Baptist History and Heritage – Henry Holcombe, DD – 1762-1824 – To Follow the Dictates of My Conscience I Must be a Baptist – PART THREE

Thomas E Kresal Admin · 2 hrs November 5, 2019

Baptist History and Heritage – Henry Holcombe, DD – 1762-1824 – To Follow the Dictates of My Conscience I Must be a Baptist – PART THREE

While an officer in the army he was led to those reflections, which inclined him to renounce the pomps and vanities of the world, and to seek for happiness in the calm contemplation of Bible truth. He had tasted of the cup of earthly pleasures, and found there was bitterness in it. He had pursued the track to which his natural propensities led him, and he became convinced that it would end in everlasting pain. He sought for a path which would conduct him to something more cheering in its aspects, more attractive in its nature, and he found that which leads up to heaven. He became a christian. In his twenty-second year, his attention was first turned to gospel ordinances.

“In conversing with my father,” says he, “he informed me that I was baptized in my infancy, and said I was a Presbyterian. Asking on what passages of Scripture the peculiar tenets of that denomination were founded, he took up the Bible and kindly endeavored to satisfy me on those points. But, to his painful disappointment, we could find nothing that seemed to me in favor of baptizing infants, nor for governing a gospel church, otherwise than by the suffrages of its members To pass softly over this tender ground, the result of my serious and reiterated inquiries into the materials, ordinances and government of the apostolic churches was the full conviction, that to follow the dictates of my conscience I must be a Baptist; and not conferring with flesh and blood, I rode near twenty miles to propose myself as a candidate for admission into a Baptist church.”

Immediately after his baptism, he received a license according to its forms to proclaim to others the truths of which he had become so fully convinced himself. He entered upon the work of the ministry with zeal, and pursued it with an industrious and persevering earnestness which did not escape the notice of his christian brethren. He was soon invited by the church at Pike creek, South Carolina, to become their pastor; and after having preached to them several months as a licentiate, he was ordained on the 11th of September, 1785, and on the same day was called upon to baptize three young men, who had given evidence of a gracious change under his ministry. His labors at this time appear to have been blessed with almost unparalleled success. Multitudes were brought to inquire what they should do to be saved. Domestic altars sprang up in all directions among families who had hitherto gloried in impiety and infidelity.

Thomas E. Kresal from – J. H. Campbell, Georgia Baptists: Historical and Biographical, 1874, pp. 187-188