History, Heritage & Distinctives James P. Boyce – Defender of Baptist PerpetuityPart FIVE of SEVEN

Thomas E Kresal

Admin · 4 hrsJune 10, 2020Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives James P. Boyce – Defender of Baptist PerpetuityPart FIVE of SEVEN

The foregoing language is found in his address on “Three Changes In Theological Institutions.” If this language means anything it means that Boyce believed in the “continuous existence” of Baptists from Christ, and that for this reason a seminary should be established to train men to defend the Baptist position. This is the more clearly brought out in the next few sentences of this same great address. He further says:”The Baptists in the past have been entirely too indifferent to the position they thus occupy. They have depended too much on the known strength of their principles. We owe a change to ourselves as Christians, bound to show an adequate reason for the differences between us and others; as men of even moderate scholarship, that it may appear that we have not made the gross errors in philology and criticism which we must have made if we do not right; as the successors of a glorious spiritual ancestry, illustrated by heroic martyrdom, by profession of noble principles, by the maintenance of true doctrines; as a Church of Christ, which he has ever preserved as the witness for his truth, by which he has illustrated his wonderful ways, and shown that his promises are sure and steadfast.”Thomas E. Kresal from: Pillars of Orthodoxy, or Defenders of the Faith, pg. 92 by Ben Bogard, 1900