The Baptism of Believers Only: The Particular Communion of the Baptist Churches Explained and Vindicated

At its foundation, the answer to the question, "What, or perhaps more accurately, Who is the Church?" is the reason for Dr. Baldwin's book. He addresses the subject from the perspective of the ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper, that the Head of the Church established, describing from the New Testament record who has a "right" to them, and his answers draw a clear and fixed distinction between the two opposing positions in this vital debate - vital to the life, the character, the visible existence of the Church itself. If his opponents be correct, then the Church may, in the final analysis and by "good and necessary inference," open its ordinances to virtually anyone, and thus to virtually everyone, with practically no previous manifest obedience to Christ. But if his statement of the case be right, then those who disagree find themselves in the unenviable position, in Dr. Baldwin's words, of laying "the foundation for a graceless church, and would leave no other difference between that and the world, than what consists merely in name and external form." It was the unique excellence of the Baptists in the centuries that followed the Reformation to be the advocates for a truly, and exclusively, spiritual kingdom of priests - that the Church in its organized and visible demonstration should be composed only of persons who exhibit the character of those the inspired writers denominate "saints." Thus, they Biblically reasoned, the ordinances that the Lord of the Church has given should reflect, in their application, this distinction "between the holy and profane...between the unclean and the clean." Here, then, is the point of departure for Dr. Baldwin's treatise.