Southern Christian Advocate

OPEN COMMUNION IN ENGLAND

From the statement of a writer in the New York Baptist Register, it appears that open communion is making steady and rapid advances in Great Britain, and that the churches to which the most eminent Baptist divines ministered, are embracing the practice. The writer to whom we refer says:

"The plan of open Communion is destructive to Baptist churches, as is abundantly proved by its effects in Great Britain. The views of Robert Hall have so spread in that kingdom, as nearly to destroy the identity of the Baptist denomination. In many Baptist churches, once regular but now open Communion, the immersion of believers is despised and derided; and if a candidate for admission into any of them, conscientiously wishes to be immersed, he has to be baptized as stealthily as possible, and generally by twilight, for fear of offending the sprinkled members. While infant sprinkling is practiced openly to gratify the Pedo Baptist members; believer's baptism has to be administered almost secretly, for fear that the church will be stigmatized as strict and bigoted. A pastor of one of the Baptist churches in England, himself a professed Baptist, but his wife a Pedo Baptist, allows the Pedo Baptist members of the church to have their children sprinkled by Pedo Baptist ministers in his own meeting-house, and even his own children are there brought forward and sprinkled. Even the church to which the Rev. Andrew Fuller so faithfully and successfully preached, is rapidly becoming Pedo Baptist. The present pastor is unable to stem the current, and there is reason to believe that after his decease the church may be easily induced to settle a Pedo Baptist minister as pastor."