Isaac Backus > Quotes

“When Church and State are separate, the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other; but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued.”
― Isaac Backus

“Mr. Blood is so much esteemed in their government, that he was called to preach their Election Sermon, October 11, 1792, which was published by their authority. One passage therein says, "A wise magistrate will set a constant guard over the words of his mouth; that with a becoming moderation, he may express his resentment of injuries done him, and have all his language such as shall tend to prevent others from an uncivil, profane way of treating their fellow citizens. A magistrate who is rough and profane in his language, is a monstrous character. He is not civil himself, and we cannot expect but that the practice, at least, will do hurt in the community. He is not the gentleman, for any person of sense knows, that a rough, profane way of treating mankind, better fits the character of a clown than a gentleman.”
― Isaac Backus, A history of New-England, with particular reference to the denomination of Christians called Baptists. Containing the first principles and...

“Mr. James Potter was born there in 1734, and was awakened to some sense of sin when he was about ten years old; and convictions followed him, from time to time, until a clear deliverance was granted him, October 3, 1781. And he says, "Now I began to see the base views I formerly had of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the plan of salvation; for when I had a discovery of actual sins, and of the danger I was exposed to thereby, I would repent and reform, and think what a glorious Saviour Christ was, and that some time or other he would save me from hell, and take me to glory, with a desire to be happy, but no desire to be holy. But, glory be to God! he now gave me another view of salvation. Now I saw his law to be holy and loved it, though I and all my conduct were condemned by it. Now I saw that God's justice did not strike against me as his creature but as a sinner; and that Christ died not only to save from punishment, but from sin itself. I saw that Christ's office was not only to make men happy, but also to make them holy, and the plan now looked beautiful to me, and I had no desire to have the least tittle of it altered, but all my cry was to be conformed to this glorious plan.”
― Isaac Backus, A history of New-England, with particular reference to the denomination of Christians called Baptists. Containing the first principles and...

“At first they received members by a general declaration of their faith, and the discovery of a regular walk; but they afterwards required of each one an account of a change of heart by the work of God’s Spirit.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“And an amendment to the constitution was made the next month, which says, “Congress shall make no law, establishing articles of faith, or a mode of worship, or prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition to the government for a redress of grievances.” This was dated September 23, 1789; and it has been adopted by so many of the states, that it is part of the constitution of our general government, and yet Massachusetts and Connecticut act contrary to it to this day.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“The name Providence, which Mr. Williams gave both to his town and colony, and the word HOPE, in their public seal, with the figure of an ANCHOR therein, were designed to hold forth the HOPE that he had in God, that he would succeed the great work that he was engaged in, of establishing a civil government upon the principles of true freedom to soul and body.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“Roger Williams, John Clarke, Joseph Clarke, Thomas Olney, Gregory Dexter, Samuel Hubbard, and many others in that little colony, held the pure doctrines of grace, and the importance of a holy life, as much as the fathers of Massachusetts did; and they established the first government upon earth, that gave equal liberty, civil and religious, which is now enjoyed in the most parts of America. General Greene also, the second military character in our revolutionary war, sprang from one of the first planters of Providence.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“And the men who were for such liberty, soon formed the first Baptist church in America. Mr. Williams had been accused before of embracing principles which tended to anabaptism; and in March, 1639, he was baptized by one of his brethren, and then he baptized about ten more.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“In September, 1638, Massachusetts made a law to compel all the inhabitants in each town to pay an equal proportion towards the support of religious ministers, though none had a vote in choosing them but communicants in their churches. And they then made another law, which said, “That whosoever shall stand excommunicated for the space of six months, without laboring what in him or her lieth to be restored, such person shall be presented to the court of assistants, and there proceeded with by fine, imprisonment, banishment, or farther for the good behavior, as their contempt and obstinacy upon full hearing shall deserve.” But this act was so high and glaring that it was repealed the next year.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“Again he says, “A national synod is the highest ecclesiastical authority upon earth.” Finally he says, “Synods have power to admonish, to excommunicate, and deliver from those censures, and every man must stand to the judgment of the national synod, Deut. 17:12.” [Stoddard on Instituted Churches, p. 12, 21, 29, 33.]”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“2. I testify that baptism, or dipping in water, is one of the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that a visible believer, or disciple of Christ Jesus (that is, one who manifesteth repentance towards God, and faith in Jesus Christ) is the only person to be baptized or dipped with water, and also that visible person that is to walk in that visible order of His house, and to wait for His coming the second time in the form of Lord and King, with His glorious kingdom, according to promise; and for His sending down, in the time of His absence, the Holy Ghost, or Holy Spirit of promise, and all this according to the last will and testament of that living Lord, whose will is not to be added to or taken from.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“And when the war came on the next year, the Christian Indians were furnished with arms and ammunition to defend the islands against the enemy; and they were so faithful therein, that when any landed to solicit them to join in the war, though some were related by blood and others by marriage, yet the islanders directly brought them before the governor to attend his pleasure. And by a divine blessing on these means, though the Indians on the island were twenty to one of the English, yet they lived in peace and security through all that dreadful war on the main land.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“His newspaper articles were not on the ordinary political topics, but were designed to expose ecclesiastical oppression, and to defend the noble principles of religious freedom.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“And on June 26, 1778, they met in a field, by the side of a river, for worship and the administration of that ordinance. But in the midst of their worship, the chief men of the town came at the head of a mob and broke it up. The ministers tried to reason with them about their conduct, but in vain; and a dog was carried into the river, and dipped, in contempt of their opinion. A gentleman of the town then invited the Baptists to his house, near another river, and they held their worship there; but the chief men of the town followed them, and two dogs were plunged in that river; and one young man dipped another there with scorn and derision of the Baptists; and an officer of the town went into the house, and advised these ministers to depart immediately out of town for their own safety. They asked if their lives would be in danger if they did not go, but received no answer. But they secretly agreed with their friends to disperse, and to meet at another place of water; and they did so, and those six persons were baptized, after which the mob offered them some further abuse.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“And as Charles the Second had been restored to the crown of England the year before, Governor Endicot and his court wrote to him in December, and said,   “Our liberty to walk in the faith of the gospel, with all good conscience, was the cause of our transporting ourselves, with our wives, little ones, and our substance, from that pleasant land over the Atlantic Ocean into this vast wilderness, choosing rather the pure Scripture worship with a good conscience, in this remote wilderness among the heathen, than the pleasures of England with submission to the then so disposed and so far prevailing hierarchy, which we could not do without an evil conscience.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“And he then said, “O! my soul, look back with gratitude on what the Lord hath done for thee in this excursion. I think it is the seventy-fifth day since I arrived at Rhode Island. My body was then weak, but the Lord has much renewed its strength. I have been enabled to preach, I think, one hundred and seventy-five times in public, besides exhorting frequently in private. I have traveled upwards of eight hundred miles, and gotten upwards of seven hundred pounds sterling, in goods, provisions, and money, for the Georgia orphans. Never did God vouchsafe to me greater comforts. Never did I see such a continuance of the Divine presence in the congregations to whom I have preached.” [Collection of his Journals, p. 437.]”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“and on the 10th, the article was brought in, to give rulers power to support ministers by force; and in order to get a vote for it, Mr. John Adams accused the Baptists of sending an agent to Philadelphia, when the first Congress was sitting there, to try to break the union of these colonies in the defense of all our privileges. And Mr. Paine accused the Baptists of reading a long memorial there, in which were some things against our government, which he believed never existed.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“As the Baptist agent was soon informed of these things, he wrote a narrative of the affair, naming his accusers, and challenging them to a fair hearing upon it before any proper judges, and published it in the Chronicle at Boston, December 2, 1779; and he has never heard of any answer since.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“And they had theirs from Rome, the mother of harlots, the great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth, Rev. 17:5, 18. Great Britain has lost all her power here, and our rulers have sworn to renounce all foreign power over America, and yet they compel the people to support ministers who claim a power of office from England. How shocking is this!”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“as a plea that the Church of England might be a true church of Christ, notwithstanding all her corruptions, Robinson says, “It is true that the apostles mentioned them, but always with utter dislike, severe reproof, and strict charges to reform them. Rom. 16:17; 1 Cor. 5; 1 Thess. 5:14; 2 Thess. 3:6; 1 Tim. 6:5; Rev. 2:14-16, 20. But how doth this concern you? Though Paul and all the apostles with him; yea, though Christ Himself from heaven should admonish any of your churches to put away any person, though never so heretical or flagitious, you could not do it.” [Robinson,”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“The excellent Mr. Edwards was settled there, with his grandfather Stoddard, upon the opinion that the Lord’s supper was a converting ordinance, and he had gone on fifteen years in that way, until he was fully convinced that it was contrary to the Word of God; and he also found that gospel discipline could not be practiced in such a way. No sooner was his change of mind discovered, in 1744, than most of his people were inflamed against him, and never would give him a hearing upon the reasons of his change of sentiments; but they were resolute to have him dismissed. As he could not get them to hear him preach upon the subject, he printed his thoughts upon it, in 1749, though most of them would not read his book. In it he says, “that baptism, by which the primitive converts were admitted into the church, was used as an exhibition and token of their being visibly regenerated, dead to sin, and alive to God. The saintship, godliness, and holiness of which, according to Scripture, professing Christians and visible saints do make a profession and have a visibility, is not any religion and virtue that is the result of common grace, or moral sincerity, (as it is called), but saving grace.” And to prove this, he referred to Rom. 2:29; 6:1-4; Phil. 3:3; Col. 2:11, 12. [On a right to Sacraments, p. 20-23.] Though he did not design it, yet many others have been made Baptists by the same scriptures, and the same ideas from them.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“After General Washington was established as President of these United States, a general committee of the Baptist churches in Virginia presented an address to him, in August, 1789, wherein they expressed a high regard for him; but a fear that our religious rights were not well secured in our new constitution of government. In answer to which, he assured them of his readiness to use his influence to make them more secure, and then said, “While I recollect with satisfaction, that the religious society of which you are members have been, throughout America, uniformly and almost unanimously the firm friends of civil liberty, and the persevering promoters of our glorious Revolution, I cannot hesitate to believe that they will be the faithful supporters of a free, yet efficient general government.” [Leland’s Virginia Chronicle, p. 47, 48.]”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“Yet in the Election Sermon at Boston, May 30, 1792, the ministers in general, who are supported by law in our country, are called, "The Christian priesthood."* And a book was published there this year, the whole labour whereof was to prove that all the children of professors of Christianity are born in the church, and ought to come to the Lord's supper, if they are not openly scandalous, whether they are satisfied that they are born again, or not. And the author says, "It is the will of God that many be admitted into the church who are not in heart friends to him. And if the greater part be of this character, can we imagine that the true interests of Christ's kingdom are in any danger, while Christ has his enemies as much in his power as any, and can use them as his instruments, or restrain them, or make them his willing people, or cut them off, whenever he pleases?"† It is readily granted that Christ has all the world under his power, but his revealed will requires a profession of saving faith of all who are received into his church; and they who imagine that he allows his enemies to come into it, implicitly put him beneath all rational men. For all such men, be they never so deceitful themselves, yet endeavour to guard against enemies in their own families and societies.”
― Isaac Backus, A history of New-England, with particular reference to the denomination of Christians called Baptists. Containing the first principles and...

“Besides the labors of Mr. Backus as a Christian pastor, he was eminently distinguished as the noble defender of religious liberty and the rights of conscience, and as an ecclesiastical historian.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“In the spring after the college was removed to Providence, where a large brick edifice was erected for it, and a house for the President, all by personal generosity; and no government upon earth ever gave any thing towards said buildings, or for the college funds; though vast sums had been given by the governments of Massachusetts and Connecticut to their colleges. But the buildings, library, and funds of this college, were all produced voluntarily, and chiefly from the inhabitants of Providence, many of whom sprung from the planters of the first Baptist church in America. O how far was this from the thoughts of Massachusetts, when they banished Roger Williams for opposing the use of force in religious affairs!”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“Yet Mr. Cotton reports that he consented to it, and reflects upon Holmes for not doing the same. But I have a writing of Governor Jenks, wherein he says, “Although the paying of a fine seems to be a small thing in comparison of a man’s parting with his religion: yet the paying of a fine is the acknowledging of a transgression; and for a man to acknowledge that he has transgressed, when his conscience tells him he has not, is but little if any thing short of parting with his religion; and it is likely this might be the consideration of those suffers.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“the Baptists vigorously united with their fellow-citizens in resisting the arbitrary claims of Great Britain; but it seemed to them unreasonable that they should be called upon to contend for civil liberty, if, after it was gained, they should still be exposed to oppression in religious concerns. When, therefore, the first Continental Congress met in Philadelphia, the Warren Association, viewing it as the highest civil resort, agreed to send Mr. Backus as their agent to that convention, “there to follow the best advice he could obtain, to procure some influence from thence in their favor.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“Whereas Anabaptists are neither spirited or principled to injure or hurt your government nor your liberties; but rather these be the means to preserve your churches from apostasy, and to provoke them to their primitive purity, as they were in the first planting; in admission of members to receive none into your churches but visible saints, and in restoring the entire jurisdiction of every congregation complete and undisturbed. We are hearty and full for our Presbyterian brethren’s equal liberty with ourselves; O that they had the same spirit towards us! But O how it grieves and affects us, that New England should persecute! Will you not give what you take? Is liberty of conscience your due? And is it not as due unto others who are sound in the faith? Amongst many Scriptures, that in the fourteenth of Romans much confirms me in liberty of conscience thus stated. To him that esteemeth any thing unclean, to him it is unclean.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“Infant baptism was not named in the Holy Scriptures, nor in any history, for two hundred years after the birth of Christ. And when it was first named, ministers called it regeneration. Because Christ says, “Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God,” they held that baptism washed away original sin, and that infants could not be saved if they were not baptized. And because Christ says, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you,” they held that no person could be saved without eating the Lord’s supper; and they brought infants to it, as well as to baptism. For the truth of these facts, we appeal to the most noted writings of the third and fourth centuries. A noted minister of the third century said, “It is for that reason, because by the sacrament of baptism the pollutions of our birth is taken away, that infants are baptized.” [Clark’s Defense of Infant Baptism, 1752, p.111.]”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804

“This book describes these early efforts and the success of Baptists in securing this religious freedom and making it a part of the United States Constitution. Though other denominations may not be aware of this fact, they owe a debt of gratitude to the Baptists, for Baptists, practically alone, fought for and secured this freedom for all.”
― Isaac Backus, Your Baptist Heritage: 1620-1804