I have been reading James Nayler's letter "To You that are Called by the Name of Baptists or the Baptized People."
It has been written “And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.”(John 1:33) John was called to baptize with water but Jesus was called to baptize with holy Spirit. This was a calling they had from God, not a ritual to be blindly imitated by their followers. This baptism was the form, the ritual people had to go through in order to start a new spiritual life.
It has been written “And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.”(John 1:33) John was called to baptize with water but Jesus was called to baptize with holy Spirit. This was a calling they had from God, not a ritual to be blindly imitated by their followers. This baptism was the form, the ritual people had to go through in order to start a new spiritual life.
James Nayler wrote “But what power or manifest token have you baptizers that do but imitate
them who had the Holy Ghost and the power; is not that wanting? and doth not
accompany your baptism, and so it is but as a bell without a clapper, and dead
as a body without a spirit, and so a form without power.” It is a ritual that doesn’t guarantee change in a
person’s heart, a form without power to change the person being baptized. Rather
the baptism in the Holy Ghost can change a person from having lived in sin to
living in love towards humankind. James Nayler writes” You baptized people that
imitate Philip, that preached to the church,
When did the Spirit bid you go, as it did him?” A baptism without a calling
from God is useless, powerless. It’s but an imitation of the real thing. “You that imitate the apostles' way of
baptizing with water but cannot give the Holy Ghost? Where have any of you sold
your possessions? and laid the price down at the apostles' feet as the baptized
people did in Acts 4, and suffer none to want but have all things common, as
they had? Acts 4:31-32 to the end.”
A baptism in water must be followed by a
holy life, something James Nayler saw was lacking among the Baptists. Paul had
a different calling; to bring people to be baptized by the Holy Ghost and fire.
“And Paul, who was a minister of Christ
and preached the gospel, did bring many into this baptism, and he was not sent
to baptize with water, but to preach the gospel, and all the churches which he
preached unto came to witness Christ's baptism with the Holy Ghost and with
fire, by one Spirit, into one body, and was baptized into Christ, who was the
head of the body (Rom 6:3), and by this baptism we are thus washed from all filthiness
of flesh and spirit; but your imitated baptism of water we deny, who live in
your filthiness of flesh and spirit, whose minds and consciences are defiled;
but the baptism of Christ we own, which purifies our consciences from dead
works and keeps our minds undefiled, "by the washing of generation, and
renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Tit. 3:5).” Don’t bother about baptism, but
rather live a holy life with a undefiled conscience pure from dead works and
empty rituals.
Source: To You that are Called by the Name of Baptists or the Baptized People <http://www.qhpress.org/texts/nayler/baptists.html> 17.2.2017
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