Excerpt from A History of the Baptists: Traced by Their Vital Principles and Practices, From the Time of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to the Year 1886 This request was declined on account of its inherent difficulty and the pressure of a large New York pastorate. He submitted two or three weighty names of those who, in his judgment, were in every way better qualified for the work, among them the late Dr. William R. Williams, and wrote letters of introduction to these several gentlemen. In a few weeks they returned, stating that they had consulted not only those referred to, but other well-known Baptist writers, each of Whom suggested that, as the author had devoted years to the examination of the subject, he owed it to his denomination to write. And publish thereon. After fuller consideration he consented to make the attempt, with the distinct understanding that he should be entirely unfettered in regard to the principle on which the work should be written. He saw at a glance that as Baptists are in no way the authors or offspring of an ecclesiastical system that, therefore, their history cannot be written on the current methods of ecclesiastical history. The attempt to show that any religious body has come down from the Apostles an unchanged people is of itself an assumption of infallibility, and contradicts the facts of history. Truth only is changeless, and only as any people have held to the truth in its purity and primitive simplicity has the world had an unchanging religion. The truth has been held by individual men and scattered companies, but never in un broken continuity by any sect as such. Sect after sect has appeared and held it for a time, then has destroyed itself by mixing error with the truth; again, the truth has evinced its divinity by rising afresh in the hands of a newly organized people, to perpetuate its diffusion in the earth. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.