Excerpt from Our Denominational Outlook The church, then, is the body of Christ. It is a spiritual body, rightfully composed only of those who have been te generated by Christ's Spirit and who have expressed this fact of regeneration in Christ's appoint-ed way. To stand for this central truth in heart and life is to be a Baptist. We can now look backward and inquire what Baptists have been and have done. I can deal only, in a large way, with the facts of the past, and details must be left to others. In general, we must say that Baptist history began two hun dred and fifty years ago. Before that time there were doubtless churches which held to some of the principles of the Baptist faith. But a clear recognition and confession Baptist of the great truth that the church is to be composed only Beginnings of those who give credible evidence of regeneration and who have expressed their faith by baptism in Christ's ap pointed way is not furnished in modern times by any definite and organized body before the year 1640. About that time the Particular Baptists of London, and shortly afterward the General Baptists of England, began to maintain that baptism belongs solely to believers and also that nothing but immersion is baptism. But both these bodies saw in the outward ordinance the sign of a living union with Christ. They wished to build a spiritual church, a church separate from the world, a church after the pattern shown in the mount, a church spiritual because scriptural, a church in which Christ could dwell because it had been constituted according to his laws as they are laid down in the New Testament. 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.