John Spilsbury (Baptist Minister) - Believer's Baptism

Believer's Baptism

Spilsbury's presentation of believer's baptism by immersion of necessity engaged covenantal theology. He approved covenant theology and built his doctrine of the church on the "infallible certainty" of the eternal covenant of grace; he argued, however, that the spirituality of the New Covenant in Christ eliminated the possibility of an infant's participation in it.

The issue of the salvation of infants dying in infancy he treated as an area of mystery. He argued that one's answer to that question does not affect the revealed qualifications for those who may legitimately receive New Covenant ordinances. Though the visible perpetuity of the Old Covenant included the circumcision of male infants, the exclusion of infants from the sign of the new does not mean that the new is less encouraging in its privileges than the old.

Spilsbury said that all participation in the positive provisions of the old covenant was only a shadow of the spiritual reality of the new. An infant's exclusion from the positive ordinance of baptism forbids to him, or her, no spiritual blessing. The new covenant assumes the effectual working of the Spirit to create a believing community justified by faith in Christ and employs new positive ordinances as the symbols of its character.

He firmly believed that Believer's baptism, not infant baptism, corresponds to the nature of the new covenant, stands alone as enjoined by the Lord's authority, and alone is practiced by the apostles.

Somewhat controversially, Spilsbury asserted that any other baptism is not baptism at all but a faulty cornerstone that would "bring down the church." He said that Protestants, therefore, who retained infant baptism kept themselves "in the company of Antichrist." They must return to Rome or go forward to what he saw as "the true constitution of the church."