BAPTISTS, in ecclesiastical history, (from βαπτίζω, I baptize); a denomination of Christians, distinguished from other Christians by their particular opinions respecting the mode and the subjects of baptism.

Instead of administering the ordinance by sprinkling or pouring water, they maintain that it ought to be administered only by immersion. Such, they insist, is the meaning of the word βαπτίζω; so that a command to baptize is a command to immerse. Thus it was understood by those who first administered it. John the Baptist, and the apostles of Christ, administered it in Jordan and other rivers and places where there was much water. Both the administrators and the subjects are described as going down into, and coming up again out of, the water; and the baptized are said to be buried in baptism, and to be raised again: which language could not, they say, be properly adopted on supposition of the ordinance being administered in any other manner than by immersion. Thus also, they affirm, it was in general administered in the primitive church. Thus it is now administered in the Russian and Greek church: and thus it is, at this day, directed to be administered in the church of England, to all who are thought capable of submitting to it in this manner. With regard to the subjects of baptism, the Baptists say, that this ordinance ought not to be administered to children or infants at all, nor to grown up persons in general; but to adults only of a certain character and description. Our Saviour's commission to his apostles, by which Christian baptism was instituted, is to go and teach all nations, baptizing them: that is, say they, not to baptize all they meet with; but first to instruct them—to teach all nations, or to preach the gospel to every creature—and whoever receives it, him to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. To such persons, and to such only, baptism appears to have been administered by the apostles, and the immediate disciples of Christ. They are described as repenting of their sins, as believing in Christ, and as having gladly received the word. Without these qualifications, Peter acquaints those who were converted by his sermon, that he could not have admitted them to baptism. Philip holds the same language in his discourse with the eunuch; and Paul treats Lydia, the jailor, and others, in the same manner. Without these qualifications, Christians in general think it wrong to admit persons to the Lord's supper; and, for the same reasons, without these qualifications, at least a profession of them, the Baptists think it wrong to admit any to baptism. Wherefore they withhold it, not only from the impenitently vicious and profane, and from infidels who have no faith; but also from infants and children, who have no knowledge, and are incapable of every action civil and religious. They further insist, that all positive institutions depend entirely upon the will and declaration of the institutor; and therefore, that reasoning by analogy from abrogated Jewish rites is to be rejected, and the express commands of Christ respecting the mode and subjects of baptism ought to be our only rule.

The Baptists in England form one of the denominations of Protestant dissenters. They separate from the establishment for the same reasons as their brethren of the other denominations do; and from additional motives derived from their particular tenets respecting baptism. The constitution of their churches, and their modes of worship, are congregational or independent: in the exercise of which they are protected, in common with other dissenters, by the act of toleration. Before this act, they were liable to pains and penalties as nonconformists, and often for their peculiar sentiments as Baptists. A proclamation was issued out against them, and some of them were burnt in Smithfield in 1538. They bore a considerable share in the persecutions of the last and of the preceding centuries; and, as it should seem, in those of some centuries before; for there were several among the Lollards and the followers of Wickliff, who disapproved of infant-baptism. There were many of this persuasion among the Protestants and reformers abroad. In Holland, Germany, and the North, they went by the names of ANABAPTISTS, and MENNONITES; and, in Piedmont and the south, they were found among the ALBIGENSES and WALDENSES. See the histories of the Reformation, and the above articles in this Dictionary.

The Baptists subsist under two denominations, viz. the Particular or Calvinistical, and the General or Arminian. The former is by far the most numerous. Some of both denominations allow of mixed communion, viz. of persons who have been sprinkled in their infancy, and therefore unbaptized in the view of the Baptists; others disallow it; and some of them observe the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath, apprehending the law that enjoined it not to have been repealed by Christ or his apostles. But a difference of opinion respecting these and other matters, is not peculiar to the Baptists: it is common to all Christians, and to all bodies of men who think and judge for themselves.