Scotch Baptists

Scotch Baptists.

In Scotland a particular class of Baptists has long existed under this name. With the exception of baptism, they are nearly allied in sentiment to the old Scotch Independents — followers of Robert Dale (q.v.). Mr. Carmichael, pastor of an Antiburgher congregation at Cupar, in Angus, having changed his views, was baptized in 1765 by Dr. Gill in London. Returning to Edinburgh, he administered that ordinance to five others. In 1769 he was joined in the pastorate by a Mr. M'Lean, who bore an important part during the various internal dissensions which arose. Churches founded in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee, after great depression, gathered strength and influence, and in 1795 several societies were formed in the north of England. At the census of 1851 they were returned as having fifteen meeting houses in England with 2037 sittings. The Scotch Baptists are Calvinists; are strictly congregational; they observe the love feast, and upon certain occasions the kiss of charity, and also wash one another's feet when it is really serviceable as an act of hospitality; they abstain from eating blood and things strangled; advocate plain attire; they hold, with respect to marriage, that, while one of the parties being an unbeliever does not dissolve that relation when once entered into; it is the duty of Christians to marry only in the Lord. For further information consult the works of M'Lean, Inglis, Braidwood, and Jones, and that of their great opponent, Andrew Fuller, Treatise on Sandemanianism. See Eadie, Eccles. Cyclop. s.v.; Blunt, Dict. of Sects, s.v.; Religions of the World (Lond. 1877).