ns from God, and as all necessary to make the man of God perfect,
and accomplished for every good word and work; the New Testament, or the
living oracles of Jesus Christ, they understand as containing the
Christian religion; the testimonies of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they
view as illustrating and proving the great proposition on which our
religion rests, viz., _that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the
only-begotten and well-beloved Son of God, and the only Savior of the
world_; the Acts of the Apostles as a divinely-authorized narrative of the
beginning and progress of the reign or kingdom of Jesus Christ, recording
the full development of _the gospel_ by the Holy Spirit sent down from
heaven, and the procedure of the apostles in setting up the church of
Christ on earth; the Epistles as carrying out and applying the doctrine of
the apostles to the practice of individuals and congregations, and as
developing the tendencies of the gospel in the behavior of its professors;
and all as forming a complete standard of Christian faith and morals,
adapted to the interval between the ascension of Christ and his return
with the kingdom which he has received from God; the Apocalypse, or
Revelation of Jesus Christ to John, in Patmos, as a figurative and
prospective view of all the fortunes of Christianity, from its date to the
return of the Savior.

Every one who sincerely believes the testimony which God gave of Jesus of
Nazareth, saying, "_This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I delight_," or,
in other words, believes what the evangelists and apostles have testified
concerning him, from his conception to his coronation in heaven as Lord of
all, and who is willing to obey him in every thing, they regard as a
proper subject of immersion, and no one else. They consider immersion into
the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, after a public, sincere, and
intelligent confession of the faith in Jesus, as necessary to admission to
the privileges of the kingdom of the Messiah, and as a solemn pledge, on
the part of Heaven, of the actual remission of all past sins, and of
adoption into the family of God.

The Holy Spirit is promised only to those who believe and obey the Savior.
No one is taught to expect the reception of that heavenly Monitor and
Comforter, as a resident in his heart, till he obeys the gospel.

Thus, while they proclaim faith and repentance, or faith and a change of
heart, as preparatory to immersion, remissi