Some of what I write here relates to something I got on my phone from a notification.  It was Derek Thomas, the Presbyterian, representing the Master’s Seminary on a podcast.  He did about fifteen minutes on preaching and the problem of evil, focusing on sermons through Job.  I don’t know that an evangelical Presbyterian might differ with a Baptist interpretation of Job.  Thomas said he disagreed with Calvin, whom he said took the Elihu position, essentially seeing Elihu arriving at the end of Job and mopping up the whole discussion.

The appearance of Thomas for Master’s Seminary drew my attention to the doctrine of Presbyterians and fellowship with them.  Presbyterians sprinkle infants, which they consider baptizing babies.  Should this bring separation from Presbyterians?

Presbyterians in the ordinance of baptism sprinkle infants. A Book of Public Prayer for the Presbyterian Church of America, 1857, reads (p. 147):

Baptism is an holy Sacrament instituted by Christ: in which a person professing the Christian Faith, or the infant of such, is baptized with water into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: in signification and solemnization of the holy covenant in which as a believer, or the seed of believers, he giveth up himself, or is by the parent given up, to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost:  to believe in, love, and fear this blessed Trinity, against the flesh, the devil, and the world. Thus he is solemnly entered a visible member of Christ and His Church, a child of God, and an heir of heaven.

This is considered and called “a prescribed form of worship” (p. xv), so under the category of worship.  Is baptism worship of God?  The thought here is that the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, these two rites, are acts of worship in the New Testament temple of God.  To worship God, God must accept the baptism.

Through the Bible, a primary criterion for worship is that God accepts it.  For God to accept it, it must accord with scripture.  God accepts worship in truth.  In the Old Testament, God punishes false worship by death, such as the case of Nadab and Abihu for offering strange fire to the Lord.  Infant sprinkling is not truth.

C. H. Spurgeon preached and the transcript reads:

When we reflect that it is rendered into some thing worse than superstition by being accompanied with falsehood, when children are taught that in their baptism they are made the children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, which is as base a lie as ever was forged in hell, or uttered beneath the copes of heaven, our spirit sinks at the fearful errors which have crept into the Church, through the one little door of infant sprinkling.

Preaching at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in 1861, Hugh Brown said:

We cannot but regard infant baptism as the main root of the superstitious and destructive dogma of baptismal regeneration, to which as Protestants we are opposed; we cannot but regard infant baptism as the chief corner-stone of State Churchism, to which as Dissenters we are opposed; we cannot but regard infant baptism as unscriptural, and to everything that is unscriptural we, as disciples of Jesus Christ, must be opposed; and we do trust that all who differ from us, and however widely they may differ, will still admit that we are only doing what is right in maintaining what we believe to be the truth of God with reference to this matter.

I’ve read many who say that infant sprinkling has sent more people to hell than any other false doctrine.  I can’t disagree.  Recently someone compared this to 1-2-3-pray-with-me or easy prayerism.  They both send many people to Hell, the latter catching up today with infant sprinkling in its damnatory qualities.

I’m happy when I hear any Presbyterian believes right, preaches scripturally, about anything.  Love rejoices in the truth.  Infant sprinkling is false worship and as a doctrine sends people to Hell.  God killed Nadab and Abihu for changing the recipe at the altar of incense.  How much more serious is the false worship and perverting message of infant sprinkling?  Baptists should separate from Presbyterians, not remain in unity with them.  They should not yoke together in common ministry.  They should do what God does with false worship.