Sometimes Baptists get accused of having a deficient sacramentology. Admittedly, this is true of some Baptists. As Baptists have engaged with the broader Reformed tradition, the discussion has historically focused on the subjects of baptism (believers only or also the infants of believers) and the mode of baptism (immersion or sprinkling/pouring). But as Michael Haykin has astutely observed, early Baptists generally held a more sacramental view—as opposed to a strict memorialist view. But this sacramental view was lost (or at the very least greatly diminished) in the eighteenth century. What caused this? He suggests that the rise of the global missions movement in the 1790s turned Baptists’ attention toward global evangelism, to the neglect of more thoughtful ecclesiology and sacramentology.[1] I believe Haykin is largely correct.
However, I believe we see this change prior to the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792. In fact, I find Michael Walker’s theory to have great merit (which is not necessarily at odds with Haykin’s view): that Baptists in this transitional period had such an aversion to anything reminiscent of Roman Catholic sacerdotalism that their sacramentology shifted from a Puritan-like sacramentalism to an anemic memorialism.[2] This can be seen in perhaps the most influential and doggedly anti-papist of our Baptist forebears, John Gill (1697–1771).[3]
I will argue that Gill wasn’t so radically anti-sacramental, but he might be perceived as such because of the way he shifted away from certain sacramental language common in the broader Reformed and Puritan tradition. We can see this by asking the question: Is baptism a “seal” of the covenant of grace?
Reformed paedobaptists answer affirmatively, but the answer from the Baptists has been mixed. In this essay, I’d like to examine how John Gill answered this question in the negative—that baptism is not a “seal” of the covenant of grace—and tease out its broader implications for Baptist sacramentalism in historical perspective. In fitting with this symposium on Baptist sacramentalism, I ask whether a rejection of the language of “seal” means that Gill rejected a sacramental view of baptism, and I conclude that affirming the ordinances as “seals” is not essential to sacramentalism.
What is a Seal?
On careful reflection, the word “seal” has a wide semantic range—from the marine mammal, to the act of joining two surfaces so that nothing can pass through, to an impression in wax to identify a letter-sender, or to confirm a commercial transaction. All of these senses are used by Gill, even the marine mammal.[4] But when it comes to a divine covenant, Gill stated that a seal is “a sure token,” an earnest or pledge, that an object “may not be lost, nor made use of for any other purpose than that for which it was designed.”[5] A seal renders an object “authentic” and “true.”[6] When a redemptive reality is sealed, it is “ratified, confirmed, and made sure.”[7] In this way, Gill recognized that seals had a legal and relational use in the covenant of grace. As such, the seal of God—whatever it is—is an extraordinary source of assurance to the believer.
But what is the seal of the covenant of grace? For Gill, it is rooted in divine foreknowledge and election, where God claimed his elect for himself, distinguishing them from the world, and committing himself to love and protect them.[8]Because of this ultimate source, Gill sometimes referred to divine election as the seal. However, elsewhere Gill identified the gift of the Holy Spirit as the seal of the covenant of grace since it is the Spirit who applies all the saving benefits of the covenant to the soul and experience of the believer.[9] Still, elsewhere, Gill preferred to speak of the blood of Christ as the seal of the covenant, since it is only by his atoning sacrifice that any redemptive reality is truly established for the believer. He wrote in one place:
the Holy Spirit is not such a seal that makes the covenant, or testament, surer in itself, only assures the Lord’s people of their interest in it, by witnessing it to their spirits, by being in them the earnest of the inheritance bequeathed them, and by sealing them up unto the day of redemption; properly speaking, the blood of Christ is the only seal of this testament, by which it is ratified and confirmed, and therefore called the blood of his covenant, and the blood of the new testament.[10]
Thus, when Gill is being most precise, the blood of Christ is the only true seal of the new covenant, though it stands in intimate relation to divine foreknowledge before time and the Spirit’s application of it in time.[11] On the cross, the new covenant was sealed in blood. The Holy Spirit acts as a subsidiary, applicatory seal in the conscience of believers that confirms their interest in the atoning blood of Christ.[12]
Further, and of particular importance for Baptist theology, only true believers receive this seal. Because the seal is necessarily related to true regeneration and conversion, it’s an internal, spiritual seal—entirely unrelated to any outward rite.
The persons thus sealed are not carnal and unconverted persons, only believers in Christ, and these, after they commence such; the seal by which they are sealed, is not any of the ordinances, as circumcision under the Old Testament, or baptism, or the Lord’s supper under the New; for these are no seals, nor are they ever so called; but the Spirit of God himself, as the Holy Spirit of promise; for the same who, in the next clause, is called the earnest, is the seal.[13]
For the seal to confirm an unregenerate person in the covenant of grace would be to tell a lie about the covenant reality. This led Gill to reiterate in numerous places throughout his vast corpus that the ordinances are not seals, which won him no friends in the broader Reformed and evangelical scene in the eighteenth century.
The paedobaptists eventually responded to Gill’s writings on baptism, and one Peter Clark (1694–1768), a colonial American Congregationalist, suggested that Gill’s rejection of the ordinances as seals of the covenant of grace was borrowed from the Socinians—certainly fighting words to Gill. To this, Gill responded sharply:
My sentiment is borrowed from the Scriptures, and is established by them; the blood of Christ confirms and ratifies the covenant, the blessings and promises of it, and is therefore called the blood of the everlasting covenant; the blessed Spirit is the sealer of believers interest in it, or assures them of it. So that there are not two seals of the covenant of grace, as he wrongly observes. The blood of Christ makes the covenant itself sure, and is in this sense the seal of that; the Spirit of God is the seal of interest in it to particular persons; and in neither sense do or can ordinances seal.[14]
Gill was admirably “biblicist” here. He believed his conclusions were drawn explicitly from Scripture and would not be bullied into accepting a theological conclusion he couldn’t justify through exegesis. Further, the two quotations above press the question, “Why not both?” Can’t there be more than one seal? Election, the blood of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, baptism, the Lord’s Supper (perhaps even something else?)—they’re all seals. Gill rejected this conclusion. There is one seal—the blood of Jesus—determined in eternity and applied in time. For Gill, a divine covenant doesn’t need to have a seal—the covenant of works did not—and so we aren’t free to go beyond the clear teaching of Scripture in identifying something as a seal.[15]
But what are we to do with Romans 4:11, which states that circumcision was a seal? And if baptism succeeds circumcision in God’s redemptive economy, then it should follow that baptism is likewise a seal. Gill was ready for this objection.
Was Circumcision a Seal?
Gill argued that circumcision was a seal only to Abraham but not to any of Abraham’s offspring. So it is not the case that circumcision was a seal for all the members of the Abrahamic covenant (or the Mosaic covenant that followed it), but only that it was a personal seal, unique to Abraham, for the covenant Yahweh made with him (i.e. not of the covenant of grace).[16] He interprets the sealing function of circumcision to be a confirmation to Abraham that he had a sincere faith, that it would give “assurance to Abraham, or was a sure token to him, that righteousness would be wrought out by Christ,” that he had received a justifying righteous by faith, “that he should be the father of many nations in a spiritual sense,” and that the same justification by faith would one day be applied to the Gentiles.[17]
Further, circumcision was “a distinguishing character of the people of the Jews, until the Messiah came,” but only in a civil/national sense.[18] In this way it “was a sign or token of that part of the promise or covenant, which gave to his seed the land of Canaan: this was a seal of the lease of that land, which was made whilst Abraham was in it, and which the Israelites were obliged to submit to, upon entrance into it in Joshua’s time, as a token of it; and which they were to observe whilst in it until the Messiah’s coming, and by which they were distinguished from other nations, and kept a distinct nation, that it might appear he came of them.”[19] Thus, it had a civil/national function in Israel’s national covenant, while not necessarily communicating any spiritual benefits to those receiving the sign.
Finally, Gill believed it was also “an emblem of spiritual circumcision, or circumcision of the heart, which lies in the putting off the body of sin, in renouncing man’s own righteousness, and in his being by the grace of God, and blood of Christ, cleansed from the impurity of his nature, propagated by carnal generation, in which the member circumcised has a principal concern.”[20] Thus it served as a type of the blood of Christ, the seal of the covenant of grace.[21]
In summary, Gill argued that circumcision is called a sign, but never a seal in the Old Testament, and that the text in Romans 4:11 was a specific reference to Abraham alone, not transferable nor to be extrapolated to every instance of circumcision.[22]
True to Baptist ethos, Gill asked that if circumcision were a seal of the covenant of grace, did it seal all or only some of Abraham’s seed? If all, then even Ishmael? Even Esau? Even Judas? Did they really have the promises of the covenant of grace confirmed to them? If so, then what value is a seal if it doesn’t actually distinguish the inheritors of the spiritual blessings of the covenant from the reprobate? Perhaps it only sealed some. But it was given to all of Abraham’s offspring. So was it ineffective to those who did not share Abraham’s saving faith? This returns us to questioning the point of such a so-called seal since the covenant of grace was not made with all of Abraham’s natural seed but only to his spiritual seed—it does not confirm any spiritual blessings to those without faith, and so it does not objectively seal anyone or anything.[23] Gill was aware that some argued that the circumcision didn’t seal any spiritual blessings to anyone, but was a seal of the truth of God’s covenant itself, but Gill rejects this possibility since “this needs no such sign or seal; the word of God is sufficient, which declares it and assures of it.”[24] Further, Gill recognized that paedobaptists distinguished between an internal and external administration of the covenant of grace, but since Gill simply rejected these categories like good Baptists should, he also rejected any doctrine or practice built upon them.[25]
Furthermore, if circumcision was a seal of the covenant of grace unto Abraham, then, Gill reasons, the covenant of grace was without a seal in the time from Adam to Abraham.[26] According to Gill, the covenant of grace “subsisted from everlasting,” and was revealed shortly after the fall, and was manifest to particular persons (like Noah) with no mention of a seal.[27] Was Shem in the covenant of grace? Undoubtedly, yet there’s no biblical reason to believe he received circumcision or any similar seal. Then there’s the obvious issue of the impossibility of any female being sealed in the covenant of grace since none could receive circumcision.[28] Apparently, some in Gill’s day argued that females were “virtually circumcised in the males”—to which Gill simply said, “false and foolish.”
In light of this, Gill asks the most pertinent question:
It may be inquired whether circumcision being called a seal, will prove that baptism is a seal of the covenant? … I answer, that circumcision was only a seal to Abraham of a peculiar covenant made with him, and of a particular promise made to him, and was it to be admitted a seal of the covenant of grace, it will not prove baptism to be such; since, as has been observed, baptism does not succeed it in place, in time, and use; and could this be allowed that it succeeds it, and is a seal of the righteousness of faith, as that was, it can only be a seal to them that have both faith and righteousness, and not to them that have neither; it would only at most be a seal to believers.[29]
Is Baptism a Seal?
As the above quotation makes clear, baptism does not take the place of circumcision. Circumcision wasn’t a type of baptism, but of the blood of Christ shed on the cross and applied by the regenerating and preserving work of the Holy Spirit. Thus it’s not the case that baptism is a seal like circumcision was a seal. For one, circumcision was a seal only to Abraham, but also, circumcision doesn’t find in baptism its antitype.
Baptism can’t be a seal—confirming a divine relation—because it’s not actually effective. Gill noted that there are many persons who have been baptized, yet were never in the covenant of grace, like Simon Magus. And there are others who are in the covenant of grace, having it sealed and assured to them, who were never baptized, like the thief on the cross.[30] Gill asked, “What spiritual blessing, what blessing of grace in the covenant, does baptism seal, or can seal, assure of, and secure unto the carnal seed of believers?”[31] He knew the answer: The reprobate, whether baptized or not, receive no spiritual blessings of the covenant.
Gill could hardly be less impressed by arguments drawing an analogy between circumcision and baptism.
The argument from analogy is weak and insufficient; though some little agreement between circumcision and baptism may be imagined, and seem to be in the signification of them, yet the difference between them is notorious; they differ in their subjects, uses, manner of administration, and the administrators of them; nor is it true, what is suggested, that they are both sacraments of admission into the church; nor are they badges of relation to God or Christ, nor signs and seals of the covenant of grace.[32]
For Gill, baptism was many things, but there was no biblical or theological justification for considering baptism as a “seal” of anything related to the covenant of grace.
Is “seal” essential to sacramentalism?
Does this rejection of the ordinances as a seal make Gill anti-sacramental? Gill didn’t think so. Like most Baptists of his era, he preferred the term ordinance over sacrament, but he held a sacramental view of the ordinances. Observe this precious observation from his commentary on Song of Solomon 1:7—
Christ oftentimes makes a feast for his people, in his ordinances, and bids them welcome, and says, “Eat, O friends, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved;” and their faith feeds heartily upon “the goodness and fatness of his house.” He does all this by his Spirit: it is the Spirit of Christ that takes Christ, and the things of Christ, and sets them before us, for faith to feed and live upon; it is he that applies the doctrines, and seals the promises of the Gospel to us; and it is he that sheds abroad the love of Christ in us; the ministry of the word, and the ordinances of the Gospel, are the means of feeding souls; but these would be dry breasts, and would fall short of satisfying and refreshing them, were they not attended with the Spirit of Christ.[33]
There could hardly be a more Calvinian statement expressing a sacramental view of an ordinance. Here we see Gill affirming the ministry of the Word and ordinances as “the means of feeding souls.” Yet it is the Holy Spirit, not the ordinance, that “seals the promises of the gospel to us.” Gill went so far as to call it “a popular clamour, a vulgar mistake,” to view the ordinances as seals of the covenant of grace. All the while, he seems to have maintained a sacramental view of the ordinances (though still affirming them as memorials too).
Like Gill, we should reject having to choose between a “sacramental” view and a “memorial” view. The ordinances are both sacramental and memorial. There is almost nothing of a sacramental view of the ordinances in Gill’s Body of Divinity, but it saturates his commentaries. Why might that be? It’s not that Gill changed his mind between the first publication of his Exposition of Solomon’s Song (1728) and his publication of his Body of Divinity (1769–70) more than forty years later. A third edition of his Exposition of Solomon’s Song appeared in 1768, in which the above sentiments are retained—Gill didn’t change his mind on this subject over time. Rather, I suspect that as Gill wrote in a scientific, biblical-theological mode, he emphasized the memorial aspect of the ordinances. Yet when he wrote commentaries in the context of preaching and pastoral application, he emphasized the sacramental aspect of the ordinances.
Conclusion
Is Gill right? Honestly, I still don’t know if I fully agree with Gill’s argument. The Reformed tradition seems to be united in affirming the ordinances as seals of the covenant of grace. But then again, the majority report also affirms infant baptism and is ambivalent (at best) about immersion. It seems to me that Gill’s view is a consistent application of Baptist commitments on covenant theology and its expression in ecclesiology.
So in certain ways, this seems very common-sensical and a consistent line of reasoning from Baptist theology. But in other ways, he seems to make some tenuous stretches in exegesis. Regardless, he’s a significant voice in our history and deserves to be heard on his own terms. However, while similar arguments to Gill may be found in the writings of men like Benjamin Keach, it should be remembered that neither Gill nor Keach is infallible, and other Baptist luminaries—like Hercules Collins in his Orthodox Catechism—seemed to have no difficulty affirming the ordinances as seals. How his Baptist brothers would respond to Gill’s objections is hard to say, since it seems there were no rejoinders by Baptists on this particular point. Perhaps this essay and this symposium might lead a confessional Baptist to provide a consistent defence of the opposing view—if it’s possible.
[1] See Michael A.G. Haykin, Amidst Us Our Belovèd Stands: Recovering Sacrament in the Baptist Tradition (Lexham Press, 2022), 53–56.
[2] See Michael J. Walker, Baptists at the Table: The Theology of the Lord’s Supper Amongst English Baptists in the Nineteenth Century (Baptist Historical Society, 1992). While Haykin observes that Walker had the Tractarian movement of the 1830s in mind, I believe a strong case can be made that the historicist eschatology that dominated the Baptist scene in the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries, with the papacy being strongly identified as the antichrist, was the motivation for someone like Gill to frame his theology and practice in about as strongly anti-Roman-Catholic a way as possible.
[3] While the purpose of this essay isn’t to demonstrate that Gill held a memorialist view of the ordinances, this can be clearly seen in the relevant chapters of his Body of Divinity, and for instance, in his sermon “Attendance in Places of Religious Worship, Where the Divine Name Is Recorded.” However, in the second part of this sermon, Gill says: “…under the gospel-dispensation; the Lord’s coming to his people, is only in a spiritual manner; by his Spirit and grace, and the communications of it; by his Spirit teaching, and instructing, enlightening, comforting, quickening them, and applying his word with power; and blessing that and his ordinances to them; in like manner as Christ promised his presence to his disciples; I will not leave you comfortless, I will come unto you; meaning, that though they should be deprived of his bodily presence, yet they should have his spiritual presence with them, especially when ministering his word, and administering his ordinances; and in this sense it is to be understood in a following verse; where he promises his presence to all that love him, and keep his commandments, and his father’s also; saying, We will come unto him, and make our abode with him; which cannot design the return of his bodily presence to his disciples, at his resurrection; but the gracious and spiritual presence of him, and his divine Father, with his people, in all ages; particularly, while they are employed in his worship, and are observing his commands and ordinances: and it is in this sense we may understand the expression in this passage; especially as it may be applied to gospel-times.” See John Gill, A Collection of Sermons and Tracts, 3 vols. (London: G. Keith, 1773), 1:252.
[4] See Gill’s comments on Lam. 4:3—“Even the sea-monsters draw out the breast…which some interpret of dragons; others of seals, or sea-calves; but it is best to understand it of whales, as the word is rendered in Gen. 1:21 and elsewhere.”
[5] See comments on Rom. 15:28.
[6] See comments on John 6:27; 1 Cor. 9:2.
[7] See comment on Song 4:12.
[8] See comment on 2 Tim. 2:19. “Having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his: faith is sealed and insured to God’s elect, by his fore-knowledge and predestination of them; so that they certainly have it, and shall never lose it: and their election is according to God’s fore-knowledge of them; which designs not a foresight of their faith, holiness, and good works, as the motives of his choosing them; nor a bare prescience of their persons; but such a fore-knowledge as includes special love to them, which is distinguishing, unchangeable, and everlasting; and this being a seal affixed to all the elect, shews the distinguishing grace of God in their election, the secrecy of it, and its firmness and irrevocableness, and also the safety of the chosen ones; things being sealed, to distinguish one thing from another, and to keep things secret, or to render them firm and authentic.”
[9] See comments on Deut. 12:9, Ps. 25:14; Song. 4:12; Jer. 32:44; Lam. 1:16; Mark 2:7; 5:19; Luke 15:22; John 14:16; Eph 1:13-14; 4:30; Heb. 9:23; Rev. 1:5; 7:2–3.
[10] See John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity (Baptist Standard Bearer, 1984), 242, emphasis added. See also Gill’s comments on Heb. 9:16.
[11] See “The Divine Right of Infant Baptism, Examined and Disproved,” in A Collection of Sermons and Tracts, 2:289.
[12] John Gill, An Exposition of the Book of Solomon’s Song, 3rd ed. (London: George Keith, 1768), 8:6.
[13] See comments on, 2 Cor. 1:22 and Eph. 1:13. See also “Truth Defended” in A Collection of Sermons and Tracts, 2:90. See also Gill’s Exposition of Solomon’s Song, 8:6. In commenting on Song 7:10, Gill wrote that when the Holy Spirit seals, “he leaves a greater impress of holiness upon the soul.”
[14] John Gill, “A Reply to a Defence of the Divine Right of Infant-Baptism,” in A Collection of Sermons and Tracts, 2:438.
[15] See “An Answer to a Welch Clergyman’s Twenty Arguments in Favour of Infant-Baptism,” in A Collection of Sermons and Tracts, 2:350.
[16] See comment on Rom. 4:11; Phil. 3:5. See also, Body of Divinity, 903–5; “The Divine Right of Infant Baptism,” 2:301; “An Answer to a Welch Clergyman,” 2:352–53; “A Reply to a Defence of the Divine Right of Infant-Baptism,” 2:436; “Some Strictures on Mr. Bostwick’s Vindication of Infant Baptism,” in A Collection of Sermons and Tracts, 2:467.
[17] See comment on Rom. 4:11, Gen. 17:11. See also “The Divine Right of Infant Baptism,” 2:287.
[18] See comment on 1 Cor. 7:19.
[19] See comment on Gen. 17:11.
[20] See comment on Gen. 17:11.
[21] See comment on 1 Cor. 7:19.
[22] See “The Divine Right of Infant Baptism,” 2:287.
[23] See “The Divine Right of Infant Baptism,” 2:287.
[24] “A Reply to a Defence of the Divine Right of Infant-Baptism,” 2:436.
[25] “A Reply to a Defence of the Divine Right of Infant-Baptism,” 2:439–440.
[26] See Body of Divinity, Of Baptism, 903–5; “The Divine Right of Infant Baptism,” 2:286; “Some Strictures on Mr. Bostwick,” 2:466.
[27] See “The Divine Right of Infant Baptism,” 2:286.
[28] See “A Reply to a Defence of the Divine Right of Infant-Baptism,” 2:433, 436.
[29]See comments on Rom. 4:11.
[30] See “The Divine Right of Infant Baptism,” 2:288–89; “An Answer to a Welch Clergyman,” 2:349.
[31] “Some Strictures on Mr. Bostwick,” 2:467–468.
[32] “Some Strictures on Mr. Bostwick,” 2:467.
[33] See comment on Song of Solomon 1:7.
