Journal: Journal of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies
Volume: JIRBS 04:1 (NA 2017)
Article: Baptism: A Positive, Inflexible Law
Author: Sidney Dyer

JIRBS 4 (2017) p. 71

Baptism:
A Positive, Inflexible Law

Sidney Dyer

[Editor’s note: This historical article, taken from The Baptist Quarterly, Vol. VII (1873): 108–18, provides a useful description of the distinction between moral law and positive law and its application to the matter of baptism. We reprint it (with minor punctuation changes) for the edification of our readers. All footnotes are editorial and have been added for clarification.

Sidney Dyer, Ph.D. (1814–1898), was born in Cambridge, New York, the descendant of an old New England family. Trained for the ministry by Rev. Charles Sommers, and ordained in 1842, he served pastorates in New York City and Indianapolis, Indiana. He also served as secretary for the Indian Mission Board of Louisville, Kentucky, and in 1859 was appointed district secretary of the American Baptist Publication Society in Philadelphia. Dyer contributed articles to many religious periodicals, as well as being the author of eight children’s books about the natural world. He also composed poetry and various forms of sacred music.1]

When searching the revealed Word of God, to learn our obligations to him, we meet with two distinct classes of precepts; one growing out of the very nature of things, denominated the “moral law”; the other depending entirely on the will of the Lawgiver, called “positive precepts.” The distinction is obvious and strongly marked.

Moral Law

The moral law is not dependent for its force on engrossment and promulgation; it is inherent in the constitution of society. Long before

JIRBS 4 (2017) p. 72

God’s finger traced its principles on tables of stone, and, amid the thunders of Sinai, gave them into the hands of Moses, they were acknowledged as the standard of human accountability. They are written in the heart of man, and his conscience confesses to their force, accusing or excusing as he squares his life by their dictation.

This form of law grew out of man’s fallen condition, and is mostly prohibitory. In this state there would be a constant tendency to do certain things inimical to the authority and glory of God, and prejudicial to the general good of mankind, which must be restrained by adequate penalties. This very depravity would lead to the anticipation of such legal proscriptives in the general, leaving to times and circumstances the breadth of their application. Hence all men would form the same general conception of their import without the aid of minute specifications in their setting forth. Indeed, it required no formal promulgation to give validity to these moral principles. Where there is no law, there can be no transgressio...