The 1919 Fraternal Address of the Southern Baptist Convention.

• Introduction
• 1. God
• 2. The Word of God
• 3. The Atonement
• 4. Regeneration and Attendant Blessings
• 5. A Church; Its Form, Functions and Limitations.
• 6. The Ordinances
• 7. The Rights and Responsibilities of The Individual Soul
• 8. Civil Government and Religious Freedom
• Baptists and Christian Union
• Signatures

7. The Rights and Responsibilities of The Individual Soul

We believe that the true nature of the Christian religion is understood only when we recognize that it is a relation between the individual soul and God as revealed in Jesus Christ. Each soul must repent and believe for itself. Each soul is responsible directly to God for sins committed. Each soul has the high privilege of dealing directly with God. No priest is needed to mediate between the soul and god, save our great High Priest, Jesus the Lord. Every true believer, by reason of his union with Christ, is a priest unto God with free access to the divine presence. Salvation cannot be imparted by means of sacraments in the hands of earthly priest. This would rob the soul of its spiritual right to direct approach to God, and it would displace the one divine Mediator and Redeemer. No body of people calling itself the church of Jesus Christ has any right to limit salvation to its own members. This is to substitute a saving church for the saving Christ. No one, not even a parent, has the right to substitute his own faith for that or a morally unconscious infant, and in the name of the substitute have water applied to the infant and call it baptism. This robs the child of his own God-given privilege of believing and obeying for himself when he reaches a suitable age. The mediation of earthly priests, ecclesiastical salvation, sacramental grace and proxy faith are each and all foreign to the teaching of the New Testament and the nature of the Christian religion.

Matthew 10:28, and 23:10; Romans 14:4; John 4:23,24