18/07/2022
Daniel Merrill, A Forgotten Baptist Who Needs To Be Rediscovered
Daniel Merrill (1765-1833) pastored the Sedgwick Congregational Church, the largest church in Maine. He came from a family of minsters and was a convinced pedobaptist.
However in 1802 some Baptists came to his town. Merrill began to earnestly study the doctrine of baptism. Soon he was convinced the Bible only taught believer's immersion. He shared the results of his study with his congregation in several sermons. On February 28, 1805, the church voted unanimously to become a Baptist church. They sent for help from the Baptists of New England. On May 13, 1805, in the waters of the Benjamin River, Merrill, his wife and sixty-four of their number were baptized by Thomas Baldwin of Boston and Elisha Williams of Beverly, Massachusetts. The next day, nineteen more were baptized and the First Baptist Church of Sedgwick was officially constituted.
While some students of Baptist history know this part, very few know the rest of the story. Merrill's studies of the Scriptures led him to become a staunch Baptist. So strong that he wrote:
"We purposely exclude from our communion all Churches, which admit to their community any of the unbaptized: for all such pollute, if not destroy, the Church of God, and are not baptized Churches; but are Churches, or Societies, of spurious origin; or Churches bewitched . . . the Paedobaptist Churches are NOT of the visible Church of Christ." (The Kingdom of Heaven Distinguished from Babylon, 1808)
Not only that, but in his 1812 Miniature History of the Baptists, Merrill wrote, "The origin of the Baptists can be found no where unless it be conceded that it was at Jordan or Enon." He goes on to write of the Anabaptists, the Waldenses, and the Petrobrusians.
Those who ignorantly claim such Baptist views originated with J.R. Graves or G.H. Orchard would do well to study the life and writings of Daniel Merrill.
(This 2012 painting is called "To the Water's Side." It can be purchased from the Baptist History Preservation Society.)
