To feel lost, and to feel found

I have been pained to see some of our brethren, in the reception of members, cross examine and elaborate with rigid scrutiny, outside of Scriptural authority, candidates for baptism, when they had told the Church that they felt themselves to be lost and depraved sinners, unable to do any thing to recover themselves, but that God for Christ’s sake had pardoned their sins, and that love to him and his people was the result, and a determination to follow him in his ordinances. I have thought, to feel lost, and after to feel found, is evidence enough on which to approve for baptism.

Zachariah Rose, in The Tennessee Baptist (Nashville, Tennessee), Saturday, February 5, 1859, page 3