History of the Church of God
AUTHOR(S): | Hassell, Cushing Biggs
Hassell, Sylvester |
|
PREFACE
A hundred or a thousand years hence the good or the evil opinions of human beings with reference to this book will not be of the
slightest importance to me; while I shall be wholly interested in the
approval or the disapproval of God. And, by reason of the entire uncertainty
of the continuance of this mortal life, such may become the state of my
feelings at any moment. Such indeed have been my feelings, I believe, to a
great extent, in the preparation of this volume:
For the Preface, Introduction, and General History of
the Church, no one but myself is responsible; while of the Kehukee and
Primitive Baptist History in the latter part of this work, with very little
exception, my father is the sole author.
It was the intention of the early members of the Kehukee
Baptist Association to have its history written up and published at the close
of each generation. The Association was organized A.D. 1765. The first history
was written by Elders Lemuel Burkitt and Jesse Read, and published in 1803.
The second history was written by Elder Joseph Biggs, and published in 1834.
And my father, Elder Cushing Biggs Hassell, was in 1876 appointed by the
Association to prepare the third history of the body, as well as a sketch of
the History of the Church from the creation. After having written nearly all
the Kehukee and special Primitive Baptist History, and the history of the
Church from B.C. 4004 to A.D. 350, he passed from the scene of his earthly
labors, April 11, 1880. I was appointed by the Association in October, 1880,
to complete the work. Upon the examination of my father’s manuscript I found
that the General History of the Church needed considerable and laborious
revision, which he designed, but did not live to accomplish. I have made this
revision to the best of my ability, and I have also brought forward the
history from A.D. 350 to A.D. 1885.
My father traveled and preached extensively among the
Old School or Primitive Baptists of nearly all parts of the United States from
1840 to 1880, and was cordially received by them everywhere; and if any one
understood their views he must have done so. He was, and I am, the Moderator
of the Kehukee, the oldest Primitive Baptist Association in America; and,
while this book does not profess to be the organ of the Primitive Baptists,
still I am satisfied that the views of my father and myself on spiritual
subjects are, in general, substantially the same as those of the great
majority of our brethren. In regard to the religious innovations of
post-apostolic times, with reference both to doctrine and to practice, the
words of the Lord in Proverbs 22:28, Jeremiah 1:17-19, 6:16, and Jude 3, have
been especially and deeply impressed upon our minds.
For about two years I earnestly endeavored, by private
correspondence and notices in our religious periodicals, to obtain complete
lists of all the Old School or Primitive Baptist Churches and Elders in the
United States; but so very few responded that the list is entirely too
defective to be published. I have inserted in the history of the eighteenth
century a list of all our churches of which I have been able to get any
account, formed during that century. At the close of the Kehukee History is
given the list of our associations in the United States, very much as left by
my father.
The most eminent of modern church historians have
zealously devoted from thirty to fifty years to the accomplishment of their
labors. The present work has occupied the careful attention of my father and
myself about nine years, he having employed upon it about three-and-a-half,
and I about five-and-a-half years. As we have had comparatively so short a
period for the survey of the history of the church for nearly six thousand
years, we have been absolutely compelled to avail ourselves extensively of the
best results of investigations made by other men, indicating our indebtedness
by quotation marks, and frequently giving the authors’ names. We have aimed,
not at a vain show of originality, but at utility; and we have freely laid
under contribution the best stores of religious knowledge on earth. It would
require not only great intellectual and spiritual ability, but a long lifetime
spent diligently in the great libraries of Europe, to write the history of the
church as it ought to be, but never has been written. My father and I have, in
general, at points where the truth is assailed, purposely used the very
language and the reluctant admissions of such as occupy the highest positions
among the enemies of the truth, so as effectually to silence the gainsayings
of those who defend error with less information and less ability. We have
dwelt sorrowfully, but emphatically and solemnly, upon the extravagant
Pharisaism and the extraordinary religious superficiality of the nineteenth
century. The world presses into the nominal church, multitudes compass sea and
land to make proselytes, while the unfelt horror of spiritual death reigns
throughout almost the entire extent of the civilized as well as the
uncivilized populations of the globe. But while gross darkness covers the
rich, proud and corrupt Egypt of the world, as of old, the few poor, humble
and despised Israel of God are blessed with divine light in their dwellings;
and, to the spiritual mind, it is intensely interesting and edifying to
observe the providential course and circumstances of that heavenly light as it
comes down to us through the historical wilderness of the ages. Straight and
narrow, high and holy, spiritual and divine is the mysterious path along which
patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, and all the dear people of God
have been led by the Spirit and providence of the Most High. The infallible
Scriptures, illuminated by the Divine Spirit in our hearts, alone can enable
us to discover that heavenly path, and to walk therein, and find rest to our
souls.
As is well known by those best acquainted with my
conduct in accepting and carrying on the difficult and onerous task of
revising and completing this work, and in arranging for its publication, I
have not been influenced by motives of worldly gain, but, as I trust, by a
desire to promote the cause of truth, even at a great sacrifice of my temporal
interests; and I hope that I have been divinely enabled in the compilation of
the history, to rise above worldly considerations, and, in the solemn light of
eternity and the consciousness of my great responsibility, to set forth what I
believe to be the truth. I have not tried to write a popular or salable book.
I seek neither the ephemeral applause nor the perishing riches of men; and I
hope that the fear of God has been implanted in my heart, and delivered me
from the fear of the face of clay soon to moulder into dust. I have not
written for the purpose of either pleasing or displeasing men; but I have
endeavored, like an impartial witness, to state plainly, calmly and
essentially “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,”
whether men like it or not. If the truth please them, I shall be glad, for
nothing else can make them free; if it displease them, I am not responsible.
For the truth, however distasteful, I am not responsible; but for accurately
reporting what I am satisfied is the truth, I am responsible to God. While it
is impossible, as Macaulay says, for history to give the whole truth, the best
historians exhibit such parts of the truth as most nearly produce the effect
of the whole, and seek to discover and explain the principles interpenetrating
and underlying the facts. Such has been my view of the true province and
object of history; and this ideal I have endeavored, as best I could, to
exemplify in the present work.
I have labored to set forth the truth in creation, in history, and in Scripture. There is but one God, and He is equally the God of nature, of providence, and of grace, as everywhere recognized by the sacred writers.; and it is disloyalty to Him to deny or contemn His work in either of these great domains. May He always, preserve me and my readers from such irreverence.
I lay no claim to inspiration or infallibility. I
believe the Old and New Testament Scriptures to be absolutely the only
inspired and infallible book in human literature; such is the fundamental
doctrine of the Baptist Church and of the Protestant Reformation. By this
divine standard I desire the present volume and every other creatural work to
be fin ally tested—to be accepted if and when in accordance, and rejected
if and when not in accordance, with the standard. “The best of the
interpretations of the Bible are but the interpretations of fallible men.”
The right and duty of private judgment in the interpretation of the
Scriptures is also a fundamental Baptist and Protestant doctrine; such right
I not only claim for myself, but I willingly allow to every other human being—only
let each one remember and admit that no person and no set of persons now on
earth are infallible. Papacy is equally offensive to reason and to faith. He
who claims infallibility for himself or for any other man since the Apostolic
Age, ceases to that extent to be a Baptist, or a Protestant, or a follower of
Christ, and renounces those precious principles of religious liberty, in
defense of which have flowed rivers of the best blood on earth. A proper
knowledge of genuine church history delivers us from the tyranny of both
ancient and modern popes of every name, and directs us to the Bible as the
only authoritative standard of faith and practice. Old School, Primitive, or
Bible Baptists, should be the last people in the world to have a pope or popes
among them. No book, no pamphlet, no periodical, no document of any kind, must
be taken as a substitute for the Bible; and no author, no editor, no preacher,
no teacher, no writer, and no body of men must be substituted for Christ, who
is the only Prophet, Priest, and King of His people.
The great importance of church history is shown by the
fact that it occupies two-thirds of the Bible. It has been called “the
backbone and storehouse of theology, and the best commentary of christianity
itself. Next to the Holy Scriptures, which are themselves chiefly a history
and depository of divine revelation, there is no stronger proof of the
continual presence of Christ with his people, no more thorough vindication of
christianity, no richer source of spiritual wisdom and experience, no deeper
incentive to virtue and piety, than the history of Christ’s kingdom, as
sublimely indicated by the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”—Prof.
P. Schaff.[1]
The history of the past gives us a more correct knowledge of the
present, and a more correct judgment as to the future. The history of the
people of God “eminently illustrates the laws of the divine administration,
evinces the truth of prophecy by showing its fulfillment, and, in due
subordination to the study of the Scriptures and of our own hearts, furnishes
the best school of human nature, although commonly postponed to that of
frivolous society and superficial worldly wisdom. It tends to elevate and
enlarge our views beyond the petty bounds of personal, sectarian and local
interests; to discourage bigotry, and moderate controversial bitterness,
without impairing our attachment to the truth itself; and to suppress crude
innovations and absurdities, both in theory and in practice, by showing that
the same, in substance if not in form, have been canvassed and exploded
centuries ago.”—Prof. J.A. Alexander.
A feature distinguishing Christianity from all other
religions is its unique historical character—the religion and history being
inseparably and supernaturally blended during a period of 4,100 years; the
very facts themselves being parables and symbols illustrating spiritual and
eternal truths. In the midst of a depraved polytheistic world the God of the
Universe, the God of History, the God of Grace, preserved for forty centuries
the pure faith and worship of Himself, in the lines of Seth and Shem and
Abraham, until, in accordance with His repeated promises and types recorded in
the Old Testament Scriptures, He manifested His great and glorious salvation
in the spotless life and atoning death and triumphant resurrection and
ascension of His incarnate Son; and then, in accordance with His purposes and
declarations from the beginning, He dispersed the descendants of Abraham, with
their ancient prophetic Scriptures, and sent his servants with the Scriptures
of the New Testament, showing the fulfillment of the Old, among all the
Gentile nations of the earth, and to the latter also mercifully displayed His
spiritual, holy and everlasting salvation. “Holy men of God foresaw and
foretold that the Gentile nations would come to worship the God of Judah, the
Jehovah of Zion, at a period when nothing in the possible horizon of the times
could have afforded the faintest indication of the wonderful future. To their
minds the future was not as it is to other men, for they spoke of the coming
ages just as the ages indeed have come.”
“Christ,” says Prof. H.B. Smith, “is the center of
God’s revelation and of man’s redemption; of Christian doctrine and of
Christian history; of Christian sects and of each believer’s faith; yea, of
the very history of this our earth, Jesus Christ is the full, the radiant, the
only center—fitted to be such because He is the God-man and the Redeemer.
Christ is the center of the Christian system, and the doctrine respecting
Christ in the heart of Christian theology. Christianity gives us all that
philosophy aims after, and in a more perfect form; it also gives us more than
philosophy can give; and this more that it gives is what man most needs, and
what reason alone could never divine. And therefore we conclude that it is not
within the scope of the human mind to conceive a system more complete, richer
in all blessings. The highest ideas and ends which reason can propound are
really embraced, the deepest wants which man can know are truly satisfied, the
sharpest antagonisms which the mind can propose are declared to be reconciled
in the ideas, the means, and the ends which are contained in that revelation
which centers in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord.”
May the God of all grace vouchsafe to bestow His
all-important blessing upon these pages. Without Him neither writers nor
readers can do anything acceptable in His holy sight. To his merciful,
righteous and sovereign will, would I desire to commit myself, my labors, my
natural and spiritual kindred, and all my fellow-creatures, both for time and
for eternity.
SYLVESTER HASSELL
WILSON, N.C., February, 1886.
ENDNOTES:
[1]
To such of my readers as may desire to pursue the study of
church history, since the coming of Christ, beyond the limits of the present
volume I believe that I am doing a real service to say that the most recent,
accurate, impartial, thorough and satisfactory works on the subject with
which I am familiar are the following by Prof. Philip Schaff, of New York:
“History of the Christian Church” (4 volumes already published, A.D.
1-1073—to be followed by, others); “The Creeds of Christendom, with a
History and Critical Notes” (3 vols.): and the “Schaff‑Herzog
Encyclopædia of Religious Knowledge” (3 vols.). As of especial interest
and value to all loving students of the New Testament, I take sincere
pleasure in recommending the first volume of his “History of the Christian
Church,” entitled “Apostolic Christianity A.D. 1‑100,” which may
be purchased separately for $4, from the publishers, Charles Scribner’s
Sons, New York. For a study of the original authorities, J.C.L.
Gieseler’s Church History, in 8 vols., is indispensable to those
acquainted with ancient and foreign languages.
These commendatory remarks are made after a careful
study of the best church histories published in Europe and America; and,
like all similar remarks in the present volume are entirely unsolicited on
the part of the authors of the works recommended.
|
