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History of the Church of God

AUTHOR(S):

Hassell, Cushing Biggs
Hassell, Sylvester

Chapter XVIII: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

During the eighteenth century, the low Arminianism and low morality of the latter part of the seventeenth century produced, largely in Europe and somewhat in America, the legitimate fruits of latitudinarianism, indifference, Arianism, Plagiarism, deism, naturalism, philosophism, illuminism, perfectionism, universalism, infidelity, and materialism; and the seeds of these evils showed, especially in Europe, their ungodly origin and nature in the production of an extraordinary and terrible crop of worldliness, selfishness, avarice, venality, mild speculation, lotteries, gambling, intemperance, profligacy, political corruption, robberies, murders, and almost social chaos.[1] The notorious, ignorant, shallow, conceited, ambitious, avaricious and licentious infidel, Voltaire, who was the echo of the drunken English debauchee, Bolingbroke, and the influential companion of the German King, Frederick “the Great,” was the leader of the public opinion of the eighteenth century. The disguised unbelief of the latter part of the seventeenth century became the blatant infidelity of the eighteenth century, denying the possibility and credibility of miracles and of a, Divine revelation and of everything supernatural, declaring all religion either merely natural or a nullity, find idolizing human reason and human morality or human benevolence. The infidelity of eighteenth century appeared first as deism in Protestant England and America, and afterwards as historical and ethical rationalism in Protestant Germany, and as materialistic atheism in irreligious, ecclesiastically and politically oppressed Roman Catholic France. The lurid and ghastly horrors of the French Revolution should, as a lofty and terrific beacon light, forever warn the world of the legitimate effects of the substitution of human reason and “free-thinking” for the religion of the Bible, or for even for a nominal adherence to the religion of the Bible. Immanuel Kant, of Germany (1724-1804), the greatest of all modern mental philosophers, is well called by Mr. John Cairns “the highest summit of rationalism.” He idealized all the positive truths of Christianity, and reduced it to a perfect but mere system of morality; and, while inconsistently admitting, beyond all other philosophers, the doctrine of human depravity taught in the third chapter of Genesis, and of the necessity of regeneration taught in the third chapter of John, he, like all his rationalizing brethren, made this regeneration, not the work of God’s Spirit, but the work of man’s own will and free agency. He, like them, fondly quoted one-half of the Apostle’s language—“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” but carefully omitted the concluding remark of the Apostle, “For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12, 13). Like many of his rationalizing followers in the nineteenth century, Kant “sees the progress of the kingdom of God in a kind of euthanasia (easy death) and ultimate disappearance of historical Christianity!”[2]

The characteristics of the eighteenth century were a dead formalism, not only in the Catholic, but also, more or less, in all the Protestant communions; the general discontinuance of doctrinal, experimental, spiritual and extemporaneous preaching, and the substitution, in its place, of cold, lifeless, written moral essays[3] read in the pulpit; the unconverted state; not only of most of the private members, but; also of most of the ministers of nearly all denominations; the immersion of the “clergy” in the gayeties [gaieties] and vanities of the world; the intolerable intrigues and corruptions of the Jesuits, and their almost total extermination from China, their overthrow in Paraguay, their expulsion from Portugal, France, Spain, Naples, Malta and Parma, and the suppression of their order by Pope Clement XIV. in 1773, he dying the next year by poison supposed to have been administered by them; the occasional persecution of Protestants in Catholic countries, and of dissenters in England and America, but the general prevalence of religious toleration occasioned by religious indifference, providence thus overruling evil for good, and establishing the original New Testament and Baptist principle of soul-liberty or freedom of conscience, more extensively than ever before in the world, and especially in the United States; the Particular or Predestinarian Baptist ministers, both in England and America, in this undoctrinal, indifferent, Arminian,[4] Pelagian, corrupt, antichristian age, laying the axe at the root of the tree of human pride and corruption, and insisting upon the great radical reformatory Bible principles of total depravity, personal election, particular redemption, effectual calling and final perseverance—these Divine and eternal truths being stigmatized as “Hyper-Calvinism” and “Antinomianism” by those who erred because not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God; the publication, in 1784, of “The Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation,” by Andrew Fuller, of England, who may almost be considered the founder of the New School or so-called “Missionary” Baptists; and who in this work modernized and moderated Calvinism by maintaining a general atonement with special application, and consequently urging that the gospel should be offered freely and indiscriminately to all men, whether they had ears to hear or hearts to receive it or not,—this work involving him in a bitter controversy of nearly twenty years with his brethren, and resulting in the conversion of most of them to his views; many of the General or Arminian Baptists degenerating into Arianism and infidelity, and some of them being converted to the scriptural views of the Strict Particular Baptists; the success of pietism, under Spener and Francke, in Germany, containing, as it did, much legalism, but also some highly important evangelical truths, such as the indispensable necessity of a spiritual birth, and of the religion of the heart and life; the origin, in Germany, under Zinzendorf, and the most extensive spread over the world, by schools and zealous, self-denying missions, costing but little money (the first Protestant missions not undertaken in connection with the planting of colonies), of a new Moravianism, characterized at first by many gross excesses, but emphasizing the importance of a personal, vital, inward experience of religion, making the gospel, the grace and love and perfection of Christ, so prominent, to the almost entire exclusion of the law, as to be accused of Antinomianism; the great religious awakening, in the British North American Colonies, under the fervent preaching, first, in 1734, of the intensely predestinarian Congregationalist, Jonathan Edwards, and then, in 1740 and afterwards, of the strongly Calvinistic Methodist, George Whitefield—the extraordinary spiritual blessings of their ministry permeating all the religious denominations, particularly the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians and the Baptists, in all the colonies, Edwards, the greatest theologian of America, being especially careful to promote and restore Bible purity of doctrine, and exercising a, great influence on Whitefield in this regard; the rise and rapid multiplication, in the British Isles and the United States, of Methodist Societies, under the preaching of Whitefield and the Wesleys, Coke and Asbury and others, Whitefield being Calvinistic and the Wesleys Arminian—all the true success of this extensive movement being due to the Holy Spirit’s blessing the highly important, but generally forgotten, spiritual and evangelical truths fervently proclaimed by the first Methodist preachers, “the utter depravity of human nature, the lost condition of every man who is born into the world, the vicarious atonement of Christ, the necessity to salvation of a new birth, of living, sanctifying, justifying faith, of the constant and sustaining action of the Divine Spirit upon the believer’s soul”—and the false success of the movement being due to the extreme Arminianism of the Wesleys, to an unequalled system of religious terrorism and the consequent ingathering of a large unconverted membership, to the attachment of the Wesleys to the Anglican Establishment, the retaining of infant baptism, and to an at first imperial and then oligarchical unscriptural organization.

The modern system of Sunday Schools originated in the eighteenth century. The patriarchs, by Divine direction, taught religious truths to their own children. The prophets gave religious instruction to all, both old and young, who were prepared to receive it. Ezra and his assistants “read to all who could hear with understanding in the book of the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading” (Neh. 8). After the Babylonian captivity, the Jews established synagogues, and religious schools in connection with them, in almost every town in Palestine. In the second century of the Christian era, Catechetical schools were established in connection with many churches to give religious instruction to the young and ignorant; and these schools were especially flourishing in the fourth and fifth centuries. In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic “Church” being engrossed with the wholesale “conversion” of nations by the sword, it is said that catechetical instruction was given by the so-called “heretics,” the Cathari, Waldenses, Wycliffites, Bohemian Brethren, etc. In the sixteenth century the Reformers, to some extent, instituted catechetical instruction on Sundays. But Robert Raikes, of Gloucester, England, is generally admitted to have been the founder of modern Sunday Schools. In 1781 he hired teachers to instruct some poor children in Gloucester in reading and in the catechism on Sunday. His example was extensively imitated in the British Isles and the United States; and, by the end of the eighteenth century, the instruction had almost universally become gratuitous, and was said to be far superior in quality to what it was before, because now springing from pure benevolence. It is claimed by the Methodists that John Wesley, first in 1784, suggested that the instruction should be gratuitous, and also expressed the hope that Sunday Schools would become “nurseries for Christians” (See the Article on Sunday Schools in McClintock and Strong’s Encyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature, vol. x., p. 21). The writer of the Article just mentioned declares that, “within the last fifty years Sunday Schools have come to be regarded as an essential branch of church action, not merely in England and America, but throughout the Protestant world whether in home or mission fields;” and he intimates, at the conclusion of his Article, that, in the Sunday School, he sees “the problem of the conversion of the world in process of solution.” It thus appears that, for nearly 1,800 years of the Christian era, the church was destitute of an “essential” requisite in its work, and the problem of the conversion of the world had not begun to be solved!

The Anglican Establishment showed but few signs of spiritual life during the eighteenth century; it was nearly buried under the rubbish of formalism, skepticism and corruption. “In America it was a sickly exotic, striking no deep roots into the soil, and it almost withered away when scorched by the fervent heat of the Revolutionary epoch. Not only was it then regarded as disloyal to the Colonies, but it had long been looked upon as not promotive of piety.”[6] In the latter part of the eighteenth century, a very limited but genuine revival of spiritual life was manifested in the Anglican communion in the true conversions and godly lives and labors of William Romaine (1714-1793), whose sermon on “The Lord our Righteousness” excluded him forever afterwards from the pulpit of Oxford University, and who wrote three admirable works called “The Life of Faith,” “The Walk of Faith,” and “The Triumph of Faith;” of A. M. Toplady (1740-1778), who edited “The Gospel Magazine,” combated the Arminianism of John Wesley, maintained the doctrinal Calvinism of the “Church of England,” and published a volume of Psalms and Hymns, among which were his own excellent compositions, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me; Let me hide myself in Thee,” “When languor and disease invade this trembling house of clay” “Prepare gracious God” and “Your harps, ye trembling saints, down from the willows take;”[7] of John Newton (1725-1807), who was converted from infidelity and profligacy, and became curate of Olney in Buckinghamshire, was an able minister of the New Testament, and wrote charming spiritual letters, and published the “Olney Hymns,” many of which were written by himself, among these being, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,” “ In evil long I took delight,” “Sweet was the time when first I felt,” “Approach, my soul, the mercy-seat,” “Come, my soul, thy suit prepare,” “’Tis a point I long to know,” “Mercy, O thou son of David,” “Savior, visit Thy plantation,” “How tedious and tasteless the hours,” “ How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” and “Glorious things of thee are spoken;” of William Cowper (1731-1800), the best of English letter-writers, and the gentlest and purest of English poets, who was for several years of his life, at intervals, melancholic and insane but who had a profound religious experience, and who wrote sixty-eight of Newton’s 280 Olney Hymns, including, “I thirst, but not as once I did,” “God moves in a mysterious way,” “The Spirit breathes upon the word,” “’Tis my happiness below,” “Sometimes a light surprises,” “Hark, my soul, it is the Lord,” “When darkness long has veiled my mind,” “O for a closer walk with God,” “The Lord will happiness Divine,” “ God of my life, to Thee I call,” “Far from the world, O Lord, I flee,” “There is a fountain filled with blood” and “Grace, triumphant in the throne;” of Joseph Milner (1744-1791) and Isaac Milner (1751-1820), who were brothers, and authors of an evangelical church history; of the eccentric, able and pious brothers, Richard Hill (1733-1808) and Rowland Hill (1744-1833); and of Thomas Scott (1747-1821), who is considered the expiring defender of Calvinism in the “Church of England,” who wrote an account of his own experience in the “Force of Truth,” and excellent Notes on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, and whose “Family Bible, with Notes,”[8] has probably been read more widely than any other. Mr. Scott was, in early life, a poor farm-laborer, and had scarcely any educational advantages; yet his religious writings were sold (mostly in America) even during his life to the value of more than a million dollars, although they were sold at about the cost of publication. He was a moderate Pedobaptist and a moderate Calvinist, but a spiritual-minded, reverential, godly, humble and benevolent man. Multitudes of the poor deeply mourned his death, feeling that they had lost a devoted friend. He tenderly relates, in his autobiography, the evidences of the genuine conviction and conversion of his little daughter, who died at the age of four years and a half. In the preface to his sermon on Election and Final Perseverance, Mr. Scott remarks: “Perhaps speculating Antinomians abound most among professed Calvinists; but Antinomians, whose sentiments influence their practice, are innumerable among Arminians. Does the reader doubt this? Let him ask any of those multitudes who trample on God’s commandments, what they think of predestination and election; and he will speedily be convinced that it is undeniably true; for all these, in various ways, take occasion from the mercy of God to encourage themselves in impenitent wickedness.”[9] And, in the last year of his life, he remarked, in a letter to a friend: “Indeed, eager, vehement, speculating Arminianism is most nearly allied to Plagiarism, and the transition is almost imperceptible.” Says Mr. Toplady: “I consider that Arminianism is the original of all the pernicious doctrines that are propagated in the world, and Destructionism will close the whole of them.”

In the last year of his life Mr. John Wesley (1703-1791) published a letter in which he wrote: “I live and die a member of the Church of England, and no one who regards my judgment or advice will ever separate from it.” He designed only to found a “Society” in the Anglican communion; and he declared he wished that the very name of “Methodists” “might never be mentioned more, but be buried in eternal oblivion.” He was so staunch an Anglican that he not only wrote a pamphlet against the American cause, but also offered to raise troops for the British government against the Colonies; and all his preachers in America, except Francis Asbury, on the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, fled to England. In the matter of church polity, he conceded that the three orders of Deacons, Priests and Bishops early appeared in the church, but he denied that these three orders are enjoined in Scripture. He considered himself, though ordained only as a “priest” in the “Church of England,” a scriptural “Bishop;” and he ordained Thomas Coke as a superintendent of American Methodists, for the purpose, merely, of recommending his delegate to his followers in America—though “Coke, in his ambition, wished and intended the ceremony to be considered as an ordination to a bishopric.” As for an uninterrupted succession of Bishops from the Apostles, Wesley declared that it was a “fable which no man ever did or could prove.” Wesley governed his Societies with absolute power; and in 1784, towards the close of his life, he, by his famous “Deed of Declaration,” vested similar power in an Annual Conference of a hundred preachers and their successors. He received into his Societies all persons who expressed “a desire to flee from the wrath to come and be saved from their sins.”[10] He prepared, especially for his American Societies, his Articles of Religion, at first twenty-four in number, increased to twenty-five by the adoption, in 1804, of the twenty-third Article (“Of the Rulers of the United States of America”), and in 1832 placed beyond the power of the “Church” to “revoke, alter or change” them. These Articles were an abridgment of the “Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England,” Wesley omitting the Calvinism of the Thirty-nine Articles, and not inserting his own Arminianism or other peculiar doctrines his design being to provide a broad and liberal platform for all professed Christians to stand upon. He believed in the inspiration both of the Scriptures and of himself, and therefore made the doctrines of his Sermons and his Notes on the New Testament (mostly adapted from Bengel’s Gnomon) the legal basis of his Societies. He generally preached briefly and extemporaneously, often selecting a text after he entered the pulpit; but sometimes, on special occasions, he spoke from manuscript. He is said to have traveled 280,000 miles in his preaching tours, and preached, in the fifty years of his itinerant ministry, 42,000 sermons; also to have written, translated or edited 200 religious works, and for the latter to have received a hundred thousand dollars, which, however, with almost all his other receipts, he gave away in charities, so that he died poor. He left, in his Societies at his death, 541 itinerant preachers, and 135,000 members. “In general,” says the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Wesleyan theology is to be described as a system of evangelical Arminianism. In particular, Wesleyan ministers insist on the doctrines of original sin, general redemption, repentance, justification by faith, the witness of the Spirit, and Christian perfection” by “the witness of the Spirit” meaning, they say, a sense of sins forgiven, but not necessarily final salvation; and, by “Christian perfection,” meaning, not sinlessness, but the perfection of love, which they believe to be attainable in the present life.[11] The doctrinal essence of Methodism is thus well stated in the American Cyclopaedia: “Methodism holds that the salvation of each human being depends solely on his own free action in respect to the enlightening, renewing and sanctifying inworkings of the Holy Spirit (which this system holds to be universal). If, in respect to these inworkings, he holds himself receptively, he will be saved both here and hereafter; but if he closes his heart against these influences of the Spirit, he will continue in death both here and in eternity.” Wesley taught that God made man holy, but that man, when he disobeyed the commandment of God, fell into spiritual death, became dead in the spirit, dead to God, dead in sin, his body then becoming corruptible and mortal, and he hastening on to death everlasting, to the destruction both of body and soul, in the fire never to be quenched. He declared that the fall of man is the very foundation of revealed religion, and that it is a, scriptural, practical, rational, experimental doctrine; and from this utter corruption of man’s nature, this death of the soul, he inferred the necessity of a New Birth, and Justification by faith. He declared that Christian or saving faith is not an opinion or any number of opinions, be they ever so true, but is a power wrought by the Almighty in an immortal spirit, inhabiting a house of clay, to see spiritual and eternal things; that faith is the eye of the new-born soul, whereby every true believer seeth Him who is invisible; that it is the ear of the soul, whereby the sinner hears the voice of the Son of God, and lives; the palate of the soul, whereby a believer tastes the good word and the powers of the world to come; the feeling of the soul, whereby, through the power of the Highest overshadowing him, he perceives the presence of Him in whom he lives, and moves, and has his being, and feels the love of God shed abroad in his heart. Why have not all men this faith? He asks. Because, he replies, no man is able to work it in himself; it is a work of omnipotence. It requires no less power, he says, thus to quicken a dead soul, than to raise a body that lies in the grave. It is, he adds, a new creation; and none can create a soul anew, but He who at first created the Heavens and the earth. You know this to be so by your own experience. Faith is the free gift of God, which He bestows not on those who are worthy of His favor, not on such as are previously holy, and so fit to be crowned with all the blessings of His goodness; but on the ungodly and unholy; on those who, till that hour, were fit only for everlasting destruction; those in whom was no good thing, and whose only plea was, God, be merciful to me, a sinner! No merit, no goodness in man, precedes the forgiving love of God. His pardoning mercy supposes nothing in us but a sense of mere sin and misery; and to all who see and feel and own their wants, and their utter inability to remove them, God freely gives faith, for the sake of Him in whom He is always well pleased. Without faith a man cannot be justified, even though he should have everything else; with faith he cannot but be, justified, though everything else should be wanting. This justifying faith implies not only the personal revelation, the inward evidence of Christianity, but likewise a sure and firm confidence in the individual believer that Christ died for his sins, loved him, and gave His life for him. And at what time so ever a sinner thus believes, God justifieth him. Repentance, indeed, must have been given him before; but that repentance was neither more nor less than a deep sense of the want of all good, and the presence of all evil; and whatever good he hath or doth from that hour when he first believes in God through Christ, faith does not find, but brings. What clear spiritual light Wesley seemed at times to have on these important subjects of the new birth, and faith, and repentance; and yet at other times, when speaking on these same subjects, especially in connection with the doctrine of predestination and election, with what gross spiritual darkness and bitterness is his mind filled! In the Conference of 1771 he said: “Take heed to your doctrine! we have leaned too much toward Calvinism. 1. With regard to man’s faithfulness; our Lord Himself taught us to use the expression, and we ought never to be ashamed of it. 2. With regard to working for life; this, also, the Lord has expressly commanded us. Labor, ergazethe, literally, work for the meat that endureth to everlasting life. 3. We have received it as a maxim, that a man is to do nothing in order to justification. Nothing can be more false. Whoever desires to find favor with God should cease from evil, and learn to do well. Whoever repents, should do works meet for repentance. And if this is not in order to find favor, what does he do them for? [Just as though the forgiven penitent had not already found Divine favor, and would not now spontaneously and gratefully work from a new and living principle of love!] Is not this,” he adds, “salvation by works? Not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition. What have we then been disputing about for these thirty years? I am afraid, about words. As to merit itself, of which we have been so dreadfully afraid, we are rewarded according to our works, yea, because of our works. How does this differ from for the sake of our works? And how differs this from secundum merita operum, as our works deserve? Can you split this hair? I doubt I cannot.” Thus, ignoring the most important and essential fact of revelation, that salvation is entirely of grace, the natural, darkened reason of man reaches the deepest abysses of Pelagian darkness, and makes salvation entirely of works. The wonder is how a sane mind can believe two such utterly contradictory systems. Wesley’s bitter opposition to the doctrine of predestination and election is most conspicuous in his sermon on “Free, Grace,” a sermon which he decided by lot whether to preach and print or not, and a sermon which should have been entitled, not Free Grace, but Free Will; for, if human language means anything, it makes the salvation of every sinner depend, not on the free grace of God, which Wesley represents to be the same to the lost as to the saved, but on the free will of the sinner, which really carries him to Heaven. The carnal caricaturing and railing at God’s eternal truth (grossly misunderstood and misrepresented) exhibited in this so-called sermon, instead of being forever perpetuated in the body of Methodist doctrine, should, as Wesley said of the name of Methodists, be “buried in eternal oblivion.” If God be an eternal and unchangeable Being, Wesley’s own language already quoted in reference to the spiritual death of all mankind since the fall, and the absolute need of omnipotent power to create the soul anew, and freely give if repentance and faith, necessitates the truth of the doctrine of predestination and election;[12] insomuch that the acute S. T. Coleridge “pledges himself to apply every sentence of Wesley’s declamation against election to Wesley’s own creed,” and Mr. Coleridge declares that “the only effective way of dealing with the Predestinarians is by demonstrating the inherent unreality and in consequence of all logic and all logical conclusions”—but this course would be fatal to all rationalistic religion. Even Mr. Daniel Curry, of New York, one of the leaders of American Methodism, admits that Wesley’s Treatise on Baptism is a capital instance of blindness; the difficulty arising from a hopeless attempt to reconcile the Anglican catechism and ritual to the New Testament. I do not know of any eminent character in ecclesiastical history more full of doctrinal inconsistences than Mr. John Wesley; and I do not see how any child of God, with a knowledge of these facts, can substitute John Wesley’s writings (or any other uninspired writings) for the Bible as his standard of faith and practice.—Charles Wesley (1708-1788), the younger brother of John, was the poet of Methodism, and the most voluminous of all English hymnists. Much of his poetry contains false theology, as “O Horrible Decree,” and “A charge to keep I have;” but some of his hymns are excellent, as “Jesus, lover of my soul,” “Blow ye the trumpet, “Come, Thou Almighty King,” “Blast be the dear uniting love,” and “ Come, let us join with saints above.”

The Independents, or Congregationalists, rapidly multiplied in England during the eighteenth century; and they became the most numerous and influential denomination in America, being mostly confined to New England. A learned ministry was their pride and boast. In Connecticut, about 1735, a law was passed providing that no man should be entitled to recognition as a clergyman who was not a graduate of Yale or Harvard or of some foreign university. Their ministry had almost unrivaled authority and influence. President Quincy gives a graphic description of the Congregational pastor in Andover, Massachusetts, “issuing from his mansion, at the moment of service, on Sunday morning, with Bible and manuscript sermon under his arm, with his wife leaning on one arm, flanked by his negro man at his side, as his wife was by her negro woman, the little negroes being distributed, according to their sex, by the side of their respective parents; the other members of the family and visitors then following according to age and rank; the whole congregation rising and standing till the minister and his family were seated; and at the close of the service the whole congregation rising and standing till the minister and his family had left the meeting-house.” The clergy were very aristocratic, and also showed a marked predilection for political discussions.—Isaac Watts (1674-1748), an almost life-long invalid, and never married, was an English Independent minister, and the inventor of English hymns. Besides versifying the Psalms, he wrote a large number of the best hymns in modern hymn books, including, “Eternal Power, whose high abode,” “Keep silence, all created things,” “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun,” “When I survey the wondrous cross,” “Come, we who love the Lord,” “ Sweet is the work, my God, my King,” “The Heavens declare Thy glory, Lord,” “How beauteous are their feet,” “Am I a soldier of the cross,” “Our God, our help in ages past,” “How pleasant, how divinely fair,” “Plunged in a gulf of dark despair,” “Join all the glorious names,” “ My soul, repeat His praise,” “Not to ourselves, who are but dust,” “Let others boast how strong they be,” “ How precious is the book Divine,” “The law commands, and makes us know,” “Blest is the man, forever bless’d,” “Vain are the hopes the sons of men,” “Go, worship at Emmanuel’s feet,” “Behold the sure foundation stone,” “From all that dwell below the skies,” “He dies, the friend of sinners dies,” “Salvation, O the joyful sound,” “Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove,” “Alas, and did my Savior bleed,” “Show pity, Lord, O Lord, forgive,” “We are a garden wall’d around,” “Lo, what an entertaining sight,” “I’m not ashamed to own my Lord,” “My God, my Life, my love,” “When I can read my title clear,” “So let our lives and lips express,” “Twas on that dark, that doleful night,” “Jesus is gone above the skies,” “How sweet and awful is the place,” “Lord, what is man, poor, feeble man,” “Teach me the measure of my days,” “There is a land of pure delight,” “There is a house not made with hands,” “And must this body die,” and “That awful day will surely come.”—Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), an English Independent minister, was a life-long invalid, a very conscientious man, and the author of “A Family Expositor” (of the New Testament), “The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” and of 374 hymns, including, “Grace, ’tis a charming sound,” “Do not I love Thee, O my Lord,” “Awake, my soul, stretch every nerve,” “O happy day, that fixed my choice,” “See Israel’s gentle Shepherd stand,” “Jesus, I love Thy charming name,” “Jesus, I sing Thy wondrous grace,” “Savior Divine, we know Thy name,” “Dear Savior, we are Thine,” “’Tis mine, the covenant of His grace,” “ What if death my sleep invade,” “Salvation, O melodious sound,” “Ye little flock, whom Jesus feeds,” “My God, what silken cords are Thine,” and “While on the verge of life I stand.”—Matthew Henry (1662-1714), an English Non-conformist minister, preached through the whole Bible, in expository sermons, more than once; and his Exposition of the Bible, though not scientific or critical, is said to be still the most practical, devotional and spiritual of all English commentaries. “George Whitefield read it through four times, the last time on his knees.” Matthew Henry’s dying language was: “A life spent in the service of God, and communion with Him, is the most pleasant life that any one can live in this world.”

The Arminianism widely prevailing among all the denominations in America was stayed for a while, and genuine spiritual life was extensively revived, throughout the Colonies, by the Spirit of God, under the earnest predestinarian ministry of Jonathan Edwards (from 1734) and George Whitefield (from 1740), in the greatest religious awakening that had been known on this continent. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), a native of Connecticut, for depth of religious thought and feeling, was perhaps never surpassed, if indeed equaled, among uninspired men. He was a graduate and tutor in Yale College, and six months before his death he was elected, and five weeks before his death inaugurated, President of Princeton College, New Jersey. In early life he had a shallow Pharisaic experience, and then a profound spiritual experience, during which he was changed, in his seventeenth year, from nature to grace, and from the bondage of sin and the law to the sweet and loving service of God, whom he saw and adored in all nature and Scripture too, and whose absolute sovereignty in all things he unreservedly accepted and rejoiced in, admitting His perfect justice in the salvation or damnation of the human race, in accordance with His holy and eternal purpose. “To those who questioned this absolute sovereignty, and rejected it as a doctrine full of horror, he made a twofold answer, not as finding excuses for the Creator, but subjectively as shutting the mouth of cavilers: First, that man’s depravity is an unquestionable fact; that through the medium of his senses and merely animal organization man can attain to no knowledge of God and no spiritual perfection. Secondly, he set forth the unity of the race; its common constitution as branches from one root, forming one complex person, one moral whole, the natural being the ground of the legal headship of Adam, which is the view also of Augustine and Calvin. The virtue and vice of the dispositions and acts of the mind lie not in their cause, but in their nature. Liberty consists in the power of doing what one wills, not in any power of willing without a motive. The will always follows the greatest seeming good; and what shall seem to a man the greatest good depends on the state of his soul. Liberty is not in the act, but in the man; and, if a depraved nature is to abstain from sin, it can only be effected by a change of heart.” The central idea of Jonathan Edwards’ system was that of this change of heart or a new spiritual life as the gift of sovereign grace. He taught that true virtue consists in active love to God and His creatures; and that the history of the kingdom of God is the center of all human history. He began to preach in his nineteenth year, and for several months served a small Presbyterian congregation in New York City. In his twenty-fourth year he was ordained to assist his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, in the pastorate of the Congregational “Church” in Northampton, Mass. Mr. Stoddard died two years afterwards, and Mr. Edwards continued sole pastor for twenty-one more years. Then, because he rebuked his members for reading immoral books, and because he insisted, contrary to the notions of his grandfather, that unconverted persons should not be admitted to partake of the elements of the Lord’s Supper, he was ejected from the pastorate which he had adorned for twenty-three years. About a year afterwards he went to Stockbridge, Mass., and preached six years and a half to a small Congregational Church and a large number of Indians residing at that place. During these years of retirement and profound study and almost virtual exile from civilization, he had the providential opportunity to write his ablest works, “Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will,” “God’s Last End in the Creation of the World,” “Nature of True Virtue,” “Original Sin,” and “History of Redemption.”[13] Among his other works were: “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence,” “A Divine and Supernatural Light Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God,” “A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton,” “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” “Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the True Spirit,” “A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections” (called “one of the most important guards against a spurious religion”), “Types of the Messiah,” and “Notes on the Bible.” President Edwards exerted a powerful influence on the leading religious minds of England. Thomas Chalmers esteemed his Treatise on the Will above every other book of human composition. Robert Hall considered Jonathan Edwards the greatest of the sons of men. Sir James Mackintosh declared that his power of subtle argument was perhaps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed, among men.

George Whitefield (1714-1770), a native of Gloucester, England, was, probably, the most persuasive preacher since the days of the Apostles. After years of early dissipation and then years of rigid Pharisaism, which was so excessive as almost to carry him to his grave, he experienced a hope in Christ in 1733, before the conversion of either of the Wesleys or any other member of the Methodist “Holy Club” at Oxford. He began to preach in 1736, and, at the solicitation of the Wesleys, he embarked for Georgia in December, 1737. Excluded from the pulpits of the Established “Church of England,” he began open field-preaching in 1739. On preaching tours he visited Scotland twelve times, Ireland three times, and America seven times; and he preached in almost every important district in England and Wales. His audiences sometimes numbered ten, twenty or even thirty thousand. He had a rich and powerful voice. In the thirty-four years of his active ministry it is estimated that he preached eighteen thousand sermons, or, on an average, ten a week, often in the open air, and with great vehemence of voice and gesture. His style was severely simple, and his language that of the common people. He made no display of human learning or reasoning. He spoke most fervently from his own heart, and what he said went to the hearts of his hearers. Even such unspiritual persons as Hume and Franklin, Bolingbroke and Chesterfield, were naturally overwhelmed by his resistless eloquence. “But the glory of Whitefield’s preaching was its heart-kindled and heart-melting gospel. So simple was his nature that glory to God and good will to man had so filled it that there was room for little more. Having no church to found, no family to enrich, and no memory to immortalize, he was simply the ambassador of God, and inspired with its genial, piteous spirit, he soon became himself a living gospel.” “Of no other preacher,” remarks Mr. Lecky, “could it be more truly said that he preached ‘as a dying man to dying men.’ His favorite maxim was that ‘a preacher, whenever he entered the pulpit, should look upon it as the last time he might preach, and the last time his people might hear.’ To his vivid imagination Heaven and hell, death and judgment, appeared palpably present. His voice was sometimes choked with tears; he stamped vehemently on the pulpit floor; every nerve was strained; his whole frame was convulsed with emotion. He had nothing of the arrogant and imperious spirit of Wesley. A more zealous, a more single-minded, a more truly amiable, a more purely unselfish man, it would be difficult to conceive. Very few men have passed through so much obloquy with a heart so entirely unsoured, and have retained amid so much adulation so large a measure of deep and genuine humility. There was, indeed, not a trace of jealousy, ambition or rancor in his nature. With almost childish simplicity he was always ready to make a public confession of his faults.” On the question of predestination and election, there was, after Wesley preached and printed his “Sermon on Free Grace,” in 1740, a temporary alienation between him and Whitefield, and, after the latter’s death, an entire separation between their respective Societies. After the publication of Wesley’s “Sermon,” in consequence of drawing a lot, as already mentioned, Whitefield wrote him: “I have often questioned whether in so doing you did not tempt the Lord. A due exercise of religious prudence without a lot would have directed you in that matter. Beside, I never heard that you inquired of God whether or not election was a gospel doctrine. But I fear, taking it for granted it was not, you only inquired whether you should be silent, or preach and print against it. I am apt to think one reason why God should so suffer you to be deceived was, that hereby a special obligation should be laid upon me faithfully to declare the Scripture doctrine of election, that thus the Lord might give me a fresh opportunity of seeing what was in my heart, and whether I would be true to His cause or not. Perhaps God has laid this difficult task upon me, even to see whether I am willing to forsake all for Him or not.” He reminded Wesley of the latter’s own confession that the Lord had once before given him a wrong lot.[14]

“Some of the peculiarities of the History of the Church in America,” says Prof. H. B. Smith, “are the following: 1. It is not the history of the conversion of a new people, but of the transplantation of old races, already Christianized, to a new theatre, comparatively untrammeled by institutions and traditions. 2. Independence of the civil power. 3. The voluntary principle applied to the support of religious institutions. 4. Moral and ecclesiastical, but not civil power, the means of retaining the members of any communion. 5. Development of the Christian system in its practical and moral aspects, rather than in its theoretical and theological. 6. Stricter discipline in the churches than is practicable where Church and State are one. 7. Increase of the churches, to a considerable extent, through revivals of religion, rather than by the natural growth of the children in an establishment. 8. Excessive multiplication of sects; and division on questions of moral reform. The divisions in the Old World are chiefly on ecclesiastical and doctrinal grounds. The dissenting sects of the Old World are strongest in the New. The entire separation of the Church from the State in this country was gradually effected. Before the Revolution religious freedom was known only in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. The voluntary principle was first carried out in Maryland, 1776, and in Virginia, 1786‑1789, under the pressure of the Presbyterians and the Baptists. An amendment to the Constitution of the United States, 1791, prohibited Congress from passing any law establishing religion or prohibiting its free exercise. But Christianity, in its general principles, is part of the common law of the land.” “To the separation of Church from State, in the United States,” says Prof. J. L. Diman, “three wholly distinct causes have contributed. The first of these was the number of religious organizations, widely differing in doctrine and worship, which rendered any public support of religion almost impracticable, although many of these bodies regarded such support without disfavor. A second cause was the conscientious objection of certain sects (especially the Baptists) to any recognition of religion by the civil power. The third and most decisive cause was the rise of the secular theory of the State, a part of the great political development of modern times, Mr. Thomas Jefferson being the chief representative of this view, which found its first expression in the famous Virginia act of 1785; in after years he looked back upon this as the most creditable achievement of his life.”

The following is a list of the Old School or Primitive Baptist Churches formed in the United States during the latter half of the eighteenth century:[15] Ketocton, Loudoun County, Va., 1751; Harford, Harford County, Md. (first called Winter’s Run), 1754; Tonoloway, Fulton County, Pa., 1754; Daniel’s (or Fishing Creek), Halifax County, N. C.; 1755; Smith’s and Lynville’s Creek, Rockingham County, Va., 1756; Wilson (first called Toisnot), Wilson County, N. C., 1756; Falls of Tar River, Nash County, N. C., 1757; Red Banks, Pitt County, N. C., 1758; Warwick, Orange County, N. Y., 1766; Broad Run, Fauquier County, Va., 1766; Mill Creek, Berkeley County, W. Va., 1766; New Valley, Loudoun County, Va., 1767; Chappawamsick, Stafford County, Va., 1767; Little River, Loudoun County, Va., 1769; Mountain Run, Orange County, Va., 1769; Birch Creek Church, Halifax County, Va., 1770; Potomac Creek Church, Stafford Co., Va., 1790; Mill, Pittsylvania County, Va., 1770; Strawberry, Pittsylvania County, Va., about 1770; Clear Spring, Stokes County, N. C., about 1770; Hartwood, Stafford County, Va., 1771; County Line, Pittsylvania County, Va., 1771; Leatherwood, Henry County, Va., 1772; Thumb Run, Fauquier County, Va., 1772; Buck Marsh, Frederick County, Va., 1772; Mill Creek, Berkeley County, W. Va., 1772; Pig River, Franklin County, Va., 1773; Upper Banister, Pittsylvania County, Va., 1773; Brent Town, Fauquier County, Va., 1773; Catawba, Halifax County, Va., 1773; Rehoboth, Chesterfield County, Va., 1773; Eno, Durham County, N. C., 1773; Rocky Swamp, Halifax County, N. C., 1774; Bethel (New River), Wythe County, Va., 1774; Muddy Creek, Powhatan County, Va., 1774; Smith’s Creek, Shenandoah County, Va., 1774; Mayo, Halifax County, Va., 1774; Goose Creek, Loudoun County, Va., 1775; Bull Run, Fairfax County, Va., 1775; Difficult, Fairfax County, Va., 1775; Popeshead, Fairfax County, Va., 1775; Occoquan, Prince William County, Va., 1776; Flat Swamp, Martin County, N. C., 1776; Skinquarter, Chesterfield County, Va., 1778; London Tract, Chester County, Pa., 1780; Catawba, Botetourt County, Va., 1780; Lower Town Creek, Edgecombe County, N. C., 1780; Hunting Quarter, Carteret County, N. C., about 1780; Newport, Carteret County, N. C., about 1780; Bryn Zion, Kent County, Del., 1781; Cow Marsh, Kent County, Del., 1781; Greenbrier, Greenbrier County, W. Va., 1781; Salisbury, Wicomico County, Md., about 1782; Cedar Island (or Fox Creek), Grayson County, Va., 1782; Buck Lick, Fairfax County, Va., 1782; Coinjock, Currituck County, N. C., 1782; Shenandoah, Shenandoah County, Va., 1783; South River, Shenandoah County, Va., 1783; Happy Creek, Frederick County, Va., 1783; Salem, Montgomery County, Va., 1784; Upper Carter’s Rim, Fauquier County, Va., 1784; Battle Run, Culpeper County, Va., 1785; Mount Poney, Culpeper County, Va., 1785; South Quay, Southampton County, Va., 1785; Meadow Creek, Montgomery County, Va., 1785; Meadow, Greene County, N. C., 1785; First Baptist Church, Wilmington, New Castle County, Del., 1785; Long Branch, Fauquier County, Va., 1786; Cross Roads, Edgecombe County, N. C., 1786; Bryan’s, Fayette County, Ky., 1786; Tate’s Creek, Madison County, Ky., 1786; North Fork, Loudoun County, Va., 1787; Water Lick, Shenandoah County, Va., 1787; North River, Hampshire County, W. Va., 1787; Skewarkey, Martin Co., N. C., 1787; Mount Tabor, Mongalia County, W. Va., 1788; Union, Pittsylvania County, Va., 1789; Greasy Creek, Montgomery County, Va., 1789; Crooked Run, Hampshire County, W. Va., 1790; Hadnot’s Creek, Carteret County, N. C., about 1790; Flatty Creek, Pasquotank County, N. C., 1790; Philadelphia (Big Red Stone), Fayette County, Pa., 1701; Chemung, Chemung County, N. Y., 1791; White Oak, Statford County, Va., 1791; White Thorn, Pittsylvania County, Va., 1791; Frying Pan, Fairfax County, Va., 1791; Hedgeman’s River, Culpeper County, Va., 1791; Morattuck, Washington County, N. C., 1791; Nahunta, Wayne County, N. C., 1791; Indian Creek (1st), Monroe County, W. Va., 1792; Seneca, Montgomery County, Md., about 1792; Conoho, Martin County, N. C., 1704; Tuscarora, Juniata County, Pa., about 1795; Great Swamp, Pitt County, N. C., 1795; Lawrence’s (or Cotten’s), Halifax County, N. C., about 1795; North Creek, Beaufort County, N. C., about 1705; South Matamuskeet, Hyde County, N. C., about 1795; Forks of Cheat, Mongalia County, W. Va., 1795; Meadow Creek, Grayson County, Va., 1796; Sinking Creek, Giles County, Va., 1796; North Fork of New River, Grayson County, Va., 1796; Big Levels, Greenbrier County, W. Va., 1796; Canawha, Greenbrier County, W. Va., 1796; Apequan, Berkeley County, Va., 1797; Olive & Hurley, Ulster County, N. Y., 1799; Zoar, Jefferson County, W. Va., 1799; South Fork of Roaring River, Wilkes County, N. C., 1799.[16]

The WELSH TRACT CHURCH, whose meeting-house is two miles from Newark, in New Castle County, Delaware, is the oldest Old School Baptist Church in the United States, and the only American Baptist Church that was regularly organized in Europe before emigrating to this country. It was constituted, in the spring of 1701, by sixteen Baptists in the counties of Pembroke and Caermarthen, in South Wales, with Thomas Griffith, one of their number, as their pastor. A “Church Emigrant,” they embarked at Milford Haven in June, 1701, and landed at Philadelphia September 8th, 1701. They first settled about Pennypack, near Philadelphia, where they continued about a year and a half, and where their membership increased to thirty-seven. Then they procured land in Northern Delaware from Messrs. Evans, Davis and Willis, who had purchased upwards of 30,000 acres of William Penn, called the “Welsh Tract,” and in 1703 they removed to that location, and built, near Iron Hill, a small meeting-house, which stood until 1746, and was then succeeded by the present substantial stone house of worship. In the yard around the house rest the bodies of many of the pastors and members who, during almost two centuries, have met and joined here in the service of God. The Welsh Tract Church was one of the five original churches that, in 1707, formed the Philadelphia Baptist Association (the oldest Baptist Association in America), and for many years it was the most influential member of that body. The Philadelphia Confession of Faith, published by this Association in 1742, was the old London Confession of 1689, with two other Articles, added principally through the influence of the Welsh Tract Church—Article 23, Of Singing of Psalms (in Public Worship), and Article 31, Of Laying on of Hands (on all Baptized Believers). Until 1732 the Church Book was kept in the Welsh language; and for about seventy years the pastors were of Welsh extraction. The Welsh are the most conservative people in Europe, their language and customs having undergone no radical changes for some twenty centuries. Mr. David Benedict speaks, in strong terms, of “the order, intelligence and stability of the Welsh Baptist Churches in America, and their sound, salutary and efficient principles.” The pastors of Welsh Tract Church have been as follows; Thomas Griffith, Elisha Thomas, Enoch Morgan, Owen Thomas, David Davis, John Sutton, John Boggs, Gideon Farrell, Stephen M. Woolford, Samuel Trott, William K. Robinson, Thomas Barton (from 1839 to 1870, when he died, after having been sixty years in the ministry), G. W. Staton, William Grafton and Joseph L. Staton, the present pastor. The church owns a residence and tract of land, which the pastor occupies.

The second oldest Old School Baptist Church, and the one that has the largest membership, in the United States, is HOPEWELL, in a village of the same name, in Mercer County, New Jersey. Elder William J. Purington, the present pastor, on April 23rd, 1882, delivered, in their meeting‑house, a sermon from Psalm 83:1-4, and a historical sketch of the church, afterwards printed, demonstrating, from the original records, that old Hopewell has never been moved at all, even by the stormiest winds of doctrine, from the faith of the fathers, nor from the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone. The church, composed of twelve members, five of whom were Stouts, was organized at the residence of Joseph Stout, April 23rd, 1715, upon these eight fundamental principles: 1st. The Three-Oneness of God; 2nd. His Self-Existence and Sovereignty; 3rd. The Total Depravity of the Natural Man; 4th. The Eternal, Personal, Unconditional Election of all the Members of the Body of Christ; 5th. The Specialty and Definiteness of the Atonement; 6th. The Necessity of a Spiritual Birth in order to Worship God in Spirit and in Truth; 7th. The Sovereign and Efficacious Operation of Divine Grace upon all the Vessels of Mercy; 8th. The Baptism of Believers by Immersion. The pastors who served the church for any considerable length of time are the following: Joseph Eaton, Thomas Davis, Isaac Eaton (1748-1772), Oliver Hart, James Ewing (1796-1805), John Boggs (1807-1846), William Curtis (1850-1854), Philander Hartwell (1854-1879), and William J. Purington (since 1879). Elder Isaac Eaton taught, at Hopewell, from 1756 to 1767, not a Theological Seminary, beta Classical School, the most of his pupils afterwards becoming lawyers, physicians, statesmen and honored citizens, and some of them becoming ministers. Mrs. Elizabeth Hobbs bequeathed three hundred and fifty pounds to the Philadelphia Association to assist poor candidates for the ministry in obtaining a liberal education, which amount was invested and lost in continental money; there is no evidence to show that Mrs. Hobbs was a member of Hopewell Church, or that she made any bequest to Hopewell Church. In 1742 a letter of dismission was granted to the members living near Bethlehem, and they were organized into a church called KINGWOOD, in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. For thirty-two years the meetings of Hopewell Church were held chiefly at the dwellings of the Stouts. In 1747 the church erected a meeting-house. In 1749 a parsonage was purchased for the pastors. In 1755 John Gano, a member of this church, was ordained to the ministry, and, in the same year, visited some of the churches in the Kehukee Association, and preached among them with power and acceptability. In 1803 twenty‑four members were dismissed to form a church[17] near Harbourtown. In 1805 Hopewell Church decided not to collect money for missionary or educational funds; and this has been her consistent scriptural position from her organization to the present time, although she has ever been forward to contribute, like the apostolic churches, to the necessities of poor saints. Against all carnal innovations, both in doctrine and in practice, she has stood, a spiritual Gibraltar, unmoved and unmovable.

Of the churches formed in the latter half of the eighteenth century I must take the space to state a remarkable fact in the history of Bryan’s Church, Fayette County, Kentucky. For its first ninety-four years, from 1786 to 1880, that church had but two pastors, Elder Ambrose Dudley, who died in 1825, at the age of seventy-five, and his son, Elder Thomas P. Dudley, who became very feeble and blind in 1880, and was then considerably relieved of pastoral work by the appointment of an assistant, and who died July 10th, 1886, in his ninety-fifth year. There is abundant testimony to prove that both father and son have been sound and zealous, faithful and fearless advocates of the truth. In a series of letters published in 1873, Elder Thomas P. Dudley makes the following pointed and powerful remarks: “Let it be remembered that those institutions (moneyed religious societies, Theological Seminaries, Sunday Schools, etc.) were unknown in this country until within the present century, and yet their advocates presume to tell us they are Old School Baptists. Did the Apostles, or subsequent ministers who made similar sacrifices, wait to make a contract with a Missionary Board for a stipulated salary, and thus make themselves hirelings; or did they, in ordaining subsequent ministers, give it in charge that they should not preach for a church or churches unless they were paid for it? We ask the community to contrast the course of those Apostles and pioneers with that of the advocates for the modern inventions of men to evangelize the world, and determine who are Old School Baptists. The commission given by the Lord Jesus is silent as death on the subject of Missionary, Bible, Tract and Temperance Societies and Sunday Schools, with all the modern inventions originated by men as aids in evangelizing the world; and the teachings of His inspired Apostles are equally silent; furthermore, the London and Philadelphia Baptist Confessions of Faith urge no duty on the church to rear and sustain these inventions. So far from it, these Confessions assume and insist that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the words of God, and the only certain and infallible rule of faith and practice; that they contain everything for us to know, believe or do in the service of God.—I do not object to the Bible being circulated. It contains the best code of morals for men, in nature, that ever was produced; and the gospel presents to those enlightened from above the only system of salvation that can save a sinner. That system proclaims, ‘Mine own arm brought salvation, and of the people there were none to help.’ ‘Salvation is of the Lord.’ ‘It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.’ ‘Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’—There is a radical difference between discussing some Bible subject in the ‘Signs’ or elsewhere, and publishing a tract or some fabulous tale of fiction, or catechism, or questions and answers for Sunday School children, and, when they can memorize and answer these questions, recognizing them as fit subjects for the ordinance of baptism, and for membership in the church of God. There is a radical difference between our contributing of our carnal things to defray the expenses of the servants of our God who have visited us from abroad, and ministered to us spiritual things, the pure and unadulterated gospel of the Son of God,—and begging from saint and sinner to employ hirelings to preach ‘another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of the Son of God.’ Between forty and fifty years since, we were told, by the advocates of these modern institutions, that with from twenty-five to fifty cents per head the world could be evangelized; since which time they have collected millions of dollars for that purpose, professedly; it is submitted to intelligent men whether the morals of the people have been improved, or whether the professed Baptist Church enjoys the same love, Christian fellowship, union and harmony she did fifty years since. Experience and observation of more than fifty years have satisfied me that where Andrew Fuller’s system, attempting to harmonize Divine sovereignty and human free agency, a general atonement and special application, salvation by works and salvation by grace, prevails, it has only widened the flood-gates of error, making the preacher the instrument, and the preached gospel the means, of the eternal salvation of our apostate world. I, however, have not so learned Christ. I hold that it is not more impossible for God to change than for the blood of Christ to fail to secure the eternal deliverance of all for whom it was shed. ‘He, by one offering, hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.’ ‘He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.’ Fuller’s system, as I understand, would ‘tread under foot the Son of God, and count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing.’”[18]

The accurate and impartial Prof. J. Lewis Diman, late of Brown University, R. I., in his centennial sketch of “Religion in America, 1776-1876,” published in the North American Review, Jan., 1876, and in his Memorial Volume of “Orations and Essays,” assigns two distinct causes as contributing to the rapid increase of the Baptists in the United States in the latter half of the eighteenth century. 1st. “Before all else the Baptists had insisted on a personal experience of religion, as the absolute condition of admission to the Christian Church. But this was precisely the doctrine on which the leaders of the Great Awakening had laid such stress. The great Northampton controversy had turned on this very point. The inevitable effect was not only to direct increased attention to the tenets of the Baptists, but also to carry over to their ranks the numerous congregations of Separatists which had been called into existence by the conservatism of the Congregational Churches. Backus, the faithful historian of the Baptists, was one of this description. 2nd. But, besides this, there was another and perhaps more potent reason. A distinctive characteristic of the Baptists was the energy with which they extolled the gifts of the Spirit and advocated an unlearned ministry. On this latter point, as we have already seen, the Congregationalists took high ground. Even Edwards, the most powerful promoter of the revival, would not allow that a man should enter the pulpit who had had no education at college. Against what seemed to them an unrighteous prejudice in favor of the original tongues, both Separatists and Baptists strenuously maintained that every brother that is qualified by God has a right to preach according to the measure of faith. ‘Lowly Preaching’ became their favorite watch-word, and it marked the beginning of a popular tendency destined to make itself deeply felt on the religious institutions of New England. The Baptists not only gained a controlling influence with a devout but humble class who had little appetite for the elaborate discussions of the Congregational divines, but they were powerfully helped by the prejudice which exists in every community against the exclusiveness of superior culture. The rapid growth of the Baptists was, in large part, a democratic protest; and it is a noticeable fact that even during the war their numbers steadily augmented.” “The fundamental principle of the Baptists,” says Prof. Diman, “is their appeal to Scripture as the sole authority in religious matters; and to this principle, through all their history, they have steadfastly adhered.”

“Now, that we may further explain this doctrine, and remove some difficulties attending it, so far as the mysteriousness of the subject will admit, we shall endeavor to resolve the following queries: Question 1.—How can Three be One, and One Three? Answer.—Three are not said to be One, and One Three, in the same respect strictly. We do not say that there are Three persons in One person, nor that there are Three Gods in One God; but Three persons or subsistences in the undivided essence of the One God. Question 2.—Why are these three subsistences called persons? Answer.—1. Because they are distinguished by personal relative properties; the Father begetting, the Son begotten, and the Holy Ghost proceeding. 2. They are styled I, Thou and He. They speak, are spoken to, and spoken of. 3. They have each of them understanding and will. And besides, 4. They have personal characters, as Creator, Redeemer, Judge, Comforter, Intercessor, etc., and are covenanted with, sent, etc. Psalm 110:1‑3, 6, 7; John 8:16, 14:16, 17, 26. In one word, they have attributed to them and spoken of them everything essential to and descriptive of personality. Question 3.—In what respect is Christ the only begotten Son of God? Answer.—1. Not with respect to His human nature; for He was the only begotten Son of God before. In that case the Spirit would have been the Father. And in His human nature He was manifested to be what He was before, namely, the only begotten of the Father. 2. Nor with respect to His resurrection; for He was so before He rose by His own power. And by His resurrection from the dead, He was manifested to be what He was before. Romans 1:4. 3. Nor yet with respect to His mediatorial office; for it is His sonship that adds lustre to this office, Hebrews 4:14, as well as efficacy, 1 John 1:7. Neither is there anything in that office that should give rise to the title Son, only Son, only begotten. Further, this did not make the Son a son, but a priest. Hebrews 1:8, 7:28. And His priesthood and sonship are distinctly spoken of, Acts 8:37, 9:20; while also in the capacity of a Mediator He was a servant. 4. It remains, then, that He was the only begotten Son of God by eternal generation, inconceivable and mysterious. He was His Son, John 5:18; 1 John 5:5; His own Son, Romans 8:3, 32; His only begotten Son, John 1:14, 18, 3:16; 1 John 4:9; was with Him in the beginning, John 1:1; before His works of old, even from everlasting, Micah 5:2; Proverbs 8:22, 23. Question 4.—If He was the Son of God by generation as to His divine nature, how could He be co-equal and co-eternal with the Father? Answer.—When we conceive of the Father and the Son, there is a priority in the order of nature, but not in the order of time. As God’s eternal decrees, the mind and thought, the sun and light; though these be prior and successive among themselves in the order of nature, yet not in point of time. The instant the sun existed, light did exist also, proceeding from it, or, as it were, generated by it. So the instant there is a Father, there must be a Son; and as the Father exists a Father from eternity, so does the Son a Son.”

In the Circular Letter of 1775, written by Elder Abel Morgan, occurs this paragraph: “When all the human race, by the sin of the first man, were involved in guilt, Romans 5:12, and fallen under condemnation, and all become the children of wrath; it would manifestly be doing them no injustice if they were, to every individual, left in that state, and eternally punished for their sins; this would have been their proper desert, their just reward. But God, out of His mere free grace and love, without any moving cause in the parties chosen, hath predestinated some unto life, through a Mediator, Ephesians 1:4; Romans 11:5, 6 (without any wrong done to others), together with all the means subservient to this end, viz., their redemption by the blood of Christ, and renovation by the Spirit of Holiness, to the praise of His glorious grace; the others left to act in sin, to their final destruction, to the glory of Divine justice, Romans 9:22, 23.” In the Letter of 1780, by the same writer, the following remarks occur: “Man became separated from God, an enemy unto Him, to His glory and government, from the first sin even until now—obnoxious to the curse of a just law violated, and tinder the wrath of God due to transgressors; also, woefully polluted throughout soul and body, ‘We are all as an unclean thing,’ Isaiah 64:6. Man, by his departure from God, is become idolatrous, turned from the only true God unto self, which is the grand idol of the whole world ever since Adam’s revolt. Self was the very alluring bait, wrapped up in the first temptation, ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ Now it cannot be otherwise, but that He who will not give His glory to another, should always abhor and detest any one, and every one, that sets up another god in the room of the true God, and lives to him as man doth to self. Again, what further aggravates the evil of the first sin of man is the capacity which Adam stood in, viz., as the public head and representative of all his posterity—that in him, and with him, all have sinned, and fell from happiness in his first transgression, ‘All have sinned,’ Romans 5:12; which is evident not only by Divine testimony, but is also universally manifested by the aversion to good—the ignorance, stupidity, selfishness and propensity to evil apparent in every one by nature, Ephesians 2:3. May we all, therefore, brethren, not only assent to the truth of the historical narration of these things, but also know the absolute necessity of a real, abiding, convincing sense of our case, thus ruined, guilty arid depraved. In order, 1. To suppress all pride and high conceits of ourselves, our supposed excellency and goodness; 2. Truly to acknowledge whatever favors mankind receive, that they are every way gratuitous, and wholly undeserved; 3. For our humiliation before God, confession of our sins, and deep distress of soul; 4. To raise in our minds a becoming admiration of God’s patience and forbearance with a sinful world, in that vindictive justice is not immediately executed on transgressors; 5. To learn the true and proper cause of His forbearance—viz., the interposition of the Mediator, Christ Jesus, between the execution of the penalty and man’s desert; 6. To give us enlarged views of rich mercy and grace with God, in constituting a way whereby to restore creatures so unworthy from present ruin and future misery, even by His own beloved Son; 7. To teach us the necessity we are under of a renovation. Again, an abiding sense of our case is necessary, in order to make us all anxiously inquisitive about our acquaintance with, and an interest in, Christ the, Mediator; and to excite all believers in Him to continued thanksgiving and praise, that they should not henceforth live to themselves, but unto Him that died for them and rose again. God, who is wise in counsel and excellent in working, suffered or permitted man to fall, and thence took occasion to bring the greatest good out of the worst of evil, or overruled the fall of man, to the more abundant display of His Divine perfections to the everlasting disappointment and confusion of His enemies, the security of His elect, and the endless praise of His glorious name.”

The Circular Letter of 1784, written by Elder John Gano, is upon the tenth chapter of the Confession of Faith—“Effectual Calling.” The letter considers “1. The Call. This is an act of sovereign grace, which flows from the everlasting love of God, and is such an irresistible impression made by the Holy Spirit upon the human soul as to effect a blessed change. 2. The Author of the Call. The Author is God, the Father, Son and Spirit. 1 Thessalonians 2:12; 2 Timothy 1:9; Proverbs 1:20, 8; Philippians. 1:6. 3. The Called. They are such as God hath chosen and predestinated both to grace and glory, elected and set apart in Christ, as redeemed by His blood, although by nature children of wrath even as others; not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. This is an holy, heavenly, and consequently an high calling. 4. Its Efficacy. It is effectual to bring the subjects of it to a piercing sense of their guilt and impurity. The mind is deeply convicted that the fountain is in the very heart or nature, from which all its criminal actions have sprung. The soul is affected with a view of its sinfulness and the malignity of sin in its nature, as entirely opposed to the holy law of God; hence arises an abhorrence of sin, as vile and odious, and a sense of its demerit as deserving eternal death. This call produces a consciousness of the absolute impossibility of our contributing in the least towards a recovery from this wretched condition, and destroys all confidence of help in the flesh. It is a call to Christ, and gives a view of Him in His suitableness and ability as a Savior; the merit of His obedience and sacrifice, and the treasures of His grace are all brought into view, which creates desires of an interest in Him, and resolutions of looking unto and relying wholly upon Him for salvation; at the same time cordially acknowledging desert of rejection from Him, and yet strengthened to rely entirely upon and surrender all unto the disposal of Christ; setting to our seal that God is true; believing the record He has given of His Son, which is eternal life, and that this life is in His Son. The changes produced are from darkness to light, from bondage to liberty, from alienation and estrangedness to Christ to a state of nearness and fellowship with Him and His saints. This is an holy calling, and is effectual to produce the exercise of holiness in the heart, even as the saints are created in Christ Jesus unto good works—God having called us, not to uncleanness, but to holiness, yea, even to glory and virtue, and to live holily, righteously and godly in this present evil world.”

In 1790 the Philadelphia Association declared: “We apprehend danger from the new system of divinity, lest by these fine-spun theories, and the consequences which are drawn from them by some, the great doctrines of the imputation of Adam’s sin, Christ’s proper atonement, imputed righteousness, etc., should be totally set aside, or, at least, the glory of them sullied. We therefore advise that great care should be taken to guard against innovations not calculated to edify the body of Christ.”—The Circular Letter of the same year, written by Elder Samuel Jones, uses strong words and arguments against the spreading “leprosy of the doctrine of universal salvation.” This doctrine is condemned “1. Because the Scripture is express against it. 2 Peter 2:17 ; Jude 13; Revelation 20:10, 14:11, 19:3; Mark 3:29; Hebrews 6:2; Jude 7; Matthew 25:41, 18:8, 25:26, 12:32. The eternal duration of the punishment of the wicked is expressed in the very same words as eternal duration in general, Daniel 2:20; in the very same words also whereby the eternal duration of the happiness of the righteous is expressed, Daniel 12:2; Revelation 22:5; John 3:16; Matthew 25:26; nay, in the very same words whereby the eternal duration of God Himself is expressed, Genesis 21:33; Psalm 40:2; Daniel 7:27; Lamentations 5:19; Deuteronomy 32:40. 2. Because there arc no Scriptures for universal salvation. No other Scriptures can contradict those just cited; and, should any seem to do so, either the texts themselves or the contexts show that they can have no such contradictory meaning. 3. Because there can be no Scriptures favoring universal salvation, since such Scriptures would be likely to do much hurt, but could do no good. If the wicked were ever to be released from hell, time enough to let them know it after they get there, and not before, to encourage them in sin. To give them so much as a hint of it in this life, would be exactly the same as if the Divine Being, when He prohibited the use of the forbidden tree, had told Adam that if he should eat of that tree He would contrive a way for his escape, of which we know that not the least item was given before the fall, and indeed than which nothing could be more unworthy the Divine Being. 4. Because if the notion of universal salvation was in some degree probable, which it is not, yet it would be much safest to reject it altogether; for if those who place dependence on it should at last find themselves mistaken, awful will be the disappointment; while those who place no dependence on it, but rattler on a better hope, would, if all should be saved, share equal benefit with others.”

The Circular Letter of 1791, written by Elder Wm. Vanhorn, treats of the final perseverance of the saints, and contains the following paragraph: “We exclude, in the consideration of this subject, all false professors of religion, of every description, whatever may be their attainments, as in the grace of knowledge, talents or tongues, and power of working miracles, who, nevertheless, are and continue destitute of tile renewing grace of God. Hence, those who have made a fair show in religion for a time, as the foolish virgins, Matthew 25. The branches who were in the true vine, either by profession only, or in relation to Abraham, John 15. Those who in a sense may have tasted of the good word of God, as the stony-ground hearers, Matthew 13; or as Herod, who heard John gladly, Matthew 6:20. Those who may have embraced the doctrine of the gospel, frequently styled ‘The Faith,’ in the New Testament, Acts 24:24; 1 Timothy 1:21; 2 Timothy 3:8; as Hymeneus and Alexander, who in time made, shipwreck thereof, 1 Timothy 1:20. Those who have been enlightened, and had the gift of prophecy, as Balaam, 1 Corinthians 13:2; or who had the gift of tongues—power to work miracles, and as such tasted of the powers of the world to come, or of the gospel dispensation, as Judas, Hebrews 6:5—all such we exclude—of all such there is no sufficient evidence that any of them were renewed by the grace of God, but of many of them the fullest testimony that they were not. We therefore cannot plead their perseverance in grace, which they never had; nor can such instances of defection, with any propriety, be produced as objections to the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints. We assert that those only will persevere in the, way of eternal life and attain unto it, in whom the regenerating grace of God has or will take place. This fact is proved by the everlasting love of God to His people; by the covenant of grace, ordered in all things and sure; redemption by Christ Jesus; the charge He has taken of His people; the promises of the gospel; the perfections of God, His immutability, justice, power, wisdom, faithfulness and truth, all engaged to bring the heirs of grace, through perseverance therein, to glory. The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints in grace is not the doctrine of their perseverance in wickedness—is not a licentious doctrine. How shall they, who are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Romans 6:1, 2.”

The Circular Letter of 1795, written by Elder Samuel Jones, is on the twentieth chapter of the Confession of Faith—“The Gospel and the Extent of the Grace Thereof.” “Observe the difference between the law and the gospel; the law denounces wrath, the gospel publishes peace; the law convinces of guilt, the gospel brings an acquittance; the law requires satisfaction to the last mite, the gospel discovers that satisfaction has been made in full; the law knows nothing of mercy, the gospel knows nothing else; in the law, righteousness, justice and truth shine gloriously—in the gospel, love, grace, mercy, pity, condescension and compassion do also shine, and with much more resplendent glory. In the gospel we find free grace, free mercy, free pardon; faith and repentance are freely given, and with them a new heart, a new nature, new life—all is new, all is free. The gospel, as the word signifies, is good message, good news, glad tidings. Luke 2:10, 4:18, 19; Isaiah 40:1-3. The gospel brings glad tidings of good things; good things done for us; in that atonement is made for us, our debt paid, a righteousness wrought out, pardon and acceptance procured; good things wrought in us, such as regeneration, meetness for Heaven, faith, hope, and every other grace; all the good things of providence and grace that are necessary for our present use during our passage through life; and finally, the good things of Heaven itself, even all the glory and happiness of the beatific state. The gospel, in fine, contains a discovery of all good things for time and eternity, in deliverance from sin and every evil, and the full enjoyment of every bliss and happiness beyond what the tongue of men or angels can express, or the powers of the human mind conceive.—From what we have said we shall mention, by way of inference, only two useful observations First, that according to the gospel, the atonement of Christ did not extend to every individual of the human race; and secondly, that the gospel contains no conditional offers of salvation. We mention these, because some in our days seem to favor such notions, and some others that tend to mar and go a great way toward sullying the glory of the gospel. In regard to the first, if atonement was made for all, it was God’s intention that it should; that intention must have its full effect; the effect must be that all must and will be saved. If Christ answered the demands of law and justice for all, and paid the price in full, then there must be guiltless persons in hell for want of being made meet for Heaven. Christ has done His part, but the Spirit declines doing His. Why God should appoint satisfaction to be made for all, and afterward not renew and sanctify all, and bring them to Heaven, must be very strange, and utterly inconsistent with the glory and perfections of Him, who does nothing in vain, who never does a part without doing the whole, who always finishes what He begins. It is manifest from the Holy Scriptures that Christ made atonement for His people, Isaiah 53:8; Luke 1:68; His sheep, John 10:15, 26, 29, 17:9; those that were given Him, Hebrews 2:13; who were redeemed from among others, Revelation 5:9.—As to the second, to make salvation conditional would rob God of His sovereignty, and make His glory to depend on man; while at the same time it would give room for boasting. It would also convert the gospel of the grace of God into a new law. Is the law of works to be preferred to the covenant of grace? If it be of grace, says the, Apostle, then is it no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace. What! make our happiness depend on man? If we will do part, God will do the rest. Alas! what can man do in the business of his salvation first or last, to merit or promote it? Is he altogether dependent on God? Yea, verily, that at every step, in the beginning and progress of the glorious work he may cry, Grace, grace; and whosoever glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.—But these men[20] make a distinction between natural and moral ability. What is the use of this distinction, but to evade, deceive and confuse? What can natural ability avail towards producing a supernatural effect? The effect can never exceed its cause, any more than a stream can rise higher than its fountain. Now the exercise of any and every supernatural grace is supernatural, is purely of God; for what is born of the flesh is flesh. And, besides, if man’s natural ability was competent to repent, believe, accept, obey, etc., what good could it do him, since he is never to exert it, unless God induces or influences him thereto, and, without which influence, all offers and moral suasion will prove ineffectual? If we speak of repentance, for instance, is not Christ exalted as a Prince and a Savior to give repentance unto Israel and remission of sins? If we speak of faith; what faith?, natural faith? What can this be better than the faith of devils, who believe and tremble? But if we speak of supernatural and evangelical faith, the Scripture is express. By way of distinction from the other, it is called the faith of the operation of God, the faith of God’s elect, like precious faith with us, that faith which purifies the heart, and worketh by love. And in regard to them who received Him, it is said, to them gave He power. Yea, verily, all the power, influence, and everything in the business of our salvation is entirely of God alone, and not of us, who are but perfect weakness.”

The last printed Minutes of the Philadelphia Baptist Association are a history of the session of the year 1807. In that year the Association recommended to each church to subscribe for a copy of Gill’s “Exposition of the Old and New Testaments” for the use of their minister; and the Association urged the same course on all sister Associations. This proceeding is a demonstration that the new or Fullerite divinity or theology had, up to 1807, made but little headway among American Baptists.—The Circular Letter of 1807, written by Elder Wm. Staughton, is upon the highly important subject of the “Qualifications of a Gospel Minister.” “Every candidate for the ministry and every church should know how to discriminate between those who are in truth ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God, and those who are such only in name. As there are some things which are regarded as qualifications which in reality are not, and others that are supposed to disqualify, but from which no discouragement ought to be drawn, a few distinctions must be made. We need not prove to you that mere morality of character, powers of eloquence, or heirships to living, are insufficient; a heathen or an infidel may possess them all. But it may be necessary to state that—1. A persuasion in the mind of the subject himself is no genuine proof. Most young Christians, brought up from, the horrible pit, and taught the excellency of Jesus, feel ardent to proclaim His character to thousands. 2. The confident decisions of friends and relatives are not always to be trusted; for natural affection may usurp the seat of sober judgment. 3. Success is no satisfactory proof that a preacher is qualified of God. The glorious word of God may be quick and powerful, though its preacher be held in the bonds of iniquity.—There are, besides these, some things which are often supposed to disqualify, but do not. 1. A deep persuasion of our entire unworthiness. If only the worthy are to serve in the sanctuary, where shall they be found? Paul felt himself ‘less than the least of all saints.’ Self-abasement will aid rather than hinder in the works of God. It will trample under foot the serpent-pride, and cast the crown at the feet of Jesus. 2. Great fear and trembling of spirit, in prospect of the service, should not lead to the conclusion that requisite qualifications are not possessed. As in the cases of Moses, Jeremiah and Paul, holy fear is useful and not injurious, when it leads to greater faithfulness in the ministry, and to a more entire reliance on the Lord for His assistance. 3. The neglect or even the contempt of many who profess the name of Christ does not prove that we ought not to gird up the loins for the labors of a steward. Different measures of talent are given to different Elders, all designed for the perfecting of the saints. ‘One star differeth from another star in glory.’ 4. The discovery of no immediate or great success should not lead any of God’s servants to conclude he has never been called to his Master’s work. Few, in comparison of the multitude of his hearers, appear to have been converted under the teachings of our Lord. If we have as yet toiled and rowed and caught nothing, who can tell but that the next endeavor may bring the greatest success? Whatever be the result, like the disciples we should say, ‘At Thy word we will let down the net.’ A minister is no adequate judge of the degree of his usefulness. Seed may have been shown and harvests be rising where he suspected all was barrenness. We have sometimes discovered more of the usefulness of a minister after his decease than before. The lamp has burned when the pitcher was broken.—The essential qualifications of a gospel minister appear to be these four, godliness, knowledge, readiness of communication, and a Divine call. 1. He must be regenerated by the grace of God, the husband of one wife, ruling well his own house, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, and not to wine; not ready to strike, or attached to filthy lucre; not given to contention, not a lover of money, not self‑willed, but just and temperate—blameless in all things as the steward of God. He must take heed to himself, to his flock, and to his doctrine. Hence, 2. Knowledge is requisite. The new man is renewed in knowledge; but spiritual understanding is progressive, and in this it is required that a minister of the word abound. He should possess general views of the plan of salvation, of the doctrines of grace, and of the ‘law of the house of the Lord.’ It appears also proper that a church solemnly exhort a y