History of the Church of God
AUTHOR(S): | Hassell, Cushing Biggs
Hassell, Sylvester |
|
Chapter XVIII: EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The eighteenth century was a century mostly of religious calm, but of clouds of thick darkness overspreading the whole face of
civilization, turning the risen day into the semblance of dead night—the
darkness originating in England and extending to America, but becoming denser
on the continent of Europe, and densest in France; these frightful clouds
being occasioned by the thick and poisonous vapors arising from a vast number
of the earthy, sickly wild flickering tapers and torches of human philosophy
and human religion kindled by the wisdom of this world; but, rifting these
clouds, the powerful and glorious beams of the Sun of righteousness irradiated
some favored spots in Germany, and many more in the British Isles and in the
British North American Colonies, known, in the latter quarter of the century,
after a seven years’ struggle for independence, as the United States of
America; while in wretched France the darkness deepened into the lurid
blackness of Tophet, and the deification of human reason, in the person of a
harlot, culminated in a Reign of Terror unparalleled in the annals of human
history.
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 eighteenth was also the century of the rise of
Swedenborgianism, or the so-called “New Jerusalem Church,” established by
Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swede (1688-1772), who professed to have been divinely
inspired from 1743, and to have lived the remainder of his life in intercourse
with the world of spirits, and to have seen the last General Judgment of the
world in 1757,—the second coming of Christ and the setting up of the New
Dispensation, the New Jerusalem Church, then taking place. He professed to
preach a new gospel, which was not a gospel; he rejected or rationalized away
(he called it spiritualizing) nearly all the fundamental principles of
Christianity, as commonly understood, denying the tripersonality of God
and the personality of the Devil, the vicariousness or reality of the
atonement, the resurrection of the body, the future general judgment, and the
destruction of the world; he claimed to understand the internal sense of the
Scriptures better than the Apostles did; he taught, like Mohammed, that Heaven
is material, and that marriage will be continued there, notwithstanding the
declaration of Christ to the contrary (Matt. 22:30). He also taught that all
religions, even those of the heathens, contain the essence of saving truth;
that man’s will is free; that God loves all alike, and gives Himself equally
to all, but all do not receive Him; and the system of salvation inculcated by
Swedenborg went beyond the last verge of Arminianism, and plunged into the
depths of Pelagian darkness. It is mournful that this theosophic mysticism is
gaining much ground, in various quarters, in the nineteenth century.
During the eighteenth century also arose the Shakers, a
kind of off-shoot from the Quakers, originating in England, but emigrating and
now confined to the Northern United States. These people worship Ann Lee
(1736-1784), a very poor, uneducated Englishwoman, who married when very
young, and lost four children in their infancy, and who became opposed to
marriage, and left her husband, the latter then marrying another woman. Ann
professed to be the manifestation or the second appearing of Christ in His
glory; and she taught her followers celibacy (called by Paul a “doctrine of
devils,” Tim. 4:1-3) and community of goods. The Shakers are mostly farmers,
living together and having; all things in common, and worshipping their “Eternal
Mother” with measured dance and song. They are spiritualists, and reject
vicarious atonement, the resurrection of the body, a future general judgment,
and predestination and election. Like the Swedenborgians, they are not only
Arminians, but thorough-going Pelagians, maintaining that the will is free;
that Heaven is opened by man’s good deeds, and hell by his evil deeds; and
that man will have a chance of saving himself, not only before, but after
death. They are said now (1886) to number about five thousand members, in
seventeen communities, and to be worth about ten million dollars, The sect
called Glassites, in Scotland (from John Glass, 1695-1773), and Sandemanians,
in England and America (from Glass’s son-in-law Robert Sandeman, 1718-1771),
sprang from the Presbyterians in the eighteenth century, advocating the
independency, and voluntary support of churches, and that “faith is a bare
belief of the bare truth;” though both Glass and Sandeman, with at least
their immediate adherents, regarded faith as the fruit of Divine grace and the
work of the Holy Spirit. They at first observed feet-washing, but have now
discontinued it. Some of their peculiarities are weekly love-feasts, the kiss
of charity, abstinence from blood and things strangled, plurality of Elders in
every church, prohibition of games of chance and of college training, and an
adherence to the most literal interpretation of Scripture. They have decreased
in the nineteenth century, and now number less than 2,000 members.
Modern Protestant Missions originated in the eighteenth
century. The English “Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts,”
established in 1701, devoted itself to the diligent dissemination of
High-Church Episcopalianism. The Danish Government, under the influence of the
German Pietist, A. H. Francke, sent out a few missionaries to India in 1705,
to Lapland in 1716, and to Greenland In 1721. The Moravian Zinzendorf sent out
from 1732 to 1750 “more missionaries than the combined Protestant Church in
two hundred years—illiterate laymen, who were enjoined to practice rigid
economy, labor with their own hands, use only spiritual means, and aim at the
conversion of individuals.” Thomas Coke, John Wesley’s “right-hand,”
“the embodiment of Methodist Missionism,” established in 1786 a mission
among the Negroes in the West Indies. “The independent Protestant Missionary
Societies formed in this century may be regarded as a substitute for the
Orders of the Roman Church,” says the able and accurate Schaff-Herzog
Catholic Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. The “Baptist Society for
Propagating the Gospel amongst the Heathen” was formed at Kettering,
England, October 2nd, 1792, under the influence of Andrew Fuller, William
Carey, and others, and operated in India. The “London Missionary Society”
was formed in 1795, soon passed under the control of the Independents, and
began work in the South Sea Islands and South Africa. The “Society for
Missions to Africa, and the East” was formed in 1799 by Episcopalians.
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 extermination of the Jesuits from China was due to
the success of their jealous brethren, the Dominicans, in finally prevailing
on the pope to compel the Jesuits to abandon, in that country, their heathen
customs and accommodations this step provoking the Chinese to destroy hundreds
of thousands of them.
The rationalistic Lutheran[5]
theologians Ernesti, Michaelis and Semler, declared that the Bible
was to be explained and interpreted just like any other book; vainly
substituted their own ideas for the thoughts of the inspired writers; set
aside the great doctrinal truths of revelation as rhetorical types and bold
metaphors, the Asiatic language of emotion and imagination, and not the modern
European language of strict scientific accuracy; distilled away the positive
facts of Christianity in pretending to get at its essence; and founded schools
of thought which have filled almost all the professors’ chairs and pulpits
in Protestant Germany during the nineteenth century.
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 American Presbyterians were almost exclusively of
Scotch or Irish-Scotch descent, and were mainly confined to the Middle and
Southern States, during the eighteenth century. They also insisted upon a
learned ministry; but their preachers, being trained to speak without notes,
surpassed the Congregational ministry in pulpit power. “Even up to the close
of the eighteenth century the prejudice against preaching written sermons was
still so strong among the Presbyterians that a man’s reputation would be
ruined should his manuscript be seen. The Presbyterians in America, as in
Scotland, were staunch advocates of popular rights, and they increased rapidly
after the Revolution.” During the eighteenth century the Presbyterians were
greatly infected with Arminianism and Arianism.
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]
Under the Holy Spirit’s effectual blessing of His own
eternal truth preached by Edwards and Whitefield, there was, for some
twenty-five years, a great revival of spiritual life in the British American
Colonies, from 1734 to 1760; and it was, as the learned and accurate Professor
Henry Boynton Smith shows, like all the genuine reformations of the church in
modern times, a staying of the prevailing Arminianism, and a revival of
scriptural predestinarianism, of the great Bible truths of God’s
sovereignty, and of salvation by grace alone, and justification by faith
alone. Generally throughout the Colonies there were large ingatherings into
the Congregational, Presbyterian and Baptist communions. At
the beginning of the Revolutionary War, three fourths of all the American
churches were predestinarian; and the people of this country were more honest,
earnest, sincere, truthful, serious, solemn and reverential than they have
ever been since (see Prof. J. L. Diman’s “Religion in America,
1776-1876,” published in the Centennial Number of the North American Review,
January, 1876). After the demoralizing influences of the Revolutionary War
had, to a considerable extent, passed away (for the demoralization of the
people is much the worst result of wars), there was, at the close of the
eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, under similar
predestinarian preaching and similar Divine blessing, another extensive
spiritual revival in the United States.
“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.”
I will now give some special information about the
Baptists during the eighteenth century.
The list of forty-eight American Baptist Churches formed
in the first half of the eighteenth century, as given by David Benedict, and
corrected and supplemented by later authorities, is as follows: Welsh
Tract, New Castle County, Del., 1701; Groton, Conn., 1705; Smithfield, R.
I., 1706; Seventh-Day, Piscataway, N. J., 1707; Hopkinton, R. I., 1708; Great
Valley, Pa., 1711; Cape May, N. J., 1712; Burley, Isle of Wight County, Va.,
1714; Hopewell,
Mercer County, N. J., 1715; Brandywine, Pa., 1715; Montgomery, Pa., 1719;
New York City, 1724; Scituate, R. I., 1725; Warwick, R. I., 1725; Richmond, R.
I., 1725; French Creek, Pa., 1726; New London, Conn., 1726; Shiloh, Pasquotank
County, N. C., 1729; Indian Town, Mass., 1730; Cumberland, R. I., 1732;
Rehoboth, Mass., 1732; Shiloh, N. J., 1734; Meherrin, Hertford County, N. C.,
1735; South Brimfield, Mass., 1736; Welsh Neck, S. C., 1738; Leicester, Mass.,
1738; Southington, Conn., 1738; West Springfield, Conn., 1740; Kehukee,
Halifax County, N. C., 1742; Kingwood,
Hunterdon County, N. J., 1742; 2nd. Boston, Mass., 1743; North Stonington,
Conn., 1743; Colchester, Conn., 1743; East Greenwich, R. I., 1743; Opeckon
(afterwards called Mill Creek), Berkeley County, Va., 1743; Euhaw Creek, S.
C., 1745; Heights Town, N. J., 1745; Southampton, Bucks County, Pa., 1746; Scotch Plains, N. J., 1747; King Street,
Conn., 1747; Oyster Bay, N. Y., 1748; Sturbridge, Mass., 1749; Bellingham,
Mass., 1750; Killingby, Conn., 1750; Westerly, R. 1., 1750; Exeter, R. I.,
1750; Thompson, Conn., 1750; Sandy Run, Bertie County, N. C., 1750. A
considerable number of these churches were composed of General or Arminian
Baptists. Those whose names are in italics are now known as Old School or
Primitive Baptist Churches.
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.
The history of KEHUKEE CHURCH, in North Carolina, is
given in the latter part of this volume.
Southampton Church, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, was constituted in
1746 by members from Pennypack,
near Philadelphia, who had for many years been settled in and about
Southampton, and had been holding monthly meetings in the houses of Peter
Chamberlain and John Morris. The latter finally gave them a small plantation
for the use of the church, and another piece of land for a burying-place and
to build a meeting-house upon. The house was built in 1746. Some of the
pastors have been as follows: Thomas B. Montanye, Jenkin Jones, Joshua Potts,
Thomas Davis, Samuel Jones, Erasmus Kelly, William Vanhorn, David Jones,
Thomas Messenger, James B. Bowen, William J. Purington (1867-1879), and Silas
H. Durand (since 1884).
Elders Isaac Eaton and Oliver Hunt, two eminent
ministers, were originally members of this church.
The above are the five oldest Primitive Baptist Churches
in the United States, and the only ones formed in the first half of the
eighteenth century.
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 following is a list of the Old School or Primitive
Baptist Associations formed in the eighteenth century: Kehukee (N. C. and
Va.), 1765; Ketockton (Va.), 1766; Redstone (Pa. and Va.), 1776; Strawberry
(Va.), 1776 ; Salisbury (Md.), 1782 ; Salem (Ky.), 1785; Yadkin (N. C.), 1790;
Warwick (N. Y.), 1791; Baltimore (Md.), 1793; Tates Creek (Ky.), 1793; New
River (Va. and N. C.), 1793; Delaware (Del.), 1795; Chemung (Pa.), 1796; Miami
(Ohio), 1797; Mayo (Va. and N. C.), 1798; and Mountain District (Va. and N.
C.), 1799.
Thus, in the year 1800, there were in the United States
sixteen Old School or Primitive Baptist Associations, containing about 200
churches, and about 10,000 members; while there were, in all, about 1,500 “Regular
Baptist” Churches, with about 100,000 members.
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.”
To show the doctrinal
belief, in the eighteenth century, of all Regular Baptists in the United
States, including the churches now called
New School, as well as those now called Old School,
I will quote a few pages from the published volume of “The Minutes of
the Philadelphia Baptist Association, 1707-1807,” the oldest and, in many
respects, the most honored of all the Baptist Associations in America, to
which not only numerous New School Baptist Churches belonged, but also the Old
School Baptist Churches of Welsh Tract, Hopewell, Kingwood, Southampton,
Warwick, Cow Marsh, London Tract, Bryn Zion and Wilmington.
In 1761 the Philadelphia Association passed these two
resolutions:
“1st. The Holy Scriptures we profess to be our full,
sufficient and only rule of faith and obedience; and we caution all to beware
of every impulse, revelation, orally other imagination whatever, inconsistent
with or contrary to the Holy Scriptures, under the pretense of being guided by
the Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit illuminates the understanding to know
the mind of God contained in the Scriptures, and may properly be called a
guide.”
“2nd. God worketh all things after the counsel of His
own will. Whatsoever comes to pass is either by His agency or permission; and
though He permit sin to be, He is not therefore the author of it.”
The Circular Letter issued in 1774 was written by Elder
Samuel Jones, who was born in Wales ill 1735, and was pastor of Pennypack
Church, near Philadelphia, from 1763 till his death in 1814, and who also
served for a while the Southampton Church, and who in 1779 received a call to
the pastoral care of Hopewell Church. The subject of this letter is the second
article of tile Philadelphia (and also of the London) Confession of Faith, “Of
God and the Holy Trinity.”[19]
“This,” says the Circular Letter, “is all important article;
a foundation, a corner-stone in the Christian faith. Remove this, and the
whole superstructure will fall. Material then it is that we clearly conceive
of, firmly believe, and without wavering hold the same agreeable to the form
of sound words wherein it is held forth in. Divine revelation. First. That
there is an only living and true God, the supreme and eternal Jehovah, is
manifest. 1. From the reason of things. Since there cannot be an effect
without cause, there must be a first cause, self-existent and independent. 2.
From the works of creation, all marvelous and astonishing from the least to
the greatest. As also 3. From those of Providence, in sustaining and well
ordering the whole universe, through all the successive periods of time. And
especially 4. From the consciousness of a Supreme Being impressed on every
rational soul. Above all 5. From the Holy Scriptures. Deuteronomy 6:4, 23:39,
4:35; Psalm 86:10; Isaiah 45:5.
“Secondly, the perfections of God may be easily
deduced from the same sources, especially His wisdom, power, and goodness
infinite. And though His mercy, justice, truth and holiness be not so clear
from the works of creation and providence, yet there is a strong consciousness
of these, as well of His omniscience, omnipresence, etc., while they are also
abundantly manifested by His word and Spirit.”
“Thirdly. Now, in this Divine and Infinite Being there
are three subsistences, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The Father
neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son, or Word, eternally begotten of the
Father, John 1:14, 18, 3:16; 1 John 4:9; and the Holy Ghost proceeding from
the Father and the Son, John 5:26, constituting, in the undivided essence of
the Godhead, a trinity of persons, each of them possessed of all Divine
perfections, and every way co-equal, and these three are one, the One God. 1
John 5:7. That there are three appears all through the sacred writings, in
reference to the works of creation, providence and grace, 1 Peter 1:2; in
whose name baptism is administered, Matthew 28:19; and to whom Divine worship
and adoration are addressed, 2 Corinthians 13:14; and that these Three are, or
that there is One, and but one God, is no less clear, as above.”
“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.”
“Thus, dearly beloved, we have endeavored to set
before you this essential article of our faith in as clear a manner as the
narrowness of our limits and the mysteriousness of the subject would permit.
But let no one presume to think that he can, by searching, find out the
Almighty to perfection, nor vainly inquire where the Lord has not revealed.
Let us rather be humbly thankful that the Divine Majesty has condescended to
make such wondrous discoveries of His being and perfections.”
“Let us set the Triune God before us in all our ways
and enjoyments, and rejoice in Him, who is worthy of our highest confidence
and purest affection, worthy of all Divine worship and adoration. Finally,
brethren, let us be established in the present truth, nor suffer any to remove
us front the firm basis of Divine Revelation. Now to the King eternal,
immortal, invisible, the only wise God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be all
Honor, glory, Divine worship, praise, power and dominion, both now and
forever.” This Circular Letter is signed, for the Association, by Elder
Benjamin Miller (of Scotch Plains), Moderator; and Elder William Vanhorn (of
Southampton), Clerk.
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.”
In the Circular Letter of 1783, written by Elder Samuel
Jones, are found these remarks: “It is clear from the Scriptures that the
providence of God is somehow conversant even about evil actions; but we know
it must be in such it way His that He is neither the author nor approver of
sin; and it may be in these ways following: 1. By causing the object to be
presented, which, through the corruptions of our nature, may be the occasion
of sin; as in the case of Joseph and his brethren, David and Shimei. Now, all
this may be, and yet the Supreme Disposer of all things perfectly clear; for
the presentation of the object does not lay a necessity of sinning, nor is the
object presented with a view to occasion the sin; as in the case of our
blessed Lord going to Jerusalem a little before His crucifixion. 2. It may
be in suffering and permitting sin, not in suggesting or influencing to it, as
James speaks in 1:13, 14. 3. The providence of God is conversant about evil
actions, in overruling them to His own glory, as in the case of Joseph, but
especially in the fall of man and the, sufferings of our Redeemer. The sun
draws forth vapors from the earth by that heat which has a tendency to exhale
them; but the stench that attends what is exhaled front any putrid substance
is not owing to the sun, but to the nature of the substance from whence it is
drawn. Jesus is said to have been delivered by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, Acts 2:23. But what influence could this foreknowledge
have had on the Jews, who were not conscious of it, and never adverted to it
in all their proceedings, but acted freely, according to the natural course of
their wicked inclinations, even those vile affections of malice, hatred,
selfishness, envy, and the like, they were actuated by?”
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 1788 it was agreed, in answer to a query, that every
member who professes that Christ died for all mankind, and that every
individual of the human race will finally be saved, ought, upon conviction,
and after proper steps have been taken, to be excluded. And in the same year
the Association “earnestly entreated the brethren and friends to exert all
their influence in discountenancing the use of distilled liquors, both in
their own families and neighborhood, except when used as medicine.”
In the Circular Letter of 1789, written by Elder Burgiss
Allison, occur the following remarks: “The repentance which is not unto life
and salvation, or mere legal repentance, originates in self-love, terminates
in the fear of future punishment, or penal evil; and is but a transient view
of that legal condemnation which is the consequence of sin; but never leads
the soul to the gospel refuge. Hence, if any reformation is effected, it
finally terminates in apostasy, agreeably to the Apostle’s assertion, 2
Peter 2:22. But repentance which is unto life and salvation has God for its
author; and does not arise from the power of free-will, or the dictates of a
natural conscience; but from the grace of God as the efficient, and the
operation of the Divine Spirit as the impulsive cause; without which no means,
as judgments, mercies, or the most powerful ministry, of themselves can effect
it. This godly sorrow and repentance for sin is not excited merely from a view
of the demerits of sin, of its evil consequences to the soul, or a fear of
hell and damnation; but on account of the evil that is in sin, its contrariety
to a holy God. The sinner thus convicted mourns that he has offended God,
wounded Christ, and grieved the Holy Spirit. This repentance further produces
an ingenuous confession of sin, and forsaking it, in bringing forth fruits
meet for repentance in life and conversation. This repentance is wrought in
the hearts of God’s people in order to their sanctification, that they may
be qualified to enjoy the heavenly inheritance.”
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.”
At the close of the Circular Letter of 1798, written by
Elder David Jones, on the Twenty-second Article of the Confession of Faith (“Of
Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day”), occurs this paragraph: “From the
above arguments we may justly infer that the religious observance of the Lord’s
Day for Divine worship is warranted by the examples of the Apostles and
churches in their days. Consequently, we have sufficient grounds to believe
that it was by the authority of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who is the
head of His church and lawgiver to the body.”
In the Circular Letter of 1806, written by Elder William
Rogers (the nineteenth century spirit of religious as well as material improvement
having begun to prevail), a zealous plea is made for the modern moneyed
missionary society, which is extolled far above the Protestant Reformation;
and a parting rebuke is administered to those “professing Christians” who,
in “their indifference or sloth or sleep,” are doing nothing for the
salvation of the heathen. Yet the same letter makes the following candid
admission: “It is, however, a very remarkable circumstance that in
modern missions papal Rome has led the way. ‘When the Roman Pontiffs,’
says Mosheim, ‘saw their ambition checked by the progress of the
Reformation, which deprived them of a great part of their spiritual dominion
in Europe, they turned their lordly views towards the other parts of the
globe.’ The society, which in the year 1540 took the denomination of
Jesuits, or the company of Jesus, were by the pope chiefly employed, at first
in India, Japan and China, after which they spared no pains in propagating
their erroneous sentiments in the West Indies and on the continent of America.
In the year 1556 Protestants began to feel for the nations involved in
paganism. Fourteen missionaries were sent from Geneva to America. The Swedes
also exerted their zeal for the conversion of the superstitious Laplanders,
and both the English and the Dutch carried with them into their increasing
foreign settlements the doctrines of the Reformation. Early in the last
century the Moravians began to organize and exert themselves in the missionary
cause. Their spheres of action have gradually increased; besides their
missions in six of the West India Islands, they have settlements in Greenland,
Upper Canada and South America; their missionaries are employed also at the
Cape of Good Hope, on the coast of Labrador, and in the Russian part of Asia.
The zeal, the afflictions and the success of these United Brethren have been
great. Patronized by Christians in Scotland and in America, Elliott, Brainard,
Edwards and others labored among the aborigines of our country; but
it was not till about the year 1790 that the great missionary spirit which now
exists began to diffuse itself. The holy ,flame spread, until in the year 1792
the Baptist missionary society was formed:”
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 |