A LOOK BACK AT BAPTISTS IN AMERICA....

INTRODUCTORY PREFACE TO EDITORIALS, 1868
From the earliest settlement of our country by the Puritans in New England, and the Church of England in the Southern colonies, whose religious supremacy was established by law in their several localities, the Baptists, and indeed all other dissenting orders, suffered great oppositions by proscription and oppression from the dominant parties.



The Baptists, perhaps, more than any other, were violently treated, and suffered the most cruel persecution. Disfranchisement as citizens, fines, confiscation of property, incarceration in prisons, and banishment for nonconformity, to which was added corporal punishments, public whippings at the stock, cropping of ears, boring their tongues through with hot irons, tying their heads and feet together, and torturing them in the most barbarous manner for days and nights, and in many cases they were put to death for their persistent and inflexible adherence to the faith and order of the gospel by which they were distinguished from all other orders. In those days of trial there were no worldly inducements offered to attract the worldly-minded to connect themselves with our churches, and there was harmony of sentiment and uniformity of practice among the Baptist churches throughout the whole breadth of our country.

When the violence of persecution began to abate, and by the interposition of the British Crown, and subsequently by the prevalence of more liberal views which were entertained by the patriots of the Revolution, the powers of the Puritans in the East, and of the Episcopalians in the South were so far curtailed as to prevent further corporal severities; still for many years after the establishment of our federal and state governments, the Puritans of the New England States were patronized by their state legislatures, and allowed to collect parish taxes from all within their parish limits. Afterwards dissenters, by procuring certificates from religious denominations to which they belonged, certifying that they were paying to their own respective orders, were released from the burden of parish taxes, and finally the whole legal distinction in favor of the Puritans was abolished. Under all the trials and persecutions thus far experienced, the Baptists were a humble, meek, loving and harmoniously united people throughout our country. But as soon as this oppressive yoke was broken, Satan was ready with other elements of discord to bring trouble and divisions into our churches.

No sooner were the Baptists of America relieved from the galling yoke of Puritanic and Episcopalian priestcraft than the doctrines of Andrew Fuller were introduced with the professed design to raise up the Baptists from the dung-hill "Till of late, I conceive, there was such a portion of erroneous doctrine and false religion amongst us, that if we had carried matter a little further, we should have been a very dunghill in society. Nor can this leaven be expected to be yet purged out, though I hope it is in a fair way of being so." Letter from Andrew Fuller to Mr. M'Lean in 1796, to rank respectably with other religious denominations. All who were inclined to the doctrine of Arminianism, with many others who had been led but sparingly into an understanding of the cardinal doctrine of salvation alone by grace, were ready to embrace the plausible and deceptive views of Fuller, and became at once ambitious for the promised elevation. 

William Staughton (1770-1829)

At this period, which is still fresh in the recollection of the editor of the Signs of the Times, there was not known among the Baptists of America a single organized institution in connection or under the patronage of the Baptists. Theological seminaries on a very small scale then began to be talked of, and a small school In 1805 Rev. Dr. William Staughton came to the First Baptist Church, Philadelphia. He was greatly interested both in young men and in education. In March, 1807, he consented to give theological instruction to Daniel Sharp, afterwards Rev. Dr. Daniel Sharp. As time went on he accepted other young men for similar instruction. In July, 1812, as an outgrowth of his teaching, and probably intended as a wider support for it, there was organized in the First Baptist Church, Philadelphia, the Baptist Education Society of the Middle States, which was to support an institution of learning.

In connection with the step there was offered to American Baptists an Address on the subject which, together with the constitution of the society, was published in the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine for September, 1812. The Address covers two pages. In it the signers said: Several young men, we understand, in the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, and some in other sister states, are anxious to enjoy privileges such as the new institution which we propose will supply. from History of Baptist Education in Pennsylvania. This society was moved to Washington DC on the suggestion of Luther Rice and became part of the Columbian College. of this kind was started in Philadelphia, under the direction of Dr. Staughton, to give some grammar lessons to a few illiterate preachers Luther Rice was not only the chief fund raiser of Columbian College; he also served as the chief financial officer. This latter job proved to be his undoing. He was much too optimistic in his financial plans for the college. While a large student body was attracted, money came in much more slowly. The economic depression of the early 1820s complicated the situation. TheConvention had adopted a pay-as-you-go policy , but new buildings were constructed on credit. The college plunged deeply into debt, and funds were borrowed from the mission board with the expectation of quick repayment. When the Board called for its funds, they could not be returned.This prompted a scandal in the denomination. A group of pastors who were very happy that the Convention had departed from its original concentration on missions intervened. Exhorted by their spokesman,Francis Wayland, they called for a complete investigation and audit. The audit revealed financial disaster at the college, and Rice received most of the blame. Some harshly accused him of dishonesty , but the investigation proved that he was only guilty of imprudent planning and inept book-keeping., and soon a college was founded in Washington City, and another educational Hamilton, N.Y., was still a frontier settlement in 1817 when 13 men met to found the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York. The thirteen founders were Jonathan Olmstead, Joel W. Clark, Nathaniel Kendrick, Charles W. Hull, Daniel Hascall, Samuel Payne, Elisha Payne, John Bostwick, Thomas Cox, Samuel Osgood, Amos Kingsley, Peter Philanthropos Roots, and Robert Powell. They are said to have backed up their experiment in education with 13 dollars and 13 prayers. The state legislature chartered the society in 1819; that same year, Hamilton was selected as the site for the society’s school. Four years later, New York City Baptists, convinced of the benefits of education in the country, decided to consolidate their seminary with the Hamilton school. Young men “not having the ministry in view” were first admitted in 1839. Prominent soapmaker William Colgate and his associates, who had founded and nurtured the seminary, turned their attention upstate to what became known as the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution. In so doing, a Colgate family connection was established, and it continues to this day. and theological institution at Hamilton, N. Y., and similar schools began to spring up in various directions. 

Columbian College, (now George Washington University)

Simultaneously with these, missionary enterprises were set on foot, both domestic and foreign, and Sabbath schools and Sabbath school unions, in which various anti-Christian denominations were recognized as hand and glove with Baptists in building up these unscriptural nurseries A correspondent of the (London) Evangelical Magazine^ for December, 1828, attributes the remarkable " revivals of religion," then prevailing in the United States, first of all to " the superior mode of conducting Sabbath-school instruction. These nurseries of the church are not left," says the writer, " to well-meaning but inexperienced youth. They are assisted by Christians more mature and of good standing in the church. They are not confined to the children of the poor, but the children of the rich and the respectable part of the community, are sent to these hallowed exercises. Each school has visitors, publicly appointed, to look after absentees, and invite the attendance of those who have not been gathered in. The children are examined by the teachers, who use Judson's questions, so that the children are taught to think, not merely to repeat ; by which they become well acquainted with the meaning of the sacred oracles. Their answers would astonish Christians of the Mother Country ; and latterly they are brought into Bible Classes. The grandfather and grandchild are often seen in these admirable classes together. The results of these exercises are the wonder of the days in which we live — multitudes are born again", Historical Sketch of the American Sunday-School Union and of the Contributions to Popular Education (1865) for the church, as they were modestly called. Then followed the Bible Societies, to give a semblance of piety to the whole system of religious machinery, followed in turn by Tract Societies, Temperance Societies, Mite Societies, Magdalene Societies, and a host of other equally unscriptural institutions under the name of Benevolence and Religion, until, to bring up the rear, the Abolition Society which had for a time been struggling into life and power under the patronage of a few New

England fanatics, was with due ceremony let in and adopted as a pet institution.

While these innovations were being made upon the faith and order of the Baptists, true enough, the Baptists began to rise, according to the prediction of Andrew Fuller, and soon came to be regarded as unsound and as a respectable as any other of the worldly churches of this degenerate age. The Baptists were now no longer obliged to pray the Lord of the harvest to furnish preachers; they could supply themselves with a more refined and educated class from their own schools. Converts could now be made to order, and the churches supplied with members from their nurseries and other institutions. Their machinery was no so complete that grace was no longer needed to make their members orderly; for they were supplied with societies to keep them sober and benevolent; and if perchance many of them should lose their piety, their machinery was so ingeniously geared that they could run through again, and re-converted and re-constructed as often as might be thought advisable.

It was during the prevalence of these abominations that the Signs of the Times was commenced. The new order of Baptists had many religious newspapers in the field, which without an exception advocated these institutions named in the foregoing, and the general impression was entertained that there were no churches or preachers left that had not enlisted in this new enterprise for worldly popularity and respectability. A few were found here and there, isolated and despised, who sighed and groaned on account of the prevailing abominations. Yet few as there were, and far between, we were denounced violently as illiberal, inert, slothful, behind the spirit of a progressive age, and enemies to the spread of the gospel, and opposed to all that is good.

Feeling deeply the need of a medium of correspondence, and excluded from the columns of the so-called Baptist papers, after much deliberation it was concluded to attempt to make ourselves a paper devoted to the case of truth, and through which we could enter our solemn protest against all the innovations, new theories and new institutions which, under the name of Baptists, had so greatly prevailed.