Benedict’s History of the Baptists “Old School, Primitive or Anti-Mission Baptists
These people generally claimed the first two of these appellations as descriptive of their peculiar views, in opposition to those of the friends of benevolent efforts; the last is applied to them by their opponents. Most of them disowned the name; While Daniel Parker and a few others freely admit it as to proper cognomen of their party.
It is one thing to complain of the modus operandi in the collection of funds and the management of missionary affairs at home and abroad, and another to take a dead stand against what is properly denominated the effort system; which, as I understand a matter, is done by the great mass of our denomination who are implicated in these remarks.
It will be seen, by those who follow my narrations through the states where all these communities exist, that I make no distinction between them and what are called the effort Baptists in my historical details. If I have been less full in my descriptions of their affairs, it is on account of the backwardness of the people, and because their history could not be obtained.
Again: I have in no case made any reference to the character of associations, as to the subject of missions, unless some facts in their history required it; And my aim, through all my narratives, has been to say as little as possible relative to the disputes in different sections of the country on this subject. My reasons for this course are as follows:
1. It is a family difficulty, about which cool observers at a distance feel very different from those who have been immediately identified with it; and I am fully satisfied, that my readers generally will derive no pleasure nor profit from any lengthy details respecting it.
2. It has been my settled opinion, for a long time past, that the cause of missions has had but little to do in this business, so very slender is its hold on the minds of the great mass of our community in most parts of the country, however, they are distinguished. This is shown by their doings for benevolent objects. The fact is, that personal altercations, rival ships, jealousies, and local contests for influence and control, have done much to set brethren at variance with each other. The mission question is the ostensible, rather than the real cause of the trouble, in many places. New men and new measures have run faster than the old travelers were accustomed to going, and they have been disturbed at being left behind. A long catalog of things of this kind might be mentioned.
But doctrinal matters have been at the bottom of all troubles, and predestination has been the bone of contention. The anti-mission party, as near as I can learn, without any exception are high or hyper-Calvinists and are so tenacious of the old theory of particular atonement, and have so far run the system up to seed, as to persuade themselves that the efforts of modern times are wholly needless, and Arminianism Is the bugbear which they profess to fear.
3. The anti-mission movement must, of necessity, be a short-lived one. It has within itself the elements of its dissolution; And before my stereotype pages could reach the different parts of the country, to say nothing of remoter regions, it will be among the things that are passed and forgotten. Whole churches and associational confederacies are either sinking into oblivion or coming over to the side of evangelical efforts.
4. I am mortified that any Baptist should assume an opposing attitude to missionary operations and the kindred objects of benevolence; So much so, that the fact would not have been named in my work, had I not been compelled to do it, as a matter of historical veracity.
5. Old school and primitive Baptists are Appalachian so entirely out of place, that I cannot, even as a matter of courtesy, use them without adding, so-called, or some such expression. I have seen so much of the missionary spirit among the old anabaptists, Walt densities, and other ancient sects; so vigorous and perpetual were the efforts of those Christians, whom we claim as Baptists, in the early, middle and later ages, to spread the gospel in all parts of the world, among all nations and languages where they could gain access, that it is plain that those who merely preach of predestination, and do nothing, have no claim to be called by their name.
Remarks. By mistake of our compositor, a large portion of what we had designed to extract from Benedict's history of the Baptists, was omitted in the last number, we have supplied the deficiency in the above extract. The reader will discover that the present extract should have preceded that which was given in our last number, according to the order in which it is found in the history. These two extracts embrace all that the historian chose to tell succeeding generations of the existence and peculiarities of old-school Baptists of the present age. But of the brevity of the notices taken of us we would not complain as he, being a religionist of a different and altogether dissimilar order from that of ourselves, we had no claim on him to notice us at all; but of the unfairness, misrepresentations, and falsehood of the character he has given, we have a right to complain, and to repel the slander. If Mr. Benedict had been ignorant of the real character of the old school Baptists, why did he essay to give their history until he should become acquainted with them this, so as to know whereof he affirmed? The “Signs of the Times” have been regularly mailed to him, from the first number of the 11th volume to the present date, we have also forwarded to him by his special request, the minutes of many old school Baptist associations every year, besides other documents, including the address of the old school Baptists assembled at Black Rock Maryland, about 17 years ago; and he has also received all the old school periodicals published in the United States. Can it be possible that with every means of information before his eyes, he is so stupidly ignorant or so blindly prejudiced that he has failed to learn our real character? If so, he is not to be relied on as an authentic historian in any other respect. In the above extract, he betrays a sly design to identify the peculiar views of Daniel Parker with the old school Baptists and speaks of his admitting deep cognomen of antmission, as the proper cognomen of the old school Baptists. In the sense in which the appellative anti-mission has generally been used, to signify an opposition to the unscriptural amalgamation of church and world in what is called mission societies and mission operations, the old-school Baptists have never objected to its application to them; but the evident design of the extract was not to imply their opposition to mission craft, but rather to fasten upon them the odium of Daniel Parker's two seed heresy, which Mr. Benedict knew the old school Baptist had disclaimed as unequivocally as they had the heresy of modern missionism.
The next stroke of the historian's pen, in what we have copied above, informs us that “it is one thing to complain of the modus operandi in the collection of funds and the management of missionary affairs, and another to take a dead stand against what is properly denominated the effort system.” And this he says he understands “is done by the great mass of the denomination Who are implicated in these remarks.” But what are we to understand by the effort system? If he means to represent that the old school Baptists are at a dead stand against the efforts made, and by the authority of the New Testament, authorized to be made by the children of God, to observe and obey all things whatsoever Christ has commanded them, he misrepresented him grossly by the insinuation that they have taken any kind of a stand against such a system; for no one knows better than Mr. Benedict ought to know, that the very ground on which we have withdrawn our Christian fellowship from what he calls the missionary Baptists, is that they have departed from that system, and are now, with himself, busily and indefatigably engaged in teaching for doctrines the commandments of men, and making void the laws of Jesus Christ, by their own traditions. It matters nothing to us by what modes of operation they carry on their opposition to the government of Christ, or how they collect their funds, so long as we know that their whole speculation is an open violation of the plainest commands of Jesus Christ. If it is possible, if we could find divine authority for taking the business of saving sinners out of the hands of Christ, and for organizing societies, composed of cash-paying men, women, and children without discrimination of character, with presidents, directors, treasurers, secretaries, boards, agents, for evangelizing the world, we might still complain of some part of the modus operandi displayed in the imitation of their ancient type, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, and who was rebuked by his animal on which he has stayed to perform his foreign mission operation. But the modus is not the bone of contention. True we find fault with the numerous wicked tricks, expertly played off in the collection of funds, but if this difficulty was not involved; If the mission board were now in possession of all the wealth of the universe, so as to require no more funds, that would not relieve the system of its unscriptural and consequently its anti-Christian character. The thing itself is an insult to the majesty and wisdom of God and treason against the king of heaven, and for this reason, we take a “dead stand” against it. We protest against murder, theft, and drunkenness, not merely to the modus operandi by which these crimes are committed, for we know of no mode, by which they can be committed without involving a transgression of God's law; And by the same rule we protest against any and every system of humanly devised missionary operations in which men have undertaken to fill the mediatorial office of our exalted Prince and savior, Jesus Christ.
Before we pass, we must notice the possessive case of the pronoun our in the connection, “the great mass of our denomination.” By what right does Mr. Benedict claim the old-school Baptists as a part of the denomination with which he is connected? He knows that a connection that wants a nominally existed has been dissolved for more than 15 years, yet he seems determined to use them by force or fraud to swell the number and respectability of his favorite denomination.
Mr. Benedict assigned 7 reasons for avoiding a full account of the old school Baptists, and for aiming to say as little as possible about the disputes on the subject of missionism, besides one or two implied, such as inability for want of information, and want of inclination; but after all we very much suspect that he has designedly concealed the real reason for the omission. If he has told his readers, that in giving a candid statement of the disputes among Baptists on the missionary subject, there was great reason to fear the “truth would out,” and people would discover that there is no divine authority for the modern missionary machinery, he might have spared himself the labor of manufacturing in the other seven reasons, but as he has chosen to conceal what we believe was the grand reason, we will examine his for far fetched, and hard labored seven reasons.
1. He considers it a family difficulty, in which there is little or no interest. If the old school Baptists and the new school or Arminian Baptists are but one family as he represents them to be, in which they must be, if the dispute on this subject is but a family broil, what can be thought of Mr. Benedict as a historian, in purposely connecting the fact that the family is a quarreling family, A house divided against itself, and therefore destined to fall? If his possession be correct, his character is involved, in giving a garbled, unfair, and partial account of them, spreading out on his “stereotyped pages” only the brighter spots of their history. It can only be justly regarded as a family difficulty, in the sense of those of cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau, was; for in a gospel sense, the whole new school fraternity has gone out from us, that it may be made manifest that they are not on the same family; that they are the strange children of whom David complained in the 144th Psalm.
2. The second reason given, is somewhat complicated, and embraces many counts, the first of which is the settled opinion of the historian that the ostensible, is not the real cause of the trouble; that doctrinal matters have been at the bottom of all the troubles, “and predestination has been the bone of contention.” That missionism involves doctrine we shall not deny; and the presumption with us is, that if the doctrine of predestination could be uprooted by Mr. Benedict and his party the old-school Baptists would waive all opposition to the anti-predestinarian schemes of modern missionism, and the old theory of particular atonement, which Mr. Benedict, by way of ridicule, says has run the system up to seed, would fall of itself; for if God has predestined nothing, he can have no definite purpose in anything, and consequently there was nothing particularly designed or intended by the atonement. But because the old Baptists believe in the universal government of God, as extending to all beings, all events and all worlds, and rejoice in the strong conviction of their hearts, that God and working all things after the council of his own will, has a purpose in all that he does or suffers to be done in heaven, earth, or hell, they are convinced that he had a special and particular design in bruising his Son, and in laying the iniquities of all his people on him, and that he had irrevocably ordained and decreed before all time, that by the stripes of Jesus, all his people should be healed; and by his one offering, he should perfect forever all that were originally sanctified by God the father, preserved in Christ Jesus, and ultimately called; they cannot believe that the final success of Christ’s mediatorial work, the object of his death, and glory of his resurrection is made to depend upon the unscriptural devices of men; nor that the certain results of Christ’s death shall give place to the God dishonouring, and heaven daring projects, and stock jobbing speculations of mission societies, mission funds, or mission agencies. And because Benedict and his fellows can blasphemously ridicule and denounce the sovereignty of the eternal God, as a system of hyper-Calvinism, or “thick-skinned antinomianism,” they can carry out their resistance to God, by undertaking to supersede the official work of Christ through their mission projects. Let the reader bear in mind the admission of Mr. Benedict, that they favor modern missionism to reject predestination in particular atonement. But as Arminianism is the opposite of predestination, Mr. Benedict lets us know that he and his brethren are not afraid of it; With him and them “it is only a bugbear,” that's all. Mr. Benedict speaks figuratively when he calls the predestination of God a “bone of contention” and represents his heterogeneous family as a parcel of dogs quarreling over a mere bone; a family difficulty involving the government of God, to be settled when the strongest dog shall carry off and demolish the bone. But we are inclined to believe that our historian has, in some things come nearer the truth than he intended, especially in admitting that new men and new measures have run faster than old travellers have been accustomed to go. They have indeed run greedily after the error of Balaam, and in the way of Cain, and have perished in the gain sayings of core, at such a rate of speed as none of the old travelers of the Baptist order have ever been accustomed to go. But if Mr. Benedict or any of his clan can point out among the old school any who have left a new order and united with us merely because of rival ships, and local contests for control, in which squabbles they have been unsuccessful, if he will lay his finger on them, we venture to guarantee that they shall be sent back to their quarters but with little delay; for such would make very poor old school Baptists. We have no inclination to detain any such with us one moment. But we must pass to consider his third reason.
3. Quote the anti-mission movement must of necessity be a short-lived one.” Now this is rather stale, Mr. Benedict. It has been wrong in our ears incessantly for many years, and still we live! All your mushroom mission societies, and funds, and agents, and slang, and falsehoods, and ridicule cannot kill us. We do not wonder what you think our skins are thick, and hard to make an impression on, for you and your party have labored long and hard to rob us of them; but the God of predestination whom we Revere and adore, and whom you despise and blaspheme, has hitherto defeated your murderous projects and because our exalted Redeemer lives we also live. Yes, Mr. Benedict, your stereotype pages will have ample time to scatter far and wide your misrepresentations of the old-school Baptists, before the anti-mission movement is arrested and your stereotype plates will perish before the old-school Baptist can become extinct. But we passed it a fourth reason the signed.
4. Mortification that any Baptist should oppose missionary operations, and their kindred objects of benevolence, mortified that all who are called Baptists have not apostatized and gone after the beast, mortified that god has reserved a remnant according to the election of grace, from bowing to this modern Baal. But to a more dreadful consternation, God has predestined all who have pleasure in unrighteousness and believe not the truth.
5. In the statement of the fifth reason assigned by Mr. Benedict for saying as little as possible about these disputes among the Baptists, his conscience has become very sensitive, and he cannot, even as a matter of courtesy apply the terms old school or primitive baptists, to us, without adding, so-called, or some such expression. This is somewhat strange, from 2 considerations; First, from the fact that the name old school was first applied to us by the advocates of missionism, with whom Mr. Benedict is identified; And 2nd, from the fact that he has himself in the second item of this very tirade of slang against us, recorded, on his veracity as a historian, that the cause of division was that “new men and new measures have run faster than the old travelers were accustomed to go, and they have been disturbed at being left behind.” Can it be hard to perceive in the division of the missionary and anti-missionary Baptists which party has run so fast into new measures, with new men, and who are left behind? In his closing remarks, on the history of the Baptist of New York, (page 580,) he says:
“We must bear in mind that all were then, (the early history of the Baptists, of New York,) set down as Arminians, who did not come up to the highest point of hyper-Calvinism. Our old ministers in this region have a century since, would have denounced as unsound in the faith, the great mass of our community of the present day, both in Europe and America, Fuller and Hall among the rest.”
50 years ago, the old preachers of the Baptist order were such as had occupied the field 50 years prior to that time, covering at least a period of one whole century, and these are all put down as hypercalvinistic, the very Appalachian which Benedict gives the old school Baptists of the present day; and from his own account of them they differed nothing from the old school Baptists. If they said they did not oppose mission societies; We reply, that it was for a very good reason, that there were none to oppose. The new men, of whom Benedict speaks, were not then born, their new measures were not at that time invented consequently neither had commenced their pedestrian pranks, of running away from the old travelers.
To us, there seems a direct Providence of God in restraining the wrath of our enemies, whenever they have attempted to misrepresent us on the pages of history. With all their care and craft, they have incautiously leaked out some truth which in succeeding generations betrayed them. Mr. Benedict cannot wrong his conscience so much as to allow that we are the old Baptist, we look so unlike them to him; And yet he himself bears testimony that the Baptists of 50, or 100 years ago were precisely what he now calls the old school Baptists, hyper Calvinists, having no fellowship for Fullerism or Hallism and to clinch the nail; he avers, that the great mass of the new men and new measure kind of Baptists, would have been denounced as unsound in the faith, and as Arminian, by the old Baptist of 50 years ago. Well, verily, if all his reasons had been as weighty as this 5th, he would not have required as many as he manufactured. But he says he has seen so much of the missionary spirit in the old anabaptists, Waldenses, and other ancient sects, in the early, middle, and later ages. What a discerner of spirits, to see so much of the missionary spirit, in practice there was nothing to indicate its existence. They were engaged in publishing the gospel abroad wherever got sent them; The same is true of the old-school Baptists of the present day, and without any disposition to boast, we challenge Mr. Benedict and all his fraternity to produce in all their ranks any who travel more, preach more, or labor more for the propagation of the gospel of Christ, without relying at all upon humanly contrived mission boards, and mission funds, than do the old school Baptists of the present age. And yet he represents us falsely as preaching a predestination and doing nothing. That the old school Baptists preach up the Bible doctrine of predestination is equally as true as it is that the new school Baptists hate and revile that doctrine; but if they do nothing, why did a new school find so much fault with them? And why does Benedict contradict his own statement? He charges them with preaching, and in the same sentence, with doing nothing. If it is doing nothing to preach, why does the new school exact so high wages for preaching, as to require mission societies, and mission funds, to pay them for doing that kind of nothing? Or is it so much harder to preach Arminianism than truth, that the preaching of one is labor requiring pay and the preaching of the other is nothing. Will Mr. Benedict tell us where in the old school Baptists differ either in doctrine or practice from those old Baptists of 50 and 100 years ago, whom he sneeringly calls hyper Calvinists or thick-skinned antinomians?
The further he goes down into the regions of antiquity the more fully, he says, he finds to character of all whom he calls our (new school,) sentimental brethren developed. Will he tell us of the existence of a missionary society comprising presidents, directors, secretaries, executive boards, and members admitted for a stipulated sum of money among the Baptists of 100 years ago? Will he find anything of the kind in the primitive or Apostolic age? If you will give us the example of the apostles and the primitive church, we will ask him to go no further into the remote regions of antiquity. Their example shall be our rule, and when that shall be forthcoming our objection to missionary speculation shall cease.
6. In this item, he makes a bold declaration, of what we know to be without the slightest foundation in truth: he says, “I have ascertained, for a certainty, that in most of the associational communities which are ranked on the empty mission side, there are members, not a few who entirely dissatisfied with their restrictions which are imposed upon them by a few of their zealous leaders. Their sympathies are with their effort brethren, they will be glad to have matters otherwise in the churches in which they are located, and from which they are not prepared to separate, and are sorry that so much is said and written about a difficulty which time only can heal.” We will make no further remarks on the above extract at this time, then to pronounce it unqualifiedly false, and challenge David Benedict or any other man living to prove that it is not false in every particular.
To give to his flourish as many heads, as belonging to the beast, to which in other respects it bears a striking resemblance, Mr. Benedict has added a seventhly to his catalog, and, but for the gravity of the subject, the reader would smile to read the change, of illiberality, and anti republicanism, an anti baptism, hurled at the old school Baptists of the united states. This coming as it does from a people, so liberal that they will neither preach nor pray for the people without pain. Sole republicans they are constantly praying the legislatures of the several states, and of the general government to grant them exclusive chartered rights, and forming themselves into mammoth moneyed monopolies under various pretensions; And in their assumption of power, meeting in national convocation to assess the people, and send forth their decrees, commanding their satellites to levy and collect, in such quantity and for such purposes as they dictate. These pinks of republicanism can charge the old Baptists, who have never asked favors from human governments, whose forms of government in all are perfectly equal and republican, with being anti-republican. If our course be, as he charges frightfully oppressive, we ask, who besides the missionists has been frightened at our course? And what have we done to terrify the mission folks so much? Reader, can you guess? Why, we are so frightfully oppressive and anti-republican, that we have refused, absolutely refused to leave the Apostolic order of the Church of God, to go into the missionary operations of the day with the new school, and so desperately oppressive, that we will contribute nothing to pay others for doing what we cannot conscientiously do ourselves. And what is regarded as still worse than all, we cannot fellowship those who depart from the faith and give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. In short, we have no fellowship with the beast, nor his image, nor his mark, nor with the number of his name. Is this not enough to provoke the wrath, and call down on us the bitterest annunciations of all the wire workers and puppet dancers of modern missionism?
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I have witnessed missions folks in detail. I built converted busses for those on deputation. I see a few who do their time to secure a place in the religious system. I never questioned Their call. I can see fruits, but cannot comment. I can see the threat of big bucks and power trips. A call to the mission field is a personal call, not to be judged by me. To yout own master you will rise or fall
ReplyDeleteThe Lord will judge.