Centreville, Fairfax Co., Va., Dec. 22, 1841. FOR THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

Centreville, Fairfax Co., Va., Dec. 22, 1841.

FOR THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES.

BROTHER BEEBE:—In looking over the last (the 24th) No. of the Signs for 1841, I came to certain remarks on the sovereignty of God, from Missouri, which appearing very good, I was induced to look forward to find the writer’s name, and behold, in an acrostic I found John Pearson!

a name fresh in memory from having but a day or two before received a very lengthy letter from him, which I shall redirect and remail to you to dispose of as you please. As it more generally relates to you, though I come in for a share, I think it right that you should share in the exquisite pleasure of reading it, and of noticing it if you choose. As to a formal answer, I shall not undertake it nor request you to do it, nor any other of his communications unless they could be written with a little more candor and discrimination, and a little less apparent wrathiness. He commences with a complaint that his contributions would not be inserted in the Signs, that the “Editor is too lofty an ecclesiastic to meet his approbation.” He next charges the Signs with making a great fuss with the term Old School Baptist church, or as he has it Old Baptist church as a general term of designation. Here he is out, and all his display of learning about the Greek word ecclesia might have been spared; for I have no recollection of a single writer in the Signs using the word church in the singular number, to designate the collective body of Old School Baptists; but the word churches is frequently used; or church when one congregation of brethren is intended. He then complains of our using the discriminating term Regular, to designate ourselves from him and the whole host of infant-sprinklers, or ranters. His next complaint is, that a certain writer in the Signs was never a thousand miles from his own door, and as ignorant of ecclesiastical affairs as a Hottentot, but the sting was that he had said there were no christians but among the Old Baptists—(it may be so) but yet Eld. Beebe published such a nostrum of ignorance, &c., (for I cannot follow him in all his epithets, nor all his remarks.) His next attack is in reference to brother Beebe’s views concerning ministerial support. He can see but one text in the New Testament having reference to the subject, that is, Acts xx. 34, 35. His next charge is that the Signs for Oct. 15th presents the editor in the posture of a blundering ecclesiastic, in all the tremendous majesty and terror of a fierce modern Bonner, or an intolerant raging Gardner, &c. &c., referring to brother Beebe’s remarks in reference to brother Clark’s letter. He goes on with a lengthy review of those remarks in the same strain as above quoted, or rather waxing hotter and hotter. He then takes up the cudgel in opposition to our views concerning a future judgment of the saints. But his weapons are far from being those of candid investigation. He quotes two or three texts in support of his opposition to the doctrine that the saints have been judged, and justified from all things; but even his quotation and manner of applying these texts is in a way to display the poison of the asp fully, and the contempt in which everything American is held by so large a proportion of his countrymen.

From the above subject he passes to combat the sentiment which has been advanced both by you and myself, that no instrumentality is used in quickening the sinner, or opening the heart to receive the word sown, that it is immediately by the sovereign energies of the Holy Spirit, agreeable to the words of the Master, “It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing.” The misrepresentation and perversion of some expressions you have used, in admitting that the preached gospel has an instrumental connexion with bringing the sinner to repentance, &c., is astonishing even from him; he representing this to be all the use which you ascribe to the gospel. His array of texts or parts of texts is wonderful in his opposition to the above sentiment, and in support of his position that the Holy Ghost cannot operate but through the gospel. Such texts as these, “If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creature,” &c. “That God had granted unto the gentiles repentance;” that, to them that received him, “To them gave he power (privilege he charges the word to) to become the sons of God;” but the rest of the text he leaves; and that, “The dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, &c.;” that the gospel is to them that believe, that are called, &c., the wisdom and power of God, &c., as though preachers have the same power to speak life to the dead that the Son of God has; and as though there was no difference as to receiving the gospel between them that believe and them that believe not; between them that are called, and them to whom the preaching of Christ crucified is foolishness, &c. To show how far he carries his opposition, Campbell-like, to the sovereign operation of the Holy Spirit, even to pronouncing the idea of heart distress, of godly sorrow for sin, being connected with conversion, a delusion, I will quote one sentence of his: “I know an Old Baptist from Kentucky, now my neighbor, who was quickened by one of those demon spirits, but it took him many months to form into a thorough shaped convert. The operation was so important in some of its harrowing sensations of anguish, that although forty years have rolled away, the poor creature has still the lively impression engraven upon his mind, that the remembrance of it constitutes the only ground of his hope of acceptance.” He then sets up a lamentation over him, crying, alas! alas! &c.—He writes this from Boonville. But that I be not further tedious, I will just remark that he passes from this subject to advocating Bible Societies in their present operations, &c.

I have thus given enough to show that the man possesses as great a composition of contradictions as ever need to be found in one man; and here I leave him.

S. TROTT.

Centreville, Fairfax Co., Va., Dec. 29, 1841.