4. Ordination. Campbell's views of ordination were very loose to the Baptist way of thinking, and his opinion of an ordained minister's authority was very low. He did not consider ordination essential, and he had exercised the ministerial functions more than a year before he was himself ordained. This offended the Baptists as it had earlier offended the Presbyterians. 5. Conversion. The Baptists held to the doctrine of human inability, or the helplessness of the will in conversion. They taught that the irresistible Holy Spirit worked faith in the heart by an act of divine power or regenerating grace. The Campbells taught that faith was the heartfelt belief that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, and grew out of the hearing or receiving of testimony to that fact. They believed that the Holy Spirit played no part in conversion save through the written Word." In 1817, the year after the delivery of the famous Sermon on the Law, Thomas Campbell visited Cambridge, Ohio, and later moved to Kentucky, thus leaving to his son the entire advocacy of the new movement in western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and eastern Ohio." The following year, the latter issued his first challenge to debate religious differences, but the man challenged, Mr. Finlay, a Union Presbyterian minister, refused. During the same year, Campbell opened Buffalo * Gates, Errett. Early Relation and Separation of Baptists and Disciples, 21-25. 84 Millennial Harbinger, II., 406. Seminary in his own home, where he boarded the entrants. In 1819, he met Walter Scott, and the same year his father returned from Kentucky to help in Buffalo Seminary. The elder Campbell also assumed pastoral care of the Brush Run Church." This Even though many of the Baptists were strongly opposed to Alexander Campbell, they recognized his ability, and some of them requested his services in defence of baptism. In 1819, John Birch, a Baptist preacher at Flat Rock, near Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, had baptized a large number of converts. success led John Walker, a minister of the Secession Church at Mt. Pleasant, to preach sermons in favor of infant baptism. Birch attended on one of these occasions, and at the close questioned some statements made. This led to a challenge by Walker to Birch, or any other Baptist minister of good standing whom he might designate, to debate the question of baptism. Birch picked Alexander Campbell, but the latter hesitated, largely because of deference to his father's opinion, and not through disinclination, for as a boy he had delighted in debating. The following letter to him, the third on the subject, was dated March 27, 1820: "Dear Brother: I once more undertake to address you by letter; as we are commanded not to weary in well doing, I am disposed to persevere. I am coming this third time unto you. I cannot persuade myself that you will refuse to attend to the dispute with Mr. Walker; therefore I do not feel disposed to complain because you have sent me no Millennial Harbinger, II., 406. answer. True, I have expected an answer signifying your acceptance of the same. I am as yet disappointed, but am not offended nor discouraged. I can truly say that it is the unanimous wish of all the church to which I belong that you should be the disputant. It is Brother Nathaniel Skinner's desire; it is the wish of all the brethren with whom I have conversed that you should be the man. You will, I hope, send me an answer by Brother Jesse Martin, who has promised to bear this unto you. Come, brother; come over into Macedonia and help us. Yours, in the best of bonds, John Birch.'' Alexander Campbell debated the question at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, June 19, 20, 1820; he was so pleased with the outcome that in concluding he gave the following general invitation: "I this day publish to all present that I feel disposed to meet any Pædobaptist minister of any denomination, of good standing in his party, and I engage to prove in a debate with him, either vive voce or with the pen, that infant sprinkling is a human tradition and injurious to the wellbeing of society religious and political."'" The next year, July, 1821, Adamson Bentley and Sidney Rigdon, two talented Baptist ministers, visited the young debater at his home, spending two days there. They embraced the doctrines of the "Reformation." Bentley was a well known and popular minister of the Western Reserve. He had induced a number of preachers to hold yearly what 36 Richardson, R. Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, II., 15, 16. 87 Ibid., II., 29. 88 Millennial Harbinger, II., 407. were called "ministers' meetings" in order to study the Scriptures, to promote their own personal religious advancement, and to help each other by criticizing sermons. Bentley acted as secretary, and aided largely in making the meetings beneficial and interesting. The leaders agreed that the churches should unite to form an association; consequently, on August 30, 1827, the messengers appointed by the churches met and formed the "Mahoning Baptist Association."" Bentley and Rigdon gave Campbell pressing invitations to visit the Association and preach for them. Thus a way was opened for "reformation" in the Western Reserve. Campbell said of these two men: "On parting the next day, Sidney Rigdon, with all apparent candor, said, if he had within the last year taught and promulgated from the pulpit one error, he had a thousand. At that time he was the great orator of the Mahoning Association, though in authority with the people second always to Adamson Bentley. . . .'' 40 During the early twenties, Alexander Campbell visited Pittsburg occasionally, and, since he was connected with the Red Stone Association, he preached to the Baptist Church there, then numbering over a hundred members. In 1822, through his influence, Sidney Rigdon was persuaded to accept a call as its pastor. The new minister of the Pittsburg Church possessed great fluency of speech and a lively fancy which made him very popular as an Richardson, R. Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, II., 48, 44. 40 Ibid., II., 45. orator. Since he seemed favorable to the "Reformation," Campbell was anxious to introduce him to Walter Scott, who was still giving weekly lectures on the New Testament to the small church for which Mr. Forrester had preached. Campbell wanted a union between these churches, but both proved rather shy until 1824, for each preferred its own peculiarities." Because of the growth of the new doctrines, Campbell began to feel the need of a paper in order to direct better and to unify teaching and preaching; hence on July 4, 1823, he published the first number of the Christian Baptist, a monthly magazine. The radical tone of this paper increased the opposition of the Baptists. Some of them had been very busy ever since Campbell's Sermon on the Law, seven years earlier, in working up a majority against him, so that they could expel him from the association, but the time did not appear propitious until August, 1823." Campbell had been so busy with his duties at Buffalo Seminary that he had not taken time to visit the churches belonging to the association as much as customary. This opportunity had been used by his enemies to good advantage, and charges of heresy were freely circulated against him. Elders Brownfield, Pritchard, and the Stones were making every effort to expel him. They sent special men to all the churches in 41 Richardson, R. 4 Gates, Errett. Disciples, 85, 86. Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, II., 47, 48, 99. |