THE union of the Campbells with the Baptists conditioned the course of their movement for the next twenty years. It opened a sphere of influence and activity to Alexander Campbell, now the acknowledged leader, which made possible the wider and more rapid dissemination of his views. It drew the attention and opened the ears of the entire Baptist brotherhood, then the numerically strongest denomination in America, to the new teachings. Without this affiliation with the Baptists all church doors would have been closed to him, and the progress of "the reformation" would have been in the teeth of the bitterest opposition and sectarian hatred. At one stroke he secured a great audience of friendly listeners. [100]

      To all intents and purposes Campbell became a Baptist and deliberately and frankly accepted the denominational status which it gave him. The Brush Run church was lost in the larger fellowship of Baptist churches, and assumed with all others its part in the extension of Baptist views and influence. Campbell's first active interest in the Baptist cause was to offer his services for the purpose of raising money among the Baptist churches of the East to build a meeting house at Charlestown, Virginia. It was to provide a church home for his father-in-law's family, who had taken membership in the Brush Run church and was contemplating removal to Charlestown, where he had already established himself in business. He visited such cities as Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, preaching and raising money in Baptist churches, and returned with a thousand dollars with which a church was built.

      At the meeting of the Redstone [101] Association, August 30, 1816, Alexander Campbell was present as one of the three messengers from the Brush Run church. In spite of opposition on the part of a few preachers, the demand of the people to hear him was so strong that they were obliged to give him a place on the program. He preached a sermon which afterwards became famous as the Sermon on the Law, and was the beginning of open opposition to him in the Redstone Association, and the cause of frequent charges of heresy against him in other Baptist associations. The subject of the discourse was the view adopted by him in 1812 that the law of Moses is not binding upon the Christian church, and that the preaching of the gospel is the all-sufficient means of conversion. The principle that the Old Testament with its authority, laws, and ordinances had been abrogated in Christ, was not with him a mere theological speculation, but of practical utility. It was this practical, far-reaching [102] scope of the doctrine, as intimated in a closing section of the sermon, which alarmed the Baptists. He said: "A fourth conclusion which is deducible from the above premises is, that all arguments or motives drawn from the law, or Old Testament, to urge the disciples of Christ to baptize their infants; to pay tithes to their teachers; to observe holy days or religious fasts, as preparatory to the observance of the Lord's supper; to sanctify the seventh day; to enter into national covenants; to establish any form of religion by civil law--and all reasons or motives borrowed from the Jewish law, to excite the disciples of Christ to a compliance with or imitation of Jewish customs, are inconclusive, repugnant to Christianity, and fall ineffectual to the ground; not being enjoined or countenanced by Jesus Christ."

      This was novel doctrine, not only to the audience before him, but to most Christian communities of the time. It was not new, [103] however, to theologians, for it had appeared in the writings of the "Federal School" of theology, of which the Dutchman, Cocceius, was the reputed founder. The mind of Campbell seems to have been thoroughly saturated with the covenant ideas of this school. Some of the preachers present at the delivery of the discourse took alarm before it was finished and held a hurried consultation as to the best means of protest against it. It was finally decided that it was "better to let it pass and let the people judge for themselves." Opposition, however, did not rest here. A movement was quietly set on foot at this meeting with the avowed purpose of counteracting the influence of the Campbells and ridding the Association of them. At this same meeting Thomas Campbell, who lived in Pittsburg, brought a letter from a small church, which he had gathered together there, asking union as a church with the Association. It was voted, "that as this letter is not [104] presented according to the constitution of this Association, the request cannot be granted." A "Circular Letter," or essay upon the "Trinity," presented by Thomas Campbell, met with a better reception, having been "accepted without amendment."

      Alexander Campbell was engaged for the most part during the years from 1813 to 1820 in managing his farm, given to him by his father-in-law; conducting a seminary chiefly for young men at his home, called "Buffalo Seminary," at Bethany, West Virginia; and making preaching tours among Baptist churches in the neighboring regions. After the preaching of the Sermon on the Law, and on account of the suspicion and enmity arising out of it, his preaching among Baptist churches was somewhat restricted. He says: "Till this time we had labored much among the Baptists with good effect." "I itinerated less than before in my labors in the gospel [105] and confined my attention to three or four little communities constituted on the Bible, one in Ohio, one in Virginia, and two in Pennsylvania. Once or twice a year I made excursions amongst the regular Baptists, but with little hope of being useful to the Redstone Association."

      While Alexander Campbell was a Baptist in all essential respects, as he viewed it, yet he was not so thoroughly denominationalized that he could not be free in his attitude towards their beliefs and practices. The attitude of the Baptists towards him varied; some received him, others rejected him. But there was no doubt among Baptists that upon the mode of baptism, he stood upon their ground. He was chosen out of all defenders of the Baptist faith in that region to represent and champion the Baptist cause in a debate with a Presbyterian minister by the name of John Walker, of Mount Pleasant, Ohio. Mr. Walker challenged Mr. Birch, or any other Baptist, to debate the question of [106] baptism, and engaged to prove, "That baptism came in the room of circumcision; that the covenant on which the Jewish church was built, and to which circumcision was a seal, is the same with the covenant on which the Christian church is built, and to which baptism is the seal; that the Jews and Christians are the same body politic under the same lawgiver and husband, consequently the infants of believers have a right to baptism." Mr. Birch had some difficulty in persuading Campbell to enter the debate, on account of his doubt of the utility of it in promoting the truth or the unity of Christians. He finally consented, and the debate was held June 19-20, 1820, at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, twenty-three miles from Mr. Campbell's home. Mr. Walker based his argument for infant baptism upon the identity of the Jewish and Christian covenants, and upon the equal authority of the Old and New Testaments. Mr. Campbell entertained the contrary view which [107] appeared in his Sermon on the Law. In the baptismal controversy of the times as usually carried on between Baptists and Pedobaptists, they stood on the same ground in a common recognition of the authority of the Old Covenant. It was something new and startling to Mr. Walker, when Campbell cut the Gordian knot at a stroke by assuming the complete annulment of the Old Covenant in the death of Christ. The debate reduced itself to a discussion of the authority or validity of the Jewish Covenant in the Christian church.

      Another novelty in the way of an argument against infant baptism introduced by Mr. Campbell in the debate was his view of the design of baptism. The argument is scarcely more than suggested in the following words: "Baptism is connected with the promise of the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit." The doctrine was subsequently to play a large part in the debates of Campbell, in the controversy with [108] the Baptists, and in the evangelistic preaching of the Disciples.

      The opportunities and issues of the debate were such as to convince Campbell that "a week's debating is worth a year's preaching," and to dispose him so favorably to the debate as a means of disseminating truth, that he issued a challenge at the close "to meet any Pedobaptist minister of any denomination and prove that Infant Sprinkling is a human tradition and injurious to the well-being of society, religious and political." The debate was printed and circulated very widely among the Baptists, who felt that they had the best of the argument, and extended the influence and fame of Campbell beyond the reach of his living voice. While some Baptists "remained extremely dubious in regard to the orthodoxy of their champion," others took grateful pride in him, and felt as one Baptist declared, that "he had done more for the Baptists than any man in the West." [109]

      In the printing and circulation of the debate, which was frequently heard from at a distance, Campbell discovered the power and usefulness of the press. He determined to make larger use of it as a means of getting his teachings before the Baptist world especially. He felt that the Baptists offered the best opportunity for reformatory work upon biblical principles because "they read the Bible and seemed to care for little else in religion than 'conversion' and 'Bible doctrine.'" He wrote in 1824 as follows: "There is one vast difference, one essential and all-important difference betwixt the Baptist and Pedobaptist views and societies. The Baptist views of the Church of Jesus Christ are constitutionally correct; the Pedobaptist views are unconstitutional." "The Baptist system is capable of being reformed or brought back again to the constitution of the kingdom of heaven; the Pedobaptist cannot."

      While he believed that "the Baptist [110] society had as much liberality in their views, as much of the ancient simplicity of the Christian religion, as much of the spirit of Christianity among them, as was to be found amongst other people"; yet he also believed that "there was in the views and practices of this large and widely extended community, as great need of reformation, and of a restoration of the ancient order of things," "as of any sect in Christendom." To extend more widely and promote more rapidly among the Baptists and all Protestant denominations his reformatory teachings, he established in 1823 a monthly periodical which he called the Christian Baptist. He announced in the prospectus that its sole object should be "the eviction of truth, and the exposure of error in doctrine and practice. The editor, acknowledging no standard of religious faith or works other than the Old and New Testaments, and the latter as the only standard of the religion of Jesus Christ, will, intentionally at least, oppose [111] nothing which it contains, and recommend nothing which it does not enjoin." He dedicated the work "to all those without distinction, who acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be a true revelation from God, and the New Testament as containing the religion of Jesus Christ; who, willing to have all religious tenets and practices tried by the Divine Word; and who, feeling themselves in duty bound to search the Scriptures for themselves in all matters of religion--are disposed to reject all doctrine and commandments of men, and to obey the truth, holding fast the faith once delivered to the saints."

      The notable thing to be observed in this program of action is the absence of all reference to Christian union. The emphasis now rests upon the principle of scriptural authority and primitive precept and example. The watchword is now reformation not union. The principle of unity [112] has been subordinated to the principle of apostolicity. Even the union of the Brush Run church with the Baptist association was quite as much an expression of devotion to apostolicity as of desire for unity. They made no concession for the sake of the union. The union of the people of God had become a hopeless task and must be postponed until their faith and practice had been squared with the Divine Standard. He did not doubt the validity or the correctness of his method of procedure or his principle of adjustment. Primitive Christianity which was put forth in the Declaration and Address as a principle of unity, but left undefined and uncertain, had been undergoing a progressive definition in the terms of a local Christian fellowship in the Brush Run church, and was now to be given still more careful definition and settlement in application to Baptist faith and practice. The results of that definition were the gradual separation and alienation [113] of the Christian Association, first from Pedobaptist churches and finally from Baptist churches. The more they learned from the Scriptures as to the terms of Christian union and communion, the more difficult it was to enter into union or to maintain union with existing religious bodies. They defined the essential elements of primitive Christianity in the direction of a growing separatism. It proved to be a principle of exclusion and division, rather than a principle of comprehension and union. The series of articles in the pages of the Christian Baptist on "The Ancient Order of Things," completed and fixed the definition of Christianity for those who attached themselves to "the new reformation." The essential elements of primitive Christianity were made to consist in "an order of things." They were very careful of the way they did things in the public worship, in the celebration and administration of the ordinances, in the organization [114] of local churches, and in the propagation of the gospel. In many instances it came very near being a tithing of mint, anise, and cummin, and a neglecting of the weightier matters of the law. Christianity was defined, the terms of Christian communion were fixed, according to the letter of Scripture, and the result was a legalistic formalism. The extreme literalism of the teaching of this first period was sure to produce a reaction and to create two parties within the movement, the literal and the spiritual. Campbell himself and the larger part of the body recoiled from this early position in the direction of a more spiritual interpretation of Christianity. The two parties have survived to the present time in the body, with varying degrees of cooperation or strife.

      Scarcely three numbers of the Christian Baptist had appeared from the press before Alexander Campbell was called upon to engage in a debate with a Presbyterian [115] preacher of Kentucky. It grew out of the previous debate with Mr. Walker. Campbell's challenge at the close of that debate was accepted by the Rev. W. L. Maccalla, of Washington, Kentucky. He felt that the strongest word for infant baptism on the ground of the identity of the Jewish and Christian covenants, had not been spoken by Mr. Walker. The debate covered the same ground and dealt with the same arguments and counter-arguments as in the previous debate. It was an arrayal of the Baptist against the Pedobaptist position. On this occasion, as on the former, Campbell went as the representative and champion of the Baptist cause, and was received into Baptist churches and homes everywhere throughout Kentucky. He brought with him copies of the Christian Baptist which he gave to the Baptist preachers present, warning them in the meantime that he had quite as much against the Baptists as against the [116] Presbyterians. In this debate he developed at greater length his doctrine of the design of baptism as an argument against infant baptism and said: "The water of baptism, then, formally washes away our sins. The blood of Christ really washes away our sins. Paul's sins were really pardoned when he believed. Yet he had no solemn pledge of the fact, no formal acquittal, no formal purgation of his sins until he washed them away in the water of baptism." "One argument from this topic is that baptism being ordained to be to a believer, a formal and personal remission of all his sins, cannot be administered to an infant without the greatest perversion and abuse of the nature and import of this ordinance. Indeed, why should an infant that never sinned . . . be baptized for the remission of sins?" Feeling that this doctrine was new to both Baptists and Presbyterians, he said: "My Baptist brethren, as well as the Pedobaptist's brotherhood, I humbly [117] conceive, require to be admonished on this point. You have been, some of you no doubt, too diffident in asserting this grand import of baptism."

      True to his promise made in the prospectus of the Christian Baptist, in the very first numbers he began a crusade against the errors in doctrine and practice of all the denominations, the Baptists in particular. His program was, first, the destruction of false doctrines and erroneous practices in the denominations that acknowledged allegiance to the Scriptures, and the reduction of their systems to a common agreement, and then would inevitably follow a union of Christians. As expressed by a writer in the Christian Baptist: "To attempt union among jarring sects which are established upon different foundations, without the explosion of their foundations, is altogether fruitless." The work of undermining and blowing up the foundations of other people's houses is not a very cordial way of [118] approaching them, nor likely to be a very successful way of winning their sympathy. There was not a custom, or doctrine, or ceremony maintained by any denomination, which was not tried and tested, squared and measured, by a severely literal application of the text of Scripture. As a consequence there were very few denominational practices for which Campbell found any scriptural authority. The Scriptures nowhere spoke of "missionary societies," "Bible societies," "associations," "synods," "presbyteries," "creeds," "confessions of faith, "clergymen," "bishops," "reverends," "doctors of divinity," and a multitude of other innovations in use in modern Christian society, consequently they should have no place in the church of to-day. He cast them all out upon the ecclesiastical scrap pile. No matter if in the general renovation and house-cleaning some useful and valuable things were thrown out--the work must be thoroughly and finally done. He was [119] cautioned by Robert Semple, the most eminent Baptist of the time, that there was danger of "running past Jerusalem as one hastens out of Babylon"; but he replied: "We are convinced, that the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint of modern fashionable Christianity--that many of the schemes of the populars resemble the delirium, the wild fancies of a subject of fever, in its highest paroxysms--and that these most fashionable projects deserve no more regard from sober Christians, Christians intelligent in the New Testament, than the vagaries, the febrile flights, of patients in an inflammatory fever." He spoke this of Bible societies, but he included all other agencies for the spread of the gospel which were without the sanction of apostolic example.

      He was moved with the spirit of the most furious iconoclasm. Nothing escaped his sarcasm and invective, in the use of which he was an adept. He cared little whether [120] his remedy hurt or not; the disease was malignant, the remedy must be severe. As a consequence, Campbell did not get himself well liked by everybody. One man wrote in 1823: "I request you to send me the Christian Baptist no more, my conscience is wounded that I should have subscribed for such a work. It is a religious incendiary and will do a world of mischief." Another wrote: "Your paper is a disorganizer and I doubt not will prove deistical in the end." After sending the paper for some time to the reading rooms of a society at Hamilton Seminary at the request of the students, they wrote saying: "For reasons which we are willing frankly to avow, our society has recently come to the resolution to ask you to discontinue your publication." Spencer Clack, a Baptist minister, wrote to Campbell from Kentucky saying: "Some are for you, others against you; some approve, others censure and condemn; such is the state of affairs; such the effect [121] produced by your writing. But let me ask, what is the great good which such division will achieve?" Campbell was denounced in public and in private by the Baptists as a "Unitarian," "a Socinian," an "Antinomian," "a Pelagian," and "a Deist"; and where that did not succeed in stirring up prejudice, they said, "he stole a horse," "was excommunicated for drunkenness," and "married his first wife's sister." He had put out in 1826 a revised edition of the New Testament, translated by Campbell, Doddridge and McKnight, and so bitter was the prejudice awakened against it that one man solemnly consigned a copy of it to the flames.

      It was a serious question in the minds of many Baptists whether they could conscientiously include Campbell in their fellowship, or whether he could consistently and honestly call himself a Baptist. Concerning this he wrote in the Christian Baptist in 1826 as follows: "I and the church with [122] which I am connected are in 'full communion' with the Mahoning Baptist Association of Ohio; and through them with the whole Baptist society in the United States; and I do intend to continue in connection with this people so long as they will permit me to say what I believe, to teach what I am assured of, and to censure what is amiss in their views and practices." When charged with inconsistency in claiming "full fellowship with the whole Baptist society" and yet censuring many of their views and practices, he said: "But what constitutes consistency? In acting conformably to our own professed sentiments and principles; or in acting conformably to the professed sentiments and principles of others?" He was ready to hold Christian communion with any person or group of persons who confessed that Jesus was the Christ, and was baptized as a testimony to it, and lived a blameless Christian life. Nothing more and [123] nothing less than this should constitute the conditions of Christian fellowship. On these terms he received all Baptists into fellowship. The difficulty was not on his side but on their side. They fulfilled all his requirements for communion, but he did not fulfill all their requirements. It was just this more-than-enough for simple Christian fellowship in Baptist requirements, such as the relation of an experience and subscription to a creed, with which he quarrelled. He refused to regard communion with a religious body as implying "an entire approbation of all their views, doctrines and practice, as a society or individuals." His principle was that "unity of opinion is not essential to Christian union."

      It was still an unsettled question with him in 1825 whether immersion should be made a test of fellowship among Christians. He said: "I frankly own that my full conviction is that there are many Pedobaptist congregations, of whose Christianity I think [124] as highly as of most Baptist congregations, and with whom I could wish to be on the very same terms of Christian communion on which I stand with the whole Baptist society." He thought that there were as good scriptural grounds for Baptists and Pedobaptists to eat the Lord's supper together as to have fellowship in other acts of social worship. He was not ready, however, to go the full length of receiving the unimmersed into fellowship. Personally he would receive them, but he could not make his own personal disposition a law for the entire Christian brotherhood. He finally settled into the practice of making immersion a test of fellowship in the local congregation, but not a prerequisite to partaking of the Lord's supper. In this he broke with the Baptist custom of close communion, and settled the practice for all reforming Baptist churches.

      The Christian Baptist grew rapidly in circulation, especially among Baptists, and [125] contributed in no small measure, together with his published debates and preaching tours through all parts of the country, in creating a rapidly increasing party in the Baptist denomination which was called "Reformers" or "reforming Baptists," and otherwise stigmatized as "Campbellites" or "Restorationers." [126]

[TDOC 100-126]