The Apostolic Succession of Churches
By S. H. Ford, 1861In order to prove that none but a company of baptized believers is a church, and therefore that those unbaptized organizations of Christians are not gospel churches, it is by no means necessary to show a regular succession of such real churches from the apostles to the present time.
For example, to prove that nothing is a competent and authorized jury but a company of qualified citizens, summoned and sworn according to the forms of law, it is not necessary to show a succession of juries, or even the existence of any other jury but this one. The only questions involved are: What is the legal qualification of a juror? what are the formalities necessary to the formation of a regular jury? and, do these qualifications exist in this given case, and have these legal formalities been enforced?
The questions to be settled in regard to a church are:
1st. What is essential to individual chu 2d. What is essential to church organization, or status
Wherever there is a law authorizing juries - a jury law - there we may presume juries will be subpoenaed and organized. If, however, the forms of law shall have been at any time abandoned or trampled beneath the foot of despotism, and martial law or mob law shall have taken the place of it, we may find that years transpired in which not a single jury was summoned. But, if during that whole period the law was still unrepealed, and the qualifications - free citizenship - existed, there were, in fact, the jury law and the jury-men, lacking only the forms of empanelment.
Conversion, faith, and baptism are essential to individual church memberbership - citizenship in the gospel kingdom. Wherever these qualifications are found, there the materials of a church exist, and need nothing more than a regular assembling of themselves together for God's worship to constitute them a church. As in the case of juries, wherever there are real citizens of Christ's kingdom, and the law authorizing churches is still in force, we may presume churches will be gathered and organized. If, however, the forms of gospel law shall have been abandoned, or trampled beneath the feet of religious despotism; if ecclesiastical mob law or priestly tyranny shall have taken the place of the law of Christ, we may find that years transpired during which not a single church convened.
But, if during those years the qualifications existed - baptized believers, acknowledging the law of independent church sovereignty, claiming the right of forming themselves into such churches, and protesting against the lawless usurpations of spiritual despotism - where all these are found, there were, in fact, church men, lacking nothing but the opportunity of organizing and regularly assembling together.
Now we hold that in every age since Christ there have been found men and women professing spiritual life through faith in Christ, immersed on a profession of that faith, and claiming the right to organize themselves into separate
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churches, entirely independent of each other, or of any power on earth. We hold that wherever the opportunity occurred these spiritual citizens formed themselves into such churches, and protested against the despotism which attempted to destroy them. Hence, in every age, there have been the materials of true churches - have been the free citizens, the law, and the jurors - churches in fact, if not always convened in form.Proving this, that Baptists have existed in every age since the apostles, our case is made out, and Christ's words are fulfilled: "On this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
Those of our readers who desire to see these positions maintained - Baptists traced back step by step to the apostles - can send fifty cents in postage stamps and get "The Origin of the Baptists."
JACOB CREATH VS. ALEXANDER CAMPBELL. We see in a late Millennial Harbinger some plain words from the pen of Jacob Creath in regard to the operation of the Spirit. Aſter ridiculing the notion that the Spirit acts without the Word, he says: “What better is the assertion that he operates through the Word? If he operates through the Word on one sect, does he not operate on all sects alike through the Word? Why his partiality for one sect? Which sect is he so partial to? How shall we tell which sect it is that he operates on, and not on others? If he operates equally on all sects through the Word, is he not as much and as certainly the author of all sectarianism on this hypothesis as on the hypothesis that he produces it all without the Word? What is the difference which way he operates - through the Word, or without the Word? The result is the same in both cases. If he operates on all sects through the Word, and then leaves them all where they are, he certainly is the cause of their being where they are. Who can escape this conclusion? For one, I cannot subscribe to it?"
He goes on further to say: "I will most cheerfully aid in settling this vexed question of sectarian operations. In all such questions, of every description. we return the answer of Father Abraham to the rich man in hell, 'We have the writings of Moses and the prophets,' and I may say of Jesus and his legates. 'Let us obey them,' - that is enough."
We have quoted this profane babbling simply to show the arguments, style, and quotations of one of the great men of the Reformation in Missouri. The argument, if it may be called one, is borrowed from the Papists. The style is original - it is Creath's. The quotation is false. Father Abraham never said any thing of the kind - nor even like it. It is an imputation which Abraham would have rebuked while living, and which it is outrageous to attach to his character after his death.
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But the idea of a modern Reformer telling all who enquire about the question of spiritual aid, "We have the writings of Moses and the prophets - let us obey THEM" - circumcision, sacrifices, fasts, tithes, etc. - and then add: "that is enough." Did any one ever hear of such reforming?The argument and conclusion, however, is that the Spirit does not operate even through the Word. Read the language again. The bald and spiritless dogma that no cause, immediate or remote, has any agency in the grand transaction of conversion, is avowed in the peculiar style of Jacob Creath. Now let us contrast this with the words of Alexander Campbell in response to J. M. Peck, in 1842:
“For we believe, with all our heart, that the heart must be changed through the truth believed, before any one can enter the kingdom of God. The truth is the instrument, and the Spirit of God is the cause or agent of regeneration; and, my dear sir (Dr. Peck), if you always make the Word the instrument of regeneration, you may always expect me to concur with you in saying, that it is but the instrument and not the first cause of the great spiritual change.”These are Alexander Campbell's own words, some of which we have emphasized, so as to call attention to them. They are plain English. It seems almost impossible that he used them in a double sense; so that some might understand them in their current import, while Creath, and Franklin, and the initiated would understand them to mean just what we have quoted from Jacob Creath.If Alexander Campbell did not believe that the Spirit is the cause or agent in the conversion of a soul, using in that spiritual change the truth as his instrument, and “that it is but the instrument;" if he did not mean this, he was perpetrating a contemptible imposture when he penned that language. But if he meant, and if he believed what he then wrote, and what he reiterated in his debate with Rice, how can he publish, without a word, the profane abuse of it by Jacob Creath?
But Alexander Campbell has raised a storm of heresy which he has not the power to guide or quell. He dare not, to-day, with all his influence, defend his position - that in conversion the Spirit is the cause, and the truth but the instrument - against the ridicule of Franklin, the twaddle of Creath, or the logic of Lard.
Arab Wisdom. - The Arabs have a saying, It is not good to jest with God, death, or the devil: for the first neither can nor will be mocked; the second mocks all men one time or another; and the third puts an eternal sarcasm on those who are too familiar with him.
=================== [From Samuel H. Ford, The Christian Repository, volume 10, 1861, pp. 36-38, via Internet edition. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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