SPRINGFIELD PRESBYTERY
Against the jealousy and strife which arose after the religious
excitement induced by the revival meetings of the previous year, Barton
Stone and other ministers lifted up their voices in protest, urging
that the bitter discussion of doctrinal points should cease. This only
turned the tide of warfare against themselves, and they soon became the
objects of bitter invective, because they had ceased to teach
speculative theology, and labored instead to show the people a more
liberal view of the redemptive plan.
Among the ministers who at this time taught a free salvation offered to
all men on the same conditions, was Richard McNemar, a member of the
Presbytery of Ohio, which had carried him through a trial for preaching
what was deemed to be anti-Calvinistic doctrine. By this presbytery his
case was referred to the Synod of Lexington. Stone and three other
ministers of the same views, perceiving in this trial of McNemar a blow
aimed against themselves, drew up a protest against such proceedings.
Then, declaring their freedom from synodical authority, they withdrew
from the jurisdiction, but not from the communion, of the organization;
although several unsuccessful attempts were made, before the synod
convened, to reclaim them in view of their record as able and
influential ministers.
In due time the synod met in Lexington, and took up McNemar's case.
Stone and the other three ministers presented the protest to the synod
through its moderator. A committee was sent to confer and to reason
with the protesting ministers. One immediate result of the conference
was that Matthew Houston, a member of the committee, became convinced
of the justice of the views of Barton Stone and his associates, and
became an advocate of their cause.
After prolonged discussion, the synod suspended the five ministers,
upon the ground that they had departed from the established creed of
their church. The ministers insisted, however, that as they had already
protested and withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the synod, that body
had no power to suspend them--"no more," to quote Stone's words, "than
had the Pope of Rome to suspend Luther after he had done the same
thing; for if Luther's suspension was valid, then the entire Protestant
succession was out of order, and in that case the synod had no power;
so that the act of suspension in this case was utterly void."
The action of the synod created great excitement and much dissension
throughout the country, and not only churches, but families, were
divided. Many persons, convinced that the turmoil was produced, not by
the Bible, but by human, authoritative creeds, were henceforth set
against such creeds, as being disturbers of religious liberty and
detrimental to Christian unity.
At the first regular appointment at Cane Ridge, after this action of
the synod, Barton Stone tendered his resignation of the ministry of
that church. It was not accepted, however, for he had, during his six
years' ministry, labored to good purpose, and, with the exception of
Hiram Gilcrest and Shadrac Landrum, the church-members were all in
harmony with their minister.
As soon as the church refused to accept Stone's resignation, Hiram
Gilcrest demanded that his name and that of his wife should be stricken
from the church books. The church would have granted them letters of
dismissal, but these he would not accept. Shadrac Landrum, though
equally bitter in his opposition to Stone's teaching, did not, when it
came to the test, withdraw from the church. Thus Gilcrest stood alone;
and it was a bitter day for the stern and narrow, but conscientious,
old man, when he found himself thus deserted by his only ally, and
turned adrift from the church of which, until two years before, he had
been the most influential member.
Soon after their separation from the Lexington Synod, the five
ministers constituted themselves into a separate organization, which
they styled "Springfield Presbytery." In a pamphlet entitled "The
Apology of the Springfield Presbytery," they stated the cause which had
led to the separation from the Lexington body; their objections to
confessions of faith of human origin; their abandonment from henceforth
of all human authoritative creeds; and their adherence to the Bible
alone as the only rule of faith and practice. It has been asserted that
this pamphlet was the first public declaration of religious freedom in
the western hemisphere, and the first in the world since that of Martin
Luther was set at naught by the act of nullification of Augsburg. The
pamphlet produced much inquiry throughout the country. It was speedily
republished in several other States, and it soon found many adherents
among both preachers and laymen of all denominations.
Under the name of "Springfield Presbytery," the ministers who belonged
to the organization continued to preach and to plant churches for about
one year. Later, perceiving that the name and the organization itself
"savored of a party spirit," they, in the words of Barton Stone, "with
the man-made creeds threw overboard the man-made name, and took the
name 'Christian' as the name given to the disciples by divine
appointment first at Antioch."[1] "Thus divested of all party name and
party creed," continues Barton Stone, "and trusting alone to God and
the word of his grace, we became at first a laughing-stock and a byword
to the sects around, all prophesying our speedy annihilation.... Yet
through much tribulation and opposition we advanced, and churches and
preachers were multiplied."
[1] See Appendix, p. 269.
This was the beginning, in the dawn of the nineteenth century, of that
great reformatory or restoratory movement, of which another writer
says: "The first churches planted and organized since the grand
apostacy, with the Bible as the only creed or church book, and the name
'Christian' as the only family name, were organized in Kentucky in the
year 1804;"[2] and of these churches so planted and organized, Cane
Ridge, Bourbon County, was the first.
[2] John A. Gano.