Crestlands: A Centennial Story of Cane Ridge

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  SPRINGFIELD PRESBYTERY

  Against the jealousy and strife which arose after the religiousexcitement induced by the revival meetings of the previous year, BartonStone and other ministers lifted up their voices in protest, urgingthat the bitter discussion of doctrinal points should cease. This onlyturned the tide of warfare against themselves, and they soon became theobjects of bitter invective, because they had ceased to teachspeculative theology, and labored instead to show the people a moreliberal view of the redemptive plan.

  Among the ministers who at this time taught a free salvation offered toall men on the same conditions, was Richard McNemar, a member of thePresbytery of Ohio, which had carried him through a trial for preachingwhat was deemed to be anti-Calvinistic doctrine. By this presbytery hiscase was referred to the Synod of Lexington. Stone and three otherministers of the same views, perceiving in this trial of McNemar a blowaimed against themselves, drew up a protest against such proceedings.Then, declaring their freedom from synodical authority, they withdrewfrom the jurisdiction, but not from the communion, of the organization;although several unsuccessful attempts were made, before the synodconvened, to reclaim them in view of their record as able andinfluential 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 synodthrough its moderator. A committee was sent to confer and to reasonwith the protesting ministers. One immediate result of the conferencewas that Matthew Houston, a member of the committee, became convincedof the justice of the views of Barton Stone and his associates, andbecame 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 oftheir church. The ministers insisted, however, that as they had alreadyprotested and withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the synod, that bodyhad no power to suspend them--"no more," to quote Stone's words, "thanhad the Pope of Rome to suspend Luther after he had done the samething; for if Luther's suspension was valid, then the entire Protestantsuccession 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 dissensionthroughout the country, and not only churches, but families, weredivided. Many persons, convinced that the turmoil was produced, not bythe Bible, but by human, authoritative creeds, were henceforth setagainst such creeds, as being disturbers of religious liberty anddetrimental to Christian unity.

  At the first regular appointment at Cane Ridge, after this action ofthe synod, Barton Stone tendered his resignation of the ministry ofthat church. It was not accepted, however, for he had, during his sixyears' ministry, labored to good purpose, and, with the exception ofHiram Gilcrest and Shadrac Landrum, the church-members were all inharmony with their minister.

  As soon as the church refused to accept Stone's resignation, HiramGilcrest demanded that his name and that of his wife should be strickenfrom the church books. The church would have granted them letters ofdismissal, but these he would not accept. Shadrac Landrum, thoughequally bitter in his opposition to Stone's teaching, did not, when itcame 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, andturned adrift from the church of which, until two years before, he hadbeen the most influential member.

  Soon after their separation from the Lexington Synod, the fiveministers constituted themselves into a separate organization, whichthey styled "Springfield Presbytery." In a pamphlet entitled "TheApology of the Springfield Presbytery," they stated the cause which hadled to the separation from the Lexington body; their objections toconfessions of faith of human origin; their abandonment from henceforthof all human authoritative creeds; and their adherence to the Biblealone as the only rule of faith and practice. It has been asserted thatthis pamphlet was the first public declaration of religious freedom inthe western hemisphere, and the first in the world since that of MartinLuther was set at naught by the act of nullification of Augsburg. Thepamphlet produced much inquiry throughout the country. It was speedilyrepublished in several other States, and it soon found many adherentsamong both preachers and laymen of all denominations.

  Under the name of "Springfield Presbytery," the ministers who belongedto the organization continued to preach and to plant churches for aboutone year. Later, perceiving that the name and the organization itself"savored of a party spirit," they, in the words of Barton Stone, "withthe man-made creeds threw overboard the man-made name, and took thename 'Christian' as the name given to the disciples by divineappointment first at Antioch."[1] "Thus divested of all party name andparty creed," continues Barton Stone, "and trusting alone to God andthe word of his grace, we became at first a laughing-stock and a bywordto the sects around, all prophesying our speedy annihilation.... Yetthrough much tribulation and opposition we advanced, and churches andpreachers were multiplied."

  [1] See Appendix, p. 269.

  This was the beginning, in the dawn of the nineteenth century, of thatgreat reformatory or restoratory movement, of which another writersays: "The first churches planted and organized since the grandapostacy, with the Bible as the only creed or church book, and the name'Christian' as the only family name, were organized in Kentucky in theyear 1804;"[2] and of these churches so planted and organized, CaneRidge, Bourbon County, was the first.

  [2] John A. Gano.