Highlights in Restoration History . . .

175 YEARS AGO: “LET THIS BODY DIE”

This year should not pass without some of us recognizing that it was 175 years ago this year on June 28 that one of the memorable documents of our history was penned. The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery is a testimonial that our pioneers were men of action as well as ideas. They were willing to “rock the boat” and make themselves vulnerable in order to make their world better. We are their heirs, and we are less than faithful to our heritage if we fail to emulate their faith and courage.

The document was originally signed by five men, all of whom were Presbyterian ministers, who had broken with their ecclesiastical body, the Synod of Kentucky, and had started their own presbytery, which they called the Springfield Presbytery. It was not, however, an official organization, but only a few churches and preachers who sought to exercise their freedom in Christ by thinking and acting for themselves. Their leader was Barton W. Stone, one of the pillars in our history, a man of deep humility and great moral courage.

The Last Will and Testament was their way of laying to rest the humble ecclesiastical structure they had created, thus bearing testimony to the oneness of the church.

The essence of the short document is in what they called the Imprimis, meaning “in the first place,” which reads: “We will that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large, for there is but one Body, and one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of our calling.” This shows that almost from the outset the Stone movement had a concern for unity, even though this is not what motivated them to become reformers. They actually began as a freedom movement, not a unity movement.

This should be the attitude of every denomination—and may I presume this includes us all?—that it one day be dissolved and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large. If because of the contingencies of history we are a denomination (God forbid that we be a sect!), we should be a denomination in protest. We must proclaim as did Thomas Campbell, that the church is one and cannot by its very nature be divided, and so we remain in denominationalism only provisionally. Our thought and action should always be with a view that Someday it will be different.

So that innocuous little document of hardly more than a single page, written back in 1804, provides for us a working ideal. As they “willed” that their insignificant little creation should be lost in the Church of Christ at large, it is to be our will that whatever is unique about us, that keeps us separated from other Christians, should also “Get lost” in a restored unity of all believers. It must be granted that a handful of ministers and churches have a more wieldy situation than do thousands of churches and millions of people. But still each of us in her own heart can will the death of anything within us that separates us from others. That will help to bring to fruition the unity for which our Lord prayed.

Barton Stone had reason to become discouraged, for two of those who signed the document with him joined the Shaker sect and the other two repudiated their “errors” and returned to the Presbyterians. Undaunted, Stone kept preaching reformation and by 1831, when he merged with Campbell’s people, he had something like 200 churches and 14,000 members, who called themselves Christians and their churches “Christian Church.” It all started with that little document back in 1804.

A year earlier these men had drawn up another document which may be even more important than the Last Will and Testament, though not nearly so well known. Due to what they had preached in the great Cane Ridge revival, which was simply Jesus Christ and him crucified, some of the men had come under the censure of their synod. While the Synod of Kentucky debated whether they should be brought to trial, the charge being that they taught contrary to the Confession of Faith, the five men gathered in a separate room and drafted their “Protest,” a paper of only two pages that later became a part of their more extended (100 pages) Apology of the Springfield Presbytery.

In the Protest they withdrew from the jurisdiction of the synod and affirmed their right to interpret the scriptures for themselves and to base their faith upon the Bible alone, apart from creeds. Except for a similar document drawn up by James O’Kelly a decade earlier, this is the first document in our history that calls for freedom from ecclesiastical control.

The Protest observed that even the Confession of Faith, which they were accused of repudiating, allowed them to interpret the scriptures for themselves and that it acknowledged the Bible itself to be the final judge. It dared to assert that the Confession sometimes darkens what is clearly set forth in scripture, and, like Socrates of old, they insisted that they should have been supported in their efforts to correct error rather than to be hauled into court. These were, of course, fighting words to the creed-bound church of their generation.

Now that they had walked out they made it clear that’ ‘Our affection for you, as brethren in the Lord, is, and we hope shall be ever the same: nor do we desire to separate from your communion, or to exclude you from ours.” They wanted to be free without being separatists, and they did not presume that they were the only Christians or that they had a monopoly on truth. The Presbyterians were still their brethren and they wanted to continue enjoying their fellowship. Theirs was a protest against and insistence for a uniformity of doctrine based upon a creed. It was not a separation from other Christians.

This intention to stay within, though not necessarily in this or that party, was true of all our founding pioneers. When James O’Kelly left the Methodists and started the Republican Methodist Church and then, with the help of Rice Haggard, named it “Christian Church,” he had no intention of breaking fellowship with those he left. Nor did the Campbells desire to be separate from other believers, even if they did have to break with their particular Presbyterian sect. Once they had an independent “Church of Christ,” as they called it, they kept applying for membership with denominational organizations until they were accepted by the Redstone Baptist Association, it being understood, to be sure, that they would be free to do their own thing. The Brush Run church prepared a document that asserted their right to be free to go their own direction while in a Baptist affiliation of churches. It is unfortunate that this significant document is lost to history.

It is a great heritage: free and yet cooperative, Christians only but not the only Christians. They did not fall prey to that great fallacy that has been an albatross about our necks in recent generations: since we cannot cooperate with other churches in everything we cannot cooperate with them in anything! Or to put it another way: since we do not endorse some of the things believed and practiced by other believers, we can enjoy no fellowship with them. Such a fallacy has the power to make us and keep us a sect.

It does not have to be that way. Not only do the scriptures liberate us from such obscurantism, but our own heritage as well. Our heritage, mind you!—the Editor

We take this divine rule as the measure of the Christian: ‘Whoever acknowledges the leading truths of Christianity, and conforms his life to that acknowledgment, we esteem a Christian.’ Such a man, however, he may differ, in matters of opinion, from his brethren, will never interfere with the liberties, the peace and harmony of the children of God.—Barton W. Stone, Biography, p. 332