OUR VISIT TO BRITAIN

 

Some how or other information of our intended visit to England arrived in that country before us. Soon after reaching London we found the following manifesto figuring in the “notices to correspondents” on the cover of the “British Millennial Harbinger,” edited by Mr. James Wallis of Nottingham.

 

“Mr. John Thomas. —We have heard through the medium of some of the second advent proclaimers, that Mr. John Thomas, M.D., from Richmond, Virginia, is on his way to England, if he has not already landed. We feel justified in stating to the brethren, and to our readers, that Mr. Thomas, in his magazine, some time ago, publicly abjured all connection with the churches of the Reformation in the United States, more especially with Brother Campbell and his associates. He not only renounced what he had learned from them, but also what he taught whilst among them, as being altogether erroneous. He has also been re-baptised, or baptised for the first time into what he calls the hope of Israel; so that he has discovered not only that the baptism of all others of our brethren is faulty, but that his own also which he received some years ago from the hands of Brother Walter Scott, and for which he has pleaded so strenuously, has no foundation in truth. What is the express object of Mr. Thomas in visiting this country, we do not know. In his writings he still appears very confident of the none resurrection of infants, idiots, and heathens, and at the same time he is shortly expecting (he says within twenty years) the coming of the Lord Jesus, to set up the everlasting kingdom, the seat of government in the land of Palestine, for at least one thousand years—introductory, as we suppose, to that glorious and eternal rest which remains for the people of God. With these views and feelings, we conclude that Mr. Thomas is coming to England to lift up his warning voice, that a people may be prepared for the thousand years’ glorious and triumphant reign of Messiah with his resurrected saints, which is the true hope of Israel. But we may be mistaken in this supposition as to the object of his visit. He has friends residing in London, and it may be only a friendly visit on family matters. Be this as it may, the Second Advent brethren—or those who believe in the personal, literal, visible reign of Christ for a thousand years in this world—are anticipating a high treat on the occasion. Now we ask, as none of our brethren emigrating to America, are received into the fellowship of the churches there without a well-attested recommendation from brethren in this country, ought not the same principle to be adopted in reference to all parties coming from America to this country? —J. W.”

 

The above was a sort of intimation of what was yet to come from the same quarter. Mr. Wallis’ policy was to make the impression upon his brethren of the Campbellite faith in Britain, that we had ‘publicly abjured all connection with the churches of the Reformation in the United States.’ This charge against us was subsequently so often repeated in his magazine, that it came at last to be believed as a fact that was indisputable. The testimony adduced to sustain the accusation was alleged to be contained in our ‘Confession and Abjuration,’ dated March, 1847, and published in the Herald, No. 4, Vol. 3. By referring to the document, however, it will be seen that the charge is a false one. We did not abjure ‘churches,’ but a certain ‘transaction,’ ‘mistakes,’ errors of compromise, the dogma of the immortality of the soul, and ‘other things’ of a kindred nature. After giving six reasons for regarding our immersion by Mr. Walter Scott, in 1833, as ‘no better than a Jewish ablution,’ as Mr. A. Campbell styles an invalid immersion, we add, ‘these, we consider, are sufficient reasons why we should abjure the whole transaction’—a transaction between Mr. Scott and ourselves before we knew any thing at all about ‘Mr. Campbell and his associates,’ or their churches.

 

Again, the word abjuration occurs in the following connection—‘Had we been properly instructed, we should not now have had to make this confession and abjuration of our mistakes.’ In the October number of the British Harbinger for 1848, Mr. Wallis accuses us of especially ‘asserting that the leading men of the Reformation held damnable heresy.’ This is a perversion of our words. We said nothing about ‘the leading men of the Reformation;’ we wrote in general terms, our words being as applicable to the leading men of all denominations and to all who held the heresy, as to ourselves on the supposition of our having also once entertained it. Our words are, ‘We do not remember that we ever taught the existence of an immortal soul in corruptible man, and the translation thereof to heaven, or hell at the instant of death; if we have, so much the worse: no man can hold this dogma, and acceptably believe the Gospel of the kingdom of God and his Christ: we abjure IT as a ‘damnable heresy.’ In the next paragraph we say, ‘ there may be other things—errors—which have escaped our recollection; whatever they be &c., we abjure them all.’ Then, referring to the treaty of peace and amity between Mr. Campbell and ourselves at Paineville in 1838, in which so long as we were not misrepresented we consented to hold certain inferences from a great truth in abeyance, because of the prejudices the publication of them was supposed to create against what we then all considered ‘ the Ancient Gospel’—referring to this, we say, ‘We erred in holding in abeyance the most trivial inference from the truth on any pretence whatever; we abjure all errors of this kind, &c.’ Then lastly, we finish our ‘Confession and Abjuration’ of the things confessed by saying, ‘Had our opponents let us alone, &c., we might have been teaching the same fables: which, however, would have deprived us of the pleasure of confessing our errors and mistakes, and of publicly renouncing and bidding them adieu.’

 

Upon the last citation, it is probable, Mr. Wallis founds his charge against us of ‘publicly abjuring all the churches of the Reformation in the United States.’ But it is obvious that the utmost he can make out of it is a renouncing and bidding of our opponents adieu. The grammatical construction of the text, however, will not even admit of this. The public renunciation and adieu is the ‘errors and mistakes’ confessed; for these, and not ‘them and their leaders,’ are the antecedent to ‘them.’ Our ‘pleasure’ consists in renouncing and bidding our errors and mistakes adieu; our sorrow, in having to turn from men who, like Messrs. Campbell and Wallis and their associates, prefer darkness to light, and will not come to the light lest it should be discovered that their deeds are not wrought in God. But we have not altogether turned from and renounced them even yet. Our duty is to endeavour to open their blind eyes that they may see the truth of the gospel of the kingdom; at all events so to deal with them that by enlightening the people their power and influence for evil may be restrained, if not entirely destroyed.

 

The impression made upon many minds by Mr. Wallis’ illiterate construction of our ‘Confession and Abjuration,’ was that we had renounced christianity itself. So far did he carry his underhand machinations in relation to this document, which some evil genius in this city, we have reason to believe, sent over to him for machiavellian purposes, that he had a number of copies printed and circulated among his co-religionists to prejudice their minds against us. He did not send us a copy or inform us of what he had done. The first we knew of it was by a friend in Glasgow who had received one, handing it to us at the epoch of the convention there—of which more hereafter—and archly inquiring if we knew anything about such a document as that? We recognised it at once as a reprint of our ‘Confession and Abjuration.’ But the iniquity of the thing was in the publication of this apart from our ‘Declaration,’ which we intended should always accompany the ‘Confession and Abjuration.’ Had this been done, no one could have come to the conclusion that we had renounced the gospel. But this candid proceeding would not have subserved Mr. Wallis and his associates’ crooked policy! We will do him the justice, however, to state that on the question being put to him by the Secretary of the Glasgow Cooperation meeting—who has since obeyed the gospel of the kingdom—why he did not reprint the ‘Declaration’ of the things Dr. Thomas now believes and teaches as well as the ‘Confession and Abjuration?’ he replied, that ‘he had not got it.’ This, however, could only be true in part. He could not have reprinted the last page of the ‘Confession and Abjuration,’ without also possessing nearly a whole page of the ‘Declaration,’ because these two pages are upon the same leaf. He possessed enough of the ‘Declaration’ to convict him of injustice in publishing our ‘Abjuration’ by itself. The first paragraph of the ‘Declaration’ connects it inseparably with the ‘Confession and Abjuration’ in these words: ‘Having presented the reader with our confession and abjuration of errors, the fitness of things requires, that we should declare to him what we believe the Holy Scriptures teach in lieu thereof.’ Here the necessity is expressed that he who reads our abjuration should also be acquainted with the position we now occupy. If Mr. Wallis could not do this for want of the whole article, he had no right to publish the abjuration at all. But then he could have made no capital out of a reprint. The articles would have spoken for themselves, and shown that if the Campbellite faith were rejected as imperfect and unscriptural, we did not therefore abjure ‘the truth as it is in Jesus.’ He might have delayed the publication till he had procured the entire ‘Declaration;’ but instead of that he hurried out a partial statement of our case, which from ignorance or malice he misconstrued, and in so doing made himself a false accuser.

 

Mr. Wallis also affirms in the above notice that Dr. Thomas renounced ‘what he taught whilst among them—the Reformers—as being altogether erroneous.’ This is not true; for while among them we taught what we still teach concerning the ‘covenants of promise’ made with Abraham and David concerning the Land of Promise, and David’s throne. We also taught that Jesus is the Christ foretold by Moses and the prophets, and that there is repentance and remission of sins through his name alone. Mr. Wallis knew this, yet dared to affirm that we had renounced what we had taught as ‘altogether’ erroneous. If he had said some things we taught he would have stated the truth; but to say ‘what’ without limitation or qualification, or rather made universal by ‘altogether,’ gives his assertion the character of an untruth. The notice is evidently one designed to forestall public opinion, and at the same time to give vent to some of his spleen against the Second Adventists in Nottingham, who at the time were a kind of thorn in his side, by identifying them with an individual he was endeavouring to render obnoxious to his own party and the public. In thrusting at them he was classing us with an antagonist party; for between the ‘Millerites’ of 1843, and the ‘Campbellites,’ there are no more dealings than between the Jews and the Samaritans. This, doubtless, he thought an effectual means of placing the reformers in opposition to us in England; but he was taken in his own craftiness, and utterly failed in all his devices. The animus of the notice is manifest from his concluding inquiry. ‘Now we ask,’ says he, ‘as none of our brethren emigrating to America are received into the churches there without a well attested recommendation from brethren in this country, ought not the same principle to be adopted in reference to all parties coming from America to this country?’ The ‘all parties’ was aimed at us. But we had ‘well-attested recommendation from brethren’ in fellowship with himself and those he calls his brethren in America, one of whom he styles ‘our much esteemed brother’ in a letter to us dated July 5, 1848. We sent one to him, another to Mr. Hine, and delivered one to Mr. Black in London, from another much esteemed brother; and had other recommendations from ‘brethren’ to ‘brethren’ in our portfeuille which we made no use of, having discovered how little practical utility they were of in securing the cooperation, good will, or even common courtesy of those to whom such epistles were addressed.

 

On our arrival in London we forwarded the letters of personal introduction to Messrs. Wallis and Hine we had received from one who had been a member of their church, and was then a member in the Campbellite body assembling at 80, Green street, New York. The latter gentleman, whose maxim in grinding the face of the poor in his employ, is, that ‘religion has nothing to do with business,’ or with courtesy either, he might have added, took no further notice of the letter addressed to him, than to join Mr. Wallis in subscribing his name to an epistle purporting to emanate from the church in which that body is represented as declining to have any thing to do with us. These letters have already been published in the Herald p. 58, Vol. 4., and need not therefore to be re-inserted here. We learned while in England that the Campbellite church in Nottingham is most unhappily situated. The members are for the most part poor, and dependant upon Messrs. Hines and Wallis for their daily bread, being to a considerable extent in their employ. It is well known in Nottingham that very great dissatisfaction prevails among them at the way things are managed and conducted in their church. Mr. Hine is ‘the divinity that shapes their ends,’ while Mr.Wallis executes his will. Both these men are reputed rich, and notwithstanding their much ado about primitive christianity, they are no exceptions to the question of the apostle James, “Do not rich men oppress you?” Messrs. Hine and Wallis are their masters, and the relation between master and man in the manufacturing towns in England, is well known to be dependence of helpless poverty upon purse-proud and hard-hearted luxury. With those who understand the nature of things in the Barker Gate Congregation, a decree in its name is well known to be the will and pleasure of Jonathan Hine and James Wallis. Other men sign the decrees for lack of independence, and no because they enter heartily into the letter and spirit of the allocution. Illustrative of this we may refer to the alleged letter of the Barker Gate church addressed to us in reply to our introductory letter to him, which church-letter he calls his in two places of the same epistle to us. The reader has seen the pretended church-letter on page 58, referred to above. It is signed by six persons in behalf of the body: and is dated July 5, 1848. Now, if he turn to page 64 of the same volume, he will find that Mr. Wallis, speaking of said letter under date of July 26^th, says, ‘your reply to mine of the 5^th;’ and again, ‘I waited for an answer to mine of the 5^th instant.’ There was no letter of the 5^th July but the church-letter, which was in Mr. Wallis’ handwriting. His claiming this letter as his divulges the secret that the church is nothing but a convenience, and used by Mr. W. and his adviser as their policy may require. They made their co-signers believe and do what they pleased contrary to the inclination of some of them. There were only 40 members including themselves out of upwards of a hundred present at the adoption of the letter as the letter of the church; and although they are made to say, that it would be ‘inexpedient and improper on our part, either to invite you to Nottingham, or in any way to lend you our influence in furthering the object of your visit to this country,’ one of the signers told us with his own lips that the declaration was not in accordance with his disposition or wishes. That this was the reality, he evinced by lending us all his influence among his brethren and others in furthering the object of our visit to England, in coming to hear us, bringing all he could, and testifying to the truth of what we taught. Why then did he sign? Because he lacked independence, and feared the consequences of refusal. When we spoke at the Nottingham Assembly Room the congregation at Barker Gate was notably diminished, thereby indicating that the policy of Messrs. Hine and Wallis, though submitted to, did not comport with their better judgment in the case.

 

Providence does all things well. The Campbellite leaders in Britain are the enemies of God’s truth, even as they are in this country. They err probably through ignorance, and therefore some day or other may obtain mercy, but while they continue in hostility they also cause the people to err in all sincerity of mind. Sincere ignorance, however, will not justify them unto life. The Second Adventists in Nottingham differed from Wallis’ party in being friendly to the truth. Even as we found them, they were more enlightened than the pure Campbellites. But though more enlightened they were ignorant of the truth, as they have since confessed. They were disposed to hear. They had heard Mr. A. Campbell and were satisfied that little as they might know aright, he understood less of the “sure word of prophecy” than they. After hearing him, they concluded that his repudiation and proscription of a person and the doctrine he taught, though countersigned by Messrs. Hine & Wallis and their party, were no guarantee of the heresy of the proscribed. They wished to hear us also, and had no mind to be baulked in their wishes by Mr. Wallis’ illiberality. When we review the past, we rejoice that providence opened this door for utterance, and closed that of Barker Gate against us. An introduction to Nottingham in connexion with Mr. Wallis would probably have been fatal to our enterprise. Mr. Wallis’ religious influence is nothing beyond the walls of Barker Gate; had we therefore been introduced to the public upon his platform, the probability is the townspeople would have disregarded the invitation to come and hear, under the impression that our expositions were only Wallisiana in a new dress. Mr. Campbell had good audiences there; it was not Mr. Wallis’ influence, however, that procured them, but a curiosity to see the man of whom they had heard so much. They heard, were satisfied, and disappointed. He philosophised, added nothing to what was already known; and therefore left no distinctive and permanent impression behind him. His visit to Britain dissolved the spell of his magic name, even in the estimation of many who esteemed him ‘great’ before.

 

(Continued in our next.)