sed by a strong
creed-party in that association. After some ten years debating and
contending for the Bible alone, and the apostles' doctrine, Alexander
Campbell, and the church to which he belonged, united with the Mahoning
association, in the Western Reserve of Ohio; that association being more
favorable to his views of reform.

In his debates on the subject and action of baptism with Mr. Walker, a
seceding minister, in the year 1820, and with Mr. M'Calla, a Presbyterian
minister of Kentucky, in the year 1823, his views of reformation began to
be developed, and were very generally received by the Baptist society, as
far as these works were read.

But in his "Christian Baptist," which began July 4, 1823 his views of the
need of reformation were more fully exposed, and, as these gained ground
by the pleading of various ministers of the Baptist denomination, a party
in opposition began to exert itself, and to oppose the spread of what they
were pleased to call heterodoxy. But not till after great numbers began to
act upon these principles, was there any attempt towards separation. After
the Mahoning association appointed Mr. Walter Scott an evangelist, in the
year 1827, and when great numbers began to be immersed into Christ, under
his labors, and new churches began to be erected by him and other laborers
in the field, did the Baptist associations begin to declare non-fellowship
with the brethren of the reformation. Thus by constraint, not of choice,
they were obliged to form societies out of those communities that split,
upon the ground of adherence to the apostles' doctrine. The distinguishing
characteristics of their views and practices are the following:--

They regard all the sects and parties of the Christian world as having, in
greater or less degrees, departed from the simplicity of faith and manners
of the first Christians, and as forming what the apostle Paul calls "the
apostasy." This defection they attribute to the great varieties of
speculation and metaphysical dogmatism of the countless creeds,
formularies, liturgies, and books of discipline, adopted and inculcated as
bonds of union and platforms of communion in all the parties which have
sprung from the Lutheran reformation. The effect of these synodical
covenants, conventional articles of belief, and rules of ecclesiastical
polity, has been the introduction of a new nomenclature,--a human
vocabulary of religious words, phrases, and technicalities, which