The Springfield Presbytery

These five men had left the Synod of Kentucky, not the Presbyterian Church. Their first act was to organize the Springfield Presbytery, independent of the synod. (Their “Springfield” is now Springdale, ten miles north of Cincinnati.) Their second act was to issue a statement of their position. This is a pamphlet of about 100 pages, the full title of which is: An Abstract of an Apology for Renouncing the Jurisdiction of the Synod of Kentucky, Being a Compendious View of the Gospel and a few Remarks on the Confession of Faith, with the names of the five attached as authors. The important points in this statement are: (1) Christ died for all—as against a limited atonement for the elect only. (2) The gospel itself is the means of regeneration, and faith is the act by which any man, if he will, can lay hold on that means. (3) Faith is the natural man’s belief of testimony—a rational, as against a mystical, conception of faith. Nothing is said explicitly about either Christian union or the restoration of primitive Christianity. (William Guirey, a Virginia Christian minister, later sent a copy of this Apology to the New England Christians as expressing the sentiments of the Virginia-North Carolina group, and said that the Kentucky five “united with us” when they left the Presbyterians.)

So far, this was an anti-Calvinist movement within the Presbyterian Church. Its leaders admitted that their position was not in agreement with the Westminster Confession, but claimed the right to differ 55 from the Confession where they thought it differed from the Scriptures. The whole history of “New Light” Presbyterianism in Virginia and the states south of it from colonial days, as well as the recent revival in Kentucky, gave them ground for saying: “We are not the only Presbyterians who view the doctrine of the atonement different from the Confession.”

But the Springfield Presbytery was only a transition stage. These five men might make their independent presbytery the nucleus of a new Presbyterian body, as the Seceders and others had done in Scotland long before, and as the Cumberland Presbyterians were to do a little later; or they might cease to be Presbyterians. They chose the latter course. On June 28, 1804, less than a year after its organization, the Springfield Presbytery met at Cane Ridge and decreed its own dissolution. The document in which it recorded this action is called “The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery.” By this instrument, the presbytery willed “that this body die, be dissolved and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large,” that every congregation should be independent in the choice and support of its minister and the discipline of its members, and that the Bible alone should be their guide and standard. Ministers are not to be called “Reverend,” are to “obtain license from God to preach the simple Gospel,” and are to be supported by free-will offerings “without a written call or subscription.” And finally, the Synod of Kentucky is exhorted to examine every suspect and suspend every heretic, “that the oppressed may go free and taste the sweets of gospel liberty.” (The full text of the “Last Will and Testament” was reprinted 56 in the first issue of Elias Smith’s Herald of Gospel Liberty, Portsmouth, N. H., Sept. 1, 1808.)