John Mason Peck was one of the great first "Hardshell Slayers." He was the first to debate Daniel Parker, one of the fathers of the anti-mission movement. Here is what he had to say about Hyper Calvinism and the "born again before faith" error.
"But there are some things which Regular Baptists have been accused of propagating, and some speculations preached by good men, which cannot be found, or legitimately inferred, by implication from this Confession of Faith (Philadelphia). These things are not there, and can not be implied from the doctrines taught..."
In a recent posting Philadelphia Confession = Hardshellism? I showed where the Philadelphia Confession, the historic confession of the oldest Hardshell churches, did not teach the Hardshell anti means view, and thus showed that they are no longer primitive Baptists. I have also shown in numerous postings over the years how the writings of the signers of the London and Philadelphia confessions fully showed even further how they all believed in means.
Elder Peck, like Elder R.B.C. Howell, was one of the first champion apologists against the birth of hardshellism. The following are some of Peck's further statements on this subject.
"Some may yet imagine and teach that the Spirit regenerates the elect without means, or the subordinate agency of his gospel. But in this they teach directly contrary to the unequivocal declarations of the Confession of Faith, no less than against the scriptures. The doctrine of means, or the instrumentality of the gospel in regeneration, as well as in all its adjuncts, is taught very plainly and directly in chapters 1st, 7th, 8th, 10th, 13th, 14th, and 20th; and is taught by implication in several other chapters. The only exception made is in chapter X, under "Effectual Calling," sec. 3: --
"Elect Infants, dying in Infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh, when and where, and how he pleaseth. So also all other persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the word."
The construction put on the first clause of this section by brethren in the Philadelphia Association was this: That the phrase "Elect Infants" includes all who died in a state of unconscious infancy -- that the second clause referred to adult idiots, and others, who were rendered incapable of being "outwardly called by the ministry of the word," by some providential acts.
The authors and revisors [sic] of this "Confession" would have repudiated with the expressions of horror, the mischievous speculation that God has an elect people, scattered among the nations of the earth -- that he knows his own -- and that he quickens or regenerates these without the gospel or any of the instrumentalities he has provided. REGULAR BAPTISTS were missionary Baptists, and knew the meaning of the great commission to preach the gospel to every creature, specially in view of their conversion and salvation.
The Confession of Faith teaches the doctrine of "particular election," without regard to human merit; but it also teaches the necessity of preaching the gospel to all men, without which sinners capable of hearing the gospel cannot be saved. The anti-christian dogma that the gospel need not be preached to sinners of every class and grade, for the specific purpose of being the instrument of their conversion and salvation through the mighty working of the Holy Spirit, has no place in the Confession of Faith of Regular Baptists." (THE BAPTISTS - Regular, Separate and United" By John M. Peck, 1855)
http://www.geocities.com/baptist_documents/peck.bapt.reg.sep.unit.html
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