Hassell On PB Two Seed Ancestry

Elder Sylvester Hassell (1842-1928)

The Two Seed Heresy

The Gospel Messenger--March 1894

Said Hassell (emphasis mine):

"In Ac 20:30, the Apostle Paul, speaking to the elders of the Church at Ephesus, says: "Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse (twisted, distorted, misrepresented) things, to draw away disciples after them." Whether with such a design or not, the heathenish perversions of Scriptural truth set forth by Eld. Daniel Parker, of Tennessee, about 1835, in his pamphlet called "My Views on the Two Seeds," have corrupted Primitive Baptist doctrine more, and rent off more members and churches from our fellowship, than any and all other causes combined. In the census of 1890, the Two-Seed Baptists claim to have 333 churches and 9,932 members in 33 States, the largest membership being 2,019 in Texas, 1,270 in Tennessee, 1,230 in Arkansas, 965 in Kentucky, 840 in Mississippi, 668 in Missouri, 641 in West Virginia, 538 in Alabama, 330 in Georgia, and from 10 to 194 in each of 14 other States. (The entire number of Primitive Baptists in the United States is probably about 100,000.) I am glad to have evidences that, at least in some sections, there is a strong tendency among the Two-Seed Baptists to renounce all the Parkerite corruptions of truth, and to return to the simple faith of the gospel. May it please the God of Israel soon to dispossess all their minds of the blighting Satanic delusions with which their churches have been cursed for nearly sixty years."

I have said, professor Crowley has said it in his book ("PBs of the Wiregrass South"), that the "Primitive" or "Old School" Baptist denomination has it roots in Two Seedism. Even though today's Hardshells may think that they have rid themselves of all elements of "Parkerism" and "Two Seedism," let them think again.

Said Hassell:

"It would be impossible to tell how many changes and forms, each one inconsistent with itself, with the others, and with the Scriptures, Two-Seedism has assumed during that period."

Boy! How true! This all well informed historians of this cult will acknowledge.

Said Hassell:

"Parkerism, while professing to establish grace and election, really do away with both, making salvation dependent on natural birth instead of grace, and offering it to all Adam's posterity, instead of to a part."

Again, so true!

Said Hassell:

"Elder Daniel Parker seems to me to give up his whole system when, in his "Supplement," he says, on the third page, that "sin is the serpent's seed;" and, on the eleventh page, that "the eternal condemnation of the lost will not be because they were of the serpent's seed, or non-elect, but because of their sin against God in His divine law and their unbelief in Christ;" and, on the thirteenth page, that "the Baptist doctrine of salvation by the sovereign distinguishing grace of God stands completely established by the authority of the word of God, as well as by Christian experience, independent of his own views as to the origin of the two seeds." When the author of this system makes these broad confessions, how can a single one of his followers hesitate to abandon forever this worthless human invention--this heathen corruption of the gospel that has, for sixty years, poisoned, hardened, chilled, confused, and divided the Church of God?"

Notice that! For sixty years the Hardshells had been battling Two Seedism. If they knew their history they would discover that many things about them in doctrine and  practice have come to them from those who have held to Two Seed ideas.