Why Alexander Campbell Left The Baptists?

The following are some citations from my 2009 posting in "The Baptist Gadfly" blog titled "Campbell vs. Peck on Fuller" (See here). In this post I simply want to focus attention on the words of Campbell wherein he says that his "controversy with the Baptists began on this dogma" of regeneration before faith and conversion. Keep in mind that those Baptists who argued that regeneration occurred before conviction, and before conversion (faith and repentance), did not believe that the new birth was the same as regeneration. I have shown this to be true when showing how the leading view of those Hyper leaning Calvinists in the day of Campbell was to say that the new birth had three distinct stages like a physical birth. First there is the planting of the seed (regeneration), then the development in the womb (conviction), and finally the birth (deliverance or conversion). 

Interesting is the fact that Campbell himself held to the same view, but he later came to see how the birth was in the act of baptism. He would say the order was faith, repentance, regeneration, conversion and baptism, rebirth. What he opposed was the idea that there was any regeneration prior to faith. I also oppose that idea, as did other Baptists of the day, such as J.M. Peck. 

REPLY TO MR. PECK—No. III.

Elder Peck:

"You next enter upon the dogma that the Spirit, Without The Word, regenerates the soul of the sinner. My controversy with the Baptists began on this dogma. You admit it was the dogma of some of them; but you say they were of an antinomian cast: yet you only except Andrew Fuller. Well, if the old Baptists were all or chiefly antinomians—and especially all those with whom I was associated; and if the new Baptists since Fuller's time have discarded this antinomianism, is it not time that, at least on this point, there should be an end of the controversy between the good Fullerite Baptists and us?

To Elder A. Campbell (by Peck - emphasis mostly mine - SG):

"In a former communication you called on me to endorse a particular dogma, that the Spirit, without the ward, regenerated the soul of the sinner. This you alleged to have been the old Baptist faith. This dogma you charged upon Gill, Fuller, and the old Baptist writers generally. In this you are certainly mistaken. None of these writers depreciated the value and importance of the gospel of Christ, or divine truth in conversion. Probably you have heard this dogma preached by some illiterate Baptists of antinomian cast of doctrine, during your connexion with the denomination; but you do great injustice to the fathers of the last age by such allegations. 

Notice how Peck affirms that those Hyper Calvinists who were putting regeneration or the new birth prior to faith were "illiterate Baptists of the antinomian cast." (Those who do so say that the word is not a means in regeneration) This was the cast in 1811 that later gave rise to the Hardshell sect and anti mission schism. 

Error on the ordo salutis by some Hyper Calvinistic Baptists is what got Campbell on the way to creating his own sect. There are lessons to be learned from this historical event.