GOSPEL MESSENGER 

Williamston, N.C., November 1898 

The Greek word paradosis translated tradition occurs thirteen times in the New Testament. In three of these passages (1 Cor. xi. 2; 2 Thess. ii. 15; iii. 6) the Apostle Paul plainly means by the word the oral or written instructions which he himself gave to the churches of Corinth and Thessalonica. In the other ten passages (Matt. xv. 2, 3, 6; Mark vii. 3, 5, 8, 9, 13; Gal. i. 14; Col. ii. 8) Christ and Paul plainly mean by the word the doctrines or practices invented by the Jewish elders or fathers, and handed down from former to succeeding generations. Christ never uses the word except in this last evil sense; and He pointedly declares that the traditions of the Jewish elders or fathers set aside and made of no effect the commandments and the word of God (Matt. xv.; Mark vii.) The Pharisees, following these traditions of their fathers, placed the outward above the inward, the ceremonial above the spiritual, the formal above the real, the shadow above the substance; and Christ declared that, in so doing, they contradicted the teaching of God's word, and proved the emptiness of their religion and the fact of their own hypocrisy. The Pharisees maintained that Moses gave to their forefathers not only the written law (in the Pentateuch) but also an unwritten or traditional law, which was handed down from generation to generation, and which was of not only equal but of even superior authority to the written law, and thus they set aside the law and the word of God. The truth is that these unscriptural traditions of theirs were manufactured by their rabbis or teachers in their synagogue-schools after their return from the Babylonian captivity, and were thus later than the time of Moses by a thousand or more years. They were thus founded in falsehood and led to ruin. The Lord had strictly commanded the Jews not to add to or diminish from the word that He had given them, not to turn from it to either the right or the left (Deut. iv. 2; xii. 32; Josh. i. 7; Isa. viii. 16, 20); but they willfully and persistently disobeyed Him, and brought upon themselves His righteous judgments.

Unscriptural traditions did not cease with the Pharisees, but they have continued to be manufactured by the professed and even by the real worshippers of God ever since. The Jews, after the first century and up to about the tenth century, kept on adding to their traditions, which they finally embodied in the gigantic volumes of the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, the real Scriptures of modern Judaism, having far more influence over their rabbis than the Inspired Scriptures of the Old Testament. With these blinded people, the word of man is far above the word of God. And, although Christ and His Apostles most solemnly and repeatedly affirmed the exclusive authority of the Scriptures of Divine Inspiration (Matt. xv. 7-9; Mark vii. 5-8; Luke xvi. 29-31; x. 26; John v. 39; Rom. iv. 3; 2 Tim. iii. 15-17; Rev. xxii. 18, 19), many professed followers of Christ have made numerous additions to the word of God, and additions which set that word aside.

Catholic Traditions

Just as the Pharisees falsely maintained that Moses gave to their forefathers an unwritten law superior in authority to the written law, and even setting aside much of the written law, so their modern Gentile successors, the Greek and Roman Catholics, falsely maintain that Christ and His Apostles gave teachings that were not written in the first century, but were handed down to succeeding generations, and recorded in the writings of the Greek and Latin so-called Fathers of the second, third, fourth, and fifth centuries, and that these teachings are of equal or even superior authority to the Inspired Writings of the New Testament. It is in this way that they seek to establish their utterly unscriptural and diabolical doctrines of apostolical (which should be called apostatical) succession, sacerdotalism, sacramentalism, papal infallibility, monasticism, priestly celibacy and absolution, baptismal regeneration, pedobaptism, transubstantiation, Purgatory, the meritoriousness of good works, works of supererogation, justification by works as well as by faith, the union of Church and State, withholding the Bible from the masses, penances and pilgrimages, the worship of the Virgin Mary and other dead saints and their images and relics, the horrors of confessional, nunnery, inquisition, crusade, and interdict, and the sale of indulgences to sin. These abominable traditions bear no more resemblance to the spiritual and holy teachings of the Inspired Scriptures than darkness bears to light; in connection with her slaughter of tens of millions of the people of God, they prove that the Roman Catholic so-called "Church" is the Second Beast, the False Prophet, the wealthy, blasphemous, murderous Whore drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus, mentioned in the Book of Revelation. The Apostle John says that the number of the Beast is six hundred and sixty-six, (Rev. xiii. 18); before the invention of the Arabic digits, numbers were generally represented by letters, so that every name, by the addition of the value of its letters, had a numerical value; and the value of the Greek words Lateinos (Latin), and of E Latine Basileia (the Latin kingdom), and of Italike Ekklesia (Italian Church) is 666. And it is remarkable that the only two Greeks nouns in all the New Testament, whose numerical value is exactly 666, are Paradosis (tradition) and Euporia (wealth), the two grand corrupters of the church,--Tradition, the corrupter of doctrine, and Wealth, the corrupter of practice; these corruptions have flourished more in the Roman Catholic communion than in any other, this pretended but apostate church teaching more ruinous traditions than any other, and owning, in the Middle or Dark Ages, half the property of the civilized world--a result which she obtained by virtually abolishing all the commandments of God, and substituting for them her own one commandment, Give the church gold. Rome makes the acceptance of her horrible anti-Christian traditions essential to eternal salvation.

Protestant Traditions

The most of Protestants happily reject the most of the ruinous Catholic traditions; but, their own churches being derived from Rome, they acknowledge her to be a church of Christ, and they retain her ruinous traditions of baptismal regeneration and pedobaptism, not only, like Rome, substituting sprinkling or pouring for baptism, but also half-heartedly teaching that unconscious infants must be "baptized" in order to eternal salvation, thus setting aside the teaching of the word of God as to the spirituality of God and His salvation, and as to burial and resurrection with Christ in baptism, and as to the baptism of believers only; and the most of Protestants are on the down-grade towards the midnight Catholic abyss of salvation by human works of righteousness instead of by divine grace and divinely wrought faith; and their churches are being evaporated into men-made and money-based Religious Societies, derived first from Rome. Indeed the Puseyites or Tractarians or Ritualists, of the Church of England, have, during the present century, with the exception of papal infallibility and the worship of the Virgin Mary, plunged again into the black depths of medieval Catholicism (see my Church History, page 595). The unscriptural Catholic traditions that they have retained and the wealth that they are accumulating threaten the complete corruption of the Protestant communions, although I think that there are very few Protestants who would maintain that the acceptance of their traditions is essential to eternal salvation, but undoubtedly some of their members either have reached or are tending to that extreme doctrinal degradation.

Primitive Baptist Traditions

May the Lord enable us from the depths of our hearts to be thankful to Him alone, that, through His rich and reigning grace, the Primitive Baptists were never derived from Rome, and have never affiliated with Rome, and do not bear a single one of the corrupt traditionary marks of the Roman Beast. Primitive Baptists maintain that the Old and New Testament Scriptures are the perfect and infallible oracles of God, the only and sufficient and authoritative standard of faith and practice, and do not need to be supplemented by any inventions and traditions of men; and that the Scriptures teach the three-oneness, eternity, spirituality, holiness, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and unchangeableness of God, the spirituality of His word, His law, His gospel, His service, and His salvation, the total depravity of the human race since the fall of man in Eden, their utter death in trespasses and sins, and thus that their eternal salvation is entirely of the Lord, of the electing love of the Father, the redeeming love of the Son, and the renewing love of the Spirit, and that this salvation is a divine, holy, complete, and everlasting one, both for soul and body, and that the three-one God deserves and will receive all the glory of it from beginning to end, and that all the ceremonies of the Old Testament and all the ordinances of the New Testament are but outward emblems of the inward work of the Spirit of God upon our hearts and lives. These scriptural and heavenly marks prove to my mind that the Primitive Baptists, poor, few, and despised like the Israelites of old, are the visible Church of Christ on earth to-day. Yet in themselves they are far from being perfect, and they have among them a few local and temporary and hurtful traditions, derived from their fathers, and not found in the Scriptures; and, although not one Primitive Baptist in the world is so untaught of God or so unacquainted with the Scriptures as to believe that the eternal salvation of any human being depends upon his acceptance or rejection of any of these traditions, still an insistence upon the retention of these little inventions and traditions of men, notwithstanding the wounded feelings of many and sometimes of the most of the members of the body of Christ, tends to the confusion, the distress, and the division of the people of God, and to the edification, the delight, and the triumph of their enemies. I hope that my only motive in briefly and kindly noticing these little local traditions among us is to glorify God and benefit His people.

Doctrinal Traditions Among Us

1. A phrase, "the absolute predestination of all things," not found in the Scriptures, but invented by one of our most esteemed elders sixty-six years ago, and thought by him to present the teaching of the Scriptures, and not so objectionable as explained by him, has traditionally become almost the entire Confession of Faith of some of our brethren, and has been carried by some to such an extreme as to make God the efficient and responsible cause of sin, and has thus produced endless and bitter controversy among us and even division in some sections. But I am glad to say that the wisest of our absolute brethren virtually admit the utter distinction between God's permissive predestination of sin and His efficient predestination of holiness, and clearly maintain that all the blame of sin belongs alone to the creature, and all the glory of salvation from sin belongs alone to the Creator. Let not this humanly-invented, traditional, undiscriminating, and unexplained phrase, so offensive to the large majority of Primitive Baptists, because seeming to ignore the infinite distinction between sin and holiness, be erected into an idol to which to sacrifice the peace and union of the church of Christ.

2. Another phrase, "the eternal vital union of Christ and His church," not found in the Scriptures, but invented about sixty years ago, and carried so far as to make the church as eternal as Christ, and to represent that the elect were at first pure eternal spirits in Christ, and that these spirits come down from Heaven into us in regeneration and thus make us manifested children of God, has become a hurtful tradition in some localities, and caused extended and heated contention and division. But I am glad to say that this extreme view has now become greatly modified by the admission that God is the only eternal being, and has no eternal children, but, in regeneration, gives His eternal life in Christ to His elect, and they thus become His children; and, to indicate this truth, the word "union" in this phrase has been changed to "unity". The Divine Spirit is the only eternal, uncreated one; and, as shown in Gen. i., John i., and Col. i., He created every other spirit as well as every atom of matter, and all were at first very good, man being created in the very image of his Maker. God purposed from eternity the vital union of Christ and His people, but this union is effected in time when they are quickened by the Holy Spirit from the death of sin to a life of righteousness. Surely this traditional phrase ought never again to divide the people of God.

3. Another human invention made by the Gnostics in the first century, and revived early in this century in Germany, and introduced among us about fifty years ago, and which has become a hurtful tradition among some of our brethren, is a method of so interpreting the Scripture prophecies of the future as to empty them of their literal and eternal meaning, and to apply them exclusively to present Christian experience, seeming to place the second coming of Christ, the resurrection and general judgment, heaven and hell, all in the present life, and to reduce the whole human race to a level with the beasts that perish. This old Gnostic speculation revamped by German Rationalism turns the oracles of eternal truth into miserable fables, and robs unbelievers of all fear, and believers of all hope, of the eternal future. None of our brethren ever carried this ruinous system of interpretation as far as its infidel originators; but the adoption and inculcation of some of its methods and results caused a deplorable division among our people in 1852, and, although this system of interpreting prophecy has been checked and modified, this division still continues. A tradition which so changes the Scriptures and the meaning of language and so opposes the faith of God's elect as to take away nearly all Scripture proof of the life beyond the grave will surely return to the nothingness from whence it sprang, and will not prevail to the permanent division and destruction of the church which Christ builds upon Himself, the Rock of Eternal Ages. Opposing this same system of false spiritualization, the inspired Apostle Paul passionately exclaims, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable; our preaching is vain, and your faith is vain, and ye are yet in your sins, and they who have fallen asleep in Christ are perished" (1 Cor. xv, 12-58); and He solemnly cautions all believers in Christ to "beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ". (Col. ii. 8). I am glad to say that this tradition is never likely to confuse and corrupt any considerable number of unsophisticated Primitive Baptists.

Practical Traditions Among Us

1. Our usual custom of communing on Sunday after preaching has become with some of our people a tradition binding them to that day and hour, just as though the Scriptures teach that the Lord's Supper must not be eaten on any other day or at any other hour; whereas the Scriptures teach that Christ instituted the Lord's Supper after the Passover Supper on Thursday night before He was crucified on Friday, and He never gave any command as to the time, either the day or the hour, when His disciples should observe the communion.

2. As those of our people who wash feet in public do so after communion, it seems to have become a tradition among us that we should have feet-washing at no other time, although John, the only evangelist who mentions the feet-washing, does not speak of the Lord's Supper, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke mention the Lord's Supper but say nothing of the feet-washing, and Paul, when he mentions the Lord's Supper, does not speak of the feet-washing. (1 Cor. xi.), and, when he mentions feet-washing, says nothing of the Lord's Supper, (1 Tim. v. 10), and the most exact interpretation of John xiii. shows that the feet-washing took place near the beginning of the Passover supper, and the other evangelists show that Christ instituted the Lord's Supper at the close of the Passover Supper. Thus the Scriptures do not prove that there is any essential connection between the Lord's Supper and the feet-washing, and, therefore, each is valid without the other; no traditions of men must be allowed to set aside the commandments of God. If we are to observe the Lord's Supper just as the Apostles first observed it, we must partake of it at night, in an upper room, having on us only two garments, and reclining on our left sides upon couches; but all of these local and transient forms are of no value whatever in the observance of this solemn memorial of our beloved and suffering Redeemer--the one thing needful is the presence and reign of His blessed Spirit in our hearts.

3. Associations and Union or District or Sectional Meeting are nowhere mentioned in the Scriptures; Associations were invented about 250 years ago, and Union Meetings about 100 years ago. They were at first simply general meetings of the members of different churches for singing, praying, and preaching; and the only business was deciding, when more ministers were present than could preach at the meeting, as to which of them should preach on each of the three days, and as to where the next meeting should be held. If these meetings were always strictly limited to these purposes, they might do more good than harm; but experience has proved that it is almost impossible thus to limit them, especially Associations. I have known Union Meeting to be held, in which one member has succeeded in carrying out his determination to rule or ruin all the churches in the Union, and has thus divided them into warring factions. And Associations have repeatedly transformed themselves into Advisory Boards to rule over their own churches, and Supervisory Boards to rule over other Associations. Human nature is so corrupt that when dressed in a little brief appearance of authority, as in a general meeting, it, in a sense, usurps the throne of Deity, and debases and oppresses the churches of the saints. There is absolutely not a trace of Scripture authority for any general meeting exercising dominion over the faith and practice of the churches composing that meeting, much less over the faith and practice of other general meetings; and when this is done, these general meetings become hurtful tradition, and ought to be abandoned. That member of the body of Christ who bows the knee to any human master is guilty of treason against the Great Head of the Church, his only Master, the Lord Jesus Christ.

4. Formal Correspondence between Associations was invented in 1766 by the Philadelphia Association (even then mostly and virtually a Missionary body, as proved by their subsequent conduct); and such correspondence between Union Meetings and churches has been invented since that time. I find no evidence of any formal correspondence, by messengers or letters or both, between Union Meetings, except in a small section of North Carolina, nor any evidence of such correspondence between churches (except through Associations) only in a portion of North Carolina and of Georgia; the most of our brethren say that they never heard of such a thing. I have known this formal correspondence between churches to become, in one county in North Carolina, the source of bitter and protracted confusion and division; and I have learned that, in the section of Georgia where it is practiced, it has become the mischievous machinery by which confusion in one church is spread through the entire circle of the correspondence. I am glad to find that this invention is confined to a very small sphere; even in that sphere it seems little else than a cold and burdensome formality. The chief surviving and most hurtful form of this modern invention and tradition is formal correspondence between Associations, and this is the chief engine which they use to corrupt and divide the people of God; especially is this power for evil shown in threatening to "drop" and in "dropping" such correspondence; rather than be "dropped" (which is considered to mean "non-fellowship"), many brethren will timidly submit to the terms of the dictators, even to the point of yielding fundamental points of doctrine; and "dropping correspondence" generally amounts to non-fellowship for generations. Thus this very modern human invention and tradition is plainly shown to be anti-Christian by so opposing the pure and loving teachings of Christ and His Apostles as to corrupt and divide the body of Christ. Unless this mischievous traditional formality is discontinued (which should be done in love and fellowship and with a cordial invitation for the brethren of other Associations to continue to visit us in love), Associations themselves ought to be abandoned, and our churches should return to the divine simplicity of the apostolic models in the New Testament, which had no Associations and no formal correspondence. It is said that formal correspondence is an expression of love, but it is such an expression as was never commanded by God, nor mentioned in the Scriptures, which "thoroughly furnish the people of God unto all good works" (2 Tim. iii. 16, 17). It is a human addition to the word of God, and therefore forbidden in that word (Rev. xxii. 18). It seems to guarantee the faith and practice of those of whom we know but little, and for whom we are not responsible. It creates apparent responsibility where there is no authority. It enables one or a few brethren to rule over thousands of others, and thus brings into human bondage those whom Christ has made free. It dares to forbid obedience to the commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ for His ministers to go into all the world and preach His gospel to every creature, by declaring that, if any ministers go among those Primitive Baptists with whom they have dropped correspondence, they themselves will no more receive and fellowship such ministers. We profess not to believe in humanly invented religious means and traditions, but formal correspondence between Associations is the most efficient means and tradition ever devised for corrupting and dividing the people of God, as is well known to those acquainted with the history of the Baptists during the present century. It is perfectly scriptural and highly edifying for the children of God, both those who live near each other and those who live fart apart, to visit each other personally in love, and to meet in solemn assemblies for the public worship of their Divine Father, as they will all meet and worship Him forever in the Heaven of immortal glory; but it is altogether unscriptural and very ruinous for them to seek, in any way, to lord it over one another.

MY PRINCIPLE OBJECT IN THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE HAS BEEN TO DIRECT THE MINDS OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD, FOR ALL THEIR FAITH AND PRACTICE, BEYOND AND ABOVE ALL UNINSPIRED AND FALLIBLE HUMAN AUTHORITY, TO THE INSPIRED AND INFALLIBLE ORACLES OF GOD, THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES, THE ONLY STANDARD AND TEST OF SOUND DOCTRINE AND ORDER WITH ALL GENUINE PRIMITIVE BAPTISTS.

Sylvester Hassell