The Primitive Monitor

Be Not Deceived
by William H. Crouse

To all who may be interested: -Not long since one of our ministers saw fit to leave us to live with the Missionary Baptists, and now we bear of another having gone (H. E. Pettus). They have given us their reasons for their course. If all they have written were true (which we deny), their course is not likely to inspire much confidence in them as heralds of the cross. It seems to me that the change from Primitive to Mission­ary Baptist is too great for one to make who believed and loved the principles of the former-all their pres­ent and past professions notwithstanding. “Actions speak louder than words,” and a man who will today insist that the Missionaries are wrong and that the Primitive Baptists are the church of Christ, and to­morrow find a home with the Missionaries and preach for them, is, to say the least, not worthy of our confi­dence or one whom we should willingly follow. If he can make such a change now, where may he land in another year?

Brethren, be not deceived. The fact that they may have preached the truth while among us, or that they may have been persecuted just as they affirm, will not justify you and me in defending them in their present course. We will re­member them for the good they have done, but we will give them to understand that no amount of ser­vice done will justify such a step as they have taken. True they say they will still preach just as they did among us, but we know they will not. Imagine El­der R. S. Kirkland preaching in a Missionary church as many of us have heard him in ours! No; this cannot be their course if they live with the Mission­aries. They have decided to be Arminians-that is all there is of it, and their fair speeches are only in­tended to deceive some of our good, sound, faithful brethren with the idea that they can live with the Missionaries and advocate Primitive Baptist faith and practice. The difference between our denom­inations is as great as that between night and day. Now I am a Primitive Baptist from principle, and no matter what I may ever have to endure I will not forsake those principles unless deceived or my reason dethroned.

The action of those brethren is no surprise to me since our meeting at Indianapolis. No one can believe and champion all the things contended for by Elders I. V. and R. S. and remain long in the Prim­itive Baptist ranks. Those things are so different from what we have always believed as a people that they at once “read” themselves out of the denomi­nation.

I am indeed sorry to see any brother make ship­wreck-and especially one in whom I have had such confidence, but so far will I go and no farther. I expect to lift my voice in defense of the apostolic practices so sadly neglected by many of our people, but I will not (God being my helper) embrace Arminianism or encourage it among us. I have not changed in the least as regards doctrine and prac­tice, and I appeal to those who, with me, tried to save those brethren, to utterly forsake them and stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of the church of God, called Primitive Baptist.

WM. H. CROUSE.