But they demanded identically the same evidence of pardon
demanded by the Calvinists, and men found it just as hard to get this
Arminian evidence of pardon as to get the experience that assured them
that they were of the elect, according to the gospel of Calvinism; and
so it game to pass that this lethargy of Christians over missionary
work, and these wranglings over human opinions, had, before the
Revolutionary War, covered the American colonies like a blanket with
the spirit of infidelity. The corruption of Christianity by the Roman
Catholic Church issued in the atheism of the French Revolution, and
has created the infidelity of modern European nations; so like causes
had precipitated a similar result in America. Men were groping as the
blind grope in darkness, and then came, during the first half of the
present century, the proclamation of primitive and apostolic
Christianity. Alexander Campbell, John Smith, Jacob Creath and Samuel
Rogers in Virginia and Kentucky, and Walter Scott, the Haydens and
John Henry in Northeastern Ohio, made the people understand that the
plan of salvation is as simple as the primer of our childhood; that it
is all comprehended in this, that we must bow to the authority of
Jesus, that we must believe in him and keep his commandments, and that
the whole story is told in the four gospels and in the Acts of the
Apostles with such simplicity that he that runs may read, that he that
reads may understand, and that he that understands may act.
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