OK, well, let’s just say that you should probably stick to internet sources for a while. Then after Christmas you’ll have a nice new one to use. It isn’t infallible either, but primary source research is hard to beat.

Heh, heh, I don’t have any idea what you are talking about!

In the meantime I should have a few things up and running for people to fuss at me over.

Would “coming days” be as far away as, er, “after Christmas”?

Since you have a problem of accessing sources… perhaps that could be rectified sometime around then… ? :)

I think that’s right, it is reading too much into the fight for autonomy to call it a “local only” view. I have a plan for studying this out more in the coming days, though my sources are limited. There is always the Internet, and we know that’s an infallible source, eh?

Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

As to question 2, there is nothing in the quotes cited here to define New Hampshire “localism” as the local church only view. Wayland was a strong proponent of autonomy, but that does not make him necessarily a proponent of the local church only view. The context for Wayland’s statements was the controversy over whether the Triennial Convention should exercise denominational authority over local churches. Originally Wayland was in favor of centralization, but eventually changed his views and became a proponent of autonomy. This lead to the 1826 reconstitution of the Triennial Convention as a Society that held no authority over the churches. For context on this, see McBeth, pp. 357-361.

Graves’ local-only view appears to be substantially different from the debates over local church autonomy that characterized Baptists from the 1600s. Particulars were typically concerned to preserve the autonomy of local congregations. Generals were typically less concerned with that.

In order to prove that the local-only view was the historic Baptist position, proponents need to demonstrate that Baptists from the 17th or 18th centuries insisted (much like Graves) that there is no such thing as the universal church. Simply demonstrating that early Baptists valued independency/autonomy does not mean that they believed that the church is by definition only a local body.