The final result was a revolutionary measure headed by Samuel McAdoo, Finis Ewing and Samuel King, men taken into the ministry and ordained under the expedience policy. They met and formed their own presbytery, calling it the Cumberland Presbytery after the one recently dissolved by the Kentucky Synod.
A short while after this schism, the Synod of Kentucky met to devise ways and means of adjusting the differences pending between the church organization and the churches of the Cumberland country.
Every Presbyterian church of the state was represented by either a presiding or ruling elder. The feeling from the first was intense. Three distinct groups of partisans were in attendance.
The conservatives, led by the Reverend Thomas Small, were in the majority. They insisted that all ministers who did not believe in predestination and who had been ordained without possessing the educational qualifications set forth under the rules of the church should be suspended, and that all physical manifestations or exhibitions of an exuberant Christian spirit by the congregation should be forbidden.
The radicals, led by Samuel McAdoo, who, though he admitted he was not up to the Presbyterian educational standard, insisted he was called, possibly predestined to [pg 329] preach, and declared that the Synod to close the breach, must take the Cumberland Presbytery with its uneducated preachers and its schism denying predestination into the organization else they would be forced to establish a distinct organization.
A third party, not exceeding a half dozen, led by Rev. Calvin Campbell, looked upon their differences as not so divergent as to justify a split in the church, rather demanding the exercise of a Christian spirit, as all yet believed in the Trinity and in the Bible.
After the organization of the Synod, Rev. Calvin Campbell rose and offered a resolution that: “No stationed or local preacher shall retail spirituous or malt liquors without forfeiting his ministerial character among us.”
Speaking upon the resolution he told of the good work Dr. Benjamin Rush had been doing in Kentucky by his prohibition movement; what a curse Bourbon whiskey had proved to be since its manufacture began in 1789; and deeply regretted that so many preachers in Kentucky found an easy way of supplementing their meager salary by vending it almost under the shadow of their churches. He said: “I call your attention to this resolution because no preacher should profit by the weakness of his brother, and as indicating how dense is the wilderness in which Dr. Rush has raised his voice, crying for prohibition. I admit that a preacher must engage in some other business to live, but like Paul we may make tents, or shoes or grow corn; follow any occupation which does not tend to bring misfortune to a weak brother.”
Upon a vote by secret ballot, the resolution was lost. (In 1813, this identical resolution was offered at a Methodist Conference in Kentucky and voted down.)
[pg 330] Rev. Small, though Rev. Campbell did not know it, was a part owner in a distillery and looked upon the resolution as directed at him. Therefore, when he rose as the advocate of conservatism, the champion of predestination, and of an educated ministry fully alive and thoroughly grounded in all doctrinal tenets of the church, he was in no mood for compromises.