| He perceived that many Baptists were "drifting into Arminianism. He loved truth too well to blow hot and cold in the same breath. |
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P.H. (PATRICK HUES) MELL (1814-1888)P.H. Mell was born in Liberty County, Georgia, July 19, 1814 . Before he reached adulthood both of his parents had died. After being baptized at the age of eighteen, Mell entered Amherst College only to leave a few months later. Apparently this was the end of Mell’s formal education. He was quite accomplished intellectually and spiritually and therefore was elected as principal of a preparatory school for EmoryCollege in 1839. After answering God’s call to ministry that same year and marrying Lurene Howard Cooper, Mell became professor of ancient languages at Mercer University. In the following years Mell was offered the presidency of Mississippi College, WakeForest, and Georgetown; all of which he declined. In 1859 Mell went to the University of Georgia as professor of ethics and metaphysics as well as becoming the vice-chancellor.Like many other influential Baptists, Mell was more a pastor than he was a theologian. He was above all a pastor to God’s flock, serving Greensboro Church for ten years, Antioch Church for twenty-eight years, and Bairdstown Church for thirty-three years. Mell’s son recalled that his father was above all a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ: "His piercing eyes glowed or melted in tender pathos as his mind grasped the glorious truths of the gospel; he held his hearers spellbound many times a full hour, and, if the theme was unusually grand, and far-reaching in its fuller development, he stood for an hour and a half, yet his people never thought he preached long … (he) clothed his ideas in language so plain, so simple, so strong, so beautiful, that the truth was fixed in the minds of his listeners."1Denominationally, Mell stood head and shoulders above others in the Southern Baptist Convention during its formative years. He served as president of the Convention for seventeen years and was known as the "Prince of Parliamentarians". After a few weeks of illness, P.H. Mell went to be with his Lord on January 26, 1888. Nearing death he said, "For to me to live is Christ, to die is gain. God is good and gracious and merciful - merciful to sinners." What sets Mell apart from many Baptists is not so much what he was but rather what he was not. He was not a great original thinker and theologian like Andrew Fuller. He did not write great hymns like Benjamin Keach. What he was not was a compromiser. Mell was not afraid to speak out against trends he saw developing among many Baptists that threatened the heart of the Gospel. Mell perceived that many Baptists were "drifting off into Arminianism. He loved the truth to well to blow hot and cold in the same breath. It was a Baptist church an it must have doctrines peculiar to that denomination preached to it … he preached to them the doctrines of predestination, election, free grace, etc." 2 Though he never wrote a systematic theology Mell did leave behind one very important work. His short book, Predestination and the Saints Perseverance, Stated and Defended, was a forceful answer to certain Arminian preaching going on in Baptist churches. P.H. Mell beseeched Baptist not to lose their view of a Sovereign and powerful God. "It is surely a worthy view of God, to present Him as sovereign and efficient ruler, who accomplishes all His pleasure, and is never thwarted." Mell contrasted this with the ‘anxious and impotent’ God of Arminianism."3 Much as Isaac Backus had called Baptists back to their roots in the eighteenth century, Mell did the same in the nineteenth. What makes a Baptist a baptist? That is a question we try to answer here at The Baptist Page. If you read the article on John Bunyan you see this theme. Baptist are not really a denomination in the classic sense. Mell recognized this and preached it often. He wrote, "Baptists maintain that the only apostolic succession consists in holding the doctrines and the practices of the apostles."4 In other words, what makes one a baptist is not belonging to some ecclesiastical body but rather what one believes and practices. This is why we make the distinction between baptist and Baptist. Mell believed as do many Baptists that baptists have existed under different names but the same beliefs throughout the history of the church. Baptist do not look to one founder such as Luther or Calvin. Instead, we look to a pattern of belief and practice. This is what Mell articulated so well. For additional information on P.H. Mell please see http://www.founders.org/library/mell1/biograph.html
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