The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

V. Cornell-Assembles Witness of Eminent Expositors

MERRITT E. CORNELL (1827-1893) was born in New York State, moving to Michigan with his parents in 1837. He became a Bates’s convert to the Sabbatarian faith in 1852. At first opposed to the seventh-day-sabbath teaching, he became an earnest advocate and soon raised up a company of Sabbatarian believers. Bold, enthusiastic, and dynamic, he was a hard-hitting evangelist and an ardent debater” ¹⁹—sometimes called the “Stormy Petrel.” He fitted into the tempo of the times, preached all the way from Maine to California, conducting the first full-fledged tent meeting held by the Sabbatarian Adventists, in 1854. At first he shared the early Bates view that the “number” of the Beast possibly indicated the “666” sects. ²⁰ But this notion quickly passed from circulation. It was soon considered the number, in symbol, of the Beast’s name. PFF4 1103.1

Cornell wrote no exposition of prophecy in book form, but was a contributor to the Reviews of 1854-1858. His were the standard positions of the various outline and time prophecies of Daniel. ²¹ In the book of Revelation he held that both the seven churches and the seven seals were historic periods of the pure and corrupted churches, with the Laodicean phase as the advent people. ²² The woman of Revelation 12 stands for the pure church and the two beasts of Revelation 13 for the Roman Catholic Church united with civil government, and the United States-with the two horns of the second beast as “Protestantism and Republicanism.” ²³ The “image” is a likeness, therefore a union, or marriage, of Protestantism and the state which will yet be formed. ²⁴ g But at first he thought that the 666 referred to the numerous “Protestant sectarian bodies.” ²⁵ PFF4 1103.2

The dread seven vials are yet future, embodying the wrath of God without an admixture of mercy. And the sixth vial involved Spiritualism.” ²⁶ Cornell challenged the contention of a temporal millennium during which the world will be converted citing leading clerics from Luther on to Whitefield in support of premillennialism. ²⁷ PFF4 1104.1

His unique contribution appeared in a 137-page compilation of “Extracts From the Writings of Eminent Authors,” attesting the fulfillment of the key features of prophecy. Cornell’s Facts for the Times was specifically designed to show that the positions maintained by the Sabbatarian Adventists were supported by many of the most “noted and pious” writers, both of the past and of contemporary times. This ran through several editions, and was considered a standard work. PFF4 1104.2

The expanded second edition (1875), in showing that these views are not new, but in harmony with the considered opinions of many of the wisest and best authorities extant, quotes, with exact references, from, such well-known past and present writers as Isaac Newton, Lloyd, Gill, Daubuz, Clarke, Scott, Henry, Faber, Wesley, Whitefield, Croly, Gumming, Duffield, Campbell, and many others—with factual features gleaned from recognized secular sources, such as Gibbon. PFF4 1104.3

These citations, the result of wide investigation, were presented as giving the stamp of historicity and orthodoxy to the fundamental Sabbatarian positions on prophecy. They were submitted as evidence that Seventh—day Adventists stood in excellent company, and were simply carrying on from where others had abandoned the basic Protestant platform on prophecy. These excerpts embraced the main features of the outline prophecies of Daniel 2 and 7, Revelation 12 and 13, and the year-day for all prophetic time periods, the signs of the approaching advent, the presumptuous change of the law of God by act of the Papacy, the false millennium, et cetera. In addition, quotations are given to support the three angels’ messages, with the fall of Babylon as the modern departure from the historic faith of Protestantism, the relation of the United States in the second symbol of Revelation 13, with the two horns of republicanism and Protestantism. PFF4 1104.4