GOSPEL, The, Sylvester Hassell So far as I know, the Kehukee Association never entertained or endorsed the doctrine that God sometimes uses the preached gospel in regenerating sinners * * * Man, not regenerated by God’s Spirit, may have a natural conviction of sin and conversion (a turning from their outward evil conduct). In my time I never knew one of our ministers or members to believe or maintain that the preaching of any man is a means of regeneration; nor do I suppose that in 1778 any minister or member of the Kehukee Association held that the Holy Spirit comes through the human preacher to quicken into life a person who is dead in sin. He may regenerate a sinner while a minister is preaching, but he does so by his own direct operation in the sinner’s heart or spirit. True conviction and conversion are the effects of immediate Divine regeneration. (Sylvester Hassell in a private correspondence with W. H. Crouse 1924)