themselves into a body and acting without of the union." Several important preachers on the east coast led in the "anti-missions" movement, but Parker was the leader on the frontier, and probably spoke best to the common man. It appears that during this time, Parker was also formulating views on God and man that he would first release in his Views on the Two Seeds (1826). He taught that all persons are from the moment of conception either of the "good seed" of God or of the "bad seed" of Satan (the children of the good seed are roughly equivalent to the "elect" of Calvinism, and those of the bad seed similar to the "non-elect"), and were predestined that way from the beginning; nothing a person can do can change one from God's seed to Satan's or vice versa. Therefore, mission activity was not only unbiblical and sinful but, as a practical matter, useless since the "decision" was already made prior to birth. Many consider his theory a type of Manichaeism. Parker's seedline doctrine identified the serpent as the father of Cain and the originator of the wicked impure seedline. Parkers initially developed and promoted the Serpent seedline doctrine as a key argument in his opposition to foreign Christian missionary activity. Parker believed that the non-white races who were the targets of foreign missions were people who were descended from the wicked seed of the serpent. He stated that since "God would save His own children, and since the children of Satan were predestined to eternal punishment, any kind of mission plan would seem ridiculous." Parker was labeled a heretic for teaching the doctrine by mainstream Baptists. The influences on Parker's beliefs are unknown, so he may have arrived at his version of the Serpent seedline doctrine independently. Parker's teachings coincided with the promotion of the earliest form of Polygenism in the United States by the Kentuckian Charles Caldwell, who believed non-white races could not have descended from Adam. Although it was not widely accepted, Parker's teaching became well known among Calvinistic Baptists in Kentucky. "Two-Seed Predestinarian Baptists always remained a small group. The U.S. religious census of 1906 recorded 781 members. In 1938 there were 98 members." Parker's views on the "two seeds" were spread rapidly and became infamous among the Primitive Baptist churches. Many members of the "anti-missions" movement accepted his doctrine, though it never achieved anything near