The Christadelphian sect was founded by John Thomas, M.D., an Englishman who grew up as a Congregationalist, experimented with Anglicanism, and received adult baptism in the Campbellite movement, before leaving to found the Christadelphians. Drawing on his Campbellite roots, he held that the original teachings of Jesus and the apostles had been corrupted by the Great Apostasy. It was this corrupt version of the gospel that was present in the churches of his day. Like the Campbellites, he held to the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice, and made it his mission to restore primitive Christianity after the pattern of the first century church.