/:^.5 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY PRINCETON, N. J. BX 7232 .D4 1870 "\ Dexter, Henry Martyn, 1821- 1890. The church polity of the Pi 1 ar ims^ / V DtC 3 1923 I THE CHURCH POLITY OF THE PILGRBIS THE POLITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. BY HENRY M. DEXTER. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HON. R. A. CHAPMAN, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF MASSACHUSETTS. BOSTON : CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY. ii>70. [FIFTY COPIES PPvINTED.J INTRODUCTION. Boston, June 30, 1870. My Dear Sir, — When the articles containing the substance of this little work were first published in " The Congregationalist and Recorder," I read them with much interest, and expressed to you a hope that they might be re-published in a more permanent form. The practical importance of the subject of church government and pol- ity appears to me to be vastly greater than many people seem to suppose. Congregational government is radically different from hierarchy in any of its forms. The former regards the members of a Christian church as capable of managing the affairs of the church : while the latter re- gards them as incompetent to manage those affairs; not capable of deciding upon the admission, discipline, or ex- pulsion of their fellow-members, nor of maintaining fel- lowship with other churches. It, therefore, reduces them to the condition of a governed class; their duty being sim- ply to obey the hierarchy, whose competency to govern them is assumed. You have shown which of these sys- iii terns of government is in conformity with the teachings of the New Testament. And if we go farther back, and consider the fundamental object of Christianity, we are led to the same result. Christ's purpose manifestly was to renovate and elevate mankind by acting upon them in- dividually. He taught the value of man as an individual ; exposed the true character of the evil that is in him and tends to degrade him ; and his plan of renovation begins with faith in himself personally, and proceeds with attach- ment and obedience to himself. The organization and observances which he prescribed to his followers were very simple ; and as the preservation and propagation of his system were to be not by coercion, but, so far as man's agency is concerned, principally by teaching and example, very little of church government was needed, and that lit- tle could be managed by a local assembly. He regarded all men as brethren, and all of them erring and sinful ; but the sin towards which he manifested a special detesta- tion was the lust and abuse of official power. The tendency of a hierarchy would naturally be adverse to his system ; and knowing how strong the lust of power is in the human heart, and foreseeing its effects, we should naturally expect that he would give a solemn command, like that which he gave when he spoke of the exercise of lordship and authority by princes and great men among the Gentiles, and peremptorily declared, " So shall it not be amon;jj you." It was addressed to those who were to be the teachers and preacliers of his system ; and, had it been obeyed after the days of the apostles, the tendency would have been to purify and ennoble that class of his followers, by saving them from the degrading temptation to claim lordship and authority over their brethren. Our ancestors came here fresh from the experience of hierarchal oppression and cruelty. Their ministers were learned men, and well acquainted with ecclesiastical his- tory. They knew how early the lust of power began to operate upon Christian ministers, and how it grew till the prominent feature of ecclesiastical history, through all the intervening ages, had become a history of the oppres- sion and degradation of the laity by the hierarchy. It is a frightful history for a layman to read. Hierarchy had been a blight upon human liberty and progress, and upon Christianity itself. They knew that its authority rested upon tradition; and therefore they went behind tradition, to the New Testament itself. There they found, as you find, popular sovereignty ; and, renouncing all claim to lordship and authority, they taught their brethren their rights and their duties in this respect. The introduction of this new system of govern- ment gave not only a new position, but naturally tended to give a new elevation of character, to the brethren. They were no longer mere subjects, living under the die- tation of office-holders, but themselves possessed the rights of sovereignty. As the New Testament expresses it, thej-were"a royal priesthood," not subject to a human priest; "kings and priests unto God," having equal rights among themselves ; and this is the very essence of a pure democracy. Attached to the rights of this common sovereignty are its dignity, its responsibilities, and its duties ; and a religious regard for them tends to elevate men towards their highest capabilities. It teaches them the need of universal education. Thus it originated the common school, which put education under the control of the people. It fits them for self government, and thus it led to the establishment of our civil government based on popular sovereignty. It is hostile to every form of monarchy and aristocracy, as tending to degrade the people. It lays the foundations of popular civil govern- ment in religious principle, and supplies restraints against wrong-doing, which human government is in- capable of supplying, — the Bible being, in fact, the text- book of civil liberty. It trains the members of the church to the exercise of the rights of sovereignty, in the management of their business, in a Christian spirit of charity, forbearance, and deference to the opinions and feelings of others, instead of a spirit of wilfulness, con- ceit, and selfishness ; a training which is of incalculable vii value to any citizen in a popular government. Ami it elevates the ministry to a higher class of duties than those belonging to dictation and coercion, and tends to purify and ennoble them. It is not necessary to speak in commendation of its in- Huence upon the character and destiny of this country. The Cambridge Platform, notwithstanding the defect noticed by you, preserved the essence of popular sov- ereignty, by leaving not only the choice of officers, but the admission, discipline, and expulsion of members, and maintaining fellowship with " neighbor churches," and, indeed, all the business of the church, in the hands of the people ; but, unfortunately, in later times there arose, in the minds of some of the influential ministers, a want of confidence in the capacity of the people, and a desire for official authority and dictation ; and this led to a neglect of instruction as to the duties of the people in maintaining self-government, and the spirit in which these duties should be discharged. Experience has shown that these men made a mistake, and I believe your discussion of the subject will do great good. Yours very respectfully, R. A. CHAPMAN. Rev. H. M. Dexter, D.D. THE CHDECH POLITY OF THE PILGPJMS THE POLITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. The Plymouth Pilgrims were stigmatized as " Brownists ; " but the careful student of their actual belief and practice will more likely conclude, not only that they were Con- gregationalists, but that the current Congre- gationalism of the United States now repro- duces much more exactly that which they held, and which John Robinson so ably ex- pounded, than it does the not quite semi- Presbyterianism of Cotton's " Keyes," and of the " Cambridge Platform." In the matter of what they called Ruling Elders, and in some other minor details, — which were mainly due to some disproportionate stress laid by them upon certain passages of Scri})ture, upon which time and experience superinduced a truer exposition, — there were slight differ- ences between them and those churches of the same order which exist to-day. But, in all great essentials, they and their spiritual children are one. The Articles of Faith of Henry Ainsworth's Brownist Church at Amsterdam, in 1596, would need but few words of alteration to make them fit the average needs, and uses, of the Congrega- tional churches of to-day. The difference between the original Con- gregationalism of the Massachusetts and the Plymouth colonies seems to have been largely due to the fact, that those who thought out the latter, went to the Bible under the one controlling idea that the Church of England, as then existing, had de- parted from the Word; and with the one controlling purpose to recover, if possible, the exact primitive and apostolic method ; and with no particular bias toward one re- sult rather than another: while the former approached the Bible with the design of ex- pounding its teachings indeed, but with so decided a prejudice against the then so disreputable Separatist or Brownist views, that it was nearly morally certain that their exegesis could, only in the last extremity be driven to that full result. And it was not strange that " the speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy " of Samuel Stone, and Cotton's doctrine of the power of the elders, " with consent of the brethren," should have been resorted to by them in the endeavor to avoid an immediate plunge into that absolute democracy, which, both for Church and State, was as much an object of dread in those days in Boston and the towns of the Bay, as it was practically trusted, and found salubrious, in the humbler and older " Old Colony." That which is simple, natural, and unforced is apt to abide when that which is adroit, and done for a transitory purpose, fails to suit and satisfy the exigencies of the ages. So that it is no strange thing which lias ha})- pened, that the Congregational churches of New England have gradually worked them- selves clear from the aristocratic elements which modified the beginnings of so many of them ; ignored, and quietly left to fall into disuse, the Presbyterianish principles which found their way into the Cambridge, and which gave form and force to the Saybrook, platform ; and have practically come to their permanent bearings upon the solid, earth- centering roek of democracy, — never bet- ter defined than unconsciously in that won- derful compact signed in the cabin of the Mayflower, as a combination into a '^ body politick for our better ordering, preservation, and furtherance of y^ ends [sought therein] , and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just & equall lawes, ordi- ances, acts, constitutions, & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenient for y® generall good ; — unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." When reduced to its first principles, gov- ernment must either lodge its power in one ruler, or in all who are ruled, or — between these extremes — in a ruling class ; and so it must be essentially either monarchy, or democracy, or aristocracy. Congregation- alism is democracy applied to church affairs. It holds Christ to be supreme, and under him it vests ecclesiastical power in the associated brotherhood of local churches ; which are bound to maintain a family relation of frater- nity and counsel, yet which are in them- selves self-complete and independent. These three systems of polity — the de- mocracy of Congregationalism, the aristoc- racy of Presbyterianism, and the monarchy of Episcopacy * — are scarcely sufficiently alike, either in princi[)les or processes, to run much risk of being confounded with each other ; so that, if the New Testament says * '' The Hartford Churchman " of 22d May, 1869, contains an elaborate argument designed to prove, that, so far from being a monarchic government. Episcopacy more nearly represents the democracy of our Republic than any other polity. And this because the Governor of the Commonwealth and the Bishop of a diocese are both " chosen by the votes of their peers." But the essential feature of monarchy is in the fitct, that, however elected, the monarch rules; and the essential feature of republicanism is, that, through their elected officers, the people rule. And it requires but the slightest acquaintance with the facts to settle it, on this rule, that Episcopacy is not republicanism, whatever else it may be ; and that Congregationalism is republicanism itself, in re- ligion. 8 any thing at all about church polity, either in the way of describing such of its activities as make themselves matters of its history, or of laying down any precepts whatsoever with regard to it, it would seem to be quite a thing impossible that the careful student of it should be left in doubt whether the churches which the apostles founded, and to whom the Epistles were addressed, were, in the main and characteristically. Congrega- tional, Presbyterian, ur Episcopal churches. We undertake an examination of the New Testament with this inquiry in mind. We mean to glance at every passage in it wdiich casually, or carefully, refers in any manner to church action and government. And, if we have not been wholly misled in our investi- gations of the Word, we shall be conducted, by such an examination, to the conclusion that the Congregational polity of our Pilgrim Fathers, which they reverently deduced from it, is the polity of the New Testament. CHAPTER I. CONGREGATIONALISM IN THE GOSPELS. Now, tlien, we approach the question, what kind of clmrch life and action, as a matter of fact, is to be found suggested in tlie way of precept, and recorded in the way of prac- tice, in the New Testament ? Did Christ, so far as he prompted any form of clmrch-hfe, prepare the minds of his apostles for the dem- ocratic, the aristocratic, or the monarchic polity ? And were those earHest churches, whose history, with more or less of detail, it gives or hints, characterized by the essential peculiarities of the Congregational, Presby- terian, or Episcopal systems ? That is the question, — one would think susceptible of easy and unerring answer. That answer, it is fair to say here, is rendered less obvious, however, to the merely Enolish reader of the New Testament than it need be in a perfectly accurate translation ; than it would have been if Kinor James's 10 translators had not sometimes modified earlier versions in the interest of Episcopacy, nor sometimes, without crowding the sense harder than it will honestly bear, in the direc- tion of prelacy.* We propose in this chapter a rapid glance at all those passages in the four Gospels which make reference, either in the way of * The translation by them of the word ndaxa {passover) by "Easter" (Actsxii:4); of the word eTnanoTnjv {office) by " bishoprick " (Acts i; 20); of the word eTr^T/coTrovf by "bishop" in several passages of the Epistles, when they had rendered it simply " overseers" in Acts xx: 28; of as many as seven different Greek words {dtaranGu^ 1 Cor. vii: 17; KadlGTrii.a^ Tit. i : 5, Heb. viii : 3 ; Kptvu^ Acts xvi : 4 ; ttoleu, Mark iii: 14; raacro, Eom. xiii: 1; ridrjiii^ 1 Tim. ii: 7; and XstpoTOve