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THE 
 
 PAST AND PRESENT STATE 
 
 OF 
 
 ileUgiou0 |iartie0. 
 
THOUGlHTS 
 
 THE PAST A'5pi&RESili-T> , 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES 
 
 IN ENGLAND. 
 
 BY ROBERT VAUGH AN, D.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT AND MODERN HISTORY IN 
 UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON. 
 
 To 5e /ieAAer' dKOVificv, u)S eVeoV irep. 
 
 'O.MHP02. 
 
 " Above all things put on charity, which is the bond 
 of perfectness."— CoLossiAxs iii. 14. 
 
 LONDON : 
 JACKSON AND WALFOKD, 
 
 IS, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD. 
 
 1838. 
 
LOKDOK : 
 
 K. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD-STREET-HILr,. 
 
TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND 
 
 CHARLES JAMES BLOMFIELD, D.D. 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 The substance of the present publication was 
 delivered as a Discourse in Union-Street Chapel, 
 Southw^ark, on the second of January last. Fifty 
 years had then passed since the day on which that 
 chapel was opened for divine worship; and the 
 christian church still assembling there, claims to 
 be regarded as the oldest Independent or Congre- 
 gational church in the kingdom ; tracing its de- 
 scent from a church of that order, formed in the 
 
vi 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 borough of Southwark, by the Rev. Henry Jacob, 
 a seceded clergyman, in the year 1616. Many 
 intelligent and devout persons, to whom these 
 facts were known, became desirous that an occa- 
 sion so well adapted to awaken profitable reflection 
 should not pass without notice. A religious ser- 
 vice, accordingly, took place ; the gentlemen from 
 various congregations who were present, and who 
 afterwards dined together, requested that the Dis- 
 course which they had heard in the morning should 
 be printed, and with this request I signified my 
 compliance. But the observations made in the 
 Discourse have been so far amplified, that I have 
 deemed it advisable to give them the title now 
 prefixed to them, and to publish them in an altered 
 form. I am not aware, however, that any thing 
 material will be found in the following sections, 
 that was not announced in a form more or less 
 distinct from the pulpit. On the whole, therefore, 
 these thoughts may be taken as a fair average view, 
 of the opinions and feehngs of the well-informed 
 and truly decided body of Protestant Noncon- 
 formists who concurred in urging that they should 
 be printed ; and as a tolerably certain indication, 
 of the views entertained by the same class of persons 
 through the kingdom. 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 vii 
 
 My Lord, I have not been inobservant of the 
 promptitude, vigour, and directness, by which your 
 mind is characterised, and can readily conceive 
 that before proceeding thus far, you have been 
 about to ask, and with some impatience — what is 
 all this to me ? With what possible propriety am 
 / addressed on a subject of this nature ? With 
 your permission I will answer these questions, 
 and so briefly as not to make any large demand on 
 the time which you know so well how to employ. 
 This I am also anxious to do, under the influence 
 of every sentiment of respect due to your high 
 character and station. Your Lordship's mind is 
 not of an order to be deemed incapable of releasing 
 itself in any degree from the force of prejudice ; 
 and is still further removed, as I am willing to 
 believe, from that want of ingenuousness which has 
 too often placed the most powerful intellects in 
 wilful alliance with error. 
 
 Still, my Lord, it is inseparable from the station 
 which you fill, that you should be in almost cease- 
 less connexion with sources of communication, 
 tending to produce and strengthen every kind of 
 prejudice against Dissenters; and never has mis- 
 representation, with regard to persons of that 
 
viii 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 class, been more rife than at this moment. The 
 public press, political and religious, is tainted, in 
 this respect, as to the core ; and there are large 
 sections of society which too nearly resemble it. 
 My impression is, that you, my Lord, are not 
 governed by the indiscriminate reckless enmity 
 with which we have to contend in many quarters ; 
 that you are willing rather, if respectfully invited 
 to the subject, to give its full weight to whatever 
 may be offered in behalf of our principles or pro- 
 ceedings as Dissenters ; and it is in consequence 
 of this impression that I have ventured to submit 
 the following thoughts to your consideration, and 
 presume in this place to detain your attention for 
 the space of a few pages. 
 
 But let me not be mistaken. Our position, as 
 Dissenters, leaves us little to hope or fear from the 
 EstabUshed Church. As a Church, our Episco- 
 palian brethren have nothing to bestow, that we 
 are at liberty to accept ; and could we conceive of 
 them as animated by the most determined hostility 
 against us, there would be nothing even in such an 
 aspect of affairs to make us greatly afraid. Our 
 fathers, who knew but too well what such things 
 mean, knew also how to make evils of that descrip- 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 ix 
 
 tion subservient to good ; and their descendants 
 would not be found wanting in the day of trial. 
 But we expect nothing of this kind ; the sound 
 part of the Church of England would be the first 
 to deplore it ; and every pious Dissenter earnestly 
 prays for something far different. I am confident 
 that I express the feeling of the great majority of 
 my brethren, when I say, that for the credit of 
 our common Christianity, and not from any fear 
 about the security or advancement of our interest 
 as Dissenters, I am deeply anxious to see the 
 return of a calmer habit of thought, and of a more 
 christian temper on both sides. 
 
 Your Lordship, then, has no doubt heard very 
 much of late concerning the restless spirit, and 
 evil designs, of the Dissenters — enough to keep 
 these persons constantly before you, as an un- 
 grateful body of people, who, while sheltered by 
 the favour of a most tolerant Establishment, have 
 become intent — from very wantonness — on doing 
 every kind of injury to that establishment, looking, 
 in fact, to nothing less than its utter spoliation 
 and overthrow. But is it unquestionable, my 
 Lord, that the spirit of the Church of England 
 towards Dissenters, has been on all occasions so 
 
X 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 lenient and kindly as those persons represent ? Is 
 it quite certain also, that Dissenters, as a bod}^, 
 are really chargeable with all the delinquency 
 which the hosts of their enemies impute to 
 them? 
 
 With regard to the first of these allegations, it 
 describes the past condition of Dissenters in terms 
 singularly at variance mth fact. Is it, for exam- 
 ple, to be accounted nothing, that we have found 
 ourselves in the midst of an artificial system, so 
 framed as to remind us at every point, and every 
 moment, of the social inferiority to which we were 
 subject, on account of our scruples in matters of 
 religion, — scruples, which we knew to be sincere and 
 honourable ? Is it nothing, that for this cause our 
 own Protestant brethren should have possessed the 
 power of thrusting us at all times into a suspicious 
 distance from royalty and court favour ; of placing 
 us at disadvantage in nearly all the avenues which 
 lead to the prizes of public life ; and of obliging 
 us to feel in all connexions, pubhc and private, 
 that we are persons of a lower grade than them- 
 selves in general estimation? Must we deem it 
 nothing, that this favouritism of the state to one 
 religious party, is, in this manner, a positive injury 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 xi 
 
 (lone to all who are not included in that favour, 
 and to all whose principles will not suffer them to 
 be included in it ? Has it been nothing, that con- 
 scientiousness has thus come to be a species of 
 crime, exposing men to an almost omnipresent, 
 and often very formidable amount of punishment ? 
 Was it nothing, my Lord, that the Test Act 
 pointed so long at the Dissenter as a man of 
 doubtful character — not to be trusted in any mat- 
 ter that might in the least affect the good of his 
 country? Nothing, that the securities of our 
 property were so long endangered, except as we 
 were prepared to comply with a form of baptism, 
 to which we felt strong religious objections; and 
 that in connecting the sanctities of religion with 
 the institute of marriage, we were so long com- 
 pelled to go from the services of our own ministers 
 to those of the stranger ? Is it nothing even now, 
 that having defrayed the expenses of our own 
 worship, we are subject to constant exaction, in 
 order that we may be made to furnish garniture 
 for the worship preferred by our more wealthy 
 neighbours ; and that our ancient seats of learn- 
 ing, while described as belonging to the nation, 
 and existing as vast sources of emolument and 
 
xii 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 honour, should continue to be accroached to them- 
 selves by the men of one religious party ? 
 
 Nor has it been enough that these grievances 
 should press upon us. How often, within the last 
 twenty years, have we been assailed with every 
 sort of misrepresentation and abuse. It would be 
 easy to collect volumes of passages of this nature 
 from the visitation discourses, and the periodical 
 and general literature of Churchmen, the scorn 
 and contumely of which nothing could exceed, 
 describing us— in the very language of the men 
 who sent our martyred fathers to the place of 
 execution — as not more than " half Englishmen," 
 because we do not bow the knee to the eccle- 
 siastical supremacy of the crown ; and denouncing 
 our religion, not merely as " destroying more souls 
 than it saves," but as tending only to destroy, and 
 as no better than a covert, under which to indulge, 
 if not in the practice of sedition, certainly in all 
 the malign passions considered as leading to such 
 practices ! While in regard to learning, the com- 
 mon assumption and language has been, that a 
 people so inherently vulgar, cannot possibly have 
 the least pretension to credit on that ground ; 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 xiii 
 
 and if proof to the contrary has been sometimes 
 afforded, enough has generally occurred to show 
 how very unwelcome such proof has been. No 
 doubt, my Lord, there are Churchmen who 
 have looked on these things with a regret highly 
 honourable to their candour and generosity ; but 
 while the majority have rather seemed to sympa- 
 thize with all the bitterness and injustice of these 
 proceedings, rarely putting the slightest private or 
 public discountenance upon them, it surely ought 
 not to be matter of surprise if a deep sense of 
 injury on the part of the Dissenter, has some- 
 times broken forth in strong expressions of resent- 
 ment. 
 
 It is not, assuredly, in your Lordship's nature, 
 nor in the nature of any educated, honourable 
 mind, to look considerately on the condition of a 
 people beset with so many obvious, and so many 
 nameless forms of civil disparagement and wrong, 
 on account of their religion, and then to say of 
 them that they have been wholly without excuse 
 in complaining of grievance, or that they have 
 become justly liable to very heavy censure, if, when 
 the moment for partial redress has seemed to arrive, 
 their desire of change has been found to caiTy them 
 
xiv 
 
 DEDICATION-. 
 
 somewhat to excess. It is the force of the previous 
 constraint which determines the strength of the 
 rebound. Thrust men into one unnatural extreme, 
 and you prepare them to rush into another, in an 
 opposite direction, on the first opportunity. The 
 elements of insurgency are never so volcanic as 
 when called forth by the rigours of despotism. 
 Dissenters are no exception to this tendency in 
 human nature. 
 
 If, indeed, we are to consider their vocation to 
 have been, that they should exemplify a perfect 
 intelligence and rectitude in our weak and dis- 
 ordered world, it must be confessed they have 
 not always appeared in their proper character. 
 In that case, they should have looked so com- 
 prehensively, and so profoundly, on the numerous 
 and momentous questions which have recently come 
 into debate, as thoroughly to have understood 
 them. They should have made large allowance for 
 the force of prejudice, and the feeling of interest, 
 in connexion with ancient and opulent institutions. 
 They should have remembered how much there is 
 in the unavoidable weakness of human nature that 
 may lead to self-deception, even in the case of the 
 weU-meaning. They should have been careful to 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 XV 
 
 acquaint themselves with all the good, as well as 
 the evil, included in the existing order of things, 
 and should have looked to the contingent injuries 
 which changes apparently the most desirable are 
 often found to carry along with them. If precluded 
 from their place as citizens, and scoffed upon and 
 put down in not a few connexions as religionists, 
 they should have known how to be silent under 
 such treatment, or how to have uttered the lan- 
 guage of complaint, influenced more by pity and 
 forbearance than by resentment. And within the 
 last few years especially, they should, perhaps, have 
 been content with calm and dignified efforts to 
 obtain a removal of their more immediate griev- 
 ances ; and if they had altogether failed in their 
 object, as in that case they probably would, they 
 should have known how to bear such disappoint- 
 ments, so as not to be greatly distressed by them, 
 and so as to have been capable of returning good 
 for evil, and blessing for cursing ! But, my Lord, 
 does it become our opponents, in the greater part 
 of whom this "meekness of wisdom'* has been so 
 lamentably wanting, to demand it from others upon 
 a scale of this sort ? Having acted the firebrand 
 during so many long years, is it seemly in these 
 persons to affect astonishment, and a kind of 
 
xvi 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 horror, on seeing that Dissenters are not always 
 engaged in the offices of the peacemaker ? Can it 
 be a true charity that is found thus capable of 
 hoping all things on one side, and incapable of 
 bearing with the usual indications of human infir- 
 mity on the other ? True, my Lord, we are 
 imperfect beings ; we have not always spoken 
 wisely, nor acted wisely ; but of this I am con- 
 fident, that from the beginning to this day, we 
 have been a people " more sinned against than 
 sinning." 
 
 The great charge against us, so far as I am able 
 to ascertain, is, that we are aiming at nothing less 
 than the destruction cf the Established Church. 
 Now it is not denied that the principles of Con- 
 gregationalism are opposed to the existence of any 
 civil establishment of Christianity. But it is one 
 thing to be persuaded that a nation might have 
 chosen a wiser course than it has done, and another 
 to fall into a justly censurable mode of proceeding, 
 in order to correct a prevalent error. It may be 
 strictly lawful that there should be no Established 
 Church ; but in the state of society existing in 
 England it may be far from expedient. The whole 
 question, though truly one of principle, is also one 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 xvii 
 
 to be determined, in a great degree, by circum- 
 stances. While the social system of England shall 
 be what it is, and while the prevalent feeling in 
 favour of an Established Church shall be what it 
 is, there ought, as I conceive, to be such a church. 
 The Dissenter may say, that the State, in this 
 respect, is exercising a power which it ought not 
 to have assumed ; but so long as the State is not 
 so persuaded, it should not be expected to relin- 
 quish the policy which has naturally resulted from 
 its different consciousness of duty. Principle, on 
 this great question, may be of as much moment to 
 the Churchman as to the Dissenter. And if there 
 are Dissenters, who, having looked to the monarchy 
 and to the court of England ; and to the preposses- 
 sions, on this subject, of the persons who constitute 
 the upper, and even the lower House of Parliament ; 
 and have expected to see these parties concur in 
 any thing approaching toward an extinction of 
 the State Church, such expectation must surely 
 have been indulged in some of those delusive 
 moments when the passions do not allow the under- 
 standing to perform its proper office. But, my 
 Lord, if there are circumstances which seem to 
 require that there should be an Established Church, 
 it should be remembered that there are other 
 
xviii 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 circumstances which demand, and not at all less im- 
 peratively, that it should be one of moderate pre- 
 tensions. If there be a majority to combine in 
 support of such a church, there is a minority dis- 
 senting from it, and one sufficiently powerful to 
 render it necessary that the Endowed Communion 
 should bear their faculties meekly. Were the 
 Church of England to become so far intolerant as 
 to disgust the liberal portion of her members, and 
 to occasion their withdrawment in any great number 
 to the side of Dissent, her days, secure as she may 
 now seem, might not be many. 
 
 On the whole, my Lord, my own humble con- 
 viction in regard to the Church of England, and 
 that, as I believe, of Dissenters generally, is, not that 
 she should be demolished, or despoiled, but that 
 she should be regarded as pertaining to the religion 
 of the majority, according to the real state of things 
 in England, and not as embodying the religion of 
 the nation, according to the perfect theory of an 
 Ecclesiastical Establishment, as carried out in Por- 
 tugal or Spain ; that on this ground, such a period 
 should be put to the ecclesiastical favouritism of 
 the State, as may prevent any further grants of 
 public money or exclusive privilege to the Endowed 
 
DEDICATION. xix 
 
 Church ; and that in regard to the few matters 
 which as Dissenters we still feel to be vexatious 
 indications of civil inferiority in consequence of 
 our religious preferences, we should continue to 
 seek a removal of them until it be obtained. 
 
 In conclusion, my Lord, I make my appeal to 
 your known intelligence, and to your christian 
 candour and urbanity, on this subject. Is there 
 any thing in the principles, or in the proceedings 
 of our denomination, as thus viewed, to render it 
 necessary that there should be this bitter hostility 
 between the Churchman and the Dissenter — this 
 envenomed partizanship, which is everywhere 
 strengthening the scepticism of the Infidel, giving 
 point to the sarcasms of the profligate, perplexing 
 the ingenuous inquirer, and afflicting the heart of 
 the most devout persons in every christian com- 
 munion ? Bear with me, my Lord, in reminding 
 you of the high responsibility which attaches, in 
 this respect, to persons holding a rank like that to 
 which you are raised. If the great are not popu- 
 lar and powerful, it is in general because they do 
 not merit such distinction. Slight favour from 
 them is almost sure to fall with effect on the mass. 
 
XX 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 Moderate effort on the part of your Lordship might 
 do much toward abating the asperities of party, and 
 producing a more christian-Hke habit of mind 
 among those who profess to be ahke Christians. It 
 may be, that this attempt to correct your probable 
 misconceptions with regard to the real object of 
 Dissenters, and to draw your fair-minded attention 
 to their character and history, will be without any 
 apparent effect. It may not appear well to place 
 your opponents in the wrong, by your own dif- 
 ferent example, should they persist in a course of 
 uncharitableness. It may still be our lot to find, 
 that nothing is accounted religion which is not 
 found within the pale of the Established Church ; 
 that nothing is supposed to be done for the ad- 
 vancement of religion, which is not done by that 
 Church ; that the country will be again called upon 
 to augment her exclusive opulence and distinction; 
 that every effort will be made to perpetuate, and 
 not to put away, remaining sources of irritation; 
 in a word, the spirit of the past may survive in 
 the future, and, if so, there will indeed be no 
 prospect of returning concord ; those who sigh 
 most for peace will be constrained to subordinate 
 feeling to principle, and the relative position of 
 
DEDICATION. 
 
 xxi 
 
 parties, in some unforeseen conjuncture of affairs, 
 may become such as the proudest are little prone 
 to expect. 
 
 TaJ ovK av fxz ycvos ye kukou koI dvdXKiha (pdures, 
 MvOoi/ aTL/jL'qaTjTe ir€<pacriJ.4voy, '6v k eS etTrco. 
 
 Nothing, however, can deprive me of the satisfac- 
 tion I feel, in having attempted, with whatever 
 feebleness, to state the case of my brethren, both 
 among the living and the dead, with fairness ; and 
 to present it under some aspects tending to show 
 the harmony that may subsist between the firmest 
 adherence to the principles of Independency, and ' 
 tlie large and fervent charity of the Gospel. 
 
 I am, 
 
 With sincere respect. 
 Your Lordship's obedient Servant, 
 
 ROBERT VAUGHAN. 
 
 Kensington, 
 Feb. 22, 1838. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 p.v» 
 
 Influence of Religious Truth on Social Freedom and Improvement.— 
 Effect of success in Particular Studies on the progress of General 
 Knowledge. — The bond of English Congregationalism always one of 
 Principle.— View of the polity so designated.— Extravagant assertions of 
 its opponents.— Testimony of Antiquity to the Independence of the 
 primitive churches. —Prevalence of the Union between Civil and Eccle- 
 siastical Power in the ancient and modern world, — Causes which led 
 to it. — The Relative Position of these powers always Unnatural. — Anti- 
 quity and prevalence of usage, no proof of its accordance with the spirit 
 of Christianity. — Early corruption of every thing christian. — Ancient 
 and General customs always based on Supposed Utility. — Real question 
 at issue between the advocates and opponents of Ecclesiastical Esta- 
 blishments,— Should never have led to persecution, or to unfriendly 
 disagreement. — Severity of our Penal Statutes in relation to it 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 Character and sufferings of the early Congregationalists, commonly 
 called Brownists.— Notices of Brown, Thacker, Copping, Greenwood, 
 and Barrow. — Brownist exiles. — Character and history of Robinson ot 
 Leyden— the father of English Independency. — His disciple, the Rev. 
 Henry Jacob, forms a Congregational Church in England, on his princi- 
 ples, in 1616.— Depressed condition of Congregationalism previous to the 
 meeting of the Long Parliament.— Progress and power of Independency 
 from that time.— Causes of its ascendency.— Character of the Indepen- 
 dent ministers and churches during that period.— Their noble ^iews on 
 the subject of Religious Liberty. — The part they took against the king 
 considered.— State of parties from the death of the king to the Restora- 
 tion. — Conduct of the Episcopcilian and court party toward the Noncon- 
 formists.— Character of the reigns of Charles II. and James II. in rejiard 
 to religious liberty.— Accession of William and Mary.— The Toleration 
 
r . 
 
 XXIV 
 
 CONTEXTS. 
 
 Act.— Further progress of religious freedom prevented during that 
 reign and the reign of Queen Anne by the old court party. — The 
 Occasional Communion and Schism Bills : their character, and the 
 design of those who supported them.— Happy accession of the House 
 of Hanover. — State of religious parties since that event.— Congregation- 
 alists, Baptists, Presbyterians. — Causes of the decline of orthodoxy in 
 the latter body, aptitude of Congregationalism to preserve religious 
 truth, and to perpetuate a truly Christian Ministry.— Answers to 
 objections 2S 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 The Nonconformist controversy confined to matters of Worship and 
 Polity. — Uncliristian spirit connected -vvith it still prevalent. — Causes of 
 asperity on this subject.— Tendency of extremes to produce extremes, 
 illustrated. — Subordinate place assigned to Modes of Worship under 
 every dispensation of religion — indicated by the changes they have 
 undergone.— Designed as helps tothe weak.— Proneness to fall from the 
 Spirit to the Letter. — Doctrine and Practice of the Apostles in regard 
 to such things. — Principles of ecclesiastical polity, — their subordinate 
 value shown in the manner in which they are taught in the New 
 Testament. — No perfect system to be found there.— Convertible use 
 of terms of office. — This course of proceeding not to have been ex- 
 pected from the Apostles. — Difference between opposing them, and 
 rejecting modern interpretations of their language or conduct.— Want 
 of Apostolic Charity on these subjects in all parties 49 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 Present Position of Congregational Dissenters — Greater Numbers 
 —Still found principally in the Middle Class— Increased Public Spirit— 
 Less subject to Civil Grievance. — Peculiar Complexion and Spirit of 
 Society. — Improvement in the general character of the Established 
 Church— Present State of Parties included in it. — Methodism. — Duties 
 of Congregationalists in these circumstances. — Supreme Importance of 
 a Devout Spirit. — Necessity of great Public Exertion, — of keeping 
 pace with the more Educated Character of Society, — of Raising the 
 Standard of Ministerial Qualification,— and the Special Duty of All 
 Parties to cultivate a spirit of Consideration, Forbearance, and Charity. 72 
 
PAST AND PRESENT STATE 
 
 OF 
 
 RELIGIOUS PARTIES, 
 
 — — 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 Influence of Religious Truth on Social Freedom and Improvement,— Effect 
 of success in Particular Studies on the progress of General Knowledge. — 
 The hond of English Congregationalism always one of Principle.— View of 
 the polity so designated.— Extravagant assertions of its opponents.— Tes- 
 timony of Antiquity to the Independence of the primitive churches.— 
 Prevalence of the Union between Civil and Ecclesiastical Power in 
 the ancient and modern world,— Causes which led to it.— The Relative 
 Position of these powers always Unnatural. — Antiquity and prevalence of 
 usage, no proof of its accordance with the spirit of Christianity.— Early 
 corruption of every thing christian. — Ancient and General customs always 
 based on Supposed Utility. — Real question at issue between the advocates 
 and opponents of Ecclesiastical Establishments,— Should never have led to 
 persecution, or to unfriendly disagreement.— Severity of our Penal Statutes 
 in relation to it. 
 
 Jesus Christ once said to certain Jews who believed 
 on liim, " The truth shall make you free."* There are 
 two senses in which this emphatic saying is true. We all 
 confess its verity in the sense in which it is commonly 
 understood. We have learnt to regard the doctrine of 
 our Divine Lord as possessing a power, when accompa- 
 nied by the influence of the Holy Spirit, to free the human 
 mind from the thraldom of error, and to deliver those who 
 
 * John viii. 32. 
 
2 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 embrace it from the usurped dominion of appetite and 
 passion. To be thus free, is to " be free indeed." But this 
 moral or spiritual liberty in the case of individuals, is not 
 the only kind of freedom resulting from the influence of 
 religious truth. There is a connexion subsisting between 
 the extent in which that truth is diffused among a people, 
 and the measure in which such a community will be taught 
 to approve the things which are equal and humane in the 
 general relations of society. Falsehood, as the offspring of 
 craft and ignorance, can never dispense with the aids of 
 oppression. Its dominion is in darkness, and no effort is so 
 natural to it as that which is designed to preclude the light. 
 But men who are satisfied concerning the truth of their 
 cause, may well challenge discussion, and become the advo- 
 cates of liberty. Such men only can afford to act on so just 
 and generous a policy. It is true, the principles of social 
 justice, even while aided by favourable circumstances, may 
 sometimes be very long in acquiring that influence over 
 a community to which they are always entitled. But it 
 is not less manifest, that the power connected with " the 
 truth as it is in Jesus," is far from being such as to give 
 an immediate completeness to the work which it is de- 
 signed to accomplish on human character. In both cases, 
 however, the effect is certain, in proportion to the degree 
 in which the cause is in operation. The progress of truth, 
 in every form, is the progress of the free principle, how- 
 ever much the ignorance and selfish passions of mankind, 
 strengthened, perhaps, by artificial circumstances, may 
 tend, for a time, to impede or divert its natural course of ac- 
 tion. It is the case with the several departments of truth, 
 as with all the great objects which discipline the human 
 faculties — there is not only harmony between them, but 
 a kindred principle pervading them, so that the successful 
 
LIBERATING EFFECT OF TRUTH. 
 
 3 
 
 study of any one prepares the way to a more adequate 
 knowledge of others, until the whole circle is brought, by 
 this law of association, under the full light and cognizance 
 of the mind. In this manner the progress of the arts 
 favoured the revival of letters, and both conduced power- 
 fully to the reformation of religion as achieved by Luther. 
 Between all such things there is a constant action and 
 re-action ; and Vhile affinities bring them together, com- 
 bination gives them a power to make free. 
 
 In the history and present position of the body of Pro- 
 testant Dissenters distinguished as holding the principles 
 of Congregationalism, we see an instructive illustration of 
 these remarks. In England, the adoption of this system 
 has always been attended by loss and suffering, particu- 
 larly under the last of the Tudors, and under the house of 
 Stuart. Its continued existence, accordingly, must be 
 viewed as the effect of a strong conviction somewhere in 
 regard to its truth. Consistently with this view of it, we 
 find its voice raised at all times on the side of free discus- 
 sion and unrestricted liberty ; and, though long regarded 
 as a most pestilent heresy on this account, it has remained 
 steadfast in its demands on these points, until " the little 
 one has become a thousand," and myriads who have not 
 imbibed its temper to the full are constrained to do 
 homage to it in part. It is not difficult to trace the steps 
 by which the truth, allied with these generous sentiments, 
 has been rendered so expansive and efficient. The per- 
 sonal responsibility of man in matters of religion, was 
 the great truth proclaimed by the Reformation. By the 
 pious men whose names are conspicuous in the early 
 history of Congregationalism, that truth was not only 
 embraced with much sincerity, but was seen with a 
 clearness long peculiar to themselves in the great results 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 to which it leads. In this one principle there was a ray 
 of light, which could not be made to bear exclusively on 
 the false authority of popes and conclaves. On the con- 
 trary, it fell with no less effect on all kindred forms of 
 ecclesiastical power, and led to the adoption of many 
 other principles, all in harmony with each other, and with 
 the one source from which they were derived. Thus, to 
 be made free from one error, was to be freed from many 
 more which had long existed in natural alliance with it. 
 By the same law, the mind passes from the principles of 
 ecclesiastical to those of civil freedom ; and thus viewed, 
 the most feeble and scattered elements of truth, whether 
 natural, moral, or religious, will appear as a prolific seed, 
 the germination of which is in the way of a constant ten- 
 dency toward an ever-growing freedom. 
 
 The religious creed of the churches in England formed 
 ipon the Independent or Congregational model, has 
 dways included the distinguishing truths of the Gos- 
 lel ; the persons recognised as members of such churches 
 lave generally borne the peculiar character described by 
 he inspired writers as that of christian men ; while their 
 ■hurch polity, the effect of a simple deference to the cora- 
 )lete authority of the New Testament, has been a cease- 
 less manifestation of their scrupulous regard to the rights 
 of their neighbours in all matters civil and religious. 
 Now the effect of the truth avowed in the religious pro- 
 fession of these persons ; embodied in this manner in their 
 religious character ; and acted upon thus continually in all 
 their relations ; has been to deUver them from a state of the 
 most fearful oppression, to place them in their present 
 condition of comparative freedom, and to confer upon 
 them a power to diffuse the elements of religious and 
 social improvement, in no small degree, over the nation 
 
PRINCIPLES OF CONGREGATIONALISM. 
 
 5 
 
 at large. Their views in relation to the doctrines, the pre- 
 cepts, and the institutions of Christianity, have all been 
 more true, as the effect of their wiser and firmer adhe- 
 rence to the one true principle concerning individual 
 responsibility on matters of religion ; and the effect of 
 the whole truth embraced by them, has been to augment 
 their numbers, to improve their social position, and to 
 correct and elevate the opinions and sentiments of man- 
 kind over a space extending far beyond the circle of their 
 own communion. We thus see the declaration of our 
 blessed Lord verified in regard to our general liberty as 
 men, no less than in regard to our spiritual liberty as 
 Christians — " The truth shall make you free." 
 
 My principal object in these pages will be, to exhibit 
 the leading facts in the history of Congregationalism ; 
 and to call attention to some of the circumstances most 
 observable in the present condition of the Congregational 
 body as compared with the past. This will be done in 
 the hope of awakening smtable gratitude to God, who, in 
 his providence, has not only granted liberty to the cap- 
 tive, but caused the weak to become strong. Nor am I 
 less concerned to prosecute these objects with the consi- 
 deration and feeling, which, under the divine blessing, 
 may conduce to render us more equal to the peculiar exi- 
 gencies of the times in which we live, and more capable 
 of uniting a fervent zeal in the cause of truth, with an 
 enlightened charity toward every communion of Chris- 
 tians, and all mankind : — high purposes, it may be said, 
 to have in view, in connexion with so humble a per- 
 formance. This I admit, but I remember also, that the 
 stream which keeps the wheel in motion, accepts its 
 supplies from the smallest rivulet. 
 
 Before we proceed to our main object, it will be proper 
 
6 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 to state, in few words, what those principles are, by which 
 Congregationalists are distinguished from other denomi- 
 nations of Christians. The cause which rests upon men, 
 will fluctuate, and be of short duration. It is when num- 
 bers are brought together by the influence of principles, 
 that combination is likely to be perpetuated; and the 
 more the principles which have so operated are imbued 
 with truth, the greater is the probability of continued 
 association, and of progressive power. It is admitted, 
 that men may labour in the cause of social justice, or of 
 religious truth, and be, in some instances, successfully 
 resisted, by the overpowering strength of e\il influences. 
 That there should be such occurrences in our world, 
 where error is often so much more acceptable than truth, 
 and wrong so often prevails over right, is not at all sur- 
 prising. It is much rather wonderfid that such events 
 should be so rare, and that even when they happen, the 
 good element should so commonly be rather exiled, or 
 suppressed for a time, than utterly destroyed. The bond 
 of Congregationalism has been one of principle from the 
 beginning : its early disciples witnessed the evils of se- 
 cular interference in the concerns of religion, on a scale 
 to which we are happily strangers. The crown and the 
 mitre, with their courts of Star-chamber and of High- 
 commission, were in league against them. Circumstances 
 thus disposed them to a ripd search into the nature and 
 foundation of ecclesiastical power ; and the result was, their 
 adoption of those principles from which they derived 
 their distinction as a religious body, and which, after the 
 experience of two centuries, a much more numerous 
 people, both in the old world and in the new, are happy 
 to avow as their own. 
 
 The leading principle in this system of polity is, that 
 
PRINCIPLES OF CONGREGATIONALISM. 
 
 7 
 
 every christian church, instituted conformably to the re- 
 quisitions of the New Testament, is a strictly volmitary 
 association, existing with a view to objects purely reli- 
 gious, and governed by laws and sanctions which are 
 altogether of a spiritual nature, and derived, in the exer- 
 cise of its own independent judgment, from Holy Scrip- 
 ture. As the object of association, in this case, is strictly 
 moral and religious, so no one can be deemed admis- 
 sible to it, with any appearance of propriety, who is not 
 a person of moral and religious character. To the magi- 
 strate, Congregationalists have always looked for security 
 from civil wrong on account of their religious preferences, 
 so long as these are not acted upon in a manner incon- 
 sistent with the duties which men owe to each other in 
 society. This amount of protection is all they have ever 
 solicited, in their religious character, from the state. 
 Each body of Christians thus united by their common 
 profession, is regarded by the Congregationahst as a 
 complete church, independent of all control from the 
 civil power, or from any ecclesiastical power apart from 
 itself. Its province is in no respect to legislate ; but 
 to interpret and enforce the law of Christ as contained 
 in the canonical Scriptures — Christ himself being re- 
 garded as the only head or king of his church. Brotherly 
 reproof, accordingly, or exclusion from communion in 
 the case of the irreclaimable, are the only censures ever 
 resorted to in a church of this order. It acknowledges 
 but two classes of officers — pastors and deacons; — the 
 former acting as the teachers and spiritual shepherds of 
 the flock ; the latter employed in ministering to the tem- 
 poral wants of the poor from the contributions of the 
 church, and in conducting the temporal affairs belonging 
 to such communities. It will be seen that a regular 
 
STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 ministry is thus recognised ; but the church claims the 
 right of choosing its own pastor, and acknowledges its 
 obligation to support the person or persons who thus 
 take the oversight of it, on the ground of the apostolic 
 injunction, " that those who preach the Gospel should 
 live by the Gospel." It should be added, that while each 
 church is regarded in its separate capacity as a complete 
 church of Christ, and as competent to all the functions 
 proper to such a body, this completeness and indepen- 
 dence of particular churches, is not incompatible with 
 any local or general association of such churches with a 
 view to objects relating to their common interest, pro- 
 vided always, that such objects are pursued in such a 
 manner as to leave each church in full possession of its 
 own inalienable independence. It is from this constant 
 solicitude to secure to each church a perfect freedom 
 from all foreign legislative control, that the advocates of 
 these views have derived their name as Independents ^ — 
 the word Congregationalist having respect, somewhat in 
 the same manner, to the complete church-character of 
 every separate congregation of Christians. 
 
 With regard to these leading principles of Congrega- 
 tionalism, its disciples have been, I believe, at all times 
 of one mind ; always revering them as sanctioned by the 
 recorded example of inspired men, by their direct in- 
 junctions, or by the manifest genius of Christianity. 
 They have been accustomed also to speak of them as 
 wisely adapted to every conceivable state of the church ; 
 and as commended by its practice in the earlier and 
 better periods of its history. We must not stop to enter 
 into any discussion concerning the truth or excellence of 
 these principles. An examination of the e^'idence and 
 reasoning on which they are founded would detain us 
 
ANTIQUITY OF CONGREGATIONALISM. 9 
 
 long, and leave small space for the consideration of those 
 matters which have been mentioned as forming the 
 principal object of the present publication. But the 
 opponents of our views have indulged of late in an un- 
 wonted boldness of assertion on subjects of this nature. 
 They have affected to pity the ignorance of Dissenting 
 authors who contend that Independency is discoverable 
 in ecclesiastical antiquity, and have professed to be much 
 concerned at the credulity of Dissenters generally, in 
 receiving with so little hesitation what they hear affirmed 
 by their oracles on this subject. Nothing, it is said, 
 can be more ill-founded than any such pretension. But 
 we venture to observe that this manner of talking on such 
 a topic is not very ingenuous, and by no means such as 
 we should expect from any man of learning. We must 
 not suppose the persons adverted to ignorant of the fact, 
 that if Congregationalists err in this respect, they err 
 in company with some of the best informed writers on 
 ecclesiastical history that Europe has produced within 
 the last two centuries. During that period, not a few 
 men of this high character have declared the government 
 prevailing in the primitive church to have been essentially 
 what Congregationalists affirm it to have been. Our lead- 
 ing principle — in which nearly all the rest may be said 
 to have their origin — is the strict independence of 
 our churches. On this point the learned Mosheim, a 
 Lutheran, affords the following testimony : — ** Although 
 all the churches were, in the first age of Christianity, 
 united together in one common bond of faith and love, 
 and were in every respect ready to promote the welfare 
 of each other ; yet, with regard to government and in- 
 ternal economy, every individual church considered itself 
 as an independent community, none of them ever looking, 
 B 3 
 
10 
 
 STATE OF KELIGIOrS PARTIES. 
 
 in these respects, beyond the circle of its own member;? 
 for assistance, or recognising any sort of external influ- 
 ence or authority. Neither in the New Testament, nor 
 in any ancient docimient whatever, do we find any thing 
 recorded from whence it might be inferred that any of 
 the minor churches were at aU dependent on, or looked 
 up for direction to, those of greater magnitude or conse- 
 quence ; on the contraiy, several things occur therein, 
 which put it out of all doubt that every one of them 
 enjoyed the same rights. A greater reverence was 
 undoubtedly entertained, during the first ages, for such 
 of the churches as had been long under the unmediate 
 instruction of any of the Apostles ; but if any one thing 
 be certain, I am pei-suaded this is — that tliose churches 
 never possessed the power of governing or controlling 
 the rest.''* Gibbon, speaking of the primitive churches, 
 says, " Tlie societies which were instituted in the cities of 
 the Roman empire, were united only by the ties of 
 faith and charity. Independence and equaUty formed 
 the basis of their internal constitution. "■}• Tlie Lord 
 Chancellor King, in his learned work on the Constitution 
 of tlie Chiu-ch, assures us, tliat in primitive times, " every 
 particular church had power to exercise discipline on 
 her own members, without the concurrency of other 
 churches and Dr. Bairow, a di^"ine whom the Church 
 of England may well be proud to mention as one of the 
 most learned and honourable of her sons, has stated, 
 
 ' Commentaries on the Affairs of the Christians, i. 265 — 267. 
 t Decline and Fall, ii. 32*. 325. 
 
 X Inquiry into the Constitution of tlie Primitive Church, iStJ — 
 138. Ed- 1712. It is said that Lord King lived to confess him- 
 self in error on this subject ; but I have never met with any good 
 authority for that saying. 
 
ANTIQUITY OF CONGREGATIONALISif. 11 
 
 that in the early days of Christianity, " every church 
 was settled apart under its own bishops and presbyters, 
 so as independently and separately to manage its own 
 concerns : each was governed by its own head, and had 
 its own laws."* Richard Baxter, reviewing the contro- 
 versies of his age on points of this nature, writes, " I 
 saw a commendable care of serious holiness and disci- 
 pline in most of the Independent churches : and I found 
 some episcopal men (as Bishop Usher himself did volun- 
 tarily profess his judgment to me) did hold that every 
 bishop was independent as to, synods, and that synods 
 were not proper governors of the particular bishops, but 
 only for their concord."-!- 
 
 Now it may be that all these learned persons, and 
 others of the same class who have spoken to the same 
 effect, are mistaken, and that Congregationalists, in 
 thinking with them on this point, and in acting upon 
 this conviction, are both theoretically and practically in 
 error. But while the testimony of such highly compe- 
 tent parties — testimony so manifestly unbiassed and above 
 suspicion — is before us, it surely can be no proof of dis- 
 graceful ignorance on matters of ecclesiastical antiquity, 
 to have erred thus in relation to this subject. And be 
 it remembered, that the testimony thus borne to the 
 fact of the independence of the primitive churches, is 
 not at all more decisive than might be adduced from 
 similar sources in favour of other leading principles of 
 Congregationalism. Surely it must be no mean weight 
 of evidence which has led such men to embark the credit 
 of their scholarship on the avowal of such opinions, and 
 
 * Works, i. 662. 
 
 t Life and Time^^, lib- i. part ii. p. l iO. 
 
12 
 
 STATE or RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 that, not only without any sinister inducement, bat, in 
 most cases, at the cost of consistency. If argument must 
 be offered in support of things as they are, let it be said, 
 that, supposing the first churches to have been inde- 
 pendent, it is clear that the polity and worship of the 
 church were so left as to be subject to change according 
 to circumstances in future times : but let it never be said 
 that the practice of Congregationalists is a novelty little 
 more than two centuries old, — and, above all, let not this 
 be said with that haughty dogmatizing temper, which no 
 well-informed modest man can encounter without asto- 
 nishment and indignation. Independency is not to be put 
 down by bold assertions, however much they may out- 
 rage truth or decency. It has done more than maintain 
 its ground, when assailed by weapons firom which there 
 was much more to apprehend. It is not said by any 
 Congregationalist, that all the churches of the first three 
 centuries were strictly independent : it is merely said 
 that the svstem of Independency is that which prevailed 
 in primitive times, and that the departures firom it 
 afterwards were imauthorized and injurious, and by no 
 means so early or so general as is sometimes repre- 
 sented. 
 
 The great controversy between Congregationalists and 
 their opponents, has always referred to the alleged inde- 
 pendence of every properly constituted church, with 
 regard to the power of the state. In their views con- 
 cerning the authority of the magistrate in relation to all 
 civil affairs, they are not at issue with other portions of 
 the community to which they belong, — ^giving '* honour 
 to whom honour, tribute to whom tribute." It is only 
 when the bearer of the civil sword, forgetful of his 
 proper office as *' a terror to evil doers, and a praise to 
 
UNION OF CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 13 
 
 those who do well," has shown himself disposed to turn 
 its edge against persons of this character on account of 
 their religious principles and practices, that they have 
 manifested a spirit of active or passive resistance ; and 
 they have so done at such times under the solemn im- 
 pression — whether mistaken or not — that to render the 
 obedience demanded by man, would be to refuse the 
 obedience demanded by God. The early Congregation- 
 alists were not without their differences among them- 
 selves, some of them being more distinguished by an 
 ardent zeal, than by a broad intelligent charity; and on 
 the point of infant baptism in particular, they were 
 divided, after a while, into two communions. Such 
 disputes, however, did not affect their essential princi- 
 ples as Congregationalists. But those principles were 
 manifestly violated by the slightest intrusion of a foreign 
 legislative power, whether lay or ecclesiastical. Hence 
 it is not to be concealed, that the elements of Con- 
 gregationalism, and those of an Ecclesiastical Esta- 
 blishment, are directly at variance in all circumstances ; 
 and that they will be sure to take the position of anta- 
 gonist powers, when the only religious worship tolerated 
 is that prescribed by law. Nevertheless, there is no fact 
 in history more observable, than the union which has 
 subsisted between civil and ecclesiastical power, both 
 in the ancient and the modern world. The nature of 
 this union may vary, from the closely interwoven texture 
 of it in the East — amounting, in fact, to an identity 
 between the Church and the State — to that more separate 
 and restricted form in which it exists in Europe, as the 
 effect of the more flexible and free spirit of European insti- 
 tutions. Among us also, this combination of power has 
 varied in its adjustment, from its extreme Popish form, as 
 
14 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 in Portugal and Spain, to its extreme Protestant form, as in 
 parts of Germany and of the United Provinces. Every- 
 where, however, from the earliest time to the age of the 
 Protestant Reformation — if we except the christian church 
 during the first three centuries — we see religion, under 
 all its names and forms, as an affair to be managed by 
 the priest, more or less at the bidding of the magistrate. 
 Nor is revealed religion itself, so far as it is placed 
 before us in the Old Testament, an exception to this 
 course of things. A result so extended and so perma- 
 nent, must be traced to causes of great prevalence and 
 power. From certain great maxims of ecclesiastical 
 government recorded or suggested in the New Testa- 
 ment, or derived from the unalterable spirit of Christi- 
 anity, we have learnt to regard this connexion between 
 religion and state polity, though sanctioned in the case 
 of the religion of the Jewish nation, as solemnly precluded 
 from Christianity — the religion designed for all the com- 
 munities of men to the end of time. But the instruc- 
 tions of the New Testament on this point, have not 
 proved sufficient to control the course of the world" 
 in relation to it. Men have professed to see more to 
 sanction this union of the spiritual with the temporal in 
 one part of the divine record, than to set it aside in the 
 other ; and not a little of the practice of Paganism has 
 been almost everywhere retained, (in other respects as 
 well as in this particular,) on the ground of a real or 
 pretended deference to Judaism. 
 
 It is not difficult to understand why the civil power 
 has been thus uniformly concerned to take religion under 
 its keeping and management. Nor is there any thing 
 hard to explain in the conduct of the priesthood. If the 
 former can bestow wealth, the latter has power to give 
 
UNION OF CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL TOWER. 15 
 
 in excliange. The opulence of the state must depend 
 mainly on the wisdom and power of the magistrate ; and 
 the laws of the magistrate will always be effective in 
 proportion as they are strengthened by the sanctions of 
 religion. Thus the union of these parties has been 
 generally viewed as promising mutual advantage to them, 
 as well as good to the community ; and accordingly they 
 have everywhere discovered a willingness to enter into 
 this kind of compact. 
 
 So far, this proceeding may be pretty well understood. 
 But christian princes, in virtue of the power thus con- 
 ceded to them, have often shown a most determined 
 purpose in the enforcement of very trivial things in reli- 
 gion, much to the perplexity of persons who have failed to 
 perceive the connexion between such things and others 
 of great importance. In this pertinacity, we see the 
 jealousy of power, — not in regard to those small matters, so 
 much as in relation to the whole of that authority which has 
 enjoined them. Now the aim of that authority is nothing 
 less, than to prescribe the manner in which the subject 
 shall worship the Invisible ; the views which he shall 
 entertain concerning the powers above him ; and the 
 obedience expected from him at the peril of retribution 
 in a world to come. To speak, after this manner, in 
 every utterance and movement of man when engaged 
 in the solemnities of religious worship ; and to regulate, 
 in this manner, his general impressions and conduct, as 
 by the sanctions of futurity, has been a point of great 
 moment with princes who have been distinguished by 
 their love of power. It is a course of proceeding in 
 which the supreme magistrate acts as the interpreter of 
 religion ; and to have the power of interpreting a law, is, 
 in most cases, to have not a little of the power of making 
 
16 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 it ; and in no connexion is law-making so effective, as 
 when our decisions can be made to assume a religious 
 character. 
 
 In aiming at this object, the magistrate has, of course, 
 availed himself of the services of the priest ; and decency 
 requires that he should seem to adopt the decisions of his 
 ecclesiastical coadjutor, rather than appear to furnish con- 
 clusions on such a matter from himself. It has happened, 
 however, that the strength and temper of the civil power 
 has had much more to do with the decrees of the eccle- 
 siastical council, than the learning or the convictions of 
 the persons composing it ; and so unwelcome to the'more 
 intellectual and ambitious of the christian clergy has 
 been this unnatural position of their order, which obliges 
 them to depend on the sanction of a lay tribunal, as the 
 last resort, for the validity of their conclusions on eccle- 
 siastical differences, that frequent and boisterous disputes 
 arose from this source, long before the time of the Refor- 
 mation. Nothing, indeed, can, at a first view, appear 
 more unreasonable than this relative condition of these 
 two powers. But so long as the clerical synod shall be 
 content to receive the pay of its lay superior ; and so 
 long as it shall not only aim to impose its decisions on 
 the laity in general, but shall look to the authority of the 
 magistrate for the means of doing it ; so long must this 
 inversion of the natural order of things be continued. 
 Every such synod is aiming at what is forbidden, and 
 cannot secure its object, except by means which are 
 absurd and unlawful. It is seeking to enslave others ; 
 and we do not regret that in order to that end, it is neces- 
 sary that it should first become a slave itself. These 
 remarks are not more applicable to the conduct of Hil- 
 debrand, or of Thomas a Becket, than to the admirers 
 
UNION OF CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. 17 
 
 of the Oxford Tracts, of whom we shall have to speak 
 presently. 
 
 The English Reformation did nothing toward dis- 
 solving this unnatural adjustment, but tended rather to 
 give it strength and permanence, by adding the direct 
 ecclesiastical power of the Pope, to the secular, and the 
 previous indirect spiritual power of the Crown. And 
 every one must remember how highly this new element 
 of ascendency was valued by Henry VIII., and particu- 
 larly by Elizabeth. The former rioted in the license 
 which seemed to be thus ceded to him ; and the latter 
 ever spoke of this branch of her authority, as a depart- 
 ment of her power which nothing should induce her in 
 one jot to relinquish. It is manifest that the reasoning of 
 Elizabeth on this subject was of that broad and towering 
 description which I have endeavoured to explain. It 
 was not that she cared about the shape of a clergyman's 
 cap, or the colour of a vestment; but care indeed she 
 did as to that place in relation to the church, which 
 enabled her to command the minds as well as the bodies 
 of her subjects ; and which, by causing her to reign as 
 mistress in the great and little pertaining to religion, gave 
 her a more uncontrolled supremacy in every thing else. 
 
 But it will perhaps be said, that whatever inconsistency 
 or evil may be found inseparable from the existence of 
 this mixed power, the fact of its great prevalence must 
 be admitted as proof that it has its root deeply fixed in 
 the natural working of almost every social system ; that 
 its existence, in consequence, is all but unavoidable ; and 
 that the duty or expediency of opposing it must, on that 
 account, be exceedingly doubtful. But this is an argu- 
 ment which, if it prove any thing, proves too much. If 
 we should all become supporters of church establish- 
 
18 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 ments because Christianity is everywhere known in that 
 form from the fourth century to the age of Luther, then 
 ought we all to go a step further, and become Papists, 
 inasmuch as all the elements, both of superstition and of 
 domination, from which " the man of sin" derived his 
 power, were at work before that period. These elements, 
 indeed, were all expanded and systematized, by slow and 
 imperceptible degrees, in subsequent time ; but they were 
 all there, ready to be so wrought upon — monkery and 
 celibacy ; holy oil, holy vestments, and holy water ; the 
 magic power of the sacraments ; the sanctity of relics ; 
 lying miracles, and works of supererogation ; confession, 
 indulgences, and penance, and nearly all the rest. In 
 becoming what we are as sober christian men, we have 
 set at nought the example of the universal church, 
 almost from the age of the Apostles to our own. We 
 have gone up at once to the times of the New Testament, 
 ami have determined to unlearn every thing not to be 
 learnt there. And have we not done well in being thus 
 decided and thus bold? But having learnt by so doing to 
 set at nought the terrors of superstition, and having cast 
 off the bands of a haughty priesthood, is it when we 
 come to the question concerning the province of the 
 magistrate in regard to religion that we must begin to do 
 homage to error, — and all, forsooth, because it is very 
 prevalent and has lasted very long ? If it be come to 
 this, then let us go out upon the spaces of the past, and 
 learn the whole of the lesson it has to teach ; let us cease 
 to be the men we have supposed we were, and let us fall 
 back in all things upon that state of childhood which we 
 liave flattered ourselves with having outgrown. But we 
 are not, I presume, disposed to furnish any such exem- 
 plification of consistency. 
 
PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 19 
 
 In speaking thus of the compact between the civil ma- 
 gistrate and the ministers of religion, as existing in a hea- 
 then and in christian nations, we have not said that this 
 kind of agreement has always been one of pure selfishness, 
 or that its effects on communities have been purely evil. 
 The fact has often been far otherwise. No social institu- 
 tion will ever become general, and continue long, without 
 possessing an intimate connexion with real or supposed 
 utility. But admitting that the pagan magistrate has 
 made the sort of religion at his disposal to be productive 
 of more social good than evil ; and that a people with a 
 Christianity provided altogether by the state, are in far 
 better circumstances than a people without any Chris- 
 tianity at all ; we are still far enough from seeing our 
 way to the conclusion, that the chief design of our reli- 
 gion is realised when it becomes thus subservient to 
 worldly policy, and that its best condition as a spiritual 
 system is as set forth in state expositions, and as pro- 
 vided for by state enactments. 
 
 One thing is indisputable — it was not the will of its 
 all-powerful Author that it should obtain its first hold 
 on mankind by such means ; and while it is certain from 
 fact, that he then approved of its being kept apart from 
 all state control, and required that its independent per- 
 fectness and efficiency should be thus demonstrated, 
 men have now to follow a dubious process of reasoning, 
 in order to persuade themselves that the same system may 
 be lawfully placed under a control of that nature in these 
 later times. The fact shows, that the system may be 
 perfect, apart from any such connexion : the reasoning 
 has to show, that it is not damaged of necessity, and 
 very materially, by it. 
 
 It should always be borne in mind in discussions on this 
 
20 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 subject, tliat there is no difference of judgment amonf 
 Christians of any class, in regard to the right and duty 
 of every professedly christian community to provide the 
 means of religious instruction for the people at large. 
 The only point at issue, is one relating to the tnanner in 
 which such communities should proceed to the per- 
 formance of this imperative service. The Church- 
 man contends, that instruction of this nature, if not 
 provided in his manner, will fail to be provided at all; 
 the Dissenter is of another mind, and persuaded that the 
 quantity of the supply on his method would be equal, 
 and the quality far better. It must be acknowledged 
 that the question, though relating exclusively to the 
 mode, and not at all to the duty of furnishing the required 
 supply, is one of great importance. But inasmuch as 
 men equally distinguished by learning, piety, and appa- 
 rent integrity, have come to strictly opposite conclusions 
 respecting it, there is one further conclusion, in which both 
 parties ought to have been fully agreed — namely, that 
 the point is not one of those on which any amount of 
 supposed error should have been allowed to prevent or 
 disturb the exercises of christian esteem and affection 
 among really devout men, — much less to bring upon 
 supposed offenders, the fines, imprisonments, exile, and 
 death, which have been so often inflicted on them, as the 
 punishment due to such delinquency. As both parties 
 may be equally sincere, and even honest, in adopting 
 their conclusions, there is nothing in the fair discussion 
 of such questions to justify displeasure on either side. 
 And if the dispute should pass from mere discussion to a 
 demand for great pubhc measures, there is even then as 
 little just ground for offence as before, provided those 
 measures are sought by strictly constitutional means. 
 
NATURE OF ECCLESIASTICAL SUPREMACY. 21 
 
 Should the measures so demanded be of a description 
 not to be brought about except by violence, still it may 
 be, that not one in a thousand of those who desire them 
 have seen them in that light, or would be parties to a 
 sino^le act of violence for the sake of them. 
 
 Now it has not been the necessary consequence of the 
 principles of Congregationalism, that it should have stood 
 so long alone in asserting the proper independence of 
 religion with regard to the coercive elements of worldly 
 power. We can conceive of Episcopalianism as being in 
 all respects what Congregationalism has been, except as 
 including three orders in the place of two ; and Presby* 
 terianism, as we all know, may exist, by choice, in a state 
 completely separate from all secular control. But it so 
 happened, that from the age of the Reformation to that 
 of the Commonwealth, it was peculiar to Congregation- 
 alists — always meaning by that term the Baptist and 
 Psedo-baptist denominations — to claim exemption from 
 the power of the state in their religious affairs, and to 
 maintain that christian churches should be strictly 
 voluntary associations. From the time of the Common- 
 wealth, the Quakers avowed the same principles, and 
 adhered to them with the spirit of martyrdom. Episco- 
 paHans have always clung to the ecclesiastical supremacy 
 of the crown ; and such of the Puritans as became Pres- 
 byterians of the most sturdy sort, while objecting strongly 
 to certain things which that supremacy was employed to 
 uphold, always professed to regard the power itself with 
 great deference. In fact, to oppose that power of the 
 crown, by speech, by writing, or by acting in indepen- 
 dence of it, in the age of Ehzabeth, was to be convicted 
 of felony, and even of treason, — her right of sovereignty 
 in the church, being a point no more to be questioned 
 
22 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 than her claim to be the head of the state. To bow to 
 the last of these pretensions only, was, in the language 
 of James I., to give the body to the prince, the soul 
 to another, and thus to reject the better half of the domi- 
 nion which he claimed. How the modest doctrine, thus 
 openly avowed, is to be reconciled with the injunction, 
 Render under Coesar the things that are Caesar's, and 
 imto God the things that are God's," the Dissenter is at 
 a loss to discover. Happily for all parties, time has 
 destroyed the force of this usurpation, and has limited 
 its exercise among us, in a great degree, to the circle of 
 persons who choose to submit to it, in the modified form 
 in which it now exists. 
 
SECTION II. 
 
 Character and sufferings of the early Congregationalists, commonly called 
 Brownists. — Notices of Brown, Thacker, Copping, Greenwood, and Barrow. 
 — Brownist exiles. — Character and history of Robinson of Leyden — the 
 father of English Independency. — His disciple, the Rev. Henry Jacob, forms 
 a Congregational Church in England, on his principles, in 1616. — Depressed 
 condition of Congregationalism previous to the meeting of the Long Par- 
 liament. — Progress and power of Independency from that time. — Causes of 
 its ascendency.— Character of the Independent ministers and churches 
 during that period. — Their noble views on the subject of Religious Liberty. 
 — The part they took against the king considered. — State of parties from 
 the death of the king to the Restoration.— Conduct of the Episcopalian and 
 court party toward the Nonconformists. — Character of the reigns of 
 Charles II. and James II. in regard to religious liberty.— Accession of 
 William and Mary. — The Toleration Act. — Further progress of religious 
 freedom prevented during that reign and the reign of Queen Anne by the 
 old court party. — The Occasional Commvmion and Schism Bills: their cha- 
 racter, and the design of those who supported them.— Happy accession of 
 the House of Hanover. — State of religious parties since that event. — Con- 
 gregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians. — Causes of the decline of orthodoxy 
 in the latter body, aptitude of Congregationalism to preserve religious 
 truth, and to perpetuate a truly Christian Ministry. — Answers to objections. 
 
 It is not until about the middle of the reign of ^Eliza- 
 beth, that the religious persons in this country, whose 
 principles led them to separate themselves from the 
 Established Church, became so considerable as to attract 
 the notice of the government, and to obtain a place in 
 history. They were then called Brownists or Barrow- 
 ists — designations derived from two of their leaders. 
 Brown was a clergyman, and educated at Cambridge, a 
 popular preacher, and nearly related to Cecil, the lord 
 treasurer. But his restless and impassioned temper, led 
 
24 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 to unsteadiness of principle and disorderly conduct, and he 
 ended his days in obscurity and disgrace as a conformist. 
 His connexions, the sort of ability which he possessed, 
 and his sufferings during some years on account of his 
 principles, made him notorious ; and his subsequent 
 conduct disposed the enemies of the Brownists to fasten 
 his name upon them, hoping, it would seem, by that 
 means, to attach the disgrace of the individual to the 
 party by which he was disowned. In 1593, an act was 
 passed which required the Brownists to abjure the realm ; 
 and which further declared, that such as should remain 
 beyond a specified time, or return without license from 
 the queen, should suffer death as felons. While the bill 
 which became law in this form was under discussion. 
 Sir Walter Raleigh said, in his place in parliament, that 
 he thought it possible some 20.000 men might be con- 
 victed of Brownism ; and he demanded to know, in case 
 of their banishment, as the bill proposed, what was to 
 become of their wives and children.* During some 
 years previously, it had been the practice of the govern- 
 ment to commit persons of this description to prison, 
 wherever they were found ; where they remained, sub- 
 ject, at the pleasure of their persecutors, to every sort of 
 privation and suffering. One of these persons died in 
 itewgate in 1592, and his fellow-prisoners placed the 
 following inscription on his coffin : " This is the corpse 
 of Roger Rippon, a servant of Christ, and her majesty's 
 faithful subject, who is the last of sixteen or seventeen 
 which that great enemy of God, the archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, with his high commissioners, have murdered in 
 Newgate within these five years, manifestly for the 
 
 ♦ D'Ewt's Journal, 517. 
 
EARLY CONGREGATIONALISTS. 
 
 25 
 
 testimony of Jesus Christ."* Beside tliosewho suffered 
 death by the slow and secret torture of imprisonment, 
 and the many whose days were embittered or shortened 
 by exile, were several who perished under the hands of 
 the executioner. Elias Thacker and John Copping thus 
 suffered at Bury St. Edmonds ; their crime being, that 
 they had circulated writings which impugned the eccle- 
 siastical supremacy of the crown. This was in 1583, 
 and four years later similar proceedings were instituted 
 against John Greenwood and Henry Barrow. Green- 
 wood was a divine, and had officiated as such among the 
 Brownists ; Barrow was a lawyer. Both were convicted 
 of holding principles which bespoke their disaffection to 
 the Established Church ; and their avowal of such princi- 
 ples being construed as sedition, they were condemned 
 as felons, and executed. The same fate awaited Penry, 
 another eminent Brownist, whose sentence was founded 
 on his having among his private papers, certain manu- 
 script observations on ecclesiastical affairs, which a jury 
 was instructed to regard as sufficient proof of sedition. 
 Penry was said by some to have been the author of the 
 Mar-prelate tracts ; but no evidence to that effect could 
 be adduced against him. All these persons held in 
 substance the principles of Congregationalism ; all might 
 have escaped by a disavowal of those principles ; but all 
 had learnt to value the testimony of a good conscience 
 as more precious than life. These martyrs all died 
 professi.ig their attachment to the person and govern- 
 ment of the queen ; and though they belonged to a sect 
 looked upon with jealousy, and even hatred, by the 
 greater part of the Puritans, as well as by the court 
 
 * Strype's Annals, iv. No. 90. 
 c 
 
26 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 clergy, their loyalty and integrity, as evinced in the 
 article of death, produced so strong an impression in 
 their favour, that the queen and the bishops deemed it 
 expedient to abstain from inflicting capital punishment 
 on such offenders in future. 
 
 From that time, such of these separatists as were 
 detected, were quietly committed to some neighbouring 
 prison. If they refused to recant, they were left to end 
 their days in confinement, or were banished from the 
 kingdom. Among the Brownist teachers, and those who 
 soon afterwards became distinguished as such, upon 
 whom these severities fell, we may mention Johnson, 
 Smith, Ainsworth, Canne, Robinson, and Jacob, all of 
 whom, with many of their followers, found an asylum in 
 Holland. In 1598, these exiles published an account of 
 their faith and principles, which is sufficiently explana- 
 tory of both, and an admirable defence of their pro- 
 ceedings. In 1604, the year after the accession of 
 James I. this work was republished, and addressed to 
 the divines of Oxford and Cambridge, in answer to some 
 censures recently made public by those learned bodies. 
 It is a document which is alone sufficient to show, that 
 the people whose views it represents, were not so un- 
 lettered, nor in any respect so contemptible, as their 
 enemies were disposed to insinuate. 
 
 Ainsworth and Canne, though better known in our 
 time than some of their colleagues, by means of their 
 biblical labours, were not on the whole in advance of 
 them. Jacob was educated at Oxford, Johnson and 
 Robinson at Cambridge. The last-mentioned person 
 appears to have been in all respects highly estimable. 
 He held a benefice near Yarmouth, which he resigned 
 on conscientious grounds ; and having exercised his 
 
EARLY CONGREGATIONALISTS. 
 
 27 
 
 ministry in secret for some years, was obliged to aban- 
 don his country. He then became pastor of a church 
 consisting of English exiles at Leyden. After he 
 had laboured in that connexion twelve years, a great 
 part of his flock resolved on transporting themselves to 
 America, in the hope of giving perpetuity to their prin- 
 ciples in that country, and of forming an asylum there 
 to which the persecuted in England might at any time 
 escape. Two vessels were procured to bear the exiles 
 and their stores to their place of destination. The new- 
 colonists amounted to about one hundred and twenty 
 persons ; and after receiving much valuable advice, and 
 the tenderest expressions of regard from the lips of their 
 pastor, and having spent a whole night in prayer, they 
 committed themselves to their voyage. Robinson, and 
 such of the church as remained, knelt on the beach, 
 and as their former companions passed over the distant 
 waters, commended them, with a fervour which such 
 circumstances could alone have produced, to Him, who 
 in his time will " execute righteousness and judgment 
 for all that are oppressed." 
 
 Robinson died in 1626, in the fiftieth year of his age. 
 He was a man of solid learning, of excellent judgment, 
 and though a great sufferer from persecution, which not 
 unfrequently impairs the temper even in the best regu- 
 lated minds, he lived and died, beloved as much for his 
 amiableness as he was respected for his integrity. Some 
 of the most learned men in the University of Leyden 
 received him to their friendship, and appeared, with 
 many of the Dutch clergy, as attendants at his funeral. 
 In his parting address to those who became pilgrim- 
 fathers in the new world, he expressed his regret that 
 Protestants in general so little understood their prin- 
 c 2 
 
28 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 ciples ; the Lutherans halting with Luther, and the 
 Calvinists with Calvin. "This," he says, "is a misery 
 much to be lamented, for though they were burning and 
 shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into 
 the whole council of God ; but, were they now living, 
 would be as willing to embrace farther light as that which 
 they first received. I beseech you to remember, it is an 
 article of your church covenant, that you should be 
 ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to 
 you from the written word of God. But I must here 
 withal exliort you to take care what you receive as truth; 
 for it is not possible that the christian world should come 
 so lately out of such thick antichristian darkness, and 
 that perfection of knowledge should break forth at once." 
 So admirable was the combination of holy caution and 
 bold enterprising thought, in the character of the man to 
 whom the English Independents of a later period have 
 been accustomed to look as to their founder. 
 
 In a work, written in Latin, entitled " A Defence of 
 the People commonly called Brownists," Robinson used 
 the word independenter, to denote that independence of 
 foreign control proper to every Congregational church, 
 which has been already explained ; and it is supposed, 
 that from this use of the term, its application to the 
 polity it is now used to designate originated. This term, 
 however, was not known as the designation of a religious 
 body until the time of the civil war. The system of 
 Robinson varied, in some respects, from that of the 
 Brownists, as the effect apparently of his greater intelli- 
 gence and moderation. 
 
 Jacob embraced all the views of Robinson, and to him 
 belongs the distinction of forming the first Congregational 
 church in England — that church which we see per- 
 
INDEPENDENCY UNDER THE LONG PARLIAMENT. 29 
 
 petuated in the body of Christians who are now united 
 in the fellowship of the Gospel in Union Street Chapel, 
 Southwark. The return of Mr. Jacob to England, and 
 the formation of the first Independent church by his 
 means, belong to the year 1616. On that solemn occa- 
 sion, the minister and the people appointed a day for 
 fasting and prayer. After the devotional services, each 
 person present made audible confession of faith in Jesus 
 Christ ; and then, standing together, they joined hands, 
 and " solemnly covenanted with each other, in the pre- 
 sence of Almighty God, to walk together in all God's 
 ways and ordinances, according as he had already re- 
 vealed, or should further make known to them." Mr. 
 Jacob was then chosen pastor by the suffrage of the 
 brotherhood, and deacons were appointed by the impo- 
 sition of hands.* But this little band was thrown on 
 evil times. Until the meeting of the Long Parliament in 
 1640, those who worshipped apart from the Established 
 Church were indebted for their safety in some measure 
 to the unsettled nature of public affairs, but still more 
 to the secrecy of their movements. 
 
 With the meeting of Parliament in 1640 fell the 
 power of the ruling clergy. Puritanism threw off the 
 yoke which had been so long fastened upon it ; and 
 Independents and Baptists came forth from their con- 
 cealments at home, and returned in considerable numbers 
 from abroad. The history of Congregationalism from 
 this time to the Restoration, is a subject of which it is 
 impossible to treat with any tolerable effect in a brief 
 space. It soon found its advocates in the senate; and 
 in the course of two or three years, it was embraced by 
 
 * Research concerning the most ancient Congregational Church 
 in England. By B. Hanbury. Pp. 7, 8. 
 
so 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 the largest and much the most efficient portion of the 
 army at the disposal of the Parliament. Before the 
 masculine powers displayed by these men, both in council 
 and in the field, — the pride of the ambitious churchman, 
 the finesse of the silken courtier, and the courage of the 
 chivalrous cavalier, all were humbled to the dust! 
 And when all the force that could be brought against 
 them in the cause, as they believed, of an intolerant 
 hierarchy and an arbitrary government, was scattered 
 and subdued, and Presbyterianism in the two kingdoms 
 betrayed a disposition to go up into the place of prelacy, 
 and to lord it there too much as other lords had done 
 before, then these same men humbled Presb5i;erianism, 
 south and north, as they had humbled the power which 
 preceded it. War is ever to be deplored, and above 
 all, civil war ; but if the sword must be unsheathed, 
 it is well to see it turn the scale on the side of the 
 injured. 
 
 The number of religious persons in that age who 
 professed to belong to the sect of the Independents, 
 was never so considerable, apart from the army, as to 
 account for the impression made upon the times by this 
 party. But what they wanted in that respect, was sup- 
 plied, in part, by the large and various body of persons 
 who acted with them, for the sake of those general 
 principles of liberty to which they were known to be 
 attached, and not from any real sympathy with their 
 religious sentiments ; and in part also, by the greater 
 intelligence, and more practical sort of ability, which they 
 brought to the maintenance of their cause, both as 
 statesmen and soldiers. They had suffered more than 
 any other class of persons, and were prepared to attempt 
 more in order to prevent a recurrence of the same evils. 
 
THE INDEPENDENTS ADVOCATE TOLERATION. 31 
 
 They saw more to be at stake, and were willing to 
 hazard more with a view to protection. 
 
 In the Assembly of Divines, the Independent ministers 
 known by the name of the " dissenting brethren " never 
 exceeded twelve ; " but these," says Dr. Lingard, "were 
 veteran disputants — eager, fearless, and persevering, 
 whose attachments to their favourite doctrines had been 
 riveted by persecution and exile, and who had not 
 escaped from the intolerance of one church, to submit 
 tamely to the control of another."* Bailey, the dele- 
 gated champion of Presbyterianism in that assembly on 
 the part of Scotland, writing to his brethren in that 
 country, says of these Independent ministers, " Truly 
 they speak much, and exceedingly well — if their cause 
 were good ; the men have plenty of learning, wit, elo- 
 quence, and above all, boldness and stiffness to make it 
 out."-f- Clarendon also describes the Independents as 
 more learned and reasonable than the Presbyterians, and 
 their congregations as including " some of the most sub- 
 stantial and wealthy citizens, as well as others of better 
 condition," though less numerous than the other sect. 
 Even Baxter, whose weak point was a horror of sects, 
 and particularly of the Baptists and Independents, ad- 
 mits that the ministers of the latter denomination were 
 in general, " learned, discreet, and godly men, fit to be 
 serviceable to the church;" and speaks of their church 
 proceedings as showing " a commendable care of serious 
 holiness and discipline." J The dissenting brethren in 
 the assembly did not hesitate to avow that the magistrate 
 is bound to abstain from putting " the least discourtesy 
 on any man, Jew, Turk, Papist, Socinian, or whatever, 
 
 » History of England, x. 274. f Letters, i. 436. 
 
 ^ Life and Times. Lib, i. Part ii. p. 140. 
 
32 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 for his religion."* It required a long interval to abate 
 the terror which the first announcement of this noble 
 truth excited both among Presbyterians and Episco- 
 palians. It was, nevertheless, a truth, and a truth, as we 
 this day feel, preeminently powerful to make free ! 
 
 The great crime laid to the charge of this party, is 
 the death of the king. The Independents, however, 
 were not all agreed in regard to that measure, nor were 
 they by any means alone in bringing it to pass. Sir 
 Harry Vane, their leader in parliament, was not the 
 only distinguished man of their party opposed to it. 
 By this time, the objects of the war, and the complexion 
 of the army, had undergone a material change ; so much 
 so, that it may be doubted whether the majority of those 
 who were most concerned in sealing the fate of the king, 
 were persons making any pretension to religious cha- 
 racter ; and, what is more, from the information we 
 possess as to the manner in which Colonel Hutchinson 
 proceeded to perform his part in that sad tragedy, it is 
 manifest that a man might have approved of bringing 
 Charles the First to the block, and still be, in other 
 respects, an enlightened patriot, and a devout Christian. f 
 
 • Baillie. ii. 18. 
 
 f "As for Mr. Hutchinson," says his noble-minded consort, 
 " although he was very much confirmed in his judgment concerning 
 the cause, yet being here called to an extraordinary action, whereof 
 many were of several minds, he addressed himself to God by prayer, 
 desiring the Lord, that if through any human frailty he were led into 
 any error or false opinion in those great transactions, he would open 
 his eyes, and not suffer him to proceed, but that he would confirm his 
 spirit in the truth, and lead him by a right enlightened conscience ; 
 and finding no check, but a confirmation in his conscience, that it was 
 his duty to act as he did, upon serious debate, both privately, and in 
 his addresses to God, and in conferences with conscientious, upright, 
 and unbiassed persons, proceeded to sign the sentence against the 
 
DEATH OF CHARLES I, 
 
 33 
 
 Nor was the proceeding itself by any means so morally 
 simple as some men would lead the unwary to suppose. 
 It was, in my judgment, an error, and a crime, but a 
 crime which a multitude of circumstances serred to ex- 
 tenuate ; and one of which no man can judge wisely, 
 except as those circumstances shall have been all consi- 
 derately weighed — a task which the superficial will be 
 sure to leave unperformed. 
 
 During the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, 
 liberty, civil and religious, was conceded, on the whole, 
 to as great an extent as was compatible with the safety 
 of the existing government. Presbyterianism was the 
 estabHshed religion ; but CongregationaUsm was tole- 
 rated in the church, in the universities, and elsewhere. 
 
 king. — Although he did not then believe, hut it might one day come 
 to be again disputed among men, yet both he and others thought they 
 could not refuse it without giving up the people of God, whom they 
 had led forth and engaged themselves unto by the oath of God, 
 into the hands of God's and their enemies ; and therefore he cast 
 himself upon God's protection, acting according to the dictates of a 
 conscience, which he had sought the Lord to guide ; and accord- 
 ingly the Lord did signalize his favour afterwards to him." — Meynoirx 
 of Colonel Hutchinson, ii. 158. And whatever maybe thought of 
 the following character which this writer has given of Charles 
 the First, it is sufficient for my purpose that such views were really 
 entertained concerning him by some of the most religious and ho- 
 nourably disposed persons among the party opposed to him. " The 
 example of the French king was propounded to him, and he thought 
 himself no monarch, so long as his will was confined to the bounds 
 of any law ; but knowing that the people of England were not pliable 
 to an arbitrary rule, he plotted to subdue them to his yoke by a 
 foreign force, and, till he could effect it, made no conscience of 
 granting any thing to the people, which he resolved should not oblige 
 him longer than it served his turn ; for he was a prince that had 
 nothing of faith or truth or justice or generosity in him. He was 
 the most obstinate person in his selfwill that ever was, and so bent 
 upon being an absolute uncontrollable sovereign, that he was re- 
 solved to be such a king or none." — Ibid. i. 129. 
 
 c 3 
 
34 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PABTiES. 
 
 We can now only conjecture as to what might have been 
 the fate or influence of this system, if the delegated mi- 
 nisters and laymen who constituted the Savoy assembly, 
 in 1658, had been permitted by Providence to add to 
 their general declaration concerning the faith and order 
 of their body, the further measures which they contem- 
 plated, with a view to its more organized existence, and 
 efficient operation. That assembly included represen- 
 tatives from about a hundred Congregational churches. 
 But the death of Cromwell, while these matters were in 
 progress, was followed by the overthrow of his wise and 
 magnanimous policy, and by a return of all the evils 
 which his sagacity had foretold. The Presbyterians, 
 regaining their ascendancy, lost no time in joining ^^dth 
 the old royalists m restoring the exiled family ; and this 
 they did, in a manner which demonstrated that, as a 
 body, they were not to be taught even by the lessons of 
 experience. 
 
 Charles the Second would have tolerated both Pres- 
 byterians and Congregationalists, partly from an indifier- 
 ence to both, and partly in consequence of some regard 
 for his declaration on that subject from Breda ; but 
 much more from the hope of being able to make such a 
 measure subservient to the toleration of the Catholics, 
 — the convenient faith of that people having become his 
 own. But the bishops, with Clarendon at their head, 
 were determined from the first upon a very different 
 course. The policy of this party at that memorable 
 juncture may be stated in few words. It was to secure, 
 in the first place, every possible advantage by delay, and 
 by making grave pretences to a spirit of conciUation ; 
 and then, as soon as matters should be matured for such 
 a course of proceeding, to shut up the whole body of 
 
SUFFERINGS OF NONCONFORMISTS. 
 
 35 
 
 nonconformists to the alternative, of either giving up 
 their livings, or retaining them with such manifest 
 inconsistency, as could not fail to deprive them of their 
 character. They shall become beggars or knaves, men 
 without substance or men without reputation, — was the 
 amiable and honourable decision of that party who, only 
 a few short months before, had poured the oil of flattery 
 on Presbyterian susceptibility with no sparing hand. 
 The good easy men who had been won over by such 
 means, fully believing the promises that were made to 
 them, now gazed on their opponents with wonder 
 and dismay — but it was only to find insult added to 
 treachery. On St. Bartholomew day, accordingly, nearly 
 two thousand beneficed clergymen resigned their livings, 
 rather than hold them in violation of their avowed con- 
 scientious principles : thus was there excluded from the 
 Established Church, in one day, an amount of piety, 
 which it has required, as we shall presently see, the 
 labours of nearly two centuries to replace. 
 
 But from this time, where are we to find the principles 
 of Congregationalism ? During almost thirty long years 
 we have to look for them as a sort of under-current in the 
 stream and working of human affairs, rising only at times 
 and very partially to the surface. What the principles 
 were that became ascendant in the place of them, we 
 may infer from the Conventicle Act, which declared 
 all persons presuming to worship God in any other 
 manner than the law prescribed, liable to fine, or im- 
 prisonment ; which punished the third offence of that 
 nature with banishment ; and made the return of a 
 nonconformist exile, without permission, capital. We 
 may look also, for the same object, to the Five-Mile Act, 
 which banished the nonconformist clergy to that distance 
 
STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 from every corporate town, and forbade their acting as 
 schoolmasters, unless prepared to take the oath of pas- 
 sive obedience and non-resistance. Nor must we forget 
 the Test Act, which excluded all persons who scrupled 
 to take the sacrament of the Lord's Supper according 
 to the rubric of the Church of England, from holding 
 any place of civil trust. 
 
 Throughout that dark and troubled period, we find 
 the nonconformists alternately caressed and insulted ; 
 flattered to-day, only to be deceived to-morrow ; in- 
 dulged at one season by a suspension of the law, and op- 
 pressed at another mider colour of it, as happened best 
 to suit the selfish purposes of the sovereign, or of the 
 factions of the hour. From the preface to De Laim's 
 " Plea for the Nonconformists," we learn that the author 
 of that work was regarded as one of more than eight 
 thousand persons, who, during the reign of Charles II*, 
 had died in the confinement to which they were subject, 
 as the penalty of dissenting from tlie worship of the 
 Established Church. And if the report which has reached 
 us, concerning the names of sufferers of this class, as 
 collected by ]\Ir. Jeremiah '^Miite, may be relied upon, 
 the number mentioned as having died in prison, in- 
 cludes not a sixth part of those who suffered, more or 
 less, from the same cause. It is less difficult to believe 
 the substance of these reports, incredible as they may 
 happily seem to us in these better times, inasmuch as 
 proceedings of this extended and merciless description are 
 ascertained in the instance of the Quakers, soon after the 
 Restoration ;* — so covered was the land with that class 
 
 * " Now were the prisons everywhere filled with Friends, and 
 others, in city and country ; and the ports were so laid for searching 
 of letters, that none could pass uusearahed. Yet we heard of 
 
WILLIAM III. — COMMUNION AND SCHISM BILLS. 37 
 
 of men, who, being placed in exclusive possession of the 
 civil power, were prepared to wield it to the purposes of 
 religious intolerance, by setting up a sort of Inqui- 
 sition in almost every city and town through the 
 kingdom. 
 
 But the happy day which witnessed the fall of the 
 last of the Stuarts, witnessed the end of the enactments 
 which led to these barbarous proceedings. The Con- 
 venticle Act and the Five-Mile Act, gave place to the 
 Act of Toleration. The gratitude and joy of the noncon- 
 formists of all sects under this change were abundant, 
 and their consequent attachment to the throne of William 
 and Mary was most ardent. William was not ignorant 
 of this fact, and would gladly have enlarged their well- 
 merited libeity by repealing the Test Act, and by some 
 other arrangements. But it soon became evident that 
 the king was much in advance of the parliament, and of 
 the majority of his new subjects, in his views on such 
 matters ; and during his reign, and that of his successor, 
 it was with the utmost difficulty, and not without the 
 manifest interposition of Providence in its favour, that 
 the Toleration Act was retained. The supposed provi- 
 sions of that act were narrowed very materially by the 
 bills on Occasional Conformity and Schism, which were 
 
 several thousands of our friends, that were cast into prison in several 
 places throughout the nation ; and Margaret Fell carried an account 
 of them to the king and council. The next week we had an account 
 of several thousands more that were sent into prison, and she went 
 and laid also them before the king and the council. They wondered 
 how we could have such intelligence. But in the deep sense I had 
 of the sufferings our friends underwent, I was moved to send them 
 a word of consolation, and to put them upon sending up their suf-* 
 ferings." — Fox's Journal, i. 560. In November 1660, four hundred 
 men and women were " in close holes and prisons " about London, 
 —Ibid. 557. 
 
38 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 carried toward the close of this period. And supported 
 as those measures were by Church mobs in London, and 
 in many parts of the country, who not only insulted the 
 persons, but destroyed the meeting-houses of the non- 
 conformists, there is only too much reason to think, that 
 had not the death of Queen Anne prepared the way 
 for the accession of the house of Brunswick and a 
 liberal government, the Toleration Act itself would have 
 shared the fate of the Edict of Nantz. 
 
 Many of the Presbyterian nonconformists had been 
 accustomed to commune at the altars of the Established 
 Church from the time of the Restoration, and were in 
 consequence qualified, even by the provisions of the 
 Test Act, to hold civil oflices. The Occasional-Com- 
 munion Bill was framed to exclude these persons from 
 all such trusts. The Schism Bill restricted the work of 
 education to certificated churchmen, who were never to 
 be seen in a conventicle, under severe penalties. Dis- 
 senters were thus shut up to the- alternative of bringing 
 up their children without the advantages of a public 
 education, or of sending them to receive instruction from 
 parties who, from inclination and circumstances, would 
 be commonly disposed to imbue their general instruction 
 with sectarian prejudice. The clergy alone could appoint 
 these persons to their office ; and the object of the bill 
 was plainly to enfeeble and crush the body against which 
 it was directed — their known intelligence ha\dng tended 
 to accomplish in their favour, what their numbers alone 
 could never have achieved. These measures readily 
 secured large majorities in the Commons, composed as 
 that house then was, of persons described by Bishop 
 Burnet as belonging to a gentry the most ignorant in 
 Europe. The far better spirit of the Lords was opposed 
 
GEORGE I. SUBSEQUENT STATE OF PARTIES. 39 
 
 with success, during more than seven years, to the first 
 of these bills. Both, however, speedily passed, when 
 the queen placed the weight of government in the 
 hands of the enemies of freedom — a party to which 
 she was naturally much inclined, being the daughter 
 of James the Second, and the grand-daughter of Lord 
 Clarendon. Bolingbroke, who took the lead in these 
 proceedings, was weU known to be an infidel ; but his 
 High-church friends forgot his infidehty in their admira- 
 tion of his intolerance. 
 
 If the nonconformists had good reason to be attached 
 to the throne of William and Mary, they had scarcely 
 less cause to rejoice in the accession of the house of 
 Hanover. If William the Third gave them the Toleration 
 Act in the place of the Conventicle and Five-Mile Acts, 
 George the First secured to them their liberty of worship, 
 unfettered by the iniquitous provisions of the Occasional- 
 Communion and Schism Bills. With the accession of 
 the present royal family to our throne, the friends of 
 popular freedom and of religious liberty were recalled to 
 office ; and as no body of men in the land has had greater 
 cause to cherish a spirit of loyalty toward tlie house of 
 Brunswick than Protestant Dissenters, so none have 
 excelled them in that feeling. 
 
 It may be worthy of remark, that the privilege con- 
 ferred — or, we should rather say, the right secured, by 
 the Toleration Act, was earnestly solicited by the Rev. 
 Henry Jacob, the pastor of the church now assembling 
 in Union Street, Southwark, from James I. The 
 petition in which he pleaded for this liberty, may be 
 still seen annexed to one of his publications. From the 
 period when this great object was realized, to the time 
 in which we live, Congregationalism has made steady 
 
40 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 progress in all parts of the kingdom, everywhere re- 
 taining its hold on the "faith once delivered to the 
 saints," — Watts and Doddridge entering into the labours 
 of Owen and Howe. The course of our Baptist brethren, 
 if we except a few of the General Baptist denomination, 
 has been upon the whole equally honourable to them. 
 Would we could speak to the same effect of the Pres- 
 byterians. From the age of Elizabeth to the Restoration, 
 the ministers of that denomination were distinguished 
 by their sound views of religious doctrine, by holiness 
 of life, by great purity of manners, by the zeal which 
 they manifested for the diffusion of religious truth, 
 and by the maintenance of a high spirit of loyalty, 
 with a decided attachment to civil freedom. Their 
 rehgious intolerance was their great fault. In this 
 respect they knew not how to concede to others, what 
 they demanded for themselves. After the Restoration 
 they became more moderate, and learnt by degrees to 
 give up all expectation, and, we should perhaps say, all 
 desire, to see their polity, established in the manner for 
 which their predecessors had contended. It would 
 have been well had they stopped at this point. But 
 at no great distance of time from the passing of the 
 Toleration Act, the party which had come forth from 
 hot wars, maintained for more than a hmidred years, 
 against popery and prelacy on one hand, and independ- 
 ency and sectarianism on the other, is seen falling with 
 rapidity from its steadfastness on points of much 
 greater moment than any questions of polity or dis- 
 cipline. The morals of the schools take the place of the 
 cross of Christ ; the rough Covenanter, not to be moved 
 by argument or entreaty, becomes the smooth philo- 
 sophical believer ; and English Presbyterianism, in 
 
DECLINE OF PRESByTERIANISM ITS CAUSES. 41 
 
 consequence, which once seemed to take half the king- 
 dom along with it, becomes an affair confined to one of the 
 most diminutive of modern sects. Even Methodism, 
 which came upon society like an influence destined to 
 move every thing from its old course and position, came 
 without effect on this once powerful body of professors. 
 Congregationalism has profited largely by this new influ- 
 ence, and the Church of England not less so ; but 
 English Presbyterianism, the old antagonist of both, 
 dozing, in the manner incident to age and infirmity, has 
 hardly seemed to be aware of the approach of this novel 
 power, though reducing its house more and more to 
 ruin about it every day. 
 
 Why this declension should have taken place thus 
 widely in connexion with Presbyterianism, and be almost 
 unknown in connexion with Congregationalism, is a ques- 
 tion deserving some consideration. The Presbyterians, 
 during some time after the Revolution, were much the 
 most numerous and wealthy body among the dissenters, 
 and included of course the larger proportion of educated 
 nonconformists. Their places of worship also, were the 
 most considerable in regard to numbers and endowments. 
 The temptation to religious indifference, so common when 
 external difficulties subside, was stronger in the case of 
 these persons, from their more easy circumstances ; and, 
 at the same time, there was a peculiarity in Presbyteri- 
 anism which led the people to vest high powers in certain 
 officers chosen from among themselves, powers which in 
 great part should not have been thus delegated ; and the 
 class of persons most liable to the sort of defection adverted 
 to, were generally raised to these responsible trusts. In 
 the admission of communicants, in all negociations with 
 ministers, and especially in the management of the 
 
42 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 property belonging to the interest, the influence of these 
 functionaries was often such as to enable them to con- 
 tinue a ministry among them, which even the majority 
 were known to disapprove. In the disputes which arose 
 from tliis cause, if numbers were on one side, strength 
 was generally on the other, and the dissatisfied com- 
 monly withdrew to other communions. It is true, 
 Presbyterianism may be so guarded as to be protected 
 against this tendency toward the evils of oligarchy : but 
 dangers of this nature are inseparable from it. These 
 wealthy elders and trustees soon melted away, for the 
 greater part, into the Estabhshed Church ; and those who 
 remained, have succeeded in giving a sort of perpetuity 
 to an expiring cause principally by means of funds which 
 the piety of former generations bequeathed to very 
 different purposes. Had the authority of the people in 
 those churches been such as Congregationalism would 
 have conferred upon them, and had they acted upon 
 that authority, such results would not have appeared. 
 Arianism, or Socinianism, might have reached to some 
 of their ministers, and to small minorities among them- 
 selves, but the root and substance of their churches 
 would have remained, and have been flourishing at this 
 day. 
 
 It is indeed a fact, that in America, Unitarianism has 
 made its appearance in churches of the Congregational 
 order. But it has so done, in part as the effect of the 
 covert process by which it has stolen its way along : in 
 part also by resting itself in that country, as in our own, 
 on the mal-appropriation of endowments : and above 
 aU, as the consequence of a very defective exercise, on 
 the part of the people, of the rights which pertained 
 to them. That community of di^'inely-taught persons, 
 
OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 43 
 
 — or, in other words, that " congregation of faithful 
 men," which we intend by the scriptural use of the 
 term church, — is " the pillar and ground of truth." 
 It has revealed wisdom as its sacred deposit. For the 
 preservation of that wisdom, and the diffusion of it by 
 means of a competent ministry, it is exclusively, and 
 beyond every thing, responsible. Against this church 
 the gates of hell shall not prevail ; to this community 
 only can it belong to understand what is proper to the 
 character of a christian ministry ; and from this source, 
 and under this authority, that ministry must proceed, if 
 it is to have any certain existence in the world. Every 
 other medium of supply must be more or less defective. 
 It may send forth good men, but they will make their 
 appearance as by chance, and as exceptions ; not with 
 any moral certainty, as the effect of a sufficient rule. 
 So rare will they be, that when they come the pious will 
 always look upon them as a god-send. This truth was 
 but imperfectly understood, and still more imperfectly 
 carried out by the body of the laity among the English 
 Presbyterians ; and in consequence, error could gain ad- 
 mission, and keep its footing among them, as it could 
 not elsewhere. It is not hazarding much to affirm, that 
 if a once orthodox church has ever been convened, in 
 order that it might express its approval of heterodox 
 opinions, this has not been done until the services of the 
 preacher have so far thinned the pews, as to make the 
 experiment quite safe. 
 
 But we must bring this view of the progress of Con- 
 gregationalism, and of the struggles of religious parties 
 in past times, from which its history is inseparable, to a 
 close. My endeavour has been to make a true report ; 
 remembering that the precept, " Thou shalt not bear 
 
44 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 false witness against thy neighbour," applies to the dead 
 no less than the living, and to bodies of men as well as 
 to indi%'iduals. In the limits to which I have restricted 
 myself, it is not possible that I should protect the state- 
 ments I have made from misrepresentation, by bringing 
 forth all the authorities or reasonings on which they are 
 founded : but being fully satisfied that the views of by- 
 gone contests which I have presented are correct, I have 
 stated them freely. It is not improbable, however, that 
 persons accustomed to look on these subjects through 
 the medium of one class of writers only, may be little 
 pleased "with the general representation now made. 
 It may be said to me, " You know, or at least ought to 
 know, that it was the law, which in the time of Eliza- 
 beth made the conduct of the Bro\NTiists seditious and 
 treasonable ; and that so long as a denial of the queen's 
 ecclesiastical supremacy was deemed a capital offence 
 in the instance of the Cathohc, an exception could not 
 with decency be made in favour of the Protestant offend- 
 ing against the same statute. And with regard to the 
 tolerant spirit which you attribute to Congregationalism, 
 did it not concur, as soon as it became powerful, in put- 
 ting down Episcopacy, in proscribing the liturgy, and in 
 depriving multitudes of clergymen of their li-vings, as 
 the punishment of their conscientious loyalty?" These, 
 and such like, are the partial and indiscriminate views 
 which the educated classes in this country have been too 
 commonly taught to entertain with regard to questions 
 of this nature in our history. 
 
 But would it not be well in such persons to bear in 
 mind, that if the statute of Elizabeth referred to was so 
 constructed as to identify dissent on a point of religion 
 with sedition in the state, it was principally because the 
 
OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 45 
 
 queen, and those who acted under her direction, would 
 have it so ? * Would it not be well also for such persons 
 seriously to ask themselves whether decency did not 
 require that a difference should be made, between the 
 Catholic and the Protestant offender against the queen's 
 ecclesiastical supremacy ; seeing that the former opposed 
 that supremacy from being in alliance with a foreign 
 priest who laid claim to it, and often with the Catholic 
 powers as supporters of that pretension ; while the latter 
 did so in favour of the supposed claims of the Divine 
 Redeemer, and in the exercise of a stronger hostility to 
 Romanism, than was felt by the men of any other party 
 in the nation ? Can it be suspected that the queen and 
 the prelates, had they been inclined to make an excep- 
 tion in the case of the latter class of offenders, would 
 have been wanting in the ability to do so ? And with 
 regard to the conduct of the Independents in power, or, 
 more properly, to that of Cromwell, who became strong 
 in their strength, it is conceded by writers accounted 
 the greatest enemies to the memory of that extraordinary 
 man, that " he would have governed constitutionally, 
 mildly, mercifully, liberally, if he could have followed 
 the impulses of his own heart, and the wishes of his 
 better mind:" and that nothing but "self-preservation 
 compelled him to a severe and suspicious system, "f 
 Cromwell was the head of a party, which became 
 ascendant after the state had been divided into two 
 hostile factions, each incapable of trusting the other ; so 
 that adjustment was impossible, and nothing remained 
 but victory for one side, and subjection to the other : and 
 
 * D' Ewe's Journal, 519. 
 
 f Quarterly Review, xxv. 345-6. 
 
46 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 the man is a sorry student of history, who can expect 
 to see a government of mild and equal laws following 
 immediately on such a state of things. It is admitted, 
 that the framework of the hierarchy was broken down, 
 and that the use of the liturgy, if in some degree con- 
 nived at, was not tolerated; but the party which 
 always maintained that the magistrate should forbear " to 
 put discourtesy on any man, whether Jew or Turk, or 
 whatever, on account of his religion," could not have 
 manifested this opposition to Episcopacy and the liturgy, 
 on their own account. These things were indeed pe- 
 culiarly obnoxious, as tending to perpetuate the memory 
 of former wrongs. It is certain, however, that they 
 were not suppressed for that reason, but in consequence 
 of the political disaffection, which, after many experi- 
 ments, was found to be inseparable from them.* On 
 the ejecting of the royalist clergy from their livings, if 
 the testimony of Richard Baxter on this point will be 
 admitted, — and a more competent or honest witness in 
 relation to it could not be adduced, — it may be safely 
 believed, that the instances of that kind of hardship, 
 — or, we would rather say, of deep wrong, — were ex- 
 ceedingly rare.f But when persons of this description 
 
 • Bishop Kennet says, " It is certain the Protector was for 
 liberty, and the utmost latitude to all parlies, so far as consisted 
 with the peace and safety of his person and government ; and even 
 the prejudice he had against the episcopal party was more for their 
 being royalists, than for their being of the good old Church. — 
 Dr. Gunning, afterwards bishop of Ely, kept a conventicle in 
 London, in as open a manner as Dissenters did after the toleration, 
 and so did several other episcopal divines,"— Complete History of 
 England, iii. 223. 
 
 f " Because this assembly of triers is most heavily accused and 
 reproached by some men, I shall speak the truth of them, and sup- 
 pose my word will be taken, because most of them took me for one 
 
OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 47 
 
 chose to employ the influence of their station in the 
 church, to strengthen and spread hostihty against the 
 powers of the state, the times were so unsettled and 
 perilous, as to render a quiet tolerance of such pro- 
 ceedings unwise and unjust. Whether many who were 
 convicted of offending in this manner were so guilty 
 as to deserve the whole of the punishment inflicted on 
 them, must be regarded by all dispassionate men as 
 very doubtful. But on the other hand, such men will 
 at once admit that there is no comparison to be made 
 in this repect between the conduct of the triers under 
 the Parliament and Commonwealth, and of the bishops 
 at the Restoration. 
 
 At the Restoration, the state of parties was widely 
 
 of their boldest adversaries. The truth is, though their authority- 
 was null, and thougli some over rigid and over busy Independents 
 among them were too severe against all that were Arminians, and 
 too particular in inquiring after evidences of sanctification in those 
 whom they examined, and somewhat too lax in admitting of 
 unlearned and erroneous men that favoured Antinomianism, or 
 Anabaptism, yet, to give them their due, they did abundance of 
 good to the church. They saved many a congregation from igno- 
 rant, ungodly, drunken teachers, — that sort of men who intend no 
 more in the ministry than to say a sermon, as readers say their 
 common prayers on Sunday, and all the rest of the week go with 
 the people to the ale-house, and harden them in sin ; and that sort 
 of preachers, who either preached against a holy life, or preached 
 as men who were never acquainted with it : these they usually 
 rejected, and in their stead admitted of any tliat were serious 
 preachers, and lived a godly life, of what tolerable opinion soever 
 they were. So that, though many of them were a little partial for 
 the Independents, Separatists, Fifth-monarchy men, and Anabap- 
 tists, and against the Prelatists and Arminians ; yet so great was 
 the benefit above the hurt which they brought to the church, that 
 many thousands of souls blessed God for the ffuthful ministers 
 whom they let in, and grieved when the Prelatists afterwards cast 
 them out again." — Life and Timei, 72. 
 
48 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 different. No hazard could have resulted to the chiTrch 
 or the state by the adoption of lenient measures, inas- 
 much as the Presbyterians and the old Royalists 
 combined, embraced an overwhelming majority of the 
 nation. Nevertheless, the treatment of the Presbyte- 
 rians, and of all classes of nonconformists, was such as 
 we have related. And as little is there to be said in 
 favour of the proceedings of the same party, during the 
 reign of William III. and Queen Anne. It is my 
 sincere wish to make all fair allowance, even for 
 persecutors ; conceding all that may be justly urged in 
 their favour, on account of the tastes, excitements, or 
 prejudices of their times. But when this is done, I am 
 at no loss to perceive on which side the balance of wis- 
 dom, justice, and humanity, has nearly always turned in 
 the history of this protracted controversy. It is one 
 thing to exercise charity in judging the conduct even of 
 such churchmen as Laud and Sheldon, and of such 
 Presbyterians as ruled almost to the last in the Long 
 Parliament ; and another to speak of those times in the 
 tone of a man insensible to the evils of persecution, and 
 strano^e to the s^ratitude and reverence due to the 
 memory of those confessors in the cause of christian and 
 general liberty, whose labours and sufferings have done 
 so much to place us among the most free-born and 
 happy of mankind. 
 
SECTION III. 
 
 The Xonconfoimist controversy confined to matters of Worship and Polity.— 
 Unchristian spirit connected with it still prevalent.— Causes of asperity on 
 this subject. — Tendency of extremes to produce extremes, illustrated. — 
 Subordinate place assigned to Modes of Worship under every dispensation 
 of religion — indicated by the changes they have undergone. — Designed as 
 helps to the weak. — Proneness to fall from the Spirit to the Letter. — Doctrine 
 and Practice of the Apostles in regard to such things.— Principles of eccle- 
 siastical polity,— their subordinate value shown in the manner in which 
 they are taught in the New Testament.— No perfect system to be found 
 there.— Convertible use of terms of office.- This course of proceeding not to 
 have been expected fi-om the Apostles.— Difference between opposing them, 
 and rejecting modern interpretations of their language or conduct.— Want 
 of Apostolic Charity on these subjects in all parties. 
 
 Many of the controversies by which the church has been 
 agitated, have had respect to the great truths of our 
 holy rehgion ; but the matters in dispute between the 
 conformists and nonconformists in EngHsh history, have 
 been confined, ahiiost entirely, to points of worship and 
 discipline — things which should never have been allowed 
 to place good men at such issue with each other. Happy 
 should we be if we could speak of the infirmities con- 
 nected with such disputes as belonging to the past only. 
 But if the discussion be less allied than formerly with the 
 ascendency of one party and the prostration of others, it 
 still leads to an uncharitableness of temper and proceeding 
 which no sober-minded Christian will look upon without 
 grief. It would not, therefore, we think, be well to leave 
 this part of our subject without endeavouring to exliibit 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 Still more strongly, the inconsistency, and the positive 
 irreligion of all such contention on subjects of this nature 
 as is found to be incompatible with the cordial intercourse 
 and real communion of truly devout minds. It is in 
 charity, and not in uniformity, nor in a strict sameness of 
 judgment even on other points, that v^e must find the 
 bond of perfectness." 
 
 When men begin to make religion an object of serious 
 attention, causes the most various generally combine 
 to produce their ultimate preferences in relation to it. 
 The opinions, sentiments, or usages, thus preferred, may 
 vary considerably, or only very little, from the more 
 generally received standard : but in either case, the mind 
 even of the dullest will commonly be sharpened to the 
 utmost in the defence of points, which are at once, in 
 some sort, the objects of favouritism, and the matters 
 which constitute the line distinguishing the persons who 
 embrace them from Christians of other communions. 
 These things belong to the outposts of our various en- 
 campments — the ground where collision begins, and is 
 most frequent ; and where, in consequence, a hostile 
 feeling is likely to become habitual and intense. In 
 the hope of protecting these obnoxious peculiarities 
 against this frequency and rudeness of assault, men will 
 be tempted to magnify their importance, to vest them 
 with a high measure of sanctity, and will often learn by 
 degrees to account themselves religious in proportion to 
 their zeal in support of them, and to deem other men 
 irreligious in proportion to their opposition to them. 
 
 Our Divine Lord charged the Pharisees with having 
 made void the law through their traditions, and with 
 having added many superstitious usages to the ritual 
 which Moses had delivered to them ; and nothing can be 
 
MODES OF WORSHIP THEIR RELATIVE VALUE. 51 
 
 more plain than that in the judgment of that sect, the 
 adoption or rejection of their own inventions was the 
 most certain evidence that any man could afford as to his 
 religion or impiety. Human nature in this respect is 
 still the same, and, placed in similar circumstances, is too 
 often found betraying the same weakness. Extremes 
 are ever producing extremes, and like producing like. 
 The Sadducees who believed too little, were the natural 
 offspring of the Pharisees who believed too much : and 
 the sect in modern times which shall raise what is pecu- 
 liar to it as a sect, to the place of what is common to it 
 as a part of the great christian community, may soon find 
 that its nearest and most formidable opponent will not 
 be indisposed to cope with it in this new movement by 
 taking a similar position. In the days of Lord Bacon, 
 churchmen in this country began to assert, not only that 
 Episcopacy was the primitive ecclesiastical government, 
 but that without it there could be no christian church or 
 religion.* But this was no sooner done than the Pres- 
 byterians, both in England and Scotland, began to discover 
 that their polity was based on this divine and exclusive 
 right ; and the result was, that all thought of settlement, 
 by any thing like mutual concession, was abandoned, and 
 the war between those parties became one in which each 
 aimed at nothing less than victory and the extinction of 
 the vanquished. In one or the other of these foolish 
 extremes, nearly the whole nation was soon afterwards 
 included. We speak of them as foolish, because so they 
 must appear if dispassionately viewed in the light of Holy 
 Scripture ; and the same spirit in our own time is entitled 
 
 * Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Church of 
 England.— Works, vii. 28—60. 
 
 D 2 
 
52 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 to no better description. "Weakness, indeed, is not the 
 element in it most to be deplored. 
 
 That considerable diflference in modes of ivorship 
 should not be allowed to separate the hearts of Christians 
 from each other, may be inferred from the relation which 
 every thing ritual in religion bears to rehgion itself. It 
 has its existence solely as means to an end. It is in- 
 tended to embody the truths and lessons of piety, so that 
 the reason and the heart may be attracted toward them 
 through the medium of the senses and the imagination. 
 This is the end proposed by them ; and the great point, 
 accordingly, would seem to be, not so much to know 
 whether a man has been very careful in the observance of 
 what we may deem the most scriptural and devout form of 
 worship, as whether he is found to possess that spiritual 
 intelligence and feeling, for the sake of which, and for 
 the sake of which alone, all such external forms have 
 existence. If the end be obtained, it must have been by 
 the use of means, and of means to which God, in every 
 such case, has put his seal of approbation. Men may be 
 taught to observe the forms of godliness without knowing 
 the power of it, but the converse is impossible. The 
 sameness of christian character among persons adopting 
 different modes of worship, is not only a proof of the 
 subordination of forms, as means to an end, but of the 
 condescension of God in operating upon the soul through 
 means so various and contradictory, and, of necessity, so 
 imperfect and erroneous. It is a bad sign when we 
 seem more concerned to make formalists than to make 
 Christians. 
 
 Tliis subordinate character of every thing pertaining to 
 modes of worship, is further intimated in the change 
 which they have undergone in different ages of the Church. 
 
MODES OF WORSHIP CHANGEABLE. 
 
 53 
 
 The principles of religion, and the great rules of duty, 
 have been the same from the beginning ; but not so the 
 manner in which men have been required or permitted to 
 approach their Maker in the formal acts of worship. 
 This has varied with all the freedom of a positive insti- 
 tution, which is either good or evil, simply as it may 
 happen to have been enjoined or prohibited by the 
 Almighty. In the patriarchal age, the worship of God 
 was conducted in the manner which it is natural to ex- 
 pect in a comparatively rude state of society ; and sub- 
 sequent to the age of Moses it was carried on by means 
 of a complex and splendid ritual, which accorded, on the 
 same principle, with the more advanced civilization of the 
 people who were then called to engage in it. On the 
 introduction of the present economy, the whole of that 
 elaborate ceremonial which stood in connexion with 
 the preceding dispensation was abolished. Thus the 
 scaffolding has been changed, as the edifice has pro- 
 ceeded. The present dispensation will conclude with 
 the raising of the last stone to its place amid shoutings 
 of grace, grace, unto it ;" and our instructions concerning 
 the external machinery by which this last portion of the 
 structure is to be raised, are few, simple, and often 
 indirect, presenting a marked contrast to those contained 
 in the Book of Leviticus. So possible is it that religion 
 should be perpetuated, and continue the same, while the 
 outward forms connected with it present not a little 
 variety and change. Abraham looked forward to the 
 Great Sacrifice from the wood-pile on Mount Moriah ; 
 and Isaiah, from the splendid ceremonial of the temple ; 
 and with Paul it was an object of retrospect, as he dis- 
 pensed to the church the bread and wine of the Eucharist. 
 It should tend also to moderate our estimate of all that 
 
54 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 • 
 
 is visible in our modes of worship, when we call to mind 
 that SO far as they are designed to convey instruction, 
 they are at best only so many proofs of our weakness, 
 existing in consequence of our inaptitude to learn 
 except as taught, in the manner of children, by the 
 assistance of pictures. It may be well that the installa- 
 tions of knighthood, the inauguration of magistrates, and 
 the coronation of monarchs, should be attended with the 
 ceremony and pomp which usually accompany them. 
 In such pageantries we see the effort of the human 
 spirit to give visibility to the high abstractions of thought 
 and sentiment involved in the relations sustained by 
 such personages. But in all such performances the 
 philosophic statesman has an eye to the impression 
 usually made by them on the many, and not to any 
 fitness in them to convey information, or to present any 
 really imposing spectacle to minds like his own. Reli- 
 gion, in every age and country, has had its ceremonial, 
 in common with the state, and for the same ends. We 
 except the ritual of the Church from this observation 
 only in part, though of di\'ine appointment, and chosen 
 by Infinite Wisdom to become the vehicle of revealed 
 truth. So far as it has been emblematic, it may be 
 regarded as the language of condescension addressed to 
 imbecility ; and whether simple or complex in its tex- 
 ture, men have too often shown a much stronger dispo- 
 sition to sink down to the letter of such observances, than 
 to rise to the spirit of them. Accordingly, under the pre- 
 sent dispensation, — the last and the perfect economy of 
 the divine goodness to men, — the human mind is treated 
 as though less needing assistance of this sort than in 
 ancient times, and is left with a slight outline, or passing 
 hints for its guidance. The great object now placed 
 
DIVERSITY OF FORMS APOSTOLIC MAXIMS. 55 
 
 before men is the worship of the Father in spirit and in 
 truth ; and where there is most of that kind of worship, 
 there will be least inclination to attach great importance 
 to mere ecclesiastical prescription on such matters. The 
 men who made broad their phylacteries, and who, in 
 many other respects, were not content with the ritual 
 which God had enjoined upon them, are described by 
 the Searcher of hearts, as persons who had lost the spirit 
 of devotion, and who would fain have substituted their 
 zeal about such things in its place. 
 
 This view of the relative value of modes of worship, 
 as indicated in their general character, and in some 
 things pertaining to their history as connected with the 
 ancient church, must dispose the thoughtful and unpre- 
 judiced to anticipate that spirit of moderation in which 
 all such matters were regarded by the Apostles, and 
 by the primitive Christians. Nothing is more certain 
 from the apostolic records than that differences in this 
 respect obtained in the primitive Church, and that 
 such differences were not deemed incompatible with a 
 cordial union among Christians. St. Paul urges upon 
 believers, often and earnestly, the importance of culti- 
 vating the utmost possible agreement, both in opinion 
 and ecclesiastical usage. But at the same time, being 
 well aware that diversity on such matters would continue 
 to arise, he laid it down as a general rule, that Christians 
 should think charitably concerning the motives of each 
 other in regard to such things, so long as they were not 
 of a description to entrench upon the truths necessary to 
 the existence of true religion. 
 
 Thus the customs of the Jews in relation to the 
 sanctity of certain meats and days, were adhered to by 
 some who became converts to Christianity, and were 
 
56 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 abandoned by others. Tliis difference of judgment and 
 conduct, among men who had been alike Jews, and who 
 were now alike professors of Christianity, was viewed by 
 the Apostle as tending to produce disputes and schisms. 
 To prevent such a result he enjoins that the man whose 
 greater light enabled him to avail himself of his full 
 liberty as a Christian, so as to cease from all such usages, 
 should not despise his brother, whose more Hmited views 
 left him still in subjection to them ; and that the latter, 
 instead of looking on the greater freedom assumed by 
 the former as proceeding from a want of regard to 
 di\'ine authority, should see in it nothing more than a 
 difference of judgment consistent with a sincerity of 
 intention not inferior to his own. Thus the primitive 
 Christian was to be prepared to say on this question, 
 " He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord : 
 and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth 
 not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord : for 
 he giveth God thanks : and he that eateth not, to the 
 Lord he eateth not ; and giveth God thanks." The 
 object of both, the one in doing, and the other in not 
 doing, is traced to the same source — a solicitude to 
 fulfil the will of God; the different conduct pursued, 
 being the natural result of the different judgments formed 
 concerning that will. In this manner, diversity was to 
 be softened and blended, under the presiding influence 
 of charity. Every man would of necessity have his own 
 views concerning such things ; but instead of making the 
 precise accuracy of such v-iews his great object, he was 
 called upon to judge rather, that no man through want 
 of candour and consideration in respect to questions of 
 that nature, should put a stumbling-block, or an occasion 
 to fall, in his brother's way. The great objects of the 
 
WORSHIP APOSTOLIC MAXIMS AND PRACTICE. 57 
 
 christian fellowship were not to be hazarded, on account 
 of customs having no essential relation to them. Men 
 were not thus to destroy the work of God for the sake 
 of meat. 
 
 Hence, to the same body of Christians, the Apostle 
 addressed himself after this wise : — " The kingdom of 
 God is not meat and drink ; but righteousness and peace 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things 
 serveth Christ, is acceptable to God, and approved of 
 men. Let us follow after the things which make for 
 peace, and things wherewith one may edify another." * 
 Here our being acceptable to God, is made to rest on 
 moral grounds, apart from every thing ceremonial — 
 " righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost:" — 
 and we are exhorted to the special study of such things 
 as tend most to edify or build up this spiritual structure 
 in the soul. 
 
 On the controversy relating to circumcision the Apostle 
 also expressed himself in the same tone of holy expostu- 
 lation, vindicating the moderation of his views on that 
 subject by a similar appeal to the ascendency of the moral 
 over every thing merely ritual, which is so characteristic 
 of the present dispensation, as the " dispensation of the 
 Spirit." While men were wasting their strength, and 
 sacrificing their christian temper, if not their Christi- 
 anity, in disputes about a Jewish rite, the Apostle, in the 
 true feeling of his vocation, exclaimed, " Circmncision 
 is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing ; but keeping 
 of the commandments of God." Again also he says, In 
 Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor 
 uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many as 
 walk according to this rule, peace be on them and mercy !" 
 
 * Rom. xiv. 
 D 3 
 
58 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 " Let them retain circumcision, or let them set it at 
 nought, the great point with me is to know that they are 
 believing, regenerated men, arid as such it shall ever 
 be mine to rejoice in them as parts of the Israel of God. 
 Partaking of this character, they are now in reality, and 
 will ere long be openly, the accepted of the ]\Iost High, 
 and have an abundant entrance administered unto them 
 into the kingdom of his dear Son, when many a zealot 
 who denounced them as mere pretenders, because they 
 were or were not circumcised, shall be excluded." His 
 calling, the devout Apostle assures us, was not that he 
 should be absorbed in the discussion of such questions, 
 but that he should be set for the defence of the Gospel, 
 considered in its great doctrines and purpose. It was 
 for this cause, and not as finding pleasure in debates 
 concerning meats and drinks, or circumcision, or strivings 
 about the law, that he was *' in labours more abundant, 
 in stripes above measure, in prisons frequent, in deaths 
 oft." Henceforth, he exclaims, let no man trouble me 
 with such questions, for I bear in my body the marks of 
 the Lord Jesus — proofs that I seek not my own things, 
 and that the things of others which I do seek, are not 
 those which influence the zeal of the formalist. 
 
 Thus the course which the Apostle commended to 
 others, was constantly exemplified in his own conduct. 
 We find him conforming with what he must have regarded 
 as a worthless, but inoff'ensive ceremony, by purifying 
 himself in company with four men who had a vow. 
 This he did in compliance with the advice of certain 
 brethren at Jerusalem, and in hope of abating the force 
 of the prejudice raised against him in consequence of his 
 being every where charged with aiming at nothing less 
 than an immediate abolition of the IMosaic customs. It 
 
WORSHIP — APOSTOLIC MAXIMS AND PRACTICE. 59 
 
 was no doubt true that he wished to see those customs 
 utterly abolished ; but it was not true, as insinuated and 
 affirmed, that he made an absolute renunciation of them 
 a necessary preliminary to the profession of the Gospel. 
 On the contrary, Jewish converts were always borne 
 with in the indulgence of their fond attachments on that 
 point, so long as they were not ensnared by them, after 
 the manner of the GalatianSj into a dependence on such 
 observances inconsistent with a saving reliance upon the 
 cross of Christ. In this better sense, our Apostle con- 
 sented to the circumcision of Timothy, looking at the 
 very time upon the prejudice to which he thus bowed as 
 a lamentable weakness. 
 
 And this was the course which he always pursued, 
 opposing himself, with a firmness which nothing could 
 move, to every such use or view of existing customs as com- 
 ported not with a due recognition of the essential truths of 
 the Gospel : but always tolerant in respect of them so long 
 as they were kept in subordination to the spirit of evan- 
 gelical religion. He would not conform to any thing 
 which his own conscience regarded as positively evil ; 
 nor did he require such conformity from others ; but 
 harmless usages, and even such as were, in some respects, 
 from the weakness of human natiu-e, of doubtful tendency, 
 if the good hkely to result from the use of them, promised, 
 in the peculiiir circumstances and spirit of the times, to be 
 much greater than the evil to which they might be per- 
 verted, he did not scruple to comply with them himself, 
 and failed not to bear with them in others. 
 
 Now from these facts it would seem to follow, and with 
 a clearness not to be innocently misapprehended, that 
 every professing Christian who suffers his mind to become 
 alienated from his brother Christian on account of his 
 
60 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 particular preferences in regard to modes of worship, is, 
 to the extent of such alienation, placing himself at issue 
 with Apostolic precept and example ; and that all systems 
 which make such things essentials of communion, are 
 necessarily so far antichristian. Men who act in the spirit 
 of such systems, withhold the due exercise of brotherly 
 affection, upon grounds on which an Apostle, thougli 
 possessing all the authority of inspiration, would not 
 have withheld it. Those extraordinary persons, whose 
 miracles sometimes taught the multitude to regard them 
 as gods in the likeness of men, and who spoke with the 
 tongue of angels more than of humanity, were accustomed 
 to respect even the weakest selections of a misguided 
 conscience in such matters. Not that they were without 
 authority to have put an end at once to all such differ- 
 ences, and to have established a perfect uniformity of 
 worship, both among Jews and Gentiles ; but they saw 
 in the application of the Gospel to the fallen spirits of 
 men, the beginnings only, of a slow, though certain 
 recovery, and they no more insisted on an immediate 
 perfection in respect to the outward forms of worship, 
 than in regard to the weightier matters of spiritual 
 attainment. Had it been the design of the Gospel to give 
 completeness at once to the power of godliness, it would 
 have been only consistent to have required the same in 
 its form. But so long as it was found to be expedient, and 
 even necessary, to bear with deficiencies in the greater 
 things of the spiritual life, it would have been to fall 
 into the capital error of the formalist in every age, to 
 have manifested a less tolerant spirit concerning religious 
 ceremonies — particularly, as even the dispensations of 
 Heaven had proclaimed all such things to be mere 
 a(^uncts, always liable to change or abolition, and 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY ITS DESIGN AND ORIGIN. 61 
 
 connected with religion more as matters of expediency 
 than necessity. 
 
 Beside which, the Apostles could not but foresee that 
 questions of this nature would vary in their complexion 
 in every age and country, in consequence of the differ- 
 ences of national character and customs. Hence, though 
 they might have settled all points of this description 
 which arose in their own age, as their inspired authority 
 terminated with themselves, no provision existed for the 
 infallible settlement of such questions in future. The 
 example, accordingly, which the apostles have left, is not 
 that of the zealous ritualist, insisting on a rigid uni- 
 formity, but that of men who were careful to inculcate 
 a d exemplify forbearance in such things, to the utmost 
 extent consistent with preserving the great elements of 
 a devout Christianity. Happy and honoured spirits ! 
 would that all who have professed to follow in your path 
 had been ennobled by the same large views of the reli- 
 gion of the cross, and constrained to look with the same 
 humanized sympathy on the infirmities of their common 
 nature ! Fearful will be your rising in the judgment 
 against the men who have boasted much of treading in 
 your steps, or of being inheritors of your functions, while 
 lost to your conceptions of the religion they have pro- 
 fessed, and aliens from the spirit by which in your history 
 it was so richly adorned ! What a scene would the past 
 have presented to the eye of the ecclesiastical historian, 
 if the mantle of apostolic charity had indeed fallen on 
 all who in after times professed and called themselves 
 .Christians ! What is now as the arid desert, had then 
 been as the garden of the Lord ; and regions awfully 
 desolate, as by the outbreaks of a volcano, had been 
 clothed with verdure and fertility, and the place of j.oy 
 
62 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 and melody ! We might then have possessed a truly 
 national church, or have had sects without sectarianism, 
 and the enemy would have lacked his abundant occasion 
 to blaspheme. 
 
 The reasoning advanced, for the purpose of showing 
 the subordinate place assigned in the christian system to 
 every thing merely ritual, applies generally to its me- 
 thod of presenting all questions relating to ecclesiastical 
 government. Its worship and its polity are alike means 
 to an end, and derive the whole of their worth from adap- 
 tation to their object. But as church polity embraces 
 rules affecting the system of instruction, as well as mat- 
 ters of government, and is designed to preserve the sub- 
 stance, of which every thing ceremonial is merely the 
 shadow, it was of importance that its great principles at 
 least should be distinctly indicated. How far we con- 
 sider this to have been done, will appear from what has 
 been said elsewhere. 
 
 It is deserving of notice in relation to our object, that 
 the ecclesiastical polity of the New Testament assumed 
 the shape in which it is known to us by slow degrees, 
 and under the influence of circumstances ; and not, it 
 would seem, as the effect of any abstract theory pre- 
 viously existing in the mind of the inspired writers. 
 Our blessed Lord, in calling to himself his twelve 
 Apostles, in giving his commission to the seventy, and in 
 imparting to the economy of his church the social com- 
 plexion set forth in the seventeenth of ]\Iatthew, had 
 respect to usages which had become sacred among the 
 people to whom he ministered. There was a sanctity 
 attached, in the popular imagination, to those numbers ; 
 and the outline of ecclesiastical relations and government 
 delivered to his church in the chapter adverted to, was 
 
POLITY now ENJOINED ON THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH. 63 
 
 taken, as all learned men agree, from the long established 
 polity of the Jewish synagogues. He well knew that 
 the effect of custom on the mind of the Jewish people 
 would be to dispose them strongly toward such a form 
 of government ; while its simplicity, its independence of 
 the civil power, and the ease with which it might be 
 made to adapt itself to circumstances in other countries, 
 and in distant times, were also considerations much in 
 its favour. In the institution of the Deacon's office, after 
 our Lord's decease, we witness, still more strikingly, 
 the operation of circumstances, and of the plea of imme- 
 diate utiUty, as distinct from all fixed and preconceived 
 theory, in giving existence to ecclesiastical functionaries, 
 in determining the sphere of their duty, and in mould- 
 ing the general polity of the church. In the same 
 manner miraculous powers, and particular offices con- 
 nected with them, — as the interpreters of tongues, and 
 the discerners of spirits, — were evidently bestowed to 
 meet the exigencies of the times ; the Gospel being then 
 exposed to the perils of its first onset against the preju- 
 dices and depravity of a fallen world. Nor were those 
 offices, or some others which have equally ceased to be 
 known among us, designed to be common to all the 
 churches of that period, any more than to all time. 
 Now, the conclusion suggested by a fair attention to such 
 facts would seem to be, not that the polity discoverable 
 in the New Testament was destitute of any thing intended 
 to be permanent, but simply, that whatever was designed 
 to be continued in all countries, and through all time, 
 will be found to be of a very general nature, tending to 
 confirm our impression with regard to the high spiritual 
 tendencies of the Gospel, and the complete subordination 
 of every thing exterior to its inward work upon the soul. 
 
64 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 Nor is it possible to resist a still stronger impression 
 of this nature, when we call to mind the fact of our being 
 left to form opinions on all topics of this description in 
 so great a degree from obscure intimations, from passing 
 notices, or as matters of inference. Much is said con- 
 cerning the spiritual qualifications necessary to christian 
 fellowship, but comparatively little in regard to the pre- 
 cise rules by which that fellowship should be instituted 
 and carried on. Elaborate descriptions are also given 
 with respect to the natural and spiritual requisites neces- 
 sary to the efficient discharge of certain offices ; but so 
 little as to the manner in which such persons should be 
 called to those trusts, that on this point the most learned, 
 judicious, and holy of mankind, are found to be of very 
 opposite judgments. All religious parties, in conse- 
 quence, are obliged to admit, that the details of their 
 systems are not to be found in the sacred Scriptures. 
 Their appeal to that authority is uniformly as containing 
 the outline, or certain great principles of their polity, 
 the filling-up being their own. All take this ground 
 with some reluctance ; and they no sooner meet even 
 here, than warm debates ensue between them, in regard 
 even to those general principles wliich are the only things 
 they can hope to ascertain. Now this manner of pro- 
 ceeding on the part of the inspired writers, was not to have 
 been expected, if anything approaching to a strict agree- 
 ment on points of this description had been deemed 
 necessary to fraternal feeling and communion among 
 Christians. Had differences upon such grounds been 
 contemplated as a sufficient cause for disaffection and 
 exclusion, care would surely have been taken to have 
 given us "line upon line," on subjects of that nature, no 
 less than in relation to the great truths of the Gospel, 
 
POLITY EARLY USE OF TERMS OF OFFICE. 65 
 
 and the essential duties of the christian life. Nor is 
 it of any avail to say, that differences on these great 
 matters are also abundant among professing Christians. 
 Our differences of opinion in regard to the great doctrines 
 of revelation, are not at all parallel with those which 
 occur on the topics adverted to ; and can no more be 
 admitted as valid argument in this case, than the 
 assumption that the evidences of Christianity must be 
 insufficient, since there are men who have access to it, 
 and still avow themselves infidels. 
 
 The manner, moreover, in which the terms used to 
 designate the most familiar ecclesiastical offices are 
 employed in the New Testament, is so unsettled, as to 
 indicate very clearly that no such importance had then 
 been attached to certain alleged distinctions between 
 them as we find common in later times. We may 
 affirm the intention of the inspired writers to have been 
 to fix three permanent offices in the church — those of 
 bishop, presbyter, and deacon ; or we may contend that 
 the distinction between the two former is imaginary, the 
 two designations being only different terms for the same 
 office. But to both these parties it should be evident, 
 that there is at least so little of fixed appropriation in 
 the use of those titles in the New Testament, as strongly 
 to suggest that a precise agreement in regard to the 
 shades of difference supposed to separate them from 
 each other, could never have been designed to form an 
 essential article of union among Christians. It is unde- 
 niable, that there are instances in which the same per- 
 sons are called, and at the same time, both bishops and 
 presbyters, the two names being used apparently as 
 denoting one office : that these words which are used 
 thus indiscriminately and interchangeably, in the manner 
 
66 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 of words having the same meaning, are never used 
 together, in the manner of words having a different sig- 
 nification ; and that the duties said to devolve on the 
 persons called by both, or by either of these names, are 
 in substance the same. 
 
 Whether we conclude from these facts against the 
 distinction between the two orders, or remain persuaded 
 that there are traces of such a distinction observable, it 
 should at least be clear that the phraseology of Holy 
 Scripture would never have been left thus loose and 
 convertible, had the points of difference supposed to mark 
 the two offices, been intended to constitute a matter of 
 acknowledgment essential to the unity of christian affec- 
 tion. No one dreams of such a promiscuous application 
 of official names in any other connexion. On few points, 
 in fact, are men so tenacious as on that of being called by 
 their proper title, especially when it designates a sphere 
 of power or duty, upon which, if not accurately defined, 
 kindred functionaries may be tempted to encroach. Of 
 this we have a striking illustration in the many and long 
 disputes which have been maintained concerning the 
 respective limits of the civil and ecclesiastical powers in 
 modern Europe : as well as in the elaborate care that 
 has everywhere been exercised, to adjust the gradations 
 of authority included in each of those divisions, and the 
 terms by which they are designated. We need not 
 come lower down than the age of Cyprian, to find the 
 distinction between the two offices mentioned above 
 sufficiently distinct; and from that time it is never 
 allowed to be out of our sight. We say not now that 
 the distinction did not exist in the apostolic age : all we 
 mean to say is, that had it been as marked then as it was 
 soon afterwards, there could not have been any contro- 
 
CHRISTIAN POLITY — ITS UNIVERSALITY. 67 
 
 versy about it. The just inference on this point would 
 therefore seem to be, that to the end of the apostolic age, 
 the polity of the church was in process of formation ; 
 and that it was left at last by the inspired guides of the 
 church, in a state partaking so little of strict uniformity 
 or complete detail, as to teach us plainly that Christians 
 should guard, with the greatest solicitude, against suf- 
 fering themselves to be alienated from each other on 
 account of their differences of judgment in relation to 
 points of that nature. 
 
 Nothing, indeed, could well have imparted more unseem- 
 liness to the pretension, which would restrict religion to one 
 exclusive form of church polity, than the manner in which 
 the Apostles were content to treat that subject altogether. 
 It is important also to observe, that this course of pro- 
 ceeding on that topic, was so different from what it would 
 have been reasonable to expect from such persons, as to 
 force upon us the conviction that it was the work of design. 
 The Apostles were Jews, whose former religion, after the 
 oriental manner, had embraced a most complex ritual 
 and ecclesiastical polity ; intermixing observances of a 
 religious nature, from season to season, and from day to 
 day, with all the affairs of social life, and in a form so 
 definite as to leave no jot or tittle to the discretion of the 
 worshipper. It was thus that the priesthood of Egypt 
 had moulded their religious system from a very early 
 age ; and the theocratic worship of the great Asiatic 
 empires had ever been of the same character, — their 
 priests being as much a secular as a spiritual aristocracy, 
 and their religious polity blended everywhere with their 
 social state, as in the case of the modern Hindoos. 
 
 Hence it is not without some effort of imagination and 
 reflection that we can apprehend the force of the 
 
68 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 restraint which must have been laid upon natural and con- 
 ventional inclination, before the Apostles, as the founders 
 of a new religion, were brought to pursue a course in 
 this respect so much at variance with the customs which 
 had prevailed from immemorial time over the extended 
 region of the earth most familiar to them. Questions of 
 polity and worship could not have been treated in a 
 manner less Asiatic than by these men, born and bred in 
 the midst of orientalism. Admitting that the Apostles, 
 disowned everywhere by the civil power, could not, in 
 this respect, have copied the example of the Aaronic 
 priesthood, or that of the great priest castes of Egj-pt and 
 ancient Persia ; still it is obvious that there was ample 
 space left to them for indulging in this kind of legislation 
 over the independent masses who owned their authority, 
 had they been so disposed. But in fact they looked not 
 merely to the East. Their views were directed to the 
 wide earth, as the scene in which Christianity was to 
 give proof of its power ; and, in consequence, they left 
 every thing external connected with it, so much a matter 
 of broad general principles, as to favour its admission 
 into any land, without interfering with the current of its 
 secular manners and institutions. Thus, wherever they 
 came, they proclaimed a religion — new, not only in its 
 name and exclusive pretensions, but in its whole com- 
 plexion ; — a religion consisting, not in a laboured code, or 
 a ritual of minutiae, framed to subserve the schemes of 
 worldly ambition, but one connected with few and simple 
 institutions, and having for its object, ** righteousness, 
 peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 Nor must we forget to observe here, that, supposing a 
 uniform judgment concerning modes of worship and 
 forms of government to have been necessary to our being 
 
APOSTOLIC AUTHORITY — ITS CLAIMS. 69 
 
 recognised as members of the christian church in the 
 apostolic age, it by no means follows that the want of 
 such agreement in the present day must imply, in the 
 same manner, the want of Christianity. In the first age 
 of the church, the Apostles were present to explain at 
 once, and completely, all points about which there might 
 be any difference of apprehension, so that any instance of 
 opposition to their will was, in fact, the same thing with a 
 revolt from the authority of Christ himself. But in our 
 case, there is no question in regard to the duty of bowing 
 to the judgment of the Apostles. This we all profess 
 ourselves anxious to do. Our perplexity is in reference 
 to what the Apostles have, or have not, set forth for our 
 guidance. We all of us conceive that it is not the will 
 of Christ that we are questioning, but our neighbour's 
 interpretation of that will. We are, therefore, in a 
 position, with regard to such things, much to the effect of 
 the case described by the Apostle in the fourteenth chapter 
 of the Epistle to the Romans if we conform to certain 
 usages, or if we refuse to do so, our conduct in either 
 case may be the result of the same principle, namely, a 
 solemn deference to the supposed will of Christ ; so that 
 in the language of the Apostle we may say, — To the Lord 
 we do it, or to the Lord we do it not. 
 
 We speak of these cases as similar ; but there is one 
 point of marked difference between them, and one which 
 shows, that if the controversy having respect to meats 
 and days was not to become the occasion of uncharitable- 
 ness among the Christians at Rome, much less should 
 such an effect be allowed to follow on account of similar 
 or much greater differences as subsisting among us. St. 
 Paul might at once have delivered the will of the Lord 
 on the points then in dispute, and might thus have 
 
70 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 precluded all occasion for the exercise of that mutual 
 forbearance and charity which he so earnestly enjoined 
 concerning them. But when we find him abstaining 
 from such an exercise of his functions, we are justified 
 in beheving that considerable latitude was intended to 
 be left in such things ; and that, in the sight of God, the 
 spirit of kindly forbearance that might be called forth 
 by them, was of much greater price than any conformity 
 of usage in relation to them that might have been 
 produced by any such act of mere authority. And the 
 question here naturally recurs — If Apostles, men gifted 
 with the spirit of inspiration, and clothed with the power of 
 working miracles, were wont to be thus tolerant, where are 
 the persons, or where is the system, that would really 
 sufier loss by conforming to this example ? 
 
 But in the place of this, we too often see the Congre- 
 gationalist mar the simphcity of the bold and beautiful 
 outline of ecclesiastical order which his system presents ; 
 sometimes destroying the harmony of an otherwise happy 
 and prosperous church, by attaching an undue importance 
 to little details — details as certainly and as much the 
 work of man's devising as any to be found in the history 
 of ecclesiastical usage ; while the Presbyterian pledges 
 himself to his league and covenant, as the only proper 
 medium through which to seek the preservation or 
 propagation of the truth, and is long in learning to do 
 altogether without its aid ; — and high above these stands 
 the Church of England with her "book" open before 
 her, exhibiting to the eye of spectators an almost endless 
 gradation of ecclesiastical offices, and multitude of mi- 
 nute ecclesiastical observances; and though conscious 
 that these are nearly all the inventions of man, she 
 demands from every one who would minister at her 
 
APOSTOLIC CHARITY — WANTING IN ALL. 
 
 71 
 
 altars, an *' unfeigned assent and consent to all and 
 every thing" so presented; this she does long, denying 
 to all dissentients the right of engaging at all in the 
 public worship of the Deity ; and this she does still, on 
 pain of exclusion from her fellowship. Oh ! Spirit of 
 apostolic charity, when — when wilt thou return, and 
 the long-lost concord, power, and blessedness of the 
 church of God be restored ? 
 
SECTION lY. 
 
 Present Position of Congrefjational Dissenters — Greater Numbers— Still 
 found principallj' in the Middle Class — Increased Public Spirit — Less sub- 
 ject to Civil Grievance.— Peculiar Complexion and Spirit of Society. — 
 Improvement in the general character of the Established Church— Present 
 State of Parties included in it.— Methodism.— Duties of Congregationalists 
 in these circumstances.— Supreme Importance of a Devout Spirit.— Neces- 
 sity of great Public Exertion,— of keeping pace with the more Educated 
 Character of Society,— of Raising the Standard of Ministerial Qualifica- 
 tion,— and the Special Duty of All Parties to cultivate a spirit of Consi- 
 deration, Forbearance, and Charity. 
 
 In passing from this rapid view of the history of 
 English Congregationalism, to the consideration of its 
 present position, our attention is first arrested by a 
 difference of numbers. 
 
 For example — in the southern, or Surrey suburb of 
 London, where, two centuries ago, the only persons 
 meeting for the worship of God except in the manner 
 enjoined by the state, were those included in the small 
 brotherhood which is still represented by the church 
 assembly in Union-street, there are now about fifty 
 Congregational churches, including Independents and 
 Baptists ; and the largest portion of accommodation for 
 persons disposed to meet for the worship of God in that 
 extensive district, if we take in all denominations, has 
 
PROGRESS OF CONGREGATIONALISM. 73 
 
 been provided, not by the state, but by the voluntary 
 efforts of the population. Thus, in a locality where, two 
 hundred years since, the state did little for religion, and 
 the people nothing, and where almost every man seemed 
 to receive his faith in the shape expounded to him by 
 the two Houses of Convocation, and by the two Houses of 
 Parliament, there has been such a working of the small 
 germ of Independency, that all the provision which the 
 state has made for the advantage of its favoured denomi- 
 nation, is equalled, and even surpassed, by that which 
 has sprung from the free and spontaneous zeal of the 
 people themselves. By the side of the principle which 
 is supposed to be so necessary to the existence of reli- 
 gion, but which refuses to do it service except through the 
 machinery of state enactments, we see another make its 
 appearance, having its origin and guidance from the 
 intelligence and feeling which disposes men to consider 
 religion as a matter of individual responsibility, and as of 
 high concernment in their relation to God, rather than 
 to Caesar ; and this last principle, though so recently 
 called into exercise, and acted upon in the midst of 
 artificial circumstances tending to place the selfishness 
 and prejudice of multitudes in the most determined array 
 against it, is seen taking precedence of the former one 
 as a source of provision for the religious wants of the 
 surrounding community. Nor is this peculiar to the 
 Surrey suburb of the metropolis ; it is rather a sample of 
 what has taken place, with slight variation, in every 
 populous department of the country. It is admitted, 
 they are not all Congregationalists who are now acting, 
 more or less, and with so much general effect, on this 
 principle ; but it was reserved to the body so designated 
 to bring out this principle, and to procure for it the 
 
 E 
 
74 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 various amount of practical homage whicii is now ren- 
 dered to it. 
 
 Congregationalism is not like Methodism, a system of 
 compromise and adjustment, formed in deference to the 
 prejudice and feeling of the hour. It is the effect of a 
 devout and firm-hearted appeal to the exact nature and 
 design of Christianity ; and the result to be expected 
 from principles so adopted has been reahzed. Derived 
 from what is unalterable in the injunctions and spirit of 
 our benign and holy religion, it has itself been perma- 
 nent. It has grown with our population, our wealth, 
 and our intelligence, and especially with our attachment 
 to even-handed justice, and equal Hberty; and whatever 
 its enemies may fondly promise themselves, we are 
 satisfied that its course in the future will be as in the 
 past. If, in addition to the increase of their numbers, 
 Congregationalists are justified in looking on every 
 thing free in the temper and proceedings of the religious 
 bodies around us, as the effect of their early avowed 
 principles, then have they much reason to thank God 
 and take courage. In fact, when searching for encou- 
 ragement in any effort to do good, our inquiries should 
 never be confined to the positive and unmixed benefit 
 we may have been able to confer. This may be very 
 small, while the evil prevented, and the indirect or 
 partial good bestowed, may be of vast amount. 
 
 The secopd point observable in the present position 
 of English Congregationalists, as compared with the 
 past, is their greater freedom from civil grievance on 
 account «of their religious profession. The Test Act, 
 designed to exclude the Catholic from places of civil 
 trust, which it was feared he would employ, and not 
 without effect, against the liberties of the countr}-, was 
 
ADVANCE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 75 
 
 supported by the Protestant nonconformist on the prin- 
 ciple of a self-denying patriotism. His Protestant 
 brethren of the Church of England spoke much in praise 
 of his magnanimity on that occasion, and promised a 
 relief bill in his favour ; but no relief bill made its appear- 
 ance ; and more than a century and a half was to inter- 
 vene before it became possible to extort a removal of the 
 badge of inferiority and distrust to which the whole 
 body of the nonconformists were in this manner made 
 subject. With the removal of the Test Act, we now 
 have to connect the benefits conferred by the Acts 
 relating to Marriage and Registration. Every friend of 
 order and peace way well regret that a recent measure, 
 intended to relieve the Dissenter from a constantly 
 returning impost, which he regards as unjust, and must 
 ever feel as a grievance, and the removal of which might 
 be accomplished without the slightest danger to any 
 public interest, has been for a time frustrated. This 
 question remains, together with that concerning admis- 
 sion to the old Universities, as fuel ready to be kindled 
 into a flame on some future occasion^ when, in all pro- 
 bability, the dangerous element will defy control, much 
 more successfully than would be possible in the present 
 state of parties among us. The concessions of the weak 
 avail them little ; it is when made by the strong that they 
 are felt as a boon. But to expect classes or parties of 
 men willingly to forego monopoly of any kind, so as to 
 admit excluded portions of the community to a partici- 
 pation in their privileges, is to look for something of 
 more rare occurrence in human affairs, than that the 
 churl should become liberal, or the proud man conde- 
 scending and humane. The sort of conscience which 
 belongs to bodies of men is little trustworthy. An 
 E 2 
 
76 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTiES. 
 
 individual will do as one of a party, as he would never think 
 of doing on his own responsibility, or in his own affairs. 
 
 But if Dissenters have not access to the old Univer- 
 sities—which, after all, is perhaps no real loss to them — 
 they may now obtain the distinctions which indicate pro- 
 ficiency in literature and science, ^vithout passing the 
 limits of their country, and without any conformity to 
 religious tests ; and these distinctions may be made as 
 available for all secular purposes, as those of the ancient 
 seats of learning. On the whole, therefore, if we except 
 the few years of the Protectorate, the condition of the 
 portion of the community dissenting from the Established 
 Church, is one of unprecedented freedom and happiness. 
 Added to which, it has been our lot to see a greater 
 advance made, within the last seven years, toward placing 
 the general institutions of the country on a basis of equity, 
 than had been made during the hmidred years preceding. 
 With this felicitous state of things, we have to contrast 
 the condition of all conscientious rehgionists under the 
 iron rule of the last of the Tudors, and under the less 
 vigorous, but hardly less oppressive policy, of the four 
 princes of the house of Stuart. While we cherish grati- 
 tude to the Author of all good on this account, and would 
 learn to cultivate a deeper interest than ever in the honour 
 and welfare of our comitry, it is proper to mark on 
 these points, as on some preceding, the source in which 
 this change has originated, and from which affairs have 
 received the often-repeated impetus necessary to its 
 accomplishment. That the large and generous theory 
 of religious liberty, now so far realized in the actual 
 condition of this country, was first struck out, and avowed 
 as just and practicable, by religious men, and that those 
 men were the fathers of Congregationalism, — is unques- 
 
ADVANCE OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 
 
 77 
 
 tionable. From the obscure retreats, where the small 
 bands of confessors of that order were accustomed to 
 debate and discourse on these high themes — holding the 
 scorn of a nation and of a world as a thing of nought — 
 their bold thoughts were slowly but steadily diffused, until 
 they found advocates in councils, and senates, and cabi- 
 nets ; and as the effect of a long war of opinion, in which 
 the issues were too often doubtful, those larger habits of 
 thought have now given their free and fearless impression 
 to our statutes, and usages, and household feelings as a 
 people. Thus did Christianity itself ascend from such little 
 circles as the family at Bethany, until it gained admission 
 into " kings' houses," and is found on the throne of the 
 Caesars, sending forth its exhaustless charities from the 
 lowest to the highest of mankind. The Puritans acquitted 
 themselves well on questions of civil liberty, but on the 
 more difficult question of liberty of conscience their views 
 were always defective and inconsistent. It was left to a 
 sect which grew up at their side, their own offspring, 
 but toward whom they never discovered the kindliness 
 of a parent, to separate between the kingdoms of the 
 earth, and the kingdom which is not of this world, so as 
 to be capable of laying down those broad maxims of 
 social right and religious equality, which gave its mem- 
 bers a place apart from all who had gone before them. 
 When it is stated, therefore, by an enemy of the Puri- 
 tans, that to them we are indebted for the preservation 
 of the spark of English liberty, this must be understood, 
 in strictness, of civil liberty only, the rights of conscience 
 being imperfectly apprehended by that party at any time. 
 If the reader doubts this, let him look to the law against 
 blasphemy, passed by the Puritan majority of the Long 
 Parliament not long before the death of the king. 
 
78 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 Another point observable, but observable as one of 
 perpetuity, and not of contrast — is the fact, that Con- 
 gregationalism still finds the body of its adherents among 
 the middle class. We do not scruple to say, that we look 
 with some pleasure on this manifest aptitude of our 
 system to commend itself to that part of the community 
 which all wise men regard as the most sound — as having 
 in it much the larger portion of real social health. Its 
 founder — or, more correctly, its restorer — was a man of 
 humane feeling, of eminent piety, and of high mental 
 culture ; and a considerable admixture of these qualities, 
 so conspicuous in Robinson of Leyden, seems to be 
 necessary to a full understanding, and a strictly wise use, 
 of the system which obtained his affectionate approval. 
 But it would be well, perhaps, for Congregational 
 Churches seriously to inquire, whether their system 
 has been worked in later time so wisely as it might 
 have been. We speak of the great principles of this 
 system as unalterable ; but in the application of them, 
 there is, perhaps, much more flexibility admissible, than 
 the most intelligent of our chm-ches at present apprehend. 
 The religious system which fails to bring the rich and 
 the poor together, may be thus at fault, mainly in conse- 
 quence of adventitious and artificial circumstances. This 
 is no doubt the case with ourselves ; but the failure of 
 the Congregational polity in the respect adverted to, 
 may also have been the result, in part, of its not being 
 employed with sufficient care, as the means of regulating 
 and improving the intercourse between the man of low 
 degree and of high degree, so as to prevent its being- 
 used in a manner to break down the proper lines of 
 demarcation between them. Churches which can allow 
 a coarse, fierce spirit of democracy to pass current, as 
 
CON'GREGATIONALISTS — THEIR ACTIVITY. 79 
 
 little or nothing more than a due exercise of christian 
 liberty, must not expect to make any considerable 
 impression on men whose opulence, station, or mental 
 power, has raised them above a very moderate level in 
 general society. 
 
 But if in this respect our position has been station- 
 ary, it has been materially improved within the last half 
 century by out great ej' activity. If our sphere of action 
 be the same, we have learnt to bring more general and 
 steady effort to bear upon it. Religious objects, as con- 
 nected with our locality, our denomination, or the 
 general interest of Christianity, are ever calling our 
 ministers and our laity from the old routine of chapel 
 worship and church business, to public and catholic 
 efforts ; and thus making it necessary that we should fill 
 more space, come more frequently and fully before the 
 eye of the public, than was the case with our forefathers 
 in the last century. These local and general institutions 
 act like the call of a muster-roll, smnmoning every man 
 to his post and his duty. They improve the capacity for 
 public service, by putting it into constant requisition. 
 They render us more familiar with the varieties of hu- 
 man character, and enable us, in consequence, to act 
 with more unity and effect. Thus our efforts to commu- 
 nicate good, become, in every way, our best means of ob- 
 taining it. It is not a small part of the internal harmony 
 and prosperity of the Dissenting churches in England, 
 that has resulted from this greater measure of public 
 spirit, with which the gracious Head of the church has 
 blessed them. The Dissenter is now known in other 
 respects than as the frequenter of a meeting-house in 
 the court or lane of his neighbourhood. 
 
 But we must guard against forming a delusive estimate 
 
80 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 of our advantage in this respect. It places us on high 
 ground as compared with our predecessors some genera- 
 tions since : but it may be doubted whether it gives us 
 any advantage in comparison with our times, which they 
 did not possess in comparison with the state of society 
 then existing. We may be much in advance of them, 
 and not at all more in advance of the general state of 
 things around us than was the fact in their instance ; and 
 it is very important to inquire, whether we are not in dan- 
 ger of attributing our greater degree of public spirit, as 
 compared with the good men who have gone before us, to 
 a greater strength of religious principle, when, in fact, it 
 is little else than the consequence of our yielding to that 
 impulse which has come upon society at large in our 
 time, wonderfully augmenting its rate of activity, in 
 every department of human exertion. 
 
 We proceed, therefore, to remark, in the next 
 place, that Congregationalism has to maintain its position 
 now in connexion with a state of society differing very 
 much from any thing with which it has previously been 
 brought into contact. I have said that it is a state of 
 society in which the rate of activity in every department 
 of human exertion is wonderfully augmented : and how 
 manifest is this ! There have been times when the 
 comparatively idle might be successful ; but no man of 
 discernment can expect such things to happen now. 
 Human life, in all its pursuits, has become an eager race, 
 in which the negligent are sure to be left behind. 
 Whether the object of pursuit be the gains of ordinary 
 traffic, as carried on by the tradesman in his shop, or 
 by the merchant on 'Change ; or that of men engaged in 
 professional life ; or the still higher aim of those who 
 aspire to distinction in literature, in science, or in politi- 
 
PRESENT STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 81 
 
 cal influence — all are agreed in predicting the failure of 
 the man who is not a man of application. Persons who 
 would acquire wealth, must be inured to labour ; and 
 our men of genius, who have attained to permanent 
 eminence, are distinguished by their ceaseless industry, 
 as much as by their natural endowments. As it is with 
 individuals, so is it with bodies of men. If they would 
 make any impression on their times, they must not only 
 be well organized, but watchful, provident, energetic. 
 
 With this greater activity, as characterising the pre- 
 sent state of society, we may connect the greater average 
 ability with which all its offices are filled. Men, who 
 were judged competent to the duties in which they were 
 engaged some fifty years ago, would, in no few cases, 
 be accounted an incumbrance, rather than a help, in the 
 same situations among ourselves. Matters which then 
 passed through many hands, are now assigned to a few ; 
 and the result from the labours of the few is, in general, 
 more speedy, and more complete, than once followed from 
 those of the greater number. It is surprising to observe 
 how small a portion of natural or acquired ability often 
 sufficed to realize large fortunes in past times. It was 
 thus in law, in medicine, and in general occupation. 
 But at present, even industry, if not joined with some 
 force of discernment, has little prospect of success. In 
 literature, in science, and in public life, it is another 
 amount, and, I may say, another kind of ability, that is 
 necessary to real distinction, than was required formerly. 
 Books are written now, and forgotten almost as soon as 
 published, which, had they appeared in a past age, 
 would have been applauded and preserved as remarkable 
 productions of genius. 
 
 But when we speak of the ability of the past as 
 e3 
 
82 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 inferior to that of the present, we must be understood to 
 speak of abiHty in its average ; that is, as existing in 
 society generally, and not as seen in the instance of 
 extraordinary persons. There were minds in those days, 
 of such power as to awe all kindi-ed natures to a dis- 
 tance, and to vest themselves with a kind of sovereignty 
 in their generation. Such were Bacon, Milton, and 
 Newton. We have no men who can be named as the 
 rivals of these persons. But it is a peculiarity of the 
 state of society in our time, that if we have not indivi- 
 duals to place in competition with such men, we have 
 an unprecedented number of powerful and richly ciU- 
 tivated minds, engaged in the pursuits to which the 
 genius of those highly-gifted persons was applied, and 
 which make up, and even more than make up, in the 
 aggregate, what is wanting in the individual. If we have 
 less of the giant in us than our forefathers, we have more 
 of the legion. The intellectual control of our times is 
 with the informed mass, and not with the solitary 
 personage. 
 
 It is, perhaps, to this greater distribution of the ele- 
 ments of power and success, that we are to attribute 
 much of the restless dissatisfaction with present attain- 
 ment, which may be regarded as another remarkable 
 feature of our times. No matter what advance may be 
 made in commerce, in science, in arts, in literature, in 
 economy, in government, there is still an onwardness in 
 the spirit of society which is constantly disposing mul- 
 titudes to forget what is behind in reaching toward what 
 is before. The numbers engaged in these several pur- 
 suits, seem to return to them from day to day as though 
 drawn by all the force of novelty. The main efiect of 
 what they do, is to disclose to them how much more 
 
PRESENT STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 83 
 
 it may be possible to do. The achievement of to-day 
 becomes the starting-point of to-morrow. Each man, 
 as he succeeds, becomes more confident himself, and 
 begets confidence in others. Something of this sort, 
 we know, is inseparable from human nature ; but it has 
 never given its impression to society, in this country, as 
 at the present moment. 
 
 It is pleasing to perceive in connexion with this in- 
 crease of social activity, intelligence, and enterprise, a 
 more adequate and practical regard to the great ends of 
 society, or to the duties which men owe to one another 
 in their social capacity. Our population has increased 
 with great rapidity ; and it is a fact, affording a melan- 
 choly confirmation of the scripture doctrine of human 
 depravity, that always in proportion as you crowd men 
 together, if you sharpen their intelligence, you multiply 
 the hazards of vicious infection. We have endeavoured, 
 in various ways, to provide against this natural and 
 alarming tendency of aflfairs ; and if our success has 
 been only partial, particularly in the view of the unre- 
 flecting, this should be no matter of surprise. The 
 question on this point is not, whether society is now 
 all we could wish, or all we might have hoped, but 
 rather, whether its state is not incalculably better than it 
 would have been in the absence of our exertions in its 
 behalf. It is not saying too much to affirm, that had 
 the evil tendency adverted to been allowed to work on 
 without the new power of counteraction supplied by the 
 exertions of the better portion of the community, society, 
 in our case, would have been, ere this, on the verge of 
 dissolution. But as it is, depraved as we are, it will 
 hardly be doubted by any impartial and informed man, 
 that this old world has never contained so large a com- 
 
84 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 munity as this of Great Britain, including so great an 
 amount of public virtue. We have in this land, at this 
 hour, greater security for person and property than has 
 existed among us in any preceding age, or in any other 
 country in any age of time ; — and be it remembered, that 
 on this security mainly depends all that we mean by 
 social happiness. What our laws, institutions, and 
 usages are in this respect, they are as the effect of the 
 intelligence and social virtue by which we are distin- 
 guished as a people. They have their impress from the 
 mind of the community ; and if you would improve 
 them still further, it must not be by theorizing upon 
 them as abstractions, but by raising the mental and moral 
 aptitudes of the community to a still higher standard. 
 
 But it is not only our lot to be placed in juxtaposition 
 with a different world (so to speak), from that which 
 existed formerly. We have to maintain our ground 
 by the side of an Established Church, upon which time 
 has also produced great changes. The rulers of that 
 church no longer regard the condition of the sleeper as a 
 condition of safety. Nor is it any longer considered 
 probable that the nation would be found to uphold the 
 endowed Church, if it should haughtily refuse to sympa- 
 thize with the more independent and vigorous spirit 
 which has risen up around it, and within it. It has 
 yielded, accordingly, in many things, to the spirit of the 
 times. Its present state exhibits a singular combina- 
 tion of parties. 
 
 The old Orthodox party in the Church is in that pro- 
 cess of improvement which has divided them into two 
 classes. Beside these, there is the Evangelical party ; 
 and in addition, a fourth, made up of persons from all 
 the rest, who, disagreeing as they do on many points. 
 
ESTABLISHED CHURCH — ITS PRESENT STATE. 85 
 
 are of one mind in the approval of those High-church 
 doctrines in regard to the christian ministry, and the 
 efficacy of the sacraments, which were advocated by the 
 court clergy in the reign of the Stuarts, and so late as 
 tlie time of Queen Anne, and which are in scarcely any 
 thing distinguishable from the doctrines of Popery. 
 
 The last of these parties, whose views are expounded 
 in the Oxford Tracts, to which reference has been made, 
 consist of persons who have persuaded themselves that 
 the only means by which to bring back the people of 
 this country to that state of ecclesiastical obedience from 
 which they have been so long departing, is to reiterate 
 the too much forgotten doctrine, that salvation is by the 
 sacraments of the Church ; that those sacraments can be 
 validly administered by one fixed order of persons only ; 
 that the clergy of the Established Church are alone that 
 Qrder ; and that all persons in separation from them, 
 whatever semblance of religion they may possess, must 
 be really without religion, and without any scriptural 
 ground on which to hope that they shall not perish ever- 
 lastingly. These frightful dogmas may be viewed by 
 some as too preposterous to need refutation or notice. 
 The men who advocate them, however, are men of 
 learning, some of them men of piety, and most of them 
 men of character ; and there is too much congeniality in 
 such doctrines with the high-minded and superstitious 
 tendencies of human nature, to allow of their being 
 without danger. It was this congeniality which gave to 
 these notions their root in the early church, and the wide 
 and disastrous infiuence which attended them so Ions 
 
 o 
 
 afterwards. Friendly intercourse between the Church- 
 man and the Dissenter, which we, in our simplicity, 
 might be disposed to regard as the triumph of a chris- 
 
86 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 tian intelligence and charity, over a popish ignorance 
 and bigotry, the peiibns referred to denounce as a prac- 
 tice which tends to obliterate the sin of hostility to the 
 only accredited ministers of religion — though the same 
 with that of Corali and his company, and to be followed 
 by similar punishment ! Tlius the excesses of the nine- 
 teenth century are to be counteracted by calling back 
 the darkness of the middle age ; extravagance producing 
 extravagance ; and, as in all seasons of excitement, 
 minds of similar culture are found betraying a suscep- 
 tibility of widely opposite influences. There are things 
 which have their best cure in being left alone ; there 
 are others which gather strength from neglect : and it is 
 the province of wdsdom to distinguish between these. 
 If both the church and the country should be put to 
 some trouble by this attempt to revive the very worst 
 doctrines of Popery, under cover of the loudest preten- 
 sions to Protestantism, there is enough in hmnan nature, 
 after all our boasted intelligence, to render such an e\i\ 
 in no way surprising. 
 
 In the Orthodox clergy, we see a body of men greatly 
 in advance of those who preceded them in the last cen- 
 tury, particularly in the early part of it. We shall not 
 attempt any description of the sort of clerg^nnen wlio 
 were then common in this country, particularly in our 
 viUages. Suffice it to say, that at present a regard to 
 decency — a sort of ecclesiastical decorum, has become 
 imperative, where piety, according to the more scrip- 
 tural view of it, may be wanting. And while those who 
 are the least changed are in general thus far improved, a 
 learned, a numerous, and a highly respectable body of 
 clerg}Tnen has grown up among them, who bring to the 
 service of the pulpit no ordinary ability, together with a 
 
ESTABLISHED CHURCH ITS PRESENT STATE. 87 
 
 grave and devotional spirit; and who, while refusing to 
 be accounted Evangelical, in the conventional meaning 
 of that word, are producing an effect on the public mind, 
 which was for some time peculiar to the labours of that 
 party. 
 
 The discourses of this class of preachers may be want- 
 ing in some degree in the dear announcement of the 
 doctrine's of the Gospel, and still more in the forcible 
 application of them to the interior working of the human 
 spirit. They may be more remarkable for the scholar- 
 like eloquence which pervades them, than as exposing to 
 the full the malady of our fallen nature, and as applying 
 the remedy with a corresponding amplitude and earnest- 
 ness. But still there is in them a tone of serious piety, 
 that is quite refreshing in comparison with the dull 
 and barren themes which they have generally super- 
 seded : and above all, there is a compass, an accuracy, 
 and an explicitness in the manner in which they enforce 
 the connexion between the piety and the morality of 
 religion, which not a few Evangelical preachers, both 
 Churchmen and Dissenters, would do well to imitate. 
 
 In no respect, however, is the improved condition of 
 the Endowed Church so manifest as in the increased and 
 still increasing numbers of its Evangelical ministers. In 
 the time of Watts and Doddridge, men like Hervey and 
 Romaine were as green spots in the wide-spread desert. 
 The Church has now some two thousand of such mini- 
 sters. But the Evangelical clergy of the present day, 
 while holding the same theological opinions with their 
 devout predecessors who were expelled from the pulpits 
 of the Establishment in 1662, are characterised by a sin- 
 gular absence of sympathy with those conscientious and 
 holy men in their objections to many things in the 
 
88 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 discipline and worship of the Established Church, and in 
 their ardent attachment to the principles of free govern- 
 ment. The regulations and forms of the Church of 
 England, though on the whole stationary amidst the 
 ceaseless current of affairs during almost three centuries, 
 are regarded by the good men adverted to as still unim- 
 provable ; while, in reference to the common liberties 
 of Englishmen, their leaning seems almost constantly to 
 be on the side opposed to the popular elements of the 
 constitution — so much so, that to no quarter might the 
 advocates of arbitrary power look with greater confidence 
 of support, should they happen to possess the reputation 
 of being friends to the Church. Some exceptions to 
 this rule may no doubt be found among the clergy, and 
 more among the laity : but exceptions they are, and I 
 fear comparatively few. Nor would it be easy to men- 
 tion a more formidable impediment to the progress of 
 serious religion among us — particularly with the more 
 independent and energetic portion of the community — 
 than arises from this deficiency of large and generous 
 sentiment on public affairs, so observable in the greater 
 part of the Evangelical clergy. Of course, all such per- 
 sons have reasons to assign, which, to themselves at least, 
 afford a sufficient justification of their conduct. They 
 persuade themselves that the ascendency of their party 
 is inseparable from the safety and happiness of the 
 community, and that they are attached to the former 
 purely for the sake of the latter ; and no doubt they are 
 generally sincere in making this profession. But it still 
 remains to be asked, whether it is really desirable that 
 christian ministers should so conduct themselves as to 
 seem to be more concerned about their Church than 
 about their country ; and whether it be well that their 
 
METHODISM. 
 
 89 
 
 piety should seem to do nothing toward bringing them 
 into friendly intercourse with Christians of other com- 
 munions, compared with what their religious prejudices 
 seem to do in the way of keeping them apart from them ? 
 One knows it will be said— The Dissenters have behaved 
 themselves ill, and have deserved to be so avoided. 
 But is it beyond all doubt that this quarrel has been so 
 unlike what generally happens in our world, that the 
 faults have all been on one side ? Is it quite certain 
 that there is perfect intelligence and well-meaning in 
 the one connexion, and nothing of either in the other ? 
 But on this subject I have ventured to speak in an- 
 other place. 
 
 Such, then, is the present state of the Church of Eng- 
 land, as compared with the past. Almost everywhere 
 there is a professional decorum observed by her ministers, 
 which was not unfrequently disregarded, sometimes to 
 a shameful extent, by their predecessors of the last cen- 
 tury. Over a large surface the system of instruction 
 has become more serious, scriptural, and effective ; while 
 in many hundreds of her pulpits " the pure word of 
 God is preached," and many thousands of the people 
 are manifestly regenerated by its influence. Moreover, 
 the religious and philanthropic institutions of our time 
 find great numbers of steady and earnest supporters in 
 that communion ; and many attempts to do good are 
 made, both by laity and clergy, which break somewhat 
 through the old forms of ecclesiastical observance. In 
 these signs of improvement, every devout heart must 
 rejoice. 
 
 Between the Church of England as thus changed, and 
 the older and more regular Dissenters, a third body has 
 made its appearance, occupying a considerable space in 
 
90 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES, 
 
 the three kingdoms, particularly in England. We refer, 
 of course, to the Methodists. The spirit of Calvinistic 
 Methodism has merged itself almost everywhere in 
 the system of Independency. But Wesleyan Methodism 
 still retains the separate position to which it was des- 
 tined by its founder. Every devout and benevolent 
 mind, unless much obscured and perverted by prejudice, 
 must look with delight on the large amount of religious 
 and social benefit which has been conferred on our 
 country and our colonies by tliis numerous and zealous 
 body of Christians. We may deem their opinions in 
 some respects erroneous ; we may regard certain of 
 their usages as tending to nourish enthusiasm and false 
 confidence, by substituting morbid fancies in the place 
 of truly religious impressions ; and, above all, we may 
 consider their polity, both in relation to their congrega- 
 tions, and to the great body of their ministers, as singu- 
 larly opposed to primitive usage and christian liberty : 
 — nevertheless, it has its redeeming properties. It has 
 seized on the great elements of revealed truth, and has 
 announced them, if not with all the discrimination, at 
 least wdth an earnestness worthy of the better ages of 
 the Church ; and in regard to general intelligence and 
 catholic feeling, has improved rapidly during the present 
 century. 
 
 That the system will not last, but, like every other 
 originating less in permanent principles than in passing 
 circumstances, will fall, in its turn, by the same influences 
 which have favoured its existence, may be safely pre- 
 dicted. All ancient establishments have a tendency, by 
 reason of their opulence and independence, to lethargy 
 and corruption ; and all, as the consequence, have wit- 
 nessed the breaking forth of such offshoots. But each 
 
METHODISM. 
 
 91- 
 
 in process of time has fallen into the snare against which 
 its primitive protest was directed ; and the renovating 
 principle, having become useless in the hands which had 
 seized upon it, has been taken up by another order of 
 regenerators. Thus the monastic life came in upon the 
 declining fervour of the primitive church ; the mendi- 
 cant orders upon the diminished zeal of their brethren of 
 the monastery ; and the Jesuits followed in the train of 
 both. Each of these orders was more powerful than the 
 former ; and each so became as the effect of circum- 
 stances — or of the constantly improving social condition 
 of Europe ; and all, in the ages to which they belong, in 
 common with Methodism in our time, performed im- 
 portant services in relation to the general influence and 
 progress of Christianity, their very errors being made 
 subservient, in many respects, to the interests of truth. 
 
 Let no man be offended by this sort of comparison. 
 It is not made with an intention to depreciate. The 
 only comparison intended is that of relationship to esta- 
 blished ecclesiastical systems — and the same holds, in a 
 degree, of all Dissenters. Not a few monks and mendi- 
 cant friars might be named, whose piety and learning 
 were of an order rarely attained in our age. God has 
 often worked by means, which the world, and even the 
 church, have been wont to look upon with scorn. But 
 wise men have seen enough of late, in the conduct 
 of certain parties, who seem to be pillars of Wesleyan 
 Methodism, to force upon them the suspicion that the 
 apostolic maxim, " Be not high-minded, but fear," 
 has not always been sufficiently remembered in that 
 quarter. It is easy to sow the seeds of division — diffi- 
 cult to free the soil from their effects. He is not a 
 sagacious man, who, in a country like ours, can calculate 
 
92 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 on tlie entire passiveness of large bodies of men, called 
 from the middle and humbler classes of society. It is a 
 fact, as we understand, that the poHtical sentiments 
 recently expressed by some leaders of Methodism, have 
 not found a response in the shape of a petition to the 
 legislature against the claims of the Protestant Dissen- 
 ters from a single Methodist congregation, while num- 
 bers have petitioned in support of those claims. The 
 great majority of the Wesleyan people know that they 
 have been accustomed to receive many kind oflBces from 
 Dissenters in all parts of the kingdom ; while, by that 
 political party to which some of their chiefs have been 
 forward to do such open homage, they have been com- 
 monly denounced as the worst order of fanatics ; and 
 few things have been accoimted more meritorious than 
 to send their mmisters to prison, if found preaching in 
 the liighways or the fields. The author has been a 
 party to the rescue of such offenders from their place 
 with pickpockets and housebreakers, and from the neces- 
 sity of appearing in the wooden shoes and ¥n:etched garb 
 allotted to the basest criminals. Let us not judge of the 
 Wesleyaji Methodists, in this respect, by those who affect 
 to represent them. The laity, we know, are not to be 
 concluded on such matters by their ministers ; and the 
 silence of many among the ministers themselves must 
 not be interpreted by any means as consent. 
 
 Such then, in brief, is the position, general and eccle- 
 siastical, in which we are placed as Congregationalists 
 at the present jimcture. It now behoves us to inquire, 
 in what manner we may pursue our course in these 
 novel circumstances, so as best to subserve the cause of 
 religious truth, of our country, and of hmnanity. 
 
 With a view to these ends, it will be of the first 
 
POSITION AND DUTIES OF CONGREGATIONALISTS. 93 
 
 importance that we cultivate much of that heartfelt piety 
 by which our pious forefathers were distinguished. In 
 our preaching, our intercourse, our famihes, and in our 
 public efforts, let the advancement of real piety be 
 manifestly the object of our great soHcitude. Our union 
 and streno:th among ourselves, the increase of our own 
 denomination, and our influence over others ; the honour 
 of our country, and the good of mankind, — all will de- 
 pend, and to what extent we cannot possibly foresee, 
 on our maintaining that constant and devout intercourse 
 with " the things of the Spirit," which is enjoined upon 
 us with so much force of persuasion and authority in 
 Holy Scripture. Living under the influence of such 
 habits, we shall act in all connexions with the sober 
 consideration proper to our calling as Christians ; and, 
 at the same time, with the steadiness of principle ; with 
 the courage of men whose trust is in God ; and with that 
 degree of perseverance to which Providence generally 
 awards success. Without this, our Congregationalism 
 will be of small avail. Its use is simply as means to an 
 end. But in alliance with this spirit, we may find in it 
 an immense advantage. Its free and generous provi- 
 sions are in admirable keeping with the confiding and 
 fearless impulses of the truly devout heart. 
 
 If we would keep the position to which we have 
 attained, and improve its advantages as duty requires, 
 we must endeavour to give the utmost efficiency to oitr 
 Public Institutions. The world around us, as we have 
 seen, was never more active, energetic, or efficient in its 
 endless departments of occupation, than at this moment. 
 And it is no less observable, that every division of the 
 visible church is characterized by a similar spirit. 
 Hence, nothing but corresponding effort can prevent our 
 
94 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 being tlirust from the ground on vrliich we stand. To 
 indulge the expectation of any advancement, without a 
 marked increase of wise and holy exertion, would only 
 be to betray our weakness. If content with less effort, 
 less sacrifice, or less earnest intercession before God, 
 with a view to the diffusion of di\T[ne truth, we must be 
 content to see our place occupied by those who will be 
 more worthy of it ; and that increase of the piety and 
 happiness of mankind which we might have been the 
 means of conferring, will be conferred by others. Every 
 communion of Christians has more comprehensive views 
 than formerly concerning its obligations in this respect; 
 more buoyant confidence as to what it may be possible 
 to accomplish ; and has become, in consequence, more 
 organized, laborious, and effective. The world, in 
 short, moves at a more rapid rate ; the same may 
 be said of the church ; and if there be any branch 
 of it that does not feel impelled so to do, that branch 
 wiW soon be numbered among " the things that are 
 ready to die." 
 
 Concerning such efibrts we shall not perhaps be 
 found wanting, if compared with any other section of the 
 christian church. But this is more than may be said with 
 regard to our encouragement of learning, and pur appa- 
 rent estimate of its importance in relation to the progress 
 of religion. If we are not to retrograde, there must be 
 improvement on this point. Among our scholars there 
 are men who in theological learning, and in the learning 
 strictly subsidiary to it, would do honour to any commu- 
 nion ; and v/e are not without minds imbued with a love 
 of general literature^ and distinguished by various read- 
 ing and refined taste. The latter, however, are of 
 much more rare occurrence than the former ; while, 
 
POSITION AND DUTIES OF CONGREGATIONALISTS. 95 
 
 almost as a body, we are not only deficient in sympathy 
 with such pursuits, but frequently betray a disposition, 
 except in particular connexions, to slight and neglect 
 the literary productions of our own authors, in favour 
 of publications, often much less valuable, as put forth 
 from other quarters. Let the common charge of igno- 
 rance and vulgarity be preferred against us, and the 
 debater on the side of Dissent will immediately appeal 
 to a series of names and works, as so many proofs to the 
 contrary ; while perhaps our polemic has never himself 
 read a single volume in the series he has enumerated, 
 nor made a single effort or sacrifice to encourage the 
 sort of labour which has produced them. We see he 
 does not need to be told that it is important to the credit 
 and the general influence of his denomination, that such 
 men should be found in it, and that such works should 
 be made public by them; but his conclusion seems to 
 be, that this advantage will be realized by some process 
 or other which is not to cost him any thing. He does 
 not bear in mind, that the literature of Dissenters, left 
 in this manner to live as by miracle in its own proper 
 circle, is too commonly regarded with jealousy or rooted 
 disaffection elsewhere. Of course, all Dissenters are not 
 chargeable with this delinquency, but this is, beyond 
 doubt, a very prevalent fault, — so much so, perhaps, as 
 to constitute, just now, the weak side of Dissent. It 
 must be acknowledged, that the majority of our people 
 are not of a class with whom much interest in relation 
 to such things can be expected ; but there is sufficient 
 wealth and intelligence in the minority to make their 
 deficiencies in this respect not a little discreditable to 
 them. 
 
 We are not curious to know how it happens, — but 
 
96 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 unfriendly as is the reception generally given to the works 
 of Dissenters by persons ecclesiastically opposed to them, 
 a book is scarcely ever regarded as truly valuable by the 
 mass of our people, until it has extorted some favourable 
 notice from parties known to be hostile to Dissent. So 
 far, indeed, is the body of Dissenters from having formed 
 a too favourable idea of the talents and acquirements of 
 their leading men, considered as authors, and from exer- 
 cising an impHcit confidence in their guidance, that 
 could it be demonstrated to-morrow, that the Eclectic 
 Review is conducted with a degree of ability not at all 
 inferior to that of the leading quarterly journals of lite- 
 rature, it is almost certain that Dissenters themselves 
 would be really the last section of the corammiity to 
 come into that opinion. In making these statements, I 
 am only giving expression to what I have heard again 
 and again from many of the most dispassionate and able 
 men in our communion. Doubtless, much of our lite- 
 rature may deserve the neglect into which it falls, and 
 feeble men, beset with a passion for authorship, will lay 
 the blame anywhere, rather than in the right place ; 
 but these admissions do not at all affect the accuracy or 
 importance of the above observations. 
 
 It is to the learning of our predecessors — unmindful 
 as their descendants may sometimes appear to be of the 
 fact — that Congregationalism is indebted for much of 
 the influence it has obtained in this kingdom. It was this 
 which gave so much efficiency to the small band of Dis- 
 senting ministers in the Westminster Assembly ; which 
 qualified the same class of men to check, in some degree, 
 the fanatical extravagance that sprmig up among the 
 Cromwellian soldiery ; which enabled them to leave the 
 University of Oxford at the Restoration, in a much 
 
LITERATURE OF DISSENTERS. 
 
 97 
 
 better state than they found it;* and which in Owen 
 and Howe produced eminent persons, who could speak 
 * before courts and princes in this cause, and could advo- 
 cate its claims from the press with a power which the 
 intelligence of their times was not able to gainsay. It 
 was this also which gave to Watts and Doddridge the 
 position they held in their own time, not only as leaders 
 of the party to which they were attached, but as the 
 friends and correspondents of the most distinguished 
 men of their day ; and which demonstrated to that age, 
 and shows even to our own time, the connexion that 
 may, and that ever ought to subsist, between the cha- 
 racter of the Dissenting minister, and that pure and dig- 
 nified attention to all the courtesies of life which results 
 so naturally from a love of learning. We owe our 
 existence and our progress to discussion ; and the wea- 
 pons of our warfare have been effective in proportion to 
 the literary adroitness and power with which they have 
 been wielded. We come in as Congregationalists, upon 
 a state of society in which men have much to unlearn, 
 in order to. their becoming participants in our views. 
 It has thus become necessary to our progress, that we 
 should be familiar with the knowledge embraced in the 
 wide compass of our argument, and skilled in making it 
 to bear against the errors, as we consider them, which 
 are prevalent about us. If a necessity of this kind 
 existed formerly, it is by no means less apparent at the 
 present time. In fact, it was never so true of the past, 
 as it is of the present— that a party without literature, 
 must be a party without power. Defence, against a- 
 
 * Clarendon's Hist. iii. 246, 298, 317, 350; v. 169, 481-2. 
 Orme's Life of Owen, 169-187. 
 
 F 
 
98 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 thousand modes of assault, is impossible, except by this 
 means. Literature, science, every thing tending to 
 human improvement, is now in such pervading and 
 ceaseless motion, and all so liable to be put into requisi- 
 tion on the side of error, that our choice is either to 
 engage in these pursuits with the prevailing ardour, 
 and to give them a wise direction, or else to see them 
 everywhere turned against us. Let the Dissenting 
 layman, then, consider this matter, and let him inquire 
 whether he has been accustomed to look on the con- 
 nexion between the literature and the power of his 
 denomination in its true light : and let him especially 
 ask himself, whether literature in this department has 
 received from him all the encouragement he might have 
 bestowed upon it ; or whether, giving himself up to an 
 unsynipathizing selfishness, it has been left, at least so 
 far as he is concerned, to droop and to perish. Next to 
 the increase of our piety, I should look on an increased 
 attention to such objects as the best indication of our 
 growing strength. 
 
 It may be observed further, that if we are not to be 
 fomid wanting in the new position which Providence has 
 assigned to us, it will be necessary that our standard of 
 ministerial qualification should be considerably raised. 
 If the rate of activity, the average intelhgence, the spirit 
 of enterprize, and the habit of contemplating moral and 
 religious questions, now observable in society, are all 
 much in advance of any thing of the kind previously 
 existing, it must be obvious that the Dissenting minister, 
 if he is to keep pace with this new impetus that has 
 come upon human alfairs, must be a man capable of 
 adapting himself to the exigencies which have been 
 thus produced. To the sort of education, and the con- 
 
THE DISSENTING MINISTRY. 
 
 99 
 
 sequent spirit of candour and urbanity, which charac- 
 terized his predecessors during the interval from the 
 Revolution to the rise of Methodism, it is needful he 
 should add knowledge somewhat more varied ; greater 
 aptness to teach ; a better acquaintance with the world ; 
 a habit of more diversified labour ; and, as the effect, a 
 more prompt, skilful, and energetic mind in matters of 
 business. But this is an object that will not be realized, 
 except by study and effort, — and by these, not only as 
 existing among ministers themselves, but as favoured 
 much more than at present by the feeling and conduct 
 of our churches generally. 
 
 With regard to the faculty of observation, and the 
 power of adapting himself to the diversities of human 
 character, which are now so necessary to success in 
 every connexion, there is, no doubt, enough in the pro- 
 ceedings of every considerable charge among Dissenters, 
 to call forth and to mature such ability on the part of 
 a minister, wherever there is aptitude for that kind of 
 improvement. Young ministers, however, frequently 
 enter on the pastoral office without that degree of 
 preparation, in this respect, which should have formed 
 an important part of their academical progress. Not 
 a few of them pass from the ill-regulated habits of a 
 grammar-school — or from connexions even less favour- 
 able to this kind of reflection and self-control, or to 
 that delicacy and propriety of manners to which it 
 naturally leads — into their place in college, where 
 their great object, in general, is to acquit themselves 
 with credit in their classes, and in their efforts as 
 preachers ; the kind of knowledge adverted to being 
 left to be acquired by slow degrees, and too often by 
 means of much bitter experience. With a mind intent 
 F 2 
 
100 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 perhaps, on higher objects, the youthful pastor is some- 
 times long in finding out how much he has suffered in 
 some directions even from so trivial a cause as the want 
 of more attention to small matters in social intercourse, 
 particularly in general society ; while, in other direc- 
 tions, he may begin to perceive, though possibly when 
 it is somewhat too late, how much less difficult it 
 is to produce excellent sermons, than so to govern 
 himself, and so to control the various tendencies of the 
 little commonwealth over which he presides, as to per- 
 petuate harmony, and to secure from the elements about 
 him a vigorous co-operation in his different plans of 
 usefulness. Where there is the groundwork of good 
 natural parts, this sort of wisdom will be acquired, but 
 not perhaps, even in such cases, until the better half of 
 life has been at some disadvantage from the want of it, 
 and chequered with disquietudes which an earlier pos- 
 session of it might in great part have prevented. Our 
 ministers — even the least experienced of them — are 
 generally so grounded in theological study, as to be 
 rarely, if ever, moved by those "winds of doctrine," 
 which carry away so many of the clergy of the Esta- 
 blished Church : and if a similar effort were made with 
 a view to the formation of wise and vigorous habits in 
 relation to the pastoral office, and to that commerce with 
 society at large that must now be familiar to the Dis- 
 senting minister, the happiest effects would follow. 
 
 But the minister eminently qualified in these respects, 
 may find much in his circumstances, rendering it next to 
 impossible that his habits should be of the description 
 necessary to real scholarship. Our churches are of 
 course pleased when they find in their pastors, men 
 capable of serving the cause of religion in this higher 
 
THE DISSENTING MINISTRY. 
 
 101 
 
 department of labour. But they too often afford proof 
 that they know not well how to submit to those sacri- 
 fices on their own part, which must generally attend the 
 efficiency of such efforts in the public service on the part 
 of their ministers. Dissenting ministers are often de- 
 scribed as ignorant men, obtruding themselves on an 
 office to the duties of which they are not competent ; 
 and few persons, perhaps, would be more indignant while 
 listening to such representations, than the very parties 
 who have been least disposed to forego any demand on 
 the time of their minister, though strictly necessary if 
 charges of this nature are to receive a practical refuta- 
 tion. What with their limited means, the too general 
 want of sympathy with any thing like learned study on 
 the part of those with whom they are immediately 
 connected, and the force of prejudice on which they have 
 to calculate in most directions beyond their own circle, 
 it is truly surprising that so great a number of Dissent- 
 ing ministers should have furnished such decided evi- 
 dence of solid acquirement. It required a high degree 
 of self-sustained energy to make them what they are 
 in such circumstances. Every thing about them seemed 
 to conspire to keep them down to the level of a tame 
 mediocrity. But if there are minds which master cir- 
 cumstances, it should be remembered that the majority 
 are surely mastered by them. 
 
 If then it be necessary, in connexion with the present 
 improved and more prevalent tone of education, that the 
 Dissenting minister of the present day should be in 
 various respects an improvement on the past, it is not 
 less obvious that his circumstances must be made more 
 favourable to scholar-like habits — and this is a change 
 which must be effected mainly by the better feeling of 
 
102 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 our churches. To this end, it will be necessary that we 
 should give the best support in our power to our various 
 colleges; that we endeavour to render the systems of 
 instruction in them as efficient as possible ; that more 
 consideration should be exercised in the demands made 
 on the time of our ministers in the way of visits for 
 common talk ; and above all, it will be needed that we 
 should ^study, in the spirit of apostoHc times, to make 
 it evident that we esteem the men who have taken 
 the oversight of us, " very highly in love, for their 
 work's sake." In all these respects, we are in reality 
 making advances, but the rate is slow ; and much more 
 must be done, if we would more frequently attract to- 
 ward the Dissenting ministry the class of minds most 
 capable of raising its character, and rendering impor- 
 tant service to the great cause with which it is iden- 
 tified. God will not fail to send our churches men of 
 power, as well as piety — men equal in all respects to 
 meet the spirit of the times in which we live — in propor- 
 tion as we are found capable of setting a proper value 
 on such bestowments. 
 
 My plea in this place, it will be perceived, is on be- 
 half of the laborious minister — the devout man, anxious 
 to husband the fragments of time that may be secured 
 from the regular course of his duties, in order to his 
 own improvement in knowledge and mental power. 
 For such as can waste even their leisure in trivial 
 affairs, while holding such an office in such times, I have 
 nothing to offer. It is probable that our men of action 
 would some of them be much improved by being more 
 men of study ; and our men of study would some of 
 them perhaps be the better for becoming more men of 
 action. But these faults of mere apportionment are 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 103 
 
 small, when compared with the crime of indolence. It 
 is not desirable that all our ministers should have the 
 habits of close students : the majority, perhaps, may be 
 better employed otherwise. What we mean is, that 
 those whose inclinations lead them to the labours of the 
 study, should be less discouraged than they are wont to 
 be in such pursuits ; that, in general, our ministers 
 must be men of more intellectual acquirement than 
 formerly ; and that no person without the preliminary of 
 good natural parts, together with a fixed love of reading, 
 should be encouraged to lay his hand at all upon this 
 work. It would be cruel to introduce men into the Dis- 
 senting ministry at present, who were seen entering it, 
 and with a measur e of success, some thirty or forty years 
 ago. A habit of labour — and, in a great degree, of 
 mental labour — is now indispensable to success, even in 
 the most humble connexion. Methodism, on this point, 
 has taught us some lessons which we cannot too soon 
 unlearn. In fact, our Methodist brethren have them- 
 selves become considerably aware of their error in this 
 respect, and are endeavouring to correct it, by the insti- 
 tution of permanent colleges for the education of their 
 ministers : — a measure strictly necessary, if sects are to 
 become permanent, when the force of novelty and the 
 rage of persecution have subsided. 
 
 As my last word of humble advice, I would venture 
 to say. Let us study to maintain and to exercise the 
 charity of the Gospel toward every communion of 
 Christians. In this respect no party has been without 
 fault. But if we cannot be of one mind, the present 
 state of society is such as to render it to the last degree 
 undesirable that our differences should be insisted on 
 in a spirit not accordant with the acknowledged temper 
 
104 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 of the religion we profess. We are surrounded by 
 men who are wise in their generation. No flaw, no 
 discrepancy can escape them. They discover as much 
 aptness as inclination to detect and expose all false pre- 
 tences. They well know that Christians should be good 
 men, and should love one another ; and they will look 
 on nothing as Christianity which is not attested by such 
 fruits. To hold principles which we profess to value, 
 and to shrink from an open avowal of them, or from 
 efforts to diffuse them, is a species of insincerity, which 
 shrewd minds, whatever the timid or the selfish may 
 persuade themselves, will not fail to see through and to 
 despise. On the other hand, such men will not be less 
 keen-eyed in observing whether the religious disputant 
 is characterized by a spirit of his owti, or in notliing 
 distinguishable from the mere pohtical partisan. Yes — 
 the heavens are gathering, and, let rulers or parties do 
 what they may, the storm will come, and the religion 
 to survive will be that which is least beset with the 
 trammels of sectarianism, and most imbued with a 
 spirit of charity toward all mankind. Let good men of 
 all denominations be only true to themselves, reserving 
 their chief solicitude for the great christian interest, 
 and their fears as to the effect of all possible changes 
 may be given to the winds. But while we are agreed 
 in lamenting the prevalence of irreligion, the strength 
 of the antagonist power has done little toward pro- 
 ducing that union among ourselves, of which, in a less 
 diseased state of things, it would surely have been the 
 occasion. It is a bad sign when the enemy thunder- 
 ing at the gate, fails to silence the noise of faction 
 within. Of a state so envenomed by discord we should 
 have small hope. It is not easy to say where the 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 105 
 
 greater portion of blame may attach ; ~ but if our bre- 
 thren are determined to perpetuate the scandal and 
 weakness of disunion, even in such circumstances, let 
 it at least be our continual study and earnest prayer 
 that the fault henceforward may not rest with us ! 
 
 We shall, perhaps, find this course of proceeding less 
 difficult, if we seriously inquire whether we have been 
 accustomed to look on the influence of circumstances, in 
 producing religious preferences in the' case of those who 
 differ from us, with a sufficient degree of consideration. 
 Under influences of this nature, we have all been led to 
 adopt error, much of which we no doubt still retain. 
 Hence it should be our concern duly to weigh the force 
 of similar causes, in regard to our brethren whom we 
 believe to be mistaken. Our own peace of mind will 
 be materially promoted by our being able, in this man- 
 ner, to judge more favourably with respect to those who 
 differ from us. Their case, we may be sure, is never so 
 simple as bigotry will be forward to assert. Such is our 
 infirmity, that all extended and complex questions are 
 sure to be viewed, in the majority of cases, under parti- 
 cular aspects only ; and, as the consequence, very dif- 
 ferent conclusions will be formed concerning them. An 
 erroneous conception may r.esult almost entirely from 
 a vicious partiality ; but more commonly it will be the 
 effect, in great part, of positive inability to look at the 
 whole of the question : and the particular points of the 
 great subject, on which this narrow power of observation 
 has been fixed, are those probably which a multitude of 
 circumstances have tended to place continually in view. 
 Hence it generally requires a strong effort of imagina- 
 tion, and of something more, to form any thing like a 
 fair moral estimate of the character of an opponent. In 
 F 3 
 
106 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOrS PARTIES. 
 
 fact, we shall never deal justly with each other in this 
 respect in the .present world. Some abatement of the 
 evil is all that can be expected. 
 
 The causes which serve to make us what we are in 
 matters of opinion and feeling are not only innumerable, 
 and of endless variety, but so intermixed as not to admit 
 of a clear separation from each other ; and so constant 
 and imperceptible is their operation, as to produce the 
 greatest effects without allowing their power to become 
 apparent, or even to be suspected. In the natural 
 world, the greatest changes are frequently wrought by 
 influences which do their office as by stealth. The dew 
 descending to the earth, the night giving place to jday, 
 arid the winter to the summer, are effects resulting from 
 causes so concealed or imperceptible as to elude our 
 power of observation. Important as is the work to be 
 accomplished, it is perfected so slowly, and in a manner 
 so noiseless, that nearly all we can say of it is that — it is 
 done. It is the same in the moral world. Those notions 
 and impressions which we are most confident we shall 
 always retain, may often be traced to influences which 
 have operated upon us in this unobtrusive, silent, cease- 
 less manner, and the real power of which, in conse- 
 quence, we may never have attempted to understand. 
 The peculiarities of our age and country, domestic 
 training, subsequent education, station in society, na- 
 tural capacity and temperament — these, and other cir- 
 cumstances, have borne with a steady pressure upon us, 
 fixing their impress on the mind and habit from day to 
 day, and from hour to hour, and fixing it the more 
 deeply from doing so by little and little. In some 
 instances, this current, by which our course has been 
 so much governed, has tended toward truth and good- 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 107 
 
 ness ; in more, possibly, it has taken a different direc- 
 tion. Indeed, we may confide that it has often taken 
 the prohibited course in our own case, if we have not 
 been very much upon our guard against danger from 
 this source. In that case, what the causes adverted to 
 have done in secret, need to be examined as in the light 
 of day ; the work they have carried forward impercep- 
 tibly, will require to be retraced through the steps of 
 its progress : and, as the result, much that we have 
 learned as by yielding to a stream, will remain to be 
 unlearned as by working against it. 
 
 While the sources of error are thus difficult to deal 
 with on account of their multitude, their variety, their 
 combinations, and the silence and secrecy with which 
 they affect us, it is often no less difficult to exercise a 
 sound discrimination upon the consequences which follow 
 from these causes. The great lines of demarcation may 
 be sufficiently manifest, but the instances are many in 
 which the shades of truth and error, and of good and 
 evil, so blend themselves to our imperfect discernment, 
 as to baffle the attempts we make to distinguish be- 
 tween them. Every moral truth, by being urged 
 beyond its proper limit, may become error ; and every 
 virtuous feeling, in the same manner, may become 
 vicious. These opposites always border upon each 
 other. Lord Bacon has remarked concerning Scripture 
 prophecies, that they are like grapes, which are found 
 to supply a wholesome wine if pressed only to a certain 
 point, but which yield a juice of an injurious quality 
 if pressed further. This observation is not more appli- 
 cable to the prophecies of Scripture than to its doctrines, 
 and, in fact, to every thing belonging to truth and duty ; 
 every thing good having its place in near connexion with 
 
108 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 the evil in which it is liable to become merged — cle- 
 mency degenerating into weakness, its opposite into in- 
 humanity ; liberality becoming profusion, and frugality 
 ending in covetousness. These moral landmarks must 
 be subject to great disturbance while man continues to 
 be what he has hitherto been ; and the confusion thus 
 produced is increased and perpetuated, by our con- 
 tinuing to give fair names to qualities, long after they 
 have sunk, more or less, into their neighbouring vices. 
 Mention is here made of these things merely to indicate 
 the propriety of guarding against rash judgment, con- 
 cerning the real or the supposed culpability of persons 
 whom we believe to be in error. " With what judg- 
 ment ye mete ye shall be judged." 
 
 Nor do we, perhaps, sufficiently bear in mind the 
 possible necessity, in our imperfect world, of the kind of 
 stimulus that is supplied by the rivalries of party with 
 respect to religion, in common with other things. Des- 
 potism has its repose in the absence of opposition. But 
 in literature, in science, in all that relates to good 
 government and commercial enterprise, the approach 
 toward perfection has been in proportion to the extent 
 in which these objects have been thrown open to rival 
 claimants. Collision between the parts has given sharp- 
 ness and power to the whole, and has everywhere 
 seemed to be necessary to that end. We are not slow 
 to affirm, that nearly every thing good in the Established 
 Church has its existence there as the effect of her juxta- 
 position with the more wakeful energies of Dissent. But 
 are we certain that Dissent itself would have been what 
 it now is, in the absence of the sort of rivalry which has 
 been inseparable from our position in regard to such an 
 Ecclesiastical Establishment ? Is it beyond doubt that 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 100 
 
 we should have possessed all our present" vigour, though 
 affected little, if at all, by this kind of competition ? 
 
 As the mutuar jealousy of angry disputants, in the 
 early ages of the church, led to a watchful oversight of 
 the canonical Scriptures, which served to protect them, 
 in a signal manner, against the possibility of being cor- 
 rupted, so the partisanship of our own time has, no 
 doubt, its good as well as its evil to perform. We do 
 well to deplore it so far as it is unchristian, but shall do 
 well also to look upon it, so long as it is not to be 
 removed by the use of christian means, as an occasion 
 in the providence of God, requiring us to abound in the 
 exercise of the more difficult virtues belonging to our 
 profession as Christians. In truth, the more I consider 
 this subject, the more I am obliged to suspect, that our 
 zeal in the cause of our own sort of uniformity, too 
 often partakes of the same element with that of the men 
 whom we justly censure as the persecutors of our pious 
 forefathers. It is true, we renounce all right or power 
 to persecute on account of religion ; but are we as anxi- 
 ous to find out arguments that should serve to nourish 
 a catholic spirit, notwithstanding our differences, as we 
 are to make out a strong case against our opponents ? 
 Is it as manifest that we love all good men, whatever 
 their mistakes may be, as it is that we think them in 
 error, and are persuaded that they ought to become as 
 ourselves ? The Dissenter, as well as the Churchman, 
 may care more about uniformity than about Christianity, 
 and be, in consequence, while little suspecting it, more a 
 formalist than a Christian ; and many, who do not err to 
 that extent, may err in that direction. It is my earnest 
 wish, in these concluding observations, to suggest such a 
 train of reflection as may tend to correct this evil, in 
 
110 
 
 STATE OF RELTGIOrs PARTIES. 
 
 whatever quarter it may exist, and to strengthen the 
 charities that should unite, adorn, and bless the brother- 
 hood of the universal church. 
 
 TVlien the apostle describes the church as a hody^ of 
 which all Christians are members, the figure which he 
 employs, without being pressed beyond its due limits, 
 may afford us an insight of high practical value into the 
 general character and purpose of the Divine dispensa- 
 tions. In the first age of the church, the miraculous 
 endowments conferred on a large portion of its mem- 
 bers gave an extraordinary variety to ecclesiastical cha- 
 racter and pretension. By this means some became 
 possessed of " the word of wisdom," and some of " the 
 word of knowledge:" one received the gifl of "heal- 
 ing;" another the working of "miracles;" another 
 " prophecy ; " another " discerning of spirits ; " another 
 divers kinds of " tongues ; " and another " the interpre- 
 tation of tongues." Some were apostles, while some 
 were merely called teachers ; and others were known 
 by the name of helps, and governments.* 
 
 Tliis was a state of things in which nothing short of 
 great supernatural aid could prevent the speedy appear- 
 ance of haughty presumption on the one hand, and of 
 emious discontent upon the other. It was proper to 
 enjoin that " each should esteem others better than him- 
 self;" but to suppose that obedience to such a precept 
 would follow, was certainly to expect the most difficult 
 moral attainments, and in circumstances singularly op- 
 posed to their existence. ISIen, however, are accounted 
 virtuous, not merely in proportion to the good they do, 
 but to the evil they resist; and as it is not more true of 
 
 • 1 Corinthians, xiL 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 Ill 
 
 our physical than of our moral capabilities, that they 
 acquire strength and readiness by exercise, it is not 
 difficult to see, in the view thus afforded with regard to 
 the complexion and circumstances of the primitive 
 church, an important feature in the designs of the 
 Redeemer with respect to the Christians of that period, 
 and with regard to his people in the present world at 
 all times, and even in the world to come. 
 
 It is true, the age of miraculous gifts has ceased : 
 but the bestowments of Heaven in the economy of divine 
 grace, as well as in nature and providence, present the 
 same general features of subordination and variety. Be 
 it remembered, then, that all the appetites and passions 
 which exist in the world, exist in the church. In the 
 wider space, they reign ; in the narrower, they are con- 
 trolled, and in part subdued, by higher and better influ- 
 ences. It must be remembered, too, that all the 
 incentives to such tendencies which beset us continually 
 in the world, find their way more or less within the pale 
 of the church. In the latter sphere, as in the former, 
 there will be authority, with its temptations to self-will ; 
 and subjection, with its proneness to insubordination ; 
 success, with its suggestions to our pride ; and failure, 
 with its influence upon our envy ; wealth, producing 
 alienation from the poor ; and poverty, inducing the same 
 feeling of separation from the rich ; and above all, di- 
 versities of judgment, of taste, and usage, on matters of 
 religion, to become the occasion either of angry discus- 
 sion, and it may be of something worse, or a circumstance 
 to determine the existence, and to afford space for the 
 exercise, of a large feeling of brotherhood. 
 
 Nor must we look on this condition of ecclesiastical 
 affairs as the effect of chance. This variousness of 
 
112 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 dispensation to the church, in common with what is 
 seen in the world, is, in a great degree, from God ; and 
 the conflict which springs from it he will make conducive 
 to his glory. It is his design, in the great commonwealth 
 of the faithful, to secure the moral harmony of the whole, 
 by the various and graduated operation of the parts. 
 It is not concealed, that this manifold species of opera- 
 tion carries with it, in the present state of human 
 nature, a strong tendency to disorder. There is danger, 
 the Apostle intimates, lest the head, in the fulness of 
 its pride, should say to the feet, " I have no need of 
 you ;" and lest the feet, dissatisfied with their inferiority, 
 should say, " We are not of the body." 
 
 To meet the danger arising from this source, one of 
 two things would seem to be necessary : — either all dis- 
 tinction between one rational creature and another must 
 be removed, and the whole be placed on one level in all 
 conceivable respects, so that no evil motive may be left 
 to spring from a sense of superiority in one case, or of 
 inferiority in another ; — or else the mind of man must be 
 so enlightened, and his moral sympathies so influenced, 
 as to lead him to acknowledge the wisdom and bene- 
 volence of an unequal dispensation of the divine gifts. 
 It does not need much reflection to become satisfied 
 as to which of these methods of proceeding it would 
 be most desirable should be chosen. The works of God 
 are everywhere characterized by variety ; and a plan to 
 separate men from all temptation, either to presumption 
 or discontent, by conferring benefits upon them on the 
 principle of a strict monotonous equality, would have 
 been to make human nature an exception to the general 
 character of the system with which it is surrounded. 
 For it must be remembered, that this supposed same- 
 
1 
 
 CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 113 
 
 ness, if it be to answer its supposed purpose, must 
 extend to every thing — to the gifts of nature, and to our 
 worldly allotments, no less than to the communications 
 of divine grace. We find, however, that the dispensa- 
 tions of Heaven are not shaped so as to roll on upon a 
 dull level of this sort. On the contrary, our heavenly 
 Father has given more of the charm of variety to man, 
 the noblest of his works, than to any other part of his 
 creation at present known to us. It is his pleasure, that 
 the understanding of man should ascend through all 
 gradations between the verge of instinct and the wisdom 
 of an angel ; and that his heart should be the seat of 
 heaven-born emotion, commencing with the lowest im- 
 perfection of such feeling on earth, until, as with a seraph 
 ardour, it longs to depart and to be with Christ ! 
 
 And when the All-wise determined, that his gifts to 
 men, of every kind, should be thus variously bestowed, 
 he did so that by this means a greater variety and 
 strength of moral excellence might become necessary to 
 the concord and happiness of his works ; that this higher 
 excellence might be called forth ; and that its existence 
 might be as a monument adapted, in the highest degree, 
 to demonstrate his wisdom, and power, and goodness. 
 He has created the distinction between rich and poor, 
 that virtues for the manifestation of which there would 
 otherwise have been no place might be brought into 
 exercise. For the same reason, we have the classes of 
 great and small in all other respects, and in the church 
 as well as in the world. Creation itself is as "a body 
 compact together by the strength which every joint sup- 
 plieth ; " and providence is the same, and the church, 
 in this respect, is in harmony with both. To all these 
 instances, everywhere bearing the features of the 
 
114 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 sovereign disposal of benefits, the language of the Apo- 
 stle is applicable : — The head cannot say to the feet, I 
 have no need of you ; nor the eye to the hand, I have 
 no need of thee. 
 
 Now, when we remember, not only that there are 
 always degrees in human intelligence, and varieties in 
 human temperament, education, and habit, but that even 
 the corrective process of religion in the soul is as the 
 little leaven, which by slow degrees leavens the whole 
 lump, it is obvious that no mean part of our obligation 
 as Christians must consist, in our maintaining a course 
 proper to our profession, when exposed to the contra- 
 diction of sinners in the world, and when having to do 
 with the ignorance, the errors, and the imperfections of 
 good men in the church. We scarcely need repeat, that 
 the portion of this ever-changing aspect of things which 
 is the effect of sin, cannot be pleasing to Him who has 
 described that evil as the abominable thing which his 
 soul hateth ; but we see him take occasion, even from 
 the disorders thus produced, to furnish a more striking 
 manifestation of his wisdom, and purity, and bene- 
 volence. If the effect of differences, which exist as 
 the result of his own immediate and holy appointment, 
 has been to raise the mind to the culture of a more 
 vigorous and comprehensive spirituality, presenting to 
 it a wider sphere of obligation, and bracing it to a 
 larger compass of duty ; why may not those which are 
 the result of man's fall and depravity be also made to 
 favour the exercise of a peculiar class of virtues, so as 
 to add a new department to the modes of rational exist- 
 ence, and another field to the development of the latent 
 power of his works ? When he makes his creatures to 
 differ in a manner which involves no moral taint, it is 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 115 
 
 with this interesting object in view ; and we learn from 
 the revelation of his will, that the differences which men 
 have created for themselves by the outbreaks of their 
 depravity, will be made to subserve the same end. In 
 this larger sense, he will make the wrath of man to 
 praise him. There is a class of sentiments, and a line 
 of conduct, particularly incumbent on men toward each 
 other, considered as being alike fallen creatures. Were 
 they innocent, and their endowments not strictly the 
 same, it would even then be a part of their obedience 
 that the strong should bear with the natural infirmities 
 of the weak. But as fallen natures, it is imperative on 
 those who are strong in faith, or in any other religious 
 grace, to bear with the infirmities of their weaker bre- 
 thren. In this manner, even the irregularities which 
 have their origin in sin, become the occasion of enrich- 
 ing the religion of a sinner with peculiar sentiments of 
 humility, forbearance, tenderness, and charity ; not to 
 mention resignation, patience, fortitude, and self-denial, 
 which are also peculiar to the religion of such a being, 
 as compared with angels, or with man in paradise. 
 Apart from the fall of man, we may have known little 
 or nothing of the Divine mercy ; and neither the 
 church, nor " the principalities and powers in heavenly 
 places," would have been privileged to contemplate that 
 " manifold wisdom of God," or that marvellous exhibi- 
 tion of the separate and harmonized glory of the Divine 
 perfections, which the redemption of the Cross has 
 placed before them. The deeper wants of human 
 nature gave occasion to this fuller manifestation of the 
 Godhead ; and so, by a similar method of proceeding, 
 he consequences of the Fall have become the occa- 
 sion of a wider and stronger development of creature 
 
116 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 obligation and obedience. We owe more as redeemed 
 men, both to God and to one another, than could in 
 other circumstances have devolved upon us ; inasmuch 
 as we have received more from above, and have more 
 within us and around us to render us familiar with 
 endurance, and to call us forth in the exercise of all 
 kind offices. 
 
 Our great duty manifestly is, to keep this holy and 
 benevolent design of God steadily in view ; to consider 
 the place assigned us in the body, the church, as from 
 him : and to be assiduous in discharging the particular 
 functions allotted to us, with a due consideration and 
 tenderness toward every class of Christians, and every 
 form of human infirmity. This would be to labour 
 that there may "be no schism in the body." But the 
 man who loses sight of this object, fails to apprehend 
 the views of God as connected with the marked charac- 
 ter of his dispensations, and instdad of favouring their 
 accomplishment, becomes an impediment in their way. 
 He has failed to look with a due thoughtfulness on the 
 nature of his position, and at his pecuhar duties as 
 arising from it ; and he fails, in consequence, to act as 
 a part, whose existence should tend to the good of the 
 whole. He has fallen under the temptations of his 
 state ; instead of resisting them, and attaining by that 
 very process of resistance to a higher and a more varied 
 feeling of spirituality than could have become his in 
 any other condition. 
 
 We can hardly conceive of the heavenly state itself, 
 except as partaking in a great degree of the variety, 
 though certainly not of the contradiction or imperfec- 
 tion, which belongs to the present. Were any place 
 found in heaven for a tendency to disagreement, there 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 117 
 
 would be no lack of occasion for the play of discordant 
 passions even in that state. Thus we not only read 
 of angels, but of archangels ; of Gabriel and Michael, as 
 raised above their fellows ; of thrones, dominions, prin- 
 cipalities, and powers ; and also of cherubim and sera- 
 phim ; — descriptions which bring that world to the eye 
 of our faith, as stored, hardly less than the present, with 
 the ordinary incentives to envy, ambition, and similar 
 feelings. 
 
 But the design of the benevolent Parent of the imi- 
 verse, in the dispensation he has commenced on earth, 
 and that which he will perfect by its means in heaven, 
 is to give such an ascendancy to the elements of sanc- 
 tity in individual character, over all that is merely intel- 
 lectual or external, that the spirit of willing subjection 
 to his government, and of mutual love among his crea- 
 tures, may be perfect and enduring, notwithstanding 
 any variety either in the measure or the form in which 
 his bounty may be shed upon them. How different 
 are the outward apportionments, and the combina- 
 tions of the intellectual and the moral, in the cha- 
 racter even of good men in" the present world ! And 
 where is the necessity, w^here is the reason, which 
 should lead us to conclude that these characteristic 
 features will cease to exist from the moment they enter 
 heaven ? Would it be in vain to search there for any 
 of those individual traits, which once distinguished be- 
 tween the piety of " the son of thunder," and that of 
 ** the son of consolation ;" between the ardent tempera- 
 ment of Peter, and the placid tenderness of John ; the 
 power of holy principle in Elijah, and the power of 
 that, and of feeling no less, in David ? There are no 
 opposites in heaven, because there is no sin there ; but 
 there may be degrees in every kind of capacity ; and 
 
118 
 
 STATE OF RELIGIOUS PARTIES. 
 
 these degrees in capacity may exist in different com- 
 binations, so that one nature may ascend high, and 
 range far, in the calmer contemplation of the works of 
 God, gazing upon them as in the profound thought of 
 the cherubim ; while others, comprehending less, may 
 feel more, worshipping for ever as with the transport of 
 a seraph! What we want in the church on earth is, 
 more of the kind of wisdom which has been thus 
 perfected in heaven. Our great need is just that 
 amount of moral change and improvement which, while 
 leaving all existing natural varieties as they are, except 
 so far as they are the effects of sin, would secure a 
 concurring and obedient habit of mind in regard to the 
 Di\'ine procedure, of so much power, as to enable us to 
 look continually with a full contentment and gratitude 
 on our own, and fervently to adore the character of 
 God in the wide profusion of his bounty to others ; all 
 his bestowments becoming endeared to the heart, as so 
 many wonderful utterances of his Infinite ]\Iind, in 
 relation to creature capability and happiness ! 
 
 ]\Iy application of these remarks to our present point 
 is as follows. Party spirit, carried to the excess of 
 uncharitableness, is only one manifestation of a very 
 common form of human depravity. Those who are 
 chargeable with it, would be, in effect, the same men, if 
 all party distinctions were at an end. The tendencies 
 of the mind, which now fasten on the points in dispute 
 between party and party, would then turn upon the 
 points of difference between members of the same com- 
 munion'; and even if all differences which have any 
 thing of sinful infirmity in them could be put aside, 
 the uncharitable heart would then fix itself on those 
 purely innocent varieties, which have their origin from 
 the boundless wisdom and benevolence of the Creator ; 
 
CHRISTIAN CHARITY. 
 
 119 
 
 and being one part of the body only, would begin to 
 question the right of precedence that may have been 
 assigned to others. Thus our forbearance toward each 
 other, on all matters not inconsistent with the possession 
 of religious character, is part of that general discipline 
 on earth by which we are to be made meet for the har- 
 mony and blessedness of heaven ; and the more we 
 enter into this conception, and live under its influence, 
 the more shall we realize of the tranquil happiness 
 awaiting us in the future, even while surrounded by 
 the imperfections and agitations of the present.* 
 
 * Nothing has been said in the foregoing pages with respect to 
 the Ronaan Catholics. The misapprehension and excitement which 
 prevail in connexion with this topic, led me to the conclusion that 
 it would not be in my power to touch upon it with advantage ; nor 
 was it necessary to my object that I should do so. The noncon- 
 formist controversy is exclusively Protestant. I may observe, 
 however, that one of the leading charges urged by the Puritans 
 against the Royalists in the age of Charles I. was their inconsis- 
 tency and impiety in accepting the services of Catholics ; while in 
 our own time, this precise ground of complaint is taken up by the 
 descendants of the old Royalists, against the descendants of the 
 Pmitans. The army of the king was then denomaced as Popish, 
 from much the same cause that is now leading men to denounce 
 the government of the queen as Popish. In fact, if you subject 
 men of different religious creeds, to similar political disadvan- 
 tages, it is inevitable that they should often seem to forget the 
 points of religion in which they differ, in the joint ardour with 
 which they seek the removal of the secular evils which they expe- 
 rience in common. Every species of sophistry and abuse may be 
 put into constant requisition to prevent this : but the effect of 
 these superadded injuries will be to strengthen the apparently 
 mmatural association, so long as its cause is suffered to remain. 
 
 THE EXD. 
 
THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF JOHN DE 
 
 WYCLIFFE, D.D., illustrated principally from his unpublished 
 Manuscripts, with a Preliminary View of the Papal System, and of 
 the state of the Protestant Doctrine in Europe, to the commence- 
 ment of the Fourteenth Century, With a finely engraved Portrait, 
 by E. H. FiNDEN, from the original Picture by Sir Antonio More, 
 now an heir-loom to the Rectory of Wycliffe, Richmondshire. The 
 Second Edition, improved. 2 vols. 8vo. 1/. Is. 
 
 " All these (preceding) biographers have their own share of merit ; but the 
 strenuous and well-directed labours of Mr. Vaughan are such as entitle 
 him to a very decided pre-eminence. In this age of flippant and flimsy com- 
 pilations, it is highly gratifying to meet with something that reminds us of 
 better times ; to meet with a book which at once relates to a subject of real 
 importance, and is prepared with a due mixture of ardent perseverance and 
 judicious deliberation." — Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1832. 
 
 *' There seems to be no repository of ancient literature in the empire which 
 has escaped the industry of Mr. Vaughan. I have found his work a most 
 invaluable guide." — Professor Le Bus — Preface to the Life of WicHf in 
 Rivington's Theological Librartj. 
 
 THE CAUSES OF THE CORRUPTION OF 
 CHRISTIANITY. The Congregational Lecture for 1834. 
 1 vol. Svo. 105. Qd. 
 
 " Mr. Vaughan has brought to his undertaking the knowledge of the his- 
 torian, the learning of the divine, and the spirit of the philosopher." 
 
 Spectator. 
 
 " The examination of the eflfects produced on Christianity by the influence 
 of Gentile philosophy, is equally remarkable for learning and discrimination." 
 
 Alhenaum. 
 
 "These lectures are well and eloquently written."— Prirt^iw^r Machine. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN WARFARE ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 1 vol. Svo. 10s. 6d. 
 
 " A work eminently adapted to inform the mind and improve the heart." 
 
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 " A truly valuable work." — Eclectic Review. 
 
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