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FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON. D. D. 
 
 BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 /Oil 
 
C^urcp '^ietox^ ^txm 
 
 CONSISTING OF A SERIES OF 
 
 DJiNOMINATlONAL HISTORIES PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF 
 
 THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CHURCH HISTORY 
 
 (Keneraf (B^itoxB 
 
 Rev. Ph'lip Schaff, D. D., LL. D. Bishop John F. Hurst, D. D., LL. D. 
 Rt. Rev. H. C. Potter, D. D., LL. D. Rev. E. J. Wolf, D. D. 
 Rev. Gi.o. P. Fisher, D. D., LL.D. Henry C. Vedder, M. A. 
 Rev. Samuel M. Jackson, D. D., LL. D. 
 
 Volume III 
 
(American C^txtc^ j^i^forg \^^ 
 
 A HISTORY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CONGREGATIONAL 
 CHURCHES 
 
 IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 WILLISTON WALKER 
 
 PROFESSOR IN HARTFORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 t^c Cf^xxBtian feiterafure €o. 
 
 MDCCCXCIV 
 
Copyright, 1894, 
 By The Christian Literature Company. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Bibliography ^^ 
 
 CHAP. I. — The Beginnings of Congregationalism. — The Refor- 
 mation and the Bible. — The Reformation Incomplete. — Calvin's 
 Work.— The Anabaptists.— Anabaptist Principles.— The English 
 Reformation.— The Early Puritans.— Thomas Cartwright.— Limita- 
 tions of Puritanism. — Advance of Anglicanism. — Diverse Political 
 Theories. — Congregational Beginnings I 
 
 CHAP. II. — Early English Congregationalism. — Robert Browne. 
 —Browne's Spiritual Development.— Browne's Church.— Browne's 
 Congregationalism. — The London Church. — Greenwood and Bar- 
 rowe.— Expositions of Congregationalism.— John Penry. — Francis 
 Johnson. — Exiles in Amsterdam 3^ 
 
 CHAP. III.— Congregationalism Carried to America.— The Pil- 
 grim Church.— John Smyth.— Pilgrims at Leyden. — The Emi- 
 gration. — Arrival in America. — Early Struggles. — Robinson and 
 Brewster. — The Plymouth Church 5^ 
 
 CHAP. IV. — The Puritan Settlement of New England — Puri- 
 tanism Congregationalized. — Puritanism not Separatism. — 
 Puritan Hopes. — James and the Puritans. — James and Parliament. 
 — The Policy of Charles. — Rise of Arminianism. — William Laud. — 
 Laud and the Puritans. — Beginnings of Massachusetts. — Character 
 of Immigration. — Influenced by Plymouth. — The Salem Church. — 
 The Dorchester Church. — Charlestown and Watertown. — A State 
 Church.— Settlement of Connecticut.— Settlement of New Haven. 
 — Milford and Guilford 7^ 
 
 CHAP. V. — The Development of Fellowship. — A Difificult Situa- 
 tion.— Roger Williams.— Effects of the Discussion.— The " Anti- 
 nomians." — The First Synod. — Fate of the Antinomians. — Baptists 
 and Quakers. — Puritanism not Alone Severe. — Investigation and 
 Education. — Their Effect. — Congregational Treatises. — Vassall and 
 Child.— The Cambridge Synod.— The " Cambridge Platform." .... 125 
 
 CHAP. VI.— Congregationalism from 1650 to 1725. — Indian Mis- 
 sions.— The Half-Way Covenant.— Convention of 1657.— Synod of 
 1662.— Res^ilts of the Dispute.—" Stoddardeanism."— Half-Way 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Covenant Abandoned. — Increase Mather. — The " Reforming Syn- 
 od." — The Confession of 1680. — Loss of the Charter. — The Andros 
 Episode. — The New Charter. — Salem Witchcraft. — Ministerial As- 
 sociations. — Brattle Church. — The Proposals of 1705. — Causes of 
 Friction. — The " Saybrook Platform." — John Wise and his Theo- 
 ries. — A Synod Forbidden 164 
 
 CHAP. VII. — Early Theories and Usages. — Little Doctrinal Dis- 
 cussion. — Theory of the Church. — Covenants and Confessions. — 
 Choice of Officers. — Ordination of Officers. — Duties of Officers. — 
 Duties and Support. — Ministerial Support. — Exemption of Dis- 
 senters. — Separation of Church and State. — The Meeting-house 
 and Services. — Sunday Services. — The Sacrament. — Other Services. 
 — Communion of Churches. — Legislative Supervision 214 
 
 CHAP. VIII. — The Great Awakening and the Rise of Theo- 
 logical Parties. — Spiritual Decline. — Edwards and the Revivals. 
 — George Whitefield. — The Great Awakening. — New England Di- 
 vided. — Connecticut Separatists. — Criticisms and Replies. — Rise of 
 Doctrinal Schools. — The Liberals. — Mayhew and Briant. — Briant's 
 Opponents. — Discussion on Original Sin. — ^Jonathan Mayhew. — 
 Arian Views. — Jonathan Edwards. — Edwards's Writings. — Joseph 
 Bellamy. — Samuel Hopkins. — Smalley, West, and Edwards. — Early 
 Universalism. — The Atonement. — Nathanael Emmons. — Timothy 
 Dwight. — Effects of the Discussions. — Development of Polity .... 251 
 
 CHAP. IX. — The Evangelical Revival. — Westv/ard Emigration. — 
 Missionary Societies. — Presbyterians and Congregationalists. — The 
 " Plan of Union." — .Spiritual Quickening. — Foreign Missions. — 
 The American Board. — The " Education Society." — The " Home 
 Missionary Society. " — The Unitarian Separation. — Theological Ed- 
 ucation. — Andover Seminary. — Yale Divinity School. — Nathaniel 
 W. Taylor. — Bennet Tyler. — Hartford Seminary. — Oberlin Semi- 
 nary. — Finney and Bushnell. — Bushnell's Views 309 
 
 CHAP. X. — The Denominational Awakening — Modern Con- 
 gregationalism. — Formation of Associations. — Churches in Illi- 
 nois and Iowa. — Wisconsin and Minnesota, — Missouri and Oregon. 
 — California. — Bacon, Thompson, and Clark. — The " Albany. Con- 
 vention." — New Societies. — Henry M. Dexter. — Chicago Seminary. 
 — In the New West. — A. Hastings Ross. — Ministerial Standing. — 
 The "National Council" of 1865.— The "Burial Hill Declara- 
 tion." — A Statement of Polity. — "American Missionary Associa- 
 tion." — Woman's Missionary Societies. — The Triennial National 
 Council. — The " Creed of 1883." — Recent Tendencies. — The An- 
 dover Controversy. — The American Board. — Novel Methods of 
 Work. — Employment of Women 370 
 
 CHAP. XI. — Congregational Facts and Traits. — Congregational 
 
 Statistics. — Congregational Principles 427 
 
A HISTORY OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES 
 IN THE UNITED STATES. 
 
 WILLISTON WALKER, 
 
 Professor in Hartford Theological Seminary. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Congregationalism has always inclined to publication, and the number of 
 works really germane to the history of the denomination is enormous and 
 constantly increasing. The connection of the body with the settlement of 
 New England and the opening up of the West has led to some treatment 
 of the features of this story by almost every writer on the beginnings of 
 the northern United States, and the intimacy which marked the relationship 
 of the Congregational churches to the civil governments during much of 
 their American life renders town and colonial histories, legislative records, 
 and even personal journals scarcely less sources of religious than of secular 
 history. Fortunately for the student of Congregationalism, a bibliography 
 of works in any way related to the theme was prepared by the late Rev. Dr. 
 Henry M. Dexter, and published in his " Congregationalism of the last 
 Three Hundred Years " (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1880). This 
 magnificent list, the result of years of investigation, extends from 1546 to 
 1879, and embraces 7250 titles. Yet even this is not exhaustive, and 
 a complete bibliography, brought down to 1894, would probably include at 
 least 8000 works which might justly be claimed to illustrate the story 
 of Congregationalism more or less directly. The present writer, in his 
 " Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism " (New York, Charles Scrib- 
 ner's Sons, 1893), has given extended bibliographies of the leading 
 Congregational symbols and of the discussions out of which they have 
 grown. 
 
 No one library includes all Congregational literature ; but the student will 
 find large collections in the possession of the Congregational Library at 
 Boston, of Yale University (Dr. Dexter's own library), of the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society or of the Public Library (Prince Library) at Boston, and 
 of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. Smaller collections of 
 value are those of the Connecticut Historical Society at Hartford, of Andover 
 Theological Seminary, and of Union Theological Seminary, 
 
 The following list is presented merely as suggestive of works of special 
 importance for Congregational History. 
 
 « 
 
 Declarations on Faith and Polity. 
 
 A True Description ovt of Hie Word of God, of the Visible CJmrch. [Dort], 
 1589. (The first Declaration of the London -Amsterdam Church.) 
 
 A Tj-ve Confession of the Faith, and Hvvible Acknowledgment oe the 
 Alegeance, which wee hir Maiesties Subjects, falsely called B7vwnists, 
 doo hojild towards God, aitd yeild to hir Majestie and all other that are 
 oner vs in the Lord. [Amsterdam], 1596. (The second Declaration of 
 the London-Amsterdam Church.) 
 
X BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 A Platform of Church Discipline gathered out of the Word of God : and 
 agreed upon by the Elders and Messengers of the Churches assembled in 
 the Synod at Cambridge in Ne^u England. Cambridge, 1649. (The 
 Cambridge Platform. ) 
 
 Propositions concerning the Subject of Baptism and Consociation of Chiirches, 
 Collected and Confirmed out of the Word of God, by a Synod of Elders 
 and Messengers of the Churches in Massachusets-Colony iti A^e^v- 
 England. Assembled at Boston . . . In the Year 1662. Cambridge, 
 1662. (The Half- Way Covemmt Synod.) 
 
 A Confession of Faith Owned and Consented unto by the Elders and Messen- 
 gers of the Churches Assembled at Boston in Ne%v-England, May 12, 
 1680. Boston, 1680. (The " Confession of 1680.") 
 
 A Confession of Faith Chuned and Consented to by the Elders and Messen- 
 gers of the Churches in the Colony of Connecticut. . . . The Heads of 
 Agreement, Assented to by the United Ministers, forfnerly called Presby- 
 terian and Congregational. And also Articles for the Administration of 
 Church Discipline Unanimously agreed upon and consented to by the 
 Elders and Messengers of the Churches in the Colony of Connecticut in 
 N'ei.o- England. Assembled by Delegation at Say-B?vok September gth, 
 1708. New London, 1710. (The Saybrook Platform.) 
 
 The '' Plan of Union. '^ Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presby- 
 terian Church, etc., 1789 to 1820, Philadelphia [1847], pp. 224, '225. 
 
 The "Burial Hill Declaration.^^ Congregational Quarterly, vol. x., pp. 
 377, 378. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Polity. The Government and Connnunion Practised by the 
 Congregational Churches in the United States of America. Boston, 
 Congregational Publishing Society, 1872. (The Boston Platform.) 
 
 The " Cojjimission Creed of iSSj."" Congregationalist, March 6, 1884. 
 
 All of the above, except the " Boston Platform," are reprinted in full in 
 Walker, Williston, The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism. 
 New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893. 
 
 Besides these ofificial declarations, the various state bodies publish Minutes 
 of their meetings, and the following National Assemblies have published 
 records, viz. : (i) Proceedings of the General Convention of Cong. Ministers 
 ajtd Delegates in the United States, held at Albany, A^.Y., on the ^th, 6th, 
 7th, and 8th of Oct., 18^2. New York, S. W. Benedict, 1852. (2) De- 
 bates and Proceedijigs of the National Council of Congregational Churches, 
 Held at Boston, Mass., June 14-24, 1865. Boston, American Congrega- 
 tional Association, 1866. (3) Minutes of the A^ational Council of the 
 Congregational Chjurhes of the United States of America. (Issued triennially 
 since 1871 by the Congregational Publishing Society, Boston.) (4) A Year- 
 book of statistics, ministerial lists, etc., has been published in some form 
 since 1854, and is now issued by the Publishing Committee of the National 
 Council and printed by the Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 Treatises on Congregational Polity. 
 
 Browne, Robert, A Booke rvhich Sheioeth the life and manners of all true 
 Christians, etc. Middelburg, imprinted ])y Richarde Painter, 1582. 
 (Extracts reprinted in Walker's " Creeds and Platforms.") 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. XI 
 
 Barrowe, Henry, A Brief Discouerie of the false Church. [Dort], 1590. 
 
 Robinson, John, Various treatises written between 1610 and 1625, and 
 collected by Robert Ashton, Works of John Robinson. 3 vols. London, 
 John Snow, 185 1. 
 
 [Mather, Richard], Church-Gonemment and Church-Covenant Discussed, 
 in an Anszver of the Elders of the severall Churches in A^ew-Efigland to 
 two and thirty Qjiestions. London, printed by R. O. and G. D. for 
 Benjamin Allen, 1643. 
 
 Cotton, John, The Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven. London, 1644. 
 Reprinted, Boston, Tappan & Dennet, 1843; and Boston, S. R. 
 Whipple & Co., 1852. 
 
 Hooker, Thomas, Swvey of the Sunwie of Chicrch-Discipline. London, 
 printed by A. M. for John Bellamy, 1648. 
 
 Wise, John, The Churches Quarrel Espoused. Boston, 1710.-^4 Vin- 
 dication of the Governinent of New England Churches. Boston, 1 71 7. 
 Both reprinted in one volume. Boston, Congregational Board of Publica- 
 tion (now Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society), i860. 
 
 Mather, Cotton, Ratio Discipline; Eratrum Nov-Anglorum. Boston, S. 
 Gerrish, 1726. 
 
 Upham, Thomas C, Ratio Disciplince ; or, The Constitution of the Con- 
 gregational Churches. Portland [Me.], Shirley & Hyde, 1829. 
 
 CummingS, Preston, A Dictionary of Congregational Usages and 
 Principles. Boston, 1852. Sixth edition, Boston, S. K. Whipple & 
 Co., 1855. 
 
 Buck, Edward, Massachusetts Ecclesiastical Law. Boston, Congrega- 
 tional Publishing Society, [1865]. 
 
 Davis, Woodbury, Congregational Polity, Usages, and Law. Boston, 
 Proprietors of " Boston Review," 1865. 
 
 Dexter, Henry M., Congregationalism : IVhat it is ; Whence it is ; How 
 it works. Boston, Nichols & Noyes, 1865. 
 
 Roy, Joseph E., A Manual of the Principles, Doctrines, and Usages of 
 the Congregational Churches. Chicago, 1869. 
 
 Dexter, Henry M., A Hand-Book of Congregationalisvi. Boston, Con- 
 gregational Publishing Society, [1880]. 
 
 Ross, A. Hastings, A Pocket Manual of Congregationalistn. Chicago, 
 E. J. Alden, 1883. 
 
 Boardman, George Nye, Congregationalism. Chicago, Advance Pub- 
 lishing Company, [1889]. 
 
 Sources and Histories. 
 
 The Colonial Records of the several colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, 
 
 Connecticut, and New Haven. Now largely printed, and to be found in 
 
 any Avell-equipped historical or public library. 
 Bradford, William, History of Plymouth Plantation (Gov. Bradford's 
 
 Journal). Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1856. 
 Winthrop, John, History of New England from 1630 to 164Q (Gov. 
 
 Winthrop's Journal). Best edition that of James Savage, Boston, 
 
 Little, Brown & Co., 1853. 
 Mather, Cotton, MagnaUa Christi Americana. London, 1702. Other 
 
 editions, Hartford, Silas Andrus, 1820; and Hartford, Silas Andrus & 
 
 Son, 1853-55. 
 
Xll BIBLIOGRAPHY, 
 
 Young, Alexander, Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers. Boston, Little & 
 Brown, 1841 and 1844. — Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony 
 of Mass. Bay. Boston, Little & Brown, 1846. 
 
 Hanbury, Benjamin, Historical Memorials relating to the Independents, 
 or Congregationalists : from their Rise to the Restoration of the Mon- 
 archy, A.D. MDCLX. 3 vols. London, printed for the Congrega- 
 tional Union of England and Wales ; Fisher, Son & Co., and Jackson & 
 Walford, 1839-44. (An ill-arranged work, but filled with reprints and 
 abstracts of great value.) 
 
 Felt, Joseph B., The Ecclesiastical History of A^ezu England [to 1678]. 
 
 2 vols. Boston, Cong. Board of Publication, 1855-62. 
 
 Sprague, William B., Annals of the American Pulpit, vols. i. and ii. 
 
 New York, Robert Carter & Bros., 1857. (Biographies.) 
 Punchard, George, Histoiy of Congregationalism. 5 vols, in revised 
 
 edition. New York and Boston, first by Hurd & Houghton, and then 
 
 by the Congregational Publishing Society, 1865-81. 
 "Waddington, John, Congregational History. 5 vols. London, Simmons 
 
 & Botten, 1869-78. (Valuable, but not always accurate in quotations.) 
 Dexter, Henry M., The Congregationalism of the last joo Yeaj's, as seen 
 
 in its Literature. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1880. (An in- 
 dispensable work.) 
 Huntington, George, Outlines of Congregational History. Boston, Cong. 
 
 Pub. Soc, 1885. 
 
 The following Histories will also be found of great value : 
 
 Hutchinson, Thomas, History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. 
 
 3 vols. iSoston, Thomas and John Fleet, 1764-69. 
 
 Palfrey, John G., History of Nciv Efigland. 5 vols. Boston, Little, 
 
 Brown & Co., 1859-90. 
 Doyle, J. A., The English in America : The Puritan Colonies. 2 vols. 
 
 London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1887. 
 Fiske, John, The Beginnings of Nnv England. Boston, Houghton, 
 
 Mifllin & Co., 1889. 
 
 Special Themes. 
 
 Adams, Charles Francis, Three Episodes of Mass. History. Boston, 
 
 Houghton, Mifllin & Co., 1892. 
 Bacon, Lieonard, Iliirteen Historical Discourses, on the Completion of 200 
 
 Years from the Beginning of the First Church in New Haven. New 
 
 Haven, Durrie & Peck, 1839. 
 Bacon, Leonard, The Genesis of the Neio England Churches. New York, 
 
 Harper & Brothers, 1 874. 
 Clark, Joseph S., Historical Sketch of the Congregational Churches in 
 
 A/assachusetts. Boston, Cong. Board of Publication, 1858. 
 Congregational Quarterly. 20 vols. Boston, 1859-78. 
 Cofitributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut ; prepared under 
 
 the Dij-ection of the General Association. New Haven, William L. 
 
 Kingsley, 1861. (Of great value.) 
 Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Essex County, Mass. Boston, 
 
 Cong. Board of Pul)lication, 1865. 
 Ellis, Arthur B., History of the First Church in Boston. Boston, Hall & 
 
 Whilini:, 1 88 1. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. xiil 
 
 Ellis, George E., The Puritan Age and Rule m the Colony of Massachu- 
 setts Bay, i62g-i68j. Boston, Houghton, Mififlin & Co., 1888. 
 
 Goodwin, John A., The Pilgrim Republic : An Historical Reviezu of the 
 Colony of N'ew Plymouth. Boston, Ticknor & Co., 1888. 
 
 Hill, Hamilton A., History of the Old South Church, Boston. 2 vols. 
 Boston, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1890. 
 
 Lawrence, Robert F., The New Hampshire Churches. Claremont, 
 pubHshed for the Author, 1856. 
 
 Ohio Church History Society, Papers. Oberlin, printed for the Society, 
 1889-93. 
 
 Parker, Edwin P., History of the Second Church of Christ in Hartfoi'd. 
 Hartford, Belknap & Warfield, 1892. 
 
 Robbins, Chandler, History of the Second Church in Boston. Boston, 
 John Wilson & Son, 1852. 
 
 Tracy, Joseph, The Great Aivakenifig : A History of the Revival of 
 Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield. Boston, Tappan & 
 Dennet, 1842. 
 
 Trumbull, Benjamin, A Co7nplete History of Comiecticut, Civil and 
 Ecclesiastical. 2 vols. New Haven, Maltby, Goldsmith & Co., 1818. 
 
 Walker, George Leon, History of the Eirst Church in Hartford. Hart- 
 ford, Brown & Gross, 1884. 
 
 White, Daniel A., Neio England Congregationalism. Salem, no pub- 
 lisher given; printed at Salem Gazette Office, 1861. 
 
THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF CONGREGATIONALISM. 
 
 It has been said that the Bible is the religion of Protest- 
 antism. With even more truth it might be affirmed that 
 the Word of God is the historic basis of Congregation- 
 alism. Yet neither of these statements is exclusive of 
 similar claims for other branches of the Christian Church. 
 In a real sense all are founded upon the Bible. But as 
 Protestantism in general has made a peculiar use of the 
 Scriptures and attached to them a unique authority in all 
 matters of doctrine, so Congregationalism, at least in all 
 its earlier history, has attributed a regulative importance 
 to the directions of the New Testament writers regarding 
 church administration, and has given a normal value even 
 to their most incidental narratives of church usages, more 
 fully than any other system of ecclesiastical polity. What- 
 ever stress is now properly laid, in any estimate of the 
 claims of Congregationalism to general recognition, on its 
 democratic simplicity, on its independence of state control, 
 its voluntariness of association, or its ready adaptation to 
 new surroundings, is but incidental to the one merit which 
 its modern founders claimed for it — that it represented 
 the pattern of the primitive and apostolic church, as laid 
 
2 THE COXGKEGATIOXALISTS. [Chap, i 
 
 down in the New Testament. To understand how this 
 claim came to be made, and how the Congregational sys- 
 tem came to be what it is, it is necessary to glance at the 
 attitude of the Reformation toward the Scriptures and 
 toward church polity. 
 
 The great teachers of the medieval church had uniformly 
 held that the Bible is the ultimate source of religious au- 
 thority. But it was not the Bible interpreted by the in- 
 dividual. No thought fundamental to the Roman Empire 
 had been more impressed on the minds of men than that 
 of visible, external unity — a unity finding expression in a 
 uniform system of government, a uniform body of law, and 
 a visible, earthly head. This great Roman imperial con- 
 ception had produced the medieval papacy ; it produced 
 also in the political world the far less efficient, but no less 
 assertive, Holy Roman Empire. For such a body, char- 
 acterized by such external marks of unity, an authorita- 
 tive exposition of that which it claimed as its fundamenta,! 
 law, the Bible, was imperatively necessary. That expo- 
 sition w^as believed to be set forth by the church itself, 
 speaking through tradition, the consensus of its fathers and 
 doctors, the decrees of its popes, and especially through 
 general councils. All these made a mass of authority 
 which, though professedly subordinate to the Word of 
 God and merely interpretative of it, really, if not theoret- 
 ically, put it in the background ; and substituted for a 
 direct appeal to its prescriptions, a mass of exposition, the 
 slow growth of centuries, which buttressed an elaborate sys- 
 tem of doctrine, polity, and ceremonial, itself the result of 
 gradual accretion through nearly a millennium and a half 
 of years. 
 
 Naturally, with such a sense of the necessity of unity 
 and such claims to continuity in its explanation of the 
 divine message, the position of the medieval church was 
 
THE REFORMATION AND THE BIBLE. 3 
 
 equally clear that for an ordinary uneducated layman to 
 attempt the interpretation of the Scriptures was a matter 
 of exceeding peril. The medieval church felt that it had 
 some justification for this position. The sects with which 
 it had struggled, sometimes with very carnal weapons, had 
 claimed to base their departures from Roman obedience 
 on the warrant of the Scriptures. The Waldenses and 
 the Cathari had been the source of infinite trouble to the 
 medieval church, and the Roman leaders felt that much 
 in their beliefs could be traced to erroneous interpreta- 
 tions of the Bible by ignorant laymen, a danger which 
 they thought could only be avoided by a careful restric- 
 tion of its use wherever such errors were prevalent. So 
 it came about that when the great revolt against medieval 
 authority which is called the Reformation took place, it 
 found the Bible bound about with a web of authoritative 
 interpretation which explained its meaning in conformity 
 with the system against which the Reformation rebelled 
 and asserted that any other interpretation was illegitimate. 
 The explanation had grown to be more practically impor- 
 tant than the Scripture itself. 
 
 The early Reformers broke with this theory of interpre- 
 tation altogether. In throwing off the sacerdotal system 
 of the Roman Church, they asserted the right of immedi- 
 ate access of every beheving soul to God,'and its capacity 
 to comprehend the divine message. They attacked the 
 Vv'hole medieval hierarchy as a growth of middle- men be- 
 tween the Divine Spirit and the human soul, where God 
 intended there should be none. They rejected the whole 
 fabric of tradition and conciliar definition by which -the 
 medieval polity had been supported as something man- 
 made and fallible. But some final authority they felt 
 there must be, some test of religious truth ; and that they 
 found where the church had always asserted that it lay, 
 
4 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. i. 
 
 in the Word of God. Yet just as the medie\'al system, 
 by emphasizing tradition and churchly authority in inter- 
 pretation, had really, though not nominally, minified the 
 Bible, so now the Reformers, by rejecting the testimony 
 of the church and the traditional views of truth, and assert- 
 ing the self-explanatory nature of the Scriptures, actually 
 raised the Bible to an authority in the church, which, what- 
 ever the theory, it had never before possessed, not even 
 in the earliest centuries. Whether this extreme assertion 
 of biblical authority was undue or not is not here the ques- 
 tion ; but no one can understand the early history of Con- 
 gregationalism without recognizing clearly the emphasis 
 which the Reformers put upon the Scriptures as the infal- 
 lible, complete, and self-interpretative expression of the will 
 of God and the nature of his relations to men — a record to 
 which no tradition could add anything, and which by its 
 fullness excluded the necessity of any further revelation. 
 
 Two principles plainly flowed from these views of the 
 Reformers, though not recognized in their fullness of ap- 
 plication by the leaders in the reform movement. It is 
 evident that if the Bible is a complete revelation, then all 
 that is really essential, whether in belief or in practice, 
 must be contained in it, and all that cannot be found there 
 delineated is at best a matter of human judgment or con- 
 venience, that, however useful, is in no way essential to 
 the faith, organization, or ordering of the church. The 
 Bible must be the only final test of that which God de- 
 signed his church to be or to know. It is no less clear, 
 that, granting the correctness of the Reformers' principles, 
 it is always right for a man, or a body of men, to apply 
 this test to the actual condition of any organization claim- 
 ing to be the church, and if it be found wanting, to attempt 
 its alteration into conformity with the prescriptions of that 
 divine standard. 
 
THE REFORMATION INCOMPLETE. 5 
 
 But though these principles were involved in the asser- 
 tions of the Reformers, their full logical sweep was not at 
 first evident. No great movement is wholly radical. The 
 past is not swept away in a moment. And tremendous 
 as were the changes which the Reformers introduced, that 
 which they left unchanged in the doctrine and organization 
 of the church far exceeded that which was altered. In 
 the field of Christian belief, while the battle raged with 
 fierceness over the problems of the method of salvation 
 and the nature of the sacraments, the Reformers as a 
 whole accepted the faith of the ancient church regarding 
 the nature of God, the person and work of Christ, and even 
 the state of man, without serious discussion. Even more 
 was this true regarding church polity. If the Reformers 
 altered that which was chiefly political in the administra- 
 tion of the church, or those offices which seemed most 
 intimately associated with the sacerdotal system against 
 which they revolted, they left untouched the medieval 
 theory that all baptized inhabitants of a Christian country 
 were church-members unless formally excommunicate, and 
 they preserved enough of the ancient conception of visible 
 unity to hold that but one form of faith and worship was 
 to be allowed within a given territory. 
 
 Other causes than these operated also to make the ques- 
 tion of the proper polity of the church a subordinate one 
 for the early Reformers. The brunt of the struggle was 
 at first chiefly doctrinal, and naturally so, for purification 
 of doctrine was more important even than the right organ- 
 ization of the church. Then, too, the early German and 
 Swiss Reformers, Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli, were 
 not organizers; and though Luther at least caught a 
 glimpse of a system very like Congregationalism in the 
 pages of the New Testament, they all felt the need of the 
 aid of civil authority in their struggle with Rome ; and, 
 
6 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. i. 
 
 partly because they could in no other way enlist the ser- 
 vices of princes and city magistrates, partly because they 
 feared the fanatics whom the Reformation drew in its 
 train and who threatened to bring the cause into discredit 
 if they became dominant, these leaders in the struggle 
 allowed their churches to be remodeled and ruled by the 
 authority of the state. This condition of affairs, which 
 they hoped would be temporary, became the universal 
 rule in Europe, and has continued to the present day. 
 Whatever may have been its merits or its seeming necessity 
 in a time of transition, when tested by the standard of the 
 New Testament it is at least as unwarranted as the system 
 which it supplanted. 
 
 If the German and Swiss Reformers of the first genera- 
 tion failed thus to apply the same Scriptural test to the 
 organization that they did, in part at least, to the doctrine 
 of the church, this was even more the case in England. 
 There the Reformation was undisguisedly political in its 
 character at first, and even doctrinal reform had to win its 
 way slowly. Under the reigns of successive sovereigns 
 of the house of Tudor the Church of England became in 
 turn Anglican, Protestant, Catholic, and again Anglican ; 
 and at each alteration of the constitution the transition to 
 the new form was made as easy as possible for clergy and 
 people by the retention of offices and much of ceremonial 
 which had marked the organization of the English Church 
 for a thousand years. At each transition, too, clergy and 
 people were expected by the government to acquiesce in 
 the new revolution at least outwardly ; and that this ac- 
 quiescence should be more easily obtained, little strenuous 
 inquiry was made as to the spiritual character or actual 
 beliefs of the ministers and members of the Establishment. 
 In doctrines the English Church at last came to be fully 
 Protestant, but its terms of membership were unchanged 
 
CALVIN'S WORK. 7 
 
 and its offices remained substantially and intentionally un- 
 altered, save that their holders now looked with Erastian 
 servility to the king as the sole source of ecclesiastical ap- 
 pointment with even greater dependence than they had 
 before manifested toward the pope. Certainly no one 
 could justly claim that Henry VIII., or the government 
 that ruled in the name of Edward VI., or Elizabeth, in 
 giving a constitution to the church, was moved by a con- 
 sideration of any pattern which might be laid down in 
 the Word of God. Yet if the Reformation principle that 
 the Bible is the sole rule of faith and conduct was once 
 admitted, there could be no logical halting-point either on 
 the continent of Europe or in England before the inquiry 
 had been diligently made whether the organization of the 
 church and its forms of worship were not matters of divine 
 revelation as truly as its doctrine. The Reformation could 
 not be stopped at the point where political expediency 
 tried to limit it. 
 
 This tendency of the Reformation to go further in the 
 direction of a logical carrying out of its principles than the 
 position taken by its first leaders was manifested in the 
 guiding spirit of its second stage — Calvin ; though he too 
 failed to apply the Reformation test in its fullness to the 
 organization and membership of the church. But Calvin 
 went far beyond Luther and Zwingli. He was an organ- 
 izer by nature ; his personality dominated the small com- 
 munity, Geneva, in which his work was done, so that he 
 had freer scope to carry his views into practice than 
 Luther would have enjoyed had Luther possessed his or- 
 ganizing ability. And Calvin, too, felt strongly that the 
 Bible should be regulative of the pattern and order of the 
 church in a general way, even if he did not make it ex- 
 clusively formative. His Genevan church thus approxi- 
 mated far more nearly to the New Testament conception 
 
8 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [CiiAr. i. 
 
 than that of the EngHsh pohtical reformers or of Luther, 
 while it did not fully or exclusively submit itself to the 
 biblical test. Thus Calvin went a long way toward the 
 position of Congregationalism when he held that ministers 
 were to be approved by the congregations whom they 
 were to serve, instead of being appointed by spiritual 
 superiors, sovereigns, or patrons ; and when he committed 
 the government of churches not to a clerical order but 
 to elderships, composed of ministers and laymen. These 
 were long steps in the direction of a more logical applica- 
 tion of the Reformation test, and they were to be pro- 
 foundly influential in the ecclesiastical development of 
 English Puritanism, out of which most of the early Con- 
 gregationalists were to come. But Calvin admitted that 
 certain features of his system were based primarily on 
 expediency, and he retained the conception of the church 
 as an institution practically coterminous with the state, 
 though independent in government, having all baptized 
 citizens of respectable lives as its members, and whose 
 discipline is to be enforced by state authority. 
 
 But while the chief of the early leaders of the Refor- 
 mation thus only partially carried out their principles, and 
 the churches which they founded thus took up into their 
 organization, in greater or less degree, elements foreign 
 to the New Testament, or at least not illustrated in the 
 New Testament churches, some who were touched by the 
 Reformation at its beginning were more radical and con- 
 sistent. Whether it be true, as Ludwig Keller has asserted 
 but hardly proved, that these completer Reformers were 
 representatives of the more evangelical medieval sects, like 
 the Waldenses, which had continuously opposed Roman 
 claims, it is certain that the movements initiated in Ger- 
 many and in Switzerland by Luther and Zwingli were 
 speedily disturbed by the preaching of a class of teachers 
 
THE ANABAPTISTS. g 
 
 nicknamed the '* Anabaptists," from their limitation of 
 the baptismal rite to believers of adult years — a doc- 
 trine which seemed to the Lutherans and Zwinglians an 
 insistence on '' re-baptism," since they, in common with 
 all others born under the rule of the medieval church, 
 had been baptized in infancy. Doubtless the fanatical 
 exhorters of Wittenberg and Zwickau, whose words and 
 deeds induced Luther to leave the protection of the Wart- 
 burg castle in 1522 to preach against them, were repre- 
 sentatives of the same radical tendency ; but the '' Ana- 
 baptist " tenets were more fully and more nobly developed 
 in Zurich, the scene of the activities of the Swiss Reformer. 
 Here, under the lead of Grebel, Blaurock, Hiibmaier, and 
 others, a party of considerable size developed, which in- 
 sisted that the close connection of church and state en- 
 couraged by the leading Reformers was wholly wrong, 
 and which attacked the reformations of Luther and Zwingli 
 as but half-hearted and incomplete. These men were as 
 obnoxious to the Protestant as to the Catholic civil au- 
 thorities, and were at once objects of persecution in every 
 quarter. Attacked by the government of Zurich in 1525, 
 the effect of this attempt at their suppression was the 
 rapid diffusion of their sentiments throughout Switzer- 
 land, Germany, and the Netherlands, while by 1535 they 
 had extended to England and soon after appeared in Italy. 
 By the Catholics and the Anglicans they were burned, by 
 the continental Protestants they were drowned. There 
 was indeed a degree of explanation, though not of excuse, 
 for this universal severity of treatment in the fanaticism 
 which characterized many of the Anabaptists, and which 
 led them into wild and sometimes dangerous and immoral 
 attempts to alter the foundations of society, of which the 
 fantastic misrule so bloodily brought to an end at Miinster 
 '^^ 1535 is the most notorious example. Like the rad- 
 
lO THE CONGKEGATIONALISTS. [CiiAr.- i. 
 
 ical party in all movements which profoundly stir men, 
 the Anabaptists gathered to themselves extremists of all 
 shades. To the Catholics they seemed odious as the most 
 pronounced illustrations of the tendencies which were lead- 
 ing multitudes away from the ancient communion ; to the 
 moderate Protestants they appeared a peculiar menace as 
 likely to bring into contempt the Reformation cause and 
 forfeit the support of those worldly powers whose aid 
 seemed to the leading Reformers well-nigh indispensable. 
 
 But though the fanatical Anabaptists caught the public 
 eye, they were but a small proportion of the party. The 
 vast majority were earnest, sober, God-fearing men and 
 women, who came chiefly from the lower ranks of society, 
 and whose prevailing ignorance led them to many diverse 
 and fanciful interpretations of Scripture, and much over- 
 confidence in direct illuminations of the Holy Spirit ; but 
 who sincerely sought to pattern life and worship upon 
 the Word of God. Especially was this true of those of 
 the Anabaptists who came under the influence of Menno 
 Simons, and who bore from their discipleship the popular 
 name of Mennonites — a body which was strongly repre- 
 sented in Holland, where it obtained from William the 
 Silent in 1575-77 the first toleration granted to Anabap- 
 ti.sts by any European government. 
 
 Though the Anabaptists, unlike the Lutherans, Angli- 
 cans, and Calvinists, had no creeds that were generally 
 recognized as binding on all local congregations, and though 
 there was necessarily great variety in opinion among them, 
 their main principles are readily discernible. First of all 
 they drew a broad line of distinction between those who 
 were experimental Christians and those who were not. 
 Instead of the general inclusiveness which swept all the 
 inhabitants of a city or a state into the church — an in- 
 clusiveness which characterized the systems of the great 
 
ANABAPTIST PRINCIPLES. I i 
 
 Reformers as well as that of Rome — they held that only 
 Christian believers constitute the church. Of that church 
 and of air religious life the Bible is the only ultimate law. 
 Human enactments have their value for the maintenance 
 of unregenerate civil society and the control of the vicious, 
 but the supreme test of every man-made statute is its 
 conformity to the Word of God. Only when his com- 
 mands are not contrary to the precepts of Scripture is 
 obedience due to the civil magistrate. That magistrate 
 has no right to interfere with the church, for the rule of 
 its spiritual communion is the Word of God, and not his 
 law ; nor should Christians hold civil office, since such 
 worldly posts of power, though divinely permitted for the 
 best good of a society still consisting in large measure of 
 unregenerate persons, are not appointed as part of the 
 government of the church, nor are the laws of their ad- 
 ministration the statutes of Christ's kingdom. God alone, 
 and not the civil ruler, appoints what the Christian is to 
 believe and practice in all spiritual concerns. 
 
 This church, they affirmed, consists of the congregations 
 of professed disciples of Christ scattered throughout the 
 world. Admission to it is obtained by baptism, conse- 
 quent upon repentance and faith ; and hence the Anabap- 
 tists maintained, like their spiritual offspring, the modern 
 Baptists, that this rite was designed exclusively for adults 
 — a contention in which English and American Congrega- 
 tionalism, with a keener sense of the covenant relation oi\/ 
 the Christian family in the kingdom of God, has been ^ 
 unable to follow them. Of this church the Lord Jesus is 
 the only head ; and its congregations enjoy the ministry, 
 sacraments, doctrines, and discipline which he has ap- 
 pointed. Its officers are to be chosen by the congregation 
 to whom they minister, and ordained at the hands of its 
 elders, with confidence that the Holy Spirit will guide his 
 
12 THE COA'GREGATIOiVA LISTS. [Chap, l 
 
 people in the selection, if made with fasting and prayer. 
 The offenses of its membership are to be redressed by ad- 
 monition and excommunication by the congregation. An 
 uncritical literalness of interpretation of the commands of 
 Christ induced the Anabaptists in general to forbid judicial 
 oaths, the bearing of arms, or recompense for ministerial 
 services. 
 
 Here was a conception of the organization, duties, and 
 ministry of the church very different from that enter- 
 tained in the state establishments founded by the leading 
 Reformers, and characterized, in spite of all oddities and 
 local differences, by a sincere desire to pattern its organi- 
 zation and government on the Word of God. Further- 
 more, we find this attempt leading everywhere to the 
 thought of the church as a collection of local bodies of 
 Christian people in some sense separate from the world, 
 ruled by divinely appointed laws, capable of choosing their 
 own officers, and administering their own affairs without 
 interference from the state. It was a conception naturally 
 repugnant to the mass of men in the sixteenth century, 
 for they had not outgrown the idea ingrained into thought 
 by over a thousand years of teaching that the church is a 
 body marked by external unity — if not the unity of an 
 undivided Christendom which the Reformation had de- 
 stroyed, at least by uniformity of creed and worship within 
 a given territory — a uniformity maintained by the state, 
 and binding on all its citizens as members of the state 
 church. It was repugnant also to governments, since 
 it denied to them a much-cherished prerogative and 
 markedly limited their powers, while it encouraged dem- 
 ocratic tendencies at variance with the prevailing spirit 
 of .sixteenth-century political theories. Hence, had the 
 radical Reformers been less feared for their frequent doc- 
 trinal vagaries than they really were, their views would 
 
THE ENGLISH REEOKM AT/ON. I3 
 
 have been slow in winning favor during the Reformation 
 period. 
 
 The influences and parties which have just been con- 
 sidered were continental, not English. But the same 
 divergent tendencies were to be apparent in the English 
 Reformation, and the influence of some of these conti- 
 nental parties was to be largely formative in that move- 
 ment. Owing in part to the caution with which the English 
 mind accepts changes, whether in religion or in politics ; to 
 its willingness to adopt compromise even If compromise is 
 not wholly logical ; and in part also to the political char- 
 acter of the early history of the English Reformation and 
 the opposition of the sovereigns to its more radical as- 
 pects, the movement advanced far more slowly in England 
 than on the Continent. It was in a true sense a period of 
 religious education, as well as of change, for the English 
 people. This slowness had its advantages both politically 
 and religiously. The nation as a whole had hardly been 
 removed from CathoUcIsm under Henry VIII., save that 
 it preferred English autonomy to submission to a foreign 
 pope. It had learned something under the rule of the 
 counselors of Edward VI., though the people in general 
 regarded their violently Protestantizing measures with 
 aversion. But it viewed the equally arbitrary Catholic 
 rule of Mary with yet greater dislike, and by the accession 
 of Elizabeth It was convinced that Protestantism was more 
 desirable than Catholicism. The cautious and intentionally 
 compromising policy of Elizabeth's early reign had one 
 merit at least — it continued the development of the English 
 people toward Protestantism without serious risk of violent 
 Catholic reaction ; it was not till the Protestantism of the 
 nation had passed the half-way position of the queen that 
 she became a drag on English religious growth. This 
 slow development saved England the bitter civil conflicts 
 
14 THE CONGREGATION ALISrS. [Chap. i. 
 
 which desolated some of the continental lands during the 
 Reformation period, and it also had an effect upon the 
 religious life of the nation which was ultimately, though 
 not immediately, beneficial. A generation passed away 
 before the transition of the land from the Roman obedience 
 of the early years of Henry VIII. to the very moderate 
 Protestantism of Elizabeth had been accomplished. All 
 this time English religious institutions were in flux, doc- 
 trinal standards w^ere being established looking first in one 
 direction and then in the other, the thoughts of men were 
 exercised with religious problems without long being cast 
 in the mold of any one governmentally imposed system. 
 At the same time no single leader, such as dominated the 
 Reformation of Germany, Switzerland, or even Scotland, 
 arose in the English Church. The result was that the 
 people of England came — in a dim way, it is true — to 
 think for themselves on religious problems more generally 
 than the inhabitants of those countries of the Continent 
 where the Reformation was more rapid in its introduction. 
 Though the real spiritual awakening of the people was not 
 manifest till Puritanism had carried its work well into the 
 reign of P^lizabeth, the hold which that movement took 
 upon the English people was in no sm^all measure due 
 to the fact that for the first three decades of the English 
 Reformation the Bible was studied by widening circles of 
 thoughtful men, while the government spoke with chang- 
 ing voice. 
 
 But while this delay and change which marked the prog- 
 ress of the English Reformation doubtless worked good 
 in the outcome in that it made a wider and deeper and 
 freer religious life eventually possible than would have 
 been the case had the people passed through a less tedious 
 education, this slowness of development was a source of 
 profound grief to the leaders in the Protestant movement 
 
THE EARLY PURITANS. 15 
 
 in that land. From the first they labored to bring the 
 Church of England to the degree of Protestantism illus- 
 trated in the state churches of the Continent. In the 
 early days of the English Reformation the German theolo- 
 gians of the school of Luther had the sympathy of English 
 Protestants, but by the time that the second prayer-book 
 of Edward VI. was issued, in 1552, the influence of Calvin 
 had become more powerful in the doctrinal thought of the 
 Enirlish Reformers than that of the Lutherans. Thence- 
 forward, till the incoming of Arminian theories in the reign 
 of James I., all parties among English Protestants were 
 Calvinists in theology. This desire to conform the Church 
 of England to the Genevan model, which was already felt 
 under the nominal rule of Edward VI., was greatly, though 
 indirectly, stimulated by the persecutions of Mary. The 
 more earnest Protestants fled from England to the Conti- 
 nent, preferring exile to conformity to Catholicism. There 
 they found a welcome in Switzerland and in the Calvinis- 
 tic portions of Germany, thou-gh not much favor from the 
 Lutherans; and on the death of Mary they returned to 
 England filled with admiration not only for the doctrine 
 but for the polity and forms of worship of Calvinism, w^hich 
 they washed to introduce into their home land in Genevan 
 fullness. Elizabeth had no sympathy with this aim ; but 
 she needed men for places of prominence in her ecclesias- 
 tical EstabHshment who could be trusted to oppose Catholic 
 plots and strengthen Protestantism, and of such men the 
 Marian exiles were the most conspicuous. So it came 
 about that, in spite of her own preferences, Elizabeth was 
 forced to give prominence in the English Church, at the 
 beginning of her reign, to men who desired a much more 
 radical Protestantizing of the ceremonials and liturgy of 
 that body than found favor in her eyes. 
 
 To these Protestants of the more earnest type, the most 
 
l6 THE C0XCRECATI0XALIS7\S. [Chap. i. 
 
 serious objection to the Church of England at the beginning 
 of Ehzabeth's reign was not any fault in doctrine ; they 
 agreed fully in its prevailing Calvinism. Nor did they at 
 first oppose its retention of bishops. In fact, the Reformers 
 as a whole had no dislike to an episcopal rank in the ministry, 
 at least as administrators of church government, though cir- 
 cumstances prevented its retention in most of the churches 
 which they founded on the Continent. Even Cahin ad- 
 vised the King of Poland to continue the episcopal office 
 in that land. Melanchthon thought bishops desirable as 
 a means of establishing good order in the church. But 
 none of the Reformers conceived of bishops as possessed 
 of spiritual powers superior to those of other ministers. 
 It was as administrative posts that the Protestants of the 
 early reign of Elizabeth were willing to see the episcopal 
 office continued. Nor did these Protestants at first object 
 to the control of the state over the church — they accepted 
 office from the hand of government without reluctance. 
 Their opposition was directed in the beginning against 
 none of these things, but against the retention of certain 
 vestments and ceremonies which seemed to them to savor 
 of the Roman liturgy. Thus, the cap and surplice were 
 reminders of the old priestly garb which had seemed to 
 make broad the line of distinction between the clergyman 
 and the layman. So, too, the use of the cross as a sym- 
 bol, the employment of the ring in marriage, and kneeling 
 at the reception of the sacrament, seemed to these Prot- 
 estants acts fitted to perpetuate the misuse of the sign of 
 the Saviour's passion, to encourage the thought of marriage 
 as a sacrament, and the conception of the Supper as a 
 transubstantiation of the elements into the very body and 
 blood of Christ, against which all Protestants of the Cal- 
 vinistic school set their faces. These were in themsehes 
 acts of little moment — the battle- flag is seldom of much 
 
THE EARLY PURITANS. I 7 
 
 intrinsic importance — but they symbolized much, and no 
 one recognized their significance more clearly than Eliza- 
 beth. Their retention meant the continuance of that poHcy 
 by which the admission of Catholics into the Church of 
 England was rendered easy — a policy which had so much 
 politically to commend it. Their abolition would signify 
 the full Protestantizing of the Anglican body, as Protest- 
 antism was understood in the Calvinistic churches of the 
 Continent, and the abandonment of the policy which made 
 it a half-way house on the roadway of reform. As early 
 as 1550, under the reign of Edward VI., Hooper, the 
 bishop- elect of Gloucester, had denounced the prescribed 
 vestments. The more earnest Protestants at the begin- 
 ning of Elizabeth's reign, like Grindal, Sandys, and Jewel 
 of the high clergy, and Burghley and Walsingham of the 
 statesmen, were also their opponents. But Elizabeth was 
 determined in her ecclesiastical policy ; and on this point 
 she had the sympathy of that large party in the kingdom 
 whose affection for the abolished Catholic worship contin- 
 ued, and who wished to make as few departures from it 
 as were consistent with obedience to the law. In opposi- 
 tion to the desires of the more earnest Protestants, she 
 insisted on the enforcement of her ecclesiastical regulations. 
 Thus there arose in the bosom of the Church of England, 
 at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth, two peir- 
 ties, one of which, from its desire to purify the church 
 from remnants of Roman usage, was nicknamed " Puri- 
 tan " ; and the other of which, marked by a wish to main- 
 tain churchly usages in the compromise condition in which 
 they were, and to support the royal supremacy in order 
 to that end, may, for want of a more descriptive title, be 
 styled ''Anglican." 
 
 The problem with which the Church of England was 
 confronted at this juncture was of the most serious char- 
 
l8 THE COXGKE(uA-riOXALISTS. [CiiAi-. I. 
 
 acter. A mass of clergy and people, swept five years 
 before by government edict out of nominal Protestant- 
 ism back to their original Catholicism, had now been car- 
 ried over to Protestantism again. The incumbents of the 
 higher offices of the church had been generally changed ; 
 but the overwhelming majority of the parish ministers of 
 the new order of affiiirs were the same who had served 
 under Mary; and they were generally ignorant, unable 
 to preach, often incapable of setting a worthy example of 
 Christian living to their congregations. In place of this in- 
 efficient body of clergy the Puritans were anxious to estab- 
 lish an educated, spiritually-minded, and zealous ministry. 
 It is no unjust criticism of the Anglicans to say that they 
 were not so alive to the spiritual necessities of the land ; 
 they were themselves very largely the ministry against 
 whose inefficiency the Puritans protested. As far as a 
 geographical division of England between the two parties 
 may be made, the south and east, especially the vicinity 
 of London and the counties along the North Sea from the 
 Thames to the Humber, may be said to have favored Puri- 
 tanism. This was the region gf England which had most 
 welcomed Wiclif and his laborers, and where the Reforma- 
 tion had found most ready lodgment at its beginning. It 
 was the region also from which the strength of the opposi- 
 tion to the tyranny of the Stuarts was to come, and where 
 no small share of the future settlers of New England had 
 their home. It was no accident, therefore, that made the 
 more eastern of the two English universities, that of Cam- 
 bridge, the home of Puritanism almost from the beginning 
 of Elizabeth's reign, and the training-school not only of 
 the most strenuous Protestantism of the home land, but 
 of most of the early New England divines. 
 
 The opposition of the authorities of the English Church, 
 under the impulse of the queen, to the modifications de- 
 
THOMAS CARTIVRIGIIT. 1 9 
 
 sired by the Puritans, led to a second stage in Puritan 
 development, and one much more radical in its departure 
 from the polity of the Establishment than that just con- 
 sidered. The forcible retention of vestments and cere- 
 monies which the growing Protestantism of the reform 
 party increasingly condemned soon led to questionings as 
 to whether the system itself which permitted their reten- 
 tion was that divinely intended as the normal polity of the 
 church ; some Puritans no longer criticised rites and gar- 
 ments, they began to examine the constitution of the English 
 Establishment in its fundamental principles. Naturally, the 
 test by which they judged it was largely borrowed from 
 Geneva. The leader in this second stage of Puritanism 
 was Thomas Cartwright. Born in 1535, he was identified 
 with the University of Cambridge from the year 1547, and 
 as student, fellow, and teacher contributed more than any 
 other Englishman toward making that seminary a strong- 
 hold of Calvinism. His greatest prominence came in 1569, 
 when he became Lady Margaret professor of divinity in 
 his university ; but this post of influence exposed him to 
 the immediate attack of the Anglicans, of whom the most 
 prominent was John Whitgift, the later Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury. By this opposition Cartwright v/as compelled to 
 abandon his professorship in December, 1570, and in Sep- 
 tember, 1571, he was driven from his fellowship; thence- 
 forward, till his death, in 1603, to be a .^ufferer for his 
 belief. 
 
 This dispute, centering in the university which best rep- 
 resented the advancing Protestantism of the nation, made 
 Cartwright the leader of the Puritan party, and impressed 
 his views on his followers. He had gained from Calvin 
 the conception of the church as independent of the state 
 in administration — a theory toward which governmental 
 opposition had been forcing the whole Puritan party. He 
 
20 THE CONGKEGATIONALISTS. [Chap. i. 
 
 had come to the conchision that church poHty is taught 
 authoritatively in the Scriptures, and that no church could 
 be truly reformed till its government was adjusted to the 
 biblical model. He had learned from Geneva also a faith 
 in the efficacy of discipline to remedy the spiritual imper- 
 fections with which the unquestioning retention of the 
 whole Catholic population of England in Elizabeth's Es- 
 tablishment had filled the membership of the church. He 
 had come to the belief that the system of diocesan episco- 
 pacy was no part of the divine model, and ought at least 
 to be essentially modified. He was convinced that the 
 people of each parish should have a share in the selection 
 of its ministers. These principles were in radical contra- 
 vention of the Elizabethan theory of the government of 
 the church by officers of royal appointment and by laws 
 imposed by the sovereign; no real compromise between 
 them and the Anglican theory was possible. Elizabeth 
 and the Anglican party generally saw their threatening 
 character, and the power of the government was there- 
 fore set in yet more determined opposition to the Puritan 
 cause. 
 
 But though Cartwright moved thus with firm tread in 
 the direction in which Calvin had led the way, and per- 
 haps went a little further than Calvin, he retained most of 
 Calvin's Hmitations also, and in his merits and shortcom- 
 ings alike he represented the whole Puritan movement in 
 which he was so conspicuous a leader. From the time of his 
 expulsion from Cambridge down to the civil war that party 
 largely walked in his footsteps — the Presbyterian Puritans, 
 always a majority of the body, did so always. Like 
 Calvin, Cartwright held to the conception of a National 
 Church, of which all baptized and non-excommunicate 
 inhabitants of England were members. Like Calvin, he 
 
LIMITATIONS OF PURITANISM. 21 
 
 believed that this vast assemblage of the good and bad 
 was to be trained and purified by the labors of ministers 
 of the Scripture designation and the enforcement of an 
 active, searching discipline by the officers of each congre- 
 gation and district. Like Calvin, he believed it the duty 
 of the magistrate to aid the church by repressing heresy 
 and compelling uniformity, though it was only in the path 
 designated in the Word of God that the magistrate could 
 rightfully compel men to go. That that path should not 
 appear the same to all really good men was a thought 
 which the Puritan did not readily entertain. The national 
 Church of England seemed to Cartwright too sacred an 
 institution for men to separate from without peril of schism, 
 and he relied on the civil government, which had already 
 carried it over from Catholicism to Anglicanism, to effect 
 its alteration, as a whole, once again into Presbyterian Puri- 
 tanism. Therefore, m Cartwright's view, the work of a 
 Christian man desirous of bringing the English Church 
 into conformity to the Scripture model was to agitate, 
 labor, argue, and try to move the government to effect 
 the change ; to introduce, as far as he was able and the 
 government would permit, the worship and discipline of 
 Geneva, in order to raise the inert mass of the all-inclusive 
 membership of the Establishment; to encourage earnest, 
 educated, spiritual-minded ministers; but on no account 
 to withdraw from the national religious body. It was a 
 theory that required for its successful establishment the 
 conversion of the dominant forces of England to its sup- 
 port, and though that conversion seemed in Cartwright's 
 time exceedingly probable, and under the concurrent influ- 
 ence of opposition to the tyranny of the Stuart sovereigns 
 was temporarily brought about during the parliamentary 
 struggles of the seventeenth century, it was never per- 
 
2 2 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. i. 
 
 manently accomplished. Moreover, the views which Cart- 
 wright impressed on the Puritan party, Hke those of Calvin, 
 had the two great defects of an unspiritual theory of church- 
 membership and an unscriptural intimacy of relation to the 
 state. As Elizabethan Anglicanism was a half-way house 
 between Catholicism and full Protestantism, so Puritanism 
 was a halting-place between Anglicanism and Congrega- 
 tionalism. It was to be the training-school of early Eng- 
 lish Congregationalists ; but it could not be permanent, 
 for it was intermingled with elements inconsistent with a 
 logical appHcation of its own principles. 
 
 The Puritan movement grew rapidly in strength as 
 Elizabeth's reign advanced ; especially after the death of 
 Mary of Scotland, in 1587, and the defeat of the Spanish 
 Armada, in 1588, relieved the fear of Catholic interven- 
 tion, which had united, in a measure, all opponents of the 
 papacy. The one great book of English' reading became 
 the Bible, and to hundreds and thousands of the more 
 earnest Protestants the Bible taught the Puritan lesson. 
 Men full of new enthusiasm for the unfettered Word of 
 God cared little for the writings of the fathers, the opin- 
 ions of the councils of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centu- 
 ries, or what is now called the " historic continuity " of the 
 church. To their thinking, God had made a plain revela- 
 tion of his will, and all that did not evidently conform to 
 that message, however ancient or of whatever generality 
 of usage, was an insult to the divine Law-giver. 
 
 But as Puritanism advanced and became more dogmatic, 
 Anglicanism advanced also. The Anglicans of the open- 
 ing years of Elizabeth's reign had found the chief warrant 
 for the existence of diocesan episcopacy in the preference 
 of the sovereign for that form of church government. 
 They were willing freely to admit the true churchly char- 
 acter of an ecclesiastical organization unprovided with 
 
ABIDANCE OF ANGLICANISM. 23 
 
 bishops. But the growing Puritan criticism of prelacy led 
 the Anglicans more and more into its defense. Whitgift, 
 Cartwright's opponent at Cambridge, and from 1583 to 
 1604 Archbishop of Canterbury, and always one of the 
 most violent of opponents of Puritanism, did not venture 
 to assert more than that episcopacy was the most ancient 
 and desirable type of organization. He used language 
 that certainly allowed the inference that possibly other 
 forms of government were more accordant Vv^ith the New 
 Testament intimations. But by 1589, in his sermon at 
 Paul's Cross, Richard Bancroft, afterward to be Whitgift's 
 successor in the see of Canterbury, declared — a little ob- 
 scurely, it is true — that episcopacy is of divine authority. 
 This theory was elaborated by Thomas Bilson, later Bishop 
 of Worcester, in 1593, and episcopacy and apostolic suc- 
 cession were asserted to be essential to the existence of 
 the church. The careful Richard Hooker, in his '' Eccle- 
 siasticall Politic" of 1593, did not indeed go further than 
 to affirm the superior antiquity and scripturahiess of epis- 
 copacy, while denying its absolute necessity ; but the 
 Anglican party as a whole moved in the direction pointed 
 out by Bancroft and Bilson — a direction which found its 
 complete exponent in WilHam Laud, Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury from 1633 to 1645, ai^cl which was the radical an- 
 tithesis of Puritanism, not only in the stress which it laid 
 on episcopacy, but in its attitude toward those features of 
 worship against which the Puritans protested. Puritan- 
 ism thus stimulated its opposite tendency in the English 
 Church. The hostility between the two parties thus be- 
 came more pronounced, as their divergence became more 
 extreme throughout Elizabeth's reign; and the queen's 
 mighty influence, controlling appointments to high eccle- 
 siastical office, and largely determining the strictness or 
 laxity of the enforcement of uniformity, was thrown fully 
 
24 THE CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. i. 
 
 on the side of the Anglicans, a httle, it may be, because 
 their growing- high-churchism appealed to her religious 
 taste, but chiefly because the views of the Anglican party 
 best comported with her theories of the royal supremacy. 
 This largely political character of Elizabeth's opposition 
 to Puritan views marked the whole Anglican party. It 
 was not merely religious opposition that embittered the 
 discussion. It was also the perception, dim at first, but 
 growing clearer all through Elizabeth's reign, of the fact 
 which became so patent in the time of the Stuarts, that 
 the differing principles of the two parties regarding church 
 government led also to radically divergent conceptions of 
 the relation of the ruler to the state. In the Anglican 
 view the clergyman was either the representative of the 
 sovereign in the religious administration of the kingdom, 
 or, as with the high- churchmen w^ho gradually arose in 
 the Anglican party, a member of a divinely appointed 
 order over which the sovereign had a regulative control. 
 In neither phase of the Anglican theory was the clergy- 
 man in any way responsible to the people to whom he 
 ministered. He looked to his sovereign, his ecclesiastical 
 superior, or to God, as the only authority that could take 
 cognizance of his acts. In actual practice the Anglican 
 saw in the king the ultimate source of ecclesiastical power. 
 Now this conception of clerical responsibility not only 
 greatly aided that dependence on the sovereign of all the 
 ecclesiastical interests of the land which was dear to the 
 Tudors and Stuarts, it gave to the sovereign himself a sta- 
 tion which accorded him a divine right to rule. A ruler 
 who was the *' supreme governor" of a church whose minis- 
 ters owed no responsibility for their actions to their flocks, 
 was not likely to be held answerable to his people for his 
 deeds. If he rightfully appointed and controlled those 
 who were members of a divinely constituted order, his 
 
DIVERSE POLITICAL THEORIES. 2$ 
 
 own power must be of divine appointment. The tendency 
 of men to think in pohtical affairs as they do in questions 
 of church poHty — a tendency always illustrated in the his- 
 tory of the church — made the Anglican naturally a sup- 
 porter of that Tudor and Stuart view of the royal author- 
 ity, which held the king answerable to God but not to his 
 people. 
 
 On the other hand, the Puritan learned from Calvinism 
 that the minister should serve his congregation with their 
 consent. The Puritan believed that to the people, in some 
 measure at least, belonged the right to select their spiritual 
 guides. Such right of choice implied responsibility to the 
 choosing power. The preacher was not a royal agent or 
 a member of a sacred order set over a parish whose in- 
 habitants had no voice in his selection ; he was a minister 
 whose leadership had been sought by those whom he 
 served. Such a relation implied responsibility to his peo- 
 ple — a certain measure of control on their part over him, 
 even if wholly undefined. Then, too, the statute-book 
 which the Puritan insisted should be the ultimate rule of 
 ecclesiastical administration was something other than the 
 laws of the realm. No ceremony or office '' by law estab- 
 lished " was right till it accorded with the Word of God. 
 And though the Puritan held that the Bible was so plain 
 that all who sincerely read its teachings must understand 
 them in the same way, what he really did was to subject 
 the ecclesiastical statutes of the realm of England to revi- 
 sion in accordance with his individual understanding of the 
 divine revelation. This habit of testing by the Word of 
 God taught the Puritan, as no man of his time was taught, 
 to think for himself. He might be slow in carrying his 
 principles from the realm of the church to the field of poli- 
 tics ; but the Puritan could no more avoid applying them 
 equally in both directions than the Anglican. It was no 
 
26 THE CONGREGAriONALISTS, [Chap. i. 
 
 accident that made the Puritan query whether a sovereign 
 was not responsible to his subjects for his administration 
 of their interests, or whether the royal acts and enact- 
 ments should not be justified by some standard higher 
 than the kingly will. It was a perception of this tendency 
 that, quite as much as any religious antipathy, roused the 
 hostility of the supporters of the royal authority against 
 the Puritan. 
 
 The influence of continental Calvinism in developing one 
 of the two great parties within the English P^stablishment 
 has thus been seen to have been profound. But the de- 
 gree in which the more radical movements which are now 
 to be considered were dependent on impulses traceable to 
 the Anabaptists of the Continent is far less certain. These 
 movements, springing up on a soil made ready by Puritan- 
 ism, were the source of modern Congregationalism. In 
 many respects — in their abandonment of the State Church, 
 in their direct appeal to the Word of God for every detail 
 of administration, in their organization and officers — their 
 likeness to those of the radical Reformers of the Continent is 
 so striking that some affiliation seems almost certain. Nor 
 is the geographical argument for probable connection with 
 continental movements less weighty. These radical Eng- 
 lish efforts for a complete reformation had their chief sup- 
 port in the eastern counties, especially in the vicinity of 
 Norwich and of London. These regions had long been 
 the recipient of Dutch immigration; and the influx from 
 the Netherlands had vastly increased during the early 
 reign of Elizabeth, owing to the tyranny of Philip II. In 
 1562 the Dutch and Walloons settled in England num- 
 bered 30,000. By 1568 some 5225 of the people of Lon- 
 don were of this immigration; and by 1587 they consti- 
 tuted more than half of the population of Norwich, while 
 they were largely present in other coast towns. Now these 
 
CONGREGATIONAL BEGINNINGS. 27 
 
 immigrants were chiefly artisans, and among the workmen 
 of Holland Anabaptist views were widely disseminated ; 
 and while it would be unjustifiable to claim that these 
 exiles on EngHsh soil were chiefly, or largely, Anabaptists, 
 there were Anabaptists among them, and an Anabaptist 
 way of thinking may not improbably have been widely 
 induced among those who may have been entirely uncon- 
 scious of the source from which their impulse came. Cer- 
 tainly the resemblances between the Anabaptist move- 
 ments of the Continent and English Congregationalism in 
 theories of church polity, and the geographical possibil- 
 ities of contact between the two, are sufficiently manifest 
 to make a denial of relationship exceedingly difficult. 
 
 But the points of dissimilarity between these extreme 
 English Protestants and the continental radicals are also 
 conspicuous. They rejected doctrines much prized by the 
 Anabaptists, like behevers' baptism; they retained oaths; 
 they recognized it as the duty of a Christian, if so re- 
 quired, to serve the state as a magistrate or a soldier. 
 These diversities, combined with the absence from their 
 writings of any sense of indebtedness to continental teach- 
 ers, and the purely English character of their names as far 
 as known, show that whatever they may have gained from 
 the thought of the Continent was indirect and unconscious, 
 and that their own work was in a large measure inde- 
 pendent. 
 
 The first traces of a movement in England which insisted 
 on a separation from the Establishment in order to a fuller 
 reformation, and which thus went beyond Puritanism in 
 the direction of early Congregationalism, are found in Lon- 
 don in the year 1567. Attempts have indeed been made 
 to demonstrate the existence of Separatist churches under 
 the reign of Mary, but the secret congregations of her time 
 seem to have been simply persecuted Protestants of the 
 
28 THE CONGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. i. 
 
 v Establishment as it had been in the days of Edward VI. 
 ^_^0n June 19, 1567, however, the authorities broke up an as- 
 (^ sembly of another character. A body of men and women 
 had gathered at Plumbers' Hall in London on that day, 
 ostensibly to celebrate a wedding, and really with the 
 added purpose of holding worship in what they deemed 
 a purer manner than that of the Church of England. The 
 inruption of the officers of the law into their little meeting 
 was followed by the arrest of some fifteen of those pres- 
 ent, their committal to prison, and their examination by 
 Edmund Grindal, then the bishop of the London diocese. 
 By this examination it appeared that this little body re- 
 garded the ceremonies and canon law of the Establishment 
 as evil, and had therefore organized for its own worship 
 apart from the constituted parishes of the land. Other 
 papers, especially a petition to Queen Elizabeth, prepared 
 in 1 5 7 1 after their pastor and deacon had died in prison, 
 show their views and procedure more clearly. In this 
 document they style themselves " a poor congregation 
 whom God hath separated from the churches of England, 
 and from the mingled and false worshiping therein used." 
 As a church assembly, it furthermore appears that they 
 had at least two officers of their own selection, " our min- 
 ister, Richard Fitz, Thomas Bowland, deacon " ; and that 
 they " do serve the Lord every Sabbath-day in houses, 
 and on the fourth day in the week we meet or come to- 
 gether weekly to use prayer and exercise discipline on 
 them which do deserve it, by the strength and sure war- 
 rant of the Lord's good Word, as in Matt, xviii. 15-18." 
 
 Here was a very rudimentary type of Congregation- 
 alism ; but its advance beyond Puritanism was decided. 
 These men and women had e\^idently cut loose from the 
 idea of a national church. They had come to the conclu- 
 sion that they themselves could constitute a church on the 
 
CONGREGATIONAL BEGINNINGS. 29 
 
 Scripture model. They had chosen their officers; and 
 they had administered discipUne apparently as the work 
 of the whole congregation, though in regard to this most 
 important particular the petition, as just quoted, is not as 
 definite as could be wished. These acts, taken together, 
 certainly show that this persecuted body at Plumbers' Hall 
 was groping after the Congregational ideal. They were 
 indeed far from its full realization. They were a com- 
 pany of poor, ignorant Christians, trying to carry out a 
 complete reformation. They had seen only a little way 
 on the road thither ; but they had caught a glimpse, im- 
 perfect though it was, of the New Testament pattern of 
 the church. 
 
 This little London church of which Fitz was minister 
 had no lasting influence and arrived at no greater definite- 
 ness of view. The strong hand of government was heavy 
 upon it, its worship was broken up, and after a period of 
 suffering in the various prisons of London which cost its 
 leaders their lives, it disappeared from human sight. Pos- 
 sibly its scattered members maintained worship for years 
 in London — we get occasional glimpses of illegal assem- 
 blies, the nature of which is not very clear, meeting from 
 time to time in and about London, and attracting the oc- 
 casional notice of the government. Possibly it contributed 
 to the formation of the London church which, twenty-one 
 years after the petition that has been quoted, chose Francis 
 Johnson for its pastor and John Greenwood for its teacher, 
 and which had Henry Barrowe for its leading member. 
 But though perhaps probable, this continued existence 
 of Fitz's church is only conjectural. Had it been the 
 sole witness to a completer reformation, Congregationalism 
 would never have come into being. The work which the 
 London church of 1567 apparently began to do was really 
 accomplished, and the Congregational system really set 
 
30 THE CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. i. 
 
 forth SO as first to claim any considerable degree of atten- 
 tion, through the labors and writings of Robert Browne — 
 to whom this polity is so indebted, in spite of any be- 
 ginnings made by Richard Fitz and his associates, that 
 he deserves the title of the father of modern Congrega- 
 tionalism. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 EARLY ENGLISH CONGREGATIONALISM. 
 
 Robert Browne, whose writings contain the first 
 definite statement of Congregational principles from an 
 English pen, was neither in fixity of character nor in sa- 
 gacity of method a man to win admiration or to command 
 personal respect. His ultimate conformity to the Church 
 of England caused early Congregationalists to resent the 
 application of his name to their churches, and still leads 
 occasional writers on Congregational history to disparage 
 his services or discredit his leadership. Nor have histo- 
 rians of the Establishment forgotten, in spite of his recon- 
 ciliation to the English Church, the fierceness of the attack 
 which he made for a time upon that body. His personal 
 qualifications were not those of a leader in an enterprise 
 demanding patience. He had little capacity to give peace 
 or permanency to the congregations which he founded, 
 and small faculty for holding continuous fellowship with 
 his associates. He was a man of rash impulsiveness of 
 temperament always. 
 
 Yet when all detractions have been made from his per- 
 sonal worth, there can be no question that he was, at least 
 during the portion of his career with which we have to do, 
 a man of sincerity and of warm Christian faith ; and the 
 probability seems strong, as Dr. Dexter has pointed out, 
 that the abandonment of his Congregational professions, 
 which has cost him the respect due to a confessor, was the 
 result of mental break-down consequent upon disappoint- 
 
 31 
 
32 THE COXGREGAriONALISTS. [Ciiai\ ii. 
 
 ments and imprisonments rather than any real denial of 
 the beliefs for which he had proved himself ready to suflfer. 
 Whatever his defects may have been, he enjoys the dis- 
 tinction not only of being the first to formulate Congrega- 
 tional polity, but the earliest Englishman also to proclaim 
 the doctrine that church and state should be mutually 
 independent. A man of such clearness of insight, and who 
 made such large contributions to Congregational develop- 
 ment, cannot be denied a prominent place in the history of 
 Congregational beginnings. 
 
 Browne came of a family of considerable local promi- 
 nence in Rutlandshire, which had an estate at Tolethorpe^ 
 and was connected with that of Lord Burghley, who was 
 from the neighboring county of Lincoln. Here at Tole- 
 thorpe Browne was born about the year 1550, though the 
 exact date is still undiscovered. No details of his early 
 life have been preserved; if we may judge by his early 
 manhood, he must have been a youth of feeble health but 
 of eager impulsiveness. By 1570 he was a student at 
 Corpus ChristI College in the University of Cambridge, 
 and in 1572 he received there his degree of bachelor of 
 arts. The university at the time was turmoiled by the 
 great controversy between Cartwright and Whitgift — a 
 contest which cost Cartwright his professorship In Decem- 
 ber, 1570, and his fellowship at Trinity College in Sep- 
 tember, 1 571, but which made him more conspicuously 
 than ever the champion of the Puritan cause. No atmos- 
 phere more adapted to excite an eager young student 
 could well be imagined ; and Browne was doubtless now 
 awakened, if he had not been before, to the importance of 
 a further reformation of the English Church. Evidences 
 of his own pronounced attitude in sympathy with the 
 radical party are soon apparent. Unless the historian 
 Strype has confused him with a man of similar name, as is 
 
ROBERT BROWNE. 
 
 33 
 
 not impossibly the case, Browne was in 157 1, a year before 
 his graduation, a chaplain in the household of the Duke 
 of Norfolk, and of opinions so obnoxious to his churchly 
 superiors that the duke was moved to plead in his be- 
 half that his position was a privileged station, in order to 
 save him from citation. However this may have been, for 
 some three years after his graduation he taught school, 
 probably in Southwark ; and during this period he preached 
 occasionally, at considerable peril, to unlawful gatherings 
 of Christian people met together for divine worship in 
 gravel-pits about Islington, His teaching being inter- 
 rupted by the plague, he was soon back in Cambridge; 
 but more important for him than any course of study 
 undertaken at the university was his entrance into the 
 family and under the theological instruction of Rev. Rich- 
 ard Greenham of the neighboring village of Dry Drayton. 
 Introduced into this strenuous Puritan home, Browne's 
 good qualities won speedy recognition from its head, and 
 though Greenham had little sympathy with Separatist 
 ideas, Browne was encouraged by him to preach in Puri- 
 tan 2^1-ilpits, apparently without the license of a bishop. 
 Nor were Brovv^ne's ministrations in any way unacceptable. 
 An urgent request from a congregation in Cambridge, 
 probably that of Benet Church, induced him to labor for 
 half a year in that town, and his hearers would gladly 
 have secured his ministrations more permanently had not 
 a change in his own views rendered his continuance even 
 in the Puritan wing of the Church of England impossible. 
 This momentous change, which transformed the zealous 
 young preacher from a Puritan, waiting like thousands of 
 others for the further reform of the English Establishment 
 by the slow process of agitation and the hand of 'civil 
 authority, into a Separatist, attacking the Church of Eng- 
 land as an unchristian body and insisting on the segre- 
 
34 THE CONGREGATlOXALISrS. [Cmai-. ii. 
 
 gation of religious men and women from its fellowship, 
 occurred during this Cambridge ministry, and probably 
 in 1579. As Browne looked upon the condition of the 
 Establishment, with its all-inclusive membership and its 
 too frequent toleration of unfit men in the ministry, he 
 felt, as every Puritan did, a burning desire for its reforma- 
 tion. But he felt now, what the Puritan did not, that the 
 only way that this reformation was to be brought about 
 was by separation from a body where such unworthy per- 
 sons were tolerated. Most of all he was convinced that 
 any dependence upon the licensure of bishops for minis- 
 terial authority was a sin, since to the bishops more than 
 to any other class of church officers it seemed to him that 
 the hindrance of the necessary reformation of the church 
 was due. They prevented the exercise of discipline desired 
 by the Puritans, they silenced the preachers most eager 
 for reform, they kept the church in much the state in 
 whic-h it had been when it came out of its papal subjection 
 at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign. Browne therefore 
 now proclaimed to his Cambridge hearers that their own 
 reformation was incomplete ; and, though it seems almost 
 certain that he must already have received episcopal ordi- 
 nation, he now repudiated all dependence on the author- 
 ization of bishops, and denounced the whole order. The 
 consequence was that he was speedily silenced. 
 
 The notification of his inhibition from preaching Browne 
 received with scorn, and he seems to have been impelled 
 by it to a yet firmer conviction that it was his duty to 
 leave a church where episcopal authority could be, as he 
 thought, so abused, and where full Christian life seemed 
 to him so hedged about with hindrances. Having heard 
 that in the adjacent county of Norfolk there were those 
 who were seeking a purified church, he now determined 
 to join them; but at this juncture a former acquaintance, 
 
BIWIVNE'S SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT. 35 
 
 Robert Harrison, came to Cambridge from Norwich, the chief 
 city of Norfolk, and it was to this friend's house at Norwich 
 that Browne went when he took his departure from Cam- 
 bridge, probably in 1580. Harrison, who for several years 
 was to be the companion and associate of Browne, was of 
 maturer age, though his seems to have been the less mas- 
 terful mind. He had graduated at Corpus Christi College, 
 Cambridge, in 1567, and had already had difficulties with 
 the ecclesiastical authorities owing to pronounced Puritan 
 scruples regarding certain portions of the service. A man 
 less erratic in his tendencies than Browne, and less fruit- 
 ful also in his reasoning, he added an element of stability 
 for a time to the congregation which Browne gathered, 
 and his pecuniary assistance apparently made possible the 
 publication of Browne's books. But his connection with 
 the Congregational movement was brief; by about 1585 
 he was no longer of the living. 
 
 It was in study and discussion with Harrison at Norwich 
 that Browne fully worked out his theories of church polity. 
 Evidently his investigation of the scattered hints contained 
 in the pages of the New Testament was profound ; and to 
 his thinking the Scriptures were the direct source of his 
 system. But it is not impossible that some indirect in- 
 fluence of Anabaptist thought may have aided in shaping 
 Browne's views. He had been attracted to Norfolk by 
 the presence there of persons desirous for a radical refor- 
 mation of the Establishment as well as by his friendship 
 for Harrison. Who these persons were it is hard to tell. 
 But Norfolk was a county whose towns contained a large 
 admixture of Dutch handicraftsmen, and the suggestion 
 seems a probable one that Anabaptist modes of thought, 
 imported with these Hollanders into their new English 
 home, may have borne some fruitage, and may have un- 
 consciously affected Browne himself in his conceptions of 
 
36 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Cii.\r. ii. 
 
 the church. Though no trace of a recognition of indebt- 
 edness to Anabaptist thought can be found in Browne's 
 writings, and though we discover no Dutch names among 
 the small number of his followers whom we know by name 
 at all, the similarity of the system which he now worked 
 out to that of the Anabaptists is so great in many respects 
 that the conclusion is hard to avoid that the resemblance 
 is more than accidental. At the same time, its unlikeness 
 in other important features, as, for instance, the doctrine 
 of baptism, is so marked that we may be sure that Browne 
 did not borrow directly or consciously ; and that if influ- 
 enced by the Anabaptist movement at all, as it seems de- 
 cidedly probable that he was, it must have been in conse- 
 quence of an Anabaptist way of thinking in the regions of 
 eastern England, where Dutch immigrants w^ere numerous, 
 rather than by contact with avowed Anabaptists. 
 
 Browne was, in early life at least, a man in whom belief 
 was coupled with action ; and the development of his sys- 
 tem during the first months of his residence at Norwich 
 was followed by the formation, on Congregational lines, 
 of a church in that city some time in 1580 or 1581. But 
 though Browne was the pastor of this little flock, his mis- 
 sionary efforts extended beyond the borders of Norfolk 
 certainly as far as Bury St. Edmunds, where his preach- 
 ing was received with much appreciation by the humbler 
 classes, and where he possibly established a church, and 
 certainly made disciples who ultimately suffered death for 
 distributing his books. This activity brought upon Browne 
 the hand of ecclesiastical restraint, though his relationship 
 to Lord Burghley and that nobleman's interest in him — 
 an interest which involved no sympathy with his views — 
 prevented the degree of severity that would have been 
 measured out to a less powerfully connected innovator. 
 But the opposition of the Bishop of Norwich, and soon 
 
BROWNE'S CHURCH. 
 
 37 
 
 that also of the Archbishop of Canterbury, convinced the 
 major part of the Httle Norwich church that it was useless 
 to attempt to carry on its work in England ; and there- 
 fore, after some debate in which Scotland and the Channel 
 Islands were considered, it emigrated, probably late in 
 1 58 1, to Middelburg, a little city in the Dutch province of 
 Zeland, which had long had extensive trade relations with 
 the eastern towns of England, and where resident English 
 merchants maintained a congregation of strongly Puritan 
 tendencies, now under the pastoral charge of the exiled 
 Cartwright. A portion of the church, it seems certain, re- 
 mained at Norwich and continued in some humble fashion 
 its organization. 
 
 Arrived on Dutch soil, Browne and Harrison still con- 
 tinued their interest in their English home. The congre- 
 gation under their care preserved its independence, it 
 appears, as long as Browne remained. Indeed, Browne 
 deemed that Puritanism, even of the strenuous type rep- 
 resented by Cartwright, was unworthy of fellowship, since 
 it continued in the national church, from which he thought 
 it the duty of a' Christian to come out; and this feeling of 
 dislike was repaid by the aversion of the Puritans to the 
 whole Separatist movement. To influence the people of 
 the land which he had left, Browne, with the aid of Har- 
 rison, sent forth from Middelburg three tracts during the 
 year 1582, of which two are of the utmost importance in 
 early Congregational literature. One, named " A Treatise 
 of Reformation without Tarying for anie, and of the 
 wickednesse of those Preachers, which will not reforme 
 till the Magistrate commaunde or compell them," carries its 
 burden on its title. It is a strenuous argum-ent for instant 
 separation from the Establishment, and a special attack 
 upon the position of the Puritans who were waiting within 
 the Church of England for its reform by civil authority. 
 
38 THE COXGREGAriONALISTS. [Chap. ii. 
 
 The other, entitled " A Booke which Sheweth the life and 
 manners of all true Christians, and howe vnlike they are 
 vnto Turkes and Papistes, and Heathen folke," is the first 
 systematic exposition of its principles which Congrega- 
 tionalism produced. In it, under an elaborate and some- 
 what mechanical form of questions, counter-questions, and 
 definitions, Browne outlined his system as he read it in 
 the Word of God. To his thinking a Christian church 
 is a body of professed believers in Christ, united to one 
 another and to their Lord by a voluntary covenant. This 
 covenant is the constitutive element which transforms an 
 assembly of Christians into a church. Its members are 
 not all the baptized inhabitants of a kingdom, but only 
 those possessed of Christian character. Such a church is 
 under the immediate headship of Christ, and is to be ruled 
 only by laws and officers of his appointment. To each 
 church Christ has intrusted its own government, discipline, 
 and choice of officers ; and the abiding officers are those 
 designated in the New Testament, the pastor, teacher, 
 elders, deacons, and widows, whom the church is to selert 
 and set apart for their various duties. But the presence 
 of these officers does not relieve the ordinary member of 
 responsibility for the welfare of the church to w^hich he 
 belongs. On the contrary, Christ is the immediate Lord 
 not only of the church but of every member of it, and 
 each member is responsible to him for the stewardship of 
 the graces with which he has been intrusted. This direct- 
 ness of connection between Christ and all the members of 
 his church made Browne's polity practically democratic, 
 and rendered it more prophetic of what Congregationalism 
 has become in our century than were the more aristocratic 
 theories of Barrowe and of the settlers of New England. 
 
 But while Browne thus asserted the full autonomy of the 
 local church and the full responsibility of each member for 
 
BROWNE'S CONGREGATIONALISM. 39 
 
 its good order, he held also that churches have obligations 
 one toward another which bind them to mutual watch and 
 brotherly helpfulness. Here, then, in germ at least, Browne 
 set forth that conception of mutual accountability which 
 is one of the distinguishing features of Congregationalism, 
 and which renders his system something more than bald 
 Independency. 
 
 In one other matter also Browne's views were prophetic. 
 To his thinking the civil authorities have no right to exer- 
 cise lordship over spiritual concerns, or to enforce submis- 
 sion to any ecclesiastical system. It was an opinion already 
 advanced by the Anabaptists of the Continent, but which 
 no Englishman had yet proclaimed, and it found little echo 
 even among his immediate disciples. Harrison did not 
 share it, the London-Amsterdam church of Johnson and 
 Ainsworth did not sympathize with it, and we shall find 
 that early New England had no place for it. But in this, 
 as in many other directions, Browne saw more clearly than 
 men of his century of far greater stability and personal 
 worth than he. 
 
 The opinions advanced in these tracts by Brov^-ne from 
 his safe retreat in Holland were far too revolutionary to 
 meet with toleration in England, and it was for circulation 
 in England that the pamphlets were designed. Soon they 
 were sent in considerable numbers, apparently in unbound 
 sheets, to those places in his native island where Browne 
 had labored, and on June 30, 1583, they called forth a 
 proclamation in the name of Queen Elizabeth, in which 
 they are described as " sundry seditious, scismaticall, and 
 erronious printed Bookes and libelles, tending to the de- 
 prauing of the Ecclesiastical gouernment established within 
 this Realme " ; and all persons possessing them are ordered 
 to give them up, while all who distribute them are threat- 
 ened with the penalties of sedition. But even before this 
 
^O THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. ii. 
 
 proclamation had been put forth, on June 4 and 5, 1583, 
 two men, John Coppin and EUas Thacker, were hanged at 
 Bury St. Edmunds on the dual charge of heresy and the 
 circulation of the works of Browne and Harrison — some 
 forty of the confiscated books being burned at the exe- 
 cutions. 
 
 But by the time that these martyrs to Congregational- 
 ism were giving up their lives, Browne's flock in Middel- 
 burg were in serious division. His own disposition un- 
 fitted him to unite or conciliate discordant elements. He 
 disagreed with his friend Harrison, he felt that his pres- 
 ence with the congregation which he had led into exile 
 had become irksome; and therefore, late in 1583, Browne 
 and four or five of his followers, with their families, went 
 from Holland to Scotland. But in Scotland Browne met 
 with nothing but opposition, extending even to imprison- 
 ment, from the ecclesiastical authorities of that Presbyte- 
 rian land. Here he not only utterly failed to secure any 
 following of importance, he came to the conclusion that 
 the church government of Scotland was more overbearing 
 and less tolerable than even the Episcopacy of England. 
 
 Browne's work as a reformer was now nearly over. By 
 the summer of 1584 he was apparently once more in Eng- 
 land, where he seems to have met with imprisonment, from 
 which he was relieved by Lord Burghley. One more at- 
 tempt to proclaim the truths for which he had witnessed — 
 this time at Northampton, it is probable — led to his ex- 
 communication by the Bishop of Peterborough in 1586. 
 He might well be discouraged over his successive failures, 
 and there is reason to believe that his health, never robust, 
 had been shattered by his trials. The conjecture advanced 
 by Dr. Dexter, that he was worn out mentally and physi- 
 cally, seems probable. At all events, he became head of 
 a e:i*ammar school at Southwark, in November, 1586, on 
 
THE LONDON CHURCH. 4 1 
 
 terms which bound him to keep peace with the EstabHsh- 
 ment and submit to its rites. In September, 1591, he re- 
 ceived the rectorship of Achurch-cum-Thorpe — no doubt 
 as the gift of Lord Burghley — and as rector of that ob- 
 scure village he lived for forty years, dying, however, some 
 time between June, 163 1, and November, 1633, in North- 
 ampton jail, where he was confined owing to his violent 
 resistance to the collection of a debt or a tax by an officer 
 of his parish. 
 
 The seed which Browne had sowed in so many places, 
 and which he had not the qualities long to cultivate, bore 
 a harvest that was better than the sower. At Norwich 
 a portion of the church which Browne had gathered con- 
 tinued the organization after he and a majoiity of its fel- 
 lowship had gone to Holland ; and in other places, Con- 
 gregational views, spread we ' know not how, took root 
 and bore fruit. The preface to the Confession put forth 
 by the London- Amsterdam church in 1596 speaks of wit- 
 nesses to Congregational principles in Bury St. Edmunds, 
 in Gloucester, and in London ; while other hints are given 
 us of Separatist associations in Chatham and in the west 
 of England. But of all these obscure adherents to what 
 they believed to be the polity taught by the Word of God, 
 only those of London formed a church of any prominence 
 or influenced the development of Congregational thought. 
 Possibly some continuous religious organization had been 
 maintained by the London Separatists from the time of 
 Richard Fitz and his fellow-prisoners of 1567; but it is 
 not till 1586 or 1587 that the existence of the Separatist 
 gatherings from which the London church was to be de- 
 veloped is clearly manifest. The early history of that 
 church is closely bound up with the stories of three men 
 of high character — Henry Barrowe, John Greenwood, and 
 John Penry — all of whom gave their lives for the cause 
 
42 THE COXGREGAl'IOXALISl'S. [Chap. ii. 
 
 which they advocated, and one of whom, Barrowe, turned 
 Congregational thought in a direction considerably differ- 
 ent from that imparted to it by Browne, so that his work- 
 constitutes a second stage in the growth of the system. 
 Neither of these men can be affirmed to have been the 
 founder of London Separatism, however, nor do they seem 
 to have been the only proclaimers of Separatist doctrines 
 in that city. On the contrary, hints of occasional meetings 
 in private houses and in secluded spots in and near Lon- 
 don, and of the ministrations of a dozen leaders of these 
 petty assemblies, show that the Separatist leaven was con- 
 siderably widespread during the four or five years previous 
 to 1592. But the first event of importance in the history 
 of London Congregationalism as now known to us is the 
 arrest of Greenwood in the autumn of 1586. 
 
 John Greenwood was a young clergyman of the Estab- 
 lishment, who had studied from March, 1578, to his grad- 
 uation in 1580-81 at Cambridge, where he had been a 
 sizar, or pecuniarily assisted student, of Corpus Christi Col- 
 lege. His graduation had been followed by his ordination ; 
 but Puritan scruples, possibly imbibed at Cambridge, led 
 Greenwood to become a chaplain in the household of Lord 
 Rich, a Puritan nobleman of Essex. By what further pro- 
 cesses he advanced from Puritanism to Separatism we 
 do not know — not improbably Browne's books may have 
 awakened his thought — but certainly in the autumn of 1 586 
 he was preaching to illegal assemblies in London, and at 
 one of these gatherings, held at a house in that city, he 
 was seized and thence transferred to the Clink prison. 
 
 On news of his arrest, Greenwood was visited in his 
 prison by his friend and fellow-laborer, Henry Barrowe, a 
 man of higher social rank, of maturer years, and far greater 
 abilities. Barrowe's teaching had already incurred the 
 displeasure of Archbishop Whitgift ; and therefore the 
 
GREENWOOD AND BARROWE, 43 
 
 jailer, without legal warrant, but well knowing that his 
 arrest would be gratifying to the ecclesiastical authorities, 
 detained Greenwood's visitor as a prisoner. Thencefor- 
 ward till their death on a common scaffold, Barrowe and 
 Greenwood were imprisoned, save for brief periods of re- 
 lease on bail ; and during most of this time they shared 
 the same sufferings and labors. 
 
 Henry Barrowe was a man of much more than ordinary 
 talents and advantages. He was of a Norfolk family of 
 some prominence, and his education had been at Clare 
 Hall, in the University of Cambridge, where he was a 
 student from 1566 to 1569-70. Though brought thus 
 into a Puritan atmosphere, no thought of personal religion, 
 much less of ministerial service, was apparently entertained 
 by him during his student days, or for some years there- 
 after. He came to London, becoming a lawyer of Gray's 
 Inn in 1576, and was of sufficient prominence to have 
 access to the royal presence ; but he was a man of im- 
 moral life, and might have so continued to the end of his 
 days had not a chance sermon been the means of his spirit- 
 ual awakening. A man of impetuous temper always, he 
 passed at once from his former profligacy to extreme Puri- 
 tanism. And from Puritanism he was led onward — there 
 is some reason to think through the agency of Greenwood 
 — to a type of Congregational Separatism, which, if not 
 quite so extreme as that of Browne, nevertheless viewed 
 the English Establishment as unscriptural and therefore 
 unchristian. 
 
 The two prisoners were speedily and repeatedly brought 
 before Archbishop Whitgift, John Aylmer, Bishop of 
 London, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries ; and also ex- 
 amined by a commission, embracing, besides these high 
 officials of the church, the chief-justices, Lord Burghley, 
 and other prominent civilians. Before all these examiners 
 
44 ^^^^ CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. ii. 
 
 they maintained firmly their conviction that the govern- 
 ment, rites, and sacraments of the Estabhshment were not 
 ordered as Christ designed; and that its all-inclusive 
 membership made it no true church. They as firmly as- 
 serted their belief that the queen was sovereign in all civil 
 affairs, but they denied to her any power over the church, 
 of which Christ is the sufficient head. In these harassing 
 interrogations Greenwood was the more self-controlled ; 
 the impetuous spirit of Barrowe met the browbeatings of 
 the bishops more often with anger and invective. Lord 
 Burghley, when he appeared on the scene, manifested 
 much of his usual gravity ; but the impression left on the 
 mind is that the bishops in these examinations showed 
 little charity and less courtesy. All attempts to shake the 
 constancy of the prisoners were unavailing. 
 
 Having failed thus by judicial examination to bring the 
 two Separatists to an acknowledgment that their teach- 
 ings were erroneous, Whitgift and Aylmer, with the counsel 
 of the two chief-justices of the realm, after Barrowe and 
 Greenwood had been for more than two years in confine- 
 ment, commissioned a number of the clergy of the vicinity 
 of London to visit these and similar prisoners at least twice 
 a week and attempt their recovery to conformity. The 
 visits were useless ; but they provoked a desire on the part 
 of the chief prisoners to set their case before the reading 
 public, which bore notable fruit. Under the most dis- 
 advantageous circumstances, unable, as Barrowe himself 
 declared, to keep one sheet at hand while a second was 
 written, compelled to smuggle their writings out of prison 
 page by page, and to have them carried surreptitiously to 
 Dort in Holland by friendly hands for printing, Barrowe 
 and Greenwood produced no less than eight controversial 
 and expository treatises, containing over nine hundred 
 printed pages. Chief in importance perhaps is the '* Trve 
 
EXPOSITIONS OF CONGREGATIONALISM. 45 
 
 Description ovt of the Word of God, of the visible Church," 
 of 1589, a brief sketch in which the writers set forth their 
 conception of what God designed his church should be, 
 and which, though somewhat ideal in tone, is evidently a 
 document which the yet imperfectly organized congrega- 
 tion at London looked upon as in some sense its creed. 
 But almost equally valuable, and far more voluminous, are 
 Barrowe's ** Brief Discouerie of the False Church," of 
 1590 — a cogent criticism of the existing condition of the 
 Establishment — and Barrowe and Greenwood's " Plaine. 
 Refutation of M. Gififards Booke, intituled, A short trea- 
 tise gainst the Donatistes of England," printed in 1591, 
 which was not only a vigorous reply to the censures of 
 an able Puritan critic, but was to be in a most remarkable 
 way the means of the conversion of Francis Johnson, the 
 first regular pastor of this London church of which Bar- 
 rowe and Greenwood were so conspicuous members. 
 Here, then, was an activity which must greatly have 
 annoyed the supporters of existing ecclesiastical institu- 
 tions, while it aided much in the spread of Separatist 
 views. 
 
 In these tracts Barrowe and Greenwood presented a 
 theory of the church in most points identical with that 
 of Browne. With him they hold that a true church is 
 a company 'of ''faithful and holie people," having as its 
 officers pastors, teachers, elders, deacons, and widows, who 
 obtain their offxce " by the holy & free election of the Lordes 
 holie and free people." To this church, as a whole, the 
 power of discipline has been intrusted, and of it Christ is 
 the immediate head. But while the London prisoners 
 thus agree for the most part with Browne, they were not 
 as democratic as he. The execution of government they 
 shut up, practically, in the hands of the church officers. 
 It is the duty of the ordinary membership to be " a most 
 
46 THE COXGKEGATIONALISrS. [Chap. ii. 
 
 humble, meek, obedient, faithfull, and loving people." 
 And this semi- Presbyterian conception of the internal 
 government of the church, instead of the democracy of 
 Browne, dominated all early English and American Con- 
 gregationalism. As Rev. Samuel Stone, of Hartford, epi- 
 grammatically expressed this theory two generations after 
 Barrowe's death^ it placed the officers as *' a speaking aris- 
 tocracy in the face of a silent democracy." That in mod- 
 ern Congregationalism this democracy is no longer silent 
 is evidence that in this particular Browne saw more clearly 
 than Barrowe ; but, for a century after Barrowe wrote, his 
 view was the generally accepted Congregational theory of 
 the relations of officers and people. 
 
 These writings from the London prisons, and the eflforts 
 of humbler members of the Separatist company, gained 
 converts. Barrowe and Greenwood, if the most promi- 
 nent, were by no means the only Separatists now under 
 confinement. At the time when certain of the London 
 clergy were deputed to attempt the conversion of the 
 Nonconformists in 1589 there were fifty-two persons under 
 arrest, and though it is too much to affirm that all were 
 Congregational Separatists, it is probable that most of 
 them were of Barrowe's way of thinking. A petition pre- 
 served by Strype, and probably of the year 1592, has ap- 
 pended to it the names of fifty-nine surviving prisoners 
 who besought the favor of Lord Burghley, and in this case 
 there seems little doubt that all the signers were Sepa- 
 ratists. Whether this petition had any influence on the 
 government or not, it is certain that the treatment of these 
 prisoners for a few months in 1592 was less severe than it 
 had been, and that Greenwood, if not Barrowe, was oc- 
 casionally allowed to go beyond his prison walls. This 
 lull in the storm, if such it deserves to be called, was 
 marked by two events of importance, the addition of John 
 
JOHN PENRY. 47 
 
 Penry and of Francis Johnson to the Separatist company, 
 and the completion of its organization by the London 
 church. 
 
 John Penry, one of the martyrs of Congregationalism, 
 and one to whom youth and purity of character lend a 
 touch of romance, was of Welsh birth and Roman Catholic 
 training. In 1580 he entered the college of Peterhouse, 
 at Cambridge, when about twenty-one years old, and be- 
 fore his graduation in 1583-84 had abandoned Catholicism 
 and embraced an ardent type of Puritanism. His ready 
 pen was soon busied with tracts advocating the claims of 
 Wales on missionary effort, and urging at the same time 
 the Puritan cause. Besides a voluminous series of contro- 
 versial tractates of which he was the acknowledged author, 
 he appears to have been connected with the publication, 
 though not probably with the composition, of the remark- 
 able series of satirical attacks upon the Establishment 
 issued in 1588 and 1589, and known as the Martin Mar- 
 prdate pamphlets, the moral worth of which is still dis- 
 puted in some quarters, but which are confessedly among 
 the most effective pasquinades ever written in the English 
 tongue. 
 
 Penry's acknowledged writings speedily called down 
 upon him the censure of Archbishop Whitgift and the 
 High Commission ; but it was not till the pursuit after all 
 suspected of connection with the Mar-prelate tracts had 
 become keen that he fled from England to Scotland in 
 1589. Here he found so much sympathy for his Puritan 
 views, that, in spite of an autograph letter of EHzabeth re- 
 questing his extradition, and a proclamation of James VI. 
 against him, he enjoyed protection till 1592. He now 
 came to London, and whether he had advanced from 
 Puritanism to Separatism during his stay in Scotland, and 
 was so attracted to the congregation of which Barrowe 
 
48 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chai'. ii. 
 
 and Greenwood were members, or whether he was Avon 
 to their principles after his return to EngUsh soil, Penry 
 joined the Separatist communion in the autumn of the 
 year of his arrival. 
 
 Like Greenwood and Penry, Francis Johnson, the sec- 
 ond of the notable additions to the London Separatists, 
 was a clergyman of the Church of England. Of Yorkshire 
 birth, he had, like them, enjoyed the training of Cam- 
 bridge, where he had graduated in 1581. It was while 
 enjoying a fellowship in Christ's College that a sermon of 
 strong Puritan flavor preached by him led to his imprison- 
 ment, and ultimately to his expulsion from the university 
 in 1589 and his self-exile to Middelburg, where he be- 
 came pastor of the English church which had enjoyed the 
 services of Cartwright. Johnson had no more sympathy 
 than other Puritans for the Separatists, and on learning 
 that Barrowe and Greenwood's " Plaine Refutation " of his 
 fellow-Puritan GifTord's attack upon Separatism was being 
 printed in 1591 either at Dort or at Middelburg, he noti- 
 fied the English ambassador of the proposed publication, 
 and was charged to see the bool<s burned. This he did 
 most thoroughly ; but as a memento of his exploit John- 
 son preserved two copies from the flames. He had not 
 yet read the works which he had condemned, and the 
 perusal of this volume carried conviction to him. He re- 
 signed his position at Middelburg, sought out Barrowe in 
 the London prison, and was soon one of the most promi- 
 nent of the London Separatist church. 
 
 Thus strengthened in membership, and enjoying a little 
 respite from the severer forms of persecution, the London 
 church felt encouraged to perfect its organization by the 
 appointment of the oflficers designated, as it believed, in 
 the Bible. The church had, indeed, for several years ex- 
 ercised certain ecclesiastical acts. It had admitted mem- 
 
FRANCIS JOHNSON. 49 
 
 bers as early as 1588 by a formal covenant that they 
 ** wold walke with the rest ; & yt so longe as they did 
 walke in the way of the Lorde, & as farr as might be 
 warranted by the word of God." It had also exercised 
 the discipline of excommunication; though, owing to its 
 want of officers, it does not appear to have administered 
 the Lord's Supper. That it had so long remained un- 
 officered was doubtless due to the hope that those who 
 were the church's recognized leaders would be released 
 from imprisonment ; and now that Greenwood was allowed 
 to go beyond his prison walls and Penry and Johnson had 
 been added to the company, the time seemed ripe for 
 action. Barrowe was ineligible, we may beHeve, by reason 
 of his continued confinement, and Penry refused an elec- 
 tion, since he still hoped to spend his Hfe in Wales rather 
 than in London; but in September, 1592, the London 
 church, gathered in the house of a Mr. Fox, in Nicholas 
 Lane, elected Johnson as its pastor and Greenwood as its 
 teacher; and associated with them as elders Daniel Stud- 
 ley, who had helped to smuggle Barrowe's manuscripts 
 out of the prison, and George Kniston or Knyveton. At 
 the same time Christopher Bowman and Nicholas Lee 
 were chosen deacons, and the sacraments of baptism and 
 the eucharist were administered. 
 
 This evident growth of the Separatist Church in London 
 renewed the alarm of the ecclesiastical authorities. In 
 December following Johnson and Greenwood were both 
 lodged in prison ; Penry avoided arrest for a few weeks 
 longer, but in March, 1593, he was captured, and the 
 same month saw the arrest of fifty-six of the humbler 
 members of the persecuted communion. It was deter- 
 mined to make an example of the leaders. Accordingly, 
 after examination before Chief-Justice Popham, Barrowe 
 and Greenwood were tried on March 23, 1593. Their 
 
50 THE CONGREGATION ALISTS. [Chap. ii. 
 
 accusation was based distinctly on the law of the twenty- 
 third year of Elizabeth, making it a capital offense to 
 write any book maliciously attacking the authority of the 
 queen or inciting to rebellion. On this charge, in spite 
 of their protests of loyalty in all civil matters, they were 
 convicted ; but it was not until an attempt had been made 
 to induce them to recant by the labors of certain clergy- 
 men, and they had once been reprieved on the gallows 
 itself, that they were hanged, on April 6, 1593- Their 
 martyrdom was followed on May 2 ist by the condemnation 
 of Penry — the conclusive evidence in his case being an 
 unfinished draught of a petition to the queen, in which he 
 complained that she and her government prevented the 
 due service of God as enjoined in his Word. This pri- 
 vate paper was held to be a seditious attack upon the sov- 
 ereign, and on May 29th Penry joined that company who 
 have not counted their lives dear unto themselves that they 
 might testify to what they believed to be the gospel of 
 the grace of God. 
 
 These executions had the warm approval of the bishops, 
 but they were not regarded with satisfaction by many 
 in England who were far enough from sharing Separatist 
 opinions. While these witnesses for their faith had been 
 under trial Parliament had been discussing a bill introduced 
 by the bishops designed to strengthen the action of the 
 courts in dealing with critics of the Establishment. In 
 the discussion of this bill Sir Walter Raleigh had uttered 
 his absurdly exaggerated estimate that the Brownists of 
 England numbered more than twenty thousand. But the 
 bishops had found the Commons unsubmissive, and the 
 law as finally passed made the penalty for the denial of 
 the queen's supremacy, or attendance on illegal meetings, 
 forfeiture of goods and banishment, instead of death. It 
 was under this new law that the government now began 
 
EXILES IN AMSTERDAM. 
 
 51 
 
 to treat its numerous Separatist prisoners in a manner well 
 calculated to destroy their feeble organization. While 
 their more prominent survivors, like Johnson, were kept 
 in confinement, the less important prisoners were com- 
 pelled to go into exile. These poor artisans, aided in 
 part by a little property left for their use by Barrowe, 
 made their way within the year of his execution to Holland ; 
 and there after a few months settled in Amsterdam, living 
 in the direst poverty, and still looking to their officers in 
 the London prisons for leadership and advice. 
 
 It was in the first year or two of this Dutch exile, how- 
 ever, that a young man of whose early history we know 
 little joined himself to this company — Henry Ainsworth ; 
 a man who probably never enjoyed a university educa- 
 tion, but who had few superiors as a Hebraist in his own 
 day and whose expositions of the Old Testament are still 
 held in esteem. The most learned of early Congregation- 
 alists, he was also one of the most deserving; and his 
 sweet-tempered love of peace made him an excellent 
 counselor for the struggling church in the years of inter- 
 nal turmoil which it passed through at Amsterdam. Ains- 
 worth had been born in 1 5 70 or 1 5 7 1 at Swanton, prob- 
 ably a village of that name near Norwich, the city where 
 Browne established his church ; but of the means of his 
 conversion to Separatist views or of the circumstances 
 which brought him to Amsterdam we know nothing, save 
 that he probably came by way of Ireland, and gained his 
 livelihood after his arrival in the Dutch city as a porter in 
 a bookseller's shop. And here, in some way unknown to 
 us, these London Separatists found him, living, if Roger 
 Williams was correctly informed, on boiled roots at nine- 
 pence a week, and eagerly pursuing every opportunity to 
 increase his learning. This was the man whom the exiled 
 church now chose, at some uncertain date, but clearly 
 
52 rilE CONGREGATIONALISrS. [Chai-. ii. 
 
 within two or three years of its coming to Amsterdam, 
 to the teachership made vacant by the death of Green- 
 wood. 
 
 Having thus in some measure made good their loss by 
 martyrdom, this divided church, part of whose members 
 were still in the London prisons and part in exile, put forth 
 in 1596 a statement of its faith and polity and of the 
 reasons which had led it to separation from the English 
 Establishment, under the title of " A Trve Confession of 
 the Faith, and Hvmble acknowledgment oe the Alegeance, 
 which wee hir Maiesties Subjects,,falsely called Brovvnists, 
 doo hould towards God, and yeild to hir Majestic and all 
 other that are ouer vs in the Lord." Its execrable typog- 
 raphy attested the poverty of its publishers, but its spirit 
 was one of confident persuasion of the justice of its cause. 
 In doctrine it did not differ from the current Calvinism 
 of the age, while in polity it set forth the main principles 
 of Congregationalism as already expounded by Barrowe. 
 As was natural from men who had suffered so much for 
 their beliefs as to the polity which the Bible enjoined, it 
 was severe in its denunciations of the EngHsh Church, 
 holding that " all that will bee saued, must with speed 
 come forth of this Antichristian estate, leaving the sup- 
 pression of it vnto the Magistrate to whom it belongeth." 
 These poor prisoners and exiles were ready enough to 
 affirm that the magistrate had no power to prescribe any 
 other order than that established by our Lord, but they 
 appealed to the same hand which had dealt out exile and 
 death to them to abolish an ecclesiastical organization the 
 unscripturalness of which they believed that they had 
 demonstrated. 
 
 How long this division of the church between London 
 and Amsterdam might have continued it is impossible to 
 say, but it was brought to an end at last by the Eng- 
 
EXILES IN AMSTERDAM. 53 
 
 llsh Government itself, which, early in 1597, allowed the 
 greater part of the still imprisoned members to join their 
 associates in Holland, while it permitted Johnson and 
 three others to join in an abortive enterprise for planting 
 a colony on the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Law- 
 rence, an expedition from which Johnson returned in time 
 to join the waiting church at Amsterdam before the end 
 of the year. 
 
 But unhappily the coming together of these separated 
 elements was not altogether a union of peace. On no 
 feature of church administration did Puritans and Separa- 
 tists alike lay more stress than on discipline ; and it must 
 be confessed that those Congregationalists gathered by 
 Browne at Norwich and these exiles from London carried 
 the duties of brotherly watchfulness to a degree of minute- 
 ness that was captious and irritating in the extreme. 
 The quarrel which was to turmoil the early Amsterdam 
 life of this little communion had its beginnings in London 
 in the objections of the pastor's brother to the fashion 
 of the garments worn by the pastor's wife. It was pro- 
 tracted, dreary, personal ; and it illustrated the fact, so 
 often exemplified, that leadership in a great enterprise is 
 no guarantee of exemption from pettiness and unchari- 
 tableness. 
 
 The story of this London church to its full gathering 
 on alien soil has thus been followed with some minuteness; 
 a glance at its later history will be sufficient. On the ac- 
 cession of James I. to the English throne in 1603, in com- 
 mon with reformers of all shades, its members cherished 
 the hope of a change from the ecclesiastical policy of 
 Elizabeth — a hope that was bitterly disappointed. A vain 
 attempt to secure permission from the new sovereign to 
 be allowed to worship God in England on the same terms 
 as congregations of French and Dutch Protestants enjoyed 
 
54 THE CONGREGATIOKALISTS. [Chap. ii. 
 
 in that island persuaded them that their only safety was 
 in continued exile. But that exile was stormy. Johnson 
 and others of the company were men of strong opinions. 
 Divisions rent the church, especially after the arrival of 
 the erratic John Smyth and his Gainsborough congrega- 
 tion in Amsterdam about 1606. Diversity of opinion as 
 to the extent of the duties of church officers and the 
 amount of power to be allowed to the ordinary members 
 in church government separated Ainsworth and Johnson, 
 and divided the flock unddr their charge into two congre- 
 gations in 1 6 10. Johnson died in Amsterdam in January, 
 161 8, and Ainsworth followed him, not, as has sometimes 
 been alleged, by poison, but by that plague of seventeenth- 
 century scholars, the stone, in 1622 or 1623. With their 
 departure from the scene the vitality of this much-divided 
 organization seems to have been nearly spent, though 
 there is reason to believe that it continued a feeble exist- 
 ence till 1 701, when the remnant was received into the 
 English Reformed Church of Amsterdam — a Puritan or- 
 ganization conformed in government to the Calvinistic 
 Established Church of Holland, which had always enjoyed 
 the approval of the Dutch authorities. 
 
 It is with mingled feelings that a modern Congregation- 
 alist looks back upon the attempts to establish the Congre- 
 gational polity which have been narrated in this chapter. 
 The story is one of strength and courage, of suffering will- 
 ingly undergone, of heroism and martyrdom. But it is 
 a story also of weakness and division and failure. The 
 men whom it presents to our view had their full share 
 of human infirmities ; but they had a faith in God and a 
 simple desire to do his will that is worthy of all praise. 
 Yet had Browne and Barrowe and Greenwood and John- 
 son and Penry and Ainsworth been all the leaders that 
 early Congregationalism produced, the system which they 
 
EXILES IN A MS IE RD AM. 55 
 
 loved would scarcely have survived them. They did a 
 noble and an indispensable work ; but it was well that 
 other workmen, more patient, more united, if less gifted, 
 entered into their labors and reaped the harvest which 
 they had sowed, but which they were not fitted to 
 garner. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 CONGREGATIONALISM CARRIED TO AMERICA. 
 
 The qualities of permanency, which were lacking in the 
 Separatist churches thus far considered, were possessed by 
 a Separatist congregation in the north of England, itself 
 apparently the fruit of the labors of one of the most un- 
 stable men ever associated with the story of Congrega- 
 tionaHsm. John Smyth, the founder of this church, is first 
 known to us as a student at Christ's College, Cambridge, 
 where he graduated in 1575-76, and where he enjoyed a 
 fellowship. What he did immediately after leaving Cam- 
 bridge is not clear, but he seems after a time to have ob- 
 tained a living as a clergyman of the Establishment at 
 Gainsborough-on-Trent. How long his connection with 
 the Church of England continued we do not know, but a 
 period of nine months of mental struggle brought him to 
 the Separatist position ; he renounced the Establishment, 
 and gathering a little flock of like-minded people, most 
 probably in the year 1602, he became its pastor. Though 
 this Congregational church had its origin and seat at 
 Gainsborough, it soon gained adherents in the farming 
 district outside the town, especially in the region where 
 the borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and York- 
 shire adjoin. Chief among these out-of-town converts 
 to Separatism was William Brewster, the postmaster at 
 Scrooby, on the main road from London to York. The 
 ample, though dilapidated, '' manor-house " which he oc- 
 cupied gave room for the gathering for worship of Sepa- 
 
 56 
 
THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 57 
 
 ratist sympathizers like the youthful William Bradford of 
 the neighboring hamlet of Austerfield, and others from 
 other villages in the vicinity. Brewster was, at the time 
 of the gathering of the Gainsborough church, a man nearly 
 or quite forty years of age, of fair classical education, and 
 of a good deal of knowledge of the world, gained in the 
 employ of William Davison during that unfortunate states- 
 man's embassy to Holland. A man of maturity, sound 
 judgment, and stability, Brewster was a natural leader, 
 though not in the pastoral office, for that section of the 
 Gainsborough church that had its center at his house. 
 But even more important for its development was the 
 addition to the little company, apparently in 1604, though 
 the exact time is a little uncertain, of John Robinson, on 
 the whole the best-known minister connected with early 
 Separatist Congregationalism. There seems some reason 
 to believe that Robinson was by birth from the Gainsbor- 
 ough region, and that his union with Smyth and Brewster 
 and their associates was in some sense a home-coming. 
 However this may have been, he had entered Corpus 
 Christi College, in Cambridge, in 1592, when about seven- 
 teen years of age ; and after passing through the ordinary 
 course of a student's Hfe, became a minister of the Estab- 
 lishment and a fellow of his college. From about 1 600 
 he labored, probably as a curate, either in Norwich or its 
 vicinity. Here, in the neighborhood where Browne had 
 taught, and where some traces of his work still continued, 
 Robinson's thought advanced from Puritanism to Separa- 
 tism, and his teachings became so marked as to lead to his 
 suspension by the Bishop of Norwich ; in consequence of 
 which inhibition, and after a good deal of mental conflict, 
 he now removed to the vicinity of Gainsborough and joined 
 himself to the church there. It was at some uncertain 
 date in 1605 or 1606, not long after his coming, that 
 
■58 THE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. m. 
 
 the Gainsborough church amicably divided, for safety and 
 convenience, one portion continuing to meet under the 
 guidance of Smyth for a httle longer in its old home, and 
 the other having its simple services at Scrooby and en- 
 joying the ministry of Robinson and of the venerable 
 Richard Clyfton, who had been rector at Babworth, a 
 village near Scrooby. 
 
 The two branches of the original Gainsborough church 
 were destined to experiences in some respects alike, but 
 in other features singularly diverse. Both were speedily 
 objects of governmental persecution. To escape this in- 
 terference Smyth and the Gainsborough flock emigrated 
 to Amsterdam, probably in 1606; while the Scrooby con- 
 gregation was moved by similar reasons to try the same 
 exiles' road in 1607 and 1608. But in Holland the differ- 
 ing qualities of the leaders of the two congregations had 
 much to do in giving them different destinies. On their 
 arrival in Amsterdam the impetuous Smyth and his as- 
 sociates settled as a second church side by side with the 
 London- Amsterdam church of which Johnson and Ains- 
 worth were the leaders, the stormy experiences of which 
 have been mentioned in the preceding chapter. But with 
 this older church Smyth soon quarreled. To his thinking the 
 congregation of Johnson and Ainsworth was in error, since 
 it used the English version of the Scriptures in public 
 worship, instead of translating viva voce, and in 1608 he 
 called on his church to have no fellowship with their neigh- 
 bors until they should reform. The same prohibition of 
 written or printed helps he extended to preaching and the 
 singing of psalms. It was after this step had been taken, 
 but probably in the next year, 1609, that Smyth, led 
 thereto by contact with the Mennonites of Amsterdam, 
 adopted Baptist views, and reorganizing his church, bap- 
 tized himself and his associates. But even here Smyth 
 
JOHN SMY7IL 59 
 
 did not rest. Doubt as to the rightfulness of the step 
 which he had taken seems to have entered his mind, 
 and some changes in other directions seem to have mod- 
 ified his theology, so that he and his sympathizers were 
 next cast out, by his associates Helwys and Murton, 
 from the congregation which he had led through so many 
 changes. Smyth then made a vain attempt, in 1609, to 
 enter the communion of the Amsterdam Mennonites ; but 
 failing in this, he remained outside of formal church fellow- 
 ship till his death, in 161 2. It was probably in the year 
 of his death that his associates till the quarrel of 1609, 
 Helwys and Murton, established in London the first of 
 Baptist churches on English soil; and thus the Baptist 
 fellowship of England and America traces its direct sources 
 back to the same fountain at Gainsborough from which 
 Plymouth Congregationalism flowed forth. 
 
 If Smyth thus gave to the exiles whom he led from 
 Gainsborough a stormy experience at Amsterdam, the 
 story of the Scrooby congregation under Robinson was 
 healthful and peaceful. Their transfer to Amsterdam in 
 1607 and 1608 was effected in the face of much govern- 
 mental opposition and many hardships, and, once arrived 
 in the chief commercial city of Holland, they were de- 
 barred from permanent settlement by the well-grounded 
 fear entertained by the leading members of the company 
 that they would become involved in the disputes distract- 
 ing the churches of Ainsworth and Johnson and of Smyth. 
 Accordingly, in 1609, they took up their abode in Leyden, 
 under the pastoral care of Robinson, and with Brewster 
 as their ruling elder. Here they dwelt, working at such 
 trades as they were able to learn, at peace with them- 
 selves, and earning the respect of their Dutch neighbors 
 by their unswerving honesty. Here, too, Robinson and 
 other prominent members purchased a large house, oppo- 
 
6o THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. in. 
 
 site St. Peter's church, for the use of the exiled congrega- 
 tion. Here Brewster printed books for such as desired to 
 publish what was forbidden in England ; and here, after a 
 time, Robinson's unusual powers of debate won him recog- 
 nition as a disputant against the Arminian champion Epis- 
 copius in one of the minor episodes of the great struggle 
 over Calvinism then convulsing Holland. 
 
 But life was hard at the best for the exiles, though their 
 church grew largely, and though some of their most valu- 
 able material, like young Edward Winslow, was added 
 during this Leyden sojourn. It was difficult to keep the 
 children free from the temptations of an alien city ; it was 
 above all distressing for those who were English in feeling 
 and sympathy to see no prospect but that of gradual 
 absorption in a foreign population ; and for Christian men 
 such as these not the least element of dissatisfaction with 
 their lot was that it afforded so few opportunities to ex- 
 tend the knowledge of the gospel in its purity beyond 
 their own circle. So it was, that, as time went on, the 
 Scrooby- Leyden church began to debate more and more 
 strenuously the possibility of emigration. Guiana, just 
 then much talked of in English circles as a promising 
 region for colonization, was discussed ; but happily for the 
 future of the United States, the decision finally reached 
 was to apply to the London branch of the Virginia Com- 
 pany — a sub-organization having authority from King 
 James I. to establish colonies on the American coast be- 
 tween the thirty-fourth and the forty-first degrees of 
 latitude — for permission to emigrate under its auspices. 
 There, on soil yet unbroken by the plowshares of civiliza- 
 tion, but nevertheless in a real sense Engli.sh, they hoped 
 to plant the institutions of the gospel for which they had 
 gone into the exile in Holland, and live as Englishmen, 
 though free from the ecclesiastical Establishment which 
 
PILGRIMS AT LEYDEN. 6 1 
 
 enforced uniformity in every hamlet of their native island. 
 It was a momentous decision, far surpassing in its boldness 
 any proposition of emigration in these days when the world 
 is brought close together by steam ; but the Leyden 
 Christians had the example of the settlers of Virginia be- 
 fore them to show that it was not impossible of accomplish- 
 ment. Yet it was not easy to carry the resolution into 
 execution. The Virginia Company was willing enough to 
 receive promising emigrants to open up its territories ; 
 but the Leyden congregation desired permission from the 
 king, if possible, for the free exercise of their worship 
 on the soil of the new settlement. That privilege was 
 the real difficulty. In hope of securing it Robinson and 
 Brewster provided their two commissioners to the English 
 authorities in 1617 with a statement of the position of the 
 Leyden church drawn up in seven remarkable articles, and 
 intended to make the utmost possible concession to English 
 prejudice. There is much reason to think that Robinson's 
 type of Separatism was Jess strenuous and more tolerant 
 than that of Browne or Barrowe, but in these articles the 
 Leyden pastor and ruling elder declare their willingness 
 to admit the authority of the king to appoint bishops, and 
 his supremacy in all causes and over all persons, as well 
 as the duty of yielding at least passive obedience to all his 
 commands. They even were willing to admit the author- 
 ity of the existing bishops as royal representatives, though 
 they were careful not to ascribe any spiritual authority 
 unto them. It was the utmost extreme of concession to 
 which these exiles could go ; and it is noteworthy in that 
 while it preserved the most essential elements of the beliefs 
 for which its writers had suffered, they were willing to 
 give full toleration to the religious institutions established 
 by law in England. Perhaps this readiness was the prod- 
 uct merely of the strong desire to secure the privileges 
 
62 THE CONGREGA TIOXALISTS. [Chap. hi. 
 
 of toleration in return ; but the London-Amsterdam church 
 had shown itself wholly intolerant of the Establishment 
 when in circumstances even more necessitous, and a large 
 degree of toleration of others — when judged by Anglican 
 or Puritan standards — was ever characteristic of the Plym- 
 outh colony, which had its germ in this Leyden church. 
 
 Conciliatory as this presentation was, the king, supported 
 by the English ecclesiastical authorities, would give no 
 guarantee of toleration to the suppliants. The utmost 
 that could be obtained from James was a verbal under- 
 standing that as long as they behaved peaceably in their 
 new home they would be unmolested. Encouraged by 
 this promise, a patent was obtained from the company in 
 June, 1619, in the name of an EngUsh friend of the strug- 
 gling church — John Wincob — a patent of which they ulti- 
 mately made no use. But in spite of the granting of the 
 patent, the arrangements for the transfer of the exiles 
 to America dragged; and at this juncture, early in 1620, 
 negotiations were begun by merchants of Amsterdam 
 looking for their settlement in New York, then the Dutch 
 territory of the New Netherlands. It was while these new 
 discussions were in progress that the London merchants, 
 whom they had already approached, made definite terms 
 with the Leyden emigrants. As finally agreed, the colo- 
 nists and merchant-contributors were made into a stock 
 company, in which the labor of each emigrant over six- 
 teen years of age for seven years was considered equal 
 to a contribution of ;^io by the merchants. During the 
 first seven years all profits and results of labor and trade 
 as developed in the colony should go to the common 
 stock, from which food, clothing, and tools for the colo- 
 nists should come ; and at the end of the period all should 
 be divided among the stockholders. That the Leyden 
 emigrants should be willing to enter into a bargain which 
 
THE EMIGRATION. 63 
 
 valued their labor at so little in proportion to the financial 
 contributions of the moneyed members of the partnership 
 shows in the clearest light, as Palfrey has expressed it, 
 '* the slenderness of their means and the constancy of their 
 purpose." 
 
 Yet even the conclusion of this hard bargain did not 
 relieve the emigrants of their difficulties. Their scanty 
 means, the uncertainty of the enterprise, and the inabil- 
 ity or unwillingness of some of their number to under- 
 take the journey even had their pecuniary resources been 
 greater than was the case, had already made it evident 
 that not quite half of the church could embark upon the 
 expedition. With the majority Robinson was constrained 
 to remain, though with a hope on his part to follow his 
 friends later ; and it may be that the wishes of the majority 
 in this matter were aided by the opposition of the English 
 contributing merchants, who prebably were glad to avoid 
 the notoriety of the presence in a colony, for the religious 
 aspects of which they cared little, of so redoubtable an 
 exponent of Separatism as Robinson. So it was agreed 
 that the minority, who were to undertake the voyage, 
 should be under the spiritual guidance of Elder William 
 Brewster, and that while each body — those who went and 
 those who remained — should be sufficiently independent 
 ecclesiastically to administer its own affairs, yet they were 
 to be still sufficiently one to receive members one from the 
 other without question or testimonial. As a matter of fact, 
 Brewster, who was an effective preacher, though retaining 
 his position as elder, was practically pastor of the colonists, 
 save in the administration of the sacraments, for nearly 
 ten years after the settlement at Plymouth — the emigrant 
 church looking upon the absent Robinson as in some sense 
 their pastor as long as he lived, and finding no satisfactory 
 successor for several years after his death. 
 
64 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. hi. 
 
 In the small/er of the two vessels which had been obtained 
 for the expedition — the "Speedwell" — the emigrants, or, 
 as Bradford styles them, the Pilgrims, left Delftshaven, 
 the port most convenient to Leyden, not far from the 
 middle of July, 1620, encouraged on their way, either at 
 the time of sailing or more probably at a fast just before 
 leaving Leyden, by Robinson in a memorable and elo- 
 quent address urging upon them the duty of open-mind- 
 edness to the leadings of the Divine Spirit, and voicing 
 the remarkable prediction that should English Puritans 
 leave their island home and come to the New World no 
 essential difference in church administration between them 
 and the Pilgrims would be found. It detracts nothing 
 from the sweetness and charity of this noble utterance 
 that the ** further light " from the " written Word " which 
 Robinson exhorted his disciples to be ready to receive 
 was, to his thinking, light on church polity rather than 
 on doctrine. The declaration is in advance of the spirit 
 of the speaker's age, and it shows the breadth of sym- 
 pathy, that, combined as it was with firmness of convic- 
 tion on those matters which he deemed fundamental, made 
 him the best beloved and the most influential of the Sep- 
 aratist ministers. 
 
 From Delftshaven the ** Speedwell " made her way to 
 Southampton, England, where the "Mayflower" awaited 
 them with some additions to the colony drawn directly 
 from English sources. On August 5th-i5th both vessels 
 set sail, but soon put into Dartmouth for repairs ; and the 
 start was made afresh. But again the " Speedwell " proved 
 unseaworthy, or, as the Pilgrims afterward believed, her 
 captain and crew repented of the voyage ; and back they 
 turned, a hundred leagues beyond Land's End, for the 
 English Plymouth. Here it was decided to abandon the 
 
THE EMIGRATION. 65 
 
 misnamed " Speedwell," and here too the courage of 
 some gave out, as well it might in view of all the diffi- 
 culties of what must have seemed an almost hopeless en- 
 terprise. But at last, on September 6th- 1 6th, the " May- 
 flower" sailed from Plymouth on her lonely voyage, 
 freighted with one hundred and two colonists, of whom 
 tw^enty-two were hired servants. Most of the independ- 
 ent members of the expedition had been of the Leyden 
 congregation, though as the younger men naturally were 
 more largely represented in the enterprise than the older, 
 a considerable proportion of the Leyden emigrants had not 
 been long of Robinson's fellowship. Brewster and Brad- 
 ford had shared the fortunes of the church since its begin- 
 nings at Scrooby; John Carver, the first governor of the 
 little colony, Deacon-Doctor Samuel Fuller, its physician 
 and the man who was more than any other to be the 
 means of transforming New England Puritanism into Con- 
 gregationalism, Edward Winslow, its able man of affairs, 
 Isaac Allerton, its unsatisfactory agent, had all been promi- 
 nent in the congregation at Leyden; while John Alden, 
 more famous in romance than conspicuous in the beginnings 
 of the colony, had been engaged as a cooper at South- 
 ampton after the long journey had been begun. Quick- 
 tempered and brave Myles Standish had come with the 
 Leyden emigrants from Holland, but though he was to 
 do much for the colony, he hardly sympathized with the 
 religious aspirations which animated most of the company, 
 for he was not a member of the church, and may have 
 been by family inclined to CathoHcism ; but his heart was 
 in the success of the enterprise for which his military abil- 
 ity had probably caused him to be chosen. This was the 
 company, of somewhat diverse elem.ents, but dominated by 
 the men of Leyden training who constituted the majority 
 
56 THE CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. ill. 
 
 of its adult membership, that sailed from the English Plym- 
 outh, and which, after a tedious voyage of no special 
 eventfulness, found itself ofif the end of Cape Cod on 
 November 9-19, 1620. 
 
 But here a serious embarrassment presented itself to the 
 voyagers. The patent under which the company proposed 
 to make its settlement was issued by the London branch 
 of the Virginia Company — a body having no claim to juris- 
 diction north of forty-one degrees, a little northward of 
 the present city of New York. They were clearly where 
 they had no legal authority to be ; and in this condition, 
 finding it impossible to go to any place within the limits 
 of their charter owing to the opposition of the sailors who 
 had brought them over, they determined to settle in the 
 region w^here Providence had cast them, and to provide 
 for the good order of the little community by the organi- 
 zation of civil government. There is reason to believe 
 that this step had been planned before leaving Leyden, 
 but the form in which it was carried out must have been 
 due to the unforeseen exigencies of the situation. It is 
 strikingly illustrative of the indirect effects of Congrega- 
 tional training that these charterless exiles now proceeded, 
 on November i ith-2ist, to provide the basis of their state 
 by a covenant, just as they would have organized a church. 
 This document, drawn up and signed in the cabin of the 
 ** Mayflower," is as follows: 
 
 *' In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are 
 vnderwritten, the loyall Subiects of our dread soveraigne 
 Lord King Iames, by the grace of God of Great Britaine, 
 France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, &c. 
 
 " Having vnder-taken for the glory of God, and ad- 
 vancement of the Christian Faith, and honour of our King 
 and Countrey, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the 
 Northerne parts of VIRGINIA, doe by these presents sol- 
 
ARRIVAL IN AMERICA. 67 
 
 emnly & mutually in the presence of God and one of an- 
 other, covenant, and combine our selues together into a 
 civill body politike, for our better ordering and preserva- 
 tion, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid ; and by vertue 
 hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such iust and equall 
 Lawes, Ordinances, acts, constitutions, offices from time to 
 time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for 
 the generall good of the Colony : vnto which we promise 
 all due submission and obedience. In witnesse whereof 
 we haue here-vnder subscribed our names. Cape Cod 11. 
 of November in the yeare of the raigne of our soveraigne 
 Lord King I AMES, of England, France, and Ireland 18. 
 and of Scotland 54. Anno Domino 1620." 
 
 Thus erected into a civil community, they chose a gov- 
 ernor in the person of John Carver, and proceeded to look 
 about for a place of settlement. After a month of explo- 
 ration, on Monday, December iith-2ist, the investigating 
 party landed at the place where Plymouth was afterward 
 to stand, and finding it suitable for their purpose, the 
 greater part of the ship's company were set to work within 
 a few days preparing dwellings for shelter during the winter 
 season already upon them. It is illustrative of their strong 
 religious antipathy to what they deemed the improper 
 observance of unscriptural festival days in the countries 
 of their birth and exile that on their first Christmas in the 
 New World '' no man rested." They had kept *' ye Sabath " 
 with scrupulous care even in the most pressing season of 
 their exploration, and they equally scrupulously endeav- 
 ored to make Christmas as if it were not by going '* on 
 shore, some to fell timber, some to saw, some to rive, and 
 some to carry." 
 
 Yet winter, even an exceedingly mild winter as this was, 
 is a sober time at best to be house-building on the New 
 England coast, and its exposures were rendered more de- 
 
58 THE CONGREGATIOXALISTS, [Chap. hi. 
 
 structive by the long- use of ship's food ; so that the settle- 
 ment had hardly begun before its scanty numbers fell ill. 
 By the ist of April forty- four of the little company had 
 died ; but the few survivors were determined to push on, 
 and when the '* Mayflower" sailed for England on April 5, 
 1 62 1, she took back with her only her own sailors. The 
 prospect was indeed gloomy enough ; scarcely had the 
 " Mayflower " sailed when Governor Carver's name was 
 added to the list of those no longer living, and with his 
 death the little colony's tale of loss counted up twenty- 
 eight of its forty-eight adult males. By the following 
 autumn the attempt had cost the lives of exactly half of 
 those who had come over in the " Mayflower" as settlers. 
 Such a bare statement of facts shows better than any rhe- 
 torical picture, however brilliant, the sincerity and single- 
 ness of the attachment of the members of this little band 
 to the principles of church government w^iich they believed 
 to be divinely appointed ; and the intense satisfaction 
 which they felt in being at last where they could combine 
 freedom and self-government with life on English soil. 
 However tolerable, as compared with a persecuted exist- 
 ence in their native island, their Holland sojourn may 
 have been, the most eloquent testimony to the hardness 
 of their lot in Leyden is the willingness of these Pilgrims 
 to continue their adventure in New England. 
 
 These qualities of courage, patience, and steadfastness 
 were general rather than exceptional in the company, but 
 they have no better illustration than in the person of Will- 
 iam Bradford, now chosen to succeed Carver in the gov- 
 ernorship from which he had been removed by death. 
 Thirty-one years of age, he was in the full vigor of man- 
 hood, but he had behind him certainly fifteen years of tried 
 fidelity to the interests of the community of which he was 
 now made the head, and before him till his honored death 
 
EARLY STRUGGLES. 69 
 
 thirty-six years of continuous service as the leader of its 
 affairs and for the greater part of that time its governor. 
 A man of education for one who had not the privileges 
 of a university, a natural leader, his modesty was as con- 
 spicuous as his devotion to the concerns of the colony was 
 entire. No one can read the '' History " in which he has 
 recorded the chief events in which he was so conspicuous 
 an actor without feeling that we have to do with a man 
 who commanded affection as well as respect, a strong, 
 sweet, self-forgetful Christian character ; and it is the 
 presence of such men as Bradford that best shows us why 
 the enterprise at Plymouth did not die. 
 
 The enterprise thus inaugurated slowly grew. In No- 
 vember, 1 62 1, just a year after the arrival of tlie first set- 
 tlers, the '' Fortune " brought thirty-five new colonists — a 
 welcome addition — among them a son of Elder Brewster 
 and a brother of Edward Winslow, but most of them ap- 
 parently picked up by the merchant-partners in England, 
 and, as Bradford describes them, '' wild enough." In July, 
 1623, about sixty additions were brought to the colony by 
 the *' Anne," *' some of them being very usefull persons, 
 . . . and some were so bad, as they were faine to be at charge 
 to send them home againe y^ next year." That these less 
 desirable elements came with the better was due to the 
 somewhat discordant aims of the partners in the Plymouth 
 undertaking. On the one hand, the Leyden Pilgrims de- 
 sired first of all the maintenance of Congregational institu- 
 tions and the preservation of the moral tone of the com- 
 munity ; on the other hand, the merchants of London, who 
 had furnished the chief part of the money for the advent- 
 ure, cared little save for a flourishing trading colony which 
 should yield satisfactory profits. A divergence of wishes 
 speedily manifested itself. The Pilgrims desired to bring 
 over their Leyden associates as speedily as possible, but 
 
70 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. hi. 
 
 bound as they were to their partners, they could not well 
 raise the money for such an end. On the contrary, the 
 merchant-partners preferred to send active young men, 
 picked up where they could get them, who might make 
 good hunters, fishers, and tillers of the soil. They looked 
 askance at the Separatists still at Leyden, most of all at 
 Robinson, whom the Pilgrims desired above all others 
 should come to them. They felt that if something could 
 be done to minimize the Separatist characteristics of the 
 colony it would grow more rapidly. And so, in 1624, 
 instead of Robinson, the merchant-partners sent over a 
 certain John Lyford to minister to the church, which was 
 led in its worship by Elder Brewster, and still regarded 
 Robinson as its pastor. 
 
 Lyford was profuse in his expressions of admiration for 
 the institutions of the colony on his arrival, and joined the 
 church as if he had been at heart a Separatist instead of a 
 very unworthy member of the Puritan party ; but it was not 
 long before his real character appeared. Certain elements 
 of discontent, as has been seen, were to be found in the 
 composition of the colony ; and of the discontented faction 
 perhaps the most conspicuous was John Oldham, a man of 
 headstrong temper, who, as a late arrival come at his own 
 charges and not bound bf the general agreement for com- 
 mon labor under which the original settlers and most of 
 their successors had made the journey, was displeased with 
 the limitations placed on trade by the Plymouth government 
 — limitations designed to secure as much as possible for 
 the payment of the debt for which so many in the com- 
 munity were jointly liable. In company with Oldham and 
 a few others, possibly among them Roger Conant, the 
 future founder of Salem, Lyford now " set up a publick 
 meeting aparte, on yc Lord's day," for worship as a Puri- 
 tan minister of the Church of England. A rather high- 
 
EARLY STRUGGLES. 7 1 
 
 handed seizure of letters from these malcontents to the mer- 
 chant-partners in London by Governor Bradford showed 
 that they were actively attempting the overthrow of the 
 supremacy of the Leyden Pilgrims, and were anxious to 
 prevent the arrival of those who had been left behind in 
 Holland but who were looking eagerly across the sea. In 
 view of these evident attempts to stir up trouble for the 
 Pilgrims, and certain revelations as to Lyford's previous 
 immoral life, both Lyford and Oldham were expelled from 
 the little community. 
 
 The news of the rejection of the unworthy Lyford pre- 
 cipitated a quarrel among the merchant-partners, many of 
 whom were disheartened over the comparatively meager 
 financial prospects of the enterprise ; and after some nego- 
 tiation, to the great joy of the Pilgrims, the London mer- 
 chants, with whom they had been so unsatisfactorily yoked, 
 sold out in 1626 all interest in the colony to the colonial 
 leaders for the onerous sum of ;^i8oo, to be paid in nine 
 annual installments. Thus at last wholly their own mas- 
 ters, though still burdened with a large debt, the Plym- 
 outh Pilgrims determined to bring over to the colony 
 their former associates who had remained at Leyden and 
 whose coming had been so much desired. As a result, 
 two companies were brought over, one in 1629, the other 
 in 1630, in all about sixty persons, at the expense of those 
 to whom they came. 
 
 But the man of all others whom they would have been 
 glad to welcome was no longer of the living : John Robin- 
 son had died at Leyden on March i, 1625 (N. S.). It was 
 no feigned sorrow that the lonely Plymouth settlers felt 
 for him, and it must have been with a feeling of almost 
 filial bereavement that they thought of him as no longer 
 a possible member of their earthly fellowship. For, taken 
 all in all, Robinson was the greatest of the Separatists. 
 
-J2 THE CONGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. hi. 
 
 His originality as a thinker was not equal to that of 
 Browne, but in every other respect he was the superior 
 of that erratic leader. He was not called to the test of 
 martyrdom as were Barrowe and Greenwood and Penry. 
 But he was vastly better fitted than they to be a i^uide 
 in a movement requiring patience, forbearance, and union. 
 He was no mean controversialist, his writings made him 
 looked upon as the representative Separatist of his gener- 
 ation ; yet his chief power was his capacity to mold those 
 who came under his personal influence. The Pilgrims who 
 crossed the ocean and founded Plymouth were strong 
 men, of marked individuahty, yet they and their colony 
 bore permanently the stamp of Robinson's forceful train- 
 ing. There was in him a quality of charity and tolerance 
 in marked contrast to the Separatist leaders before him, 
 which led him into kindly relations with the Dutch churches 
 as far as they would permit, and which softened his antip- 
 athy to the Church of England every year that he lived. 
 Nor was his conception of his own powers in his congre- 
 gation autocratic, like that of Francis Johnson. Though 
 he failed to reach the full democracy of Browne, his the- 
 ory of church administration was more democratic than 
 that of any early Congregational leader beside. And these 
 qualities became in a measure the characteristics of the 
 colony of which he was truly one of the founders, though 
 he never set foot upon its soil. 
 
 From the coming of the Pilgrims in 1620 to the arrival 
 of the last company of their Leyden associates not quite 
 ten years later, the little colony grew to about three hun- 
 dred members. It had taken firm root, it had maintained 
 its institutions, it had passed through perils of famine, 
 sickness, opposition in England, internal discords, tlie dan- 
 gers of Indian hostility, and the worse peril of the lawless 
 deeds of the rough traders and adventurers who settled 
 
ROBiySOJV AND BREWSTER. 73 
 
 about Massachusetts Bay under Weston, Gorges, and Mor- 
 ton at various times from 1622 onward. By 1630 the 
 continuance of the colony seemed fairly assured, while 
 the coming of the new forces from Leyden made it more 
 certain than it had been during the early years of struggle 
 that the religious element would permanently dominate 
 the community. But already the great Puritan immigra- 
 tion into Massachusetts had begun which was to leave 
 Plymouth, hampered by its sterile soil and slow-growing 
 population, far behind in the material development of New 
 England ; but on which Plymouth was to do its best mis- 
 sionary work in fashioning Puritanism into Congregation- 
 alism. 
 
 Through these years of sacrifice and struggle till 1629, 
 when a moderately gifted minister was procured in the 
 person of Ralph Smith, the Pilgrim church had been minis- 
 tered to by Elder Brewster. The merchant-partners had 
 sent the unworthy Lyford in 1624, and the colonial agent, 
 Isaac Allerton, had taken it upon himself to bring over 
 the mentally distracted Rogers in 1628; but the church 
 preferred to listen to Brewster, who, though refraining 
 by Robinson's advice from administering the sacraments, 
 '' taught twise every Saboth, and yt both powerfully and 
 profitably, to ye great contentment of y^ hearers, and their 
 comfortable edification ; yea, many were brought to God 
 by his ministrie." A letter of De Rasieres, the Dutch 
 chief-merchant at Fort Amsterdam, the present New 
 York, describing a visit made by him to Plymouth in 
 1627, gives us a glimpse of the meeting-house and con- 
 gregation : 
 
 " Upon the hill they have a large square house, with a 
 flat roof, made of thick-sawn planks, stayed with oak 
 beams, upon the top of which they have six cannons, 
 which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds, and com- 
 
74 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. hi. 
 
 mand the surrounding country. The lower part they use 
 for their church, where they preach on Sundays and the 
 usual holidays. They assemble by beat of drum, each 
 with his musket or firelock, in front of the captain's 
 [Myles Standish's] door; they have their cloaks on, and 
 place themselves in order, three abreast, and are led by a 
 sergeant without beat of drum. Behind comes the Gover- 
 nor [William Bradford], in a long robe; beside him, on 
 the right hand, comes the preacher [Elder Brewster], with 
 his cloak on, and on the left hand the captain, with his 
 side-arms and cloak on, and with a small cane in his hand ; 
 and so they march in good order, and each sets his arms 
 down near him." 
 
 We get an insight into this Plymouth meeting-house 
 also on a later and somewhat special occasion, when Plym- 
 outh enjoyed the residence of two ministers, and was re- 
 ceiving Governor Winthrop and Rev. John Wilson of Bos- 
 ton as its guests. Winthrop records in October, 1632 : 
 
 '* On the Lord's day there was a sacrament, which they 
 did partake in ; and, in the afternoon, Mr. Roger Williams 
 [then living at Plymouth] (according to their custom) pro- 
 pounded a question, to which the pastor, Mr. [Ralph] 
 Smith, spake briefly; then Mr. Williams prophesied [i.e., 
 preached] ; and after the governour of Plimouth spake to 
 the question ; after him the elder [Brewster] ; then some 
 two or three more of the congregation. Then the elder 
 desired the governour of Massachusetts and Mr. Wilson 
 to speak to it, which they did. When this was ended, the 
 deacon, Mr. Fuller, put the congregation in mind of their 
 duty of contribution ; whereupon the governour and all 
 the rest went down to the deacons' seat, and put into the 
 box, and then returned." 
 
 On such an occasion the congregation in the rude can- 
 non-topped meeting-house at Plymouth might well feel 
 
THE PLYMOUTH CHURCH. 7^ 
 
 that In the liberty to practice the poHty and worship in 
 which they beUeved they had their reward for fidehty to 
 their covenant promise ** to walke in all his wayes . . . 
 whatsoever it should cost them " ; and what it had cost, 
 the wind-swept graveyard and the rude street of hewn- 
 plank houses bore mute witness. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE PURITAN SETTLEMENT OF NEW ENGLAND. — PURI- 
 TANISM CONGREGATIONALIZED. 
 
 In the preceding- chapter the struggles and sacrifices by 
 which CongregationaHsts of the Separatist type brought 
 their institutions from England through Holland to the 
 American wilderness have been passed in rapid review. 
 It has been seen that the Plymouth colony, after ten years 
 of contest with perils within and without, was possessed 
 of a population of about three hundrgd, and had arrived 
 at a condition of stability which promised the continuance 
 of its institutions in church and state, unless disturbed by 
 influences from outside. But had Plymouth been left to 
 its slow development such disturbance must almost cer- 
 tainly have come. Its supply of immigrants from the 
 Leyden congregation was at best small, and by 1630 had 
 practically reached its limit ; it could hope for little direct 
 increase from English Separatists, for they were few and 
 poor ; and though the sobriety and industry of the Pilgrim 
 colony had enabled it to make head against the ill-managed 
 attempts of Weston, Gorges, and Morton to found inimical 
 .settlements about Massachusetts Bay, it could be only a 
 matter of time when the more fertile lands about the 
 Charles and the superior fishing privileges of Cape Ann 
 would people those regions with Englishmen more in 
 number than tliose of Plymouth, who would inevitably 
 force the Separatist colony into conformity with their 
 wishes, should the principles of Plymouth be obnoxious 
 
 76 
 
PURITANISM NOT SEPARATISM. ^^ 
 
 to them. That the work of Plymouth was preserved, and 
 that the larger English settlements, when they came to 
 be erected on New England soil, were friendly rather than 
 hostile, was due to the fact that, owing to causes the work- 
 ing of which was unforeseen when the Pilgrims crossed 
 the ocean, the great Puritan party of England, within less 
 than ten years after the landing at Plymouth, h^id begun 
 the occupation of Massachusetts Bay in force, and, in spite 
 of its opposition to Separatism in P^ngland, had come into 
 essential ecclesiastical harmony with the Separatists of the 
 New World. 
 
 Throughout the later years of Elizabeth and the reign 
 of the first of the Stuarts the two types of Puritanism, 
 noticed in the first chapter of this volume, continued with- 
 out any very sharp discrimination, since the opposition of 
 the government was continually driving Puritans of every 
 shade to more and more radical positions. But between 
 even the most advanced Puritan of the school of Cart- 
 wright and the Separatist there was one important point 
 of disagreement. Alike in doctrine, both extreme Calvin- 
 ists, agreeing also that the Bible is the ultimate rule of 
 church poHty as well as the final test of faith, both ques- 
 tioning the rightfulness of the ceremonies, liturgy, and 
 government of the Establishment, they differed chiefly in 
 their attitude toward that church itself. To the Separatist 
 of the type of Browne, Barrowe, or Johnson, it was an anti- 
 christian imitation of the true church of God, from which 
 duty should compel a Christian to withdraw himself as 
 speedily as possible. Robinson and Brewster, indeed, as 
 they advanced in years, came to think less harshly of the 
 legal church, but even they regarded it as a body from 
 membership in which a Christian man should hold himself 
 aloof. But to the extremest Puritan the Church of Eng- 
 land was still a true church, though in error. He ^agreed 
 
78 ' THE CONGKEGATIONALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 largely with the Separatist as to what the officers of the 
 church ought to be ; he felt that its membership ought to 
 be purified, for Puritanism was above all a movement of 
 ethical power anxious that men should live godly lives ; 
 but he clung to the idea of a national church, and hoped 
 that its purification would be brought about by the assist- 
 ance of the government. And if this was true of the ex- 
 treme Puritan, it was even more true of the large wing 
 of the party that continued in the attitude which had 
 been that of all the Puritans before Cartwright, viewing 
 the service as marred by Catholic ceremonies, the Prayer- 
 Book as defaced by superstitious prescriptions, the mem- 
 bership of the church as in sore need of discipline and 
 its ministry of education, objecting to the tyranny of the 
 High Commission and its imposition of vestments and 
 rites, and looking for the abolition of all these evils from 
 the government, without going so far as to join with the 
 extremer Puritans in condemning Episcopacy per sc, or 
 the Prayer- Book as a whole. 
 
 Nor did this hope of general reform by the civil author- 
 ity, cherished by all types of Puritans, appear to be vain 
 for many years after the Puritan movement had begun. 
 True, the Puritans were frowned upon by Elizabeth and im- 
 prisoned by Whitgift and other bishops under her encour- 
 agement ; but all through the reign of that great queen 
 their numbers steadily increased. It did not require a 
 long memory for the Puritan to recall that Henry VHI. 
 had torn the church from Rome and given it an Eng- 
 lish Bible, while leaving its doctrines essentially Cath- 
 olic ; that the government which ruled in the name of 
 Edward VI. had given the same church an English liturgy 
 and Protestant articles ; that Mary had led the way back 
 to Rome ; that Elizabeth had brought it once more to at 
 least partial Protestantism ; and that all these changes had 
 
PURITAN I/OPES. ^g 
 
 been concurred in by Parliament and extended at once, 
 in theory at least, to the remotest hamlet of the kingdom. 
 Why should not a growing party feel confident that the 
 time would come, if not under Elizabeth, yet speedily, 
 when for a fifth time within a century the sovereign and 
 Parliament would once more undertake the reformation 
 of the often altered Church of England, and make it more 
 fully what the Scriptures taught that a church should be? 
 And this hope seemed the better grounded because Par- 
 liament, while not yet mainly Puritan, had been gaining 
 rapidly in sympathy with Puritanism, and in a sense of its 
 own right to take an increasing share in the government 
 of the nation, during the closing years of Elizabeth's reign. 
 It was with this hope that about seven hundred and fifty 
 Puritan ministers of the Church of England approved the 
 Millenary Petition, with which James I. was met on his 
 way up to London to take possession of the throne vacated 
 by Elizabeth in 1603. This prayer did not ask for ex- 
 tensive changes, it represented the wishes of the moderate 
 rather than the extreme Puritans ; and the petitioners 
 would have been satisfied could they have secured the 
 abolition of the surplice, the sign of the cross, and similar 
 ceremonials, together with non-residence and other grave 
 ministerial faults, and the change of a few passages in the 
 Prayer-Book. They had some reason to hope, in spite 
 of the efiforts which James had made in his Scotch king- 
 dom to give real power to the bishops, to whom Scotch 
 law had long allowed a nominal existence, that the well- 
 known Calvinism and the Presbyterian training of the new 
 English sovereign would incline him to grant what they 
 asked. But in this they found themselves grievously dis- 
 appointed. In the Hampton Court Conference of January, 
 1604, which resulted from this petition, and where these 
 and some other changes desired by the Puritans were de- 
 
8o THE COXGRECATWXALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 bated before and by the king, James fully committed him- 
 self to the Anglican side. His great desire was the asser- 
 tion of his own authority, and he was shrewd enough to 
 see that a system which made him the appointer of the 
 btshops, and them the regulators of the church, gave him 
 a power which had never been his in Scotland — a power 
 which would be impaired just in proportion as concessions 
 were made to the Puritans. '* No Bishop, no King," was 
 the " short Aphorisme " in which the royalist sympathizer 
 Barlow says James expressed his position at the conference ; 
 and his hostility to all proposed changes in church gov- 
 ernment led him to declare that Scotch Presbyterianism 
 •* as wel agreeth with a Monarchy, as God and the Deuill. 
 Then lack & Tout, & Will, & Dick, shall meete, and at 
 their pleasures censure me, and my Councell, and all our 
 proceedinges." To the Puritans, who had treated him with 
 the greatest respect throughout the conference, he »an- 
 nounced : *' I shall make the conforme themselues, or I 
 wil harrie them out of the land, or else doe worse." No 
 wonder these declarations of their new sovereign were 
 pleasing to the bishops ; but were it not told by the sym- 
 pathetic Dean of Chester, one could hardly believe that 
 any member of that order could have exclaimed, as one 
 did with delighted servility, that " hee was fully perswaded, 
 his Maiestie spake by the instinct of the spiritc of God.'' 
 
 This triumph of the High Anglican party was followed 
 by another. The Convocation which met under the presi- 
 dency of Bancroft, then Bishop of London, in the summer 
 following the Conference, passed a series of stringent can- 
 ons enforcing uniformity, and declaring that to question 
 the apostolical character of the Church of P^ngland in its 
 existing form, to condemn its Pr?tyer-Book, rites, and cere- 
 monies as superstitions, or its officers — such as archbishops, 
 bishops, deans, or archdeacons — as repugnant to the Word 
 
JAMES AND THE PURITANS. 8 1 
 
 of God, or to affirm that any ministers or laymen may make 
 rules for church government without the sanction of the 
 king", is to become ipso facto excommunicate, and incapable 
 of restoration to communion by any officer less in rank 
 than the archbishop himself, and then only after repent- 
 ance and a public revocation. Under the stress of these 
 stringent regulations, which were soon promulgated with 
 the royal approval, a number of ministers, estimated by 
 some at three hundred, were driven from their livings. 
 
 Archbishop Whitgift died in February, 1604, and was 
 succeeded In the see of Canterbury by Bancroft, who 
 now brought the jure divino theory of episcopacy to the 
 highest ecclesiastical post In the kingdom. His eleva- 
 tion strengthened, of course, all the forces opposed to 
 Puritanism. 
 
 But while Puritanism thus suffered a loss of Influence 
 over the administration of the church, rather than a gain, 
 through the accession of James It made a decided advance 
 in another quarter — the English Parliament. Under the 
 Tudors Parliament had reached its lowest ebb of power. 
 The destruction of the old noble families during the War 
 of the Roses had removed from Parliament that which had 
 been Its main strength In the Lancastrian days ; It required 
 several generations for the power of the landed gentry to 
 develop sufficiently to raise the lower House to something 
 of the Importance which had once belonged to the upper. 
 It was during the reigns of the five Tudor sovereigns that 
 this transfer of the parliamentary center of gravity took 
 place, and while it was In process parliamentary Independ- 
 ence amounted to little. But before the close of Eliza- 
 beth's reign the strength of the Commons was consider- 
 able ; and if it was not much exercised in opposition to 
 the will of a popular sovereign such as the great queen 
 was, the latent forces were there which would be sure to 
 
§2 THE CONGREGATWXALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 rise into strength when resisted by a king who was un- 
 popular. And James, through his arbitrary assertions of 
 his claims, alienated his first Parliament, that of 1604. 
 He sought to interfere in the election of members, he 
 pressed measures for a union with Scotland which the 
 Commons regarded with suspicion, he quarreled with the 
 Commons as to whether they were a ''court of record" 
 or no, and thus roused a high degree of irritation. This 
 opening Parliament of his reign was not predominantly 
 Puritan, but it was sufficiently under Puritan influence to 
 believe that some of the reforms desired by the Puritans 
 might wisely have been granted. And with the begin- 
 nings of parliamentary opposition to the king the religious 
 and the pohtical opponents of the arbitrariness of the crown 
 naturally recognized that they were in a measure fight- 
 ing the same battle ; the Puritan way of thinking inclined, 
 moreover, as truly toward the limitation of royal absolu- 
 tism by precedent and by law as the High Anglican to assert 
 the royal supremacy. As the reign of James went on the 
 Commons came into more and more hearty sympathy with 
 the religious ideas of the Puritans. James's own feeling 
 had been right, that Puritanism, Hke Scotch Presbyterian- 
 ism, " as wel agreeth with a Monarchy " — as he wished a 
 monarchy to be — " as God and the Deuill." 
 
 The reign thus begun in hostility to the Puritans, and to 
 the spirit of constitutional government which soon came 
 into full alliance with Puritanism, went on with increas- 
 ing bitterness, though not always with increasing severity, 
 toward the Puritan party. Under Bancroft the repress- 
 ive policy of Whitgift was continued and strengthened ; 
 but George Abbot, Bancroft's successor in the see of Can- 
 terbury from 161 1 to 1633, was a pronounced Calvinist, 
 in some degree sympathetic with the Puritans, and willing 
 to overlook some departure from the prescribed vestments 
 
JAMES AND PARLIAMENT. 83 
 
 and ceremonies. During his early archbishopric, till the 
 rise of Laud and his school, the Puritans felt more encour- 
 agement, though they at no time obtained the favor of 
 the king. With Parliament James fell into more and more 
 hopeless quarrel. The nation as a whole looked upon 
 Spain as its natural enemy; its strong hatred of Catholi- 
 cism feared any alliance with Spanish interests; but the 
 king hoped to promote the peace of Europe and fill his 
 depleted treasury by effecting a marriage between his son 
 and a Spanish princess — a hope which the diplomacy of 
 Spain used for years to tie the hands of the English Gov- 
 ernment when all England except a few extreme royalists 
 and Catholics were longing to go to the aid of German 
 Protestantism, struggling from 161 8 onward in the death- 
 grapple of the Thirty Years' War. Nor was James's home 
 policy more representative of the best feeling of England 
 than his foreign. Corruption was less concealed in his 
 court than in that of his immediate predecessors ; succes- 
 sive favorites, Carr and Villiers, with no other claim to 
 elevation than the fancy of the king, dispensed the royal 
 favors ; unusual taxes were imposed by royal order ; and 
 monopolies for manufacture and trade were granted which 
 were popularly supposed to be enormously profitable, and 
 which angered the people against their possessors. Parlia- 
 ment disliked James's administration at home and abroad, 
 in church and state alike, and the quarrel culminated in 
 162 I and 1622 in the royal prohibition that the Commons 
 should discuss aflairs of state — a prohibition which was 
 met by the famous declaration that all concerns of church 
 and state were proper subjects of parliamentary debate, 
 and that in their consideration every member should have 
 freedom of speech. James expressed his opinion of this 
 assertion of right by tearing the page on which it was re- 
 corded from the journal of the Commons with his own 
 
84 THE C0NGREGATI0NALIST6. [Chap. iv. 
 
 hand, declaring, as he did so : ** I will govern according to 
 the common weal, but not according to the common will." 
 
 All these events, and especially the proposed Spanish 
 marriage and the non-interference in behalf of the hard- 
 pressed Protestants of Germany, strengthened Puritanism 
 and gave it a hold on the national affection which it had 
 never enjoyed under Elizabeth. As the average English- 
 man saw James agree, in 1623, that if his son should marry 
 the Spanish princess the future queen should have public 
 Catholic worship to which every man might have unmo- 
 lested access, that Catholics everywhere in the kingdom 
 should have freedom of worship in private houses, and 
 that the children of the proposed marriage should be under 
 their mother's charge till ten years of age and hence have 
 their early training in the Roman faith, no wonder he felt 
 that the party which maintained the most positive type of 
 Protestantism at home and which would go, if it could, to 
 the aid of oppressed Protestants abroad was the party for 
 him, rather than that which exalted royal absolutism and 
 preached the doctrine of unquestioning obedience to the 
 behests of so unrepresentative a king. Nor was this 
 feeling of the common Englishman lessened when, after 
 his brief period of joy over the failure of the Spanish mar- 
 riage negotiations, he saw the heir to the throne betrothed 
 to the daughter of the king of France under an agreement 
 pledging nearly as great concessions to English Catholics 
 as had been offered to projDitiate Spain. 
 
 Thus it came about that when James died, in 1625, he 
 left the affairs of his kingdom in a situation which only 
 the wisest and most conciliatory statesmanship could mas- 
 ter, and he left them to an obstinate, self-willed young 
 man — Charles I. — who, though outwardly more dignified 
 than his father had been, had an evil trait not markedly 
 present in the older Stuart king, a capacity to make 
 
THE POLICY OF CHARLES. 85 
 
 promises which he never intended to fulfill ; and who was, 
 if anything, more persuaded than James of the divine 
 authority of kings. Such a king could only make matters 
 worse. 
 
 The accession of Charles was followed by his marriage 
 to the French Catholic princess ; the establishment of her 
 Catholic chapel, which soon became a popular place of 
 resort ; and the loan of English ships to Richelieu to fight 
 against French Protestants as part of the price — in justice 
 to Charles be it said an unexpected part of the price — of 
 the French marriage. His first Parliament he dissolved 
 after it had sat for less than two months in the first year 
 of his reign because the Commons refused to vote money 
 which they believed would be squandered by the all- 
 powerful favorite, George Villiers, who as Duke of Buck- 
 ingham was Charles's most trusted adviser. His second 
 Parliament he sent home in 1626 to save the favorite from 
 impeachment. His third Parliament wrung from him the 
 famous "Petition of Right" in June, 1628, but was dis- 
 solved in March of the following year because it attempted 
 to enforce the Puritan hatred of Catholicism and Armin- 
 ianism, and to prevent the levying of taxes unauthorized 
 by the Commons. For the next eleven years Charles 
 reigned without Parliaments — a time of oppression which, 
 while it was marked by evidences of commercial prosperity 
 and external good order, was one which made good men 
 despair of the future of English liberty, and so fed the 
 flames of dissatisfaction that when they burst forth once 
 more they destroyed for a time the whole fabric of royal 
 absolutism which had been so laboriously erected. 
 
 The hostility to Arminianism displayed by the Parlia- 
 ments of the reign of Charles was a manifestation of Puri- 
 tan opposition to the change in doctrinal position which 
 had been going on among the High Anglicans since the 
 
S6 THE CONGKEGATIONALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 beginning of the reign of James. Arbitrary as their dom- 
 ineering poHcy was, it would be an injustice to the bish- 
 ops and clergy who supported Charles in the opening 
 years of his rule to fail to recognize that they now repre- 
 sented not merely a tyrannous insistence on ceremonial 
 and governmental uniformity in the church, they stood 
 in a measure for doctrinal freedom. The older Anglicans, 
 like Whitgift, had no serious doctrinal dispute with the 
 Puritans — they were alike Calvinists. But there was an 
 intensity in the Calvinism of the Puritans which made 
 them endeavor to strengthen and enforce the Calvinism 
 they found in the Thirty-nine Articles. To Puritan think- 
 ing, right views regarding the divine decrees were essential 
 to all true Protestantism and all successful resistance to 
 Rome. This feeling had led the Puritans at the Hampton 
 Court Conference vainly to propose the introduction into 
 the Articles of the EngHsh Church of the Lambeth Articles 
 of 1595, which, though approved by Whitgift and others 
 of the Anglican party at the time of their composition, 
 are the most extreme statement of Calvinism ever put 
 forth with any show of authority in England. But, con- 
 temporary with the reign of James, the Arminian contro- 
 versy ran its violent course in Holland. That discussion 
 awakened much interest in the English Church, which 
 was represented by commissioners at the Synod of Dort 
 in 1618-19; and though James approved the Calvinistic 
 decisions of that body, the Arminian theories there con- 
 demned impressed a section of the High Anglican clergy- 
 men, and, through the influence of William Laud, it is 
 said, even modified the theolog}^ of the old king himself. 
 
 Under Charles, Arminianism became increasingl}^ char- 
 acteristic of the Higli Church party; and Arminianism in 
 P2ngland under the Stuarts, whatever it may have signified 
 in Holland or in the Wesleyan revival, while implying an 
 
RISE OF ARMINIANISM. ^j 
 
 increase of intellectual freedom in doctrinal matters, was 
 characterized also by a less strenuous Protestantism, by a 
 willingness to coquet with some features of Catholicism, 
 and a decreased sympathy with the Calvinistic churches 
 of the Continent, with which the Church of England had 
 thus far held itself in cordial fellowship. During the reign 
 of James, also, the jure divino view of episcopacy, intro- 
 duced by Bancroft and Bilson in the later years of Eliza- 
 beth, had become that of the Anglican party ; and by the 
 accession of Charles to the throne the devotion of that 
 party to the royal absolutism had risen to an absurd height 
 under the stimulus of constant royal favor and increasing 
 opposition from the majority of the nation. The High 
 Church party stood chiefly by the favor of the king, and 
 it is not surprising that its members exalted the hand that 
 upheld them. 
 
 Over against this Arminianism and absolutism of the 
 High Anglican party, Puritanism in the church and in 
 Parliament desired absolute uniformity of belief. Neither 
 of the parties favored toleration, but the unity sought by 
 the one was not that looked for by the other. To the 
 Puritan the prime necessity was unity in acceptance and 
 in strengthening of the historic Calvinism of the English 
 Church ; to the Anglican it was a submission to the regu- 
 lations imposed by a divinely authorized king and a God- 
 appointed order. To the Puritan the spiritual and doctri- 
 nal condition of England was the all-important matter; to 
 the Anglican its external uniformity and submission to 
 constituted authority. The Puritan would have men be- 
 lieve alike ; the Anglican would have them worship alike. 
 
 This feeling that the Protestantism of England was 
 threatened by doctrinal innovation as well as its liberty 
 imperiled by the assertion of royal absolutism, induced 
 Parliament, now decidedly Puritan, to proceed against 
 
88 THE COKGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 some of the High Church party. In 1625 the Commons 
 reproved Dr. Richard Montagu for denying that Calvinism 
 was the doctrine of the Church of England and speaking 
 favorably of Rome — a reproof which they soon carried to 
 the extreme of imprisonment. The king's answer was 
 the appointment of Montagu first to a chaplaincy and 
 later (1628) to the bishopric of Chichester. Nor were the 
 voices of the Anglican royalists less loudly raised in favor 
 of the king's claims, or his recognition of their services 
 less exasperating to the Puritans. In 1627, when Charles 
 was endeavoring to raise taxes without the consent of 
 Parliament, Dr. Robert Sybthorpe, vicar of Brackley, 
 printed a sermon in which he declared that subjects were 
 not authorized to resist even if the royal command was 
 counter to the laws of God or nature, or impossible of 
 fulfillment. These views were too exaggerated for the 
 Puritanism of Archbishop Abbot to approve their publi- 
 cation ; but the Bishop of London did so, and they were so 
 acceptable to the king that Abbot was disgraced for his 
 opposition, and practically set aside. About the same 
 time Rev. Roger. Manwaring declared in a sermon before 
 the king that Parliament was a cipher, and that the king's 
 command, without the consent of Parliament, bound the 
 subject to pay any tax imposed, on pain of eternal dam- 
 nation. The royal approval of Manwaring's theory was 
 expressed by ecclesiastical advancement. In 1628 Charles 
 and his bishops published a declaration, still prefixed to 
 the Articles of the Church of England, affirming that 
 in order that unprofitable discussion should cease these 
 Articles were henceforth to be taken in their literal mean- 
 ing, and no private interpretation should be put upon 
 them. In one sense this declaration tended to theological 
 liberty; but its real purport was to bar the Puritans from 
 insisting on a Calvinistic interpretation of them as the only 
 
WILLIAM LAUD. 89 
 
 admissible one, and thus to aid in the spread of theological 
 views which a majority of the nation deemed inimical to 
 Protestantism. 
 
 The most conspicuous illustration of opposition to Puri- 
 tanism and of what was best and worst in High Anglican- 
 ism was William Laud, who was Charles's most trusted 
 clerical adviser from the begijining of his reign, and after 
 the assassination of Buckingham in 1628 Charles's right 
 hand in the ecclesiastical and largely in the civil adminis- 
 tration of the kingdom. Laud was born in 1573, and had 
 his education in St. John's College, Oxford, where he was 
 distinguished for his anti-Puritan sentiments. Preferment 
 came to him slowly at first, but by 1616, when he be- 
 came Dean of Gloucester, he was one of the most marked 
 and influential of the extreme Anglicans. Li 1621 James 
 made him bishop of St. David's; 1624 saw him a member 
 of the High Commission; in 1626 he became Bishop of 
 Bath and Wells ; and now in 1628 he was raised by Charles 
 to the see of London, the most important and most Puri- 
 tanly inclined of the bishoprics of England, and only less 
 in influence than the archiepiscopate of Canterbury, to 
 which Charles advanced him in 1633. 
 
 Laud was unquestionably sincere, devout, mentally 
 acute, of indefatigable energy, a lover of learning, and 
 devoted to the interests of the church as he understood 
 them ; but he was also narrow-minded, cruel, and domi- 
 neering. He never learned that conciliation and forbear- 
 ance are sometimes desirable; he believed that the best 
 method of securing uniformity was by crushing opposition 
 by force. He regarded unity in form and worship as of the 
 highest importance, and in his willingness to persecute 
 those who differed from him he resembled the pre-Refor- 
 mation prelates w^hose ideals of the church were so largely 
 his own. A firm believer in the necessity of the episco- 
 
90 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 pate and of apostolic succession, a representative of the 
 anti-Calvinistic theology of the High Church party, and a 
 devoted supporter of the royal absolutism, Laud was more 
 than the chief exponent of the views of his party, he was 
 a leader such as few men in the history of the English 
 Church have been. To his mind there came the pleasing 
 but unhistoric conception that subjection to the papacy 
 and the Reformation were but incidents in the life of the 
 Church of England ; that that organization had presented 
 substantially the same doctrine at all times in fundamen- 
 tals, and that, those fundamentals were better preserved in 
 the Roman Church, in spite of its errors and its subjection 
 to the papacy which he denounced, than in the non-pre- 
 latical churches of the Continent. A strong sacramenta- 
 rian, though he did not materially diflfer with Calvin re- 
 garding the nature of Christ's presence in the Supper, he 
 attached greater importance to the sacraments than the 
 Calvinistic Reformers had done. Above all he was a rit- 
 ualist, whose piety craved a showy service, whose mental 
 habit attached great importance to bowings at the name 
 of Jesus, who saw irreverence in placing the communion 
 table in the body of the church as the Puritans did, and de- 
 sired to rail it ofif at the end as the altar had been in Roman 
 days ; while his martinet-like spirit inclined him to force all 
 that he deemed fitting in worship on clergy and people, to 
 whom these changes seemed nothing but a return to Rome. 
 Laud was the first of Anglo- Catholics ; he was not a Ro- 
 man Catholic. But it is no wonder that neither the Puri- 
 tans nor the Roman Catholics of his age understood him, 
 and that both parties sincerely believed that his object was 
 to lead the Church of P^ngland back to Rome — a belief 
 which led to the offer to him on two occasions of a cardi- 
 nal's hat. If it is true that his views of worship and of 
 the sacraments have largely become those of the English 
 
LAUD AND THE PURITANS. 
 
 91 
 
 Church, it is also true, as Gardiner has remarked, that this 
 has been brought about " by a total abandonment of 
 Laud's methods. What had been impossible to effect in 
 a church to the worship of which every person in the land 
 was obliged to conform became possible in a church which 
 any one who pleased was at liberty to abandon." 
 
 But to Laud's thinking, the enforcement of conformity 
 seemed not at all impossible, and he set himself to the 
 work, now that he was master of the great diocese of 
 London, with sC vigor that made many a Puritan despair 
 of the religious future of England. To the Puritan the 
 spiritual elevation of the people seemed impossible with- 
 out the aid of a learned, preaching ministry, inculcating 
 Scriptural doctrines, reproving sins, and above all setting 
 forth an active type of religious life, of which conversion 
 by the power of the Spirit of God was the source, and a 
 strenuous morality the fruit. In order to secure such a 
 ministry the Puritans had established in many parishes 
 what were known as '' lectureships " — that is, pecuniary 
 provision was made by which a preacher of Puritan incli- 
 nations, generally in priests' orders but not always so, could 
 have maintenance and '* lecture " on Sunday afternoons in 
 parishes where the incumbent was absent, or incompetent, 
 or obnoxious. This system had been partially tolerated 
 by Abbot, though in 1622 James had issued orders through 
 Abbot that no preacher less in rank than a dean should 
 discuss predestination or grace before a general audience. 
 As these subjects were uppermost in Puritan thought, the 
 aim of the order was distinctly inimical to the lectureship 
 system. To Laud the lectures were intolerable, and he 
 set himself on entering on his diocese of London, and even 
 more when Archbishop of Canterbury, to their suppression. 
 By Laud's persuasion Charles issued directions that after- 
 noon sermons should be reduced to mere catechising by 
 
92 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 question and answer, and that every lecture must be pre- 
 ceded by the service, read by the lecturer in surplice and 
 hood. To the Puritan this hostility of Laud and the king 
 seemed a deprivation of the means of salvation. 
 
 Perhaps even more impressive to the ordinary Puritan 
 mind than tliese general orders was the savage relentless- 
 ness with which Laud pursued men whose only offense 
 was that they spoke what half the nation was thinking, and 
 what the Puritan believed to be the truth of God. A 
 universally notorious illustration is that, of Alexander 
 Leighton, father of the celebrated Scotch archbishop. 
 Leighton was an extreme Cartwrightian Puritan, who 
 printed in the " month wherein Rochell was lost " (Octo- 
 ber, 1628) a fierce outburst against the bishops and the 
 Catholic queen, entitled '* Sions Plea against the Prelacie." 
 The book was a burning attack upon the influences which 
 had led to a great disaster to the Protestant cause and a 
 great disgrace for English foreign policy. For its writing 
 Leighton* was sentenced by the Star-Chamber Court in 
 June, 1630 — while Laud with uncovered head gave thanks 
 to God for the decree — to degradation from the ministry, 
 to life imprisonment, to the hopelessly exorbitant fine of 
 ;^ 1 0,000, to the pillory, to whipping, to the loss of his ears 
 and the slitting of his nose, and finally to branding on his 
 cliceks as a "sower of sedition." 
 
 Leighton's attack upon the authorities of the church 
 had been bitter, and liis punishment merciless. He cer- 
 tainly was an extremist. Possibly, therefore, Laud's more 
 usual methods of harassing Puritanism and enforcing 
 uniformity may be better understood from a much less 
 flagrant case, where the minister was no fanatic, but was 
 notably learned, sj)iritual-mindcd, able, and devoted — a 
 man who might well be deemed an ornament to any 
 communion. Thomas Plooker, later one of the founders 
 
LAUD AND THE PURITANS. 93 
 
 of Connecticut, had filled for two years, when Laud be- 
 came Bishop of London, a notably successful lectureship at 
 Chelmsford. His opinions on the great problems which 
 agitated the state in those stormy years had no doubt been 
 positive, but his chief activity had been the preaching of 
 the doctrines of grace in a deep, spiritual, searching, and 
 intensely Calvinistic treatment of the relations of the soul 
 to God. A man of profound piety, he had preeminently 
 sought the conversion and upbuilding of his hearers. This 
 preaching, though its themes contravened the orders issued 
 by James in 1622, was received with great popular favor 
 — as one of Laud's agents wrote in 1629: ** Our people's 
 pallats grow so out of tast, yt noe food contents them but 
 of Mr Hooker's dressing." But Laud had been less than 
 a year Bishop of London before his hand was stretched 
 out against Hooker, and the Chelmsford lecturer was 
 under bonds for appearance when wanted. Renewed 
 preaching brought him in a few months more again to 
 Laud's attention. But now his beneficed neighbors among 
 the clergy to the number of forty-nine, and, it is interest- 
 ing to note, the rector of Chelmsford, in whose parish he 
 had labored, petitioned for his retention as a man *' for 
 doctryne, orthodox, and life and conversation honest, and 
 for liis disposition peaceable, no wayes turbulent or fac- 
 tious." A few days later forty-one of the ministers of the 
 county sent in a counter-petition asking that uniformity 
 be enforced. . Hooker had to abandon the lectureship, and 
 now taught school for a few months, with John Eliot as 
 his assistant; but even this change of occupation did not 
 shelter him from Laud. Li July, 1630, he was ordered to 
 appear before the High Commission ; but his friends at 
 Chelmsford paid his forfeited bail, and he escaped with 
 difficulty to Holland. Certainly when such men as Hooker 
 were forced to abandon the pulpit — and his case was neither 
 
94 THE CONGREGATIONALISrS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 striking nor exceptional — it was paying pretty dear for cer- 
 emonial uniformity ; and the prohibition of discussion of 
 those doctrines which the Puritans deemed essential to all 
 spiritual growth was a sorry way to advance theological 
 freedom at a time when the chief need of the Establish- 
 ment was an educated and worthy ministry, a better in- 
 structed membership, and a stricter moral life. No won- 
 der Milton cried out in his noble lament for Lycidas, nine 
 years after Laud became Bishop of London and eight 
 years after Charles had put in force his determination to 
 rule without Parliament : 
 
 Last came, and last did go, 
 
 The pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
 
 Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
 
 (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain,) 
 
 He shook his mitered locks, and stern bespake : 
 
 " How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, 
 
 Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
 
 Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold.? 
 
 Of other care they little reckoning make. 
 
 Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
 
 And shove away the worthy bidden guest : 
 
 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed. 
 
 But, swollen with wind and the rank mist they draw. 
 
 Rot inwardly and foul contagion spread : 
 
 Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
 
 Daily devours apace, and nothing said." 
 
 Under such circumstances of increasing discouragement 
 a few of the more adventurous of the Puritans began to 
 look across the Atlantic with the thought of founding on 
 the shores of a new continent the institutions that were 
 denied them in the old. This inclination was doubtless 
 stimulated by the example of the Plymouth Pilgrims, 
 whose experiences, told in Mourt's '* Relation " and Wins- 
 low's ** Good Newes from New England," were given to 
 
BEGINNINGS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 95 
 
 the English public in 1622 and 1624. But religious con- 
 siderations did not exclusively control the first Puritan 
 motions toward the settlement of Massachusetts. That 
 impulse heid its apparent beginnings in the south-of- 
 England borough of Dorchester, where Rev. John White, a 
 distinguished Puritan, was rector. From all this coast of 
 England vessels resorted annually to American waters for 
 fishing ; and as larger crews could be employed in taking 
 the catch than were required for the homeward voyage, 
 the thought occurred to some of those interested in the 
 trade that a permanent settlement could be formed in New 
 England, where the superfluous fishermen could remain, 
 and where supplies could be raised and stored. For this 
 purpose a Fishing Company was organized at Dorchester 
 through White's influence, and by this company a settle- 
 ment was begun on Cape Ann late in 1623 or early in 
 1624. To this colony Roger Conant, a vigorous Puritan, 
 came as its superintendent, in 1625, and with him Rev. 
 John Lyford, who had been with him at Plymouth, and 
 whose experiences in the Pilgrim colony have already been 
 noted. But the Cape Ann enterprise was unsuccessful, 
 and when most of its settlers went home to England in 
 1626, Conant, and a few like-minded men, removed to the 
 more fertile spot which was afterward known by the name 
 of Salem. 
 
 As the project had gone on White's thoughts had grown 
 broader, and he now determined to organize, if possible, 
 a Puritan colony, in the formation of which religion rather 
 than trade should be a prime consideration. To this end 
 he now labored to enlist Puritan sympathy and obtain a 
 patent which would give a legal basis for his new enter- 
 prise. In both attempts he was successful. The Plym- 
 outh (England) Council, a body of which Sir Ferdinando 
 Gorges was the leading spirit, and which by a charter of 
 
96 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 November, 1620, claimed jurisdiction over New England, 
 granted by a patent of March 19, 1628, such portion of 
 its territories as lay between three miles north of the Mer- 
 rimac and an equal distance south of the Charles rivers to 
 a Puritan land company having John Endicott as one of 
 its members. Under the auspices of this new association 
 Endicott and an advance guard of settlers left England 
 in the summer of 1628, landing at Salem, where Conant 
 had been for about two years a resident, on the 6th of 
 September. 
 
 The enterprise thus launched was pushed rapidly on. 
 Through the instrumentality of White and others, Puritans 
 from all over England were interested, and new members 
 of increasing prominence were rapidly added to the com- 
 pany. Influential support was secured at court ; whether 
 Charles I. really seriously concerned himself with what 
 must have seemed to him an insignificant colony in an 
 out-of-the-way part of the world may be doubtful ; pos- 
 sibly he felt that a Puritan exodus might free him of a few 
 of his opponents ; but through the influence of Lord Dor- 
 chester and the Earl of Warwick the king granted a direct 
 charter to this enlarged company — a document which was 
 sealed on March 4, 1629, and which authorized the '* Gov- 
 ernor and Company of the Mattachusetts Bay," thuscreated, 
 to elect officers, admit new members, and make laws for the 
 administration of its domain. Thus equipped with a char- 
 ter granting extensive privileges, the company strongly 
 attracted Puritan colonists, so that within a few months 
 after its creation a large reinforcement was sent to Salem, 
 arriving there in June, 1629. Even more important for 
 the future of the enterprise was the agreement entered 
 into by John Winthrop, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Thomas 
 Dudley, Increase Nowell, Isaac Johnson, William Pynchon, 
 and others at Cambridge, August 26, 1629, to go to New 
 
BEGINNIXGS OF MASSACHUSETTS. 97 
 
 England the next spring, provided the government and 
 charter of the company should be transferred to Massa- 
 chusetts. This gave the undertaking not only the support 
 of men of character and position, it made the new colony 
 practically a semi-independent, self-governing state, instead 
 of an ordinary corporation for the development of a new 
 country administered by a board in England, which was 
 doubtless all that the king had in mind when the charter 
 was granted, if that act caused him any serious thought 
 at all. The decision to make the company wholly domi- 
 ciled in New England led to the election of John Win- 
 throp to the governorship, since Matthew Cradock, the 
 first governor, was unable to emigrate ; and in the spring 
 and summer of 1630 the Puritan exodus ran full tide. 
 Probably at least a thousand persons came from England 
 to Massachusetts in that year alone — more than three 
 times as many as the Plymouth colony numbered after ten 
 years of struggle — and by 1640, when the advent of the 
 Long Parliament and the evident speedy downfall of the 
 tyranny of Charles and Laud checked Puritan emigration, 
 it is estimated that the number who had crossed the ocean 
 had risen to more than twenty thousand. The summer 
 of 1630 saw the settlement of Dorchester by a company 
 organized into church-estate through the influence of Rev. 
 John White before leaving England ; and the same weeks 
 witnessed the beginnings of Winthrop and his immediate 
 following at Charlestown and Boston ; while at the same 
 time settlements were made at Watertown and elsewhere 
 about Massachusetts Bay. 
 
 These emigrant companies, like that at Plymouth, all ex- 
 perienced a period of disease and death which robbed them 
 of many of their best members within a few weeks of their 
 landing. But their contrast to the Plymouth Pilgrims in all 
 that goes to make for worldly esteem and probable success 
 
98 . THE C0XGREGATI0NALIS7\S. [Chap. iv. 
 
 was extreme. Their membership contained men of humble 
 position, it is true, but their leaders were from good station 
 in England, many of them of the country gentry, men of 
 wealth, character, and education. Their ministers, as there 
 w ill be ample occasion to see, were the peers in learning 
 and ability of any in the Puritan wing of the Church of 
 England ; they were men reverenced and admired not 
 only in the colonial hamlets to which they came, but by 
 wide circles in the home land. Probably no colony in the 
 history of European emigration was superior to that of 
 Massachusetts in wealth, station, or capacity. The relig- 
 ious motive, ever predominant in the beginning of the 
 enterprise, had enabled it to draw on the best elements of 
 a great party in England, and to attract men whom no 
 mean or ordinary aims would have drawn across the sea. 
 Religion had equally animated the Plymouth enterprise ; 
 but Plymouth had no constituency in England from which 
 to draw strength ; its Separatist principles had been de- 
 spised in the home land by Anglican and Puritan alike, and 
 its true-hearted membership had come from the humble 
 Leyden exiles, or the equally humble occasional emigrant 
 sent directly from England by the merchant-partners or 
 self-impelled to cast in his lot with the struggling com- 
 munity. It had a few men of ability, like Brewster and 
 Bradford and Winslow, it had men of character in abun- 
 dance ; but it was wholly deficient in men of wealth or 
 university education, while its pulpit, never conspicuously 
 strong after Robinson had been left at Leyden, was filled 
 by no higher officer than a ruling elder when the Puritan 
 colonists began their work at Salem. 
 
 Nor were these Puritan emigrants men easily impressi- 
 ble by outside influences or tolerant of dissent. Puritan- 
 ism crossed the ocean with no such general intention of 
 seeking civil and religious liberty as has often been at- 
 
CHARACTER OF IMMJGRATJOX. 99 
 
 tributed to it. As compared with the Puritans, the Pil- 
 grims of Plymouth indeed showed a considerable measure 
 of toleration, perhaps because of Dutch example, more 
 probably by reason of the kindly spirit infused into them 
 by Robinson and maintained by Brewster, Bradford, and 
 Winslow — a spirit the more readily cherished on account 
 of the comparative feebleness of the colony. But neither 
 Pilgrims nor Puritans had any thought of establishing lib- 
 erty for men to do as they please ; nor would any general 
 toleration, such as .we now justly value, have furnished 
 motives definite enough to have led our ancestors to the 
 New World. The Puritans who settled Massachusetts had 
 little if any more disposition to tolerate dissent from what 
 they believed to be the right path in church and state 
 than had Archbishop Laud to allow departure from the 
 ceremonial observances which he enjoined. They had 
 no intention of separating from the Church of England 
 as the Pilgrims had done. If Mather was correctly in- 
 formed, one of the tw^o ministers of the first Puritan church 
 on Massachusetts soil, Francis Hioginson, had exclaimed 
 when the last headlands of their island home faded from 
 the view of his fellow- voyagers : 
 
 *' We will not say, as the separatists were wont to say 
 at their leaving of England, * Farewel, Babylon ! ' . . . 
 but . . . ' farewel, the Church of God in England! . . . 
 We d.o not go to New England as separatists from the 
 Church of England ; though we cannot but separate from 
 the corruptions in it.' " 
 
 Certainly, in 1630, Winthrop, Dudley, Johnson, and 
 other of the most prominent of the Massachusetts Com- 
 pany joined in the declaration, as they started on their 
 voyage : 
 
 ** Wee desire you would be pleased to take Notice of 
 the Principals, and Body of our Company, as those who 
 
lOO THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [CiiAr. iv. 
 
 esteeme it our honour to call the CJiiircJi of England, from 
 whence wee rise, our deare Mother. . . . Wee leave it 
 not therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we were 
 nourished there, but blessing God for the Parentage and 
 Education, as Members of the same Body, shall always 
 rejoice in her good." 
 
 And in 1631 the extremely Separatist Roger Williams 
 refused to supply the pulpit of the Boston church because 
 that body still considered itself unseparated from the 
 Church of England. 
 
 All the more remarkable is it, then, in view of the 
 worldly and educational superiority of the Puritans over 
 the Pilgrims, and their anti- Separatist feelings, that the 
 Puritan churches organized in New England adopted the 
 principles of Separatist Plymouth in their formation and 
 government. No step in the development of Congrega- 
 tionalism is more obscure or more important than this 
 Congregationalizing of English Puritanism. To under- 
 stand it we must go back to the winter of 1628-29, when 
 Endicott and the vanguard of the Puritan emigration 
 were laying the foundations at Salem. Illness had borne 
 hard on the little company, and in their distress Endicott 
 had obtained the ministrations of the only physician then 
 on the coast. Dr. Samuel Fuller, deacon of the church at 
 Plymouth. Before F'uller's coming, Endicott, like most 
 Puritans, had regarded the Plymouth Separatists with sus- 
 picion ; but in conversation with his guest prejudices melted 
 away, and he was able to write to Bradford on May 11, 
 1629, as follows: 
 
 " I acknowledge my selfe much bound to you for your 
 kind love and care in sending M^ Fuller among us, and 
 rejoyce much y^ I am by him satisfied touching your 
 judgments of y*^ outward forme of Gods worshipe. It is, 
 as farr as I can yet gather, no other then is warrented by 
 
INFLUENCED BY PLYMOUTH, lOI 
 
 ye evidence of truth, and y^ same which I have proffessed 
 and maintained ever since ye Lord in mercie revealed him 
 selfe unto me ; being farr from ye commcne reporte that 
 hath been spread of you touching that perticuler." 
 
 That Endicott was readily impressed by the expositions 
 of the Plymouth deacon was natural. Puritans and Sep- 
 aratists had never had doctrinal disagreement ; both were 
 pronounced Calvinists. Both alike believed that much of 
 the worship required by the English Establishment was 
 superstitious. Both held that in the Bible God has set 
 forth all his will. Both welcomed preaching on the doc- 
 trinal issues of the day. Both had left their native land 
 to escape High Commission Courts and requirements of 
 uniformity, that they might practice '' the positive part of 
 church reformation." Neither could have felt any desire 
 to see the continued rule of bishops ; for, apart from the 
 hostility of the Separatists and extremer Puritans toward 
 the spiritual claims of an ^episcopal order as unwarranted 
 by Scripture, no Puritan in Endicott's company could have 
 remembered a time when the bishops, as a whole, had not 
 been hostile to the Puritans. Nor was the Prayer-Book 
 likely to have a place in the affections of a generation of 
 men who had vainly striven to amend what they deemed 
 its evils, and had seen its use required in its entirety as a 
 badge of that spiritual system which the Puritan and the 
 Separatist were alike trying to escape. The more ad- 
 vanced Puritans had held, from the time of Cartwright at 
 least, that there should be no ministers at large, but that 
 every minister ought to be bound to a particular congre- 
 gation, which ought in some way to have a voice in his 
 selection ; and they had been of the opinion also that the 
 local church should be so purified by discipline that prac- 
 tically only persons of Christian character should remain 
 in it. In addition to these characteristics of the extremer 
 
102 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 type of Puritanism in general which would incline to a 
 ready acceptance of Plymouth theories, there is reason to 
 think that some of the Puritans associated with White in 
 the initial stages of the Salem undertaking were moving 
 in directions hitherto distinctive only of English Separa- 
 tism. How far this was the case is a question the answer 
 to which is of great obscurity. The use of a distinct cov- 
 enant as the basis of the local church is one of the funda- 
 mental principles of Congregationalism which never found 
 acceptance with English Puritanism as a whole,*but was 
 typical of the system of Browne, Barrowe, and Robinson. 
 The ordination of its ministers by the local congregation, 
 in addition to their election, was also a distinctly Separatist 
 doctrine. ' But certain considerations seem to show that 
 the former of these usages, if not also the latter, may have 
 been favorably regarded in the circle from which Endicott 
 came. Rev. Hugh Peter, for example, who was among 
 the earliest members of the Massachusetts Company of 
 
 1628, and whom Endicott must have known personally, 
 employed a covenant in the church at Rotterdam of which 
 he became colleague pastor on his flight from England in 
 
 1629. Perhaps he may have argued in favor of the prac- 
 tice in Endicott's hearing before the Salem settlers left 
 Itngland ; but more probably Peter's own adoption of the 
 covenant was due to the influence of his associate in the 
 Rotterdam charge, Dr. William Ames, whose Separatist 
 leanings were decided. Of more importance as showing 
 possible inclination toward covenant organization in the 
 circles of southwestern I^igland where White labored is 
 the fact that the church which was organized through 
 White's efforts at Plymouth, P>ngland, in March, 1630, and 
 which afterward settled at Dorchester, Mass., seems to 
 have had some more definite uniting pledge than was 
 usual in Puritan parishes, though reasons will be given 
 
INFLUENCED BY PLYMOUTIL IO3 
 
 when the organization of that church is more minutely 
 described for doubting whether that agreement impHed im 
 exclusively regenerate membership. And if the statement 
 is true, as seems hardly credible, that at the officering of 
 that church the ministers were not only chosen, but or- 
 dained by the congregation, it is evident that the Puritans 
 of southwestern England were far more radical than Puri- 
 tanism as a whole. 
 
 But while it is thus clear that Endicott and the first 
 emigrants to Salem were nearer to the Plymouth Pilgrims 
 in belief than they at first realized, their conceptions of 
 polity and government were still in the gristle, and we 
 may safely conjecture that the discussions with Fuller 
 embraced four or five features of church life, in regard to 
 all of which general Puritan custom differed from that of 
 Plymouth : the power of a local congregation to ordain its 
 ow^n chosen officers ; the participation or non-participation 
 of the church as a whole in matters of discipline ; the use 
 of a covenant ; the conduct of public worship ; and rela- 
 tionship or non- relationship to a national church whose 
 nearest congregation was three thousand miles away. On 
 all of these points except the last the practice of Plymouth 
 won over or confirmed the inclinations of the Puritans at 
 Salem ; the last point was not yielded, and most of the 
 Massachusetts Puritans continued to view themselves for 
 a considerable time as members of the Church of England. 
 But if the soil was thus prepared for the seed which 
 Dr. Fuller sowed, his planting was of the first importance. 
 Agreed as Endicott found that he w^as with the men of 
 Plymouth, the discovery of that agreement was in no small 
 measure due to the persuasive skill of the Plymouth phy- 
 sician. 
 
 The Plymouth advice resulted speedily in the formation 
 at Salem of a Congregational church, the first Puritan 
 
I04 THE COXGREGATIOXALTSTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 church, and the second Congregational church in New 
 England. The historians of the latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century, and even Rev. John Higginson, son of the 
 first teacher of the Salem church and himself one of its 
 most honored ministers, dated its formation from August 
 6, 1629; but a contemporary letter shows that by July 
 20th of that year a covenanted church on the Plymouth 
 model existed at Salem, which on that day chose and or- 
 dained its pastor and teacher. It is quite possible that this 
 church was organized, at least to the extent of the union 
 of its first members by a covenant, in the late spring of 
 1629, before the coming of the large immigration in June. 
 Be this as it may, the covenant by which this church was 
 constituted was, like almost all early Congregational cov- 
 enants, extremely simple. As far as its content is now 
 known it was embraced in a single sentence : 
 
 ''"We Covenant with the Lord and one with an other; 
 and doe bynd our selves in the presence of God, to walke 
 together in all his waies, according as he is pleased to re- 
 veale himself unto us in his Blessed word of truth." 
 
 While Endicott had thus been battling with the New 
 England winter and coming into friendly relations with 
 the Separatists of Plymouth, the company in England 
 whose agent he was had been rapidly growing, it had ob- 
 tained its royal charter, and was prepared in the spring of 
 1629 to send over a numerous body of colonists. Promi- 
 nent among the cares of the company during this busy 
 winter had been its negotiations with clergymen of Puri- 
 tan sentiment to take spiritual charge of Its American 
 enterprise and attempt the conversion also of the savage 
 natives of New England. In this search aid was rendered 
 by Rev. John White and by Rev. John Davenport, later 
 to be the first pastor at New Haven, Conn. Three minis- 
 ters were obtained, Francis Bright, Francis Higginson, and 
 
THE SALEM CHURCH. I05 
 
 Samuel Skelton, all of whom were ordained clergymen of 
 the Church of England ; and with them came a fourth 
 minister who had obtained passage in the company's ships, 
 Ralph Smith, whose strict Separatist views had not been 
 understood at first by the company ; but how little the 
 enterprise savored of general toleration is manifest from 
 the direction given to Endicott that unless Smith should 
 be ** conformable " to the government established at Salem 
 he should not be permitted to remain. Acknowledged 
 fellowship with Separatist Plymouth was still far from the 
 desire oi the managers of the enterprise in England, who, 
 aside from their own objections on religious grounds, 
 doubtless feared the hostility of the English Government 
 should the Salem colony become known as '' Brownist." 
 By the end of June, 1629, these ministerial reinforcements 
 had crossed the Atlantic. 
 
 On July 20th, about three weeks after their arrival, 
 Endicott appointed — so Charles Gott wrote to Bradford, 
 ten days subsequent to the event — " a solemn c day of 
 humilliation, for y choyce of a pastor & teacher." The 
 morning of that day was spent in prayer and preaching 
 as a preparation for the main event ; and in the afternoon 
 Higginson and Skelton were asked to express their view 
 as to the proper call to the ministerial office. Both had 
 had episcopal hands laid on them in ordination ; but both 
 now affirmed that a true call embraced two elements, one 
 of which at least was not deemed an essential in their 
 original episcopal vocation — an inward sense of fitness, and 
 an election by the free suffrages of the male members of 
 *' a company of beleevers . . . joyned togither in cove- 
 nante." Such a covenant church the Salem congregation 
 evidently felt itself to be, for, the church approving these 
 answers, '* every fit member wrote, in a note, his name 
 whom the Lord moved him to think was fit for a pastor, 
 
I06 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 and so likewise, whom they would have for teacher ; so 
 the most voice was for Mr. Skelton to be Pastor, and Mr. 
 Higginson to be Teacher." 
 
 This election was followed by an act of great importance 
 — one which would scarcely have been performed save for 
 the influence of Plymouth teaching. As Gott records of 
 the pastor and teacher just elected: "They accepting y^ 
 choyce, M^ Higgison, with 3. or 4. of yc gravest members 
 of ye church, laid their hands on M^ Skelton, using prayer 
 therwith. This being done, ther was imposission of hands 
 on M^ Higgison also." 
 
 By this laying on of hands Higginson and Skelton broke 
 with the whole system of episcopal succession which Laud 
 maintained, and illustrated the wholly congregational con- 
 ception that it was within the province of every Christian 
 congregation not only to choose but to ordain its own 
 officers — a conception which had been held in its fullness 
 only by Separatists and Anabaptists. 
 
 But another Congregational principle was to be illus- 
 trated in the formation of this first New England Puritan 
 chu.rch besides that of the autonomy of the congregation. At 
 least one ruling elder and one or more deacons were elected 
 on this memorable 20th of July ; but their ordination was 
 delayed in order that there might be no repentance if the 
 incoming ships should bring immigrants better qualified 
 for these posts, and August 6th was fixed for the comple- 
 tion of the work. News of the events past and to occur 
 was sent to Bradford at Plymouth by a private correspond- 
 ent, though it is hardly probable that the statement of 
 the Plymouth historian Morton is correct, that represent- 
 atives from Plymouth were formally invited by the Salem 
 church. However this may have been, Bradford and some 
 others of the Plymouth churcli appear to have gone to 
 Salem to welcome the new enterprise, and though the 
 
THE SALEM CHURCH. \OJ 
 
 voyage proved longer than they hoped, they came into 
 the Salem assembly in time to give the first illustration on 
 American soil of that communion of churches which is so 
 important a trait of American Congregationalism by hold- 
 ing out '' the right hand of fellowship." 
 
 Yet though Endicott and Higginson and Skelton were 
 profoundly influenced by Plymouth example, they wished 
 to steer a narrow course of their own between such a con- 
 formity to the methods of worship of the English Establish- 
 ment as the more moderate Puritans in England practiced, 
 and full Separatism. Not all the inhabitants even of the 
 little Salem community were of their way of thinking. 
 Two of the most prominent of the newcomers of 1629, 
 John and Samuel Browne, were dissatisfied with the form 
 and worship of the nevv^ church. To their thinking it was 
 Separatist, and its abandonment of the Prayer- Book was 
 distasteful to them. They gathered a few like-minded 
 spirits and held separate services at which the liturgy of 
 the Establishment was used. The situation was now not 
 unlike that from which Endicott and his friends had fled 
 in England, only the strength of the parties was reversed. 
 The moderate Puritans at Salem who deserted the congre- 
 gation and held their Anglican service were now the non- 
 conformists of the little commonwealth, and as such they 
 were sent back to England by Endicott before the summer 
 of their arrival was past. On the other hand, Endicott 
 desired to have no real Separatists in the colony, much as 
 he incHned to the other features of Plymouth worship and 
 government ; and it was not long before Rev. Ralph Smith, 
 who was apparently a decided Separatist, found it well to 
 leave for desolate Nantasket, whence he was brought to 
 Plymouth by a kindly crew from that place, to meet a 
 more friendly reception than at Salem, and to become for 
 a time the minister of the Plymouth church. Of the 
 
I08 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 causes of dissatisfaction which led Francis Bright, one of 
 the three ministers sent out by the company, to return to 
 England in 1630 little is certainly known; but the writers 
 of New England history in the latter half of the seven- 
 teenth century believed that he, like the Brownes, was too 
 much of a conformist wholly to relish the Salem inno- 
 vations. 
 
 That so radical a departure was not expected or relished 
 by the Puritan members of the company who remained in 
 England there is abundant evidence. On news of what 
 had been done by Endicott regarding the Brownes his 
 superiors wrote to him : " Wee may haue leave to think 
 that it is possible some vndigested councells haue too 
 sodainely bin put in execucon, wcli may haue ill construccon 
 w^'^ the state heere, and make vs obnoxious to any adver- 
 sary." 
 
 It is evident, too, that the English Puritans believed the 
 Salem novelties to be due to Plymouth influence. A year 
 after the formation of the Salem church, 1630, Winthrop, 
 Dudley, Jolmson, and Coddington were denied the Lord's 
 Supper by Skelton, and baptism was denied to Codd- 
 ington's child, since they were not members of any local 
 church. On news of this refusal of the sacraments to those 
 who certainly were members of the Church of England, 
 supposing a national church to have any rightful existence. 
 Rev. John Cotton, then of Boston, England, but later to 
 become the teacher of the church of Boston, Mass., and a 
 chief defender of the position he now attacked, wrote to 
 Skelton in distress, declaring: '* You went hence of another 
 judgment, and I am afraid your change hath sprung from 
 New Plymouth men." 
 
 The story of Salem beginnings has thus been told at 
 some length because it is a turning-point in Congregational 
 history. Had P2ndicott, Higginson, and Skelton moved 
 
THE SALEM CI/rRCH. IO9 
 
 in any other direction than that they took, Congregational 
 development would have been vastly other than wtis act- 
 ually the case. They might have maintained the moder- 
 ately conformist position of the Brownes ; but had they 
 done so, the Plymouth influence would have been scarcely 
 felt, and the Puritan and Pilgrim streams could hardly have 
 flowed together. They might have become wholly Sepa- 
 ratist ; but that w^ould have been to break with the com- 
 pany which had sent them out, and to have been discred- 
 ited in large measure by the army of immigration that 
 was to follow them. As it was, they disowned one feature 
 of Plymouth polity — that of Separation — which was not 
 very strenuously insisted on at Plymouth, and wiiich had 
 little practical importance across the Atlantic, save as a 
 stimulant to English prejudice. But all other essentials 
 of Plymouth practice they adopted, and made thereby 
 characteristics of Puritan Congregationalism. The path- 
 way thus marked out was one easy to follow by those 
 who came after them. And the credit of this fusion is 
 due primarily to two laymen, Dr. Samuel Fuller and Gov- 
 ernor John Endicott. 
 
 The effect of the adoption of full Congregationalism by 
 the Salem church in molding subsequent Puritan organi- 
 zations is clearly apparent in the constitution of two of 
 the three Massachusetts churches that were formed in 
 1630 — those of Charlestown- Boston and of Watertown. 
 The church immediately subsequent in origin to that of 
 Salem had indeed a peculiar and an interesting beginning. 
 Of all Puritan churches in New England, only one, repre- 
 sented now by the church at Windsor, Conn., and possibly 
 by the First Church, Dorchester, Mass., traces its conti- 
 nuity back to English soil. Its origin was in a company 
 gathered by that unwearied friend of Massachusetts col- 
 onization, Rev. John White, in 1629 and 1630, drawn 
 
J lO THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 largely from the southwestern counties of the island, which 
 left England on March 20, 1630, and settled at Dorchester 
 early in June. This body assembled in the New Hospital 
 at Plymouth, England, just before sailing; and there, under 
 the guidance of White, chose as its officers two clergy- 
 men of the Church of England, from Exeter and its neigh- 
 borhood, John Maverick and John Warham. Here, as at 
 Salem, the choice was solemnized by a fast and preceded 
 by a sermon ; but it may well be doubted whether the 
 ministers were ordained by the church. Roger Clap, who 
 was present as a young man, and whose vivid recollections 
 written out many years later constitute our source of 
 knowledge of the details of the scene, would hardly have 
 omitted so essential a feature. White, who was no ex- 
 treme nonconformist, and was afterward much more of a 
 Presbyterian than a Congregationalist, as evidenced by his 
 later attitude in the Westminster Assembly, could scarcely 
 have countenanced it ; and the thought of ordination in 
 addition to election in this transaction at Plymouth would 
 probably be at once rejected, were it not for the direct 
 statement of the learned eighteenth century New England 
 annalist, Rev. Thomas Prince, that ordination took place. 
 Prince based his statement on a manuscript letter, but 
 whose or when written does not appear ; and the inherent 
 improbabilities seem, so great that one may well hesitate 
 before accepting the allegation as proven. Whether this 
 body possessed a covenant before leaving England is also 
 not easy to decide, and competent New England historians 
 have held the affirmative and the negative. Roger Clap, 
 of whom mention has been made, though present as a 
 member of the expedition at the election at Plymouth, 
 was " admitted into the Church Fellow.ship at the first 
 beginning in Dorchester, in the year 1630." This would 
 seem as if some agreement had been entered into before 
 
THE DORCHESTER CHURCH. I l I 
 
 sailing to which tiie young- and humbly ranked Clap was 
 not a partner. But whether this agreement implied a 
 covenant entered into by regenerate persons only as the 
 basis of the church, is made doubtful by Warham's opinion, 
 expressed to Fuller just after the arrival of the Dorchester 
 company on American soil, that the " church may consist 
 of a mixed people, godly and openly ungodly "• — a view 
 which comports with the English Puritan theory better 
 than with that of Plymouth. But whatever imperfec- 
 tions there may have been in the Congregationalism of this 
 Dorchester body at its coming, it is easy to see that it was 
 moving in a direction which would incline it to look favor- 
 ably at what Endicott and his Salem associates had done, 
 and feel kindly toward Plymouth, whose physician, the 
 indefatigable Fuller, was ministering to the sick of the 
 Dorchester company, and talking church polity to sick ajid 
 well, within a month of their arrival. 
 
 Before the Dorchester fellowship had much more than 
 begun the erection of their dwellings the main portion of 
 the immigration of 1630 had come and entered on the 
 hard life of colonial beginnings at a number of other places 
 about Massachusetts Bay — the chief interest being of 
 course at Charlestown, and speedily at Boston, where 
 Governor Winthrop and his immediate following were 
 located, and at Watertown, where Sir Richard Saltonstall 
 was the most prominent settler. With Winthrop was 
 Rev. John Wilson, a Puritan clergyman of the Church of 
 England who had been conspicuous for his nonconformity 
 during an interrupted ministry at Sudbury, in Suffolk; 
 with Saltonstall was Re\\ George Phillips, a clergyman of 
 even stronger anti-Anglican tendencies, from Boxford, in 
 Essex. As yet none of these infant communities were 
 gathered into Congregational church estate ; they had in- 
 deed been advised to consult with the people of Plymouth 
 
112 THE CONGREGATION ALISrS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 by a minister held in great esteem among them, John 
 Cotton, of Boston, England, who was three years later to 
 become the teacher of the church at Boston, Mass. But 
 his counsel appears to have been of the most general char- 
 acter, and these immigrants 'came to Massachusetts Bay 
 with their conceptions of church organization still in the 
 formative stage. In this condition they fell under the 
 molding influence of Fuller, and of his earlier convert 
 Endicott, whom the Plymouth physician now describes as 
 a second Barrowe in his zeal for the Congregational way. 
 The sickness incident to new settlements in those days 
 of little sanitary knowledge afflicted Winthrop's company 
 at Charlestown severely. In their distress Winthrop ap- 
 pealed to the Salem church for advice. At Salem there 
 were present, on the reception of this request, three of the 
 more prominent members of the Plymouth body. Fuller, 
 Win.slow, and Allerton, and, as was natural, they too were 
 consulted as to the problem presented by the Massachu- 
 setts governor. By the joint counsel of the Salem church 
 and of the representatives of that of Plymouth, Friday, July 
 30, 1630, was appointed as a fast in view of the sickness, 
 and by the same advice covenanted churches were organ- 
 ized on that day at Charlestown and Watertown. At 
 Charlestown such care was exercised in admission to this 
 new fellowship that on the day of beginning only four, 
 Governor Winthrop, Isaac Johnson, Thomas Dudley, and 
 Rev. John Wilson, were united— a number which was 
 rapidly augmented during the ensuing weeks. It is in- 
 teresting to observe that at Charlestown, as was probably 
 the case at Salem, the organization of the church by union 
 in covenant considerably preceded its choice of officers. 
 It was not till August 27th, after salaries, to be raised 
 by taxation, had been voted to Wilson and Phillips by 
 the assistants of the company on August 23d, that the 
 
CHARLESTOWN AND IVATERTOIVN. 113 
 
 Charlestown-Boston church chose and Installed John 
 Wilson as teacher, Increase Nowell as ruling elder, and 
 William Gager and William Aspinwall as deacons. It is 
 curiously illustrative of the conservatism of this Puritan 
 congregation that, as Winthrop tells us, they "used im- 
 position of hands, but with this protestation by all, that it 
 was only as a sign of election and confirmation, not of any 
 intent that Mr. Wilson should renounce his ministry he 
 received in England " — of course at the hands of a bishop. 
 But the trend of the Charlestown-Boston church toward 
 the full realization of the Plymouth ideals was decided. 
 Though Roger Williams found it still " unseparated " in 
 163 1, in November, 1632, when Wilson was transferred 
 from its teachership to its pastorate, he was " ordained by 
 imposition of hands " of the elder and deacons, and Win- 
 throp records no reservation as to previous ministry ; and 
 when, on October 10, 1633, the distinguished John Cot- 
 ton, already for twenty years vicar at Boston, England, 
 was made its teacher, he was '' chosen by all the congre- 
 gation testifying their consent by erection of hands," and 
 then ordained by the pastor and ruling elders, who, '' speak- 
 ing to him by his name, . . . did . . . design him to the 
 said office, in the name of the Holy Ghost, and did give 
 him the charge of the congregation, and did thereby (as 
 by a sign from God) indue him with the gifts fit for his 
 office; and lastly did bless him." 
 
 Absence of a chronicler like Winthrop makes it impos- 
 sible to follow the course of events at Watertown as closely 
 as at Charlestown-Boston, but there is reason to think 
 that the tendency in polity Plymouth-ward there was even 
 more rapid. The minister, George Phillips, told Fuller 
 a month before the gathering of the church, that if his 
 people " will have him stand minister, by that calling 
 which he received from the prelates in England, he will 
 
H 
 
 I'lIE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [CiiAr. iv. 
 
 leave them " ; and the tradition reported by Hubbard and 
 Mather concerning him was that he was more advanced 
 toward the Separatist ideals in his Congregationalism than 
 most of the early New England pastors. 
 
 Enough has been said to show that rhmouth example, 
 as interpreted and somewhat modified by Salem, found 
 ready approval with the three Puritan churches which orig- 
 inated in 1630. Thus influentially established by those 
 who were to be leaders in all early Massachusetts history, 
 the way was made easy for the adoption of full Congrega- 
 tionalism by the Puritan immigration that came after ; and 
 this tendency to conform to the type developed in 1629 
 and 1630 was doubtless stimulated by the prescription of 
 the Massachusetts General Court in May, i63i,thiit the 
 franchise should be limited to those in church- membership. 
 This enactment, characteristic of Massachusetts and New 
 Haven colonies, and not to be found in Plymouth or Con- 
 necticut, was doubtless intended to establish a semi-theo- 
 cratic government, wherein the religious element should 
 rule and from which all disaffected with the Puritan way, 
 especially all Anglican sympathizers, should be excluded ; 
 but its effect could have been scarcely less in giving fixity 
 to the pattern of church organization set at the beginning 
 of the colony. It made Congregationalism essentially a 
 state church, and insured that all later coming bodies of 
 Christians, not violently out of sympathy with the views 
 of the founders, would organize themselves after the pat- 
 tern with which the founders had connected the fran- 
 chise, and which was in so many respects attractive to the 
 iidvanced Puritan. Like the whole trend of the P^nglish 
 Reformation movement, of which it was a radical manifes- 
 tation, this religious commonwealth was essentially con- 
 trolled by laymen. No charge is more baseless than that 
 which represents early New England as "priest-ridden." 
 
A STA TE CHURCH. I i 5 
 
 The minister was reverenced and consulted as perhaps in 
 no other British territory ; but a jealous public sentiment 
 excluded him from political office, and kept the ultimate 
 control of the churches and of the state in the hands of 
 the General Court. It was Endicott rather than Higginson 
 that gave form to religious institutions at Salem, and 
 crushed out incipient dissent by expelling the Brownes. 
 It was the General Court, whatever urging may have come 
 from the ministers, that banished Williams and Anne 
 Hutchinson. It was the same legislative assembly that 
 called, in 1646, the Cambridge Synod that gave definite 
 written form to the polity of New England. And in 
 Massachusetts after 1631 the Court was a body of lay 
 church- members. The vote of that year was the comple- 
 tion of the Puritan reaction against the condition of affairs 
 in England. There every man was accounted of the 
 church by reason of his membership in the state ; in 
 Massachusetts a voice in the state was now conditioned 
 on membership in the church for all who were admitted 
 to the privilege after 1631, and this continued 'to be the 
 rule till 1664; and really in spirit, though not in letter, till 
 the revocation of the charter in 1684. 
 
 The rapid immigration of the fourth decade of the 
 seventeenth century led to the speedy formation of new 
 churches, often by companies already well acquainted 
 with one another on English soil, and under the charge of 
 ministers whose services had been prized by their New 
 England hearers before leaving the mother- country. No 
 church was organized in 163 i ; but in July, 1632, that at 
 Roxbury came into being with Thomas Welde as pastor, 
 and before the close of the year with " Apostle " John 
 Eliot as teacher. The same year saw the beginnings of 
 a church at Lynn, and the separate organization of the 
 members of the Charlestown- Boston church, whose natural 
 
Il6 THE COXGREGATIOXALISrS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 meeting-place was at Charlestown. In Plymouth colony 
 also the first ecclesiastical swarming from the parent hive 
 took place in 1632, and resulted in churches at Duxbury 
 and Marshfield. The year 1633 saw the completion of a 
 strong church at Newtown, now Cambridge, with Thomas 
 Hooker as pastor, Samuel Stone as teacher, William Good- 
 win as ruling elder, and John Haynes, successively gov- 
 ernor of Massachusetts and Connecticut, as its chief lay 
 member — a church that in process of time became the 
 First Church in Hartford. In 1634 churches were estab- 
 lished at Ipswich in Massachusetts and at Scituate in 
 Plymouth; while 1635 beheld the origin of churches at 
 Newbury, Weymouth, and Hingham ; 1636 added to the 
 roll of Massachusetts churches that of Concord, and new 
 churches at Cambridge and Dorchester to take the places 
 of those which had gone from these places to Connecticut. 
 Possibly the church at Wethersfield, Conn., was formed 
 also in the year last named. Springfield in Massachu- 
 setts and Taunton in Plymouth followed in 1637; in 1638 
 Massachusetts received Salisbury and Dedham, Plymouth 
 added Sandwich ; and three churches were founded in 
 what is now New Hampshire, at Hampton, Dover, and 
 Exeter. In 1639 came the churches of Ouincy and Row- 
 ley in Massachusetts, of Yarmouth and a new church at 
 Scituate in Plymouth colony, and those of New Haven 
 and Milford in New Haven colony. Thus, in a few months 
 more than ten years from the formation of the Salem 
 church, the churches of New England probably numbered 
 thirty- three. Of these the churches of Newbury and 
 Hingham had pastors inclined to Presbyterianism in in- 
 ternal administration, and rather critical of the polity of 
 the majority ; but the others were all of the full Congre- 
 gational type. 
 
 Mention has been made in the preceding paragraph of 
 
SETTLEMENT OF CONNECTICUT. II7 
 
 churches in Connecticut and New Haven colonies. The 
 founding of these plantations was the most noteworthy 
 territorial extension of Puritanism in New England, impor- 
 tant as giving strategical control of southern New England 
 to the settlers who had hitherto occupied only a narrow 
 fringe on the eastern coast, but chiefly noteworthy in our 
 story as allowing room for the development of independent 
 types of civil government and church polity, closely re- 
 sembling those of Massachusetts, but possessed of individ- 
 ual peculiarities, since Connecticut and New Haven were 
 never mere echoes of the larger colony ; and ultimately 
 giving to American Congregationalism a 'broader variety 
 in form and a more diversified doctrinal life than if its 
 development had been confined to Massachusetts alone. 
 
 The settlement of Connecticut was chiefly the work of 
 the inhabitants of Newtown (now Cambridge) and Dor- 
 chester, together with a few from Watertown and other 
 Massachusetts towns. Its causes are somewhat complex ; 
 and it seems strange at first sight that men who had 
 miles of unsubdued forest almost at their doors should so 
 soon find the limits of the first settlements too narrow. 
 But the founders of New England had all the land-hunger 
 of pioneer communities of our more modern West ; like 
 all frontier societies, they were marked by restlessness and 
 love of change. The valley of the Connecticut, with its 
 long stretches of fertile, treeless meadows, was a garden 
 spot compared w^ith the hard soil about Massachusetts 
 Bay. There was serious danger that it would be taken by 
 the Dutch or the men of Plymouth, who both had posts 
 on the river by 1633. This was incentive enough for emi- 
 gration thither ; but there is reason to believe that other 
 motives, of a nature less easily expressed in public debate, 
 may have urged the removal quite as strongly. The New- 
 town people were a wealthy and homogeneous company, 
 
ir8 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 led in spiritual matters by Hooker and Stone, and in civil 
 concerns by John Haynes, men easily the peers of any in 
 the colony. They may well have desired to go where 
 these leaders could have a little freer scope than in the 
 immediate neighborhood of Winthrop and Cotton — the 
 more so that Hooker seems to have had a somewhat more 
 democratic theory of government than prevailed in Massa- 
 chusetts, and to have disapproved of the limitation of the 
 franchise to church-members. The Dorchester company, 
 too, though it did not enter into the emigration quite as 
 fully as that of Newtown, will be remembered as some- 
 what peculiar in origin and distinct in composition. At 
 all events, unrest soon manifested itself in these towns. 
 By 1634 the people of Newtown were petitioning the 
 General Court for leave to go to Connecticut, and the same 
 year a few adventurers from Watertown were beginning 
 the settlement of what is now Wethersfield. The emigra- 
 tion of the petitioners was delayed, but before the close 
 of 1635 many inhabitants of Dorchester and Newtown had 
 found their way to what became Windsor and Hartford. 
 In the .spring of 1636 this emigration reached its greatest 
 height, when Hooker and Stone, with a large part of their 
 congregation, made their way overland to Hartford ; and 
 probably during the same season the surviving minister 
 of the Dorchester church, John Warham, took up his 
 abode at Windsor, whither many of liis flock preceded 
 or accompanied him. Thus two of the most prominent 
 Mas.sachusetts churches were tran.sferred to Connecticut, 
 the continuity of their organization being uninterrupted 
 by the change ; while on the soil which they had aban- 
 doned, and where some of their former members still re- 
 mained, new churches had to be gathered to take their 
 place. Connecticut, though a small colony, had thus frcMii 
 the first a strong ministry and a completely ordered Con- 
 
SETTLEMENT OF NEW HAVEN. IIQ 
 
 gregatlonal ecclesiastical system, while its early tendencies 
 were a little less theocratic than those of Massachusetts. 
 
 New Haven, the youngest of the early Congregational 
 colonies, had its origin in a Puritan company gathered 
 chiefly from London by Rev. John Davenport, who had 
 been curate of St. Lawrence Jewry, and afterward vicar 
 of St. Stephen's in that city, till Laud's opposition caused 
 him to fly to Holland in 1633. Davenport had been in- 
 terested in the Massachusetts enterprise almost from the 
 beginning, and by the close of 1636 his friends were 
 making ready for the voyage. Chief among them was his 
 parishioner, Theophilus Eaton, a London merchant, and 
 the whole company was conspicuous for wealth and high 
 character. In sympathy with this London movement two 
 small emigrant parties were formed in other regions of 
 England, in Hereford under the spiritual leadership of 
 Rev. Peter Prudden, and in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex by 
 men who chose as their minister Rev. Henry Whitfield, of 
 Okely, in Surrey ; and settlers from Yorkshire also added 
 their strength to the enterprise. Davenport, Prudden, 
 Eaton, and a large proportion of the. future New Haven 
 settlers sailed from England in the spring of 1637 and 
 landed in Boston on June 26th, where they met a warm 
 welcome from the Massachusetts authorities, who would 
 gladly have received so valuable an accession of strength 
 to their own colony. But the emigrants desired independ- 
 ence ; Davenport was a man of positive opinions as to the 
 ordering of church and state; and while the newcomers 
 agreed substantially with the leaders of Massachusetts, 
 they preferred to be their own masters. Accordingly, 
 after some exploration and a winter spent in the vicinity 
 of Boston, they removed to the site afterward known as 
 New Haven, reaching their goal in April, 1638. From 
 the first the colony had a stronger theocratic tendency 
 
120 7'IIE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 than any of its predecessors, and one of the earhest acts 
 after setting foot on New Haven soil was an agreement 
 that church and state aHke — laws, officers, and problems 
 of government — should be ordered by the Word of God. 
 But as yet no church was formed, though worship was 
 regularly maintained. It was not till more than a year had 
 elapsed after the beginnings at New Haven, and Prud- 
 den with his Hereford associates had determined to estab- 
 lish the neighboring plantation of Milford, that on June 4, 
 1639, the permanent civil and ecclesiastical government of 
 New Haven was determined. After considerable debate, 
 in which the point of contention was the restriction of the 
 suffrage to church-members, the landed proprietors of the 
 infant colony, led by Davenport and Eaton, voted that the 
 ** Scripturs doe holde forth a perfect rule for the directid 
 and gouernmt of all men in all duet[ies] w^h they are to 
 performe to God and men as well in the gou'mt of fani)-- 
 lyes and comonwealths as in matters of the chur[ch] " ; 
 and renewed their pledge of the previous year that they 
 would be governed by biblical rules in the organization 
 of a church and in the '' choyce of magistrates and officers, 
 makeing and repealing of lawes, devideing allottmts of in- 
 heritance and all things of like nature." 
 
 They then voted to limit the franchise to church- mem- 
 bers, thus bringing their practice into accord with that of 
 Massachusetts, and departing from that of Plymouth and 
 Connecticut ; and, in order to establish the church, this 
 assembly of '' free planters," still guided by Davenport, 
 proceeded to nominate twelve men, who should select 
 seven from among themselves as the foundation members 
 of the church to be. Thus by the voluntary action of the 
 New Haven founders the franchise and tenure of office 
 were restricted to a portion of the community. 
 
 After more than two months of deliberation the New 
 
SETTLEMENT OF NEIV HAVEN. 121 
 
 Haven church was formed by the seven pillar-members 
 chosen by the committee of twelve, on August 21 or 22, 
 L639, Davenport and Eaton being included in its original 
 fellowship; and on October 25th following these seven 
 church-members organized the civil government of the 
 little community, elected Eaton as magistrate or governor, 
 and extended the franchise to those (only three in number) 
 who had been admitted to the New Haven church up to 
 that time, and also to those who were " members of other 
 approved churches." Though they had no royal charter, 
 this new government felt itself authorized five days later 
 to execute an Indian for murder. The new church, like 
 that at Boston and probably that at Salem, was at first a 
 covenanted association without officers, but the tradition 
 when Benjamin Trumbull wrote his '' History of Connecti- 
 cut," a century ago, was that not long after its organiza- 
 tion the infant church chose Davenport its pastor, with the 
 presence and assistance of Hooker and Stone of Hartford 
 in his installation ; though the circumstances of the officer- 
 ing of the Milford church make this Hartford assistance 
 doubtful. 
 
 The transactions thus narrated concerned only the in- 
 habitants of New Haven, for in Davenport's colony, unlike 
 Massachusetts and Connecticut, the towns were at first 
 wholly independent of each other ; and no central author- 
 ity had jurisdiction over them all till 1643. While the 
 New Haven church was being organized Prudden and his 
 Hereford company were still in New Haven, though as 
 intended residents of Milford they were looked upon as 
 independent. Evidently, however, they approv^ed of the 
 course of the New Haven settlers, for on August 22, 1639, 
 the same day that the New Haven church was formed, or 
 possibly the day after, seven prominent men chosen by 
 their company organized the Milford church at New Haven. 
 
122 THE CONGREGATIONALISrs. [Chap. IV. 
 
 Of these seven Prudden was one, and on April i8, 1640, 
 he was ordained its pastor at Milford with imposition of 
 hands by three of the six men who had originally entered 
 into covenant with him. In this it may well be believed 
 that Milford simply followed what New Haven had already 
 done in the case of Davenport. By November, 1639, this 
 company w^ere in their Milford home, and on November 
 20th the planters there voted that the franchise should 
 be confined to church-members. This prescription w^as 
 speedily modified, and six non-member landholders were 
 allowed the ballot. But when Milford was admitted into 
 union with New Haven and other towns of the colony in 
 October, 1643, these non-church-members were expressly 
 denied a direct voice in matters of general colonial concern. 
 The company from Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, under 
 the leadership of Rev. Henry Whitfield, of which mention 
 has been made, arrived in New Haven by direct voyage 
 from England during the summer in which the churches 
 of New Haven and Milford were formed. On this voyage 
 they had entered into a written covenant to be faithful one 
 to another, but expressly reserving the formation of their 
 church till they should be settled in their new home. 
 Established at Guilford before the close of 1639, their 
 affairs were temporarily ordered by committees until they 
 could accomplish the ** main end" of their coming — the 
 establishment of " the ordinances of God in an explicite 
 congregational church way." There is some reason to 
 believe that the New Haven restrictions on the suffrage 
 were not satisfactory to the people of Guilford, and there- 
 fore the formation of their church was delayed ; but though 
 they had been originally politically independent, the for- 
 mation of the Colonial Union of Massachusetts, Plymouth, 
 Connecticut, and New Haven in 1643 made it seem desir- 
 able for Guilford to unite in a common jurisdiction with 
 
MILFORD AND GUILFORD. 1 23 
 
 New Haven and Milford ; and accordingly, in the spring 
 or summer of 1643, probably June 19th, seven men entered 
 into covenant as at New Haven, and the Guilford church 
 was constituted. Two of the seven were ministers, Whit- 
 field and John Higginson, who became pastor and teacher, 
 though some doubt exists as to whether Whitfield, at least, 
 was not esteemed so far a minister by virtue of his episcopal 
 ordination that he was not specially ordained to this charge. 
 
 The formation of churches by a select few was no pe- 
 culiarity of the New Haven colonies : that at Charlestown- 
 Boston had been constituted by four men. But the number 
 seven, based doubtless on Proverbs ix. I, was certainly un- 
 usual elsewhere in New England. The church gathered 
 at Dorchester in 1636, after the departure of Warham to 
 Windsor, was constituted by the covenant vows of seven 
 persons, but there is nothing to show that the number 
 there was more than accidental. 
 
 As New Haven colony was the last of the Puritan col- 
 onies, so in some respects it marks the most radical de- 
 parture of any from English ecclesiastical ideals. Its civil 
 state was even more distinctly based on a compact than 
 that of Plymouth. Its code of laws was avowedly the 
 Bible. It almost seems as if the theory of churchly in- 
 dependency which these colonists represented was carried 
 over to the state in the complete autonomy of each local 
 community in which they began. The system they would 
 maintain was truly a theocracy, for it was an attempt to 
 be ruled in all things by the Word of God. Yet even in 
 this extremest form New England Puritanism never abso- 
 lutely merged church and state. The condition of a voice 
 in the state was membership in the church, but when that 
 voice was expressed it was not as the church, but as the 
 civil ''court " of legislation and adjudication. Church and 
 state micjht and sometimes did trench on each other's 
 
124 ^-^^ COXGREGATIOiXALISrS. [Chap. iv. 
 
 l:)orders ; but in early New Eng-land theory, and largely in 
 practice, they were distinct. The chief peculiarities of New 
 Haven, including its restriction of the franchise, passed 
 away on its union with Connecticut in 1664-65. 
 
 It has thus been seen that Puritan ecclesiastical institu- 
 tions on New England soil shaped themselves essentially 
 on one model — a model largely that of Plymouth. Minor 
 unlikenesses existed between church and church ; dissimi- 
 larities of considerable importance, like the extent of the 
 franchise, distinguished one colony from another; but 
 when all these have been taken into consideration, the 
 conclusion remains that the churches of early New Eng- 
 land were singularly alike. They everywhere presented 
 the conception of a church as a body of persons of relig- 
 ious experience bound together by a covenant, choosing 
 its own officers, administering its own affairs, and inde- 
 pendent of other ecclesiastical control. They stood every- 
 where, also, for a free, unliturgical form of worship, an 
 educated ministry, and a strenuous moral discipline. But 
 if the model set at the beginning led to a high degree of 
 local independence, other characteristics of early New 
 England ecclesiastical life, some of which have already 
 been touched upon, and others of which will be noted in 
 the next chapter, prevented this centrifugal tendency from 
 becoming mutual indifference. The connection of these 
 churches with the state, the repressive measures adopted 
 toward dissenters, with the consequent necessity of the 
 formulation of their own standards, led also to the growth 
 of a .spirit of fellowship which ultimately developed that 
 sense of responsibility of one church for another that dis- 
 tinguishes American Congregationalism from that of P^ng- 
 land, and has made our churches something more organi- 
 cally knit together than a convenient grouping of local 
 congregations similar in polity. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 iT'has already been pointed out that the settlers of New- 
 England came with no intention of establishing general 
 freedom of worship or extended religious toleration. Their 
 belief in the Scripture was profound, their feehng that the 
 Church of England as then administered did not represent 
 the biblical model was intense, and their great desire was 
 to set up the institutions which they believed the Scriptures 
 required. Had they approved a general toleration, the 
 majority of them would probably have never left their 
 English homes. It was their confidence that the beliefs 
 they maiiitained were, within narrow ranges of possible 
 divergence of opinion, the only beliefs that w^ere true, that 
 nerved the emigrants for the sacrifices involved in leaving 
 their native island and gave much of its strength to the 
 New England character. And once in possession of a 
 country where they could establish institutions of their 
 own, they did not propose to imperil their work by allow- 
 ing extensive dissent from their methods either in church 
 or state. This attitude of mind, more conspicuously illus- 
 trated in the Puritan colonies than in Plymouth, and 
 most of all evident in Massachusetts, led to acts of banish- 
 ment and repression scarcely more defensible in some in- 
 stances than those of Laud, which constitute an unattract- 
 ive chapter in the story of men otherwise so conspicuous 
 for statesmanship, Christian character, and lofty purposes. 
 But it is a chapter that cannot be passed over if we are to 
 
 125 
 
126 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 understand the founders of New England ; and it is of 
 great importance for the history of CongregationaHsm, 
 since the measures undertaken to repress dissent and to 
 secure uniformity crystalHzed the at first somewhat solvent 
 polity, gave to it standards of government and faith, and 
 by compelling consultation and united action emphasized 
 the principle of fellowship in Congregationalism. The 
 methods by which dissent was suppressed often deserve 
 censure; but this exclusive dominance of the Congre- 
 gational system enabled it to mold popular thought in 
 church and state, to become developed along the lines of 
 its own genius, and by fashioning the ideas of successive 
 generations to affect American civil and religious life as it 
 might not otherwise have done. 
 
 During all of their seventeenth century history, save 
 when England was under the Commonwealth, the New 
 England colonies were in a most difficult position ; and 
 this was especially true of Massachusetts, which, as the 
 largest and most representative, had to bear the brunt of 
 criticism. On the one hand, their leaders were determined 
 to maintain the religious system and the civil institutions of 
 which they approved ; on the other, none of the colonies 
 save Massachusetts had a royal charter till Connecticut 
 received one in 1662, and though the Massachusetts charter 
 was liberal in its provisions for a trading and colonizing 
 company, it required considerable stretching of its con- 
 ferred powers to make it the basis of a semi-independent 
 state. Hence the Massachusetts colony was always liable 
 to be called to account by those unfavorable to its eccle- 
 siastical system or its political methods; and the great 
 anxiety of the Massachusetts authorities was to prevent 
 any disturbances within the colony or appeals from its 
 jurisdiction which should give occasion for questioning 
 its action or its institutions ; and hence, also, their acts of 
 
A DIFFICULT SITUATION. 1 27 
 
 repression had almost always a twofold motive, the one 
 aiming at the preservation of religious and political uni- 
 formity, the other having regard to the prevention of inter- 
 ference from England. This dual aspect of the repressive 
 acts of colonial governments, and especially of Massachu- 
 setts, has often been forgotten by historians, and the 
 actions of the civil authorities have either been denounced 
 as pure religious bigotry, or excused as entirely due to 
 political necessity. In point of fact, both elements entered 
 into the motives of the leaders of early New England, and 
 it is often impossible to say which predominated ; and 
 while we may wish that New England might have ex- 
 hibited the toleration displayed by Holland under very 
 different circumstances, it may well be questioned whether 
 a general toleration would have produced that sturciy spirit 
 of independence which ultimately secured political freedom 
 from Great Britain, or whether internal commotions would 
 not have given the ever ready English Government ex- 
 cuse for disastrous interference when as yet New England 
 institutions were in the formative stage. It was because 
 the leaders of New England believed that they had a cause 
 worth defending that they were so tenacious in its support 
 against opposition at home and abroad. Doubtless the 
 same is true of Laud or Philip II. ; but the situation of 
 New England was essentially unlike that of England or 
 Spain. A few feeble colonies maintaining their institu- 
 tional integrity in the face of a powerful and menacing 
 home government were not iii the condition of countries 
 whose independence and autonomy were practically un- 
 shakable. . Probably the New England leaders would have 
 had little sympathy with extensive divergence from their 
 views under any circumstances ; but the peculiar situation 
 of New England was such as to provoke and intensify 
 repressive measures, for it added fear as to the permanency 
 
128 THE CONGREGATIOXALlSrS. [Chap. v. 
 
 of the state itself to feelings of religious concern. No 
 estimate of the attitude of the fathers of Puritan Confrre- 
 gationalism toward those who differed with them is cor- 
 rect which ignores the influence of a situation of extreme 
 public peril in intensifying the antipathy which they felt 
 toward that which they deemed subversive of the principles 
 they had made such sacrifices to put into practice. 
 
 The interference of the civil authorities of New England 
 in matters of faith and practice began early. The case of 
 the Brownes at Salem has already been noticed, and the 
 uncompromising action of Endicott has been seen in send- 
 ing them out of the colony when their separate worship, 
 even though that of the English Establishment, threatened 
 to divide the scanty inhabitants of the wilderness planta- 
 tion. From the first, the Massachusetts authorities exer- 
 cised the power of ridding their territories of persons 
 obnoxious in civil or religious affairs by what was prac- 
 ticall}^ banishment, even though that word of somewhat 
 technical legal import be strictly applicable only to a sen- 
 tence of Parliament. Thus in September, 1630, the court 
 directed the notorious Thomas Morton of Mount Wollas- 
 ton to be sent to England, his goods seized to pay the 
 cost of his passage, and his house burned. In March, 
 1 63 1, six persons were ordered back to England as 
 '' \'nmeete to inhabit here " ; in May of that )'ear two were 
 sentenced to leave the colony before October 20th, their 
 offense being '' contempt of authoritie & confrontinge offi- 
 cers " ; in June following Philip Ratliffe was "banished," 
 in addition to the loss of his ears and a fine of ^^40, '' for 
 vttering mallitious & scandulous speeches against the 
 gou'mt & the church of Salem " ; and during the next 
 September Henry Lynn was *' whipped and banished . . . 
 for writeing into England falsely & mallitiously against the 
 gou'mt & execucon of justice here." 
 
ROGER WILLI AiMS. 1 29 
 
 These cases, most of which did not involve religious con- 
 siderations in the remotest degree, show that banishment 
 was no unusual remedy, for the ills of the body poUtic, 
 nor one that was first employed in the case of Roger Will- 
 iams. This able, personally lovable, but exceedingly erratic 
 man was probably a Londoner by origin, who graduated 
 from Cambridge in January, 1627, and then held a chap- 
 laincy to Sir William Masham, of Otes, county of Essex. 
 Here he adopted Separatist views, and as a Separatist in 
 feeling he came to New England in 1631. As such he 
 refused to minister to the Boston church, or even to enter 
 its membership, because he '' durst not officiate to an un- 
 separated people," and " because they would not make a 
 public declaration of their repentance for having com- 
 munion with the churches of England while they lived 
 there." With this illiberal attitude, Williams, Hke Robert 
 Browne, combined a view in another direction quite in 
 advance of the current opinions of his age. With Browne 
 he held that the civil ruler should not enforce the observ- 
 ance of '' first table," i.e., the first four commandments, 
 which the theory of that age held to cover the field of 
 right belief and worship. The particular form of magis- 
 terial interference to which Williams objected was the 
 punishment of'* the breach of the Sabbath." Shortly 
 after his refusal to serve the Boston church, Williams 
 was called to the teachership made vacant at Salem by 
 the death of Higginson — that church having advanced, it 
 would appear, to a more distinctly Separatist position than 
 the Boston congregation occupied. On news of this call 
 the six members of the Court of Assistants, which met on 
 April 1 2th, sent an informal letter to Endicott advising 
 delay. Probably this letter interrupted the action of the 
 Salem church, for from the autumn of 163 1 to the summer 
 of 1633 Williams assisted Rev. Ralph Smith in the care of 
 
I30 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chav. v. 
 
 the Plymouth church, and there began the study of the 
 Indian tongues, wliich he was to put to so conspicuous 
 use. From Plymouth, where he left the impression on 
 Bradford of being " a man godly and zealous, having many 
 precious parts, but very unsettled in judgmente," Will- 
 iams returned to Salem, and after assisting Skelton, he 
 succeeded within a few months of Skelton's decease to the 
 pastorate of the Salem church. 
 
 The time was one of special peril and anxiety in the 
 colony. Sir Ferdinando Gorges had obtained the ear of 
 Laud in 1634, and had set the machinery in motion for the 
 revocation of the Massachusetts charter, the suppression 
 of the New England Puritans, the establishment in the 
 Puritan colonies of the Church of England, and the ap- 
 pointment of Gorges himself as governor of the recon- 
 structed territories. The danger for the next five years 
 was very real. The colonial authorities temporized, they 
 fortified Boston Harbor, they stirred up all the friends 
 they could muster in England ; but had Gorges had more 
 money to fit out an expedition, or had not the resistance 
 of the Scotch to Laud's attempt in 1637 to introduce epis- 
 copacy into their churches distracted the attention of the 
 royal government, it would have gone hard with Con- 
 gregationalism in America. Such a time of anxiety de- 
 manded unity at home, or at least the avoidance of all 
 acts that might precipitate the forcible overthrow of their 
 governments which the colonies feared. 
 
 But Williams was not a man to be moved by consider- 
 ations of expediency. During his stay at Plymouth he 
 had written an essay to prove that royal charters were 
 worthless, since not the king but the Indian natives had a 
 right to give title to the land ; that King James was a liar 
 and blaspliemcr in that he had called Iiurope " Christen- 
 dom " and spoken of himself as *' the first Christian prince 
 
ROGER WILLIAMS. I31 
 
 that had discovered this land " ; and that King Charles 
 was aptly described in Revelation xvi. 13, 14, xvii. 12, 13, 
 and xviii. 9 ; and that it was the duty of the colonists 
 to repent of their sin in receiving such a patent. Aside 
 from the inexpediency of insulting powers already suffi- 
 ciently hostile, there seems to be reason to doubt whether 
 Williams had ever read the charters of 1620 or 1629, for 
 the passages of which he complains do not appear in them ; 
 and the company had been explicit in its directions that 
 Indian claimants should be satisfied. Nor does it add to 
 our estimate of the worth of Williams's criticisms to learn 
 that he himself gave them so little weight as to own a 
 house at Salem, which by his own principles must have 
 been held ultimately on a dishonest title. On hearing of 
 the existence of this dangerous document Governor Win- 
 throp asked for it, and submitted it to his brother magis- 
 trates on December 27, 1633. Admonished by the magis- 
 trates, Williams now disclaimed any intention to make 
 trouble, and offered to allow his book to be burned ; and 
 so the matter rested for a little. 
 
 Whether Williams instigated, as Endicott certainly 
 effected, the mutilation of the English flag at Salem in 
 November, 1634, by cutting out the cross *'as a relique 
 of Antichrist " is possibly uncertain, though exceedingly 
 probable and characteristic in its perilous disregard of 
 the critical situation of the colony. But by December, 
 1634, Williams was once more '' teaching publickly against 
 the king's patent, and our great sin in claiming right 
 thereby to this country," and denouncing the churches of 
 England as '' antichristian." In the previous April King 
 Charles had appointed a commission, having Laud as its 
 head, with power to recall charters and inflict any form 
 of punishment; and it seemed probable enough that 
 Massachusetts would be speedily deprived of any legal 
 
132 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chaf. v. 
 
 title without the aid of denunciations by her own in- 
 habitants. 
 
 WilHams soon advanced to more annoying if less vital 
 criticisms. In its peril the court ordered, in April', 1634, 
 that all residents of the colony should take oath to obey 
 its laws and reveal plots against its welfare. But to Will- 
 iams's thinking an oath was an act of worship, and since 
 it was a sin to " have 'communion with a wicked man in 
 the worship of God," no magistrate had a right to call on 
 any unregenerate person to make oath. Just about the 
 time that Williams began to vent those opinions, the church 
 at Salem, which had enjoyed his ministry for more than 
 a year, ordained him to its pastorate. The views of the 
 minister and the action of the church caused great alarm 
 to the magistrates, and as a consequence, Williams was 
 summoned before the court in July, 1635. Here he was 
 charged with teaching that the civil ruler had no right to 
 punish breaches of the '' first table," that the oath could 
 not be tendered to an unregenerate man, nor could a man 
 pray without sin with his own wife or child if they were 
 unregenerate. The court called on the ministers of the 
 colony for advice, and " the said opinions were adjudged 
 by all, magistrates and ministers, . . . to be . . . very 
 dangerous " ; and the action of the Salem church in '* call- 
 ing of him to office, at that time, was judged a great con- 
 tempt of authority." The court gave the Salem church 
 and its pastor till its next meeting to think matters over. 
 
 It was at the same court which thus severely criticired 
 the Salem minister and church that a petition, presented 
 by the representatives of Salem, and claiming title in the 
 name of the town to certain lands, was laid on the table 
 pending the settlement of these disputes. The action of 
 the court in so doing was no more than might be expected 
 of ordinary human nature probably ; but it was a mixing 
 
ROGER WILLIAMS. I 33 
 
 of two distinct questions, which should have been kept 
 separate. Possibly the court doubted a little the loyalty 
 of the Salem people ; but the tabling of the petition looks 
 more like a disposition to punish the Salem church-mem- 
 bers for their certainly exasperating course. But Williams 
 met it with an act which showed that whatever mieht be 
 his theory as to the wrongfulness of coercion by magis- 
 trates in matters of worship, Sabbath-keeping, and belief, 
 he had no hesitation in applying churchly censure to com- 
 pel votes in purely secular questions. With the approval 
 of the Salem church, he now sent letters to the other 
 churches whose members had voted in the court on the 
 land question, calling on them to discipline these magis- 
 trates for the action taken on the petition. On receipt of 
 these letters some of the churches, and notably those of 
 Boston and Newtown under the lead of Cotton and Hooker, 
 remonstrated with the Salem communion, and with such 
 effect that the majority of that body began to be ashamed 
 of their course and critical of the wisdom of their pastor. 
 On perceiving that he had lost his hold on his own con- 
 gregation, Williams now turned on it, and by a letter of 
 August 16, 1635, announced to it that he had separated 
 from all the other churches of Massachusetts, and would 
 renounce communion with that of Salem unless it would 
 follow him in cutting off fellowship with its sister congre- 
 gations ''as full of antichristian pollution." The majority 
 of the Salem church had no sympathy with this demand ; 
 but Williams was fully determined, refusing even to hold 
 family prayers or say grace at table in the presence of his 
 wife so long as she continued to worship in the congrega- 
 tion of which he was still in name pastor. 
 
 On its assembly at Cambridge in September the court 
 took cognizance of the censorious letters of the Salem 
 church designed to bring church censure to bear upon the 
 
134 THE COXGKEGATIONALISrS. [Chap. v. 
 
 magistrates, by ordering home the Salem deputies, and 
 directing that Salem should send its representatives to the 
 court when the major part of its voters (of course church- 
 members) had disclaimed the offensive epistles. They 
 complied ; but the court showed no haste in dealing with 
 Williams himself. It was not till more than a month had 
 elapsed after its first meeting that Williams was brought 
 before it. Here, the advice of the ministers of the colony 
 having been had, Williams was taken to task on October 
 8th for his letters defamatory of the Christian character of 
 the Massachusetts churches, and for his other well-known 
 opinions ; and, on his defense of his views, was offered a 
 month for further thought. This he refused, and Rev. 
 Thomas Hooker was appointed to argue with him. As 
 far as any evidence of the nature of the debate has come 
 down to us, it was of an exceedingly dialectic and hair- 
 splitting sort, turning on the right of a Christian to share 
 in oaths, grace at table, and the like, with non- Christians. 
 But, as was probably to be expected. Hooker ** could not 
 reduce him from any of his errors." The court therefore 
 proceeded on October 9, 1635, to pass sentence upon 
 him : " Whereas M^' Roger Williams . . . hath broached 
 & dyvulged dyvers newe & dangerous opinions, against 
 the aucthoritie of magistrates, as also writt l[ette]res of 
 defamacon, both of the magistrates & churches here, & 
 that before any conviccon, and yet mainetaineth the same 
 without retraccon, it is therefore ordered, that the said 
 Ml" Williams shall dep'te out of this jurisdiccon within sixe 
 weekes nowe nexte ensueing." 
 
 Governor Haynes, the most prominent layman in 
 Hooker's congregation, and later to be a leader in Con- 
 necticut, summed up the case and spoke the verdict. In 
 his speech he charged Williams with four errors : his at- 
 tack on the charters, his denunciation of oaths and acts of 
 
ROGER WILLIAMS. 
 
 135 
 
 worship shared in by the unregenerate, his affirmation that 
 it was a sin to hear ministers of the Church of England 
 in the home country, and his denial of authority to magis- 
 trates in matters of belief. The fourth point in Haynes's 
 summary, which we know only from Williams's own re- 
 port, is of course the most famous; but neither Williams 
 nor the court regarded it as the chief ground of his ban- 
 ishment. 
 
 By the strict letter of the sentence Williams would have 
 been compelled to leave the Massachusetts colony for 
 England, Plymouth, or the unsettled regions about Narra- 
 gansett Bay whither Winthrop had advised him to go, by 
 November 20th ; but before that time he was ill, and the 
 Massachusetts authorities consented to his stay at Salem 
 till spring, on condition that he would not make proselytes. 
 This was doubtless too hard a condition for a man of 
 Williams's disposition — at all events, he gathered hearers 
 in his house, did *' preach to them, even of such points as 
 he had been censured for," and had drawn '' above twenty 
 persons to his opinion." The chief burden of this preach- 
 ing was still the old cry of the impurity of the Massachu- 
 setts churches in that they allowed their members who 
 returned on visits to England to listen uncensured to the 
 ministers of the Establishment. For this renewxd act of 
 opposition the court proposed to ship Williams to Eng- 
 land, but he anticipated their designs by flight, and after 
 a hard winter sojourn among the Indians, he began laying 
 the foundations of Providence with the aid of sympathizers 
 who accompanied and followed him. Here he came to 
 doubt his English baptism — a matter not surprising in one 
 so stoutly Separatist in his attitude toward the English 
 Church — and, apparently under the influence of these 
 doubts, he developed Baptist opinions not held while in 
 Massachusetts. As a result, he was baptized by Ezekiel 
 
136 77/E COA'GREGAT/OXAL/STS. [Chap. v. 
 
 Holliman in 1638, and to Holliman and ten others he in 
 turn administered tlie rite. Yet WilHams did not lone 
 remain in the fellowship of this first American Baptist 
 Church. After three or four months of walkinsf in the 
 Baptist way he declared '* that their baptism could not 
 be right, because it was not administered by an apostle " ; 
 and from thenceforward to his death, in 1684, he remained 
 a ** seeker," ready to preach or jjray with all, but holding 
 that the church and its ordinances could be reestablished 
 only by a new apostolic manifestation. 
 
 Doubtless it would have been better, taking the wnde 
 future into view% if the Massachusetts government had 
 allowed Roger Williams to turmoil the Salem community, 
 to denounce the charters, to decry the oaths of fidelity, 
 and to refuse to admit to his congregation those who did 
 not repent of once having been of the communion of the 
 Church of England. Doubtless Massachusetts lost some- 
 thing of variety, and it may be of breadth of thought, in 
 depriving itself of the stimulus of so constant and so 
 conscientious a critic as Williams. It is a loss to any 
 community to lose any good man, and especially if he 
 be a man of talent and in any way a man of progress, as 
 Williams undoubtedly was in his doctrine of freedom of 
 belief. But there are times in nascent communities, as 
 well as in plant life, when rest seems the condition of tak- 
 ing root, and to the men of Massachusetts there was much 
 in the hard-pressed situation of the colony to make the 
 most kindly of them believe this to be such a time. 
 
 Williams's banishment was for reasons affecting the 
 peace of the state and the churches rather than their 
 doctrine ; but it led to results of permanent influence on 
 American Congregationalism. As has been seen, Will- 
 iams in his attack upon the magistrates appealed in the 
 name of the Salem church to its sister churches; and they 
 
EFFECTS OF THE DTSCUSSION. 137 
 
 in turn labored with the Salem body, and not in vain. 
 The dispute brought out, as nothing before in the brief 
 history of New England had done, the sense of fellowship 
 and mutual responsibility between churches, which had 
 been foreshadowed in Bradford's right hand of fellowship 
 to the Salem church in 1629, but which is so characteristic 
 a feature of American, as distinguished from English, Con- 
 gregationalism. All these tendencies were strengthened 
 by the action of the Massachusetts General Court in the 
 spring of 1636 — action which was but the logical outcome 
 of its restriction of the franchise to church-members in 
 1 63 1, but which was occasioned apparently by the divi- 
 sions of Williams's Salem congregation and a dispute 
 which had arisen at Lynn involving a possible schism in 
 the church there on personal grounds. In March, 1636, 
 the court voted that no body of men associated after the 
 passage of this law should be approved as a church, *' with- 
 out they shall first acquainte the magistrates, & the elders 
 of the great'" p'te of the churches in this jurisdiccon, with 
 their intencons, and have their approbacon herein." 
 
 This course of procedure had been voluntarily adopted 
 by the company, which organized a church at Cambridge 
 on the 1st of February previous to this vote, and there 
 is reason to believe that it had been followed in other 
 cases ; but it was now made obligatory. The consent of 
 the ministers and the magistrates (themselves church- 
 members) was now essential to the gathering of a church. 
 Though not in form a Congregational council, it made 
 such a council practically a necessary step in church-for- 
 mation, and thus immensely strengthened the sense of 
 mutual responsibility between churches. The statute was 
 no meaningless enactment. In April, 1636, less than a 
 month after its passag-e, Rev. Richard Mather and his 
 Dorchester associates sought the prescribed approval for 
 
138 THE CONGREGATJOXA LISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 their gathering in church estate. Their case was duly 
 investigated, and though their '* confession of faith " was 
 approved, so strong were the doubts felt as to the Chris- 
 tian experience of most of the applicants that it was not 
 till the following August that their desire was granted. 
 Indeed, had the court's wishes been fulfilled, Congregation- 
 alism would have reached a greater degree of consolida- 
 tion as a consequence of the Williams dispute than it 
 actually attained. A year before the vote just quoted, in 
 March, 1635, the court had requested ''of the elders & 
 brethren of eu'y church within this jurisdiccon that they 
 will consult & advise of one vniforme order of dissipline 
 in the churches, agreeable to the Scriptures, & then to 
 consider howe farr the magistrates are bound to interpose 
 for the preservacon of that vniformity & peace of the 
 churches " ; but nothing had come of it, nor was it to bear 
 full fruitage till the Cambridge Synod of 1646-48. 
 
 This impulse toward Congregational consolidation, grow- 
 ing out of the Williams controversy and the consequent 
 measures adopted in church and state, was greatly strength- 
 ened by a second and more purely theological dispute, 
 which arose speedily after Williams's banishment — the so- 
 called Antinomian episode. In this discussion the colonial 
 authorities acted on a larger scale and with less political 
 justification than in the affair of Williams, and the conse- 
 quences were correspondingly greater. The source from 
 which this new commotion had its origin was a warm- 
 hearted, magnetic, and keen-tongued woman, Mrs. Anne 
 Hutchinson, who, with her husband, William Hutchinson, 
 had come to Boston in 1634, having been a warm admirer 
 of Cotton in old England, and being attracted across the 
 ocean by his example. A woman of much skill in nursing, 
 and self-sacrificing in her devotion to those of her own sex 
 who needed her services, she soon endeared herself to a 
 
THE '' ANTINOMIAKSy I 39 
 
 large circle In the little colonial seaport. To these friends 
 she talked on what was the great theme of interest — re- 
 ligion ; and especially on the merits and demerits of the 
 discourses of the colonial ministers. These meetings, at 
 first confined to her own sex, grew rapidly in popularity, 
 and as they increased in attendance enlarged in scope, 
 until they became a religious power in the little commu- 
 nity. The views which Mrs. Hutchinson unfolded to her 
 admiring auditors were those now known as '' perfection- 
 ism," or the " higher life." To her thinking, the Holy 
 Spirit dwells in every believer in a personal union so as 
 to become one being with him, and so as to preclude the 
 need of any other evidence of sanctification than a con- 
 sciousness of this divine conjunction to prove a man a 
 Christian. In fact, to argue the existence of Christian 
 character from betterment of morals, delight in God's 
 worship, or anything short of a conscious feeling of union 
 with God, was to rest in a ''covenant of works"; while 
 to one under the *' covenant of grace " divine illumina- 
 tion, complete confidence, and undoubted salvation were 
 assured. 
 
 The labors of Mrs. Hutchinson, at first approved by 
 the authorities, and especially by Cotton, did not come to 
 their full fruitage till 1636, when two other forces of tur- 
 moil had been added to the Boston community. In Octo- 
 ber, 1635, Henry Vane, later to be Sir Henry and one of 
 the most conspicuous figures of the great drama of the 
 English Commonv/ealth, landed at Boston. Young, hand- 
 some, and popular, above all the son of an influential 
 royal counselor at a time when Massachusetts needed all 
 possible aid at the Court of Whitehall, Vane was eagerly 
 taken up by a colony which had temporarily tired of Win- 
 throp and had tried Thomas Dudley and John Haynes in 
 the gubernatorial chair. In May, 1636, Vane was elected 
 
I40 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 governor. From his coming to Boston Vane was actively 
 in sympathy with Mrs. Hutchinson, and through their in- 
 fluence the Boston church, to which they both belonged, 
 came to be chiefly of the same way of thinking. Its 
 pastor, Wilson, and Winthrop opposed the movement. 
 Cotton, though he said little, was counted its friend. The 
 second element of strength added to the Hutchinsonian 
 side was due to the coming into the colony in May, 1636, 
 of Mr. Hutchinson's brother-in-lav\', Rev. John Wheel- 
 wright, a graduate of Cambridge and a minister of the 
 Church of England of pronounced Puritan beliefs. 
 
 By the time of Wheelwright's arrival the Boston church 
 was in a divided state. Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends 
 desired to have him as one of the ministers of that church. 
 Wilson opposed, and was now openly attacked, as under 
 the ** covenant of works." The projected calling of Wheel- 
 wright failed through the hostility of Winthrop, in a debate 
 which involved Vane, Cotton, and Wheehvright himself; 
 but he was given a ministerial position at Mount Wollas- 
 ton, then a Boston territorial appendage. Yet if the feeling 
 of Boston w^as warmly Hutchinsonian, that of the churches 
 and ministers of the other towns supported Winthrop and 
 Wilson; and on October 25, 1636, a meeting of ministers 
 at Boston tried in vain to heal the breach. By the out-of- 
 Boston party Winthrop was looked upon as the champion 
 of good order, while the majority of the Boston church 
 held to Vane, who more and more represented the Hutch- 
 insonian theories. By December, 1636, the ministers of 
 the colony appeared before the magistrates, where Hugh 
 Peter, the Salem pastor, openly rebuked Vane as respon- 
 sible for much of the confusion ; and they next debated 
 with Mrs. Hutchinson herself, who maintained her favorite 
 position that while Cotton and Wheelwright preached the 
 ** covenant of grace," the rest of the ministers were under 
 
THE ' ' A NTINOMIA NS. ' 
 
 141 
 
 the " covenant of works," not having received the '' seal " 
 — or, as some theological circles of the present day would 
 say, a ''second blessing." On the last day of 1636 the 
 Boston church, led by Vane, endeavored to censure Wil- 
 son ; but its rule requiring unanimity in important action 
 prevented, though Cotton admonished his colleague before 
 the congregation. And at a fast held on January 20, 
 1637, Wheelwright, preaching before the Boston church, 
 added fuel to the flame by describing those under the 
 ''covenant of works" as "Antichrists." As Winthrop 
 recorded, " it began to be as common here to distinguish 
 between men, by being under a covenant of grace or a 
 covenant of works, as in other countries between Protest- 
 ants and Papists." 
 
 When the court met in the following March, Wheel- 
 wright was censured for this sermon by the majority, in 
 spite of the protests of Vane and of a large portion of the 
 Boston church. The dispute had now involved the whole 
 colony, and on it the election of May, 1637, turned, with 
 Winthrop and Vane as representatives of the rival inter- 
 ests. At this election Vane and his friends were dropped 
 from office, but were promptly chosen as representatives 
 of Boston as a reply of that defiantly Hutchinsonian town 
 to the substitution of Winthrop for Vane in the governor- 
 ship. The successful party made an ungenerous use of 
 their victory by enacting a law forbidding the entertain- 
 ment of strangers for more than three weeks without the 
 consent of the magistrates — a law general in form, but 
 really designed to prevent the settlement in the colony of 
 friends and relatives of the Hutchinsonian faction whose 
 immigration was expected. 
 
 The supporters of the " covenant of grace " were now 
 politically beaten in the larger field of colonial interests ; 
 but in Boston they were dominant, and expressed their 
 
142 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 dislike of their opponent heartily. The Boston halberd- 
 bearers, who had lent official state to the governor on 
 public occasions, refused to honor Winthrop. The Boston 
 levy for the Pequot campaign largely declined to serve in 
 the little army of the colony, because the Boston pastor, 
 Wilson, was chaplain, and he was under the " covenant of 
 works." Certainly affairs seemed moving perilously near 
 to civil conflict. 
 
 What might have happened had Vane remained in New 
 England is impossible to say ; but the Hutchinson party 
 received a staggering blow when Vane, who had not re- 
 covered from his disappointment occasioned by the loss 
 of the governorship, sailed for England, August 3, 1637. 
 Two days after Hooker and Stone of Hartford and other 
 prominent ministers and laymen came to Boston, called to 
 the first general Congregational council, or, as they styled 
 it, "synod." The suggestion of this assembly originated 
 with some of the Massachusetts ministers, but the plan 
 was submitted to the magistrates for their consent, and 
 with magisterial approval " sundry Elders were sent for, 
 from other jurisdictions, and messengers from all the 
 Churches in the Country." Though its summons is unre- 
 corded in the Colonial Records, so much was it deemed a 
 creature of the General Court that the board of its attend- 
 ants from Massachusetts and the traveling-expenses as 
 well of those from Connecticut was paid from the colonial 
 treasury. Soon after Hooker's arrival in Boston with the 
 other Connecticut delegates, the date of the synod's open- 
 ing was fixed by the ministers, in consultation with the 
 magistrates, for August 30th, at Cambridge. Here, on 
 the day appointed, in the rude meeting-house that pos- 
 sessed the distinction of having '* a bell upon it," there 
 gathered not only " all the teaching elders through the 
 country, and some new come out of England, not yet 
 
THE FIRST SYNOD. 1 43 
 
 called to any place here, as Mr. Davenport," later of New 
 Haven, numbering perhajjs twenty-five in all, but with 
 them '* others sent by the churches " ; and with these 
 members of the synod proper there sat the Massachusetts 
 magistrates, as assistants in debate rather than as voters. 
 It was no longer a mere assemblage of ministers such as 
 had frequently gathered at the request of the magistrates. 
 The body was distinctly representative of the churches, 
 and, as such, contained the deputies of the ordinary mem- 
 bership which distinguished a Congregational council from 
 a ministerial convention, and gave to Congregationalism, 
 even in its most theocratic period, a democratic character 
 compared with other polities. It marked the highest 
 expression yet attained of that sense of community and 
 responsibility, of fellowship in churchly concerns, which 
 had been growing in New England since the days of 
 Fuller's ministrations at Salem, and distinguishes American 
 Congregationalism from English Independency. 
 
 But while this gathering was thus momentous for Con- 
 gregational history, its proceedings exhibited no more 
 toleration than those of the court. Under the joint mod- 
 eratorship of Thomas Hooker of Hartford, Conn., and Peter 
 Bulkeley of Concord, Mass., and with John Higginson as 
 its scribe, whom the New England ministers had been 
 educating out of love for his short-lived father, the synod 
 held its sessions for twenty-four days. Some eighty-two 
 errors, said to be entertained by the Hutchinsonian party 
 or deducible from its beliefs, or at least held by some in 
 New England, were enumerated and condemned by the 
 overwhelming majority of the assembly, though the dele- 
 gates of the Boston church protested, and some of them 
 left the synod. As the session went on. Cotton more and 
 more came over to the majority, so that Wheelwright was 
 left alone. Mrs. Hutchinson's large '* set assemblies " for 
 
144 rJIE COXGRl'.GAJIOXALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 women were "agreed to be disorderly"; and die public 
 questioning- of a minister by a " jjrivate member" at the 
 close of his sermon was only to be " very wisely and spar- 
 ingly done." 
 
 A result so generally harmonious was so satisfactory to 
 Winthrop in particular that the governor proposed that 
 synods should be annually held ; but for this development 
 Congregationalism was not ready, and the suggestion was 
 disapproved. A second proposition of Winthrop, that the 
 synod should decide upon the method of ministerial sup- 
 port, was laid aside by the ministers with a high-minded- 
 ness usually characteristic of the New England clergy, 
 ** lest it should be said that this assembly was gathered 
 for their private advantage." On September 22d the 
 synod adjourned. 
 
 Since the Hutchinsonian party remained openly defiant 
 of the synod's conclusions, the court felt the more disposed 
 to take sharp measures against it. At the November ses- 
 sion Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson were sentenced to 
 banishment, the latter after claiming direct divine revela- 
 tions ; and, by an arbitrary stretch of authority, the re- 
 monstrance which the people of Boston had addressed 
 to a previous legislature in March, 1637, praying that the 
 court would not interfere with Wheelwright, was now in- 
 terpreted as constructive sedition, and those of its signers 
 who would not express their contrition were disarmed and 
 some of them disfranchised. With the fifty-eight thus 
 deprived of their arms in Boston, seventeen persons in five 
 other towns, were joined by the court. The result was 
 the complete break-down of opposition. Public feeling in 
 Boston changed, or at least was silenced ; Cotton was now 
 wholly identified Vvith the majority. In March, 1638, Mrs. 
 Hutchinson, who had been permitted to remain through 
 the winter in Massachusetts, was brought before the Boston 
 
FATE OF THE ANllNOMIANS. 145 
 
 church, of which she was a member, and where she had 
 formerly enjoyed the sympathy of the majority ; and, after 
 a trial reflecting- little credit on any concerned, she was 
 excommunicated. Going to Rhode Island soon after her 
 excommunication, she Uved near the present Newport till 
 1642, when she removed to Manhattan Island, then under 
 Dutch jurisdiction, and was there murdered by the Indians 
 with most of her family in August of the next year. Her 
 connection, Wheelwright, began the hard wilderness life 
 anew in the winter of 1636-37 at Exeter, N. H. ; but 
 ultimately returned to Massachusetts, and died in 1679 
 as pastor of the church at Sahsbury. Mrs. Hutchinson's 
 sympathizer, William Coddington, became one of the 
 founders of Rhode Island institutions. 
 
 The main actors in these proscriptions naturally desired 
 to make the religious element in them seem as slight as 
 possible, while they emphasized the civil breach of peace 
 which these troubles threatened. No doubt they sincerely 
 believed the danger of poHtical division, especially in the 
 threatening attitude of the Enghsh Government, a very 
 real peril. No doubt, too, they sincerely feared an out- 
 burst of fanaticism such as men had associated for a 
 century, for the most part wrongly enough, with ''Ana- 
 baptism " or ''Antinomianism." But the rehgious motive 
 was the leading impulse on both sides, and if it led on 
 the one to mystical and erroneous views, it led on the 
 other to persecution as real as it was unjustifiable. It 
 led also, as our story has pointed out, to a remarkable 
 development of the principle of fellowship in Congrega- 
 tionalism, which involved the calling of the first general 
 council. 
 
 Unfortunately, the spirit of persecution once aroused 
 was not easily checked. The political necessities which 
 largely justified the treatment of W^illiams by Massachusetts 
 
146 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 were much less of a factor in the Hutchinsonian dispute, 
 though still present ; in the proscription of Baptists and 
 Quakers they were hardly of weight at all. Persons of 
 Baptist principles were to be found among the Puritan 
 settlers of New England from the beginning ; but so long 
 as they did not violently attack infant baptism or the 
 churches practicing it they were let alone. 
 
 As early as December 14, 1642, three women of Lynn 
 and Salem were before the quarter court for their Bap- 
 tist views. A little later, February 28, 1643, William 
 Witter, of Lynn, was brought to answer by the same tri- 
 bunal, having " called our ordenonce of God a badge of 
 the whore." Witter made apology; but in February, 
 1646, he was again before the court of Salem " for saying 
 that they who stayed whiles a child is baptized doe wor- 
 shipp the dyvell." This case, and one or two others, in- 
 duced the General Court to take action in November, 1644, 
 when a law was passed threatening all opponents of infant 
 baptism with banishment. For his Baptist sentiments, 
 Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard College, 
 was compelled to resign his post in 1654. But Plymouth 
 colony was by no means as severe in this matter as Massa- 
 chusetts ; and the patience and persistence of the Baptists 
 at last broke down the opposition of the Massachusetts 
 authorities themselves. \\\ 1665 a Baptist church was 
 organized in Boston, which soon worshiped on Noddle's 
 Island. The court intervened, and in 1668 sentenced 
 three of these dissenters to banishment ; but protests from 
 prominent men of the colony and from leading English 
 Congregational ministers prevented the full execution of 
 this decree; and by 1674 this Baptist church was trans- 
 ferred to Boston. By the clo.s'e of the century Cotton 
 Mather could write of the Baptists: ''We are willing to 
 
BAPTISTS AND QUAKERS. 1 47 
 
 acknowledge for our brethren as many of them as are 
 willing to be so acknowledged." 
 
 This spirit of persecution manifested itself in far more 
 violent forms against the Quakers than against the Bap- 
 tists, in proportion as their own conduct was more exas- 
 perating. The Baptist at least claimed to stand with the 
 Puritan on the Word of God. The Quaker asserted a 
 divine illumination which made his actions and his testi- 
 mony directly inspired of God ; and however necessary 
 such a protest as his may have been against the literalism 
 of the Puritan's interpretation of the Bible, there can be 
 no doubt that the early New England Quaker by conduct 
 and speech convinced the Puritan that he was an enemy 
 against decency and order rather than a messenger of the 
 Lord. Probably the extremer forms of Quaker demon- 
 stration were aggravated by the repressive measures from 
 which the Quakers suffered ; but much that they did 
 would, if done in our own day, have brought them before 
 the police-court and into examination as to mental sanity. 
 First arriving in the colony in July, 1656, they were im- 
 prisoned and sent away ; and in October of that year a 
 law was passed by the General Court, now presided over 
 by Endicott and Bellingham, two of the sternest of Mas- 
 sachusetts Puritans, as governor and deputy-governor, 
 ordering that all Quakers should be whipped, imprisoned, 
 and transported out of the country. Similar laws were 
 enacted in Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven colo- 
 nies. Yet Quakers continued to come, claiming " a mes- 
 sage from the Lord "; and in 1658 the penalty for return 
 after banishment was, by recommendation of the commis- 
 sioners of the four colonies, increased in Massachusetts to 
 death. The three other colonies failed to follow the advice 
 of their commissioners, and the Massachusetts lower House 
 
1^8 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 passed the statute by a majority of only one. But the 
 Quakers were persistent. Under what they beheved to 
 be divine impulse, they continued to return to Massachu- 
 setts in order to denounce its institutions and revile its 
 ministers and magistrates. In accordance with this law, 
 two men were executed at Boston in 1659, one woman 
 in 1660, and a man in 1661. But opposition to these 
 severities was strong in the colony, and in May, 1 66 1, the 
 law was greatly alleviated. In 1677 the last instance of 
 punishment of Quakers by whipping occurred ; and though 
 Massachusetts still looked upon them with di.sfavor, they, 
 like the Baptists and all other Protestants, received freedom 
 from molestation by the new charter granted to the colony 
 in 1 69 1. 
 
 The shortcomings of a neighboring people are slight 
 excuse indeed for national failings ; but it is not without 
 interest to observe that the repressive measures of the New 
 England Puritans were nothing peculiar to them. In- 
 deed, if the severity rather than the spirit of the statute 
 be made the test, American Puritanism appears lenient in 
 comparison with the mother-country, or with the other 
 great English colonial experiment of the period, the Church- 
 of-England colony of Virginia. Under what has recentl}' 
 been described as the " wholesome discipline " of Sir 
 Thomas Dale, high marshal of that colony from 161 1 to 
 161 6, a code of laws of military strictness was estab- 
 lished. By these statutes continued absence from daily 
 services was punishable with six months in the galleys, 
 and similar neglect of Sunday worship with death. This 
 harsh rule was probably never fully enforced, and it 
 was modified when the colonial assembly of Virginia 
 began its existence in 1619; but the worship of the 
 Church of p:ngland still remained the exclusive legal 
 form, and attendance on its services " both forenoon and 
 
PURITANISM NOT ALONE SEVERE. 149 
 
 afternoon " was enjoined on " all persons whatsoever," 
 under a fine established by statute in 1623, as a hogshead 
 of tobacco for a single willful absence, and of ^50 for a 
 month's neglect. Yet, in spite of this enforced uniformity, 
 an appeal came from some of the people of Virginia to 
 Boston in 1642 asking for Congregational missionaries. 
 New England heard the request, and in response Rev. 
 Messrs. William Tompson of Braintree, John Knowles of 
 Watertown, and Thomas James of New Haven went 
 thither with the commendation of their ministerial asso- 
 ciates. Yet, though they had some slight success, their 
 mission was a failure, owing to the opposition of the gov- 
 ernment, which drove out the ministers, and, though the 
 dissenters numbered a hundred and eighteen, *' made an 
 order that all such as would not conform to the discipline 
 of the Church of England should depart the country by a 
 certain day." So effective were the drastic measures of 
 the Virginia assembly that Governor Spotswood was able 
 to write in 17 10, two generations after this expulsion : *' It 
 is a peculiar blessing to this Country to have but few 
 of any kind of Dissenters." Certainly the New England 
 Puritan was not more bigoted than the Virginia Episco- 
 palian. 
 
 But it should not be forgotten, in any estimate of Puri- 
 tan New England, that it had in itself a principle that ulti- 
 mately worked the cure of its limitation of religious free- 
 dom. It believed profoundly in the authoritative character 
 of the Word of God ; but in the interpretation of that 
 Word, as John Fiske has pointed out, it employed no aid 
 save reason, enlightened by whatever of learning men 
 could attain. In this regard it was beyond all other Chris- 
 tian countries of the age rationalist It appealed to no 
 standards of interpretation fixed in bygone centuries, or 
 by authoritative councils. It claimed no insight into the 
 
I^o THE COXGKEGATIONALISTS. [Chap. V, 
 
 Scriptures for its ministers beyond what any layman might 
 and ought to reach by a similar degree of education and 
 study. It laid down no dictum as to the meaning of the 
 Bible which it did not believe to be grounded on the same 
 bases of rational argument that it apphed to the concerns 
 of law or business. Its ministers were no priestly order 
 demanding reverence as the exclusive expounders of 
 divine oracles, or claiming any inherent right to direct the 
 affairs of state. Their influence, great as it was, had no 
 other basis than that of special knowledge obtained through 
 ordinary processes of learning addressed to themes which 
 the community deemed of first importance. It was 
 largely because Mrs. Hutchinson and the Quakers claimed 
 other sources of authority, substituting for study of the 
 Bible and logical deductions from its teachings what they 
 affirmed to be divine revelations, that they seemed so ob- 
 noxious to the New England Puritans. Such a system of 
 scholarly investigation implies, however dimly the implica- 
 tion may be apprehended, the possibility of revision, which 
 no dogmatic or confessional system allows without revolu- 
 tion. And though the Congregationalists of the seven- 
 teenth century adopted elaborate statements of faith as 
 expressions of the beliefs of the body of New England 
 churches, by allowing each church freedom of creed-forma- 
 tion and autonomy in government within the general limits 
 of fellowship they unintentionally made the way easy for 
 local modification and adaptation to advancing discussion. 
 Nor did the ministry of early New England manifest 
 any jealousy oi laymen either in theologic discussion or 
 in church administration. There were no fountains of 
 divine knowledge not open to the ordinary church-mem- 
 ber. By the votes of laymen the minister received the 
 *' call " which gave him all the ministerial title he possessed ; 
 and though when in office a minister had a more authori- 
 
INVESTIGA TION AND EDUCA TION. \ 5 i 
 
 tative position than he enjoys in modern democratic Con- 
 gregationaHsm, the doctrine, discipHne, and increase of 
 any particular church rested ultimately on the decision of 
 its non-clerical membership. In all synods and councils 
 the lay element was present, and usually during the seven- 
 teenth century in larger numbers than the ministers. It 
 was this working together of the religious community as 
 a whole which renders the repressive acts of which account 
 has been given the work of no one class, and which made 
 it certain that as soon as public sentiment in general was 
 ready for toleration repression would cease. 
 
 One other feature of the Congregational life of the 
 seventeenth century shows that in spite of whatever 
 narrow^ness it may have exhibited it was in a healthful 
 state, and had in it seeds of future freedom. New Eng- 
 land Congregationalism believed that education was one 
 of the chief safeguards of the Christian life. Such a con- 
 ception was the natural outcome of the importance it at- 
 tached to the Bible, and especially of the method by which 
 the truths contained therein were thought to be discover- 
 able. The Puritan had no sympathy with the doctrine 
 that ignorance is the mother of faith; to his thinking, 
 education is the road to knowledge in divine things. The 
 New Englanders of the seventeenth century, judged by 
 modern standards, were not a reading people ; but com- 
 pared with the common people of the land from which 
 they had come forth, they were educated ; and their min- 
 istry was from the first a conspicuously learned body of 
 men. Moved by the desire to train up successors worthy 
 of the graduates of Cambridge and Oxford who occupied 
 New England pulpits, the Massachusetts General Court, 
 on October 28, 1636, voted ^^400 for a " colledge." The 
 same court that exiled Mrs. Hutchinson in November, 
 1637, ordered that it should be at Newtown, soon after 
 
152 THE CONGREGAriONA LISTS. [Chap. V. 
 
 named Cambridge, doubtless in honor of the English alma 
 mater of nearly fifty of the inhabitants of the colonies; 
 and to this college the name of Harvard was given in 
 March, 1639, in honor of its principal benefactor. The first 
 commencement at this seat of learning was held in 1642, 
 and from that time till the founding of Yale College, in 
 I 701, it was almost the sole source from which the New 
 England ministry was replenished. 
 
 Lower education also soon attracted the attention of the 
 colonial governments. Boston had a school by 1635; in 
 Hartford one was in existence by 1637, ^.nd by 1643 the 
 town voted to pay the tuition of any whose parents were 
 " not able to pay for their teaching" ; New Haven estab- 
 lished a school in 1642. The example thus set was en- 
 forced by the colonial legislatures. In November, 1647, 
 Massachusetts thus ordered : " yt ev^y towneship in this 
 iurisdiction, aft'' y^ Lord hath increased y»^ to y^ number 
 of 50 houshold>"^, shall then forthw^h appoint one w^^Mn 
 their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him 
 to write & reade ;...&... y^ where any towne shall 
 increase to y^ numb'' of 100 families or househould'"^, they 
 sliall set up a gramer schoole, y^ m'" thereof being able to 
 instruct youth so farr as they may be fited for y^ university." 
 
 This Massachusetts statute was copied verbally in the 
 code of laws enacted by the Connecticut Court in May, 
 1650. And the reason given in both cases is that men 
 might have a better understanding of the Word of God : 
 " it being," as the court expressed it, " one cheife proiect 
 of yt ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men from the knowl- 
 edge of ye Scriptures." 
 
 Certainly a community in which the autonomy of the 
 local church was preserved ; in which separate colonial 
 jurisdictions grew out of and perpetuated somewhat diver- 
 gent theories as to the extent of the theocratic principle 
 
THEIR EFFECT. 
 
 153 
 
 in the administration of the state ; in which laymen were 
 concerned in the definition of doctrine and the management 
 of ecclesiastical affairs to a degree nowhere else exempli- 
 fied ; and in which the interpretation of the fundamental 
 religious rule, the Scriptures, was based solely on studious 
 investigation and argument — was a community having in 
 its constitution principles which must lead to religious 
 freedom, in which repression could be only a passing phase 
 of development, and which was certain to produce strong, 
 intelligent, intellectually acute, Christian men and women. 
 
 As a matter of fact, in spite of the repression of the ex- 
 tremer forms of dissent from what was practically an estab- 
 lished church, discussion of polity — and, to a considerable 
 extent, of doctrine — was a necessary characteristic of early 
 New England life, and from these debates continued prog- 
 ress in the development of the principle of fellowship re- 
 sulted. The form which these discussions took was largely 
 determined by the changing state of public affairs in Eng- 
 land — a change which led, in 1640, to the summons of 
 the Long Parliament, and in 1642 to war between Parlia- 
 ment and the king and the dominance in parliamentary 
 counsels of Presbyterian Puritanism. To some extent, 
 also, debates as to the extent of church-membership and 
 consequent right to baptism, which were to turmoil the 
 New England churches in the sixth and seventh decades 
 of the seventeenth century, made their beginnings felt soon 
 after the Hutchinsonian dispute. 
 
 Naturally the rapid development of Congregationalism 
 in New England excited the curiosity, and to some extent 
 the concern, of the Puritan party In the mother-country. 
 Through the influence of Cartwrlght and other of its early 
 leaders the nonconformity of that party Inclined toward 
 Presbyterlanism. To many of its leaders the Congrega- 
 tionalism of Massachusetts and Connecticut seemed a fall- 
 
154 THE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 Ing away under Plymouth example into dangerous Sepa- 
 ratism. Accordingly, as early as 1636 or 1637 the English 
 Puritans sent across the ocean two sets of queries as to the 
 constitution of a church ; membership ; forms of worship ; 
 the use of a liturgy ; ministerial election, ordination, and 
 standing ; councils ; and, in fact, the whole range of eccle- 
 siastical life. The shorter of these inquiries, entitled " A 
 Letter of Many Ministers in Old England, requesting The 
 judgement of their Reverend Brethren in New England 
 concerning Nine Positions," was replied to by Rev. John 
 Davenport, of New Haven, under the caption of *' An 
 Answer of the Elders of the Severall Chvrches in New- 
 England unto Nine Positions," and both the query and 
 the reply were printed at London in 1643, after they had 
 circulated several years in manuscript. The longer series 
 of questions, thirty-two in number, were replied to in 1639 
 by Rev. Richard Mather, of Dorchester, but his tractate, 
 Hke that of Davenport, did not appear in print till 1643, 
 and bears the title of '* Church- Government and Church- 
 Covenant Discvssed, \\\ an Ansvvcr of the Elders of the 
 severall Churches in New- England To two and thirty 
 Questions." These elaborate expositions of the various 
 aspects of New England Congregationalism evoked plen- 
 tiful reply, and were soon followed by others. Thus, not 
 long after Mather's tract was composed, Rev. John Cotton, 
 of Boston, wrote a manuscript defense of New England 
 methods, which reached England in an imperfect or undi- 
 gested copy, and after circulating in manuscript for several 
 years was printed in 1645 as the ** Way of the Churches 
 of Christ in New-England." Even more important as 
 one of the formative expositions of American Congrega- 
 tionalism was Cotton's " Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven," 
 published at London in 1644. These works led to many 
 opposing treatises, especially after the call of the West- 
 
CONGREGAllONAL TREATISES. I 55 
 
 minster Assembly and the adoption of the Covenant by 
 Parhament in 1643 made Presbyterianism dominant in 
 England. Perhaps the most weighty of these replies, in 
 the estimate of the founders of New England, was the 
 ** Due right of Presbyteries," published by Professor 
 Samuel Rutherford, of the University of St. Andrew's, in 
 1644. To this work Mather rejoined in 1647 by his 
 "Reply to Mr. Rutherfurd," and Cotton in 1648 by his 
 '* Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared"; but 
 the most important answer was that of Rev. Thomas 
 Hooker, of Hartford, in his '' Survey of the Summe of 
 Church-Discipline," the original manuscript of which was 
 sent from New Haven by the celebrated " phantom ship " 
 in January, 1646. Its destruction in the mysterious loss 
 of the vessel to which it was intrusted led to its ultimate 
 publication, in 1648, from an exceedingly imperfect man- 
 uscript, after the death of the writer ; yet fragmentary as 
 it is. Hooker's " Survey " ranks with Cotton's " Keyes " 
 as one of the chief settings forth of early New England 
 Congregationalism. 
 
 This formulation of the Congregational system in elabo- 
 rate treatises, only the more important of which have been 
 named, was chiefly the result of inquiry and criticism from 
 beyond the sea ; but even more positive consequences in 
 the way of definition flowed from home debates. Not all 
 of the founders thought alike upon polity. At Newbury, 
 Mass., the pastor and teacher, Thomas Parker and James 
 Noyes, were so far inclined toward Presbyterianism that 
 they did away with the participation of the ordinary mem- 
 bership in church acts save in ministerial election. At 
 Hingham, Rev. Peter Hobart was of the same opinion. 
 But to the majority of the ministry of New England this 
 denial to the brethren of a share in admissions, dismissions, 
 and discipline seemed a serious error ; and therefore a con- 
 
156 THE CONGKEGAriONALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 vention of the ministers of the Congregational colonies was 
 held at Cambridge in September, 1643, with Cotton and 
 Hooker for its moderators. It was not a synod, like the 
 council of 1637, though that name has sometimes loosely- 
 been given to it, for it had in it no delegates from the lay 
 membership of the churches. By this assembly the New- 
 bury ministers were labored with, though not convinced; 
 and it shows the advance toward consolidation that the 
 few years of establishment on American soil had efifected, 
 that the suggestion vainly proposed by Winthrop in the 
 Synod of 1637 was approved with added emphasis by the 
 convention, which agreed, " that Consociation of churches, 
 in way of more general meetings, yearly ; and more pri- 
 vately, monthly, or quarterly ; as Consultative Synods ; are 
 very comfortable, and necessary for the peace and good of 
 the churches." It is hardly needful to point out that the 
 word "consociation" was not used by the first two gen- 
 erations on New England soilin the technical sense later 
 attached to it in Connecticut ; what the convention had in 
 view more nearly resembles the modern Congregational 
 " conference." 
 
 It was natural that the unhealed difference between the 
 ministers at Newbury and Hingham, the manifestation of 
 Bapti-st sentiments here and there among the membership 
 of the churches, and above all the growing prominence of 
 the questions as to the extent of church-membership and 
 the right to baptism out of which the Half-Way Cove- 
 nant discussion was to grow, should incline men who had 
 just expressed their approval of frequent meetings of the 
 churches to desire a new general council to determine the 
 questions at issue, and to give to the churches the ** one 
 vniforme order of dissipline," the propriety of which had 
 been urged by the Massachusetts General Court as early 
 as March, 1635. But other causes impelled toward the 
 
VASSALL AND CHILD. I 57 
 
 formulation of Congregational order. Parliament was at 
 war with the king, and in that struggle had the hearty 
 sympathy of the New England colonies. But Parliament 
 and its Scotch supporters were violently Presbyterian. 
 The Westminster Assembly had been engaged since July, 
 1643, in preparing a Presbyterian Confession and ecclesi- 
 astical constitution for England. Moreover, Parliament, 
 in November, 1643, had established a board entitled " The 
 Commissioners for Plantations," with power '* to provide 
 for, order, and dispose all things " for the colonies, and 
 in fact exercise all the authority formerly possessed over 
 them by the king. It seemed no idle fear that when the 
 Westminster Assembly had done its work Parliament would 
 force the acceptance of its results on New England, as it 
 seemed hkely to do on other parts of the realm. This 
 fear was strengthened by a formidable movement in 1645 
 and 1646, led by William Vassall, of Plymouth colony, and 
 Dr. Robert Child and a number of associates in the Mas- 
 sachusetts jurisdiction. These men, dissatisfied with the 
 limitation of the suffrage to church-members in Massachu- 
 setts, and with the strenuous barriers which Congregation- 
 alism everywhere placed between the sacraments and 
 all who could not unite in church covenant on the basis 
 of personal religious experience, petitioned the courts of 
 Massachusetts and Plymouth for the privileges which they 
 would have had in church and state in England, and 
 threatened that if their desires were not granted they 
 would appeal to Parliament for redress. Certainly they 
 had much reason to feel that their complaint was just ; yet 
 had the courts granted their requests, the fabric of New 
 .England institutions would have been profoundly altered. 
 And had they not been frustrated in their attempt to 
 secure parliamentary interference by the great poHtical 
 reversal which in 1647 made Cromwell and the army, 
 
158 THE COXGKEGATIONALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 rather than Parhament, masters of England, New England 
 institutions would probably have been forcibly changed 
 by a parliamentary power no less arbitrary than that of 
 King Charles himself. 
 
 It was under these circumstances of internal discussion 
 and dreaded interference from without that some of the 
 Massachusetts ministers obtained from the General Court 
 of that colony, in spite of considerable hesitation on the 
 part of the representatives of the towns in the lower House, 
 the summons of a synod by a call dated May 15, 1646. 
 By this legislative invitation the churches of Massachu- 
 setts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven were asked 
 to send their ministers and delegates to meet at Cambridge 
 on the 1st of September following, ** there to discusse, 
 dispute, & cleare up, by the word of God, such questions 
 of church governmt & discipline ... as they shall thinke 
 needfull & meete." 
 
 The particular questions which seemed to the court to 
 be the most pressing were ** those about baptisme, & ye 
 p'sons to be received thereto " ; but the invitation doubt- 
 less was intended to allow freedom to formulate the whole 
 round of ecclesiastical practice. 
 
 Yet, in spite of the call of the court, four Massachu- 
 setts churches were unrepresented when the 1st of Sep- 
 tember came. Hingham was doubtless disinclined, owing 
 to a recent quarrel with the colonial authorities ; at Con- 
 cord the minister was unable to go, and no brother of the 
 church was deemed gifted enough to be its delegate ; but 
 at Boston and Salem considerable portions of the congre- 
 gation had doubts as to the wisdom of synods by legisla- 
 tive authority. These scruples were overcome after much 
 argument ; but this discussion consumed a number of 
 days, and the attendance from other colonies than Mas- 
 sachusetts was small, and therefore, having appointed 
 
TFIE CAMBRIDGE SYNOD. 
 
 159 
 
 Rev. Messrs. John Cotton of Boston, Richard Mather of 
 Dorchester, and Ralph Partridge of Duxbury each to 
 draught a " model of church government,"- the Synod 
 adjourned to June 8, 1647. At that time it reassembled, 
 but an epidemic caused its speedy adjournment for the 
 second time. 
 
 Soon after its second recess the court laid a new task 
 upon the Synod. The Westminster Assembly was well 
 known to have prepared a Confession of Faith, which, 
 though presented to ParHament in December, 1646, was 
 not approved by that body till after much revision, in June, 
 1648. Till adopted by the Scotch General Assembly on 
 August 27, 1647, it had been held secret; and its exact 
 nature was in all probability unknown in New England 
 when the General Court of Massachusetts met in October 
 of that year.- It doubtless seemed to many in New Eng- 
 land that it would be well for the Synod to be ready with 
 a confession of its own should that of Westminster prove 
 unsatisfactory, and therefore the court requested seven 
 of the Massachusetts ministers each to prepare " a breife 
 forme of this nature, & p'sent ye same to ye next session 
 of ye synode." 
 
 Meanwhile affairs in England were rapidly assuming an 
 aspect satisfactory to the New England Congregationalists. 
 Child and his friends had gone thither to prosecute their 
 complaints, and the Massachusetts authoriries had sent 
 Gov. Edward Winslow of Plymouth thither, in December, 
 1646, as its agent to prevent the English governmental 
 interference which Child proposed to invoke. In this 
 mission Winslow was entirely successful, not so much on 
 account of his own labors, though he was skillful and 
 energetic in high degree, as by reason of the downfall of 
 the Presbyterian ascendency owing to the rise of the army 
 to poHrical supremacy in 1647 and 1648. When the 
 
l6o THE COXG KEG ATI OXA LISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 Synod met, therefore, for its final session on August 15, 
 1648, the political horizon seemed brighter than at any 
 time in its history. Two draughts certainly of the three 
 models of church government requested by the Synod 
 were presented ; and that of Rev. Richard Mather was 
 preferred to that of Rev. Ralph Partridge, though much 
 abridged and somewhat modified by the assembly. In 
 particular, the extension of baptism to the children of those 
 who, though themselves baptized offspring of parents in 
 church-covenant, were not persons of Christian experience 
 — the system later known as the Half- Way Covenant — 
 though given a place by Mather and Partridge in their 
 draughts, and though prominently in the thought of the 
 court as a question to be determined by the Synod, was 
 left undecided, after considerable debate, owing to the 
 strenuous opposition of a few to the innovation. The 
 defeat of Child and his friends made it seem a less press- 
 ing question than at the call of the Synod. Thus revised, 
 Mather's draught became the celebrated " Cambridge 
 Platform." At the same time the Synod fulfilled the 
 further request of the court, that a confession of faith 
 should be adopted, by approving " for the substance 
 therof " the doctrinal parts of the Westminster Confession, 
 which had now reached New England. With these acts 
 the most important of early Congregational councils came 
 to an end. 
 
 The " Platform," provided with a preface by Rev. John 
 Cotton elucidating certain features of Congregational pol- 
 ity and defending the orthodoxy of the New England 
 churches, was printed at Cambridge in 1649, ^"<^ P^'^- 
 sented to the Massachusetts court at its October session 
 in that year. By that legislative body it was commended 
 to the churches for their consideration and report — a re- 
 quest wliich was rej^eated as an order in June, 1650, when 
 
THE "CAMBRIDGE PLATFORMS l6l 
 
 the churches were also desired to express their opinion on 
 the Westminster Confession. The churches seem gener- 
 ally to have approved, though a considerable number of 
 criticisms regarding the " Platform " were offered, which 
 were answered by the ministers, at the request of the 
 court, through the pen of Rev. Richard Mather. And 
 at last, in October, 165 i, the court expressed its guarded 
 approval of the result, voting that its members ** account 
 themselues called of God (especially at this time, when 
 the truth of Christ is so much opposed In the world) to 
 glue theire testimony to the s'd Booke of Discipline, that 
 for the substance thereof It Is that we haue practised & 
 doe beleeue." Yet from this very cautious commendation 
 fourteen of the town representatives In the lower House 
 dissented, including the entire delegations from Boston 
 and Salem, showing thus that the distrust which had there 
 led to a tardy recognition of the Synod had not died out. 
 But no serious opposition to the '* Platform " developed 
 among the churches, and the *' Platform " continued the 
 recognized standard of Congregationalism in Massachu- 
 setts throughout the colonial period, and in Connecticut 
 till the Saybrook Synod In i 708. 
 
 The Westminster Confession of Faith, approved at 
 Cambridge as an adequate expression of Congregational 
 belief, was superseded In Massachusetts in 1680, and In 
 Connecticut in i 708, by a slight modification of Its Savoy 
 revision of 1658. But early Congregationalism in Amer- 
 ica stood uncrltlclslngly on the doctrinal basis of the great 
 Puritan party In the home land, and there is no evidence 
 that the adoption of the Westminster Confession aroused 
 anything like the Interest excited by the *' Platform." 
 One point, Indeed, that of "vocation," raised a little de- 
 bate In the Synod ; but neither that body nor the churches 
 seem to have felt In any critical spirit toward the Confes- 
 
1 52 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. v. 
 
 sion, which ParHament had just made the doctrinal stand- 
 ard of England. 
 
 The " Cambridge Platform " is an ecclesiastical constitu- 
 tion in seventeen chapters, built upon the proposition that 
 " the partes of Church- Government are all of them exactly 
 described in the word of God." It attempts to ascertain 
 hlie Scripture pattern of the church; the character and 
 conditions of its membership ; its powers ; its officers, their 
 appointment and duties ; its discipline ; its expression of 
 fellowship with other churches ; the right of councils to 
 advise in its affairs ; and the authority of the magistrate in 
 ecclesiastical concerns. The ''Platform" represents Con- 
 gregationalism as the New England fathers pictured it 
 after half a generation of experience in its practical ad- 
 ministration. To the thinking of the Synod, Congrega- 
 tionalism was vastly less democratic than modern Con- 
 gregational practice conceives the system to be. It was 
 viewed as of exclusive divine authority, and as subject to 
 the interference of the civil ruler should its churches swerve 
 in doctrine or administration from the ^God-given standard. 
 But though the '* Platform" in these and other particulars 
 reflects the temporary rather than the permanent char- 
 acteristics of the system, it pictures with great clearness 
 the abiding principles of Congregationalism. The cov- 
 enant as the basis of the local church, the autonomy of 
 each congregation, coupled with its dependence on other 
 churches for fellowship and counsel, the representative 
 character of the ministry, above all the absence of all 
 final authority in doctrine or polity save the Word of God, 
 are the essential features of the ** Platform " wliich have 
 given it permanent worth and have partially justified the 
 veneration with which this monument of early New Eng- 
 land Congregationalism lias been regarded. 
 
 The preparation of the " Cambridge Platform " and the 
 
THE ''CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM:' 163 
 
 adoption of the Westminster Confession as general ex- 
 pressions of Congregational faith and practice by a body 
 representative of the New England churches as a whole 
 marks the completion of that movement toward confeder- 
 ation which characterized early American Congregation- 
 alism from the arrival of the Puritans, which was greatly 
 strengthened by the establishment of Congregationalism 
 as a state church, and had its strongest impulse from the 
 efforts of the civil and ecclesiastical forces of the new set- 
 tlements to guard their institutions and their faith from 
 what they deemed dangerous encroachments. Congrega- 
 tionalism was thus placed almost from the first in New 
 England in a totally different position from what it has 
 ever occupied in England — in the home land it has always 
 been a somewhat radical element protesting against an 
 established system ; in New England it necessarily became 
 conservative, since it was the legally recognized polity, 
 and such a position is one requiring definition and leading 
 to united action. No general council of all Congregational 
 churches in America met again till the Albany Convention 
 of 1852 ; but the impulse toward fellowship which marked 
 these early years developed principles recognized from the 
 first in the system, but which had not come into practice 
 to any considerable extent in England or Holland, and so 
 developed them that they gave a fraternal character to the 
 relationship of churches one to another and a corporate 
 consciousness to the Congregational body which survived 
 the strongly decentralizing tendencies of the eighteenth 
 century, and is increasingly valued in our own day. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONGREGATIONALISM FROM 1650 TO 1 725. 
 
 It was one of the pleasant incidents of the second ses- 
 sion of the Cambridge Synod in June, 1647, that, as Win- 
 throp tell us, " Mr. Eliot preached to the Indians in their 
 own language before all the assembly." The missionary 
 enterprise thus publicly exhibited had not long before been 
 inaugurated. To bring the savage inhabitants of America 
 to Christianity had, indeed, been one of the objects which 
 attracted the Leyden Pilgrims across the ocean ; and the 
 Massachusetts Company had declared, in 1629, that "the 
 propagating of the gosple is the thing [wee] doe professe 
 aboue all to bee o^ ay me " ; — a propagation which included 
 the evangelization of the Indians, as well as the establish- 
 ment of English religious institutions in New England. 
 But though various efforts were made in the early days of 
 the colonies to carry this purpose into execution, no sys- 
 tematic plan was at first pursued, and scanty results were 
 accomplished. The barriers of language and especially of 
 thought and manner of life made easy communication be- 
 tween the two races difficult. It is to be remembered to 
 the credit of Roger Williams that while at Plymouth, prob- 
 ably as early as 1632, he began the study of the Indian 
 tongues and cultivated that familiarity with Indian life 
 which made his words influential with the savage warriors. 
 
 But the most important movement for Indian conversion 
 was initiated by the Massachusetts court, — the body which 
 was responsible for so much that was good and evil alike 
 
 164 
 
INDIAN MISSIONS. J65 
 
 in early New England religious life, and which served in 
 so many ways as a General Assembly regulative of the 
 churches. In November, 1644, the court expressed its 
 desire that the Indians should receive religious instruction, 
 and soon invited the ministers to express their opinions as 
 to the most fitting methods. And two years later, No- 
 vember 4, 1646, the same legislative body ordered the min- 
 isters to choose two of their number at the annual election 
 every year to engage in missionary work with the aid of 
 such volunteers as might join them. Probably the latter 
 action of the couft was hastened by the knowledge of mis- 
 sionary labors which had been begun a week before its 
 enactment. Rev. John Eliot, the teacher of the Roxbury 
 church, had been for some time studying the Indian dia- 
 lect, with the aid of a young native who had learned Eng- 
 lish as a servant ; and on October 28, 1646, Eliot and three 
 friends went to an Indian village near Watertown, and 
 there the Indian apostle preached his first sermon. The 
 movement excited the general interest of the churches, and 
 such assistance as could be given was cheerfully rendered. 
 These direct efforts for the conversion of the savages were 
 accompanied by attempts to give them the rudiments of 
 education and to bring them to English modes of life, in 
 which Eliot had the support of the court and the colonial 
 treasury. 
 
 Contemporary with these missionary exertions of Eliot, 
 or possibly a little earlier in their beginning, were the inde- 
 pendent labors of the Mayhews on the island of Martha's 
 Vineyard, where the father and son established themselves 
 as proprietors by purchase, the former in 1644 ^"^^ the 
 latter even earlier. Tidings of these events, published by 
 friends of New England, aroused great interest in the 
 mother-country, and led, in July, 1649, to the formation 
 of a corporation by act of Parliament under the title of 
 
1 66 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 "The President and Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospell in New England," designed to raise money by a 
 ** general collection " in England for the furtherance of the 
 work. The dispensing agents of this society in New Eng- 
 land were the commissioners of the four united colonies 
 of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. 
 Nor were the sums given in charity in England under the 
 Commonwealth inconsiderable: amounting by 1656 to a 
 total of i^iyoo, and reaching by 166 1 to more than ^^600 
 a year. To these gifts the inhabitants of New England 
 added what they could, giving, a contemporary observer 
 declared, " far more, in proportion, than their countrymen 
 in England." Under the instructions of Eliot, the May- 
 hews, and others, the work soon showed results. In 1650 
 Eliot organized his converts into a community at Natick, 
 where they might not only worship, but learn trades and 
 husbandry and be drilled in the exercise of civil govern- 
 ment. By 1655 a similar Indian town was begun at Pun- 
 kapog, later known as Stoughton, and others were soon 
 formed near Grafton and Concord. In Martha's Vineyard 
 the labors of the Mayhews were as successful; and at- 
 tempts of a less fruitful nature were made to reach the 
 Indians at Sandwich in Plymouth, near Norwich in Con- 
 necticut, and at Branford in New Haven Colony. The 
 most notable literary fruit of this enterprise was the pub- 
 Hcation at the cost of the English Society in 1661 at Cam- 
 bridge, Mass., of Eliot's translation of the New Testament 
 into the language of the Massachusetts Indians, — a w^ork 
 which was followed two years later by the issue of the 
 whole Bible from the same press. This monumental un- 
 dertaking was followed by a number of translations, em- 
 bracing treatises by Cotton, Increase Mather, Shepard, 
 Baxter, as well as the ''Cambridge Platform" and the 
 Confession of 1680, the publication of which extended 
 
INDIAN MISSIONS. 1 67 
 
 over a period of nearly sixty years. By 1674 the " Pray- 
 ing Indians " numbered not far from four thousand, gath- 
 ered in part into at least seven churches, and enjoying the 
 religious instruction of teachers of their own race, as well 
 as the general oversight of white missionaries, in many set- 
 tlements in Massachusetts, Plymouth, and the islands. Of 
 these churches, four, and of the Indians, some eighteen 
 hundred, were on the islands of the Martha's Vineyard 
 group. . 
 
 But an unexpected tempest largely wrecked the Indian 
 missions thus auspiciously begun. Contrary to the rep- 
 resentations sometimes made, the Puritan settlers of New 
 England treated the Indians well. Except for the short, 
 sharp conflict with the Pequots in 1637, the two races were 
 at peace. The white inhabitants of the colonies carefully 
 secured their lands by purchase, and defended Indian rights 
 by law. The New England Puritan of the first two gen- 
 erations seems to have been as honorable in his dealings 
 with the red men as the Pennsylvania Quaker. But the 
 situation was one, thanks to Indian politics, where perma- 
 nent peace between the two races was impossible. Thrust 
 in between Massachusetts and Plymouth on the east and 
 the settlements of Connecticut on the west were a number 
 of tribes, of which the most powerful were the rivals, the 
 Mohegans and the Narragansetts. To keep on good terms 
 with both was difficult, and the situation was doubtless 
 made all the harder by a complete misunderstanding on 
 the part of these more powerful tribes of the motives of 
 Eliot and the other missionaries. The '* Praying Indians " 
 were mostly from feeble tribes, like the Massachusetts and 
 the Pokanokets. As Mr. John Fiske has pointed out, to 
 the stronger Indian clans, who could have comprehended 
 little of missionary intentions, it probably seemed that 
 Eliot, by his villages and churches, was strengthening the 
 
1 68 THE CONGREGATIONALISrS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 white man's tribe by the familiar Indian method of adop- 
 tion, causing it thus to be an increasing menace to Indian 
 independence. The unexpected attack upon the settle- 
 ments, known as Philip's War, from the English nickname 
 of the chief of the Wampanoags, who organized the tribal 
 confederacy designed to effect the destruction of the set- 
 tlements, began on June 20, 1675, ^i^d the terrible strug- 
 gle lasted till the death of Philip, August 12, 1676. In 
 this contest the Indian power in New England was for- 
 ever broken, the Narragansetts, the Nipmucks, and the 
 Wampanoags were largely blotted out ; but the cost to the 
 colonies was frightful. More than half of the eighty or 
 ninety towns in Massachusetts and Plymouth were partially 
 destroyed, ten or twelve were utterly consumed. Nearly 
 six hundred men, besides scores of women and children, 
 lost their lives, — many of them by the torments in which 
 Indian cruelty has always delighted. And what made the 
 settlers doubly incensed was that not a few of the implic- 
 itly trusted " Praying Indians " went back to their savage 
 kinsmen, and were the equals in cruelty of any who at- 
 tacked scattered farm-houses or frontier villages. 
 
 Fortunately most of the Indian converts were faithful, 
 and they had devoted friends in Eliot and Captain Daniel 
 Gookin, who from 1656 to his death, in 1687, was by ap- 
 pointment of the General Court *' ruler," or superintendent, 
 of the Massachusetts converts. But the war wasted the 
 missions. When it was over the work was taken up once 
 more ; and while a large proportion of the Indians who had 
 professed Christianity were gathered once more in their 
 old settlements, those who had been partially civilized and 
 were in process of training were mostly lost forever. It 
 was a crippled work ; but it shows the true missionary 
 spirit of the New England churches that, in spite of the 
 bitter feeling of hostility which the war excited, the publi- 
 
INDIAN MISSIONS. 1 69 
 
 cation of books in the Indian tongue and the gathering of 
 Indian churches was carried forward with persistent en- 
 ergy. EHot continued his work almost till his death, in 
 1690. The real failure of these missionary enterprises to 
 make permanent Indian churches was due to the disap- 
 pearance of the Indian tribes in the eighteenth century, 
 chiefly through the dying out of the red race, in part also 
 through the intermarriage of its remnants with negroes, 
 causing the Indians to be absorbed in the colored popula- 
 tion of New England. 
 
 After the '* Great Awakening " had aroused renewed 
 religious activity in New England during the fourth and 
 fifth decades of the eighteenth century, new attempts at 
 Indian Christianization were begun, notably that among 
 the Housatonic Indians of western Massachusetts, devised 
 by Rev. Samuel Hopkins of West Springfield (uncle of the 
 more famous Samuel) in 1734, and carried out by Rev. 
 John Sergeant at Stockbridge, till his death, in 1749, who 
 was in turn succeeded from 1751 to 1758 by the greatest 
 of New England theologians, Jonathan Edwards. Equally 
 important was a school for Indian instruction in the house- 
 hold of Rev. Eleazar Wheelock of Lebanon, Conn., which 
 received as its first pupil the Mohegan Samson Occom in 
 I743» — a school which developed in 1769-70 into Dart- 
 mouth College. This picturesque Indian preacher, who 
 was welcomed by the pulpits of Great Britain as well as 
 of New England, is still remembered by his hymn, be- 
 ginning : 
 
 "Awaked by Sinai's awful sound; " 
 
 and he was, on the whole, the most conspicuous fruit of 
 these Indian missions; for, though a native of Martha's 
 Vineyard, Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, climbed the long 
 road from barbarism to the Bachelor's degree at Harvard 
 
lyo THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chai-. vi. 
 
 in 1665, this sole Indian graduate of New England's oldest 
 college died at the age of twenty. The well-nigh com- 
 plete extinction of the New England aborigines by the 
 close of the eighteenth century ended the possibiUty of 
 further missionary labors within the ancient borders ; 
 though some effort has been put forth by the Congrega- 
 tional churches down to the present time to reach the fast- 
 receding tribes to the westward. 
 
 While the beginnings of these missionary activities were 
 occupying the attention of Eliot and his associates and 
 exciting a degree of interest in the churches immediately 
 after the Cambridge Synod, the Congregational body was 
 profoundly stirred by the first general discussion in which 
 it engaged on American soil, — that known as the Half- 
 Way Covenant controversy. This dispute, often though 
 most erroneously ascribed to political motives, really sprang 
 out of the dual theory as to entrance into church-member- 
 ship entertained by the settlers of New England. Unlike 
 •any other division of Protestantism at that day except the 
 Anabaptists, Congregationalists maintained that only adult 
 persons of Christian experience, — in the phrase of that 
 day, *' visible saints,"— should be admitted to the covenant 
 union which constituted the local church ; but they also 
 held that, as in the Jewish church of old, children shared 
 in their parents' covenanting and were therefore truly 
 members of the church to which their parents belonged. 
 This infant-membership was not the result of baptism ; 
 rather it was the covenant relation already acquired by 
 birth in a Christian household that gave right to this sac- 
 rament. But the fathers of New England at their coming 
 held that it extended only to the immediate offspring of 
 professed Christians, and hence restricted baptism to chil- 
 dren one of whose parents^ at least, was a declared be- 
 liever, in fellowship with some church. This restriction 
 
THE HALF-WAY COVENANT. 171 
 
 was comparatively easy at first, in spite of the twofold 
 mode of entrance into church-membership, — by profession 
 and by birth, — because the leaders in the emigration were 
 men of tried religious experience, generally able to give a 
 reason for their faith. The line of distinction was sharp 
 between the consciously regenerate and that considerable 
 class even among the first settlers who made no claim to 
 a regenerative change. But with the growth of the chil- 
 dren of these first-comers the question was made much 
 more difficult. These members of the second generation 
 naturally showed some decline from the ardent type of 
 piety which marked many of the founders. They were 
 prevailingly of moral life, anxious for the religious training 
 of their children, and desirous of throwing about them the 
 safeguards of church- watch and discipline; but in many 
 instances they could point to no conscious work of divine 
 grace in their own personal experience. 
 
 What to do with these persons was not easy to decide. 
 To admit them to the Lord's Supper would be to break 
 down the whole theory of regenerate church-membership ; 
 and though Robert Child and his associates in Massachu- 
 setts, and a few years later WilHam Pitkin and his friends 
 in Connecticut, desired that all who would have been 
 accounted members of the Church of England at home 
 should be admitted to the full privileges of the New Eng- 
 land churches, if of respectable character, this extension of 
 access to the communion was not put in practice by any 
 of the churches during the first half-century of their exist- 
 ence, save at Presbyterianly inclined Newbury. 
 
 On the other hand, to deny some church standing to 
 these non- regenerate children of the church came to seem 
 not only difficult but dangerous to the thinking of many 
 of the leaders of New England. If these persons were by 
 birth members of the church to which their parents had 
 
172 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 belonged, when did their membership cease? Could they 
 be cast out of co\enant save by excommunication, and 
 could any be excommunicated save for actual transgres- 
 sions of moral law or heretical opinions, with which these 
 persons were not chargeable? And if their membership 
 was denied, what hold had the church upon its children 
 for that discipline which Puritanism in general believed so 
 essential for the spiritual upbuilding of the community? 
 
 To avoid this dilemma the New England churches, after 
 •a long period of agitation, adopted a rather illogical com- 
 promise. The non- regenerate offspring of the church were 
 held to be sufficiently in church-covenant to transmit the 
 same degree of church-membership, and its accompanying 
 right to baptism, in turn to their children, on condition of 
 acquaintance with the main truths of the gospel and a 
 sincere promise to walk in fellowship with and under the 
 discipline of the church of which they were members, — a 
 promise called " owning the covenant," into which they 
 had been born. But while the abiding membership of 
 this earnest but non- regenerate class was thus clearly rec- 
 ognized, its representatives were debarred from a place at 
 the Lord's table or a vote in church government or in the 
 choice of church officers. They were not members in ** full 
 communion." A double classification of members was 
 thus introduced, and those whose non-regenerate char- 
 acter limited their church privileges to a single sacrament 
 and the disciplinary oversight of the church were said to 
 be members in what its opponents of the eighteenth cent- 
 ury nicknamed the " Half- Way Covenant." 
 
 The establishment of this serious modification of the 
 system of original New England was the result of a pro- 
 longed discussion, in which the leaders were the ministry 
 of the churches rather than the class for whose benefit the 
 modification was made. It was not political impulse that 
 
THE HALF-WAY COVENANT. 
 
 173 
 
 led to the change. Save in the applications of Child in 
 Massachusetts and Pitkin in Connecticut for the full in- 
 troduction of English theories of church-membership, — re- 
 quests for something very unlike the Half-Way Covenant, 
 — the political note is nowhere heard in the whole debate. 
 No political advantages came to the Half-Way member in 
 Connecticut or Plymouth ; in Massachusetts the approval 
 of the system by the Synod of 1662 was followed in two 
 years by the modification of the restriction of the franchise 
 to church- members, and the most strenuous debates over 
 its adoption by individual churches occurred after the 
 change of the basis of the electorate in 1664. No men- 
 tion of political considerations occurs, as far as the writer 
 is aware, in any of the voluminous discussion which the 
 Half-Way Covenant Synod and Convention produced. 
 Nor was a share in the government of the churches an 
 impelling cause. The Convention of 1657 and the Synod 
 of 1662, as well as the votes of local churches, forbade the 
 Half-Way member any part in ecclesiastical administra- 
 tion ; and how consonant this prohibition was with the 
 general feeling of the time is shown by a declaration of 
 the Massachusetts court, as late as October, 1668, that 
 while '* euery church hath free liberty of calHng, election, 
 & ordination of all her officers, . . . this Court doth order 
 & declare, & be it hereby ordered & enacted, that by the 
 church is to be meant such as are in full comunion only." 
 
 The real impelling motive in the adoption of the system 
 was the desire of the ministers and many of the churches 
 to maintain a hold over those whose parents had been 
 actively Christian, but who themselves seemed slipping 
 away from the churches. It was as a religious question 
 that the Half-Way Covenant discussion had its only im- 
 portance. 
 
 The question first presented itself, it would appear, in 
 
1 74 THE CONGKEGA TIOXALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 1634, when a grandfather of the Dorchester church asked 
 baptism for his grandchild, — the immediate parents of the 
 child not being persons of professed Christian experience. 
 The request was referred to the Boston church for advice; 
 and that body counseled compliance, on the ground that 
 though the immediate parents were not regenerate, they 
 were not so far " pagans and infidels " as to debar their 
 ofiFspring from baptism on the strength of the grandfather's 
 membership. This position was not generally approved 
 a few years after, even by those who apparently counte- 
 nanced it in 1634, for Cotton, Hooker, and Richard Mather 
 all expressed the opinion in their early works on Congre- 
 gational polity that only the immediate oflfspring of be- 
 Heving parents were to be admitted to the rite. But the 
 problem grew increasingly pressing, and opinion shifted. 
 Though Hooker and Davenport never departed from the 
 early strictness, by 1645 Mather argued in favor of the 
 baptism of the children of those whose church-membership 
 rested on birth rather than experience, and similar expres- 
 sions within the next six years from men as influential, 
 and as scattered, as Rev. Messrs. Thomas Shepard, of Cam- 
 bridge, John Norton, of Ipswich, Samuel Stone, of Hart- 
 ford, John Warham, of Windsor, Henry Smith, of Wethers- 
 field, Ralph Partridge, of Duxbury, and Peter Prudden, of 
 Milford, show that the system commended itself to leading 
 men in all four colonies. No wonder that the Massachu- 
 .setts court in its call of the Cambridge Synod in 1646 
 specified ** baptisme, & y^ p'sons to be received thereto" 
 as a prime topic for discussion by that assembly. 
 
 Probably the Half- Way Covenant would have been 
 adopted by the Cambridge Synod had it not been for 
 strenuous opposition on the part of a few members, appar- 
 ently led by Rev. Charles Chauncy, then of Scituate, but 
 to become, in 1654, the second president of Harvard Col- 
 
CONVENTION OF 1G57. I 75 
 
 lege. Both Richard Mather and Ralph Partridge gave 
 the system a place in the tentative platforms which they 
 prepared at the direction of the Synod, but that body 
 passed the point by in rather ambiguous terms. 
 
 All the more by reason of the non-action of the Cam- 
 bridge Synod the topic became one of increasing debate. 
 But the practice was first adopted by the church at Ips- 
 wich, Mass., of which Rev. Thomas Cobbett was minister, 
 in 1656. In May of the same year the General Court of 
 Connecticut was moved to attempt the settlement of the 
 problem by a ministerial convention, and appealed to the 
 Massachusetts court to assign a time and place of meeting 
 and to notify the other colonies, accompanying its request 
 with a series of questions for debate in the proposed 
 assembly. The Massachusetts authorities did as asked, 
 appointing thirteen prominent divines of their jurisdiction 
 to meet at Boston on June 4, 1657, with those ministers 
 whom the other colonies might send. The notification of 
 this action and the request for cooperation sent by Mas- 
 sachusetts to the other colonial courts was variously re- 
 ceived. Connecticut, of course, approved and appointed 
 four ministerial representatives ; Plymouth took no action ; 
 while New Haven, influenced by Davenport, not only re- 
 fused to have a part in the convention, but sent an earnest 
 letter of protest against change and insistence that the old 
 ways be kept. 
 
 Though representative of the ministers of Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut only, the Convention met for a fortnight 
 in June, 1657, and formulated a series of answers to the 
 questions which the Connecticut legislature had asked. 
 These conclusions of sixteen or seventeen ministers heartily 
 supported the Half- Way view ; and declared that the non- 
 regenerate member by birth was entitled to transmit the 
 same status to his children, and obtain baptism for them, 
 
176 THE CONG REG ATIONALISTS. [Chap, vi/ 
 
 provided he accepted the obligations of his membership, 
 as far as he was able without the full transforming grace 
 of God, by solemnly acknowledging his intellectual belief 
 in the principles of the gospel and his willingness to sub- 
 mit to the discipline of the church to which he belonged 
 and to promote its welfare. On the other hand, it was 
 affirmed that nothing but a full Christian profession would 
 fit the member by birth, or any other person, for the 
 Lord's table or a vote in ecclesiastical affairs. 
 
 The Ministerial Convention of 1657 had no effect in 
 allaying debate; the question continued as divisive as 
 before. The Massachusetts court therefore determined to 
 try the healing virtue of a true synod, or council, in which 
 all the churches of the commonwealth should be repre- 
 sented by their ministers and delegates. On December 
 31, 1 66 1, the legislature issued an order to the churches 
 of the colony to convene at Boston, March 11, 1662, and 
 decide the question, " Who are the subjects of baptisme? " 
 and, at the request of the same civil authority, the ministers 
 of Boston and vicinity propounded a second query for the 
 council's consideration, as to " Whither, according to the 
 Word of God, there ought to be a conscociation of 
 churches, & what should be ye manner of it." It is well 
 to remember that what these divines meant by *' a consco- 
 ciation " was not the peculiar institution later known by 
 that name in Connecticut. The word has as yet no strictly 
 technical usage ; what was to be discussed was the nature 
 and conditions of fellowship between churches. 
 
 On the day appointed the Synod gathered, with an 
 attendance of more than seventy, including the most prom- 
 inent survivors of the first generation of Massachusetts 
 ministers, like Richard Mather, John Wilson, and Charles 
 Chauncy, and the rising lights of the second generation, 
 
SYNOD OF 1662. 
 
 177 
 
 such as Jonathan Mitchell and Increase Mather. From 
 the first, the question at issue was hotly disputed. About 
 an eighth of the membership, having a weight dispro- 
 portionate to their numbers by reason of the able lead- 
 ership of President Chauncy of Harvard and including 
 Increase Mather, strenuously opposed any departure from 
 the stricter practice, and circulated writings by Rev. John 
 Davenport, of New Haven, denunciatory of the Half- Way 
 Covenant. The vast majority, however, led by Jonathan 
 Mitchell, Richard Mather, and John Norton, favored the 
 larger practice and determined the result of the Synod, — 
 a result which was reached at its third session, in Septem- 
 ber, 1662. The conclusions arrived at were essentially 
 those of the Ministerial Convention of 1657. The right 
 to bring his children to baptism was extended to the non- 
 regenerate member who owned the covenant ; but, as be- 
 fore, access to the Supper and a vote in church afifairs were 
 denied to all whose Christian experience would not warrant 
 membership in full communion. 
 
 The baptismal question was the only problem of moment 
 before the Synod of 1662, and the body therefore very 
 hastily and practically unanimously approved a few brief 
 principles governing church-fellowship, not materially di- 
 vergent from the prescriptions of the '' Cambridge Plat- 
 form." This second question for the Synod's considera- 
 tion had been a ministerial after-thought and one which 
 evidently aroused little interest. 
 
 The Synod of 1662 was representative of Massachusetts 
 only ; but the publication of its results increased, rather 
 than diminished, the heat of the controversy in all the 
 colonies. No New England discussion of the seventeenth 
 century aroused such interest as this, and the rivals on the 
 floor of the Synod continued their strife in a war of pam- 
 
178 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 phlets after its close. The chief effect of this discussion 
 was that Increase Mather was convinced of the justice of 
 the Half- Way Covenant position, and became a defender 
 of the Synod's conclusions which he had at first opposed. 
 In Connecticut the division of feeling was intensified by 
 the forcible union of the colony of New Haven with Con- 
 necticut by the charter granted the latter by the recently 
 restored Charles II. in 1662, — a union completed in 1665. 
 Under the influence of Davenport the predominant senti- 
 ment of New Haven favored the older strictness ; the sen- 
 timent of Connecticut proper was more divided, but in- 
 clined to the larger usage. At Hartford, a quarrel begun 
 in 1666, in which the colleague ministers, Whiting and 
 Haynes, took opposing sides, led in 1670 to the establish- 
 ment of a second church. The Stratford and Windsor 
 churches were similarly rent ; while Rev. Abraham Pier- 
 son, of Branford, led a considerable colony of settlers 
 from the old New Haven jurisdiction to Newark, N. J., 
 where they might be free from Half- Way Covenant inno- 
 vations, and could continue the restriction of the franchise 
 to church-members which had once characterized New 
 Haven, but which the union with Connecticut abolished. 
 After vain attempts to call a Connecticut Ministerial As- 
 sembly in 1666 and 1667, the Connecticut court voted 
 toleration for both parties in the dispute in 1669. But the 
 course of events inclined the ecclesiastical founder of New 
 Haven, Rev. John Davenport, to look with misgiving on 
 the scene of his labors for nearly thirty years, and when 
 a call came to him from the First Church in Boston, a 
 majority of the membership of which shared Davenport's 
 opposition to the Half- Way Covenant, he accepted the 
 invitation, although nearly seventy years of age. The re- 
 sult was unhappy for him and for the church, — since that 
 portion of its membership which favored the larger view 
 
RESULTS OF THE DISPUTE. 
 
 179 
 
 and had opposed his coming withdrew and formed the 
 Third or " Old South " Church of Boston. 
 
 But though vigorously opposed by many churches and 
 some ministers, and never universally adopted, the Half- 
 Way Covenant won its way into use in the vast majority 
 of New England churches, and so continued till the be- 
 ginning of the nineteenth century. And as it became 
 more familiar in the usage of our churches, especially 
 under the influence of the low type of piety prevaiHng in 
 the eighteenth century, it became a far less strenuous and 
 worthy spiritual instrumentality than it had been planned 
 to be by the leaders in the Assemblies of 1657 ^i^d 1662. 
 In its original intention it had been confined exclusively 
 to those in the covenant of the churches by birth into the 
 household of a church-member; and the owning of the 
 covenant by these unregenerate persons had been looked 
 upon as a solemn association with the people of God, by 
 which a man pledged himself to do all in his power to 
 seek a Christian hope and lead a rehgious life. But by 
 the early part of the eighteenth century it became the 
 frequent custom to admit all applicants of unblamable 
 character to Half- Way Covenant membership and their 
 children to baptism. In times of religious interest the 
 Covenant came to be administered to large bodies of 
 young people. Instead of being, as it was intended, a 
 means of retaining those under the watch and discipline 
 of the churches who were members by birth and yet 
 seemed slipping away, it became a method of entrance 
 into the church for those also who could advance no birth- 
 right claim. This was a detrimental modification of the 
 original theory, and one that undoubtedly did much to 
 lower the spiritual tone of the chiirches. It vastly aug- 
 mented that which was the main evil of the Half- Way 
 Covenant system always, — the toleration of a partial 
 
l8o THE COXGREGATIONALISrS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 Christian profession, allowing men who might have been 
 led to a full Christian experience to rest content with an 
 imperfect and merely intellectual religious life. 
 
 A modification of the Half-Way system, the beginnings 
 of which became apparent within less than a score of 
 years after the Synod of 1662, deserves notice. The 
 original advocates of the larger practice barred the non- 
 regenerate member from any share in the eucharist or in 
 church administration. But to some this seemed an undue 
 restriction, and as early as 1677 advocates of the full ex- 
 tension of churchly privileges to the non-regenerate but 
 earnest-minded members of the churches were to be found 
 among the New England ministers. This view was, how- 
 ever, most elaborately set forth by Rev. Solomon Stod- 
 dard, who served the church at Northampton, Mass., from 
 1669 to 1729, and who was in his day the most influential 
 minister in the Connecticut valley. Advocated by Stod- 
 dard at the '' Reforming Synod " of 1679, this theory, often 
 called " Stoddardeanism," was argued by him in print in 
 his " Instituted Churches" of 1700; and though attacked 
 by Increase Mather, was further defended by Stoddard in 
 a sermon published in 1708, and especially in his "Appeal 
 to the Learned " of i 709. Though not adopted by Stod- 
 dard's own church till after 1706, this theory, largely 
 through his influence, became widespread in western Mas- 
 sachusetts and Connecticut during the eighteenth century, 
 and did not lack defenders in other parts of New England, 
 though it always remained the view of a fraction only of 
 the churches. 
 
 The Stoddardean theory held that the Lord's Supper 
 was designee^ for " all adult Members of the Church who 
 are not scandalous." It was to be ** applyed to visible 
 Saints, though Unconverted, therefore it is for their Sav- 
 ing goud, and consequently for their Conversion." In 
 
' ' S TOD DA RDEA NISM. " 1 8 1 
 
 Stoddard's judgment '' visible saints " were '' such as make 
 a serious profession of the true ReHgion, together with 
 those that do descend from them, till rejected of God." 
 This was essentially an importation into New England of 
 the inclusive membership theories of England or Scotland 
 which the New England fathers had abandoned, though it 
 differed from those conceptions of church-relationship in 
 that it laid stress on covenant-membership as the basis 
 of access to the Lord's table. It did not, as has often 
 erroneously been represented, encourage every respectable 
 person in the community to come to the communion. On 
 the contrary, it was for the *' visible saint," for the church- 
 member by birth, even though " in a Natural Condition," 
 as well as for the member by profession of Christian ex- 
 perience, that the sacrament was declared to be instituted. 
 Stoddard was a man of unusual piety and ability. Liv- 
 ing in an age of low spiritual life, his ministry was marked 
 by a succession of revivals. It is perhaps useless to at- 
 tempt to pry into the processes by which he reached his 
 peculiar sacramental views. His '' Instituted Churches " 
 shows a large sympathy with a theory of the church more 
 akin to the Presbyterianism of his day than to early New 
 England Congregationalism. But there is a tradition, 
 dating back certainly to Rev. Joseph Lathrop, pastor at 
 West Springfield, Mass., from 1756 to 1820, which affirms 
 that Stoddard began his Northampton ministry in an un- 
 regenerate state, and became converted at the Lord's table. 
 Yet, to the present writer, it seems quite as probable that 
 family experiences may have emphasized any tendency 
 toward insistence on participation in the Supper as a duty 
 incumbent on all church- members which was inherent in 
 Stoddard's general cast of thought. His wife was a 
 daughter of Rev. John Warham, of Windsor, Conn. ; and 
 one of the few facts known regarding Stoddard's father- 
 
1 82 THE CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 in-law is that, though a deeply religious man, he spent 
 much of his later life under such a burdening sense of un- 
 worthiness to partake of the consecrated elements that, 
 while he administered the communion to his flock, he often 
 refused to share in the Supper himself, and this state of 
 melancholy self-distrust continued till his death, in 1670. 
 l^rought thus into his own family as a practical question, 
 it is not surprising that Stoddard came to the conclusion 
 that it was the duty of all church-members to come to the 
 Lord's table, without a continual torturing self-examination 
 as to whether they were really regenerate or not. 
 
 Yet though Stoddardeanism became considerably wide- 
 spread, and by the time that Cotton Mather wrote his 
 " Ratio Disciplinae " was practiced peacefully side by side 
 with the Half-Way Covenant or the older New England 
 strictness, it was a complete denial of the original Congre- 
 gational conception of the church. The revival of the 
 ideal of an exclusively regenerate membership, and the 
 attack upon all departures from it, begun by Jonathan 
 Edwards, in 1749, and continued by his disciples and 
 spiritual successors, Joseph Bellamy, Chandler Robbins, 
 Cyprian Strong, Stephen West, Nathaniel Emmons, and 
 other representatives of the so-called '' New Divinity," led 
 to a general abandonment both of the Half- Way Cove- 
 nant and of Stoddardeanism by the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century, though in a few instances the Half- Way 
 practice survived till 1820, and in one church, — that at 
 Charlestown, Mass., — till 1828. 
 
 This brief sketch of the later story of the chief discussion 
 which disturbed the first century of New England Congre- 
 gationalism has carried us beyond the seventh and eighth 
 decades of the seventeenth century, to which we must 
 now return. By the time of the meeting of the Synod of 
 1662 the founders of New England were passing rapidly 
 
HALF- WAV COVENANT ABANDONED. 183 
 
 off the stage. Many had indeed gone before : Hooker had 
 died in 1647; Cotton, in 1652; Winthrop, in 1649; ^^^ 
 Bradford, in 1657. Yet in spite of the prominence of men 
 of the second generation, Hke Jonathan Mitchell and In- 
 crease Mather, in the Half- Way Covenant discussion, the 
 chief weight in the decision seems still to have been that 
 of the surviving leaders of the settlement. But ten years 
 after the Synod we are clearly in the time of the second 
 generation; and, notwithstanding the survival of a few 
 patriarchs of the older time like the Apostle Eliot, the 
 most powerful influence in the New England of the chil- 
 dren of the founders was Increase Mather. 
 
 The ablest of his distinguished family, Increase Mather 
 has been most variously judged. He was essentially a 
 conservative, he was far from universally popular in his 
 own lifetime ; but there was no man in the New England 
 of his day who compared with him in ability, leadership, 
 or influence, or who labored more sincerely for what he 
 deemed the interests of the kingdom of God. Born in 
 1639 in the Dorchester home of his father, Richard, he 
 graduated from Harvard College in 1656, and soon sailed 
 for England, where he found acceptance as a preacher in 
 the closing days of the Commonwealth, but whence he re- 
 turned speedily after the Restoration, possessed of a wide 
 and useful acquaintance with English men and affairs. On 
 his arrival in his native New England he began to preach 
 to the Second Church of Boston, though he did not accept 
 the office of teacher till 1664, and in the service of this 
 church he remained till his death, in 1723. The post was 
 probably the most conspicuous in influence of any in the 
 colony, especially after the crippling and division of the 
 Boston First Church consequent upon the Half- Way Cov- 
 enant discussion and the settlement of John Davenport. 
 For the last forty years of this distinguished pastorate 
 
1 84 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 he had as his colleague, and in the fullest sense as his 
 associate, his gifted though less able son, Cotton Mather, 
 who survived him till 1 728. During the last three decades 
 of the seventeenth century Increase Mather was in the 
 forefront of every ecclesiastical action in Massachusetts, 
 and his prominence in educational and political affairs was 
 hardly less conspicuous. From 1685 to 1701 he was 
 president of Harvard College. In the stress of colonial 
 affairs after the downfall of the first charter, it was In- 
 crease Mather who was sent to England in 1688 to plead 
 the Massachusetts cause against Andros with James II. ; 
 and it was Mather who secured for Massachusetts more 
 than any other American could have obtained in the new 
 provincial charter of 1691. So preeminently did Mather 
 stand forth as the first citizen of his colony that the 
 English Government, in granting the charter, made him 
 the nominator of those who should first bear office under 
 it. Yet even the cares of this arduous political mission 
 could not draw him away from that interest in ecclesias- 
 tical affairs which was always his chief concern. His stay 
 in England was marked by the formation, chiefly through 
 his agency, of the union of Presbyterian and Congrega- 
 tional ministers in and about London, in 1691, — a union 
 which, indeed, fell apart soon after Mather's return to 
 America, but which was, while it lasted, the only exten- 
 sive association of the two English bodies which the 
 seventeenth century beheld, and which had as its basis 
 the " Heads of Agreement," of w^hich there will be occa- 
 sion to speak in treating of the *' Saybrook Platform." 
 But with all his preeminence, it was Increase Mather's 
 misfortune to be to some extent passed by in the drift of 
 events, so that his old age was a period of disappointment ; 
 yet he was never without influence, and was as long as he 
 lived the foremost of the New England ministry, alike in 
 
INCREASE MATHER. 1 85 
 
 the merit of the services which he had rendered to his 
 country and its churches and the reverence which his 
 abilities compelled. 
 
 This leadership of Increase Mather in the second gener- 
 ation was exhibited in the summons of the next Synod 
 which followed that of 1662, — the "Reforming Synod" 
 of 1679-80, — an assembly which has the distinction of 
 being, the last Congregational Synod of Massachusetts. 
 The gathering of this council was not occasioned by any 
 general discussion such as centered public interest in the 
 Half- Way Covenant. On the contrary, it met to deplore 
 the spiritual deadness of the times, and to devise a rem- 
 edy for their evils. Its immediate occasion was what the 
 leaders of New England believed to be a series of divine 
 judgments consequent upon religious decay. As has al- 
 ready been pointed out, the second generation manifested 
 little of the religious zeal which had animated the fathers 
 of New England. The fire of the first enthusiasm had 
 spent much of its force, — it is the universal experience of 
 mankind that ideals which profoundly stir one age lose 
 something of their power in the next epoch, — and while 
 New England was still an intensely religious land when 
 judged by the standard of contemporary England, the 
 type of piety was less warmly experiential, the additions 
 to the churches were fewer, and serious cases of discipline 
 seem to have been more common than in the days when 
 the enterprise had more of novelty. New England w^as 
 becoming more provincial. Its founders had been leaders 
 in a great cause which had been that also of thousands 
 in the home-land who never crossed the seas. Till the 
 Restoration they still continued actors, in a measure, on the 
 national stage. But with the return of the Stuarts New 
 England ceased to have weight in the mother-country. 
 The party whose principles it represented was defeated 
 
1 86 THE CONGREGATIONALISrS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 and proscribed ; other interests than those for which the 
 Puritan cared largely engrossed English thought. New 
 England was no longer a formative factor in English re- 
 ligious life; while the second generation, brought up in 
 the hard battle with the half-tamed wilderness, lacked that 
 generous training gained from the institutions of an old 
 and stable civilization and developed by participation in 
 struggles of national importance, which the fathers so 
 richly enjoyed. Doubtless it was well for the future of 
 America that sympathy in thought between Old Eng- 
 land and the New was thus interrupted, and that political 
 bickerings added to the separation between the two lands, 
 for it made the development of New England a hardy and 
 independent growth ; but its immediate effect was to stunt 
 the life which drew its sustenance from the scanty colonial 
 soil. All through the later colonial period fancy looked 
 back with almost pathetic lamentation to the early days 
 as a golden age of piety and an era of men of strength ; 
 and though there was much of exaggeration in this view, 
 there was a measure of truth also, for the later New Eng- 
 land was poorer in enthusiasm, poorer in men of conspicu- 
 ous leadership, less endowed with a sense of a mission to 
 fulfill than the New England of the founders. 
 
 In the eighth decade of the seventeenth century material 
 losses enhanced this feeling of spiritual decline. Disas- 
 trous conflagrations in Boston in 1676 and 1679, visitations 
 of the smallpox, and above all the destructive struggle of 
 1675-76 known as Philip's War, brought distress to all 
 parts of Massachusetts ; while the threatening movements 
 which resulted in the overthrow of the charter had already 
 begun to make themselves felt. 
 
 To Increase Mather it seemed desirable that a Synod 
 should assemble to consider the situation ; and therefore, 
 at his motion, a petition, bearing his name and that of 
 
THE ''REFORMING SYNOD." ' 187 
 
 eighteen others of the Massachusetts ministry, was pre- 
 sented to the General Court at its session beginning May 
 2^, i6jq, praying that such a council should be called. 
 The court heard the request, and ordered that the Synod 
 should meet on September loth, at Boston, "for the re- 
 uisall of the platforme of discipljne agreed vpon by the 
 churches, 1647, and what else may appeare necessary for 
 the preventing schishmes, haeresies, prophaness, & the 
 establishment of the churches in one faith & order of the 
 gospell," — a problem embodied more succinctly in the two 
 questions handed in by the petitioners and approved by 
 the court, " What are the euills that haue provoked the 
 Lord to bring his judgments on New England?" and 
 "What is to be donn that so those evills may be re- 
 formed?" 
 
 Pursuant to this call, the representatives of the churches 
 gathered at Boston at the time appointed, and after a 
 session of ten days adopted a document draughted by In- 
 crease Mather setting forth the Synod's sense of the decay 
 of godliness in the land ; of the increase of pride ; neglect 
 of worship ; sabbath-breaking ; lack of family government ; 
 censurings, intemperance, falsehood, and love of the 
 world : and recommending, as means for combating these 
 evils, insistence on strictness in admission to communion ; 
 the strengthening of family and church discipline ; the 
 appointment of a pastor, teacher, and ruling elder in each 
 church, as at the beginning of the New England churches, 
 instead 'of having only a single minister, as had already 
 become the rule; the payment of adequate ministerial 
 salaries; the careful execution of law, especially of the 
 statutes regulating the sale of spirits ; a renewal of church 
 covenants; and care for schools, especially for Harvard 
 College, then the sole source of ministerial supply. At 
 the same time, and as a measure for religious betterment. 
 
1 88 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 the Synod " unanimously approved " the " Cambridge 
 Platform," *' for the substance of it." 
 
 This enumeration of evils and suggestion of remedies 
 undoubtedly did good in that it stirred up the churches 
 to renewed self-examination, and led, for a time at least, 
 to greater painstaking in the instruction of the young, as 
 well as to special meetings designed to awaken their at- 
 tention to religious things. But the most permanently 
 memorable, if least discussed, action of this Synod was the 
 result of the appointment of a committee on the last day 
 of its first session to *' draw up a Confession of faith " and 
 report it to a second session on May 12, 1680. Though 
 the Cambridge Synod had approved the doctrinal parts of 
 the Westminster Confession in 1648 as ** very holy, ortho- 
 dox, & judicious," and had therefore *' freely & fully " 
 consented to it " for the substance therof," that Confession 
 had been revised by English Congregationalists at a Synod 
 held at the Savoy Palace in London in 1658; and in ad- 
 dition to the changes introduced by Parliament when the 
 Confession had been declared the religious standard of 
 England, the English Congregationalists had rewritten a 
 number of articles, leaving their doctrinal significance 
 essentially unaltered, but amending the phraseology here 
 and there, and changing every passage incompatible with 
 Congregational theories of church government. To the 
 minds of the leaders of Massachusetts it doubtless seemed 
 well that a similar readaptation of the Westminster Con- 
 fession should bear testimony to the common faith of New 
 England. 
 
 The committee on the creed v/as made up of Urian 
 Oakes, acting-president of Harvard, and Rev. Messrs. 
 Increase Mather, Solomon Stoddard, Samuel Torrey, of 
 Weymouth, James Allen, of the Boston First Church, 
 Samuel Willard, of the Bo.ston " Old South," John Iliggin- 
 
THE CONFESSION OF IGSO. 1 89 
 
 son, of Salem, and Joslah Flynt, of Dorchester. It was a 
 body as able as any that could have been gathered in 
 Massachusetts, and undoubtedly might have formulated 
 an original Confession of learning and force had it so 
 chosen; but three of its most prominent members had 
 been in England at the time of the preparation of the Savoy 
 Confession about twenty-two years before, and the desire 
 of all was strong that the essential unity of belief between 
 the Congregational churches of Old England and the New 
 should be expressed, if possible, by a common Confession. 
 Nor had there been as yet any serious doctrinal discussions 
 in New England. The churches still stood, as at their 
 origin, on the basis of the general Puritan theology of 
 England as it had been in the time of their beginnings. 
 Increase Mather could say with truth, as he said in the 
 preface commending the results of this session of the 
 Synod in 1680: '' It is well known, that as to matters of 
 Doctrine we agree with other Reformed Churches: Nor 
 was it that, but what concerns' Worship and Discipline, 
 that caused our Fathers to come into this wilderness." 
 The setting forth of a new Confession aroused no general 
 interest, for no one could doubt what its essential content 
 would be, — it was simply one of various devices for the 
 betterment of the churches in this time of loss and, as it 
 was believed, of judgment. 
 
 It was natural, therefore, that when the Synod met for 
 its second session, under the moderatorship of Increase 
 Mather, the committee recommended and the Assembly 
 adopted the Savoy Confession, changing a word here and 
 there, asserting more distinctly the church-membership of 
 children of Christian parents which the Half-Way Cove- 
 nant discussion had brought into prominence in New Eng- 
 land ; but making no serious alteration except to substitute 
 for the guarded expressions of the Savoy symbol concern- 
 
I90 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 ing the interference of magistrates in religious matters an 
 article chiefly in words borrowed from the Westminster 
 Confession, which more positively set forth the authority 
 of the state in doctrinal questions, — a change which can- 
 not be deemed an improvement. The lengthy Confession 
 was twice read to the Synod ; but it awakened no debate 
 of consequence, and a session of two days sufficed, under 
 Mather's energetic leadership, for the establishment of 
 what has since been known by the title of the " Confession 
 of 1680" as the public testimony of the Massachusetts 
 churches to their faith. 
 
 So came into existence a creed which the Congrega- 
 tional churches of America have always held in veneration, 
 and which the National Council in 1865 affirmed in its 
 '' Burial Hill Declaration " substantially embodies their 
 faith. It was not imposed on individual churches, nor 
 was it intended as a substitute for local creeds. Two 
 churches did indeed employ it as their own creedal ex- 
 pression,— the First Church, Cambridge, and the " Old 
 South," Boston, though in the latter case, at least, it is 
 doubtful whether it was ever adopted by formal vote of 
 the church. No Congregational church has been bound 
 by it in the sense in which every Presbyterian church is 
 bound by the Westminster Confession. But it remains 
 the fullest and the most respected testimony to the faith 
 of those churches as that faith appeared to the men of the 
 last quarter of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The adoption of this Confession was an event of less 
 immediate concern to the people of Massachusetts than 
 the great political overturn of five years later, which 
 threatened for a time to make profound alterations in the 
 state, and which led to a considerable modification of the 
 ecclesiastical policy of the colony. The charter of 1629, 
 as interpreted by the founders of Massachusetts, rendered 
 
LOSS OF THE CHARTER. I91 
 
 that commonwealth practically self-governing, and had 
 therefore long been looked upon with disfavor by the 
 Stuart sovereigns. It had been earnestly defended by the 
 early settlers against the encroachments of Charles I. and 
 of Parliament ; but Charles 11. was now attacking it, and 
 the situation on both sides of the Atlantic favored such 
 an onslaught. In the mother-country the opponents of 
 the religious system of New England were in authority ; 
 in the colony the old sturdy Puritan type of the Winthrops 
 and Dudleys had, to some extent, given place to a society 
 swayed by prospects of political advantage, especially in 
 the chief towns, — a society whose aspirations and affilia- 
 tions favored rather than discountenanced closer connection 
 with the royal authorities. In 1683 that enemy of Mas- 
 sachusetts, Edward Randolph, succeeded in serving upon 
 the colonial government a writ summoning it to show 
 cause before the English courts why the charter should 
 not be vacated. Though the Upper House of the legisla- 
 ture favored submission to such a revision of the charter 
 as the king might choose, the Lower House, represent- 
 ing as it did the still strongly Puritan sentiment of the 
 common people and the country towns, refused. But the 
 blow fell. In June and October, 1684, the English Court 
 of Chancery declared the charter vacated. All that the 
 founders of Massachusetts had held dear in civil liberty, 
 ecclesiastical polity, or even personal property, was with- 
 out legal safeguard. A revision of the powers of the 
 Massachusetts government by the English authorities was 
 doubtless sure to come at some time. The charter of 
 Charles I. was an anom.aly as soon as the colony grew 
 powerful enough to be in any sense a rival to the mother- 
 country. The privileges which it granted were too nearly 
 those of independence to have continued in a large colony 
 in the seventeenth century without civil war; though the 
 
192 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 smallness of Connecticut eventually preserved to her rights 
 similar to those which Massachusetts now lost. It was 
 w^ell, too, that a broader policy of religious toleration and 
 a wider extension of the franchise than Massachusetts had 
 heretofore allowed should be established. The colonial 
 government had been neither tolerant nor conciliatory 
 toward those who had differed from its way in church or 
 state. But such a desirable revision was very different 
 from the revolution which the annulling of the charter 
 accomplished. By that act every corporation created, 
 every town government established, every sale of land 
 effected by virtue of powers conferred by the charter of 
 1629, w^as made void. The whole legal establishment of 
 the churches, the entire body of colonial law, was swept 
 away. 
 
 These radical changes in the organic law of Massachu- 
 setts were effected under Charles II., but that monarch 
 died on February 6, 1685, without having arranged for 
 the new governments which were to take the place of the 
 old in New England, though it had been the king's inten- 
 tion to make Colonel Piercy Kirke governor, a man soon 
 to become notorious ifor his cruelties in the suppression of 
 Monmouth's rebellion. So turmoiled were the early days 
 of James II. that it was not till 1686 that the new govern- 
 ment was set up. After the brief presidency of Joseph 
 Dudley, beginning in May of that year, the governorship 
 of all New England was taken by Sir Edmund Andros, 
 who arrived at Boston on the 20th of the following De- 
 cember. Under the new form of government, which as- 
 serted itself in a few months over all the Puritan colonies, 
 directly representative institutions no longer existed. At 
 the head of" the colonies was a governor of royal appoint- 
 ment, instead of chief magistrates chosen by the freemen. 
 For his assistance there was a council, designated by the 
 
THE ANDROS EPISODE. 1 93 
 
 king. To this non-elective body, which took the place of 
 the popular legislatures, the law-making power was com- 
 mitted, and by governor and council taxes could be laid. 
 And to the New England CongregationaHst of the old 
 school not the least of the offensive features of the politi- 
 cal situation was the open countenance given by Randolph 
 to the efforts which had been begun in 1679 to introduce 
 Episcopacy into the colonies and which resulted in the 
 formation of an Episcopal congregation in Boston, — that 
 of the famous King's Chapel, — on June 15, 1686. This 
 feeling of dread was strengthened when Andros and Ran- 
 dolph demanded the use of the *' Old South" meeting- 
 house for worship in conformity with the usage of the 
 Church of England during such time as it was not occupied 
 by its regular Sunday congregation. A modern Congre- 
 gationaHst, conscious that the laws under which he lives 
 will permit no other religious body to fetter him in the 
 free exercise of his worship, and accustomed to see mem- 
 bers of Christian communions of various names labor side 
 by side with mutual respect and sometimes with fraternal 
 cooperation, may find it hard to sympathize wdth the feel- 
 ing displayed by his ancestors against the introduction of 
 a form of worship which w^as that of the mother- country. 
 But his sense of surprise disappears when he recalls the 
 fact that Episcopacy was still the sole legal form of wor- 
 ship in England, that Congregationalism w^as still pro- 
 scribed in the home-land, that the political institutions of 
 New England w^ere prostrate, and the feeble colonies were 
 wholly at the mercy of a government avowedly disposed 
 to support Episcopal interests. It seemed no very im- 
 probable supposition that a power w^hich had not hesitated 
 to vacate the title of every Massachusetts farmer's home- 
 stead and do away with all popular representation in the 
 government might enforce on reluctant New England 
 
194 THE CONGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 something of that Episcopal uniformity which was legally 
 maintained in the home-land. The New Englander's fears 
 may have been exaggerated. His worst forebodings were 
 not realized. Andros showed himself, on the whole, a well- 
 intentioned man, who fulfilled the duties of his office with 
 honesty and with as much fairness as could be expected 
 of a courtier out of sympathy with the political and relig- 
 ious ideas of the land over which he was called to admin- 
 ister. But had he been a far better governor than he 
 really was, his rule would have been none the less a 
 tyranny, for he represented the Stuart attempt to take 
 away the liberties which the colonies had enjoyed and 
 modify essentially the institutions which they had created. 
 Fortunately for New England, the revolt of Old Eng- 
 land from James II. made the dominance of the Stuart 
 system in New England brief; and happily, also, Massa- 
 chusetts was represented at this juncture by Increase 
 Mather at the royal court. The foremost exponent of the 
 old Puritan spirit which still dominated all the community 
 except a portion of the trading and political class chiefly 
 to be found in Boston, Mather slipped out of Massachu- 
 setts early in April, 1688, as the informal representative 
 of the people of his native colony. Arrived in London, 
 he presented his case before James II. and was received 
 with personal favor, though the requests which he made 
 were not granted. But meanwhile he diligently cultivated 
 the friendship of the leading non-conformists, and obtained, 
 to some extent, the favor of the Whig leaders, so that 
 when the revolution of the autumn of 1688 drove James 
 •from his throne and substituted the joint sovereignty of 
 William and Mary, Increase Mather was able to approach 
 the new government with some prospect of a favorable 
 hearing. Such an advocate was needed, for on the tardy 
 arrival of news of the landing of WilUarn in England, the 
 
THE NEW CHARTER. 
 
 195 
 
 people of Boston arose on April 18, 1689, and made 
 Andros and his official following prisoners. In Massa- 
 chusetts and Connecticut the old governments were re- 
 stored by popular insistence. But only the timely efforts 
 of Mather prevented the issue of an order from William 
 directing that Andros continue in authority. Yet, though 
 proceedings for the voiding of the Connecticut charter had 
 not advanced so far as to make it impossible for the ancient 
 government of that colony to resume its sway now that 
 what men deemed the usurpation of Andros was over, 
 the charter of Massachusetts was gone forever. For a 
 moment, in January, 1690, it seemed likely that Mather 
 would secure its restoration by act of Parliament. But 
 William proved at first almost as intractable as his Stuart 
 predecessor, and it was soon evident that a full restoration 
 of the ancient privileges of Massachusetts was out of the 
 question. The old thought of a theocratic state, in which 
 one form of worship should be allowed, where the rulers 
 should be Christian men, and in which a self-governing 
 class of the population should administer all affairs in 
 a spirit of semi-independence, was impossible of revival, 
 partly because New England had in a measure grown 
 away from it, but chiefly because William, like James, 
 wished to hold the prosperous colony closely under his 
 administration. 
 
 But though the Massachusetts of the fathers which 
 Mather loved was not to be reproduced, Mather rescued 
 much that was dear to the New England Puritan. He pre- 
 vented the annexation of Plymouth Colony to New York, 
 and secured its incorporation with Massachusetts, thus 
 honorably and naturally terminating the separate existence 
 of the Pilgrim commonwealth, the independence of which 
 could not longer be maintained. He obtained a new 
 charter for Massachusetts in 1 691, in spite of the opposi- 
 
Iq5 the COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. VI. 
 
 tion of the agents whom the colony had associated with 
 him and who impracticably held for the old charter or 
 nothing. This charter was, indeed, distasteful to Mather 
 in its limitations ; it reserved to the king the appointment 
 of the highest offices of government, and a right to reject 
 obnoxious laws. It swept away all ecclesiastical tests for 
 the franchise, even such indirect and partial tests as had 
 continued since 1664; it granted freedom of worship to 
 Protestants of all shades. But it left to Massachusetts a 
 legislature the Lower House of which was directly chosen 
 by the people, and in which the Upper House was still 
 measurably under the control of the popular representa- 
 tives, — a legislature, too, which held the purse, and hence 
 had a potent means of control over all branches of the 
 government. The old local governments of the towns 
 were left undisturbed; and this, with the power of taxa- 
 tion which was in the hands of the legislature, insured 
 the ascendency of the form of ecclesiastical polity which 
 had heretofore been dominant in New England. An ex- 
 press provision, confirming all grants made by the General 
 Court in time past, secured to individuals and to churches 
 the possession of their lands, and the maintenance as far 
 as possible of the old order of affairs. Certainly Congre- 
 gationalism owed much to the influences that preserved 
 its essential features unfettered by the English Govern- 
 ment at the conclusion of this momentous political change. 
 Such a profound disturbance of public thought as oc- 
 curred all over New England during the Andros episode 
 gave occasion, as such events customarily do, to move- 
 ments of more or less intensity in other directions than 
 merely poHtical. It would be unwarranted to say that 
 the grim tragedy of Salem witchcraft was caused by this 
 state of the public mind. New England, like Old Eng- 
 land and Scotland, firmly beheved in the possibility of 
 
SALEM WITCHCRAFT. 1 97 
 
 witchcraft; and the laws under which executions took 
 place in the mother-country as late as 1712, and which 
 were not repealed till 1736, had their counterparts in 
 these colonies, where an occasional victim had been put 
 to death by legal process in Massachusetts and Connec- 
 ticut. But no New England community had thus far been 
 crazed with excitement, as Salem now was ; and the ex- 
 cessive violence of this mental epidemic may in this case 
 be justly attributed to the fevered state of the public 
 mind. Fortunately the outbreak was local and its dura- 
 tion brief. Beginning with the strange actions of children 
 in the household of Rev. Samuel Parris, of Salem village, 
 now Danvers, Mass., in February, 1692, it chiefly involved 
 Salem and Andover, and before the executions ceased, 
 in September, 1692, nineteen men and women had been 
 hanged, and one pressed to death in accordance with the 
 barbarous English penalty for refusal to plead. All this 
 was done under a special judicial commission appointed by 
 the new royal governor. Sir William Phips, himself, like 
 the members of the commission, of New England birth ; 
 and the habit of mind by which it had been made possible 
 had been fostered by the teachings of the two Mathers, 
 especially of Cotton Mather. But it is illustrative of the 
 good sense fundamental to the New England character 
 that the excitement passed by almost as quickly as it 
 arose ; and though belief in witchcraft did not immediately 
 die out, men speedily felt that there had been no proper 
 sifting of evidence, and it is to their credit that some of 
 the chief actors in these scenes, such as the high-minded 
 Samuel Sewall of the judicial commission, and some of 
 the jurymen themselves, publicly acknowledged that they 
 had been in error and entreated forgiveness. Indeed, the 
 government of the province, in appointing a fast-day in 
 January, 1696, though maintaining the satanic origin of 
 
198 THE COXGREGATIOXA LISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 the tragedy, prayed the divine forgiveness for ** whatever 
 mistakes . . . had been fallen into " ; and at a later time, 
 171 1, gave pecuniary compensation to the heirs of the 
 victims. When Cotton Mather believed that he had dis- 
 covered a case of demoniac possession in Boston a year 
 after the Salem executions, his views were combated by 
 Robert Calef, a merchant of that place ; and this discussion 
 led to an elaborate criticism of the transactions of 1692 
 and of those prominent in them, issued by Calef in i 700. 
 Though popular trust in the reality of satanic compacts 
 continued in New England, as in other countries, into the 
 eighteenth century, the Salem executions ended the inflic- 
 tion of death for this widespread delusion, and it is not 
 without significance, as illustrative of the comparative mild- 
 ness of New England punishment, that the Salem witches 
 were hanged, while in Scotland these miserable creatures 
 were burned as late as 1722. 
 
 To turn from a grim outburst of popular delusion to 
 the peaceful establishment of a new agency for the expres- 
 sion of Congregational fellowship is an abrupt transition, 
 but the disturbed years of waiting between the downfall 
 of the government of Andros and the grant of the new 
 Massachusetts charter saw the beginnings of permanent 
 Ministerial Associations. There had been meetings of the 
 ministry of the scattered settlements as early as 1633, 
 and these voluntary gatherings had continued for some 
 years ; but fears lest they should result in a Presbytery, it 
 would appear, led to their abandonment not far from the 
 middle of the seventeenth century. But the year 1686 
 saw the addition to the ranks of the New England ministry 
 of Rev. Charles Morton, a prominent Dissenter, who had 
 made his English home a theological seminary even under 
 the restored monarchy of Charles II., and who was settled, 
 speedily after his arrival, over the church at Charlestown, 
 
MINISTERIAL ASSOCIATIOXS. 1 99 
 
 Mass. Morton had been a member of a Ministerial Asso- 
 ciation at Bodmin, Cornwall, in the days of the Common- 
 wealth, and now, on October 13, 1690, an association, 
 having the same rules as the Bodmin body, was formed, 
 doubtless through his efforts, embracing the ministers of 
 Boston and its neighbor towns, and meeting regularly in 
 the college building at Cambridge. It was a purely vol- 
 untary, club-like organization, having for its aim *' to de- 
 bate any matter referring to ourselves," and " to hear and 
 consider any cases that shall be proposed unto us, from 
 churches or private persons." Such an institution met a 
 real want; and by 1692 two other associations, one hav- 
 ing its headquarters at Salem, were in existence. By 
 1705 they numbered five. From 1690 onward they be- 
 came a permanent feature of New England Congregation- 
 alism, though their full development did not come till the 
 consociational movements of 1705 and 1708 in Massachu- 
 setts and Connecticut, to which reference will speedily be 
 made. 
 
 Another token of the upheaval of public thought is to 
 be seen in certain innovations on established ecclesiastical 
 usage which made themselves felt in the last decade of the 
 seventeenth century, particularly at Boston, — innovations 
 in themselves of no great importance, but which gave rise 
 to more' or less successful attempts to establish a stricter 
 and more Presbyterian type of Congregational govern- 
 ment. A group of youngerly men, connected with Har- 
 vard College, were inclined toward change, and, as it 
 seemed to them, a liberalization of the usages of earlier 
 New England. The most conspicuous members of this 
 party were John Leverett and William Brattle, who had 
 become tutors at Harvard in 1685, and had controlled the 
 college during Increase Mather's absence In England, — a 
 position which Brattle exchanged In 1696 for the more 
 
200 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 influential post of pastor of the Cambridge church. Asso- 
 ciated with Brattle, and of even greater prominence than 
 he, was his older brother Thomas, the college treasurer; 
 and Ebenezer Pemberton, a tutor and later colleague 
 pastor of the ''Old South" Church of Bo.ston. These 
 men desired the abandonment of public relations of relig- 
 ious experience in admission to church-membership ; and 
 they wi.shed that all baptized adults who shared in a min- 
 ister's support, whether in full communion or not, should 
 have a voice in his election. These were the two main 
 features of their innovations, but they desired also the 
 baptism of all children presented by any Christian sponsor ; 
 the reading of the Scriptures without comment, instead of 
 with explanation verse by verse, as was the Puritan cus- 
 tom ; and the liturgical use of the Lord's Prayer. 
 
 The first two of these changes were opposed by Increase 
 Mather with great vigor, and in a way to provoke his lib- 
 eralizing associates in the Harvard faculty and in Boston. 
 The result was the building by Thomas Brattle and his 
 associates of a new meeting-house at Boston in 1698; 
 and an invitation by its builders and others to Rev. Benja- 
 min Colman, a Harvard graduate of 1692, then in Eng- 
 land, to become their pastor. The well-known conservative 
 sympathies of the three Congregational churches existing 
 in Boston induced Brattle and his friends to recommend 
 that Colman .should procure ordination at the more friendly 
 hands of the London Presbytery, and when Colman came 
 to Boston in November, 1699, it was as a minister enjoy- 
 ing Presbyterian ordination, but of course no minister in 
 the eyes of strenuous Congregationalists, who insisted, as 
 the fathers had done, that a pastor was to be ordained 
 only by the congregation which he served, and was a min- 
 ister only in connection with a particular church. Hav- 
 ing secured their pastor, the associates organized Brattle 
 
BRATTLE CHURCH. 20I 
 
 Church on December 12, 1699. All this was done without 
 the countenance of the other churches of the colony; it 
 was clearly un-Congregational when judged by the stand- 
 ards of American usage. It would be thought grossly 
 irregular at the present time. And the movement was 
 strenuously opposed by the Mathers, especially by In- 
 crease, who attacked it in his vigorous tractate of 1700, 
 " The Order of the Gospel." But, in spite of the Mathers 
 and other conservatives, Brattle Church won recognition ; 
 and Increase Mather himself saw the control of Harvard 
 slip from his own hands to those of sympathizers with the 
 innovators in 1701, partly as a result of this quarrel, and 
 partly by reason of political grudges and of his own un- 
 willingness to live in Cambridge. 
 
 In itself this Brattle Church episode amounted to little. 
 Brattle Church soon took a place practically indistinguish- 
 able from that occupied by the other churches of Boston ; 
 and its minister, Rev. Benjamin Colman, became in the 
 course of a few years more prominent for conservatism 
 than for any other characteristic. But its formation was 
 the apparent cause of an attempt to secure a stricter eccle- 
 siastical government in Massachusetts, which is of great 
 importance, — an attempt in which not only the Mathers, 
 but, curiously enough, Benjamin Colman and Ebenezer 
 Pemberton, of the sympathizers with the Brattle Church 
 movement, had a part. 
 
 The first public manifestation of the movement was in 
 the Ministerial Convention of Massachusetts, — an annual 
 gathering of all the ministers of the province at the time 
 of the May General Court, which had begun in the in- 
 formal coming together of the ministers in the earliest days 
 of the colon}^ and had crystallized sufficiently by about 
 1680 to have a moderator, a dinner, and a sermon. The 
 body still has a feeble existence as a joint meeting of 
 
202 THE CONGREGAriOKALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 Trinitarian and Unitarian ministers and the custodian of a 
 fund for the relief of the widows and daughters of Massa- 
 chusetts ministers. Though in no sense a judicial assem- 
 bly, or one directly representative of the churches, the 
 Convention was accustomed to discuss the state of religion 
 in the commonwealth, and had made suggestions to the 
 legislature and the churches. This Convention now, on 
 June I, 1704, approved a circular letter to the churches, 
 signed by Samuel Willard, of the *' Old South " Church of 
 Boston, Ebenezer Pemberton, Benjamin Colman, Cotton 
 Mather, and twenty-two other of the Massachusetts min- 
 isters who were distinctly and widely representative. It 
 urged more diligent pastoral labors in behalf of the young, 
 a general enforcement of discipline, and ** that the Associa- 
 tions of the Ministers in the several Parts of the Country 
 may be strengthened." In the following November this 
 vote was transmitted to the various ministers of the prov- 
 ince through the agency of the Association meeting at 
 Cambridge, of the formation of which, in 1690, an account 
 has already been given. 
 
 As a result of these appeals, and perhaps of further ac- 
 tion of the Ministers' Convention in 1705, nine ministers, 
 including Willard, Pemberton, and Cotton Mather, came 
 together at Boston on September 11, 1705, as representa- 
 tives of five Massachusetts Ministerial Associations — ap- 
 parently all that then existed in the province — and in a 
 two-days session drew up an elaborate series of Proposals 
 essaying seriously to modify the type of church govern- 
 ment thus far characteristic of New England. 
 
 The plan involved two main features. The first of its 
 recommendations was that Ministerial Associations should 
 be formed where not already existing, and that pastors 
 take their advice in all difficult cases. A suggestion of 
 great importance, borrowed from the English *' Heads of 
 
THE PROPOSALS OF 1705. 
 
 203 
 
 Agreement" of 1691, which was the basis of the union 
 of London Presbyterians and Congregationalists effected 
 largely by Increase Mather, was that ministerial candidates 
 be examined and licensed by these associations. Here- 
 tofore each church had given whatever warrant any man 
 had to preach to it simply by asking, formally or inform- 
 ally, to hear him. But with this recommendation of i 705 
 the present New England method of ministerial licensure 
 was introduced. " Bereaved churches," as those without 
 ministers were called, were advised to apply to the asso- 
 ciations for candidates. The associations were further- 
 more to inquire into the state of religion, examine charges 
 brought against the character, belief, or conduct of any 
 minister of their membership, and elect delegates to an 
 annual General Association of the entire province. 
 
 The second division of this scheme recommended that 
 the pastors connected with these associations and dele- 
 gates from the lay membership of their churches should 
 constitute ''standing councils," to "consult, advise, and 
 determine all affairs that shall be proper matter for the 
 consideration of an ecclesiastical council within their re- 
 spective limits." The results of these councils of " con- 
 sociated churches" "are to be looked upon as final and 
 decisive " ; and in case of refusal to accept the decision, 
 after the case has been heard by a second and neighboring 
 standing council, the churches represented in the council 
 " are to approve, confirm, and ratifie the sentence, and 
 with-draw from the communion of the church that would 
 not be healed.". 
 
 The Proposals here briefly outlined were transmitted to 
 the various associations by the Cambridge-Boston Asso- 
 ciation in November, 1705, and were approved by the 
 Ministerial Convention at Boston on May 30, i 706. But 
 though thus approved by men representative of all parties 
 
204 ^^^^ CONGREG/iTICNALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 in existent Massachusetts Congregationalism as its discus- 
 sions had heretofore developed, these Proposals were only 
 partially carried into effect. Associations were stimulated, 
 a system of ministerial licensure was established ; but the 
 most essential feature of the plan, the system of standing 
 councils, was never put in operation in Massachusetts. 
 The truth is that the Proposals encountered at once a 
 considerable degree of opposition, both from ministers and 
 from their congregations, as inimical to Congregational 
 liberty. The system which it commended, though ap- 
 proved by a majority of the pastors, encountered too 
 much hostility to be put in full practice without legislative 
 support ; and under the new charter, with a governor, 
 Joseph Dudley, who coquetted with Episcopacy, and a 
 legislature whose acts were subject to royal revisal, such 
 support was unattainable. 
 
 These Massachusetts Proposals of 1705, which thus 
 failed in large part in the commonwealth of their origin, 
 were substantially adopted in Connecticut three years 
 later. As compared with Massachusetts, the life of Con- 
 necticut in the latter half of the seventeenth century had 
 been peaceful. Though Connecticut troops had borne 
 their share in Philip's War, her towns had been spared the 
 devastation that fell on Massachusetts and Plymouth ; the 
 government of Andros had extended to the colony, but 
 the superior foresight of her General Court had assured 
 to her citizens their lands, while those of Massachusetts 
 were in doubt ; no popular delusion, like the witclicraft 
 craze, had frenzied any of her towns ; het people were a 
 homogeneous, fairly well-to-do agricultural population, 
 ruled by a semi-independent government, under a charter 
 even more liberal tlian that which Massachusetts had en- 
 joyed before 1684. 
 
 But if tlie special trials of Massachusetts' political and 
 
CAUSES OF FRICl^ION. 205 
 
 ecclesiastical life had no full counterparts in the Connecti- 
 cut of I 700, the general causes modifying Congregational 
 usage were at work there as in the larger colony. As 
 has been already pointed out, the Congregationalism of 
 the founders was of the type of Rarrowe rather than of 
 Browne. It recognized clearly the right of the ordinary 
 membership to elect their ministers and to admit mem- 
 bers, it held that no act of discipline was valid unless with 
 the consent of the church ; but it placed the initiative in 
 the hands of the officers, and practically limited the share 
 of the brethren in ordinary church acts to assent to or 
 dissent from propositions presented by them. As the 
 "Cambridge Platform" expres^d it: "Church govern- 
 ment, or Rule, is placed by Christ in the officers of the 
 Church; . . . yet in case of mal-administration, they are 
 subject to the power of the church; . . . the work & 
 duty of the people is expressed in the phrase of obeying 
 their Elders." And one of the duties laid on ministers 
 by the same constitution is that of calling " the church 
 together upon any weighty occasion, when the members 
 so called, without just cause, may not refuse to come : 
 nor when they are come, depart before they are dismissed : 
 nor speak in the church, before they have leave from the 
 elders : ^or continue so doing, when they require silence, 
 nor may they oppose nor contradict the judgment or sen- 
 tence of the Elders, without sufficient & weighty cause." 
 
 The authoritative position here given to the ministry 
 was difficult to maintain in a country like New England ; 
 but it became much more arduous when, instead of a 
 pastor, teacher, and one or more ruling elders, to consti- 
 tute a governing body, as in the larger churches at the 
 first, the eldership was reduced to a single minister. This 
 change from the original custom was induced rather by 
 motives of economy than by any alteration of theoretic 
 
206 THE COXGREGATIOXA LISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 polity, and was deplored as already general by the ** Re- 
 forming Synod" of 1679; but it is easy to see that a 
 single pastor who attempted to exercise the extensive 
 prerogatives wielded originally by an eldership of three 
 or four officers, was not unlikely to fall into quarrel with 
 his flock. Such disputes did occasionally occur, and they 
 explain why it was that many in Connecticut, even in the 
 absence of special problems such as disturbed the vicinity 
 of Boston, were ready to look with favor on a revisal of 
 the standards of church government. 
 
 The first decade of the eighteenth century was a time 
 of much activity in Connecticut. In 1701 the long-cher- 
 ished desire for *' a nearer^and less expensive seat of learn- 
 ing " than .Harvard was carried into effect by the organi- 
 zation of Yale College, with ten of the ministers of the 
 colony as its trustees. The meetings of these trustees at 
 once became the most important ministerial gatherings in 
 Connecticut ; and as early as March i 7, i 703, those pres- 
 ent at one of these sessions sent forth a circular letter to 
 ascertain whether the approval of the Massachusetts Con- 
 fession of 1680 by the legislature of the colony would not 
 be agreeable to the ministry as a whole. The efforts of 
 the framers of the Massachusetts Proposals of 1 705 also 
 were well known to the leaders of Connecticut, many of 
 whom sympathized with the Mathers and other prominent 
 Massachusetts conservatives. But the Connecticut move- 
 ment for stricter government was greatly aided by the 
 election of Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, of New London, to 
 the governorship in December, i 707. In May following, 
 and largely through Saltonstall's influence, the court issued 
 the call for the Saybrook Synod, — the last Synod called 
 by governmental authority in New England, except the 
 " General Consociation " approved by the Connecticut 
 legislature in the excitement of the " Great Awakening." 
 
THE '' SAYBROOK PLAI'FORM:'- 207 
 
 By this vote the legislature ordered the representatives of 
 the churches to come together in the various county towns 
 on June 28, 1708, there to draw up tentative schemes of 
 church government and to choose delegates to a general 
 assembly which should meet at Saybrook, at the Com- 
 mencement of the infant college ; when the delegates to 
 this general council should, in turn, prepare a form of 
 government, on the basis of the several county plans, for 
 submission to the legislature. This rather elaborate direc- 
 tion was obeyed ; and on September 9, i 708, the Synod 
 met at Saybrook w^ith an attendance of twelve ministers 
 and four laymen. 
 
 The work of the Synod was threefold. It approved the 
 Confession of 1680, — itself a slight modification of the 
 Savoy revision of the Westminster symbol, — as the doc- 
 trinal standard ; and the somewhat divergent views of its 
 members regarding the proper strenuousness of church 
 government were met by the adoption of the rather liberal 
 and loose-knitted ** Heads of Agreement" of 1691, and 
 fifteen close-compacted Articles, the *' Saybrook Plat- 
 form " proper. These famous Articles, the most important 
 and only original part of the Synod's symbols, were based 
 essentially on the Massachusetts Proposals of 1705, though 
 worked out in more elaborate detail. They provided that 
 the churches should be grouped in '* consociations " or 
 standing councils, one or more such bodies in each county. 
 To these *' consociations " all cases of discipline difficult of 
 settlement within the local church where they originate 
 should be brought, and the decision then rendered shall 
 be considered final save in cases of great difficulty and 
 moment, when the next neighboring " consociation " 
 should meet jointly with that having original cognizance 
 of the case. The help of the ** consociation " should be 
 sought by each church belonging to it " upon all occa- 
 
208 . rilE CONG REG ATIOX. I LISTS. [Chai-. vi. 
 
 sions ecclesiasticall," which included, of course, ministerial 
 ordinations, installations, and dismissions. In a similar 
 way, all the ministers of the colony were to be di-stributed 
 into " associations," for consultation, ministerial licensure, 
 and recommendation ; and by their delegates an annual 
 "General Association" of the whole colony should be 
 constituted. 
 
 These recommendations were at once approved by the 
 legislature, and were carried into effect in February, March, 
 and April, i 709, w^hen consociations and associations were 
 formed in the several counties. In May the first General 
 Association met, thus inaugurating what is now by far the 
 oldest of the State organizations representativ^e of Congre- 
 gationalism, except the feeble and never very well com- 
 pacted Massachusetts Convention. But though adopted 
 in all parts of Connecticut, the Saybrook system encoun- 
 tered considerable opposition. While Hartford and New 
 London counties accepted the new rules as they came 
 from the Synod, Fairfield County made them more stren- 
 uous by a Presbyterianizing interpretation put on record 
 when its consociation was formed, and New Haven County 
 abated their strictness by the same method. It is clear 
 that, unless backed by the legislature, they would have 
 failed of adoption in Connecticut as the similar Proposals 
 of 1705 did in Massachusetts. But in Connecticut they 
 remained the legally recognized standard till 1 7S4, and 
 the rule of the vast majority of the churches, though w^ith 
 ever-decreasing strictness, till after the middle of the 
 jjresent century. 
 
 The adoption of this stricter Congregational system in 
 Connecticut and its failure in Massachusetts put the two 
 chief Puritan colonies on somewhat divergent paths, and 
 led to certain minor differences in their types of Con- 
 gregationalism which continue, though in much-abated 
 
THE '' SAYBROOK platform:' 209 
 
 distinctness, to the present day. Under the influence of 
 consociationism, especially as the eighteenth century drew 
 toward a close, Connecticut's sympathies went out increas- 
 ingly toward fellowship with the Presbyterian Church of the 
 Middle States. Massachusetts, on the other hand, came 
 to represent an increasingly independent type of Congre- 
 gationalism. In our own century the two types have once 
 more approximated, though each has contributed elements 
 to present denominational life. 
 
 This divergence of the characteristics of Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut Congregationalism was stimulated by a 
 keen satire upon the Proposals of i 705, published in 17 10, 
 by Rev. John Wise, pastor of a parish then in Ipswich, 
 but now known as Essex, Mass., under the title of " The 
 Churches Quarrel Espoused," — a work which Wise fol- 
 lowed in 1 71 7 with his ''Vindication of the Government 
 of New England Churches." These brilliant little books 
 doubtless came too late to have much effect in brin"-- 
 ing about the rejection of the Proposals; but they stirred 
 and stimulated Congregational thought, and ultimately did 
 much to change the Barrowism of early New England into 
 a more democratic type of Congregationalism. Wise was 
 a graduate of Harvard of the class of 1673, who had suf- 
 fered fine, suspension from the ministry, and imprison- 
 ment under the government of Andros for leading his town 
 in a refusal to collect taxes not imposed by a representa- 
 tive assembly, thus being the first conspicuous American 
 opponent of taxation without representation. His abili- 
 ties as a leader of men in other experiences than those of a 
 parish were attested also on a laborious campaign against 
 Canada, In w^hich he served as chaplain ; and his enlighten- 
 ment by his opposition to the witchcraft delusion of 1692. 
 Altogether, Wise combined an intense love for the New 
 England of the fathers with a clear-sighted perception 
 
2IO THE CONGREGATIOXALISl^S. [Chap. vi. 
 
 of the democratic tendencies of American life that made 
 him unconsciously prophetic of the future, while defending 
 from innovation, as he believed, the best features of the 
 past ; and he clothed his work in a literary form more 
 attractive than that of any other colonial writer of his age. 
 In his little books of 1710 and 171 7 Wise seems to have 
 thought that he was simply defending the " Cambridge 
 Platform " against the consociational movements of Massa- 
 chusetts and Connecticut. But he really entered, espe- 
 cially in the second of these volumes, on a broad discus- 
 sion of the fundamental principles of government in church 
 and state alike, and his view was far more democratic than 
 that of the '' Platform." Wise based his defense of a 
 democratic Congregationalism not only on the Bible and 
 on the prescriptions of the New England fathers as he 
 understood them, but very strikingly and prophetically 
 also on natural law, declaring that " it seems most agree- 
 able with the light of nature, that if there be any of the 
 regular government settled in the church of God it must 
 needs be a Democracy." " Power," he asserted, *'is origi- 
 nally in the people." And Wise conceived it to be one of 
 the chief merits of Congregationalism that it best illus- 
 trates the principles of the most valuable forms of civil 
 government. In his views of civil society Wise showed 
 his agreement with the most advanced of the European 
 publicists of his day, holding the ''compact" theory, so 
 popular later in his century ; asserting that men are *' all 
 naturally free and equal," that "civil government" is 
 '* the effect of human free-compacts and not of divine in- 
 stitution " ; and that ** the formal reason of government is 
 the will of a community, yielded up and surrendered to 
 some other subject, either one particular person or more," 
 in order that men " may be secured against the injuries 
 they are liable to from their own kind." This govern- 
 
JOnX WISE AND HIS IIIEORIES. 
 
 21 I 
 
 ment may take the form of a democracy, an aristocracy, 
 or a monarchy. Of these democracy is the oldest in the 
 civil world, it " is a form of government which the light 
 of nature does highly value, and often directs to as most 
 agreeable to the just and natural prerogatives of human 
 beings." So, too: "If Christ has settled any form of 
 power in his church he has done it for his churches safety, 
 and for the benefit of every member : Then he must needs 
 be presumed to have made choice of that government as 
 should least expose his people to hazard, either from 
 fraud, or arbitrary measures of particular men. And it is 
 as plain as daylight, there is no species of government like 
 a democracy to attain this end." 
 
 These quotations from Wise's ** Government of New 
 England Churches" of 171 7 show that he presented a 
 new and forceful treatment of Congregationalism, making 
 its claims no longer dependent on its superior conformity 
 to the scattered hints of Scripture alone, but basing its 
 merits also on the broad principles of democracy which 
 were to be the mainspring of so much of American thought 
 and action. In so doing he emphasized the democratic 
 element in Congregationalism as no previous writer had 
 done. His books were forces in Congregational thought 
 from their publication. Yet his presentation was so novel 
 and so in advance of his time that the influence of these 
 tracts was not at first wide. Their greatest power as 
 directive of pu.blic thought was more than half a century 
 after they were first put in print. In 1772, when their 
 author had been forty-seven years silent in death, their 
 real hour came. Then, in the excitement anticipatory to 
 the great struggle for political independence, Massachusetts 
 welcomed two editions of Wise's works in a single year; 
 and the democratic principles which he declared the essen- 
 tials of Congregationalism, and which a slowly increasing 
 
212 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vi. 
 
 number had recognized since his day, were the theories 
 which men welcomed in church and state ahke. 
 
 But while Wise must be reckoned thus as one of the 
 men to \\'hom modern Congregationalism is most highly 
 indebted, the Massachusetts churches of his lifetime were 
 more u rider the dominance of the views of the Mathers 
 than his own. On May 27, 1725, just seven weeks after 
 Wise died, the Ministers' Convention, by the pen of Cotton 
 Mather, petitioned the legislature of the province to call a 
 Synod in the old-time fashion, to consider " What are the 
 miscarriages whereof we have reason to think the jucig- 
 ments of heaven, upon us, call us to be more generally 
 sensible, and what may be the most evangelical and effect- 
 ual expedients to put a stop unto those or the like mis- 
 carriages." The Upper House favored the request, the 
 Lower House disapproved at first, but afterward joined in 
 referring the question to the next session of the court, and 
 this disposition met the approval of William Dummer, who, 
 as lieutenant-governor, was the highest royal representa- 
 tive at the time in Massachusetts. But the Episcopalians 
 of the province were determined that the Synod should 
 not take place, and appealed to the Bishop of London, by 
 whom the English authorities were induced to administer 
 a sharp rebuke to Dummer and to forbid the meeting, giv- 
 ing as their reason : " It is thought here that the clergy 
 should not meet in so public and authoritative a manner 
 without the king's consent as head of the church, and that 
 it would be a bad precedent for dissenters here to ask the 
 same privilege, which, if granted, would be a sort of vying 
 with the established church. It has also been insinuated 
 that this Synod would have come to some resolutions to 
 the prejudice of the Church of England." 
 
 Thus by Episcopal interference the churches of Massa- 
 chusetts were made to feel that their privileges under the 
 
A SYNOD FORBIDDEN. 213 
 
 charter of 1691 were not what they had been in the days 
 of the founders, or what Connecticut still enjoyed. But 
 probably it was well that it was so. Congregational con- 
 solidation, the development of fellowship, had been the 
 main characteristic of the seventeenth century. That 
 development had gone to semi- Presbyterian lengths in 
 Connecticut ; it had nearly reached the same goal in Mas- 
 sachusetts. It was time to assert the other element of 
 the polity, that of local autonomy; and' the difficulty of 
 calling Synods by government authority, the democratic 
 principles of Wise, and the political situation, all tended to 
 make that assertion, rather than the further development 
 of fellowship, the characteristic of the next century and a 
 quarter. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EARLY THEORIES AND USAGES. 
 
 The failure of the attempt to secure the summons of a 
 Synod by the Massachusetts legislature in 1725 was the 
 concluding incident of the last chapter. Though not in 
 itself a matter of great importance, it may well serve as a 
 convenient terminal mark for the story of early Congrega- 
 tionalism. It emphasized the decline of that intimacy of 
 relationship of the civil and ecclesiastical leaders which 
 had been more and more evident since the downfall of the 
 first Massachusetts charter. The Synod itself was pro- 
 posed to devise a remedy for a state of affairs largely illus- 
 trative of the passing away of the ideals of earlier New 
 England. Already another theory of the claims of Con- 
 gregational polity than that maintained by the founders 
 had been propounded by Wise ; and if one advances be- 
 yond this date there speedily appear new religious move- 
 ments, new discussions, and different problems from those 
 which had engrossed Congregational thought heretofore. 
 It is proper, therefore, to pause in the narrative at this 
 point and to glance at the characteristic features of the 
 institution with which we have had to do — the Congrega- 
 tional Church — as those features appeared in this impor- 
 tant division of Congregational history which has been 
 under review. 
 
 As has already been pointed out, the first century and 
 a half of Congregationalism was not a period of theologic 
 contention. Not that doctrinal themes were not presented 
 in sermons and in lectures with the utmost fullness. In 
 
 214 
 
LITTLE DOCTRINAL DLSCUSSION. 215 
 
 no country were the intellectual principles of the Christian 
 faith more laboriously and persistently set forth than in 
 New England. But till well into the eighteenth century, 
 save in one or two isolated instances, no disposition was 
 manifested to depart from the strenuous type of Calvinism 
 which the early English Congregationalists had defended 
 and which had been characteristic of the Puritans of the 
 reigns of Elizabeth and James I. In reading the sermons 
 of Hooker or Cotton or Shepard, marked by a clear asser- 
 tion of election, of the absolute powerlessness of man by 
 nature in conversion, of the necessity of entire submission 
 to the divine will, and of the infinite blessedness and com- 
 fort which flow to all who receive the justifying and pre- 
 serving grace of God, — even more characterized by a 
 strenuous and reiterated insistence on the necessity of 
 personal godliness of life and a lofty conception of the 
 requirements and the privileges of the Christian calling, — 
 one is reading discourses of the same type as those of 
 Whitaker or Perkins or Preston, the Puritan lights of the 
 University of Cambridge ; and these characteristics con- 
 tinued the uniform and practically unquestioned marks of 
 New England preaching for over a century after the settle- 
 ments were begun. 
 
 A few ripples did, indeed, disturb this doctrinal calm. 
 The Hutchinsonian dispute, in the early days of Massa- 
 chusetts, has already been described ; the Baptist and 
 Quaker beginnings have been glanced at; but none of 
 these episodes affected any considerable portion of New 
 England or modified the type of preaching there exhibited. 
 Still less influential was the publication of a theory of the 
 atonement at variance with the Anselmic view then prev- 
 alent in all Puritan thinking, by William Pynchon, the 
 founder of Springfield, Mass., and one of the few laymen 
 to contribute to theologic literature during the colonial 
 
2l6 THE COXGKEGAriOiXALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 period of New England. His book of 1650, the "Meri- 
 torious Price of our Redemption," denied that Christ suf- 
 fered the torments of hell, or was under the wrath of God, 
 or paid the exact penalty of our sins divinely imputed to 
 him ; and affirmed that the price of our salvation was his 
 mediatorial obedience — the voluntary offering of himself — 
 which disposed the Father to forgive sin. Thoughts sim- 
 ilar to some of these were to appear in a modified form in 
 that conception of Christ's work which the younger Jona- 
 than Edwards was so successfully to advocate in the clos- 
 ing years of the eighteenth century, that it has become 
 known as the '' New England theory " ; but New England 
 was not ripe for such speculations in 1650. 
 
 The Massachusetts legislature ordered Pynchon's book 
 to be burned, and appointed Rev. John Norton, of Ips- 
 wich, to make reply. Pynchon was not convinced, but he 
 founded no new school of thinking, and his pamphlet led 
 to no permanent results. Indeed, so uniform was the pat- 
 tern of New England belief that Cotton Mather was able 
 to say in his " Ratio Disciplinae," published in i 726 : ** There 
 is no need of Reporting what is the P'aith professed by the 
 Churches in New England; For every one knows. That 
 they perfectly adhere to the Confession of Faith, published 
 by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, and afterwards 
 renewed by the Synod at the Savoy : And received by 
 the Renowned Kirk of Scotland. The Doctrinal Articles 
 of the Church of England, also, are more universally held 
 and preached in the Churches of New England, than in 
 any Nation ; and far more than in our own [England]. I 
 cannot learn, That among all the Pastors of Two Hundred 
 Churches, there is one Arminian : much less an Arian, or 
 a Gentilist. ... It is well known, that the Points peculiar 
 to the Churches of New England, are those of their Church 
 Discipline." 
 
THEORY OF THE CHURCH. 217 
 
 It is when we turn to the poHty of Congregationalism 
 that we see that which was most peculiar to our churches 
 in their first century and a half. As defined by the " Cam- 
 bridge Platform," and as held from' the beginnings of Con- 
 gregationalism, *' a Congregational Church, is by the in- 
 stitution of Christ a part of the MiHtant-visible-church, 
 consisting of a company of Saints by calling, united into one 
 body, by a holy covenant, for the publick worship of God, 
 & the mutuall edification one of another, in the Fellowship 
 of the Lord lesus." The '* saints by calling," who are the 
 members of a church, are : '* Such, as haue not only attained 
 the knowledge of the principles of Religion, & are free from 
 gros & open scandals, but also do together with the profes- 
 sion of their faith & Repentance, walk in blameles obe- 
 dience to the word," with their children; in number not 
 greater than " may ordinarily meet together conveniently 
 in one place : nor ordinarily fewer, then may conveniently 
 carry on Church- work." The covenant which joins a com- 
 pany of otherwise disconnected Christians into a church, 
 and which is a fundamental characteristic of the Congre- 
 gational system, is a ^' voluntary agreement " " wherby 
 they give up themselves unto the Lord, to the observing 
 of the ordinances of Christ together in the same society." 
 This covenant is best when it is "express & plain"; but 
 the Puritan Congregationalists of New England, though 
 they firmly denied the proper existence of any organized 
 churches except Congregational bodies, were far from 
 believing with the EngHsh Separatists that the English 
 parish churches were antichrlstian. On the contrary, the 
 *' Cambridge Platform " asserted that a verbal covenant 
 was not the only form of the basal agreement, for '' a com- 
 pany of faithful persons " express such a union '' by their 
 constant practise in comming together for the publick wor- 
 ship of God, & by their religious subjection unto the ordi- 
 
2i8 THE COKGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 nances of God"; and hence they held that though there 
 was no true Church of Enghmd, there were many true 
 churches in the bounds of the Estabhshment. 
 
 A church was organized in early New England by the 
 entrance into formal covenant one with another of those 
 inhabitants of a definite territory, a township or a division 
 of a township, who were " satisfied of one another's faith 
 & repentance." From 1636 onward in Massachusetts and 
 from 1658 in Connecticut the consent of the civil govern- 
 ment and the approval of other churches was a prerequisite 
 to this act, — a consent which was based not only on the 
 type of religious character exhibited, but on the ability 
 of the petitioners to support the necessary expenses of 
 divine worship. In general these fundamental covenants 
 were remarkably free from doctrinal expression, being 
 usually a simple promise to walk in fidelity to the divine 
 commandments and in Christian faithfulness one to an- 
 other. Nor was anything of peculiar sanctity supposed to 
 lie in the form of words adopted at a church's beginning. 
 Such covenants were renewed, made more explicit against 
 definite forms of prevalent sin, or otherwise amended, with 
 much freedom, to meet the exigencies of ecclesiastical life. 
 In fact, it was widely the custom for each new minister to 
 draught the particular agreement to which he took the 
 assent of candidates for church-membership, without neces- 
 sarily submitting his form of words to the approval of the 
 church. The essential matter was the agreement, not its 
 verbal expression. Local confessions of faith were to be 
 found in a few instances in early, though apparently not in 
 the earhest, New England, as at Wenham, Mass., by 1644, 
 or Windsor, Conn., in 1647. A large portion of the elab- 
 orate local creeds of the Congregational churches of the 
 present day had their beginnings in the discussions of the 
 opening years of the present century. 
 
COVENANTS AND CONFESSIONS. 219 
 
 Yet it would be a serious error to conclude that the 
 churches of New England had no doctrinal tests for mem- 
 bership. The absence of written local creeds was chiefly 
 due to the prevalent doctrinal uniformity of the first cent- 
 ury of New England life. But the ordinary requirements 
 for admission to membership show that the tests applied 
 were severe. The candidates for fellowship made their 
 desire known to the officers of the church. They were 
 then obliged to submit to an examination by the teaching 
 and ruling elders, usually in private, though frequently 
 in the presence of the more prominent members of the 
 flock, as Cotton declares, both as to ** their knowledge in 
 the principles of religion, & of their experience in the wayes 
 of grace, and of their godly conversation amongst men." 
 The *' Cambridge Platform " indeed directs that ** the weak- 
 est measure of faith is to be accepted," and that ** severity 
 of examination is to be avoyded " ; but the evidence seems 
 clear that this threefold test implied not only a searching 
 inquiry into the candidates' experience and reputation, but 
 into their acquaintance with the principles of Christian doc- 
 trine. Once approved by the officers, the candidates were 
 propounded to the church that objection to their ad- 
 mission might, if necessary, be made. No difficulties hav- 
 ing been raised, the candidates would appear before the 
 church as a whole, unless excessively timid, and make a 
 *' relation " of their beliefs and religious experiences. With 
 men this usually took the form of oral statements of some 
 length, or question and answer; in the case of women 
 written confessions were usually read by a church officer. 
 But, however presented, the most essential portion of the 
 transaction was the act of the church itself, which, after 
 hearing these statements, voted on the candidates' admis- 
 sion. If accepted, they assented to the covenant and were 
 accounted of the church. 
 
2 20 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vli. 
 
 This early strenuousness, which kept probably a major- 
 ity of the inhabitants of the colonies out of the churches 
 even in the first days of the settlements, was relaxed as 
 the seventeenth century wore on. When the Half- Way 
 Covenant had become the rule, those baptized under it, as 
 already of the church, were admitted to " full communion " 
 in some places, on the strength of a private examination 
 by the officers, without the elaborate propounding and 
 relations still required of those who had had no parental 
 connection with the churches. But these public relations 
 were felt by many to be a formidable matter, — their aban- 
 donment was one of the innovations insisted upon by 
 Brattle Church in 1699, — and though they still continued 
 in extensive use at the close of the first quarter of the 
 eighteenth century, and were favored by conservatives 
 like the Mathers, private examination by the ministers 
 more and more took the place of the public ordeal, espe- 
 cially in the larger towns. 
 
 The organization of a church was followed by its choice 
 of officers. As with the English Separatists, these officers 
 were theoretically held to be pastor, teacher, elders, dea- 
 cons, and widows. But actual New England practice un- 
 derwent a very rapid change in the direction of simplicity 
 during the seventeenth century, so that by 1700 few New 
 England churches had any other officers than pastor and 
 deacons. Tliese officers were at first chosen by the votes 
 of all the adult male members of the church which they 
 were to serve, and members in which they were required 
 to be, — the deacons continued to be so selected always. 
 But certain changes, due prim.arily to the share of all the 
 inhabitants of a township or precinct in a minister's support, 
 of which more will be said later in this chapter, led to the 
 recognition, toward the close of the seventeenth century, 
 of the right of the legal voters of a town or parish, irre- 
 
CHOICE OF OFFICERS. 221 
 
 spectlve of their church-membership, to a cooperant part 
 in a minister's selection, thus estabhshing the dual organ- 
 ization of New England Congregationalism, the church 
 and the ** society," or parish, as joint factors in the choice 
 and settlement of a minister. As long as all legal voters 
 in Massachusetts, or the overwhelming portion of the en- 
 franchised in Connecticut, were church-members, the provi- 
 sion of a minister's support or the erection of a meeting- 
 house by town authorities was the act of substantially the 
 same persons who as church- members had the selection 
 of the minister. But the growth into political prominence 
 of those who were not of the churches altered the situation. 
 In spite of the declaration of the Massachusetts court in 
 1668 that none but members in " full communion" should 
 join in a minister's election, exceptions occurred at Salem 
 as early as 1672 and at Dedham in 1685. In 1666 the 
 Connecticut court asked the ministers to give advice 
 " whether it doth not belong to ye body of a Towne col- 
 lectively, taken joyntly, to call him to be their minister 
 whom the Church shal choose to be their officer?" but 
 nothing came of the inquiry at the time. Massachusetts 
 statutes of 1692-93 directed that the church should select 
 the minister, and that the choice should then be submitted 
 to the inhabitants, both church-members and non-members, 
 for approval ; if approved by a majority, the tax-payers of 
 the town or parish should be bound to provide his support. 
 In cases of disagreement a Massachusetts law of 1695 
 declared that a council of neighboring churches should 
 decide ; but the law practically necessitated a concurrence 
 of communicants and tax-payers in ministerial settlement. 
 A law of I 708 in Connecticut gave legal sanction to a sim- 
 ilar system ; and in both colonies these statutes were but 
 expressions of the sentiment that there should be no taxa- 
 tion without representation. Indeed, in this matter Connec- 
 
222 THE COXGK EGA TIOXA LISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 ticut practice in the latter part of the period under review 
 allowed the parish in many instances larger influence than 
 it obtained in Massachusetts. New settlements in Con- 
 necticut, and parish districts of older settlements in which 
 churches were not yet formed, usually selected a minister and 
 contracted for his salary before, in some instances a number 
 of years before, a church w^as organized. Having thus taken 
 the initiative at the beginning, the society sometimes kept it 
 after the organization of a church, and called the minister, 
 leaving to the church a confirmatory or rejecting power. 
 In eastefn Connecticut, especially New London County, 
 this uncongregational outgrowth of early colonial condi- 
 tions continued in force throughout the colonial period. 
 This joint action of church and society in ministerial selec- 
 tion led to the theory, adjudged to be the law of Massachu- 
 setts in the Dedham case of 1 820, that a church has no legal 
 existence save in " connection with some regularly consti- 
 tuted society," — a legal interpretation which has been much 
 disputed, and which has been practically voided within the 
 last few years by laws in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and 
 other New England States allowing the incorporation of a 
 church without the appendage of a society. But this union 
 of church and society, the one having to do with the spirit- 
 ual and the other with the secular concerns of ecclesiastical 
 life, still continues the almost universal rule among the 
 churches of New England even in these days of voluntary- 
 ism, while outside of New England it has never very ex- 
 tensively obtained. 
 
 Election to office was followed by ordination in the case 
 of all officers in early Congregationalism; though at the close 
 of the first century on American soil, the primitive custom 
 had become so modified that ordination of deacons was fall- 
 ing into disuse, and reimposition of hands upon ministers 
 who had held previous pastoral charge was already aban- 
 
ORDINATION OF OFFICERS. 
 
 223 
 
 doned for the ceremony of installation. In the undeveloped 
 and somewhat tentative state of Congregational fellow- 
 ship during the few years which immediately succeeded the 
 arrival of the Puritans, as in the Congregational churches 
 of England and of the Dutch exile, ordination was accom- 
 pHshed by the church which the minister was to serve; 
 and the establishment of the pastoral relation was effected 
 without the advice of other churches. But from the time 
 that Governor Bradford went to Salem in 1629 to extend 
 the right hand of fellowship to the newly ordained Skelton 
 and Higginson it became increasingly the custom for sister 
 churches to recognize the new relation, and soon to advise 
 in it, so that when the church at Watertown ordained Rev. 
 John Knowles in 1640 without ** giving notice thereof to 
 the neighboring churches, nor to the magistrates," Win- 
 throp declares that they differed ** from the practice of the 
 other churches. " During the early part of the first century 
 of our churches on American soil opinion as to the proper 
 persons by whom ministerial ordination was to be performed 
 underwent a rapid change. At the beginning, where a 
 church had no officers, as at Salem in 1629, ordination 
 was at the hands of *' 3. or 4. of ye gravest members of ye 
 church," or where a church had officers, as" at Boston, in 
 1633, when Cotton was added to the ministerial equip- 
 ment, by the existing pastor, teacher, or ruling elders. 
 But as the fellowship of sister churches was increasingly 
 expressed by the presence and advice of their representa- 
 tives in ministerial ordination, it became increasingly the 
 custom to call upon ministers of other churches to lay con- 
 secrating hands upon the three classes of church officers 
 included under the title of " elders," the pastor, teacher, 
 and ruling elder. As far as the writer is aware, the ordi- 
 nation of deacons, when practiced, always remained the 
 work of the church which chose them to office. This tran- 
 
224 ^'^-^^^ COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 sitional stage in the ordination of '' elders " is illustrated in 
 the *' Cambridge Platform " of 1648, which inclines toward 
 the older metliod of consecration, but admits that " in such 
 Churches where there are no Elders, & the Church so de- 
 sire, wee see not why Imposition of hands may not be per- 
 formed by the Elders of other Churches." But the newer 
 method made rapid progress. In spite of such conserva- 
 tive examples as that of the Salem church, which ordained 
 John Higginson in 1660 by the hands of two deacons and 
 a brother in the presence of a council of neighboring 
 churches, or of the Milford church in ordaining Roger 
 Newton by its ruling elder, deacon, and a brother, in the 
 same year, the system of consecration at the hands of min- 
 isters of the vicinage, gathered in council at the request of 
 the church which had called the candidate, became speed- 
 ily universal. 
 
 Though Congregationalism has always attached much 
 importance to ordination, it has never attributed to this 
 rite the supreme value ascribed to it by some Protestant 
 bodies. As defined in the " Cambridge Platform," it was 
 ** nothing else, but the solemn putting of a man into his 
 place & office in the Church wher-unto he had right be- 
 fore by election, being like the installing of a magistrat in 
 the common wealth." Choice by a church was the real 
 title to ministerial office, for '' ordination doth not consti- 
 tute an officer, nor give him the essentials of his office." 
 It followed that since *' church-officers are officers to one 
 church," and not to the churches as a whole, that " hee that 
 is clearly loosed from his office-relation unto that cluirch 
 wherof he was a minister, canot be looked at as an officer, 
 nor perform any act of Office in any other church, vnless 
 he be again orderly called unto Office." The logically con- 
 sistent position, thus stated in the " Cambridge Platform," 
 which denied the ministerial character of all persons not in 
 
ORDINATION OF OFFICERS. 225 
 
 office, was accepted after a little hesitation even by those 
 of the Puritan immigrants, like the founders of Boston, 
 whose affection for the English Establishment was warm ; 
 but the feeling that one who had once been set apart to 
 the pastoral office was in some way authorized to admin- 
 ister the sacraments, and was possessed of an undefined 
 ministerial character, even though he had not been for 
 years the officer of any local church, caused this stricter 
 theory to be generally laid aside in practice by the close of 
 the seventeenth century. 
 
 Ordination, or installation, was always* accomplished 
 with ceremony, the church making the occasion one of 
 fasting, and the neighboring pastors extending fellowship. 
 As the mutual responsibility of churches was speedily de- 
 veloped, the occasion became one for the assembling of an 
 advisory council, of more or less examination of the can- 
 didate, and the conduct by the minister- elect of a public 
 service, including prayer and a sermon, before the council 
 and the congregation gathered for the occasion. This pub- 
 lic exhibition of the candidate's powers, designed originally 
 to '* give some Discovery, that he understands the Work, 
 to which he is now to be Separated," yielded place grad- 
 ually in the early part of the eighteenth century to the 
 prayer and preaching of ** elder divines " as *' more de- 
 cent " ; though occasional instances long continued. After 
 the sermon, the moderator of the council asked the church 
 to ratify Its election and the candidate to renew his accept- 
 ance. Then followed the prayer of ordination, with impo- 
 sition of hands ; next a charge intended to Impress upon 
 the newly ordained minister the duties of his office ; and 
 finally an extension of the right hand of fellowship by one 
 of the assembled pastors in the name of the churches. The 
 *' charge to the people," now usual on such occasions, was 
 not one of the customs of early New England. In instal- 
 
226 THE CONGKEGATIONALISrS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 lation the services were the same, save that a prayer com- 
 mending the new relation to the blessing of God took the 
 place of the prayer of ordination and its accompanying 
 laying on of hands. 
 
 Church officers were divided into two main groups in 
 the classification of early Congregationalism, '* elders " 
 and " deacons." To the ** elders," constituting the ** pres- 
 bytery " of the local church, the power has been committed 
 by Christ " to feed & rule the Church of God." Elders 
 in turn were divisible into two subclasses, embracing the 
 ''teaching," i^e., pastor and teacher, and the ''ruling" 
 eldership ; and in theory the diaconate was separable into 
 two groups, the " deacons " proper, and the " widows " or 
 deaconesses. The diaconate " being limited unto the care 
 of the temporall good things of the church, it extends not 
 unto the attendance upon, & administration of the spirituall 
 things thereof, as the word, and Sacraments, or the like." 
 
 As defined in the " Cambridge Platform," " the office of 
 Pastor & Teacher, appears to be distinct. The Pastors 
 special work is, to attend to exhortation : & therein to Ad- 
 minister a word of Wisdom : the Teacher is to attend to 
 Doctrine, & therein to Administer a word of Knowledg: 
 & either of them to administer the Scales of that Covenant 
 [i.e., sacraments], unto the dispensation wherof they are 
 alike called: as also to execute the Censures." It is easy 
 to see, however, that this distinction, though held to be 
 of theoretic importance, was hard to maintain in practice. 
 The more prominent of the early churches, except that at 
 Watertown, which had colleague pastors, provided them- 
 selves with the two classes of " teaching elders " at the 
 beginning; but the shade of difference was too indistinct 
 to be readily discriminated, and the expense of supporting 
 two such officers in a small community where one could 
 really do the work was a serious burden, so that with the 
 death of the first generation of ministers the distinction 
 
DUTIES OF OFFICERS. 22 7 
 
 Speedily ceased to be observed, and the New England 
 churches came prevailingly to have a single minister. 
 Even where, as at Boston, the wealth and populousness 
 of the place made two ministers the rule throughout the 
 period with which we have to do, associate pastorships 
 took the place of the ancient pastorate and teachership in 
 most instances before the year i 700, though that eminent 
 conservative, Increase Mather, remained "teacher" of the 
 Boston Second Church till his death, in 1723. 
 
 No office established by Congregationalists in their at- 
 tempt to revive the New Testament model was more stren- 
 uously insisted upon by the early New England expounders 
 of polity than the ruling eldership, and scarcely any was more 
 speedily abandoned in practice. The ruling elder of Pres- 
 byterianism is a layman ; but early Congregationalism was 
 a little uncertain whether he was a minister or a layman, 
 though inclined to class him in the ministry. Thus Con- 
 gregationalism reckoned him to the ''presbytery" of the 
 •local church, ordained him not infrequently at the hands 
 of ministers gathered in council from other churches, and 
 paid him a salary as it did the teaching elders; but did 
 not allow him to administer the sacraments, and permitted 
 him to preach, as Brewster did at Plymouth, only when a 
 ** teaching elder " was wanting. In its exposition of Con- 
 gregationalism the '' Cambridge Platform " thus sets forth 
 his duties : " The Ruling Elders work is to joyn with the 
 Pastor & Teacher in those acts of spiritual Rule which are 
 distinct from the ministry of the word & Sacraments com- 
 mitted to them, of which sort, these be, as followeth. I to 
 open & shutt the dores of Gods house, by the Admission of 
 members approved by the church : by Ordination of officers 
 chosen by the church : & by excommunication of notori- 
 ous & obstinate offenders renounced by the church : & by 
 restoring of poenitents, forgive by the church. II To call 
 the church together when there is occasion, & seasonably 
 
228 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 to dismiss them agayn. Ill To prepare matters in pri- 
 vate, that in pubHck they may be carried to an end with 
 less trouble, & more speedy dispatch. IV To moderate 
 the carriage of all matters in the church assembled, as, 
 to propound matters to the church, to Order the season 
 of speech & silence; & to pronounce sentence according 
 to the minde of Christ, with the consent of the church. 
 V To be Guides & Leaders to the church, in all matters 
 what-soever, pertaining to church administrations & ac- 
 tions. VI To see that none in the church live inordinately 
 out of rank & place; without a calling, or Idlely in their 
 calling. VII To prevent & heal such offences in life, or in 
 doctrin; as might corrupt the church. IIX To feed the 
 flock of God with a word of admonition. IX And as 
 they shall be sent for, to visit, & to pray over their sick 
 brethren. X & at other times as opportunity shall serve 
 therunto." 
 
 Here was a series of obligations requiring peculiar wis- 
 dom and tact, some of them very irksome in their nature, 
 sure to bring criticism upon the efficient ruling elder, while 
 his position had not the popular strength which comes to 
 the pastor from the administration of the sacraments and 
 the regular preaching of the Word. In some of his pre- 
 rogatives the ruling elder trenched on the powers of the 
 pastor and teacher, in others he limited the rights of the 
 brethren. He was a superfluous officer, and Congrega- 
 tionalism speedily found him so, partly by reason of a 
 growing doubt whether more than one kind of " elders " 
 was spoken of in the New Testament, and even more be- 
 cause the office was hard to fill and difficult to administer. 
 In a large proportion of the churches of New England the 
 ruling eldership did not survive the first generation of the 
 settlers. Some instances of continuance to a much later 
 period may, indeed, be found. Thus the post was occu- 
 pied at Plymouth till the death of Thomas Faunce, in 
 
DUTIES OF OFFICERS. 
 
 229 
 
 1746; the New North Church, Boston, had a ruHng elder 
 till 1775; while the North Church, Salem, chose one as 
 late as 1826; yet, in spite of these rare examples of sur- 
 vival, the statement of Cotton Mather, published in i 726, 
 is true, that the office had been " almost extinguished . . . 
 within the half of One Century." 
 
 Turning now to the distinctly lay offices, we find the 
 only one represented in New England practice was that 
 of the deacon. The duties of members of this rank were 
 clearly set forth in the '' Cambridge Platform," as follows: 
 " The office and work of the Deacons is to receive the off- 
 rings of the church, gifts given to the church, & to keep 
 the treasury of the church: & therewith to serve the Ta- 
 bles which the church is to provide for: as the Lords 
 Table, the table of the ministers, & of such as are in neces- 
 sitie, to whom they are to distribute in simplicity." They 
 were to furnish the sacramental elements, to raise the sal- 
 aries of the elders, and to have the oversight of the church 
 poor. As such they had charge of the contributions of 
 the churches. Like the pastorate, the diaconate has sur- 
 vived to the present day as a characteristic of American 
 Congregationalism. But its duties early became somewhat 
 more restricted in practice than the ''Cambridge Platform" 
 implies. The salaries of the ministers came speedily to 
 be generally raised by taxation ; church poor were few, 
 especially in hard-working rural New England ; and when 
 Cotton Mather published his ** Ratio Disciplinae," he could 
 say that the reason why the early custom of ordination 
 had been extensively abandoned was " because in many 
 of our Churches, the Deacons do little other Work, than 
 provide the Elements for the Eucharist ; and a solemn 
 Ordination to nothing but this, appears hardly a Congru- 
 ity." The statement is still largely true, though the more 
 democratic nature of modern Congregationalism, the de- 
 velopment of social meetings for prayer and conference. 
 
230 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 and the disappearance of all other ministerial officers save 
 the pastor, have given the deacons a place since Cotton 
 Mather's time as the minister's most efficient aids in the 
 conduct of the more informal services and his advisers in 
 church administration, — a place not theirs in early New 
 England. 
 
 The other lay office recognized by early American Con- 
 gregationalism was that of the deaconess or " widow," 
 to give *' attendance to the sick, & to give succour unto 
 them, & others in the like necessities." But as far as 
 New England was concerned this office was purely theo- 
 retical. No instances of deaconesses appear here in the 
 period with which we have to do ; perhaps for the rea- 
 son given by Cotton in his "Way of the Churches," that 
 ** wee finde it somewhat rare to finde a woman of so 
 great an age (as the Apostle describeth, to wit, of three- 
 score years) and withall, to be so hearty, and healthy, and 
 strong, as to be fit to undertake such a service." The 
 London-Amsterdam church, which enjoyed the ministry 
 of Johnson and Ainsworth, had a deaconess of whom 
 Governor Bradford has left a picturesque account. '' She 
 honored her place," he records, ''and was an ornament to 
 the congregation. She usually sat in a convenient place 
 in the congregation, with a little birchen rod in her hand, 
 and kept little children in great awe from disturbing the 
 congregation. She did frequently visit the sick and weak, 
 especially women, and, as there was need, called out maids 
 and young women to watch and do them other helps as 
 their necessity did require ; and if they were poor, she 
 would gather relief for them of those that were able, or 
 acquaint the deacons ; and she was obeyed as a mother in 
 Israel and an officer of Christ." Certainly many women 
 in the churches of all epochs have shown similar aptitude 
 in smoothing the rough places of life for their fellow-mem- 
 
DUTIES AND SUPPORT. 23 I 
 
 bers, but it was only at Amsterdam that early Congrega- 
 tionalism put its theory in this matter into practice by the 
 appointment of a ''widow." The ancient office, thus ex- 
 emplified in a single instance, is being revived with profit 
 by a few churches of the Congregational order at the pres- 
 ent day, but the movement is of recent origin. 
 
 The support of the ministry was a matter of much im- 
 portance in early American Congregational life. Though 
 salaries were small when judged by the standards of the 
 present day, when estimated by the style of living in the 
 new-formed communities, and by the remuneration of civil 
 officers, they were fairly liberal. Congregational human 
 nature was no more exempt from niggardliness, at times, 
 than human nature generally; but the feeling was preva- 
 lent that a minister should be supported in a manner 
 worthy of the best type of colonial life. It was the theory 
 of Separatist Congregationalism, as expressed, for instance, 
 in the '' Points of Difference " in which the Amsterdam 
 exiles summarized their criticisms of the Church of Eng- 
 land in 1603, that the *' due maintenance" of ministers 
 " should be of the free and voluntarie contribution of the 
 Church." This system the Pilgrims brought with them to 
 America. The Massachusetts Company entered into defi- 
 nite agreements with the first ministers that it sent over, 
 Bright, Skelton, and Higginson; and the colonial court 
 voted on August 23, 1630, to pay the salaries of Wilson, 
 of Boston, and Phillips, of Watertown, *' att the comon 
 charge." But after 1630 the Puritans of Massachusetts, 
 probably moved by Plymouth example, tried the voluntary 
 plan till 1638. At Boston the raising of ministerial sala- 
 ries by general taxation never regained a footing, and free 
 contribution continued the rule throughout much of the 
 colonial period, though modified there after a time by the 
 system of pew assessments. 
 
2 32 THE CONGRRGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that the early New 
 England Congregationalists of the Pilgrim and the Puritan 
 types alike attempted the voluntary system as a matter of 
 Christian duty. But it was not long before it was found 
 that the heavy expenses for church building and for min- 
 isterial support were met with difficulty in many towns. 
 Church attendance was obligatory in Massachusetts by a 
 law of March, 1635, and the feeling of the time was that 
 '* not only members of Churches, but all that are taught in 
 the Word, are to contribute unto him that teacheth." So 
 unequal were the gifts of different towns that Governor 
 Winthrop raised the question of ministerial maintenance 
 at the Synod of 1637; but the ministers there assembled 
 laid it aside lest their motives should be thought merce- 
 nary. Yet the question was a pressing one, and in Sep- 
 tember, 1638, the Massachusetts General Court met it by 
 a law rehearsing the frequent failure of those who were 
 not church-members to bear a share in church expenses, 
 and ordering that every '' inhabitant who shall not volen- 
 tarily contribute, p'portionably to his ability, w^l^ other 
 freemen of the same towne, to all comon charges, as well 
 for vpholding the ordinances of the churches as otherwise, 
 shalbee compelled thereto by assessment & distres to bee 
 levied by the cunstable, or other officer of the towne, as in 
 other cases." This drastic measure was intended to apply 
 only to those who failed to do their duty voluntarily; but 
 it changed the basis of ministerial support to taxation 
 wherever it was not made a dead letter by public senti- 
 ment, as in Boston permanently, and for a time at least in 
 other towns. Similar action was speedily taken in other 
 colonies. One of the first acts of the commissioners, after 
 the four congregational commonwealths entered into the 
 union of 1643, was to recommend (Septcniber, 1644) to 
 the courts of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and 
 
MINISTERIAL SUPPORT, 233 
 
 New Haven the enactment of laws directing ** that euery 
 man voluntaryly set downe wliat he is willing to allow to 
 that end & vse [ministerial support], and if any man refuse 
 to pay a meet p'porcon, that then hee be rated by author- 
 yty in some just & equall way, and if after this any man 
 wthold or delay due payment the ciuill power to be exer- 
 cised as in other just debts." This suggestion, which kept 
 the appearance of voluntariness while rendering ministe- 
 rial maintenance really a public tax, was made the statute 
 of Connecticut on October 25, 1644. Plymouth colony, 
 where the old Separatist idea of free contribution was 
 deep-rooted, held out yet longer; but on June 5, 1655, it 
 passed a mild enactment authorizing magistrates, in the 
 case of obstinate neglecters, ** to use such other meanes as 
 may put them upon their duty." Two years later this 
 law was somewhat strengthened. The statutes of New 
 Haven colony, printed in 1656, but most of them enacted 
 considerably earlier, provided that where negligence ap- 
 peared the deputies and constable of each town should 
 summon all inhabitants and have them pledge what they 
 would individually give toward the minister's support. 
 In case of refusal or delay, or of a niggardly subscription, 
 the authorities should assess and collect a proper sum, if 
 necessary, by legal execution. This was essentially the 
 recommendation of the commissioners of 1644. Thus, 
 within a comparatively few years of the settlement, though 
 the principle of free contribution was still recognized as 
 the ideal, the law collected the expenses of the churches 
 as truly as it did the maintenance of the state, and the 
 colonial records give ample evidence that threats of legal 
 process against delinquents were often carried into action. 
 The pathway of legal prescription once entered upon 
 was easily followed yet further. Thus, in November, 1647, 
 the Massachusetts General Court authorized towns to levy 
 
234 ^-^^ CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 taxes to supply their ministers with houses. In August, 
 1654, the same body directed that the county courts, upon 
 complaint, should fix ministers' salaries and collect them 
 by distraint. In Connecticut even the appearance of vol- 
 untaryism preserved in the statute of 1644 was in time 
 abandoned. An official report to the English authorities 
 in 1680 declared that ministers' maintenance was " raysed 
 upon the people by way of a rate," i.e., a tax; and a law 
 of May, 1697, provided that salaries due from any town 
 or society " shall be levied and assessed on the several 
 inhabitants in each town or plantation according to their 
 respective estates as from time to time they shall be in the 
 genii list," and collected *' by such person or persons as 
 the respective townes shall from year to year choose and 
 appoint for that end." Collections were to be made by 
 the same process of constraint as in case of other taxes, 
 and, lest a people should grow negligent, they were to be 
 made even in case the pulpit was vacant, being then placed 
 in the hands of the court of the county to be retained for 
 the benefit of the ministry when once more established 
 In the town. This law was made more explicit in Octo- 
 ber, 1699; s-^'id its provisions were the subject of occa- 
 sional strengthening or modification during the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
 Naturally when dissenters from the established religious 
 system of New England arose they regarded as a serious 
 grievance the necessity laid on all inhabitants of the colo- 
 nies, save those of a few towns like Boston, to contribute 
 to the support of the Congregational ministry under pen- 
 alty of seizure of goods. Agitation for exemption com- 
 menced as soon as dissenters began to multiply in the 
 eighteenth century. As a result, in 1727, Episcopalians in 
 Massachusetts were allowed to pay their assessment to a 
 clergyman of their faith, instead of to the Congregational 
 
EXEMPTION OF DISSENTERS. 235 
 
 pastor, in towns where there was an Episcopal minister. 
 In Connecticut, where a law of 1 708 had allowed the same 
 toleration secured in Massachusetts by the new charter of 
 1 69 1, an exemption law was passed for the benefit of Epis- 
 copalians in 1727, ordering that all inhabitants should be 
 taxed at the same rate for the support of the ministry, but 
 that wherever a resident clergyman of the Church of Eng- 
 land was to be found, the taxes of those regularly attend- 
 ant on his ministrations should be paid to him ; and pro- 
 viding also that Episcopalians should not be chargeable 
 with the erection of Congregational meeting-houses. Sim- 
 ilar relief was extended by Connecticut in 1 729 to Quakers 
 and Baptists; and Massachusetts granted exemption to 
 these two classes of Christians in 1728-29. In both col- 
 onies release from payment to the legally recognized 
 churches was obtained only by a formal signification of 
 connection with another denomination. The laws were in- 
 terpreted with strictness ; in the excitement of the " Great 
 Awakening" in Connecticut some of the privileges were 
 temporarily withdrawn. But on the whole the system of 
 taxation and exemptions worked to the upbuilding of other 
 denominations at the expense of Congregationalism. If a 
 quarrel occurred in a Congregational parish during the co- 
 lonial period, a second Congregational church could not be 
 formed without legislative permission, since all Congrega- 
 tional inhabitants of the parish were legally bound to sup- 
 port the duly settled minister. But the disgruntled fac- 
 tion, by becoming Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, or 
 Quakers in name, could be relieved from all payment to 
 the Congregational minister. Not a few churches, especially 
 of the Baptist faith, had their origin in this state of the 
 law, which made it easier for the minority in church quar- 
 rels to become connected with another denomination than 
 to found another church of their own order. 
 
236 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 As the eighteenth century wore on religious freedom 
 increased, especially after the discussions of the revolu- 
 tionary period. The Massachusetts Bill of Rights of 1780. 
 declared it the duty of the legislature to require the sup- 
 port of Protestant worship, and continued to it authority 
 to compel attendance thereon where conscientious scru- 
 ples did not prevent the individual citizen. But it left 
 each town or parish free to choose such a minister as the 
 inhabitants pleased, without stipulating that he should be 
 of the Congregational order, and only requiring that all 
 taxes paid for the support of worship by any resident not 
 of the same belief as the majority of the parish should go 
 to a '' public teacher" of the denomination to which he 
 belonged, provided there was such a minister whose ser- 
 vices he attended. Some difficulty was made for dissent- 
 ers under these provisions by the hesitation of judges to 
 look upon the clergy of voluntary religious bodies as " pub- 
 lic teachers." Four years after the ratification of this Bill 
 of Rights, Connecticut granted even greater freedom to its 
 dissenters by a change in the statutes (1784). Both com- 
 monwealths still maintained the principle that all persons 
 should be taxed for the support of religious institutions, 
 and that there was one standard polity and faith in each 
 town or parish from which all others were dissenters ; and 
 both still required that this dissent should be expressed 
 by the deposit with the town-clerk of a formal certificate 
 in order to secure exemption. But this system came to 
 an end in Connecticut by the adoption of the present con- 
 stitution in 1 81 8, by which all religious bodies were made 
 equal before the law and all connection between church 
 and state was severed ; and a similar disestablishment took 
 place in Massachusetts in 1834. Thus, after about two 
 hundred years of ministerial maintenance by state aid, 
 New England Congregationalism reverted to its original 
 
SEPARATIOX OF CHL'RCH AXD STATE. 237 
 
 system of voluntaryism. Outside of New England the 
 Congregational churches have never enjoyed the support 
 of civil government. 
 
 The " meeting-house " was the religious and social cen- 
 ter of colonial New England. It was alike the place of 
 worship and of political discussion. No impropriety was 
 seen in using the meeting-house for legislative and town 
 assemblies, for no special sacredness was held to attach to 
 the structure itself, — the " church " in strict Congregational 
 thought has always been the association of Christian be- 
 lievers, though loose usage has often affixed the title to the 
 place of their worship. It has often, though erroneously, 
 been intimated that New England meeting-houses were 
 studiously mean. On the contrary, they were, from the 
 first, the most elaborate structures that the comparatively 
 unskilled carpenters and masons of colonial days could 
 erect. Ecclesiastical symbolism was scrupulously eschewed ; 
 but the steady improvement in the material elements of 
 early New England life finds its reflection in the constantly 
 advancing elaborateness of the meeting-houses. 
 
 The '' meeting-house " of colonial days was prevailingly 
 a square, or slightly oblong, structure, entered by a door 
 on the side and at each end, and having within a pulpit 
 well raised up on the side wall opposite the main door, 
 from which, nearly to the pulpit, a broad aisle ran. In 
 earliest New England two pews at different heights faced 
 the congregation from the front of the pulpit, the more 
 dignified for the elders, the lower for the deacons. The 
 congregation sat on benches ; the men on one .side of the 
 house, and the women with the smaller children on the 
 other, while the boys and young men, under the watchful 
 eyes of a tithing-man, occupied the gallery, if the edifice 
 was elaborate enough to boast such a structure. As in 
 England, seats were assigned in the meeting-house in 
 
238 THE CONGREGATION ALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 accordance with the supposed social dignity of the occu- 
 pants — a custom productive of much discussion and heart- 
 burning; but this separation of families and ** dignifying" 
 of seats continued in some parts of New England to a very' 
 late period. Husbands and wives sat apart at Glaston- 
 bury, Conn., till 1757 ; while seats were assigned by social 
 rank at East Hartford till 1824, and at Norfolk, Conn., in 
 form at least, till 1875. The original system of benches 
 or ** slips " was early modified in part by the erection of 
 " pews," at first nearly square inclosures, often constructed 
 at the expense of the occupant, and placed in any conven- 
 ient position which the vote of the society would assign 
 for his use, usually around the sides of the house. In 
 these "pews" whole families sat together, and gradually 
 they grew to be held as property, or subject to a fixed 
 rent. No method of heating New England churches was 
 employed during the colonial period. 
 
 The first of the two Sabbath services began at nine in 
 the morning, the congregations being summoned by a bell 
 in a few of the more wealthy communities, but more gen- 
 erally, at least during the seventeenth century, by a drum, 
 a conch-shell, a horn, a flag, or some such inexpensive 
 device. Once gathered in the building, the services were 
 begun, where a church had a full complement of the offi- 
 cers prescribed by early Congregationalism, by a prayer 
 of " about a quarter of an houre " by the pastor, — of course 
 wholly unliturgical, for the founders of New England de- 
 lighted in their liberty of making their wants known unto 
 God in words suited to their immediate necessities. Mem- 
 bers of the congregation in illness or trial were accustomed 
 to request the supplications of the church by " bills " read 
 by the pastor before tliis prayer. 
 
 Following the petition, the teacher read a passage of 
 the Bible, expounding it section by section. This form of 
 
THE MEETING-HOUSE AND SERVICES. 239 
 
 Scripture-reading was deemed the only fitting method by 
 the New England fathers, " dumb-reading," or reading 
 without comment, being supposed to savor of the liturgical 
 usages from which they had fled. But by the close of the 
 seventeenth century New England practice was undergo- 
 ing a twofold change. In some churches in the larger 
 towns, like that of Brattle Street in Boston, the custom of 
 Scripture-reading without comment had begun; but in 
 many places Scripture exposition had fallen into disuse 
 with the abandonment of the office of teacher, and the 
 Bible was not read in the services of the Lord's day. At 
 Newburyport, Mass., the regular use of the Scriptures was 
 approved by the church in 1750; at West Newbury, in 
 1 769 ; while the General Association of Connecticut as 
 late as 1 765 recommended " the Public reading of the 
 Sacred Scriptures" to the churches of the colony, and in 
 18 10 the Litchfield South Consociation repeated the ex- 
 hortation to the churches under its care. 
 
 Next in order in the morning worship came a psalm, 
 lined off by the ruling elder, or where such an officer was 
 lacking, by a brother '' whom the Pastor desires to do 
 that Service," that the congregation might sing. New 
 England singing was indeed a dolorous performance. In- 
 strumental music was disapproved till far into the eight- 
 eenth century, as forbidden by Amos v. 23 ; and this feeling 
 is well illustrated by the refusal of so innovating a body as 
 Brattle Church in i 713 to accept an organ bequeathed to it 
 by William Brattle, its most prominent founder and lead- 
 ing worshiper. Thus, deprived of instrumental music, and 
 using books, when books were used at all, which, like the 
 Bay Psalm-Book, were without notes, the tunes retained 
 by tradition were few, and became almost hopelessly cor- 
 rupted. Even Cotton Mather, in his " Ratio Disciplinne " 
 of 1726, writing when the dawn of improvement was per- 
 
240 THE CONGREGATIOXALISrS. . [Chap. vii. 
 
 ceptible, could find no higher praise than that New Eng- 
 land worship of song " has been commended by Strangers 
 as generally not worse than w^hat is in many other parts of 
 the World," ** and more than a Score of Tunes " are to be 
 heard. When Mather thus described the state of music 
 about Boston, a vigorous reform was in progress. In i 714 
 Rev. John Tufts, of West Newbury, Mass., had published 
 a little tract in favor of singing by note, and containing 
 twenty-eight tunes. Eleven editions were called for in 
 the next few years. The musical impulse thus given to 
 the churches rapidly spread. Within the next twenty 
 years the agitation had involved nearly all New England, 
 and the newer method of notes and printed tunes, instead 
 of Hning off and memoriter singing, though violently op- 
 posed as a dishonor to the fathers and a dangerous step 
 Rome-ward, won its way into favor by reason of its ob- 
 vious superiority. The choir did not gain much footing 
 till about the time of the Revolution. 
 
 The psalm was followed by the sermon, always esteemed 
 the central element in the Congregational service. New 
 England discourses were habitually based on a text, and 
 in the seventeenth century were expected to be about an 
 hour in ordinary delivery, an hour-glass often being placed 
 on the pulpit ; though special occasions were thought to 
 warrant more protracted efforts. The preaching of the 
 first two generations of the settlers was almost exclusively 
 memoriter or from brief notes, though with very pains- 
 taking preparation since, as Cotton Mather remarks, "' well 
 studied Sermons are those which among Judicious Chris- 
 tians in these Churches find the best Acceptance." By 
 the first quarter of the eighteenth century, however, fully 
 written discourses had *' become extremely Fashionable," 
 somewhat to the detriment of freedom in delivery, for 
 " no doubt some Sermons are the better Composed for it, 
 
SUNDAY SERVICES. 24 1 
 
 tho' it will require good Management if they be not the 
 less Affecting." A glance at a few of the hundreds of 
 manuscript sermons that have come down to the present 
 day shows good reason for the caution quoted from the 
 ** Ratio Disciplinae," since, owing to the expensiveness of 
 paper, they were customarily written on pages as small as 
 a modern postal-card, and in writing almost microscopic 
 in its minuteness. Such manuscripts must have been held 
 close to the eyes to be read at all, and the difficulty of 
 their decipherment must have prevented all freedom in 
 delivery. In the early da3^s of the colonies, as among the 
 English Puritans, it was a frequent usage for some of the 
 auditors to take notes of the sermon during its progress, 
 but this rather laborious custom hardly survived the de- 
 cline of the first religious enthusiasm of New England. 
 
 After the sermon the teacher, when there was such an 
 officer, or if there was not, then the pastor, made " a shorter 
 Prayer," asking the divine blessing on the sermon ; and the 
 congregation was dismissed with the benediction. When 
 Cotton Mather wrote, at the close of the period under re- 
 view, a second psalm was often sung between the prayer 
 and the words of blessing in dismission. 
 
 Between the services of morning and afternoon there 
 was an intermission of several hours in the larger towns, 
 and of less duration in the country, where the distance of 
 the meeting-house from the homes of many of the con- 
 gregation and the badness of the roads made an early ter- 
 mination of the worship imperative. The interval of wait- 
 ing was spent in social intercourse, and as the only occasion 
 on which the scattered inhabitants of a rural community 
 had an opportunity of exchanging news and gossip, this 
 friendly hour doubtless did as much as any statutory enact- 
 ment to secure the general attendance of all inhabitants 
 at the meeting-house from Sunday to Sunday. But occa- 
 
242 THE CONGREGATIONALISrs. [Chap. vii. 
 
 sionally a church felt that a more spiritually profitable 
 method of employing the time of waiting might be devised, 
 and instances are recorded, especially in seasons of relig- 
 ious interest, where men were appointed ''to tarry at the 
 meeting-house by turns, and read some suitable discourse 
 between the public services, for the benefit and edification 
 of such as tarry at noon." It need hardly be said that 
 such an infringement on the one general, if rather sober, 
 rural visiting-hour of the week was never very widely 
 adopted. 
 
 At two o'clock, or earlier in the afternoon, the second 
 service began, — a service which was substantially a repe- 
 tition of that of the morning, save that v/here a church 
 had both a pastor and a teacher, the minister who had not 
 preached in the morning usually delivered the sermon. At 
 the afternoon service also, a collection was taken in such 
 churches as supported public worship by voluntary gifts, 
 and in others, as occasions for benevolence presented them- 
 selves, — a duty to which the congregation was summoned 
 in the early days of the churches by one of the deacons, 
 who exhorted [' as God has prospered you, so freely offer." 
 At Boston and Plymouth, and probably elsewhere, no plates 
 were passed; but the congregation rose and filed by the 
 deacons' seat, putting their money or written pledges into 
 a box, and occasionally offering ornaments or articles of 
 merchandise, like the ''faire gilt cup " which Lechford saw 
 given at Boston, and then returning to their places. 
 
 Once a month, at the conclusion of the morning service, 
 as Lechford noted, " is a Sacrament of the Lords Supper, 
 whereof notice is given usually a fortnight before, and then 
 all others departing save the Church, which is a- great deal 
 lesse in number then those that goe away, they receive 
 the Sacrament, the Ministers and ruling Elders sitting at 
 the Table, the rest in their seats. . . . The one of the 
 
THE SACRAMENTS. 
 
 243 
 
 teaching Elders prayes before, and blesseth, and conse- 
 crates the Bread and Wine, according to the words of In- 
 stitution ; the other prays after the receiving of all the 
 members . . . 'the Ministers deliver the Bread in a Charger 
 to some of the chiefe . . . and they deliver the Charger 
 from one to another, till all have eaten ; in like manner the 
 cup, till all have dranke, goes from one to another. Then 
 a Psalme is sung, and with a short blessing the congrega- 
 tion is dismissed." Though participation was confined to 
 church-members, all persons who wished were permitted 
 to be spectators at the Supper. 
 
 Baptism was held by Congregationalism to be the seal 
 or witness to the membership of a believing adult, or of a 
 child or ward of a Christian household, in the divinely ap- 
 pointed fellowship of some covenanted church, and should 
 not therefore be administered privately, but before the 
 congregation. At Boston, in Lechford's day, the rite was 
 granted at the close of the afternoon service whenever 
 desired, at the hands of *' either Pastor or Teacher, in the 
 Deacons seate. . . . The Pastor most commonly makes a 
 speech or exhortation to the Church, and parents concern- 
 ing Baptisme, and then prayeth before and after. It is 
 done by washing or sprinkling." 
 
 While the Sabbath was thus filled with services in which 
 the element of preaching was made central, the New Eng- 
 land church of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
 had none of that wealth and variety of societies and meet- 
 ings for different types of Christian work which engage 
 the efTorts of so large a port-ion of the membership at the 
 present day. In the larger towns from the first a weekly 
 '* lecture " was maintained, — in Boston and Hartford on 
 Thursdays, though elsewhere often on other days of the 
 week. On these occasions a sermon was preached, though 
 custom favored a somewhat freer and more secular range 
 
244 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 of topics for discussion than on the Sabbath. It was the 
 especial occasion for the treatment of questions of poHtics 
 and morals, though always with primary reference to the 
 Scriptures. In the first years of enthusiasm these meet- 
 ings were so popular that the legislature of Massachusetts 
 in 1639 sought to hmit their ''length and frequency," lest 
 running about from one town to another to be present at 
 *' two or three in the week " should seriously interfere with 
 business; but a century later (1740) Rev. Benjamin Col- 
 man had to say of the Boston *' lecture," that it had '' been 
 shamefully neglected by the Town." 
 
 The ''preparatory lecture," anticipatory of the Supper 
 and now characteristic of Congregationalism, was begun 
 March 4, 1 720, just at the close of the period under review, 
 by the joint action of the Brattle Street and First churches 
 of Boston, where the lecture was held for many years, 
 monthly, on Friday afternoons. 
 
 Evening meetings of a public character were regarded 
 with suspicion in early New England as possible occa- 
 sions of disorder in the larger towns, while scattered rural 
 communities even now find them difficult of maintenance. 
 After our period, especially in the revival season known 
 as the " Great Awakening," a few evening services were 
 instituted in populous places, as, for example, at Boston, 
 on October 21, 1740; but they were not an approved 
 measure, and did not become so till the revivals which 
 marked the dawn of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Besides these set occasions, many days of fast and of 
 thanksgiving were appointed by public authority or ob- 
 served by individual churches, on which the services were 
 similar to those of the Sabbath, though the sermon bore 
 distinctly on the themes of the special assembly. It need 
 hardly be said that saints' and holy days were scrupulously 
 disregarded. 
 
OTHER SERVICES. 245 
 
 These public services of the churches did not indeed 
 embrace all the agencies for religious nurture by which 
 early New England Christian life was characterized. Not 
 only was there careful catechising in families and schools ; 
 ministers from time to time took heed to their flocks " by 
 goeing from hous to hous " in order to ascertain how they 
 were "p'fitting by y^ word"; and young people were 
 gathered together in any season of religious interest for 
 special pastoral instruction. Private meetings of the breth- 
 ren with or without the minister were not infrequent, and 
 from I 705 onward many towns had voluntary societies of 
 church-members, to " consider what may be for the good 
 of the Town in general, especially the churches in it, and 
 more particularly our Church." 
 
 In two features of social life, now deemed by Congre- 
 gationaHsts, as by other Christians, occasions peculiarly 
 appropriate for religious service, — weddings and funerals, 
 — the customs of early New England were unlike those of 
 the present day. Like the English Separatists, the found- 
 ers of New England held that ministers were not to be 
 " burthened with the execution of Civill affaires, as the 
 celebration of marriage, burying the dead, &c. which things 
 belong aswell to those without as within the Church." 
 The feeling which prompted this prohibition was due in 
 part to reaction from the Roman conception of marriage 
 as a sacrament and from the Catholic practice of prayers 
 for the dead, in part also to the thought that a minister had 
 pastoral duties only to the particular body of covenanted 
 believers whom he served. Therefore early New England 
 marriages were celebrated by the magistrates, but not with- 
 out the asking of the divine blessing on the unions, for these 
 civil officers, themselves almost invariably professing Chris- 
 tians, *' not only gave the Marriage Covenant unto the 
 Parties, but also made the Prayers proper for the Occa- 
 
246 THE CONGKEGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 sion," as Cotton Mather tells us. But the usage of the 
 church universal was stronger than the Separatist theory 
 in this matter, and in 1686 the first instance of marriage 
 by a clergyman occurred in Massachusetts, while in Con- 
 necticut ministers were permitted to join in marriage by a 
 law of 1694. 
 
 Though no word of prayer cheered an early New Eng- 
 land funeral, there was no want of respect to the dead. 
 Lechford records in his book of 1642, that '* at Burials, 
 nothing is read, nor any Funeral Sermon made, but all 
 the neighbourhood, or a good company of them, come to- 
 gether by tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly 
 to his grave, and there stand by him while he is buried. 
 The Ministers are most commonly present." But as in mar- 
 riage, so here, the peculiar usage at length disappeared. 
 In 1685, at Roxbury, there occurred the first instance in 
 the Congregational colonies of prayer at a funeral, — the 
 occasion being the burial of a minister. Rev. William 
 Adams. Yet these religious observances won their way 
 slowly. When Cotton Mather published his *' Ratio Dis- 
 ciplinae " forty- one years later, he found that ** in many 
 Towns of New-England the Ministers make agreeable 
 Prayers with the People come together at the House, to 
 attend the Funeral of the Dead. And in some, the Min- 
 isters make a short Speech at the Grave. But in other 
 Places both of these Things are wholly omitted." 
 
 The relation of one church to another was that of sis- 
 terly equality, since of each church Christ is the imme- 
 diate head ; and to New England thinking, especially as 
 developed through the experiences narrated in preceding 
 chapters of this book, this relation was anything but one of 
 indifference. The " Cambridge Platform " enumerated six 
 ways in which " the communion of Churches " was to be 
 " exercised." The first was that " of mutuall care in tak- 
 
COMMUNION OF CHURCHES. 247 
 
 ing thought for one anothers wellfare." A second way 
 was that *' of Consultation one with another," in all ques- 
 tions of difficulty ; and, as we have seen, in all ministerial 
 settlements and dismissions the advice of a council of the 
 representatives of neighboring churches and ministers was 
 sought. But sometimes a church would fall into what 
 seemed to its neighbors dangerous error or reprehensi- 
 ble quarrel, and yet asked no advice. Congregationalism 
 would remedy such a situation, if possible, by methods 
 similar to those laid down by the Saviour for dealing with 
 an erring brother within a local church ; and this gave rise 
 to the ** third way " of communion, — that of '' admoni- 
 tion." In the exercise of this duty, any church which 
 perceived that a sister church was in error should first 
 admonish its wandering associate, as one Christian might 
 a sinful brother. Should this exhortation produce no 
 amendment, the admonishing church was to acquaint sev- 
 eral other churches with the offense and ask them to join 
 in reproof. Should they too be unheeded, they were to 
 call a council of neighboring churches to advise in the 
 case, and should this advice be unfavorable to the accused 
 church, such churches as approved the result were to de- 
 clare a cessation of communion with the offending church. 
 This system was strengthened in the ''Saybrook Platform " 
 by making the membership of the council definite, and its 
 methods more exactly prescribed, but the underlying the- 
 ory was the same. A fourth, and more agreeable, mode 
 of communion the "Platform" styled that of ''participa- 
 tion " ; which permitted members of one church providen- 
 tially with another to join with the church of their sojourn 
 in the sacraments. Closely connected with this method 
 was the fifth way, — that of ''recommendation," by which 
 members going from one church to another for a more 
 permanent stay transferred their relationship by letters 
 
248 THE CONGREGATIOiYALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 of recommendation or dismission. And finally, the sixth 
 manifestation of fellowship was in the way of " reliefe & 
 succour," when a more gifted church supplied a needy 
 sister either with " able members to furnish them with 
 officers," or ** outward support " of a pecuniary character, 
 — a twofold thought, which contains the germ of the whole 
 modern home missionary activity of Congregationalism. 
 
 But no account of the ecclesiastical system of colonial 
 New England would be complete without mention of the 
 general supervision in ecclesiastical affairs exercised by 
 the colonial legislatures. These general courts in Massa- 
 chusetts and New Haven were composed for a generation 
 exclusively of church-members, and throughout the period 
 with which we have to do were predominantly made up 
 of Christian men in all the colonies. They were therefore 
 really representative of the churches, though indirectly and 
 through laymen only. As the " Cambridge Platform " 
 expressed it : ** It is the duty of the Magistrate, to take 
 care of matters of religion, & to improve his civil author- 
 ity for the observing of the duties commanded in the first, 
 as well as for observing of the duties commanded in the 
 second table;" i.e., his authority extended both to matters 
 of belief and practice. And the colonial courts acted fully 
 on this theory. They called Synods ; they authorized the 
 organization of churches; they determined church quar- 
 rels; they reprimanded communities which were laggard 
 in procuring a minister; they sometimes recommended 
 ministerial candidates ; they regulated the collection of the 
 ministers* support, and heard the prayers of those pastors 
 who were inadequately recompensed; they commended 
 statements of faith and polity to the churches; they coun- 
 seled weekly ''lectures" and careful catechising. Some- 
 times, as when the Boston Second Church proposed to 
 choose an uneducated pastor in 1653-54, they interfered 
 
LEGISLATIVE SUPERVISION. 249 
 
 with their advice; on one occasion at least, in 1652, the 
 Massachusetts court enumerated the books of the Script- 
 ures by name, and threatened banishment or possible 
 death on all who should deny any of them ** to be the 
 written & infallible word of God " ; at another time, in 
 1646, the Massachusetts legislature became a missionary 
 society for sending the gospel to the Indians. The watch- 
 fulness of the general courts over the churches was inces- 
 sant, minute, and not infrequently annoying. 
 
 Yet this governmental supervision had its distinct limits. 
 The " Cambridge Platform " declared : '* As it is unlawfull 
 for church-ofhcers to meddle with the sword of the Magis- 
 trate, so it is unlawfull for the Magistrate to meddle with 
 the work proper to church-officers;" and this restriction 
 represented fairly well the actual practice. Large as was 
 the exercise of influence and authority by the legislatures 
 over the churches, governmental authority did not appoint 
 ministers, nor did it compel individuals to become church- 
 members, or to ofTer their children for baptism. In gen- 
 eral, the churches, even in the most theocratic portion of 
 New England history, enjoyed local autonomy and a de- 
 gree of individual freedom which has never characterized 
 the churches of any other land where ecclesiastical affairs 
 have been the subject of governmental cognizance. 
 
 It is difficult to fix an exact terminus to the period of 
 governmental supervision in New England. Its more ex- 
 tensive manifestations, were, of course, in the seventeenth 
 century. The Massachusetts charter of 1691 greatly lim- 
 ited its possibilities in that province, so that throughout 
 the eighteenth century the legislature interfered in eccle- 
 siastical matters more in Connecticut than in the larger 
 Puritan commonwealth. But this supervision tended to 
 assume less and Less pronounced forms. It slowly died 
 out. Long before the Revolution it had come to amount 
 
250 THE CONGREGAriONALISTS. [Chap. vii. 
 
 to little more than the maintenance of a certain method 
 of settling and recompensing a minister and defraying 
 other ecclesiastical expenses ; but a measure of connection 
 between church and state, and consequently of potential 
 state supervision, continued till the full disestablishment of 
 these churches in our own century. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE GREAT AWAKENING AND THE RISE OF THEO- 
 LOGICAL PARTIES. 
 
 The fourth decade of the eighteenth century witnessed 
 the beginnings of a remarkable revival period which pro- 
 foundly stirred the churches of New England and of the 
 Middle Colonies, which gave rise to divisions and doctrinal 
 discussions to a degree unknown in New England hereto- 
 fore, and which led ultimately to the rise of a distinctly 
 American school of theology. Interest 'in the discussion 
 of polity had now become well-nigh exhausted, since few 
 New Englanders were familiar with any type of church 
 government other than the Congregational. From this 
 revival movement onward till the middle of the nineteenth 
 century New England religious thought concerned itself 
 with doctrine ; and polity did not rise again into impor- 
 tance till contact on a large scale with other forms of church 
 life, after the narrow territorial bounds of New England 
 had long been burst by her westward- streaming sons and 
 daughters, once more turned the attention of Congrega- 
 tionalists to what they deem the peculiar excellencies of 
 the system they profess. 
 
 The type of piety for half a century after the " Reform- 
 ing Synod" was low and unemotional. There were in- 
 deed occasional manifestations of religious interest here 
 and there in the churches, as, for example, in Northamp- 
 ton under the ministry of Solomon Stoddard apparently 
 in 1679, 1683, 1696, I 712, and 1718; at Hartford in 1696; 
 
 251 
 
252 THE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 at Taunton in 1705 ; at Windham in 1721 ; and a consid- 
 erable and general, though brief, religious quickening fol- 
 lowed the deep impressions produced by the great earth- 
 quake of October 29, i "]2"j. But none of these movements 
 were of any striking magnitude. The general type of 
 preaching and of religious life which had come to charac- 
 terize the third and fourth New England generations was 
 not conducive to revivals. The intense preaching of the 
 founders, directed to a class of men profoundly stirred by 
 religious ideals, had been marked by *' conversion," or a 
 conscious change in a man's relation to God, often accom- 
 panied by deep conviction of sin and an intense spiritual 
 struggle. The founders, in their strong Calvinism, had 
 indeed represented man as wholly passive in this expe- 
 rience, — ** conversion " was solely a work of God; — but 
 they had made its attainment the one object of Christian 
 hope, before which all minor acquirements and privileges, 
 like birth in the covenant, sank into insignificance. They 
 had insisted upon a strenuous morality ; yet they had 
 taught that morality was the fruit rather than the means 
 of the Christian life. But the decline of the first inten- 
 sity of religious enthusiasm inevitably produced a marked 
 change in the emphasis of preaching, if not in its doctrinal 
 content. '' Conversion " was still held to be the work of 
 God alone, it was still declared to be the all-important 
 Christian experience ; but there were *' means " by which 
 a man could put his soul in a position likely to receive the 
 regenerating touch of God's Spirit. Such means were 
 prayer, the study of the Scriptures, a moral life, regular 
 attendance on divine worship, " owning the covenant " 
 when one was of the church by birth, and, in churches 
 into which Stoddardean views had entered, participation 
 in the Supper. 
 
 It was but a following out of the characteristics of 
 
SPIRITUAL DECLINE. 253 
 
 human nature that when regeneration was looked upon as 
 a change beyond human power, and at the same time 
 many rehgious acts within a man's attainment were de- 
 clared to be adapted to put the soul in a position of hope- 
 ful expectation, emphasis should be placed in men's think- 
 ing on the '' means " which man could employ, even while 
 it was still affirmed that the divinely wrought change v/as 
 the all- essential matter. Nor is it surprising that, as the 
 eighteenth century advanced, some ministers and some 
 congregations began to question the extent of human in- 
 ability and query whether God had not so conditioned 
 regeneration on the employment of '' means " that a 
 *' sincere " though necessarily imperfect obedience would 
 bring saving grace to him who rendered it. This position, 
 which was soon known as '' Arminianism,'.' was not very 
 distinctly recognized at the beginning of the revivals, and 
 was never accepted by the larger portion of the churches; 
 but the discussions of the revival period brought it into 
 fuller and more definite development, so that in the New 
 England wherein Cotton Mather's '' Ratio Disciplinae " of 
 1726 had declared that no Arminian pastor could be found 
 there were many ministers by i 740 who were accused of 
 "Arminianism." The chief evil both of the old New 
 England Calvinism and of the newer Arminianism was 
 that responsibility for a full and personal obedience to 
 God was practically denied. In the one case the nature 
 of an unconverted man was represented as devoid of all 
 present power to serve God ; in the other a well-intentioned 
 and serious attempt at obedience seemed to lay off upon 
 God all further responsibility for a man's salvation. 
 
 It was into an atmosphere so filled with an unemotional 
 reliance on the use of '' means " that a new force came in 
 the person and preaching of Jonathan Edwards, the great- 
 est theolodan that American Congregationalism has pro- 
 
2 54 ^^^^ CONGREGATION A LISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 duced ; and it came where a reaction was perhaps most 
 needed, at Northampton, Mass., the source from which 
 " Stoddardeanism " had flowed out. Jonathan Edwards 
 was born at East Windsor, Conn., where his father, Timo- 
 thy Edwards, Avas pastor, on October 5, 1703; and after 
 a youth-time of briUiant promise graduated at Yale Col- 
 lege in I 720. A period of study and of preaching ended 
 in his settlement on February 15, 1727, as colleague with 
 his maternal grandfather, the aged Solomon Stoddard, 
 whose death two years later left him the sole pastor of 
 the Northampton church. In Edwards there was a rare 
 combination of fervor of feeling, of almost oriental fertility 
 of imagination, and intellectual acumen, which clothed all 
 that he said with glowing force, while beneath his words 
 flowed the stream of a most carefully elaborated theologic 
 system; and all these more exalted and impulsive moods 
 were emphasized by the influence of his wife, Sarah, a 
 daughter of Rev. James Pierpont of New Haven, a woman 
 of remarkable intellectual force, but even more conspicuous 
 for intense spirituality of nature. 
 
 Of Edwards's contributions to New England theology 
 there will be occasion later briefly to speak, but perhaps 
 the most far-reaching in its influence was his assertion of 
 responsibility. An intense Calvinist, he felt the difficulty 
 of the old Calvinism as keenly as the shortcomings of the 
 new Arminianism ; and, while he asserted the absolute 
 sovereignty of God, and the entire right of the Creator to 
 dispose of his creatures as seemed wise, he affirmed a dis- 
 tinction between moral and natural ability which had been 
 advanced in less perfect form by the French theologian of 
 the Saumur school, Moses Amyraut, in the first half of the 
 seventeenth century, and had been hinted by the philoso- 
 pher Locke, but which had been ignored by most Anglo- 
 Saxon Calvinists. Man has not lost the power to turn to 
 
EDWARDS AND THE REVIVALS. 255 
 
 God, and hence he owes to his Maker a full and perfect 
 obedience and an unfeigned love. He should therefore 
 be urged to begin an active Christian life by faith and 
 repentance, without an undue reliance on *' means." But 
 while man has this power, he has not the willingness to 
 turn to God, he is morally unable, and will so continue 
 unable, though responsible, till God in sovereign mercy 
 works in him a change of desires, by revealing himself to 
 him as his highest good. 
 
 As far as any human origin can be assigned, the great 
 revival began at Northampton in December, 1734, in con- 
 nection with a series of sermons by Edwards which set 
 forth the doctrine of justification by faith alone, exhorted 
 to the duty of immediate repentance, and denied that any 
 action, however good in itself, done by an '' unconverted " 
 man laid any claim either upon divine justice or the 
 promises of grace. Soon the whole town seemed in deep 
 spiritual concern. Little else was talked of besides the 
 interests of religion ; and these impressions were deepened 
 by the vividness with which Edwards depicted the wrath 
 of God, from which he exhorted men to flee. The move- 
 ment was almost as marked among' the aged as among the 
 young, and by May, 1735, when it began to abate, more 
 than three hundred persons were thought to have expe- 
 rienced a regenerative change. Soon the same impulse 
 was felt in other towns of the Connecticut valley. From 
 Northfield on the north to Windsor on the south it affected 
 every settlement on the river, and in Connecticut it ex- 
 tended considerably widely, reaching points as far asunder 
 as Lebanon, New Haven, Stratford, and Groton. News 
 of these unusual events was sent to England by Rev. Dr. 
 Benjamin Colman of Boston, and at the request of Colman's 
 English correspondents. Rev. Drs. Isaac Watts and John 
 Guyse, Edwards wrote his '* Narrative of the Surprizing 
 
256 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 Work of God," which was printed and circulated on both 
 sides of the Atlantic in 1737-38, and turned public atten- 
 tion in all Anglo-Saxon non-prelatical circles to the Amer- 
 ican revival movement. Public interest in the subject was 
 further heightened by considerable, though less extensive, 
 manifestations in 1 739-40 among the Presbyterians of New 
 Jersey. 
 
 It was in a time, therefore, when popular thought had 
 been widely aroused regarding revivals that Colman, in 
 I 740, invited Rev. George Whitefield to visit New Eng- 
 land. This eloquent English preacher was in the height 
 of his youthful fame. Though but twenty-five years of 
 age, his matchless oratory, his novel methods, and his fiery 
 zeal had made his name familiar, and this popular curiosity 
 was intensified by his anomalous position as a clergyman 
 of the Church of England in sympathy with the doc- 
 trines and usages of the Presbyterians and Congregation- 
 aHsts. He had gone to Georgia in 1738 at the request of 
 his friends, the Wesleys; and after his speedy return to 
 England, he had crossed the Atlantic once more, reaching 
 Philadelphia in November, 1739, and journeying through 
 the colonies southward *as far as Savannah. On this jour- 
 ney he made the acquaintance of William Tennent and his 
 sons, especially the famous Gilbert, ministers of the Pres- 
 byterian Church in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and 
 second only to Edwards in their later influence in the 
 revival movement. From Charleston, S. C, Whitefield 
 sailed for New England, and on September 14, 1740, he 
 was in Newport, R. I. All New England had been filled 
 with religious excitement by the events of the last six 
 years, and his reception was enthusiastic in the extreme. 
 After three days of preaching to crowded assemblies at 
 Newport, he went on to Boston, being received with the 
 utmost cordiality by all classes of society. For the next 
 
GEORGE Will TEE/ELD. 
 
 257 
 
 ten days he discoursed to immense congregations, taxing 
 the capacity of the largest meeting-houses, and assembhng 
 occasionally on the Common in the open air. He ad- 
 dressed the students at Harvard College ; and from Boston 
 he journej^ed down the coast as far as York, Me., return- 
 ing to the Massachusetts capital to repeat for a week his 
 previous successes. Everywhere his audiences were pro- 
 foundly moved. Under his oratory they were *' melted " ; 
 men wept, and women fainted, numbers professed con- 
 version. But with much that was excellent, Whitefield 
 began to exhibit at Boston that censorious spirit toward 
 ministers who differed with him which marred all his 
 preaching. From Boston he wrote to John Wesley, of 
 v/hose "perfectionism" he had heard, ** Remember you are 
 but a babe in Christ, if so much ; be humble, talk little, 
 think and pray much;" and this spirit of criticism led him 
 to declare in the " Old South " meeting-house, in the pres- 
 ence of many ministers, that " the generality of preachers 
 talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ ; and the reason why 
 congregations have been so dead is, because they have 
 had dead men preaching to them." The charge was un- 
 deserved, for whatever their shortcomings, the hard-work- 
 ing, faithful pastors of New England were not an '* uncon- 
 verted ministry." 
 
 On October 13, 1740, Whitefield left Boston, kissed and 
 wept over by Governor Belcher, who had been among the 
 foremost to do him honor ; and his hearers were as wax in 
 his hands, as he journeyed by way of Concord, Worcester, 
 Brookfield, and other towns, to Northampton, drawn thither 
 by the fame of the revivals under Edwards. Here Edwards 
 and his congregation were much moved, though the North- 
 ampton minister felt it necessary to remonstrate with his 
 guest for giving too great heed to " impulses " as evi- 
 dences of regeneration in his hearers, and for "judging 
 
25 S THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 Other persons to be unconverted." But on this latter 
 point Whitefield was irrepressible. At Suffield, Conn., 
 as he records in his journal, " many ministers were present. 
 I did not spare them." And so he went on his way, 
 preaching at Westfield, Springfield, East Windsor, Hart- 
 ford, Wethersfield, and Middletown ; staying only a few 
 hours at each place, but remaining nearly three days at 
 New Haven, where he addressed the students on " the 
 dreadful ill consequences of an unconverted ministry." 
 Thence he went rapidly onward to New York, and spent 
 the remainder of the year in a tour through the other 
 American colonies. Never in the entire history of New 
 England was a preacher possessed of such popular influ- 
 ence or received with such unbounded adoration by the 
 community at large. 
 
 Whitefield's brief journey was followed by an outburst 
 of evangelistic activity in New England. From December, 
 1740, to March, 1741, Gilbert Tennent continued in most 
 effective labor at Boston, and soon followed up White- 
 field's work in Connecticut. By the spring and summer 
 of 1 741 the movement was in full tide. Not only were 
 revival manifestations widely extended, but many minis- 
 ters were engaged in itinerant evangelism, of whom the 
 most conspicuous were Rev. Messrs. Jonathan Parsons of 
 Lyme, Benjamin Pomeroy of Hebron, Eleazer Wheelock of 
 Lebanon, Joseph Bellamy of Bethlem, and John Graham 
 of Southbury in Connecticut, and Jonathan Edwards of 
 Northampton in Massachusetts. The preaching of all of 
 these worthy ministers was accompanied by physical dem- 
 onstrations which manifested the high pitch of spiritual 
 excitement prevailing among their auditors. When Par- 
 sons discoursed at Lyme on May 14, 1741, he tells us 
 that " great numbers cried out aloud in the anguish of 
 their souls, Several stout men fell ^s though a cannon 
 
THE GREAT AWAKEXEXG. 259 
 
 had been discharged and a ball had made its way through 
 their hearts. Some young women were thrown into hys- 
 teric fits." When Edwards preached at Enfield, Conn., 
 on July 8, 1741, taking as his theme, ''Sinners in the 
 hands of an angry God," " there was such a breathing of 
 distress, and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to 
 speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be 
 heard." Men claimed to have visions of heaven and hell 
 in which Christ showed them their names written in the 
 Book of Life. And some of these extreme bodily mani- 
 festations were defended as rej^resentative of a true Chris- 
 tian experience even by Edwards, whose intense and 
 spiritual- minded wife was wrought upon by the contem- 
 plation of divine things to a degree almost as great as the 
 just awakened hearers at Enfield or Lyme. 
 
 It is no wonder, when such men looked with favor on 
 a markedly emotional type of preaching and experience, 
 that there were those who advanced to extremely radi- 
 cal methods. Such a man was Rev. James Davenport of 
 Southold, Long Island, in regard to whom Whitefield, 
 who was not conspicuous as a judge of character, had de- 
 clared " that of all men living he knew of none who kept 
 a closer Walk with God." Excited by the revivals, he 
 journeyed through Connecticut and Massachusetts, ha- 
 ranguing large audiences in words of impassioned exhor- 
 tation or denunciation, charging ministers who opposed 
 him with being " unconverted " and " leading their people 
 blindfold to hell." Wherever he went the scene of his 
 preaching was almost a riot. At New London, on March 
 6, 1743, he built a fire of the books of Flavel, Beveridge, 
 Increase Mather, and others, and declared to his followers 
 that as the smoke arose from this pyre " so the smoke of 
 the torment of such of their authors as died in the same 
 belief was now ascending in hell." So extravagant was 
 
26o THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 Davenport that the Connecticut legislature and a Boston 
 jury, both of which took legal cognizance of his actions, 
 pronounced him mentally unbalanced ; and it is charitable 
 to suppose that their view was correct. 
 
 But with all these vagaries of method, the revival was 
 an awakening such as has never been ec^ualed in intensity 
 in America. Coming after a period of profound religious 
 inertia and follow^ed by a half-century of similar spiritual 
 coldness, the ten years from 1734 to 1744, and especially 
 the years i 740-42, were a season of wonderful ingathering 
 into the kingdom of God. Estimates are of course almost 
 entirely conjectural. Careful historians writing a genera- 
 tion or more after the event have concluded that from 
 25,000 to 50,000 out of the population of New England, 
 then perhaps 300,000, were converted or added to the 
 churches. From such investigation as the writer has been 
 able to make he believes that the sm.allest of these guesses 
 is greatly in excess of the truth ; but though these esti- 
 mates may be disallowed, the fact remains that never has 
 there been so extensive a manifestation of religious feeling 
 in New England in any period of similar duration. It 
 amply deserves the title of the " Great Awakening." 
 
 Enough has been seen, however, to cause no surprise 
 that the movement awakened very divergent emotions 
 among its contemporaries. While men like Edwards or 
 Colman looked upon it as a blessing, others no less honest 
 regarded it with distrust and hostility. Chief of these 
 opponents was Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy, the able, ascetic, 
 unemotional, and doctrinally exceedingly " liberal " pastor 
 of the Boston First Church, whose *' Seasonable Thoughts 
 on the State of Religion in New England," published in 
 1743, was the most notable opposing treatise that the 
 "Great Awakening" produced. Two parties speedily 
 divided New England. The one heartily supported the 
 
NEIV ENGLAND DIVIDED. 26 1 
 
 new methods of Christian work, approved the dramatic 
 exhortations of itinerant evangeHsts, and insisted on a 
 conscious experience of a change in a man's relations to 
 God as the only proof that a man was truly a Christian. 
 The other felt that the impulse that controlled the meet- 
 ings was an evanescent enthusiasm, rather than an abiding- 
 force, and doubted whether the results of the labors of the 
 itinerants were as permanent as those of the regular min- 
 istry ; while they held also, that the surest way to become 
 a Christian was to employ the ordinary means of grace 
 with diligence. The party favoring the revivals was nick- 
 named the ''New Lights," their opponents the "Old 
 Lights"; and a similar division among the Presbyterians 
 of the Middle Colonies led to the'* Old Sides" and '' New 
 Sides." On the whole, a majority of the ministers of New 
 England inclined to " Old Light " views ; though generally 
 laboring, as at Hartford, with the utmost diligence to reap 
 the fruits of the evident work of God. 
 
 Between these two parties New England was speedily 
 filled with controversy. The excesses of the revival were 
 nowhere so conspicuous as in eastern Connecticut; and 
 at its session in October, 1741, the Connecticut legislature 
 approved a proposition of the ministers ** to have a Gen- 
 eral Consociation of the churches in this Colony, consist- 
 ing of three ministers and three messengers from each 
 particular consociation," *' hoping that such a general con- 
 vention" may issue in the accommodation of divisions, 
 settling peace, love, and charity, and promoting the true 
 interest of vital religion." This body, of which the colony 
 bore the expenses, met at Guilford, November 24, 1741 ; 
 and enjoys the distinction of being the last Congregational 
 synod representative of the churches of a commonwealth 
 called under the auspices of the State It declared strongly 
 against itinerant preachers as the chief source of existing 
 
262 THE CONGREGATJOXALISTS. [Chai'. viu. 
 
 disorders ; and affirmed that no minister ouc;ht to preach 
 or administer the sacraments in a parish not his own, 
 " without the consent of . . . the settled minister of the 
 parish." This expression of the representatives of tlie 
 churclies failing to improve the situation, the court, at its 
 May session in 1742, passed a drastic and arbitrary enact- 
 ment, forbidding itinerant evangelizing without the con- 
 sent of the minister of the parish, under penalty of loss of 
 right to collect liis legal salary and subjection to bonds 
 for good behavior in case the offender was a clerical resi- 
 dent of Connecticut, or expulsion from the colony if a 
 stranger. 
 
 This action only added fuel to the flames. At Can- 
 terbury, Mansfield, Plainfield, Norwich, and many other 
 places in eastern Connecticut, "Separatist," or, as they 
 called themselves, '* Strict Congregational," churches were 
 formed during the next few years, chiefly by persons in 
 liumble circumstances. These bodies rejected the *' Say- 
 brook Platform," opposed the Half- Way Covenant, held 
 that an educated ministry or premeditated sermons were 
 unnecessary, attached great value to visions and to relig- 
 ious excitement in public meetings, and believed that the 
 church was so possessed of the " key of knowledge " that 
 it could discern by spiritual intuition who were the real 
 Christians who alone should constitute its membership. 
 In general they were made up of warm-hearted, spirit- 
 ually-minded, though ignorant persons, who had been 
 profoundly touched by the revival. In general, too, the 
 principles which they held regarding the constitution and 
 government of the churches were more nearly those of 
 modern Congregationalism than the views of the estab- 
 lished churches which they opposed. But ignorance, 
 ridiculous fanaticism, and inordinate exercise of discipline 
 soon distracted their congregations ; they had upon them 
 
CONNEC7VCUT SEPARAl'ISTS. 263 
 
 the heavy hand of the State, which deprived them of office, 
 compelled them by distraint and imprisonment, even where 
 in the majority, to pay taxes for the regular ministry, and 
 till 1755 refused all petitions for their relief. When the 
 two brothers Cleaveland of Canterbury attended a Sepa- 
 ratist meeting during vacation with their parents in 1744 
 they were expelled from Yale College, as the saintly David 
 Brainerd had been for reflecting on the religious character 
 of tutor Chauncey Whittelsey and attending a Separatist 
 meeting in 1741. Frowned upon by the authorities of 
 the day, and torn by internal dissensions, the " Separatist " 
 churches in many cases died out, while in some instances 
 they became Baptist through the bodil)- transference of 
 the organization to that communion or the adoption of 
 Baptist sentiments by their leading members. 
 
 Naturally the excesses incident to the revival aroused 
 much opposition from many of the ministry in Massachu- 
 setts, though owing to its restricted charter the colonial 
 government, had it so desired, was unable to interfere as 
 in Connecticut. An evidence of this opposition was the 
 " testimony " of the Annual Ministerial Convention at 
 Boston on May 25, 1743, ''against several errors in doc- 
 trine, and disorders in practice, which have of late obtained 
 in various parts of the Land." This body lamented itin- 
 eracy ; the preaching of '' private Persons of no Educa- 
 tion " ; ordinations ** at large " ; the establishment of sepa- 
 rate congregations ; condemnation of non-sympathetic min- 
 isters *' as Pharisees, Arminians, blind, and unconverted " ; 
 and '* the disorderly Tumults and indecent Behaviours " 
 which had defaced many of the revival meetings. This 
 ** testimony " encountered much opposition in the Con- 
 vention from a large minority, and the thirty-eight votes 
 by which it was declared adopted represented only a small 
 portion of the ministers of Massachusetts. The supporters 
 
264 THE COXGREGAl'IOXALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 of revival measures, therefore, led by Joshua Gee of the 
 Boston Second Church, Benjamin Colman and William 
 Cooper of Brattle Street Cliurch, and Thomas Prince and 
 Joseph Sewall of the Old South Church in the same town, 
 gathered a new and special "Assembly of Pastors" at 
 Boston on July 7, 1743, with an attendance of ninety min- 
 isters drawn thither from Massachusetts and New Hamp- 
 shire. This revivalistic convention affirmed it to be an 
 " indispensable Duty " to bear witness " that there has 
 been a happy and remarkable Revival of Religion in many 
 Parts of this Land, through an uncommon divine Influ- 
 ence," — remarkable " on Account of the Numbers wrought 
 upon, . . . the Suddenness and quick Progress of it, . . . 
 also in Respect of the Degree of Operation, both in a Way 
 of Terror and in a Way of Consolation ; attended in many 
 with unusual bodily Effects." At the same time they ac- 
 knowledged that *' in some Places many Irregularities and 
 Extravagancies have been permitted. . . . But who can 
 wonder, if at such a Time as this Satan should intermingle 
 himself, to hinder and blemish a Work so directly contrary 
 to the Interests of his own Kingdom?" To this docu- 
 ment the names of sixty-eight ministers were appended, 
 and attestations were collected from forty- five more pas- 
 tors scattered throughout New England, — the whole form- 
 ing a li.st conspicuous for ability, position, and piety. 
 
 But it is not surprising that, in spite of the efforts of 
 many anxious to advance the revival movement, the gen- 
 eral religious interest passed away almost as suddenly as 
 it had begun. Controversy turned men's thoughts away 
 from personal spiritual concerns, the type of revival preach- 
 ing was too emotional and too denunciatory not to pro- 
 duce decided reaction, and beginning with the attack on 
 Louisburg in 1745 there followed a succession of wars and 
 political discussions of the most engrossing character that 
 
CAVT/C/SA/S AND REPLIES. 265 
 
 lasted till the adoption of the federal constitution in i 788. 
 So speedily did the great revival interest cease that the 
 earnest Thomas Prince of the Boston Old South Churcli 
 declared in November, i 744, that for a year previous there 
 had been scarcely any conversions in the town of his min- 
 istry ; and even Jonathan Edwards waited from 1 744 to 
 I 748 for any candidate to come forward for admission to 
 the Northanipton church. 
 
 When, therefore, Whitefield arrived in New England 
 on October 19, 1744., for a second preaching tour it was 
 hardly possible to expect a repetition of his previous suc- 
 cesses ; but he was now met witli the warnings of the 
 "Old Light" party; and this feeling of opposition was 
 increased by the unguarded remarks concerning New Eng- 
 land colleges and churches which had found a place in his 
 published journals. On December 28, 1744, the faculty 
 of Harvard issued a '* Testimony against the Rev. Mr. 
 George Whitefield and his conduct," and the authorities 
 of Yale made a similar " Declaration " of opposition to his 
 methods on February 25,1 745. As Whitefield journeyed 
 through New England during the winter and spring of 
 1744-45, protests against his admission to the pulpits 
 multiplied. Such dissuasives emanated from the Minis- 
 terial Associations of Essex County, at Cambridge, at 
 Weymouth, at Marlborough, and from pastors in Bristol 
 County in Massachusetts. In Connecticut the Hartford 
 North Association took similar action on February 5, i 745 ; 
 and on June i8th the General Association of the colony 
 voted regarding Whitefield that " it would by no means 
 be advisable for any of our ministers to admit him into 
 their Pulpits or for any of our People to attend upon his 
 Preaching and Administrations." The signers of these 
 documents were not always anti-re\ivalists. Whitefield 
 himself made partial explanation regarding some of the 
 
266 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap, v in. 
 
 rash censurings for which he was criticised. But while 
 many thus opposed him, he had vigorous friends. Prince, 
 Gee, Foxcroft, and others of the Boston ministers upheld 
 him ; his non-clerical admirers there proposed to build the 
 largest meeting-house in America for his use ; but his in- 
 fluence was slight compared with that exerted on his first 
 visit. Three times more he visited New England, — in 
 1754, 1764, and 1770, — and was always gladly heard by 
 thousands. On his last visit he died at Newbury port, 
 Mass., September 30, 1770; and his memory is that of 
 one who with many faults of temper and of method yet 
 with many virtues of heart and deep consecration of spirit 
 was a prime human factor in the greatest religious over- 
 turning that New England has ever experienced. 
 
 The most permanent fruit of the Great Awakening was 
 the doctrinal discussion of which it was the occasion, — 
 a discussion which ultimately produced the only original 
 contribution of importance given by America to the de- 
 velopment of Christian theology, in the system worked 
 out by Edwards and his followers and often nicknamed 
 the ** New Divinity " or ** New England theology." Out 
 of the general mass of New England Old Calvinism of the 
 type of the Westminster Confession the Great Awakening 
 developed two marked schools of thought, each carrying 
 out tendencies already observable at the beginning of the 
 revival movement, but both intensified and stimulated 
 by that spiritual upheaval. These schools, both of which 
 were small at first in comparison with the prevailing Old 
 Calvinism, ultimately led to the division of the Congrega- 
 tional body into two unequal wings, the " Orthodox " and 
 the *' Unitarian," though the severance did not become 
 formal till two generations had passed. Each illustrated 
 one of two diametrically opposite tendencies exhibited by 
 later Puritanism as represented in England and America. 
 
MISE OF DOCTRINAL SCHOOLS. 267 
 
 It would be wrong to call them " Old Lights " and " New 
 Lights," and divide them merely by their attitude toward 
 the revivals, for the mass both of the supporters and the 
 opponents of the measures of Whitefield and the itinerants 
 were Old Calvinists ; but the one party embraced almost 
 to a man the most strenuous of the antagonists of the 
 Great Awakening, while the other included its most zeal- 
 ous advocates. They were the two extremes between 
 which the Old Calvinists constituted the center. 
 
 The first of these incipient schools, at both of which we 
 have already glanced, was that of what was known at the 
 time of the Great Awakening as " Arminianism " ; though 
 as it differed radically in spirit from the contemporary 
 evangelistic Arminianism of the Wesleys, and as Armin- 
 ian tenets were only a part of its characteristics, its most 
 marked doctrinal distinction being a negative attitude to- 
 ward the main features of historic Calvinism rather than a 
 constructive genius, we will designate it by the name which 
 its spiritual offspring of modern times prefer, — the rather 
 indefinite title of "Liberal Theology." This tendency, 
 which had aroused the concern of Edwards at the begin- 
 ning of the revivals, was largely due, as has already been 
 pointed out, to a reaction from the intense preaching of 
 the founders of New England and especially to the im- 
 portance attached by the ministry of the second and third 
 generations to use of "means." It was a school which 
 was stimulated, however, by' the course of Puritan devel- 
 opment in England, and especially by the writings of the 
 prominent Dissenters of the eighteenth century, for all 
 through the colonial period the degree of intercourse be- 
 tween the Nonconformists of the mother- country and the 
 Congregationalists on this side of the Atlantic was very 
 considerable. 
 
 The critical tendency of the eighteenth century, which 
 
268 THE CONG REG ATIONALISTS. . [Chap. viii. 
 
 doubted so much that the seventeenth century had held 
 to be estabhshed, which gave rise to Deism and Free- 
 thinking, affected the Enghsh Dissenters profoundly, espe- 
 cially during that period of low spiritual life which pre- 
 ceded the Wesleyan revival. Arminianism, by the year 
 1 700, had widely invaded English Nonconformist ranks. 
 Arianism, foreshadowed by Milton and Locke, was pre- 
 sented in 1 702 by Thomas Emlyn, once a Presbyterian 
 minister at Dublin, in his " Humble Inquiry into the Script- 
 ure Account of Jesus Christ." It was popularized by 
 William Whiston in a treatise entitled '' Primitive Chris- 
 tianity Revived" of 171 1 ; and was set forth in a lofty 
 and seductive form by the distinguished Anglican divine, 
 Samuel Clarke, in his '' Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity " 
 in 1712. Thus advocated by distinguished scholars within 
 and without the Establishment, it found its chief accept- 
 ance among the English Presbyterians, by some of whose 
 pastors it was adopted by i 7 1 7 ; and Arianism soon spread 
 to such an extent throughout that denomination, which 
 had been the largest body of Nonconformists at the pas- 
 sage of the Toleration Act, that by 1750 English Presby- 
 terianism was prevailingly Arian, and half a century later 
 became as generally Unitarian. 
 
 English Congregationalism resisted the Arian inroad, 
 but its leaders, like Watts and Doddridge, though men of 
 warm Christian feeling, defended the older Puritan Cal- 
 vinism rather feebly in the face of the rising tide of Armin- 
 ian and Arian speculations. In their, reaction from the 
 doctrinal strenuousness of the seventeenth century the re- 
 ligious classes of England, and especially the Dissenters, 
 generally inclined to look upon creeds as man-made state- 
 ments of dubious value, and claimed a large degree of 
 tolerance for all shades of religious opinion. The favorite 
 expression of the time was that questions of belief should 
 
THE LIBERALS. 269 
 
 be discussed with " candor," — a phrase which signified 
 practically that no sharp points of doctrinal definition 
 should be obtruded. The works of the leading Church- 
 men and Nonconformists were read by the ministry of 
 New England. English Arianism was indeed too wide a 
 departure from New England doctrinal positions to evoke 
 much sympathy, though it was not without fruit ; but the 
 less radical treatises of the Nonconformists made much 
 impression on the American mind, especially in eastern 
 Massachusetts, a region which by reason of its trade and 
 its comparative wealth was brought into closer touch with 
 the mother-country than the rest of New England. 
 
 The writings of two English divines were especially in- 
 fluential in molding the " Liberal Theology " of New Eng- 
 land at the period of the Great Awakening. One of these 
 was an Anglican clergyman, Daniel Whitby (1638-1726), 
 who during the last half-century of his life was a rector at 
 Salisbury. Whitby began his ministry as a Calvinist, but 
 passed to Arminianism, and finally, under the influence 
 of Clarke, to Arianism. During his Arminian period, in 
 1 7 10, he published a '' Discourse " on the five Calvinistic 
 points which was four times republished and was esteemed 
 an almost unanswerable argument in favor of the Arminian 
 view. The second writer was even more influential. John 
 Taylor (1694-1761) was a Presbyterian Arian divine of 
 Norwich, who printed a treatise on " The Scripture Doc- 
 trine of Original Sin" in 1738, which soon ran through 
 five editions ; a *' Key to the Apostolic Writings "in i 745 ; 
 and a discussion on the ** Scripture Doctrine of the Atone- 
 ment " in 1750. These tracts were written in a remark- 
 ably simple and comprehensible style and appealed dis- 
 tinctly to the general reader. In the first, Taylor main- 
 tained that sorrow, labor, and physical death were the 
 consequences to us of Adam's transgression ; but we are 
 
270 rilE CONGRECATIOXALISTS. [Ciiai-. \iii. 
 
 in no sense guilty of Adam's sin ; no curse was pronounced 
 upon our rational powers; each of us is fully able to serve 
 God, and, with the assistance of the divine Spirit, to ob- 
 tain " Regeneration, or our gaining the Habits of Virtue 
 and HoHness " ; and the aid of the Spirit, though a most 
 valuable help, is not given " as supposing any natural Cor- 
 ruption or innate Pravity of our Minds." In the last, 
 Taylor rejected the idea that Christ suffered to satisfy 
 divine justice or endured a vicarious punishment, and pre- 
 sented a conception of the atonement like the govern- 
 mental theory of Grotius, though with insistence also on 
 the moral influence upon the sinner of Christ's death. 
 
 The first New England work of importance which marked 
 the greater definition of parties consequent upon the Great 
 Awakening was Experience Mayhew's *' Grace Defended," 
 of 1744- Experience Mayhew was a worthy member of 
 that missionary family which labored for five generations 
 for the spiritual uplifting of the Indians. A grandson of 
 the younger Thomas Mayhew, of w^hom mention has al- 
 ready been made, he spent his life among the natives of 
 the Martha's Vineyard group ; and though thus isolated 
 and without a college training, he maintained a lively in- 
 terest in New England religious progress and won recog- 
 nition for his very exceptional talents. In his treatise of 
 1 744 Mayhew affirmed himself to be essentially a Calvinist, 
 declaring his full persuasion "of the Truth of the Doctrine 
 of God's Decrees of Election and Reprobation, as the same 
 is revealed in the Scripture, and for the Substance, as it is 
 explained in our Confessions of Faith." But his conten- 
 tion was that " the Offer of Salvation made to Sinners in 
 the Gospel comprises in it the Offer of the Graces given in 
 Regeneration," and that " the best Actions of the Unre- 
 gencrate are not properly called Sins, nor uncapable of 
 being Conditions of the Covenant of Grace." The unre- 
 
MAYHEW AND B RIANT. 27 I 
 
 generate cannot exercise saving grace, but they can, by 
 diligent cultivation of the ** means of grace," fulfill the 
 conditions on which the free pardoning grace of God 
 which will effect their regeneration is bestowed. 
 
 Perhaps the next treatise of moment as indicating the 
 direction in which some men in eastern Massachusetts were 
 moving was a sermon by Rev. Lemuel Briant, entitled 
 ** The Absurdity and Blasphemy of depretiating Moral 
 Virtue," preached, among other places, at the West 
 Church, Boston, and printed in 1749. Briant was a man 
 of twenty-seven, of brilliant parts, and pastor since 1 745 
 of the church of that portion of Braintree which is now 
 Ouincy, Mass. Taking as his text the much-abused dec- 
 laration of Isaiah, '* All our righteousnesses are as filthy 
 rags," he affirmed that this prophetic utterance was never 
 intended to be a description " of the personal Righteous- 
 ness of truly good and holy Men." On the contrary, ** the 
 great Rule the Scriptures lay down for Men to go by in 
 passing Judgment on their spiritual State, is the sincere, 
 upright, steady, and universal Practice of Vertue." Some 
 might object, Briant declared, that this was not preaching 
 Christ ; but, he answered, *' to preach up chiefly what 
 Christ himself laid the chiefest Stress upon (and whether 
 this was not moral Vertue, let every One judge from his 
 Discourses) must certainly, in the Opinion of all sober Men, 
 be called truly and properly, and in the best Sense, preach- 
 ing of Christ." 
 
 This discourse produced immediate reply. Soon after 
 its publication, Rev. John Porter of what is now North 
 Bridgewater, Mass., uttered a counterblast, from the same 
 text, in the pulpit of another Braintree church, which was 
 printed in 1750 as ** The Absurdity and Blasphemy of 
 substituting the personal Righteousness of Men in the 
 Room of the Surety-Righteousness of Christ, in the im- 
 
2 72 THE CONGREGATIONALISrS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 portant Article of Justification before God." To this ser- 
 mon were appended the attestations of five of Porter's 
 ministerial neighbors, who " rejoyce that this our dear 
 Brother is enabled to stand up in Defence of the Gospel ; 
 and . . . lament the dreadful Increase of Arminiasm and 
 other Errors in the Land, among Ministers and People." 
 Rev. Thomas Foxcroft, the revivalistic colleague of Dr. 
 Chauncy in the pastorate of the Boston First Church, also 
 replied to Briant, though not by name, " at the Tuesday- 
 Evening Lecture in Brattle-Street, Boston, January 30, 
 1749-50"; and from the text already twice preached on 
 in the discussion. In Foxcroft's judgment the debate was 
 between positions essentially Protestant and "Popish." 
 Briant answered Porter at once, and in a tone of irony, 
 though he says seriously enough, " I challenge you . . . 
 to point out a single Passage in my Sermon where the 
 Doctrine of Justification by the merit of Man's personal 
 Righteousness is asserted. . . . All I contend for . . . is 
 only to show that the Prophet did not design to brand the 
 Vertues of real good Men with this odious Character of 
 filthy rags. ... I say expressly . . . Forgiveness of Sin 
 and final Acceptance with the Father is thro' the Merits 
 of the Son. . . . But I always tho't that so far as any 
 Man is pure (let it be in a greater or lesser Degree) he is 
 not filthy." 
 
 But Briant aroused other opponents. His aged neighbor 
 in the Braintree ministry, Rev. Samuel Niles, after waiting 
 in vain for a " laudable Retraction," and finding instead 
 that Briant resorted to ** Banter," put forth, in 1752, a 
 lengthy " Vindication of Divers important Gospel-Doc- 
 trines," in which he accused his young neighbor of omit- 
 ting the custom of catechising children practiced by former 
 Braintree pastors, declared that the much-disputed sermon 
 " disavow'd the orthodox commonly received Notions," 
 
BIUAiV7''S OPPONENTS. 273 
 
 asserted that Briant was " an Arminian or worse," and 
 affirmed that the " main Design" of the present Vindica- 
 tion was *' to put a Stop to the prev,aiHng Contagion of 
 Arminian Errors and other loose Opinions among us, 
 which threaten to banish vital Piety out of the Land." 
 By the time that Niles wrote, Briant's church was in tur~ 
 moil, and in the closing weeks of 1752 a council tried to 
 heal the situation, though without much success. A more 
 certain termination speedily came to the strife as far as 
 the chief actor was concerned. In October, 1753, ill- 
 health compelled Briant's resignation, and a year later he 
 was no longer of the Hving. 
 
 This story has been told at some length because it 
 shows the type of discussion which prevailed in New Eng- 
 land in the decade which followed the Great Awakening, 
 and because it reveals also the incoming of a presentation 
 of Christian doctrine akin to the contemporary views of 
 many English Nonconformists, but a decided departure 
 from the historic position of New England. Of course 
 matters did not stop here. Eastern Massachusetts was 
 in a general doctrinal ferment. In 1757 Rev. Samuel 
 Webster, a Harvard graduate of 1737, and from 1741 to 
 1796 pastor at Salisbury, Mass., published an anonymous 
 tract entitled "A Winter Evening's Conversation upon the 
 Doctrine of Original Sin . . . wherein the Notion of our 
 having sinned in Adam, and being on that Account only 
 liable to eternal Damnation, is proved to be unscriptural." 
 This leaflet, which bears evidence that Webster was a 
 student of Whitby's and Taylor's writings, was reprinted 
 the same year at New Haven, Conn., and, if one can judge 
 by the commotion which it created, must be called 
 ** timely." In it Webster held "that even supposing 
 that, which cannot be proved, that Adam was our federal 
 head, or representative, ... we only suffer the ill conse- 
 
2 74 ^'^^^ CONGREGATIOXA LISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 quences of his folly ; but are not . . . chargeable with his 
 sin;" and that infants are ** as blameless as helpless." To 
 Webster Rev. Peter Clark, a Harvard graduate of 1712, 
 and a much-respected minister at Danvers, Mass,, till his 
 death in 1768, responded in 1758 in "A Summer Morn- 
 ing's Conversation," fortified with a preface signed by 
 five ministers of revivalistic sympathies, including Joseph 
 Sewall, Thomas Prince, and Thomas Foxcroft, of Boston. 
 In this reply Clark argued at much length in support of 
 the doctrine of the inherent depravity of human nature as 
 a consequence of Adam's transgression ; and, as the attes- 
 tors expressed it, criticised Webster for '* making tragical 
 Exclamations against the Doctrine of Original Sin . . . 
 as if it imply'd, that Children dying in Infancy suffer the 
 eternal Torments of Hell for the first Sin of Adam; — 
 when it is well known, the Patrons of that Doctrine are 
 wont to leave the future State of such among the secret 
 Things which belong to God alone." Clark was confident 
 that infants were not liable to punishment. 
 
 These two tracts aroused other contestants. Rev. Joseph 
 Bellamy, the distinguished Edwardean of whom there will 
 be occasion to speak later, replied anonymously to Web- 
 ster in 1758, in a dialogue of considerable brilliancy, 
 advocating the theory of the imputation of Adam's sin 
 to the race, and called attention to Edwards's " Original 
 Sin Defended," then about to be issued from the press. 
 Quite a different contribution to the debate was a tract, 
 also anonymous, by the anti-revivalist Charles Chauncy of 
 Boston, in criticism of Clark's answer to Webster. With 
 a good deal of dialectic ingenuity Chauncy turned Clark's 
 guns by asserting that " this Gentleman [Clark], no more 
 than his Antagonist [Webster], is a friend to the Calvin- 
 istical doctrine, as it maintains the liableness of all Adam's 
 posterity, without exception, on account of his first sin, to 
 
DISCUSSION ON ORIGINAL SIN. 275 
 
 the eternal damnation of hell," thus accusing Clark of 
 treachery to Calvinism in admitting the general salvation 
 of infants. Other pamphlets by the principals in the de- 
 bate and by two more anonymous writers followed ; but 
 the most important publication on this theme at the time 
 was the work of Edwards which Bellamy had announced. 
 Edwards's elaborate treatise on Original Sin was begun 
 and perhaps finished before Webster put forth his tract. 
 It is an answer to the writings of John Taylor, the English 
 Presbyterian Arian whose works have already been spoken 
 of, and who furnished most of Webster's ammunition, 
 rather than to the American deniers of original sin. But 
 the occasion of its publication at this time rather than 
 several other important works which Edwards held in 
 manuscript was doubtless this discussion. It was passing 
 through the press when Edwards died, in the spring of 
 1758. In this lengthy essay Edwards asserts that the 
 universal prevalence of original sin is taught by experi- 
 ence and by the Scriptures. All mankind are by nature 
 corrupt at whatever stage of their existence from infancy 
 to old age. But the most peculiar portion of Edwards's 
 argument is that in which he explains the nature of the 
 Adamic relation. That primal sin is ours; but not by 
 reason of any Augustinian existence of the sum of human 
 nature in Adam. That which preserves personal identity, 
 which makes the man of to-day the same being that sinned 
 or was virtuous yesterday, is simply the constant creative 
 activity of God. God, by a " constitution " or arrange- 
 ment of things that is ** arbitrary " in the sense that it de- 
 pends on his will alone, sees fit to appoint that the acts 
 and thoughts of the present moment shall be consciously 
 continuous with those of the past ; and it is this ever- 
 renewed creation that gives all personal identity to the in- 
 dividual. In a similar way God has constituted the whole 
 
276 THE C0XGKEGA710XALISrS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 race one with Adam, so that his sin is really theirs and 
 they are viewed as " sinners, truly guilty and children of 
 wrath on that account." This may indeed come peril- 
 ously near the verge of ascribing to God the authorship 
 of sin ; but it reveals a thinker of vastly greater powers 
 than Taylor or Webster or Clark. 
 
 These discussions reveal a good deal of breaking down of 
 the old Calvinism, especially in eastern Massachusetts, but 
 other divines of that region went considerably further in 
 their criticism. It will be remembered that Lemuel Briant's 
 sermon of i 749 was preached to the West Church at Boston. 
 The pastor of that church from i 747 to his death at the age 
 of forty-five in 1766 was Jonathan Mayhew, son of Expe- 
 rience Mayhew, whose ** Grace Defended" has already 
 been spoken of. Mayhew^ was a m^an of most brilliant 
 qualities, though too arrogant in discussion ; a correspond- 
 ent wnth prominent English Dissenters; and one of the 
 earliest of the American patriots who foresaw and pre- 
 pared the public mind for the revolutionary struggle — a 
 friend of Otis and the Adamses. He was a marked man 
 in every respect. Already at his settlement rumors ac- 
 cusing him of doctrinal unsoundness were rife, and sev- 
 eral of the churches invited preferred not to be repre- 
 sented in the council by which the pastoral relation was 
 established ; but he gained public respect as a preaclier of 
 power, and grew to be a force in the town of his residence. 
 Among his voluminous publications were a series of " Ser- 
 mons " issued at Boston in i 755 and reprinted at London a 
 year later. Li these discourses Mayhew inveighed against 
 ** Creeds of human composition " ; but his chief endea\'or 
 was to explain the method of salvation. The discussion led 
 him to elaborate and carry much further the principles laid 
 down by his father. " Those who imagine," he declared, 
 " that, because we are saved by grace, obedience to the 
 
JON A THAN MA YIIE W. 277 
 
 gospel is not necessary, as the condition on our part, in 
 order to salvation, draw a conclusion which is very unnat- 
 ural." To the objection that to assert this condition was 
 to exalt human merit, Mayhew replied: " Good men may 
 so far trust to their own righteousness, as to believe it will 
 be available with a gracious God, thro' the Mediator; so 
 as to procure eternal life for them." 
 
 But the chief innovation advanced by Mayhew in these 
 sermons was his view of the Trinity. On that doctrine 
 he was a high Arian of the school of the English divine, 
 Samuel Clarke. " Tho' our obedience as Christians," he 
 told his hearers, " is due more immediately to our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, . . . yet it is ultimately referred to His 
 Father and our Father, to His God and our God ; who ' is 
 greater than ALL ' ; and who has conferred this dignity 
 and authority on the Son." "The Dominion and Sover- 
 eignty of the universe is necessarily one, and in ONE; the 
 only living and true GOD, who delegates such measures 
 of power and authority to other Beings, as seemeth good 
 in his sight ; but ' will not give his peculiar glory to an- 
 other.' Our blessed Saviour does indeed assert the rights 
 and prerogatives of his own crown ; but never usurped 
 those of his Father." 
 
 A more pronouncedly Arian footnote with which the 
 passage in which these statements occur was accompanied 
 aroused the anxiety of Jonathan Edwards, who was fur- 
 ther moved by the anonymous publication of a reprint of 
 Emlyn's Arian treatise of 1702, the "Humble Inquiry," 
 at Boston in 1756. Edwards therefore wrote to Prof. 
 Edward Wigglesworth, Hollis Professor of Divinity at 
 Harvard, in February, 1757, asking him to take up the cud- 
 gels against Mayhew. But though Wigglesworth sympa- 
 thized in the main with Edwards he did not feel a necessity 
 of engaging in the struggle to which he was thus exhorted. 
 
278 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [CuAr. viii. 
 
 Though Mayhew was the most pronounced, he was not 
 the only sympathizer with Arian views among the ministry 
 of eastern Massachusetts. When the Unitarian struggle 
 was at its height in 1815, President John Adams stated 
 that " sixty -fiv'C years ago" (i.e., about 1750) Lemuel 
 Briant of Braintree, Ebenezer Gay and Daniel Shute of 
 Hingham, and John Brown of Cohasset, besides Mayhew, 
 *' were Unitarians." Probably this description is a little 
 overdrawn, for even Mayhew does not appear to be more 
 than a high Arian in his writings ; but that the full divin- 
 ity of Christ was being questioned considerably widely 
 there is ample evidence. In i 768 Rev. Samuel Hopkins, 
 the distinguished disciple of Edwards, preached a sermon 
 at Boston on the Character of Christ, which is largely an 
 answer to Arian positions, and which he said he wrote 
 ** under a conviction that the doctrine of the Divinity of 
 Christ was much neglected, if not disbelieved, by a num- 
 ber of ministers in Boston." In a note to this discourse 
 Hopkins remarked : '' I desire it may be considered, 
 whether the ordaining councils who neglect to examine 
 candidates for the ministry, with respect to their religious 
 sentiments, and they who zealously oppose such exami- 
 nations, do not by this conduct openly declare that it is 
 with them no matter of importance what men believe;" 
 thus implying that much laxity in this particular already 
 prevailed. Nor were Arian views confined to the imme- 
 diate vicinity of Boston. In 1757 a council called to in- 
 vestigate charges of unsoundness preferred against Rev. 
 John Rogers of Leominster, Mass., found that he did not 
 " hold or believe the essential Divinity of Christ " ; and in 
 1758 he was dismissed. In 1760, in a pamphlet wherein 
 Bellamy attacked the theory that creeds as a test of ortho- 
 doxy should be abandoned, which Rev. James Dana had 
 brought with him from his home under the shadow of 
 
ARIAN VIEWS. 279 
 
 Harvard College to Walllngford, Conn., and which found 
 other defenders, the Edwardean champion charged that 
 the liberal party in New Hampshire " actually, three years 
 ago, . . . ventured to new model our shorter catechism, 
 to alter, or entirely leave out the doctrines of the Trinity, 
 of the decrees ... of original sin, . , . and to adjust 
 the whole to Dr. Taylor's scheme." A catechism, appar- 
 ently the one thus described, was issued at Portsmouth in 
 April, 1757. 
 
 It is evident that twenty years after the Great Awak- 
 ening Arminian and even Arian opinions were somewhat 
 extensively disseminated in eastern Massachusetts, and 
 were supported by men of ability and character. It is 
 clear, too, that a large part of the stimulus toward such 
 ideas came from the writings of thinkers across the Atlan- 
 tic who had trod the same path from Calvinism to Liberal 
 Theology somewhat earlier. But it is no less manifest 
 that the development of some of the Puritan churches in 
 America, especially some of those that most opposed the 
 revival movement, had been leading them independently 
 to results similar to those reached by the Presbyterian 
 Puritans in England. That the development of Liberal 
 Theology, in its outward manifestations, was not more 
 rapid after 1765, and that Unitarianism did not become a 
 recognized power till the beginning of the nineteenth cent- 
 ury, was due in a measure to the early deaths of Ma}-- 
 hew and of Briant, but even more to the great political 
 struggle which absorbed the thought of New England for 
 more than twenty years. Men gave little heed to theol- 
 ogy. But the type of belief that Mayhew and his sym- 
 pathizers represented quietly spread, till forty years after 
 his death it was that of a large proportion of the churches 
 of eastern Massachusetts. 
 
 In polar opposition to these Liberal Theologians stood 
 
28o THE COXG REG ATI OX A LISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 the school of Edwards, — that of the so-called " New 
 Divinity." The leaders in this movement were a re- 
 markably able and strongly individual group of eight 
 men, seven of them of Connecticut blood, and all except 
 one trained at Yale College. All were warm sympathiz- 
 ers with the " New Light " party, though the five younger 
 members were not acti\ ely contemporary with the Great 
 Awakening. They were Jonathan Edwards and his two 
 immediate friends, Joseph Bellamy and Samuel Hopkins; 
 and the later representatives of the same impulse, Stephen 
 West, John Smalley, Jonathan Edwards the younger, Na- 
 thanael Emmons, and Timothy Dwight. 
 
 Of the early life of Jonathan Edwards mention has 
 already been made, and his share in the revival movement 
 has already been pointed out. A man of more metaphys- 
 ical genius than any other American, Edwards was a force 
 such as few men have been in molding the thoughts of his 
 friends and of three generations of the religious body to 
 which he belonged. He was a man of warm friendships ; 
 but, in spite of his remarkable ability as a preacher, he 
 was always something of the student rather than the man 
 of affairs in dealing with his associates, and an autocratic 
 strain inherited from his father gave him less of the sym- 
 pathy of his ministerial neighbors than might otherwise 
 have been his. A serious case of church discipline, and 
 even more the hostile stand which the growing clearness 
 of his own conception of the conditions of entrance into 
 the kingdom of God induced him to take more than twenty 
 years after his settlement against the " Stoddardean " sys- 
 tem introduced by his grandfather and practiced in his 
 own early ministry, led to his dismission from Northamp- 
 ton under very trying circumstances in 1750. This event 
 was followed, in 1 751, by his settlement in the then fron- 
 tier town of Stockbridge as pastor of the church and mis- 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS. 28 I 
 
 sionary to the Housatonic Indians; and here he spent 
 nearly seven years of great intellectual productiveness. 
 Early in 1758 he accepted a call to the presidency of 
 Princeton College, an institution in hearty sympathy with 
 the "New Light" party; but he died, March 22, 1758, 
 just as he was entering- on his new duties. 
 
 Edwards was a mystic and a seer as well as a dialectic 
 theologian ; and partly by reason of this manifoldness of 
 his nature, partly because death interrupted him in his 
 labors, his system was not fully worked out on all points 
 nor made in all respects logically consistent. But no 
 small share of his power over those who have come in 
 contact with him and with his writings is the feeling that 
 he awakens that one is dealing not merely with an intel- 
 lect of marvelous acuteness,- but with a soul stirred by 
 profound religious emotions, and a spirit that in a pecu- 
 liar degree seemed to walk with God. It is a perception 
 of this spiritual many-sidedness that has led others than 
 those of the theological lineage that bears his name to lay 
 claim to him as the master-key that unlocks the meaning 
 of the most various tendencies jn the later history of New 
 England thought. But whatever germs of diverse fruitage 
 may have been wrapped up in the profundities of his 
 speculations, Edwards stands historically as the founder 
 of a school of definite tendencies and easily recognized in- 
 fluence on New England theology and life. He aimed to 
 raise up Calvinism, then sore pressed by the Arminian 
 school of Whitby and Taylor ; and he sought this restora- 
 tion not because of any devotion to Calvinism as a system 
 long maintained in the churches, but because the center 
 of his own religious experience, like that of Calvin, was 
 the recognition of the sovereignty of God. Yet he was 
 equally convinced that Calvinism needed to be modified 
 so that the responsibility of man should be more clearly 
 
2 82 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 taught. And a second aim was no less evidently his. 
 Edwards sought to foster a warm, emotional type of 
 Christian character, touched and vivified by a sense of 
 immediate communion between God and the human soul. 
 
 Edwards's publications numbered twenty-seven in his 
 lifetime, and nine volumes from his pen have been printed 
 since his death, while it is said that even more material 
 than has ever been published still remains in the volu- 
 minous manuscript fragments on which he recorded his 
 thoughts. Five works, however, may be readily selected 
 as the most characteristic. 
 
 The first of these publications of prime importance was 
 Edwards's '* Treatise Concerning Religious Affections," of 
 I 746. It is a garnering up of the best results of the revival 
 upon the author's thought .regarding the problem which 
 that movement had made prominent, — what are the char- 
 acteristics of true personal religion. Edwards includes the 
 will as well as the emotions in his conception of the affec- 
 tions. His work is a profound, somewhat mystical plea 
 for the primacy of the emotions, and chief of all love, in 
 religion ; a warning against mistaken tests and signs of 
 Christian character; and a definition of the nature of those 
 affections which constitute the essence of personal godli- 
 ness. The Holy Spirit does indeed operate on and over- 
 rule the actions of all men, but he enters into indwelling 
 union only wnth the saints; by his power men are led to a 
 new attitude of heart toward God, impossible for them to 
 conceive in their natural state, but implying no new facul- 
 ties of the .soul not possessed before. This new attitude 
 induces men to love God, not for any self-interest, but out 
 of delight in his holiness ; and from this primal love to God 
 all other Christian virtues flow. 
 
 Holding such lofty views as to the essence of the Chris- 
 tian life, and so convinced of the spiritual worthlessness of 
 
EDWARDS'S WRITINGS. 283 
 
 all that fell short of It, it Is no wonder that Edwards was 
 led to renounce '* Stoddardeanism " and the Half- Way 
 Covenant with their admission of non-regenerate men to 
 the sacraments, as he did in his second work of moment, 
 the " Humble Inquiry . . . Concerning the Qualifications 
 Requisite to . . . full Communion," issued in 1749. 
 
 But the most famous of Edwards's treatises was one 
 written in his Stockbridge sojourn and published in 1754, 
 — his ** Careful and Strict Enquiry into the modern prevail- 
 ing Notions of Freedom of Will." In this work Edwards 
 sought to defend the Calvinistic doctrine of the complete 
 sovereignty of God in conversion against Arminianism of 
 the school of Whitby, by maintaining that human freedom 
 implies simply the natural power to act in accordance with 
 the choice of the mind. With the origin of the incli- 
 nation man has nothing to do. Man is free to do as he 
 chooses, as free now as ever he was, but not free to bend 
 his inclinations hither and thither. The action of the will 
 always follows the strongest choice, and follows it freely ; 
 but that inclination is determined by what seems the high- 
 est good. While man has full natural power to serve God, 
 — that is, could follow freely a choice to serve God If he 
 had such an inclination, — he will not serve God till God 
 reveals himself to him as his highest good and thus ren- 
 ders the choice of obedience to God man's strongest de- 
 termination. Moral responsibility lies in the choice, not 
 in the cause of the choice ; and hence a man of evil incli- 
 nation is to be condemned, since choice is his own act, 
 even though the direction in which the choices are exer- 
 cised is not under his determination. Man cannot choose 
 between various possible choices ; nor can his choice origi- 
 nate without some impelling cause; but his will acts in 
 the direction in which it desires to move and is not forced 
 to act counter to its inclination. This philosophic con- 
 
284 THE COKGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 ception, by which Edwards beHeved that he had demon- 
 strated the absolute control of God while leaving freedom 
 and responsibility to man, had its immediate philosophi- 
 cal antecedents in the speculations of Locke, Hobbes, and 
 Collins, though Edwards appears to have known only the 
 writings of the first-named thinker; but Edwards's own 
 use of these ideas was profoundly original, and the work 
 was long regarded by most Calvinists in America and 
 Scotland as an unanswerable critique of the Arminian 
 position. 
 
 The fourth work of special moment which Edwards 
 issued was that " Christian Doctrine of Original Sin de- 
 fended " which appeared in 1758. The peculiar argu- 
 ment by which he attempts to show the unity of the race 
 with Adam by a divine constitution or appointment has 
 already been noticed. 
 
 A final volume deserves i^articular attention. — that 
 containing Edwards's essay on " The Nature of true Vir- 
 tue " which was published in 1765, though written about 
 ten years earlier. To his thinking, virtue is essentially 
 benevolence, or love to intelligent being in general. God 
 as the absolutely infinite and perfect being is the object of 
 the highest love ; men are objects of a real though far lesser 
 love. The cliaracteristic of this benevolence is that it 
 seeks " the highest good of Being in general. And it will 
 seek the good of every individual Being unless it be con- 
 ceived as not consistent with the highest good of Being 
 in general." Should any individual being be hostile to 
 this general good, true virtue must of necessity oppose 
 him and take satisfaction in his punishment. A second 
 and inferior characteristic of virtue is the attraction which 
 one possessed of general benevolence feels toward any 
 other being who is animated by a like spirit. The actual 
 exercise of benevolence brings a perception of .spiritual 
 
EDJVAKDS'S WRITINGS. 285 
 
 beauty and joy which no other experience can equal. 
 Self-love is the opposite of love for being in general and 
 hence is hostile to true virtue. Of course virtue in God 
 is the same in essence as in his creatures, — it is benevo- 
 lence which leads him to seek what his wisdom declares is 
 the highest good of being in general, or of the universe as 
 a whole. But, as Edwards shows in his treatise " Con- 
 cerning the End for which God created the World," which 
 was printed with his essay on virtue, the manifestation of 
 this benevolence is somewhat different in God from what 
 it is in men. God, as the being before w4iose infinity the 
 sum total of other being is infinitesimal, in manifesting 
 benevolence to being in general, naturally and unselfishly 
 loves himself and seeks primarily his own glory. 
 
 It is evident, from what has been said, that while Ed- 
 wards exalted the divine sovereignty in creation, provi- 
 dence, and redemption to a higher degree than the Cal- 
 vinism of the day had been accustomed to do, he also 
 emphasized four positions which were essentially a de- 
 parture from that historic Calvinism. The first was his 
 insistence on the possession by the sinner of a natural 
 abiUty to do the will of God, thus placing the sinner's 
 inability to obey God not in lack of power, but in lack 
 of inchnation. This doctrine emphasized a change of the 
 sinner's disposition or '' heart," as not only the primary, 
 but the only important thing in beginning a Christian life. 
 It laid stress on ''conversion"; it depreciated the value 
 of *' means," since by undue reliance on '' means " a sinner 
 might be kept back from that full surrender to God which 
 w^as his first duty. It also, though unintentionally, tended 
 to lessen the importance attached to the covenant relation 
 of birth in a Christian family and of baptism, through the 
 stress which it put on '' conversion " rather than on Chris- 
 tian nurture. A second characteristic feature of Edwards's 
 
2 86 THE COXGREGATIOXALISrS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 system was his theory of virtue, making it consist in dis- 
 interested benevolence, — in a love to being in general 
 which is primarily th^t self-forgetful love to God which 
 Edwards regarded as the essence of the religious life. In 
 the third place, Edwards maintained that the divine action 
 in salvation and punishment alike flowed from a single 
 principle, that of a wise benevolence to the universe as a 
 whole, which is at the same time a manifestation of his 
 own glory. And finally Edwards represented the preser- 
 vation of identity in the individual and of unity in the race 
 as the effect of a divine constitution which was a constantly 
 renewed manifestation of creative activity. But, besides 
 these evident features of his system, Edwards dropped 
 many hints and half-elaborated suggestions regarding 
 other doctrines, like that of the atonement, which made 
 his work the beginning of a development carried much 
 further by his followers, rather than the framing of a sys- 
 tem to be accepted as a completed whole. 
 
 The elder of the two immediate disciples of Edwards 
 and contemporaries of his later years was Joseph Bellamy, 
 a native in I 719 of what is now Cheshire, Conn., a grad- 
 uate of Yale in the class of 1735, and from 1738 to his 
 death, in i 790, the minister of the little town of Bethlem, 
 Conn., — a rural parish which he might have exchanged, 
 had he been willing to do so, for a New York City pulpit. 
 Bellamy was from the beginning of his ministry a warm 
 personal friend of Edwards. He was the most gifted 
 preacher of any of the Edwardeans, — a man of unusual 
 pulpit abilities ; and he threw himself heartily in the re- 
 vivalistic current of the Great Awakening, becoming, for 
 two years, an indefatigable itinerant evangelist. But his 
 chief fame was as a writer and especially as a controver- 
 sialist. He argued in his sermons of 1758 on "The Wis- 
 dom of God, in the Permission of Sin," that though sin 
 
JOSEPH BELLAMY. 287 
 
 was in itself a terrible evil, it was allowed by God as a 
 necessary means of the best good of the universe as a 
 whole. In a discourse of the same year on " The Divinity 
 of Jesus Christ" he defended the doctrine of the Trinity 
 which Mayhew had attacked. In a series of dialogues and 
 tracts in 1769 and 17 70 he attacked the Half- Way Cove- 
 nant, which Edwards had opposed, and did more than any 
 other man to bring about its abandonment. He was an 
 ungenerous but most effective champion of the " New 
 Divinity " ; and it was largely by his blows and criticisms 
 that opposition to it in Connecticut was broken down. 
 Bellamy's most lengthy and most popular work, — next to 
 Edwards's ** Affections " the most generally influential 
 book put forth by the Edwardean school, — was his '* True 
 ■Religion Delineated," of 1750, which Edwards read in 
 manuscript and warmly commended in print. It is a 
 vivacious, readable, yet severely logical presentation of the 
 plan of salvation and of the Christian life substantially as 
 Edwards conceived them. Bellamy's most marked doc- 
 trinal advance over his teacher is his clear assertion of a 
 general atonement. Edwards had inclined to the limited 
 atonement theory ; but the view of Bellamy became that 
 of the " New Divinity," and a further point of rupture with 
 the older Calvinism. 
 
 All this influence was multiplied in the case of Bellamy 
 by the reproduction of his theories in the teaching of 
 numerous pupils. Bellamy's home practically became a 
 theological seminary, in which more ministerial candidates 
 were trained than in the house of any other New England 
 minister except that of Emmons, — probably not less than 
 sixty, — and almost every one of them bore the distinct 
 stamp of his system. 
 
 Edwards's younger disciple and most intimate personal 
 friend was Samuel Hopkins, — not an interesting preacher 
 
288 THE CONGREGATIOXAUSTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 like Bellamy, nor so vivacious a writer, but a controver- 
 sialist of even greater power, and a theological thinker who 
 developed certain features of Edwards's teachings so fully 
 that his own name was often given to the ultra- Ed wardean 
 school of which he was the founder. A man of great nat- 
 ural modesty, of self-denying Christian life, and one of the 
 earliest of the New England opponents of human slavery, 
 his personal character always commanded respect ; but his 
 theological opinions were assailed and defended w^ith the 
 utmost bitterness. 
 
 Hopkins was born, in 1721, at Waterbury, Conn., and, 
 after graduating at Yale with the class of 1741, studied 
 divinity in the household of Edwards at Northampton 
 during the later months of the Great Awakening. He 
 then became the pastor at what is now Great Barrington, 
 Mass., from 1743 to 1769, being for seven years a near 
 ministerial neighbor of Edwards while the latter was at 
 Stockbridge. In 1770 Hopkins undertook the charge of 
 the First Congregational Church at Newport, R. I., and in 
 that office he remained till his death, in 1803. 
 
 The theologic positions most characteristically associated 
 with Hopkins's teachings were all of them extensions of 
 the theories of Edwards, — especially of Edwards's con- 
 ception of ''benevolence" as the essence of true virtue. 
 Hopkins held that though man has entire natural free- 
 dom, and ought therefore to be exhorted instantly to re- 
 pent, the elective and directing power of God overrules 
 all his choices, whether good or evil ; and since God acts 
 on the principle of benevolence, or the largest good of 
 being in general, God has not permitted any greater amount 
 of sin than he sees is for the interest of the universe, — 
 though this divinely wise permission of sin renders it no 
 less evil in the sinner. 
 
 In the individual this benevolence, as with Edwards, 
 
SAMUEL HOPKINS. 289 
 
 takes the form of a preference for the glory of God. Sin 
 is selfishness. And hence the test of a true Christian is a 
 willing and disinterested submission to the divine disposal. 
 A soul is really submissive when it is content that God 
 shall do with it what he deems for the best interest of the 
 universe as a whole, even if that disposal be its damna- 
 tion. This doctrine of unconditional resignation, so foreign 
 to the feelings of most Christians, was not original with 
 Hopkins; to say nothing of theologians in other branches 
 of the church, it had been held by Hooker and Shepard 
 in the early days of New England. It was a natural de- 
 velopment from the principles of the Edwardean school; 
 but as one reads the account which Mrs. Edwards gave of 
 the profound religious experience which she underwent in 
 the early weeks of 1742, — an experience turning on this 
 resolution of absolute submission, — one wonders whether 
 the impressionable young theological student, then an in- 
 mate of the Northampton home, may not have received 
 something of his inclination toward this test of Christian 
 character from the mystical, exalted, and winsome wife of 
 his instructor. 
 
 In Hopkins's system this doctrine of benevolence led to 
 a third conclusion, approached but not fully reached by 
 Edwards. God has made no promises to the efforts of 
 the unregenerate. The first duty is submission to the 
 divine will; till that is rendered all acts are essentially 
 selfish and sinful, and tend to harden the sinner in oppo- 
 sition to God. Hence, as Hopkins expressed it, ** the un- 
 regenerate, under the greatest convictions, and in all their 
 external reformations and doings, are more criminal and 
 guilty than they were in a state of security." ''The im- 
 penitent sinner, who continues obstinately to reject and 
 oppose the salvation offered in the gospel, does . . . be- 
 come, not less, but more vicious and guilty in God's sight, 
 
290 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [CuAr. viii. 
 
 the more instruction and knowledge he gets in attendance 
 on the means of grace." Yet " means " are desirable and 
 even essential to a proper understanding of a man's sinful 
 condition and the way of salvation ; but they have no 
 power in themselves to make a man better. 
 
 Closely connected with this doctrine is another feature 
 of Hopkins's system which w^as carried much further by 
 his pupil, Emmons, a feature having its roots ultimately in 
 the speculations of Edwards on the will and virtue. All 
 moral quahties, according to Hopkins, inhere in the choices 
 or ** exercises" of the will. Back of those exercises is a 
 state or bias of the '' heart " which in itself has no moral 
 quality. In an unconverted man this bias makes it certain 
 that his acts will be evil, yet these choices are his own. 
 In regeneration this bias is changed by God to a bias or 
 taste for good, and man is passive in this change. But 
 now his choices are Godward, and to them are all the 
 promises of the gospel. This doctrine that sin and virtue 
 consist in exercises or definite acts led Hopkins to deny 
 the responsibility for Adam's sin which Edwards had 
 maintained. Men " are not guilty of his sin, are not pun- 
 ished, and do not suffer for that, any further than they 
 implicitly or expressly approve of his transgression by 
 sinning as he did." Yet God has so constituted man that 
 present sin is an effect of Adam's sin; man sins as soon 
 as childhood begins to act. The divine efficiency is the 
 ultimate cause of all acts, good and bad; but since sin is 
 in the act or exercise and not in its cause, sin belongs to 
 man and not to God. 
 
 These views, advanced in an uncompromisingly contro- 
 versial manner, naturally excited much opposition from 
 the Liberal Theologians and the Old Calvinists alike, and 
 were combated quite as much by the latter as by the 
 former. Hopkins's first tract of importance was issued in 
 
SAMUEL HOPKINS. 29 1 
 
 1759, the year after Bellamy's ** Wisdom of God in the 
 Permission of Sin," and bears its argument in its title: 
 " Sin, through Divine Interposition, an Advantage to the 
 Universe, and yet this no Excuse for Sin or Encourage- 
 ment to it." But this created little discussion compared 
 with his next essay. In 1761 Jonathan Mayhew put forth 
 two sermons on " Striving to Enter in at the Strait Gate," 
 in which he advocated his familiar position that regenera- 
 tion was conditioned on the earnest efforts of good men to 
 obtain it. After four years of waiting Hopkins replied 
 in '* An Enquiry concerning the Promises of the Gospel, 
 Whether any of them are made to the Exercises and Do- 
 ings of Persons in an Unregenerate State." 
 
 Mayhew did not live long enough to make reply ; but 
 the shot aimed at the Liberal drew abundant fire from the 
 Old Calvinists. Jedidiah Mills, a venerable minister of 
 *• New Light " sympathies settled at what is now Hunting- 
 ton, Conn., answered Llopkins in 1767 in *' An Inquiry 
 concerning the State of the Unregenerate under the Gos- 
 pel." The same year the distinguished Old Calvinist, 
 Moses Hemmenway, who filled a pastorate at Wells, Me., 
 from I 759 to 181 1, put forth a volume of " Seven Sermons 
 on the Obligation and Ejicouragement of the Unregener- 
 ate to labour for the Meat which endureth to everlasting 
 Life." To the tract of Mills Hopkins rephed in 1769 in 
 his " True State and Character of the Unregenerate, 
 stripped of all Misrepresentation and Disguise." But 
 now the able and excellent William Hart, an Old Calvinist 
 of '' Old Light " sympathies who filled a distinguished 
 pastorate at Saybrook, Conn., from 1736 to 1784, ap- 
 peared in the arena in i 769 with a dialogue and a satirical 
 sketch in which he opposed Hopkins's positions, and first 
 used the epithet " Hopkintonian " to describe his system. 
 To these arguments of Hart Hopkins replied the next 
 
292 THE CONGREGATIONA LISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 year with a good deal of asperity. In 1771 Hart issued 
 a vigorous criticism of Edwards's theory of virtue, and the 
 year following Hemmenway put forth an elaborate reply 
 to Hopkins's rejoinder to Mills. These two works, and 
 one by the Old Calvinist, Moses Mather, of Darien, Conn., 
 drew forth from Hopkins in 1773 his greatest and last im- 
 portant controversial treatise, '* An Inquiry into the Nature 
 of True Holiness." 
 
 In all this heated warfare of pamphlets, the question 
 between the Old Calvinists and the champion of the ** New 
 Divinity " was as to the status of that class of men of 
 upright, moral lives, but of no Christian experience, with 
 which every religious community is familiar. Hopkins 
 argued that they ought to use the means of grace ; but 
 that so long as they remained unconverted under those 
 means they were growing worse rather than better. His 
 Old Calvinist opponents replied that though a man who 
 simply prayed and read his Bible and attended divine 
 worship was not fulfilling his whole duty and was not yet 
 regenerate, yet God commanded prayer and worship as 
 well as repentance, and the man who used these and other 
 means diligently was growing better rather than worse, 
 and instead of moving away from God was coming into a 
 position where God was likely to bless him with a full 
 conversion. 
 
 Bellamy and Hopkins were companions of Edwards's 
 later life; but the others of the Edwardean school to 
 whom reference is now to be made may more properly be 
 called successors, since they had little or no personal ac- 
 quaintance with the Northampton divine. The earliest of 
 these successors were two young men of Connecticut birth, 
 Stephen West and John Smalley, who graduated from 
 Yale in 1755 and 1756. Both exercised a wide influence 
 through their training of theological students in their own 
 
SM ALLEY, WEST, AND EDWARDS, 293 
 
 households, as well as through their writings. West was 
 the successor of Edwards in the Stockbridge pastorate 
 from 1758 to 1818, and was brought from his original 
 Arminianism to a high type of Edwardeanism by the in- 
 fluence of his neighbor at Great Barrington during the 
 early part of his ministry, — Samuel Hopkins. As a con- 
 troversialist West is best remembered for his " Essay on 
 Moral Agency " of 1772, — a hyper-Edwardean defense of 
 Edwards's *' Freedom of Will " against the criticisms of 
 Rev. Dr. James Dana, of New Haven ; and his '' Scripture 
 Doctrine of the Atonement" of 1785, of which there will 
 be occasion to speak in connection with the younger 
 Edwards's more famous sermons on the same theme. 
 Smalley's pastorate was at what is now New Britain, 
 Conn., from 1757 to 1820. A pupil of Bellamy, he was 
 in turn the teacher of Emmons. His doctrinal contri- 
 bution to the ''New Divinity" was a development along 
 lines marked out by Edwards, of the theory of the natural 
 ability of the sinner to serve God, as distinguished from 
 moral inability. 
 
 A peculiar interest attaches to a third of these succes- 
 sors, in that he not only bore the name of Edwards, but 
 in many incidents of his career strikingly resembled the 
 founder of the Edwardean school. Jonathan Edwards the 
 younger was in his thirteenth year at the death of his 
 father, by whom he had been designed for a missionary 
 to the Indians. His education was at Princeton College, 
 where he graduated in 1765, and the reception of his de- 
 gree was followed by a period of theologic training under 
 Bellamy. A tutorship at Princeton was succeeded, in 
 1769, by his settlement over the North Church in New 
 Haven — a conspicuous post, from which he was dismissed 
 in 1795, really, though not ostensibly, by reason of doc- 
 trinal opposition. From New Haven he transferred his 
 
294 ^-^^^ CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 ministerial labors to the little town of Colebrook, Conn., 
 and from there he was called to the presidency of Union 
 College, in 1799. He died in his new office on August i, 
 1 80 1. Professor Park has thus summarized the curious 
 likeness of this life to that of the elder Edwards : ** The 
 son, like the father, was a tutor in the college where he 
 had been a student ; was first ordained over a prominent 
 church in the town where his maternal grandfather had 
 been the pastor ; was dismissed on account of his doctrinal 
 opinions ; was afterward the minister of a retired parish ; 
 was then president of a college ; and died at the age of 
 about fifty-five years, soon after his inauguration." In 
 intellectual acumen the younger Edwards much resembled 
 the elder; but he lacked the poetic nature and the warm 
 mystical feeling which made the temperament of the father 
 so rare a combination of the qualities of the intellect and 
 of the heart. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards the younger was, like most of the 
 Edwardean leaders, a successful trainer of ministerial can- 
 didates, numbering among his pupils men like Presidents 
 Dwight of Yale and Griffin of Williams, or Rev. Drs. 
 Samuel Nott and Jedidiah Morse. He edited his father's 
 works ; he expounded his father's system with originality 
 and force ; like Hopkins, he attacked negro slavery ; he 
 was a power in the churches always. But he gained his 
 chief repute as a developer of the Edwardean system 
 through a discussion in regard to the atonement which 
 had its rise in consequence of the teachings of the intro- 
 ducers of Universalism into New England. 
 
 UniversaHsm was first propagated on this side of the 
 Atlantic by Rev. John Murray, once a disciple of White- 
 field. Murray came to America from his English home 
 in 1770, and founded a congregation at Gloucester, Mass., 
 about 1779. From 1793 to his death, in 181 5, he was 
 
EARLY UNI VERSA LI SIM. 295 
 
 pastor of a flock at Boston. His indefatigable itinerant 
 labors, and those of his American associate, Elhanan Win- 
 chester, met with considerable response, especially among 
 the Baptists ; and his speculations won disciples, and led 
 to the acknowledgment of somewhat similar opinions by 
 several Congregational ministers. Of those who thus ad- 
 vocated the doctrine of ultimate universal salvation, though 
 far from agreeing fully with Murray, the most noted was 
 Rev. Dr. Charles Chauncy of Boston, the opponent of the 
 Whitefieldian revival methods of forty years before. In 
 an anonymous tract of i ']^2, entitled '* Salvation for All 
 Men Illustrated and Vindicated as a Scripture Doctrine," 
 Chauncy published a number of excerpts from the writings 
 of foreign Universalists, and taught the ultimate rescue of 
 mankind, through Christ ; though he held that many might 
 undergo a protracted period of suffering hereafter. The 
 next year Chauncy supported these beliefs in a second 
 anonymous tract. These treatises were replied to by a 
 number of ministers, both Edwardeans and Old Calvinists, 
 and notably by Samuel Mather and Joseph Eckley of 
 Boston, Peter Thacher of Maiden, Timothy Allen of Gran- 
 ville, Mass., George Beckwith of Lyme, Conn., and the 
 " New Divinity " leaders Hopkins and Emmons, during 
 1782 and 1783. But Chauncy persevered ; and in 1784 
 set forth an anonymous, but hardly unacknowledged, book, 
 — **The Mystery hid from Ages ... or, the Salvation 
 of all Men," — defending his previous positions with great 
 elaboration. To this work the younger Edwards gave an 
 exceedingly able answer in 1 790. 
 
 These outcroppings of Universalist sentiments were a 
 sign of the general ferment of the times succeeding the 
 Revolutionary War, and though not very extensive in the 
 numbers affected, they were widely scattered, and created 
 much alarm by appearing in the most unexpected places. 
 
296 THE CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 Such an instance was that of Rev. Joseph Huntington, of 
 Coventry, Conn., who died, in 1794, supposedly in sym- 
 pathy with his ministerial brethren, but whose posthumous 
 "Calvinism Improved" of 1796 showed him a Univer- 
 saHst, — the " improvement " being the extension of the 
 divine elective decree to include all mankind. 
 
 The title of Huntington's work shows the general doc- 
 trinal attitude of the early Universalists. While some be- 
 lievers in ultimate restoration, like Chauncy, were not 
 Calvinists, many of this way of thinking were staunchly 
 Calvinistic, and drew from the '' satisfaction " theory of 
 the atonement the strongest argument either for the im- 
 mediate blessedness of all men at death or their final 
 redemption. The younger Edwards thus stated their 
 position in his " Brief Observations on the Doctrine of 
 Universal Salvation" of 1784: ''The doctrine is, that all 
 mankind, without exception but none of the devils, will 
 be saved ; that this universal salvation will take place im- 
 mediately after the general judgment, so that after that 
 time there will be no punishment of any individual of the 
 human race ; that this deliverance from future punishment 
 is obtained in the way of the most strict justice; that 
 Christ having paid the whole debt, for all mankind, it is 
 not consistent with justice that any man should be pun- 
 ished for sin in his own person." This position was nat- 
 urally more difficult for the Edwardeans than for the Old 
 Calvinists to answer, so long as the " satisfaction " theory 
 of the atonement, historically characteristic of Calvinism, 
 was maintained. The Old Calvinist could reply that all 
 for whom Christ died would be saved ; but that his atone- 
 ment was limited, being only for the elect. But while 
 the Edwardean maintained the doctrines of election and 
 future punishment as vigorously as the Old Calvinist, 
 he had also asserted, since Bellamy published his *' True 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 297 
 
 Religion " In 1750, that the atonement was general, Christ 
 having died for all men. It was to meet the difficulties 
 of this situation that the younger Edwards Introduced a 
 theory of the atonement novel to New England. 
 
 This new Edwardean theory did not Indeed spring from 
 the exigencies which brought It out. Its principles lie 
 back In the teachings of the elder Edwards and his con- 
 temporaries, though the full meaning of those principles 
 was not perceived by them. In their exaltation of the 
 sovereignty of God they had taught that not only the 
 provision of redemption in general, but the rescue of each 
 soul in particular, was a work of divine sovereignty. This 
 position was a departure from the spirit of the Old Cal- 
 vinism, which represented God as sovereign in election 
 and In providing atonement, but held that after Christ 
 had rendered satisfaction for each of the elect the salvation 
 of the Individual whose debt was thus paid was an act of 
 justice, not of sovereignty. And taking this departure 
 the Edwardeans must Inevitably have reached eventually 
 the position that the sinner's debt was not literally dis- 
 charged by the sufferings of Christ, and hence that the 
 atonement was not a ''satisfaction." How certainly the 
 minds of the theologians of the "New Divinity" school 
 were moving In the direction reached by the younger 
 Edwards is shown by the treatise entitled '* The Scripture 
 Doctrine of the Atonement," which West finished in the 
 spring of 1785 and to which allusion has already been 
 made. In this volume West maintained that the atone- 
 ment was designed to manifest the divine attributes, to 
 show the disposition of God^s mind toward men for the 
 breach of his law, and that It Involved *' no obligation on 
 the justice of God, to pardon and save the sinner." 
 
 The full statement of the later Edwardean position was 
 given In three sermons preached by the younger Edwards 
 
298 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 at New Haven in October, 1785, and printed the same 
 year, under the title of ''The Necessity of Atonement." 
 In these discourses he maintained that " Christ has not, in 
 the hteral and proper sense, paid the debt for us." God 
 forgives the sinner his sin freely. The atonement did not 
 satisfy ''distributive justice," i.e., the reward or punish- 
 ment of the individual according to his " personal moral 
 character or conduct." "This atonement constitutes no 
 part of the personal character of the sinner: but his per- 
 sonal character is essentially the same, as it would have 
 been, if Christ had made no atonement. And as the 
 sinner, in pardon, is treated, not only more favourably, but 
 infinitely more favourably, than is correspondent to his 
 personal character, his pardon is wholly an act of infinite 
 grace." 
 
 But " justice " may be used in another sense than " dis- 
 tributive." In " general " or " public " justice " any thing 
 is just, which is right and best to be done " ; and in this 
 sense " the pardon of the sinner is entirely an act of justice. 
 It is undoubtedly most conducive to the divine glory, 
 and the general good of the created system." Though 
 pardon is thus wholly an act of grace, an atonement was 
 necessary in order that pardon could be bestowed. It is 
 essential for the wise government of God and the best 
 good of the universe that " the authority of the divine 
 law " should be maintained. This can only be accom- 
 plished by the punishment of all offenders; or by an 
 atonement " which, to the purposes of supporting the 
 authority of the divine law, and the dignity and consist- 
 ency of the divine government, is equivalent to the pun- 
 ishment of the sinner, according to the literal threatening 
 of the law." Such an atonement Christ has made. By it 
 " general justice to the Deity and to the universe is satis- 
 fied. That is done by the death of Christ which supports 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 299 
 
 the authority of the law, and renders it consistent with the 
 glory of God and the good of the whole system, to pardon 
 the sinner." By it also *' an exhibition " is " made in the 
 death and sufferings of Christ, of the punishment to which 
 the sinner is justly liable." The atonement flows from the 
 divine benevolence ; it enables God to pardon whomsoever 
 he will, on whatever conditions he sees are wise to impose ; 
 it shows that the withholding of pardon is no act of injus- 
 tice. The atonement is general. Christ's death makes 
 it possible for God to pardon all men, it does not make it 
 necessary for him to pardon all. 
 
 This theory, often called the " governmental " or '' New 
 England " view, resembles in many respects that advanced 
 more than a century and a half before by the great Dutch 
 Arminian Hugo Grotius. It differs from his theory chiefly 
 in the clearer emphasis which it lays on the atonement as 
 revealing the heinousness of sin, and in its presentation of 
 benevolence as the central thought in the atonement itself. 
 Developed by Smalley, Maxcy, Emmons, Griffin, Burge, 
 Weeks, and Professor Park, it became speedily the domi- 
 nant view in American Congregationalism ; and though 
 other conceptions of the work of Christ have gained a 
 considerable currency within the last forty years, it is still 
 the most widely accepted theory in the Congregational 
 churches. 
 
 All of the Edwardean leaders were independent thinkers, 
 and no one fully reproduced another. But with the two 
 Edwardean divines who are now to be spoken of, — Em- 
 mons and Dwight, — the New Divinity may be said to have 
 divided into two subschools, the one extreme and moving 
 in the direction which Hopkins had pointed out, having 
 Emmons as its representative ; the other, of which Dwight 
 was the leader, moderate and conciliatory. 
 
 Nathanael Emmons was a native of East Haddam, Conn., 
 
300 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 born in 1745, and a graduate of Yale in the class of 1767. 
 His ministerial studies were in part under Smalley, but he 
 became a warm friend of Hopkins ; and from Hopkins, 
 more than 'from Smalley, the pattern of his theology was 
 derived. His only pastorate, from 1773 to 1827, was at 
 Franklin, Mass., where he died at great age in 1840. A 
 man of enormous industry, of much wit, and of exceeding 
 keenness of mind, Emmons's best work was as a trainer 
 of candidates for the ministry, of whom it is thought not 
 less than a hundred passed under his molding touch. Of 
 his influence on the development of Congregational polity 
 there will be occasion later to speak. No man of his 
 age was more widely a force in the religious life of New 
 England. 
 
 In his theology Emmons developed yet further the posi- 
 tions taken by Hopkins, and which were known by the 
 Hopkinsians as " Consistent Calvinism." Holiness and sin 
 are *' exercises " of the will ; and though Emmons appears 
 to have believed that some permanent substratum lies 
 under these exercises, he so emphasized the idea that the 
 mind exists solely in activity as to convey the impression 
 that man's spiritual nature is simply a chain of acts or 
 '* exercises," each perfectly good or wholly bad. In these 
 acts the will is free in the sense that it acts voluntarily, 
 though the ultimate cause of all " exercises " is the divine 
 efficiency. '' If men always act under a divine operation, 
 then they always act of necessity, though not of compul- 
 sion." " Though God does work in men to repent, to be- 
 lieve, and to obey, yet God does not repent, nor believe, 
 nor obey, but the persons themselves on whom he oper- 
 ates." Though the efficiency of God is the cause of all 
 action, yet " no created object . . . bears the least resem- 
 blance of the Deity simply because he made it. . . . It 
 is, therefore, as consistent with the moral rectitude of the 
 
NATHANAEL EM AWNS. 3OI 
 
 Deity to produce sinful, as holy, exercises in the minds of 
 men. His operations and their voluntary exercises are 
 totally distinct." 
 
 Emmons, unlike Hopkins, represents man as active in 
 regeneration. He is likewise active in sin, and derives no 
 guilt from Adam, " for moral depravity consists in the 
 free, voluntary exercises of a moral agent ; and of conse- 
 quence cannot be transmitted by one person to another." 
 But '* in consequence of Adam's first transgression, God 
 now brings his posterity into the world in a state of moral 
 depravity." Even in infants God ''produces those moral 
 exercises ... in which moral depravity properly and 
 essentially consists." Emmons asserted election and rep- 
 robation in the strongest terms. His Calvinism was of the 
 Supralapsarian type. Yet he affirmed none the less dis- 
 tinctly that sin is the voluntary active transgression of 
 known law, even in the case of young children, and that 
 sinners should be exhorted to immediate repentance and 
 holy love. Emmons wholly agreed with Hopkins that the 
 essence of sin is selfishness, and that of holiness, disinter- 
 ested love or benevolence. 
 
 In Emmons the Edwardean school reached its extrem- 
 est development in the direction in which Hopkins had 
 led the way ; in Dwight it appeared in a much more mod- 
 erate and conciliatory type of theology. Timothy Dwight 
 was born at Northampton in 1752, and was through his 
 mother a grandson of the elder Edwards. Like almost 
 all of the Edwardean leaders, he graduated at Yale, his 
 class being that of 1 769. After service as tutor in the 
 college, and as chaplain in the Revolutionary War, suc- 
 ceeded by a residence of several years in his native town, 
 Dwight became pastor in Greenfield parish in the town of 
 Fairfield, Conn., where he remained till his call to the pres- 
 idency of Yale College in 1795. His election brought 
 
302 THE COXGREGA TIOXALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 about the ascendency of Edwardeanism in that institution. 
 Here he fulfilled a distinguished administration till his 
 death, in 1817 ; but, what is of more moment for our nar- 
 rative, here he also occupied the professorship of divinity, 
 which required him to assume the pastorate of the college 
 church and to give regular instruction to the students in 
 theology, preaching a series of doctrinal sermons on Sun- 
 day mornings, designed to cover the outline of his system 
 of divinity in four years. His own powerful personality, 
 warm piety, and great ability gave these discourses wide 
 popularity and much influence, not only over the students 
 of the college, but with the Christian public. As '* Theo- 
 logy Explained and Defended," they were published in 
 18 18, and again in 1823. 
 
 Dwight earnestly opposed Hopkins's and Emmons's 
 theory of the divine efficiency as the cause of sinful 
 choices, and affirmed that their speculations led toward a 
 Pantheism much like that of Spinoza. Unlike the more 
 strenuous teachers of the Edwardean school also, he urged 
 " that Ministers ought to advise, and exhort, sinners to 
 use the Means of Grace." He held distinctly that as long 
 as a man remains unregenerate all his acts are sinful ; but 
 on the question, " Whether the man, who performs the 
 act merely, is any better for performing it, than if he had 
 neglected or refused to perform it," Dwight took Old Cal- 
 vinist, rather than Hopkinsian, ground, answering " that, 
 supposing the man's disposition substantially the same 
 in both cases, he is less sinful when he performs the act, 
 than when he neglects or refuses to perform it." ** In his 
 preaching and advice, a minister is not to confine himself 
 to the mere enjoining of Eaith and Repentance ; but is to 
 extend them to any other conduct in itself proper to be 
 pursued ; while he universally teaches these great Christian 
 duties, as the immediate end of all his preaching." Nor 
 
TIMOTHY DWIGHT. 303 
 
 is it counseling sinners to sin to exhort them to pray and 
 read the Bible, since Christ and the prophets directed those 
 who were obviously unregenerate to call upon God. 
 
 A further divergence appeared between Dwight and 
 Emmons. The latter taught that holiness or sin consists 
 in acts of choice or '* exercises," and was understood to 
 hold that the soul was simply a chain of " exercises " ; 
 hence his system was often called the " exercise scheme." 
 To Dwight's thinking something possessing moral qualities 
 underlies choice ; " there is a cause of moral action in In- 
 telligent beings, frequently indicated by the words Prin- 
 ciple, Affections, Habits, Nature, Tendency, Propensity, 
 and several others." Elsewhere he speaks of this cause 
 as a "disposition," and remarks: "Of the metaphysical 
 nature of this cause I am ignorant. But its existence is, 
 in my own view, certainly proved by its effects." This 
 "disposition" is the cause of righteous or sinful choices; 
 and regeneration consists in " a Relish for Spiritual objects, 
 communicated to it by the power of the Holy Ghost." 
 Yet, " after Regeneration the native character of man still 
 remains; his relish for sinful pursuits and enjoyments still 
 continues ; and his relish for spiritual pursuits and enjoy- 
 ments is never perfected on this side of the grave." 
 
 This conception that regeneration consists in the impar- 
 tation to the disposition of a new rehsh or " taste," thus 
 advanced by Dwight against Emmons's thought of regen- 
 eration as the production of " holy exercises " or " only 
 love, which is activity itself," was elaborated, largely inde- 
 pendently, by a contemporary of Dwight, Rev. Asa Bur- 
 ton, pastor at Thetford, Vt., from 1779 to 1836, and the 
 instructor of nearly sixty ministerial candidates. In Bur- 
 ton's teaching it became known as the "taste scheme." 
 
 These divergent tendencies manifested in the Edwardean 
 school by the close of the eighteenth century were con- 
 
304 ^'^^^" COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chai-. viii. 
 
 tinned and intensified in the early part of the nineteenth ; 
 and resulted, after further development by Nathaniel W. 
 Taylor and others, in the creation in Connecticut of two 
 theological seminaries, representative, in their early life at 
 least, of the somewhat opposing theories of later Edward- 
 eanism. Of these movements there will be occasion later 
 to speak. 
 
 The Edwardean movement w^as a theological develop- 
 ment of great force and originality ; but its impulse was 
 not primarily speculative. The New England mind has 
 always been essentially practical. It cannot have escaped 
 the reader's observation that the Liberal and the Edward- 
 ean movements alike had to do with what may not im- 
 properly be called the more practical doctrines of theology. 
 Questions of the proper use of '* means," of the nature of 
 conversion, of the extent of human freedom and responsi- 
 bility, of the essence of that holiness which is characteristic 
 of the Christian life, of the relation of the atonement to 
 the forgiveness of the individual transgressor's sins, con- 
 stituted the chief themes of these debates. But practical 
 as were these topics of speculation, it may be questioned 
 whether the influence of the Edwardean party over the 
 churches was not greater by reason of its w^arm, evangelic 
 life, than by reason of its doctrinal discussions. The Ed- 
 wardean leaders were not retired students, they were all 
 of them pastors intimately associated with the life of the 
 churches. They preached human responsibility and im- 
 mediate repentance as New England had never heard 
 these doctrines preached, even if they coupled this preach- 
 ing with a high assertion of election and necessity. They 
 advocated revival methods ; they represented that which 
 was best in the Whitefieldian movement. They urged a 
 strenuous, self-forgetful type of Christian life. Edward- 
 eanism was not merely, one is almost ready to say not 
 
EFFECTS OF THE DISCUSSIONS. 305 
 
 chiefly, a doctrinal system ; it was a moral and spiritual 
 force. 
 
 The leaders of the Edwardean party were of Connecti- 
 cut origin, and theirs gradually became the dominant in- 
 fluence in Connecticut and western Massachusetts. Unlike 
 eastern Massachusetts, Liberal Theology of the Armin- 
 ian type had not found much lodgment in the churches of 
 western New England before the Edwardean movement 
 became powerful. English writers were less read, the 
 Episcopal Church had some existence in Connecticut and 
 afforded a refuge for those of Arminian belief and strong 
 dislike of emotional preaching. The separation between 
 the Old Calvinists and the Edwardeans in western New 
 England was long exceedingly bitter; but by 1758 the 
 ** New Light" sympathizers of both classes had gained 
 control of the ecclesiastical machinery of Connecticut, and 
 the most energetic and influential of the *' New Lights" 
 were the Edwardeans. Then, too, Edvvardeanism, though 
 largely a Connecticut product, had its leading expounders 
 of the extremer type, like Hopkins and Emmons, outside 
 of Connecticut borders. In Connecticut the younger Ed- 
 wards and Dwight presented its principles in a form more 
 conciliatory to the Old Calvinists; and though Old Cal- 
 vinism continued, by the beginning of the present century 
 Connecticut and western Massachusetts were thoroughly 
 leavened with Edwardean views and methods. Edward- 
 ean opinions also spread widely among the Presbyterians 
 of the northern Middle States, though opposed wherever 
 Scotch or Protestant Irish influence was strong by an 
 older form of Calvinism. 
 
 On the other hand, Liberal Theology of the type of 
 Mayhew and Chauncy grew in influence in eastern Massa- 
 chusetts till the end of the eighteenth century, and led to 
 a large ignoring of the characteristic doctrines of Calvin- 
 
306 THE COXGKEGA TIOXALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 ism by many preachers who did not go to any such lengths 
 as the two Boston ministers whose names have been cited. 
 But though powerfully influential, Liberal Theology never 
 gained so full control over eastern Massachusetts as Ed- 
 wardeanism obtained in western New England. 
 
 The half-century following the Great Awakening was a 
 period of spiritual deadness, and owing to this low relig- 
 ious life the growing divergence between the influences 
 which were molding eastern and western New England 
 was not as obvious as would otherwise have been the case ; 
 but the cleft between Liberalism and Edwardeanism ran 
 deep, and the student who looks back upon this epoch can 
 see that it was certain that if a new and general interest in 
 • religion should arise or the supporters of either type of 
 theology should carry an aggressive campaign into terri- 
 tories where the other was strong, an open separation 
 could be the only result. These conditions appeared in 
 the last decade of the eighteenth and the opening years 
 of the nineteenth centuries, and the consequence was the 
 Unitarian division, of which some account will be given 
 later in our story. 
 
 But while eastern and western New England were thus 
 drifting really if not recognizedly apart, as the eighteenth 
 century drew toward its end, the feeling of fellowship be- 
 tween the Edwardeans and those of the Presbyterians who 
 sympathized with their views was constantly increasing. 
 The old interest in polity which had marked the seven- 
 teenth century had largely been driven out by the new 
 zeal for doctrinal debate. Doctrinal agreement made the 
 people of western New England, and especially the Ed- 
 wardeans, regard the differences in polity betw^een Presb}^- 
 terianism and Connecticut Consociationism as immaterial. 
 Several of the Edwardean leaders, like the younger Ed- 
 wards and Dwight, labored to secure the more intimate 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF FOLITY. 307 
 
 union of the two denominations ; and in general the Ed- 
 wardeans contributed httle to the development of Con- 
 gregational polity. 
 
 There was, however, one conspicuous exception. To 
 Nathanael Emmons Congregational polity is more indebted 
 than to any other leader of the eighteenth century, not ex- 
 cepting John Wise, and his thought ran in the same direc- 
 tion which Wise had already indicated. Emmons wholly 
 abandoned the aristocratic conception of Congregationalism 
 typical of the seventeenth century, which Wise had op- 
 posed. In his incisive style he declared that a Congrega- 
 tional church is *' a pure democracy, which places every 
 member of the church upon a level, and gives him perfect 
 liberty with order." In a Congregational Church, in all 
 matters of business, the pastor ''is but a mere moderator; 
 and, in respect to voting, stands upon the same ground as 
 a private brother." Every church is wholly self-govern- 
 ing: *' One church has as much power as another;" and 
 '* there is no appeal from the authority of a particular 
 church to any higher ecclesiastical tribunal." 
 
 Emmons carried his doctrines of ecclesiastical independ- 
 ence to an extreme, as when he opposed the establishment 
 of a State association in Massachusetts with the assertion : 
 ** Associationism leads to Consociationism ; Consociation- 
 ism leads to Presbyterianism ; Presbyterianism leads to 
 Episcopacy ; Episcopacy leads to Roman Catholicism ; and 
 Roman Catholicism is an ultimate fact." Modern Con- 
 gregationalism does not believe that voluntary organiza- 
 tions of a non-judicial character meeting at stated intervals 
 lead to such a chain of results any more than it believes 
 that the soul is 'a chain of ''exercises"; but Emmons's 
 teaching as to the absolute democracy of a Congrega- 
 tional church is the view of modern Congregationalism. 
 
 The development of the Congregational churches 
 
308 THE CONG REG ATIONALISTS. [Chap. viii. 
 
 throughout the eighteenth century was such as to make 
 natural the teachings of Emmons regarding pohty. The 
 first two generations on American soil saw the growth of 
 the principle of fellowship. That principle then became 
 so imbedded in American Congregationalism that it has 
 continued, and found constant manifestation down to the 
 present day. But from the time of the Great Awakening, 
 if not earlier, this centralizing tendency was supplanted by 
 an emphasis on local independence. Many causes contrib- 
 uted to this result ; the growth of democracy in political 
 thought culminating in national independence, the doc- 
 trinal divisions, the diflferences of opinion as to method 
 arising out of the revivals, the rapidly lessening interference 
 of the civil governments in ecclesiastical affairs, all tended 
 to make the local church free and democratic ; while the 
 new impulses toward voluntary union springing out of 
 missionary eflforts at home and abroad, which have tended 
 to centralize modern CongregationaHsm in united endeavor, 
 did not begin to appear till the very close of the eighteenth 
 century. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL. 
 
 While the later theological movements described in 
 the last chapter were in progress the great period of emi- 
 gration had begun which was to carry thousands of the 
 sons and daughters of New England beyond the borders 
 of the original colonies, and ultimately to plant Congrega- 
 tional churches across the continent to the Pacific. But 
 at first the *' new West " was close at hand. 
 
 Vermont was the earliest of these territories to be opened 
 up for settlement. Situated on the route between the 
 older colonies and Canada, it was not a favorable region 
 for husbandry till the conquest of the French possessions 
 along the St. Lawrence in 1759-60 had removed the con- 
 stant danger of attack from the northward. On the con- 
 clusion of the old French war, the few military settlements 
 already existing in the territory were speedily supplanted 
 by numerous peaceful colonies ; and so preponderatingly 
 was this immigration of Connecticut origin that a Vermont 
 convention in 1777 contemplated the bestowal of the name 
 '' New Connecticut " on the region. Naturally, Congrega- 
 tionalism came with the more religious of the immigrants, 
 and in 1762 the first church of Vermont was formed at 
 Bennington. Other churches were organized in rapid suc- 
 cession, — Newbury in 1764, Westminster in 1767, Guilford 
 and Windsor in 1768, Brattleboro in 1770, Chester and 
 Thetford in 1773, Newfane in 1774, and Putney and Marl- 
 boro in 1776. The Revolution checked the growth of 
 
 309 
 
3IO THE CONGREGATIONALISrS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 Vermont for a time, but at its close, and especially after 
 the admission of Vermont as the fourteenth State of the 
 Union in 1791, the increase of population was very rapid 
 and the multiplication of churches correspondingly great. 
 By 1800 seventy-four Congregational churches had come 
 into being in Vermont, and they had been united since 
 1796 in a ''General Convention." The Congregational 
 desire for education was exhibited in the granting of a 
 charter to the University of Vermont in 1791 and to Mid- 
 dlebury College in 1800, — institutions largely Congrega- 
 tional in officers and membership, though undenominational 
 in their constitutions. 
 
 A few Congregational churches were founded in eastern 
 New York, besides several on Long Island, long before the 
 Revolution. Thus churches of more or les3 permanence 
 came into being at East Chester in 1665, at Bedford in 
 1680, at Gloversville in 1752, and elsewhere. But the 
 settlement of central and western New York did not begin 
 in force till after peace had been made with Great Britain. 
 From that time onward emigration from Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut across the Hudson was rapid. In 1791 
 Congregational churches were formed at Clinton, Paris, 
 and Westmoreland, one at Franklin followed in 1792, 
 others at Walton, Hamden, and Whitestown in 1793. 
 Others yet more westward speedily followed, as at Madison 
 and East Bloomfield in 1796, Lisle in 1797, Camden in 
 1798, and Canandaigua in 1799. 
 
 Yet the most westward of these new towns in which 
 ecclesiastical beginnings were thus made was much east- 
 ward of the remoter settlements of the same period be- 
 yond the borders of New York. In April, 1788, a party 
 of New Englanders began the first plantation in Ohio, 
 at Marietta. Here worship was maintained from the be- 
 ginning, and here on December 6, 1796, the first Con- 
 
WESTWARD EMIGRATION. 3II 
 
 gregational church of Ohio, and the first in the " Old 
 Northwest," was gathered. The portion of Ohio most dis- 
 tinctively of New England settlement was, however, the 
 southern shore of Lake Erie, — Connecticut's ** Western 
 Reserve." The year which saw the laying of ecclesias- 
 tical foundations at Marietta witnessed the beginnings of 
 Cleveland; but the first church in the "Reserve" was 
 that formed among the immigrants from Pennsylvania at 
 Youngstown in 1 799. The earliest Congregational church, 
 and the second of any denomination in the '* Reserve," was 
 that of Austinburg, which dates from 1801. Under the 
 impulse of immigration from New England and the Middle 
 States Ohio rapidly grew, and by its admission into the 
 Union in 1803 numbered about 40,000 inhabitants, — a 
 population which had risen in 18 10 to 230,000; and soon 
 after 1830 reached a million. 
 
 The multiplication of churches which kept pace with 
 this rapid spread of new settlements could not have been 
 effected had it not been for the stirrings of missionary zeal 
 in the Congregational churches of New England and the 
 Presbyterian bodies of the Middle States. Connecticut, 
 which contributed so largely to this outpouring, early felt 
 this impulse. The General Association of that colony, at 
 its meeting in Mansfield in June, 1774, voted in favor of 
 raising funds and sending missionaries to *' ye Settlements 
 now forming in the Wilderness to the Westward & North- 
 westward," i.e., in New York and Vermont. The response 
 of the churches was favorable, and in September of the 
 same year the Association decided that two pastors should 
 go forth on a tour of " 5 or 6 months " *' if the Committee 
 are able to provide for their support so long," — the journey 
 to begin in the spring of 1775. But by the time the mis- 
 sionaries should have set forth the skirmish at Lexington 
 had turned popular thought in other channels, and the 
 
312 THE CONGKEGATIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 Association in June, 1775, had to record "that the per- 
 plexed & melancholly State of pubHc Affairs has been a 
 Discouragement to this Design, & a Reason why the Col- 
 lections have not been brought in, as was expected." 
 But some contributions were received, even in the dark 
 days of the Revolutionary struggle ; and in i 780 the Gen- 
 eral Association asked two pastors to go as missionaries 
 to Vermont. Futher discussion followed in 1788 and in 
 1791 ; and in 1792 a missionary was approved. At the 
 same time legislative countenance was sought for soliciting 
 contributions. So successful were these appeals that in 
 1793 eight settled pastors were named as missionaries to 
 go forth on tours of four months each, to receive four and 
 a half dollars as their weekly compensation, together with 
 an allowance of four dollars a week to supply the pulpits 
 which their absence left vacant. The undertaking, launched 
 with so much difficulty, was now pushed with vigor. 
 
 As the missionary labors of the Connecticut General 
 Association grew more extensive, its own conception of 
 the work magnified, and in 1797 it consulted the local 
 Associations of the State regarding the formation of a 
 Missionary Society. Encouraged by the response, the 
 General Association on June 19, 1798, organized itself as 
 a Missionary Society, — the first voluntary Congregational 
 missionary society on this side of the Atlantic, — " to 
 Christianize the Heathen in North America, and to sup- 
 port and promote Christian Knowledge in the new settle- 
 ments within the United States." This organization was 
 followed by the establishment of the *' Connecticut Evan- 
 gelical Magazine" in 1800, a periodical designed to pro- 
 mote acquaintance with missions, as well as for theologic 
 discussion ; and its profits were assigned to the Missionary 
 Society. In 1802 the society was chartered by the Con- 
 necticut legislature. 
 
MISSIONARY SOCIETIES. 313 
 
 These missionary movements in Connecticut led to simi- 
 lar results in Massachusetts. In i 798 the '* Congregational 
 Missionary Society in the Counties of Berkshire and Co- 
 lumbia " was formed, embracing representatives of the 
 churches of western Massachusetts and of the New York 
 county immediately adjacent. And on May 28, 1799, the 
 *' Massachusetts Missionary Society " came into being, under 
 the presidency of that Edwardean champion, Nathanael 
 Emmons, an organization identical in aim with the '* Mis- 
 sionary Society of Connecticut." Like its Connecticut 
 prototype, it soon began the publication of a periodical, 
 the "Massachusetts Missionary Magazine," in 1803. This 
 Massachusetts society was wholly the work of the Edward- 
 eans and chiefly of their Hopkinsian wing. Two years 
 later, September, 1801, the "New Hampshire Missionary 
 Society" came into being, and in 1807 the General Con- 
 vention of Vermont began acting as a missionary society. 
 
 In addition to these State organizations several smaller 
 bodies of a missionary character were formed in this period. 
 In October, 1800, the "Boston Female Society for Mission- 
 ary Purposes," the first missionary organization of women, 
 was constituted. Four years later the " Female Cent In- 
 stitution " was founded in New Hampshire, — an association 
 of pious women, pledged to contribute each a cent a week 
 to the promotion of missions, which was extensively copied 
 in other New England States. In 1802 Hampshire County 
 in Massachusetts saw the beginnings of a local home mis- 
 sionary society ; a similar local body was formed in eastern 
 New Hampshire as the " Piscataqua Missionary Society" 
 in 1804; and in 1807 representatives of the churches of 
 the Massachusetts counties of Worcester and Middlesex 
 joined in an " Evangelical Missionary Society." A similar 
 impulse led to the formation of the " Vermont Religious 
 Tract Society " in 1808, the " Connecticut Bible Society " 
 
314 THE CONGREGATIONALISl'S. [Chap. ix. 
 
 in 1809, and the "Massachusetts Bible Society" during 
 the same year. The development of these numerous 
 organizations, many of which were not indeed peculiar to 
 Congregationalism, revealed clearly the ready adaptability 
 of the polity to meet new spiritual conditions by voluntary 
 organization and effort. 
 
 Under the charge of these new agencies of evangeliza- 
 tion, the Congregational churches began that extensive 
 sending forth of laborers into the newer portions of the 
 country which has continued to the present day, and which 
 has done so much to impart a Christian character to the 
 civilization of the great West. But these efforts soon gave 
 rise to an important question of interdenominational com- 
 ity, the solution of which profoundly affected the history 
 of Congregationalism during the first half of the nineteenth 
 century. The immigration into Vermont was almost ex- 
 clusively of New England origin, and hence Congregational 
 institutions were established in that State without ques- 
 tion ; but in New York, and even more in Ohio, the emi- 
 grant from New England encountered settlers from the old 
 Middle Colonies whose training was in Presbyterianism and 
 for whose spiritual instruction the Presbyterian Church was 
 making efforts at the same time that the Congregational 
 churches were sending forth missionaries. Presbyterian 
 and Congregational missionaries met on the same ground, 
 and labored for the same communities. It seemed desir- 
 able that some system of cooperation should be established. 
 
 This desire was the more natural since the lulwardean 
 party, and to some extent the Old Calvinists, of Connecticut 
 and western Massachusetts had for fifty years been coming 
 into closer affiliation with the Presbyterians of the Middle 
 States who largely sympathized with their doctrinal views. 
 The elder Edwards was president of Princeton College, the 
 younger Edwards was its graduate, nearly half the trustees 
 
PRESBYTERIANS AND CONGREGATIONALISTS. 315 
 
 of that institution at the time of Edwards's incumbency- 
 had had their education at Yale. The peculiar consocia- 
 tional system of Connecticut inclined many in that State 
 to look upon the Connecticut churches as more allied in 
 government with the Presbyterian bodies than with the 
 churches of Massachusetts which held to the *' Cambridge 
 Platforrn." This feeling found frequent public expression. 
 The churches of Connecticut were often designated by 
 their own pastors and members as ** Presbyterian." The 
 Hartford North Association, in 1 799, formally declared 
 that the constitution of the Connecticut churches ** contains 
 the essentials of the church of Scotland, or Presbyterian 
 Church in America." Even the General Association 
 spoke of a plan offered in i ']%% by which Presbyterians and 
 Congregationalists should come into more intimate fellow- 
 ship as '' a Scheme for an Union of the Presbyterians in 
 America," and described the **Saybrook Platform" in 1805 
 as the *' constitution of the Presbyterian Church in Con- 
 necticut." More formal interrelation was naturally estab- 
 lished. As a barrier against the introduction of an Ameri- 
 can episcopate, — an exercise of English governmental 
 authority much feared by the colonies just prior to the 
 Revolution, — an annual joint convention of representatives 
 of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia and the As- 
 sociations of Connecticut met from 1766 to 1775. After 
 the war, a more intimate union was promoted, especially 
 by the Edwardean leader Timothy Dwight, which, after 
 discussion and correspondence in 1788, 1790, and 1791, 
 resulted in an agreement between the Presbyterian General 
 Assembly and the Connecticut General Association that 
 delegates from each organization should regularly be sent 
 to the session of the other body ; and, at the request of 
 the Presbyterians in i 794, these representatives were given 
 full power of voting in the meetings to which they were 
 
3 1 6 ■ THE CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 accredited. Within the next few years a similar exchange 
 of delegates was effected between the Presbyterian General 
 Assembly and the State organizations of Massachusetts, 
 Vermont, and New Hampshire. This arrangement con- 
 tinued in full force till the rupture in the Presbyterian 
 body in 1837. 
 
 Relations between the two denominations being so 
 friendly, and polity having been so little regarded during 
 the doctrinal discussions which had prevailed since the 
 Great Awakening, it was natural that union in missionary 
 enterprises should be looked upon with favor. The motion 
 to that effect originated, apparently, with the younger 
 Jonathan Edwards, in the Connecticut General Association 
 of 1800, where Edwards, then president of Union College, 
 sat as a representative of the Presbyterian General Assem- 
 bly. Thus moved, the Association empowered its delegates 
 to the General Assembly to enter into negotiations '' to 
 promote harmony and to establish, as far as possible, an 
 uniform system of Church government, between those 
 habitants of the new Settlements, who are attached to the 
 Presbyterian form of church Government, and those who 
 are attached to the congregational form." The result was 
 the adoption by the General Assembly in May, 1801, and 
 by the Connecticut General Association in June of the 
 same year, of the famous " Plan of Union." This agree- 
 ment provided that missionaries should be directed to 
 "promote mutual forbearance" between the adherents 
 of the respective polities where they should labor; that 
 churches of Congregational or Presbyterian preferences 
 should continue to conduct their discipline in accordance 
 with their chosen polity, even where their pastors were of 
 the opposite type ; that all cases of dispute between a 
 pastor and a church of opposite inclinations should be 
 determined, if both -parties agreed to such a course, by 
 
THE ''PLAN OF UNION.'' 317 
 
 the Presbytery or Association of which the minister was 
 a member, but if agreement was impossible then by a 
 mutual council of equal numbers of Congregationalists 
 and of Presbyterians; that in mixed churches a *' standing 
 committee " of communicants should be chosen by the 
 church to administer discipline, one member of which, 
 chosen by the committee itself, should " have the same 
 right to sit and act in the Presbytery as a ruling elder of 
 the Presbyterian church "; and that appeals from the de- 
 cision of such a " standing committee " should be allowed, 
 in case of Presbyterian members of a mixed church, to the 
 Presbytery, or in case of Congregational members, '* to the 
 body of the male communicants of the church." Appeals 
 beyond the Presbytery were forbidden to members of a 
 mixed church without the consent of the church itself; 
 but an appeal might be taken by a Congregational mem- 
 ber to the judgment of a *' mutual council." The " Plan " 
 clearly contemplated the formation of Associations as well 
 as Presbyteries on the soil where it was to be put in 
 operation. 
 
 This " Plan," which was afterward approved by other 
 General Associations in New England besides that of Con- 
 necticut, continued in full force until repudiated by the 
 ** Old School " wing of the Presbyterian body in the Gen- 
 eral Assembly of 1837; and was then maintained in con- 
 junction with the ''New School" body until abandoned 
 by the Congregationalists at the Albany Convention in 
 1852. It was a wholly honorable arrangement, and was 
 designed to be entirely fair to both parties. Both Con- 
 gregationalists and Presbyterians sacrificed important feat- 
 ures of their polities in it. Its framers seem to have had 
 little thought that the scanty settlements to which it was 
 to be applied would grow to be among the strongest of 
 American communities, and that what was well enough 
 
3l8 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 as a compromise arrangement by which feeble bands of 
 Christians could be associated on the frontier would have 
 a different look when the churches formed under it grew 
 vigorous. 
 
 In its actual workings, the ** Plan " operated in favor of 
 the Presbyterians. They were nearer the scene of mission- 
 ary labor ; their denominational spirit was more assertive 
 than that of the Congregationalism of the day ; their Pres- 
 byteries were rapidly spread over the missionary districts, 
 and the natural desire for fellowship where the points of 
 separation seemed so few led Congregational ministers to 
 accept the welcome offered therein. Moreover, the doc- 
 trinal discussions of New England and the development 
 of Connecticut consociationism had created a widespread 
 feeling in the older Congregational churches that Con- 
 gregationalism could not thrive in unformed communities. 
 It required the successful demonstration of experience 
 wholly to remove this misconception from the New Eng- 
 land mind ; and even when western Congregationalism had 
 shown its right to be, the rise of the Arminianly inclined 
 theology of Oberlin, and other evidences of an independent 
 spirit, led to unjust suspicions of infection with doctrinal 
 unsoundnesses and somewhat retarded the growth of full 
 cordiality of feeling between the churches of the East and 
 those in the West who were struggling to maintain a pure 
 type of Congregationalism. No wonder, then, that during 
 the first half of the nineteenth century the Presbyterian 
 body on the whole gained by the " Plan of Union " ; and 
 that its ultimate result was, if one may accept the figures 
 given by the late Rev. Dr. A. H. Ross, — and no one has 
 devoted more thorough study to the subject, — the trans- 
 formation of " over two thousand churches, which were 
 in origin and usages Congregational, into Presbyterian 
 churches." It was under this ** Plan " that the religious 
 
THE ''PLAN OF UNION:' 319 
 
 foundations of western New York, of Ohio, of Illinois, and 
 of Michigan were largely laid. 
 
 This outflow of missionary activity was in part illustra- 
 tive of that new manifestation of interest in the advance- 
 ment of the Redeemer's kingdom characteristic of all 
 Anglo-Saxon Christendom at the close of the eighteenth 
 century ; but its immediate apparent cause, aside from the 
 bfurden of opportunity laid on our churches by the emigra- 
 tions, was the new era of revivals which began soon after 
 the long period of political distraction had been brought 
 to an end by the adoption of the federal constitution. The 
 excesses and excitement of the Great Awakening had 
 been followed, as early as i 744, by a period of spiritual leth- 
 argy which made the era of the Revolutionary struggle the 
 epoch of lowest spiritual vitality that our churches have 
 ever experienced. Doctrinal discussion, as has been seen, 
 was extensive. On the whole the ministry was brought 
 into sympathy with a conception of the beginnings of the 
 Christian life which made revivals desired, and which laid 
 primary emphasis on ''conversion" rather than on Chris- 
 tian nurture, though the opposite tendency was also de- 
 veloped in a considerable party in eastern Massachusetts ; 
 but the spiritual life of the churches was little affected. 
 Slight popular interest was felt in religious questions, and 
 ministers of the most opposing views associated in the 
 same ecclesiastical fellowships and freely exchanged pulpits 
 with one another. 
 
 This spiritual lethargy was ended by the new religious 
 awakenings. No such general excitement marked the new 
 revival era as had characterized the Great Awakening. 
 No preacher of wide-extended fame, like Whitefield, 
 aroused universal feelings of approval or of hostility for 
 his methods. Bodily manifestations of nervous excitement 
 and imagined visions were almost wholly absent; but the 
 
320 THE COXGRECATIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 movement was continuous, far- reaching, and vastly more 
 valuable in its permanent results than the Great Awak- 
 ening. In 1 791 a revival movement occurred in North 
 Yarmouth, Me.; in 1792, Lee, Mass., East Haddam and 
 Lyme, Conn., were similarly visited. The spiritual quick- 
 ening thus quietly begun extended in increasing force 
 all over New England, the Middle States, and the new 
 West. Rev. Dr. Edward D. Griffin, then pastor at NdW 
 Hartford, Conn., recorded of this period: *' I saw a con- 
 tinued succession of heavenly sprinklings ... in Con- 
 necticut, until, in 1799, I could stand at my door in New 
 Hartford, . . . and number fifty or sixty contiguous con- 
 gregations laid down in one field of divine wonders, and as 
 many more in different parts of New England." These 
 spiritual awakenings, though local, were often of great 
 strength, and they appeared here and there in New Eng- 
 land and beyond her borders year after year. The power- 
 ful revivals of 1799 were prolonged at least- till 1805, and 
 then, though lessened, did not wholly cease. In 1802 
 Yale College was greatly stirred. The years 1807-08 
 were seasons of quickening in Rhode Island and western 
 Massachusetts. From 18 15 to 18 18 a sixth of all the 
 towns in Connecticut were visited, Massachusetts and New 
 Hampshire were much moved, while in Rutland County, 
 Vt., there was almost a spiritual revolution. Again in 
 1820-23 extensive revival movements appeared in New 
 England and the West, and once more in 1826-27; but 
 these were surpassed in turn by the religious interest of 
 1830-31. Yet later, in 1841-42, and in 1857-58, very 
 extensive awakenings took place. Thus, for two genera- 
 tions, the revival became the characteristic feature of Con- 
 gregational religious life. These manifestations of religious 
 interest had a distinct character. They were prevailingly 
 accompanied by a profound conviction of sin, a sense of 
 
SPIRITUAL QUICKENING. 32 I 
 
 peace through submission to God, and a conscious change 
 of purpose. The way was prepared for them in New 
 England and the forrn of experience wdiich they exhibited 
 was determined in large measure by the doctrine and 
 preaching of the Edwardeans ; and the revivals in turn 
 made the Edwardean theology and its methods almost the 
 exclusive type among evangelical Congregationalists dur- 
 ing the later two thirds of the period of their continuance. 
 But the revivals were far more than the result of any 
 special pattern of doctrine or method of Christian work; 
 they w^ere a general and profound influence, quickening 
 and uplifting the religious life of the nation as a whole, 
 and their effect on Congregationalism was almost that of 
 a new birth. 
 
 The revivals stimulated all forms of religious activity. 
 They led to the introduction into New England of the 
 Sunday-school, which Robert Raikes had originated at 
 Gloucester, England, in i 780 ; they brought about, speedily 
 after their beginning, the extensive adoption of the evening 
 prayer-meeting in the larger towns, which had heretofore 
 been looked upon with distrust. But three of the con- 
 sequences of this revival epoch, all manifested early in its 
 history, are worthy of more minute attention, — the ex- 
 tension of missionary enterprises, the Unitarian separation, 
 and the new systems of theologic instruction. 
 
 Of the beginnings of home missionary activity enough 
 has already been said in speaking of the westward exten- 
 sion of Congregationalism at the close of the Revolution 
 and of its cooperation with Presbyterianism. It has been 
 seen that though the Connecticut General Association 
 showed a missionary spirit as early as 1774, its w^ork did 
 not begin on an extensive scale till 1793, after the revivals 
 had commenced, and the rapid organization of missionary 
 societies in the New England States was from 1798 to 
 
32 2 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 1807, when the first great wave of revival impulse was at 
 its height. It was natural that when the thoughts of so 
 many were turned toward the evangelization of the newer 
 parts of their own country, the vision of missionary labor 
 on a yet larger scale should rise before a few. 
 
 Doubtless the example and appeals of the English foreign 
 missionary associations, especially of the *' London Mis- 
 sionary Society," which came into being in 1795, prepared 
 American religious sentiment to favor foreign missionary 
 activity ; but, as far as any single human origin may be 
 assigned, its inception in the Congregational churches was 
 due to Samuel John Mills, — " the father of foreign mission 
 work in Christian America." Mills was born in 1783 at 
 Torringford, Conn., where his father, of the same name, 
 was pastor. The father was a man well fitted to give a 
 missionary impulse to his son. An Edwardean preacher 
 of power, he was one of the missionary pastors sent out 
 by the Connecticut General Association in 1793, and an 
 editor of the " Connecticut Evangelical Magazine " ; while 
 his own church experienced remarkable revivals in 1793 
 and I 799. Brought up thus in a missionary atmosphere, 
 the younger Mills entered Williams College in 1806, and 
 here in 1808 he organized *' The Brethren," a little associa- 
 tion " to effect, in the persons of its members, a mission or 
 missions to the heathen." In the spring of 18 10, follow- 
 ing his graduation in 1809, Mills and his society were 
 transferred to the newly instituted Theological Seminary 
 at Andover; and there his missionary zeal enkindled or 
 confirmed the consecration of at least six of his student 
 associates. These were Adoniram Judson, a graduate of 
 Brown ; Samuel Newell of Harvard, Samuel Nott of Union ; 
 besides Luther Rice, Gordon Hall, and James Richards, 
 with whom Mills had been associated at Williams College. 
 These friends, after consultation with the Andover pro- 
 
FOREIGX MISSIONS. 
 
 323 
 
 fessors and with Rev. Messrs. Samuel Spring and Samuel 
 Worcester, determined to apply to the General Associa- 
 tion of Massachusetts, — a ministerial body similar to the 
 ancient General Association of Connecticut, which had 
 been formed in 1803 and which represented the Old Cal- 
 vinists and Edwardeans of Massachusetts rather than the 
 Liberals, — for support and direction in their chosen work. 
 A memorial drawn up by Judson and signed only by Nott, 
 Mills, Newell, and himself, lest a greater number of can- 
 didates should imperil the enterprise by affrighting the 
 churches, was presented to -the Association at Bradford, 
 Mass., on June 27, and on June 29, 18 10, that body insti- 
 tuted the " American Board of Commissioners for Foreign 
 Missions," to put the request of their petitioners into ex- 
 ecution. From the first it was intended that the Board 
 should be more than a Massachusetts enterprise, though 
 it was not at first planned to go beyond the borders of 
 Congregationalism for its membership ; and therefore of the 
 nine original commissioners chosen by the Massachusetts 
 Association, four w^ere from Connecticut, including Gover- 
 nor Tread well and President Timothy D wight, the other 
 five being Massachusetts men and numbering among them 
 Rev. Messrs. Samuel Spring and Samuel Worcester, and 
 William Bartlett, the benefactor of Andover Seminary. 
 The first meeting of this Board was held and its organiza- 
 tion effected at the house of Rev. Noah Porter, father of 
 the president of Yale, at Farmington, Conn., on Septem- 
 ber 5, 1 8 10. 
 
 The undertaking thus inaugurated met with the im- 
 mediate approval of the Congregational churches ; the 
 foreign missionary cause took a strong hold on their affec- 
 tions, and led in a comparatively short time to large con- 
 secration of men and money to the work. But it was not 
 easy to send the first missionaries to the heathen. It was 
 
324 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Ciiai>. ix. 
 
 uncertain at the beginning how far the churches would 
 support the work. The great European wars, and the 
 struggle between England and the United States which 
 began in 1812, but of which the premonitory signs had 
 been visible for some time before hostilities commenced, 
 made the problem of transportation to India, whither the 
 first missionaries desired to go, one of difficulty and their 
 reception uncertain. Even the Massachusetts legislature, 
 from which a charter was obtained in 1812, was persuaded 
 with some difficulty to create a corporation to send mone)^ 
 out of the country. It was not till February, 181 2, after 
 an encouraging bequest of $30,000 had been received from 
 Mrs. Mary Norris of Salem, Mass., that the pioneer mis- 
 sionaries, Judson, Newell, Nott, Hall, and Rice, were sent 
 forth to India. Mills, who had been so instrumental in 
 awakening a missionary spirit, was unable to go with his 
 friends, though he did a noble work as a home missionary 
 and an organizer of Bible societies, and died at sea, in 
 18 1 8, off the coast of Africa, whither he had gone on a 
 voyage designed to ascertain the prospect of advancing the 
 cause of Christ on that continent through the just formed 
 " Colonization Society." But even with the arrival of the 
 five American missionaries at Calcutta, the difficulties of 
 the undertaking seemed almost insurmountable. The East 
 India Company, then the ruler of such portions of India 
 as were under British control, forbade them to preach lest 
 commercial interests should be endangered by religious 
 prejudice. The result was that Judson went to Burmah, 
 while, after months of negotiation. Hall and Nott obtained 
 a footing at Bombay, where at length Newell joined them. 
 But the perplexities of the missionaries and the Board were 
 not yet over. On the long voyage India-ward, Judson 
 had adopted Baptist principles, an(^ Rice soon followed him. 
 Thus two of the most valued of these missionaries who 
 
THE AMERICAN BOARD. 
 
 325 
 
 had been sent out with so much labor withdrew at once 
 from the service of the Congregational churches; but the 
 event was not without its compensations, for it led, in 
 1 8 14, to the founding of the " American Baptist Mission- 
 ary Union," and the enlistment of that great body of 
 churches in the cause of foreign missions. 
 
 The American Board was purely Congregational in its 
 origin ; its original commissioners were chosen by the 
 Massachusetts General Association, with the understanding 
 that as soon as the Connecticut General Association should 
 ratify the plan it should elect a proportion of the number. 
 This was actually carried out in 181 1. But the act of in- 
 corporation, procured from the Massachusetts legislature 
 in 1 8 12, made the Board, as it still is, a self-perpetuating 
 body or close corporation. The same feeling of fellow- 
 ship with other Calvinistic religious bodies that had been 
 exhibited in the '* Plan of Union " of 1801 now prompted 
 the Board, at its meeting in September, 18 12, to choose 
 eight Presbyterians to its membership; and, in 18 16, to 
 include also a representative from the Reformed (Dutch) 
 Church. Even before the establishment of this connection, 
 the Board had been recognized (June, 181 2) by the Pres- 
 byterian General Assembly as a proper channel for the 
 gifts of Presbyterian churches, and this approval was re- 
 peated in more positive terms in May, 1826. The connec- 
 tion with the Reformed Church was not quite so cordial, 
 but for a quarter of a century after 1832 it secured decided 
 intimacy of association. The American Board thus con- 
 tinued to be interdenominational in its basis for many years, 
 and the process of its return to its original estate was a grad- 
 ual one. In 1837 the " Old School " wing of the Presbyteri- 
 ans withdrew and constituted a Board of its own. Twenty 
 years later the Reformed Church severed its connec- 
 tion ; and finally, on the reunion of the '' Old School " and 
 
:>26 THE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chaf. ix. 
 
 "New School" divisions of Presbyterianism in 1870, the 
 latter withdrew in favor of its own denominational agency, 
 leaving the American Board exclusively Congregational, 
 though individual Presbyterians still continue in some in- 
 stances their places in its membership. 
 
 The Board thus constituted has had a history of honor. 
 Its original mission station in India was supplemented in 
 1 81 6 by a mission in Ceylon; in 181 7 and 181 8 mission- 
 aries began work among the Cherokees and Choctaws, then 
 in Georgia and Mississippi ; 1819 saw the sailing of laborers 
 for the Hawaiian Islands and for Palestine. Syria became 
 the seat of a mission in 1823, China in 1829, Constantino- 
 ple in 1 83 1, Persia in 1833, the Madura district of India 
 in 1834, Zululand in 1835, the Micronesian Islands in 1852, 
 Japan in 1869, Spain, Mexico, and Austria in 1872, and 
 Central Africa in 1880. These, with their various subdi- 
 visions and branches, constitute a field of labor of infinite 
 variety, as well as great extent. By 1840 the Board could 
 report that it had sent out 694 missionaries in the thirty 
 years which then embraced its history, and that it had 
 gathered 17,234 members into the churches v>hich it had 
 established. The number of its missionaries during its 
 first half-century was 1258; while in 1894 it could declare 
 that it had sent 2066 persons to the mission fields and 
 had received 125,584 members into its churches. It has 
 Christianized the Hawaiian and some of the Micronesian 
 Islands, it has profoundly altered the life of Bulgaria and 
 Asia Minor for the better, it has made creditable progress 
 in India, China, and Japan. Such a missionary record 
 may well be a cause of just satisfaction. 
 
 A further illustration of the new spirit of voluntary 
 united action in effort essentially of a missionary character 
 is to be seen in the organization at Boston on August 29 
 and December 7, 181 5, of the ''American Society for P^du- 
 
THE ^'EDUCATION SOCIETY. 
 
 1^1 
 
 eating Pious Youth for the Gospel Ministry," which was 
 at first broadly interdenominational and speedily became 
 the '^American Education -Society." Assistance to enable 
 needy young men to secure a ministerial training had al- 
 ready been afforded by various synods among the Ameri- 
 can Presbyterians to candidates of their own order ; and a 
 local society for this purpose had been formed on March 6, 
 1 804, by the Congregational association meeting at Pawlet, 
 Vt. The work was now taken up on a large scale ; and, 
 in the spirit already exhibited in the " Plan of Union " and 
 the American Board, the " Education Society " opened its 
 membership and extended its aid to others than to Con- 
 gregationalists, especially to Presbyterians. But as the 
 Presbyterian General Assembly organized its own " Board 
 of Education" in 1819, this connection was never very 
 extensive, and the ** Education Society " has long been, 
 as it now is, distinctively Congregational. In 1874 the 
 '' American Education Society " joined w^ith the '' Society 
 for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Educa- 
 tion at the West," an organization formed at New York 
 June 29, 1843, to aid in establishing Christian institutions 
 for higher education. The combined body took the name 
 of the ''American College and Education Society," which 
 it bore till 1893, when, becoming united wdth the "New 
 West Education Commission " formed in 1879 to promote 
 " Christian civilization in Utah and adjacent States and 
 Territories," it reverted to its earlier name, — the ''Amer- 
 ican Education Society." During its useful history this 
 society has aided more than eight thousand candidates for 
 the ministry, and its efforts in behalf of about thirty col- 
 leges have been largely instrumental in building up the 
 cause of higher education, in which Congregationalism has 
 always felt a deep interest, throughout the newer regions 
 of the land. 
 
328 THE COXGREGATIOXALISrS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 It has already been seen that the home missionary activ- 
 ity of CongregationaHsm led to the formation of many 
 comparatively local missionary societies. The examples 
 of organizations on a national scale, like the American 
 Board and the '' Education Society," led to the creation 
 at New York on May lo, 1826, of the "American Home 
 Missionary Society," — a body formed on the basis of a 
 joint association of Presbyterians and a few members of 
 the Reformed (Dutch) Church which had been organized 
 under the title of the ** United Domestic Missionary Soci- 
 ety" in 1822. The new ''Home Missionary Society" was 
 of course voluntary and interdenominational, and it carried 
 on its w^ork in the spirit of the '' Plan of Union." 
 
 At its beginning the new society was largely Presbyte- 
 rian in its membership; but the local home missionary 
 bodies of New England rapidly became auxiliary to it, 
 without generally surrendering their own organization. It 
 was at first heartily approved by the Presbyterian General 
 A.s.sembly ; but on the division of the Presbyterian body 
 into '' Old School " and " New School " in 1837, the '' Old 
 School " party withdrew its countenance, declaring the 
 work of the society " exceedingly injurious to the peace 
 and purity of the Presbyterian Church." The ''New 
 School " wing continued its support, however, and, as a 
 committee of that party affirmed in i860, were "accus- 
 tomed to regard it as, in a sense, peculiarly their own." 
 But with the growth of denominational consciousness re- 
 lations between the elements in the society became more 
 strained, and by i860 the body had become predomi- 
 nantly Congregational, drawing five sevenths of its receipts 
 from Congregational sources and reckoning seven tenths 
 of its mission fields to the same denomination. As a re- 
 sult, the " New School " Presbyterians withdrew in favor 
 of more distinctly denominational agencies of their own 
 
THE ''HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY.'' 329 
 
 on May 27, 1861, and the society became wholly Con- 
 gregational, — a change which was tardily recognized in 
 1893 by the alteration of its name to the " Congregational 
 Home Missionary Society." It has done an immense 
 work in spreading Christian institutions throughout the 
 West and in supporting feeble churches in all parts of the 
 land. By 1893 it could report that it had organized 612 1 
 churches, of which 2978 had become self-supporting. In 
 that year it had 2002 missionaries on its rolls, and was 
 conducting regular religious worship at 3841 stations. 
 
 It is evident that the New England of the new revival 
 epoch that began about 1791 was a much more spiritually 
 awakened and active land than the New England of most 
 of the eighteenth century ; and it was fortunate for the 
 Congregational churches that this outburst of missionary 
 zeal and this new sense of Christian privilege and obligation 
 took place just before the separation between church and 
 state was effected which altered the whole system of finan- 
 cial support on which the New England churches had de- 
 pended. The changes of 181 8 in Connecticut and of 1834 
 in Massachusetts found the churches filled with a new 
 vitality, and ready to profit rather than to receive harm 
 by being made wholly dependent on their own voluntary 
 efforts. 
 
 The second result of the new period of revivals was the 
 Unitarian separation, — an outgoing due to causes long 
 operative, but which did not become completely accom- 
 plished till the nineteenth century had begun. In the 
 preceding chapter some account has been given of the rise 
 of the Liberals of eastern Massachusetts, — of their be- 
 ginnings in the old Arminianism that was at first largely 
 a disbelief in the sharper points of Calvinism ; of their 
 strengthening during the reaction from the excesses of the 
 Great Awakening; of the influence of EngUsh Arminian 
 
330 THE COXGREGATIOXA LISTS. [Ch.m'. ix. 
 
 and Arian writers ; and of the teachings of men of talent 
 and in many ways of worth, like Lemuel Briant, Jonathan 
 Mayhew, and Charles Chauncy. It has been seen that by 
 the end of the Revolution there were, or had recently been, 
 pastors in eastern Massachusetts who openly denied the 
 total depravity of man, who publicly controverted the 
 doctrine of eternal punishment, and who advocated high 
 Arian views of the Godhead. These men naturally dwelt 
 in their preaching on the moral duties and on the cultiva- 
 tion of the virtues, rather than on their doubts and disbe- 
 liefs. Preachers who are unopposed usually prefer to be 
 positive rather than negative ; and till the Unitarian posi- 
 tion was fully brought out by the criticisms of its oppo- 
 nents, the sermons, and doubtless the thinking, of the 
 Liberals were more marked by omissions than by actual 
 denials. Then, too, the prominence given by the Revolu- 
 tion and the subsequent era of political creation to the 
 rights and duties of man made it natural for ministers of 
 no great keenness of doctrinal interest to make ethical 
 questions their main burden of discourse ; and no ministers 
 were more patriotic in the Revolutionary struggle or more 
 hearty in entering into discussion of the problems which it 
 involved than the Massachusetts Liberals. 
 
 The first organized avowal of anti-Trinitarian beliefs was 
 made by the congregation worshiping in King's Chapel, 
 — the oldest Episcopal body in Boston. The rector of 
 that society, Rev. Henry Caner, had fled to Halifax 
 with his loyalist friends when Boston was evacuated by 
 the British in 1776, and it remained without a minister 
 till 1782, when the congregation called Rev. James Free- 
 man, a young man of twenty-three. Both minister and 
 people found that their views were so strongly anti-Trini- 
 tarian that the expressions of the Prayer- Book were dis- 
 tasteful, and they proceeded in i 785 to revise the formulae 
 
THE UXITARIAN SEPARATIOX. 33 I 
 
 of prayer, — a course of action which Freeman warmly de- 
 fended from the pulpit. But such radical anti-Trinitarian 
 changes naturally led Bishops Seabury of Connecticut and 
 Provoost of New York to refuse ordination, and there- 
 fore on November 18, 1787, the representatives of King's 
 Chapel congregation themselves set Freeman apart to his 
 office, much as an early Congregational church might have 
 ordained its minister. 
 
 This action of the ancient Episcopal congregation of 
 Boston was regarded as extreme, and it produced no im- 
 mediate effect on the Congregational churches of the town ; 
 but the general prevalence of anti-Trinitarian sentiments 
 among them is evidenced by the publication in 1 795 by 
 Rev. Dr, Jeremy Belknap, pastor of the Congregational 
 Church in Federal Street, of a *' Collection of Psalms and 
 Hymns," This aid to worship, which soon came into ex- 
 tensive use in Boston and vicinity, while expressing the 
 utmost affection for the Saviour and giving him a high 
 Arian exaltation, omitted or altered all references to him 
 as God or all intimations of a Trinity in the divine ex- 
 istence. A new collection of ** Extracts " from Emlyn's 
 "Humble Inquiry" was once more put forth, in 1790; 
 and in 1 795 Rev. John Clarke, Chauncy's cultivated and 
 scholarly associate and successor in the pastorate of the 
 First Boston Church, published " An Answer to the Ques- 
 tion, Why are you a Christian? " which, though it ascribes 
 a lofty function to Christ and holds full faith in his miracles, 
 dwells primarily on the ethical aspects of the gospel, and 
 is exceedingly ''liberal" in tone. Yet Boston was not 
 ready for a bald Socinianism, like that of Priestley, and a 
 proposition to invite the English Unitarian leader to come 
 thither in 1794 found no considerable encouragement. 
 But by May, 1796, Freeman could write to an English 
 friend : '' The Unitarian doctrine appears to be still upon 
 
332 THE COXGKEGA710XALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 the increase. I am acquainted with a number of ministers, 
 particularly in the southern part of this State, who avow 
 and publicly preach this sentiment." 
 
 While these theories had been spreading in eastern 
 Massachusetts, the Edvvardean teachings of western Mas- 
 sachusetts and of Connecticut had also been gaining a 
 foothold in the region. At Plymouth Chandler Robbins, 
 a pupil and friend of Bellamy, held the pastorate of the old 
 Mayflower Church from 1 760 to 1799; at Newburyport 
 the able Hopkinsian Samuel Spring was pastor from 1777 
 to 1 8 19; Charlestown had for its minister, from 1789 to 
 1820, the gifted and polemic Jedidiah Morse, a pupil of 
 the younger Edwards; while Nathanael Emmons, the 
 most powerful leader of the ultra- Ed wardean school, made 
 his home a theological seminary and his pulpit a theologic 
 fortress at Franklin from 1773 to 1827. With the begin- 
 ning of the revivals and the new sense of religious privilege 
 and obligation which began to manifest itself in a mission- 
 ary spirit during the last decade of the eighteenth century, 
 the influence of these men was greatly increased. They 
 and their party had been the advocates of a more spiritual 
 and evangelical type of religion in the depressed period 
 before the revivals began, and the new revival spirit at 
 once made Edwardean men and measures popular wher- 
 ever the Liberal theology had not won complete control. 
 As the eighteenth century drew toward a close the more 
 conservative churches began to awake. In Essex County, 
 for instance, during the decade of 1791 to 1801, ** the 
 churches are aroused to scrutinize more carefully the doc- 
 trinal views of their pastors ; and when a pulpit is vacated 
 by the removal of an Arminian, or a semi-Arminian, it is 
 somehow pretty sure to be filled with a man of a more 
 Orthodox stamp" ; and the same thing was true, only in 
 less degree, of other districts of eastern Massachusetts. The 
 
THE UNITARIAN SEPARATION. 333. 
 
 Edwardeans and Old Calvinlsts, without wholly ignoring 
 their differences, felt that they had a common cause to de- 
 fej-i(i^ — the cause of what they loved to designate as that 
 of " evangelical truth." As the new evangelical move- 
 ment became more pronounced and aggressive, ministers 
 and churches who sympathized with it began to recognize 
 how far some of their associates had drifted almost unper- 
 ceived into LiberaUsm, and to w^onder how such changes 
 could have taken place around them without concealment. 
 But such a charge, though a few passages to support it 
 may be quoted from the writings of Freeman and others, 
 is an essential injustice to the Liberals ; it was rather that 
 the more conservative element had been asleep. 
 
 Evidence of the evangelical awakening began to be 
 patent by the close of the eighteenth century, and with 
 the rising tide of Edwardean and revivalistic feeling the 
 conservative elements became decidedly aggressive and 
 determined to purge the anti-Trinitarians from the Con- 
 gregational body. In 1798 a council refused to install 
 Rev. Clark Brown at Brimfield, Mass., among other reasons, 
 on account of denials of the divinity of Christ similar to 
 the Arian speculations which he put forth to the world the 
 next year in his tract, "The Character of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ." This refusal aroused much opposi- 
 tion. An anonymous pamphlet was at once published at 
 Springfield, Mass., under the title of '' Popish Hierarchy 
 suppressed by Buonaparte in Italy : and his Hohness ex- 
 erting his Influence, in a late Ecclesiastical Council at 
 Brimfield," in which the action of the council was de- 
 nounced as ecclesiastical tyranny. A more compliant 
 council settled Mr. Brown a few months later. In 1799 
 the '' Massachusetts Missionary Society " was formed, as 
 has been already narrated ; and in 1803 the foundations 
 of a new state ministerial gathering were laid,— the Mas- 
 
334 THE COXGREGATIOXA LISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 sachusetts General Association, — an assembly additional 
 to, and more efficient than, the ancient Ministerial Con- 
 vention. The new organization came into favor with some 
 difficulty. It was recognized and opposed as the work of 
 the evangelical party ; but the extreme Independency of 
 Nathanael Emmons led him and his Hopkinsian friends to 
 show the same hostility to the enterprise that the Liberals 
 manifested for other reasons. Its formation, however, was 
 a distinct proof of the increasing strenuousness of the 
 opponents of advancing Liberalism, and of the growing 
 tightening of theological lines. 
 
 The first church to be divided by the rising contest, — 
 unless the rather obscure schism at Taunton in 1792 be an 
 exception, — was, curiously enough, the old Pilgrim Church 
 at Plymouth. After the death of Rev. Chandler Robbins, 
 in 1799, the Plymouth Church called Rev. James Kendall, 
 — a man of " liberal " sentiments, — as their pastor, by a 
 small majority of the communicants but with the well-nigh 
 unanimous approval of the parish. His ordination was 
 followed after some months by the withdrawal, on Octo- 
 ber I, 1 80 1, of almost exactly one half of the members of 
 the ancient church, and their constitution into a church of 
 the ancient faith, while the Mayflower Church, as an organ- 
 ization, passed fully to the party soon to be known as 
 Unitarian. A year later, September 8, 1802, Rev. Sam- 
 uel Worcester was dismissed from his charge at P'^itchburg, 
 Mass., because of a Calvinism displeasing to the parish, 
 though not distasteful to the church. 
 
 But the first real test of strength between the two parties 
 that was tried on any considerable scale took place over 
 the choice of a successor to the decidedly Old Calvinist, 
 Rev. Dr. David Tappan, whose death, in August, 1S03, 
 left vacant the Hollis Professorship of Divinity in Harvard 
 College, — a choice which determined what influences were 
 
THE UNITARIAN SEPARATION. 335 
 
 to be dominant In that seat of learning. The importance 
 of the decision was keenly felt, and both sides put forth 
 their efforts. At the time of Tappan's death the corpora- 
 tion was equally divided and no choice was made. The 
 candidate of the Liberal side was Rev. Henry Ware, of 
 Hingham, Mass., his opponents favored Rev. Jesse Apple- 
 ton, of Hampton, N. H., soon to become president of 
 Bowdoin College. In them the two types of theology 
 were brought into opposing contrast. Death having 
 changed the complexion of the corporation, the struggle 
 issued on February 5, 1805, in the election of Ware, and 
 in the manifest passage of New England's oldest college 
 to the control of the anti-Trinitarians. 
 
 The decision as to the future attitude of Harvard Col- 
 lege aroused public attention as nothing yet had done ; it 
 was the immediate occasion of the foundation of Andover 
 Seminary, as there will be cause to note a little later in 
 this chapter ; and it was speedily followed by a bitter Hter- 
 ary warfare. In 1805 Rev. Dr. Jedidiah Morse, of Charles- 
 town, attacked the whole transaction in his ** True Reasons 
 on Vv^hich the Election of the Hollis Professor of Divinity 
 in Harvard College was opposed." But more permanent 
 weapons than ephemeral pamphlets were also resorted to. 
 In November, 1803, several prominent Boston Liberals 
 had estabhshed the '* Monthly Anthology," a magazine 
 decidedly sympathetic with their cast of doctrine, but 
 showing also that tendency toward literature which was 
 so marked and so fruitful a characteristic of the early New 
 England Unitarians. And now, in June, 1805, and largely 
 through the influence of Morse, the '' Panoplist " was 
 founded, as an active defender of ancient faith, " by an 
 Association of Friends to Evangelical Truth," who were 
 broadly Calvinistic rather than Hopkinsian. From the 
 first it was an aggressive, vigorous magazine; and there 
 
336 THE COXGREGAriOXA LISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 can be no doubt that it did much to compel the Liberals 
 to define their position. United with the decidedly Hop- 
 kinsian " Massachusetts Missionary Magazine" in 1808, it 
 ultimately became in a certain sense the ancestor of that 
 non-polemic medium of Congregational missionary intel- 
 ligence, the *' Missionary Herald," which is published by 
 the American Board to the present day. 
 
 One more publication of the year 1805 attracted wide 
 attention, — the work of Rev. John Sherman, of Mansfield, 
 Conn., entitled " One God in one Person only, and Jesus 
 Christ a Being distinct from God, dependent upon Him 
 for his Existence and his various Powers." This w^as the 
 most positive anti-Trinitarian treatise that had yet origi- 
 nated in New England. Sherman was in a region where 
 Liberalism found little ministerial sympathy, and he was 
 promptly dismissed by a mutual council, though approved 
 by a large portion of his congregation. The transaction 
 caused much discussion, and coming so speedily after the 
 Harvard College controversy, added fuel to the flames of 
 publie excitement. 
 
 Meanwhile the Liberal pulpit of Boston had received tw^o 
 notable accessions in the persons of Rev. William Ellery 
 Channing, — on the whole the most distinguished of Ameri- 
 can Unitarians, — who became pastor of the Federal Street 
 Church in 1803 at the age of twenty-three; and of Joseph 
 Stevens Buckminster, who entered the service of Brattle 
 Church in January, 1805, w^hen not quite twenty-one, and 
 died seven years later, but \\\\o lives in tradition even yet 
 as one of the most gifted of American preachers. Both 
 these ministers greatly ad\'anced the popularity of Lib- 
 eralism in the town of their labors; and the situation be- 
 came one increasingly demanding positive action if the 
 evangelical party was not to be driven from the local 
 
THE UNITARIAN SEPARATION. t^:^^ 
 
 field. It was with this feeHng, doubtless, that Rev. Dr. 
 Morse, the evangelical champion of Charlestown, procured 
 the settlement of Rev. Joshua Huntington, a Yale gradu- 
 ate, who had studied theology under President Timothy 
 Dwight and under Morse himself, as colleague pastor of 
 the Old South Church, — the most conservative of all the 
 Boston churches, — in May, 1808. A few months later, — 
 December, 1 808, — the Second Church in Dorchester settled 
 an actively evangelical minister in the person of Rev. John 
 Codman, destined to fill a prominent place in the theologi- 
 cal conflicts of the next few years. But it illustrates the 
 still outwardly undivided state of CongregationaHsm that 
 at the first of these installations Morse and Channing took 
 part together in the services, and at the second Channing 
 preached the sermon. 
 
 A much more positive and aggressive evangelical ad- 
 vance was the organization, on February 2^] , 1809, partly 
 as a result of the recent preaching of Rev. Dr. Henry 
 Kollock, of Savannah, Ga., of a new church in Boston 
 which was soon known as that of Park Street. With 
 the countenance of Morse and Codman this body was 
 made illustrative of a strict type of Calvinism in its doc- 
 trinal basis, and on the settlement of Rev. Dr. Edward D. 
 Griffin, — a pupil of the younger Edwards, — as its pastor 
 in 181 1, its eloquent and able pulpit presented a positive 
 Hopkinsian type of theology such as Boston had not heard 
 before, and presented it with great power. Such preach- 
 ing was sorely needed, for, in his sermon at the Ministerial 
 Convention of 18 10, Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Porter, of Rox- 
 bury, had declared of the doctrines of '' Original Sin, a 
 Trinity in Unity, the Mere Humanity, Super-Angelic 
 Nature, or Absolute Deity of Christ, and the Absolute 
 Eternity of Punishment, ... I cannot place my finger 
 
338 THE COXGREGATIONALISrS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 on any one article in the list of doctrines just mentioned, 
 the belief or rejection of which I consider essential to the 
 Christian faith or character." 
 
 The ancient New England custom approved far more 
 frequent pulpit exchanges than are customary at pres- 
 ent, — in many towns as often as once in three or four 
 weeks, — and about the time of Griffin's settlement the 
 evangelical party began to draw what eventually proved 
 the line of separation between them and the Liberals by re- 
 fusing to exchange with those whose soundness they sus- 
 pected. Rev. John Codman, whose settlement at Dorches- 
 ter has just been noted, was a leader in this movement, and 
 the defense of his right thus to refuse ministerial fellowship 
 caused him a bitter contest with a part of his parishioners, 
 resulting in the calling of two councils, in i8ii and 1812, 
 and his maintenance of his pastoral position only by the 
 casting vote of the moderator of the latter of these bodies. 
 
 The position of exclusion from fellowship thus taken by 
 Codman and others toward the Liberals was a sign of the 
 growing strength and self-respect of the evangelical party ; 
 and the breach now opening was rapidly widened by an 
 event of the year 1815. In 1812 Rev. Thomas Belsham, 
 of London, who since the death of Priestley had been the 
 leader of the English Unitarians, had published a " Life 
 of the Rev. Theophilus Lindsey," in which he had printed 
 letters from Freeman and other prominent citizens of Bos- 
 ton giving accounts of the progress of Liberalism in that 
 community. For some reason the work attracted little 
 notice at first ; but in 18 1 5 the portions relating to America 
 were republished in a pampjilet at Boston, probably at the 
 instance of Morse, under the title of "American Unitarian- 
 ism ; or, A Brief History of the Progress and Present State 
 of the Unitarian Churches in America." This publication 
 aroused great commotion ; and its real significance was 
 
THE UNITARIAN SEPARATION. 339 
 
 evident in its title. The word *' Unitarian " at that day 
 popularly signified an asserter of the mere humanity of 
 Christ, and a semi-materialist in religion, such as Priestley 
 had been. Such a '' Unitarian" Belsham was to a large 
 extent. But the Boston Liberals, with possibly one excep- 
 tion, were still Arians and supernaturalists, they were not 
 " Unitarians " in the then odious sense of that word. Yet 
 Freeman and William Wells, Belsham's correspondents, 
 had spoken of the movement as *' Unitarian," and Belsham, 
 who was a " Unitarian " in the Priestleian sense, had natu- 
 rally made the most of the epithet, though Wells at least 
 took prompt occasion to declare that he had used the term 
 to indicate '' a Christian, not a believer in the doctrine of 
 the Trinity," rather than in the narrow significance that 
 Belsham attached to it. But the Liberals had all along 
 asserted that their departures from the ancient faith were 
 moderate and non-destructive, and in this pamphlet they 
 seemed identified wholly with the extreme English party 
 which was generally looked upon as little better than 
 infidel. In a very able review of the pamphlet in June, 
 1815, probably from the pen of Jeremiah Evarts, the 
 " Panoplist " pushed this identification, asserting: " W^e 
 shall feel ourselves warranted hereafter, to speak of the 
 fact as certain, that Unitarianism is the predominant relig- 
 ion among the ministers and churches of Boston," and 
 declaring that '' Unitarianism and Infidelity are nearly re- 
 lated indeed. Mr. Wells, who is a hopeful pupil of the 
 Priestleian school, says that they are identical. ' Unita- 
 rianism,' says he, ' consists rather in not believing.' " 
 
 This extreme characterization of the Liberal party, for 
 which their English friends and the more radical repre- 
 sentatives of the movement in America had opened the 
 way, led to a great commotion. Channing, who was an 
 Arian, and a believer in a certain sense in the atonement. 
 
340 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 came into the field, within a month of the " Panoplist's " 
 review, with a protest against " the Aspersions contained 
 in a late number of the ' Panoplist,' " in the form of a letter 
 to Rev. S. C. Thacher, a brother Boston minister. In this 
 letter he described the method of the " Panoplist " as a 
 ** criminal instance of unfairness," and declared that the 
 statement that " the great body of Liberal Christians are 
 Unitarians, in Mr. Belsham's sense of that word ... is 
 false." *' The word Unitarian, taken in . . . its true 
 sense, . . . includes all who believe that there is no dis- 
 tinction of persons in God." In that sense, Channing 
 averred, " My worship and sentiments have been Unita- 
 rian ;" but his Unitarianism and that of most of his brethren 
 held, he affirmed, '' that Jesus Christ is more than man, 
 that he existed before the world, that he literally came 
 from heaven to save our race, that he sustains other offices 
 than those of a teacher and witness to the truth, and that 
 he still acts for our benefit, and is our intercessor with the 
 Father." To this letter. Rev. Dr. Samuel Worcester, who 
 had been dismissed from his Fitchburg charge for his 
 evangelical sentiments in 1802 and who was now settled 
 at Salem, Mass., made vigorous reply. Channing in turn 
 answered, and a sharp exchange of pamphlets followed. 
 But the fact w^as that though the Liberals might protest 
 against " a system of exclusion," the separation between 
 them and the evangelical party was a reality, and a defi- 
 nite name for the new denomination was a great conven- 
 ience. So convenient was it that Channing and the other 
 Liberal leaders began at once to use the term " Unitarian " 
 to describe their own party, though of course in the since 
 popular New England signification of a denier of the 
 Trinity, without defining the exact quality of that denial. 
 The Unitarians were now to all intents a distinct denom- 
 ination, though this distinction became more manifest and 
 
THE UNITARIAN SEPARATION. 34 1 
 
 the evangelical withdrawal from fellowship with them more 
 pronounced after 18 19. On May 5th of that year Channing 
 preached his famous sermon at the ordination of Rev. Jared 
 Sparks at Baltimore, Md., — a sermon which was a careful 
 setting forth not only of the doctrine of the nature of God, 
 but of the whole system of God's dealings with men, as 
 the preacher conceived them. Though not representing 
 the prevalent type of modern Unitarianism, it has been 
 regarded as a Unitarian classic. To this discourse Prof. 
 Moses Stuart of Andover gave a strong reply during the 
 same year, to which Prof. Andrews Norton of Harvard, 
 Channing's friend, made answer defending the Unitarian 
 position. Channing's Baltimore sermon was also the oc- 
 casion of the vigorous ''Letters to Unitarians" put forth 
 in 1820 by Prof. Leonard Woods, Stuart's colleague at 
 Andover, which drew forth the " Letters to Trinitarians 
 and Calvinists " from Prof. Henry Ware of Harvard. This 
 discussion and the rejoinders which followed on both sides 
 covered the whole range of doctrines in debate, but it may 
 be questioned whether the separation between the evan- 
 gelical Congregationalists and the Unitarians had not be- 
 come so complete as to make these elaborate publications 
 productive of little actual result. 
 
 The year 1 8 1 5 may therefore be assigned for convenience 
 as the time of the Unitarian separation, — though exactness 
 in date is difficult where the marks of division were ex- 
 hibited, as they were in this case, by local action, by re- 
 fusals to exchange, and withdrawals of fellowship, rather 
 than the widely visible schisms which rend more centralized 
 ecclesiastical associations. The real division, — the division 
 of spirit, — was of course much earlier. From 1 8 1 7 to 1 840 
 the separation of local churches went on vigorously, and of 
 these local drawings apart the most famous, by reason of 
 the legal decision to which it gave rise, was that at Ded- 
 
342 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 ham, Mass., in i8i8. In that town the majority of the 
 church-members being evangehcal, the society, i.e., the 
 legal voters of the First Parish of Dedham, who were pre- 
 ponderatingly Unitarian, took the initiative and, in spite of 
 the protests of two thirds of the church, called Rev. Alvan 
 Lamson as their minister and invited a council of Unitarians 
 to ordain him. The council, which included Channing, 
 Ware, President Kirkland of Harvard, and other men of 
 prominence, showed its partisan spirit by voting, in spite 
 of a protest from the majority of the church, that *' whereas 
 cases may exist in which a majority of a church do not 
 concur with the religious society in the call of a minister, 
 . . . such cases may still be so urgent as to authorize an 
 ecclesiastical council to proceed to the ordination." Natu- 
 rally the council felt that such an astounding departure 
 from Congregational usage demanded an explanation, and 
 they therefore adopted a long justificatory declaration in 
 which they affirmed that " the council regard the well- 
 known usage, according to which, the first step in electing 
 a pastor is taken by the church, as in the main wise and 
 beneficial " ; but also claimed " that circumstances may 
 exist in which a minister may be ordained over a parish 
 without the concurrence of the church connected with it " ; 
 and that ** greater good is to be expected to this society 
 and to the church in general " from this ordination than 
 from its refusal. But it is not surprising that this *' greater 
 good " was not apparent to the evangelical majority of the 
 church, which now withdrew from the Unitarian minority. 
 The legal question now arose as to which faction of the 
 ancient church was the First Church of Dedham, and 
 entitled to use the meeting-house and property of the 
 society ; and this case was carried to the Massachusetts 
 Supreme Court, where after arguments by Daniel Webster 
 and Theron Metcalf on the various merits of the dispute, it 
 
THE UNITARIAN SEPARATION. 343 
 
 was decided in 1820 that a church exists only in connec- 
 tion with a society, and in case of division in the church 
 only that faction which is recognized by the society has a 
 right to the name and the use of the property. 
 
 Under the operation of this Dedham decision the pre- 
 vailing Unitarianism of the societies in many of the ancient 
 towns of eastern Massachusetts led to the enrollment of 
 the titles of a considerable proportion of the earliest Con- 
 gregational churches of New England in th^ list of Unita- 
 rian churches. A careful report prepared by a committee 
 of the Massachusetts General Association in 1836 enu- 
 merates 81 cases of ecclesiastical division, in which 3900 
 evangelical members withdrew, leaving property to the 
 value of more than $600,000 for the use of 1282 Unitarian 
 fellow-members who remained. But while the excision of 
 Unitarianism was a cause of division in many churches, it 
 is but just to say that a considerable number of ancient 
 Puritan churches found themselves without serious con- 
 troversy on the Unitarian side. This was noticeably the 
 case in Boston, where of the fourteen churches of the Con- 
 gregational order existing in 1800 within the large territory 
 now embraced by the city limits, all but two, the Old South 
 of Boston and the First Church of Charlestown, became Uni- 
 tarian, and for the most part without internal commotion. It 
 has been ascertained by a careful student of Massachusetts 
 ecclesiastical history, — Rev. Dr. Joseph S. Clark, — that 96 
 churches in all were lost from the Congregational rolls, 
 though in a large portion of these cases the evangelical 
 members who withdrew formed new organizations to take 
 their places. But many of the names thus lost were ven- 
 erable for their historic associations, and the ability, wealth, 
 and social or political distinction of those who withdrew to 
 the early Unitarians was such as to make the loss a severe 
 one from a worldly point of view. 
 
344 ^-^^^ CONGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 The Unitarian movement was almost strictly local. Out- 
 side of eastern Massachusetts, the adjacent portions of New 
 Hampshire, and one or two of the older towns of Maine, 
 it has gained little footing. No Connecticut church has 
 ever become Unitarian, except that of Brooklyn, and there 
 the evangelical portion has kept the name and maintained 
 the field in large measure. Connecticut soil has proved 
 unfavorable for the planting of Unitarianism. A few Uni- 
 tarian churches have found root in western Massachusetts 
 and Vermont ; but in general the regions where Edward- 
 eanism had become powerful before 1800 have given scanty 
 welcome to Unitarian speculations. Nor has Unitarianism 
 itself escaped the control of an ever-increasing radicalism. 
 The Arian and supernatural type of the separation gave 
 place largely to the *' transcendental " school before the 
 middle of the century was reached, and while Unitarianism 
 includes all shades of belief from a conservatism that is 
 almost orthodox to a radicalism ready to dispense with the 
 Christian name altogether, its general tendency has carried 
 it farther and farther away from the now seemingly mod- 
 erate liberalism of a Channing or a Norton. 
 
 The Unitarian excision is the only separation of impor- 
 tance in the history of American Congregationalism. Uni- 
 tarianism was a movement of slow growth, a gradual change 
 in attitude toward the main truths of the gospel, and was 
 to some extent due to the introduction of a different type 
 of culture from that which had characterized New England. 
 In no invidious sense it may be said that a high degree of 
 moral rectitude of conduct, a general diffusion of material 
 comfort, and a comparatively unemotional type of relig- 
 ious experience, had idealized human nature in the thought 
 of many, so that a vivid perception of the power of sin and 
 of the greatness of the redemption necessary to overcome 
 its effects had been lost. The same conditions of eeneral 
 
THE UNITARIAN SEPARATION. 345 
 
 comfort and social well-being tended to develop in the class 
 to which Unitarianism powerfully appealed that keen ap- 
 preciation of literary form which makes the roll of New 
 England men of letters so largely a record of Unitarian 
 names. And there was in the movement also a deep and 
 unselfish humanitarian feeling and a high sense of duty, 
 not due to material conditions but to the finer ethical 
 effects of that Puritan training which Unitarians and 
 EvangeHcals alike inherit, which made many of the Unita- 
 rians conspicuous as leaders of social and political reform. 
 It was a movement which exemplified many noble and de- 
 sirable quaUties in its more conspicuous representatives; 
 but it was, from a spiritual point of view, none the less a 
 movement which lost touch with those needs and feelings 
 that the church universal has always recognized as deepest 
 in mankind. Its loudest strife in its later stage was over 
 the doctrine of the Trinity ; but its most vital point was 
 after all the practical question of the nature of man and 
 the way of salvation. Channing declared in his reply to 
 the '' Panoplist " in 18 15 that ''we consider the errours 
 which relate to Christ's person as of little or no importance 
 compared with the errour of those who teach, that God 
 brings us into life wholly depraved and wholly helpless." 
 And one of the chief of living exponents of Unitarianism, 
 Rev. Dr. George E. Ellis, thus defined its essential features 
 nearly forty years ago, when the movement still preserved 
 much of its original force and character: ''Unitarianism 
 stands in direct and positive opposition to Orthodoxy on 
 three great doctrines, which Orthodoxy teaches, with em- 
 phasis, as vital to its system ; namely, that the nature of 
 human beings has been vitiated, corrupted, and disabled, 
 in consequence of the sin of Adam, for which God has 
 in judgment doomed our race to suffering and woe; that 
 Jesus Christ is God, and therefore an object of religious 
 
346 THE COXGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 homage and prayer; and that the death of Christ is made 
 effectual to human salvation by reconciling God to man, 
 and satisfying the claims of an insulted and outraged law. 
 Unitarianism denies that these are doctrines of the Gospel, 
 and offers very different doctrines, sustained by Scripture, 
 in their place." In making this denial Unitarianism broke 
 with the consciousness of the church universal, and made 
 a separation between itself and evangelical Congregation- 
 alism not only inevitable but desirable. 
 
 The third important result of the awakened religious 
 zeal of the churches was the introduction into New Eng- 
 land of a new system of theological education. The main 
 design for which Harvard and Yale had been founded was 
 to train up a learned ministry, and they had fulfilled their 
 purpose, judged by the low educational standards of the 
 colonial era. It is difficult to imagine what New England 
 would have become had it not been for their noble work. 
 But that work was limited. The original courses of in- 
 struction at these colleges presupposed that the graduates 
 would chiefly enter the ministry, and laid emphasis on 
 theology, Greek, and Hebrew, as well as on dialectics ; but 
 the youth of the students and the elementary character 
 of the curriculum gave the graduates what would now be 
 considered an exceedingly scanty technical training. It 
 was the custom, however, from early times for occasional 
 students to return to college after graduation for a few 
 months, or perhaps a year or two, of reading under the 
 direction of tlie "president and with the advantages of the 
 library. The deficiencies of the system were recognized 
 in the eighteenth century and led to the foundation of the 
 Hollis Professorship of Divinity at Harvard by the gift of 
 a generous Baptist merchant of London, Thomas Hollis, 
 in 1 721. In 1746 the beginnings of a professorship of 
 divinity were made at Yale, though the chair was not filled 
 
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION. 347 
 
 till 1755. But though these appointments secured more 
 or less regular lectures on doctrinal, historical, and exegeti- 
 cal topics for the undergraduates, they were not a very 
 efficient or very popular means of instruction. It became 
 increasingly the custom, especially after the middle of the 
 eighteenth century, for ministerial candidates to take a 
 few months of study with some prominent minister, — and 
 though many of the New England clergy thus received 
 students into their households, the Edwardean leaders 
 most extensively engaged in this labor of education. Such 
 intimate connection of pupil and teacher had much value 
 in initiating the candidate into methods of pastoral labor, 
 and familiarizing him with questions of practical parish 
 administration, and beyond that he obtained an intimate 
 acquaintance with the system of polemic divinity of which 
 his teacher was the exponent. The method propagated 
 schools of theology most effectively. But it is almost 
 needless to point out that this system of education gave 
 no broad view of church history, no careful study of lin- 
 guistics or exegesis, and no extensive acquaintance with 
 the development of Christian doctrine as a whole. A busy 
 New England pastor of the last century had neither the 
 time, nor the books, nor the technical education to give 
 instruction along such lines. 
 
 The quickening of the churches under the new revival 
 spirit led to a feeling among many that a better system of 
 ministerial training should be introduced ; but this feeling 
 was transformed into action only after the loss of Har- 
 vard College to the Liberals by the election of Ware to 
 the Hollis Professorship had impressed on the evangeHcal 
 party the fact that such public facilities as then existed 
 for ministerial training in Massachusetts had passed out of 
 conservative hands. It has already been seen that the 
 evangelical party of eastern Massachusetts included at least 
 
34^ THE COXGREGAriOXALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 two elements, — an extreme Edwardean section, the Hop- 
 kinsians, or '' Consistent Calvinists " ; and an Old Calvinist 
 section of varying degrees of strenuousness. The Hop- 
 kinsians had founded the ** Massachusetts Missionary 
 Society," and its " Magazine " ; the hand of the Old Cal- 
 vinists was more conspicuous in the beginnings of the 
 Massachusetts General Association and the '' Panoplist." 
 Both parties were being brought into union by their com- 
 mon opposition to Liberalism, but during the opening 
 years of the century they still felt considerable jealousy of 
 each other. Now, on the defection of Harvard, repre- 
 sentatives both of the Old Calvinists and Hopkinsians in 
 Essex County, Mass., began in 1806 to lay their plans, each 
 party at first entirely without knowledge of the others 
 purposes, for the planting of a theological seminary. 
 
 The Old Calvinist movement had its center at Andover, 
 where Samuel and John Phillips had founded the most 
 famous of New England academies in 1778. The Phillipses 
 were men of great political and social prominence, of ster- 
 ling character, and of Old Calvinist principles, and they 
 had given to their academy a strongly religious bent, 
 had directed that the main doctrines of the gospel should 
 be taught in it, and had even contemplated the eventual 
 establishment in the academy of a professorship of divinity 
 similar to the chairs at Harvard and Yale. John Phillips 
 had also left funds in charge of the trustees of the academy 
 to assist students *' in the study of divinity under the direc- 
 tion of some eminent Calvinistic minister," — funds from 
 which students were aided from 1797 to 1808 in their 
 training under one of the Andover pastors. It was natural, 
 therefore, that the thoughts of the Old Calvinists regarding 
 a theological seminary should group themselves about the 
 academy at Andover; especially since the most prominent 
 of the projectors of the plan was Prof. Eliphalet Pearson, 
 
ANDOVER SEMIXARY. 349 
 
 who had been the first principal of the academy, and had 
 continued one of its trustees during his incumbency of the 
 cliair of Hebrew at Harvard from 1785 to 1806. Now, in 
 1806, Pearson resigned his professorship and returned to 
 Andover, convinced that the loss of Harvard to the Lib- 
 erals demanded energetic counter-action. With Pearson 
 there were associated in forming the plan for the seminary 
 Rev. Dr. Morse, of Charlestown, theologically an Edward- 
 ean of the type of Dwight, but broadly sympathetic with 
 the Old Calvinists, a man w^iose activity as an opponent 
 of rising Unitarianism has already been noted, and Samuel 
 Farrar, an Andover lawyer. Above all there were the 
 '* Founders," who eventually contributed the necessary 
 funds, Samuel Abbot, Madam Phcebe Phillips, the widowed 
 daughter-in-law of Samuel Phillips, the benefactor of the 
 academy, and her son John Phillips, Jr., of Andover. In 
 July, 1806, a " Voluntary Association," embracing Pearson, 
 Morse, P'arrar, Abbot, and one or two others, met at the 
 Phillips residence and began to lay definite plans for realiz- 
 ing their purpose. During the following autumn a consti- 
 tution for the proposed "Theological Institution" was 
 prepared; and by June, 1807, the scheme had so far crys- 
 tallized that an act was obtained from the Massachusetts 
 legislature authorizing the trustees of Phillips Academy 
 to hold funds for a theological seminary. 
 
 While the Old Calvinists at Andover had been engaged 
 in the earHer portion of this undertaking, a few Hopkins- 
 ians about Newburyport had, without their knowledge, 
 also been laying plans for a seminary. The leader in this 
 movement was Rev. Dr. Samuel Spring, a pupil of Bellamy, 
 Hopkins, and West, and an intimate friend of Emmons, 
 who had been filHng a distinguished pastorate at New^bury- 
 port since 1777, and who was reckoned with reason as, 
 next to Emmons, the chief Hopkinsian in New England. 
 
350 THE CONGREGATIOXALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 With Dr. spring was associated his much -younger friend, 
 Rev. Leonard Woods, pastor from 1 798 at West New- 
 bury, a man who was classed with the Hopkinsians in early 
 life, but whose catholic and judicious spirit, wide friendships, 
 and sympathy with all types of New England Calvinism 
 admirably fitted him to conciliate all the elements of the 
 evangelical party. Under the influence of Spring and 
 Woods three laymen of wealth and character, William 
 Bartlett and Moses Brown of Newburyport, and John 
 Norris of Salem, became interested by the beginning of 
 1807 in the foundation of a seminary, which they thought 
 might be located at West Newbury and have Woods for 
 its teacher of theology. None of these laymen were church- 
 members at this time, and Brown alone became so, but 
 they were men of the old New England type, much in- 
 terested in religion, and solicitous for the advancement 
 of the churches. These three laymen, whose contribu- 
 tions did much to make Andover Seminary a strong institu- 
 tion, were to be known in its history as the "Associate 
 Founders." 
 
 The intentions of the two parties became known to each 
 other through the intimacy of Woods and Morse growing 
 out of their association in the publication of the " Panoplist," 
 and to both of these friends it seemed desirable that the 
 Old Calvinists and Hopkinsians should combine their forces 
 in one strong seminary. Professor Pearson soon warmly 
 espoused the same cause, and to his untiring efforts the 
 ultimate accomplishment of the union was chiefly due. 
 But Spring was suspicious of the full orthodoxy of the 
 Old Calvinists, and disinclined to compromise, and Emmons 
 threw his great influence in the same direction. It looked 
 as if two hostile institutions would be erected almost side 
 by side ; and believing that union was unattainable, the 
 ** P'ounders " signed the constitution of their proposed 
 
ANDO VER SEMINA R Y. 
 
 351 
 
 seminary on August 31, 1807, and committed it to the 
 trustees of Phillips Academy, who accepted the trust two 
 days later. The theological standard now laid down by 
 the " Founders " for the test of professorial orthodoxy was 
 the requirement that each instructor should ** be a man of 
 sound and orthodox principles in Divinity according to 
 that form of sound words or system of evangelical doctrines, 
 drawn from the Scriptures, and denominated the Westmin- 
 ster Assembly's Shorter Catechism." 
 
 But through the persistence of Pearson and Woods the 
 plan of union was revived ; and at last mutual conces- 
 sions, in which the chief generosity was exhibited by the Old 
 Calvinists, brought about the desired result. To the Hop- 
 kinsians the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which was a 
 satisfactory creed test in the estimate of the Old Calvinists 
 at Andover, did not seem sufficient. Moreover, it appeared 
 unsafe to the Hopkinsians that the choice of professors 
 should be committed unreservedly to the trustees of Phillips 
 Academy. But at last, on December i, 1807, a union was 
 fully determined, and in May, 1808, it was completed. 
 During the early summer of 1807 Spring and Woods had 
 prepared a decidedly Edwardean, and moderately Hop- 
 kinsian, creed for the use of the possible seminary at West 
 Newbury. This creed had met with the approval of the 
 "Associate Founders." The visitatorial system, of which 
 a mild example existed in the Board of Overseers at Har- 
 vard, also commended itself to the ''Associate Founders " 
 as a possible means of controlling the action of the trustees 
 of Phillips Academy. As a result, the "Associate Foun- 
 ders " and the " Founders " agreed that each professor 
 should assent to the creed which the Hopkinsians had 
 prepared, as a symbol in which those doctrines are " more 
 particularly expressed " which are " summarily expressed 
 in the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism." Each 
 
352 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 incumbent of a chair endowed by the "Associate Founders " 
 was required, in addition, to be a "consistent Calvinist." 
 A self-perpetuating " Board of Visitors" was also named, 
 charged to see that the provisions of the trust were duly 
 executed by trustees and professors, from whose decision 
 an appeal might be taken to the Supreme Court of Mas- 
 sachusetts. This complicated system of government, the 
 only basis on which the two parties- would unite in found- 
 ing a single institution, was accepted by the trustees of 
 Phillips Academy on May lo, 1808, and thus became the 
 constitution of Andover Seminary. In the same spirit of 
 conciliation, Samuel Abbot, the Old Calvinist " Founder," 
 who had retained the right to appoint the first professor 
 to the chair of Christian Theology which he had endowed, 
 chose Leonard Woods ; and the "Associate Founders," 
 Hopkinsians though they were, chose Eliphalet Pearson to 
 their professorship of Natural Theology. And so the 
 seminary was opened for students on September 28, 1808, 
 with an attendance of thirty-six. 
 
 The inauguration of Andover Seminary was an event 
 of prime importance in the history of Congregationalism. 
 It was the beginning of a new era of theologic education, 
 it was the most formidable barrier erected against the 
 spread of Unitarianism, it was a focus of missionary zeal, 
 and its successful foundation marked the union between 
 Old Calvinism and Edwardeanism in eastern Massachusetts, 
 a union which averted a very serious division in the evan- 
 gelical forces at a time when all their strength was needed. 
 The seminary had from the first the confidence of the 
 churches, — a confidence which was amply justified by the 
 character and ability of its early professors. Under the 
 guidance of Leonard Woods in the chair of Theology from 
 1808 to 1846; of Moses Stuart, who came from the Plrst 
 Church in New Haven, Conn., to succeed Pearson in 18 10, 
 
AND OVER SEMINARY. 353 
 
 and whose occupancy of the professorship of Sacred Lit- 
 erature continued till 1848; and of Ebenezer Porter, who 
 was professor of Sacred Rhetoric from 1812 to 1832, not 
 only were ministerial candidates trained as they never had 
 been in America, but a far-reaching impulse was given to 
 theological studies on this side of the Atlantic. Systematic 
 theology, in the technical sense of that term, was esteemed 
 a relatively more important branch of a seminary curricu- 
 lum then than now, and the careful, clear, and thorough 
 instruction of Professor Woods was of course of prime im- 
 portance. His work was of the utmost value, standing as 
 he did in his theology in broad sympathy with Old Cal- 
 vinists and Edwardeans, in completing that union of the 
 evangelical forces which his election to the Andover pro- 
 fessorship had foreshadowed. But Professor Stuart did a 
 service of scarcely less value by his enthusiastic leadership 
 in Oriental Literature, a field then almost untrodden by 
 Americans, and by his introduction of the study of con- 
 temporary German theology. Nor was the power of the 
 seminary lessened, but rather increased, when Prof. Ed- 
 wards A. Park, who had occupied the chair of Sacred 
 Rhetoric since 1836, took, in 1847, the professorship of 
 Christian Theology that had been held by Professor Woods, 
 and remained its incumbent till 1881. Under Professor 
 Park the Edwardean elements in the creed of the seminary 
 were made more prominent than they had been under 
 Professor Woods, and his conception of the " NeV England 
 Theology " became part of the mental furnishing of more 
 theological students than any other Congregationalist has 
 ever personally taught. 
 
 The new system of theologic instruction inaugurated at 
 Andover was immediately popular. The entering students 
 in that institution during its first thirty years averaged 
 sixty-two annually. Such results naturally encouraged 
 
354 ^-^^ CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 the foundation of similar seminaries in other parts of the 
 Congregational field. The first to follow Andover was 
 that incorporated by the Massachusetts legislature in Feb- 
 ruary, 1 8 14, and which opened in October, 1816, at Hamp- 
 den in what is now the State of Maine, but was then a dis- 
 trict attached to Massachusetts. In 18 19 its location was 
 changed to Bangor, Me., where it has since continued and 
 from which place the seminary takes its name. It was 
 originally intended, as it still endeavors, to give special 
 facilities to those who have not had the advantages of a 
 college training, though this aim has not interfered with 
 the maintenance of a high scholarly reputation; but it has 
 always been one of the smaller of the Congregational semi- 
 naries. Through the labors of Rev. Dr. Enoch Pond, — a 
 pupil of Emmons, — whose connection with it extended from 
 1832 to 1870, Bangor Seminary attained a strong position 
 of influence in the region of which it is the center. 
 
 These advances in theologic instruction were naturally 
 regarded with interest by the authorities of Harvard Col- 
 lege, and the result was the enlargement of the old pro- 
 fessorship of Divinity into a Divinity School, — of Unitarian 
 sympathies, — in 18 15. 
 
 A similar enlargement soon after took place at Yale 
 College. It had been a cherished plan of President Dwight 
 that a separate department for post-graduate theologic 
 teaching should be established, but he was not permitted 
 to see the* desire carried into execution. In 1822, how- 
 ever, fifteen students of the academic class then graduating 
 petitioned that they might be organized into a class in 
 theology. The request met with the hearty approval of 
 the college authorities, a fund of $20,000 was raised, and 
 a Divinity School established as a separate collegiate de- 
 partment, having as its professor of Sacred Literature Rev. 
 Eleazar T. Fitch, who had held the chair of Divinity in 
 
YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL. 355 
 
 the college since 181 7; and as its professor of System- 
 atic Theology, Rev. Nathaniel W. Taylor, of whose life and 
 work there will be occasion to speak at some length. Both 
 were men of remarkable mental powers, and of very un- 
 usual pulpit abilities, but they were unlike in disposition, 
 Professor Fitch being timid and retiring, while Professor 
 Taylor was well fitted by nature to sustain the burden of 
 theologic conflict. The Yale Divinity School soon became 
 a power in the churches through the influences that flowed 
 forth from his lecture-room. 
 
 Nathaniel W. Taylor was born at New Milford, Conn., 
 in 1786, and after graduation at Yale in the class of 1807, 
 he studied theology with President Dwight, whom he 
 served as an amanuensis and by whom he was much be- 
 loved. In 181 1, after Moses Stuart had accepted a pro- 
 fessorship at Andover, he became Stuart's successor in the 
 pastorate of the First Church of New Haven, and from 
 that office he was called to the post in the 'Divinity School 
 which he retained till his death, in 1858. 
 
 As has been pointed out in the preceding chapter, the 
 Edwardean school by the beginning of the nineteenth cent- 
 ury had divided into two wings, — an ultra- Edwardean or 
 Hopkinsian section, and a conciliatory and moderate sec- 
 tion of which Dwight was the leader. It was the tendency 
 of this latter branch that Taylor developed in his own sys- 
 tem. The elder Edwards had asserted human responsi- 
 bility with positiveness, and this doctrine had been put in 
 the fore-front by all the Edwardeans, though coupled by 
 them all with the most strenuous assertions of the divine 
 sovereignty. It was to this problem of human responsi- 
 bility that Taylor turned his attention, and he endeavored 
 to explain it in what he deemed a more positive and less 
 objectionable way than the Edwardeans had thus far done. 
 Man is not a creature, Taylor asserted, whose acts are 
 
356 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 necessitated in accordance with an unqualified law of cause 
 and effect ; yet ev^ery man's choices are so connected with 
 man's antecedent conditions of soul and his situation that, 
 to God's perception, it is certain what they will be, though 
 man has full power of contrary choice at all times. This 
 " certainty with power to the contrary " makes it possible 
 for God to be sovereign and man dependent, while man is 
 also perfectly unforced in his actions. The natural ability 
 to choose aright is a real power, which can be exercised 
 by the sinner, if he is aroused to action by appeal to the 
 proper faculties of his mind. This appeal can be made to 
 the sensibilities, — for Taylor divided the mental powers 
 into the intellect, sensibilities, and will, unlike the older 
 Edwardeans who had made the twofold distinction of will 
 and understanding. The feeling to which an appeal can 
 be made is self-love, — a statement startling enough to a 
 Hopkinsian, — but Taylor held that the highest form of this 
 self-love, the pursuit of the highest happiness, could never 
 be inconsistent with that choice of the best good of the 
 universe which is benevolence. Yet while man has entire 
 natural power to change his character so as to love God 
 supremely, it is certain that he will not so change his rul- 
 ing purpose unless the divine Spirit so moves upon his sen- 
 sibilities as to induce his will to act, yet to act without 
 coercion. 
 
 Sin, Taylor maintained, is a voluntary disobedience to 
 known law ; it consists in sinning, it flows out of a bias to 
 sin which will occasion the active transgression wherein 
 sin consists whenever the circumstances are such as to be 
 favorable to sinful action, but this bias or disposition is not 
 In itself sinful. Taylor also denied that sin Is the necessary 
 means of the greatest good, as the older Edwardeans had 
 asserted. He held that a system In which the free action 
 of the creature is permitted may be one from which God 
 
NATHANIEL IK TAYLOR. 357 
 
 is unable to exclude sin. Such a system of freedom may 
 be preferable to a system of constraint in which God for- 
 cibly prevents sin by allowing no freedom to the creature. 
 It may be the best system. But though the possibility of 
 sin may not be preventable by God in a system of freedom, 
 sin may be prevented consistently with the purposes of 
 such a system by man's resistance to temptation, and such 
 resistance would be preferable to any yielding to sin, not 
 only for the interests of the individual but for those of the 
 universe as a whole. 
 
 The opinions of Professor Taylor won the general ap- 
 proval of his colleagues, and they soon became known as 
 the '' New Haven theology." The first public statements 
 that attracted any considerable attention to these theories, 
 aside from rumors of class-room teachings, were " Two 
 Discourses on the Nature of Sin ; Delivered before the 
 Students of Yale College, July 30, 1826," by Professor 
 Fitch. In these sermons Fitch defended the proposition 
 " that sin, in every form and instance, is reducible to the 
 act of a moral agent in which he violates a known rule of 
 duty." Two years later, September 10, 1828, Professor 
 Taylor delivered the annual Cojicio ad Clej^inn before those 
 of the ministers of Connecticut who had assembled at the 
 Yale commencement, and set forth fully his theory of sin 
 and of its non-preventability by divine power. This dis- 
 course aroused a keen discussion at once. Many of the 
 more conservative Edwardeans of Connecticut had looked 
 upon Professor Taylor with suspicion ever since his en- 
 trance on the duties of his chair; and it now seemed to 
 them that he had made a serious departure from New 
 England Calvinism in an Arminian direction and had 
 denied the full sovereignty of God, by his theories regard- 
 ing the nature and preventability of sin, and especially 
 regarding self-love as a motive in conversion. Publica- 
 
358 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 tlons In criticism and in defense of the New Haven views 
 followed in rapid succession, and with much warmth of 
 feeling. 
 
 Taylor's sermon was answered speedily by Rev. Joseph 
 Harvey of Westchester parish, in Colchester, Conn., and 
 by Professor Woods of Andover Seminary ; but a more 
 energetic antagonist than either speedily came into the 
 field. During 1829 Taylor reviewed, in a New Haven 
 reUgious magazine, the " Quarterly Christian Spectator," 
 an essay published in 1827 by Rev. Dr. Gardiner Spring, 
 of New York, on the ''Means of Regeneration," and in 
 his reviews the New Haven divine once more made evi- 
 dent his interpretation of religious truth. That summer 
 Rev. Dr. Bennet Tyler, then pastor of the Second Church 
 of Portland, Me., '* visited Connecticut and collected all 
 the pamphlets which had been published " relative to the 
 New Haven theology. The result of a '' careful examina- 
 tion of this literature," he records, *' was a full conviction 
 that the New Haven brethren had adopted opinions which 
 were erroneous and of dangerous tendency." And as a 
 consequence of this conclusion he attacked Taylor's views 
 with vigor in December, 1829, in his ''Strictures on the 
 Review of Dr. Spring's Dissertation." So thoroughly did 
 Tyler become, from now onward, the champion on the 
 conservative Edwardean side, in spite of the fact that the 
 party included a number of other men of vigor, that the 
 discussion was popularly known as the " Taylor and Tyler 
 Controversy." 
 
 Like Professor Taylor, Bennet Tyler was a native of 
 Connecticut, having been born in Middlebury, in 1783; 
 and like Taylor he was a graduate of Yale, his class being 
 that of 1804. After a pastorate at South Britain in his 
 native State, he became president of Dartmouth College in 
 1822 ; and in 1828 entered on his charge at Portland, Me. 
 
BENNET TYLER. 359 
 
 He was a vigorous writer, a natural leader, a man of sin- 
 cere piety, of great positiveness of conviction, and a full 
 sympathizer with the older Edwardeanism. 
 
 The next two or three years were filled with discussion, 
 negotiation, and publication, and resulted in the formation 
 of two clearly defined parties in Connecticut. Probably 
 this conclusion was aided by the contemporary discussions 
 in the Presbyterian Church which resulted in the division 
 of that body into the *' Old School " and ** New School " 
 factions in 1837. Certainly the Connecticut discussions 
 were a factor in that separation. The first step in organized 
 opposition to the New Haven views appears to have been 
 taken on October 12, 1831, when a few ministers of Con- 
 necticut met at Norwich and organized a " Doctrinal Tract 
 Society." The movement grew, and late in 1832, at the 
 suggestion of Rev. Dr. Nathan Perkins of West Hartford, 
 and of Rev. Joseph Harvey, an invitation was sent out to 
 all the associations of the State and to a few of those of 
 western Massachusetts asking them to send two pastors 
 each to a meeting to be held at Hartford, January 8, 1833, 
 '* to consult on measures which it may be proper and nec- 
 essary to adopt, in the present posture of our theological 
 concerns." The response was by no means general; only 
 about twenty ministers appeared at the meeting. But 
 at the invitation of a committee chosen at this Hartford 
 gathering a convention of thirty-six Connecticut ministers 
 of conservative sympathies assembled on September lO, 
 1833, in a Httle schoolhouse in what is now South Wind- 
 sor, but was then East Windsor, Conn. Among those 
 present in this meeting were Rev. Drs. Samuel Spring of 
 Hartford, Asahel Nettleton the evangelist, Nathaniel Hewit 
 of Bridgeport, Daniel Dow of Thompson, George A. Cal- 
 houn of North Coventry, Joseph Harvey, and Rev. Messrs. 
 Timothy P. Gillett of Branford, Frederick- Marsh of Win- 
 
36o THE CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 Chester, and Cyrus Yale of New Hartford. The result of 
 two days of deliberation was the formation of a voluntary 
 association of ministers, the '* Connecticut Pastoral Union," 
 with a conservatively Edwardean but not extreme creed, 
 based on a draught which had already been submitted to 
 the meeting at Hartford in the previous January and in 
 which the New Haven peculiarities were distinctly opposed. 
 This " Pastoral Union," into which the meeting at East 
 Windsor had resolved itself, now took steps toward found- 
 ing a new theological seminary, having its creed as the 
 doctrinal test. Rev. Dr. Tyler was soon chosen professor 
 of Christian Theology, and a fund of $20,'ooo was raised 
 by January, 1834. The contributions of one of the larger 
 donors determined the location of the new seminary at 
 East Windsor Hill, and this determination was strengthened 
 by the desire that the students should gain physical exer- 
 cise, then just beginning to be recognized as of importance 
 in educational institutions, by work upon a farm. The 
 new seminary, known as the '' Theological Institute of 
 Connecticut," was formally opened on May 13, 1834, with 
 Dr. Tyler, and Rev. Dr. Jonathan Cogswell of New Brit- 
 ain, as its professors. In the following October, Rev. 
 William Thompson, a native of Goshen, Conn., and just 
 entering on a pastorate at what is now Brockton, Mass., 
 became professor of Biblical Literature. His connection 
 with the seminary lasted till his death, in 1889, and to his 
 wisdom, patience, self-denial, and teaching skill, whatever 
 success the institution has had is chiefly due. Professor 
 Tyler's connection continued till 1857, and in 1858, the 
 same year that witnessed the demise of Professor Taylor, 
 he died. Public interest in the particular questions in de- 
 bate between the two institutions had been declining, and 
 can scarcely be said to have survived the departure of the 
 two champions. Fruitless efforts were made just before 
 
HARTFORD SEMINARY. 36 1 
 
 the deaths of Taylor and Tyler and again in 1864 to unite 
 the two Connecticut seminaries. The isolated location at 
 East Windsor Hill proved unfavorable to the younger in- 
 stitution, and it therefore removed in 1865 to Hartford, 
 where after a few years of domicile in its new location and 
 a very marked growth in strength, its name was altered to 
 that of " Hartford Theological Seminary." It has always 
 borne the somewhat conservative impress given to it by its 
 founders. 
 
 Contemporary with the establishment of a second theo- 
 logical seminary in Connecticut, a very remarkable move- 
 ment led to the undertaking of a great educational and 
 missionary enterprise in Ohio, out of which, through a 
 chain of circumstances of much interest, a theological sem- 
 inary speedily grew. Oberlin College had its beginnings 
 in the thought of Rev. John J. Shipherd, the young pastor 
 of the Presbyterian Church at Elyria, O., a native of Gran- 
 ville, N. Y., who had had his theological training under 
 the hymn- writer, Rev. Dr. Josiah Hopkins, long a Vermont 
 minister, and settled at Auburn, N. Y., in 1830. Shipherd 
 had as his associate in his plans Rev. Philo P. Stewart, a 
 native of Sherman, Conn., who had been a missionary of 
 the American Board among the Choctaw Indians, but was 
 now living in Shipherd's household. In 1832 they con- 
 ceived the idea of a Christian college, open to men and 
 women alike, furnishing an education to all who wished at 
 a moderateness of cost which should put it within the reach 
 of the most needy, and ultimately offering preparatory, 
 normal, collegiate, and theologic instruction. This institu- 
 tion they proposed to surround with a self-denying Chris- 
 tian community, pledged to common effort for the advance- 
 ment of the Redeemer's kingdom. This far-reaching 
 undertaking was begun almost as soon as it had been 
 determined upon. A large tract of uncleared forest land 
 
362 THE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 in the Western Reserve was obtained, and in April, 1833, 
 the OberHn colony, — a band of people all of whom could 
 trace back their family origin to New England, — settled 
 upon it and erected a college building. Instruction was 
 begun that year, and in 1834 the school was regularly 
 organized. In September, 1834, the Oberlin church, an 
 institution vitally connected with the college, was formed. 
 This church was originally on the " Plan of Union " ; but 
 in 1836 it became wholly and actively Congregational, and 
 since that time Oberlin has been a thoroughly Congrega- 
 tional community and college. No institution has been 
 more useful to our churches than this educational center; 
 its life has been one of intense spiritual activity, of deep 
 consecration, of high, self-denying achievement, and Con- 
 gregationalism to-day has few agencies for which it has 
 more profound reason to be thankful than for Oberlin 
 College. 
 
 It was the intention of the projectors of Oberlin that 
 the foundation should ultimately include a theological de- 
 partment, — the actual establishment of that seminary came 
 about unexpectedly, however, in 1835. Lane Seminary, 
 a Presbyterian institution of ** New School " sympathies, 
 had been founded at Cincinnati, O., in 1829, and had 
 opened its doors for theological students in 1832, with two 
 of its three professors men of New England birth who had 
 been prominent in Congregational circles. Rev. Drs. Ly- 
 man Beecher and Calvin E. Stowe. Soon after its open- 
 ing the Abolition movement began to make a stir in the 
 land, and the students of Lane Seminary, being located 
 just on the border of slavery, entered with eagerness into 
 the discussion and largely adopted anti slavery sentiments. 
 Alarmed lest the agitation should injure the seminary, its 
 trustees in 1834, without consulting the faculty as a whole, 
 adopted a rule forbidding the students to discuss slav^ery 
 
O BERLIN SEMINARY. 363 
 
 in public or in private. Four fifths of the students speedily- 
 left the institution in a body, and after some negotiation 
 proposed to go to Oberlln provided Rev. Charles G. Fin- 
 ney could be secured as a theological Instructor. At the 
 same time Shipherd urged the Oberlin trustees to throw 
 open their doors to colored students, — a step of then un- 
 heard-of boldness. The proposition was keenly opposed, 
 but was finally carried by the casting vote of the presid- 
 ing officer of the board, and it placed Oberlln permanently 
 on the basis of the Christian equality of all men, white 
 or black. At the same meeting the trustees elected Fin- 
 ney professor of Theology; and in the spring of 1835, 
 a few weeks after this action of the trustees, the Lane 
 students came, and Oberlin Theological Seminary was 
 established. 
 
 Rev. Charles G. Finney, whose coming as professor of 
 theology had been so earnestly desired in 1835, and whose 
 connection with the college at Oberlln as teacher and as 
 president was to continue till his death in 1875, was a man 
 of remarkable gifts and marked peculiarities. He was born 
 in Warren, Conn., in 1792, but his early training was in 
 western New York. Here he grew up with meager op-, 
 portunities for study, and intending to devote himself to 
 the law, till he experienced a profound religious awakening 
 in 1 82 1. Licensed to preach in 1824, he became one of 
 the most laborious of American evangelists, extending his 
 efforts all through the New England and Middle States, 
 and being characterized by a type of preaching and a 
 method of revlvalistic work which, though extremely 
 effective, seemed to many to be extravagant, and led to 
 some opposition even from evangelists like Lyman Beecher 
 and Asahel Nettleton. Many incidents are yet related of 
 his direct public prayers for individuals by name, and vari- 
 ous other eccentricities of manner by which he was always 
 
364 THE CONGREGATIONALISMS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 marked. Finney settled in New York in 1832, and in 
 1834 became pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle Congre- 
 gational Church of that city, from which post he went to 
 Oberlin. 
 
 In his theology Finney belonged in a general way to 
 the Edwardean school, but he gave to his system some 
 features that were certainly far removed from the older 
 " New England Divinity." He laid even more stress on 
 the natural ability of the sinner to repent than the later 
 Edwardeans had done. To his thinking, as to that of 
 some of the New England Edwardeans, holiness and sin 
 attach only to voluntary actions ; but he drew a conclusion 
 that was his own, holding that since these qualities are 
 diametrically opposed they cannot coexist in man. Holi- 
 ness is entire obedience to God ; all sin is as positive and 
 complete disobedience. When a Christian sins, his obedi- 
 ence is wholly interrupted for the time. But it is possible, 
 by the aid of the Spirit of God, to Hve in continuous obe- 
 dience even in this world, and every Christian should labor 
 and should expect to make this abiding obedience the 
 permanent condition of his life on earth. These doctrines 
 seemed to many of Finney's contemporaries to savor of 
 Arminianism, as they certainly did of Perfectionism, — a 
 feeling that was not lessened when in 1836, partly through 
 its desire to welcome Christians of all shades to its fellow- 
 ship, the Oberlin church, which embraced the leaders of 
 the college and community, dropped the doctrines of elec- 
 tion and perseverance from its creed. The more strongly 
 Calvinistic Congregational churches of the West, and New 
 England generally, looked upon the orthodoxy of Oberlin 
 with doubt, and this doubt strengthened the suspicions 
 regarding western Congregationalism, which did so much 
 to maintain the " Plan of Union" in operation in its later 
 years, and which were not wholly removed till after the 
 
FINNEY AND BUSH NELL. 365 
 
 Albany Convention of 1852. But the spiritual power and 
 consecrated purpose of Oberlin in time won it great re- 
 spect, though Finney's interpretation of Christian truth 
 has never found large acceptance in the Congregational 
 churches. 
 
 This brief sketch of the religious forces which molded 
 Congregationalism in the period of awaking religious life 
 and rapid transition in methods that forms the theme of 
 this chapter would not be complete without the mention 
 of a theologian who represented in large measure a break- 
 ing away from the Edwardean type of thought which had 
 gradually come to dominate Congregationalism, — Horace 
 Bushnell. Bushnell was a native of Litchfield, Conn., 
 where he was born in 1802, and a graduate of Yale in the 
 class of 1827. For the next four years he was a teacher, 
 a journalist, and then a student of law and a tutor at his 
 alma mater. A religious experience in 1831 turned his 
 thoughts to the ministry, and he entered Yale Divinity 
 School, where Professor Taylor was then in the height of 
 his fame, graduating in 1833. The same year he began 
 his only pastorate, that of the North (now Park) Congrega- 
 tional Church at Hartford, in whose service he remained 
 till ill-health compelled his resignation in 1859. He died 
 February 17, 1876. Never a man of vigorous constitution, 
 he was an untiring worker, and a most public-spirited citi- 
 zen, leaving the impress of his marked personality in many 
 ways on the community where he lived. 
 
 Bushnell's first important publication was his " Dis- 
 courses on Christian Nurture," issued in 1847. In this 
 book he broke with the conception emphasized ^by the 
 whole Edwardean school, which had looked upon entrance 
 into the kingdom of God as by a " conversion," usually in- 
 volving a conscious submission to God. This experience, 
 while not denied to children, is characteristic of adult years ; 
 
366 THE CONGREGATION ALISTS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 and the tendency of the Edvvardean reaction from the 
 abuses of the Half- Way Covenant was to cause those who 
 were the baptized children of the church to be regarded 
 as little more in the way of salvation, as long as they were 
 unconverted, than any other children. In this book Bush- 
 nell returned in large measure to the pre-Edwardean New 
 England view ; though he presented it in a very modern 
 way. Membership in a Christian family and baptism ought, 
 he held, to render the child presumptively one of the house- 
 hold of faith. The " true idea of Christian education," 
 Bushnell declared, is '* that the child is to grow up a Chris- 
 tian, and never know himself as being otherwise." For 
 such a child a " great change of experience " is not neces- 
 sary. " He ought not to be the subject of any such change ; 
 and if he is properly trained, will not be." 
 
 This presentation of the possibilities of Christian nurture, 
 as Bushnell conceived them, aroused opposition from many 
 earnest Edwardeans to whom his doctrines seemed to im- 
 ply that a man became a Christian by education rather 
 than by the direct change of his heart by a sovereign act 
 of God. Professor Tyler of the Theological Institute of 
 Connecticut was one of these. In a *' Letter to Dr. Bush- 
 nell," printed in 1847, Tyler maintained: "That the child 
 should grow up a Christian, it is necessary that he should 
 become a Christian. . . . Those to whom the privilege is 
 given to become the sons of God ... are not Christians 
 by natural descent. Grace is not hereditary, . . . They 
 are not converted by any efforts of their own, made in an 
 unrenewed state. . . . They are not converted by moral 
 suasion'^ or by any efforts of man. They are not made 
 Christians by education. ... It is God's prerogative to 
 change the heart." 
 
 Two years later, in 1849, Bushnell published a yet more 
 debate-stirring series of discourses, — his ** God in Christ." 
 
BUSHNELL'S VIEWS. 367 
 
 In this work he presented a semi-Sabelhan theory of the 
 divine existence, and a view of the atonement which placed 
 its entire empliasis on its man-ward aspects. To Bushnell's 
 thinking, the Trinity is a truth of Christian experience : " I 
 do not undertake to fathom the interior being of God, and 
 tell how it is composed. That is a matter too high for me, 
 and, I think, for us all. I only insist that, assuming the 
 strictest unity and even simplicity of God's nature, he 
 could not be efficiently or sufficiently revealed to us, with- 
 out evolving a trinity of persons, such as we meet in the 
 Scriptures." . But "whatever may be true of the Father, 
 Son, and Holy Ghost, it certainly is not true that they are 
 three distinct consciousnesses, wills, and understandings. 
 Or, speaking in a way more positive, they are instrument- 
 ally three, — three simply as related to our finite apprehen- 
 sion, and the communication of God's incommunicable 
 nature." 
 
 In his judgment, likewise, the atonement is *' the Life of 
 God . . . manifested in Jesus Christ, to quicken the world 
 in love and truth, and reunite it to himself." *' My doc- 
 trine is summarily this; that, excluding all thoughts of 
 a penal quality in the life and death of Christ, or of any 
 divine abhorrence to sin, exhibited by sufferings laid upon 
 his person ; also, dismissing, as an assumption too high for 
 us, the opinion that the death of Christ is designed for 
 some governmental effect on the moral empire of God in 
 other worlds, — excluding points like these, and regarding 
 everything done by him as done for expression before us, 
 and thus for effect in us, he does produce an impression in 
 our minds of the essential sanctity of God's law and char- 
 acter, which it was needful to produce, and without which 
 any proclamation of pardon would be dangerous, any at- 
 tempt to subdue and reconcile us to God, ineffectual." 
 
 These opinions set forth in Bushnell's *' God in Christ " 
 
368 THE COXGREGATIOXALISrS. [Chap. ix. 
 
 were at once attacked in the New York " Evangelist," the 
 '* Christian Observatory " of Boston, the '* Princeton Re- 
 view," the ** ReHgious Herald " of Hartford, and elsewhere. 
 A few months after the publication of the book, the Hart- 
 ford Central Association, of which Bushnell was a mem- 
 ber, took up the case, but decided eventually against 
 action. Against this course, the Association of Fairfield 
 West remonstrated in January, 1850; and in 1850 and 
 1852 the case was laid before the General Association of 
 Connecticut, but that body did not interfere. Bushnell's 
 church as a whole decidedly sympathized with its pastor, 
 and since the case could still be brought before the local 
 consociation for trial if three members of his church should 
 make complaint, the church, on June 2^, 1852, withdrew 
 from the Hartford North Consociation, — a step which the 
 general break- down of the consociational system that was 
 to result in the suspension of the Hartford Consociation 
 itself in 1871 rendered not very difficult. 
 
 These theories, and Bushnell's later works which in some 
 measure enforced and developed them, notably his '* Na- 
 ture and the Supernatural " of 1858, "The Vicarious Sac- 
 rifice " of 1866, and " Forgiveness and Law " of 1874, not 
 only created discussion, but two of the three views which 
 have been described have secured an abiding following. 
 The New England mind has in it little of the old Greek 
 desire to speculate for speculation's sake ; and Bushnell's 
 thoughts regarding the Trinity, though pitched upon most 
 prominently by his opponents, have had scant currency 
 and have excited little real interest. But his " moral 
 theory " of the atonement has gained considerable follow- 
 ing, though its adherents are still a decided minority among 
 Congregational ministers; and his conception of the im- 
 portance of Christian nurture and of the consequences 
 which may be expected from it has awakened even wider 
 
BUSHNELVS VIEWS. 369 
 
 response, though it, too, is by no means unquestioned. 
 Bushnell well represents a type of departure from some of 
 the older New England ways of thinking, especially from 
 the views of the Edwardean school which dominated the 
 first half of the nineteenth century, that has become in- 
 creasingly common during the last thirty years. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE DENOMINATIONAL AWAKENING — MODERN CON- 
 GREGATIONALISM. 
 
 The general indifference regarding the extension of 
 Congregational polity which had marked the epoch of 
 doctrinal discussion introduced by the Great Awakening 
 continued well toward the middle of the nineteenth cent- 
 ury. It has already been pointed out that the three oldest 
 national missionary societies of Congregationalism were 
 interdenominational organizations in their earlier years. 
 Under the " Plan of Union " a multitude of churches grew 
 up in the older West neither purely Presbyterian nor 
 wholly Congregational. Theological seminaries in their 
 instruction laid little or no emphasis on Congregational 
 polity. Ministers passing from regions where Congrega- 
 tionalism was prevalent to sections permeated by Presby- 
 terianism changed their church affiliations as readily as 
 they changed their residences, and Presbyterians coming 
 to New England were as cordially received. The de- 
 scendants of those who had crossed the ocean to establish 
 what they believed to be the only polity warranted by the 
 Word of God now seemed to hold that polity was a matter 
 of geography rather than of principle, — that a church west- 
 ward of the Hudson ought to be Presbyterian as surely as 
 one east of that dividing stream should be Congregational. 
 
 But at last, soon after the beginning of the fourth decade 
 of the present century, Congregationalism began to show 
 signs of awaking to a sense of its own mission and its right 
 
 370 
 
FORMATION OF ASSOCIATIONS. 371 
 
 to be. These evidences were first apparent in the regions 
 where Congregationahsm was brought into active compari- 
 son with other poHties, as in the older and more recent 
 West. State Associations began to arise in territories 
 where missionary labors had been carried on under the 
 "Plan of Union"; and afforded distinct evidence of the 
 dawning self- recognition of the Congregational churches. 
 The first of these then esteemed Western bodies to come 
 into being was that of New York, formed at Clinton on 
 May 21, 1834. The establishment of Oberlin College in 
 1832-34 was a step of the utmost importance for the his- 
 tory of Congregationalism in Ohio ; and was followed on 
 October 29, 1834, by the creation of the ''Independent 
 Congregational Union of the Western Reserve." In Sep- 
 tember, 1836, the churches and ministers of the Reserve 
 were united into a General Association at Oberlin, de- 
 signed ** to afford such of them as choose, the free exercise 
 of their Congregational rights." The Reserve was only a 
 section of a State, but its character was so individual that 
 the formation of its Association was an event of great im- 
 portance. It showed that the Congregational elements 
 were beginning to crystallize out of the general solution 
 into which they had been cast by the '' Plan of Union." 
 But consolidation came slowly in Ohio, largely by reason 
 of doctrinal divergences between the Oberlin theology and 
 the older Calvinism ; and a General Association for the 
 whole State was not brought into being till June 24, 1852, 
 when far-off Oregon had already had a State Association 
 for four years. The General Association of Iowa was or- 
 ganized at Denmark on November 6, 1840; and that of 
 Michigan at Jackson on October 11, 1842. Next came 
 the State body of Illinois on June 21, 1844; that of Kansas 
 in 1855, California in 1857, Indiana in 1858, and those of 
 the newer Western States in rapid succession. 
 
372 THE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 A glance at the sequence of these events reveals at once 
 the fact that by 1840 the home-missionary pioneers of the 
 Congregational body upon the frontier were making more 
 strenuous eflforts to advance Congregational polity than 
 they had thus far done. Hence it was that Iowa had a 
 General Association four years before the much older State 
 of Illinois, and two years before Michigan. This increased 
 emphasis on church government was not due to any pre- 
 scriptions of the missionary societies or of the contributors 
 to the missionary treasuries. It w^as owing to the awaken- 
 ing denominational consciousness of the Congregational 
 body itself, — an awakening which first became evident in 
 the West, and which at last aroused New England after it 
 had fully demonstrated that Congregationalism was as well 
 able to bring forth its characteristic fruits in the forming 
 communities of the new States as it had been in the New 
 England of two hundred years before. 
 
 This development of denominational spirit is w^ell illus- 
 trated in the introduction of CongregationaHsm into the 
 adjacent States of Illinois and Iowa. Illinois belonged to 
 the " Old Northwest " which was organized into a free 
 territory by the celebrated Ordinance of 1787. Iowa was 
 a portion of the Louisiana purchase of 1803. The first 
 connection of Illinois with Congregational missionary en- 
 terprise was in 1812, when Samuel J. Mills, the friend of 
 foreign missions, made report regarding the region to the 
 Connecticut Missionary Society. He found the Methodists 
 and Baptists already at work on the field. But though 
 Congregational missionary societies were actively at work 
 in Illinois by 18 14, their labors were at first wholly along 
 the lines of the ** Plan of Union." It was not till 1831 
 that there was a distinctly Congregational church in the 
 State, — that of Princeton, which had been organized at 
 Northampton, Mass., and had emigrated in a body. Till 
 
CHURCHES IN ILLINOIS AND IOWA. 373 
 
 the arrival of that church In its lUinois home, the churches 
 gathered by New England missionaries, and often com- 
 posed of New England material, had become Presbyte- 
 rian in their affihations. After 1833, when four Congrega- 
 tional churches were formed, the polity slowly spread ; and 
 by 1843 the Congregational churches of Illinois num^bered 
 sixty-one. Yet so thoroughly had the consequences of 
 the '* Plan of Union " controlled the rehgious concerns of 
 the State, and so widespread was the doubt whether Con- 
 gregationalism could flourish outside of New England, that 
 it was not till May 22, 185 i, that the first Congregational 
 church in Chicago was organized, — a city which now con- 
 tains fifty-one churches of this order. Not a little of the 
 early growth of Congregationalism in Illinois and the slow 
 reversal of the prejudice against the polity as unadapted 
 to frontier communities was due to President Julian M. 
 Sturtevant, whose connection with Illinois College at Jack- 
 sonville, — the first Congregational college of the State, — 
 lasted from its opening, in 1830, to his death, in 1886. 
 
 In marked contrast to these tardy beginnings in Illinois 
 was the rapid introduction of Congregationalism into Iowa, 
 — a region where settlements were beginning just about 
 the time that the revived interest in polity first clearly ap- 
 peared. The credit for having preached the first Prot- 
 estant sermon in Iowa belongs to a Methodist, who visited 
 that new Territory in 1834. But the "American Home 
 Missionary Society" was in the field by 1835, and the 
 Presbyterians and Congregationalists both organized their 
 first churches in the spring of 1838. That of Denmark, 
 which bears the distinction not only of being the first 
 church of the Congregational order in Iowa, but the first 
 beyond the Mississippi, was founded on May 5, 1838, in 
 a New England settlement begun nearly two years before, 
 and had for its minister Rev. Asa Turner, to whose energy 
 
374 ^^^^ CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 and enthusiasm the CongregationaHsm not only of Iowa 
 but of the whole West is conspicuously indebted. This 
 work, so vigorously begun, was taken up by nine students 
 from Andover Seminary, who had associated themselves 
 for missionary labor while at that seat of learning, and who 
 now, on their graduation in 1843, came to Iowa. Though 
 they did not make the planting of denominationalism chief, 
 they believed that CongregationaHsm was adapted to the 
 West. The members of this *' Iowa Band " were ordained 
 at Denmark, November 5, 1843, ^i^d at once threw them- 
 selves into the work of upbuilding Christian institutions on 
 the Congregational model. Through their influence and 
 that of Turner, CongregationaHsm thus took deep root in 
 Iowa while the State was still in the gristle. And Con- 
 gregationalism manifested here the same interest in educa- 
 tion which has always been one of its distinguishing marks. 
 In 1843 an academy was opened at Denmark; and in 1847 
 the earliest college in the State — Iowa College — was es- 
 tablished at Davenport, though since i860 the location of 
 this wide-awake Congregational school of learning has been 
 at Grinnell. 
 
 Contemporary with these events in Iowa, the foundations 
 of Congregationalism were being laid in Wisconsin. The 
 earliest church of this order there was, indeed, that among 
 the Stockbridge Indians, — a tribe that had been gradually 
 driven westward from the Massachusetts home where they 
 had enjoyed the services of John Sergeant and Jonathan 
 Edwards, till they settled in Wisconsin in 1821. Here, as 
 in Illinois, the Methodists and Baptists were early in the 
 field laboring among the white immigrants, establishing 
 themselves in Wisconsin in 1835-38. But by July, 1835, 
 the ''American Home Missionary Society " had entered 
 the region. The first Congregational church of Wisconsin 
 was gathered at Waukesha on January 20, 1838, and was 
 
WISCONSIN AND MINNESOTA. 
 
 375 
 
 followed in the same year by others at Kenosha and at 
 Beloit. Here at Beloit, nine years later, and largely 
 through Congregational efforts, one of the most valued of 
 Western educational institutions— Beloit College — came 
 into full being. In Wisconsin Presbyterians and Congre- 
 gationalists seem to have thought from the first that the 
 '* Plan of Union " should be laid aside, and that churches 
 should be formed distinctly of one order or the other ; but 
 this wise determination did not prevent cordial relations 
 between the two denominations, which united in October, 
 1840, in the ** Presbyterian and Congregational Convention 
 of Wisconsin." This agreement made no provision for 
 composite churches, such as had been characteristic of the 
 older union. From this convention most of the Presby- 
 terian churches withdrew within a few years, leaving it 
 essentially Congregational. 
 
 Minnesota, the State immediately northwestward of 
 Wisconsin, was originally foreign missionary ground. In 
 1835 the American Board began labor among the Dakota 
 Indians about Fort Snelling; but the few churches which 
 they gathered, some of which contained white persons, 
 were affiliated with Presbyterianism. In 1849 the ''Amer- 
 ican Home Missionary Society" entered the field; and 
 as its first missionaries thither were Presbyterians, the 
 churches gathered in 1849 at St. Paul and at Stillwater, 
 as well as that formed in 1850 at St. Anthony, were of 
 that order. But in 1850 Rev. Charles Seccombe and Rev. 
 Richard Hall, missionaries of the same society and of Con- 
 gregational sentiments, reached Minnesota. The day for 
 founding mixed churches had about gone by ; and though 
 Seccombe had been commissioned by the society to St. 
 Anthony, the Httle Minnesota Presbytery, which had just 
 been organized, refused to install him over the Presbyterian 
 church at that place unless he would join the Presbytery. 
 
376 THE CONGREGAriONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 This just demand was met on Seccombe's part by an 
 equally justifiable refusal to give up his Congregationalism, 
 and he therefore gathered the first Congregational church 
 of Minnesota at St. Anthony on November i6, 185 i, — the 
 body now known as the First Church of Minneapolis. 
 Attempts on the part of the " Home Missionary Society " 
 to unite the two churches in St. Anthony resulted in the 
 ultimate junction of both in a Congregational body. In 
 February, 1852, Hall founded the second Congregational 
 church in Minnesota, at Point Douglas. Four years later 
 the State Association came into being; and by 1858 the 
 Congregational churches in the region numbered thirty, 
 largely owing to the efforts of Seccombe and Hall. The 
 impulse thus early imparted has given Congregationalism 
 a strong hold on this State. 
 
 Contemporary with the establishment of Congregational- 
 ism in Minnesota the permanent introduction of this polity 
 into Missouri was effected. The missionary spirit of New 
 England had early gone out toward Missouri. In 1812 
 and 1 8 14 Samuel J. Mills had investigated its religious 
 needs in behalf of the Connecticut and Massachusetts 
 Missionary Societies; by 181 5 these bodies had begun 
 sending laborers thither, and the work was taken up with 
 vigor by the ''American Home Missionary Society " at its 
 organization. But partly owing to the doubt which existed 
 in the minds of New England men during the early years 
 of the century as to whether Congregationalism could 
 flourish in the West, and partly by reason of the slight 
 sympathy for New England institutions felt by the slave- 
 holding and largely Southern population of the State, Pres- 
 byterianism rather than Congregationalism was introduced 
 by these missionaries. With the exception of an abortive 
 attempt to establish a Congregational church commenced 
 at Arcadia in 1841, the beginnings of this denomination 
 
MISSOURI AND OREGON. 377 
 
 were at St. Louis on March 14, 1852, when the First Con- 
 gregational Church was formed through the efforts of a 
 man to whom Western Congregationahsm was profoundly 
 indebted, — Rev. Truman M. Post. This earnest Congre- 
 gationalist was born in Middlebury, Vt, in 1810, and after 
 service at Jacksonville, III, from 1833 to 1847 as professor 
 in Illinois College and then as pastor of the Congregational 
 church, he entered' the ministry of the Third Presbyterian 
 Church at St. Louis in 1847 on an engagement for four 
 years. Here his views on polity were well known, though 
 not advanced in any underhanded way, and this knowledge 
 led to the establishment of a Congregational church under 
 his pastoral care soon after his engagement*with the Pres- 
 byterian body had terminated. Of this new church he 
 continued the spiritual guide till his death, in 1886 ; but his 
 influence was widely felt in denominational affairs and was 
 a force far beyond the bounds of the State of his residence. 
 Congregationalism had reached the Pacific Ocean even 
 before the events which have last been noticed. Oregon, 
 the only region claimed by the United States which touched 
 that ocean till the Mexican War had resulted in the con- 
 quest of California, was the first scene of its operations, and 
 was at first regarded as foreign missionary ground. The 
 American Board entered upon attempts at the Christianiza- 
 tion of the Indians in 1835, sending out Marcus Whitman, 
 a missionary physician, and Rev. Henry H. Spalding, with 
 their wives. In 1836 these pioneers reached the land 
 of their pilgrimage by the then perilous overland route. 
 By 1838 their labors were reinforced by those of Rev. 
 Cushing Eells, and other workmen followed. Oregon was 
 still in dispute between the United States and Great Britain, 
 and to Whitman's energy and skill its preservation to the 
 United States was due. A journey to the national capital 
 in the winter of 1842-43, at great personal hazard, pre- 
 
378 THE CONGREGATIONALlSrS. [Chap. x. 
 
 vented the possible abandonment of this valuable region to 
 Great Britain as not worth the keeping. Whitman died a 
 martyr at Indian hands in 1847 ) while Eells lived till 1893, 
 and interwove his long and useful life in the history of 
 the religious and educational institutions of the States of 
 Oregon and Washington. The early missionaries labored 
 of course among the Indian natives, but with the incom- 
 ing of white settlers religious institutions were planted 
 among them, — the first permanent Congregational church 
 in Oregon being that at Oregon City, organized in 1844. 
 On July 13, 1848, the Congregational ministers and 
 churches of Oregon formed a General Association ; and 
 the same year the first laborer of the ''American Home 
 Missionary Society," Rev. Dr. George H. Atkinson, began 
 his long career of service to the Congregational churches 
 of the State. The Congregational love of education was 
 exhibited by the founding, largely through the efforts of 
 these missionaries, of Tualatin Academy in 1848, and its 
 higher department, Pacific University, in 1853, at Forest 
 Grove. 
 
 The discovery of gold in California in 1848 was followed 
 by the great rush of emigrants thither in 1849, ^.nd with 
 them came some who were interested in the souls of their 
 fellow-men. Rev. Timothy D. Hunt, probably the first 
 Protestant minister in California, reached San Francisco 
 in November, 1 848 ; and the next year there came Rev. 
 Joseph A. Benton, like Hunt a graduate of Yale, and des- 
 tined not only to be a leader in Congregational ecclesias- 
 tical affairs on the Pacific Slope, but later to be identified 
 with Pacific Theological Seminary, at Oakland, from its 
 foundation, in 1869, to his death, in 1892. The *'.OId 
 School " wing of the Presbyterians was slightly in advance 
 in obtaining definite ecclesiastical organization in Califor- 
 nia, gathering a church in May, 1849, but the Congrega- 
 
CALIFORNIA. 379 
 
 tionalists were not far behind. The First Church, San 
 Francisco, came into being on July 29, 1849, and Rev. 
 Mr. Hunt, who had been the first minister on the ground, 
 was speedily installed as its pastor. Two months later, 
 the second church in California — that of Sacramento — was 
 formed, with Benton as its minister. In 1857 a General 
 Association was organized. 
 
 It is thus evident that soon after 1830 the denomina- 
 tional consciousness, largely though not wholly dormant 
 in the early part of the century, began to awake, and Con- 
 gregationalism all through the Western States began to 
 take a more self-reliant and aggressive attitude. Though 
 union efforts still continued, Congregationalists felt in- 
 creasingly that their polity had claims which could not 
 be ignored. 
 
 While this development was in progress in the West, a 
 few men in the East were slowly arousing the older churches 
 to a sense of their heritage in pohty. Conspicuous among 
 these leaders of Congregational thought was Rev. Dr. 
 Leonard Bacon, — the son of a missionary sent forth by the 
 Connecticut society, and actively pastor of the First Church, 
 New Haven, from 1825 to 1866, — a relation which he did 
 not wholly sever till his death, in 1881. Dr. Bacon was a 
 man of commanding power as a speaker, of warm interest 
 in the antislavery movement, of marked taste for historical 
 study, and a natural leader of men. From his boyhood 
 he was fascinated by the story of the struggles and suc- 
 cesses of the New England forefathers. One of the earliest 
 of the literary productions of his maturer years was the 
 volume of ''Thirteen Historical Discourses," of 1839, in 
 which he told in graphic fashion the experiences for two 
 centuries of the church of which he was the pastor; one of 
 the latest of his writings was his " Genesis of the New 
 England Churches," which he put forth in 1874. He was 
 
380 THE CONGREGATJONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 largely instrumental in founding the '' New Englander " at 
 New Haven in 1843, ^nd the New York "Independent" 
 in 1848; and was a powerful opponent of slavery. He 
 was ardently a Congregationalist of a broad and catholic 
 type, leaning a little to the side of Independency. Living 
 in a State where the consociational modification of the 
 Congregational system was strongly intrenched, his influ- 
 ence largely contributed to the abandonment of its more 
 Presbyterianizing peculiarities. It was Dr. Bacon's good 
 fortune to be able to communicate this hearty love for the 
 Congregational polity to others, so as to kindle an interest 
 in its investigation and development ; and in his later life 
 he came justly to be looked up to with reverence in eccle- 
 siastical gatherings as an authority in all matters of Con- 
 gregational usage. 
 
 Another leader to whom Congregationalism was con- 
 spicuously indebted in this period was Rev. Dr. Joseph P. 
 Thompson, like Bacon a graduate of Yale, who held the 
 pastorate of the Broadway Tabernacle Church in New York 
 City from 1845 to 1871. With Bacon he was associated 
 in the establishment of the "New Englander" and the 
 " Independent " ; and though he never came to be the 
 authority on Congregational concerns that Bacon did, his 
 labors for the advancement of the denomination were very 
 considerable. 
 
 In Rev. Dr. Joseph S. Clark, of Massachusetts, a third 
 minister largely influential in the revived appreciation of 
 the New England polity appeared. A graduate of Am- 
 herst College in 1827, and of Andover Seminary in 1831, 
 he had a brief pastorate at Sturb ridge, Mass., but his chief 
 activity was .spent as secretary of the " Massachusetts 
 Missionary Society " from 1839 to 1857. His last days 
 till his death, in 1861, were devoted to the service of the 
 " Congregational library " and of the " Congregational 
 
BACON, THOMPSON, AND CLARK. 38 1 
 
 Quarterly," of which there will be occasion later to speak. 
 No man knew the story of the Massachusetts churches 
 better than he, and none was more convinced that Con- 
 gregationalism had a mission. He had little patience with 
 the readiness to subordinate polity to plans of union mani- 
 fested so often by the Congregationalists of the first third 
 of this century. '' We have been well called ' the Lord's 
 silly people,' " he declared ; and his opposition to such un- 
 wisdom increased with his advancing years. 
 
 The efforts of these men, and of others whom they 
 aroused or who labored with them, were greatly aided by 
 the ever-increasing study of the life and ideals of early 
 New England, — a study in which all scholarly New Eng- 
 land has joined, and which has made the work and aims of 
 the founders more familiarly and definitely known with each 
 passing year since the early part of the present century. 
 
 The first impulse emanating from an official source look- 
 ing toward greater recognition of the unity of Congrega- 
 tionalism, East and West, the removal of doctrinal preju- 
 dice, and a more aggressive assertion of Congregational 
 claims, appears to have come from the then newly formed 
 General Association of Michigan. In 1845 ^^v. L. Smith 
 Hobart, a Yale graduate of 1837, then pastor of the church 
 at Union City, Mich., and secretary of the Michigan As- 
 sociation, proposed a " General Convention of Western 
 Congregationalists " to deliberate concerning denomina- 
 tional advancement ; and, as a result of an approval of this 
 recommendation by the body of which Hobart was secre- 
 tary, such a *' Convention" brought together representa- 
 tives of the churches of the Northwestern States and a few 
 men from the East at Michigan City, Ind., in Jul}^, 1846. 
 That body declared the adherence of the Western churches 
 to the historic theology of New England, and discussed 
 the feasibility of abrogating the '* Plan of Union." 
 
382 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 This impulse which went out from Michigan was taken 
 up by the oldest of the General Associations on what had 
 been Western home missionary ground, — that of New 
 York, — and largely through the efforts of Rev. Dr. J. P. 
 Thompson, of whom mention has already been made. As 
 a result of an invitation issued by that body, asking every 
 Congregational church in the United States that felt so 
 disposed to send its pastor and a delegate, there gathered 
 at Albany, N. Y., on October 5, 1852, the first council or 
 synod representative of American Congregationalism as a 
 whole that had met since the Cambridge Synod of 1646- 
 48. In this *' Albany Convention " four hundred and 
 sixty-three pastors and messengers from the churches of 
 seventeen States gathered. It was a body illustrative of 
 the best spirit and embracing the leaders of the Congre- 
 gational churches of East and West. And it proceeded at 
 once to examine the denominational situation with fullness. 
 Its Business Committee, under the guidance of Rev. Dr. 
 Bacon, of New Haven, speedily announced its work to 
 be to discuss: ** i. The construction and practical opera- 
 tion of the ' Plan of Union.' ... 2. The building of Church 
 Edifices at the West. 3. The system and operations of 
 the 'American Home Missionary Society.' 4. The inter- 
 course between the Congregationalists of New England 
 and those of other States. 5. The local work and respon- 
 sibility of a Congregational Church. 6. The bringing for- 
 ward of Candidates for the Ministry. 7. The re-publication 
 of the Works of our standard Theological writers." 
 
 The labors of the "Albany Convention," thus vigorously 
 mapped out, were carried out with equal energy. After 
 a thorough debate, the ** Plan of Union " was abandoned 
 by a unanimous vote ; the "American Home Missionary 
 Society " was approved as impartial in its administra- 
 tion and the " American Education Society " was com- 
 
THE ''ALBANY CONVENTION:' 383 
 
 mended; intercourse between the Congregationallsts of 
 the East and the West was urged, and *' insinuations and 
 charges of heresy in doctrine and of disorder in practice" 
 of a vague and sweeping nature ** made against Congre- 
 gationahsts at the West" were discountenanced; the re- 
 printing and circulation of the works of the fathers and 
 theologians of New England was advocated; and the 
 growing opposition of Congregationalism toward slavery 
 was manifested in a unanimous vote that the missionary 
 societies ought to support only such ministers in slave 
 States as would *' so preach the gospel . . . that, with the 
 blessing of God, it shall have its full effect in awakening 
 and enlightening the moral sense in regard to slavery, and 
 in bringing to pass the speedy abolition of that stupendous 
 wrong." But the most efficient aid given by the "Albany 
 Convention " to denominational extension was its call for 
 $50,000 to aid in erecting meeting-houses in Ohio, Michi- 
 gan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Min- 
 nesota. The response from the churches to this appeal 
 was immediate and hearty, and their gifts reached the sum 
 of $61,891. A more permanent reply was the organiza- 
 tion at New York in May, 185 3, of the body then called the 
 ** American Congregational Union," — an indefinite title 
 which was exchanged in 1892 for the descriptive name 
 '* Congregational Church Building Society." This asso- 
 ciation was broadly planned *' to collect, preserve, and 
 publish authentic information concerning the history, con- 
 dition, and continual progress of the Congregational 
 churches in all parts of this country," and *' to promote, 
 — by tracts and books, by devising and recommending to 
 the public plans of cooperation in building meeting-houses 
 and parsonages, — . . . the progress and well- working of 
 the Congregational Church polity." In this effort it began 
 in 1854 the publication of the '* Year Book " of denomina- 
 
384 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 tional statistics, which passed later to the pages of the 
 " Congregational Quarterly," and is now issued under the 
 editorial superintendence of Rev. Dr. Henry A. Hazen, 
 by the Publishing Committee of the National Council, 
 through the " Congregational Sunday-school and Publish- 
 ing Society." The main work of the ''American Con- 
 gregational Union" has been, however, the payment of 
 " last bills " after needy churches have done all in their 
 power to provide themselves with buildings ; and by this 
 work the society has been a conspicuous factor in Con- 
 gregational advancement. At the close of its first forty 
 years of existence (1893) it had completed 2340 houses 
 of worship and 309 parsonages, and had given permanency 
 to many a struggling church which w^ould otherwise have 
 perished. 
 
 A further consequence of the ''Albany Convention," 
 more local in its effects, but nevertheless of general im- 
 portance to American Congregationalism, was the reorgan- 
 ization at Boston of the " Congregational Library Associa- 
 tion " in the same month that saw the beginnings of the 
 " American Congregational Union." The germ of such 
 an undertaking originated as early as 1838 in the thought 
 of Professors Bela B. Edwards and Edwards A. Park, of 
 Andover Seminary, and in 1847 Professor Edwards pub- 
 Hcly advocated such an undertaking. A beginning was 
 made in a comparatively feeble way, and a society drawing- 
 its membership from the immediate vicinity of Boston was 
 founded in P^ebruary, 1 85 i . This body was now remodeled 
 and its membership greatly extended on May 25, 1853, 
 when its largely efficient life really began. The library 
 thus instituted has become the chief single storehouse of 
 Congregational literature on the continent, and now con- 
 tains 32,000 volumes, besides nearly 60,000 pamphlets. 
 But as its work went on the thoughts of the " Congrega- 
 
A'EIV SOCIETIES. 385 
 
 tional Library Association " began to turn toward the pos- 
 session of a '* Congregational House," which might furnish 
 accommodation for such of the benevolent societies of this 
 order as had their of^ces In Boston and serve as denomina- 
 tional headquarters. An old residence was purchased In 
 the spring of 1857; and with a view to these enlarging 
 functions the name of the body was altered In 1864 to 
 " American Congregational Association," — a title which it 
 still retains. It was not till 1871, however, that the present 
 well-located but ill-arranged '' Congregational House " was 
 obtained. It Is the ambition of the society to replace the 
 ancient structure speedily with a building more worthy of 
 the denomination; but there can be no doubt that the 
 possession of a '' House " at all, as well as the magnificent 
 library, Is in no small measure owing to the Impulse that 
 went out from the " Albany Convention." Not a little of 
 the success of this Association and its library is due to the 
 untiring labors of Rev. Dr. Joseph S. Clark, Its correspond- 
 ing secretary and librarian from 1853 to his death, in 1861, 
 and of his successor till 1887, Rev. Dr. Isaac P. Lang- 
 worthy. 
 
 While this movement for the preservation of Con- 
 gregational literature and the housing of the Congre- 
 gational missionary societies was In Its beginnings, there 
 was entering upon a pastorate at Boston a man to whom 
 Congregationalism Is as much Indebted as to any who may 
 be named among its founders or expounders, — Rev. Henry 
 Martyn Dexter. Dr. Dexter w^as of Pilgrim blood, a native 
 of Plympton, Mass., a township which has been carved out 
 of old Plymouth. Born in 1821, his education w^as at 
 Brown University and at Yale College, and after his grad- 
 uation at the latter Institution in 1840, his theological 
 instruction was received at Andover. A pastorate at 
 Manchester, N. H., lasted from 1844 to 1849, when he 
 
386 THE CONGREGATJONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 was settled over what is now Berkeley Temple, Boston, — 
 a relation which he continued till 1867. Dr. Dexter's in- 
 clination toward religious journalism was marked, and in 
 185 1 he became the editor of the '* Congrcgationalist," 
 which had commenced its career in 1849. Under his hand 
 it prospered, and in 1867 it was united with the pioneer of 
 the American weekly religious press, the *' Boston Re- 
 corder," which dated its origin from 18 16. Of this joint 
 publication, generally known simply as the " Congrega- 
 tionalist," Dr. Dexter remained till his death, in 1890, the 
 editor-in-chief and one of the proprietors ; and he made 
 it the most influential journal of Congregationalism. 
 
 Dr. Dexter was a man of pa.instaking scholarly accuracy 
 and of indefatigable industry, and all his enthusiasm was 
 drawn out by the story of Congregationalism and especially 
 of its beginnings. In the pursuit of the obscure facts of the 
 rise of the denomxination he ransacked the libraries and ar- 
 chives of England and Holland, while his own library, now 
 in the possession of Yale University, is the best collection of 
 Congregational sources ever brought together by a single 
 student. It was with him a collection for use, and the 
 employment he made of it is revealed in his elaborate con- 
 tributions to Congregational history. Twenty-five pub- 
 lications from his pen are enumerated, besides his constant 
 editorial writings. His " Congregationalism : What it Is, 
 Whence it Is, and How it Works," printed in 1865, is the 
 ablest and most thorough modern exposition of the claims 
 and methods of this polity. His monumental work, " The 
 Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years," put 
 forth in 1880, is not only a treasure-house of facts regard- 
 ing the early history of the body, gathered from the most 
 obscure sources oftentimes and combined with remarkable 
 skill, it is indispensable to the student of Congregationalism 
 by reason of its enormous bibliographical apparatus. His 
 
HENRY M. DEXTER. 387 
 
 "As to Roger Williams" of 1876 and ** The True Story 
 of John Smyth " of 1881 are careful siftings of the evidence 
 regarding disputed passages of Congregational story ; while 
 his *' Handbook of Congregationalism," published in 1880, 
 is the most extensively used compendium of the polity 
 which it treats in outhne. But Dr. Dexter was much more 
 than a mere student, he was an active man of aflfairs. No 
 voice was more influential than his in his later life in Con- 
 gregational assemblies. He was a large-hearted, generous, 
 clear-sighted, and honorable leader. His Congregation- 
 alism was so intense as to reach the jure divino height 
 seldom attained by modern Congregationalists, though 
 characteristic of the first century of the history of the 
 denomination ; but he held his views in no spirit of un- 
 charitableness. He opposed all Presbyterianizing tenden- 
 cies ; but he welcomed attempts at the expression of 
 denominational unity by deliberative assemblies on a na- 
 tional scale and by missionary societies rendered actually 
 representative of and responsible to the churches. He, 
 certainly more than any other man, pointed out the line of 
 development in polity actually taken by American Congre- 
 gationahsm from 1865 to the present day; and he deserves 
 a high rank among those who are reckoned the formulators 
 and developers of the Congregational system. 
 
 With Dr. Dexter there was closely associated in his more 
 pubhc labors for denominational advancement a still ac- 
 tive minister, Rev. Dr. Alonzo H. Quint, perhaps the ablest 
 ecclesiastical parliamentarian that modern Congregation- 
 ahsm has produced, and a thorough student of its polity. 
 From 1853 to 1863 Dr. Quint w^as Dexter's near ministerial 
 neighbor, as pastor of the Central Church at Jamaica Plain, 
 Mass., and though Dr. Quint's later pastoral labors and 
 other activities have sometimes carried him farther away 
 from Boston, his connection with all Congregational devel- 
 
388 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 opments that have flowed out from eastern Massachusetts 
 has been intimate. 
 
 It was in November, 1858, that Rev. Drs. Dexter, Quint, 
 and Joseph S. Clark joined in the projection of a magazine 
 of Congregational history, biography, statistical investiga- 
 tion, and exposition of polity, which should do a more 
 positive work for the memory of the past of Congrega- 
 tionalism ajid its present advancement than any existing 
 periodical. The plan, which originated with Dr. Dexter, 
 was laid before the " Congregational Library Association " 
 in November, 1858, and the result was the issue of the first 
 number of the '' Congregational Quarterly " in January, 
 1859, under the editorship of the three ministers whose 
 names have been mentioned, and with the sanction of the 
 Association. With its second issue it also obtained the 
 official approval of the "American Congregational Union " 
 of New York, and the secretary of that society, Rev. Isaac 
 P. Langworthy, was added to its editorial force. The 
 usual vicissitudes of religious journalism produced various 
 editorial changes during the twenty years of life which 
 the " Quarterly " enjoyed ; but though the magazine never 
 received the support from the churches which it deserved, 
 it was one of the most important educational agencies of 
 Congregationalism during the period of development from 
 its inception to the establishment of the triennial National 
 Council in 1871. 
 
 While this development of Congregational activity was 
 in progress in the East, the revived denominational spirit 
 which had led to the "Albany Convention " was producing 
 no less important results in the West. Chief of these 
 consequences was the foundation of a new Congregational- 
 theological seminary at Chicago. The thought of this in- 
 stitution for ministerial education seems to have come to 
 its first expression by an organized ecclesiastical body in 
 
CHICAGO SEMINARY. 389 
 
 the wide-awake General Association of Michigan, which 
 had already led the way in securing united action favorable 
 to denomination extension by Western Congregationalists. 
 At its meeting at Ann Arbor, May 31, 1853, Rev. L. 
 Smith Hobart, already conspicuous in Michigan Congre- 
 gational affairs, presented *' a plan for Theological educa- 
 tion," which the Association referred to a committee for 
 report the following year. A carefully prepared '* Plan 
 for a Theological Seminary" was accordingly prepared; 
 and having been duly approved by the Michigan General 
 Association in 1854, was laid by it before the other Asso- 
 ciations of the Northwestern States. Iowa was the first 
 to respond favorably, on June 7, 1854, and the other bodies 
 gradually fell into line. The result was that, after some 
 preliminary negotiation, a convention of clerical and lay 
 delegates, representing the churches of Michigan, Iowa, 
 Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri, met at Chicago 
 on September 26 and 27, 1854, and organized the Chicago 
 Seminary, — the first theological seminary of any denomi- 
 nation in Chicago, — appointing boards of directors and 
 examiners, or ** visitors." The seminary thus constituted 
 was opened for students on October 6, 1858. The founders 
 were far-sighted and ingenious, and they had the advan- 
 tage of living in a time when confidence in the power of 
 the Congregational polity to care for institutions represen- 
 tative of large bodies of our churches was much greater 
 than when the New England seminaries were instituted. 
 Instead, therefore, of committing their foundation to the 
 charge of a self-perpetuating board of trustees, whose ac- 
 tion was supervised by an equally self-perpetuating board 
 of visitors, and the orthodoxy of whose professional 
 appointments was tested by an unalterable creed, as at 
 ' Andover; or making their foundation simply a department 
 of a university responsible to the general corporation which 
 
390 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 governs the whole educational institution, as at Yale ; or 
 placing its control in the hands of a board of trustees 
 elected by a self-perpetuating ministerial club, as at Hart- 
 ford, — they adopted the much more Congregational plan 
 of making the seminary depend ultimately on the churches, 
 its directors and visitors being chosen by a convention of 
 the churches of the States west of Ohio and east of the 
 Rocky Mountains, meeting triennially at Chicago, and in 
 which every one of those churches has a right to be repre- 
 sented by its minister and a delegate. To this convention, 
 and through it to the churches, Chicago Seminary is re- 
 sponsible for its teaching and its administration. The 
 seminary, which commenced its work in 1858 with two 
 professors and twenty-nine students, has grown marvel- 
 ously, and now has in attendance two hundred and two 
 young men, while its faculty, its buildings, and its endow- 
 ment give it high rank among Congregational institutions 
 for ministerial training. 
 
 Something of the new strength of CongregationaHsm in 
 Chicago was due to the entrance on a pastorate over the 
 First Church in that city in 1857, the year before the 
 seminary opened its doors, of an earnest and influential 
 upholder of Congregational ideals, — Rev. Dr. William W. 
 Patton. Dr. Patton was a native of New York City, born 
 in 1 83 1, who had served churches in Boston and Hartford, 
 and who now for twenty years was connected with Con- 
 gregational interests in Chicago. His last years, from 1877 
 to his death, in 1889, were spent as president of that noble 
 institution for the education of colored youth at Washing- 
 ton, D. C, Howard University. On September 5, 1867, 
 the first number of the "Advance " was issued at Chicago, 
 and Dr. Patton remained the editor of this widely influen- 
 tial Congregational weekly till 1872. 
 
 Meanwhile Congregationalism was pushing rapidly into 
 
IN THE NEW WEST. 39! 
 
 the newer West. October 9, 1854, saw the formation of 
 the first church of this order in Kansas, at Lawrence ; and 
 a General Association followed in August, 1855. Ne- 
 braska's first Congregational church, that of Omaha, came 
 into being on May 4, 1856, and the Association followed 
 on August 8, 1857. Colorado received Congregationalism 
 in 1863, — a church being gathered at Central City on 
 August 23d, and being followed by churches at Denver and 
 Boulder in 1864, and by an Association on March 10, 1868. 
 What is now South Dakota was reached in 1868, and a 
 church organized at Yankton on April 8th, of which Rev. 
 Dr. Joseph Ward, one of the most useful of the more 
 recent Congregational ministry, was pastor from 1869 to 
 1883, when he entered upon the presidency of Yankton 
 College, which he had helped to found in 1881, — a post 
 that he held till his untimely death, in 1889. Still exist- 
 ing churches were formed in the State of Washington, at 
 Seattle, in 1870; in Nevada, at Reno, in 187 1 ; in Utah, 
 at Salt Lake City, in 1874; in Indian Territor}^, in 1876; 
 in Arizona, at Prescott, in 1880; and the same year in 
 New Mexico, at Albuquerque; in North Dakota, at Fargo 
 and elsewhere, in 1881. Idaho and Montana saw the es- 
 tablishment of permanent churches in 1882 ; and Oklahoma 
 in 1889. 
 
 This extension was marked, as elsewhere in the story of 
 Congregationalism, by the desire to establish institutions 
 of Christian learning. Among the colleges which now 
 came into being, chiefly through Congregational efforts, 
 are: Washburn, at Topeka, Kan., in 1865; Carleton, at 
 Northfield, Minn., in 1867; Doane, at Crete, Neb., in 
 1872; Drury, at Springfield, Mo., in 1873; Colorado, at 
 Colorado Springs, Col., in 1874; Yankton, as has been 
 noted, in 1881 ; Whitman, at Walla Walla, Ore., in 1883 
 (on the basis of an academy founded by Rev. Cushing 
 
392 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 Eells In 1859 and opened in 1866); and Fargo, at Fargo, 
 N. D., in 1887. 
 
 A more distinctly ecclesiastical undertaking was the organ- 
 ization by the Congregationalists of California in 1 866 of a 
 ''Theological Seminary Association," which opened in June, 
 1869, the youngest of our denominational schools of minis- 
 terial instruction, Pacific Theological Seminary, at Oakland. 
 
 One name cannot be omitted from this story of increas- 
 ing denominational strength, though it belongs to the latter 
 part of the period just held in review, — that of Rev. Dr. A. 
 Hastings Ross, the most original contributor to the discus- 
 sion of Congregational polity that the West has developed. 
 Dr. Ross was a native of Winchendon, Mass., in 183 1, a 
 graduate of Oberlin College and of Andover Seminary, 
 who after a pastorate at Boylston in the State of his birth 
 from 1 86 1 to 1866, served successively the churches of 
 Springfield and Columbus, Ohio; and then from 1876 to 
 his death, in 1893, the church of Port Huron, Mich. Dr. 
 Ross early became a student of the Congregational system 
 of government, publishing much in its illustration and his- 
 torical exposition. His best known and most useful works 
 were his ** Pocket Manual of Congregationalism," which he 
 put forth in 1883, and his elaborate treatise, ''The Church- 
 Kingdom," of 1887. His thinking, though strictly Congre- 
 gational, linked itself less definitely with the historic pres- 
 entations of the polity than did that of Dr. Dexter. He 
 was more of an innovator, and more of an asserter of the 
 powers of ecclesiastical associations. His most marked and 
 probably his most permanently influential view, — that re- 
 garding the basis of ministerial standing, — was, however, 
 largely the outgrowth of what must be considered a posi- 
 tive improvement in Congregational usage which had come 
 about at the West. As instituted in Massachusetts and 
 Connecticut at the close of the seventeenth and beginning 
 
A. HASTINGS ROSS. 393 
 
 of the eighteenth centuries, the local Associations were 
 simply assemblies of ministers, and such they largely con- 
 tinue to be in the New England States. It has already 
 been seen that these Associations had for one of their duties 
 the recommendation of candidates to vacant churches, and 
 the custom of licensure thus established has persisted in 
 New England to the present day. The chief infelicity 
 of this arrangement is that it makes a preacher's appro- 
 bation to the churches the work of a ministerial body and 
 not that of the churches themselves. The Increasing desire 
 on the part of the churches for consultation and local help- 
 fulness has led to the general introduction Into New Eng- 
 land, In addition to the Associations, during the present 
 century, of district and State meetings for discussion, com- 
 posed of representatives of the churches and of the ministers, 
 usually under the name of *' Conferences." These " Con- 
 ferences " do not take the place of councils, they do not 
 advise in the formation or discontinuance of pastoral re- 
 lationships, or in the establishment of new churches, nor 
 do they attempt to solve church quarrels, as a council 
 does ; they are meetings for friendly discussion, and for 
 the choice of representatives to State and national assem- 
 blies. In the West, however, the "Associations " were early 
 and generally composed of representatives of churches as 
 well as of ministers ; and they have continued to exercise 
 the functions both of the New England Associations and 
 Conferences, thus causing ministerial licensure to Inhere in 
 bodies truly representative of the churches, — a method 
 undoubtedly more consistent with Congregational prin- 
 ciples than that usual In New England. 
 
 It was this Western development of the Association that 
 Dr. Ross proposed to make the basis of churchly and min- 
 isterial standing. In the Congregationalism of the " Cam- 
 bridge Platform" a minister remains such only while 
 
394 ^^^ CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 actually in ministerial relations to a definite church ; but 
 this theory, though ably defended by expounders of polity 
 like Dr. Dexter, was early practically disregarded, and a 
 man once set apart for ministerial service by ordination 
 came popularly to be looked upon as in some sense always 
 a minister, whether in a pastorate or not. This abiding 
 ministerial character raised the question of " ministerial 
 standing " and responsibility. How should the good char- 
 acter of a minister not in the service of a local church be 
 assured to others, and to whom should he be responsible 
 for his delinquencies? The question became more press- 
 ing as the country grew larger and ministerial changes 
 more frequent. For this diflficulty Dr. Ross proposed a 
 remedy in placing *' accountable ministerial standing in 
 District Associations, with the right of appeal in case of 
 injustice to a council of churches." In a like manner Dr. 
 Ross would give churches standing and accountability in 
 Associations. Probably the old consociational system of 
 Connecticut gave to Dr. Ross some hints as to his plan ; 
 but it was chiefly due to his own systematizing of elements 
 already appearing in Western Congregational development. 
 It would be too much to afhrm that Dr. Ross's suggestions 
 have become generally recognized Congregational usage. 
 His theory of churchly standing certainly has not ; but his 
 view as to ministerial standing bids fair to become so, the 
 National Council having voted at its session of 1886 ** that 
 the State organizations and local organizations of churches 
 be recommended to consider such modification of their 
 constitution as will enable them to become responsible for 
 the ministerial standing of ministers within their bounds, in 
 harmony with the principle that the churches of any locality 
 decide upon their own fellowship." 
 
 While this Western development of Congregationalism 
 had been in progress, the great Civil War had convulsed 
 
MINISTERIAL STANDING. 395 
 
 the United States and brought its burden of responsibiUty 
 and opportunity upon the Congregational as upon the other 
 Christian bodies of the land. Unlike some American de- 
 nominations, the Congregational body was not rent by the 
 struggle. Although a few churches of this order existed 
 at the South before the war, the denomination never ob- 
 tained any footing which made it a factor in the religious 
 life of that region so long as slavery continued. The atti- 
 tude toward human bondage assumed by the *' Albany 
 Convention" in 1852 has already been noticed, and Con- 
 gregationalism both in New England and the West was 
 strongly antislavery for many years before the rebellion 
 began. But if the Civil War did not bring to the denomi- 
 nation a problem of division and reorganization, it did open 
 to denominational effort a section of country which had 
 never generally accepted Congregationalism by removing 
 that which the Northern churches of this order believed 
 was the greatest hindrance to their southward spread, — 
 slavery ; and it presented a problem in the emancipated 
 negro that appealed powerfully to the missionary spirit of 
 these churches. So desirable was cooperation in meeting 
 the opportunites of the hour felt to be, that at least a year 
 before the conclusion of hostilities an extensive movement 
 was in progress looking toward a general council of the 
 representatives of American Congregationalism. 
 
 The impulse toward this gathering went forth, it is in- 
 teresting to note, from that '' Convention of the Congrega- 
 tional Churches of the Northwest," which met once in three 
 years at Chicago to choose the directors and visitors of 
 the Chicago Seminary, and to consider the interests of the 
 great region from which the members of the Convention 
 were gathered. That body, under the leadership of Rev. 
 Dr. T. M. Post, of St. Louis, voted that, in its opinion, 
 '* the crisis demands general consultation, cooperation, and 
 
396 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 concert among our churches, and to these ends, requires 
 extensive correspondence among our ecclesiastical asso- 
 ciations, or the assembhng of a National Congregational 
 Convention." A month later the proposals of the Chicago 
 Convention were laid before the General Association of 
 Illinois, and by that assembly a proposition for a ** Na- 
 tional Convention," like that which met at Albany in 1852, 
 was sent to the other State Associations ; and, before the 
 summer of 1864 was over, received the approval success- 
 ively of the representatives of the churches of Indiana, 
 Michigan, Iowa, Ohio, Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut, 
 Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, and Minnesota. The 
 churches of New Hampshire were divided, and there the 
 State body disfavored the proposal. By the several ap- 
 proving State Associations committees were appointed, by 
 whose joint action the plan of the national gathering should 
 be perfected ; and, as a result of their negotiations in a 
 " Preliminary Conference " at New York on November 16, 
 1864, a *' National Council " was called to meet at Boston 
 on June 14, 1865, having as its members clerical and lay 
 representatives of the churches, chosen by the local con- 
 ferences or associations in the proportion of two for each 
 ten churches, or fraction of ten in excess of one half, united 
 in each such local body. At the same time a number of 
 topics for discussion were agreed upon, covering a wide 
 range of denominational interests, and committees were 
 designated by which these themes should be suitably pre- 
 sented to the Council. 
 
 On the day appointed, the ''National Council" gathered 
 together in the Old South Meeting-house at Boston a 
 membership of five hundred and two representatives of the 
 churches. It was the most important convention that had 
 met since the Cambridge Synod, and it was much more 
 widely representative than its immediate predecessor, the 
 
THE ''NATIONAL COUNCIL'' OF 1S65. 397 
 
 "Albany Convention." It was a Council well worthy of 
 the churches, both in the distinguished character of its 
 membership and the thoroughness with which the topics 
 presented to its consideration were discussed. The signifi- 
 cance of the opportunities opening before the Congrega- 
 tional body were thoroughly appreciated, and an earnest 
 advance to meet them was urged ; but probably the most 
 memorable of the events of this Council were the discussions 
 regarding a Declaration of Faith and a Statement of Polity. 
 In Congregationalism each local church draws up its own 
 articles of belief in any language which it may deem proper, 
 under the limitation, of course, that a grossly erroneous or 
 heretical statement would subject the church adopting it to 
 withdrawal of fellowship by its sister churches. But though 
 Congregationalism thus asserts the autonomy of the local 
 congregation, its councils or synods have never hesitated 
 to formulate its general doctrinal position, not as a test to 
 be imposed on particular churches by external authority, 
 bu-t as a testimony as to what the belief of those churches 
 is. It was natural, therefore, that one of the tasks to which 
 the attention of the Council had been directed by the pre- 
 liminary committees was the adoption of a statement of 
 the faith of the churches whose creation it was. Such a 
 declaration was reported to the Council, therefore, by a 
 committee which the Preliminary Conference had desig- 
 nated for the purpose, and consisting of Rev. Dr. Joseph 
 P. Thompson, Prof. Edward A. Lawrence of what is now 
 Hartford Seminary, and Prof. George P. Fisher of Yale 
 Divinity School. This suggested form was referred by 
 the Council itself to a new committee, which elaborated it, 
 and, in particular, introduced a paragraph in which it de- 
 clared that the faith of the Congregational churches was 
 '' the system of truths which is commonly known among 
 us as Calvinism." 
 
398 THE CONGREGATION ALIS7'S. [Chai-. x. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the prevaiHng doctrinal 
 positions of Congregationalism were then and still are es- 
 sentially Calv'inistic. But the sympathies of the denomi- 
 nation had broadened since the opening of the century, 
 and many who were earnest Calvinists themselves felt that 
 it would be a mistake to tie Congregational fellowship to 
 any party shibboleth, even to one so venerated and his- 
 torically so descriptive of Congregational beliefs as the 
 name of the great Genevan theologian. The result was 
 that the proposed paragraph of definition was earnestly 
 debated, till it became evident that, if pushed to a vote, it 
 would be adopted by a decided majority of the Council, 
 and as evident that this affirmation that Congregational 
 doctrine is Calvinism would seem unduly divisive and 
 sectarian to a respectable minority. Such was the state of 
 affairs in the Council when the day came which had been 
 set apart for an excursion to the historic scenes of Plym- 
 outh. To a few of the body it seemed that a reunion on 
 a spot so fragrant with the memory of the struggles and 
 sufferings by which Congregationalism was planted on 
 American soil would furnish a fitting occasion for the 
 presentation of a modification of the declaration under 
 discussion, from which the disputed phrase might be 
 omitted. Such a form was hastily prepared by Rev. A. 
 H. Quint, chairman of the Business Committee of the 
 Council, — its last sentences being written, with a hat as 
 a tablet, on the train that bore the Council to Plymouth. 
 The new draught was chiefly taken from the forms already 
 before the Council ; but with the addition of a new opening 
 paragraph, a new expression of the essential unity of the 
 whole Church of Christ, and the omission, of course, of the 
 phrase " Calvinism." Presented to the Council assembled 
 on Burial Hill at Plymouth, it was accepted, subject to 
 slight verbal revision, and after the return of the Council 
 
THE "BURIAL HILL DECLARATIOXr 399 
 
 to Boston was adopted by a rising vote without opposition 
 on June 21, 1865. 
 
 The " Burial Hill Declaration," which thus came into 
 existence, is the only statement of faith formally approved 
 by a council representative of American Congregational- 
 ism as a whole since the Cambridge Synod of 1648. It 
 expresses " our adherence to the faith and order of the 
 apostolic and primitive churches held by our fathers, and 
 substantially as embodied in the confessions and platforms 
 which our synods of 1648 and 1680 set forth or reaffirmed." 
 It emphasizes the excellences of the Congregational polity ; 
 but at the same time it declares that " knowing that we are 
 but one branch of Christ's people, while adhering to our 
 own peculiar faith and order, we extend to all believers the 
 hand of Christian fellowship, upon the basis of those great 
 fundamental truths in which all Christians should agree." 
 It recognizes clearly the obligation to missionary service 
 incumbent upon the Church of Christ. Its chief defects 
 are its indefiniteness as to the extent to which the seven- 
 teenth-century symbols whereto it makes reference are 
 to be considered as standards of present faith, its merely 
 general treatment of such doctrines as it specifically men- 
 tions, and its rhetorical form, — a form better suited to an 
 address on an historic occasion than to a creed for local 
 and permanent use. But that a declaration of faith should 
 be issued at all by a voluntary body speaking in the name 
 of the Congregational churches of America was a fact of 
 great significance, and one which showed how much the 
 sense of unity in the denomination had been growing since 
 the period of indifference to poHty which had characterized 
 the early part of the century. 
 
 The '' National Council " of 1865 was also charged with 
 the formulation of a statement of polity ; and, at the in- 
 stance of the Preliminary Conference, Rev. Dr. Leonard 
 
400 THE CONGREGATIONALIS'TS. [Chap. x. 
 
 Bacon and Rev. A. H. Quint had prepared an elaborate 
 treatise on church government, similar in size and arrange- 
 ment to the " Cambridge Platform," and a concise epitome ; 
 both of which were duly laid before the National Council. 
 Here the proposed formulae encountered considerable dis- 
 cussion ; and the result was that the Council itself adopted 
 a brief statement of principles, drawn up by Professor Park 
 of Andover, which constitutes so succinct and so admirable 
 an epitome of modern Congregationalism that it may well 
 be quoted in full : 
 
 Resolved, That this Council recognizes as distinctive of the Congregational 
 polity — 
 
 First, The principle that the local or Congregational church derives its 
 power and authority directly from Christ, and is not subject to any ecclesias- 
 tical government exterior or superior to itself. 
 
 Second, That every local or Congregational church is bound to observe the 
 duties of mutual respect and charity which are included in the communion 
 of churches one with another ; and that every church which refuses to give 
 an account of its proceedings, when kindly and orderly desired to do so by 
 neighboring churches, violates the law of Christ. 
 
 Third, That the ministry of the gospel by members of the churches who 
 have been duly called and set apart to that work implies in itself no power 
 of government, and that ministers of the gospel not elected to office in any 
 church are not a hierarchy, nor are they invested with any official power in 
 or over the churches. 
 
 The Council also referred the elaborate statements of 
 polity that had been laid before it to a committee of twenty- 
 nine, widely representative of Congregationalism geograph- 
 ically, to serve as a basis for the preparation of a more 
 lengthy treatise on polity, which the committee might re- 
 port directly to the churches. The result was the publi- 
 cation in 1872 of the so-called " Boston Platform," — a care- 
 ful exposition of modern Congregational usage, in length 
 somewhat resembling the " Cambridge Platform " of 1648. 
 But though it bore the approving signatures of the twenty- 
 six surviving members of the committee, and was in every 
 
A STATEMENT OF POLITY, 4OI 
 
 way worthy of them, its very length and elaborateness have 
 prevented it from coming into any extensive use. 
 
 The Council also discussed with much thoroughness the 
 work of evangelization in the West and South, church- 
 building, ministerial education, and other problems of the 
 advancement of the kingdom of God. It is needless to say 
 that it had no authority to bind the action of individual 
 churches, and that it was not a judicial body ; but its 
 influence was none the less widely felt, and it contribu- 
 ted none the less positively to Congregational advance- 
 ment. 
 
 The missionary work at the South, which was one of 
 the objects of consideration at this National Council of 
 1865, and for which the emancipation of the slaves and 
 the collapse of the rebellion had opened a door, had been 
 carried on for a number -of years under great difficulties 
 by a Congregational society which was now coming into 
 prominence and much enlarged activity, — the " American 
 Missionary Association." This association grew out of 
 several little missionary bodies of antislavery sympathies, 
 which had felt that the older missionary societies were 
 not sufficiently outspoken in their denunciation of human 
 bondage. The oldest of these centers of impulse was the 
 " Amistad Committee," — an association formed in New 
 York to provide legal defense and religious instruction for 
 the captured cargo of the slave-schooner " Amistad," seized 
 in August, 1839, and brought to New London, Conn. As 
 a result of the labors of this committee the ''Amistad " cap- 
 tives were declared free by the United States Supreme 
 Court, were given religious teaching at Farmington, Conn., 
 and were sent to Kaw Mendi, near Sierra Leone, in Africa. 
 In order to perpetuate and extend the religious impression 
 made upon these poor Africans, a little association was 
 organized at Hartford, Conn., — the " Union Missionary 
 
402 THE COXGKEGATIOXALISTS. [Chap, x.' 
 
 Society," — under the auspices of which three missionaries 
 were sent out with the returning captives, who carried on 
 work with some success in western Africa. A third httle 
 center for aid to the negro race was the " Committee for 
 West India Missions," formed in 1844 to provide the sup- 
 port of Rev. David S. Ingraham, an OberHn graduate, and 
 those who were associated with him in missionary labors 
 among the freedmen of Jamaica. Still another of these 
 minor organizations was the '* Western Evangelical Mis- 
 sionary Society," — a body formed by the association of 
 the churches in the Western Reserve of Ohio In 1843, ^or 
 work among the Indians. 
 
 The existence of these unions led to the thought of a 
 larger organization, of similar antislavery tendencies, which 
 could do a like work on an extended scale. The result 
 was the formation of the *' American Missionary Associa- 
 tion " at Albany on September 3, 1846, into which the 
 older minor organizations speedily merged themselves or 
 their work. The ''American Missionary Association " was 
 at first almost as much a foreign as a home missionary so- 
 ciety. By 1854 It had 71 missionaries at various stations 
 in Africa, Jamaica, the Hawaiian Islands, Slam, and Egypt, 
 as well as among the American Indians and the negro 
 fugitives who had found a refuge in Canada. At the same 
 time it entered heartily Into the work of upbuilding anti- 
 slavery churches at home, employing by i860 as many as 
 1 12 home missionaries, chiefly In Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, 
 Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Kansas. A few 
 of its missionaries were laboring among the whites of the 
 slave States, especially In Kentucky, where they laid the 
 foundations of Berea College, and In North Carolina, en- 
 countering everywhere much popular opposition ; but as 
 long as slavery continued the negroes of the South were 
 practically inaccessible, and the impression made by the 
 
''AMERICAN MISSION AR Y ASSOCIA TION" 
 
 403 
 
 "American Missionary Association" upon that region was 
 almost inappreciable. 
 
 With the outbreak of the war, however, the whole situa- 
 tion was changed ; and the Congregational churches found 
 in the ''American Missionary Association " the agency 
 through which to labor for the newly emancipated colored 
 population. With the entrance of the Union armies into 
 the South the society began, on September 17, 1 861, at 
 Hampton, Va., the first day-school for the freedmen ; and 
 as the war went on other schools were planted at Norfolk, 
 Va., Washington, D. C, Carlo, 111., Newbern, N. C, and in 
 many other places, the teachers and missionaries following 
 closely in the wake of the armies. By 1864 the society had 
 250 laborers among the negroes. At the close of the war 
 the whole Southern field was thrown open to its opera- 
 tions, and the "American Missionary Association " received 
 the hearty commendation of the National Council of 1865, 
 which advised the churches to raise $250,000 for immedi- 
 ate work among the colored population. As a result, the 
 income of the society, which had amounted to $47,062 in 
 the year ending in 1862, rose to $253,045 in that closing 
 in 1866. By 1867 the society had 528 missionaries and 
 teachers in its employ. 
 
 The need of the negro seemed to be general training of 
 mind and body almost as imperatively as religious instruc- 
 tion, and the *' American Missionary Association " there- 
 fore, from its commencement of labor among the freed- 
 men, aimed at the establishment of permanent educational 
 institutions open to students without distinction of race. 
 Largely through the efforts of this society, the Hampton 
 Normal and Agricultural Institute, at Hampton, Va., was 
 opened in 1868, — a training-school which has done a noble 
 work for the freedmen and the Indians, under the leader- 
 ship of General S. C. Armstrong, its principal from its be- 
 
404 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 ginning to his death, in 1893. Atlanta University, at 
 Atlanta, Ga., incorporated in 1867 and opened two years 
 later, is another educational center in which Congregation- 
 ahsts, and their *' American Missionary Association," have 
 had a large share. A similar interest has been felt in 
 Howard University, founded at Washington, D.C., in 1867, 
 where the Theological Department is still under the care 
 of this society. These institutions are controlled as a 
 whole by their own trustees. More directly under the 
 charge of this agency of the Congregational churches are : 
 Fisk University at Nashville, Tenn., opened as a school in 
 1866 and incorporated as an institution for higher educa- 
 tion in 1867; Talladega College, situated in the town of 
 the same name in Alabama, opened in 1867 and chartered 
 two years later; Tougaloo University, named from the 
 Mississippi village of its location, and begun in 1869, still 
 rather of the grade of a normal school than what its title 
 shows that it aims to be ; Straight University, begun at 
 New Orleans in 1869; and Tillotson Collegiate and Nor- 
 mal Institute at Austin, Texas, chartered in 1876. In 
 these institutions manual and industrial instruction accom- 
 panies a thorough intellectual training. Theological cou rses 
 are also given in Fisk, Talladega, and Straight, as well as 
 at Howard, Universities. And besides these institutions 
 of a higher grade, the "American Missionary Association " 
 has founded numerous schools of primary and secondary 
 education, so that the schools of all grades now under its 
 charge in the South number seventy-eight. 
 
 While the ** American Missionary Association" was 
 thus busily engaged in the work of education at the 
 South, it by no means neglected the planting of churches. 
 Its first church among the colored people was organized 
 at Charleston, S. C, on April 14, 1867; and the second 
 followed at Atlanta, Ga., in May of the same year. Be- 
 
''AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION: 
 
 405 
 
 sides a considerable number of congregations that have 
 become self-supporting, the society now maintains 152 
 churches in the South, and by its aid Congregationalism is. 
 now represented in every Southern State. These Con- 
 gregational workers have cared more for character than 
 numbers, and it may be that the negro can best be reached 
 in large masses by polities demanding less individual in- 
 telligence than that of New England; but though these 
 Southern churches of the Congregational fellowship are 
 still comparatively few, they represent much self-denying 
 labor, they are a credit to the Congregational name, and 
 they and the educational institutions which Congregation- 
 alism has planted are of great value in holding up a high 
 ideal before the colored people and in offering them the 
 means for its attainment. They have sent out spiritual 
 quickening far beyond the bounds of their nominal fellow- 
 ship. They have stood with uncompromising firmness for 
 the principle that no distinctions of race or color should be 
 made in educational privileges or ecclesiastical fellowship. 
 At the same time it is just to remark that so thoroughly 
 has the ''American Missionary Association " been the his- 
 toric representative of the antislavery spirit of the North 
 that the ** Congregational Home Missionary Society" has 
 found it advantageous, without abandoning the principle 
 that no man should be denied fellowship in a Congrega- 
 tional church on account of color or race, to introduce its 
 laborers, and to a limited extent to establish churches, in 
 the Southern field. 
 
 The " American Missionary Association " was founded 
 to labor among the Indians and in the foreign field as well 
 as for the negro race. Its Indian missions were for a time 
 intermitted during the exacting period of rapid increase in 
 its Southern work consequent upon the war ; but they were 
 resumed in 1870, and these labors were much increased 
 
406 THE CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 when the American Board transferred its missions among 
 the Indians to this society as a result of negotiations begun 
 in 1874 and completed in 1882. These missions are still 
 maintained, and have been extended to the Eskimos of 
 Alaska. They now report 92 laborers, 12 churches, and 
 12 schools. As part of the same agreement with the 
 American Board, the ** American Missionary Association " 
 assigned its foreign work to the care of the older society. 
 
 Two other missionary efforts have marked the endeavors 
 of the '* American Missionary Association " to reach the 
 neglected races of the United States, — its work among the 
 Chinese and among the mountain whites. Attempts at 
 the Christianization of Chinese immigrants in California 
 were begun by this society as early as 1852, but it was 
 not till 1870 that they were entered upon with system or 
 on an extended scale. The society now employs 40 mis- 
 sionaries in this labor, and with results which show that 
 the effort has been fairly successful The work among 
 the neglected white inhabitants of the mountains of Ken- 
 tucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina was begun in a very 
 feeble way as early as 1857; but in 1882 it was taken up 
 in earnest by the society, and has proved one of the most 
 interesting fields of missionary activity to which the atten- 
 tion of Congregationalists has been directed. 
 
 An illustration of the missionary spirit of the Congrega- 
 tional churches, though not peculiar to them, is the grow- 
 ing tendency toward the organization of Christian women 
 for the general advancement of missionary enterprises, and 
 especially for reaching their heathen sisters with the gospel 
 through laborers of their own sex. In January, 1868, as 
 a result of some previous negotiation, about forty women 
 of the vicinity of Boston organized the *' Woman's Board 
 of Missions," which speedily became auxiliary to the 
 American Board, its purpose, as expressed in its charter 
 
PVOMAN'S MISSIONARY SOCIETIES. 407 
 
 granted by the Massachusetts legislature in 1869, being 
 " to collect, receive, and hold money ... to be exclusively 
 expended in sending out and supporting such unmarried 
 females as the Prudential Committee of the American 
 Board . . . shall, under the recommendation of the Board 
 of Directors of this corporation, designate and appoint as 
 assistant missionaries for the Christianization of women in 
 foreign lands ; and for the support of such other female 
 helpers in the missionary work, as may be selected by the 
 Board of Directors, with the approbation of the said Pru- 
 dential Committee." 
 
 The example of this society led to the organization at 
 Chicago, in October, 1868, of the ** Woman's Board of 
 Missions of the Interior," and of the ''Woman's Board of 
 Missions for the Pacific," at Santa Cruz, Cal, in 1873, to 
 do a similar work in the regions of which they are the 
 natural centers. These societies have planted auxiliaries 
 throughout all the portion of the United States occupied 
 in force by the Congregational churches, and the result 
 has been not only a notable increase in missionary labors 
 and contributions, but the extensive banding together of 
 the young people of these churches for missionary instruc- 
 tion and effort. So successful has the movement been 
 that similar organizations of women have been formed in 
 forty-one States and Territories in aid of the several home 
 missionary societies of Congregationalism, though these 
 State bodies are not gathered in any national association. 
 
 The youngest of Congregational missionary organiza- 
 tions is the "New West Education Commission," — a so- 
 ciety formed at Chicago and incorporated in 1879, having 
 as its aim '' the promotion of Christian civiHzation in Utah 
 and adjacent States and Territories, by the education of 
 the children and youth under Christian teachers, and by the 
 use of such other kindred agencies as may at any time be 
 
408 THE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 deemed wise." By 1892 this commission had 28 schools 
 under its charge, employing 68 teachers, and instructing 
 2812 pupils; but its separate existence ceased in 1893, ^s 
 has already been mentioned, though its work continues, it 
 having been merged at that time in the "American Edu- 
 cation Society." 
 
 The evident advantages which had flowed from the 
 National Council of 1865, the impulse which it had given 
 to Congregational advance, and the general wisdom of its 
 actions, led to the widespread feeling throughout the Con- 
 gregational body that such an assembly, without judicial 
 authority but representative of the denomination as a whole 
 and able therefore to voice its sentiments and discuss its 
 needs, should be a permanent instead of an occasional 
 feature of Congregational religious life. To a few, such a 
 regularly recurring assembly seemed a possible menace to 
 ecclesiastical independence ; but the majority of the de- 
 nomination were prepared to see in a permanent National 
 Council only a fuller expression of that fellowship of the 
 churches wiiich Congregationalism has ahvays regarded 
 as one of the peculiar merits of its polity, and which the 
 voluntary system of the nineteenth century has proved 
 itself as well able to foster as the State supervision of the 
 seventeenth century. This feeling found a voice through 
 a convention to which the approach of the two hundred 
 and fiftieth anniversary of the landing of the *' Mayflower " 
 Pilgrims at Plymouth gave occasion. 
 
 In order to devise a proper celebration of that impor- 
 tant event in Congregational history, the Church of the 
 Pilgrimage at Plymouth asked its sister-churches to send 
 delegates to New York to consult regarding the method 
 of commemoration. As a result of this invitation a meet- 
 ing was held on March 2, 1870, and a committee to take 
 suitable action was appointed, including such champions 
 
THE TRIENNIAL NATIONAL COUNCIL. 409 
 
 of Congregationalism as Rev. Drs. Dexter, Quint, and 
 Patton. At their instance, a " Pilgrim Memorial Con- 
 vention," to which representatives of all Congregational 
 churches in the United States were bidden, assembled at 
 Chicago on the 27th of the following April. In this con- 
 vention the impulse toward a permanent National Council 
 was strongly manifested, and it therefore voted to " recom- 
 mend to the Congregational State Conferences and Asso- 
 ciations, and to other local bodies, to unite in measures for 
 instituting on the principle of fellowship, excluding eccle- 
 siastical authority, a permanent National Conference." 
 
 Thus invited, the General Conference of Ohio appointed 
 a committee, with Rev. Dr. A. H. Ross as its chairman, to 
 correspond with other State bodies and perfect the plan. 
 The suggestion met w4th general approval, — the steps were 
 the same which had led to the National Council of 1865, 
 — the various State organizations appointed committees, 
 which, at the suggestion of the General Association of 
 New York, met as a preliminary convention at Boston on 
 December 21, 1870. To this preliminary convention it 
 appeared ** clearly to be the voice of the churches, that a 
 National Council of the Congregational churches of the 
 United States be organized." It therefore invited them 
 to meet by delegates chosen substantially like the repre- 
 sentatives to the Council of 1865, and intrusted the draft- 
 ing of a constitution for submission to the Council-to-be, 
 together with the designation of the time and place of 
 meeting, to a committee of which Rev. Dr. Quint was 
 chairman. 
 
 As a result of all these proceedings, a National Council 
 assembled at Oberlin, O., on November 15, 1871, with an 
 attendance of 2^6 delegates representative of the Congre- 
 gational churches of twenty-five States and Territories, 
 and adopted a constitution organizing a permanent triennial 
 
4IO THE CONGKEGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 body. The more important sections of this document are 
 as follows : 
 
 The Congregational churches of the United States, by elders and mes- 
 sengers assembled, do now associate themselves in National Council : 
 
 To express and foster their substantial unity in doctrine, polity, and work ; 
 and 
 
 To consult upon the common interests of all the churches, their duties in 
 the work of evangelization, the united development of their resources, and 
 their relations to all parts of the kingdom of Christ. 
 
 They agree in belief that the Holy Scriptures are the sufficient and only 
 infallible rule of religious faith and practice ; their interpretation thereof being 
 in substantial accordance with the great doctrines of the Christian faith, com- 
 monly called evangelical, held in our churches from the early times, and suf- 
 ficiently set forth by former General Councils. 
 
 They agree in the belief that the right of government resides in local 
 churches, or congregations of believers, who are responsible directly to the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, the One Head of the church universal and of all particular 
 churches ; but that all churches, being in communion one with another as 
 parts of Christ's catholic church, have mutual duties subsisting in the obliga- 
 tions of fellowship. 
 
 The churches, therefore, while establishing this National Council for the 
 furtherance of the common interests and work of all the churches, do main- 
 tain the Scriptural and inalienable right of each church to self-government 
 and administration ; and this National Council shall never exercise legislative 
 or judicial authority, nor consent to act as a council of reference. 
 
 And for the convenience'of orderly consultation, they establish the follow- 
 ing Rules : 
 
 I. Sessions. — The churches will meet in National Council every third year. 
 They shall also be convened in special session whenever any five of the gen- 
 eral State organizations shall so request. 
 
 n. Representation. — The churches shall be represented, at each session, 
 by delegates, either ministers or laymen, appointed in number and manner 
 as follows : 
 
 1. The churches, assembled in their local organizations, appoint one dele- 
 gate for every ten churches in their respective organizations, and one for a 
 fraction of ten greater than one half, it being understood that whenever the 
 churches of any State are directly united in a general organization, they may, 
 at their option, appoint the delegates in such a body, instead of in local or- 
 ganizations, but in the above ratio of churches so united. 
 
 2. In addition to the above, the churches united in State organization ap- 
 point by such body one delegate, and one for each ten thousand communi- 
 cants in their fellowship, and one for a major fraction thereof: — 
 
 3. It being recommended that the number of delegates be, in all cases, 
 divided between ministers and laymen, as nearly equally as is practicable. 
 
THE TRIENNIAL NATIONAL COUNCIL. 41 I 
 
 4. Such Congregational general societies for Christian work, and the fac- 
 ulties of such theological seminaries, as may be recognized by this Council, 
 may be represented by one delegate each, such representatives having the 
 right of discus,sion only. 
 
 At the same time the National Council formally ex- 
 pressed the desire of the Congregational churches to pro- 
 mote the unity of the whole Church of Christ, affirming 
 that: 
 
 To us, as to our brethren, " There is one body and one spirit, even as we 
 are called in one hope of our calling." 
 
 As little as did our fathers in their day, do we in ours, make a pretension 
 to be the only churches of Christ. We find ourselves consulting and acting 
 together under the distinctive name of Congregationalists, because, in the 
 present condition of our common Christianity, we have felt ourselves called 
 to ascertain and do our own appropriate part of the work of Christ's church 
 among men. 
 
 We especially desire, in prosecuting the common work of evangelizing our 
 own land and the world, to observe the common and sacred law, that in the 
 wide field of the world's evangelization, we do our work in friendly coopera- 
 tion with all those who love and serve our common Lord. 
 
 Possibly the doctrinal statements of the constitution are 
 more important for what is there left unsaid than for what 
 is distinctly affirmed. The expression *' commonly called 
 evangelical," taken in connection with the broad offer of 
 cooperation with those who are engaged in the service of 
 the common Master, was understood at the Council, and 
 has since generally been held, to extend a welcome to those 
 of Arminian beliefs, and to be but a further illustration of 
 the widening sympathy which led to the omission of the 
 word ** Calvinism " from the Declaration of Faith adopted 
 in 1865. 
 
 The National Council has enjoyed the good-will of the 
 Congregational churches as a whole since its beginning. 
 Attempts to prevent its regular recurrence and to limit its 
 expression of opinion by vote were indeed made by the 
 General Associations of New York and New Jersey through 
 
412 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 fear lest it become dangerous to Congregational liberty ; 
 but no such anxieties have been entertained by the churches 
 in general, nor have the protesting Associations taken any 
 permanent attitude of opposition. It has gained the hearty 
 support of the whole .Congregational body ; and, to Con- 
 gregational thinking, it has solved the problem of securing 
 the advantages of discussion, cooperation, and expression 
 of opinion, on a national scale, without the interference 
 with local liberty, the imposition of tests by majority vote, 
 and the sacrifice of the rights of the individual church, in- 
 evitable in any system of judicial assemblies. No church, 
 or body of churches, is bound to follow the recommen- 
 dations of the National Council ; but its discussions and 
 opinions have always commanded respect and have had 
 constantly increasing influence over the churches and the 
 missionary societies through which their benevolences are 
 administered. The National Council has led to more per- 
 fect adjustment of the relations of the various Congrega- 
 tional missionary organizations ; it has relieved friction in 
 their work ; it has set in motion impulses which have made 
 some of them more directly representative of the churches 
 in their management, and which have brought about at 
 least the beginnings of consolidation ; it has systematized 
 the statistics of the churches ; and has undertaken the re- 
 lief of disabled ministers, and of the destitute widows and 
 orphans of those who die in the service of the churches. 
 It has been efficient in promoting that hearty sympathy 
 and cardial good-fellowship between the Congregational 
 churches of all sections of the country which has been a 
 growing feature of their life since the Albany Convention 
 of 1852. 
 
 Probably the most noteworthy single effort of the Na- 
 tional Council, however, has been the gift to the Congre- 
 gational churches of a new Confession of Faith, express- 
 
THE ''CREED OF ISSSy 413 
 
 ive of the present theologic position of the denomination. 
 Though generally approved by Congregationalists as a 
 fitting presentation of the sentiments of the time and place 
 and of the broad principles of which the denomination is 
 the representative, the " Burial Hill Declaration" was too 
 rhetorical in form and too indefinite in statement as to 
 particular doctrines, as well as too sweeping in its approval 
 of seventeenth-century formulations of behef, to be satis- 
 factory as a creed for local churches or as an exposition 
 of the faith of the Congregational body as a whole. The 
 desire for a new and simple expression of faith was mani- 
 fested at the National Council in 1871 ; but the impulse 
 that led directly to its preparation went out from the Ohio 
 Association, which, having considered the matter at its 
 sessions of 1879 and 1880, laid before the Council in the 
 latter year the question of the issue of a *' formula that 
 shall not be mainly a reaffirmation of former confessions, 
 but that shall state in precise terms in our living tongue 
 the doctrines that we hold to-day." At the same session 
 of the National Council, similar requests were presented 
 from the General Conference of Minnesota, and a Confer- 
 ence in Tennessee. Thus approached, the National Coun- 
 cil on November 15, 1880, -appointed a committee of seven 
 to select twenty- five Commissioners, '* representing differ- 
 ent shades of thought," and widely distributed geograph- 
 ically, to prepare a creed. The Council left the mem- 
 bers of this Commission free to adopt their own methods 
 of proceeding, only stipulating, '' that the result of their 
 labors, when complete, be reported — not to this Council, 
 but to the churches and to the world through the public 
 press — to carry such weight of authority as the character 
 of the Commission and the intrinsic merit of their exposi- 
 tion of truth may command." 
 
 The Commission thus selected was probably as thoroughly 
 
414 'THE CONGREGATIONALISrS. [Chap. x. 
 
 representative of Congregationalism as any twenty-five 
 ministers and theological instructors who could have been 
 named ; and the result of their careful deliberations was 
 the pubHcation, on December 19, 1883, of what has been 
 usually called the " Creed of 1883." The confession bore 
 the approving signatures of twenty-two of the twenty- five 
 commissioners. Three refused their names ; two of them 
 deeming the symbol an inadequate expression of their 
 views, and the third on account of absence from the meet- 
 ings of the Commission. But though the " Creed of 1883 " 
 still has its occasional critics, it is, what the Commission 
 was directed to make it, a simple, compact statement, in 
 modern language, of the present beliefs of the Congrega- 
 tional churches. It is not binding on the churches any 
 further than they choose to adopt it as a local expression 
 of faith ; but its use has been steadily increasing ; and it 
 gives the denomination, what no other considerable re- 
 ligious body in America possesses, — a widely recognized 
 creed, of modern composition, and expressing a fair con- 
 sensus of the present belief of the communion whose faith 
 it sets forth. 
 
 The story of modern American Congregationalism is 
 thus one of increasing denominational strength, of grow- 
 ing conviction of its own mission, and of more manifest 
 fellowship and cooperation between its churches. At the 
 same time this development has been accompanied by a 
 hearty spirit of brotherhood toward other bodies which 
 bear the Christian name and hold similar evangelical doc- 
 trines. 
 
 The past ten or fifteen years have brought the Congre- 
 gational churches, as they have all other American relig- 
 ious bodies, face to face with much that is novel in doctrine 
 and method ; and the new tendencies of theologic discus- 
 sion and of the practical application of the gospel to men 
 
RECENT TENDENCIES. 
 
 415 
 
 have been viewed with as much interest by Congregation- 
 alists as by any class of American Christians. While the 
 presentations of Christian truth which were characteristic 
 of the first three quarters of this century have not been 
 abandoned, the emphasis in doctrinal discussion of late 
 years has shifted from questions of the atonement, of abil- 
 ity, and of sin, such as held a chief place in the debates 
 of that period, to problems of the nature of inspiration, of 
 Old Testament criticism, and of the future state. In a 
 similar way the burden of discussion in regard to meth- 
 ods of Christian activity has to some extent come to rest 
 on what are called the larger interests of the kingdom of 
 Christ, the broad application of the gospel to the social 
 condition of mankind, and much interest has been devel- 
 oped in ** Christian Sociology." This alteration of em- 
 phasis is not peculiar to 'Congregationalism, it is charac- 
 teristic of the age. 
 
 Naturally this change in the topics of debate, especially 
 in regard to doctrine, while not substantially altering the 
 views or the teachings of the denomination as a whole, has 
 been productive of considerable controversy and has given 
 rise in places to marked divergencies of opinion, without 
 seriously threatening the interruption of Congregational fel- 
 lowship, or the organic unity of the denomination. While 
 the great body of the Congregational churches have not 
 entered into the debate, two wings have developed, espe- 
 cially in eastern Massachusetts, which for want of better 
 titles may be designated as progressive and conservative. 
 The most marked exhibition of this divergence has been 
 in regard to Andover Seminary, — an institution which has 
 been more affected by the change of interest in the topics 
 of doctrinal discussion and more responsive to the thought 
 of European theologians than any other Congregational 
 seat of learning. As has already been pointed out, the 
 
4l6 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Ciiai-. x. 
 
 orthodoxy of its teachers is tested by a creed prepared by 
 the ** Associate Founders " and approved by the " Found- 
 ers " before the opening of the Seminary ; and the appHca- 
 tion of this test Hes in the hands of the Board of Visitors. 
 Though substantial departure from their creed was denied 
 by the Andover faculty, it seemed to certain of the alumni 
 of the institution that such essential modification of the 
 historic standard had actually taken place ; and at a meet- 
 ing on December 28, 1885, they resolved to make com- 
 plaint to the Board of Visitors against the published views 
 of several of the professors. The result was a formal trial 
 of charges involving five instructors before the Visitors 
 at Boston, beginning just a year later, and the declaration 
 by the Visitors on June 16, 1887, that Prof. E. C. Smyth, 
 the president of the faculty, was removed from his chair 
 of instruction. From this decision appeal was taken, as 
 permitted by the terms of the Andover foundation, to the 
 Massachusetts Supreme Court. After elaborate and com- 
 plicated judicial proceedings, that tribunal, on October 
 28, 1 89 1, set aside the finding of the Visitors on technical 
 grounds, without passing on the questions involved in the 
 controversy. Motion for a new trial before the Visitors 
 having been made, and a further hearing of the parties 
 involved having been held, that Board, on September 6, 
 1892, dismissed the complaint, now nearly seven years old, 
 holding that further procedure on charges of such antiquity 
 was not likely to be productive of good, but ** without 
 thereby expressing any opinion upon the merits of the 
 case." 
 
 Nearly parallel with this discussion, but somewhat dif- 
 ferent in the questions involved and to some extent unlike 
 in the parties to the controversy, a debate concerning the 
 policy of the American Board in making missionary ap- 
 pointments has run its course. The doctrinal ferment. 
 
THE ANDOVER CONTROVERSY. 
 
 417 
 
 out of which the Andover trials were to grow, had been 
 felt for several years previous to the presentation of the 
 complaints against the Andover faculty ; and certain feat- 
 ures of what was called by its friends the '* new theology " 
 excited alarm among the more conservative thinkers of the 
 Congregational body. Probably the view most popularly 
 deemed characteristic of that theology was a speculation 
 as to a possible contact with the Saviour and his forgiving 
 grace in the future life for those who, like the heathen, had 
 no opportunity for knowledge of the historic Christ in this 
 world, — a view commonly called "future probation." 
 
 These speculations were first brought into the arena of 
 discussion in the American Board at its annual meeting at 
 Portland, Me., in 1882, where Rev. Dr. E. P. Goodwin, of 
 Chicago, and Professor Park, then an emeritus member of 
 the Andover faculty, denounced them as fatal to the mis- 
 sionary spirit. There was no general debate, however, at 
 this meeting ; and for the next three years the topic did 
 not prominently enter into the discussions of the annual 
 gatherings of the Board. But meanwhile the Home Sec- 
 retary of the Board, by whom correspondence with in- 
 tended missionaries was conducted, had pressed inquiry 
 into the possible belief of candidates in these speculations ; 
 and the Prudential Committee, which has the power of 
 appointment, had, it was alleged, rejected several because 
 of lack of definiteness of conviction on the points involved, 
 or full acceptance of the questioned theories. As a result, 
 the matter came up with great earnestness of debate at 
 the annual meeting of the Board at Des Moines, la., in 
 1886; and eventuated there in a vote declaring that the 
 body was '* constrained to look with grave apprehension 
 upon certain tendencies of the doctrine of a probation after 
 death " as ** divisive and perversive and dangerous to the 
 churches at home and abroad," and approving the action 
 
41 8 THE CONGREGATIONALISrS. [Chap. x. 
 
 of the Prudential Committee. At the same time the Board 
 instructed the Prudential Committee to consider the wis- 
 dom of inviting a council of the churches for advice in per- 
 plexing questions as to the views of missionary candidates. 
 The decision at Des Moines was not, however, felt to 
 be final. Though it undoubtedly represented the desires 
 of a majority of the churches at the time, a large and in- 
 creasing party, who had no sympathy with the disputed 
 theories, felt that the emphasis laid on doctrinal examina- 
 tion by the Prudential Committee and the Home Secretary 
 was undue, and that a Board which carried on the foreign 
 mission work of all the churches should be ready to wel- 
 come candidates to its fields of labor whom ecclesiastical 
 councils were willing to install in home pulpits. But a 
 yet larger party felt that any toleration of doubt regard- 
 ing the truths of the debated speculations was dangerous. 
 One or two cases of rejection by the Committee after the 
 De-s Moines meeting, notably that of Mr. William H. Noyes, 
 increased rather than diminished the warmth of feeling; 
 and the meeting of the Board at Springfield, Mass., in 
 1887, was a scene of even more animated discussion than 
 that at Des Moines. The majority secured the reaffirma- 
 tion of the Des Moines resolutions and the approval of the 
 action of the Prudential Committee by a vote of more than 
 two to one ; and at the same time a report of that Com- 
 mittee disapproving of the reference to councils of cases of 
 doubtful orthodoxy in missionary candidates was adopted. 
 The Board at this meeting chose Rev. Dr. R. S. Storrs its 
 president ; and a few days later he signified his acceptance 
 in a letter approving in the main the results reached at 
 Des Moines and Springfield, but intimating that the Com- 
 mittee ought " to discriminate between the want of an 
 opinion and the presence of one which implies or favors 
 the objectionable theory ; between even a vague hope, 
 
THE AMERICAN BOARD. ^ig 
 
 acknowledged to be unsupported by the Scripture, only 
 personal to one's self, held in silent submission to subse- 
 quent correction, and a distinct dogmatic tendency or a 
 formulated conviction." 
 
 For the next two years comparatively little of impor- 
 tance occurred. Mr. Noyes, who seemed to many to come 
 within President Storrs's permissible category, was once 
 more rejected by the Prudential Committee, and was sent 
 to Japan as an independent laborer by the Berkeley Tem- 
 ple Church of Boston. Feeling grew, and when the Board 
 met at New York in 1889 a heated discussion ensued, 
 which resulted, however, in the unanimous acceptance of 
 President Storrs's letter as a basis for action, and in the 
 appointment of a committee of nine, under the chairman- 
 ship of Rev. Dr. G. L. Walker, of Hartford, to examine 
 into the methods of administration pursued by the officers 
 of the Board in relation to candidates. This committee 
 made its report at the meeting at Minneapolis, Minn., in 
 1890, and unanimously recommended that the secretaries 
 of the Board, in dealing with applicants for appointment, 
 should be hmited to two prescribed doctrinal questions : 
 "i. What are your views respecting each of the leading 
 doctrines of Scripture commonly held by the churches 
 sustaining this Board? In answering this question, you 
 may use your own language or refer to any creeds of 
 acknowledged weight. 2. Have you any views at vari- 
 ance with these doctrines or any views of church govern- 
 ment which would prevent your cordial cooperation with 
 the missionaries of this Board?" All further doctrinal 
 examination, it was recommended, should be conducted 
 by the Prudential Committee itself, in the presence of 
 such members of the Board and personal friends of the 
 candidate as desired to attend. These suggestions were 
 duly adopted by the Board, with a modification permitting 
 
420 TFLE CONGREGA TIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 the Prudential Committee to substitute correspondence for 
 a personal examination when such personal meeting seemed 
 impracticable. 
 
 For some time after this action at Minneapolis it was 
 generally believed that friction in the Board had been 
 practically ended, and the meeting of 1891 passed with- 
 out a word of criticism or doctrinal debate. But the feel- 
 ing was manifested in some quarters that the Prudential 
 Committee and the secretaries had failed fully to carry 
 out the Minneapolis resolutions or to act entirely on the 
 basis of President Storrs's letter, and though it was denied 
 that such charges were well founded, the question was 
 reopened at the meeting at Chicago in 1892. Here the 
 Board refused to make void its vote passed at Des Moines 
 in 1886; but the minority was strong enough to lead to 
 the passage of a resolution instructing the Committee to 
 interpret that vote with liberality as well as with faithful- 
 ness. At the same time the Board asked its Prudential 
 Committee to canvass anew the appointment of Mr. Noyes, 
 whose record as a missionary in Japan had proved most 
 creditable. But, though the Committee reopened the case, 
 though it was shown that the missionaries of the Board in 
 Japan desired Mr. Noyes as an associate, and that he had 
 never taught the questioned speculation on the mission 
 field, the Committee rejected Mr. Noyes for a third time, 
 on his statement that his views had undergone no substan- 
 tial alteration. The opinion of the churches, however, was 
 increasingly in favor of his appointment on the ground of 
 his efficient service, and when the Board met at Worcester, 
 Mass., in October, 1893, this feeling was plainly manifest. 
 A widely representative committee of fifteen, under the 
 chairmanship of Hon. H. D. Hyde, of Boston, unanimously 
 recommended " that this Board, in response to the ex- 
 pressed wish of its missionaries in Japan, and in recogni- 
 
THE AMERICAN BOARD. 421 
 
 tion of the successful labors of the Rev. William H, Noyes 
 in that empire, requests the Prudential Committee to offer 
 to him an appointment as a missionary of the Board. The 
 Board declares that this action is not to be understood as 
 in any way modifying its former utterances on the subject 
 of future probation;" and the Board adopted the sugges- 
 tion by a vote of 106 to 24. This action was followed by 
 the presentation and acceptance of the resignations of the 
 Home Secretary, Rev. Dr. E. K. Alden, and of two hon- 
 ored members of the Prudential Committee ; but within a 
 few weeks the appointment thus offered was accepted by 
 Mr. Noyes. 
 
 This long discussion led to an increasing desire that the 
 Board should be made in some way more directly repre- 
 sentative of the churches in the choice of its membership, 
 — a desire that found expression in the appointment by 
 the National Council in 1889 of a committee to consider 
 the relations of all the benevolent societies to the Congre- 
 gational churches. And so general was the feeling that 
 an efficient representation of the churches in the Board 
 should be brought about that this committee was able to 
 report to the Council in 1892 that, since its appointment, 
 twenty-one State bodies, embracing nearly three fourths 
 of the churches of the denomination, had taken action 
 favoring such a change. Urged thus by many State or- 
 ganizations widely representative of Congregationalism, 
 the Board, at its meeting at Chicago in 1892, voted to try 
 for one year the experiment of filling three fourths of the 
 vacancies occurring in the ranks of its now self-perpetuat- 
 ing corporation from nominations made by the State bodies, 
 the understanding being that the number of appointments 
 to be made from any State should be proportionate to the 
 membership and gifts of its churches. At Worcester, in 
 1893, the Board resolved to continue the experiment for 
 
422 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 two years more, and to increase its membership at the 
 rate of twenty-five a year till it numbered one hundred 
 more than at present (i.e., to 350). This system, or some 
 better device, will doubtless be permanently adopted ; and 
 will make the Board in future directly representative of 
 the churches in membership, as it has been in spirit dur- 
 ing most of its past history. 
 
 The past few years which have witnessed this shifting 
 in the topics of doctrinal discussion in Congregational cir- 
 cles have also beheld the introduction to some extent of 
 new methods of Christian activity. Congregationalism is 
 always favorable to individual initiative. A Congrega- 
 tional church can try any new plan of labor or order of 
 worship without seeking the permission of any superior 
 body. It lends itself flexibly to experiments, possessing 
 the merits of ready adaptability to environment as thor- 
 oughly as they are enjoyed by similar systems of local 
 self-government in the political world. One such experi- 
 ment, introduced by a Congregational pastor, has become 
 a movement of almost world-wide extent. On Febru- 
 ary 2, 1 88 1, Rev. F. E. Clark, then pastor of the Williston 
 Church at Portland, Me., organized a number of his young 
 people who were desirous of beginning the Christian life 
 into an association pledged to regular attendance upon 
 and participation in its meetings, and distinctly cooperant 
 in the activities of the church. The "Young People's 
 Society of Christian Endeavor," which thus came into 
 being, has been adopted by many other Christian bodies 
 besides the Congregational churches, and has had an 
 amazing growth, numbering within twelve years of its 
 origin nearly twenty-eight thousand societies, with 1,650,- 
 000 members. 
 
 Another novel method of Christian work with which 
 some Congregational churches have experimented, as they 
 
NOVEL METHODS OF WORK. 423 
 
 believe with encouraging results, during the last few years, 
 is what is rather infelicitously called the ''institutional 
 church." Such a church aims not merely to unite its 
 members in worship. Christian nurture, and benevolence 
 by the ordinary channels of endeavor, but to touch the 
 surrounding community at many points, providuig read- 
 ing-rooms, gymnasiums, and bowling-alleys, clubs for boys 
 and girls, healthful amusement and instruction for the 
 tempted and the homeless, all designed to make the gos- 
 pel more effective in the upbuilding of an upright, self- 
 respecting. Christian manhood and womanhood. Such 
 extension of their work has been undertaken within a 
 recent period by churches in Boston, Worcester, Hartford, 
 Jersey City, Cleveland, and elsewhere; and though the 
 movement is still so far in its initial stage that it is impos- 
 sible to estimate its permanent value, it is of interest as 
 illustrating the ready employment by the Congregational 
 churches of any worthy methods of effort which seem to 
 promise the furtherance of their main aim — the upbuilding 
 of the kingdom of God. 
 
 A similar ready response to the broader aspects of the 
 application of the gospel to human needs is to be seen in 
 the recent introduction of sociological instruction into Con- 
 gregational theological seminaries, and the incorporation 
 of practical experience in the workings of preventative, 
 reformatory, charitable, and evangelistic agencies as ex- 
 hibited in the cities, as a part of the prescribed ministe- 
 rial training. Harvard University led the way by offer- 
 ing elective studies in social ethics to the students of its 
 Divinity School in 1880, and like courses w^ere opened for 
 the choice of the students at Andover in 1887. Hartford 
 Seminary in 1888 became the first American theological 
 school to require some knowledge of sociological principles 
 as essential to graduation ; and similar instruction became 
 
424 THE CONGKEGA TlONALISrS. [Chap. x. 
 
 part of the course at Chicago in 1890, where the study 
 was first made a separate department of instruction. At 
 Yale Divinity School Christian sociology was introduced 
 as an elective in 1892, and in the autumn of 1894 will 
 become k fully established department of seminary work. 
 Student residence in portions of large cities where the 
 problems of poverty and crime are most pressing has been 
 provided for the young men of Andover Seminary by the 
 ** Andover House " in Boston, and for those of Chicago 
 Seminary in connection with the ** Hull House " of tliat 
 city. Nor has this interest been confined to the semina- 
 ries. Iowa College, — the long- established Congregational 
 center of education in the State from which it takes its 
 title, — has recently founded a chair of Applied Christian- 
 ity ; and the "Northwestern Congregationalist " of Min- 
 neapolis has become the representative of this nev/ move- 
 ment under the altered title of " The Kingdom " since the 
 beginning of the year 1894. Here, again, it is too soon 
 to form an opinion as to the permanency or value of the 
 tendency ; but it evidences the quick response of the Con- 
 gregational churches and their institutions to all that is 
 stirring the thoughts of Christian men. 
 
 A further illustration of the same ready adaptability 
 of Congregationalism to novel methods is to be seen in 
 its increasing employment of women in the more public 
 aspects of Christian work. The organization of the Woman's 
 Boards of Missions has already been described, and through 
 their impulse not only are the women of the churches 
 largely banded together for the support of missionary en- 
 deavor, the number of women workers on the fiefds of mis- 
 sionary labor at home and abroad is great and constantly 
 increasing. Thus far these women have been almost ex- 
 clusively employed in teaching, the healing of the sick, 
 and the less distinctively ministerial functions; but the 
 
EMPLOYMENT OE WOMEN. 425 
 
 ''Vermont Domestic Missionary Society" has during the 
 last two or three summers employed Christian young 
 women to go about two by two in the remoter and more 
 sparsely settled districts of the State, to all practical pur- 
 poses as evangelists. The *' Year Book " for 1893 reports 
 the names of not less than thirteen women as ministerial 
 licentiates, mostly in States west of the Mississippi. But 
 women have gone further than this primary permission 
 to exercise the gift of preaching. In 1880 the church at 
 Nantucket, Mass., came under a woman's charge, though 
 she was not reported as ordained. In 1893, however, the 
 •' Year Book " enumerated nine fully ordained women, in 
 various towns in New York, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, 
 South Dakota, and Washington, — seven of whom were in 
 pastoral charge of Congregational churches. Of these all 
 except one had been ordained since 1889. On February 
 14, 1894, the first ordination of a woman over a Congre- 
 gational church in New England occurred at Littleton, 
 Mass., — the first settlement of a person of her sex effected 
 by a council in the history of American Congregational- 
 ism. In most of these cases the circumstances have been 
 somewhat exceptional, and such ordinations cannot now 
 be called good Congregational usage, whatever they may 
 become in process of time. 
 
 This desire to train and to employ women in a wide 
 range of Christian activities appears also in the opening 
 of the doors of Hartford Seminary in 1889 to women on 
 the same terms as to men. It was not, indeed, the inten- 
 tion of the seminary to encourage women to enter the 
 ordained ministry, and none of its students of this sex 
 have done so ; but it desired to offer whatever advantages 
 it had to give to those who might add strength to the 
 Christian life of the time as scholars, teachers, laborers in 
 philanthropic enterprises, pastors' assistants, or missionaries. 
 
426 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. x. 
 
 Congregationalism at the present day is active in many 
 directions. It is not afraid to try experiments, to discuss 
 doctrinal truths, and to test methods of work. But what- 
 ever of novelty in method or in thought it may here and 
 there exhibit, it never was more true to the main principles 
 of faith and practice which it has inherited than at present, 
 or more conscious of a mission to a sinning and sufifering 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 CONGREGATIONAL FACTS AND TRAITS. 
 
 Congregationalism, as a form of polity, is much more 
 widely extended in the United States than the communion 
 which bears the Congregational name. Though differing 
 from one another in the details of their administration of 
 this type of organization, especially in the extent to which 
 the principle of the fellowship, as distinguished from the 
 self-government of the churches, is developed, the Con- 
 gregational polity is that of a large portion of the religious 
 bodies of America. As Dr. Carroll has pointed out in the 
 first volume of this series, the Baptists, the Plymouth 
 Brethren, the Christians, the Disciples of Christ, the Uni- 
 tarians, as well as a number of minor religious bodies, are 
 essentially Congregational in government. This is also 
 true of certain sections of the Adventists, of the Luther- 
 ans, and all the Hebrew congregations, so that the same 
 authority classifies no less than 62,373 religious organi- 
 zations, — nearly 38 per cent, of all congregations in the 
 United States, — as of this polity. 
 
 But while the Congregational system of church govern- 
 ment is thus widely diffused, and while other poHties not 
 distinctly Congregational have in many instances been 
 modified in the United States from their European origi- 
 nals by the introduction of some Congregational elements, 
 the body known as the Congregational churches has a dis- 
 tinct unity and history. It represents something more 
 than a form of church government. It is characterized 
 
 427 
 
428 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. xi. 
 
 by a high degree of unity in doctrinal development, by a 
 marked desire for learning both in the ministry and in 
 the laity, by similar modes of worship, and above all, by a 
 visible oneness of fellowship manifested in advisory coun- 
 cils and in occasional or regularly recurring assemblies for 
 consultation. The Congregational churches therefore con- 
 stitute a distinct religious whole, — as marked in its charac- 
 teristics as any religious denomination in America. 
 
 The Congregational churches have not increased as rap- 
 idly in numbers as some religious communions, but their 
 growth has been continuous and sure. During the first 
 two centuries of their existence on American soil they 
 were practically confined to New England ; they have 
 since spread into all parts of the United States, but largely 
 with the diffusion of the New England element of our 
 population. Beginning with a single church in 1620, the 
 fellow^ship numbered about 53 congregations by the time 
 of the Cambridge Synod (1646-48). Though minutely ac- 
 curate statistics are wanting, it is thought that by 1696 the 
 number of churches had increased to at least 160, includ- 
 ing the congregations among the Indians. In i 760 Rev. 
 (and later President) Ezra Stiles numbered the churches 
 at 530; by 1845 they had multiplied to 1 471, with 141 2 
 ordained ministers; i860 saw 2583 churches, with 2634 
 ministers; in 1870 the churches numbered 3 121, and the 
 ministers, 3098; in 1880 there were 3745 churches, with 
 3577 ministers. The census of 1890 reported the number 
 of the Congregational churches as 4868, their ministers, 
 5058, and their members as 512,771. At the beginning 
 of 1894 these churches were 5236 in number, their ordained 
 ministers 5138, their licentiates about 400, and their mem- 
 bership 561,641. In 1894 these churches enrolled 646,694 
 persons in their Sunday-schools. 
 
 The missionary labors of these churches are carried on 
 
CONGREGATIONAL STATISTICS. 429 
 
 by six national societies,— the "American Board of Com- 
 missioners for Foreign Missions," whicli conducts the efforts 
 of the churches for the upbuilding of the Redeemer's kinjr. 
 dom in other lands; the ''American Education Society/' 
 having as its object the assistance of needy students for 
 the ministry, the upbuilding of colleges, and the main- 
 tenance of schools, especially in the newer districts of the 
 West; the "Congregational Home Missionary Society," 
 conducting home missionary labors in all parts of the 
 United States, but chiefly \\\ the North and West; the 
 " American Missionary Association," laboring for the most 
 part in the South and among the Indians and Chinese ; 
 the '• Congregational Church Building Society," aiming 
 to supply needy congregations with meeting-houses and 
 parsonages; and the "Congregational Sunday-school and 
 Publishing Society," which not only prints Christian litera- 
 ture, but carries on as a separate department an extensive 
 mission work in planting and supporting Sunday-schools, 
 especially in the newer parts of the country. Besides 
 these six societies, two other organizations have a claim 
 on the churches as a whole, — the " American Congre- 
 gational Association," in charge of the Congregational 
 Library and House at Boston ; and the " Ministerial Re- 
 lief Fund," for the aid of disabled ministers, their widows 
 and orphans. These societies are assisted by the Wom- 
 an's Boards and Unions and numerous State and local 
 auxiliaries; and almost every church of self-sustaining 
 proportions has its " sewing-society," or some similar 
 local organization for the furtherance of missionary activ- 
 ity. As a result, the benevolent contributions of the 
 churches to these societies and through other channels 
 for the year 1893 amounted to $2,401,896. During the 
 same annual period the legacies reported as bequeathed 
 to the same objects reached the sum of $947,311 ; and 
 
430 THE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. xi. 
 
 the home expenses of the churches were reported as 
 $7,ooa,838. 
 
 Modern Congregationahsm has few representatives who 
 would claim, as did the early teachers of the polity which 
 these churches inherit, that its system is of exclusive divine 
 authority. There have been prominent expounders of its 
 polity within recent years who have held s.jure divino con- 
 ception of its claims. But, unlike the founders, the great 
 majority of modern Congregationalists fail to find in the 
 New Testament any minute outline of what the church 
 should be or any inflexible pattern to which it must in 
 all particulars conform. They gladly recognize the true 
 churchly character of organizations illustrating other types 
 of church government than their own. As far as possible 
 they hold fellowship with all believers in Christ, however 
 constituted. But while they thus fail to discover any hard- 
 and-fast prescription of polity in the New Testament, they 
 do find there certain broad principles applicable to indi- 
 vidual and to churchly Hfe, which they believe are better 
 illustrated under the Congregational polity than under any 
 other. They believe that that polity, more naturally than 
 any other, tends to make the Christian disciple what the 
 gospel intended he should be, a full-rounded, self-reliant, 
 free man in Christ. They are confident that it best trains 
 the individual Christian to an independent, intelligent, and 
 responsible spiritual life. They also deem it more accord- 
 ant with the genius of the political institutions of a free 
 republic like the United States than any other form of 
 polity, and hence peculiarly adapted to all lands where 
 high intelligence and local self-government are character- 
 istic of the people. 
 
 But, in particular, a Congregational church that is at all 
 true to its ideal illustrates certain traits which Congrega- 
 tionalists hold to be of prime importance. It aims, first 
 
CONGREGATIONAL PRINCIPLES. 431 
 
 of all, to be a pure church. The belief that the proper 
 material of a church should be regenerate persons has been 
 characteristic oi Congregationalism from the beginning. 
 Though modified in regard to one sacrament in the Half- 
 Way Covenant which prevailed in New England for a 
 century and a half, it has always been the view of Con- 
 gregationalism that admission to the full churchly privileges 
 of communion and of voting is only for those who can 
 claim a Christian experience. And with the abandonment 
 of the Half- Way Covenant the behef of modern Congre- 
 gationalism, though it ascribes potential membership to the 
 baptized children of the congregation, holds that personal 
 followers of the Lord Jesus are the only proper active mem- 
 bers of a church. It finds no other type of a Christian 
 church in the New Testament, it conceives no other to be 
 really desirable. Such a local company of believers it 
 holds now, as CongregationaUsm has held from the be- 
 ginning, becomes a church by entering into a covenant 
 to serve God and to aid one another in the Christian life. 
 At the same time it maintains that all believers through- 
 out the world are spiritually, though not governmentally, 
 one body, — the church universal, — of which, as of each 
 local church, Christ is the immediate head. 
 
 A true Congregational church is a learned church. This 
 also has been a trait of the denomination from the bemn- 
 nmg. Congregationalism beHeves that a learned ministry 
 is the only permanently successful ministry ; but it deems 
 the intelligence of the pews no less important for the well- 
 being of the church than that of the pulpit. A spiritual 
 democracy, like a political democracy, requires self-control 
 and wisdom in its membership for its best usefulness. This 
 sense of the essential character of these qualities has led 
 Congregationalism to plant colleges and schools from the 
 time of its first generation on New England soil to its lat- 
 
432 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. xi. 
 
 est missionary endeavors, side by side with its churches. 
 Yet it is not of the opinion that these schools of learning 
 should be controlled by any sectarian bias. It willingly 
 fosters education by the State, but it believes that all edu- 
 cation should be dominated by a broadly Christian spirit. 
 It holds that scholastic advantages should be open to all, 
 irrespective of color or race ; and it regards the school as 
 a missionary agency only secondary in value to the preach- 
 ing of the gospel. 
 
 A Congregational church is also a missionary church. 
 In this particular the story of Congregationalism is one 
 of increasing strength. Its missionary spirit did indeed 
 appear in its efforts for the Indians in the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries; but the opportunities for such labors 
 were slight, and no portion of Protestant Christendom had 
 yet awakened to a full sense of obligation to the heathen 
 world. But Congregationalism has always had men of a 
 missionary impulse, like Eliot, the Mayhews, Edwards, or 
 Brainerd ; and with the new revival epoch w^hich began in 
 the closing years of the last century, missionary zeal be- 
 came one of tb.e conspicuous traits of the Congregational 
 body as a whole. No duty of the gospel is more clearly 
 recognized by the churches of this denomination at the 
 present day than that of carrying the gospel to foreign 
 lands and to the destitute regions of our own country; 
 and Congregational self-government has clearly demon- 
 strated that the full control enjoyed by a local church 
 over its own affairs does not impair a feeling of wide obli- 
 gation or prevent union with other churches of the same 
 fellowship in the support of highly organized missionary 
 endeavor. 
 
 A Congregational church is likewise a democratic church. 
 It believes that all its membership, whether in the pulpit 
 or the pews, are brethren, and are equally concerned in 
 
CONG RE GA TIONA L PRINCIPLES. 433 
 
 its welfare and administration. But the Congregational 
 churches have not always been as democratic as they now 
 are. As has been pointed out in the course of this his- 
 tory, Browne's early democratic theories speedily gave 
 place to the semi-aristocratic administrative conceptions 
 of Barrowe ; and these Barrowist ideals dominated all early 
 New England practice. But it has also been seen that the 
 American development of Congregationalism led to full 
 democracy by the beginning of the present century. A 
 Congregational church regards its pastor as the first among 
 his brethren, the leader of its worship, the director of its 
 labors, the moderator of its meetings ; but with no power 
 to command obedience. It is the church, not the pastor, 
 that decides regarding admissions, dismissions, and excom- 
 »munications, that formulates articles of faith and rules of 
 procedure, that determines as to representation in coun- 
 cils, that appoints officers and committees. Doubtless the 
 voice of the pastor is usually decisive when he makes his 
 opinion known ; but the decision rests In the hands of the 
 church, not in his. And this decision is voiced by the 
 votes of the membership. Till well into this century vot- 
 ing was a privilege only possessed by male members of 
 adult years ; but the general usage of the Congregational 
 churches now extends it to all members of maturity, both 
 men and women, without very strictly inquiring whether 
 they have attained a legal majority. At the same time, 
 like all democratic bodies, the Congregational churches 
 make large use of committees to handle any specially dif- 
 ficult business and to report their results rather than their 
 processes for the approval of the church. Most churches 
 of size have a '* Prudential Committee," which naturally 
 includes the deacons, to aid the pastor and to conduct 
 with him the examination of candidates for membership ; 
 but all such committees are viewed as possessed of power 
 
434 ^'^^^" CONGREGATIONALISMS. [Ciiai>. xi. 
 
 simply by delegation from the church to which they owe 
 their being. 
 
 A Congregational church is, moreover, a free church. 
 The self-governing constitution of each local church has 
 been a cardinal principle of Congregational polity from its 
 beginning. No Congregation^d church is under the domi- 
 nance of any other ecclesiastical organization or person. 
 This freedom enables such a church to choose its own 
 officers. Though Congregational practice esteems it good 
 order that a minister be placed in pastoral charge of a con- 
 gregation by the advice of the representatives of neighbor- 
 ing churches gathered in council, the ultimate basis of the 
 relationship, in modern as in early Congregationalism, is 
 his election by the church, and his acceptance of the choice. 
 So fundamental is this principle that modern Congrega- 
 tional usage esteems a man a pastor who is in the service 
 of a church by its definite vote, even if no council has 
 been called to advise on his installation, — though it deems 
 such a relation less regular than when " settled by council." 
 In the same way a church has entire freedom to elect its 
 deacons, or add to them any other officers which it may 
 desire, and in these cases modern Congregationalism rec- 
 ognizes no occasion for advice from the representatives of 
 other churches gathered in council. 
 
 This freedom also enables a church to formulate its state- 
 ment of doctrine in its own words. Congregationalism 
 originated in the belief that the Bible is a sufficient and 
 an authoritative exposition of polity as well as of doctrine, 
 and it has at all times held that the conformity of its beliefs 
 and practices to the Word of God is of prime importance ; 
 but it has allowed each church to express its conception 
 of Christian truth in its own way. Such expressions be- 
 come tests for membership in the local church which adopts 
 them in so far as that churcli desires to use them for such 
 
CONGREGATIONAL PRINCIPLES. 435 
 
 a purpose. At the same time, as has already been pointed 
 out, the Congregational churches in their representative 
 gatherings have never hesitated to present their faith in 
 public confessions, but such general confessions are not 
 binding on any local church unless adopted by its own 
 act. They are witnesses to the faith of the churches in 
 general, not tests of ministerial fitness. 
 
 This freedom likewise enables a church to order its wor- 
 ship as seems most fitting to its members. The founders 
 of the Congregational churches in the United States came 
 out from the liturgical system of the Church of England 
 into what they rightly deemed the liberty of unprescribed 
 form and unfettered, or, as they said, '' unstinted," prayer. 
 They rejoiced in their freedom of access to God in public 
 worship in words of supplication or thanksgiving suited to 
 the actual experiences of the hour. Indeed, many of them 
 doubted the rightfulness of the use of a rigid liturgy at 
 all; and the Prayer-Book seems to have been one of the 
 rarest of volumes in early New England libraries. Congre- 
 gationalism, as a whole, has always found the liberty of a 
 non-liturgical worship congenial to its taste and adapted 
 to its spiritual profit. But no prescription prevents any 
 church that finds beauty and appropriateness in appointed 
 forms of supplication or common confessions of faith from 
 employing these methods of worship if it sees fit; nor does 
 any rule ordain the exact form or proportion of the vari- 
 ous elements entering into public worship. Each church 
 is free to adapt its methods to its own necessities. There 
 has been throughout the recent history of the denomination 
 a constant tendency to increase the variety of the services 
 of the house of God by larger use of music, by responsive 
 reading of portions of Holy Writ, by the employment of 
 printed outlines and forms of worship; but these modifi- 
 cations have not deprived the sermon and the unwritten 
 
436 THE COXGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. xi. 
 
 petition of the central place in Congregational worship 
 which they have always occupied. There is also notice- 
 able in many churches an increasing observance of the 
 greater memorial days of the Christian year, — Christmas, 
 Good Friday, and Easter, — days which the fathers care- 
 fully left unmarked. There is likewise a tendency in some 
 quarters in the Congregational body, as in some other 
 denominations, to introduce of late the recognition of cer- 
 tain special days not accepted by the church universal, like 
 '* Children's Sunday," — a form of calendar for the Chris- 
 tian year much less to be desired than the observance of 
 days which have been considered for ages commicmorative 
 of the earthly life of our Lord. But none of these move- 
 ments have gone far enough to alter the general character 
 of Congregational worship, which is still essentially non- 
 Hturgical, and still regards Sunday as the most sacred of 
 all ecclesiastical days and the only one the observance of 
 which is binding upon the Christian. Modern Congrega- 
 tionalism makes large use of the prayer-meeting, in which, 
 besides the minister, the male members generally, and in 
 some places their feminine associates, are encouraged to 
 take part. But each Congregational church is free to 
 choose the number and nature of its services, and to adapt 
 them as best it can to its own wants and the necessities of 
 the' community where it is placed. 
 
 A Congregational church is, finally, bound together in 
 mutually responsible fellowship with other churches of the 
 same denomination. This feature of American Congrega- 
 tionalism is probably the trait least understood by the 
 representatives of other communions; but it is that which 
 most distinguishes the Congregationalists of the United 
 States from the Independents of Great Britain, and from 
 most of the other denominations of America which are 
 essentially Congregational in polity. The Congregational 
 
CONGREGATIONAL PRINCIPLES. 437 
 
 churches of the United States developed the principle of 
 fellowship in early colonial days, and they have ever re- 
 garded it as of the highest value. They believe that each 
 local church has Christ as its immediate head, and stands 
 in a sisterly relation to every other similar congregation. 
 They beHeve that, like the members of an earthly house- 
 hold, while they have no right to sit in judgment one 
 on another or to punish one another, they owe to one 
 another counsel in difficulty, consultation in important 
 action, and warning when in apparent error. They hold 
 that, as brothers and sisters may be compelled to cease 
 communication with a sinning member of a human family, 
 so sister-churches, having failed to call back an erring church 
 from its evil practices, may withdraw fellowship from it 
 while it continues in its way. The expression of this fellow- 
 ship is chiefly through advisory councils, consisting of the 
 pastors and delegates of churches, and often, though rather 
 by courtesy, of a few additional individuals, summoned 
 to give their opinion in cases of ministerial settlement and 
 dismission, ordinations, the organization of new churches, 
 or difficulties arising in a congregation. A council may 
 be called by a church, a party in a church in case of quar- 
 rel, or a company of persons desirous of being recognized 
 as a church. It may consist of the representatives of any 
 churches which may be invited and may choose to accept; 
 but it is not considered good usage in modern Congrega- 
 tional practice to call the majority of its members from 
 elsewhere than the immediate vicinage. No church or 
 person not named in the invitation, or 'Metter-missive," 
 may have a seat in a council, nor can any business be dis- 
 cussed that is not specified in the same warrant, nor has 
 the council a proper quorum unless a majority of the pos- 
 sible members invited are present. Its advice is not a bind- 
 ing judicial decision, but a friendly counsel ; yet instances 
 
438 THE CONGREGATIONALISTS. [Chap. xi. 
 
 where the opinion of a council is not followed are exceed- 
 ingly rare. 
 
 Congregationalism further illustrates the fellowship of 
 its churches by their union all over the United States in 
 district conferences and associations, in State bodies, and 
 finally in the National Council, for consultation at fixed 
 periods. These various expressions of fellowship knit the 
 Congregational churches into one body, while preserving 
 to each local congregation the rights of self-government 
 and individual initiative. 
 
 Congregationalism has had a history of over three hun- 
 dred years since its beginnings in England. It has been 
 more than two centuries and a half on American soil. It 
 settled and molded New England ; and through its influ- 
 ence on the political institutions of that region it has con- 
 tributed far beyond any other polity to the fashioning of 
 the political ideals of the United States. It has sought 
 more than any other polity on American soil to promote 
 education. It has been forward in missionary activity. 
 It has maintained a high, strenuous ideal of the Christian 
 life. It has been a prime force in the political, intellect- 
 ual, and spiritual development of America. But while its 
 adherents are thankful for the heritage of noble men and 
 worthy deeds into which they have entered, they believe 
 that it has a greater mission yet to perform than anything 
 which it has done in the past. They believe that while 
 the Congregational body may never become the largest 
 of the tribes of our American Israel in its nominal com- 
 munion, its principles of democracy, freedom, self-govern- 
 ment, and responsible fellowship will increasingly penetrate 
 and mold all American Christian life; and they are confi- 
 dent, also, that, under the guidance of the Divine Spirit, its 
 story will be one of growing numerical strength, usefulness, 
 and spiritual power as the years are added to its history. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbot, George, Archbishop, 82, 83, 
 
 88, 91. 
 Abbot, Samuel, 349. 
 Adams, Pres, John, 278. 
 Adams, Rev. William, 246. 
 "Advance," the, 390. 
 Agreement, Heads of. See Heads of 
 
 Agreement. 
 Ainsworth, Henry, 51-54. 
 Albany Convention, 317, 365, 382, 
 
 383, 385. 388, 397.^ 
 Alden, Rev. E. K., 417-421. 
 Alden, John, Plymouth Pilgrim, 65. 
 Allen, Rev. James, 188. 
 Allen, Rev. Timothy, 295. 
 AUerton, Isaac, 73, 112. 
 American Baptist Missionary Union, 
 
 325; 
 
 American Board, origin and early his- 
 tory, 323-326; Western missions, 
 375, 377, 406; recent discussions, 
 416-422 ; also 429. 
 
 American Congregational Association, 
 385, 388, 429. 
 
 American Congregational Union. See 
 Cong. Church Building Society. 
 
 American Education Society. See Ed- 
 ucation Society. 
 
 American Home Missionary Society. 
 See Congregational Home Miss. 
 Soc. • 
 
 American Missionary Association, 
 401-406, 429. 
 
 Ames, William, 102. 
 
 Amistad Committee, 401. 
 
 Amyraut, Moses, 254. 
 
 Anabaptists, rise, 8, 9 ; characteris- 
 tics, 10-13; influence in England, 
 26, 27 ; possible indebtedness of 
 Browne to them, 35, 36. 
 
 Andover House, 424. 
 
 Andover Seminary, foundation, 335, 
 348-353; creed and organization, 
 35 1» 352, 389; trial of professors, 
 415, 416. 
 
 Andros, Sir Edmund, 184, 192-195, 
 204. 
 
 Anglican party, characteristics, ij; 
 Puritanism strengthens it, 22-24; 
 political ideals, 24 ; -triumph under 
 James I., 80, 81 ; becomes Ar- 
 minian, 85-87; aims, 87; Laud's 
 leadership, 90. 
 
 "Anthology, the Monthly," 335. 
 
 Antinomian dispute, 138-145 ; its 
 Synod, 142-144. 
 
 Appleton, Rev. Jesse, 335. 
 
 Arianism, in England, 268 ; in New 
 England, 277-279, 330, 3^3- 
 
 Arminianism, spread in Engh^nd, 85- 
 89 ; in New England, 253, 254, 267- 
 279, 281, 283, 293, 305, 329, 332; 
 Oberlin, 364; not excluded from 
 Cong, fellowship, 411. 
 
 Armstrong, Gen. S. C., 403. 
 
 Aspinwafl, William, 113. 
 
 Associations, ministerial, origin, 198, 
 199; extension and duties, 202-204, 
 208, 371 ; differences East and 
 West, 393. 
 
 Atkinson, Rev. Geo. H., 378. 
 
 Atlanta University, 404. 
 
 Atonement, Pynchon's view, 215- 
 216 ; general, 287 ; the younger Ed- 
 wards, 294-299 ; Bushnell,367, 368. 
 
 Awakening, Great. See Great Awak- 
 ening. 
 
 Aylmer, John, bishop, 43, 44. 
 
 Bacon, Rev. Leonard, 379, 380, 382, 
 399, 400. 
 
 Bancroft, Richard, Archbishop, 23, 
 80, 81. 
 
 439 
 
440 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Bangor Seminary, 354. 
 
 Baptism, how administered, 243. 
 
 Baptists, church established in Eng- 
 land, 59; opposed in Mass., 146, 
 147; ch. at Boston, 146; exemp- 
 tion granted, 235 ; also 427. 
 
 Barrowe, Henry, early life, 43 ; con- 
 nection with London ch., 29, 41 ; 
 arrest, 42 ; trial, 43, 44, 49 ; writ- 
 ings, 44, 45 ; his type of Congrega- 
 tionalism, 45, 46 ; martyrdom, 50 ; 
 bequest, 51. 
 
 Bartlett, William, beginnings of Amer- 
 ican Board, 323 ; founding of An- 
 dover, 350-352- 
 
 Beckwith, Rev. George, 295. 
 
 Beecher, Rev. Lyman, 362, 363. 
 
 Belcher, Gov. Jonathan, 257. 
 
 Belknap, Rev. Jeremy, collection of 
 
 hymns, 33 I.- 
 Bellamy, Rev. Joseph, theological 
 views, 182, 274, 278, 279, 280, 
 286-288, 296 ; preaching, 258, 286 ; 
 pupils, 287, 288, 293, 332, 349. 
 
 Beloit College, 375. 
 
 Belsham, Rev. Thomas, Unitarian 
 writings, 338, 339. 
 
 Benton, Rev. J. A., 378, 379. 
 
 Bible Societies, 313, 314. 
 
 Bilson, Thomas, bishop, 23. 
 
 Blaurock, Anabaptist leader, 9. 
 
 Boston, settled and ch. formed, 1 1 1- 
 
 113. 
 Boston Platform, 400. 
 " Boston Recorder," the, 386. 
 Bowland, Thomas, early Congrega- 
 
 tionalist, 28. 
 Bowman, Christopher, 49. 
 Bradford, Gov. William, Scroobych., 
 
 57; character, 68, 69; at Plymouth 
 
 71, 74; at Salem, 106; judgment of 
 
 Roger Williams, 130; death, 183; 
 
 quoted, 69, 70, 73, 75, 230; also 
 
 223. 
 Brainerd, Rev. David, 263. 
 Brattle Church, 199-201, 220, 239, 
 
 244. 
 Brattle, Thomas, 200. 
 Brattle, Rev. William, 199, 239. 
 Brewster, Elder William, Scrooby 
 
 ch., 56; its ruling elder, 59; with 
 
 the Pilgrims, 61-74; feeling toward 
 
 Ch. of England, 77; preaching, 
 227. 
 
 Briant, Rev. Lemuel, writings and 
 theologic position, 271-273, 276, 
 278, 279, 330. 
 
 Bright, Rev. Francis, 104, 108, 231. 
 
 Brown, Rev. Clark, Arian views, 2)2>Z- 
 
 Brown, Rev. John, of Cohasset, 278. 
 
 Brown, Moses, 350. 
 
 Browne, John, of Salem, 107, 128. 
 
 Browne, Robert, relations to Cong., 
 30-32 ; early life, 32, 2>?) \ becomes 
 a Sej-jaratist, 33-36 ; church in Nor- 
 wich, 36 ; in Holland, 37 ; his 
 theories, 2i^, 39, 45, 46, 129; con- 
 forms to Ch. of England, 40, 41 ; 
 death, 41. 
 
 Browne, Samuel, 107, 128. 
 
 Buckminster, Rev. J. S., 336. 
 
 Bulkeley, Rev. Peter, at Antinomian 
 synod, 143. 
 
 Burge, Rev. Caleb, 299. 
 
 Burghley, Lord, scruples regarding 
 vestments, 17; related to Robert 
 Browne, 32 ; protects him, 36, 40, 
 41 ; examines Barrowe and Green- 
 wood, 43, 44 ; petition to, 46. 
 
 Burial Hill Declaration, 190, 397-399, 
 
 413- 
 Burton, Rev. Asa, 303. 
 Bushnell, Rev. Horace, work and 
 
 theology, 365-369. 
 Calef, Robert, 198. 
 Calhoun, Rev. G. A., 359. 
 California, Cong, beginnings in, 378, 
 
 379- 
 
 Calvin, John, 7, 8, 281. 
 
 Calvinism, at Council of 1865, 397, 
 398; at Oberlin Council, 411. 
 
 Calvinists, Old. See Old Calvinists. 
 
 Cambridge Platform, 160-163; ap- 
 proved by Synod of 1 679, 188 ; min- 
 isterial standing, 393, 394 ; quoted, 
 205, 217, 219, 224, 226-230, 246- 
 248, 249 ; also 400. 
 
 Cambridge Synod, its causes, meet- 
 ing, and work, 156-164, 428. 
 
 Cambridge University, Puritan char- 
 acter, 18, 19, 32. 
 
 Caner, Rev. Henry, 330. 
 
 Cartwright, Thomas, 19-22, 32, 37, 
 153- 
 
INDEX, 
 
 441 
 
 Carver, John, Plymouth Pilgrim, 65 ; 
 chosen governor, 67 ; died, 68. 
 
 Cathari, 3. 
 
 Channing, Rev. W. E., pastorate, 
 336 : at Codman's ordination, 337 ; 
 reply to the " Panoplist," 339, 
 340; sermon at Sparks's ordina- 
 tion, 341; at Dedham, 342; also 
 
 344, 345- „ , . 
 
 Charles I., character, 84, 85 ; relations 
 to Parliament, 85 ; rewards High 
 Anglican clergy, 88; limits Puritan 
 preaching, 91 ; grants Mass. char- 
 ter, 96. 
 
 Charles II., 191, 192- 
 
 Chauncy, Pres. Charles, of Harvard, 
 
 174, 176, 177- 
 Chauncy, Rev. Charles, of Boston, 
 
 opposes Great Awakening, 260, 
 
 261, 272: on original sin, 274; 
 
 Universalist views, 295, 296; other 
 
 references, 305, 330. 
 Cheeshahteaumuck, Caleb, 169. 
 Chicago, Cong, in, 373, 390. 
 Chicago Theological Seminary, 388- 
 
 390, 395, 424- 
 Child, Dr. Robert, 157, I59. 160, 171, 
 
 Chinese, missions among, 40b. 
 Church, nature of a Cong, ch., 217, 
 
 218, 237. . 
 
 Church-membership, condition ot 
 
 franchise, 114, 122, 124; doctrinal 
 
 tests, 219, 220. 
 Church-ofhcers, numbers, choice, and 
 
 duties, 220-237. . 
 Clap, Roger, cited, no. 
 Clark, Rev. F. E., 422. 
 Clark, Rev. Joseph S., 343, 3^0, 38 1» 
 
 385, 388. . 
 
 Clark, Rev. Peter, discussion on origi- 
 nal sin, 274, 275. 
 Clarke, Rev. John, 331. 
 Clarke, Rev. Samuel, Arian views, 
 
 268, 269, 277. 
 Cleaveland, Rev. John, 263. 
 Clyfton, Rev. Richard, 58. 
 Cobbett, Rev. Thomas, 175. 
 Coddington, William, 108, 145. 
 Codman, Rev. John, Unitarian con- 
 troversy, 337, 338. 
 Cogswell, Prof. Jonathan, 360. 
 Collins, Anthony, 284. 
 
 Col man. Rev. Benj., 200-202 ; quoted, 
 244; the Great Awakening, 255, 
 25b, 260, 264. 
 Conant, Roger, at Plymouth, 70 ; set- 
 tles Salem, 95, 96. 
 Conferences, 393. 
 
 Confession, Westminster. See West- 
 minster Confession. 
 Confession of 1680, 188-190; ap- 
 proved at Saybrook, 207; at Na- 
 tional Council of 1865, 399. 
 Confessions of faith, local, 218, 219. 
 Congregational Church Building So- 
 ciety, 383, 384, 388, 429- 
 Congregational Home Missionary So- 
 ciety, 328, 329, 373-376, 378, 382, 
 405, 429. 
 Congregational House, 385. 
 Congregational Library, 384, 429. 
 " Congregational Quarterly," 380, 
 
 381, 384, 388. 
 Congregational Sunday-school and 
 
 Publishing Society, 429. 
 Congregationalism, originates in be- 
 lief that Bible teaches polity, i ; in- 
 debtedness to Anabaptists, 26, 27, 
 35, 36; beginnings, 27-30; debt 
 to Browne, 30-32, 37; Browne's 
 views, 38, 39; martyrs, 40, 50; 
 Barrowe's influence, 42; contrast 
 between his views and those of 
 Browne, 45, 46; London ch. ex- 
 iled to Holland, 51; its confes- 
 sion, 52 ; theGainsborough-Scrooby 
 ch., 56; emigration to Leyden, 
 59; transfer to America, 60-67; 
 Mass. settled, 95-97; the Puri- 
 tans Congregationalized, 100-109; 
 becomes a State ch., 114, 115; 
 early characteristics, 124, 149- 
 153; fellowship strengthened, 125- 
 163; intolerance, 125-147; effect 
 of Roger Williams's dispute, 136; 
 the f^rst " synod," 142-144; l^'^Y in- 
 fluence, 150, 151 ; love of education, 
 151, 152, 391, 403, 431 ; convention 
 of 1643, 156; Cambridge Synod 
 and Platform, 156-163; Indian 
 missions, 164-170, 375, 377, 402, 
 405; the Half-Way Covenant, 
 170-182; Reforming Synod, 185- 
 190; Confession of 1680, 188- 
 190; Ministerial Associations, 198, 
 
442 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 199; proposals of 1705, 202-204; 
 Saybrook Platform, 204-209 ; John 
 Wise, 209-212; little theologic 
 discussion in early Cong., 214- 
 216; early theories and usages, 
 217-250; treatment of Dissenters 
 in the eighteenth century, 234-237 ; 
 State interference, 248, 249 ; the 
 Grea't Awakening, 255-260; conse- 
 quences, 260-266 ; rise of theolog- 
 ical parties, 266, 267 ; the Liberal 
 school, 267—279; the Edwardean 
 party, 280-306 ; Hopkinsianism, 
 288-292 ; the Atonement, 294-299 ; 
 Emmons's contributions to polity, 
 307, 308 ; Cong, in Vermont, New 
 York, and Ohio, 309-311; rise of 
 home missions, 311-314; inter- 
 course with Presbyterians, 306, 
 314-316; Plan of Union, 316-319, 
 37o-373» 381, 382; distrust of 
 Cong., 318, 364, i^i\ Cong, dises- 
 tablished, 236, 329 ; new period of 
 revivals, 319-321, 329; new mis- 
 sionary agencies, 322-329 ; Unita- 
 rian separation, 329-346 ; founding 
 of theological seminaries, 346-365, 
 388-390, 392 ; Taylor-Tyler con- 
 troversy, 355-361 ; Bushnell, 365- 
 369; westward spread of Cong., 
 371-379; revival of interest in 
 polity, 371-379; Bacon, Thomp- 
 son, and Clark, 379-381 ; steps to- 
 ward greater union, 381 ; the Albany 
 Convention and its results, 382-385 ; 
 Library and House, 384, 385 ; H. M. 
 Dexter, 385-387 ; Chicago Semi- 
 nary, 388-390 ; the New West, 391, 
 392; the National Council of 1865, 
 395-401 ; discussion over Calvin- 
 ism, 397, 398; the "Burial Hill 
 Declaration," 398, 399; statement 
 of polity, 400; work at the South, 
 401-405 ; woman's work, 406, 407, 
 424, 425 ; Triennial National Coun- 
 cil, 408-412; Creed of 1883, 412- 
 414; recent tendencies, 414-426; 
 Andover controversy, 415, 416; the 
 American Board, 416-422; novel 
 methods, 422-426; statistics, 427- 
 430; characteristics of a Cong, ch., 
 430-438. 
 
 " Congregationalist," the, 386. 
 
 Connecticut, settlement, 11 7-1 19; 
 early provision for education, 152; 
 legislature tries to settle Half- Way 
 Covenant dispute, 175, 178; union 
 with New Haven, 178; religious 
 condition at opening of eighteenth 
 century, 204 ; legislature calls Say- 
 brook Synod, 206-209 ; laws re- 
 garding ministerial support, 233, 
 234; toleration of Dissenters, 235, 
 236 ; consequences of Great Awak- 
 ening, 261 ; laws against " Separa- 
 tists," 262, 263; General Associa- 
 tion opposes Whitefield, 265 ; Gen- 
 eral Association promotes home 
 missions, 311, 312 ; Cong, disestab- 
 lished, 236, 329 ; friendliness to 
 Presbyterianism, 314, 315. 
 
 " Connecticut Evangelical Magazine," 
 312, 322. 
 
 Connecticut Missionary Society, 312. 
 
 Connecticut Pastoral Union, 360. 
 
 Consociation, early meaning of term, 
 156, 176; origin of system, 203, 
 207, 208; effects, 306, 315, 318; 
 decline, 368, 380. 
 
 Consociation, General, of 1741, 261. 
 
 Contributions in early New England, 
 242. 
 
 Convention, Albany. See Albany 
 Convention. 
 
 Convention, General, of 1846, 381. 
 
 Convention, Ministerial, of Mass. See 
 Massachusetts Convention. 
 
 Convention of 1657, 175. 
 
 Cooper, Rev. W^illiam, 264. 
 
 Coppin, John, Cong, martyr, 40. 
 
 Cotton, Rev. John, opposes Separa- 
 tism, 108 ; advises consultation witli 
 Plymouth, 112; ordination, 113, 
 233 ; Roger Williams's dispute, 133 ; 
 Antinomian dispute, 138-144; writ- 
 ings, 154, 155; at Convention of 
 1643, 156; Caml)ridge Synod, 159; 
 writes preface to Platform, 160; 
 Half-Way Covenant views, 174; 
 quoted, 219, 230; death, 183. 
 
 Creed of 1883, the, 412-414. 
 
 Councils, advisory, 225, 247, 393, 437. 
 
 Covenant, basis of Cong. Ch., 102, 
 217, 218. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 443 
 
 Cradock, Gov. Matthew, 97. 
 Dale, Sir Thomas, 148. 
 Dana, Rev. James, 278, 293. 
 Dartmouth College, 169. 
 Davenport, Rev. James, excesses, 
 
 259. 
 
 Davenport, Rev. John, procures min- 
 isters for Mass., 104; settlement 
 of New Haven, 119-121; Antino- 
 mian Synod, 143; writings, 154; 
 opposes Half-Way Covenant, 174, 
 175, 177; at Boston, 178, 183. 
 
 Davison, William, 57. 
 
 Deacon, nature of his office, 229, 230, 
 242. 
 
 Deaconess, nature of her office, 230, 
 231. 
 
 Dedham case, 222, 341-343. 
 
 Dexter, Henry M., opinion of 
 Browne, 31, 40; contributions to 
 Cong., 385-388, 392, 394, 409. 
 
 Doddridge, Rev. Philip, 268. 
 
 Dorchester-Windsor ch. formed, log- 
 in. 
 
 Dort, Synod of, 86. 
 
 Dow, Rev. Daniel, 359. 
 
 Dudley, Gov. Joseph, 192, 204. 
 
 Dudley, Gov. Thomas, 96, 108, 112, 
 139. 
 
 Dummer, Lieut. -Gov. William, 212. 
 
 Dunster, Pres. Henry, Baptist suf- 
 erer, 146. 
 
 Dwight, Pres. Timothy, pupil of 
 younger Edwards, 294; theologic 
 position, 280, 299, 301-303; pro- 
 motes union with Presbyterians, 
 315 ; founding of American Board, 
 323; plans Yale Divinity School, 
 354; teacher of Taylor, 355; also 
 305, 306, 337. 
 
 Eaton, Gov. Theophilus, 1 19-12 1. 
 
 Eckley, Rev. Joseph, 295. 
 
 Education, sought by Congregation- 
 alists, 151, 152, 391, 403, 431. 
 
 Education Society, 326, 327, 382, 
 408, 429. 
 
 Edwardeanism, 280-307 ; evangelic 
 character, 304, 305, 321; trains 
 ministers, 347; in eastern Mass., 
 332, ZZZ '■> barrier to Unitarianism, 
 344; later types, 355-361, 364, 
 366. 
 
 Edwards, Prof. B. B., 384. 
 
 Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, theologic 
 views, 254, 255, 267, 280-286; 
 Evangelistic activity, 253-259, 265, 
 266; Indian missions, 169, 174; 
 opposes Half-Way Covenant, 182, 
 283; views on original sin, 274- 
 276, 284; on Arianism^ 277; trea- 
 tise on the Affections, 282 ; IIumI)le 
 Inquiry, 283 ; Freedom of Will, 283 ; 
 Nature of Virtue, 284, 285 ; dis- 
 ciples, 286 sqq. ; also 314. 
 
 Edwards, Rev. Jonathan, Jr., life- 
 work, 293-299 ; on the atonement, 
 297-299 ; answer to Chauncy, 
 295, 296; Plan of Union, 316; 
 also 305, 306, 314, 332. 
 
 Edwards, Mrs. Sarah, 254, 286. 
 
 Edwards, Rev. Timothy, 254. 
 
 Eells, Rev. Gushing, 377, 378, 391, 
 392. 
 
 Elders, 226. 
 
 Elders, ruling, 226-229, 239. 
 
 Eliot, Rev. John, assists Plooker in 
 teaching, 93; at Roxbury, 115; 
 Indian missions, 165-169; also 
 183. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, ecclesiastical pol- 
 icy, 13, 15, 23; proclamation 
 against Browne's books, 39 ; asks 
 Penry's extradition, 47; attitude 
 toward Puritans, 78. 
 
 Ellis, Rev. Geo. E,, quoted, 345. 
 
 Emlyn, Rev. Thomas, Arian writings, 
 268, 277, 331. 
 
 Emmons, Rev. Nathanael, theology, 
 280, 290, 293, 299-303 ; opposes 
 Half-Way Covenant, 182; an- 
 swers Chauncy, 295 ; atonement, 
 299 ; contributions to Cong, polity, 
 307, 308; founds Mass. Missionary 
 Soc, 313; opposes Mass. General 
 Association, 334 ; opposes union 
 with Old Calvinists, 350; as theo- 
 logical instructor, 300 ; also 302, 
 
 305, 332, 349, 354. 
 Endicott, Gov. John, settles at Sa- 
 lem, 96; learns of Cong, from 
 Fuller, 100, 103, 104; Salem ch. 
 founded, 104-107; opposes dis- 
 senters, 107, 108 ; influence on 
 Boston ch., 112; in Ro^er Wil- 
 
444 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 liams dispute, 129, 131 ; against 
 Quakers, 147. 
 
 Episcopacy, established in New Eng- 
 land, 193; exemption laws in favor 
 of, 234, 235 ; prevents a Synod, 
 212. 
 
 Evarts, Jeremiah, 339. 
 
 Farrar, Samuel, 349. 
 
 Faunce, Elder Thomas, 228. 
 
 Female Cent Institution, 313. 
 
 Finney, Pres. Charles G., work and 
 theology, 363-365. 
 
 Fisher, Prof. George P., 397. 
 
 Fisk University, 404. 
 
 Fiske, John, cited, 149, 167. 
 
 Fitch, Prof. Eleazar T., 354, 355, 357. 
 
 Fitz, Richard, early Congregational- 
 ist, 28-30, 41. 
 
 Flynt, Rev. Josiah, 189. 
 
 Foxcroft, Rev. Thomas, 266, 272, 
 274. 
 
 Freeman, Rev. James, Unitarian 
 views and letters, 330, 331, t^t^t^, 
 
 Z?^^, 339- 
 
 Fuller, Samuel, in ch. at Plymouth, 
 65, 74; influence in Congregation- 
 alizing the Mass. Puritans, 100- 
 112. 
 
 Funerals, early customs, 245, 246. 
 
 Gager, William, 113. 
 
 Gardiner, Samuel R., quoted, 91. 
 
 Gay, Rev. Ebenezer, 278. 
 
 Gee, Rev. Joshua, 264, 266. 
 
 Gillett, Rev. T. P., 359. 
 
 Goodwin, Rev. E. P., 417. 
 
 Goodwin, Elder William, 116. 
 
 Gookin, Capt. Daniel, 168. 
 
 Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 95, 130. 
 
 Gott, Charles, letter quoted, 105, 106. 
 
 Graham, Rev. John, 258. 
 
 Great Awakening, the, 255-260; con- 
 sequences, 260-266 ; rapid decline, 
 264, 265. 
 
 Grebel, Anabaptist leader, 9. 
 
 Greenham, Rev. Richard, Browne's 
 teacher, t,Z- 
 
 Greenwood, John, early life, 42 ; la- 
 bors and suflferings, 29, 41-44, 49 ; 
 writings, 44; martyrdom, 50. 
 
 Griffin, Rev. Edward Dorr, 294; 
 atonement, 299 ; quoted on the re- 
 vivals, 320; Boston pastorate, 337. 
 
 Grindal, Edmund, Archbishop, op- 
 poses use of vestments, 17; exam- 
 ination of London Separatists, 28 ; 
 opposes Browne, 37. 
 
 Grotius Hugo, 299. 
 
 Guilford, settled, 122, 123. 
 
 Guyse, Rev. John, 255. 
 
 Half- Way Covenant, beginnings of 
 discussion, 156, 158, 160; its na- 
 ture and course, 170-182; also 220, 
 262, 283, 287, 366. 
 
 Hall, Gordon, missionary, 322, 324. 
 
 Hall, Rev. Richard, 375, 376. 
 
 Hampton Court Conference, 79, 80, 
 86. 
 
 Hampton Institute, 403. 
 
 Harrison, Robert, associated with 
 Browne, 35-37, 39, 40. 
 
 Hart, Rev. William, 291, 292. 
 
 Hartford church organized, 116; early 
 public schools, 152. 
 
 Hartford Theological Seminary, 359- 
 361, 390, 423, 425. 
 
 Harvard College founded, 151, 152; 
 opposes Whitefield, 265 ; becomes 
 I Unitarian, 334, 335 ; ministerial 
 j education, 346 ; Divinity School, 
 I 354 ; sociological instruction, 423. 
 I Harvey, Rev. Joseph, 358, 359. 
 
 Haynes, Gov. John, 116, 118, 139; 
 banishment of Roger Williams, 134, 
 
 135- 
 
 Haynes, Rev. Joseph, 178. 
 
 Hazen, Rev. H. A., 384. 
 
 Heads of Agreement, 202, 203, 207. 
 
 Hemmenway, Rev. Moses, 291, 292. 
 
 Hewit, Rev. Nathaniel, 359. 
 
 Higginson, Rev. Francis, feeling to- 
 ward Ch. of England, 99; sent as 
 minister to Salem, 104, 105 ; or- 
 dained, 105-107; death, 129; also 
 231. 
 
 Higginson, Rev. John, beginnings of 
 Salem, 104; at Guilford, 123; An- 
 tinomian Synod, 143 ; ordination at 
 Salem, 224; Confession of 1680, 
 188, 189. 
 
 Hobart, Rev. L. Smith, 381, 389. 
 
 Hobart, Rev. Peter, 155. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, philosopher, 284. 
 
 Holliman, Ezekiel, 135, 136. 
 
 Hollis, Thomas, 346. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 445 
 
 Home Missionary Society. See Con- 
 gregational Home Miss. Soc. 
 
 Hooker, Richard, views on Episco- 
 pacy, 23. 
 
 Hooker, Rev. Thomas, treatment by 
 Laud, 92, 93; at Newtown, Mass., 
 116; removal to Hartford, 1 18; 
 Davenport's installation, 121; 
 Roger Williams dispute, 133, 134; 
 Antinomian Synod, 142, 143 ; Con- 
 vention of 1643, 156; writings, 155; 
 views on church-membership, 183 ; 
 his Hopkinsianism, 289 ; death, 
 
 183. 
 
 Hooper, John, Bishop, Puritan scru- 
 ples, 17. 
 
 Hopkins, Rev. Josiah, 361. 
 
 Hopkins, Rev. Samuel, of West 
 Springfield, 169. 
 
 Hopkins, Rev. Samuel, of Newport, 
 anti-Arian sermon, 278 ; his theo- 
 logical position, 280, 287-291 ; in- 
 fluence on West, 293 ; answer to 
 Chauncy, 295 ; other references, 
 300, 301, 302, 305, 349. 
 
 Hopkinsianism, nature and influence, 
 288-292, 300, 301, 355; founds 
 Mass. Miss. Soc, 313; in eastern 
 Mass., 332, 334, ,337 ; in beginnings 
 of Andover Seminary, 348-352. 
 
 Howard University, 390, 404. 
 
 Hiibmaier, Anabaptist leader, 9. 
 
 Hunt, Rev. T. D., 378, 379. 
 
 Huntington, Rev. Joseph, 296. 
 
 Huntington, Rev. Joshua, 337. 
 
 Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, the Antino- 
 mian dispute, 138-145; also 150, 
 
 151. 
 
 Hutchinson, William, 138. 
 
 Hyde, Hon. H. D., 420. 
 
 Illinois, Cong, development in, 371- 
 
 373. 
 Indians, missions to, 164-170, 375, 
 
 377» 378, 405, 406. 
 Ingraham, Rev. David S., 402. 
 Installation, 225. 
 Institutional church, the, 423. 
 Iowa, Cong, beginnings in, 373, 374. 
 Iowa Band, the, 374. 
 Iowa College, 374, 424. 
 James I., and Millenary Petition, 79; 
 
 at Hampton Court Conference, 79, 
 
 80 ; quarrels with Parliament, 82- 
 84 ; forbids doctrinal discussion, 
 91 ; concessions to Pilgrims, 62. 
 
 James II., 192, 194. 
 
 James, Rev. Thomas, 149. 
 
 Jewel, John, Bishop, 17. 
 
 Johnson, PVancis, early life and con- 
 version, 45, 47 ; pastor of London 
 ch., 29, 45, 49; imprisonment, 49, 
 51; life and ministry in Amster- 
 dam, 53, 54. 
 
 Johnson, Isaac, 96, 108, 112. 
 
 Keller, Ludwig, 8. 
 
 Kendall, Rev. James, 334. 
 
 " Kingdom," the, 424. 
 
 King's Chapel, becomes Unitarian, 
 
 330, 331- 
 
 Kirke, Col. Piercy, 192. 
 
 Kniston, George, 49. 
 
 Knowles, Rev. John, 149, 223. 
 
 Kollock, Rev. Henry, 337. 
 
 Lambeth Articles of 1595, 86. 
 
 Lamson, Rev. Alvan, 342. 
 
 Lane Seminary, 362, 363. 
 
 Langworthy, Rev. I. P., 385, 388. 
 
 Lathrop, Rev. Joseph, 181. 
 
 Laud, William, Archbishop, life and 
 character, 23, 89-91 ; oppresses the 
 Puritans, 91-94; designs on Mass., 
 
 I30» 131- 
 
 Lawrence, Prof. E. A., 397. 
 
 Laymen, influence in early New Eng- 
 land, 150, 151. 
 
 Lechford, Thomas, quoted, 242, 243, 
 246. 
 
 Lecture, Preparatory, 244. 
 
 Lectures (religious service) in early 
 New England, 243, 244. 
 
 Lectureships, Puritan, 91. 
 
 Lee, Nicholas, 49. 
 
 Leighton, Alexander, Puritan suf- 
 ferer, 92. 
 
 Leverett, Pres. John, 199. 
 
 Liberal Theology, 267-279, 305, 306, 
 
 329, 330, 335, 'h^^^ Z^^- 
 
 Licensure, Ministerial, 203, 393. 
 Locke, John, philosopher, 254, 268, 
 
 284. 
 Luther, Martin, 5, 7-9. 
 Lyford, Rev. John, at Plymouth, 70, 
 
 71 ; at Salem, 95. 
 Lynn, Henry, 128. 
 
446 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Manwaring, Rev. Roger, 88. 
 Marsl), Rev. P>ederick, 359. 
 Martin JNIur-prclate tracts, 47. 
 Massachusetts, settlement, 95-116; 
 early difficulties of situation, 126- 
 128; severity toward dissenters, 
 128-148; governmental interfer- 
 ence in church affairs, 114, 115, 
 ^1>1; 138, 146, I73» 175> 248, 249; 
 legislature founds a college and 
 schools, 151, 152; calls synods, 
 I5.8> I75» 176, 187; approves Cam- 
 bridge Platform, 160, 161 ; legisla- 
 ture becomes a missionary society, 
 164, 165, 249 ; loss of original char- 
 ter, 190-195; the charter of 1691, 
 195, 196; government refuses to 
 call a synod, 212; burns Pynchon's 
 book, 216; law regarding ministe- 
 rial election and support, 221, 232, 
 '^ZZ'> 234; toleration of dissenters, 
 234-236 ; Cong, disestablished, 236, 
 329- 
 
 Massachusetts Convention, Annual 
 Ministerial, 201, 334; testimony 
 against Whitefield, 263. 
 
 Massachusetts General Association, 
 
 ^^ ZZ2>^ 334- 
 
 " Massachusetts Missionary Maga- 
 zine," 313, 336, 348. 
 
 Massachusetts Missionary Society, 
 
 z^^z, ?>iz, 348- 
 
 Mather, Rev. Cotton, ministry, 184; 
 witchcraft excitement, 197, 198; 
 Proposals of 1705, 202 ; petition for 
 Synod, 1725, 212; religious views 
 of New England, 216; cited, 182; 
 quoted, 99, 146, 225, 229, 239- 
 241, 245, 246, 253. 
 
 Mather, Rev, Increase, life and influ- 
 ence, 183-190, 194-196, 199-201, 
 203; teachership, 227; Half-Way 
 Covenant discussion, 177, 178, 
 183 ; opposes Stoddardeanism, 180; 
 books burned, 259. 
 
 Mather, Rev. Moses, 292. 
 
 Mather, Rev. Richard, settlement, 
 137. 138; writings, 154, 155; Cam- 
 bridge Platform, 159-161; Malf- 
 Way Covenant views, 174-177; 
 also 183. I 
 
 Mather, Rev. Samuel, 295. | 
 
 Maverick, Rev. John, 110. 
 
 Maxcy, Rev. Jonathan, 299. 
 
 Mayflower Compact, 66, 67. 
 
 Mayhew, Rev. Experience, his "Grace 
 Defended," 270, 271, 276. 
 
 Mayhew, Rev. Jonathan, Arian view s, 
 276-279, 287; other writings, 291 ; 
 also 330. 
 
 Mayhew, Thomas, and Thomas, Jr., 
 missionary efforts, 165, 166, 270. 
 
 Meeting-houses, 237, 238. 
 
 Melanchthon, Philip, 5. 
 
 Menno Simons, 10. 
 
 Mennonites, 10. 
 
 Metcalf, Theron, 342. 
 
 Michigan, Association formed, 371 ; 
 seeks greater Cong, union, 381 ; 
 Chicago Sem., 389. 
 
 Middlebury College, 310. 
 
 Milford, settled, 121, 122. 
 
 Millenary Petition, 79. 
 
 Mills, Rev. Jedidiah, 291. 
 
 Mills, Rev. Samuel J., 322. 
 
 Mills, Rev. S. J., Jr., his mission- 
 ary endeavors, 322-324, 372, 376; 
 death, 324. 
 
 Milton, John, 268; quoted, 94. 
 
 Ministerial licensure (see Licensure) 
 Relief Fund, 429; settlement, 220- 
 226; standing, 392-394; support, 
 231-237; training (see Theological 
 Education). 
 
 Minnesota, Cong, beginnings in, 375, 
 376. 
 
 " Missionary Herald," the, 336. 
 Missions, foreign, beginning, 322. 
 
 See also American Board. 
 Missions, home, beginnings in Conn., 
 311, 312; in other New Enghmd 
 States, 313, 314; Western work, 
 314; " Plan of Union," 316-319. 
 Missouri, Cong, beginnings in, 376, 
 
 377- 
 Mitchell, Rev. Jonathan, 177, 183. 
 Montagu, Dr. Richard, Anglican 
 
 views, 88. 
 Morse, Rev. Jedidiah, pastorate, 332 ; 
 
 anti-Unitarian polemics, 335, 337, 
 
 338; founding of Andover Sem., 
 
 349. 350; also 294. 
 Morton, Rev. Charles, 198, 199. 
 Morton, Thomas, 73, 128. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 447 
 
 Murray, Rev. John, Universalist, 
 294, 295. 
 
 Music, in public worship, 239, 240. 
 
 National Council at Oberlin, 409-411 ; 
 doctrinal position, 411. 
 
 National Council of 1865, 395-401, 
 403, 408, 409. 
 
 National Council, Triennial, 408-412 ; 
 its constitution, 410, 411 ; its creed- 
 commission, 412-414; the benevo- 
 lent societies, 421, 422. 
 
 Nettleton, Rev. Asahel, 359, 363. 
 
 New Divinity. See Edwardeanism. 
 
 New Hampshire Missionary Society, 
 
 New Haven, settlement of, 1 19-124; 
 
 ch. formed, 120, 121; Half- Way 
 
 Covenant dispute, 178. 
 New Haven theology, 355-358. 
 New Lights, 261, 267, 280, 281, 
 
 305- 
 New West Education Commission, 
 
 327, 407, 408. 
 New York, Cong, in, 310; home mis- 
 sions to, 311; Association, 371; 
 
 Albany Convention, 382 ; criticises 
 
 National Council, 411. 
 Newell, Samuel, missionary, 422- 
 
 324- 
 Newton, Rev. Roger, ordination, 224. 
 Niles, Rev. Samuel, writings, 272, 
 
 273. 
 Norris, John, 350. 
 Norris, Mrs. Mary, 324. 
 Norton, Prof. Andrews, Unitarian 
 
 writings, 341, 344. 
 Norton, Rev. John, 174, 177, 216. 
 Nott, Rev. Samuel, 294, 322-324. 
 Nowcll, Increase, 113. 
 Noyes, Rev. James, 155. 
 Noyes, Rev. William H., 418-421. 
 Oakes, Rres. Urian, 188. 
 Oberlin College and Seminary, 361- 
 
 365, 371 ; theology, 318, 364, 371. 
 Occom, Rev. Samson, 169. 
 Ohio, Cong, planted in, 310, 311; 
 
 Association, 371, 413. 
 Old Calvinists, 267, 290-292, 295, 
 
 296, 302, 305, 314, 323, S3S, 334; 
 
 founding of Andover Sem., 348- 
 
 352. 
 Old Lights, 261, 265, 267. 
 
 Old South Ch. of Boston, formed, 1 79 ; 
 
 also 337. 
 Oldham, John, at Plymouth, 70, 71. 
 Ordination, 222-226. 
 Oregon, Cong, beginnings in, 377, 
 
 37^- 
 Original Sin, discussion on, 273-276 ; 
 Hopkins on, 290; Emmons on, 
 301. 
 Pacific Theological Seminary, 392. 
 "Panoplist," \he, 335, 339, 340, 
 
 345» 348, 350. 
 Parish. See Society. 
 Park, Prof. E. A., 353; the atone- 
 mejit, 299; Cong. Library, 384; 
 statement of polity, 400; Am. 
 Board, 417; quoted, 294. 
 Park Street Ch., Boston, organized, 
 
 337- 
 Parker, Rev. Thomas, 155. 
 Parris, Rev. Samuel, 197. 
 Parsons, Rev. Jonathan, 258, 259. 
 Partridge, Rev. Ralph, 159, 160, 
 
 174, 175- 
 Pastor, nature of his office, 226, 227. 
 Patton, Rev. William W., 390, 409. 
 Pearson, Prof. Eliphalet, founding of 
 
 Andover Sem., 348-352. 
 Pemberton, Rev. Ebnezer, 200-202. 
 Penry, John, early life, 47 ; connec- 
 tion with London ch., 41, 47, 48; 
 writings, 47; martyrdom, 49, 50. 
 Perkins, Rev. Nathan, 359. 
 Peter, Rev. PI ugh, 102, 140. 
 Phillip's War, 167, 168, 186, 204. 
 Phillips, Rev. George, settled at 
 Watertown, in, 113, 114; salary, 
 231. 
 Phillips, John, 348. 
 Phillips, John, Jr., 349. 
 Phillips, Samuel, 348, 349, 
 Phips, Sir William, 197. 
 Pierpont, Rev. James, 254. 
 Pierson, Rev. Abraham, of Branford, 
 
 178. 
 Pilgrims, Scrooby ch., founded, 56- 
 58; emigration to Holland, 59; 
 transfer to America, 60-67 ! toler- 
 ant spirit, 61, 62, 65, 72, 99; land- 
 ing at Plymouth, 67 ; early strug- 
 gles, 67-75 ; their influence on the 
 Mass. Puritans, 100-109. 
 
448 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Pitkin, William, 171, 173. 
 
 Plan of Union, 316-319; nature, 316, 
 317; workings, 318, 370-373; re- 
 piuliated by Old School Presb. , 
 317; by Cong., 317, 381, 382. 
 
 Pomeroy, Rev. Benjamin, 258. 
 
 Pond, Rev. Enoch, 354. 
 
 Porter, Prof. Ebenezer, 353. 
 
 Porter, Rev. Eliphalet, liberal views, 
 
 ZZl- 
 
 Porter, Rev. John, 271, 272. 
 
 Porter, Rev. Noah, 323. 
 
 Post, Rev. Truman M., 377, 395. 
 
 Prayer-meetings, 321. 
 
 Presbyterianism, in early New Eng- 
 land, 155; English Pres. becomes 
 largely Arian, 268 ; friendly rela- 
 tions with Cong., 209, 306, 307, 
 314-316; Plan of Union, 316-319 ; 
 associated in foreign and home 
 missions, 325, 326, 328. 
 
 Priestley, Rev. Joseph, 331, 338, 339. 
 
 Prince, Rev. Thomas, 264-266, 274; 
 cited, no. 
 
 Proposals of 1705, 202-204, 207, 209. 
 
 Prudden, Rev. Peter, of Milford, 
 1 19-122, 174. 
 
 Puritanism, its genesis, 14-18; its 
 second stage, 18-20; its limitations, 
 20-22 ; political ideals, 25 ; how 
 differing from Separatism, 77, 78, 
 109 ; under James I., 79-86 ; strong- 
 ly Calvinistic, 86 ; it seeks uniform- 
 ity of belief, 87; oppressed by 
 Laud, 91-94; the " lectureships," 
 91; Puritanism settles Mass., 95- 
 97 ; number and quality of immi- 
 grants, 97, 98 ; did not come to estab- 
 lish religious liberty, 98, 99 ; Con- 
 gregationalized by the Pilgrims, 
 100-109 ; want of tolerance, 105, 
 107, 108, 125-147; other character- 
 istics, 149-153. 
 
 Pynchon, William, 96 ; theory of the 
 atonement, 215, 216. 
 
 Quakers, opposed by Puritans, 147, 
 148, 150; exemption laws, 235. 
 
 Quint, Rev. A. H., 387, 388, 398, 400, 
 409. 
 
 Raikes, Robert, 321. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, estimate of 
 Brownist strength, 50. 
 
 [ Randolph, Edward, 191, 193. 
 Rasieres, Isaac de, description of 
 
 Plymouth, 73, 74. 
 Ratliffe, or Ratcliflfe, Philip, 128. 
 Reforming Synod, 185-190. 
 Revivals, 251, 252, 255-260, 319-321, 
 
 329. See Great Awakening. 
 Rice, Rev. Luther, 322, 324. 
 Richards, Rev. James, 322. 
 Rol)bins,. Rev. Chandler, 182, 332, 
 
 334- 
 Robinson, John, connection with 
 Scrooby ch., 57; its emigration to 
 Holland, 59; his influence, 60; un- 
 i willingly remains at Leyden, 63, 
 j 70; his parting address, 64; death 
 I and character, 71, 72. 
 Rogers, Rev. John, 278. 
 Ross, Rev. A. H., on Plan of Union, 
 j 318; contrilmtions to Cong., 392- 
 [ 394 ; also 409. 
 i Rutherford, Prof. Samuel, writings, 
 
 I 155- 
 
 j Sacraments, how administered, 242, 
 
 243. 
 j Salaries. See Ministerial Support. 
 I Salem, ch. founded, 103, 104; its im- 
 ; portance, 108, 109; witchcraft ex- 
 j citement (see Witchcraft). 
 
 Saltonstall, Gov. Gurdon, 206. 
 
 Saltonstall, Sir Richard, 96, ill. 
 
 Sandys, Edwin, Archbishop, 17, 
 
 Savoy Synod, 188; Confession, 189. 
 
 Saybrook Platform, 207, 208, 247. 
 
 Saybrook Synod, 206-209. 
 
 Scripture-reading, public, 238, 239. 
 
 Seccombe, Rev. Charles, 375, 376. 
 
 Separatism, how differing from Puri- 
 tanism, 77, 78. 
 
 Separatists (Connecticut), 262, 263. 
 
 Sergeant, Rev. John, 169, 374. 
 
 Sermon, in early New England, 240, 
 
 Services, public, 238-244. 
 Settlement, Ministerial. See Minis- 
 terial Settlement. 
 Sewall, Rev. Joseph, 264, 274. 
 vSewall, Judge Samuel, 197. 
 Shepard, Rev. Thomas, 174, 289. 
 Sherman, Rev. John, 336. 
 Shipherd, Rev. J. J., 361, 363. 
 Shute, Rev. Daniel, 278. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 449 
 
 Sin, Taylor's views of, 356 ; Fitch on, I 
 357. See Original Sin. I 
 
 Skelton, Rev. Samuel, 105, 108, 130, | 
 231. i 
 
 Slavery, 363, 383, 395. 1 
 
 Smalley, Rev. John, theological posi- : 
 tion, 280, 292, 293, 299 ; teacher of 
 Emmons, 300. 1 
 
 Smith, Rev. Henry, 174. | 
 
 Smith, Rev. Ralph, at Plymouth, 73, i 
 74; Separatist views, 105, 107; also 
 '129. 
 
 Smyth, Prof. E. C, 416. 
 
 Smyth, John, gathers ch. at Gains- 
 borough, 56; emigration to Hol- 
 land, 58; becomes a Baptist, 58; 
 after experiences, 59 ; also 387. 
 
 Society, Ecclesiastical, origin and na- 
 ture, 220-222. 
 
 Sociology, study of, 423, 424. 
 
 Spalding, Rev. H. H., 377. 
 
 Sparks, Rev. Jared, 341. 
 
 Spotswood, Gov. Alex., 149. 
 
 Spring, Rev. Gardiner, 358. 
 
 Spring, Rev. Samuel, of Newbury- | 
 port, founding of American Board, 
 111 ; pastorate, 332 ; founding of 
 Andover Sem., 349-351- 
 
 Spring, Rev. Samuel, of Hartford, 
 
 359- 
 Standish, Myles, Plymouth Pilgrim, 
 
 65, 74- 
 
 Stewart, Rev. P. P., 361. 
 
 Stiles, Pres. Ezra, 428. 
 
 Stoddard, Rev. Solomon, on sacra- 
 ments, 180-182; Confession of 
 1680, 188; revivals, 251; death, 
 
 254- 
 
 Stoddardeanism, 180-182, 252, 254, 
 280, 283. 
 
 Stone, Rev. Samuel, settled at Cam- 
 bridge, 116; removal to Hartford, 
 118; Half-Way Covenant, 174; 
 quoted, 46; also 121, 142. 
 
 Storrs, Rev. R. S., 418-420. 
 
 Stowe, Prof. Calvin E., 362. 
 
 Strong, Rev. Cyprian, 182. 
 
 Stuart, Prof. Moses, reply to Chan- 
 ning, 341 ; influence, 352, 353; also 
 
 355- 
 Studley, Daniel, 49. 
 Sturtevant, Pres. J. M., 373. 
 
 Sunday-schools, 321. 
 Sybthorpe, Dr. Robert, 88. 
 Synod, Antinomian, 142-144. 
 Synod, Cambridge. See Cambridge 
 
 Synod. 
 Synod, Saybrook. See Saybrook 
 
 Synod. 
 Synod at the Savoy. See Savoy 
 
 Synod. 
 Synod of 1662, 176-178. 
 Synod of 1680. See Reforming 
 
 Synod. 
 Tappan, Prof. David, 334. 
 Taylor, Rev. John, writings and in- 
 fluence, 269, 270, 273, 275, 279, 
 
 281. 
 Taylor, Prof. Nathaniel W., 304; 
 
 life and theology, 355-361. 
 Teacher, nature of his office, 226, 
 
 227. 
 Tennent, Rev. Gilbert, 256, 258. 
 Tennent, Rev. William, 256. 
 Thacher, Rev. Peter, 295. 
 Thacher, Rev. S. C, 340. 
 Thacker, Elias, Cong, martyr, 40. 
 Theological Education, in early New 
 
 England, 346; later development, 
 
 346-365, 388-390, 392» 425- 
 Thompson, Rev. Joseph P., 380, 
 
 382, 397- 
 
 Thompson, Prof. William, 360. 
 
 Tompson, Rev. William, 149. 
 
 Torrey, Rev. Samuel, 188. 
 
 Treadwell, Gov. John, 323. 
 
 Trumbull, Rev. Benjamin, cited, 121. 
 
 Tufts, Rev. John, 240. 
 
 Turner, Rev. Asa, 373, 374. 
 
 Tyler, Prof. Bennet, life and theol- 
 ogy, 358-361 ; reply to Bushnell, 
 366. 
 
 Unitarianism, 266, 278, 279, 305, 
 306, 321 ; the Unitarian separation, 
 329-346; the name " Unitarian," 
 339, 340; local character of move- 
 ment, 344; its literary sympathies, 
 345 ; its nature, 345, 346 ; also 
 
 Universalism, beginnmgs m New 
 
 England, 294-296. 
 Vane, Gov. Henry, the Antinomian 
 
 dispute, 139-142. 
 Vassall, William, 157. 
 
450 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Vermont, Congregationalism planted 
 in, 309, 310; home missions to, 
 311; Miss. Soc. 313, 425; Univer- 
 sity of, 310. [ 
 
 Virginia, statutes against dissent in, j 
 148, 149. 
 
 Virginia Company, and the Pilgrims, I 
 60-63, 66. 
 
 Voluntaryism, in ministerial support, { 
 
 231-237- 
 Waldenses, 3, 8. 
 Walker, Rev. G. L., 419. 
 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 17. 
 Ward, Rev. Joseph, 391. 
 Ware, Prof. Henry, 335, 341, 342, 
 
 347- 
 
 Warham, Rev. John, minister at 
 Dorchester, no, in; at Windsor, 
 118; Half- Way Covenant, 174; 
 melancholia, 181, 182. 
 
 Watertown, settled and ch. formed, 
 III, 113, 114. 
 
 Watts, Rev. Isaac, 255, 268. 
 
 Webster, Hon. Daniel, 342. 
 
 Webster, Rev. Samuel, on original | 
 sin, 273-275. 
 
 Weddings, early customs, 245, 246. 
 
 Weeks, Rev. William R., 299. 
 
 Welde, Rev. Thomas, 115. 
 
 Wells, William, 339. 
 
 Wesley, Rev. John, 257, 267. 
 
 West, Rev. Stephen, theological 
 position, 280, 292, 293 ; treatise 
 on the atonement, 293, 297; also 
 182, 349. 
 
 Western Reserve, settled, 311; As- 
 sociation, 371 ; Miss. Soc, 402. 
 
 Westminster Confession, approved by 
 Cong., 159-162, 188, 216. 
 
 Wheelock, Rev. Eleazar, 169, 258. 
 
 Wheelwright, Rev. John, the Anti- 
 nomian dispute, 140-145. 
 
 Whiston, Prof. William, 268. 
 
 Whitby, Rev. Daniel, writings and 
 influence, 269, 273, 281, 283. 
 
 White, Rev. John, of Dorchester, 
 England, influence in beginnings of 
 Mass., 95-97, 102, 104, 109, no. 
 
 Whitefield, Rev. George, preaching 
 in New England, 256-258 ; later 
 visits, 265, 266; death, 266; also 
 294. 
 
 Whitfield, Rev. Henry, settlement of 
 Guilford, 119, 122, 123. 
 
 Whitgift, John, Archbishop, opposes 
 Cartwright, 19, 32, 78 ; views on 
 episcopacy, 23 ; opposes Barrowe, 
 42 ; examines him and Greenwood, 
 43-45; censures Penry, 47; death, 
 81 ; a strong Calvinist, 86. 
 
 Whiting, Rev. John, 178. 
 
 Whitman, Dr. Marcus, 377, 378. 
 
 Whittelsey, Rev. Chauncey, 263. 
 
 Wiclif, Puritanism flourished where 
 he had labored, 18. 
 
 Widows. See Deaconess. 
 
 Wiggles worth. Prof. Edward, 277. 
 
 Willard, Rev. Samuel, 188, 202. 
 
 William and Mary, 194, 195. 
 
 William the Silent tolerates Anabap- 
 tists, 10. 
 
 Williams, Roger, Separatist views, 
 100, 113; opinions and banish- 
 ment, 129-137; also 51, 74, 164, 
 
 387- 
 
 Wilson, Rev. John, settled at Boston, 
 111-113; salary, 231 ; Antinomian 
 dispute, 140-142; Synod of 1662, 
 176; also 74. 
 
 Winchester, Rev. Elhanan, 295. 
 
 Wincob, John, 62. 
 
 Winslow, Gov. Edward, joins Pilgrim 
 Ch., 60; colonial agent, 159; also 
 65, 94, 112. 
 
 Winthrop, Gov. John, agrees to go to 
 New England, 96 ; chosen gover- 
 nor, 97 ; feeling toward Ch. of Eng- 
 land, 99 ; denied communion at 
 Salem, 108 ; settlement at Boston 
 and formation of ch., 11 i-i 13 ; An- 
 tinomian dispute, 140—144; minis- 
 terial support, 144, 232; death, 
 183; quoted, 223; also 74, 135. 
 
 Wisconsin, Cong, in, 374, 375. 
 
 Wise, Rev. John, life and writings, 
 209-212, 307. 
 
 Witchcraft excitement at Salem and 
 elsewhere, 196-198. 
 
 Witter, William, 146. 
 
 Woman's Missionary Societies, 313, 
 406, 407, 429 ; women in Christian 
 work, 424, 425. 
 
 Woods, Prof. Leonard, founding of 
 Andover, 350-353 ; professorship at 
 
INDEX. 
 
 451 
 
 Andover, 352, 3S3 ; ''eply '« Chan- 
 ning, 341 ; to Taylor, 358. 
 AVorcester, Rev. Samuel, beginnings 
 of American Board, 323; theolog- 
 ical views, 334 ; reply to Channing, 
 
 340. 
 Worship. See Services. 
 Yale, Rev. Cyrus, 360. 
 Vale College, founded, 152, 206; ex- 
 
 pulsion of Brainerd, 263 ; against 
 Whitefield, 265 ; Dwight's presi- 
 dency, 301, 302; ministerial educa- 
 tion at, 346 ; Divinity School, 354- 
 
 357, 389. 390, 424- 
 " Year Book," the, 383, 384, 425. 
 Young People's Society of Christian 
 
 Endeavor, 422. 
 Zwingli, Huldreich, 5, 7-9. 
 
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