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SKETCHES IN THE
EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH CONGEEGATIONALISM
J^^.^^£^ t^Cr/3^
SKETCHES IN THE
EVOLUTION OF ENGLISH CONGEEOATIONALISM
Cateto lecture for 1900-01
DELIVERED IN
HARTPORD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY CONNECTICUT
By ALEXANDER MACKENNAL, D.D.
Author of
"The Story of the Emjlish Separatists," "Homes and
Haunts of the Pilgrim Fathers," dx.
BOSTON
CONGREGATIONAL SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND
PUBLISHING SOCIETY
Printed by Bali.antynk, Hanson &^ Co. At the Ballantyiie Tress
CD CD
KWo.s
TO THE REV. CHESTER D. HARTRANFT AND THE FACULTY HE PRESIDES OVER THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED IN ADMIRATION OF THEIR WORK AND REMEMBRANCE OF THEIR FRIENDSHIP
309881
Ipreface
The Carew Lecture was founded in the year 1873, to enable "occasional instruction" to be given to the students of the Theological Insti- tute of Connecticut, now the Hartford Theo- logical Seminary ; and the trust provided that the Lectures be open to the public.
The object of the present Lecture is to "instruct the students" and others as to the spiritual forces and conditions which have made English Congregationalism what it is to-day ; giving only so much of the history as would make the course of the development clear.
The Lecturer believes that as many English- men as Americans will be interested in this special treatment of his theme.
The subjects sketched, and the proportion observed in their treatment, have been partly determined by the fact that the Lecturer had in view an American audience and Eniilish readers.
viii PREFACE
In treating of Robert Browne and his con- temporaries, it has not been found possible to avoid saying over again some things already- said in " The Story of the English Separatists." The quotation on pages 70 and 71 is from that book.
Contents
LECTURE I
I'AGK
The Problem of the English Reformation . . i
LECTURE II Congregationalism before Robert Browne . , 41
LECTURE III Presbyterians and Independents .... 83
LECTURE IV Reactions and Revival 125
LECTURE V
Congeegationalists and Anglicans . . . .167
LECTURE VI
SEVENTEl'iNTH CeNTURY INDEPENDENTS AND TWENTIETH
Century Congregationalists . . -213
LECTURE' I
THE PROBLEM OE THE ENGLISH REEORMATION
A
Arclibishop Sandys's perplexity — Tlie Primitive Church aud Tudor England — Sandys's Protestantism — His Courage — Eesidence in Strasburg — His Return to England — Church Preferment under Elizabeth — The Sorrows of Preferment — The Reformer thwarted by the Queen — Sandys's Self-dis- satisfaction— Archbishop Grindal also an Uneasy Man — Reason of their Inconsistency — Conscience and Patriotism — Sir Edwin Sandys's Europx Speculum — Power of Calvinism — Calvinism as an Ecclesiastical System — Ecclesiastical Calvinism and Eni^lish Puritanism — Thomas Cartwright — Fruitless Efforts of Puritans to direct the English Reforma- tion— " Why did they remain in the Church ? " — Conscience and Patriotism — The Conscience of the Separatists — Their Patriotism — The Separatists were true Englishmen — Nationalists, Puritans, and Separatists contribute to Eng- lish Progress — The Political Foresight of the Separatists — M. Borgeaud on the Mayflower Compact.
LECTUllE I
THE PROBLEiVI OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION
I
Archbishop Sandys, under whose son, Sir Samuel Sandys, Elder Brewster and his father occupied the mansion-house of Scroby, wrote the following w^ords in the preamble to his will: "The state of a small private church, and the form of a learned Christian kingdom, neither would long like nor can at all brook one and the same ecclesiastical government." The sentence will appear to some a truism ; others will think it oracular, and suspect its motive ; we may even fancy it to be one of those epigrams in which a clever man suggests an excuse for occupying a position he is not satisfied with. Standing, however, in his solemn will and testament, dated not quite a year before his death, and read in connection
4 THE PROBLEM OF
with the whole preamble, the words are not without a certain pathos.
Sandys began his public life a zealous and thorough-going Protestant Reformer. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge in the hopeful days of King Edward VI., and pressed for the removal of everything that savoured of Popery in the English Church. At Edward's death he preached a sermon on the proclamation of the Lady Jane Grey as queen ; hoping that her accession would secure the triumph of Protestantism. Two days after, when he was sending off his sermon to London for printing, a university " bedellus " "came weeping to him, and prayed him to shift for himself," for Queen Mary was proclaimed. He knew that his life was in danger ; but " he was not troubled herewithal," says his con- temporary Fox, " for he had ever a man's courage, and could not be terrified." " My life," he affirmed, " is not dear unto me, neither have I done or said anything that urgeth my conscience. For that which I spoke of the State I have instructions warranted by the subscription of sixteen counsellors ; neither can speech be treason, neither yet have I spoken
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 5
further than the Word of God and the laws of the realm doth warrant me, come of me what God will."
After an imprisonment of many weeks he went away to Antwerp, only just escaping the officers who were sent to reapprehend him, and who saw the sails of the ship that was carrying him off. King Philip of Spain, Mary's affianced husband, searched Antwerp for him, and Sandys went to Strasburg. While making this his home for a season, he sought acquaintance with some Continental Reformers, Peter Martyr and Bullinger among them. He was in Peter Martyr's house when word was brought him that Queen Mary had died. "He took his leave, and returned to Strausborough, where he preached, and so Master Grindall and he came towards England, and came to London the same day that Q)ueen Elizabeth was crowmed."
His Protestant zeal had been refreshed by four years' intercourse with the Continental Reformers ; it was tempered by his knowledge of causes of dissension among the English con- gregations in Germany and Switzerland ; but he was full of hope for England under the new
6 THE PROBLEM OF
queen. Elizabeth received him graciously, and made him one of her commissioners for revising the Common Prayer ; in other ways he was soon fully employed about the reformation of religion. He hesitated in accepting a bishopric, because of his dislike of the vestments of the priesthood and the ornaments of public worship. After he was consecrated Bishop of Worcester he almost lost his preferment by opposing the Queen, w^ho retained the crucifix in her private chapel, and was for keeping this symbol and imao;es of the saints in the churches. " As to myself," he writes Peter Martyr, " because I was rather vehement in this matter, and could by no means consent that an occasion of stumb- linsj should be afforded to the Church of Christ, I was very near being deposed from my office and incurring the displeasure of the Queen. But God, in whose hand are the hearts of kings, gave us tranquillity instead of a tem- pest, and delivered the Church of England from stumbling-blocks of this kind ; only the popish vestments remain in our Church — I mean the copes, which, however, we hope will not last very long." He spoke from his See against the compulsory imposition of conformity ; he
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 7
declared that "the bishops woukl give up their livings rather than swear that the Queen was supreme head of the Church ; " in the Convoca- tion of I 562 he presented a paper recommending the adoption of an improved system of ecclesi- astical government and discipline. So brave were his beginnings.
From Worcester he was removed to the more important See of London, following Grindal, who had been made Archbishop of York. And when Grindal was promoted to Canterbury in 1576, he again succeeded him as Archbishop of York. He held this preferment twelve years ; the whole length of his Episcopate was nearly thirty years. He died " Primate of England " ; it was thought he would liave been made Archbishop of Can- terbury and " Primate of all England " when Grindal died. But his warmth of temper was a difficulty ; there was another difficulty in Queen Elizabeth's reluctance to make a married man the first ecclesiastical personage of the realm.
Sandys was well able to appreciate his suc- cesses. Lie was born in a Cumbrian hall ; liis mother was a descendant of the ancient barons of Kendal. He was of the class of old English
8 THE PROBLEM OF
gentry who think that their ancestry and local influence make them at least the equals of the aristocracy. It is a class which has given many members to the higher ranks in the Church and in the law, who take precedence among peers. His family is still connected with Hawkshead, where the archbishop founded the grammar-school in which the "poet's mind" awoke in Wordsworth, and there Sandys's por- trait is to be seen. But his prosperity did not bring him happiness. He found himself entangled in the perplexities of high life, and could not always get men to see that he was walking straight. Before he was fully in- stalled in the archbishopric he had to resist an attempt by the Crown to acquire the palace of Bishopthorp. Then came a disagreement with Grindal about dilapidations, which are so serious a charge on all English benefices. He quarrelled with Aylmer, his successor in the See of London, over both dilapidations and arrears. The Queen wished him to grant her a lease of Scroby Manor, an appanage of the Archbishopric of York, and he refused because of the injury which would be done to the See. The loss would be many thousands of
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 9
pounds — "too much, Most Gracious Sovereign, too much to pull from a bishoprick inferior to many others in revenue, but superior in charge and countenance." A month after writ- ing this letter he leased the manor to his son for a rent of ^65, 6s. 8d. Of course his in- consistency was commented on. " He was the first Protestant bishop," says Mr. Hunter,^ "who raised a powerful family out of the goods of the Church." Six sons enjoyed leases of the episcopal lands. 'J'hey were men of merit, and they won distinction ; their emi- nence kept people mindful of the start their father had given them in life. Sandys was, moreover, a passionate man, and made enemies ; plots were laid for him, and malignant charges brought against him.
He does not refer to any of these matters in his will, but he is very anxious to clear himself from the suspicion of insincerity or time-serving. Ilis earnestness betokens a heart ill at ease, if not a troubled conscience. " Be- cause I have lived an old man in the ministry of Christ, a faitlifiil disposer of the mysteries
^ "The Founders of New Plymouth,". l)y the Mcv. Josejih Hunter, F.S.A.L. Loudon : John llussell Smith, 1854. P. 22.
lo THE PROBLEM OF
of God and to my power an earnest labourer in the vineyard of the Lord, I testify before God and His angels and men of this world I rest resolute and yield up my spirit in that doctrine which I have privately studied and publicly preached, and which is this day main- tained in the Church of England. ... I have not laboured to please man, but studied to please my Master, who sent me not to flatter either prince or people. . . . Concerning rites and ceremonies by political constitutions autho- rised among us, as I am and have been per- suaded that such as are now set down by public authority in this Church of England are no way either ungodly or unlawful, but may w^ith good conscience, for order and obedience' sake, be used of a good Christian ... so have I ever been, and presently am persuaded that some of them be not so expedient in this Church now, but that in the Church reformed, and in all this time of the Gospel (wherein the seed of the Scripture hath so long been sown), they may better be disused by little and little than more and more urged." A reference to the Puritans follows, in which is the sentence quoted at the beginning of this Lecture :
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION ii
*' Howbeit, as I do easily acknowledge our ecclesiastical policy in some points may be bettered, so do I utterly mislike, even in my conscience, all such rude and indigested plat- forms as have been more lately and boldly than either learnedly or wisely preferred, tending not to the reformation, but to the destruction of the Church of England. The particularities of both sorts [doctrine and discipline] reserved to the discretion of the godly wise, of the latter I only say thus, that the state of a small private church, and the form of a learned Christian kingdom, neither would long like nor can at all brook one and the same ecclesiasti- cal government." " Thus much," he continues, " I thought good to testify concerning these ecclesiastical matters, to clear me from all suspicion of double and indirect dealing in the house of God, wherein as touching mine office I have not halted, but walked sincerely according to that skill and ability which I received at God's merciful hands. Lord, as a great sinner by reason of my frail ilesh and manifold infirmities, 1 lice unto Thee for mercy. Lord, forgive me my sins, for I acknowledge my sins. Lord, perform Thy
12 THE PROBLEM OF
promise, and do away all mine iniquities. Haste the coming of Thy Christ, and deliver me from this body of sin : Veni cito, Domine Jesu. Clothe me with immortality, and give that promised crow^n of glory. So be it."
Archbishop Sandys was by no means an ex- ceptional personage among the ecclesiastical dignitaries of that time. The Queen appointed with him as her first bishops. Jewel, Grindal, Horn, Cox, Parkhurst, and Beutham. They w^ere all men pledged to the religious Reforma- tion, which Wyclif had begun ; which Henry Vni., without intending it, reinvigorated ; which was advanced by Edward VI. ; opposed by Mary Tudor ; and ultimately checked by the im- perious temper and autocratic rule of Eliza- beth. They remonstrated with the Queen, and exhorted Parliament to do away with all the remnants of Popery in worship, to grant some liberty to conscience, to encourage evangelical preaching ; their language was sometimes vehe- ment, it always has the tone of sincerity. They were equally concerned over the assumption by the Queen's courts of authority to determine the practice of the clergy and the discipline of the
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 13
Church. The Zurich Letters are full of lamenta- tions about their pitiable plight. Jewel writes : " As heretofore Christ was cast out by His enemies, so He is now kept out by His friends." " That little cross of ill omen still maintains its place in the Queen's chapel. Wretched me ! this thing will soon be drawn into a precedent." " I wish that all, even the slightest vestiges, of Popery might be removed from our churches and, above all, from our minds. But the Queen will not endure the least alteration in matters of religion." Grindal and Horn, in a joint letter to Bullinger and Gualter, say : " We most solemnly make oath that we have hitherto laboured with all earnestness, fidelity, and diligence to efiect what our brethren require. But now we are brousrht into such straits, what is to be done we leave you to conjecture ; but since we cannot do what we would, we should do in the Lord what we can." " Although we are unable to remove all the abuses of this fiscal court, as also some others, yet we do not cease to find fault with and censure them, and send them back to that liell from whence they proceeded." These strong words are associated with others in which they try to justify their
14 THE PROBLEM OF
conformity : they speak of the necessity of their continuing in office and conciliating the Queen ; their fear lest public disputing should alienate the minds of the nobility, and encourage the papal party ; and they declare that, in their administration of their bishoprics, they leave every minister "at liberty to speak against all matters of this kind, [so as it is done] with modesty and sobriety " ; "we by no means de- prive of their office those ministers who refuse to receive or approve of those articles falsely ascribed to us." They would have been glad if they could have won from Peter Martyr, Bullinger, and Gualter even a qualified approval of a position which they felt so burdensome to their conscience.
Between Grindal and the Queen there was at last an open rupture. He had not been at Canterbury a year when Elizabeth ordered him to suppress the "prophesyings," or public preach- ings, in assemblies specially gathered for the purpose. " She thought these meetings gave encouragement to novelty " ; that people's " curiosity was too much indulged, and their heads overcharged with notions, by these dis- courses." She did not love appeals to the
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 15
public of any sort, fearing national disturbance. She thought that three or four preachers in a county might be enough ; and that homilies, prepared for the clergy, should be read by them instead of their using free speech. Grindal, who would have had every minister a preacher, able to deliver his own discourses, refused to comply, and wrote a long letter to Elizabeth on the subject. Thomas Fuller has commented on this letter : " What could be written with more spirit or less animosity, more humility and less dejection ? I see a lamb in his own can be a lion in God and his Church's cause." "All the archbishop could say or write," to quote Strype, " moved not the Queen from her resolution ; but she seemed much offended with him, and resolved to have him suspended and sequestered ; and seeing he would not be instru- mental in it, sent her own commandment, by her letters, to the rest of the bishops, wholly to put down the exercises." Grindal was ad- vised by the Lord Treasurer Burleigh to submit to the (^ueen, but he would not ; he had done nothing amiss, he said, and refused to ask pardon which supposed a fault. The opinion of the Queen's counsellors was against depriving
1 6 THE PROBLEM OF
him of his office, but he continued either wholly, or in part, disabled from the exercise of it. It is creditable to Whitgift, who was nominated as his successor, that he would not enter on the See w^hile Grindal was alive. Thomas Fuller gives us a last picture of him : "Being really blind, more with grief than age, he was willing to put oft' his clothes before he went to bed, and in his lifetime to resign his place to Dr. Whitgift, who refused such accept- ance thereof. And the Queen, commiserating his condition, was graciously pleased to say, that as she had made him, so he should die an archbishop; as he did, July 6, 1583, Worldly wealth he cared not for, desiring only to make both ends meet ; and as for that little that lapped over, he gave it to pious uses in both universities, and the founding of a fair free - school at St. Bees, the place of his nativity."
The most pathetic object on which we can look is the troubled conscience of good men in a false position. When we read Sandys's Apologia, and see Grindal passing out of the world in name only an archbishop, we are
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 17
sure to ask ourselves — How could such men have borne it ? Compromising with themselves and ill at ease, failing to retain the confidence of persons wlio had trusted them and whose approval they valued, seeing the inevitable drift of things, the cause for which they were sacrificing so much losing ground daily, the popish errors they called hellish, and Anti- christ, daily becoming more familiar to Pro- testants, and securing hold on the life of the nation — why did they not assert the freedom of Christian men, break away from their en- tanglements, and labour directly for the full Reformation which was so dear to them ? It is easy to call them cowards and time-servers ; easy to speak of " loaves and fishes," social recognition, Court fav^our, love of power. But we make a great mistake if we thirds it is only a good man's worse self that leads him astray ; quite as often he errs by a ftilse reading of the good.
Two motives seem to me to have been dominant in them — conscience and patriotism. These men had a high sense of the sanctity of their orders. They had been called into the ministry by God, and they were under respon-
B
1 8 THE PROBLEM OF
sibility to God to exercise tlieir ministry, if it was in any wise possible for them honestly to do so. They were able men ; many of them had been exiles in the cause of Protestantism. In Frankfort, Strasburg, Zurich, they came into association with others like themselves, strong, zealous, masterful persons, whose counsel and sympathy confirmed their belief that they were called to be instruments of Reformation in England. They came back full of hope, ready to take a difficult post in accomplishing their mission. The sense of their responsibility be- came more and more urgent the harder they found their task ; and when it proved an im- possible enterprise, it was too late to draw back. Their patriotism, too, was a plea they could not resist. There was still a popish clergy in England ; probably a majority of the priests they found in office were in heart Catho- lics of the Roman type. That clergy would have furnished and trained bishops had these retired. And a perpetual protest on their part, constant resistance of the Queen, whom they were fain to believe God's appointed bulwark of Protestantism, ceaseless strife in the councils of the realm, seemed to them certain to end
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 19
in social disruption, perhaps in civil war. The true problem of the Reformation in England was — how to secure purity in doctrine and worship without rending the nation asunder ; it was to bring back the simplicity and sanctity of the Apostolic Church in a land which had grown complex in condition, with a history it could not break from, and containinii manv citizens who desired no Reformation.
U
The most eminent of Archldshop Sandys's children was his second son, Sir Edwin, iii< n- tioned in Bradford's "History of riymouLh Plantation " as the friend of the Pilo-riTu Fathers, the treasurer and governor of the Virginia Company. When a young man, while his brother George was pursuing his classical studies in the East, he was travelling in Western Eurojie, trying to understand the Roman controversy and the relations of tlie Protestant sects to one another, with a view- to sec how they might be brought into a " unitie universallc." His report, intended for presentation to an ecclesiastical dignitary,
2 0 THE PROBLEM OF
was published fifteen years after without his authority, under the title Eiiropm Specuhmi. It is a judicious book — Sir Edwin had been a pupil of Richard Hooker — a book full of keen observation, philosophic reflections, and grave humour, breatliing throughout a generous spirit. Among other things, he tells us that his origi- nal view of the Roman Church, gained by speculation, was not nearly so unfavourable as his later judgment, formed by actual examina- tion. He also says that, " of all places, the desires and attempts [of the Papists] to recover England, have been always and still are the strongest;" which, "in theyr more sober moods, sundry of them will acknowledge to have been the only nation that took the right way of justificall Reformation, in comparison of other who have runne headlong rather to a tumul- tuous innovation (so they conceive it). Where- as that alteration which hath ])een in England, was brought in with peaceable and orderly proceeding, by generall consent of the Prince and whole Realme representatively assembled in solemn Parliament, a great part of their owne Cleririe accordino; and conforminoj them- selves with it ; no Luther, no Calvin, in the
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 21
square of tbeyr Faith." There is one signifi- cant passage in his description of the hostility of the Romanists to all religious communities but their own. '• Theyr hatred is to the Lutheran, the author of theyr calamitie ; but hatred and feare both of the Calvinist onely, whom they accompt the only growing enemie and dausferous to their state. For as for the Lutheran, liee was long since at his highest ; and if he itch an inch forward one way for an ell he losetli an other."
Sir Edwin's discovery of the tenacious vigour of Calvinism had been anticipated half a cen- tury before by many English Reformers. AVhen Dr. Cox went over to Frankfort, where, in the time of ]\Iary's persecution, a church of our countrymen was gathered, under licence of the magistrates, he found it established on a Cal- vinistic basis ; his endeavours to I'c-establish it on that moderate platform, which gratified so many Papists, was the reason of " the troubles in Frankfort." The moderate and the thorough- ffoino- Reformers both foresaw tliat, when the Protestant Princess Elizabeth ascended the throne, and the exiles returned, the influence of the Continental churches would be felt
2 2 THE PROBLEM OF
in the settlement of relioion in their own country ; hence the vehemence of the con- troversy between them. The congregation had the sympathy of Calvin himself and the Zurich Reformers ; they were in correspond- ence witli tlie Cambridge Protestants at home. They vainly appealed to Sandys, and some others who afterward were made bishops, to help them in thwarting Cox's schemes. They would have smiled had the future archbishop spoken to them of the distinction between '■ a small private church" and the church of "a learned Christian kino-dom ; " it was not onlv the little Frankfort congregation they were zealous for, but the Church of England as it was to be.
Here we must distinguish between Calvinism as a theological doctrine and Calvinism as an ecclesiastical system. When we talk of Calvin- ism to-day, we mean the doctrine of predestina- tion, with its corollaries of personal election, effectual calling, and the perseverance of the saints. There was no controversy among the English Reformers about this ; it was the doc- trine common to Protestants. Even Whitgift was a Calvinist in this sense ; so were the
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 23
men who afterward broke away from the Puritans : Barrowc was a Calvinist, and John Robinson ; Henry x\insworth liases his Congre- gationalism on the doctrine of personal election. The ecclesiastical system of Calvinism is as really a State-church doctrine as is the Anglican system, but with this profound difference. The English Church has always and inevitably tended to Erastianism ; the Church is regarded as the nation in its religious aspect and func- tions. I.ord Rosebery has expressed the doc- trine bluntly : " I believe a State has as much right to sustain a standing Church as it has to sustain a standing army." Calvinism recognises the Church as a distinct body constituted by direct divine calling, and believes that God in- tended it to regulate the faith and morals of tlie people. In England, whenever it has Ijeen feared that serious social complications would re- sult from carrying out the principles of the New Testament, political necessity has determined the issue ; the Church has had to give way to the Crown, rjalvin, on the other hand, governed Geneva. The Calvinistic system means the interference of the Church with the life of the nation, the direction of its faith and morals
f 24 THE PROBLEM OF
by ministers and elders of the Church — con- sistories, classes, presbyteries, and synods.
The Church at Frankfort, while glad to have the sympathy of the Continental Calvinists, had not adopted — there was no occasion that it should adopt — the full Calvinistic ecclesiasti- cal sytem ; indeed there are some things in its action, as we shall see hereafter, which look rather to Congregationalism than to Presby- terianism. But the most prominent leader of the Puritan party, wdiich Church historians affiliate to the Geneva Church, did adopt it. Thomas Cartwright, Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Lady Margaret Pro- fessor of Divinity, whose " pulpit exercises were so much followed that, when he preached at St. Mary's [the university] Church, the windows of the church were taken down for the accommodation of the multitudes who flocked to hear him," goes so far as to make clerical authority of the essence of the Church. The well-known XlXth Article of the Church of England, " on the Church," so admirable for its catholicity, was issued by authority of King Edward in 1553, the second year before liis death. It reads: "The visible Church of
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 25
Christ is a coiiirregation of faithful inoii, in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments be duly administered, according to Christ's ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same." The Frankfort congregation evidently accepts this article, but makes a significant addition to it concerning fellowship. " What thing ought we to have in greater recommendation than the Order and Policy which God hath estab- lished in His Church ? that we may be taught by his Word, that we may worship him and call on his name with one accord, that we may have the true use of the Sacraments to help us to the same?" And again: " We have a Church freely granted to preach God's Word purely, to minister the Sacraments sincerely, and to execute Discipline truly." (yartwright, however, makes this sweeping affirmation : " Without any part of that Order or Disci- pline which the Lord hath appointed, I grant there can be no Church of C*hrist ; or, that without some part of it, there can be no faith in Jesus Christ. It is a |)art of the Discipline of oui' Saviour Christ that there should be certain whi(;h should be chosen out of the
2 6 THE PROBLEM OF
rest to preach the gospel, by preaching whereof the Churches are gathered together. Where, therefore, there is no ministry of the Word, there it is plain that there are no visible and apparent Churches. It is another piece of the Discipline of the Lord that the rest of the body should obey them that are set over them in the Lord ; wherever, therefore, there is no obedience of the people to the ministers that in the Lord's name preach unto them, there can be no true Church of Christ."
The Puritan was a man of immense moral courao-e. No reductio ad absurdum made him halt in his logic ; neither scorn nor indifference could abash him in maintaining his points. AVhen he undertook the charge of the nation nothing was too small for him to look after, nothing too great for him to attempt. He could cut down a maypole with Endicott at Merry Mount and the Martindales at Ros- therne ; he could make Mary Queen of Scots tremble in her closet ; and compare Queen Elizabeth, in a Court sermon, to an untamed heifer. It was with no ligjht heart he assumed the regulation of public faith and morals ; he was aware of the responsibility, and it made him
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 27
a grave num. lie had indomitable patience ; for a hundred and thirty-five years, from "the troubles at P'rankfort," in 1554, to the passing of the Toleration Act in 1689, he fought his battle, always being worsted, but never accept- ing his defeat. Friends fell away from him, he enjoyed no more of the favour of the Court than if he had been a confessed dissenter ; he made the prophets of tlie Old Testament his companions, and yet there was in him a fountain of sweetness drawn from the gospel. He was tender to the poor, gentle in the sick-room, a sympathetic counsellor to weak and troubled con- sciences. The beautiful hymn bearing Baxter's name —
" Lov'l, it helont^'S not to nay share Wli(jtlier I clie 1)1- live " —
is a cento from a [joeni the old man wrote to comfort a girl in spiritual depression, and forms part of one of the purest and most romantic love - stories in English literature. "Endurance" was the Puritan's "downing quality." He stayed himself on tlie com- passion and fidelity of Him who numbereth the very hairs of His people's heads, telleth their wanderings, puts their tears into His l»ottle,
2 8 THE PROBLEM OF
and writes them in His book. The pragmatism, the portentous solemnity, and the obstinacy, which form the main features of his character in popular histories and novels, arc but the caricatures of his noble qualities. There were hypocrites among the Puritans, but the Puritan was no hypocrite. He would often unwittingly caricature himself, but he held fast his pro- fession until death.
Speaking of the painful position of Sandys and Grindal, I have asked — How could they bear it ? with still more emphasis I ask myself — How could the Puritans bear theirs ? From the days of Elizabeth to the days of Charles n., a hundred years, with the exception of the short period of the Commonwealth, they were Nonconformists within the Established Church, and they must have found it an irksome state. It wounded their self-respect ; they were fretted and hindered in their preach- ing and their parish work, dependent on the casual toleration of a few friendly bishops and lay patrons, who stood between them and the Crown. The Separatists set them the example of forming churches, in which, when they were
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 29
able to meet, tlieir worship was according to the order they themselves had laid down, and all their liearers were sympathetic. But the Puritans stayed where tliey were ; they wouhl not leave the Church of England. They were persecuted, admonished, checked, but they re- mained. James talked of harrying them out of the Church, or worse, if they would not conform ; but James's vanity was no match for the pride in patience of the Puritans : tliey neither conformed nor separated. They di<l not go until they were put out by a new^ law — Charles II. 's Act of Uniformity in 1662.
The animating principles of their fortitude were those which justified tlic bishop's ])arty in their conformity — their conscience and their patriotism. All through their controversies their reverence for tlieir ministerial office appears. They w'ere called of Cod to their various charges ; their ordination liad been to service in the Established Church. Tlicy had a high sense of their duty to their nation ; God had blessed England with the dawn of a Reformation, and though the dawn liad been obscured and clouded, it was for them to wait on Ilim until the clouds should lift. Scottish
30 THE PROBLEM OF
Presbyterianism shows us this Puritan senti- ment of the sanctity of national religion at its hin^hest. Not until our own times has the Free Church of Scotland, the representative of the old evangelical theology of the first Reformers, recognised that a nation may be Christian without an Established Church. There are Scotsmen even now who believe that Scotland is a covenanted nation, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States inherits the tradition. " Why should there be such a Church here ? " I said a few years ago to a minister who had sprung from that stock. " America is surely not included in the Scottish covenant," His answer w^as striking : " The Reformed Presbyterian Church," he said, "stands for the moral personality of the nation." English Presbyterianism never soared to the height of that great argument ; but it was charged with the sense of national Christian obligation, national Protestant obli- gation, and it knew no way of fulfilling it but to labour for a wholly Reformed and purely Protestant National Church. The Puritans were ready to wait as well as to labour. They would tarry for prince, would tarry for people.
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 31
but they could not abate their ideal ; tlicy could neitlier conform to the cstabli.-hed order nor voluntarily (juit tlieir Church.
Ill
The conscientiousness of the Separatists — the men who, tired at length of tarrying for a Reformation which the Puritans were always promising, but which never came, broke away altogether from the Established Church — needs no defence before those whom I am addressing • indeed, it has never been challenged seriously by any. The scores who died in London prisons, and the three men — Henry Barrowc, John Greenwood, and John Tenry — who were so wantonly hanged at Tyburn, were martyrs for conscience' sake. The ceaseless endurance of suffering and ignominy by the London church, and their banishment to Holland, the vexa- tion and harassment of the churches in Gains- borough and Scroby, and their exile in the same place of refuge, witnessed to the sustain- ing power of conscience. It was the " rude grasp " of conscience which drove the Pilgrim Fathers across the sea ; the broken - hearted
32 THE PROBLEM OF
remnants of the fellowship in Amsterdam, who dribbled back to London, there haply to accom- plish the work of settling a pure and peaceful Church, which they had fciiled to do in their exile, were under the same constraint. The Church in the Catacombs did not contain truer- souled men than Ainsworth and Jacob, and others whose names are lost ; perhaps, if the inner history of the early Roman Christians were as fully known as we know that of Amsterdam, we should find there too some miserable details, sullying the record, but not availing to destroy the impression of fidelity.
What has not been so fully recognised in the history of the Separatists is that their patriotism, though different in aim, was not a whit inferior in quality to that of the Puritans and the Anglicans. Their first concern is with the Churches ; that they be constituted and governed according to the will of Christ ; that the members be disciplined in faith and know- ledge and godly character ; but it is clear that they believed that in seeking this they were labouring for the welfare of the nation. One of the most touching features in the prison con- ferences between the suffering Separatists and
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 33
the Royal Commissioners sent to interrogate them is the constant appeal of the prisoners for public debate, regularly conducted, care- fully taken down and reported without partial editing. They long to get at the ear of Eng- land ; they are confident that both their per- sonal integrity and the soundness of their cause will appeal to their fellow-countrymen if only they be fairly listened to.
The same confidence appears in some " mo- tions touching Unitie, sent by a few who are falselie and maliciouslie called Brownistes." A portion of it was written by Harrowe ; within a month of his execution the trouljled Church enlarges his appeal and prepares it for private circulation to the Lord Alayor and Counsellors of London, to the Judges and Counsellors of tlie realm. In a document preserved in the iiritish Museum/ one of the sheets is endorsed " Penry ye othur " (author), and the style — fer- vid, vacillating, and absolutely sincere — is like his. A third person — a redactor — appar- ently an uneducated man, has gone over the sheets, correcting and adding to the work of the martyrs. It is an impassioned appe;il,
> Ilarleiau MSS., 6848, Article i.
34 THE PROBLEM OF
shewing liow cruelly the blow which had fallen on the Church was afflicting them, and con- tainino; some touchino; details of their sufFerings. Equally impassioned is the confidence it dis- plays in English fairplay ; the petitioners do not believe that anything but misconception can account for the injustice they are enduring. " For God's sake, for Queen Elizabeth's sake, for England's sake, and for your own sake," they appeal, "peruse it with favour. It ten- deth to Mercy and Unity." There is no word of retractation in the appeal, but an intense desire to be reconciled to their fellow-country- men, and an unfaltering confidence that they would be left in peace to follow conscience if they were but understood.
Nor was this patriotism an evanescent feel- ing. It characterises the whole history of the Independents ; it saved them from cherishing scorn of England, and mitigated the bitterness of their lot. Only patriots could have founded the Plymouth Colony, and given form to the United States. It was patriotism to which Cromwell appealed wdien he made of the humble men of these Churches an army, able to "encounter o;entlemen, that have honour
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 35
and couraoe and resolution in them." " 1 raised," he said, " sucli men as had the fear of God before them, as made some conscience of what they did ; and from tliat day forward, I must say to you, they were never beaten, and wherever they were engaged against tlie enemy, they beat continually."
The Separatists were Englishmei], with the English prejudice against foreigners, the Eng- lish intensity of purpose.
Robinson's company could not Itecome Dutch- men ; could they have done so, they would have made happy homes in Leyden, or established a colony under the protection of Holland, and their condition would have been far easier than it was under the lee of Cape Cod, with James Stuart ;is their king. It was to found a new England that the Mayflower left the old shores. To help in making a new England was equally the task of those who stayed in the mother-land. The England of to-day is as different from Tudor England, and the England of the early Stuarts, as is America from Gre;it Britain ; nay, the difference is far greater, and the work of my foreiathers, since the seven-
36 THE PROBLEM OF
teeiith century, was quite as arduous as that of yours. Tjmited monarchy and constitutional government instead of absolute rule ; freedom of public worship, under whatever form the Churches may determine ; a religious tolera- tion always tending to entire religious equality in the eye of the law ; the abatement of con- troversy, the friendly recognition of denomina- tional and doctrinal differences ; the federation of Churches, with various disciplines, into a Catholic fellowship, where all are free and all are brotherly — this new state of England, which lies before us to be completed in the twentieth century, is no chance issue. It has come about by the determination of each of the three great sections of English Protestants — Anglicans, Puritans, and Separatists — to be faithful to its own ideal, to establish itself in the common land.
IV
The truth underlying Archbishop Sandys's sentence, about the " small private church " and the " learned Christian kingdom," is this : a Church in a nation like England must share in the national life ; it cannot pursue an ab-
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 37
stract ideal, it is conditioned in all its move- ment hy the traditions, the habits, and the needs of the commonwealth. It would be a great mistake to suppose that the Separatists were ignorant of this. Barrowe was a man trained in the principles of English law ; he sought no liberty for Churches, which was, in his view, inconsistent with the constitution. Henry Jacob had the temperament and the sober speculative habit of the jurist. John Robinson had something of the statesman's outlook ; his advice as to the civil government of the new colony, which was followed by the Mayflower Compact, was also in the spirit of English history. The fact which Sandys over- looked was that England was undergoing a political change, the influence of which was reflected in the discussions on ecclesiastical polity. It was the eve of democratic constitu- tionalism. The feudal system was dead, the population was gathering into towns ; municipal life — and Congregationalism is municipal free- dom in Church government — had begun. The power of the barons, once the protection and then the burden of the people, which had been weakened by the Wars of the Roses, was finally
•>f
0BG8.1
38 THE PROBLEM OF
broken by the Tudor monarchs. The contest between absolute monarchy and the self-govern- ment of the people was at hand. Elizabeth was the last of the Tudor monarchs ; the futility of the Scottish Stuarts made the triumph of democracy certain, but a long struggle be- tween the Crown and the people was inevit- able. The Separatists were the men who were looking and labouring for the morrow ; Sandys and his party were facing the setting sun ; Cartwright and those with him thought for the morrow, but they worked in the spirit of the past. An eminent Swiss jurisprudent, M. Borgeaud, does not hesitate to affirm that the Separatists were the earliest Christian democrats ; he traces the history of modern democracy to the compact signed in the cabin of the Mayfiower. Barrowe may have sus- pected something of this sort ; Henry Jacob knew it. The wide-reaching issues of their testimony were not, of course, before them ; but they were watchers by the cradle of the new England, and they loved the child. They " builded better than they knew," but they understood architecture. Truth is one ; no man can be faithful to his vision, however small
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 39
may he his field of sight, without helping for- ward every great movement associated with his own. It is much for us to be able to say of our spiritual forefathers that they were men who — in times of great confusion, when prin- ciples were seething and none could wholly forecast what form crystallisation would assume — by a divine instinct associated themselves with a doctrine which has proved so fruitful and so far- reaching.
L EOT HUE IT
C O N G R E (t a T I () N iV L 1 8 M B E lO 1 { J IK) BERT BROWNE
Fletcher's " History of Independency " — Congregational and Aggregate Independency — Mr. Fletcher's Anti-State- Churchisni — Not all Independents theoretical Congre- gationalists — Congregationalism the Primitive Type of Cliurches — Lollard Congregations — English Exiles form Independent Congregations on the Continent — " The Troubles in Frankfort" — Rapid Development of Congre- gational Practice — Congregational Self-government — The Church prior to the Ministry — Discipline — Return of Exiles to England — What the Marian Persecution had done for Congregationalism — The Christian Congregation — The Use of the term Church in the Puritan Controversy — Persecuted Congregation in London — Accession of Eliza- beth— Discontinuance and Revival of Separate Congrega- tions— The Church in the Prisons — Elizabeth's Discourage- ment of Protestantism — " Reformation without Tarrying for Anie " — Robert Browne — Breach between Puritans and Separatists — Characteristic Differences between them — Purity of Fellowship — The Power of the People — Persecu- tion had proved the People trustworthy — The Church- Meeting — Creed and Covenant — Congregationalism in the New Testament.
LECTIJIIK II
CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE ROBERT BROWNE
The Kev. Joseph Fletcher, whose " History of Independency " ^ has not received the attention it deserves, draws a distinction between " Con- gregational Independency " and what he styles " Aggregate Independency." By Congregational Independency lie means simply the practice in cono;reirations of manaojino; their own internal affairs, either by their members directly or l)y those whom they have called to office. l>y Aggregate Independency he means the recog- nised freedom of the Church in tlie aggregate from outside control. He has in view not only a practice, but a practice founded on a doctrine — and the doctrine is that religion, especially the Christian religion, is a matter of conscience ;
' "Tlie History of llie Revival and Progress of Independency in England." Hy Joseph Fletcher. 4 vols. London : John Snow & Co., 1S4S.
44 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
and that as conscience can neither be compelled by power nor converted by favour, the purely relisjious action of Churches must not be sub- ject to external authority, either civil or ecclesi- astical. He points out, moreover, that many of the " rigid Puritans " — that is, the nonconform- ing members of the Established Church — were Congregational, or accidental, Independents.
Mr. Fletcher was one of the young Congre- gationalists who, about the year i<'^40, were under the influence of Edward Miall in the Nonconformist newspaper. To them the sepa- ration of Church and State was a constant subject of thought ; they saw the evils of establishment or the blessings of disestablish- ment everywhere. In his treatment of Robert Browne and Separatism, he fixes attention on the denial of the claim of the civil govern- ment to regulate the profession of religion. " With all deference to the judgment of others," ^ he says, " we are compelled to re- gard Robert Browne as the first in this country to advocate liberty of conscience on the broad ground of the distinction between matters civil and religious. There can be little doubt, also,
> Fletcher, vol. iii. pp. 43, 44.
ROBERT BROWNE 45
that the early Brownists hekl the same views as their leader, since they are so referred to in the contemporaneous writings of the day. The Barrowists were in this and some other re- spects another class of men, as the Separatists in Holland were a third, and the rigid Puritans in Enoland a fourth. All of them, tosjether with the Baptists, were Congregational Inde- pendents ; but they did not all hold the same views in respect to the scriptural power of the magistrates in matters of religion." Again he says,^ " It is plain that the assertion wliich has been made in our day, respecting the incom- patibility of Congregational Independency with the civil establishment of religion, is not abso- lutely true ; since the Congregational Independ- ents of this period — 1603 to 16 16 — or some of tliem, souglit that civil oversight and inter- ference, which, in later periods and in other countries, have actually been connected witli the system."
This distinction, which Dr. Dexter quotes with approval, is important. It enables us to understand how it was that, while tlie Separa- tists were so few and so weak in the reign of
Fletcher, vol. iii. pp. 47, 48.
46 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
King James, Cromwell could call around him, in the next reign, so many Independents that he clianged the destiny of England. It throws light on tlic early ecclesiastical history of Massa- chusetts and Connecticut, the " blue laws," and the interference with individual religious liberty, which drove Rosier Williams to Rhode Island as an escape from Congregational rule. It helps us to grasp the fact, the assertion of which is so bewildering to many, that the Pilgrim Fathers in America and the Brownists in England were not persecutors ; and it frees the persecuting Con2:reo;ationalists themselves from the charge of inconsistency in preaching toleration when they were the weaker party and refusing tolera- tion when they were in power. The early Independents included a few who were so be- cause they had worked out a harmonious doc- trine of the obligations and rights of the particular Church, and a great many who simply practised democracy in their own con- gregations. The former did not persecute ; the latter did. The distinction has also a backward look ; we shall not understand the development of English Congreo-ationalism out of the Refor- mation struggle unless we bear it in mind.
ilOTiKlJT BROWNE 47
I
Congregationalism is tlie primitive form of Church government, not only in the sense of its being an apostolic form, but also because it is the form to which Churcli life naturally and inevitably reverts when Christian men and women, finding either civil or ecclesiastical rule intolerable to conscience, come together in societies for mutual edification. The germ of our Congrreo-ationalism was in the teachinsf and conduct of Wyelif The "poor priests" whom he sent out to preach had not only evangelistic fervour, tliey had learned fi-om him very broad principles of religious and civil freedom. The disciples whom they won had a strong impulse of fellowship ; they were also instructed in the right and duty of gather- ing together.
It has been abundantly proved that Lollardry was not sporadic ; that it was local and abiding. The Pvcv. W. H. Beckett^ has given us maps in which there are graphically presented cer- tain districts which, for successive generations,
' " 'J'liu Englisli R('funnat ion of tlie Sixteeutli Cciilui'y." By \V. II. P.eckctt. London : K.T.S., 1890.
48 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
kept up the tradition of Lollardry ; for the most part these were the districts in which Puritanism flourished, and where dissent is strong to-day. Still more lately, Mr. G. M. Trevelyan has dealt with the fable that Lol- lardry ceased to be influential after the great Reformer's death. ^ Not only did AVyclif leave behind him a few sympathisers among the nobles, he had also founded societies among the people. The first preachers were followed by simple, poor men ; " no great Lollard divine succeeded Wyclifie." In the Home Counties, in East Anglia, and in Somerset, from 1400 to 1520, there was persecution of the Lollards. " In the neighbourhood of Beccles, on the borders of Norfolk and Sufi"olk, great congre- gations were formed, Lollard schools started, and arrangements made with a certain parch- ment maker for smuo;i2;linoj in the latest heretical tracts from the capital. This was about the time of the accession of Henry the Sixth." All was done without the protection or patronage of any powerful landowner, simply by the
1 " England in the Age of Wycliffe." By George IMacaulay Trevelyan. London : Longmans, Green, & Co., 1899.
2 1422.
ROBERT RROWNE 49
initiative of the middle classes of the district, searchinsf for a relimon suitable to themselves." Nearly a century after, in the reign of Henry the Seventh, one of the signs of the times was " an ever-increasing number of men burnt for Lollardry."
Facts like these cannot but su2;oest to the imagination companies of men and women, not straggling audiences, but permanent congrega- tions ; and the congregations must have had some sort of discipline, using the word in its beautiful Congregational sense, of the care which the members of Christ's body have one for another, A common accusation brought against them was that of Separatism, although the word had not yet come into vogue. They " despised the sacrament of the altar," refused to come to confession, kept away from the parish churches. They are spoken of as " con- creijations " and "a sect."
11
In the reign of Henry VI 11., when religious Reformation was hoped for, and in the reign of Edward VI., when it was advanced, the
D
50 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
tendency to this inchoate Congregationalism was checked ; but it received a powerful im- pulse from the persecutions under Mary Tudor. Bands of Protestants exiled themselves ; they formed congregations "in sundry places of Ger- many and Helvetia." There were some also in Holland. They recognised each other as independent societies ; they spoke of their assemblies as churches ; they were so described by Archbishop Grindal. The congregations were self- governed ; they had consultations with each other by letters and messengers, pro- fiting by one another's experience ; but they recognised no authority, even in great leaders like Calvin and Beza, to determine their decisions.
The inevitable drift of such companies into Congregational Independency is illustrated by " The History of that Stir and Strife, which was in the English Church at Frankfort, from the 13th Day of January, Ann. Dom. 1557, forward."
After John Knox had been sent away from that Church and Mr. Home chosen their pastor, a difference arose between him and Mr. Ashley, one of the members. The elders took up the case, affirming that Mr. Ashley had, in the
ROBERT BROWNE 51
controversy, spoken words injurious to them all. He denied it, and was summoned to appear before them and answer for his fault. The Church was assembled to hear the trial, when lie, not unnaturally for an Englishman, demanded an impartial tribunal. He said that *' he would not answer before them as com- petent judges of the cause," seeing "they shewed themselves an adversary part to him ; " but he would refer the cause for trial to the whole Church. The pastor threatened him with an appeal to the magistrates. Ashley " then handled his own cause in his own name before the pastor and elders," and offered to submit the whole matter to eight or ten competent and impartial men. When the pastor and elders refused this suggestion, under the plea that they had received their authority from the Church, and meant to exercise it, Ashley appealed to the congregation, and the members took the matter up.
To shew his displeasure, the offended pastor declined to exercise his ministry among them. The members would not excuse his absence ; tlicy summoned liim to preach and to come to their meetings. Jle would not, and they deposed
52 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
him ; tlie elders, who sided with the pastor, were deposed with him. The Church, being now without officers, met and took steps to elect others ; whereupon Mr. Home claimed to be still pastor. But it was too late, neither he nor the elders were able to recover their position.
The members went further. Having found that their order and discipline did not provide for a case like this, where the pastor and elders constituted one side in a controversy and a member of the Church another, they undertook the work of amending their con- stitution, and produced a new order and dis- cipline— an elaborate document of seventy-three items, in which the freedom of the Church is safeguarded against an unreasonable set of rulers. The pastor and elders had, at the first, appealed to the magistrates, wdio interfered, although unwillingly, in the interest of the peace of the city. Practically the magistrates sided with the Church ; they directed the com- munity to amend its constitution. The head- ing of the new constitution looks like a note of triumph on the part of the people : " Now followeth the Discipline reform'd and con-
ROBERT BROWNE 53
firm'd by tlic authority of the Church iiiid Magistrates."
Wlicn we remember that these events happened in 1557-58, twenty-five years before the publication of Robert lirowne's " booke which shewetli the life and manners of all true Christians, and how unlike they arc unto Turkes and Papistes and Heathen folke," we are struck with the somewhat advanced Con- gregationalism in Frankfort. The document not only afiirms the right of the Church to elect its officers — Cartwright, as a Puritan, afiirms the same — it declares that the authority of the Church is prior to that of the ministers, and that the ministers are subject to the dis- cipline of the Church. In case some of the ministers and ciders are excepted against by a member or members of the Church, those excepted against are to have no part in trying the case ; they must stand aside, and the CI lurch is to nominate substitutes for them on the judicial body. "If all the ministers and Seniors be suspected or found I'arties, or if any appeal be made from them ; that then such appeal be made to the body of the con- gregation, tlie ministers, Seniors, and Parties
54 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
excepted. And that the Body of the Congre- gation may appoint so many of the Congrega- tion to hear and determine the said matter or matters, as it shall seem good to the Congre- gation." " The Congregation is to be called or assembled, for causes and at times as shall seem expedient to the ministers and elders ; but if they refuse to act, when desired, then the Congregation may itself come together, and that which they, or the major part of them shall judge or decree, shall be a lawful decree and ordinance, of sufficient force to bind the whole Congregation, and every member of the same." They anticipate John Eobinson's advice to the Plymouth people, to have more ministers than one ; and they declare that neither of them shall be superior in standing or authority to the other. Their definition of a visible Church includes : " (i) Pure and godly doctrine ; (2) tlie right ministration and use of the Sacraments and Common Prayer ; (3) honest and godly life, if not in the whole multitude, yet in many of them ; (4) discipline, that is, the correction of vices." It is further enacted, that " if any controversy be upon the doubtful meaning of any Word or AVords in
ROBERT BROWNE 55
the discipline, tlkat first it ])C. refcr'd to the Ministers and Seniors. And if they cannot agree thereupon, then the thing to be brought and refer'd to the whole conG!;re2;ation," The final item provides that " the Discipline and Orders of the Church shall be read openly once every Quarter, and warning thereof before shall be given to the whole Congregation, both that every member thereof may know his Duty, and that every man may with liberty quietly speak his mind, for the changing and amend- ing of it, or any part thereof, according to God's word ; and the same exhibited in writ- ino:, with the xVr2;uments and Reasons of that his Request."
A very significant clause is one concern- ing discipline. " Altho' this word Discipline generally doth contain all ecclesiastical Orders and Ordinances, yet in this place it is properly taken for the rule of outward honest Orders and Manners, and of the Runishment and Correction of Vices." This is a Congregational note. Discipline, among the Anglicans, meant, as Robert I>rownc complained, the power of the Queen's courts to enforce uniformity. Dis- cipline, as Cartwright and Travers define it,
56 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
is mainly the consistorial government of the Church. Discipline here means the care of the whole Church for the purity of life of the members. The execution of discipline is the special charge of six elders, together with the two ministers. " Provided always that the said Ministers and Seniors, severally and jointly, shall have no authority to make any manner of Decrees to l)ind the Congregation, or any member thereof; but shall execute such Ordin- ances and Decrees as shall be made by the Congregation, and to them deliver'd."
And yet these men in Frankfort were not true Congregatioualists. They were not even "rigid Puritans," for they quote the Apocrypha as if it were Scripture. They are a self-govern- ing community ; but it is not because they love the condition, or know that Christ intended His disciples to be such. They are strangers, living their own life in a foreign country, and bringing their common sense to decide domestic details which do not fall under the survey of the law of the land. They accept, and invoke, and plead the general authority of the magis- trates ; and after all the trouble they have taken with their order and discipline they
IIOBEUT JiUOWNK 57
welcome tlie time when they shall hiy it aside. They had hardly familiarised them- selves with its working when Queen Mary died ; and in the joy of their return to Eng- land, they were willing to accept the order to be provided for them by Parliament. 'i'hc Entrlisli cono-re^ation at Geneva, which had become cold to them in the former troubles over King Edward's Prayer-Book, now sought their alliance for common work of lieformation in England. These sentences occur in their reply :—
" For our parts, as we have had no conten- tion with you at all aforetime, so we purpose not (as we trust there shall Ije no cause) to enter into contention with you hereafter. For ceremonies to contend (where it shall be neither in your hands or ours to a})point wliat they shall be, ])ut in such men's wisdoms as shall be appointed to the devising of the same, and which shall be received by common consent of the Parliament) it shall be to small pur- pose. But we trust that both true Religion shall be restor'd, and tliat we shall not be burden'd witli uiij)i-olitable ceremonies. And therefore, as we purpose to submit ourselves
58 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
to such Orders as shall be established by Authority ; being not of themselves wicked, so we would wish you willingly to do the same. For, whereas all the Reformed Churches differ among themselves in divers Ceremonies, and yet agree in the unity of Doctrine, we see no inconvenience if we use some ceremonies diverse from them, so that we agree in the chief points of our Religion ; notwithstanding, if any shall be intruded that shall be offensive, we, upon just conference and deliberation upon the same, at our meeting with }'ou in England (which we trust by God's Grace will be shortly) will lirotherly join with you to be suiters for the reformation and abolishing of the same. In the mean season, let us with one Heart and Mind call to the Almighty God, that of His infinite Mercy He will finish and establish that Work wdiich He hath begun in our country, and that we may all lovingly consent together in the earnest setting forth of His Truth, that God may be known and exalted, and His Church perfectly Iniilt up thro' Christ our Lord."
ROBEliT BROWNE 59
III
A contemporaneous movement of events toward tlie assertion of Congregational Inde- pendency shewed itself in England in a dif- ferent, but still more effective way — not by internal controversy, the struggle for authority between the ministry and the people, but by fidelity under persecution. The reforming party was impoverished by the self-l)anishment of so many to the Continent. Their scholars went to the university cities of Germany and Switzer- land, taking with them a number of students who formed an important part of the English Churches abroad. Many of their rich people went also, and those self-reliant men who were confident of their ability to earn a living wherever they might be. Of the leaders who remained behind, the most influential were in prison : l)ut the humble, dispirited common people met for worship and encouragement of one another by study of the Scriptures. They were exhorted to continue the practice by letters from the Fleet and King's Bench jails, and such as grew indillerent. justifying tiieir conformity by pleading that tliougli their
Go CUNOUEGATIONALISM BEFORE
bodily presence might be in the parish churches their hearts were not there, were severely cen- sured. These small dispersed bodies of the faithful are addressed as the true Church of God in England. Coverdale, editing letters from Bishop Hooper and Archdeacon Philpot, written in their captivity, addresses them to " the congregation," using the precise word which in his New Testament he uniformly employs in translation of the term eKKXtjcrla. " A letter sent to the Christian congregation, wherein he (Bishop Hooper) proveth that true faith cannot be kept secret in the heart, with- out confession thereof openly to the world where occasion serveth." " A letter which he (Master John Philpot) sent to the Christian congregation, exhorting them to refrain them- selves from the idolatrous service of the Papists, and to serve God with a pure and undefiled conscience after His Word."
In these inscriptions by Coverdale, as in the story of the Troubles in Frankfort, the use of the words congregation, church, fluctuates be- tween the " Several Church," as it came to be called, and the Protestant Church of England. It is a noteworthy fact, one which may first
ROBERT BROWNE 6i
strike the sectarian witli surprise, that at the beginning of the Puritan controversy, the word church was freely used l)y all parties alike, of the " particular " or " several " Church — the Congregational sense ; of the Church of England — the National sense ; and the Church Univer- sal— the Catholic sense. A little later, when the time came for formulating theories of Church government, a more exclusive use of the term began. Bancroft, who succeeded Whitgift in the See of Canterbury, was startled at the bare Erastianism of his prede- cessor, and affirmed that there could be no Church without the divinely ordained Episco- pate. Browne and Barrowe had been before him with the affirmation that there could be no Church where there was not the discipline which Christ commanded. And this habit has come down to our own time. There is scarcely an Anglican who ever speaks of Congregationa- lists, Bresbyterians, or Methodists, as being Churches, he calls them " religious societies." The Independent or Congregational doctrine was very strict in limiting the word "church ' to two applications — the particular Congrega- tion and the whole body of Christians in
62 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
heaven and earth. I have known Congrega- tionalists who have rejoiced in the fact that they have never committed the fault of calling the English Establishment a Church. Robinson, indeed, and others denied that they were so exclusive, acknowledging that there might be pure congregations within the Establishment, and that these w^ere rightly spoken of as Churches. The Presbyterian habit has been more generous than that of the Anglicans and the Congregationalists ; they have not refused to call Churches those organised Christian fellowships which have not adopted the Pres- byterian discipline. And in this they are faithful to the tradition of the Puritan con- troversy, which had come down from the days of the Marian controversy. Archbishop Whit- gift wrote frankly of " particular Churches " ; Cartwright of "distinct Churches," "particular Churches," and " the whole Church of England ;" John Robinson of the " parish Churches," ^ and "the Church of England."
It is not easy to conjecture how many of these scattered Churches there were under the persecution. We only know that in different
' Meaning tlie congregation, not the building.
ROBERT BROWNE r,3
parts of England there were some. History has fixed its attention on those in London. Protestants met in the city, in private houses ; on the outskirts, in Islington, there were some gravel pits where they assembled. They had regular preaching ; they recognised each other as members of a common fellowship. A sen- tence in Georo-e Johnson's " Brief Discourse of Troubles in Amsterdam" (the book in Trinity College Library, Cambridge, from which Dr. Dexter drew his narration of the disagree- able bickering about the pastor's wife and her clothes) throws light on the connection between these London conventicles and the body which afterward became the Southwark Church, the first Congregational Church in England. It refers to the time when the pastor, Francis Johnson, was in jorison. " Alderman Tailor's wife, an old professor since Queen Mary's days, having sent him maintenance and help in his imprisonment, said, when she saw his wife's pride, that she would not give any mainte- nance to maintain pride." The use of the word " professor " here is at once intelligible to old - fashir)iiod Independents ; to them a "professor" was a church member.
64 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
The assemblies were discontinued on the accession of Elizabeth ; they were resumed when it became clear that she did not intend any further reformation, and then they took a more ordered character. There was a Church in the city which had a minister, and observed the Communion of the Lord's Supper. When he was taken to prison they chose another, a Scotsman, who had heard of their worship, and joined himself to them. Their deacon, Cuthbert Sympson, was burnt. We read of baptisms and marriages ; the order of their service was described by spies, and recorded in depositions as the habit of such assemblies. Then comes the beautiful story of the Church in the prisons, "whereof Mr. Fitz was pastor." It put out a manifesto: "The order of the Privye Churche in London, whiche by the malice of Satan is falselie slandered and evill spoken of " ; and a petition to the Queen, in which they say, "According to the saying of the Almighty our God (Matt, xviii. 20), ' wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I,' so we, a poor congregation whom God hath separated from the churches of England and from the mingled and false
robi<;rt nuoWNE 65
worshipping therein used, out of the which assemblies the Lord our only Saviour hath called us, and still calleth, saying, come out from among them, and separate yourselves from them, and touch no unclean thing, then will I receive you, and I will be your God, and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord (Cor. vi. 17, 18). So as God giveth us strength at this day, we do serve the Lord every Sabbath day in houses, and on the fourth day in the week we meet or come together weekly to use prayer and exercise discipline on them which do deserve it, by the strength and sure warrant of the Lord's good word, as in Matt, xviii. 15-18 (i Cor. v.)."
The persecution of Separatists under Eliza- beth was not so bloody as that of Protestants under j\Iary ; but it was equally relentless, and perhaps even more searching. An extract from the examination of a prisoner, chosen to be interrogated because he was so venerable an old man, shew^s why these people thought themselves compelled to form churches of their own, and how they associated themselves with the sufferers of the preceding reign. " So long as we might have the word freely preached
66 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
and the sacraments administered without the preferring of idolatrous gear about it, we never assembled together in houses. But when it came to this point, that all our preachers were displaced by your law, that would not sub- scribe to your apparel and your law, so that we could not hear none of them in any church by the space of seven or eight weeks, except Father Coverdale, of whom we have a good opinion, and yet (God knoweth) the man was so fearful that he durst not be known unto us where he preached, though we sought it at his house ; and then we were troubled and commanded to your courts day by day for not coming to our parish churches. Then we bethought us what were best to do ; and w^e remembered that there was a cono^regation of us in this city in Queen Mary's days, and a congregation at Geneva, which used a book and order of preaching, ministering of the sacraments and discipline, most agreeable to the word of God, which book is allowed by that godly and well - learned man. Master Calvin, and the preachers there, which book and order we now hold."
John Penry goes further. He shews us the
troubled Tuiitans looking back on the days of Mary, and thinking that her open and sanguin- ary hostility to Protestantism, under any guise, w^as better than Elizabeth's purpose of saving the national Church l)y the sacrifice of what the Church, in their opinion, lived for. One of the bits of evidence on which he was con- victed and hanged was the draft of a petition to the Queen, which was found in his house, penned in heat as something which he would like to present to her with his own hand. Here are one or two extracts : "If we had had Qucun Mary's days, I think we should have had as flourishing a church this day as ever any ; for it is well known that there was then in London, under the burden, and elsewhere in exile, more flourishing churches than any now tolerated by your authority. . . . Thus much we must needs say, that, in all likelihood, if the days of your sister Queen Mary, and her persecution, had continued unto this day, that the Church of God in Eno;land had been far more flourishinfr than at this day it is : for then, madam, the Church of (^od within this land and elsewhere, being strangers, enjoyed the ordinances of God's holy word as far as then they saw.
68 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
" But since your majesty came unto your crown we have bad whole Christ Jesus, God and man, but we must serve him only in heart.
"And if those days had continued to this time, and those lights risen therein which by the mercy of God have since shined in England, it is not to be doubted but the Church of England, even in England, had far surpassed all the Reformed Churches in the world."
" Then, madam, any of our brethren durst not have been seen within the tents of Anti- christ ; now they arc ready to defend them to be the Lord's, and that he has no other taber- nacle upon earth but them."
IV
These quotations indicate the strain under which zeulous reformers were labouring in the days of Queen Elizabeth. In the light of them we understand the significance of the title to one of the parts of Robert Browne's book, published in 1582: "A Treatise of Reforma- tion without tarrying for anie, and of the wickedness of those Preachers, which will not
ROBERT BROWNE 69
reforme themselves and tlieir charge, because they will tarie till the Magistrate commaunde and compell tliem."
Let me frankly confess — 1 do not like Ro])ert Browne ; I have not the confidence in him ex- pressed by Dr. Dexter and Dr. Dale. He was a man offensive to his opponents and objec- tionable to his friends ; he betrayed the causes to which he attached himself; and I do not wonder at the heat with which English dis- senters have always repudiated the nickname " Brownists." But he was a clear and resolute thinker ; he gave himself to study the problems of his time in the simple light of the New Testament, and he produced an admirable and complete doctrine of the Church, which at once determined the whole future of Congre- gationalism.
He was not so thorough an opponent of the action of the State in religion as Mr. Fletcher takes him to have been. He makes a singular statement to the effect that the magistrate has no ric^ht to dej^rade a faithful minister, but that he has the right to promote him, on the ground that the State ought to advance good men. It was as difiicult for him as it is for us to dis-
70 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
criminate between the personal influence which a man in office may properly use for the ad- vancement of religion and that official action which ought not to be put forth in Church matters. But he was a strenuous advocate of the duty of Christian believers to form them- selves into societies, which the State should not interfere with. 1 say " the duty," not "the right." Of course the duty involves the right ; but it is of some importance which of the two words men are in the habit of usins;. " There is a substantial identity between the first Separatists and the Congregationalists of to-day ; but there is a diff"erence in the proportion given to difierent aspects of the truth held by them in common and the tone and temper of their testimony. Where we speak of the right of separation they speak of the duty of separation. When we would assert the sanction of Scrip- ture for our polity, we commonly appeal to the words of Christ, ' Where two or three are gathered together in ]\Iy name, there am I in the midst of them.' The text is occasionally met with in the early Separatist literature ; ])ut far more commonly we have the precept, ' Come ye out from among them, and l)e ye
ROBERT BROWNE 71
separate, and touch not the unclean thing.' It recurs ac-ain and ao-ain, as if it was exertino; the most solemn constraint upon their con- science ; and equally solemn is their continua- tion of the (potation, ' And i will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty ; ' as if the Fatherhood and the Sonship — words so lightly uttered — could only be realised after the duty of separation liad been fulfilled. The very name ' Separatist,' given them as a nick- name, l)ut not repudiated l)y them, assumed rather as a badge of their fidelity, shews how often this passage of Scripture was on their lips."
With the circulation of Browne's book came a breach, which proved final, between the Puri- tans and tlie Separatists. Henceforth Cart- wright had to meet two sets of opponents : his old antagonists, against whom he had to j ustify his nonconformity ; his former associates, who challenged the consistency, even the recti- tude, of his continuing in a Church the laws of wliicli lie coidd not o])ey. Tlic contest between the Puritans and the Separatists was just as uncomj)nimising, tliough not (piite so con-
72 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
stant, as that between them both and the Anglicans. There could be no harmony be- tween men who thought it was the most urG^ent Christian duty to come out of the national Church and men who thought they were bound by their allegiance to Christ to keep in. In the course of the discussion three points ap- peared in which Puritanism and Separatism were hopelessly at variance.
(i.) The Separatists made much of purity of fellowship, and tried to secure it by looking to the personal character, as well as to the soundness of belief, of the members. It may seem strange to-day, when all the evangelical Churches insist that church members should be living members of the body of C'hrist, that the Puritans should have spoken against this. Two reasons, among others, appear prominently. Their learning in Church history misled them ; they had the Catholic dread of Donatism. You could put the stiffest Puritan to confusion by calling him a Donatist. That is a significant clause in the definition of the Church in the new Frankfort constitution : " Honest and godly life, if not in the whole multitude, yet in
ROBERT BROWNE 73
many of them ; " and it has plenty of parallels. At an earlier period in the story, when there was a discussion whether the conQ-rei^iation should adopt the Anglican ceremonies or follow the example of Geneva, the question was put — a proi^os of schism — " whether the Donatists were schismatics ? " "Yes,"saith Wittingliam, " and also Hereticks, but you are deceiv'd, if you think that they separated themselves for ceremonies." Wittingham was a prominent mem])cr of the Puritan section ; but he was in haste to repel the charge of Donatism.^ The other reason was the Puritan's dread of the Anabaptists, and his sense of obligation to the national Church. When the first English pres- bytery, that of Wandsworth, was erected, some of the parties to it were sent to Newgate. After an explanation of their design to the chaplain of the archbishop, who visited them in prison, they said, " We are not for an unspotted chun^h on earth, and, therefore, though the Church of England has many fjiults, we would not willingly leave it." To the Separatists it was
' John Wesley defended himself from the charge of schism on precisely tlie same ground : that he had not dei)artcd from tlie doctrine, Init in some rcsjjects from the disci^jline of the (Jliurcli.
74 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
matter of first moment to seek that the Churches on earth should be unspotted. They knew that their judgment was not infallible, but they could exercise common sense. The distinction between the visible and the in- visible Church, made much of by the Puritans, was repudiated by them ; they believed that Christian character was patent, and that it was the one thins; essential to a true fellow- ship. The history of Congregationalism has confirmed their opinion in this matter ; purity of fellowship remains the first demand of our Churches.
(2.) The next point of difference between Puritans and Separatists is concerned with the place of the people — the members — in the government and discipline of the Church. The Church, says Jacob, is a certain demo- cracy— that is its political character, although Jacob strongly afi^^irms that, on its spiritual side, it is a monarchy, Christ being the King ; and is an aristocracy of character. Presby- terianism has been proved to be consistent with democracy ; modern Presbyterianism may be described as an ordered representative demo-
ROBERT BROWNE 75
cracy. The tendency in Puritanism to l)ecome this was apprehended at once by the Anglican party. " He seeth little," writes Bishop Sandys to Lord Burghley, "who does not perceive that their whole proceedings tend to a mere popu- larity," i.e. popular government. " In the platform set down by these new builders we evidently see the spoliation of the patrimony of Christ, and a popular state to be sought," write Sandys and Grindal to another prelate. But Cart Wright was as great a foe to "popu- larity " as the bishops theniselves ; the people are to elect their ministers and leave adminis- tration to them.
The Separatists called the members indivi- dually to take part in the government of the Church, and this was not a mere demand of con- sistency in the working out of their doctrine ; nor was it a bit of policy, a determination to commit the people as deeply as possible to the cause. It was the result of experience also. The fidelity of the people had been tried in times of persecution, and it was at least equal to that of their leaders. The nunil)er of r(!cantations, either final or tem- porary, is oik; of the most patlictic rc.'itiires
-je CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
in the story of the English martyrdoms ; it lends great interest to that first chapter of the second volume of Mr. Fronde's "History of England," perhaps the most beautiful chapter in the book. He refers us to Latimer's account of Bilney as a typical narrative. " I knew a man myself," says the great preacher, " Bilney, little Bilney, that blessed martyr of God, what time he had borne his fagot, and was come again to Cambridge, had such conflicts within himself, beholding the image of death, that his friends were afraid to let him be alone ; they were fain to be with him day and night, and comforted him as they could, but no com- forts would serve. As for the comfortable places of Scripture, to bring them unto him, it was as though a man would run him through the heart with a sword ; yet afterward, for all this, he w^as revived, and took his death patiently, and died well against the tyrannical See of Rome." Mr. Trevelyan gives us the same picture. There are so many recantations ; even John Purvey, the valorous fellow-worker with Wyclif, when the slaughter l)egan, re- canted ; as did Cranmer when the last fires were burning out. The humbler people were
ROBERT BROWNE 77
more laithrul tliaii tlicir leaders ; not recanta- tion, but fidelity, marks the story of the peasant and tlie working woman. AVe may account for this fact, may plead the inJhience of cul- ture on the development of nerves, and the larfje-mindedness which suo-o-ests doubt ; but the fact remains — the Christian commonalty had shewn itself worthy to be trusted. John Robinson's noble scorn of those who contemp- tuously upbraided God's people with incon- stancy, instability, pride, contention, and such like evils, nicknaming- them Symon the saddler, Tomkin the tailor, Billy the bellows-mender, has a historical justification in the part the people had taken in the Reformation.
Equally has experience warranted the Separa- tists' confidence in the a])ility of pure churches to maintain a lofty ideal of fellowship and mutual edification. Robinson's testimony to the character of the church meetings in Leyden is well known. " If ever I saw the beauty of Zion, and the glory of the Eoi'd filling His tabernacle, it liatii Ix'cii in the manifestation of the divers graces of God in the Churcli, in that heavenly harmony and comely order wherein, by the grace of God, we are set and
78 CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
walk." Henry Barrowe — courtier, law student, man of tlie world — said the same thing of the Church in London. " The solitary and con- templative life," said Lancelot Andrews to him when he was in jail, "I hold the most blessed life. It is the life I would choose." Barrowe's reply shows something of the inner life of the Church for whose sake he was suffering. " You speak philosophically, but not Christianly. So sweet is the harmony of God's graces unto me in the confrresration and the conversation of the saints at all times, as I think myself as a sparrow on the housetop when I am exiled from them." From that time to our own the most cultivated and saintly leaders in Congregation- alism have shewn the same appreciation of the church meeting. It would be easy to make a catena of utterances to this effect, not from controversial writings or sermons, but from hymns, and letters, and biographical memoirs, ending with Dr. Dale's lofty description of its sanctity in his address to a joint meeting of the Baptist and Congregational Unions in 1886. "To be at a church meeting — apart from any prayer that is offered, any hymn that is sung, any words that are spoken — is for me one of the
KUUEUT UIMJWNE 79
chief means of grace. To know that I am sur- rounded by men and women who dwell in God, who have received the Holy Ghost, with whom 1 am to share the eternal righteousness and eternal rapture of the great life to come, this is blessedness. 1 breathe a Divine air. I am in the new Jerusalem, which has come down out of heaven from God, and the nations of the saved are walking its streets of gold. 1 rejoice in the joy of Christ over those whom lie has delivered from eternal death and lifted into the light and glory of God. The Kingdom of Heaven is there."
(3.) The third point of difference between the Separatists and the Puritans is the confidence of the Puritans that it was possible for them to give adequate expression to the truth of God in creeds and confessions, while the Separatists affirmed that all creeds and confessions were partial and temporary utterances, for that the Lord had more light yet to break forth out of His holy word. Their church covenants bound the members to hold all God's truth already revealed or yet to be revealed. So deeply was this thought, tliat there is no finality in doc-
8o CONGREGATIONALISM BEFORE
tiiiie, rooted in tlicir faith, that the May- flower Compact applies it to political principles. The sioners of that document bound themselves to no constitution already adopted, but " to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most mcete and good for the generall good of the Colonic, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." The growth of toleration followed from the adoption of this principle. Again and again the limited tolera- tion of the Independents has been pointed out ; it was for Christians, Protestant Christians only. They had not solved — we have not yet solved — the problem of tolerating all religious beliefs in a community, when such toleration would pro- bably result in an attempt, by some of the sects tolerated, religiously to upset the order of civil jjovernment. Their claim to be consistent lovers of religious liberty does not lie in their success- ful grappling with this difficulty ; although English Congregationalists have been always advocates of the largest liberty the Government has been ready to grant, and have urged a full application of the method of freedom. It lies
ROBERT BROWNF: 8i
ill their tenacious, couiageous acknowledgment tliat never yet has so much enlightenment been granted to the interpreters of Clod's revealed will, that they could say, " We know not in part, but perfectly."
I referred in my former T.ecture to the ftict that the Separatists were living in the last hours of Absolutism in CInnch and State, on the eve of English democracy. Many interest- ing discussions have been going on as to the causes of this democratic movement, and the conditions under which it Ijecame inevitable. The Teutonic home, and the traditions of the German agricultural life ; trade guilds and the growth of large towns ; the free municipalities of Holland and the intercourse between Dutch and English manufacturers ; the influence of the Renascence and the printing-press — all have been brought in to illustrate a fact which summed up in itself all that these forces had to give. Such considerations shew us what made it possible for Congregational Churches to be, but they do not account for Con- gregationalism. It is always to the Bible the Separatists turn when they would de-
8 2 CONGREGATIONALISM
fend their ecclesiastical faith. It is no wonder that such men found Congrega- tionalism in the New Testament ; the won- der would have been had they found anything else.
LECTUIIE Til
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
Di". Shaw's " Church of the Commonwealth " — The Church of England a Presbyterian Church — The short Duration of this Establishment — English Presbyterianism prejudiced by its History— The Scottish Committee and the Westminster Assembly — The Scottish Army and the Scottish Arguments — A rigid Presbyterianism rejected by the English People — Baxter's Testimony — The Voluntary Associations — Adam Martindale — Independents in the Westminster Assembly — Declaration of Liberty of Con- science— What it meant — Independents' Scheme of Tolera- tion — Fails from Over - Definition — Baxter and the Fundamentals — Independents' Zeal for Orthodoxy — Pro- jects for Union between Presbyterians and Independ- ents— "The Happy Union" — The Crispian Controversy — The Salters' Hall Split — Unitarianism — Evangelical Presbyterians become Congregationalists — Defoe Memorial Church — Relation of Separatists to Independents.
LECTUUE 111
PRESBYTEIIIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
A VALUABLE addition lias been made to the story of tlie struggle l)etween Presbyterianism and Independency in England by tlie publica- tion of Dr. Shaw's " History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth." ^ He had previously edited the Minutes of the Manchester Classis, 1646- 60, and the Minutes of the Bury Classis, 1647- 57, and had demonstrated how systematically it had been attempted to work the Presby- terian government in Lancashire. In his later book he has slicwn tliat the system was more widely prevalent tlian we have been in the habit of thinking. The very title is signifi- cant. "The English Clmrch," as the Parlia- ment established it in 1648, and as Cromwell administered it, was a Presbyterian Church. The Scottish Commissioners had succeeded in
' Luiidun : Longman.s, (Jreen & Co., 1900. 85
86 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
forcing through the Westminster Assembly a complete scheme of consistorial rule — Congre- gational Presbyteries, that is the English name for Kirk Sessions ; Classes, the English name for Presbyteries ; Provincial Synods ; and a National Assembly — the orders ranging one above another, in ecclesiastical authority as well as in dignity. This system was adopted after debate, and promulgated by Acts of Parliament, exactly as the present Episcopal Church was established.
Here are some words from Dr. Shaw's pre- face : "The years 1640-60 witnessed the most complete and drastic revolution which the Church of England has ever undergone. Its whole structure was ruthlessly demolished — Episcopacy, the Spiritual Courts, Deans and Chapters, Convocation, the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty- nine Articles, and the Psalter. . . . On the clean - swept ground an entirely novel church system was erected. In place of Episcopal Church government a Presbyterian organisation was introduced, and a Presbyterian system of ordination. For tlie Spiritual Courts were substituted Presbyterian Assemblies (Parochial, Classical, and Provin-
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 87
cial), acting with a very real censorial juris- diction, but in final subordination to a Parlia- mentary Committee sitting at Westminster. Instead of tlie Thirty-nine Articles the Con- fession of Faith was introduced, and the Direc- tory in place of the Book of Common Prayer. New catechisms and a new metrical version were prepared, a parochial survey of the whole country was carried out, and extensive re- organisation of parishes effected." " There is hardly a parallel in history to such a consti- tutional revolution as this."
It was, however, oidy a paper revolution. The Lonsj Parliament was not the nation ; it would not have been the Long Parliament had its leaders thought that they had the judgment of the people with them. Nor did the Westminster Assemldy represent the re- ligious spirit and convictions of England. Not more than half the counties even professed to adopt the classical system ; where it was adopted it was only indifferently observed. In the few cases, as in Lancashire, where the classis met regularly, there \vas opposition to it l)oth from ministers and Churches. It is very improbable that it would have become
88 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
efiective in time, and time was not given. Twelve years after its passing through Parlia- ment came the Restoration, and the re-estab- lishment of Episcopacy. In 1662 there was a new Act of Uniformity, and about two thousand Puritan clergymen, most of them styled Presbyterian, were ejected from their livings. In 1688, when William III. began his rule of fourteen years, the hope of the Presbyterians partially revived. Now they would have been content with far less than a National Presbyterian Church ; they did, however, expect that the Church of England would have been made Inroad enough to take them in. A Bill of Comprehension was laid before Parliament with that object. It passed the House of Lords, but was rejected by the Commons. In the following year '"the Toleration Act " was passed ; it was a statute " for exempting Protestant subjects dissent- ing from the Church of England from the penalties of certain laws." The Presbyterians, with other Nonconformists, were allowed liberty of public worship and self-government ; but they were declared dissenters, not members of the Church of England. From that time
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 89
Presbytcrianism steadily declined. In the eighteenth century most Evangelical Presby- terian churches became Congregational ; a por- tion of the Unitarian denomination preserving the tradition of the old system, but loosely administering it, is what now remains of the Classical Church of the Commonwealth.
I
English Pres])ytcrianisin was prejudiced at the first, and ultimately was ruined by the very circumstances which alone made its adoption possible. It was l)orn in the throes of revolu- tion. It was a Church of safety — to borrow the language of revolutionary times. The Long Parliament had become a mere " Committee of Safety," and the establishment of a Presby- terian Church was one of its necessities. In the struggle between the Parliamentary forces and the army of Charles I. an alliance with Scotland seemed essential, and the only terms on which the Scots w^ould grant their he][) were the adoption by England of the Solemn League and Covenant, and the establishment of the National Church after the rigid Presl)yterian
90 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
model. To a religious mind the story of the Westminster Assembly is painful reading — the contrast is so great between the dignity, the solemn severity, the large and lofty reach of the Confession of Faith, and the subtlety and dis- ingenuousness which marked the ecclesiastical discussions. A political league with Scotland was desired, the religious covenant was un- welcome. Engagements of this sort are uncon- genial to the English temper ; the more sacred their terms, the more the Englishman shrinks from them. But dogmatic confidence and political necessity are both purblind and ruth- less ; the covenant, with its solemn adjuration of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, had to be taken. Attempts to reconcile the demands of the Presbyterian majority and the scruples of the Independents were thwarted by the Scot- tish Commissioners, some of whom took small part in the discussions of the Assembly, but ceaselessly acted on it through its Scottish debaters. Here is an extract from Baillie. He is reporting a discussion on the ruling eldership, in which the main body were opposed by the Independents. " When all were tired, it came to the question. There was no doubt but we
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 91
would have carried it by far most voices ; yet ])ecause the opposite were men verie consider- a])le, aV)ove all gracious and learned little Palmer, we agreed upon a committee to satisfie if it were possible the dissenters. For this end we meet to-day, and I hope ere all he done we shall agree. All of them were ever willing to admitt chlers in a prudentiall way ; but this to us seemed a most dangerous and unhappie way, and therefore was peremptorily rejected. We trust to carry at last, with the contentment of sundry once opposite, and silence of all, their divine and scriptural institution. This is a point of high consequence, and upon no other we expect so great ditiicultie, except alone on In- dependencie, wherewith we purpose not to medic in haste till it please God to advance our armie, which we expect will much assist our arguments.'" We are not to read his words as a sucfSes- tion that the Scottish troops are to come to London and train their fxuns on the Jcrusa- lem Chamber. It is not the arm\ , but the advancement of the army, which Baillie looks to to assist tlie arguments, in tjic early days of the Civil War, while Cromwell's series of brilliant victories was not dreamed of, a
92 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
(leraonstriition that the issue of the struggle depended on the Scottish army would facilitate a Presbyterian triumph in the Assembly. When the Scottish troops gained a victory, the Presby- terians were domineering ; when the Parlia- mentarian forces were successful, the Independ- ents became exacting. However conciliatory the Presbyterians might occasionally be, the Scottish Commissioners were always biding their time to reassert themselves. At last they carried their points, but the Assembly had lono^ ceased to have moral weigrht. An endur- ing Church could not be established in such times, and by such men.
Another difficulty appeared when the attempt was made to settle Presbyterianism in the parishes and counties — the Churches would not have it. There were not approving clergymen enough in most districts to work the polity, nor men fit to be ordained. Dr. Shaw says broadly, but correctly, that " the Presbyterianism of tlie Civil War was an abrupt and startling and illogical expansion from the basis of English Puritanism." ^ He quotes Baxter, not as uni- formly accurate in his estimate of facts, but as
' Sliaw, vol. i. jx 6.
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 93
right in tone. " Tliouoh Presbytery generally took in Scotland, yet it was l)ut a stranger here, and it found some ministers that lived in conformity to the bishops' liturgies and cere- monies (however much they might wish for reformation), and the most that quickly after were ordained were but young students in the universities at the time of the change of church government, and had never well studied the points on either side ; and though most of the ministers then in England saw nothino; in the Presbyterian way which they could not cheer- fully concur in, yet it was but few that had resolved on their principles. And when I came to try it, I found that most that ever I could meet with were against the jus divinum of lay elders, and for the moderate primitive Episco- pacy, and for a narrow Congregational or parochial extent of ordinary churches, and lor an accommodation of all parties in order to concord." Baxter's words are very significant. The English people are practically, not academi- cally, minded ; it is at once their strength and their weakness. In Parliament, in town coun- cils, in religious committees, and business meet- ings, you close a discussion by pronouncing it
94 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
academic. The advocates of the Puritan disci- pline in the times of Elizabeth were academics — like Cartwright, the Cambridge vice - chancellor, and Travers, the preacher at the Temple ; so were the Presbyterian leaders in the Westminster Asseml)ly. Their scheme was very complete, and it was authoritatively issued, but the parish clergy, with their working experience, would not have it.
II
The parish clergy were not content with disregarding the system ; within five years another system, essentially Congregational, was adopted in many parts of the country — adopted, too, where the Puritan tradition was strong. This was Baxter's scheme of Voluntary Asso- ciations, which he expounded with his usual copiousness and clearness. These associations repudiated the right of commanding the attend- ance of ministers within their bounds ; they made no claim to authority, they exercised only advisory influence over the particular churches.
This scheme is fully described by Baxter, its
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 95
author. An extract from Adam Martindale's autobiography will show how it appeared to an ordinary country parson.^ " In Septeml)er 1653, at a meeting of ministers at Wilmeslow, tlie 14th day of that month, a motion was made, and a letter drawne to invite many other ministers to give them the meeting at Knutsford on the 20th of October, being the exercise day, as accordingly many did ; and there they agreed upon a voluntary association of themselves and their churches, if it could ije done, for mutuall advice and strengthening each other. Into this societie I quickly after fell, and met with much comfort and assist- ance ; but by this meanes our worke was encreased by meeting frequently about classi- call Ijusinesse, and preaching in our turnes a lecture when we so met.
" If it be asked how I got satisfaction to act with them now, when 1 had scrupled some things concerning classicall government at the time of my being at Gorton, I answer, the case was not the same. Here was only a voluntary association of such as were desirous to advise and assist one another, nor did we
' " Adam Mai tindalu's Diary, ' Chetliani iSuciuty, p. 112.
96 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
look upon ourselves as having any pastorall inspection over one another's congregations ; l)ut onely to Ijc helpfull to them in a charitable way : we pretended not to any power to convent any before us, or suppresse any minister because dwelling in such a place, within such a verge, and differing from us in practice."
Martindale was not a Congregatioualist ; he was a parish clergyman of the Puritan type. Jle disliked the Separatists as cordially as did Baxter, and complains of the intrusion of In- dependents from Manchester when he was at Gorton, and from Bowdon into his country charge at Rostherne. It is the true English spirit which asserts itself in him ; the deter- mination to have municipal freedom, and a dread of clerical courts. An Episcopal system is not un-English, neither is Congregational Independency ; Presl)yteriaDism of the Conti- nental and Scottish character is.
Ill
The struggle between a voluntary Presby- terianism, adopted as a " prudential " system, dependent on the free consent of the particular
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 97
Churches, and Presbyterianism claimiDg the jus divinum, demanding to be established ])y Parliament as an authoritative and uniform system over every congregation in tlie land, was in reality the great conflict of the West- minster Assembly. A conciliatory temper often appeared in l)otli parties, notwithstanding the trust in the Scottish army of the Presbyterians, and the dependence of the Independents on Cromwell, and their occasional alliance with the Erastian members of the House of Commons. The opposing parties had very much in common ; admiration, even affectionate regard, sprang up between them as they came to know eacli other in debate. Terms of accommodation were more than once suggested, and were proposed with hope. But when the critical point was reached — authority or free consent, uniformity or lil)erty of diti'crence among the Churclics — the quarrel broke (Jut afresh ; the conciliatory temper was lost in mutual exasperation and a deeper distrust. The same fundamental dif- ference appears in the histories of the Assembly, as written l)y constitutional Congregationalists and constitutional Presbyterians almost down to the present day. It is a conscientious
6
98 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
difference ; we have here no battle between " frogs and mice," still less a greedy contest between "kites and crows." It is rooted in the dialectic habit, and represents the various temperaments, of men equally honourable, equally religious, equally striving after abiding concord in the faith. Some men are, by natural constitution, lovers of order in the first place ; they believe that under good order individual liberty is secure : other men attach the supreme importance to freedom, and trust that free men, free societies, will work out order. The fight in the Assembly ended in the triumph of unifor- mity, but liberty has ultimately prevailed. The history of England subsequently has, however, made it evident that the strife will be perpetual so long as there is a Church established by, and acting with the authority of, the State.
As part of this struggle there arose that great historic incident, which stirs in Englishmen the same deep, impassioned reverence which Ameri- cans feel when any allusion is made to the voy- age of t'he Mayfloiver — the plea for liberty of conscience advanced by Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Jeremiah Burroughs, William Bridge, and Sidrach Simson. A striking picture found in
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 99
many a Congregational home has impressed this plea for liberty of conscience in the Westminster Assembly on the national memory. No single incident occurred like that which is here pour- trayed, but the picture is true to the spirit of the Independents in the Assembly. Historians have pointed out that the doctrine of toleration as advanced by these men, was not the modern doctrine ; it was much more limited, it was not based on the universal right, the inevitable necessity, of liberty of thought, which is gene- rally accepted to-day. Mr. Hunter says that Locke and Chillingworth, not the five dis- senting brethren, were the fathers of toleration. Dr. Hetherington, a Presljytcrian historian of the Assem})ly, points out that the Independents did not give unlimited toleration when they had the power. And Dr. Shaw dwells on the fact that what was pleaded for was not a universal regard for tender consciences, but freedom for their own Congregational action under the Church which was to be established. All this is true, and 1 do not know that the five brethren are to l)e censured for confining their protest to the matters under discussion, with- out encumbering themselves with large general-
loo PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
isations, which only an experience very much broader and more specific than any which men then possessed would warrant. It has been a weakness, rather than a strength, in modern English Nonconformity, that so many Non- conformists have invoked, on small occasions, great principles, the full application of which they have not had the opportunity of test- ing. What the five dissenters did was to utter, to utter firmly, their own demand, and refuse to be turned aside when they were told that their action was endangering interests which were as sacred to them as to their opponents. It shows moral courage in an educated man when he does not shrink before the ai^gumentum ad invidiam ; the possession of such courage, quite as much as large vision, is a qualification for pioneering progressive thought.
Dr. Hetherinsfton criticises the dissenting brethren severely. He writes thus : ^ " What we have termed the political Independents of the army were composed of sectarians of every
^ "History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines," by W. M. Hetherington, D.D., LL.D. Ediuburgli : James Gem- mell, 1878. P. 149.
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS loi
shade of opinion ; and from tlicni, rather than from the religious Independents in the Assembly, arose the idea of toleration, of which so much use was subsequently made. As used by those military sectarians, the meaning of the term was, that any man might freely utter the ravings of his own heated fancy, and endea- vour to proselytise others, be his opinions what they might, even though manifestly sub- versive of all morality, all government, and all revelation. Such a toleration, for instance, as would include alike Antinomians and Ana- baptists, though teaching that they were set free from and above the rules of moral duty so completely, that to indulge in the grossest licentiousness was in them no sin ; and Level- lers and l^^ifth- Monarchy men, whose tenets went directly to the subversion of every kind of constituted government, and all distinctions in rank and property. This was what tlwy meant ])y toleration, — and this was what the Puritans and Presl)yterians condemned and wrote against with startled vehemence. And it is neither to the credit of the Independent divines of that ))eriod, nor of tliuir subsequent admirers and followers, tliat they seem to coun-
I02 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
tenance such a toleration, the real meaning of which was civil, moral, and religious anarchy."
I have no quarrel with this general repre- sentation of the matter at issue, but I say that, instead of reflecting no credit on the Independent divines, it is a high tribute to their courage and wisdom and composure that when the question of toleration was before the Assembly, in such guise as it here assumes, they did not draw back from their demand. It means much that they stood firm under conditions in presence of which Martin Luther quailed. "Pious, gentle, able, acute, learned " — these are some of the epithets Dr. Hether- ington distributes among the group. They knew the odium which an association with Antinomians and Levellers would draw on them ; they foresaw the grave questions which would have to be grappled with if a beginning of toleration were made ; they perceived the controversial advantage which they were giv- ing to their opponents, and they did not flinch. Dr. Hetherington goes on to admit, " It is, however, true that out of the dis- cussions which this cLdm of unbounded and licentious toleration raised, there was at length
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evolved the idea of religious toleration, such as is demanded ])y man's solemn and dread characteristic of personal responsibility, and consecjucnt inalienable right to liberty of con- science."
That they deliberately faced this issue ap- pears from the following extract from Bail lie : " We hope shortelie to gett the Independents put to it to declare themselves either to be for the rest of the Sectaries or against them. If they declare against them they will be but a small inconsiderable companie ; if for them all honest men will cry out upon them for separating from all the Reformed Churches to joyne with Anabaptists and Libertines." They made their choice ; met a subtle, logical dilemma by a demand whose brevity is significant.^ In the end of November 1645 " (Joodwin, Nye, Simson, Bridge, and Burroughs were requested to bring in their desires concerning Church government. On the 4tli of December they accordingly presented such their desires : — " I. Ordination to be permissibly performed by sufficiently qualified persons in case there be no presbytery.
1 Shaw, vol. ii. p. 48.
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" 2. Their congregations to be exempt from Classical, Provincial, and National Synods in respect of jurisdiction."
" 3. Liberty to form congregations."
IV
The real weakness of the Independent posi- tion appeared later on, when, under Cromwell's Protectorate, the Independents were instructed to formulate a scheme of toleration. Cromwell himself was a large-minded man. Personally, he was a strong Calvinist and a sincere Con- gregationalist ; but as charged with care for the national concord, and seeing the peril of continued religious strife, he would have en- couraged ministers of conspicuous piety with very different theories of Church government. It was understood that popish and prelatic clergymen were to be excluded ; this was on political grounds. Exactly as Barrowe, and Greenwood, and Penry were charged with sedition in Elizabeth's days, and with more reason, Roman Catholics were treated as seek- ing the political supremacy of the Pope, and Episcopalians as working for the restoration of
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 105
the Stuarts. The exclusion is inconsistent with a generous doctrine of liberty of conscience ; and the niistake seemed to justify the ruthless ejectment of the Puritan clergy when Charles II. came to the throne. I^ut we must consider tlie national danger ; and Cromwell's good faith is apparent in the fact that Episcopalian ministers, who were manifestly devoted to their parishes, and not preaching faction, were continued in their cures. The forbidding of liberty of speech to Atheists, Anti-Trinitarians, and others was a necessary consequence of the fact that the scheme of toleration was proposed in continua- tion of legislative proposals for a scheme for " the Propagation of the Gospel," which since 1652-53 had been, more or less, before Par- liament. It was taken for granted " that the Christian religion, as contained in the Scrip- tures, 1)0 held forth and recommended as the public profession of tlie nation ; " " and the dis- covery and confutation of error, heresy, and whatever is contrary to sound doctrine," were looked upon as the concern of Parliament equally with "the encouragement and main- tenance of able and [);iiiiful preachers for the instructing of the people.' No method of
io6 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
reconciling perfect liberty for all consciences with the existence of a Church, established and sustained by the State, has even yet been discovered, and in those days it was almost universally believed that, without such a national Church, there could be no public profession of the Christian religion. Nor had men then detected the fallacy into which even Dr. Hetherington has stumbled, the assumption, namely, that because some doc- trines are subversive of society, to tolerate their utterance is " civil, moral, and religious anarchy." It needed Milton's lofty courage and clarion words — " Let truth and falsehood grapple ; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter ? " — to stir the conscience of the nation ; and Locke's clear reasoning to convince its judgment that loyalty to truth demands the liberty of open utterance for all opinions which men hold.
In a report presented to a Parliamentary Committee, i8th February 1651, to which twenty - seven names are attached — among them Nye and Simson and Bridge, dissenting brethren of the almost defunct Assembly, and John Owen and John Goodwyn, the great Cal-
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vinistic and Aimiuiaii divines of the Inde- pendents— there are some wise and weighty recommendations.^ " It is desired that no person be required to receive the Sacrament further than their light shall lead them unto, so no person sent forth to preach and already placed, or who shall be placed in any parish within this nation, ])e compelled to administer the Sacraments to any but such as he shall approve of as fit for the same." " That whereas divers persons are not satisfied to come to tlie public places of hearing the word, upon this account that these places are dedicated and consecrated, that the Parliament will be pleased to declare that such places are made use of and continued only for the better convenience of persons meeting together for the public wor- ship of God, and for no other consideration." " That all persons dissenting to the doctrine and way of worship owned by the State, or consenting thereunto, and yet not having the advantage or opportunity of some of the pul)- lick meeting-places, commonly called churches, be rcMjuired to meet (if they have any constant meeting) in })laces publickly known, and to
' .Shaw, vol. ii. pj). 82, 83.
io8 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
give notice unto some magistrate of such their place of ordinary meetings." A later Parliamen- tary declaration — the historic " Instrument of Government" — declares that^ "to tlie public profession (of the Christian religion) held forth, none shall be compelled by penalties or other- wise ; but that endeavours be used to win them by sound doctrine and the "example of a good conversation," " That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ (though differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship, or dis- cipline publicly held forth) shall not be re- strained from, but shall be protected in, the profession of the faith and exercise of their religion ; so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil injury of others and to the actual disturbance of the public peace on their parts ; provided this liberty be not extended to Popery or Prelacy, nor to such as, under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practise licentiousness." Up to this point all went well ; but on the words " faith in God by Jesus Christ," a dis- cussion arose, the issue of which was that the whole scheme came to nothing. " Considering that such words contained the fundamentals
' Shaw, vol. ii. p. 815.
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of religious hclief, it was proposed that all should have a due measure of liberty who professed tlie fundamentals ; and a Committee of Divines was nominated to define them." At once the old dogmatic spirit was aroused, and the Inde- pendents, by their definitions, began a work of exclusion. " I knew," says Baxter,' " how ticklish a business the enumeration of Funda- mentals was, and of what very ill consequence it would be if it were ill done, and how un- satisfactorily that (juestion, What are your Fundamentals ? is usually answered to the Papists." Baxter wisely suggested that they should " distinguish between the serine or matter and the words; and that it's only the sense that is primarily and properly our Fnnda- mentals, and the words no further than as they are needful to express that sense to others, or represent it to our own conce[)tion." He further proposed that they should substitute for the word Fundamental the word Essential, whicli proposal is not exactly an Irenicon ; but anotlier declaration fi'oni him is, " that quoad rem there is no more Essential or Fundatnental in' religion, Ijut what is con-
lieliquiir; JJajicriaiw;. Loiidun, 1696. Tp. 197-99.
I I o PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
tained in our Baptismal Covenant, / believe in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and give up myself in covenant to Him, renouncing the Flesh, the World, and the Devil." " I would have had the Brethren," he further said, " to have offered the Parliament the Creed, Lord's Prayer, and Decalogue alone as our Essentials or Fundamentals, which at least contain all that is necessary to salvation, and hath been by all the ancient Churches taken for the sum of their religion. And whereas they still said, A Socinian or a Pajnst ivill subscribe all this, I answered them. So much the better, and so much the fitter it is to be the matter of our concord. But if you are afraid of communion with Papists and Socinians, it must not be avoided by making a new Rule or Test of Faith which they will not subscribe to, or by forcing others to sub- scribe to more than they can do, but by calling them to account whenever in preaching or writing they contradict or abuse the truth to which they have subscribed." That last sen- tence is very characteristic of Baxter, who wrote a hundred and sixty -eight treatises, mostly long and always controversial, and whose
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS i i i
perpetual wonder was that one so reasonable as lie should have scarcely any to agree with him. " One merry passage," which Baxter tells us "awakened laughter," will shew the elabora- tion to which the discussion lengthened. " Mr. Sympson caused them to make this a Funda- mental, that He that alloiveth himself or others in any hnoivn sin cannot he sared. I pleaded against the word ' allowed,' and told them that many a thousand lived in wilful sin, which they could not be said to allow themselves in, but confessed it to l)e sin, and went on against conscience, and yet were impenitent and in a state of death ; and that there seemed a little contradiction between known sin and allowed ; so far as a man knoweth that he sinneth, he doth not alloiv, that is, approve it. Other exceptions there were, but they would have their way, and my opposition to anything did but heighten their resolution. At last 1 told them, As stiff as they were in their opinion and way, I would force them with one word to change or blot out all that Fundamental. I uigcd tliem to take my wager, and they would not believe me, but marvelled what I meant. I told them that the Parlia-
I I 2 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
ment took the Independent way of separation to be a sin, and when this Article came before them they would say, By our Brethren's own Judgment we are all damned Men, if we allow the Independents or any other Sectaries in their sin. They gave me no answer, but they left out all that Fundamental."
All this is very noteworthy ; it brings into prominence a fact which must ])e borne in mind if we are to understand the relation of Presby- terians and Independents under the Common- wealth— that the Independents were more jealous for orthodoxy than the Presbyterians. Baxter speaks of " the over-orthodox Doctors, Owen and Cheynell " ; and attributes the failure of their scheme of toleration to the fact that " they took it to be their Duty in all those Fundamentals to put in those words which, as they said, did obviate the Heresies and Errors of the Divines." This was the normal attitude of the Independents from Browne and Barrowe down to the first half of tlie nineteenth century. It was not their universal temper ; there always have been men among them — like Peter Sterry in the seventeenth century, Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge in the eighteenth, and a large
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS i i 3
majority of them in the nineteeuth — who did not confound zeal for orthodoxy with fidelity to the truth ; but it was something more than a general attitude, it was normal, sure on criti- cal occasions to appear. It was part of their Separatism ; they loved the church fellowship of like-minded men, not only for the gracious discipline of morals it afforded, but equally because it gave them freedom to profess their full-orbed system of truth. It accounts for the contrast between tfie tepid interest the Inde- pendents of the Assembly took in schemes of Accommodation and the heartiness with wliich they threw themselves into the scheme of Toleration. Accommodation meant the sur- render of testimony to some truths, secondary, indeed, Imt very dear to them, for the sake of more important interests ; Toleration meant an equal liberty for them all to form assemblies in which everything they held as Oliristian truth might be freely uttered. The practice of Church covenanting which marked the Con- gregationalists of the seventeenth century, and the frequency with which they put out Confes- sions of Faith, are indications of the same regard for minute and systematic utterances of truth.
u
114 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
The extreme orthodoxy of the Independents frustrated, in tlie end of the seventeenth cen- tury, what looked like a very promising scheme for uniting them with the Presbyterians in one denomination. For three-fourths of the cen- tury they were drawing nearer to each other in confidence and esteem, though they did not always perceive it. In the controversies of the Commonwealth they were learning to know each other ; and in the parishes non-contro- versialists were working side by side with mutual respect. Under the Restoration they were fellow-sufferers : the iniquitous oppression beneath which they groaned bound them in tender sympathy ; the anxieties which weighed down the ministers and congregations, who still came together with difficulty and danger, abolished the distinction between them. They joined together to accomplish the Revolution and set William III. on the throne. There is in London a " General Board of the three Denominations " — Baptist, Congregational, and Presbyterian — which still has the right of direct access to the throne for the service
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS i i 5
they rciidered in the polilicul struggles which finally established the monarchy of the House of Hanover. When the Comprehension Bill was lost and the Act of Toleration was passed, and the Episcopal Church was finally estab- lished as exclusively the National Church, the only political distinction between Presbyterians and Independents was gone. Their congrega- tions coalesced ; their ministers were Con- gregational or Presbyterian, not because of any difi^'erence in the government of the churches, but according to the accidental attachment of the people, in one part of the country or another, to either of the two names. Trust - deeds were drawn, declaring lands and buildings to be held for the use of conscregatioiis of Protestant Dissenters of the I'resbyterian or Independent denomination, and to this day it is a moot point whether the words signified two denominations, or one denomination with transferable names. It wa a state of things wliicli would have been in- tolerable to the Scottish Presbyterians of the Assembly ; it was very delightful to the chil- dren of the Puritans, and it seemed to promise an entire union l)ctween them.
ii6 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
A project for such a union, known under the name of " the Happy Agreement," or " the Happy Union," was ruined by the extreme Calvinism — so-called, Lut wrongly so-called — of the Independents. A London minister chose this particular time for republishing some writings of his father, Dr. Tobias Crisp, in which the doctrine of the Atonement was set forth in a very obnoxious form. The writer had been an Arminian ; when he be- came a Calvinist he rushed into an extreme which it needs a skilful theologian to dis- tinguish from Antinomianism. He went even beyond the Supralapsarians in that he taught that a man was justified before his faith, viz., in the eternal decree by which he was or- dained unto eternal life. Dr. Daniel Williams, an eminent Presbyterian — a man now known for the library he left behind him containing books and manuscripts of the greatest use in Puritan history, and for the university scholar- ships he founded, but then known for the jrrace of his character and his Puritan devo- tion — answered these writings. The Inde- pendents generally were not Antinomian, but they accused Dr. Williams of Arminianism,
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS i i 7
and a fierce quarrel arose between the de- nominations. Various attempts were made at reconciliation, which only ended in greater bitterness. The controversy raged for some years ; Dr. Williams, whose conduct in the dispute was vindicated as wise and fair even by his opponents, closed it with a treatise entitled " Peace with Truth, or an End to Discord." He believed that he had laid down in this book a declaration of principles which would be a sufficient foundation for cordial union, and expected that Ijefore long endea- vours for denominational unity would be resumed.
liefore attempts at a Happy Agreement could be begun again with any hope of success, Uni- tarianism had become a "burning question" in England. In Kxeter, where there were four Presbyterian churches, James Peirce, one of the ministers, adopted anti - Trinitarian doctrine. He did not think it necessary to preach it, but he left out of his services all references to the three persons of the Godhead. A brother minister finding, in conversation with him, what Peirce's sentiments were, proclaimed his lapse horn orthodoxy in Exeter, and the
ii8 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
news quickly spread among the people. They requested the London ministers — Presbyterian and Independent — to advise them ; and the London ministers met to consider the matter in Salters' Hall. A letter to Exeter was deter- mined on ; but before it was drafted Thomas Bradbury, an able and vehement Independent, one of the most representative Congregation- alists, proposed that every minister then present should, as a witness to his own faith, subscribe the first Article of the Established Church on the doctrine of the Trinity, and the answers to the fifth and sixth questions in the Catechism of the Westminster Assembly. This motion was opposed mainly on the ground that it was an imposition of a human creed, and that to en- force such a creed was inconsistent with the principles of Protestant Dissent. It was re- jected by seventy-three to sixty-nine votes, on which the minority, mainly Congregationalists, left the conference and formed themselves into a separate Assembly. The non-subscrib- ing Assembly had some Congregationalist and Baptist members, but its majority was Pres- byterian.
The immediate result of all this was, on the
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 119
Presbyterian side, an added impulse to Uni- tarianism ; it made the Cpngregational churches look to detailed doctrinal creeds for that defence of truth which the more consistent Congre- gationalists now believe the spiritual fellowship sufficient to secure. Nearly all the evangelical Presbyterians gradually became Independents ; they had always been Congregational in prac- tice, now they assumed the Congregational name. The possession of property, chapels, manses, endowments, was determined in this way — where tlie orthodox members seceded, the Unitarians held the trusts ; where the Uni- tarians seceded, the Cono;re2;ationalists held them. By-and-by litigation arose, and an Act of Parliament was passed ordering that, where no specific doctrines had been laid down in the trust-deed, the property was secured to those who had held it for a term of not less than twenty-five years. The latest decision of the courts, in 1897, is of historical as well as legal interest. The Defoe Memorial Cliurch, in Toot- ing, received its name V)ecause Daniel Defoe had been at one time associated with the congrega- tion. The original deed settling property on the conii;ref!;ation declared it to ])e for the use of
I20 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
*' Protestant Dissenters of the Presbyterian or Independent denomination." For more than a hundred years the church had been Congre- gational, with a succession of Congregational ministers. For the greater part of that time the only Presbyterian church claiming to be English was Unitarian, and the Tooting congre- gation was never other than Evangelical. In 1876 "the Presbyterian Church of England" was formed, mainly consisting of congregations associated with the United Presbyterian and the Free Churches of Scotland. With this newly- formed church the pastor of the Defoe Memorial Church and a portion of the members de- termined to unite themselves, " believing," as they said in a resolution passed on the loth December 1879, "that the doctrine and polity of the Presbyterian Church of England are in harmony with the word of God, and knowing that the real and personal property connected with the church at Tootino; are of Presbyterian origin." The London Congrega- tional Union contested their right to do this and continue to hold the property, and the case was decided against the pastor and his Presbyterian adherents. The pleadings pre-
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 121
pared on both sides were very elaborate ; but the ground of the decision was severely simple. The trust-deed provided that the premises were for the use of Protestant Dissenters of the Presbyterian or Independent denomination to worship in ; but the " Book of Order and Discipline of the Presbyterian Church of England " made that impossible. " The rules in that book," Mr. Justice Kekewich said, " conflict at every turn with what I understand to be the essential character of the Independent denomi- nation, namely, that each particular church stands alone, independent of every other church, in harmony with them, perhaps, but still in- dependent, self-contained, self-governed. The Book of Order is directly contrary to that position." If the modern Presbyterianism had allowed the freedom which the English Presby- terians enjoyed, the question would have had to be fought out more specifically, and it is by no means certain that the Con2[reo;ationalists would have won their case. But the rigour of the Scottish method was decisive. The minister was not dismissed, but he was strictly charged that he was not at liberty to continue in his place as a member of the South London l^resbytery.
122 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
We have two Presbyterian churches in England to-day — this modern " Presbyterian Church of England," which is orthodox, and the old " English Presbyterian Church," which is Uni- tarian. Its ministers do not use, by choice, the title Unitarian churches ; they prefer to call themselves Free or Non-subscribing churches ; but many of them cling to the old historic title. Here is the reason that while in America the Unitarians regard with affection the historic name Congregational, their English brethren love the name Presbyterian. The Puritan tradition is very dear to them : they look with reverence to Richard l^axter and Daniel Williams, orthodox though these were ; they regard the non- subscribino; members of the Salters' Hall con- ference as their ecclesiastical ancestors.
I have been putting off, all through this Lecture, the consideration of the relation be- tween the Independents of the seventeenth and the Separatists of the sixteenth century. With a word or two on this point I close.
The Independents were not enamoured of the name Separatist or Brownist, and that not simply because it was an offensive title, carry-
PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 123
ing a stigma with it. They were not true Separatists ; had they been so, they would not have sat in the Westminster Assembly, nor entered into Cromwell's purpose of founding a comprehensive National Church. But Baillie and Baxter, and the Presbyterians generally, were not wrong in calling them so. All they knew of Congregational Independency, gathered Churches, discipline, the association of the members with the ministers in church govern- ment, the desire for toleration, had been formu- lated for them by Browne, and Barrowe, and John Robinson, and Henry Jacob, and Henry Ainsworth. The Separatist doctrine was as the leaven, the Independents w^rc the three measures of meal, which in its turn became leaven, leavening the wdiole lump of English church life. I never study this history, never mark how the habit of gathering for worship outside the Established Churches, and the exercise of care over one another by the members in these separate assemblies, grew into the practice of discipline, and then into an assertion of the doctrine of purity of com- munion ; how the people took into their hands the exercise of government, and found tliat they
124 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS
were following St. Paul's model in the congre- gations of the Greek municipalities in Asia Minor and Achaia ; how the habit of depending on the guidance of the Holy Spirit led to an assertion of the operative headship of Christ in the churches, which made the thought of civil or ecclesiastical dominion over them intolerable — without recalling some striking words of Mr. Gladstone, when he speaks of the relation of the evangelical revival in the eighteenth century to the Tractarian movement of the ninteenth. " Logical continuity and moral causation are stronger than the conscious thought of man ; they mock it, and play with it, and constrain it, even without its knowledge, to suit their purpose."
LECTURE IV
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
Tlie Act of Toleration — Its Defects — Its Adaptation to the Times — Nonconforming Pieacliers in Parish Churches — The Power of the Patron — Private Chajjels and Chap- lains— Charles II. 's Indulgence— Dissenters Excluded from Public Life— Colleges and Grammar Schools Closed to Dis- senters— Dissenting Academies — Tlie Corporation and the Test Acts — Occasional Conformity — Profanation of Holy- Communion — Nonconformists and the Shrievalty of Lon- don— Lord Mansfield on Religious Persecution — Develop- ment of Separatism under this Policy — Baxter on the "Lazy" Separatists — Wesley's Censure of Independent Ministers — Dissenting Churches in the Eighteenth Century — Isaac Watts — Philip Doddridge — The Disabling Influ- ence of Smallness — Watts's Patriotism — " A Garden Walled Around " — Indifference to the Spiritual Needs of England a Characteristic of the Eighteenth Century — Decay of In- terest in Religion— The Evangelical Revival — Methodism and Puritanism — Calvini.stic and Arminian Methodists — Tlieir Church Doctrine — Drift toward Congregationalism— Inlluence of Methodism on English Religion.
T.IX riiiiK IV
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
Thi-; Act of Toleration was the only solution of the religious difficulty in England which the times and the tempers of men permitted. It was not an ideal Act; it was founded upon that principle of compromise, so dear to the average Englishman and so ofi'ensive to the dogmatist. It was niggardly in its conces- sions, and created new difficulties. It divided the religious part of the nation into two classes — the ])rivileged and the tolerated — and this division became a line of cleavage which has penetrated througli every stratum of the social life. It hindered for more than a century the establishment of a national system of education ; the coniiict between two sections of educationists — those who want a national and those who want a denominational system — is one of the "burning (jucstions" of to-day. Aiul yet our children, who will read the liistory more dis-
128 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
passionately than we can, may affirm it to have been, in its result, both beneficent and wise. It gave a temporary peace if it did not secure a lasting concord. Certainly it was better than any Act of Comprehension would have been. No Act of Comprehension could have efifaced dissent. The thoroughgoing Independents, and the Baptists, would still have been outside the National Church. But we should have had a small dissent, unfit for grappling with problems as they arose, and powerless to influence states- men. The Toleration Act made the Dissenters a large and strong body ; much of the learning, the piety, the social influence of the land was with them. • If the Episcopalians were secured in their supremacy, the Nonconformists had the liberty to preach, and to order their churches according to what they believed to be " the mind of Christ." This was all that Browne, and Barrowe, and John Robinson— the early Separatists — asked for. It was what Milton regarded as the highest earthly boon. " Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liber- ties." I am not at all sure that a much larger measure of liberty would have been a boon even
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 129
to the Independents. Freedom for thought cannot be won by a coiqj de main, nor con- ferred by an Act of Parliament. It has subtler enemies than legislation can put down — preju- dice, narrowness, want of consideration for others — and the discipline of the yoke is a surer solvent of these than social advantajres and easy times.
I
The toleration of Dissenters was accordinir to the mind of the nation. The Act of Uniformity itself had not been able to silence Presbyterian and Independent ministers, and suppress Con- gregational church discipline. Dr. Plalley has told us how " several nonconforming ministers in Lancashire contrived in one way or another to retain their places without complying with the requirements of the Act. This could be done only where the minister was so much respected that no one would lay an information against him, where the patron of the living had no desire to present another incumbent, and generally where the stipend was so small as to
excite no desire in any other clergyman to
I
130 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
appeal to authority to have the church de- clared vacant."^
He enumerates thirteen chapelrics in Lanca- shire where the incumbency was not disturbed by the refusal of the clergyman to conform, and says that similar instances of nonconform- ing ministers retaining their benefices or being allowed to preach in their churches as lecturers, may be found in the adjoining counties of York and Chester. A chapel at Morley in Yorkshire continues to be occupied by Congregationalists, and a Unitarian conofreo;ation still holds " the ancient chapel of Toxtcth Park," a suburb of Liverpool.
A state of things like this requires a word or two of explanation. It is partly accounted for by the national character. The well- regulated English mind finds a charm in in- consistency, equal to that which order brings to more servile spirits. We do not cut ofl' the ravelled edges of our fabrics, we twist them into fringes, and account them pictur- esque. The Englishman is not a rationally
1 " Lancashire ; its Purilanism and Nonconformity," by Robert Halley, D.D. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1869. VoL ii. p. 146.
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 131
tolerant man, Itut lie is easy-going. He is lial)le to fierce bursts of popular passion, and the passion while it lasts is ruthless ; but it soon subsides. He
"Carries anger as the Hint bears fire : Who, mucli enforced, shews a hasty spark, And straight is cold again."
The power of the patron of the living, a remnant of feudalism, accounts for more. The lord of the manor had perhaps built the chapel ; he was responsible for much of the cost of maintaining the building, the parish clergyman, and the public worship. He had presented the incumbent ; it would have lain with him to appoint a successor. There are instances where, through the favour of the patron, under Elizabeth's or Charles's Act of Unifor- mity, a Congregational Church was formed within the parish, ministered to sometimes by the parish clergyman, sometimes by a lecturer acting with his concurrence. Other members of the aristocracy had private chapels and private chaplains ; they claimed the right, both of disregarding the Act of Uniformity in their own households, and of inviting as many
132 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
neighbours as they pleased to their family worship. All the people of a parish might thus have been Congregationalists within the Established Church. Greenwood, the martyr, had been Puritan chaplain to Lord Rich in Essex, and had been allowed by the parish clergyman to minister to a gathered Church at Rochford Hall, until his conscience drove him to London, where he avowed himself a Separatist. In the times of the Evangelical Revival, the Calvinistic section had some aristocratic leaders who unintentionally fostered dissent in this way. The Countess of Hunting- don built chapels, and appointed her chaplains to be ministers of them without the consent of the parish clergyman, and she was very indignant when a legal judgment was given that she could only do so under the Toleration Act, and must register the buildings as dissent- ing chapels.
We have to consider, also, the tolerant temper of some of the bishops. Bishop Wilkins of Chester, the diocese of which Dr. Ilalley is writing, definitely allowed this independent action of ministers in a few cases. One reason why the English people prefer Epis-
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copacy to Presbyterian ism is, that they believe a bishop acting on his own responsibility more likely to be liberal than a Synod or a Presbytery.
The Court party, moreover, was not consis- tent in the policy of persecution. Charles II., desiring to propitiate both Romanists and Nonconformists, put out, without consulting Parliament, a Declaration of Induloence, wliich practically repealed the Act of Uniformity. A similar Act, in 1687, cost James II. his crown; and there were many Dissenters who, resenting Charles's invasion of the prerogative of Parlia- ment, refused to be indulged. His later de- claration, which w^as issued under Parliamentary sanction, was generally accepted ; an<l it con- tinued in operation until the Toleration Act was passed.
The strength of the Toleration Act was, that it gave legal recognition to a custom which it had been found impossible to repress ; its great defect was, that under its operation the Dissenters found themselves excluded from public life. The exemption of Dissenters from "the penalties of certain laws" did not repeal the laws themselves. I'here were Tory states-
134 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
men who avowed that the Toleration Act was only temporary, and the fear that it might be so is evidenced by a clause which, during the whole of the eighteenth century, continued to be inserted in the trust-deeds of Nonconformist meeting-houses, directing to what uses the pro- perty should be applied should the Toleration Act be repealed.
The disability imposed by the Act of Uni- formity began with the children. England had in her colleges and grammar-schools a generous, and for the time a sufficient, provision for the scholarly education of her people. In these had been trained the great majority of the clergy, of doctors also and lawyers, as well as the sons of the gentry, and many farmers' and tradesmen's sons. The Act of Uniformity demanded subscription to the Articles and Liturgy of the Church from all Heads and Fellows and Tutors of Colleges, from Univer- sity Professors and Readers, and masters of public schools. There were no old-world con- ditions to mitigate the pressure of this law. The schools had not patrons who could have seen to it that the children of Nonconformists
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 135
were not trained up in the practice of the Established Church ; there was no one in the universities to protest against the requirement of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles when students entered college and went on to their dejrrees. Under the Toleration Act the Dissen- ters founded academies of their own, which at first cfave a liberal education to all lads seekino; it, and l)y-and-by became seminaries for the training^ of their ministers. But these were not like the old places of learning. The culture was generous, and it made scholars, but the atmosphere was sectarian. It was as Protestant Dissenters the young men were taught, and for the service of their own churches, not as Englishmen, fired with an ambition to take part in public life.
The Corporation Act, passed in 1661, imposed conformity on all town councillors, mayors, aldcrnicn, and slicrilfs, and so excluded Dissen- ters from municipal otlice. Municipal office is the training-school of pul)lic-spirited men : if it had been intended to dwarf the aspirations and limit the outlook of a whole section of English manhood, to make them narrow sec- tarians, to confine public service to other
136 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
sectarians in whom the sense of privilege should work an equal narrowness of vision, no surer method could have been devised. The Test Act, passed in 1673, made the same demand of conformity on all persons holding office and emolument from the Crown, on Ministers of State, on custom-house servants and excisemen, great and small alike. This Act, too, kept the sense of injustice constant in the minds of some of the most devoted friends of the Commonwealth, and injured the community by the loss of their service.
The Act of Uniformity, the Corporation Act, and the Test Act continued in force when the Act of Toleration was passed, and gave occasion to some of the bitterest political conflicts of the eighteenth century. The Whigs were sincerely attached to toleration, and would have silently sanctioned any evasion of the restrictive laws to which Nonconformists might resort ; but the Tories were always for making them stricter, and for stamping out dissent entirely. John Robinson had written in favour of the occasional joining of Separatists in the worship of the parish churches, although he frankly confessed that he himself could not practise it. Occasional
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conformity was gradually becoming a habit among Dissenters of wealth and social position, of Presbyterian nurture mostly, and it provoked the hostility of the Church and State party, who brought Bills before Parliament to make it illegal. Strong Dissenters, like Defoe and Thomas Bradbury, and the Independents gene- rally, were equally vehement in their oppositioii to the practice, because it was inconsistent with the integrity of conscience and threatened the absorption of Dissenters into the Established Church. The discussions of the leaders were punctuated by furious riots of the mob, who loved agitation better than they understood the points at issue, and greeted with similar acclamations Sacheverell on his return from condemnation by the House of Lords, and Defoe when he was standing in the pillory. An Act intended to put an end to occasional con- formity was passed in 171 1 ; the Schism Bill, preventing any but members of the Established Church from being teachers, became law in 1 7 14. It seemed as if the persecutions of Elizabeth and Charles 11. were to be renewed, all the old bitterness was reawakening ; Thomas Bradbury wondered — so he said to Bishop
138 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
Burnet, when walkino; throuQ-h Smitlifield — if he should have the constancy and resolution of the old martyrs ; and then the death of Queen Anne startled the nation. The whole political prospect was changed ; England was delivered from the fear of a Stuart dynasty and a perse- cuting Church.
The Test and Corporation Acts were not rendered innoxious because there was now no danger of their extension. Thoughtful persons were shocked by the impiety which they en- couraged. The profession of the State religion was made by taking the Sacrament within three months of appointment to office, and as part of the qualification. How this degraded the con- ception of the Lord's Supper, to what scenes it gave occasion, when crowds of successful candi- dates hung about the churches to qualify, and then went to the ale-house to drink themselves in, may well be imagined. " His Royal Highness Prince Frederick " — so might say a paragraph in the London Gazette — " yesterday received the Sacrament, having been appointed Ranger of Windsor Park." There were advertisements of days when the Sacrament would be adminis- tered to persons recently admitted to public
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posts. To this custom C^owpcr alludes in his satire on the ungodliness and hypocrisy of England.
o
'■ ITast tliou by statute slioved from its design 'I'lie Saviour's feast, liis own blest bread and wine, And made the symbols of redeeming grace An office-key, a picklock to a place, That infidels may prove their title good Ijy an oath dipped in sacramental blood 1 A blot that will be still a blot, in spite Of all that grave apologists may write ; And though a ])ishop toil to cleanse the stain. He wipes and scours tlie silver cup in vain."
In one historical instance the perversion of the Corporation Act to miserable party purpose at length provoked an appeal to the courts of law. The London City Council being in want of money — they were Ijuilding the Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor — for many years chose Nonconformist citizens to be sheriffs. A person refusing to act as sheriff is liable to a fine. In 1742 a citizen declined to qualify for the office l)y taking the Sacrament, and was cited by tlie CoriJoration befort' the Court oF Queen's Bench. The Couit decided in thf citiztni's favour, wliereupoii the Corporation in i74«S passed a by-law ini[)osing a
I40 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
penalty of four liuudred pounds on any person who should not accept the Lord Mayor's nomi- nation, and of six hundred pounds if, after election by the citizens, he should refuse to serve. In six years the fines had swelled up to fifteen thousand pounds, and then resistance was determined upon. Three Dissenters were in one year successively elected, and as they would not pay the fines, the Corporation proceeded against them in the Sheriff's Court. Judgment was given in favour of the Corporation, and the defendants appealed to another local Court, presided over by the Recorder of London, who dismissed the appeal. The case was carried before a special commission of five judges, who, by a majority of four to one, reversed the decisions of the Courts below. The Corporation finally appealed to the House of Lords, and six judges out of seven gave judgment in favour of the sole remaining defendant. Lord Mansfield, the Chancellor, was scathing in his censure of tlie Corporation, whom he declared to be not so much desirous of the Dissenters' services as of their fines. His summing up contained a de- fence of liberty of conscience. " There is no usage or custom," he said, " independent of
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jjositive law, which makes nonconformity a crime. . . . There never was a single instance, from the Saxon times clown to our own, in which a man was ever punislied for erroneous opinions concerning rites or modes of worship, but upon some positive law. The common law of England, which is only common reason or usage, knows of no prosecution for mere opinions. . . . There is nothing certainly more unreasonable, more iniquitous, more inconsistent with the rights of human nature, more contrary to the spirit and precepts of the Christian religion, more iniquitous and unjust, more im- politic, than persecution. It is against natural religion, revealed religion, and sound policy." The judgment gave heart to the Dissenters; it aroused them to make still further eiibrts to resist encroachments on their freedom which were not sanctioned by express statute.
Lord Mansfield's distinction between common law and positive law is valuable, but statutes of tlie realm help to form public opinion. Fighting men, like the ]3isscnting deputies of liOndon, who organised the resistance to the Corporation, may be alert to see that only such disabilities as are definitely enacted arc
142 KEACTIONS AND REVIVAL
enforced upon them. So long, however, as the Test and Corporation Acts were unre- pealed, the members of the Church of England were encouraged in the belief that Dissenters had fewer natural rights than other people ; and many of themselves, quiet, timid men, acquiesced in the presumption.
II
The conditions I have been describing, opera- tive for a hundred and fifty years, developed the Separatist habit in English Nonconformity, and made the Dissenter the man he was, in his good qualities and in his defects, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Both the Puritan and the Separatist were strenuous men. But the strenuousness was of two diffe- rent types. The Puritan was enthusiastic, ex- pansive, thinking first of England and the National Church ; the Separatist was intense, individualistic, aiming at the purity of the [)articular Churches in their actual member- ship. The difference is like that between spade culture and the use of the plough. The one produces a heavier and a richer crop per
REACTIONS AND RP]V1VAL 143
square yard, but it demands small fields, nar- rowly hedged in. The other loves large reaches of land, lying open to sun and air, but the crops are not so varied, the indi- vidual fruits not so full, nor so finely sent to market. The decay of Presbyterianism meant the gradual death of the larger ambi- tions ; the Churches, instead of the Church, became the supreme object of the care of all Dissenters. Separatism was not regarded with affection by more than a small minority of the English people until the eighteenth century ; thoughtful men in the Church of England must sometimes reflect, a little sorrow- fully, that but for the Act of Uniformity the Separatists might have died out like the Non- jurors. But the hand of Cod was in the history ; the English ecclesiastical problem could not be solved until this idea of the Church had had full opportunity to prove itself and its worth, to shew what it could do, and wherein, if standing alone, it was doomed to fail.
Richard Jjaxter, an unsparing critic of the Independents, frequently comments on what seemed to him the exclusive care of their own
144 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
members and comparative indifference to the ungodly who were around them. Here is a severe sentence from " The Saints' Everlast- ing Rest " ; it is an admonition addressed to the parish clergy : " Have a watchful eye upon each particular sheep in your flock ; do not as the lazy Separatists, that gather a few of the best together, and take them only for their charge, leaving the rest to sink or swim, and giving them over to the Divel and their lusts, and except it be by a Sermon in the pulpit, scarce ever endeavouring their salva- tion, nor once looking what becomes of them. 0, let it not be so with you." The same criticism is still occasionally passed on Non- conformist ministers by pious clergymen of the Established Church. They look upon all the residents in the parish as equally within their cure, and treat them as all alike members of the Church. It is a heavy re- sponsil)ility they are bearing ; the conscious- ness of it makes them disposed to judge, as indifferent to the ])urden of souls, the ministers whose sole charge is the fellowship of men and women like - minded with themselves. John Wesley uses Baxter's word. In his Diary,
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when he records, as he frequently has to do, that some of his preachers become Independ- ent ministers, he taxes them with laziness. Wesley's " parish " was " the world ; " he has the zeal for itinerant — Apostolic — preaching which Baxter has for parish visitation ; lie cannot understand the intensive culture of souls, nor think of men who are not ready to share his special labour as actuated by any other motive than love of ease.
Baxter was comparatively a young man, and a minister of small experience, when he wrote the words I have quoted. Six years after, in " The Reformed Pastor," he speaks ditferently. Appealing again to the parish clergy, he says : " AVe do keep up Separation, by permitting the worst to be uncensured in our churches ; so that many lionest Christians think they are necessitated to withdraw. I must profess that I have spoke with some members of the Sepa- rated (or gathered) churches, that were mode- rate men, and have argued with them against their way, and they have assured me that they were of the Presbyterian judgment, or had nothing to say against it, l)ut they joyned themselves with other churches upon mere
K
146 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
necessity, thinking that Discipline, being an ordinance of Christ, must be used by all that can, and therefore they durst no longer live without it when they may have it ; and they could find no Presbyterian churches that exe- cuted Discipline, as they wrote for it ; and they told me that they did thus separate only jpro tempore, till the Presbyterians will use Discipline, and then they would willingly re- turn to them again. I confess I was sorry that such persons had any such occasion to withdraw, and the least ground for such a reason of their doings. It is not keeping them from the Sacrament that will excuse us from the further exercise of Discipline, while they are members of our churches." In his later years, when he wrote his Autobiography — one of the most interesting of our English classics — he goes still further. He describes his graduated care of his parishioners. His first charge is the members, that is, the re- cognised communicants ; then he thinks of the members of the congregation who are not com- municants ; afterward, as time and strength will allow, he labours among the parishioners generally who do not come to church. "For
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the Independents," he says, " I saw that most of them were zealous, and very many learned, dis- creet, and godly men, and fit to be very service- able in the church. And I found in the search of Scripture and Antiquity, that in the begin- ning a Governed Church, and a Stated Wor- shipinng Church, were all one, and not two severall things . . . and that they were socie- ties of Christians united for Personal Com- munion; and not only for Communion by Meetings of Officers and Delegates in Synods, as many churches in Association be. And I saw if once we go beyond the bounds of Personal Communion, as the end of Particular Churches, in the Definition, we may make a Church of a nation, or of ten nations, or what we please, which shall have none of the natural ends of the Primitive particular Churches. Also I saw a commendable care of Serious Holiness and Dis- cipline in most of the Independent churches."
Ill
Turning to the biographies of tlie eighteenth century, we have many charming pictures of dissenting churches. We see small comniuni-
148 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
ties under the afFectionate and unwearied care of godly ministers, living lives of great eleva- tion, often of singular domestic graciousness and gravity. The most favoured ministers are of very moderate means, and the majority are poor, as are many of the members. But there is no misery in their poverty ; always they have the Good Shepherd's guidance, in green pastures, to still waters, and gifts from generous hands are not wanting. The churches are rigorously self-sustaining, and watchful over their poorer members. The students for the ministry gather together as the family of their tutor, conducted through a fairly wide range of human and divine learning, leading in turn the devotions of the household, encouraged to preach to the church of which their tutor is the pastor, and sent out by him to conduct cottage services. Isaac Watts belongs to them — the gifted and beautiful boy, a scholar from his childhood, and never relaxing in his love of knowledge, soothing the sorrows of a sickly life with "divine and moral songs," affection- ately tending a small church in the city of London, and living for several years at Stoke Newington in the country house of Mr. and
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Mrs. Elizabeth Abney (afterwards Sir Thomas and Lady Abney), whose })eautiful grounds are now the cemetery of Abney Park, the necro- polis of London Evangelical Dissenters, l^hilip Doddridge was another, the country pastor at Kibworth in Leicestershire, then town minister in Northampton, preaching a gracious doctrine that broadened away from Calvinistic ortho- doxy, always having students in his home over whom he sedulously watched, writing a family exposition of the Scriptures, and a treatise on the " Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," which all Christians loved to read. He, too, was a poet and a valetudinarian. His death at Lisbon, where he was in search of health, the more impressed his memory on his people's hearts. Northamptonshire and Leices- tershire still cherish his name with sinoular reverence, and visitors are shewn relics of him which are religiously preserved. There were less known homes, where ministers lived an obscure l)ut sufficient life — some teacliers of boys, others farmers, al)le to load a ha}X'art with tlie l)est ; others students of science — natural philosophy, as it was then called — all known for men of Ood, wliom the country
ISO REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
round acknowledged at their death to have been worthy of their people's attachment.
But the disabling influence of smallness was upon it all. They were not conscious of it when they were among their books ; there they were free of the best society. But they never stepped beyond their own door without being reminded that they were an excluded class. In a different fashion, they felt the contrast between Puritan loftiness of aspiration and Puritan narrowness of opportunity, which made Hawthorne the man he was. As they had not the fret of genius, they did not grow vocal ; they simply gave themselves to make the best for God they could of their sunless lives. Their church was the only sphere to which they could give their practical energies when the daily work for daily bread was ended ; and they watched its purity, its doctrinal soundness, its zeal for truth, and its devotional temper with a jealousy that was not always wise. The mem- bers scrutinised each other's conduct, harassed their children with premature anxieties, became formal in speech and habit. Their younger men grew doctrinaire and controversial, catch- ing at every phantom of free thought, imbibing
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 151
the social and political doctrines which were preparing for the French Revolution. So, at least, Samuel Wesley says in an evidently pre- judiced account of his residence at Mr. Morton's academy in Stoke Newington. The students read books they ought not to have read, lampooned the parish clergyman, and boldly proclaimed king-killing doctrines.
These are dangers inherent in Separatism. In a narrow sphere Independency is not always lovely. Church discipline tends to become vexatious, pragmatic ; tlie meddling man is able to make too much of himself, enlarge the range of practical thought and effort, and Con- gregationalism is a generous church system, as broad as it is lofty. So John Rol)iMson felt when he counselled the pilgrims to be exiles no longer in a foreign land, but go out and reclaim a country and found a commonwealth of their own. So Ilcnry Jacob felt when he 1)roug]it back to London some poor fragments of the Amster- dam Church, preferring danger in the nation of which he was a citizen to safety in the land of others. The misery of the Act of Toleration was that under it, for a century, so many English- men had ceased to be citizens of England.
152 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
In these circumstances Dr. Watts wrote for public worship his Psalms, Hymns, and Spiri- tual Songs. They are out of date now, and perhaps the book as a whole may never be republished. But they are worth reading, and to the Congregationalist, Congregational habit will continually appear in them. In trans- lating the Psalms, Dr. Watts could not but be patriotic. His patriotism expends itself mostly on two themes — ideal England and spiritual churches. He was not at all a narrow Dissenter, but he had Congregational fellow- ships in view when he wrote —
" These temples of his grace. How beautiful they stand ! The honours of our native place, And bulwarks of our land."
" Let strangers walk around The city where we dwell, Compass and view thine holy ground, And mark the building well :
The orders of thy house.
The worsliip of thy court, The cheerful songs, the solemn vows,
And make a fair report.
How decent and how wise !
How glorious to behold ! Beyond the pomp that charms the eyes.
And rites adorned with "old."
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 153
There is one of his hymns which Congrcga- tionalists used to be charged with always sing- ing ; our own speakers are sure to make a point on a platform if they will say, " We no longer love to sing —
" 'We are a garden wall'd around.'"
I have frequently asked Congregational gather- ings if any one present ever heard the hymn sung ; and no matter how old some of the per- sons may be, I have not yet seen the man old enough to remember it. But I do not envy the member of a church who could read only to repudiate such verses as these —
" We arc a garden wallM around, Cliosen and made peculiar ground ; A little spot enclosed by grace Out of the world's wide Avilderness.
Like trees of myrrh and spice we stand Planted by God the Father's hand ; And all his springs in Zion flow To make the young plantations grow.
Awake, O heavenly wind, and come. Blow on this garden of perfume : Spirit Divine ! descend and broatlic A gracious gale on plants beneath.
Make our best spices flow abroad. To entertain our Saviour God ; And faith, and love, and joy api)car, And ever}' grace be active here."
154 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
Whatever may be the dignity or the mean- ness of the stanzas, it shouhl be remembered that English Dissenters had not chosen the condition for themselves. Not from them had come the exclusion, and the narrowness, and the retirement ; but it was theirs to look upward for a Heavenly Guest, and to pray that they might be found ready for His visitation.
HI
It is not surprising that, under such condi- tions, the religious needs of the people of England should come to be overlooked, alike when Conformists and Nonconformists were struggling for the mastery, and when both acquiesced in a settlement of their difficulties by compromise. The excitements of the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries gave way to a great lethargy which, in the eighteenth cen- tury, affected all the higher life of the nation. Philosophy had become critical instead of con- structive ; and inevitably a period of scepticism followed, when theology lost its lofty specu- lative bias, and was wholly devoted to apologetic. Physical science was attracting the more ardent
KEACTIONS AND REVIVAL 155
minds, and historical study was reborn ; Ijut metaphysic was discountenanced as leading to no sure result ; the metaphysic of the time was not even educative. Literature had lost imagina- tion ; the belles lettres had taken the place of poetry ; the writings of the time are admirable for the clear simplicity of their style ; even the ponderousness of the pulpit died out in the prevailing taste for common sense and lucid utterance. Religious excitement was no longer characteristic of leading men ; Dr. Sacheverell was perhaps a true, he was certainly a squalid, successor to Whitgift and Laud. The mob broke out into frightful excesses, such as that in which Dr. Priestley's library was burnt, and dissenting chapels were wrecked. Notwith- standing these occasional extravagances, the age was not intolerant ; but the tolerance was rather that of exhaustion than largeness in mind and heart. Relis;ion seemed to have decayed with bigotry. Good men were gravely concerned with the apparently universal indif- ference to serious reli<i;ion. It is a cheerinix sign of the times — one that heralded better days — that Churchmen and Dissenters did not accuse each other of beintr the cause of this
156 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
spiritual indifference. Doddridge wrote of the decay of the dissenting interest, but it was of spiritual religion, not of denominational influ- ence, lie was thinking. Bishop Butler wrote of unbelief as a lamentable feature of the age, not as a consequence of sectarian animosity.
Then came Methodism and the Evangelical Revival, which changed the face of England, and influenced the whole English-speaking world, affecting the destiny of America and the future colonies of Great Britain as markedly as it affected the homeland. Two things are noteworthy about this revival. The movement was not primarily Evangelistic, although it very soon became so. It sprang out of a profound concern for personal godliness, and shewed itself in a longing for deep, inward, spiritual fellowship, such as the Established Church did not contemplate and provide for. The spirit which led the Congregational martyrs, Barrowe, and Greenwood, and Penry, to demand liberty for "gathered churches," — "the grasp of the great impulse " which drove the Pilgrim Fathers across the sea — was in these Young Oxford Reformers. The early Methodist societies were incipient Congregational churches ; the same
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 157
craving for mutual edification, not as a pas- toral function simply, but as a privilege and duty of each individual member, appears in tlieir " method " and in our " discipline." The Oxford societies of the sixteenth century, which Mr. Froude so beautifully describes, were re- peated by John Wesley and his friends ; and with a similar result. The earlier societies were contributory to the growth of Separatism ; the Methodists, too, became Separatists. It took some of them a long time to learn whither they were tending, and how God's hand \\as impelling them on. Down to the middle of this century VVesleyan JMethodism repelled the idea of constituting itself a church. There were secessions from the Wesleyan Societies, and each secession became a church ; the old body clung affectionately to the delusion that its people were still members of the National Church, claiming a freedom which the bishops and Parliament would at length confirm them in. In 1 89 1 the spell was l)roken ; the Wesleyan Methodist Church was recognised by Conference. In 1881 had been held the first Oecumenical Conference of the W esleyan Methodist Churches — of wdiicli there are half-
158 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
a-dozen in Englaud alone — and in 1892 they joined with Baptists, Congregation alists, and Presbyterians at the Free Church Congress in Manchester, in a common utterance that a Church of Christ is a permanent society of Christian believers, and no others ; and that Church fellowship is no accident of nationality, or heredity, but is the mutual communion of all the members.
The next noteworthy fact about the Evan- gelical Revival is that it sprang out of the Church of England, not out of eighteenth- century dissent. John Wesley was the descend- ant, through both his parents, of Presbyterian clergymen ejected from their livings on black Bartholomew Day, 1662. His father and mother had voluntarily and conscientiously, and at some cost of feeling, gone back to the establishment before their marriaore. The filiation of the present Wesleyan Methodist Church to the old Puritanism of the Presby- terian type is more than the accident of its founder's parentage. It is Presbyterian in its government, Puritan in ecclesiastical habit. There is no inherent antagonism in it to the theory of a National Church ; many Wesleyan
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL i S9
Methodists would probably prefer tlie machinery of such a Church if it left them freedom of s]oiritual movement ; and they would not re- gard the two conditions as incompatible. The patience with which Cartwright and Baxter bore with the imperfections of the National Church, its petty interferences, sometimes its malignant persecution, hoping against hope that there would be found a place for them within its constitution, was like that of Wesley. And the reason was the same, not love of ease, or of consideration, but the deep con- viction that a National Church gave a gospel minister such opportunities and advantages for the full exercise of his ministry as no other Church relation could furnish. Baxter and Wesley were very unlike in more than their theology — and I confess that I am much more attracted by the personality of Baxter than by that of Wesley — but I cannot read over Baxter's reasonings on such subjects as the Christian ministry, the spiritual needs of a people, and the methods in which they may best be supplied, without having before me the picture of A\'esley in action.
i6o REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
IV
The term " Methodism " in the nineteenth century came to connote two ideas — Arminianism in doctrine, and Connectionalism in government ; but in the eighteenth century it was not so. George Whitefiekl, a pronounced Calvinist, was a Methodist. The Countess of Huntingdon's connection was Methodist, but her ministers were almost all Calvinists. There were within the Established Church many clergymen who were commonly called Methodists ; some of them, like Rowland Hill, founded separate congregations without repudiating their Episco- pal orders ; others, like John Newton, and Scott the commentator, and Romaine the preacher, never extended their ministry beyond the parish churches, but they were styled Methodists, while retaining their benefices. These were for the most part Calvinists. The peculiarity of all Methodists, Calvinist and Arminian alike, was that in a certain vague way they recognised three senses of the word Church — the National visible Church, the Church universal and in- visible, and a tertium quid, an invisible but partly recognisable body of the faithful within
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL i6i
the parish churches. John AVesley organised these true believers, on confession of their desire " to flee from the wrath to come," into societies under the direction of the itinerant preachers, which societies were divided up into classes meeting weekly under the charge of godly men and women, whom the preachers appointed. These societies came to have separate places of meeting built for them. At first the members were careful to meet at other hours than those appointed for public worship in the parish churches ; in all ways Wesley took care to impress on them the fact that these were not companies of Dissenters, but members of the Established Church, supplementing the national observance by gatherings for their mutual edification. The Countess of Huntingdon en- couraged the formation of such societies, and made them more pastoral. She founded a college for the training of ministers who should watch over and direct them. Some of her students received Episcopal ordination, and carried on their work in the parish churches ; others became non-Episcopal ministers and met their followers in chapels which she erected for them. There were many of the Established
1 62 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
clergy in general sympathy with the men of the Revival, who did not form these societies ; they preached to the parish congregation as if it were a gathered church, and watched over the parish in the spirit and manner of Richard Baxter. This was the origin of the Evangelical party within the Established Church, a body which for half a century exercised perhaps the greatest religious influence on the domestic life of England.
All these new forces, originating in the Oxford Revival, told directly on English Congregationalism, adding to its numbers, en- riching its experience, broadening its purpose, enlarging its activities. On the other hand, the existence of the Congregational churches sup- plied Methodism with an example of free religious communities, and a norm of church doctrine. John Wesley tried his best to hold in check the inevitable development of his societies into a dissenting church, but in vain. He was continually losing preachers wdio found the itinerant system burdensome and inefficient, and who became Congregational pastors, bring- ing an Arminian leaven into Independency. He was forced to gather his preachers into a
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 163
conference, who undertook the charge of the societies, repeating, with some variation, and with more success, the effort of the Puritans to organise religious communities from the Synod and Presbytery downward ; repeating also the Puritan experience that Christ's freemen will not always endure to be a governed body, that a voluntary church must ultimately become self- administrative. Each secession from Wesleyanism — and there have been half- a-dozen — has given more and more representa- tion to the lay members. Some Primitive Methodists frankly confess that they have more in common with Congregationalists than with the old body. There are Independent Metho- dists, retaining their Arminianism, but Congre- gational in government. Another of these communities is known as the United Methodist Free C'hurclies — not church — and its repre- sentative body has abandoned the old Methodist name — Conference or Connexion — for the Con- gregational term — Assembly. Nearly every congregation founded by the Countess of Huntingdon has become an Independent church. Finally, the Wesleyan Methodist Conference has ceased to be a merely clerical body. Hampered
1 64 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
by legal restrictions, and made to move slowly by the fears of the older men, the Conference has added lay representatives to its sessions, and these are acquiring an equal as well as a real power of control.
In a large number of cases the death of a fervid Evangelical parish clergyman was followed by the formation of a Congregational church ; in a few cases the Evangelical clergyman became a Congregational minister. A training school for Evangelists, founded by the Reverend John Eyre, of Homerton, and nominated })y Rowland Hill to be the residuary legatee of his estate, is now Hackney College. A similar institution, founded at Trevecca by the Countess of Huntingdon, is now Cheshunt College. The principals, professors, and students of both these colleges are generally, though not by legal compulsion, Congregationalists.
One or two interestino; marks of this transi- tion period will strike the literary student. Take up, for instance, a copy of John Wesley's Hymn-Book, as he left it, and read the head- lines. You will find "The Society" and "Be- lievers " where, in other Hymn - Books, you would find " The Church." Take up a copy
REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 165
of Watts's Hymns, and you will not find the word " Chapel." He lias entitled the hymn " How pleased and blessed was I," for instance, " On going to Church." The word chapel was not, in his time, commonly used by Congre- gationalists. Its subsequent prevalence marks the influence of Methodism on English Non- conformity ; the chapel was a building, supple- mentary of and subordinate to the parish church. The old Cons^reejational word in England, as in America, was meeting - house, or meeting ; the modern term in England, as in America, is church.
V
The exclusive spirit has gone from Independ- ency not to return. Many causes have been at work to produce this change — the growth of the nation, with the new problems that growth has brought with it ; the broadening of all human thought ; the feeling which has come with increasing consciousness of the limitations of certainty that dogmatism is absurd, inhuman ; the enlarging charity of life ; but the first impulse came from Method-
1 66 REACTIONS AND REVIVAL
ism and the Evangelical Revival. To a con- siderable extent Ens^lish Cong;reo;ationalism has been modified by the number of Methodist preachers who, from the first and down to the present, have come into our ministry. The example of the Methodists is, moreover, a stimulus to every Christian society in the land. But the spirit of Methodism is mightier than its men. All the churches in Eno;land are penetrated by the deep conviction that their obligations are not limited to their own adherents; the church may be "gathered." " particular," " separate," but the sphere of their work, and therefore their responsibility, is national, world-wide. " Go and make dis- ciples of all the nations."
LECTURE V
CONGREGATIONALISTS AND ANGLICANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Removal of Nonconformist Disabilities in the Nineteenth Century — Influence of the long Struggle on Nonconformist Character — Emancipation of England — The Franchise — Local Councils — Dissenters Liberals in Politics — Is this to be regretted 1 — Abatement of Controversial Bitterness — Formation and Motive of the Liberation Society — Preva- lence and Decay of Individualism — Congregational Indi- vidualism— Effect of this on Theology — The Doctrine of the Church — The Oriel School and Congregationalists — John Henry Newman — " Ideal of a Christian Church " — The Church a Voluntary Society — Defects of this Definition — The Separatist Doctrine of the Church recovered — The Broad Church — Thomas Arnold — Frederick Denison Maurice — His Influence on young Congregationalists — Christ's Head- ship of the Human Kace — Maurice and Dale — Congre- gationalists and Synods — English Congregationalists' Dis- like of Councils — Organisation of the Congregational Churches — Tlie " Small Private Church " and the Nation.
LECTURE Y
CONGREGATION A LISTS AND ANGLICANS
The nineteenth century witnessed the removal of nearly all the disabilities under which Eng- lish Nonconformists laboured, througli the Act of Uniformity and those specific Acts which were passed to shut them out of public life. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 allowed them to accept municipal office and to enter the Civil Service. The University Tests Act, passed in 1871, com- pleted a series of changes by whicdi they could go to college, matriculate in the uni- versities, and take their deoirees : the grammar schools have been opened to them as pupils and under-masters, though the head-master- ships are still to a considerable extent con- fined to clergymen of the Established C^liurcli.
An Act for the Registration of Marriages, in
169
1 70 CONGREGATIONALISTS
1836, enabled them to be married in their own places of worship and by their own ministers. An Act for the Remstration of Births and Deaths, passed the same year, facilitated the introduction of a subsequent measure by which they can bury their dead in the graveyards of their parishes and in the consecrated part of the public cemeteries, with- out the service of the Established Church. The slowness of their emancipation, even under favourable circumstances, is illustrated by the fact that this latter Bill did not become law until 1880, The disability removed by the public registration of births was so petty, so significant of the bigotry which watched over every section of life, that it deserves a some- what fuller notice. Up to 1836 the regular way of proving age was the production of a certificate of baptism. When a policy of Life Assurance was to be paid, when lads entered some public offices, when personal identity was to be established, or a passport for foreign travel was applied for, the baptismal certificate had to be produced ; and if it was not forth- coming, some one had to be hunted up who remembered the birth, and his or her — gene-
AND ANGLICANS 171
rally her — affidavit was grudgingly accepted instead. So deeply had this custom rooted itself in English habit, that the London Uni- versity, founded in 1S37 as a Liberal university, priding itself on its complete ignoring of the religious beliefs of its members, asked matricu- lating students for their baptismal certificates. All Dissenters found this constant requirement vexatious ; to Baptists, (»)uakers, Jews, and Sceptics it seemed insulting and profane.
The story of this century of emancipation is, to those who took part in it, a matter of pride. Our children, and freemen not natives of Eno;land, will wonder — not altosjether ad- miringly — at the patience which could make men endure sucli ignominy so long. The Act of Toleration made it possible. The religious Dissenter — and the burden bore most heavily on him — had his chapel, his times of social worship, his fellowship with persons like- minded to himself. Some qualities of Eng- lish Nonconformists will be better appreciated as we recall the story — their intense love of their Churches, their strenuousness and vigil- ance, their faith in little communities, and their hal)it of not despising " the day of small
172 CONGREGATIONALISTS
things " ; their passion for liberty, the deep indignation against all unnecessary restrictions under which their thought about the rights of conscience broadened, so that they who began by asking toleration for themselves became the advocates of a universal toleration, and secured for the Jew, the Roman Catholic, and the unbeliever the same rio;lits as their own. The conventicle did this great work for Eng- land. When the phrase " the consolations of religion " is used on the platform and in the press, it generally refers to a man's comfort in dying. The Nonconformist found " the con- solations of religion " effective for life ; they gave him patience, forbearance, hope ; he used what liberty he had, and in no revolutionary temper, but, unwearied and ever watchful, he sought for more.
In a larger sense, the nineteenth century may be called the century of the emancipation of England. Its greatest achievement w^as the passing of the first Reform Bill in 1832. Up to that time the franchise, national and muni- cipal, was not regarded as the right of the English people : it had come to be the privi- lege of the few. Parliament was originally a
AND ANGLICANS 173
Council called toejether to advise the kin^. The county franchise represented the ancient right of occupiers of land to be represented in this Council ; as towns grew some of them were summoned at the royal pleasure to send their members to the House of Commons, The privilege was not at first highly valued ; indeed, there were boroughs which asked to be relieved of the burden, because of the cost and trouble it imposed on them. AVhile the power of Parliament developed, the privilege increased in value. The idea of privilege was intensified by the growth of tradition and the pride of the old historic boroughs. The municipal franchises had grown out of trade guilds, and privileges granted by special charters, which charters were conferred by lords of manors as well as by the Crown. In the breathing time of the eighteenth century men had begun to sec that England was a people, and that old feudal customs, which had sprung out of the needs of localities, did not meet the case. The en- franchisement of new boroughs had long ceased : the Crown did not want them ; tlie Stuarts would ha\c been glad to do away with Parlia- ments altogether. Parliamentary and municipal
174 CONGREGATION ALTSTS
corporations had not followed the distribution of the population. Large towns, like Man- chester and Birmingham, sent no members to Parliament ; the owner of a manor, like Old Sarum, or the inhabitants of a couple of farm- houses, like Gatton, did. There were many- important and growing towns in which there was no corporation at all ; there were some in which the mayor and aldermen were nomi- nated by the lord of the manor, and his court leet was in place of a town council. Within the boroughs and counties the francliise was restricted, and it was not uniform ; there were freemen of boroughs ; freemen of companies — Goldsmiths, Fishmongers, Cordwainers, Loriners, Spectacle-makers, &c., &c. — in London; and all over the country there were scot-and-lot voters, potwallopers, faggot voters, and others, every name representing an original distinction in the qualification, or a variation introduced into the claim. " Fancy franchises," as they were called, were defended by Mr. Disraeli with characteristic affectation, on the ground that they extended the privilege of voting in a picturesque, traditional manner.
All this complicated structure, venerable and
AND ANGLICANS 175
decaying, lias been swept away. Reform Bill has followed Reform Bill, until we have now the whole country covered with electoral dis- tricts, and the franchise given practically to every male person of full age who pays rates and taxes ; and Councils — town, county, dis- trict, urban, and rural — which have put local pu1)lic concerns under the direction of the people of the locality. The most beneficial result of this extension of the franchise has been the chanQ;e it has wrouo;ht in men's con- ception of what the power of voting means. The process has been educative ; it has called public spirit into play and developed patriot- ism. The idea that the franchise is a privilege gave w\ay to the demand for it as a right, and this gradually passed into the feeling and conviction that it is a responsibility, a great public trust.
II
The emancipation of the Dissenters and the emancipation of England went on side by side, each movement helping the other. Hence it has come about that nearly all Dissenters are identified with the Tiil)cral party. There is a
1 76 CONGREG ATIONALISTS
natural, a psychological aflinity between the two causes. English Conservatives may be defined as defenders of privileges, and English Liberals as asserters of rights. The political agitations of two hundred and fifty years have illustrated the sameness of conviction in Liberals and Dissenters, and welded them into one party. The alliance has its disadvantages. We sometimes wish, for religious reasons, that the churches should be entirely free from poli- tical prejudice, but it has worked well for the national life. Whig historians of the eighteenth century put the matter somewhat cynically. Sir John Dalrymple, speaking of the failure of William the Fourth's Comprehension Bill, by which the Presbyterians would have been included in the National Church, tells us : "There were a few in Parliament of firm minds and remoter views, who, reflecting that the dissenting interest had been always as much attached to liberty as the Church of England had been to prerogative, thought that opposition and liberty would be buried in the same grave, and that great factions should be kept alive, both in Church and State, for the sake of the State itself." Speaker Onslow con-
AND ANGLICANS 177
demiis this maxim, not too severely : "A false and foolish notion, the artifice of mean and weak politicians, who value themselves upon small cunning, and think, or hope at least, that it will be deemed wisdom." Air. Green, whose " History of the English People " is not cynical, speaks of the failure of the Comprehensive Bill as of the highest political value. "The Tolera- tion Act established a group of religious bodies whose religious opposition to the Church forced them to support the measures of progress which the Church opposed. With religious forces on the one side and on the other, England has escaped the great stumbling-block in the way of nations where the cause of religion has be- come identified with that of political reaction."
These struggles for religious equality have, however, left very little ill-feeling behind them ; as reform after reform has been carried, poli- tical conflict has become larger minded, and religious controversy more gracious. A body of young Oxford Churchmen threw themselves into the agitation for opening the universities, declaring that the nation suilcred more wlien citizens were shut out from the higher culture
than did the excluded parties, and that llni-
M
1 7 8 CONGREGATIONALISTS
versity reform should contemplate the admission of poor men as well as Nonconformists. The latest Bill for freeing Dissenters from annoy- ances in the use of the parish graveyards was introduced in the House of Commons by a Churchman and Conservative. A few disabili- ties yet remain, mostly in the operation of the Education Acts. It is probable they will be settled by common agreement, by discussion rather than by controversy. Platform invec- tive and newspaper bitterness are not now the characteristics of English religious difference ; where they appear they are found as supersti- tions, bad habits remaining over from ignorant times.
Ill
In 1844 the Anti-State Church Association was formed, for the definite purpose of securing self-government to all Churches, and of freeing Parliament, which had now become the Council of the Nation, representing citizens, and not sectaries, from the necessity of legislating in the interests of a single church. The enfranchise- ment of England had prepared the way for this movement, and it came about when Dissenters
AND ANGLICANS 179
grew conscious of their political strength. But it was in essence a deeply religious movement. It was the full logical expression of the Separa- tist conscience of the sixteenth century, and all the struo^o-les of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made it inevitable. The Presbyterian Independents of the eighteenth century did not deem a State Church necessarily inconsistent with religious liberty. Even such a man as Doddridge could say that he had " always pleaded for the reasonableness of su])mitting to a majority here, and of our being obliged, thougli we are Dissenters, to do our part to- wards maintaining that clergy wliich the authorit}^ of our country in general has thought fit to estal)lish ; and indeed, so far as I can judge, it is admitted by all but the Quakers, whose opposition is now mere matter of form." The controversy over the Occasional Conformity and Schism Bills had perhaps more to do tlian any other single cause with the changed mind of Dissenters in the nineteenth century. The attaching of special civil privileges to a special religious profession was manifestly degrading the religious profession itself; it obscured the principle adniiraljly expressed l)y Robert Browne
1 80 CONGREGATION ALISTS
— " the Lord's people are of the willing sort." The ease with which men could flatter them- selves into the belief that they were true Christians because they observed the reli- gious ordinances which Parliament sanctioned prompted Mr. Binney to say that the Estab- lished Church system " destroyed more souls than it saved." The sense of civil justice was confused in many good men's minds by their habitual tendency to defend the political action of governments that secured them their favoured religious position. The officials of the Church of England as a whole were in favour of the American War ; they opposed the abolition of slavery, the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the abandonment of the penalty of hanging for small offences. The Dissenters were amazed at the rancour with which clergymen opposed their admission to the universities, the conferring on them the right to marriage and burial by their own ministers, and generally the extension to all subjects of the full advantages of Englishmen. They knew that most of these clergy were good, kind-hearted men ; they respected many of them for their piety and their devotion to their calling. When they asked themselves how such
AND ANGLICANS i8i
men could sanction selfishness and injustice, they could only assign as the reason that their position in a Church specially associated with a State was radically false. Mr. Edward Miall expressed the most solemn conviction of nine- teenth century Nonconformists when he affirmed again and again that their object was not so much the liberation of Dissenters as the libera- tion of Christianity, of religion. It was to express this idea that the old name " Anti-State Church Association," dear to Radical reformers as a fighting title, was changed in 1853 to the graver and more fully descriptive name, " Society for the Liberation of Relisjion from State Patron- age and Control." From the first the English Nonconformists had the Scottish Voluntaries witli them ; the Free Church of Scotland, which originall)' testified to the need of a national provision Ibr religion, had accepted the Libera- tion [)rinciplc l)efore it joined with the United Presbyterians in one Church. Slowly but effectually the doctrine is influencing the niore earnest members of the Church of England itself.
1 8 3 CONGREGATIONAL ISTS
IV
The advancing work of emancipation has had one result, as unpremeditated as it has proved in its action to be benignant ; it has taken away that confidence in individualism which, in the early years of the century, characterised our foremost publicists. The claim of liberty used to be put in this form : every man has naturally the right to perfect freedom of action, in so far as he does not encroach on the rights of others. The definition did not contemplate any right in society to secure that the individual should be trained for the duties of citizenship. The demand for a system of national education was resisted, not only by members of the extreme right, who were afraid that to educate the children of the poor would make them dis- contented, but also by members of the extreme left, who would not have the authority of the parent over his children interfered with. These persons honestly believed that the sense of parental obligation would be weakened if the State provided public schools and made children attend. Mr. Bright opposed the Mines and Factories Acts, which fixed the age at which
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children were set to work and the conditions of their labour, because it was not consistent with the rights of parents. He spoke against an Act to prevent adulteration of articles of food, be- cause he dreaded the intrusion of (Jovernment inspectors into a shopkeeper's book-keeping. Our later leg-islation has defied such criticism. Not only are schools now provided at the public cost, but museums, art galleries, circula- ting and reference libraries, parks and play- grounds, baths and wash-houses as well. Corporations are empowered to purchase and destroy dwelling-houses in crowded districts, and to build houses for the poor. Private monopolies and the monopoly of companies are checked by the powers of municipalities to supply tramways and omnibuses, gas and water and electric power, for the use of the inhabi- tants. These enlargements of State action were at first suspiciously watched ; but the movement has been irresistible. Sir AVilliam llarcourt's phrase — " We are all socialists now " — is not strictly accurate, but it is tlie vivid declaration of a fact. To rejoice in this alteration of the national lial)it is nut necessarily to condemn the older individualism. That individualism was
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not selfish ; Bentliam and Malthus were as true philanthropists as Carlyle and Ruskin. Its error was that it mistook a temporary necessity for an abiding social condition. The possibility of individual development is as much a right of man as freedom of individual action, and this by common consent the State is setting itself to secure. Socialism itself has been modified by the new environment ; the former demand of equal conditions for all men has given way to the claim of equal opportunities. This formula will be seen to be as narrow as was the other ; indeed, even now, probably, it does not mean all it says ; it is really the claim of room and provision for every person to develop himself according to his powers, and to fit himself, as fully as he can, to render his own service to the community.
No keener, more conscientious individualists have ever been than were the Enirlish Conc;re2;a- tionalists — Baptist and pocdo-Baptist — of the first half of the nineteenth century. Their characteristic Church doctrine was that the sphere of religion was limited to personal thought and action, from which sphere the State was to be rigidly excluded. Hence their
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objection to u luitioiial system of education. Education, they said, is not instruction, but the training of the personality. The doctrine of the old-fashioned Voluntaries was that no way was to be found of distinguishing between education and reli";ion, and that relio-ion in- eluded dogma ; and that therefore to give educa- tion was one of those inward, personal obligations with whicli the State must not interfere.
Their circumstances had made them the in- dividualists they were. Shut away from public life, deprived of the social advantages provided by pious benefactors of the past, they had not only thriven in temporal affairs ; they had de- veloped manliness of spirit and the godly habit. They had won their emancipation by their own patient endeavour. We need not wonder if the consciousness of all this made them oblivious of two other facts, first, that not all persons could do as they had done : and secondly, that such as they were, they were not wholly their own creation ; that the solidarity of the nation had been operative even u])Ou them, that their very personality was English, that their obligations were social, as was every advantage they en- joyed. Their religion was individualistic; per-
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sonal election to personal salvation was the note of the Calvinist ; the notes of the Evangelical Revival were personal repentance, conscious faith, the obedience of the personal will. The tendency to individualism received a great im- pulse from " the Voluntary Controversy " in Scotland. Originally, this discussion turned on the point of pecuniary support ; should churches be sustained and ministers paid by free-will offerings or by endowments and public money ; but the word Voluntary gradually insinuated itself into every department of Church life. A Christian Church was commonly defined as " a voluntary association of believers in Christ for mutual edification and the advancement of the Kingdom of God." Other aspects of the Chris- tian fellowship had fallen into oblivion — the organic piety of which Dr. Bushnell made so much ; the membership in the body of Christ which is prior to the personal profession ; the limitation of the right to multiply small com- munities by regard to the Catholic oneness ; the fact that Christian social obligations are only recognised, not constituted, by the act of the individual. The whole Christian life took on a tone of hardness from this individualism.
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The Evangelical theology was rationalistic ; the lofty mysticism, which is the charm of the seventeenth centur}- Puritan doctrine, was lack- ing. Its apologetic was ineffective, as apologetic in wliicli there is no mystic clement must ever be. The Atonement became a scheme for over- coming governmental difticulties which the fact of sin had introduced ; not the outflowing of the Heavenly Father's heart. The divine righteousness was defined as the giving to every man exactly what he had deserved ; and no ingenuity has been able to evolve a con- sistent doctrine of sacrifice out of that. The solidarity of man, Christ's Headship of the human race, not figurative or forensic, but real, vital, was not thought of, only His personal forgiveness of the individual penitent, the justi- fication of the individual believer. The 2'esti- monium Spiritus Sancti became, first, a doctrine of personal assurance merely, and then was seldom preached at all. Among Congrega- tionalists the word Sacrament fell into disuse ; instead, persons spoke of ordinances ; and the very conception of the two Christian rites was impoverished. No witness to organic unity, in nature and grace, was seen in baptism ; it
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was regarded, almost wholly, as a confession of personal faith or a dedication of children to God. The Lord's Supper was a commemora- tion rather than a communion ; and the com- memoration was the recalling of the fact and meaning of His sacrificial death ; the higher, larger truth that it is a witness to His per- petual bestowal of the grace of His glorified humanity on His people was scarcely appre- hended.
The first impulse to a more generous and Catholic doctrine of the Church among modern Conn-regationalists came — so I at least believe — from a movement which they regarded with intense suspicion and dislike ; the new High Churchism, which was identified with Oriel College, Oxford, and which culminated in the publication of the "Tracts for the Times." Dr. Newman has told us in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, that he was repelled from the Evangeli- cism in which he had been brought up by his fear of Liberalism ; and by Liberalism he means that extreme Lidividualism which 1 have been describing. Newman lias had no direct, aljiding
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influence on English Nonconformity ; it was impossible that any one who calls the light of day "garish," as he does in his hymn, "Lead, kindly light," should persuade men who value "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liber- ties." They felt the piety of his temperament, and the charm of his lucid English ; but they perceived the subtlety of that apparently clear style, and they altogether repudiated his doctrine of economy in the statement of truth. His use of the doctrine of development repelled them, because it was development Rome ward ; but they saw that, both in the history of the Church and in the promises of Christ, develoj)ment of Christian truth was an essential part of God's spiritual providence ; and they sympathised with his ceaseless demand of freedom for the Church to develop according to its own law, unfettered by State legislation and the fancied necessities of worldly societies. W. G. Ward's ** Ideal of a Christian Church " is full of passion- ate longings for ecclesiastical autonomy ; and Congregationalists reawokc to the perception that, in their own churches, the autonomy, the liberty of development, under the guidance of
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Christ's Spirit, existed in its highest, purest form. They saw, too, that the doctrine of de- velopment involved the continuity and identity of the Christian consciousness ; involved the historic Church, not to be confounded with Rome, or England, or any ecclesiastical estab- lishment, but also not to be dismissed as in- visil)le, ideal merely. Under the influence of this thought, too, they studied their own system of government ; and they saw that Congrega- tionalism provided for Catholicity, as well as for autonomy, in its highest, purest form.
Such were the conceptions taking form in the minds of young men in our colleges in the middle of the last century ; many of the students of those days have since become de- nominational leaders, and they have restored the old lofty Separatist doctrine of the Churches and the Church. A few of them have lately called themselves High Church Congregationa- lists ; a title I do not love, but they mean by it, that they have a doctrine of the Church, as clear, consistent, gracious and commanding, as any held by Romanist or Anglican. Memory may deceive a man in advancing years, and I would not claim absolute historical accuracy
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for all 1 am now saying. But I have a vivid impression that, while I often heard in youth sermons on the importance of the Christian ministry, I seldom heard a sermon on the Christian Church ; and when I did so, it was the meagre presentation of a voluntary society, charged -with the obligation of maintaining its own purity of communion, while its members did all the good they could. Listening to a preaching friar in Milan C^athedral, I was won by the passionate fervour with which he spoke of the bark of St. Peter, and dilated on the unity, sanctity, catholicity, and apostolicity of the Church. I thought to myself — " We too, we Congregationalists, have a doctrine of the Church, which we hold dear as God's truth ; how is it that w^e leave Romanists and Angli- cans to preach on this theme with fervour? how is it that with all our zeal for purity and apostolicity we do not make our congregations glow as we discourse on unity and catholicity ? " That hour in Milan Cathedral has affected my whole ministry ; and I found that many of my contemporaries were passing through a similar experience. Apostolicity — we follow the model laid down by the Apostles ; sanctity
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— we seek it in assemblies of holy men antl women ; unity— the Christian consciousness is the same and constitutes one spiritual commu- nity of believers in every age ; catholicity — we value the separate fellowship of believers because we want no organisation between them and the whole family in earth and heaven, and will not substitute for that communion the meaner figure of a big institution.
When the Congregationalist of to-day turns back to the early Separatist writings, he discovers that he has more in common with Browne and Barrowe, and Jacob and Ainsworth, and Robinson, than with the Individualists of the first half of his own century. With the older men as with him, the Church comes first, the individual member second. The dif- ference is not great in the particular truths ; it is great in the proportion and relative inci- dence of the truths. It w^ould be easy to multiply quotations ; I will content myself with two or three from Robert Browne. " The Church planted or formed is a company or number of Christians or believers, which, by a willing covenant made with their God, are under the government of God and Christ, and
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keep his laws in one holy communion." ''The Church government is the Lordship of Christ in the communion of his offices ; whereby his people obey to his will and have mutual use of their graces and callings, to i'urther their godliness and welfare." This is much better than the nineteenth Article of the Church of England — " The visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men, in the which the pure AVord of God is preached, and the Sacra- ments be duly ministered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same " — because it lays stress, not on order, but on the living Lordship of Christ, and on the communion of offices, " whereby his people have mutual use of their graces and callings." It is also better than the prevailinij^ definition anion ij; Cono;reo;ationa- lists sixty years ago, the " Voluntary associa- tion " definition, because it makes the covenant with God the voluntary act ; where the will has been yielded to God, the association is of spiritual inevitableness rather than of personal determination. Browne, moreover, s])eaks of the Church— and he means the particulaf, not merelv the ideal, universal Chuich — as havinc
N
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" the commuiiiou of those graces aud offices, which are in Christ ; " "it hath the use of his priesthoode, because he is the High Priest thereof. Also of his prophecie, because he is the Prophet thereof; also of his kingdome and government, because he is the Kynge and Lorde thereof." He speaks of Christ as using "the obedience of his people" for the fulfilment of these offices ; and goes on to indicate how all Christians are made Kinges and Priestes. We are Kings because " we must all watch each other, and trie out all wickedness ; " " Chris- tians are Priestes unto Christ, because they present and offer up praiers unto God, for themselves and for others. They turn others from iniquitie, so that atonement is made in Christ unto justification. In them also and for them others are sanctified, by partaking the graces of Christ unto them." This is very different from the conception of Christian Kingship as self-control, and of priesthood as the right of every man to say his own prayers.
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VI
The Tractariaii revolt against Protestantism was followed at once by a counter movement — ■ the rise of the Broad Church School, which, during the middle third of the century, power- fully affected English thinking on religious and social subjects. One of its first teachers was Dr. Arnold, who did not materially modify Congregational thought ; a little later came the prophet of the movement, Frederick Denison Maurice, who did. Maurice was a child of the eighteenth century Presbyterianism ; his father was a typical Unitarian, having so large a re- gard for liberty of conscience that he did not try to impress his own theological beliefs on his children, combined witli an intensity of personal conviction that saddened his later years when his family left him alone in his religion. His three eldest daughters became Calvinists, as did his wife. " In one of her letters to her husband," Frederick Maurice's son and biographer has written, " she announces her conviction that ' Calvinism is true.' The contrast to the form in which her daughters announced their adhesion to the sect which
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they joined is very remarkable. For the very essence of Calvinism in the sense of her letter is this : That it assumes the existence in the world of a select body who are known as ' the elect ' ; and assumes further that every one in the world can determine in his own mind whether or no he possesses a certain testamur which is called ' faith,' by which he can decide whether or no he belongs to that select body. Now, on the one hand, each of the sisters quite willingly gave the accredited proofs of their possessing the testamur in question, and on the other, Mrs. Maurice never satisfied herself that she could do so, though looking at the matter from the outside she quite believed that this view of the universe was the correct one." The biographer adds : " It is scarcely too much to say that such a position is a contradiction in terms." This comment would not have been written by any one who had a large acquaint- ance with English Puritan biography, in which the want of this personal assurance on the part of those who were most deeply persuaded of the truth of the system is a constant and pathetic feature ; or with the rise of anti- Calviaistic Methodism, which gives j^ersonal
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assurance a prevalence wliich it lacked in English Calvinism. But there is little doubt that the biographer had learnt what he wrote on this sul)ject from his father. The difference between tlie daughters and the mother seems to have been mainly a matter of temperament. " The intense individuality of each of their characters " — I am again quoting from the biography — " the dramatic distinctness of the personality of each of these three sisters, is to be noted also of every separate member of the whole family. Ft is the one sure mark of the race that seems to have been noticed by all who knew them. It gave to their peculiarities of religious conviction an earnestness and a certain aggressiveness which, despite their general agreement on the main point of Cal- vinism, showed itself in the discussions with one another, not always in an attractive form." Under these incidents of his home life, the elder Maurice himself revealed the intensity of his character, and questioned whether he had been a wise and faithful father in leaving his children so much as he had done to the religious guidance of others.
Frederick Maurice's boyhood was passed in
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this atmospliere of religious controversy, and it determined the sentiment of his life. " The desire for Unity'' he says, "has haunted me all my life through ; I have never been able to substitute any desire for that, or to accept any of the different schemes for satisfying it which men have devised." And his son thus interprets the sentence : " In other words, the great wish in the boy's heart was to reconcile those various earnest faiths which the house- hold presented." To this "desire for Unity" Frederick Maurice attributes his becominsj a member of the Church of England. " I not only believe in the Trinity in Unity, but I find in it the centre of my beliefs, the rest of my spirit when 1 contemplate myself and mankind. But strange as it may seem, I owe the depth of this belief in a great measure to my training in my home. The very name that was used to describe the denial of this doctrine is the one which most expresses to me the end that I have been compelled, even in spite of myself, to seek." This is a very significant utterance ; the reconciliation of apparent anti- nomies was the master motive of his life.
It is just here that we see the secret of the
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iniiuence which Maurice came, afterward, to exer- cise on young Congregationalists. It was not because he had any sympathy with them ; he displays a singular want of appreciation of their position. He repudiated their demand for tlie rights of the individual conscience interpreted by the individual judgment ; and he was repelled by even the modified form in which Evangelicals spoke of personal experience. The controversy between him and men like Dr. John Pye Smith and Dr. Wardlaw has a bitterly intolerant spirit, from which Maurice, in his early days, was not free. His " Kingdom of Christ" is painful reading, alike to those who love him and to those who love Congregational- ism. It is dogmatic, one-sided in statement, perverse in temper. In later years the harsh- ness became softened, but the intolerance re- mained. Under the influence of Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, he learned to under- stand Calvinism better ; ])ut his narrow judg- ment of the Separatist testimony never left liini. Just as the typical Dissenter of that period saw everywhere in the Bible a con- demnation of the identification of Church and State, so Maurice saw in it from first to Inst
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a condemnation of those who thought that, in Christian fellowship, the godly should separate themselves from the godless. His exegesis is continually turning on this one point ; no litcralist is more confident in his quotation of Scripture than is this broad-hearted man when he reads his own thought into the stories of Genesis, the Old Testament prophets, and the writings of the Apostles ; without a suspicion of the irreverence of the practice, he will ex- pand an utterance of Christ into long para- graphs of controversial matter, contained within inverted commas, as if Jesus had dictated all that Maurice is saying. He did not know that many young Congregationalists were passing through a stage of sentiment like that he had experienced in youth, were tired of solitude and sectarianism ; it surprised him to learn that they read his waitings for the sake of the larger reaches of social, national, and spiritual fellow- ship which he was opening up to them, and for the sake of these could bear patiently with his severe and uncomprehending censures of much which they held dear.
In political and social matters there were many affinities, and even some co-operation.
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between liim and the Dissenters. He, like them, was a Liberal who had passed beyond Whig pedantry and the Revolution Settlement. They like him advocated the extension of the Franchise and the claims of the workman. They were glad that, when he was put out from his Professorship in King's College, London, for heresy, he was free to become Principal of a Working Men's College, and they gave his college what little help and large sympathy they could. Maurice is intro- duced, with Thomas Carlyle, into a striking picture called " Work," by Ford Madox Brown, one of the pre-Raphaelite band of painters, the two great thinkers looking sympathetically on while a number of burly, ruddy bricklayers are building a w^all. He worked with the Con- gregationalists, Edward White and lildward Miall, to secure a conference between repre- sentative artisans and Christian ministers of all denominations for the discussion of the question : " Why do not working men come to ( 'liurcli ? " The occasions of our meeting with him tlius were very rare, and our intercourse rigidly restricted, but we had him to ourselves in the study ; and it was in his theok)gi('al ami
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pliilosophical writings that bis true force was found. The risjour of individualistic reasoninor was loosened when he told us that personality without society was an impossibility to thought ; that the obliojation of social unitv was not left to our choice, but was a necessity of our very being ; that no man could exist, save as a member of a family, of a nation, of the race ; that deep below the judgments of the individual mind there w\as in every one of us the common reason, the conscience of man- kind, and that the training of history had been at work upon us before we began consciously to be.
To Maurice is owing the conception of Christ's Headship of the human race, which has given modern English Congregationalists a firmer grasp of the doctrine of the Atonement, and enriched their sense of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. Dr. Dale devotes the tenth chapter of his Congregational Union Lecture to this subject, and he speaks of the "great energy" with which it has been insisted on by Mr. Maurice and his disciples. Dale used to affirm that he had not learnt this from Maurice ; and the two men do not hold it in exactly the
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same way. Maurice speaks of Christ as the Root and Head of humanity, the words seem- ing to ])e borrowed from the passage in the Apocalypse — " I am the root and offspring of David ; " the liistorical manifestation ])eing founded on a primal relation ; and it is quite consonant with his mystic habit that he treats it almost as a truth of intuition. With Dale it is — as was the doctrine of Imputed Righteous- ness with older theologians— a necessary factor in the general scheme of the Atonement ; and he deduces it from the personal experience of the Apostles. Moreover, Dale, while speaking of Christ's Headship of the human race, does not apply it to any fact in human history except the redemption of the race by Christ ; he rejoices to recognise the solidarity of Christ and His believing people, and the solidarity of tlie Churcli ; but he does not speak of tlie solida- rity of mankind. Maurice sees solidarity every- where: in the family, in the nation, in humanity. And Maurice's teaching is needed to supplement Dale's. The value of Dale's " Lectures on the Atonement" was h'lt in its strenuous assertion of the fact that tlie self-offering of ( 'hiist, was an objective ground of justification, not simj)ly
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the incentive and example of sanctification ; and this we received all the more gladly be- cause we had already learnt the responsibility of men as members of the race, as well as individuals, from Maurice's *' Sermons on Sacrifice."
It is impossil)le to classify Maurice. A hater of " individualism," he never lost, nor desired to lose, the individuality of his early training. His " soul was like a star and dwelt apart." He was one with his teacher Coleridge and his disciple Kingsley in hostility to the dominant Nominalism of the time ; but he was ensnared by the idola nominum, and often confounded his own empirical generalisations with the Divine ideas. Like Newman, he had a picturesque and apparently lucid style, but it was obscure through the affluent connotation of his words ; he was not suspected, as Kingsley suspected Newman, of usinor lanG;ua2;e to insinuate other, and farther-reaching, conclusions than those he was professedly enforcing. His charm lay, first, in the lofty reach of his thinking ; enforced as this was by his transparent purity of purpose and his deep devoutness. The delight of his guidancii made you tolerate the absence of
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cogency in much of his reasoning. He lived as seeing the invisible ; when he read the Liturgy, men prayed ; and as he preached, they listened to one who had " heard unspeakable things, which it is not for a man to utter." Worldly men were impatient with him ; the drift of his teaching was suspected by " persons of import- ance," and he never had church preferment. But they who do not care supremely, either for persons of importance or for the man in the street, felt the power of a spiritual presence in even his lightest speech ; Church authorities might try to ban him, the physicians of Guy's Hospital, the lawyers of Lincoln's hm, and the working men of the College in Red Lion Square, found him neither unintelligible nor unsafe. He forced men to reflect ; and the truth they reflected on was precious. You learnt from him even if you differed from him ; when you agreed with him you felt your position the more secure. There is nothing in Christian biography more pathetic than the story of how he went "sounding on his dim and perilous way," nothing more beautiful than the story of liis death. " He began talking very rapidly, })ut very indistinctly. We made
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out that it was about the Communion being for all nations and peoples, for men who were working like Dr. Radcliffe. Something, too, we understood about its being women's work to teach men its meanino;. Once Dr. Radcliffe said, ' Speak slowly.' He said quickly, ' You do not want me to speak.' Dr. Radclifie said, ' 0, tell us all you can ! ' He went on speak- ing, but more and more indistinctly, till sud- denly he seemed to make a great effort to gather himself up, and after a pause he said slowly and distinctly, ' The knowledge of the love of God — the ])lessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be amongst you, amongst us — and remain with us for ever.' He never spoke again. In one instant all consciousness was gone, and when I looked up and called him, he did not know me.
The time has not yet come to estimate the effect of Maurice on the religious and social thinking of the century. I often suspect that when it can be appraised, it will be seen that his abiding influence has been, not on English Churchmen, but on English Congregationalists.
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VII
During the whole of the iiiiieteeiith century there have been endeavours made to bring the Congregational Churches of England together for spiritual fellowship and consultation on practical matters, for united action in national questions, and for evangelistic work at home and abroad. The Separatists and the inde- pendents of the Commonwealth wrote in favour of Synods or Councils. These diftered from the Presbyterian Synods in three particulars : they were occasional, not permanent assemblies ; they did not represent all the churches of a locality, but only those taking part in them ; and they assumed no authority over other churches or even over those sendinjjj delesfates to them. Their sphere and function are defined in Article XXVI. of the Declaration of Order, adopted in the meeting at the Savoy, October 12, 1658 : " In cases of Difficulties or Differences, either in point of Doctrine or in Administrations, wherein either the Churches in general are concerned, or any one Church in their Peace, Union, and Edification, or any Member or Mem])ers of any Church are injured in, or by any proceeding in
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Censures, not agreeable to Truth and Order : it is according to the mind of Christ, that many- Churches holding communion together, do by their Messengers meet in a Synod or Councel, to consider and give their advice in, or about that matter in difference, to be reported to all the Churches concerned ; Howbeit these Synods so assembled are not entrusted with any Church- Power, properly so called, or with any Juris- diction over the Churches themselves, to exercise any Censures, either over any Churches or Per- sons, or to impose their determinations on the Churches or Officers."
We have not held such synods ; the absence of the Advisory Council differentiates English from American Congregationalists. The weari- ness of ecclesiastical debate which characterised the eighteenth century in England generally had much to do with this. There was also a fear that even the most carefully guarded councils would gradually encroach on the inde- pendency of the Churches. The religious needs of the population at large have, however, so pressed upon our consciences and our hearts that even suspicion of dangers to Congrega- tional liberty has given way. Local meetings
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of ministers led to the formation of County Unions of Churches for the help of necessitous congregations and for home missionary work. Out of these grew the Congregational Union of England and Wales, wliich was founded in 1 83 I. It was at first attempted to make this a body directly representative of the County Unions, but the attempt broke down, so great was the fear lest the Union should become a court of higher jurisdiction, occupying the same relation to County Unions and Churches as the Presbyterian General xissembly sustains to Synods and Presbyteries and Congregations. It was found hurtful to the peace of the Union to have reports of the various Congregational Missionary Societies presented to it ; our Home Missionary Society, our Colonial Mission- ary Society, our Irish Evangelical Society were severed from the Union ; we would not even have newspapers and magazines as official organs of the Union. The Union has proved to be a powerful Congress ; its utterances on public questions represent the mind of the denomination, and affect public thought. Now it is this suspicious habit, this jealousy of in- trusion on the freedom of the Churches, as if
0
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they were unable to guard it for themselves, which has broken down. The religious needs of England are calling for united action as well as spiritual communion ; and it is thought a futile and inconsequent policy for the Churches to entrust to competing religious societies powers which they deny to the representatives of the Churches gathered in National Assembly. The Congregational Union has just begun to con- sider the question of organising the forces of the Churches. That question will bring on an- other— the organisation of the Churches them- selves. The demand is made by some that the Churches should consolidate themselves into a great National Congregational Church. I much question the wisdom of this demand ; my study of our whole history, primitive and modern, as well as the Congregational habit, makes me hold by Article VI. of the Savoy Declaration of Order : " Besides these particular Churches, there is not instituted by Christ any Church more extensive or Catholique entrusted with power for the administration of his Ordinances, or the execution of any authority in his name." But I am heartily at one with those who be- lieve that national religious needs demand a
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Natioual Council with power to iuiiiiiiiister its own resolutions ; and I think it would be (juite within our wisdom to devise a scheme which, while rigidly safeguarding the autonomy of the Churches in all which concerns their congrega- tional life, should also make the Union autono- mous in all the larojer matters committed to
its charge.
Congregationalism has felt the influence of other considerations which have converted the nation from an exclusive individualism to tlic doctrine that the individual is subordinate to the society, that as he is its offspring and its beneficiary, so must he be its ministering servant, its sympathising member, suffering with it, rejoicing with it, one w^ith it to live and die. The needs of the poor, the sorrows of the feeble, the disadvantage of the weak have made us see that competition is only one of the laws, a very rudimentary law, of life. And the doctrine of evolution, teaching us that tlie iiidi\i(ln;il is as a w^ave — a livino; w^ave — rising out of the ocean — the living ocean — of organised being, sinking ])ack into it, not, as we believe, to lose personality, rather perhaps
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to add to his own consciousness the conscious- ness of the whole, has completely changed, for every one of us, the attitude and element of thought. But my theme in these Lectures is specific — tlie relation of our Churclies to the Church at large and to the nation ; the way in which Englisli Congregationalists have come to apprehend the problem suggested by the words of Archbishop Sandys when he contrasts the state of a small private church and that of a great, complex, and growing nation.
TJX rURE YI
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY INDEPENDENTS
AND TWENTIETH CENTURY
CONGREGATIONALISTS
Louis (hi ^Moulin — " Conformity of the Indepentlents to the Primitive Christians" — Advantage of Small Congrega- tions— Indejiendents not " Lazy Separatists " — Orthodoxy of Independents — Catholic Temper of Indejicndents — Free- dom of Method— Preference of the Christian Commonalty for Congregationalism — Independency unfavourable to Heresy, to Spiritual Tyranny, to Faction — Du Moulin's Aiguments have Ceased to be Relevant — Foresight of the Separatists — Romanism — Erastianism — Mr. Arthur Balfour — No Freedom in Church of England — Pebt of Congrega- tionalists to Established Church — " Half- Way Covenant" in America — Congregationalism an Established Church — No " Half- Way " Policy in England — Congregationalists and Baptists — Modern Concei;)tion of Catholicity — Necessity of Denominational Differences — History of the Word " Tolera- tion " — Federation of the Evangelical Free; Churches — Denominational Churches — Are they according to the Will of Christ? — Condition of the People of England — Relation of this Question to Free Church Federation — Congrega- tionalism a Receiver as well as a Dispenser of Religious Impulse.
LECTUllE YI
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY INDEPENDENTS
AND TWENTIETH CENTURY
CONGREGATIONALISTS
On the 4th aiul 5tli of Octol)er 1680 Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, was an anxious visitor in the chamber of a dying man, in the parish of St. Paul's, Covent Garden. The dying man was Louis du Moulin, son of the renowned French Protestant, and antagonist of Bossuet, Peter du Moulin, Louis had settled in England as a physician. Being a man of some reading, he was appointed Camden Professor of History, in Oxford, in place of Robert Waring, by the E^arliamcntary Committee for reforming the University. He lost his Chair at the Restora- tion, and went to London, where he resided for the rest of his life, watching the contro- versies of the time with much zest, and occasion- ally joining in them. He was not a peaceful
2i6 INDEPENDENTS AND
man ; lie had been brought up in an atmosphere of controversy ; he knew what a clever arguer he was, and his writings are full of sharp personal invective. When he felt his end drawing near, he sent for Dr. Burnet, who re- minded him of his bitterness, and urged him to make amends. Dr. Burnet himself wrote a paper expressive of regret, which Du Moulin adopted as his own. He sent conciliatory mes- sages to the Dean of St. Paul's and the Dean of Windsor. He also asked to see the Rector of his parish, Dean Patrick, The Dean supposed he had come to listen to a retractation of opinions, and Du Moulin only withdrew the personal charges he had made. This he did frankly and fully, signing copies of confession for circulation after his death, declaring that he was ready, if need were, to write his name in his heart's blood. He died sixteen days after, and Dean Patrick committed his body to the grave.
In the early part of the same year there was published a small pamphlet by Louis du Moulin, entitled " The Conformity of the Discipline and Government of the Independents to that of the Ancient Primitive Christians." It is a clever pamphlet, without personality, and has come
CONGREGATIONALISTS 2 1 7
down to us unaffected by his dying expressions of regret. Bossuet, in a work written against tlie French Protestants, had made this point — the Consistorial Government of a National Church, such as the Calvinists desire, needs in- fallibility to be safe ; and the Consistory, so far from assuming to be infallible, rejects the idea of Church Infallibility altogether. The English Independents, Bossuet added, are more con- sistent than you. Louis du Moulin, who did not love the English Presbyterians, saw his opportunity, and wrote his book. He makes the renowned Bishop of Condom a defender of Independency. His argument is that the Independents, undertaking no charge more exacting than the government of a gathered Church, do not need infallibility ; their re- sponsibility is within the compass of a small fellowship of serious Christians, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. He further testi- fies that the English Independents were ex- emplifying their system in such a way as to be examples to other churches.
Louis was not an Independent, though Anthony Wood calls him so — " a fiery, violent and hot-headed Independent, a cross and ill-
2i8 INDEPENDENTS AND
tempered man." He himself tells us that he is a member of the French Reformed Church, and declares his loyalty to the communion of his birth. But he was much interested in the London Congregational Churches, and greatly admired Dr. Owen, whom he knew, and whose ministry he frequently attended. Because he is not an Englishman, because he is not an Inde- pendent, and because he is a physician, he claims to be a singularly unprejudiced witness. He has somewhat overrated his impartiality ; but his book is full of curious first-hand knowledge. It is a contemporary record, by an outsider not predisposed to admiration, of the life of the Independent Churches as they were, under the later toleration of Charles II. Those who do not appreciate his arguments may listen to his evidence ; especially as his narrative is vivid, and charged with the feeling of the time and place he is dealing with.
He shews us, for instance, the small congrega- tions which scholarly and venerable men like Dr. Owen found a sufiicient sphere for the exercise of their great powers. The pastors of Independent Churches have congregations of not, " at the most, above two hundred persons,"
CONGREGATIONALISTS 2 1 9
and they are " eased and helped by their coadjutors in the work of the holy ministry." He declares small congregations to be more in harmony with Primitive times than the large parish assemblies in which the popular 'Presby- terian preachers of the Commonwealth had delighted. The fruit of such preaching, he says, " was like to that of which S. Chrisostome speaks in one of his homilies, which resembles the water that is thrown in Buckets upon a great number of Bottles, which have a strait neck, and where there goes in but a few drops, whereas the fruit of the exhortations which are made in private to a few, is the effect of him, who having taken the bottles, will fill them by degrees, one after another."
He vindicates the ministers from the charge of being " lazy Separatists," so swallowed up in small congregational cares as to have lost the sense of responsibility for a public ministry. "As to the objection that is made against them, that in case there should be no other ecclesi- astical establishment in a kingdom than theirs, the three-fourths of the Inhabitants would live in great negligence, and in gross ignorance of Religion. To that they say, that their way does
2 20 INDEPENDENTS AND
not exempt Pastors from attending upon the office of their ministry, at all times and places, both within and without their particular Con- gregations, and to take the same pains as the Presbyterian ministers do, for what respects the preaching of the Word in the most Publick places."
He has a French Protestant's delight in Calvinistic doctrinal orthodoxy, and affirms that the Savoy Declaration of Faith is superior to the Westminster Confession, on which it is founded ; stands, indeed, at the very top of the Protestant symbols for soundness and clearness of doc- trinal testimony.
He bears witness to the Catholicity of temper in the Independents. " 'Tis very rarely seen that any one of the congregation does not love all good men of what Communion soever the}^ be, and that they do not speak of them as of the true Churches of Jesus Christ." Their separation, he says, "is not an absolute and entire abandoning of the profession of the doctrine and life of those who follow the Re- ligion of their Country ; but of those who con- demn that carriage, that doctrine and discipline, which retained the most of the Apostolical."
CONGREGATIONALISTS
22 I
He affirms their indifference to uniformity of discipline in their several churches. There were persons then, as there are persons now, doubting if there can be union without rigid system, and curiously asking: "What is the Order practised among the Independents ? " Du Moulin replies : "As they profess a perfect harmony among themselves ; so likewise they do not believe this same absolute necessity as to that which concerns discipline. Their order is to do all things decently and in order." He refers on this point to Article VHI. of the Savoy Declaration of Order. ^
He testifies to the decided preference of the Christian commonalty for a free Congregational method over a rigid Presbyterian government. He refers to the hostility of the people of Geneva to Calvin's rule ; and says that it has been seen in England for the last forty years
1 "The Members of these Churches are Saints Ijy Calling, visibly manifesting and evidencing (in and by their profession and walking) their obedience unto that Call of Christ, who being further known to each other by their confession of the Faith wrought in them by the power of God, declared by them- selves or otherwise manifested, do willingly consent to walk together according to the appointment of Christ, giving uj) themselves to the Lord, and to one another by the will of God in professed subjection to the Ordinances of the Gospel."
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that the people have had a greater inclination to the Congregational way than the pastors. " For of more than six-score persons, who made up the Assembly of Ministers, there was above a hundred of them for the Presbyterian govern- ment, and about eight or ten for the Con- gregational way, and two only, Coleman and Lightfoot, for the opinion of Erastus. Yet, nevertheless, when it came to the execution and practice, there was not one of ten thousand people that would submit to the Presbyterian government. And one of them, who was the most eminent, confessed to me, that being pastor of the greatest parish in London, he was never able to establish in it a consistory, nor find any that would be of it but a pitiful Scotch Taylor. This difficulty was not seen as to the Congregational way, for whereas only the pastors were for the Presbyterian way, there were proportionably, as many people as ministers, who joined in the Assemblies of the Congregational way. Which they did with more heat and fervour than the Parliament would have had them ; insomuch that they were forced to publish a Declaration, by which they exhorted the people to put off the gathering
CONGREGATION ALISTS 2 2 3
of Churches till the Parliament had made a more public regulation thereof."
He declares also the futility of the policy of conciliating the Roman Catholics of England to the Establishment by truncating the Reforma- tion. The nearness of affinity of the two Churches " has rather sharpened and em- bittered the spirits and tempers of those of [the Roman] communion, to plot against the sacred person of the King, and against his govern- ment, than it has any ways sweetened them."
Dilating on his main theme — the dangers of a National Church, and consistorial government, where there is no infallibility — he points out, in three particular examples, the comparative freedom from these dangers of Independent or Congregational Churches.
There is the danger of Heresy. If a national council should err, he says, as Church councils have erred and may err, the mistake becomes as widespread and as enduring as the Church ; but it is impossible that a number of Inde- pendent Churches should all depart from the faith together, and those which remain true preserve the faith, which will spread from them as centres.
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There is the danger of injustice to the in- dividual member of the Church. Du Moulin is not favourable to Excommunication, and he regrets that the Independent Churches profess the power to excommunicate. But he points out that practically their excommunication is only the withdrawal of the Church from fellow- ship with a member ; and that the mischief of excommunication among Independents is very small, for it is not exclusion from a large body, covering a nation ; but only from a few people.
He speaks also of the danger to the State which may arise from the hostile action of a large and compact National Church within it — the danger of the imperium in imperio — and affirms that the nation has nothing to fear from small Independent religious societies. Their power of mischief, if they should be disposed to faction, is at most only local and temporary ; whereas the authority of a great compact spiritual community may vie with that of King and Parliament.
CONGREGATION ALISTS 2 2 5
I have dwelt somewhat at length on Du Moulin and his little pamphlet, because, for two hundred years, his arguments were employed by Congregationalists. He had learnt them, probably, from Dr. Owen and others ; there is not one of them which I have not heard, again and again, on Independent platforms. They are arguments which have influenced the thousfht of the nation. Similar pleas, in favour of liberty and a free press, used to be employed by Whig politicians, and some of them appear, with a slight change of form, in John Stuart Mill's Treatise on Liberty. We do not often hear them now ; their old-world flavour appears as we read the quotations. They have not lost their cogency ; given circumstances like those under which they were formulated, they would awaken the old interest and achieve new vic- tories. Their relevancy is gone because they have accomplished their work. The place once held by them as commendations of the Congre- gational polity is now taken by appeals to the sentiment of catholicity and zeal for the national efiiciency of the Churches.
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II
When we contemplate the whole history of the Churches in England, of which i have given you a few detached, but typical, instances, we are struck with the foresight of the Separatists. They dreaded two things : the recrudescence of Roman error, and the Erastianism of the National policy. " The little cross in the Queen's closet," which Jewel thought of ill omen, has indeed been drawn into a precedent. The crucifix is found as an object of adoration in many of the parish churches ; the stations of our Lord's pas- sion are on the pillars ; the worship of the mass is restored, and prayers for the dead are invited ; the practice of confession troubles many a home ; the Daily Prayers and the Litany are mumbled, so that the English service is no lonsjer rendered in a lano;uao;e " understauded of the people " ; in many churches it would be hard for an ordinary worshipper to know if he were assisting at an Anglican or a Roman service. The very name Protestant is repudiated ; as an instrument of the Reformed religion, the Estab- lished Church has conspicuously failed. " There are some persons calling themselves members of
CONGREGATIONALISTS 227
the Church of England," Mr. F^)alfour said, in September last, to a Protestant deputation, " who seem to me to differ so little in their doctrine from the Church of Rome that their secession from the Church of England mig-ht perhaps be no very serious loss to our com- munion."
At the same time Mr. Balfour acknowledged that the difficulty of applying the law was such that those persons could not be put out of the Church of England. We may add that there is not any compelling motive for them to secede. The deputation Mr. Balfour was addressing had asked for an improved method of enforcing the law ; and he told them " there is a vast body of opinion in the Church — a vast body of High Church opinion — which has a perfect right to be in the Church, and which none of you wish to exclude from the Church, but which would be profoundly horrified, or might be profoundly horrified, at the general trend and tendency of the litigation which might be set up by any great change of the law such as you propose." And then he makes this striking assertion : " There is apt to be in any great accession of strength to merely lay and legal tribunals an
2 28 INDEPENDENTS AND
appearance of Erastianism — to use the old- fashioned phrase — an appearance of making religious doctrine depend merely on lawyers, judges, and advocates, which is profoundly re- pellent, I think, probably to every man in this room, and is certainly profoundly repellent to the great Fathers of the Reformation. They of all men in the world would have objected to seeing the living Church subjected to anything like the dead hand of a mere technical and legal interpretation, by technical lawyers, of printed or written documents. And thoug-h the law must be there, though the law must be efficient, it would be a great disaster for the Church, a great disaster for religion, if it were brought in as the ordinary day-by-day method of preserv- ing discipline in the Church, as the ordinary machinery of Church government." ^
This is a frank and manly declaration of the straits in which the Protestant party in the Church of England — the overwhelming majority of the Church as well as of the nation — is involved because of the Elizabethan settlement,
' These (quotations have not had Mr. lialfour's revision. They are taken from a Report in the Manchester Guardian of October 1st, 1900.
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confirmed by the Act of Uniformity. Mr. Balfour's declaration rules out of the number of the " great Fathers of the Reformation " Whitgift and Elizabeth's Bishops ; it discredits Elizabeth herself and her statesmen ; for they deliberately laid the Church of England on an Erastian foundation. The Church, according to Hooker, is the nation in its religious aspect. Fellowship with the Church of England is the legal right of every baptized English person who has not been excommunicated. And because excommunication is the taking away of a legal right, and because the courts of law would be entitled, on appeal, to review the pleadings and decide the case, it is almost never resorted to. Not many years ago, a man and his wife, who had been repelled from the communion in their parish church, on grounds of patent heresy, appealed to a court of law, and the incumbent was ordered to admit them. There are hundreds of English clergymen who believe that another marriage of a divorced person, during the life- time of the second party, is contrary to the law of Christ ; and who publish that they will not administer the communion to persons so married.
3 30 INDEPENDENTS AND
But they could not help themselves ; the law would compel them.
The Church of England has no right of revi- sion of Canons, or of adapting its constitution to new conditions of the national life ; the fear of the length to which reform would go, and the direction it might take, is too great. Convoca- tion cannot meet except when Parliament is sitting, and by summons of the Crown. What- ever the state of business, it has to rise when Parliament is prorogued. No Act of Convoca- tion is valid until it has been laid before Parlia- ment, and received the sanction of the Crown ; and so Convocation seldom acts at all. It confines itself to questions which do not involve much public discussion.
Of course all this is shocking to the con- science of the community ; it is so shocking that even Nonconformists refrain, in controversy, from parading the facts. The Congregational doctrine of Church membership — that it implies personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ ; purity of life ; a general harmony of religious sentiment between each member and the Church as a whole — has leavened the nation. " The appearance of Erastianism," to use Mr. Balfour's words,
CONGREGATIONALISTS 2 3 1
" is profoundly repellent " to nearly every one ; and tlie Church of Eng-land must be Erastian so long as it is established.
Ill
Here is an illustration of the wise foresight of the fathers of Eng-lish ConOTesfationalism in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But they did not apprehend, they could not have foreseen, how the existence of the Establishment facilitated their working out of their own doc- trines. They attributed the purity and peace of their Churches entirely to the excellence of their own method, without observing how the opera- tion of this was affected by the coexistence of other Churches with different traditions.
The most important, though not the most conspicuous, difference between English and American Congregation alists results from the fact that the Congregationalism of Massa- chusetts and Connecticut, which settled the type of American Congregationalism, was the public religious profession of tliese two states, was, in fact, until far into the nineteenth century, a State-established Church.
2 32 INDEPENDENTS AND
Dr. George Leon Walker has described one of the conditions under which " the Half-way Covenant" was introduced into the New Eng- land Churches, and the religious declension which was its consequence. With Thomas Hooker's principle that " Visible Saints are the matter" and "confederation the form" by which only a true church can be constituted, " was associated the additional doctrine that the children of confederated saints were them- selves also church-members and saints ; and of course that their children also would be so in their turn. This did well enough so long as the children of the first covenanting parents were children, and the question of their saintli- ness remained a hypothetical matter. But how when they grew up to manhood and woman- hood, and were consciously and visibly no saints at all, in that interior and self-scrutinising sense which was generally admitted as necessary to eternal life ? Where did such people stand ? " ^
This difficulty was complicated with another. The states legislated for the suppression of im-
1 "Some Aspects of the Religious Life of New England," Carew Lecture, by George Leon Walker, D.D. Silver, Burdett & Co., New York, 1897. P. 61.
CONGREGATION ALISTS 233
moralities, and the Congregational Churches were the teachers as to what the moral life was ; the selectmen were directed to see that families were provided with Bibles, orthodox catechisms, and " other good books of practical godliness, viz., such as treat on, encourage and duly prepare for the right attendance on that great duty, the Lord's Supper." ^
Association with a Church was a badge of respectability, even after it ceased to be essen- tial to the exercise of the rights of citizenship ; and the result was that persons whose Church- membership originally involved only a right to baptism for their children, came to be looked on as having a right to the Lord's Supper though they were " destitute of a Saving Work of God's Spirit on their Hearts." This custom proved so injurious to the Churches and to the influence of religion on the community that, as a result of " the Great Awakening," it was swept away.
If Congregationalism had been in England, as it was in America, the established, or the sole, form of Church Discipline ; if to be a
1 Dunning's " Congregationalists in America." New York : J. A. Hill & Co. P. 238.
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Con2;reo;ational Church member had been an essential mark of a respectable citizen, the question would have presented itself in a far larger and more complicated form. For Eng- lish society was far more complex than American, having greater and more pronounced varieties of religious tradition and habit.
To borrow Dr. Leon Walker's form of ques- tion, the Independent Churches would have had to ask themselves : How about the persons who never had accepted the doctrine of purity of fellowship, to whom the process of self- scrutinising was distasteful, even impossible, and yet to whom to deny the name Christian and the Christian ordinances would have been harsh, or even impious ? How about the many whose consciousness of imperfection made the idea of a strictly personal profession painful, who nevertheless cherished the Christian hope in their hearts, and loved association with God's people ? How about the many more, to whom Christian fellowship and the communion of the Lord's Supper appeared a spiritual discipline ; a means of guidance into that full faith which the consistent Congregationalist requires as the qualification for admission to Church member-
CONGRECtATIONALISTS 2 3 5
ship ? And how about the many more whom not even the judgment of charity could call Christian, and who yet might be irreparably injured if they were made to live under a constant sense of reprobation ?
If God had called the Congregational Churches of England to face these questions, in all their complexity, as a practical problem, I believe that in His infinite mercy He would have directed them to an answer. But is it cowardly in me to be glad that we have not had to answer them ? Hard, dogmatic men would have had no hesitation in dealing with the problem ; but hard, dogmatic men might have lost Eno-land for Christ.
We have not been rigidly uniform in our own Congregational practice. The same Church has been sometimes severe, sometimes gracious ; but, on the whole, and in both ways, we have been consistent in the doctrine, and faithful in the practice, of purity of communion. And those who could not have joined with us have not l)een unchurched.
There have been ejradations among: the Churches, from Congregational strictness to the laxity of the Establishment ; the Puritans
236 INDEPENDENTS AND
were half-way men ; the Methodists were three- quarters men, with an increasing tendency to the Con2:reo;ational ideal. Different Churches have represented various types of piety, from the intense Independent to the non-defining Erastian ; and they have acted and reacted on each other, in great public movements, in social intercourse, by intermarriage, and the birth of grandchildren combining the strains ; by con- ference on great religious questions, by reading each other's books, by loving remembrance of opponents after death, and fond thoughts of fuller fellowship in " the all-reconciling world." Of each type there have been faithful pastors, gracious souls ; in all the Churches children have grown up sweetly into Christian manhood and womanhood ; and men of the world have felt the touch of the unseen, and repentant sinners have gazed on the cross with their closing eyes. May I hazard a suggestion here ? Is the fact that we have had no " Half-way Covenant " in English Congregationalism the reason why we have to-day so very few close communion Baptists ? Those children, whose needs Dr. Leon Walker has suggested to us, loving their parents and their parents' Christianity, and yet
CONGREGATION ALISTS 237
not prepared to make their parents' confession, could find a spiritual home elsewhere. We have always regretted losing them, ])ut we have not been obliged to alter the terms of com- munion to retain them. There has been very little difference between the practice of the Baptist Churches and our own in the personal requirement for church-fellowship. And there- fore it has been possible for Baptist and Paedo- Baptist Congregationalists to come into very close fellowship. Not only do we receive letters of dismissal from each other ; in most of our Churches of both denominations all offices in the Church are open to Baptists and Psedo- Baptists indiscriminately, save that, by our trust-deeds, the pastorate is restricted to the denomination ; in some newly formed Churches even that restriction is repudiated. In the county of Bedford the absolute indifference of John Bunyan and his Church on this point has been followed, and the County Union is an association of Congregational and Baptist Churches. By the constitution of the Congre- gational Union of England and Wales, Churches where a difference of opinion as to the subjects and mode of baptism is no bar to membership
238 INDEPENDENTS AND
or office may send representatives to be mem- bers of the Assembly, and this year the prin- cipal sessions of the Baptist and Congregational Unions have been united meetings, presided over by the chairman of the Congregational Union and the President of the Baptist Union alternately.
IV
The opening of the twentieth century has witnessed a new conception of catholicity, and the growth of it illustrates John Robinson's dictum that "the Lord hath yet more light to break forth out of His Holy Word." For a lono; time Eno;lish Dissenters used to recall how much their impulse had modified other Churches, and their thought enlarged the national life. Now they love rather to record what they have learned from each other and from England. Long ago they knew uni- formity in doctrine and discipline to be impos- sible ; now they do not regard it as desirable ; they recognise that the solitary prevalence of their own type of church life would be an impoverishment rather than a gain to national Christianity. The person who is always learn-
CONGREGATION ALISTS 2 3 9
ing from his fellow-clenominationalists is like one who studies humanity in his looking-glass — " He beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and he has forgotten even what manner of man he himself is." The "perfect;law of liberty" of development is the way of blessedness.
The Cono;reo'ational Union has a Lecture established to enable leading ministers to give deliverances on important questions of Chris- tian doctrine, discipline, and life. I desire that, in some memorial year, the Congrega- tional Union Lecture shall take a broader form. I want to have the service of the different denominations to the common religion treated by representative men of the different com- munions, and the representative man should be one of the most pronounced denomina- tionalists, not one of the least so. I would have Dr. Rogers, for instance, or Dr. Brown, tell us what England owes to the Congre- gationalists ; and Dr. MacLaren or Charles Williams discourse on what it owes to the Baptists. I would have Dr. Rigg lecture on John AVesley, and Dr. Dykes on Thomas Cart- wright. I regret that Archbishop Benson is no longer here to tell us what are the claims on
240 INDEPENDENTS AND
the national gratitude of his predecessor Laud. I believe such a course of Lectures will one day be delivered, and the place where it might most fittingly be delivered is the Memorial Hall.
V
In recalling the story of the efforts after in- corporate union between the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, which followed the accession to the throne of the large - minded, sound- hearted William the Third ; seeing how near they again and again came to being one Church, and how miserably their efforts were thwarted ; it is impossible to keep down our regret. A little more wisdom, we think, a little more patience, an added touch of mutual considera- tion in their zeal, would have saved us many a year of strife and bitterness. The regret is natural, but perhaps it is not wise. The differ- ences which emerged in England when the Reformation was l)eing worked out were not fanciful, not the outcome of perversity ; they were characteristic, temperamental ; each varia- tion represented an important truth. It is essential to such speculations on the polity of
CONGREGATIONALISTS 24 1
life, if tliey are to render their full service to the Church and the world, that they should have room for practical development, should prove their efficiency, should also reveal their insuffi- ciency as an expression of the whole. Congre- gationalists required the practice of separation to shew what Christian individualism can do for Christendom. Presbyterians needed liberty of combination to display the directive, efficient power of an organised Church. The national idea, too, required to have full expression, that we might not lose the grace of tradition and the feeling of history. Even the Catholic Church, if only it could see that Catholic and Eoman are inconsistent and mutually destruc- tive terms, would have the great claim on our gratitude that it has kept alive the idea of the identity of the Christian consciousness and the continuity of the Christian Church. " No man can be more wise than destiny ; " let us catch the tolerant spirit of history. The sixteenth century, in English ecclesiastical matters, was the century of Reformation, the seventeenth the century of separation, the eighteenth the century of toleration, the nineteenth the cen- tury of religious equality. Some of us believe
Q
242 INDEPENDENTS AND
and desire that the twentieth century may- prove to be that of reunion. But we do not quarrel with our forefathers, nor condemn the past. Without the experience of separation, the partial liberty of toleration, the successful assertion of the right of all religious doctrines to equal freedom for self-development, there would have been no hope for us of a Reformed Catholic Church.
VI
The word " toleration " has had an interest- ing history in English religious thought. The Separatists talked of matters in doctrine and Church practice they could not tolerate, and we understand what they meant. Some things are not to be suppressed by the magistrate, but in themselves they seem to us intolerable. The Independents of the Westminster Assembly de- manded toleration — that is, liberty of preaching and worship without the interference of the civil law. The eighteenth century worshipped the very word " toleration," i.e. what Milton claimed as "the liberty of unlicensed printing" — the right of men to utter all that God has allowed them to think. In the nineteenth century there was a double reaction against the word. Coleridge,
CONGREGATION ALISTS 243
who for a short period was a Unitarian preacher, discovered that toleration was not a religion, was not even a force, was only a void that force might fill ; and he quoted, approvingly, Jacobi's words — that the only true tolerance was the bearing of the intolerance of others. The Non- conformists, under Edward Miall, grew to resent legal toleration ; it seemed to imply a right in some thinkers to extend permission of thought to others ; to tolerate a man who has equal rights with yourself is to insult him. But time has brought a more equable mood. Legal toleration has begotten the tolerant habit in men ; patience with those from whom we differ ; the love of understanding them ; the sense of appreciation ; the search after truth by the co-ordination of varieties. Phillips Brooks has done good service by his little book on this subject. Tolerance, as a grace of character, will abide when toleration has become an archaism.
VII
The Catholicity of to-day recognises that " no prophecy of Scripture is of private inter- pretation ; " but that any and every " private
244 INDEPENDENTS AND
interpretation " contributes to full understaud- ino^. The National Council of the Evano;elical Free Churches is perfectly frank in its welcome of diversities of judgment in Church polity and the government of Churches. There is no sinister afterthought among us, no complacent dream that we shall bring our brethren over to our way if only they will let us talk to them. We are like Chaucer's schoolmaster —
" Gladly would we learn, and gladly also teach " —
and we are equally at home in speaking and in listening. Our experience that it is possible and eminently edifying for men of different denominations to talk to one another with no thought of proselytising, to work together with- out reckoning up what Churches are most increasing their numbers by the co-operation, encourages us to believe that we have found the way to unity and Catholicity by federation. I am often asked — What of the future of your federated Churches ? Will the various de- nominations fuse and combine their Church doctrines into a new and comprehensive polity, w^hich shall conserve all of truth which each has to give, and shall discard everything which
CONGREGATION ALISTS 2 4 5
is of sectional significance only ? Will there not emerge a new star, " not Jove, nor Mars," but " some fisiured flame which blends, trans- cends them all ? " Sometimes the question is put wistfully, by men who long that such a Church might be ; sometimes a little mis- chievously, as if the inevitable drift of things would set the Council on constitution building, and then disintegration, working to disruption, would begin. Let me answer the question by another — Will the United States ever be a kingdom ? Do the Americans want uniformity of State government ? Are they not a nation as they are ?
Let me frankly say — I do not think the National Council will ever grow into a Church, uniform in discipline, representative of a single polity. Congregationalism and Presbyterianism are not incompatible ; and Episcopacy, the con- stitutional authority, for certain purposes, of the specially gifted and experienced man, might coexist with Congregational autonomy and re- presentative government of the united Churches for common ends. l>ut history abides, and the past lives in to-day. The city of God has twelve sates, and names written thereon which
246 INDEPENDENTS AND
are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel ; and the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb. You may call a Federation a Church, but its constituents will be Churches, and the Churches will be of various types.
When John Robinson and his contemporaries spoke in recognition of those parish assemblies, where godly life and pastoral discipline pre- vailed, as true Churches of God — for which graciousness they have been stigmatised as semi-Separatists — they were introducing the idea of denominational Churches. They did not use the term ; indeed, it has not yet come into vogue, although that is really the Free Church conception of to-day. Probably the reason of this reserve was that there was no authority for denominational Churches in the New Testament. Constitutional Cono-res-ation- alists used to affirm confidently that the word Church was used in the New Testament in only two senses — the gathered municipal Church, and the whole family in heaven and earth. We know now that the idea of a National Church was not alien to primitive Christianity.
CONGREGATIONALISTS 247
Not only does Stephen speak of " the church in the wilderness ; " the Revised Version of Acts ix. 31 reads — "So the church through- out all Judsea and Galilee and Samaria had peace, being edified ; and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, was multiplied." This is a most im- portant reading ; it undoubtedly represents a widely adopted primitive text, probably the primitive text. The Apostles did not think it necessary to remodel the constitution of the Jewish religious society, because in Asia Minor and Macedonia and Achaia the Hellenic municipal tradition had been followed. \Ye now recognise that there were three primitive uses of the word Church — the gathered muni- cipal Church, which was the most widely adopted form ; the National Church, sanctioned by Jewish history ; the Catholic, dear to every Christian heart. Is the fourth use, which per- sons have been driven into by the growth into freedom and fellowship of the foremost nations of Christendom, therefore excluded ? First, it is to be noticed that men have been impelled to it by the spirit of loyalty to Jesus Christ, and the spirit of love to the brethren ; that is
248 INDEPENDENTS AND
to say, by the Spirit of the Lord, who has promised to be with His people to the end. And then it may be asked, reverently and con- fidingly— Is not such action within the scope of the promise : " Verily I say unto you, What things soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and w^hat things soever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven " ? Congregationalists of the last veneration freed themselves from the notion, which prevailed from Cart Wright and Browne down, that the method of Church government was among the things delivered by Christ to His Apostles, to be by them delivered to His people, for every nation and for every age. But they had an uneasy feeling that they were making too light of Church discipline in dismissing Church polity as of comparatively little moment. I confess to the gladness with wdiich I shelter myself within the scope of His large w^ords. He has not said — "I bind you;" He has said, "Bind yourselves." And we are secure from fatal blundering by the virtue of His name. " Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them."
CONGREGATIONALISTS 249
VIII
The condition of the people of England, about which Carlyle began to write when he ceased to be merely a literary man and became a teacher, has been an increasing burden to the heart and conscience of the Churches for more than half a century. We are as tired of unqualified compe- tition in religion as in trade, we are sick of class Churches — Methodism for the poor, Congrega- tionalism and Presbyterianism for the middle classes, the Church of England for the aristo- cracy. There is an honest desire in all the denominations to bring the reality and blessed- ness of Christian fellowship to the whole people ; we cannot rest
" Till we have set Jerusalem In Elngland's fair and pleasant land."
This is the motive compelling Church reformers of various schools to press for freedom of action, and some measure of lay government, within the State Church. This has been the most urgent and the most sacred motive leading the Free Churches to federate. When Dr. Chalmers proclaimed, while he was a minister of the
2 50 INDEPENDENTS AND
Established Church of Scotland, that volun- taryism was insufficient to meet the spiritual needs of the nation, the Congregationalists and Baptists, with the Scottish Seceders, contra- dicted him. The Methodists went on their course of evangelisation without paying any attention to him. But the needs have proved too vast, the problem is too complicated for any denomination, or even for them all, working without concert and the stimulus of union. The Methodists
" Laugh at impossibilities And say, it shall be done : "
but they do not laugh at this. The Independent specific for sanitation — let every Church keep its own doorstep clean, and instruct others to do the same — is not sufficient, for the very soil is polluted, and disease is in the air. The annual growth of population has been far in advance of the aggregate extension of all the Churches. Great towns have been increasing in progressive ratio, and the new neighbourhoods are not pro- vided for. The villaQ;es and hamlets are under a wasting sickness, and the Churches have shared in the decline. The denominations have had
CONGREGATIONALISTS 2 5 1
little heart to face the problem, so great is the disproportion between the resources in men and opportunities of any one of them and the national needs. And, meanwhile, the sense of nationality — national character, national re- sponsibility, national solidarity — has been grow- ing in depth as well as in extent. Patriotism has been taking on a new meaning : it is not British lionism, nor spread-eagleism ; the clam- our of the saloon rises and falls, but ever there is an undertone, " the still, sad music of humanity," the cry of the Christian heart. We used to discuss, academically, whether there could be such a thing as a national Christianity ; we have learned too well that there is such a thing as national ungodliness. And to meet the demands of national brotherhood, we have invoked the whole fellowship of the Evangelical Free Churches ; we are organising voluntaryism, persuaded that it will be efficient when it is no longer impulsive, sporadic, sectarian, but co- operative, constant, an accepted purpose, made wise and far-reaching by common counsel. There is a deep solemnity, as of " the burden of the Lord," underlying the jubilance of the National Council of the Evangelical Free
25 2 INDEPENDENTS AND
Churches. In their forecast of the future there may be perceived an increasing sense of responsi- bility, a larger patience, a firmer courage, more self-forgetful sacrifice, and the promise of a rich reward.
There has been a simultaneous mission for England ; the beginning, not the completion, of combined evanorelistic effort. Free Church
o
parishes are being organised in industrial centres. It is beinsj considered how the Free Churches may unitedly sustain one, and in thinly-populated districts only one, resident pastor within easy reach of every hamlet in the land. The motive is simple ; these churches have only as their aim the religious well-being of the people. They know that hitherto Christ's spirit has led as well as prompted them, and they are not anxious for the morrow. They believe the future is with them ; they have the promise of " the morning star,"
In laying out my plan for these Lectures, in preparing and delivering them, I have not tried merely to glorify Congregationalism. I have been quite as anxious to shew what it has received from others as what it has given to
co:n grectATIon alists 2 5 3
others ; its obligation, as well as its contribution, to the national life for three centuries. It has had a history of strenuous endurance and fidelity to its own central constitutive idea, but it has also been enriched from many external sources. There has been no Church in the land from which it has not learned something, no great religious awakening which has not brought it light and impulse. The church system is to be estimated not less by its readiness to receive instruction from all quarters than by its own simple, sufficient testimony. If it began in separation, it has ended in fellowship. To borrow Tennyson's image, it has
" Stood four-square to every wind that blows,"
and the benediction of that attitude has been as marked as the courage of it. For every wind has brought some fertilising influence ; and in the Christian comity it is blessed both to give and to receive.
INDEX
Aggekgate Independency, 43 Agreement, The Happy. See
Happy Union Ainsworth, Henry, his Calvinism,
23 American Congregationalism, 231 Anti-State Church Association,
178 Apostolicity of Congregational
Churches, 191 Arnold, Thomas, 195 Ashley, Mr., of Frankfort, 50 Associations, Voluntary versus
Presb3'teries, 94
Baillie, Robert, on the Scottish army, 90 ; on toleration, 103
Balfour, Mr. A. J., on Erastian- ism, 227
Bancroft's revolt from Erastian- ism, 61
Baptists and Congregationalists in England and America, 236
Barrowe, Henry, on the Church meeting, 78
Baxter, Richard, his love-story, 27 ; on the lay-eldership, 93 ; on Fundamentals, 109; "lazy Separatists," 144; on Discipline in the Independent Churches, 145 ; on the Primitive Churches, 147
Beckett, Rev. W. H., on the continuity of Lollardry, 47
Bilney's recantation, 76
Binney, Kev. T., on the State Church system, 180
Board of the Three Denomina- tions, 114
Borgeaud, M., on Congrega- tionalism and Democracy, 38
Bradbury, Thomas, Salters' Hall Conference, 118; occasional conformity, 137
Bright, Mr. John, and Individual- ism, 182
Broad Church, 195
Browne, Robert, 68
Brownist plea for mercy and charity, 1 593, 33
Calvinism, power of, 21 ; theo- logical Calvinism, 22, 160; ecclesiastical Calvinism, 23
Cartwright, Thomas, on the min- istry and Discipline, 25
Catholicity of Church, Congre- gational conception of, 192 ; catholicity of Independents in 17th century, 220; modern conception of catholicity, 23S
Chapel, use of word in the iSth century, 165
256
INDEX
Charles II., Declarations of In- dulgence, 133
Church, Browne's definition of, 192; generous use of word in Puritan controversy, 61. See Denominational Churches and New Testament
Church of England a Presbyterian establishment, 85
Clergy, English Church, their attitude to Liberal measure ■•, 180
Commonalty (Christian) and Congregationalism, 221
Compact. See Mayfloiver and Borgeaud
Conformity, occasional, 137
Congregationalism, primitive form of Church government, 47; inchoate Congregationalism and Lollardry, 48 ; in Frank- fort, 50 ; in England under Mary, 59 ; under Elizabeth, 64 ; Biblical basis of Congre- gationalism, 81
Congregational Independency, 43
Congregational Union, 209
Congregational Union lecture, 239
Corporation Act, 135 ; repeal of, 169
Council, National Free Church, 244
Councils, Congregational, 207 ; English municipal, 175
Covenants, Church, 79, 113
Coverdale, his use of the word " Congregation," 60 ; his timi- dity, 66
Cowper, William, on Test and Corporation Acts, 139
Crisp, Dr. Tobias, 116
Cromwell, on the Independents, 35
Dale, Dr. R. W., on Church meeting, 78 ; Headship of Christ, 202
Dalrymple, Sir John, on faction, 176
Defoe, Daniel, 137
Defoe Memorial Church case, 119
Democracy and Congregational- ism, 37, 81
Denominational Churches, 246
Disabilities of Dissenters re- moved, 169
Discipline, 49, 55, 235. See also Baxter
Doddridge, Philip, 149 ; on Church establishment, 179
Donatism, Puritan dread of, 72
Dunning, Dr. A. E., on Half- way Covenant, 233
Eighteenth century, decay of
religion in, 154 Erastianism of the Established
Church of England, 23, 226.
See Balfour, Bancroft, and Lord
Rosehery Erastians in Westminster
Assembly, 222 Excommunication among the
Independents, 224
Faction, Independency not favourable to, 224
Fitz's Church, 64
Fletcher, Rev. Joseph, 43
Frankfort, "Troubles in," 21, " Stir and Strife in," 50
Frankfort Church, drift to Con- gregationalism, 50 ; essential Erastianism of, 57
INDEX
257
Gbindal, Archbishop, 13
Half-way Covenant, 232
Halley, Dr., 129
Harcourt, Sir William, 183
Heresy, freedom of Independents from, 223
Hetherington, Dr., 1 00
High Church Congregationalists, 190
Hunter, the Rev. J., on Arch- bishop Sandys, 9 ; on Independ- ents and toleration, 99
Huntingdon, Countess of, 132 ; Countess of Huntingdon's con- nexion, 160
Hymn-Books, Watts's and Wes- ley's, 164
Hymns, Dr. Watts's, 152
Independent congregations under Charles II. described, 218
Independents, extreme orthodoxy of, 112
Individualism, 182 ; Baptist and Congregational individualism, 184; individualism and theo- logy, 186
Liberal party and Dissenters,
175 Liberation Society, 181 Lollardry and Congregationalism,
49
London, use of Test and Cor- poration Acts by Corporation of, 139
Mansfield, Lord, 140 Martindale, Adam, 95 Maurice, F. D., 195 Mayflower Compact, 80. See also Borgeaud
Methodism, 156; Methodism and Separatism, 157; Methodism and Puritanism, 158 ; Arminian and Calvinistic Methodism, 160; doctrine of the Church, 160
Methodist, Wesleyan, Church, 157
Miall, Edward, Nonconformist newspaper, 44 ; Liberation Society, 181
Milton, John, on toleration, 106 ; on liberty for thought, 1 28
Morley old chapel, Yorkshire, 130
Moulin, Louis du, 215
National needs, Congregationa- lists and, 249 Newman, John Henry, 188 New Testament use of word " Church," 246
Onslow, Speaker, on Sir John Dalrymp'e, 176
Oriel movement and Congrega- tionalism, 188
Owen, Dr. John, 218
Patronage, Church and Noncon- formity, 131 Peirce, James, of Exeter, 117 Penry, John, on the Elizabethan Church, Gj ; Brownist petition,
33
Persecution of Protestants under Mary, 59 ; persecution of Sepa- ratists under Elizabeth, 64 ; persecution by Independents, 46 ; fidelity of common people under persecution, 75
Presbyterian Church of England and English Presbyterian Church, 122
R
258
INDEX
Presbyterianism in Westminster Assembly, 89, 96 ; Scottish Presbyterianism not acceptable to English people, 93, 222 ; contrast between English and Scottish Presbyterianism, 121 Presbyterians and Unitarians, 117 Priesthood of Believers, 194 Puritans, characteristics of, 26, 29 ; Puritans and Separatists, 71 ; differences between Puri- tans and Separatists on purity of fellowship, 72 ; rights of members, 74 ; creeds and covenants, 79 Purity of Church fellowship, not a Puritan doctrine, 73 ; a dis- tinguishing Separatist doctrine, 74 ; maintained in Fitz's Church, 64 ; modern prevalence of the doctrine, 230
Recantations under persecution,
76 Reform Bill, 172 Reformed Presbyterian Church in
America, 30 Registration Acts, of marriages,
169 ; of births and deaths,
170 Robinson, John, patriotism, 35 ;
on Church meeting, 77 ; his
semi-Separatism, 246 Rosebery, Lord, his Erastianism,
23
Saoramknts among Independ- ents, 187
Salters' Hall Conference, 118
Sanctity of the Church, Congrega- tional conception of, 192
Sandys, Archbishop, his reform-
ing zeal, 4 ; his preferments, 6 ; his Apologia, 9
Sandys, Sir Edwin, Europce Speculum, 20
Schism Bill, 137 ; its influence on English Church relations, 179
Separatism and Puritanism, 71 ; dangers of Separatism, 151 ; early Separatism and modern Congregationalism, 192
Separatists, 31; Separatists and Independents, 122
Shaw, Dr., on the Church of the Commonwealth, 85 ; on tolera- tion in the Westminster As- sembly, 99
Socialism, modern, 184
State Church Congregationalism in America, 231
Synods. See Councils
Test Act, 136 ; repeal of, 169
Toleration, 80, 99, 104 ; Inde- pendents' scheme of toleration, 106; Act of Toleration, 127; toleration and tolerance, 242
Tories, attitude of, to Noncon- formity, 134
Toxteth Park Chapel, Liverpool, 130
Trevelyan, Mr. G. M., 48
Uniformity, Act of, 134
Union, Happy, 1 16
Unitarianism, 117. See Presby- terians and Unitarians
Unitarians in England and in America, 122
Unity of Church, Congregational conception of, 192
University of London, 17 1
University tests abolished, 169
INDEX
259
Voluntary Controversy in Scot- land, 186
Walkee, Dr. G. Leon, Half-way
Covenant, 232 Ward, W. G., "Ideal of a
Christian Church," 189 Watts, Isaac, 148
Wesley, John, on Independents, 144 ; Puritanism of John Wes-
Wesley, Samuel, 151
Westminster Assembly, 90, 97; plea for liberty of conscience, 98 ; dissenting brethren, 100
Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, 132
Williams, Dr. Daniel, 1 16
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