Sketches in the evolution of English Congregationalism

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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

PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 103

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.

104 PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS

" 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-

PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 107

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.

PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS 109

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-

REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 133

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

REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 137

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

REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 139

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

REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 141

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,

REACTIONS AND Rp]VIVAL 145

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

REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 147

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

REACTIONS AND REVIVAL 149

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

AND ANGLICANS 183

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

1 84 CONGKEGATIONALISTS

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

AND ANGLICANS 185

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-

I 8 6 CONGREGATION ALISTS

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.

AND ANGLICANS 187

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

1 8 8 CONGREGATION ALISTS

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

AND ANGLICANS 189

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

1 90 CONGREGATIONALISTS

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

AND ANGLICANS 191

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

1 92 CONGREGATIONALISTS

— 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

AND ANGLICANS 193

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

1 94 CONGREGATIONALISTS

" 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.

AND ANGLICANS 195

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

1 96 CONGREGATION ALISTS

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

AND ANdLICANS 197

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

r 98 CONGREGATION ALTSTS

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

AND ANGLICANS 199

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

200 CONGREGATION ALISTS

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.

AND ANGLICANS 201

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

2 o 2 CONGREGATION ALISTS

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

AND ANGLICANS 203

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

2 04 CONGREGATIONALISTS

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

AND ANGLICANS 205

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

2o6 CONG REG ATIONALTSTS

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.

AND ANGLICANS 207

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

2o8 CONGREGATIONALISTS

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

AND ANGLICANS 209

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

2 1 o CONGREGATION ALISTS

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

AND ANGLICANS 2 i i

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

2 1 2 CONGREG ATIONALISTS

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."

2 22 INDEPENDENTS AND

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.

2 24 INDEPENDENTS AND

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.

2 26 INDEPENDENTS AND

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.

CONGREGATION ALISTS 229

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.

2 34 INDEPENDENTS AND

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

THE END

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