earnest and proscribed class of religious men, whose course has been
thus traced in England and Holland, with the enterprise of colonization
in New England. It is but reasonable to suppose that, dating from the
time and the incident referred to in the opening of this chapter,
such an enterprise was latent in conception or desire in the thoughts
of many as a possible alternative for the near future. A resolve or
purpose or effort of such a nature as this involves much brooding over
by individuals, much private communing, balancing of circumstances,
conditions, gains, and losses, and an estimate of means and resources,
with an eye towards allowance by a governmental or noble patronage,
or at least to security in the venture. We have but fragmentary and
scattered information as to all these preliminaries to the emigration.
We must trace them backward from the completion to the initiation of
the enterprise.
And here is the point at which we should define to ourselves, as
intelligently and fairly as we can from our abounding authentic
sources of information, precisely what was the influence or agency of
religion in the first emigration to New England. We are familiar with
the oft-reiterated and positive statement, that the enterprise would
neither have been undertaken, nor persisted in, nor led on to success,
had not religion furnished its mainspring, its guiding motive, and the
end aimed at, to be in degree realized.
We may safely commit ourselves to these assertions, that religion was
the master-motive and object of the most earnest and ablest leaders of
the emigration; that they felt this motive more deeply and with more of
singleness of purpose than they always avowed, as their circumstances
compelled them to take into view sublunary objects of trade and
subsistence which would engage to them needful help and resources; and
that some of these secondary objects very soon qualified and impaired
the paramount importance of the primary one. I am led to make this
allowance of exception as to the occasional reserve in the avowal of
an exclusively religious motive, because of a fact which must impress
the careful student of their history and fortunes for the first hundred
years. That fact is, that in multitudes of occasional utterances,
sermons, journals, and historical sketches, many of the descendants of
the first comers laid more exclusive and emphatic stress upon the prime
agency of religion in the enterprise than did the first movers in it.
When ministers and magistrates in after years uttered their frequent
and sombre laments over the degeneracy of the times, the decay of zeal
and godliness, and the falling from the first love, the refrain always
was found in extolling the one, single, supreme aim of the fathers as
that of pure piety. The pages of Cotton Mather’s _Magnalia_ and of his
tracts of memorial, rebuke, and exhortation, and the _Century Sermon_
of Foxcroft, minister of the First Church, are specimens of masses of
such matter in our old cabinets pitched in that tone. Nor need we
conclude that, as a general rule, the most fervent of those laments or
the most positive of those statements were exaggerated. Only what such
writers and speakers recognized as the degeneracy of their own later
times, must be traced to seeds and agencies which came in with the most
select fellowship of the fathers themselves. We cannot go so far as to
claim that the whole aim, the all-including purpose of every member, or
of even of a majority of the colonists, was religion, after the pattern
of that of the leaders, or of any style of religion. But we have to
conclude that the smaller the number of those among whom we concentrate
the religious fervor in its supreme sway, the more intensified must
have been its power to have enabled them, as it did, to give direction
to the whole enterprise. And this was not only true at the first, but
proportionately so as the original centre of that enterprise for a long
period sent off its radii successively to new settlements in the woods.
There were always found men and women enough to copy the original
pattern and to keep the motive force in action. Sir Henry Maine does
not state the whole of the truth when he writes thus: “The earliest
English emigrants to North America, who belonged principally to the
class of yeomanry, organized themselves in village communities for
purposes of cultivation.”[450]
The stream of exile to New England in the interest of religion was
first parted into one small and one large rill, which, however, soon
flowed together and assimilated, as it appeared that they started
substantially from the same source, with similar elements, and found
more that was congenial than discordant in their qualities. The company
of exiles whom residence in Holland, with its attendant influences
and results, had confirmed and stiffened in their original principles
of rigid Separatism, had the start by nearly a decade of years in
transferring themselves to Plymouth. Their fortunes are traced in the
next chapter.
The colonists in Massachusetts Bay, and those who, in substantial
accord with them, struck into several other settlements in the
wilderness of New England, were mainly those who in the land of their
birth had remained steadfast to their principles of Nonconformity, and
who had borne the penalties of them when avowed and put in practice.
They had not turned in disdain and temper from the institution which
they called their “mother church.” Their divided relation to it they
regarded as rather caused by such harsh conditions as excluded them
from its privileges than by any wilfulness or hostility of their own.
They professed that they still clung to its breast, and wished to be
nourished from it. It was not strange, however, that partial alienation
should, under favoring opportunities, widen and stiffen into seeming
antagonism to it. They regarded themselves as having been subjected
to pains and penalties because of their protest against objectionable
and harmful, as well as unscriptural, exactions in its discipline and
ceremonial. So they were content to be known as Nonconformists, but
repelled the charge of being Separatists. They kept alive a lingering
tenderness, in a reminder of their early membership and later disturbed
affiliation with it. Some few of the sterner spirits among them—and
Roger Williams was such, as he appeared here in his youth—demanded a
penitential avowal of sin from Winthrop’s company, on account of their
having once been in fellowship with the English Church. An agitation
also arose upon the question whether the members of the Boston Church,
who on visits to the old home occasionally conformed, should not be put
under discipline on their return here. Happily the dispute was disposed
of by forbearance and charity.
Still, while there was a slight manifestation at first of an antipathy
or a jealousy on the part of the Nonconformists at the Bay of being
in any way confounded with the Separatists at Plymouth, there never
was a breach or even a controversy, beyond that of a friendly
discussion, between them; and there is something well-nigh amusing,
as well as interesting, in following the quaint narration[451] of the
establishment of immediate harmony and accord between their respective
church ways. Endicott’s little company at Salem, heralding the great
emigration to the Bay, “entered into church estate” in August, 1629,
having sought what we should now call the advice, help, and sympathy of
their Plymouth brethren. This fellowship was extended through Governor
Bradford and other delegates, and the example was afterward followed
in like recognition of other churches. The covenanted members of the
Salem Church _ordained_ their pastor and teacher, notwithstanding that
they had previously been under the hands of a bishop. It soon appeared,
however, that the church was to be emphatically Nonconformist. Two
brothers Brown, at Salem, set up separate worship by the Common
Prayer. On being “convented” before the Governor, his Council and
the ministers, and accusing the church of Separatism, they were told
that the members did not wish to be Separatists, but were simply
Nonconformists with the corruptions of the Church; and that having
suffered much for their principles, and being now in a free place, they
were determined to be rid of Common Prayer and ceremonial.[452]
The First Boston Church, in 1630, was organized under its covenant,
with its appointed and ordained teacher, ruling elder, and deacons. In
ten years after the landing at Plymouth there were five churches after
this pattern, and in twenty years thirty-five, in New England.
This instantaneous abandonment, as it may be called, of everything
in the institution of a church, followed by an immediate disuse of
everything in ceremonial and worship in the English usage which the
Nonconformists had scrupled at home, is of itself very suggestive,
even in the first aspect of it. Followed into detail, it presents some
surprises and very rich instruction. In full result, it exhibits to
us principles and institutions in the highest interests of religion,
in civil, social, and domestic life, which had been repudiated and
put under severe penalties in England, crossing the ocean to plant
themselves in a wilderness for the training and guidance of successive
generations of men and women in freedom, virtue, piety, worldly thrift,
and every form of prosperity. There must have been nobleness in those
principles, as well as in the men and women who suffered for them, put
them on trial, and led them to triumph.
The work of preference, of conviction and conscience, had been wrought
in behalf of those principles, in old English homes and byways, in
humble conventicles, in fireside and wayside musings and conferences.
Enough persons had been brought to be of one mind, purpose, and
resolve, in the spirit of a determined heroism, to make a beginning
of such a sort that it would be more than half of the accomplished
work. There may have been debates, warm variances, hesitations, and
conciliatory methods used among those who entered into covenant as the
First Church of Boston. If there were such, we know nothing of them.
There is no surviving record or intimation of them. The pattern and
model which the exiled colonists followed, needed no study or shaping
on the wilderness soil. It was an old-home product. What might seem to
be extemporized work was prepared work. It was as if they had brought
over timbers cut in their native woods all framed and matched for
setting up in their transferred home. Their initiated teachers had been
ordained by Episcopal hands. But this was neither help nor hindrance.
When they needed more and new ones, they had a method of qualifying
them. Surplice, tippet, cap, rochet, and prayer-book are not missed
or mourned over. Simply not a word is said about them. The fabric
which they set up was of a new and peculiar style. No! They would not
have owned it to be new; they regarded it as the oldest, because the
original,—that which was established by the first generation of the
disciples of Jesus Christ.
One hundred university men from the grand old nooks and shrines of
consecrated learning in Old England were the medium for the “Gospel
work” in New England, till it could supply its needs from its own
well-provided resources. But there was not a prelate among them.
English magistrates of various grades and authority, governors,
judges, spies, collectors, and commissionaries were here to represent
the mother country, till she became so stingy that we were forced
to wean ourselves from her; but never did an English bishop as a
functionary set foot on the soil of what is now the territory of the
United States. And when after our Revolution the virtue which comes
from episcopal hands was communicated to the possessors of it here,
it had parted with what was most offensive or objectionable in its
claim or efficacy to the Old and the New English Puritans. Town and
rural parishes, colleges and schools, had the faithful services of
that hundred of university men. For a long time, the books that were
imported here were almost exclusively the Puritan literature of the
old home, and had a perceptible influence in stiffening, rather than
relaxing, the stern spirit of Dissent, and throwing new vitality into
the hard work which it had to do in the wilderness. One consideration
of the highest practical weight is presented to us in the fact that
the Puritanism of New England originated and fostered the free and
radically working instrumentalities and forces which neutralized its
own errors, restrained its own bigotry and severity, and compelled it
to develop from its own best elements something better than itself.
There were other plantations on this virgin soil, of which religion was
in no sense the master-impulse, and others still in which the mother
church sought to direct the movement. New England was never affected
for evil or for good by them. But if over the whole land, in radiations
or percolations of influence, the leaven of any one section of the
country has wrought in the whole of it, it is that of the New England
Puritanism.
* * * * *
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
THE original authorities and sources of information, in manuscript and
print, relating to the agitations and controversies arising within
the real or assumed membership of the Church of England after the
Reformation, are to be distinguished into two great classes,—those
of a public character, as records of the proceedings of government,
of the courts, and of all bodies or individuals in office charged
with authority; and those of a private nature, coming from voluntary
bodies, or from single members of them, or from writers and authors
whose works were published after the usual method, or sent forth and
circulated surreptitiously. Both these classes of original authorities,
constituting together an enormous mass of an infinitely varied
elementary composition, are alike widely scattered, and, so far as
they have not been gathered into local repositories, could be directly
consulted only by one whose travel, investigation, and research were of
the most extended comprehensiveness. England, Holland, and Switzerland
have in keeping contemporary records and documents relating to minute
and trivial, or to most important and vital, points in one or another
stage, or concerning one or another prime party in the controversy.
Perhaps, even after all the keen investigation and diligent toil
of the most recent inquisitors, such original papers have not been
exhaustively detected and examined. But one who is familiar with the
stores already reported to us, unless his taste and interest in them
run to morbidness, will hardly desire more of them. It is certain
that whatever obscurity may still invest any incidental point in the
controversy, the matter is of such comparatively slight importance,
that the substance and details of any information as to persons or
events which may be lacking to us would hardly qualify the general
narratives of history.
The expense, diligence, and intelligent illustration which within the
last thirty or forty years have been devoted to the collection and
arrangement and calendaring of such masses of the State and other
public papers of Great Britain, have aided as well as prompted the
researches of those who have been zealous to trace out with fidelity
and accuracy every stage, and the character and course of each one,
lofty or obscure, as an actor in the larger and the lesser bearings
of the struggle of Nonconformity and Dissent. As a general statement,
it may be affirmed that the developments and the more full and minute
information concerning the substance and phases of early Puritanism,
as they have been studied in the mass of accumulated documents, have
set forth the controversy in a dignity of interest and in a disclosure
of its vital relations to all theories of civil government, church
establishments, and the institutional administration of religion, far
more fully and in a much more comprehensive view than was recognized by
contemporary actors.
There are two extensive and exceedingly rich collections of
tracts, books, and manuscript documents of a most varied character
well-preserved and easily accessible in London, which furnish
well-nigh inexhaustible materials for the study of the Puritan, the
Nonconformist, and the Separatist movements in all their phases. One of
these is in the British Museum, the other in Dr. Williams’s Library.
In the times with which we are now concerned, the motive, perhaps but
vaguely comprehended by himself, which led George Thomason to gather
his marvellous collection, now in the British Museum, would have been
called a _providential_ prompting. He was a modest man in private
life, and, so far as we know, took no part in public agitations. As a
Royalist bookseller, at “The Rose and Crown, in St. Paul’s Churchyard,”
he had opportunities favoring him in the scheme which he undertook. It
was in 1641 that he began a laborious enterprise, and one not without
very serious risks to himself, which he continued to pursue till
just before his death in 1666. This was to gather up, preserve, and
bind in volumes,—though without any system or order of arrangement
except chronological,—a copy of each of the publications in tract,
or pamphlet, or fly-leaf form which appeared from the press, licensed
or surreptitiously printed, during a period teeming with the issue,
like the dropping of forest leaves, of a most extraordinary series of
ephemeral works, quickened with all the vitality of those times. Though
he began his collection in 1641, he anticipated that date by gathering
similar publications previous to it. He copied during Cromwell’s time
nearly a hundred manuscripts, mainly “on the King’s side, which no
man durst venture to publish here without the danger of his ruin.”
He took pains to write upon most of the publications the date of its
appearance, and when anonymous, the name of its author if he could
ascertain it. Besides the risks of fire and the burden of such a mass
of materials filling his house from cellar to garret, this zealous
collector exposed himself to severe penalties from the authorities on
either side of the great civil and religious conflict. He was compelled
once at least to remove his collection to a safe hiding-place. It fills
now 2,220 volumes, and counts to 34,000 separate publications, from
folio downward. It is difficult to say what may not be found there,
and nearly as difficult to find exactly what one wishes. After various
exposures through which the collection passed safely, it now rests in
the British Museum, under the general title of the “King’s Pamphlets,”
having been purchased and presented by King George III. in 1762, at a
cost of £300. A mine of most curious matter is there ready for search
on every subject, serious or comic, sacred or secular, illustrative
of high and low life during the period. Probably the two most zealous
delvers in that mine for its best uses have been Professor Masson, for
the purpose of _The Life of John Milton: narrated in connexion with the
Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of his Time_, in six
volumes; and Dr. H. M. Dexter, in his _Congregationalism of the Last
Three Hundred Years_, etc. Both authors have turned these pamphlets to
the best account in clearing obscurities or filling gaps in the history
or writings of men prominent in the cause of Nonconformity.
The other comprehensive and extensive collection of pamphlets, volumes,
and original papers for illustrating the whole history of Puritanism
and Dissent, is in what is known as Dr. Williams’s Library, in London.
Dr. Daniel Williams, an eminent Presbyterian divine, possessed of
means, had purchased the library of the famous Dr. William Bates.
Adding to it from his own resources, he founded in 1716 the library
which bears his name, committing it, with a sum of money for a building
(to which additions were made by a subscription), to the hands of
trustees in succession. The library edifice—long standing in Red-Cross
Street, now removed to Grafton Street—has been ever since a favorite
place for the assembling of meetings and committees in the Dissenting
interest (of late years Presbyterians and Unitarians acceding to their
trust), for the transaction of business, for preparing addresses to
successive sovereigns, and managing their cause in Parliament. Those
who in former years have sat in one of the ancient chairs of the
library in Red-Cross Street have hardly escaped feeling profoundly
the influence of the place and of its associations,—the walls hung
with the portraits of venerable divines and scholars learned in all
ancient lore; the cabinets filled with laboriously wrought manuscripts,
histories, diaries, and letters, some of them dating in the first
half of the sixteenth century; the crowded shelves of folios and
smaller tractates composed of brain-work and patient toil, without
the facilities of modern research and study, and the many relics and
memorials connected with the daily ministerial and domestic life of
men of self-denying and honorable service. Harvard College holds and
administers a fund of over sixteen thousand dollars, left by Dr.
Williams in 1711, as a trust for the benefit of the aborigines.
Here is the fitting place for appropriate and most grateful mention
of the results of a labor of devoted zeal and love given by the Rev.
Henry Martyn Dexter, D.D., to the historic memorial of a cause of which
he inherits the full spirit, and in the service of which he has spent
his mature life. It may safely be said that not a single person, at
least of those born on the soil of New England, of the lineage of the
Fathers has so “magnified” their cause and work as he has done. Holding
with such a rooted conviction, as is his, that the Congregational
polity of the Christian Church has the warrant of Scripture and of
the Primitive Church, and that it best serves the sacred interests of
soul-freedom and of associated religion in its institutions, works,
and influence, the earliest witnesses, confessors, and martyrs in its
behalf have seemed to him worthy of the most lavish labor for their
commemoration. Repeatedly has he crossed the seas and plied his most
diligent scrutiny of tracing and searching, as he got the scent of
some tract or record in its hiding-place of private cabinet or dim old
parchment. With hardly eye or thought for the usual attractions of
foreign travel, his valuable leisure has been spent in following any
clew which promised him even the slightest aid to clearing an obscure
point, or setting right a disputed fact, or completing our information
on any serious matter relating to the early history of what is now
represented by Congregationalism. The Introduction to his volume, _The
Congregationalism of the last Three Hundred Years, as seen in its
Literature, with Special Reference to Certain Recondite, Neglected, or
Disputed Passages_,[453] tells in a vigorous and hearty tone what was
his aim, his course, and its method.
The principal text of his volume disposes the treatment of his subject
under twelve lectures, delivered by the author in the Theological
Seminary at Andover, in 1876-1879. This text is elaborately illustrated
by notes, with references and extracts, largely drawn from the
recondite sources and the depositories already referred to. The author
is careful to authenticate all his statements from prime authorities;
and where obscurity or conflict of views or of evidence adduced makes
it necessary, his patience and candor give weight to his judgment or
decision. The extraordinary and unique element of his work is presented
in his _Collections towards a Bibliography of Congregationalism_,
which with the Index to its titles covers more than three hundred
royal octavo pages, in close type. This contains an enumeration of
7,250 titles of publications, from folios down to a few leaves, dating
between the years 1546 and 1879, which have even the slightest relation
in contents, authorship, or purpose with the most comprehensive
bearings of his subject in its historical development.
I have mentioned this elaborate work among the primary, instead of
classing it with the secondary, sources of information on the history
of Nonconformity, because it is something more than a link between the
two. It takes its flavor from the past. Its abounding extracts from the
quaint writings, and its portraitures and relations of the experiences,
of the old-time worthies transfer us to their presence, make us sharers
of their buffeted fortunes and listeners to their living speech. The
work may be regarded as a summary of monumental memorials, more frank
and true than are such generally on stone or brass of those who fought
a good fight and trusted in promises.
The natural desire of a dispassionate reader of the original documents
dealing with the heats of the Puritan controversy, or pursuing it in
the pages of historians who may relate it either with a partisan or
an impartial spirit, is that he might have before him the words and
impressions of some contemporary or observer of profound wisdom and
of well-balanced judgment, as he viewed this turmoil of affairs. The
nearest approach made to the gratification of this wish is found in
two brief but very comprehensive essays from the pen of the great
Lord Bacon, as with an evident serenity and poise of spirit he
studied the scenes before him, and the characters, aims, excesses,
and shortcomings of the various actors, monarchs, prelates, zealots,
enthusiasts, and earnest, however ill-judging, extremists on either
side. The first of these essays in publication, whenever it may have
been written, is entitled _Certain Considerations touching the better
Pacification and Edification of the Church of England_. The date of
its imprint is 1640. But in this reference is made, in the address to
King James, to an earlier essay, which appeared anonymously with the
imprint of 1641, under the title of _An Advertisement touching the
Controversies of the Church of England_. This was evidently written in
the time of Elizabeth. In it, Bacon sagaciously traces the origin of
the controversy to four main springs,—namely, the offering and the
accepting occasions for variance; the extending and multiplying them;
passionate and unbrotherly proceedings on both parts, and the recourse
on either side to a stiffer union among its members, heightening the
distraction. His most severe stricture is upon the Church, for its
harsh measures, as the strife advanced, in enforcing with penalties
what had previously been allowed to be matters of indifference, thus
driving some discontents into a banded sect. He regards it as a grave
error that some of the English Church zealots had spoken contemptuously
of foreign Protestant Churches. Though Bacon affirms that he is himself
no party to the strife, and aims only for an impartial arbitration in
it, his judgment and sympathy evidently incline him to the Puritan side
as against the bishops. A fair-minded Puritan of the time might well
have contented himself with this wise man’s statement of his side and
cause. Of the second of these essays, it being addressed to King James
on his accession, it may be said that it would be difficult to find any
piece of writing of equal compass, on the themes with which it deals,
more crowded with sound, solid good sense, better balanced in its
allowances and limitations, more moderate, judicious, and practical in
its principles, or more likely to harmonize all reasonable differences,
and to repress and discountenance extreme and perverse individualisms.
Bacon justifies innovations and reconstructions. He tells the King that
the opening of his reign is the opportune time for making them. He
protests against modelling all reformation after one pattern. Then he
utters words of eminent wisdom about the government of bishops, about
the liturgy, ceremonies, and subscription, about a preaching ministry,
the abuse of excommunication, and about non-residence, pluralities,
and the maintenance of the ministry. Here, again, moderate men of both
parties might well have been content with the great philosopher’s
judgment.
DOCUMENTS IN FOREIGN REPOSITORIES.—In connection with the exile of so
many prelates, clergy, and other members of the English Church on the
accession of Queen Mary in 1553, the relations established between them
and many eminent Reformers on the Continent resulted in the production
of a large number of documents of the highest historical authenticity
and value, as throwing light upon the aims and methods of the Puritans
in England during the whole period from 1553 to 1602. Several of these
exiles settled at Zurich, and there formed intimate friendships with
many magistrates and ministers of the Reformed religion. On the return
of the exiles, on the accession of Elizabeth, many of them kept up
a constant correspondence with their friends. The letters have been
preserved in the archives of Zurich, and it has been only within the
last forty years that the wealth of information in them has been
revealed in England. There are nearly two hundred folio volumes of
these letters. Strype and Burnet had obtained copies of some of them,
which they put to use in their histories.[454] A descendant of one of
the Swiss correspondents had before 1788 copied eighteen thousand of
the letters with his own hand, arranged chronologically. In 1845 and
1846, “The Parker Society” in England published,[455] in four octavo
volumes, a large number of these “Zurich Letters,” translated and
carefully edited, with annotations. The general titles are _The Zurich
Letters, comprising the Correspondence of Several English Bishops,
and Others, with Some of the Helvetian Reformers_, during the reigns
of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queens Mary and Elizabeth. In the
collection are several letters to royal personages. One of these, by
Rodolph Gualter, who in his youth had resided at Oxford, to Queen
Elizabeth, dated Zurich, Jan. 16, 1559, is a long epistle, written in a
dignified, courteous and earnest strain, counselling the Queen to have
two things in her supreme regard: “First, that every reformation of the
Church and of religion be conducted agreeably to the Word of God;” and
second, that she restrain her counsellors from hindering or reversing
the good work. Better than from the best-digested pages of history,
one may learn from these fresh and admirable letters, down to the most
minute detail and incident, the cross-workings, the entanglements, the
progressive advance, the obstructions, the retrograde and opposing
forces and influences connected with the oscillations of the reform
in England. Nowhere else in our abounding literature on the subject
are the Puritans and Nonconformists presented more faithfully and
intelligently in their conscientious, scrupulous, and certainly
well-meant efforts, within the Church itself, to have its institutions,
ceremonial, and discipline disposed after a pattern which should have
regard equally to discountenance the impositions and superstitions of
the Papal system, which had been nominally renounced, and to make the
purified Church a power to advance the best interests of true religion.
The intelligent American visitor to Zurich, if his attention is drawn
to this highly valued and admirably arranged collection in its library,
can hardly fail of the impression that he has before him most sincere
evidences of the depth of thought and the nobleness of spirit of men
who were working out the principles of wisdom and righteousness.
Considering the influence exerted upon some of the English Puritans
by their residence on the Continent, and their frequent reference
afterward to the different ecclesiastical system and discipline adopted
there, an interesting phase of the controversy is presented in the
two following works. At the opening of the eighteenth century, Dr.
William Nichols,—as he says, at the prompting of others, though, it
was intimated, of his own motion,—wrote a _Defence of the Doctrine
and Discipline of the Church of England_, addressed especially to
foreign divines and churches. This was replied to by James Peirce in
his _Vindication of the Dissenters; or, an Appeal to Foreign Divines,
Professors, and all other Learned Men of the Reformed Religion_. In
this volume, originally written and published in Latin, afterward
translated by the author and published in English, there is in the main
a thorough and candid review of the rise and the conduct of the cause
of Nonconformity, and a searching examination of the principles of the
Church of England. Peirce quotes with care the original authorities,
and puts them to a good use. He follows the history into the fortunes
of those who had taken refuge and established their religion in New
England, and while he says he differs with Mr. Cotton, of Boston, “in
many of his opinions,” defends him and all the “Independents” from the
charge of being “Brownists.”
The historians Bancroft and Motley and Dr. H. M. Dexter have, after
diligent research in Holland, discovered many little scraps of curious
information relating to the residence, mode of life, social and
domestic experiences, and way of conducting their religious affairs,
of the earliest English exiles there associated in churches and
assemblies. These slight memorials indicate that the Puritans and
Separatists in refuge there, though their circumstances were modest, if
not obscure, were respected for their characters and for the sincerity
of their purposes. They found conveniences from the presses in Holland
for putting into print their own fertile productions in the setting
forth of their principles, while the busy commerce between the ports
of Holland and those of England and Scotland furnished ready means for
conveying these publications, as well as private letters, secretly and
surreptitiously if it were necessary, to the safe hands of friends.
Nor, if the occasion was urgent, would one of these refugees hesitate,
taking in his hands the risk of his liberty or life, to pass the
seas on some secret errand in his own behalf or in the interest of
his fellows. Such scraps of information from Dutch repositories as
the explorers above named have gathered have all been duly valued as
filling gaps in our previous knowledge, or clearing up some obscure
passages. The results have been so gratefully recognized and at once
incorporated in the many modern rehearsals of the old history, that
they need not be referred to more specifically here.[456]
ENGLISH AUTHORITIES.—All such periods of intense controversy and
struggle upon themes of the highest concern to man, as that of the
internal commotions in England immediately following and consequent
upon the Reformation, leave behind them some memorial in literature
of so conspicuous and rare an excellence as to insure perpetual
freshness, and to acquire interest and attractions even beyond that
of the particular subject with which it deals. When the Press in
such periods is pouring its outflow of ephemeral tracts and books,
vigorous, intense, effective, as they may be for a temporary end or
for the circle of a sect or party, genius or scholarly culture, or a
philosophical and comprehensive spirit, penetrating below the surface
and rising above the details of a controversy, will engage itself upon
the product of what we call an immortal work. Such a work[457] is
that which came from the pen of “the judicious Hooker,”—Richard by
baptismal name. His eight books constitute one of the richest classics
of the English tongue. It finds delighted readers among those who
care little, if at all, for the mere issues of the questions under
controversy. Its generally rich and stately style, its logic and
rhetoric, its wealth of learning, and its occasional play of satire
or contempt, engage the interest of many a reader who would turn
listlessly from most pages of polemics. There is so much in it of a
manly, free courage and self-asserting spirit, that at times it is
difficult to believe that it was written by one who, according to the
quaint biography of him by Isaack Walton, was so cowed and subjugated
by his domestic partner, the mother of his children. English Churchmen
may well boast themselves on this majestic work, dealing with the
nucleus of the whole Puritan controversy, the question of Church
authority. Of course, its argument in its whole sum and detail, in its
array and estimate of original vouchers, has been traversed and brought
under dispute by champions on the other side. But it will always hold
its supreme place while the cause which it upholds shall need a classic.
Hallam[458] says that, “though the reasonings of Hooker won for him the
surname of ‘the Judicious,’ they are not always safe or satisfactory,
nor, perhaps, can they be reckoned wholly clear or consistent. His
learning, though beyond that of most English writers in that age, is
necessarily uncritical; and his fundamental theory, the mutability of
ecclesiastical government, has as little pleased those for whom he
wrote, as those whom he repelled by its means.” The same writer, in
another work,[459] passes a high encomium upon Hooker’s _Polity_, as
finding a basis for its argument in natural law.
The first four of the books of Hooker’s work were published in 1594,
the fifth in 1597. As the other three had been left in manuscript,
and did not appear in print till many years after his death in 1600,
suspicions were raised that they might have been interpolated. As the
Narrative of this chapter has given place to an exposition of Hooker’s
fundamental position against the Nonconformists, it need not be
repeated here.
For a long period, the well-known work[460] of Daniel Neal, in its
successive editions, was the only one written from an historical point
of view by an author not contemporary with its whole subject, which had
appeared from the press, was widely circulated and generally accredited
for its fidelity, its ability, and its trustworthiness. Mr. Neal, born
in London in 1678, was a Dissenting minister in that city, and died
in 1743. His history was published in portions between 1731 and 1738.
The editions of it now in general circulation are those edited with
valuable notes by Dr. Toulmin, the first of which appeared in London in
1793, and the last in 1837. The editor continued the history after the
English Revolution. Mr. Neal made diligent research, in order to verify
his statements from all the original sources which were open to him. He
relied largely on the laborious _Memorials_ gathered by the painstaking
Strype, while owing much to Fuller and Burnet. Mosheim accepted Neal’s
work as of the highest authority. Dr. Kippis commends it highly in the
_Biographia Britannica_. After the publication of his first volume,
Neal made public his answer to an anonymous work by Dr. Maddox, Bishop
of St. Asaph, vindicating the Church of England “from the injurious
reflections cast upon it in that volume.” Similar animadversions were
cast upon the later volumes by Dr. Zachary Grey. Bishop Warburton, in
some _Notes_ to Mr. Neal’s history which he published in 1788, even
brings in question the author’s veracity. Dr. Toulmin meets and answers
such charges. Mr. Neal sought to give his pages authenticity by full
quotations, citations, and references to his original authorities.
In a few instances in which Burnet or others denied his fairness or
accuracy, Dr. Toulmin has vindicated him against all aspersions, if
not from all charges of error. The author wrote when the Dissenters
were relieved by legislation of the severe impositions, fines, and
inflictions of an earlier period, but were by no means brought into an
equality in social and civil rights and privileges with the favored and
patronized members of the Church Establishment. So Mr. Neal’s pages
are free from the asperity and bitterness provoked into indulgence by
his predecessors under the smart of humiliating wrongs. Still, he is
loyal to the memory and steadfastness of those earlier sufferers. There
was much on which the Dissenters of his time might pride themselves as
won by the constancy of those who had fought for them the battles with
lordly arrogance and hierarchical assumptions and prerogatives. There
was a palmy age for Dissent in England which Lord Macaulay describes
very felicitously, when, as he says, there were Dissenting ministers
whose standing and condition in life compared favorably with those of
all the clergy of the Establishment below those of the bishops. Among
the Dissenting laity were men of wealth and of commercial consequence,
as a high and honored social class, whose munificent endowments were
bestowed on some of the noblest institutions of the realm.
Mr. Hallam devotes the second, third, and fourth chapters of his
_Constitutional History of England_ to the development of the history
of Nonconformity, both among Roman Catholics and Protestants, during
the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth. Among
the many reviews and critical estimates of this history, that in the
_Edinburgh Review_, vol. xlviii., is especially able and satisfactory.
Mr. Hallam brought to the presentation of this part of his whole
subject, not only his habitually thorough and conscientious fulness of
research among authorities and documents, public and private, but also
that spirit of candor, moderation, and equitable impartiality which,
if not already cherished in the purposes and motives of one intending
the task of an historian, may or may not be acquired and exercised in
dealing with themes engaging so much of temper, strife, and intenseness
of polemical animosity. From his point of view, reading backwards
along the line of historical development, he recognized that the early
Nonconformists were dealing with fundamental principles in religious
affairs which, though not at the time fully apprehended, would
necessarily involve immunities and rights of a political character.
It is because of this, now clearly exposed and certified to us, that
such lofty tributes are rendered to the Puritans as the exponents and
champions of English liberty.
The _Inner Life_[461] of Robert Barclay, not completely, though
substantially, finished and supervised by its author, is an admirable
example of the more wise, just, and considerate tone and method
adopted in quite recent years for dealing with times and subjects of
once embittered religious agitation and controversy. It is calm and
judicial in its temper, inclusive and well-digested in its materials
and contents. The author’s research was most wide and comprehensive.
He spared no labor in the quest of original documents, in manuscript
or print, all over England and on the Continent, of prime use and
authority for his purpose, whether in public repositories or in private
cabinets. For some very important matters which entered into the full
treatment of his theme he has used for the first time many records that
had been lying in undisturbed repose, and he has enlisted the valuable
aid of many friends.
The author, after defining the idea and object of a visible church,
makes an elaborate effort to trace to its sources and in its course
the development of religious opinion in England previous to 1640.
He marks the rise of Barrowism, Brownism, of the Johnsonists, the
Separatists, the Presbyterians, the early Independents, the two parties
of Baptists, and the Friends, or Quakers. Some of the views, habits,
and principles adopted by these parties he traces in their connection
with the Mennonites on the Continent. He distinguishes, as far as
possible, the various shades of opinion, the introduction of new points
of controversy or discussion, the individualisms, extravagancies,
eccentricities, and erratic excesses of individuals or parties,
and he keeps distinct the two main currents of the development, as
they favored or rejected the connection of civil and ecclesiastical
authority. He draws the line distinctly between the Episcopalians
and Presbyterians, on the one side, as according in favoring a state
church and a national establishment, and the original ideas gradually
developed into positive principles of individuals and societies
among the Separatists, which involved the complete separation of the
administration of religion from the civil power.
The central subject of Mr. Barclay’s volume is the early history of the
Friends, or Quakers. Two chief points are specially dealt with: First,
many of the distinctive principles in their teaching and conduct which
have been generally regarded as original with them are traced as in
full recognition by other parties previous to the preaching of George
Fox. Second, the author presents many facts, new, or in a new light,
which disclose how earnest were the efforts of the early Friends for
a very careful and even elaborate inner organization and discipline
of their membership, after the manner of a visible Church,—the
appointment and oversight of a qualified ministry, the sending out of
authorized missionaries, and the inquisition into the private affairs,
the home life, habits, and business of members, carried out into very
minute and annoying details. He reveals to us the embarrassments met
by them in deciding upon the question of “birthright membership.”
Manuscript documents, records, minute-books, etc., preserved in many
places where the early Friends had their meetings, are found very
communicative.[462]
Mr. Skeats, in his _Free Churches_[463] has in view as his general
purpose, to trace “the part which English Dissent has played in
the history of England.” Following this comprehensive design, he
presents the various phases of Nonconformity and Separatism through
denominational organizations among Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers,
Independents, and Congregationalists, noting the attitude of opposition
assumed towards them by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. He
regards the Toleration Act, passed in 1689,—which even then excluded
the Unitarians from its terms,—as drawing the line between the
efforts which had been made up to that time to extinguish Dissent,
and the leaving it simply under a stigma, as lacking social standing
and Government recognition. Only the first chapter, covering a
hundred of the six hundred pages of the volume, is concerned with the
subject directly in our hands. The author is in full sympathy with
the principles and the cause, the attitude and the persistency, of
the resolute and buffeted men whose views he sets forth, as developed
from the earliest stage of the Reformation in England. He cites and
quotes original authorities to authenticate his statements and his
judgments. In some instances, where they bear hard upon the conduct
of the archbishops of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth, Curteis, in
his _Bampton Lectures_, challenges their fairness. More than four
hundred Dissenting societies, Congregationalist and Baptist, are now
existing in England, which date their origin before the passage of
the Toleration Act under William.[464] To these are to be added many
societies of Presbyterians and Quakers.
The Congregational Union of England and Wales is an organized body
devoted to the interests of the fellowship to which it succeeds as
representing the original single and associated Nonconformists from the
date of the English Reformation. Its magazines, its annual reports,
and various publications issued under its patronage, keep in living
interest and advocacy the principles first stood for by faithful
witnesses, sufferers, and martyrs. One of these publications, of
especial importance, bears the following title: _Historical Memorials
relating to the Independents, or Congregationalists, from their Rise to
the Restoration of the Monarchy_, 1660, London, 1839. The distinctive
value and authority of this work, which is in four octavo volumes,
attach to its being almost exclusively composed of the original
writings, of various kinds, from the pens of the first Nonconformists,
and the answers or arguments brought against them. These have been
gathered by keen and extended investigation, carefully authenticated,
and, where it is necessary, annotated. The motive which inspired
this undertaking was to remove the obscurity and contumely which had
been threatening to settle over the memory and principles of men
whose own writings prove them to have been equal in learning, acumen,
argumentative power, and heroic constancy of purpose to defend a cause
by them thought worthy of their devotion. Many important papers which
elsewhere are found only in quotations, extracts, or fragments, are
here given in full.
The Bi-Centennial commemoration of the ejectment of all Nonconforming
ministers from the parish churches of England, on St. Bartholomew’s
Day, 1662, was made the occasion, after modern usage for such
observances, of the delivery of a multitude of addresses, and the
preparation and publication of numerous pamphlets and volumes, of
local or general interest, with historical retrospect and review of
the origin and development of English Nonconformity. Curteis[465] has
a very pregnant note on the “bicentenary rhetoric” connected with this
occasion. He alleges that “incredible exaggerations” were exposed, as
founded upon the lists given in Calamy’s famous Nonconformist Memorial
(edited by Palmer) of the ejected ministers, as being in number two
thousand. Curteis says it was proved that instead of there being 293
such in London parishes, there were by count only 127, and that from
the whole alleged number of two thousand, there should be struck off no
less than twelve hundred.[466]
There are three very admirable works[467] covering much of the matter
of this chapter, from the pen of John Tulloch, D.D., Principal of St.
Mary’s College in the University of St. Andrew’s.
Though these three works are from the pen of a clergyman of the
Church of Scotland, they are written in a spirit of the most broad
and comprehensive catholicity. They set forth with keen discernment
and with generous appreciation the advances made by highly gifted
individual minds in the several stages and phases of the development of
a protracted controversy upon the principles involved in an attempted
adjustment of the rights of conscience and free thought, in asserting
themselves against traditional and ecclesiastical proscriptions. It
required the contributions from many such minds and spirits, with their
fragments of certified truth, to insure the substitution of reason for
authority.
CHURCH OF ENGLAND AUTHORITIES.—Among the recently published works, the
authors of which have aimed with moderation and impartiality to treat a
theme of embittered relations and rehearsals so as to present readers
with information of facts and the means of judging fairly between
violent contestants in their once angry issues, is one already referred
to as Curteis’s _Bampton Lectures_.[468] Assuming that the English
Church had an origin and existence independent of the ecclesiastical
authority of the Pope, the author relates the process by which it
reformed itself, by renouncing his interference and impositions, and
establishing its own discipline and ritual. After this he regards and
treats the Romanists as but one class of Dissenters, taking their
place as such with the Independents, the Baptists, the Quakers, the
Unitarians, and the Wesleyans. Of these divided elements of the common
Christian fold, the author traces the rise, the leading principles, and
the distinct institutions and methods which they adopted. His treatment
of his large and tangled subject is as fair, considerate, and judicious
as could be expected from an earnest and heartily loyal minister of the
English Church. He makes many strong statements to commend and urge a
national establishment of religion as far more dignified, consistent,
and desirable than the scattering and fragmentary multiplication,
indefinitely increasing under petty variances, of independent religious
organizations. But he does not work out a practicable method for his
suggested scheme when those concerned in it prefer their own ways. Mr.
Curteis is very severe (p. 62) in his rebuke upon the harshness of
terms in which Mr. Skeats[469] deals with Archbishop Parker, in the
course pursued by him towards the Puritans. But the view presented by
Mr. Skeats is more than justified by Hallam,[470] in his calm dealing
with the original documents.
In the same connection may be mentioned _The Church and Puritans_,[471]
a small and compact volume, written in the best spirit of moderation
and candor. In but little more than two hundred open pages, the author
traces the whole course of Dissent,—its rise, aims, principles,
and methods, and its struggles, buffetings, and discomfitures, from
its manifestations under Elizabeth to the failure of “a glorious
opportunity of reconciling all moderate Dissenters to the communion
of the Church of England, under William and Mary.” By the judicious
restraint upon what might naturally be his promptings, as a clergyman
of the Church of England, to criticise with some sharpness what has so
generally been represented as the perversity and weak scrupulosity of
the Puritans, he is eminently fair and considerate in presenting their
side of the controversy, and in dealing with their more conspicuous
men. The abounding citation of original authorities on both sides in
his notes authenticates, for nearly every sentence of the work, the
statement made in it.
Two works of a remarkably liberal and scholarly character which have
quite recently appeared from the pens of eminent divines of the English
Church, would have been gratefully welcomed by the Nonconformists in
the period of their sharpest conflict, on account of their generous
spirit and their contents. They would have been especially noteworthy
in the liberal concessions which they make upon all the points
involved in the controversy, as to the simple authority and pattern of
Scripture in the constitution and discipline of the Christian Church,
as against the hierarchical claims based upon traditions and usages
subsequent to the age of the apostles, and traceable in the so-called
Primitive Church. These books are Mr. Edwin Hatch’s _Organization of
the Early Christian Churches_,[472] and Dean Stanley’s _Christian
Institutions_.[473]
Mr. Hatch has also published articles of a similar tenor to the
contents of his Bampton Lectures, in the _Dictionary of Christian
Antiquities_. In these lectures, the author aims to trace the facts
of ecclesiastical history in the same way as those of civil history
are usually dealt with. His aim is to investigate the framework of
the earliest Christian societies. He says these societies in their
formation adjusted themselves to previously existing methods of
association. The philanthropic element in them suggested the sort
of officers needed, their provinces and functions. A president of
the society and one or more distributors of alms were the requisite
officers. Then as increasing numbers in a society, and of societies,
made necessary a distribution of functions, with centralization and
subordination of duty and authority, an ecclesiastical system was
developed by like methods to those of a civil or political system.
Convenience and adaptation thus originated the elements of a hierarchy,
the regulation of which was watched over and disposed by a system of
councils.
Dean Stanley’s volume is a collection of essays, previously published
separately. They are liberal in tone and tenor, and by no means
in harmony with, or even quite respectful toward, any high-church
principles, or any demands of “divine right” for ecclesiastical
authority. He adopts a rational point of view for marking the
accumulation of sentiments and usages around the original substance of
Christianity. He exhibits the entire unlikeness of conditions and needs
between the early days of the religion and our own. He recognizes the
vast superstructure of fable reared upon original simple verities, and,
like Mr. Hatch, identifies the development of ecclesiastical with that
of civil forms and usages.
An _Essay on the Christian Ministry_, by Bishop Lightfoot, treats after
a like unconventional method, the themes which in the days of early
Nonconformity were dealt with in so different a tone and method.
NEW ENGLAND AUTHORITIES.[474]—The authorities concerning every detail
in the institution and disposing of church affairs in New England are
abundant and well-nigh exhaustive. They may be consulted as digested
and set in order in the more recently published works to be here
named by title, or they may be traced fragmentarily in chronological
order in the writings of the Fathers themselves. The organization of
the New England churches came to be best described under the term
“Congregational.” It was in substance a modification of Barrowism.
While there seems to have been but little discordancy here among those
who followed the pattern, they were soon challenged by some of their
brethren in England most nearly in sympathy with them, as to doubtful
or debated principles and methods in their institution and discipline
of churches. There were two chief points which came under discussion:
first, the respective rights of all the brethren composing a church
fellowship in administering discipline, and those of the pastor,
teacher, and elders. Should the whole church, or only its officers, be
primarily and ultimately invested with executive and administrative
power? The second point covered all the considerations which would
come into prominence in deciding upon the relations of churches to
each other,—whether each should maintain an absolute independency, or
qualify it in any way by seeking sympathy, fellowship, and advice, and
heeding remonstrances or interference from “sister churches,” through
their teachers and elders.
Contemporary references to these matters as they presented themselves
to the attention of those who here first entered into a “church
estate,” are scattered over Governor Winthrop’s journal. John Cotton,
minister of the First Church of Boston, diligently and earnestly,
in successive writings and publications, set himself to answering
all questioning and challenging friends abroad. He evidently had to
work out clear and consistent views of his own on a subject which,
besides being novel in many of its relations, was embarrassed by local
difficulties, and by some conscientious or practical diversities of
judgment among his associates. Richard Mather, of Dorchester, also
contributed his help in the exposition of the Congregational polity,
which was to be defended alike from extreme Barrowism and from
Presbyterianism, which was soon found to have some sympathizers in the
colony. By a sort of general consent, recourse was had to a succession
of “synods,” or councils of the representatives of the churches, first
those of the Bay Colony alone, then with some of the other New England
colonies. These synods resulted in the formation of a “Platform,” which
laid out in form and detail the system of the Congregational polity.
It is not necessary here to indicate the titles, contents, and authors
of the several publications, preserved in our cabinets of relics, which
contributed either to the dissension or to the pacification of the
sometimes eccentric and heated, and of the always scrupulous, earnest,
and independent parties in this work of ecclesiastical reconstruction.
They have been so faithfully, admirably, and impartially digested by
Dr. Dexter in the eighth of the lectures in his _Congregationalism_,
as to present to the reader a full and intelligent view of the whole
subject in its development and its results, while relieving him of
what save to the fewest possible of historical students would be
a repelling task. If, however, zeal or curiosity should dispose
any one to peer through those dried and withered relics of the old
polemics of a generation that drew its honey from the rocks, he will
find much occasion to respect the acuteness and the persistency of
men who, having taken the interests of their creed and piety into
their own hands, determined to build on what was to them the only
sure foundation. That foundation was “the Word.” If the Scriptures,
as their prelatical foes insisted, were not intended to afford, and
would not afford, a complete pattern of a method of institution and
government of a Christian Church, the reader of those patiently wrought
tractates will often be amazed as he notes how rich and fertile, how
apt and facile, the contents of the sacred books were found to be, in
furnishing the requisite material for argument and authority.
A controversial discussion was opened in 1861 by Hon. D. A. White, of
Salem, by the publication of his _New England Congregationalism in its
Origin and Purity, illustrated by the Foundation and Early Records
of the First Church in Salem, and Various Discussions pertaining to
the Subject_. To this work Rev. J. B. Felt, in the same year, made
an answer: _Reply to the New England Congregationalism of Hon. D. A.
White_. The principal interest of the matter of these two publications
consists in their arguments upon the question whether Congregationalism
as a system of polity in the constitution and government of churches
carries with it, as an essential organic part, the doctrinal creed
held by those who first adopted it. Dr. Dexter offers some suggestions
on this point, arguing that the creed of the first Congregationalists
belongs continuously to their system of polity. Of course, only
constructive and inferential arguments can be brought to bear on this
point. As we have seen, from the first manifestations of Nonconformity
and Dissent in England, doctrinal themes did not at all enter into the
controversy, it being taken for granted that there was accord upon
them. But there certainly is no absolute, vital connection between a
form of polity and a doctrinal system. There have come to be very many
organizations and fellowships among Protestants which are substantially
Congregational in their order, while widely diverse in their creeds.
In 1862, Mr. Felt published _The Ecclesiastical History of New England_.
Very full and curiously interesting information about the principles,
persons, and events connecting the Puritan controversy in the Old
World with the settlement of New England, may be found in the now
well-nigh innumerable volumes containing the history of our oldest
towns and churches. In their earlier pages or chapters these histories
find the town and the church a common theme. Grateful occasions have
been found in commemorations of bi-centennial or longer periods, from
the settlement of municipalities or the foundation of parishes, to
review the past, and to trace in the old land the men who brought
here in their exile, for free and successful enjoyment, principles
for which they had there suffered. The history of the Reformation and
of Nonconformity might indeed be largely written from the pamphlets
and the volumes called out by these local commemorations, so numerous
during the last decade of years. Traces of matter of a similar
character may also be found in the personal and historical references,
in text or note, of the first volume of the _Biographical Sketches
of the Graduates of Harvard University_, by John Langdon Sibley. In
connection with the public and formal observance of the Two Hundred and
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the First Church of Boston,—in
the fifth in order of the edifices in which it had worshipped,—a son
of the present pastor (the seventeenth in the line of succession)
prepared and published a work with the following title: _History of
the First Church in Boston. 1630-1880. By Arthur B. Ellis. With an
Introduction by George E. Ellis. Illustrated._ Boston, 1881. Pages
lxxxviii + 356.
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