CHAPTER I

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and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CONNECTICUT

BY

M. LOUISE GREENE, PhD.

PREFACE

The following monograph is the outgrowth of three earlier and shorter

essays. The first, "Church and State in Connecticut to 1818," was

presented to Yale University as a doctor's thesis. The second, a

briefer and more popularly written article, won the Straus prize

offered in 1896 through Brown University by the Hon. Oscar S. Straus.

The third, a paper containing additional matter, was so far approved

by the American Historical Association as to receive honorable mention

in the Justin Winsor prize competition of 1901.

With such encouragement, it seemed as if the history of the

development of religious liberty in Connecticut might serve a larger

purpose than that of satisfying personal interest alone. In

Connecticut such development was not marked, as so often elsewhere, by

wild disorder, outrageous oppression, tyranny of classes, civil war,

or by any great retrograde movement. Connecticut was more modern in

her progress towards such liberty, and her contribution to advancing

civilization was a pattern of stability, of reasonableness in

government, and of a slow broadening out of the conception of liberty,

as she gradually softened down her restrictions upon religious and

personal freedom.

And yet, Connecticut is recalled as a part of that New England where

those not Congregationalists, the unorthodox or radical thinkers,

found early and late an uncomfortable atmosphere and restricted

liberties. By a study of her past, I have hoped to contribute to a

fairer judgment of the men and measures of colonial times, and to a

correct estimate of those essentials in religion and morals which

endure from age to age, and which alone, it would seem, must

constitute the basis of that "ultimate union of Christendom" toward

which so many confidently look. The past should teach the present,

and one generation, from dwelling upon the transient beliefs and

opinions of a preceding, may better judge what are the non-essentials

of its own.

Connecticut's individual experiment in the union of Church and State

is separable neither from the New England setting of her earliest days

nor from the early years of that Congregationalism which the colony

approved and established. Hence, the opening chapters of her story

must treat of events both in old England and in New. And because

religious liberty was finally won by a coalition of men like-minded in

their attitude towards rights of conscience and in their desire for

certain necessary changes and reforms in government, the final

chapters must deal with social and political conditions more than with

those purely religious. It may be pertinent to remark that the passing

of a hundred years since the divorce of Church and State and the

reforms of a century ago have brought to the commonwealth some of the

same deplorable political conditions that the men of the past, the

first Constitutional Reform Party, swept away by the peaceful

revolution of 1818.

For encouragement, assistance, and suggestions, I am especially

indebted to Professor George B. Adams and Professor Williston Walker

of Yale University, to Professor Charles M. Andrews of Bryn Mawr, to

Dr. William G. Andrews, rector of Christ Church, Guilford, Conn., and

to Professor Lucy M. Salmon of Vassar College. Of numerous libraries,

my largest debt is to that of Yale University.

M. LOUISE GREENE.

NEW HAVEN, October 20, 1905.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE EVOLUTION OF EARLY CONGREGATIONALISM

Preparation of the English nation for the two earliest forms of

Congregationalism, Brownism and Barrowism.--Rise of Separatism and

Puritanism.--Non-conformists during Queen Mary's reign.--Revival of

the Reformation movement under Queen Elizabeth.--Development of

Presbyterianism.--Three Cambridge men, Robert Browne, Henry Greenwood,

and Henry Barrowe.--Brownism and Barrowism.--The Puritans under

Elizabeth, her early tolerance and later change of policy.--Arrest of

the Puritan movement by the clash between Episcopal and Presbyterian

forms of polity and the pretensions of the latter.--James the First

and his policy of conformity.--Exile of the Gainsborough and Scrooby

Separatists.--Separatist writings.--General approachment of Puritans

and Separatists in their ideas of church polity.--The Scrooby exiles

in America.--Sympathy of the Separatists of Plymouth Colony with both

the English Established Church and with English Puritans.

II. THE TRANSPLANTING OF CONGREGATIONALISM

English Puritans decide to colonize in America.--Friendly relations

between the settlements of Salem and Plymouth.--Salem decides upon the

character of her church organization.--Arrival of Higginson and

Skelton with recruits.--Formation of the Salem church and election of

officers.--Governor Bradford and delegates from Plymouth present.--The

beginning of Congregational polity among the Puritans and the break

with English Episcopacy.--Formation and organization of the New

England churches.

III. CHURCH AND STATE IN NEW ENGLAND

Church and State in the four New England colonies.--Early theological

dissensions and disturbances.--Colonial legislation in behalf of

religion.--Development of state authority at the cost of the

independence of the church.--Desire of Massachusetts for a platform of

church discipline.--Practical working of the theory of Church and

State in Connecticut.

IV. THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM AND THE HALF-WAY COVENANT

Necessity of a church platform to resist innovations, to answer

English criticism, and to meet changing conditions of colonial

life.--Summary of the Cambridge Platform.--Of the history of

Congregationalism to the year 1648.--Attempt to discipline the

Hartford, Conn., church according to the Platform.--Spread of its

schism.--Petition to the Connecticut General Court for some method of

relief.--The Ministerial Convention or "Synod" of 1657.--Its Half-Way

Covenant.--Attitude of the Connecticut churches towards the

measure.--Pitkin's petition to the General Court of Connecticut for

broader church privileges.--The Court's favorable reply.--Renewed

outbreak of schism in the Hartford and other churches.--Failure in the

calling of a synod of New England churches.--The Connecticut Court

establishes the Congregational Church.--Connecticut's first toleration

act.--Settlement of the Hartford dispute.--The new order and its

important modifications of ecclesiastical polity.

V. A PERIOD OF TRANSITION

Drift from religious to secular, and from intercolonial to individual

interests.--Reforming Synod of 1680.--Religious life in the last

quarter of the seventeenth century.--The "Proposals of 1705" in

Massachusetts.--Introduction in Connecticut of the Saybrook System of

Consociated Church government.

VI. THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM

The Confession of Faith.--Heads of Agreement.--Fifteen

Articles.--Attitude of the churches towards the Platform.--Formation

of Consociations.--The "Proviso" in the act of establishment.--Neglect

to read the proviso to the Norwich church.--Contention arising.--The

Norwich church as an example of the difficulty of collecting church

rates.

VII. THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM AND THE TOLERATION ACT

Toleration in the "Proviso" of the act establishing the Saybrook

Platform.--Reasons for passing the Toleration Act of 1708.--Baptist

dissenters.--Rogerine-Baptists, Rogerine-Quakers or Rogerines, and

their persecution.--Attitude toward the Society of Friends or

Quakers.--Toward the Church of England men or

Episcopalians.--Political events parallel in time with the dissenters'

attempts to secure exemption from the support of the Connecticut

Establishment.--General Ineffectiveness of the Toleration Act.

VIII. THE FIRST VICTORY FOR DISSENT

General dissatisfaction with the Toleration Act.--Episcopalians resent

petty persecution.--Their desire for an American

episcopate.--Conversion of Cutler, Rector of Yale College, and

others.--Bishop Gibson's correspondence with Governor Talcott.

--Petition of the Fairfield churchmen.--Law of 1727 exempting

Churchmen.--Persecution growing out of neglect to enforce the

law.--Futile efforts of the Rogerines to obtain exemption.--Charges

against the Colony of Connecticut.--The Winthrop case.--Quakers

attempt to secure exemption from ecclesiastical rates.--Exemption

granted to Quakers and Baptists.--Relative position of the dissenting

and established churches in Connecticut.

IX. "THE GREAT AWAKENING"

Minor revivals in Connecticut before 1740.--Low tone of moral and

religious life.--Jonathan Edwards's sermons at Northampton.--Revival

of religious interest and its spread among the people.--The

Rev. George Whitefield.--The Great Awakening.--Its immediate results.

X. THE GREAT SCHISM

The Separatist churches.--Old Lights and New.--Opposition to the

revival movement.--Severe colony laws of 1742-43--Illustrations of

oppression of reformed churches, as the North Church of New Haven, the

Separatist Church of Canterbury, and that of Enfield.--Persecution of

individuals, as of Rev. Samuel Finlay, James Davenport, John Owen,

and Benjamin Pomeroy.--Persecution of Moravian missionaries,--The

colony law of 1746, "Concerning who shall vote in Society

meeting."--Change in public opinion.--Summary of the influence of the

Great Awakening and of the great schism.

XI. THE ABROGATION OF THE SAYBROOK PLATFORM

Revision of the laws of 1750.--Attitude of the colonial authorities

toward Baptists and Separatists.--Influence on colonial legislation of

the English Committee of Dissenters.--Formation of the Church of Yale

College.--Separatist and Baptist writers in favor of

toleration.--Frothingham's "Articles of Faith and Practice."--Solomon

Paine's "Letter."--John Bolles's "To Worship God in Spirit and in

Truth."--Israel Holly's "A Word in Zion's Behalf."--Frothingham's "Key

to Unlock the Door."--Joseph Brown's "Letter to Infant

Baptizers."--The importance of the colonial newspaper.--Influence of

English non-conformity upon the religious thought of New England.--The

Edwardean School.--Hopkinsinianism and the New Divinity.--The clergy

and the people.--Controversy over the renewed proposal for an American

episcopate.--Movement for consolidation among all religious

bodies.--Influences promoting nationalism and, indirectly, religious

toleration.--Connecticut at the threshold of the

Revolution.--Connecticut clergymen as advocates of civil

liberty.--Greater toleration in religion granted by the laws of

1770.--Development of the idea of democracy in Church and

State.--Exemption of Separatists by the revision of the laws in

1784.--Virtual abrogation of the Saybrook Platform.--Status of

Dissenters.

XII. CONNECTICUT AT THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION

Expansion of towns.--Revival of commerce and industries.--Schools and

literature.--Newspapers.--Rise of the Anti-Federal party.--Baptist,

Methodist, and Separatist dissatisfaction.--Growth of a broader

conception of toleration within the Consociated churches.

XIII. CERTIFICATE LAWS AND WESTEKN LAND BILLS

Opposition to the Establishment from dissenters, Anti-Federalists, and

the dissatisfied within the Federal ranks.--Certificate law of 1791 to

allay dissatisfaction.--Its opposite effect.--A second Certificate law

to replace the former.--Antagonism created by legislation in favor of

Yale College.--Storm of protest against the Western Land bills of

1792-93.--Congregational missions in Western territory.--Baptist

opposition to legislative measures.--The revised Western Land bill as

a basis for Connecticut's public school fund.--Result of the

opposition roused by the Certificate laws and Western Land bills.

XIV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN CONNECTICUT

Government according to the charter of 1662.--Party tilt over town

representation.--Anti-Federal grievances against the Council or

Senate, the Judiciary, and other defective parts of the machinery of

government.--Constitutional questions.--Rise of the

Democratic-Republican party.--Influence of the French Revolution.--The

Federal members of the Establishment or "Standing Order," the

champions of religious and political stability.--President Dwight, the

leader of the Standing Order.--Leaders of the

Democratic-Republicans.--Political campaigns of 1804-1806.--Sympathy

for the defeated Republicans.--Politics at the close of the War of

1812.

XV. DISESTABLISHMENT

Waning of the power of the Federal party in Connecticut.--Opposition

to the Republican administration during the War of

1812.--Participation in the Hartford Convention.--Economic benefits of

the war.--Attitude of the New England clergy toward the war.--The

Toleration party of 1816.--Act for the Support of Literature and

Religion.--Opposition.--Toleration and Reform Ticket of 1817.--New

Certificate Law.--Constitution and Reform Ticket of 1818.--Its

victory.--The Constitutional Convention.--New Constitution of

1818.--Separation of Church and State.

APPENDIX

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN CONNECTICUT

CHAPTER I

THE EVOLUTION OF EARLY CONGREGATIONALISM

The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the

corner.--Psalm cxviii, 22.

The colonists of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven

were grounded in the system which became known as Congregational, and

later as Congregationalism. At the outset they differed not at all in

creed, and only in some respects in polity, from the great Puritan

body in England, out of which they largely came.[a]

For more than forty years before their migration to New England there

had been in old England two clearly developed forms of

Congregationalism, Brownism and Barrowism. The term Congregationalism,

with its allied forms Congregational and Congregationalist, would not

then have been employed. They did not come into general use until the

latter half of the seventeenth century, and were at first limited in

usage to defining or referring to the modified church system of New

England. The term "Independent" was preferred to designate the

somewhat similar polity among the nonconformist churches in old

England.[b] Brownism and Barrowism are both included in Dr. Dexter's

comprehensive definition of Congregationalism, using the term "to

designate that system of thought, faith, and practice, which starting

with the dictum that the conditions of church life are revealed in the

Bible, and are thence to be evolved by reverent common-sense, assisted

but never controlled by all other sources of knowledge; interprets

that book as teaching the reality and independent competency of the

local church, and the duty of fraternity and co-working between such

churches; from these two truths symmetrically developing its entire

system of principles, privileges, and obligations." [1] The

"independent competency of the local church" is directly opposed to

any system of episcopal government within the church, and is

diametrically opposed to any control by king, prince, or civil

government. Yet this was one of the pivotal dogmas of Browne and of

the later Separatists; this, a fundamental doctrine which Barrowe

strove to incorporate into a new church system, but into one having

sufficient control over its local units to make it acceptable to a

people who were accustomed to the autonomy and stability of a church

both episcopal and national in character.

In order to appreciate the changes in church polity and in the

religious temper of the people for which Browne and Barrowe labored,

one must survey the field in which they worked and note such

preparation as it had received before their advent. It is to be

recalled that Henry VIII substituted for submission to the Pope

submission to himself as head of a church essentially Romish in

ritual, teaching, and authority over his subjects. The religious

reformation, as such, came later and by slow evolution through the

gradual awakening of the moral and spiritual perceptions of the

masses. It came very slowly notwithstanding the fact that the first

definite and systematic opposition to the abuses and assumptions of

the clergy had arisen long before Henry's reign. As early as 1382, the

itinerant preachers, sent out by Wyckliff, were complained of by the

clergy and magistrates as teachers of insubordinate and dangerous

doctrines. Thenceforward, outcroppings of dissatisfaction with the

clergy appear from time to time both in English life and

literature. This dissatisfaction was silenced by various acts of

Parliament which were passed to enforce conformity and to punish

heresy. Their character and intent were the same whether the head of

the church wore the papal tiara or the English crown. Two hundred

years after Wyckliff, in 1582, laws were still fulminated against

"divers false and perverse people of certain new sects," for

Protestant England would support but one form of religion as the moral

prop of the state. She regarded all innovations as questionable, or

wholly evil, and their authors as dangerous men. Chief among the

latter was Robert Browne. But before Browne's advent and in the days

of Henry the Eighth, there had been a large, respectable, and steadily

increasing party whose desire was to remain within the English church,

but to purify it from superstitious rites and practices, such as

penances, pilgrimages, forced oblations, and votive offerings. They

wished also to free the ritual from many customs inherited from the

days of Rome's supremacy. It was in this party that the leaven of

Protestantism had been working. Luther and Henry, be it remembered,

had died within a year of each other. Under the feeble rule of Edward

the Sixth, the English reform movement gained rapidly, and, in 1550,

upon the refusal of Bishop Hooper to be consecrated in the usual

Romish vestments, it began to crystallize in two forms, Separatism and

Puritanism.[c] In spite of much opposition, the teachings of Luther,

Calvin, and other Continental reformers took root in England, and

interested men of widely different classes. They stirred to new

activity the scattered and persecuted groups, that, from time to time,

had met in secret in London and elsewhere to read the Scriptures and

to worship with their elected leaders in some simpler form of service

than that prescribed by law. Under Mary's persecution, these

Separatists increased, and with other Protestants swelled the roll of

martyrs. In her severity, the Queen also drove into exile many able

and learned men, who sought shelter in Geneva, Zurich, Basle, and

Frankfort, where they were hospitably entertained. Upon their return,

there was a marked increase in the Calvinistic tone both of preaching

and teaching in the English church and in the university lecture

rooms, especially those of Cambridge. Among the most influential

teachers was Thomas Cartwright,[d] in 1560-1562, Lady Margaret

Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. While having no sympathy with the

nonconformist or Separatist of his day, Cartwright accepted the polity

and creed of Calvin in its severer form. He became junior-dean of

St. John's, major-fellow of Trinity, and a member of the

governing-board. In 1565 he went to Ireland to escape the heated

controversy of the period which centred in the "Vestiarian"

movement. He was recalled in 1569 to his former professorship, and in

September, 1571, was forced out of it because, when controversy

changed from vestments to polity, he took extreme views of church

discipline and repudiated episcopal government.[e] While Cartwright

was very pronounced in his views, his desire at first was that the

changes in church polity should be brought about by the united action

of the Crown and Parliament. Such had been the method of introducing

changes under the three sovereigns, Henry, Mary, and Elizabeth. With

this brief summary of the reform movements among the masses and in the

universities covering the years until Cartwright, through the

influence of the ritualistic church party, was expelled from

Cambridge, and Robert Browne, as a student there, came under the

strong Puritan influence of the university, we pass to a consideration

of Brownism.

Robert Browne was graduated from Cambridge in 1572, the year after

Cartwright's expulsion. The next three years he taught in London and

"wholly bent himself to search and find out the matters of the church:

as to how it was guided and ordered, and what abuses there were in the

ecclesiastical government then used." [2] When the plague broke out in

London, Browne went to Cambridge. There, he refused to accept the

bishop's license to preach, though urged to do so, because he had come

to consider it as contrary to the authority of the

Scriptures. Nevertheless, he continued preaching until he was silenced

by the prelate. Browne then went to Norwich, preaching there and at

Bury St. Edmunds, both of which had been gathering-places for the

Separatists. At Norwich, he organized a church. Writing of Browne's

labors there in 1580 and 1581, Dr. Dexter says: "Here, following the

track which he had been long elaborating, he thoroughly discovered and

restated the original Congregational way in all its simplicity and

symmetry. And here, by his prompting and under his guidance, was

formed the first church in modern days of which I have any knowledge,

which was intelligently and one might say philosophically

Congregational in its platform and processes; he becoming its pastor."

[3] Persecution followed Browne to Norwich, and in order to escape it

he, in 1581, migrated with his church to Middelburg, in

Zealand. There, for two years, he devoted himself to authorship,

wherein he set forth his teachings. His books and pamphlets, which had

been proscribed in England, were printed in Middelburg and secretly

distributed by his friends and followers at home. But Browne's

temperament was not of the kind to hold and mould men together, while

his doctrine of equality in church government was too strong food for

people who, for generations, had been subservient to a system that

demanded only their obedience. His church soon disintegrated. With but

a remnant of his following, he returned in 1583 by way of Scotland

into England, finding everywhere the strong hand of the government

stretched out in persecution. Three years later, after having been

imprisoned in noisome cells some thirty times within six years,

utterly broken in health, if not weakened also in mind, and never

feeling safe from arrest while in his own land, Browne finally sought

pardon for his offensive teachings and, obtaining it, reentered the

English communion. Though he was given a small parish, he was looked

upon as a renegade, and died in poverty about 1631, at an extreme old

age. He died while the Pilgrim Separatists were still a struggling

colony at Plymouth, repudiating the name of Brownists; before the

colonial churches had embodied in their system most of the

fundamentals of his; and long before the value of his teachings as to

democracy, whether in the church or by extension in the state, had

dawned upon mankind.

The connecting link between Brownism and Barrowism, whose similarities

and dissimilarities we shall consider together, or rather the

connecting link between Robert Browne and Henry Barrowe, was another

Cambridge student, John Greenwood. He was graduated in 1581, the year

that Browne removed to Middelburg. Greenwood had become so enamored

with Separatist doctrines, that within five years of his graduation he

was deprived of his benefice, in 1586, and sent to prison. While

there, he was visited by his friend, Henry Barrowe, a young London

lawyer, who, through the chance words of a London preacher, had been

converted from a wild, gay life to one devout and godly. During a

visit to Greenwood, Barrowe was arrested and sent to Lambeth Palace

for examination. Upon refusing to take the oath required by the

bishop, Barrowe was remanded to prison to await further

examination. Later, he damaged himself and his cause by an

unnecessarily bitter denunciation of his enemies and by a too dogmatic

assertion of his own principles. Accordingly, he was sent back to

prison, where, together with Greenwood, he awaited trial until March,

1593. Then, upon the distorted testimony of their writings, both men

were sentenced as seditious fellows, worthy of death. Though twice

reprieved at the seemingly last hour, they were hanged together on

April 6, 1593.

Both Greenwood and Barrowe frequently asserted that they never had

anything to do with Browne. [4] Yet it is probable that it was

Browne's influence which turned Greenwood's puritanical convictions to

Separatist principles. Barrowe had been graduated from Clare Hall,

Cambridge, in 1569-70; Browne, from Corpus Christi in 1572. The two

men, so different in character, probably did not meet in university

days, and certainly not later in London, where one went to a life of

pleasure and the other to teaching and to the study of the

Scriptures. Greenwood, however, had entered Cambridge in 1577-78, and

left it in 1581. Thus he was in college during the two years that

Browne was preaching in and near Cambridge. It is safe to assume that

the young scholar, soon to become a licensed preacher, and overflowing

with the Puritan zeal of his college, might be drawn either through

curiosity or admiration to hear the erratic and almost fanatic

preacher. Later, when Browne's writings were being secretly

distributed in England, both Barrowe and Greenwood had come in contact

with the London congregations to whom Browne had preached. The fact

that many men in England were thinking along the same lines as the

Separatists; that Browne had recanted just as Barrowe and Greenwood

were thrust into prison; and that they both disapproved in some

measure of Browne's teachings, might account for a denial of

discipleship. Browne's influence might even have been unrecognized by

the men themselves. Be that as it may, during their long

imprisonment, both Barrowe and Greenwood, in their teachings, in their

public conferences, and in their writings strove to outline a system

of church government and discipline, which was very similar to and yet

essentially different from Browne's.

Thus it happened that in the last decade of the sixteenth century two

forms of Congregationalism had developed, Brownism and Barrowism.

Neither Browne nor Barrowe felt any need, as did their later

followers, to demonstrate their doctrinal soundness, because in all

matters of creed they "were in full doctrinal sympathy with the

predominantly Calvinistic views of the English Established Church from

which they had come out."

"Browne, first of all English writers, set forth the Anabaptist

doctrine that the civil ruler had no control over the spiritual

affairs of the church and that State and Church were separate realms."

[5] In the beginning, Browne's foremost wish was not to establish a

new church system or polity, but to encourage the spiritual life of

the believer. To this end he desired separation from the English

church, which, like all other state churches, included all baptized

persons, not excommunicate, whether faithful or not to their baptismal

or confirmation vows to lead godly lives. [6] Moreover, as Browne did

not believe that the magistrates should have power to coerce men's

consciences, teaching, as he did, that the mingling of church offices

and civil offices was anti-Christian,[7] he was unwilling to wait for

a reformation to be brought about by the changing laws of the

state.[8] He further advocated such equality of power [9] among the

members of the church that in its government a democracy resulted, and

this theory, pushed to a logical conclusion, implied that a democratic

form of civil government was also the best.[f] Browne roughly

draughted a government for the church with pastors, teachers, elders,

deacons, and widows. He insisted, however, that these officers did not

stand between Christ and the ordinary believer, "though they haue the

grace and office of teaching and guiding.... Because eurie one of the

church is made Kinge, and Priest and a Prophet, under Christ, to

vpholde and further the kingdom of God."

Browne and Barrowe both made the Bible their guide in all matters of

church life. From its text they deduced the definition of a true

church as, "A company of faithful people gathered by the Word unto

Christ and submitting themselves in all things;" of a Christian, as

one who had made a "willing covenant with God, and thereby did live a

godly and Christian life."[10] This covenanting together of Christians

constituted a church. From their interpretation of the New Testament,

Browne and Barrowe held that this covenanting included repentance for

sin, a profession of faith, and a promise of obedience. Moreover, to

their minds, primitive Christianity had insisted upon a public,

personal narration of each covenanter's regenerative experience. From

sacred writ they derived their church organization also.[ll] Their

pastors were for exhorting or "edifying by all comfortable words and

promises in the Scriptures, to work in our hearts the estimate of our

duties with love and zeal thereunto." Their teachers were for teaching

or "delivering the grounds of Religion and meaning of the Scriptures

and confirming the same." Both officers were to administer baptism and

the Lord's supper, or "the Seals of the Covenant." The elders included

both pastors and teachers and also "Ruling Elders," all of whom were

for "oversight, counsel, and redressing things amiss," but the ruling

elders were to give special attention to the public order and

government of the church. According to both Browne and Barrowe, these

officers were to be the mouthpiece of the church in the admission,

censure, dismissal, or readmission of members. They were to prepare

matters to be brought before the church for action. They were also to

adjust matters, when possible, so as to avoid overburdening the church

or its pastor and teacher with trivial business. In matters spiritual,

they were to unite with the pastor and teacher in keeping watch over

the lives of the people, that they be of good character and godly

reputation.

Browne taught that the church had power which it shared with its

officers as fellow-Christians, but which lifted it above them and

their office. It lay with the church to elect them. It lay with the

church to censure them. Barrowe also maintained that the church was

"above its institutions, above its officers," [12] and that every

officer was responsible to the church and liable to its censure as

well as indebted to it for his election and office. But he further

maintained that the members of the church should render meek and

submissive, faithful and loving obedience to their chosen

elders. Barrowe thus taught that guidance in religious matters should

be left in the hands of those to whom by election it had been

delegated. The elders were to be men of discernment, able to judge

"between cause and cause, plea and plea," to redress evil, and to see

that both the people and their officers[g] did their full duty in

accordance with the laws of God and the ordinances of the

church. Barrowe had seen the confusion and disintegration of Browne's

church, and he planned by thus introducing the Calvinistic theory of

eldership to avoid the pitfalls into which the Brownists had plunged

while practicing their new-found principle of religious

equality. Barrowe hoped by his system to secure the independence of

the local churches and also to avoid the repellent attitude of a

nation that was as yet unprepared to welcome any trend towards

democracy.[h] Having devised this system of compromise, Barrowe made a

futile attempt to interest Cartwright, but the latter regarded the

reformer as too heretical. Yet Cartwright himself, tired of waiting

for the better day when his desired reforms should be brought about

through the operation of Parliamentary laws, was attempting in

Warwickshire and Northamptonshire to test his system of

Presbyterianism.

To the list of church officers already enumerated, both reformers

added deacons and widows. The deacons were to attend to the church

finances and all temporal cares, and, in their visiting of the sick

and afflicted, they were to be aided by the widows. The latter office,

however, soon fell into disuse, for it was difficult to find women of

satisfactory character, attainments, and physical ability, since, in

order to avoid scandal or censoriousness, those filling the office had

to be of advanced years.[i]

With respect to the relation of the churches among themselves, Browne

and Barrowe each insisted upon the integral independence and

self-governing powers of the local units. Both approved of the

"sisterly advice" of neighboring churches in matters of mutual

interest. Both held that in matters of great weight, synods, or

councils of all the churches should be summoned; that the delegates to

such bodies should advise and bring the wisdom of their united

experience to questions affecting the welfare of all the churches, and

also, when in consultation upon serious cases, that any one church

should lay before them. Browne insisted that delegates to synods

should be both ministerial and lay, while Barrowe leaned to the

conviction that they should be chosen only from among the church

officers. Both reformers limited the power of synods, maintaining that

they should be consultative and advisory only. [13] Their decisions

were not to be binding upon the churches as were those of the

Presbyterian synods,[j] whose authority both reformers regarded as a

violation of Gospel rule. The church system, outlined by these two

men, became, in time, the organization of the churches of Plymouth,

Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven. The character of their

polity fluctuated, as we shall see, leaning sometimes more to

Barrowism and sometimes, or in some respects, emphasizing the greater

democracy which Browne taught. In England, and because of the pressure

of circumstances among English exiles and colonists, Barrowe's

teachings at first gained the stronger hold and kept it for many

years. Moreover, as Barrowe's almost immediate followers embraced

them, there was no objection to the customary union of church and

state. And furthermore, if only the state would uphold this peculiar

polity, it might even insist upon the payment of contributions, which

both Browne and Barrowe had distinctly stated were to be voluntary and

were to be the only support of their churches. Though Barrowism was

more welcomed, eventually--yet not until long after the colonial

period--Brownism triumphed, and it predominates in the

Congregationalism of to-day.

The immediate spread of Barrowism was due to the poor Separatists of

London. Doubtless among them were many who in the preceding years had

listened to Browne and had begun to look up to him as their

Luther. While Barrowe and Greenwood were in prison, many of these

Separatists had gone to hear them preach and had studied their

writings. During the autumn of 1592, there had been some relaxation in

the severity exercised toward the prisoners, and Greenwood was allowed

occasionally to be out of jail under bail. He associated himself with

these Separatists, who, according to Dr. Dexter, had organized a

church about five years before, and who at once elected Greenwood to

the office of teacher. Dr. John Brown, writing later than Dr. Dexter,

claims this London church as the parent of English Congregationalism.

To make good the claim, he traces the history of the church by means

of references in Bradford's History, Fox's "Book of Martyrs," and in

recently discovered state papers to its existence as a Separate church

under Elizabeth, when, as early as 1571, its pastor, Richard Fitz, had

died in prison. Dr. Brown believes he can still farther trace its

origin to Queen Mary's reign, when a Mr. Rough, its pastor, suffered

martyrdom, and one Cuthbert Sympson was deacon. [l4] After the death

of Greenwood and Barrowe, this London congregation was sore pressed.

Their pastor, Francis Johnson, having been thrown into prison, they

began to make their way secretly to Amsterdam. There Johnson joined

them in 1597, soon after his release. To this London-Amsterdam church

were gathered Separatist exiles from all parts of England, for

converts were increasing,[k] especially in the rural districts of the

north, notwithstanding the fact that persecution followed hard upon

conversion.

The policy of Elizabeth during the earlier years of her reign was one

of forbearance towards inoffensive Catholics and of toleration towards

all Protestants. Caring nothing for religion as such, her aim was to

secure peace and to increase the stability of her realm. This she did

by crushing malcontent Catholics, by balancing the factions of

Protestantism, and by holding in check the extremists, whether

High-Churchmen or the ultra-Puritan followers of Cartwright. She had

forced on the contending factions a sort of armed truce and silenced

the violent antagonism of pulpit against pulpit by licensing

preachers. The Acts of Supremacy and of Uniformity placed all

ecclesiastical jurisdiction, as well as all legislative power, in the

hands of the state. They outlined a system of church doctrine and

discipline from which no variation was legally

permitted. Notwithstanding the enforced outward conformity, the Bible

was left open to the masses to study, and private discussion and

polemic writing were unrestrained. The main principles of the

Reformation were accepted, even while Elizabeth resisted the sweeping

reforms which the strong Calvinistic faction of the Puritan party

would have made in the ceremonial of the English church. This she did

notwithstanding the fact that about the time Thomas Cartwright,

through the influence of the ritualists under Whitgift, had been

driven from Cambridge, Parliament had refused to bind the clergy to

the Three Articles on Supremacy, on the form of Church government, and

on the power of the Church to ordain rites and ceremonies. Parliament

had even suggested a reform of the liturgy by omitting from it those

ceremonies most obnoxious to the Puritan party.[l] That representative

assembly had but reflected the desire of all moderate statesmen, as

well as of the Puritans. But, in the twelve years between Cartwright's

dismissal from Cambridge and Browne's preaching there without a

license, a great change took place, altering the sentiment of the

nation. All but extremists drew back when Cartwright pushed his

Presbyterian notions to the point of asserting that the only power

which the state rightfully held over religion was to see that the

decrees of the churches were executed and their contemners punished,

or when this reformer still further asserted that the power and

authority of the church was derived from the Gospel and consequently

was above Queen or Parliament. Cartwright claimed for his church an

infallibility and control of its members far above the claims of Rome,

and, tired of waiting for a purification of existing conditions by

legislative acts, he had, as has been said, boldly organized, in

accordance with his system, the clergy of Warwickshire and

Northamptonshire. The local churches were treated as self-governing

units, but were controlled by a series of authoritative Classes and

Synods. Having done this, Cartwright called for the establishment of

Presbyterianism as the national church and for the vigorous

suppression of Episcopacy, Separatism, and all variations from his

standard. As he thus struck at the national church, at the Queen's

supremacy, and, seemingly to many Englishmen, at the very roots of

civil government and security, there was a sudden halt in the reform

movement. The impetus which would have probably brought about all the

changes that the great body of Puritans desired was arrested. Richard

Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity" swept the ground from under Thomas

Cartwright's "Admonition to Parliament." Hooker's broad and

philosophic reasoning showed that no one system of church-government

was immutable; that all were temporary; and that not upon any man's

interpretation of Scripture, or upon that of any group of men alone,

could the divine ordering of the world, of the church or of the state,

be based. Such order depended upon moral relations, upon social and

political institutions, and changed with times and nations.

The death of Mary Queen of Scots crushed the Catholic party, and the

defeat of the Armada left Elizabeth free to turn her attention to the

phases of the Protestant movement in her own realm. While Browne was

preaching in Norwich, the Queen raised Whitgift to the See of

Canterbury. He was the bitter opponent of all nonconformity, and

immediately the persecution both of Separatists and of Puritans became

severe. Elizabeth, sure at last of her throne and of her position as

head of the Protestant cause in Europe, gave her minister a free

hand. She demanded rigid conformity, but wisely forbore to revive many

of the customs which the Puritans had succeeded in rendering

obsolete. Notwithstanding such modifications, the English liturgy had

been so slightly altered that, "Pius the Fifth did see so little

variation in it from the Latin service that had been formerly used in

that Kingdom that he would have ratified it by his authority, if the

Queen would have so received it."[m] Elizabeth now forbade all

preaching, teaching, and catechising in private houses, and refused to

recognize lay or Presbyterian ordination. Ministers who could no

longer accept episcopal ordination, or subscribe to the Thirty-nine

Articles, or approve the Book of Common Prayer and conform to its

liturgy were silenced and deprived of their salaries. In default of

witnesses, charges against them were proved by their own testimony

under oath, whereby they were made to incriminate themselves. The

censorship of the press was made stringent, printing was restricted to

London and to the two universities, and all printers had to be

licensed. Furthermore, all publications, even pamphlets, had to

receive the approval of the Primate or of the Bishop of London. In

addition, the Queen established the Ecclesiastical Commission of

forty-four members, which became a permanent court where all authority

virtually centred in the hands of the archbishops. English law had not

as yet defined the powers and limitations of the Protestant

clergy. Consequently, this Commission assumed almost unlimited powers

and cared little for its own precedents. Its very existence undid a

large part of the work of the Reformation, and the successive

Archbishops of Canterbury, Parker, Whitgift, Bancroft, Abbott, and

Laud, claimed greater and more despotic authority than any papal

primate since the days of Augustine. The Commission passed upon all

opinions or acts which it held to be contrary to the Acts of Supremacy

and Uniformity. It altered or amended the Statutes of Schools and

Colleges; it claimed the right of deprivation of clergy and held them

at its mercy; it passed from decisions upon heresy, schism, or

nonconformity to judgment and sentence upon incest and similar

crimes. It could fine and imprison at will, and employ any measures

for securing information or calling witnesses. The result was that all

nonconformists and all Puritans drew closer together under

trial. Another result was that the Bible was studied more earnestly in

private, and that there was a public eager to read the religious books

and pamphlets published abroad and cautiously circulated in

England. Though the Presbyterians were confined to the nonconformist

clergy and to a comparatively small number among them, they were

rising in importance, and were accorded sympathetic recognition as a

section of the Puritan party. This party, as a whole, continued to

increase its membership. The Separatists also increased, for, as of

old, the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church.

The hope that times would mend when James ascended the throne was soon

abandoned. As he had been trained in Scotch Presbyterianism, the

Presbyterians believed that he would grant them some favor, while the

Puritans looked for some conciliatory measures. Eight hundred Puritan

ministers, a tenth of all the clergy, signed the "Millenary Petition,"

asking that the practices which they most abhorred, such as the sign

of the cross in baptism, the use of the surplice, the giving of the

ring at marriage, and the kneeling during the communion service,

should be done away with. The petition was not Presbyterian, but was

strictly Puritan in tone. It asked for no change in the government or

organization of the church. It did ask for a reform in the

ecclesiastical courts, and it demanded provision for the training of

godly ministers. James replied to the petition by promising a

conference of prelates and of Puritan ministers to consider their

demands; but at the conference it was found that he had summpned it

only to air the theological knowledge upon which he so greatly prided

himself. His answer to the petition was that he would have "one

doctrine, one religion, in substance and in ceremony," and of the

remonstrants he added, "I will make them conform or I will harry them

out of the land." The harrying began. The recently organized

Separatist church at Gainsborough-on-Trent endured persecution for

four years, and then emigrated with its pastor, John Smyth, M.A., of

Christ's College, Cambridge. It found refuge in Amsterdam by the side

of the London-Amsterdam church and its pastor, Francis Johnson, who

had been Smyth's tutor in college days. The next year, after more of

the King's harrying, the future colonists of Plymouth, the Separatist

Church of Scrooby, an offshoot of the Gainsborough church, attempted

to flee over seas to Holland. The magistrates would not give them

leave to go, and to emigrate without permission had been counted a

crime since the reign of Richard II. Their first attempt to leave the

country was defeated and their leaders imprisoned. During their second

attempt, after a large number of their men had reached the ship with

many of their household goods, and while their wives and children were

waiting to embark, those on the beach were surprised and arrested, and

their goods confiscated. Public opinion forbade sending helpless women

and children to prison for no other offense than agreeing with and

wishing to join their husbands and fathers. Consequently the

magistrates let their prisoners go, but made no provision for

them. Helpless and destitute, they were taken in and cared for by the

people of the countryside, and sheltered until their men returned. The

latter had suffered shipwreck, because the Dutch captain had attempted

to sail away when he saw the approach of the English officers. When

the church had once more raised sufficient funds for the emigration,

the magistrates gave them a contemptuous permission to depart, "glad

to be rid of them at any price." So, in 1608, they also joined the

English exiles in Amsterdam. The rank injustice and cruelty of their

treatment, together with their patience and forbearance under their

sufferings, drew people's attention to the character and worth of the

pious "pilgrims" and Separatists whom James was constantly driving

forth from England.

Meanwhile, both in England and on the continent, the Separatists held

fast to the principles of their leaders, of which the cardinal ones

were a church wherein membership was not by birthright, but by

"conversion;" over which magistrates or government should have no

control; in which each congregation constituted an independent unit,

coequal with all others; and with which the state should have nothing

more to do than to see that members respected the decrees of the

church and were obedient to its discipline.

On the continent, the Separatists elaborated these fundamentals and

developed detailed and systematic expression of them. Such were the

"True Description out of the Word of God of the Visible Church" of the

London-Amsterdam church, put forth in 1589, and in which Barrowe

himself outlined his system; the "True Confession," issued by the same

church about ten years later; "The Points of Difference," some

fourteen in number, in which the London-Amsterdam church set forth

wherein it differed from the English church; and the "Seven Articles,"

signed by John Robinson and William Brewster. This last document the

exiled Scrooby church sent from Leyden to the English Council of State

in 1617, with the hope of convincing King James that if allowed to go

to America under the Virginia patent, and to worship there in their

own fashion, they would be desirable colonists and law-abiding

subjects. The "True Confession"[n] sets forth the nature, powers,

order, and officers of the church. It limits the sacraments to the

members, and baptism to their children. It insists upon the wisdom of

churches seeking advice from one another, and of their use of

certificates of membership so as to guard against the admission of

strangers coming from other churches, and possibly of unworthy

character. In the definition of eldership, the "True Confession"

passes out of the haze in which Barrowe's "True Description" left the

conflicting powers of the eldership, and of the church. It plainly

asserts that the elders have the power of guidance and also of

control, should members attempt to censure them or to interfere in

matters beyond their knowledge. This platform also insists that

magistrates should uphold the church which it defines, because it is

the one true church, and that they should oppose all others as

anti-Christian. [15] In the "Points of Difference," stress is again

laid upon the covenant-nature of the church, upon its voluntary

support, upon the right of election of officers, and upon the

abolishment of "Popish Canons, Courts, Classes, Customs or any human

inventions," including the Popish liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer,

and "all Monuments of Idolatry in garments or in other things, and all

Temples, Chapels, etc." Many of the Puritans desired these same

changes. Many favored a polity giving the local churches some degree

of choice in the election of their officers. If the "Points of

Difference" aimed to lay bare the errors of Episcopacy and of

Presbyterianism as well as to demonstrate the superior merits of the

new aspirant for the status of a national church, the "Seven Articles"

[16] aimed to minimize differences in church usage by omitting mention

of them when possible and by emphasizing agreement. The evident

advance along the line of a more authoritative eldership had developed

out of the experience of the first two English churches in

Amsterdam. John Robinson and his followers had held more closely to

Robert Browne's standard of Congregationalism, for Robinson maintained

that the government of the church should be vested in its membership

rather than in its eldership alone. In order to maintain this

principle in greater purity, Robinson withdrew his fold from their

first resting-place in Amsterdam to Leyden. Richard Clyfton, who had

been pastor of the church in Scrooby, remained in Amsterdam, partly

because he felt too old to migrate again, and partly because he leaned

to Francis Johnson's more aristocratic theories of church

government. These divergent views caused trouble in the Amsterdam

churches, and Robinson wished to be far enough away to be out of the

vortex of doctrinal eddies. For eleven years his people lived a

peaceful and exemplary church life in Leyden, and it was chiefly their

longing to rear their children in an English home and under English

influences that made them anxious to emigrate to America. As the years

passed, Robinson sympathized more with the Barrowistic standards of

other churches and came also to regard more leniently the English

Established Church as one having true religion under corrupt forms and

ceremonies, and accordingly one with which he could hold a limited

fellowship. This was a step in the approachment of Separatist and

Puritan, and Robinson was a most influential writer. Of necessity, his

work was largely controversial, but he wrote from the standpoint of

defense, and rarely departed from a broad and kindly spirit. In the

"Seven Articles" Robinson admits the royal supremacy in so far as to

countenance a passive obedience. His teaching had the greatest

influence in shaping the religious life of the first and second

generation of New Englanders.

The Separatists who remained in England devoted themselves to the

discussion of particular topics rather than to platforms of faith and

discipline. Many of the writers were men who, like the pastors of two

of the exiled churches, were at first ministers in good standing in

the English church; but, later, had allowed their Puritan tendencies

to outrun the bounds of that party and to become convictions that the

Bible commanded their separation from the Establishment as witnesses

to the corruptions it countenanced. Poring over the Bible story, they

had become enamored with the simplicity of the Gospel age.

From the days of Elizabeth, the English nation became more and more a

people of one book, and that book the Bible. As, deeply dyed with

Calvinism, they read over and over its sacred pages, they became a

serious, sombre, purposeful--and almost fanatic people. The faults and

extravagances of the Puritan party and of the later Commonwealth do

not at this time concern us. It is with their purposefulness, their

determination to make the church a home of vigorous and visible

righteousness, and to preserve their ecclesiastical and civil

liberties from the encroachment of Stuart pretensions, that we have to

do. More and more, as has been said, the Puritan was coming to the

conviction that the best way to reform the church would be to

substitute some restrictive policy for her all-embracing membership,

or, at least, to supplement it by such measures of local church

discipline as should practically exclude the unregenerate and the

immoral. Again, the Church of England could be arraigned as a

politico-ecclesiastical institution, and in the pages of the Bible,

King James's theory of the divine right of kings and bishops found no

support. It was obnoxious alike to Separatist and Puritan, and James's

Puritan subjects had the sympathy of more than three fourths of the

squires and burgesses in the king's first Parliament of 1604, while

the Separatists counted some twenty thousand converts in his

realm. The Puritan opposition was a formidable one to provoke. Yet

"the wisest fool in Christendom" jeered at its clergy and scolded its

representatives in Parliament for daring to warn him, in their reply

to his boasted divine right of kings, that

Your majesty would be misinformed if any man should deliver that

the Kings of England have any absolute power in themselves either

to alter religion, or to make any laws concerning the same,

otherwise than as in temporal causes, by consent of Parliament.

It was the extravagant claims for himself and his bishops, coupled

with his lawless overriding of justice and his profligate use of the

national wealth, that undermined the king's throne and prepared the

downfall of the House of Stuart. Notwithstanding the remonstrance of

Parliament, James's insistence upon his divine right, by very force of

reiteration, whether his own or that of the clergy who favored

royalty, won a growing recognition from a conservative people. For

his king as the political head of the nation, the Puritan had all the

Englishman's half-idolatrous reverence, until James's own acts

outraged justice and substituted contempt.

The self-restraint for which every Separatist, every Puritan, strove,

was characteristic of the great reform party. They asked only for

ecclesiastical betterment, for the reform of the ecclesiastical

courts, for provision for a godly ministry, and for the suppression of

"Popish usages." These requests of the "Millenary Petition" were,

after the Guy Fawkes plot, urged with all the intensity of a people

who, as they looked abroad upon the feeble and warring Protestantism

of Europe, and at home upon the attempt to revive Romanism, believed

themselves the sole hope and savior of the Protestant

cause. Persecution had created a small measure of tolerance throughout

all nonconformist bodies. Fear of the revival of Catholicism, the

renewed attempt to enforce the Three Articles, the dismissal from

their parishes of three hundred Puritan ministers, and the hand and

glove policy of the king and his bishops, welded together the variants

in the Puritan party. The desire for personal righteousness, for

morality in church and state, which had seized upon the masses in the

nation, stood aghast at the profligacy of the king and his courtiers.

Reason seemed to cry aloud for reform, preferably for a reform that

should be free from every trace of the old hypocrisies, but which

should be strong within the old episcopal system which had endured for

centuries and which still kept its hold upon the vast majority of the

people. And to this idea of reform the great Puritan party clung,

until the exactions of the Stuarts, their suppression of both

religious and civil rights, forced upon it a civil war and the

formation of the Commonwealth. As a preliminary training of the men of

the Puritan armies and of the Commonwealth, and for their great

contest, all the years of Bible study, of controversial writing, of

individual suffering, were needed. These brought forth the necessary

moral earnestness, the mental acumen, the enduring strength. These

qualities, though most noticeable in the leaders, were well-nigh

universal traits. Every common soldier felt himself the equal of his

officer as a soldier of God, a defender of the faith, and a necessary

builder of Christ's new kingdom upon earth. To this growing sense of

democracy, to this sense of personal responsibility and

self-sacrifice, the teaching, the writings, and the sufferings of the

oppressed Separatists, as well as those of the persecuted Puritans,

had contributed.

When, in 1620, James I permitted the Pilgrims of Leyden to emigrate,

they planted in Plymouth of New England the first American

Congregational church and erected there the first American

commonwealth. The influence of this Separatist church upon New England

religious life belongs to another chapter. Here it is only necessary

to repeat that its members differed not at all in creed, only in

polity, from the English established church out of which they had

originally come. With the English Puritan they were one in faith,

while they differed little from him in theories of church government,

though much in practice. In America, the Plymouth colonists at once

set up the same church polity as in Leyden, one from which, as has

been shown, many of the English Puritans would have borrowed the

features of a converted or covenant membership and of local

self-government, or at least some measure of it. Eight years were to

elapse before the great Puritan exodus began. In those eight years

both parties, through the discipline of time, were to be brought still

nearer to a common standard of church life. When the vanguard of the

Puritans reached the Massachusetts shore, the Plymouth church stood

ready to extend the right hand of fellowship. How it did so, and how

it impressed itself upon the church life in the three colonies of

Massachusetts, New Haven, and Connecticut, is a part of the story of

the earliest period of colonial Congregationalism.

FOOTNOTES:

[a] "Our pious Ancestors transported themselves with regard unto

Church Order and Discipline, not with respect to the Fundamentals in

Doctrine."--Richard Mather, _Attestation to the Ratio

Disciplina_, p. 10.

"The issue on which the Pilgrims and Puritans alike left sweet fields

and comfortable homes and settled ways of the land of their birth for

this raw wilderness, was primarily an issue of politics rather than of

the substance of religious life."--G. L. Walker, _Some Aspects of

Religious Life in New England_, p. 19.

[b] "After the 17th century 'Independent' was chiefly used in England,

while 'Congregational' was decidedly preferred in New England, where

the 'consociation' of the churches formed a more important feature of

the system." "Congregational" first appeared in manuscript in 1639, in

print in 1642. "Congregationalist" appeared in 1692, and

"Congregationalism," not until 1716.--J. Murray, _A New English

Dict. on Hist. Principles._

[c] Separatism is commonly said to date from the year 1554. About

1564, the other branch of the reform party was nicknamed

"Puritan."--G. L. Walker, _History of the First Church in

Hartford_, p. 6.

[d] Another noted preacher who left an indelible impression upon

several early New England ministers was William Perkins, who was in

discourse "strenuous, searching, and ultra-Calvinistic." He was a

Cambridge man, filling the positions of Professor of Divinity, Master

of Trinity, and Chancellor of the University.--G. L. Walker, _Some

Aspects of the Religious Life in New England_, p. 14.

[e] Cartwright in 1574, the year of its publication, translated

Travers's _Ecclesiasticae Disciplinae et Anglicanae Ecclesiae ab

illa Aberrationis, plena e verbo Dei & dilucida Explicatio_, and

made it the basis of a practical attempt to introduce the Presbyterian

system into England. More than five hundred of the clergy seconded his

attempt, subscribing to the principles that (1) there can be only one

right form of church government, but one church order and one form of

church, namely, that described in the Scriptures; (2) that every local

church should have a presbytery of elders to direct its affairs; and

(3) that every church should obey the combined opinion of all the

churches in fellowship with it. In this declaration lay a blow at the

Queen's supremacy.--H. M. Dexter, _Congregationalism as seen in

Lit_. p. 55.

[f] "Browne's polity was essentially, though unintentionally,

democratic, and that gives it a closer resemblance in some features to

the purely democratic Congregationalism of the present century, than

to the more aristocratic, one might almost say semi-Presbyterianized,

Congregationalism of Barrowe and the founders of New England. His

picture of the covenant relation of men in the church, under the

immediate sovereignty of God, he extended to the state; and it led him

as directly, and probably as unintentionally, to democracy in the one

field as in the other. His theory implied that all governors should

rule by the will of the governed, and made the basis of the state on

its human side essentially a compact."--W. Walker, _Creeds and

Platforms_, pp. 15, 16. See also H. M. Dexter, _Congregationalism

as seen in Lit_., pp. 96-107; 235-39; 351; R. Browne, _Book which

Sheweth, Def_., 51.

[g] Barrowe wrote, "Though there be communion in the Church, yet is

there no equality." This is in strong contrast to Browne's, "Every one

of the church is made King and Priest and Prophet under Christ to

uphold and further the kingdom of God." Barrowe continues, "The Church

of Christ is to obey and submit unto her leaders.... The Church

knoweth how to give reverence unto her leaders." In his _True

Description_ there is a hazy attempt to define how far the

membership of the church may judge its elders. This authority of the

elders was defined more clearly and elaborated by Barrowe's followers

in their _True Confession_, published in Amsterdam in

1596-98.--H. Barrowe, _A True Description; Discovery of False

Churches_, p. 188; _A Plain Refutation of Mr. Gifford_, p. 129

(ed. of 1605).

[h] "Traces of this (Barrowe's) innovation on apostolic

Congregationalism have been aptly characterized as a Presbyterian

heart within a Congregational body, and are seen long after the

denomination grew to be a power in New England."--A. E. Dunning,

_Congregationalists in America_, p. 61.

[i] Barrowe says, "over sixty."

[j] The first English Presbytery was organized in 1572. Among its

organizers, there was the seeming determination to treat the Episcopal

system as a mere legal appendage.--F. J. Powicke, _Henry

Barrowe_, p. 139.

[k] At the height of its prosperity this church contained about three

hundred communicants, with representatives from twenty-nine English

counties. Among them was one John Bolton, who had been a member of

Mr. Fitz's church in 1571. At the beginning of James the First's

reign, 1603, Separatist converts numbered 20,000 souls in England.

[l] "The wish for a reform in the Liturgy, the dislike of

superstitious usages, of the use of the surplice, the sign of the

cross in baptism, the gift of the ring in marriage, the posture of

kneeling at the Lord's Supper, was shared by a large number of the

clergy and laity alike. At the opening of Elizabeth's reign almost all

the higher churchmen but Parker were opposed to them, and a motion for

their abolition in Convocation was lost but by a single

vote."--J. R. Green, _Short History of the English People_,

p. 459.

[m] John Davenport, in his _Answer to the Letter of Many Ministers

in Old England_, p. 3.

[n] Its full title is "A True Confession of the Faith and Humble

Acknowledgement of the Allegeance which wee his Majestes Subjects

falsely called Brownists, doo hould towards God and yeild his Majestie

and all others that are over us in the Lord."