LI Theolog PRI Case, Shel) Book B R A. R Y OF THE i c a 1 Seminar y, NCETON, N. J. Bacon, Leonard, i^ The genesis o*^^^® England churches Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Harper & Brothers, [n the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. TO ALL WHO HONOR THE MEMORY OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS, AND ESPECIALLY TO THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST IN NEW HAVEN, WHICH I SERVED IN THE PASTORAL OFFICE THROUGH MORE THAN FORTY YEARS, THIS ENDEAVOR TO "BRING FORTH FRUIT IN OLD age" IS RESPECTFULLY OFFERED, ^^^/, ^{"^Y. P R E F A C E: ' ' A FEW words will sufficiently explain to the reader of this book the design of the author. The history of Protestant Christianity in the United States of America is the history, not of a national church, but of voluntary churches. I have attempted fo show how it began, and to trace the origin and development of the idea which generated the churches of ]S"ew England. It is hardly necessary to say that the Baptist churches — a name which, in the United States, comprehends more churches than any other save one — are constituted on the same platform of polity with the church which came in the Mayflower. I have had no occasion to speak of them or of their influence in giving character to our American civilization ; inasmuch as the history of churches bearing that name, on this side of the Atlantic, begins later than the latest date in the volume now submitted to the public. It has been claimed for those churches that, from the acre of the Eeformation onward, they have been always fore- most and always consistent in maintainino; the doctrine of religious liberty. Let me not be understood as calling in question their right to so great an honor. My life has been too busy for researches among the re- motest sources of history. The story in this volume is de- rived chiefly from works which may be found in all good libraries. Instead of going to the British Museum that I might inspect the editio jprincejps of some Separatist book VIU PREFACE. for which the author was hanged, I have made use of the abstracts and extracts in Hanbury's " Historical Memori- als." The documents which were collected, arranged, and published by the late Dr. Alexander Young, with his care- ful annotations, in those two volumes, the " Chronicles of the Pilgrims" and the " Chronicles of Massachusetts," were worth more to me for my purpose than the originals from which he copied them could have been. Inasmuch as I had before me Bradford's " History of Plymouth Plantation," transcribed and published at the expense of the Massa- chusetts Historical Society, with annotations by its learned secretary, Mr. Deane, there w^as no need of my crossing the ocean to consult the venerable autograph w^hich, having been stolen from the Prince Library when the Old South Meeting-house was occupied by British soldiers, was found after many years in the library of Fulham Palace. I have been as well provided for the work which I have attempt- ed as I could have been if the Bishop of London and the Queen of Great Britain had not said their '-^ Non possii- mw5," or if the omnipotent Parliament had authorized the rendition of the precious relic to its rightful proprietor. The Prince Library can not be named without honor- able mention of its founder, Thomas Prince, the earliest American bibliographer, whose " Annals of ]S"ew Eng- land"— though less important as an authority since the re- covery of Bradford's History than it w^as when Dr. Young incorporated much of it into his " Chronicles" — is so help- ful a guide in the study of our history, whether of church or state. The title of his work sliow^s that he did not forget how different is tlie task of the annalist, collecting facts and arranging them in strictly chronological order as in a table of dates, from that of the historian, who, dealing with the same facts, describes them in their significance and their natural connections. Whatever disappointment may PREFACE. 15c be experienced by a reader who opens Felt's "Ecclesias- tical History of New England" with the expectation of finding on its pages a continuous and lively narrative, the reason of that disappointment will be that, while all the facts of the story are there, the book, instead of being really history, is little else than a chronological arrange- ment of events, set down with, exemplary carefulness and diligence, but almost as dry as a volume of statistics. I take pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to the annalists and to the collectors and editors of historical doc- uments— to Felt, Young, Prince, and Hanbury, as well as to the Anglican Strype. I do not profess to have gone behind them for the facts which they give me ; but, on the other hand, I do not regard my work as bearing any re- semblance to theirs. I have only attempted to construct a story out of the materials which the}^, and others like them, have provided. This book, then, is offered to readers as a history digest- ed from materials wliich others ha^•e prepared for me. It makes no profession of bringing to light new facts from documents lieretofore inedited, or from black-letter books heretofore overlooked. It simply tells an old story, giving perhaps here and there a new interpretation or a new em- phasis to some undisputed fact. My purpose has been to tell the story clearly and fairly, not for the instruction or delight of antiquarians, nor merely for those with whom church history is a professional study, but for all sorts of intelligent and thoughtful readers. He who writes only for scholars, or for the men of some learned profession, can say, " Fit audience let me find, though few ;" but my labor has been thrown away if the story which I have writ- ten is not so told as to invite the attention and to stir the sympathies of the many. Those who read the story will understand, I trust — what many are ignorant of, and what PREFAOK. some historians have not sufficiently explained — the differ- ence between "our Pilgrim Fathers" and "our Puritan Fathers." In the old world on the other side of the ooean, the Puritan was a Nationalist, believing that a Christian na- tion is a Christian church, and demanding that the Church of England should be thoroughly reformed ; while the Pilgrim was a Separatist, not only from the Anglican Prayer-book and Queen Elizabeth's episcopacy, but from all national churches. Between them there was sharp con- tention— a controversy quite as earnest and almost as bitter as that which they both had with the ecclesiastico-political power that oppressed them both, fining and imprisoning the Puritan, and visiting upon the Separatist the added penalties of exile and the gallows. The Pilgrim wanted liberty for himself and his w^ife and little ones, and for his brethren, to w^alk with God in a Christian life as the rules and motives of such a life were revealed to him from God's Woi'd. For that he went into exile ; for that he crossed the ocean ; for that he made his home in a wilderness. The Puritan's idea w^as not liberty, but right government in church and state — such government as should not only permit him, but also compel other men to walk in the right way. Of all this the ingenuous reader will find, 1 think, some illustration in the history before him. The words, written or spoken, of the actors in the story are often introduced for the sake of bringing the reader into closer connection with the men whom I describe and with their times ; but, in so doing, I have not always deemed it necessary to transcribe with scrupulous exact- ness every pleonasm or tautology, and every careless mis- location of words in the structure of a sentence. If in any instance I have misrepresented the meaning of a quotation, let me receive such censure as the unfairness may seem to deserve. Though I am not aware that I have PREFACE. X 1 used a larger liberty in this respect than is conceded to writers of history, I may say that, if I have erred, the error was because of my desire to make the meaning of every sentence clear, at the first glance, to an ordinarily intelli- gent reader. The history of the colonization of New England has been admirably written by Dr. Palfrey ; and it would have been folly in me to attempt a repetition of what he has done so well. Mine is a very different undertaking. The story which I tell is the story of an idea slowly making its way against prejudices, interests, and passions — a story of faith and martyrdom, of heroic endeavor and heroic constancy. It includes only so much of secular history as is involved in the history of the idea, and of the men whom it pos- sessed, and who labored and suffered to make it a reality in the world of fact. I have attempted nothing more than a humble contribution to our ecclesiastical history — only a book of Genesis, which, had I written it earlier, might have been followed by a Puritan Exodus. Mr. Punchard's " History of Congregationalism," and Dr. Waddington's most elaborate " Congregational History" (of which a sec- ond volume has been lately published), cover a much wider field than I have ventured to traverse. I take the liberty of expressing here my thanks to Pro- fessor Fisher of Yale College, who has kindly assisted in revising the proof-sheets of this volume, and whose sugges- tions have contributed to its accuracy especially in the ear- lier chapters. In the later and most important chapters, beginning with Chapter X., I have had also the benefit of corrections and suggestions from the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Dexter, who is better acquainted, I suppose, than any other man with every foot-print of the Pilgrim Fathers, at Scroo- by, at Amsterdam, at Leyden, or in New England. Yet I must not represent him as responsible for every thing on XU PREFACE. those pages ; for, being less imbued than he with the anti- quarian spirit, I have sometimes ventured not to follow where he seemed to lead me. For example, when he tells me that the Urst governor of Salem, under the Massachu- setts corporation, wrote himself John Endecott, I can not doubt the fact, yet I leave the name in the form in which it has passed into history and poetry — John Endicott. In regard to any more important matter of fact, I should not dare to reject the advice of a friend so learned and so ac- curate. L. B. New Haven, July 1, 1874. CONTENTS CHAPTER I.— A.D. 1-100. Pagk What was in the Beginning 17 CHAPTER II.— A.D. 100-1500. From the Primitive to the Papal 34 CHAPTER III.— A.D. 1517-1555. What the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century did for Church Polity. . 49 CHAPTER IV.— A.D. 1370-1560. The English Reformation and the Puritans 60 CHAPTER v.— A.D. 1560-1583. Reformation without Tarrying for Any 73 CHAPTER VL— A.D. 1583-1587. Separatism before the High Commissioners 91 CHAPTER VII.— A.D. 1590-1592. Controversy under Difficulties. — Nationalism, Conformist and Puritan, against Separatism 110 CHAPTER VIII.— A.D. 1592-1593. The Martyr Church : the Jails and the Gallows 131 CHAPTER IX.— A.D. 1555-1593. John Penry, the Martyr for Evangelism 1 55 CHAPTER X.— A.D. 1587-1608. Persecution and Exile. — The Church at Scrooby 1 86 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XI.— A.D. 1G08-1616. Page The Separatists in Amsterdam 216 CHAPTER XIL— A.D. 1G09-1618. The Sojourn at Leyden. — John Robinson a Pastor and an Author 228 CHAPTER XIII.— A.D. 1G17-1620. Struggles and Sacrifices in a Great Attempt 253 CHAPTER XIV.— A.D. 1620. From Leyden to Southampton. — Robinson's Pastoral Letter. — The Pil- grims the Reformers of Separatism 284 CHAPTER XV.— A.D. 1620. The Voyage of the Mayflower, Exploration, and the Landing of the Pilgrims 306 CHAPTER XVI.— A.D. 1621. The First Year at Plymouth 323 CHAPTER XVIL— A.D. 1622, 1623. Adversity and Progress. — Weston's Colony, and what came of it 357 CHAPTER XVIII.— A.D. 1624, 1625. Attempts of Nationalism against the Pilgrim Church 390 CHAPTER XIX.— A.D. 1625-1629. The Pilgrim Colony Abandoned by the Puritan Adventurers. — Prosper- ity at Plymouth. — Death of Robinson. — The Leyden Remnant 421 CHAPTER XX.— A.D. 1624-1629. The Beginning of a Puritan Colony in New England, and what came of it 446 ILLUSTRATIONS. The Compact in the Cabin of the "Mayflower" Frontispiece. St. Alban's Hall, Oxford (Penry's College) Faces p. 156 SCROOBY " 202 Leyden. '. " 233 The Embarkation at Delft-Haven " 286 Cape Cod (from Young) " 308 Plymouth (from Young) " 316 Plymouth — Burial Hill " 318 Sabbath in the Common House at Plymouth " 320 The " Mayflower " 322 The Return of the " Mayflower" " 337 Edward Winslow '* 373 Pilgrim Autographs 445 John Endicott " 454 O God ! beneath Thy guiding hand, Our exiled fathers crossed the sea ; And when they trod the wintry strand, With prayer and psalm they worshiped Thee. Thou heard'st, 'well pleased, the song, the prayer- Thy blessing came ; and still its power Shall onward to all ages bear The memory of that holy hour. What change ! through pathless wilds no more The fierce and naked savage roams ; Sweet praise, along the cultured shore, Breaks from ten thousand happy homes. Laws, freedom, truth, and faith in God Came with those exiles o'er the waves ; And where their pilgrim feet have trod, The God they trusted guards their graves. And here Thy name, O God of love, Their children's children shall adore, Till these eternal hills remove, And spring adorns the earth no more. THE GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. CHAPTER I. WHAT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. In the beginning, Christianity was simply Gospel. Eccle- siastical organization was not the cause, but the effect of life. Churches were constituted by the spontaneous association of believers. Individuals and families, drawn toward each other by their common trust in Jesus the Christ, and their common interest in the good news concerning the kingdom of God, became a community united, not by external bonds, but by the vital force of distinctive ideas and principles. New affections became the bond of a new brotherhood, and the new brotherhood, with its mutual duties and united re- sponsibilities, became an organized society. The ecclesias- tical polity of the apostles was simple — a living growth, not an artificial construction. How was it at Jerusalem? A few persons — about one hundred and twenty in all — after the ascension of their Lord, were in the practice of assembling in an upper room, which seems to have been the head-quarters of the eleven who had been nearest to him, and whom the others recognized as leaders. These persons were Jews, whose distinction from their countrymen was that, having been followers of Jesus B 18 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. L before his ignominious death, they had not lost their confi- dence in him ; but, in the face of an immense and triumphant majority, believed that though he had been rejected by the priests and rulers of the nation, and crucified by the Roman power, he was the Messiah risen from the dead, and invested with all authority on earth and in heaven. Waiting for some new manifestation of his glory, they " continued with one accord in prayer and supplication " — not those of the sterner sex only, as if they were planning a revolutionary movement in the state, or were setting up a new school in philosophy, but the men " with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren." Thus they were unconsciously forming that new commonwealth of men and women, and of households, united by personal attachment to Jesus, and living in the atmosphere of worship — that com- monwealth of faith and love which was to realize in its fut- ure all the promise of a new earth encircled by new heavens. At first the few disciples seem not to have thought much about how their society should be organized and its aff*airs administered, their minds being otherwise occupied. The earliest appearance of any thing like organization among them is when it seemed necessary that one of them should be designated and recognized as an apostle in the place that had been made vacant by the defection and death of Judas. On that occasion the whole proceeding, though essentially theocratic in its spirit, was democratic in its form. It seems to have been doubtful which of the two brethren toward whom the minds of the assembly had been turned was best qualified for the work of an apostle. An expedient was re- sorted to, which, had the assembly been unanimous concern- ing the superior fitness of either candidate, would have been preposterous. The question whether Barsabas or Matthias should be "numbered with the eleven apostles" was decided by lot, religiously, and with prayer that thus God's will might be manifested. The religious use of the lot for the decision of doubtful questions was customary among the A.D. 1-100.] WHAT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. 19 Jews from the earliest period of their history, but no other instance of it appears in the New Testament. On the fiftieth day after that Passover at which Christ was crucified, the new dispensation which had been prepared in his life and death, and completed in his resurrection and as- cension, was publicly introduced by the manifestation of a special divine presence, the promised Holy Spirit illuminat- ing and guiding the apostles. Suddenly the one hundred and twenty became three thousand. Of this growing multi- tude it is said that " they continued in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in prayers." In other words, the "three thousand souls" were bound to- gether by their constant attendance on the apostles' teaching, and their sympathy of thought and feeling with the move- ment which those witnesses for Christ were leading; they had a certain distinctive practice of breaking bread together, as if they were all one family, and they continually prayed together. Their new ideas and new sympathies and hopes were a bond of union ; and though not yet separated from the Jewish people, nor anticipating such a separation, they were beginning to be a distinct community with a life of their own — a community almost unorganized, so far as the record shows, and yet distinct in the midst of the Jewish na- tion, like that nation in the midst of the Roman Empire. A new and unique commonwealth had begun to live, and must needs c^row into some org^anized form accordins^ to its nature. How, then, shall the new community be organized ? What officers and functionaries shall it have? How shall it be governed ? The silence of the record seems to show that the apostles, busy with their work of teaching, daily repeat- ing to the thousands of new disciples the remembered words of their Master, telling as eye-witnesses the story of Jesus from his baptism to his ascension, and preaching the good news of the kingdom, gave themselves little concern before- hand about the organization of the community w^hich was coming into existence as the result of their testimony con- 20 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. 1/ cerning the resurrection and glory of the crucified Christ. Yet something of organization was inevitable, and could not be long deferred. To sustain so large a community — so sud- denly constituted, and including multitudes who had come to Jerusalem only as pilgrims, many of them from distant regions — large contributions were necessary, and were made by those who had any thing to give. In the emergency, all that they had was thrown, as it were, into a common stock ; for such as had convertible property of any kind sold it, and made generous distribution of the proceeds to all that were in want. When this liberality is first mentioned [Acts ii., 44, 45], it is as if the distribution were made by the donors themselves, or by their personal friends, without any formal arrangement. Afterward [iv., 34, 35], when the work had be- come more arduous, and when those of the disciples who had " lands or houses," in Jerusalem or near it, sold them for the benefit of the common cause, the distribution seems to have been in a more systematic way under the direction of the apostles. But after a while the number included in the new community had been so multiplied, and the amounts to be received and distributed had become so great, that these methods were found unsatisfactory. Then it w^as — and ap- parently not till then — that special ofiicers or commissioners were appointed to that service. The procedure in making the appointment was full of a religious spirit, and at the same time democratic. It may be compared with a parallel passage in the history of the Wesleyan polity. After Wesleyanism, with its exquisitely adjusted organization, had become powerful in England, and while John Wesley was still holding the reins of power, he undertook to tell, at one of the conferences of his helpers, what his power was, and how he came by it. He told how" a few persons came to him, first in London, and then in other places, desiring that he would advise them and pray with them. " The desire," said he, " was on their part, not on mine " — " but I did not see how I could refuse them my help A.D. 1-100.] V/HAT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. 21 and be guiltless before God. Here commenced my power — namely, a power to appoint when, where, and how they should meet, and to remove those whose life showed that they had no desire to flee from the wrath to come. And this power remained the same whether the people meeting together were twelve, twelve hundred, on* twelve thousand." After a time, the people who had thus come under his care and direction proposed a subscription of quarterly payments for certain common interests — such as rent and repair of the building in which they held their meetings — and he permit- ted them to subscribe. "Then I asked," so he continued the story, " ' Who will take the trouble of receiving this money and paying it where it is needful ?' One said, ' I will do it, and keep the account for you ;' so here was the first steward. Afterward I desired one or two more to help me as stewards, and in process of time a greater number. Let it be remem- bered it was I myself, and not the people, who chose the stewards, and appointed to each the distinct work wherein he was to help me as long as I chose." He gave a similar account of his power over the preachers, whether as individ- uals or as assembled in conference. Without raising any question as to the wisdom or the rightfulness of the autoc- racy which Wesley asserted over the voluntary association by which he was hoping to revive religion in the Church of England, we can not but observe the contrast between his account of what he did in the appointment of receiving and disbursing officers in the community which he was found- ing, and Luke's account of what the apostles did in the appointment of similar officers for the community under their teaching at Jerusalem. The apostles seem to have been proceeding on Wesley's plan, which was natural and reasonable in the circumstances. Offerings for the support of the community had been brought to them, and the distribution seems to have been made by them personally, or by others acting for them. A complaint had arisen that the distribution was not perfectly equitable. 22 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. I. In dealing with that complaint the apostles convoked not a conference of preachers only, whom they had taken under their direction and control as their "helpers" in the work, but " the multitude of the disciples." Instead of explaining how it was that the power of appointing stewards fell into their hands, and how reasonable it was that they should re- tain the powder, they refused to have any burden of that kind laid upon them. The financial affairs of the growing community were not to be managed by them nor by their agents. "It is not meet," said they, "that we should leave the word of God and serve tables." Their proposal was that special officers for this trust should be designated by popular election. "Brethren," said they, "look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. But we" — your teachers and the commissioned witnesses for Christ — we, instead of burdening ourselves with your af- fairs— " will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word."^ In this record of an office instituted by the vote of a church meeting, and of officers designated by " the whole multitude of disciples " acting as electors, we have an expla- nation of passages that might otherwise be doubtful touch- ing the organization and polity of the apostolic churches as described or implied in the New Testament. Having seen that the process of organization in the mother church at Je- rusalem was essentially democratic while under the immedi- ate guidance of the apostles, we need positive information to convince us that in other places the process by Avhich be- lievers in Christ became an organized body was materially ^ The original shows that when the apostles say, "It is not meet that we leave the Word of God," and " We will give ourselves to prayer," etc., the pronoun is emphatic; but when they say, "Whom we may appoint," etc., the pronoun, being merely implied in the form of the verb, can have no spe- cial emphasis, but must be understood as including the multitude of disciples with the apostles. See the entire story, Acts vi. A.D. 1-100.] WHAT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. 23 different. But there is no such information. On the con- trary, there are indications that in every place the society of believers in Christ was a little republic. We get glimpses of the church at Antioch, which soon became, not less than that at Jerusalem, a metropolitan cen- tre of Christian ideas and enterprises. Even in its origin, it startled the Pharisaic portion of the Jerusalem Church by receiving into fellowship unproselyted Gentiles. It was a community by virtue of the new faith which the members of it had received, and which bound them to each other. Some of its members were prophets and teachers, but all Avere brethren. It undertook for itself, at a divine sugges- tion, the first formal mission for the propagation of the Gos- pel through the Gentile world. When invaded by men from Judea, teaching, in the name of the original apostles, that the Gospel of Christ was to impose the ceremonial and national law of Moses on all Gentile believers every where, it resisted them with strenuous disputation, and instead of waiting for a rescript or a bull from Jerusalem, it sent its own message thither, not only to learn what the facts were there, but also to tell what the facts were at Antioch, and to show that God's blessing had attested the genuineness of a Gospel without Judaism. Thus it obtained from the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, and from " the whole church there," a conclusive declaration in behalf of a Christianity free for all nations.^ We get more than glimpses of the church at Corinth. We see its parties and disputes ; its disorderly and almost tur- bulent assemblies; its gross offender, whose sin was a re- proach to the whole body while he remained uncensured, and on whom the heaviest censure must therefore be inflicted by the many in a full assembly; its faults and excesses, in- cidental to an ecclesiastical democracy ; the strange diversity and multiplicity of gifts among its members ; and, at the ' Acts xi., 19-30; xiii., 1-3; xiv., 26-28; xv., 1-35; Gal. ii., 1-14. 24 GENESIS OF THE NEAV ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. I. same time, its ready submission to rebuke and advice from Paul its founder. All that we see of it in the two epistles addressed to it, or in the historic record, shows us an intense vitality working in discordant elements to bring them into unity — an organizing force striving against tendencies to an- archy, but the organization not yet complete — a fermenting chaos, as it were, of Greek, Jewish, and Roman materials; seething with enthusiasms, speculations, infirmities, and er- rors; yet hallowed by the formative Spirit brooding over it, and the light of divine truth and love shining into it.^ Every reader of the New Testament books may gather up for himself the hints which they give, incidentally, about the churches of Galatia, or the saints at Philippi " with the bishops and deacons," or "the Church of the Thessalonians," or " the seven churches of Asia," or the seemingly unorgan- ized fraternity of believers at Rome. He may observe the traces and rudiments of organization among " the holy and faithful brethren in Christ " at Colosse, or among those whom Peter and James and the author of the Epistle to the He- brews addressed in their writings. He may scrutinize the pastoral epistles to ascertain how far the development of ecclesiastical institutions had advanced in the latest years of the apostle Paul. For the purposes of this history, it will be enough to give some results of such an inquiry without repeating the process. I. The churches instituted by the apostles were local in- stitutions only. Nothing like a national church, distinct and individual among co-ordinate national churches — nothing like a provincial church, having jurisdiction over many congre- gations within certain geographical boundaries, natural or po- litical— appears in the writings or acts of the apostles. A church, as mentioned in those venerable documents, is always local or parochial, the church of some town or municipality, like Ephesus or Thyatira, Corinth or Cenchrea, Thessalonica ^ Acts xviii., 1-18. Epistles to the Corinthians, ^jassm. A.D. 1-100.] WHAT WAS IX THE BEGINNING. 25 or Philij^pi. To say that the church of a given place was always congregational, in the sense of never meeting for wor- ship in two places at once, or of not being divided into two or more assemblies, with one body of "elders" or of "bishops and deacons," would be to say what can hardly be proved. But that the organized church, in the primitive age of Christianity, was always a local institution — never national, never provincial or diocesan — is a proposition which few will deny. II. Each local church was complete in itself, and was held responsible to Christ for its own character, and the character of those whom it retained in its fellowship. The apostles, indeed, had a certain authority in all the churches, as they have now in all churches built on their foundation, for they were Christ's commissioned witnesses to testify w^hat he had taught, as well as the facts of his life and of his resurrection and ascension. If a question arose involving a doubt as to the nature and extent of the new kingdom of heaven — for example, the question whether all converts to Christ must be naturalized in the Hebrew commonwealth, and so brought under the restrictions and obligations of the national law ; or the question whether, in the fellowship of Christ's disciples, there should be a caste distinction between converted Jews and converted Greeks or Romans — there might be " no small dissension and disputation," as happened at Antioch and in many other places ; but if the question could not be settled in that way — if the disputants could not, by arguments from the prophetic Scriptures and from the story of the Gospel as they had received it, bring each other and the church to agree in a common conclusion — the apostles were of course appealed to as most likely to know the principles of the Gos- pel and their application, or, in other words, as most likely to know the mind of Christ. The reference from Antioch to Jerusalem' was a reference ^ Acts XV. 26 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. I. to the apostles for information concerning the nature and genius of that Gospel which they were commissioned to pub- lish, and which, at that time, had not been put upon record in any authoritative Scripture. If we permit the story to speak for itself, we see that the reference was not made be- cause the church at Jerusalem was supposed to have a metropolitan jurisdiction over the church in the capital of Syria, but because some ill-informed and narrow-minded men from Judea had alleged that the practice at Jerusalem under the teaching of the original apostles was opposite to the practice at Antioch and in the churches founded by Paul and Barnabas, whose authority as apostles was itself in ques- tion. What the brethren at Antioch wanted was informa- tion, full and conclusive, on a question of fact, and that in- formation could be obtained at Jerusalem, if they would send competent messengers to get it. The question of fact was : Did the original apostles, in the holy city of the Jews, preacli another Gospel than that which was preached by the new apostle to the Gentiles? Had they contradicted that cath- olic doctrine of justification by faith without the deeds of the law, on which the church at Antioch was founded, and which had been proclaimed so widely by the missionaries from that new centre of evangelization ? The party which Paul afterward stigmatized as "the concision" — the narrow, ultra-conservative, anti-evangelical party of the apostolic age — had begun to show itself; and it must be encountered and put down at Jerusalem as well as at Antioch. So far as the two churches were concerned, the procedure was not an ap- peal from an inferior court to a higher, but only the sending of a committee from the one to confer with the other, so that there should be no misunderstanding between them on a question of great interest to both. III. Particular churches, in that age, were related to each other as constituent portions of the Universal Church. Their unity was their one faith and hope. It was the unity of common ideas and principles distinguishing them from all the A.D. 1-100.] WHAT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. 27 world besides — of common interests and efforts, of common trials and perils, and of mutual affection. It was manifested not in their subjection to a common jurisdiction, nor in dog- matic formularies, nor in identity of liturgical forms, but in their common willingness to labor and suffer for Christ, and to do good in his name. When in that conference at Jerusalem it had come to be clearly understood that the Gospel in Palestine and the Gospel in Syria and Cilicia, and the regions beyond, were one Gospel, and when James, Ce- phas, and John "gave the right hands of fellowship to Paul and Barnabas," one permanent manifestation of the unity thus ascertained and professed was stipulated for. Paul tells us what the stipulation was — " Only that we should remem- ber the poor, the same which I also was forward to do."^ The " contribution for the poor saints at Jerusalem," which Paul had been concerned in at Antioch, from the beginning of his labors there,^ and which he was zealous for wherever he went,^ answered the purpose, which is more imperfectly answered by doctrinal standards and books of common prayer, by ruling priesthoods and ruling preacherhoods, or by representative assemblies receiving appeals and com- plaints from all points of the compass, and exercising juris- diction co-extensive with the boundaries of nations. One word [Kou'ijjyia — Jcoi?i07iia], in its twofold meaning, was at once the "contribution" for impoverished and suffering brethren and the " communion " of the saints. As the unity of the three thousand, after the day of Pentecost, and then of the five thousand, was manifested in their generous and loving Jcoinonia — when none of them said that aucrht of the thinsfs which he possessed was his own, but they had " all things common ;" so afterward, when " it pleased them of Macedo- nia and Achaia" to do the same sort of thing for suffering- brethren whom they had never seen, that contribution of theirs was the recognition and manifestation of unity. The ' Gal. ii., 9, 10. = Acts xi., 27-30. ^ i q^^^ ^vi., 1 ; 2 Cor., viii., ix. 28 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [oH. I. communion " in things carnal," expressed and testified the communion in "things spiritual."^ More significant than any other symbol could have been, such transactions were a demonstration of the fact that all the particular churches, however separated by distance, or diversified in forms and circumstances, were the one Catholic Church of Christ. In this way it became palpable that believers in Christ, wher- ever dispersed, were members of one holy commonwealth, and that there was " one body and one spirit, even as they were called in one hope of their calling."^ IV. In all the cliurches there was one rule to be observed in dealing with ofl:enders. Christ had given an explicit law : "If thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his" fault between thee and him alone ; if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it to the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican." ^ It would be preposterous to suppose that when the apostles gathered their converts in one place and another into societies for spiritual com- munion and fraternal helpfulness, they were forgetful of that rule, or that in any arrangements which they made for the working of such societies that rule was superseded. V. The earliest stated assemblies of Christian worshipers were formed on the model of the synagogue, with its simple arrangements for orderly worship and for instruction out of the Scriptures, rather than of the Temple with its priesthood and its ritual. Centuries before the coming of Christ, there grew up in Palestine, and afterward among the Jews of the dispersion, a religious institution which has outlived the Temple, the sacrifices, and the altar of ancient Judaism — the simple institution of local assemblies on the Sabbath-day for ^ Rom. XV., 27. = Eph. iv., 4. ^ Matt, xviii., 15-17. A.D. 1-100.] WHAT WAS IX THE BEGINNING. 29 prayer, and for the public reading and explanation of the holy books. In the synagogue, as may be seen now wher- ever there are Jews enough for a meeting, there was the worship of God without priest or altar — an intelligent wor- ship, impressive in its simjjlicity. The Sabbath created for itself the synagogue, and thus became a day of public wor- ship every where, instead of being only a day of religious abstinence from labor and of home enjoyment. The earliest Christians, whether in Palestine or in any other country, were Jews, or " devout " Gentiles, who found in the Gospel, not a new religion, but the fulfillment of God's ancient prom- ises ; and on all sides they were regarded as a Jewish sect, like the Pharisees or the Sadducees, though more obnoxious because of the newness and the revolutionary tendency of their opinions. In whatever place they were excluded from the assemblies of the Old-school Jews, or withdrew of their own choice, they became a Christian synagogue. Perhaps in some instances the synagogue itself became Christian. In the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, two words — EKicXrjtTia [ecclesio], and crwayioyi] [si/nagoge] — are used interchangeably for the word which in the English Bible is " congregation." Once in the Xew Testament the latter word is used to denote a Christian assembly ; ^ but it seems to have come to pass, in the gradual separation of Christian from Jewish congregations, that the name ecdesia was given distinctively to the worshiping society of believ- ers in Christ. Such were the churches at the date of the New Testament Scriptures. It is not difficult to understand the j^rocess of their origin and organization if we recollect distinctly what Christianity was at the beginning, before it was developed into what is now called doctrine, and what change it wrought in the consciousness and relations of those who received it. ^ James ii., 2 : "If there come into your synagogue,'' etc. 30 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. I. 1. The Gospel, as the apostles preached it, was essentially a story and a hope — the story the warrant of the hope. Even now we talk about " the story of the Gospel," though preach- ers, as well as theologians, ordinarily find it more natural to talk about " the doctrines of the Gospel." We still speak of the four books which record the life, death, and resurrec- tion of Jesus as " the four Gospels." But to the apostles and their hearers the story was all — the story about Jesus of Nazareth. All doctrine was involved in that story, all duty was related to it. All the inspiration which made the believer " a new creature " was in the story, and in the hope which it warranted. Those who received the story, and into whose consciousness its inspiration entered, were related to each other as brethren. The religious element in human nature is pre-eminently social, and the new religious con- sciousness which believers had in common made them mem- bers of a new society. At Philippi, for example, Lydia and the other converts were in a new relation to each other from the hour of their conversion.^ By virtue of their new faith and hope, they became at once, independently of any conven- tional arrangement, the church of Christ in Philippi. 2. Wherever the Gospel found reception, the converts must needs have their meetings for prayer, for mutual encourage- ment and help, and for such instruction as the best informed and most gifted among them could impart, if no other teach- ing was at hand. A convenient time for such meetings — a season redolent of sacred memories — was the first day of the week, beginning with the sunset of the Sabbath, and this they called "the Lord's day."^ 3. The first converts, who were the earliest members of such a meeting, had made profession of their faith in Jesus the Christ, and of their joining themselves to the new king- dom of God, by a simple ceremony of washing, significant of the divine cleansing w^hich was their entrance into a new » Acts xvi., 12-15, 40. ^ Acts xx., 7 ; 1 Cor. xvi., 2 ; Rev. i., 10. A.D. 1-100.] WHAT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. 31 and holy life. Of course, any who afterward came into their fellowship were in like manner baptized. 4. As at Jerusalem, so in all other places, the believers, as- sembled for mutual help and the mutual expression of their fellowship in the Gospel, had a certain "breaking of bread" together in remembrance of him whom they gratefully ac- knowledged as Christ the Lord. Their eating and drinking as at their Lord's table, and their initiatory w\ashing, seem to have been all that was, distinctive in their formal observ- ances, unless we add their habit of meeting on the first day of the week. 5. The name w^hich they gave to their religion, as distin- guished from the story by which it was inspired — the name of that new life w^iich they had begun to live — was "godli- ness," or the right worship [evrrrjljela] ; and the name by which they spoke of themselves as a community, or of each other, was "saints," or "holy brethren." Having such thoughts and aspirations, they were under a necessity of sympathizing with each other in any trouble, and of helping each other in any distress. That necessity w^as not imposed upon them merely by rule or stipulation — it was an instinct of their new life. 6. At first, such a society may have been without formal organization. The most capable, by a certain law of human nature, would lead the rest. Each member, prompted by his new ideas and sympathies, would use, for the common cause and the edification of his brethren, whatever gifts he had, and of whatever kind.^ But soon organization, in a more defi- nite way, would become necessary. There must be a recog- nized distribution of duties: one must do this work, another must do that. Somebody must preside in their meetings, and take the lead in worship and conference or in more form- al teaching. Somebody (and naturally somebody else) must receive contributions and expend them. If we would know * Rom. xii., 4-8. 32 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. I. how the organization was completed by the appointment of officers to perform these various functions, we must forget for the moment all modern systems of ecclesiastical polity, and let the apostolic documents teach us. Paul and Barna- bas revisited carefully the places where they had, in the first visit, made disciples. They went, " confirming the souls of the disciples," or, in another phrase, " confirming the church- es;" and one thing in that work of confirming or consolidat- ing the believers in the fellowship into which they had been introduced was the leading of them to a formal choice of of- ficers in each society as " the seven " were chosen at Jerusa- lem.i It was to that work of "confirming the churches'" that Timothy and Titus were afterward designated, when they were commissioned to set in order the things that had not been completed, and to constitute " elders in every city." When a missionary, the modern evangelist, in some unevangelized country, gathers his converts into churches leads them in the choice of the officers necessary to the com pleteness of their organization, trains them to habits of self support and self-government, and at last leaves them to the protection of God's providence and the guiding influence of God's word and Spirit, the difference between him and those whom he ordains in every city is surely intelligible. Such was the difl*erence between those primitive evangelists, the apostles, with their fellow-laborers, and the presbyter-bishops in every city. Such was the simplicity of organization in the primitive churches. There was no complex constitution, no studied distribution of powers, no sharp distinction of ranks. Each congregation — like a patriarchal tribe, like a Hebrew village, like a synagogue — had its " elders." ^ Some were to preside in the assembly, leading and feeding the flock; others to serve in the communion of the saints, almoners for the church to the needy, comforters to the afflicted. Bishops or dea- ^ Acts xiv., 21-23 ; xv., 3G-41. = Stanley, "Jewish Church," 181, 182. A.D. 1-100.] WHAT WAS IN THE BEGINNING. 33 cons, they were servants of the community, not lords over it. In a brotherhood where all were "kings and priests to God," no elder was king over his brethren, or stood as priest between them and tlie Father of their Lord Jesus Christ. [The reader who would examine more in detail the subject of the fore- going chapter may be referred to the following works accessible in the English language : Neander, -'Planting and Training of the Christian Church by the Apos- tles." Books I. -III. SchafF, "History of the Apostolic Church." . Books II. -IV. Mosheim, "Historical Commentaries." Century I., Sections 37-48. Milman, "History of Christianity." Book II., Ch. iv. Jacob, "Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament." Whately, "Kingdom of Christ."] c 34 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND OHUECHES. [cH. II. CHAPTER II. FROM THE PRIMITIVE TO THE PAPAL. When Christianity, by the conversion of Constantine (A.D. 312), became the dominant religion in the Roman Em- pire, the church polity then existing was in some respects widely different from that of the primitive churches. Less than three hundred years after the beginning at Jerusalem, the government of churches had become essentially episcopal, though the bishops every where were elected by the Chris- tian people. Often, if not always, the authority of the bishop, instead of being simply parochial, extended over many con- gregations, the mother church, in which the bishop had his throne, or secies [see], being surrounded with dependent con- gregations, all under one government. The bishop had un- der him a body of presbyters, who were his council and help- ers, and to whom he assigned their duties. Not unfrequently the bishops of a district or province were assembled in synods or councils to deliberate on affairs of general interest, such as disputed points of doctrine, and questions about uniformity in worship and discipline. There was a firmly established distinction between clergy and laity, the clergy consisting of three orders or gradations, bishops, presbyters, and deacons. It has been sometimes assumed that what was in the fourth century must have been from the beginning. The fact, so conspicuous in the survey of that age, that the then existing church polity was substantially what is now called episcopal, has been thought to prove that the churches never were or- ganized and governed in any other way ; especially as there are no traces of any revolutionary conflict by which one polity was substituted for another, and no exact line can be drawn to mark the beginning of the distinction between A.D. 100-400.] FROM PRIMITIVE TO PAPAL. 35 presbyters and bishops, or the transfer of power from self- governing Christian assemblies to a hierarchy. Constantine did not institute the episcopal form of government over the churches — he found it already existing, with its roots in the past; and in adopting Christianity as the religion of the em- pire, he adopted that ecclesiastical polity. What, then, had become of the polity which we find in the New Testament? At what date was it superseded ? Who introduced another constitution in the place of it ? Such is the outline of an argument which often seems conclusive. The fallacy lies in the assumption that church government,' once instituted, will perpetuate itself, and can be changed only by a revolutionary agitation. It is easy to assume that from what existed in the early part of the fourth century we may safely infer what existed in the early part of the third or of the second ; and that from what existed when Chris- tianity, early in the second century, emerges as an organized force into secular history, we may infer with certainty what existed in that formative and rudimentary period of which we have no record but in the New Testament. We know that the church polity which Constantine found in full shape and action was modified under his influence, and that the history of the church through all the ages from Constantine to Luther is full of changes in the polity of what was called the Catholic Church. We know, too, that in the earlier pe- riod, from the days of Ignatius and Polycarp onward, the constitution of the Christian commonwealth throughout the Roman Empire, the powers and functions of its officers, and the relations of local churches to each other, had been grad- ually changed. Need we marvel then if, in the early years of the second century, we find a difi*erence between such bishops as Ignatius of Antioch or even Polycarp of Smyrna and those whom Paul exhorted at Miletus, or those to whom he addressed the epistle which he wrote for the church at Philippi, or those whom he described in his Pastoral Epistles? As the New Testament gives us no system of definite and 36 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. II. formulated dogmas in theology, so it gives us no completed system of church government. Ecclesiastical polity grew, age after age, just as theology grew. What there was of or- ganization in the primitive churches was more like the or- ganization of a seed than like the organization of the tree in its maturity. The period between the day of Pentecost and the middle of the second century — or the narrow^er period between the date of the Pastoral Epistles and the beginning of that century — could not but be a period of rapid develop- ment in the Christian commonwealth. Nor did the growth of ecclesiastical polity terminate then. It went on, imper- ceptibly but steadily, to the age of Constantine — as it went on afterward to the age of Luther — as it goes on now, even in communities most abhorrent of progress and most observ- ant of traditions. The circumstances of that early development determined, in many respects, its character and tendency. In that age the churches had no experience to guide them or to warn them. They knew nothing of what we know from the his- tory of eighteen centuries. Why should they be jealous for their liberty? How should they be expected to detect and resist the beginning of lordship over God's heritage? We must remember, too, that in those times of inexperience the development of the Christian organization was a develop- ment under pressure. Christianity, often persecuted, always " an illicit religion," was making its way in the presence of powerful enemies. Its natural leaders, the "bishops and deacons," freely chosen in every church, were, of necessity, intrusted with large powers over the endangered flock, and, of course, power was accumulating in their hands. The churches were in cities ; for it was in cities that the new doc- trine and worship could obtain a foothold. Such churches, as they grew, were naturally distributed, rather than divided, into a plurality of assemblies governed by one venerable company of bishops or elders, and served by one corps of deacons. Equally natural was it for each mother church to A.D. 100-400.] FROM PEIMITIVE TO PAPAL. 37 become still more extencled by spreading itself out into the suburbs and surrounding villages; all believers in the city and its suburbs, or in the country round about, being recog- nized as constituting one ecdesia with one administration. In the growth of such a community, as its affairs become more complicated, one of the elders or overseers must needs become the moderator or chairman of the board ; and to him the chief oversight must be intrusted. At first that presid- ing elder is only a leader, foremost among brethren who are equal in authority ; but by degrees he becomes a superior officer with distinctive powers. A tendency to monarchy begins to be developed in what was at first a simple republic. The principle of equality and fraternity begins to be super- seded by the spirit of authority and subordination. This may be noted as the first departure from the simplicity of the primitive polity. Primitive bishops — the elders w^iom the apostles ordained in every city — were not necessarily preachers in an official or professional way. They were rather a board of managers, not unlike to class-leaders in the system of Wesleyan Meth- odism. Some of them " labored in word and doctrine," and " aptness to teach " was regarded as an important qualifica- tion for their office. It Avas their duty to preside in the worshiping assembly ; to watch for the prosperity of the church and for the welfare of individual souls, and, among other things, to call out those who could fitly speak a word of exhortation or of doctrine — as the rulers of the synagogue at Antioch, in Pisidia, called out Paul and Barnabas. ^ Preach- ing was by apostles, evangelists, prophets, or gifted brethren [TTVEVjiaTLKOL], somc of whom — if there were such in the church — would be among the elders. In the next generation, w^hen the apostles and their fellow-laborers in the first preaching of the Gospel had passed aw^ay, the duty of feeding the peo- ple with knowledge, and of speaking to them the word of ^ Acts xiii., 15. 38 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. TI. God, came with additional weight upon the rulers of the Christian synagogue. Then the elder who is to preside over liis brethren must be a preacher with gifts of knowledge and of utterance; and the elder who presides and preaches be- comes the bishop. So there comes to be a distinction of rank and of functions between the bishop and his presbyters. Once he and they were co-presbyters, taking heed to the flock " over which the Holy Ghost had made them" jointly " over- seers ;" but the silent progress of change has made them his subordinates. Such was the rudimentary beginning of episcopal power over the churches. At first it was simply a parish episcopacy. While the mother church in a city — the principal and cen- tral congregation — had its full staff" of presbyters, the bishop's advisers and helpers, it naturally followed that the subordi- nate congregations which had grown up in the near vicinity were supplied with presbyters, or teachers and rulers, under the direction of the bishop, and responsible to him. As yet there was properly no diocese — only a large and growing parish, with dependent and outlying districts. But by im- perceptible gradations the parochial bishop of the second century had begun to be, in the third century, a diocesan bishop, though of moderate pretensions. The ancient civili- zation, even more than the modern, made cities the seats of power; and it was most natural for the mother church of a city to become the mother church for all the region of which that city was the market town or the political centre. At an early period the churches of Greece, represented by their bishops, began to meet in occasional synods for consultation and agreement on questions of doctrine or of order; and gradually the theory was accepted of an oecumenical church under a common government, and of councils whose decrees, or " canons," enacted in the name of catholic unity, were to have the force of law in all particular churches. When Christianity became, under Constantine, the religion of the emperor, that sagacious statesman found already developed A.D. 100-400.] FROM PRIMITIVE TO PAPAL. 39 more than the rudiments of the ecclesiastical government which he proceeded to establish. He divided the territory of the empire into ecclesiastical patriarchates, provinces, and dioceses, corresponding with the divisions and subordinations of civil jurisdiction; and thus the system of diocesan epis- copacy, as it exists to-day in Roman Catholic Europe, in En- gland, in Russia, and in the old Christian communities of the Turkish Empire, was completed. Meanwhile another change, departing more widely from the simple Christianity of the New Testament, had been in progress. The primitive elder, whether bishop or deacon, was only an officer in a local society where all were brethren. In the Christian assembly, as in the Jewish synagogue, there were rulers to preside and direct ; there were " prophets and teachers ;" there were servants of the congregation ; there was the obvious distinction between brethren appointed to certain duties and brethren not in office; and, doubtless, those brethren who, though neither bishops nor deacons, had special gifts for the service of the Gospel, were in some way recognized and distinguished; but the distinction between clergy and laity, afterward so wide, had not then been made. As in the synagogue, so in the ecclesia, there was neither sacrifice nor altar. In the new kingdom of God on earth, all were " kings and priests unto God ;" and the High-priest was none other than Jesus the Christ, who, having ofi'ered him- self once for all, had passed beyond the veil, and was making intercession for all his saints. The Christianity of that age knew nothing of a clergy superior to the brotherhood by virtue of some mysterious power conferred in ordination, or of a laity dependent on priestly mediation for access to God. But certain errors adverse to spiritual Christianity have their origin in human nature, ever prone to superstition. In the third and fourth centuries, the rulers of the Christian synagogue — the bishops and deacons appointed to certain duties in the local church — became, by gradual change, a Christian priesthood. 40 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [cH. II. That change was inseparably connected with other changes adverse to the simply spiritual religion of the New Testa- ment. It was not without significance that what had been only a teaching and guiding ministry in tlie churches began to be called by names and titles borrowed from the Jewish or the Gentile sacerdotal system. Superstition had already begun to misunderstand and pervert the symbolic observ- ances instituted by Christ, and to regard them as having a supernatural efficacy if rightly performed. The elder who not only labors in word and doctrine, and helps to guide the flock, but also communicates supernatural grace by his ma- nipulations, has become more than a ruler in the Christian synagogue — more than a minister of the Gospel. He is a priest, and is rightly designated by sacerdotal titles. Being a priest, he must magnify his priestly office. Baptism, in- stead of being only a symbolical washing, significant of the new life into which the believer in Christ is born, becomes itself a regenerative act, deriving its efficacy from the priest who administers it. The primitive elder having grown into a priest, " it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer." ^ Thus the primitive eating and drinking in affec- tionate remembrance of Christ becomes a mysterious trans- action, invalid without a ministering priest; and at last, when superstition has been formulated into dogma, the table of the Lord's Supper is displaced by the altar, the bread has become "the host" [hostia, victim], the sign is confounded with the thing signified, the simple memorials are transub- stantiated into the actual body and blood and divinity of the Incarnate Son of God, and the officiating priest by a few muttered words of Latin creates the world's Creator. In the earliest centuries, after the fall of Jerusalem, the church of Antioch, where " the disciples were first called Christians," and whence Paul and Barnabas with their asso- ciates were sent forth on their missionary journeys; the ^ Heb. viii., 3. A.D. 100—400.] FROM PRIMITIVE TO PAPAL. 41 churches of Ephesus and Smyrna, where there had long been a marvelous confluence of ideas and superstitions, as well as of commerce from the East and from the West; and the church of Alexandria, where the new religion began to claim for its service the world's philosophy and learning, were more important, more honored, and more authoritative than the church of the imperial city. Beginning at Jerusa- lem, Christianity was in those ages more of a power on the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean than in any European country, with the exception, perhaps, of Mace- donia and Achaia. Even in Rome its language, as at Anti- och and Alexandria, was Greek. But when Christianity had organized itself more widely through the empire, it began to be felt that the church in the greatest of all cities — the centre of the world's civilization, and the seat of almost universal empire — was in some sense the most important of all churches. Gradually, what had been a mere feeling, was becoming a claim on the one hand and a concession on the other, and something like a primacy among churches was recognized as a prerogative of the church in the imperial city. When the seat of empire was transferred to the New Rome on the Bosphorus by the Christian emperor Constantino, the con- sequent rivalry between the church of Rome and the church of Constantinople, and between their bishops, for the pri- macy, was the beginning of a division which ultimately sepa- rated the Greek Church from the Latin, the Christianity of the East from that of the West. The flrst great attempt to convert the invisible and spiritual unity of Christ's Universal Church — such unity as may co-exist with freedom and di- versity— into the organic unity of a body politic, resulted in the first great schism. Rome having ceased to be the chief city of the world, the claim of the Roman bishops to precedence must rest upon another foundation. Was there not a primacy among the apostles? Did not Christ give to Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven ? Was it not to Peter that he said, 42 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. II. "Feed my sheep ?" How could Peter govern the Universal Church as Christ's vicar, without making Rome the seat of his apostolic empire ? Where else could he so fitly die and leave his authority to his successors? So came the pious fraud which made Rome the apostolic see, and its bishop the vicar of Christ. This was a deep and sure foundation, not to be shaken by so trifling an event as the removal of the imperial court from the Tiber to the Bosphorus. Resting on such a foundation, the claim of primacy among bishops became at last a claim of supremacy over all Christians. Tlie continued absence of the imperial court, the increasing imbecility of the empire in the West, the irruption of bar- barians even into Italy, and the gradual displacement of pa- ganism by a modified Christianity, combined to invest the bishop of Rome with ever-growing authority. That author- ity became, in the absence of an efficient secular govern- ment, a barrier against anarchy. The bishop — " the holy fa- ther"— was the father of the people, and for his sake the Greek word pcqm, or pope — a familiar title applied to all priests in the Greek Church — was transferred into the Latin language. In pagan Rome the priests were pontiffs, and from the days of Numa Pompilius, there was always a Ponti- fex Maximus, or supreme pontiff. When the Emperor Au- gustus was completing the subversion of the republic, and gathering into his own hands all the elements of power, he was the Pontifex Maximus, and thenceforth that was an im- perial title ; for the emperor must needs be the highest func- tionary of the national religion. But when the emperors were no longer pagan, they abdicated that old pagan priest- liood. Why then should not the chief priest of the new re- ligion snatch from the ruin of the old, and claim as his in- lieritance, the title and the powers of Pontifex Maximus? In the early centuries, the law of God revealed in the Scriptures was the rule of life for Christians, while the civil government, being unchristian, had another standard. There was a higher law for Christians, and a lower law for those A.D. 100-400.] FROM PRIMITIVE TO PAPAL. 43 who adhered to the old religion. A striking instance of tliis was the difference between Christians and unbelievers in the law of marriage and in regard to offenses against chastity. While the Roman law was not quite regardless of conjugal rights and domestic sanctities, it permitted divorce almost at the discretion of either party, and it had no censure for any licentiousness save that which robbed a husband of his wife not yet divorced. But among Christians, marriage was a religious contract, in which the parties were united under the benediction of the church, and which was indissoluble without a forfeiture of character and standing by at least one of the parties. A divorce might be lawful before Caesar and unlawful before God. The church, therefore, applying in its discipline the law of Christ, must take cognizance of every divorce within its jurisdiction, and at its tribunal the invalidity of a marriage or the rightfulness of a divorce might be tried and decided. In like manner other offenses, whether against morals or against religion, if committed by persons claiming the Christian name, came under the cognizance of the church. Moreover, the early Christians had been taught by the apostles not to appear against each other as litigants before heathen magistrates, but rath- er to settle their differences among themselves by friendly arbitration. Thus in each church, wherever Christianity grew into an organized institution, there must needs be some judicial power both for the trial and censure of public offenses and for the adjustment of private contro- versies among the faithful. When the government of those early churches had become episcopal, the judicial power rested in the bishop and his subordinates. As the nom- inally Christian population, in one city and another, be- came more numerous, age after age, the judicial and admin- istrative functions of the clergy, presided over by the bish- ops, became continually more extensive and more arduous. Less scrupulous than the apostles, the bishops did not refuse to take upon themselves, in addition to the administration 44 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. II. of spiritual discipline and the trial of causes between Chris- tian litigants, various duties pertaining to what we have learned to call the secularities of the church. Dependent widows, friendless orphans, and all arrangements in the name of the church to relieve the poor, were under their care. Wills were referred to the bishop for approval, and the di- vision of inheritances fell under his superintendence. When the hierarchical principle had been developed, and with it the correlate principle of an cecumenical church, governed as one body by its hierarchy ; and when councils, provincial and oecumenical, had begun to legislate for the churches, and their decrees or canons had begun to be recognized as law, the idea of appeals from one tribunal to another, and finally to the church at Rome, as the tribunal of ultimate resort, was an easy consequence. Constantine and his successors in the empire, having removed from Christianity the stigma of an illicit religion, proceeded to recognize and legalize the power of the bishops over the communities under their care. The distinction, now so familiar, between church govern- ment and civil government, had never been defined or dis- cussed, and it was therefore natural for the ministers of a re- ligion recognized and protected by the state to become in some sort and to some extent functionaries of the imperial power. The decisions of bishops, in certain cases, were to be enforced without question or appeal by civil officers. Certain exemptions and immunities were gained for the clergy, so that for many offenses, and at last for all offenses, they were responsible only to the ecclesiastical authority, and must be divested of their sacred character by the church before the civil power could touch them. Of all this, noth- ing was lost — indeed, the progress of ecclesiastical usurpa- tion was greatly accelerated — when, at the downfall of the empire in the West, its barbarian conquerors were them- selves conquered by the church. In the new world which slowly emerged, as from a deluge, after the overthrow of the old civilization, and which became A.D. 600-1500.] FKOM PEIMITIVE TO PAPAL. 45 the world of the Middle Ages, the church, converting the barbarians and humanizing their ferocity, was among the foremost powers. The Catholic Church, with its one ubiqui- tous priesthood, with its superstitions and imposing ritual, with its ever-growing splendor and grandeur, with its gov- ernment centralized under the supreme Pontiff at the his- toric seat of universal empire, and with what still remained to it of intellectual culture and aspiration, and of the Chris- tian spirit and doctrine, became the bond of union among nations of diverse races and dissonant languages. Its canon law was a distinct body of jurisprudence, supposed to be au- thoritative over all men, touching all human relations, and having force as law wherever the primacy of Rome was ac- knowledged— whether on the Tiber or on the Thames, whether in France or in Germany. Its tribunals were every where co-ordinate with the courts of secular justice, and every where the magistrate was bound to respect and obey their decisions. But while the church was thus encroaching on the state, it came to pass that the state in its turn transcended its legitimate powers and invaded the province of the church. At every stage in the progress of the hierarchy and of the superstitions which made it powerful, there was a correspond- ino^ increase of the wealth devoted to religious uses and con- trolled by ecclesiastical functionaries. The election of bish- ops, after being transferred from the people to the clergy of the cathedral churches, had been virtually given to the pope, whose approval was considered necessary to the valid- ity of an election. By similar methods the control of ap- pointments to lucrative or honorable stations in the church, throughout all the countries subject to papal authority, was gradually centralized in the court of Rome. The power of the pope in these respects, together with the taxes which he levied under various names and pretenses, became burden- some. In one country and another, the drain on the national wealth gave rise to loud and frequent complaint. It was a 46 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [cH. II. serious question whether the ever-growing wealth of the ec- clesiastical power should bear its part, with the wealth of laymen and of secular corporations, in the tribute which wealth pays to government for protection. When the ec- clesiastical power had become so great and so formidable, there could not but be resistance unless the state were con- tent to be merged in a spiritual despotism. Some limit must be set to the power that was centred at Rome, or there would soon be no other power. If princely archbish- ops, with princely dignity and jDOwer, and bishops with the wealth and state of barons, were appointed by the pope, and were responsible only to him for the exercise of their most formidable powers, the king — the secular and civil govern- ment, under whatever name — must have a voice in the ap- pointment ; and the ecclesiastical lord, no less than the lay lord, must be invested with the lands and temporal posses- sions of his office by the sovereign to whom he owed alle- giance. The conflict about ecclesiastical investitures which runs through the history of the Middle Ages was essentially a conflict between the church and the state about the ap- pointment of church officers. No such conflict could have arisen had the churches retained their original simplicity of constitution. But when the church had become a hierarchy with immense possessions, and that hierarchy had become complicated with all the machinery of government in the state, the long conflict between the popes, on the one hand, and emperors and kings on the other hand, was an inevitable consequence. The celibacy of the clergy was not a papal invention. In the early churches — as early, perhaps, as the latter part of the second century — there was an ascetic sentiment which forgot that "marriage is honorable in all," and ascribed superior sanctity to a life of voluntary celibacy. Before the schism between the Greek Church and the Latin, before the excision of the Oriental churches, that sentiment had acquired almost the force of law. Yet to this day, in the Greek Church, in A.D. 600-1500.] FROM PRIMITIVE TO PAPAL. 47 the Armenian Church, and in the Nestorian, celibacy is re- quired only of bishops, who are therefore selected generally, not from among the parochial clergy, but from among the monks in convents. But in the Latin Church of the Middle Ages, an unmarried life became at last, after many conflicts, the indispensable rule for all orders of the hierarchy. The priests of that great organization which, in the name of Christ, aspired to universal dominion, were excluded from the most important and sacred of human relations, and were to be an isolated class incapable of the sympathies, so tender and so powerful, w^hich live in the atmosphere of home and of household love and duty. Yet the parochial clergy, dwelling in their own parishes, watching over their own flocks, serving their neighbors in the ministrations of religion, and responsible each to his own bishop, were thought to be not sufficiently cut off from hu- man relations and sympathies. Though doomed to ignorance of parental and conjugal affections, though exempt from all ordinary duties in society and from responsibility to civil government, they were, after all, citizens in some sort, and capable of patriotic sympathies. As being in the world, they were called the secular clergy. The monastic orders, those great fraternities organized under vows of obedience as well as of celibacy, were the regular clergy — exempted from the jurisdiction of the bishops, withdrawn from the world, generally secluded in monasteries, governed by their own ofticers like a military organization — the standing army of the great High-Priest at Rome. Into those bodies many of the best men, in those ages of ignorance and violence, were attracted, by whose withdrawal from their natural relations to society, the world, which might have been the better for their example and their direct be- neficence, was really made worse. Doubtless the monasteries and the monastic orders were instituted, originally, with the best intentions. Doubtless they served some good purpose under that divine Providence which makes all thinofs in 48 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. II. some way subservient to itself. It may be that, without them, learning, in those ages of barbarism, would have per- ished. It may be that, without them, Christianity, finding no place of refuge, would have degenerated into a religion of ferocity, or into a superstition as besotted as that which exists in Abyssinia. But we know that human nature in those ages was just what human nature is to-day. We know that neither human passions nor human infirmities can be laid down at the gate of a monastery, and that the commu- nity within, which receives the neophyte into its bosom and subjects him to its ascetic rules, is only a community of men in a most unnatural and unmanly condition. We know, too, that a sentimental Christianity, shirking all natural duties, retreating from conflict with the world's temptations, and shutting itself up in a cell for communion with God, is Christianity misguided, morbid, and deformed, and that it can not recover its vigor or its divine beauty but by going forth to walk and to work in the sunshine. Nor can we for- get that as the idea of monastic life had its origin partly in the exaggeration, but still more in the perversion of Christian sentiments, so the monastic orders, instead of having any tendency or fitness to restore the true ideal of the Christian life, were the foremost supporters of superstition and the most efficient instruments of spiritual despotism. A. D. 1517-55.] CHURCH POLITY OF THE REFOKMATIOJM. 49 CHAPTER HI. WHAT THE KEFOEMATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY DID FOR CHURCH POLITY. The great Reformation in the sixteenth century was an attempt to recover the primitive Gospel. Its success, so far as it was successful, resulted from a concurrence of various forces adverse to that huge system, comjoacted of supersti- tion, scholastic theology, and spiritual despotism, the growth of fourteen hundred years, which had usurped the name and place of Christianity. The revival of learning, the invention of printing, and the general movement toward a new stage of civilization, were among the influences which contributed to the result. What was, at first, the experience of individ- ual souls struggling with the great question, "How shall man be just with God," driven back from tradition to the Scriptures, and finding rest in Christ the one mediator be- tween God and men, became, at that juncture, a new an- nouncement of the primitive Gospel. As in the first cent- ury, so in the sixteenth, the Gospel, " to wit, that God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself," was the power that took hold of human souls to bring them out of darkness into light, and out of bondage into the liberty of the sons of God. Agitation ensued, opposition, conflict, papal excommunica- tion, and at last a permanent revolt of Protestant nations against the power enthroned at Rome.^ In what ecclesiastical forms did Protestantism organize it- self? When -we ask this question, we meet the fact that every where a political element was combined with the sim- ply religious element in effecting the Reformation. ^ See " History of the Reformation,'" by Prof George P. Fisher. D 50 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. 111. The Roman Catholic religion, or, more properly, the church under the hierarchy centralized at Rome, was every where a political institution. For ages the pope and the bishops un- der him were often, not to say habitually, in conflict with civil o-overnments; for the church, professing to wield the power of Him to whom is given all power on earth and in heaven, was every where — whether in Spain or in England, in Sicily or in Sweden — one corporation, claiming its exemp- tions and its privileges, not under the law of the land, but under a superior law of which it was itself the sole expos- itor. The ecclesiastical theory of those ages was not " a free church in a free state," but one oecumenical church dom- inant over subject states, and executing its decrees by the ministry of the secular power. If there were to be a church reformation, the movement could not but be political as well as religious. In the relations then existing between church and state, if the institution known as the church were to be reformed in its doctrines, worship, and polity, that reforma- tion must take place either under the protection of the civil power, and in some sort of co-operation with it, or in the form of a political revolution. Earlier attempts at reformation failed and were suppress- ed because they came to be regarded by the civil power, sooner or later, as dangerous and revolutionary. But when Luther in Northern Germany, and Zwingli in German Swit- zerland, began simultaneously to recall men's minds from su- perstitious reliance on priestly intercessions and manipula- tions, and to exhibit the freeness of God's grace and the sim- plicity of the way to be saved, the political condition of Eu- rope was such that they found protection and encourage- ment, and in some sense help, from secular powers. Under the Providence that rules the world, the success of the Reformation, wherever it was permanently successful, was brought about by that combination of political with relig- ious forces. Luther would have been crushed but for the constant friendship of Frederick the Wise. Zwingli was sus- A.D. 1517-55.] CHURCH POLITY OF THE REFORMATIOX. 51 tained by the free spirit of Switzerland. The little republic of Geneva made itself illustrious by receiving Calvin as its religious leader. It was an inevitable consequence of this combination that every where the political element of the Reformation pre- dominated in determining the form of ecclesiastical institu- tions and arrangements. Already, in each state or kingdom, the church was inseparably complicated with the state. No reformation was possible but by asserting and maintaining liberty for the state or kingdom against the tyranny of Rome or of the ecclesiastico-political power. Acquiescence, on the part of the Reformers, in such arrangements for public wor- ship and for the religious instruction of the people as could be obtained by consultation and agreement with the polit- ical power that protected them, was inevitable in the cir- cumstances of the conflict. What they were contending for was the primitive Gospel rather than the primitive church polity. The ecclesiastical polity, therefore — especially in relation to the forms of public worship, the selection and designation of ministers, and the provision for their support — was determined, in each reformed state or kingdom, not so much by a reference to the primitive model as by considera- tions of temporary and local convenience. It was in this way that national churches, independent of each other as well as of Rome, came into being. No doubt there had been long before some rudimentary notion of a national church ; but in the Reformation, as wrought out by the co-operation of religious and political forces, that idea was developed, and became the basis of ecclesiastical organ- ization. It was assumed, as a first principle, that the people of a Christian state or kingdom, being all baptized, were all Christians and members of Christ's church in that state or kingdom. It was also assumed that the Christian people were represented in their government, and that whatever rights and powers in matters ecclesiastical had originally be- longed to the Christian laity, but had been usurped by the 52 GENESIS OF THE NEAV ENGLAND CHUKCHES. [CH. III. pope or the clergy, were in the people as politically organ- ized, or (wherever the Reformation came by a political revo- lution) in the Protestant as distinguished from the Roman- ist people. Arrangements were therefore made for the re- forming of ecclesiastical institutions — such as public wor- ship, the choice and induction of ministers, the administra- tion of sacraments, and the infliction of censures — in con- formity with the theory which it will be convenient to des- ignate as Nationalismi. The underlying idea was that the baptized people of an independent state, being a distinct church, were as independent of Rome as Rome was of them, while they were also a constituent part of the true church catholic. Before the Reformation there was no ecclesias- tical independence any where in Western Christendom. Na- tional churches, if any body thought of such a thing, were only portions of one organized and governed church — the Roman Catholic. Where kings or sovereign princes led the Reformation, and had the shaping of its institutions, the reconstructed church government was, essentially if not in name, episcopal. In proportion as the political element concurring with the religious reformers was popular, the new church government was essentially presbyterian, or classical and synodical, tend- ing toward the independence and self-government of each particular congregation, but guarding the official authority as well as the parity of the clergy. At Geneva, Calvin, not to be out-voted by fellow-presbyters unfriendly to the Ref- ormation, established a consistory in which representatives of the laity, annually chosen, were consessors with the clergy. That consistory at Geneva became a model of government for the churches of the Reformation in France, in the Neth- erlands, in various German cities and principalities, and in Scotland ; and the laymen whose voices and votes in the consistory were to check the power of the ministers were afterward called "lay-elders." It would be folly to suppose that the Reformers, as dis- A.D. 1517-55.] CHURCH POLITY OF THE REFORMATION. 53 tinguished from the secular powers that protected or be- friended them, regarded themselves as having achieved their own ideal of church organization. On the contrary, they seem to have regarded the various ecclesiastical systems re- sulting from the Reformation as obviously imperfect, and to have accepted them as the best they could obtain in the cir- cumstances. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Cranmer, and Latimer wanted something better, and hoped that in another age the work begun by them would be completed. The religious tendency, in the reconstruction of ecclesiastical institutions, was in the direction of a theory which was nowhere realized.^ Nine years after the beginning of the Reformation in Ger- many (1526), there was prepared for the churches of the great principality of Hesse, or Hessia, a scheme of ecclesiastical or-" der which was almost a purely Congregational platform, but which never went into operation there. Francis Lambert, of Avignon, was the author of it. A fugitive from France, he had found in Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse, a protector and a patron. Li an informal synod convened by Philip to settle the Reformation in his principality, the exiled French- man had the opportunity of presenting certain theses on church government which he had published not long before under the title of "Paradoxes;" and a plan of reformation was adopted by the synod in conformity with the views which he had gained from a careful and independent study of the Scriptures. The method which Lambert proposed, and which the in- formal synod seems to have heartily approved, provides, first, for the organization of local churches. It " contemplates the formation of a pure congregation of true believers, in which the right of ecclesiastical self-government should be exer- cised immediately by the congregation, not mediately through representatives and delegates." Reasons for the self-govern- ment of parochial churches were adduced from the Script- ' Gieseler, "Eccl. Hist." (translated by Prof. H. B. Smith), iv., 520-532. 54 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. III. ures. "The law of Christ, in Matt, xviii., requires it to be 'told to the church' when a brother will not hear admoni- tion ; but the church of God is nothing but the assembly of believers. The believers must therefore be assembled from time to time, otherwise it would not be possible for the con- tumacy of an offending brother to be reported to them. Furthermore, according to the word of Paul (l Cor. v.), the believers must be gathered together for the public censure and excommunication of a scandalous person. There are other purposes, also, for which the believers must assemble — to pass judgment on the sentiments of their pastors; to elect, and, if necessary, to depose bishops and deacons (that is, parish ministers and their assistants), and officers for the care of the poor,^ and to decide on any other matter that concerns the whole Church. " Accordingly," said the author of the plan, " we ordain that in every parish, after the Word of God has been preached for a sufficient length of time, a meeting of believ- ers shall bo held, in which all men who are on Christ's side and are reckoned with the saints shall come together, in or- der that they may, in conjunction with the bishop " — that is, the bishop of that parish — " settle all the affairs of the church according to the word of God. Believing women may attend the meeting, but without the right of voting. " But inasmuch as opposers of the faith ought not to be admitted to the assembly of the faithful, let a separation be- tween true and false brethren be undertaken in the follow- ing way : After the word of God has been preached for a time, let the minister invite all believers to a meeting on the next Sunday, at which, however, only those are expected to be present who are willing to submit themselves to the word of God, and in particular to the rule that whosoever ' Another account of this platform describes it as providing for "two kinds of church officers " — the pastors (episcopi) and their helpers (diaconi, or adju- tores episcoporum), on the one hand, and the almoners (diaconi ecclesiaruin) on the other hand. A.D. 151 7-55. J CHURCH POLITY OF THE REFORMATION. 55 gives offense by evil-doing shall be put out of the cliurcli. After this has been repeatedly announced, and after the people have been individually exhorted to repentance and amendment of life, shall the meeting take place. Those who are not willing to devote themselves to a life of Christian piety shall withdraw, and shall be considered not as breth- ren, but as heathen men and 'those that are without.' Let prayer, however, be made for these as well as for the brethren. "The power of excommunication and absolution by no means rests with the bishop alone, but only with him in conjunction w^ith the church. But those who wish to be numbered with the saints, and to put themselves under the Christian discipline, are to be enrolled in a register — not shrinking from this even when they are very few in num- ber; let them be assured of this, that through the operation of God's word their number shall speedily increase, even though, at the outset, it be no more than twenty or thirty. " In the congregations of brethren or saints that may be organized as the result of these preparatory steps, all church business is to be transacted — choice of ministers, excommu- nication, restoration ; the bishop, to whom it belongs to pre- side in the meeting, seeing to it that, in accordance with the word of God, every one shall have a patient hearing." Such was the plan which Francis Lambert, in the early years of the Reformation, had deduced from the precedents and principles of the New Testament. The church, as or- ganized and governed, was to be a local or parochial institu- tion, complete in every parish. It was to be constituted, not by including all baptized inhabitants, but by a separation of its members from such as were not willing to submit them- selves to the word of God, and by mutual agreement. The church thus constituted was to be self-governed, having power over its members to admonish the erring, to excom- municate the stubborn offender, to restore the penitent. It was to have power over its officers, both bishops and deacons — the power to elect, to judge, and, if necessary, to depose. 56 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. III. The bishop — each church having a bishop or bishops of its own — was to preside in the church-meeting, but was to have no power of exclusion from communion without the votes of the brethren. In every j^arish the brotherhood of believers was to be, simply and purely, a spiritual democracy under Christ. Another part of the platform made provision for a yearly synod of the churches, which was to be "composed of the assembled pastors and of delegates chosen immediately be- fore in the church-meetings." The functions and powers of the synod were defined in a remarkable accordance with the powers and functions of councils in the polity of the New England churches, the most important difterence being that the synod was to meet annually at a fixed time and place, instead of being convened like a New England council on a definite occasion and at a special call. In the annual meet- ing there was to be an examination of the doings of congre- gations in the choice and removal of pastors, an inspection and superintendence of the three visitors annually appointed, and finally the decision of questions and difficulties laid be- fore them by the churches. But it was declared in an in- tensely Congregational spirit, " that the word of God out- weighs a majority ;" ^ and that the decisions of the synod were to be set forth solely on the authority of substantial proofs from Scripture for the edification of all the churches, and were to be announced not as decrees or statutes, but only as " the answer of the Hessian Synod." Yet — and this was the greatest defect — the church was not to be completely separated from the state, but was still to be in some sort under the superintendence of the secular government. The business occurring between one synod and the next was to be in the charge, partly, of a select synodal committee of thirteen, partly of three visitors, to be * '■^ Major enim est Dei sermo omni hominum multitudine ; et melius est adherere uni habenti verbum Domini, quam multis proprium judicium se- (luen'iibus." A.D, 1517-55.] CHURCH POLITY OF THE REFORMATIOX. 57 named for the first year by the landgrave and afterward by the synod, and p'artly of the church in the synodal city of Marburg. The same synodal committee was to superintend and manage the business of the synod when in session. In the selection of this committee, the prince, with the nobility, if present in the assembly, was to have the right of voting ; and in its sessions the prince, with such persons as he should introduce, and the nobility lavorable to the Gospel, might be present. This Hessian platform almost extinguishes the idea of clerical power — an idea essential to all the national churches produced by the Reformation, to the Presbyterian no less than to the Episcopal. A Presbyterian system of church government may change the priest into a minister of the word of God, and may deny that there is any cleansing effi- cacy or sacrificial value in his manipulation of the sacra- ments; but if it make all preachers, by virtue of their or- dination, and independently of their being called to office in a local church, rulers by divine right in the church at large, it simply changes the ruling priesthood into a ruling preach- erhood. But there was as little of ruling preacherhood as of ruling priesthood in Francis Lambert's system. The plat- form which he deduced from the Scriptures recognizes no bishop at large, nor any bishop other than the simple pastor of a parish church. It knows nothing about what is called the " indelibility of ordination," but affirms that " each pas- tor and pastor's assistant is appointed for such time only as he shall preach God's word purely and simply, and shall walk worthily," a position which assumes and explains the duty of the assembled believers " to pass judgment on the sen- timents of their pastors." It excludes the idea that only mem- bers of a clerical order can be chosen to the pastoral office ; and, on the contrary, it maintains that " citizens and working- men, whatever their business may be, if only they are devout, blameless, and instructed, are eligible to the pastorate." It even maintains that men may be preachers without being in 58 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. III. any sense cliurcb officers. Where it prevails, there shall be no clerical body, not even a body of pastors, with an exclu- sive right to speak in the congregation ; for it holds that "men without office in the church, being devout and strong in the Scriptures, are not to be forbidden to preach, inasmuch as there is an inward call from God." Had this scheme been proposed to Luther as an ideal theo- ry of church polity, or as a plan which might be adopted at a later stage of the Reformation, doubtless he would have most heartily approved it ; for the ideal which it portrayed was substantially his own. But when the question of at- tempting such a polity in the churches of Hesse was submit- ted to him by Philip, early in the following year, he could not believe that the time had come for building the house of God according to the pattern given in the Scriptures. He advised the prince not to promulgate the plan immediately, but first to appoint capable men over the parish schools and churches ; and when a number of these should have come practically and cordially into agreement, and others should be ready to follow them, to introduce the plan by a public ordinance. Thus a certain usage, being first settled, might be elevated into law. Evidently the great Reformer thought that the scheme was a devout imagination not to be realized in that age when so much depended on princely patronage ; and that Lambert was only an amiable dreamer. Luther's advice prevailed, and Lambert's platform of church discipline was set aside to wait for better times. Melanchthon, as well as Luther, thought that the age was not ripe for the emancipation of the churches and the coming in of a simply evangelical church polity. Accordingly, the or- dering of ecclesiastical afiairs remained in the hands of the reforming landgrave; and his "instructions" to the ecclesi- astical visitors, issued after much deliberation, made no men- tion of local self-governed churches with their several bishops and their synods, but only of parish priests and superintend- ents. Two years later Lambert died, but not till he had re- A.D. 1530-39.] CHURCH POLITY OF THE REFORMATION. 59 iiewed his testimony with unfailing aspiration. "When shall we have the joy of seeing our churches ordered strictly ac- cording to the law of Christ? Where is the power of ex- communication, that most essential thing to any church, which so many, in opposition to the plain testimony of the Scriptures, are throwing away?" Another year, and instead of provisional officers for the su- perintendence of the clergy and the parishes, superintendents for life were appointed. Then followed a second assembly at Homberg, by whose advice the duty of admonishing and of excommunicating unworthy parishioners was laid upon pastors only. At last, after thirteen years of such reforma- tion by the secular power with the advice of reforming theo- logians, the lay-eldership was introduced into the Hessian churches ; and the share of each local church (or rather of each parish) in its own government was that it might choose half of the lay-elders in its consistory, the other half being- chosen by the magistrate to represent and maintain the de- pendence of the church on the civil government. In this last arrangement, " the ideal plan of Lambert van- ished away, leaving behind it no enduring fruit." ^ ^ Congregational Quarterly^ July, 1864, p. 276-280; Lechler, "Geschichte der Presbyterial- und Synodal -verfassung seit der Reformation" (Leyden, 183-1), 1-1-21; "Leben und ansgewahlte Schriften der Vater lind Begriin- der der reformirten Kirche (Elberfeld, 1861), ix., 41-47. These writers re- fer to RiCHTER, "Sammlung Evangelischer Kirehenordnungen, " i. , 58 sq., which contains the original document: "Reformatio Ecclesiarum Hassice juxta certissimam sermonum Dei regulam ordinata in venerabili synodo," etc. 60 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES. [CH. IV. CHAPTER IV. THE ENGLISH EEFOKMATION AND THE PURITANS. In England, the twofold character of the Reformation was more conspicuous than in any other country. Elsewhere, as we have seen, that great revolution was effected, under the providence of God, by a concurrence of political with relig- ious forces. Princes and statesmen, or the leaders of petty republics, on the one hand, and reforming preachers and writ- ers on the other hand, were fellow- workers. But in England, more than any where else, the Reformation resembled some great river formed by the confluence of two streams which, like the Missouri and the Mississippi, refuse to mingle though flowing in one channel. On one side, it was a religious movement among the people, an inquiry after truth and sal- vation, a revolt of earnest and devout souls against the su- perstition, the false doctrine, and the despotic priesthood that hindered their access to God. On the other side, it was a politico-ecclesiastical revolution, an attempt of king and Parliament to drive out of the kingdom the insolent intru- sions and vexatious exactions of the court of Rome, a break- ing of what had long been felt as a galling yoke on the neck of a proud people. Considered as a religious movement, the Reformation in England began with Wycliffe, more than, a hundred and fifty years before Luther. Fitly has the stout-hearted En- glishman been called "the morning star" of the day which had its sunrise in the sixteenth century. Though protected for a M'hile by some of the most powerful of the nobles, and encouraged by the sympathy of Parliament in his Luther-like attacks on the mendicant orders and the pope, he was not sustained by any adequate political power in his efforts to A.D. 1370-1534.] THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. Gl evangelize the people. His disciples, under the name of Lol- lards— a reproachful designation imported from the Continent — carried on his work after his death ; and though perse- cuted, and often giving their testimony in prison and at the stake, they could not be suppressed. The Protestant mar- tyrology of England, long before the age of Luther, is rich in records of their suffering heroism. Their books, multiplied by the slow process of transcribing, were widely, though se- cretly, distributed; were read with closed doors in many a household and in many a private assembly ; and were hand- ed down from sire to son as precious heir-looms. Their itin- erant preachers, passing quietly from place to place, and eluding — though not always — the vigilance of their enemies, kept alive the tradition of their doctrine, and strengthened the scattered disciples by making them know each other's faith and patience. When the Reformation began on the Continent, Wycliffism or Lollardism was soon lost, or rather perpetuated, in Lutheranism or Protestantism, which found in England a soil well prepared for it. Considered in the other aspect, namely, as a political or national movement, the English Reformation, at its begin- nins:, had no visible connection with the relioious movement among the people. The history of England through the Middle Ages is largely the history of a chronic conflict be- tween the state, as represented by the king and Parliament, and the church, as governed by a foreign potentate, the pope. But that change in the ecclesiastical establishment of the realm which is commonly called by English writers "the reformation from popery," began when Henry YIIL, who had written a book against Luther, and had been re- warded by the pope with the title "Defender of the Faith" — a title borne by all his successors — procured the consent of Parliament to his declaring himself the Supreme Head (1534) under Christ of the Church of England, and then constrained the clergy in Convocation to acknowledge his supremacy. Other changes followed. First was the suppression of the G2 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. IV. monasteries and the confiscation of their property in lands and treasures. That great wealth, instead of being reserved (as the religious reformers would have chosen) to be a fund for the education of the people, or for any public use, was lavishly — but, on the whole, perhaps not unwisely — distrib- uted by the king among his nobles and courtiers. Thus the breach between England and Rome, politically considered, was not only widened but made irreparable. Every lord who held any of the rich domains once belonging to mo- nastic corporations might be relied on for a steadfast opposi- tion to all measures tending toward a restoration of the old order of things. Such being the position of the government, it became im- portant, in a political view, that the popular mind be turned against Rome. Accordingly, the Bible, translated into En- glish by Tyndale a few years before, instead of being, as it had been, a prohibited book, smuggled in from the Continent, was permitted, after a few unimportant corrections, to be printed and published in England ; and thus that great point — the right of the people to read the Scriptures — was indi- rectly conceded. But it was not till the following reign (that of the boy king, Edward YL, 1547) that the authorized doctrine and the devotional formularies of the Established Church were subjected to the hands of such reformers as Cranmer and Ridley ; and then it was that the scattered and persecuted followers of WycliiFe, as well as the many who had caught the new opinions then spreading on the Conti- nent and floating across the sea, found their cause victorious, as they supposed, in England. Thus, in that reign, and aft- erward at the commencement of the reign of Elizabeth (1558), there was a temporary union of the religious reformation, originating and spreading among the people, wnth the polit- ico-ecclesiastical reformation conducted by the government. The ecclesiastical establishment was so modified, and the ad- ministration of it was so changed, that the remnant of Lol- lardism and the adherents of the Continental reformers re- A.D. 1534-62.] THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 63 garded it as having virtually come over to them. Accord- ingly they were no longer excluded from the Church of En- gland, but were recognized as among the most zealous of its members. By their enthusiasm, propagating itself among the people, the reformed establishment was strengthened against the common enemy, and the chances of a reconcilia- tion with Rome, and of a consequent restitution of confiscated church property, were greatly diminished. That politico-ecclesiastical reformation brought the Church of England, considered as an establishment, with its endow- ments and its clergy, into a complete dependence on the crown, and a closer alliance than before with the landed aris- tocracy. In former ages, the Catholic Church in England, though connected with the state and to some extent influ- enced by the crown, had an independence which made it sometimes formidable to the secular power. But the great change begun under Henry VIIL, and made permanent by the necessities and the policy of his daughter Elizabeth, dis- turbed the balance of power by annexing to the crown all that dominion over the Church which had formerly belonged to the pope. The ecclesiastical courts, with an extensive ju- risdiction which in these days would be called civil, became virtually the king's courts, and thei-e was no more appealing of causes to Rome. By the removal of the " mitred abbots " from the House of Lords— where they with the bishops had always been a majority — and by the loss of the immense wealth which, at the dissolution of the monasteries, had pass- ed into the hands of the king, and thence into the hands of the lay aristocracy, the separate importance of the clergy as one of the estates of the realm was almost destroyed. At the same time, the great amount of church patronage — in- cluding the appointment of thousands of clergymen to their livings — which was transferred from the monastic corpora- tions to the king and to lay lords, separated the church, as an establishment, more than ever from the interests and sym- pathies of the lower orders, and completed its connection, not 64 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. IV. merely with the state, but with the king and the nobility. To all this must be added that unlimited superintendence over ecclesiastical affairs and over the religion of the people which was considered as belonging to the king by virtue of his being Head of the Church. Such was the political bondage of what is called the Church of England, as the government reformation left it : all the great ecclesiastical dignities, and thousands of the humbler benefices, at the disposal of the government; the people, ex- cept in here and there an anomalous instance, excluded from influence, direct or indirect, over the appointment of their own parochial ministers; no synods or conventions, general or diocesan, with a lay representation, to regulate matters of common interest ; no convocation, even of the clergy, per- mitted to assemble save at the king's command, or, when as- sembled, permitted to engage in any business save by the king's particular warrant. Another result of that revolution in the ecclesiastical in- stitutions of England is conspicuous in the subsequent his- tory. The National Church contained, thenceforward, the elements of internal strife. Two dissimilar movements, as we have seen, were united in the English Reformation, but, though united as it were mechanically, they were not blend- ed. An irrepressible conflict was the consequence — a con- flict which continues to this day. On one hand was the great body of the old clergy, with their opinions and their sympathies and prejudices mostly unchanged. Having been coerced into the acknowledgment of bluff King Harry as their Supreme Head on earth, they were led or driven from one change to another, till they found themselves using the English service-book instead of the old Latin Missal, and reading from their pulpits, as well as they could, the " Hom- ily against Idolatry," in edifices despoiled of the relics and the images which once adorned them. These men were nat- urally a conservative party with reactionary tendencies. They had accepted the revolution, not spontaneously, nor A.D. 1534-62.] THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 65 with a burning convrction that the old system was full of great errors and abuses which must be reformed at all haz- ards, but passively, and under the force of a habit of subor- dination. The law which compelled their celibacy having been taken away, they had generally become married men ; and their lawful wives and children — lawful while the Ref- ormation lasted — were hostages for their fidelity to the Prot- estant establishment. At first, and for a long time, the pa- rochial clergy were generally of this description, for how could it be otherw^ise? Their tendency as a body was to keep the Reformation stationary by their dead weight, and to perpetuate in the Reformed Church of England the relig- ious ideas in which they had been educated before the change. They were likely to feel that the Reformation had gone far enough ; and w-hen they looked upon the churches no long- er smoking and fragrant with incense, nor gorgeous with the gold and gems of the altar; when they saw pictures and statues, before which the faithful once kneeled in worship, borne away, and the holiest relics cast out as unclean things ; still more, when they saw some old monastic building deso- late and falling into ruin ; most of all, when they looked upon some stately pile where, in the good old times, grave abbots had given alms to the poor, and had dispensed due hospital- ity to pilgrims and to princes, now possessed by some sacri- legious lord, masque and revel and the noise of boisterous banquets succeeding, to the chanted prayers of men devoted to religion — it would not be strange if they felt that the Reformation had already been carried too far. Here was one great party in the National Church, which, having submitted to the new arrangements without much of a revolutionary spirit, looked toward the past with a feel- ing akin to regret. But on the other hand, the ecclesiastical establishment had received into itself a very different sort of men — wide-awake men, who were not merely reformed by an order from the King in Council or by an act of Parlia- ment, but wei'e reformers in their own persons — men whose E Q6 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. IV. ideas of reformation had come to them by tradition from Wycliffe, or by communication and sympatliy with reform- ers on the Continent — men whose quarrel with Rome was not on the question of ecclesiastical supremacy merely, but on the whole system of religion — men whose protest against the pope, instead of being careful and measured, was ut- tered as in words of fire, and who were ready to die for their testimony. These were the movement j^arty — the radicals — the destructives — if any choose to call them by such names. With them, or with many of them, ref- ormation, even to the destruction of every thing which they regarded as idolatrous or popish, was a passion. Their sym- pathies were with the people more than with the court; they were fitted for influence with the people ; and therefore, when the government would thoroughly bring off" the people from the old ways, it called these men to its aid ; and some of them — such as the plain-dealing Latimer, Fox, the author of the " Book of Martyrs," the sturdy and scrupulous Hooper, and even (at one time) that intractable Scotchman, John Knox — were placed in stations of honor and wide influence. While the Reformation was going forward, men of this qual- ity were in their element ; but when its progress was arrest- ed, and the government liad resolved that it should go no farther, they were disappointed and dissatisfied. So long as the permanency of the changes which the government had undertaken to introduce was not yet sure, and fiery spirits were needed to carry the work forward, these men were nec- essary to the government, and were therefore in favor ; but when the business of reforming was no longer in hand, and the objects which sovereign and courtiers had in view were felt to be well enough secured, such men were no longer in alliance with the court. Gradually they fell back to their original position among the people as reformei-s on their own account. Then began that age-long conflict in the Church of En- gland between the government Protestantism, on the one A.D. 1560.] THE PURITANS. 67 hand, completed and immovable, and the demand, on the other hand, for a more thorough reformation that should carry the National Church and the national Christianity back to the original purity portrayed in the Scriptures. On one side were the court, and those who were called " the court clergy." On the other side were the Puritans, so named from their demand for purity in the worship of God and in the administration of Christ's ordinances. As in many a similar conflict, the line of division was not very sharply drawn between the parties. There were Puritans more or less decided in their opinions, and more or less resolute in word and deed ; but, at first, there was no Puritan party act- ing in concert under acknowledged leaders. Such was the origin of Puritanism in England, and such was its position three hundred years ago, when Elizabeth was qfteen. It was not, nor did it intend to be, a secession or separation from the National Church. It must not be thought that the Puritans were "Dissenters" in the modern meaning of that word. They were not Congregationalists in their theory of the church ; nor, at first, were they even Presbyterians. Certainly the great body of them, in the earliest stages of the conflict, had not arrived at the conclu- sion that diocesan episcojDacy must be got rid of At first the most advanced of them were only " Nonconformists," deviating from some of the prescribed regulations in the per- formance of public worship. As Christian Englishmen, they were, according to the theory which I have called National- ism, members of the Church of England ; and what they de- sired was not liberty to withdraw from that National Church and to organize what would now be called a distinct "de- nomination ;" nor was it merely liberty m the National Church to worship according to their own idea of Christian simplic- ity and purity — though, doubtless, many of them would have been contented with that. What they desired was reforma- tion of the National Church itself by national authority. While the conflict was in its earliest stage, the episcopal 08 GENESIS OF TilE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. IV. element in the constitution of the ecclesiastical establishment seems not to have been seriously called in question. On the contrary, it was conceded by those who desired more refor- mation that the king might lawfully appoint officers to su- perintend and govern the clergy, and those superintend- ents, though called bishops, were regarded as deriving their authority from the king. Puritanism first appeared in the form of a protest against certain ceremonies and vestments which were required by law in the celebration of public wor- ship. The Act of Uniformity, in the first year of the reign of Elizabeth, established the Book of Common Prayer as the only form for the worship of God by any religious assembly ; and every minister deviating from the directions printed in that book (called " rubrics," because originally printed with red ink) was liable to severe penalties. Some of those di- rections required the use of certain ceremonies which were regarded by the more advanced Protestants as teaching or sanctioning an unchristian and pernicious superstition. The sign of the cross in baptism, the use of a ring in marriage, and kneeling to partake of the Lord's Supper, were particu- larly objected to on that ground. But, most of all, some of the vestments required to be worn by ministers in the pre- scribed worship were protested against. Nobody found fault with the scholar's gown which the clergy wore in preaching. On all sides, that was admitted to be a becoming dress for those who served as teachers in the church, and something of the kind was universal in the Protestant churches of oth- er countries. But the priestly surplice, which the minister must wear when administering sacraments or performing " divine service," was associated in all minds with the super- stitions which Protestants abhorred, and which the Refor- mation had undertaken to abolish. It was a sign that the official who wore it was not merely a recognized minister of the Gospel, but a veritable priest with supernatural functions. Every body knew that the wearing of it was required out of deference to popular superstition. To the ignorant peo- A.D. 1560.] THE PURITx\.NS. 69 pie, who were disposed to hanker after the old ideas, it had as real a meaning as the " wearing of the green " has now to Irish Fenians. To earnest Protestants it had the same sort of meaning which the gray uniform of the " Confeder- ates " in the late war had to the " boys in blue " who were fighting for the Union. The controversy about ceremonies and vestments, in the reign of Elizabeth, was essentially the same with the Ritualistic agitation in the reign of Victoria — an agitation which shakes the Church of England to-day, and is not wholly unfelt in the United States. After so many ages of philosophic sneering at the Puritans for their scrupulousness about such matters as the cut and color of a prescribed garment, all parties in the English establish- ment are now compelled to confess that questions about things indifferent in themselves — as, for example, whether the French flag shall be white or tricolor — may acquire a signif- icance which shall make them worth dying for. That con- flict three hundred years ago was the same in principle with the conflict now ; for behind the sacerdotal millinery and frip- peiy, behind the significant and pompous ceremonies, there stood then, as there stands now, a body of anti-evangelical and really antichristian doctrine — another Gospel, which is really no Gospel at all — another theory than that of Paul and of Jesus Christ concerning the way to be saved. Conscience, in conscientious men, when it has been roused to declare itself, is an obstinate thing. The conscience of the Puritans, and especially of the Puritans among the clergy, did declare itself against the symbols of superstition ; and so numerous were those who, in one point or another, refused to conform, and so eminent were they for fidelity and abil- ity in their ministry and for learning, that for a while their nonconformity was connived at by the ecclesiastical author- ities, and the more because many of the bishops were in sym- pathy with that party. But in a few years after the acces- sion of Elizabeth (1565), when such ecclesiastical reforma- tion had been made as she chose to tolerate, a royal proela- TO GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES [CH. IV. raation was issued demanding a strict conformity. In the city of London, thirty-seven out of ninety-eight beneficed clergymen refused to make the promise which was required of them, and were immediately excluded from the perform- ance of their ministry.^ A company of Puritans who vent- ured to meet for worship in their own way (1567), found that there were penalties for the nonconforming laity as well as for nonconforming clergymen. Their meeting was broken up, and a large number of' them were imprisoned to study in their confinement the principles of church order.^ In all parts of England there were similar proceedings. Not many years passed before the conflict entered on an- other stage of its progress, and new questions were opened between the Puritans and those who ruled the ecclesiastical establishment. The rigorous enforcement of the Act of Uni- formity by bishops on laity as well as clergy, and the forci- ble suppression of the private assemblies in which noncon- formists ventured to meet for social worship, had an effect which a little knowledge of human nature might have antic- ipated. Puritans, instead of being convinced by such argu- ments, began to consider whether the system of ecclesias- tical government which was so conservative of superstitious vestments and ceremonies ought not to be more radically re- formed. Thomas Cartwright, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, a man of great ce- lebrity for learning and eloquence, began (1570) to discuss in his lectures the theory of church government as given in the Scriptures; and he did not hesitate to say in what par- ticulars the actual arrangements for the government of the Church of England were widely divergent from the most an- cient examples, and especially from the authoritative prece- dents and principles of the New Testament. Still holding the vicious theory that an independent Christian nation is an independent Christian church, he aimed at nothing more ' Neal, i., 98, 99. ' Ibid., p. 108, 109. A.D. 1560.] THE PUEITANS. '71 than a complete reformation by the government; but the system which he would have the queen and Parliament es- tablish in England was essentially that of Geneva and of Scotland. Thenceforward the Puritans, as a party, looked for something more than the removal of a few obnoxious ceremonies, and the privilege of officiating in a black gowp instead of a white surplice. Thenceforward they would be satisfied with nothing less than an entire revision and recon- struction of the ecclesiastical establishment. Under Cart- wright's influence, English Puritanism became, essentially, in its ideas and aspirations, Presbyterianism like that of Hol- land or of Scotland. To describe the progress of that controversy in the Church of England would be aside from our purpose. It w^as a long and bitter controversy. On one side there was power, on the other side there was the obstinacy of conscience. On one side was the queen, with the splendor of her court and government, with her inborn love of pomp as well as of power, with her imperious will, and with her unbounded pop- ularity as a princess w^hose right to the throne, and even the legitimacy of her birth, were identified with Protestantism. On the other side was the people's abhorrence of the pope and all his works — the English " no-popery," which had been long growing, especially among the middle-class people, and which had gained both extension and intensity from the viv- idly remembered atrocities in the reign of Mary. On one side were some good men and learned, conservative by nat- ure and by training, who thankfully accepted as much of ref- ormation as the queen would give them, and quietly waited for more, with many other men, not so good nor so learned, whose feeling was that the queen had already done quite enough, and even more than enough, in the way of church reformation. On the other side there was no less of learn- ing, and much more of earnest religious feeling. On one side was the fixed purpose of Elizabeth Tudor, and (after a while) of the prelates who depended on her favor, to extin- 72 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. IV. guish the noncoiitbrniing and reforming party by depriva- tion and silencing, by exorbitant fines, by confinement in loathsome and pestilential prisons. On the other side there was the invisible yet invincible might of those who suffer for conscience' sake. . On both sides it was held that the bishop of Rome had no rightful authority in England. On both sides there was a fatal error — fiital to liberty, and fatal in the end to godli- ness— the error of supposing that Christian England, being an independent nation, was therefore an independent church — the Church of England. Both held a fatal error in assum- ing that there must be a national church, one and indivisi- ble, and that the reformation of the church could be wi'ought only by the legislative and executive sovereignty of the na- tion. Something better than Puritanism was necessary to liberty, and to the restoration of simple and primitive Christianity. A.D. 1560.] KEFORMATION WITHOUT TARRYING. 73 CHAPTER V. REFORMATION WITHOUT TARRYING TOR ANY. What Puritanism demanded was an ecclesiastical reforma- tion to be made by the national authority. Queen Eliza- beth and the Parliament, as having full legislative power in England, were to revise the established forms of public wor- ship and purge out all idolatrous symbols and superstitious ceremonies. The laws concerning uniformity Were to be changed, not in the interest of liberty or of " broad-church " principles, but in the interest of primitive purity and sim- plicity. The entire constitution of ecclesiastical government, which had really undergone no change except by putting the queen into the pope's place, was to be taken down and reconstructed. The reforming party, in its study of the Scriptures, had learned that archbishops and archdeacons were not known to the apostles; that the bishops mentioned in the New Testament were cIHcers of local churches only, and not rulers over many churches in one diocese ; that the so-called ecclesiastical courts, with their fines and imprison- ments Q>?'0 salute ani'marimi] for the health of the souls of nonconformists and other oifenders, bore no resemblance to the arrangements instituted by the apostles for the primitive churches. Therefore" the Puritans demanded that all these things, and more of the same sort, should be set right by the national authority, inasmuch as the English nation itself, baptized and Protestant, was the Church of England. No withdrawal from the National Church was to be thought of, for that would be schism. When Puritan clergymen officiated without the surplice, or baptized without the sign of the cross, or pronounced the nuptial benediction on bride and bridegroom who had been 74 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [cH. V. married without a ring, or administered the Lord's Supper to communicants who received it without kneeling, they did not consider themselves as seceding from the National Church, but only as disregarding, in deference to the supreme authority of Christ, certain regulations which, being made in derogation of his law, were without force in his church, and ought to be disregarded at all hazards. When, after being silenced and deprived of their livings for their nonconform- ity, they met with their friends in private assemblies for worship, they had no intention of organizing another church outside of the Church of England, but, as members of the National Church, they insisted on obeying God rather than men. So in these days, the Old-Catholic clergy and laity in Germany do not regard themselves as seceding from the Catholic, nor from the Roman Catholic Church. It is as Catholics and not Protestants that they reject the author- ity of the Vatican Council, and maintain that the sentences of excommunication hurled against them by a not infallible pope are invalid. But under oppression men sometimes get new light. As the urging of conformity to an obnoxious ritual led Thomas Cartwright and others to investigate the theory of church government, and to demand a warrant from the Scriptures for the system of diocesan episcopacy, so, under the dis- cipline of impoverishing fines and tedious imprisonments, some of the sufferers began to doubt whether the exception- al institution called the Church of England — having Eliza- beth Tudor as its supreme ruler on earth, to whom every minister of God's word was responsible for his preaching and for all his spiritual administrations — was really a church of Christ in any legitimate meaning of that phrase. The more they studied the New Testament, the less tliey coifld find bearing a resemblance to that or any othe.r National Church. Questions were beginning to emerge which had not yet been fairly considered. Did the apostles institute any national church ? Did Christ intend that his Catholic A.D. 1558-67.] EEFORMATIOX WITHOUT TARRYING. 75 Ohiirch should be made up of national churches mutually independent ? Was it his plan that in every nation the Ca3- sar or other sovereign, if baptized, should be supreme over the church also? If not, what was his intention when he sent forth his disciples to convert all nations? Noncon- formists were holding conventicles in private rooms, with the doors shut for fear of informers and persecutors ; but in what capacity or character were they thus assembled ? What w^as the relation of such assemblies, and what the re- lation of the queen's National Church to the true church of Christ in England ? Such questionings among the Puritans gave origin to an- other party aiming at a more radical reformation. The men of the new party, instead of remaining in the Church of En- gland to reform it, boldly withdrew themselves from that ecclesiastico-political organization, denouncing that and all other so-called national churches as institutions unknown to the law and mind of Christ. The idea of separation, in some sort, from the State Church, in order to regain the sim- plicity of Christian institutions, must have occurred to many minds, before any attempt was made to propound a theory of separation and to embody it in organized churches. Ev- ery act of nonconforming worship by Lollards before the Reformation, or by Protestants in that bloody restoration of Romanism which filled up the five years between the death of Edward YI. and the accession of Elizabeth, was, practical- ly, though not in theory, an assertion of religious liberty. On the part of the worshipers, every such act implied, logi- cally if not consciously, a denial of any right in the civil power to prescribe by law what they should believe and profess concerning God, or in what forms they should w^or- ship. But ordinarily the protests against what remained of superstition in the National Church were not protests against the theory of Nationalism ; and the private meet- ings of Nonconformists for the enjoyment of a purer worship were nothing more than a practical appeal to a higher law 76 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CIIUECHES. [CH. V. with which the lower law was in conflict, but which ought to be recognized and enforced by the legislative authority of England. Even when congregations were organized, as they seem to have been in some instances, to meet statedly for worship according to the Scriptures, using the Geneva Service-book instead of the Book of Common Prayer, it does not appear, save in one obscure instance, that they regarded themselves as any thing else than provisional congregations of oppressed Christians in the Church of England, separating not so much from the National Chui-ch as from its disorders and corruptions, till "the reliques of Antichrist" should be swept away by act of Parliament. Documents, Avithout date, not long ago discovered in the State Paper Oftice of the English government, show that, as early perhaps as the tenth year in the reign of Elizabeth •-^ (1567), there was a congregation calling itself " the Privye Church in London," and describing itself as "a poor congre- gation whom God hath separated from the churches of En- gland and from the mingled and false worshiping therein used." It was a church professing that its members, "by the strength and working of the Almighty, our Lord Jesus Christ, have set their hands and hearts to the pure, unmin- gled, and sincere worshiping of God according to his blessed and glorious word . . . abolishing and abhorring all inventions and traditions of men." It held its Lord's-day and its week- day meetings. " So as God giveth strength," said they, " we do serve the Lord "every Sabbath-day in houses, and on the fourth day in the week we come together weekly to use prayer and exercise discipline on them which do deserve it, by the strength and sure warrant of the Lord's good word." It was a persecuted church. " This secret and disguised An- tichrist," said they, " to wit, this canon law with the branches and maintainers" — in other words, the ecclesiastical courts and the queen's Hign Commission — "have by long imprison- ment pined and killed the Lord's servants, as our minister Richard Fitz, Thomas Itowland, deacon . . . and besides them A.D. 1567.] REFORM ATION WITHOUT TARRYING. •d great multitude . . . wliose good cause aud faithful testi- mony— though we should cease to groan and cry unto our God to redress such wrongs and cruel handlings of his poor members — the very walls of the prisons about this city (as the Gate-house, Bridewell, the Counters, the King's Bench, the Marshalsea, the White Lion) would testify God's anger kindled against this land for such injustice."^ That "secret and disguised Antichrist" complained of by the sufferers was an important element in the ecclesiastical government of England, and was every where present to suppress both separation from the Established Church and nonconformity within the church. What was it ? All persons within the realm of England were under the government of the Church of England, and were therefore subject to the judicial authority of the bishops in their sev- eral dioceses. That authority was exercised in ecclesiastical or " spiritual " courts. Lowest of these was the Archdea- coii's Court, which was held, in the absence of the archdea- con, by a judge appointed as his substitute, and called his official. Next was the Consistory Court of the diocese, held in the cathedral, the bishop's chancellor or commissary pre- siding as judge. The Court of Arches, \n London, was that to which appeals were brought from the consistory courts in the several dioceses in the province of Canterbury, there being a similar court for appeals in the province of York. The judge in each of these courts was supposed to represent the " spiritual " authority of the archbishop ; and the final appeal was from these archiepiscopal courts to the supreme head of the ecclesiastical establishment, namely, to a Court of Delegates, or commissioners, appointed by the sovereign to represent that supremacy over the Church of England which had been wrested from the pope. Other ecclesiastical courts there were — some of them mere shops for the sale of "dis- pensations, licenses, faculties, and other remnants of the * Waddington, " Congregational History," p. 742-745. 78 GENESIS OF THE NEAV ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. V. papal extortions" — but no description of them is necessary here. All these courts, except the last, were from ancient times, and were spared by the conservative genius of the English Reformation. But that Reformation itself had created an- other tribunal — higher, more powerful, and more terrible than all the rest. By the Act of Supremacy, which stands iirst among the statutes of the reign of Elizabeth, and vv^hich finally separated the ecclesiastical establishment of England from the see of Rome, the queen was empowered to estab- lish what was afterward known as the "High Commission for Causes Ecclesiastical." Her commissioners, " being nat- ural-born subjects," but otherwise appointed at her absolute discretion as "supreme governor" of the Church of England, were authorized " to use, occupy, and exercise, under her, all manner of jurisdiction, privileges, and pre-eminences touch- ing any spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the realms of England and Ireland." By that authority, they were " to visit, reform, redress, order, correct, and amend all errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts, offenses, and enor- mities whatsoever." As reconstituted, with some unimpor- tant changes, in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth (1584), the High Commission consisted of forty-four commis- sioners. Twelve of these were bishops, several were mem- bers of the Privy Council, others were clergymen or laymen of lower degree. The commissioners — or an}^ three of them, one being a bishop — Avere empowered to make inquiry con- cerning "all heretical opinions, seditious books, contempts, conspiracies, false rumors or talks, slanderous words and say- ings ;" to punish all persons willfully " absent from church or divine service established by law ;" to " visit and reform all errors, heresies, and schisms," and to do many other like things. They were empowered " to call before them all per- sons suspected" of ecclesiastical offenses, to examine them on their oaths, though (or rather, in order that) in their an- swers they might criminate themselves, and to punish them, A.D. 1574.] KEFOKMATION WITHOUT TARRYING. 79 if refractory, by excommunication (a terrible penalty in En- glish law), by fines at discretion, and by unlimited imprison- ment. All "sheriffs, justices, and other officers," were to be at their command for the purpose of apprehending or caus- ing to be apprehended any persons whom they might require to be brought before them. This terrible enginery for the enforcement of worship and of religious opinion was employ- ed not in London only — the chief seat of the High Commis- sion— but throughout the realm wherever one of the twelve bishops and two of the other commissioners might choose to hold a commission court. ^ Proceeding, like other ecclesias- tical courts, against offenders and suspected persons accord- ing to the methods of the canon and civil law, the High Commission for Causes Ecclesiastical might well be called the English Inquisition. That we may sec clearly in what school the more ad- vanced and uncompromising Puritans were studying, and what means were employed to give them right views of church polity, we must look at some instances of individual experience. The old town of Bury St. Edmunds, in the county of Suf- folk, is in the diocese of the Bishop of Norwich. Of that di- ocese, John Parkhurst, a Puritan Conformist, had been bish- op from the time of the restoration of Protestantism by Eliz- abeth. His ideal of reformation was the ecclesiastical order which he saw at Zurich when he found refuge there from the persecution under Mary. Being himself a diligent preacher, he had been much more intent on having the Gospel intelli- gently preached in every parish than on persecuting those preachers who were more scrupulous than he about the cer- emonies and the vestments. Consequently the diocese, at his death (1574), was greatly infested with Puritanism.^ His successor, Edmund Freke, was of another sort, and was a ' The queen's patent appointing the High Commissioners, as tlie court was reconstituted, Jc^\. 7, 1583-4, may be read in Neal, i., I GO, note. 2 Neal, i., 92, 128,133, 134. 80 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. V. bishop after the queen's own heart. From the beginning of his administration, the established method of dealing with scrupulous consciences was perseveringly employed. Minis- ters of the Gospel, beloved and honored for their work's sake in their parishes, were vexed with prosecutions in the eccle- siastical courts, were suspended from their ministry, were sentenced to imprisonment for six months, for a year, or for life. All this, instead of reconciling the Puritan clergy or people to the system imposed upon them, made them more obstinate in their scruples and more daring in their inquiries. At Bury, especially, and in its vicinity, the growing dislike to the imprisonment of godly men, as a method of church discipline, seems to have prepared some advanced minds for the revolutionary idea of churches mutually independent, formed by the voluntary union of believing souls, and gov- erning themselves by Christ's authority without asking leave of prince or prelate. Among the earliest who received and attempted to realize that conception were John Copping, Elias Thacker, and Rob- ert Browne, all clergymen of the Established Church. The first of these, with another clergyman, Tyler, was shut up in the common jail of Bury for nonconformity (1576), only a few months, at the latest, after the consecration ofFreke as Bishop of Norwich ; and there he remained seven years, while the bishop and his very zealous commissary, aided by the High Commission, were using with desperate persistence all the oppressive enginery with which the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity had armed them to put down Puritanism, But Puritanism would not be put down. When earnest ministers of the Gospel were suspended, deprived of their livings, silenced, and imprisoned for conscience' sake, their sufferings and remonstrances (for it was not their wont to suffer such things without remonstrance) stimulated the growth of nonconformity in the parishes. Something of the English spirit of resistance to aggi-ession, and of the old-time conflict between the common law and the law administered A. D. 1581.] EEFOEilATIOX WITHOUT TARRYING. 81 by ecclesiastical functionaries, entered into the growing ex- citement. The bishop found himself in conflict with the sec- ular authorities of Bury, and knowing that his policy was the queen's policy, he sent forward charges (1581) to the Lord Treasurer Burleigh against the justices who had used their influence, ofiicial and personal, in favor of the noncon- forming clergy and against his proceedings. Four of those magistrates, for themselves and their associates, replied to the bishop's complaint. Professing their own loyalty, and aflirming that they " countenanced none but such as are lov- ers of God's true religion and dutiful subjects to her maj- esty," they charged the bishop with sinister intentions in not removing Copping and Tyler from the common jail in Bury, where they had been so many years imprisoned, to his own prison in Norwich ; and they boldly maintained that he, by his pertinacious attempts to introduce into the par- ishes of his diocese clergymen too ignorant to preach, had shown himself a patron of ignorance in the church and an enemy to the preaching of the Word of God. The bishop's complaint against the justices appears to have been dismiss- ed, but there was no relief for the prisoners, and — though Lord Burleigh himself interceded by writing to the bishop — no less rigor in the treatment of nonconforming clergy- men. Robert Browne was a young man of impetuous and reck- less zeal, and eloquent in popular discourse, but of an im- perious, passionate, and unstable disposition. He w^as an active and daring agitator, not only in that diocese, but in other parts of England. More than once he had been call- ed to account for ecclesiastical irregularities ; and once, at least, he had been imprisoned at Norwich by the High Commission Court. But being a kinsman of the queen's most trusted and most powerful counselor. Lord Burleigh, he had a measure of impunity from which he seems to have taken courage. Not long after his release, in compliance with Lord Burleigh's request to the bishop, from the prison F 82 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. V. at Norwich, he was constrained to flee from England, as many liad done already, and at Middleburg, in the Dutch republic, he gathered a church of English exiles, chiefly friends of his who had accompanied him (1582). At that place he printed two books or pamphlets, setting forth dis- tinctly the new idea of church reformation, which was noth- ing else than to restore the purely voluntary Christianity of the New Testament. Such books could not have been print- ed in England but by stealth ; yet they were printed for cir- culation and eflect in England, as Tyndale's translation of the New Testament had been more than fifty years before that time. The fli'st of those books was entitled "A Book which showeth the Life and Manners of all true Christians, and how unlike they are unto Turks and Papists and Heathen Folk. Also, the Points and Parts of all Divinity — that is, of the Revealed Will and Word of God — are declared by their several Definitions and Divisions." Some of the statements and definitions in that book are worthy to be remembered, as indicating the depth and breadth of the new^ reformation which was contemplated, and the simplicity of its idea. "The New Testament," said this radical reformer," which is called the Gospel, or glad tidings, is a joyful and plain de- claring and teaching, by a due message, of the remedy of our miseries. through Christ our Redeemer, who is come in the flesh, a Saviour unto those which worthily receive this message, and hath fulfilled the old ceremonies." Christian- ity, in this rudimental definition of it, is a simple thing— not a hierarchy, not a ritual, not a system of dogmas — but the intelligible story of a remedy for human miseries through Christ our Redeemer, who by his coming has fulfilled, and by fulfilling has abolished, the old ritual prophetic of his re- deeming work; and "all true Christians" are all those who worthily receive the story. But is there, then, no church? Is Christianity nothing more than a story told and received ? Is the church noth- A.D. 1582.] REFORMATION WITHOUT TARRYING. 83 ing more than the unorganized and invisible unity of those who receive the Gospel? Yes. "The church planted or gathered [the organized institution] is a company or number of Christians or believers, which, by a willing covenant made with their God, are under the government of God and Christ, and keep his laws in one holy communion, because Christ hath redeemed them unto holiness and happiness forever, from which they were fallen by the sin of Adam." "The church government is the Lordship of Christ in the com- munion of his oflSces ; whereby his people obey his will, and have mutual use of their graces and callings, to further their godliness and welfare." If the church is no more than this — if the government of the church is only the free obedience of Christ's people to his will in mutual helpfulness, in order to their godliness and welfare — where and what is Christ's kingdom ? How can he have a kingdom without ecclesiastical courts and canon law? " The kingdom of Christ," in the programme of that new reformation, " is his office of government, whereby he useth the obedience of his people to keep his laws and command- ments to their salvation and welfare." "The kingdom of Antichrist is his government confirmed by the civil magis- trate, whereby he abuseth the obedience of the people to keep his evil laws and customs to their own damnation." The pope, then, may be dethroned ; but if the civil magistrate come into his place to confirm the "evil laws and customs" which the apostasy brought in, the kingdom of Antichrist remains. What, then, of excommunication ? Are there to be neither consistory courts nor presbyterial judicatures in the king- dom of Christ ? Are there to be no " spiritual " penalties of fine and imprisonment inflicted in the name of the church — no sentence of excommunication with consequent civil dis- abilities ? What is to be substituted for all this ? Simply the voluntary action of the church freely separating itself from ofienders and the offenders from itself. "Separation 84 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES [CH. V. of the open, willful, or grievous offenders is a dutifulness of the church in withholding from them the Christian com- munion and fellowship, by pronouncing and showing the covenant of Christian communion to be broken by their grievous wickedness, and that with mourning, fasting, and prayer for them, and denouncing God's judgment against them." Is the church, then, an ungoverned and unorganized as- sembly ? No ; it is served and guided by officers of its own choice, each with appropriate and definite duties. " A pastor is a person having office and message of God, for exhorting and moving especially, and guiding accordingly; for the which he is tried to be meet, and thereto is duly chosen by the church which calleth him, or received by obedience where he planteth the church." "A teacher of doctrine is a person having office and message of God for teaching espe- cially, and guiding accordingly, with less gift to exhort and apply; for the which he is tried to be meet, and thereto is duly chosen by the church which calleth him, or received by obedience where he planteth the church." "An elder, or more forward in gift, is a person having office and message of God for oversight and counsel, and redressing things amiss ;" and he, too, is in like manner tried and chosen by the church. " The reliever is a person having office of God, to provide, gather, and bestow the gifts and liberality of the church as there is need; to the which office he is tried and received as meet." "The icidoio is a person having office of God to pray for the church, and to visit and minister to those which are afflicted and distressed in the church ; for the which she is tried and received as meet." But what service does this Utopian church render to the queen? What obedience does it pay to those who rule by her commission and under her supreme authority ? The an- swer is not wanting. " Civil magistrates are persons au- thorized of God, and received by the consent or choice of the people, whether officers or subjects, or by birth and succes- A.D. 1582.] REFOEMATIOX WITHOUT TARRYING. 85 sion also, to make and execute laws by public agreement, to rule the commonwealth in all outward justice, and to main- tain the right welfare and honor thereof, with outward power, bodily punishments, and civil forcing of men." This was written, or at least printed, under the protection of a re- public; the reference to "the consent or choice of the peo- ple" was therefore natural. But the book was to have its circulation and eifect in England, and therefore it recognized "birth and succession also" as a method in which "persons" might be " authorized of God and received " to rule the com- monwealth, and to maintain its rights, welfare, and honor in peace or war, not bearing the sword in vaiu.^ Of the other book j^rinted under Browne's direction at Mid- dleburg and sent into England, we know little more than its title, which was strikingly significant of the contents. It an- nounced itself as a treatise " Of Reformation without tarry- ing for any ; and of the wickedness of those preachers who will not reform themselves and their charge, because they will tarry till the magistrate command and compel them." The very title was a declaration of war against Puritanism, w^aiting and agitating for Reformation of the National Church by act of Parliament. It implied that those who would follow Christ in the regeneration of England must begin by withdrawing from the queen's ecclesiastical estab- lishment, and gathering believers into voluntary churches just as the first believers were gathered into churches by the apostles and their helpers. These tw^o books, printed out of the reach of English laws and English officers, were sent into England ; for in Holland they could be read only by a few exiles. At that time Cop- ping had been five years a prisoner "for his disobedience to the ecclesiastical laws of the realm, whereunto he would not yet conform himself, although he had been sundry times exhorted thereto by many godly and learned preachers re- ^ Hanbuiy, "Historical Memorials," i., 19-22. 86 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. V. pairing publicly to him to bring him to conformity." A child had been born to him there in Bury, and had remained month after month unbaptized, because he had insisted that no mere priest — none but a preacher of the Gospel — should baptize a child of his, and that no godfathers and godmoth- ers should have part in the baptism. It is also reported con- cerning him that he held many fantastical opinions, where- by he did very much hurt there in Bury," so that " learned preachers," as well as Puritan magistrates, " wished him to be removed out of the prison for preventing the doing of more hurt." On the morning of the feast of All Saints, when the chaplain, as required by the regulations, had " said morn- ing prayer to the prisoners," Copping, embracing so good an opportunity for disputation, called him a "dumb dog," and said that the keeping of saints' days was idolatry. He even said something to the effect that a coronation oath to set forth God's glory directly in conformity with the Script- ures, if taken and not performed, was perjury; and if he did not infer, others made the inference for him, that the queen was therefore perjured. The infectiousness of his "fantas- tical opinions" is implied in the anxiety of Puritan preach- ers and magistrates for his removal, and the removal of those who for the same cause were his fellow-prisoners, to the ecclesiastical jail at Norwich ; and it may have been the reason why the bishop would not consent to the desired re- moval. Norwich itself was full of Puritanism, and there, no less than at Bury, imprisoned Nonconformists, if Copping were among them, might take the infection of his opinions as naturally as they might take the jail fever. When those ominous books made their appearance in En- gland, the diocese of Norwich, especially the county of Suf- folk, had already become a field prepared for the reception of such seed ; and from the jail at Bury the seed seems to have been dispersed. Elias Thacker, of whom little else is known than what is now to be related, was a fellow-prisoner with Copping, and took part with him and others in the ar- A.D. 1583.] REFORMATION WITHOUT TARRYING. 87 rangements for putting the books into circulation. It is not unreasonable to suppose — though positive evidence is want- ing— that the relation of these men, and of others whose names have not come down to us, to Browne's attempt, was more than that of accessories after the fact ; in other words, that the books were written and printed in conformity with a plan agreed upon before Browne's departure from England, and were the result of consultation among thoughtful and resolute men who had already accepted the theory of separa- tion. Be that as it may,^the agitation thus inaugurated was reofarded as a hioh crime agjainst the o'overnment ; and for their co-operation in "spreading certain books seditiously penned by Robert Browne against the Book of Common Pray- er," Copping and Thacker, having been thus far in the hands of the bishop and the High Commission, were transferred to the secular power, and tried under a charge of sedition (1583, June). The alleged sedition was that, in the books distributed by them, the queen's supremacy over the church was denied. That they incited the queen's subjects to any rebellion or tu- mult, or to any breach of the peace ; that they denied in anywise her civil supremacy over all persons and all estates within the realm — was not pretended. But only for holding the church polity of the New Testament, namely, the in- alienable right and duty of Christian men to associate, volun- tarily, for worship and communion, in separate and self-gov- erned churches — only for putting into circulation certain tracts for the times, in which that theory was set forth and vindicated — those two clergymen were found guilty of sedi- tion, under the rulino: of the Lord Chief Justice of Eng^land. One of the archbishop's chaplains, as in duty bound, la- bored with his two brethren thus condemned to die; but he could not bring them to the desired repentance. Nor is it likely that the success of his spiritual counsel would have been greater had the time been extended. It was only a *' short shrift." Thacker on the 4th of June, and Copping on the 6th, died, not indeed as heretics, amid " the glories of 88 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. Y. the burning stake," like the martyrs in Queen Mary's reign, but only as felons, their sole felony being that they held and published what is now called Congregationalism. In En- gland, under Queen Elizabeth, Congregationalism was pun- ished as sedition.^ The queen and her counselors judged rightly that the principles of the two books were dangerous to the notion of the royal supremacy in matters of religion, and to the sys- tem built upon that notion ; for, instead of proposing to amend the system here and there, in the Puritan fashion, and to bring the ecclesiastical establishment of the realm into a better shape, those new principles struck at the root of the tree. If such principles were to prevail — if a church were nothing else than a society of Christian disciples, separated from the world, and voluntarily agreeing to govern them- selves by the law of Christ as given in the Holy Scriptures — if churches were to be instituted at Bury St. Edmund's, at Norwich, and at London, by the same right by which church- es were first instituted at Antioch, at Corinth, and at Rome — if England, with its hierarchy, were not a church at all, but only a kingdom in which Elizabeth was queen — the entire fab- ric of the National Church was in peril. For that reason it was that John Copping and Elias Thacker were so sternly dealt with. The purpose was to make an example which should deter all men from any thought of independent churches. Robert Browne was not a martyr. He was not of the stuft* that martyrs are made of The passion that impelled him was the love of agitation. When that passion had partly spent itself, he did what mere agitators often do as they grow older — he turned conservative, and betrayed the cause for which he had contended. After about two years in Hol- ^ Strype, " Annals of the Reformation," iii., pt. i., 15-17, 186, 187; Brad- ford, in Young's "Chroniclesof the Pilgrims, "p. 427; Neal,i., 149-154; Hop- kins, "Puritans and Queen Elizabeth," ii., 280-320. Neal calls these two mar- tyrs "ministers of the Brownist persuasion ;" but neither Strype nor Bradford speaks of them as ministers. A.D. 1584-1630.] REFOKMATION WITHOUT TARRYING. 89 land, he passed over into Scotland (1584), his flock at Middle- burg having been broken up, as might have been expected in view of his imperious and impulsive temper. A pastor of such a temper may be a much better man than Browne was, and yet bring ruin upon a much stronger church than that little society of English exiles could have been. In Scotland, the agitator was as obnoxious to the Presbyterian establishment as he had been to Bishop Freke in his native country. The next year (1585) we find him in England again, presuming on the comparative immunity which he had by virtue of his high connection, and soon renewing his work of agitation. Five years after the martyrdom of Copping and Thacker he w as vanquished by the civil disabilities consequent on a sentence of excommunication which had been pronounced against him in a bishop's court for the contempt of not appearing in an- swer to a citation. Thereupon he " submitted himself to the order and government established" in the Church of En- gland, and was restored to good standing, not only in the church, but in its priesthood. By the influence of his friends at court he obtained "means and help for some ecclesiastic- al preferment," and in a short time after his submission he received a benefice (1591). This does not imply that he re- canted his opinions, or made any profession of repentance for what he had done — it was enough that he submitted. He had not even the desperate self-respect which prompted Judas to hang himself; but, like Benedict Arnold, he took care not to lose the poor reward of his baseness. He was the rector of a parish, and received his tithes ; but never preached. By his idle and dissolute life he disgraced his ministry ; but, in- asmuch as he could not be charged with nonconformity, he retained his living. The quarrelsome temper which had brok- en up his little church at Middleburg vented itself upon his wife in acts of cruelty, and they could not live together. In a quarrel with the constable of the parish, he took the re- sponsibility of beating that ofiicer. Arraigned before a jus- tice for the unclerical ofiense, he used such violence of speech 90 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. V. that he was sent to prison for contempt, and there he died at the age of eighty, a miserable and despised old man, but a beneficed minister of the Church of England, and in regular standing.^ He died in the year 1630, when the Separation which he deserted, and for which Thacker and Copping suf- fered an ignominious death, had founded a Christian com- monwealth in New England. They died in their early man- hood ; he lived on, and " the days of his years, by reason of strength, were fourscore years ;" yet how much better and more blessed was it to die as they died, than to live as he lived ! Fuller, "Church History," v., 63-70. A.D. 1593.] SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSION. 91 CHAPTER VI. SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSIONERS. It was not so easy as Elizabeth and her prelates had sup- posed to suppress the new theory of freedom in the church. The idea of "Reformation without tarrying for any," as it survived the hanging of its first confessors, survived also the treachery of their unworthy associate. Only ten years after that hanging there was a bill in Parliament (1593) for a new law against "the Brownists," so called though Browne was no longer one of them ; for some new securities were thought necessary against a party that was growing formidable. On that occasion. Sir Walter Raleigh, arguing against the bill — not that he cared for the Brownists, whom he pronounced " worthy to be rooted out of the commonwealth," but be- cause he valued those principles of English liberty which the bill proposed to sacrifice — made a significant statement : " I am afraid," said he, "there are near twenty thousand of them in England." Twenty thousand of them in England, only ten years after that hanging at Bury St. Edmund's ! Already the Separation was beginning to be spoken of among the people by another name than Browne's. Henry Barrowe, "a gentleman of a good house" in Norfolk, and a graduate of the University of Cambridge, became, after leav- ing the university, a member of the legal profession in Lon- don, and "was sometime a frequenter of the court" of Queen Elizabeth. Governor Bradford has given us that ac- count of him which was current fifty years later among the Separatist founders of Plymouth, some of whom had been " well acquainted with those that knew him familiarly both before and after his conversion," and one of whom had re- ceived information from a servant of his who " tended upon 92 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VI. him both before and sometime after" the great change in his life. "He was a gentleman of good worth, and a flourishing courtier in his time." " Walking in London one Lord's day with one of his companions, he heard a preacher at his ser- mon, very loud, as they passed by the church. *Let us go in,' said he, ' and hear what this man saith that is thus earnest.' Moved by the sudden impulse, in he went and sat down. And the minister was vehement in reproving sin, and sharp- ly applied the judgments of God against the same ; and, it should seem, touched him to the quick in such things as he was guilty of, so as God set it home to his soul, and began to work for his repentance and conviction thereby. For he was so stricken as he could not be quiet, until by conference with godly men, and further hearing of the word, with dili- gent reading and meditation, God brought peace to his soul and conscience after much humiliation of heart and reforma- tion of life." In this process of reformation " he left the court and retired himself to a private life, sometime in the country and sometime in the city, giving himself to study and reading of the Scriptures and other good works very dil- igently ; and being missed at court by his consorts and ac- quaintance, it was quickly bruited abroad that Barrowe was turned Puritan."^ Another account of his conversion, given by one who may have known him as a young man at court, is that he " made a leap from a vain and dissolute youth to a preciseness in the highest degree, the strangeness of which alteration made him very much spoken of" ^ Long afterward, the life which he lived in his youth was unkindly referred to as a disgrace to his memory. Enemies of the Separation reported that he " was a great gamester and a dicer when he lived in court ; and, getting much in play, would boast of loose spending it" — as if there were no 1 Bradford's "Dialogue," in " Chronicles of the Pilgrims," p. 433, 434. 2 Lord Bacon's Works (Philadelphia, 1842), ii., 249. A.D. 1583.] SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSION. 93 such thing as the true conversion of a sinner, or as if the conversion of Augustine from a wayward and vicious life to eminence among the saints were less marvelous or more mi- raculous than the conversion of that young man in the court of Queen Elizabeth. " That he was tainted with vices at the court before his conversion is not very strange," said Bradford ; " and if he had lived and died in that condition, it is like he might have gone out of the world without any pub- lic brand on his name, and have passed for a tolerable Chris- tian and member of the church." From the " vain and dis- solute" life of a courtier, he was strangely converted to a life of serious godliness. The fact was notorious at the time, as we know from indubitable testimony. "Barrowe is turned Puritan" was the story among the lawyers at Gray's Inn, and among gay courtiers. Any man who seemed in earnest to do the will of God, taking the Bi- ble for his guide, was in those days called a Puritan. But, as to the question of church reformation, this young man, no longer " vain and dissolute," did not rest in mere Puritanism. His inquiries soon brought him to the more advanced posi- tion of separation from all national churches. His connec- tions and the notoriety of his conversion, as well as his tal- ents and his zeal, made him conspicuous among the Sepa- ratists ; and soon the name " Barrowist " began to be used instead of "Brownist." The name of Henry Barrowe is inseparably associated in history with that of his friend and fellow-sufferer, John Green- w^ood. Of Greenwood we know that he had taken a degree at Cambridge, had received ordination from episcopal hands, had served as chaplain in the family of a Puritan nobleman (Lord Rich, of Rochford, in Essex), but had renounced all connection with the so-called Church of England, and, in co- operation with Barrowe, had made himself obnoxious to the ruling powers by his conspicuous activity among the Sepa- ratists. He was a young man — probably not thirty years of age — a husband, and the father of a young son, when we 94 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VI. find him a prisoner in the Clink prison in Southwark. The date of his arrest and confinement does not appear. On a Lord's day in November (Nov. 19, 1586), six years and a half after Copping and Thacker had been put to death for maintaining that Christians in England ought to unite in sepa- rate and voluntary churches, according to the New Testament, Henry Barrowe, having heard that his friend Greenwood was in prison, made haste to visit him. The keeper of the prison took the opportunity of detaining Barrowe without a war- rant, and hurried to Archbishop Whitgift, at Lambeth, with the news of the capture. On his return with two of the archbishop's ofiicers, the captive was conveyed by water to the Lambeth Palace, and underwent an examination before Whitgift and two others of the High Commission ; for the business, being ecclesiastical, was not thought inappropriate to the Lord's day. The examination was far from satisfactory to the examin- ers, as will appear from some passages which show striking- ly what the man was, and what were his principles. At the beginning, Barrowe found opportunity to allege that his imprisonment by the keeper of the prison, without warrant, was contrary to the law of the land. He was ask- ed, " Know you the law of the land ?" " Very little," he re- plied ; " yet I was of Gray's Inn some years." When the archbishop and the two doctors derided his unskillfulness in the law (it being to them ludicrous that an English subject should complain of being shut up in prison without a war- rant from a magistrate), he added, " I look for little help by law against you." The archbishop, proposing that, according to the usage of the High Commission, he should be sworn to answer what- ever questions might be put to him, asked him, " Will you swear?" He answered, "I hold it lawful to swear, if it be done with due order and circumstances." "Keach a book," said the archbishop, " and hold it him." With a provoking simplicity, the prisoner asked, " What shall I do with it ?" A.D. 1586.] SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSION. 95 "Lay your hand upon it, man," said Whitgift. "For what purpose," said Barrowe, asking as if he did not know. "To swear," said Whitgift. " I use to swear by no books," was the grave and resolute reply. Whitgift explained: "You shall not swear by the book, but by God only." " So I pur- pose when I swear," was the answer. One of the two doc- tors, Cosins, interposed to inform the prisoner that, if he were a witness in a cause before a secular court, and should re- fuse to lay his hand on a book and swear, his testimony would not be taken ; and thereupon the archbishop added, " Why, man, the book is no part of the oath : it is but a cer- emony." "A needless and wicked ceremony," said the fear- less respondent. Being reminded that the book in question was the Bible, the firm Separatist answered, "I will swear by no Bible." Cosins cried out, " Schismatics are always clamorous." "True," said Whitgift; "such were the Dona- tists of old ; and such art thou, and all other schismatics such as thou art." Unabashed by their vituperation, Barrowe replied, " Say your pleasure. God forgive you. I am neither schismatic nor clamorous. I only answer your demands. If you will, I will be silent." Then followed more altercation about the book-oath, he maintaining that he would "join no creatures to the name of God in an oath ;" and that if it were, as they alleged, " only a custom commanded by law," "the law ought not to command a wicked custom." At last, " the archbishop commanded Dr. Cosins to record ' that Mr. Barrowe refused to swear upon a book.' " Finding that they could not induce him to take the oath, the commissioners proceeded to interrogate him without that formality; but his answers, though prompt and per- emptory, were little else than a continued refusal to become his own accuser — although the archbishop threatened him with the deadly peril of a trial for heresy, which, if he were found guilty, would consign him to the fire. When they proposed to him that he should find security for his good behavior, he professed his readiness to do so in any amount 96 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. VI. they might require ; but when the explanation was given that he would be bound to frequent the churches of the es- tablishment, he replied, " N'ow that I know your mind, I will enter into no such bond." The end was that he was sent to the Gate-house j^rison. On Monday of the following week (Nov. 27), he was brought again before the High Commission at Lambeth Pal- ace, the Bishop of London (Aylmer) and the Dean of St. Paul's being present with the archbishop. Again he refused the oath. He would not be sworn to answer questions de- signed to make him give testimony against himself An informal paper was read containing certain things which he was reported to have said concerning the Church of En- gland; but he persisted in his refusal. " There is much more cause," said he, "to swear mine accuser; I will not swear." " Where," cried the angry archbishop, " is his keeper ? You shall not prattle here. Away with him. Clap him up close, close. Let no man come to him. I will make him tell another tale, ere I have done with him." Of course Barrowe was immediately conveyed back to his prison. There he remained, " clapped up close," to meditate on the liberty of an Englishman and the theory of the Church of Christ. After four months (1587, March 24), he was brought up for a new examination before a more impos- ing array of the High Commission. There were present, not only the archbishop and the Bishops of London and Win- chester, but also " the two lord chief justices, the lord chief baron, and many others," Again there was the difficulty about the oath. The prisoner would not swear by any books or Bibles, but only by " the Eternal God himself" He would not swear to be his own accuser. He would take no oath but with " great regard and reverence," and " for con- firmation " of his testimony if it were contradicted by some false witness. "By God's grace," said he, "I will answer nothing but the truth." At last the archbishop, remember- insc that " a Christian man's word oug^ht to be as true as his A.D. 1587.] SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSION. 97 oath," gave up the conflict, and proceeded to interrogate the Christian man before him. The questions projiosed to the prisoner were designed to draw out from him the opinions of which he was suspected, and which were, in the judgment of the inquisitors, dangerous to the church and realm of En- gland. His direct and fearless answers to the several " arti- cles of inquiry," show clearly enough what the controversy was between him and the church of Queen Elizabeth, and what the crimes were of which Barrowe and the so-called Barrowists were guilty. 1. " In my opinion, the Lord's Prayer is rather a summary than an enjoined form, and, not finding it used by the apos- tles, I think it may not be constantly used." 2. " In the word of God, I find no authority given to any man to impose liturgies or forms of prayer upon the church ; and it is therefore high presumption to impose them." 3. " In my opinion, the Common Prayer " — the form of worship actually imposed in England — " is idolatrous, super- stitious, and popish." 4. " The sacraments of the Church of England, as they are publicly administered, are not true sacraments." 5. "As the decrees and canons of the church are so numer- ous, I can not judge of all; but many of them, and the ec- clesiastical courts and governors, are unlawful and antichris- tian." 6. "Such as have been baptized in the Church of England are not baptized according to the institution of Christ ; yet they may not need to be baptized again." 7. "The Church of England, as it is now formed, is not the true church of Christ ; yet there are many excellent Christians in it." 8. " The queen is supreme governor of the whole land, and over the church, bodies and goods ; but may not make any other laws for the church of Christ than He hath left in his word." ' 9. "I can not see it lawful for any one to alter the least G 98 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VI. part of the judicial law of Moses without doing injury to the moral law, and opposing the will of God." 10. The question being, whether a private person may re- form the church if the prince neglect it : " No private per- sons may reform the state ; but they ought to abstain from all unlawful things commanded by the prince." 11. "The government of the church of Christ belongeth not to the ungodly, but every particular church ought to have an eldership." Nothing was more evident to Whitgift and his fellow-in- quisitors than that such opinions ought not to be tolerated under a Christian government, and that there would be dan- ger to the realm of England if a man conscientious and cour- ageous enough to confess that he held them should be per- mitted to go at large. So Barrowe was clapped up again — " close, close " — none being allowed to visit him ; and " though he earnestly requested a copy of his answers, the favor could not be obtained." After another period of almost three months, he was again brought before the High Commission (June 18, 1587) ; pres- ent, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor Hat- ton, the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, Lord Buckhurst, the Bishop of London, Justice Young, Dr. Some, and others. Burleigh began the examination ; and, after the first question and an- swer, it proceeded in this fashion : " Why will you not come to church?" "My whole desire is to come to the church of God." "I see thou art a fantastical fellow; but why not come to our churches?" "My lord, the causes are great and many : as,first, because all the wicked in the land ai e re- ceived unto the communion ; secondly^ you have a false and an antichristian ministry set over your church ; thirdly^ you do not worship God aright, but in an idolatrous and super- stitious manner ; m\di, fourthly^ your church is not governed by the Testament of Christ, but by tlie Romish courts and canons." "Here is matter enough, indeed. I perceive thou takest delight to be an author of tliis new religion." A.D. 1587.] SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSION. 99 Matter enough — no doubt ! Hatton, the lord chancellor, was moved to betray his ignorance of religious questions and his contemptuous indifference : " I never heard such stuff in all my life." Bishop Aylmer, at that exclamation, thought it was time for him to give a helping hand. He interposed with ques- tions about the Book of Common Prayer ; and, being un- wary enough to reply as well as to ask questions, he denied that his church gave any part of God's worship to any creat- ure. Barrowe's answer was, "Yes, you celebrate a day and sanctify an eve, and call them by the names of saints ; and thus you make a feast, and devise a w^orship unto them." Martinmas, then, and Michaelmas, and all the rest of the saints' days, must be wiped out of the calendar. Burleigh resumed his questioning. " Why may we not call the days by their names ? Is not this in our liberty ?" " No, my lord." "How do you prove that?" "In the beginning of the Bible it is written that God himself named all the days, the first, the second, etc." "Then we may not call them Sunday, Monday, etc. ?" " We are otherwise taught to call them in the word of God." " Why, thou thyself callest Sun- day the Lord's day." " And so the Holy Ghost calleth it in the first of Revelation." The grave lord treasurer paused, and Aylmer, eager to defend the church, which had done so much for him, resumed. "We have nothing in our saints' days but what is taken forth of the Scriptures." " In that you say true ; for you find no saints' days in the Scriptures." " We find their histories and deeds in the Scripture." " But not their days and festivals." "He is a proud spirit," said Lord Buckhurst. "He has a hot brain," said Lord Burleigh, and proceeded to draw forth from that hot brain more objections to the mode of worship established by law and imposed inexorably on all Englishmen. The stream of talk flowed on till Buckhurst cried out again, " He is out of his wits !" Barrowe, who probably remembered, better than his lord- 100 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. YI. ship, what Festus on a similar occasion said to Paul, replied, " No, my lord, I sj^eak the words of truth and soberness, as I could make apj^ear, if I might be suifered." Without seeming to notice the interruption. Lord Burleigh went on in his serious way, and drew from the prisoner a frank acknowledgment that we ought to pray that our lives may be such as the lives of the saints were. The acknowl- edgment w^as followed up and explained by a protest against being " tied to days and times," and against being "restrained or stinted in our prayers, as to time, place, manner, kneeling, standing, etc. ;" at which Lord Buckhurst exclaimed, " This fellow delighteth to hear himself talk." Whereupon Whit- gift, silent thus far, began to show his mind and temper. "He is a sower of errors," said the archbishop; "and there- fore I committed him." The undaunted Separatist replied to the Primate of all England, ''' You, indeed, committed me half a year close pris- oner in the Gate-house, and I never until now understood the cause ; neither do I yet know what errors they are. Show them, therefore, I pray you." "He has a presumptuous spirit," said Buckhurst. "My lord," said Barrowe, " all spirits must be tried and judged by the word of God. But if I err, it is meet I should be shown wherein." Doubtless they all felt that in regard to the mat- ters of controversy between the queen's church and the Sep- aratists, it would not be easy to shew that man, so that he should see, wherein he had erred. After, perhaps, a moment's pause, the Lord Chancellor Hatton said, " There must be stricter laws made for such fellows." At the suggestion of " stricter laws for such fellows," the spirit that can mount the scaffold or march to the stake rather than deny a persecuted truth, uttered itself in the words, " Would God there were, my lord ! Our journey would then be the shorter." Things were taking a very serious aspect. We may sup- pose that even the frivolous Hatton was touched by that A.D. 1587.] SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSIOX. 101 last answer, and was beginning to have some vague feeling of how much deeper than his thoughts about religion had ever gone, must that conviction be which would not be surren- dered even if "stricter laws" were made against it. Law had made him a Protestant, and if it should change, it might make him a Papist again, or a Presbyterian, or a Pagan. What sort of a man, then, was this prisoner whose journey would only be the shorter if a little more stringency in the laws should require him, under penalty of death, to surrender his convictions concerning the church of Christ and the wor- ship of God. Burleigh resumed the examination, and, like a man accus- tomed to deal with concrete and practical questions, he said to the prisoner, "You complained to us of injustice. Where- in have you suffered wrong?" "By being imprisoned, my lord, without trial," was the answer. How can this be? was Burleigh's instant thought. " You said [at the beginning of your examination] you were condemned upon the statute [against recusants]." Yet Barrowe had not contradicted him- self; he had been examined and imprisoned by the archbishop, but not tried ; and they all so understood him when, without any explanation, he replied, "Unjustly, my lord. That statute was not made for us." He was right, and they knew it. The Parliament that enacted that law — unjust and unwise — against Roman Catholics, did not intend that it should be an engine of persecution against any true Protestant. Then said Burleigh, " There must be stricter laws made for you." " Oh, my lord !" was the reply, " speak more comfort- ably. We have sorrows enough." In his response to Hat- ton's threat of " stricter laws," the prisoner, without breach of courtesy, had answered a fool according to his folly ; but in giving this reply to a similar intimation from Burleigh, he was appealing to a man of larger and more generous nature. After a few words more about the injustice complained of, his lordship asked, "Have you not had a conference ?" There- 102 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VI. upon Bishop Aylmer, without waiting for the prisoner to an- swer that question, said, "Several have been with them, whom they mocked." Barrowe, having small respect for bishops, contradicted him. " We have mocked no man. Miserable physicians are you all. We desired a public conference, that all might know our opinions and wherein we err." A public conference ! As if it were not the chief end of the High Commission to suppress all public discussion of such themes as these ! Whitgift was roused by the suggestion. "You shall have no such conference. You have published too much already ; and therefore I committed you to prison." "But contrary to law," insisted the prisoner. The lord treasurer interposed again, " On such occasions it may be done by law. Have you any learning?" Obviously, the question referred to Barrowe's professional studies; and he replied, modestly, " The Lord knoweth I am ignorant. I have no learning to boast of But" — turning to the archbishop — " this I know, that you are void of all true learning and god- liness." ^ " See the spirit of this man," cried Buckhurst. Whit- gift, out of temper with a prisoner who had charged him to his face with lack of true learning and godliness, renewed the threat with which he had attempted to terrify the same man seven months before : " I have matter to call you before me as a heretic." That threat meant more than continued im- prisonment, more than fines, however exorbitant, more than the gallows : it meant the stake, the iron chain, the heap of fagots, and tlie fire. Again the stubborn Separatist replied, ''That you shall never do. You know my former judgment in that matter. Err I may ; but heretic, by the grace of God, I will never be." Such a reply was, in reality, almost a chal- lenge— as if he had said. Prove me a heretic if you can. Burleigh turned the conversation to another topic. "Do ^ The last sentence of this answer is inconsistent with the respectful tone of all that the prisoner said to Burleigh and to the other lay lords in that examination ; but it is entirely consistent with the style of his replies to the two prelates. A.D. 1587.] SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSION. 103 you not hold that it is unlawful to enact a law for ministers to live by tithes, and that the people be required to pay them ?" The answers to that and other questions propound- ed an extremely radical doctrine — the identical doctrine with which Wickliffe had terrified the clergy so long ago. Min- isters of the Gospel — in Barrowe's theory of the relations be- tween church and state — should be supported not by tithes, nor by any other assessments on the people at large, but wholly by the voluntary contributions of those to whom they minister. The text was quoted, "Let him tliat is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things" — a rule very diiferent from the law of tithes. "Wouldst thou, then," said Burleigh, "have the minister to have all my goods ?" " No, my lord ; but I would not have you withhold your goods from helping him : neither rich nor poor are exempted from this duty." The lord treasurer's religion was not much infected with sacerdotalism. For some reason, he threw out a remark more Protestant than the theory which the bishops were up- holding in the Church of England : " Ministers are not now called priests." " If they receive tithes, they are priests," was the prompt reply; "they" — who receive tithes — "are called priests in the law." Pedantic Aylmer, not relishing the intimation that Christian ministers are not priests, and fearing what might come of it, thought that the argument for tithes might be helped by suggesting the etymology and origin of the English word priest. " What is a presby- ter, I pray thee?" "An elder." "What, in age only?" " No : Timothy was a young man." " Presbyter," said the Bishop of London — who had been tutor to Lady Jane Grey, and had made her famously learned in Latin and Greek — "Presbyter is Latin for priest." "It is no Latin word," said the prisoner, " but is derived from the Greek, and signifieth the same as the Greek word, which is elder." As if impelled to expose more completely the weakness of the argument which he w^as trying to suggest, the bishop asked one question 104 GKNESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES. [CH. VI. more : " What, theD, dost thou make a priest ?" The answer was obvious. " One that offereth sacrifices ; for so it is al- ways used in the law." The High Commissioners present in that court could not but observe the courtesy which characterized the prisoner's answers, bold as they were, to the lord tveasurer, the lord chancellor, and the queen's kinsman, Lord Buckhurst ; nor could they help seeing that all customary terms of reverence toward the highest dignitaries of the Church were wanting when he addressed the Bishop of London or the Archbishop of Canterbury. As if he were a precursor of George Fox, he had not once said "My Lord" to Aylmer, nor "Your Grace" to Whitgift. Hatton, who was almost a Roman Catholic, but whose frivolous nature was incapable of any religious earnestness, had evidently been impressed with such a defect of courtliness on the part of one who was formerly a courtier. Either in the simplicity of his ignorance, or because he was willing to tease those prelates and to see them worried out of all self-command, he pointed at the bishop and archbishop, and said to the prisoner, " Do you not know these two men ?" "Yes, my lord," was the answer; "I have cause to know them." The lord chancellor asked again, " Is not this the Bishop of London?" "I know him for no bishop, my lord." This was Barrowe's explanation. He could honor the nobles of England and the queen's officers representing her suprem- acy in the state ; but he would acknowledge no bishop who was not a bishop according to the New Testament. Hatton, not yet satisfied, persisted in his question, "What is he, then?" The answer came at last: "His name is Aylmer, my lord. The Lord pardon my fault that I did not lay him open as a wolf, a bloody persecutor, and an apostate." So much for ray lord of London ; next for Whitgift, toward whom the merciless chancellor's finger was directed. "What is that man?" In other words. What is the title which designates his rank and office ? Thus challenged to declare his judg- ment concerning the functionary known as archbishop in an A.D. 1587.] SEPARATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSION. 105 ecclesiastical establishment which was half Roman, and less than half Protestant, the fearless Separatist replied, " He is a monster, a miserable compound ; I know not what to make of him. He is neither ecclesiastical nor civil. He is that second beast spoken of in the Revelation" — which "exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed." Mischievously or earnestly, Burleigh seemed to be inter- ested in that matter. The question whether the prelacy in the English establishment was of God or only of men — whether bishop and archbishop derived their power from the " King of kings and Lord of lords " by apostolic succession, or from Queen Elizabeth under the laws of England — had al- ready been urged on his attention ; and the manner in whicli that power was used by Whitgift had been the subject of a disagreeable correspondence, and almost of altercation, be- tween the primate and the premier. The statesmanship which was working with consummate skill to govern England, and which found nothing in its great task more difficult than to manage the queen and those obsequious creatures of her will, the bishops, had reasons of its own for saying of a func- tionary so composite and anomalous as an archbishop, "I know not what to make of him ;" and Burleigh, with all his gravity, could not but smile inwardly at the alleged resem- blance between that officer and " the second beast spoken of in Revelation." " Where is the place ?" said he ; " show it." My lord's Grace of Canterbury could endure this no longer. While the prisoner was turning the leaves to find the thir- teenth chapter of the Apocalypse, Whitgift rose from his seat, and, "gnashing his teeth," exclaimed, "Will you suffer him, my lords?" Thus the examination ended. "Then by the wardens Mr. Barrowe was immediately plucked from off his knees and carried away." Greenwood underwent a similar examination, and gave a similar testimony. He refused to be sworn by or upon any 106 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. VI. book, though not refusing to swear by the name of God, " if there be any need." When the commissioners proceeded to interrogate him without an oath (for it seems to have been their opinion that an oath was of no account without a book), they found him not reluctant to tell what he believed, though protesting against the attempt " to bring him within the compass of their law by making him accuse himself." In reply to the question," Are you a minister?" he said, "I was one, according to your orders," or ordination. Had he been degraded from the clerical order by due course of canon law? No; but, said he, "I degraded myself, through God's mercy, by repentance." They interrogated him on the law- fulness of using " any stinted forms of prayer in public or in private ;" on the Book of Common Prayer — whether it was contrary to the Scriptures, and whether it was " popish, su- perstitious, and idolatrous ;" on marriage — whether he had married "one Boman and his wife" in the Fleet prison; on the Church of England, whether it was " a true established church of God" — whether, as governed by bishops, it was antichristian — whether the sacraments therein administered were true sacraments — whether the parish were the church — whether the church ought to be governed by a presbytery, and what the presbytery ought to be. They also touched the more radical topic of voluntary church reformation with- out tarrying for the prince, and whether the prince might be excommunicated by a voluntary church. Some of his an- swers may be given here, as showing not only the spirit of the man, but also the character of the movement in which he was a leader, and for which he was a witness. On the general question of " stinted forms of prayer," or liturgies prescribed and imposed by authority, his testimony was, "It does not appear lawful to use stinted prayers, in- vented by men, either publicly or privately, from any thing I can see in the Scriptures." Respecting the Book of Common Prayer (after being as- sured by the lord chief justice, one of the commissioners, A.D. 1587.] SEPAKATISM BEFORE THE HIGH COMMISSION. 107 that he should have liberty to call back whatever statement he might afterward desire to revoke), he said, "I hold it is full of errors, and the form of it disagreeable to the Script- ures." In opposition to the notion which makes marriage a sacra- ment, and some priestly intervention essential to its sacred- ness, he denied that marriage is "any part of the minister's office." He held that the contract between the parties to be thenceforward husband and wife made them one under the law of God, and that their mutual consent, expressed before faithful witnesses — though in the case referred to he had of- fered prayer — needed no priest or minister to make it an in- dissoluble bond. When he was asked whether the Church of England — the institution represented before him at that moment by the High Commission Court — was "a true established church of God," he answered, "The whole commonwealth is not a church." When urged with the question in another form : "Do you know anytrue established church in the land?" he answered, "If I did, I would not accuse it unto you,." As governed by bishops, and by the laws then enforced, k was "contrary to Christ's word." Of the sacraments in the national establishment, he said, "They are not rightly administered, according to the insti- tution of Clirist; nor have they the promise of grace :" "If you have no true church, you can have no true sacraments." Yet he held that there was no need of baptizing again those who had received baptism in the establishment. While he was "no Anabaptist," " differing from them as far as truth is from error," his own boy, a year and a half old, had received the name Abel without its being given to him in baptism ; "because," said the father, "I have been in prison, and can not tell where to go to a reformed church, where I might have him baptized according to God's ordinance." To the question, "Do you not hold a parish to be the church ?" he answered, " If all the people were faithful, hav- 108 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH.VI. ing God's law and ordinances practiced among them, I do." A church would then be constituted by " the profession which the people make ;" and, as for its government, " every con- gregation of Christ ought to be governed by that presby- tery which Christ hath appointed." To him the presbytery which Christ hath appointed was not the Genevan or classic- al presbytery which the Puritans would introduce in place of the existing establishment, but a congregational presby- tery— the " pastor, teacher, and elder" in each congregation of Christ. The church thus constituted," people and presby- tery," would be Christ's church, and ought to practice God's laws, and " correct vice by the censure of the word." But '' what if the prince forbid them ?" Then " they must, never- theless, do that which God commandetJV^ That phrase, " the censure of the word," pointed toward ex- communication. Queen Elizabeth had been excommunicated by the pope ; might not this church government according to the New Testament do the same thing ? In reference to the presbyterial government which the Puritans were en- deavoring to establish, this was a very grave question ; for, under that system, the queen, instead of being by virtue of her own crown and her baptism the supreme governor of the Church of England, would be a simple member of the church, on the same level with every other baptized English- woman. The crucifix in her private chapel might be com- plained of to the session or consistory of the parish. As a woman, she could sustain no ecclesiastical office, not even that of lay elder. She might be excommunicated by the con- sistory, and her appeals to presbytery, synod, and general assembly might be in vain. "If the prince offend," said the examiners to Greenwood, " may the presbytery excommuni- cate him?" His answer was, "The whole church — not the elders — may excommunicate any member of that church, if the party continue obstinate in open transgression." Even if the prince should have become, by free consent and mutual covenant, a member of that church, "there is no exception of A.D. 1587.] SEPAKATISM BEFOKE THE HIGH COMMISSION. 109 persons." If our queen should become a voluntary mem- ber of that voluntary church, " I doubt not her majesty would be ruled by the word."^ The queen's supremacy in ecclesiastical matters would vanish, and no place be found for it. Each congregation of worshipers freely consenting to be ruled by the word of God would be self-governed under Christ ; for " the Scripture hath set down sufficient laws for the worship of God and the gov- ernment of the church, so that no man may add unto it nor diminish from it." The queen " is supreme magistrate over all persons, to punish the evil and defend the good;" but " Christ is the only head of his church, and his laws may no man alter." Having given this testimony, the confessor was sent back to the prison. 1 Brook, "Lives of the Puritans," ii., 21-28. The stoiy of Barrowe and Greenwood before the High Commissioners is told briefly by Neal, i., 201, 202, and more at length by Hopkins, iii., 4G0-4G9. 110 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES. [CH.VII. CHAPTER VII. CONTROVERSY UNDER DIFFICULTIES. NATIONALISM, CONFORM- IST AND PURITAN, AGAINST SEPARATISM. Had not John Banyan been shut up to dream in Bedford jail, he would never have found time to write the " Pilgrim's Progress." His influence would have been limited and tran- sient in comparison with what it has been for two hundred years, and will be for centuries of years to come. Witnesses for liberty and truth may be imprisoned ; but ideas that have life in them find wings and fly abroad. The word of God is not bound. It does not appear that Barrowe or Greenwood had writ- ten any thing for publication before Archbishop Whitgift took them under his tutelage, and set them to study in prison the argument for a National Church, governed by the queen through her bishops and her High Commission. In due time the fruit of those studies began to appear. While the years of their imprisonment were passing, and while the published account of their bold answers at their several examinations was provoking inquiry and discussion in various places, Bar- rowe— though often he could not "keep one sheet by him while writing another" — found means and opportunity for the writing of a book, sheet by sheet, which, notwithstanding the restrictions on the press, was printed in Holland, and be- gan to be circulated in England (1590). It was entitled "A Brief Discovery of the False Church," and was subscribed "by the Lord's most unworthy servant and witness, in bonds, Henry Barrowe." To intimate the relation between the new establishment and the old, it bore upon its title-page the motto (from Ezekiel xvi., 44) : " As the mother, such the A.D. 1590.] CONTROVERSY UNDER DIFFICULTIES. Ill daughter is."^ While it exposed in the most unsparing fash- ion whatever Puritanism had found fault with in the es- tablished government and imposed liturgy of the National Church, it went farther and deeper; and — more explicitly, perhaps, than ever Robert Browne had done — it assailed the foundation-principle of every national church, however con- formed to the Puritan ideal. The author of that book was aware of the peril to which he was exposing himself " The shipmasters," said he, " the mariners, merchantmen, and all the people that reign, row, and are carried in this false church, will never endure to see fire cast into her — they will never endure to suifer loss of their dainty and precious merchandize; but, rather, will raise up no small tumults and stirs against the servants of God, seeking their blood by all subtle and violent means, as we read in the Scriptures their predecessors have always done — accusing them of treason, of troubling the state, schism, her- esy, and what not. But unto all the power, learning, deceit, rage of the false church, we oppose that little book of God's word, which, as the light, shall reveal her — as the fire, con- sume her — as a heavy millstone, shall press her and all her children, lovers, partakers, and abettors, down to hell ; which book we willingly receive as the judge of all our controver- sies, knowing that all men shall one day, and that ere long, be judged by the same." Professing small respect for what Roman Catholic and An- glo-Catholic theologians call "the notes of the church,"^ he proposes a more excellent way. " Let us, for the appeasing It was printed in quarto, pp. 263. See Hanbury, i., 39-47. 2 " ' The time is short' to run the race of Christianity, even when we have entered on it : how necessary, then, is it that we should endeavor to find speedily, as well as certainly, the arena in which it is to be run. It is with such views that theologians in various ages have endeavored to lay down rules for the discrimination of Christ's church by a comparatively short and intelligible process, and these rules are styled 720^^5 or sif/ns of the church." — Palmer," Treatise on the Church" (New York, 1841), i., 45. 112 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VII. and assurance of our consciences, give heed to the word of God, and by that golden reed measure our temple, our altar, and our worshipers ; even by these rules whereby the apos- tles— those excellent, perfect workmen — planted and built the first churches." The issue between the theory of the ecclesiastical estab- lishment and that of the Separation, or between Nationalism and Congregationalism, was clearly stated. Nationalism rests on "this doctrine,' That a Christian prince which publisheth and maintaineth the Gospel, doth forthwith make all that realm (which with open force resisteth not his proceedings) to be held a church, to Avhom a holy ministry and sacraments belong, without further and more particular and personal trial, examination, and confession.' " In other words, if the sovereign be Christian, the nation is a church, and all sub- jects not in arms against the Christian sovereign are church members. "This doctrine," said the author," we find, by the word of God, to be most false, corrupt, unclean, dangerous, and pernicious doctrine ; contrary to the whole cause, prac- tice, and laws, both of the Old and New Testament ; break- ing at once all Christian order, corrupting and poisoning all Christian communion and fellowship, and sacrilegiously pro- faning the holy things of God." Such being the fundamen- tal assumption on which a national church is constituted and governed by national authority, there are good reasons for a vehement rejection of it. "First, we know that no prince, or mortal man, can make any a member of the church. Princes may, by their godly government, greatly help and further the church, greatly comfort the faithful, and advance the Gospel ; but to choose or refuse, to call or harden, that the Eternal and Almighty Ruler of heaven and earth keep- eth in his own hands, and giveth not this power unto any other. This also we know, that whom the Lord hath before all w^orlds chosen, them he will, in his due time and means, call by his word ; and whom he calleth, them he sealeth with his seal to depart from iniquity, to believe and lay hold of A.D. 1590.] CONTROVERSY UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 113 Christ Jesus as their alone Saviour — to honor and obey him as their anointed king, priest, and prophet — to submit them- selves unto him in all things — to be reformed, corrected, governed, and directed by his most holy word, vowing their faithful obedience unto the same as it shall be revealed unto them. By this faith, confession, and profession, every m'em- ber of Christ, from the greatest unto the least, without re- spect of persons, eutereth into and standeth in the church. In this faith have all the faithful congregations in the world, and true members of the same body, fellowship each with other; and out of this faith have the true servants of God no fellowship, no communion with any congregation or mem- ber, how flourishing titles or fair shows soever they make here in the flesh." What theologians have called the doctrine of particular elec- tion— in other words, the doctrine that God, in saving men through Christ, deals not with generic human nature only, nor with nations only, but with the individual souls, one by one, whom he chooses, whom he calls, whom he sanctifies — was in- corporated into the conception of the true church in Barrowe's " Discovery of the False Church." The individuality of human souls in the presence of God is their individual responsibility. Responsible each for others by reason of those mutual rela- tions and reciprocal duties and influences which constitute society, all human souls are individually responsible to God. " Now, then, seeing every member hath interest in the pub- lic actions of the church, and [all] together shall bear blame for the defaults of the same ; -and seeing all our communion must be in the truth, and that we are not to be drawn by any into any willing or known transgressions of God's law, who can deny but every particular member hath power, yea, and ought to examine the manner of administering the sac- raments, as also the estate, disorder, or transgressions of the whole church ; yea, and not to join in any known transgres- sion with them, but rather to call them all to repentance," and even " to leave their fellowship rather than to partake in H 114 GENESIS OP THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHEr [cH. VII. their wickedness." It seems to have been a saying in those days, by way of apology for not separating from an ecclesi- astical establishment that would not be reformed, "Every man eateth to his own salvation or damnation ; therefore the open sins of minister or people do neither hurt the sacra- ments there administered nor the godly conscience of the re- ceivers." The Separatist's answer was, " What sense or se- quel is in these reasons ? What can be devised more false or foolish ? Because every one is to look to his own private estate, therefore no man may meddle with another man's, or with the public estate I Were he not as foolish that could be led or carried with these reasons, as they that made them ?" Some description of the true church was necessary to any full exposure of the false church. Is the spiritual common- wealth of Christ's disciples a hierarchy ? What offices of dignity and power does its constitution provide for or require? Barrowe's positive doctrine on that point is very simple : "The ministry appointed unto the government and service of the church of Christ we find to be of two sorts, elders and deacons — the elders, some of them to give attendance unto the public ministry of the word and sacraments, as the pas- tor and teacher; the other elders, together with them, to give attendance to the public order and government of the church — the deacons to attend the gathering and distributing the goods of the church." The Book of Common Prayer, imposed on all Englishmen with its ceremonial uniformity, as the only mode of worship, was the first occasion of Protestant opposition to the ecclesias- tical establishment, and of a demand for more thorough refor- mation. The more rigorously the vestments and ceremonies supposed to be " popish " were enforced upon scrupulous con- sciences, the more numerous and the more obstinate were the scruples of Nonconformists. Yet the Puritans, generally, de- manded only a reformation of the prescribed forms of worship. Some of them might have been satisfied with a few changes. A.D. 1590.] CONTROVERSY TTNDER DIFFICULTIES. 115 Others would have accepted no liturgy less Protestant in form or spirit than that which Calvin introduced in Geneva, and which had been adopted with only slight changes in the Re- formed churches of Scotland and of the Continent. But the Separatists, as the examinations of Barrowe and Greenwood have shown us, had taken a more advanced position in the controversy about the Book of Common Prayer. So radical was their doctrine, that to them any possible form of prayer, prescribed by whatever authority, and imposed upon Christ's churches as a substitute for free and spiritual worship, was like the interposition of a visible image between the wor- shiper and God. The discoverer of the false church had no lack of objections against particular things in the queen's prayer-book, nor was he careful to measure the language in which he stated his objections. In some passages the coarse- ness of his vituperation, though less offensive to English ears in the reign of Elizabeth than it would be if used in the reign of Victoria, is such as can not be justified, even if it should be paralleled with quotations from Luther, who was some- times more vehement than any Hebrew prophet. But the stress of his argument against the English liturgy was not so much against the contents of it — " abstracted out of the pope's blasphemous mass-book" — "old rotten stuff," reeking with odors of decay — as against the principle of prescribed and imposed forms of worship. "This book," said he, " in that it standeth a public prescript continued liturgy" — "if it were the best that ever was de- vised by mortal man, yet, in this place and use (being brought into the church, yea, or into any private house), becometh a detestable idol, standing for that it is not in the church of God and consciences of men, namely, for holy, spiritual, and faithful prayer." Nay, being not prayer, but a form sub- stituted for the spiint of prayer, it is " an abominable and loathsome sacrifice in the sight of God, even as a dead dog. Now, under the law . . . every sacrifice must be brought quick and new unto the altar, and there be slain morning and even- 116 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. VII. ing : how much more in this spiritual temple of God, where the offerings are spiritual, and God hath made all his servants kings and priests to offer up acceptable sacrifices unto him through Jesus Christ, who hath thereunto given them his Holy Spirit into their hearts, to help their infirmities and teach them to say, Abba, Father ! How much more hath he who ascended given graces unto those his servants whom he useth in such high places to the repairing of the saints, the work of the ministry, and the edification of the church ! God useth them as his mouth unto the church ; the church again, on the other side, useth them as their mouth unto the Lord. Shall we think that God hath any time left these his serv- ants so singly furnished and destitute of his grace that they can not find words according to their necessities and faith to express their wants and desires, but need thus be taught line unto line, as children new weaned from the breasts, what and when to say, how much to say, and when to make an end ?" " Prayer I take to be a confident demanding, which faith maketh through the Holy Ghost, according to the will of God, for their present wants and estate. How can any pre- script stinted liturgy which was penned many years or days before be called a pouring forth of the heart unto the Lord, or those faithful requests which are stirred up in them by the Holy Ghost according to their present wants and the present estate of their hearts or church?" "Is not this" — this imposing of prescribed forms of prayer upon the churches — " presumptuously to undertake to teach the Spirit of God, and to take away his ofiice, who, as hath been said, instruct- eth all the children of God to pray, even with inward sighs and groans inexpressible, and giveth both words and utter- ance ?" " Is not this, if they will have their written stuff to be held and used as prayer, to bind the Holy Ghost to the froth and leaven of their lips as it were*to the holy word of God ? Is it not utterly to quench and extinguish the Spirit of God both in the ministry and people, while they tie both them and God to their stinted, numbered prayers ?" A.D. 1590.] CONTROVERSY UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 117 All this is significant as to the divergence of Separatism from Puritanism. But much more significant are the pas- sages in which the author exposed the attempt of certain Puritan clergymen to institute and carry on a presbyterial government in the National Church. Such an attempt, hav- ing been commenced many years before, was still in progress. Several presbyteries or classes had been organized, meeting secretly, and vainly endeavoring to administer a reformed discipline, which, till a reforming sovereign, or at least a re- forming Parliament, should arise, might in some degree sup- ply the lack of really evangelical discipline in the ecclesias- tical establishment of the kingdom. The severity of lan- guage with which Barrowe described that scheme and its authors is worthy of notice : " Let me, in a word or two, give you warning of the other sort of enemies of Christ's kingdom — the Pharisees of these times. I mean your great learned preachers, your good men that sigh and groan for ' reformation,' but their hands, with the sluggard, deny to work. These counterfeits would raise up a second error, even as a second ' beast,' ^ by so much more dangerous, by how much it hath more show of the truth. These men, instead of this gross antichristian gov- ernment which is now manifest and odious unto all men, would bring in a new adulterate forged government in show (or rather in despite) of Christ's government." "They, in their pride, rashness, ignorance, and sensuality of their fleshly hearts, most miserably innovate and corrupt" Christ's gov- ernment over his churches. ' See ante, p. 105. The figure of that " second beast," which, though " he had two horns like a lamb, " nevertheless "spake as a dragon, " which "ex- erciseth all the power of the first beast," which "deceiveth them that dwell on the earth," and "causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark," so that "no man might buy or sell saA-e he that had the mark " — seems to have been, with Barrowe, a favorite illustra- tion of what a state church, pretending to maintain a church government over all the subjects of the realm, must needs be. 118 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. VII. " The thing itself they innovate and corrupt, in that they add new devices of their own — as, their pastoral suspension from their sacraments, their set continued synods, their select classis of ministers, their settled supreme council." As yet their scheme of discipline existed only in the germ, for the only power which a Puritan minister in a Church of England parish had of inflicting any thing like a church censure was the power of privately admonishing and repelling from the Lord's table any gross offender. Out of this germ of "pas- toral suspension from their sacraments" they hoped the whole scheme of a presbyterial church government over the nation might, in due time, be developed. Barrowe and the Sepa- ratists, as they compared that scheme with the model which they found in the New Testament, were of the oi^inion which Milton, himself a Separatist, afterward exj^ressed — "New 'presbyter' is but old 'priest' writ large." No man who had dared to withdraw from the National Church, and to denounce the idea of it as essentially anti- christian, could be expected to speak very respectfully of the timid and stealthy manner in which those non-separating re- formers were proceeding. Barrowe did not disguise his con- tempt of " the weak and fearful practice of some of their for- ward men, who, that they might make a fair show among their rude, ignorant parishioners, set up, instead of Christ's government, their counterfeit 'discipline' in and over all the parish, making the popish churchwardens and perjured quest- men elders. And for Mr. Parson himself, he takes unto him the instrument of that 'foolish shepherd' [Zech. xi., 15], his pastoral staff" or wooden dagger of ' suspension,' wherewith he keepeth such a flourishing as the flies can have no rest ; yea, by your leave, if any poor man in any parish offend him, he may, peradventure, go without his bread and wine that day." _ It did not escape the notice of Barrowe that the Puritan scheme proposed an ecclesiastical government of the people, A.D. 1590.] CONTROVERSY UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 119 but not hy the people. " Their permanent synods and coun- cils," he said, " which they would erect — not here to speak of their new Dutch classis, for therein is a secret — should only consist of priests — or ministers, as they term them. Peo- ple of the churches [must] be shut out, and neither be made acquainted with the matters debated there, nor have free voice in those synods and councils, but must receive and obey, without contradiction, whatever those learned priests shall decree. These synods' and councils' decrees . . . are most holy, without controlment, unless it be by the prince or the high court of Parliament." " The ' ancient ways' of the Lord are the only true Avays; whatever is second, or diverse, is new and false. This I say, because both these factions (of our pontif- ical and reforming priests) have sought rather to the broken pits and dry cisterns of men's inventions, for their direction and groundwork, than unto the pure fountain of God's word." "You see how the one side — the Pontificals, I mean — . . . reject all claim the people can make, refuting them by MachiavePs considerations and Aristotle's politics instead of the New Testament ; alleging, I wot not how many, inconven- iences in way of bar. The other sect, or faction rather — these Reformists — ^howsoever, for fashion's sake, they give the peo- ple a little liberty, to sweeten their mouths and make them believe that they should choose their own ministers ; yet, even in this pretended choice, they do cozen and beguile them also, leaving them nothing but the smoky, windy title of election only, enjoining them to choose some university clerk, one of these college-birds of their own brood, or else comes a synod in the neck of them, and annihilates the elec- tion whatsoever it be. They have also a trick to stoj) it, be- fore it come so far; namely, in the ordination, which must, forsooth, be done by other priests, for the church that chooseth him hath no power to ordain him. And this makes the mother church of Geneva, and the Dutch classis — I dare not say the secret classis in England — to make ministers for us in Engjland." 120 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. VII. The Reverend George Giffard, who wrote himself " Min- ister of God's holy word in Maldon" (Essex), "was a great and diligent preacher, and much esteemed by many of good rank in the town, and had brought that place to more sobri- ety and knowledge of true religion." He had suffered as a Puritan, " there being some things in the Book of Common Prayer which he was not persuaded of to be agreeable to the word of God." For this and other alleged offenses, he had been suspended from his ministry, brought before the High Commission, and imprisoned ; but, for want of evidence to sustain the charges against him, he had been released and permitted to resume his work. Persisting in his opinions and practices, he came again under the censure of Bishoj) Aylmer, more than two years before the imprisonment of Barrowe and Greenwood, and was a second time suspended from his functions. On both occasions his friends — among whom were some of the aldermen and other official persons in that town — made their earnest petition to the bishop in his behalf, and in both instances he was released and re- stored— probably because the influence of Lord Burleigh, to whom they represented the case, and whom they persuaded to intercede for them with Archbishop Whitgift, was too powerful to be resisted. What Giffard's position was among the Puritan clergymen of Essex appears from a supplication which twenty-seven of them made, about that time, to the Lords of the Council, and in which, after protesting their loyalty as subjects and their fidelity as preachers of the Gos- pel, they said, " We are in great heaviness, and some of us already put to silence, and the rest living in fear, . . . be- cause w^e refuse to subscribe ' that there is nothing contained in the Book of Common Prayer contrary to the w^ord of God.' " Of the names subscribed to that petition, George Giff"ard is the first. So it came to pass that, notwithstand- ing the vigilance of Aylmer and Whitgift, that " minister of God's holy word " was still at his post in Maldon, carrying on "the reformation he had made in that market-town by A.D. 1590.] PUEITANISM AGAINST SEPARATISM. 121 his preaching," and steadily puritanizing the whole parish, when BaiTOwe sent forth, from his prison, the "Discovery ofthe False Church."' It was only among Puritans, and in parishes where there were ministers who felt themselves to be not priests, but "ministers of God's word," that such a book was likely to find readers. We may presume that in the market-town of Maldon, and in other parishes of Essex under the twenty- seven Puritan ministers, there were some whose Puritanism was almost ready to lapse into Separatism, and to whom the arguments and invectives of that book, or even the bold and incisive answers which the Separatist confessors had given before the High Commission, would be as fire to fuel pre- pared for burning. The Maldon preacher found himself called to refute the opinions of Barrowe and his fellow-con- fessor; and, very promptly, he published "A Short Treatise against the Donatists of England, whom we call Brownists, wherein, by answers unto certain writings of theirs, divers of their heresies are noted, with sundry fantastical opinions." Very convenient was that word " Donatist." It was a name taken from ecclesiastical history; few of the laity would know the meaning of it, and most readers would assume that it meant something very bad, and that even a godly man was in danger of lapsing into Donatism if he had fellowship with the Brownists. "There is risen up among us," said Giffard, " a blind sect, opposite to these [the Papists], which is so furious that it cometh like a raging tempest from a contrary coast, so that our ship is tossed between contrary waves. For these cry aloud that our assemblies be Romish, idolatrous, and antichristian synagogues ; that we worship the beast, receive his mark, and stand under his yoke ; and, finally, that we have no ministry, no word of God, nor sac- raments." Briefly, the embarrassing question for the Puri- tans who maintained their connection with the National ^ Brook, ii., 273-278. Strype," Aylmer," 71-73 ; " Whitgift," i., 152, 153. 122 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VII. Church in the hope of reforming it, was this, If the Cliurch of England is a true church, why is not the Church of Rome a true church? The question which Giffard, by the very title of his book, committed himself to answer was, How is it that those who separate from the Church of England for the sake of a purer worship and a strictly evangelical disci- pline deserve to be stigmatized with the name of an ancient and maligned schism, unless the Church of England itself have become Donatist by separating from the self-styled Catholic Church under the pretense of reformation and for the sake of throwing off an unwarranted government and super- stitious worship? Doubtless his solution of that difficulty was satisfactory to himself, but it did not satisfy those whom he called the Donatists of England. Another champion of the National Church was already in the field. Even before the " Discovery of the False Church " had been printed. Dr. Robert Some had assailed Barrowe and Greenwood in a book which he dated "from my Lord's Grace of Canterbury his house in Lambeth," and which he entitled "A Godly Treatise, wherein are examined and con- futed many execrable fancies, given out and holden, partly by Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood, and partly by oth- er of the Anabaptistical order." Dr. Some had already at- tempted to defend the National Church against Puritan re- formers, and his earlier " Godly Treatise," five times larger than this, will be mentioned in the progress of our story. He had now found that another movement, more revolution- ary in its remoter tendencies than Puritanism, was stirring the thoughts of some earnest Englishmen ; and as the Re-. formist preacher in Maldon called those men Donatists whose plans of reform'ation were more radical than his own, so to this Conformist writer in Lambeth Palace it seemed equally convenient and more efficient to call them by a name which was not only more reproachful theologically, but more alarm- ing to the secular power. He called them Anabaptists. Dedicating his pamphlet to Lord Chancellor Hatton and A.D. 1590.] PURITANISM AGAINST SEPARATISM. 123 Lord Treasurer Burleigh, he complained that " the Anabap- tistical sort" were growing bold. "Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood," said he, "are the masters of that college; men as yet " — after so many years of imprisonment — " very willful and ignorant. The way to cure them, if God will, is to teach and punish them." The two prisoners, notwithstanding the difficulties under which they labored, were prompt in sustaining their part of the controversy. In the same year with the publication of Giffard's treatise (1590), there came forth, printed, doubtless, at some foreign press. Greenwood's " Answer to George Gif- fard's pretended Defense of Read Prayers and Devised Lit- urgies." It was a vehement attack on the Puritan party, not only exposing the erroneous principles of those reform- ers who retained their connection with the ecclesiastical es- tablishment, and recognized it as the church of Christ in England, but even assailing their persons with most unchar- itable vituperation. "Railing accusations," however inex- cusable, are a natural weapon in such a conflict as that which the Separatists were waging. Overwhelmed with oppro- brium from the Prelatists, on one side, and the Puritans on the other, they did not always follow the example of Him "who when he was reviled, reviled not again." That we may fairly appreciate the controversy between Puritanism and Separation, we must see with what invectives each as- sailed the other. Gifiard's position in the National Church was only that of a lecturer or "stipendiary preacher." A special sermon on a week-day, or in the afternoon of the Lord's day, was called a lecture, and could be preached by ministers whose non- conformity made them unable to serve in the care of a par- ish. The Puritan clergy were zealous preachers ; their chief work in their own estimation was the holding forth of God's word rather than the reading of prayers or the administra- tion of sacraments. The Puritan laity were diligent hearers of sermons, and earnest to have their neighbors hear with 124 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VII. them. It was natural, therefore, for the sermon-loving in- habitants of a parish, especially in a market-town, to estab- lish a lecture, providing a stipend for the lecturer either by a temporary subscription or by a settled endowment. Under such an arrangement George Giffard was a " minister of God's holy word in Maldon." Against him holding such a place, and yielding only that partial and compromising conformity to the usurpations of the ecclesiastical establishment, the un- compromising Greenwood gave indignant testimony. " He writeth himself ' minister of God's holy word in Mal- don.' . . . He hath not in Maldon the credit or room of so much as a curate, the pastor there supplying his own office ; but he is brought in by such of the parish as, having ' itch- ing ears,' get unto themselves a heap of new-fangled teach- ers, after their own lusts, disliking and watching the min- istry that is set over them, to which, notwithstanding, in hy- pocrisy and for fear of the world, they join in prayer and sacraments, and pay tithes and maintenance as to the proper minister. To such people, being rich and able to pay them well, these sectary precise * preachers ' run for their hire and wages, but chiefly for vain glory and worldly ostentation. And there they teach and preach . . . for the most part un- der some dumb and plurified pastor, from whom, as from in- sufficient and blind guides, they withdraw not the people. . . . Yet, for their own estimation, advantage, and entertainment, they will by all subtle means, underhand, seek to alienate the hearts and minds of this forward and best-inclined peo- ple from these their pastors, and slily to draw them unto themselves. "Long it were to relate their arts and engines whereby they hunt and entangle poor souls ; their counterfeit shows of holiness . . . austereness of manners, preciseness in trifles, large conscience in matters of greatest weight — especially of any danger ; straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel ; hatred and thundering against some sin ; tolerating, yea, col- oring some other in some special persons . . . holding and with- A.D. 1590.] PURITANISM: AGAINST SEPARATISM. 125 holding the known truth of God in respect of times, places, and persons . . . under the color of peace, Christian policy, and wisdom. "Hence arise these schisms and sects in the Church of En- gland ; some holding with these * preachers,' who make a show as though they sought a sincere reformation of all things according to the Gospel of Christ, and yet both exe- cute a false ministry themselves, and . . . stand under that throne of Antichrist (the bishops, their courts and accom- plices, and all those detestable enormities) which they should have utterly removed, and not reformed. And these are, here- upon, called Precisians, or 'Puritans,' and now lately 'Mar- tinists.' The other side are the ' Pontificals,' that in all things hold and jump with the time, and are ready to justi- fy whatever is or shall be by public authority established; and with these hold all the rabble of atheists, dissembling papists, cold and lukewarm Protestants, libertines, dissolute, and facinorous persons, and such as have no knowledge or fear of God." These opposite parties are like " that ancient sect of the Pharisees and Sadducees — the one in preciseness, outward show of holiness, hypocrisy, vain glory, covetous- ness, resembling, or rather exceeding the Pharisees; the oth- er, in their whole religion and dissolute conversation, like unto the Sadducees, looking for no resurrection, judgment, or life to come — confessing God with their lips, and serving him after their careless manner, but denying him in their heart, yea, openly in their deeds, as their whole life and all their works declare." Such vehemence of vituperation was, doubtless, too gener- ally characteristic of those earliest Separatists. To conceal this, or to overlook it, would be inconsistent with the truth of history. Greenwood, and others like him, used the same violence of speech concerning their adversaries — whom they held to be adversaries of truth — which their adversaries used toward them, and which Luther and the Reformers used con- cerning the pope and the upholders of his power. When a 126 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. VIL Separatist confessor, testifying and suffering for the universal priesthood of Christ's redeemed ones, and for their right to associate in free and self-governed churches, cries out of his prison against Puritan lecturers in the Church of England, and calls them " these Pharisee-sectary-teachers," " these sti- pendiary, roving predicants, that have no certain office or place assigned them in their church, but, like wandering stars, remove from place to place for their greatest advantage and best entertainment," we seem to hear in these harsh tones a voice like that of Knox or of Wycliffe. The great offense of those whom Giffard insisted on call- ing " Brownists," in spite of their disclaimer, was that they disowned the National Church, and withdrew from it. Gif- fard had said of them, " They can not, but with heresies and most heinous injury and inordinate dealing, condemn a church as quite divorced and separate from Christ, for such corrup- tions and imperfections in God's worship as be not funda- mental nor destroy the substance." Greenwood replied, " We never condemned any true church for any fault what- soever, knowing that where true faith is, there is repentance, and where true faith and repentance are, there is remission of all sins." But "for their idolatry, confusion, sacrilege, false and antichristian ministry and government, obstinacy in all these sins, hatred of the truth, and persecution of Christ's servants, we have proved the Church of England not to be the true, but the malignant church. . . . We but discover their sins and show their estate by the word of God, refraining from and witnessing against their abominations, as we are commanded by that voice from heaven, 'Go out of her, ray people, that ye communicate not in her sins, and that ye re- ceive not of her plagues.' . . . Let her shipmasters, then, her mariners, merchantmen, enchanters, and false prophets, utter and retail her wares — deck and adorn her with the scarlet, purple, gold, silver, jewels, and ornaments of the true taber- nacle ; let them, in her, offer up their sacrifices, their beasts, sheep, meal, wine, oil, their odors, ointments, and frankin- A.D. 1591.] PURITANISM AGAINST SEPARATISM. 127 cense ; let them daub and undershore her, build and reform her — until the storm of the Lord's wrath break forth, the morning whereof all these divines shall not foresee . . . until the wall and the daubers be no more. But let the wise, that are warned and see the evil, fear and depart from the same ; so shall they preserve their own souls as a prey, and the Lord shall bring them among his redeemed to Zion ' with praise,' and ' everlasting joy ' shall be upon their heads; 'they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.' " Another reply to GiiFard was prepared by the two pris- oners, and was printed (1591) at Middleburg, in Zealand. Barrowe's part of it purported to be, "A Plain Refutation of Mr. Giffard's Book, intitled 'A Short Treatise against the Donatists of England :' Wherein is discovered the Forgery of the whole Ministry, the Confusion, False Worship, and Antichristian Disorder of these Parish Assemblies called 'The Church of England.' Here also is prefixed, A Sum of the Causes of our Separation, and of our Purposes in Practice." Greenwood's contribution to the volume was, "A Brief Ref- utation of Mr. Giflard's supposed consimilitude betwixt the Donatists and us : Wherein is showed how his arguments have been and may be, by the PajDists, more justly retorted against himself and the present estate of their church." The "Epistle Dedicatory to the Right Honorable Peer and grave Counselor," Lord Burleigh, was subscribed, "Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood, for the testimony of the Gospel, in close prison." In that dedication of their work to perhaps the only member of the queen's government whom they could reasonably regard as a possible friend and protector, they complained of the hardships they had suffered, and apol- ogized for the "bold presumption" of defending themselves and the truth, for which they were God's witnesses. " Our malignant adversaries have had full scope against us, with the law in their own hands." " They have made no spare or conscience to accuse, blaspheme, condemn, and punish us." 128 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VII. " Openly in their pulpits and in their printed books — to the ears and eyes of all men — they have pronounced and pub- lished us as ' damnable heretics, schismatics, sectaries, sedi- tious, disobedient to princes, deniers and abridgers of their sacred power.' " " No trial has been granted us : either civ- il, that we might know for what cause and by what law we thus suffer (which yet is not denied the most horrible male- factors and offenders), or ecclesiastical, by the word of God, where place of freedom might be given us to declare and plead our own cause in sobriety and order." "They have shut us up, now more than three years, in miserable and close prisons, from the air, and from all means so much as to write, ink and paper being taken and kept from us." " We have been rifled from time to time of all our papers and writings they could find." " While we were thus straitly kept and watched from speaking or writing, they suborned, among sundry others, two special instruments — Mr. Some and Mr. Giffard — to accuse and blaspheme us publicly to the view of the world, the one laboring to prove us ' Anabaptists,' the other 'Donatists.'" "Wherefore we addressed ourselves, by such means as the Lord administered, and as the in- commodities of the place, and the infirmities of our decayed bodies and memories would permit, to our defense ; or, rather, to the defense of that truth whereof God hath made and set us his unworthy witnesses." At the time when these partners in testimony and in suf- fering had overcome " the incommodities of the place," and notwithstanding the vigilance of their enemies had their book ready in some sort for the printer, and when their manuscripts were smuggled "beyond seas" to be printed, Francis Johnson was ministering as chaplain to the English merchants at Middleburg, being supported by them wdth a commendable liberality. Like most of the English clergy- men who found employment of that sort in foreign ports, he was an advanced Puritan, zealous not only against super- stitious vestments and ceremonies, but against the govern- A.D. 1591.] PURITANISM AGAINST SEPARATISM. 129 ment established in the Chnrch of England. At the Univer- sity of Cambridge, two years before, he had given offense to the ruling powers by a sermon, after the manner of Cart- wright, maintaining that the church ought to be governed by teaching and ruling elders, and implying that any other government in the church is unauthorized. For that ser- mon lie was summoned before the vice-chancellor and the heads of the colleges, and was by their authority committed to prison. Being required to make a public recantation, and refusing to make it in the terms prescribed, he was expelled from the university. He appealed against that sentence, and was then imprisoned again because he would not go away till his case had been decided. The result was that, after a twelvemonth of academic agitation between the Conformist and Reformist factions, he withdrew from Cambridge, and we next -find him " preacher to the Company of English of the Staple at Middleburg, in Zealand." The fact came to his knowledge that a book by two Separatists so notorious and so obnoxious as Barrowe and Greenwood was in the hands of printers there; and, as a loyal though Puritan member and minister of the Church of England, he was alarmed at the thought of how much harm might be done by the circulation of that book in England. He communicated the alarming- information to the English embassador, and was employed to " intercept " the publication, and to take care that the edition should be destroyed. He waited till the last sheets had gone through the press ; and then he executed his com- mission so thoroughly that he permitted only two copies to escape the fire — " one to keep in his own study that he might see their errors, and the other to bestow on a special friend for the like use." So the great labor of the two prisoners, amid "continual tossings and turmoils, searches and riflings, and with no peace or means given them to write or revise what they had written," seemed to have been in vain. Yet it was not entirely labor lost. It took eflect in an un- expected way, first on the overzealous Puritan who had "in- I 130 GEXESIS OF THE NEAV ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VII. tercepted " and destroyed the edition. " When he had done this work, he went home, and being set down in his study, he began to turn over some pages of this book, and super- ficially to read some things here and there as his fancy led him. At length he met with something that began to work upon his spirit, which so wrought with him as drew him to this resolution, seriously to read over the whole book ; the which he did once and again. In the end he was so taken, and his conscience was troubled so, as he could have no rest in himself until he crossed the seas and came to London to confer with the authors, who were then in prison." Fourteen years later, the "intercepted" book was reprinted at Amsterdam. Francis Johnson, banished from England as a Separatist, had become the pastor of a banished church which had found a refuge in that city ; and there " he caused the same books which he had been an instrument to burn, to be new printed and set out at his own charge." ^ ^ Hanburv, i., 89-70; Bradford, in "Chronicles of the Pilgrims.'' 424. 425; Strype, "Annals," iii., pt. ii., 589-592; App., 267-2G9 ; Book ii., 89-96. A.D. 1592.] THE MARTYK CHUKCH. 131 CHAPTER VIII THE MARTYR CHURCH I THE JAILS AND THE GALLOWS. When Francis Johnson returned to England that he might confer with Barrowe and Greenwood in prison, he conimitted himself to the cause of the Separatists in London, and shared thenceforth in their testimony and in their suffer- ings. They could not but be encouraged by the accession of a clergyman who had lately been a fellow in one of the colleges at Cambridge, who as a Puritan had suffered im- prisonment and loss for conscience' sake, and who, having been as zealous as Giffard against Separation, had given up safety and a comfortable support from an English congrega- tion in the Netherlands for the sake of helping the cause he had opposed. Soon after his coming among them, they proceeded to institute, under his leadership, a formal organ- ization. Before that time they had held their "secret conventicles" or prayer-meetings, such as we may suppose the Lollards to have held in the foregoing ages. By the government they were held to be a " wicked sect " with " wicked opinions," and, to detect their wickedness, they were watched as if they were a gang of thieves. Some of them were subjected to examination; and from their "confessions," together with certain pamphlets of the time, a statement was drawn up, by the queen's attorney-general, to show how dangerous a sect they were, and how detestable were their opinions. The grave annalist of the Church of England, writing while the facts were less significant than they now are, and when passion had not yet cooled, deemed that paper so important that he inserted it in his history ; and so it has come down 132 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUKCHES. [CH.VIII. to us.^ It is in some points a vivid picture of the people whom the govenniient of Queen Elizabetli thought worthy of persecution as criminals dangerous to society.^ These were some of their nefarious practices : " In the summer-time they meet together in the fields, a mile or more [from London]. There they sit down upon a bank, and divers of them expound out of the Bible as long as they are there assembled. "In the winter-time they assemble themselves by five of the clock in the morning to the house where they make their conventicle for the Sabbath-day, men and women together. There they continue in their kind of prayers and exposition of Scriptures all the day. They dine together. After dinner [they] make collections to pay for their diet. And what money is left, some one of them carrieth to the prisons where any of their sort be committed. " In their prayers one speaketh, and the rest do groan and sob and sigh, as if they would wring out tears, but say not after him that prayeth. Their prayer is extemporal. " In their conventicles they use not the Lord's Prayer, nor any form of set prayer. For the Lord's Prayer, one who hath been a daily resorter to their conventicles this year and a half on the Sabbath-days, confesseth that he never heard it said among them. And this is the doctrine of the use of it in their pamphlets : To that which is alleged that we ought to say the Lord's Prayer because our Saviour Christ saith : ' When you pray, do you say thus,' we answer he did not say, 'Read thus,' or 'Pray these words;' for that place is to be otherwise understood, namely, all our petitions must be di- rected by this general doctrine." "For the use of set or stinted prayers, as they term it, this they teach : That all stinted prayers, or said service, is ^ Strype, "Annals," iii., pt. ii., 579-581. ^ The reader can hardly fail to remember Pliny's famous letTter to Trajan concerning the persecuted Christians in Bithynia, at the commencement of the second century. A.D. 1592.] THE MARTYR CHURCH. 133 but babbling in the Lord's sight, and hath neither promise of blessing nor edification, for tiiat they are but cushions for such idle 23riests and atheists as have not the Spirit of God. And therefore to ofier up prayers by reading or by writ unto God is plain idolatry. " In all their meetings they teach that there is no head or supreme governor of the church of God but Christ ; and that the queen hath no authority to appoint ministers in the church, nor to set down any government for the church, which is not directly commanded in God's word. "To confirm their private conventicles and expounding there, they teach that a private man, being a brother, may preach to beget faith ; and, now that the office of the apostles is ceased, there needeth not public ministers, but every man in his own calling was to preach the Gospel. " To come to our churches in England, to any public prayer or preaching of whomsoever, they condemn it as a thing un- lawful, for that they say, as the Church of England stand- eth, they be all false teachers and false prophets that be in it. Their reason is, for that our preachers, as they say, do teach us that the state of the realm of England is the true church, which they deny. And therefore they say that all preachers of [the Church of] England be false preachers sent in the Lord's anger to deceive his people with lies, and not true preachers to bring the glad tidings of the Gospel. And all that come to our churches to public prayers or sermons, they account damnable souls. " Concerning the authority of magistracy, they say that our preachers teach we must not cast our pollutions out of the church until the magistrate hath disannulled the same ; which they say is contrary to the doctrine of the apostles, who did not tarry for the authority of the magistrate." "And therefore our preachers, they say, be false prophets, for that we ought to reform without the magistrate if he be slow, for that, they say, the primitive church, whose ex- ample ought to be our wai-rant, sued not to the courts and 134 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. YIII. parliaments, nor waited upon princes for their reformation. When the stones were ready, they went presently forward with their building." Other things were set down against them. They abhor- red the Book of Common Prayer as " full of errors and abom- inations." They " condemned as apostates " those who, hav- ing been of their brotherhood, had fallen aw-ay from them. They even inflicted in such cases a solemn censure of excom- munication. They w^ould not have their children baptized in the Church of England, " but rather chose to let them go unbaptized." It " could not be learned where they received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper," and " one who never missed their meeting-place a year and a half confesseth that he never saw any ministration of the sacrament, nor knovveth where it is done." Nor did they marry and give in mar- riage according to the ritual of the Church of England — "if any of their church marry together, some of their own broth- erhood must marry them."^ At the time when that statement was drawn up, the Lon- don Separatists had not quite completed their organization as a church. The facts that they had among them no cele- bration of the Lord's Supper, and that they chose to let their children go unbaptized rather than to have them baptized by a parish priest, are thus exjjlained. But encouraged by the accession of Francis Johnson, and confident in his ability to lead them, they determined to become a completely or- ganized church according to the rules and precedents of the New Testament. Cartwright, the great Puritan, had said not long before to his sister-in-law, who was one of them, and who had argued that the Church of England was not the church of Christ, inasmuch as it had no free election of min- isters, " If for this want we be not of the church of Christ, how much more are you not of that church who have no ministers at all, and no election at all ?" He added, " There * Compare what Greenwood said in his examination, p. 107. A.D. 1592.] THE MAKTYR CHURCH. 135 is not so Diuch as one among you that is fit for the func- tion of the ministry by those necessary gifts which are re- quired in the ministry of the word."* This reproach on the London Separatists was taken away when a Puritan clergy- man so well known as Francis Johnson joined himself to them. They had been a church, and had so regarded them- selves, for we know not how long a time, each member at his admission entering into a sacred covenant " that he would walk with the rest of the congregation, so long as they did walk in the way of the Lord, and as far as might be war- ranted by the word of God ;" but as yet they had elected none to any office. It was evidently their belief that the church makes the officer, and not the officer the church. They had been acting on the principle afterward defined by the fathers of New England — " There may be the essence and being of a church without any officers ;" and now they were ready to act on the co-ordinate principle (September, 1592), "Though officers be not absolutely necessary to the simple being of a church, yet ordinarily to their calling they are, and to their well-being." ^ Francis Johnson, of whom Brad- ford afterward testified, " A very grave man he was, and an able teacher, and Avas the most solemn in all his administra- tions that we have seen,"^ was chosen pastor; John Green- wood, teacher; Daniel Studley and George Kniston, ruling elders ; and Christopher Bowman and Nicholas Lee, deacons. With what formalities those brethren, when elected, were inducted into their offices, does not appear from any docu- ment that has come down to us. But we may be sure of this: They held that "ordination is not to go before, but to follow election," and is only "the solemn putting a man into his place and office whereunto he had right before by elec- tion, being like the installing of a magistrate in the common- ' Waddington, "John Penry," p. 85, 8G. 2 "Cambridge Platform," ch. vi,, § 1, 2. ^Bradford's "Dialogue," in Young"& ''Chronicles of the Pilgrims," p. 415. 136 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH.VIII. wealth."^ iSTor could they have been so forgetful of their own principles as to dream for a moment that the imposition of prelatical hands, by which Johnson and Greenwood had formerly been introduced into the national priesthood, was a reason for not ordaining them to their offices of pastor and teacher. Doubtless there was solemn prayer, devoting and commending them to God. Probably they were " set apart " by "the laying on of the hands "^ \e7ri^e(ng rh)v x^'P'^*'] ^^ brethren deputed by the church to perform that service. Yet it may be that the lifting np of the hands of the church^ [^EipoTori^tTavTEo] was deemed a sufficient ordination. The persecuted church had its four "bishops" and its two "dea- cons." Then, for the first time in that church, there w^as the ad- ministration of baptism. Seven children, "being of several vears of age," were presented, "but they had neither godfa- thers nor godmothers." The pastor " took water and wash- ed the faces of them that were baptized," " saying only . . . ' I do baptize thee in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,' without using any other ceremony." Then, too, having: their own official ministers of the word, they could orderly celebrate the Lord's Supper. It was with strict adherence to the precedents recorded in the New Testament, and therefore with the utmost simplicity of cere- monial, that they "broke bread" in remembrance of Christ. " Five white loaves, or more, were set upon the table. The pastor did break the bread, and then delivered it to some of them, and the deacons delivered to the rest, some of the congregation sitting and some standing about the table. The pastor delivered the cup unto one, and he to another, ' "Cambridge Platform." ch. ix., § 2. 2 1 Tim. iv., 13 ; 2 Tim. i., 6 ; Heb. vi., 2. 3 Acts xiv., 23; 2 Cor. viii., U). Some cTiurches in England (if I am rightly informed) ordain their ministers only by "the lifting up of hands." So eminent a minister as Robert Hall, whose name is among the treasures of the universal church of Christ, received no other ordination. A.D. 1592.] THE MARTYR CHURCH. 137 till they all had drunken." At the delivery of the bread and the cnp he used the words of Christ set down by the apostle Paul, "Take, eat; this is my body w^hich is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me ;" and, "This cup is the new testament in my blood : this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me." Nor could he fail to add, "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come."i In no English cathe- dral w^as our Lord's memorial supper celebrated more fitly, or more impressively, than in that humble conventicle, " when the doors were shut, w^here the disciples were assembled, for fear of the" High Commission. How it happened that Greenwood, the piisoner, was pres- ent when the church completed its organization — if, indeed, lie were present — does not appear. It may be that he was there by the connivance of the jailer who was responsible for his safe-keeping.2 It may be that, though absent and in prison, he was chosen teacher in the hope that he would soon l)e at liberty. Or it may be that the church, in choosing its pastor and teacher, remembered them that were in bonds, as bound witli them, and that for that reason Greenwood, though a prisoner, was chosen to be one of the ministers. The number of Separatists in the prisons of London was so considerable, that not far from that time they made a formal ])etition to Lord Burleigh, beseeching him to procure for them a " speedy trial together, or some free Christian confer- ence ;" or that they might be " bailed according to law ;" or, if such favors could not be granted to them, that they might be collected into one prison, "wdiere they might be together for mutual help and comfort." That petition was subscribed by fifty-nine prisoners (including Barrowe and Greenwood), and the names of ten more who had already died in prison 1 1 Cor. xii., 24-26. ' Some instances of such kindness on the part of jailers toward ministers imprisoned for the Gospel's sake are well authenticated. Waddington's "Penry,"p.l2(;, 2r>4. 138 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CU. VIII. were appended.^ If the survivors could have been brought together in one prison, Greenwood being one of them, there would have been an obvious division of labor between the pastor and the teacher — one ministering to the imprisoned portion of the church, the other laboring in word and doc- trine among those who had not yet been cast into prison. The proceedings which have just been described seem to have been followed by a more vigorous persecution of the Separatists. In the estimation of those who then governed England, such proceedings — the voluntary association of be- lievers in a church, their election of bishops and deacons ac- cording to precedents in the apostolic age, and their ad- ministration of Christian sacraments, all in disregard of the queen's ecclesiastical supremacy and of the Act of Uniform- ity— were atrocious, and not to be borne. The petition to the lord high treasurer brought no relief to the prisoners ; or, if it had any effect, its effect w^as an increase of their suffer- ings. Another memorial, not long afterward, was addressed to the "lords of the council," and was a more elaborate and ample statement of their case. That paper, entitled "The humble supplication of the faithful servants of the church of Christ, in the behalf of their ministers and preachers impris- oned," may be taken as a formal manifesto from the church, setting forth, officially, the issue between the persecuted and the persecutors. After courteous expressions of respect, the petitioners, in the first and comprehensive statement of their grievance, took occasion to affirm their innocence and their loyalty to the queen. " We are," said they," her. majesty's poor, oppressed subjects," " whose entire faith unto God, loyalty to our sov- ereign, obedience to our governors, reverence to our supe- riors, innocency in all good conversation toward all men, call not avail us for the safety of our lives, liberty, or goods — not even by her highness's royal laws, and the public char- 1 Strype, iv., 91-93. A.D. 1592.] THE MARTYR CHURCH. 139 ter of this land — from the violence and invasion of our ad- versaries, her majesty's subjects." They proceeded by referring to the fact that the queen, as a Protestant sovereign, had not only permitted the publica- tion of the Bible, but had *' exhorted all her subjects to the diligent readhig and sincere obedience thereof." By such use of the Scriptures, " we," said they, " upon due examina- tion and assured proof, find the whole public ministry, minis- tration, worship, government, ordinances, and proceedings ec- clesiastical of this land, to be strange and quite dissenting from the rule of Christ's Testament ; not to belong unto, or to have any place or use, or so much as mention in his church ; but rather to belong unto, and to be derived from, the ma- lignant synagogue of Antichrist, being the selfsame that the pope used and left in this land ;" wherefore " we dare not by any means defile or subject ourselves in any outward sub- jection or inward consent thereunto." Their withdrawal from all communion with the ecclesiastical establishment was to them a conscientious necessity. But they had not simply withdrawn from the parish church- es. They had done what the primate and the High Com- mission regarded as a much greater sin. " We," said they, "by the Holy Scriptures, find God's absolute commandment that all which hear and believe the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ should forthwith thereupon forsake their evil walk, and from thenceforth walk in Christ's holy faith and order, together with his faithful servants, subjecting themselves to the ministry, and those holy laws and ordinances which the Lord Jesus hath appointed, and whereby only he is present and reigneth in his church. Wherefore, both for the enjoy- ing of that inestimable comfort of his joyful presence and protection, and to show our obedience to God's holy com- mandment, we have, in his reverent fear and love, joined our- selves together in that Christian faith, order, and communion prescribed in his word, and [have] subjected our souls and bodies to those holy laws and ordinances which the Son of 140 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. VIII. God hath instituted, and whereby he is present and ruleth his church here beneath ; and [we] have chosen to ourselves such a ministry of pastor, teacher, elders, deacons, as Clirist hath given to his church here on earth to the world's end." In this organized fellowship, " notwithstanding any prohibi- tion of men, or what by men can be done unto us," we ex- pect " the promised assistance of God's grace," which will en- able us " to worship him aright, and to frame all our pro- ceedings according to the prescript of his word, and to lead our lives in holiness and righteousness before him, in all du- tiful obedience and humble subjection to our magistrates and governors set over us by the Lord." They professed themselves ready to prove against all men that their proceedings were " warrantable by the word of God, allowable by her majesty's laws, noways prejudicial to her sovereign power, or offensive to the public peace of the state." At the same time, they affirmed that the only adver- saries against whom they had any special complaint were the clergy — " the officers of Antichrist's kingdom — namely, the Romish prelacy and priesthood left in the land." The persecution which they suffered was carried on in the name, not of the state, but of the church, and the particulars of their complaint to "the lords of the council," against that "resid- uary Romish prelacy and priesthood," were such as these : " Their dealing with ns is, and hath been a long time, most injurious, outrageous, and unlawful, by the great power and high authority they have gotten in their hands, and usurped above all the public courts, judges, laws, and charters of this land ; persecuting, imprisoning, detaining at their pleasures our poor bodies, without any trial, release, or bail permitted yet ; and, hitherto, without any cause either for error or crime directly objected." " Some of us they have now more than five years in prison (158V-92); yea, four of these five years in close prison, with miserable usage, as Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood, at this present in the Fleet. Others they have cast into their limbo of Newgate, laden A.D. 1592.] THE CHURCH AND THE JAILS. 141 with as many irons as they could bear; others into the dan- gerous and loathsome jail, among the most facinorous and vile persons — where it is lamentable to relate how many of these innocents have perished within these five years, and of these, some aged widows, aged men, and young maidens — and where so many as the infection^ hath spared shall lie in woeful distress, like to follow their fellows if speedy redress be not had. Others of us have been grievously beaten with cudgels in the prison, as at Bridewell, and cast into a place called 'Little-ease' there, for refusing to come to their chap- el service there ; in which prison they, and others of us not long after, ended their lives. Upon none of us thus commit- ted by them, dying in their prison, is any search or inquest suffered to pass, as by law in like case is provided."^ The "humble supplication" had other details for her maj- esty's council. " Their manner of pursuing and apprehend- ing us," said the petitioners, "is with no less violence and outrage. Their pursuivants, with assistants, break into our houses at all hours of the night. . . . There they break up, ransack, rifle, and make havoc at their pleasure, under pre- tense of searching for seditious and unlawful books. The ^ The "jail fever," so common at that time, and long afterward, in the English prisons. See Hopkins, iii., 487-490. 2 The significance of this fact should be remembered. English law re- quired, in cases of that kind, a coroner's inquest. But a jury, inquiring into the death of an "aged widow," or an "aged man," or a "young maiden," dead in Bridewell, might give a censorious verdict, and miglit express and stimulate the indignation which pitying souls could not but feel at such cru- elties. The traditional jealousy of the people against punishments inflicted by church courts might break out, and the verdict of a coroner's jury miglit bring on a conflict between the ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the courts of common law. The genius and methods of the English common law are more favorable to individual liberty than the genius and methods of the can- on or of the civil law. The Separatists believed that the common law, ftiir- ly applied and executed, would protect them. It was natural, therefore, for them, whenever one of their number perished in prison, to desire a cor- oner's inquest ; and it is easy to see why they could not have it. 142 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH.VIII. liusbands, in the deep of the night, they have plucked out of bed from their wives and haled them unjustly to prison." " About a month since their pursuivants, late in the night, en- tered, in the queen's name, into an honest citizen's house on Ludgate Hill, where, after they had at their pleasure search- ed and ransacked . . . the house, they apprehended two of our ministers — Francis Johnson, without any warrant at all, and John Greenwood^ — both whom, between one and two of the clock after midnight, they, with bills and staves, led to" pris- on, " taking assurance of Edward Boys, the owner of this house, to be true prisoner in his own house until the next day," "at which time the archbishop, with certain doctors, his associates, committed them all three to close prison, two unto the Clink, the third again to the Fleet, where they re- main in great distress." Some additional instances of arrest, still more recent, hav- ing been mentioned, the petitioners proceeded to complain of the "secret drifts and open practices wherebj^" their ad- versaries, the bishops, were seeking to draw them "into danger and hatred." Especially were they aggrieved by the polemic trick of "defaming and divulging" them "as Ana- baptists"— "asDonatists and schismatics" — as "seditious" — and " as abridgers and encroachers upon the royal power of the queen." Against the calumny that they were disloyal to their sovereign, they made their protest : " We from our hearts acknowledge her sovereign power, under God, over all persons, causes, and actions, civil or ecclesiastical. . . . We gladly obey, and never willingly break any of her godly laws. ^ The mention of Johnson, as taken by the pursuivants (the "familiars" of the Enghsh Inquisition) "without any warrant at all," implies a distinc- tion in that respect between his case and Greenwood's, whom the petitioners had just mentioned as having been "four years in close prison," It may be supposed that at the time, "about a month since," when the two ministers were "apprehended," and "with bills and staves led to prison," Green- wood had been permitted, by the connivance of a friendly jailer, to go abroad for an evening, under the watch, perhaps, of a responsible attendant. A.D. 1592.] THE CHFRCH AND THE JAILS. 143 . . . We never attempted, either secretly or openly, of our- selves, to suppress or innovate any thing, how enormous so- ever, by public authority established; patiently suffering whatsoever the arm of injustice shall do unto us for the same; doing such things as Christ hath commanded us in his holy worship ; but always leaving the reformation of the state to those that God hath set to govern the state." The simplicity of their confidence in the truth for which they were in prison, and in their ability to make the truth appear if they could be heard, is even pathetic. " We can but, in all humble manner, beseech, offer, and commit our cause and whole proceedings to be tried by the Scriptures of God, with any that ' I " liHiJililillllliili^ . rHce, and near by, much farther off was i pile known as the mnv versity was then a n\od» of the Middle Ages, whi monastery. The PiljTiims receive Leyde^ his reside neai the o-( Leyden uni I buildiri .omory of Ley 'ties, they cod , enjovi^ii mi'^h •itual conifo 1 234 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. Xll. after much patience used, no other means would serve- — which seldom comes to pass."* Maintaining a fraternal intercourse with their fellow-exiles at Amsterdam, they could not but have some share in the troubles which came upon that less-favored community. The Amsterdam church — partly by reason of its locality, partly, perhaps, by the force of some elective affinity — drew to itself many of those fugitives or exiles who, having been Puritan clergymen in the Church of England, had advanced from Puritanism to Separation. Some of these — for exam- ple, Clyfton — were never liable to any charge of defection from evangelical doctrine or of instability. Others — such as Smyth — were erratic, and driven by every wind of doctrine. Others were of the same sort with Robert Browne, zealous for a while, then relapsing into Anglicanism, and, sometimes at least, assailing the persecuted church with malignant slanders. The Leyden church was "not at all inferior in able men ;" but its able men were of another sort — men of broad views and generous culture, like Robinson — men of wide experience in affairs, like Brewster — practical men, like Carver and Bradford. Thus exempted from the disturbing influence of men who live in speculations and disputes, and who seem to regard religion itself as something to quarrel about, they were trained into the simplest and purest style of Christian character; "and, that which was a crown unto them, they lived together in peace and love all their days without any considerable differences, or any disturbance that grew there by but such as was easily healed in love." Yet let it not be thought that all the able men in the church at Amsterdam were contentious. " Many worthy and able men there were in both places, who lived and died in obscurity in respect of the world, as private Christians, yet were they precious in the eyes of the Lord, and also in the eyes of such as knew them — whose virtues we," said the " ancient men " ' Bradford, p. 17, 18. A.D. 1609-18.] THE SOJOUEN AT LEYDEX. 235 at Plymouth, " with such of you as are their children, do follow." Among the Pilgrims there was no serious division on that question about the powers of elders or church-overseers which was so contentiously debated at Amsterdam.^ When the contention had become chronic, the minority (for so we may call the party opposing Johnson's claim of power) proposed that the church at Leyden should be sent for to hear the q\iestion debated and to give advice. This proposal was, substantially, a request for a mutual council ; but the major- ity preferred that the Leyden church should either interpose uninvited, or come at the invitation of the discontented party. After some hesitation, about thirty members of the Amsterdam church subscribed a letter inviting the Leyden church to come, to hear all parties, and to give such advice as might be needful. Li other words, the minority called an ex parte council. They thought that their teacher, Ains- worth, though disliking their pastor's new doctrine, was not sufficiently resolute in his opposition to it, " hoping rather to pacify his colleague by moderation, than by opposition to stop him in his intended course, and fearing lest he should give encouragement to the too violent oppositions of some brethren " with whom he agreed in opinion on the main question. But the Leyden church was reluctant. Listead of complying at once with the invitation, they wrote to the church at Amsterdam, asking for information, and " signify- ing their unwillingness to interpose save upon a due and necessary calling, and under the conditions of best hope of success." At last, Robinson and Brewster went, first of themselves, and afterward at the request of Ainsworth and his friends, being sent by the church of which they were the elders, and "delivering the church's message," reproving what they judged evil in the Amsterdam church, " and that " — as they confess in a review of the whole story — "with ^ k?ee chap. xi. Q 236 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. XII. some vehemence." The result of that neighborly visit was an agreement — somewhat informal perhaps, but proposed by Johnson, and distinctly approved by the other church — that those of the minority who could not with a good conscience submit to the presbyterian rule which their pastor was in- troducing, should be freely dismissed to the church at Ley- den. But when it appeared that the persons thus dismissed would hold themselves free to reside still at Amsterdam, the agreement Avas repudiated by Johnson and his friends. Oth- er proposals for accommodation Avere subsequently discuss- ed in letters between the two churches, and the correspond- ence was continued till Ains worth and his friends withdrew, and became another church in Amsterdam. The story of this appeal from one church to another, and of the response, is significant of the relations which were to exist among voluntary churches, mutually independent, as well as independent of thrones and hierarchies. Churches which have no other charter than the New Testament, which derive their authority, each for itself, directly from Christ, and which profess that to its own master each must stand or fall, may nevertheless acknowledge a fraternal responsi- bility to each other — may ask one of another, and may give advice or other help in case of need — may fraternally ad- monish or rebuke each other in case of fault — may co-oper- ate by mutual helpfulness or combined effort in behalf of common interests — without any surrender of their independ- ence, and without organizing a superior and centralized gov- ernment over all. It was for the sake of assembling freely to worship God according to the simplicity and i3urity of the New Testa- ment, and to be edified by the ministry of the word, that the pilgrims had escaped out of England into that land of strangers. What, then, were their advantages and means of Christian culture? As a religious community in Leyden, they were almost isolated. The church at Amsterdam was forty miles away; and while they recognized the fratcriud A.D. 1609-18.] THE SOJOURN AT LEYDEN. 237 bond of commimioii with it, they did not long for a closer proximity to it. Simultaneously with their coming to the city, a Scotch congregation was established there, with Rob- ert Durie as its minister; but though, since the death of Queen Elizabeth, the King of Scots had been also King of England, the two kingdoms w^ere not yet united, and the na- tives of each were foreigners to the other. English Puritans might fraternize with the National Church of Scotland, but both alike abhorred what they called Brownism. The rela- tion of the Pilgrims to their Dutch neighbors seems to have been always friendly ; but the diversity of language was, for the first few years at least, a bar to religious communion with them; and though Robinson acknowledged that the Dutch churches were formed on the principle of separation from the world, he nevertheless testified, and his church with him, against certain deviations from primitive simplicity and purity in the practice of those churches. Ecclesiastically, the Pilgrims at Leyden wei-e alone. They had none of the strength that comes with the consciousness of being com- j^rehended in a wide and powerful organization. All their strength was in their principles, and in the confidence that God w^ould sustain their testimony for the liberty and purity of his church. And what w^ere their arrangements and order as a w^or- shiping assembly? How frequently they met for prayer and informal conference in order to mutual edification can not be definitely known ; but we know that to them, not less than to the Puritans who disowned them, the first day of the w^eek w^as a holy Sabbath. They observed that day with a stricter abstinence from labor and amusements than was practiced by the Calvinists of Holland. Coming together on that day in their pastor's house, they felt, as few congre- gations can feel, the closeness of the bond which made them one in Christ. On other days and in other places they heard on all sides, and were learning to speak, " a strange and un- couth language ;" but in that meeting-place, every word on 238 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH, XII. their lips or in their ears was their own dear mother tongue — clearer for their being in a land of strangers, and dearer yet for the liberty they had gained by exile. One in the most intimate fellowship of faith, and in the fellowship of suflfer- ing for Christ, they were most tenderly conscious of their unity when, coming together as " strangers and pilgrims," they felt most deeply their seclusion from all the world with- out. The arrangements of the room when they met for wor- ship gave it an informal consecration, and presented to their eyes the simple order of their church. Official seats were there for the elders (Robinson and Bi'ewster), raised on some slight platform, and for the deacons at the sacramental ta- ble. Nor was the congregation seated without arrangement, for we may assume that they had even then a custom of as- signing a seat to every worshiper in some orderly method. At the appointed hour the pastor " led the assembly in prayer and the giving of thanks," according to the Pauline rubric : " that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men." Then their voices were blended in one of the Old Testament psalms, translated by Henry Ainsworth out of the Hebrew into English stan- zas, with great fidelity, but with little felicity of versification. Next came " the exercise of the Word," in conformity with another rubric : " Give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine."^ Two or three chapters of Holy Scripture were read, " with a brief explanation of their meaning." The pas- tor— in those years the only teaching elder — taking some passage for a text, expounded and enforced it in a sermon. But, in that church, a ministry of gifts was recognized as well as a ministry of offices; and, under the presidency of the elders, brethren not in office might " prophesy." The truth held forth by the pastor might be further illustrated and applied, sometimes by respectful questions on one point or another, sometimes by a word of testimony or of exhorta- ' 1 Tim. ii., 1 ; iv., 13. A.D. 1609-18.] THE SOJOURN AT LEYDEX. 239 tion. Another psalm followed " the exercise of the Word." Then came the ministration of baptism or the Lord's Sup- per; for to believing hearers the promises of the Word wei-e " sealed " in the sacraments. Nor was their worship ended without the contribution ; for that act of sacrifice — each giv- ing according to his ability and his readiness of mind to the support of the church and the relief of its poor — was neces- sary to the completeness of the service. Besides the two services on the Lord's day every week, there was a similar service on a secular day, for it is in the record of the pastor's labors that "he taught thrice a w^eek." A church so conducted was a school of religious knowledge and of intellectual discipline as well as of devotion. Preach- ing in those days and in that church was not rhetoric nor sentiment alone, but literally "teaching." That chui'ch was in some sort a school of the prophets — for it discovered and tested, and at the same time cultivated, the gifts of wisdom and of utterance in its members by its "exercise of proph- ecy."^ We may well believe that the members of that ^ What the "exercise of prophecy" was, in the church at Leyden, is ex- plained in Robinson's Catechism. To the question, "Who are to open and apply the Scriptures in the church?" the answer is: "1. Principally, the bishops or elders, who, by the Word of Life, are to feed the flock both by teaching and government,— Acts xx., 28. 2. Such as are out of office, in the exercise of prophecy." Several arguments from the Scriptures are given in proof of that exercise, the fourth and last being an enumeration of "the excellent ends which, by this means, are to be obtained : as, 1 . The glory of God in the manifestation of his manifold graces. — 1 Pet. iv., 10, 11. 2. That the gifts of the Spirit in men be not quenched. — 1 Thess. v., \9. 3. For the fitting and trial of men for the ministry. — 1 Tim. iii., 2. 4. For the preserving pure of the doctrine of the church, which is more endangered if some one or two alone may only be heard and speak. — 1 Cor. xiv., 24, 25. n. For debating and satisfying of doubts, if any do arise. 6. For the edi- f\dng of the church and the conversion of others. — Acts ii., 42; Luke iv., 21-23." "A prophet in this sense" is "he that hath a gift of the Spirit to speak unto edification, exhortation, and comfort." — 1 Cor. xiv., 4, 24, 25. " The order of this exercise "is " that it be performed after the public min- istry by the teachers, and under their direction and moderation, whose duty 240 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. XII. church, with Robinson for pastor and teacher, "grew in knowledge and other gifts and graces." ^ It was truly a great work which Robinson was perform- ino* in those years of exile, training the Pilgrims for their destiny of suffering and of achievement. What his influence was upon them is testified by their own chronicler in words too full of pathos not to be transcribed : " Such was the mutual love and reciprocal respect that this worthy man had to his flock and his flock to him . . . that it was hard to judge whether he delighted more in having such a people, or they in having such a pastor. His love was great toward them, and his care was always bent for their best good botli for soul and body. For, besides his singular abilities in divine things, wherein he excelled, he was also very able to give directions in civil affairs; by which means he was very helpful to their outward estates, and so was every way as a common father unto them. And none did more offend him than those that were close and cleaving to themselves, and retired from the common good ; as aiso such as would be stiff and rigid in matters of outward order, and inveigh against the evil of others, and yet be remiss in themselves, and not so careful to express a virtuous conversation. The church, in like manner, had ever a reverent regard to him, and had him in precious estimation as his worth and wis- dom did deserve; and though they esteemed him highly while he lived and labored among them, yet much more [did they] after his death when they came to feel the want of his it is, if any thing be obscure, to open it ; if doubtful, to clear it ; if unsound. to refuse it; if unprofitable, to supply what is wanting, as they are able. — I Cor. xiv., 3, 37; Acts xiiL, 15."— Works, iii., 432, 433. ^ An account of the order oi public worship in the Amsterdam church is found in the Appendix to Robinson's Works, iii., 485. It is a statement which Clyfton made while he was teacher of that church after the with- drawal of Ainsworth and his friends. It omits "the exercise of prophecy;" and that omission was, probably, a characteristic of Johnson's church as distinguished from Robinson's and from Ainsworth's. A.D. 1609-18.] THE SOJOURX AT LEYDEX. 241 lie]]), and saw, by woeful experience, what a treasure they had lost.'" When the Pilgrims had become established in Leyden, their pastor began to frequent the lectures in the university — especially the lectures by the two professors of theology. The controversy in w^hich Arminius and Gomarus had been antagonists at first, was still kept up in the universities, and nowhere more learnedly or more persistently than there, where Arminius himself had propounded the doctrines which afterward Avere called by his name. The two profess- ors of theology, Polyander, defender of the old Calvinism, and Episcopius, champion of the obnoxious novelties in doc- trine, Avere agitating the university with disputes and con- troversial lectures. Robinson, by carefully hearing both sides, by familiar conference with the Leyden divines, and by his own profound and accurate thinking, made himself master of the questions at issue. He saw, or thought he saw, that the Arminian theories concerning the relation of God's purpose and power to the going on of nature and of human history, were shallow ; and it began to be understood that "the preacher of the English Society by the Belfry" was an acute and strenuous disputant. In the progress of that war of dogmas, Episcopius, confident in himself and in his cause, resorted to an expedient which had not then become obsolete in universities. He set forth a series of theses, or propositions challenging dispute, w^hich he was to defend against whoever might assail them. Such was his intellectual stature and weight, and such his "nimbleness" in that sort of fencing, that Polyander, and " the chief preachers of the city," not choosing to encounter in their own persons the chances of defeat, entreated Robinson to enter the lists against the challenger. Declining their re- quest at first with the modesty of " a stranger," he yielded to their importunity, and " prepared himself against the ' Bradford, p. 18. 242 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. XII. time." The disputation was, of course, in Latin, the univer- sity language; so that tlie Dutchman liad no accidental ad- vantage over the Englisliman. On the appointed day there was "a great and public audience" as at a commencement; and the firm belief of the Pilgrims, long cherished in their loving memory, was that, by the help of the Lord, their pastor, in his defense of the truth, foiled tha-t great adver- sary, and " put him to an apparent nonplus." It was also afliirmed that on two similar occasions he achieved a similar success. "The which," says Bradford, "as it caused many to praise God that the truth had so famous victory, so it procured him much honor and respect from those learned men, and others that loved tlie truth." ^ The records of the university show that Robinson was in due form — but not till he had been six years a resident in Leyden — incorporated with that renowned society of learned men, and so became a partner in its privileges. Thenceforth he was no longer subject to the city magistrates, and was so far exempted from taxation that he might have, free of town and state duties, half a tun of beer every month, and about ten gallons of wine every three months.^ Hoornbeek, a learned theologian of that age, himself a professor in the same university, confirms the testimony of the Pilgrims as to the estimation in which their pastor was lield among the learned men of Leyden. He says : " John Robinson was most dear to us while he lived, was on famil- iar terms with the Leyden theologians, and was greatly es- teemed by them. He wrote, moreover, in a variety of ways against the Arminians, and was the frequent opponent and bold antagonist of Episcopius himself in the university." ^ Bradford, p. 20, 21. 2 Sumner, p. 18, 19. The record, as transcribed by Mr. Sumner is : 1615 Sep. 5^ JOANNKS ROBINTSONUS. Augbis. coss. pennissu. Ann. xxxix. Stud. Tbeol. alit familiam. A.D. 1609-18.] TBTE SOJOURN AT LEYDEX. 248 It was not till after his removal into Holland that Robin- son began to be an author. His first publication was almost coincident in date with his settlement in Leyden. Joseph Hall, who had been a companion with him at the university, and who afterward became bishop of Norwich, published (1608), when the Pilgrims had just escaped from their perse- cutors, a letter of rebuke and admonition addressed to Smyth and Robinson as " ringleaders of the late separation at Amsterdam." To that "censorious epistle" Robinson replied with manifest ability, and w^ith more of calmness and courtesy than was usual in the controversial writings of that age. Hall made his answer in an elaborate w^ork, entitled, "A Common Apologie of the Church of England against the Unjust Challenges of the Overjust Sect commonly called Brownists " — a work of which Robinson took no public notice save in the preface of his reply to another and more earnest adversary, but upon which John Milton made some scorching observations, at a later period, in his controversy with the same author. Notwithstanding the position of Bishop Hall in English literature, as well as in the Church of England, he exhibits no superiority in the controversy wdth Robinson, save the superiority of arrogance. In argu- ment, in style, in courtesy, and in charity, the Pilgrim pastor has the advantage over his flippant and insolent adversary. One sentence from the last page of the "Common Apologie" may suffice to show what sort of an adversary Hall was: "The mastership of the hospital at Norwich, or a lease from that city — sued for with repulse — might have procured that this separation from the communion, government, and wor- ship of the Church of England should not have been made by John Robinson." Well said! rector of Halstead, looking for preferment! Is it not a manly and charitable imputa- tion? Why was it that John Robinson, instead of aspiring to some fat rectory, sued for the mastership of that hospital? Why was it that he could not have the humble place for which he sued? If he were governed by mercenary consid- 244 GEXESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [CH. XII. erations, what hindered him from taking the side which had mercenary considerations to offer ? By taking that side, you are prospering in the world, and are to be — ere long — a bish- op and a peer of the realm; while Ae, by taking the other side, has suffered the loss of all that you have or hope for in this life, and has become an outlaw and an exile. Something is added to our knowledge of what Robinson must have been to the Pilgrims, as their pastor and teacher, by the series of his published writings, beginning with the first year of his exile and ending with the year of his death. Two of his most elaborate works were written to defend the position of the Separatists against Puritan assailants — " Re- formists," he called them, in distinction from " Conformists." ^ Another, originally published in Latin and afterward trans- lated by himself, was especially designed to show both the differences and the agreement between the churches of the English exiles called Brownists and the Reformed Dutch churches.- Other works of his — some very elaborate — were written in controversy with Separatists who carried their ^ " A Justification of Separation from the Church of England, against Mr. Richard Bernard liis Invective, entituled 'The Separatists' Schisme. By John Robinson. 'And God saw that the light was good, and God sepa- rated between the light and between the darkness.' Gen. i., 4. 'What communion hath light with darkness?' 2 Cor. vi., 14. Anno D. 1610." "The People's Plea for the Exercise of Prophecy, against Mr. John Yates his Monopolie, By Jolm Robinson, ' Follow after charity, and de- sire spiritual gifts, but rather that yee may prophesy.' 1 Cor. xiv., 1. Print- ed in the yeare 1618." ^ " A Just and Necessarie Apologie of Certain Christians, no less contume- liously than commonly called Brownists or Barrowists. By Mr. John Rob- inson, Pastor of the English Church at Leyden, first published in Latin, in his and the church's name over which he was set, after translated into En- glish by himself, and now republished for the special and common good of our own countrimen. ' O blessed is he that prudently attendeth to the poore weakling.' Psalm xli., 2. Printed in the yeere of our Lord MDC.XXV." The title of the original work was, "Apologia justa et necessaria quorun- dam Christianorum, £eque contumeliose ac communiter dictorum Brownista- rum sive Barrowistarum, per Johannem Robinsonum, Anglo-Leidenensem, A.D. 1609-18.] THE SOJOURX AT LEYDEN. 245 separation too far, and bad gone beyond tbe true landmarks in matters of Christian doctrine or of Christian fellowsbij). Perhaps his works in this line — though now of little value save as historic documents — were in their immediate influ- ence and in their remoter eflects more important than any- other productions of his pen.^ He opposed, and in a good measure subdued, the ultraism of some who had preceded liim, or who were his contemporaries. The extravagant ve- hemence of Robert Browne, and the tremendous invectives of Barrowe, found no place on his pages. Thus he became a reformer of the Separation ; and to him is the honor due of having introduced into Congregational- ism that more catholic spirit, those broader views of the kingdom of Christ, and that more conservative tendency, by which it is distinguished from the strict Independency which held no sort of religious communion with any who had not renounced and forsaken the national churches. suo et ecclesite nomine cui pvreficitur. Psa. xli., 2 : ' Beatus qui attendit ad attenuatum.' Anno Domini 1G19." '■ " Of Religious Communion, Private and Public. With the silencing of the clamors raised by Mr. Thomas Helwisse against our retaining the Bap- tism received in England and administering of Baptism unto infants. As also, A Survey of the Confession of Faith published in certain conclusions by the remainders of Mr, Smitli's company. By John Robinson. ' The simple believeth every word: but the prudent looketh well to his going.' Prov. xiv., 15. Printed anno 1014." "A Defense of the Doctrine propounded by the Synode at Dort, against John Murton and his associates in a treatise entituled ' A Description Avhat God,' etc., with the Refutation of their Answer to a writing touching Bap- tism. By John Robinson. Printed in the year U)24." "A Treatise of the Lawfulness of Hearing of the Ministers in the Church of England. Penned by that Learned and Reverent Divine, Mr. John Rob- inz, late Pastor to the English Church of God in Leyden. Printed ac- cording to the copie that was found in his studie after his decease, and now published for the common good. Together with a Letter written by the same Authour, and approved by his Church, which followeth after this Treatise. 'Judge not according to pearance, but judge righteous judgment.' John vii., 24. Printed anno 1634." 246 GEXESIS OF THE XEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. XII. The only one of Robinson's works which was not contro- versial, or in some other way occasional, was published in the year of his death ; and, inasmuch as it bears no indica- tion of its being posthumous, the revision of it, while it was in press, must have been almost the latest labor of his life."^ His " Essays, or Observations Divine and Moral," are weighty with thought, rich in knowledge of mankind, adorned with allusions to all sorts of authors, ancient or contemporaneous, and sparkling occasionally with a kind of grave wit. Their style is sententious, epigrammatic, and more polished than the author uses in his controversial writings. An intelligent re*ader can hardly avoid thinking that somehow they resem- ble those incomparable Essays by Lord Bacon which Arch- bishop Whately has so largely expounded. Nor would it be easy to say why they are not as worthy of a permanent place in English literature as the Essays of Bishop Hall, the "pensorious" opponent of the exiled Separatist. Robinson's " Essays " are, probably, of all his Avritings that remain to us, the most significant in relation to the quality of his official " teaching." It is not likely that any of his ser- mons were committed to writing; certainly no specimen of them has been preserved. His controversial works show great familiarity with the text-book of all Christian teach- ing, a common-sense feculty of interpretation, a habit of log- ical exactness and acuteness which is nowhere more impor- tant than in the preparation of sermons, and a practiced abil- ity in dealing with the j)rofoundest themes of theology. But ^ "New Essays; or Observations Divine and Moral, collected out of the Holy Scriptures, ancient and modern writers both divine and liuman ; as also out of the great volume of men's manners : Tending to the furtherance of knowledge and virtue. By .John Robinson. ' Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser ; teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.' Prov. ix., 9. ' Experientia docet aut nocet.' Printed in the year 1G38." Three editions, at least, of this work were published in seventeen years. The foregoing is the title of the second edition. A.D. 1609-18.] THE SOJOURX AT LEYDEN. 247 it is difficult to believe that his "teaching" in the church was always or often in the same strain with bis "Defense of the Doctrine proj^ouncled by the Synod at Dort." The "Es- says," on the contrary, seem as if he had condensed into them the thoughts given out or to be given out, more diffusely and more fiimiliarly, in his sacred. work of teaching. Some of them are theological; all, with hardly an exception, are strictly religious in theme and spirit. We might even take them as digested from the notes or briefs which (not lying before him, but retained in memory) were his preparation for feeding his flock with divine knowledge. For specimens, then, of the matter and quality of the dis- courses which the Pilgrims in Leyden heard from their pas- tor, we turn to those "Essays." Thus we learn that while he did not refrain from teaching in the church those trans- cendent truths concerning God's eternal thought and will wdiich are in all ages the themes of insatiable speculation, he could nevertheless set forth in lucid and winning statement the love of God. " Love in the creature," said he, " ever presupposeth some good, true or apparent, in the thing loved, by which that af- fection of union is drawn, as the iron by the loadstone; but the love of God, on the contrary, causeth all good, wrought or to be wrought, in the creature. He first loveth us in the free purpose of his will, and thence worketh good for and in us; and then loves ns actually for his own good work for and in ns; and so still more and more for his own further work. And hence ariseth the nnchangeableness of God's love toward us, because it is founded in himself and in the stableness of the good pleasure of his own will. And al- though the arguments of comfort be great which we draw from the certain knowledge of our love to him, yet are those infinitely greater which are taken from the consideration of his love to us. . . . And hereupon it was that the sisters of Lazarus, seeking help for their sick brother, sent Christ word, not that he who loved him (though that were not nothing), 248 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECHES. [cH. XII. but that 'he whom he loved was sick.' . . . He w^honi God loves, though he know it not, is a happy man ; he that knows it, knows himself to be happy. Which caused tlie apostle to make, in his own name, and in the names of all the 'beloved of God' (Rom. viii., 35-39), that glorious insultation over all the enemies of his and their haj^piness, that they could not separate him or them — not from the power, or wisdom, or holiness, but not — ' from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.' From this ' love of God,' as from a springhead, issu- eth all good, both for grace and glory. Yea, by it (which is more), all evil, by all creatures intended or done against us, is turned to good to us. . . . By reason of it ' the stones of the field are at league with us, and the beasts of the field are at peace with us ;' yea, even the very sword that killeth us, the fire that burnetii us, and the water that drowneth us, is in a kind of spiritual and invisible league with us, to do us good. ... As we may certainly know that the sun shines, by the beams and heat thereof below, though we climb not into heaven to see, so we may have certain knowledge of God's gracious love toward us without searching farther than our own hearts and ways, and by finding them truly and effect- ually turned from sin to God."^ See in what terms the pastor, teaching his flock what " faith, hope, and charity " ought to be in them, might speak of Christian love : " As love is the affection of union, so it makes, after a sort, the loving and loved one ; such being the force thereof as that he that loveth suffereth a kind of conversion into that which he loveth, and by frequent meditation of it uniteth it with his understanding and affection. Thus, to love God, is to become godly, and to have the mind, after a sort, deified, 'being made partakers of the divine nature.' ... Oh ! how happy is that man, who, by the sweet feeling of ' the love of God shed abroad into his heart by the Holy Ghost,' is thereby, ' Works, i., 4-7. A.D. 1609-18.] THE SOJOURN AT LEYDEX. 249 as by the most strong cords of heaven, drawn effectually and with all the heart, to love God again who hath loved him first, and so becomes one with him, and rests upon him, for all good." . . . "Love is the loadstone of love; and the most ready and compendious way to be beloved of others is to love them first. They, taking knowledge thereof, will be efiectually drawn to answerable good-will, if they be not harder than iron, and such as have cast ofiT the chains and bonds of com- mon humanity; for even 'publicans and sinners love those that love them.' Yea, admit thy love of them never come to their knowledge, yet will God, by the invisible hand of his providence, bend their hearts by mutual affection unto thee, at least so far as is good for thee. . . . We must not be like the Pharisees who, instead of enlarging their own af- fections, straightened [narrowed] the law of loving their neighbors unto such as loved them or dwelt within a certain compass of them; but we must account all our neighbors that need pity or heljD from us ; and our Christian neighbors and brethren also, if the Lord have received them, though they be neither minded in all things as we are, nor minded towards us as we are towards them."^ The Separatists were charged sometimes with heresy, al- ways with schism. On the topic of "heresy and schism," the pastor of the Pilgrims might hold forth light in words like these : " Men are often accounted heretics with greater sin through want of charity in the judges than in the judged through defect of faith. Of old, some have been branded heretics for holding antipodes; others for holding the original of the soul by traduction ; others for thinking that Mary the moth- er of Christ had other children by her husband Joseph — the first being a certain truth; and the second a philosophical doubt; and the third, though an error, yet neither against ' Works, i., 01-66. 250 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. XII. foundation nor post of the Scripture's building. As there are certain elements and foundations of the oracles of God and of Christian faith, which must first be laid, and upon which other truths are to be built, so must not the founda- tion be confounded with the walls or roof; nor [must] er- rors lightly be made fundamental or unavoidably damnable. Yea, who can say with how little and imperfect faith in Christ, both for degree and parts, God both can and doth save the sincere in heart, whose salvation depends not upon the perfection of the instrument, faith, but of the object, Christ? On the contrary, there are some vulgar and com- mon errors, though less severely censured, which are appar- ently damnable — as, by name, for a man to believe and ex- pect mercy from God and salvation by Christ, though going on in affected ignorance of, or profane disobedience to God's commandments." ..." If only an uncharitable heart make an unchar- itable person before God, and a proud heart a proud per- son, then he who, upon due examination and certain knowl- edge of his heart, finds and feels the same truly disposed to union with all Christians so far as possibly he can see it lawful — though through error or frailty he may step aside into some by-path — jet hath that person a siq:)ersedeas from the Lord in his bosom, securing him from being attached as a schismatical person, and so found in the court of heaven — what blame soever he may bear from men upon earth, or correction from God, for his failing, upon infirmity, therein. "No man can endure to be withdrawn from, nor easily dissented from by another, in his way of religion ; in which, above all other things, he makes account that he himself draws nearest to God. Therefore to do this causelessly (for not the separation but the cause makes the schismatic), though out of error or scrupulosity, is evil ; more, to do it out of wantonness of mind, or lust to contend, or affectation A.D. 1609-18.] THE SOJOURN AT LEYDEX. 251 of singularity ; most of all, to do it out of proud contempt or cruel revenge against others."^ The last essay is " Of Death." To most of those who had loved and honored the writer as their pastor, the first read- ing of it must have been when they were " sorrowing most of all that they should see his face no more." Surely they must have seemed to hear some of his tones and cadences, as if " Fi-om the sky, serene and far, A voice fell like a falling star," while they read, through their tears, these latest words of teaching and of comfort from him who had so bravely borne with them the heat and burden of their day : " ' Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints,' when they 'die for, or in, faith and a good conscience ; as the gold, melting and dissolving in the furnace, is as much esteemed by the goldsmith as any in his shop or purse. Precious also it is while they live, and that which God will not lightly suffer to befall them. And if he put their tears in his bottle, he will not neglect their blood, nor easily suffer it to be shed ; neither doth death, when it comes, part him and them, though it part man and man, yea man and wife, yea man in himself, soul and body. Friends show themselves faithful in sticking to their friends in sickness and all other afflictions; but they, how affectionate soever, must leave them in death, and are glad to remove them, and have ' their dead buried out of their sight.' But the fruit of God's love reacheth unto death itself — in which he doth his beloved ones the greatest good, when friends can do no more for them. "He that said, 'Before death and the funeral no man is happy,' spake the truth, as he meant, of the happiness which can be found in worldly things. But both he, and they who have so admired his saying, should have considered that he ' Works, i., 70, 72. R 252 GENESIS OF THE :NEVV ENGLAND CHLECHES. [CII. XII. who is not happy before death in worldly things, can not be happy in them by it which deprives him of them all, and of life itself, w^iich is better than they, and for which they are. But miserable, indeed, is the happiness whereof a man hath neither beginning nor certainty but by ceasing to be a man. The godly are truly happy both in life and death, the wicked in neither. " We are not to mourn for the death of our Christian friends, as they which are without hope, either in regard of them or of ourselves ; — not of them, because such as are asleep with Jesus, God will bring with him to a more glorious life, in wdiich we (in our time and theirs) shall ever remain with the Lord and them; — not of ourselves, as if, because they had left us, God had left us also. But we should take occa- sion by their deaths to love this world the less, out of which they are taken, and heaven the more, whither they are gone before us, and where we shall ever enjoy them. Amen." A.D. 1617-20.] STRUGGLES AND SACRIFICES. 253 CHAPTER XIII. STRUGGLES AND SACRIFICES IN A GREAT ATTEMPT. So long as the Pilgrims remained irw Holland, they never ceased to feel that they were simply exiles from their coun- try— strangers in a strange land. They were ever waiting, with hope deferred, for some such change in the policy of the English government as would permit them to go home. None of them could forget that the change of policy which took place Avhen Mary was succeeded by her half-sister Eliza- beth brought back hundreds of English fugitives from all parts of Euro23e. Who could tell how soon the providence of God, in whose hand is " the king's heart as the rivers of water, and he turneth it whithersoever he will," might open the way for their return ? In that hope, they labored and struggled ; they ate contentedly the bread of carefulness ; they bore each other's burdens, fulfilling the law of Christ ; they married and were given in marriage; they greeted the birth of children in their households, and gave them to God in baptism ; they buried, in hope of " a better country, even a heavenly," many an associate in testimony and in suffering, whose eyes had failed with longing for the sight of dear old England. In that hope, the church for which they had suf- fered, and which encircled them with the bond of its cove- nant, grew dearer to them year by year; the simplicity and purity of its worship, the fidelity and eflScacy of its disci- pline, and the constant wealth of " teaching" from its honored pastor, were more and more valued by them, as showing what might be in England if liberty Avere there. But gradu- ally that hope was receding. While some had found their graves in that foreign soil, others were growing old. What was to become of their children? What would become of 254 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. XIIL their cliurcli ? The end of the twelve-years' truce, which had interrupted the long and terrible war of the Dutch witli Spain for their independence and their religion, was drawing near; and then — what? "Taught by experience," they say, " those prudent governors [Robinson and Brewster],with sun- dry of the sagest members, began both deeply to apprehend their present dangers and wisely to foresee the future, and think of timely remedy." At first, these matters were discussed in private conference among the leading minds of the community ; and the moi-e they thought and talked in such conference, the stronger did the arguments seem for attempting a removal. Twenty-five years earlier, even before the latest martyrs of Separation were put to death, the thought of migration to America had been entertained among the Separatists in England; and pe- tition for liberty to form a Separatist colony in America had been made to Queen Elizabeth (1592), whose government was at that moment contriving the law by which every per- sistent Separatist should be compelled to abjure the realm and go into banishment. ^ There is no evidence that the pe- tition was answered, nor that it received any attention from the queen or from her ministers. Evidently, those who, at that time, were most intent on expelling the "Brownists" from England, were unwilling to see them go without their being first punished by imprisonment and plundered by for- feiture of all their goods — still more unwilling that they should have their own schismatic way even in the wilder- nesses of America. The persecution which followed the pas- sage of the "Act to retain the Queen's subjects in obedience" defeated the proposed migration, notwithstanding the sug- gestion of the petitioners that in the "far country" where they desired to plant themselves, they, while worshiping God " as in conscience persuaded by his word," might " also ' Editor's Prefiice to Morton's "Memorial" as published by the Congrega- tional Board of I*ublication. Boston:, 18^4. A.D. 161 7.] STRUGGLES AND SACKIFICES. 255 do unto her majesty and country great good service, and in time also annoy that bloody and persecuting Spaniard about the Bay of Mexico." But, at last, the thought, which may have been in Penry's mind when he sent his dying messages to the brethren in the north countries, and which had been, so long, like a seed buried too deep to grow, came into the consultations of Robinson and Brewster, with other " sagest members" of the Pilgrim church. In view of present and impending dangers incident to their lot in Leyden, they were thinking of " timely remedy ;" and what remedy was there but migration from that old world to the new? "Not out of new-fangledness, or other such like giddy humor," were they " inclined to the conclusion of removal." They found themselves urged by "sundry weighty and solid reasons" which belong to history, and which they have put upon rec- ord for us. "First, they saw, and found by experience, the hardness of the place to be such that few in comparison would come to them, and fewer would bide it out and continue with them. For many that came to them — and many more that desired to be with them — could not endure that great labor and hard fare, with other inconveniences, which they under- went and were contented with. But though they loved their l^ersons, approved their cause, and honored their sufferings, yet they left them — as it were weeping — as Orphah did her mother-in-law Naomi ; or as those Romans did Cato in Utica, who desired to be excused and borne with though they could not all be Catos. Many — though they desired to en- joy the ordinances of God in their purity, and the liberty of the Gospel with them — yet, alas ! admitted of bondage, with danger of conscience, rather than to endure these hardships : yea, some preferred and chose the prisons in England rather than liberty in Plolland with these afflictions. It was thought, therefore, that if a better and easier place of living could be had, it would draw many, and take away these discourage- ments. Yea, their pastor would often say that many of those 2.56 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CIIUKCHES. [cil. XIII. who both wrote and preached against them, would practice as they did if they were in a place where they might have liberty and live comfortably." Such, then, in their own simple statement, was the first consideration urging them to a removal. Their foremost thought was for the cause in which they had suffered. Ought they not to dare — and perhaps to suffer — gi'eater things in the hope of making a refuge for others like-minded with themselves ? At the same time, other considerations, drawn from their own hardships, apparently so ineffective, and from their hopes and fears for their children, pointed in the same direction. The second " weighty and solid reason " was : " They saw that, though the people generally bore all these difficulties very cheerfully, and with a resolute courage, being in the best and strength of their years, yet old age began to steal on many of them" — even before the time, hastened by " their great and continual labors, with other crosses and sorrows ;" and it was becoming evident " that within a few years more they would be in danger to scatter by necessities press- ing them, or to sink under their burdens, or both. There- fore they — like skillful and beaten soldiers — thought it better to dislodge betimes to some place of better advantage and less danger, if any such could be found." The few who were holding these consultations were leaders ; their conference was like a council of war. Willing as they were, and will- ing as their associates were, to struggle and suffer for the Gospel, they were not willing to throw their lives away with no advantage to the cause, if, by a timely retreat, they could gain a more hopeful position. The third consideration was still more urgent. What was to become of their children there in Holland ? " As neces- sity was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to be taskmasters not only to their servants, but, in a sort, to their dearest children — which was not only painful to many a loving father and mother, but produced likewise sundry A.D. 161 7.] STRUGGLES AND SACRIFICES. 257 sad and sorrowful effects. Many of their children that were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, having learned to bear the yoke in their youth, and willing to bear part of their parents' burden, were so oppressed with their heavy labors that, though their minds were free and willing, their bodies bowed under the weight and became decrepit, the vigor of nature being consumed, as it were, in the bud. But that which was more lamentable, and of all sorrows most heavy to be borne, was that many of their children, by these occasions and the great licentiousness of youth in that coun- try, and the manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses. . . . Some became soldiers, others took upon them far voyages by sea ; and some others, worse courses tending to dissoluteness and the danger of their souls." With such sad facts before them, " they saw that their posterity w^ould be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted." Other considerations were not without weight in their de- liberations. Exiles as they were, they could not forget that they were English ; and little as they owed to king or par- liament, they w^ere loyal to their native country. They could not bear the thought of losing their nationality. After all, it was their desire "to live under the protection of England, and that their children after them should retain the language and the name of Englishmen." Nor was that all. They wanted more for their children than the inheritance of their nationality. One incident of their poverty, in that foreign land, Avas "their inability to give their children such an education as they had themselves received." If they could have a country of their own, even though it were in a wilderness three thousand miles away, they might have English schools for all their children. It was characteristic of the men that the religious value of the Christian Sabbath entered into their deliberations. They had been Puritans, and, in becoming Separatists, they had not surrendered the Puritan doctrine which made the 258 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. XIII. first day of the week a day of holy rest, and recognized no other day as holy. A Continental Sunday, even among Cal- vinists, did not seem to them like God's institution in the Decalogue. How did their hearts long for the stillness of those rural Sabbaths in old England. " Their grief at the profanation of the Sabbath in Holland " made them weary of that land, with all the liberty it gave them. As they thought how tranquil and how full of heaven that day might be to them in a country all their own, the thought was like a vision of the rest that remaineth to the people of God. But most inspiring of all the reasons for so bold an enter- prise was the one which blended with every other, lifting their consultations up to a higher plane; and it would be un- just not to describe it in their words. It was " a great hope and inward zeal they had. of laying some good foundation (or at least to make some way thereunto) for propagating and advancing the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world ; yea, though they should be but stepping-stones unto others for the performance of so great a work." ^ After much thought and prayer, when Robinson and Brew- ster had taken counsel of such " sagest members " as Carver, Bradford, Winslow, Cushman, Allerton, and others, the ques- tion was brought before the church : Shall we attempt to found an English colony in America ? Some caught at once the grand idea. Others doubted. There was a full compar- ison of opinions, and apparently a long debate. Fears and discouragements were set over against the greatness and seeming hopefuUiess of the proposal. We know something of what was said on one side and the other. The more timid were appalled by the greatness of the de- sign. It involved inconceivable dangers — the casualties of the sea — the hardships of the long voyage, unendurable by ^ Bradford, p. 22-24 ; Winslow, in Young, p. 358 seq. Bradford's state- ment loses something of its effect if translated into nineteenth century En- glish. I have ventured to make onlv verv slight abridgment. A.D. 1617.] A GREAT ATTEMPT. 259 their aged and feeble men and women — the liability to fam- ine and nakedness, and to the want of all things. The change of air, too, and of food, and " the drinking of water" instead of their customary beer, " would infect their bodies with sore sickness." If any should escape or overcome such dangers, they would yet be in continual danger from "savage peo- ple, cruel, barbarous, most treacherous, most furious in their rage, and merciless where they overcome ;" and many were the specifications of horrible torments to be inflicted by those savages on such as might fall into their hands. Objections of another sort were to be considered by pru- dent men. The cost of the voyage merely would be too great for their almost exhausted resources. And what was the cost of the voyage, and of personal outfit, compared with the aggregate expenditure necessary to the founding of a colony in so distant a wilderness? Other attempts, with larger means than they could hope to command, had resulted in miserable failure. Ought not they to learn caution from what they had already sufifered, struggling for subsistence in a civilized and hospitable country ? Did not their own experience warn them against going forth — so ill-furnished as, at the best, they must be — into a barbarous wilderness on the other side of the ocean ? These and other like objections were considered, and tiie answer was, "All great and honorable actions are accompa- nied with difficulties that must be met and conquered with corresponding courage. What though the dangers be great, they are not desperate. What though the difficulties be many, they are not invincible. Some of the things so great- ly feared may never befall us ; others, by foresight, care, and good use of means, may in a great measure be prevented ; and all of them, by fortitude, patience, and God's help, can be borne or overcome. Such attempts, it is true, are not to be made without good ground and reason ; but have we not good ground and honorable reasons ? Have we not, in the providence of God, a lawful and urgent call to the proposed 260 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHURCHES. [CH. XIII. undertaking ? May we not, therefore^ look for God's bless- ing upon it? Yea, though we should lose our lives in this action, yet may we have comfort in the same, and our en- deavors will be honorable." In a word, the attempt was worth dying for. There was another aspect of the case, too obvious not to be considered. " What is to befall us if we remain where we are ? We know not when or how the war, now^ soon to bo renewed, will end. The Spaniard can be as cruel as the sav- ages of America. Famine and pestilence may be as terrible here as in the wilderness ; and if famine or pestilence come upon us here, retreat may be dishonorable, and escape or remedy impossible." How long, and in how many meetings, the question was debated, we know not ; but in the end, " it was fully conclud- ed by the major part to put this design in execution, and to prosecute it by the best means they could." Whether they were to make the bold attempt was no longer an open ques- tion. Other questions followed in their order. First, to what transatlantic country should they go ? Guiana, in South Amer- ica— stretching along the coast between the Orinoco and the Amazon — had been not long ago explored by Sir Wal- ter Raleigh, and was represented by him, and by travelers more recent, as a country which, " for health, good air, pleas- ure, and riches,. . . can not be equaled by- any region either in the east or west." Some were impressed with the belief that there was for them the land of promise. "The coun- try," they said, " was rich, fruitful, and blessed witli a per- petual spring and a flourishing greenness, where vigorous nature brought forth all things in abundance without any great labor or art of man. It must needs make the inhab- itants rich, seeing less provision of clotliing and other things would serve than in colder and less fruitful countries must be had. The Spaniards, having much more than they could possess, had not yet planted there, nor any where near." But A.D. 1617.] A GREAT ATTEMPT. 261 the sturdy sense of the majority preva:iled against these po- etic visions. Born and bred in England, they conld not endure the heat and diseases of a tropical climate. " The jealous Spaniard — if they should live there and do "well — would never suffer them long, but would displant or over- throw them (as lie did the French in Florida, who were seat- ed farther from his richest countries) ; and the sooner, be- cause they should have none to protect them, and their own strength would be too small to resist so potent an enemy." On the other hand, Virginia was proposed. It was a re- gion of which they had little knowledge ; but it was w^ithin the northern temperate zone, it Avas claimed by the King of Engla,nd, and there "the English had already made entrance and beginning." The king had created, more than ten years ago, two great colonizing corporations, dividing to them a thousand miles of sea-coast, that, by their regulated compe- tition, the empty claim of dominion might be converted into a substantial English empire in America. One of those two corporations, or Virginia companies, was established in Lon- don, the other at Plymouth. Under the patronage of that Lord Chief Justice Popham who sentenced Penry to the gallows, there had been an abortive attempt, in behalf of the Plymouth Council, to establish a colony near the mouth of the Sagadehock, in w^hat was then known as North Vir- ginia. A more costly attempt, by the London Council, to plant a colony on the James River, in South Virginia, had been continued through the struggles and disasters of ten years ; but had hardly ceased to be doubtful. So much of "entrance and beginning" had England made in that great field of colonization. Virginia, therefore, measured off on the map from Cape Fear to Passamaquoddy Bay, was English ; and the Spanish power was far away. But, on the other hand, the Church of England — the National Church, identi- fied with the state — was there ; and there, as in England, sep- aration from the National Church, and conformity to the New Testament in the worship of God, would be under the 262 GENESIS OF THE NEW ENGLAND CHUECflES. [CH. XIII. ban of the law. Might not the Pilgrims find even less of safety and religious freedom there than in England itself? Their inquiries terminated in this conclusion : They would apply to the Virginia Company of London for a grant of territory on which they could settle as a distinct community " under the general government of Virginia ;" and, by the mediation of their friends, they would " sue to his majesty that he would be pleased to grant them freedom of relig- ion." Friends they had, "of good rank and quality," who liad encouraged them to hope for success, and whose influ- ence in their behalf they thought would be eflfectual, not only with the company, but with the king. Especially do they seem to have relied on the friendship of that " religious gentleman," Sir Edwin Sandys,^ who, since the time when Brewster was placed as postmaster for Queen Elizabeth in the manor-house of Scrooby, had become conspicuous in Par- liament and elsewhere. We may assume that there had al- ready been some communication, direct or indirect, from him to them. Accordingly, two of the Pilgrims, John Carver and Robert Cushman, were sent to negotiate with the council of the Vir- ginia Company at London, and to present the petition of the exiles to the king (Sept., 1617). They found the Company ready enough to grant all that the Church asked for. In that quarter. Sir Edwin Sandys had influence ; and it was easy for him, as a member of the London Council, to convince his colleagues that the exiles at Leyden, notwithstanding their antipathy to national churches, were the right men for that work of colonization. But the application to the king "for liberty in religion" was unsuccessful. Their friends in the Virginia Company had been confident that so simple a re- quest would be granted, and that the grant would be " con- firmed under the king's broad seal." In that confidence, they und.ertook to have the petition laid before his majesty. 1 Ante, p. 204. A. U. 161 7.] A GRExVT ATTEMPT. 263 Some men, who were tliouglit to have influence, " labore