FROM THE LIBRARY OF REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON, D. D. BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO THE LIBRARY OF PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY DMsioa S<^B Section / V7f 3 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library http://archive.org/details/sectarianismOOblai [DEC Ml ' THE ^ — ■ PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM;, A CLASSIFIED VIEW CHRISTIAN SECTS IX THE UNITED STATES ; VTITH NOTICES OF THEIR PROGRESS AND TENDENCIES. ILLUSTRATED BY HISTORICAL FACTS AND ANECDOTES. ■ Believe not every spirit, but try the iplrita." — 1 Johs iv. 1. BY THE V had no burial service, nor funeral sermon. " The first instance in which it is known that a prayer was offered at a funeral in New England, was in 1685, at Dedham, Massa- chusetts — an act which attracted much observation at the time." * Among Presbyterians it is ordered, " When any person departeth this life, let the dead body, upon the day of burial, be decently attended * Rev. Dr. Adams, New York. INFLUENCES IN THE PLACE OF WORSHIP. 185 from the house to the place appointed for public burial, and there immediately interred without any ceremony. " Howbeit, it is very convenient, that the Christian friends who accompany the dead body to the place appointed for public burial do apply themselves to meditations and conferences suitable to the occa- sion; and that the minister, as upon other occasions, so at this time, if he be present, may put them in remembrance of their duty." 16* CHAPTER XIV. MISSIONS. In this field of competition, both the other radical divisions outstrip Presbyterianism. Under Prelacy the power of ordination and of rule, being lodged in a single hand, gives efficiency to missionary op- erations. Hence, although upon the Greek church a supineness has rested in regard to missions for many centuries, the other branches of Episcopacy have not in this department of religious activity been idle. Papal Prelacy, from its rise and growth with " the dark ages," has ever compassechsea and land to make one proselyte, and it is to be feared, has often made its converts twofold more the chil- dren of hell than they were before. The man of sin has partitioned out to his priest- hood and spiritual subjects the whole earth and its other inhabitants, and established his " orders " among a large proportion of our race. Under one of these, the term Jesuit denotes so much of the sum and attainments of human depravity and its workings,* that earthly kings have been forced to * Especially equivocation under oath. See note under Chapter XX., viz., Statement of Lord Lyndhurst. (18G) MISSIONS. 187 expel the " order " from their dominions, and by- Pope Clement XIV., in 1773, it was for a season suppressed. Besides vows of poverty, chastity, and monastic obedience, the Spanish knight, in estab- lishing this order, made it a most powerful engine of efficacious intrigue, by adding that of implicit obedience to the pope. Bound to go wherever he might send them, and to go on any " warfare on their own charges," they, to compensate for the want of " purse and scrip," not only at all times claimed to be the alone suitable instructors of youth, but they obtained also, besides the sources of wealth common to all the*regular clergy, a special license from the court of Rome to trade with the nations whom they might labor to convert. Hence their influences have been felt in both hemispheres, and being "restored to" their " butlership again," they now, more or less, closely keep watch behind the thrones of the leading potentates on earth. They have establishments at Rome, Sicily, Naples, Turin, Paris, Lyons, in Spain, Belgium, England, Austria, Ireland, Germany, Maryland, Canada, New York, Massachusetts, and probably elsewhere. They had in these provinces, on January 1, 1844, two hundred and thirty-three establish- ments, and four thousand one hundred and thirty- three members, which, during that year, were in- creased to four thousand five hundred and twenty- seven. The obstructions to their progress growing daily 188 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. less, as a superabundant faith or a want of a pre- cise belief in " the doctrine of God our Savior " prevails, it must not be deemed a strange thing if, in a generation or two, under these and other mis- sionary appliances which " the man of sin " is now wielding with " the wisdom of the serpent," the righteous should be again driven into "dens and caves," and that the thrones of princes and the governments of mock republics * (founded on any thing else than the knowledge of the Presbyterian principles of the Bible) should, throughout the whole earth, " receive the mark of the beast, and that all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, might buy or sell only as they have his name or the number of his name." In view of the missionary labors of the Papacy in purpose, character, or efficiency, the only hope for truth and righteousness among our race is, that " the earth " shall in due season be made to " help the woman," and that " the Lord shall consume that wicked with the spirit of his mouth, and de- stroy him with the brightness of his coming." On this field of operation the Anglican church entered in 1698, by the formation of the " Society for promoting Christian Knowledge," and in 1701 she organized the " Society for the Propagation of Knowledge in Foreign Parts," to which was added in 1800 the " Church Missionary Society." * Witness, c. ?., Mexico. MISSIONS. 189 The first foreign Lutheran missionary appears to have been Michael, who, in 1559, was sent into Lapland by Gustavus Vasa, King of Sweden. In the foreign field we do not again discover any of this type of prelacy until, by the King of Den- mark, in 1705, a mission was commenced at Tranquebar, in Hindoostan. Among Protestants, the missionary zeal of the Moravians has not been exceeded. " Their mis- sionaries are all volunteers. They persuade no man to engage in missions;"* yet so powerfully does the principle of individual obligation operate, that where one or more consider it to be their duty to embark in the establishment of a new mission, several are usually ready to join ; and they seldom make such attempt without, at least, five or six concurring in the enterprise. All, however, which is efficient in their character should rather be attrib- uted to Presbyterianism, as the Episcopal element of power enters into this denomination only in ref- erence to the ordination of ministers. The power of ordination and of rule being lodged in the bishopric among the Protestant Episcopalians in the United States, societyism did not find favor until 1820, when by them a domestic and foreign missionary society were formed. Of the Protestant divisions of Episcopal regimen, that of the Rev. John Wesley has far eclipsed the * Hayward. 190 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. rest. Having assumed the authority, which he has delegated to his successors in rule, to appoint when, and where, and how his ministers should preach, "he, being dead, yet" reigneth; has only to "say to one, Go, and he goeth; to another, Come, and he cometh ; and to a third, Do this, and he doeth it." How far the elements of posthumous fame entered into his chosen ecclesiastical organization may be a matter of debate; but in selecting a compound of Prelatic assumption and of Congregational in- dividual self-importance and obligation, he has evinced much human wisdom, and given life and energy to his missionary operations. Hence, in bearing the names of Wesley and Methodist to re- mote parts of the earth, those who adopt this type of Arminianism find, in offering themselves as mis- sionaries, nothing at variance either with denomi- national fame, (to which they are not insensible,) nor the innate pride of the human heart, while the con- ference or the bishops have power to bind them firmly to the horns of the altar as frequently as the means of sustentation can be obtained. So that, notwithstanding their imaginary idea that " men can be saved without the gospel if" this denomina- tion stands prominently forward in the missionary field. Among Presbyterians, in apostolic times, when evangelists were ordained " by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery," and when they " ordained them elders in every church," the spirit of the de- MISSIONS. 191 nomination was preeminently missionary. " The field is the world." " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," were their in- structions, and the demand made upon their labors ; and they went forth and preached every where, until they had " turned the world upside down." For centuries this continued to be the case, until by conformity to this world and union to the state, the church of Christ was overtaken with the prelatic slumbers of the dark ages. Such is the relative position of pastor and peo- ple, of rulers and ruled, under this radical division, that it not only becomes the duty of every minister to look out and encourage young men of promise to prepare to " preach Christ crucified," but where any individual feels moved to devote himself to this work, and they find him able to divide the word of truth, it devolves upon the presbytery to give to him "the right hand of fellowship, to take part in their ministry." Consequently, the reason why these relative and mutual duties are not at any time performed, and why laborers do not offer themselves abundantly in proportion to the neces- sities of our perishing world, is to be found in the depravity of our nature, and that consequent sloth- ful indifference to the affairs of " the house of God," which is reproved by the apostle when he says, " All men seek their own, not the things which are Jesus Christ's." Ease, indifference, avarice, with other like opera- 192 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. tions of our unsanctified nature, s all conspire to blunt the edge of personal obligation, and to induce the young men m this radical division too often to say, " Send, Lord, by whom thou wilt send ; " "I do not feel ready to go ; do not send by me." Hence modern Presbyterians have generally entered the missionary field late in the day, and then only when led on and provoked to it by others. When we survey the characteristics of the other radical division, its influence on this department of Christian duty is more marked than perhaps on any other. Renouncing the authority of prelates and presbyteries, each individual feels not only his personal importance, but occasionally, also, he feels, it may be more deeply, than others his obligations, and says, " If it be duty to go preach to the perish- ing, it is my duty as well as that of others, and I will go; here am I; send me." In this way the social compact is brought into valuable use. Not that, in this point of view, there is in it any thing original, for this sense of duty is imbodied in Pres- byterianism, where every pious youth, when his in- clinations so move him, may " desire the office of a bishop;" and then, if his pastor or presbytery have neglected to seek him out and encourage him, they can now, when he makes the proposal, in part, at least, cover their neglect. The individual, unrepresented, or personal posi- tion is older among intelligent existences than that of the federal or representative ; and men often MISSIONS. 193 "aspire," in this respect, "to be angels." Each one desires to act for himself. In their rebellion, those high intelligences, " who kept not their first estate," sinned under the influences of the social compact, " Go to, let us," while man sinned by rep- resentation. " By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. By the offence of one man judgment came upon all men to con- demnation." Such is the principle under which men became sinners. The reality of such a representation the genius of Congregational church government eschews, and finds its life, its activities, and its pleasures in the idea of personal accountability and the gratified love of power, when and where individual influence has been, or may be, successfully exercised over others. The idea of making even one proselyte to the opinions of the individual here operates power- fully. Whatever may be the chosen type of reli- gious belief with the individual, whether true or false, while on the one hand he claims the absolute right to liberty of opinion, he on the other is also ready to say, I " would to God that all were both almost and altogether such as I am," and under a full share of partisan zeal he labors j;o have them so. Hence, where "the love of Christ constrains" the soul, and the eye of observation beholds " the whole world lying in wickedness," bowels of com- passion are often moved, and we see a Carey, a 17 194 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. Mills, a Judson, a Newell, a Moffat, and many others departing " far hence to the Gentiles." This is done, however, only where there are indeed " bowels of mercies " in exercise. Surveyed philo- sophically in its own character, this species of regi- men rather inclines the individual to self-importance, and to a calculating self-interest, where every aim looks steadily to self-aggrandizement and personal honor. In relation to that with which we have more im- mediately to do, — the Congregationalism of New England — it has a specific type of character. The colonists of Massachusetts Bay did not, as I read their history, like those who landed on Plymouth Rock, leave Britain solely for " freedom to worship God." They kept this object prominently in view, but connected it with commerce. Hence, said the Rev. Mr. Higginson, of SaJem, " If any man make commerce to religion as thirteen to twelve, he mis- takes the character of a New England man." These traits, to my optics, have an existence in the zeal and energy with which their descendants devote themselves to missions. At an early day, missionaries left the land of the Puritans for the wil- derness of the Southern States, and they still steadily press their peculiar "customs" and church govern- ment* upon the expanding and receding "West." * Said a Deacon Russell in Chicago, in 1835, to the writer, 4< We wish to do every thing here just as they do in Boston." MISSIONS. ] 9o Within a generation, or a little more, we see also a nation born by their instrumentality, and the Sand- wich Islands elevated from the pollutions of pagan idolatry to the rank of a Christian kingdom,* while to various other portions of the earth they have extensively aided in carrying the tidings of salvation. In the aggregation of personal labor, being desti- tute of a scriptural church government, they have to cooperate by an association called a board — an oligarchy, to some degree irresponsible, and which cannot scripturally, in the name and by the au- thority of Christ, " take heed to the doctrine " among those who are, even by their own instru- mentality, " turned from dumb idols to serve the living God." It is not a probable supposition that men and women awaking from the stupor of pagan pollution can correctly determine the doc- trine, government, worship, and discipline of the house of God, according to "the mind of Christ," on the day in which, in the judgment of charity, they might safely be admitted to the fold, and be "added to the church" as the lambs of Christ's flock. Hence, notwithstanding that the Congrega- tionalists, with the Constitutional Presbyterians and the Reformed Dutch church, have assumed a name for their " board," as long and broad as our * In the Sandwich Islands, all but the king and chiefs were slaves ; and there, in thirty years, one hundred thousand souls have been made free. — Dr. Treat or Pomeroy. 196 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. continent, they cannot, neither as denominations nor as a board, always vouch for the precise type of doctrine which their missionaries think proper to teach in the one hundred and three churches (now, in 1854) connected with their missions. And does not the modesty of those who, although first in the work, retain the name of the American Board of Com- missioners for Foreign Missions, almost seem ques- tionable in this particular, when there are engaged according to their several abilities, in the foreign field, the Protestant Episcopal church, the Methodist Episcopal, the Moravian, the Old School Presby- terians, the Baptists, the Reformed Presbyterians, the Associate Reformed Presbyterians, and others ? Experience also forces them towards the scrip- tural order of presbytery, for necessity compels them to intrust the things of the house of God, not to the social compact of the native members in an aggregate vote, but to those who occupy the place of teaching elders, and who, for some time at least, in each station, must be the missionaries them- selves. While, then, I view the most beneficial effects which ever arise from this order of ecclesias- tical regimen as shown in bringing into action the missionary spirit, yet I by no means admit that the social compact can more efficiently sustain the cause and advance all, or even any, of its interests, than either of the other two forms. Presbytery, from the time when it awoke (as in- deed it has only yet partially done) to a sense of MISSIONS. 197 duty, has not been " a whit behind " its competitors. Although the Sandwich Islands stand out in attrac- tive and bold relief, still their acquaintance with the " things which are lovely, and honest, and of good report " have been the result of above thirty years' labor, while in India, in half that time, at least a proportionate invasion has been made on the lands of darkness; and there Presbyterians have now a synod and various presbyteries, churches, and "elders ordained in every church," according to apostolic order. The future there is also to them equally bright with hope. While this scriptural order of government is, at least, equally aggressive, when compared with either of the other two among the heathen, the Mussulmans, or the Papists, it forms preeminently - ; the hope of Israel according to the flesh," and as a successful instrumentality it is adapted, under the divine blessing, to the conver- sion of that people, just as its adherents tenaciously hold forth the simplicity of synagogue worship. This has been shown by the success of the mis- sionaries of the Free church of Scotland (during the brief period of their labors) among the Jew;.. "Where men present to " the seed of Jacob " the simple worship of the synagogue, and ask them to join in singing one of "Jehovah's songs," (Ps. cxxxvii..) they touch a chord to which, even under that "blindness in part which has happened to Israel," indifference, prejudice, and opposition must, by the agency of God the Spirit, yield. Where Presby- 17* 198 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. terians are consistent in their own acts of worship, and sing to the praise of God, only " Those strains, which once Did sweet in Zion glide," their instrumentality may, for simplicity and effi- ciency, be compared to the sling and smooth stones employed by David ; while the gorgeous trappings of prelacy, in all its " rites and ceremonies," and its other peculiarities of hymns, choirs, and organs, so far as these are adopted by Congregationalists, will, among both, be as the armor of Saul, a cumbersome and unsafe panoply. The proof of this will appear to the candid mind, when a com- parison is instituted between the simple scriptural labors of those men whose " flight was in the winter " from prelatic power in Pesth, and the zeal- ous labors of the Rev. Bishop Gobat and his clergy at Jerusalem, even when supported by two of the most important thrones on earth.* When the " sweet psalm " was sung in the dwell- ing of the missionary at morning and evening wor- ship, it attracted the attention of the Jewish ear without, and prompted the request, that in surround- ing the house they should not be considered as in- truders. The breathings of scriptural devotion on the part of the followers of the Nazarene. aroused those * Those of Britain and Prussia. MISSIONS. 199 associations, of which their fathers had told them, of the doings of God in the days of old, in the ways of Zion, and in the dwellings of the righteous, when " God was known in Judah, and his name was great in Israel." * While they might be much more extensively exhibited, such are some of the peculiarities respectively of the three forms of ec- clesiastical rule, when applied to the great subject of missions. * Their scriptural simplicity in worship formed the secret of their suc- cess, under the divine blessing, until they were expelled from their labors of love by Papal prelacy. CHAPTER XV. ON MARRIAGE AND INCEST. By the institution of marriage, God has placed mankind in families, and this arrangement lies at the foundation of all that is " lovely and pure, true and honest, just and of good report" upon the earth. Upon this institution church government lays its plastic hand, and on it leaves a specific, a distinct impression. Viewed in the light of Scripture, as read by Presbyterians, it is regarded as a covenant in which God is Witness and Judge ; and although " it is lawful for all sorts of people to marry who may be able with judgment to give their consent, yet it is the duty of Christians to marry only in the Lord ; and therefore such as profess the true reformed re- ligion should not marry with infidels, Papists, nor other idolaters, neither should such as are godly be unequally yoked by marrying with such as are no- toriously wicked in their life, or maintain damnable heresies." " Marriage ought not to be within the degrees of consanguinity nor affinity forbidden in the word, nor can such incestuous marriages ever be (200) MARRIAGE AND TNCEST. 201 made lawful by any law of man or consent of parties, so that those persons may live together as man and wife. The man may not marry any of the wife's kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband's kindred nearer in blood than of her own." Such has been the ec- clesiastical statute law of Presbyterians for above two hundred years, and it has been virtually their ecclesiastical equity and common law of marriage and incest, since the meeting of that synod at Jeru- salem, in which the apostles and other elders " or- dained " their " decree " concerning " fornication," and sent it forth authoritatively to the presbyteries and churches. From this simple scriptural exhibition of this or- dinance of God, Papal Prelacy dissents. " The man of sin " denies that it is lawful for his bishops and priests to have wives of their own; makes mar- riage a sacrament equal to baptism and the Lord's supper; pretends that it can only be suitably solem- nized by a (so called) priest, or other holy man, at an altar in a church, and not freely during what Holy Mother calls Lent.* Consequently where it is formed between a Protestant and a Papist, or in such a case solemnized by a Protestant, any " prom- ise inconsistent with the principles and practice of the " Romish " church " is considered to be a bad promise, and must be broken.f * The Greek church observes four Lents annually, and with her, marriage is not a sacrament, f McGavin, Vol. I. p. 511. 202 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. In the Anglican church it is called " holy matri- mony," and although not regarded as a sacrament essential to salvation, yet it looks so far that way, that " on the day and time appointed the persons to be married shall come into the body of the church," and after other ceremonies, " the man shall give unto the woman a ring, laying the same upon the book with the accustomed duty to the priest and clerk. And the priest, taking the ring, shall deliver it unto the man, to put it upon the fourth finger of the woman's left hand. And the man, holding the ring there, and taught by the priest, shall say, With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." After this, they are both required to kneel, while the minister engages in reading a prayer and finishing the remaining ceremonies. It is then declared to be " convenient that the new married persons should receive the holy communion at the time of their marriage, or at the first opportunity after their marriage." In much of this, Presbyterians see a faith founded on something in addition to the word of God, founded on the assumed authority of the church to decree rites and ceremonies, if not founded on the traditions of the dark ages. In their simple scrip- tural views, the most appropriate place for marriage is not the house devoted to the solemnities of MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 203 divine worship, where " great fear in meeting of the saints is due unto the Lord," but the domestic habitation, the parental dwelling. In the Scriptures, the season is always represented as one of joy and •exquisite social intercourse. " The bridegroom then rejoices over the bride, and the bride comes forth adorned for her husband, while the friends of the bridegroom rejoice greatly because of the bride- groom's voice." To them it has no sacramental airs, no kneeling at an altar, and to them marriage is (although it forms an emblem of his affection for his church) of a character entirely removed from the commemoration of the love of our Redeemer to his people in his death. While they do not, in it, countenance sensuality and the laughter of fools, yet by them it is viewed as a season of the highest enjoyment of an earth-born nature. In all the transactions of the marriage at Cana of Galilee, Presbyterians find no surplice on the minister ; no coming into the body of the church ; no ring placed upon a book ; no worshipping of the woman with the man's body, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. So obtuse also are their powers uf perception, that they can there dis- cover no kneeling before a curate ; no coming to and kneeling at an altar; and no declaration of Him who " spake as never man spake," and who was then present, that it was " convenient that the new married persons should receive the holy communion at the time of their marriage." 204 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. Presbyterians believe that even the " early writers on church history" knew nothing of these prelatic " rites and ceremonies " connected now with mar- riage, and that so far from a young man and woman receiving the Lord's supper simply from the fact of their being at that hour united as husband and wife, the proper approach to that sacrament can be made only by a man examining " himself, and so eating of that bread and drinking of that cup." " For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." 1 Cor. xi. 29. Believing it to partake of a civil as well as of a sacred compact, and to be neither a work of ne- cessity nor one of mercy, Presbyterians are careful not to invade the holiness of the Sabbath day with the laughter of the marriage feast ; and with them, in all their scriptural peculiarities, as opposed to those of Prelacy, in relation to this institution, the Independents and earlier Congregationalists co- incided. Different, however, is the case with modern Congregationalists. Other usages have been introduced among "the churches," and in these, doubtless, "the good hand of God" has the credit of " moulding them." While many among them, on the one hand, believe so little in the effi- cacy of prayer on the occasion as to avoid the presence of a clergyman altogether, and to transfer all the importance of the transaction to the Squire or to the Quaker form, yet so much of the im- MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 205 aginary idea of a sacrament, on the opposite hand, overshadows this institution among others, that many must borrow from Prelacy, and have it per- formed in " the body of the church," by a man rendered apparently prelatically holy by cassock, gown, and bands. In illustration, I refer the reader to the following item from the Boston Traveller of July, 1851: — " On a late Sabbath evening, while Dr. Welch, of Albany, was in the midst of a sermon, ' a pair were waiting to be married after the sermon, in the rear of the audience, and were to be called forward by the sexton. But the latter official, having be- come absorbed in drowsiness or contemplation while the reverend doctor was preaching, was suddenly brought to his recollection by hearing the doctor exclaim, " The Spirit and the bride say, Come ! " Off he posted to the wedding party, who, of course, had not understood a word of the sermon, and notified them that the moment had arrived for the performance of the nuptial ceremony. They promptly obeyed the summons, and the bride and bridegroom, bridesmaid and groomsman, came marching down the broad aisle in the midst of the discourse. The preacher finished his sentence, de- scended from the pulpit, tied the knot, returned to his pulpit, and finished his discourse, and the wed- ding party were not at all sensibly that every thing was not as it should be. ' " If the doctor, instead of being a Baptist, and, as 18 206 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM such, necessarily a Congregationalist, had been a full believer in the teachings of the Westminster confession of faith, these humorous, comical, and unscriptural associations could never have been grouped in the place of his ministry on the Sab- bath evening. The only part, however, of the scenes with which a modern Congregation alist may not be familiar, or, at least, find among " the cus- toms of the churches," would be the episode of the marriage, and " the accustomed duty to the priest and clerk," or sexton, " in the midst of the sermon." That not a few Presbyterians in America are adopting these and other chosen " customs of the " Congregation alist " churches " in relation to the place and time of marriage, is no valid objection against my position. They do not alter the scrip- tural usages of proper Presbyterians, but abandon these for those which may be more fashionable or popular. Consequently they diminish propor- tionably their just claims to this appellative, Presbyterian, and should, in honesty, wear the generic name of those with whom they thus sym- bolize and act. The Presbyterian law of incest I have quoted above, and in reference to this species of pollution, as viewed by Prelatists, it is at times made lawful in the Papal church by a dispensation from the pope. " The Queen of Portugal * was married to her * Says the Rev. Charles Buck. MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 207 uncle, and the Prince of Brazil, the son of that in- cestuous marriage, wedded his aunt. But they had dispensations for these unnatural marriages from his holiness." By disregarding "the remon- strances of Pope Clement VIL," and by asking counsel " of the most learned European universi- ties " , concerning the propriety of his " marriage with a brother's widow," a majority of whom "declared" such marriage unlawful, King Henry VIIL, when " declared by the Parliament and peo- ple supreme head on earth of the church of Eng- land," took this matter into his own hands, and in due time the Anglican law of incest was regulated by the Mosaic code. Hence * " the Levitical law which is received in this country, and from which the rule of the Roman law differs very little, pro- hibits marriage between relations within three de- grees of kindred, computing the generations not from, but through, the common ancestor, and ac- counting affinity the same as consanguinity. The issue, however, of such marriages are not bastard- ized, unless the parents be divorced during their lifetime. In the Levitical, or English law, there is nothing to hinder a man from marrying his great niece." With great care the earlier Independents and Congregationalists "walked by the same rule" with Protestant Episcopalians and Presbyterians in regard to both what was malum hi se and malum * Says Dr. Paley, Vol. I. p. 192. 208 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. 'prohibitum, on this subject. Under the light of the nineteenth century, however, " a change has come over the spirit of their " theology, law, and practice, in relation to incest, and the prohibitions of Puritan statute law, in common with some other wholesome restraints which served so extensively, under sound doctrinal preaching, to make. New England New England, have been viewed as relics of " old, stiff-necked, conservative, vinegar-faced evangelicals." Practices " sufficiently divine " have arisen in " the churches," one or two of which I shall now endeavor to consider, as in proof of my radical position ; and lest I be charged with misrep- resentation, I shall endeavor to do this, as far as practicable, in the language of others. I refer to the marriage of a man to his wife's sister, and of a woman to her husband's brother. I quote from S. E. Dwight, Esq., the author of the Hebrew Wife. Says he, in 1836, " Some years since, in consequence of a complaint made in due form of law, and substantiated by satisfac- tory evidence, it became the author's official duty to institute a prosecution for an incestuous mar- riage. On examining the statute book, however, the degree of affinity between the parties was dis- covered to be more remote than in other cases that had been legalized. The individual was prosecuted, and the offence proved ; but the court, instead of passing sentence, adjourned the case, that he might petition the legislature for an alteration of the MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 209 statute. He did so. The section forbidding the given marriage was repealed, and the prosecution, of course, fell through." His labor was not, however, lost, as any candid reader of his work may readily discover. He not only "investigated the reasonings of two of the ablest jurists of the country, and the scriptural law of incest," but he has also presented the origin of the custom. " To our American legislatures," says he, " be- longs the honor of the discovery that the Jewish and Christian churches, doubtless* from the love of supererogatory obedience so natural to man, submitted, for more than three thousand years, to various restraints on their marriages, which were wholly unenjoined by the law of God. Since this discovery, they have, to say the least, deserved no censure for not removing these restraints as soon as they could make them out to be supererogatory. " The curious reader, in examining some of our statute books, will be struck with sundry nice dis- tinctions made between lawful and unlawful mar- riages. In various instances he will find that a man is allowed to marry his wife's sister or niece, while a woman is forbidden to marry her husband's brother or nephew. In endeavoring to account for these distinctions, he may, perhaps, imagine that the law makers were guided by a modern notion — that a woman is more nearly related to her husband than a man to his wife. This, however, could not 18* 210 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. have occasioned them, for the statutes in which they are found were made before the publication of the pamphlet in which this notion was first pro- mulgated. Their real origin is to be traced to the following facts : The law makers were exclusively men ; men usually wish to marry women who are younger than themselves ; men commonly prefer maids to widows. A brother's wife and an uncle's wife, to be marriageable, must, of course, be widows ; and the latter is usually older than her correlative, a husband's nephew; but this is not the case with a wife's sister or a wife's niepe. Had the law- makers been women, — as ladies are willing to marry men older than themselves, and do not refuse widowers when they cannot get bachelors, — the popular feeling in the legislatures would probably have been in favor of all four of the exemptions, and would doubtless have required a brother's wife and an uncle's wife to be placed on as high ground as a wife's sister and a wife's niece. This opera- tion of female views and sympathies on our mar- riage acts would have brushed away several odious distinctions without a difference, would have made the statute books consistent with themselves, and would have put widows and widowers on a level. " Since these innovations on the law of incest, various marriages, long regarded as incestuous, have become common. The instinctive horror which the bare thought of such connection once excited has too extensively given way to the sane- MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 211 tion of law and the turbulence of passion. Those whose only standard of action is the law of the land, and who regard every thing as right which is safe, — a description which includes the vast major- ity of every community, — have, of course, con- tracted them without a scruple. To such men, the marriage of a wife's sister, if the wife have a younger sister, or, if not, of a wife's niece, is the most convenient imaginable. A wife's sister comes under the roof, and the parties are, of course, inti- mately acquainted, and often together. A present affection is already their duty, and a future connec- tion, under a change of circumstances, has become lawful. Conscience has been laid by the statute, and no longer ' holds the heart in chains against the seduction of beauty.' Perhaps no situation can be imagined where, ceteris paribus, an embryo spark will so easily be struck, which at a convenient time will be fanned into a flame. She is present, also, at the critical moment ; and by her sympathy and tenderness, quickens emotions of which she is ap- parently unconscious. ' 'Tis but a kindred string to move, For pity melts the soul to love.' " The bereaved family, and particularly the parties in question, who are now, de facto, ' the united head' of it, find themselves for a while — such are the customs of society — chiefly secluded from company ; often alone together, solum cum sola, si 212 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. non omnibus horis, saltern vespertinis, quando solitudo, tenebrce, tristitia etiam, memoria, cvpido — omnia flammis surgentibus favent ; et citius fide, etiam 710 cte silenti vix divulsos ; and thus with less and less reluctance constrained to depend on each other for all that solaces and sweetens life. Long before they are aware, they have become mutually neces- sary, and many months anterior to the time when the deposition of weeds is customary, they have made to each other a complete development of what the actual state of things is, as well as a satisfac- tory demonstration of what is soon to be. No courtship is so easy as this. It begins, they know not, they are afraid to know, when ; it is carried on, they know not, they are not willing to know, how ; it is completed, (all excepting the concluding cere- mony,) very often, without having been suspected, even by those busybodies who worm out and publish every other affair of a similar nature. " A few individuals, also, possessing minds more enlightened, and a morality more elevated, have given to the marriage in question the authority of their example. A few have thrown around it ' the sanctity of their lawn,' a few have enveloped it in 'the purity of their ermine.' Some of these, doubtless, have done it ignorantly, or hastily, while others have first investigated its lawfulness, and then have hesitatingly ventured. But the investi- gation has usually been commenced because the affections were fastened and the purpose formed ; MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 213 and, of course, has been pursued with less exemp- tion from prepossession and bias than truth and fair play would seem to require. The cool logic of the intellect is at best a feeble advocate, when opposed by the warm rhetoric of the affections. While the head is umpire, reason and argument will usually carry the day ; but when the heart is on the bench, a single impulse will put to flight a whole army of syllogisms. Still, decisions made in such a forum are not to be regarded as prece- dents, or as entitled to all that authority which is allowed to adjudged cases, in our courts of law. " A few of the more enlightened, also, have, with- out this personal bias, arrived at the same conclu- sion. Some in this, as in all other cases of mere morality unconnected with loss and gain, have, without examination, taken the popular side of the question. Others, resolving to throw off the shac- kles of prejudice and prescription, and aided by the wri tings of unprincipled Europeans, have adopted loose and licentious notions respecting marriage. Among these notions are the following: That marriage is not an institution of God, but a mere creature of municipal law ; that the marriage con- tract is merely a civil contract, liable, like every other contract, to be varied, dissolved, and renewed at the pleasure of the parties ; and that, in enact- ing laws respecting it, the legislature is not bound to regard the law of God at all, but merely its own views of the good of the state. 214 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. " The effect of these innovations on the law of incest has been to unsetile the minds of the com- munity on the whole subject, to introduce a loose and vague scepticism with regard to the guilt of incest in all cases whatsoever, and to leave a pain- ful uncertainty as to the actual extent of the alter- ations to which the original law has been subjected. The people at large rarely consult the statute book. Few of them, so far as my observation extends, appear to be aware that inroads have been made upon the law of incest by a legislative act; yet, perceiving that marriages are actually celebrated which are among those prohibited at the end of the Old Testament, they conclude that the law of in- cest has grown obsolete. Knowin g propinquity * to be the only ground and rule of incest, they natu- rally place all marriages, where the degree of pro- pinquity is the same, on a level. The consequence has been, that marriages still pronounced incestu- ous by the statute book have been extensively con- tracted. The parties have thus ignorantly exposed themselves to an infamous punishment, and their, children to the loss of their inheritance, and to a disgraceful epithet under circumstances peculiarly humbling and painful. I have known two instances of marriage between an uncle and niece, and have heard of one between a half-brother and sister. * " By the word propinquity is intended nearness in general ; by affinity, nearness by marriage ; and by consanguinity, nearness by blood." MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 215 So general, however, is the impression that this un- certainty is fairly attributable to the legislature, and to the zigzag plight of the statutes, that incest passes unmolested and unnoticed. Not less gen- eral, perhaps, is the impression that incest, except between lineal relations, cannot be prosecuted to effect. These facts should teach us to ' leave off' the revisal of the law of God, ' before it be meddled with.' " In investigating the subject of incest, the divine law is our only directory, for that law alone is uni- versally binding on the human race. If that law prohibits' incest, it is a sin; if it does not, k is innocent. " The most natural and obvious mode of con- ducting this discussion would be simply to ascer- tain what marriages are pronounced incestuous by the Scriptures. This course I would gladly take, were it possible ; but those who advocate innova- tions on the ancient law of incest have supported their scheme by very different arguments. Some of them contend that the incest prohibited in the Scriptures is merely incestuous fornication or adul- tery, and that no marriage can be incestuous; others, that consanguinity is the sole scriptural ground of incest, and that it cannot exist in any case of mere affinity ; others, that the Levitical prohibitions were intended merely to preserve the natural supremacy of the husband ; others, that the Levitical law prohibits marriage with certain 216 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. women while they are the wives of other men, but not after they become widows ; others, that the law of incest was either merely ceremonial, or merely the national law of Israel, and in neither case bind- ing on us ; others, that incest is merely a positive offence, and therefore not a crime in its own nature ; others, that we are subject to no law of incest whatever, but that all marriages are lawful ; others, that marriage with a wife's sister is authorized in the Scriptures, and is in itself particularly proper; and others, that it is in vain to amend the laws of any one state, and leave those of the other states as they are. " The subject is, however, of so much intrinsic importance as to justify any length of discussion which it fairly involves. If incest be now a sin, it is unquestionably a sin of no light magnitude. It was one of nine crimes for which the Canaanites were exterminated, and for which the Israelites were threatened with extermination. Under the Levitical law, those guilty of it were punished with death. Few sins are spoken of in the Scriptures as equally offensive to the eye of God. If, then, it be now a sin, and if many of the marriages now customary in this country are incestuous, it is most desirable that its guilt and danger should be fully exposed, and the degrees within which marriage is prohibited exactly ascertained. " The first inroads on our laws of incest were made at the instigation, and by the secret manage- MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 217 ment, of some of our ' prime nobles,' who had either seduced, or married, or pledged themselves to marry a wife's sister, and who wished by this finesse to escape* at once public odium and personal responsi- bility — just as the archchancellor of Napoleon, fol- lowing in their steps, when appointed by his master to draw up the ' Code Penal,'' struck out the sin of Sodom from the list of crimes — being himself a notorious and infamous Sodomite. After this first inroad, some other of these disinterested men, wish- ing to marry his wife's niece, or brother's wife, moved the wires afresh, and the puppets legalized the already formed or proposed connection. At length a few of the reverend clergy, being ' men of like passions with other men,' took the double hint of inclination and example ; and with a spirit equally disinterested, justified their ' civil fathers,' first by kindly writing in defence of the marriage which they had doubly sanctioned, and immedi- ately afterwards by contracting it themselves. Many others in humbler life, and yet but few on the whole, have formed similar connections. But the great majority of the people of any or all of the states, do not wish to contract the marriages in question, and feel no interest in con- tinuing their legislative sanction. The common voice is not in their favor. Nothing has prevented the prosecution of cases still prohibited but the consideration that they had occurred through the miserable interference of the legislature, and the 19 218 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. rickety state of the marriage acts. Were our laws restored to their fair form and comely proportion, the practice would be right, of course. No offence is so easily detected as an incestuous marriage, none confined within limits so absolutely definite. And it is a gross slander upon the substantial yeomanry of our country to represent them as so little con- scious of moral obligation, that, when under the solemnity of an oath, they will not, upon satisfac- tory evidence, convict transgression. " No one of the marriages heretofore regarded as incestuous has found so numerous or so warm ad- vocates as that with a wife's sister. Those of the clergy, particularly, who have either contracted, or purposed to contract, this marriage, feeling uneasy until they could satisfy others of its lawfulness as fully as they hoped they had satisfied themselves, have usually come out in self-defence before they were attacked. " We appeal then to those who make our laws, to those who constitute our ecclesiastical courts, to those who minister at the altar, and to the churches of Christ. We call on them to purify the church and the country from this sin. It is the work to which God calls them, and to which in his provi- dence they are appointed. If they will not do it, God will charge on them — on each according to his measure — the guilt and the consequent pollu- tions of the sin of incest." Under such impulses, when actuating young MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 219 clergymen, "the science of theology" has been tor- tured, and pamphlet after pamphlet has been pub- lished, if not to disclose a " royal road to geometry," at least to vindicate those who "lead about a sister "-in-law as "a wife." And this leprosy has spread from the Congregational churches of New England to those portions of the Presbyterian churches who from them have learned that, in wor- ship, the imitations of the Rev. Dr. Watts, and the unhallowed productions of other uninspired hymn makers, are " sufficiently divine," with which to supplant the psalms of Jehovah as the matter of praise. In reference to some of these I extract from the writings of the Rev. Dr. J. J. Janeway, under date of November, 1843. " The design," says he, " of the Puritan's pamphlet is to vindicate the lawfulness of a marriage between a man and his deceased wife's sister. It was prepared and published in opposition to an act of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church, by which, in accordance with their confession of faith, and, as they believed, in accordance with the sacred Scrip- tures, they affirmed the decision of one of their presbyteries, who had deposed a member for the sin of contracting such a marriage. " It was distributed widely among the members of the Presbyterian churchj and as the question of the lawfulness of such a marriage had, by appeal, come up before the General Synod of the Reformed Dutch church, and had, by that synod, been sent 220 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. down to all their classes, to report their judgment on the question to the next synod, the pamphlet was widely and gratuitously distributed among the members of the classes, with a view to influence their decision, and to effect a change in the action of that Christian church in regard to such mar- riages. " It had doubtless very considerable influence on the members of that church, and particularly on her younger ministers. The General Synod of the Reformed Dutch church, at their last session, having received the reports of their classes, departed from what had heretofore been the uniform practice of their church, and the church of Holland, from which they were descended, by resolving, ' that all resolu- tions which may have been passed by the General Synod, forbidding a man to marry his deceased wife's sister, be and hereby are rescinded.' " * This subject is now agitated widely in the Old School General Assembly,! while the New School Presbyterians, making transcendental progress to- wards the largest liberty, have, in 1853, legalized the marriage of an uncle and his niece; and just as * " See their minutes for 1843, p. 221." f The Associate Reformed Synod, in 1787, on a reference from the first presbytery, sanctioned the excommunication of Wm. McC. and his wife's sister for this crime. Among them this law is still in force. How long in then hands the authority of Christ shall keep the marriage bed from defilement from this quarter throughout their borders, in this age of change, (often miscalled improvement,) progress, and expediency, time alone can tell. " Hating even the garment spotted by the flesh." MARRIAGE AND INCEST. 221 •men depart from a full belief in the divine authority of the Scriptures, or " believe too little," so will this pollution spread, until it cease to be regarded with horror. Then men will " call evil good, and good evil." By politicians, who are usually of one of the two extremes, of those who " believe too little," or of those who follow Pope Clement VII., this innova- tion upon the authority of the divine law, and upon the purity of domestic morals, has been favorably received, and " all the states in this country but one allow of the marriage of a wife's sister " * by statute law. As " faults in the life breed errors in the brain," this array of statute law gives painful evi- dence that in the deliberations and labors of our state legislatures, " the pleasures of sin," and not the glory of God, possess, at times, the ascendency in our land. Such, however, is tjie manner in which the powerful hand of church government moulds some of the matters pertaining to marriage and incest. * Janeway. 19* CHAPTER XVI. THEIR INFLUENCES ON DOMESTIC TRAINING. When we look at the training of families to the duties and trials of life, our radical difference leaves here, also, I believe, its impression. I do not assert that the rich in one division will not, from the in- fluence of wealth, diner from those in poverty under both the others ; but place them all on equality in relation to wealth and external social position, and the specific or radical training will usually appear. In Presbyterian families, a precision in relation to what are sometimes, by the others, called small matters, will not unfrequently be observed. Morn- ing and evening, as we have seen, "The saint, the husband, and the father prays," while the family, as a whole, sing and make a joy- ful noise to God with "the voice of a psalm." Trained daily in "the church in the house" to re- spect their parents, they on Sabbaths become fa- miliar with the place of prayer, in which " the faces of the elders are honored." Upon such youthful minds the stern and solemn countenances of the teaching and ruling overseers (222) INFLUENCES ON DOMESTIC TRAINING. 223 produce weekly a feeling of veneration, which the visit of the pastor to the parental roof increases. A decent respect for superiors, thus inculcated by- parental precept and example, will, in due time, make " the Presbyterian sour," while the conscien- tious sanctification of " the Lord's day " in secret, private, and in public, will usually " grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength." Not only are they thus trained to sing, " How lovely is thy dwelling-place, Lord of hosts, to me!" — but upon their return home, the same Sabbath still- ness pervades the parental dwelling, and the study of "the doctrine of God our Savior" becomes a portion of the evening exercises. That compendium of divine truth, the Shorter Catechism, is then employed, and if Sabbath schools are attended, they are viewed only as an auxiliary to, and not as a substitute for, parental training. Through the varied appliances of thus reading, singing, and hearing "the word of life" daily, the scrutinizing supervision of the ruling elders and the associations of the solemn assembly, the catechizing and the sabbatical rest, a cast of character is formed which becomes marked and un- mistakable. He who has enjoyed and profited by such a training becomes a Puritan, a Presbyterian. Again : where social position and personal wealth are as equally enjoyed by Episcopalians, the results 224 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. of domestic training differ. Here the use of forms in prayer, the absence of the song of Jehovah in morning and evenirig worship, the weekly repetition of a stereotyped " public service," the playing of a " thing without life, giving sound," together with the varied " rites and ceremonies " which " the church " has decreed, her oratorios, cantatas, te Devms, &c, &c, all conspire to produce a faith broader than the Scriptures, and a surplus of ven- eration for sacred persons, places, things, and holy- days. When into the account are also taken the ease with which, after the attendance on " service," social levity can often be introduced on the return home, the consoling thought that the individual belongs to the true apostolic church, that he has " a Levite " as his " priest," together with the influ- ences of appointed feasts and holydays to diminish the preeminent sanctity of the Sabbath, it becomes no matter of astonishment that thus, under a less severe religious training, a difference of character should be developed. Hence we find ease, dignity of manners, and a more ready obsequiousness to superiors, together, usually, with a less severe con- scientiousness, predominant among Protestant Epis- copalians when compared with Presbyterians. That Popery has a peculiar influence on domes- tic training, especially during infancy and youth, the stinted operations of mind, in millions of human families under her power, unquestionably prove. INFLUENCES ON DOMESTIC TRAINING. 225 The voice of psalms and the rejoicings of salvation are hushed in her domestic habitations, while a zeal- ous, early, a'nd earnest devotion usually character- izes their prescribed matins and vespers. The " marks," both of a trembling obsequiousness to their priesthood and a conscious inferiority, draw a plain line of distinction between them at every stage of training and existence, and those above described, who honor the faces of their elders, and who hold their pastors " highly in love for their work sake." While, in the whole domestic training of youth, the earlier Congregationalists differed but little from Presbyterians, and what I have stated in relation •to it among the one might have been affirmed in New England for a hundred and fifty years of the other, yet new " customs " have been formed in this department of duty and of privilege, which materially alter character in some of its delinea- tions. The growing want of " the voice of rejoicing and salvation in the tabernacles of the righteous," in " sweet psalms " morning and evening ; the not unfrequent idea that the youth (is the architect of his own fortune, and) may attend the usual parental place, or any place of prayer, at his own option ; the want of ruling elders in the house of God ; the equivocal idea at times connected in its modern sense with the word " deacon ;" exclusion of young persons from taking a part in the praises of their Redeemer in the sanctuary, unless they belong to 226 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. " that sensitive and troublesome class of function- aries — the choir;" the absence of many of the hallowed associations of the Lord's table, and the soul-stirring exercises of a communion season around it, where pew distribution prevails ; the prac- tice of dispensing it by "boards" and "conven- tions " during secular time, instead of doing so by the rulers of the church on the first day of the week, and especially the general absence of family catechizing on Sabbath evening, — these, together with other influences which might be mentioned, such as the partly religious newspaper, the senti- mental magazine, the " divers doctrines " heard in Sabbath schools, and the fictitious Sabbath school book, all have a powerful influence to form a variety of character, and give diversity to human conduct. Lest my statements in relation to some of these items of religious training may be questioned, I re- fer my readers to the following extract from an " Orthodox " paper, the " Well- Spring," of August 6,1852: — " Brought up in New England. — A Scotch minister, who has many years been a pastor and laborer in the cause of Christ in New England, said he once spent a Sabbath in a Scotch family. After the afternoon meeting, the family were assem- bled, according to the almost universal practice in Scotland, to recite the Catechism. " The children and all the other members of the family were seated, and the father began to ask the INFLUENCES ON DOMESTIC TRAINING. 227 questions to each individual in turn. When he came round to the minister, he put a question, in turn, to him. '"I can answer the question in substance? said he, 'but I cannot answer it as it is in the Catechism. Shall I give the answer in substance ? ' The father shook his head, and immediately put the question to the next. He did not wish his children to feel the example of answering the questions otherwise than correctly. " The Scotch minister, after having related this fact, was asked how it was that he, a Scotchman, could not recite the Catechism, as all that people think so much of having the children taught this form of sound words ? " ' O,' said he, with a comical shrug of the shoulder, l I was brought up in New England ! ' " " The Primer " is still occasionally published in New England, but some of its doctrines do not highly honor our depraved reason ; hence the " cus- toms of the churches " (the only effective power in the case) do not enforce an acquaintance with it upon families. Thus, where wealth and external social position are equal, our radical division has an influence on the formation of character which might be presented from different other stand points in the field of life, and especially in the area of the domestic, circle.* " Train- up a child in " either " way, and he will not " easily, nor usually, " depart from it." * See Appendix E. 228 PHILOSOPHY OP SECTARIANISM. As the sculptor, by tap after tap upon the chisel, forms from the marble u the fisher boy," or other lifelike forms, so, by "line upon line," impression upon impression, the plastic hand of parental or other training, as guided by either form of church government, will produce a different people, as may be seen by placing in juxtaposition the Papists of any land, the members of the Anglican church from merry England, the Presbyterian of Scotland, or of the north of Ireland, or of Western Pennsyl- vania, and comparing either, or both, with the ris- ing generation in New England.* To show how these apparently trivial influences early impress the mind, I will produce the testimony of two men, and their feelings in youth under * This fact has, by some ethnologists, been accounted for by a refer- ence to races. Hence, says Dr. Solger, in New York, February, 1854, " With the Germanic, (to which belong Germany, England, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark,) by their inherent superiority of race, the great principles of civil and religious liberty are identified, and these princi- ples are impossible with the others, (first the Romanic, embracing the people of Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, and secondly, the Sclavic, embracing Russia, Turkey, a part of Austria, and a small part of Prussia,) by their very make and essence." Of his distribution of the European races, "inherent superiority, very make and essence," may, on a close survey, perhaps, be discovered to be partly the effect, as well as the cause ; sometimes the secondary, and not always the primary, consequences arising from an early and more thorough acquaintance with the sacred page, and a more precise belief of its absolutely equal inspiration and authority. This will possibly, to some extent, account for their diversity, as well as birth, food, and climate. The food and climate of the soul have, at least, as much to do with the superiority of races as that which belongs to the mere material frame. — See His" tory of the Huguenots, by Dr. Weiss. INFLUENCES ON DOMESTIC TRAINING. 229 parental domestic example. Robert Burns cannot be justly impeached with fanaticism ; yet he states that when his father, at morning and evening wor- ship, used to say, " Let us worship God," he always thought that there " was something peculiarly ven- erable in the expression." Not only did his own feelings in youth become deeply impressed with the moral grandeur of soul with which these words were uttered, but to the " godly sincerity," apparent in this invocation, all his parent's daily deportment appeared, in his estimation, to correspond.* So that, if any thing short of the grace of God could have converted the poet, the religious training which he received, and especially the force of such parental example, would have done much to make him " wise unto salvation." " Dr. Channing was brought up," says a corre- spondent of the Boston Chronicle, of August, 1852, " at the feet of Dr. Hopkins, the founder of the Hopkinsian sect, and dated his scepticism on Calvinism from a certain Sabbath night, when he heard a sermon on the eternity of future punish- * This is unquestionable from his epitaph. " O ye, whose cheek the tear of pity stains, Draw near with pious reverence and attend ! Here lie the loving husband's dear remains, The tender father, and the generous friend ; The pitying heart that felt for human woe ; The dauntless heart that feared no human pride ; The friend of man, to vice alone a foe ; For ' e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side.' " 20 230 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. ment. Dr. Charming was then a lad ; the sermon produced an impression upon his mind. His father was a member of Dr. Hopkins's church. His father came home that night, pulled off his boots, took up a paper, and read away as if nothing were to happen. Dr. Channing thought his father could not believe what he had heard, and from that time prepared his mind to abandon the faith of his fathers." The mere influence and tendency of paternal example, where both parents were professing Christians, is here clearly exemplified, under these different forms of government, to be a most power- ful element in training ; and while neither parent could give grace to his child, yet the radical diver- sity under consideration moulded in their youth the views of these two powerful minds in their respec- tive estimates of true godliness. If those who controvert my position deny that the discipline of " the whole church," to which the father of Dr. Channing then belonged, retained a membership inferior in point of piety and true godliness to those under the inspection of the kirk session to which the father of Robert Burns was obedient, or that the religious instructions received by his father in a rural parish were superior to those enjoyed by the members of the church of which (in a New England town) the popular and renowned Rev. Dr. Hopkins, who was himself " the founder of the Hopkinsian sect," was pastor, they are welcome to the advantage resulting from their choice in the case, either jn whole or in part. CHAPTER XVII. THEIR INFLUENCES OX SABBATH SCHOOLS. The unity of children with their parents in char- acter and privilege has ever been a dictate both of reason and of revelation. As sinners, the children on the earth at the commencement of the deluge perished with their parents, while, in like manner, " Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example," parents and children " suffering the vengeance of eternal fire," unless we believe with the Rev. Dr. "Watts, "that the children of ungodly parents who die in infancy are annihilated."* In like manner, when Jehovah called Abraham, produced in him that " faith which is of the opera- tion of God," gave to him the righteousness which that faith receives and appropriates, and when with it " he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had, yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all that believe, though they be not circumcised, * Buck's Diet. art. Dcstrvctionists. (231) 232 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. that righteousness might be imputed toihem also," he was solemnly informed, " This is my covenant which ye shall keep between me and you, and thy seed after thee. Every man child among you shall be circumcised." This was " the law of the house" of God until "the fulness of time." The children with their " fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea ; and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink." Not only was Jesus brought to Jerusalem and presented to the Lord on the pro- fession of the faith of his mother and of Joseph, who did for him after the custom of the law, but at twelve years of age, and after he had entered on his Father's business, from his identity of character and privilege, he went to Nazareth, and was subject unto them during his minority in our nature. In vindication of those children who, with the multitudes, and doubtless among them their parents also, cried to him in the house of prayer, " Hosanna to the Son of David," he has further taught that the children of believing parents in all ages ought, as worshippers, with those by whom they are so endearingly represented, to praise God " with the voice of a psalm." " Yea, have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise ? " (Matt. xxi. 16.) Such being their relation to their parents under the law, (and from the beginning,) it was diminished neither in character INFLUENCES ON SABBATH SCHOOLS. 233 nor privilege when He to whom it was promised in the covenant of grace, " So shall he sprinkle many nations," directed his ministering servants to " go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them," admitting them into Christian fellowship, and after- wards " teaching them to observe all things what- soever I have commanded you." Early did the apostles avow this relation, as it affected both character and privilege. When, on the day of Pentecost, those who, among others, had cried out, " His blood be on us and on our children," under the awful terrors of spiritual con- viction, aggravated by this fearful imprecation upon their offspring, inquired, " Men 'and brethren, what shall we do ? " the encouraging assurance of all the apostles, unanimously given by the mouth of Peter, was, " The promise is unto you and to your children." In this they say, " As your enmity and malice imprecated the blood of the Son of God, and the vengeance due to those who shed it, upon your unconscious children, and as they would have, undoubtedly, continued under this imprecation, un- less he, as " a Prince and a Savior," by whom you now " with the heart believe unto righteousness," had granted unto you " repentance and forgiveness of sins," so, in the tender mercy of our God, their character and privileges now change with yours, for the promise is not only unto you, but also unto your children; not to the children of your fellow- countrymen who continue in unbelief, but unto 20* 234 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. yours, as they are the children of believing parents. From them the guilt of this fearful crime is now removed, providing they do not afterwards assume it by wilful rejection of Jesus as their Savior." Not only do we find " salvation " coming to the house, the household, or family of Zaccheus, when he, by grace, became in reality what he had previ- ously been by nature, " a son of Abraham," and all his children henceforth favored with true spiritual instruction, but walking by the same rule with him who was their Lord, the apostles in like manner recognized the character and privileges of the chil- dren of believing parents. On the profession of parental faith, the households of Stephanas and Lydia were baptized. On a similar profession of faith made by the jailer at Philippi, alone, " he was baptized, and all his straightway." In the change from the former to that of the New Testament dis- pensation, " the blessing of Abraham " came on all who were " added to the church ; " and as, under the latter, all professing Christians are to forsake, not the synagoguing of themselves together, the same exercises of worship were attended to by the apostles, who for several years preached Christ in the synagogues into which children were invariably brought with their parents. When the American colonists became an inde- pendent nation, their children were with them in- cluded in character and privilege, were trained up for the performance of the duties, and in due time INFLUENCES ON SABBATH SCHOOLS. 235 invested with the privileges, of citizenship. Similar, if not identical, is the case here. As, during the period which elapsed previously to the conversion of Cornelius, (Acts x.,) the children of the many- thousands of the Jews who believed on Jesus Christ were not left among their unbelieving countrymen, nor excluded from the house of God by their Chris- tian parents, by the ruling elders of the churches, nor by the ministers of Christ, and thus left under Jewish bondage, or turned over to the uncovenanted mercies of the heathen, so they, doubtless, were by baptism acknowledged members of the visible church, became thus the object of parental vows, prayers, and solicitude, grew up in the courts of the Lord, and were taught and " knew the Scriptures from their childhood." (2 Tim. i. 5.) To the parents the command was, " And, ye fa- thers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord." So clearly were all the interests of the children of true believers guarded, that the line of demarcation is drawn so wide as to embrace all the " godly seed " of Christians in every condition, even where one of the parents continues to be a heathen, Jew, or infidel. (1 Cor. vii. 14.) Thus, where both parents are unbelievers, the children are " unclean ; " where one or both parents (and one as well as both) believe on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, their off- spring are relatively or federally " holy ;" they are united with their parents in character and privileges. 236 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. This is the dictate of revelation, " If the root be holy, so are the branches." Not absolutely, but federally, by the positive arrangement of God. This is also the inculcation of reason. Hence, in the admission of aliens to national character and privileges, (to which allusion has been made,) the young children of those who become citizens are not only included and protected, but they are viewed federally as citi- zens, and admitted to all civil immunities, so far and so fast as their capacity and condition warrant their enjoying them; and they continue such until by choice they renounce their national character, and disclaim their civil advantages. In like man- ner, those whom God has declared to be " holy " by their federal connection with believing parents, may by unbelief avowedly reject their birthright, or by indifference and neglect fail to join themselves "to the Lord in a covenant not to be forgotten," and thus change their character and relation. Hence the church has almost constantly suffered by " an increase of sinful men," when the children of pro- fessing parents have kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in his law. Consequently all Presbyterians maintain that " not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents, are to be baptized." This we have previously seen, and out of this unity of character and privilege arises among them the solemn obligation which professing Christian par- INFLUENCES ON SABBATH SCHOOLS. 237 ents assume to educate their children religiously. (Ps. lxxviii. 5-6-7.) Hence they are required to " train up a child in the way he should go ; " and in order that this may be certainly done, parents themselves promise to be, according to their ability, the teach- ers of their own children. Under this polity, then, " the elders of the church " have a control of the parents, and through them of their children. As instructors over their own children, parents have direct control. With the child the pastor comes into direct and intimate, and the elders into official and salutary contact. These varied appliances, then, all bear upon the highest interests of the child, while under these spiritual " tutors and governors " he is taught and compelled to "render honor to whom honor is due," and by " walking with wise men," under the blessing of Heaven, he "becomes wise." Among Protestant Episcopalians, as we have seen, a child is baptized because it is a child ; and for it, sponsors, official relatives unknown to the Bible, are provided. To the joint parties of parents and sponsors the responsibility of the religious education of the child is intrusted, sometimes with good, although frequently with varied success. Here we find too much belief, a faith broader than that which rests on the Bible, under the operation of which the sacred name of our Creator is criminally, and too often profanely, coupled with those of earthly parents, and under an unscriptural arrange- 238 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. ment of what are called godfathers and godmothers, duties are assumed which none but believing par- ents can scripturally perform. When Prelatic confirmation, a "rite" of "the church " unknown to the word of God, takes the place of a public profession of faith in Christ, before " the elders of the church," the candidate is taught, in answer to the question, " Who gave you this name ? " to say, " My godfathers and godmothers in my baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." And to another question, " They did promise and vow three things in my name ; first, that I should renounce the devil and all his works ; secondly, that I should believe all the articles of the Christian faith ; and thirdly, that I should keep God's commandments." Popery not only claims the child, where either parent is a Papist, but also makes confirmation a distinct sacrament, and so early and thoroughly im- bues the infant mind with homage to her priests, that in its countenance it bears the image of its master. Again : Methodism, in its arrangements of classes and its varied other appliances, takes care early and deeply to instamp upon all within its pale " the same mind which was also in " the Rev. John Wesley. Among the earlier Independents and in the New England churches, this training was assigned * * As their business was to " serve tables," with it deacons had noth- ing officially nor beyond private members to do. INFLUENCES ON SABBATH SCHOOLS. 239 to the parents, pastors, and elders. Then pure and undefiled religion abounded greatly in this land. While by these and similar arrangements, among Protestants, provision was made for instructing, to some extent, the children of parents professing Chris- tianity, yet it was discovered that great numbers in all dense masses of population, were growing to maturity in vice. This was the case in many parts of England, and with a philanthropic heart Robert Raikes is said to have attempted first the instruction of the neglected on the Sabbath. What the progress of Sabbath schools in Great Britain has been I am not fully aware; but says the author of the " Teacher taught," " The first per- manent organization in the United States, of which we have any authentic record, was the First Day or Sunday School Society, which was established in Philadelphia, January 11, 1791. Those who united in this enterprise were of different denominations — Quakers, Protestant Episcopalians, ccc. It was confined to reading and writing from the Bible and such other moral and religious books as the society may, from time to time, direct." The Neiu York Sabbath School Union was insti- tuted February 26, 1S16. Its design, among other things, was " to unite the Christian feelings, the counsels, and labors of persons of different denom- inations in those benevolent undertaking-." The Philadelphia Sunday and Adult School Union was formed May 26, 1817, and was designed to 240 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. cultivate unity and charity among those of different names, &c, &c. " In obedience to a loud call for a new and more general organization, which sug- gestion first came from New York, this union was merged, on the 25th of May, 1824, into the Ameri- can Sunday School Union." * " The grand principle on which the American Sunday School Union was organized, and is con- ducted, is, that the essential truths of Protestant Christianity are held in common by all evangelical denominations, such as Presbyterians, Congregation- alists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Reformed Dutch," &c, &c. Such is the union principle, that it is said to be "just as much the duty of a Baptist member to protect the union principle from violation in those points which affect the views or doctrines of Methodists, or Episcopalians, as in those which affect his own conscience and communion." Of course all such protection of opposing doctrines will be required from each sect which enters this asso- ciation, and in this case fraternity may readily be- come of more importance than " the truth as it is in Jesus," unless all, in every particular, hold " the doctrine of God our Savior." " Can two (or more) walk together except they be agreed ? " Are there any truths in " the doctrine of Christ " which are not " essential " ? (John xx. 31.) * The first Sabbath school in Boston is said to have been established in the West Church, (Unitarian,) in 1812 ; others say in the Third Baptist Church, in 1816. INFLUENCES ON SABBATH SCHOOLS. 241 There are multitudes of places where the Sab- bath school has been planted with vast results, and there exist wide fields of destitution, where parents care not for the souls of their children, and where those who "speak the truth in love" may find a wide door and effectual ; yet with all its cl^ms to disinterestedness, as stated above, it has a no small element of sectarianism in its operations. Such is its vast charity, that the New England Primer must be excluded, and general questions, drawn from Scripture, be substituted ; from which, as a common fountain, all teachers may issue to their pupils their own doctrinal opinions, just as a com- pany of glassblowers, at the same furnace, may each tinge his work with coloring material of any shade. The Sabbath school is consequently an arena on which all, or nearly all, denominations enter. Prelacy under its different forms, Congregation- alism in its ramified diversities, and Presbyterian- ism just as it departs from some of its own leading characteristics and makes a mere auxiliary a pri- mary, all congregate their children under teachers in their own folds, while books, too often destitute of " the force of truth," are selected by the ample charity of the " committee of publication." Al- though not a few of these are of great usefulness, and afford profitable fields of reading to many, others, it cannot be very well denied, have such a kindred affinity to fiction, that the youthful mind, 21 242 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. in the use of such pabulum and condiment, often forms a taste for works of imagination, or, at best, of sentimentality — a taste which can neither be cul- tivated nor satisfied by reading the Bible. Presbyterian parents, who vow to teach to their childi^n their lost condition by nature, notwith- standing the supposed charity of the " union prin- ciple," cannot, then, safely trust them to irresponsi- ble persons of other denominations ; and those who have no zeal for communicating their peculiar ideas in relation either to church government and discipline, or to scriptural doctrine or worship, are both " few and far between," and are seldom the most valuable instructors. Different, however, is the case with the varied sects of Baptists. To them all children are alike without the pale of the church, and in the world lying in wickedness, form- ing no part of the " many nations " which Emanuel is to " sprinkle " with " the blood of sprinkling." As no church courts have any control over them, all who fancy themselves " apt to teach " may thrust in their sickles and proselyte. To this element in the working of "Sunday schools" may be at- tributed no inconsiderable part of their denomina- tional increase, of which we must not lose sight in studying the philosophy of sectarianism. Upon the early susceptibilities of the mind, where the analogy of faith is not fairly presented to the understanding, and where the youthful emotions of the soul are capable of deep feeling from the im- INFLUENCES ON SABBATH SCHOOLS. 243 aginary as well as from the real, it is not an impos- sible thing to make the individual believe that he, or she, as the case may be, ought to " follow the Savior into a watery grave," that in being immersed they " wash away " their " sins," while the opposi- tion made by others to their peculiar rite savors not a little, in their estimation, of the genuine re- proach of the cross of Christ, and for this cardinal reason it ought early to be attended to. As neither godfathers nor believing parents have presented them in infancy for baptism, the volatile and capricious will may now readily suppose that it has hitherto had no connection with " the cove- nant that was confirmed before of God in Christ," and that the readiness of the individual to be im- mersed, is a sure token of the agency of Him who " sprinkles many nations," " in the day of his power.'" In looking at the reports of revivals in our day, it is not unfrequently said that such persons as have joined particular churches were received from " the Sunday school." A little further observation would also show to us that there was no other place from which they could come. In former times, families, that is, those properly connected with churches, were Sabbath schools, and from them members entered the church ; but now the sound instruction and stern discipline of former days or generations are only, or too nearly so, known in history or in domestic tradition, while the con- 244 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM, sciences of many parents are eased of almost all sense of obligation, just as some heads of house- holds would be freed from care if they only knew that their children could be fed at a general soup table down town, and save them the trouble of cooking and feeding with a frequency commensu- rate to the wants of nature. As a substitute for parental training, they are, then, not safe. While an irresponsible class of persons are thus thrust into the affections of the children, separating the child from its pastor, from its ruling elders, and measurably, also, even from the affections and authority of its own parents, " Teacher says so," being, at least, too often the practical and final ap- peal, Presbyterians who consistently maintain their avowed doctrines, and perform their solemn duties, are chary as to whose care they commit their chil- dren upon the Sabbath. Still, under judicious ar- rangement, parents, pastors, and elders may employ, to a certain extent, as auxiliaries in the religious education of youth, Sabbath school teachers, ac- cording to popular usage; but they cannot, in safety, rest on them generally as substitutes. Vows of official position and relation rest on them individually, to which the succedaneum is a stranger. "With all the compensating influences of society- ism as a panacea, the general sacredness of the Sabbath also suffers loss by the pleasantry and social intercourse which this arrangement for in- INFLUENCES ON SABBATH SCHOOLS. 245 struction demands and receives, when and where the stern domestic sanctification of the Lord's day- is even partially abandoned. Of Sabbath Schools, then, each order of church polity does not form precisely the same estimate with the others. 21* CHAPTER XVIII. THE INFLUENCES OF ECCLESIASTICAL ON CIVIL POLITY. There are three departments of government which God has established among men — those of the family, the state, and the church. That the third of these has important influences on the first, we have already seen ; and I now proceed briefly to view some of its modifications of the other. Prelacy claims connection with the Jewish the- ocracy, and in reference to civil government reads the New Testament under the shadows of the Old. As she there finds an established order of priest- hood, altars, sacrifices, rites, and ceremonies, so in the same field she discovers, at times, a theocracy, and again a divinely established race of kings. Hence, in all her forms, she supposes them to reign jure divino, or " by the grace of God." Not only as the supposed vicegerent of Jehovah does the Pope of Rome undertake to authorize* kings to reign, or to free their subjects from them, (where he * Hence the difficulty of Pio No-no in relation to crowning Bonaparte, and thus cutting off Henry V. from the crown of France, in 1853. (246) INFLUENCES ON CIVIL POLITY. 247 has the power,) according to his pleasure, but when King Henry VIIL, of England, assumed the author- ity to reject some of the forms, and to alter some of the doctrines, of the Papal church, it was not to abandon prelacy, nor its assumptions, but to substi- tute for those of Popery the forms of the Anglican church in all its manifest sympathies and varied identities with the Papal, and to claim for himself and his heirs its sovereign headship. The position of his successors in relation to church government is well known ; and although, rather than lose their crowns, two of them yielded to the just demands of Presbyterianism, yet one of these, James, " by the grace of God King and De- fender of the Faith," could not believe that even the grace and power of Heaven were sufficient to pre- serve him king in the absence of prelacy in the church.* Hence his most comprehensive saying was, " No bishop, no king." We have already noted some of the " orders " among prelatic clergy. With them the many are obviously made for the few; and similar always is the case with kings where this order of church gov- ernment has "its perfect work." It provides one fountain of power, the throne, and places its hands authoritatively upon all its subjects. Hence all * In the second conference between King James L, of Great Britain, and the bishops, and Puritan parties, together at Hampton Court, January 16, 1604, he swore by his soul he believed that a Scot- tish presbytery as well agrees with monarchy as God and the devil. — Prince's Chronology, Vol. L p. 10. 248 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. absolutism, whether hereditary or assumed, is claimed on the one hand, and submitted to on the other, by those who " believe too much," or who be- lieve in "the divine right of kings," as authorized by popes or by their equivalents. If, however, a different ecclesiastical regimen should be chosen by a nation and yielded by the throne, still on such a people the neighboring influences of prelacy will have (as in Prussia) an indirect regulating power. The sympathies of this order of church government are strongly in unison with all kingly thrones, and it has long upheld " holy alliances," which are often unfavorable to the advancement of nations. As brought to bear upon civil governments, Con- gregationalism has had no permanent existence. When the colonists came with their charter to Massachusetts Bay, they had forgotten to ask for power to form a representative government, or probably were so alive to Independency, and so de- termined to be in all things regulated by it, that " their first General Court, which was held on the 19th of October, 1631, was not by a representation, but by every one that was free of the corporation in person. One hundred and nine freemen were admitted to this court; besides, Maverick, Black- stone, and many more, who were not of any of the churches, were of this number." * Under this type of church government a few * Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts, Vol. I. p. 30. INFLUENCES ON CIVIL POLITY. 249 hundred persons may associate to hear, " approbate," ordain, hire, try, or dismiss a preacher; but when applied to the government of a colony or nation, the idea becomes a political abstraction, and can have only an ephemeral existence, such as it had in " a plain in the land of Shinar," or at the base of Horeb. On Shawm ut it continued three years, and then expired, for,* " The freemen were so increased in 1634, that it was impracticable to debate and determine matters in a body, so that this represen- tative body was a thing of necessity, but no pro- vision had been made for it in their charter." While the necessities of the case drove them to representation, (which is the life and imbodiment of Presbyterianism, and which, in civil government, even Congregationalists have since wisely followed,) some of the native, though remote workings of the social compact, when put in operation, may be found in the earlier agrarianism of Tammany Hall and in the executive code of Judge Lynch. Where they coexist, Presbyterianism modifies Prelacy ; hence arise the constitutional barriers of limited monarchies and mixed governments. Wher- ever it operates without restraint, presbyterial gov- ernment is representative and republican. It can, however, only be established with the hope of per- petuity where a people are intelligent and virtu- ous. Ignorance and vice soon plunge it into * Hutchinson, VoL I, p. 40» 250 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. anarchy, or force it under a military despotism, from which, with returning consideration, may arise a monarchy absolute or limited. Correspondent to the synods, presbyteries, and sessions of this order of regimen, are the national, state, and city, or town governments, each of them being representa- tive. A sessicm is composed of the pastor and ruling elders of a local church, and from this affinity comes elder, olderman, alderman, in city councils. As a presbytery is composed of all the ministers of the gospel within a convenient boundary, each of "them attended by an elder delegated by the session, so from the different districts the two branches of the legislature in a commonwealth are sent as del- egates by representation ; while a general synod, composed of one or more ministers and one or more ruling elders from each presbytery in the different synods, corresponds to the congress of a republic. Each legislature, state or national, may not only act on joint ballot, but has also its supreme or sub- ordinate place and jurisdiction ; and similar is the antitype, the respective ecclesiastical courts of Pres- byterians, in relation to the enactment of statute law. Forced by stern necessity from under the over- shadowing influences of the Anglican church and her ally the British throne, long did the revolted American colonies, by their agents, labor to devise some system of government by which the rights of states might not be merged into those of the nation ; INFLUENCES ON CIVIL POLITY. 251 and they eventually succeeded by simply adopting a fac simile of the Presbyterian regimen.* In Massachusetts especially, as in it Congrega- tionalism had, with greatly preponderating f influ- ences, framed public sentiment, the adoption of the federal constitution and its subordinating arrange- ments met with decided opposition, and was carried by only a majority of nineteen out of the votes of three hundred and fifty-five delegates. It is also a coincidence not a little anomalous, that the consti- tution which placed this state within the pale of, and subordinate to, the nation, in its legislature, ju- diciary, and executive, was adopted on the only portion of the soil J of Massachusetts entailed for the exclusive use of worshippers according to the Presbyterian form forever. After seven days of ineffectual attempts to hear, in the Brattle Street Church, the subject was de- bated for seventeen days in the Presbyterian meet- ing house in Long Lane, which, from the fact that this national bond was there adopted on Wednes- * See Appendix, D. f Prelacy, whether Papal, Anglican, or Methodistical, had then, in 1788, no ministry, and hardly, even in the two Protestant forms, a single adherent in this commonwealth. There existed in 1776 in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and the District of Maine, a synod of about twenty churches, having two of its presbyteries — those of Salem and Palmer — within the Bay State, in which were then found about three hundred Congregational churches, besides a number of Regular Baptists. X There may possibly be others, for of the fifteen churches in Mas- sachusetts held under Presbyterian tenure, according to the United States census of 1850, only three are occupied by Presbyterians. 252 PHILOSOPHY OP SECTARIANISM, day, February 6, 1788, was henceforth called Federal Street Church. To the analogy which subsists between the Pres- byterian regimen and the government of the United Slates, supreme and subordinate) both Congrega- tionalists and Prelatists lay claim. Both claims are, however, only imaginary, or, at best} borrowed where any similarity exists* In the framework of a church of the former order, with its absolute and total independence, relative subordination cannot be discovered, beyond mere advice, excepting what is borrowed from Presbytery* From Episcopacy our republican civil govern* ment originally borrowed nothing, notwithstanding the assumption of the late Bishop Hobart, that "our own church is, in some respects, more con- formed than any other religious communities to the organization of our civil government." It is, since the adoption of the constitution, which was formed by representation, totally Presbyterian. He claims it as a peculiarity of the Protestant Episcopal church, that her legislative power is divided be- tween two branches, and that she alone is thus like our civil governments ; " for," says he, " in our ec- clesiastical judicatories the representatives of the laity possess strict coordinate authority-^ the power of voting as a separate body, and of annulling by a majority of votes the acts of the bishops and clergy." In Presbyterian rule, each minister is met by a ruling elder representing his church, and they can INFLUENCES ON CIVIL POLITY* 253 thus, if not " nullify by a majority of votes," always hinder by an equal number the acts of their clergy- men. It must be here noticed that we are not to understand that Protestant Episcopacy is actually and exclusively " conformed " to our republican government, but it is " more conformed than other religious communities to our civil government." The truth of the whole thing is this — the ruling elders in every church court can " annul by a ma- jority of votes " the sinister designs and " acts of their pastors," and no enactment of a synod can be permanently binding on the people without the ex- pressed sanction of a majority of the presbyteries composing said synod.* These principles of legis- lation form some of the most obvious lineaments of our republican government, and they were all borrowed, by the light of common sense in the " continental " assembly of representatives which elaborated our civil constitution, and all its subor- dinate parts and details, from the form of church regimen written in the Westminster confession of faith. f As our civil one was borrowed from this form of government, and was only the echo of it, so the boasted " our own church " of the bishop, although " more conformed in some respects " to * So it was agreed upon by their representatives, that if nine of the original thirteen states should adopt the constitution, it should be binding on the rest. That synod overtured and sent the matter down to the presbyteries, to the state legislatures. t See Appendix, D. 22 254 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. this echo, is merely, in this point of view, the echo of that echo. All attempts to induce intelligent citizens under this government to believe that prelacy is even the foster parent of our republic, or by nature friendly to any of its peculiar interests, should be met by the consideration, that its distinct and peculiar na- ture and character forbid it ; that " the Ethiopian cannot change his skin," and notwithstanding it has been said by Professor Bowen, (Lowell lecture, February 24, 1852,) that " the revolution was the first war between the people and their government not kindled by theological contentions, and success- fully carried on;" that the whole war of the Ameri- can revolution was but one between the Presbyte- rian confession of faith and catechisms (of which "the New England Primer" forms a vital part) on* the one hand, and the "service" and "Prayer Book " of the Anglican church on the other. " One of the principal causes of the revolution was, the active correspondence maintained between Episco- palians in the colonies and the authorities of Britain, to set up bishops over all the inhabitants. American independence was owing more to the republican views of the clergy, and the weight which their opinions had with the people, than to any other * There was point in the saying of the loyalists who founded the city of St. John, New Brunswick, that " if it were not for Presbyterians and Presbyterian principles, the United States would have all continued to be good British colonies." INFLUENCES ON CIVIL POLITV. 255 cause." * And says the eloquent Bancroft, " The first voice publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great Britain, came not from the Puritans of New England, or the Dutch of New York, or the planters of Virginia, but from Scotch- Irish Presbyterians. They brought to America no submissive love for England, and their experience and their religion alike bade them meet oppression with prompt resistance." f The facts that in the Continental Congress, " the Rev. Mr. Duche, by invitation, on the 7th of Sep- tember, 1774, read several prayers in the established form, in connection with the thirty-fifth psalm, which Episcopalians call the collect for that day, and subsequently (as John Adams expressed it) " struck out into an extemporaneous prayer ; " that the Rev. William (afterwards Bishop) White and a very few others among the clergy, that Washing- ton, Jay, and some others among "the laity," were Episcopalians, and yet were the earnest defenders of the soil, are only exceptions which strengthen my position. Washington did what no true prela- tist, no believer in an apostolical succession, could have done — asked for and partook of the sacrament of the Lord's supper from a schismatic, a dissenter, a Presbyterian minister, the Rev. Dr. Jones, of Mor- listown, New Jersey, joined with a Presbyterian * John Adams. f History United States, Vol. V. p. 77. See Appendix, D. 256 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. church in sitting down at the Lord's table instead of " kneeling meekly upon his knees " at an altar, so called, and afterwards confessed that to his soul the reminiscences of that day were sweet. The few clergymen among Episcopalians, who, during the war of the revolution, felt friendly to the interests of the soil when they attempted to worship canonically, had to pray through the Lord Bishop of London, to whose diocess they belonged. The modicum of apostolic succession which had hither- to vivified their liturgy then became extinct, and a genuine prelatic prayer they could not offer for the success of the colonists without his lordship's authority* As Diana is said to have lost her temple while she was superintending the birth of Alexander, so Protestant prelacy on the soil of the thirteen re- volted colonies, on the fourth day of July, 1776, saw her genuine " tactual succession," which had been communicated through King Henry VIII. and Archbishop Cranmer, become canonically lost for above nine years, or until the head of the Angli- can church had to acknowledge the American national independence, and not only tolerate the ordination of Bishop Seabury at Aberdeen, in 1784, but also, in 1786, ratify an act of Parliament author- izing " the consecration of bishops for foreign places." Then, after this nation became independent of a throne, and of Episcopal forms as the state religion, American prelacy, like those human beings who INFLUENCES ON CIVIL POLITY. 257 survive the throes of an earthquake, began to breathe, and creep, and walk. Having regained the thread of " succession," she soon says, " I will go out as at other times before and shake myself." (Judges xvi. 20.) Hence boasts her very Samson, " Our own church is in some respects more con- formed than other religious communities to the organization of our civil government." • The ten- dency of such a statement to mislead the unwary forms my apology for the apparent severity of this language. And notwithstanding that, against the rule of the federal legislature, (which declares that the same sect shall not have both,) the Episcopal Methodists, in 1853-4, occupy both chaplaincies in Congress, this sect in the revolutionary struggle was equally with Protestant Episcopacy opposed to those who were believers in the Westminster standards, and who secured, by their blood, American indepen- dence and liberty of conscience in this land. To give true prelatic form to the labors of Mr. Embury (who had erected the banner of the Rev. John Wesley in New Y*)rk, in 1766) and Messrs. Webb and Strawbridge, " Messrs. Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmore were sent, under the direction of Mr. Wesley, to America, in 1769." In 1771, Messrs. Asbury and Wright came over, and in 1773 the first regular conference was held at Philadelphia, under the superintendence of Mr. Thomas Rankin, who had been sent by Mr. Wesley to take the 99* 258 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. general oversight (or bishopric) in this country. " In England, Mr. Wesley professed a strong attach- ment to the established church, and exhorted his societies to attend her service and receive the Lord's supper from the regular clergy; but in the latter part of his time, he thought proper to ordain some bishops and priests for America and Scotland." * " These zealous missionaries spread themselves in different directions through the country;"! Dut like the warhorse in the days of Job, they " smelled the battle afar off," they foresaw " the sanguinary con- flict," and "during the revolutionary war all the preachers from Europe, except Mr. Asbury, returned to their native land." t " Home, home, sweet home." Some zealous young men, (natives, it would seem,) under the superintendence of Mr. Asbury, continued to preach the doctrines of the Rev. John Wesley in the colonies; and after independ- ence had been secured by the sacrifice of the lives of thousands of Calvinists, and by the waste of millions of their treasure, in 1784 Dr. Thomas Coke came to America with the fourth thread of apostolical succession, or "with powers to consti- * Buck. f Rev. Dr. Bangs. X This returning home was precisely what Episcopal clergymen gen- erally did at that period ; and the wary preachers of that sagacious man were not a whit behind those of a kindred ecclesiastical regimen in seeking personal safety. " No servant can serve two masters." INFLUENCES ON CIVIL POLITY. 259 tute the Methodist societies into an independent church." As the " zealous young men " (of Dr. Bangs) " were considered only lay preachers," and at the " uniform advice of Mr. Wesley, had declined ad- ministering the ordinances," so " after maturely weighing the subject in his own mind," he " being assisted by other presbyters of the church of England, by prayer and imposition of hands, set apart a presbyter of said church, Thomas Coke, LL. D., as a superintendent of the Methodist socie- ties in America, and directed him to consecrate Mr. Francis Asbury for the same office." Obeying the directions of his master, who then lived and reigned, he, at a conference of sixty-one Methodist preachers, at Baltimore, on December 25, 1784, ordained Mr. Asbury " first to the office of deacon, then elder, and then superintendent or bishop. Twelve of the preachers were elected, and ordained elders at the same conference." As Americus supplanted Columbus in the honor of identifying his name with a whole continent, so Mr. Morgan, who, it is said, was the founder of Methodism, was then forgotten, and the Rev. John Wesley was at that date as the supreme head to a fourth Episcopal church on earth,* not only a ruler * The second prelatic head in Christendom, or the "supreme patriarch " of the Greek church, formerly resided in Moscow ; but in 1716, Peter I. abolished this high office, which seemed to rival the temporal power ; and when the czar was asked, " Who is now the 260 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. over his numerous preachers and people in Europe, but was also the ecclesiastical channel of commu- nication Romeward to " eighty-three preachers and fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight members in society," in America.* So much, and no more, do the civil and religious liberties of the United States owe to Episcopal Methodism. Had its influences begun in the colonies fifty years earlier, and been as extensively felt as they have been elsewhere since, it would not require more than one guess to determine their choice of com- panionship, in 1776, between the Book of Common Prayer and the New England Primer. Thus each form of church government moulds, as it obtains the ascendant, the throne, or the re- public, while, in their combinations, they modify proportion ably their respective special results. Hav- ing nothing in common, excepting opposition to anarchy, together in full operation they cannot dwell. patriarch ? " he replied, haughtily, " I am ; " and from that time the Mus- covite emperors have been the visible heads of the church. They are pontiffs, like the Roman emperors; they cannot perform any priestly office, but they speak to the people as the nearest representatives of God ; they confer on whom they please the principal ecclesiastial of- fices, and all the important business of the church. Their decisions are without appeal ; they claim almost a Papal infallibility. The three met- ropolitans have their sees at St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kief." — " X." in New York Observer, December, 15, 1853. * Supposing that these fifteen thousand and seventy-one "preachers and members in society " had individually served on the field of battle, they would have formed less than the one fifteenth of the two hundred and thirty-one thousand seven hundred and ninety-one soldiers who were engaged in the war of the revolution. INFLUENCES ON CIVIL POLITY. 261 Hence, on St. Helena, the friend and scourge of millions of his race said, " In fifty years, continental Europe will be either Cossack or republican." Both, at the same time, neither continent nor nation can be ; and each form of ecclesiastical regimen can be traced by its results on national govern- ments throughout Christendom. In this comparison I refer exclusively to .Prelacy and Presbytery; for Congregationalism, as we have seen, has no sym- pathies with nations, but only with isolated groups ; and the fact I cite " in point," that of the political journals in the Southern States, which, during 1851-2, advocated a secession from, and the dis- solution of the Union, five, at least, are said to be conducted by New England men. Again : in the Northern States, none but Congregationalists, and those virtually conformed, in part at least, to this ecclesiastical regimen, have desired a dissolu- tion of the Union, even while they see, by perverted legislation, some of its blessings turned into curses. CHAPTER XIX. THEIR INFLUENCES ON MIXED QUESTIONS. — ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. The formation of man we can leafn from divine revelation alone ; and while only from the same source can we ascertain the laws by which, in his approach to God and intercourse with man, he can be safely governed, yet in relation to some depart- ments of duty, even " Nature itself teaches " us. In nothing concerning him is her voice more dis- tinctly heard than in the duty of self-preservation. She, unitedly with revelation, declares, " All that a man hath will he give for his life." Beyond the landmarks of those nations favored with the word of God, as well as among them, "the avenger of blood" has ever been known, and has had a place in connection with the crime of wilful murder. Apart from any knowledge by the sacred Scriptures of God as the Judge of all the earth, and apart from any intention to promote his glory by yielding obedience to his commands in the case, the safety of human life always demands that a wilful murderer should be put to death. The Bible, as read by Presbyterians and Episco- (262) CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 263 palians, always returns the same verdict, with the great reason why, in inseparable connection," Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man." Hence, in all legislation upon this subject where either of these two forms of church polity has the control, the interpretation of this statute of Jehovah, delivered to every descendant of Noah, is literal in relation to wilful murder. It is also a matter of unfeigned regret that Prel- acy, especially in her Papal form, has often, very often, inflicted this awful punishment, through an excess of faith, beyond the authority of the Bible, and has " slain heaps upon heaps," not for murder at all, but because they refused the bondage of her " apostolic succession," her " rites and ceremonies," and other peculiarities. This statute of the supreme Lawgiver and Judge of nations in relation to de- liberate murder, those who believe too little interpret variously. Just so far as they borrow the doctrine of Presbyterians, Independents, when called to the solemn duty, after due process of law, and on evi- dence amounting to perfect proof of guilt, execute the murderer; but where, by modern Congregation- alists, a discriminating tariff is imposed on portions of the word of God, and some " verses " are found more " useful " than others, " the death penalty ' is viewed as dark, Jewish, cloudy, and anti-Christian, and the authority of God, speaking in the Scrip- tures, is rejected as at war with reason and humanity. 264 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. By such, this last and most awful demand of hu- man law is supposed to be only a relic of barba- rism, or, at best, only an enactment of Moses, which has passed away; yet there is no evidence that, like the ordinance of the " red heifer," it belonged solely to Jewish peculiarities. Abundant proof, apart from ail that transpired from the passage of Israel through the Red Sea until Judea became a prov- ince, can be obtained to show that it has been, is, and will be, a universal law of our race so long as " out of the heart of man proceed murders." The " mark set upon Cain," rather than impose the official duties of the avenger of blood upon his own father ; the aggravated conduct of Lamech, and his guilt of conscience ; the assurance which Rebekah had, that if Esau should kill Jacob, that very day he also would become dead in law, and she should " be deprived of them both in one day ; " the fact that, when Moses slew the Egyptian when vindicat- ing one of his brethren in bondage, Pharaoh, for his doing so, " sought to slay him," are cases over which the Mosaic ritual had no control, and they either bear conclusively upon this subject, or are useless and inexplicable mysteries, interspersed in the sacred volume to bewilder the reader. Again : while " God, in these last days, has spoken to us by his Son," He who " spake as never man spake" has said, "'Thou shalt do no murder." If this were a mere declaration without an adequate penalty, it amounted to nothing but solemn trilling. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 265 On the other hand, however, it forms, so far as his authority is regarded who has said, " Murderers shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death," (Rev. xxi. 8,) a barrier against "the taking away of our own life or the life of our neighbor un- justly," and subordinately, "whatsoever tendeth thereunto." When, doomed by fiendish perjury and black in- justice to an ignominious death, Jesus of Nazareth was nailed " with wicked hands " to the accursed tree by his murderers, his Father " spared not his own Son, but delivered him up " to offended justice. Compared with those modern* sentimentalists who encompass a murderer with more than a father's pity or a mother's love, and have no sympathy (or but a secondary one) with the murdered or the bereaved, the God of vengeance, when making "inquisition for blood," appears to be, in their esti- mation, destitute of philanthropy. Made in the image of God, no man is permitted to take his own life, or at any time to throw it away; yet even when guided by the Holy Ghost, the apostle places on record for our imitation this as- severation, " If I have committed any thing worthy of death, I refuse not to die." Reading, then, the Old Testament in the 'light of the New, we find this law given to all the nations of the earth, that the wilful murderer shall surely be put to death ; and even in the light of nature the whole family of 23 266 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. nations ever have read and now read this law thus. Hence, when the barbarous people of Melita saw the viper hang upon Paul's hand, the spontaneous and unanimous impulse of their conscience was but' the voice of the divine law to Noah, speaking by the light of nature from every human bosom, " No doubt this" man is a murderer, whom though her hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live." This declaration did not arise from a superabundance of credulity in the law of Moses, of which they knew nothing; and its echo, eighteen hundred years afterwards, is now repeated, not only by " the poor Indian, whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds or hears him in the wind," but by every conscience which is not, at least partially, seared with modern infidelity, or, in other words, " believes too little." While the Pilgrim Fathers adopted the Mosaic code, and at times most wrongfully executed per- sons for crimes which did not amount at all to wilful murder, some of the standard bearers of (what remains of) their church polity have im- agined that under the light of the nineteenth cen- tury the comfort and pleasure of the murderer, and not the safety of the innocent, nor the will of the eternal Lawgiver, should regulate capital punish- ment ; and they consequently desire its abolition. To overthrow it, the usual modern appliances have been provided. A society has been formed, a mag- CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 267 azine has been published, and Jecturers have been employed. Almost every new winter witnesses in Boston (which has been emphatically styled, by the Rev. A. King, Congregationalist minister of Dublin, " the Mount Zion of the whole earth ") the organi- zation of a new society for the removal of some of " the ills which flesh is heir to ; " and in these the same persons are often found acting in similar positions. Hence in societies, as different in name as "anti-Sabbath," "anti-capital punishment," and " spiritual rapping," the same characters may be found acting their brief part in each. Their hallu- cinations might be considered comparatively harm- less if they labored only in their legitimate sphere ; but they pretend also to know the proper treatment of the criminal, the whole subject of prison reform, and that of the prevention of crime, and on these subjects they feel qualified to enlighten the govern- ments of the earth. In proof of this I quote from " a letter " addressed " to the clergymen of America," dated " Boston, March 4, 1851," and signed " Charles Spear : " " And the present year we have designed to visit Europe for six months, to meet the questions of the British government, and to create a friendly feeling between England and America on the great question of the prevention of crime. Hon. Daniel "Webster has given us a letter addressed to her majesty's principal secretary of state for the home department. The government has thus sanctioned this movement. Will you not, then, deem it a 268 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. privilege to assist in a work of so high a character? or if you have any facts or peculiar views, please forward them, (post paid,) and they will be con- veyed to England. Please forward any means, however small, before May 1, 1851, and the sums will be faithfully appropriated by the committee." How much illumination, on all or each of these important topics, the British government received from this reverend Universalist Editor, I am not informed ; but in the parturition of societyism for 1852, he appears as a vice president for a spirit- ual rapping association, of a meeting of which a notice was thus taken, in September, 1852, by the Boston papers : — " A few unquestionable lunatics assembled in our city last week, and held what they called a ' Con- vention of Spiritualists? A few sorry and deluded specimens of humanity took part in the proceed- ings of the convention, which were of a nature little calculated to excite any other sensation than those of disgust and pity. A majority of the audi- ence were present from curiosity, that ever-impel- ling element in the popular mind. There is always a class that will encourage any charlatanism, how- ever palpable and ridiculous, by perpetually dancing attendance upon it. It is this which gives vitality to so many humbugs of the day — spiritualism among them. " The proceedings in the convention did not vary from those which have been practised in other CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 269 places where the ' mediums ' have been pleased to exhibit their foolish ' manifestations.' Several men and women, who ought to be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, got up and made queer antics in speech and person ; one moment swinging their arms, another their bodies, and then spouting sick- ening messes of nonsense — all the while pretend- ing to be in communication with the < spirit world.' This is not only the height of folly, but, as we con- ceive it, the summit of blasphemy. It is painful to see these lunatics play their madhouse didoes. Poor, imbecile, fallen, shattered specimens of hu- manity, vainly imagining themselves in a land of spirits, a knowledge of which it is as utterly impos- sible for mankind to have as it is to look a million years into the future. The whole thing is based on the most miserable of delusions, and so sure as it is allowed to progress, will the madhouse receive its victims by scores. " We learn that it is the intention of these ' spirit- ual ' charlatans to hold weekly meetings in this city. We are sorry to hear it. We had hoped that such a delusion — so fearfully prolific of evil, and so en- tirely innocent of a possibility of good — would have no permanent countenance in this commu- nity. We still think the humbug will speedily ex- plode. " The Courier closes an account of the conven- tion as follows : ' At such a spectacle of " Bedlam broke loose " as is displayed in this exhibition of 23* 270 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. charlatans and dupes, one is overcome with mingled emotions of indignation and melancholy. The knaves who encourage this monstrous and wicked delusion deserve to be treated as public criminals. The poor creatures who are led away and besotted by their tricks should be seat to a lunatic asylum, or cured of the disorder in their brains by being set to earn 'a living in some decent employment.' " We echo amen, most heartily, though the delu- sion does include John M. Spear, Rev. Charles Spear, Rev. Adin Ballou, Andrew Jackson Davis, Wm. Porter, Le Roy Sunderland, Eliza J. Kinney, Eunice Cobb, and others." * Judging from the devastation of sound mind produced by the abetters of this new society in New England and elsewhere,! if ne should revisit Britain, thus so honorably introduced, it would not appear astonishing if lunatic asylums might be found increasingly useful. In some of those states where Congregational- ism moulds public opinion and the laws, the aboli- tion of this penalty has taken place. Michigan, in 1846, set the example, and her grand juries (in De- troit, especially) have begged, and prayed, and en- treated its restoration. But in vain. Among some believers in this ecclesiastical polity it is loudly hinted that even grand juries are rather troublesome * Boston Bee. t In the New York State Lunatic Asylum last year, (1853,) there were fourtcon admissions from the effects of spiritual rapping. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 271 to certain classes, and that they must pass into ob- livion to promote " the largest liberty." Upon this career of experiment Rhode Island next entered, and in 1852 declared that, " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall " not " his blood be shed." However, according to the humane and philanthrophic Miss Dix,this state requires commis- eration as well as blame, being the most extensively insane of any in the Union,* and (according to her)" about ten times as much so as South Carolina. Massachusetts, favored earliest and most effectually by the labors of the Messrs. Spears, has succeeded in robbing the gallows of the murderer for a year, by consigning him to prison, and then to be executed only when the governor and his council may so agree to order. To prove that such legislators have more wisdom and philanthropy than God himself, the prison where he will be comfortably maintained is to be the resting-place of the murderer, at least for that period. The result must undoubtedly be an in- crease of wilful murder, and of insecurity to human life. Revenge and passion can easily borrow the garb of somnambulism, drunkenness, or insanity, and the deliberate murderer, or the burglar or the highway robber who becomes one, under these ex- tenuations, or others of equal force, may serve for a short term, return to liberty to repeat the same * Perhaps we must now except California. 272 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. lesson, and serve a second, or third term it may be, at the bench, or forge, and be told by " the prisoner's friend," that, as there is no hell into which the wicked are to be turned at death, he suffers his pun- ishment for crime now, by eating his bread " in the sweat of his face," in almost the same manner in which, if he had never become a murderer, he would have earned a lawful living, and precisely in the same manner in which multitudes of Christian mechanics " provide things honest in the sight of all men." * It is true, that to some minds the associations connected with the inner walls of a state prison would not be delightful ; but man is greatly the creature of custom, and about matters of taste human opinions are very varied. Prelacy, then, on the one hand, believes too much, and is liable to extend capital punishment beyond its legitimate appointment ; and it has very, very often done so ; while modern Congregationalism, on the other hand, when able to establish "the cus- tom," will consider it " sufficiently divine," and * The State of Wisconsin was among the first to adopt the plan of imprisonment for life for the crime of murder. The mode has been tried, and the result is unsatisfactory. Attempts are now making to return to the old mode of punishment by death. Success will not probably crown their efforts at once, but that this will be the final re- sult we cannot doubt. A bill has passed the lower house to modify the law, by a vote of thirty-six to twenty-seven, making the penalty of murder death, after an imprisonment of ten years. This, to us, seems more revolting than death after a few weeks or months' interval after sentence. — Erie Gazette, April, 1854. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 273 maintain that in this age of " progress," " whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall " not " his blood be shed." Yet where justice is robbed of her retrib- utive jurisdiction over the murderer, men soon cast off the fear of God, and are eventually encouraged for some paltry consideration, first to act as robbers, and then, for personal security, to imbrue their hands in human blood. Thus where capital punish- ment has -been set aside, a number of men may combine to murder one person, and if in this case one murderer does not always, or often, perpetrate the crime a second or third time, (although this is not impossible,) yet two, three, four, or five may be- come murderers by unitedly taking one life.* On this mixed question, then, in which the teach- ings of nature are confirmed by the word of God, our generic divisions have each a distinct and char- acteristic influence. * "Murder will out. — Three out of five of the murderers of Mr. Thomas Easterbrook, of Reading, Vermont, the gentleman -who, it will' be remembered, left that place in December last for St. Joseph county, Michigan, where he was engaged to marry a lady, and who never reached his place of destination, have been discovered, and are now in jail. The officers are now searching for the others. Mr. Easter- brook was murdered, and robbed in a wood on the way to the house of his betrothed by these five ruffians, and his body buried under a tree. One of the wretches, while under arrest on a charge of larceny, con- fessed the crime, and criminated his companions." — Boston Joi&nal, July 28, 1854. CHAPTER XX. THEIR RESPECTIVE VIEWS OF WITNESS-BEARING AND OATHS. " A lawful oath is a part of religious worship, wherein, upon just occasion, the person swearing solemnly calleth God to witness what he asserteth or promiseth, and to judge him according to the truth or falsehood of what he sweareth. The name of God only is that by which men ought to swear, and therein it is to be used with all holy fear and reverence." Such is the Presbyterian view of a lawful oath, which " for confirmation is," to them, " an end of all strife." In taking it, their simple scriptural form is the uplifting of the right hand, and swearing by the living God " in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness." In this act Protestant Prelacy interposes the lay- ing of the hand of the juror upon the sacred vol- ume, kissing of the Gospels, or the Bible which includes them ; and Popery adds to the word of God, as necessary to a binding oath, that the juror depose upon the picture of the cross officially consecrated. To this she superadds, when most (274) WITNESS-BEARING AND OATHS. 275 conducive to her interests, a mental reservation ; * and her pope claims the right and authority of re- leasing subjects, being Papists, at his pleasure from allegiance to other earthly sovereigns. Prelacy may thus vary from Presbyterianism in the design, the form, and in the binding obligation of an oath. Both, however, refer the person about to be sworn to the living God, and to vengeance beyond the grave. Among some sects of Congregationalists a diver- * Hence it was stated by Lord Lyndhurst, in the House of Lords, when explaining the introduction of the words " on the true faith of a Christian " into the British oath of abjuration, that "in the third year of James I., search was made in the chamber of Francis Tresham, one of the conspirators in the gunpowder plot, in which was found a manu- script entitled a ' Treatise on Equivocation,' which had been altered in many places by Garnett, superior of the Jesuits, and which was marked with the imjwimoiur of Blackhall, at that time archpriest. This manuscript was made use of on the trial of the persons connected with the plot. The object of the treatise is to show how the obligation of an oath may be avoided. In one of the chapters the doctrine is laid down, that if a question is put to you which you think you are not in conscience bound to answer, you may answer the question with words uttered aloud, but at the same time qualify those words with other words uttered mentally, which, taken in connection with the words uttered aloud, will prevent your taking a false oath. Thus, if a magistrate, say, asks, • Were you in London at such a time ? ' you may say aloud, ' I was not in London,' and swear to it, but at the same time you may add mentally, ' Not for an improper purpose,' which mental reservation will save you from a false oath. It is remarkable, my lords, that in the letters of Pascal he ascribes to the Jesuits pre- cisely the species of equivocation which we have here laid down as a principle, in the handwriting of the superior of the Jesuits. It was in the same year that for the first time there were introduced into the oaths the words ' without equivocation, mental evasion, or secret reser- vation whatsoever.' " — See London Times, June 1, 1853. 276 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. sity of opinion and practice exists as to both the necessity of an oath at all, on the one hand, and the punishment allotted to the violation of it upon the other. While the Orthodox, Eegular Baptists, and many other sects, in administering an oath, employ the same forms with Presbyterians, and view the obliga- tion which it imposes as imperishable, one sect, who eschew both a bishop and a presbytery, deny the legality of an oath altogether. The Friends pro- fess under all circumstances simply to affirm, or to let their "yea be yea" and their " nay nay," sup- posing that our Lord in this instruction opposed all lawful as well as all profane oaths. By conse- quence, they must be viewed as at all times under oath, in the most trivial affairs and duties of life, and the least deviation from truth, then, in their case, is not simply a lie, but perjury. There is, then, one sin which a Friend can never commit: — he can never lie ; and to one part of " the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone " (Rev. xxi. 8) none can ever go from the feet of George Fox or Elias Hicks. Another species under this generic division, in denying the perpetuity of future punishment, di- vests an oath of its vitality as a motive power for the declaration of truth, when surrounded by the meshes of interest. In judicial proceedings, with the usual form they may readily comply ; yet ban- ish hell, and the idea of the perpetuity of its tor- WITNESS-BEARING AND OATHS. 277 ments to the perjured person from the engagement, and all the Auburn s, Charlestowns, and Sing Sings in America will not bind such a believer, with abso- lute certainty, to declare " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth " so long as he does not " fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." Another tendency of many of the elements of Congregationalism, or believing too little in rela- tion to the word of God, is not only to deny that he " can destroy both soul and body in hell," but to doubt and ultimately to deny his very existence altogether. Hence practical atheism, that is, " pro- fessing to believe in God, and yet acting contrary to this belief," is fearfully common and increasing, while speculative atheism, or denying the being of God, is not unknown among some of the descend- ants of the Puritans. The assertions of atheists in evidence have been hitherto " ruled out " and disal- lowed by the bench, both in the national and state courts, on different occasions ; but so far has the fear of God departed from a portion of the inhab- itants of this commonwealth, that the Senate of Massachusetts, in 1852, passed a bill, as an amend- ment to the law of evidence, allowing the testi- mony of atheists, which was, by a vote of ninety- five to seventy-four, rejected in the house. In 1853-4, the matter was pressed with pertinacity, and among the petitions in its favor was one headed by a prominent member of . the Suffolk bar. 24 278 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. " Remove God once out of heaven, and there will never be any gods upon the earth;" and low in- deed must be the condition of society, when the testimony of him who feareth God and regardeth an oath, is placed on a level with the word of " the fool," who hath said in his heart, " There is no God." These illustrations, which might be much ex- tended, will afford to the reader proof, that on this question of testimony and oaths the plastic hand of church government leaves a distinct impression. CHAPTER XXL A SUMMARY OF COMPARATIVE RELATIVE INFLUENCES AND TENDENCIES. In confirmation of my position, I might have proceeded to a further detail, by the application of it to other moral and social subjects, such as asso- ciations for the promotion of temperance, and have more universally applied it to those which are strictly religious. But I trust my readers will now see that, account for it as they will, no two of these three radical divisions of ecclesiastical polity re- ceive the word of God and believe it precisely alike. The supposition has been entertained that our Creator has impressed the idea of a trinity upon all his works, as some objects, such as light, are reducible to three, and only to three, simple, pri- mary, or elementary principles. Whether my radi- cal idea of church government has any connection with such a cause, I know not; yet from the above three specific forms and their compounds, all the sects in Christendom (amounting to more than one hundred) who believe, or profess to believe, the Bible, are formed. (279) 280 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. In studying the philosophy of sectarianism, by tracing effects to causes, distinguishing things that differ, and classifying those sects which agree, we thus find that prelacy, while the least ramified, not only arose with,* but has had an uninterrupted existence through, " the dark ages," a covering of her own spreading, and a mantle with which, if not counteracted by the other forms, it is very highly probable she would again cover the face of Christendom. Various ingredients in this order of polity conspire to this probability. Under it the least amount of cultivated intellect and purified thought is required among the masses of man- kind. The absence of these is compensated by the bold assumptions and pretensions of those heaven- exalted and favored races of men, priests and em- perors, who finding that " ignorance is " (at least oftentimes) " the mother of devotion," and that the credulity of the unlearned is frequently very great, lord it over their fellow-mortals.f Under this * " Hippolytus and his Age," a recently discovered treatise of the third century, represents its author as protesting against the attempted usurpations of the incipient prelacy, and as asserting the apostolicity of Presbyterianism. Hippolytus appears to have nourished about A. D. 225; he was a member of the presbytery of Home, and exercised the pastorate within a few miles of that city. Chevalier Bunsen, no friend to the Presbyterian polity, makes the important admission, when expounding the views of the author, that " his ecclesiastical polity may be named Presbyterian." — Hugh Miller. f Hence, from London, on February 17, 1854, wrote Nuncio Bedini, who had once " governed a million of the subjects of the Pontifical States," " I will not retract one of the innumerable benedictions which I A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 281 division it is " like priest, like people," emphatically. It is also no matter of astonishment that the Papal church should claim unity, and that the Oriental and Anglican should so closely fraternize with her in her pretensions, for each of them is a tree from the same root, and founded on a faith broader than the word of God ; a faith resting on the statements of " early writers " in relation to " genealogies " of popes, " which minister questions rather than godly edifying." A similar faith, destitute of scriptural precision, also underlies Wesleyan and Episcopal Methodism. Its founder (according to the Rev. Augustus Top- lady) received the thread of apostolic succession at Oxford through an Anglican prelate ; and to his preachers and successors he not only left his whole power of ordination and of rule, thus obtained, with all its accumulated interest, for about forty years, but on their behalf besought an Armenian bishop "to ordain several of his lay preachers, ac- cording to the manner of which he called the Greek church, and they did dress and officiate as clergy- men of the church of England in consequence of that ordination." The application of the marline- have scattered on the land of Columbus — the American people whom I blessed with all my soul in their institutions, in their churches, in their sick, and in their young children. It was very just that I should call the attention of the American people to that portentous moving of the pupils of the wonderful picture of the blessed Virgin of Rimini which took place during my civil jurisdiction over the government of Bologna." 24* 282 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. spike, by that " Bishop of Arcadia, Erasmus," to the cord of the founder of Methodism, (previously amplified by no inconsiderable assumption,) gave it all necessary dimensions to fit the hawses of his new ark. He consequently could cast his anchor into the very Tiber, and in his own estimation " read his title clear " to ecclesiastical authority. As a result or fruit of his ambition combined with his power, as thus by himself established, the rulers of this denomination were, in England, in 1852, charged with "the virtual setting aside of the Holy Scriptures, as the only rule of faith and practice, and the substitution of human authorities in their stead." Human authority, then, to a greater or less extent, shares the honor due alone to the word of God, in all the prelatic portions of Chris- tendom. Dominion, where it is obtained, whether civil or religious, under this regimen, must be of a centralizing and consolidating character, and can be shared only by a few, to whom the many are subservient. None but a bold, daring spirit can break its force, or direct it into new channels. Such were Luther, Ignatius Loyola, King Henry VIIL, John Wesley, and Napoleon, and such is Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. No inconsiderable proportion of the wars of Christendom have arisen from the attempts of as- pirants to obtain this power, both in church and state. Of it all the pope claims sole possession. The largest amount of rational liberty, social en- A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 283 joyment, and religious improvement cannot, then, be found under this ecclesiastical form of regimen, while " Cossack " is the significant term by which the comprehensive mind of Napoleon designated its civil influences wherever they are fully felt, and such will ever be its native tendencies. When counteracted in civil rule by the equalizing influ- ences of presbytery as a coefficient, it results in a limited monarchy, guarded by constitutional pow- ers, and forms a very high order of government. Not only has this form of ecclesiastical regimen the most powerful nfluence in Christendom, but it is also destined largely to increase, until the diffu- sion of general intelligence, and especially of " sound doctrine/' together with the establishment of pres- byterial rule in the church militant, leaven a large proportion of the millions now actually, or pro- spectively, under its influences ; and those imposing and awe-producing arrangements in religious wor- ship, which have c;iven to it vigorous vitality, are supplanted by the simple, scriptural order of pure Presbyterianism. The comparative relative influences of Presby- terianism have as yet, in modern times, had but little pure religious or civil illustration. Established as it was by Emmanuel after the order of the syna- gogue, (Luke iv. 15, 16,) the first ministers of this denomination, beginning at Jerusalem, went every where from that city, preaching the word, authorita- tively and officially appointing (when by their own 284 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. directions looked out by the brethren) deacons or almoners over the " tables " of the poor, whose " business " was " to serve tables in the daily minis- tration " of "carnal things," ordaining over them, wherever they made or found disciples, elders in every city and in every church, who were thus made overseers or bishops over a single flock by the Holy Ghost, separating to the work of the ministry, by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, faith- ful men, who could rightly divide the word of truth, and who became to those to whom they were sent the savor of life unto life or of death unto death ; and from time to time referring such matters of doctrine and discipline as a presbytery could not settle ( Acts xv.) by representatives from the churches where difficulties existed, to an assembly of apostles and other elders, constituted as a supreme judicial court, who sent down their ordained " decrees " to all the presbyteries and churches, to be by them religiously kept. Thus teaching his followers " to observe all things whatsoever " Christ had "com- manded by his apostles," the other elders of the churches took the oversight of their respective flocks willingly, met in a scriptural manner errors in doctrine, government, worship, and discipline, and thus taking the appointed care of the house of God, " the pleasure of the Lord prospered in their hands." Then were the golden days of ministerial effi- ciency, when popes, cardinals, archbishops, deans, A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 285 and archdeacons were unknown as lords over God's heritage, when each single church had a plurality of bishops, (Acts xx. 28,) and when the genius of Congregationalism, checked by the apostle in the bud, had only begun to say, " I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas," each admiring the man, the eloquent or the beautiful man. Then ec- clesiastics were charged with "turning the world upside down,*' and for centuries " the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the church," until, for- getful that the kingdom of her Master is not of this world, she fell asleep on the lap of the state, and was shorn of those locks under which her supernatural strength had been hitherto concealed. " Lords many" appeared, and the scriptural parity of her ministry was denied, while Peter the apostle, who declared in "words of truth and soberness," that he was an elder, and in his lifetime exhorted other elders to perform their duty, was, without his own consent (being either asked or given) eventually canonized, and in his name his imaginary successors at Rome were superstitiously and blasphemously elevated, by an ample faith, to the post of vicars apostolic of God on earth. Then in due time Prelacy had " her perfect work." " The church " prelatic became the way to life ever- lasting throughout Christendom, excepting among the faithful Waldenses ; and excepting among these witnesses of heaven, this "remnant accordinsfto the election of grace," Presbytery had her oblivious 286 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. sleep during the night of "the dark ages." To rescue her from oblivion, to rake her from the dust, to bless the church militant with her scriptural order, and to cast abroad the salt of life for the civil as well as spiritual welfare of the nations, divine Providence raised up Zwinglius, Calvin, their as- sociates and successors, to " vindicate the ways of God to man." While the moral courage of Luther became proverbial, and will ever continue to be so, none, excepting that of his master, is bespattered with more ignominy than the name of John Cal- vin ; who steering equally clear of the Chary bdis of prelacy, and the Scylla of the social compact, has, in " words of truth," asserted, " Nobody has yet ap- peared who could prove that we have altered any one thing which God has commanded, or that we have appointed any new thing contrary to his word, or that we have turned aside from the truth to fol- low any evil opinion." In reference to the influ- ences of his scriptural doctrines under this regimen on civil institutions, an eminent historian has made the statement, that " to no man since the days of the apostles is civil liberty more indebted than to John Calvin." The antiseptic influences of " a Calvin- istic creed " have not only been felt in preserving from the putrefaction of despotism those spots of Europe which have even the shadow of civil liberty, but on it, as brought by the Anglo-Saxons to North America, was founded eventually the republic of the United States. A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 287 Upon this church regimen, drawn, as we have seen, by Calvin and others from the word of God, the civil government of most of the separate commonwealths was eventually founded ; and to preserve and perpetu- ate the august fabric which unitedly they now form, the genius and purity of Presbyterianism will ever be required. On the diffusion of general intelligence and the inculcation of scriptural morality, the na- tional character was at first moulded, and any devia- tions from these, either by a return to prelacy in any of its forms, or to modern Congregationalism, must be to it proportionably destructive. Hence these opposite extremes are the obvious dangers which menace the American Union and the enjoyment of perpetual religious liberty under its shadow. As all abso- lutism in the state rea t uires a priesthood resting solely on an " apostolical succession," (and hence " no bishop, no king,") so our republic must always suffer friction in every department of its operations of a purely moral character, (such as the epmloyment of national or state chaplains,) and even in those of its civil legislatures, judiciaries, or executive trusts, just as these offices are occupied, more or less, by those who have a faith founded directly or indirectly upon the monarch on the banks of the Tiber.* Hence the centralizing tendency of Episcopalian forms in * That Montgomery, Lafayette, Pulaski, DeKalb, Steuben, and others were under this spiritual faith, is not conclusive proof of the error of my position that the religious sentiment will rule the civil. They are only exceptions. 288 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. prayer and other religious exercises in our army and navy, although quite in keeping with the existence of those necessary evils, will, just so far as their power is felt, cherish a feeling in those who engage in them, and those who are pleased with them, hostile to republican simplicity. So distinctly has the tendency to prelatic forms in our governmental chaplainships been felt, that the leading branch of the Presbyterian church in the Union has adopted the anti-republic and doubtful expediency of select- ing and publishing a compilation of prayers for the use of chaplains in the army or navy, by way of competition with Episcopacy. The tendency and influence of modern Congre- gationalism upon our civil and religious liberty are not at all of a healthful character. A progressive democracy in the state, whatever may be its atti- tude to availability and expediency among politi- cians, will proportionably manifest a tendency to exclude prayer and religious instruction from legis- lation and government, and to level to the dust of anarchy genuine liberty. Hence those varied sec- tarian divisions under that form of ecclesiastical regimen (which is built upon the faith that the hand of Providence may render a custom " sufficiently divine ") must exercise a false charity, which em- braces error and truth alike, have a destructive tendency, in a direction opposite to prelacy ; and as their influences are extended, prayer for the blessing of " the God of all grace " upon legislation A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 289 or government will be deemed less indispensable. From this source arises the danger of neology, rationalism, and succeeding kindred affinities of doctrinal errors, as they would prevent the employ- ment of evangelical chaplains in our halls of legis- lation, by the cry of " priestcraft," " church and state," &c. For our national domain, two opposite influences are thus in contest — superstition and insubordina- tion ; the one desirous to subordinate our energies, in the same manner as the nations of Southern Europe are, to the Pope of Rome, who blasphe- mously claims the right to say, " By me kings (ought to) reign, and princes decree justice, even all the nobles of the earth ; " the other, enraged at the aid afforded to Christianity by the state, as " the earth " is made to " help the woman," by allowing to all " freedom to worship God," would trample our liberties, civil and religious, in the mire of licen- tiousness. Consequently, let either of these have the power of control, and the civil and religious liberty of the United States will exist only in his- tory. Preservation from either extreme can be found alone in Presbyterianism, and so soon as it is overborne by either of them, or by them both combined, the experiment of self-government, now so long, so largely, and so happily made by this nation, will be a perfect failure. Anarchy, martial law, and perhaps afterwards a limited monarchy, will ensue on the one hand, or absolutism will 25 290 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. concentrate unlimited power in the hands of the usurper, on the other.* In connection, then, with the philosophy of secta- rianism, the tendency of each specific form of govern- ment, on all matters of public weal or woe, civil and religious, is a subject of interesting study to every true philanthropist. As the influences of Presbyte- rianism were unknown for nearly a century in these colonies, after both the other forms had begun to exert their energies in forming social welfare, so, if this regimen had never been forced across the Atlantic, it is reasonable to conclude that a numer- ous group of colonies would have continued to yield homage to regal authority, either remote or local. By those, then, who suppose that the exist- ence and influences of republicanism on this conti- nent have been, or may yet be, of any advantage to our race, Presbyterianism can never be despised, neither in its recorded history, its present realities, nor its future mission. This consideration applies with equal force to the early Congregationalism of New England, so far as it adopted the presbyterial order of church government. * Since writing the above, I have seen this statement of General Cass: "Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, I believe the fate of republican governments is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and that a people who repel its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.'" If this be true of our holy religion generally, in its three different forms, it is preeminently correct of true Presbyte- rianism, without which it is doubtful whether pure republicanism could long advantageously exist. A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 291 Between the ecclesiastical order of " the Pilgrim Fathers " and the progressive Congregationalism of the middle of the nineteenth century, a chasm of no inconsiderable extent exists. The modern order, we have seen, makes no provision for honor- ing " the faces of the elders," and makes the voice of the people, or, at least, of the members of the church, or, again, if this be objected to, at least of the male members of the church, jure divino, the will and authority of God in their churches. Not so, in either shape, the order established by those officiating in religious matters among the one hun- dred and one passengers of the Mayflower, adopted December 31, 1620. " Rule III. of Church Government, Section 6. — That the officers appointed by Christ for this imbodied church are, in some respects, of three sorts ; in others but two, viz. : 1. Pastors, or teaching elders, who have the power both of overseeing, teaching, administering the sacraments, and ruling too, and being chiefly to give themselves to study- ing, teaching, and the spiritual care of the flock, are, therefore, to be maintained. 2. Mere ruling elders, who" are to help the pastor in overseeing and ruling ; that their offices be not temporary, as among the Dutch and French churches, but con- tinual. Ajid being also qualified in some degree to teach, they are to teach only occasionally, through necessity, or in the pastor's absence or illness; but being not to give themselves to study or teaching, 292 PHILOSOPHY OP SECTARIANISM. they have no need of maintenance. That the elders of both sorts form the presbytery of overseers and rulers which should be in- every particular church, and are in Scripture sometimes called presbyters or elders, sometimes bishops or overseers, sometimes guides, and sometimes rulers. 3. Deacons, who are to take care of the poor, and of the church's treasure ; to distribute for the support of the pastor, the supply of the needy, the propagation of re- ligion, and to minister at the Lord's table." * In this, so far as it extends, we find pure Presby- terianism, defective only in two essentials, that of supplanting the ■ ministrations of the ruling elders at the Lord's table by the inferior order of deacons, who in this arrangement are thrust into the office of their superiors, and in consequence of which, as the elders were thus shorn of their most solemn official duty and honor, f the office was eventually, by the same intrusion, totally superseded in New England. This otherwise scriptural order of gov- ernment was also defective from its isolated position, having no court of review, appeal, or of final de- cision, nothing beyond mere advice. It conse- quently bore within itself the seeds of dissolution, the germinating of which caused Jonathan Edwards * Prince's New England Chronology, p. 92, Vol. I. f Said the chivalrous Sir Ralph Abercrombie upon his death bed, " I have been successful in the battles of my country, but I esteem it as an honor above all my victories, that as a ruling elder I have been permitted to distribute the sacramental elements to my fellow-Chris- tians at the Lord's table." A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 293 to declare, " I have long been perfectly out of con- ceit of our unsettled, independent, confused way of church government in this land." Being, how- ever, so very extensively scriptural in its arrange- ments, this order, adopted by " the Pilgrim Fathers," had a powerful conservative and subordinating in- fluence on the early formation of society in New England. Within the last half century, the influences of modern Congregationalism in an opposite direction have been greatly increased, when we make a col- lective estimate of the progress of the diversified sects under its banner. By the press its " schemes" of doctrine have been widely diffused, and over this powerful agency this regimen has an increasing influence, much more effective in scattering u divers and strange doctrines " than any other of its efficien- cies. Hence, when a work subservient to any of its peculiarities, but especially to the promotion of its own specific interests, appears, it is lauded by much of the press from Eastport to the Golden Gate. A close survey of the history and character of these ever-ready heralds will usually show that they have a modern Xew England origin, and that they are promoting a common interest.* Having the * Thus we see that the Xew York Independent puffed upon " hear- say " the pollutions which Robinson had gleaned at the Five Points. These had been written by a friendly editor of kindred origin, and he was thus aided in increasing his wealth. " We knew that wise and good people were pleased with the Tribune stories." — Xtic' York In- dependent, February 16, 1854. 25* 294 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. influences of all hymnology, that of the press to a great extent, and a large share of the other appli- ances of the age, under her direction, orthodox Con- gregationalism has now swept loose from her em- brace of Presbyterianism, which she had held since 1801. When what is now "the New School" General Assembly was, in 1837, exscinded by the Old School one, her Rev. Drs. Beechers, Pattons, Lansings, and Cleavelands exposed themselves for "constitutional" Presbyterianism on "the high places of the field;" but in 1852 we find them at Albany, associated by their affinities in a general defence of modern Congregationalism. That single assembly, denominated " a convention," bore strong testimony to the inefficiency of isolated groups under " the social compact," and to the necessity of presbyterial action by representation in all eccle- siastical matters, as the dictate both of reason and of revelation. Just as Congregationalists abandon the separate action of single sovereign churches for consociations, or are governed, led, directed, advised (call it what you please) by resolutions of their ministers and experienced church members, so they proclaim that their ecclesiastical order, being, as to both its " customs " and " principles," but a hu- man expedient, is inefficient as well as unscriptural. The tendency of tbis radical division is to a multiplied diversity. Hence, in surveying it, we are not to imagine that it is wholly limited to the Orthodox and to the varied sects of Baptists. Other A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 295 sects, of no inconsiderable magnitude, have grown from the root of modern Congregationalism In 1770, the Rev. John Murray first preached in New York ; but finding it an ungenial soil at that time for Congregational church government, and especially for his type of it, he preached his first sermon in Boston on the 30th of October, 1783. Here, not only were his labors successful, but he was in due time succeeded by the Chalmers of Universalism, Hosea Ballou. He was the son of a Baptist clergyman in New Hampshire, and for a time a member of his father's church ; but impelled by that mental insta- bility which this regimen promotes, and believing less than the whole counsel of God, he eventually became a Universalist. In 1791 he became a preacher. At Rutland, Vermont, in June, 1805, in his presence, the error of his leading doctrine was most unsparingly demolished by the Rev. Lemuel Haynes, in a sermon from Genesis iii. 4. Still he fulfilled his mission. For fifty years the " imita- tions" of Dr. Watts had familiarized the minds of Congregationalists in America with his doctrine that Christ came " to make his blessings flow, Far as the curse is found ; " (Ps. xcviii. 13.) and Mr. Ballou, on coming to Boston, in 1817, thrust in his sickle, and speedily gathered an abun- dant harvest. As the Puritan city has been called " the Mount Zion of the whole earth," so her wor- shippers carry her doctrines to remote and distant 296 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. places, as well as throughout New England. Con- sequently, says his eulogist, " When Mr. Ballou commenced his career, his denomination was in its infancy, and had a mere handful of men. When he died, in June, 1852, there were nineteen annual state conventions, one thousand and seventy socie- ties, and six hundred and twelve preachers." From the same root Unitarianism, in 1785, blos- somed in King's Chapel, Boston, when Mr. Free- man received a popular ordination from and by the vestry, wardens, and people of his parish. It now numbers in Massachusetts about one hundred and sixty-two preachers, has for years controlled the prominent state university, and possesses, proba- bly, two fifths of the wealth and intelligence of the New England metropolis. It has produced various proficients in the fine arts, and the denomination has been adorned with the eloquence of a Chan- ning. We have seen that at least twenty-nine out of the forty-one sects in " the Eeserve " are the off- spring of Congregationalism; and although all "the Orthodox " in the east, and in that " New England of the west," appear to have been harmoniously rep- resented at Albany, in 1852, yet as powerfully con- flicting views in, at least, as violent a tone of opposi- tion, as if all church power were (according to their ideas) lodged without the church, and in church offi- cers alone, (as it is among Presbyterians and Epis- copalians,) have^been held, at times, in relation to A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 297 their ". schemes " and peculiar dogmas.* The Chris- tian Observatory of Boston, for August, 1847, shows that " the things which make for peace " are not. more largely found where every church does " what is right in her own eyes " than where churches are under the supposed bondage of presbyteries, and that neither does " brotherly love " more cordially prevail in all quarters of the social compact than under the other forms of rule. In the above-named periodical, and at that date, we find the Oberlin Quarterly Review, edited by the Rev. Mr. Mahan and the Rev. Mr. Finney, thus hit off: " In the May number (of that year, they publish) an article entitled ' Authority a Prerogative of the Minis- terial Office.' It is a rough piece of work, written against demagogues, agrarians, socialists, and level- lers in church and state. Against these it stiffly maintains the prerogative of the ministry, asserting ' that the pastor stands in Christ's stead to the flock, and hence occupies a position of authority,' and that he is ' the servant of God, and not the servant of the people.' ' We urge our doctrines,' * Following their example, we find the Presbyterian doctors of New Albany and Danville, in 1853-4, waging an unholy and disgraceful war, so that we would gladly say, " Tell it not in Gath ; " yet it forms one of " the signs of the times," indicative of not only an unhallowed cen- tralization of ecclesiastical power around chartered corporations for literary or theological purposes, hostile to, if not destructive of, pres- byterial parity, and before which sometimes even good men quail, but also an evidence that the sternness of Presbyterian discipline has been neglected on account of, cr overborne, by social position. 298 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. he says, ' as a check to error, a bridle to fanaticism, and an obstacle to religious anarchy.' " " We have long made it," says the Observatory, " a point not to be astonished at any monsters generated by the rich mud of Oberlin, or we might have been a little sur- prised to see the doctrine of a priestly domina- tion starting out of it, like the frogs which Herodo- tus describes as produced by the prolific slime of the Nile, the upper half pawing and croaking, while the nether portion is still in the miry state. But as Oberlin has been a hotbed for spawning out so many frogs of fanaticism, it is about right that it should hatch out, at least, one crocodile to devour them again. On the whole, it is not so very strange that they who have waked the tempest of anarchy should seek shelter from their own whirl- winds in the dead calm of ecclesiastical despotism." Here one of the phases of Congregationalism, as says the Observatory, " comes out at the opposite extreme." This is not only a dash at the Quarterly, but also a not unfrequent occurrence, which is an evidence of the mental instability produced by this order of ecclesiastical rule. Consequently we have, among many others, a Mr. Brownson, who has walked through dry places under the compact theory,* seeking rest, but finding none, at last ensconcing himself in the lap of " Holy Mother," and laboring * " Stand from under. — The Puritan Recorder alludes to a well- known theological writer in this vicinity as • that Calvinistic, Unitarian, Infidel, Catholic Brownson.' " — Popish paper. A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 299 to persuade all men that her mercies of rack, of sword, and fagot, are most tender, and devoutly to be embraced by all human kind. Again we see the same truth illustrated by Mr. Bakewell, editor of the Shepherd of the Valley, at St. Louis, who was first a Unitarian, secondly an Episcopalian, and thirdly a Romanist, who has announced to his readers (says the New York Observer of December 2, 1852) the discovery that " the Bible, or Protestant religion, neither clearly teaches who God is, nor what he commands." To omit mentioning various other illustrations of this truth, such as Mr. Capen, late of the Pacific Baptist Banner; the present editor of the Freeman's Journal, (Mr. McM.,) by abandoning the Presbyte- rian instructions enjoyed under a psalm-singing parental roof for the varied fields of human poetry, as the matter of praise to God, discovered by the Rev. Dr. Watts, explored by Joel Barlow, Esq., cul- tivated by the Rev. Dr. D wight, and decorated by various renowned sentimentalists among modern Congregationalists and hymn-singing Presbyterians, entered the field of prelacy, took his direct march for Rome, and serves her interests by a zeal against " heretics " which would not disgrace Loyola him- self. Thus the tendencies of the age proceed from a more to a less pure and severe order of doctrine and discipline, to a formal ritual, to worldly and fashionable worship, calculated to impress with awe 300 PHILOSOPHY OP SECTARIANISM. the Listener, and to afford to the critic an appropri- ate field. Let the observer, whose recollection can retrace the last thirty years, look at this subject, and he will see that while the knowledge of divine truth is now diffused more widely than in previous mod- ern times throughout the earth, it has been much diluted, and that its salutary influences are less clearly seen and less powerfully felt than they were at that period where it was then known. The tendencies of our age and times are to the two extremes — to a superabundant or to a defective faith, to prelacy or to Congregationalism in the church visible, and to " Cossack" or red republican- ism in the state. Papal prelacy drops none of the drapery which her abundant faith has ever woven and prepared for her personal use, where she can wear it with impunity ; and in this land, where she has liberty of conscience, (an enjoyment which she has very seldom, if ever, granted to others,) she does not hesitate through modesty to possess her full privi- lege. Protestant Episcopacy looks also with yearn- ing to that provincial supremacy which she once lost. Hence, to chaplaincies in the national navy and army, she is not slow to press the claims of her ritual. Evidences not a few are offered by Papal editors (who, we may reasonably suppose, speak ex cathedra) to show that our national liber- ties can be safe and prosperous only in the embrace and keeping of " Holy Mother," while her hierarchy, A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY; 301 who, it would seem, suppose that Ignorance is the mother of Devotion, make, in many of our cities, one apparently concerted attack upon our public schools, which, in opposition to their wishes, sub- serve the diffusion of general knowledge. As " coming events cast their shadows before," so those who can read her character have only to look down the vista of time until the day when she has the ability, to see the tragedy of her St. Bar- tholomew in France performed to the letter, from the Rio Grande to the Falls of Montmorenci. Towards the possessor of " the fisherman's ring," Puseyism makes steadfast and certain progress, while the more modest forms of prelacy, instead of a wider departure from Papal peculiarities, give, in some cases, symptoms of approach to that gentleman. Into these ranks, again, turn many nominal Pres- byterians who have a faith growing more ample than the teachings of the Bible, and to whom a stereotyped book of forms and ceremonies, decreed by " the church," becomes more attractive than the ever-fluctuating pabulum of human hymns. A Presbyterian who conscientiously adheres to the Psalms as the only matter of praise to God, can with difficulty descend to Prelacy, and never sink to Popery. But when it becomes, to those who have been such, a matter of little moment whether, instead of the appointed songs of Jehovah, the poetical effusions of uninspired men (which can be 26 302 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. adopted only by the leading ingredient of Popery, viz., will worship) are used, to them, then on the confines of Congregationalism, the peculiarities of Presbyterianism cease to be attractive, and towards the enjoyment of prelatic honors the inclination is not then diminished. From the same field in which a too limited faith forms the prominent in- gredient, men may run to the opposite extreme, as we have seen by the charge brought by the Chris- tain Observatory against the doctors of Oberlin. Hence, by Congregationalists, the use of organs and other Popish peculiarities is demanding the sanction of " the customs of the churches," and as has been shown, for what maybe wanting to render their introduction " sufficiently divine," ample com- pensation may be found in their efficiency to regu- late that " most troublesome of all classes of func- tionaries " (which also owes its origin to Popery) — a choir. Having become enamoured of this in- strument, those who progressively reject Christ as a Savior, and afterwards as an assistant Savior, and who eventually view him as a mere pattern for im- itation, or " a preeminent pattern of human perfec- tion," at least, sometimes, by turning Papists, direct their worship to the mother of our Lord. Ex- tremes, then, meet, so that those who once nomi- nally worshipped the Son, now, in reality, worship the mother. Still the great tendency of the Con- gregationalism of our ni^e is to Arminianism, Semi- Pelagianism, Pelagianism, Universalism, Socinian- A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 303 ism, Rationalism, Transcendentalism, and avowed infidelity in religion, (or rather irreligion,) and to " manifest destiny," where it is not suitably counter- acted in the state. Hence says the venerable and Rev. Dr. Dana, after occupying for forty-five years a seat at their board, to the trustees of the Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, " Will it be denied, my brethren, that in our own New England it has become common for members of churches called Orthodox to manifest disgust at hearing from the desk the very doctrines which they once professed solemnly to believe ? Will it be denied that unbelief is the grand and fatal malady of 'the day? The distinguishing doctrines, and the very inspiration of the Bible are vanishing from the minds of men, and a real, though disguised, infi- delity is occupying their places." While we have here " a bird's eye view " of its influences on doctrine, we have its tendency and relative influence on a vital part of divine worship thus stated by another of New England's own sons, Mr. Asa Fitz, author of the Parlor Harp: " By choir singing for religious purposes, the house of the living God, with all its hallowed associa- tions, has been changed to a place of godless fash- ion and heartless mummery. The spirit of ' the sweet singer of Israel' has departed from our churches, while the simple and pure worship of our fathers has degenerated into the soulless perform- ance of wood, brass, and iron."' 304 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. But view the tendencies of the present age, thus veering to these extremes, from what stand-point we please, we find this view of them verified and correct. Even those parts of the Presbyterian church which professedly retain the doctrine, wor- ship, and discipline of their fathers, are familiarizing their youth with the green (because unscriptural) fields of Congregationalism and Prelacy. Hence, while their sons and daughters might be trained in seminaries and colleges under Presbyterian regimen and culture, where their associations might be healthful, and where parental vows might be duly performed, they are, at least often, exposed, in the forming period of life and character, to influences of an opposite nature, not the less real because con- cealed by the unction of sectarian flattery. Fashion, and the opinions of lively, fickle asso- ciates, who manifest their own self-importance by trumpeting the superiority of some showy academy, and not the prayerful, deliberate inquiry of parents professing godliness, too often select their place of instruction. Consequently, so far as the religious peculiarities of the parents are concerned, they are soon laughed to scorn, as pertaining to "the blue laws " and bigotry of former days, while they not unfrequently become champions of the very errors which* their parents were religiously taught to dread. In this way the solemn baptismal obligation, so far from being faithfully performed in the religious de- partment of education, is too often disregarded, I A COMPARATIVE SUMMARY. 305 while the fashionable conformity of the youthful mind to those associates who laugh at unfulfilled parental vows (differing but little from parental perjury) compensates for all the remonstrances of pastors, the convictions of conscience, and disregard of the authority of God. There are things which differ — let us distinguish them ; things which are excellent — let us approve them. Each form of church government has its comparative relative in- fluences a^d tendencies. Reader, has it not? 26* DEDUCTIONS. I. That Presbyterianism is the scriptural form of church government. It rests neither on " early writers," on church his- tory, nor on -" genealogies," nor on tradition, nor on any thing beyond the Bible ; and it can never re?t upon u the customs of the churches," nor on new revelations ; yet it absorbs and includes (and rests, according to the analogy of faith, directly or iudi- rectly upon) every part of the sacred volume. It is the form most hated by the ungodly. They view its government as despotic, its doctrines as narrow and illiberal, its worship as unpopular, and its discipline as precise and severe. Both the other forms must borrow from it. The pope must have his conclave, and Congregationalism its councils and conventions. It possesses the most vital power * for the promotion * The Papal hierarchy understand this well. The late Robert Stewart, Esq., of Detroit, who often engaged in social conversation with his neighbor, the Papal bishop, (Rese,) was one day thus acaosted by him: "Stewart, I will tell you something if you do not gerangry." "If you try to make me angry, you can. What is it ? " " If it were not for you Scotch, we would walk the earth." " Strange that they, such a small handful, should hinder you." " Ay, but by the Scotch I mean "all that worship as they do. They are the only people who hare stood (306) DEDUCTIONS. 307 of the divine glory, and of peace on the earth, simply because it is the scriptural form. II. It is most conducive to the civil and religious happiness of man. This may be irrefragably shown by the prosperity of the United States under it, and by the condition of every truly religious Presbyterian family on earth, where all beneath the domestic roof are sub- ject to parental authority, the parents subject to the eldership, and they to the presbytery. It may again be shown by the insufficiency of either of the other forms to promote the greatest peace of the church in connection with her true unity. To the scrip- tural order of presbytery, both extremes, the social compact and prelacy, must come, and this some of them partially foresee. Hence says a writer in the New York Independent, January 12, 1854, " Your remarks, Messrs. Editors, show a keen vigilance for the power and dignity of the separate churches, as against any 'orders' that may be above them, but not of them. Closely connected with all this is the question, What part shall the churches have in those ecclesiastical bodies, which in fact, if not avowedly, form a permanent bond of union between them, and represent them as an entire Christian communion before the world ? Whatever theories may prevail which ignore all permanent organiza- to be shot and burned ; they will stand to be shot and burned again. We -Rill walk over them ; we will walk the earth ; for all the rest we can either scare or coax." — Speech at Pittsburg, Pa., May, 1836. 308 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. tions beyond single congregations of believers, such organizations are a necessity, and will exist in some form wherever there is any thing like perma- nent Christian unity, order, and confidence. With- out them disintegration is inevitable. Even Qua- kers must have their ' yearly meeting.' In New England, in the absence of other provision for the purpose, distinct associations have spontaneously sprung up, and out of these, general associations, forming a bond of union for the Congregationalists of each state. These bodies represent the denom- ination as a whole before the world. Ought they not, then, as in Maine, and in many of the Western States, to be composed in part of delegates of the churches ? Ought not the lay element to be equal to the clerical ? For lack of this lay element, we have suffered loss, and have been at a disadvantage, as compared with Presbyterians and Episcopa- lians, in our great annual convocations." How much better it would be to cast aside these " cus- toms of the churches," and* even " Congregational principles," and have those in a scriptural order, who should have the rule over both churches and members ; who should, by the authority of Christ, watch for their souls, and of them render a final account. Alas, Master ! " Doth he not speak parables ? " This would establish the tyrannical bondage of Presbyterianism. But hear " one of themselves, even a prophet of their own," the Rev. Dr. Hall, of Norwich, Connecticut, who, in a letter DEDUCTIONS. 309 to the *Rev. Dr. Hewitt, says, " We have row a disjointed, capricious, irresponsible independency, which holds alike in its embrace the vilest errors and the most precious truth. Whoever will not submit to this state of things has no alterna- tive before him but either to contend almost hope- lessly for the ancient faith and order, or to with- draw." " This witness is true." As to the opposite extreme, the case is but a little better. Says the New York Churchman, April, 1854, " Our church presents the spectacle of bishop against bishop, and doctor against doctor, with no voice to com- pose the strife, and that on points not lying outside the ruling of her standards, and so open to debate, but on points on which the Prayer Book must be assumed to have a determinate meaning one way or the other. This is a bad spectacle — that of a church thus divided against itself, with no lawful voice to compose the discord, and secure unity of teaching on the fundamental doctrine. It is a posi- tion full of evils. Most heartily do we desire a ju- dicial determination of the questions at issue by a true synodical voice of our church and of the church of England." What elements of the pleas- ures of peace and the beauties of holiness does this (their own account of ) their condition show the "tactual succession" to enjoy, above the government and discipline of pure Presbyterianism ? " Believe not every spirit." III. The government of the United States, if 310 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. overthrown, must be subverted by the spread of Prelacy on the one hand, or of Congregationalism on the other. By pure Presbyterial government, worship, doc- trine, and discipline, it is impossible to overthrow either the civil or religious liberties of the nation; but a controlling representation of either of the other two forms may do this. Let either the Papal hierarchy, on the one hand, or the German and kindred agrarians, on the other, have a complete ascendency, and the United States of America and their free institutions would exist only in history. For this ascendency, Papal Jesuitism and infidelity alike live in hope, and labor with untiring assiduity. Political demagogues may, in this case, cry, Peace, peace, but in it there is none. As it was at the establishment of our republican institutions, so the friends of freedom in this country will ever find it, that " eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." IV. All wars in Christendom must be between the different types of Prelacy itself, or between it and the other two forms. Prelacy is most fre- quently, if not always, aggressive. JTrue, we see in history Cromwell and his Independents fighting the Presbyterians, who refused to acknowledge " the governors of the kingdom;" yet all the conflicts which he originated form but a speck among the wars of Christendom. V. No Papal country is, or can be, truly pre- pared for a republican form of government. DEDUCTIONS. 311 As where there is " no bishop, no king," so where there is a prelate, the consciences of the many, by the power of a superabundant faith, are subject to the few, civilly as well as ecclesiastically. This is readily seen in the political convulsions which have so frequently agitated Mexico alone ; and New Granada, in aspiring to the liberties of republicanism forms " a case in point," in which with " bull " and tears, the "holy father" deplores the dishonor done to his priesthood for their fidelity to his dominion. No country under the Papal hierarchy, nor even under Episcopacy in its best forms, is at all prepared, by general intelligence or scriptural morals, to sustain a republican government, and it is problematical if one can ever become so. Prelatic France once de- lighted to drink the blood of martyrs, and she has ever and anon blood in abundance given to her to drink, while her present position of prostration un- der the heel of the dictator is to her, on the scale of existence, not only degrading, but a legitimate result of her obsequiousness to the Papal priesthood. If her inhabitants, in 1848, when he was elected to her National Assembly, had been as familiar with the Westminster Confession of Faith and the New England Primer as were the colonists from Maine to Georgia in 1775, with these " forms of sound words," Louis Napoleon would neither have over- thrown the constitution in 1851, nor have assumed the title of emperor in 1852, nor have been called by " his holiness," in 1853, " our beloved son in 312 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. Jesus Christ, Louis Napoleon, Emperor of the French." France, if thus once imbued with Pres- byterianism, would speedily bless millions of our race, and no longer be, as she is at present, a " Magor Missabib " (Jer. xx. 3) in the earth. VI. The fertile root of religious sectarianism is found essentially in Independency. The sects governed by bishops, on the one hand, and by presbyteries, on the other, while unscrip- turally numerous, are unitedly so " few, that a child may write them." We see this abundantly verified under the reign of Charles L, of England, during the civil war. " The full establishment of presby- tery in that realm was hindered by the rapid and unprecedented growth of sectarianism. When the Westminister Assembly sat down, in 1643, there were very few dissenters in England, and these were chiefly Independents, who went about the country disseminating their opinions. During the civil war they multiplied in most appalling num- bers. Besides Papists and Prelatists, the only op- ponents with whom the Scotch Presbyterians had to contend, there arose in England Independents and Brownists of all degrees, Millenarians, Antino- mians, Anabaptists, Libertines, Familists, Seekers, Perfectists, Socinians, Arians, Anti-Scripturists, Fifth Monarchy men, Ranters, Behminists, Qua- kers, and a host of other sects. Errors of every shade, heresies the most monstrous, and blasphemies the most revolting, were daily propagated. The DEDUCTIONS. 313 prolific nest in which these sectaries were engendered was the parliamentary army. Xo regular chaplains had been provided for them, and the bishops would ordain none but those who would use the liturgy. Thomas Edwards enumerates no less than one hun- dred and seventy-six errors and heresies which pre- vailed at that time. In Scotland, where there was a regular ministry and church discipline, no such fanaticism appeared, even during the stormiest period of her troubles." * In Rhode Island, includ- ing one Presbyterian church, there are about twenty- five sects, and in " the Reserve," twenty-nine out of forty-one sects are Congregationalists. Unques- tionably, then, Independency is the fruitful root of sectarianism. VII. The importance of calling each sect by its appropriate name, also, in this view, becomes obvious. Much proselyting is done by sailing under false colors. Hence it is, at times, not unusual on the part of some, who style themselves "Orthodox" Congregationalists, to tell Presbyterian strangers, " We are American Presbyterians, you are Scotch, or (as the case may be) Irish Presbyterians. Yours will not suit this country. We hold your doctrines 4 for substance.' There is only a little difference. Come with us. As for your sacramental tables, psalms, ruling elders, and objections to hymns, McCries, Sketches, Vol. I. pp. 302, 303. 27 314 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. choirs, and organs, they are only Scotch or Irish prejudices." Other Congregationalists will join in saying " Dr. and the Rev. Mr. are beautiful men, and pronounce impressive discourses; you would admire to hear them." If, however, the radical and essential differences which exist between Presbytery and Congregation- alism were fully known, and the close affinity which exists between the " Orthodox " and Baptists, (or immersing Congregationalists,) and even between the Orthodox and the self-styled Unitarians, espe- cially on the fourth Wednesday and the fourth Thursday* of May annually, in Massachusetts, were generally understood, it might save some Presbyte- rians in, at least, one commonwealth, from entan- gling alliances with heterogeneous sects, too often to the destruction of that elementary formation of character which was begun under a pious parental roof, and so far moulded under Presbyterian appli- ances. VIII. Another deduction which I make from this view of the philosophy of sectarianism is this — that * On which days the Massachusetts Convention of Congregational Ministers, embracing all of " the Orthodox " and all of the Unitarian clergymen in the state, hold fellowship. On said Wednesday they meet in the Supreme Court room in Boston for business, or the discussion of some topic, and in Brattle Street Church (Unitarian) they preach to each other on Thursday, at 11, A. M. The Orthodox, being the most numerous, appoint the preacher two years out of three, and listen to Unitarian instruction on the third. At the close of the exercises, a collection is taken to aid a fund on behalf of the widows of Congre- gationalist ministers, of both sects. DEDUCTIONS. 315 Presbyterians who emigrate to or in the United States should carefully retain their religious princi- ples and form of worship. This they are at liberty to do. It is to them, as well as to others, a land in which they may have " freedom to worship God," and they (according to the historian Bancroft) were the first to strike to make it so. The genius of the government of the country is also peculiarly favorable to them, as it has been borrowed from their order of ecclesiastical " regimen." Local and individual influences, it is true, may for a time oppose them, and they may have, often at some sacrifice, to seek a place to which they may successfully repair in order to set their trust upon the Lord after the manner of their fathers, there to be doing good in the land, and to be fed. But the enjoyment is worth all the sacri- fice, and even earthly prosperity is not always more certain and permanent to those who sell their birth- right by joining some more noisy or showy form of sectarianism. Declension in religious worth is also no unusual result, where some new sect is embraced ; and this sometimes leads " those who are given to change " far beyond their original supposition. Notwithstanding a temporary zeal for their new sect, goaded by that itching novelty which allured them from the ways of their fathers, declension will not unfrequently further steal upon them, and an after-life survey of the phases through which they have passed, will often provide food for astonish- ment to their own souls. 316 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. Mental instability is closely allied to the social " compact " when operating ecclesiastically, and when "the customs of the churches" become the polar star of religious belief and worship. It is also, at least often, true that those who become proselytes to this " church order " are as frequently and easily " carried about with every wind of doc- trine " as those who have been educated under it. While these observations apply to their union with any sect of pure Congregationalists, or to the varied sects of Methodists, which all partake, to some ex- tent, of this church order, Presbyterians, where the spirit of the ecclesiastical descendants of John Calvin, or the very shadow of John Knox, animates them, will avoid union with Prelacy, and very es- pecially with the Papal form, — " For these are they, who Jacob have devoured cruelly ; And they his habitation have caused waste to lie." (* App. E.) IX. True charity is to be promoted, not by hail- ing as brethren all who choose to call themselves Christians, but by weighing their doctrine, govern- ment, worship, and discipline in the balances of the sanctuary, by trying the spirits, by rejecting heretics, and by rebuking errorists sharply, that they may be sound in the faith. A divine injunction is, "endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." This DEDUCTIONS. 317 delightful prize and bond, peace, we are, if possible, to follow with all men, and it can be obtained only by endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit. Where some men, in relation to the word of God, believe too much, and others too little, it is obvious that all endeavors to keep the unity of the Spirit will be proportionably fruitless. To obtain peace in the visible church, men must, then, " see eye to eye," or believe alike on the walls of Zion. This vision of peace must, then, extend to all that the Spirit teaches, and of which he is the author in re- lation to each and every point of doctrine, for he is not the author of any two contradictory ones, and both cannot be true. Every point of doctrine con- cerning the nature, persons, works, and word of God, whatever is taught of him by the Spirit, must be believed alike, or in these truths there can be no unity. Similar is the case in relation to divine icorship in all its parts, especially in praise. Just so far as the Spirit is the author of our songs of praise, so far, and no farther, can we sing with the Spirit. In the upper sanctuary there is no discord, for all sing with the Spirit the song of the Lamb; and when men cast their idols to the moles and to the bats, and sing the Lord's song, the song of Moses and of the Lamb, of which the Spirit is the author, they will more successfully endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit. As human hymns are varied by human doctrinal opinion, and are often contradictory, and as they are not inspired by 27* 318 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. the Spirit, so they do not partake of his unity. They may be laid on the altar by men, but they are only " strange fire." This unity exists also in relation to the government which Christ has, by his spirit and word, authorized, and can be found fully under none other. It must also be kept by main- taining that discipline in the church militant of which he is the author. Hence the same unity of which the Spirit is the author, in the faith, experi- ence, and lives of his people, extends to the whole plan and entire application of redemption. There is one body, — the church of Christ, — one Spirit, one effectual calling, one hope, one Lord, one faith, of which the Spirit is the author, one baptism of the Spirit, one God, and one Father of all. True charity is, then, to be promoted by walking in the Spirit, keeping within all that he teaches and au- thorizes, and not otherwise. There may be such a thing as establishing earthly friendships at the sacri- fice of Christ, (Luke xxiii. 12; Acts iv. 27;) and on the altar of charity, so called, we may, at times, see Congregationalism sacrificing scriptural principle, not only on the fourth Thursday of May in Brattle Street Church, but at other seasons, as, e. g., the Boston Herald of April 5, 1854, thus announced: " Fast day will be observed at East Cambridge by a union service in the Unitarian church. Reading of the Scriptures by the Methodist clergyman, the devotions by the Baptist and Orthodox, and the discourse by the Unitarian pastor, Mr. Holland." DEDUCTIONS. 319 "Aman that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition reject." — Titus iii. 10. X. Those portions of the visible church of " like precious faith " in doctrine, government, worship, and discipline, (not others,) should unite and main- tain the headship and supremacy of Christ over his church, forego all that is unscriptural in the shib- boleth of party, " contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints," and for its universal diffusion in the earth. Thus sectarianism would be diminished; men would then say, "I am of Christ," and not, I am of Paul, or of Cephas, or of Apollos. They should, at the same time, to all unscriptural sects apply the teachings and order of the word of life, both by bearing a direct and solemn testimony against their erroneous doctrines, and by " expounding unto them the way of God more perfectly." Reader, for the promotion of these desirable results, I have now presented to you an analytical and a comparative view of the religious sects in the United States, with sketches of their progress and tendencies. You will thus be aided in distinguish- ing things that differ. If, in some of my positions and illustrations, I have appeared to you uncharitable and in error, I beg of you to survey the subject again. " Strike, but hear me." The shades of death will soon spread over us ; we will find that there is but " one 320 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. Lord, one faith, one baptism," and that those who delight most deeply in the word of God and his appointed doctrine, government, worship, and dis- cipline now, will then be hailed with, " Well done, good and faithful." If, in your estimation, I have dealt too severely with the opinions of those who differ from me in doctrine, government, worship, or discipline, I ask you to remember that the subject itself compelled me to this; that the disease is well nigh desperate, and that unpalatable medicine alone, under the blessing of our Redeemer, can re- move it. The command of God is, " Rebuke them sharply ; that they maybe sound in the faith." (Titus i. 13.) Until men are brought to take the Bible as a whole, to believe and obey it all, and it alone, as the rule of life and the guide to immortality, there will exist but little substantial hope for universal peace to our fallen race. When that is done, op- pression will cease, "Slavery itself will pass away, And be a tale of yesterday." " Neither shall they learn war any more." Of " the mother of fornications and abomina- tions of the earth," it will be then said, " Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets ; for God hath, avenged you on her." " Ephraim shall not envy Judah, and Judah shall not vex Ephraim," for sectarian rancor will cease. Men will then "keep the unity of the spirit in the DEDUCTIONS. 321 bond of peace." Then, " from the uttermost parts of the earth," shall be " heard songs, even glory to the righteous ; " all nations shall do homage to Emanuel, and " the kingdoms of this world " shall "become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever." In that day the Lord shall be one, and his name one throughout the whole earth. May God Almighty hasten it in his time. " His name forever shall endure : last like the sun it shall : Men shall be bless'd in Him, and Bless'd all nations shall him call. Now blessed be the Lord our God, the God of Israel ; For he alone doth wondrous works, in glory that excel. And blessed be his glorious name to all eternity. The whole earth let his glory fill. \.men, so let it be." Ps. lxxii. APPENDIX A. In a philosophical survey of sectarianism, it may be readily asked, How do you account for the unequalled growth of Methodism in the United States ? To this obvious result, various influences and causes conspire. Some of the more prominent arise from the doctrines of this denomination — such as the denial of predestination, election, total depravity, efficacious grace, and the final perseverance of the saints. Mankind usually, by nature, deny these doctrines. Every man believes himself to be the architect of his own spiritual destiny; that God has not from all eternity foreordained whatsoever comes to pass, and by consequence that he has not '•' out of his mere good pleasure elected some to everlast- ing life," but that he has chosen, or rather must choose, them in consequence of some foreseen good works to be by them at some time performed. Very gratifying to our depraved nature, also, is the idea of a hypothetical salvation for all mankind, if they will repent and believe the gospel, founded on an indefinite atonement. To all such, the declaration of the great Shepherd, " I lay down my life for the sheep," ap- pears as a hard saying, or as an idle tale. From our native corruption, also, every individual supposes that in him dwells much that is good, and that by the light of nature, where the gospel is unknown, salvation may be effected. Hence this opinion is considered, by all who are (328) 824 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM, strangers to the plagues of their own hearts, as a most lib- eral and charitable doctrine. The irresistible and effica- cious operation of the Spirit in the reign of grace is a hard saying to all who are " alive without the law." while the idea 'that a man may be in Christ to-day and in hell to-morrow, if he should ere then die, is abhorrent to the belief of no Armin- ian. Hence the popular opinion that a man can get religion or lose it at his pleasure. Contrasted with these and similar sectarian views, the doctrine of salvation by grace reigning through the righteousness of Christ, in the election, regener- ation, justification, and progressive sanctification of his peo- ple, is viewed as behind the age, and is usually called one of " the hard doctrines." Some imagine that they can have the gospel preached without doctrine at all ; and the public teacher who avoids those doctrines which both abase the pride of man and exalt God as the author of salvation to the perishing children of men, becomes the popular idol, and is preeminently styled a liberal preacher. In short, every man, as to his doctrinal opin- ions of " the way of salvation," is born an Arminian, and while he " must be born again " to be a true Calvinist, in the mean time all that is requisite to make him a Methodist is the adoption of the chosen opinions, order, and usages estab- lished by the Rev. John Wesley. The process is not difficult. Tributary to this result, also, is the itinerant life of his ministry, it being much easier to tell for twenty-four months the opinions of u the founder of Methodism," than to preach " the unsearchable riches of Christ," by "not shunning to declare the whole counsel of God," which must necessarily require the labor of many years. As a part of his arrange- ments, subservient to the diffusion of his tenets and the in- crease of his sects, the wisdom of " the founder " appears in the manner in which his preachers are supported. They have a well-regulated support, and can give a constant devo- tion to their specific work. Clergymen of the Presbyterian and purely Congregation;;! orders, such as the Baptists, may, at APPENDIX. 325 times, in want, minister to their own necessities with their own hands ; but from this the bishops and ordained preachers of Methodism are exempted. They give themselves wholly to the advancement of their denominational interests. Again : their manner of not laboriously informing the un- derstanding with sound doctrine, in relation to the covenant of grace, but of presenting the opinions which they propagate directly to the feelings of their hearers, by addressing to their fears the terrors of the law, connected with their systematic arrangements of camp meetings, anxious seats, classes, love feasts, and conferences, all conspire to produce numerical in- crease. Much is also done indirectly to promote the same end. where positive prohibition might prove unavailing by the systematic arrangement of holding (what are called) prayer meetings, when they have not preaching, at the same hour at which neighboring congregations assemble for public worship. Their rulers may not directly prohibit their socie- ties from hearing the ministry of other denominations, yet no opportunity is thus afforded them so to do, without the com- punctions which must arise from treason to the adopted order and laws of their founder. Whiie their confessional in class meetings may provoke others to emulation in disclosing their personal turpitude to a degree which, however true, they would not for a moment allow others to declare of them in verity, it cherishes their spiritual pride and self-righteousness by inspiring the purpose of personal and sinless perfection in future in connection with the idea that they can keep themselves in a justified state. In short, the self-sufficiency of our unrenewed nature is more cherished by such processes than that self-abasement of soul which characterizes the true believer, to whom u Christ is precious " and u all in all." The probation for a few months into which their seekers must enter, under class leaders, removes also some of the difficulties which deter those from doing so, who, in trembling uncertainty as to the precise path of dutv, desire to make 28 326 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. a public profession of faith before a session or a whole church. It makes the way to membership gradual and easy. The tenure of their church property to so great an extent by their ministry, together with that part of the arrangement by which the few are to think for the many, must not be lost sight of in our inquiry into the reason of their denominational pros- perity. Their devoted preference for any thing produced by the denomination, especially if it will strengthen, pecuniarily or otherwise, their own numbers, conspires also powerfully to this result. In this they apparently borrow one feature from Popery. Although the Anglican church and her American daughter recommend usually the purchase of their peculiar books of devotion from their own manufacturers and traders, yet none of their members would, probably, long hesitate to pur- chase a copy of the " Book of Common Prayer " from a Bap- tist or a Presbyterian publisher provided it were a correct one ; but out of an opposite determination and rule has grown the u Methodist Book Concern," through which must come to his faithful followers the u Hymns for the Use of the People called Methodists, by the Rev. John Wesley," with the com- bined recommendation of his American bishops for their uni- versal and exclusive use. It would appear that religious books which do not emanate from, nor pass through, the " Concern," or, at least, of it have the tacit consent, belong among this sect to their index ex purgatory. This gives not only the precise impression to their sectarian books, but it unites the labor of the manufacturer and the money of the purchaser in swelling their aggregate denominational wealth, already in their " Concern " amount- ing to some hundreds of thousands of dollars, two hundred and thirty thousand dollars, being, in 1853, adjudged to the Methodist church south as her share. This is a species of sectarian policy, subservient to denominational increase, to which proper Presbyterians have, until recently, been blind with indifference. It matters not to them who publishes APPENDIX. 327 the u Psalms " provided they can obtain them at low prices; and in this way the late Matthew Carey made (it is said) a no inconsiderable fortune in Philadelphia by publishing the Psalms, vulgarly called Rouse's version, and family Bibles, with the Psalms in metre, before u his holiness n knew that his otherwise faithful son was thus affording spiritual " aid and comfort " to heretics, by enabling them to read the Holy Scriptures and to sing the Genevan jigs. When to all these elements of increase we add the matter and manner of their praise in public worship, we find it all calculated to suit the pleasure and pride of the human heart. Hymns adapted to Arminian doctrines are, to our nature, more attractive and popular than the Songs of Zion, especially when presented by suitable music of a sentimental and pathetic character. By training a whole assembly to sing, instead of listening to a few performers in an elevated place, by making the living voice, and not a "thing without life, giv- ing sound/*' fill the human ear, interest is elicited, attention is aroused, and emulation is secured. This obedience, in so far, to divine appointment, " Let all the people praise thee, God," has a healthful action on denominational growth. Again : matters about which other sects are precise are (at least sometimes) to them subjects of indifference. Does an adult, who has not been (on the profession of parental faith) baptized, make a demand for this ordinance, he can receive it either by sprinkling or immersion. Does a formal parent dread the austere discipline of the Presbyterian church, and live without her pale when he ought to be one of her pillars, and desire to have (to quiet the itchings of con- science) his children baptized, he can with them have this done on easy terms, both as to vows now and the perform- ance of them hereafter. But, in short, whether we survey the government, doctrine, worship, or discipline of this sect, in connection with the de- pravity, ignorance, unbelief, and prejudice of mankind, they are all framed to conspire, with almost the perfection of 328 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. mechanism, to the desired end — the increase and perpetuity of Methodism made subservient to the posthumous fame of its founder. If it only had the sanction of the Holy Spirit, it would be all but omnipotent in converting sinners, even if they were not ordained to eternal life, nor of such as should be saved. (Acts ii. 47 : xiii. 48.) It is a combination of Epis- copacy and Congregationalism which is " cunningly devised," giving to the people large imaginary ideas of ecclesiastical liberty, while their whole " governmental organization " is beyond their reach, and in the hands of their ministry. " The people have no part in their governmental organization,'- says Judge Nelson, '-'and never had." So perfect are the arrangements of the founder and his official successors for increasing numerically the denomination, that, excepting by those of Ignatius Loyola, they are unequalled ; and if it were not that they differ from the arrangements of the covenant of grace, they might ultimately become univer- sal among men. This may be seen by an inspection of the entire machinery, doctrinal, moral, literary, ecclesiastical, and social, of this sect. Under the spreading branches of the tree of national liberty, civil and religious, (which, as we have seen, they did but little to plant,) this denomination have found in the United States a genial soil, where they may freely grow. * The leaven of republican principles * Still, in common with the other works of man, the fabric of Meth- odism gives forebodings that it will neither universally swallow up all other sects, nor be eternal in its duration. Its growth in some of its earliest fields is stinted, and in some places even the moss of decay is germinating on its trunk. At least, appearances have so presented themselves to other observers, both in England and the Northern States, of which the following, among other statistics, are in proof: " The Chris- tian Advocate and Journal gives a table, showing the total number of members of the Methodist churches in New York to have been, in 1843, nine thousand seven hundred and eighty ; 18o3, nine thousand three hundred and thirteen, showing a decrease in ten years of four hundred members, while the population has nearly doubled." * The * Boston Traveller, January 13, 1854. APPENDIX. 329 may, however, in due time excite their people to subvert the very foundations of their u founder," by demanding a lay representation in "their governmental organization," or, in other words, by insisting on the introduction of the scriptural order of simply ruling elders into their ecclesiastical super- vision, and by reclaiming the control usually enjoyed by other denominations, excepting the Episcopal. (Papal and Protestant.) of their church lands, places of worship, and mission houses. The continued exclusion, however, of the common people from these privileges and trusts, will both contribute to de- nominational extension, and continue until the schoolmaster moves abroad ; while the delay of that period will more clearly disclose the fact, that no man, in establishing a popu- lar species of sectarianism, has ever written more legibly his own epitaph, " He. being dead, yet " reigneth, than the Rev. John Wesley. same paper states the decrease in the same ten years, in Baltimore, to be one thousand one hundred and twenty-three, while that city has, in that period, largely increased.* This is their own account of the field in which Methodism was first planted in America. It should not, however, be forgotten, that every appliance within their power, secular and ecclesiastical, is exerted to the supreme end of denominational in- crease, and by Presbyterian parents it should be vigilantly remembered that among these their educational schemes are not the most insignifi- cant for the promotion of this design. Under the sounding titles of colleges and universities, in which a tinsel and superficial education is, at least too often, obtained at a comparatively low price, they are en- abled to secure the patronage of easy Presbyterians, who little dream how readily tfceir children may thus become familiar with " another gospel." • In Boston, in ten years preceding 1853, they have gained about one hundred and eighty members, and in Pittsburg, says the Christian Advocate, " we find, in 1853, our numerical strength about what it was ten years previous — seventen hundred.— Preacher, March 22,1854. 28* 330 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. B. The growth of the immersing Congregationalists has, in this land, during the last seventy years, been very great. In that period, the ministry of the Regular Baptists has increased about ten fold, their members sixteen fold, and their churches seventeen fold. Of this increase, " believing too little," or less than the entire word of God, has been the prominent cause. Thus, when their supposed examples of immersion are referred to, as our only divinely authorized rule in bap- tism, to the exclusion of the promise of the covenant of grace, "so shall he sprinkle many nations ; " to the denial and rejection of the fact that all Christians are "elect to the sprin- kling of the blood of Jesus Christ," and that when " made par- takers of the divine nature " by regeneration, they are " come to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than that of Abel ; " and when they constantly dwell on these with tenacity and pertinacity,* multitudes, not largely acquainted with the w T ord of God, are constrained to believe that immer- sion must be the only scriptural mode, and that it alone can be baptism ; while so important, also, in this way may this their peculiar rite be made at times to appear, that it savors strongly of possessing a saving efficacy. The low estimate of the office and work of the gospel * " A writer in the Watchman and Reflector, (Baptist,) expounding the text, Matt. iii. 11, where it is said, ' He shall baptize'you with the Holy Ghost and with fire,' comes to the following result : ' The meaning of John's language, then, taken in its connection, seems to be, that the coming Messiah would baptize his hearers either in the gra- cious influences of the Holy Ghost, or in the extreme misery of eternal fire. Those who believe his doctrine should enjoy very copious influ- ences of his spirit, and those who reject him should be overwhelmed with misery. Ali should be immersed either in happiness or in suffer- ing.' " — Puritan Recorder, November 17, 1853. APPENDIX. 331 ministry, and the ease with which it can be entered, or, at times, assumed, with the sanction of a popular vote, among this denomination, even where many of the most prominent ingredients of ministerial ability are wanting,* has contributed to the same result. Connected with this the increase of pop- ulation has also, in many parts of this land, far outrun all the means f of religious instruction, and consequently affords ample opportunity to the zealous, both with and without knowledge, to thrust in their sickles and gather the harvest of numbers into the garner of their own sectarian opinions. What is said in the following extract from, the Spirit of Missions, of New York, (1848,) of the ca.uses of the growth of this denomination in Kentucky, (the most Baptist state in the Union, not excepting their maternal one, Rhode Island,) will answer almost literally for, at least, much of the south- western portion of the United States. " For nearly a century before the revolution, the wealthy and aristocratic families of Virginia, descended as they were from the refugee Cavaliers of Cromwell's time, and, therefore, * The Rev. Dr. Baird estimates that " not above one third of the clergymen of this denomination have a collegiate education." For a more general diffusion of education, they are now making, probably, efforts unsurpassed in the United States, finding this course most subservient to denominational growth. Hence says the Boston Travel- ler, March 31, 1854, "Within the last six years, one million five hun- dred thousand dollars have been subscribed towards the endowment of Baptist colleges and seminaries in this country. The whole number of instructors connected with them is one hundred and fifty-four, students over two thousand five hundred. They have graduated over four thousand students in all, and their libraries contain more than one hundred and twenty thousand volumes." f The number of adults in the State of Georgia who cannot read or write is forty-one thousand, and the number of children whose parents are unable to send them to school is upwards of thirty-eight thousand. According to official returns, the number of adults in Vir- ginia who cannot read and write is eighty thousand, — twenty thousand more than in 1840, — and the number of the children whose parents have not the means to educate them is seventy-five thousand. 332 philosophy of sectarianism. stanch church of England men. were obliged to send home, as they called it, not only for their clergy, but, as they held themselves loftily superior to any menial employments, few their overseers and mechanics also. And it may readily be supposed that this intermediate class, feeling quite above the colored population, and being, in turn, scorned and looked down upon by their employers, would be strongly tempted to imbibe and cherish sentiments at variance with those of the upper class. It is to be feared that they had cause to com- plain of being slighted and neglected by the clergy, who, in too many instances, were the flatterers and boon companions of the wealthier people. " With such tendencies, we may suppose that the border counties, now the magnificent region just below the Blue Ridge, would, to a great extent, be first peopled by this class of white people, and that they would, as soon as they had ac- quired means, set up. however humble, as independent land- holders for themselves. Certain it is that Baptist ministers, some of them from Rhode Island, before the revolution, pen- etrated into these counties, and not only found vast multitudes in a condition loudly calling for missionary exertion, but pre- pared to embrace with enthusiasm almost any class of opin- ions, social, political, or religious, which were at antipodes to those of the aristocracy of the upper classes. " At the period of the revolution, many of the then Baptist dogmas rang like a tocsin in the ears of the poor white people of old Virginia. An unlettered clergy, not haughtily superior to the poor; a laborious, unpaid clergy, sharing in the daily toils, and thankful for the rough hospitality of the poorest farm- er ; forms of religion which made the mountain stream, in their estimation, the only consecrated font of baptism. No stately altars, no dignified vestments, no costly sacramental vases, no pompous dignitaries, no far-fetched ministerial commis- sion, no sober forms of prayer for them. Their own sons and brothers, in every-day attire, often in their shirt sleeves, and with their own homespun modes of speech, preached to them." APPENDIX. 333 One of these preachers, in making his return, in 1852, re- ported that he had " exercised one hundred and ninety-six times, and received two hundred and forty dollars in the entire year." * Not only in the regions above described, but also in other parts of the nation, this denomination, until recently, dreaded u head knowledge " and : " man-made ministers."'" The details of personal observation in the State of Maine would abun- dantly confirm this position, and illustrate its effects. This low estimate of the ministerial office and work, operating both as cause and effect, produces both results, like priest, like people, and like people, like priest : yet it contributes materially to denominational enlargement. It gives a vast facility to sectarian extension beyond the comparatively slow process of admission into the ministry among Presbyterians, where no man can be admitted a student of divinity without being in full communion with the Christian church, nor pre- vious to his examination in relation to his abilities, education, and piety; after which, -in ordinary cases, no student of divinity can be admitted to trials for license without a course of theological study during three full years after the time of his being received by presbytery/' Having produced satis- factory testimonials of unexceptionable conduct and of pro- ficiency in classical and philosophical literature, he must, on examination by the presbytery, give proof of his skill in the original languages of the Scriptures, of acquaintance with ecclesiastical history, and with the doctrines of our holy re- ligion. He shall be examined especially on the Deistical, Socinian, and Arminian controversies, on the nature of the sacraments, on the principles of church government, and privately on his own experience of the grace of the Lord Jesus ; after which, " to alford a specimen of his ministerial talents, he shall deliver, as pieces of trial, a homily, an exe- gesis, a critical exercise, a lecture, and a popular sermon. n * Xew York Observer. 334 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. Notwithstanding that thi^ process of admission to the ministry- appears slow, (and the rejection of some leading features of it forms a prominent cause of the numerical increase of the Cumberland Presbyterians.) yet the experience of the Bap- tist churches testifies loudly to its necessity. While some among the more wealthy and aristocratic societies in the north (as among other Congregationalists) will, on fitting seasons, make a hymn for the occasion, or sing a u Wel- come Pastor " to their minister after a period of absence, the Baptist churches in the south have enrolled in their use (in, at least, one book of hymns, viz., Mercer's Cluster, hymn ccxxxi., verses 2, 3) the following effusions : — " Of every preacher I'd complain : One spoke through pride, and one for gain ; Another's learning small ; One spoke too fast, and one too slow ; One prayed too loud, and one too low; Another had no call. " Some walk too straight to make a show, While others far too crooked go ; And both of these I scorn. Some odd, fantastic motions make ; Some stoop too low, some stand too straight ; No one is faultless born." If those who advocate the use of human hymns in the praise of God can glorify him by the use of such poetical philippics, (and this they must avowedly do,) how " highly in love for their work's sake " do such worshippers hold their preachers ? Their ministers, consequently, experience changes nearly half as often as those who are biennially removed by the rules of the founder of Methodism, while their advantages by removal are comparatively small. The preachers of the Rev. John Wesley know before removal where their next mission house is to be found, and to what people they go j the Baptist elder, (at least oftentimes,) like the APPENDIX. 335 Levite, (Judges xvii. 9,) "goes to sojourn where he may find a place.'' Hence, says the Watchman and Reflector, " Out of one hundred and ninety Baptist pastors in Massachusetts, in the four years ending April 1, 1852, one hundred and seventy changed places, six died, leaving but fourteen station- ary. For the same period, sixty-one out of seventy-one Bap- tist pastors in New Hampshire changed their fields of labor. Three died, leaving seven, the remainder, settled over the same people." * This constant changing, however, although it retards the growth of sound doctrine and of true godliness, enables not a few of them, in connection with their varied other appliances, to make a little knowledge of spiritual mysteries go a long way in propagating what they are pleased to call "believer baptism." Subservient to the same end is the exclusion of the Songs of Zion from the praise of God, and the adoption of human hymns to answer the diversified opinions of the varied sects of Baptists, from the " Calvinistic " down to the " Latter Day Saints." Each sect must revel in poetical fancies, and al- though they vary as does WinchelFs Watts from those of the " Second Adventists," still, adapted to corresponding music, they have all a sectarian and denominational design and influence; and so far as both hymns and tunes have any force, they subserve the extension and perpetuity of this group of sects, by dwelling on immersion to the exclusion of sprinkling. % " Music has charms," not only " to soothe the savage breast," but also to stereotype on the mind the sentiments which it accompanies, and to promote beyond all prose the sectarian views of those who for this purpose employ it. Hence we find such plunging effusions as the following : — " There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Emanuel's veins, And sinners plunged beneath tbis flood Are cleansed from guilty stains." * Boston Congregationalist, April 8, 1853. 336 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. Such sentimentality ma}* induce not a few to be plunged according to sectarian custom ; bat it happens to convey no very clear idea of "the blood of sprinkling," to which every Christian has " come/ 5 and is irreconcilably at Avar with the word of God, which assures us that all his " seed " are " elect to the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." Among the causes which conspire to the increase of this group of sects must not remain unnoticed the vast amount of ignorance or the destitution of sound doctrinal instruction in relation to the baptism of the infants of believing parents, and the obligations which it involves. While multitudes professing to believe in infant baptism have this ordinance administered to children simply because they are children, and consequently cannot be expected to pay that which they have not vowed, others, who profess to receive baptism for them because they are the children of believing parents, and federally "holy," (1 Cor. vii. 14.) although they make vows, neglect to perform them. Consequently, because such parents have their consciences lulled to slumber by the fact that their children are baptized, and settle down into a deep ignorance of the doctrine of our Savior, their children, instead of being trained up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and growing up in the courts of our God, by the force of an example, deep, impressive, and lasting, without any great difficulty, as they grow up, " despise their birthright/' Where there is no •■church in the house/' in which "to rear the tender plant." and no Sabbath evening school there, in which "to teach the young idea how to shoot," and to know from parental lips the " first principles of the oracles of God," the children thus neglected by their parents are easily induced to seek abroad what they do not find at home. As a Sabbath school is a voluntary arrangement, in which no parental vows are neces- sary, and in which those who are eager (although not always "apt) to teach" can proselyte to their own opinions, so such children and youth, as well as those who have never been "presented to the Lord in his temple," often become tha APPENDIX. 337 read)' pupils of instructors, who, by a series of doctrinal ideas, lead them eventually* in their denominational phraseology, "down into Jordan."'* Under such tuition they can ultimately be taught to believe that the Abrahamic covenant, the sprin- kling of the blood of Jesus Christ, and infant baptism, are as ''the chaff to the wheat 7 ' in comparison with the total sub- mersion with the body, of those external appendages, in which sin has invested our mortal frames, our garments. Another prolific source of sectarian increase among this division of the visible church is the systematic exclusion of every thing in books which savors of the doctrine of infant baptism. By this means their Sabbath scholars, if not their people, know but little on this subject excepting what their writers are pleased to teach them. Perhaps it may be said they have a share in conducting the American Sunday School Union. This is too true. Hence, when a book has been so divested of the Abrahamic covenant, and of the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, as to suit their members of the publishing committee, but little knowledge of " the covenant that was confirmed of God in Christ "' can be gleaned from its pages. Their denominational press is faithful to its sect. The (Baptist) New York Recorder cautions his people against Shady Side. " There is certainly a dark spot very prominent in this excellent book — its fallacious and subtle advocacy of infant baptism. The copy which was recentl)' - placed in our Sabbath school will be, of course, forthwith ejected without ceremony, and the several copies which I have in my ignorance given away must be forthwith marked as false and untrue in their testimony for infant baptism.'" He then warns Baptist churches against the introduction of the books of Pedobaptist booksellers into their Sabbath school libraries, and again says, " A brother minister informed me the other day. that he had been compelled to arrest the cir- culation in his school of the " Broken Bud.-" because upon 29 338 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. examination he found it to contain the error of Pedobap- tism." * Such, consequently, is the difficulty by which a Baptist is beset in knowing any thing beyond the instructions of the teachers of his own denomination, together with their books, magazines, and papers. If the Broken Bud, Shady Side, and all such books as maintain infant baptism, are carefully excluded from their people, — " What can they reason but from what they know " ? Another sectarian feature, subservient to increase, is their almost constantly dwelling on regeneration, which, with all its untold importance, does not constitute " the whole counsel of God," especially where frames and feelings are supposed to be the one thing needful, and the only sure evidence of its existence, preparatory to immersion. f Another collateral force in sectarian accumulation among this division is, the idea of the reproach of the cross, which is supposed by them peculiarly to belong to immersion. This gives vitality to courage and decision to character, when un- dergone before a multitude. Nor is the enthusiasm inspired by example in vain in the same cause. As the nun on the gala day of her initiation to all that lies beyond the vail in the mysteries of Popery becomes " the observed of all obser- vers," so no inconsiderable fragment of the same mantle, it may be, falls on the candidate for immersion, when he, or she, before an assembly, follows Christ (in their sectarian phraseology) into " a watery grave," not to remain there three days and three nights, but a few seconds, or long enough, at most, to pray and to impose hands. As in the one case, a * Puritan Recorder, August 18, 1853. t Said a Baptist lady once to a member of my former pastoral charge, ** "Whether does your minister admit, on catechism or on experience ? " With profound amazement, she received the reply, " On both." She had then, at least, exercised herself in a thing too high for her. — Psalm cxxxi. 1. APPENDIX. 339 return to the duties of social life would, for many reasons, be a matter of difficulty, so a return to true views of this ordi- nance, as to its subjects and mode, would meet with many hinderances where (as in this case always) men believe too little. It would require a total change of their church government to become a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, and a change of some magnitude to become, from what at immersion they were, to be simply an Orthodox Congregationalist,* as they must then believe more of the Bible, viz., those parts of it which belong to the subject and mode of baptism which they had previously rejected. Again : among this branch of those who believe too little, the alteration of our common translation of the Bible for sectarian purposes, while it elicits the jeers of infidelity, will soon have, nay, it has already had, and must prospectively have, a vast influence both in unsettling the minds of multi- tudes in relation to the authority of the word of God, and in increasing the numbers of Baptists. ' Thus varied influences — the rejection of the common trans- lation of the Holy Scriptures ; the rejection of ruling elders and presbyterial authority in the house of God \ the influences of human hymns with corresponding music ; the want of sound doctrinal knowledge, so generally prevalent even where * Between the sects in this division and the Universalist Congrega- tionalists, some considerable agreement is discovered, as neither of them publicly bring their children into the temple of God, nor vow, before the rulers of an assembled church and the King of Zion, to train up their little ones in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This diminishes vastly the burden of parental responsibility, where children are turned over to the uncovenanted mercies of the heathen, and are, in parental estimation, "unclean;" and the only congregation of Universalists, of which I remember having heard, (some where in Missouri,) who considered baptism of sufficient importance to be observed at all, ad- mitted members to their fellowship by immersion. Another sect of Congregationalists, strongly assimilated to the self-styled Unitarians, separate themselves by the name of Christians, or, according to their neighbors, Christ-ians, practise immersion and reject infant baptism. 340 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. the Bible may be read ; the fallacious and unscriptural opin- ions and unauthorized practices among all Episcopalians, and among many partially informed and unsound Presbyterians, in relation to the right of infants to baptism ; the neglect of the performance of parental vows by many who believe that parental faith and visible union to the church of Christ are prerequisites to the reception of this ordinance ; the want of earnest contending for this article of the faith once delivered to the saints by those who profess to preach Christ crucified ', the prostitution, in short, of this ordinance to unworthy parents ; the rejection of the positive institution of sprinkling with clean water, as emblematical of the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ for supposed examples ; the ease with which their ministry can be entered, and the constant changes which their ministers or people can almost at pleasure effect in the pastoral relation ; the agency of their Sabbath schools, protracted meetings, and anxious seats ; the expurgated char- acter of their books, where any thing which does not support the peculiar rite of their denomination is discovered, and many other appliances, — all go to swell their numbers among this division of those who believe too little. c. In order that the reader may understand the doctrine of " apostolical succession," I take the following summary of it rfom the " addenda " made " by a Presbyter of Ohio n to the "official calendar of the church," of which the Rev. Dr. Boys, Dean of Canterbury, was the author : ■ — " Those who doubt an uninterrupted succession of minis- ters and sacraments in the Christian church must also doubt the authenticity of the Bible itself, which, passing through APPENDIX. 341 the hands of so many copyists, was as liable to corruption as the sacraments and ministry. " No single name can be exhibited in the long list of the bishops from the present time up to Archbishop Parker, the regularity of whose ordination can be doubted. And as we ascend from the period of the reformation, through the early ages of the English church, to the apostles' own times, there can be brought forward no isolated instance of infidelity in preserving and handing down, uncorrupt and unchanged, the sacred deposits received at the apostles' hands — the Bible, the sacraments, and the ministry. 11 The sacraments and ministry were preserved among them unchanged and pure, in the year 633, when they were visited by Augustin ; and Calvin not only acknowledged their fidelity in preserving these things, but negotiated with the Archbishop of Canterbury to procure the ministerial succes- sion for the churches of Geneva, and failed in his end in con- sequence of the wars and political commotions of his time. The Lutherans, like Calvin, were unable, owing to the troubled state of Europe, to obtain and keep up the episco- pal succession ; and although they still retain the office, they have not the tactual succession, but derive their ordination through the second order of the ministry — what would be called : ruling elders.' The Methodist Episcopal church pre- served the office, although they could not get the outward divine commission in tactual succession. The tactual suc- cession of the Presbyterian church is involved in much ob- scurity during the reformation, and cannot be traced beyond that period. Calvin proceeded to preach without any recorded ordination. u The Protestant Episcopal church of America has received her authority, as Christ's agent and representative, through three distinct channels, all emanating from Jerusalem, and combining in England. The first by the apostle who carried the gospel into Britain in the beginning of the Christian dis- pensation. The second coming through Aries in France, the 29* 342 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. church of France planted by apostolic hands and in the year 632, giving the episcopate to Augustin," (said to be the first Archbishop of Canterbury,) "who, although the expense of his mission was borne by Gregory the Great, did not go to Italy for consecration, but was consecrated in Aries. The third, which in latter times was derived through the Italian church by the consecration of one of the English bishops in Italy, prior to the reformation. " The church of Rome has not corrupted the succession, but the doctrine which she delivers us. We should not be ashamed of the ' royal priesthood,' even though it be in Rome. We do not sutler much by the addition of the Italian succession, which is lost and mingled among the others, and is the addition of one bishop to a church which already had scores of them. Gilbert Sheldon, while Bishop of London, consecrated James Sharpe Archbishop of St. Andrews/"' (the first Scottish prelate.) " Robert Kilgour, Bishop of Aberdeen, and primus of the Scottish church, consecrated Samuel Sea- bury Bishop of Connecticut, first bishop of the American church, November 14, 1784. John Mogre, Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated William White Bishop of Pennsyl- vania, second bishop of the American church, February 4, 1787. A succession of bishops may also be traced from St. James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, to the American bishops, viz., in the see of Jerusalem to John III., the fifty-first bishop, who, in the year 523, consecrated David Archbishop of St. David's, in Wales, and in the see of St. David's to the present time, or to the period of the reformation, when it comes through Matthew Parker and his associates." (Pp. 116-120.) "A threefold cord" (but especially a fourfold one) "is not quickly broken." (Ecc. iv. 12.) While the author of the u addenda " speaks so covertly of " the Italian church," I am not sure that he escapes the imprecation written in Deuter- onomy xxvii. 16. As the Bible tells us nothing about an apostle carrying prelacy into Britain, nor any thing about a tactual episcopate being given to Augustin at Aries, and APPENDIX. 343 equally little about the connection of u the American bishops " and the see of St. David's, so of all probabilities in relation to the '-tactual succession" that channel appears most plau- sible in which the names of Thomas Cranmer, Reginald Pole, and Matthew Parker are found — that which comes through the church of Rome ; and let us look at this. Peter was called first (or next to Andrew, his brother) to the apostolic office. Being naturally of a forward and ready disposition both in duty and in sin, he was the subject of personal address both by his Savior and his fellow-apostles, as well as speaker on their behalf, more frequently than any of the other disciples. When the popular curiosity was ex- cited to know who Jesus was, and when the question was proposed to the twelve, he readily responded on their behalf and his own, avowing the essential divinity of his Lord, who, addressing him with them, called him a stone, a partaker of the same nature with the great and living Rock, the Rock of offence, the Rock of ages, and that Rock was Christ, (not Peter;) giving to him in common with the rest, on whose be- half he had answered, power in the church of the living God, which is the pillar and ground of the truth, and saying, " I will," not, I do now, but " I will," when I am ready to as- cend unto my Father, and to send down the Holy Comforter, "give unto you the keys of the kingdom of heaven." The same impetuosity led him soon after to " rebuke " his Master, (Matt. xvi. 22.) and drew down upon him language at variance with every idea of infallibility. " Satan, thou savorest not the things that be of God," led him to the denial of his Lord, and blackened his soul with perjury. (Matt. xxvi. 72.) The other apostles, as well as he, and equally with him. were offi- cially assured, so long as they should "behave themselves in the house of God," " Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." He was the first to preach the gospel to the Jews ; to him was the apostleship of the circumcision committed ; and as a 344 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. co-presbyter with James, the Lord's brother, he, above ten years after the day of Pentecost, labored in word and doc- trine as an elder at Jerusalem, where he was visited by Paul. (1 and 2 Galatians.) When, fourteen years afterwards, Paul revisited him at Jerusalem, (not at Rome,) he was in that city with James and John, laboring still in word and doctrine, preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ; and when (some years later) he came to Antioch, Paul "withstood him to the face, because he w T as to be blamed " for his dissimulation. Not only was he one of the three which attended our Lord at his transfiguration, but he was the first to draw a sword in defence of his Master when he was apprehended by his be- trayers and murderers. He was also the first to preach the gospel to the Gentiles, as well as the apostle of the Jews ; yet he declares himself to be only an elder, not a pope. He does not command, or issue " bulls," to the simple faithful, but exhorts the elders who labored among those who were 'f elect to obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ," to feed the flock of God, as " ensamples," and warns them against being " lords over God's heritage." And he does this, disclaiming every shadow of prelatic power, acting simply as an elder. " The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder." Admitting, then, that he possessed all the power, office, and honor of an apostle, which he unquestionably had, this does not prove that he alone was (or that his successors in office, if he had any, were) possessed of absolute ecclesias- tical power; for it was promised concerning Christ, " I will lay upon his shoulder the key of the house of David," (the. emblem of power, both of ordination and of rule ;) and this power Christ gave in an equal degree to all his apostles. — Matt, xviii. 18. Hence all believers, saints, and faithful in Christ Jesus "are built on the foundation," not of Peter alone, but of all "the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ"" (not Peter) "being the chief corner stone." And the church of God (Rev. xxi. APPENDIX. D45 14) has (in the language of prophecy) "twelve foundations," and in them not the name of Peter as Pope of Rome alone, but " the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." This totally excludes Peter from any prelatical preeminence, especially such as is claimed for him by the Papal church, and assigns to him his position as an elder, precisely on that parity, and yet official superiority, which are given to the oldest ruling elder in a session, or to the minister oldest in office in a presbytery, and nothing more, the ipse dixit of the Vatican notwithstanding. As to a successor in office, Judas alone had one. About Cletus and Anacletus the Bible says nothing, although the apostle John outlived, according to the prelatic genealogies, two or three popes. My faith must lose its cohesiveness, and be cast in a mould of greater diameter and periphery than it is at present, in view of these genealogies, before I can undoubtedly believe that a " tactual succession " has in all the above-mentioned cases taken place ; and its expansion must then be much in- creased before I can believe that a tactual succession is in the specific form of prelacy authorized by the word of God. That "the tactual succession of the Presbyterian church is involved in much obscurity during the reformation," is true ; and yet " it can be traced beyond that period," traced where prelacy had no existence — to the primitive apostolic church. Thus by the " tactual succession," communicated by Simeon Niger, Lucius, and Manaen, and probably u certain " other " prophets and teachers, which were in the church that was at Antioch," Barnabas and Saul were separated to the work of the ministry. " And when they had fasted, and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away, they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost." (Acts xiii.) Timothy, at least, among the early Presbyterians, received the "tactual succession " by " the laying on of the hands of the presby- tery." (1 Tim. iv. 14.) Let prelacy show, from the word of God, that any other " tactual succession " was given to Linus. " Try the spirits," 346 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. D. True, whether we look north or south. The germ of our national republic is found in the following persecution: — " Mr. Francis Makemie was one of the first, if not the first Presbyterian minister in this country. The following extract presents in brief the persecution he encountered in New York, in 1707, from the then established (Episcopal) religion. A fuller account may be found in Smith's History of New York. " Mr. Makemie was a bold man ; and it would seem that he was willing to endure all things for the elect's sake, that they might also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. I have heretofore alluded to the persecution which he suffered in New York. He reached that city in the month of January, 1707. From the season of the year, we conclude certainly that he made the journey by land, and not coastwise ; and from the missionary spirit of the man, there is no doubt he preached the truth all along the way. He was accompanied by the Rev. John Hampton, afterwards the settled pastor of the church at Snowhill. There were, at that time, in New York, Dutch and French Calvinists, Episco- palians, and Irish Presbyterians. The Presbyterians had neither meeting house nor minister. Messrs. Makemie and Hampton had, with the consent of the congregation, or their representatives, preached certainly once, perhaps many times, in the Dutch church ; but on a particular Sabbath day, Mr. Makemie preached in a private house with open doors, 1 * and Mr. Hampton preached at New Town. By the order of the governor, they were both arrested the same week at New • ",I have seen it stated some where that he also baptized a child. I have no evidence of the fact. It may have been mentioned in the pamphlet referred to in my last letter ; but it was not noticed in the prosecution afterwards instituted against him." APPENDIX. 347 Town, and carried before his lordship, who reprimanded them severely; but they withstood the ferocity of his temper and man- ner with undaunted firmness. The charge preferred against them was, that they had violated those British statutes which relate to dissenters and dissenting teachers. Mr. Makemie replied with great power to the arguments of the attorney general, and proved conclusively, that those obnoxious laws were not intended for that province, and therefore did not ex- tend to it. His lordship replied, that they had nevertheless committed an offence against his instructions, and accordingly committed them to prison to await the return of the chief jus- tice from New Jersey. When they were arraigned before the court, the governor, becoming convinced that the indictments found could not be sustained, changed entirely the character of the offence charged. They gave bail for their appearance at the next term of the Supreme Court, and were discharged after an imprisonment of almost seven weeks' duration. The grand jury, which next acted upon the case, found no bill against Mr. Hampton; but on the sixth day of June in the same year, Mr. Makemie was tried upon an indictment, the substance of which was in the following words : ' That Francis Makemie, pretending himself to be a Protestant dis- senting minister, condemning and endeavoring to subvert the queen's ecclesiastical supremacy, unlawfully preached, with- out the governor's license first obtained, in derogation of the royal authority and prerogative ; and that he used other cere- monies and rites than those contained in the common prayer book ; and lastly, that he, being unqualified to preach, did preach at an illegal conventicle.' The two last charges were said to be contrary to the forms of the statutes. The people took deep interest in the trial, for very precious rights were involved, and the most learned and eminent members of the provincial bar were engaged in it. The court favored the prosecution, but the jury returned a verdict of 'not guilty.' Notwithstanding his acquittal, his bail was not discharged until he had paid the whole cost of the prosecution, amounting 848 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. to the sum of eighty-three pounds seven shillings and sixpence ! More grievous oppression, or more unrighteous extortion, never disgraced the government of any tyrant. "The deep injuries inflicted on Mr. Makemie had a power- ful effect upon the people. They saw for the first time their chief magistrate in his true character J they saw that invalu- able rights, the rights of conscience, were in danger ; and a legislative assembly, convened on the 8th of November, i708, spoke to the offender in language not to be misunder- stood. In one of a series of resolutions, they denounced the extortion practised upon Mr. Makemie in the following words : * Resolved, that the compelling any man upon trial, by a jury or otherwise, to pay any fees for his prosecution, or any thing whatsoever, unless the fees of the officers whom he employs for his necessary defence, is a great grievance, and contrary to justice.' 7 * This was the " little cloud, not bigger than a man's hand," which eventually assembled the Mecklenburg, North Carolina, convention, in May, 1 775, and caused the declaration of in- dependence in 1776, with all their untold results. Secondary and subordinate matters, of course, conspired to the great is- sue, but this persecution occupied the primary place, not simply claiming redress, as did taxation without representa- tion, in the stamp act and other oppressh f e forms, but crying for vengeance to the Judge of the oppressed. Corroborative of the position of the historian (Bancroft) is the fact, that in almost all the steps of the revolution, espe- cially in its incipient ones, the Presbyterian clergymen were the early and steadfast cobperators, if not the leaders. A few specimens of their prominence 1 now give in proof. Of the Rev. James Hall, of North Carolina, it is said, " A full account of his actions during the revolution would fill a volume ; his active, enterprising spirit would not let him be neuter; hig principles, drawn from the word of God and the doctrines of * Spenee's Letters^ APPENDIX. 349 his church, and cultivated by Dr. Witherspoon, carried him with all his heart to defend the ground taken by the conven- tion in Mecklenburg, May, 1775, and by the Continental Congress in 1776. He gave his powers of mind, body, and estate to^the cause of his country. As the citizens would as- semble to hear news and discuss the politics of those trying times, and were making choice of the side they would es- pouse, Mr. Hall was accustomed to meet with them, and ad- dressing them, infused his own spirit, and inflamed their love of liberty, and strengthened their purpose of maintaining their rights at all hazards. The tradition about him, in these cases, is, that he was eminently successful ; and the fact that there was great unanimity in that section of country, in a measure the effect of his exertions, would of itself show that he was both influential and eloquent." * " The synod of New York was the very first body, a year before the declaration of independence, to declare themselves in favor of open resistance, and to encourage and guide their people then in arms. u This is certainly a most remarkable fact. i Of the inde- pendence of the colonies, for some time after the affair at Lexington, that is, in 1775,' says Mr. Cheatham, 'few thought, and no one wrote. Here and there it was indistinctly men- tioned, but nowhere encouraged.' ' Independence,' says Thomas Paine, ' was a doctrine scarce and rare, even towards the conclusion of the year 1775.' Even in October, 1775, when the news of the rejection of the petition of Congress to the king was received, and had produced universal indigna- tion, still even now few thought seriously of independence. The mind was overpowered by fear rather than alive to safety. And yet among those few who not only thought upon, but openly advised independence, were the Presbyte- rians as a body ; they having openly commended it months before the publication of Paine's Common Sense, which was * Foote's Sketches of North Carolina. 30 350 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. not issued until January, 1776, and which waft itself the off- spring of a suggestion made by Dr. Benjamin Rush, who was brought up under the Rev. Samuel Finley, afterwards president of the College of Princeton, of which college he became a graduate under the presidency of the Rey^ Samuel Davies." " The service rendered in securing the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, by the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, a Presbyterian clergyman from Scotland, and also president of the College of Princeton, and who was a member of the Continental Congress, is thus graphically described by Dr. Krebs : f When the declaration of independence was under debate in the Continental Congress, doubts and forebodings were whispered through that hall. The houses hesitated, wavered, and, for a while, the liberty and slavery of the na- tion appeared to hang in an even scale. It was then that an aged patriarch arose, a venerable and stately form, his head white with the frosts of years. Every eye went to him with the quickness of thought, and remained with the fixedness of the polar star. He cast on the assembly a look of inex- pressible interest and unconquerable determination, while on his visage the hue of age was lost in the flush of a burn- ing patriotism that fired his cheek. " There is,"' said he, when he saw the house wavering, — there is a tide in the affairs of men — a nick of time. We perceive it now before us. To hesitate is to consent to our own slavery. That noble instrument upon your table, which insures immortality to its author, should be subscribed this very morning, by every pen in the house. He that will not respond to its ac- cents, and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions, is unworthy the name of a freeman. For my own part, of property I have some — of reputation, more. That reputation is staked, that property is pledged, on the issue of this contest. And although these gray hairs must soon descend into the sepulchre, I would infinitely rather they should descend thither by the hands of the public executioner than desert, APPENDIX. 351 at this crisis, the sacred cause of my country.'" Who was it that uttered this memorable speech, potent in turning the scales of the nation's destiny, and worthy to be preserved in the same imperishable record in which is registered the not more eloquent speech ascribed to John Adams, on the same sublime occasion ? It was John Witherspoon, at that day the most distinguished Presbyterian minister west of the Atlantic Ocean — the father of the Presbyterian church in the United States." '" — Dr. Smyth. Again : in the synod of New England, (which had then three presbyteries in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.) at their meeting at Londonderry, September 4, 1776. -the question being put. whether any suspected to be inimical to the liberties of the independent states of America, which they are now contending for, and refuses to declare his at- tachment to the same, should have a seat in this judicature : voted, they should not." Not only did they there and then declare their '-'approval of the declaration of independence lately published by the American colonies.*' but also deposed from ministerial and Christian standing the Rev. John Morrison, who had u been under ecclesiastical proceedings, and had then eloped to the ministerial army, and shamefully behaved himself. *" To this that synod then added, " As the Rev. John Houston is suspected as inimical to the states of America.*'* he has to promise to give satisfaction to the civil authorities, and his presbytery must certify to this synod that he has also satisfied them/' Various other proofs of a similar character in rela- tion to Presbyterian clergymen might be here adduced, but I shall only further mention one at the Ultima Tkule of the re- volted colonies. At a meeting of the presbytery of the Eastward, at Pownal- toro*. on October 21, 1777, ' ; Colonel Reed reported that the situation of the Rev. John Murray's dwelling, the particular vengeance threatened by the common enemy against him, and the large reward of five hundred pounds sterling offered 352 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. by them to any person that shall deliver him up, render his longer residence in Boothbay, at this juncture, exceedingly dangerous." — Minutes of that date. Nor were the ruling eldership of the Presbyterian church less unanimous in the struggle. Says the Rev. Dr. Smyth, of South Carolina, " The battles of the Cowpens, of King's Mountain, and also the severe skir/nish known as Huck's Defeat, are among the most celebrated in this state, as giving a turning point to the contest of the revolution. General Morgan, who commanded at the Cowpens, was a Presbyterian elder, and lived and died in the communion of the church. General Pickens, who made all the arrangements for the battle, was also a Presbyterian elder. And nearly all under their command were Presbyterians. In the battle of King's Mountain, Colonel Campbell, Colonel James Williams, (who fell in action,) Colonel Cleaveland, Colonel Shelby, and Colonel Sevier, were all Presbyterian elders ; and the body of their troops were collected from Presbyterian settlements. At Huck's Defeat, in York, Colonel Bratton and Major Dick- son were both elders of the Presbyterian church. Major Samuel Morrow, who was with Colonel Sumpter in four en- gagements, and at King's Mountain, Blackstock, and other battles, and whose home was in the army till the termination of hostilities, was, for about fifty years, a ruling elder in the Presbyterian church. " These facts we have collected from high authority, and they deserve to be prominently noticed. Here are ten officers of distinction, all bearing rule in the church of Christ, and all bearing arms in defence of our liberties. Braver or better officers cannot be found in the annals of our country, nor braver or better troops. It may also be mentioned in this connection, that Marion, Huger, and other distinguished men of revolutionary memory, were of Huguenot, that is, full- blooded Presbyterian, descent. u Joseph Reed, the military secretary of Washington, at Cambridge, adjutant general of the continental army, APPENDIX. 353 member of the Congress of the United States, and president of the Executive Council of the State of Pennsylvania, — Joseph Reed, in whom, more than in any other man, General Washington confided, was the son and grandson of Irish Presbyterians. His grandfather came from Carrickfergus. His father was one of the trustees of the Third Presbyterian church, Arch Street, Philadelphia. He was educated at Princeton. l He was firmly attached to the Presbyterian church, in which he had been educated. In one of his pub- lications, when far advanced in life, he said of it, " When I am convinced of its errors, or ashamed of its character, I may perhaps change it. Till then I shall not blush at a con- nection with a people, who, in this great controversy, are not second to any in vigorous exertions and generous contribu- tions, and to whom we are so eminently indebted for our deliverance from the thraldom of Great Britain/' ' " That the people were unanimous with the ministers and elders we have ample proof. " Mr. Reed, of Philadelphia, himself an Episcopalian, in a published address, remarks, 1 The part taken by the Presbyterians in the contest with the mother country, was indeed at the time often made a ground of reproach ; and the connection between their efforts for the security of their religious liberty, and opposition to the op- pressive measures of Parliament, was then distinctly seen. Mr. Galloway, a prominent advocate of the government, as- cribed, in 1774, the revolt and revolution mainly to the action of the Presbyterian clergy and laity as early as 1764, when the proposition for a general synod emanated from a com- mittee appointed for that purpose, in Philadelphia. Another writer of the same period says, c You will have discovered that I am no friend to the Presbyterians, and that I fix all the blame of these extraordinary American proceedings upon them.' "'A Presbyterian loyalist,' adds Mr. Reed, 'was a thing unheard of.' Patriotic clergymen of the established church were exceptions to general conduct ; for while they were 30* 354 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. patriots at a sacrifice, and in spite of restraint and imaginary obligations, which many found it impossible to disregard, it was natural sympathy and voluntary action that placed the dissenters under the banner of revolutionary redress. It is a sober judgment, which cannot be questioned, that had inde- pendence and its maintenance depended on the approval and ready sanction of the colonial Episcopal clergy, misrule and oppression must have become far more intense before they would have seen a case of justifiable revolution. The debt of gratitude which independent America owes to the dissent- ing clergy and laity never can be paid. '• The testimony of an Episcopalian is corroborated by Dr. Elliot, the editor of the organ of the Methodist church in the west, in noticing an attack made on the Presbyterians by Bishop Purcell : k ' The Presbyterians.' says he, ' of every class, were prominent, and even foremost, in achieving the liberties of the United States ; and they have been all along the leading supporters of constitution, and law, and good order. They have been the pioneers of learning and sound knowl- edge from its highest to its lowest grade, and are now its principal supporters.' " u During the continuance of the revolutionary war," says the Rev. Mr. Smyth, " the Presbyterian body sustained and invigorated the forces of their beleaguered country, so that Presbyterians were every where treated with special cruelty and revenge ; * and at the close of the war they again ad- dressed their people, and offered up praise to God, who had given them the victory." The standards, also, which gave to this people (under the blessing of God) their peculiarities, were the antitype from * Says Kendall, in his unfinished history of General Jackson, " The British officer who marched his troops into the settlement of Waxhaw, South Carolina, burned the Presbyterian church, and the house of the preacher, and every Bible he could lay his hands on containing the Scotch translation of the Psalms of David." — Christian Instructor, Philadelphia, Vol. IV. p. 217- APPENDIX. 355 which has arisen our representative republicanism. Hence says the Rev. Mr. Junkin, " After the conflict was over, and the sages of America came to settle the forms of our government, they did but copy into every constitution the simple elements of representative republicanism, as found in the Presbyterian system. It is matter of history that cannot be denied, that Presbyterianism, as found in the Bible, and in the standards of the several Presbyterian churches, gave character to our free institutions. Am I reminded of the glorious part which New England Congregationalists took in our country's deliverance ? My heart's best feelings kindle at the recollection : and in according to New England all the glory that she has so well earned, T yield not my position, for New England ■' (was then) •'*' substantially Presbyterian. It must not be forgotten that the Pilgrim Fathers, after witnessing the sad effects of simple Independency in their own land, had been nursed in the bosom, and had drank of the spirit, of Presbyterian Holland and Geneva, before they reached the rock of Plymouth, and from the very first their institutions partook of the Presbyterian form.'' * " We have the authority, also, of the late Chief Justice Tilghman for stating that the framers of the constitution of the United States were (chiefly through the agency of Dr. Witherspoon, who was one of them) greatly indebted to the standards of the Presbyterian church in Scotland, in model- ling that admirable instrument, under which we have enjoyed more than half a century of unparalleled national prosperity." 7 a And still further, the Hon. W. C. Preston has given pub- licity to the following remarkable words : l Certainly it is the most remarkable and singular coincidence, that the con- stitution of the Presbyterian church should bear such a close and striking resemblance to the political constitution of our country. This may be regarded as an earnest of our beloved national union. We fondly regard our federal constitution * Dis., p. 28. 356 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. as the purest specimen of republican government that the world ever saw ; and on the same^pure principles of repub- licanism, as its basis, we find established the constitution of this republican church. The two may be supposed to be formed after the same model.'" " The venerable and patriotic Mr. Duponceau, of Phila- delphia, remarked to a gentleman known to the writer, that he considered George Bryan, Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry the three men of the revolution. Now, Mr. Bryan, who was a member of the siamp act Congress of 1765, pres- ident of Pennsylvania, a judge of the Supreme Court, and a member of the council'of censors, and one of the leading whig members of the new Assembly, was also a Presbyterian. To him principally, in conjunction with a Mr. Cannon, a schoolmaster, is attributed, by Mr. Graydon, the constitution of Pennsylvania. i These,' says Mr. Graydon, ' constituted the 4 duumvirate which had the credit of framing the consti- tution, and thence laying, in Pennsylvania, the corner stone of that edifice which, however retarded in its progress by aristocratical interferences, towers like another Babel to the skies, and will continue to tower, until finally arrested and dilapidated by an irremediable confusion of tongues — for anarchy ever closes the career of democracy.' For a correct statement of this fact, Mr. Graydon was a most competent witness; and President Adams, therefore, in associating Timothy Matlock, Thomas Young, and Thomas Paine in this work, was doubtless misinformed." " From this constitution we make the following extracts, to show that this Presbyterian constitution of Pennsylvania was the first in the United Stales, since the revolution, which provided for the complete and universal toleration of religious opinions. This constitution was adopted in 1776, (from July 15 to September 28.) Article II. is as follows : ' That all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Al- mighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understanding ; and that no man ought or can of right APPENDIX. 357 be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any ministry, con- trary to or against his own free will and consent. Nor can any man, who acknowledges the being of a God, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil rights as a citizen, on ac- count of his religious sentiments or peculiar modes of reli- gious worship ; that no authority can, or ought to be vested in, or assumed by any power whatever, that shall in any case interfere with, or in any manner control, the right of con- science in the free exercise of religious worship.' u It thus appears that the declaration of American inde- pendence was first favored by the Presbyterian synod, then the highest body in the church; that the first actual and prac- tical declaration of independence was made by Presbyterians, in Mecklenburgh, North. Carolina; that the first state con- stitution made under that declaration, proclaiming universal and complete toleration of religious opinion, was framed by a Presbyterian ; and that the overthrow of the then existing establishment of religion in Virginia and South Carolina, and the complete divorce of the church and the state, were mainly owing to the efforts of the Presbyterian church." * * Smyth's Presbyterianism. 358 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. E. The formation of character under each polity becomes so marked and distinct, that if the way to true happiness were consulted by those thus trained so diversely, in the selection of " The plighted partners of their future lives," fewer marriages would be formed between individuals from any two of these conflicting radical divisions, and they would in wisdom unite only with those, in this most important and indissoluble union, who had been trained alike with them- selves. " Can two walk together except they be agreed ?- " While he or she that " believeth can have no part with an infidel," and must, at the risk of all that is valuable, '-marry only in the Lord," still happiness in this heaven -ordained institution cannot always be found by simply uniting with one under the general name of Christian. It is not usually great disasters which disturb domestic peace. A constant irritation or friction will destroy the most delightful social intercourse ; and small as church government is usually con- sidered to be, it will plant a thorn among the joys of wedded life where its importance is not considered, and its conflicting influences are brought into contact. "The contentions of a wife" (or of a husband) "are a continual dropping." Those who enter this relation in the visible church are re- quired to dwell together as heirs of the grace of life, to bear each other's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. The religious belief will usually, if not invariably, control the domestic relations, especially in the bosom of the mother. Faith finds a more genial home in the female heart than in the rugged and calculating soul of man. A little captive maid from the land of Israel becomes, by attachment to the faith of her fathers, the instrument of bringing the idolatrous commander-in-chief of the forces of the King of Syria to be a worshipper of the God of Abraham, while on the other APPENDIX. 359 hand, even " the wisdom of Solomon '' could not withstand the influences of female faith ; " nevertheless, even him did outlandish women cause to sin,-' by bringing him to their belief and debasement in the pollutions of idolatry. The influences of a superabundant faith have been felt by millions of our race, where woman has been devoted to Popery. How many households have been shorn of their full measure of domestic bliss by that faith which has pro- duced and upholds nunneries ! And where a wife has her belief in the supremacy of the Roman pontiff, it adds but little. I opine, to a husband's joys. "What a spectacle to see a father and a mother divide their children according to the faith of each parent, where Papal prelacy has been united with any of the forms of Protestantism ! to see sex doom the offspring to superstition, or to the enjoyment of the word of God, presenting, in this point of view, a partial similarity to the abominations of slavery, in which freedom goes or comes with the mother ! To unite, then, in marriage those from this type of prelacy with any other, would necessarily destroy full domestic bliss. Neither would the union of individuals, from any of the sects under the other radical divisions, with Protestant Episcopacy, insure domestic peace. Either the superabun- dance of the faith of the one party must be abandoned, or the other, from natural affection, must have an increase of faith, and relinquish their former religious belief to obtain concord. .Religious faith must be the sacrifice and price, and where it is not offered, strife about, or perchance indifference to, god- liness and religious duties, must ensue. The offspring in such a case cannot be trained up in the nurture and admoni- tion of the Lord, and thus they, at times, become the property of some other sect. Again : when, in domestic training, one parent conscien- tiously " honors the faces of the elders" of the church, and the other views their office as unscriptural and their visits as unne- cessary, unless it be at the sacrifice of a change of faith^ paren- 360 philosophy of sectarianism. tal harmony in religion, and even morals, can but partially exist. If the wife believe too little, she will have no supera- bundant reverence for her husband ; and if in religious mat- ters, where " all church power resides in the church, and not in church officers," she does not submit to be represented by her husband, but must personally exercise ecclesiastical power by the social compact, she will not, at home, very readily, like " Sarah, obey " her husband, " calling him Lord." Hence arise those unnatural exhibitions of human weak- ness in which woman abandons her position, dishonors her nature, and becomes an unseemly warrior for what, in modern Congregational phraseology, are called ''women's rights." To all such, as they believe too little, the charge of God is trivial and valueless — " Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands." The idea that their husbands are to " dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel," does not suit the insubordinating nature of this church polity. With those who thus carry it out in some of its legitimate results, such directions as the following have but little authority : " Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, and if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home ; for it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church." Those women, on the other hand, who profess godliness and believe the Holy Scriptures without diminution or increase of their contents, not only readily consent to these divine instructions, but when requested to enter- into this relation, which is " hon- orable in all," they are careful to "marry only in the Lord," and to be companions only " of those who fear God and keep his precepts." Their daily observation of society will convince such, that APPENDIX. 361 the trials and sorrows, as well as the joys, of married life are sure ; that " such shall have trouble in the flesh." Conse- quently, a wise woman commits her dearest interests only to one who will, with her, believe the same things, and walk by the same rule in the house of God ; one to whom she has fair reason to believe that, in future life, she can look up with pleasure, and not with shame ; one whom she can reverence ; one to whom she would feel it to be no honor to dictate ; and then, by all the appliances of affectionate obe- dience, and by a chaste conversation, coupled with fear, it becomes alike the study and delight of her life, that by his consciousness .of domestic delights at home, as well as by the enjoyment of public honor and usefulness in his own generation, "her husband shall be known in the gates when he sitteth among the elders of the land." The subordinating influences of Episcopacy (as I have else- where shown) teach to every virtuous woman the same thing, and cause her thus to rejoice, while she honors the guide of her youth, and ministers daily as a helpmeet to his comfort, spiritual and temporal. Hence, among both Episcopalians and Presbyterians, all the modern clamor for " women's rights " are unknown, and they were for above two centuries unknown among Independents. They have a specific origin under modern Congregationalism. Under the Jewish economy the children of Israel were to marry only in their own tribe. This was ordered for a reason peculiar to that nation in reference to the coming of the Messiah. Still, under the New Testament, when these dis- tinctions of affinity are abolished, there would exist much wisdom, which would be evolved in a vast increase of human happiness, if each of our radical divisions of church polity should marry only with those of like bsliof. Then two, being agreed, could walk and dwell tcgelher; and then "domestic bliss, the only joy of paradise ?E/ped the fall," or rather which has been restored to his people by Him who " loved the church, and gave himself for it," would 31 362 PHILOSOPHY OF SECTARIANISM. have found a comfortable abode in many households, where the tinsel attractions of wealth, or rank, or beauty, have brought together those trained most differently under two antagonistic and opposing forms of ecclesiastical govern- ment and where, in consequence of inattention to this salu- tary arrangement in due season, by coldness, distrust, partial affection, religious prejudice, and sectarian rancor, they are to each other as husband and wife through life, at least too often, sources of annoyance, pain, or disgrace. As there is but one faith, so those only who entertain the same views in relation to its nature and influence should, with each other, enter into the covenant of their God. Then a unity of affec- tion and design through life might be rationally expected. Under the plastic hand of church government, men and women of different tribes and races, when educated reli- giously, in the same doctrine and worship, notwithstanding the essential variety of constitution, and the want of precise identity of nature which they bring together, can rind a mutual companionship, while those of the same race by nature, when trained under different forms of regimen, will always discover some sources of discord which can be re- moved only by a change of religious faith, or endured only by a large amount of the grace of forbearance. Low, indeed, must be his esteem of religious principle, who can yield his conscientious belief in the doctrine of God our Savior to the earth-born love of a fellow-creature ; and far from the enjoyments arising from a conscience void of offence must her pleasures be who relinquishes her parental, early reli- gious belief to one, who, by influences bordering on compul- sion, constrains her to change her church polity and all its inseparable influences in life, as the price of domestic har- mony. Let all, then, who have been favored with pious do- mestic training, when about to assume parental relations, " see, and know, and consider, and understand, that the hand of the Lord hath done this."' u Ponder the paths of thy feet, and all thy ways shall be ordered aright."