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The American
Church History Series
CONSISTING OF A SERIES OF
DENOMINATIONAL HISTORIES PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY of CHURCH HISTORY
General Editors
BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D. D., LL. D.
REV. E. J. WOLF, D. D.
HENRY C. VEDDer, M. A.
REV. SAMUEL M. JACKSON, D. D., LL. D.
REV. PHILIP SCHAFF, D. D., LL. D.
RT. REV. H. C. POTTER, D. D., LL. D.
REV. GEO. P. Fisher, D. D., LL. D.
VOLUME VI
American Church History
A HISTORY .
OF THE
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES
IN THE UNITED STATES
BY
ROBERT ELLIS THOMPSON, D. D.
New York
The Christian Literature Co.
MDCCCXCV
*
Copyright, 1895,
BY THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . .
CHAP. I.—INTRODUCTION: THE HISTORIC ANTECEDENTS IN THE
OLD WORLD.-The Reformed Polity.-The Ulster Plantation.-
Agreement among the Churches.-The Reformed Discipline.-A
Covenanted Nation
CHAP. II.—THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS, 1629–1713.—“The New
England Way.”—Presbyterians in Maryland.-The First Presby-
tery.-Harmony with New England
CHAP. III.—GROWTH AND DISSENSION, 1713-41.-The Great Immi-
gration.-Church and School.-Subscription Established." Bar-
barism the Danger."-The Great Awakening.-The Division of
1741....
..
Y
...
""
•
CHAP. IV.—FROM THE SCHISM TO THE REUNION, 1741-58.—The
Education Problem.-Faults of the Awakening.-The Presbytery
of Hanover.-Covenanters and Seceders.-Rous or Watts?.
CHAP. V.-REUNION AND GROWTH, 1758-75.-The American Se-
ceders. Dissensions in the Synod.-New Side Rigor.-The Need
of a Bishop.-A Joint Convention
CHAP. VI.—INDEPENDENCE AND REORGANIZATION, 1776–89.—Pres-
byterian Patriotism.-Beyond the Alleghanies.-Covenanters and
Seceders Unite.-The New Constitution.-Laying Bonds on the
Future.-Presbyterian Example Followed...
56
""
CHAP. VII.-REVIVAL AND DISSENSION, 1789-1810.-Presbyterian
Strength and Losses.-The Associated Presbyteries.'
"The
Great Revival.-The Lesser Bodies.-Statistics of Growth ...
CHAP. VIII.—THE ERA OF NEW METHODS, 1810-30.—The New
West.—Theological Seminaries.-Hopkinsianism.—Individualism.
—Church Life.-A Hasty Union.-An Era of Growth ....
CHAP. IX. THE NEW AGE.-Theocratic Ideals.-"The Beauty of
Holiness."-" The Spirit of All Ages.
95
CHAP. X.-YEARS OF STRIFE, 1831-36.—Division among Covenant-
ers.-Albert Barnes's Sermon.-" Misadelphia."-Mr. Barnes's
PAGE
xi
•
13
22
34
45
68
79
vi
CONTENTS.
Second Trial.-The "Act and Testimony."-The Policy of Sepa-
ration..
•
•
•
115
CHAP. XI.—THE DIVISION OF 1837-38.-The Exscinding Acts.-
The New School Organize.-The Moderates.-Deliverances on
Slavery. Boards, or Societies?—The Leaders in Debate...
CHAP. XII.—FROM WAR To War, 1840-60.-Agitation and Work.
-Presbyterians and Slavery.-New-school Faithfulness.-Old-
school Neutrality.-A New Atmosphere.-Eldership and Boards.—
Biblical Scholarship.-Church History.-Reunion of Seceders.-
Rigidity Relaxed.
•
• •
W
CHAP. XIII.-THE WAR FOR THE UNION AND Two SECESSIONS,
1861-70.—The Assembly of 1861.-The Spring Resolutions.-
Religion and Politics.-The Confederate Church.-Reunion in the
South.-Revivals in the Armies.-The Border States." Running
the Churches."-The Assembly of 1865.-The Declaration and
Testimony. Changes in the South.
CHAP. XIV. THE REUNION OF THE OLD AND NEW SCHOOL
CHURCHES, 1869-70.-A Reunion Conference.-Bishops McIlvaine
and Lee.-Answer to the Protest.-Dr. Stearns's Sermon.-Re-
union Consummated.-Reorganization.-Suspension of Mr. Stuart 172
CHAP. XV.—WORK AND GROWTH, 1870-88.-Dr. McCosh and Sus-
tentation.-Woman's Work in the Church.-The Color-line in the
Church.-Grant's Indian Policy.-Schools and Colleges.—Paro-
chi..l Schools.-Missionary Advance.—Instrumental Music.-Chris-
tian Union:-The Historic Episcopate....
CHAP. XVI.-THEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY LIFE SINCE 1870.-Dog-
matic Theology.—Biblical Scholarship.-Church Historians.-De-
votional Writers.-Hymnologists.-The Swing Trial.-Lesser
Heretics
•
• • •
·· •
CHAP. XVII. THE CONGREGATIONAL Life and Worship of thE
CHURCH.-Presbytery and Congregation.-The Eldership.-Poly-
pragmatic Pastors.—A Presbyterian Liturgy.—Innovations in Wor-
ship.—Loss and Gain in Spiritual Life.-Christian Nurture and
Work.-Church Discipline and Unity ..
CHAP. XVIII.-THE REVISION CONTROVERSY.-Scottish Relaxation.
-Friends and Foes of Revision.-Objections to Revision.—The
"Elastic Formula."-Presbyterian Losses.—Half a Loaf, or None?
-The Vote on Revision.-National Confessions.
•
CHAP. XIX.—THE BRIGGS AND SMITH TRIALS.-Errancy and Iner-
rancy.-Dr. Briggs's Inaugural.-A Questionable Appeal.-A
Questionable Sentence.-Dr. Smith's Appeal.-Conservative Con-
cessions.
•
CHAP. XX. THE SEMINARY QUESTION, AND OTHER MATTERS.
Status of the Seminaries.-Plan of Federation.-Political Dissent.
-Theocratic Reform.-Strife before Stagnation
PAGE
• •
102
129
150
187
209
226
243
261
274
CONTENTS.
CHAP. XXI.—-Retrospect aND PROSPECT, 1705-1895.-The Pres-
byterian Idea.-A Dual Church.-The Lessons of History.-The
Strength of Puritanism.—The Kirk's Discipline.—The Great Awak-
ening.-Faults and Merits.-A Mediating Church.-The Churchly
Age.—The Social Spirit.—Socialist Exaggerations.—The Begin-
nings of Schism.--The Perils and the Hope of Union.-Unhistoric
Unionism.-A Trinitarian Church.-The Three Types....
APPENDIX.-The National Covenant.-Solemn League and Covenant.
-Adopting Acts, 1647.-Adopting Acts, 1729.-Explanatory Act,
1736.-The Protestation, 1741.-The Plan of Union, 1758.—The
Basis of Union, 1782.-The Adopting Act, 1788.—Declaration of
Principles, 1788.-The Plan of Union, 1801.-The Exscinding
Acts, 1837.-The Auburn Declaration, 1837.-Deliverances on
Slavery, 1787-1853.-Basis of Union, 1858.-The Spring Reso-
lutions, 1861.-The Southern Address, 1861.-Basis of Reunion,
1869.-Concurrent Declarations, 1869.-The Charges and Sentence
in the case of Dr. Briggs.-Proposed Plan for Federation....
vii
PAGE
284
317
A HISTORY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN
THE UNITED STATES.
BY
REV. ROBERT ELLIS THOMPSON, D.D.,
Philadelphia, Pa.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
I. THE REFORMED CHURCHES OF EUrope.
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2 vols.,
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The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre. 2 vols.,, New York, 1886.
Baum, G., et Cunitz, E., Histoire Ecclésiastique des Églises Reformées au
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Tom. i., Firenze, 1891.
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Henry, Paul, Leben Johann Calvins, des grossen Reformators. 3 vols.,
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Heppe, Heinrich, Geschichte des Pietismus und der Mystik in der Refor-
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xi
xii
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Niemeyer, Aug. Herm., Collectio Confessionum in Ecclesiis Reformatis
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Vol. i., Der Pietismus in
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der Reformirten Kirche. Bonn, Marcus, 1880.
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The History of the Christian Church. Vol. vii., The Swiss Refor-
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Smith, Henry B., The Reformed Churches of Europe and America, in Re-
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II. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES OF GREAT BRITAIN AND Ireland.
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Calderwood, David, A History of the Church of Scotland [to 1625].
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Edited by Thomas Thomson.
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Killen, William Dool, Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. 2 vols., Lon-
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Knox, John, A History of the Reformation of Religion within the Realm
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McCrie, Thomas, Jr., Annals of English Presbytery from the Earliest
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Mitchell, Alexander F., The Westminster Assembly: Its History and
Standards. London, 1883.
Reid, James Seaton, A History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland,
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xiii
Wodrow, Robert, The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scot-
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BIBLIOGRAPHY.
III. AMERICAN PRESBYTERIANISM IN GENEral.
Beecher, Willis J. and Mary A., An Index of Presbyterian Ministers,
1706-1881. Philadelphia, 1883.
Blake, T. C., Old Log House: History and Defense of the Cumberland Pres-
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""
In the Theological Medium," Nashville, 1877-1878.
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xiv.
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XV.
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•
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•
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•
xvi
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"
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xvii
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experienced, Converters Unconverted, Revivals Killing Religion, Mission-
aries in Need of Teaching; or, War against the Gospel by its Friends.
Being the Examination and Rejection of Thomas Ledlie Birch, a Foreign
Ordained Minister, by the Rev. Presbytery of Ohio, under the Very Rev.
General Assembly's Alien Act. Washington, Pa., 1806.
Brown, Isaac V., Biography of the Rev. Robert Finley, D.D., Author of
the American Colonization Society. Philadelphia, 1857.
Brown, Matthew, A Memoir of the Rev. Obadiah Jennings, D.D., of
Nashville, Tenn. Pittsburg, 1832.
A Memoir of the Rev. John Macmillan, D.D.
Cossitt, F. R., The Life and Times of Rev. Finis Ewing, one of the Fathers
and Founders of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. To which are
added Remarks on Dr. Davidson's History; or, A Review of his Chapter
on the Revival of 1800, and his History of the Cumberland Presbyterians.
Louisville, 1853.
Dana, Daniel, A Discourse Preached on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Au-
thor's Ordination. Newburyport, 1845.
Elliott, David, Biographical Šketch of the Rev. Samuel Porter.
Prefixed
to his Discourses and Dialogues. Pittsburg, 1853.
The Life of the Rev. Elisha Macurdy. With an Appendix contain-
ing Brief Notices of Various Deceased Ministers of the Presbyterian
Church in Western Pennsylvania. Alleghany, 1848.
Ely, Ezra Stiles, A Contrast between Calvinism and Hopkinsianism.
New York, 1811.
, History of the Ecclesiastical Proceedings Relative to the Third Presby-
terian Church in Philadelphia, the Rev. E. S. Ely, and the Judicatories
of the Church with which they are Connected. Philadelphia, 1814.
Green, Ashbel, Historical Sketch of Domestic and Foreign Missions of the
Presbyterian Church of the United States. Philadelphia, 1838. (A new
edition, with Supplementary Notes by John C. Lowrie, D.D. 1855 and
1868.)
Memoirs of the Rev. Joseph Eastburn, Stated Preacher in the Mar-
iners' Church, Philadelphia.~ Philadelphia, 1828.
Gridley, Samuel H., A Sketch of the Life of Professor James Richards, D.D.,
+
xviii
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Griffin, Edward Dorr, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Rev. Alex-
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ander McWhorter, D.D., of Newark, N. J.
Gurley, R. R., Life and Eloquence of Sylvester Larned. New York, 1844.
Hall, James, A Narrative of a Most Extraordinary Work of Religion in
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Humphrey, Edward P., and Cleland, Thomas H., Memoirs of the
Rev. Thomas Cleland, D.D., Compiled from his Private Papers. Cin-
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Jones, Joseph H., The Life of Ashbel Green, V.D.M., Begun to be Writ-
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Kirk, Edward N., Memorial of the Rev. John Chester, D.D. Albany, 1829.
Kollock, S. K., Biography of the Rev. Henry Kollock, of Savannah. Pre-
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Lacy, Drury, An Account of the Great Revival in Kentucky.
Lundie, Mrs. M. G., Memoirs of the Life and Character of the_Rev.
Matthias Bruen, late Pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Bleecker Street,
New York. New York, 1831.
McNemar, Richard, The Kentucky Revival; or, A Short History of the
late Extraordinary Outpouring of the Spirit of God in the Western States.
Pittsfield, 1808.
Mason, John M., A Plea for Sacramental Communion upon Catholic Prin-
ciples. New York, 1816.
Maxwell, William, A Memoir of the Rev. John H. Rice, D.D., First Pro-
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Philadelphia, J. Whetham, 1835.
Miller, Samuel, Memoir of the Rev. Charles Nisbet, D.D., late President
of Dickinson College. Philadelphia, 1840.
Memoirs of the Rev. John Rogers, D.D., late Pastor of the Wall
Street and Brick Churches, New York. New York, 1813; abridged edi-
tion, Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board, 1840.
The Life of Samuel Miller, D.D., Second Professor in the Theologi-
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2 vols.,
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Patterson, Robert, Biography of the Rev. John Ewing, D.D., First Pro-
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Plumer, William S., Memoir of Rev. William Nevins.
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Speer, William, The Great Revival of 1800.
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Sprague, William B., Life of Daniel Dana, D.D. Boston, 1866.
Spring, Gardiner, Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel J. Mills, late Missionary to
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Wylie, Samuel Brown, Memoir of Alexander McLeod, D.D., New York.
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VI. THE ERA OF DIVISIONS.
A Report of the Debates in the Presbytery of Philadelphia at a Special Meeting
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Baird, Samuel J., A History of the New School, and of the Questions In-
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Barnes, Albert, The Way of Salvation: A Sermon Delivered at Morris-
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Beecher, Edward, Narrative of the Riots at Alton, in Connection with the
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Beecher, Lyman, Views in Theology. Published by Request of the Synod
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>
Brown, Isaac V., A Historical Vindication of the Abrogation of the Plan
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Philadelphia, 1854.
Cheeseman, Lewis, Differences between Old and New School Presbyteri-
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Crocker, Zebulon, The Catastrophe of the Presbyterian Church in 1837,
including a Full History of the Recent Theological Controversies in New
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Duffield, George, Spiritual Life; or, Regeneration Illustrated in a Series
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The Principles of Presbyterian Discipline Unfolded and Illustrated
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History of the Division of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of
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Junkin, George, The Vindication, containing a History of the Trial of the
Rev. Albert Barnes by the Second Presbytery and by the Synod of Phila-
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XX.
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"
171
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McCalla, W. L., A Correct Narrative of the Trial of the Rev. Albert Barnes.
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Members of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. New York,
1836.
The Trial and Acquittal of Lyman Beecher, D.D., before the Presbytery of
Cincinnati, on the Charge of Heresy. Cincinnati and New York, 1835.
Trial of the Rev. Albert Barnes before the Synod of Philadelphia, in Session
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As re-
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VII. FROM DIVISION TO THE WAR.
A Memoir of J. D. Paxton, D.D., late of Princeton, Ind.
1870.
Philadelphia,
Adger, James B., The Collected Writings of the Rev. James Henley Thorn-
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Alexander, Henry Carrington, The Life of James Addison Alexander,
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New York, Scribners, 1870.
the Notes, a Memoir of his Life.
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Edited by the Surviving Correspond-
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Armstrong, George Dodd, The Christian Doctrine of Slavery. New York,
1858.
Baird, Henry M., The Life of the Rev. Robert Baird, D.D. New York,
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Baker, William M., The Life and Labors of the Rev. Daniel Baker, Pastor
and Evangelist. Philadelphia, Martien, 1859.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
xxi
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-, Life at Threescore. Philadelphia, 1858.
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Birney, W., James G. Birney and his Times. New York, 1890.
Brainerd, Mrs. M., Life of Rev. Thomas Brainerd, D.D., for Thirty Years
Pastor of Old Pine Street Church, Philadelphia. Philadelphia, Lippin-
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Dabney, R. L., Memoir of the Rev. F. S. Sampson, D.D., Professor in
Union Theological Seminary. Richmond, 1854.
Halsey, Leroy J., A Sketch of the Life and Educational Labors of Philip
Lindsley, D.D. Hartford, 1859. Also prefixed to his Works, 3 vols.,
Philadelphia, 1866.
Memoirs of the Life and Character of Rev. Lewis Warner Green, D.D.
With a Selection from his Sermons. New York, Scribners, 1871.
Hatfield, Edwin F., Patient Continuance in Well-doing: A Memoir of
Elihu Baldwin, D.D., First Pastor of the Seventh Presbyterian Church,
New York, and First President of Wabash College. With an Introduc-
tion by Samuel Hanson Cox, D.D. New York, Leavitt, 1843.
Hodge, Archibald Alexander, The Life of Charles Hodge, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, N. J. New York,
Scribners, 1880.
Hodge, Charles, and Others, Memorial of Cortlandt Van Rensselaer.
Philadelphia, 1860.
Janeway, T. L., Memoir of the Rev. Jacob J. Janeway, D.D. Philadelphia,
1860.
McCullagh, Joseph H., The Sunday-school Man of the South: Memoirs
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Palmer, Benjamin M., Life and Letters of Rev. James Henley Thornwell,
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Memoirs of the Rev. Nicholas Murray, D.D. [“Kirwan"]. New
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in Reference to American Slavery. With an Appendix containing the
Position of all the Other Churches in Relation to the Same Subject. Cin-
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Schenck, W. E., A Discourse on the Death of Benjamin Holt Rice. Phil-
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Sherwood, J. M., Sketch of the Life of Ichabod S. Spencer, D.D. Pre-
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Smith, Henry B., and Hitchcock, Roswell D., Life, Writings, and
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The Life and Writings of Rev. Joseph Gordon.
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Phila-
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VIII. DURING AND SINCE THE War.
Addresses Delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the General Assembly of
the Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, May 24, 1888. Philadelphia, 1888.
Boardman, Henry A., The General Assembly of 1866. Philadelphia, 1867.
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Phila-
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Edgar, G. P., Dr. Talmage Findicated by Presbytery and Synod. New
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How Shall We Revise? A Bundle of Papers. By Drs. Briggs, Evans,
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xxiii
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IX. LOCAL CHURCH HISTORY.
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xxiv
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Centenary Memorial of the Planting and Growth of Presbyterianism in West-
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•
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XXV
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,
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» 2011. „Za mer, M
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, Early Presbyterian Immigration into South Carolina: A Discourse
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The Scotch-Irish and their First Settlement on the Tyger River, S. C.
A Centennial Discourse. Columbia, 1861.
-, History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina. Vol. i.,
Columbia, 1870.
Hoyt, J., The Mountain Society: A History of the First Presbyterian
Church of Orange, N. J., Organized about 1719. New York, 1860.
Johnson, William M., Presbyterianism in Cohoes, N. Y. Cohoes, 1876.
Johnston, John, Early Presbyterianism East of the Hudson. n. d.
Junkin, D. X., A Discourse Delivered on the Centenary of the First Pres-
byterian Church, Greenwich, N. J. Easton, Pa., 1875.
Kennedy, William S., The Plan of Union; or, A History of the Presby
terian and Congregational Churches of the Western Reserve [Ohio]. With
Biographical Sketches of the Early Missionaries. Hudson, O., 1856.
Lawrence, Robert F., The New Hampshire Churches, comprising Histo-
ries of the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches in the State, with
Notices of Other Denominations; also containing Many Interesting
Incidents Connected with the First Settlement of Towns. Claremont,
1856.
Lincoln, W., The History of Worcester from its First Settlement to 1836.
Continued from 1836 to 1861 by Charles Hessey. Worcester, Mass., 1862.
McAllister, David, The National Reform Movement: Its History and
Principles. Philadelphia, 1890.
McClune, James, History of the Presbyterian Church in the Forks of
Brandywine, Chester County, Pa. (Brandywine Manor Presbyterian
Church), from 1735 to 1835. Philadelphia, 1885.
McDermott, C., History of the First Presbyterian Church of Dayton, 0.
Dayton, 1880.
Macdonald, J. M., Two Centuries in the History of the Presbyterian Church,
Jamaica, L. I. New York, 1863.
McIlwain, J. W., Early Presbyterianism in Maryland. Baltimore, 1890.
Mack, R. C., "Old Nutfield": The Celebration of the One Hundred and
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of Londonderry, Derry, Windham,
etc. Portraits. Concord, 1870.
MacLean, Rev. John, History of the College of New Jersey, from its Ori-
gin in 1746 to the Commencement of 1854. 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1877.
Maclise, D. M., Historical Discourse at Montgomery, N. Y., on the Anni-
versary of the Goodwill Presbyterian Church. New York, 1865.
xxvii
McMaster, Samuel, History of the Presbyterian Church of Rehoboth, Md.
Mitchell, J. Y., History and Directory of Temple Presbyterian Church.
Philadelphia, 1873.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Montfort, J. G., Presbyterianism North of the Ohio: An Historical Dis-
course Delivered April 9, 1872, being the Fiftieth Anniversary of the
Presbytery of Cincinnati. Containing a Statement of the Planting and
Progress of the Presbyterian Church in Ohio . . . from 1790 to 1822.
Cincinnati, 1872.
Moore, William E., and Awl, William M., History of the Presbytery
of Columbus from 1823 to 1876. Columbus, 1876.
Morris, E. D., Five Years of Ministerial Life. Columbus, 1851.
God Merciful to His Church: An Historical Discourse.
1866.
Columbus,
Mott, George S., History of the Presbyterian Church of Flemington, N. J.
Flemington, 1876.
Murphy, Thomas, One Hundred Years of the Presbyterian Church of
Frankford. Philadelphia, 1872.
The Presbytery of the Log College; or, The Cradle of the Presbyte-
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Murray, Nicholas, Notes, Historical and Biographical, concerning Éliza-
bethtown, N. J.: Its Eminent Men, Churches, and Ministers. Eliza-
bethtown, 1844.
Nevin, Alfred, Churches of the Valley; or, An Historical Sketch of the Old
Presbyterian Congregations of Cumberland and Franklin Counties, in
Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Joseph M. Wilson, 1852.
History of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, and of the Philadelphia
Central. Philadelphia, Fortescue, 1888.
Niven, Archibald C., Centennial Memorial: A Record of the Proceedings
on the Occasion of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Associate Re-
formed Presbyterian Church of Little Britain [in Lancaster County,
Pa.]. New York, 1857.
Norcross, George, Centennial Memorial; or, History of the Presbytery of
Carlisle. 2 vols., Harrisburg, 1889.
Norton, A. T., History of the Presbyterian Church in the State of Illinois.
Vol. i., St. Louis, 1879.
Ohio: Historical Addresses on the history of the Presbyterian churches in
Ashtabula (by J. N. McGiffert); Blendon Township, Franklin County
(by H. M. Robertson); Chillicothe (by Henry W. Biggs); Cincinnati 2d
(by Nathaniel Wright); Clairsville (by Robert Alexander); Columbus
2d (by William E. Moore); Jersey (by D. R. Colmery); Loveland (by
Henry A. Rossiter); Putnam (by Addison Kingsbury); Mansfield (by
S. W. Miller); Mount Gilead (by D. B. Hervey and H. Shedd); Read-
ing and Lockland (by W. A. Hutchinson); South Salem (by Robert K.
Campbell); Springdale (by William H. Jones); Xenia (by T. M. Hop-
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Parker, Edward L., History of Londonderry, N. H. Boston, 1851.
Patten, J. A., Lives of the Clergy of New York and Brooklyn. With Por-
traits. New York, 1874.
Patterson, R. M., and Davidson, R., Historical Sketch of the Synod of
Philadelphia. Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Ministers of the
Synod. Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board, 1876.
Patton, Jacob Harris, The Triumph of the Presbytery of Hanover; or,
xxviii
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
The Separation of Church and State in Virginia. With a Concise His-
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New York, Randolph, 1887.
Peet, Stephen, History of the Presbyterian and Congregational Ministers
and Churches in Wisconsin. Milwaukee, 1851.
Petrie, George, Church and State in Early Maryland.
Baltimore,
1892.
Prentiss, George L., Union Theological Seminary in the City of New
York: Historical and Biographical Sketches of its First Fifty Years.
New York, 1889.
Presbyterianism in Cincinnati: Its History, Position, and Duty. Cincinnati,
1871.
Prime, N. S., Ecclesiastical History of Long Island, from its First Settle-
ment to 1845. With Special Reference to its Ecclesiastical Concerns. New
York, 1845.
""
-, History of the Secession from the Synod of New York and Philadel-
phia in 1780, which Assumed the Name of" The Associated Presbytery of
Morris County. (Manuscript: see Gillette, vol. i., pp. 207–214.)
Proud, Robert, The History of Pennsylvania, in North America, from the
Original Institution and Settlement of that Province, in 1681, till 1742.
2 vols., Philadelphia, 1797-1798.
Record of the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the South Park Presbyterian Church,
Newark, N. J., Oct. 27, 1876. Illustrated. Newark, 1878.
Records of the Synod of Pittsburg, from its First Organization, September 29,
1802, to October, 1832, inclusive. Printed by the Approbation of Synod,
at their Meeting in Alleghany City, 1850. Pittsburg, 1852.
Sample, Robert F., Historical Sketch of the Presbyterian Church of Bed-
ford, [Penna.]. Philadelphia, Claxton, 1866.
Schenck, William Edw., Historical Account of the First Presbyterian
Church of Princeton, N. J. Princeton, 1851.
Scott, John Welwood, An Historical Sketch of the Pine Street or Third
Presbyterian Church in the City of Philadelphia. With an Introduction
by the Present Pastor. Philadelphia, Lydia R. Bailey, 1837.
Scouller, J. B., History of the Big Spring [U. P.] Presbytery. Harris-
burg, 1881.
History of the [U. P.] Presbytery of Argyle [N. Y.].
1880.
History of the United Presbyterian Church of Big Spring, Newville,
Pa., 1764–1878. Carlisle, Pa., 1878.
Scouller, J. B., and Harper, James, History of the Associate Reformed
Synod of New York, and of the United Presbyterian Synod. Philadel-
phia, 1877.
Shedd, Henry, Home Missionary Life: An Autobiographical Discourse.
Mount Gilead, O., 1872.
Shepherd, Thomas J., The Days that are Past: A History of the First
Presbyterian Church, Northern Liberties, Philadelphia. Philadelphia,
1864; enlarged edition, Philadelphia, 1881.
Sloan, D. H., A History of the Presbytery of Kittanning,
with its
Churches and Schools. Pittsburg, 1888.
Smith, E. V., History of Newburyport, Mass., from its Earliest Settlement.
With a Biographical Appendix. Newburyport, 1854.
Smith, Joseph, History of Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Penna., includ-
ing an Account of the Early Log-cabin Schools and the Cannonsburg
xxix
Academy. With Biographical Sketches of Matthew Brown, Samuel Rals-
ton, Matthew Henderson, and Others. Pittsburg, 1857.
Old Redstone; or, Historical Sketches of Western Presbyterianism, its
Early Ministers, Perilous Times, and its First Records.
1854.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Philadelphia,
Smith, William, History of the late Province of New York, from its Dis-
covery to the Appointment of Governor Colden in 1762. 2 vols., New
York, 1829.
Sprague, William B., A Discourse to the Alumni of the Princeton Theo-
logical Seminary on the Occasion of the Completion of its First Half-
century. With an Appendix. Albany, 1862.
Stearns, Jonathan F., The First Church in Newark: Historical Dis-
courses relating to the First Presbyterian Church in Newark. Illustrated.
Newark, 1853.
The Mountain Whites of the South. By a Scotch-Irishman. Pittsburg, 1893.
The Wylie Memorial Presbyterian Church: Commemorative Services on the
Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ordination and Installation of Rev. T. W. J.
Wylie, D.D. Philadelphia, 1893.
Turner, D. K., History of Neshaminy Presbyterian Church of Warwick,
Hartsville, Bucks County, Pa., 1726-1876. Philadelphia, 1876.
Tuttle, Samuel L., A History of the Presbyterian Church in Madison, N. J.
New York, 1855.
Vass, L. C., History of the Presbyterian Church of New Berne, N. C. With
a Résumé of Early Ecclesiastical Affairs in Eastern North Carolina, and
a Sketch of Early Days of New Berne, N. C. Richmond, 1886.
Watson, Samuel L., History of Bethel (S. C.) Presbyterian Church. In
the Yorkville, S. C. “ Enquirer," November, 1855.
Weeks, S. B., The Religious Development in the Province of North Caro-
lina. Baltimore, 1888.
White, Erskine N., History of the West Twenty-third Street Presbyterian
Church, New York. New York, 1876.
Willey, S. H., Discourse at the Closing Exercises of the Howard Presbyte-
rian Church, January 6, 1867. San Francisco, 1867.
Williams, J. L., Historical Sketch of the First Presbyterian Church of Fort
Wayne, Indiana. Fort Wayne, n. d.
Williams, Samuel Porter, Historical Account of the First Presbyterian
Church and Society in Newburyport. Newburyport, 1826.
Willis, William, Genealogy of the McKinstry Family. With a Prelimi-
nary Essay on the Scotch-Irish Immigration into America. Boston, 1856.
The Scotch-Irish Immigration into Maine, and Presbyterianism in
New England. In the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, vol. vi.
Wing, Conway P., A History of the First Presbyterian Church of Carlisle,
Pa. Carlisle, 1877.
History of the Presbyteries of Donegal and Carlisle. Carlisle, 1876.
"
X. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY AND Law.
Alexander, W. A., A Digest of the Acts of the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States, from its Organization to the
Assembly of 1887, inclusive. With certain Historical and Explanatory
Notes. Richmond, Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1888.
htt
:
XXX
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Baird, Samuel J., A Collection of the Acts, Deliverances, and Testimonies
of the Supreme Judicatory of the Presbyterian Church, from its Origin in
America to the Present Time. Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board, 1855.
Hodge, Charles, Discussions in Church Polity. From the Contributions to
the "Princeton Review." Selected aud Arranged by Rev. W. Durant.
With Preface by A. A. Hodge, D.D. New York, 1878.
Hodge, J. Aspinwall, What is Presbyterian Law as Defined by the Church
Courts? Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board, 1882; 3d ed., with Decisions
of Assemblies, Philadelphia, 1884.
Macleod, Alexander, An Ecclesiastical Catechism.
New York, 1807.
Frequently reprinted in America and Scotland.
Miller, Samuel, An Essay on the Warrant, Nature, and Duties of the
Office of the Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church. New York and
Boston, 1831; Glasgow, 1835; Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board, 1840.
Moore, William E., New Digest of the Acts and Deliverances of the Pres-
byterian Church. Philadelphia, Presbyterian Publication Committee,
1861.
The Presbyterian Digest: A Compend of the Acts and Deliverances
of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States
of America. Compiled by the Order and Authority of the General As-
sembly. Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board, 1873.
Smyth, Thomas, Ecclesiastical Catechism of the Presbyterian Church.
Boston, 1841.
Ecclesiastical Republicanism. Boston, 1843.
New York,
The Name, Nature, and Functions of the Ruling Elder.
1845.
Steuart, Walter, of Pardovan, Collections and Observations, Methodized,
concerning the Worship, Discipline, and Government of the Church of
Scotland. In Four Books. Edinburgh, 1709. Frequently reprinted.
United Presbyterian Digest of the General Assembly, 1859–1878. Pittsburg,
1879.
XI. SUBSIDIARY LITERATURE.
Baird, Robert, Religion in America; or, An Account of Origin, Relation
to the State, and Present Conditions of the Evangelical Churches in the
United States. With Notices of the Evangelical Denominations.
York, 1844; 2d ed., 1856.
New
New York, 1870.
Beecher, Thomas K., Our Seven Churches.
Dorchester, Daniel, Christianity in the United States, from the First Set-
tlement down to the Present Time. New York, 1888.
Hurst, John F., Short History of the Church in the United States. New
York, 1890.
Reed, Andrew, and Matheson, James, Narrative of the Visit to the
American Churches by the Deputation of the Congregational Union of
England and Wales. New York, 1835.
Rupp, Israel Daniel, He Pasa Ecclesia: An Original History of the Re-
ligious Denominations at Present Existing in the United States, contain-
ing Authentic Accounts of their Rise, Progress, Statistics, and Doctrines.
Written expressly for the Work by eminent Theological Professors,
Ministers, and Lay Members of the Respective Denominations. Phila-
delphia, 1844.
xxxi
Winebrenner, John, a second enlarged edition of the same work,
with a somewhat different title-page. Harrisburg, 1848.
Schaff, Philip, America: A Sketch of the Political, Social, and Religious
Character of the United States of North America, in Two Lectures Deliv-
With a Report Read before the German Church Diet at
Frankfort-on-the-Main, September, 1854. Translated from the German.
New York, 1855.
ered at Berlin.
"
Church and State in the United States; or, The American Idea of
Religious Liberty and its Practical Effects. With Official Documents.
(Papers of the American Historical Association, vol. ii., No. 4.) New
York, Putnams, 1883.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Shiells, Robert, The Story of the Token as Belonging to the Sacrament of
the Lord's Supper. New York, 1891.
Thompson, Joseph P., Church and State in the United States.
1873.
Boston,
Zahn, Adolph, Abriss einer Geschichte der Evangelischen Kirche in Amer-
ika im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert. Stuttgart, 1889.
1
|
THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN
AMERICA.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION: THE HISTORIC ANTECEDENTS IN THE
OLD WORLD.
THE group of ecclesiastical bodies which constitute the
Presbyterian family in America hold a place of great im-
portance in the religious life of the nation. American
Presbyterianism has been of weight beyond its numerical
strength through the services it has rendered to theological
science, the interest it has maintained in Christian doctrine,
the high standard of intelligence it has set up for both its
ministry and its people, its capacity to develop strength of
character, its superior family discipline, and its conserva-
tive influence upon the national life. In the sphere of
church organization it was the pioneer in the creation of
that synodical type of government which now constitutes.
the actual polity of nearly all our churches, even of those
which hold to the theory of congregational independency
on the one side, or of diocesan episcopacy on the other.
Presbyterianism claims to be substantially the method
of church organization indicated in the New Testament.
It holds middle ground between systems which eliminate
the Christian people from any direct share in the control
I
2
[CHAP. I.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
of church affairs, and those which offer little or no safe-
guard against popular prejudice or passion. It knows of
no higher work, and it recognizes no higher calling, than
that of the pastor of the Christian congregation, in whom
it sees the bishop of the first churches. Yet it also rec-
ognizes a church whose extent transcends the Christian
congregation, and takes shape in provincial, national, and
ecumenical synods, councils, or assemblies, vested with
authority to speak for the larger unities they represent.
The claims which have been put forward, that this order
of church government was perpetuated from the days of
the Apostles in the Scotch Culdees or the Italian and
French Waldenses, will not stand the test of historical
criticism. The Culdees represented the strange tribal
organization of the Scottish (i.e., Irish) Church founded
by Patrick-an organization as alien to modern Presbyte-
rianism as it was to medieval Romanism. The Waldenses
grew out of a comparatively recent protest against the
scholastic development of the Church of Rome, and re-
ceived from the Swiss Reformers far more than they had
to impart. Those Reformers, equally with Luther and
Cranmer, were obliged, in effecting the emancipation of
the Protestant nations from the usurped authority of the
Bishop of Rome, to make radical changes in the system
they found in existence. All three types of Protestantism,
however, started from elements of doctrine, worship, and
organization they found already at hand, and which they
found in harmony with their reading of the New Testa-
ment. To these they gave a new weight, setting them in
a new perspective, but claiming to be reformers, and not
revolutionists, as were the Anabaptists. The reformers
of the churches called Reformed on the Continent, and
Presbyterian in the British Islands, did the work more
thoroughly and with less regard to historic tradition than
!
3
either of the others. They took as the official unit the pas-
torate exercised by the parish priest of the Latin Church,
whom they accepted as bishop in the apostolic sense, and as
amply empowered to transmit his own office by ordination.
It was in Geneva, in the days of Calvin's influence, that
the Presbyterian polity was set up; but it was in northern
Holland, under the guidance of John à Lasco, that it was
developed beyond what was needed in a city church and
adapted to the use of a nation. It became the church gov-
ernment of the French Huguenots, of the Protestants of
Switzerland and the Palatinate, of the Reformed of Hesse,
Brandenburg, and other parts of Germany, and of the na-
tional churches of Holland and Scotland. By the earlier
Puritans in the Church of England it was regarded as the
ideal order for a church. Dr. Thomas Cartwright of Cam-
bridge University defended it as such in 1583-84, and in
1588 it was set up in secret in several English localities,
but suppressed by Archbishop Whitgift in 1591.
In Scotland the polity established by John Knox in
1560, and developed by Andrew Melville in 1578, was
hated by the Stuart dynasty because of its claim to in-
dependence of state control. James VI. found the com-
plaisant episcopacy of his English kingdom so much more
to his mind that in 1610-12 he forced that polity upon his
Scottish subjects, and in 1617-21 introduced a number of
Anglican usages, which were repugnant to Scottish feel-
ing. The attempt of his son, in 1637, to supersede John
Knox's liturgy by a service book like that of the Church
of England came close upon the publication of a Book of
Canons, which had established the ecclesiastical supremacy
of the king and his bishops, and set aside the synodical gov-
ernment of the church. The two measures precipitated the
revolt against the Stuart tyranny, which spread through-
out the two kingdoms, and awakened hopes of a uniform-
THE REFORMED POLITY.
4
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. I.
1
ity in doctrine, worship, and government in the national
churches of both. The Westminster Assembly of Divines,
which was in no sense a church synod, planned a polity
such as "the example of the best Reformed. Churches"
suggested. But the revolt against the prelatic tyranny of
Laud and his associates had produced a restlessness under
all authority, resulting in a demand for the democratic in-
dependency of the churches. This in turn produced a
counter-reaction to prelacy as an escape from anarchy,
with the return of the Stuarts. In a few localities the
polity outlined by the Westminster divines had been set
up, but it disappeared entirely with the Restoration, al-
though one section of the English dissenters retained the
name Presbyterians, while in fact they were Independents.
-
In Scotland the Stuarts again set up prelacy, but with-
out attempting to force a liturgy upon the people. Their
tyranny and intolerance made the rule of their bishops
loathsome to the nation, to whom it was equally unnational
and unscriptural. The revolution of 1688-90 gave them
the opportunity to return to a polity which persecution had
made doubly dear to them. A small body of the most
pronounced Presbyterians, especially in the western parts
of the Lowlands-the Cameronians or Hill men-refused
to accept this Revolution Settlement as adequate. As
dissenting from both church and state, they organized
themselves into lay societies for mutual edification, until
in 1706 the accession of Rev. John Macmillan furnished
them with ministry and ordinances. For a long time they
erected no houses of worship, as claiming the parish
churches as theirs by rights; and even after the discom-
forts of hill-side services drove them under roof, they con-
tinued to observe the semi-annual communions in the open
air. A second secession from the Kirk took place in 1737,
and a third in 1752, consequent partly upon the introduc-
the ulster PLANTATION.
5
tion of patronage into the church in 1712, in violation both
of the Revolution Settlement of 1688, and of the Treaty of
Union with England of 1707; and partly upon the grow-
ing indifference to doctrinal beliefs under the influence of
the eighteenth-century culture. The three constitute the
Reformed Presbyterian (or Covenanter), the Associate (or
Seceder), and the Relief Churches. The two former play
their part in American church history.
But it was not directly from either Scotland or Eng-
land that the Presbyterian Church of America received its
principal inflow of members, or took its character mainly.
The forfeiture of the estates of the Earls of Tyrone and of
Tyrconnell in the Irish province of Ulster in 1607 placed
at the disposal of the crown a large area of land in the
north of Ireland, which was planted in 1610 and the years
following with English but especially with Scotch settlers,
the "undertakers," to whom grants were made, being for-
bidden to rent or sell lands to the native Irish. Through
this and subsequent confiscations and plantations of that
century, Ulster became a Scottish colony in the main,
four fifths of its Protestant people being attached to
the Presbyterian polity, and many of them refugees from
Scotland during "the killing time" which followed the
Stuart Restoration. Yet the prelatic system was estab-
lished throughout all Ireland, Presbyterians and Catholics
being forced to pay for the support of the English Church
system, and being subjected to the jurisdiction of the bish-
ops' courts in all matters relating to wills, marriages, and
divorces. And while the Presbyterian colonists never were
subjected to the atrocity of the penal laws against the
Catholic natives, and, after the Revolution, were permitted
the exercise of their worship and of their church govern-
ment, they were still excluded from office, including Par-
liament, required to have their marriages solemnized by
6
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. 1.
L
Anglican ministers, and otherwise ill-treated and insulted.
This, along with the breaches of contract on the part of the
Irish landlords, drove them to America in such numbers
as both depleted the Ulster colony and greatly strength-
ened those of America. To this Scotch-Irish immigration
was due the firm establishment and rapid growth of the
Presbyterian Church in the colonial period of American
history.
From this rapid historical sketch I pass to some of the
distinctive features of the Reformed Church. Its polity
was by no means its most noteworthy characteristic. Tak-
ing an impress from the strong, logical intellect of John
Calvin, it always has put theological doctrine into its fore-
ground. It has laid a stress upon doctrinal soundness as
an element of wholesome church life, which differentiates
it from both Lutheran and Anglican Protestantism.
weaker side, in this respect, has been an over-confidence
in the adequacy of human logic to bring the truth of the
Scriptures into a systematic form, and to present it in a
coherent sequence which the Bible does not seek to fur-
nish. This tendency naturally reached its culmination in
the seventeenth century, the scholastic middle age of Prot-
estant history. From the meeting of the Synod of Dort
in 1618 till the drafting of the Helvetic Consensus in 1675,
the Reformed Church of Europe passed through a devel-
opment of theological definition, whose confessions of the-
ology, through their increasing stringency, stand in sharp
contrast to the freer, more popular, and more devout con-
fessions of faith of the century of the Reformation. The
Confession and Catechisms drafted by the Westminster
Assembly, and accepted afterward as the standards of
Presbyterian orthodoxy in Scotland, Ireland, and Amer-
ica, surpassed in systematic elaborateness and logical pre-
cision nearly every other Protestant symbol. Their sub-
Its
AGREEMENT AMONG THE CHURCHES.
7
stitution by the Scotch Assembly of 1648 for John Knox's
spirited Scottish Confession of 1562 was in the vain hope
of attaining ecclesiastical uniformity with England. It
had the effect of carrying the requirement of theological
agreement to niceties not before prescribed.
When the teaching of the Reformed Church, in the
age before the Synod of Dort, was called Calvinism, the
reference was not to its view of predestination, but to its
teaching as to the sacraments. In that era there was a
substantial agreement among the Protestant churches in
accepting the Augustinian view that man's will is in bond-
age through sin, and must be set free by divine grace.
This is asserted against the more than half Pelagianism of
the Church of Rome, by Luther in his controversy with
Erasmus (1524–26), and by the Lutheran divines who com-
piled the "Formula of Concord" (1579), no less than by
Calvin or by Knox. Indeed, Knox probably would have
shrunk from the extreme statements of the Lambeth
Articles, drafted in 1579 by Archbishop Whitgift and four
other Anglican divines, formally approved by Archbishop
Hutton of York, and incorporated by Archbishop Ussher
into the Articles of the Established Church of Ireland.
It is therefore a mistake to give Calvin's name to teach-
ing he shared with Augustine and Aquinas, Luther and
Andreä, Cranmer and Whitgift; and the mistake has been
possible only because the Reformed Church adhered to the
Augustinian teaching, while the Lutheran and Anglican
Churches, in spite of their own formulas, have approxi-
mated to that of the Church of Rome.
With the exception of the school of Zwingli, which soon
ceased to exert an appreciable influence, the Reformed
theologians held to the objective reality of sacramental
grace, but expressed this in terms which placed the asser-
tion of it on Protestant ground. They recognized a gift of
8
·00
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. I.
regenerating grace in baptism, bestowed even upon the
unconscious child, while they maintained that his member-
ship in the church was his birthright as a child of Christian
parentage. Following the Old Testament analogy, they
taught that the children of Christians are "born within the
covenant," and are baptized because this natural descent
is accompanied by spiritual privilege. And when such
children had come to years of discretion, and had been
taught catechetically the "saving knowledge" of the gos-
pel, if their lives were free from reproach, the Reformed
Church acknowledged their right to the sacrament of the
Lord's Supper. In this also it saw no "bare and empty
sign," but an appointed channel of grace, through the
presence in it of the divine-human person of our Lord to
the faith of those who worthily participate. This presence,
however, is in the ordinance, and not "in, with, or under
the elements-a gift of grace received by faith, not by
the mouth, and by the believing communicant alone. It is
this which is Calvinism, in the historic sense of the term.
""
In its forms of worship the Reformed Church was litur-
gic, yet with a striving after simplicity and an indiffer-
ence to the older liturgic traditions, which distinguishes it
from both the Lutheran and the Anglican. In Hesse it
approached its sister-churches most nearly in these things,
while in other parts of Germany, in Switzerland, France,
Holland, Scotland, and Ulster, the divergence was wide.
As we have seen, it was the attempt to force elaborate
Anglican forms on the Scottish Kirk which proved "the
last straw" in the burden the Stuarts were laying upon
Scotland. By a natural tendency this Reformed love of
simplicity, by force of opposition, became a Puritan indif-
ference to form; and the Westminster Assembly found
no difficulty in setting aside all prescribed forms, includ-
ing John Knox's "Book of Common Order," and substi-
-
Gab
THE REFORMED DISCIPLINE.
9
tuting the general directions of the Directory for Wor-
ship, with merely exemplary forms, which fell into desue-
tude.
In contrast to this informality of the church's prayers
was the strictness of prescription in the matter of praise.
The Psalms in metrical versions were the handbook of every
national church of the Reformed faith, from Warsaw to
Rochelle, and from Geneva to Edinburgh, and through
Puritan influence they attained the same use in the Angli-
can Church, while the Lutherans were the hymn-writers
and hymn-singers of earlier Protestantism. As the Re-
formed psalters supplemented the Psalms with metrical ver-
sions of other passages of Scripture, and even with metrical
doxologies and a few hymns, it cannot be said that the
exclusive use of the Book of Psalms was a principle they
accepted.
The most characteristic element in the life of the Re-
formed Church, and that by which it influenced European
history the most profoundly, was neither its polity, nor its
type of doctrine, nor its forms of worship, but its ethical
and social discipline. Under John Calvin's rule Geneva
became one of the world's wonders-a city in which all
that Savonarola had dreamed and hoped for Florence was
actually realized. In Geneva Christian living was the first
concern of laws and of magistracy. Offenses against the
moral law of God were treated as crimes, and the Chris-
tian conception of duty was assumed as part of the public
policy. The impression of Calvin's influence on the city
was lasting as well as deep. Even Lutherans, like John
Valentine Andreä (1614) and Philip Jakob Spener (1660),
came back from a visit to Geneva with a lofty envy of the
orderliness, the moral correctness, the show of reverence
for sacred things, and the deference to authority, which
still characterized the city by Lake Leman.
10
[CHAP. I.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
We now see the imperfection of Calvin's method, and
therefore of his achievement. We draw the line of dis-
crimination between sins and crimes, as that age did not.
We see in the Genevan administration an extension of
legal methods into a province where they have no fitness,
and which must provoke a reaction. Our Reformed fathers
made nothing of such distinctions. They accepted, with
hearty enthusiasm, the Genevan ideal of a community
binding upon itself the law of God, entering into cove-
nant with him for the consecration of public and social life
to his glory, and aiming at the immediate realization of his
kingdom through the repression of all base and unchris-
tian habits and instincts by the whole weight of collec-
tive authority. It was this that fired the imaginations and
strengthened the wills of the great reformers and states-
men of the Reformed faith: of William the Silent and
Admiral Coligny, of Latimer and Knox, of Marnix de
Aldegonde and Agrippa d'Aubigne. It was this purpose
to establish the direct rule of God upon earth-a theocracy
in the true sense-that found expression in the poetry of
Edmund Spenser and John Milton, and that sent the Pil-
grims and the Puritans across the ocean to seek a freer
field for its realization. It was this that plunged Presby-
terian Scotland and Puritan England into the struggle with
the Stuarts, against whose low and demoralizing influence
Milton directed the scorn of his " Comus." This theocratic
ideal played a primary part in the public life of Europe in
the great struggle with the Counter-Reformation.
Q
In Scotland the Genevan ideal was embraced with a
fervor that might have been expected from the mixture
of Celtic and Scandinavian in the nation's make-up. In
Wordsworth's phrase,
The Scottish Church
had held
The strong hand of her purity
•
•
•
-
A COVENANTED NATIÓN.
I I
upon a nation in whom willfulness and lawlessness had
been fostered by centuries, and whose worst vices had
had the sanction of the example of the ecclesiastics high-
est in place. Through defeat and through victory, through
periods of popular support and times of royal or aristo-
cratic antagonism, the Knoxes, the Melvilles, the Bruces,
the Hendersons, the Guthries, and the Rutherfords of the
Kirk labored to make their Scotland a holy nation, a peo-
ple in covenant with their God. The continuous pressure
of session and presbytery, synod and assembly, was exerted
for the extirpation of vice, and the elevation of social life
to the level of their own spiritual vision. At times, indeed,
this was employed against usages we have learned to regard
as innocent; at others it was intruded into a political sphere
in which it had no proper exercise. On the whole, how-
ever, the Kirk's claim "to treat in an ecclesiastical way of
greatest and smallest matters, from the king's throne, that
should be established in righteousness, to the merchant's
balance, that should be used in faithfulness," was not only
recognized in fact, but was directed to the best interests
of the nation. It was this discipline which created those
cottage homes, which Burns has immortalized in his most
gracious verse, and of which Wordsworth writes:
A virtuous household, though exceeding poor!
Pure livers were they all, austere and grave,
And fearing God: the very children taught
Stern self-respect, a reverence for God's Word,
And an habitual piety, maintained
With strictness scarely known on English ground.
-
It is noteworthy that in later times if the people com-
plained of the Kirk, or withdrew from her communion, it
always was because she fell short of the theocratic vigor
and rigor they had learned to demand of her. In their
hearts the nation knew that it was just their faithfulness
12
[CHAP. I.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
2
to the ideal of Knox and of Henderson which made them
a great people-a people capable of binding on itself
the yoke of service and of self-denial, and of foregoing
the satisfactions and enjoyments of the present for some
greater good.
In the Reformed, as distinguished from the Anabaptist
and Independent conception, the proper subjects of such
a discipline are a whole nation embracing the faith and
order of the gospel by their collective act. Accepting
"the judgment of charity," they took for granted the
Christian standing and character of all who had been born
and brought up in such a nation, and taught the truths and
subjected to the discipline of the gospel, and kept by God's
grace from profaning the Christian name by any scandal.
Such they accepted as entitled to the ordinances of the
church, for both themselves and their children. In prac-
tice, however, they treated this as merely the minimum of
a Christian profession, and urged upon all to "go on to
perfection."
The daughter-church in Ulster preserved in great meas-
ure the theological and theocratic character of the Scottish
Kirk. Its social position, however, was very different, and
its environment reacted upon its character. Its Presby-
terianism was not the creed and order of a whole people.
It must recognize as in its membership only those who
gave it their voluntary adherence, in the face of legal pro-
scriptions and of the attractions of the Anglican estab-
lishment, and even of Irish Romanism. This made it less
theocratic in itself, and caused a less theocratic tone in
the preponderant influence Ulster exercised upon the Pres-
byterianism of America.
CHAPTER II.
THE DAY OF SMALL THINGS, 1629-1713.
In view of the extensive acceptance of the Presbyterian
theory of church order in the British Islands, it is surpris-
ing that so long a period elapsed before it took root in
any of the British colonies in America. Up to the time of
Cromwell's accession to power, and even after that event,
the central and probably the largest body of the English
Puritans were Presbyterians, with moderate Episcopalians
like Ussher and Reynolds forming the right wing, while
Independents and Baptists were the left. While the Pil-
grim Fathers, who settled the Plymouth colony, were In-
dependents on principle, the Puritans of the Massachusetts
Bay colony were largely Presbyterians in theory before
their emigration. But the suppression of the attempts to
set up the Genevan order in England in 1591 through the
hostility of Archbishop Whitgift, and its partial suspen-
sion in Scotland by the Compromise of 1586, and by the
Articles of Perth in 1618, had prevented any practical
application of Presbyterian principles within Great Britain.
It was merely a theory, and in the case of the English Puri-
tans it was subject to the influence of that general tendency
to pure individualism which dominated the whole Puritan
movement. From Anglican to Presbyterian, from that to
Independent, and from that to Baptist, ending often in
Seekerism or Quakerism, is the gamut through which the
active spirits of the time easily ran.
13
14
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. II.
I
In laying the foundations of church order in the absence.
of precedence and traditions, and not uninfluenced by the
proximity of the pronounced Independents of Plymouth,
the Puritans of New England drifted into arrangements
which were midway between Presbyterianism and Inde-
pendency, with a strong leaning toward the latter. Not
that there was no resistance to this. "The New England
way," as it was called, excited some sharp criticism among
the Puritan divines in England, and in 1637-39 there was
a prolonged correspondence between them and their breth-
ren on the subject, not entirely to their satisfaction. But
the two tendencies struggled for the mastery for nearly
seventy years, the Presbyterian finding able supporters in
John Eliot ("The Divine Ordinance of Councils," 1665)
and the Mathers. Dr. H. M. Dexter felicitously describes.
"the New England way " as "a Congregationalized Pres-
byterianism" which "had its roots in one system and its
branches in another," and says that the Massachusetts
churches differed locally "from the almost Presbyterian-
ism of Hingham and Newbury [port]" to the pronounced
Independency of Plymouth. But he is not so happy in
his statement that the system was "essentially Genevan
within the local congregation, and essentially other out-
side it." The absence of regularly constituted sessions
for the administration of church discipline, and the refusal
of baptism to the children of baptized persons who were
not communicants, marked the local congregation as un-
Presbyterian. The latter rule was a rejection of the “judg-
ment of charity" accepted by all the Reformed churches.
It was one of the moot-points between the two parties in
the Westminster Assembly, and in 1662 the severer rule
had to be relaxed even in New England by the Half-Way
Covenant. On the other hand, the high authority claimed
and exercised by synods called by the civil magistrate, of
15
which six met during the seventeenth century, shows that,
even outside the local congregation, "the New England
way" was not so entirely other than Genevan. We hear
of no more such synods when the Congregational principle
had attained supremacy in Massachusetts, and the church
order had taken the shape indicated in the writings of Rev.
John Wise ("The Churches' Quarrell Espoused," 1710),
who completed what John Cotton and his associates had
begun.
In the sister-colony of Connecticut the movement was
in the opposite direction. The Saybrook Platform (1708)
gave jurisdiction over the local churches to the consocia-
tions consisting of the ministers and the "messengers of
the churches" in an assigned district.
Under its opera-
tion the churches of Connecticut grew more conscious of
their relation to the Presbyterianism of the Middle States
than to the Congregationalism of Massachusetts, and they
freely used the name Presbyterian as the briefest descrip-
tion of their ecclesiastical position.
On the other hand, we shall see that the Congregation-
alism of Massachusetts and the States north of it proved
itself strong enough to absorb and assimilate an Ulster
immigration, which came with the purpose of establishing
the Scottish order on New England soil.
From 1640 onward we find a certain amount of migra-
tion from New England into the Dutch settlements on
Long Island and the mainland. Mostly this was Congre-
gationalist, but two of the ministers who made this trans-
fer-Francis Doughty to Long Island in 1642, and thence
to New Amsterdam the next year, and Richard Denton
to Long Island in 1643—were distinctly Presbyterians.
They both had trouble with their Congregationalist neigh-
bors as to the extent of the Abrahamic covenant in the
matter of baptizing the children of those who were not
"THE NEW ENGLAND WAY.”
16
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. II.
communicants. Both were welcome to the Dutch, who
adhered stoutly and somewhat intolerantly to their Re-
formed faith and order. And in New York the atmosphere
tended to make the transformation of Puritan into Presby-
terian an easy one, as the subsequent history will show.
The Scotch never have been a colonizing people, the
settlement of the Irish province of Ulster in the reign of
James I. being their only national achievement of that kind.
Up to their ill-fated experiment at Darien (1698) they
made no large effort at establishing a colony in the New
World. In South Carolina, Maryland, and East Jersey
were small bodies of Scotch immigrants who sought a
home in America during the religious troubles of the
period between the Restoration and the Revolution, the
first having been deported after the defeat at Bothwell
Brig (1684) by way of punishment. Both their deportation
and the Darien failure did so far contribute to the Presby-
terian element in the colonies, that in South Carolina Pres-
byterian churches grew up, and a Presbytery was organized
in 1722-23, but partly of New England Puritans.
The Scotch-Irish colony in Ulster far exceeded the
mother-country in colonizing energy. Large sections of
that province had been granted by James I. to royal favor-
ites in Scotland, who held out great inducements to their
countrymen to become their tenants in Ireland. Unfortu-
nately, these pledges had not the force of a law, and were
generally broken. Besides this, as the century advanced,
and the prelatizing policy of the Stuarts became pro-
nounced, the religious difficulty became more acute. As
early as 1636 a ship-load of the Scotch of Ulster set sail
for New England, having been invited by the authorities
of that province to settle on the Merrimac River. The
ministers on board were Robert Blair and John Livingston,
who both were to play a prominent part in the impending
17
troubles in Scotland. The ship was driven back by con-
trary winds, and the undertaking abandoned.
After the Restoration the Irish Presbyterians felt the
weight of prelatic intolerance only less than did their
Scotch brethren. Even Jeremy Taylor, now an Ulster
bishop, retracted the bold arguments of his "Liberty of
Prophesying" (1647), and both defended and practiced
the persecution of the Scotch colonists for nonconformity
to the established church. So before a decade elapsed
emigration set in from Ulster to America, seeking the
Barbadoes, Maryland, and Virginia as their new homes.
To Maryland, indeed, Francis Doughty had come from
New Amsterdam as early as 1659, his brother-in-law Cap-
tain William Stone having been made governor of the
colony by the Calverts, as a safeguard against interfer-
ence on the part of the Commonwealth government at
home. We hear of Doughty as preaching on both sides
of the Potomac, but there is no record of his death, or
of any permanent result of his labors. To Maryland also
Fifeshire colonists had been brought by Captain Vivian
Beale to escape the persecution in Scotland.
With the first immigration of the Scotch-Irish it may
be said that Presbyterianism had come to stay. Prelatic
intolerance in Ireland had had the natural effect of intensi-
fying their attachment to their own church and its order.
The tenacity of will for which they always have been
famous came into play in planting the Presbyterian order
and doctrine in a new environment. As but one minister,
probably Richard Salwey by name, shared in the earlier
migration, they were indebted to the ministrations of an
English Presbyterian, Matthew Hill, who had been induced
by Richard Baxter to make his home in Maryland. In 1669
he writes to Baxter: "We have many of the Reformed
religion, who have a long while lived as sheep without a
PRESBYTERIANS IN MARYLAND.
18
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. II.
shepherd, though last year brought in a young man from
Ireland, who hath already had good success in his work.
We have room for more ministers." In 1680 the Scotch-
Irish in the colony applied to the Irish Presbytery of Lag-
gan for another minister. The arrest and deportation of
the members of that Presbytery for keeping a public fast
prevented a response in the ordinary fashion, but prob-
ably was the means of sending to Maryland its former
moderator, William Traill, in 1682, and Francis Makemie
in 1683.
It is to Francis Makemie rather than to Matthew Hill
or William Traill that the American Presbyterian Church
has been accustomed to look back as to her founder. The
others preceded him and were men of ability. But Wil-
liam Traill returned to Scotland at the Revolution, and
Makemie was the more energetic nature. His ordination
seems to have been among the last acts of the Presbytery
of Laggan before its dispersion by official violence. In
America at first he went to and fro as an evangelist, rang-
ing from South Carolina to New York, combining com-
merce with preaching, and making Rehoboth, on the east-
ern shore of Maryland, the center of his labors at least as
early as 1691. He came forward as the literary champion
of his church when it was attacked by either Quakers or
prelatists. In New York, on the ground preëmpted by
Doughty and Denton, he suffered arrest and imprisonment.
in 1706 for the offense of preaching without a license, as
the Episcopal Church had been established in that colony
by a legislative trick in 1693, and Governor Cornbury,
the Queen's cousin, was ruling the people after the Stuart
fashion in the matter of suppressing dissent. Makemie's
vigorous defense and acquittal in the next year fixed atten-
tion on Cornbury's conduct, and thus contributed to his
recall in 1709.
THE FIRST PRESBYTERY.
19
Altogether, Francis Makemie, although not a man of
the first order, and unable to stand comparison with many
of the later leaders of the church he "founded," was a per-
son of such vitality and energy, such excellent judgment
and genuine piety, as made him greatly useful in his day,
and entitles him to the gratitude of all who believe that
Presbyterianism has been of eminent service in the religious
life of the nation.
Up to this time, while there had been separate congrega-
tions of Presbyterian structure, no Presbytery had ever met
to exercise control over their governing sessions. Some
kind of informal conference or council must have been
held in 1701, when Jedediah Andrews was ordained to the
pastorate in Philadelphia. "The Presbyterians," writes
Rev. John Talbot, missionary of the S. P. G., "have come
a great way to lay hands on each other.”
In 1705, pre-
sumably in the same young and growing city, a regular
Presbytery met, and chose Francis Makemie to the mod-
eratorship. Five other ministers were enrolled as members.
Philadelphia was the most northern point represented, until
the ordination of John Boyd as pastor at Freehold, in the
year following. The other churches lay in Delaware and
Maryland, Snow Hill in the latter State being probably the
oldest in date of organization.
From 1705 until 1716 inclusive, the Presbytery of Phila-
delphia was the only judicature of the church, and in the
twelve years it had increased from five to seventeen minis-
ters, chiefly by arrivals from New England and the Brit-
ish Islands. From Philadelphia northward to Long Island,
the pastors were generally from Old or New England; in
Maryland, either Scotch or Irish; while Delaware was the
meeting-ground of the two elements.
As the church of the new immigration it had great diffi-
culties to encounter. The people were extremely poor,
20
[CHAP. II.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
and sparsely settled; and in their disheartening battle
for the conquest of nature, they tended to sink into mere
animalism through the neglect of spiritual interests. The
supply of ministers was far below the need, and there was
a temptation to accept as such men poorly fitted in point
of learning or of character. But the Presbytery exacted
adequate credentials and assurance of orthodoxy and good
character from all applicants. When a young Welshman
in 1710 undertook to preach to the people of the Welsh
Tract without a license, he was rebuked, and required to
place himself under competent direction that he might be
educated for the sacred office; and it was not until 1715
that he was ordained. The number of cases of discipline
for moral offenses was excessive among both ministers and
people; and to these were added disputes and uncertainties
as to the degrees within which marriage was forbidden, as
might be expected in small and isolated settlements, where
the range of choice was very limited.
The forms of Presbyterian government used in Scotland
and Ireland were followed as far as possible. There was
some difficulty in bringing the Welsh and English Con-
gregationalists, who had united with Presbytery, to see
the expediency of the authority exercised over the sev-
eral congregations. They generally acquiesced, however,
in accepting the Presbyterian Church as the representative
of the Puritan principle in the Middle States. The fervor
of the earlier strife over the two methods of church gov-
ernment had died out on both sides, probably through
exhaustion. They were united against prelacy, tolerant
of each other.
Nothing, indeed, could be more friendly than the rela-
tions of the Presbytery to the New England churches. It
was in correspondence with the union of the Presbyterians
and Congregationalists of London, asking for additional
HARMONY WITH NEW ENGLAND.
21
ministers. It had a friend and adviser in the indefatigable
Cotton Mather, who worked for its growth and prosperity,
as he was working vainly for the establishment of a some-
what similar plan of government in Massachusetts. In the
ministers and churches of Connecticut, newly reorganized
on the Saybrook Platform, it had helpful and sympathetic
neighbors. Indeed, there was no sharp line of sectarian
severance between the two bodies until the present century.
CHAPTER III.
GROWTH AND DISSENSION, 1713-41.
OF the Scotch colony planted in Ulster in the seven-
teenth century there are probably three descendants in
America for one left at home. Disappointed in the ex-
pectations raised by the offers of the new landlords at the
time of the plantation, and oppressed by the established
Episcopal Church, they turned their eyes to America as
a possible home. Of their first immigration, that to Mary-
land in the seventeenth century, I have spoken already. The
second began in 1713, and continued until the eve of the
War for Independence. It entered the colonies on three
lines. The first followed the course originally proposed
by Robert Blair and John Livingston in 1636, and sought
New England. It was spread over a large part of Maine
and several districts of New Hampshire; and it also found
a home in the larger towns of Massachusetts, especially
Boston, Worcester, and Pelham. Those who see nothing
in the New England history but the doings of Puritans and
Pilgrims ignore a large indebtedness to this strenuous and
vertebrate stock, from which sprang her Websters, Greeleys,
Greys, Starks, Andersons, and others who hold no mean
place in her annals.
.
At first the new immigrants were anything but wel-
come. They were
They were "a parcel of Irish," and that of itself
carried with it an idea of wildness. Their intense Presby-
terianism was supposed to imperil the "standing order
of the New England churches. In 1718-19 we find the
"}
22
23
selectmen of Boston taking measures to clear the town of
these "passengers lately arrived from Ireland," and warn-
ing them to depart. It was not until 1730 that they were
able to gather a church, under the pastorate of John Moore-
head. When those who had settled in Worcester, in 1718,
took measures to build themselves a church, the people
"gathered by night, hewed down and demolished the
structure," and "persons of consideration and respectabil-
ity aided in the riotous work," we are told in W. Lincoln's
History of Worcester" (1837). This intolerance caused
the greater part to migrate to New York about 1740; and
in other instances the churches were weakened by removals
for a like reason. They were compelled to pay taxes for
the support of the Congregationalist churches, while they
also maintained their own.
66
THE GREAT IMMIGRATION.
S
Their position was much more favorable where, as in
Londonderry and other newly established towns of New
Hampshire or Maine, they themselves constituted the town,
and levied the tax for the support of their own minister.
Their first Presbytery was constituted before 1729, and
was called the Presbytery of Londonderry, or, by their
neighbors, “the Irish Presbytery." It had some sixteen
ministerial members during this period, with a still larger
number of feeble churches looking to it for supplies.
The great body of the immigrants from Ulster sought
the middle colonies, especially Pennsylvania, attracted by
the reports of the toleration practiced in that colony and
of its great natural wealth. The historian Proud esti-
mates that six thousand had arrived by 1726. The fail-
ure of the grain crops of Ulster in that and the following
years increased the volume of immigration, so that Proud
estimates it at twelve thousand a year until 1750. While
mixed a good deal with the people of the older settlements,
these newcomers naturally took the western frontier, which
24
[CHAP. III.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
~
exposed them to the brunt of Indian warfare, and led them
to an estimate of the red man very different from that
accepted by the Friends. On their obtaining control of
the provincial legislature, therefore, they reversed Penn's
policy of peaceful conciliation, and sought precedents for
a new Indian policy in the Book of Joshua. It was this
exposure to the French, and the Indians influenced by
them, which turned their attention to more southern val-
leys of the Appalachian chain, and gave them a southward
impetus which carried them as far as what is now north-
ern Alabama. Here they joined the third stream of Ulster
immigration, which entered the Carolinas by Charleston.
To the two it is due that West Virginia, North Carolina,
eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and adjacent parts of
South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama constitute, with
Pennsylvania, an American Ulster, far more extensive and
populous than King James's Irish "plantation."
It is no longer thought sufficient to enumerate Puritan,
Cavalier, and Quaker as the elements which made up
America in colonial times, and directed the struggle for
independence. It is now recognized that even thus early
the Scotch-Irish of Ulster contributed no less than any of
these to the make-up of the young nation. If the Puritan
might be regarded as the thinking brain and the Quaker
as the sympathetic heart of the new nation, the Scotch-
Irish have been the backbone of its nationality. Deficient
alike in comprehensive philanthropy and in speculative
intellect, they possess in their volitional energy a quality
of not less importance, as it has made them the element
of persistence and of conservatism. They thus recall the
part played by the Aaronic priesthood in Jewish history,
which was less brilliant and attractive than the prophetic
order, but not less useful as the vertebral link which bound
generation to generation, and secured the continuity of the
-
<
C
•
5
25
nation's life.
“Grant that I may always be right, for Thou
knowest I am hard to turn," is the recorded prayer of one
old Presbyterian elder of this stock. His prayer might be
adopted by the whole church—at any rate, by the whole
Scotch-Irish stock.
Especially they have served the country as educators
of the Middle States, and of those which lie west of them.
Their early ministers were generally graduates of Glasgow,
and it was they who established the many academies of
those States, in which young men were given an educa-
tion which would at least have fitted them to enter any
American college. This threw the Presbyterian clergy
into contact with others than their own people, enlarged
their influence for good, and caused their church to be
more highly esteemed. In view of the church's require-
ment that none but educated men should be regarded as
candidates for the ministry, this combination of the school-
master with the pastor was regarded as natural and proper,
as indeed their every seminary was a seed-plot for the
ministry. They thus rendered a great service in maintain-
ing a high educational standard at a time when the poverty
of the country, the general indifference to whatever was
unpractical," and the active hostility of many sects to
literary culture, made this very much harder to do than it
is to-day.
(6
CHURCH AND SCHOOL.
At the time now under consideration the Scotch-Irish
settlers were most numerous in Delaware and eastern
Pennsylvania. It was through their coming that the Pres-
byterian Church outgrew the Presbytery and was obliged
to establish a Synod with four subordinate Presbyteries,
being one each in New York-which then included New
Jersey-Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. At its
constitution in 1717 the Synod consisted of all the minis-
ters, with one elder from each church. But in 1724 this
26
[CHAP. III.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
provisional arrangement was set aside, and the Presbyteries
were directed to choose delegates equal to half their num-
ber, yet with the proviso that every third year all should
attend. This arrangement for delegation, however, lasted
for but two years, and then "the full Synod" was restored
as a permanent institution.
A more important change in the constitution of the
church was the Adopting Act of 1729, by which its min-
isters and licentiates, present and future, were required to
subscribe to the Westminster Confession and Catechisms,
"as being, in all essential and necessary articles, good
forms of sound words and systems of Christian doctrine.”
It had not been the purpose of the Westminster As-
sembly that subscription should be required to these
"standards." Subscription never was introduced into the
Presbyterian Church of England, as organized in various
neighborhoods largely through the labors of members of
the Assembly. Nor in Scotland was it required until it
was enacted by Act of Assembly in 1690 to secure the
ejection of the Episcopalian party from the parishes they
still held in the northern shires. In Ireland the Synod
of Ulster introduced it in 1698, but required it only of
licentiates. It reënacted it in 1705, for all its ministers,
as a safeguard against the growing tendency to Arianism.
This in 1726 resulted in a division of the Irish Synod.
In America the Presbytery of New Castle had exacted
a subscription to the Confession as early as 1724, and it
was John Thomson, of that Presbytery, who first memori-
alized the Synod of Philadelphia to do the same. In 1728
the Presbytery itself renewed the memorial. The proposal
met with opposition from the New England and from the
Welsh ministers. Jonathan Dickinson, of Elizabethtown,
pointed to the rupture of the Irish Church through requir-
ing it, and declared that while subscription might exclude
G
SUBSCRIPTION ESTABLISHED.
27
those who were scrupulous as to what they signed, it would
neither "detect hypocrites, nor keep concealed heretics out
of the church." He and his friends suspected a design
on the part of the Scotch and Irish ministers to get rid of
the Welsh and the native American element.
In the Synod of 1729, after the question had been fully
handled in a committee containing the ablest men of both
parties, an agreement was reached through mutual con-
cessions. The concession to the opponents of subscription
was the freedom extended to ministers and licentiates to
express to Presbytery or Synod the scruples they felt as
to any article in the standards, leaving the body to judge
whether or not these scruples touched the "essential and
necessary articles of faith." This followed the precedent
set by the Irish Synod in its " Pacific Act" of 1720. With
this proviso, all the ministers of the church subscribed,
"after proposing all the scruples that any of them had
against any. articles or expressions." As a matter of fact
these scruples related only to "some clauses in the 20th
and 24th chapters" of the Confession, which treated of the
power of the civil magistrate in matters of religion. Yet
"many persons were offended" at this qualification, and
desired that the Synod should require unconditional sub-
scription; and some petitioned the Associate (or Seceder)
Synod of Scotland to establish their church in America
on that basis.
How well justified were Dickinson's apprehensions as
to the futility of this safeguard against heretics was seen
within a few years. Samuel Hemphill applied for mem-
bership in 1734, bringing credentials from the Irish Pres-
bytery of Strabane, and then, for the second time within
a year, subscribed the standards without the statement of
either "scruple" or objection. A year later we find him
arraigned before the Synod for preaching something like
1
28
[CHAP. III.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Deism, and, in his contumacious absence, declared "un-
qualified for any future exercise of his ministry" within
its bounds. This first heresy case led the Synod to pro-
test against the practice of Irish Presbyteries in “ ordaining
men to the ministry sine titulo, immediately before they
come over hither, thereby depriving us of our just rights,”
and to suggest that in addition to "their Presbyterial cre-
dentials," they should be furnished with "private letters
of recommendation," showing them to be "firmly attached
to our good old principles and schemes." This implies
the admission that subscription was not the safeguard its
friends had supposed it.
Of much graver import was the dissension which arose
between the two elements of the Synod with regard to the
religious movement known in American church history
as the Great Awakening-a movement which made itself
felt from Maine to Georgia, and gave a new direction to
the religious life of the country.
To appreciate fully its significance it must be remembered
that one of the effects of emigration upon great bodies of
men is almost invariably their spiritual declension. Just
as plants hardly can be transplanted without the sacrifice
of those fine fibrous roots on which so much of their vital-
ity depends, so the human transplantation involves the
sacrifice of those fibers of sacred local and personal asso-
ciations upon which the life of the spirit depends so much.
The old home, the traditional place of worship, the opinion
of hereditary neighbors, the wholesome routine of religious
usage, all are foregone; and no one knows how much he is
dependent on these until he has parted with them. Even
in New England, with all the fervor of the piety of Pilgrim
and Puritan settlers, the symptoms of spiritual decay were
speedily felt, especially in the younger generation. The
Half-Way Covenant, with its frank defiance of Congrega-
M
"BARBARISM THE DANGER.”
29
tionalist principle, was a device to make it possible that the
grandchildren of the first settlers should not be excluded
from baptism and visible connection with the church.
With each decade there was a palpable cooling of devo-
tional fervor; and in spite of the Reforming Synods held
in Boston in 1679 and 1680 to correct the growing laxity,
it seemed probable that the sons of the Puritans would
sink into shrewd money-getters, with little interest in
either religion or the higher culture. In the words of
Dr. Bushnell, "barbarism was the next danger."
The Scotch-Irish immigration represented a class which
had already lost some ground by migration to Ireland, and
it undoubtedly suffered spiritually by its second migration
to America, first of all through the want of a regular min-
istry and worship. Matthew Hill writes of them to Bax-
ter as scattered widely in Maryland, "as sheep without a
shepherd." Where they made the attempt to gather into
congregations they were generally too few and too poor
to support a minister: and we find the Synod, in 1718,
writing to the Presbytery of Dublin of their spiritual des-
titution, and of "a deplorable necessity of still continuing
in the same circumstances of darkness, which may render
both themselves and posterity, miserable Pagans." Even
where it was possible to obtain preachers, these in many
cases were not of a character to weigh heavily on the side
of a stricter life. The number of cases in which ministers
were arraigned before the Presbytery and the Synod for
grave moral offenses was very large in proportion; and in
some cases the penalties imposed were very inadequate to
the offense proven or confessed.
As the Presbyterian Church was not exceptional in
any of these unhappy respects, an awakening to a larger
measure of spiritual life was needed for the salvation of
the whole country. It came almost parallel with the great
-
30
[CHAP. III.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Methodist awakening in the British Islands, and it was
powerfully promoted by George Whitefield, the preacher
of that movement. But it had a somewhat different char-
acter and originated independently of that, and even earlier,
in the labors of Jacob Frelinghuysen, who, in 1719, was
settled as pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church in Rari-
tan, N. J., where he remained until 1746. He was a native
of Holland, and there had been affected by that Pietist
movement which was to influence so markedly Whitefield
and the Wesleys. He preached "awakening" sermons,
insisted on evidences of regeneration in those he admitted
to the Lord's table, and saw much fruit of his labors.
Four miles from Raritan lay New Brunswick, whose
Presbyterian Church in 1726 called to its pastorate young
Gilbert Tennent, who soon came under the personal influ-
ence of Dominie Frelinghuysen. Gilbert Tennent's father,
William Tennent, had emigrated from Ireland to America
in 1716. He was in Episcopal orders, but was of Scotch-
Irish stock, and had married Catherine Kennedy, the
daughter of an eminent Presbyterian minister. In 1718,
possibly through her influence, he renounced the prelatic
forms of government and worship, and was admitted with-
out reordination into the Synod. He established himself
in 1726 on the Neshaminy, north of Philadelphia, and
opened an academy, which its enemies nicknamed "the
Log College." His son Gilbert he had already educated
for the ministry, and from the Neshaminy academy went
forth others—including three of the principal's younger
sons, Samuel Blair, and John Rowland-whose eminent
usefulness was proof of the spiritual energy of their teacher.
At New Brunswick Gilbert Tennent at first had but a
barren ministry. The gift of power came to him after a
severe illness, and a loving letter from Dominie Freling-
huysen. He now preached the necessity of a conscious
31
conversion from sin to God, and dealt pungently with the
barren professors he found in his charge. From 1728
onward there was a notable harvest of conversions in his
own flock and the adjacent districts to which he extended
his labors. Other ministers-such as Jonathan Dickinson
at Elizabethtown, and William Tennent the younger at
Freehold-had the same joyful experience of seeing the
ice of indifference broken and the message of the gospel
come home in fresh power to the hearts of their people.
All this was much before the arrival of George White-
field for his great evangelistic tour of November, 1739,
to December, 1740, and even before the Awakening in
New England, which began in 1734 under the preaching
of Jonathan Edwards. Indeed, to say nothing of Dominie
Frelinghuysen, Gilbert Tennent's ingathering began at New
Brunswick a year before the "Holy Club" was formed at
Oxford, and had spent its force before the date assigned
by John and Charles Wesley as that of their conversion.
Yet the two movements were so much alike in character
that Whitefield found himself entirely at home among the
Tennents and their co-workers; and in 1740 he persuaded
Gilbert Tennent to continue his own work in Boston, where
he labored for months with great impression. From White-
field's comments we may infer that Tennent's preaching
was more severe and inculpatory than his own. 'He is
a son of thunder, whose preaching must either convert or
enrage hypocrites." In this Tennent reflected the manner
of the Pietists, without the alleviating tinge of cheerfulness
which the Methodists got from the Moravians.
(C
But the treasure came in earthen vessels. Its presen-
tation was affected by the personal weaknesses and the
mental limitations of those who bore it, and by the spirit
of their age.
Not content with speaking the truth it had
been given him to see, Gilbert Tennent undertook to sit in
THE GREAT AWAKENING.
32
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. III.
(6
judgment upon those who did not see as he did. He and
his friends denounced " unconverted ministers" as blind
leaders of the blind"; they also preached within the bounds
of the charges of the ministers so described, as they had
opportunity, without leave asked, and refusing recognition
of their ministerial character.
In the Synod of 1740 Tennent and Blair presented
papers which drew a black picture of the character of the
ministry as a body, and, when challenged to substantiate
their charges, they had to admit that they had not inves-
tigated the reports they accepted, nor had they spoken
privately, as Christ requires, to these alleged offenders.
At last, by a famous sermon, preached March 8, 1740,
at Nottingham, Pa., on "An Unconverted Ministry," Gil-
bert Tennent brought matters to a head. It was such a
public indictment of those who had stood aloof from the
Awakening, that, even without the naming of names, it
seemed to be meant to make it impossible for the minis-
ters described to remain in synodical communion with him
and his friends.
At the next meeting of the Synod a protest signed by
.twelve ministers and eight elders was presented by Robert
Cross, of Philadelphia, which the majority of the Synod
adopted as its own. This arraigned the party represented
by Tennent and Blair for overthrowing the authority of
Synod by confining its powers to advice; for disorderly
irruptions into other men's congregations; for censorious
judgments of those who did not walk with them, resulting
in the disturbance and division of congregations; for mak-
ing the call to the ministry a matter merely of personal
feeling; for preaching the terrors of the law "in such a
manner and dialect as has no precedent in the Word of
God"; and for asserting that truly gracious persons are
able to judge with certainty both of their own state and
THE DIVISION OF 1741.
33
that of others.
On these grounds they denied the right
of the offenders to sit as members of that judicatory. As
the Presbytery of New York was not represented, while
the Southern Presbyteries were present in strength, that
of New Brunswick had but small support. Only twenty-
five out of the forty-seven ministers of the Synod were
in attendance, and the measure was carried by a vote of
twelve to ten, three not voting. The ministers and elders
of the New Brunswick Presbytery, in great surprise at this
result, accepted the decision and withdrew.
*
The very next step of the majority was to alter the
terms of subscription to the Westminster standards, mak-
ing it unconditional, with no liberty to state scruples and
have Presbytery or Synod pass upon them as to whether
they touched essential doctrines. Two of the Presbyteries,
indeed, had already anticipated this action.
-
CHAPTER IV.
FROM THE SCHISM TO THE REUNION, 1741–58.
THE division of the Presbyterian Church in 1741, what-
ever elements of human weakness entered into it, was the
result of forces working widely in the life of the colonies
and of Great Britain. It was an indirect result of the Great
Awakening which terminated the Puritan and inaugurated
the Pietist or Methodist age of American church history.
During the period of division it was the progressive
or New Side of the church which made the greater prog-
ress. After a friendly attempt to effect a reconciliation
in 1742-43 the Presbytery of New York declined to sit in
Synod on the ground that the New Brunswick Presbytery
had as good right as themselves. They also desired the
good-will of the Synod of Philadelphia in establishing a
Synod of New York, and this was accorded with some re-
luctance. The body thus organized embraced the New
Brunswick Presbytery, and increased from 22 members in
1745 to 72 in 1758, while the Synod of Philadelphia had
fallen from 24 to 23. This was due to several causes, the
first being the establishment in 1746 of the College of
New Jersey, finally located at Princeton in 1757.
The education question had been a matter of contro-
versy between the two parties until the Nottingham ser-
mon turned the waters of strife into a new channel. The
conservative party, in their anxiety to maintain a high
standard of ministerial culture, were disposed to insist
that none but the graduates of British universities or New
England colleges should be accepted as candidate's. The
>
34
THE EDUCATION PROBLEM.
35
friends of the Awakening insisted on the right of Presby-
teries to license the graduates of such academies as Nesh-
aminy, in view of the urgent need of preachers and pas-
tors. And they insisted that the Presbyteries should lay
less stress on college training and more on the evidence of
the candidate being a regenerate man, called by the Holy
Ghost to the ministry. To overcome the former difficulty
the Synod of Philadelphia attempted to establish a college
of its own, there being none at that time in the Middle
Colonies. Failing in this, they voted, in 1739, to create a
committee to examine the students and graduates of private
seminaries, and to give those whose proficiency merited.
it a certificate which would serve as a diploma in their
application to Presbytery. To this the friends of Nesh-
aminy Academy objected for reasons told us only by their
enemies, viz., "that it was to prevent that school from
training gracious men for the ministry."
After the division, the Synod of Philadelphia took under
its care the academy at New London taught by Francis
Alison, an Irish graduate of Glasgow, described as "the
best Latin scholar in America"; and tried to make an
arrangement with Yale College for the further training
of its graduates. "As learning," they write, "is not in
the same esteem in this government as in New England,
we beg all the indulgence your constitution can allow us,
lest parents grudge expenses if they run high." But this
does not seem to have accomplished much, and in 1749
Alison removed to Philadelphia to accept a post in the
academy newly established by Franklin's influence.
The New York Synod did much better in applying for
a charter for a college, and in placing it, in 1745, under
the direction of Jonathan Dickinson, of Elizabethtown, the
best scholar, the most effective writer, and the soundest
judgment in the church. At his death, in 1747, Aaron
&
36
[CHAP. IV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
!
Burr was chosen to succeed him, and the college removed
accordingly to Newark, where he was pastor. In 1755
both it and Burr were transferred to Princeton; and on
his death, in 1757, he was succeeded by his father-in-
law, Jonathan Edwards, who hardly lived to enter upon
the office, and was followed in the year of the reunion
by Samuel Davies. It was this young institution which
poured into the Presbyterian ministry a stream of young
men, imbued with sympathy with the Awakening and
zealous for its objects.
Next to this, it was the sympathy of the Synod of New
York, with the revival of religious interest, which aided its
growth. The spirit of the time in the colonies was revival-
ist. Here and there resistance was offered: Harvard and
Yale, after favoring Whitefield, turned against him; Con-
necticut enacted arrest and expulsion for " vagrant preach-
ers," and applied the law to Samuel Finley, who had gone
to New Haven to preach to a congregation of "Separates.
But these were side-eddies, and the main current of the
country's religious life flowed in the new channel, to the
advantage of all the larger social interests. Even in a
political sense the Great Awakening was a decisive influ-
It broke the barriers of colonial reserve, as well as
of sectarian isolation, and gave the American people, for
the first time, a common intellectual interest in the move-
ment, and personal interest in its leaders. Whitefield,
Edwards, and Tennent preceded Franklin and Washing-
ton as rallying names for Americans, irrespective of local
distinctions.
ence.
""
C
All this, however, does not require us to regard the
Awakening as an unmixed good, or to refuse a relative
justification to those who opposed it. Nor need this rela-
tive justification be based upon the extravagance of men
like James Davenport and Jonathan Barber, or the unchar-
}
37
itableness of Tennent and Blair. Indeed, these excesses
were quickly sloughed off, and the Synod of New York,
under the sober leadership of Jonathan Dickinson, was ani-
mated by a different spirit from that of its Presbytery of
New Brunswick. Gilbert Tennent himself laid aside his
asperity, labored for the reunion of the two bodies, aban-
doned his oddities in dress, and donned a wig. As pastor
of the Second Church in Philadelphia, in avowed opposi-
tion to the view of Jonathan Edwards, he maintained that
persons of blameless life, properly instructed in the prin-
ciples of Christianity, should be admitted to the Lord's
table. Like Whitefield and Wesley, he lived to repent
and retract the hasty and censorious judgments he had
pronounced on his brethren in the ministry.
The real faults of the Awakening lay deeper than these
superficial matters. One of them is indicated by the very
name Methodism, by which the movement has been so
generally known. It set out with the assumption that
there is one method of grace, by which all God's true
people are made alive unto him through his Son; and it
exacted of all much the same evidences of this uniform
Christian experience. Instantaneous, conscious conversion,
preceded by an overwhelming sense of personal guilt, and
followed by a joyful assurance of acceptance with God,
was the only ordo salutis it recognized. Religion must
thus come into the man like “a bolt from the blue," and
with no conceivable relation to the past providences of his
life, the human relationships in which he had been placed
by God, and the Christian nurture in divine things he
had received from his childhood. Mankind were classi-
fied broadly into those who knew they were converted
and those who were not. The "judgment of charity" of
the Reformed churches was displaced by the Anabaptist
demand for a church-membership giving "credible evi-
FAULTS OF THE AWAKENING.
38
[CHAP. IV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
dence" of regeneration; and the Christian nurture of the
family, along with the catechetical instruction of the young
by their pastors, came to be regarded as relatively unim-
portant.
The resultant type of Christian experience was one iso-
lated from the relationships and relative duties of life in a
very un-Protestant fashion; and the energy of attention
was concentrated upon the succession of inward emotions
and feelings. An age of introspection and consequently
of spiritual gloom was one result, while the direct appli-
cation of Christian principle to the whole life of Christian
society, and the realization of God's kingdom in this pres-
ent world, were hardly contemplated as Christian duties.
The theocratic element in the life of the Reformed Church,
notably reflected in Makemie's New York sermon, gave
way before an introspective pietism, which had much in
common with the monasticism of the Church of Rome.
But in the period we are considering Presbyterian pietism
was in the heyday of youth, with all the charm of novelty
and of earnestness. It was its internal vigor, and the zeal
it was able to elicit in the young men it drew into the min-
istry, that made possible the rapid increase of the church
within the New Side Synod.
One sign of this vigor was the organization of the Pres-
bytery of Hanover, the mother-Presbytery of most of the
churches and Presbyteries south of the Potomac. As early
as 1719 the Scotch-Irish migration began to flow down
the Shenandoah Valley, occupying fertile districts still un-
touched by the tobacco-planters of the eastern counties,
and bearing the brunt of Indian hostility. In view of these
services the intolerant ecclesiastical laws of the colony were
allowed to remain a dead letter beyond the Blue Ridge,
and the people were visited from time to time by Pres-
byterian preachers from the North, generally of the Old
་
39
Side. It was different when Presbyterianism struck root
in Hanover County, built its meeting-houses in the par-
ishes of the Established Church, and sent zealous preach-
ers like William Robinson, Samuel Davies, John Rodgers,
and John Todd to do the work neglected by the sleepy
and worldly rectors of the Virginian establishment. They
did not come uncalled. The reading of a few religious
works by some planters of the county had produced a
religious awakening independent of church or clergy. At
first they met only to hear such books read, and buildings
had to be erected for the accommodation of the crowds
who came. Hearing of William Robinson, who was travel-
ing toward North Carolina for his health and preaching
as he went, they sent for him, satisfied themselves of his
orthodoxy and piety, and put the direction of affairs into
his hands. Through their labors and his, Presbyterianism
struck root in a community English and Episcopalian by
its traditions. Thanks to the eloquence and the administra-
tive ability of Davies, as well as to the favor of a Scotch
governor, it was protected from the legalized intolerance
of the established clergy, and had time and room to grow.
On hearing of Jonathan Edwards's removal from North-
ampton in 1749, Samuel Davies wrote to urge his coming
to Virginia, but was too late, as he had consented to take
charge of the Indian mission at Stockbridge. In 1755 the
Synod of New York organized the Presbytery of Han-
over, which embraced all the ministers who were resident
in Virginia and the Carolinas, except the Presbytery of
Charleston, and one minister who adhered to the Synod
of Philadelphia.
THE PRESBYTERY OF HANOVER.
The Awakening bore fruit also in the mission-work
among the Northern Indians, begun in 1743 by David
Brainerd. With the forks of the Delaware as his center,
he extended his labors from Freehold on the east to the
40
[CHAP. IV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Susquehanna on the west. His saintly fervor, which made
him willing to forego all the comforts of civilized life,
touched the heart of the red man as it had not been since
the days of John Eliot, if even then; and a large harvest
of converts was gathered. After his early death, in 1747,
his brother John stepped into his place, and carried on the
work with some interruptions until his death, in 1781, but
with less fruit of his labor. So in 1748-50 Elihu Spencer
labored among the Oneidas of New York. In 1757 the
Presbytery of Suffolk ordained a Connecticut Mohegan,
Samson Occom, to labor among his own people, which he
did until his death, in 1791. He and President Davies
were the two first hymn-writers of the American Presby-
terian Church.
It was during this time that two other types of British
Presbyterianism found a home in America. The Revolu-
tion Settlement of 1688-90 had been accepted by all the
surviving ministers, of whatever shade of Presbyterianism.
Many, however, of the Cameronians, or Hill People, who
formed the extreme right wing of the church and who
had disowned all who had accepted the Indulgence of
1670, no less than the Scottish and Irish prelates and
their "curates," objected to the settlement as dealing too
gently with "the indulged," and as making no proper rec-
ognition of the binding obligation of the national Covenants
of 1638 and 1643. They in fact continued to renounce
allegiance to both church and state as established in Scot-
land. As they had no ministers, they sought to edify one
another in "corresponding societies" until the accession of
John Macmillan, a minister of the Scottish Kirk, in 1706,
enabled them to obtain the sacraments in an orderly way.
That of Mr. Nairn, a minister of the Seceder Church, in
1743, made possible the constitution of a Reformed Pres-
bytery.
1
COVENANTERS AND SECEDERS:
4I
Three ministers of the American Synod-Alexander
Craighead and David Alexander, both of Donegal Pres-
bytery, and John Cross, of New Brunswick Presbytery—
were in agreement with the Reformed Presbyterians (or
Covenanters) as to the perpetual obligation of the Cov-
enants, while the rest, in so far as they had any distinct
opinion in the matter, were satisfied with the Revolution
Settlement. In 1740 Craighead was suspended for mak-
ing the Covenants a term of communion in his congrega-
tion at Middle Octorara, Pa., and for other matters grow-
ing out of his zealous advocacy of the Awakening. After
the exclusion of the Presbytery of New Brunswick from
the Synod of Philadelphia he pleaded with them to renew
the Covenants, and when they refused he turned to the
Scottish Reformed Presbytery, and asked helpers for Amer-
ica. At Octorara in 1743 he and his adherents solemnly
renewed the Covenants, with swords pointed to the four
quarters of the heavens, as though to defy opposition from
whatever quarter it might come. In 1751 the Scotch Pres-
bytery sent John Cuthbertson, but two years before this
Craighead had joined the Synod of New York. Some at
least of his followers were more tenacious, and at Middle
Octorara Cuthbertson made his home, ministering to the
scattered societies of the Covenanters of Pennsylvania,
until the union of 1782.
It is said, but probably not correctly, that Craighead,
when tired with waiting for a response from the Reformed
Presbytery, made application to the Associate (or Seceder)
Synod of Scotland. This was the second body of conserv-
ative Presbyterians which declared their separation from
the Kirk of Scotland, charging it with unfaithfulness to
its own principles. It was in 1733 that Ebenezer Erskine
and three other ministers of the Synod of Perth, who had
been condemned for holding and teaching the doctrines of
•
42
[CHAP. IV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Edward Fisher's book, "The Marrow of Modern Divin-
ity" (1644), organized the first Associate Presbytery. In
1746-47 they had divided as to the lawfulness of the oath
exacted of burgesses in the Scottish burghs, into Burghers
and Antiburghers. To them, as representing all that was
pronounced in Calvinism and strict in Presbyterianism, and
yet not breaking with the civil government over Scotland
and America-as Craighead and the Covenanters did-an
appeal was made by those Presbyterians in Pennsylvania
who objected to the qualified subscription exacted in 1729
by the Synod of Pennsylvania. In 1753 the Antiburgher
Synod responded by sending Alexander Gellatly and An-
drew Arnot to America, with authority to organize con-
gregations and to constitute a Presbytery. In the mean-
time the division of 1741 had enabled the Old Side to
alter the terms of subscription in the Synod of Philadel-
phia to such as ought to have satisfied the most orthodox.
On the other hand, the New Side Presbytery of Newcas-
tle issued "a judicial warning" against the newcomers,
denouncing them as schismatics, and "the Marrow doc-
trines" as unsound. To this Messrs. Gellatly and Arnot
naturally published a reply; and the relations of the two
wings of the Presbyterian host were involved in an atmos-
phere of unhappy and unprofitable controversy as to the
obligation of the Covenants, the nature of faith, and the
extent and manner of "the gospel offer."
Each party
naturally tended to lay stress on that which sundered it
from the other.
A fresh ground of difference showed itself in New York.
Here a Presbyterian church had been organized in 1716,
but as the Episcopalian influence defeated its repeated
efforts to obtain a charter, it had been forced to vest its
property in the Church of Scotland. The Scotch and
Scotch-Irish element in the congregation always had had
43
W
some friction with the Puritans from New England, and
this came to a head in 1752, when the attempt was made
to substitute Dr. Watts's paraphrastic version of the Book
of Psalms for the less smooth but more faithful version
based on that of Francis Rous (1643), and adopted after
revision by the Westminster divines in 1645, and by the
Scottish Assembly in 1649. This Scottish psalter was re-
pugnant to the tastes of the eighteenth century through its
strong no less than its weak points; and the Great Awak-
ening had affected the taste in psalmody as much as in
anything else. The Synod of New York in 1756 refused
to condemn the use of Watts, as it was orthodox, and “ as
no particular version is of divine authority." So in that
year the disaffected withdrew and organized a “Scotch
church," which next year was taken under the care of
the Associate Presbytery. The Synod of Philadelphia had
not sanctioned any innovation in psalmody; and in the
Synod of New York we hear of it only in this one church,
and even in that no hymns were sung. In this way, how-
ever, arose the great dispute as to the proper matter of
praise," which still divides the lesser and more conservative
Presbyterian bodies from the greater.
Throughout the whole period of the separation of the
two Synods, that of New York had labored for reconcilia-
tion and reunion, with increasing weight as its numbers
grew, and its management of its affairs gave evidence of
its sobriety and orthodoxy. At first the personal irritation
on the side of the Synod of Philadelphia was naturally
very considerable, but only against the eight Irish minis-
ters of the Tennent group.
For Dickinson and his New
York associates, New England Puritans chiefly, they always
avowed their high regard. At last, in 1758, a plan of union
was reached which both could adopt. As regards both
subscription to the standards and the authority of Synod
ROUS OR WATTS?
66
-
44
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. IV.
14
and the Presbyteries, the Old Side carried their point.
Arrangements for stating scruples and leaving the church
court to judge of their importance were dropped. Those
who dissented from synodical or presbyterial action might
withdraw or protest, but nothing more. Intrusion into
other men's congregations and wholesale indictments of
brother-ministers were forbidden as irregular. As to the
questions growing out of the Awakening, a compromise
was reached. It was provided that candidates for the
ministry should be examined as to their "experimental
acquaintance with religion," no less than their learning
and orthodoxy. As to the Awakening itself, instead of
pronouncing upon it, the basis defines in thesi what is "a
work of grace," in terms far more natural to the new the-
ology than the old; and while repudiating the extrava-
gances of visionaries, it pledged the united Synod to work
for the promotion of what was thus described.
On this basis the reunited church entered upon a new
period of activity. The stricter view of Presbyterianism
had prevailed over the looser in matters of church order.
The newer view had prevailed over the older in that of
the perspective of doctrine and its practical application.
The united church thus reached a comparatively stable
equilibrium, which was to last for eighty years.
CHAPTER V.
·
REUNION AND GROWTH, 1758-75.
By reason of the extent of the immigration from Ulster,
and of the adhesion of Puritan migrants from New Eng-
land, the Presbyterian Church was now one of the three
largest in the country. While the Congregationalists pre-
dominated in New England, and the Episcopal Church
was established in New York and in the States south of
Mason and Dixon's line, in the States between the Hud-
son and the Potomac there were more Presbyterians than
anything else. At the beginning of the War of Inde-
pendence the thirteen colonies had 186 Presbyterian and
61 Reformed ministers. Taken along with the Congrega-
tionalists, who were in the friendliest relations with them,
they constituted a controlling majority of the American
people.
In the Southern colonies the Presbyterian churches
were increasing rapidly by immigration from Ulster. The
advantages of a strong organization and of vigorous synodi-
cal authority were especially shown in enabling the Synod
to meet the rapidly multiplying demand for ministerial
service from unorganized communities and vacant churches
in the Carolinas, Virginia, western Pennsylvania, and north-
ern New York. At least one session of each meeting of
the Synod was occupied with no other business than arrang-
ing supplies, frequently by requiring the older churches to
give up the services of their pastors for the time needed for
a journey to the South or across the Alleghanies. Even
45
46
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. V.
H
from Nova Scotia came an appeal for help, so widely dif-
fused was confidence in the Synod's ability to overtake
the demands of a growing field.
The correspondence of the time shows how much atten-
tion was aroused in New England by the effective disci-
pline over pastors, candidates, and people which the Synod
exercised. As a consequence the Puritan churches and
ministers within the bounds of the middle and Southern
colonies gave their adhesion to the Synod very generally.
Those which lay between the Hudson River and the Con-
necticut line had organized themselves into a Presbytery
of Dutchess County in 1752, and were admitted to the
Synod in 1763.
<
cess.
The college at Princeton continued to surpass the hopes
of its founders as a source of supply of the ministry. The
presidency of Samuel Davies (1759-61), the most brilliant
preacher thus far of the church, ended too quickly to real-
ize the expectations his election had roused. In 1753-54
he and Gilbert Tennent had visited Great Britain and Ire-
land to secure an endowment fund from the Presbyterians
and orthodox dissenters, and had met with marked suc-
His successor, Samuel Finley, was one of the few
survivors of the Sturm und Drang period of the Awaken-
ing, and his academy at Nottingham had been a fruitful
nursery of ministers. In his presidency (1761–66) there
was a notable revival in the college. In 1768 Princeton
received one of its great presidents in Dr. John Wither-
spoon, who had been elected in 1766. He already had
made a name as the literary champion of earnest Calvin-
ism against the moderate party in the Kirk of Scotland.
He now showed no less ability as an administrator and
educator, the latter as filling the new chair of divinity.
His position in church affairs in Scotland threw him
into sympathetic relations with the Associate Presbytery
47
in America; and in 1769, at their request, he moved for
a committee of conference with a view to union. These
negotiations continued until 1774, when it was manifest
that the Associate brethren could not see their way to an
agreement. Probably this final refusal was due to the
stiffening received in the meantime from the Scottish As-
sociate Synod. In 1764-68 five ministers of the Burgher
branch of the Associate body had arrived in America, and
applied for admission into the Associate Presbytery. As
the point of difference between the two Seceder churches
had no pertinence to America, the Presbytery agreed to
accept them on the footing of assent to the common prin-
ciples as defined in the Secession Testimony. But as the
American Presbytery was subordinate to the Scotch Synod,
this now felt itself compromised by being brought into fel-
lowship with ministers who approved of the Burgher oath.
Two more ministers were sent out, with instructions not
to take their seat in Presbytery until the Burgher members
were expelled. This was done in 1771, and they were told
that "it was very sinful" in Presbytery to have admitted
them.
THE AMERICAN SECEDERS.
During the period we are considering the Associate Pres-
bytery increased to thirteen ministers, resident in Penn-
sylvania and New York, and in 1776 it was divided into
two Presbyteries, named from those colonies. As each
was directly subject to the Synod in Scotland, they were
related to each other only by way of correspondence-an
arrangement which resulted in the development of two dis-
tinct types of American Seceders. The Reformed Presby-
tery, organized in 1774, had now three ministers laboring
among small" societies" in Pennsylvania.
Besides the Synod and these conservative Presbyteries
there was a Presbytery of South Carolina, organized in
1723, or sooner, largely composed of Scotchmen, and
48
[CHAP. V.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
claiming to represent the Kirk of Scotland. Its members
seem to have been in sympathy with the Moderate party
in the Kirk, as we hear of Principal Robertson and Dr.
Hugh Blair selecting a minister for their Charleston church.
They were not, therefore, fraternal in their relations to the
zealous revivalist preachers of the Synod.
In New England the course of events had been not un-
like that in the Middle States. It is true that the question
on which the Presbytery of Londonderry divided in 1736
was that of their relation to the Congregationalist churches
and their discipline. But it is notable that the Presbytery
of Boston, organized in 1745 by the minority, threw itself
with zeal into the measures of the Great Awakening, and
rapidly outgrew its elder rival, which by 1765 had become
extinct by depletion. By 1771 the new body began to
consider the propriety of constituting a Synod, a step
which was carried out in 1774, the fifteen or sixteen min-
isters of the Synod of New England being divided into four
Presbyteries Boston, Newburyport (afterward Salem),
Londonderry, and Palmer. Nearly at the same time were
organized two other Presbyteries: that of the Eastward
and that of Grafton, or of the Connecticut River. The
latter was composed of President Wheelock, of Dartmouth
College, then newly founded, and other Congregationalist
admirers of Presbyterian methods; and it held itself strictly
aloof from other Presbyterian bodies. The Presbytery of
the Eastward was refused recognition by the Synod, on
the ground that its founder and leading spirit, John Mur-
ray, of Boothbay, Me., had no ministerial standing, as the
Presbytery of Philadelphia had deposed him from the min-
istry little more than a year after it had ordained him.
He, however, was a man of much greater vitality than
any in the new Synod, and the Presbytery of the East-
ward grew at its expense, the first secessions being those
DISSENSIONS IN THE SYNOD.
49
of the church in Boston and that in Newburyport, where
George Whitefield had been buried in 1770. Its aged pas-
tor, Jonathan Parsons, in whose house the great preacher
had died, took Murray's part; and in 1776 Murray became
his successor, after refusing a call to Boston. The Psalm-
ody question also arose in New England, as in 1774 Moses
Baldwin of Palmer made the first move toward a substitute
for the Scotch psalter. This led some of the conservatives
to turn their eyes toward the Associate Presbytery of New
York.
This was the period of greatest growth of New England
Presbyterianism. In New Hampshire the five churches
of 1760 had grown to twenty by 1778; and the number
in Maine cannot have been less. That of ministers in all
three bodies is estimated at thirty-two.
The Synod of New York and Philadelphia, however,
was by far the largest and most growing body. But it
was not possessed of complete homogeneity and harmony.
The Old Side and the New were united, but not quite
reconciled, and three occasions for dissension were found:
(1) The reconstruction of the Presbyteries was found easy,
except in the districts covered by the two Presbyteries of
Newcastle and the Old Side Presbytery of Donegal. This
was the region in which the antagonisms of the old con-
troversies had been sharpest and most personal; and the
Synod found it hard to effect such a reconstruction as was
demanded by the interests of the church at large. At one
time a part of the Presbytery of Donegal for three years
actually declined the jurisdiction of Synod rather than sub-
mit to its arrangements; and there was a constant transfer
of ministers and churches from Presbytery to Presbytery
for the sake of peace. (2) The especial bone of conten-
tion within the Presbyteries was the examination of candi-
dates for the ministry. The Plan of Union forbade Pres-
50
[CHAP. V.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
byteries to license or ordain any one "until he give them
competent satisfaction as to his learning and experimental
acquaintance with religion, and skill in divinity and cases
of conscience." The Old Side members contended that
this meant nothing more than the requirement of the
Westminster Directory, that the Presbytery shall "inquire
touching the grace of God in the candidate, and if he be
of such holiness of life as is requisite in a minister of the
gospel." The New Side, however, would be content with
nothing less than the rehearsal in Presbytery of his relig-
ious experiences, in the spirit of the Awakening. To this
it was objected that beyond the profession of faith in the
gospel no man or body of men had a right to inquire into
the religious state of another; and that the proper means
to ascertain the presence of grace in a man is not his own
testimony concerning himself, but the testimony of those
who have best known his life and conversation.
In 1761
the Synod was on the verge of a fresh division on this
issue, each party contending that it stood for the true
sense of the Plan of Union, and a large majority sustain-
ing the demand for a public rehearsal of experiences. To
avoid a renewal of the schism it was agreed that the
majority of each Presbytery should take whichever course
it preferred; and that if the minority could not acquiesce
conscientiously, they should be organized as a separate
Presbytery. This was a most un-Presbyterian solution of
the difficulty, as it abandoned the principle of unity in pro-
cedure in a matter of vital importance. Thus the Second
Presbytery of Philadelphia, organized under this author-
ity out of Old Side ministers and churches, had power to
admit to the ministry men who in the view of the First
Presbytery, and of the church at large, might be altogether
unfit persons. The majority acted with more charity than
prudence in thus setting what proved a fatal precedent,
-
NEW SIDE RIGOR.
51
as Presbyteries of this structure were sure to perpetuate
and intensify the differences they represented.
As a rule, however, the majority in the united Synod
acted with more rigor of authority than charitable con-
sideration for the scruples or sensibilities of the minority.
Although it consisted largely of New England Puritans,
who had entertained scruples as to the exercise of presby-
terial and synodical authority over the churches, and of
the New Brunswick party, which had tried to minimize
that authority into an advisory power, it now showed little
hesitation in laying down with sharp precision the lines on
which the order and discipline of the church must move.
This was seen (3) in the dispute as to the power of Synod
and Presbytery to deal with applicants from the Presby-
terian churches of Great Britain and Ireland. The Pres-
byterian churches of England, and a part of those of Ire-
land, had fallen into Arianism. Even in the Scottish Kirk
a similar tendency had been shown; and since the seces-
sion of the Erskines and their friends, the Moderates had
obtained complete control in the Scottish Assembly. Their
indifference to both the independence of the church and
to theological doctrines was rooted in a carelessness to any
deeper godliness than morality of outer life. It therefore
behooved the American church to guard the entrance to
its ministry from these quarters, and the New Side pro-
posed to effect this by reserving to the Synod the right
to admit them finally. Before the division of 1741 it was
they who had been sticklers for the rights of the Presby-
teries over against the Synod-a part now adopted by the
Old Side brethren in repeated protests, which also pointed
out the danger of causing ministers from abroad to set
up separate Presbyteries. A compromise was reached in
1774, by which the Presbyteries were admonished to exer-
cise great care, and required to make a special report to
52
[CHAP. V.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
:
1
Synod of every case, and to transmit the credentials of the
persons admitted, while Synod reserved the power to annul
their admission.
Less obtrusive, but of more lasting importance, was the
growing difficulty as to the psalmody of the church, and
that first in the congregations which had been connected
with the Synod of New York, where the disposition to a
change was greatest. It was especially in the Second
Church of Philadelphia, organized of those who sympa-
thized with the Awakening, and long the pastoral charge
of Gilbert Tennent, that the dissension was manifest, a
minority appealing from Session to Presbytery, and from
Presbytery to Synod, against "the introduction of Dr.
Watts's imitation of the Psalms." The Synod had already
sanctioned its use in churches which preferred it, and
refused to recall that approval, while it sent Drs. Wither-
spoon, Rodgers, and Macwhorter to talk the recalcitrant
party into a different judgment. They reported, but not
in terms which indicated their success. The difficulty was
made more acute by the unwise language Dr. Watts had
employed in the preface to his version, denying the fit-
ness of the Psalms for Christian use until they had been
adapted to "the language of the New Testament."
The proceedings of the Synod during this period are
more barren than we should have expected of references
to public affairs, as it was the time of those successive and
acute struggles with Great Britain over the power of taxa-
tion which finally precipitated the War for Independence.
In 1766 the Synod, on motion of Dr. Alison, sent an ad-
dress to the king on the repeal of the Stamp Act. Under
the surface of this apparent indifference, however, lay an in-
tense concern in the possible course of events as affecting
the ecclesiastical as well as the civil status of the colonies.
Thrice in the history of the colonies preparations had
53
been made for the consecration of a bishop for the British
colonies of America; and thrice the plan had come to
naught through what the anti-prelatists of America re-
garded as the interpositions of Providence, viz., the fall
of Archbishop Laud in 1640, the disgrace of the Earl of
Clarendon in 1667, and the sudden death of Queen Anne
in 1714. In George III. for the first time the new dynasty
was represented by a king of English birth and sympathies,
and withal a zealous churchman, while in Thomas Secker,
the primate of Canterbury, and Beilby Porteus, Bishop of
Chester and the king's chaplain-himself a native of Vir-
ginia-the American Episcopal Church had two zealous
friends at court. To prepare the way for the new step,
Dr. T. B. Chandler, of Burlington, whose great abilities
certainly designated him as the occupant of the proposed
see, published "An Appeal to the Public in Behalf of the
Church of England in America" (New York, 1767), show-
ing the hardships it endured for want of a bishop. No
discipline was maintained over clergy or people; the rite
of confirmation could be enjoyed only by those who could
make the journey to England; the same journey must be
undertaken by all candidates for holy orders, and by rea-
son of wars, pestilences, and shipwrecks one in five of these
never returned. He declared that American Episcopalians
desired no power over their brethren of other communions.
Their bishop would be supported by their own gifts, not
by compulsory tithes, and he would claim no such jurisdic-
tion as English bishops' courts (until 1857) exercised over
marriages, divorces, wills, and other questions affected by
canon law.
THE NEED OF A BISHOP.
-
In the controversy this provoked the hardships were
admitted; nor was it necessary to call into question the
excellent intentions of American Episcopalians. But even
they could give no security against the enactment of a
54
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. V.
▸
general tithe law and the establishment of prelatical juris-
diction by the British Parliament, either at once or at some
early date.
Point was given to these apprehensions by recollections
of the stratagem practiced by Governor Fletcher to effect
the establishment of episcopacy in New York. At a time
when the chaplain of the forces was the only Episcopal
minister in the colony, he induced the colonial legislature
to pass an act (1693) for the employment of "able Protest-
ant ministers" for the different inhabited parishes. Then,
acting on the principle Cujus regio, ejus religio, and in the
face of the protest of the legislature, he interpreted this to
mean exclusively clergymen of the Church of England, as
no others were of the same communion with William III.!
He and his successors, and other zealous Episcopalians,
aided by the English Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel, hastened to provide episcopally ordained clergymen
even for the thoroughly Puritan churches on Long Island,
whose houses of worship they seized on the ground that
these had been erected by a public tax, and were therefore
the property of the Established Church. And in 1703 the
Episcopalian vestry of Philadelphia waited on Lord Corn-
bury, governor of New York, and expressed their hopes
that his cousin, Queen Anne, would extend the benefits
of his government to Pennsylvania.
These transactions emphasized to the Puritan and Pres-
byterian churches the dangers to religious equality attend-
ant on the connection with England. The Ulster immi-
grants naturally would recall the legal establishment of
prelacy in their native province, with tithes and episcopal
courts, at a time when four out of five of its Protestant
inhabitants were Presbyterians; and they remembered how
their fathers had been summoned before those courts on the
charge of living in fornication with their own wives, because
A JOINT CONVENTION.
1
55
they had not been married with a ring by an Episcopalian
rector. These experiences fitted them to welcome inde-
pendence as the final disappearance of a peril which had
overhung them ever since the young king's accession. It
is not without significance that Presbyterian Synod and
the Connecticut Association held a joint convention by
delegates from 1766 till 1776, and that the Synod of 1775
promptly accepted the leadership of the Continental Con-
gress, expressly leaving to "that august body" the choice
of a fast-day to be held in view of "the alarming state of
public affairs." To those who have looked below the sur-
face it is clear that ecclesiastical considerations were as
active in promoting the revolt of the colonies as were the
disputes over revenue. Connection with a "mother-coun-
try" in which church and state had a common head, and
were controlled by the same legislature, carried with it
other perils than those of fiscal exaction.
}
CHAPTER VI.
INDEPENDENCE AND REORGANIZATION, 1776–89.
THE period of the War of Independence is acknowledged
on all hands to have been one of disaster to the spiritual
condition of the country. In part this was due to the mix-
ture of ecclesiastical considerations in the motives of the
contest. These did not raise it to the horrible dignity of
a war of religion, but they brought strife into the sanctuary
of peace, and they prompted to willful injuries to church
property. The fact that the Congregationalists, Presby-
terians, Reformed, Lutherans, and Baptists as a whole
were on the patriotic side, while the Episcopalians and the
Methodists in the main sided with the mother-country,
which also possessed the sympathy and quiet coöperation
of the majority of the Friends, was recognized in the
conduct of hostilities. When the British troops entered
an American town they were pretty sure to seize on the
patriotic churches and convert them into barracks, hos-
pitals, or stables, leaving them in a state of wreck at their
departure. The patriot troops naturally would retaliate
on the Episcopal churches as they had opportunity.
Only the Highlanders, who had settled at Cape Fear
and some other places of North Carolina after the rebellion
of 1745, broke the unanimity with which the Presbyterians
of America-Scotch, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, and Puritan-
supported the cause of independence. The Synod of 1783
congratulates the church on "the general and almost uni-
versal attachment of the Presbyterian body to the cause
56
•
PRESBYTERIAN PATRIOTISM.
57
of liberty," as "confessed by the complaints and resent-
ment of the common enemy." It points to " our burnt
and wasted churches, and our plundered dwellings" as
"an earnest of what we must have suffered" had the
issue of the war been different. Dr. Inglis, the Tory rec-
tor of Trinity Church, wrote in 1776: "I do not know
one Presbyterian minister, nor have I been able, after
strict inquiry, to hear of any, who did not, by preaching
and every effort in their power, promote all the measures
of the Continental Congress, however extravagant." There
was, indeed, one minister in the Synod of New England
who embraced the British side of the controversy, and
joined the royal army. The Synod deposed him, and sus-
pended another of its members until he brought a certifi-
cate of his loyalty from the State of New Hampshire.
Dr. Witherspoon, along with several other Presbyterians,
sat in the Continental Congress, and voted for independ-
ence. Charles Thomson, an elder in the session of the
First Church, was its trusted secretary, and by his pro-
verbial truthfulness gave additional weight to its proclama-
tions and gazettes. George Duffield shared with William
White the duties and honors of the chaplaincy. The wife
of James Caldwell, of Elizabeth-the minister who brought
the patriot troops an armful of psalm-books when their
wadding gave out-was assassinated by a Tory, and he
himself was shot by a drunken sentinel while on chaplain's
duty; and John Rosbrugh, of Allentown," was barbarously
murdered by the enemy at Trenton," in cold blood after
he had surrendered. George Duffield had at least one nar-
row escape, and on the head of John Murray, of Boothbay,
was set a reward as great as on those of Samuel Adams
and John Hancock.
The Synod of 1778 met at Bedminster because Phila-
delphia was "in possession of the enemy." The Tories
58
[CHAP. VI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
complained that the fast-days kept by Presbyterians and
Puritans were used especially to keep alive the opposition
to English policy. In the calls to observe these I find
constant reference to the decay of piety, the gross immo-
ralities which so commonly attend a state of war, and the
spread of irreligion. In the twenty years before the war
there had been a perceptible decay of religious earnestness.
The white-heat methods of the Awakening had been fol-
lowed by the usual reaction, which attests how much of
the temporal and the human had been blended with what
was of God in it, and therefore was found lasting. The
disputes with the "mother-country" had diverted atten-
tion from eternal to temporal interests. The churches of
America were ill fit to stand the strain of a time of war,
and the temptations it offered to the malevolent passions.
Not all the patriotic ministers showed the calmness and
good-will which marked Dr. John Rodgers, of New York,
the friend and trusted adviser of Washington, who, in his
years of exile from his own charge, subordinated every
other consideration to his work in the ministry of recon-
ciliation.
-
-
The peril was much increased by the alliance, which
brought groups of French officers into contact with the
people in every important seaport, and with the army at
large. The frivolous and scoffing deism of the school of
Voltaire was thus naturalized in America, and an irreligious
tone began to pervade its society, especially its public
life. Religion was valued, if at all, as a supplement to
the jail and the police; belief in a disclosure of God to his
creatures was thought a jestworthy superstition.
Besides these gravest losses in the character and temper
of the people, the churches suffered much disorganization.
Their buildings were torn down, or diverted for a time to
other uses in a way which involved great loss. Princeton
·
BEYOND THE ALLEGHANIES.
59
College was closed for years, thus interrupting the prep-
aration of young ministers. It was almost impossible for
many pastors to obtain the means of supporting their
families, especially in the districts reached by the war.
Yet in the face of discouragements of all sorts, the rou-
tine of the church's work was kept up in the Presbyterian
bodies, and in the Synod some forty candidates were
ordained to the ministry. In the New England States,
indeed, the year 1778 marks the highest point reached by
Presbyterian growth, and the following decade the begin-
nings of decay, as but one new church was organized,
while several were dissolved; and in 1782 the Synod of
New England, in view of its "broken circumstances," was
dissolved to form a Presbytery.
mi
In 1781 the Synod of New York and Philadelphia organ-
ized the Presbytery of Redstone in western Pennsylvania.
When the Treaty of Paris in 1762 threw open this region
to undisputed settlement, the Scotch-Irish had poured
across the Alleghany ranges to and beyond what is now
the Ohio line. In 1766 Charles Beatty-who as a young
Irish peddler had startled William Tennent at Neshaminy
by offering his wares in good Latin-and George Duffield
had been sent by Synod to preach to the new settlements
and report on their spiritual condition. But not until 1774
was there a minister among them to stay; and two years
later John Macmillan accepted a call to this field. He was
a man who knew how to convert such a population into a
self-supporting community in church matters, by raising
up laborers at home. Largely to him and his pupils is it
due that this became the most Presbyterian region of the
whole country, and the most conservative in its influence
on the church at large. Yet by 1781 there were but four
ministers in the Redstone Presbytery, which, like Hanover,
was to be a mother of Presbyteries. Not until 1790 was
60
[CHAP. VI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS. ·
the first house of worship erected, congregations meeting
in the woods in summer, and in private houses in winter.
In 1782 Matthew Henderson, of the Associate Presbytery,
settled in this region, and gathered several small congre-
gations, who were to share in the troubles which attended
the union with the Covenanters.
With the return of peace in 1783 the ecclesiastical rela-
tions of America took a new aspect. The demand was
now made for absolute religious equality, such as existed
in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania; and it was secured by
degrees. The battle was hardest in Virginia, where the
Presbytery of Hanover took the lead in demanding it, and
was vigorously supported by the Baptists. The doctrine
that religion needs nothing from the state but a general
protection was now enunciated in terms which would have
shocked the Westminster Assembly, who "did crie down"
Thomas Goodwin's plea for a general toleration. The
colonial system lasted longest in New England, where the
standing order" was abolished in Connecticut in 1816,
and in Massachusetts in 1833.
One effect of ecclesiastical independence was the ter-
mination of the monopoly of printing the English Bible,
which had been vested in the king's printers in London.
The Continental Congress first proposed to have an edi-
tion printed under its auspices, and failing in that for want
of type, ordered the importation of a large quantity. In
1782 Robert Aitken, of Philadelphia, an elder in the Asso-
ciate Church, brought out an edition, which both Congress
and Synod commended to the public.
As the ties were now severed which connected the Prot-
estant churches of America with those of Europe, we find
a general movement toward their organization as national
churches. The Episcopal Church, no longer especially
favored by law and influence in high places, now obtained
"C
COVENANTERS AND SECEDERS UNITE.
61
bishops not only without opposition, but with the friendly
coöperation of other Americans. The Dutch and Ger-
man Reformed churches established General Synods, and
declared their independence of foreign judicatories. The
Methodist societies in 1784 cast off the personal control
still claimed by John Wesley over all who bore the name.
The Congregationalist churches of New England began to
draw together into General Associations for each State,
after the Connecticut model. The Separate, the Free-
Will and some other branches of the Baptists began to
organize into general conferences. The Roman Catholics
made their first approach to a national organization by
the consecration of John Carroll as Bishop of Baltimore.
The Presbyterians felt a similar impulse. It was shown
first in the attempt to consolidate the two conservative
bodies, the Covenanters and the Seceders. As the former
promptly acknowledged the new government of the United
States, and thus ceased to be " an anti-government party,"
it was felt that the chief obstacle to their fellowship with
the Seceders had been removed. As early as 1777 a con-
ference on the subject was begun. The Covenanters, how-
ever, had embraced a theory of civil government and its
direct dependence on Christ's mediatorial headship, which
justified their previous attitude toward the government of
Great Britain, and this they now showed no disposition to
abandon. As one of them said: "You may agree to what
propositions you please, but I will agree to none but with
this interpretation—that all that power and ability civil
rulers have are from Christ, the Prophet of the Covenant
of grace, and that all that food and raiment mankind enjoy
are from Christ, the Priest of the Covenant." To these
positions the Associate Presbytery of Pennsylvania refused
their assent; but in 1780 the much smaller Presbytery of
New York came to terms of union. Through the influ-
62
[CHAP. VI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
ence of one of its members, Robert Annan, of Wallkill, the
question was called up again in the other Presbytery, and
a union carried in the meeting of June, 1782, by the cast-
ing vote of the moderator, James Proudfit, thus constituting
the Associate Reformed Church of America. The minority
of two ministers and four elders protested, and appealed
to the Scotch Associate Synod; but the majority refused,
with some reason, to admit an appeal to a foreign judi-
cature. The appeal, however, was carried to the Scotch
Synod, which in 1785 recognized the protesters as the
Associate Presbytery of Pennsylvania, and sent them, in
Thomas Beveridge and James Anderson, able assistants,
to rebuild the denomination. The latter, in 1784, pre-
pared by direction of Presbytery their “" Testimony for the
Doctrine and Order of the Church of Christ," to which
subscription was required. As the Scotch Reformed Pres-
bytery equally refused to recognize the union, and took
steps in 1789 to reconstitute their American churches, the
transaction resulted in adding another to the number of
Presbyterian subdivisions, as indeed had been predicted
by some who opposed it. It did, however, establish an
intermediate body between the strict conservatives and
the Presbyterian Synod, and thus helped to an approach
from each side. The Associate Reformed Church, indeed,
had been formed out of very conservative elements, but on
the principle of distinguishing between lesser and greater,
essentials and inessentials, in the matters which had been
reasons for division. And this character it always retained.
A complaint from the Reformed Dutch Classis of New
Brunswick having opened the question of the mutual rela-
tion of the American churches of the Reformed faith and
order, the Synod of New York and Philadelphia took
advantage of it to secure a conference on “ matters of gen-
eral utility and friendship." This was extended afterward
THE NEW CONSTITUTION.
63
to include the Associate Reformed Synod in the confer-
ence, and to cover the suggestion of "a plan for some
kind of union among them." The conference was held in
October, 1785, and was free, full, and friendly, but led to
nothing more than a plan for annual conferences by dele-
gates, like that with the Connecticut Association before
the war.
One obstacle to any immediate action was the prospect
of an extensive change in the constitution of the Presbyte-
rian Church. It was felt that it had outgrown an arrange-
ment which required or assumed the attendance of the
whole body of ministers at a single point, and that much
was to be gained by the union of neighboring Presbyteries
in subordinate synods. By erecting a delegated General
Assembly, subdivided into Synods, as these were into Pres-
byteries, the American church would also more distinctly
announce its new standing as a national church, ready to
take under its care those who sought its communion in
every part of the country.
The first step was taken by the Synod of 1786, which
adopted a plan for rearranging the bounds of the Presby-
teries. This increased their number from twelve to six-
teen, and grouped these into four Synods, with a proviso
as to the number of ministers and of ruling elders each
Presbytery should elect annually to the General Assem-
bly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of
America.
•
<
This Synod also ordered the preparation of "a book of
discipline and government . accommodated to the state
of the Presbyterian Church in America" by a committee
of which Witherspoon was chairman, and Macwhorter,
Rodgers, Duffield, Sproat, Robert Smith, Alison, and Ewing
were the clerical members. For nearly a century the
method of transmitting grave constitutional questions "in
64
[CHAP. VI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
})
overture to the Presbyteries had been in use in the Kirk
of Scotland, but had not been adopted by the American
Synod, as it was not a delegated body. The committee,
however, were instructed to distribute three hundred copies
of their Plan among the Presbyteries, and every Presbytery
was required to "report its observations in writing" to the
Synod of 1787. In that Synod a session was assigned for
hearing these "observations" but the minutes have no
record of their purport, or even of their being actually
read, except that those of the Presbytery of Baltimore
were presented and heard the next morning. We have
no means, therefore, of ascertaining the degree of unanim-
ity with which the Plan was received by the Presbyteries,
nor could their "observations" amount to a direct vote
on its acceptance or rejection. The committee itself was
not quite unanimous. Dr. Matthew Wilson, although of
the Old Side by training and conviction, offered a substi-
tute which would have established congregational instead
of "classical" Presbyteries. The Presbytery of Suffolk
(Long Island) proposed to separate from the church, on
the ground that the Plan was impracticable, and its
churches would not comply with it; but it was persuaded
to withdraw the proposal.
The Synod discussed the Plan in detail, made impor-
tant alterations, and ordered the distribution of a thousand
copies, as amended, among the Presbyteries, "for their
consideration, and the consideration of the churches under
their care." In the next Synod we hear of three memorials
from congregations, but none from Presbyteries. After a
full discussion and further amendment, the whole Plan,-
embracing the Confession of Faith (amended in the matter
of the civil magistrate's relation to the church), the Longer
Catechism (with an amendment as to toleration), the
Shorter Catechism, the Directory for Worship (radically
-
LAYING BONDS ON THE FUTURE.
65
altered and not för the better), and a Form of Govern-
ment and Discipline, was adopted and ratified finally, by
what majority the minutes do not say. This final vote
was taken in a Synod of thirty-five ministers and eight
elders. One hundred and thirty-six ministers entitled and
expected to be present were not so; and some four hun-
dred church sessions had no ruling elder to represent
them. The language of the minutes, "as now altered
and amended," indicates that what was finally voted upon
differed from both the first draft sent to the Presbyteries
in 1786, and the revised draft sent to the Presbyteries and
churches in 1787. Dr. Ashbel Green says that "many
articles of the constitution as finally sanctioned remained
as then agreed upon." But even the name of the General
Assembly was settled in the Synod of 1788.
Yet it was enacted not only that "the Form of Govern-
ment and Discipline and the Confession of Faith" should
be that of the church, but that they should "continue to
be our constitution and the confession of our faith and
practice unalterable, unless two thirds of the Presbyteries
under the care of the General Assembly shall propose
alterations or amendments, and such alterations or amend-
ments shall be agreed to and enacted by the General As-
sembly." Attempts to lay bonds upon the future by
constitutional enactment are a weakness characteristic of
Americans. But never was the attempt made by a body
possessed of less prescriptive right to do so; and in this
case no more was forbidden than that a national church
should freely give utterance to its actual faith in authori-
tative form!
It has been claimed that this Presbyterian form of gov-
ernment was the model after which that of the United
States was formed. The same claim, I believe, has been.
put forward for every other form of church government
66
[CHAP. VI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
then in existence in America. The Synod of 1787 cer-
tainly was debating and amending the report of Wither-
spoon and his associates, at the time when the Constitu-
tional Convention was discussing in the same city the best
form for a new government of the country. Alexander
Hamilton, James Madison, and James Wilson, the three
leading debaters of the Convention, although none of
them Presbyterians, may well have been familiar with the
Scottish methods. And a certain vague resemblance exists
between Congress, legislature, and county government on
the one side, and Assembly, Synod, and Presbytery on the
other. There, however, the likeness ends. These eccle-
siastical bodies are not legislatures, but only courts for
the interpretation of law. The legal background, also, of
Presbyterian procedure is the Scottish law, which in turn
rests on the Civil Law of Rome. That of the American
constitution is the Common Law of England, which always
was most jealous of any intrusion of the Civil Law. Each
of the superior courts of the Presbyterian system possesses
an authority over the lower, which the States never have
conceded to the national Government. And, lastly, the
democratic element in the American Constitution has no
real correspondent in the Presbyterian system.
manent eldership, and its parochial bishops, with seats or
representation in its church courts even when they have,
no pastoral charge, are aristocratic rather than democratic.
This last practice, I may add, is unknown to the Reformed
churches of Europe.
Its per-
The one feature in the Constitution of the United States,
which suggests a Presbyterian influence, is the method of
amendment by reference to and consent of the States.
This, however, was not yet in use in the American church
when the Constitution was drafted. If copied at all, it
must have been directly from the constitution of the Kirk
67
of Scotland, into which it was introduced by the Barrier
Act of 1695.
It is not by any external copying of features that the
two plans of government are related. It is through both
being the fruit of the same great national impulse to give
the social life its complete expression by a polity of national
dimensions and spirit.
PRESBYTERIAN EXAMPLE FOLLOWED.
It is not in the field of political but in that of ecclesias-
tical life that the Presbyterian method of synodical govern-
ment attains a significance far wider than the reach of the
denomination. The Presbyterian Synod of colonial times
stood entirely alone. It was the only instance in which
the collective wisdom and discretion of the whole body
was brought to bear continuously upon the affairs of an
American church. The Congregationalist churches of Con-
necticut, indeed, had made an approach to synodical gov-
ernment, but this was confined to the State. If to-day the
interests and affairs of every great Protestant denomination
in the land are in the hands of conference, convention, or
synod of some sort, meeting periodically, and with mini-
sterial and lay members voting equally, it may fairly be
claimed that all have walked in the footsteps of the Pres-
byterians whose Synod is the ancestor of all these no less
than of the General Assembly itself.
-
11.
CHAPTER VII.
REVIVAL AND DISSENSION, 1789-1810.
GREAT as always has been the influence of the Presby-
terian Church on the religious life of the country, it prob-
ably at no time has been so dominant as in the closing years
of the eighteenth century. The Puritan churches were
localized in New England, with a growing consciousness
of their distinctness, as a group of churches and of States,
from the rest of the country. The Episcopal Church,
which had gone into the War for Independence one of the
strongest, had come out one of the weakest, through tak-
ing the wrong side. It had lost heavily by disendowment,
by desertions, and by migration to the British colonies of
Nova Scotia and Canada; and it was still struggling to
bring opposing tendencies into coöperation, and to perfect
its own organization. The Methodist Church was still in
its feeble infancy, having with Asbury retired to private
life during the progress of the struggle. The Baptist
churches, although they had gained heavily in both New
England and the South as a consequence of the Great
Awakening, had achieved their growth mainly among the
poor and uneducated classes; and had accepted the ideal
of a "lowly ministry" of uneducated men. The German
churches were isolated from the rest of the nation by their
persistence in the use of a foreign language. The newer
sects, Free-Will Baptists, "Christians," Universalists, Uni-
tarians, and Shakers, were great only in their hopes.
The Presbyterian Church was strong in a learned minis-
S
68
69
try, graduates not only of Princeton but of the Scotch and
the New England universities. Its members had borne
the brunt of the struggle for independence from the Hud-
son to the Savannah. It had shared with the Baptists the
honor of the struggle for religious equality against Episco-
palian privilege in the Southern States, and had sustained
it alone in New York and New Jersey. It had the sup-
port of the large Scotch-Irish element in the Middle and
Southern States, and of the New England overflow west-
ward across the Hudson. It was more homogeneous and
harmonious than ever before, the Old Side men and their
traditions having died out, and the methods of the Great
Awakening having been heartily accepted. It had shown
its staying power in maintaining a unique synodical author-
ity over its pastors and people, in holding up the standard
of Calvinistic orthodoxy in an age far more alien to that
mode of thought than our own, and in extending its mis-
sionary labors to newly settled districts. Not only did it
flourish in the older States, but the new territories beyond
the Appalachian ranges seemed especially its own.
Had the church been able to maintain this position in
the nation's religious life, and had it even been able to
retain in its membership the children of the great Ulster
immigration and to continue to assimilate the New Eng-
land overflow, it would now take rank, not as the third,
but as the first, of the great Protestant communions of
America. The ranks of the Baptists and the Methodists,
of the Episcopalians and the Disciples, have been swollen
at its expense. Of the descendants of the Ulster Presby-
terians in America probably not much above a third are
to-day Presbyterian. However large the membership and
extensive the influence of the church, therefore, it cannot
be called successful even in holding its own, much less in
aggressive power.
PRESBYTERIAN STRENGTH AND LOSSES.
Ga
70
[CHAP. VII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
23
It is in the period now under consideration that the
signs of this partial failure are first beginning to show
themselves, and at the same time its reasons. The first
of these was the scholastic shape in which the doctrines of
the church were presented in its confession and catechisms,
and the influence of these upon preaching and teaching.
Calvinism, as John Duncan well says, is "a sheep in wolf's
clothing." It is sure to repel those who for the first time
have their attention fixed on such questions, until further
thought brings them to see that the difficulties which attend
any and every view of God's relation to the moral universe
are not to be got rid of by denying man's inmost depend-
ence upon God. There are no truths which require more
judicious and guarded statement than these; and while the
Westminster divines were not quite unaware of this, they
were far more concerned to guard against logical incom-
pleteness of statement than against the accumulation of
what is mere inference of their own logic. In this respect
the Scottish "Confession of Faith," drafted by John Knox
in 1560, is so much superior, that its supersession by the
more elaborate and less popular document was an histori-
cal calamity.
A second difficulty in the church's way was the rigidity
of her polity in the matter of ministerial education. She
was right in setting up a high ideal, and has benefited all
the churches of America by this. She was wrong in re-
fusing to recognize that there are times when a higher ex-
pediency demands a temporary relaxation of the rule. It
was a just requirement for a fairly educated and fully
intelligent community, which enjoyed the prosperity and
the leisure of a country not newly settled. On the fron-
tier, however, and among those who were enduring the
hardships and privations of a new settlement, with but few
opportunities for even the simplest education, the rigid
-
THE "ASSOCIATED PRESBYTERIES.”
71
exaction of a collegiate education for every candidate for.
the ministry was a fatal embarrassment. It is true that
the Assembly and its Synods maintained a missionary sys-
tem of some extent, and at times had from forty to fifty
ministers and probationers at work in the outlying settle-
ments of the South and the West. But even these were
unable to overtake the demand for preachers and pastors,
and the Synod of 1783 flatly refused to sanction the licen-
sure of less educated men, a precedent followed by the
General Assembly. It judged of the needs of the frontiers
by the standard of Philadelphia, and insisted (the people
said) on "making men gentlemen before it made them
ministers." It thus left its natural adherents to the more
adaptable ministrations of the Methodists and the Baptists.
At the same time, at the other extremity, on the New
England frontier, the growing rigor of Presbyterian law
was tending to alienate the Puritan churches. Ten years
even before the adoption of the constitution of 1789 a
movement was begun to effect a reorganization of these
churches in New Jersey and New York, which should avoid
equally the slackness of Congregationalism and the rigidity
of Presbyterianism. Between 1780 and 1807 four " Asso-
ciated Presbyteries" were formed on this footing, with a
confession of eighteen articles only, and claiming for Pres-
bytery no more than power to advise the churches under
its care.
But the movement shared the general fate of
eclectic compromises. One principle or the other was sure
to get the upper hand. By 1818-20 the Associated Pres-
byteries were broken up, leaving pastors and churches to
find their proper place in either the Congregationalist or
the Presbyterian bodies. The significance of the move-
ment was as an indication that there were limits to the
coöperation of the Puritan and the Presbyterian elements
in the States west of the Hudson, and that the day was
72
[CHAP. VII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
1
1
coming when "the New England way" would be trans-
planted to every part of the country.
Yet that day seemed far enough off when the General
Assembly and the Connecticut Association adopted the
famous Plan of Union in 1801. Its terms showed that the
Assembly was not inclined to unreasonable rigidity on this
side, possibly because it had taken warning from the estab-
lishment of the Associated Presbyteries. It practically
made the constituent parts of the two systems interchange-
able. Churches of either body might call a pastor from the
other, and when any dispute arose the appeal might be to
either the Presbytery or a council chosen from both bodies.
Presbyterian churches might be represented in Associations
by ruling elders and Congregational churches in Presby-
teries by messengers chosen in church meeting. A prac-
tical test of the spirit in which the Plan was regarded by
its authors occurred in 1808, when the Middle Association
of Congregationalists in New York State was invited to
become a subordinate division of the Synod of Albany,
with the approval of the Assembly, and accepted the in-
vitation rather than unite with others to form a State As-
sociation.
This "Presbygational" system, as it afterward was nick-
named, received the approval of the Vermont, New Hamp-
shire, and Massachusetts Associations, and had respect
especially to the settlement of western New York from
New England; but during the half-century that it lasted
it was extended to Ohio, and to States still farther west.
It brought into the Presbyterian Church a large num-
ber of pastors and churches which were more or less in
touch with the doctrinal movements of New England,
and thus helped to impart to American Presbyterianism
that dual character which resulted in the division of 1837.
The severest test to which the Presbyterian order and
THE GREAT REVIVAL.
73
doctrine were subjected was associated with the happiest
events of this period. From the close of the War for Inde-
pendence spiritual influences appeared to lose their hold
on the popular mind. Unbelief became the fashion of the
day. There was a decay of zeal in the churches, and in
the eastern part of Massachusetts a rapid spread of Socin-
ianism. The first signs of a change came in 1792, when
extensive revivals occurred, especially in western New Eng-
land. Then the frontier settlements of the new States of
Kentucky and Tennessee were deeply moved. Immorality,
irreligion, and skepticism abounded in this region. In 1793
the Kentucky legislature voted to dispense with prayers
in its sessions. The churches and ministers were few, and
fewer still those in whom was manifest "the power of an
endless life." From 1798, when the revival began on the
Red River, there hardly was a year unblessed; but in 1801
the movement culminated in the Southwest, and reached
nearly every part of the country, on a scale which recalls
the Great Awakening. The movement overflowed the
limits of the places of stated worship, and took an open-
air character, which recalled the labors of Whitefield and
his associates. To meet the needs of a scattered popula-
tion great “camp meetings" were held at central places—
the first of their kind. At these the lasting conversions
were many, but the infectious influence of excitements upon
great multitudes found unhappy illustrations. Especially
in the frontier communities of the Southwest, where the
Scotch-Irish were the chief settlers, the tension of newly
awakened feeling was so great as to lead to manifold ex-
travagances and nervous disturbances, resulting in con-
vulsive physical movements, the "falling exercise," "the
jerks," and so forth. In some cases hundreds were flung
prostrate, like a grain-field swept by a hurricane, or the
ground was torn up by their convulsive stampings.
G
74
[CHAP. VII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
1
While Presbyterians were in the majority among both
preachers and people, the Methodists also were on the
ground. The former generally labored to check and re-
strain these physical manifestations; the latter are said to
have encouraged them as a means of grace. The believers
in predestination insisted on rational conviction as essential
to a right conversion. The believers in freewill accepted
as satisfactory conversions effected by processes which set
both will and reason aside in trances or in physical convul-
sions. The hunger for preaching went far beyond the
power of the ministers to meet it. Laymen, even children,
were heard eagerly, and with powerful effect.
In these circumstances the Presbytery of Transylvania,
and then the Cumberland Presbytery, which in 1802 had
been set off from it, took the step of licensing as preachers
a number of zealous young men, who neither had obtained
the required amount of academic training nor were able to
give an entire assent to the teaching of the Westminster
Confession, especially on the subjects of predestination and
perseverance. Against this course a minority of the Cum-
berland Presbytery protested and appealed to the Synod
of Kentucky, which took the unfortunate step of empower-
ing a commission to deal with the case. This body assumed
to itself powers and performed acts which the General As-
sembly of 1807 declared to be "at least of questionable
regularity." It suspended the majority of the Presbytery
and all its licentiates. The Synod stood by its commission
and went still further. But the Presbytery compromised
its case by refusing to appeal in due form to the General
Assembly, although this course was suggested twice by the
Assembly itself, which disclaimed the possession of original
jurisdiction. This, together with the manifest irregularities
in its proceedings, so much weakened its friends in the
Assembly of 1809 as to lead to an acceptance of the
75
Synod's explanations as fully satisfactory. A year later
the Presbytery had become a separate denomination, which
grew rapidly in numbers, in sobriety of method, and in
demand for an educated ministry. The Synod of Cumber-
land, organized in 1813, the next year adopted a revision
of the Westminster Confession, from which "fatalism," or
what it judged such, was eliminated. Thus was constituted
the left wing of American Presbyterianism, the Cumberland
Presbyterian Church.
THE LESSER BODIES.
The conservative bodies on the right wing were growing
steadily in numbers and influence.
(1) The Reformed Presbytery, reconstituted in 1798,
obtained some notable accessions of the younger genera-
tion. One of these, Alexander McLeod, in 1800 declined
a call to a New York church on the ground that some of
its members were slave-holders. This at once fixed at-
tention upon the subject, and the Presbytery required that
the members of the church should emancipate their slaves.
This decision was conveyed to the churches in the South
by James McKinney and Samuel B. Wylie, and with a
single exception the membership complied with it. By
1809 the Presbytery had become a Synod, and the three
local" committees " into which it had been divided became
Presbyteries. As reorganized the body dissented from
the Constitution of the United States on the ground that
it contained no recognition of the mediatorial authority
of Christ over the nations; and its membership therefore
abstained from voting. In exposition of these views they
published a doctrinal and historical Testimony in 1806.
(2) The Associate Presbytery (or Seceders) had grown
by immigration in both the Middle and the Southern States,
and in 1801 a Synod was organized in subordination to
the General Synod in Scotland—a relation not terminated
until 1818. In James Anderson, of western Pennsylvania,
76
[CHAP. VII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
whom they elected professor of theology in 1792, they
found an able and laborious, though somewhat tedious,
trainer of their ministry. With them also the question of
slavery was brought up in 1800, and again in 1808, by
memorials. The Associate Synod, however, did not adopt
the heroic remedy the Reformed Presbytery had applied.
They, in 1811, advised emancipation, but left open an al-
ternative, which deprived the act of much of its force.
(3) The Associate Reformed Church, formed by the
union of 1780-82, was growing more rapidly than either
of these bodies. To the three Presbyteries the Synod
embraced was added, in 1794, the Presbytery of London-
derry, embracing most of the Presbyterian churches that
were left in New England. But within a year after this
union the Synod began to hear unsatisfactory reports of
the behavior of these churches in the matter of their Psal-
mody, and their communion with other churches and
Christians. As no satisfaction was obtained on this point,
the Synod in 1801 "disclaimed all responsibility" for the
New England Presbytery. The same year witnessed a
secession in the other direction. The Synod had refused to
publish a "subordinate Testimony," and had adopted the
Westminster Confession and Catechisms with qualifying
declarations as to the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate in
matters of religion. On this and like accounts two minis-
ters withdrew, and organized in 1801 the Reformed Dis-
senting Presbytery, which perpetuated its existence for
more than half a century. The body was called the War-
wickites, from the more influential of the two. The next
year the Synod made provision for the election of a Gen-
eral Synod, with four provincial Synods. This scheme
proved too elaborate and cumbersome for the strength of
the church, and had the further effect of isolating the sub-
divisions from each other. The eastern wing of the church,
I
-
STATISTICS OF GROWTH.
77
led by the eloquent John M. Mason, of New York, diverged
from the West and the South, and approximated the posi-
tion of the General Assembly.
It is only from the statistics the General Assembly be-
gan to append to its minutes that we are able to obtain an
idea of the rate at which the main body of Presbyterians
grew.
Those of 1789 show a total of 419 churches with
177 ordained ministers and II probationers. The returns
for the following years are all defective, until we reach
1798 and 1799. In the latter year we find the Presbyteries
have grown from 17 to 25, with 449 churches, served by
266 ministers and 35 licentiates. The reports are again
defective until 1803, when the ingatherings from the great
revival are indicated in 31 Presbyteries and 511 churches,
supplied by 322 ministers and 48 licentiates. It was after
1807 that the report of communicants is attempted, but
always with from 2 to 9 Presbyteries marked as having
made "no report." The minutes of 1810, the last of the
present period, show that 32 of the 36 Presbyteries re-
ported 28,901 communicants gathered in 772 churches,
and supplied by 434 ordained ministers and 51 licentiates.
The extent to which the churches outnumbered the
ministers and licentiates suggested strenuous efforts, to
which the Assembly called the Presbyteries, to increase
the number of candidates. It was from the Presbytery of
Philadelphia that the suggestion came for the establishment
of a theological school. The work of circulating good books
had been promoted even in colonial times. By a pamphlet
called "Glad Tidings," describing the widespread revivals,
and by establishing an " Assembly's Magazine," the church
now entered the field of publication on its own account,
while it formally approved of new editions of the Scriptures,
and of the formation of Bible Societies. It declined to
adopt the program of immediate, compulsory emancipation
ފ
78
[CHAP. VII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
4
of the slaves held by its own members; but it repeated its
disapproval of slavery, and gladly welcomed to the ministry
two colored men, who labored among their own people.
It required its home missionaries not to neglect the Indians
in their fields of labor, and found in Gideon Blackburn, of
Tennessee, a worthy successor to the Brainards, in his labors
among the Cherokees (1792-1810).
Besides the differences growing out of the revivals in
the Southwest, the church had few matters of dispute to
distract it. Adam Rankin came across the Alleghanies to
convince the Assembly of 1789 of the wrongfulness of al-
lowing Watts to supersede Rouse in the matter of Psal-
mody, and went back to cast in his lot with the Associate
Reformed Church in Kentucky, and to give them also
trouble enough. In 1802 Dr. Dwight's enlargement and
revision of Watts, with an appendix of hymns, was adopted
by the Assembly without resistance.
The only doctrinal discussions of the time grew out of
the influence of the views of theology put forward by Dr.
Samuel Hopkins, of Newport, in 1793. In 1798 Hezekiah
Balch, of Greenville, Tenn., was heard on appeal from the
Synod of the Carolinas; and while the Assembly, on hear-
ing his explanations, exonerated him from the charge of
heresy, it yet had admonished him for making "disinter-
ested benevolence" the test of a gracious state, and for
failing to trace our innate depravity to our membership
in a fallen race. These well-known points of Hopkinsian
teaching he had absorbed during a visit to New England,
which he took to raise funds for Greenville College. He
submitted himself to the admonition of the Assembly, but
remained a Hopkinsian to his death, as was his associate
and successor in the college's presidency, Dr. Charles Cof-
fin, and others.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ERA OF NEW METHODS, 1810–30.
It was not until some twenty years after the organiza-
tion of the General Assembly that the methods of practical
administration were really adjusted. There were years of
outreaching and of experiment in various directions, under
the influence of a spirit which was at work in every branch
of the Presbyterian brotherhood, in the other Protestant
churches of America, and in the churches, both established
and free, of Great Britain. It was indeed in these last that
the first steps in the new direction were taken, and from
thence that the new methods of procedure made their way
to America.
The Great Awakening, which all these churches had
shared, was characterized by a disposition to subordinate
everything to immediate practical efficiency. It rearranged
the theology of Protestantism in a new perspective of doc-
trines, with reference to the conversion of sinners, laying
stress upon those points only which seemed to contribute
to that end. Much more in the field of practical adminis-
tration it placed no value upon traditional methods or
principles, when newer plans of action promised larger
results. The authority of bishops, the independency of
local churches, and the initiative of Synods and Presby-
teries alike must yield to this; or else see those who once
had accepted the new maxims form themselves into entirely
new communions, in which the principle of immediate util-
ity dominated all methods. Those who clung to the older
79
80
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. VIII.
communions, but acquiesced in the new ideas, compromised
by setting up a new order alongside the old, and working
the two in such harmony as was attainable.
The Presbyterian Church had to give up less in yielding
to the new demands than did either of the two rival sys-
tems. It placed its aggressive work, indeed, in the hands
of boards chosen annually, and administered by permanent
officials-the method with which we now are so familiar,
but which seemed so novel a century ago. It allowed
these to adopt the policy of big meetings, with eloquent
speakers to enforce the claims of the annual report upon
audiences heated by eloquence. But by keeping the selec-
tion of these boards in the hands of the church's courts, it
avoided the evils of a nominally popular election, by which
a few persons might perpetuate indefinitely their tenure of
office. To this extent the stricter Presbyterians were right
in their preference for boards thus created and controlled,
to those created by voluntary societies—a preference which
became one of the fighting issues of the approaching era
of division. A thoroughly effective board, however, must
take responsibilities of action which are not reconcilable
with the authority of initiative which our theory of church
government vests in the General Assembly.
It was the inception of missions to the heathen, so long
neglected by the Protestant churches, which introduced
the new method. In America this began with the organi-
zation of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign
Missions in 1810, by the Congregationalists of Massachu-
setts, in response to the desire of certain candidates for
the ministry, to be sent to the foreign field. The General
Assembly in 1812 commended the Board to the support
of its churches, and afterward refused to establish a Foreign
Mission Board of its own, although urged to do so by the
American Board itself. Within the church, and in coöp-
い
​*
THE NEW WEST.
8 I
eration with the members of kindred churches, were formed
local missionary societies. These, however, confined their
labors to the pagan Indians of our own country; and in
1826 even these were consolidated with the American
Board.
Parallel with this rise of foreign missions, there arose a
new interest in the work of home missions. The valley of
the Mississippi was now open to white settlement, and the
first settlers were giving painful illustration of the influence
of such a migration on moral habits and feeble Christian
character. In 1813 Samuel J. Mills, who had held with
two others the prayer-meeting under the haystack in the
meadow near Williams College, which led to the formation
of the American Board, and who had been debarred from
the foreign field by ill-health, visited the new settlements,
in company with John F. Schermerhorn, to investigate and
report upon their condition. Their account of the profan-
ity, drunkenness, gambling, and indifference they witnessed
was an eloquent and effective appeal to the Calvinistic
churches, leading to the organization of home missionary
societies, and to the transfer of the General Assembly's
home mission work to a Board of Home Missions, with
ampler powers, in 1816. It was now seen that steps must
be taken to occupy the home field more effectively than
had been done by sending out a few itinerants, to spread
their labors over a wide field, and to form small churches,
which soon perished of neglect.
C
Another department of home mission work was entered
in 1819 by the establishment of the Board of Education.
This was the time of the rise of the great national societies:
the American Bible Society, organized by delegates of local
societies in 1816; the American Sunday-school Union in
1824, and the American Tract Society in 1825. In the
smaller Presbyterian churches home missionary work was
82
[CHAP. VIII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
still conducted by purely synodical methods, and none of
them engaged as yet in foreign missions; but individuals,
such as Dr. Alexander Proudfit, gave support to the
American Board.
Hardly less important in its effects was the change now
begun in the education of the church's ministry. In the
colonial period such training as was given in addition to
the academic course of study was generally obtained by
the candidate's residence at the home of a working pastor
of recognized theological attainments. It was chiefly
instruction in dogmatic theology by the preparation of
prescribed essays and sermons, and practical training in
pastoral work in the homes of the minister's people. In
New England, pastors like Joseph Bellamy and Nathaniel
Emmons were especially sought out. The next step in
the Presbyterian churches was to designate a fit man to
exercise such oversight, and to pay him a small salary in
recognition of his additional toil, rather than in compensa-
tion for it. So the Reformed Dutch Church selected Dr.
John Livingston, of New York, in 1784; the Associate
Presbyterian Church in 1792 appointed Dr. John Ander-
son, of Beaver County, Pa.; the Associate Reformed
Church secured Dr. John M. Mason, of New York, in
1804, and gave him a colleague in 1809; and the Re-
formed Presbyterian Church appointed Dr. Samuel B.
Wylie, of Philadelphia, in 1808. In the Presbyterian
Church, study under pastors, especially those who, like
Tennent and Blair, had founded classical academies, came
first. After Witherspoon's acceptance of the presidency
at Princeton in 1768, the occupant of that office was ex-
pected and paid to give instruction in sacred literature and
in theology. But men of eminence as pastors and teach-
ers, like Robert Smith, of Pequa, continued to attract
students for preparation in theology.
<
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES.
83
The insufficiency of both means to meet the rapidly
increasing demand for ministers was felt especially after
the great revivals of 1799–1804; and the notable success
of the Congregationalist seminary recently established at
Andover suggested a new step. The president of Prince-
ton College, it was found, could spare but two hours a
week to carry his students of theology over the entire
field. In 1809 the General Assembly submitted to the
Presbyteries a plan to establish either one, two, or several
theological schools. As many of the Presbyteries having
voted generally for a single school, as for any other plan,
steps were taken for its endowment, and in 1812 Dr.
Archibald Alexander, a native of Virginia, who had first
suggested the plan to the Assembly, and had left the
presidency of Hampden-Sidney College for a Philadelphia
pastorate, was called to be the first professor of theology,
with nine students. Next year Dr. Samuel Miller was
associated with him, as professor of ecclesiastical history
and church government; and in 1820 Charles Hodge was
employed to teach Hebrew and Greek, becoming professor
of oriental and biblical literature in 1822. The seminary
owed much, in its inception and early years, to the gifts
and efforts of devout women in the church.
As the Middle States were still comparatively poor, and
as New England was occupied with the endowment of
Andover Seminary and its struggling colleges, it was hard
to get an endowment for Princeton. Devout women not
a few gave and collected for this purpose. John Seargent
gave a fortnight's fees, and others contributed up to the
measure of their ability.
The Assembly having left the Synods free to establish
synodical seminaries, if they chose, the Synod of Virginia
established Union Seminary at Hampden-Sidney, with
one professor and an instructor; and in 1828 it obtained
84
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. VIII.
the support of the Synod of North Carolina. In 1821
Auburn Seminary was opened, under control of the
Synod of Geneva, with its three professorships, filled by
James Richards, M. L. R. Perrine, and Henry Mills. Rather
on the old footing of the colonial academy was the South-
ern and Western Theological Seminary, set on foot by
Isaac Anderson, at Maryville, Tenn., a man equally great
as teacher and preacher, and Hopkinsian in his views of
theology. The theological seminaries at Columbia in
South Carolina (1828), and Alleghany in western Penn-
sylvania (1826), were synodical institutions.
This new method of training ministers represented both
a loss and a gain. It could not secure that direct familiar-
ity with the pastor's work among his people which was
possible in what we may call the clerical apprenticeship of
the older method. It also made it possible for the teach-
ers to become scholastic and abstract in their methods, as
working pastors were not likely to be. And by concen-
trating the whole work of training the ministry in the
hands of a few closely associated scholars, it created the
opportunity to stamp the peculiarities of some single mind
upon the teaching of the church at large, so as to narrow
its range of theological thought to one or a few types,
and exaggerate some points of doctrinal teaching far be-
yond their true importance. The gain was in the greater
thoroughness with which the scientific parts of theology
could be mastered and imparted by teachers set free from
other labors, and with the field of theology shared be-
tween several. At the same time this opened vistas of
grave possibilities as to the effect of the investigations of
theological science upon minds pledged to teach the views
formulated in the standards of the church.
C
-
ܚ
It was again the problem of clerical education that de-
veloped those differences between the two elements in the
85
personal composition of the Presbyterian Church which
afterward led to their disunion. The spiritual needs of
the colored people had suggested in 1818 the establish-
ment of an "African School" to train preachers of their
own color. The proposal to place its teachers under the
same special pledge to the standards, as is given by prc-
fessors in Princeton Seminary, was resisted by the New
England element which controlled the Synods adjacent to
those States. And this disagreement probably caused its
suspension in 1826.
Parallel with the new departure in ministerial education
was a general effort to increase the number of theological
students. The General Assembly urged the Presbyteries
to press the claims of the work upon gracious young men.
To aid needy students two education societies were formed,
one to coöperate with the American Education Society,
centered in Boston, and the other to act under the authority
of the General Assembly. The former proposed to assist
young men during their academic career only, giving as a
reason that the church was too much divided on doctrinal
questions to allow of united action as regards theological
training! This only could mean dissatisfaction with the
theological character of Princeton, as representing a Cal-
vinism unaffected by the "improvements" which Edwards,
Hopkins, and Emmons had introduced in New England.
At this time the especial views of Dr. Samuel Hopkins,
of Newport, enjoyed a great vogue in both New England
and the adjacent States. Samuel Whelpley, of New York,
defended them with great vigor and some acrimony in
"The Triangle" (1816); Edward Dorr Griffin, at Newark
(1801-09), Gardiner Spring of the Brick Church, in New
York, Samuel Hanson Cox, a young convert from Quaker-
ism, and others, held them. James Richards, who suc-
ceeded Griffin in Newark, and was afterward professor of
HOPKINSIANISM.
86
[CHAP. VIII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
theology in the seminary at Auburn, erected in 1819 by
those who thought Princeton too narrow, was rather an
Edwardean than a Hopkinsian, and dissented strongly
from the peculiar views of Dr. Emmons, which he found
prevalent in western New York.
Equally decided, but in different degrees, was the oppo-
sition to this Hopkinsian drift. Dr. Ezra Stiles Ely, a New
Englander, but then a hospital chaplain in New York,
made himself the spokesman of extreme opposition by his
"Contrast between Calvinism and Hopkinsianism" (New
York, 1811), whose sharpness gave offense even in Phila-
delphia. He was called in 1813 to succeed Dr. Archibald
Alexander in the Pine Street Church, but his settlement
was resisted by a strong minority, which after a time with-
drew to form a Sixth Church.
<
In 1817 the Synod of Pennsylvania, in a Pastoral Letter
composed by Dr. Ely, congratulated the churches on the
vigor shown by its Presbyteries in "resisting the introduc-
tion of Arian, Socinian, Arminian, and Hopkinsian here-
sies, which are some of the means by which the enemy of
souls would, if possible, deceive the very elect." The
stigma thus affixed to a school whom Dr. Ashbel Green
had described to Mr. Balch as the most laborious stu-
dents, faithful pastors, successful preachers, and instructive
writers in all New England," arrested the attention of the
committee on the records of that Synod, and they re-
ported a commendation of its zeal with an expression of
regret that it had been "manifested in such a manner as
to be offensive to other denominations." This was due
probably to the chairman of the committee, Dr. Samuel
Miller, whose friendship for Dr. Griffin did not prevent his
being a decided opponent of what Dr. Rice called "those
Hopkinsian crudities." It is said that he had suggested
to Dr. Ely the writing of the "Contrast," but regretted
"6
INDIVIDUALISM.
1
87
the tone he took. In his view, which time has justified,
the Hopkinsian peculiarities were a temporary phase of
thought, which at last would vanish into the limbo of for-
gotten theories.
He believed that more was to be gained
by courteous discussion and patience than by judicial con-
demnations. There were those who differed from this
Gamaliel-like policy, and two protests against the report
received the signatures of twelve of the one hundred and
one members of that Assembly.
son's "
As has been pointed out by Dr. Augustus Strong, the
root of all the theological peculiarities of New England
theology, from Hooker and Sheppard to our own times,
may be traced to the extravagant individualism which has
characterized her social and intellectual life. These short-
lived “improvements" of the Calvinistic theology were
but so many attempts to bring Calvinism into harmony
with a principle which found its final expression in Emer-
supremacy of the individual conscience" over all
law and all forms of institutions. In her opposition to
congregational independency and her maintenance of
synodical authority, the Presbyterian Church held to the
principle of an organic social life in both the race and the
church. And the instinct which led her to regard these
"improvements" with repugnance was historically just
and theologically sound. Here again, however, we must
regret that the Westminster standards, as adopting the
Covenant or "Federal" theology of the Cocceian school,
presented the opposite principle in an inadequate and ex-
tremely artificial shape, and represented the primal unity
of the race, and that of the redeemed with Christ, as a
forensic fiction rather than a spiritual reality. Nor did
the Princeton theology at any time rise to a perception of
the difference between the form of statement found in the
standards and the principle really at stake. Among the
88
[CHAP. VIII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Covenanters, who cherished the older traditions of Scottish
Calvinism, there was complaint that Princeton mistook
theologic fact for forensic fiction, and laid no stress on the
dignity of the Saviour as the living head of his redeemed
people, in explaining the connection of his righteousness
with their salvation.¹
(
More easy and unresisted was the encroachment of
Puritan individualism in the practical life of the church.
The New England men among its ministry brought with
them elements of the Independent conception of the
church, which differed widely from historic Presbyterian-
ism, but which have nearly replaced it. Their demand
for "a regenerate church-membership" not only set aside
"the judgment of charity" of the Reformed churches, but
introduced the fashion of speaking of the adult communi-
cants as the only "members of the church," and of treat-
ing its baptized children as outside pagans, exempt even
from its discipline. For the Presbyterian usage of baptiz-
ing the children of the baptized came in the Congregation-
alist rule that baptism should be confined to the children
of communicants, i.e., of those who could give credible
evidence of their conversion. Thus Dr. Gardiner Spring,
on coming from New England to the pastorate of the
Brick Church, set aside the usage established by Dr. Rod-
gers, Dr. McKnight, and Dr. Samuel Miller, and confined
baptism to those children one of whose parents was a
professed Christian."2 From the same root grew the
1 See Dr. S. B. Wylie in "The American Christian Expositor,” vol. i.,
pp. 419-425, and pp. 445-453. One of Dr. Wylie's former students had been
challenged for his views on this point on applying for admission to the Pres-
byterian ministry, but had been admitted after explanations.
2 See his "Life and Times," New York, 1865, vol. i., pp. 124-126. Dr.
Spring appeals to the language of the Confession and the Longer Catechism
as justifying this restriction. But his eminent predecessors in the pastorate
had interpreted the language of the standards in accordance with the historic
sense; he, in accordance with the language of the Great Awakening. Dr.
Charles Hodge always stood by the older interpretation.
89
practice of establishing elaborate covenants and articles of
belief in each congregation, to which every member was
asked to give assent, instead of receiving them on a con-
fession of the simplest essentials of Christian faith. The
requirement was natural enough among Congregational-
ists, but manifestly out of harmony with Presbyterianism.
Besides, these in the more public aspects of the church,
there were important changes in the Congregational life
of this time. The position of the ministry became less
separate and formal. Even late in the eighteenth century
they commonly appeared on the streets in their black
gowns. In 1795, and probably later, they wore them on
their way to church on Sundays. Dr. Milledoller speaks
of passing Dr. Samuel Miller frequently on Sunday morn-
ings, "both dressed in full canonicals, not omitting the
three-cornered hat," and says they were called "the boy
ministers." With the new century the gown was laid
aside on the street, and gradually disused even in the
pulpit—a symbol of the abandonment of that position of
factitious reverence which the ministry had occupied. In
1801 Dr. Archibald Alexander, on a visit to New Eng-
land, knew he had crossed the Connecticut State line and
had entered Rhode Island from the cessation of all public
deference to his ministerial character. The manners of
Rhode Island were now to become national.
CHURCH LIFE.
-
The labors of the ministry were arduous. Intolerance
of read sermons compelled the practice of memorizing
after writing, and public taste exacted a stately and elab-
orate style, such as John M. Mason and Edward Dorr
Griffin especially exemplified, from the occupants of im-
portant pastoral charges. Long, even life-long pastorates
were still the rule, and changes the exception, so that the
preacher commonly spent his whole labor on a single
flock, and had no opportunity to use old material in a new
-
90
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. VIII.
W
pulpit. Official visitation at least twice a year was ex-
pected of them. And while the general introduction of
Sunday-schools during this period somewhat lightencd
their labors among the young of their flock, where the
older tradition lingered they were expected to meet and
catechize the children of their charge every week on
Wednesday or on Saturday, with the help of some of the
elders, or, if she were a notable woman, of the pastor's
wife. The Lord's Supper was administered four times
a year; and the Edwardean test for communicants, once
rejected even by Gilbert Tennent, now came into very
general acceptance. People came not so much to get
grace, as to profess that they had got it. At the same
time the Zwinglian theory of a simple commemoration
became more common, and reliance was placed simply
upon "the hallowed associations" of the rite, and its
adaptation for enforcing truth by a striking symbol.
Between the General Assembly and the other Presby-
terian bodies, except the Cumberland Presbyterians, the
breach was now complete in the matter of Psalmody.
These others still clung to the use of the Scotch Psalter
of 1649, and made the use of uninspired hymns a ground
for refusing communion. In spite of repeated efforts
toward a better collection, Dr. Dwight's "Psalms and
Hymns" remained the only book the churches of the
General Assembly were allowed to substitute for the
Scotch Psalter until 1831. It contained the whole of Dr.
Dwight's revision of Dr. Watts's Psalms.
Of the smaller Presbyterian bodies, the Associate Re-
formed Church had the most memorable history during
this time. From the first its origin, though a union on
the principle of preferring essentials to lesser peculiarities,
seemed to affect its position and tendencies. The leader-
ship of Dr. John M. Mason corresponded to this initiative.
£
A HASTY UNION.
91
In 1811 we find the General Synod treating Psalmody as
a question for forbearance rather than strictness; and five
years later Dr. Mason's "Plea for Sacramental Union on
Catholic Principles" showed how far he had advanced
toward a comprehensive Presbyterianism. In 1820 the
General Synod received overtures for a union from the
General Assembly. This was accepted by a small major-
ity at the next session, although it had been voted down
in the Presbyteries, and the union thus irregularly agreed
to was consummated. Three Presbyteries only united with
the General Assembly; but among the ministers received
were John M. Mason, Erskine Mason, George Junkin, and
William Engles. In the meantime the stricter Presbyteries
and churches of the West had withdrawn from the Gen-
eral Synod, and organized a Synod of the West, and even
opened negotiations for union with the Associate Church;
and in 1821 the Presbyteries and churches of the South
had seceded chiefly because of the hostility to slavery
shown by the Northern part of the church. Even the
Synod of New York perpetuated its organization, retain-
ing most of its churches and ministers, and finally, in 1836,
recovering the library of the Newburg Seminary, which
had been removed to Princeton after the union of 1822.
The seminary itself was resuscitated in 1829, while the
Western Synod had established another at Pittsburg in
1825.
The Associate Church, which became independent of the
Scottish Synod in 1818, moved on more quietly, extending
its membership South and West by home mission labors.
Although slavery was declared "a moral evil" in 1811,
slave-holders were not debarred from communion until
1830. In 1825 it issued a special testimony against Uni-
tarianism and Hopkinsianism, describing the latter as a
revival of Pelagianism. It declined a union with even
92
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. VIII.
the stricter Associate Reformed Synod of the West, stand-
ing until 1840 by the unaltered Westminster Confession
and its doctrine of the civil magistrate, while rejecting
the "political dissent" which the Covenanters had first
adopted toward the government of Great Britain and now
applied to that of America.
Among the Covenanters themselves there was not entire
harmony on this point, and what there was tended to
diminish as time went on. During the War of 1812-15
Dr. Alexander MacLeod was the foremost among Ameri-
can preachers in vindication of the policy of the national
government; and this sympathetic attitude was reflected
by the Synod of 1812, which proposed that its members
should take what was virtually an oath of allegiance to the
United States, but with no mention of the Constitution.1
The stricter view was represented by Dr. James R. Will-
son, of Albany, who did not sympathize with Dr. MacLeod's
to render our system less exclusive." He en-
purpose
joys the distinction of being the first American writer on
the history of doctrine, through his " Historical Sketch of
Opinions on the Atonement" (Philadelphia, 1817).2 The
church grew steadily, if not rapidly, a General Synod with
two subordinate Synods taking the place of the Synod in
(6
"
J
-
1 This oath ran: "I, A. B., do solemnly declare, in the name of the Most
High God, the searcher of hearts, that I abjure all foreign allegiance what-
soever, and hold that these States and the United States are, and ought to be,
sovereign and independent of all other nations and governments; and that I
will promote the best interests of this empire, maintain its independence, pre-
serve its peace, and support the integrity of the Union to the best of my
power. The Synod declare their disapprobation of the constitution is
""
(C
"
""
a matter of conscience, and wholly founded on the omission" of a recog-
nition of the sovereignty of Messiah over all persons and things.' Dr.
MacLeod's sermons on The Character, Causes, and Ends of the Present
War," preached in 1814, and published the year following, made a stir lo-
cally, as New York City and most of its preachers were unfriendly to the war.
They were praised by Jefferson, and Secretary Stanton is said to have read
them once a year during the War for the Union.
2 Pages 123-215 are devoted to America, and contain some valuable notices.
But the whole book is badly digested.
0
AN ERA OF GROWTH.
93
1823. As their decided opposition to slavery made their
continuance in the South uncomfortable, a general migra-
tion to the States north of the Ohio was planned, their
first settlement being at Eden, in southern Illinois, on
whose name Mr. Dickens fastened in his Martin Chuz-
zlewit."
66
-
7
The population of the nation during this period increased
from 7 to 123 millions, extending by isolated groups as
far west as the Missouri River, but moving more abun-
dantly north of the Ohio River than south of it. But the
growth of the American churches was far more rapid.
This was due largely to a series of widespread revivals
during the years of commercial depression and general
distress, which followed the Peace of 1816. By 1819, it
may be said, the skeptical tendencies which came in with
the Revolution were finally overcome. The compact
organization of the churches, the recognized ability of
their leaders, and the efficiency of the new and centralized
methods of religious work had created a new prestige for
positive religion, while skepticism, under the name of free
thought, became a sect whose feebleness and purposeless-
ness were advertised by its attempts at organization and
agitation. So the churches grew and multiplied, now by
the fervor of revivals, now by the steady weekly ministra-
tions of the gospel. The General Assembly began to re-
port its statistics of membership in 1807, when it had 598
churches and 365 pastors and licentiates on its rolls. In
1820 the returns showed a communicant roll of 72,096 in
over 1299 churches, supplied by 741 pastors and 108 licen-
tiates-three Presbyteries sending no report. In 1830 the
communicant membership was 173,329 in 2158 churches,
ministered to by 1491, ministers and 220 licentiates.
The most rapid growth had been in the new settlements
in western New York and in Ohio. It had been a saying
94
[CHAP. VIII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
that the Sabbath was unknown west of the Genesee River.
But the Synod of Genesee and the two adjacent now con-
tained more members of the church than the whole Gen-
eral Assembly could have claimed at the opening of the
century.
All this cost heroic toil on the part of devoted men,
who generally gave up the comforts of life in the older
States, that they might save the newer for Christ and his
church. They rode on long circuits through the pathless
forests or over unbroken prairies, where the bending of the
stalks of grass showed the "trail." They slept at night
under a tree, beside a fire kept alight to scare off beasts
of prey; or they shared the rude shelter and rough fare
of the settler. If they found homes for their families it
was in rude shanties of two rooms, where they eked out
existence far from schools, physicians, and stores, often
laboring with their own hands. They met every form of
resistance, from stolid indifference to avowed infidelity.
They encountered drunkenness, lewdness, horse-racing,
gambling, and Sabbath-breaking in the newer settlements.
But nothing disheartened them or broke down their faith
in God and the gospel, and bit by bit they saw better in-
fluences becoming pervasive, and the order of a Christian
civilization replacing the wild lawlessness of an earlier day.
Qu
CHAPTER IX.
THE NEW AGE.
WITH the opening of the fourth decade of the nine-
teenth century-as of the eighteenth-there dawns a new
age for the churches of America. As the date of the Great
Awakening marks the transition from the Puritan to the
Methodist or "Evangelical" period, so the new date
stands for the transition to a period we might call the his-
torical or the churchly, or by half a dozen related names.
In this case the new influence reaches America from Great
Britain, pervading different portions of our Christian com-
munity with different degrees of rapidity. It was the
Protestant Episcopal Church here which, like its mother-
church abroad, was the first to recognize what was con-
genial to its own spirit in the new atmosphere of thought
and feeling.
W
The characteristic note of the new era is its apprehen-
sion of Christianity, not especially as doctrinal truth or de-
vout emotion, but as historical fact. It turns away from
systems to the Scriptures, especially to the Gospels. It
takes up Lessing's challenge-to show how historical fact
can be religious truth—and meets it by placing the Incar-
nation in the forefront of Christian teaching. It values all
the ties of office and sacrament and worship which in any
way bind our own time to that wonderful Life, and to the
church which first grew out of it. It finds in these the
manifestation, in forms essentially beautiful, of that which
95
96
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. IX.
is the core of Christianity-the personal presence of Christ
with his church, as her king and the source of her united
life.
This new age is especially the social age. Puritanism,
by its excessive individualism, broke up society into its
constituent elements, leaving each "face to face with Ged
in the wilderness." By its stress on the nice points of
doctrinal distinction on which men more easily differ than
agree, it tended to sunder them into antagonistic parties
and sects, rather than bring them into unity and brother-
hood. Methodism did not overcome this Puritan tend-
ency, but rather adopted it, as it set before the church
as its goal the salvation of the largest number of individ-
ual souls rather than the establishment of God's kingdom
through the redemption of society. It went even further
than did Puritanism in ignoring the historic continuity of
the church and sweeping aside whatever was not seen to
be directly useful to the ends it recognized.
The new age is characterized throughout by the social
stress. Beginning with the questions, "What is the church?
Where is it? What are the essentials of its organization ?
What is the proper expression of its life in worship, in
organization?" it has gone on to investigate the relation
of the church to social problems of every kind. Moral
reforms, the study of the poor, the demands of social
revolutionists, the ideal of a truer human brotherhood
among men, are but the newer phases of the questions
put by the leaders of the Oxford Movement. In America
they were first propounded to the church by Stephen
Colwell in his "New Themes for the Protestant Clergy'
(Philadelphia, 1851), a book which now would cause hardly
a ripple of interest, but was then received almost as a
proposal of apostasy from the pure gospel. They now are
pressed with the vehemence and exaggeration which char-
"}
THEOCRATIC IDEALS.
97
acterize all reactions, and which frequently hide the old
truth by the obtrusion of the new into the foreground.
To the Presbyterian churches, with their theocratic tra-
ditions inherited from their founders, this reaction to a
more social view of religious problems should be especially
welcome. The individualism of both Puritanism and
Methodism is alien to their oldest and best traditions,
which call for the realization of God's kingdom in this
present world through the influence of Christian discipline
and teaching. The Geneva of John Calvin corresponds
more nearly to the new aspirations which are stirring in
the churches of America than does anything else in mod-
ern history. The great Scottish kirkmen from Knox to
Henderson give us suggestions for the problems of to-day.
While the past cannot be restored, and its methods are no
longer in place, its ideals have a lasting value for us.
Yet the first attitude of these churches toward the new
tendency was one of indifference and even hostility. This
was partly because it presented itself in shapes less con-
genial to Presbyterian tradition, and partly because Pres-
byterians were dominated by the ideals of the Awakening.
It is true that it was two Presbyterians, Edward Irving
and Sir Walter Scott, who first gave expression to the new
spirit, as Dr. Newman points out in one of his Oxford
pamphlets. But the seed they sowed fell into an Anglican
glebe, where it brought forth a harvest of ecclesiasticism
and æstheticism mainly. Not that both were not akin to
the new spirit. The idea of the church needed to be im-
pressed upon a generation which had grown indifferent to
it; and the more receptive minds among us, such as James
W. Alexander, did not fail to discern the significance of
the truth which underlay the Tractarian extravagances.
Equally necessary was the restoration of the beautiful to
its place in the service of God and the order of his house.
98
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. IX.
As M. Lanfrey says, our age is one which is characterized.
by imagination rather than reason. Men feel the force of
historical associations, or the subtle attraction of form, as
they did not for centuries past. Powers no less human
than reason and emotion have been called into a new
activity, and demand satisfaction. To give them a noble
direction, to effect their consecration to a divine service, is
one of the problems of our time. It is not a question
between recognition of the beautiful and indifference to it.
It is whether the new recognition of the beautiful shall be
Christian or pagan.
Certainly there was sore need of an æsthetic reform in
the churches of sixty years ago. Methodism, with its
rough-and-ready utilitarianism and directness, had swept
away the last vestige of care for a fitting environment of
the congregation's worship and life. The churches of that
era were as ugly and cheerless as they were uncomfort-
able. Only the imposing mass of the pulpit symbolized
the absorption of all other functions in that of the preacher.
There was an angularity and a stiffness about every line,
within and without, which stood in sharpest contrast to
any glimpses of natural form within reach of the eye. The
interlacing of the branches of a tree outside a window
must have suggested to any sensitive mind the difference
between the constructive methods of our Maker and those
of the builders of houses for his worship. God had filled
the world with beauty of form and color; but those who
professed to know his mind best, to have acquired that
knowledge from a book as full of beautiful form as it was
of deep meanings, showed an entire indifference to any-
thing but a practical utility conceived in the narrowest
way.
Most unfortunately the new message came to Christians
generally in association with narrow ecclesiastical preten-
"THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.”
99
sions, fitly symbolized by the chill and mechanical copies
of medieval Gothic, which commonly-not always-consti-
tuted their outer expression of it. To Mr. Ruskin, who
confesses his great obligations to Presbyterian training, we
owe the emancipation of imaginative truth from the mo-
nopoly of a party.
As of the church edifices, so of the worship seen in
them. There was no doubt a vast amount of living
conviction as to the great realities on which the church is
built, and an intense earnestness of personal feeling in the
approach to God. The barest place of worship was often
glorified to the worshiper by a beatific vision of the High
and Holy One. The baldest forms were found to be an
access into the holiest of all. The most prosaic songs of
praise lifted the heart on wings of thanksgiving. But in
all this, if the Bible be our guide in such matters, there
was a lack of adaptation of the outer to the inner which
was not, indeed, vital, yet unfit and unnatural. Holiness
has its own beauty, and the worship which is to meet
man's need must embrace the aroused activities of his
whole nature.
One reason for this sordidness was found in the low
ideas of the Christian sacraments which generally pre-
vailed. Puritanism always tended to the Zwinglian view
of the Lord's Supper, as seeing no need for this social
fellowship in communion with Christ; and to Anabaptism,
as failing to conceive of the organic tie which binds gener-
ation to generation. John Wesley's churchmanship did
not save Methodism from the same conclusions, especially
as the historic means of grace' were replaced by the
"more efficient" anxious bench and class-meeting. So
both tendencies coöperated to diminish the importance of
the great transactions of congregational life.
In some quarters, among the older-fashioned Presby-
""
100
[CHAP. IX.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
terian bodies, the venerable ceremonial which came down
from the times of the Covenanters still sustained the sense
of a solemn spiritual mystery and an awful presence in the
communion. The element of awe, indeed, was excessive
and oppressive, surpassing that of Roman or Anglican ritual
in its effect upon sensitive minds. By a reaction from this the
churches generally had passed to a sordid "simplicity," in
which the presence of the sacramental elements seemed
an incongruity. The long white communion-tables had
vanished from the aisles. The season of preparation had
been minimized. The "fencing of the tables had been
replaced by an address, solemn or cheerful, as the mood
of the minister might be. No doubt the great end of the
sacrament was attained in innumerable instances, but it
often was rather by what the single worshiper brought to
the rite, than by any help beyond the most meager which
was offered him in the manner of the service. And at
best there was the great fault of the Awakening-private
and individual devoutness without the life of social com-
munion.
In all these things we have changed much in the last
sixty years, as have all the American churches. Nor are
we at the end of the change. Presbyterians, as the most
conservative of American churches, naturally do not move
rapidly in such cases, nor is it desirable that they should.
But as an historic church, with roots in centuries past, it is
not for them to accept the brief and narrow traditions of
a recent date as limiting their action: John Calvin and
John Knox were born before John Wesley.
The same duty of progress in the light of their own
history arises in view of the social problems of the eco-
nomic and political field. In dealing with social reforms
the utilitarian spirit of the Awakening is a constant dan-
ger. The shortest, quickest, readiest means are preferred
K
*
“THE SPIRIT OF ALL AGES.”.
IOI
to every other, often to the sacrifice of interests not less
important than those we are seeking to promote. At the
same time the reaction against the excessive individualism
of the Awakening plunges men into excesses of feeling and
statement which obscure the valuable truths in Puritanism
and Methodism. Soon we may come to the extravagances
of the French theorist, who declared that society is the
only concrete moral reality, that the individual is an ab-
straction merely, and that conscience is a purely social
function.
Now whatever else the doctrine of election may stand for,
it is the assertion of the permanent worth of the individual
before the greatest of all standards, the judgment of God.
Our fathers prized it as a truth which counteracted the
mere corporate religiousness of Rome, as that proffered a
certain assurance of salvation on condition of complying
with the terms laid down by the corporation. They thus
brought into view the great truth which Puritanism exag-
gerated, and yet they laid equal emphasis on the organic
character of Christian society in family, state, and church.
The problem of to-day is the reconciliation of these two
tendencies-the social and the individual. The spirit of
an age that is passing away laid excessive stress on the
individual life. That of the age on which we have entered
is exaggerating equally the social life. It is our problem
to rise above the Spirit of the age, and, as Jean Paul says,
to enter into "the Spirit of all ages," and speak his lan-
guage of sobriety and reconciliation.
CHAPTER X.
YEARS OF STRIFE, 1831-36.
THE opening of the new age upon American Presbyte-
rianism was not peaceful. It found elements of fermenta-
tion and discord at work which precipitated division. The
years 1830-50, indeed, were a time of controversies through-
out the churches of America. Public debates and heated
newspaper discussions were heard on all sides, and the ef-
fective controversialist was a man of weight and influence
in the councils of his denomination. Both within and be-
tween the several churches lines of division were sharply
drawn, and a large share of personal energy was given to
border warfare along them.
The first sundering of church bonds came about among
the Covenanters. For many years two tendencies had
been manifest as regards the attitude of political dissent
from the American government. Some were disposed to
sharpen it; others to return to the attitude of 1777, when
the Covenanters acknowledged the new American govern-
ment as entitled to their allegiance, in view of the strongly
Christian language of the public papers of the Continental
Congress. The absence of any expression of Christian
loyalty in the national Constitution of 1787, and the rati-
fication by the Senate and the President of a treaty in
which a Moslem power was assured that "the United
States is not a Christian nation," naturally strengthened
the hands of the conservatives. At last the matter came
to open debate in the General Synod of 1831, and at its
102
*
103
next meeting, two years later, resulted in a division. The
cause was found largely in the altered political situation
of the country. The extension of the suffrage without
regard to property qualification had gone on simultane-
ously with the rise of political issues, such as antislavery
and antimasonry, in which Covenanters felt an intense
interest. Then, as now, conservative Covenanters worked
to influence the votes of others, while refusing to vote
themselves. The party of movement felt this to be an
inconsistency, and several of them were naturalized and
cast their votes in the presidential election of 1832. At
a special meeting of the Eastern Sub-Synod, in which the
conservatives had control, five ministers were suspended
for subscribing and publishing a paper which declared that
"since the commencement, of Christianity, no government
on earth has had fairer claims to recognition as the ordi-
nance of God than that of the United States.". The min-
isters thus suspended refused to recognize the sentence, as
a piece of party strategy, since it was inflicted less than a
month before the meeting of the General Synod in Phila-
delphia. One of them, Rev. S. W. Crawford, was the
retiring moderator, and as he insisted on preaching the
sermon the conservatives withdrew and constituted the
General Synod in another church. The division thus
consummated was in part one between town and country,
the conservatives predominating in the latter. The com-
parative strength of the two parties was matter of dispute,
but it seems probable that the conservatives were slightly
the more numerous. In a lawsuit for the property of the
church in Pittsburg they were unsuccessful, a result due
in great measure to the able defense made by a young
lawyer named Edwin M. Stanton.
..
DIVISION AMONG COVENANTERS.
-
Besides the objections to the Constitution and the treaty
with Algiers, the strict Covenanters complained that the
104
[CHAP. X.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
national government "gives a legal security to gross her-
esy, blasphemy, and idolatry, under the notion of liberty
of conscience," and "makes no provision for the interest
of true religion," while "the major part of the States
recognize the principle of slavery." Yet a few among
them thought them not sufficiently loyal to the Covenanter
principle. After petitioning for several years, in 1840 Rev.
Robert Lusk and David Steele withdrew, and with three
elders constituted the Reformed Presbytery of North
America. This small body, the extreme right wing of
Presbyterianism, required its members to abstain from
association with others for any moral purpose, besides in-
sisting on the maintenance of several old usages, such as
"lining out the Psalms" before singing and proclaiming the
banns in marriage. At this time all Covenanters, as well
as the Associate Church, were strict in enforcing the rule
against "occasional hearing," i.e., participation in any act
of public worship with persons of another communion
than their own. Dr. John Black, of Pittsburg, belonged
to the progressive party, yet two members of his church
were placed under discipline for pausing on the sidewalk
on their way from church to hear what a Seceder minister
was saying in a communion address.
Up to about 1828 there was comparative quiet in the
Presbyterian Church. The alarm over Hopkinsianism
had died away, and never had been very extensive. The
dispute as to the African Theological School had come to
an end with the dissolution of the school. The policy of
coöperation with the American Board in foreign and In-
dian missions had gained ground rather than lost it. There
was a general acquiescence in the Plan of Union, even
among those who misliked its blending of Presbyterian
and Congregationalist elements in the new churches of the
West.
Differences as to the strictness with which the
·
ALBERT BARNES'S SERMON.
ERMON.
105
Westminster standards were accepted were tolerated with-
in the church.
The rift between conservatives and progressives began
in New England itself. In 1828 Dr. Nathaniel W. Taylor,
professor of didactic theology in the theological school of
Yale College, delivered a concio ad clerum in connection.
with the commencement exercises, which ran a new line of
division among the ministry of the Connecticut churches.
Hopkinsians like Dr. Strong, Dr. Griffin, and Dr. Richards.
repudiated the new improvements upon Calvinism no less
than did the old-fashioned Calvinists like Dr. Woods, and
indeed with reason, as in some respects Dr. Taylor was in
agreement with the latter against Dr. Hopkins.
Next year Albert Barnes, a young graduate of Princeton
Seminary, and pastor of the church in Morristown, N. J.,
preached a sermon on "The Way of Salvation," in which
he was said to agree substantially with Dr. Taylor, as in
denying "that the sinner is held to be personally responsi-
ble for the transgressions of Adam, or of any other man;
or that God has given a law which man has no power to
obey"; yet he affirmed "that in connection with the sin
of Adam, or as a result, all moral agents in this world will
sin-and, sinning, will die. He admitted that "this lan-
guage
does not accord with that used in the Confes- ·
sion of Faith," but challenged those who rejected it to
produce from the standards a warrant for the ordinary
statement that the sin of Adam is imputed to his poster-
ity. In his view, the Westminster divines like President
Edwards were realists, holding that "a personal identity
was constituted between Adam and his posterity."
A minority of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, led by
Dr. Ashbel Green, regarded the sermon as justifying a
""
refusal to install him as pastor of the First Church, to
which he was called in 1830, to succeed Dr. James P. Wil-
<
106
[CHAP. X.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
son.
They contended that the church never had heard
him preach, and seemed to have called him on the merits
of this sermon, so that it was fairly before them. They
also pleaded their right to examine him on his doctrinal
soundness, instead of admitting him to a seat in Presby-
tery on his papers of dismission from the Presbytery of
Elizabethtown. Mr. Barnes submitted a written state-
ment of his views, and Presbytery, by a two-thirds vote,
proceeded to install him. The minority protested and
appealed to the Synod of Philadelphia, which sustained
their appeal, and ordered Presbytery to "hear and decide
upon the objections" made to Mr. Barnes's orthodoxy,
and "take such order as is required by a regard to the
purity of the church and its acknowledged doctrines and
order." The Presbytery, which now had an old-school
majority, might either have condemned the sermon with-
out asserting the authorship, as the Assembly had done in a
similar case in 1810, or it might have put Mr. Barnes on
trial for heresy at the instance of some responsible prose-
cutor, and proved, among other things, his authorship of
the sermon. It took neither course, but adopted a minute
assuming the authorship, and condemning the sermon as
"highly objectionable, and manifestly, in some of its lead-
ing points, opposed to the doctrines of the Confession of
Faith." It appointed a committee, with Dr. Green as
chairman, to wait on Mr. Barnes and persuade him to re-
tract. He very properly refused to submit to this uncon-
stitutional mode of procedure.
The case came before the Assembly of 1831, the largest
that had ever met, and Dr. Green alleges that no stone
had been left unturned to secure a new-school majority.
It expressed its disapprobation of "a number of unguarded
and objectionable passages" in the sermon, but declared
that the Presbytery ought to have been satisfied with the
107
informal explanations given by its author when the matter
first came before it.
"C 'MISADELPHIA."
Philadelphia was now become a center of theological
disturbance which affected the whole church. The meet-
ing-place of the Assembly, which regularly held its ses-
sions in the very church of which Mr. Barnes was pastor,
it was able to affect and influence the whole church as
was no other city. Dr. Green, Dr. Junkin, Mr. McCalla,
Mr. Engles, made up a force on the old-school side, which
Dr. Ely-now more liberal than in the days of his "Con-
trast "-Dr. Potts, Dr. Skinner, and Mr. Barnes hardly
balanced, especially as the last was constitutionally indis-
posed to polemics and gentle in temper. New York was
hardly more quiet. Between them lay Princeton, where
the party of moderation, conservative and yet irenic, had its
headquarters, with Dr. Miller and the Alexanders as its
leaders. While decidedly old school in their theology,
they deprecated the polemic spirit in which Mr. McCalla
and some others had entered upon the matter. James W.
Alexander proposed to change Philadelphia to Misadel-
phia, and compared some of his brethren," who have com-
mitted themselves as partisans much in advance of their
own convictions," to the Irishman in Judge Brackenridge's
"Modern Chivalry," "who cast himself from his coach
into a row, crying, 'Heaven direct me to the right side!'"
This party was especially strong in the South, where it
was represented by the saintly Dr. John H. Rice, of Union
Theological Seminary. He pleaded that "the church is
not to be purified by controversy, but by holy love."
Twenty years before this he had done much to assuage
the sharpness of party feeling by an irenic sermon at the
opening of the General Assembly. But in his last visit to
the North, in 1830, he wrote: "I am not gratified by any-
thing I see in the state of the Presbyterian Church, from
<<
G
108
[CHAP. X.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Richmond to New York.
Everything is cold and dead
except the spirit of controversy. In Philadelphia and New
York things are in a dismal condition." He labored to
countervail the rage of partisan and even sectarian feeling
by rousing the church to a fresh zeal for missions, and
yearned for “a larger increase of holiness among minis-
""
ters.'
As the decade advanced, there was an increase chiefly
of controversial eagerness. One symptom of this was the
frequency of prosecutions for heresy. George Duffield, a
grandson of the Revolutionary chaplain, was tried before
the Presbytery of Carlisle in 1832, for the teachings of
his book on "Regeneration" (Carlisle, Pa., 1832), in which
the new-school positions were affirmed. Presbytery found
against him in eight out of ten charges, but earned the
censure of the Synod of Philadelphia by refusing to go
further than to "warn him to guard against such specula-
tions as may impugn the doctrines of our church." Ed-
ward Beecher, J. M. Sturdevant, and William Kirby, all of
Illinois College, were arraigned before the Presbytery of
Illinois in 1833, for teaching the New Haven doctrines;
but Presbytery declared that they "do not teach doctrines.
materially or essentially at variance with the standards."
Lyman Beecher, of Lane Seminary, who had originated
the temperance reform, broken the power of Unitarianism
in Boston, and roused eastern Christians to the spiritual
needs of the western States, was prosecuted before the
Presbytery and then the Synod of Cincinnati in 1835, for
heresy, slander, and hypocrisy, by Dr. Joshua L. Wilson.
He was acquitted even by the Synod, which was old school,
by a good majority; yet they found fault with his "dis-
position to philosophize" in the treatment of important
doctrines, and censured his use of "terms and phrases
calculated to convey ideas" not orthodox, and requested
MR. BARNES'S SECOND TRIAL.
109
him to publish the explanations which had satisfied them.
Dr. Wilson appealed to the Assembly, but the accidental
loss of his papers prevented further proceedings. It is
surprising that Dr. N. S. S. Beman, of Troy (N. Y.), escaped
a prosecution, as his "Four Sermons on the Doctrine of the
Atonement" (Troy, 1825) must have been more offensive
to old-school men than anything Mr. Barnes wrote.
Barnes, Beman, and Duffield" were constantly named to-
gether in the controversies of that and a later time.¹
..
But, as might have been expected, the church was far
more agitated by the prosecution of Albert Barnes at the
instance of Dr. George Junkin before the Second Presby-
tery of Philadelphia, the Synod of Philadelphia, and the
General Assembly of 1836. This was based on doctrinal
statements contained in Mr. Barnes's "Notes, Explanatory
and Practical, on the Epistle to the Romans" (Philadel-
phia, 1835), the second of the long series by which he
placed the results of exegetical scholarship within reach of
the people, and especially of Sunday-school teachers. The
Second Presbytery had been constituted of Mr. Barnes's
friends, on the principle of "elective affinity." This imi-
tation of the bad precedent of 1762 had just been antici-
pated in the erection of a Third Presbytery of New York.
The Synod of Philadelphia in 1831 had refused to take
this step, even when ordered by the General Assembly;
the Assembly of 1832 had to effect the erection over the
Synod's head-another bad precedent. A Synod of Dela-
ware was constituted in 1834 on the same vicious prin-
ciple, and the Second Presbytery was conjoined with it.
In 1835 Dr. George Junkin, now the president of La-
14
1 Dr. Beman was a speaker well to the front in the great field-days of the
Assembly. He also was an ardent Jacksonian in politics. After one Assem-
bly he went to Washington to condole with the President as to his political
troubles. "To tell you the truth, Dr. Beman, these fellows don't bother
me half so much as do the dissensions in the Presbyterian Church."
IIO
[CHAP. X.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
fayette College, appeared before the Second Presbytery to
present charges against Mr. Barnes of teachings contrary
to the standards. Dr. Junkin had entered the church in
1822, with the majority of the General Synod of the As-
sociate Reformed Church. He united to the Seceder
interest in nice points of doctrine, a clear head and a re-
markable power of self-control. He never condescended
to the asperities of controversialists like Mr. McCalla, while
he clung to the matter in hand with Scotch-Irish tenacity.
Like Dr. Wilson, he accepted frankly the responsibilities of
the prosecutor, which the old-school men generally shrank
from, trying to secure the condemnation of new-school
teachers without taking the legal steps, which exposed
them to formal censure if they failed to secure a convic-
tion. To avoid the odium of its use, however, he omitted
the term "heresy" from the charges, but showed some
impatience on finding Mr. Barnes and the Presbytery not
as ready as himself for the precipitation of a new struggle
of this kind. The counts of the indictment were much
the same as in the previous arraignment of Mr. Barnes's
sermon, but they were based on a publication in which his
views had been stated more fully, and Dr. Junkin urged
them with an acuteness Dr. Green did not possess. Yet
the Presbytery, as was expected, acquitted him upon each
and all of them, asserting that he had not taught the errors
Dr. Junkin imputed to him.
The appeal now lay to Synod, but was complicated by
the action of the Assembly of that year. In the Assembly
of 1834 the new-school party had still held the majority,
as in every Assembly since 1831. But the old-school
minority had presented a Memorial expressing alarm at
the prevalence of unsound doctrine and laxity in disci-
pline,” and enumerating grievances, one of which was the
introduction of the principle of elective affinity in the con-
THE “ACT AND TESTIMONY.”
III
stitution of Synods and Presbyteries. When the Assembly
refused to accede to the requests of the memorialists, these
embodied them in an "Act and Testimony" against prev-
alent" errors," which they issued to the church with their
signatures. The emphasis and definiteness of this protest
greatly strengthened the old-school party, especially in the
South, which was practically the arbiter between Penn-
sylvania and New England, and resulted in an old-school
majority in the Assembly of 1835. This adopted in the
main the prayers of the memorialists, and called the attention
of the Presbyteries to the list of errors alleged. It also
enacted that the Synod of Delaware should form a part
of the Synod of Pennsylvania at and after the first meet-
ing of the latter, but did not touch the Presbyteries which
had been formed on the same principle.
-
When the Synod of Philadelphia met, and Dr. Junkin's
appeal came up for action, Dr. Ely challenged its right to
entertain the appeal, as the Presbytery and Mr. Barnes had
not been subject to its jurisdiction at the time of his trial;
and on this ground the Second Presbytery refused to trans-
mit to Synod the books and papers necessary for the con-
tinuance of the process. The Synod, however, acted on
what it believed to be the intention of the Assembly,
entertained and sustained the appeal, and declared that the
errors charged were some of them fundamental, and all of
them contrary to the standards, and that they contravened
"the system of truth therein taught, and set forth in the
Word of God." Then, without passing upon Mr. Barnes's
denial that he had taught these errors, they proceeded to
suspend him from the ministry until he should retract them.
For a year he sat, in submission to this sentence, a
hearer in his own church, awaiting the decision of the
next Assembly upon his appeal. The feeling now spread
widely that the conservatives had abused their opportu-
I12
[CHAP. X.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
nity, and sympathy both inside and outside the church ral-
lied to the scholar and pastor who had been subjected to
this harsh sentence. It was felt that anything less than
heresy could not justify it, and the word "heresy "his prose-
cutors had avoided expressly because of the odium attach-
ing to its use. The Assembly of 1836 reflected the re-
action of feeling. Although Dr. Witherspoon, of South
Carolina, was chosen moderator by the old school, over
Dr. Absalom Peters, the leader of the new-school men on
the floor of the Assembly and the great champion of the
Plan of Union, yet the full Assembly a few days later was
found to have a new-school majority. The protest and
appeal of Mr. Barnes was sustained, and the action of the
Synod reversed, but with a resolution deprecating any ap-
proval of the errors charged upon him. On the contrary,
they declared their adoption of the Confession “ex animo
on the points of doctrine in question, according to the
obvious and most prevalent interpretation.
If the new-school party had stopped with this they
would have strengthened their own cause. But they also
proceeded to abuse their victory by taking counsel with
extremists to the alienation of moderate men. The As-
sembly of 1836 had made arrangements to adopt the
Western Foreign Missionary Society, established in Pitts-
burg in 1831, as the organ of the church for the conduct
of its work for the conversion of the heathen. The friends
of the American Board now rallied to maintain what they
called the Assembly's compact with that board, and repu-
diated that with the Pittsburg society by a small majority.
An attempt was made, and only just defeated, to place
the Boards of Education and of Domestic Missions in the
hands of those who desired to have them also merged in.
voluntary and undenominational societies. Worst of all,
the elective-affinity principle, as applied to the organiza-
);
C
113
tion of Presbyteries, which the Assembly of 1835 had set
aside, was restored on appeals from the action of the Synod
of Philadelphia.
THE POLICY OF SEPARATION.
The old-school men were brought into such a state of
agitation by these measures that, with little delay, they
began to take steps for the division of the church. No doc-
trinal action of the Assembly either called for or justified
this procedure. While acquitting Mr. Barnes on ground
of fact-on which the Synod of Philadelphia had not passed
-it had condemned in thesi the errors charged upon him.
But the other measures of the Assembly of 1836 were such
as tended to undermine the constitution of the church;·
and even new-school men showed by their actions a dec-
ade later that they did not care to vindicate them. While
much was said of doctrinal differences in the subsequent
protests, the strength of the old-school policy lay in the
purpose to maintain the constitutional character of the
church; and many gave their support to the old school who
were not made uncomfortable by the removal of Mr.
Barnes's suspension.
One of the first steps taken was to seek a union of
forces with the moderate party, especially as represented
by Princeton Seminary. Dr. Charles Hodge, indeed, had
furnished Mr. Robert J. Breckinridge with all but one of
the series of "new-school errors" specified in the Act and
Testimony of 1835. Yet the organ of the seminary had
treated that document and the policy it represented with
contemptuous disfavor. In the autumn of 1836 Drs. Cuy-
ler, Junkin, and others met the professors in Dr. Hodge's
study, to offer reasons why Princeton should make a change
of front. Among the considerations employed were the
perils the seminary ran of being transferred to new-school
control, and the likelihood that Mr. Robert Lenox and
other laymen would take steps at once to establish a dis-
114
[CHAP. X.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
tinctly old-school seminary, unless Princeton abandoned
its opposition to the old-school policy. The conference
did not seem to attain its end, yet from that time the ven-
erable senior professors, Alexander and Miller, are found
in hearty coöperation with the old-school party of action.
It cannot be said that the new-school men showed much
desire to aid Dr. Miller and the rest in the efforts they had
made to maintain Princeton in an attitude of conciliation.
In January, 1836, they had founded Union Theological
Seminary in New York, in a distinctly new-school and
Plan-of-Union spirit, and independent of the control of
'the Assembly. It seemed as if they purposed to drive
Princeton into the arms of the other party, where, indeed,
we next find it.
CHAPTER XI.
THE DIVISION OF 1837-38.
THE old-school leaders had now resolved to divide the
church, either by a voluntary secession and the organiza-
tion of a True Presbyterian Church, or by the excision of
those whom they regarded as un-Presbyterian in doctrine
and practice. The extreme measures of the Assembly of
1836 placed the initiative in their hands, and they hastened
to make use of it.
The meeting of the Assembly of 1837, in Philadelphia,
was preceded by that of an old-school convention, which
met a week earlier with a view to "effectual measures for
putting an end to the contentions which for years had
agitated the church." The South was represented largely,
and moderate men like Dr. Miller took part in the prepa-
ration of a "Testimony and Memorial" to the General
Assembly, exhibiting the doctrinal errors and lapses in
discipline which they believed were defacing the church.
The list of the former, which Dr. Miller revised, was now
much longer than in the " Act and Testimony," and in-
cluded even points of Hopkinsian teaching which the new
school, and also New Haven, decidedly rejected.
From the first the old-school men had a decided major-
ity in the Assembly, and the only question left was the
best way to use it. To their great credit it must be said
that they strove to avoid a violent disruption, by coming
to terms of peaceful separation with the minority. The
115
116
[CHAP. XI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
first step taken was to abrogate the Plan of Union of 1801,
which had added much to the numerical strength of the
church, while detracting greatly from its homogeneity.
The Assembly of 1835, out of deference to Dr. Miller's
statement that the Plan was a compact which the Assem-
bly had proposed, had asked the General Association of
Connecticut to agree to its annulment, so far as concerned
churches yet to be formed. But this resolution was never
transmitted to the Association. The Assembly of 1837
now voted its abrogation in a resolution which carried
with it no qualifications. After adopting the Memorial of
the convention, and citing to the bar of the next Assem-
bly any Presbyteries or Synods charged with the disorders
enumerated, the Assembly took up the chief question. A
committee of both parties was appointed to arrange a plan
for a voluntary division. They found no difficulty in agree-
ing as to the division of funds and institutions of the church,
and the disposal of its archives, and the style and title of the
proposed new-school Assembly. But the new-school men
would not assent to an immediate division by the action
of the Assembly then in session, and with the old-school
body recognized as the historic successor of the undivided
church. They required that the plan should be overtured
to the Presbyteries for their approval. In this, as in other
cases, they stood on the letter of Presbyterian law. But
ordinary law, in the old-school view, was not adequate to
the occasion. While proposing to summon to the next
Assembly Synods and Presbyteries charged with irregu-
larities in procedure, they now resolved to set all rules of
procedure at defiance, rather than leave their policy to the
chances of an overture.
H
For a time the old-school men were at a loss how to
proceed, but Dr. Baxter, the successor of Dr. Rice at the
head of Union Seminary (Virginia), struck out the sug-
THE EXSCINDING ACTS.
117
gestion that the abrogation of the Plan of Union was re-
troactive, and that the Synods and Presbyteries organized
under that arrangement had ceased to form a part of the
church. Rev. W. S. Plumer, of Richmond, moved a dec-
laration to this effect with regard to the Synod of the West-
ern Reserve. After an animated discussion it was carried
by a strict party vote-132 to 105. The Synods of Utica,
Geneva, and Genesee, all in western New York, were then
exscinded in the same fashion, but by smaller majorities,
as a number of the moderate party would have preferred
a gentle course with them. Five other Synods were di-
rected to take order with certain of their Presbyteries.
which were charged with tolerating errors in doctrine or
disorders in practice. Ministers and churches within the
bounds of these Synods who were Presbyterian in order
and doctrine were directed to seek membership in which-
ever Presbytery of the church they found most convenient;
and orderly Presbyteries to report to the next Assembly
for direction.
C
The next step was to conform the methods of the church
to what the old-school mên regarded as `strict Presbyteri-
anism, although it really was one of the most questionable
results of the Awakening. The Western Missionary So-
ciety was erected into the Assembly's Board of Foreign
Missions. The American Education and Home Mission-
ary Societies were invited to cease their operations within
the bounds of the church, leaving the field to the Boards
of Education and of Domestic Missions.
Thus was consummated the division of 1837, which re-
sulted in cutting off 533 churches and over a hundred
thousand communicants—a larger number than the whole
church body contained in 1801, when the Plan of Union
was set on foot. The surprise and indignation with which
it was received showed that the old-school leaders had
118
[CHAP. XI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
L
been far-sighted in refusing to risk their policy upon a
reference to the Presbyteries by overture. If they had
gone to the church with such a proposal there would have
been a reaction greater than that of 1836. But most men
easily come to accept accomplished facts, however they
may dislike the manner of their accomplishment. Even
the organ of Princeton, in vindicating the abstract right
of the Assembly to do what it had done, declined to pass
upon the wisdom of its action. Everywhere the party of
action found itself thrown upon the defensive and forced
to adopt an apologetic tone. Eventually, in the interest
of peace in its own fold, the old-school Assembly had to
declare that public disapproval of the exscinding acts was
no bar to ministerial fellowship.
After the excision of the four Synods, the new-school
men naturally took measures to vindicate themselves be-
fore the Christian public, and to assert their legal and con-
stitutional rights. In August they met in convention at
Auburn, N. Y., and outlined their policy. The four Syn-
ods and their Presbyteries were neither to abandon the
Plan of Union and the churches formed under it, nor to
recognize the action of the Assembly as having any valid-
ity. They were to send their delegations to the Assembly
of 1838, and claim their seats by constitutional right.
Equally important was the preparation of the Auburn
Declaration, in which the charges of doctrinal unsoundness
made by the old-school convention were contrasted point
by point with the actual teachings of new-school men.
In accordance with this program, and acting on legal
advice, the delegations from the exscinded Presbyteries
presented their credentials to the Assembly of 1838, but
the clerks of that body acted in accordance with a decla-
ration they had made the year before, in refusing to place
their names on the roll. Before the reading of the clerks'
TIIE NEW school organize.
I 19
report on the roll, Dr. William Patton, a new-school man,
whose name was on the roll, tried to offer a motion that
the roll be completed by adding the names of these dele-
gates. The retiring moderator, Dr. David Elliott, refused
either to entertain the motion or to recognize an appeal
from his own ruling. The clerks then reported the roll of
the Assembly, and the retiring moderator made the cus-
tomary call for members whose credentials had not yet
been presented. Dr. Erskine Mason now rose, holding in
his hand the commissions of delegates from the Presby-
teries of the four Synods, which the clerks had rejected,
and moved that the roll be completed by adding these.
Dr. Elliott again declared out of order the motion, and
also an appeal from his decision. Rev. Miles P. Squier,
representing an exscinded Presbytery, made a personal
demand that his name be added to the roll, but was de-
clared to have no standing in the court. Rev. John P.
Cleveland then moved that Dr. Beman, of Troy, act as tem-
porary moderator, as Dr. Elliott had refused to discharge
his constitutional duty, and took the vote on his own
motion after it was seconded.
was seconded. The new-school delegates
voted for it, the old-school mostly remaining silent. Dr.
Beman did not attempt to take possession of the chair, but,
standing in the aisle of the church, he entertained motions
to organize the Assembly by the choice of a moderator
and clerks, and to adjourn its meetings to the First Church.
On these motions the new-school men alone voted, and
they alone met at the place thus designated. They pro-
ceeded to declare the repeal of the exscinding acts, and
they elected six trustees of the General Assembly to dis-
place old-school men then in office.
These six brought suit before the courts of the com-
monwealth of Pennsylvania for possession of the property
held by the Assembly's trustees, since the charter of in-
¿
I 20
[CHAP. XI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
2
A
corporation had been granted by it. The general doctrine
of the American state is that an ecclesiastical body is a
voluntary association, and that its constitution partakes of
the nature of a civil contract between the body at large
and each of its members. In case of a violation of this
contract the civil courts will grant redress upon proper
complaint. This view, however, made its way more slowly
into the practice of Pennsylvania than that of the sister-
commonwealths, probably because of the long and con-
tinuous control of its supreme bench by Presbyterian eld-
ers of Scotch-Irish stock. These were so strong in their
conviction of the right of a church to manage its own
affairs, independently even of constitutional restrictions,
that they inclined to regard the highest court of the church
as possessing an authority coördinate with their own, even
where civil rights were in question. In the former view
of the law the new-school case was a very strong one, and
Chancellor Kent, of New York, told Dr. Gardiner Spring
that if the case had been tried in his own commonwealth
it would have been decided in their favor. As it was, the
verdict of a Supreme Court jury, under instructions from
Judge Rogers, spread dismay among the old-school men,
as it was against them; but the court in banc set aside
the verdict on grounds which made a fresh trial useless.
It was ruled by Chief-Justice Gibson, supported by Judges
Huston and Kennedy (Rogers dissenting), that the Plan
of Union "was evidently not intended to be permanent,
and as it had been enacted, so it might be " repealed, by an
ordinary act of legislation"; and that "those who built up
Presbyteries and Synods on the basis of it had no reason
to expect that their structures would survive it." This
may be law-it is not history.
When the separation was complete it was found that
the new school embraced about four ninths of the minis-
"}
THE MODERATES.
I2I
try and membership of the church, mostly lying in the
Northern States. It coincided in the main with the lines
of discrimination between Scotch-Irish and New England
elements, as it grew largely out of the incompatibility of
their tempers. In the three exscinded Synods of New
York, only six churches and about four hundred members
went over to the old school. The new-school Assembly
had the adhesion also of the Synods of Michigan and
eastern Tennessee, and of majorities in the Synods of New
York, Albany, and Illinois, as well as half the Synods of
New Jersey and Indiana, and strong minorities in those of
Ohio and Cincinnati. Elsewhere the line of severance ran
sharply through Presbyteries and even congregations.
The moderate men in some cases went with the old
school from theological sympathy, yet under protest; and
in others they sided with the new school from a sense of
the injustice that had been done them.
Their greatest
strength appeared in the Synod of New York, which di-
vided between new and old school at its session of 1838
in Newburg. Forty-nine protested against any division,
claiming to be the undivided Synod, and got the name of
the High School, from their place of meeting. Finally
the new school as a body united with them on this foot-
ing, and the Synod adhered to the new-school Assembly.
The Synod of Ohio, while adhering to the old school,
recorded upon their minutes that the exscinded Synods
were still constitutionally a part of the church. Gardiner
Spring, Ichabod Spencer, and Daniel Lord protested form-
ally against the excision before their old-school Presby-
tery.
The division was effected most slowly in the South, out-
side the area in which Hezekiah Balch and his disciples
had diffused Hopkinsian ideas. Elsewhere the interest in
the controversies had been limited to a few, and many
122
[CHAP. XI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
had to take time to make up their minds. The suggestion
to withdraw from both parties and organize a Southern
Presbyterian Church was made in South Carolina, and
probably was an echo of the nullification excitement of a
few years before. In a similar way the repugnance of the
South to the centralization of authority in the national
government suggested an opposition to the assumption of
authority by the national Assembly of the church. But
altogether less than a fourth cast in their lot with the new
school. It was alleged as early as 18381 that the prev-
alence of antislavery sentiments among the new-school
men, as in New England, was one of the reasons for the
coöperation of the South in the policy of division. This
is not borne out by the facts. It is true, as Dr. Miller
said in 1823, that the South had become "very sensitive,
extremely, perhaps excessively sensitive on this subject
long before this. As far back as 1796 we find the Pres-
bytery and the Synod of South Carolina enjoining upon
James Gililand, pastor of Broadaway, that he abstain from
preaching in favor of emancipation. We see prominent
ministers like Thomas D. Baird and David Nelson leaving
the South to find a home in the free States, out of dislike
for an institution for whose abolition they were not free to
plead. We find William Maxwell, of Norfolk, the friend
and biographer of Dr. Rice, threatened in 1827 with a coat
of tar and feathers for publishing a very temperate plea
for emancipation. But we also find him and Mr. Baird,
in the Assembly of 1837, among the most zealous on the
old-school side. It is possible that Dr. Baxter, as a de-
""
1 By Rev. Zebulon Crocker, in "The Catastrophe of the Presbyterian
Church" (New Haven, 1838). He was the delegate from the Connecticut
Association to the Assembly of 1837, and his work has value as an account
of the contemporary controversy in Connecticut. He says slavery was not a
principal cause of the division, but a secondary one, and he points to the
fact that Dr. Baxter, who presided over the old-school convention, had writ-
ten in defense of slavery as a Scriptural institution.
DELIVERANCES ON SLAVERY.
123
fender of slavery, may have felt more comfortable in a
church which had fewer Northern men in it; and he cer-
tainly used language in 1837 which showed that the aboli-
tion problem to his own mind was part of the reasons for
a division. But even he knew, or ought to have known,
that the Scotch-Irish of the Middle States were furnishing
many of the most determined enemies of human bondage,
and that the church, by the action of 1818, had declared
slavery "inconsistent with the law of God, and totally
irreconcilable with the gospel of Christ." He must have
known that in 1833, when the Synod of Kentucky refused
to declare against slavery, Rc ɔert J. Breckinridge rose and
left the church, exclaiming, "Since God has forsaken the
Synod of Kentucky, Robert J. Breckinridge will desert
it too!" Also that a year later the Synod came to a
better mind, condemned slavery as a source of degradation,
ignorance, cruelty, and licentiousness, and urged gradual
emancipation of the slave. Of the committee which re-
ported that action, Dr. Ashbel Green had been chairman,
and Dr. Baxter a member. The question had come up
again in 1835, through memorials asking the Assembly to
act in accordance with its previous deliverances in work-
ing for emancipation. It had been referred to a committee
of five, of whom two were from the South, with Dr. Miller
as chairman. The majority report to the Assembly of
1836, in which the new-school men had control, depre-
cated action. A minority report by Rev. James H. Dickey
-afterward the founder of Ashmun Institute, now Lincoln
University was in harmony with the deliverance of 1818.
The subject was indefinitely postponed after an excited
discussion. If antislavery had been a distinctive feature
of the new school they would have secured action on this
as on other questions they cared for. In that case there
would have been no new-school church in the South.
J
124
[CHAP. XI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
is
Theologically the division of 1837 grew out of panic and
alarm, rather than any more solid reason. There was no
evidence that the New Haven theology had extensively
pervaded, or was likely to pervade, the church. Its pecul-
iarities were nothing but a temporary phase in the theo-
logical speculation of New England, and in some respects
a distinct approach to Calvinistic orthodoxy, as compared
with Hopkinsianism. It might have been treated with the
wise patience which the earlier Assemblies had shown to-
ward that form of speculation, without real prejudice to
any theological or spiritual interest. Even to prove “ Tay-
lorism" upon men like Mr. Barnes and Mr. Duffield, it was
necessary to hold them responsible not only for what they
actually said, but for what their critics held to be neces-
sary inferences from their words. And in some cases what
was alleged to be essential to the Calvinistic orthodoxy of
the Confession had never been heard of until the seven-
teenth century. Thus "the federal headship of Adam,"
and "the covenant of works" made with him, which Dr.
Junkin exalted into a shibboleth, were nothing but Dutch
"improvements upon Calvinism," designed to break some-
what the force of the conception of irresponsible sovereignty.
In truth the heated atmosphere of church controversy was
shown to be the worst possible for weighing the exact sig-
nificance of a disputed formula. Nor were even the min-
istry of that time so well equipped in a knowledge of his-
torical theology as to be able to distinguish between the
original and essential features of Calvinistic teaching and
the later accretions. In Princeton Seminary, indeed, the
subject of church history, to say nothing of the history of
doctrine, never was treated as an important theological dis-
cipline until our own time.
It was on the ecclesiastical side that the old-school pol-
icy was most capable of defense. Yet even here, as the
BOARDS, OR SOCIETIES?
125
{"
subsequent developments showed, a little patience would
have secured all that was sought and fought for. The
very drift of thought and feeling, which had made men
like Drs. Green and Miller far more Presbyterian in their
old age than in their youth, was to affect the new-school
men just as decidedly. High-church" sentiment was
developing rapidly in the Presbyterian Church as in the
others, in this new age of churchliness. The right of the
church to create and control its own agencies was obtain-
ing a strong and instinctive recognition. It was also felt
that under the operation of the Plan of Union the church
was becoming a dual body, with two sets of agencies for
its work, two conceptions of ecclesiastical order. The tone
taken by the friends of the Plan, especially by Dr. Absalom
Peters in his "Plea for Union in the West," was most of-
fensive to all decided Presbyterians, and soon became so
to the new-school men themselves. On the other hand,
the success of the Board of Domestic Missions, created in
1816 out of the Standing Committee of 1802, and vested
with enlarged powers in 1827, was such as to awaken a
desire for a similar independence and energy in other
fields, especially the foreign. Dr. Rice, from his death-
bed, wrote to ask the Assembly of 1831 to declare that
"the Presbyterian Church in the United States is a mis-
sionary society, and every member of the church is a life-
member of said society." His last visit to the North had
satisfied him that the two denominations were drawing
farther apart, and that Presbyterians as a body could not
be brought " to unite under what is thought to be a Congre-
gational Board." The Assembly took no action on his sug-
gestion, but it led to the organization of the Pittsburg
.society.
As might be expected, this decade of strife was not
characterized by extensive growth of the church. The
S
126
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XI.
undivided church reports 182,017 in its communion in
1831. Its old-school in 1840 reports 126,583; the new
school, 102,060. This was the more remarkable as the
opening years of the decade had been a time of intense
revival excitement under the use of the new measure, and
it is estimated that between 1826 and 1832 not less than
two hundred thousand had thus been added to the evan-
gelical churches. It also was noteworthy that the business
depression of 1837 and the years following had been at-
tended by the usual awakening of religious interest in the
centers of population, where the depression was most se-
verely felt. Up to 1835 Rev. Charles G. Finney was in full
career as a new-measure revivalist, and much of his work
was among the Presbyterians of central New York.
Mad
A
In fact, what John Howe calls "the carnality of religious.
contention" was abroad in the church, and furnished an
obstacle to the movement of the spiritual life. It was all
the more a snare because the baser self in us loves to be
busy about the surface of spiritual things, and to show
great fervor for religion when no immediate demand for
the life of faith is pressed upon it.
"Set Jehu to pulling
down idols, and see how zealous he can be," writes an old
Puritan.
-
It was a poor compensation for these losses that the
great debates in Presbytery, Synod, and Assembly at-
tracted attention as never before, and familiarized a large
part of the outside community with niceties of Presbyterian
doctrine and law. Henry Clay pronounced the oratorical
display in the Assemblies finer than anything Congress had
to show. The power of Calvinistic training to develop
strong men found ample illustration, even though the
strength was not given the highest direction. The old
school were happy in the support of representatives of
the church's past in the much-loved and kindly Archibald
THE LEADERS IN DEBATE.
127
Alexander, the courtly and diplomatic Samuel Miller, the
masterful Ashbel Green. Of the younger generation, the
South furnished the two Breckinridges-John a saint of
unsurpassed eloquence, Robert a type of Kentuckian chiv-
alry; George Addison Baxter, lucid in exposition, resource-
ful in council; John Witherspoon the younger; and Wil-
liam S. Plumer, a most impressive speaker even to the
latest years of a long life. The North furnished in George
Junkin a representative of the Scotch-Irish strength and
tenacity; in John McDowell a well-rounded, practical nat-
ure; in Charles Hodge a Johannine character, yet, like
John, capable of an intense theological fervor; and in Wil-
liam L. McCalla a rough tongue, which lent itself to telling
epigram and kept its owner all his life in hot water.
The new-school men, like progressive parties generally,
impress us rather more by their intellectual quality than
by strength of character, although in Thomas H. Skinner
we find a singularly simple and unworldly character.
Samuel Hanson Cox, a convert from Quakerism, possessed
an eloquence which would have found no superior if it had
been better sustained. George Potts ill spared for debate.
the time taken from an exceptionally devoted pastorate.
Nathaniel S. S. Beman had a restless intellect and an
aggressive temper, which earned him the title of the
"War-horse of the New School," but is now best remem-
bered for his services to hymnology. Erskine Mason,
with far less than his great father's eloquence, acquired a
wonderful influence over his people, and left a fragrant
memory of personal holiness and good works. Thomas
McAuley, the first president of the (new) Union Semi-
nary, carried his Irish wit and pathos to the support of a
party which embraced few of his countrymen. Judge Jes-
sup, the father of the eminent missionaries, brought great
forensic abilities to the same side, his defense of Mr. Barnes
Cada
128
[CHAP. XI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
in the Assembly of 1836 being reckoned his greatest tri-
umph as a speaker.
This unhappy decade was to witness yet another divis-
ion among Presbyterians, and the most unmeaning yet.
Simply through disaffection to an act of discipline three
Presbyteries of the Associate Church in New York and
Vermont withdrew in 1838 from the Associate Synod,
under the leadership of Drs. Peter Bullions and Andrew
Stark. Thus the Seceder family, like the Presbyterians and
the Covenanters, found it a day of strife and of division.
CHAPTER XII.
FROM WAR TO WAR, 1840–60.
THE twenty years which preceded the war for the Union
were years of great agitation and ferment in the intellect-
ual, social, and spiritual life of America.
The new age
began to declare itself and its character by a thousand
signs. The spirit of the nation found expression as never
before in literature and art, in social-reform movements
and political agitation. A new criticism, a new philoso-
phy, a new scholarship arose to multiply the objects of
public interest, and to add to the complexity of existence.
No longer content with reproducing English and Scottish
thought, America flung herself boldly into contact with
the culture of the civilized world, and was reinforced in
this by the more varied immigration from all the countries
of northern Europe.
These agitations reached the spiritual life of the country
largely through new sects or agitations within the existing
churches. Millerism, and its offspring, Adventism, might
be traced, along with sober Premillenarianism, to the inter-
est in Scripture prophecy which first awoke in the group
of which Edward Irving was the center. Connected with
the same interest in the future were the various theories
of annihilation or conditional mortality, which now com-
peted with the older Universalism as substitutes for the
orthodox eschatology. Spiritualism owed its strength to
an instinctive desire to pierce the veil which sunders the
dead from the living, and know more definitely “the to-
129
130
[CHAP. XII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
*
morrow of death." Campbellism stood for a revolt from
the Methodism of the Great Awakening, which had per-
vaded all the churches more or less largely. Socialism, in
various phases, especially Fourierism in 1842-49, sought
a reconstruction of society as the cure for the evils attend-
ing the industrial revolution which was in progress. The
broad-church tendency, in the writings first of Coleridge
and then of Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, sought a deeper
Scriptural and spiritual basis for the essential truths of
Christianity; while Tractarianism, affecting chiefly the Epis-
copal Church, but challenging all, insisted that that foun-
dation must be sought in Christian tradition, by going back
to the church of the first centuries. Perfectionism, a tend-
ency no longer confined to the Quaker and Methodist
bodies, urged the perfecting of holiness as the central prin-
ciple and first duty of Christianity.
Along with these ran the great social agitations which
are characteristic of our age. That for the abolition of
war had taken its start just after the Peace of 1815, and
was no longer a Quaker peculiarity. The temperance.
agitation may fairly be dated from Dr. Lyman Beecher's
"Six Sermons on Intemperance," preached in 1825 at
Litchfield, Conn., and published the next year. About
the same time Albert Barnes formed at Morristown, N. J.,
the first temperance society, whose members were pledged
to limit their consumption of "apple-jack" to a pint a day,
the usual allowance being a quart. The demand of the
movement rose rapidly to total abstinence from intoxicants
by 1836, and even to the legal suppression of the traffic
in them, and such laws had been enacted in fourteen
States between 1850 and 1856. Among many others, Rev.
Thomas P. Hunt, a brilliant and eccentric preacher, gave
both wit and eloquence to the cause. Dr. Robert Baird
carried the propaganda to Europe. The immigration of
+
AGITATION AND WORK.
131
Irish and German Romanists produced a violent agitation
against that church, resulting in riot and arson in several
cities. Dr. Thomas Brainerd, of Philadelphia, was one of
those who offered a courageous opposition to the extrava-
gances of this excitement,¹ while Robert J. Breckinridge
and Nicholas Murray ("Kirwan ") were especially promi-
nent in antagonizing the pretensions of American Ro-
manism.
More quiet were the labors for the extension of the
Sunday-school system to the neglected portions of the
country, and for the universal diffusion of the Scriptures.
To both Presbyterians gave large support. John McCul-
lagh in the South and Benjamin W. Chidlaw in the North
will live forever in the history of the American Sunday-
school. To the Bible Society Presbyterians have given
of men and means beyond any other American church.
The care of the poor, especially in the great cities, took a
fresh impulse toward wisdom and kindliness from the visit of
a Scotchman who had studied Dr. Chalmers's work in Glas-
gow and described it to Americans. He was reinforced
in this by Dr. Alexander Duff during his memorable visit
of 1854, which did so much, in Dr. Tyng's words, "to
awaken enlarged desires and views in reference to the
propagation of the gospel among the unevangelized na-
tions of the earth." The care for the young men of our
great cities through the Young Men's Christian Associa-
tions, begun in London in 1844, reached America seven
years later.
In this work Presbyterians were amply rep-
resented by William E. Dodge, George H. Stuart, John
Wanamaker, and a host of others.
-
But it was especially the antislavery agitation which
1 "Our Country Safe from Romanism. A Sermon delivered at the
Opening of the Third Presbytery of Philadelphia, April, 1841,” Philadel-
phia, 1841.
4
132
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XII.
t
•
affected the churches. That had originated with the
Christian people of both North and South, and among
Presbyterians as much as any. A type of these was James
G. Birnie, of Alabama, who emancipated his slaves, came
North, and devoted his life to the cause of emancipation,
becoming in 1840 and 1844 the first antislavery candidate
for the Presidency. Another was Dr. David Nelson, of
Tennessee, who emancipated his own slaves, denounced
slave-holding as a sin, and refused to commune with those
who practiced it. On one occasion his friends had to hide
him from a Missouri mob for proposing to his congrega-
tion a subscription to buy and colonize slaves. Two years
later, in 1837, Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered in
Alton, Ill., by another Missouri mob for the offense of
publishing in his paper moderate articles against slavery.
He was a graduate of Princeton Seminary, and a member
of the Presbytery of Illinois.
The indifference or hostility of many ministers and Chris-
tians to the cause of emancipation had the effect of alien-
ating some badly based opponents of slavery from the
churches, and of leading to the association of abolition with
infidelity and come-outer-ism. Those who yielded to this
drift naturally lost influence with the people at large; and
while the noisiest in talk and the extremest in their de-
mands, they actually contributed little to the final result.
They denounced both church and state, copying the "po-
litical dissent" of the Covenanters, and carrying it to an
extreme. As Albert Barnes said of them, "If a just cause
could have been killed by the folly of its friends, the cause
of African liberty would have been so by the spirit and
methods of the abolitionists." These words are the weight-
ier as coming from one who fearlessly followed his own
convictions of duty in this matter. His book on Ameri-
can slavery," says Professor Phelps, "was a thesaurus to
(6
PRESBYTERIANS AND SLAVERY.
133
the abolitionists for twenty years. . . . He preached the
substance of his book to his people at a time when millions
of property sat along the aisles of his church, coined out
of slave-labor on cotton and rice plantations. He did it
with the air of one who did not for a moment conceive
it possible to do anything else. His more timid friends
trembled for the result, but not he."
Among the Presbyterian churches there was a great
difference of attitude toward slavery, and this formed one
of the obstacles to their union. The smaller and stricter
bodies, with the exception of the Associate Reformed
Synod of the South, now occupied the ground taken by
the Covenanters at the opening of the century, in exclud-
ing slave-holders from their communion. And those who
passed over from them to the old-school church naturally
carried with them a strong repugnance to human bondage.
Neither of the two Assemblies which grew out of the
division of 1837-38 was ready to take any decided ground,
as might be inferred from the fiasco of 1836. Both, in-
deed, had inherited from the Assembly of 1818 an author-
itative denunciation of slavery, which plainly involved the
duty of slave-holders in the membership of the church to
take steps toward emancipation, or of rigorous discipline
in that of the church's judicatories, even although the
Assembly proceeded, in that deliverance, to pronounce
against immediate emancipation, as "adding a second in-
jury to the first," since it added that this consideration
should not be made a cover for the love and practice of
slavery, or a pretense for not using efforts that are lawful
and practicable to extinguish the evil.”
66
The deliverance, however, remained a dead letter as re-
gards the practice of the church. It was even defied form -
ally and openly. The Presbytery of Harmony, S. C., in
1836 resolved, in flat contradiction to the General Assem-
134
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XII.
bly, that "the existence of slavery is not opposed to the
will of God"; and the Synod of Virginia declared that
"the General Assembly had no right to declare that re-
lation sinful which Christ and his apostles teach to be con-
sistent with the most unquestionable piety."
In the meantime the legal status of the slave and his
social condition grew worse instead of better. The eman-
cipation societies, founded by the Quaker, Benjamin Lun-
dy, in 1815-26, which had been counted by the score in
the South, passed out of existence; and the policy of
silence as to the licentiousness and cruelties attendant on
the system was enforced upon all.
The slave States
passed laws of constantly increasing severity, declaring
the slave to be a chattel and not a person, and forbidding
even his owner to have him taught to read. For religious
instruction he was shut up to oral teaching at white
mouths, and some colored preachers did manage to acquire
in this way a moderate acquaintance with the Scriptures.
A domestic slave-trade sprang up between the border
States and the States farther South, where the cotton,
rice, and sugar plantations furnished a market. Hus-
bands and wives, parents and young children, were thus
severed for life, and the abomination of temporary mar-
riage was actually sanctioned by some Christian ministers.
Here certainly was a large field for reformatory action
on the part of conservative men. Those who disbelieved
in immediate emancipation, or even in emancipation at any
date, might have united to demand the removal of these
gross iniquities. Those who sought in the Old Testa-
ment for a Scriptural justification of slavery might very
well have insisted that the merciful provisions of the
Mosaic legislation should find something like a counter-
part in that of free America. The church both North and
South might have been a unit in insisting that its mem-
-
-
NEW-SCHOOL FAITHFULNESS.
135
bers should keep themselves unspotted from these evils,
and that the Word of God should be made accessible to
black as well as white. Strong and united action even
within these limits-as Dr. Charles Hodge pointed out-
would have taken the sting out of the abolitionist argu-
ment, and prepared the way for peaceful and gradual
emancipation. It was the unfaithfulness of the American
churches, and not least of the Presbyterian churches, to
the plain requirements of duty, which suffered the evil to
grow and gather head, until its end came in a deluge of
human blood.
J.
Of the two Assemblies, the new-school naturally was the
more faithful to the deliverance of 1818, which it repeated
in substance in 1846 and 1849. Yet not until 1850 did it
take the first step toward reducing doctrine to practice,
declaring slave-holding a matter of discipline when not
excusable by special circumstances. In 1853 the Assem-
bly called upon its Southern Presbyteries to report what
had been done to purge the church of this evil. The Pres-
bytery of Lexington responded that ministers and mem-
bers of its churches were slave-holders by choice and on
principle. As the Assembly met this deliverance by a de-
cided condemnation, the Southern part of the new-school
church, numbering six Synods, twenty-one Presbyteries,
fifteen thousand communicants, seceded and formed the
United Synod of the Presbyterian Church. It at once.
made overtures of union to the old-school Assembly,
meeting in New Orleans; but as these required a con-
demnation of the exscinding acts of 1837, and would have
plunged the church afresh into the controversy over slav-
ery, they were declined. This was the last of a series of
ecclesiastical divisions over slavery, which presaged the
secession of the slave States. The Associate Reformed
Presbyterians had divided on this line in 1821; the Meth-
G
-
1
136
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XII.
odists and Baptists in 1844; the "Christian" Connection
in 1866.
The old-school Assembly preserved its unity until the
eve of the war by moving in the other direction. There
is a wide gap between the deliverance of 1818 and those
of 1845 and 1849. The Assembly of 1845 went no fur-
ther than to decline to deny "that there is evil connected
with slavery," or to "approve those oppressive and defect-
ive laws by which, in some of the States, it is regulated."
Nor would it by any means "countenance the traffic in
slaves for the sake of gain; the separation of husbands and
wives, parents and children, for the sake of 'filthy lucre'
or for the convenience of the master; or cruel treatment
of slaves in any respect." But it recognized no responsi-
bility on the part of the church to secure the removal of
such evils, except by preaching the duty masters owed to
their slaves, and had not a word to say of the duty of
emancipation, or of the sin of refusing the slave access to
the Scriptures. The deliverance was adopted by a vote
of 168 to 13. In this view slavery was no longer an evil
contrary to the law of God and the gospel of Christ, but
an institution which had come to be associated with cer-
tain remediable evils, about which the church need not
greatly concern herself. Yet the Assembly of 1846 de-
clared that the church had " always held and uttered sub-
stantially the same sentiments" on this subject. In 1849
the Presbytery of Chillicothe, O., memorialized the As-
sembly, asking that slavery be declared a sin and the lower
courts be enjoined to exercise discipline to remove it from
the church. The Assembly, without a division, voted that
it was "inexpedient and improper for it to attempt or pro-
pose" measures of emancipation. Four members of the
Assembly protested, declaring that the deliverance of 1845,
“instead of benefiting the slave, it is feared has given re-
137
lief to the consciences of slave-holders, which had already
begun to cry out against their wrong."
One result of this new policy was to throw the old-
school church upon the defensive in its correspondence
with foreign churches. The Irish Presl terian Church and
the Free Church of Scotland both recognized the old-
school church as the rightful representative of Presbyte-
rian orthodoxy in America. In their correspondence by
letter between the Assemblies, the Irish and Scotch in-
dulged in the language of strong remonstrance, and were
told, in pious and diplomatic phrase, to mind their own
business, as the American Assembly declined to discuss
the subject with them. As a consequence the corre-
spondence came to an end, only to be resumed by dele-
gates after the war.
OLD-SCHOOL NEUTRALITY.
Another result was a small secession from both the old
and the new school churches. The new-school Presbytery
of Ripley, O., had already withdrawn, when the deliver-
ance of 1845 led a minority of the old-school Presbytery
of Mahoning, Pa., to take the same course. The two or-
ganized the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church in
1847, which finally united during the war for the Union
with the new-school Assembly, because of its increased
faithfulness in dealing with slavery. By that time the
Free Church extended west to Iowa, embracing five Pres-
byteries and forty-three ministers.
The relations of the old and new school churches were
naturally distant and unfriendly at the first. It was not
until 1862 that they got so far as to exchange greetings
by delegates. By that time both parties had come to dis-
cover that the distance between them had always been less
than it seemed in the heated atmosphere of controversy,
and that it actually was growing less through mutual ap-
proximation.
138
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XII.
On the new-school side there was a decided growth of
Presbyterian feeling, which drew them and their Congre-
gationalist allies farther apart. They were becoming dis-
satisfied with the management of home missions and the
education of the ministry by voluntary societies of an
interdenominational character. Church boards, with the
style of permanent committees, were established in 1852
to take charge of their home missions and their publica-
tion work. Even with the American Board methods on
the foreign field there was a growth of discontent. The
rules prescribed for the organization of the native converts
into churches tended to give those churches a Congrega-
tionalist character. The policy of Dr. Rufus Anderson,
the very able but arbitrary secretary of the board, in forc-
ing upon the missionaries in India the abandonment of
Dr. Duff's educational methods of evangelization, roused
a lively resentment both in India and at home. It was
felt that those missions were detached from a basis com-
mon to all Presbyterians in the foreign field, and in har-
mony with the principles of the Presbyterian polity. R. G.
Wilder, of the Kolapoor mission, renounced his connection
with the American Board rather than become Puritanized
in this way, and was supported thereafter by Presbyteries
and churches which sympathized with his action.
Theologically the new-school church did not fulfill any
of the prognostications of its unfriendly critics. It did
not run headlong through a descending career of Taylor-
ism, Arminianism, and Socinianism. It retracted none of
the positions laid down in its Auburn Declaration of 1837.
It held fast to the assertion that Christ died for all, elect
and non-elect alike. It denied the legal equivalence of
our Lord's sufferings to the pains due to us for sin. . It
refused to make the Cocceian " federal headship of Adam'
a test of orthodoxy; and while it traced the common hu-
""
139
man depravity to his fall, it declined to call this sin before
it resulted in sinful acts. It asserted the natural ability of
the sinner to do what God's law requires of him, seeing in
him only the moral inability which consists of voluntary
inclination to evil.
A NEW ATMOSPHERE.
Mag
On the other hand, a new theological atmosphere had
begun to pervade the church, thanks especially to the in-
fluence of Professor Henry B. Smith, of Union Seminary,
whom Dr. Archibald Hodge declared to be the greatest
theologian of the American Presbyterian Church.¹ Him-
self a New Englander, he did much to destroy the hegem-
ony of New England in American theology, by bringing
it into relation with the deeper thought of the conservative
and constructive minds of Europe, and by giving this a
shape fitted to American needs. A somewhat similar
standpoint was reached by those who, like Dr. Jonathan
F. Stearns, went back to the first fount of Protestant teach-
ing in the writings of Luther and Calvin, and learned to
appreciate the worth of their thought.2
At the same time the old-school church was unable to
maintain the rigidity it had put on before and during the
division of the church. One of the points especially at
issue in the controversies of that time had been the nat-
W
SA
1 Dr. J. H. Good, of the (German) Reformed Church, is my authority for
this. He had it from Dr. Hodge himself.
2 See Dr. Stearns's sermon on Justification by Faith, preached before the
Synod of New York and New Jersey, October 20, 1852, and published by
direction of the Synod. "I know it will be alleged that great improvements
have been made in the nineteenth century, and why not in theology?
It has
been claimed that our own branch of the church deserves to be held in honor,
as having made valuable modifications of the ancient theology. But, my
brethren, I must confess, I stand greatly in doubt of those modifications.
Some of them, I apprehend, are but adaptations or adjustments to a super-
ficial style of thinking among us, which is neither sound nor destined to
stand the test of the more penetrating style of thinking which a better age
will ere long bring into favor. I am sure we have no modifications sufficient
to erect a school upon, which will not peril the soundness of our foundations."
Dr. Stearns quotes Edwards and Hopkins with great respect, and confesses
his obligations to Archdeacon Hare.
140
[CHAP. XII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
#
ure or extent of the subscription required to the doctrinal
standards of the church. The old-school men made no
discrimination in their discussions which would indicate
any latitude of dissent from even less important state-
ments. Dr. Junkin, in prosecuting Mr. Barnes, repudiated
the very idea. That a new-school man had expressed a
conviction that differed from what the Confession said
was enough to justify his condemnation as unfaithful to
his ordination vows. In the Assembly of 1858, however,
Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge introduced a motion to have
the Board of Publication bring out a commentary on thẹ
Scriptures, which should conform to the teachings of the
Westminster standards. Dr. Charles Hodge, in reviewing
the proposal, wrote of the Confession of Faith:
→
"We could not hold together a week if we made the
adoption of all its propositions a condition of ministerial
communion." "Who is to tell the church's sense of the
Confession? It is notorious that as to that we are not
agreed. In the second place, even as to the points in
which the sense of the Confession is plain, there is want,
of entire concurrence in its reception."
-
2
In justifying this statement he distinguished three modes
of subscription, the first being for substance of doctrine,
the second covering every statement, and the third in-
cluding the truths held (1) by all Christians; (2) by all
Protestants; (3) by Calvinists over against Lutherans,
Arminians, and other Protestants. It is worth while to
compare with this Mr. Barnes's statement of 1836: "The
system of truth contained in the Confession, as distin-
guished from all other systems-the Socinian, the Pela-
gian, the Arian, the Arminian, etc.-has appeared to me
to be the true system, and, without hesitation or fluctua-
tion, I have received it."
Next to doctrinal conformity to the Westminster stand-
TAY
141
ards, in the controversies of 1831-37, the greatest stress
had been laid on the necessity of the ruling eldership to
the right constitution of a congregation. The four Synods
had been exscinded not because of any defect in the stand-
ing of their ministry, but because they admitted to seats
in Synod and Presbytery men who had never been or-
dained to the eldership, and who were no more than elected
representatives of congregations. A prolonged debate in
the old-school Assemblies of 1842-44 brought out the fact
that no agreement had ever been reached as to the nature
of the office, its relation to the pastorate, the necessity of
the presence of elders in the courts of the church, and the
forms by which they should be set apart to their office.
Dr. Hodge, over against his colleague, Dr. Miller, and all
the Scottish and Irish authorities, supported the lower
view of the office, denying it to be of the same order with
the pastorate, defining the elder as a lay representative of
the people, and refusing him ordination by laying on hands.
In that view the committee-men of 1831-37 could hardly
be ruled out as unfit to sit in Synod or Assembly.
A third point of dissension had been the right of church
boards as an essential feature of Presbyterian polity, over
against voluntary societies. But in the Assemblies of 1854
and 1860, Dr. James Henry Thornwell, of the Columbia
(S. C.) Seminary, attacked the boards, with equal truth of
logic and of history, as an excrescence upon synodical
government, which had no warrant in Scripture or the
standards of the church. In his defense of the boards
Dr. Hodge took much lower ground than had been held
in 1837. He simply asserted the right of the church to
govern her action by expediency in the selection or or-
ganization of her agencies.
ELDERSHIP AND BOARDS.
In contrast to the old-school church, the new-school
showed its Puritan affinities by a moral rigorism in disci-
!
142
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XII.
pline, and an exaction of theological subscription from its
entire membership. Elaborate and exacting covenants
and confessions were prescribed by their sessions for those
who were admitted to communicant membership. Promis-
cuous dancing, card-playing, and other "worldly amuse-
ments" were sharply dealt with. While both churches
proclaimed their acceptance of revival methods, there was
some foundation for the claim that the new-school church
was preeminent in this respect, as being more thoroughly
pervaded by the spirit of the Awakening, and less affected
by the earlier Presbyterian tradition.
Of the two churches it was the old-school which made
the most rapid progress during the period of their separate
existence. It was slightly in the majority at the time of
the separation, and decidedly so at the outbreak of the
war. This was due in part to the greater vigor and effi-
ciency of its agencies in the home field, and their control
by the church itself. Much more was due to the altered
attitude of the Congregationalists. They also had felt the
impulse to make more of their historic past, and to draw
more firmly the lines of denominational distinction. They
were dissatisfied with seeing their membership outside of
New England absorbed by Presbyterian churches, and their
churches by Presbyteries. In the new and growing States
of the Northwest they now fought to their own hand, build-
ing up State Associations of their own churches, and in
some cases reclaiming from the new school those who be-
longed to them by birthright. At last, in 1852, a national
convention of the Congregationalist churches met at Al-
bany, N. Y., and voted the discontinuance of the Plan of
Union, thus drawing the denominational line firmly and
permanently.¹ Thus the two systems drew apart ecclesi-
-
-
1 Over against the losses to Congregationalism by the Plan of Union
might be placed the losses to Presbyterianism of nearly all its New England
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP.
143
astically just at the time when their theological contact
was coming to an end through the development of a more
independent activity in the Presbyterian churches.
Until after the division of 1837, American Presbyteri-
anism made no important addition to the literature of
theology. Able preachers there were-Davies, Tennant,
Mason, Griffin, Kollock, Larned, John Breckinridge, and
others—and sound practical writers, such as Dickinson,
Green, Miller, and the Alexanders. But there was no
such succession of notable names as New England con-
tributed to the history of theology from the time of Presi-
dent Edwards—perhaps I should say of Hooker and Shep-
ard-onward.
It was in the year 1841 that Edward Robinson, of the
new Union Seminary, published his " Biblical Researches,"
which, as Carl Ritter said, "opened the second great era
of our knowledge of the Promised Land." It constitutes,
along with his " Later Researches" (1856) and his "Phys-
ical Geography of the Holy Land” (1865), the greatest
contribution to biblical literature America has made, as
Dr. William M. Thomson's "The Land and the Book"
(1859 and 1882-86) furnishes the best popular work on
the same subject. Dr. Robinson's name is associated with
one of those revisions to which the text of the English
Bible has been frequently subjected since King James's
time, as he was a member of the Committee on Versions,
supervising the work, which was executed by Dr. Jas.
W. McLane, of Brooklyn. Without touching the transla-
tion itself, this eliminated from the headings of the chap-
·
churches, through the operation of a legal code created for the benefit of
Congregationalism. As the laws of the New England States recognized no
higher ecclesiastical authority than that of the local congregation, as soon
as any disagreement with Presbytery occurred, a disaffected majority in the
congregation, however much in the wrong, could vote itself from under that
jurisdiction, and set up as a Congregationalist parish, perhaps in opposition
to all or a majority of the communicants.
144
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XII.
!
ters expressions which amounted to a comment on the
text, conformed the New Testament to the Old in the
spelling of proper names, and got rid of manifest errors
in the use of capitals, italics, and punctuation marks.
Slight as was the revision embodied in this standard text
(1851), it was attacked as a breach of faith on the part of
the society by Dr. A. C. Coxe-now Bishop Coxe-in
1856. On the motion of Dr. R. J. Breckinridge the old-
school Assembly condemned the revision and directed its
Board of Publication to print a Bible with the unrevised
text of 1611. By this action the Bible Society was obliged
to return to the old text.1
On the old-school side biblical scholarship was finely
represented by Professor Addison Alexander, of Princeton
a man of sound judgment and remarkable openness to
the results of modern scholarship. The notes of George
Bush on the Old Testament-written before he became a
Swedenborgian-and of Melanchthon W. Jacobus on the
New, like those of Mr. Barnes, were for popular rather
than scholarly readers.
In dogmatic theology Dr. Charles Hodge exerted the
greatest influence, indoctrinating several generations into
the "Princeton theology." The graciousness of his per-
sonal influence compensated the deficiencies of his histor-
ical training and the lack of coherence at times in his log-
ical demonstrations. His commentaries may be regarded
as subsidiary to his dogmatics, which as yet reached the
1 In this discussion, and those over the radical Revision of later days,
great stress is laid upon the phrase
the phrase "Authorized Version." By whom was it
authorized? Not by King James, nor by the convocation or episcopate of the
Church of England; not the Kirk of Scotland, which authorized the Genevan
version, and never any other. In Presbyterian law the version of 1611 is an
unwarranted innovation, for which nothing but prescription and acquiescence
can be pleaded. But the old-school church, in the case of the Plan of Union,
ruled that prescription and acquiescence imparted no validity to the act of the
Assembly of 1801, since that act was ultra vires. Much less can they serve as
an authorization in the absence of any formal act.
CHURCH HISTORY.
145
public only through the "Princeton Review." In this he
carried on a vigorous polemic with Professor Edwards A.
Park, of Andover. Of Professor H. B. Smith's work at
Union I have spoken already. A worthy third was Pro-
fessor James H. Thornwell, of Columbia (S. C.) Seminary,
who combined with the glowing eloquence of a Southern
orator a strength of reasoning second to none of his day.
Dr. Samuel J. Baird, in "The Elohim Revealed” (1860),
set forth the older realistic Calvinism, in contrast to both
Princeton and the new school. Dr. Robert J. Breckin-
ridge in his "Knowledge of God, Objectively and Sub-
jectively Considered" (1857-59), presents a philosophical
theology of the most decided old-school orthodoxy, but
without marked originality.
In the field of church history Dr. Schaff, then in the
German Reformed Church, was breaking new ground in
the face of much ultra-Protestant criticism and opposition.
Presbyterians were attempting little, having hardly awak-
ened to the importance of the subject. Some biographies,
such as that of Dr. Rogers by Dr. Miller, and autobiogra-
phies, like those of Addison Alexander, Thomas Cleland,
and Ashbel Green, constituted valuable contributions to
American church history. But the plan of the General
Assembly to secure and publish a history of each of its
Synods and Presbyteries had fallen through, although some
of these were actually prepared. Most important were
Dr. William B. Sprague's “ Annals of the American Pul-
pit" (9 vols., 1857-69), which lay the church historians
of America under inestimable obligations. Dr. Robert
Baird's "Religion in America" (1843-44 and 1856), al-
though prepared with a view to European readers, was a
really excellent account, historical and statistical, of the
American churches. The works of Dr. Hodge (1839-40),
Dr. William Hill (1839), and Mr. Webster (1858), Dr. Archi-
1
146
[CHAP. XII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
A
bald Alexander's" Log College" (1845), Dr. William Henry
Foote's "Sketches of North Carolina and of Virginia" (3
vols., 1846–55), and Dr. Davidson's "History of the Church
in Kentucky" (1847) are all books of lasting importance.
In the field of practical theology the number of writers
was very great, but not so that of those whose books have
achieved a permanent place. The introspective character
imparted especially to this literature by the Awakening
makes it less acceptable to our own generation. The best-
known books were David Nelson's "Cause and Cure of
Infidelity" (1836); Thomas H. Skinner's "Aids to Preach-
ing and Hearing" (1839); Dr. Charles Hodge's "The Way
of Salvation" (1841); Ichabod S. Spencer's "A Pastor's
Sketches" (1850-53); Dr. James W. Alexander's “Con-
solation" (1852); Dr. Erskine Mason's "A Pastor's Leg-
acy" (1853); and Albert Barnes's "The Atonement "
(1859). In the adjacent field of hymnody the beginning
made by President Davies was followed up by Dr. James
W. Alexander in his fine renderings from the German (col-
lected, 1861); by Professor Henry Mills, of Auburn, in ren-
dering from both Latin (1840) and German (1845 and 1856);
and by Drs. N. S. S. Beman and Edwin H. Hatfield, Rev.
George Duffield and Thomas S. Hastings, with original
hymns. American Presbyterians, however, as hymn-writ-
ers, were and are both less notable and less productive
than the Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Baptists, or
Unitarians. They contributed little to the rapid develop-
ment of poetry and imaginative prose which characterized
the national life at this time.
The smaller Presbyterian bodies experienced important
changes during this period. There was the usual tale of
petty strifes and divisions, but, along with these, most cheer-
ing evidence that the Spirit of wisdom, unity, and a sound
mind had not deserted the church. In 1843 discontent
reunion of seceders.
147
with the action in a disciplinary case caused a short-lived
secession from the Associate Synod, which called itself
the "Free Presbytery of Miami," but went to pieces in
two years. Longer lived was the secession of 1844 from
the Associate Presbytery of Philadelphia, which took the
name of that Presbytery, but was popularly known as the
Websterite party. The cause of the division was partly
the refusal of the Associate Presbytery and Synod to con-
demn that true saint, Dr. Thomas P. Cooper, for teaching
that the Holy Spirit acts immediately in regeneration, and
not by means of the Word, and partly dissatisfaction with
the changes in the Westminster Confession made by the
Synod in 1840. This new body was dissolved in 1858,
some of its ministers returning to the Seceders, while others
went to the Covenanters (N. S.). The Reformed Dissent-
ing Presbytery, which had withdrawn from the Associate
Reformed Synod in 1801, found a home in the Associate
Synod in 1852. The Bullions secession of 1840 from the
Associate Church came to an end in 1854, when its four
Presbyteries, with over twenty-five hundred communicants,
returned to the Associate Synod. The death of Mr. Lusk
in 1845 dissolved for a time the little Reformed Presby-
tery of North America, as it left David Steele alone in its
ministry. But it afterward was revived.
The most important and happy change was the union
of the great body of the American Seceders in a single
General Assembly. As early as 1837 the Reformed Pres-
byterians (N. S.) asked for conference with the Associate
and Associate Reformed Churches with a view to organic
union. This wing of the Covenanters, having abandoned
"political dissent," seemed to feel that the precedent of
1782, which brought the Associate Reformed Church into
existence, might well be followed. The Associate Re-
formed Church, however, like the Presbyterian Church,
148
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XII.
had altered the statements of the Confession of Faith as
regards the functions of the civil magistracy, and it now
refused to go back to the very strong statements of the
Westminster divines as to the power of civil rulers for the
reformation of the church, the maintenance of sound doc-
trine, and the punishment of heresy. The other two
churches had not made the change, nor could the Cove-
nanters (N. S.) be induced to do so. The Associate Synod
in 1840 agreed to the alteration, and by 1844 a plan for a
United Presbyterian Church was in readiness for adoption.
It was not found acceptable, yet the conferences continued
until 1849. Even after they ceased the two Seceder
churches continued correspondence on the subject, and in
1857 the Associate Synod proposed a basis of union which
was adopted by the other Synod. This provided for a com-
mon modification of the Confession and a “judicial testi-
mony" against prevalent errors, including slave-holding,
oath-bound secret societies, open communion, and hymn-
singing. It was approved by the Presbyteries of both,
with the exception of the Associate Presbytery of north-
ern Indiana. Thus was formed the United Presbyterian
Church of North America. A small minority of the As-
sociate Synod entered protest, declined the union, and,
later in the same year, reorganized the Associate Synod.
Similarly a small minority of the Associate Reformed Synod
refused to enter the union, and organized the Associate
Reformed Synod of New York, with two Presbyteries and
sixteen ministers.
During the negotiations with the Seceders a strong de-
sire for organic union with them was developed in the
Covenanter Church, which had taken the first step. The
approach of the union of 1858 awakened the hope that
all three churches would be included. A conference was
held at Chambersburg before the meeting of the General
•
RIGIDITY RELAXED.
149
Synod, at which the leading men resolved against union.
As one of them expressed it, they resolved that "the Re-
formed Presbyterian Church should march into the millen-
nium with banners displayed." This decision contributed
to the subsequent disorganization of the body.
Among these smaller bodies, with the exception of the
Reformed Presbytery, there was a gradual and partial re-
laxation of the disciplinary rigidity of earlier times. The
rule against " occasional hearing" was generally abandoned
among the Seceders, and plays no part in the union of
1858; and it disappeared also among the (N. S.) Covenant-
ers. The stricter Covenanters, now known as those of the
Synod in contrast to the General Synod, found it hard to
maintain the rule in the cities. Thus in Philadelphia in
1859 young people of their churches would go to hear
Mr. Grattan Guinness preach. They submitted passively
to the discipline inflicted by the sessions, and then went
again. Discontent also was shown with the rule forbid-
ding funeral services.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE WAR FOR THE UNION AND TWO SECESSIONS,
1861-70.
THIS decade, 1861-70, was as memorable in the history
of the Presbyterian Church as in that of the nation. It
opened with a division and closed with a reunion which
constitute the last notable changes in the contour of
American Presbyterianism.
When the old-school Assembly met in Philadelphia in
May, 1861, eight of the Southern States had declared their
severance from the federal Union, and the war between
their Confederate government and that of the nation had
been in progress for about a month, though chiefly in the
way of preparation for active hostilities. No one, who did
not live through it, could realize the swift change from
uncertainty and irresolution to enthusiastic decision which
had passed over the country in a few days. After the
first shot fired on the national flag, men had looked into
each other's eyes to find reflected there a passion of patri-
otism of which they had not thought themselves capable.
This united all parties for the time, and the least military
of peoples was rapidly converting itself into an army.
Naturally this atmosphere could not be excluded from
the ecclesiastical assemblages of that and the following
years. Even the Peace Society had to pronounce for
"vigorous police measures" for the maintenance of the
national authority. Especially those bodies which had
150
THE ASSEMBLY OF 1861.
151
held an ambiguous position in relation to the South were
expected to show on which side they stood, just as the
mobs who swept the streets of the great cities after Fort
Sumter was fired on made special demand for the hoisting of
the flag over churches and hotels which had been believed
to be in sympathy with the seceding States. The old-
school Assembly, from its large affiliations with the South,
much more than from its utterances with regard to slavery
66
as that, in the North, was not yet an issue of the struggle
was among the bodies which were expected to speak
out against a movement the American people regarded
as morally wicked no less than politically ruinous. Mr.
McCormick, the inventor of the reaper and the founder of
the Northwestern Seminary, was accustomed to speak of
the old-school church and the Democratic party as the
two hoops which held the Union together." The saying
reflected the popular feeling that that church had a polit-
ical importance, and the new administration in Washing-
ton is said to have intimated that a declaration for loyalty
would strengthen the hands of the national government,
especially in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.
It was
equally certain that such a declaration would be especially
irritating to the Confederate authorities, as showing that
the unexpected enthusiasm for the maintenance of the na-
tional unity had pervaded even the bodies least liable to
be actuated by any slight or passing emotion.
The border-State Presbyteries were fully represented in
the Assembly, and there were a few delegates, also, from
the States which had declared themselves out of the Union.
These were men like Dr. E. Thompson Baird, of Missis-
sippi, who held to the hope that the church might main-
tain its unity in spite of political separation. Many in the
Northern delegations agreed with them in deprecating all
discussion and action with regard to the political situation.
152
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIII.
These made a strong party, yet they were decidedly in
the minority.
The first note was struck by the venerable Dr. Gardiner
Spring, for more than half a century the pastor of the
Brick Church in New York. The retiring moderator, Dr.
Yeomans, asked him to offer prayer before the annual ser-
mon, and the old man poured out his heart for the preser-
vation of the Union. The party of silence scored a point
in the selection of Dr. John C. Backus, of Baltimore, to the
moderatorship, as will appear in the contrast between the
action of the Assembly and the report of its committee.
As the session proceeded it was seen that all the former
leaders of the body were following the policy of silence,
and a number of the less prominent men invited Dr. Spring
to prepare and offer a resolution. He was among the
most conservative men in the church, and his utterances
on the slavery question mostly had been in the shape of
denunciations of the abolitionists. He had united with
thirty-five leading ministers of his own way of thinking in
an appeal to the ministers and churches of the South, just
after South Carolina had adopted the Act of Secession,
assuring them of fraternal love and confidence, and invit-
ing them to united prayer to “ avert the horrors of fratri-
cidal war." But when the war came, after he had heard
a Southern Senator declare there were no terms on which
the South would consent to stay in the Union, he thought
himself obligated by his duty to the country to work for
its preservation from destruction by the hands of its own
children.
It certainly was not with the intention of obtaining ex-
treme or radical action that the majority put their case
into Dr. Spring's hands. Nor was his proposal offensive
in its manner or extreme in its matter. On the sixth day
of the session, after repeated failures to have the subject
the spring resolutions.
153
referred to a special committee to prepare a deliverance,
he offered a preamble and Resolutions providing for a day
of fasting and prayer that God might " turn away his anger
from us and speedily restore to us the blessings of an hon-
orable peace." It proceeded, "in the spirit of Christian
patriotism,” to “acknowledge and declare our obligations
to promote and perpetuate, so far as in us lies, the integ-
rity of these United States, and to strengthen, uphold, and
encourage the Federal Government in the exercise of all
its functions under our noble Constitution; and to this
Constitution, in all its provisions, requirements, and prin-
ciples, we profess our unabated loyalty.'
The source from which the proposal came added so
much to its weight that the advocates of silence secured
the postponement of the discussion for two days. These
Dr. Henry A. Boardman and others employed in urging Dr.
Spring to withdraw or modify the paper, but without effect.
After three days of heated debate, the paper, with two
substitutes for it, was referred to a committee of nine, who
reported-eight to one-for the policy of silence. Dr.
William C. Anderson, of San Francisco, who constituted
the minority, reported back Dr. Spring's Resolutions with
a slight modification; and these, after renewed debate,
were adopted finally by a vote of 156 to 66, with a rider
offered by Dr. Jonathan Edwards, of Philadelphia. This
declared that by the term "Federal Government" nothing
else was meant than "the central Administration, which,
being at any time appointed and inaugurated according to
the form prescribed in the Constitution of the United States,
is the visible representative of our national existence.”
To outsiders in that heated time it seemed as though
the Assembly had "roared as gently as a sucking dove."
But the dignified, deliberate terms of the Resolutions ex-
pressed exactly what the best mind of the church was,
154
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIII.
without a word of bitterness or denunciation toward the
South, and therefore they had the greater effect in helping
to draw the line of secession below, and not above, the
border States. To the minority, however, the action was
as unacceptable as possible. Dr. Charles Hodge, a Repub-
lican in politics from the formation of that party until his
death, presented a Protest, which was signed by himself
and fifty-seven others, including the moderators of that
and the previous Assemblies, and the sixteen delegates in
attendance from the seceded States. It admiis, of course,
the right of the Assembly to enjoin upon the ministers and
churches the duty of loyalty and subjection to the powers
that be. It denies its right, in case of a dispute, to de-
cide as to which or what authority has the primary claim
to allegiance, and it asserts that the General Assembly had
made allegiance to the Union, whatever the action of the
State, a term of communion.
Those who stood by the Spring Resolutions had the
whole history of the church, the teaching of the Confes-
sion, and the authority of God's Word on their side. The
Protest implied a condemnation of Knox and of Calvin, of
the Golden Assembly of 1638, of the Westminster Assem-
bly of Divines, of the Revolution Assembly of 1690, and
of the American Synods of 1772-82. It is impossible to
see how Presbyterianism could have perpetuated its exist-
ence on either side of the Atlantic if the Kirk had acted
on the theories of the Hodge Protest, and had renounced
her claim to "treat in an ecclesiastical way of greatest and
smallest matters, from the king's throne, that should be
established in righteousness, to the merchant's balance,
that should be used in faithfulness." The document was
another index of the extent to which the pietism of the
Awakening had displaced the theocratic conception which
lies so near the core of historic Presbyterianism.
155
That good men in the South honestly believed it their
duty to stand by their State against the nation was no
more bar to a deliverance upon the matter than was the
fact that good men had held it their duty to stand by the
Stuart kings in the exercise of a brutal Erastian tyranny,
or by the Pretender in his assertion of his right to the Brit-
ish throne, or by the British government in its claim to
deal with the American colonies in a fashion which would
have extinguished both civil and religious liberty. The
most conscientious conviction may be but the conviction
of an unenlightened conscience, and while the church may
not "intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the com-
monwealth," the Confession makes an exception: "By way
of advice for the satisfaction of conscience."
RELIGION AND POLITICS.
That there was need of such advice in the present case
shows how weakening, on the social side, had been the in-
fluence of the Awakening. It had made even good men
tolerant of the political atheism of the Rousseau and Jeffer-
son school, which saw in a nation nothing higher than a
human contrivance for secular ends, to be formed on such
terms, and dissolved in such emergencies, as its constitu-
ent elements pleased. To those who see in God the giver
of national life and order, the attempt to destroy these, on
whatever pretense, must seem criminal. The readiness,
however, of later Presbyterians to make almost any differ-
ence of opinion an excuse for ecclesiastical separation had
tended so much to lower the feeling of the sacredness of
church unity, that it could not but react upon our political
life in an unhappy way.
-
During the summer and autumn of 1861 the Southern
Presbyteries of the old-school church generally adopted
resolutions renouncing the authority of the General Assem-
bly. In pursuance of an invitation issued by a conven-
tion held at Atlanta, Ga., in August, delegates from ten
156
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIII.
Synods, including forty-seven Presbyteries, met in Au-
gusta, Ga., and constituted the first General Assembly of
"the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of
America." It chose as moderator Dr. Benjamin M. Palmer,
whose Fast-day Sermon of 1860 had placed him in the
front rank of the advocates of secession, and of whom
a Confederate general said that "his services were worth
more to the cause than a soldiery of ten thousand men.
""
It has been asserted, and no doubt sincerely, that oppo-
sition to the Spring Resolutions, on the grounds presented
in Dr. Hodge's Protest, was the efficient cause of this sep-
aration. But the whole manner, scope, and circumstances
of the transaction show that its causes were purély polit-
ical. It was a secession from the minority as well as the
majority of the General Assembly-from Drs. Hodge,
Backus, and Yeomans, no less than from Drs. Spring,
Anderson, and Edwards. No offer of coöperation and
union was held out to those who had protested against
the Spring Resolutions. On the contrary, the title taken
by the new body ruled them out of its communion with
the utmost distinctness. That title crystallized the new
church along the lines of a political division, not those of
ecclesiastical principle. It excluded even the churches
and Presbyteries of the border States, so long as it re-
mained the style of the Southern church. When the
United Synod cast in its lot with that church, its Presby-
tery of Lexington, Ky., was left out necessarily, and
sought readmission to the new-school Assembly.
Neither did the Spring Resolutions afford any reasonable
ground for separation. They enunciated no new doctrine
and subverted no principle of Presbyterian order. They
merely passed upon a question of social duty according to
the best light the Assembly had, whether right or wrong;
and such a deliverance in thesi has no binding force upon
J
157
the consciences of either members or judicatories of the
church. Dr. Hodge and his co-protesters, indeed, declared
that they had erected a new term of communion, and Dr.
Palmer denounced them as "virtually exscinding" the
Southern churches; but both wrote unadvisedly and under
the influence of excitement.
THE CONFEDERATE CHURCH.
If the policy of silence had been followed by the Gen-
eral Assembly, the question of a separation could have
been put off only for a brief time. Political separation
always has carried ecclesiastical division with it in the
sphere of Protestantism. Even the Protestant Episcopal
Church, in which the policy of silence was systematized,
went apart while the war lasted. As soon as the seceding
States satisfied themselves that their experiment was a
success and that their Confederacy was to last, they would
have adjusted their ecclesiastical arrangements to the new
lines. That assurance they reached so early that it is
doubtful if the Spring Resolutions even hastened the action
of the Southern Presbyterians. This first Southern Assem-
bly itself said: "It is desirable that each nation should
contain a separate and independent church, and the Pres-
byteries of the Confederate States need no apology for
bowing to the decree of Providence, which, in withdrawing
their country from the government of the United States,
has, at the same time, determined that they should with-
draw from the church of their fathers.” 1
1 From the very frank and able" Address by the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America to all the Churches of
Jesus Christ throughout the Earth, unanimously adopted at their sessions in
Augusta, Ga., December, 1861." It was prepared by Dr. Thornwell, and
is reprinted in his works. It also says:
"We frankly admit that the mere unconstitutionality of the proceedings of
the last Assembly is not, in itself considered, a sufficient ground of separa-
tion. It is the consequences of these proceedings which make them so
offensive. It is the door they open for the introduction of the worst pas-
sions of human nature into the deliberations of church courts."
"The Northern section of the church stands in the awkward predicament
158
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIII.
>
It was the collapse of the Confederate States which
gave those Resolutions permanent significance as a reason
for maintaining the separation of 1861 within the bounds.
of the same nation. But for that they would now have lit-
tle more than an antiquarian interest, and for that purpose
they are badly overworked. That the Southern church
did not plant itself upon the ground taken in the Hodge
Protest was shown by deliverances, far more explicit than
the Spring Resolutions, in frankest support of the Confed-
erate States. Thus, to quote one of several, the South-
ern Assembly of 1862, in its "Narrative of the State of
Religion," says: "All the Presbyteries which have re-
ported dwell upon the absorbing topic of the war in which
we are now engaged. . . . All the Presbyterial narratives,
without exception, mention the fact that their congregations
have evinced the most cordial sympathy with the people.
of the Confederate States in their efforts to maintain their
cherished rights and institutions against the despotic power
which is attempting to crush them." The Assembly of
1864, besides adopting a report which contained an un-
mistakable condemnation of protection and approval of free
trade, in its "Narrative of the State of Religion" says:
"The long-continued agitations of our adversaries have
wrought within us a deeper conviction of the divine ap-
pointment of domestic servitude, and have led to a clearer
comprehension of the duties we owe to the African race.
We hesitate not to affirm that it is the peculiar mission of
of maintaining, in one breath, that slavery is an evil which ought to be
abolished, and of asserting, in the next, that it is not a sin to be visited by
exclusion from communion of the saints. The consequence is that it plays
partly into the hands of the abolitionists and partly into the hands of the
slave-holders, and weakens its influence with both. It is a prevaricating
witness whom neither party will trust.
""
"In our ecclesiastical capacity we are neither the friends nor the foes of
slavery; that is to say, we have no commission either to propagate or to
abolish it."
REUNION IN THE SOUTH.
159
the Southern church to conserve the institution of slavery,
and to make it a blessing to both master and slave."
The new church at once adopted a vigorous home and
foreign missionary and educational policy. It took charge
of the missionary work among those tribes in the Indian
Territory whom General Albert Pike had persuaded to
cast in their lot with the Confederacy, through their sym-
pathy with it as slave-holders. Following out the policy
defended by Dr. Thornwell before the division, it dispensed
with "boards," and placed its work in charge of executive
committees invested with less discretionary power and more
directly responsible to the synodical bodies which consti-
tute Presbyterian government.
In 1863 it received the Independent Presbyterian
Church, a body of thirteen churches and four ministers, all
in South Carolina. This had been formed in 1811 by Wil-
liam C. Davis and his followers. He had been deposed
for the heresies contained in his book, "The Gospel Plan"
(1809), by the Presbytery of Orange in 1811; and as both
Synod and Assembly had already condemned the teach-
ings of his book, he withdrew without appeal. In 1833
the General Assembly had censured those in its own ju-
risdiction who held communion with him, as he was a de-
posed minister. On their profession of their acceptance
of the Confession, the Southern Assembly admitted them
without reordination of their ministers.
The next year a union was formed with the United
Synod (N. S.). This was on the basis of a doctrinal state-
ment which covered the grounds of difference of 1837; and
the new-school men of the South, by accepting it, showed
that either they had shifted their ground in the meanwhile,
or else that they never were in agreement with those who
drafted the Auburn Declaration. This, however, is denied
by some of them to this day.
160
[CHAP. XIII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Presbyterians of both Scotch-Irish and New England
stock had their full share in the burdens and achievements
of the war on both sides. The first blood shed was that of
Surgeon (afterward General) Crawford, who was wounded.
in the face during the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
He was a son of Dr. S. Wylie Crawford, of the Covenanter
(N. S.) Church. In the South, the men of the Scotch-
Irish race occupied the Appalachian chain and its upland
valleys, where the plantation was unknown and slave-hold-
ers rare. They were therefore out of sympathy with the
policy of their wealthier neighbors, and in general attached
strongly to the Union. In West Virginia they cut loose
from the Confederacy, and reëntered the Union as a new
State. In western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and
adjacent parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama
they offered resistance to the measures taken to draft them
into the Confederate army. Hence it was that, next to
the opening of the Mississippi, the seizure of Chattanooga
in eastern Tennessee was the chief strategic point of the
war, as it gave the national army a basis of operations.
among a friendly people, from which the line of the coast
States could be cut in any direction. But, for the reasons
already stated (pp. 69–71), only a fraction of this Scotch-
Irish population had remained in the Presbyterian com-
munion.
Like almost all wars, that for the Union brought with
it elements of demoralization and spiritual decline. The
great cities especially suffered in the injury to public order
which attends the preparation and conduct of hostilities.
The churches in many cases suffered in the diversion of
their attention and energies to "things seen and tempo-
tal"; and the duties of loyalty were often preached in a
way which lowered the tone of the church, while it alien-
ated many who had not acquired the new enthusiasm for
-
REVIVALS IN THE ARMIES.
161
the Union, and, in later years, that for the suppression of
slavery. In a host of cases Presbyterian churches were
divided for this reason, the seceding minority commonly
organizing as an Episcopalian congregation. That church,
by a reverse of policy, gained more members in the War
for the Union than it had lost in that for Independence.
But there were compensations. There was a distinct
deepening of tone in the public utterances of the time, an
ampler and more sincere recognition of the authority of
God as the Ruler of nations, a new sense of the sacred-
ness of the public order and unity of the nation as the gift
of God. It was felt that war itself was a solemn appeal
to the divine arbitration, and even the blasphemies of
General Hooker but emphasized for thoughtful soldiers
the solemn lessons of the hour of judgment in which they
stood.
The armies themselves were in many cases schools of
the new life to those who entered them. In that of the
Confederate States there was a revival in 1863-64, which
fairly outran the power of the chaplains and volunteer
workers to deal with it. In the army of the United States
the chaplains, with a few unworthy exceptions, were picked
men, whose labors were fruitful of good both while the
war lasted and ever since. They were aided by the labors
of the Christian Commission, in which all the orthodox
churches coöperated in sending preachers, nurses, supplies
for well and wounded, libraries and religious literature
both to the armies in action and to the winter-quarters and
hospitals. The soldiers were kept in touch with home and
under home influences, and were encouraged and helped
to keep up correspondence and to send home a part of
their pay. This kind of work was begun by John Patter-
son, a Presbyterian elder of Philadelphia, by George S.
Griffith, of the German Reformed Church in Baltimore,
1
162
*.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIII.
and by Rev. Benj. W. Chidlaw in the West.
It soon crys-
tallized into a national organization, called into existence
by the national convention of the Young Men's Christian
Associations, which placed George Hay Stuart, who com-
bined practical business abilities with great personal enthu-
siasm, at the head. Of the Presbyterians associated with
him, Dr. Charles Hodge,(Stephen Colwell, William E. Dodge,
and Joseph Patterson deserve mention here, though not
more notable than the representatives of other denomi-
nations.
M

While the New Side Covenanters gave a leader to this
work of Christian benevolence, the Old Side found it hard
to maintain the attitude of "political dissent" in circum-
stances which so strongly enlisted their sympathies on the
side of the nation. No American church was more pro-
nounced in its abhorrence of slavery; none cherished so
strong a sense of the sacredness of national life. Their
Synod declared: "It is seldom in the history of war that
the right is so entirely on one side, and wrong on the other,
as in the present case. . . . In this great struggle for the
preservation of law and order against disloyalty and trea-
son, we may readily distinguish between the welfare of
the country on the one hand and the sinful character of
the Constitution, and its imperfect administration, on the
other." But so long as an oath of allegiance to the Con-
stitution was imposed upon the soldier, they could but
offer prayers and sympathy, while the fighting instincts of
Drumclog and Pentland Hills were hot within them. The
Synod of 1863 made a proffer to the government of a form
of oath pledging the recruit to be "faithful to the United
States" and yield “all due obedience to military orders.”
Against this ten voted; and two entered protest against
approval of a war whose “declared purpose was the
maintenance and defense of the Constitution."
""
"C
As the
163
oath of allegiance ceased to be required of the soldiers,
the matter was dropped, and the Synod's approval was
rescinded. Secretary Stanton, through his employment.
in the Pittsburg lawsuit of 1848 (p. 103), understood their
difficulties, and did all in his power to facilitate their
serving in the army.
The close of the war brought with it the necessity for
a change in the style of the Southern church, which now
took the name the "Presbyterian Church in the United
States." It had suffered heavily, as had the South, from
the devastations of the war, and the loss of both men and
means. Churches, in some cases, had broken up, never to
gather again. Wounds and the diseases of camp and
march had thinned out its membership. Many wealthy
families had been reduced to complete poverty by the loss
of their slaves and other property. But, like the South
generally, it took up the burdens of rebuilding with spirit
and energy.
It was soon to be reinforced largely by accessions
of Presbyteries and churches in the border States, who
had suffered less, or not at all, in the years of war. The
people of these States, so far as slavery was concerned,
generally were in sympathy with the South, but were
opposed to the dissolution of the Union, as that, indeed,
would have imperiled their interests by reopening the Afri-
can slave-trade. For a time they tried to maintain a neu-
tral attitude, but ultimately they found themselves within
the national military lines. After the war had ended they
felt themselves aggrieved by the abolition of slavery through
the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which
affected only them. They also had had to bear a large
share of the severely repressive measures which the ad-
ministration had thought necessary for the effective con-
duct of the war.
THE BORDER STATES.
G
164
+
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
1
[CHAP. XIII.
Most unfortunately, some of these measures had been of
a character which involved the churches both needlessly
and wrongfully. The officers commanding the military
districts undertook to suppress anything that seemed an
ecclesiastical expression of sympathy with the Confederate
cause, and that often with more vehemence than discretion.
The first case which attracted general attention was that
of Dr. S. B. McPheeters, pastor of the Pine Street Church
in St. Louis. He had twice taken the oath of allegiance
to the national government, and had abstained strictly from
what he called "political preaching and praying." He
had defended the policy of silence on civil questions in
the Assembly of 1862 against Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge,
and he practiced it for himself. He had people of both
ways of thinking in his congregation, and he labored to
give offense to neither.
Unfortunately, one of his congregation presented a child
for baptism, and gave the name of a Confederate com-
mander, who was especially detested by the Unionists of
the State on account of his raids across its southern bor-
der. Dr. McPheeters, under the Constitution of the church,
had no choice but to give the child that name, as he also
must have done if the name specified to him had been
Abraham Lincoln or Charles Sumner. The transaction,
however, was like a spark in a powder-magazine, as things
then stood. Some of the Unionists of the congregation
made their appeal to the provost-marshal general of the
Department of the Missouri, alleging against their pas-
tor no more than this act, and that he prayed for "kings
and all in authority," and not specifically for the Presi-
dent of the United States. Thereupon General F. A.
Dick issued an order (December 19, 1862) banishing Dr.
McPheeters and his wife out of the military district on
the plea of "unmistakable evidence of sympathy with the
165
Rebellion," forbidding his discharge of ministerial func-
tions in the meantime, and requiring that they leave the
State in ten days, and "take up their residence within the
free States north of Indianapolis and west of Pittsburg."
At the same time the " edifice, books, and papers" of the
Pine Street Church were handed over to “ the control of
three loyal members, who shall see that its pulpit be
filled by a loyal minister of the gospel.
""
G
Dr. McPheeters, within a week after, went to Washington
and laid the case before Mr. Lincoln. The President at once
ordered a modification by which Dr. McPheeters and his
family were allowed to continue in Missouri, and a few
days later (January 2, 1863) he wrote to General Curtis,
commanding in the district, that "the United States gov-
ernment must not, as by this order," relating to Dr. Mc-
Pheeters, "undertake to run the churches. When an in-
dividual in the church or out of it becomes dangerous to
the public interest he must be checked; but the churches,
as such, must take care of themselves. It will not do for
the United States to appoint trustees, supervisors, or other
agents for the churches." This letter he meant as dispos-
ing of the case in the sense Dr. McPheeters desired, and
in principle it did so. But the military authorities of the
district seem to have resolved that nothing less than a
specific and categorical order, naming him by name, was
obligatory upon them. He remained under their ban, for-
bidden to attend his Presbytery or Synod, shut out of his
pulpit, and refused leave even to officiate at a marriage or
a funeral, until the President wrote a second letter, nearly
a year later (December 22, 1863), reinforcing the first.
"I have never," he said, "interfered, or thought of inter-
fering, as to who shall or shall not preach in any church;
nor have I knowingly or believingly tolerated any one else
so to interfere by my authority."
"RUNNING THE CHURCHES.”
•
***
166
[CHAP. XIII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Nearly four months after this, however, General Rose-
crans, the new commander of the district, issued an order
(March 8, 1864) requiring every ecclesiastical body with-
in the district to ascertain whether any of their number
had not taken the oath of allegiance within a time speci-
fied, and to exclude those who had not, under penalties of
martial law. It was believed, on what evidence I cannot
learn, that this action had been instigated by ministers and
elders of the church, by way of badgering those of their
brethren who differed from them in politics. Nor can I
find any evidence that Mr. Lincoln's attention was ever
called to it by those who had benefited by his letter.
Dr. McPheeters, and those who agreed with him as to the
relations of church and state, abstained from attending under
the circumstances, leaving the Presbytery of St. Louis in the
hands of a minority-eighteen out of sixty members-which
proceeded to dissolve the pastoral relation existing between
him and the Pine Street Church. Complaints against this
action went up to the General Assembly of 1864, from
Dr. McPheeters, his session, and a majority of the minis-
ters and sessions of the Presbytery, on the ground that the
meeting of Presbytery was invalid, its proceedings irregular
and unwarranted. Most unhappily, the Assembly treated
the matter of military interference as a "side issue," and
by 117 to 49 voted not to sustain the appeal, "because.
the proceedings in the Presbytery of St. Louis appear con-
stitutional and regular," "and, being on the ground, and
conversant with all the facts of the case, they seem most
competent to undertake and decide upon what" action
was required by "the disturbed state of the church" in
Pine Street, St. Louis. This was done in the face of the
opposition of passionate Unionists like Dr. George Junkin,
who declared that the independence and spirituality of the
church were at stake.
Alpin
•
167.
This action naturally left a very bad taste in the mouths
of many in the border States. It was not removed by
the deliverances and decisions of the Assembly of 1865,
meeting in Pittsburg a month after the assassination of
President Lincoln, with the sores of the war still unhealed,
and its fruits still ungathered. All the Christian world has
praised the magnanimity with which the American people
dealt with the States that had attempted to destroy the
unity of the nation. But the hour for magnanimity had
not yet struck, nor did the Assembly anticipate it by its
action. It stigmatized secession as a crime, and the with-
drawal of the Southern churches as a schism. It offered
recognition and restoration to such Southern ministers as
would apply for it, and would declare their acceptance of
the deliverances on slavery. It directed the Board of Do-
mestic Missions to treat the South as missionary ground,
and to employ loyal ministers without requiring a Presby-
terial recommendation, where this could not be obtained.
It proceeded to make loyalty, or a confession of repentance
for 'disloyalty, and a rejection of the theory that slavery
is "a divine institution," tests to be exacted both of min-
isters and members who sought to enter the church.
There came before this Assembly a complaint from
Robert P. Farris, of Charles City, Mo., that he and his elder
had been prevented from taking part in the organization
of the Synod of Missouri at its last meeting. The moder-
ator had decided that, in the view of ecclesiastical law,
these gentlemen were members of the Synod, but that in
view of the order of General Rosecrans, with which they
had not complied, he could not allow them to participate
in its proceedings! This decision was reversed after the
Synod had been organized, and the two were allowed to sit.
But it was made a test case, and the Assembly declared
that it was "not called upon to decide anything in regard
THE ASSEMBLY OF 1865.
.168
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIII.
to the propriety or impropriety of the military order re-
ferred to," and dismissed the appeal on technical grounds.
The Protest of Dr. Samuel R. Wilson and other border-
State delegates, in which they spread the Rosecrans Order
on the minutes of the Assembly, was the first step toward
a movement to carry the churches of those States over to
the Southern Assembly, whose jurisdiction was no longer
circumscribed by its title. Following the precedent set in
1835, Dr. Wilson drafted a "Declaration and Testimony"
against all the deliverances of the old-school Assembly—
from the Spring Resolutions of 1861 to those of recent
date-which bore upon political questions, especially the
deliverances on slavery in 1864 and 1865, which it very
truthfully declared to be in contradiction to the deliv-
erance of 1845. It denounced the union of church and
state which had been reached in the prosecution of the
war; the personal proscription of men like Dr. McPhee-
ters; and the virtual excommunication of the whole South-
ern church by the Assembly of 1865. It pledged the
signers to recognize no authority in ecclesiastical decisions
unwarranted by the Scriptures, especially the decisions of
the last two Assemblies on slavery and loyalty, "and with
reference to the conducting of missions in the Southern
States, and with regard to the ministers, members, and
churches in the seceded and border States." This was
signed by fifty-four ministers and one hundred and sev-
enty-three ruling elders, chiefly in the border States, and
was formally adopted by the Presbytery of Louisville, Ky.,
one minister alone dissenting. On the other hand, a con-
vention of ministers and elders for prayer and conference
was held at St. Louis, at the suggestion of Dr. Robert J.
Breckinridge, to counteract the effect of the Declaration
and Testimony. It prepared a Memorial, urging the As-
sembly to stand firmly by its deliverances, and this was
W
169
signed by eighty-four ministers and one hundred and
thirty-four elders, of whom not a score were from the bor-
der States.
The Assembly of 1866 approved the Memorial and or-
dered it to be printed, and then took up the gauntlet of
the Declaration and Testimony people in much the spirit
in which it had been flung down. It condemned that
document as “a slander on the church, schismatical in
character and aims," summoned its signers to the bar of
the next Assembly, excluded them from sitting in church
courts in the meantime, and declared any Presbytery
ipso facto dissolved" that should enroll them, authorizing
the ministers and elders of that Presbytery who adhered
to the Assembly to take charge of the records, retain the
name, and exercise the authority of the Presbytery. This
Gurley Order" was adopted by 196 votes to 37. Several
protests were entered, but one by Dr. Henry A. Board-
man was rejected as disrespectful to the Assembly.
This action, as must have been expected, ran the line of
division through the Presbyteries in the Synods of Ken-
tucky and Missouri. The signers of the Declaration and
Testimony stood by their action; and twelve Presbyteries
divided on the issue of admitting them to seats, and sent
rival delegations to the Assembly of 1867. The Assem-
bly, after hearing two of the signers in their own defense,
by a vote of 261 to 4 admitted the delegations from the
Presbyteries which had acted as the Assembly of 1866 had
directed. Thus two Synods were cut off from connection
with the Assembly, and suits for church property began.
The case of the Walnut Street Church in Louisville was
made a test. The courts of the State decided against the
adherents of the Assembly; but as some of them were
citizens of another State, they were able to take it before
the courts of the United States. Finally the Supreme
66
THE DECLARATION AND TESTIMONY.
(C
wit
170
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIII.
Court of the United States decided the case in favor of the
adherents of the Assembly, on much the same grounds of
ecclesiastical omnipotence as the Pennsylvania decision of
1839.
It was noteworthy that throughout this controversy the
decided old-school men of the border States, and those
who sympathized with them in other parts of the church,
displayed a great liking for the arguments by which the
new-school men had arraigned the Exscinding Acts of
1837. The power of the Assembly to exercise original
jurisdiction, or to condemn without the formality of a trial,
was stoutly denied, and the rights of Presbyteries were as-
serted strongly. On the other hand, I observed that the
new-school men did not find so much comfort in this as
might have been expected. Their sympathies went so
strongly with the majority in the old-school Assembly,
against a party they regarded as but half-loyal, if so much,
that they generally refrained from speaking evil of the
Gurley Order, and of the drastic proceedings to which it
led. In the nearly thirty years which have passed a gentler
spirit has come to prevail, and the acts of the Assemblies
of 1865-67 are not those upon which Presbyterians gener-
ally look back with gratification.
The two Synods thus thrown upon themselves were
really bound by their own principles to maintain their
isolation. The lofty principles of the severance of religion
from politics, of matters ecclesiastical from matters civil,
on which they took their stand, were no more those of the
Southern than of the national Assembly. A perusal of
the minutes of the former during the years of the war
would have furnished them with materials for a Declara-
tion and Testimony quite as long and as acerb as that
which had led to their excision from their own church.
The Missouri Synod, indeed, seemed to feel this, as it per-
CHANGES IN THE SOUTH.
171
petuated its separate existence until 1874. The Kentucky
Presbyteries, which had had no Rosecrans Order to com-
plain of, but had been the loudest in their protests against
the confusion of church and state matters, found their way
to the Southern Assembly in 1868. Once more political
affinities sufficed to modify ecclesiastical convictions.
One effect of their adherence was to strengthen the
work of the Southern church, especially in the home field.
Another was to teach her new modes of speech with re-
gard to public questions, and to impress upon her a con-
ception of "the spirituality of the church," which hardly
can be brought into harmony with the utterances of her
Assemblies, Synods, Presbyteries, and pulpits during the
war. But by withdrawing from the old-school church the
element which stood nearest to the South, it put off the
day of reconciliation with the Presbyterians of that section.
The Southern church obtained other accessions during
this period. In 1867 the Associate Reformed Presbytery
of Alabama, and in 1870 that of Kentucky, entered its
communion, the ties of political sympathy proving stronger
than their repugnance to hymn-singing.
}
CHAPTER XIV.
THE REUNION OF THE OLD AND NEW SCHOOL
CHURCHES, 1869-70.
།
THE first effect of the spirit of the new age upon the
American churches was to intensify sectarian feeling. The
next was to awaken a yearning after Christian unity. Dr.
Archibald Alexander, in 1841, "strongly maintained that
there was less and less appearance of amalgamation among
Protestant sects," although he had been watching for sixty
years. It was matter of remark when an evangelist like
Daniel Baker preached the gospel of love wherever he
could find an opening, without reference to any advantage
to his own church. And he had part of his reward in see-
ing two bishops of the Episcopal Church among the fruits
of his Presbyterian labors.
Since 1860, however, there has been a great change of
tone. The separate churches are put upon their defense
to justify their separate existence. The rapid pace at
which our political unity has been reached is felt to be an
adverse criticism upon the persistence of old-world sepa-
rations in our religious life. The war itself, by throwing
men into new associations with their fellow-citizens and
bringing home to them how much they had in common as
men and as Christians, contributed greatly to this. The
high value men learned to place on national unity naturally
and easily led to hopes of a better day when sectarian
172
173
lines would cease to divide us, just as sectional lines were
vanishing.
In the Presbyterian Church this uniting tendency was
felt very early in the war. The old-school Assembly of
1862 took the first step by proposing "a friendly inter-
change of commissioners" between the two Assemblies;
and the new-school Assembly of 1863 responded with
great heartiness. The next step came again from the
same quarter. During the sessions of the old-school As-
sembly of 1864 a reunion conference was held and a paper
adopted and published with the signatures of seventy min-
isters and fifty-three elders. It expressed confidence in
the doctrinal soundness and ecclesiastical orderliness of
both churches, and in the possibility of removing the ob-
stacles to reunion by developing "a spirit of unity and
fraternity."
A REUNION CONFERENCE.
Two years later both the Assemblies met in St. Louis
and found on their tables memorials from their Presbyteries
asking that steps be taken to reunite the churches. Again
the old school took the initiative, expressing an "earnest
desire for reunion at the earliest time consistent with agree-
ment in doctrine, order, and policy, on the basis of our
common standards and the prevalence of mutual love and
confidence,” and proposing a Joint Committee of nine min-
isters and six ruling elders from each body to discuss its
feasibility. Assent on the part of the new school was
unanimous. The men chosen on each side were not from
among the professors but from the working pastors of the
church. Dr. Stearns, on the new-school side, was the
only scientific theologian among them. After two joint
meetings they were able to report to the two Assemblies
of 1869 a plan of reunion, " on the doctrinal and ecclesias-
tical basis of the common standards;" the Confession of
Faith "to be sincerely received" in "its fair historical
174
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIV.
}
sense, as it is accepted by the two bodies, in opposition to
antinomianism and fatalism on the one hand, and to Ar-
minianism and Pelagianism on the other." This was fol-
lowed by a number of articles for effecting the readjust-
ments which would be required by the new condition of
things. This plan they asked to have published for infor-
mation and referred to the Assemblies of 1868 for action.
-
Without waiting for this, Dr. Charles Hodge attacked
the plan in the "Princeton Review" for July, 1867, as-
serting that the new school never had "sincerely received
in their integrity all the doctrines essential to the Reformed
or Calvinistic system," and that less than this as a condi-
tion of union would be "not only inexpedient but morally
wrong." Dr. H.
Dr. H. B. Smith, in the "Presbyterian and
Theological Review," met this charge with a flat contra-
diction. He declared that the new-school church received
the Confession in precisely that "Reformed or Calvinistic
sense" which Dr. Hodge demanded, and that those who
opposed reunion "assumed a most serious responsibility.
His superior historical learning gave great weight to his
affirmations as regards what was "essential to the Re-
formed or Calvinistic system," while his independent atti-
tude within the new-school church (p. 139) made his testi-
mony to its orthodoxy especially important.
Thus far the question had been handled in rather a
gingerly fashion, which seemed to show that those en-
gaged with it were more conscious of the difficulties in
the way than hopeful of overcoming them.
What was
needed was a clear, sharp crystallization of the sentiment
in favor of reunion, and this came from an unexpected
quarter. In the Reformed Presbyterian (N. S.) General
Synod of 1867 a resolution was offered by George H.
Stuart calling a convention of all the Presbyterian churches
to consider the question of a general reunion. The Synod
1
BISHOPS MCILVAINE ANd lee.
175
addressed this invitation to the other national assemblies,
but it was the Presbyteries which acted on it and sent
delegations. Ministers and elders to the number of 263—
162 from the old school, 64 from the new school, 12 from
the United Presbyterians, 12 from the Reformed Presby-
terians (N. S.), 6 from the Reformed Dutch, 6 from the
Cumberland Presbyterians, and I from the Southern Pres-
byterians-assembled in the First Reformed Presbyterian
Church of Philadelphia on November 8, 1867. From first
to last the spirit of peace and of brotherly love seemed
to brood over the proceedings. Men who knew one another
only in the encounters of polemics met face to face. Drs.
Hodge and Smith, fresh from their tourney over the Joint
Committee's plan, found themselves associated lovingly in
prayer and praise for the great object of their debate.
The high tide of feeling was reached when the venerable
Bishops McIlvaine and Lee, at the head of a deputation
from the annual meetings of two of the great evangelical
societies of their church, came to bid the convention “ God-
speed" in its work, and to speak kind words of their Pres-
byterian brethren.
The business of the convention, to propose a basis of
Presbyterian reunion, was intrusted to a committee of one
minister and one elder from each of the churches repre-
sented. They brought in a unanimous report, of which
the second article provided that "in the united church the
Westminster Confession of Faith shall be received and
adopted as containing the system of doctrine taught in the
Holy Scripture." To this Dr. Smith, taking the words
from Dr. Hodge's article in the "Princeton Review,"
proposed an addition: "It being understood that this Con-
fession is received in its proper historical, that is, the Cal-
vinistic or Reformed, sense." On this the delegations.
voted separately, the new school adopting it by 46 to 2.
176
[CHAP. XIV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
This action went a great way to remove the objections
many of the old school had felt. The atmosphere grew
clearer, and the speedy coming of the reunion was now
taken for granted..
Yet when the Joint Committee met the next year, the
difficulties in the way seemed greater than ever.
The old-
school men wanted the Philadelphia Article. The new-
school men were agreed, provided a clause were added
stating that this already was the position held by both
churches; or they were willing to take the original doc-
trinal article of 1867, either with or without Dr. Smith's
amendment. The old school did not like either, but when
asked for an alternative had none to offer. The evident
purpose was to reach a formula, which would be open
to no attack from the conservatives of the old school,
while soothing the susceptibilities of the other church.
These last had been roused by acrimonious resuscitations
of the charges made in 1835-37. At last Dr. Gurley, of
Washington, proposed to supplement the Philadelphia
Article, with Dr. Smith's amendment, by another which
declared:
"It is also understood that various methods of viewing,
stating, explaining, and illustrating the doctrines of the
Confession, which do not impair the integrity of the Re-
formed or Calvinistic system, are to be freely allowed in
the united church, as they have hitherto been allowed in
the separate churches."
This basis the Joint Committee accepted as securing to
the new school theological liberty within the bounds they
themselves had declared to be those they desired, while it
left it free to the reunited church to deal with any whose
teachings exceeded just limits and corresponded to what
the conservatives of the old school declared to be the belief
of radical new-school men. They reported it to the As-
ANSWER TO THE PROTEST.
177
semblies of 1868, adding also to their previous proposals
an agreement acknowledging the right—not the duty—of
Presbyteries "to examine ministers applying for admission
from other Presbyteries." In the new-school Assembly it
was this Tenth Article which roused the most opposition, as
being thoroughly un-Presbyterian in its character, and un-
known to the sister-churches of both Europe and America.
In the old school the opposition centered on the two qualify-
ing amendments to the Philadelphia Article. Even that
which Dr. Smith had framed in Dr. Hodge's words was
felt to be not quite safe for conservatism. Who could
tell how much this appeal to doctrinal history-to a region
of which so little was known-might be made to cover?
When the Assembly finally adopted it by a vote of 185 to
79, a strong minority offered a Protest, drafted by Dr.
Charles Hodge, alleging the lists of errors in the "Memo-
rial" of 1837 as evidence of the doctrinal unsoundness of
the new-school church as a whole. The answer to this
Protest was prepared by Dr. William G. T. Shedd and
adopted by the Assembly. Among other things, it said:
"These very errors, charged by the signers of the Pro-
test as allowed by the new-school Presbyterians, have
already been repudiated by them. The Auburn Conven-
tion, held in 1837, under the influence and doctrinal guid-
ance of that excellent and sound divine, the late Dr.
Richards, specified sixteen doctrinal errors, which contain
the very same latitudinarian and heretical tenets men-
tioned in the Protest, rejected them in toto, and set over
against them sixteen 'true doctrines,' which embrace all
the fundamentals of the Calvinistic creed. This Assembly
regard the 'Auburn Declaration' as an authoritative state-
ment of the new-school type of Calvinism."
It was felt, however, that the situation was critical as
regards the old-school church, unless something more were
178
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIV.
done to conciliate the opposition. It was suggested that
reunion on the basis of "the standards pure and simple"
would meet with less resistance. A resolution proposing
the omission of both the Smith and the Gurley Amend-
ments was adopted, and sent to the other Assembly by a
special delegation. Before it arrived from Albany in
Harrisburg the attendance had fallen below a quorum, and
no action could be taken. So the Joint Committee's basis
alone went down to the Presbyteries in overture, for ap-
proval or rejection. Yet while the new-school Presby-
teries voted approval of this, the old-school Presbyteries
very generally voted their approval of "the standard pure
and simple" basis, which had never been before the new-
school Assembly for action. This was largely in pursuance
of the advice given in the Pittsburg Circular, which was
proposed by Dr. James Allison, of the "Presbyterian Ban-
ner," and signed by Professor A. A. Hodge, Dr. M. W.
Jacobus, Dr. William M. Paxton, and others. As a result
the Plan of Reunion was accepted in one branch and re-
jected in the other.
When the two Assemblies met in New York in 1869,
the zeal of the new school for reunion was visibly cooling.
The manner of procedure on the other side had been un-
satisfactory, if not discourteous. The men who had carried
the Joint Committee's plan through the old-school Assem-
bly had failed to stand by it in the Presbyteries. They
had shown more eagerness to soothe the feelings of those
who had stirred again the bitter waters of 1835-37, than
to carry out the agreement definitely reached. During
the interval between the two Assemblies many unfraternal
and irritating things had been said of new-school men.
The names of Albert Barnes and George Duffield had
been bandied about as those of convicted and condemned
heretics, and security had been asked that in the future
Gal
DR. STEARNS'S SERMON.
179
a
no such men should make their way into the ministry of
the church. Even more offensive than these demands had
been the answers made to them by some who regarded
themselves as excellent friends of reunion. It was implied
that the new-school church had nothing to ask but":
tombstone and an epitaph"; that the body negotiating
under that name was substantially an old-school church;
and that Mr. Barnes stood isolated in its ministry, an un-
venerable relic of an abandoned past. In this light, it was
said, what was the meaning of the hostility shown to the
Gurley Amendment, which assured the lesser church
against undue rigidity on the part of the larger? Why
talk of exacting pledges as unbrotherly and discourteous?
The man whose word is as good as his bond never refuses
to give his bond.
Fortunately for reunion, Dr. Stearns was the retiring
moderator of the new-school Assembly, and in his sermon
he pleaded with all his soul for what had seemed a sink-
ing cause. The churches of the city threw around the
Assembly an atmosphere more friendly to it than they
would have encountered in Philadelphia or Pittsburg.
Union prayer-meetings of the two Assemblies brought
back the lost fervor. A new Committee of Conference
brought in a unanimous report for a reunion of the two
churches on the basis of the standards simply, "each rec-
ognizing the other as a sound and orthodox body, accord-
ing to the principles of the Confession common to both.”
This doctrinal clause alone was to be overtured to the
Presbyteries, the other parts of the basis being converted
into "Concurrent Declarations" of the two Assemblies.
The new-school Assembly once more voted unanimous
approval. In the other Assembly the vote was 285 to 9,
the minority being five ministers and four elders.
The vote of the Presbyteries in the months following
180
[CHAP. XIV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
was in much the same proportion. Every one of the one
hundred and thirteen Presbyteries of the new-school church
voted to approve, and all but three of them unanimously,
the minority in each case being a single member. Of the
one hundred and forty-four Presbyteries of the old-school
church, all but thirteen responded to the overture. Of
these one hundred and twenty-eight voted approval, and
three rejection. Among the minority was Dr. Charles
Hodge, who "rode nine miles to meet the Presbytery in
Cranberry, on October 5, 1869, with the anthrax mali-
tiosissimus on the back of his neck, for the purpose of
casting his final vote against" reunion.
The two Assemblies had adjourned to meet at Pittsburg
on November 10th to consummate the reunion, if it had
been voted by the necessary majority of the Presbyteries.
The proceedings were in the main of a formal or congratu-
latory character. Each Assembly declared the Basis of Re-
union to be of binding force, and declared its own dissolution,
the moderators calling another Assembly to meet in the
First Church in Philadelphia in May, 1870. The members
of the two bodies then met in front of the First Church,
in which the old-school Assembly had been meeting, and,
pairing off, marched, amid great popular enthusiasm, to
the Third Church, in which the new-school Assembly had
held its sessions. Here a reunion ratification meeting was
held, and a joint communion service in the afternoon. At
the former a resolution was adopted to raise $5,000,000
as a thank-offering for the restoration of peace. Pittsburg,
most Scotch-Irish of American cities, had had its share in
the troubles which had divided the church. It now wit-
nessed and approved the transaction which brought the
division to an end.
Upon the Assembly of 1870, meeting in Albert Barnes's
church, devolved the duty of carrying into effect the Con-
I
REUNION CONSUMMATED.
181
current Declarations of 1869. Sixty General Assemblies
had met in the city, forty-four of them before the division,
and most of them in the same church. Of the two retir-
ing moderators Dr. Jacobus took charge of the business
procedure, and Dr. Fowler preached the sermon, in which
he pleaded, on grounds of expediency, for the establish-
ment of personal supervision over the churches, such as
John Knox's superintendents had exercised. Any comfort
Episcopalians might have got from the suggestion was
neutralized by his reference to the "imbecile pulpit" of
that denomination.
The united church was subdivided into thirty-four
Synods, two of them on the mission field, and these were
directed to reorganize the Presbyteries within their bounds.
The Concurrent Declarations had proposed that the theolog-
ical seminaries place themselves under Synodical control.
As there were legal difficulties in the way, the directors of
Union and Princeton Seminaries simultaneously proposed,
the others assenting, that ecclesiastical control should take
the shape of giving the Assembly a veto upon the elec-
tion and removal of professors—an arrangement accepted
promptly as solving a grave difficulty.
The consolidation of the boards was quickly effected, as
the differences which had played so great a part in 1835-
37 had as good as disappeared. The old school, thanks
to Dr. Thornwell's criticisms and Dr. Hodge's concessions,
were no longer of the mind that these organizations were
implied in the apostolic commission. The new school had
found that voluntary societies embracing several denomi-
nations were apt to be sources of disappointment and irrita-
tion. The Boards of Foreign and Home Missions were
located in New York, as that city had not only surpassed
Philadelphia in population, but had acquired greater facil-
ities for prompt communication with both fields.
182
[CHAP. XIV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
The new-school church now terminated its connection
with the American Board, and effected a division of the
mission fields with that body. Ten years before this that
church had given expression to its discontent with an ar-
rangement which had resulted in the existence of but one
genuine Presbyterian church in the foreign field after the
expenditure of millions in missionary operations. They
did not charge the board with any conscious manage-
ment to secure this result; yet they saw in its operations
what was confirmed by the published lectures on Foreign
Missions by Secretary Anderson-indications of the work-
ings of Congregationalist ideals in the management of
mission affairs. In 1859 they had asked that every facil-
ity be given for the formation of missionary Presbyteries;
and although the request was granted, not one such Pres-
bytery appears in the Minutes of 1869, while forty-five
foreign missionaries, including Drs. Thomson and Jessup
of Syria, Dr. Doolittle of China, Mr. Bushnell of Gaboon,
Mr. Bowen of Bombay, and Mr. Wilder of Kolapoor, are
distributed among the Presbyteries at home, with which
their connection could not be more than nominal. These
facts helped to influence the new-school church toward re-
union as certain to bring with it a more consistent missionary
policy. The Assembly of 1869 opened negotiations for a
transfer of a fair share of the mission fields of the Ameri-
can Board, in view of the withdrawal of new-school support
from its treasury. This finally resulted in the transfer of
the Syrian and Persian missions, that in the Gaboon dis-
trict of Africa, and those to four of our own Indian tribes,
to the care of the reunited church. This was done with
due consideration for Congregationalists laboring in these
fields, but with the understanding that they should be re-
placed and supplemented by Presbyterian workers only.
Somewhat similar was the problem presented by the
183
churches organized under the Plan of Union in New York
and the western States. The Concurrent Declarations of
1869 called upon “imperfectly organized churches " to per-
fect their organization by the election of a session within five
years at latest. This made the reunion a signal for
a struggle between the Presbyterians and the Congrega-
tionalists in the area organized under the Plan of Union,
the former urging these Presbygational churches to become
thoroughly Presbyterian, while the latter pleaded with
them to assert their independence and cast in their lot
with the churches of the New England order.
The ma-
jority became Presbyterian, and with this decision the Plan
of Union passed out of history.
The consolidation of the two Boards of Publication was
effected by the removal from the catalogues of each of what-
ever must be offensive to the sensibilities of the other body.
To facilitate matters, Mr. Barnes withdrew all his publica-
tions from the Presbyterian Publication Committee and
transferred them to private publishers. Dr. Gillette revised
his "History of the Presbyterian Church," though not so
as to eliminate all his criticisms of the exscinding policy of
1837. The result is a tamer and less piquant book, so
that the original edition is more in demand.
REORGANIZATION.
As one of the Concurrent Declarations enacted that "no
rule or precedent which does not stand approved by both
the bodies should be of any authority until reëstablished
in the united body," except so far as these might affect
rights of property, it was thought that this opened the
way for peace with the Southern church. The contro-
versial heats which the Declaration and Testimony had
produced were cooling off. The deliverances of the old-
school Assembly on that and other questions growing out.
of the war were now of no force except so far as they
corresponded to deliverances of the new-school Assembly
•
184.
[CHAP. XIV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
on the same subject. On motion of Dr. William Adams,
of New York, who had been the chairman of the new-
school half of the Joint Committee on Reunion, a dele-
gation of two ministers and one elder was appointed to
proceed to the Assembly meeting in Louisville, to call
attention to this feature of the Basis of Reunion and pro-
pose a Joint Committee for friendly conference as to the
relations of the two churches. The delegation was court-
eously received, and the proposed committee agreed to,
but on such terms as led the united Assembly to dismiss
the subject and discharge its committee. The Southern
Assembly, in the tone and style of the Declaration and
Testimony, charged that both branches of the reunited
church “did fatally complicate themselves with the state
in political utterances deliberately uttered year after year.'
It declared that "the union now consummated was accom-
plished by methods which, in our judgment, involve a total
surrender of all the great testimonies of the church for the
fundamental doctrines of grace. . . . Of these falling tes-
timonies, we are the sole surviving heirs." With much
more pertinence and accuracy it recalled the violent and
unconstitutional expulsion of some of the members of its
own body, and declared that the action then taken by the
old-school church was no mere' rule' or ' precedent,' but
a solemn sentence of outlawry," and demanded “an une-
quivocal repudiation of that interpretation of the law," as
a condition of the restoration of official relations. The
olive-branch was thus used, and not for the last time, to
castigate those who offered it.
The resolution for a Reunion Thanksgiving Fund came
before the Assembly, that it might define the objects prop-
erly to be embraced in the range of gifts. It did so with the
aim of excluding the ordinary contributions. The sum fi-
nally reported to the Assembly of 1871 was $7,607,491.91.
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185
Of this $5,737,545.38 went to the erection or repair of
churches and manses, or the extinction of debt on them,
and $1,083,478.72 to institutions of learning.
SUSPENSIÓN ÓF MR. STÜART.
Of the other participants in the Reunion Convention of
1867, none proceeded farther in the movement toward a
general reunion. Both the Assemblies in session at Pitts-
burg resolved to ask conference with the United Presby-
terian Church with a view to union on the basis of treating
the differences as to psalmody and the like as matters of
forbearance. The negotiations were continued for some
years, but proved fruitless. The Reformed Presbyterian
(N. S.) General Synod, which had called the Philadelphia
Convention, passed into control of the party of reaction at
its sessions in 1868. It suspended Mr. George H. Stuart
by resolution from the eldership and from membership for
the offense of singing uninspired hymns and meeting Chris-
tians of other names at the Lord's table. As both these of-
fenses had been avowed before the Synod of 1856, and had
been condoned by his reëlection to all the offices he held in
the gift of Synod, this action was regarded by his friends as
not only unjust but revolutionary. It subjected a large
part of the ministry and membership to discipline for acts
which, for twelve years, had been treated as worthy of
toleration. The Presbyteries of Philadelphia, Pittsburg,
and Saharunpoor suspended relations with the General
Synod until Mr. Stuart should be restored, and for this
they were exscinded by the General Synod of 1869.
three connected themselves with the Presbyterian Church,
the two latter in 1870, and that of Philadelphia in 1881.
This delay was to permit a decision on suits brought by
the adherents of the Synod for church property in Phil-
adelphia. The Supreme Court showed a great advance
on its earlier decisions in refusing to accept the decision
of the General Synod as final, and deciding that it was
All
·
186
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIV.
bound by its own constitution, like any other voluntary
society. It therefore gave the property in two cases to
Mr. Stuart's friends, and the third was compromised in
consequence. In the meantime the Western Presbytery,
where there was most dissatisfaction with the course taken
by the General Synod in 1858, withdrew and joined the
United Presbyterian Church. By these and subsequent
losses the strength of the Reformed Presbyterian (N. S.)
Church has been reduced to less than half that of the Old
Side Covenanters.
CHAPTER XV.
,
WORK AND GROWTH, 1870-88.
THE reunion of the old and new school churches oc-
curred at a time when the liveliest interest was felt in
Christian work of every kind. There was a disposition to
discredit any kind of Christian living or thinking which did
not bear immediate fruit in some practical service. Martha,
not Mary, came well to the front in the household of faith.
It seemed to be thought that the day alike for theological
speculation and for saintly meditation had come to an end;
that the best music of the church was the clatter of ma-
chinery, and her finest history the tale of conversions
through the labors of her workers.
All this was an inevitable reaction following the undue
diversion of church energy into other fields than those of
service in the kingdom. It was itself, however, an excess,
and one especially out of keeping with the genius of a
theological church, such as Presbyterian churches always
have been. As Dr. A. A. Hodge said, in his extravagant
humor, “Rather let us have an Inquisition and a little
blood-letting than a dead apathy about religious doctrine."
For a time after the reunion the trend of feeling was all
toward the practical. The strongest argument for the re-
union, indeed, was the opportunity it would furnish for
effective work. It did make the Presbyterian Church one
of the largest and wealthiest in America. The day had
passed when the New England States so outranked the
rest in prosperity that colleges and seminaries in the Middle
t
187
188
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XV.
and even the Southern States looked to her Christian mer-
chants for substantial help. That help gave Hezekiah Balch
the means of maintaining Greenville College in Tennessee,
and Dr. Rice the money to build Boston Hall in Union
Seminary (Va.). In the industrial development which at-
tended and followed the war Presbyterians shared at least
as much as people of any other denomination. This de-
velopment was found especially in districts which the
Scotch-Irish had preëmpted, and it called into activity
their eminent practical gifts. In the cities the gain was
attended by some loss, through people of newly acquired
wealth coming to think that their fathers' church, like
their fathers' homes and mode of life, was not fine enough
for them. This, however, affected only the less solid ele-
ments in the make-up of the Presbyterian churches. The
growing responsibilities of the command of ampler means
fell more heavily upon them with every year of this period.
While no Christian church in the world-not even the
Moravian-gives up to the measure of its ability, there has
been a marked enlargement of Christian giving in all the
American churches, and the Presbyterians have had their
share of it. The Reformed Presbyterians (O. S.) stand
foremost, with an average contribution of nearly twenty
dollars a member; and, indeed, nothing less would suffice
to maintain their vigorous work in the foreign and the
home field. But in the exalted mood which attended re-
union in the Assembly of 1870, large ideas were enter-
tained, and few things roused more feeling than Dr. John
R. Paxson's vigorous castigation of the policy of starva-
tion followed by the old-school Board of Domestic Mis-
sions, and his praise of the new school for their greater
generosity to their home missionaries. A plan was brought
before that Assembly for a general treasury of the church,
into which all contributions should go, for distribution by
189
a Committee of Benevolence and Finance. It was felt,
however, that this restriction of individual choice was not
in keeping with the history and genius of American Pres-
byterianism. Neither has any notable success attended
the erection of a sustentation fund for the support of the
weaker churches, somewhat after the model of that of the
Free Church of Scotland. It had then been recently
copied by the Presbyterian Church of Ireland in the crisis
of disestablishment, which caused the withdrawal of the
regium donum at the death of each of the Presbyterian
ministers then receiving it. Dr. James McCosh, who had
come from Belfast to become president of Princeton Col-
lege in 1868, had shared in the heroic sacrifices of the
Scottish disruption. He had done much to prepare, the
Irish church for the not less heroic sacrifice by which all
the ministers, except one or two, had capitalized their in-
terest in the regium donum and paid it into a fund for the
permanent endowment of their church. He hoped to
awaken something of the same enthusiasm in America in
proposing a similar sustentation policy; but in the absence
of a great emergency, custom and routine were too much
for him.
DR. MCCOSH AND SUSTENTATION.
In many of the Presbyterian churches the principle of
the tithe is widely accepted and practiced as a means to
secure something more solid as a basis of benevolent giv-
ing than the emotion awakened by pulpit appeals. More
in keeping with the spirit of the New Testament would
be the acceptance of the doctrine of Christian stewardship,
which covers not a tenth, but the whole of a man's posses-
sions, while it regards all rightful forms of expenditure as
embraced in the service of God. In very recent years, to
meet some special emergency, "weeks of self-denial" have
been adopted, all that is saved by a week's careful econo-
mies being given to the object designated.
190
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XV.
Closely connected with this growth of liberality has been
the increased activity of women in every kind of church
work. This is a fact which cannot be regarded apart from
the general tendency in American life to give to woman
a prominence and a freedom of action which have been
denied her even in Great Britain. Fruitful as this tend-
ency has been in extravagant demands for the effacement
of proper distinctions between the sexes and their work in
life, it has been right in the main, as working to the rec-
ognition of woman's essential equality with man in the
very line of the general influence of Christianity upon
society.
men.
The Presbyterian Women's Board of Foreign Missions
dates from the year of the reunion, being anticipated
by a union movement in New York in 1861, and by a
Congregationalist Women's Board in 1868, and one of the
Northern Methodists in 1869. In 1878 was formed the
Women's Executive Committee for Home Mission Work,
with especial reference to labor among the Southern freed-
Nor have the other Presbyterian bodies been much
behind. The women of the United Presbyterian Church
formed their Missionary Society in 1875, and it was given
rank as the Women's Mission Board by their General As-
sembly in 1888. In 1878 they organized their Women's
Association for Benevolent Work. The Reformed Pres-
byterians (O. S.) also have a Women's Foreign Mission
Board, and in 1878 they outran all the other Presbyterian
churches by voting that women had a right to pray and
exhort in social meetings (as now do those of the United
Presbyterian Church), and, subsequently, that they might
be elected to the office of deacon.
PL
The presence and successful labors of women in the
mission fields furnished a natural motive to their sisters at
home to help by prayers and gifts. In some cases, in-
WOMAN'S WORK IN THE CHURCH.
191
deed, women had shown an ability for independent action
not inferior to that of men. Mrs. Macfarland was for years
the only representative of our Christian civilization in the
neglected Territory of Alaska, and even presided over a
constitutional convention called by the natives to set up
a government, since the United States had let years pass
without taking any. step in that direction. Miss Sue
McBeth, in Idaho, opened a theological seminary for the
training of pastors for the Nez Percé Indians, and all the
churches in the tribe are in charge of the graduates of her
seminary. Through her labor and that of her sister two
thirds of the tribe are in the membership of the church,
and other tribes have applied to them for missionaries.
The Southern Presbyterian Church, if we may judge from
those who profess to interpret her inaction, regards all this
as a departure from Christian discipline, which presents a
new obstacle to the ecclesiastical reunion of the two As-
semblies. It is said that the millions secured to missions by
these women's missionary boards are a poor compensation.
for the injury done to the family and social life of the na-
tion by encouraging woman to usurp the rights and assume
the duties of the superior sex.¹
The attitude of that church toward the freedmen of the
South has been the most striking feature of its home mis-
sion policy. Before the war the Southern slaves very com-
monly attended the same churches with their masters,
being accommodated in the galleries of the churches.
So
1 This Southern view of the matter would probably be approved by the
sister-churches of Europe. Dr. Christlieb, of Bonn, on his return from the
Pan-Presbyterian Council in Philadelphia (1880), made an address in which
he praised many things he had seen in America, but lamented "the want of
a true Christian discipline" among us. This he illustrated by an incident.
He was setting out with his host and hostess to attend an evening meeting,
and when they reached the doorstep the lady said to her husband, My
dear, it's colder than I supposed. Won't you step back and bring me my
shawl?" "And," reports good Dr. Christlieb, "the man went!"
CC
L
192.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XV.
long as "the patriarchal relation" existed, the white people
showed no repugnance to association with their bondmen
either in church or elsewhere. It was, indeed, their boast
that they did not keep the black man at a distance to the
extent this was done even by his warmest friends in the
North. But the free negro has been quite another matter,
and the freedmen generally have been given to understand
that they are no longer welcome in the white people's
churches, but had better form churches of their own. A
new line of social separation between the races has thus
resulted from the emancipation and the enfranchisement of
the blacks.
In most cases the freedmen did not need much persua-
sion. They naturally resented the control of their former
masters in church matters, as in politics. Great numbers
of them, indeed, preferred the Baptist order, simply be-
cause it gave them the most complete freedom from white
dominance, each church being free to manage its own affairs
in its own way. Many who had been kept in the Method-
ist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Episcopal Churches by
the influence of their owners became Baptists as soon as
they were free to go "to their own company." This was
a most unfortunate change, as it threw heavy responsibil-
ities upon a class which had no training to bear them,
placed them under spiritual leaders who had good reason,
in many cases, to labor against the better education of
the young, and sundered them from influences on whose
closeness and continuance their moral progress must de-
pend.
In these circumstances it was for the interest both of
the South and of the nation that the Episcopalian and
Presbyterian bodies should maintain as close relations as
possible with that part of the colored population which
still retained any affinity for those churches, and should
H
193
thus encourage others to seek a communion in which so-
briety in worship and moral discipline in daily life would
be secured them. Unfortunately neither of them saw the
matter in this light. The Cumberland Presbyterians en-
couraged their colored membership to withdraw and, in
1869, to organize themselves as a separate denomination,
now numbering 13,439 members. The Southern Presby-
terians have not taken this extreme step, but they inaugu-
rated a policy of separation in congregation, Presbytery,
and Synod, which was at once un-Presbyterian and unfort-
unate. Not only did colored pastors fall out of touch
with their white brethren, but the Presbyteries organized
for them and their churches covered too large an area for
any effective supervision. Thus the State of Texas—a
country considerably larger than France, and embracing
one eleventh of the area of the United States-saw all its
colored Presbyterian churches in connection with the
Southern Assembly placed under the care of a single
Presbytery. Five such Presbyteries cover the whole
South, and five are to be united into an African Synod.
The Southern church, which lost most of its ten thou-
sand colored members at the close of the war-having but
1211 in 1890-has made some honest but not extraordi-
nary efforts to recover the ground and to do her share in
the Christian training of a needy people left at her doors.
In no year have her people given her $10,000 to spend
for this purpose, and many of her wealthier congregations
refuse to add the Executive Committee on Colored Evan-
gelization (established in 1891) to the number for which
they take collections. Since 1877 she has had an ably
conducted institute for training colored ministers at Tus-
caloosa, Ala., but its work has been crippled for want of
adequate support.
A joint conference on coöperation in this work was
THE COLOR-LINE IN THE CHURCH.
<
·
194
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XV.
C
asked by the Southern Assembly in 1887. It was con-
tinued afterward at the request of the other Assembly.
An agreement was reached in 1894 to unify the work by
transferring it to a joint board, in which the Southern As-
sembly would constitute the minority, as having much the
smaller colored membership and the lesser monetary in-
terest. This, however, was rejected by that Assembly,
and, indeed, would not have furnished a satisfactory solu-
tion of the problem. The churches organized within the
national Assembly's Synods of Atlanta and of Texas
among the freedmen-with 16,850 members in 1890-are
nearly as exclusively colored churches by force of circum-
stances as those under care of the Southern Assembly are
by choice and policy. If the two bodies are to remain
apart, it would have been far better to have transferred all
these churches to the care of the Southern Assembly, if
this could have been done with assurance that "the color-
line" is to disappear out of the house of God.
In other fields of home missionary labor the American
churches of all names have been more active and zealous
since the war than ever before. A constantly increasing.
responsibility has been thrown upon them by the influx
of millions of immigrants from the continent of Europe.
Many of these, it is true, naturally find their home in the
Reformed, Lutheran, and other churches in which they
held their membership before leaving home. Others, how-
ever, have been careless of church connections, or have be-
come so through emigration. Many have been alienated
from the church through its connection with the state in
Europe, even if they have not been infected with the crude
materialism which is the philosophy of European socialism
and anarchism. Multitudes, especially of Roman Catho
lics, "never darken the door of a church" after coming to
America, and allow their children to grow up in practical
·
GRANT'S INDIAN POLICY.
195
paganism. Among these classes the American churches
are laboring for the salvation of the Republic from the ir-
religion and social disorder which threaten the Old World.
Presbyterian work has been mostly among the peoples
who held by the Reformed Church in Europe-Dutch,
Bohemians, Swiss, and especially the Germans of the
lower Rhine valley. To secure workers among these
last, two theological seminaries have been established:
that at Dubuque, in 1860, by members of two old-school
Presbyteries-Dubuque, Ia., and Dana, Wis.; and that at
Newark, N. J., by the new-school Presbytery of Newark.
-
The announcement by President Grant, in his inaugural
of 1868, of a policy by which the churches would be in-
vited to coöperate with the national government in the
civilization and Christianization of the Indians,¹ excited a
very general interest in that work, and led to very exten-
sive plans for their education. Of the Protestant churches
only a few can be said to have really embraced their op-
portunity, the others either stopping with proposals or
contenting themselves with feeble and ill-sustained efforts.
Presbyterians were the first to enter the neglected terri-
tory of Alaska with missionary work, and they have had
a splendid share in the transformation which has reduced
steadily the quota of pagans among our Indian tribes.
Two laymen of the church, Captain Pratt and General
Armstrong, by founding and conducting the great gov-
20
1 The Grant policy seems likely to be set aside as regards its main feature,
through the jealousy which has been excited by the greater extent and success
of the Roman Catholic schools established under it. The hierarchy of that
church were in no way friendly to such labors, and gave them but little official
support. Thanks, however, to the persistence of a single priest and his co-
adjutors, mainly laymen, the Roman Catholic Church has entered largely upon
t'.e fields neglected or abandoned by Protestants. Hence the outcry, chiefly
from denominations which have done nothing, for the withdrawal of govern-
ment aid to mission schools on the Indian reservations. To this outcry the
Episcopal General Convention and our own General Assembly have yielded.
196
[CHAP. XV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
ernment schools at Carlisle, Pa., and Fortress Monroe,
Va., have rendered a unique service in the work of assimi-
lating our Indian wards to the rest of the nation. At the
same time a fresh interest has awakened among the Pres-
byterians of that region in the remnant of the great Iroquois
confederacy in central New York, a large part of which
still cherishes pagan practices and superstitions. All these
Indian missions have been transferred to the Board of Home
Missions, after having been long classed as belonging to the
foreign field. To the same board belongs the work among
the resident Chinese on the Pacific coast and elsewhere,
which has been proportionally more fruitful than the mis-
sions to the Chinese at home.
In the conduct of home mission work generally there
has been an approximation to the method of personal
supervision, for which Dr. Fowler invoked the authority
of Knox and Melville. Men like Dr. Sheldon Jackson
render a service of general oversight which is not less
Scriptural than is the supervision by boards. Another
gain has been in the diminution of the waste of men and
money through the maintenance of too many churches
in young communities. The reunion did much to abate
the evil by consolidating weak congregations of the two
branches. Something more has been done through an
understanding with the Congregationalists that where
either body has preëmpted any new field the other will
wait a reasonable time before establishing a second church.
The evil, however, is only abated, and it remains one of
the scandals of our divided Christendom. It is estimated
that fully half the money raised for home missionary work
is wasted in "holding the fort" for sectarian ends, without
achieving a real gain for the cause of Christianity. Worse
still is the waste in this way of personal force, often ani-
mated by the loftiest enthusiasm for the kingdom of God.
197
Presbyterians and Congregationalists no longer are dis-
tinguished from other Christians in America by their be-
lief in the school, the college, and the theological seminary
as indispensable adjuncts of home mission work.
All our
Protestant bodies, even to Friends and Dunkers, have come
to accept their view. Ignorance is no longer valued as a
preparation for ministerial labor. Still more noteworthy
has been the conversion of the general public to the belief
in the higher education. The university system of train-
ing, imported into America by the churches, and sustained
by them through an era of distrust and contempt, is now
accepted as the necessary complement of the public-school
system, especially in the newer States. Through this
change and the generous gifts of private individuals for
the founding of institutions outside of her control, the
church's relation to the higher education, as well as the
lower, has become less intimate and effective than it once
SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES.
was.
In the field of intermediate schools and that of colleges
and universities, the churches show no disposition to aban-
don their activity, as they feel that the new universities
founded by the States, or by individuals indifferent to the
Christian influence on education, cannot be expected to
furnish candidates for the ministry in sufficient numbers
and fitly prepared for the theological seminary. The
Presbyterians, though no longer holding the same relative
position in the higher education, still hold their own and
steadily extend their work. At the opening of the century
there were but four institutions of the higher grade under
their control. These had increased to more than a dozen
at the time of the division of 1837. They now number
some fifty, ranging from the long-established and richly
endowed university in the East to the little Western col-
lege, which is no poorer than the university once was, and
198
[CHAP. XV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
has reasonable hope of becoming as rich and prosperous.
through "growing up with the country." As these weaker
colleges have been placed at a disadvantage by the com-
petition of institutions of the other class, the General As-
sembly of 1883, after a discussion extending over several
years, established a Board of Aid for Colleges, which has
secured them valuable and much-needed assistance.
In the field of primary education there has been a more
general acquiescence in the transfer of the work to State
agencies, as being alone able to cope with the magnitude
of the public needs. At the same time very little care
has been exercised to secure from the state's schools that
amount and kind of religious teaching which their char-
acter permits of. There is a strong and growing party
which seeks to secularize entirely the teaching in the pub-
lic schools, in the delusive expectation that this will make
them less objectionable to Roman Catholics. It is rein-
forced by those denominations, such as the Baptists, who
regard the state as a purely secular institution having no
religious duties.
C
Naturally this secularist policy does not commend itself
to consistent Presbyterians. In the two decades before
the war there was a movement among the old-school Pres-
byterians to establish a system of parochial schools. The
General Assembly of 1844 advised every congregation,
which had the ability, to set up a school of its own, and
directed the Board of Publication to prepare the necessary
text-books. The pressure of other matters coöperated
with the inertia of the churches to frustrate the plan,
which ceased to be prominent after the resignation of Dr.
Cortlandt van Rensselaer from the secretaryship of the
Board of Education in 1860. His successor in that office
let the matter drop. It was the assured belief of Dr. A. A.
Hodge that it would come forward again. In recent
199
years the Synod of New York made an earnest effort to
counteract the secularization of the schools within its
bounds. It called a convention of Christians of all classes
to this end, but accomplished nothing, through the indiffer-
ence and even hostility of the Christian people generally
to the purpose. The rapid increase of crime which has
gone hand in hand with the secularization of education
may awaken them roughly to the need discerned by the
Synod.
PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS.
The position taken by the Presbyterian Church in the
matter was defined by the reunion Assembly of 1870:
"We should regard the successful attempt to expel all
religious instruction and influence from our public schools
as an evil of the first magnitude. Nor do we see how this
can be done without inflicting a deadly wound upon the
intellectual and moral life of the nation. . . . We look
upon the state as an ordinance of God, and not a mere
creature of the popular will; and, under its high responsi-
bility to the Supreme Ruler of the world, we hold it to be
both its right and bounden duty to educate its children in
those elementary principles of knowledge and virtue which
are essential to its own security and well-being. The union.
of church and state is indeed against our American theory
and constitutions of government; but the most intimate
union of the state with the saving and conservative forces
of Christianity is one of the oldest customs of the coun-
try, and has always ranked as a vital article of our political
faith."
Another adjunct to home mission work has been that of
the Board of Publication. No agency of the church has
been subjected to more criticism than this. The need of
any church agency for the publication of religious litera-
ture has been questioned, in view of the fact that private
firms do so much to supply good books, and in a form and
+
200
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XV.
}
L
؟
More forcible, I
of a character suited to the public taste.
think, has been the objection to the quality of the publica-
tions of the board. Our age grows daily more exacting
in the matter of literary excellence and human interest in
the books it reads. A church board of publication is apt
to follow a policy of caution which narrows the range of its
work and results in a dull uniformity in its issues. That
this can be avoided has been shown in recent years by
several agencies of this kind on either side of the ocean.
But it did characterize the lists of the Presbyterian board
to` an extent which led the average reader to avoid any
book bearing its imprint. Through recent changes of pol-
icy and of management this evil bids fair to be removed.
Formerly the board employed agents merely to carry
on the sale of its books, but latterly it directed them to
seek to establish Sunday-schools in neglected districts.
For this reason in 1887 the General Assembly enlarged the
title of the board to include this work, and appointed a sec-
retary to take charge of it. It also has placed the statistics of
Sunday-school membership and contributions on the same
footing as those of the congregations. This has contrib-
uted to the extension of Sunday-school teaching, but it
would be an unfortunate result if it tended to draw any
deep line of distinction between church and school. The
development of the latter has been sound and safe just in
so far as it tends to closer relations with the congregation.
The goal will be reached when the Sunday-school is recog-
nized as the congregation in session for a specific purpose,
under direction of the pastor and session, and entitled to
draw upon the treasury of the congregation for its neces-
sary expenses. On that footing every member of the con-
gregation will find his place in the school, and the teach-
ing (or “doctrine") of the apostolic church will resume
its place beside the preaching of the Word.
MISSIONARY ADVANCE.
201
In the field of foreign missions all the Presbyterian
bodies have made progress since the war. The union of
1858 brought under the United Presbyterian Assembly
the Associate Church's mission at Sialkot, in India (1844),
and that of the Associate Reformed Church to the Copts
of Egypt (1853), both highly successful enterprises. The
Reformed Presbyterian Synod (O. S.) has a well-sustained
mission work in Syria, and the General Synod (N. S.),
since the loss of its Presbytery of Saharanpoor through the
troubles of 1868-69 (p. 185), has taken steps to renew its
labors in the same country. The fields already occupied
by the old-school Assembly, and those ceded by the Amer-
ican Board in 1871, have been enlarged, and additions
made to their number. As in many cases Presbyterian
missionaries are working in the foreign field side by side
with those of sister-churches in other lands, or those of
American churches whose differences sink into insignifi-
cance in comparison with the great problem of the com-
mon labor, it has been thought best to effect ecclesiastical
consolidation. Thus in India and China a single Presby-
terian Synod is proposed for each country. In Japan and
in Brazil consolidation has been accelerated by the desire
of the native churches to emerge out of the mission stage
of existence and to assume the self-direction which is the
right of every national church. The United Church of
Christ in Japan, thus organized of the Reformed and Pres-
byterian missions, is the strongest Christian body in the
empire, has drawn up its own confession of faith, and
governs itself, while enjoying the advice of the council of
missionaries. Such unions help to take away the reproach
of Christian disunion, which nowhere is seen in its ugliness
so distinctly as on the mission field.
In other fields the relations of the Presbyterian churches
to the sister-churches of other lands have been most
202
[CHAP. XV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Wat
friendly and harmonious. American help has been ex-
tended to the struggling churches of the Reformed order
and faith in Italy, Bohemia, and Hungary. In 1876,
largely through the labors of Drs. James McCosh and
Philip Schaff, there was formed an "Alliance of the Re-
formed Churches throughout the World holding the Pres-
byterian System," with provision for holding an interna-
tional council once in four years. It embraces some sixty
churches, who have given their official adherence to it.
The second of its councils was held in Philadelphia in
1880, and the fifth in Toronto. Thus far it has accom-
plished little more than the promotion of international and
interdenominational comity among the churches. The
efforts of Dr. Schaff to secure through it the preparation
of a consensus of the Reformed churches, as a sort of ecu-
menical creed which should supersede the several confes-
sions of the separate churches, did not prove successful.
It met with opposition from both quarters, the liberals of
Europe thinking it too long, and the conservatives of Ire-
land and America too short and vague.
Nor has it been found possible to satisfy all the churches
which at first accepted membership in the Alliance. The
psalm-singers of the United Presbyterian Church felt them-
selves aggrieved by the use of uninspired hymns at some
of its sessions and the celebration of the communion. For
this reason the General Assembly of this church withdrew
from the Alliance for a time, because of the breach of the
original agreement that the meetings would confine them-
selves to the Psalms in praise. But on receiving fresh as-
surance on this point, this Assembly appointed delegates
to Toronto.
Ma
Within this very church, however, innovation has played
its part. The Seceder and Covenanter Churches in earlier
times were entirely agreed in rejecting the use of instru-
❤
INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.
203
mental music, clearly as its use is prescribed in the Psalms,
which the church-in their view-is required to use till
the end of time. Partly the sense of this incongruity, and
partly the desire to bring this part of worship into har-
mony with modern culture, caused a restlessness under the
rule. At last in 1881 the General Assembly was induced
to submit the question to the Presbyteries in overture, the
rules requiring its adoption not only by a majority of the
Presbyteries, but by a majority of their individual members
taken in the aggregate. The result was its approval by a
small majority of the actual voters, but just one short of a
majority of the whole number present when the vote was
taken. The opponents and the friends of the proposal
both claimed a victory. The General Assembly of 1882,
acting upon precedents already established, decided that
the overture had been adopted. It declared, however,
that the action taken did not authorize the introduction of
instruments, but merely declared that "there is not suffi-
cient Bible authority for an absolutely exclusive rule on
the subject." This deliverance, as might have been ex-
pected, satisfied neither party. The conservatives found
the previous testimony of the church set aside, with the
assurance that no change in practice would follow it. The
progressives found themselves virtually forbidden to do
what the church had declared was not contrary to the
Word of God. While most of the congregations followed
the policy of inaction, a few proceeded to employ musical
instruments, first in the Sunday-school and then in con-
gregational worship. This produced an agitation on the
other side which at times threatened a division of the
church, the minority holding conventions to agitate against
innovations.
In something of the same spirit of accommodation to
the needs of the time was the revision of the old Psalm-
204
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XV.
F
ㄹ
​"C
book of 1649, which this denomination adopted in 1870.
This also encountered resistance, but sporadic only and
personal. The result is certainly "more smoothe," if not
more agreeable to the Originall Texte," than the older
version. But a lover of old English poetry might depre-
cate many of the alterations in a version beloved of Burns,
Campbell, Scott, Irving, Carlyle, and Archdeacon Hare,
on finding
Strength's knots and gnarls all pared away,
And varnish in their places.
The problems of Presbyterian reunion were freely dis-
cussed in various conferences between separate churches
at this time, but to no end. The conference set on foot
with the United Presbyterians by the General Assembly
of 1870 brought to light nothing but the obstacles of which
everybody knew. That ministers and churches of that
and the smaller Presbyterian bodies are attracted toward
the reunited church is evidenced by transfers of both to
the care of the General Assembly. Thus in 1889 the
United Presbyterian Presbytery of Detroit, by a vote of
two to one, decided to unite with the Presbyterian Church,
leaving the minority—after a loss of six ministers and eight
churches to continue the existence of the Presbytery.
But these very transfers only serve to put off the day of
reunion, by strengthening relatively the conservative ele-
ments they leave behind them.
In the national Assembly the extension of overtures to
the Southern Assembly has been frequently pressed by a
party which seemed to be bent on reunion at any price, not
excepting the church's self-respect. Much was expected by
them from the joint celebration of the centenary of the first
General Assembly in 1888, when the Southern Assembly
adjourned from Baltimore to meet the other Assembly sit-
. 205
ting in Philadelphia. The Southern speakers, however,
while eloquent enough as to the church's past, had noth-
ing comforting to say of the future. Six years later their
Assembly flatly refused to appoint a Conference Commit-
tee on Reunion, at the request of the national Assembly.
What probably encourages the hope of reunion is the atti-
tude of attention and criticism which the Southern church
occupies toward the national Assembly. It never has suc-
ceeded in regarding it as a body to which it owes no more
than the interdenominational courtesies due to a separate
church. The severed limb feels its indestructible relation
to the body.
CHRISTIAN UNION.
During this period the Presbyterian churches were more
or less affected by the agitation for a general union of all
Christians on the basis of their common beliefs. As early
as 1867, indeed, the Rev. William McCune, of the United
Presbyterian Church, set on foot an agitation for the aboli-
tion of all lines of sectarian division between Protestants,
and conducted it with an energy which brought him into
conflict with his own church. Its General Assembly of
that year had some difficulty in deciding that his conten-
tion involved fundamental error," but it inflicted upon
him a suspension, which led to his withdrawal from the
church. He afterward found a home for a short time in
the Presbyterian Church, but finally withdrew from it.
Twice during this period these churches were approached
from without with invitations to return to "Catholic unity."
The first came from Pope Pius IX. in 1870, on the eve of
the holding of the Council of the Vatican which put the
copestone on the edifice of papal authority. It was a re-
quest to the Protestant world to embrace the opportunity
offered by this reunion of the true church to put an end
to the schisms and divisions which the Reformation had
introduced. Most of the Protestant bodies made no reply,
66
206
[CHAP. XV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
¿
but the General Assembly sent a courteous but decided
refusal. As this was written by Dr. John Hall, there was
no want of emphasis in its Protestantism.¹
The other invitation came from the House of Bishops
of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who addressed to the
other denominations of our American Christendom a plea
for reunion upon a basis which they defined, without de-
fining the method by which it should be accomplished,
whether by confederation or consolidation. The address
was notable as the first official recognition from that quar-
ter of the existence of other Christian churches in Amer-
ica. Since the beginning of the Oxford movement, and even
before it, American Episcopalians had been making their
appeal to individual Christians and ministers of other
denominations, and not without success, as their church
growth had been more largely effected in this way than
by conquests from the world. Rapid as had been their
increase in the cities and towns, however, it gave and gives
no promise of their absorbing or even outnumbering the
other churches. The hope some of them cherished that
their church would prove the Aaron's rod which would
swallow all the others is not likely to be realized, and the
less so since other denominations have had the wisdom to
adjust their worship, architecture, and the like to the de-
mands of an age which requires beauty and detests sor-
didness. The address of the House of Bishops, therefore,
-
1
1 A prominent American organ of the Roman Catholic Church, in notic-
ing the fact that such an answer had been sent, said of the Presbyterians :
"Their intellectual and moral worth, their philanthropy and zeal for God,
the value of many most excellent works which they have written in defense
of the divine revelation, we fully appreciate. That great numbers have been
and are in the spiritual communion of the Catholic Church we sincerely hope.
We desire that the schism which has separated them from our visible com-
munion may be healed, not only for their own spiritual good, but also that
the Catholic Church in the United States may be strengthened by the acces-
sion of that intellectual and religious vigor which such a great mass of bap-
tized Christians contains in itself."
207
indicates a growth of practical good sense which is full of
promise.
The three essentials to Christian unity which the address
prescribes are the Catholic creeds, the two sacraments ad-
ministered with the essential forms of words, and the "his-
toric episcopate." The first two present no difficulty to
Presbyterians. The third involves an assumption in favor
of diocesan episcopacy, to which they cannot assent with-
out shutting their eyes to the facts of church history.
Recent investigation has shown that the word episcopos
came into the use of the church from the sect of the Stoics,
who employed it to designate a man who took a personal
interest in the moral well-being of his neighbors. It was
thus an approach to the Christian conception of the pastor-
ate or "cure of souls," and was fitly employed to designate
the minister of the Christian congregation. Its original
sense still lingers in the pastoral staff, or crosier, borne by
the bishops of the Latin and Greek Churches. It lost this
sense when the assimilation of the church's polity to that
of the Roman Empire took the episcopos (bishop) from his
paroikia or parish (district around a house of worship) and
gave him rule over a civil dioikesis. It has less of the orig-
inal sense the farther we come from the original home of
Christianity-less in the Latin Church than in the Greek,
less in the Anglican than in the Latin, less in the Episcopal
Church of America than in the mother-church of England.
With each remove the dioceses grow larger and the work
of the bishop less pastoral, until we see Dr. Kinsolving de-
scribed as "Bishop of Texas," a region larger than France.
It is the fewness of the bishops in the Episcopal Church
that repels Presbyterians. To parochial episcopacy, even
as described in the Ignatian Epistles, they have no manner
of objection.
The address of the bishops would have excited much
THE HISTORIC EPISCOPATE.
Med
ނ
208
[CHAP. XV.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
less attention in the Presbyterian Church if it had not
found an earnest supporter in Dr. Charles W. Shields, of
Princeton College. He even went beyond the terms of
the address and held up the Book of Common Prayer as
the basis for a reunion of all English-speaking Christians.
While there has been a marked increase in the desire for
liturgic worship among American as among British Pres-
byterians, Dr. Shields cannot be said to have carried many
with him in his plea. As Professor Briggs has said, that
book does not meet the needs of our time and land as
well as they might be met by a work which should draw
freely on other sources-Greek and Latin, Lutheran and
Reformed, as well as Anglican. Nor do the House of
Bishops, or the bishops of the whole Anglican communion,
met in conference at Lambeth, in adopting the proposal of
the American bishops as their own, suggest the adoption
of the Prayer-book as a prerequisite to communion.
Thus far the Presbyterian Church has declined to enter
upon any discussion of the proposal until there has been
an acknowledgment of the validity of Presbyterian ordina-
tion by the Episcopal Church, as in the earlier days of the
Reformed Church of England. The refusal is natural, but
not logical, as the House of Bishops may be in possession
of further light on that subject.
I
CHAPTER XVI.
THEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY LIFE SINCE 1870.
IMPORTANT as are the works of Christian liberality and
of evangelization, it is not possible for the Presbyterian
Church to find in them the full scope for her vocation.
She is, by God's calling, a theological church, set to wit-
ness for the great truths of God's grace in providence and
redemption. Her theologians are not the least among her
jewels, and no others of her sons exert so great an influ-
ence outside her own bounds.
Several of her ablest passed to their reward in the period
we are now considering.
The Southern church had lost its greatest theologian by
the death of Dr. Jas. H. Thornwell still earlier, in 1862. He
had gone to visit his son, who had been wounded in the
Confederate service, when death came to close a life rich
in both pastoral and professional work.
The year 1877 saw Dr. Henry B. Smith gathered to his
fathers, without ever having had the leisure to do justice
to his thought. The inadequacy and uncertainty of his
salary as a professor compelled him to spend in secondary
labors the energies which should have been given to his
proper work.
In this Dr. Charles Hodge was more fortunate, in that
he could devote the leisure of eight years to the elabora-
tion of his "Systematic Theology" (1871-73). It used
209
210
[CHAP. XVI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
to be said that he and Professor Park, of Andover, were
each waiting for the other to publish his system, with crit-
ical intention. Before the whole work was before the
public the semi-centenary of his inauguration as professor
occurred. Of the three thousand students he had trained
for the ministry, a goodly number gathered around him
with grateful congratulations, and greetings came from
other churches to the veteran professor. In 1873 the
Assembly, hearing that he was in Washington, adjourned
thither from Baltimore to wait on him. In 1878 he passed
away, full of years and of good works. His "Systematic
Theology" probably exceeds any other body of divinity
in the language in the reach of its influence.
Two years before his death his still greater son, Dr.
Archibald Alexander Hodge, was called to Princeton from
the Alleghany Seminary, as assistant and successor to his
father in the chair of didactic theology. While inferior to
his father in serenity and judicial temper, he was a man of
richer and more complex nature, larger experience of the
world, more extensive historical learning, and greater
speculative originality. His playful, sometimes extrava-
gant humor shaped his thought into epigrammatic form
and a conversational audacity which often startled and
offended weak brethren. Under all lay a fervency of spir-
itual devotion which at times suggested the old mystics.
His "Outlines of Theology" (1860 and 1878) and his “Pop-
ular Lectures on Theological Themes" (1887) are notable
books; but nothing he has written gives an adequate im-
pression of his inspiring individuality. He was not spared
long to cultivate his new field, as he died suddenly, in 1886.
The death of his brother, Dr. Caspar Wistar Hodge, in 1893,
terminated the family connection with the seminary, and in
his case put an end to an influence and an inspiration which
has left no monument of its great worth.
DOGMATIC THEOLOGY.
211
In Dr. Wm. G. T. Shedd (ob. 1894) Union Seminary found
a successor to Henry B. Smith, who represented the earlier
Calvinism and at the same time had been one of the group
of young Coleridgeans who gathered round Dr. James
Marsh at Burlington, Vt., in 1826. Like Dr. S. J. Baird
(p. 000), he defended the realistic conception of the race
both in its fall and in its redemption. His "Theological
Essays" (1877), "Commentary on Romans" (1879), “ Ser-
mons to the Natural Man" (3d ed., 1884), and “Sermons
to the Spiritual Man" (1884) were the forerunners of his
able but rigid "Dogmatic Theology" (3 vols., 1889-94).
A more distinctly new-school type of doctrine is presented
by Dr. E. D. Morris, of Lane Seminary, in his "Outlines
of Christian Doctrine" (1880) and “Ecclesiology: a Trea-
tise on the Church" (1885); and by Dr. Ransom B. Welch,
of Auburn Seminary, in "Faith and Modern Thought
(2d ed., 1880) and his "Outlines of Theology" (1881).
The Southern church in Robert L. Dabney has a church
leader who takes the place of both Thornwell and Smyth.
His "Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century"
(1875) and his "Theology, Dogmatic and Polemic” (3d ed.,
1885) are the work of an able controversialist. He is still
better known as the biographer of his friend and com-
mander, General "Stonewall" Jackson, on whose staff he
served.
""
The smaller Presbyterian bodies, despite their intense
interest in dogmatic theology, have been prevented by
their circumstances from adding much to its literature. A
noteworthy exception to this is Rev. John M. Armour, of the
Reformed Presbyterian Synod (O. S.), who in his “ Atone-
ment and Law" (1886) and other works seeks to furnish a
defense, modern in spirit and method, for the most scho-
lastic Calvinism, and who impresses every careful reader
with his force of thought even when he provokes dissent.
212
[CHAP. XVI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
To the same body we owe Dr. Thomas Sproull's “Prelec-
tions on Theology" (1882).
In the closely related field of Christian philosophy Prince-
ton College possessed in Dr. James McCosh the chief Amer-
ican representative of the Scottish school, but an indepen-
dent worker in this field. It still has Dr. Charles W. Shields,
whose "Final Philosophy" (2d ed., 1879) seeks to secure
to the science the place of arbitrator in pending disputes;
and Dr. Francis L. Patton, who occupies himself with the
problems of Christian theism. Dr. Laurens P. Hicock, of
Auburn Seminary and Union College, in "The Logic of
Reason" (1875) and other works, elaborates a philosophy
which touches Kant and Coleridge on one side and the
new school of experimental psychology on the other.
In apologetical theology Albert Barnes broke new ground
in his “Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth Cent-
ury" (1868); but his "Letters to Gerrit Smith" (1869)
on the use made by Universalists of a famous passage in
one of his sermons are even more interesting and powerful
-perhaps the most characteristic of all his works. Dr.
A.W. Pitzer contributed his share of the literature provoked
by Professor Seeley's book in his "Ecce Deus-Homo "
(1867). Dr. S. H. Kellogg, in “The Light of Asia and the
Light of the World" (1885), controverted, with full knowl-
edge and great ability, the attempts made to set Buddha,
the light of Asia," above or beside Christ.
He is a type
of the man of letters who has found the stimulus to author-
ship on the mission field. Beside him we place Dr. Elias
Riggs, of Constantinople, translator of the Scriptures into
Armenian, Bulgarian, and Turkish, and author of original
works in these and in modern Greek; Dr. George E. Post,
of Beirut, an authority on the natural history of the Bible,
and a contributor to Smith's Bible Dictionary; Dr. H. H.
Jessup, of Beirut, author of "The Mohammedan Mission-
213
sionary Problem" (1879) and "The Women of the Arabs"
(1873); Dr. John C. Lowrie, author of "Missionary Papers"
(1882); Dr. W. A. P. Martin, of Peking, head of the Chi-
nese Imperial College, and author of "The Chinese: Their
Education, Philosophy, and Letters "(1881); and Dr. A.W.
Loomis, author of "Confucius and the Chinese Classics"
(2d ed., 1882). The most prolific writer on missions is
Dr. Arthur T. Pierson, editor of the "Missionary Review
of the World," and author of "The Crisis of Missions
(1888) and other works calculated to stir up the church
to a sense of her duty.
In the field of home missions the literary impulse is less
felt. Dr. Sheldon Jackson's book on Alaska (1880) lies.
on the middle line between the two fields. Dr. H. W.
Pierson's" In the Brush; or, Old-Time Social, Political, and
Religious Life in the Southwest" (1881), gives the harvest
of his observations as an agent of the Bible Society, and
with unusual literary skill.
The scholarship of the church in the field of exegetical
theology was tested in the selection by Dr. Philip Schaff
of his co-workers on the translation of Lange's Com-
mentary (25 vols., 1864–80). Besides the general editor,
who came over from the German Reformed Church in
1864, Drs. C. A. Aiken, Charles A. Briggs, E. R. Craven,
Howard Crosby, Charles Elliott, Llewellyn J. Evans,
William H. Green, William Henry Hornblower, John
Lillie, Samuel T. Lowrie, Dunlop Moore, Daniel W. Poor,
M. B. Riddle, William G. T. Shedd, Conway P. Wing, and
Edward D. Yeomans had a share in the work. So in the
revision of the "Authorized" Version of the English Bible,
Dr. William Henry Green presided over the Old Testament
division of the American committee, to which also belonged
Professors Charles A. Aiken and John De Witt, the latter
then in the Reformed Church; in the New Testament
BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP.
214
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVI.
A
committee were Drs. H. B. Smith (snatched away by
death), Howard Crosby, M. B. Riddle, and Philip Schaff,
while Dr. Charles Hodge was a corresponding member.
In Old Testament criticism Dr. William Henry Green is
the type of conservative scholarship, and the unflinching
antagonist of documentary hypotheses, of the duplication
of Isaiahs, and the rest. He began his apologetic work
with a reply to Bishop Colenso in 1863, and followed it
up in "Moses and the Prophets" (1883), "The Hebrew
Feasts" (1885), and "The Pentateuchal Question" in "He-
braica" (1890--92), besides numerous articles, especially in
the "Presbyterian Review " (1880 ff.). By a sort of agree-
ment the views of both the conservative and the liberal crit-
ics were presented in alternate numbers, Drs. Green, A. A.
Hodge, and B. B. Warfield representing the former. Dr.
Green's point of view is shared by Dr. Charles Elliott in his
"Treatise on Inspiration" (1877) and his "Mosaic Author-
ship of the Pentateuch" (1884), and by many who have
not given permanent shape to their pleas for the traditional
theory.
On the other side, and with equal prominence, there
stands a much younger man, Dr. Charles Augustus Briggs,
of Union Seminary, who as early as the year of the reunion
declared the traditional view of inspiration to be untenable.
In his articles in the "Presbyterian Review," his book on
"Biblical Study "(1883 and 1885), his" Messianic Prophecy"
(1886), and his pamphlet-book, "Whither?" (1889) he
made progressive advance toward the positions taken in the
famous Inaugural of 1891, and his "The Bible, the Church,
and Reason" (1892), and his "Higher Criticism of the
Hexateuch" (1893), which led to his suspension from the
ministry. Substantially in agreement with him were Pro-
fessors Evans and Smith, of the Lane Seminary, while Pro-
fessor Willis J. Beecher maintained with firmness and judg-
BİBLİCAL SCHOLARSHİP.
215
ment an intermediate position between the two schools,
standing open to hear what the new criticism had to offer,
but subjecting it to a searching examination.
Of commentaries on Old Testament books the list is
short. Dr. William S. Plumer, who offered the exscind-
ing resolutions in 1837, and who cast in his lot with the
Southern church, illustrates ably the old style of exegesis
in his bulky book on the Psalms. Dr. Marvin R. Vin-
cent's "Gates into the Psalm-Country "(1878 and 1883) are
suggestive discourses on single points. Dr. S. H. Kel-
logg's "Leviticus" is the only American contribution to
the Expositor's Bible. In the related field of Assyriology
Professor Francis Brown, of Union Seminary, holds ac-
knowledged rank, and is associated with Professor Briggs
as American co-workers on the new dictionary of Hebrew.
In that of Egyptology Rev. Alfred H. Kellogg in his
'Abraham, Joseph and Moses in Egypt" (1887), has done
much toward solving the problem presented by the Egyp-
tian and Mosaic chronologies.
"C
In the New Testament field Professor Isaac H. Hall has
done scholarly work on the bibliography of the Greek text.
Dr. C. René Gregory-now a Lutheran-after helping Dr.
Charles Hodge in the historical portion of his " Systematic
Theology," became co-worker with Professor Tischendorf
on his final edition of the Greek New Testament, and since
his death has completed it. Dr. Schaff, in addition to his
labors in organizing the American Committee of Revisers
and in arranging the terms of the publication of the Re-
vised Version, reissued, with an Introduction, the three
most scholarly treatises in advocacy of revision (Lightfoot,
Trench, and Ellicott) in 1873, and published a volume
giving an account of the undertaking in 1879. He also
edited, with an Introduction, in 1882, the Westcott and Hort
edition of the Greek text used by the revisers, and pub-
216
[CHAP. XVI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
L
lished in the same year “ A Companion to the Greek New
Testament and the English Version." Besides his edition.
of Lange, he edited, with the assistance of Dr. M. B.
Riddle, and several English scholars, a popular “Illus-
trated Commentary on the New Testament" (1878-83),
which was partially reissued as the " International Revision
Commentary" in 1882 ff. In this field he was not an
expert as in that of history; but he possessed a wide range
of theological culture, which he made useful to the
American churches.
Dr. Marvin R. Vincent's "Word-Studies in the New
Testament" (1887-90) represents an effort to reach the
sense of the text by analysis and comparison. President
D. S. Gregory, in "Why Four Gospels?" (3d ed., 1885),
gives a popular discussion of a most interesting problem.
Dr. Howard Crosby (ob. 1891), in his " Commentary on the
New Testament" (1885), as in earlier works, brought sound
classical scholarship to the service of exegetics. Dr. W. S.
Plumer has discussed the Epistles to the Romans and the
Hebrews on the same scale as the Psalms. Dr. Shedd has
written on Romans. Dr. S. T. Lowrie bases his work on
Hebrews on the very able commentary of Hofmann of
Erlangen. Dr. John Lillie's posthumous “Lectures on the
Epistles of Peter" (1869) is the work of one whom Dr. Schaff
placed among the best biblical scholars of America. Rev.
W. R. Reid, of the United Presbyterian Church, has written
on Revelation—a book now much less discussed than half a
century ago. Dr. J. H. McIlvaine's" Wisdom of the Apoca-
lypse "(1886) explains the book from a novel point of view.
In historical theology Dr. Schaff holds the lead with his
great "History of the Christian Church," unhappily never
finished. His translation and adaptation of Herzog's
"Real-Encyklopädie" (1884 and 1887), his "Creeds of
Christendom" (4th ed., 1884), his monographs on "Au-
217
gustine, Melanchthon, and Neander" (1886), and his "Li-
brary of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers" (25 vols.,
1886 ff.) all contributed to familiarizing American read-
ers with historic method in estimating the church's past.
When he came to America in 1845 history was still the
obedient handmaid of dogmatic theology, and histories
were written in the interests of edification or orthodoxy or
sect. It is to his labors, and those of Henry B. Smith
and John F. Hurst-the latter a Methodist—that we owe
the emancipation of the science.
Of general writers on church history the tale is as short
as that of writers on special and local history is long. Rev.
Samuel Macauley Jackson's "Concise Dictionary of Relig-
ious Knowledge" (1889; 3d ed., 1893) is quite strong in
the departments of history and biography, and the best
handbook of its kind we have. Dr. William M. Blackburn
has written a popular handbook (1879) which is much supe-
rior to his earlier monographs in this field, being eminently
graphic and readable. It is not possible to give the same
praise to Dr. J. C. Moffat's "Church History in Brief"
(1885) or "The Church in Scotland" (1882). Rev. George
Slater's "Historical and Critical Essay on the Acta Pilati"
(1879), Professor Francis Brown and President R. D. Hitch-
cock's "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (Greek and
English; 2d ed., 1885), and Dr. Schaff's translation of the
same document stand for a hopeful widening of historic
interest.
CHURCH HISTORIANS.
In the field of European Protestant history Dr. Henry
M. Baird's "Huguenots of France" (2d ed., 1885) and
his "Huguenots and Henry of Navarre” (1886), Dr. C. M.
Baird's" Huguenot Emigration to America" (2d ed.,1885),
and Dr. E. H. Gillett's "Life and Times of John Huss"
(3d ed., 1870) are all creditable to American scholarship.
In the field of American Presbyterian history the palm
¿
•
218
[CHAP. XVI.
THÉ PRESBYTERIANS.
►
I
is due to Dr. J. B. Scouller for his careful studies of the
history of the United Presbyterian Church and its pred-
ecessors, most of which have not been published in book
form. Dr. Charles Augustus Briggs's "American Pres-
byterianism: Its Origin and Growth" enriches the subject
with new documents and seeks to show the justification.
history offers to liberal interpretation; but none of his
works evidence the possession of the historic spirit. Dr.
George P. Hays's popular book, "Presbyterians,” offers a
good conspectus of the past and present of the church in
its several branches. Dr. Alfred Nevin's "Encyclopedia
of the Presbyterian Church" contains much that should
find no place in such a work, and omits much that should.
It is written with little regard to historical perspective; but
it contains information which might have been lost. It is
confined to the national and the southern Assemblies.
Of local histories the number is very great, and the qual-
ity improving, possibly through the exhaustion of lauda-
tory commonplaces and certainly through the diffusion of
a truer interest in the historic past. Dr. S. D. Alexander's
rather dry and matter-of-fact history of the New York
Presbyteries, Dr. Thomas Murphy's more exuberant and
enthusiastic book on the Presbytery of Philadelphia North,
Mr. Sloan's "Presbytery of Kittatining," Dr. Norton's
"Illinois," and Dr. Howe's "South Carolina" are espe-
cially worthy of mention. So are Dr. Prentiss's "First Fifty
Years of Union Seminary" (1889) and Mr. Hageman's work
on "Princeton and its Institutions" (1879). Dr. Conway P.
Wing's "First Church of Carlisle " (1877) and his ´ Pres-
byteries of Donegal and Carlisle" (1876), Mr. Turner's
"Neshaminy Church "(1876), and the “Centenary Memo-
rial" of the meeting of the four Synods at Pittsburg in 1875
are all solid contributions to Presbyterian history. As
these dates show, the national centenary of 1876 was more
i
DEVOTIONAL WRITERS.
219
fruitful than that of the General Assembly in 1888 in sug-
gesting historical research in this field. In good biographies
the period has not been rich, the best being Dr. A. A.
Hodge's life of his father, Dr. Stearns's life of Dr. Henry
B. Smith, Mr. George Junkin's life of his father, and Dr.
Palmer's life of Dr. Thornwell. Mr. H. C. Alexander's
life of Dr. Addison Alexander is much below the interest
of the subject, and Mr. Grasty's life of Dr. McPheeters is
one of the worst-written books in the language. The auto-
biographies of Dr. Gardiner Spring, Dr. Samuel Irenæus
Prime, and George H. Stuart share in the charm which
belongs to that species of writing. Professor Sloane's life
of his father is a portrait of a man who exhibited the
strong Covenanter type of character, in combination with
most attractive personal qualities.
In the department of devotional theology the church
is fortunate in possessing writers of more than national
repute. The many articles and the less numerous books
of Drs. Theodore L. Cuyler, John Hall, and J. R. Miller
have nourished the spiritual life wherever the Eng-
lish language is spoken. Of the church's preachers Dr.
T. De Witt Talmage is the most widely known, though not
for qualities distinctly Presbyterian; John Hall, whose
sermons gather force, where others weaken, toward the
close; John De Witt, who sees so finely the points of con-
tact between lofty principles and homely duties; Henry
van Dyke, who brings the culture of the modern world to
bear on his pulpit work; Charles Wadsworth, who illumined
every topic with the coruscations of genius; Herrick John-
son, who presses his theme with the cogency of a great
pleader; Charles H. Parkhurst, who turns the light upon
the dark places alike of the human conscience and of New
York society; William S. Plumer, who fused a severe the-
ology with tender emotion; Francis L. Patton, who by
220
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVI.
sheer force of logic cuts the channels for right action and
feeling; Benjamin M. Palmer, whose fervid eloquence has
the polish of the Southern school of oratory; Professor
W. W. Moore, who seizes on the effective points of a sub-
ject with marvelous precision-these are but a few of the
notable preachers who have helped to keep the American
pulpit vigorously masculine and socially powerful.
In sacred poetry Presbyterians make a much feebler show-
ing. The Scotch-Irish race has never been imaginative,
on either side of the Atlantic. Margaret Junkin Preston
is a poet of unquestioned power and of the purest Pres-
byterian stock. Her poem on the dangerous illness of
the Prince of Wales elicited thanks from his noble wife.
Sidney Lanier, though dealing but seldom with sacred
themes, has not written a line out of keeping with his
Huguenot descent and his Presbyterian training. Mrs.
Elizabeth Prentiss displays less of vigor in expression, but
a boldness in tender thought, which at times recalls the
mystics. Mr. Samuel W. Duffield, like his father (p. 146),
had a genuine gift of song and a wide acquaintance with
Latin and English hymnology. His "English Hymns:
Their Authors and their History" (2d ed., 1886) is a lit-
erary commentary on Dr. Robinson's "Laudes Domini
(1884). His "Latin Hymn-Writers and their Hymns
(1889) is pronounced by Rev. John Julian "the most com-
plete and popular account which has been published in the
English language." Professor Francis A. March's “Latin
Hymns with English Notes" (1874) has put the finest
within the reach of a wide public. Dr. Philip Schaff's
Christ in Song" (1869) contains some beautiful transla-
tions by the editor. The "Library of Religious Poetry
(1881), edited by him and Mr. Arthur Gilman, and Dr. S.
Irenæus Prime's "Songs of the Soul" (1874) are anthol-
ogies of some value.
((
""
""
}}
HYMNOLOGISTS.
221
In the development of the worship of praise Dr. Charles
S. Robinson may be said to have achieved a revolution by
his series of musical hymn-books, from his "Songs of the
Church" (1862) and "Songs of the Sanctuary" (1865) to
his last revision of "Laudes Domini" (1892). He always
has been stronger and more independent in the musical
than the literary character of his books; but his "Annota-
tions upon Popular Hymns" (1893) shows a close famil-
iarity with the hymn-writers and their work. Dr. Edwin
F. Hatfield, long the clerk of the General Assembly, was
himself a hymn-writer of merit.
His "Church Hymn-
Book, with Tunes" (1872), is carefully edited as regards
both text and music, and, while keeping well within the
lines of established tradition, does not ignore the new poets.
and musicians. In "The Poets of the Church” (1884) he
furnishes a kind of biographical commentary to his own
collection. The "Hymns and Songs of Praise" (1874),
edited by Drs. R. D. Hitchcock, Zachary Eddy (Reformed),
and Philip Schaff, is the amplest collection, and in its day
the widest in range of selection. "Carmina Sanctorum,"
by Drs. Hitchcock and Schaff and Mr. Lewis Ward Mudge,
is a smaller collection, but with much the same character.
Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, in his "Evangelical Hymnal,"
shows himself a decided innovator, drawing upon the latest
Anglican composers and hymn-writers very freely. In
"The Church Praise-Book" (1881), edited by himself and
Mr. Hubert P. Main, Dr. M. Woolsey Stryker gives a very
catholic selection, enriched with ten of his own hymns.
In his "Church Song" (1889) he increases this number
threefold. His hymns in "The Song of Miriam " (1888)
have much beauty of thought, but sometimes fall short of
the simplicity and obviousness in expression required for
the widest popularity. Other Presbyterian hymnodists are
Dr. Hervey D. Ganse, Rev. Epher Whitaker, Rev. Aaron
222
[CHAP. XVI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
}
ܘ ܕܢܫ
7
R. Wolfe, Rev. Arthur T. Pierson, Mrs. Herrick Johnson,
Anson D. F. Randolph, Mrs. M. H. Seward ("Agnes Bur-
ney"), and Professor Robert P. Dunn.
髅
​The efforts of the reunited church and of the Southern
Assembly to secure satisfactory books of praise were not
at once successful. After a preliminary balk "The Pres-
byterian Hymnal" (1874) appeared, understood to be the
work chiefly of Dr. J. T. Duryea. In both hymns and
tunes it fell decidedly below the better class of American
hymnaries, but it was twenty years before its revision was
effected, and then only because the more educated and
exacting congregations were discarding it in favor of pri-
vate compilations. Even worse in its dolefulness of spirit
and general feebleness was the Southern "Psalms and
Hymns for the Worship of God" (1874), now also super-
seded by a better book. It is to be regretted that both
churches have abandoned the Reformed tradition, and
widened the breach among Presbyterians, by failing to place
the Book of Psalms in the forefront of their hymnaries.
This necessarily imperfect summary shows the increasing
activity of American Presbyterians in many branches of
scholarly work. It is weakest on the literary side, nor can
it be said that they have contributed largely to the grati-
fying growth of national literature during the present half-
century.
The Presbyterian churches have had their share of the
friction which attends the process of readjustment of old
beliefs to new discoveries and theories, which has made up
the intellectual history of the last half-century. Naturally
conservative by temperament and theological by vocation,
they have been less prompt than others to accept new
views, but they often have ignored their claims instead of
submitting them to a searching examination. In the re-
223
adjustments of religious belief to scientific discovery and
speculation their attitude has been wise and patient. When
it became clear that -the age of the earth and of man in-
volved at least a reinterpretation of the Mosaic account
of creation, and called in question the chronology which
Ussher and Newton had extracted from the Old Testa-
ment narrative, there was a slow and quiet acquiescence in
the fact. The evolutionary theory of the origin of species,
and of man's animal nature, was met with toleration, except
in the prosecution of Dr. James Wodrow in the Southern
church. The attempt to elevate science itself to the level
of a complete philosophy, with the result of reducing men
to the rank of parts of nature, governed by necessary laws
as nature is, and therefore destitute of any real freedom
of action, was even greeted with favor by some orthodox
writers, on account of its supposed coincidence with the
conclusions of Calvinism.
THE SWING TRIAL.
There has been, therefore, but little ecclesiastical dis-
turbance along the lines on which the hardest intellectual
battle of the age has been fought and is not yet completed.
That along the lines of literary and historical criticism falls
to the next chapter. The controversies and heresy trials.
of this period were, therefore, of minor importance, and
with one exception they attracted almost no attention out-
side of the church. That exception was the prosecution of
Professor David Swing before the Presbytery of Chicago,
in 1874, by Professor Francis L. Patton, of the Northwest-
ern Seminary, who also was editing the "Interior" and
serving a Chicago church as its pastor. In his editorial
work his attention was called to the preaching and-public
acts of a brother-pastor, Professor David Swing. This
gentleman was of German descent and of old-school train-
ing. He had come in 1866 to the pastorate of the West-
224
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVI.
minster Church (O.S.) from a chair in Miami University,
and had attracted a large congregation by his original and
suggestive sermons. He showed in these the mind of a
prose poet rather than of a logician, while his antagonist
was a logician before everything. In certain statements
found in Professor Swing's published sermons Dr. Patton
thought he detected contradictions of the Confession of
Faith on Election, Perseverance, Original Sin, the Vicarious
Sacrifice of Christ, the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, Jus-
tification by Faith, Plenary Inspiration, Biblical Infalli-
bility, and the Call to the Ministry, besides his "giving
the weight of his influence to the Unitarian denomination
by lecturing in behalf of one of their chapels. This long
indictment was reached by logical inferences from Professor
Swing's words, and these inferences the latter repudiated.
The Presbytery, which was composed mainly of new-
school men, acquitted Professor Swing, after a trial which
lasted six weeks, by a vote of three to one.
As an appeal
was taken to the Synod of Illinois, Professor Swing at once
announced his withdrawal from the church, as he had an
utter distaste for polemics, and his attachment to the Pres-
byterian Church had been much weakened by this experi-
He gathered an independent congregation, to which
he preached with no diminution of his popularity or in-
crease of his orthodoxy until his death, in 1894. Two
men—the Esau of liberalism and the Jacob of orthodoxy
ence.
.
were always struggling to the birth in him, and this kind
of midwifery greatly added to Esau's chances.
The transaction made an unpleasant impression through-
out the church. Few could go with the Presbytery in its
absolute acquittal of the accused, and not many were sat-
isfied with the spirit and manner of the prosecution. Many
things which were alleged to prove Professor Swing's het-
erodoxy would pass now without a word of comment, still
Galler
""
Go
T
225
less of objection. It is no longer possible to elevate the
destiny of Penelope and Socrates, or the moral character
of John Stuart Mill, to the level of an issue in dogmatics.
Nothing like the same interest attached to the trial of
Rev. John Miller before the Presbytery of New Brunswick
in 1877, although he was the son of Dr. Samuel Miller, of
Princeton Seminary. It was felt on all hands that Mr.
Miller had put himself outside the pale of Presbyterianism
by his rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity, although he
held to the proper deity of Jesus the Christ. He also as-
serted the annihilation of man by death until he is raised
again at the resurrection; and that Christ took upon him
original sin and was capable of sin. The decision reached
by the Presbytery commanded the assent of the entire
church.
LESSER HERETICS.
There was not quite the same unanimity in approving
the action of the Presbytery of Huntingdon, Pa., in the
case of the Rev. J. W. White, in 1884. Mr. White evi-
dently was in a state of mental reaction against the legal
conception of redemption, and was striving after one in
which real should replace jural relations and conceptions.
He also asserted that the scope of the atonement is found
defined in its effects upon redeemed men. On this point,
and in his conception of the resurrection, he showed the
influence of Swedenborg's teaching. The Presbytery,
after condemning his teaching on these points, allowed
him to withdraw from the ministry of the church. This
gentleness the Synod of Pennsylvania disapproved, while
applauding the Presbytery's findings on the charges.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CONGREGATIONAL LIFE AND WORSHIP OF THE
CHURCH.
་
IN the Presbyterian view of the church, it consists of a
series of assemblies, congregational, presbyterial, provin-
cial (or synodical), national, and ecumenical. Each larger
body embraces as its parts all the lesser which fall within
its bounds, and possesses their functions of teaching, wor-
ship, and discipline. Thus the presbyterial church is the
aggregate of all the congregational churches under its care,
and more. The ministers (or bishops) resident within its
bounds are members of the presbyterial church, but not
of congregational churches, their ordination transferring
them from the one to the other.
G
In the Presbyterian system in practice the Presbytery
is the most important unit. It meets far more frequently
than the larger bodies can; it elects the members of the
Assemblies, and in the large States those of the Synods;
it has supervision of a manageable area; it has the sole
power of ordination and of licensure; it possesses primary
jurisdiction over the ministry of the church; and, through
the operation of the Barrier Act, it possesses a control of
the church's constitution in which Synods and sessions do
not share. In its original purpose it was to serve many
uses. It was a theological school for the training of its
own members by the selection of profitable themes of dis-
cussion and by friendly criticisms of the sermons preached.
226
PRESBYTERY AND CONGREGATION.
227
The trials of students before licensure, and of licentiates
before ordination, are a remnant only of this.
It also ex-
ercised the most direct care over its congregations. It met
with each church in turn, to take cognizance of its spiritual
condition, the faithfulness of its minister, the efficiency of
its eldership, the household care of the young, the freedom
of the people from scandals, and their constancy in attend-
ance on worship and the Lord's Supper. This is continued
to some extent among the lesser Presbyterian bodies, but
the American Presbytery generally exercises its episcopal
functions at a distance, and in a very general way. It
very commonly has so many churches under its care that
it could not visit them once in a generation. Its meeting
with any of them is but upon invitation, and the spiritual
benefit (or harm) which results from the visit is through the
general influence of its proceedings rather than any direct
dealing with the church itself. This is still more true, of
necessity, of the Synods and the General Assembly.
--
For these reasons the spiritual life of the church is de-
veloped almost entirely through the congregation. Each
local church is what its people, its session, and especially
its pastor, make of it. The predominance of the pastor in
its life, and of the preaching function in its worship, is such as
would not have been possible in the apostolic age, because
of the difference in the conception and working of the
earliest church. That was a body of great complexity,
and therefore ranked high in the sociological scale. "The
simplicity that is in Christ" was not a simplicity of func-
tion or of operation, as the Apostle describes these in his
Epistles to the churches of Corinth and of Ephesus. All
the special powers and capacities which their new life had
brought to light in the members of the apostolic church
were given scope and exercise in its congregational life
and its labors for the advance of the gospel. The resultant
#
228
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVII.
*
unity was not that of simplicity, but of complexity—“ the
whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that
which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual work-
ing in the measure of every part."
The modern church has undergone sociologic retrogres-
sion from complexity to simplicity. It has not been able
to suppress the bestowal of gifts and the evocation of
powers for service; but neither has it furnished a place for
them. They have been obliged to find their scope outside
the church rather than in it. Thus the modern societies
for the care of the poor have taken up a work which was
the glory of the early church. The Sunday-school, for
the exercise of the gift of teaching or "doctrine," has
been organized outside the congregation, though it gradu-
ally is making its way back into it. The prayer-meeting
has been found necessary to give scope to Christian free-
dom in the exercise of the gifts of supplication and ex-
hortation, because the stiff dignity and simplicity of the
Sabbath services left no room for them. The Young
Men's (and Women's) Christian Associations, the Temper-
ance societies, the Christian Endeavor societies, and the
rest of their kind, are but so many indications of the wo-
ful impoverishment of the life of the congregation through
its simplification.
In the actual working of our Presbyterian churches gen-
erally this evil has reached an extreme development. The
habit of speaking of a congregation as Dr. A's or Mr. B's
church is but an expression of the fact. Practically the
pastor carries the undivided work on his own shoulders,
the sexton being the official next in importance. The
Scriptural diaconate for men has been replaced by trus-
tees, who have only the duties of collecting pew-rents,
paying salaries and bills, and keeping the church-building
in repair. The diaconate for women has disappeared alto-
}
THE ELDERSHIP.
229
gether, or is feebly represented by Dorcas societies, ladies'
aid societies, sewing-circles, mothers' meetings, and the
like; and the effort to restore it to its rightful place in the
church's order was defeated by a vote of the Presbyteries,
after receiving the sanction of the General Assembly of
1891, and the strong approval of the Princeton Seminary
faculty.¹
Lastly, the eldership, which has been the glory and the
strength of Presbyterianism, is tending to become little
more than association with the pastor in a religious com-
mittee to dispose of matters of discipline and the like. Its
active and public functions ceased when the annual and
formal visitation of the congregation was given up. Its
members are generally too busy to do more than attend
an evening meeting once a month or less, and it is excep-
tional to find that they regard even the visiting of the sick
as one of the duties of the office. There is, consequently,
a profound dissatisfaction with the present status of the elder-
ship, both among its own members and elsewhere. Con-
ferences are held and papers read which either describe an
impossible ideal or make trifling suggestions. The sense
of unexhausted possibilities in the office is not wanting,
but what to do is not so evident. The purely lay char-
acter of its members, their absorption in business pursuits,
their lack of personal oversight and authority in the con-
gregation, are all in antagonism to Presbyterian history,
however well these may fit into Dr. Hodge's theory that
they are simply the elected representatives of the people.
That theory, indeed, and the general disuse of ordination
by laying on of hands, have the air of an accommodation
to facts rather than the exhibition of an ideal. And the
1 The essentially Scriptural and Protestant character of this office is well
exhibited in Mr. J. M. Ludlow's little book, "Woman's Work in the
Church" (Macmillans, 1865).
230
THE PRESBYTERİANS.
[CHAP. XVII.
adoption in many churches, since 1872, of the rotary plan,
by which a part of the session retires from office at the
close of a specified term and is replaced by fresh election,
is quite in harmony with the present status of affairs,
though not with history. It was strenuously opposed by
Albert Barnes when under discussion.
The equal vote of the ruling eldership with the ministry
on all questions which come before the courts of the church
is an essential feature of Presbyterian government, but it
has become anomalous through the changed relation of
the elder to the church. The elder of past days was gen-
erally a man who was not greatly inferior to his pastor in
doctrinal and Scriptural knowledge. He had given close
study to theological questions. He had read, if not widely,
yet attentively and with reflection. He was usually as com-
petent as his minister to pass judgment on questions which
came before Synod and Presbytery. The young minister,
indeed, lived in a certain fear of him and of other keen
theologians of both sexes among his hearers, who were
sound on "the fundamentals." This is more commonly
true now of the smaller Presbyterian bodies than the larger.
In ordinary cases the elder of to-day is far less fully pre-
pared to sit in judgment upon the questions which agitate
the church. He has been too busy with other pursuits to
even attempt to keep abreast of the more thorough and
professional training of the ministry. He either takes the
safe course of voting as his minister does, or he is at the
mercy of party leaders, who catch him with party watch-
words, progressive or alarmist, and commit him to policies.
whose ultimate bearing he is too busy to understand.
-
In the absence of efficient assistance from his session,
the pastor of our day ordinarily has his hands full to over-
flowing. He has to do all the preaching, all the pastoral
visiting, all the presiding, all the work of administration
•
POLYPRAGMATIC PASTORS.
231
except the financial, and often a good deal of that. While
his associates in the session too generally hide their talents
in a napkin, he has to trade with his beyond what their
amount justifies, and the result sometimes is bankruptcy.
Fitted to do one thing well, he has to do many things
badly, and thus awakens the criticism which ends in a ter-
mination of the pastoral relation. Under such a system it
is not wonderful that the average duration of the pastorate
grows shorter. It is a striking evidence of their adaptabil-
ity that our ministers hold one church as long as they do.
The evil is all the graver because of the prevalence of
the notion that each church, however large, needs a single
minister and no more. In our large cities it is as excep-
tional to find a large Episcopal congregation which has but
one minister in charge, as it is to find a Presbyterian church
which has more than its pastor. It is not want of means
which is in the way, but the conception of the pastoral
office, which exacts that each of its occupants shall show
himself equal to all the multifarious requirements which
have gathered around it, and that there shall be no divis-
ion of labor among them. Hence the practice of multi-
plying small city churches beyond all need, each with its
one polypragmatic pastor. For a similar reason it has
been found difficult to effect any arrangement to exempt
even a distinguished preacher from pastoral labor, however
unfitted he may be to undertake it. In one noteworthy
case the people ceased to attend church, and gave as their
reason, "We want our pastor to preach to us." The pas-
tor was a man of little note, associated with one of the
greatest preachers of the age.
Closely related to this demand for simplification in the
ministry has been a demand for simplicity in all that per-
tains to the worship and forms of the church. This as-
sumes a Presbyterian tradition for simplicity of which his-
232
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVII.
tory knows nothing. The Kirk in its best days, like all
"the best Reformed churches," in all its public services
exhibited a dignity which has now disappeared. The min-
ister of the church still wore his gown in his pulpit minis-
trations, if not also on the street. He bore himself with
the courtly manner of the old-fashioned gentleman, and
was received by his people with a deference which recog-
nized the greatness of the office with which he was clothed.
His visits to their homes, like Edward Irving's to his Glas-
gow and London flocks, were not "calls" of neighborly
familiarity, but the coming and going of one who left an
atmosphere of grace and consecration in the household.
The children never heard him lightly spoken of, not for
his own sake so much as that of his office and his influ-
ence with them.
G
In the public services there was a lofty gravity which
became the house of God. The congregation not only lis-
tened, but, Bible in hand, they accompanied their pastor in
his references to the teachings of the Word. They arose
and stood in prayer, though they sat in singing. The
elders occupied the elders' pew, close to the pulpit, as in
the Reformed churches of America still. They were chosen
from the men of weight and spirituality of character, and
many are the testimonies to the deep impression they
made on the young of the flock by their paternal interest
in candidates for the communion or for the ministry.
Communion seasons came too seldom-generally twice
a year only-but they were times of solemnity and not
of modern simplicity. The " token," whose history goes
back to the subapostolic ages, symbolized the communi-
cant's pledged friendship with his Lord. The language of
the "action-sermon," the barring or fencing of the tables,
the whole atmosphere of the rite, were more suggestive
of the presence of a great spiritual mystery than the ritual
#
233
of Canterbury or even Rome. Yet the long tables, draped
with white, bore witness to the original character of the
feast spread by the Master for his church, rather than to a
clerical ceremonial which the people only were admitted to
share in.
A PRESBYTERIAN LITURGY.
To-day these things are hardly to be found, except
among our high-church brethren, the Covenanters. Their
disappearance elsewhere has been a loss of weight in im-
pression, and of a sense of the true purposes of worship.
Man has grown more and God less in our assemblies.
The discontent with the present status of congregational
worship has produced a feeling in favor of a liturgy. Drs.
Greene, Miller, and Krebs among the earlier leaders of the
General Assembly, and the Hodges at a later date, declined
to express any disapproval of liturgic forms, although they
agreed in disapproving of their imposition as a fixed order
obligatory upon all, and to the exclusion of free prayer.
The Hodges felt a warm interest in the movement repre-
sented by the Church Service Society of the Church of
Scotland and in its Euchologion. Dr. A. A. Hodge himself
prepared a book of forms for special services, which, how-
ever, does not show him to have possessed extraordinary
gifts as a liturgist.
In 1855 the late Dr. Charles W. Baird formally opened
the discussion of the question in his "Eutaxia; or, The
Presbyterian Liturgies," in which he showed that the
sister-churches of Italy, Switzerland, France, Germany,
Holland, England, and Scotland, in earlier times, had been
liturgic in practice. He drew from the archives of the
church the liturgies which bear the great names of Calvin
and Knox, and interpreted their devout accents to Ameri-
can ears. Dr. Charles Hodge reviewed the work in the
"Princeton Review" for July, 1855, and deplored the
want of a Presbyterian prayer-book to serve both as a
ܝ
234
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVII.
1
guide in the exercise of free prayer and as a substitute for it
on proper occasions. He deplored the sometimes slovenly
and frequently inappropriate fashion in which this part of
worship was conducted, and especially the want of a suit-
able communion service, declaring that the Presbyterian
Church "has suffered more than can well be estimated
from these faults in the conduct of her simple services,
and from failing to supply her children with those aids for
religious worship which their exigencies demand" in the
absence of a minister. "If God would put it into the
heart of some man of large experience in the pastoral life,
familiar with the literature of the subject and with the in-
tellectual gifts the work demands, to compile a book con-
taining prayers for public worship, and forms for the ad-
ministration of the sacraments, marriages, and funerals, he
would do the church a great service, whether the book
ever received the sanction of our ecclesiastical judicatures
or not."
In the next decade a liturgy was actually adopted by
St. Peter's Church in Rochester, and used until suppressed
by the new-school Presbytery. In 1864 Dr. Charles W.
Shields, then of Philadelphia, now of Princeton College,
reproduced the English Book of Common Prayer in the
shape which Richard Baxter and the other English Pres-
byterians in 1661 declared would be satisfactory to them,
and pressed its claim to supply a basis for unity in wor-
ship among Protestants. In 1883 Professor S. M. Hopkins,
of Auburn Seminary, published a liturgy for the use of
Presbyterian churches. Somewhat earlier the late John
Neill, M.D., of Philadelphia, tried to establish a John Knox
Society for the promotion or restoration of liturgic wor-
ship.¹
1 See Dr. Charles W. Baird's "Eutaxia; or, The Presbyterian Liturgies,'
New York, Dodd, 1855; “A Book of Public Prayer, Compiled from the Au-
""
INNOVATIONS IN WORSHIP.
235
Parallel with this discussion has gone forward a process
of change which has put an end to uniformity in worship,
and has set the Directory of 1788 aside in many, if not most,
of the churches. The Lord's Prayer has been restored
to the place given it by the Westminster Divines, and is
repeated in unison. So are the Apostles' Creed, selections
from the Psalms and other parts of Scripture. A formal
offertory has taken the place of the collection. There is a
silent pause after the benediction, and a free use of chants,
by the choir at least. In other cases we see a free use of
spontaneous symbolism, not always in the best taste, but a
witness to the growing need of appeal to the imagination,
no less than to the understanding and the emotions, in
true worship. For no worship is really adequate to human
needs whose methods leave any province of our manifold
human nature out of account. God has made us the most
complex of his creatures, and calls for a response to his
goodness from every side of our human nature.
It is but natural that much of the change this restlessness
has led to has not been for the better. The prominence
given to the quartet choir in our city churches, often lead-
ing to the relinquishment of the singing to them, and the
time devoted to choir pieces and organ voluntaries, con-
stitute a censurable departure not only from Presbyterian
history, but from the very idea of congregational worship.
It is an importation of the methods of the concert-hall into
the church, which is offensive both to good taste and to
thorized Formularies of Worship of the Presbyterian Church, as Prepared by the
Reformers, Calvin, Knox, and others, with Supplementary Forms," New York,
Scribner, 1868; Dr. Charles W. Shields's "The Book of Common Prayer and
Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the
Church, as Amended by the Westminster Divines in the Royal Commission
of 1661, and in Agreement with the Directory for Public Worship of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States," Philadelphia, 1864, New York,
1883; also his Liturgia Expurgata," Philadelphia, 1864, third edition,
New York, 1884; Professor S. M. Hopkins's "A General Liturgy and Book of
Common Prayer," New York, Barnes, 1883.
""
236
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVII.
devout instincts. Not so bad, but certainly not laudable,
has been the introduction of an undignified and unsuitable
music into the Sunday-school, the praise-service, and even,
in some cases, into the stated services of worship. It is
undeniable that the school of music begun by Philip Phil-
lips and developed by Ira D. Sankey has led multitudes to
sing who otherwise would not have done it. The gain,
however, is attended by a loss so grave as to justify the
church in setting her face against it. The power of asso-
ciation is nowhere more in evidence than in the influence
which music exercises. The association of the greatest
and most affecting truths with words commonly paltry
and often vulgar, and with music often more suitable to a
dance-hall than to the house of God, is a chief among the
many influences which have been robbing religion of its
severity and God of his awfulness. Popularity is too dearly
bought at such a price.
More promising of good is the growing taste for a music
at once popular and excellent in quality, which the Eng-
lish churches have fostered. The names of Dykes, Hullah,
Wesley, Barnby, Sullivan, indicate that as yet it is an ex-
otic in America; but its amount in the newer hymnaries is
increasing steadily, and it is to be expected that a school
of this character will arise among us, and will emancipate
it from a certain stiffness which is alien to our national
character. The good work done by Lowell Mason and
Thomas S. Hastings for the American churches entitles
them to lasting gratitude; but they worked for an age in
which musical culture was making its beginnings in Amer-
ica; and, as Browning says, each age must produce its own
music.
G
The proper spiritual life of the congregation differs from
that of the past in showing neither the denominational
distinctness and uniformity nor the doctrinal exactitude of
LOSS AND GAIN İN SPIRITUAL LIFE.
237
former times. The lines and bounds of spiritual affinity
become less distinct through greater freedom of intercourse
and interchange with other Christians. Presbyterians may
still commit the Shorter Catechism to memory in their
childhood, but their riper years are nourished by writers
of so many schools that that famous text-book of highly
abstract theology generally falls into the background of
the mind. They still, by force of heredity, are more in-
terested in doctrinal questions than are their fellow-Chris-
tians generally, but in a different way from their fathers.
There is a loss in this syncretism by which the thoughts of
À Kempis and Pascal, Keble and Newman, Robertson and
Kingsley, lie side by side with the tenets of their vernacu-
lar Calvinism. In minds of the less logical kind the result
is a great deal of confusion and irresolution, with a disposi-
tion to keep open house for whatever offers itself as new.
But there is a gain also in the enrichment of the spiritual
life from the fruits of other fields, which are yet the Mas-
ter's domain. The hymnaries of the church exemplify
this gain. Were all that is not from the pen of the Cal-
vinistic hymnodists, from Baxter to Bonar, eliminated from
the selection, the result would be a great impoverishment.
A decided gain to the spiritual life of the modern
churches has been in gifts bestowed upon them in this
age which are not seen so distinctly in the past. One of
these is the new sense of intimate personal communion with
the Saviour in what some old writers call "the process of
his life and death, resurrection and ascension." Beginning
from the revivals of 1857-59 in both the British Islands
and America, there has been a growing dissatisfaction with
the merely jural conception of man's redemption in Christ,
and a pressing on "to know him, and the power of his
resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming
conformed unto his death." Christians are seeking after
-t-
238
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVII.
the deepest spiritual significance of the mysteries of death
to sin and rising again to righteousness, as made possible
to us through fellowship with him in all he was and did.
There is no resting in salvation as a judicial transaction
liberating men from the penalties of sin. The inner life.
of conflict with evil, and victory through faith, is seen to
be associated with the great transactions recorded in the
Gospels in a way not to be expressed to the understanding
in the phrases of any philosophy, or even theology, that
has been formulated. Hence the welcome shown to those
mystical writers whose bold utterances express this truth
in parable and paradox.
This new phase of Christian experience certainly de-
prives the law of condemnation of the prominence which
the teachers of the Great Awakening gave it in the ordo
salutis. Hence the complaints from the representatives of
that school that there is no such "thorough law-work"
in modern conversions as in those of past generations.
Sinners come to the rest of faith without such maddening
visions of their own depravity, such prostrating sense of
the sinfulness of sin, such readiness to accept even damna-
tion at God's hands as their just reward, as were seen in
1735-42, or in 1800-19. This is true; but if these tre-
mendous emotions be the indispensable prerequisites of
the Christian life, there is no age of the church before the
rise of Pietism in Germany which must not be pronounced
fatally deficient. Even the apostolic age and that of the
Reformation will not satisfy these conditions. It is true
that Luther went through experiences not less harrowing
in the days of his ignorance; but he never looked for them
in his own people, who had been brought by easier ways
into the light of the gospel. And he, like Calvin, describes
repentance for sin, not as an achievement to be got through
CHRISTIAN NURTURE AND WORK.
239
and done with before exercising faith, but as a lifelong
and deepening experience resulting from faith.
This new view is carrying the church back into sym-
pathy with the Reformers in the matter of the way in
which men enter upon the new life.
The desire grows
less for sharp crises of transition from conscious enmity to
conscious friendship with God. The principle of Christian
Nurture enunciated by Horace Bushnell in 1847-viz., that
a child brought up under Christian influence should never
know a time when love to God is not an active principle
in its life—is displacing the old assumption that even the
offspring of the godly are the born enemies of God and
must await the crisis of conversion. In this respect the
church no longer presents the unity it once did in its
practical theology. In some quarters the assumptions of
the Awakening still control her action. In others the
newer view, which is also the older, has obtained prac-
tical recognition, and the demand for conscious conversion
is no longer made of the children of the church.
Another grace bestowed on the modern church, and one
closely connected with this new sense of direct relation to
Christ, is the spirit of helpfulness. The neighborhood of
the Master is found to be no place for idlers in the vine-
yard. So there has been a development of spontaneous
activity in the churches, which, as has been shown, finds
itself badly suited with room in the church as popularly
understood and organized. The new wine, in many in-
stances, has burst the old bottles.
With this also has come a peril of doing and overdoing,
without the vocation and the leading which must come
before right spontaneous action. Unfortunate, too, has
been the growing disposition to propose that the church
shall take the whole social burden on her shoulders, and
240
[CHAP. XVII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
hold herself responsible for the right conduct of affairs
which belong properly to the state. Into the sphere of
state action--the sphere of rights and of law-the church
may not enter, except as announcing the great principles
of social duty. She is not made a judge or a divider be-
tween rich and poor or between labor and capital. Nor
is it hers to decide by what methods the state is to deal
with the problems of slavery or intemperance or the social
evil, although she has the right to insist that they shall
not be ignored. She can undertake these things only at
the sacrifice of far higher interests, at the peril of forfeit-
ing her proper spiritual influence.
The institutional church, which has grown up in our
great cities as the result of this new interest in social prob-
lems, is a sign of good. It is a return to apostolic ideals
in many respects, especially in getting rid of that severance
of the spiritual from the material in ministering to human
needs which stands in such contrast to all the precedents
of the New Testament. It may result in a restoration of
the manifold activities of the churches of the first days,
and thus reclaim for the gospel the gracious activities to
which it gave the first impulse. No doubt it will make
many mistakes in the process, and learn by its mistakes.
The discipline of the modern church over its own mem-
bers has become a matter of some difficulty, in view of
the church's divisions, and the readiness of many of these
to open their arms to persons whose stay in the others has
become uncomfortable. In some of our religious bodies
there is hardly a pretense of exercising discipline over
their lay members. In others it is abandoned to the judg-
ment of each congregation, and can rise no higher than
the local and temporary sense of propriety in each. The
Presbyterian churches always have confessed their respon-
sibility, both local and collective, for seeing that the walk
CHURCH DISCIPLINE AND UNITY.
241
and conversation of their people is according to godliness.
The scope of this responsibility has been narrowed and its
efficiency weakened by the notion that none but the com-
municants in the church are its members; and even when
there has been a disposition to enlarge the conception, it
has been too generally by including merely "the children
of the church" who, through youth or indecision, have
not yet become communicants. In this respect the Con-
gregationalist conception of the church has displaced that
which is distinctively Presbyterian, to the diminution of
the church's social influence, and to the injury of her non-
communicant members. The present tendency to assert
for the church a firmer and broader influence will help to
correct this, and will bring even our Independent brethren
to see that the demand for a church-membership individu-
ally assured of their conversion does not place the church
in a position fitted to meet the social need, and is not in
harmony with the teachings of the New Testament. Soci-
ology promises to play havoc with ecclesiology of that
type.
In view of these openings toward a new development
we cannot regard the American church, either as mean-
ing a congregation or embracing a "denomination," as an
accomplished fact. Thus far, indeed, there has been little
that is distinctly American in our religious life, and that
little not the most laudable. All our sects, except a few
to which we refuse the Christian name, are of European
origin. We have been singularly barren in ecclesiastical
originality, while original in nearly all other fields of
national life. The national instinct, indeed, has hardly
touched the churches, as yet, with its unifying power.
We are still in the colonial stage, abounding in European
elements of all sorts, but not yet American.
The manner in which the political unity of the nation
-
242
[CHAP. XVII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
came about probably foreshadows the solution of the
problem of Christian unity, which already presses upon
our Protestant churches. It will not be by sacrificing the
wealth of variety in the present order (or seeming chaos)
of our ecclesiastical life, but by some elastic method, like
our federal Union, which will leave room for variety in the
types of worship and of life, and yet prevent or avoid the
breach of unity. We shall not leave behind us all the past
has bestowed, and attain to unity by the process of sim-
plification in creed and worship, but by finding room and
And
use in mutual help for all that God has given us.
when that day comes, soon or late, there is no church that
will have more to bring than our own, and none that will
be welcomed more heartily into the new fellowship by its
sister-churches.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE REVISION CONTROVERSY.
HALF a century ago the great controversies were waged
between our religious households. It was church against
church, or sect against sect. When a collision of opinion
arose within a church, it generally resulted in a division,
or in the formation of a new sect to represent the worsted
principle. Our ecclesiastical politics had the simplicity and
directness seen in an ancient Greek city, where the victori-
ous party generally expelled the minority, and thus secured
an effective unanimity. It was a common plea with those
who expressed their dissent from the position taken by
their own church, that they should leave it in peace, and
either seek fellowship in some body which agreed with
them, or form a new one for themselves.
This breaking up religious communions "with a light
heart" is become less the habit of our American Christians.
It begins to be recognized that doctrinal uniformity is not
the most precious possession a church can claim, and may
be bought at too high a price. What once would have been
separate sects begin to be parties within the churches, and
the discussions which would have been waged across sec-
tarian lines are now carried on in a more brotherly fashion
within the same body.
It is noticeable that the questions which perplex one
church are those which are pressing for an answer in some
shape in the others also. All the churches are feeling the
243
244
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVIII.
strain of readjusting their theological formulas to the new
conclusions of history and criticism, sociology and biology.
All have to decide how far the new scholarship demands a
new attitude toward the Scriptures; how far the Develop-
ment theory may be accepted as explaining the origin of
man and of society, without imperiling positions essential
to the Christian conception of human spirituality and divine
Providence. All have to say how far the newer ethics
oblige us to reconsider our ethical ideals, and thus to modify
our conception of God. And even when the shape taken
by the discussion is one which is peculiar to the individual
church, the wide sympathy excited in other churches with
one or both of the parties to the controversy shows that
the real issue is one which is common to the churches.
This was eminently true of the discussion as to the re-
vision of the Westminster standards, which was sprung
upon the church by the General Assembly of 1889. It
can hardly be said to have been foreshadowed by any
previous action on any one's part on this side of the ocean.
The interest in the question of subscription, which had
been fanned into life by the discussions previous to the re-
union of 1869–70, had fairly died out. None of the trials
for heresy, except for a brief moment that of Professor
Swing, had caused it to revive. No liberal was asserting
the need of larger liberty of construction; no conservative
was urging greater strictness. There seemed to be, in
fact, a distinct languor in reference to all such matters; and
Dr. Archibald A. Hodge's course of popular lectures on
theological themes had given unusual satisfaction even to
those who differed from the Princeton type of doctrine.
The agitation as to the "Higher Criticism," which had
been going on in the pages of the "Presbyterian Review,"
was quite another affair, and stood in no vital relation to
the question now raised.
245
It was in the British churches that the alteration of the
church's relation to the Westminster standards was pro-
posed. First the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland
-the church which had sent its missionaries to America be-
cause unconditional subscription to the Confession of Faith
was not required by the Synod of Philadelphia-adopted
in 1879, after prolonged debate, a "Declaratory Act as to
the Sense in which the Confession is to be Understood,"
which shifted the emphasis from the points peculiar to Cal-
vinism to those in which Calvinists are in agreement with
other Christians. Next the Free Church, which refused
recognition to the new-school church of America as un-
sound in its Calvinism, was planning a similar declaration
as to the sense in which it required subscription to the
standards. Lastly the newly vigorous Presbyterian Church
of England was adopting in 1889 briefer Articles of Faith,
twenty-four in number, as a summary of the Westminster
Confession of Faith, to which ministers and elders might
assent at their ordination.
SCOTTISH RELAXATION.
duty)
These examples acted the more directly upon the Ameri-
can church because of the closer relations which had been
fostered by the Reformed Alliance, and through the vigor-
ous theological literature created by the young Free Church
ministry. For years there was a silent observation of what
was happening abroad, and a feeling that the same problem
must be solved in America also. Sound, but not ultra, con-
servatives, like Dr. Archibald A. Hodge, did not hesitate
to express a willingness to go as far, at least, as the British
churches were going for the relief of troubled consciences.
He reprinted the Declaratory Act of the United Presby-
terian Synod in his "Commentary on the Confession of
Faith" (Philadelphia, 1885), and he told me that he saw
no objection to the same step being taken by the American
church.
7
246
[CHAP. XVIII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
The air, indeed, was growing electric, but the shock
which brought down the avalanche came from the conserv-
ative Presbytery of Philadelphia. It sent a memorial to
the General Assembly asking it to revise the proof-texts
printed with the Shorter Catechism, which a sounder exe-
gesis had shown to be not always the best for the purpose.
To this there was no great objection from any quarter, and
the work has since been done. But the memorial, by its
very success, suggested a bolder step. In the General
Assembly of 1889 memorials were presented from fifteen
Presbyteries asking it to take steps toward a revision of
the Westminster Confession. The Assembly, without a
division, resolved to transmit an overture to the Presby-
teries asking their sense of the propriety of attempting a
revision, and what changes they thought necessary.
The constitutionality of the overture was challenged,
especially by the lawyers in the conservative wing of the
church. The Adopting Act of 1789 (p. 65) had declared
that the Confession should be "unalterable, unless two
thirds of the Presbyteries shall propose alterations or
amendments, and [these] shall be agreed to and enacted
by the General Assembly." It was claimed that this re-
served the initiative to the Presbyteries, and that the Gen-
eral Assembly could not move in the matter until two thirds
of the Presbyteries invited it to do so. The action, how-
ever, of the Synod of 1787 did not vitiate the overture of
1889, which proposed and sanctioned no alteration in the
Confession, but merely suggested to the Presbyteries that
now was the time to do it unitedly if they desired to. A
much bolder course, indeed, had been taken by the As-
sembly of 1803, which had directed one of its committees
"to consider whether any, and, if any, what, alterations
ought to be made in the Confession of Faith."
The response to the overture from the Presbyteries of
-
-
247
the church was surprising both in the extent of the desire
for a change it elicited and the emphasis with which it was
expressed. Up to the opening of the question there must
have been a steady growth of dissatisfaction which had
found no utterance. Not only among new-school men and
among the younger ministers was this shown, but in all
classes. Dr. Henry J. van Dyke, who had made no secret
of his sympathy with the "Declaration and Testimony"
movement, Drs. James McCosh and J. T. Duffield of
Princeton College, Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler, Dr. Henry C.
McCook, Dr. William O. Campbell, and other old-school
men, were as emphatic as Drs. Philip Schaff, Howard
Crosby, E. R. Craven, Herrick Johnson, Stephen W.
Dana, Charles L. Thompson, and others on the new-
school side.
FRIENDS AND FOES OF REVISION.
The opposition, however, was strong, able, and resolute.
The faculty of Princeton Seminary (Drs. Green, Warfield,
C. W. Hodge, etc.) were a unit in opposition, and with
them stood Dr. Patton, now the president of the college.
They were reinforced by Dr. Shedd, of Union Seminary,
and Dr. John de Witt, of the Chicago Seminary. On the
same side stood Drs. John Hall, Samuel T. Lowrie, and
George P. Hays, with Judge Drake of Missouri, and a
host of lawyers among the elders. Professor C. A. Briggs
occupied a rather ambiguous position, as fearing that the
Confession if revised might leave him less sailing-room
than he then enjoyed. His pamphlet, "Whither?" cer-
tainly throws cold water on the proposal to revise, although
he finally voted for the New York Presbytery's resolution
for "revision, understanding the word to be used broadly as
comprehending any Confessional changes." The direction
in which this last expression points was taken by twenty-
one of the Presbyteries, beginning with that of Albany,
which overtured the General Assembly for an entirely new
248
[CHAP. XVIII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Confession of Faith. Others expressed their desire for a
brief statement of the church's essential doctrine, which
should not supersede, but stand beside, the Confession,
after the fashion of the Scotch Declaratory Act.
The reasons given for revision were very various, but
some were so generally expressed as to permit of their
being stated as the mind of the church. It was said that the
Confession was both defective and excessive in statement. ·
The church had undergone great changes since the West-
minster divines had been in session. It had been led into
a deeper sense of the love of God to mankind, of the work
of the Spirit in the hearts of men, and of the church's voca-
tion as a missionary agency. The Confession contained no
explicit recognition of the love of God to men, and no con-
fession of the church's duty toward the nations that sit in
darkness. It was explicit enough as to controversial points
which were of interest to the seventeenth century. It had
nothing to say of the issues of modern debate of the great
conflict, for instance, between materialistic science and spir-
itual religion.
On the other hand, it went beyond the teachings of
Scripture in explicitly asserting the reprobation of the
wicked, in refining as to the number of the elect being inca-
pable of increase or decrease, in speaking of “elect infants
with the evident implication that some are reprobate, and
in declaring the Bishop of Rome to be the Antichrist.
The third chapter of the Confession, which treats "Of
God's Eternal Decree," was the center of the whole de-
bate, the conservatives insisting that every part of it was
either a primary statement of the Calvinistic principle or a
necessary inference from it, while the revisionists declined
to regard logically necessary inferences as necessarily true.
This, indeed, the conservatives conceded in refusing to
admit that if there be "elect infants" there must also be
""
OBJECTIONS TO REVISION.
249
reprobate infants.” The Westminster divines, as Dr.
C. P. Krauth showed in his reply to Dr. Charles Hodge on
this point, would not have shrunk from the inference. It
shows how great the change which has taken place in our
conception of God's character, that not a single opponent
of revision would subscribe to the opinion which the au-
thors of the Confession actually held and meant to express.
Many of them even refused to believe that the dogma of
infant damnation had ever been held by Calvinists.
The opponents of revision argued (1) that it was dan-
gerous, as likely to lead to changes which would impair
"the integrity of the Reformed or Calvinistic system "—
Professor H. B. Smith's phrase, of which conservatives
were now less afraid than when they voted it out of the
Basis of Union. It is true that the leading advocates of
revision were pledged to resist such changes, and were
ready to have the Committee on Revision instructed to
reject them if proposed. To many, however, reprobation
or preterition belonged to that integrity, and they were
alarmed by the urgency for its excision. They also were
alarmed, and with some reason, by the wild and loose criti-
cisms of the Confession in which some of the advocates of
revision-not the leaders, however-indulged themselves.
They also (2) objected to revision as needless, since “ the
elastic formula of subscription" employed by the American
church bound its office-bearers only to "sincerely receive
and adopt the Confession, . as containing the System
of Doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures." This, they
insisted, meant simply the Reformed or Calvinistic system
in its integrity, apart from the special peculiarities of state-
ment employed by the framers of the Confession. Sub-
scription did not carry with it unqualified and unlimited ac-
ceptance of the Confession, but only of its essential articles.
This plea, as Dr. Craven showed, was not in accordance
"
250
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVIII.
G
with the history of the church and the expression of its
mind by several General Assemblies. These identified the
Confession itself with "the system of doctrine taught in
the Holy Scriptures." The right to even public exception
to any statement in the Confession was abolished by the
Old Side at the division of 1741, and was not reasserted
by the New Side at the reunion of 1758, with the express
exception of "so much of the xxiiid Chapter as gives au-
thority to the civil magistrate in matters of religion."` That
chapter was changed in 1786-87, thus eliminating the ex-
ception. The same Synod originated the formula of assent
at ordination still in use: "Do you sincerely receive and
adopt the Confession of Faith of this Church, as containing
the System of Doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures?"
The Synod also declared the books which made up its con-
stitution to be "the standard of our doctrine, government,
discipline, and worship." Neither it nor the earlier As-
semblies regarded it as being "the system of doctrine" or
“the standard of doctrine" mixed up with other matters.
The Assembly of 1824 described the doctrinal standards
of the church as “a summary of those divine truths which
are diffused throughout the sacred volume," and added:
"They as a system of doctrine, therefore, cannot be aban-
doned, in our opinion, without an abandonment of the Word
of God." They again speak of them as "the system of
doctrine which men of sound learning, full of the Holy
Ghost and mighty in the Scriptures, have devised from the
oracles of the living God." In a word, the Confession is
the system to which the church requires its ministers, elders,
and deacons to subscribe. That system is contained in it
in the sense in which "the Word of God is contained in
the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments," as ortho-
dox men understand that formula and rationalists do not.
The liberty to except whatever is not essential to the
THE "ELASTIC FORMULA.”
251
integrity of the Reformed or Calvinistic system no more
exists legally than does the liberty to except whatever is
not essential to the evangelical system held by Calvinists
and Arminians alike. The church has no more drawn the
one line than the other. The attempt to draw the former
line was defeated in 1869 by the conservatives of the old-
school church. Those ministers of the church, therefore,
who betrayed their lack of sympathy with the essentials
of Calvinism during the debate on revision had just the
same rights in the church as those who avowed their Cal-
vinism but expressed their dissent from any of the state-
ments of the Confession. Both were there on toleration
simply—a toleration growing out of the impossibility Dr.
Charles Hodge confessed (p. 140) of requiring subscription
to an elaborate Confession, but never officially defined as
to its limits. The debate should have opened the eyes of
the conservatives to the doctrinal uncertainty of the church's
position. The church's creed should be one to which the
ministry could subscribe as unreservedly as the bridegroom
answers in a marriage. This was what was required of her
ministers and elders in the earlier period of her history.
When this ceased to be possible with regard to the Con-
fession of Faith, the remedy should have been found in an
alteration of the document, and not in treating the language
of the act of subscription as an "elastic formula," when the
terms bear no such sense.
Much stress was laid upon the fact (3) that nobody but
ministers and elders had to subscribe the Confession, as
persons were received to the membership of the church
upon the confession simply of their faith in Jesus Christ.
This had not been the practice of the new-school churches,
in which Congregationalist influences had led to the adop-
tion of extended articles of belief and covenants as terms
of communion. But it was the law of the reunited church,
252
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVIII.
and there had been a general conformity of local practice
to its requirements. When, therefore, the members of the
church complained of any statement in the Confession,
and urged a revision, it was answered that they need not
trouble themselves about it, as they were not required to
assent to it.
This, however, was not the whole truth of the matter.
The Confession is officially described as that of the Pres-
byterian Church, not of its ministry and eldership. And
in our country distinctions between clergy and people do
not count for much. Every man is expected to stand up
for the creed of his church as he does for the platform of
his party. The Roman Catholic workmen in our shops.
and factories must have an answer ready when they are
challenged as to the dogma of papal infallibility or the
immaculate conception; the Baptist must have his reasons
for immersion and close communion; and so along the
whole line of denominational peculiarities.
The debate on revision brought the extreme statements
of the Westminster standards into strong light, and threw
the members of the church everywhere upon the defen-
sive. Reprobation and infant damnation became topics of
common conversation. Presbyterians had to declare where
they stood on these points, without the least reference to
the fact that they never had subscribed the Confession.
It was felt that the whole membership of the church had
a vital interest in its authoritative statements of doctrine,
and that a normal confession must be one which is both
intelligible and credible to the people at large.
It also was said (4) that the alleged defects of the Con-
fession were not serious matters, as no Confession of Faith
could be expected to state the whole faith of the church,
but only to establish the lines of definition and defense
PRESBYTERIAN LOSSES.
253
which are essential to its doctrinal integrity. It was an-
swered that this was true enough, and that the divines at
Westminster would have done their work much better if
they had borne the principle in mind. But the things to
be omitted must not be such fundamental truths as the love
of God to mankind, which is nowhere stated with explicit-
ness. Neither should the operation of the Spirit in men's
hearts, apart from his comforting and sanctifying believers,
have been left to inference. In truth, since the days of
Jonathan Edwards, and starting, indeed, from his later
theological development, there had been a shifting of the
theological center from the sovereignty to the love of God.
This had been the root of the larger activity of the church
in the mission field and in works of charity at home. This
had supplied a new theological perspective to the preach-
ing even of Dr. Shedd and Dr. Hall. But the Confession
was out of harmony with all this.
It was argued also (5) that in spite of its alleged omis-
sions and excesses the Confession had served the church
for nearly two centuries and a half of splendid growth and
achievement. This argument was generally allowed to
pass, but it had the least foundation of any. American
Presbyterianism, in all its eleven branches, did not contain
one third of the descendants of the Presbyterian immigra-
tion to America. This fact and the division and subdivis-
ion of the church were directly traceable to the scholastic
and one-sidedly intellectual character, and the resulting
tendency to doctrinal niceties and polemics, which the
Westminster standards have imparted to Presbyterianism.
As the voting proceeded the conservatives at first were
disposed to insist that nothing less than a two-thirds ma-
jority would warrant the Assembly in proceeding further.
But this claim was generally abandoned, as the overture
254
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVIII.
1
made no specific proposal for revision, and its adoption
would effect none. The vote finally stood 134 Presby-
teries for revision explicitly, and 4 substantially so, a two-
thirds majority of all being 142.
When the Assembly of 1890 met, a prolongation of the
struggle was expected. The conservatives, however, ac-
cepted the decision and proffered their assistance in effect-
ing the revision. Princeton took the lead in this, much to
the indignation of extreme conservatives, who forgot that
a sort of opportunism is one of its fixed traditions. It sug-
gested Dr. Warfield as its representative; but his declara-
tion that the Confession unrevised" suited him down to the
ground" had created a prejudice against him as a reviser.
Dr. Green was appointed instead, and a committee was
created out of both parties, which distinctly did not repre-
sent the state of feeling in the church on the subject. The
result was a great disappointment, as its report, while con-
ceding much that had been asked, did not make that on
which the revision movement hinged. The offensive state-
ments as to p₁ rition were touched so slightly as to leave
that matter mu n where it had stood before.
The Assembly of 1891 sent down the report to the
Presbyteries for further suggestions, which were forwarded
to the committee. The conclusions finally reached were
laid before the Assembly of 1892 in twenty-eight over-
tures, and these were sent to the Presbyteries for their
final action.
These overtures certainly contained some of the changes
ardently desired by the majority of the church. The
statement as to the unalterable number of the elect was to
disappear; the operation of God's grace and of his Holy
Spirit in the lives and hearts of the unregenerate was enun-
ciated; the limitation of the work of creation to six days
was changed so as to leave the question of time an open
1
1
HALF A LOAF, OR NONE?
255
one; the salvation of the heathen by God's grace, without
the preached Word, was admitted as possible; that of all
infants dying in infancy was clearly stated; the pope was
not to be pilloried as Antichrist, nor marriage with Roman
Catholics explicitly forbidden; and the power of ministers
to retain and remit sins was pronounced to be “ministerial
and declarative" only. But the doctrine of reprobation
or preterition was not eliminated, as had been asked by
over a hundred Presbyteries. On this point, it is said,
Princeton was most determined and most persuasive. Six
of the twenty-four members of the Committee. of Revi-
sion 1 recorded their dissent from the result in the case of
Chapter III.
It now fell to the advocates of revision to decide whether
half a loaf was better than none, or the contrary. A large
number of them must have concluded that it was better to
lay the whole subject on the shelf for the time than adopt
a truncated revision, which might stand in the way of one
more perfect. At the same time there was a decided feel-
ing among many that the church had taken the wrong
course, as revision would necessarily prove more irritating
to one half the church and less satisfactory to the other
than would the preparation of a new creed, less scholastic
and more practical in character. The report of the com-
mittee offered nothing but sundry patches of new cloth on
an old garment, and the whole effect was incongruous in
the extreme. A sixteenth-century document blistered
1 The committee consisted of Dr. William E. Roberts, chairman; Dr.
William E. Moore, secretary; Dr. William Henry Green, Dr. Matthew B.
Riddle, Dr. Willis J. Beecher, Dr. Edward D. Morris, Dr. Herrick John-
son, Dr. William Alexander, Dr. Ebenezer Erskine, Dr. James T. Leftwich,
Dr. Samuel J. Niccolls, Dr. Edward R. Burkhalter, Dr. Robert R. Booth;
Elders Hon. William Strong, Hon. Samuel J. R. Macmillan, Hon. Alfred
Hand, Hon. Emerson E. White, Hon. Henry B. Sayler; and Messrs. Win-
throp S. Gilman, Barker Gummere, William Evarts, George Junkin, and
Charles M. Charnley.
256
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XVIII.
over with nineteenth-century amendments could not form
a homogeneous whole.
This state of feeling was indicated in the final vote. The
vote of 147 Presbyteries was needed to adopt any of the
overtures. The highest number received by any was 114,
and this number was given for four. The rest, with four
exceptions, ranged from 105 to 113, while the explicit vote
in the negative ranged from 61 to 68. But the latter were
reinforced by fifteen Presbyteries (mostly on the mission
field) which made no report; thirteen others (two on the
mission field) which reported no action on the overtures;
and seventeen which refused to act on them as doubting
their constitutionality. Fifteen out of these three groups
had voted for revision in 1890.
The support of the overtures did not come by any means
from those Presbyteries alone which had supported the
original proposal. The twenty-four Presbyteries of the
Cherokee nation, Chillicothe, Dubuque, Ebenezer, Hunt-
ingdon, Kingston, La Crosse, North Laos, North Texas,
Palmyra, Peoria, Platte, Portsmouth, Redstone, Rock River,
Sacramento, St. Louis, San Francisco, Shenango, Spring-
field, Trinity, Washington, Wooster, and Zanesville, all had
voted with the minority in 1890. They now voted for all
or nearly all the overtures—as did Pittsburg for sixteen of
them, Philadelphia for nineteen, and New Brunswick for
twenty-one-and would have carried them if the revision-
ists had kept their ranks. But in addition to the fifteen
abstentionists already referred to, the thirty-one Presby-
teries of Albany, Chemung, Chippewa, East Oregon, Free-
port, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Iowa City, Jersey City,
Larned, Logansport, Mahoning, Mankato, Maumee, Mil-
waukee, Montana, New York, North River, Otsego, Pe-
toskey, Puget Sound, Rochester, St. Clairsville, St. Law-
rence, Solomon, Southern Oregon, South Florida, Stockton,
THE VOTE ON REVISION.
257
Syracuse, West Jersey, and Whitewater, all of which had
voted for revision in 1890, now voted against the overtures
about as evenly as the conservative Presbyteries above
mentioned voted for them. This in a few cases may have
been the result of a shift of control of the Presbytery from
one party to another, but it cannot have been true in most
These Presbyteries wanted revision, or something
like it, as much as ever, but not after this fashion.
cases.
The four overtures which fell below the average of sup-
port were the first, third, fourth, and the second half of the
fifteenth. The first proposed to insert into the list of the
things which " move us to a high and reverend estimate
of the Scriptures" a statement of the external evidences.
This belated bit of apologetics received but 97 votes. The
third was the restatement of the doctrine of reprobation,
which represented Princeton's ultimatum. It was rejected
by 107 votes against it to 67 in its favor. The fourth
eliminated the "six days'" limit out of the statement of
creation, and it received 100 votes to 74 in the negative.
The second half of the fifteenth, on which a separate vote
was asked, was offensive to the conservatives. Drs. Green,
Patton, Alexander, and Leftwich, and Messrs. Junkin and
Stratton had appended an expression of their dissent from
it to their signatures to the report. It enlarged the state-
ment of the Confession as to the regeneration of elect per-
sons in the absence of the ordinary means from “all other
elect persons, who are incapable of being outwardly called
by the ministry of the Word," to "all other elect persons,
who are not outwardly called by the Word." It also was
in the minority by 92 negative to 81 affirmative votes.
The overture just preceding, which would have struck out
the language as to "elect infants," received but 105 votes
to 68.
The Assembly of 1893 received over sixty memorials.
258
THE PRESBYTERIANS,
[CHAP. XVIII.
asking the preparation of a new and shorter creed, but
voted to lay the matter aside. In this decision there was
a general acquiescence. The church was weary of the dis-
cussion. It was felt that the whole subject had been taken
up by the wrong handle, with the result of obtaining the
maximum of irritation and the minimum of relief.
Here the matter has rested, but cannot continue to do
so for many years. The discussion placed the church per-
manently in such a relation to its own Confession as makes
it impossible for it to retain the place it had held before
1889. The work of the Westminster divines has been
challenged as inadequate in its statement of the gospel of
divine grace, and as presumptuous in its handling of divine
mysteries. This has been done not by some obscure and
isolated group of theologians, but by men of the largest
influence in every part of the church. Its statements on
matters of vital importance have been declared unsatisfac-
tory by more than a majority of the Presbyteries, and the
substitution of other statements has been approved. In
this the church has gone much too far to stop, but the
delay will not be wasted if some attention be given to as-
certaining a better mode of procedure than was adopted
in 1889.
The preparation of a new Confession of Faith for the
Presbyterian Church of America, with the coöperation of
any of the sister-churches which can be induced to partici-
pate in it, seems the most feasible method of solving the
problem. The right, even the duty, of each national church
to express its own faith in its own words was recognized
among the earlier Calvinists. That they had as many con-
fessions as churches was one of the characteristics which
distinguished them from the Lutherans with their Augs-
burg Confession, for which they claimed an ecumenical
character. Holland did not copy France, nor did the
259
Huguenot Church of France repeat the Swiss. The church.
of the Pfalz drafted its own Heidelberg Catechism as its
confession. The Scottish Kirk in Knox's day was well
acquainted with the confessions of the continental churches,
but it prepared a confession of its own, a document full of
the spirit and the flavor of Scotland. No church thought
of playing the rôle of theological parasite, in the fashion
of the hermit-crab, as Professor Drummond describes it.
It was felt that the weight and force of the collective testi-
mony of these churches was greatly increased through
each testifying, "in its own tongue" and its own terms,
"the wonderful works of God." It is to this freedom of
individual utterance that the British churches are now re-
turning, for the Scottish Declaratory Acts cannot but lead
to the step already taken by the Presbyterian Church of
England. It will be in accord with the oldest traditions
of the Reformed churches if their American representa-
tives, laying aside the helmet of brass and the coat of mail
devised by the divines of Westminster for a scholastic-
polemic age, should go forth to the world with an expres-
sion of their own insight into Scriptural truth, their own
statement of those great doctrines of grace which exalt
God and humble man.
NATIONAL CONFESSIONS.
It is true that we are told-and Dr. Briggs seems to
agree in the statement—that the modern church has not
the ability to do anything half so good in that line as the
Westminster divines did. That statement is extremely
doubtful. They were not men of the first order of their
own time. The great names which most adorn the Puri-
tan age, with the exception of Samuel Rutherford, are all
wanting from the list of the Assembly. James Ussher,
Stephen Charnock, Thomas Brookes, John Owen, John
Howe, Richard Baxter, Robert Leighton, were all absent.
William Twiss, Herbert Palmer, Stephen Marshall, An-
260
[CHAP. XVIII.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
thony Tuckney, and John Lightfoot were the best theolo-
gians among them, and not one of them but the last sur-
vived his age in any production of his pen. Their attempt
to supplement their work as an Assembly by a commen-
tary on the Scriptures proved a failure. Even their col-
lective repute failed to float their sapless "Annotations"
into favor.
The theologians of our American church may have less
scholastic training, and less faith in the adequacy of logic
to meet every emergency, than had the body which met
in Westminster Abbey. They may make but little of the
nice distinctions and discriminations which seemed so pre-
cious to the divines who debated across that green-baize
table in the Jerusalem Chamber. But they have had the
advantage of two centuries of deepening knowledge of
God's Word and deepening experience of his guidance of
his church. And what they would offer for the service
of God in the assertion of his truth, and for the upbuilding
of his kingdom, would be their own, and not the borrowed
offering, which was always rejected from sacrifice.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE BRIGGS AND SMITH TRIALS.
A CIRCUMSTANCE which tended to strengthen the hands
of the conservatives in the final vote on revision was the
precipitation of a new controversy upon the church, and
one even more exciting in its character. The Assembly
of 1891, to which the report on revision was made, was the
first which had the case of Professor Charles A. Briggs, of
Union Theological Seminary, before it. This case raised
the question of the church's attitude to what lay behind
and above the Confession-to the Bible itself.
Two questions, frequently confounded, were involved in
this case and in that of Professor Henry Preserved Smith,
of Lane Seminary, which came after it. The first is that
of the inerrancy of the Scriptures; the second that of the
composite character of the first six books of the Old Testa-
ment and the prophecies of Isaiah. They are entirely in-
dependent questions, as any one may take the negative side
on either while holding the positive on the other.
It was long contended by Christian scholars that the
Bible as it stands in the original text is altogether free
from errors and contradictions. Immense ingenuity was
expended in showing that the figures and dates of the Old
Testament in Hebrew were mathematically exact, and that
the apparent discrepancies of the several Gospels presented
no real contradictions. Of late years, however, this kind
of harmonizing seems to have been abandoned by scholars
261
262
[CHAP. XIX.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
of the most orthodox type as regards some of these alleged
discrepancies, while they limit the concession to a much
smaller number of instances than the negative critics allege.
It is admitted that the Hebrew and Greek texts contain
some errors of statement, and the problem is how these are
to be accounted for without giving up the Bible as an in-
spired guide of human life.
des
})
The two ways which have been suggested are (1) to
ascribe the errors and inaccuracies to the copyists' lack of
care in transcription, or (2) to modify the conception of
divine inspiration so as to leave room for human error in
the inspired man with regard to matters which do not
pertain to "teaching, reproof, correction, and instruction.
in righteousness." To minds of the conservative type the
former solution of the difficulty very naturally commends
itself, as apparently the safer, and as involving no modifi-
cation of the usual conceptions of the divine dealings with
men. It is not, however, one which finds any warrant in
the Westminster Confession, which declares that "the Old
Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek
being immediately inspired by God, and by his singular
care and providence kept pure in all ages, are therefore
authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the
church is finally to appeal to them." The authors of this
statement certainly did not regard the divine efficiency as
less enlisted in the preservation of the Scriptures from error
during their transmission to us than in their first origina-
tion by the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit. And when
they appeal in the same chapter to "the consent of all the
parts as an evidence of the "infallible truth and divine
authority thereof," they leave no room to suppose that they
have reference only to original copies, while the present
texts have fallen from this "consent of the parts" into in-
consistencies, or from this "infallible truth." into errancy
ERRANCY AND INERRANCY
263
through lapse of that "singular care and providence."
Such a supposition they distinctly reject—more distinctly,
indeed, than a theory of inspiration which leaves room for
the presence of mistaken judgments in the inspired man
as regards other and lesser matters than "the goodness,
wisdom, and power of God," "the comfort of the church.
against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan
and the world," "the full discovery of the way of man's
salvation," "the whole counsel of God concerning all
things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith,
and life," and authoritative guidance "in all controversies
of religion," which things the Confession defines, as the
content of the Bible.
Yet this theory of the inerrancy of the original texts,
along with the admitted errancy of the texts we have, not
only has obtained recognition as a permissible solution, in
the face of the Confession's teaching to the contrary, but
has been exalted to serve as a new test of orthodoxy, to
the condemnation of those who prefer the other solution,
which finds nothing like an explicit condemnation in the
Confession. In this way the divine providence, which our
Lord declares to extend to the numbering of the hairs of
our head, is confessed inadequate to preserving the Bible
in that state of perfection in which it was first given to the
church, and which, we are told, we must believe it once
possessed if we are to believe that its human authors were
really inspired by God.
2
The other question as to the origin of certain parts of
the Bible is of lesser importance. Inspiration may use
editors as well as authors, and did so in the case of the
third evangelist, who knew nothing at first-hand of the
story he tells. It is, indeed, another affair when the books
of the Mosaic law are represented as a series of inventions
of late date, with no root in the nation's legal traditions,
264
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIX.
so that "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
be-
comes a mere mode of speech with no historic warrant.
No such significance, however, can be attached to the
question of the double authorship of the Book of Isaiah,
except that the notion of prophecy as prediction out of
historic relation to the prophet's environment rests largely
on the assumption that one Isaiah wrote the whole book.
In this case, also, the contact with the churches of Great
Britain, and especially with the Free Church of Scotland,
had much to do with the origination of the controversy.
In 1881 Professor W. Robertson Smith had been removed
from his professorship of Hebrew in the Free Church Col-
lege, Aberdeen, by the Free Church Assembly, his offense
being the views he presented of the origin of the Old
Testament Scriptures in articles contributed to the Ency-
clopædia Britannica, and in his book, "The Old Testa-
ment in the Jewish Church" (Edinburgh and New York,
1881). The case attracted general attention on both sides
of the Atlantic, and raised the question whether the church
was likely to confirm the faith of her own members, or to
exert the right influence upon the world, if she decided to
expel her Thomases from the apostolate, as her Master
did not.
""
The case was complicated by the peculiarly unconcilia-
tory temper of Professor Smith, who combined a great deal
of the fortiter in re with very little of the suaviter in modo.
It was to be regretted that these difficult and delicate ques-
tions should be first pressed on the attention of the church
by one who, whatever his learning, had so little reverence
for opinions long cherished by his countrymen, and identi-
fied by them, rightly or wrongly, with their grasp upon
the Word of God. Much the same embarrassment at-
tended the appearance of the same problems in the Amer-
ican church. Professor Charles Augustus Briggs shares
265
In
Professor Robertson Smith's temper as well as his critical
opinions, and goes beyond the Scotchman in his enjoyment
of a spirited controversy. If we may judge from the way
in which he is said to have received the remonstrances of >
those friends to whom he showed his Inaugural before its
delivery, he prefers to say the thing which will shock his
hearers, rather than to give it a shape less offensive.
none of his works is there shown that faculty of reverence
which is as needful for the critic as for the pastor. He
never gave the church the impression that, in his view, the
great work of a professor in training the ministry to a
knowledge of the Scriptures is to show them what are the
elements of power which have given those books their hold
on the faith, the affections, and the conscience of mankind.
On the other hand, it is beyond question that he knew how
to win the enthusiastic affection of his pupils, and that in
some cases he had been the means of rescuing young men
from a profound skepticism as regards the Bible to a prac-
tical faith in its authority.
But it was the former side of his work which was most
in evidence before the church when in 1891 he was trans-
ferred from the chair of Hebrew and cognate languages in
Union Seminary to the newly founded chair of biblical
theology, and delivered (January 20th) his inaugural ad-
dress. As early as 1870 he had repudiated publicly the
traditional theory of inspiration. In his articles in the
Reformed and Presbyterian Review" and in his “Bibli-
cal Study" (1883) and "Messianic Prophecy" (1886) he
had shown himself affected by the school of critics to which
Professor Robertson Smith belongs, but always with reser-
vations which kept him within the bounds of toleration.
In the Inaugural he showed that he had reached a point
which, conservatives thought, made it impossible to pass it
over in silence. His case first came before the General
(6
DR. BRIGGS'S INAUGURAL.
C
266
[CHAP. XIX.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
}
Assembly of 1891, under the agreement of Union and
other seminaries to submit the election of professors to the
Assembly for confirmation. His friends contended that
his transfer from one chair to another did not require the
Assembly's approval; but the Assembly overruled this,
and by 449 to 60 votes formally refused to confirm his
appointment.
His Presbytery therefore appointed a committee to con-
sider the propriety of trying him upon charges of unsound
doctrine. This committee reported charges, which the
Presbytery ordered him to answer. On November 4,
1891, the Presbytery heard his answer, and by 94 votes.
to 39 decided to dismiss the case "in view of the declara-
tions made by Dr. Briggs touching his loyalty to the Holy
Scriptures and the Westminster standards, and of his dis-
claimers of interpretations put on some of his words." The
prosecuting committee then took the unusual step of ap-
pealing directly to the General Assembly, while thirty-four
members of the Presbytery complained in the ordinary
way to the Synod of New York. The Assembly of 1892,
meeting at Portland, Ore., entertained the Protest and or-
dered the Presbytery to try the case on its merits. The
Presbytery, meeting in November, 1892, cited Professor
Briggs to appear before it a month later, and to answer the
list of charges, with specifications, which the Committee of
Prosecution had laid before it. When the trial actually
occurred, it was a matter of more than national interest.
The prosecution was conducted with distinguished ability
and legal acumen, though not with great exegetical learn-
ing, by Drs. G. W. F. Birch and Joseph J. Lampe, and
Elder John J. McCook. The charges were that he taught
(1) that men may be enlightened unto salvation by reason
or through the church, apart from the Bible; (2) that the
inspiration of the Bible was not such as to exclude errors
A QUESTIONABLE APPEAL.
267
as to matters of fact even from the original documents;
(3) that he denied the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch
and of the unity of authorship of the Book of Isaiah; and
(4) asserted the continuance of sanctification after death.
The second point was really the essential one, and cannot
be said to have been handled fully and frankly by the
prosecution. Appeal was made to a great number of
authorities, who really held to the inerrancy of the He-
brew and Greek texts as we have them, and who would
have repudiated Dr. Green's concessions as emphatically as
those of Dr. Briggs. In his reply Professor Briggs showed
his superiority in a professional familiarity with the subjects
under discussion, and was unhappy only in the tone which
characterized every reference to the prosecution and the
Assembly. The Presbytery, by a somewhat diminished
majority, acquitted Dr. Briggs on all the charges.
The Committee of Prosecution now appealed a second
time to the General Assembly, both on the ground of ex-
ceptions taken to the Presbytery's conduct of the trial, and
of the wrongfulness of the verdict reached. To this course.
it was objected that a committee of Presbytery could not
appeal against the Presbytery, and that no appeal could
be taken from a verdict of acquittal by a public prosecutor.
It was pointed out that no such appeal had ever been en-
tertained in the American church, that it was forbidden to
the national courts by an amendment to the Constitution,
that it was a violation of the common law inherited from
England, and that it was contrary to the universal prin-
ciples of equity. That such appeals had been taken
by private prosecutors in the cases of Mr. Barnes and
Dr. Beecher established no precedent for this case, as the
public prosecutor incurs none of the personal risks which
Presbyterian law attaches to the failure of the private
prosecutor to make good his charges. The revised Book
268
[CHAP. XIX.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
ウ
​of Discipline, however, allowed of an appeal being taken
by "either of the original parties," where the old book
had limited this to "a party aggrieved" by the decision.
On this point mainly the conservatives rested their case.
In the selection of members of the Assembly of 1893,
as in the case of its predecessor, pains were taken to send
up delegations whose sympathies coincided with those of
the majority in each Presbytery. This worked badly for
Professor Briggs's friends, who were the majority in very
few Presbyteries, and secured an Assembly much more
conservative than the church at large, and one whose
scholarship was not as ample as would have been obtained.
with less party management. It is not always those who
have given most attention to a complex question who are
the most positive about it. Next to the report on the vote
of the Presbyteries on the twenty-eight overtures for the
revision of the Confession, the Briggs case was the most
important matter of business, and in point of popular
interest it almost wholly eclipsed that. The Assembly,
by a vote of 410 to 145, decided to entertain the appeal,
Dr. Nicholls, of St. Louis, and four other members of the
Judicial Committee objecting to this course. The trial of
the appeal then proceeded, Messrs. Lampe and McCook
stating the case for the prosecution, and Dr. Briggs reply-
ing. After hearing other members of the Presbytery and
members of the Assembly, the vote was reached, and 295
voted to sustain the appeal as a whole and 84 to sustain
in part, while 116 voted not to sustain.
Before the sentence was pronounced a subcommittee of
the special committee appointed to draft it waited on Dr.
Briggs in the hope that he would make some retraction,
which might render a stay of proceedings short of suspen-
sion possible. He replied first verbally, and then in writ-
ing, that he had nothing to retract, as he "adhered to all
Ka
་
269
the positions taken before the General Assembly." The
Assembly therefore went on to declare the decision of
the Presbytery of New York erroneous and its proceeding
faulty, and to pronounce Professor Briggs guilty of all the
charges on which he had been tried-of having "uttered,
taught, and propagated views, doctrines, and teachings
contrary to the essential doctrines of Holy Scripture and
the standards of the Presbyterian Church, and in violation
of [his] ordination vow, which said erroneous teachings,
views, and doctrines strike at the vitals of religion, and
have been industriously spread." On this ground it sus-
pended him "from the office of a minister in the Presby-
terian Church, until such time as he shall give satisfactory
evidence of repentance to the General Assembly for the
violation by him of said ordination wow."
This decision lacks the calm of the judicial temper.
It
is pervaded by a personal animus, which finds an outlet in
many of its phrases, and especially in the conversion of the
charge of unsound teaching into one of personal immoral-
ity, and in making the restoration of the offender depend-
ent not upon the retraction of his alleged errors, but
upon his " repentance" for his sin. It thus affixes a stigma
to the accused, which was not warranted by any evidence
before the Assembly, nor embodied in any of the charges.
on which he was tried. It bases this sin of unfaithfulness
on each and all of the charges, thus declaring that who-
ever holds that there were two Isaiahs and not one, or
that Moses did not write the books of the Pentateuch-a
point on which the Confession of Faith has nothing to say
—is guilty of a breach of his ordination vow, if he be a
minister of the church.
A QUESTIONABLE SENTENCE.
In truth, there is no such thing as an "ordination vow
with regard to doctrine. The candidate for the ministry
is admitted on the declaration of his present assent to the
WE
270
[CHAP. XIX.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
teachings of the Confession of Faith. He gives no prom-
ise that he will continue that assent. His utmost implied
obligation is to state fully and frankly his divergences from
the Confession and leave the church to judge whether they
are such as require that his place in the ministry shall be
abandoned. Even on the supposition that Dr. Briggs was
conscious of an essential divergence of his views from those
of the Confession-a supposition he denies, and no man
has the right to say the denial is dishonest-he had done
all that honesty and manliness required of him.
It is to be regretted that in neither of the two protests,
signed respectively by 97 and 62 members of the Assem-
bly, was this point insisted upon. The second, indeed,
complained of the injustice which the Assembly had
done to a "Christian scholar of acknowledged high char-
acter." The first confined itself to a protest against the
new theory of an inerrant and infallible Bible which no-
body had seen, but in which all must believe from this
time forward. As the sentence runs the General Assem-
bly pronounced every signer of this protest guilty of vio-
lating his ordination vow. Among them were Drs. Her-
rick Johnson, Samuel J. Niccolls, Charles L. Thompson,
George Alexander, Charles A. Dickey, Francis Brown,
Henry M. Storrs, Edward P. Sprague, William R. Taylor,
J. Garland Hamner, Henry H. Stebbins, and Revs. Thomas
C. Hall, Robert A. Carnahan, and C. P. H. Nason.
The case of Professor Henry Preserved Smith, of Lane
Seminary, came before the Assembly in regular order
through his appeal from the adverse decision of the Synod
of Ohio. In March, 1891, he had read a paper on Inspi-
ration before the Presbyterian Ministerial Association of
Cincinnati, and this was printed along with a similar paper
by Professor Llewellyn J. Evans, also of Lane Seminary.
It was eighteen months later that the Presbytery of Cin-
DR. SMITH'S APPEAL.
271
cinnati referred the matter to a committee, which drafted
three charges, of two of which the Presbytery found Dr.
Smith guilty, and suspended him from the ministry until
he should renounce the errors alleged. On this he ap-
pealed to the Synod of Ohio, complaining both of the
procedure and the verdict of the Presbytery. The Synod
entertained the appeal, but, after hearing the case, voted
not to sustain any of its twelve specifications. The high-
est vote on any was 51 to 78. On all twelve Dr. Smith
now appealed to the General Assembly.
The case was not complicated with any of the personal
considerations or side issues which complicated that of
Professor Briggs. The appellant's manner of stating his
opinions and of conducting his case was open to no excep-
tion. He commanded the esteem even of those who had
united in condemning him. The issue simply was whether
the original manuscripts, as they came from the hands of
the inspired writers, did or did not possess an inerrancy
which they have lost in the process of transmission. But
this issue had been prejudged in the sentence on Professor
Briggs, and Dr. Smith's appeal was rejected by a vote of
396 not to sustain, against 55 to sustain and 47 to sustain in
part, the appeal. In this case the Assembly remembered
its duty to confer with the accused, but its Committee of
Conference found him unprepared to make any statement
which would modify the result. As sentence had been
pronounced already, in terms which corresponded to the
charges, by the Presbytery of Cincinnati, there was no
room for the blunder of converting a suspension for alleged
heresy into one for immoral conduct.
ent.
With these decisions the matter has rested for the pres-
The majority, very naturally, hold them to be final
and to constitute an interpretation of the Confession which
is binding upon all. The minority reply that this is to
272
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XIX
fall into the second of the two heresies charged upon Dr.
Briggs, and to treat the church as an independent source
of divine illumination. Not content with the protests
tabled in the Assembly of 1893, they met in convention
that year at Cleveland to reiterate their refusal to accept
a new dogma at the hands of the General Assembly. In
taking this course of dissent and protest against even judi-
cial decisions, they have on their side the authority of Dr.
Charles Hodge, who wrote, in 1866, “The right of pro-
test, as it has always been exercised, includes the right of
dissenting from the deliverances and judgments of church
courts, on the ground of their being unwise, unjust, un-
scriptural. . . . The Assembly [of 1866] recognizes the
principle that adhesion to its deliverances cannot be made
a condition of Christian or ministerial communion."
But whatever may be thought of the manner of the de-
cision, it was not possible that any other could be reached
under the circumstances. The traditional respect for the
Bible as a perfect book, the general acceptance of the
most absolute and mechanical theories of its inspiration,
have been common features of our American churches of
every name. These have been so long associated with the
reverence for the Bible's spiritual greatness, and recogni-
tion of its actual worth as a guide for life and a disclosure
of God, that the scholar who first broached a different
view in any quarter was certain to be regarded as "strik-
ing at the vitals of religion.” Especially must this be
expected of the most conservative and most theological of
the American churches. Men felt as if Professor Briggs
were cutting the very ground from beneath their feet.
They were in no mood to judge calmly as to which theory
of inspiration best fitted the facts. They were the less so
in this case, because it was presented to them in associa-
tion with doubtful opinions as to the origin and composi-
G
G
273
tion of some of the books of Scripture, and other matters
of the higher criticism, and because the champion of the
new views was a man whose statements were often so un-
guarded as to convey an entirely false notion of his mean-
ing. At times he seemed anxious to intensify the shock
which must attend his enunciation of his views even in
their mildest expression.
CONSERVATIVE CONCESSIONS.
The judgment excited a general dissent, but a still more
general assent, in the other churches. In all quarters the
progressives regretted or ridiculed, and the conservatives
rejoiced. As America is the most conservative of Prot-
estant countries, the satisfaction predominated. It was
said that one of the most learned of American churches
had given her decision on the side of orthodoxy, and that
with an emphasis which must help to stem the tide of
loose opinion about the Bible. It was not noticed that the
form of the decision did not place the church on that West-
minster platform on which all the churches stood as late as
thirty years ago. It admitted, by unmistakable implication,
the presence of errors in the Hebrew and Greek texts. It
admitted the errancy of the Bible as we have it.
It only
pronounced against one way of accounting for these, and
gave its sanction to the other. How the theory it sanc-
tioned may be used in the interest of negative criticism
remains to be seen.
CHAPTER XX.
THE SEMINARY QUESTION, AND OTHER MATTERS.
As the Union Theological Seminary refused to accept.
the decision of the Assembly of 1891 with regard to Pro-
fessor Briggs's professorship, there was at once a straining
of the relations created by the voluntary compact of 1870
between the Assembly and the theological seminaries in a
shape suggested by Union Seminary itself. After some
hesitation the directors of the seminary applied to the
Assembly for an abandonment of the compact by mutual
agreement, on the ground that the directors of the semi-
nary had exceeded their powers in entering into it. To
this the Assembly refused to assent, but it proposed to
refer the matter to arbitration, and appointed its own rep-
resentatives on the proposed board of arbitration. When
these met in November, in New York, and opened a cor-
respondence with the directors of the seminary, they were
told that the board, by a vote of 19 to 1, had decided to
terminate the compact with the Assembly; so there was
no use for the service of arbitrators. The Assembly of
1893 placed on record its protest against this action, and
instructed its Committee on Theological Seminaries to re-
ceive no reports from Union Seminary while its directors
maintained this attitude, disclaimed responsibility for its
teachings, and directed the Board of Education to give
aid only to students in the seminaries approved by the
Assembly.
274
275
The same Assembly received the first report from a
special committee which had been directed by the Assem-
bly of 1892 to consider the relations of the seminaries to
the Assembly, and to report what changes were necessary
to secure the Assembly's authority over them.
It re-
hearsed a part of the facts connected with the establish-
ment of Princeton Seminary, and declared that since the
creation of a separate board of trustees for that seminary
in. 1822 the church had abandoned its earlier and proper
policy in the establishment and control of these institu-
tions. It found the fourteen seminaries of the church,
with 880 students taught by 93 teachers, in possession of
over $8,000,000 in property (Union, $2,100,000; Prince-
ton, $1,500,000; McCormick, $1,400,000; Auburn, $800,-
000; Alleghany, $750,000; Lane, $560,000; San Fran-
cisco, $500,000; Danville, $260,000; Omaha, $25,000;
Newark, $67,000; Dubuque, $50,000), which the com-
mittee assumed to have been given by members of the
church to secure such teaching as the General Assembly
approved, but which the donors had seen fit to vest in self-
perpetuating bodies or in bodies controlled by Synods or
Presbyteries only. It was not until 1894, however, that
the committee felt free to report a plan to establish the
control of the General Assembly. It was to request the
seminaries to so amend their charters as to secure that
their funds shall be held in trust for the church at large,
for the purpose of theological education according to its
standards; and also to secure to the Assembly a veto upon
the election of directors and trustees, and upon the elec-
tion, appointment, and transfer of all professors and teach-
ers; and to vest in the Assembly the power to proceed
legally against seminaries which violate any of these pro-
visions. After a discussion which occupied parts of three
mornings, the report was adopted by a vote of 441 to 117,
STATUS OF THE SEMINARIES.
-
276
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XX.
L
the seminary professors in the Assembly voting with the
majority.
year.
The Assembly had not long adjourned when it began
to be seen that the action taken was hasty and ill consid-
ered. The especial advocates of a reunion with the South-
ern Assembly discovered that the action was distasteful in
that quarter, and that its success would furnish one more
of the obstacles to that policy. The Southern church.
deprecates centralization, and always has kept seminaries
under synodical control. It also became evident that the
obstacles to the changes of charter the Assembly asked
were as good as insurmountable. Some of the States
could give no legal recognition to a body constituted, as
is the General Assembly, from citizens of all the States of
the Union, and changed in its composition with every
Nor are State legislatures so fond of ecclesiastical
centralization as to place property held within their limits
under control of a body meeting outside them, and thus
to be invested with the control of millions of property.
Probably the Alleghany Seminary would have had the
least difficulty in obtaining a modification of its charter,
but for a reason which would have made the change emi-
nently undesirable. Any chartered institution which ac-
cepts fresh legislation from the legislature, since the adop-
tion of the present Constitution of Pennsylvania, is brought
thereby under the supervision and control of the State to
an extent which deprives it of the autonomy it previously
possessed. It is probable that this is not the only State
in which such consequences would have resulted.
It also was found that the existing boards of trustees or
directors could not be brought to see the matter from the
Assembly's point of view. The experiences of 1830-36,
and the terror of action on the part of the Assemblies then
felt by the friends of Princeton Seminary, were recalled, and
PLAN OF FEDERATION.
277
went to prove that the General Assembly was not always
and necessarily the best safeguard of a conservative ortho-
doxy. Certainly Alleghany, under the exclusive control
of the Synod of Pittsburg, at that time felt much more
secure in its position.
At this writing the majority of the seminaries have had
the Assembly's proposal under consideration, and every
one of these has refused to accede to it.
The proposal would not have secured the object aimed
at. What the Assembly needs for the purpose in view is
the power of summary removal, not of veto upon appoint-
ments. It was this that enabled the Free Church of Scot-
land to get rid of Professor Robertson Smith, to whose
election it made not the smallest objection. But the lack
of this, as also of the powers it asked, is not distressing
the church to anything like the degree that the majority of
1894 seemed to suppose. While the Assembly is in session,
its members, collectively and individually, are tempted to
think it the great power which moves the church, when in
truth it is but the balance-wheel of the machine.
Another subject which came before the Assembly of
1894 was the plan for a federal council of the Reformed
churches of America. This might be described as an at-
tempt to form a more perfect union, within national limits,
than the International Alliance of the Reformed Churches
offered, and to take away the reproach of antagonism be-
tween bodies whose differences are far too trifling to justify
rivalry. In another sense it is a reflex of the unifying
action taken in the mission fields of Japan and Brazil and
contemplated in other missionary lands.
The object of the plan is to include all the Reformed
churches of America which hold the Presbyterian polity.
The churches which acted by their commissioners in draft-
ing the plan are the Presbyterian, the United Presbyterian,
278
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XX.
J.
the Reformed Presbyterian (O. S. and N. S.), the Cumber-
land Presbyterian, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian,
South, and the two Reformed churches formerly known
as the Dutch and the German. This includes all but the
Southern Presbyterian Church and the fragments left out
in the formation of the United Presbyterian Church.
The object of the plan is too good to admit of question.
Whether the specific plan is the best for the object is
doubted by some. As the proposed federal council is to
consist of four ministers and four elders from each of the
churches, the smaller bodies would have an undue weight
in influencing its decisions. The representatives of their
125,000 communicants would all but balance those of the
►
1,400,000 in the larger bodies. It is true that the scope
of the powers conferred is limited, but it extends to dec-
larations and definitions of a common policy in regard to
questions of national magnitude, such as temperance, pub-
lic schools, and the amendment of the national Constitution
in a Christian sense. It also is to be constituted an eccle-
siastical board of arbitration in all cases of dispute between
the churches embraced in the federation.
The problem which the proposal really raises is whether
this plan would serve to hasten a still closer union or to
retard it. In some cases these half-way measures stand
in the way of something better. In others they give such
a foretaste of its advantages as strengthens the desire for
it. This was notably true of the national Articles of Con-
federation under which the American people managed
their affairs until the adoption of the Constitution. The
resemblance of the Plan to those Articles is so close as to
suggest conscious imitation. They also created a single
deliberative body, with vaguely defined and greatly limited
powers, in which each of the contracting parties had an
equal vote; they also conferred power in relation to exter-
POLITICAL DISSENT.
•
A
279°
nal affairs, while jealously reserving the control of domestic
matters; and they also constituted the central body an
umpire in disputes between the parties to the agreement.
The best service the Articles of Confederation rendered
was to tide over a period of excessive colonial jealousies,
and to prepare the country for "a more perfect union" on
a national basis. We might well put up with the faults
found with the plan under discussion if we had reasonable
ground for the expectation that it would do its work.
equally well. The favor with which it has been received
seems to promise its final adoption by the churches con-
cerned.
One of the lesser Presbyterian bodies had its share of
agitation and distress during these last years. The disso-
lution of the Reformed Presbytery of North America, by
the death of Rev. David Steel, Sr., gives the Synod of the
Reformed Presbyterian (or Covenanter) Church (O. S.) the
hegemony of the extreme right wing of the Presbyterian
host. It has stood for old-fashioned, theocratic Presby-
terianism with a vigor and an ability which remind one of
John Stuart Mill's saying that if the most capable men are
found leading the van, the next so will be seen bringing
up the rear.
Their attitude of requiring political dissent as a term of
communion, which they inherited from the Hillmen of the
western Lowlands, they have maintained for two hundred
years. In that time they never have sworn an oath of al-
legiance to any government on earth, or held communion
with any who did so. So long as slavery was tolerated
within the national area this position was maintained with-
out much difficulty. Its abolition both created a difficulty
and presented an opportunity. The difficulty was that of
keeping their membership apart from a political system
which, in their opinion, had purged off its worst stain. The
+:
280
[CHAP. XX.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
opportunity was that of enlisting the deepened national
seriousness in securing such an amendment to the national
Constitution as would give the government a distinctly
Christian character, and thus put an end to the necessity
for their political dissent.
It was with this purpose that the National Reform Asso-
ciation was organized in the city of Pittsburg in the year
1864, after preliminary conventions in different parts of
the country. The aim to secure support outside the Cov-
enanter Church for the Covenanter principle has had con-
siderable success. Bishops McIlvaine, Kerfoot, Eastburn,
Huntingdon, Beckwith, Bedell, Jaggar and Kip of the
Protestant Episcopal Church, Bishop Nicholson of the
Reformed Episcopal Church, Bishops Haven and Simpson
of the Methodist Church, Bishops Weaver, Wright, and
Dickson of the United Brethren Church, and both Bishops
Escher and Dubs of the Evangelical Association, gave
their adherence to the platform of the association, showing
that the children of the Covenant are no longer afraid of
prelates. Drs. Charles and Archibald Hodge, Cuyler,
McIlvaine, Craven, Herrick Johnson, and George P. Hays
of the Presbyterian Church, Drs. Pressly, Cooper, and Barr
of the United Presbyterian Church, Dr. Boyce of the As-
sociate Reformed Church, South, and Dr. Tayler Lewis
of the Reformed Church, came to its support from a less
distance. Among the Congregationalists President Julius
H. Seelye, Joseph Cook, and Dr. George B. Cheever
stepped upon its platform. Three ex-governors, nine
judges, nineteen college presidents, and twelve professors
were found among its officers in 1891.
The contention of the association has been that our
efforts for political and social reform are ineffective and
sporadic because they lack a central theocratic aim. Just
as we would bid an individual sinner, who was making
w
THEOCRATIC REFORM.
281
efforts to cast off his sins one by one, to start right by sur-
rendering himself to God and invoking his grace, so the
nation needs to make the same sort of right start. And
as in the individual case the open confession of his new
attitude is required equally by God's law, and by the reason
of things as committing him to the right side, so should
the nation make public and formal confession of its having
entered into covenant with God to serve him in the keep-
ing of his law.
The monetary support of the association has come chiefly
from the Covenanter body and has developed a high degree
of liberality in giving. On the other hand, it has thrown
them into close relations with the champions of social re-
forms of all kinds, especially that of temperance, and has
led them to give these a hearty support.
The incongruity, however, of urging others to vote for
measures for which they would not vote themselves came
to be felt among them, especially when the commonwealth
of Pennsylvania invited a vote on an amendment to the
Constitution which would have prohibited the manufacture
and sale of intoxicants within its boundaries. The year
before this the Synod had ruled that political dissent did
not forbid service on juries. Following the lead of the
Presbytery of Pittsburg, it now decided that dissent would
not be impaired by Covenanters having themselves placed
on the registration list and voting, when no explicit approval
of the Constitution was required.
To many both of the younger and progressive men, and
of the older and conservative, this seemed an abandonment
of political dissent. The members of the church were no
longer required to hold themselves aloof from the political
system. They were even permitted to incorporate them-
selves into it, provided they abstained from any express
approval of an objectionable document. The former con-
282
[CHAP. XX.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
23
tended that the Synod could not stop with this, but must
go farther. A conference was held in a church in the
East End of Pittsburg, at which some score of the younger
ministers were present, the immediate object being advice
to one of their number who found himself in an embarrass-
ing position. Quite as an after-thought they drew up and
signed a declaration of their views-called the East End
Platform-in which they treated the matter of political.
dissent as now an open question, and published this.
The Presbytery of Pittsburg responded by suspending
from the exercise of their ministry those of the signers who
belonged to its jurisdiction. This was done on the ground
that they denied the binding force of the covenant which
the church had adopted in 1871, and which pledged its
members not to "incorporate" themselves with any political
system until they had obtained from that a recognition of
Christ's headship over the nations. The suspended min-
isters appealed to the Synod, which sustained the action
of the Presbytery and proceeded to exercise the same
rigorous discipline upon the other signers, with the excep-
tion of two, against whom the Presbytery of New York
was proceeding. That Presbytery, however, showed less.
vigor than did the Pittsburg Presbytery, and the two
were allowed to withdraw from the church without formal
censure.
Most of the signers sought an ecclesiastical home in
the nearest denomination, the United Presbyterian Church.
Several of them were accompanied by large sections of
their congregations, and in two instances the church prop-
erty was taken with them. As after the division of 1833,
the adherents of the Synod sued for its possession, invok-
ing in defense of property rights the State to which they
refuse allegiance.
One effect of this rigorous discipline has been an altered
STRIFE BEFORE STAGNATION.
283
spirit in the affairs of the National Reform Association.
The part of its membership which lies outside the Cove-
nanter Church shows some indisposition to accept the
leadership of a body with whose ecclesiastical proceedings
they cannot sympathize.
The closing pages of the story of American Presbyte-
rianism are a tale of agitation and of friction. Better this,
however, than stagnation and dull acquiescence in tradi-
tional beliefs and usages. Even this evidences life and
looks to a future in which
Generations yet unborn
Shall bless and magnify the Lord.
1
CHAPTER XXI.
RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT, 1705-1895.
NEARLY two centuries have elapsed since the meeting
of the first American Presbytery announced the establish-
ment of the synodical method of church government in
the English colonies of America. There had been, previ-
ously to that, ministers and congregations whose ecclesi-
astical character had been determined by their opposition
to the prelatic claims of the Anglican system on the one
hand and the independency of "the New England way"
on the other. Newbury [port] in Massachusetts (1635),
Jamaica on Long Island (1677), Newark in New Jersey
(1667), Snow Hill in Maryland (1682), Rehoboth in Vir-
ginia (1684), Port Royal in South Carolina (1684), and
Philadelphia (1698) stand for the earliest congregational
beginnings of this character in each of those colonies.
The names of Francis Doughty, Richard Denton, Abra-
ham Pierson, Matthew Hill, Samuel Davis, Francis Make-
mie, and William Dunlop and Archibald Stobo stand for
the personal leaders of this antagonism to "the falsehood
of extremes." But until the Presbyterian theory of church
government found its expression in the organization of a
Presbytery it could not be said to have really taken root.
The vine thus planted has come to overshadow the
whole land. Not only has the little handful of Presby-
terians, gathered on soil preëmpted for many years by
prelacy and independency, grown to a great host, with
"
284
>
285
1,278,000 communicants in 1890, representing more than
four millions of the American people, but the Presbyterian
method of government has had a marked attraction for
both the antagonistic forms. The prelacy of earlier An-
glicanism has given way, in America, to a distinctly Pres-
byterian type of Episcopal government; the power of the
bishop has yielded to that of the Convention and its Stand-
ing Committee to an extent which has caused some strict
canonists to doubt if the Protestant Episcopal Church can
be said to be episcopally governed. Modern Congrega-
tionalism is a manifest compromise between the Independ-
ent and the Presbyterian way; and since the organization
of the National Council there has been a marked growth
in the disposition to look to it as the authoritative arbiter
in disputed matters. The Lutherans of America, laying
aside the consistorial methods of their European churches,
have adopted synodical government as the best suited to
their needs, and associated the representatives of the peo-
ple with their pastors in their local and national councils.
The Methodists have been obliged to modify their highly
efficient but never popular system of clerical government
by the admission of lay delegates to their conferences; at
the same time the "preacher" of earlier days has been
converted by a like attraction into the " pastor," and obliged
to assume the duties once assigned to the class-leaders.
Even the Baptists, who have been the stanchest represent-
atives of independency, have come to intrust the real man-
agement of denominational affairs to local and national
associations, the former treating churches which walk dis-
orderly as liable to the discipline of exclusion from the
association.
THE PRESBYTERIAN IDEA.
--
-
C
As a whole the Protestantism of America has become
Presbyterian in substance, though not in name. A hun-
dred years ago there were no churches, outside the Re-
286
[CHAP. XXI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
formed household, which controlled their affairs by repre-
sentative councils of pastors and people. Now this is true
of nearly every important church in the Protestant family.
It cannot be said that this is because Presbyterianism
adheres more strictly and literally to the letter of the
Scriptures than did its rivals in method. The idea of
representation on which it is based was unknown to the
ancient political world, and was not anticipated in the New
Testament. It was developed in the rise of the Teutonic
nationalities on the ruins of the Roman empire, making
possible governments at once freer and more authoritative
than antiquity had known.¹ It was the great merit of Cal-
vin, À Lasco, and Knox to have perceived that this prin-
ciple of representation had been providentially developed
for the benefit of the church no less than of the state, so
that provincial, national, and ecumenical unity could be
attained without prelates, primates, and popes; and the
liberties of the Christian people secured without the sever-
ance of the church into independent local churches.
It is in America, where action is least trammeled by
tradition, that the common approximation to this type is
most freely illustrated. The meeting of the first Presby-
tery in Philadelphia was therefore the beginning of a new
era for the American churches, in that the modern prin-
ciple of representative government there and then found
its first expression as regards the Christian church of the
New World.
The Presbyterian Church, as the accredited historic rep-
resentative of this great principle, which has brought the
collective wisdom of each religious communion to bear
upon its affairs, has not discredited it by the manner in
which it has applied it. It always has been a body whose
1 See my "Divine Order of Human Society" (Philadelphia, 1891), pp.
116-120.
287
weight was greater than its numbers seemed to justify.
While it has not escaped the peril of hasty decisions, espe-
cially through the action of theological panics on the minds
of its people, these have been exceptional in its history,
and with the return of calmer moods there has been a
virtual confession and a practical correction of the mistake.
The great moments of this church's history have been
those reunions of divided forces, when the faults and bit-
ternesses of the past have been swallowed up in fraternal
joy. Next to these have been those of noble self-restraint,
when the national Synod or Assembly has calmed the local
or personal agitation by a wise patience, a serene temper,
a discriminating decision which helped men to distinguish
a difference over words from a difference in the great
things of the gospel. This wiser and more Christian rôle
has been the harder to play because of the church's dual
composition. Scotch-Irish and New Englander, from the
very outset of her history, have been blended in her min-
istry and her membership. The two elements have much
in common, and yet also much that marks them as diverse.
Both are keenly interested in doctrinal teaching, and as
such they have always inclined to those conceptions of the
relation of God to man which lie out of the range of super-
ficial thought, but commend themselves to men of pro-
founder reflection. Both incline to construe those rela-
tions not from the point of view of what is pleasing to
man, but what is honoring to God. Both, therefore, are
instinctive Calvinists, regarding the glory of God as the
end of man's creation and of his spiritual history. And
both assign to right conceptions of these great realities an
influence upon character and destiny which many regard
as excessive.
A DUAL CHURCH.
The contrast of the two elements is found in the active
and discursive intellect of the New Englander and the
288
[CHAP. XXI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
solid conservatism of the Scotch-Irish. The one has tried
to "improve" all previous statements of Calvinism; the
other to appreciate them. The one tends to a restless
spirit of change, in which the largest truths are supposed
to need a constant overhauling; the other to a dull ac-
quiescence, in which whatever the past has given us is ac-
cepted for that very reason. These are their perils. The
fusion of the two tendencies into a spirit at once wisely
conservative and wisely progressive has been the problem
of the Presbyterian Church more than of any other in
America. It cannot be said to have been solved; our
very divisions into eleven communions of varying degrees
of liberality and conservatism are evidence to the con-
trary. But nothing will more help us to the right attitude
for reaching the solution than the study of our own his-
tory. That furnishes evidence enough of the grand ser-
vice rendered to the religious life of the nation by Pres-
byterian conservatism. It stood by the most unpopular
and decried doctrines of the Bible through periods when
the public mind was least fitted for their reception, until
soberer and more profound thinking came to their vindi-
cation. It thus saved to the general religious conscious-
ness some of the greatest principles, which otherwise it
might have taken centuries to recover. It asserted the
principle of loyalty to the whole scope of inspired teaching,
in the face of tendencies to choose and pick what was the
more pleasing to human nature, or what an English writer
calls "the pleasanter parts of Christianity." Thus the
Presbyterian Church has played the part of a check upon
change which was not progress, and has vindicated the
integrity of the gospel of God's grace, with both its good-
ness and its severity. It never has cut its garment ac-
cording to the fashions set by the spirit of the age, which,
indeed, Richter says, is what our fathers called Antichrist.
289
On the other hand, history is no mere eulogist of con-
servatism. It exhibits everywhere the necessity of change
in human conceptions and statements of divine truths, and
the reality of a deeper and more vital apprehension of
them under the Spirit's leading of the church. It shows
that not the most conservative of to-day are able to think
in the limits and find utterance in the phrases of a cent-
ury ago. Whatever lives must change; only the dead
perpetuates itself from age to age unaltered. The Bible
itself furnishes illustrations of this on every page. Our
Lord pointed to them when he said that certain things
had been allowed to their fathers because they were
bound by mental limitations which had passed away, and
when he censured the spirit in which they asked him to
repeat the act of Elijah. He thus recognized the pro-
gressiveness of revelation within the period of canonic
Scripture. Nor can we fail to recognize the continuance
of this progress in the Spirit's guidance of the church..
Luther sees farther than Augustine; men of our age see
farther than Luther did. History alike forbids us to de-
spise the past and to rest in the past. It discredits alike
the change which proceeds from the positive to mere ne-
gation, and the stolidity which excludes all change what-
ever. It condemns mere liberalism and mere inaction.
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY.
No history illustrates this more distinctly than does the
history of the ecclesiastical life of America, and the Pres-
byterian Church supplies as good a point of view as any
other from which to consider it. As has been indicated
already, that history falls into three great periods, whose
spirit has affected all the American churches, though in
varying ways and different degrees.
The first was that of Puritan influence, which had three
notes: intellectual interest in doctrine, Scriptural literal-
ism, and practical individualism. In that age Christianity
290
[CHAP. XXI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
was so exclusively regarded as a doctrinal system that the
boundary-line between the church and the school of the-
ology was practically obliterated, and the distinction be-
tween theology and faith lost sight of. Of this the
Westminster Confession is the best monument. Men had
the sublimest confidence in the adequacy of logical pro-
cesses to deal with divine mysteries, but lacked that ele-
ment of reverence which should furnish the atmosphere of
· such discussion. Milton's deficiency in awe is that of his
age; and Spurgeon, who best represented the Puritan
thought in our own century, confessed to an equal want in
himself. This orthodox rationalism needed but to cool to
become negative and unorthodox; and the cooling was
seen in all the British churches, especially the Presbyte-
rian churches of England and of Ireland.
In both stages
it stands convicted of want of respect for the historical,
which also is seen in its Scriptural literalism. It looked
into the New Testament for a Book of Leviticus, and tried
to construct one out of isolated passages and incidental
notices. It demanded an express warrant of Scripture for
every arrangement and institution, and turned its back
upon the whole experience of the church since the days
of the apostles. It was this feature of Puritanism which
elicited Hooker's great treatise, "The Laws of the Eccle-
siastical Polity" (1594-97); but the extreme advocates of
the principle drove even the Westminster divines to de-
clare that "there are some circumstances concerning the
worship of God and the government of the church, com-
mon to human actions and societies, which are to be or-
dered by the light of nature and Christian prudence.”
Even this, it will be noticed, contains no concession to
history. And in the same weakness of perception of the
worth of the historical, and of the blessing of being our-
selves embraced and molded by historic forms of society,
1
V
THE STRENGTH OF PURITANISM.
291
is to be found the reason for the excessive individualism
of Puritanism. It always tended to the purest independ-
ency, first of the local church and then of the individual
member within that church. It had an instinctive repug-
nance to synodical authority, and to the inclusion of in-
fants among the baptized members of the church, as im-
plying some religious solidarity of the family, and point-
ing to the organic character of the church. When most
logical it became Baptist; in its less logical forms it denied
that baptism admitted to actual membership in the church,
and therefore refused baptism to the children of any but
those who had become communicants upon giving credi-
ble evidence of their regeneration.
It would be ungracious to dwell only on these negative
sides of the Puritan spirit, to the neglect of those ele-
ments of positive strength which had root in the Calvin-
istic theology. Its greatness lay in an ethical strenuous-
ness which has worked itself into the fiber of Scotch and
American character, though in different ways, and which
is reflected in the literature, the social ideals, and the
finest personal types of both countries. Next to this may
be put its loyalty to the cause of human freedom, in op-
position to dynastic and oligarchic rule in both church
and state. The theology which was charged with under-
mining human responsibility was in effect the most stren-
uous asserter of that principle. "There is no system
which equals Calvinism," says Beecher, "in intensifying to
the last degree ideas of moral excellence and purity of char-
acter. There never was a system since the world began
which puts upon man such motives to holiness, or which
builds batteries which sweep the whole ground of sin with
such horrible artillery." The view of our human nature
which has been charged with humbling man below his
deserts has stimulated him to the most resolute assertion
292
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XXI.
f
of his human dignity and personal rights against the en-
croachments of kings and nobles, popes and prelates. "It
would be hard," says John Fiske, "to overrate the debt
of civil liberty which mankind owes to John Calvin."
These two paradoxes find ample illustration in the his-
tory of Presbyterianism on both sides of the ocean. The
latter has been amply recognized since Macaulay first
fixed attention on the facts by his essay on Milton. The
former has been obscured by a good deal of unfair histor-
ical writing, in which Robert Chambers, Henry Thomas
Buckle, Mr. Craig-Brown, and others have represented
the disciplinary work of the Scotch Presbytery and Ses-
sion as consisting mainly of witch-hunting and the sup-
pression of popular sports. Bishop Creighton, in review-
ing the last writer's work, says:
"Mr. Craig-Brown is revolted by the stern aspect of
Calvinism, and denounces the discipline of the Kirk Ses-
sion as little better than that of the Inquisition. Yet that
discipline, repugnant as it is to modern ways of thinking,
did much toward forming the strong character of the
Scottish people. Without it the wild borderfolk would
never have been changed into the sterling, upright people
with whom we are familiar. If the idea of righteousness
which was enforced by Presbyterianism was narrow and
not altogether lively, it still upheld a high idea of recti-
tude, and the Kirk did a civilizing work which there was
no other agency to undertake. There can be no doubt
that its discipline retained all the strength of character
which had been generated in the unquiet times of border
warfare; there can be little doubt that only a stern and
vigorous system could have given a moral direction to
that strength. The records of the Kirk Session tell us
more of the process of the purification of national charac-
ter than they do of religious fanaticism."
D
THE KIRK'S DISCIPLINE.
293
Another English writer, of Episcopalian sympathies,
Mr. Richard Heath, testifies to the excellent influence of
the Presbyterian discipline where it has crossed the border
and established itself in the northern shires of England:
"The Northumbrian peasant is largely influenced by a
form of Christianity that not only recognizes that he is
a man, but that, without ceasing to be a laboring man,
tending the sheep or following the plow, he can be chosen,
and is chosen, and found worthy to be an elder of the
church." He goes on to speak of "the superior educative
power of the Presbyterian to the Church of England sys-
tem, as seen in the higher form of manhood and woman-
hood of the people under its control. The reason is clear:
the one is a democratic religion, the other the most aris-
tocratic in the world. It is this characteristic of the
Church of England which is mainly responsible for the
degraded condition of the English rural poor.
In our own country the task of Presbyterian discipline
among the unrestrained frontiersmen of the New World
was quite as difficult as along the Scottish border. For
reasons already indicated, the immigrant population of the
new settlements had to be followed up most energetically
with church and school agencies, to maintain what was
saved and retrieve what was lost of good influences in the
land of their birth.
""
Between Puritan and anti-Puritan the Presbyterian
Church held a middle position. It set its face against
congregational independency by asserting the existence,
visibility, and lawful authority of the larger church and
its synodical government. It found in baptism the rite of
admission to membership in the church, with all its privi-
leges, including the baptism of the children of baptized
persons. Acting on the judgment of charity, it admitted
to the Lord's table all such as had been brought up as
294
[CHAP. XXI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
Christians and were free from scandal of life. It sought
thus to embrace the whole people of a Christian country
within the scope of church influences and in personal con-
tact with the means of grace. Yet it conceded to Puritan-
ism the necessity of vindicating the polity of the church
by proof-texts from the Scriptures, and it adopted a sys-
tematic theology built up by logical inference. To Puri-
tanism, also, it conceded the relinquishment of liturgic
worship.
Its losses to Puritanism were very great on both sides
of the Atlantic. Its English churches became merely
Independent, and afterward Arian. In America the
Presbyterian colonists from England rapidly fell away from
Presbyterianism into the unstable compromise with Inde-
pendency called Congregationalism. The literalism which
demanded an express Scriptural sanction for every feature
of the church's polity was pressed with so much zeal, and
reinforced so well by the example of the Plymouth sepa-
ratists, that the efforts of John Eliot, the Mathers, and other
opponents of Independency came to nothing. Even the
later Presbyterian emigration from Ulster to New Eng-
land was unable to maintain its ecclesiastical character in
surroundings hostile to the Presbyterian idea, and under
laws enacted in the interest of Independency. It is only
in our own days, and chiefly through immigration from
the seaboard provinces of Canada, that Presbyterianism
has again raised its head in New England, after being long
confined to a handful of feeble and imperfectly organized
congregations.
W
The final establishment of Presbyterian order in the
Middle States was like the settlement of Pennsylvania in
the political sphere. As the one supplied the keystone of
the arch, a community committed to neither Cavalier nor
Puritan ideals of society, so the other supplied the miss-
THE GREAT AWAKENING.
295
ing link in the ecclesiastical order. It drew to itself dissat-
isfied elements of both the extreme systems, Puritans from
New England and Episcopalians of Virginia. It at once
began the fusion of the intense Presbyterians of Ulster with
the New Englanders, who thus in the Middle States under-
went what biologists call "reversion to type." It even
threatened to extend this reversion to New England itself,
as when the Connecticut churches made a marked approach
to Presbyterianism in the Saybrook Platform (1708), and
came to describe themselves as Presbyterians even in official
documents. Thus from the first the Presbyterian Church
may be said to have assumed a central position among the
churches of America.
The second period opens with the Great Awakening,
which began in the Dutch Reformed Church, and then
spread to the Presbyterian, before the rise of English
Methodism. The excessive intellectualism of Puritanism
had begun to avenge itself in a chilled and chilling atmos-
phere around the religious life. Its disregard of history
bore fruit in a weaker grasp on the great realities of the
historic revelation. The Calvinistic churches seemed likely
to run a downward course through the successive stages
of Arminianism, Arianism, deism, and naturalism. This
was more felt in America even than in the British Islands,
because colonists are more likely to drift from their moor-
ings than are the people of long-settled countries, where
the conservative influence of institution and of custom is
more constant. From this fate the nation was saved by
the pietistic movement of 1728-44, which brought back
warmth and fervency into religion, and lighted anew the
fires of spiritual zeal. In all its earlier stages it was so dis-
tinctly a Calvinistic movement that its friends hailed it as
the check to the drift into Arminian laxity, and Edwards
challenged the Arminians of New England to reconcile
login
**
296
[CHAP. XXI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
such a visible display of sovereign grace with their theory
that man turns himself to God. Yet in the Calvinistic
camp it bred sore divisions, of which the rending of the
Presbyterian Synod in 1741 was the most striking, though
not the most irreparable. The Ulster famine of 1726 had
greatly increased the immigrants in that and the follow-
ing years.
These viewed with distrust a movement to
which their native province offered no parallel, and they
strengthened the hands of those ministers who regarded the
new stress on religious emotion as likely to undermine the
interest in doctrinal soundness. And their distrust was
not removed by the attitude the friends of the Awakening
assumed toward those who distrusted it. The church was
rent not along the line of cleavage between Scotch-Irish
and New Englander-for the most zealous revivalists were
Scotch-Irish-and yet in such a way as threatened a prac-
tical severance of the two elements into two communions.
It was an indication of God's good purpose for the future
of the church that the two were brought together after
seventeen years of separation.
The Methodism of the Awakening was no more historic
than the Puritanism of the previous period had been. It
by no means sufficed to heal all the breaches of Zion. It
offered no substantial check to the Puritan individualism,
but rather lent it a new sanction by making true religion a
matter chiefly of isolated personal emotion, which reaches
a man by a channel which has nothing to do with human
kinship, social relations, or early nurture. It thus severed
it from public and social duties to an extent which threat-
ened a return to monastic asceticism, and made a conscious
conversion from enmity to friendship with God the only
way of entrance into the kingdom. It therefore could lay
but little stress on the influences of the Christian home, or
of the providential leading in the individual life. House-
297
hold training and catechetical instruction of the young by
their pastor were both thrust into the background, or even
disused, as of little value. If infant baptism were still
continued—and the "Separate" churches of New England
which grew out of the Awakening commonly became Bap-
tist churches, while the converts in the Southern colonies
went the same way mostly-it was rather through instinct
or custom than by force of logic. The baptized child was
too generally given to understand that he could be nothing
but a child of Satan until a revival came to convert him,
and that his chance of eternal life depended on his embrac-
ing that favored moment. This rigid "Methodism" of the
Awakening, which stands in such contrast to the mani-
foldness of the spiritual life as exemplified in the Script-
ures and the past history of the church, together with the
habits of anxious introspection it fostered, tended to im-
part a monotony to Christian experience, and a dreariness
to the literature which records it, for which a parallel must
be sought among the German Pietists and the ascetic lit-
erature of the later Jesuits.
FAULTS AND MERITS.
It would again be ungracious to dwell only on these
weaker sides of the Awakening. In the good providence.
of God it saved America from irreligion and barbarism.
It lifted the spiritual life of the churches out of a dull and
fruitless moderation into an inspired and aggressive energy.
It set the Christian people free to exhort and supplicate
as in apostolic times, by supplementing the Sunday ser-
vice with the prayer-meeting. It gave a distinctly Chris-
tian character to the church's praises by supplementing
the Book of Psalms with Christian hymns. It carried the
message of divine love into dark and neglected places of
the country, and awakened the voice of thankful song along
the frontier settlements and among the Indian tribes. It
aroused the church to a sense of its duty to the heathen
298
[CHAP. XXI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
world, and thus laid the foundation of the missionary
enterprise. In its later stages it adopted the Sunday-
school and similar agencies into the service of the church,
and created the machinery of wholesale agitation for the
support of religious enterprises and moral reforms. It
put down the slave-trade, prepared the way for the aboli-
tion of slavery, and set itself to the work of dealing with
intemperance and other social evils. It wrought, in fact, a
social revolution, whose extent is hid from us by the fact
that we have always lived among its results and do not
know with what a price they were bought for us. "Other
men labored, and ye are entered into their labors."
t
-
Of the American churches some simply antagonized the
Awakening; others gave themselves up to it completely,
or even took their rise from its activity. The Presbyte-
rian Church again fulfilled its mission by doing neither.
It labored successfully to keep alive the interest in pure
theology, as did also the Puritan churches of New Eng-
land and the Reformed churches of the Middle States,
thus counteracting the Methodist tendency to undervalue
doctrine where it was not seen to be directly available for
edification. It yielded much-some might say too much
-to the practical theology of the movement, in accepting
the revival meeting while seeking to abate its excitements,
and in coming to regard a conscious conversion as the pre-
requisite to full communion with the church. It retained
infant baptism on the ground that the Abrahamic covenant
embraced the children of God's covenant people in the
New Testament no less than the Old. But its ministers
tacitly and very generally went over to the Congregation-
alist position, in confining baptism to the children of com-
municants. It allowed the pastor's catechetical instruction
to be displaced by the labors of the Sunday-school teacher,
A MEDIATING CHURCH.
299
because it had ceased to regard that instruction as leading
on to communion. Yet it sought to maintain household
religion and family worship, as well as the instruction of
children by their parents in Bible and catechism. It also
labored to support Christian schools, in which instruction
in natural and historical science should not be divorced
from recognition of the Creator and the Ruler of man-
kind. And in its attitude toward the public life of the
nation it still stood for the principle that the state is the
creature of God, accountable to him, obliged by his laws.
It thus practically refused to accept the Methodist theory
that mankind at large is to be regarded as "the world" at
enmity with God, from which individuals may be brought
over by conversion into churches, whose membership can
give reasonable evidence of regeneration. The old "judg-
ment of charity" lingered on as a tradition when it had
fallen into oblivion as a doctrine.
Into the good works which grew out of the Methodist
movement the Presbyterian Church entered with as much
alacrity as was consistent with its conservative character.
Without accepting the Methodist view that the expedi-
ency of immediate success is the only test of right method,
it took up the new methods so far as these commended
themselves to its judgment. It became a church of Sun-
day-schools, prayer-meetings, missionary societies, and
voluntary associations for the promotion of all kinds of
good works. It gave support to the great moral reforms,
without losing its head over any of them, or expecting
from the success of any the immediate arrival of the mil-
lennium. It felt too deeply the corruption of our human
nature to share in the hopes of those who expected lightly
to bring it to perfection by changes of environment or of
method; and yet it worked for both with the stolid perse-
+
·
300
[CHAP. XXI.
the presBYTERIANS.
verance befitting a service done to God. It-got the bless-
ing which rewards such a service, as did the sister-churches.
Its foreign-missionary enterprise lifted it out of a narrow
and self-satisfied occupation with its own affairs and be-
longings, into a work so large and absorbing as to keep
all its energies on the strain. Its home-mission labor, to
keep the newer States and the Territories from falling to
a level of intellectual and spiritual life below that of the
older States, was blessed to both. This saved the West
from barbarism and the East from miserly selfishness. It
identified religion with generosity, and showed ways in
which the very power of accumulation might be turned to
the service of God and of the country.
Yet the Awakening also cost the Presbyterian Church
heavy losses of its natural adherents, especially in the
Southwest. In its maintenance of the interest in Chris-
tian doctrine it was heavily handicapped by its adherence
to a Confession of Faith unsuited to the needs of the
country and the time. The precise, scholastic statements
of the Westminster divines, and their wire-drawn distinc-
tions, were naturally out of harmony with the revivalist
spirit, and those who preached them found no access ex-
cept to congregations trained to appreciate such preach-
ing. The masses wanted a preacher to show warmth of
feeling, simplicity in doctrine, insight into the perplexities
and sorrows of the human heart. These found rather a
help than a check in Puritan doctrinalism, and the major-
ity of the children of the Ulster immigration fell away
from the church of their fathers. The more moderate
organized a church of their own, Presbyterian in order,
and less drastic in doctrine than the Westminster stand-
ards, exhibiting a futile attempt at compromise between
popular Arminianism and traditional Calvinism. A far
greater number found a spiritual home among the Method-
-
THE CHURCHLY AGE.
301
ists, the Baptists, the Disciples, the Christians, or even the
Shakers. And all this from Calvinism "putting its worst
foot foremost.
The third period in American church history began
about sixty years ago.
It is that in which the historical
side of Christianity is more highly appreciated than at any
earlier time.
}}
Puritanism appreciated strongly the intellectual side of
Christianity; Methodism, the emotional. In neither did
the historical element come to its rights. Yet Christianity
is as distinctly history as it is doctrine and emotion. Το
do justice to this third element is the problem of our own
age. To this end we must attain a truer recognition of
our vital relation to the historic fact of the Incarnation.
The years of that wonderful ministry are no part of a dead
and gone past; nor are they related to us merely through
some change in our legal status before the divine law that
was then accomplished. They are nearer to us than our
own yesterdays, and form a substantial part of every
Christian's life.
Hence all that comes to us from that past on the lines
of history acquires a high significance to us. The church
is the witness of the gathering of all under the one Head
(àvanspaλaiwoaoda, Eph. i. 10) of all the elect of God.
The sacraments speak of his perpetual presence with the
church, to purify and nourish her life and that of her
members. They are not symbols of an absent, but wit-
nesses of a present Christ. We are to come to them with
the faith that the heavenly element behind them is not
less real and operative than the earthly element present
to our senses. And this involves no confusion of the two
elements, as though the earthly were made divine or the
heavenly bound to the earthly. Baptismal grace and the
real presence in the sacrament were the common teaching
302
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XXI.
of all the churches of the Reformation. These ordinances
they declared to be the means of grace—not mere witnesses
to the possibility of grace, nor mere helps, through the
law of mental association, to lift our thoughts to profit-
able meditation and resolution.
In this view, also, the whole course of church history
becomes instructive to us. Whatever the sins, ignorances,
and negligences in it that require forgiveness, Christ was
in it all. It did not cease to be his church with the death
of the apostles or of Augustine of Hippo, and begin to be
such again with Martin Luther. Nor is the connection
between the two points to be sought in the Waldenses,
whatever their merits, but in the great central current
where we find the marks of Christ in such men as Ber-
nard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas,
John Tauler, John Gerson, Thomas à Kempis, Nicholas of
Cusa, Savonarola, and the other great witnesses by life
and doctrine to the living presence of Christ in the world.
So the Reformers taught, having no more will to give up
the church's history to Rome than to give up the Bible.
Yet when Philip Schaff, then freshly arrived from Switzer-
land, enunciated this more generous view of the past, he
was assailed as a Romanizer by Dr. Berg and others.
His heresy has become almost a commonplace now, and
the theory of Waldensian continuity has given way partly
before its honest refutation by their own historical scholars.
And the result is seen in the free use of the medieval
hymns in our hymnaries, and in the high esteem in which
the "Imitation of Christ" stands.
Closely connected with this new respect for the historic
past is the appreciation of the beautiful in its spiritual
significance. We grow impatient with the ugly, the un-
seemly, and the sordid, when we find these connected
with the church and its worship. We acquire sympathy
{
bad
THE SOCIAL SPIRIT.
303
with the men of the past, who spent toil and wealth on
grand and graceful edifices for the divine worship. In this
we enter into sympathy with the divine purpose which
has molded our world, our bodies, and God's own Word
with reference to beauty as well as use, and into whose
temple there is a Gate Beautiful, no less than approaches
through truth and emotion.
Another note of this present age is its socialism, using
that term in its broadest sense, in antithesis to individual-
ism. Our widened outlook upon the past, and our deep-
ened sense of the social forces which have shaped the
present out of it, have weakened faith in the capacity of
the individual to deal satisfactorily with all questions.
This feeling has combined with the reformatory and phil-
anthropic energy transmitted from the previous period,
and with the new scientific stress upon environment as
molding the life of individual and species, to give a social-
ist character to our thought and the methods which it orig-
inates. And this has been stimulated by reaction against
the mòre than Puritan individualism of the English political
economists, until we run the risk of sacrificing the precious
fruits of liberty in the pursuit of collectivist ideals.
In this new age the Presbyterian Church still holds a
central position in the religious life of the nation. She is
a historic church, prizing her own past, and reverencing
the great historic names in her annals, without refusing
that reverence to names as great, whose work was done
outside her communion. As a conservative church she
has helped to counteract the sudden breaks with history
which each new tendency has threatened to accomplish.
She moderated the extravagance of Puritanism by holding
fast to elements of earlier date and historic value. She
modified the urgency of the Awakening, when it would
cast aside the heritage Puritanism had bequeathed, and
Q
304
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XXI.
would have disparaged every doctrine and institution which
could not be proved directly useful for the conversion of
sinners. So in our own time she has to modify and re-
strain the tendency which would put church and sacrament
and historic tradition not only beside, but above, or in
place of, Christian truth and feeling. She has to oppose
those who in the name of the historic would turn their
backs on all history but what suits their own tastes and
likings, would cry down the Reformers and their work,
treat Puritanism as an apostasy and the Awakening as
an aberration, and find nothing to their liking that is not
medieval or Romanist. There are those who cannot love
the Bernards and the Gregories without hating Luther and
Knox, or who think that theological development came to
an end with the seventh ecumenical council. But "God
wastes no history," as Phillips Brooks has well said. He
no more ceased to guide his church when the middle ages
ended than when they began. To doubt this, and to seek
the connecting-link with that age in Laud and a handful
of High-church Anglicans, is an exact parallel to the Wal-
densian theory as to the medieval period. He knows not
the history of the church who does not recognize the
spiritual necessity for the change which sundered the
Teutonic from the Romance church in the sixteenth cent-
ury, or the Latin Church from the Greek in the eleventh;
who does not recognize the sobriety and conservatism
with which it was effected, and does not find in its leaders
the equals at least of any men God has given his church
since Athanasius and Augustine.
-
Ag
Equally necessary is a moderating and conservative in-
fluence in the case of another tendency of our age. As
every extreme carries in it the causes of an equal reaction,
so the extremes of individualism are producing the ex-
tremes of socialism. Personal responsibility for poverty,
dow
SOCIALIST EXAGGERATIONS.
305
wretchedness, and even vice is boldly questioned in these
days. Society, and especially the church, is held to answer
for the whole burden of human misery, which is put into
such light as to fill the entire sky of social vision from
horizon to horizon. All the problems of society are laid
at the feet of the church, and she is required to turn aside
from the ministry of the Word to serve the tables, at
which the whole mass of the hungry and the thriftless are
to be fed. In the past the conversion of sinners was made
too exclusively the church's work. She is now to give it
over, to turn to the conversion of millionaires into social-
ist philanthropists. She was too often characterized by
an other-worldliness, which gave up the life of this time
for a better life in the hereafter. She is now to drop the
question of a hereafter, and to devote herself to improv-
ing the physical no less than the moral well-being of the
human mass, taken in the mass.
There is both truth and justice in these charges and
these demands, but there also is mischievous exaggeration,
To oppose it we need a revival of the Puritan sense of
personal responsibility and the Methodist sense of the
adequacy of God's grace to reach and reform men in any
surroundings. We need to rid our minds of the worship
of environment and heredity which materialistic science
has been teaching us, and to worship the living God, who
says, "All souls are mine: . . . the soul that sinneth, it
shall die." He is the greatest fact in the environment of
any human spirit, and his quickening power is more than
all the forces of heredity.
-
The Presbyterian Church, as heir to theocratic principle
which was distinctive of the Reformed Church in its most
illustrious era, has never sunk to mere pietistic individual-
ism. She always has recognized her social responsibilities,
and has spoken her mind on all social problems. She is
G
306
[CHAP. XXI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
therefore less liable than the Puritan and Methodist bodies
to these violent reactions, while she responds to the new
impulse to deal with spiritual problems on their social no
less than their individual side. The man of to-day is not
to be contented with the Methodist teaching of yesterday.
He longs for a new order of life more even than for the
good of his own soul. He so longs because God is quick-
ening in him desires for that social order which our Lord
called the kingdom of heaven. But he still needs to have
the old truth pressed upon him, that he cannot enter the
kingdom until he is born from above and puts on the
childlike nature of the newly born.
The last note of the present age is the yearning for
Christian union which is awakening in the severed parts
of Christ's church. The desire of a universal brother-
hood of men simply as such, from which no man shall be
excluded except he will to be, finds expression in many
shapes, some of them fantastic enough. The church was
founded to satisfy that yearning. The closer we get to
its Founder, and the more we study its history, the less
content we are with a Christendom broken into fragments
by strife over secondary matters, and the more painful be-
comes the contrast between Christ's ideal and its imperfect
realization.
Here, I fear, it would be hard to assert any peculiar
merit for the Presbyterian bodies. Up to the Revolution
settlement of 1690, indeed, the Kirk kept its unity un-
broken. The custom was for those who regarded any-
thing in its practice as wrong and burdensome to their
consciences to "declare their separation from" that thing,
without breaking the unity of the church. Thus the sharp
dissensions between the Engagers and the Resolutioners
in 1649-50 were got over without any breach of com-
munion.
THE BEGINNINGS OF SCHISM.
307
At the Revolution all the ministers who had preached
in the fields, in defiance of Stuart persecution, and had
escaped the scaffold for this faithfulness, united with the
Scottish church as reëstablished, claiming that Cargill,
Cameron, Renwick, and the rest of the martyrs had de-
clared against any separation "if the Lord should send
deliverance to his church, and give them access to present
their grievances to its judicatories with personal safety."¹
That is, however much they might dissent from the action
taken on their grievances, they would no more than declare
their dissent, without leaving the church. Unhappily this
view did not commend itself to a part of the elders and
members who had waited upon the ministry of the perse-
cuted preachers and had shared in the perils of the killing-
time. Because the Revolution settlement provided for no
acknowledgment of the lasting obligation of the Covenants,
they would have none of it; and through the accession
of ministers who took the same view, they, after a long
wait, in 1743 were able to organize themselves as a Cove-
nanter Church. The same course was taken by the Er-
skines and their friends in withdrawing from the Kirk in
1733; by Gillespie and his friends in withdrawing to form
the Relief Church in 1752; and by the majority in the
American Synod, in 1741, in casting out the Tennents
and their friends. Then came divisions within divisions,
the Covenanters in Scotland dividing, in 1751, as to the
soundness of a treatise by Mr. Frazer, of Brea, one of the
persecuted preachers, in which he taught that Christ died.
for all men; and the Seceders, in 1747, on the ques-
tion of the Burgher oath. Thus the Presbyterian Church,
through neglect of her established principle of ecclesiasti-
1
N
1 See "An Inquiry into Church-Communion; or, A Treatise Against Sep-
aration from the Revolution Settlement of this National Church, as it was
Settled Anno 1689 and 1690." By Mr. Alexander Shields, Minister of the
Gospel at St. Andrews. Edinburgh, 1706; 2d ed., 1747.
+
308
[CHAP. XXI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
1
cal communion and dissent, was launched on a career of
division and schism which has been the scandal of the
Presbyterian name.
In America we have had, first and last, twenty-eight
Presbyterian bodies, most of them extended over the
national field, and many of them claiming to be the only
true representatives of Presbyterian principles. Of these
ten are still in existence, unless, indeed, the eleventh still
perpetuates its organization after the death of its last
minister. If we except the two Cumberland Presbyterian
churches the differences between the other eight are sim-
ply infinitesimal when compared with their agreements in
doctrine, polity, and character. Should they plant them-
selves on the ground occupied by the church in its most
heroic period they could find room for all within one fold,
with freedom for each to " declare its separation" from
what it regards as the shortcomings of the whole body.
And as regards even the Cumberland churches, there is
reason to believe that if this reunited church were to de-
clare its Calvinistic faith in its own words, there would be
less difficulty in a reunion with them than is supposed.
Even that difficulty would not be in the way of a union
with the two Reformed churches, and this might be ef-
fected without requiring them to give up their older and
more historic name. But to effect all this the church
needs more of the Spirit of wisdom, unity, and a sound
mind than she yet possesses. It seems, indeed, as though
through her very divisions God were holding her back
from the temptations which come with increase of num-
bers and of strength until she is fitted to bear them.
G
This is still more true of the outlook for Christian unity,
of which Presbyterian and Reformed unity is but a lesser
branch. It would bring great perils to the nation if all
our Protestant churches were to be united into a single
G
Ge
THE PERILS AND THE HOPE OF UNION.
309
effectively organized church, without their rising to a
higher plane of practical wisdom and true spirituality than
they have yet reached separately. The hasty and drastic
fashion in which many of them have undertaken to deal
with social problems, their assumption to decide not only
the ends of moral reform, but the political means by which
these are to be reached, are foreshadowings of these perils.
The sad chapters in the earlier history of the established
churches of Europe and America, before Protestant dis-
sent and division curbed their strength, show that human
nature works in much the same fashion in Protestant as in
Romanist ecclesiastics, with the exception that a married
clergy is less likely to devise fantastic and excessive sever-
ities than is a celibate. We therefore seem to be wisely
compelled to wait for Christian union until we are fit to
use it without abusing it.
Yet to wait is not to despair of it, or to give up yearn-
ing for it, or even to abandon the assurance that it is com-
ing at no distant date. Our ecclesiastical life as a people
is still in the colonial stage. It hardly has felt the touch
of the great nationalizing instinct which played so great a
part in the crises of our political history in 1775, in 1787,
in 1832, and in 1861-65. We have inherited from Europe
a state of ecclesiastical division not unlike nor unrelated
to the divisions which kept colony apart from colony in
the age of colonial dependence. In those earlier decades.
of American history it seemed as though the differences of
race, of creed, and of social ideal would keep the colonies
apart forever—at least it seemed impossible to bring
them together in less than three confederacies, the South-
ern and the New England States standing apart from the
others. But the good providence of God was building up
a nation out of these alien elements long before the work-
ing of his hand appeared on the surface of things. By
?
310
[CHAP. XXI.
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
can.
community of peril and of toil, by the friendly interchanges
of commerce, by the spreading enthusiasms of the Great
Awakening, by the common interest in men of national
magnitude, like Franklin and Washington, by the foolish
and ill-timed exactions of the British government, and by
the manifest perils to religious liberty which attended the
connection with England, the colonies were drawn out of
their isolation, and began to be conscious of being Ameri-
When independence was achieved under an imper-
fect form of union, then commercial distress, industrial
decay, popular turbulence, and bitter disputes between the
States forced on the adoption of the Constitution. The
crisis of Nullification brought the national sentiment into
more lively activity, under the very rule of a party least
disposed to cherish it. That of Secession finally settled
the question of the permanence of the Union, by discover-
ing to the American people, both North and South, how
precious it had become to them.
All this has taken place in a sphere where no larger
union is sought than that of a single people within their
national boundaries. But in the sphere where the union of
all men into one human brotherhood under the headship
of Jesus Christ is the goal, we have accomplished as good
as nothing as yet. We are not even national.
Here we have to move between two extremes. The
first offers us unity in the footing of an abandonment of
the past, and a reconstruction of the church out of New
Testament texts, in the spirit of Puritan literalism. We
have had more than one attempt of this kind, the most
notable being the body called the Disciples, whose found-
ers, Isaac and Alexander Campbell, came to America
from the Associate Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and
first joined the Baptists before reaching the conclusions.
on which they based their new organization. In this view
UNHISTORIC UNIONISM.
311
the history of the church since the days of the apostles
has been little more than a series of sins and blunders, of
which the less said or remembered the better. They
frankly apply to the history of the Protestant churches
the judgments which many Protestants still apply to the
middle ages: they admit the relief of the ecclesiastical
darkness by some shining names, but assert that the whole
story is a tissue of mere usurpation and wrong-doing—
creeds, polity, methods of work, all being out of the line
of what the New Testament forbids and requires.
Such a theory of the church could have originated only
in a period when historic studies were but little cultivated,
and the popular interest in the church's history as good
as absent. It was associated, however, with a disposition
to reject the subjectivity of the Awakening, and to assert
for Christianity a strongly objective character; and this
commended it to many. The history of the body shows
that the plan does not solve the problem. Divisions and
disputes have arisen within it, which have rent the bond
of charity, because this New Testament literalism does not
remove all grounds of difference in judgment.¹ Nor is the
church called upon to sacrifice her whole history to regain
her unity. These ages have not been lost, whatever their
mistakes.
The other extreme is that which proposes Christian
1 The Disciples may be said to be the American representatives of the
Haldane movement in Scotland, by which the younger Campbell was greatly
influenced during his attendance at Glasgow University. In the Ahorey
Presbyterian congregation, where I spent a part of my boyhood, Isaac Camp-
bell was still remembered for the strictness of the Seceder discipline he ex-
ercised when its pastor. Professor Whitsett, of the Southern Baptists, traces
the origin of Mormonism as a working-system to the literalism of the Dis-
ciples. Orson Pratt was a preacher among the Disciples, and became the
theologian of the Latter-day Saints. And the claim of the Saints is that
they alone offer a church which literally corresponds throughout to that of
the New Testament, being persecuted by the Gentiles, speaking with tongues,
working miracles, laying on hands for the bestowal of the Spirit, anointing
the sick, etc.
$
312
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XXI.
&
union on the historical basis presented by a single church,
which claims to possess the only true church order or doc-
trine, or both. This is a form of ecclesiastical assumption
confined to no particular church. All have made this claim
at times, especially in the days of their early progress,
when they thought themselves Aaron's rod, predestined
to swallow up the others. The Friends, the Methodists,
the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians—all have
had their jure divino claims at times, when they were
ready to unchurch everybody else. At present it is the
Church of Rome and the Protestant Episcopal Church
which maintain exclusive claims in America. The latter
did not assume this attitude in the era of Bishop White,
when it put itself more on a level with the other churches
by speaking of" other denominations." But all the changes
in the legislation of the last half-century look in this direc-
tion and grow out of the dominant spirit of the church.
It is now distinctly High-church of the Oxford pattern.
Nor is this position abandoned at all in the action of the
House of Bishops which looks toward Christian union.
The notable feature of that action was that. it was ad-
dressed to other bodies of American Christians, and not
simply to the individuals who compose them. It thus
marks a great advance in Christian courtesy upon the
style in which the High-church claim has been pressed in
most cases. But it still assumes that the elements of
Christian reunion are to be sought entirely in the Epis-
copal Church, while it minimizes as far as possible the
number of the prerequisites. It asks of no other church
for any contribution to the problem, while it proposes to
open negotiations with any upon the basis it has laid down
itself. On this basis Protestants may be reunited by be-
coming Episcopalians to an extent there defined, while the
Episcopal Church accepts and learns nothing from them.
*
A TRINITARIAN CHURCH.
313
Here again there is need of a central and moderating
influence between opposed extremes, which the Presby-
terian Church might very well exercise. She has more
affinity with all the diverse elements of our ecclesiastical
life than has any other church. She has been a Puritan
church in the Puritan age, and a Methodist church in the
age of the Awakening; and she is returning to what she
was before the Puritan influence touched her, in adapting
herself to the churchly tendencies of the present age. It
would not be to the exclusion of any of these principles
that she would offer herself as a mediator between them
all; nor need Christian union be achieved by leaving be-
hind the attainments of any in the past, and all becoming
Presbyterians. Such a reunion, indeed, would bring all the
elements of our rich and varied spiritual life into harmony
and coöperation, giving us a church practically Trinitarian
and at the same time more complex than is the life of any
existing body.
In his address at the celebration of his semi-centenary
Dr. Charles Hodge pointed to the clew furnished by the
doctrine of the Trinity to the variety of spiritual life in the
churches of Christ: "There are different types of religion
even among true believers. The religion of St. Bernard
and of John Wesley, of Jeremy Taylor and of Jonathan
Edwards, although essentially the same, had in each case
its peculiar character. Every great historic church has
its own type of piety. As there are three Persons in the
Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, so there
appear to be three general forms of religion among evan-
gelical Christians. There are some whose religious experi-
ence is determined mainly by what is taught in the Script-
ures concerning the Holy Spirit. They dwell upon his
inward work on the heart, on his indwelling, his illumina-
tion, on his life-giving power; they yield themselves pas-
314
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
[CHAP. XXI.
sively to his influence to exalt them into fellowship with
God. Such men are disposed more or less to mysticism.
There are others whose religious life is determined more
by their relation to the Father, to God as God; who look
upon him as a sovereign or lawgiver; who dwell upon the
grounds of obligation, upon responsibility and ability, and
upon the subjective change by which the sinner passes from
a state of rebellion to that of obedience. Then there are
those in whom the form of religion, as Dr. Boardman has
said, is distinctly Christological. I see around me alumni
whose heads are gray as my own. They will unite with
me in testifying that this is the form of religion in which
we were trained. While our teachers did not dissuade us
from looking within and searching for evidences of the
Spirit's work in the heart, they constantly directed us to
look only unto Jesus-Jehovah-Jesus-him in whom are
united all that is infinite and awful, indicated by the name
of Jehovah; and all that is human and tender and sympa-
thetic, forbearing and loving, implied in the name Jesus.
If any student went to Dr. Alexander in a state of de-
spondence the venerable man was sure to tell him, 'Look
not so much within. Look to Christ. Dwell on his per-
son, on his work, on his promises, and devote yourself to
his service, and you will soon find peace.'"
This remarkable passage might be alleged in refutation
of Dr. Hodge's famous statement in the same address: “I
am not afraid to say that a new idea never originated in
this seminary." It coincides in the main with the results.
reached by the present writer in thirty years' study of the
religious life and history of America. The point at which
the coincidence is not perfect will be indicated.
Our ecclesiastical life looks like a chaos of mere dissen-
sion and unreasonable divisions, but it is not so. Under
the seeming chaos lies an unseen order, with the promise.
THE THREE TYPES.
315
of its ultimate visibility. The great American churches
are Trinitarian in theory-they recognize in the God-
head an essential unity, and yet a threefoldness of life so
distinct that the Son speaks to the Father as "thou" and
of the Spirit as "he"-but in their actual life they tend
to be, in some sense, Unitarians, singling out some one
of the three as the object of trust and confidence.
- Some, as Dr. Hodge says, have their thoughts centered
upon the Father, the fons deitatis, "God as God," as the
sovereign will which puts forth energy in creation, provi-
dence, redemption, and judgment. Here the Puritan, Cal-
vinistic, and Reformed churches naturally belong. They
regard the work of Christ mainly as putting an obstacle
out of the way of the Father's will. In that will every-
thing is embraced. This type of thought dominates the
Westminster standards and all the Reformed confessions.
Dr. Hodge evidently finds its truest representatives among
the theologians of New England. But whatever modifica-
tions of it might come of Dr. Archibald Alexander's type
of piety, and his own contact with the mediation school
during his stay in Germany, this in the long run is that of
Presbyterian theology.
-
The second type in the historic order we find in Amer-
ica is that of the worship of the Holy Spirit, as the Method-
ist era succeeds the Puritan. Here feeling counts for more
than doctrine, and the inner life is accounted the greatest
of all interests. Here stand our Methodists, Moravians,
Friends, and other pietistic or mystical sects.
The third type is Christocentric. It regards the Incar-
nation as the world's redemption, and lays its stress not
on the work of Christ to reconcile the Father to man, but
on his very person, in which our humanity is lifted into
fellowship with God. Its stress falls on the social rather
than the intellectual and the emotional life, and on the
316
THE PRESBYTERIANS.
€
[CHAP. XXI.
sacraments around which that social life centers. The
most perfect type of this is the Catholic and Apostolic
Church, which was organized chiefly out of English and
Scotch Presbyterians, and is now represented at some seven
or eight centers in America. Next to it comes the Protest-
ant Episcopal Church, especially since it has been perme-
ated by the spirit of the Oxford revival.
And these three are one. Each tendency in its turn has
been dominant for a time in the religious life of America.
Shall not the next age be that of their unity in the mani-
fold life of a national (and ecumenical) Trinitarian church,
in which, as in our federal system of government, there
shall be room for the largest variety of type in connection
with an essential unity? To such a result the Presbyte-
rian Church can contribute at least as largely as any in the
land, through its friendly relations with all, through its
hospitality in the past and the present to all these forms
of the spiritual life.
At any rate, the last word on the subject is one of hope
and of outlook. In the seeming welter of sects and
parties, the hand of God is at work.
show forth his glory.
Out of it, he will
→
·
=
APPENDIX OF THE MOST IMPORTANT DOCU-
MENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY
OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN
AMERICA.
I. THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL COVENANT OF 1581,
RENEWED IN 1638.
WEE all and every one of us underwritten, Protest,
That, after long and due examination of our owne Con-
sciences in matters of true and false Religion, [we] are now
thoroughly resolved of the Truth, by the Word and Spirit
of God, and, therefore, we beleeve with our hearts, con-
fesse with our mouths, subscribe with our hands, and con-
stantly affirm, before God and the whole World, that this
only is the true Christian Faith and Religion, pleasing
God, and bringing Salvation to man, which now is, by the
mercy of God, revealed to the world by the preaching of
the blessed Evangel.
W
·
-
And received, beleeved, and defended by many and
sundry notable Kirks and Realmes, but chiefly by the
Kirk of Scotland, the King's Majestie, and by three
Estates of this Realme, as God's eternall Truth, and onely
ground of our salvation; as more particularly is expressed
in the Confession of our Faith, stablished and publikely
confirmed by sundry Acts of Parlaments, and now, of a
long time, hath been openly professed by the King's
Majestie, and whole body of this Realme, both in Burgh
and Land. To the which Confession and forme of Re-
ligion wee willingly agree in our consciences in all points,
317
318
APPENDIX.
as unto God's undoubted Truth and Verity, grounded
onely upon his written Word. And, therefore, We ab-
horre and detest all contrarie Religion and Doctrine; but
chiefly all kinde of Papistrie in generall and particular
heads, even as they are now damned and confuted by the
Word of God and Kirk of Scotland; but, in speciall, we
detest and refuse the usurped authoritie of that Roman
Antichrist upon the Scriptures of God, upon the Kirk, the
civill Magistrate, and Consciences of men; all his tyran-
nous lawes made upon indifferent things against our Chris-
tian libertie; his erroneous Doctrine against the sufficiencie
of the written Word, the perfection of the Law, the office
of Christ and his blessed Evangel; his corrupted Doctrine
concerning originall sinne, our natural inabilitie and rebel-
lion to God's law, our justification by faith onely, our im-
perfect sanctification and obedience to the law, the nature,
number, and use of the holy Sacraments; his five bastard
Sacraments, with all his Rites, Ceremonies, and false Doc-
trine, added to the ministration of the true Sacraments
without the Word of God; his cruell judgement against In-
fants departing without the sacrament; his absolute neces-
sitie of Baptisme; his blasphemous opinion of Transubstan-
tiation, or real presence of Christ's body in the Elements,
and receiving of the same by the wicked, or bodies of
men; his dispensations with solemn oaths, perjuries, and
degrees of Marriage forbidden in the Word; his crueltie
against the innocent divorced; his divellish Masse; his
blasphemous Priesthood; his profane Sacrifice for the sins
of the dead and the quick; his Canonization of men, calling
upon Angels or Saints departed, worshipping of Imagerie,
Relicks, and Crosses, dedicating of Kirks, Altars, Daies,
Vowes to creatures; his Purgatorie, praiers for the dead;
praying or speaking in a strange language, with his Proces-
sions, and blasphemous Letanie, and multitude of Advo-
cates or Mediators; his manifold Orders, Auricular Confes-
sion; his desperate and uncertaine repentence; his generall
and doubtsome faith; his satisfactions of men for their
sins; his justification by works, opus operatum, works of
Gladia
&
THE NATIONAL COVENANT.
319
supererogation, Merits, Pardons, Peregrinations, and Sta-
tions; his holy Water, baptizing of Bels, conjuring of spirits,
crossing, saning, anointing, conjuring, hallowing of God's
good creatures, with the superstitious opinion joyned there-
with; his worldly Monarchy, and wicked Hierarchie; his
three solemne vowes, with all his shavelings of sundry sorts;
his erroneous and bloudie decrees made at Trent, with all
the subscribers and approvers of that cruell and bloudie
Band conjured against the Kirk of God; and, finally, we
detest all his vain Allegories, Rites, Signs, and Traditions
brought in the Kirk, without or against the Word of God,
and Doctrine of this true reformed Kirk; to the which we
joyne ourselves willingly, in Doctrine, Faith, Religion, Dis-
cipline, and use of the Holy Sacraments, as lively members
of the same in Christ our Head; promising and swearing,
by the GREAT NAME OF THE LORD OUR GOD, that we
shall continue in the obedience of the Doctrine and Disci-
pline of this Kirk, and shall defend the same, according to
our vocation and power, all the dayes of our lives, under
the paines contained in the Law, and danger both of body
and soule in the day of God's fearfull Judgement; and see-
ing that many are stirred up by Satan and that Romane
Antichrist, to promise, sweare, subscribe, and, for a time,
use the Holy Sacraments in the Kirk deceitfully, against
their owne consciences, minding thereby, first, under the
externall cloake of Religion, to corrupt and subvert secretly
God's true Religion within the Kirk, and afterward, when
time may serve, to become open enemies and persecutors
of the same, under vaine hope of the Pope's dispensation,
devised against the Word of God, to his greater confusion,
and their double condemnation in the day of the LORD
JESUS.
We, therefore, willing to take away all suspition of
hypocrisie, and of such double dealing with God and his
Kirk, Protest, and call The Searcher of all Hearts for wit-
nesse, that our minds and hearts do fully agree with this
our Confession, Promise, Oath, and Subscription, so that we
are not moved for any worldly respect, but are perswaded
320
APPENDIX.
onely in our Consciences, through the knowledge and love
of God's true Religion, printed in our hearts by the Holy
Spirit, as we shall answer to Him in the day when the
secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed; and because we
perceive, that the quietnesse and stability of our Religion
and Kirk doth depend upon the safety and good behaviour
of the King's Majestie, as upon a comfortable instrument
of God's mercy granted to this Country, for the maintain-
ing of his Kirk, and ministration of Justice amongst us;
we protest and promise with our hearts, under the same
Oath, Hand-writ, and paines, that we shall defend his Per-
son and Authority with our goods, bodies, and lives, in the
defence of Christ his Evangel, Liberties of our Countrey,
ministration of Justice, and punishment of iniquity, against
all enemies within this Realme or without, as we desire.
our God to be a strong and mercifull Defender to us in
the day of our death, and comming of our LORD JESUS
CHRIST; to whom, with the Father, and the Holy Spirit,
be all honour and glorie eternally.
[In the renewal of 1638 there is added a rehearsal of
the Acts of the Scottish Parliament for the Confirmation
and Maintenance of the Reformed Religion, concluding
with that which prescribed the coronation oath taken by
Charles I. in 1633. It then proceeds:]
In obedience to the commandment of God, conform to
the practice of the godly in former times, and according
to the laudable example of our worthy and religious Pro-
genitors, and of many yet living amongst us, which was
warranted also by Act of Councell, commanding a gen-
erall Band to bee made and subscribed by his Majestie's
subjects of all ranks, for two causes: One was, for de-
fending the true Religion, as it was then reformed, and is
expressed in the Confession of Faith above written, and
a former large Confession established by sundrie Acts of
lawfull Generall Assemblies and of Parlament, unto which
it hath relation set downe in publicke Cathechismes, and
which had beene for many yeeres, with a blessing from
heaven, preached and professed in this Kirk and King-
Cla
THE NATIONAL COVENANT.
321
dome, as God's undoubted truth, grounded onely upon his
written Word; The other cause was, for maintaining the
King's Majestie his Person and Estate; the true worship of
God, and the King's authoritie being so straightly joyned,
as that they had the same friends and common enemies,
and did stand and fall together. And, finally, being con-
vinced in our minds, and confessing with our mouthes, that
the present and succeeding generations in this Land are
bound to keep the foresaid nationall Oath and subscription
inviolable, Wee Noblemen, Barons, Gentlemen, Burgesses,
Ministers and Commons under subscribing, considering
divers times before, and especially at this time, the dan-
ger of the true reformed Religion, of the King's honour,
and of the publicke peace of the Kingdome, by the mani-
fold innovations and evils generally contained and particu-
larly mentioned in our late supplications, complaints, and
protestations, doe hereby professe, and, before God, hist
Angels, and the World, solemnely declare, That, with our
whole hearts wee agree and resolve all the daies of our life
constantly to adhere unto, and to defend the foresaid true
Religion, and forbearing the practice of all novations al-
ready introduced in the matters of the worship of God, or
approbation of the corruptions of the publick Government
of the Kirk, or civill places and power of Kirkmen, till
they bee tryed and allowed in free Assemblies, and in
Parlaments, to labour by all meanes lawfull to recover the
purity and libertie of the Gospel, as it was established and
professed before the foresaid novations: And because, after
due examination, we plainly perceive, and undoubtedly
beleeve, that the Innovations and evils contained in our
Supplications, Complaints, and Protestations have no war-
rant of the Word of God, are contrary to the Articles of
the foresaid Confessions, to the intention and meaning of
the blessed Reformers of Religion in this Land, to the
above written Acts of Parlament, and doe sensibly tend
to the re-establishing of the Popish Religion and tyranny,
and to the subversion and ruine of the true Reformed Re-
ligion, and of our Liberties, Lawes, and Estates. We also
Si
322
APPENDIX.
declare, that the foresaid Confessions are to bee inter-
preted, and ought to be understood of the foresaid nova-
tions and evils, no lesse then if everie one of them had
beene expressed in the foresaid Confessions; and that wee
are obliged to detest and abhorre them, amongst other
particular heads of Papistrie abjured therein. And, there-
fore, from the knowledge and conscience of our dutie to
God, to our King and countrey, without any worldly re-
spect or inducement, so farre as humane infirmitie will
suffer, wishing a further measure of the grace of God for
this effect, We promise and sweare, by the GREAT NAME
OF THE LORD our GOD, to continue in the Profession
and Obedience of the foresaid Religion: That we shall
defend the same, and resist all these contrarie errours and
corruptions, according to our vocation, and to the utter-
most of that power that God hath put in our hands, all
the dayes of our life: And, in like manner, with the same
heart, we declare before God and Men, That wee have no
intention nor desire to attempt anything that may turne to
the dishonour of God, or to the diminution of the King's
Greatnesse and authoritie: But, on the contrarie, wee
promise and sweare, that wee shall, to the uttermost of
our power, with our meanes and lives, stand to the de-
fence of our dread Soveraign, the King's Majestie, his
person and authoritie, in the defence and preservation of
the foresaid true Religion, Liberties, and Lawes of the
Kingdome: As, also, to the mutuall defence and assist-
ance, everie one of us of another in the same cause of
maintaining the true Religion, and his Majestie's author-
itie, with our best counsell, our bodies, meanes, and whole
power, against all sorts of persons whatsoever.
So that,
whatsoever shall be done to the least of us for that cause,
shall be taken as done to us all in generall, and to everie
one of us in particular. And that wee shall neither directly
nor indirectly suffer ourselves to be divided or withdrawn
by whatsoever suggestion, combination, allurement, or ter-
rour, from this blessed and loyall conjunction, nor shall
cast in any let or impediment that may stay or hinder
-
-
THE NATIONAL COVENANT.
323
any such resolution, as by common consent shall be found
to conduce for so good ends. But, on the contrarie, shall,
by all lawful meanes, labour to further and promove the
same; and if any such dangerous and divisive motion be
made to us by word or writ, wee, and everie one of us,
shall either suppresse it, or, if need be, shall incontinent
make the same known, that it may bee timeously obvi-
ated; neither do we feare the foule aspersions of rebel-
lion, combination, or what else our adversaries, from their
craft and malice would put upon us, seeing what we do is
so well warranted, and ariseth from an unfained desire to
maintaine the true worship of God, the majestie of our
King, and the peace of the Kingdome, for the common
happiness of ourselves and posteritie. And because we
cannot look for a blessing from God upon our proceedings,
except with our profession and subscription we joyne such
a life and conversation, as beseemeth Christians, who have
renewed their Covenant with God; Wee therefore faith-
fully promise, for ourselves, our followers, and all others.
under us, both in publicke, in our particular families and
personall carriage, to endevour to keep ourselves within
the bounds of Christian libertie, and to be good examples
to others of all Godlinesse, Sobernesse, and Righteousness,
and of everie dutie we owe to God and Man. And that
this our Union and Conjunction may be observed with-
out violation, we call the living God, the Searcher of our
Hearts, to witnesse, who knoweth this to be our sincere
Desire, and unfained Resolution, as wee shall answer to
JESUS CHRIST in the great day, and under the paine
of God's everlasting wrath, and of infamie, and of losse of
all honour and respect in this World. Most humblie be-
seeching the LORD, to strengthen us by his Holy Spirit
for this end, and to bless our desires and proceedings with
a happie success, that Religion and Righteousnesse may
flourish in the land, to the glorie of God, the honour of
our King, and peace and comfort of us all. In witnesse
whereof we have subscribed with our hands all the prem-
isses, &c.
324
APPENDIX.
II. A SOLEMNE LEAGUE AND COVENANT FOR REFORMA-
TION AND DEFENCE OF RELIGION, THE HONOR AND
HAPPINESSE OF THE KING, AND THE PEACE AND
SAFETY OF THE THREE KINGDOMES OF SCOTLAND,
ENGLAND, AND IRELAND. [ADOPTED 1643.]
-
Wee, Noblemen, Barons, Knights, Gentlemen, Citizens,
Burgesses, Ministers of the Gospel, and Commons of all
sorts, in the kingdomes of Scotland, England, and Ire-
land, by the providence of GOD, living under one King,
and being of one reformed religion, having before our
eyes the glory of GOD, and the advancement of the king-
dome of our Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST, the honour
and happinesse of the Kings Majesty and his posterity,
and the true publick liberty, safety, and peace of the king-
domes, wherein every ones private condition is included:
And calling to minde the treacherous and bloudy plots,
conspiracies, attempts, and practices of the enemies of
GOD, against the true religion and professours thereof in
all places, especially in these three kingdomes, ever since
the reformation of religion; and how much their rage,
power, and presumption are of late, and at this time, in-
creased and exercised; whereof the deplorable estate of
the church and kingdome of Ireland, the distressed estate
of the church and kingdome of England, and the danger-
ous estate of the church and kingdome of Scotland, are
present and publick testimonies; We have now at last,
(after other means of supplication, remonstrance, protesta-
tions, and sufferings,) for the preservation of ourselves and
our religion from utter ruin and destruction, according to
the commendable practice of these kingdomes in former
times, and the example of GODS people in other nations,
after mature deliberation, resolved and determined to enter
into a mutuall and Solemne League and Covenant, wherein
we all subscribe, and each one of us for himself, with our
hands lifted up to the most High GOD, do swear,
I. That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through
SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.
325
the grace of GOD, endeavour, in our several places and
callings, the preservation of the reformed religion in the
Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and
government, against our common enemies; the reforma-
tion of religion in the kingdomes of England and Ireland,
in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, according
to the word of GOD, and the example of the best reformed
Churches; and shall endeavour to bring the Churches of
GOD in the three kingdomes to the nearest conjunction
and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of
church government, directory for worship and catechis-
ing; that we, and our posterity after us, may as brethren
live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell
in the midst of us.
2. That we shall, in like manner, without respect of
persons, endeavour the extirpation of Popery, Prelacy,
(that is, church-government by Archbishops, Bishops, their
Chancellors, and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chap-
ters, Archdeacons, and all other ecclesiasticall Officers, de-
pending on that hierarchy,) superstition, heresie, schisme,
profanenesse, and whatsoever shall be found to be con-
trary to sound doctrine and the power of godlinesse; lest
we partake in other mens sins, and thereby be in danger
to receive of their plagues; and that the Lord may be one,
and his name one in the three kingdomes.
3. We shall, with the same sincerity, reality, and con-
stancie, in our several vocations, endeavour, with our estates
and lives, mutually to preserve the rights and privileges of
the Parliaments, and the liberties of the kingdomes; and
to preserve and defend the Kings Majesties person and
authoritie, in the preservation and defence of the true re-
ligion, and liberties of the kingdomes; that the world may
bear witnesse with our consciences of our loyalty, and
that wee have no thoughts or intensions to diminish his
Majesties just power and greatnesse.
4. We shall also, with all faithfulnesse, endeavour the
discovery of such as have been, or shall be incendiaries,
malignants, or evil instruments, by hindering the reforma-
326
APPENDIX.
tion of religion, dividing the King from his people, or one
of the kingdomes from another, or making any faction or
parties among the people, contrary to this League and
Covenant; that they may be brought to publick triall, and
receive condigne punishment, as the degree of their offences
shall require or deserve, or the supreame judicatories of both
kingdomes respectively, or others, having power from them
for that effect, shall judge convenient.
5. And whereas, the happinesse of a blessed peace be-
tween these kingdomes, denyed in former times to our
progenitors, is, by the good providence of GOD, granted
unto us, and hath been lately concluded and settled by
both Parliaments; we shall each one of us, according to
our place and interest, endeavour that they may remaine
conjoined in a firme peace and union to all posterity; and
that justice may be done upon the wilfull opposers thereof,
in manner expressed in the precedent article.
G
6. Wee shall also, according to our places and callings,
in this common cause of religion, liberty, and peace of the
kingdomes, assist and defend all those that enter into this
League and Covenant, in the maintaining and pursuing
thereof; and shall not suffer ourselves, directly or in-
directly, by whatsoever combination, persuasion, or ter-
rour, to be divided and withdrawn from this blessed union
and conjunction, whether to make defection to the con-
trary part, or to give ourselves to a detestable indifferency
or neutrality in this cause, which so much concerneth the
glory of GOD, the good of the kingdomes, and honour of
the King; but shall, all the days of our lives, zealously
and constantly continue therein against all opposition, and
promote the same according to our power, against all lets
and impediments whatsoever; and, what we are not able
ourselves to suppresse or overcome, we shall reveal and
make known, that it may be timely prevented or removed :
All which we shall do as in the sight of GOD:
And, because these kingdomes are guilty of many sins
and provocations against GOD, and his Son JESUS CHRIST,
as is too manifest by our present distresses and dangers,
Call
ADOPTING ACTS, 1647.
327
the fruits thereof; we profess and declare, before GOD and
the world, our unfeigned desire to be humbled for our own
sins, and for the sins of these kingdomes: especially, that
we have not as we ought, valued the inestimable benefit
of the gospel; that we have not laboured for the purity
and power thereof; and that we have not endeavoured to
receive CHRIST in our hearts, nor to walk worthy of him
in our lives, which are the causes of other sins and trans-
gressions so much abounding amongst us; and our true
and unfeigned purpose, desire, and endeavour for our-
selves, and all others under our power and charge, both in
publick and private, in all duties we owe to GOD and man,
to amend our lives, and each one to go before another in
the example of a reall reformation; that the Lord may
turn away his wrath and heavy indignation, and establish
these churches and kingdomes in truth and peace. And
this Covenant we make in the presence of ALMIGHTY
GOD, the Searcher of all hearts, with a true intention to
performe the same, as we shall answer at that great day,
when the secrets of all hearts shall bee disclosed; most
humbly beseeching the LORD to strengthen us by his
HOLY SPIRIT for this end, and to blesse our desires and
proceedings with such successe, as may be deliverance and
safety to his people, and encouragement to other Christian
churches, groaning under, or in danger of, the yoke of anti-
christian tyrannie, to joyn in the same or like association
and covenant, to the glory of GOD, the enlargement of
the kingdome of JESUS CHRIST, and the peace and tran-
quillity of Christian kingdomes and commonwealths.
G
III. THE ADOPTING ACTS OF 1647.
(a) Approbation of the Confession of Faith.
A Confession of Faith for the Kirks of God in the three
Kingdomes, being the chiefest part of that Uniformity in
Religion which by the Solemne League and Covenant we
328
APPENDIX.
are bound to endeavour; And there being accordingly a
Confession of Faith agreed upon by the Assembly of
Divines sitting at Westminster, with the assistance of
Commissioners from the Kirk of Scotland; Which Confes-
sion was sent from our Commissioners at London to the
Commissioners of the Kirk met at Edinburgh in January
last, and hath been in this Assembly twice publikely read
over, examined, and considered; Copies thereof being also
Printed, that it might be particularly perused by all the
Members of this Assembly, unto whom frequent intimation
was publikely made, to put in their doubts and objections
if they had any; And the said Confession being upon due
examination thereof found by the Assembly to bee most
agreeable to the Word of God, and in nothing contrary to
the received Doctrine, Worship, Discipline, and Govern-
ment of this Kirk: And lastly, it being so necessary and
so much longed for, That the said Confession be with all
possible diligence and expedition approved and established
in both Kingdomes, as a principall part of the intended
Uniformity in Religion, and as a speciall means for the
more effectuall suppressing of the many dangerous errours
and heresies of these times; The Generall Assembly doth
therefore after mature diliberation Agree unto and Ap-
prove the said Confession as to the truth of the matter
(judging it to be most orthodox and grounded upon the
Word of God) and also as to the point of Uniformity,
Agreeing for our part that it be a common Confession of
Faith for the three Kingdomes. The Assembly doth also
blesse the Lord, and thankfully acknowledge his great
mercy, in that so excellent a Confession of Faith is pre-
pared, and thus far agreed upon in both Kingdomes;
which we look upon as a great strengthening of the true
Reformed Religion against the common enemies thereof.
But lest our intention and meaning be in some particulars
misunderstood, It is hereby expressly Declared and Pro-
vided, that the not mentioning in this Confession the sev-
erall sorts of Ecclesiasticall Officers and Assemblies, shall
be no prejudice to the Truth of Christ in these particulars
ADOPTING ACTS, 1647.
329
to be expressed fully in the Directory of Government.
It is further Declared, that the Assembly understandeth
some parts of the second Article of the thirty one Chap-
ter, only of Kirks not settled or constituted in point of
Government; And that although in such Kirks, a Synod
of Ministers and other fit persons may be called by the
Magistrates authority and nomination without any other
Call, to consult and advise with about matters of Re-
ligion; And although likewise the Ministers of Christ
without delegation from their Churches, may of them-
selves and by vertue of their Office meet together Synod-
ically in such Kirks not yet constituted; Yet neither of
these ought to be done in Kirks constituted and setled:
It being alwayes free to the Magistrate to advise with
Synods of Ministers and ruling Elders meeting upon dele-
gation from their Churches, either ordinarily, or being in-
dicted by his Authority occasionally and pro re nata; It
being also free to assemble together Synodically, as well
pro re nata, as at the ordinary times upon delegation from
the Churches, by the intrinsicall power received from
Christ, as often as it is necessary for the good of the
Church so to assemble, in case the Magistrate to the det-
riment of the Church withhold or deny his consent, the
necessity of occasionall Assemblies being first remonstrate
unto him by humble supplication.
(b) The Psalm-Book.
The Generall Assembly, having considered the report of
the Committee, concerning the Paraphrase of the Psalmes
sent from England: And finding that it is very necessary,
that the said Paraphrase be yet revised; Therefore doth
appoint Master John Adamson to examine the first fourty
Psalmes, Master Thomas Craufurd the second fourty, Mas-
ter John Row the third fourty, and Master John Nevey
the last thirty Psalms of that Paraphrase; and in their
Examination they shall not only observe what they think
needs to be amended, but also to set downe their own
330
APPENDIX.
essay for correcting thereof: And for this purpose recom-
mends to them, to make use of the travels of Rowallen,
Master Zachary Boyd, or of any other on that subject, but
especially of our own Paraphrase, that what they finde
better in any of these Works may be chosen and likewise
they shall make use of the animadversions sent from Pres-
byteries, who for this cause are hereby desired to hasten
their observations unto them: And they are to make
report of their labours herein to the Commission of the
Assembly for publike affaires against their first meeting
in February next: And the Commission after revising
thereof, shall send the same to Provinciall Assemblies, to
bee transmitted to Presbyteries, that by their further con-
sideration, the matter may be fully prepared to the next
Assembly: And because some Psalmes in that Paraphrase
sent from England are composed in verses which do not
agree with the Common-tunes, Therefore it is also recom-
mended that these Psalms be likewise turned in other
verses which may agree to the Common-tunes, that is,
having the first line of eight syllabs, and the second line.
of six, that so both versions being together, use may bee
made of either of them in Congregations as shall be found.
convenient: And the Assembly doth further recommend,
That M. Zachary Boyd be at the paines to translate the
other Scripturall Songs in meeter, and to report his travels
also to the Commission of Assembly, that after their Ex-
amination thereof, they may send the same to Presbyteries
to be there considered untill the next Generall Assembly.
IV. THE ADOPTING ACT OF THE SYNOD OF PHILA-
DELPHIA, 1729.
Although the Synod do not claim or pretend to any
authority of imposing our faith upon other men's con-
sciences, but do profess our just dissatisfaction with, and
abhorrence of such impositions, and do utterly disclaim all
legislative power and authority in the Church, being will-
ADOPTING ACTS, 1729.
331
ing to receive one another as Christ has received us to the
glory of God, and admit to fellowship in sacred ordinances,
all such as we have grounds to believe Christ will at last
admit to the kingdom of heaven, yet we are undoubtedly
obliged to take care that the faith once delivered to the
saints be kept pure and uncorrupt among us, and so
handed down to our posterity; and do therefore agree
that all the ministers of this Synod, or that shall hereafter
be admitted into this Synod, shall declare their agreement
in, and approbation of, the Confession of Faith, with the
Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines
at Westminster, as being in all the essential and necessary
articles, good forms of sound words and systems of Chris-
tian doctrine, and do also adopt the said Confession and
Catechisms as the confession of our faith. And we do
also agree, that all the Presbyteries within our bounds.
shall always take care not to admit any candidate of the
ministry into the exercise of the sacred function but what
declares his agreement in opinion with all the essential and
necessary articles of said Confession, either by subscrib-
ing the said Confession of Faith and Catechisms, or by a
verbal declaration of their assent thereto, as such minister
or candidate shall think best. And in case any minister
of this Synod, or any candidate for the ministry, shall
have any scruple with respect to any article or articles of
said Confession or Catechisms, he shall at the time of his
making said declaration declare his sentiments to the Pres-
bytery or Synod, who shall, notwithstanding, admit him
to the exercise of the ministry within our bounds, and to
ministerial communion, if the Synod or Presbytery shall
judge his scruple or mistake to be only about articles not
essential and necessary in doctrine, worship, or govern-
ment. But if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge such
ministers or candidates erroneous in essential and neces-
sary articles of faith, the Synod or Presbytery shall de-
clare them uncapable of communion with them. And the
Synod do solemnly agree, that none of us will traduce or
use any opprobrious terms of those that differ from us in
1
332
APPENDIX.
these extra-essential and not necessary points of doctrine,
but treat them with the same friendship, kindness, and
brotherly love, as if they had not differed from us in such
sentiments.
All the ministers of this Synod now present, except
one that declared himself not prepared, viz. Masters Jedi-
diah Andrews, Thomas Craighead, John Thomson, James
Anderson, John Pierson, Samuel Gelston, Joseph Houston,
Gilbert Tennent, Adam Boyd, Jonathan Dickinson, John
Bradner, Alexander Hutchinson, Thomas Evans, Hugh
Stevenson, William Tennent, Hugh Conn, George Gilles-
pie, and John Willson, after proposing all the scruples that
any of them had to make against any articles and expres-
sions in the Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter
Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster,
have unanimously agreed in the solution of those scruples,
and in declaring the said Confession and Catechisms to be
the confession of their faith, excepting only some clauses.
in the twentieth and twenty-third chapters, concerning
which clauses the Synod do unanimously declare, that
they do not receive those articles in any such sense as to
suppose the civil magistrate hath a controlling power over
Synods with respect to the exercise of their ministerial.
authority; or power to persecute any for their religion, or
in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession to the
throne of Great Britain.
The Synod observing that unanimity, peace, and unity,
which appeared in all their consultations and determina-
tions relating to the affair of the Confession, did unani-
mously agree in giving thanks to God in solemn prayer
and praises.
V. THE SYNOD OF PHILADELPHIA'S EXPLANATORY
ACT OF 1736.
An overture of the committee upon the supplication of
the people of Paxton and Derry, was brought in and is as
followeth. That the Synod do declare, that inasmuch as
1
EXPLANATORY ACT, 1736.
333
we understand that many persons of our persuasion, both
more lately and formerly, have been offended with some
expressions or distinctions in the first or preliminary act
of our Synod, contained in the printed paper, relating to
our receiving or adopting the Westminster Confession and
Catechisms, &c: That in order to remove said offence, and
all jealousies that have arisen or may arise in any of our
people's minds, on occasion of said distinctions and ex-
pressions, the Synod doth declare, that the Synod have
adopted and still do adhere to the Westminster Confession,
Catechisms, and Directory, without the least variation or
alteration, and without any regard to said distinctions.
And we do further declare, that this was our meaning
and true intent in our first adopting of said Confession,
as may particularly appear by our adopting act which is
as followeth All the ministers of the Synod now present
(which were eighteen in number, except one that declared
himself not prepared,) after proposing all the scruples any
of them had to make against any articles and expressions
in the Confession of Faith, and Larger and Shorter Cate-
chisms of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, have
unanimously agreed in the solution of these scruples, and
in declaring the said Confession and Catechisms to be the
confession of their faith, except only some clauses in the
twentieth and twenty-third chapters, concerning which
clauses the Synod do unanimously declare, that they do
not receive these articles in any such sense as to suppose
the civil magistrate hath a controlling power over Synods
with respect to the exercise of their ministerial authority,
or power to persecute any for their religion, or in any
sense contrary to the Protestant succession to the throne
of Great Britain.
-
And we hope and desire, that this our Synodical dec-
laration and explication may satisfy all our people, as to
our firm attachment to our good old received doctrines
contained in said Confession, without the least variation
or alteration, and that they will lay aside their jealousies
that have been entertained through occasion of the above
334
APPENDIX.
hinted expressions and declarations as groundless. This
overture approved nemine contradicente.
VI. THE PROTESTATION OF 1741, WHICH OCCASIONED
THE DIVISION OF THE SYNOD OF PHILADELPHIA.
Reverend Fathers and Brethren,
We, the ministers of Jesus Christ, and members of the
Synod of Philadelphia, being wounded and grieved at our
very hearts, at the dreadful divisions, distractions, and
convulsions, which all of a sudden have seized this infant
church to such a degree, that unless He, who is King in
Zion, do graciously and seasonably interpose for our re-
lief, she is in no small danger of expiring outright, and
that quickly, as to the form, order, and constitution, of
an organized church, which hath subsisted for above these
thirty years past, in a very great degree of comely order
and sweet harmony, until of late-we say, we being deeply
afflicted with these things which lie heavy on our spirits,
and being sensible that it is our indispensable duty to do
what lies in our power, in a lawful way, according to the
light and direction of the inspired oracles, to preserve this
swooning church from a total expiration: and after the
deliberate and unprejudiced inquiry into the causes of
these confusions which rage so among us, both ministers
and people, we evidently seeing, and being fully persuaded
in our judgments, that besides our misimprovement of,
and unfruitfulness under, gospel light, liberty, and privi-
lege, that great decay of practical godliness in the life and
power of it, and many abounding immoralities: we say,
besides these, our sins, which we judge to be the merito-
rious cause of our present doleful distractions, the awful
judgment we at present groan under, we evidently see
that our protesting brethren and their adherents were the
direct and proper cause thereof, by their unwearied, un-
scriptural, antipresbyterial, uncharitable, divisive practices,
which they have been pursuing, with all the industry they
THE PROTESTATION, 1741.
335
were capable of, with any probability of success, for above
these twelve months past especially, besides too much of
the like practices for some years before, though not with
such barefaced arrogance and boldness:
And being fully convinced in our judgments, that it is
our duty to bear testimony against these disorderly pro-
ceedings, according to our stations, capacity, and trust
reposed in us by our exalted Lord, as watchmen on the
walls of his Zion, we having endeavoured sincerely to
seek counsel and direction from God, who hath promised
to give wisdom to those that ask him in faith, yea, hath
promised his Holy Spirit to lead his people and servants
into all truth, and being clearly convinced in our con-
sciences, that it is a duty called unto in this present junc-
ture of affairs:
Reverend Fathers and Brethren, we hereby humbly and
solemnly protest, in the presence of the great and eternal
God, and his elect angels, as well as in the presence of all
here present, and particularly to you, Reverend Brethren,
in our own names, and in the names of all, both ministers
and people, who shall adhere to us, as follows:
I. We protest that it is the indispensable duty of this
Synod, to maintain and stand by the principles of doc-
trine, worship, and government, of the Church of Christ,
as the same are summed up in the Confession of Faith,
Catechisms, and Directory, composed by the Westminster
Assembly, as being agreeable to the word of God, and
which this Synod have owned, acknowledged, and adopted,
as may appear by our synodical records of the years 1729,
1736, which we desire to be read publicly.
2. We protest that no person, minister or elder, should
be allowed to sit and vote in this Synod, who hath not
received, adopted, or subscribed, the said Confession, Cate-
chisms, and Directory, as our Presbyteries respectively do,
according to our last explication of the adopting act; or
who is either accused or convicted, or may be convicted
before this Synod, or any of our Presbyteries, of holding
or maintaining any doctrine, or who act and persist in any
:
336
APPENDIX.
practice, contrary to any of those doctrines, or rules con-
tained in said Directory, or contrary to any of the known
rights of Presbytery, or orders made or agreed to by this
Synod, and which stand yet unrepealed, unless, or until he
renounce such doctrine, and being found guilty, acknowl-
edge, confess, and profess his sorrow for such sinful dis-
order, to the satisfaction of this Synod, or such inferior
judicatory as the Synod shall appoint or empower for that
purpose.
3. We protest that all our protesting brethren have at
present no right to sit and vote as members of this Synod,
having forfeited their right of being accounted members
of it for many reasons, a few of which we shall mention
afterwards.
¿
4. We protest that, if, notwithstanding of this our pro-
testation, these brethren be allowed to sit and vote in this
Synod, without giving suitable satisfaction to the Synod,
and particularly to us, who now enter this protestation,
and those who adhere to us in it, that whatsoever shall be
done, voted, or transacted by them, contrary to our judg-
ment, shall be of no force or obligation to us, being done
and acted by a judicatory consisting in part of members
who have no authority to act with us in ecclesiastical
matters.
5. We protest that, if, notwithstanding this our protes-
tation, and contrary to the true intent and meaning of it,
these protesting brethren, and such as adhere to them, or
support and countenance them in their antipresbyterial
practices, shall continue to act as they have done this last
year, in that case we, and as many as have clearness to
join with us, and maintain the rights of this judicatory,
shall be accounted in nowise disorderly, but the true Pres-
byterian Church in this province; and they shall be looked
upon as guilty of schism, and the breach of the rules of
Presbyterial government, which Christ has established in
his church, which we are ready at all times to demonstrate
to the world.
Reverend and dear Brethren, we beseech you to hear
THE PROTESTATION, 1741.
337
us with patience, while we lay before you as briefly as we
can, some of the reasons that move us thus to protest, and
more particularly, why we protest against our protesting
brethren's being allowed to sit as members of this Synod.
I. Their heterodox and anarchical principles expressed
in their Apology, pages twenty-eight and thirty-nine,
where they expressly deny that Presbyteries have author-
ity to oblige their dissenting members, and that Synods.
should go any further, in judging of appeals or references,
&c., than to give their best advice, which is plainly to
divest the officers and judicatories of Christ's kingdom of
all authority, (and plainly contradicts the thirty-first arti-
cle of our Confession of Faith, section three, which these
brethren pretend to adopt,) agreeable to which is the
whole superstructure of arguments which they advance
and maintain against not only our synodical acts, but also
all authority to make any acts or orders that shall bind
their dissenting members, throughout their whole Apology.
2. Their protesting against the Synod's act in relation
to the examination of candidates, together with their pro-
ceeding to license and ordain men to the ministry of the
gospel, in opposition to, and in contempt of said act of
Synod.
3. Their making irregular irruptions upon the congrega-
tions to which they have no immediate relation, without
order, concurrence, or allowance of the Presbyteries or
ministers to which congregations belong, thereby sowing
the seeds of division among people, and doing what they
can to alienate and fill their minds with unjust prejudices
against their lawfully called pastors.
4. Their principles and practices of rash judging and
condemning all who do not fall in with their measures,
both ministers and people, as carnal, graceless, and enemies
to the work of God, and what not, as appears in Mr. Gil-
bert Tennent's sermon against unconverted ministers, and
his and Mr. Blair's papers of May last, which were read
in open Synod; which rash judging has been the constant
practice of our protesting brethren, and their irregular pro-
338
APPENDIX.
bationers, for above these twelve months past, in their dis-
orderly itinerations and preaching through our congrega-
tions, by which, (alas! for it,) most of our congregations,
through weakness and credulity, are so shattered and
divided, and shaken in their principles, that few or none
of us can say we enjoy the comfort, or have the success
among our people, which otherwise we might, and which
we enjoyed heretofore.
5. Their industriously persuading people to believe that
the call of God whereby he calls men to the ministry, does
not consist in their being regularly ordained and set apart
to that work, according to the institution and rules of the
Word; but in some invisible motions and workings of the
Spirit, which none can be conscious or sensible of but the
person himself, and with respect to which he is liable to be
deceived, or play the hypocrite; that the gospel preached
in truth by unconverted ministers, can be of no saving
benefit to souls; and their pointing out such ministers,
whom they condemn as graceless by their rash judging
spirit, they effectually carry the point with the poor credu-
lous people, who, in imitation of their example, and under
their patrociny, judge their ministers to be graceless, and
forsake their ministry as hurtful rather than profitable.
6. Their preaching the terrors of the law in such a man-
ner and dialect as has no precedent in the word of God,
but rather appears to be borrowed from a worse dialect;
and so industriously working on the passions and affections.
of weak minds, as to cause them to cry out in a hideous
manner, and fall down in convulsion-like fits, to the mar-
ring of the profiting both of themselves and others, who
are so taken up in seeing and hearing these odd symptoms,
that they cannot attend to or hear what the preacher says;
and then, after all, boasting of these things as the work of
God, which we are persuaded do proceed from an inferior
or worse cause.
7. Their, or some of them, preaching and maintaining
that all true converts are as certain of their gracious state
as a person can be of what he knows by his outward
maga
THE PROTESTATION, 1741.
339
senses; and are able to give a narrative of the time and
manner of their conversion, or else they conclude them to
be in a natural or graceless state, and that a gracious per-
son can judge of another's gracious state otherwise than
by his profession and life. That people are under no
sacred tie or relation to their own pastors lawfully called,
but may leave them when they please, and ought to go
where they think they get most good.
For these and many other reasons, we protest, before the
Eternal God, his holy angels, and you, Reverend Brethren,
and before all here present, that these brethren have no
right to be acknowledged as members of this judicatory of
Christ, whose principles and practices are so diametrically
opposite to our doctrine, and principles of government
and order, which the great King of the Church hath laid
down in his Word.
How absurd and monstrous must that union be, where
one part of the members own themselves obliged, in con-
science, to the judicial determinations of the whole, founded
on the Word of God, or else relinquish membership; and
another part declare, they are not obliged and will not
submit, unless the determination be according to their
minds, and consequently will submit to no rule, in mak-
ing of which they are in the negative.
Again, how monstrously absurd is it, that they should
so much as desire to join with us, or we with them, as a
judicatory, made up of authoritative officers of Jesus Christ,
while they openly condemn us wholesale; and, when they
please, apply their condemnatory sentences to particular
brethren by name, without judicial process, or proving
them guilty of heresy or immorality, and at the same
time will not hold Christian communion with them.
Again, how absurd is the union, while some of the
members of the same body, which meet once a year, and
join as a judicatory of Christ, do all the rest of the year
what they can, openly and above board, to persuade the
people and flocks of their brethren and fellow members,
to separate from their own pastors, as graceless hypocrites,
340
APPENDIX.
and yet they do not separate from them themselves, but
join with them once every year, as members of the same
judicatory of Christ, and oftener, when Presbyteries are
mixed. Is it not most unreasonable, stupid indolence in
us, to join with such as are avowedly tearing us in pieces.
like beasts of prey?
Again, is not the continuance of union with our protest-
ing brethren very absurd, when it is so notorious that both
their doctrine and practice are so directly contrary to the
adopting act, whereby both they and we have adopted the
Confession of Faith, Catechisms and Directory, composed
by the Westminster Assembly?
Finally, is not continuance of union absurd with those
who would arrogate to themselves a right and power to
palm and obtrude members on our Synod, contrary to the
minds and judgment of the body?
In fine, a continued union, in our judgment, is most
absurd and inconsistent, when it is so notorious, that our
doctrine and principles of church government, in many
points, are not only diverse, but directly opposite. For
how can two walk together, except they be agreed?
Reverend Fathers and Brethren, these are a part, and
but a part, of our reasons why we protest as above, and
which we have only hinted at, but have forborne to en-
large on them, as we might, the matter and substance of
them are so well known to you all, and the whole world
about us, that we judged this hint sufficient at present, to
declare our serious and deliberate judgment in the mat-
ter; and as we profess ourselves to be resolvedly against
principles and practice of both anarchy and schism, so we
hope that God, whom we desire to serve and obey, the
Lord Jesus Christ, whose ministers we are, will both direct
and enable us to conduct ourselves, in these trying times,
so as our consciences shall not reproach us as long as we
live. Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered, and
let them that hate him fly before him, but let the righteous
be glad, yea, let them exceedingly rejoice. And may the
Spirit of life and comfort revive and comfort this poor
-
THE PROTESTATION, 1741.
341
swooning and fainting church, quicken her to spiritual life,
and restore her to the exercise of true charity, peace, and
order.
Although we can freely, and from the bottom of our
hearts, justify the Divine proceedings against us, in suffer-
ing us to fall into these confusions for our sins, and par-
ticularly for the great decay of the life and power of god-
liness among all ranks, both ministers and people, yet we
think it to be our present duty to bear testimony against
these prevailing disorders, judging that to give way to the
breaking down the hedge of discipline and government
from about Christ's vineyard, is far from being the proper
method of causing his tender plants to grow in grace and
fruitfulness.
A
As it is our duty in our station, without delay, to set
about a reformation of the evils whereby we have pro-
voked God against ourselves, so we judge the strict obser-
vation of his laws of government and order, and not the
breaking of them, to be one necessary mean and method
of this necessary and much to be desired reformation.
And we doubt not, but when our God sees us duly hum-
bled and penitent for our sins, he will yet return to us in
mercy, and cause us to flourish in spiritual life, love, unity,
and order, though perhaps we may not live to see it, yet
this testimony that we now bear, may be of some good
use to our children yet unborn, when God shall arise and
have mercy on Zion.
Ministers: Robert Cross, John Thomson, Francis Alison,
Robert Cathcart, Richard Zanchy, John Elder, John Craig,
Samuel Caven, Samuel Thomson, Adam Boyd, James Mar-
tin, Robert Jamison.
Elders: Robert Porter, Robert McKnight, William
McCulloch, John McEuen, Robert Rowland, Robert
Craig, James Kerr, Alexander McKnight.
342
APPENDIX.
VII. THE PLAN OF UNION OF 1758.
The Synods of New York and Philadelphia, taking into
serious consideration the present divided state of the Pres-
byterian church in this land, and being deeply sensible
that the division of the church tends to weaken its inter-
ests, to dishonour religion, and consequently its glorious.
Author; to render government and discipline ineffectual,
and finally to dissolve its very frame; and being desirous
to pursue such measures as may most tend to the glory
of God and the establishment and edification of his peo-
ple, do judge it to be our indispensable duty to study the
things that make for peace, and to endeavour the healing
of that breach which has for some time subsisted amongst
us, that so its hurtful consequences may not extend to
posterity; that all occasion of reproach upon our society
may be removed, and that we may carry on the great de-
signs of religion to better advantage than we can do in a
divided state; and since both Synods continue to profess
the same principles of faith, and adhere to the same form
of worship, government, and discipline, there is the greater
reason to endeavour the compromising those differences,
which were agitated many years ago with too great warmth
and animosity, and unite in one body.
For which end, and that no jealousies or grounds of
alienation may remain, and also to prevent future breaches
of like nature, we agree to unite and do unite in one body,
under the name of the Synod of New York and Phila-
delphia, on the following plan.
I. Both Synods having always approved and received
the Westminster Confession of Faith, and Larger and
Shorter Catechisms, as an orthodox and excellent system
of Christian doctrine, founded on the word of God, we do
still receive the same as the confession of our faith, and
also adhere to the plan of worship, government, and dis-
cipline, contained in the Westminster Directory, strictly
enjoining it on all our members and probationers for the
THE PLAN OF UNION, 1758.
343
ministry, that they preach and teach according to the
form of sound words in said Confession and Catechisms,
and avoid and oppose all errors contrary thereto.
II. That when any matter is determined by a major
vote, every member shall either actively concur with, or
passively submit to such determination; or, if his con-
science permit him to do neither, he shall, after sufficient
liberty modestly to reason and remonstrate, peaceably
withdraw from our communion without attempting to
make any schism. Provided always, that this shall be
understood to extend only to such determinations as the
body shall judge indispensable in doctrine or Presbyterian
government.
III. That any member or members, for the exonera-
tion of his or their conscience before God, have a right to
protest against any act or procedure of our highest judi-
cature, because there is no further appeal to another for
redress; and to require that such protestation be recorded
in their minutes. And as such a protest is a solemn ap-
peal from the bar of said judicature, no member is liable
to prosecution on the account of his protesting. Provided
always, that it shall be deemed irregular and unlawful, to
enter a protestation against any member or members, or
to protest facts or accusations instead of proving them,
unless a fair trial be refused, even by the highest judica-
ture. And it is agreed, that protestations are only to be
entered against the public acts, judgments, or determina-
tions of the judicature with which the protester's con-
science is offended.
S
IV. As the Protestation entered in the Synod of Phila-
delphia, Ann. Dom. 1741, has been apprehended to have
been approved and received by an act of said Synod, and
on that account was judged a sufficient obstacle to an
union; the said Synod declare, that they never judicially
adopted the said Protestation, nor do account it a Synod-
ical act, but that it is to be considered as the act of those
only who subscribed it; and therefore cannot in its nature
be a valid objection to the union of the two Synods, espe-
344
APPENDIX.
E
cially considering that a very great majority of both Synods
have become members, since the said Protestation was
entered.
V. That it shall be esteemed and treated as a censurable
evil, to accuse any member of heterodoxy, insufficiency, or
immorality, in a calumniating manner, or otherwise than
by private brotherly admonition, or by a regular process.
according to our known rules of judicial trial in cases of
scandal. And it shall be considered in the same view, if
any Presbytery appoint supplies within the bounds of
another Presbytery without their concurrence; or if any
member officiate in another's congregation, without ask-
ing and obtaining his consent, or the session's in case the
minister be absent; yet it shall be esteemed unbrotherly
for any one, in ordinary circumstances, to refuse his con-
sent to a regular member when it is requested.
VI. That no Presbytery shall license or ordain to the
work of the ministry, any candidate, until he give them
competent satisfaction as to his learning, and experimental
acquaintance with religion, and skill in divinity and cases
of conscience; and declare his acceptance of the West-
minster Confession and Catechisms as the confession of
his faith, and promise subjection to the Presbyterian plan
of government in the Westminster Directory.
VII. The Synods declare it is their earnest desire, that
a complete union may be obtained as soon as possible, and
agree that the united Synod shall model the several Pres-
byteries in such manner as shall appear to them most ex-
pedient. Provided nevertheless, that Presbyteries, where
an alteration does not appear to be for edification, continue
in their present form. As to divided congregations it is
agreed, that such as have settled ministers on both sides.
be allowed to continue as they are; that where those of
one side have a settled minister, the other being vacant,
may join with the settled minister, if a majority choose so
to do; that when both sides are vacant they shall be at
liberty to unite together.
VIII. As the late religious appearances occasioned much
-
THE PLAN OF UNIÓN, 1758.
345
speculation and debate, the members of the New York
Synod, in order to prevent any misapprehensions, declare
their adherence to their former sentiments in favour of
them, that a blessed work of God's Holy Spirit in the
conversion of numbers was then carried on; and for the
satisfaction of all concerned, this united Synod agree in
declaring, that as all mankind are naturally dead in tres-
passes and sins an entire change of heart and life is neces-
sary to make them meet for the service and enjoyment of
God; that such a change can be only effected by the
powerful operations of the Divine Spirit; that when sin-
ners are made sensible of their lost condition and abso-
lute inability to recover themselves, are enlightened in
the knowledge of Christ and convinced of his ability and
willingness to save, and upon gospel encouragements do
choose him for their Saviour, and renouncing their own
righteousness in point of merit, depend upon his imputed
righteousness for their justification before God, and on
his wisdom and strength for guidance and support; when
upon these apprehensions and exercises their souls are
comforted, notwithstanding all their past guilt, and re-
joice in God through Jesus Christ; when they hate and
bewail their sins of heart and life, delight in the laws of
God without exception, reverently and diligently attend
his ordinances, become humble and self denied, and make
it the business of their lives to please and glorify God and
to do good to their fellow men; this is to be acknowl-
edged as a gracious work of God, even though it should
be attended with unusual bodily commotions or some
more exceptionable circumstances, by means of infirmity,
temptations, or remaining corruptions; and wherever re-
ligious appearances are attended with the good effects
above mentioned, we desire to rejoice in and thank God
for them.
-
But on the other hand, when persons seeming to be
under a religious concern, imagine that they have visions
of the human nature of Jesus Christ, or hear voices, or see
external lights, or have fainting and convulsion-like fits,
346
APPENDIX.
and on the account of these judge themselves to be truly
converted, though they have not the Scriptural characters
of a work of God above described, we believe such persons
are under a dangerous delusion. And we testify our utter
disapprobation of such a delusion, wherever it attends any
religious appearances, in any church or time.
Now as both Synods are agreed in their sentiments con-
cerning the nature of a work of grace, and declare their
desire and purpose to promote it, different judgments re-
specting particular matters of fact, ought not to prevent
their union; especially as many of the present members
have entered into the ministry since the time of the afore-
said religious appearances.
Upon the whole, as the design of our union is the ad-
vancement of the Mediator's kingdom; and as the wise
and faithful discharge of the ministerial function is the
principal appointed mean for that glorious end, we judge,
that this is a proper occasion to manifest our sincere in-
tention, unitedly to exert ourselves to fulfil the ministry
we have received of the Lord Jesus. Accordingly, we
unanimously declare our serious and fixed resolution, by
divine aid, to take heed to ourselves that our hearts be
upright, our discourse edifying, and our lives exemplary
for purity and godliness; to take heed to our doctrine,
that it be not only orthodox but evangelical and spiritual,
tending to awaken the secure to a suitable concern for their
salvation, and to instruct and encourage sincere Christians;
thus commending ourselves to every man's conscience in
the sight of God; to cultivate peace and harmony among
ourselves, and strengthen each other's hands in promoting
the knowledge of divine truth, and diffusing the savour of
piety among our people.
Finally we earnestly recommend it to all under our
care, that instead of indulging a contentious disposition,
they would love each other with a pure heart fervently, as
brethren who profess subjection to the same Lord, adhere
to the same faith, worship, and government, and entertain
the same hope of glory. And we desire that they would
7
THE BASIS OF UNION, 1782.
improve the present union for their mutual edification,
combine to strengthen the common interests of religion,
and go hand in hand in the path of life; which we pray
the God of all grace would please to effect, for Christ's
sake. Amen.
347
The Synod agree, that all former differences and dis-
putes are laid aside and buried; and that no future inquiry
or vote shall be proposed in this Synod concerning these
things; but if any member seek a Synodical inquiry, or
declaration about any of the matters of our past differences,
it shall be deemed a censurable breach of this agreement,
and be refused, and he be rebuked accordingly.
VIII. THE BASIS OF UNION OF 1782, ON WHICH THE
ASSOCIATE REFORMED CHURCH WAS FORMED.
.
Article 1. Election, redemption, and the application
thereof, are of equal extent, and for the elect only.
Art. 2. Magistracy is derived from God as the Almighty
Creator and Governor of the world, and not from Christ
as Mediator.
Art. 3. Whereas magistracy proceeds from God as the
Creator and Governor of the world, and the profession of
the true religion is not essential to the being of civil mag-
istrates and whereas protection and allegiance are recip-
rocal, and as the United States of America, while they
protect us in life and property, at the same time do not
impose any thing sinful on us, we therefore judge it our
duty to acknowledge the government of these states, in
all lawful commands, that we may lead quiet and peace-
able lives in all godliness and honesty.
Art. 4. The above proposition is not to be understood
in an opposite sense to that proposition relative to civil
government, on which the union between the Associate
Presbytery of New York and the Reformed Presbytery
have agreed; but only as a plain and undisguised explica-
tion of one point of truth, in which we have the best rea-
son to believe the whole body are united.
348
APPENDIX.
Art. 5. As no opposition of sentiment, relative to the
important duty of covenanting, appears on either side; it
is mutually agreed, that the consideration of it be referred
to the councils and deliberations of the whole body.
Art. 6. Though no real or practical subordination to
the Associate Synod of Edinburgh, in a consistency with
Presbyterian principles, can be pled, yet from the most
wise and important considerations, the former connections,
whatever they have been, shall remain as before, notwith-
standing of this coalescence.
IX. THE ADOPTING ACTS OF 1788.
(1) The Synod having fully considered the draught of
the form of government and discipline, did, on a review
of the whole, and hereby do ratify and adopt the same,
as now altered and amended, as the Constitution of the
Presbyterian Church in America, and order the same to
be considered and strictly observed as the rule of their
proceedings, by all the inferior judicatories, belonging to
the body. And they order that a correct copy be printed,
and that the Westminster Confession of Faith, as now
altered, be printed in full along with it, as making a part
of the Constitution.
RESOLVED, That the true intent and meaning of the
above ratification by the Synod, is, that the Form of Gov-
ernment and Discipline and the Confession of Faith, as now
ratified, is to continue to be our Constitution and the con-
fession of our faith and practice unalterable, unless two-
thirds of the Presbyteries under the care of the General
Assembly shall propose alterations or amendments, and
such alterations or amendments shall be agreed to and
enacted by the General Assembly.
(2) The Synod having now revised and corrected the
draught of a Directory for worship, did approve and ratify
the same, and do hereby appoint the said Directory, as
now amended, to be the Directory for the worship of God
in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of Amer-
I
+
THE ADOPTING ACT, 1788.
349
ica. They also took into consideration the Westminster
Larger and Shorter Catechisms, and having made a small
amendment of the Larger, did approve, and do hereby ap-
prove and ratify the said Catechisms, as now agreed on,
as the Catechisms of the Presbyterian Church in the said
United States. And the Synod order, that the said Direc-
tory and Catechisms be printed and bound up in the same
volume with the Confession of Faith and the Form of
Government and Discipline, and that the whole be con-
sidered as the standard of our doctrine, government, dis-
cipline, and worship, agreeably to the resolutions of the
Synod at their present sessions.
ORDERED, That Dr. Duffield, Mr. Armstrong and Mr.
Green, be a committee to superintend the printing and
publishing the above said Confession of Faith and Cate-
chisms, with the Form of Government and Discipline, and
the Directory for the Worship of God, as now adopted and
ratified by the Synod, as the Constitution of the Presby-
terian Church in the United States of America, and that
they divide the several parts into chapters and sections
properly numbered.
[A different and somewhat fuller version of the two first
paragraphs of the Adopting Act was found by Judge
Drake, in 1870, in a pamphlet entitled "Acts and Pro-
ceedings of the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, A.D.
1787 and 1788" (Philadelphia, 1788), viz.:
"The Synod took into consideration the Draught of the
Form of Government and Discipline of the Presbyterian
Church in the United States of America-And having gone
through the same, did, on a review of the whole, ratify
and adopt the said Form of Government and Discipline, as
now altered and amended, as the Constitution of the Gov-
ernment and Discipline of the Presbyterian Church in
America. And recommend to all their inferior judicatures,
strictly to observe the rules laid down therein, in all eccle-
siastical proceedings. And they order, that a correct copy
be printed; and that the Westminster Confession of Faith,
350
APPENDIX.
as now altered, be printed in full along with it, as making
part of the Constitution.
(6
Resolved that the true meaning of the above ratification
by the Synod, is, that the Form of Government and Disci-
pline, and Confession of Faith, as now ratified, is to continue
to be our Constitution, and the Confession of our Faith
and Practice, unalterably; unless two thirds of the Presby-
teries, under the care of the General Assembly, shall pro-
pose alterations or amendments; and such alterations and
amendments shall be agreed to, and enacted by the Gen-
eral Assembly."]
X. THE DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES OF 1788.
→
The Presbyterian Church in the United States of Amer-
ica, in presenting to the Christian public the system of
union and the form of government and discipline which
they have adopted, have thought proper to state, by way
of introduction, a few of the general principles by which
they have been governed in the formation of the plan.
This, it is hoped, will, in some measure, prevent those rash
misconstructions and uncandid reflections which usually
proceed from an imperfect view of any subject, as well as
make the several parts of the system plain and the whole
perspicuous and fully understood.
They are unanimously of opinion:
I. That" God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath
left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men,
which are in any thing contrary to his word, or beside it
in matters of faith or worship": therefore they consider
the right of private judgment, in all matters that respect
religion, as universal and unalienable; they do not even
wish to see any religious constitution aided by the civil
power, further than may be necessary for protection and
security, and, at the same time, be equal and common to
all others.
II. That, in perfect consistency with the above prin-
ciple of common right, every Christian church, or union,
I
1
ļ
DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES, 1788.
351
or association of particular churches, is entitled to declare
the terms of admission into its communion, and the qualifi-
cations of its ministers and members, as well as the whole
system of its internal government which Christ hath ap-
pointed; that in the exercise of this right, they may, not-
withstanding, err in making the terms of communion either
too lax or too narrow; yet even in this case they do not
infringe upon the liberty or the rights of others, but only
make an improper use of their own.
III. That our blessed Saviour, for the edification of the
visible Church, which is his body, hath appointed officers,
not only to preach the Gospel and administer the sacra-
ments, but also to exercise discipline for the preservation
both of truth and duty; and that it is incumbent upon
these officers and upon the whole Church in whose names.
they act, to censure or cast out the erroneous and scandal-
ous; observing in all cases the rules contained in the word
of God.
IV. That truth is in order to goodness, and the great
touchstone of truth, its tendency to promote holiness;
according to our Saviour's rule, "by their fruits ye shall
know them." And that no opinion can be either more
pernicious or absurd than that which brings truth and
falsehood upon a level, and represents it as of no conse-
quence what a man's opinions are. On the contrary, they
are persuaded that there is an inseparable connection be-
tween faith and practice, truth and duty. Otherwise it
would be of no consequence either to discover truth or to
embrace it.
V. That while, under the conviction of the above prin-
ciple, they think it necessary to make effectual provisions
that all who are admitted as teachers be sound in the faith,
they also believe that there are truths and forms with re-
spect to which men of good characters and principles may
differ. And, in all these, they think it the duty, both of
private Christians and societies, to exercise mutual for-
bearance toward each other.
VI. That though the character, qualifications and
352
APPENDIX.
authority, of church officers are laid down in the Holy
Scriptures, as well as the proper method of their investi-
ture and institution, yet the election of the persons to the
exercise of this authority, in any particular society, is in
that society.
VII. That all church-power, whether exercised by the
body in general, or in the way of representation by dele-
gated authority, is only ministerial and declarative: that is
to say, that the Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith
and manners; that no church judicatory ought to pretend
to make laws to bind the conscience in virtue of their own
authority, and that all their decisions should be founded
upon the revealed will of God. Now, though it will easily
be admitted that all synods and councils may err, through
the frailty inseparable from humanity, yet there is much
greater danger from the usurped claim of making laws
than from the right of judging upon laws already made
and common to all who profess the Gospel, although this
right, as necessity requires in the present state, be lodged
with fallible man.
VIII. Lastly, That if the preceding scriptural and ra-
tional principles be steadfastly adhered to, the vigor and
strictness of its discipline will contribute to the glory and
happiness of any Church. Since ecclesiastical discipline
must be purely moral or spiritual in its object, and not at-
tended with any civil effects, it can derive no force what-
ever, but from its own justice, the approbation of an
impartial public, and the countenance and blessing of the
Great Head of the Church Universal.
XI. THE TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED OF CAN-
DIDATES FOR ORDINATION IN THE PRESBYTERIAN
CHURCH SINCE 1788.
I. Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testaments to be the word of God, the only infallible rule
of faith and practice?
THE PLAN OF UNION, 1801.
2. Do you sincerely receive and adopt the Confession
of Faith of this Church as containing the system of doc-
trine taught in the Holy Scriptures?
3. Do you approve of the government and discipline of
the Presbyterian Church in these United States?
353
4. Do you promise subjection to your brethren in the
Lord?
5. Have you been induced, as far as you know your
own heart, to seek the office of the holy ministry from
love to God, and a sincere desire to promote his glory in
the gospel of his Son?
6. Do you promise to be zealous and faithful in main-
taining the truths of the gospel and the purity and peace
of the Church, whatever persecution or opposition may
arise unto you on that account?
7. Do you engage to be faithful and diligent in the
exercise of all private and personal duties which become
you as a Christian and a minister of the gospel, as well as
in all relative duties and the public duties of your office,
endeavoring to adorn the profession of the gospel by
your conversation, and walking with exemplary piety be-
fore the flock over which God shall make you overseer?
8. Are you now willing to take the charge of this con-
gregation, agreeably to your declaration at accepting their
call? And do you promise to discharge the duties of a
pastor to them as God shall give you strength?
XII. THE PLAN OF UNION OF 1801.
G
Regulations adopted by the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in America, and by the General As-
sociation of the State of Connecticut with a view to pre-
vent alienation and promote union and harmony, in those
new settlements which are composed of inhabitants from
those bodies.
Ist. It is strictly enjoined on all their missionaries to
the new settlements, to endeavor by all proper means, to
354
APPENDIX.
promote mutual forbearance and accommodation, between
those inhabitants of the new settlements who hold the
Presbyterian, and those who hold the Congregational form
of Church government.
2d. If in the new settlements, any Church of the Con-
gregational order, shall settle a minister of the Presbyte-
rian order, that Church may, if they choose, still conduct
their discipline according to Congregational principles, set-
tling their difficulties among themselves, or by a council
mutually agreed upon for that purpose. But if any diffi-
culty shall exist between the minister and the Church or
any member of it, it shall be referred to the Presbytery
to which the minister shall belong, provided both parties
agree to it; if not, to a council consisting of an equal
number of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, agreed
upon by both parties.
G
3d. If a Presbyterian Church shall settle a minister of
Congregational principles, that Church may still conduct
their discipline according to Presbyterian principles; ex-
cepting that if a difficulty arise between him and his
Church, or any member of it, the cause shall be tried by
the Association to which the said minister shall belong,
provided both parties agree to it; otherwise by a council,
one half Congregationalists and the other half Presbyte-
rians, mutually agreed on by the parties.
-
4th. If any congregation consist partly of those who
hold the Congregational form of discipline, and partly of
those who hold the Presbyterian form, we recommend to
both parties, that this be no obstruction to their uniting in
one church and settling a minister; and that, in this case,
the Church choose a standing committee from the com-
municants of said church, whose business it shall be, to
call to account every member of the church, who shall
conduct himself inconsistently with the laws of Christian-
ity, and to give judgment on such conduct; and if the
person condemned by their judgment be a Presbyterian,
he shall have liberty to appeal to the Presbytery; if a
Congregationalist, he shall have liberty to appeal to the
་
THE EXSCINDING ACTS, 1837.
355
body of the male communicants of the church; in the
former case, the determination of the Presbytery shall be
final, unless the Church consent to a further appeal to the
Synod, or to the General Assembly; and in the latter case,
if the party condemned shall wish for a trial by a mutual
council, the cause shall be referred to such council. And
provided the said standing committee of any church shall
depute one of themselves to attend the Presbytery, he
may have the same right to sit and act in the Presbytery,
as a ruling elder of the Presbyterian Church.
On motion, RESOLVED, That an attested copy of the
above Plan be made by the stated clerk, and put into the
hands of the delegates of this Assembly to the General
Association, to be by them laid before that body for their
consideration; and that if it should be approved by them,
it go into immediate operation.
XIII. THE EXSCINDING ACTS OF 1837.
(a) Resolutions as to Relations existing between the Pres-
byterian and Congregational Churches.
I.
"That between these two branches of the American
Church, there ought, in the judgment of this Assembly, to
be maintained sentiments of mutual respect and esteem,
and for that purpose no reasonable efforts should be
omitted to preserve a perfectly good understanding be-
tween these branches of the Church of Christ.
2. "That it is expedient to continue the plan of friendly
intercourse between this Church and the Congregational
Churches of New England, as it now exists.
3. "But as the 'Plan of Union' adopted for the new
settlements, in 1801, was originally an unconstitutional
act on the part of that Assembly-these important stand-
ing rules having never been submitted to the Presbyteries
—and as they were totally destitute of authority as pro-
ceeding from the General Association of Connecticut, which
T
356
APPENDIX.
is invested with no power to legislate in such cases, and
especially to enact laws to regulate churches not within
her limits; and as much confusion and irregularity have
arisen from this unnatural and unconstitutional system of
union, therefore, it is resolved, that the Act of the Assem-
bly of 1801, entitled a 'Plan of Union,' be, and the same
is hereby abrogated."
(b) Excision of the Plan-of-Union Synods.
"Resolved, That by the operation of the abrogation of
the Plan of Union of 1801, the Synod of the Western
Reserve is, and is hereby declared to be, no longer a part
of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of
America."
"(1) Resolved, That in consequence of the abrogation
by this Assembly of the Plan of Union of 1801, between
it and the General Association of Connecticut, as utterly
unconstitutional, and therefore null and void from the
beginning, the Synods of Utica, Geneva, and Genesee,
which were formed and attached to this body under and
in execution of said 'Plan of Union,' be, and are hereby
declared to be out of the ecclesiastical connection of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and
that they are not in form and in fact an integral portion
of said Church.
"(2) That the solicitude of this Assembly on the whole
subject, and its urgency for the immediate decision of it,
are greatly increased by reason of the gross disorders.
which are ascertained to have prevailed in those Synods,
(as well as that of the Western Reserve, against which a
declarative resolution, similar to the first of these, has
been passed during our present sessions,) it being made
clear to us, that even the Plan of Union itself was never
consistently carried into effect by those professing to act
under it.
THE AUBURN DECLARATION, 1837.
357
("
(3) That the General Assembly has no intention, by
these resolutions, or by that passed in the case of the
Synod of the Western Reserve, to affect in any way the
ministerial standing of any members of either of said
Synods; nor to disturb the pastoral relation in any
Church; nor to interfere with the duties or relations of
private Christians in their respective congregations; but
only to declare and determine, according to the truth and
necessity of the case, and by virtue of the full authority
existing in it for that purpose, the relation of all said
Synods, and all their constituent parts to this body, and
to the Presbyterian Church in the United States.
CC
(4) That inasmuch as there are reported to be several
churches and ministers, if not one or two Presbyteries, now
in connection with one or more of said Synods, which are
strictly Presbyterian in doctrine and order, be it, there-
fore, further resolved that all such churches and ministers
as wish to unite with us, are hereby directed to apply for
admission into those Presbyteries belonging to our connec-
tion which are most convenient to their respective loca-
tions; and that any such Presbytery as aforesaid, being
strictly Presbyterian in doctrine and order, and now in
connection with either of said Synods, as may desire to
unite with us, are hereby directed to make application,
with a full statement of their cases, to the next General
Assembly, which will take proper order thereon."
XIV. THE AUBURN DECLARATION OF 1837, STATING
THE TRUE DOCTRINES" OF THE NEW-SCHOOL
MEN OVER AGAINST THE ERRORS" CHARGED ON
THEM IN THE OLD-SCHOOL MEMORIAL OF THAT
YEAR.
(6
66
FIRST ERROR. "That God would have prevented
the existence of sin in our world, but was not able, with-
out destroying the moral agency of man; or, that for
aught that appears in the Bible to the contrary, sin is in-
cidental to any wise moral system."
-
358
APPENDIX.
TRUE DOCTRINE. God permitted the introduction
of sin, not because he was unable to prevent it, consistently
with the moral freedom of his creatures, but for wise and
benevolent reasons which he has not revealed.
SECOND ERROR. "That election to eternal life is
founded on a foresight of faith and obedience."
TRUE DOCTRINE. Election to eternal life is not
founded on a foresight of faith and obedience, but is a
sovereign act of God's mercy, whereby, according to the
counsel of his own will, he has chosen some to salvation;
"yet so as thereby neither is violence offered to the will
of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second
causes taken away, but rather established;" nor does this
gracious purpose ever take effect independently of faith
and a holy life.
THIRD ERROR. "That we have no more to do with
the first sin of Adam than with the sins of any other
parent."
TRUE DOCTRINE. By a divine constitution, Adam
was so the head and representative of the race, that, as
a consequence of his transgression, all mankind become
morally corrupt, and liable to death, temporal and eternal.
FOURTH ERROR. "That infants come into the world
as free from moral defilement as was Adam when he was
created."
TRUE DOCTRINE. Adam was created in the image
of God, endowed with knowledge, righteousness, and true
holiness. Infants come into the world, not only destitute
of these, but with a nature inclined to evil and only evil.
FIFTH ERROR. "That infants sustain the same re-
lation to the moral government of God, in this world, as
brute animals, and that their sufferings and death are to
be accounted for on the same principles as those of brutes,
and not by any means to be considered as penal."
TRUE DOCTRINE. Brute animals sustain no such
relation to the moral government of God as does the
THE AUBURN DECLARATION, 1837.
359
human family. Infants are a part of the human family;
and their sufferings and death are to be accounted for on
the ground of their being involved in the general moral
ruin of the race induced by the apostacy.
-
SIXTH ERROR. "That there is no other original sin
than the fact, that all the posterity of Adam, though by
nature innocent, will always begin to sin when they begin
to exercise moral agency; that original sin does not in-
clude a sinful bias of the human mind, and a just exposure
to penal suffering; and that there is no evidence in Script-
ure, that infants, in order to salvation, do need redemp-
tion by the blood of Christ, and regeneration by the Holy
Ghost."
TRUE DOCTRINE. Original sin is a natural bias to
evil, resulting from the first apostacy, leading invariably
and certainly to actual transgression. And all infants, as
well as adults, in order to be saved, need redemption by
the blood of Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Ghost.
SEVENTH ERROR. "That the doctrine of imputa-
tion, whether of the guilt of Adam's sin, or of the right-
eousness of Christ, has no foundation in the Word of God,
and is both unjust and absurd."
TRUE DOCTRINE. The sin of Adam is not imputed
to his posterity in the sense of a literal transfer of per-
sonal qualities, acts, and demerit; but by reason of the
sin of Adam, in his peculiar relation, the race are treated
as if they had sinned. Nor is the righteousness of Christ
imputed to his people in the sense of a literal transfer of
personal qualities, acts, and merit; but by reason of his
righteousness, in his peculiar relation, they are treated as
if they were righteous.
EIGHTH ERROR. "That the sufferings and death of
Christ were not truly vicarious and penal, but symbolical,
governmental, and instructive only.
>>
TRUE DOCTRINE. The sufferings and death of Christ
were not symbolical, governmental, and instructive. only,
360
APPENDIX.
but were truly vicarious, i.e. a substitute for the punish-
ment due to transgressors. And while Christ did not
suffer the literal penalty of the law, involving remorse of
conscience and the pains of hell, he did offer a sacrifice,
which infinite wisdom saw to be a full equivalent. And
by virtue of this atonement, overtures of mercy are sin-
cerely made to the race, and salvation secured to all who
believe.
Gr
NINTH ERROR. "That the impenitent sinner is by
nature, and independently of the renewing influence or
almighty energy of the Holy Spirit, in full possession of
all the ability necessary to a full compliance with all the
commands of God."
TRUE DOCTRINE. While sinners have all the fac-
ulties necessary to a perfect moral agency and a just ac-
countability, such is their love of sin and opposition to
God and his law, that, independently of the renewing in-
fluence or almighty energy of the Holy Spirit, they never
will comply with the commands of God.
TENTH ERROR. "That Christ does not intercede for
the elect until after their regeneration."
TRUE DOCTRINE. The intercession of Christ for the
elect is previous as well as subsequent to their regenera-
tion, as appears from the following Scripture, viz. “I pray
not for the world, but for them which thou hast given
me, for they are thine. Neither pray I for these alone,
but for them also which shall believe on me through their
word."
ELEVENTH ERROR. "That saving faith is not an
effect of the operations of the Holy Spirit, but a mere
rational belief of the truth or assent to the word of God."
TRUE DOCTRINE. Saving faith is an intelligent and
cordial assent to the testimony of God concerning his Son,
implying reliance on Christ alone for pardon and eternal
life; and in all cases it is an effect of the special operations.
of the Holy Spirit.
THE AUBURN DECLARATION, 1837.
361
TWELFTH ERROR. "That regeneration is the act
of the sinner himself, and that it consists in change of his
governing purpose, which he himself must produce, and
which is the result, not of any direct influence of the Holy
Spirit on the heart, but chiefly of a persuasive exhibition
of the truth, analogous to the influence which one man
exerts over the mind of another; or that regeneration is
not an instantaneous act, but a progressive work."
TRUE DOCTRINE. Regeneration is a radical change
of heart, produced by the special operations of the Holy
Spirit, "determining the sinner to that which is good," and
is in all cases instantaneous.
THIRTEENTH ERROR. "That God has done all
that he can do for the salvation of all men, and that man
himself must do the rest."
TRUE DOCTRINE. While repentance for sin and faith
in Christ are indispensable to salvation, all who are saved
are indebted from first to last to the grace and Spirit of
God.. And the reason that God does not save all, is not
that he wants the power to do it, but that in his wisdom.
he does not see fit to exert that power further than he
actually does.
FOURTEENTH ERROR. "That God cannot exert
such influence on the minds of men, as shall make it cer-
tain that they will choose and act in a particular manner,
without impairing their moral agency.
""
TRUE DOCTRINE. While the liberty of the will is
not impaired, nor the established connexion betwixt means
and end broken by any action of God on the mind, he can
influence it according to his pleasure, and does effectually
determine it to good in all cases of true conversion.
FIFTEENTH ERROR. "That the righteousness of
Christ is not the sole ground of the sinner's acceptance
with God; and that in no sense does the righteousness of
Christ become ours."
TRUE DOCTRINE. All believers are justified, not on
362
APPENDIX.
the ground of personal merit, but solely on the ground of
the obedience and death, or, in other words, the righteous-
ness of Christ. And while that righteousness does not
become theirs, in the sense of a literal transfer of personal
qualities and merit; yet, from respect to it, God can and
does treat them as if they were righteous.
SIXTEENTH ERROR. "That the reason why some
differ from others in regard to their reception of the Gos-
pel is, that they make themselves to differ."
TRUE DOCTRINE. While all such as reject the Gos-
pel of Christ do it, not by coercion but freely-and all who
embrace it do it, not by coercion but freely-the reason
why some differ from others is, that God has made them
to differ.
XV. DELIVERANCES ON SLAVERY.
(1) The Synod of New York and Philadelphia in 1787.
The Synod of New York and Philadelphia do highly
approve of the general principles in favour of universal
liberty, that prevail in America, and the interest which
many of the states have taken in promoting the abolition
of slavery; yet, inasmuch as men introduced from a servile
state to a participation of all the privileges of civil society,
without a proper education, and without previous habits
of industry, may be, in many respects, dangerous to the
community, therefore they earnestly recommend it to all
the members belonging to their communion, to give those
persons who are at present held in servitude, such good
education as to prepare them for the better enjoyment of
freedom; and they moreover recommend that masters,
wherever they find servants disposed to make a just im-
provement of the privilege, would give them a peculium,
or grant them sufficient time and sufficient means of pro-
curing their own liberty at a moderate rate, that there-
by they may be brought into society with those habits of
DELIVERANCES ON SLAVERY, 1811.
363
industry that may render them useful citizens; and, fin-
ally, they recommend it to all their people to use the
most prudent measures, consistent with the interest and
the state of civil society, in the counties where they live,
to procure eventually the final abolition of slavery in
America.
(2) The Reformed Presbytery in 1800.
[This I have not been able to procure, but its terms
made the abandonment of slave-holding a prerequisite to
church communion.]
(3) The Associate Synod in 1811.
I. That it is a moral evil to hold negroes or their chil-
dren in perpetual slavery; or to claim the right of buying
and selling, or bequeathing them as transferable property.
2. That in those States where the liberation of slaves
is rendered impracticable by the existing laws, it is the
duty of the holders of slaves to treat them with as much
justice as if they were liberated; to give them suitable
food and clothing; to have them taught to read, and in-
structed in the principles of religion; and when their ser-
vices may justly deserve it, to give them additional com-
pensation.
3. That those slave-holders who refuse to renounce
the above claim and to treat their slaves in the manner
now specified, are unworthy of being admitted into or
retained in the fellowship of the Church of Christ. . .
5. That it is the special duty of sessions to see that the
above regulations be faithfully acted upon.
That it is lawful for persons in our communion to
purchase negroes from those who are holding them in
absolute and perpetual slavery, with a view to retain them
in their service until they are recompensed for the money
laid out in the purchase of said slaves, provided it be done
with the consent of the negroes themselves, and that, in
364
APPENDIX.
.:
the meantime, they be treated according to the second
resolution.
But before they be acted upon by any session, care
shall be taken in every congregation where the application
of them is requisite, not only to have the people apprized,
but instructed in the moral evil of slave-holding here con-
templated.
(4) The General Assembly in 1818.
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church hav-
ing taken into consideration the subject of SLAVERY,
think proper to make known their sentiments upon it to
the churches and people under their care.
We consider the voluntary enslaving of one part of the
human race by another, as a gross violation of the most
precious and sacred rights of human nature; as utterly
inconsistent with the law of God, which requires us to
love our neighbour as ourselves; and as totally irreconcil-
able with the spirit and principles of the Gospel of Christ,
which enjoin that, "all things whatsoever ye would that
men should do to you, do ye even so to them." Slavery
creates a paradox in the moral system—it exhibits rational,
accountable, and immortal beings, in such circumstances
as scarcely to leave them the power of moral action. It
exhibits them as dependent on the will of others, whether
they shall receive religious instruction; whether they shall
know and worship the true God; whether they shall enjoy
the ordinances of the Gospel; whether they shall perform
the duties and cherish the endearments of husbands and
wives, parents and children, neighbours and friends;
whether they shall preserve their chastity and purity, or
regard the dictates of justice and humanity. Such are
some of the consequences of Slavery,-consequences not
imaginary-but which connect themselves with its very
existence. The evils to which the slave is always ex-
posed, often take place in fact, and in their very worst
degree and form; and where all of them do not take
.
365
place, as we rejoice to say that in many instances, through
the influence of the principles of humanity and religion
on the minds of masters, they do not-still the slave is
deprived of his natural right, degraded as a human being,
and exposed to the danger of passing into the hands of a
master who may inflict upon him all the hardships and
injuries which inhumanity and avarice may suggest.
From this view of the consequences resulting from the
practice into which christian people have most inconsist-
ently fallen, of enslaving a portion of their brethren of
mankind—for “God hath made of one blood all nations
of men to dwell on the face of the earth "—it is manifestly
the duty of all christians who enjoy the light of the pres-
ent day, when the inconsistency of slavery, both with the
dictates of humanity and religion, has been demonstrated,
and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their
honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors, to correct the
errors of former times, and as speedily as possible to efface
this blot on our holy religion, and to obtain the complete
abolition of slavery throughout christendom, and if possi-
ble throughout the world.
We rejoice that the church to which we belong com-
menced, as early as any other in this country, the good
work of endeavouring to put an end to slavery, and that
in the same work many of its members have ever since
been, and now are, among the most active, vigorous, and
efficient labourers. We do, indeed, tenderly sympathize
with those portions of our church and our country, where
the evil of slavery has been entailed upon them; where a
great, and the most virtuous part of the community abhor
slavery, and wish its extermination, as sincerely as any
others but where the number of slaves, their ignorance,
and their vicious habits generally, render an immediate
and universal emancipation inconsistent, alike, with the
safety and happiness of the master and the slave. With
those who are thus circumstanced, we repeat that we ten-
derly sympathize.-At the same time, we earnestly ex-
hort them to continue, and, if possible, to increase their
DELIVERANCES ON SLAVERY, 1818.
366
APPENDIX.
exertions to effect a total abolition of slavery. We ex-
hort them to suffer no greater delay to take place in this
most interesting concern, than a regard to the public wel-
fare truly and indispensably demands.
As our country has inflicted a most grievous injury on
the unhappy Africans, by bringing them into slavery, we
cannot, indeed, urge that we should add a second injury
to the first, by emancipating them in such manner as that
they will be likely to destroy themselves or others. But
we do think, that our country ought to be governed in
this matter, by no other consideration than an honest and
impartial regard to the happiness of the injured party;
uninfluenced by the expense or inconvenience which such
a regard may involve. We therefore warn all who be-
long to our denomination of christians, against unduly ex-
tending this plea of necessity; against making it a cover
for the love and practice of slavery, or a pretence for not
using efforts that are lawful and practicable, to extinguish
the evil.
-
And we, at the same time, exhort others to forbear harsh
censures, and uncharitable reflections on their brethren,
who unhappily live among slaves, whom they cannot im-
mediately set free; but who, at the same time, are really
using all their influence, and all their endeavours, to bring
them into a state of freedom, as soon as a door for it can
be safely opened.
Having thus expressed our views of slavery, and of the
duty indispensably incumbent on all christians to labour
for its complete extinction, we proceed to recommend-
(and we do it with all the earnestness and solemnity which
this momentous subject demands)—a particular attention
to the following points.
1. We recommend to all our people to patronize and
encourage the Society, lately formed, for colonizing in
Africa, the land of their ancestors, the free people of colour
in our country. We hope that much good may result
from the plans and efforts of this Society. And while we
exceedingly rejoice to have witnessed its origin and organ-
367
ization among the holders of slaves, as giving an unequiv-
ocal pledge of their desire to deliver themselves and their
country from the calamity of slavery; we hope that those
portions of the American Union, whose inhabitants are, by
a gracious Providence, more favorably circumstanced, will
cordially, and liberally, and earnestly co-operate with their
brethren, in bringing about the great end contemplated.
2. We recommend to all the members of our religious.
denomination, not only to permit, but to facilitate and
encourage the instruction of their slaves, in the principles.
and duties of the christian religion; by granting them
liberty to attend on the preaching of the gospel, when
they have the opportunity; by favouring the instruction
of them in Sabbath Schools, wherever those Schools can
be formed; and by giving them all other proper advan-
tages for acquiring the knowledge of their duty both to
God and man. We are perfectly satisfied, that as it is in-
cumbent on all christians to communicate religious instruc-
tion to those who are under their authority, so that the
doing of this in the case before us, so far from operating,
as some have apprehended that it might, as an excitement
to insubordination and insurrection, would, on the con-
trary, operate as the most powerful means for the preven-
tion of those evils.
DELIVERANCES ON SLAVERY, 1818.
3. We enjoin it on all Church Sessions and Presbyte-
ries, under the care of this Assembly, to discountenance,
and, as far as possible, to prevent, all cruelty of whatever
kind in the treatment of slaves; especially the cruelty of
separating husband and wife, parents and children, and
that which consists in selling slaves to those who will
either themselves deprive these unhappy people of the
blessings of the Gospel, or who will transport them to
places where the Gospel is not proclaimed, or where it is
forbidden to slaves to attend upon its institutions.—The
manifest violation or disregard of the injunction here
given, in its true spirit and intention, ought to be consid-
ered as just ground for the discipline and censures of the
church. And if it shall ever happen that a christian pro-
368
APPENDIX.
fessor, in our communion, shall sell a slave who is also in
communion and good standing with our church, contrary
to his or her will, and inclination, it ought immediately to
claim the particular attention of the proper church judica-
ture; and unless there be such peculiar circumstances
attending the case as can but seldom happen, it ought to
be followed, without delay, by a suspension of the offender
from all the privileges of the church, till he repent, and
make all the reparation in his power, to the injured party.
(5) The Associate Reformed Synod in 1830.
RESOLVED, I. That the religion of Christ Jesus re-
quires that involuntary slavery should be removed from
the Church, as soon as an opportunity, in the providence
of God, is offered to slave-owners for the liberation of
their slaves.
2. That when there are no regulations of the State to
prohibit it; when provision can be made for the support of
the freedmen; when they can be placed in circumstances
to support the rank, enjoy the rights and discharge the
duties of freedmen, it shall be considered that such an
opportunity is afforded in the providence of God.
3. That Synod will, as it hereby does, recommend it to
all its members to aid in placing the slaves that are within
the jurisdiction of this Synod in the possession of their
rights as freedmen; and that it be recommended to them.
especially to take up annual collections, to aid the funds
of the American society for colonizing the free people of
color of the United States.
4. That the practice of buying or selling of slaves for
gain, by any member of this Church, be disapproved, and
that slave-owners under the jurisdiction of this Synod, be,
as they hereby are, forbidden all aggravations of the evils
of slavery, by violating the ties of nature, in the separa-
tion of husband and wife, parents and children, or by
cruel or unkind treatment; and that they shall not only
treat them well, but also instruct them in useful knowl-
----
DELIVERANCES ON SLAVERY, 1845.
369
edge and the principles of the Christian religion, and in
all respects treat them as enjoined upon masters towards
their servants by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(6) The Synod of Associate Church in 1831.
RESOLVED, 1. That as slavery is clearly condemned
by the law of God, and has been long since judicially
declared to be a moral evil by this Church, no member
thereof shall, from and after this date, be allowed to hold
a human being in the character or condition of a slave.
2. That this Synod do hereby order all its subordinate
judicatories to proceed forthwith to carry into execution
the intention of the foregoing resolution, by requiring those
church members under their immediate inspection, who
may be possessed of slaves, to relinquish their unjust claims,
and release those whom they may have heretofore consid-
ered as their property.
3. That if any member or members of this Church, in
order to evade this act, shall sell any of their slaves, or
make a transfer of them, so as to retain the proceeds of
their services, or the price of their sale, or in any other
way evade the provisions of this act, they shall be subject
to the censures of the Church.
4. Further, that where an individual is found, who has
spent so much of his or her strength in the service of an-
other, as to be disqualified from providing for his or her
own support, the master, in such a case, is to be held
responsible for the comfortable maintenance of said ser-
vants.
(7) The General Assembly (O. S.) in 1845.
The question which is now unhappily agitating and
dividing other branches of the church, and which is
pressed upon the attention of the Assembly is, whether the
holding of slaves is, under all circumstances, a heinous
sin, calling for the discipline of the church.
The church of Christ is a spiritual body, whose jurisdic-
·
370
APPENDIX.
tion extends only to the religious faith, and moral conduct
of her members. She cannot legislate where Christ has
not legislated, nor make terms of membership which he
has not made. The question, therefore, which this As-
sembly is called upon to decide, is this: Do the Scriptures
teach that the holding of slaves, without regard to circum-
stances, is a sin, the renunciation of which should be made
a condition of membership in the church of Christ.
spa
It is impossible to answer this question in the affirma-
tive, without contradicting some of the plainest declara-
tions of the word of God. That slavery existed in the
days of Christ and his Apostles is an admitted fact. That
they did not denounce the relation itself as sinful, as in-
consistent with Christianity; that slaveholders were ad-
mitted to membership in the churches organized by the
Apostles; that whilst they were required to treat their
slaves with kindness, and as rational, accountable, immor-
tal beings, and if Christians, as brethren in the Lord, they
were not commanded to emancipate them; that slaves
were required to be "obedient to their masters according
to the flesh, with fear and trembling, with singleness of
heart as unto Christ," are facts which meet the eye of
every reader of the New Testament. This Assembly
cannot, therefore, denounce the holding of slaves as neces-
sarily a heinous and scandalous sin, calculated to bring
upon the Church the curse of God, without charging the
Apostles of Christ with conniving at such sin, introducing
into the Church such sinners, and thus bringing upon
them the curse of the Almighty.
In so saying, however, the Assembly are not to be
understood as denying that there is evil connected with
slavery. Much less do they approve those defective and
oppressive laws by which, in some of the States, it is reg-
ulated. Nor would they by any means countenance the
traffic in slaves for the sake of gain; the separation of
husbands and wives, parents and children, for the sake of
"filthy lucre" or for the convenience of the master; or
cruel treatment of slaves in any respect. Every Christian
f
•
DELIVERANCES ON SLAVERY, 1845.
371
and philanthropist certainly should seek by all peaceable
and lawful means the repeal of unjust and oppressive
laws, and the amendment of such as are defective, so as
to protect the slaves from cruel treatment by wicked men,
and secure to them the right to receive religious instruction.
Nor is this Assembly to be understood as countenancing
the idea that masters may regard their servants as mere
property, and not as human beings, rational, accountable,
immortal. The Scriptures prescribe not only the duties
of servants, but of masters also, warning the latter to dis-
charge those duties, "knowing that their Master is in
heaven, neither is there respect of persons with him."
The Assembly intend simply to say, that since Christ
and his inspired Apostles did not make the holding of
slaves a bar to communion, we, as a court of Christ, have
no authority to do so; since they did not attempt to re-
move it from the Church by legislation, we have no au-
thority to legislate on the subject. We feel constrained,
further, to say, that however desirable it may be to ameli-
orate the condition of the slaves in the Southern and
Western States, or to remove slavery from our country,
these objects we are fully persuaded can never be secured
by ecclesiastical legislation. Much less can they be at-
tained by those indiscriminate denunciations against slave-
holders, without regard to their character or circumstances,
which have, to so great an extent, characterized the move-
ments of modern abolitionists, which, so far from remov-
ing the evils complained of, tend only to perpetuate and
aggravate them.
The Apostles of Christ sought to ameliorate the condi-
tion of slaves, not by denouncing and excommunicating
their masters, but by teaching both masters and slaves the
glorious doctrines of the gospel, and enjoining upon each
the discharge of their relative duties. Thus only can the
church of Christ, as such, now improve the condition of
the slaves in our country.
As to the extent of the evils involved in slavery and the
best methods of removing them, various opinions prevail,
+
372
APPENDIX.
and neither Scriptures nor our constitution authorize this
body to prescribe any particular course to be pursued by
the churches under our care. The Assembly cannot but
rejoice, however, to learn that the ministers and churches
in the slave-holding States are awaking to a deeper sense
of their obligation to extend to the slave population gen-
erally the means of grace, and many slave-holders not
professedly religious favour this object. We earnestly
exhort them to abound more and more in this good work.
We would exhort every believing master to remember that
his Master is also in heaven, and in view of all the circum-
stances in which he is placed, to act in the spirit of the
golden rule: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do
to you, do ye even the same to them."
In view of the above stated principles and facts—
RESOLVED, Ist. That the General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States was originally
organized, and has since continued the bond of union in
the Church upon the conceded principle that the existence
of domestic slavery, under the circumstances in which it is
found in the southern portion of the country, is no bar to
Christian communion.
2d. That the petitions that ask the Assembly to make
the holding of slaves in itself a matter of discipline, do
virtually require this judicatory to dissolve itself, and
abandon the organization under which, by the Divine
blessing, it has so long prospered. The tendency is evi-
dently to separate the northern from the southern portion
of the Church; a result which every good citizen must
deplore as tending to the dissolution of the union of our
beloved country, and which every enlightened Christian
will oppose as bringing about a ruinous and unnecessary
schism between brethren who maintain a common faith.
(8) The General Assembly (N. S.) in 1850.
We exceedingly deplore the working of the whole sys-
tem of slavery as it exists in our country and is inter-
DELIVERANCES ON SLAVERY, 1853.
373
woven with the political institutions of the slave-holding
States, as fraught with many and great evils to the civil,
political, and moral interests of those regions where it
exists.
The holding of our fellow-men in the condition of slav-
ery, except in those cases where it is unavoidable, by the
laws of the State, the obligations of guardianship, or the
demands of humanity, is an offence in the proper import
of that term, as used in the Book of Discipline, chap. i.
sec. 3, and should be regarded and treated in the same
manner as other offences.
The sessions and presbyteries are, by the Constitution
of our church, the courts of primary jurisdiction for the
trial of offences.
That, after this declaration of sentiment, the whole sub-
ject of slavery, as it exists in the church, be referred to
the sessions and presbyteries, to take such action thereon
as in their judgment the laws of Christianity require.
(9) The General Assembly (N. S.) in 1853.
I. That this body reaffirm the doctrine of the 2d reso-
lution adopted by the Assembly in its action at Detroit in
1850.
2. That we do earnestly exhort and beseech all those
who are happily free from any personal connection with
the institution of slavery, to exercise patience and forbear-
ance toward their brethren less favoured in this respect
than themselves, remembering the embarrassments of their
position; and to cherish for them that fraternal confidence
and love which they the more need in consequence of the
peculiar trials by which they are surrounded.
3. To correct misapprehensions which may exist in
many Northern minds, and allay causeless irritation, by
having the real facts in relation to this subject spread
before the whole church, it is recommended earnestly to
request the presbyteries in each of the slave-holding States
to take such measures as may seem to them most expe-
374
APPENDIX.
r
dient and proper, for laying before the next Assembly, in
its sessions at Philadelphia, distinct and full statements
touching the following points:-
(1) The number of slave-holders in connection with the
churches under their jurisdiction, and the number of slaves
held by them.
(2) The extent to which slaves are held by an unavoid-
able necessity "imposed by the laws of the States, the
obligations of guardianship, and the demands of human-
ity."
(3) Whether a practical regard, such as the word of
God requires, is evinced by the Southern churches for the
sacredness of the conjugal and parental relations as they
exist among slaves; whether baptism is duly administered
to the children of slaves professing Christianity; whether
slaves are admitted to equal privileges and powers in the
church courts; and, in general, to what extent and in what
manner provision is made for the religious well-being of
the enslaved.
XVI. DOCTRINAL BASIS OF THE UNION OF 1858, FORM-
ING THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
I. We declare, That God has not only in the Scriptures
of the Old and New Testaments made a revelation of his
will to man, as the only rule of faith and practice, but that
these Scriptures, viewed as a revelation from God, are in
every part the inspired word of God, and that this inspira-
tion extends to the language, as well as to the sentiments
which they express.
II. We declare, That our Lord Jesus Christ is not only
true and Supreme God, being one in essence with the
Father, but also the Son of God, in respect of his natural,
necessary, and eternal relation to the Father.
III. We declare, That God having created man in a
state of perfect holiness, and in possession of a perfect
ability to obey him in all things, did enter into a covenant
1
BASIS OF UNION, 1858.
375
with him, in which covenant Adam was the representative
of all his natural posterity, so that in him they were to
stand or fall, as he stood or fell.
IV. We declare, That our first parents did, by their
breach of covenant with God, subject themselves to his
eternal wrath, and bring themselves into such a state of
depravity as to be wholly inclined to sin, and altogether
unable, by their own power, to perform a single act of
acceptable obedience to God; and that all their natural
posterity, in virtue of their representation in the covenant,
are born into the world in the same state of guilt, deprav-
ity, and inability, and in this state will continue until de-
livered therefrom by the grace and righteousness of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
V. We declare, That our Lord Jesus Christ did, by the
appointment of the Father, and by his own gracious and
voluntary act, place himself in the room of a definite num-
ber, who were chosen in him before the foundation of the
world; so that he was their true and proper legal surety;
and as such, did, in their behalf, satisfy the justice of God,
and answer all the demands which the law had against
them, and thereby infallibly obtain for them eternal re-
demption.
vi. We declare, That in justification there is an impu-
tation to the believer of that righteousness, or satisfaction
and obedience, which the Lord Jesus Christ, as the surety
of his people, rendered to the law; and that it is only on
the ground of this imputed righteousness that his sins are
pardoned, and his person accepted in the sight of God.
VII. We declare, That the gospel, taken in its strict and
proper sense, as distinguished from the law, is a revelation
of grace to sinners as such; and that it contains a free and
unconditional offer and grant of salvation through Christ,
to all who hear it, whatever may be their character or con-
dition.
VIII. We declare, That in true and saving faith there is
not merely an assent of the mind to the proposition that
the Lord Jesus Christ is the Saviour of sinners; but also
376
APPENDIX.
a cordial reception and appropriation of him by the sinner
as his Saviour, with an accompanying persuasion or assur-
ance corresponding to the degree or strength of his faith,
that he shall be saved by him; which appropriation and
persuasion are founded, solely, upon the free, and uncon-
ditional, and unlimited offer of Christ and salvation in him,
which God makes in the gospel to sinners of mankind.
IX. We declare, That the repentance which is a saving
grace, is one of the fruits of a justifying faith; and, of
course, cannot be regarded as a ground of the sinner's
pardon, or as necessary to qualify him for coming to
Christ.
-
X. We declare, That although the moral law is of per-
petual obligation, and consequently does and ever will
bind the believer as a rule of life, yet as a covenant, he is,
by his justification through Christ, completely and forever
set free from it, both as to its commanding and condemn-
ing power, and consequently not required to yield obedi-
ence to it as a condition of life and salvation.
XI. We declare, That the Holy Spirit, the third person.
of the Trinity, does, by a direct operation accompanying
the word, so act upon the soul as to quicken, regenerate,
and sanctify it; and that without this direct operation, the
soul would have no ability to perceive, in a saving manner,
the truths of God's word, or yield to the motives which it
presents.
XII. We declare, That our Lord Jesus Christ, besides
the dominion which belongs to him as God, has, as our
God-man Mediator, a twofold dominion, with which he
has been invested by the Father as the reward of his suf-
ferings. These are a dominion over the Church, of which
he is the living Head and Lawgiver, and the source of all
that Divine influence and authority by which she is sus-
tained and governed; and also a dominion over all created
persons and things, which is exercised by him in subserv-
iency to the manifestations of God's glory in the system.
of redemption, and the interests of his Church.
XIII. We declare, That the law of God, as written upon
BASIS OF UNION, 1858.
377
the heart of man, and as set forth in the Scriptures of the
Old and New Testaments, is supreme in its authority and
obligations; and that where the commands of the Church
or State are in conflict with the commands of this law, we
are to obey God rather than man.
XIV. We declare, That slaveholding-that is, the hold-
ing of unoffending human beings in involuntary bondage,
and considering and treating them as property, and subject
to be bought and sold-is a violation of the law of God,
and contrary both to the letter and spirit of Christianity.
XV. We declare, That all associations, whether formed
for political or benevolent purposes, which impose upon
their members an oath of secrecy, or an obligation to obey
a code of unknown laws, are inconsistent with the genius
and spirit of Christianity, and Church members ought not
to have fellowship with such associations.
XVI. We declare, That the Church should not extend
communion, in sealing ordinances, to those who refuse
adherence to her profession, or subjection to her govern-
ment and discipline, or who refuse to forsake a communion
which is inconsistent with the profession that she makes;
nor should communion in any ordinance of worship be
held under such circumstances as would be inconsistent
with the keeping of these ordinances pure and entire, or
so as to give countenance to any corruption of the doc-
trines and institutions of Christ.
XVII. We declare, That public social covenanting is a
moral duty, the observance of which is not required at
stated times, but on extraordinary occasions, as the provi-
dence of God and the circumstances of the Church may
indicate. It is seasonable in times of great danger to the
Church-in times of exposure to backsliding-or in times.
of reformation, when the Church is returning to God from
a state of backsliding. When the Church has entered into
such covenant transactions, they continue to bind poster-
ity faithfully to adhere to and prosecute the grand object
for which such engagements have been entered into.
XVIII. We declare, That it is the will of God that the
378
APPENDIX.
songs contained in the Book of Psalms be sung in his wor-
ship, both public and private, to the end of the world; and.
in singing God's praise, these songs should be employed
to the exclusion of the devotional compositions of unin-
spired men.
G
XVII. ADOPTING ACT OF THE UNION OF 1858.
WHEREAS, it is understood that the Testimony sub-
mitted to the General Synod of the Associate Reformed
Church by the Associate Synod, was proposed and ac-
cepted as a term of communion, on the adoption of which
the union of the two Churches was to be consummated;
and, whereas, it is agreed between the two Churches that
the forbearance in love, which is required by the law of
God, will be exercised towards any brethren who may not
be able fully to subscribe the Standards of the united
Church, while they do not determinedly oppose them, but
follow the things which make for peace, and things where-
with one may edify another:—
1. Resolved, That these Churches, when united, shall
be called the "United Presbyterian Church of North
America."
2. Resolved, That the respective Presbyteries of these
Churches shall remain as at present constituted until other-
wise ordered, as convenience shall suggest.
3. Resolved, That the Supreme Court of this Church
shall be a General Assembly, to meet annually, to be
composed of delegates from the respective Presbyteries,
the number of delegates to be according to the proportion
of the members constituting each Presbytery, as now fixed
by the rules of the Associate Reformed Church, until a
change shall be found expedient.
4. Resolved, That there shall be subordinate Synods,
and these shall be the same as those now existing in the
Associate Reformed Church, to which Synods the differ-
ent Presbyteries in the Associate Church shall attach
themselves for the present according to their location,
THE SPRING RESOLUTIONS, 1861.
379
provided that the separate Synods and Presbyteries of the
said Associate Reformed and Associate Churches shall
also continue as at present constituted until otherwise
directed.
5. Resolved, That the General Assembly and subordi-
nate Synods shall be regulated according to the rules pres-
ently in force in the Associate Reformed Church, until the
united Church shall see fit to alter such rules.
6. Resolved, That the different, Boards and Institutions
of the respective Churches shall not be affected by this
union, but shall have the control of their funds, and retain
all their corporate, or other rights and privileges, until the
interests of the Church shall require a change.
7. Resolved, That these and other regulations found
necessary, being agreed upon by the respective Synods at
the present meeting in the city of Allegheny, the two
Synods shall meet at such a place as shall mutually be
agreed upon, and be constituted with prayer by the Senior
Moderator, after which a Moderator and Clerk shall be
chosen by the united Church.
XVIII. THE ACTION OF THE OLD-SCHOOL ASSEMBLY ON
LOYALTY, IN 1861.
(a) The Gardiner Spring Resolutions.
Gratefully acknowledging the distinguished bounty and
care of Almighty God toward this favored land, and also
recognizing our obligations to submit to every ordinance
of man for the Lord's sake, this General Assembly adopt
the following resolutions:
Resolved, 1. That in view of the present agitated and
unhappy condition of this country, the first day of July
next be hereby set apart as a day of prayer throughout
our bounds; and that on that day ministers and people are
called on humbly to confess and bewail our national sins;
to offer our thanks to the Father of light for his abundant
T
380
APPENDIX.
ப
*
and undeserved goodness toward us as a nation; to seek
his guidance and blessing upon our rulers, and their coun-
sels, as well as on the Congress of the United States about
to assemble; and to implore him, in the name of Jesus
Christ, the Great High Priest of the Christian profession,
to turn away his anger from us, and speedily restore to us
the blessings of an honorable peace.
Resolved, 2. That this General Assembly, in the spirit
of that Christian patriotism which the Scriptures enjoin,
and which has always characterized this Church, do hereby
acknowledge and declare our obligation to promote and
perpetuate, so far as in us lies, the integrity of these
United States, and to strengthen, uphold, and encourage
the Federal Government in the exercise of all its functions
under our noble Constitution; and to this Constitution,
in all its provisions, requirements, and principles, we profess
our unabated loyalty.
And to avoid all misconception, the Assembly declare
that by the terms "Federal Government," as here used,
is not meant any particular administration, or the peculiar
opinions of any particular party, but that central administra-
tion, which being at any time inaugurated according to the
forms prescribed in the Constitution of the United States,
is the visible representative of our national existence.
(b) Protest of Dr. Hodge and Others.
We, the undersigned, respectfully protest against the
action of the General Assembly in adopting the minority
report of the Committee on the State of the Country.
We make this protest, not because we do not acknowl-
edge loyalty to our country to be a moral and religious
duty, according to the word of God, which requires us to
be subject to the powers that be; nor because we deny
the right of the Assembly to enjoin that, and all other like
duties, on the ministers and churches under its care; but
because we deny the right of the General Assembly to
decide the political question, to what government the
F
THE SPRING RESOLUTIONS, 1861.
381
allegiance of Presbyterians as citizens is due, and its right
to make that decision a condition of membership in our
Church.
That the paper adopted by the Assembly does decide.
the political question just stated, is in our judgment unde-
niable. It asserts not only the loyalty of this body to the
Constitution and the Union, but it promises in the name
of all the churches and ministers whom it represents, to do
all that in them lies to "strengthen, uphold, and encour-
age the Federal Government." It is, however, a notori-
ous fact, that many of our ministers and members con-
scientiously believe that the allegiance of the citizens of
this country is primarily due to the States to which they
respectively belong; and, therefore, that when any State
renounces its connection with the United States, and its
allegiance to the Constitution, the citizens of that State are
bound by the laws of God to continue loyal to their State,
and obedient to its laws. The paper adopted by the Gen-
eral Assembly virtually declares, on the other hand, that
the allegiance of the citizens is due to the United States;
anything in the Constitution, or ordinances, or laws of the
several States, to the contrary notwithstanding.
It is not the loyalty of the members constituting this
Assembly, nor of our churches and ministers in any one
portion of our country, that is thus asserted, but the loyalty
of the whole Presbyterian Church, North and South, East
and West.
malay
Allegiance to the Federal Government is recognized or
declared to be the duty of all the churches and ministers
represented in this body. In adopting this paper, there-
fore, the Assembly does decide the great political question
which agitates and divides the country. The question is
whether the allegiance of our citizens is primarily to the
State or to the Union. However clear our own convic-
tions of the correctness of this decision may be, or however
deeply we may be impressed with its importance, yet it is
not a question which this Assembly has the right to decide.
A man may conscientiously believe that he owes alle-
}
382
APPENDIX.
giance to one government or another, and yet possess all
the qualifications which the word of God or the standards
of the Church authorize us to demand of in our members
or ministers. As this General Assembly represents the
whole Church, the acts and deliverances of this Assembly
become the acts and deliverances of the Church. It is this
consideration that gives to the action of this Assembly in
this case all its importance, either in our own view or in
the view of others.
It is the allegiance of the Old-school Presbyterian
Church to the Constitution, the Union, and the Federal
Government, which this paper is intended to profess and
proclaim. It does, therefore, of necessity, decide the
political question which agitates the country.
It pro-
nounces or assumes a particular interpretation of the Con-
stitution. This is a matter beyond the jurisdiction of the
Assembly.
That the action of the Assembly in the premises does
not only decide the political question referred to, but
makes that decision a term of membership in the Church,
is no less clear. It is not analogous to the recommen-
dation of a religious or benevolent institution, which our
members may regard or not at pleasure; but it puts into
the mouths of all represented in this body, a declaration
of loyalty and allegiance to the Union and to the Federal
Government. But such a declaration, made by our mem-
bers residing in what are called the seceding States, is
treasonable. Presbyterians under the jurisdiction of those
States, cannot, therefore, make that declaration. They
are consequently forced to choose between allegiance to
their States and allegiance to the Church. The General
Assembly in thus deciding a political question, and in
making that decision practically a condition of member-
ship to the Church, has, in our judgment, violated the Con-
stitution of the Church, and usurped the prerogative of its
Divine Master.
Midn
We protest loudly against the action of the Assembly,
because it is a departure from all its previous actions.
1
THE SPRING RESOLUTIONS, 1861.
383
The General Assembly has always acted on the princi-
ple that the Church has no right to make anything a con-
dition of Christian or ministerial fellowship, which is not
enjoined or required in the Scriptures and the Standards
of the Church.
We have, at one time, resisted the popular demand to
make total abstinence from intoxicating liquors a term of
membership. At another time, the holding of slaves. In
firmly resisting these unscriptural demands, we have pre-
served the integrity and unity of the Church, made it the
great conservative body of truth, moderation, and liberty
of conscience in our country. The Assembly have now
descended from this high position, in making a political
opinion, a particular theory of the Constitution, however
correct and important that theory may be, the condition
of membership in our body, and thus, we fear, endangered
the unity of the Church.
In the third place we protest, because we regard the
action of the Assembly as altogether unnecessary and un-
called for. It was required neither to instruct nor excite
our brethren in the Northern States. It was not needed
as a vindication of the loyalty of the North.
Old-school Presbyterians everywhere out of the so-
called seceding States, have openly avowed and conspicu-
ously displayed their allegiance to the Constitution and
the Government, and that in many cases at great cost and
peril. Nor was such action required by our duty to the
country. We are fully persuaded that we best promote
the interests of the country by preserving the integrity
and unity of the Church.
We regard this action of the Assembly, therefore, as a
great national calamity, as well as the most disastrous to
the interests of our Church which has marked its history.
We protest, fourthly, because we regard the action of
the Assembly as unjust and cruel in its bearing on our
Southern brethren. It was, in our judgment, unfair to
entertain and decide such a momentous question when the
great majority of our Southern Presbyteries were, from
384
APPENDIX.
necessity, unrepresented in this body. And it is, in our
judgment, a violation of the law of love to adopt an act
which must expose the Southern churches that remain in
connection with our Church, to suspicion, to loss of prop-
erty, to personal danger, and which tends to destroy their
usefulness in their appointed fields of labor.
And finally we protest, because we believe the act of
the Assembly will not only diminish the resources of the
Church, but greatly weaken its power for good, and expose
it to the danger of being carried away more and more from
its true principles by a worldly or fanatical spirit.
(c) The Answer to this and Other Protests, Adopted by the
Assembly.
The action of the General Assembly, in reference to
which these Protests are offered, embraces two resolutions,
against the former of which no objection is alleged. The
whole stress of the protestation is directed upon the fol-
lowing sentence in the second Resolution :
"Resolved, That this General Assembly, in the spirit of
that Christian patriotism which the Scriptures enjoin, and
which has always characterized this Church, do hereby
acknowledge and declare our obligation to promote and
perpetuate, so far as in us lies, the integrity of these
United States, and to strengthen, uphold, and encourage
the Federal Government in the exercise of all its functions
under our noble Constitution; and to this Constitution, in
all its provisions, requirements, and principles, we profess
our unabated loyalty.
""
P
The first and main ground of a protest against the
adoption of this resolution, is, that the General Assembly
has no right to decide purely political questions; that the
question whether the allegiance of American citizens is due
primarily and eminently to the State, or to the Union, is
purely political, of the gravest character, dependent upon.
constitutional theories and interpretations, respecting which
various opinions prevail in different sections of our coun-
THE SPRING RESOLUTIONS, 1861.
385
try; that the action of the Assembly virtually determines
this vexed question, decides to what Government the alle-
giance of Presbyterians, as citizens, is due, and makes that
decision a term of communion.
That the action of the Assembly has political as well as
moral bearings, is readily admitted. So had the decision
of our Divine Master, when he said to the Pharisees and
Herodians, “Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's,"
Mark xii. 17; a decision still binding upon all men, and
underlying this very act of the Assembly. The payment
of the required tax was both a moral and a political duty.
“There are occasions," says the author of an able arti-
cle on "The State of the Country," in the January num-
ber of the Princeton Review, "there are occasions when
political questions rise into the sphere of morals and re-
ligion; when the rule of political action is to be sought,
not in considerations of State policy, but in the law of
God. When the question to be decided turns upon
moral principles; when reason, conscience, and the religious
sentiment are to be addressed, it is the privilege and duty
of all who have access in any way to the public ear, to en-
deavour to allay unholy feeling, and to bring truth to bear
on the minds of their fellow-citizens." The General As-
sembly heartily approve these principles, and doubt not
that if ever there was an occasion when political questions
rose into the sphere of morals and religion, the present cir-
cumstances of our beloved country are of that character.
The protestants " deny the right of the General Assem-
bly to decide to what Government the allegiance of Presby-
terians, as citizens, is due." Strictly speaking, the Assem-
bly has made no such decision. They have said nothing
respecting the allegiance of the subjects of any foreign
power, or that of the members of our mission churches in
India, China, or elsewhere, who may hold connection with
our denomination. The action complained of relates solely
to American Presbyterians, citizens of these United States.
-
Even with regard to them, the Assembly has not de-
termined, as between conflicting governments, to which
386
APPENDIX.
our allegiance is due. We are the General Assembly of
the Presbyterian Church in the United States of Amer-
ica. Such is the distinctive name, ecclesiastical and legal,
under which we have been chosen to be known by our sis-
ter churches and by the world. In the seventy-four years
of our existence, Presbyterians have known but one supreme
government, one nationality, within our wide-spread ter-
ritory. We know no other now. History tells of none.
The Federal Government acknowledges none. No nation
on earth recognizes the existence of two independent
sovereignties within these United States. What Divine
Providence may intend for us hereafter-what curse of
rival and hostile sovereignties within this broad heritage
of our fathers—we presume not to determine. Do these
protestants, who so anxiously avoid political entanglements,
desire the General Assembly to anticipate the dread deci-
sion of impending battle, the action of our own Govern-
ment, the determination of foreign powers, and even the
ultimate arbitration of Heaven? Would they have us
recognize, as good Presbyterians, men whom our own
Government, with the approval of Christendom, may soon
execute as traitors? May not the highest Court of our
Church, speaking as the interpreter of the holy law which
says, “Ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but
also for conscience' sake," Rom. xiii. 5, warn her com-
municants against "resisting the ordinance of God"?
Rom. xiii. 2. In the language of the learned Reviewer
above cited, “Is disunion morally right? Does it not
involve a breach of faith, and a violation of the oaths by
which that faith was confirmed? We believe, under exist-
ing circumstances, that it does, and therefore it is as dread-
ful a blow to the Church as it is to the State. If a crime
at all, it is one the heinousness of which can only be im-
perfectly estimated."
In the judgment of this Assembly, "this saying is true;'
and therefore the admission, on the part of the Assembly,
that Presbyterians may take up arms against the Federal
Government, or aid and comfort its enemies, and yet be
>
THE SPRING RESOLUTIONS, 1861.
387
guiltless, would exhibit that “practical recognition of the
right of secession," which, says the Reviewer, would "de-
stroy our national life.”
But we deny that this deliverance of the Assembly estab-
lishes any new term of communion. The terms of Chris-
tian fellowship are laid down in the word of God, and are
embodied in our standards. It is competent to this Court
to interpret and apply the doctrines of the word; to warn
men against prevailing sins; and to urge the performance
of neglected duties. We regard the action, against which
these protests are levelled, simply as a faithful declaration,
by the Assembly, of Christian duty toward those in author-
ity over us; which adds nothing to the terms of communion
already recognized. Surely the idea of the obligation of
loyalty to our Federal Government is no new thing to
Presbyterians.
And this is a sufficient reply, also, to the second article
of this Protest. Having established no new term of mem-
bership, this Assembly is not liable to the charge of hav-
ing departed from the old paths.
A third ground of protest is the allegation that this
action of the Assembly is uncalled for, and unnecessary.
Yet, on the admission of these protestants themselves, it
is " a. notorious fact," that many of our ministers and
members believe themselves absolved from all obligations
of loyalty to our National Government-believe, in con-
tradiction to the Princeton Reviewer, that disunion is
morally right; and some are already in arms to vindicate
these opinions. What, when "a crime, the heinousness of
which can only be imperfectly estimated "-" striking as
dreadful a blow at the Church as at the State," is already
committed; when thousands of Presbyterians are likely to
be seduced from their allegiance by the machinations of
wicked men; when our national prosperity is overclouded;
when every material interest is in jeopardy, and every
spiritual energy paralyzed; when armed rebellion joins
issue with armed authority on battle-fields, where tens
of thousands must perish; when it remains a question,
388
APPENDIX.
whether our national life survives the conflict, or whether
our sun sets in anarchy and blood—is it uncalled for, un-
necessary, for this Christian Assembly to renew, in the
memories and hearts of a Christian people, respect for the
majesty of law, and a sense of the obligation of loyalty?
Let posterity decide between us.
That this decision of the Assembly is unjust to a portion
of our Church, not now fully represented in this body, is
a fourth reason of protest. We need only reply that the
roll of this Assembly shows delegates from Virginia, Ken-
tucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and
Texas. All might have been as easily represented. Be-
sides, the action has no local or sectional character. The
subject is of national relations, as well as of such pressing
urgency, that to have waited for a full Southern represen-
tation, in a future Assembly, would have been to lose for-
ever the critical moment when action would be productive
of good.
As to the final ground of protest, it is enough to record
our simple denial of the opinions expressed. We sincerely
believe that this action of the General Assembly will in-
crease the power of the Church for good; securing, as we
humbly trust it will, the favour of her exalted Head, in
behalf of those who testify for a suffering truth.
XIX. ADDRESS OF THE SOUTHERN GENERAL ASSEMBLY
TO ALL THE CHURCHES OF JESUS CHRIST, ADOPTED
1861.
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in
the Confederate States of America, to all the Churches of
Jesus Christ throughout the earth, greeting: Grace, mercy,
and peace be multiplied upon you:
DEARLY BELOVED BRETHREN: It is probably
known to you that the Presbyteries and Synods in the
Confederate States, which were formerly in connection
with the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in
THE SOUTHERN ADDRESS, 1861.
389
the United States of America, have renounced the juris-
diction of that body; and dissolved the ties which bound
them ecclesiastically with their brethren of the North.
This act of separation left them without any formal union
among themselves.
But as they were one in faith and
order, and still adhered to their old standards, measures
were promptly adopted for giving expression to their
unity, by the organization of a Supreme Court, upon the
model of the one whose authority they had just relin-
quished. Commissioners duly appointed, from all the
Presbyteries of these Confederate States, met accordingly,
in the City of Augusta, on the fourth day of December,
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty one, and then and there proceeded to constitute
the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the
Confederate States of America. The Constitution of the
Presbyterian Church in the United States-that is to say,
the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Larger and
Shorter Catechisms, the Form of Government, the Book
of Discipline, and the Directory for Worship-were unani-
mously and solemnly declared to be the Constitution of
the Church in the Confederate States, with no other
change than the substitution of "Confederate" for
"United" wherever the country is mentioned in the stand-
ards. The Church, therefore, in these seceded States,
presents now the spectacle of a separate, and independent,
and complete organization, under the style and title of
The Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of
America. In thus taking its place among sister Churches
of this and other countries, it seems proper that it should
set forth the causes which have impelled it to separate
from the Church of the North, and to indicate a general
view of the course which it feels it incumbent upon it to
pursue in the new circumstances in which it is placed.
We should be sorry to be regarded by our brethren in
any part of the world as guilty of schism. We are not
conscious of any purpose to rend the body of Christ. On
the contrary, our aim has been to promote the unity of
390
APPENDIX.
the Spirit in the bonds of peace.
If we know our own
hearts, and can form any just estimate of the motives
which have governed us, we have been prompted by a
sincere desire to promote the glory of God, and the effi-
ciency, energy, harmony, and zeal of his visible kingdom.
in the earth. We have separated from our brethren of
the North as Abraham separated from Lot-because we
are persuaded that the interests of true religion will be
more effectually subserved by two independent Churches,
under the circumstances in which the two countries are
placed, than by one united body.
I. In the first place, the course of the last Assembly, at
Philadelphia, conclusively shows that if we should remain
together, the political questions which divide us as citizens,
will be obtruded on our Church Courts, and discussed by
Christian Ministers and Elders with all the acrimony, bit-
terness, and rancor with which such questions are usually
discussed by men of the world. Our Assembly would
present a mournful spectacle of strife and debate. Com-
missioners from the Northern would meet with Commis-
sioners from the Southern Confederacy, to wrangle over
the questions which have split them into two confedera-
cies, and involved them in furious and bloody war. They
would denounce each other, on the one hand, as tyrants
and oppressors, and on the other, as traitors and rebels.
The Spirit of God would take his departure from these
scenes of confusion, and leave the Church lifeless and
powerless, an easy prey to the sectional divisions and
angry passions of its members. Two nations, under any
circumstances, except those of perfect homogeneousness,
cannot be united in one Church, without the rigid exclu-
sion of all civil and secular questions from its halls. Where
the countries differ in their customs and institutions, and
view each other with an eye of jealousy and rivalry, if
national feelings are permitted to enter the Church Courts,
there must be an end of harmony and peace. The preju-
dices of the man and the citizen will prove stronger than
the charity of the Christian. When they have allowed
-
-
THE SOUTHERN ADDRESS, 1861.
391
themselves to denounce each other for their national pecul-
iarities, it will be hard to join in cordial fellowship as
members of the same spiritual family. Much more must
this be the case where the nations are not simply rivals,
but enemies—when they hate each other with a cruel
‚hatred—when they are engaged in a ferocious and bloody
war, and when the worst passions of human nature are
stirred to their very depths. An Assembly composed of
representatives from two such countries, could have no
security for peace except in a steady, uncompromising ad-
herence to the Scriptural principle, that it would know no
man after the flesh; that it would abolish the distinctions
of Barbarian, Scythian, bond and free, and recognize noth-
ing but the new creature in Christ Jesus. The moment
it permits itself to know the Confederate or the United
States, the moment its members meet as citizens of these
countries our political differences will be transferred to the
house of God, and the passions of the forum will expel the
Spirit of Holy Love and of Christian communion.
We cannot condemn a man, in one breath, as unfaithful
to the most solemn earthly interests-his country and his
race—and commend him in the next as a loyal and faith-
ful servant of his God. If we distrust his patriotism, our
confidence is apt to be very measured in his piety. The
old adage will hold here as in other things, falsus in uno,
falsus in omnibus.
The only conceivable condition, therefore, upon which
the Church of the North and the South could remain to-
gether as one body, with any prospect of success, is the
rigorous exclusion of the questions and passions of the
forum from its halls of debate. This is what always ought
to be done. The provinces of Church and State are per-
fectly distinct, and the one has no right to usurp the juris-
diction of the other. The State is a natural institute,
founded in the constitution of man as moral and social,
and designed to realize the idea of justice. It is the so-
ciety of rights. The Church is a supernatural institute,
founded in the facts of redemption, and is designed to
?
392
APPENDIX.
realize the idea of grace. It is the society of the re-
deemed. The State aims at social order, the Church at
spiritual holiness. The State looks to the visible and out-
ward, the Church is concerned for the invisible and in-
ward. The badge of the State's authority is the sword,
by which it becomes a terror to evil doers, and a praise to
them that do well. The badge of the Church's authority
is the keys, by which it opens and shuts the Kingdom of
Heaven according as men are believing or impenitent.
The power of the Church is exclusively spiritual, that of
the State includes the exercise of force. The Constitu-
tion of the Church is a Divine revelation-the Constitu-
tion of the State must be determined by human reason
and the course of Providential events. The Church has
no right to construct or modify a government for the
State, and the State has no right to frame a creed or pol-
ity for the Church. They are as planets moving in differ-
ent orbits, and unless each is confined to its own tract, the
consequences may be as disastrous in the moral world as
the collision of different spheres in the world of matter.
It is true that there is a point at which their respective
jurisdictions seem to meet—in the idea of duty. But
even duty is viewed by each in very different lights. The
Church enjoins it as obedience to God, and the State en-
forces it as the safeguard of order. But there can be no
collision, unless one or the other blunders as to the things
that are materially right. When the State makes wicked
laws, contradicting the eternal principles of rectitude, the
Church is at liberty to testify against them, and humbly
to petition that they may be repealed. In like manner,
if the Church become seditious and a disturber of the
peace, the State has a right to abate the nuisance. In
ordinary cases, however, there is not likely to be a colli-
sion. Among a Christian people, there is little difference
of opinion as to the radical distinctions of right and wrong.
The only serious danger is where moral duty is condi-
tioned upon a political question. Under the pretext of
inculcating duty, the Church may usurp the power to de-
C
THE SOUTHERN ADDRESS, 1861.
393
termine the question which conditions it, and that is pre-
cisely what she is debarred from doing. The condition
must be given. She must accept it from the State, and
then her own course is clear. If Cæsar is your master,
then pay tribute to him; but whether the "if" holds
whether Cæsar is your master or not, whether he ever
had any just authority, whether he now retains it, or has
forfeited it, these are points which the Church has no
commission to adjudicate.
Had these principles been steadily maintained by the
Assembly at Philadelphia, it is possible that the ecclesi-
astical separation of the North and the South might have
been deferred for years to come. Our Presbyteries, many
of them, clung with tenderness to the recollections of the
past. Sacred memories gathered around that venerable
Church which had breasted many a storm and trained our
fathers for glory. It had always been distinguished for
its conservative influence, and many fondly hoped that,
even in the present emergency, it would raise its placid
and serene head above the tumults of popular passion,
and bid defiance to the angry billows which rolled at its
feet. We expected it to bow in reverence only at the
name of Jesus. Many dreamed that it would utterly
refuse to know either Confederates or Federalists, and
utterly refuse to give any authoritative decree without a
Thus saith the Lord." It was ardently desired that the
sublime spectacle might be presented of one Church upon
earth combining in cordial fellowship and in holy love-
the disciples of Jesus in different and even in hostile lands.
But, alas! for the weakness of man, these golden visions
were soon dispelled. The first thing which roused our
Presbyteries to look the question of separation seriously
in the face, was the course of the Assembly in venturing
to determine, as a Court of Jesus Christ, which it did by
necessary implication, the true interpretation of the Con-
stitution of the United States as to the kind of govern-
ment it intended to form. A political theory was, to all
intents and purposes, propounded, which made secession
""
→
સ
394
APPENDIX.
a crime, the seceding States rebellious, and the citizens
who obeyed them traitors. We say nothing here as to the
righteousness or unrighteousness of these decrees. What
we maintain is, that, whether right or wrong, the Church
had no right to make them-she transcended her sphere,
and usurped the duties of the State. The discussion of
these questions, we are sorry to add, was in the spirit and
temper of partizan declaimers. The Assembly, driven
from its ancient moorings, was tossed to and fro by the
waves of popular passion. Like Pilate, it obeyed the
clamor of the multitude, and though acting in the name
of Jesus, it kissed the sceptre and bowed the knee to the
mandates of Northern phrenzy. The Church was con-
verted into the forum, and the Assembly was henceforward
to become the arena of sectional divisions and national
animosities.
We frankly admit that the mere unconstitutionality of
the proceedings of the last Assembly is not, in itself con-
sidered, a sufficient ground of separation. It is the conse-
quences of these proceedings which make them so offen-
sive. It is the door which they open for the introduction
of the worst passions of human nature into the delibera-
tions of Church Courts. The spirit of these proceedings,
if allowed to prevail, would forever banish peace from the
Church, and there is no reason to hope that the tide which
has begun to flow can soon be arrested.
The two con-
federacies hate each other more intensely now than they
did in May, and if their citizens should come together
upon the same floor, whatever might be the errand that
brought them there, they could not be restrained from
smiting each other with the fist of wickedness. For the
sake of peace, therefore, for Christian charity, for the
honor of the Church, and for the glory of God, we have
been constrained, as much as in us lies, to remove all oc-
casion of offence. We have quietly separated, and we are
grateful to God that, while leaving for the sake of peace,
we leave it with the humble consciousness that we, our-
selves, have never given occasion to break the peace.
We
¦•
395
have never confounded Cæsar and Christ, and we have
never mixed the issues of this world with the weighty
matters that properly belong to us as citizens of the King-
dom of God.
THE SOUTHERN ADDRESS, 1861.
2. Though the immediate occasion of separation was
the course of the General Assembly at Philadelphia in
relation to the Federal Government and the war, yet
there is another ground on which the independent organ-
ization of the Southern Church can be amply and script-
urally maintained. The unity of the Church does not re-
quire a formal bond of union among all the congregations
of believers throughout the earth. It does not demand a
vast imperial monarchy like that of Rome, nor a strictly
universal council, like that to which the complete develop-
ment of Presbyterianism would naturally give rise. The
Church Catholic is one in Christ, but it is not necessarily
one visible, all-absorbing organization upon earth. There
is no schism where there is no breach of charity. Churches
may be perfectly at one in every principle of faith and
order, and yet geographically distinct, and mutually inde-
pendent. As the unity of the human race is not disturbed.
by its division into countries and nations, so the unity of
the spiritual seed of Christ is neither broken nor impaired
by separation and division into various Church constitu-
tions. Accordingly, in the Protestant countries, Church
organizations have followed national lines. The Calvin-
istic Churches of Switzerland are distinct from the Re-
formed Church of France. The Presbyterians of Ireland
belong to a different Church from the Presbyterians of
Scotland, and the Presbyterians of this country constitute
a Church, in like manner, distinct from all other Churches
on the globe. That the division into national Churches,
that is, Churches bounded by national lines, is, in the
present condition of human nature, a benefit, seems to us
too obvious for proof. It realizes to the Church Catholic
all the advantages of a division of labor. It makes a
Church organization homogeneous and compact-it stim-
ulates holy rivalry and zeal-it removes all grounds of
396
APPENDIX.
suspicion and jealousy on the part of the State. What is
lost in expansion is gained in energy. The Church Cath-
olic, as thus divided, and yet spiritually one, divided, but
not rent, is a beautiful illustration of the great philosoph-
ical principle which pervades all nature—the co-existence
of the one with the many.
If it is desirable that each nation should contain a sepa-
rate and an independent Church, the Presbyteries of these
Confederate States need no apology for bowing to the
decree of Providence, which, in withdrawing their country
from the government of the United States, has, at the
same time, determined that they should withdraw from
the Church of their fathers. It is not that they have
ceased to love it—not that they have abjured its ancient
principles, or forgotten its glorious history. It is to give
these same principles a richer, freer, fuller development
among ourselves than they possibly could receive under
foreign culture. It is precisely because we love that
Church as it was, and that Church as it should be, that we
have resolved as far as in us lies, to realize its grand idea
in the country, and under the Government where God has
cast our lot. With the supreme control of ecclesiastical
affairs in our hands, we may be able, in some competent
measure, to consummate this result. In subjection to a
foreign power, we could no more accomplish it than the
Church in the United States could have been developed
in dependence upon the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
The difficulty there would have been, not the distance of
Edinburgh from New York, Philadelphia, or Charleston,
but the difference in the manners, habits, customs, and
ways of thinking, the social, civil, and political institutions.
of the people. These same difficulties exist in relation
to the Confederate and United States, and render it emi-
nently proper that the Church in each should be as sepa-
rate and independent as the Governments.
In addition to this, there is one difference which so
radically and fundamentally distinguishes the North and
the South, that it is becoming every day more and more
THE SOUTHERN ADDRESS, 1861.
397
apparent that the religious, as well as the secular, interests
of both will be more effectually promoted by a complete
and lasting separation. The antagonism of Northern and
Southern sentiment on the subject of slavery lies at the
root of all the difficulties which have resulted in the dis-
memberment of the Federal Union, and involved us in the
horrors of an unnatural war. The Presbyterian Church
in the United States has been enabled by Divine grace to
pursue, for the most part, an eminently conservative, be-
cause a thoroughly Scriptural, policy in relation to this
delicate question. It has planted itself upon the Word
of God, and utterly refused to make slaveholding a sin,
or non-slaveholding a term of communion. But though
both sections are agreed as to this general principle, it is
not to be disguised that the North exercises a deep and
settled antipathy to slavery itself, while the South is
equally zealous in its defence. Recent events can have
no other effect than to confirm the antipathy on the one
hand and strengthen the attachment on the other. The
Northern section of the Church stands in the awkward
predicament of maintaining, in one breath, that slavery is
an evil which ought to be abolished, and of asserting in
the next, that it is not a sin to be visited by exclusion
from communion of the saints. The consequence is, that
it plays partly into the hands of abolitionists and partly
into the hands of slaveholders, and weakens its influence
with both. It occupies the position of a prevaricating
witness whom neither party will trust. It would be bet-
ter, therefore, for the moral power of the Northern section
of the Church to get entirely quit of the subject. At the
same time, it is intuitively obvious that the Southern sec-
tion of the Church, while even partially under the control
of those who are hostile to slavery, can never have free
and unimpeded access to the slave population. Its min-
isters and elders will always be liable to some degree of
suspicion. In the present circumstances, Northern alliance
would be absolutely fatal. It would utterly preclude the
Church from a wide and commanding field of usefulness.
All
398
APPENDIX.
This is too dear a price to be paid for a nominal union.
We cannot afford to give up these millions of souls and
consign them, so far as our efforts are concerned, to hope-
less perdition, for the sake of preserving an outward unity
which, after all, is an empty shadow. If we would gird
ourselves heartily and in earnest, for the work which God
has set before us, we must have the control of our eccle-
siastical affairs, and declare ourselves separate and inde-
pendent.
And here we may venture to lay before the Christian
world our views as a Church, upon the subject of slavery.
We beg a candid hearing.
In the first place, we would have it distinctly under-
stood that, in our ecclesiastical capacity, we are neither
the friends nor the foes of slavery; that is to say, we have
no commission either to propagate or abolish it. The
policy of its existence or non-existence is a question which
exclusively belongs to the State. We have no right, as
a Church, to enjoin it as a duty, or to condemn it as a sin.
Our business is with the duties which spring from the re-
lation; the duties of the masters on the one hand, and of
their slaves on the other. These duties we are to pro-
claim and enforce with spiritual sanctions. The social,
civil, political problems connected with this great subject
transcend our sphere, as God has not entrusted to his
Church the organization of society, the construction of
Government, nor the allotment of individuals to their
various stations. The Church has as much right to preach
to the monarchies of Europe, and the despotism of Asia,
the doctrines of republican equality, as to preach to the
Governments of the South the extirpation of slavery.
This position is impregnable, unless it can be shown that
slavery is a sin. Upon every other hypothesis, it is so
clearly a question for the State, that the proposition
would never for a moment have been doubted, had there
not been a foregone conclusion in relation to its moral
character. Is slavery, then, a sin?
In answering this question, as a Church, let it be dis-
THE SOUTHERN ADDRESS, 1861.
399
tinctly borne in mind that the only rule of judgment is
the written Word of God. The Church knows nothing of
the intuitions of reason or the deductions of philosophy,
except those reproduced in the Sacred Canon. She has
a positive constitution in the Holy Scriptures, and has no
right to utter a single syllable upon any subject, except
as the Lord puts words in her mouth. She is founded, in
other words, upon express revelation.
Her creed is an
authoritative testimony of God, and not a speculation, and
what she proclaims, she must proclaim with the infallible
certitude of faith, and not with the hesitating assent of an
opinion. The question, then, is brought within a narrow
compass: Do the Scriptures directly or indirectly condemn
slavery as a sin? If they do not, the dispute is ended, for
the Church, without forfeiting her character, dares not go
beyond them.
Now, we venture to assert that if men had drawn their
conclusions upon this subject only from the Bible, it would
no more have entered into any human head to denounce
slavery as a sin, than to denounce monarchy, aristocracy,
or poverty. The truth is, men have listened to what they
falsely considered as primitive intuitions, or as necessary
deductions from primitive cognitions, and then have gone
to the Bible to confirm the crotchets of their vain philoso-
phy. They have gone there determined to find a partic-
ular result, and the consequence is, that they leave with
having made, instead of having interpreted, Scripture.
Slavery is no new thing. It has not only existed for ages
in the world, but it has existed, under every dispensation
of the covenant of grace, in the Church of God. Indeed,
the first organization of the Church as a visible society,
separate and distinct from the unbelieving world, was in-
augurated in the family of a slaveholder. Among the very
first persons to whom the seal of circumcision was affixed,
were the slaves of the father of the faithful, some born in
his house, and others bought with his money. Slavery
again re-appears under the Law. God sanctions it in the
first table of the Decalogue, and Moses treats it as an in-
400
APPENDIX.
stitution to be regulated, not abolished; legitimated, and
not condemned. We come down to the age of the New
Testament, and we find it again in the Churches founded
by the Apostles under the plenary inspiration of the Holy
Ghost. These facts are utterly amazing, if slavery is the
enormous sin which its enemies represent it to be. It will
not do to say that the Scriptures have treated it only in a
general, incidental way, without any clear implication as
to its moral character. Moses surely made it the subject
of express and positive legislation, and the Apostles are
equally explicit in inculcating the duties which spring
from both sides of the relation. They treat slaves as
bound to obey, and inculcate obedience as an office of re-
ligion—a thing wholly self-contradictory, if the authority
exercised over them were unlawful and iniquitous.
But what puts this subject in a still clearer light is the
manner in which it is sought to extort from the Scriptures
a contrary testimony. The notion of direct and explicit
condemnation is given up. The attempt is to show that
the genius and spirit of Christianity are opposed to it—
that its great cardinal principles of virtue are utterly
against it. Much stress is laid upon the Golden Rule and
upon the general denunciations of tyranny and oppres-
sion. To all this we reply, that no principle is clearer
than that a case positively excepted cannot be included
under a general rule. Let us concede, for a moment, that
the law of love, and the condemnation of tyranny and
oppression, seem logically to involve, as a result, the con-
demnation of slavery; yet, if slavery is afterwards ex-
pressly mentioned and treated as a lawful relation, it ob-
viously follows, unless Scripture is to be interpreted as
inconsistent with itself, that slavery is, by necessary impli-
cation, excepted. The Jewish law forbade, as a general
rule, the marriage of a man with his brother's wife. The
same law expressly enjoined the same marriage in a given
case. The given case was, therefore, an exception, and
not to be treated as a violation of the general rule.
law of love has always been the law of God.
The
It was
THE SOUTHERN ADDRESS, 1861.
40I
enunciated by Moses almost as clearly as it was enunciated
by Jesus Christ. Yet, notwithstanding this law, Moses
and the Apostles alike sanctioned the relation of slavery.
The conclusion is inevitable, either that the law is not
opposed to it, or that slavery is an excepted case. To
say that the prohibition of tyranny and oppression include
slavery, is to beg the whole question. Tyranny and op-
pression involve either the unjust usurpation or the un-
lawful exercise of power. It is the unlawfulness, either in
its principle or measure, which constitutes the core of the
sin. Slavery must, therefore, be proved to be unlawful,
before it can be referred to any such category. The
master may, indeed, abuse his power, but he oppresses
not simply as a master, but as a wicked master.
-
But, apart from all this, the law of love is simply the
inculcation of universal equity. It implies nothing as to
the existence of various ranks and gradations in society.
The interpretation which makes it repudiate slavery would
make it equally repudiate all social, civil, and political in-
equalities. Its meaning is, not that we should conform
ourselves to the arbitrary expectations of others, but that
we should render unto them precisely the same measure
which, if we were in their circumstance, it would be rea-
sonable and just in us to demand at their hands. It con-
demns slavery, therefore, only upon the supposition that
slavery is a sinful relation—that is, he who extracts the
prohibition of slavery from the Golden Rule, begs the
very point in dispute.
We cannot prosecute the argument in detail, but we
have said enough, we think, to vindicate the position of
the Southern Church. We have assumed no new attitude.
We stand exactly where the Church of God has always
stood from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to Christ,
from Christ to the Reformers, and from the Reformers to
ourselves. We stand upon the foundation of the Prophets
and Apostles, Jesus Christ himself being the Chief corner-
Shall we be excluded from the fellowship of our
brethren in other lands, because we dare not depart from
stone.
402
APPENDIX.
the charter of our faith? Shall we be branded with the
stigma of reproach, because we cannot consent to corrupt
the Word of God to suit the intuitions of an infidel philos-
ophy? Shall our names be cast out as evil, and the finger
of scorn pointed at us, because we utterly refuse to break
our communion with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with
Moses, David, and Isaiah, with Apostles, Prophets, and
Martyrs, with all the noble army of confessors who have
gone to glory from slaveholding countries and from a
slaveholding Church, without ever having dreamed that
they were living in mortal sin, by conniving at slavery in
the midst of them? If so, we shall take consolation in
the cheering consciousness that the Master has accepted
us. We may be denounced, despised, and cast out of the
Synagogues of our brethren. But while they are wran-
gling about the distinctions of men according to the flesh,
we shall go forward in our Divine work, and confidently
anticipate that, in the great day, as the consequence of
our humble labors, we shall meet millions of glorified
spirits, who have come up from the bondage of earth to a
nobler freedom than human philosophy ever dreamed of.
Others, if they please, may spend their time in declaim-
ing on the tyranny of earthly masters; it will be our aim
to resist the real tyrants which oppress the soul-Sin and
Satan. These are the foes against whom we shall find it
employment enough to wage a successful war. And to
this holy war it is the purpose of our Church to devote
itself with redoubled energy. We feel that the souls of
our slaves are a solemn trust, and we shall strive to present
them faultless and complete before the presence of God.
Indeed, as we contemplate their condition in the South-
ern States, and contrast it with that of their fathers before
them, and that of their brethren in the present day in
their native land, we cannot but accept it as a gracious
Providence that they have been brought in such numbers
to our shores, and redeemed from the bondage of barba-
rism and sin. Slavery to them has certainly been over-
ruled for the greatest good. It has been a link in the
A
Ada
THE SOUTHERN ADDRESS, 1861.
403
wondrous chain of Providence, through which many sons
and daughters have been made heirs of the heavenly in-
heritance. The Providential result is, of course, no justi-
fication, if the thing is intrinsically wrong; but it is cer-
tainly a matter of devout thanksgiving, and no obscure
intimation of the will and purpose of God, and of the con-
sequent duty of the Church.
We cannot forbear to say,
however, that the general operation of the system is kindly
and benevolent; it is a real and effective discipline, and
without it we are profoundly persuaded that the African
race in the midst of us can never be elevated in the scale
of being, As long as that race, in its comparative degra-
dation, co-exists, side by side, with the white, bondage is
its normal condition.
As to the endless declamation about human rights, we
have only to say that human rights are not a fixed, but
a fluctuating quantity. Their sum is not the same in any
two nations on the globe. The rights of Englishmen are
one thing, the rights of Frenchmen another. There is a
minimum without which a man cannot be responsible;
there is a maximum which expresses the highest degree.
of civilization and of Christian culture. The education of
the species consists in its ascent along this line.
As you
go up, the number of rights increases, but the number of
individuals who possess them diminishes. As you come
down the line, rights are diminished, but the individuals
are multiplied. It is just the opposite of the predicamental
scale of the logicians. There comprehension diminishes as
you ascend and extension increases, and comprehension.
increases as you descend and extension diminishes. Now,
when it is said that slavery is inconsistent with human
rights, we crave to understand what point in this line is
the slave conceived to occupy. There are, no doubt,
many rights which belong to other men-to Englishmen,
to Frenchmen, to his master, for example-which are
denied to him. But is he fit to possess them? Has God
qualified him to meet the responsibilities which their pos-
session necessarily implies? His place in the scale is de-
404
APPENDIX.
termined by his competency to fulfil its duties. There are
other rights which he certainly possesses, without which he
could neither be human nor accountable. Before slavery
can be charged with doing him injustice, it must be shown
that the minimum which falls to his lot at the bottom of
the line is out of proportion to his capacity and culture-
a thing which can never be done by abstract speculation.
The truth is, the education of the human race for liberty
and virtue, is a vast Providential scheme, and God assigns
to every man, by a wise and holy decree, the precise
place he is to occupy in the great moral school of human-
ity. The scholars are distributed into classes, according
to their competency and progress. For God is in history.
To avoid the suspicion of a conscious weakness of our
cause, when contemplated from the side of pure specula-
tion, we may advert for a moment to those pretended in-
tuitions which stamp the reprobation of humanity upon
this ancient and hoary institution. We admit that there
are primitive principles in morals which lie at the root of
human consciousness. But the question is, how are we to
distinguish them? The subjective feeling of certainty is
no adequate criterion, as that is equally felt in reference
to crotchets and hereditary prejudices. The very point is
to know when this certainty indicates a primitive cogni-
tion, and when it does not. There must, therefore, be
some eternal test, and whatever cannot abide that test has
no authority as a primary truth. That test is an inward
necessity of thought, which, in all minds at the proper
stage of maturity, is absolutely universal. Whatever is
universal is natural. We are willing that slavery should
be tried by this standard. We are willing to abide by
the testimony of the race, and if man, as man, has every-
where condemned it-if all human laws have prohibited
it as crime if it stands in the same category with malice,
murder, and theft; then we are willing, in the name of
humanity, to renounce it, and to renounce it forever.
But what if the overwhelming majority of mankind have
approved it? what if philosophers and statesmen have jus-
THE SOUTHERN ADDRESS, 1861.
405
tified it, and the laws of all nations acknowledged it? what
then becomes of these luminous intuitions? They are an
ignis fatuus, mistaken for a star.
We have now, brethren, in a brief compass, for the
nature of this address admits only of an outline, opened
to you our whole hearts upon this delicate and vexed sub-
ject. We have concealed nothing. We have sought to
conciliate no sympathy by appeals to your charity. We
have tried our cause by the word of God; and though
protesting against its authority to judge in a question
concerning the duty of the Church, we have not refused
to appear at the tribunal of reason. Are we not right, in
view of all the preceding considerations, in remitting the
social, civil, and political problems connected with slavery
to the State? Is it not a subject, save in the moral duties
which spring from it, which lies beyond the province of
the Church? Have we any right to make it an element
in judging of Christian character? Are we not treading
in the footsteps of the flock? Are we not acting as Christ
and his Apostles have acted before us? Is it not enough
for us to pray and labor, in our lot, that all men may be
saved, without meddling as a Church with the technical
distinction of their civil life? We leave the matter with
you. We offer you the right hand of fellowship. It is
for you to accept it or reject it. We have done our duty.
We can do no more. Truth is more precious than union,
and if you cast us out as sinners, the breach of charity is
not with us, as long as we walk according to the light of
the written Word.
The ends which we propose to accomplish as a Church
are the same as those which are proposed by every other
church. To proclaim God's truth as a witness to the
nations; to gather his elect from the four corners of the
earth, and through the Word, Ministries, and Ordinances,
to train them for eternal life, is the great business of His
people. The only thing that will be at all peculiar to us,
is the manner in which we shall attempt to discharge our
duty. In almost every department of labor, except the
406
APPENDIX.
+
pastoral care of congregations, it has been usual for the
Church to resort to societies more or less closely connected
with itself, and yet logically and really distinct. It is
our purpose to rely upon the regular organs of our gov-
ernment, and executive agencies directly and immediately
responsible to them. We wish to make the Church not
merely a superintendent, but an agent. We wish to de-
velope the idea that the congregation of believers, as vis-
ibly organized, is the very society or corporation which is
divinely called to do the work of the Lord. We shall,
therefore, endeavor to do what has never yet been ade-
quately done-bring out the energies of our Presbyterian
system of government. From the Session to the Assembly
we shall strive to enlist all our courts, as courts, in every
department of Christian effort. We are not ashamed to
confess that we are intensely Presbyterian. We embrace all
other denominations in the arms of Christian fellowship and
love, but our own scheme of government we humbly believe
to be according to the pattern shown in the Mount, and, by
God's grace, we propose to put its efficiency to the test.
Brethren, we have done. We have told you who we
are, and what we are. We greet you in the ties of Chris-
tian brotherhood. We desire to cultivate peace and charity
with all our fellow Christians throughout the world. We
invite to ecclesiastical communion all who maintain our
principles of faith and order. And now we commend you
to God and the word of his grace. We devoutly pray that
the whole Catholic Church may be afresh baptized with
the Holy Ghost, and that she may speedily be stirred up
to give the Lord no rest until he establish and make Jeru-
salem a praise in the earth.
XX. DOCTRINAL BASIS OF UNION OF THE UNITED SYNOD
OF THE SOUTH (N. S.) TO THE SOUTHERN PRESBY-
TERIAN CHURCH (0. S).
The General Assembly and the United Synod of the
Presbyterian Churches in the Confederate States of Amer-
BASIS OF REUNION, 1869.
407
ica, holding the same system of doctrine and church order,
and believing that their union will glorify God by promot-
ing peace and increasing their ability for the edification of
the Body of Christ, do agree to unite under the name of the
Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of Amer-
ica, and under the existing charter of the Trustees of the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Con-
federate States of America, on the following basis, viz. :
Article I. The General Assembly and the United Synod
declare that they continue sincerely to receive and adopt
the Confession of Faith and Catechisms of the Presbyte-
rian Church, as containing the system of doctrine taught in
the Holy Scriptures, and approve of its government and
discipline.
XXI. THE DOCTRINAL BASIS OF THE REUNION OF THE
OLD- AND NEW-SCHOOL CHURCHES IN 1869.
(1) The Doctrinal Article Proposed by the Joint Com-
mittee in 1867.
The Reunion shall be effected on the doctrinal and
ecclesiastical basis of our common standards; the Confes-
sion of Faith shall continue to be sincerely received and
adopted "as containing the system of doctrine taught in
the Holy Scriptures"; and its fair, historical sense, as it is
accepted by the two bodies in opposition to Antinomianism
and Fatalism on the one hand, and to Arminianism and
Pelagianism on the other, shall be regarded as the sense
in which it is received and adopted; and the Government
and Discipline of the Presbyterian Church in the United
States shall continue to be approved as containing the
principles and rule of our polity.
(2) The Article Proposed in the Presbyterian Reunion Con-
vention of 1867, with Dr. Henry B. Smith's Proviso.
The Reunion shall be effected on the doctrinal and eccle-
siastical basis of our common standards; the Scriptures of
408
APPENDIX.
the Old and New Testaments shall be acknowledged to be
the inspired Word of God, and the only infallible rule of
faith and practice; the Confession of Faith shall continue
to be sincerely received and adopted "as containing the
system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures"; it being
understood, that this Confession is received in its proper,
historical-that is, the Calvinistic or Reformed,-sense.
(3) The Gurley Amendment, added to the above by the
Joint Committee in 1868.
It is also understood that various methods of viewing,
stating, explaining and illustrating, the doctrines of the
Confession, which do not impair the integrity of the Re-
formed or Calvinistic system, are to be freely allowed in
the united Church, as they have hitherto been allowed in
the separate Churches; and the Government and Discipline
of the Presbyterian Church in the United States shall be
approved as containing the principles and rule of our
polity.
(4) The Basis Finally Adopted in 1869.
Believing that the interests of the Redeemer's kingdom
would be promoted by the healing of our divisions, and
that the two bodies bearing the same names, having the
same Constitution, and each recognizing the other as a
sound and orthodox body according to the principles of
the Confession common to both, cannot be justified by
any but the most imperative reasons in maintaining sepa-
rate and, in some respects, rival organizations; we are now
clearly of the opinion that the reunion of those bodies
ought, as soon as the necessary steps can be taken, to be
accomplished, upon the basis hereinafter set forth.
1. The Presbyterian Churches in the United States of
America, namely, that whose General Assembly convened
in the Brick Church in the city of New York, on the 20th
day of May, 1869, and that whose General Assembly met
CONCURRENT DECLARATIONS, 1869.
409
in the Church of the Covenant in the said city on the same
day, shall be reunited as one Church, under the name and
style of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of
America, possessing all the legal and corporate rights and
powers pertaining to the Church previous to the division
in 1838, and all the legal and corporate rights and powers
which the separate churches now possess.
2. The reunion shall be effected on the doctrinal and
ecclesiastical basis of our common standards; the Script-
ures of the Old and New Testaments shall be acknowl-
edged to be the inspired Word of God, and the only infal-
lible rule of faith and practice; the Confession of Faith
shall continue to be sincerely received and adopted as
containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy
Scriptures; and the government and discipline of the Pres-
byterian Church in the United States shall be approved as
containing the principles and rules of our polity.
XXII. THE CONCURRENT DECLARATIONS OF 1869.
As there are matters pertaining to the interests of the
Church, when it shall have become reunited, which will
manifestly require adjustment on the coming together of
two bodies which have so long acted separately, and con-
cerning some of which matters it is highly desirable that
there should be a previous good understanding, the two
Assemblies agree to adopt the following declarations, not
as articles of compact or covenant, but as in their judg-
ment proper and equitable arrangements, to wit:
1. All the ministers and churches embraced in the two
bodies should be admitted to the same standing in the
united body, which they may have held in their respect-
ive connections, up to the consummation of the union.
2. Imperfectly organized churches are counselled and
expected to become thoroughly Presbyterian, as early
within the period of five years as may be permitted by
the highest interests to be consulted; and no other such
churches shall be hereafter received.
410
APPENDIX.
A
3. The boundaries of the several Presbyteries and Synods
should be adjusted by the General Assembly of the united
church.
4. The official records of the two branches of the church
for the period of separation should be preserved and held
as making up the one history of the church; and no rule
or precedent which does not stand approved by both the
bodies, should be of any authority until re-established in
the united body, except in so far as such rule or precedent
may affect the rights of property founded thereon.
5. The corporate rights now held by the two General
Assemblies, and by their Boards and Committees, should,
as far as practicable, be consolidated, and applied for their
several objects, as defined by law.
6. There should be one set of Committees or Boards
for Home and Foreign Missions, and the other religious
enterprises of the church; which the churches should be
encouraged to sustain, though free to cast their contribu-
tions into other channels if they desire to do so.
7. As soon as practicable after the union shall have been
effected, the General Assembly should reconstruct and
consolidate the several Permanent Committees and Boards
which now belong to the two Assemblies, so as to repre-
sent, as far as possible with impartiality, the views and
wishes of the two bodies constituting the united church.
8. The publications cf the Board of Publication and of
the Publication Committee should continue to be issued
as at present, leaving it to the Board of Publication of the
united church to revise these issues and perfect a catalogue
for the united church so as to exclude invidious references
to past controversies.
9. In order to a uniform system of ecclesiastical super-
vision, those Theological Seminaries that are now under
Assembly control may, if their Boards of Direction so elect,
be transferred to the watch and care of one or more of the
adjacent Synods; and the other Seminaries are advised to
introduce, as far as may be, into their Constitutions, the
principle of Synodical or Assembly supervision; in which
THE CHARGE AGAINST DR. BRIGGS.
411
case they shall be entitled to an official recognition and
approbation on the part of the General Assembly.
10. It should be regarded as the duty of all our judica-
tories, ministers and people in the united church, to study
the things which make for peace, and to guard against all
needless and offensive references to the causes that have
divided us; and in order to avoid the revival of past issues
by the continuance of any usage in either branch of the
church, that has grown out of former conflicts, it is ear-
nestly recommended to the lower judicatories of the church
that they conform their practice in relation to all such
usages, as far as is consistent with their convictions of
duty, to the general custom of the church prior to the
controversies that resulted in the separation.
XXIII. THE CHARGES ON WHICH
PROFESSOR BRIGGS
WAS TRIED, AND THE SENTENCE PRONOUNCED BY
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
(a) The Charge against Dr. Briggs.
(1) Teaching that the Reason is a fountain of divine
authority to such an extent that it may and does savingly
enlighten men, even such men as reject the Scriptures as
the authoritative proclamation of the will of God and re-
ject also the way of salvation through the mediation and
sacrifice of the Son of God as revealed therein; all of
which is contrary to the essential doctrine of the Holy
Scripture, and of the Standards of the said Church, that
the Holy Scripture is most necessary, and the rule of
faith and practice.
(2) Teaching that the Church is a fountain of divine
authority which, apart from the Holy Scripture, may and
does savingly enlighten men; which is contrary to the
essential doctrine of the Holy Scripture and of the Stand-
ards of the said Church, that the Holy Scripture is most
necessary, and the rule of faith and practice.
-
412
APPENDIX.
(3) Teaching that errors may have existed in the original
text of the Holy Scripture, as it came from its authors;
which is contrary to the essential doctrine taught in the
Holy Scripture and in the Standards of the said Church,
that the Holy Scripture is the Word of God written, imme-
diately inspired, and the rule of faith and practice.
(4) Teaching that Moses is not the author of the Pen-
tateuch, which is contrary to direct statements of Holy
Scripture, and to the essential doctrines of the Standards
of the said Church, that the Holy Scripture evidences itself
to be the Word of God by the consent of all the parts, and
that the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the
Scripture itself.
(5) Teaching that Isaiah is not the author of half of
the book that bears his name, which is contrary to direct
statements of Holy Scripture and to the essential doctrines
of the Standards of the said Church, that the Holy Script-
ure evidences itself to be the Word of God by the consent
of all the parts, and that the infallible rule of interpreta-
tion of Scripture is the Scripture itself.
(6) Teaching that Sanctification is not complete at
death, which is contrary to the essential doctrine of Holy
Scripture and of the Standards of the said Church, that
the souls of believers are at their death at once made
perfect in holiness.
(b) The Sentence Inflicted by the General Assembly of 1893.
This appeal being regularly issued, and coming on to be
heard on the judgment, the notice of appeal, the appeal,
and the specifications of errors alleged, and the record in
the case from the beginning, and the reading of said record
having been omitted by consent, and the parties hereto
having been heard before the judicatory in argument, and
the opportunity having been given to the members of the
judicatory appealed from to be heard, and they having
been heard, and opportunity having been given to the
members of this judicatory to be heard, and they having
THE CHARGE AGAINST DR. BRIGGS.
413
been heard, as provided by the Book of Discipline, and
the General Assembly, as a judicatory sitting in said cause
on appeal, having sustained the following specifications of
error, to wit:
All of said specifications of errors set forth in said five
grounds of appeal, save and except the first and fifth.
under the fourth ground of appeal, on consideration thereof,
this judicatory finds said Appeal should be and is hereby
sustained, and that said Presbytery of New York, the judi-
catory appealed from, erred in striking out said amended
charges four and seven, and erred in not sustaining, on the
law and the evidence, said amended charges, one, two,
three, five, six and eight; on consideration whereof this
judicatory finds that said final judgment of the Presbytery
of New York is erroneous, and should be and is hereby
reversed; and this General Assembly sitting as a judica-
tory in said cause coming now to enter judgment on said
amended charges, one, two, three, five, six and eight, finds
the appellee, the said Charles A. Briggs, has uttered,
taught and propagated views, doctrines and teachings, as
set forth in said charges, contrary to the essential doctrine
of Holy Scripture and the Standards of said Presbyterian
church in the United States of America, and in violation
of the ordination vows of said appellee, which said erro-
neous teachings, views and doctrines strike at the vitals of
religion, and have been industriously spread; wherefore,
this General Assembly of the Presbyterian church in the
United States of America, sitting as a judicatory in this
cause on appeal, does hereby suspend Charles A. Briggs,
the said appellee, from the office of a minister in the Pres-
byterian church in the United States of America, until
such time as he shall give satisfactory evidence of repent-
ance to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian church
in the United States of America, for the violation by him
of said ordination vows as herein and heretofore found.
And it is ordered that the Stated Clerk of this General
Assembly transmit a certified copy of this judgment to the
Presbytery of New York, to be made a part of the record
*
414
APPENDIX.
in this case. It is also ordered that a copy be furnished
to the appellee, the Rev. Charles A. Briggs, D.D.
XXIV. PROPOSED PLAN FOR THE FEDERATION OF THE
REFORMED CHURCHES OF AMERICA, 1894.
For the glory of God, and for the greater unity and ad-
vancement of the church of which the Lord Jesus Christ
is the Head, the Reformed churches in the United States
holding to the Presbyterian system adopt the following
Articles of Federal Union:
1. Every denomination entering into this Union shall
retain its distinct individuality, as well as every power,
jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Constitution
expressly delegated to the body hereby constituted.
2. The acts, proceedings, and records of the duly consti-
tuted authorities of each of the denominations shall be re-
ceived in all the other denominations, and in the Federal
Council, as of full credit and with proper respect.
3. For the prosecution of work that can be better done
in union than separately, an Ecclesiastical Assembly is
hereby constituted, which shall be known by the name and
style of The Federal Council of the Reformed churches
in the United States of America holding the Presbyterian
system.
4. The Federal Council shall consist of four ministers
and four elders from each of the constituent denomina-
tions, who shall be chosen, with alternates, under the
direction of their respective supreme judicatories, in such
manner as those judicatories shall respectively determine.
5. The Federal Council shall promote the co-operation
of the federated denominations in their Home and Foreign
Missionary work, and shall keep watch on current religious,
moral, and social movements, and take such action as may
concentrate the influence of all the churches in the main-
tenance of the truth that our nation is a Protestant Chris-
tian nation, and of all that is therein involved.
415
6. The Federal Council may advise and recommend in
all matters pertaining to the general welfare of the King-
dom of Christ, but shall not exercise authority, except
such as is conferred upon it by this instrument, or such
as may be conferred upon it by the federated bodies. It
shall not interfere with the creed, worship, or government
of the federated denominations. In the conduct of its
meetings it shall respect their conscientious views. All
matters of discipline shall be left to the exclusive and
final judgment of the ecclesiastical authorities of the de-
nomination in which the same may arise.
7. The Federal Council shall have the power of opening
and maintaining a friendly correspondence with the high-
est Assemblies of other religious denominations, for the
purpose of promoting union and concert of action in gen-
eral or common interests.
PROPOSED PLAN FOR FEDERATION.
Vide
8. All differences which may arise among the federated
bodies, or any of them, in regard to matters within the
jurisdiction of the Federal Council shall be determined by
such executive agencies as may be created by the Federal
Council, with the right of appeal to the Federal Council
for final adjudication.
9. The officers of the Federal Council shall be a Presi-
dent, Vice-President, Clerk, and Treasurer.
10. The Federal Council shall meet annually, and on its
own adjournment, at such time and place as may be deter-
mined. Special meetings may be called by a unanimous
vote of the officers of the Council on thirty days' notice.
11. The expenses of the Council shall be met by a
contingent fund to be provided by a pro rata apportion-
ment on the basis of the number of communicants in each
denomination; and the expenses of the delegates to the
Council shall be paid from this fund.
12. Amendments to these Articles may be proposed by
the Federal Council, or by any of the supreme judicatories
of the churches in the Federation; but the approval of all
those judicatories shall be necessary for their adoption.
INDEX.
"Act and Testimony" of 1835, III, | Associate Reformed Church, 61, 62,
63, 76, 77, 78, 90, 91, 110, 133,
135, 147, 148, 171, 201, 278, 347,
348, 368, 369, 378, 379.
Associate Synod, 75, 76, 91, 92, 128,
147, 148, 201, 363, 364, 369, 378,
379.
Associated Presbyteries, 71.
Auburn Declaration of 1837, 118, 138,
159, 177, 357-362.
Auburn Seminary, 84, 85, 86, 275.
113.
Adams, William, 184.
Adopting Act of 1729, 26, 27, 330-
334, 340.
Adopting Act of 1788, 63-65, 246,
348-350.
African School, 85, 104.
Aiken, Charles, 213.
Aitken Bible, 60.
Albany, Synod of, 72,
Alexander, Archibald, 83, 86, 89, 114, Augustine of Hippo, 7, 289, 302, 304.
Awakening, the Great, 295-301, 310,
127, 143, 145, 172, 314, 315.
Alexander, David, 41.
Alexander, James Waddell, 97, 107,
143, 146.
|
Alexander, Joseph Addison, 144, 219.
Alexander, Samuel D., 218.
Alison, Francis, 35, 51, 83, 341.
Alleghany Seminary, 84, 275, 276,
337-339, 344-346.
Backus, John C., 152, 156.
Baird, Charles W., 217, 233.
Baird, E. Thompson, 151.
Baird, Henry M., 217.
Baird, Robert, 130, 145.
Baird, Samuel J., 145, 211.
Baker, Daniel, 172.
Balch, Hezekiah, 78, 86, 121, 188.
Baldwin, Moses, 49.
Baptism, 8, 12, 14, 15, 88, 99, 293,
297, 298, 301, 302, 318.
Barber, Jonathan, 36.
Barnes, Albert, 105-107, 109-112,
113, 124, 128, 130, 132, 133, 140,
144, 146, 178, 179, 180, 183, 212,
230, 267.
Barrier Act, 63, 64, 66, 67, 226.
Baxter, George Addison, 116, 119,
123, 127.
Baxter, Richard, 17, 18, 234, 237, 259.
Beale, Vivian, 17.
Beatty, Charles, 59.
Beautiful, the, 98, 302, 303.
Associate Presbytery, 42, 46-57, 60, Beecher, Edward, 108.
61, 62, 75.
277.
Alliance of the Reformed Churches,
202, 245, 264, 277.
Allison, James, 178.
American Board, 80, 104, 112, 138,
182, 201.
Anderson, Isaac, 84.
Anderson, James, 62, 75–78, 82.
Anderson, William C., 153, 156.
Andrews, Jedediah, 19, 332.
Annan, Robert, 62.
Armour, John M., 211.
Armstrong, Samuel Chapman,
196.
Army, 161.
Arnot, Andrew, 42.
Ashmun Institute, 123.
195,
Beecher, Henry Ward, 108, 291.
417
418
INDEX.
|
Beecher, Lyman, 108, 109, 130, 267.
Beecher, Willis J., 214, 215, 255, note.
Beman, Nathaniel S. S., 55, 109, 119,
127, 146.
Beveridge, Thomas, 62.
Bible Society, 81, 131, 143, 144.
Birch, G. W. F., 266.
Birney, James G., 132.
Bishops, diocesan, 5, 6, 17, 52-55, Chinese, 196.
207, 208, 325.
Bishops, Scriptural, 2, 226.
Black, John, 104.
Blackburn, Gideon, 78.
Blackburn, William M., 217.
Blair, Samuel, 30, 32, 37, 82, 337.
Board of Aid for Colleges, 198.
Board of Domestic Missions, 81, 112,
125, 167.
Board of Education, 112, 113, 274.
Board of Foreign Missions, 112.
Board of Publication, 199, 200, 410.
Boardman, Henry Augustus, 169, 314.
Boards of the church, 80, 125, 138,
159, 181–183, 410.
Boston, 22, 23, 29, 31, 48, 49.
Bowen, George, 182.
Brainerd, David, 39, 40, 78.
Brainerd, John, 40, 78.
Brainerd, Thomas, 131.
Breckinridge, John, 127, 143.
Breckinridge, Robert J., 112, 123,
127, 131, 140, 144, 145, 164, 168.
Briggs, Charles Augustus, 208,
214, 218, 247, 259, 261–270,
411-414.
49, 50, 56, 337, 344.
Carlisle, Presbytery of, 108.
213,
271,
Carolinas, 24, 45, 78.
Cartwright, Thomas, 3.
Catechetical instruction, 297, 298.
Chalmers, Thomas, 131.
Charity, judgment of, 12, 14, 37, 293,
294.
Charleston, 24.
Chidlaw, Benjamin W., 131, 162.
Christian Commission, 161, 162.
Christlieb, Theodore, 191, note.
Churchly era, 95, 96, 125, 138, 301-
306.
Cincinnati, Presbytery of, 108, 109,
270, 271.
Cleland, Thomas, 145.
Cleveland, John P., 119.
Cleveland Convention of 1893, 272.
Coffin, Charles, 78.
Colleges, 197, 198.
Columbia Seminary, 84, 141.
| Colwell, Stephen, 96, 162.
Concurrent Declarations of 1869, 179,
180-184, 409–411.
Confederate States, Presbyterian
Church in the, 155-159.
Congregation, the, 89, 90, 227–229.
Congregationalists 14, 15, 20, 21, 22,
23, 28, 29, 45, 48, 61, 68, 71, 72,
82, 83, 142, 182, 190, 196, 241, 251,
280, 284, 285, 353-356.
Connecticut, 15, 21, 36, 55, 60, 63,
71, 89, 295, 353-356.
Conversion, 32, 296, 339, 345.
Cooper, Thomas P., 131, 280.
Covenant, the Half-Way, 14, 28.
Covenanters, 4, 5, 40, 41, 60, 61, 62,
88, 100, 102-104, 233, 307. (See
Reformed Presbyterians.)
Covenants, the Scottish, 40, 41, 42,
317-327.
Cox, Samuel Hanson, 85, 127.
Craighead, Alexander, 41, 42, 332.
Craven, Elias R., 213, 247, 249, 250,
280.
Brown, Francis, 215, 217, 270.
Bullions, Peter, 128, 147.
Burr, Aaron, 35, 36.
Bush, George, 144.
Bushnell, Albert, 182.
Bushnell, Horace, 29, 239.
Caldwell, James, 57.
Calvin, John, 3, 6, 9, 97, 100, 139,
154, 238, 239, 286, 292.
Calvinism, 7, 8, 9, 10, 69, 70, 85, 87,
124, 126, 174, 177, 211, 237, 249,
251, 287, 288, 291, 295, 296.
Campbell, William O., 247.
Camp-meetings, 73.
Candidates, examination of, 35, 44, Culdees, 2.
Crawford, Samuel Wylie, 103, 160.
Crosby, Howard, 213, 216, 247.
Cross, John, 41.
Cross, Robert, 32, 341.
Cumberland Presbyterians, 74, 75,
175, 193, 278, 300, 308.
Dabney, Robert L., 211.
Dana, Stephen W., 247.
Danville Seminary, 275.
Davenport, James, 36.
Davidson, Robert, 146.
Cuthbertson, John, 41.
Cuyler, Theodore, 113.
Cuyler, Theodore Ledyard, 219, 247, Eliot, John, 14, 294.
Elizabethtown, 26, 35.
280.
Delaware, 19, 25.
Denton, Richard, 15, 284.
INDEX.
De Witt, 219, 247.
Dickey, James H., 123.
29, 293, 295, 300.
Davies, Samuel, 36, 39, 46, 143, 146. Engles, William M., 91, 107.
Davis, William C., 159.
English Presbyterians, 4, 245, 259,
Deacons and deaconesses, 190, 228,
294.
229.
Episcopacy. (See Bishops.)
Declaration and Testimony of 1865, Episcopalians, 5, 7, 45, 52-54, 56, 60,
168–171, 183, 184.
61, 68, 69, 95, 157, 161, 172, 175,
181, 192, 206-208, 231, 280, 285,
312, 316.
43, 143, 334.
Disciples, 310, 311.
Discipline, 9-11, 29, 141, 142, 240,
241, 292, 293.
Dodge, William E., 131, 162.
Donegal, Presbytery of, 49.
Doolittle, Justus, 182.
Doughty, Francis, 15, 17, 284.
Drake, Charles D., 247, 349.
Dubuque Seminary (German),
275.
"Elective affinity," 50, 109, 110, III,
113.
Elliott, Charles, 213, 214.
Elliott, David, 119.
Dickinson, Jonathan, 26, 27, 31, 35, Ewing, John, 63.
349.
Duffield, George (2), 108, 124, 178.
Duffield, George (3), 146.
Duffield, John T., 247.
Ely, Ezra Stiles, 86, 107, III.
Emigration, spiritual perils of, 20, 28,
Duffield, Samuel Willoughby, 220.
Dunlop, William, 284.
Dunn, Robinson P., 222.
Duryea, Joseph T., 222.
Dwight, Theodore, 78, 90.
Eastward, Presbytery of the, 48.
Education, 25, 34-36, 68, 69, 70, 71,
82-85, 197-199, 299.
Edwards, Jonathan (1), 31, 36, 37, 39,
90, 105, 139, note, 253, 295.
Edwards, Jonathan (2), 154.
Eldership, the, 66, 90, 141, 229, 251,
252, 293.
"Elect infants," 248, 249, 252, 255,
257.
419.
Episcopate, the historic, 207, 312.
Evans, Llewellyn J., 213, 270.
Finney, Charles Grandison, 126.
195, Foote, William Henry, 146.
Exscinding Acts of 1837, 117, 119, 141,
170, 183, 355-357.
"Falling exercise," 73.
Farris, Robert P., 167, 168.
Federal theology, 87, 88, 105, 124,
138, 139, 358, 359, 375.
Federation, Plan of, 277-279, 414-415.
Finley, Samuel, 36, 46.
Duff, Alexander, 131, 138.
Duffield, George (1), 57, 59, 63, Fowler, Henry, 181, 196.
Form of Government and Discipline,
63-65.
Free Church of Scotland, 137, 245,
259, 264, 277.
Free Presbyterian Church, 137.
Free Presbytery of Miami, 147.
Freedmen's missions, 190, 191-194.
Frelinghuysen, Jacob, 30.
Ganse, Hervey D., 221.
Gellatly, Alexander, 42.
General Assembly of 1801, 353-355;
1807, 74, 75; 1810, 106; 1818, 133,
135, 364-368; 1824, 250; 1831, 106,
107, 109, 110; 1832, 109; 1833, 159';
1834, 109; 1835, 111, 116; 1837,
115-118, 355-362; 1838, 118, 119;
1844 (O. S.), 198; 1842-44 (O. S.),
141; 1845 (O. S.), 136, 168, 369-
372; 1846 (O. S.), 136; 1849 (O. S.),
136; 1851 (N. S.), 135, 372, 373;
1853 (N. S.), 135, 373, 374; 1854
420
INDEX.
}
(O. S.), 141; 1859 (N. S.), 182;
1860 (O. S.), 141; 1861 (O. S.),
150-155, 379-388; (South), 155,
156, 388-406; 1862 (O. S.), 164,
173; (South), 158; 1864 (O. S.),
166, 168, 173; (South), 158, 159;
1865 (O. S.), 167, 168; 1866 (O.
and N. S.), 169, 173, 174, 272;
1868 (O. and N. S.), 177, 407; 1869
(O. and N. S.), 179, 180, 408–411;
1870, 180-185, 199, 204; (South),
184; 1887, 200; 1888, 204, 205;
(South), 204, 205; 1889, 246; 1890,
254; 1891, 229, 254, 265, 266, 274;
1892, 254, 266, 275; 1893, 268-270,
272, 274; 1894, 275, 276, 277;
(South), 205.
Genesee, Synod of, 94, 114, 356.
Geneva, 3, 9, 10, 97.
Georgia, 24.
Gililand, James, 122.
Gillette, Ezra H., 183, 217.
Grafton, Presbytery of, 48.
Grasty, John S., 219.
Green, Ashbel, 65, 86, 105, 107, 110,
123, 125, 127, 143, 145, 233, 349.
Green, William Henry, 213, 214, 247,
254, 255, note, 257, 267.
Greenville College, 78, 188.
Gregory, Caspar René, 215.
Gregory, Daniel S., 216.
Griffin, Edward Dorr, 85, 86, 89, 104,
143.
Gurley, Phineas H., 169, 170, 176,
179, 408.
Hageman, John Frelinghuysen, 218.
Hall, Charles Cuthbert, 221.
Hall, Isaac H., 215.
Hall, John, 206, 219, 247, 253.
Hanover, Presbytery of, 39, 59, 60.
Hastings, Thomas S., 146, 236.
Hatfie'd, Edwin F., 146, 221.
Hays, George P., 218, 247, 280.
Hemphill, Samuel, 27, 28.
Henderson, Alexander, II, 12, 97.
Henderson, Matthew, 60.
Hicock, Laurens P., 212.
Hill, Matthew, 17, 18, 29, 284.
Hill, William, 146.
Hodge, Archibald Alexander, 139,
178, 187, 198, 210, 214, 219, 233,
244, 245, 280.
Hodge, Caspar Wistar, 210, 247.
Hodge, Charles, 83, 88, note, 113,
127, 135, 140, 141, 144, 145, 146,
154, 157, 162, 174, 177, 180, 183,
209, 210, 214, 215, 219, 229, 233,
234, 249, 251, 272, 280, 313, 314,
315, 380-388.
Hopkins, S. M., 234, 235, note.
Hopkinsianism, 78, 84, 91, 104, 115,
121, 139, note.
Hornblower, William Henry, 213.
Howe, George, 218.
Huguenots, 3, 10.
Hunt, Thomas P., 130.
Hymn-writers, 40, 78, 146, 220-222,
237.
Immigration, 17, 19, 22-24, 28, 29,
45, 194, 195.
Incarnation, the, 95, 96, 237, 238,
301.
Independency, 1, 14, 15, 284, 291,
294.
Presbyterian Church
Independent
(S. C.), 159.
Indians, 24, 39, 40, 78, 81, 159, 182,
191, 195, 196, 297.
Individualism, 13, 87, 88, 96, 100,
238, 291, 296, 297, 303.
Inerrancy of the Scriptures, 261-263,
266, 267, 271, 272, 273, 411, 412.
Institutional church, 240.
Irving, Edward, 97, 129, 204, 232,
316.
Jackson, Samuel Macauley, 217.
Jackson, Sheldon, 196, 213.
Jackson, Thomas A., 211.
Jacobus, Melanchthon W., 144, 178,
181.
Jamaica, L. I., 284.
Jerks, the, 73.
Jessup, Henry H., 182, 212, 213.
Jessup, William, 127, 128.
Johnson, Herrick, 219, 247, 255, note,
270, 280.
Johnson, Katherine, 222.
Junkin, George, 91, 107, 109–111, 124,
127, 140, 166, 219.
Kellogg, Alfred H., 215.
Kellogg, S. H., 212, 215.
Kentucky, 73-75.
Kentucky, Synod of, 74, 75, 123, 169,
170, 171.
Knox, John, 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 70, 97,
100, 154, 181, 196, 234, 259, 286,
304.
Kollock, Shepherd K., 143.
Krebs, John M., 233.
Lambeth Articles, 7.
Lampe, Joseph J., 266, 268.
Lane Seminary, 108, 270, 275.
Lanier, Sidney, 220.
Larned, Sylvester, 143.
Lasco, John à, 3, 286.
Lillie, John, 213, 216.
Lincoln University, 123.
<<
235, 294.
Log College," 30.
INDEX.
Liturgies, Presbyterian, 3, 8, 208, 233- Miller, J. R., 219.
Londonderry, N. H., 23, 48, 76.
Long Island, 15, 19, 40, 64, 284.
Loomis, A. W., 213.
Maine, 22.
Makemie, Francis, 18, 19, 38, 284.
March, Francis A., 220.
Martin, W. A. P., 213.
Maryland, 17, 19, 25, 29, 284.
Maryville Seminary, 84.
Mason, Erskine, 91, 119, 127, 146.
Mason, John M., 77, 82, 89, 90, 91,
143.
Mason, Lowell, 236.
Mather, Cotton, 14, 21, 294.
Maxwell, William, 122.
McAuley, Thomas, 127.
McBeth, Sue, 191.
Lord, Daniel, 121.
Lord's Supper, 8, 12, 37, 90, 99, 100, Missions, foreign, 80, 138, 181, 182,
190, 297, 298, 300.
232, 233, 301, 302, 318.
Lovejoy, Elijah P., 132.
Lowrie, John C., 213.
Missions, home, 45, 46, 81, 93, 94,
188, 190, 194–196, 300.
Mississippi Valley, 81, 93.
Lowrie, Samuel T., 213, 216, 247.
Lusk, Robert, 104, 147.
Missouri, Synod of, 167, 169, 170,
Macmillan, John (1), 4, 40.
Macmillan, John (2), 59.
McCalla, William L., 107, 110, 127.
McCook, Henry C., 247.
McCook, John J., 266, 268.
McCormick, Cyrus, 151.
McKinney, James, 75.
McKnight, John, 88.
McLeod, Alexander, 75, 92.
McPheeters, Samuel B., 164–166, 168,
218.
McWhorter, Alexander, 52, 63.
Melville, Andrew, 3, 11.
Memorial of 1837, 115, 116, 177, 357–
362.
McCosh, James, 189, 202, 212, 247.
McCullagh, John, 131.
McCune, William, 205.
McDowell, John, 127.
McFarland, Amanda R., 191.
McIlvaine, J. H., 216, 280.
421
Methodism, 30, 31, 37, 61, 68, 69, 71,
96, 99, 285, 295, 296, 297, 298, 299,
305, 306, 312.
Miller, John, 225.
Miller, Samuel, 83, 86, 87, 88, 89, 114,
115, 122, 123, 125, 127, 141, 143,
145, 233.
Mills, Henry, 84, 146.
Mills, Samuel J., 81.
Misadelphia," 107.
66
171.
Moderates, Scottish, 46, 48, 51.
Moffat, J. C., 217.
Moore, Dunlop, 213.
Moore, W. W., 220.
Morris, Edward D., 211, 255, note.
Murphy, Thomas, 218.
Murray, John, 48, 49, 57.
Music, 202, 203, 235, 236.
National Reform Association, 280-
283.
Nelson, David, 122, 132, 146.
Neshaminy Academy, 30, 35, 59.
Nevin, Alfred, 218.
New Brunswick, 30, 33, 34, 41.
New England, 10, 13, 16, 20, 22, 28,
29, 45, 48, 49, 57, 59, 60, 76, 83,
85-89, 142, 143, 160, 187, 287, 288,
294.
New Hampshire, 22, 49, 57, 72.
New Haven theology, 124.
New Jersey, 25.
New Jersey, College of, 34, 35, 36,
46, 58, 59, 82, 83, 189.
New London Academy, 35.
"New Side," 34-40, 43, 44, 250.
422
INDEX.
New York, 15, 16, 18, 23, 25, 38, 42,
43, 45, 54, 72, 109, 179, 183, 196.
New York, Presbytery of, 109, 121,
266-269, 411–414.
New York, Synod of, 34, 36, 43, 121,
199.
i
New York and Philadelphia, Synod
of, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49-52, 55, 56,
57, 63-65, 71, 342-347, 348-353,
362, 363.
Newark Theological Seminary, 195,
275.
Newburg Theological Seminary, 91.
Newburyport, Mass., 14, 48, 49, 284.
Niccolls, Samuel J., 255, note, 268,
270.
Norton, Augustus Theodore, 218.
Nottingham sermon, 32, 34, 337.
Occom, Samson, 40.
Octorara, 41.
Ohio, 72, 121.
Ohio, Synod of, 108, 109, 121.
Omaha Theological Seminary, 275.
Palmer, Benjamin M., 156, 157, 219,
220.
Parkhurst, Charles H., 219.
Parsons, Jonathan, 49.
Pastorate, the, 89, 90, 228, 229, 230,
231, 232.
Patrick, 2.
Patterson, Joseph, 162.
Patton, Francis L., 212, 219, 220,
223-225, 247, 257.
Patton, William, 119.
Paxson, John R., 188.
Paxton, William M., 178.
Pelham, Mass., 22.
276, 294, 295.
Pennsylvania, Synod of, 225.
Perrine, M. L. R., 84.
Peters, Absalom, 112, 125.
Phelps, Austin, 132, 133.
Philadelphia, 19, 35, 71, 105, 106, 107,
108.
Pierson, Arthur T., 213, 222.
Pittsburg Circular of 1869, 178.
Pitzer, A. W., 212.
Plan of Union of 1758, 43, 44, 49, 50,
250, 342-347.
Plan of Union of 1801, 72, 104, 112,
114, 116, 117, 118, 125, 142, 144,
note, 183, 353-357, 409.
Plumer, William S., 117, 127, 215,
216, 219.
Poor, Daniel W., 213.
Post, George E., 212.
Potts, George, 107, 127.
Pratt, R. H., 195, 196.
| Prayer-meetings, 228, 297.
Predestination, 7, 101, 248, 249, 254,
287, 288, 358.
Prentiss, Elizabeth, 220.
Prentiss, George L., 218.
Presbygational churches," 72, 183.
Presbytery, the, 226, 227.
Preston, Margaret Junkin, 220.
Prime, S. Irenæus, 219, 220.
Princeton Seminary, 83, 85, 86, 87,
88, 113, 114, 124, 210, 244, 254,
255, 257, 275, 276, 314, 315.
Protestation of 1741, 32, 33, 334-341,
Philadelphia, Presbytery of, 19, 25,
48, 50, 246, 256, 286.
Philadelphia, Synod of, 25, 26, 27, 32,
33, 34, 35, 296, 307, 330–341.
Philadelphia Reunion Convention of
1867, 407, 408.
Pierson, Abraham, 284.
(6
343, 344.
Proudfit, Alexander, 82.
Proudfit, James, 62.
Psalmody, 8, 43, 49, 52, 78, 90, 104,
185, 202, 203, 204, 222, 297, 329,
330, 377, 378.
Publication work and boards, 77, 199,
Pennsylvania, 19, 23, 45, 59, 60, 120, Randolph, Anson D. F., 222.
Rankin, Adam, 78.
200.
Puritans, 3, 10, 13-16, 20, 96, 99,
289-292, 305.
Redstone, Presbytery of, 59, 256.
Reformed Church, 2-12.
Reformed Presbyterians, 92, 93, 147–
149, 162, 163, 174, 175, 183–186,
188, 190, 201, 211, 212, 278, 279-
283.
Reformed Presbytery, 40, 41, 47, 75,
279, 363.
Reformers, 2, 238, 239, 304.
Reid, W. R., 216.
Reprobation, 248, 249, 252, 255, 257.
Reunion of 1869-70, 175-186, 407-
411.
423
Revision of the standards, 64, 65, 148, | Smith, Henry Preserved, 261, 270,
243-260.
271.
Revival, the great, of 1801, 73, 74, 238.
Revivals, 30, 31, 37, 126, 142, 297.
Rice, John Holt, 86, 107, 108, 116,
122, 125, 188.
| Smith, Robert, 63, 82.
Smith, W. Robertson, 264, 265, 277.
Smyth, Thomas, 211.
Social spirit, 96, 238, 239, 240, 303-
306.
Richards, James, 84, 85, 86, 104, 177.
Riddle, Matthew B., 213, 214, 216,
255, note.
South Carolina, 47, 48.
Southern "Presbyterian Church in
the Confederate States," 155-159,
388-407.
Riggs, Elias, 212.
Southern" Presbyterian Church in the
United States," 163, 170, 171, 183,
184, 276.
Spencer, Elihu, 40.
Spencer, Ichabod, 121, 146.
Sprague, William B., 145.
Spring, Gardiner, 85, 88, 120, 121,
152-154, 156, 157, 158, 219.
Spring Resolutions of 1861, 152–158,
379-388.
INDEX.
Robinson, Charles S., 220, 221.
Robinson, Edward, 143.
Robinson, William, 39.
Rodgers, John, 39, 52, 58, 63, 88, 145.
Rosbrugh, John, 57.
Rotary eldership, 230.
Rous, Francis, 43, 78.
Rowland, John, 30.
Ruskin, John, 99.
Salwey, Richard, 17.
San Francisco Theological Seminary,
275.
Saybrook Platform, 15, 21, 295.
Schaff, Philip, 145, 202, 213, 214, 215,
216, 217, 220, 221, 247, 302.
Schermerhorn, John F., 81.
Scotch-Irish, 6, 16-18, 22-25, 29, 38,
45, 56, 59, 69, 121, 123, 160, 188,
287, 288, 295, 296.
Scotland, 3, 10, 16, 26, 306–308, 317-
334.
Scouller, James B., 218.
Seceders, 4, 5, 27, 41, 42, 43, 51.
Seminaries, theological, 83-85, 181,
""
195, 274-277, 410, 411.
Separates," 36, 297.
Seward, M. H., 222.
Shedd, William G. T., 177, 211, 213, Suffolk Presbytery, 40, 64.
Sproat, James, 63.
Sproull, Thomas, 212.
Squier, Miles P., 119.
Statistics of growth, 77, 93, 94, 117,
120, 121, 125, 126, 184, 185, 197,
198, 278, 284, 285.
Stearns, Jonathan F., 139, 173, 179.
Steele, David, 104, 149, 283.
Stobo, Archibald, 284.
Stryker, Melanchthon Woolsey, 221.
Stuart, George Hay, 131, 162, 174,
185, 186, 219.
Stuarts, the, 3, 155.
Subscription, 26, 33, 43, 44, 104, 105,
139, 140, 174, 249-252, 269, 270,
330-334, 335, 336, 344, 352, 353.
216, 247, 252.
Shields, Charles W., 208, 212, 234,
235, note.
Skinner, Thomas H., 107, 127, 146.
Slater, George, 217.
Slavery, 75, 76, 77, 78, 91, 93, 122,
123, 131-137, 148, 151, 152, 158,
159, 162, 163, 167, 279, 298, 362-
374, 377, 383, 397-405.
Sloan, D. H., 218.
Sloane, James Renwick Willson, 219.
Smith, Henry B., 139, 145, 174, 175,
176, 177, 178, 209, 213, 217, 219,
249, 407, 408.
Sunday-schools, 90, 131, 200, 228,
236, 298.
Sustentation Fund, 189.
Swing, David, 223-225, 244.
Switzerland, 2, 3.
Synodical government, I, 14, 15, 18,
67, 79, 80, 226, 227, 285-287, 337,
343.
Talmage, T. De Witt, 219.
Taylor, Nathaniel W., 105, 124, 138.
Temperance reformation, 108, 130,
281, 383.
Tennent, Gilbert, 30-33, 36, 37, 46,
52, 90, 143, 307, 334, 337.
424
INDEX.
Tennent, William, 30, 59, 82.
Tennent, William, Jr., 30, 31, 334.
Tennessee, 73-75.
Testimony and Memorial of 1837, 115,
116.
Theocracy, 10, 38, 97, 154, 155, 161,
279-281, 299, 305, 306.
Thompson, Charles L., 247, 270.
Thomson, Charles, 57.
Thomson, John, 26, 332, 341.
Thomson, William M., 143, 182.
Thornwell, James Henry, 141, 145,
157, 158, note, 159, 183, 209, 219,
388-406.
Todd, John, 39.
Traill, William, 18.
Turner, D. K., 218.
277.
|
United Presbyterian Church, 147, 148,
185, 190, 201, 202–204, 205, 218,
277, 282, 374-378.
United Synod of the South, 135, 156,
159, 406, 407.
Unity of the church, 172, 241,
242,
306–316.
Watts, Isaac, 43, 52, 78, 90.
Webster, Richard, 146.
Websterites," 147.
Welch, Ransom B., 211.
Welsh, 20, 27, 56.
West Virginia, 24.
Western Missionary Society, 1'2, 117,
Utica, Synod of, 117.
Van Dyke, Henry, 219.
Van Dyke, Henry J., 247.
Van Rensselaer, Cortlandt, 198.
Vincent, Marvin R., 215, 216.
Virginia, 38, 39, 45, 284, 295.
Wadsworth, Charles, 219.
Waldenses, 2, 302, 304.
Wanamaker, John, 131.
Warfield, Benjamin B., 214, 247, 254.
"Warwickites." (See Reformed Dis-
senting Presbytery.)
CC
Westminster Directory, 9, 64, 65, 235,
335, 336, 340, 342, 343, 348, 349.
Tuscaloosa Institute, 193.
Ulster, 5, 6, 12, 15–18, 22, 23, 26, 29, | Westminster Shorter Catechism, 235,
45, 54, 69, 294, 295, 296, 300.
246, 331-334, 335, 336, 340, 342,
343, 349.
Wheelock, Eleazar, 48.
Union Theological Seminary, N. Y.,
114, 271, 274, 275, 276.
Union Theological Seminary, Va., 83,
84, 116.
|
Whelpley, Samuel, 85.
Whitaker, Epher, 221.
White, J. W., 225.
United Church of Christ, Japan, 201,
Whitefield, George, 30, 31, 36, 37, 49.
Wilder, Royal G., 138, 182.
Willson, James Renwick, 92.
Wilson, James P., 105.
Wilson, Joshua L., 108, 109, 110.
Wilson, Matthew, 64.
Wilson, Samuel R., 168.
Witherspoon, John, 46, 47, 52, 57, 82.
Witherspoon, John, Jr., 127.
Wing, Conway P., 213, 218.
Wodrow, James, 223.
Wolfe, Aaron R., 221, 222.
Women, 83, 190, 191.
Worcester, Mass., 22, 23.
Wordsworth, William, 10, II.
Wylie, Samuel Brown, 75, 82, 88,
125.
Westminster Assembly, 4, 14, 26, 60,
105, 154, 253, 259, 260.
Westminster Confession, 6, 7, 26, 27,
33, 64, 75, 76, 147, 155, 159, 174,
175, 245, 246–260, 262, 263, 290,
300, 315, 327-329, 330-334, 335,
336, 337, 340, 342, 343, 348, 349,
350.
note.
Yeomans, Edward D., 213.
Yeomans, John William, 152, 156.
Zwingli, Huldrich, 7, 90, 99.
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·
·
REV. ROBERT ELLIS THOMPSON, D.D.,
Philadelphia. Pa.
REV. C. C. TIFFANY, D.D.,
New York.
Providence, R. I.
REV. GROSS Alexander, D.D.,
Professor Greek and N. T. Exegesis,
Nashville, Tenn.
REV. THOMAS C. JOHNSON, D.D.,
Professor Ecclesiastical History and
Polity, Hampden-Sidney, Va.
REV. JAMES B. SCOULLER, D.D.,
Newville, Pa.
REV. R. V. Foster, D.D.,
Professor Biblical Exegesis, Cumberland
University, Lebanon, Tenn.
REV. R. B. TYLER, D.D., New York.
Prof. A. C. THOMAS, M.A.,
Haverford College, Haverford, Pa.
R. H. THOMAS, M.D., Baltimore, Md.
REV. D. BERGER, D.D., Dayton, Ohio.
REV. S. P. Spreng,
Editor Evangelical Messenger, Cleve-
land, Ohio.
REV. SAMUEL MACAULEY JACKSON,
New York.
0933

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