under the reigns of James and Charles I., and obliged to seek shelter first in Holland and then in the wilderness of New England.

But with the opening of the Long Parliament, which promised to inaugurate a jubilee to all tender consciences, they began to breathe freely, and hastened to return from exile; 'for,' says Fuller, only England is England indeed, though some parts of Holland may be like unto it.' They had a considerable share in the labors of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, especially through Dr. Goodwin and Rev. Philip Nye, who are styled the 'patriarchs' of orthodox Independency. They became the ruling political and religious power in England during the short protectorate of Cromwell, and furnished the majority to his ecclesiastical commission, called the Triers. After the Restoration they were again persecuted, being held chiefly responsible for the execution of King Charles and the overthrow of the monarchy. In 1689 they acquired toleration, and are now one of the most intelligent, active, and influential among the Dissenting bodies in England.

6

The classical soil of Congregationalism is New England, where it established a Church without a bishop and a State without a king.' From New England it spread into the far West, to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and exerted a powerful influence upon other Churches. Puritan Congregationalism is the father of New England and one of the grandfathers of the American Republic, and it need not be ashamed of its children. It lacks a proper appreciation of histor

1 Vol. VI. p. 280.

2

I beg leave to quote from an essay which I wrote and published in the midst of our civil war (1863), when New England was most unpopular, the following tribute to its influence upon American history: 'It seems superfluous, even in these days of sectional prejudice, party animosity, and slander, to say one word in praise of New England. Facts and institutions always speak best for themselves. We might say with Daniel Webster, giving his famous eulogy on Massachusetts a more general application to her five sister States: "There they stand look at them, and judge for yourselves. There is their history-the world knows it by heart the past at least is secure. The rapid rise and progress of that rocky and barren country called New England is one of the marvels of modern history. In the short period of two centuries and a half it has attained the height of modern civilization which it required other countries more than a thousand years to reach. Naturally the poorest part of the United States, it has become the intellectual garden, the busy workshop, and the thinking brain of this vast republic. In general wealth and prosperity, in energy and enterprise, in love of freedom and respect for law, in the diffusion of intelligence and education, in letters and arts, in virtue and religion, in every essential feature of national power and greatness, the people of the six New England States, and more particularly of Massachusetts, need not fear a comparison with the most favored nation on the globe. But the power and influence of

ical Christianity and its claims upon our regard and obedience; but by bringing to light the manhood and freedom of the Christian people, and the rights and privileges of individual congregations, it marks a real progress in the development of Protestantism, and has leavened other Protestant denominations in America; for here congregations justly claim and exercise a much larger share, and have consequently a much deeper interest in the management of their own affairs than in the State Churches of Europe. The Congregational system implies, of course, the power of self-government and a living faith in Christ, without which it would be no government at all. It moreover requires the cementing power of fellowship.

INDEPENDENCY AND FELLOWSHIP.

Anglo-American Congregationalism has two tap roots, independency and fellowship, on the basis of the Puritan or Calvinistic faith. It succeeds in the measure of its ability to adjust and harmonize them. It is a compromise between pure Independency and Presbyterianism. It must die without freedom, and it can not live without authority. Independency without fellowship is ecclesiastical atomism; fellowship without Independency leads to Presbyterianism or Episcopacy.1

It starts from the idea of an apostolic congregation as an organized

New England, owing to the enterprising and restless character of its population, extends far beyond its own limits, and is almost omnipresent in the United States. The twenty thousand Puritans who emigrated from England within the course of twenty years, from 1620 to 1640, and received but few accessions until the modern flood of mixed European immigration set in, have grown into a race of several millions, diffused themselves more or less into every State of the Union, and take a leading part in the organization and development of every new State of the great West to the shores of the Pacific. Their principles have acted like leaven upon American society; their influence reaches into all the ramifications of our commerce, manufactures, politics, literature, and religion; there is hardly a Protestant Church or Sabbath-school in the land, from Boston to San Francisco, which does not feel, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively, the intellectual and moral power that constantly emanates from the classical soil of Puritan Christianity.'

1 Dr. Emmons, one of the leaders of New England Congregationalism, is credited with this memorable dictum: 'Associationism leads to Consociationism; Consociationism leads to Presbyterianism; Presbyterianism leads to Episcopacy; Episcopacy leads to Roman Catholicism; and Roman Catholicism is an ultimate fact' (Prof. Park, in Memoir of Emmons, p. 163). But there would be equal force in the opposite reasoning from Independency to anarchy, and from anarchy to dissolution. Independents have a right to protest against tyranny, whether exercised by bishops or presbyters ('priests writ large'); but there are Lord Brethren as well as Lord Bishops, and the tyranny of a congregation over a minister, or of a majority over a minority, is as bad as any other kind of tyranny.

brotherhood of converted believers in Christ. This was the common ground of the Westminster divines.' But they parted on the question of jurisdiction and the relation of the local congregation to the Church general. The Independents denied the authority of presbyteries and synods, and maintained that each congregation properly constituted is directly dependent on Christ, and subject to his law, and his law only. The whole power of the keys is vested in these individual churches.

At the same time, however, it is admitted and demanded that there should be a free fraternal intercommunion between them, with the rights and duties of advice, reproof, and co-operation in every Christian work.

This fellowship manifests itself in the forms of Councils, Associations (in Massachusetts), Consociations (in Connecticut), on a larger scale in 'the Congregational Union of England and Wales,' and 'the National Council of the Congregational Churches in the United States.' It is this fellowship which gives Congregationalism the character of a denomination among other denominations. But the principle of congregational sovereignty is guarded by denying to those general meetings any legislative authority, and reducing them simply to advisory bodies.2

There were from the start two tendencies among Congregationaliststhe extreme Independents or Separatists, of whom the Pilgrim Fathers' are the noblest representatives, and the more churchly Independents, who remained in the English Church, and who established on a Calvinistic theocratic basis the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. John Robinson, the Moses of American Independency, who accompanied his flock to the deck of the Speedwell, but never saw the promised

1 'The Form of Presbyterial Church Government agreed upon by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster,' and adopted by the General Assembly of Scotland in 1645, thus defines a local Church: Particular churches in the primitive times were made up of visible saints, viz., such as, being of age, professed faith in Christ and obedience unto Christ, according to the rules of faith and life taught by Christ and his apostles, and of their children.' The Form of Government ratified by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States in May, 1821, gives this definition (Ch. II. 4): ‘A particular church consists of a number of professing Christians, with their offspring, voluntarily associated together for divine worship and godly living, agreeably to the Holy Scriptures, and submitting to a cer tain form of government.'

* The most serious conflict between the principles of Independency and Fellowship in recent times has grown out of the unhappy Beecher trial, which has shaken American Congregationalism to the very base. See Proceedings of the two Councils held in Brooklyn in 1874 and 1876, which represent both sides of the question (Dr. Storrs's and Mr. Beecher's), though presided over by the same Nestor of American Congregationalism (Dr. Leonard Bacon).

land himself, was a separatist from the Church of England, though he disowned Brownism with its extravagances. His colony at Plymouth were Separatists. The settlers of Boston, Salem, Hartford, and New Haven, on the other hand, were simply Nonconformists within the Church of England. Their ministers-John Cotton, Richard Mather, Thomas Hooker, John Davenport, Samuel Stone, and others—were trained in the English Universities, mostly in Cainbridge,' and had received Episcopal ordination. They rejected the term Independents, and inconsistently relapsed into the old notion of uniformity in religion, with an outburst of the dark spirit of persecution. But this was only temporary. American Congregationalism at present is a compromise between the two tendencies, and vacillates between them, leaning sometimes to the one, sometimes to the other side.

CONGREGATIONALISM AND CREEDS.

The effect of the Congregational polity upon creeds is to weaken the authority of general creeds and to strengthen the authority of particular creeds. The principle of fellowship requires a general creed, but it is reduced to a mere declaration of the common faith prevailing among Congregationalists at a given time, instead of a binding formula of subscription. The principle of independency calls for as many particular creeds as there are congregations. Each congregation, being a complete self-governing body, has the right to frame its own creed, to change it ad libitum, and to require assent to it not only from the minister, but from every applicant for membership. Hence there are a great many creeds among American Congregationalists which have purely local authority; but they must be in essential harmony with the prevailing faith of the body, or the congregations professing them forfeit the privileges of fellowship. They must flow from the same system of doctrine, as many little streams flow from the same fountain.

In this multiplication of local creeds Congregationalism far outstrips the practice of the ante-Nicene age, where we find varying yet essen

1 Masson (Life of Milton, Vol. II. p. 563) says that of seventeen noted ministers who emigrated to New England, fourteen were bred in Cambridge, and only three (Davenport, Mather, and Williams) at Oxford. R. Williams was probably likewise a Cambridge graduate. It was therefore natural that the first college in New England should be called after Cambridge.

tially concordant rules of faith in Jerusalem, Cæsarea, Antioch, Aquileja, Carthage, Rome.

With these local creeds are connected 'covenants' or pledges of members to live conformably to the law of God and the faith and discipline of the Church. A covenant is the ethical application of the dogmatic creed.

In the theory of creeds and covenants, as on the whole subject of Church polity, the Regular or Calvinistic Baptists entirely agree with the Congregationalists.

§ 102. ENGLISH CONGREGATIONAL CREEDS.

Literature.

A DECLARATION | of the | FAITH and Order | Owned and practised in the | CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES | in | ENGLAND; | Agreed upon and consented unto | by their | ELDERS AND MESSENGERS | in | their MERTING at the SAVOY, | Octob. 12, 1658. | London | Printed for D.L. And are to be sold in Paul's Churchyard, Fleet Street, and Westminster Hall, 1659.

A Latin edition appeared in 1662 at Utrecht, under the title, Confessio nuper edita Independentium seu Congregationalium in Anglia.

The Preface, the Platform, and those doctrinal articles which differ from the Westminster Confession are printed in Vol. III. pp. 707 sqq., from the first London edition. The Savoy Declaration, without the Preface, is also given by HANBURY, Memorials, Vol. III. pp. 517 sqq.; and by Dr. A. H. QUINT. in the 'Congregational Quarterly' for July and October, 1866 (Vol. VIII. pp. 241-267 and 341-344). On the Savoy meeting, comp. HANBURY, Memorials, Vol. III. pp. 515 sqq.

We now proceed to the general creeds or declarations of faith which have been approved by the Congregational Churches in England and America. They agree substantially with the Westminster Confession, or the Calvinistic system of doctrine, but differ from Presbyterianism by rejecting the legislative and judicial authority of presbyteries and synods, and by maintaining the independence of the local churches. In the course of time the rigor of old Calvinism has relaxed, both in England and America. New England theology,' as it is called, attempts to find a via media between Calvinism and Arminianism in anthropology and soteriology. But the old standards still remain unrepealed.

The first and fundamental Congregational confession of faith and platform of polity is the SAVOY DECLARATION, so called from the place where it was composed and adopted.1

The Savoy, in the Strand, London, is remarkable for its historical associations. The palace, on the banks of the Thames, was built by Peter, Earl of Savoy and Richmond, in 1245; enlarged and beautified by Henry, Duke of Lancaster, 1328. King John II., of