A Handbook of Congregationalism

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Contents

CHAPTXR. PAGB.

I. The History of Congregationalism . . . i

II. The Polity of Congregationalism . . .14

Chapter I. The History Of Congregationalism

SPEAK here solely of its history since the Reformation, inasmuch as the discussion of that original Congregationalism which is taught and exemplified in the references of the New Testament to the subject of polity, and which characterized the Apostolic churches, can be treated more naturally under a subsequent head in the examination of those references themselves.

The immediate result of that transfer of the headship of the Established Church of England from Pope Clement VII. to King Heniy VIIL, which it is common to call the Reformation, was Episcopacy. A secondary result was the Presbyterianism which those who were exiled for conscience' sake during the brief subsequent reign of the bloody Mary were taught by the disciples of Calvin at Geneva, Frankfort, and elsewhere, and brought back with them on their return ; of which Thomas Cartwright was the most illustrious champion. The spiritual needs of England remained so serious under Elizabeth as to lead the godly who longed for a more thorough and purer reformation to cast about for some greater relief than had yet been gained ; and the majority of these — who §oon came to be, not unnaturally, called Puritans — looked toward Cartwright and the new discipline which hq advocated, as best offering to supply a demand which every month seemed to them to render more pressing. But this Genevan plan contemplated a State Church still. It proposed indiscriminately, by their baptism, to receive all the baptized to its fellowship. And it waited for the Queen to move as its leader and head — which, to some whose hearts burned within them, seemed to threaten a wearywaiting for a doubtful blessing; yet while the little light which they saw in this direction was scarcely more than darkness, they saw none at all else-wise.

Such being the condition of affairs, in the year 1568, or thereabouts, there went up to Cambridge — where the Puritan influence then especially centered — a young man named Robert Browne, of a good family in Rutlandshire, to become a scholar of Corpus Christi (or Benet) College. Leaving Cambridge after a few terms of study, he taught school for three years, apparently at Southwark ; but the plague of 1578 broke up his school, and he went home. On the subsidence of the pest he returned to Cambridge for further research and training, and soon became a member of the family of Rev. Richard Greenham, an eminently devout Puritan minister resident in the near vicinity, and studied theology with him. Mr. Greenham encouraged him to preach, and he did so with so much acceptance as soon to be pressed to accept one of the Cambridge pulpits. After considerable anxious thought he declined the invitation, on the ground that he could not in conscience ask, or receive, ordination from the Bishops. He passed through, at this time, a mental conflict which for a season seems to have broken down his not robust bodily health. In his own language :

ROBERT BROWNE. 3

"he had no rest what he might do for the name and kingdom of God : he often complained of these evill daies and with manie tears sought where to find the righteous which glorified God, with whom he might live, and rejoice together that they put away abominations."

After his recovery from severe illness and regaining of strength, while beseeching the Lord "to show him more comfort of His kingdom and church than he saw m Cambridge," it came to his ears that there were believers in Norfolk who were " verie forward " in that good work of spiritual reform for which his soul longed, and he thought it his duty to "take his voiage to them." He accordingly went to Norwich, where, spending some months in prayer, the study of the Bible, and meditation in the open fields, he came, at last, into the conviction that the only way to untie the knot was to cut it, and that such persons as desired to walk with God and with each other without waiting for prince or people, should separate themselves from the world and from all who walk disorderly, and join themselves together into local companies, each one of which

— being rightly confederate of true believers — would be a true church of Christ. And so soon as his mind found rest in this position, he proceeded to labor with others, until — at some time in 1580, as it would seem

— he, with a few associates of a kindred spirit, at Norwich formed by mutual covenant what I believe to have been the first Congregational church since the last of those founded in the days of the Apostles yielded up its life under the superincumbent weight of an intolerable hierarchy.

Browne thoroughly elaborated his new system. He believed that all church power resides in Christ, its rightful absolute monarch. Democracy was not a thought of his time, and he was no democrat. Yet as he held that Christ reveals His will to, and by, each of His faithful ones — ruling through each equally as His vicegerent — in point of practical working his absolute monarchy became indistinguishable from a pure democracy. The people governed as vicegerents of Christ ; yet still the people governed. A mutual covenant was the fundamental basis on which all rested. The outward signs and seals were baptism and the Lord's Supper. Every such local church, while selfcomplete and under Christ self-governed, was bound in equal sisterhood to every other. It should give to and receive from them not only sjrmpathy but help as need might require. Such sympathy and help, on occasion, should manifest themselves in Councils or Synods, "for deciding or redressing of matters which can not well be otherwise taken up." One further provision there was, whose prominence brought disaster to the enterprise, and seems to have reacted to modify Congregationalism for two hundred years. Since the g^eat object of the church is to glorify God and serve Christ in the spiritual perfectness of its own believers, Browne held that it was one duty of the church to watch over its members with a view to insure their becoming perfect as our Father which is in Heaven is perfect ; and he carried this to that degree that they " particularly agreed " to hold frequent meetings for mutual criticism, and for the correction of errors and reform of abuses in each other.

The theory of that day made it the imperious duty

DISASTERS AT MIDDELBERG. 5

of the State to require and seek to secure uniformity in religion ) through persecution, if need were. By consequence Browne and his associates were persecuted. He himself testified that he endured the rigors of twoand-thirty prisons, in some of which he could not see his hand at noon-day. Such obstacles stood in the way of all proper development of associate life that the little church soon emigrated in a body to Middelberg, in Zealand, where by the tolerance of the magistracy they were permitted to work in their own manner. There all went well for a time. Browne wrote several treatises stating and advocating with great vigor of language, and much force of thought, his new views. But his people were poor, and sustenance was not easy to be earned, while narrow circumstances chilled their enthusiasm, and the regular seasons of mutual criticism degenerated into occasions of surmise, scolding and recrimination ; until the meagerly cultured body, uitfit at once to bear responsibilities for which their training had been so inadequate, went to pieces in jealous and angry squads. Browne resigned his pastorate, and in the early winter of 1583, with a handful of followers, returned to England by way of Scotland, and the brief bright light went out in the gloom of what seemed absolute failure. To make bad matters as much worse as possible, Browne himself soon after returned nominally to the Establishment, accepting from his noble kinsman, Lord Burghley, the living of Achurch-cum- Thorpe; and all which can save the remaining forty years of his life from condemnation, and rescue his eariier career from the ignominy of presumed hypocrisy, or admitted apostasy, is the conviction — for which there are many reasonable grounds of hope — that, never having enjoyed vigorous health, he became so diseased in mind as that, while tolerated under strong protection as the incumbent of an insignificant parish which a century later contained only eighteen families, he was practically to a degree insane, and sometimes wholly irresponsible. His writings had been early sent over for circulation in England, and the fact that when Copping and Thacker were hanged at Bury St. Edmonds in 1583 for circulating them, "so many of the books as could be found, were burned " in connection with the execution, seems to indicate a conviction on the part of the authorities that some elements of popular influence were in them.

The next succ^sors of Browne before the English people as advocates of Separatism — coming into notice five or six years after the Middelberg collapse — were Henry Barrowe and John Greenwood. How much Browne's books had to do with shaping their thoughts, we may never know; but they certainly adopted his system in the main, so far as the duty of Separation, the right of forming local churches by covenant, and other germane features were concerned. On the other hand they seem to have assumed that the failure of Browne's endeavor was due to its practical democracy, to avoid which they proposed to have the church governed by a few of its cultivated members. Their system became thus a compromise between — or rather perhaps an amalgamation of — Congregationalism and Presbyterianism. It was Congregational in that it advocated the local church confederate by covenant, with pastor, teacher, and officers chosen by itself ; inde-

BARROWISM. 7

pendent of all outward control, yet bound in the bonds of common sisterhood to all similar bodies. It was Presbyterian in that it entrusted the government of each local church to the session of ruling elders, which it was the first duty of the membership to choose, and the second, ever after to obey in the Lord. As early as 1589 there seems to have existed a rudimentary organization of the disciples of this phase of Separatism — which is Barrowism — in London; but, such and so many were the interruptions of persecution, that it does not appear to have been able to perfect that organization until the early autumn of 1592, when Francis Johnson was chosen pastor, John Greenwood teacher, Daniel Studley and George Knyveton, elders, and Nicholas Lee and Christopher Bowman, deacons. About a year later the unimprisoned portion of the church made its way to Holland, where it remained for four years without pastor; and for a considerable period, until Henry Ainsworth had become its teacher, without the sacraments. Not until near the end of the summer of 1597 were the pastor and elders, with that portion of the company which had been detained in the Gatehouse, the Clink, the Fleet, and Newgate, or banished ineffectually to Newfoundland, able to join their brethren, so that the little church could commence together, and in fairly good order, its Amsterdam life of troubles.

The interesting and instructive history of its fortunes and misfortunes there cannot here be detailed. Nor is it essential to the purpose of the present sketch that attention be called to it, further than to develop the fact that in the division and subdivision which the church suffered ; and in its relations to the successive companies on the one hand of the able, devout, but erratic John Sm)rth, and on the other to that officered by John Robinson and William Brewster ; and not less in those discussions iA which Johnson, Ainsworth, Clyfton, and Robinson bore a distinguished part ; the ill working of a Presbyterian heart within a Congregational body became conspicuously manifest. Neither the High-Church Barrowism of Johnson, nor the Low- Church Barrowism of Ainsworth, nor the Broad-Church Barrowism of Robinson, proved equal to any permanently satisfactory solution of the problem in what manner the radical inconsistency involved in a body constituted so as to be controlled under Christ by its members, and at the same time, also and especially, to be controlled under Christ by its elders, could be solved. Robinson came nearest to a solution by reducing the inconsistency to the minimum of never having but one elder, never filling his place after the public occasions led him to America, and never undertaking any other control than .that which inheres in intelligence and moral influence.

Such being the ideas dominant in Leyden, it was a matter of course that the Leyden-Plymouth company — the more that they were obliged to wait nearly ten years in the wilderness before they had a pastor — should develop their Barrowistic thieory into a practice that was little mt)re than Brownism itself. When the Dorchester, Salem, and Massachusetts companies came over, their Nonconformity was of the most chaotic description — individuals indeed appearing to imagine that a way might be found in which they could retain

BARROWISM IN THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM. 9

some sort of unobjectionable connection with the Church of England still. But by the time when Mr. Cotton arrived, influences had begun to work at home which were preparing the way for the strange overturn which was to give the mother-country for a short time a Presbyterian Establishment, and bring on the Long Parliament.

About 161 6 Henry Jacob returned to London from a varied experience on the Continent, and organized the first Congregational church in England which has left any traceable direct descent to the present time. It was naturally a Barrowistic body. So were those which grew up by its side, whose outnumbered pastors gave the Presbyterians so hard a fight in the Westminster Assembly.

On this side of the sea. Cotton, Davenport, and Hooker shared the bitter old misconception and prejudice which had followed poor Browne in his renegade retirement; knew what his system was — his books having disappeared from public knowledge altogether — only from the misrepresentations of his enemies; and — led on in large part by too close an interpretation of a few passages like Romans xii : 6-8 ; i Cor. xii: 28; iTim. v: 17, etc. — they established Barrowism as the t)rpe of New England Congregationalism. As such it went into the Cambridge Platform, where it especially blossoms in the eleventh section of the tenth chapter, as follows :

"From the Premises, namely, That the ordinary power of Get^ emment belonging only to the Elders, /^?«/^r ofpriviledg remaineth with the brotherhood ... it foUoweth, that in an organick Church, and right administration^ all Church acts proceed after the manner lO HANI>-BOOK OF CONGREGATIONALISM.

of a mixt administration, so as no Church act can be consumated^ or perfected f without the consent ofboth^^

What this " power of privilege " amounted to is made clear by the eighth section of the same chapter, where we read that when the elders have called the church together upon any weighty occasion :

" the members so called may not without just cause [the Elders being judges] refuse to come; nor when they are come, depart before they are dismissed ; nor speak in the Church before they have leave from the Elders; nor continue so doing when they [the Elders] require silence ; nor may they oppose nor contradict the judgment or sentence of the Elders without [what those Elders concede to be] sufficient and weighty cause ; because such practices are manifestly contrary unto order and government^ and in-lets of disturbance y and tend to confusion.''*

Beautiful in theory as Barrowe thought this must be in the eye of every truly good man, and well-balanced as John Cotton conceived it ought to prove in practice. New England never really took to it. It may be doubtful if a single church here ever fully furnished itself with elders according to Barrowe's ideal ; and it proved in practice excessively difficult to obtain fit men to serve in an office at once so exacting, so unsatisfying, and so liable to be unpopular. The pastors, however, for a long time proved equal to the emergency, and made up ih quality of assumption for quantity of eldership. In many cases, after ruling elders had altogether ceased to be attempted to be chosen, the pastor assumed to himself solely the function constitutionally assigned to a session of which theoretically he was but a single member, and, in virtue of the eleventh section above cited, claimed and exercised the right to veto all

BARROWISM PASSED BACK INTO BROWNISH. II

church action which displeased him; on the ground that " no church act can be consummated, or perfected, without the consent of ^M,"

I need not suggest that such a condition of affairs was not a wholesome one for religion here. It was no strange thing that unrest followed. It would be too long a story for this page how God raised up John Wise of Ipswich, and, two generations later, Nathaniel Emmons of Franklin, by whose masterful logic, and powerful influence, the churches were carried back, to New Testament times, and Congregationalism — although these men scarcely knew the precise quality, or the full value, of that which they were doing — once more consistently planted upon the foundations which Robert Browne had elaborated for it in Norwich three hundred years ago. There was a difference in philosophy j none at all in the result. The world had been drifting toward democrac}'. And Wise and Emmons both demonstrated, with irresistible clearness and f orce, that democracy is not only a sound, but the best, government, whether for Church or State. So that the votes which in Robert Browne's little church at Middel* berg its members gave not in their own right, but as vicegerents of Christ, the members of our American churches now give, under some solemn sense of fealty to the Master indeed, and with supreme desire to please Him, yet humbly as of their own right under Him, as being intelligent and responsible members of a spiritual commonwealth, each one of whom must give account before God for the use of the talents and gifts with which he has been endowed.

In England, two hundred years ago, the Westminster and Savoy Assemblies elaborated statements of the theology and the polity of the Congregational — or, as it has there been more common to call them, the Independent — churches; while for nearly half a century the Congregational Union of England and Wales, which holds its annual meeting in the month of May in London, and an autumnal meeting in some other city or town of England and Wales, has been steadily doing a good work of unification and consolidation which yet has in no way invaded, or impaired, the liberties of the churches.

In this country a General S)mod was resorted to as early as in 1637, for the counteraction of the speculative errors of John Wheelwright and Mistress Anne Hutchinson. A second, which convened in 1646 and adjourned to 1648, indorsed the then recent doctrinal statements of the Westminster Assembly in the Fatherland, and set forth the Cambridge Platform as formulating accurately the Congregational polity as by it understood. Although a most important Synod was held in Massachusetts in 1662 upon the question who are proper subjects of baptism, which resulted in the disastrous recommendation of the half-way covenant; another in 1679-80 which condemned certain evils on account of which it was feared the Lord was scourging the land ; and still another at Saybrook, in Connecticut, in 1708, which led to the adoption by the majority of the churches of that State of Consociationism and the Saybrook Platform ; no third General Synod was gathered from the Congregational churches of all the land until the "Albany Convention" of 1852, which did important work in setting in motion agencies for the

LATE GENERAL COUNCILS. I3

assistance of feeble .Congregational churches at the West, and promoted some important readjustment of certain old arrangements between Congregationalists and Presbyterians which had been found to work to the disadvantage of the former. After the Waf^ of the Rebellion, and the new aspects of the South thence resulting, a General Council was held at Boston in 1865, whose results were most important in evoking and wisely directing the common benevolence, in bringing pastors and churches West and East to a better^ more confiding, and more cooperative mutual acquaintance, and, in general, in consolidating and stimulating our denominational growth and usefulness. On the 17th November, 187 1, through the agency of a fifth General Convention, the Triennial National Council was organized at Oberlin, Ohio, on the basis of one delegate for every ten churches, and one for a fraction of ten greater than one-half ; together with one delegate from each State organization of churches, and one for each ten thousand communicants in their fellowship, with one also for a major fraction thereof — as nearly equally divided between ministers and laymen as may be. The second session of this Council was held at New Haven, Connecticut, September 30-October 4, 1874; the third at Detroit, Michigan, October 17-21, 1877 ; and the fourth is to meet at St. Louis, Missouri, on the nth November, 1880.

Chapter II. The Polity Of Congregationalism

{HE claim of Congregationalism is that it is the polity of the New Testament ; a claim founded upon the conviction that it is impossible with a clear and candid mind to examine Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, studying critically every passage between ** The book of the generation of Jesus Christ " of Matthew, and the last " Amen " of the Apocal)rpse, which refers, however remotely, to church government, without reaching such a conclusion.

But three systems of polity — the democracy of Congregationalism, the aristocracy of Presbyterianism, and the monarchy of Episcopacy, and df the Greek and Romish churches — are possible. They may be inconsistently combined, as we have seen the first two to have been amalgamated in Barrowism; but such hybridity is unfertile and therefore temporary. Moreover, the three are scarcely sufficiently alike, either in principles or processes, to be easily confounded with each other. So that, in so far as the New Testament refers at all to that subject, either in the way of implication while it describes early church methods which enter into its narrative, or in the way of precept, there would seem to be no need of serious doubt as to which of the three it chronicles and favors.

The briefest possible examination of every passage in the New Testament which with directness touches the subject, is now proposed, in the view of eliciting the amplitude and the conclusiveness of the argument for Congregationalism therein contained. In fairness, before entering upon such an examination, I may, however, call attention to the fact well known to scholars, that the merely English reader of King James's version suffers occasional disadvantage in such a study, for the reason that its translators acted under Episcopal bias, and in some passages modified earlier and more eicact versions in its interest.^

Section I. Congregationalism In The Gospels

Here one further preliminary remark appears essential — to the effect that it seems to have been our Lord's plan to leave the work of elaboration to the apostles, under the constant superintendence of the Holy Spirit. We easily see that there was a necessity that this be

•The translation by them of the word irdaxa i/auaver} by "Easter" [Acts xii 4J ; of the word kniGKOTrrp/ [ojffice] by " bishoprick " [Acts i : 20]; of the word £niaK&K(yvq by "bishop" in several pass^es of the Epistles, when they had rendered it simply " overseers" in Acts xxt a8; of as n\^any as seven different Greek words idtaraaoUy » Cor. vii: 17; KaffiOTTjfiiyTii. i: 5, Heb. viii: 3; iCjo/vo), Acts xvi: 4; iroUtJj Mark iii: 14; rdddw, Rom. xiii: i; Tifhffiiy 1 Tim. n: 7; and xstf)OT(weu>y Acts xiv: 43], neither one of which properly signifies what general readers naturally understand by the term, by the phrase "ordain,"— are examples of what is hert meant. So Acts xiv: 23 retained in the English versions, until the hand of Episcopal authority struck it out, the recognition of the action of the membership of the churches in the choice of their elders. Tyndale [1534] reads, "And when they had ordened them eldenfyeUccum in every congregadon." Cranmer [1539] reads, "And whan they had ordened them elders iy tUccwt in every congregadon." The Genevan [1557], " And when they had ordeined them Elders by glectum in euery Churche." The authorized version [161 1] strode out this reference to the people, and made the act that of the apostles alone, etc.

SO in the vitalest matters of theology. Jesus planted the seeds ; they ripened the fruit. It was necessary for Him to die before the great central doctrine of the Atonement could be seen by them in its true aspect, as the propitiation for their sins, and not for theirs only, but also for the sins of the whole world ; and before those other doctrines which grow out of it and depend upon it could assume their logical place, and take on their relative force. So also in the matter of the church and of church-life, Christ contented Himself with making a few suggestions — commands in spirit though scarcely in form — and laying down a general principle, with a single rule, leaving it for the apostles to carry them out to their necessary conclusions, while He should guide them in the work of laying church foundations, when the time came for it, by His pledged supervision. As, moreover, the matter of church form must •necessarily be among those things reached, if reached at all, only in the closing stages of His career, we ought to expect to find very few, if any, references to it in the four Gospels.

It so happens that the first word which we come to in the harmonized New Testament — I follow mainly Dr. Robinson's familiar manual — which seems to have any flavor of polity about it, is one [Mark iii: 14] which illustrates the criticism already made upon King James's translators as sometimes, for substance, corrupting the text in the interest of Episcopacy. They tell us that Jesus " ordained twelve, that they should be with him;" and so forth. This, if it were correct, would not mean much, but it would certainly sound about as, Episcopally, it ought to sound. The Greek word is TToUu [poieo\. This is employed four or five hundred times in the New Testament, and always in the sense of either " to make " or " to do," — as it is used to imply action as heing completed or continued. In no other instance does our common version translate it "ordain." It means here simply "to make to become;" that is, to appoint. Wiclif [A.D. 1380] renders it, " And he made that there weren twelue with h)rm." The Genevan version [A.D. 1557] gives it, " And he appoynted twelue, that they should be with hym." Even the Romanist Rheims version [A.D. 1582] has it, "And he made that twelue should be with him." It is curious to notice, also, in this connection, how the authors of the common version elsewhere strained another verb in the same direction. They represent Christ (John xv : 16] as saying to the twelve, " I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit," and so forth. The Greek«.word here is ridtifii \tithemt\^ which means "to set," "to put," .and so also " to put to some certain use," and hence "to appoint" It is used ninety-six times in the New Testament, and has everywhere been rendered in one of those senses, or in one directly secondary to them, except here, and.in i Tim, ii : 7, in both of which they have translated it " ordained ; " and this although in 2 Tim. i: 11, precisely the same Greek words they have made to read, " Whereunto I am appointed a preacher." ^ There is one class of utterances in the Evangelists from the lips of our Saviour, which inculcates very strongly the general principle of the equal brotherhood

1 Wiclif [1380] renders both : ** in which« I am sette a prechour."

l8 HAND-BOOK OF CONGREGATIONALISM.

of believers. This class is represented by such passages as Matt xviii: 1-14, Mark ix: 33-50, Luke ix: 46-50, where the question who should be greatest .was discussed by the disciples, and answered by our Lord's putting a little child in the midst of them, and saying, *' He that is least among you all, the same shall be great ;" by such as Matt, xx : 1-16, which declares that

even those who come in at the eleventh hour shall

•

receive equal wages, without wrong to those who have borne the heat and burden of the day ; by those like Matt XX : 20-28, Mark x: 35—45, which reply to the request of the mother of Zebedee's children, by teaching that the true primacy is that of doing most, rather than of ruling most, or having most; those which, like Matt, xxiii: 1-12, rebuke the assumptions of the Pharisees, and the aristocracy of their spirit ; and John xiii : 1-20, which pictures the Lord as washing the disciples' feet to teach them humility and fraternity.