The creeds and platforms of Congregationalism

Front matter

REV. LOUIS FITZGERALD BENSON. D. D.

BEQUEATHED BY HIM TO

THE LIBRARY OF

Preface

CONGREGATIONALISM has always accorded large liberty to local churches in their interpretation of doctrine and polity. Its creeds are not exclusively binding, and its platforms have always been held to be open to revision. They have been witnesses to the faith and practice of the churches rather than tests for subscription. But by reason of this liberty a collection of Congregational creeds and platforms illustrates the history of the body whose expressions they are better than if those symbols were less readily amended. The points wherein they agree may therefore confidently be believed to set forth that which is abiding in the faith and practice of the churches, while the features of change and the traces of discussion of more temporary importance which these creeds and platforms exhibit illustrate as clearly that which is mutable in our ecclesiastical life.. It is because the writer deems such a collection of prime value in illuminating the history of Congregationalism that this compilation has been made.

This volume has grown out of the experiences of the classroom. In his endeavors to teach the story of Congregationalism the writer has been hindered at all points by the inaccessibility of much of the material which must be before the student or the minister if a knowledge of denominational history is to be more than second hand. He has therefore collected the most important Congregational creeds and platforms, and has illustrated them as far as he is able by such historic notes and comments as may serve to make the circumstances of their composition and their meaning plain. He has had in mind the necessities of the general reader whose knowledge of the sources of our denominational history is rudimentary, and has endeavored to point out with the utmost plainness the basis of every important statement, and to indicate the literature of each symbol, hoping that by this fullness of annotation the student may find his way comparatively readily should he

Vi PREFACE

desire to make a minute study of Congregational beliefs and usages.

In reproducing these symbols the writer has reprinted the text of the earliest editions known to him to be extant. He has endeavored faithfully to reproduce the spelling and punctuation, and even the misprints, deeming that the dress in which these documents were presented to the world, sometimes by persecuted congregations and with the scantiest resources, is of value in forming our estimate of the impression which they were calculated to produce on their time. That the writer has wholly avoided misprints of his own in this reproduction he hardly dares to hope,— he has used great pains so to do; — but he trusts that before the reader condemns an illprinted passage it may be compared with the original to see if the fault was not that of the earliest printer.

The writer is under obligation to many scholars for suggestions, but he would especially acknowledge his indebtedness to the librarians of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, the Public Library at Boston, the Connecticut Historical Society and Watkinson Library at Hartford, the Massachusetts Historical Society at Boston, and of Yale University, for the access which they have afforded him to the treasures in their custody.

This volume is sent forth with the hope that it may serve to make easier the pathway to a knowledge of Congregational history, and may illustrate the essential unity as well as the healthful growth which has marked the development of creed and practice from the founders of Congregationalism to our own day.

Hartford, Conn., July 15, i8pj

Contents

VII.

VIII.

IX.

Preface to the Confession

Text of the Confession (Savoy Confession and notes), .

The "Heads of Agreement," 1691, and other Union- Efforts of the Seventeeth Century, Extracts from the Agreement of 1656, .

Preface and text of the " Heads," . • • ■ The Massachusetts Proposals OF 1705, and the S. brook Platform of 1708, Text of the Proposals, Prefaces to the Saybrook Result, Text of the Platform,

Text of the Plan. .

The English Declaration of 1833,

Text of the Declaration, .

The "Burial Hill" Declaration of "Faith Statement of Principles of Polity,

Text of the Declaration, .

Text of the Statement, .

The Constitution of the National lin Declaration, 1871, .

Text of the Constitution, Text of the Declaration, .

The "Commission" Creed of 1883, Text of the Creed, .

Council,

PAGE

409-439

423-437

438, 439

367-402

570-576

572-574 575, 576

577-584 580-582

585-604

I

ROBERT BROWNE'S STATEMENT OF CONGRE- GATIONAL PRINCIPLES, 1582

Text

I. A Books I which Sheweth the \ life and manners of all true Christians, \ and howe vnlike they are vnto I'urkes and Papistes, \ and Heathen folke. \ Also the pointes and partes of all diui- \ nitie, that is of the reitealed will and worde of God, are \ declared by their seuerall Definitions, \ and Diuisions in order as \ followeth. I Robert Browne, \ Middelbvrgh, \ Imprinted by Rickarde Painter. \ ijS=. 4°, pp. in.

II. A few of the sections, extracted from Browne's work, are given in I Ianbury, Historical Memorials Relating to the Independents, etc., London 1839, I; 2°~ 22; in Fletcher, History . . . of Independency, London 1862, II: 114-117; and in Punchard, History of Congregationalism, Boston [1867], III: 14-17.

The works of Hanbury, Fletcher, and Punchard, above cited; [Waddington], Historical Papers, London 1861, pp. 33-48; Waddington, Congregational History, rj6j-lJoo, London 1874, p. 16 ; Bacon, Genesis of the New England Churches, New York 1874, pp. 81-90; Browne, History of Congregationalism . . . in Norfolk and Suffolk, London 1877, cns- I-HI; Dexter, The Congregationalism of the last three hundred years, as seen in its Literature, New York 1S80, pp. 61-12S.

MODERN Congregationalism is a legitimate outcome of a consistent application to church polity of the principles of the Reformation. The fundamental religious thought of that movement was the rejection of all authority save that of the Word of God. But, while this cardinal principle was recognized by all the reformers, there was great variety in the extent to which they carried its application. All of them agreed that the will of God had prescribed in the Bible the sufficient test of Christian doctrine, but none of the reformers of the first rank felt the necessity of a complete conformity of their systems of church polity to the same standard. The paramount importance of doctrinal reform, the necessity for the orderly control of the church in the trying period of transition from its ancient form, and especially the disorders which the advent of ecclesiastical freedom excited among the lower classes, induced Luther and Zwingli, neither of whom were organizers by nature, to put aside their early inclinations toward the substantially Congregational system' which they recognized in the New Testament example, in favor of a would-be temporary dependence on the civil rulers of the lands in which they lived for the organization of their new churches. Calvin was an organizer, and though he sought scripture warrant for the system which he established, he seems to have been led to its adoption largely by the necessities of his position in the foremost outpost of Protestantism at Geneva; and he admitted, on one occasion at least, that his eldership was primarily a device of expediency.2 And if these men did not fully recognize that the legitimate outcome of the principles of the Reformation was the test of church government as well as Christian doctrine by the standard of the Bible, this truth was even less clearly perceived in England, where the state Establishment which was the outcome of the Reformation was designedly a compromise, in which a large portion of the ancient government and ceremonial was retained, and in which the fountain of ecclesiastical authority was the sovereign.

But if the leaders of the Reformation thus fell short of a full application of their principles, there were those from almost the beginning of the movement who sought to go further. These men, nicknamed usually by their opponents the "Anabaptists,"3 first came to notice about 15 23-4 4 in the portions of Switzerland which had felt the reforming touch of Zwingli. Persecuted at once by Protestants and Catholics, they were dispersed with great rapidity all over Germany and the Netherlands and came even to England.5 They were drawn chiefly from the lower orders of the population, and were often characterized by extreme fanaticism.6

1 See inter alia, Gieseler, Church History, ed. New York 1876. IV: 518; Fisher, Reformation, pp. 488-495; Dexter, Cong, as seen, p. 51 ; Schaff, Hist. 0/ the Christian Church, VI : 538.

2 For valuable quotations illustrative of this point see Dexter, Ibid., pp. 52, 53.

3 I. e., " Re-baptizers," because they held infant baptism no baptism.

* See the valuable paper of Rev. Dr. Burrage, Anabaptists 0/ the Sixteenth Century, Papers 0/ the Am. Soc. Church Hist., Ill: 145-164. Keller in his suggestive Die Reformation unci die alteren Re/ormfiartcien, Leipzig 1885, holds, as many others have done, the Anabaptists to be successors of mediaeval sects, but his thesis is not fully proven.

s As early as 1535 fourteen were burned in one year in England. Executions continued under English Protestant sovereigns, e. g. under Elizabeth in 1575, and James in 1612.

• The most conspicuous illustration is of course the Munster anarchy, 1532-5.

ANABAPTIST PRINCIPLES 3

But the fanatics were only a fraction of the Anabaptists, and under the lead of men like Menno Simons,1 in Holland especially, they settled down into orderly and valuable citizens.2 They were everywhere marked by a desire to carry the principles of the Reformation to their logical outcome, and hence they tried to test not only doctrine but polity and Christian life by the same rule. The natural tendency of men to put differing constructions on the same facts of revelation, increased in their case by the ignorance of a great part of the body and an inclination to lay stress on the direct illumination of the believers by the Holy Spirit, led to diversities of belief among them, so that we can lay down no rigid creed for the Anabaptists as a whole; but there were certain features in their beliefs which appear also in the views of the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Congregationalists.3

The Protestant bodies founded by the great reformers of the sixteenth century were all at one in recognizing every baptized person, residing within the territories where they were established and not formally excommunicate, as a church member. Church and state were practically co-extensive. Even the Puritans of England, who labored under Elizabeth for the purification and full Protestantizing of the Establishment, and from whom the majority of early Congregationalists were to come, held to the church-membership of all non-excommunicate Englishmen, and looked upon the true method of reform as a vigorous purging from within by the rigid enforcement of discipline, the appointment of the officers whom they believed to be designated in the Scripture model, and the aid of civil magistrates, rather than a separation from the national church.4 The Anabaptists, on the other hand, maintained that a church was a company of Christian believers, gathered out of the world,5 to which men were admitted by con-

2 See the articles by Prof, de Hoop Scheffer on Menno and the Mennonites in the Herzog Real-Encyclopddie fiir protestantisc/te Thcologie, Leipzig, 1881 (briefly abridged in the Schaff- Herzog, Encyclopa-dia, New York [1882]).

3 This relation has been positively, perhaps too positively, insisted upon by Campbell, Puritan in Holland, England, and America, New York, 1892, II : 177-209.

4 Compare Dexter, Cong, as seen, pp. 54-58. Briggs, American Preslyterianism, New York, 1885, p. 43.

5 For the doctrines of the Anabaptists, especially the Mennonite branch, which had the fession and baptism; that each congregation of believers should be independent of all external control, civil or ecclesiastical, and that the civil magistrate had no authority over the church; that no believer should bear the sword, take oath, or hold the office of a magistrate; that each congregation should be kept pure by discipline, and should be led by elders chosen by itself, who should serve it without compensation. So they held the New Testament pattern of a Christian church to require.

Like the modern Baptists, the Anabaptists had no creeds of general binding force. Some confessions were issued by individuals and congregations, and some as formulae of union between various branches of the much divided body, but each congregation accepted or rejected what it chose. In general, however, the agreement regarding all the more essential features of doctrine and polity was close. A few extracts from the popular confession prepared by the Mennonite ministers Hans de Ries and Lubbert Gerrits for the benefit of the one time Congregationalist John Smyth and his company in 1609 at Amsterdam, — a confession based on and representative of the writings of the older Mennonite Anabaptists and widely used by the Mennonite churches of Holland,—may serve to set forth some of these beliefs more clearly:1

"22. Such faithful, righteous people, scattered in several parts of the world, being the true congregations of God, or the church of Christ, whom he saved, and for whom he gave himself, that he might sanctify them, ye [yea] whom he hath cleansed by the washing of water in the word of life : of all such is Jesus the Head, the Shepherd, the Leader, the Lord, the King, and Master. Now although among these there may be mingled a company of seeming holy ones, or hypocrites ; yet, nevertheless, they are and remain only the righteous, true members of the body of

most influence in Holland, see beside the articles of Prof, de Hoop Scheffer, before cited ; Barclay, Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth, London, 3d ed., 1879, pp. 75-92 • Dr. ISurrage, Papers Am. Soc. Ch. Hist., Ill: .57; Prof. Schaff, in Baptist Quarterly Review, July 1889. Much further and minuter information is contained in the works of the Mennonite historian, Hermann Schyn, Historia Christianorum Qui in Be/gio Fwderato inter J'rotestantes Mennonita appellantur, Amsterdam, 1723, and Historic Mennonitarum Vlenior Deductio, ibid,

1 Regarding the circumstances of the appeal of Smyth and his brethren for admission to the Amsterdam Mennonite church of which Germs was minister, and the preparation of this Confession, see Evans, Early English Baptists, London, 1862, I. 201-224; Barclay, Inner Life, etc., pp. 68-73 ; De Hoop S( hctTer, De Brownisttn te Amsterdam, etc. (Memoir before the Royal Academy), published Amsterdam, 1881 ; Dexter, True Story 0/ John Smyth, the Se-Baptist, etc., Boston, 1881. The Confession as originally prepared consisted of 38 articles, drawn up by Hans de Ries at the request of Smyth's company. Translated into English, it was signed by Smyth and his friends and laid before the Mennonite congregation. It was enlarged by its author and put forth

ANABAPTIST PRINCIPLES 5

Christ,1 according to the spirit and the truth, the heirs of the promises, truly saved from the hypocrites and dissemblers.

" 23. In this holy church hath God ordained the ministers of the Gospel, the doctrines of the holy Word, the use of the holy sacraments, the oversight of the poor, and the ministers of the same offices ; furthermore, the exercise of brotherly admonition and correction, and, finally, the separating of the impenitent ; which holy ordinances, contained in the Word of God, are to be administered according to the contents thereof.

" 24. And like as a body consisteth of divers parts, and every part hath its own proper work, seeing ever}' part is not a hand, eye, or foot; so it is also in the church of God; for although every believer is a member of the body of Christ, yet is not every one therefore a teacher, elder, or deacon, but only such who are orderly appointed to such offices. Therefore, also, the administration of the said offices or duties pertaineth only to those that are ordained thereto, and not to every particular common person.

"25. The vocation or election of the said officers is performed by the church, with fasting, and prayer to God; for God knoweth the heart; he is amongst the faithful who are gathered together in his name; and by his Holy Spirit doth so govern the minds and hearts of his people, that he by them bringeth to light and propounded! whom he knoweth to be profitable to his church.

"26. And although the election and vocation to the said offices is performed by the foresaid means, yet, nevertheless, the investing into the said service is accomplished by the elders of the church 2 through the laying on of hands. . . .

" 2g. The Holy Baptism is given unto these in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, which hear, believe, and with penitent heart receive the doctrines of the Holy Gospel. For such hath the Lord Jesus commanded to be baptized, and no unspeaking children.

"33. The church discipline, or external censures, is also an outward handling3 among the believers, whereby the impenitent sinner, after Christian admonition and reproof, is severed, by reason of his sins, from the communion of the saints for his future good; and the wrath of God is denounced against him until the time of his contrition and reformation. . . .

" 35. Worldly authority or magistracy is a necessary ordinance of God, appointed and established for the preservation of the common estate, and of a good, natural, politic life, for the reward of the good and the punishing of the evil: we acknowledge ourselves obnoxious, and bound by the Word of God to fear, honour, and show obedience to the magistrates in all causes not contrary to the Word of for the use of the Dutch probably in 1610, apparently with the approval of Gerrits. Though in no sense binding upon the Mennonite body, it has been their most venerated expression of faith. A full Latin version of the enlarged form is given by Schyn, Historia, etc., Amsterdam, 1723, pp. 172-220, who remarks: " Ecce . . . Confessionem, non solum fere per sesqui saeculum apud plurimas & maximas illorum Ecclesias, in Belgio pro formula Consensus inter Waterlandos sic dictos habitam," etc. On the great doctrinal controversy which agitated Holland at the time of its composition the Confession is Arminian, but that which here concerns us is its view of church polity, in which it is representative of all Mennonite teaching and the theories doubtless which were current among the Anabaptists who found settlement during the previous half-century in England. The extracts are from the English version signed by Smyth and his associates in 1609, and printed by Evans, Ibid., 1 : 245-252. It is substantially and almost verbally identical with the revised form given by Schyn.

1 I. e., the righteous are the only true members, etc.

the Lord. We are obliged to pray God Almighty for them, and to thank the Lord for good reasonable magistrates, and to yield unto them, without murmuring, beseeming tribute, toll, and tax. This office of the worldly authority the Lord Jesus hath not ordained in his spiritual kingdom, the church of the New Testament, nor adjoined to the offices of his church. Neither hath he called his disciples or followers to be worldly kings, princes, potentates, or magistrates; neither hath he burdened or charged them to assume such offices, or to govern the world in such a worldly manner; much less hath he given a law to the members of his church which is agreeable to such office or government. . . .

"36. Christ, the King and Lawgiver of the New Testament, hath prohibited Christians the swearing of oaths; therefore it is not permitted that the faithful of the New Testament should swear at all."

It is clear, therefore, that there were prevalent in the domain of Protestantism, during the latter half of the sixteenth century, two radically differing theories of the church, — the one supported by the leading reformers and their successors and upheld by the civil authorities, but representing nevertheless a partial rather than a complete application of the principles of the Reformation; the other maintained with many vagaries, and much that was positively fanatical, by men of little education or social position, subject to almost universal persecution,1 but representing, however mistakenly, an attempt to apply the principles of the Word of God not merely to doctrine but to every feature of polity and life.

Though the Anabaptists nourished in Holland, they made few direct disciples during the sixteenth century on English soil. Yet they were present in the island and cannot have been without some influence. After the religious and political tyranny of Philip II. had begun its reign of terror in the Netherlands, the Dutch and Walloons, who had always found in the eastern counties of England a favorite field for immigration, flocked across the North Sea in almost astounding numbers. By 1562 these exiles on English soil numbered 3o,ooo.2 Six years later they embraced some 5,225 of the population of London, while in the cities of the eastern coast they were yet more largely represented, forming a majority of the people of Norwich in 1587, and making a con-

' The one exception was the protection of the Dutch Anabaptists by William of Orange. Campbell, Puritan, I : 247, 248.

2 These figures are from Campbell, Ibid., 488.

ANABAPTISTS IN ENGLAND 7

spicuous element in the population of Dover, Sandwich, and other important towns. Of course these thousands of Hollanders were not to any large extent Anabaptists; but there were Anabaptists among them,1 and probably many more than openly appeared, for to own the sentiments of the hated sect under the reign of Elizabeth was to be liable to death at the stake. It seems not unreasonable to suppose that their views, modified and partially presented, may have, more or less unconsciously, become part of the thinking of the more zealous of the English seekers after a fuller reformation with whom they were brought in contact. But while it is certainly within the bounds of probability to admit such a degree of influence on the part of the Dutch Anabaptists on English religious thought in the eastern counties during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, it should not be forgotten that the New Testament was before the English reader as well as in the hands of the Dutch Anabaptist, and that its pages might convey the same lesson independently to the English student. Certainly the early English Congregationalists had no consciousness that their views were derived from any other source than the New Testament; and while there is much in their history, and especially in the geography of their origin, to make it probable that some considerable infiltration of Anabaptist thought aided in shaping their interpretations of the Scripture; they were more than mere successors or offshoots of the Anabaptists of the Continent.2 Some attempt to realize a further reformation in directions looking toward later Congregationalism may have been made by Richard Fitz and his associates at London in 1567, but the first Englishman3 to proclaim Congregational principles in writing was

1 On the occasion when the two whose burning in 1575 has already been noticed were arrested in London, twenty-five others were taken into custody.

2 Mr. Douglas Campbell, in his suggestive work. The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, II: 180, holds strongly that Browne received his ideas directly from the Anabaptists. This matter will be further considered later in this chapter.

3 The origin of Congregationalism as an organized polity has been frequently attributed, and notably by Waddington (Congregational History, /200-IJ67, London, 1869, pp. 742-745), to a company broken up by the government at Plumbers' Hall, June 19, 1567. But though the evidence of their opposition to the existing state of the Church of England is ample, and it seems certain that they had adopted Separatist principles and chosen their own ministry, their Congregationalism was yet very rudimentary. See Punchard, Hist. 0/ Cong., Boston [1865], II: 454-459; Dexter, Cong, as seen, pp. 114, 115, 631-4; Scott, Pilgrim Fathers neither Puritans nor Persecutors, London,

Robert Browne,1 a man of sincere purpose, at least in early life; but one whose erratic disposition and final reconciliation with the English Establishment have cost him the personal repute which would otherwise have been his. Possessed of only ordinary ability, he nevertheless saw some truths clearly which had been ignored by the ecclesiastical teachers of his age.

Browne was born about the middle of the sixteenth century, of a family related to that of Elizabeth's great statesman, Lord Burghley. His education was at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, an institution which he entered in 1570. The university was already strongly Puritan, and under the vigorous teaching of the greatest of the early Puritans, Thomas Cartwright/ was filled with the idea that a further reformation of the English Church was needful, — a reform to be brought about, in his estimation,

,891- C. R. Palmer, Historical Address, before New Haven Cong. Club, Oct., 1892, New Haven, ,893; MacKennal, Story of the Eng. Separatists, London, .893; Adeney, Ch. in the Prisons, in Early Independents, London, 1893. .

1 The discoveries and investigations of the late Dr. Dexter have so re-made the portrait of Browne that all previous literature regarding him is of secondary value. The student will do well, therefore, to consult Dexter, Congregationalism as seen, etc., pp. 61-128. The article on Browne by Aug. Jessopp in the Dictionary of National Biography, VII: 57-6'. '* *ls° °* val»e- The main facts of his life, so far as not related in the text, are as follows: -He was born, probably in 1550 at Tolethorpe, Rutlandshire. After his student life in Cambridge, and chapla.n, Duke of Norfolk, he taught school till 1578 : then followed his second period of Cambridge study, his preaching and silencing by the bishop, and his full adoption of Congregational principles and settlement in Norwich about 1580. Late in .581, probably, he went to Holland, and in 1582 published the books with which we have to do. Quarrels distressed his church in Middelburg, and as a result Browne and a few followers went from Holland to Scotland in .583. At Edinburgh he was received with much disfavor by the Presbyterian authorities. By the summer of 1584 he was apparently back in London, having failed to found a permanent congregation either in Norwich, Holland, or Scotland. Here in London he was impnsoned, as he had been repeatedly before; but here, as elsewhere he was saved from the most serious consequences of his opposition to the Lngl.sh ecclesiastical system by his relationship to Lord Burghley. Released from prison, he seems to have gone to Northampton in 1586, and was then excommunicated by the Bishop of Peterborough. He was now it would appear, utterly discouraged. Dr. Dexter held, with much show of reason, that his mind had become affected by his long disappointments and imprisonments. At all events, he became reconciled to the Establishment late in ,586, and was appointed master of a grammar school in Southwark, a position which he held till September, 1501, when, hav.ng been restored to he ministry of the Church of England, he received from his ever kindly relative, Lord Burghley, the living of Achurch cum Thorpe. Here he ministered till near his death, an event which occurred in Northampton jail (when he was a prisoner probably in consequence of a debt) sometime between June, 1631, and November, ,633. His later life was wholly insignificant and comports well with the view that he was a broken-down man. _

. Cartwright was about forty years old when Browne entered the university and was at the height of his fame and influence. He had been identified with Cambridge as student, fellow, and teacher since 1547. In 1569 he had been made professor of divinity -but his Puritan views were at once attacked by the Anglicans, led by Whitgift, the later archbishop, and he was compelled to relinquish his professorship in December, .570, and his fellowship in September, 1571. This discussion must have stirred Browne profoundly.

BROWNE'S SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT 9

however, from within and not by separation from its fold. Browne soon combined the duties of a student's life with the occupation of a chaplain in the family of the Duke of Norfolk; but here he showed opinions at variance with those of the ecclesiastical authorities, the exact nature of which it is impossible to affirm, but which were probably Puritan rather than fully Congregational. The duke, at all events, sympathized with him sufficiently to plead in his behalf that a chaplaincy was a privileged office beyond the reach of the ordinary processes of ecclesiastical law. Whether his patron's intervention was sufficient to check further proceedings in Browne's case or not does not appear; but for about three years thereafter he taught school, apparently at Southwark, preaching also to such as he could gather in illegal meetings in a gravelpit at Islington. But desire for further study drew him back to Cambridge, and, as was natural for an earnest young Puritan minister, he entered the household theological school of Rev. Richard Greenham, an eminent Puritan of Dry Drayton, not far from the university town. Here he was encouraged to preach in pulpits of the Church of England where the hearers were of Puritan sympathies, and such was the favor with which he was regarded that he took charge of a church in Cambridge itself. Here it was, apparently, that he underwent the spiritual struggle which led him to Congregational views.1 The church to which he had preached for about six months desired him to remain, but Browne's Puritan scruples regarding bishops had made him feel that an appointment dependent upon one of their order was no proper ministry. The conviction now came to him that the all-inclusive membership of the Church of England was well-nigh fatal to real piety. The only course for those who would seek a full Christian life was to separate from it and unite among themselves. He felt that " the kingdom off God Was not to be begun by whole parishes, but