Page Rev. George Leon Walker, D.D., Hartford, Conn. II. Jonathan Edwards as a Man; and the Ministers of the last Century. Rev. I. N. Tarbox, D.D., Boston, Mass. VI. The Anti-Christian use of the Bible in the Sunday School. The Book of the Beginnings. By R. Heber Newton. Brahmoism or History of Reformed Hinduism. By Ram Chandra Bose, M.A. Critical and Exegetical Hand-Book to the Gospel of John. By H. A. W. THE NEW ENGLANDER. No. CLXXXII. SEPTEMBER, 1884. ARTICLE I.-JONATHAN EDWARDS AND THE THE month of June, 1750, saw the people of Northampton in a state of intense excitement, with which the people of the surrounding country to a considerable extent sympathized. The chief outward expression of this excitement was the dismission from his pastorate, of twenty-three years, of Jonathan Edwards. This dismission had been demanded by a vote of "above two hundred against twenty" of the church members, and was ecclesiastically effected by the result of a pretty evenly divided council of nine churches, on the 22d of June, 1750. This result had been prefaced by a controversy between pastor and people of such sharpness and conspicuity, had so enlisted the sympathies, on one side or the other, of observers near and far, and was in itself so melancholy an affair, that it was instinctively felt to be an event of historic importance in New England generally; a conviction which a clearer knowledge of the principles involved only serves to confirm. Two causes conspired to bring about the controversy between Mr. Edwards and his Northampton congregation resulting in their overwhelming rejection of his pastoral ministrations. One was the endeavor on his part-whether wise or unwise in method it is not here important to enquire-to lead his church to an investigation of the behavior of a number of the young people of his congregation who were accused of reading and circulating licentious books, and of other bad conduct. The other was a more fundamental question relating to the conditions of entitlement to Sacramental privileges, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, respecting which the church and the pastor had come to stand in positions of resolved antagonism. It is to the second only of these two conspiring occasions of controversy that attention will here be directed; but this one was at the time the one of most importance, and is now the only one of other than antiquarian interest. To set the Northampton affair of June, 1750, in its proper surroundings, and to estimate accurately Jonathan Edwards's relations to the Half-way Covenant system, both as it was generally practiced in New England and as it was somewhat peculiarly administered in the Northampton church in his day, it will be needful to trace out a short pathway of preliminary historical survey. One of the strongest convictions of the founders of the New England colonies was the necessity of a really Christian membership in the churches they established. They had seen in the old countries, both in England and on the continent, what they regarded as the disastrous results of a membership of the church and an admission to sacramental privileges, of persons confessedly or at least plainly not experimentally Christian. To guard against this danger, which they thought inherent in the State system of churches which they had known in England and Europe generally, they accepted and set on working the way of Congregational churches of New England. These churches they affirmed (see Hooker's Survey, Cotton's Keyes, Holinesse of Church Members, etc.,) ought to be composed of "Visible Saints"; or as John Cotton puts it (Way of the Churches, chap. 3, sect. 3, p. 56): "Wee receive none as Members into the Church but such as (according to the Judgment of Charitable Christians) may be Conceived to be received of God into Fellowship with Christ, the head of the Church." At the same time, however, the founders of these churches held with strenuous tenacity to the doctrine of the Abrahamic Covenant as extended to the Christian Church; and to the belief that all baptized persons were therefore in a real sense church-members, subject to its discipline as well as partial partakers of its privileges. This membership was not indeed in all respects complete without something further. It could not "orderly" be "continued and confirmed" without some act of personal repentance and faith in after years. This view of the reality of a qualified church membership by infant baptism was a very positive one with the founders. It was a view which carried many things along with it. An individual's church membership by his childhood's baptism was the valid ground of great privileges and great accountabilities. For example, the Boston church in March, 1653, being then under the charge of Rev. John Wilson its first pastor, called before it a boy of sixteen years who had in infancy been "baptized into the fellowship of the covenant," and publicly “admonished" him for "choosing evil company and frequenting a house of ill report"-probably a tavern or tippling establishment. Four years later, in June, 1657, the same church, having now joined Rev. John Norton with Mr. Wilson in its ministry, summoned another young man of twenty-one years before it who was "born and baptized in its fellowship," and for a graver offense publicly excommunicated him. But not many years went by before the churches found themselves embarrassed in working their system in accordance with both their fundamental principles. The children grew up, married, and had children whom they in turn wanted to have baptized; but the parents had never met with any personal religious experience, had never come to the Lord's Supper, had only that connection with the church which their infantile baptism had given them. What was to be done? Could a child be baptized on the strength of his grandfather's church-membership? Thomas Hooker and John Dav enport (Survey, Part III., Chap. II., and Power of Congregational Churches, pp. 47, 48,) argued he could not. John Cotton, in answer to a question proposed by him by the Dorches ter church in 1634, seems to think he could. But the general sense of the churches settled down upon the principle that the title to baptism in an infant child rested upon the status of his immediate parents, or, in some cases, his adopted parents. But New England was rapidly becoming filled with parents who though themselves baptized were not communicants; did not profess experimental piety, but did want to have their children have the benefit, whatever it was, of Christian baptism. What could be done for such parents? Was their connection with the church by their own baptism in infancy substantial enough in itself, and in the absence of anything further, and in lack of supposed fitness for the Communion table, to justify the baptism of their children? Were they so far “visible saints" by the fact of their childhood baptism, that grown to manhood, they could ask baptism for their offspring as being also children of the Covenant? It was a great question. There is no space in this article to go into the minor aspects of its discussion. It must suffice here to say that, after being mooted in correspondence and agitated in local communities and churches, Connecticut in 1656 formulated a series of Twenty-one Questions concerning church membership and the relation of children to the church, and invited the legislatures of Massachusetts, Plymouth, and New Haven to call a Ministerial Assembly to consider them. Such an assembly met in Boston in June, 1657-though New Haven declined to send representatives and Plymouth apparently made no response-and answered the twenty-one questions formulated by Connecticut. The answer given to the tenth question is the chiefly signifi cant one: "It is the duty of those children [who confederate in their parents] when grown up to years of discretion, though not yet fit for the Lord's Supper, to own the Covenant they made with their parents by entering thereinto in their own persons. . . . And in case they understand the Grounds of Religion, are not scandalous, and solemnly own the Covenant in their own persons, wherein they give up both themselves and their children to the Lord, and desire baptism for them, we (with due |