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ten years later yet, they emerged to notice in other relations, their opponents and their votaries alike referred to Massachusetts as the source of the potent element which had made its appearance in the religious politics of England. In the second year of the Long Parliament, there

1 Baylie published his "Dissuasive," the Separatists he was then well ac&c., in 1645, when the Presbyterians quainted, but declared himself against had become thoroughly frightened by it in print." The good man, however, the course of affairs. The first two went to New England, and there came chapters treat of the Origin, Progress, under new influences. "Master Cotton, and Doctrine of the Brownists, of a man of very excellent parts, contrary which sect he says (17) that it was much to his former judgment, having "ruined" by Robinson, and had "be- fallen into a liking of it, and by his come contemptible to all the world:" great wit and learning having refined it, The title of the third chapter is, "The without the impediment of any oppoOriginal and Progress of the Indepen- sition, became the great instrument of dents, and of their Carriage in New drawing to it, not only the thousands of England," in which nest he considers those who left England, but also, by the scheme to have been fledged for his letters to his friends who abode in its higher flight. "Master Robinson," their country, made it become lovely he says, in an off-hand summary (54), to many who never before had ap"did derive his way to his separate peared in the least degree of affection congregation at Leyden; a part of toward it. ..... So soon as he did taste them did carry it over to Plymouth in of the New-English air, he fell into so New England; here Master Cotton did passionate an affection with the religion take it up, and transmit it from thence he found there, that incontinent he beto Master Goodwin [then a leading gan to persuade it with a great deal member of the small clerical represen- more zeal and success than before he tation of Independents in the West- had opposed it. His convert, Master minster Assembly], who did help to Goodwin, a most fine and dainty spirit, propagate it to sundry others in Old with very little ado was brought by England,............. till now by many hands his letters from New England to follow it is sown thick in divers parts of this him unto this step also of his progress." kingdom." (Comp. Pagitt, Heresiogra- (Ibid., 56; comp. Cotton, Way of Conphy, &c., 82.) This general statement gregational Churches Cleared, I. 12he proceeds to draw out into details. 18, 25-28.) Baylie had motives and As was natural, his attention to the opportunities to trace the spring of the subject having been of but recent date, then recent resurrection of IndepenCotton, who did not go to Massa- dency in England, and his testimony chusetts till three years after the foun- on that point is very noteworthy, notdation of that Colony, occupies a some- withstanding his attaching an exceswhat disproportionate space upon his sive importance to the agency of Cotcanvas. Cotton, he says (55), "so long ton, of whom he knew more than of as he abode in England, ..... in all other movers in Massachusetts. Cothis opposition to the episcopal corrup- ton's position was no doubt in the front tions, went not beyond Cartwright and rank. But he was not the only Massathe Presbyterians. With the way of chusetts man who corresponded freely

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1642.

was published in London a treatise by John Cotton, in the form of Question and Answer, entitled "The True Constitution of a Particular Visible Church, proved by Scripture." It asserts for congregations of Christians a perfect independence of each other, except that, if a church, having given offence, shall refuse to "hearken" to the admonition of neighboring churches,

with religious Englishmen; nor was correspondence the only medium for transmitting Independency from New to Old England. Vane went home from the chief seat in Massachusetts four years before the Long Parliament met. Humphrey, Saltonstall, the younger Winthrop, Wilson, Winslow, numbers of men of note,- passed back and forth between their new abode and the circles of their earlier association; and, for some few years before Baylie wrote, ministers had been relating from English pulpits, and soldiers to their comrades by camp-fires, their experiences of free churches in the Transatlantic wilderness. (See Vol. I. 585 – 587.) So long ago as 1637, some Puritan clergymen in England wrote to the emigrants a letter of inquiry, in which they say, "Letters from New England have so taken with divers in many parts of this kingdom, that they have left our assemblies because of a stinted Liturgy, and excommunicated themselves from the Lord's Supper because of such as are not debarred from it." (Hanbury, Historical Memorials, &c., II. 19 et seq.; comp. Albro, Life of Shepard, 265-267.) The letter was answered by Cotton for the New-England ministers in 1639; a rejoinder was made by John Ball in 1640, in a treatise entitled, "A Trial of the New Church Way in New England and in Old ;" and Mr. Shepard and Mr. Allin of Massachusetts continued the controversy by a book in more than two hundred quarto pages, entitled, "A Treatise of Liturgies," &c.,

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and professing to be "A Defence of the Nine Positions," which the NewEngland clergy had assumed.

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The form into which Independency in its third stage (Separatism and Semiseparatism being the first two) had been brought in Massachusetts, was recognized in the "Apologetical Narration," presented to the House of Commons in 1643 by Nye and his four clerical friends in the Assembly. "We have had," they say, "the later example of the ways and practices ..... of those multitudes of godly men of our own nation, almost to the number of another nation, and among them, some as holy and judicious divines as this kingdom hath bred, whose sincerity in their way hath been testified by the greatest undertaking, but that of our father Abraham out of his own country and his seed after him," &c. (Hanbury, II. 223.) And they proceed to explain, that a church may be called to account by neighboring churches, and, for good cause, be cut off from church-fellowship. With this arrangement - which may, with much propriety, be said to be of Massachusetts origin for the exercise of a jurisdiction by Councils of neighboring churches, Independency or Congregationalism took its ultimate shape. Whoever wishes to write a monograph upon the growth of the great power of Independency in England from an American root, may find ample materials in Prynne, Edwards, Baylie, Rutherfurd, Ball, and the other English and Scotch controvertists of the period.

"they have power to withdraw from them the right hand of fellowship, and no longer to hold them in the communion of saints;" and this course may be decided upon at a meeting of messengers from "the churches thereabouts." The same was the doctrine of a treatise issued in London about the time of the meeting 1643. of the Westminster Assembly, with the title, "Church Government and Church Covenant discussed, in an Answer of the Elders of the several Churches in New England to Two and Thirty Questions sent over to them by divers Ministers in England.'

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Among the clerical members of the Westminster Assembly only eight or ten were reckoned as Independents; but, of that small number, five at least, Philip Nye, Thomas Goodwin, William Bridge, Sidrach Simpson, and Jeremiah Burrows, were men of undisputed ability.* Among the laymen the great names of Oliver St. John, John Selden, and Bulstrode Whitelocke were counted either with them or with the Erastians. In Parliament, Lord Say and Sele in the Upper House, and in the Lower the younger Vane, Oliver Cromwell, and Nathaniel Fiennes, with St. John, Selden, and Whitelocke, were as yet almost their only decided and eminent friends.

Outside of the Assembly there were popular forces more or less allied in policy with the Independents. A variety Variety of of names had come into use, to designate one English or another of the systems of erratic specula

Bectaries.

1 True Constitution, &c., 12, 13. "Synods" for this purpose made a part of Robert Browne's project. (A Book which showeth The Life and Manners of all True Christians, &c., Question 51.) 2 The questioners were Presbyterians. The Answer was drawn up by Richard Mather of Dorchester. (Cotton, Answer to Williams, 63.) In a Preface by Hugh Peter, he repudiates the name Independent. "Of late we find

them passionately reject the name of
Independents." (Baylie, 102.)
"The
word of Independency some of them do
much abominate." (Ibid., 111.) The
name Congregationalist was preferred
by such persons.

3 Hetherington, History of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, 140.

Henry Phillips, previously of Dedham in Massachusetts, was a member. (Hist. and Geneal. Reg., XIII. 79.)

tion, which had grown up under the stimulating influences of the time. In politics, some of the most noisy fanatics -the word is said to have now first become commonheld that government in every form is a usurpation; while their moral theory maintained, that the Gospel had superseded not only the Jewish law, but all divine law, and that, "since the death of Christ upon the cross, sin itself, its guilt and punishment, are so utterly abolished, that there is now no sin in the Church of God, and God now sees no sin in us." It was in great part owing to their profession of doctrines of this description, so directly and mightily bearing upon practice in public and private life,- that the Anabaptists and Antinomians labored under such general discredit. But they and the more obscure sectaries might be relied upon for opposition to the Presbyterians in the controversy about ecclesiastical regulation, and consequently in the more practical disputes which grew out of it. The cause of the Independents was so far their own.

1643.

For a little while the business of the Assembly proceeded without strife. It petitioned Parliament to appoint a Fast-Day, which was accordingly ob- July 21. served. It spent ten weeks in a revisal of the first fifteen of the Articles of the Church. Together with the Parliament, in a church in Westminster, it adopted, with imposing ceremony, the Solemn League and Cove

1 In his "Gangræna," Thomas Edwards, Presbyterian incumbent of Christ Church, London, treats of the sectaries of his time under the following general heads, sixteen in number; namely, Independents, Brownists, Millenaries, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Arminians, Libertines, Familists, Enthusiasts, Seekers, Perfectists, Socinians, Arians, Anti-Trinitarians, Anti-Scripturists, Sceptics. Edwards published in 1646; but all these forms of opinion, full-shaped or in their elements, had appeared at least

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Sept. 25.

some few years before. Other names, as Ranters, Rationalists, Levellers, &c., came into use later. Pagett's list (Heresiography, or a Description of the Heretics and Sectaries of these Latter Times, &c., 1647) contains forty-five names of sects. - Samuel Rutherfurd's abridged catalogue (Survey of the Spiritual Antichrist, 1648) comprises Antinomians, Libertines, Anabaptists, Socinians, Perfectists, Familists, Swenckfeldians, Enthusiasts, and others. 2 Marsden, Later Puritans, 222-235.

Dissension in

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nant, in the month after the Parliamentary sanction of that compact. This proceeding led to a rupture. The Presbyterians understood the League and Covenant to include an engagement to set up their church polity; the Assem- and they did not scruple to avow their design, that that polity should be exclusive and intolerant. The small, but weighty, minority took alarm; and, with the help of able backers in Parliament, they managed to fend off the threatened mischief, though their position was still altogether insecure. When the scheme for their oppression was sufficiently unfolded, their obvious resource was to look abroad for sympathy and support; and the five leading Independent ministers published, with their signatures, what they called an 'Apologetical Narration," in the form of a me1643. morial to Parliament. They concluded by "beseeching" that body, for themselves and those whom they represented, " to have some regard to their past exile and present sufferings, and upon these accounts to allow them to continue in their native country, with the enjoyment of the ordinances of Christ, and an indulgence in some lesser differences, as long as they continued subjects." This, however, was no part of the plan of the confident and determined Presbyterian leaders, who with difficulty were kept back from the immediate consummation of their purposes by the skilful tactics of the experienced lay members of the smaller party.2

1

66

66

1 Fuller, Church History, III. 466. In writing thus of the Presbyterians, I have not overlooked the liberal views and generous character of many of the party, or the serious embarrassments with which they were beset. A large proportion of the best men of England were of their number. After the overthrow of the hierarchy, they constituted the conservative element in the kingdom. They were disgusted and alarmed by the crop which they

saw growing around them, of extravagant nonsense in speculation, of conceited and ignorant dogmatism, of sentiments hostile to public order, of refinements in morality which ended in escape from the sense of moral obligation, and in libertinism and universal license. The responsible Independents could not fairly be charged with an agency in bringing in these mischiefs. But the exigencies of self-defence had brought the Independents into political

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