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and stronger force than anything visible and material. We have not been born of flesh and blood. We have been begotten of the will of God, with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. Our true growth, and our true strength, must lie in the line of our origin and birth. The ultimate organizing and centralizing influence, therefore, upon which we must place our main reliance as a religious denomination, is the doctrine, the truth, of God. This is one and homogeneous, and consequently unifies and harmonizes all that comes under its fair and full influence. But this supposes that eye sees to eye; and that there is a common doctrinal faith, and a common doctrinal creed, for the denomination.

Let us then, Brethren and Fathers, consider for a few moments, the necessity that exists in Congregationalism for a stronger symbolical feeling, and a bolder confidence in creedstatements, in order to its highest efficiency as a Christian denomination.

Before proceeding to the discussion of this theme, we will cast a swift glance at the ancestral feeling and tendency on this subject. What was the attitude of the fathers and founders of Congregationalism towards the old historical theology that had preceded them, and particularly towards the Symbolism that was then in existence? The answer to this question will require us to notice, very briefly, the theological position of the leading minds in the formative periods of Congregationalism, and the particular public action of the denomination itself.

It is a fact which will not be disputed, that the master spirits among the English Independents of the Cromwellian period were earnest and strong defenders, not merely of the doctrines of the Reformation, but of that particular shaping of them which is found in the creeds of the Calvinistic division of the Protestants. The English church previous to the days of Laud, it is well known, sympathized heartily with the theologians of Zurich and Geneva, and when that large and learned body of divines whose consciences com. pelled them to dissent from the increasing ecclesiasticism of

the state establishment came out from it, they brought with them the very same dogmatic system which had been embodied in the 42 articles of Edward sixth, had been compressed into the 39 articles of Elizabeth, and had been maintained by prelates like Whitgift, and Cranmer, and Usher, as the faith once delivered to the saints. As a natural consequence, the non-conforming theologians in England, however much they differed from one another, and from the old national church, upon secondary subjects, were characterized by an earnest and intelligent zeal for the Old English, which was the Old Calvinistic, faith and creed.

The Independents were not second to any in this feeling. Thomas Goodwin and John Owen, says Anthony Wood, "were the two Atlases and Patriarchs of Independency."" These two minds are the true representatives of the English Congregationalism of the 17th century, and they did more than any others to determine its type and character, both in doctrine and practice. Their theological position is as well known as that of Calvin himself. These minds were, also, of that exact and scientific order which requires for its own satisfaction the most unambiguous and self-consistent statement of religious truth. The treatises of the individual divine are, commonly, not so carefully worded as the articles of the council of divines; from the same cause that the best reasoned political disquisitions are not so precise in their statements as the technical phraseology of the political convention, or the political treaty. Yet even the practical treatises of Owen and Goodwin bear a much stronger resemblance than is common, or commonly practicable, in flowing discourse, to the concise and guarded enunciations of the council. The very structure of their sermons, and the very style of their discourses, evinces that these leading Independents were of their own free-will, and with their own clear eye, following on in that strait and narrow way of dogma which is the intellectual parallel to the strait and narrow way of life.

The Independents of England in the Cromwellian period

'Neale, II. 291.

had no quarrel with the Presbyterians in respect to matters of doctrine; even as the English Presbyterians had no quarrel with the low-church Episcopalians of this period, so far as relates to points of faith. Owen heartily adopted Twisse and the whole

the Westminster Confession, and Westminster Assembly would have been content with the doctrinal part of the 39 articles. The Calvinists of England within the Establishment, and the Calvinists of England without the Establishment, were both alike opposed to Arminianism, and were equally earnest for those well discriminated creed-statements which mark off the faith of Geneva from that of Leyden.

The English Independents differed from the English Presbyterians solely upon the subject of ecclesiastical polity. And when, therefore, they appointed their committee at the Savoy in 1658 (exactly two hundred years ago) to draw up a confession of faith, that should organize the denomination, and hold it together, they instructed them to keep close to the Westminster upon doctrinal points, but to engraft the Congregational form of polity upon the old historical Calvinism that had come down to the Presbyterians themselves through Dort and Geneva.1

These well-known and familiar facts are sufficient to show, that the founders and fathers of English Congregationalism were imbued with reverence for the ancient symbolism of the Protestant church, and felt that their small and feeble denomination, which was then struggling for existence amidst the convulsions of churches and states, must be held together, and made strong, by the strength of God's truth stated unequivocally and exhaustively in a creed-form. The Congregational churches of New England were animated by the same feeling. Their leading minds, also, were of the same stamp, and theological affinities, with John Owen and John Howe. The pastor of the Plymouth pilgrims during their sojourn in Holland, the one who commended them to the protection of God when they embarked upon that hazardous voyage, and who told them that the

'Neale, II. 178.

Bible was not yet exhausted, and that "more light,” he believed, was still to "break forth" from it, was John Robinson. But John Robinson believed in no light from the Bible that did not shine more and more upon the path of the Calvinist. John Robinson was a very vigilant observer of the most subtle and perplexing controversy in modern doctrinal history, that between Calvinism and Arminianism, and took a part in it. Bradford informs us that the pastor of the Pilgrims was "terrible to the Arminians," and that too, it should be noticed, at a period in the history of Arminianism when the little finger of the progenitor was not so thick as the loins of some of the posterity. The controlling spirits among the clergy of the first New England colonies were also men of the same theological character, and tendencies, with the Owens and the Robinsons. The membership of the first New England churches had been born into the kingdom, through the instrumentality of a style of preaching, and indoctrination, searching, systematic, and orthodox, in the highest degree.

"In these times, also, were the great troubles raised by the Arminians; who, as they greatly molested the whole State, so this city in particular, in which was the chief university; so as there were daily and hot disputes in the schools thereabouts. And as the students and other learned were divided in their opinions herein, so were the two professors or divinity readers themselves, the one daily teaching for it, and the other against it; which grew to that pass, that few of the disciples of the one would hear the other teach. But Mr. Robinson, although he taught thrice a week himself, and wrote sundry books, besides his manifold pains otherwise, yet he went constantly to hear their readings, and heard as well one as the other. By which means he was so well grounded in the controversy, and saw the force of all their arguments, and knew the shifts of the adversary; and being himself very able, none was fitter to buckle with them than himself, as appeared by sundry disputes; so as he began to be terrible to the Arminians; which made Episcopius, the Arminian professor, to put forth his best strength, and set out sundry theses, which by public dispute he would defend against all men. Now Polyander, the other professor, and the chief preachers of the city, desired Mr. Robinson to dispute against him. But he was loth, being a stranger. Yet the other did importune him, and told him that such was the ability and nimbleness of wit of the adversary, that the truth would suffer if he did not help them; so as he condescended, and prepared himself against the time. And when the time came, the Lord did so help him to defend the truth and foil his adversary, as he put him to an apparent nonplus in this great and public audience. And the like he did two or three times upon such like occasions.". Bradford's History of Plymouth Colony, Congregational Board's edition, pp. 256, 257.

It was natural, therefore, that the Congregationalism of the New World should be marked by the same respect for the old historical faith which we have noticed in the English Independency. In 1648, ten years before the English Independents adopted their symbol at Savoy, the vigorous and vital churches scattered through the forests, and among the savages, of New England, sent their delegates to Cambridge, who drew up a confession of which the doctrinal part was adopted verbally from that of Westminster, while the polity of the symbol was made to conform to their own Congregational theory and usage. Thirty-two years after this, the churches of the province of Massachusetts met in synod, and drew up the only original symbol that has yet been constructed by an ecclesiastical body of Congregationalists. The Boston Confession of 1680, still retained as its creed by one of the oldest churches in the city of Boston, though modelled very much after those of Westminster and Savoy, purports to be the work of a Congregational Synod, and in this regard has more claim to the respect of the descendants of the Pilgrims than any other symbol. Twenty eight years after the formation of the Boston Confession, the churches in the Connecticut colony sent their representatives to Saybrook to construct a symbol for their use. This synod adopted the Boston Confession of 1680, as an expression of doctrinal belief, and made a fuller statement of what they deemed to be the Congregational polity.

This brief survey is sufficient to show that those who laid the foundations of Congregationalism, in the Old world, and in the New, were in hearty sympathy with that body of doctrine which received its precise and technical statement in the creeds of the Reformation, and more particularly in that carefully discriminated system which was the result of the debate between Calvinism and Arminianism. The carefulness, and the frequency (three times within sixty years), with which symbols were drawn up and sent forth by

1 The Old South.

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