came in collision with other sects, and other doctrines and controversies, they naturally fell into some diversities among themselves. It is not our object to follow up all who have borne this name. The doctrines of the atonement, of election, of communion with other Christians, and at length the doctrine of the Trinity itself, and, in some instances, the forms and organization of the church, have produced many subdivisions. Particularly this may be said of Baptists in Scotland and England. But the Particular Baptists of England, and the Regular Baptists of the United States, or, in other words, the Calvinistic Baptists, as they are now extended into nearly all parts of the known world, and are so rapidly increasing in our own country, are to be taken in the present description, as they only are wholly distinct from Pædobaptists.

There were Baptists in England, and in other countries in Europe, when Roger Williams appeared in New England. The light which glowed in the soul of that truly great man, might claim for him a kindred connection with many other noble and free spirits of his own time; and it looked back to a succession of spirits equally noble and free, who had borne it for ages before him-men who held the same sentiments-men who, perhaps, were able to be his instructers in respect to that great doctrine which has at length restored something like apostolic order to at least a part of the Christian world. Hanserd Knollys was, perhaps, the first Baptist minister in the United States. He had charge of a church in Dover, N. H., about 1635, and returned to Europe some four or five years afterwards. But Roger Williams may be said to have been the first to found a Baptist church in America. This took place at Providence, R. I., in 1639, or perhaps more correctly, in 1638. "At a time," says Bancroft in his History of the United States,-"at a time when Germany was the battle field for all Europe in the implacable wars of religion, when even Holland was bleeding with the anger of vengeful faction, when France was still to go through the fearful struggle with bigotry, when England was gasping under the despotism of intolerance; more than forty years before William Penn became an American proprietor, Roger Williams asserted the great doctrine of intellectual freedom." "Williams was willing to leave truth in her own panoply of light." "Magistrates, Wil

liams asserted, are but the agents of the people, or its trustees; on whom no spiritual powers in matters of religion can be conferred, since conscience belongs to the individual, and is not the property of the body politic; and, with admirable dialectics, clothing the great truth in its boldest form, he asserts that the civil magistrate may not intermeddle to stop a church from heresy and apostacy." "To compel men to unite with those of a different creed, he regarded as an open violation of their natural rights!" It should be borne in mind that such a sentiment had but too few advocates in the age of Williams, if we except, indeed, the Vanes and Cromwells of England, and those who were struggling in some other countries, already mentioned by our author. Williams has, to a great extent, stamped himself upon the religion and the politics of America-and certainly upon that community of Christians to which he afterwards attached himself-in characters so deep that, in the language of the same eloquent writer, "the impress has remained to the present day; and like the image of Phidias on the shield of Minerva, it cannot be erased without the total destruction of the whole work. The principles which he first sustained amid the bickerings of a colonial parish; and next asserted in the general court of Massachusetts; and then introduced into the wilds of Narraganset Bay, he soon found occasion to publish to the world, and to defend as the basis of religious freedom to mankind. The same principles of entire freedom, the Baptist churches have inherited-not, indeed, so much from Roger Williams, as from the apostolic age, and from the Bible, the asserter of the great doctrine which he advocated. They trace the title of their inheritance to a higher source than man; and acknowledge it in nothing but in our religion itself, and in the authority of him who established it. This, therefore, may be stated as one of the prominent doctrines of the Baptist denomination that all men are endowed with indisputable rights of conscience, and are at liberty to choose for themselves in all matters of religion and happiness. Over this great rock, the church of Christ has spilt her blood in all ages; and over it she has resisted, and must forever resist the encroachment of all the corrupted forms of Christianity. This alone, of all Christian sects which can trace their

origin as high up as the Reformation, has never persecuted.

Again, the Baptists hold that there are no privileged orders of men in the church; that a pastor is endowed with the same conventional authority, whether he administers to a feeble flock or to one more numerous. His authority can never be increased. The officers in the church are two, Bishops or Elders, which are the same, and Deacons. These offices are distinctly fixed, and cannot extend beyond the particular church to which the individuals who hold them may administer. Every particular church or congregation of Christians, agreed together for the promotion of the objects of the gospel, is an independent body; and no such body has any jurisdiction or right over any other body, or over any individual, who has not voluntarily consented to the compact. Ten individuals thus organized are in possession of the whole authority of the church of Christ on earth, though, in another instance, its numbers should be magnified to infinity. Influences which are exerted beyond their own limits, are, in every instance, but in the execution of the laws of their constitution. This constitution is no other than the Bible itself. Their influences are not authoritative, but advisory. And again, as all ministers are equal in their authority, so are all churches; and no separate body can be formed by a combination of either of these, that is to say, of ministers, on the one hand, or of churches, on the other, which can either possess the authority of a church, or interfere authoritatively with any of the rights or the affairs of a church.

It is, perhaps, a consequence of these two points as much as any thing else, that this Christian community have ever been a missionary people; and it is, perhaps, to this they owe it, that among them has originated the most glorious movement in the church, since the days of the apostles themselves-a movement which has given an entire new aspect to the Christian world, since the predominance of Papacy. The same freedom from clerical restraint, which suggested a model for the framers of our own national policy, led them to undertake an enterprise which must ultimately transform the world, and dissipate the power of Papacy and of every intermediate form of compulsion and human policy;-an enterprise

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which must ultimately establish liberty and freedom on the farthest borders of the earth. Just as a democracy, as a form of government in the civil and political world, has ever been the most favorable to great undertakings, and has ever given scope to genius in every art and in every noble enterprise; so it may be expected in the religious world, that a church policy which embraces the same elements of freedom, must be more favorable to the deep and extended workings of religious principles. These principles, in this instance, are at liberty to work without restraint in the heart of every individual, however obscure he may be in the eyes of mere conventional greatness. When, as a consequence, religious principles shall find a lodgment in a genius even at the base of society, which may be broader than that of those who have trampled upon it, they bring up that genius to strike off the cumbrous multitude which have oppressed it, and send it forth with mighty energies to overturn the policy of ages, and give a new and lasting impulse to all the rest of mankind. This can never take place in such a policy of the church as fixes every thing by prelatical constraints. Had Napoleon been under a king, the political world had never seen its conqueror in the obscure young Corsican. Had William Carey been under a bishop, the heathen world had never seen its deliverer in the obscure young cobbler of Leicester; nor again, had the Sanscrit language seen, in the same individual, its lexicographer and grammarian; nor had forty languages of India become the vehicles of light and of the word of God to countless multitudes of deluded pagans. The irregularities which are the result of such a policy, while they sometimes apparently delay and render ineffectual the movements of the church, may be said more often-inspired as they are by the genius of freedom which gave them origin-to result in some great measure or discovery, which must hold for a while the shackled world in amazement, till at length it opens, lets in the light, slackens its fetters, and, despite itself, takes one step more and higher in the scale of being and of universal advancement.

The Baptists have ever regarded the ministry as the great means of propagating the gospel, and, as such, worthy of a competent support. "The ox that treadeth out the corn should not be muzzled." They have never

acknowledged, however, any right on the part of the ministry to impose rules for their conduct, or demands upon their substance or their persons. The present condition of the denomination exhibits the progress of a return from one of those re-actions to which its own elasticity of action has subjected it. The denomination saw in the clergy of the established church, a learned ministry who were principally destitute of piety; they saw them care only for their own emoluments and ease; they saw the poor oppressed; and they felt especially upon their own heads, the force of their evil power. For these reasons, they concluded that learning and want of piety must be inseparable; and for the minister to demand a support as his salary must be, they imagined, the result both of learning and impiety. Hence they have, in fact, to a lamentable extent, always neglected both to educate their ministry and to give them a competent support. But, as a counterpart to such a re-action, the freedom of their policy in introducing the ministry to their office, has furnished them, it is true, with an unlearned ministry, and, like their great predecessors, mostly from the lower walks of life; but, as a consequence, a ministry moved only by feelings of piety, and ardor for the salvation of their fellowmen-a ministry which have looked to heaven rather than to men, both for their support and for the result of their labors a ministry, which, without learning to recommend them, and with only the Bible, beaming its promises and its blessings upon their path, and their own efforts to support them, have overcome all obstacles-and a ministry faithful to their Master rather than to men, and which is, beyond all controversy, restoring the policy of the Bible to the church. But the return of the denomination to their true policy, is sufficiently manifest in the present enterprises in which they are engaged.

The Baptists have ever held that the Bible is the rule of faith and practice for Christians; and that it is so complete and perfect in this respect, as to exclude all farther legislation, and to reject all tradition and precedent; and that, for this purpose, it has been given entirely by divine inspiration. Jealous for the truth, they have ever held it as a maxim not to be overlooked, that the conscious admission of any error in the creed or the practice of a church is to open thus far the flood-gates that protect her