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affairs, accountable to no other ecclesiastical body, and bound only to obey the great Head of the universal Church. And this was a singularly bold step for men to take, who had been bred amidst the high-toned claims of the English Church, to say, that Bishops and Archbishops and other Church dignitaries were nothing, and that the brethren who joined voluntarily in the same covenant, and who associated themselves together to do the Lord's work in any place, were everything. They adopted a principle, the true nature, character and results of which could not for many generations be understood; a principle, which would not fail ultimately to be a source of civil as well as of religious freedom. This principle, it is not too much to say, has been the origin of all the freedom we enjoy. To the independent religious societies which our Puritan forefathers established must the historian look, if he would discover the nurseries of North American freedom. There the cradle was rocked. There the early bias was given. There the habits of the people were formed, their habits of thinking, feeling and acting. The practice of a century and a half had accustomed men to bow to no earthly authority in the Church, except what they consented to themselves, — the authority which resided in small bodies, of which each individual member might feel himself to be an important part. And when the Revolution of 1775 broke out, the people in this portion of the Colonies had only to apply to civil affairs the same principle, which had long been familiar to them in the Church.

W. P. L.

ART. XI.—THE UNITARIAN DENOMINATION.*

DR. PUTNAM's discourse at the Installation of Mr. Fosdick has given rise to more conversation than any sermon preached in this city for many years, with the exception of Mr. Parker's at the South Boston ordination; not so much, however, we apprehend, from the novelty or strength of his

* A Discourse delivered at the Installation of Rev. David Fosdick, as Pastor of the Hollis Street Church, Boston, March 3, 1846. By GEORGE PUTNAM. Together with the Charge, Right Hand of Fellowship, and Address to the People. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1846. 8vo. pp. 72.

positions, (or his main position, we should rather say,) as from the surprise which was felt at the exhibition of such views from the author of the discourse on such an occasion. Mr. Putnam has fully justified himself, we think, for bringing the subject before the public in this particular manner, since his object was, if possible, to draw general attention to remarks which he thought it important should be made. The event has shown that in this respect he chose his time. and place with his usual sagacity. He has, also, amply vindicated himself from any imputation of unfairness in not printing the sermon precisely as it was delivered, by the statement which he makes in the preface of the changes he has introduced. The discourse therefore stands now upon its own merits, to be judged without any bias from the associations which it acquired in the delivery.

We

Of its merits, when thus independently examined, we cannot speak as we should be glad, and as we are accustomed, to speak of whatever comes from the writer. not only dissent from him in his general purpose and in many of his illustrations, but we are compelled to say that the discourse seems to us to fall much below his usual pulpit performances. The impression which we received when we heard it, has been confirmed by repeated perusals. It lacks the glow which we have before found in his productions, and as an argumentative discussion, is open to severe criticism. The preface shows us that Mr. Putnam is interested in the views which he has presented, from a deep conviction of their truth, but if we had only the sermon before us, and knew nothing of its author, we should be tempted to think he had published his crude opinions without even reviewing his manuscript to mark the incongruities of his own reasoning. Our limits prevent us from entering on a thorough examination of the discourse, or the subject which it has brought into such prominence before our community, but we cannot think that many pages are needed to expose the unsoundness of the train of thought which here invites our judgment.

The position on which Mr. Putnam plants himself, and which he labors through the whole discourse to defend, is, that Unitarians should discard and disown any denominational existence. He thinks that both the principles they profess and the policy they ought to pursue should dissuade

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them from multiplying denominational bonds, and should induce them to relinquish whatever ecclesiastical ties or usages they now have, which may give them, or seem to give them, the form and bearing of a denomination. He maintains that we not only ought not to be, but that we are not and cannot be, a denomination. In his desire to establish this point, he breaks out in an indignant remonstrance against the notion, that we have any compactness, coherence, union, or substantive existence whatever, as a body. "Us! there is no us in any corporate sense, and it was never meant there should be; I pray God there never may be." If Mr. Putnam had paused over this sentence before proceeding to the next, he is too good a scholar not to have perceived, that by his use of the word "corporate" he had changed entirely the aspect of his argument. No one imagines that we have a corporate existence. No one wishes we should have, or believes we can have. But we may be a denomination, and a very efficient denomination, without this. Mr. Putnam, doubtless, meant to assert, as we have just intimated, that the Unitarian body is a mere name, a phantom, an illusion. "There is no us." And yet all through his sermon he talks about "we" and "us," just as if the words denoted a visible reality. Strike out these words from the discourse, and it will fall to pieces. "We are not a denomination, in the common and full meaning of that term," says he, (p. 4); and yet, " in point of influence in the organization of society, and in shaping the general course of thought, we are one of the strongest," (p. 34). Well, that is enough for our content. A denomination strong enough to have such influence is something real. Seriously, this playing false and loose with we and us should have been avoided by one (so cautious and upright as our friend.

But whether we are a denomination or not, Mr. Putnam contends that we ought not to be; and in conducting his argument selects three points of attack upon the mischievous error which he would overthrow. He condemns our ecclesiastical usages—such as we have; everybody knows they are few and simple enough. He rebukes our narrowness in refusing the Christian name to any one who claims it. And he chastises us for not entertaining a more just conception of the nature of Christian fellowship. We will follow him a little way in each of these three assaults.

Mr. Putnam pronounces a sentence of condemnation on almost all our ways of expressing religious sympathy. Ecclesiastical councils and ministerial associations receive his especial censure; while the American Unitarian Association, which presents more of a sectarian aspect than anything else which we have among us, obtains, singularly enough, a reluctant permission to go on and accomplish its work. Now we really think Mr. Putnam is spending his strength upon windmills and moonshine, when he exerts himself so vigorously to rescue us from the evils which arise out of our inartificial and voluntary organizations. We doubt that there are such serious evils as he seems to descry, lurking in our path or lowering in our horizon. Some inconveniences and difficulties we experience now; and we should be tried by a similar experience, if we had no councils and no associations and no meetings and no name, for inconvenience and difficulty belong to man's condition, and so long as the flesh detains and the world encompasses us, we must expect to meet them. But all the embarrassment which we have yet experienced, or are likely to encounter, can be easily borne, and need not drive us to relinquish the good old ways in which generations have walked, to their own comfort and for an example to their children. We like these councils and associations, which Congregationalism has accepted without any sacrifice of its fundamental principle. They are pleasant in remembrance, and in spite of the death-blow which has been aimed at them, we have many a pleasant vision in prospect. We should regret to see them laid aside, and least of all should we like that purely clerical management of ecclesiastical occasions, which would grow up under Mr. Putnam's plan of avoiding a representation of churches. It is this very feature, the union of churches, and not of ministers alone the incorporation of lay influence with clerical—which is one of the safeguards of our religious liberty.

We feel some regret, that so much attention has been bestowed on these subsidiary portions of the discourse before us. We fear that it has thus been withdrawn from the main purpose of the writer, which, as we understand him, is to establish an individuality of action that would be fatal to union or cooperation. He does not, of course, so regard it, but he appears to us the advocate of the extremest

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individualism. To use the cant word of the day, he is an ultraist of the first water. We cannot go along with him, and we are glad that neither his arguments, nor our own judgment founded on some observation and reflection, compel us to go along with him.

Passing on to his next battery, he discusses the question, what constitutes a right to the Christian name. We confess we have read some pages in this part of the discourse with astonishment. It is not only the reasoning to which we find ourselves unable to give an assent, but some of the statements assumed as the basis of this reasoning sound strange to our ears. Mr. Putnam declares it to be "our theory, that any one desiring to be of us may come into all ecclesiastical relations with us, unless we are obliged to deny him to be a Christian believer;" that, according to our theory, we should be bound to receive any such person, and "give him free course and furtherance in spreading his doctrines in our name!"—that is, give him free permission to enact the hypocrite. We can only say, that we never heard of such a theory before, and all the practice of our denomination has been directly in the face of such a construction. Have we ever maintained, has a single Unitarian journal, writer, or preacher ever affirmed, that any one may come into all ecclesiastical relations with us, provided only he be a Christian believer? Have we ever expected, or desired, that Roman Catholics, or Calvinists, or Methodists, (Father Taylor even,) should "come into all ecclesiastical relations with us?" Yet we have never felt ourselves obliged to doubt their Christian belief. The statement is palpably erroneous, unless its correctness be saved by the clause"desiring to be of us ;" and then it is reduced to a harmless common-place, that whoever wishes to be a Unitarian has our leave to become one. Mr. Putnam asks, with all sobriety, "if any persons, ministers, or churches, holding those systems, wish to join our denomination, and so become identified with us, what should we do?" We would ask him in return, by what process of thought he is able to conceive of persons holding those systems becoming identified with us? The very fact that they are Romanists, or Calvinists, is an insuperable barrier. Bitter and sweet cannot become identical, while they retain their distinctive properties.

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