EIGHTH CHAPTER.

MODERN PROTESTANT CREEDS.

$ 100. GENERAL SURVEY.

With the Westminster standards the creed-making period of the Reformed Churches was brought to a close. Calvinism found in them its clearest and fullest exposition. The Helvetic Consensus Formula (1675) was only a weak symbolical after-birth, called forth by the Saumur controversies on the extent of divine election and the inspiration of Hebrew vowel-points. The creative power of Lutheran symbolism had exhausted itself much earlier in the Formula of Concord (1577), and was followed by a period of scholastic analysis and demonstration of the Lutheran system as embodied in its authoritative confessions. The prevailing tendency in these Churches is to greater confessional freedom and catholic expansion rather than sectarian contraction. While the Roman Catholic Church in our age has narrowed its creed by adding two new dogmas of wide range and import, and has doomed to silence every dissent from the infallible decisions of the Vatican, like a machine that is worked by a single motive force, and makes resistance impossible, the Protestant Churches would simplify and liberalize their elaborate standards of former days rather than increase their bulk and tighten their authority. The spirit of the age refuses to be bound by rigorous formulas, and demands greater latitude for private opinion and theological science.

We might therefore close our history of creeds at this point. But evangelical Protestantism extends far beyond the boundaries of Lutheranism and Calvinism.

Since the middle of the seventeenth century there arose, mainly from the fruitful soil of the Reformed Church in England, first amid much persecution, then under the partial protection of the Toleration Act of 1689, a number of distinct ecclesiastical organizations, which, while holding fast to the articles of the cecumenical faith of orthodox Christendom, and the evangelical principles of the Protestant Reformation, differ on minor points of doctrine, worship, and discipline. They have passed through the bloody baptism of persecution as much as the older Churches of the Reformation, and by their fruits they have fully

earned a title to an honorable standing in the family of Christian Churches.

The most important among these modern denominations are the CONGREGATIONALISTS, BAPTISTS, and QUAKERS, who rose in the seventeenth century, and the METHODISTS and MORAVIANS, who date from the middle of the eighteenth century. They originated in England, with the exception of the Moravians (who are of Bohemian and German descent), and found from the start a fruitful and congenial soil in the American colonies, which offered an hospitable asylum to all who suffered from religious persecution. The Congregationalists had established flourishing colonies in Massachusetts and Connecticut before they were even tolerated in the mother country. Roger Williams, the patriarch of the American Baptists, though of English birth and training, made Rhode Island his permanent home. The fathers and founders of the Society of Friends-Fox and Penn; of MethodisınWesley and Whitefield; of the Moravian Church-Zinzendorf, Spangenberg, Nitschmann-visited America repeatedly, and with such success that they gave to their denominations an Anglo-American stamp. Two of these denominations, the Methodists and Baptists, have in the United States during the nineteenth century numerically far outgrown the older Protestant Churches, and are full of aggressive zeal and energy, both at home and in distant missionary fields.'

On the Continent of Europe these Anglo-American denominations till quite recently were little known, and were even persecuted as intruders and unchurchly sects. National State Churches will allow the

The following comparative table of ministers and churches in 1776 and 1876 gives at least an approximate idea of the growth of churches in the United States during its first centennial:

widest latitude of theological speculation within the limits of outward conformity rather than grant freedom of public worship to dissenting organizations, however orthodox.1

The nineteenth century has given birth in England to the IRVINGITES and DARBYITES, and in America to the CUMBERLAND PRESBYTERIANS, REFORMED EPISCOPALIANS, and other organizations, which more or less depart from the older Protestant confessions, but adhere to the supernatural revelation in the Bible and the fundamental articles of general orthodoxy.2

The creeds of these modern Protestant denominations (if we except the Savoy Declaration of 1658 and the Baptist Confession of 1688, which contain the body of the Westminster Confession) are thin, meagre, and indefinite as compared with the older confessions, which grew out of the profound theological controversies of the sixteenth century. They contain much less theology; they confine themselves to a popular statement of the chief articles of faith for practical use, and leave a large margin for the exercise of private judgment. In this respect they mark a return to the brevity and simplicity of the primitive baptismal creeds and rules of faith. The authority of creeds, moreover, is lowered, and the absolute supremacy and sufficiency of the Scriptures is emphasized.

In the present age there is, especially in America, a growing tendency towards a liberal recognition and a closer approach of the various evangelical denominations in the form of a free union and co-operation in the common work of the Master, without interfering with the inner organization and peculiar mission of each. This union tendency manifests itself from different starting-points and in different direc

1 Under the disparaging name of sects the Methodists and Baptists, and other denominations figure usually in German works on Symbolics that recognize only three Churches or Confessions the Catholic (Greek and Roman), the Lutheran, and the Reformed (Calvinistic). The late Professor Marheineke, one of the chief writers on Symbolics, after explaining to his catechumens of Trinity Parish, in Berlin, that there are three Churches in Christendom, asked a pupil, 'To what Church do you belong?' and received the answer, 'To Trinity Church.' The science of Symbolics, or Comparative Theology, has thus far been almost exclusively cultivated in Germany, but should be reconstructed on a much more liberal scale in England and America, where all denominations meet in daily intercourse and on terms of equal rights.

2 Some of these have already been considered, the Cumberland Presbyterians in connection with the Westminster Confession, the Reformed Episcopalians in connection with the history of the Thirty-nine Articles.

tions, now in the form of voluntary associations (such as Bible and Tract Societies, Young Men's Christian Associations, the Evangelical Alliance, the German Church Diet), now in the form of ecclesiastical confederations (Pan-Anglican Council, Presbyterian Alliance, AngloGreek Committees, the Bonn Conferences), now in the form of organic union (the evangelical Union of Lutherans and Reformed Churches in Prussia and other German States, Presbyterian Reunion of Old and New School). The same tendency calls forth efforts, feeble as yet, to formulate the essential consensus of the creeds of congenial sections of Christendom. The old motto, in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas, is struggling to become a practical reality; the age of separation and division is passing away, and the age of the reunion of divided Christendom is beginning to dawn, and to gather the corps of Christ's army, so long engaged in internal war, against the common foe Antichrist.

§ 101. THE CONGREGATIONALISTS.

LITERATURE.

I. ENGLISH CONGREGATIONALISM.

See the sources of the Westminster Assembly, and the historical works of Neal, Stoughton, and others mentioned in §§ 92, 93, and 94.

JOHN ROBINSON (Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers in Leyden, d. 1625): Works, with Memoir by Robert Ashton. London, 1851, 3 vols.

The Grand Debate concerning Presbytery and Episcopacy in the Westminster Assembly (Lond. 1652). The works of Drs. GOODWIN, OWEN, HOWE, and other patriarchs of Independency.

BENJAMIN BROOK: The Lives of the Puritans from Queen Elizabeth to 1662. London, 1813, 3 vols. BENJAMIN HANBURY: Historical Memorials relating to the Independents or Congregationalists, from their Rise to the Restoration of the Monarchy, A.D. 1660. London (Congreg. Union of England and Wales), 1839-1844, 3 vols.

Jos. FLETCHER: History of Independency in England since the Reformation. London, 1847-1849, 4 vols. GEORGE PUNCHARD (of Boston): History of Congregationalism from about A.D. 250 to the Present Time. 2d ed. rewritten and enlarged, New York and Boston (Hurd & Houghton), 1865-81, 5 vols. (The first two vols. are irrelevant.)

JOHN WADDINGTON: Congregational History, 1200–1567. London, 1869-78, 4 vols. Second volume from 1567 to 1700, Lond. 1874. (See a searching and damaging review of this work by Dr. Dexter in the "Congreg. Quarterly" for July, 1874, Vol. XVI. pp. 420 sqq.)

HERBERT S. SKEATS: A History of the Free Churches of England from 1688 to 1851. London, 1867; 2d ed. 1869.

II. AMERICAN CONGREGATIONALISM.

(1) Sources.

The works of JOHN ROBINSON, above quoted, especially his Justification of Separation from the Church of England (1610, printed in 1639).

JOHN COTTON (of Boston, England, and then of Boston, Mass.): The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England. Or the Way of Churches Walking in Brotherly Equality or Co-ordination, without Subjection of one Church to another. Measured by the Golden Reed of the Sanctuary. London, 1645. By the same: The Way of Congregational Churches cleared (against Baillie and Rutherford). London, 164S.

THOMAS HOOKER (of Hartford, Conn.): A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline. London, 1648. Robinson, Cotton, and Hooker are the connecting links between English Independency and American Congregationalism. Their rare pamphlets (wretchedly printed, like most works during the period of the civil wars, from want of good type and paper) are mostly found in the Congregational Library at Boston, and ought to be republished in collected form.

ALEXANDER YOUNG: Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth, from 1602 to 1628. Boston, 1841.

ALEXANDER YOUNG: Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. From 1623 to 1636. Boston, 1846.

GEORGE B. CHEEVER: The Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, in New England, in 1620; reprinted from the original volume, with illustrations. New York, 1848.

NATHANAEL MORTON (Secretary to the Court for the Jurisdiction of New Plymouth): New England's Memorial. Boston, 1855 (6th ed. Congreg. Board of Publication). Reprints of Memorial of 1669, Bradford's History of Plymouth Colony, etc.

(2) Histories.

BENJAMIN TRUMBULL, D.D.: A Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesiastical, from the Emigration of its First Planters, from England, in the year 1630, to the year 1764. New Haven, 1818, 2 vols. LEONARD BACON: Thirteen Historical Discourses, on the Completion of Two Hundred Years from the Beginning of the First Church in New Haven. New Haven, 1839.

JOSEPH B. FELT: The Ecclesiastical History of New England; comprising not only Religious, but also Moral and other Relations. Boston, Mass. (Congregational Library Association), 1855-1862, 2 vols. JOSEPH S. CLARK: A Historical Sketch of the Congregational Churches in Massachusetts from 1620 to 1858. Boston, 1858.

Memorial of the Semi-Centennial Celebration of the Founding of the Theological Seminary at Andover. Andover, Mass. 1859.

Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut; prepared under the Direction of the General Association to Commemorate the Completion of One Hundred and Fifty Years since its First Annual Assembly. New Haven (publ. by Wм. L. KINGSLEY), 1861.

DANIEL APPLETON WHITE: New England Congregationalism in its Origin and Purity; Illustrated by the Foundation and Early Records of the First Church in Salem [Mass.]. Salem, 1861. Comp. Reply to the above, by JOSEPH B. FELT. Salem, 1861.

The first vols. of G. BANCROFT's History of the United States (begun in 1884); last ed. 1876, 6 vols. JOHN GORHAM PALFREY: History of New England. Boston, 1859-1874, 4 vols.

LEONARD BACON: The Genesis of the New England Churches. New York, 1874.

HENRY MARTYN DEXTER: As to Roger Williams and his 'Banishment' from the Massachusetts Plantation; with a few further Words concerning the Baptists, the Quakers, and Religious Liberty. Boston, 1876 (Congregational Publishing Society). A vindication of the Massachusetts Colony against the charge of intolerance.

Numerons essays and reviews relating to the Congregational polity and doctrine and the history of Congregational Churches may be found in the volumes of the following periodicals:

American Quarterly Register. Boston, Mass. 1827-1843, 15 vols.

The Christian Spectator. 1st series monthly; 2d series quarterly. New Haven, 1819-1838, 20 vols. The New-Englander, quarterly (continued). New Haven, 1843-1876, 34 vols.

The Congregational Quarterly (continued). Boston, Mass. 1st series, 1859-1868, 10 vols.; 2d series, 1869-1876, 8 vols.

The Congregational Year-Book. New York, 1854-1859, 5 vols.

Other light is thrown on the Congregational history and polity by Results of Councils, many of which, in cases of peculiar interest, have been published in pamphlet form.

(3) Congregational Polity.

Congregational Order. The Ancient Platforms of the Congregational Churches of New England, with a Digest of Rules and Usages in Connecticut. Publ. by direction of the General Association of Connecticut. Middletown, Conn. 1843. [Edited by LEONARD BACON, DAVID D. FIELD, TIMOTHY P. GILLET.]

THOMAS C. UPHAM: Ratio Discipline; or, The Constitution of the Congregational Churches, Examined and Deduced from Early Congregational Writers, and other Ecclesiastical Authorities, and from Usage. 2d edition. Portland, 1844.

PRESTON CUMMINGS: A Dictionary of Congregational Usages and Principles according to Ancient and Modern Authors; to which are added brief Notices of some of the Principal Writers, Assemblies, and Treatises referred to in the Compilation. Boston, 1852.

GEORGE PUNCHARD: A View of Concrepationalism, its Principles and Doctrines; the Testimony of Ecclesiastical History in its Faver, its Practice, and its Advantages. [1st edition, 1840.] Third edition, revised and enlarged. Boston (Congreg. Board of Publication), 1856.

HENRY MARTYN DEXTER: Congregationalism: What it is; Whence it is; How it Works; Why it is Better than any other Form of Church Government. Boston, 1865; 5th ed. revised, 1879.

Congregationalism has its name from the prominence it gives to the particular congregation as distinct from the general Church.' It aims

This term is preferable to Independency. In England both terms are used synonymous