the legitimate deductions from principles of the New Testament by copious use of laws, usages, examples, and injunctions of the Old Testament. The planters of New-Haven Colony organized their civil State upon the principle that "the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of men in all duties, as well in families and commonwealth, as in matters of the Church."1 In 1644 the General Court of this Colony ordered, "that the judicial laws of God as they were delivered by Moses, and as they were a fence to the moral law, being neither typical nor ceremonial, nor having any reference to Canaan, shall be accounted of moral equity, and generally bind all offenders, and be a rule to all the courts in this jurisdiction in their proceedings against offenders, till they be branched out into particulars hereafter. "2 So far as these and similar acts and enactments of early Congregationalists show their confidence in those principles of civil righteousness that are exhibited in the Word of God, they cannot be too highly commended. But so far, on the other hand, as they show an undoubted tendency to confound things different, a strong disposition to drive public morality as an affair of church control with a high hand, and a plainly mistaken point of view with respect to the method in which the laws of the Old Testament have their applicability to modern life, they are worthy of regret and disavowal. The Congregational principle of individual equality and self-control in church affairs has been the most important factor in the modern development of religious and civil liberty. The testimony to this truth, in respect both to the work of the Puritans in Old England, 1 History of the First Church in New Haven, p. 20, f. and to that of New-England Congregationalists, is un. equivocal and competent. I quote at second hand a few sentences which are said to have come from distinguished pens and lips. "To this sect," says Hume of the Puritans, "the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution." Lord Brougham affirms of the Independents, "They, with whatever ridicule some may visit their excesses, or with whatever blame others, they, with the zeal of martyrs and with the purity of the early Christians, the skill and courage of the most renowned warriors, achieved for England the free constitution which she now enjoys." "As for toleration," declares Lord King, "or any true notion of religious liberty, or any general freedom of conscience, we owe them not in the least degree to what is called the Church of England. On the contrary, we owe all these to the Independents in the time of the Commonwealth, and to Locke, their most enlightened and illustrious disciple." "To Congregationalism," says David Hale, "we doubtless owe the free and happy structure of our political institutions." Bancroft speaks of the civil compact formed by the Plymouth Colony as "the birth of popular constitutional liberty;" and of the Pilgrims as the "men who, as they first trod the soil of the New World, scattered the seminal principles of Republican freedom and national independence." It was the opinion of Pitt, "that, if the Church of England had been efficiently established in the North-American Colonies, they would never have refused allegiance to the British crown." "These village Hampdens who came up to Boston year after year, and voted solidly 1 See Church Polity of the Pilgrims, p. 64, f. and Appendix F; American Congregational Union Addresses, May, 1854, p. 13, f; Congregational Tracts, No. 1, said to be written by Rev. Z. K. Hawley, p. 13, f. to disobey the royal orders, were the offspring of townmeetings and the Puritan church system," so it is truly asserted by a writer in "The North-American Review." It is said that Jefferson derived his "best plan of government for the American Colonies" from the churchmeetings of a church conducted upon Congregational principles. Moreover, the different prime elements of our free civil government as it now exists may be more or less directly traced to the working in church affairs of this principle of individual equality and self-control. The written constitution formed by the consultation of citizens in their representatives, and deriving all its authority, under God, from the consciences and wills of the people, is one such element. The first written constitution in the history of nations was, as Dr. Leonard Bacon has shown,1 the direct offspring of the earliest Congregational churches of Connecticut. The preamble of this constitution declares, that, "where a people are gathered together, the Word of God requires, that, to maintain the peace and union of such a people, there should be an orderly and decent government according to God." To maintain "the discipline of the churches, which, according to the truth of said gospel, is now practised among us," is set forth as one principal intent of this constitution. The rights of civil selfgovernment are thus derived from the same source from which are derived the rights of the self-government of individual Christians and of Christian churches. The town-meeting is another prime factor in our civil free government. The town-meeting was, however, primarily modelled after the church-meeting; not unfre 1 Centennial Papers of the General Conference of Connecticut, p. 150, f. quently it was only the church-meeting with its face turned toward civil affairs. "The town corporation," declares Dr. Joseph S. Clark,1 "is the offspring of Puritan Congregationalism." It is to be traced to the polity of our fathers, who uniformly adapted the new plantation on a grant of land to the size suitable for common public worship of the inhabitants. These small free republics are the germinal elements out of which grew, both in idea and in fact, the greater republics, and the common republican government which now covers them all. The element of popular suffrage is another prime element of our free civil state. But "it is an unquestionable fact," says the same author just quoted, "that the right of popular suffrage found its way to these shores from the north of England, through Holland, in Mr. Robinson's congregation, and crept into our civil government through the pre-established usage of the Congregational churches." 2 We must also duly notice the fact that the writings and preaching of Congregational pastors in New England, as well as their influence upon magistrates and people in other ways, were of momentous influence in the securing and development of civil freedom. A sermon preached by Thomas Hooker as early as May 31, 1638, and deciphered from obscure notes not many years since, furnishes, according to Dr. Bacon,3 "the earliest known suggestion of a fundamental law enacted not by royal charter, nor by concession from any previously existing government, but by the people themselves,a primary and supreme law by which the government 1 Historical Sketch of Congregational Churches in Massachusetts, p. 56. 2 Ibid., p. 12, f. See, also, Baylie's Historical Memoir, I. 30. 8 Centennial Papers of the General Conference of Connecticut, p. 152. The is constituted, and which not only provides for the free choice of magistrates by the people, but also 'sets the bounds and limitations of the power and place' to which each magistrate is called." This same Congregational pastor instituted in Connecticut such a system of state policy and laws as commanded admiration in England. In Massachusetts, for more than fifty years, John Cotton's "Judicials " and Nathaniel Ward's "Body of Liberties" constituted the only civil code. "Vindication of the Government of New-England churches," by Rev. John Wise, "Pastor to a Church in Ipswich," was used as a political text-book in the struggle for civil freedom;1 and some of the most glittering sentences of the Declaration of Independence seem like echoes from this work of the Ipswich pastor. The election-sermons by Congregational ministers were, down to the close of the war of the Revolution, clear, convincing, and effective applications of the principles of religion and of their church order to affairs of civil government. They were often printed in large editions, and distributed among the people as quasi statedocuments. What fidelity some of these sermons displayed, we may judge from a somewhat late example. John Barnard, pastor of a church in Andover, preached the election-sermon before his Excellency William Shirley, Governor, and the other assembled notables, May 28, 1746.2 To these worthies the bold preacher does not hesitate to present point blank these and similar pertinent inquiries: "Are those so fit to govern others who don't govern their passions and ap1 See Historical Sketch of Congregational Churches in Massachusetts, p. 120. 2 Printed by John Draper, printer to His Excellency the Governour and Council, for Daniel Gookin, over against the Old-South Meetinghouse. Volume in the library of the Maine Historical Society. |