Congregationalism to conform its laws and practice; although, in fact, both laws and practice have at times departed, and are even at present removed, from the first intention. The doctrine of the Cambridge Platform is in this regard essentially, but not quite purely, apostolic. This is manifest in its definitions of the matter and form of a particular visible church. "The matter of a visible church are saints by calling." "Those who have and show the knowledge of the principles of religion," freedom from "gross and open scandals," "the profession of their faith and repentance," a walk "in blameless obedience to the Word, so as that in charitable discretion they may be accounted-saints by calling," and "the children of such, who are also holy," are the matter of a visible church. The form of a church is the visible covenant, agreement, or consent, whereby they give up themselves unto the Lord, to the observing of the ordinances of Christ, together in the same society, which is usually called the church covenant."2 "The things which are requisite to be found in all church-members are repentance from sin, and faith in Jesus Christ." "These are the things whereof men are to be examined at their admission into the church: " these things they must profess in such sort as to "satisfy rational charity that the things are there indeed." It will readily be seen that the position of the children of those who are saints by calling, when as yet they have not manifested "their (own) faith and repentance by an open profession thereof," is left somewhat equivocal by the Platform. They are declared to belong to the matter of a particular visible church; they are spoken of as members of the church, being "born. in the same," or having "received their membership " 1 Chap. III. 1, 2.. 2 Chap. IV. 3. 3 Chap. XII. 2.

"in their infancy or minority, by virtue of the covenant of their parents;" and yet they, too, must "manifest their faith and repentance by an open profession thereof before they are received to the Lord's Supper," or are considered "capable of being made partakers of full communion." Two classes of persons called churchmembers are thus constituted. The principle of a regenerate membership is in all this, in theory, fully recognized; but the practice of the churches is not made to conform to the full recognition, and they are thus left in time partially to lose their first and fullest recognition of the principle itself. This effort to combine the principle with a practice which seemed necessary in theory, on account of the doctrine of God's covenant with believers in its extension to their children, and indispensable in fact, on account of previous and surrounding conditions of church life, gave much trouble to New-England Congregationalism.

John Cotton's treatise, "Of the Holinesse of ChurchMembers," 2 printed at about the time of the construction of the Cambridge Platform, attempts this question of the requisites for church-membership in a discussion of nearly one hundred pages in length. Like the Platform, this treatise maintains essentially the doctrine of a regenerate membership for the particular visible church, and is at the same time conciliatory in its tone and rules of practice toward the men of a different view. "Such as are born of Christian parents, and baptized in their infancy into the fellowship of the church," are admitted to be "initiated members of the same church, though destitute of spiritual grace." Yet

1 Chap. XII. 7.

2 Printed in London, 1650, and addressed to his former people in Boston, England.

again it is declared: "Such persons, and such onely, are lawfully received as members into the fellowship of the visible Church, who do before the Lord, and his people, professe their repentance, and faith in Christ, and subjection to him in his ordinances." And "such as are born and baptized members of the church," "unless, when they grow up to years," they submit to the same conditions, “are not orderly continued and confirmed members of the church." The same distinction between members born, or received in infancy, into the church, and members confirmed, or in full communion, which the Platform acknowledges, is here acknowledged and made more prominent by the treatise of Cotton. The debate as to the course which should be taken with those who, being members in the former sense, refused or neglected to become members in the latter sense, was certain to arise. This debate, as I have said, afterward sorely distracted the Congregational churches of New England.

"Visible saints," says Hooker,2 "are the only true and mete matter whereof a visible church should be gathered;" and confederation (entering into a mutual covenant) is the form. "If upon this Rock (Christ believed on and publickly confessed, by grown persons) the Church of Christ is to be built, then the children of the Church, who were baptized in their infancy, when they come to be of ripe age, must hold forth publickly their personal confession of faith," - such is the sound and indisputable conclusion of John Davenport.3

To the views of Hooker and Davenport the earlier and purer practice of Congregational churches in this country conformed itself. None of these churches, ex

1 See sect. V.

2 Survey of Church Discipline, pp. 13, 14. 8 Power of Congregational Churches, p. 22.

cept, for a time, the First Church in Dorchester, seems to have shown any disposition to depart from the true New-Testament principle as to the constitution of a particular visible church. We find that active lay evangelist, Dr. Samuel Fuller, disputing with Rev. John Warham, one of the ministers of this church, because the latter held that the visible church "may consist of a mixed people, godly and openly ungodly." The result of the dispute was the conformity of the Dorchester church to the practice of the other churches.

This question, however, having become, as might have been foreseen, a burning question, and the authority of the New Testament and of the Cambridge Platform having been claimed for their side by both classes of disputants, it received a different answer from the original one of Congregationalism at the hands of the synods of 1657 and 1662. The declarations of these synods show, not simply the same confusion of language which the early theory manifested: they show rather a departure from the principle which underlies the theory itself. "Church-members who were admitted in minority, understanding the doctrine of faith, and publicly professing their faith thereto, not scandalous in life, and solemnly owning the covenant before the church," are to have the privilege of having their children baptized. We note in this provision these two elements, which both witness a departure from the ancient view; viz., the prominence given to a public intellectual assent to doctrine, and the invitation given to virtual hypocrisy, when it is assumed that men may, without a change of heart, solemnly own before the church a covenant in which "they give up themselves and children to the Lord, and subject themselves to the government of Christ in the church." The tendency here plainly

manifested is to make the conditions of enjoying full communion a matter of religious formalism and compliance with custom, rather than of inner attitude toward God and Christ.

The subterfuges resorted to in argument by those who favored the Half-way Covenant, in order that they might satisfy themselves and others of their substantial accord with the New Testament and with their fathers in regard to this doctrine, are really distressing. But scarcely any open avowals of contradiction to the principle of a regenerate membership for the material of a particular visible church are found until the close of the seventeenth century. In Hartford, in 1696, we find Mr. Woodbridge gathering a church without reference to the scriptural and truly Congregational requisition. Not credible evidence of a true Christian life, but "owning the covenant," is made the basis of its membership. The principle was verbally denied, for almost the first time in New England, in a sermon published by Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton in 1707. This sermon maintains that "sanctification is not a necessary qualification to partaking of the Lord's Supper," and that "the Lord's Supper is a converting ordinance." And so far do the churches swing away from their ancient allegiance, that in 1750 the grandson of Mr. Stoddard, no other than Jonathan Edwards, was by a Congregational council removed from his pastorate in Northampton, because he opposed the admission of the unconverted to the communion of the Lord's Supper.

There is little doubt that the conceptions held by many of the founders of New-England Congregationalism concerning the nature of genuine Christian experience were meagre and formal: the tests which they