of a mixt administration, so as no Church act can be consumated, or perfected, without the consent of both."

What this "power of privilege" amounted to is made clear by the eighth section of the same chapter, where we read that when the elders have called the church together upon any weighty occasion :

"the members so called may not without just cause [the Elders being judges] refuse to come; nor when they are come, depart before they are dismissed; nor speak in the Church before they have leave from the Elders; nor continue so doing when they [the Elders] require silence; nor may they oppose nor contradict the judgment or sentence of the Elders without [what those Elders concede to be] sufficient and weighty cause; because such practices are manifestly contrary unto order and government, and in-lets of disturbance, and tend to confusion."

Beautiful in theory as Barrowe thought this must be in the eye of every truly good man, and well-balanced as John Cotton conceived it ought to prove in practice, New England never really took to it. It may be doubtful if a single church here ever fully furnished itself with elders according to Barrowe's ideal; and it proved in practice excessively difficult to obtain fit men to serve in an office at once so exacting, so unsatisfying, and so liable to be unpopular. The pastors, however, for a long time proved equal to the emergency, and made up in quality of assumption for quantity of eldership. In many cases, after ruling elders had altogether ceased to be attempted to be chosen, the pastor assumed to himself solely the function constitutionally assigned to a session of which theoretically he was but a single member, and, in virtue of the eleventh section above cited, claimed and exercised the right to veto all

church action which displeased him; on the ground that "no church act can be consummated, or perfected, without the consent of both."

I need not suggest that such a condition of affairs was not a wholesome one for religion here. It was no strange thing that unrest followed. It would be too long a story for this page how God raised up John Wise of Ipswich, and, two generations later, Nathaniel Emmons of Franklin, by whose masterful logic, and powerful influence, the churches were carried back to New Testament times, and Congregationalism — although these men scarcely knew the precise quality, or the full value, of that which they were doing - once more consistently planted upon the foundations which Robert Browne had elaborated for it in Norwich three hundred years ago. There was a difference in philosophy; none at all in the result. The world had been drifting toward democracy. And Wise and Emmons both demonstrated, with irresistible clearness and force, that democracy is not only a sound, but the best, government, whether for Church or State. So that the votes which in Robert Browne's little church at Middelberg its members gave not in their own right, but as vicegerents of Christ, the members of our American churches now give, under some solemn sense of fealty to the Master indeed, and with supreme desire to please Him, yet humbly as of their own right under Him, as being intelligent and responsible members of a spiritual commonwealth, each one of whom must give account before God for the use of the talents and gifts with which he has been endowed.

In England, two hundred years ago, the Westminster

and Savoy Assemblies elaborated statements of the theology and the polity of the Congregational-or, as it has there been more common to call them, the Independent-churches; while for nearly half a century the Congregational Union of England and Wales, which holds its annual meeting in the month of May in London, and an autumnal meeting in some other city or town of England and Wales, has been steadily doing a good work of unification and consolidation which yet has in no way invaded, or impaired, the liberties of the churches.

In this country a General Synod was resorted to as early as in 1637, for the counteraction of the speculative errors of John Wheelwright and Mistress Anne Hutchinson. A second, which convened in 1646 and adjourned to 1648, indorsed the then recent doctrinal statements of the Westminster Assembly in the Fatherland, and set forth the Cambridge Platform as formulating accurately the Congregational polity as by it understood. Although a most important Synod was held in Massachusetts in 1662 upon the question who are proper subjects of baptism, which resulted in the disastrous recommendation of the half-way covenant; another in 1679-80 which condemned certain evils on account of which it was feared the Lord was scourging the land; and still another at Saybrook, in Connecticut, in 1708, which led to the adoption by the majority of the churches of that State of Consociationism and the Saybrook Platform; no third General Synod was gathered from the Congregational churches of all the land until the "Albany Convention" of 1852, which did important work in setting in motion agencies for the

assistance of feeble Congregational churches at the West, and promoted some important readjustment of certain old arrangements between Congregationalists and Presbyterians which had been found to work to the disadvantage of the former. After the War of the Rebellion, and the new aspects of the South thence resulting, a General Council was held at Boston in 1865, whose results were most important in evoking and wisely directing the common benevolence, in bringing pastors and churches West and East to a better, more confiding, and more coöperative mutual acquaintance, and, in general, in consolidating and stimulating our denominational growth and usefulness. On the 17th November, 1871, through the agency of a fifth General Convention, the Triennial National Council was organized at Oberlin, Ohio, on the basis of one delegate for every ten churches, and one for a fraction of ten greater than one-half; together with one delegate from each State organization of churches, and one for each ten thousand communicants in their fellowship, with one also for a major fraction thereof as nearly equally divided between ministers and laymen as may be. The second session of this Council was held at New Haven, Connecticut, September 30-October 4, 1874; the third at Detroit, Michigan, October 17-21, 1877; and the fourth is to meet at St. Louis, Missouri, on the 11th November, 1880.

CHAPTER II.

THE POLITY OF CONGREGATIONALISM.

HE claim of Congregationalism is that it is the polity of the New Testament; a claim founded upon the conviction that it is impossible with a clear and candid mind to examine Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, studying critically every passage between "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ" of Matthew, and the last "Amen" of the Apocalypse, which refers, however remotely, to church government, without reaching such a conclusion.

But three systems of polity—the democracy of Congregationalism, the aristocracy of Presbyterianism, and the monarchy of Episcopacy, and of the Greek and Romish churches are possible. They may be inconsistently combined, as we have seen the first two to have been amalgamated in Barrowism; but such hybridity is unfertile and therefore temporary. Moreover, the three are scarcely sufficiently alike, either in principles or processes, to be easily confounded with each other. So that, in so far as the New Testament refers at all to that subject, either in the way of implication while it describes early church methods which enter into its narrative, or in the way of precept, there would seem to be no need of serious doubt as to which of the three it chronicles and favors.

The briefest possible examination of every passage