DISCOURSE I.

JOB VIII. 8.

Inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers.

Το say that we feel an interest in the history of our churches, is but saying that we are interested in the history of New England. To be ignorant of the history of our churches, or indifferent to it, is to be indifferent and ignorant of the men from whom we descended, and of the institutions by which they secured and transmitted our highest privileges and choicest blessings. There are none of us who are indifferent. Ignorant we may be, unconcerned we are not and cannot be. It is unmeaning, it does but betray ignorance, for any to say that they care only for our civil polity and progress, and not for our religious. Our civil has been our religious polity. Or rather, the religious preceeded and controlled the civil. Religion led the way. It laid the foundation. It reared the superstructure. It built not the church only but the school, it founded the college, it guarded the laws, it wielded the power, it threw its strong voice and stronger energy into all the forms and fashions, the institutions and interests, of the new State, and the new world.

We are made to smile, as well as to mourn, when we hear the modern aspirant for fame and professor of all wisdom,

sneering at the boasted power and blessings of religion, in any period of the world, in any portion of rude or advanced society. And the smile becomes amazement and pity, when the sneer is pointed at New England. New England, the child of religion wafted in the Pilgrims' barque, planted on the Pilgrims' rock, baptized in the Pilgrims' tears, tears both of suffering and of gratitude. And what but religion, has crowned with such unexampled success and undying glory, the strongest wishes of the Pilgrims' heart-nerving the arm, sustaining the courage, guiding the counsels, inspiring the generous sacrifices and vigorous perseverance, which have made the wilderness and the solitary place glad for them, and caused that that which was to them indeed a desert, should to us blossom as the rose.

With what kind of religion, as regards at least its external form, with what order of church polity and discipline, are we to connect the influence of which we speak, in the settlement of New England? It is in no spirit of boasting or exclusion, that we reply, the Congregational order. Not that we suppose this alone did the work, or that the power of religion resides in its mode of government, or that any order is the only true and acceptable. On the contrary, we regard it as the chief glory of the Congregational churches, that while they reserve to themselves, they extend freely to all, the liberty of deciding the question of order, believing that the Head of the church gave to all this liberty, and that the purposes of religion are best answered by guarding it sacredly, and exercising it independently, with no fear but of God, and no appeal except to Christ. It is therefore chiefly, though we acknowledge it is not only, as historical fact, that we trace to Congregational churches the influence which gave to New England its first and best impulse. In the history of Congregational churches, we read a large and most important portion of the history of

religious liberty. It was about twenty years before the landing of our fathers at Plymouth, that a Society of Christians in the North of England separated from the established church, "and as the Lord's Free People, joined themselves by covenant into a church-state, to walk in all his ways, made known, or to be made known to them, according to their best endeavors, whatever it might cost them."* Here is the true spirit of Protestant and independent Congregationalism. It was in this spirit that these dissenters left their homes and crossed the wide waters, believing, as they said, that "the sun shines as pleasantly on America, as on England, and the sun of righteousness much more clearly," though they themselves were to open the forest and the soil, which would permit either sun to act in its power. It was in this spirit that the Plymouth colony, in 1641, passed an ordinance in these words: "That no injunction shall be put on any church or church member, as to doctrine, worship or discipline, whether for substance or circumstance, beside the command of the Bible." It was in this spirit, that all the early churches in this country were founded, each distinct and independent, in the making of its laws, in the choice of its pastor and officers, and in all its regulations; guarding their independence most suspiciously, carrying it out more consistently and fearlessly, than even their own churches in later times. Few churches except Congregational were founded in New England during its early periods.— As late as 1700, there were, as I find it stated on authority believed to be accurate, few Episcopalians, no Methodists, and with the exception of Rhode Island, very few Baptists; not a church of Baptists in Connecticut, and but two or three in

*Prince's New England Chronology. Prince and Norton give to this movement the early date of 1602. Neal dates the regular formation of the First Independent Congregational church at 1616, under Mr. Henry Ja cob, a friend and convert of Robinson.

Massachusetts, while the Congregational churches in New England then were nearly one hundred and fifty.*

Here we find Rhode-Island made an exception to the general prevalence of Congregationalism. The statement is a common one, and is founded in truth, as a comparative view. But when given as a positive assertion, and applied to the first settlement of Rhode Island, it needs qualification. It is well known that Roger Williams and his associates came here as Congregationalists. The first church which they formed in Providence, is stated by several writers to have been Congregational, and this it must have been, so far as it was of any order, or had any regular organization. But it is more probable that this little company formed no separate church at first, but worshipped, as they were able, after the manner of the church they had left in Salem, which we know was Podobaptist and rigidly Congregational. The first church in Newport also, gathered in 1640, under the Rev. John Clarke, we are told, "was Congregational and Podobaptist, and continued so about four years, when it became Baptist." It is also to be observed, that these and other churches, which afterward became Baptist, remained, and do still remain, Congregational in their general form and government. The First Baptist Church in Providence, formed in 1639, the first in America, has never bound itself by a creed, or used any articles of faith.|| This is true also of most of the old Baptist churches in this Colony. They are supposed, besides, by many of their own order, to have had at first open communion. Nor have any of

*History of Dissenters.

+ Appendix, Note A.

Dumont's Brief Notice, &c.-on the authority of Dr. Styles' Mss.Is it not probable, however, that, both in Newport and Providence, the first settlers, though Congregationalists for the most part, did not at once organize a church, and that the first church regularly formed was Baptist?

Appendix, Note B.