Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER VII.

CONTROVERSY UNDER DIFFICULTIES.-NATIONALISM, CONFORMIST AND PURITAN, AGAINST SEPARATISM.

HAD not John Bunyan been shut up to dream in Bedford jail, he would never have found time to write the "Pilgrim's Progress." His influence would have been limited and transient in comparison with what it has been for two hundred years, and will be for centuries of years to come. Witnesses for liberty and truth may be imprisoned; but ideas that have life in them find wings and fly abroad. The word of God is not bound.

It does not appear that Barrowe or Greenwood had written any thing for publication before Archbishop Whitgift took them under his tutelage, and set them to study in prison the argument for a National Church, governed by the queen through her bishops and her High Commission. In due time the fruit of those studies began to appear. While the years of their imprisonment were passing, and while the published account of their bold answers at their several examinations was provoking inquiry and discussion in various places, Barrowe-though often he could not "keep one sheet by him while writing another"-found means and opportunity for the writing of a book, sheet by sheet, which, notwithstanding the restrictions on the press, was printed in Holland, and began to be circulated in England (1590). It was entitled "A Brief Discovery of the False Church," and was subscribed "by the Lord's most unworthy servant and witness, in bonds, Henry Barrowe." To intimate the relation between the new establishment and the old, it bore upon its title - page the motto (from Ezekiel xvi., 44): "As the mother, such the

daughter is." While it exposed in the most unsparing fashion whatever Puritanism had found fault with in the established government and imposed liturgy of the National Church, it went farther and deeper; and-more explicitly, perhaps, than ever Robert Browne had done-it assailed the foundation-principle of every national church, however conformed to the Puritan ideal.

[ocr errors]

The author of that book was aware of the peril to which he was exposing himself. "The shipmasters," said he, "the mariners, merchantmen, and all the people that reign, row, and are carried in this false church, will never endure to see fire cast into her they will never endure to suffer loss of their dainty and precious merchandize; but, rather, will raise up no small tumults and stirs against the servants of God, seeking their blood by all subtle and violent means, as we read in the Scriptures their predecessors have always doneaccusing them of treason, of troubling the state, schism, heresy, and what not. But unto all the power, learning, deceit, rage of the false church, we oppose that little book of God's word, which, as the light, shall reveal her as the fire, consume her as a heavy millstone, shall press her and all her children, lovers, partakers, and abettors, down to hell; which book we willingly receive as the judge of all our controversies, knowing that all men shall one day, and that ere long, be judged by the same."

Professing small respect for what Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic theologians call "the notes of the church,”2 he proposes a more excellent way. "Let us, for the appeasing

It was printed in quarto, pp. 263. See Hanbury, i., 39–47.

2 The time is short' to run the race of Christianity, even when we have entered on it: how necessary, then, is it that we should endeavor to find speedily, as well as certainly, the arena in which it is to be run. It is with such views that theologians in various ages have endeavored to lay down rules for the discrimination of Christ's church by a comparatively short and intelligible process, and these rules are styled notes or signs of the church.”. Palmer, “Treatise on the Church" (New York, 1841), i., 45.

and assurance of our consciences, give heed to the word of God, and by that golden reed measure our temple, our altar, and our worshipers; even by these rules whereby the apostles-those excellent, perfect workmen-planted and built the first churches."

The issue between the theory of the ecclesiastical establishment and that of the Separation, or between Nationalism and Congregationalism, was clearly stated. Nationalism rests on "this doctrine, 'That a Christian prince which publisheth and maintaineth the Gospel, doth forthwith make all that realm (which with open force resisteth not his proceedings) to be held a church, to whom a holy ministry and sacraments belong, without further and more particular and personal trial, examination, and confession."" In other words, if the sovereign be Christian, the nation is a church, and all subjects not in arms against the Christian sovereign are church members. "This doctrine," said the author, "we find, by the word of God, to be most false, corrupt, unclean, dangerous, and pernicious doctrine; contrary to the whole cause, practice, and laws, both of the Old and New Testament; breaking at once all Christian order, corrupting and poisoning all Christian communion and fellowship, and sacrilegiously profaning the holy things of God." Such being the fundamental assumption on which a national church is constituted and governed by national authority, there are good reasons for a vehement rejection of it. 'First, we know that no prince, or mortal man, can make any a member of the church. Princes may, by their godly government, greatly help and further the church, greatly comfort the faithful, and advance the Gospel; but to choose or refuse, to call or harden, that the Eternal and Almighty Ruler of heaven and earth keepeth in his own hands, and giveth not this power unto any other. This also we know, that whom the Lord hath before all worlds chosen, them he will, in his due time and means, call by his word; and whom he calleth, them he sealeth with his seal to depart from iniquity, to believe and lay hold of

'

Christ Jesus as their alone Saviour to honor and obey him as their anointed king, priest, and prophet-to submit themselves unto him in all things-to be reformed, corrected, governed, and directed by his most holy word, vowing their faithful obedience unto the same as it shall be revealed unto them. By this faith, confession, and profession, every member of Christ, from the greatest unto the least, without respect of persons, entereth into and standeth in the church. In this faith have all the faithful congregations in the world, and true members of the same body, fellowship each with other; and out of this faith have the true servants of God no fellowship, no communion with any congregation or member, how flourishing titles or fair shows soever they make here in the flesh."

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

What theologians have called the doctrine of particular election—in other words, the doctrine that God, in saving men through Christ, deals not with generic human nature only, nor with nations only, but with the individual souls, one by one, whom he chooses, whom he calls, whom he sanctifies-was incorporated into the conception of the true church in Barrowe's 'Discovery of the False Church." The individuality of human souls in the presence of God is their individual responsibility. Responsible each for others by reason of those mutual relations and reciprocal duties and influences which constitute society, all human souls are individually responsible to God. "Now, then, seeing every member hath interest in the public actions of the church, and [all] together shall bear blame for the defaults of the same; and seeing all our communion must be in the truth, and that we are not to be drawn by any into any willing or known transgressions of God's law, who can deny but every particular member hath power, yea, and ought to examine the manner of administering the sacraments, as also the estate, disorder, or transgressions of the whole church; yea, and not to join in any known transgression with them, but rather to call them all to repentance," and even "to leave their fellowship rather than to partake in

H

their wickedness." It seems to have been a saying in those days, by way of apology for not separating from an ecclesiastical establishment that would not be reformed, "Every man eateth to his own salvation or damnation; therefore the open sins of minister or people do neither hurt the sacraments there administered nor the godly conscience of the receivers." The Separatist's answer was, "What sense or se quel is in these reasons? What can be devised more false or foolish? Because every one is to look to his own private estate, therefore no man may meddle with another man's, or with the public estate! Were he not as foolish that could be led or carried with these reasons, as they that made them ?"

[ocr errors]

Some description of the true church was necessary to any full exposure of the false church. Is the spiritual commonwealth of Christ's disciples a hierarchy? What offices of dignity and power does its constitution provide for or require? Barrowe's positive doctrine on that point is very simple: "The ministry appointed unto the government and service of the church of Christ we find to be of two sorts, elders and deacons the elders, some of them to give attendance unto the public ministry of the word and sacraments, as the pastor and teacher; the other elders, together with them, to give attendance to the public order and government of the church -the deacons to attend the gathering and distributing the goods of the church."

The Book of Common Prayer, imposed on all Englishmen with its ceremonial uniformity, as the only mode of worship, was the first occasion of Protestant opposition to the ecclesiastical establishment, and of a demand for more thorough reformation. The more rigorously the vestments and ceremonies supposed to be "popish" were enforced upon scrupulous consciences, the more numerous and the more obstinate were the scruples of Nonconformists. Yet the Puritans, generally, demanded only a reformation of the prescribed forms of worship. Some of them might have been satisfied with a few changes,

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »