the counties of the south of England have now associations, which meet once or twice a-year; when, in addition to public worship, they receive the Lord's Supper *.

A more general association has also been lately proposed, to be called the Independent Union, which the ministers and churches throughout England have been encouraged to join. It has not however been formed; nor is it likely that it will take place, as many decline it.

NUMBERS, EMINENT MEN, &c.

This denomination, considered as a distinct class of the Protestant Dissenters, and without including the other two, is highly respectable in point of numbers, being supposed to be more numerous in England and Wales, than both the parties of Baptists together. But, as they generally admit Baptists to their communion, there has been such an intermixture, both of pastors and of members, in some congregations, that it would be difficult to know under what denomination they should be classed t. And indeed, if their brethren agree with them in doctrine and in spirit, they make considerable allowance for a difference of judgment and practice in things now allowed to be indifferent.

The number of their congregations in 1812, was said to have been, in England 799, and in Wales 225; or 1,024 in allt.

Among their eminent men may be reckoned the names of Drs. Owen, Guise, Watts, Doddridge, and Jennings, and Job Orton; and for their manner of preaching we are referred to the sermons of Watts, Doddridge, Hurrion, Guise, Matthew Clark, Richard Winter, Stafford, Lavington, Lambert, Lowell, and Jay.

The Independents have several Academies-viz. those at Wymondley-house, Homerton, Hoxton, Gosport, Rotherham, Blackburn, Idle, together with two or three others in Wales §. And while the Presbyterian Academies are less numerous than formerly, the Independents never educated so great numbers as at present.

Bogue and Bennet's "History of the Dissenters," vol. iv. p. 362. "Some of these county Associations have two or three itinerant preachers." Ibid. p. 363.

Since writing the above, I am told that the Baptists bear a very small proportion in any church, and that there are scarcely six cases of a Baptist minister over an Independent congregation, or vice versa.

Bogue and Bennet's History, vol. i. p. 143, and vol. iv. p. 328.

The two first of these are supposed to have the best libraries among

the Dissenters.

The Missionary Seminary at Gosport, connected with the London Missionary Society, is not Independent, as many have supposed; for that active society receives Baptists, Methodists, &c. as members, and even into its direction.

MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS.

Independency being the prevailing constitution of the Protestant Dissenters in general, and as an affection to it in preference to every other mode of church government has, of late years, been growing upon many in Scotland, as well as in England, I close this article in the language of a clergyman of the Church of England, addressed to an Independent minister, "et valeat quantum valere potest."

"The constitution of your churches," says the former, "which you suppose the only one agreeable to Scripture, appears to me faulty, in giving a greater power to the people than the Scripture authorizes. There is doubtless a sense in which ministers are not only the servants of the Lord, but, for his sake, the servants of the churches; but it is a service which implies rule, and is entitled to respect. Thus the Apostle says, Obey them that have the rule over you.' Their office is that of a steward, who is neither to lord it over the household, nor to be entirely under subjection to it, but to superintend and provide for the family. Scriptural regulations are wisely and graciously adapted to our state of infirmity; but I think the power which the people with you claim and attempt to exercise, is not so. Many of them, though truly gracious persons, may, notwithstanding, from their situation in life, their want of education, and the narrowness of their views, be very incapable of government; yet when a number of such are associated according to your plan, under the honourable title of a Church of Christ, they acquire a great importance. Almost every individual conceives himself qualified to judge and to guide the minister; to sift and scrutinize his expressions, and to tell him what and how he ought to preach. But the poorer part of your flocks are not always the most troublesome. The rich can contribute most to the minister's support, who is often entirely dependent upon his people for a maintenance: their riches, likewise, give them some additional weight and influence in the church; and the officers, whom you call the deacons, are usually chosen from among the more wealthy. But it is not always found, that the most wealthy church-members are the most eminent either for grace or wisdom. We may be

rather sure, that riches, if the possessors are not proportionably humble and spiritual, have a direct tendency to nourish the worms of self-conceit and self-will. Such persons expect to be consulted, and that their judgment shall be followed. Their preaching must be suited to their taste and sentiment; and if any thing is either enforced or censured, which bears hard upon their conduct, they think themselves ill-treated. Although a faithful minister, in his better hours, disdains the thought of complying with the caprice of his hearers, or conniving at their faults; yet human nature is weak, and, it must be allowed, that in such circumstances he stands in a state of temptation. And if he has grace to maintain his integrity, yet it is painful and difficult to be obliged frequently to displease those on whom we depend, and who, in some other respects, may be our best friends and benefactors. I can truly say, that my heart has been grieved for the opposition, neglect, and unkindness, which some valuable men among you have, to my knowledge, met with from those who ought to have esteemed them very highly for their work's sake.

"The effects of this supreme power lodged in the people, and of the unsanctified spirit in which it has been exercised, have been often visible in the divisions and subdivisions, which have crumbled large societies into separate handfuls, if I may so speak. And to this, I am afraid, rather than to the spread of a work of grace, may be ascribed, in many instances, the great increase of the number of your churches of late years *."

It is indeed very evident, and I doubt not that many worthy pastors know it from sad experience, that the word Independent better expresses the state and circumstances of the people, than of their ministers, who, though they reject the lord bishops and all "human governors" ab extra, find many "lord brethren" at home +.

* Apologia, &c. (as above, vol. i. p. 153, note), pp. 131–136. + See above, vol. i. p. 156.

THE BAPTISTS.

NAMES.

THE members of this denomination are so called on account of their views of the sacrament of Baptism differing from those of the generality of other Christians. As they hold that baptism is to be administered to those only who can and do give credible evidence of repentance towards God, and faith in Jesus Christ, they are constrained, by natural consequence, to disapprove of the admission of infants to that sacrament. Hence they have been styled Anti-pædobaptists; a term, perhaps, more appropriate than the other, as their opponents do by no means admit the propriety of the exclusive application to them of the name of Baptists, since it seems to imply that they alone practise true scriptural baptism.

Most of them also consider immersion in water as essential to Christian baptism. And as it happens that many of those whom they baptize have undergone what they term the ́" ceremony of sprinkling" in their infancy, they have been called Anabaptists; as though they baptized ava, "over again," which they themselves of course do not admit, conceiving that those who have undergone that ceremony in their infancy did not thereby receive Christian baptism.

These appellations have been applied to them almost solely in Britain and America. On the continent, they are known by different names, as Mennonites, Doops-gesinden, Teleiobaptists, &c.; and indeed it may be observed, that the name of Baptist, being only of modern date and local application, cannot serve as an index throughout ecclesiastical history to the existence of the sentiment.

RISE, PROGRESS, &c.

The true origin of this sect, according to Mosheim, is hid in the remote depths of antiquity, and is, of consequence, extremely difficult to be ascertained.

But to those who say that the custom of baptizing children was not derived from the apostolical ages, the traditional argument may fairly run in language nearly scriptural : If any man seem to be contentious, we have never had such

a custom' as that of confining baptism to adults, nor the churches of God *.'"

Some of the Hussites, in the fifteenth century; of the Lollards or Wickliffites, in the fourteenth; of the Petrobrussians, in the twelfth; and also of the Waldenses, were Baptists in sentiment. But, these "few instances excepted, the existence of anti-pædobaptism seems scarcely to have taken place in the church of Christ till a little after the beginning of the Reformation, when a sect arose, whom historians commonly call the Anabaptists.'

But the Anabaptists of Germany, who began to attract attention about 1522, and were nursed by their leaders, Storck, Stubner, and Munzer, are considered by the Baptists of the present day as wearing manifestly the appearance of a political or revolutionary cabal, and not the fervent exertions of a Christian sect. For, besides their views of baptism, they maintained, that, among Christians, who had the precepts of the Gospel to direct and the Spirit of God to guide them, the office of magistracy was not only unnecessary, but an unlawful encroachment on their spiritual liberty; that the distinctions occasioned by birth, or rank, or wealth, being contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, which considers all men as equal, should be entirely abolished; that all Christians, throwing their possessions into one common stock, should live together in that state of equality which becomes members of the same family; and that, as neither the laws of nature nor the precepts of the New Testament had imposed any restraint upon men with regard to the number of wives which they might marry, they should use that liberty which God himself had granted to the patriarchs.

Such opinions, propagated and maintained with enthusiastic zeal and boldness, and at length even by force of arms, soon produced the violent effects natural to them; and many places suffered severely from them, particularly the imperial city of Munster, in Westphalia, which they seized, and one John Bockhold, or Beukels, a journeyman tailor of Leyden, and the king of this new Jerusalem, defended himself in it as long as possible; but the place was at length taken, and this their ringleader put to a most painful and ignominious death, in 1536.

Nor was Germany the only country that was infested by these wild fanatics; for they also occasioned much disturbance in Sweden, &c.; but as they owed their existence to political

* Milner's History of the Church, vol. i. 430, 3d edit.