Page images
PDF
EPUB

by the elders, either in the ordination of officers after election, or excommunication of offenders after obstinacy in sin." 37

[ocr errors]

But the strength of this declaration is greatly qualified by another passage in the same treatise, in which he appears to deny to the highest church officers and governors" any real official authority. Contrasting the position of the civil magistrate with the position of church rulers, he says that in many things the bare authority of the magistrate requires submission; in nothing does the bare authority of church rulers require submission. There are many cases in which, with reason or without reason, the civil magistrate can demand obedience; there are no cases in which church rulers can assert a similar authority. To quote his own words

"Neither are the ministers in anything at all, as are the magistrates in many things, to be obeyed for the authority of the commander, but for the reason of the commandment, which the ministers are also bound in duty to manifest, and approve unto the consciences of them over whom they are set." 38

This limits the power of church rulers to the right to persuade; and this right, according to the Congregational theory, belongs to every private member of the Church.

But to define the limits of authority on the one hand and of submission on the other, and yet to preserve the Congregational ideal, is impossible. The just relations between the rulers of the Church and the people can be preserved only by the intimate and perfect union of both people and rulers with Christ. The relations are too delicate, too subtle, too variable, to be fixed by a rigid rule; they must be determined by the immediate action of a Living Spirit and a Personal Will. The whole life of the Church belongs to a region in which external law can have no effective place. With a wise and unfailing loyalty to Christ penetrating the whole Church, no difficulty will emerge that will not soon admit of a satisfactory solution; without this loyalty no regulations will be able to avert bitterness, strife, and schism."-R. W. Dale, Congregational Union Jubilee Lectures, i. 48-53.

37 John Robinson, A Just and Necessary Apology; Works, iii. 42-43 (R. Ashton's edition). Robinson protests against those whom "it hath pleased. . . contumeliously to upbraid us," and who charged the Independents with allowing women and children to vote. Only men, and them grown, and of discretion," Robinson acknowledged as having a right to the franchise. He definitely asserts the right and the duty of the elders to meet at times apart from the body of the Church to consider questions affecting its interests, and to prepare the business. Ibid., 43.

38 Ibid., iii. 61-62.

CHAPTER III

REVIVAL OF CONGREGATIONALISM IN ENGLAND

HIM

ABBOT APPOINTED ARCHBISHOP-CLARENDON'S ESTIMATE OF SEVERITY AGAINST PURITANISM RELAXED-FLIGHT IN PERSECUTION CENSURED AND DEFENDED CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BROUGHTON AND BILSON OVER OUR LORD'S DESCENT INTO HELLHENRY JACOB INTERVENES-HE BECOMES a Leader of the PuriTAN PARTY-HIS ATTITUDE TO THE ESTABLISHED CHURCHACCEPTS CONGREGATIONAL PRINCIPLES-ORGANISES A CHURCH IN SOUTHWArk-Settles IN AMERICA, AND DIES THERE-LATHROP, HIS SUCCESSOR AT SOUTHWARK, ARREsted-ActiviTY OF LAUD AGAINST THE Separatists-Churches established in Wales.

ANCROFT died in 1610, and was succeeded by Abbot,

BAN

who owed his rapid promotion in the Church to the favour of the King's favourite, the Earl of Dunbar. Lord Clarendon says that

"he was preferred . . . to the bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield, and presently after to London, before he had ever been parson, vicar, or curate of any parish-church in England, or dean or prebend of any cathedral church; and was in truth totally ignorant of the true constitution of the church of England, and the state and interest of the clergy; as sufficiently appeared throughout the whole course of his life afterward. He had scarce performed any part of the office of a bishop in the diocese of London, when he was snatched from thence and promoted to Canterbury.' "1

According to the same authority, the new Archbishop

"considered Christian religion no otherwise, than as it abhorred and reviled popery, and valued those men most, who did that most furiously. For the strict observation of the discipline of the church, or the conformity to the articles or canons established, he made little inquiry, and took less care; and having himself made. a very little progress in the ancient and solid study of divinity, 1 Clarendon, History, i. 125.

2

he adhered wholly to the doctrine of Calvin, and, for his sake, did not think so ill of the discipline as he ought to have done. But if men prudently forbore a public reviling and railing at the hierarchy and ecclesiastical government, let their opinions and private practice be what it would, they were not only secure from any inquisition of his, but acceptable to him, and at least equally preferred by him. . . . That temper in the archbishop, whose house was a sanctuary to the most eminent of that most factious party, and who licensed their most pernicious writings, left his successor a very difficult work to do, to reform and reduce a church into order, that had been so long neglected, and that was so ill inhabited by many weak, and more wilful clergymen."

3

Under Abbot's primacy the vigilance with which the ecclesiastical laws had been administered during the previous six years was relaxed. Clergymen who omitted the ceremonies were still silenced, and Separatists were still thrown into prison, and kept there without trial; but the vigour with which offenders had been hunted down by Bancroft ceased.

It seemed possible to make another attempt to establish Churches in England after the apostolic model. Grave risks. would have to be run; but was it right for those to whom

By

"the discipline" Clarendon means the church polity for which the Presbyterian Puritans contended.

3 Ibid., 125, 126.

• James professed to believe in the impolicy of religious persecution. "No state," he said to his Parliament in 1614, can evidence that any

[ocr errors]

religion or heresy was ever extirpated by the sword or by violence, nor have I ever judged it a way of planting the truth. One example of this I take where, when many rigorous counsels were propounded, Gamaliel stood up and advised that if that religion were of God it would prosper; if of man it would finish of itself.' But under the reign of the monarch who could say these wise things, and under the archbishopric of Abbot, Bartholomew Legatt was burnt at Smithfield for Arianism (March 18, 1611-2); and a month later Edward Wightman suffered the same fate at Lichfield, being charged in the warrant with the incompatible and mutually contradictory heresies of Arius, Cerinthus, Manichæus, and the Anabaptists, not to mention twelve others. Brook, i. 66-67; and Fuller, v. 418-425, who says that the effect of "this seasonable severity" was not altogether wholesome, for "the burning of heretics much startled common people, pitying all in pain, and prone to asperse justice itself with cruelty, because of the novelty and hideousness of the punishment. . . . Wherefore King James politicly preferred that heretics hereafter, though condemned, should silently and privately waste themselves away in the prison, rather than to grace them and amuse others with the solemnity of a public execution."

Christ had revealed His will concerning the true organisation of His Church to remain any longer in exile, consulting their own safety instead of endeavouring to make known to their fellow countrymen the truth they had received from God? This was a question which had been seriously discussed by those who had gone with Browne and Harrison to Middelberg many years before. It was now raised by a pamphlet published by Thomas Helwys, one of the original members of the Church at Scrooby, who had renounced the practice of infant baptism and returned to England, where he had founded a Baptist Church.5

Robinson, "forced by the unreasonable provocation of Mr. Thomas Helwisse, who in great confidence and passion layeth load of reproaches both upon our flight in persecution, and also upon our persons for it," attempted to justify himself and his Church. He appealed to the flight of Jacob, of Moses, of David, of Jeremiah, of Baruch, and of Elijah; to the flight of Joseph and Mary, who carried our Lord with them into Egypt; to our Lord's own example during His public ministry— for He Himself kept out of the way of His enemies till the hour for His suffering came; to His direction to His disciples that when they were persecuted in one city they should flee to another; to the example of Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles.

In a pamphlet which appeared in 1615, the appeal to these examples was challenged.' An Indifferent Man, who intervenes in a discussion between Christian and Anti-Christian on the questions at issue between the Separatists and the ecclesiastical

Helwys remained in Amsterdam when Robinson went to Leyden. With John Smyth he seceded from the Amsterdam Church and established a Church on Baptist principles. On the death of Smyth he became its pastor. About 1611 he and a considerable number of his friends returned to England, and in 1612 he published a treatise entitled A Short Declaration of the Mystery of Iniquity. It was to statements in this treatise on 66 Flight in Persecution" that Robinson replied in ch. iii. of his Religious Communion Private and Public (1614). (edited by R. Ashton), v. 135-164.

• Robinson, ibid., 155-156.

Works

7 Objections answered by way of Dialogue, wherein is proved... that no man should be persecuted for his Religion. It was probably written by a member of the Church in London of which Helwys was pastor-perhaps by John Murton-but after the death of Helwys. It was reprinted by the Hanserd Knollys Society in Tracts on Liberty of Conscience (1846).

authorities, and between the Baptists and other Separatists, says:

One thing there is yet which hath much troubled me and others, and in my judgment hath much hindered the growth of godliness in this kingdom, and that is, that many so soon as they see or fear trouble will ensue, they fly into another nation, who cannot see their conversation, and thereby deprive many poor ignorant souls in their own nation of their information, and of their conversation among them."

To this Christian replies:-

"Oh! that hath been the overthrow of religion in this land, the best able and greater part being gone, and leaving behind them some few, who, by the others' departure, have had their afflictions and contempt increased, which hath been the cause of many falling back, and of the adversaries' exulting."

"8

Christian goes on to argue that although in the Scriptures there are the records of the flight of many holy men from persecution, their flight was only for a time, and that when the work of God had to be done, God would" in no case . . . suffer them to fly." And then, bringing his argument to a practical application, he says, "If any of these men can prove that the Lord requireth no work at their hands to be done for His glory, and the salvation of thousands of ignorant souls in their own nation, let them stay in foreign countries." 9

Moved by such appeals as this, Henry Jacob, a member of Robinson's Church at Leyden, resolved to return to London. Jacob was a native of the county of Kent, and was born about 1563. When sixteen years of age, he went up to Oxford as a commoner of St. Mary's Hall. On leaving the university he received orders in the English Church, and was appointed to the living of Cheriton in his native county.

In 1598 he published A Treatise of the Sufferings and Victory of Christ in the Work of our Redemption, etc., written against certain Errors in these points publicly preached in London. It was the common opinion of those clergy of the English Church who did not belong to the Puritan party, that the clause of the Creed, declaring that "Christ descended into Hell," was

• Hanserd Knollys Society, Tracts on Liberty of Conscience, 176. • Ibid., 176-177.

« PreviousContinue »