ROBERT BROWNE'S

TEXT

I

STATEMENT OF CONGRE

GATIONAL PRINCIPLES, 1582

I. A Booke which Sheweth the \ life and manners of all true Christians, \ and home vnlike they are vnto Turkes and Papistes, \ and Heathen folke. \ Also the pointes and partes of all diui- \ nitic, that is of the reuealed will and worde of God, are | declared by their seuerall Definitions, \ and Diuisions in order as \ followeth. | Robert Brovvne. \ Middelbvrgh, \ Imprinted by Richarde Painter. \ 1j82, 4o, pp. II1.

II. A few of the sections, extracted from Browne's work, are given in Hanbury, Historical Memorials Relating to the Independents, etc., London 1839, I: 2022; in Fletcher, History of Independency, London 1862, II: 114-117;

and in Punchard, History of Congregationalism, Boston [1867], III: 14-17.

Literature

The works of Hanbury, Fletcher, and Punchard, above cited; [Waddington], Historical Papers, London 1861, pp. 33-48; Waddington, Congregational History, rjbj-tjoo, London 1874, p. 16; Bacon, Genesis of the Aew England Churches, Xew York 1874, pp. 81-90; Browne, History of Congregationalism Norfolk and Suffolk, London 1877, chs. I—III; Dexter, The Congregationalism of the last three hundred years, as seen in its Literature, New York 1880, pp. 61-128.

M

in

ODERN Congregationalism is a legitimate outcome of a

consistent application to church polity of the principles of the Reformation. The fundamental religious thought of that movement was the rejection of all authority save that of the Word of God. But, while this cardinal principle was recognized by all the reformers, there was great variety in the extent to which they carried its application. All of them agreed that the will of God had prescribed in the Bible the sufficient test of Christian. doctrine, but none of the reformers of the first rank felt the necessity of a complete conformity of their systems of church polity to the same standard. The paramount importance of doctrinal reform, the necessity for the orderly control of the church in the trying period of transition from its ancient form, and especially the disorders which the advent of ecclesiastical freedom excited

among the lower classes, induced Luther and Zwingli, neither of whom were organizers by nature, to put aside their early inclinations toward the substantially Congregational system1 which they recognized in the New Testament example, in favor of a would-be temporary dependence on the civil rulers of the lands in which they lived for the organization of their new churches. Calvin was an organizer, and though he sought scripture warrant for the system which he established, he seems to have been led to its adoption largely by the necessities of his position in the foremost outpost of Protestantism at Geneva; and he admitted, on one occasion at least, that his eldership was primarily a device of expediency.' And if these men did not fully recognize that the legitimate outcome of the principles of the Reformation was the test of church government as well as Christian doctrine by the standard of the Bible, this truth was even less clearly perceived in England, where the state Establishment which was the outcome of the Reformation was designedly a compromise, in which a large portion of the ancient government and ceremonial was retained, and in which the fountain of ecclesiastical authority was the sovereign.

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But if the leaders of the Reformation thus fell short of a full application of their principles, there were those from almost the beginning of the movement who sought to go further. These men, nicknamed usually by their opponents the "Anabaptists," first came to notice about 1523-4 in the portions of Switzerland which had felt the reforming touch of Zwingli. Persecuted at once by Protestants and Catholics, they were dispersed with great rapidity all over Germany and the Netherlands and came even to England.6 They were drawn chiefly from the lower orders of the population, and were often characterized by extreme fanaticism."

1 See inter alia, Gieseler, Church History, ed. New York 1876, IV: 518; Fisher, Reformation, pp. 488-495; Dexter, Cong. as seen, p. 51; Schaff, Hist. of the Christian Church, VI: 538. 2 For valuable quotations illustrative of this point see Dexter, Ibid., pp. 52, 53.

3 I. e., "Re-baptizers," because they held infant baptism no baptism.

* See the valuable paper of Rev. Dr. Burrage, Anabaptists of the Sixteenth Century, Papers of the Am. Soc. Church Hist., III: 145-164. Keller in his suggestive Die Reformation und die älteren Reformparteien, Leipzig 1885, holds, as many others have done, the Anabaptists to be successors of mediaeval sects, but his thesis is not fully proven.

5 As early as 1535 fourteen were burned in one year in England. Executions continued un

der English Protestant sovereigns, e. g. under Elizabeth in 1575, and James in 1612.

The most conspicuous illustration is of course the Münster anarchy, 1532-5.

But the fanatics were only a fraction of the Anabaptists, and under the lead of men like Menno Simons,1 in Holland especially, they settled down into orderly and valuable citizens.* They were everywhere marked by a desire to carry the principles of the Reformation to their logical outcome, and hence they tried to test not only doctrine but polity and Christian life by the same rule. The natural tendency of men to put differing constructions on the same facts of revelation, increased in their case by the ignorance of a great part of the body and an inclination to lay stress on the direct illumination of the believers by the Holy Spirit, led to diversities of belief among them, so that we can lay down no rigid creed for the Anabaptists as a whole; but there were certain features in their beliefs which appear also in the views of the Baptists, the Quakers, and the Congregationalists.3

The Protestant bodies founded by the great reformers of the sixteenth century were all at one in recognizing every baptized person, residing within the territories where they were established and not formally excommunicate, as a church member. Church and state were practically co-extensive. Even the Puritans of England, who labored under Elizabeth for the purification and full Protestantizing of the Establishment, and from whom the majority of early Congregationalists were to come, held to the churchmembership of all non-excommunicate Englishmen, and looked upon the true method of reform as a vigorous purging from within by the rigid enforcement of discipline, the appointment of the officers whom they believed to be designated in the Scripture. model, and the aid of civil magistrates, rather than a separation from the national church. The Anabaptists, on the other hand, maintained that a church was a company of Christian believers, gathered out of the world, to which men were admitted by con

1 1492-I559.

2 See the articles by Prof, de Hoop Scheffer on Menno and the Mennonites in the Herzog Rcal-Encyclopddic /ur protestantische Theologie, Leipzig, 1881 (briefly abridged in the SchaffHerzog, Encyclopadia, New York [1882]).

This relation has been positively, perhaps too positively, insisted upon by Campbell, Puritan in Holland, England, and America, New York, 1892, II: 177-200.

4 Compare Dexter, Cong, as seen, pp. 54-58. Briggs, American Presbyterianism, New York, 1885, p. 43.

For the doctrines of the Anabaptists, especially the Mennonite branch, which had the

fession and baptism; that each congregation of believers should be independent of all external control, civil or ecclesiastical, and that the civil magistrate had no authority over the church; that no believer should bear the sword, take oath, or hold the office of a magistrate; that each congregation should be kept pure by discipline, and should be led by elders chosen by itself, who should serve it without compensation. So they held the New Testament pattern of a Christian church to require.

Like the modern Baptists, the Anabaptists had no creeds of general binding force. Some confessions were issued by individuals and congregations, and some as formulæ of union between various branches of the much divided body, but each congregation accepted or rejected what it chose. In general, however, the agreement regarding all the more essential features of doctrine and polity was close. A few extracts from the popular confession prepared by the Mennonite ministers Hans de Ries and Lubbert Gerrits for the benefit of the one time Congregationalist John Smyth and his company in 1609 at Amsterdam,-a confession based on and representative of the writings of the older Mennonite Anabaptists and widely used by the Mennonite churches of Holland, may serve to set forth some of these beliefs more clearly:' Such faithful, righteous people, scattered in several parts of the world, being the true congregations of God, or the church of Christ, whom he saved, and for whom he gave himself, that he might sanctify them, ye [yea] whom he hath cleansed by the washing of water in the word of life: of all such is Jesus the Head, the Shepherd, the Leader, the Lord, the King, and Master. Now although among these there may be mingled a company of seeming holy ones, or hypocrites; yet, nevertheless, they are and remain only the righteous, true members of the body of

22.

most influence in Holland, see beside the articles of Prof, de Hoop Scheffer, before cited; Barclay, Inner Life of the Religious Soc1eties of the Commonwealth, London, 3d ed., 1879, pp. 75-92: Dr. Burrage, Papers Am. Soc. Ch. Hist., IIl: 157; Prof. Schaff, in Baptist Quarterly Review, July 1889. Much further and minuter information is contained in the works of the Mennonite historian, Hermann Schyn, Historia Christianorum Qui in Belgio Fœdcrato inter Protestan1es Mennonite appellantur, Amsterdam, 1723, and Historie Mennonitarum Plenior Deductio, ibid,

1729.

1 Regarding the circumstances of the appeal of Smyth and his brethren for admission to the Amsterdam Mennonite church of which Gerrits was minister, and the preparation of this Confession, see Evans, Early English Baptists, London, 1862, I. 201-224; Barclay, Inner Life, etc., pp. 68-73; De Hoop Scheffer, De Brownisten te Amsterdam, etc. (Memoir before the Royal Academy), published Amsterdam, 1881; Dexter, True Story of John Smyth, the Se~Baptist, etc., Boston, 1881. The Confession as originally prepared consisted of 38 articles, drawn up by Hans de Ries at the request of Smyth's company. Translated into English, it was signed by Smyth and his friends and laid before the Mennonite congregation. It was enlarged by its author and put forth

Christ,' according to the spirit and the truth, the heirs of the promises, truly saved from the hypocrites and dissemblers.

"23. In this holy church hath God ordained the ministers of the Gospel, the doctrines of the holy Word, the use of the holy sacraments, the oversight of the poor, and the ministers of the same offices; furthermore, the exercise of brotherly admonition and correction, and, finally, the separating of the impenitent; which holy ordinances, contained in the Word of God, are to be administered according to the contents thereof.

"24. And like as a body consisteth of divers parts, and every part hath its own proper work, seeing every part is not a hand, eye, or foot; so it is also in the church of God; for although every believer is a member of the body of Christ, yet is not every one therefore a teacher, elder, or deacon, but only such who are orderly appointed to such offices. Therefore, also, the administration of the said offices or duties pertaineth only to those that are ordained thereto, and not to every particular common person.

"25. The vocation or election of the said officers is performed by the church, with fasting, and prayer to God; for God knoweth the heart; he is amongst the faithful who are gathered together in his name; and by his Holy Spirit doth so govern the minds and hearts of his people, that he by them bringeth to light and propoundeth whom he knoweth to be profitable to his church.

**26. And although the election and vocation to the said offices is performed by the foresaid means, yet, nevertheless, the investing into the said service is accomplished by the elders of the church through the laying on of hands..

**29. The Holy Baptism is given unto these in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, which hear, believe, and with penitent heart receive the doctrines of the Holy Gospel. For such hath the Lord Jesus commanded to be baptized, and no unspeaking children.

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**33. The church discipline, or external censures, is also an outward handling 3 among the believers, whereby the impenitent sinner, after Christian admonition and reproof, is severed, by reason of his sins, from the communion of the saints for his future good; and the wrath of God is denounced against him until the time of his contrition and reformation.

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35. Worldly authority or magistracy is a necessary ordinance of God, appointed and established for the preservation of the common estate, and of a good, natural, politic life, for the reward of the good and the punishing of the evil: we acknowledge ourselves obnoxious, and bound by the Word of God to fear, honour, and show obedience to the magistrates in all causes not contrary to the Word of

for the use of the Dutch probably in 1610, apparently with the approval of Gerrits. Though in no sense binding upon the Mennonite body, it has been their most venerated expression of faith. A full Latin version of the enlarged form is given by Schyn, Historia, etc., Amsterdam, 1723, pp. 172-220, who remarks: "Ecce Confessionem, non solum fere per sesqui sæculum apud plurimas & maximas illorum Ecclesias, in Belgio pro formula Consensus inter Waterlandos sic dictos habitam," etc. On the great doctrinal controversy which agitated Holland at the time of its composition the Confession is Arminian, but that which here concerns us is its view of church polity, in which it is representative of all Mennonite teaching and the theories doubtless which were current among the Anabaptists who found settlement during the previous half-century in England. The extracts are from the English version signed by Smyth and his associates in 1609, and printed by Evans, Ibid., I: 245-252. It is substantially and almost verbally identical with the revised form given by Schyn.

1 I. e., the righteous are the only true members, etc.

2 Schyn, "a Senioribus populi coram Ecclesia."

3 Ibid., "actio."