the Charlestown-Boston Christian community made it certain that Congregationalism was to be the polity of Puritan New England.

THE CHARLESTOWN-BOSTON COVENANT.1

In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, & in Obedience to His holy will & Divine Ordinaunce.

Wee whose names are herevnder written, being by His most wise, & good Providence brought together into this part of America in the Bay of Masachusetts, & desirous to vnite our selves into one Congregation, or Church, vnder the Lord Jesus Christ our Head, in such sort as becometh all those whom He hath Redeemed, & Sanctifyed to Himselfe, do hereby solemnly, and religiously (as in His most holy Proesence) Promisse, & bind o'selves, to walke in all our wayes according to the Rule of the Gospell, & in all sincere Conformity to His holy Ordinaunces, & in mutuall love, & respect each to other, so neere as God shall give vs grace.

1 Text from A. B. Ellis, History of the First Church in Boston, p. 3. Mr. Ellis, now clerk of the First Church, has kindly verified the text in his History by a fresh comparison with the copy of the Records of the First Church made by David Pulsifer in 1847.

VIII

HOOKER'S SUMMARY OF CONGREGATIONAL PRINCIPLES, 1645

I. These articles were originally published in Hooker's preface to his Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline, etc., London, 1648, pp. [xvii-xix.] Thence they were reproduced in

II.

Hanbury, Historical Memorials, etc., London, 1839-44, III: 266, 267; and III. Felt, Ecclesiastical History of New England, Boston, 1855, I: 566; and IV. G. L. Walker, History of the First Church in Hartford, Hartford, 18S4, pp. 144, 145.

THE

an

HE coming of Winthrop's company was but the beginning of a great outpouring1 from Old England to the New, emigration which continued in full force till the changes in the English political horizon at the opening of the Long Parliament gave promise to the Puritans of satisfactory reforms at home, and thus removed the chief impulse toward the planting of Puritan colonies beyond the Atlantic. As a whole, this great emigration was remarkably homogeneous in character and united in habits of religious thought. But it was impossible that in so large a body some degree of diversity should not be found. It is remarkable that, freed as the emigrants were from the restraints of the English Establishment, their divisions were so few and so comparatively unimportant.

The first really serious question to disturb the peace of our rising churches was that occasioned by the coming of Mrs. Anne

1 Johnson, Wonder-Working Providence, London, 1654, Poole's reprint, Andover, 1867, p. 31, estimated the number who had come to New England by 1643 as 21,200. These figures were approved by Pres. Stiles in a glowing sermon preached Apl. 23, 1760, at Bristol, R. I., before the Congregational Convention of that province-a sermon in which the preacher indulged in predictions as to the growth of New England's population during the next 100 years which far exceed anything which has been realized on New England soil. Pres. Stiles added the observation that between 1643 and 1760 more persons probably left New England than came to her shores. Palfrey, Hist. N. E., I: vii (Preface), substantially accepts these statements; and doubtless they are approximately true, though Savage in a note to Winthrop, ed. 1853, II: 403, 404, intimates that the figures may not be taken as final.

Hutchinson to Boston in 1634, Mr. Henry Vane in 1635, and Mrs. Hutchinson's husband's brother-in-law, Rev. John Wheelwright, in 1636. The views of Mrs. Hutchinson, embraced as they were in large degree not only by the two whose names have been associated with hers, but by a majority of the Boston church, were stigmatized by her opponents as "Antinomian"; and certainly laid far too much stress on the believer's confidence in his good estate, rather than visible betterment in his character, as evidence of his acceptance with God. However worthy of respect Mrs. Hutchinson herself may have been, there can be no doubt that the controversy raised by her came perilously near wrecking the infant colonies; and the greatness of the danger explains in part, without justifying, the severe measures of repression employed by the churches and the government.1 The dispute occasioned the calling by the Massachusetts General Court of the first Synod ever held in New England, an assembly which met on Aug. 30, 1637,' at what is now Cambridge, and continued in session, with Thomas Hooker and Peter Bulkeley,' as moderators, for twenty-four days. By this Synod some eighty-two opinions, ascribed to or said to be deducible from the teachings of Mrs. Hutchinson, and other disturbers of the churches at the time, were condemned.

4

1 The sources and literature of this controversy are presented in an admirable bibliographical note by Winsor in the Memorial History of Boston, Boston, 1882, I: 176, 177. To the summary there given the writer may add as having appeared since the publication of the History, a contemporary document of the first importance, communicated by Prof. F. B. Dexter, to the 2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., IV: 159-191, from the MSS. collected by Pres. Stiles, and giving a report of the trial of Anne Hutchinson. The controversy has been discussed from various points of view by G. L. Walker, Hist. First Ch. in Hartford, Hartford, 1884, pp. 97-103; Brooks Adams, Emancipation of Mass., Boston, 1887, pp. 44-78; Doyle, The English in America, Puritan Colonies, London, 1887, 1: 173-189; G. E. Ellis, Puritan Age in . Mass., Boston, 1888, pp. 300-362.

Dr. Winsor does not include Punchard, History of Congregationalism, Boston, 1880, IV: 196-248, who gives a good sketch of the controversy and its results; and since Winsor's note was written Charles Francis Adams has published a picturesque and valuable narrative of the dispute in his Three Episodes of Mass. History, Boston, 1892, pp. 363-578.

The fact of this call is not mentioned in the Colony Records or Winthrop, but may be deduced from the latter's statement that the diet of the Synod and the traveling expenses of the delegates from Connecticut were paid by the government. Savage's ed. 1853, I; 288.

2 A contemporary account of its proceedings is to be found in Winthrop, Ibid., I: 284-288. In attendance "were all the teaching elders through the country, and some new come out of England."

t Of Hartford, Conn.

Of Concord, Mass.

• These opinions are given in Winthrop and Welde's Short Story of the Rise, reign, and ruinc of the Antinomians, Familists & Libertines, that infected the Churches of Nevv England, London, 1644; but are more accessible in Felt, Ecclesiastical History of N. E., Boston, 1855, I: 313-319.

But the most effective, if least creditable, termination to the dangerous dispute was given not by the Synod, but by the Court, in banishing Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson and some of their prominent supporters from the Massachusetts jurisdiction, by its sentence on November 2, 1637.'

These internal conflicts were, however, only a portion of the difficulties in which the early New England churches found themselves involved. As has already been pointed out, though the churches of Massachusetts Bay and of Connecticut had left England as Non-Conformists rather than Separatists, and though influential churches, like that of Boston, still refused to reject the Church of England as anti-Christian, they had all of them nevertheless organized on the model set by Separatist Plymouth. It was natural that such action should excite a degree of alarm in the minds of those Puritans in England who still hoped for the reformation of the Establishment, and especially that dominant wing of English Puritanism whose non-conformity looked rather in the direction of Presbyterianism than Congregationalism. Such alarm found expression in 1636 or 1637 in A Letter of Many Ministers in Old England, requesting The judgement of their Reverend Brethren in New England concerning Nine Positions, written Anno Dom. 1637.5 These questions have to do with the use of a liturgy, admission to the sacraments, church-membership, excommunication, and ministerial standing. To this letter of inquiry the ministers of New England responded at some length in 1638 and 1639, by the pen of John Davenport, pastor of the church at New Haven.

1 Records,

3

Mass. Bay, I: 207.

2 So the title page of the first edition of this document, 1643; but Shepard and Allin credit its sending to 1636. See Felt, Eccles. Hist. N. E., 1: 277. The Letter to New England, the Reply, and Ball's Rejoinder were printed in one small volume in London in 1643. The same year, also, the New England answers were printed at London, together with Richard Mather's Answer to the XXXII Questions, about to be noted, and his reply to Bernard regarding Church-Covenant — the whole under the title of Church-Government and Church-Covenant Discvssed, etc., and furn1shed w1th a preface by Hunh Peter. The Letter, Replies, and Rejoinder are given in copious extract by Hanbury, Historical Memorials, II: 18-39; and the Positions may be found also in Felt, Eccles. Hist. N. E., 1: 277; and a summary of the Answers, Ibid., 366-368.

2 On its authorship see 1. Mather, Discourse Concerning the Unlawfulness of Common Prayer, [1689] p. 14. The first copy miscarried, 1638, and the reply was sent anew in 1639. See Church-Government, as cited, pp. 24, 28; and Shepard and Allin's Defence (Hanbury, Memorials, III: 36).

A rejoinder, by Rev. John Ball on the part of the English critics, followed in 1640; and a defense of the New England answers by Rev. Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, Mass., and Rev. Thomas Allin of Charlestown, in 1645.'

3

About the time that the Nine Positions were sent over to New England the English Puritans also forwarded to their brethren across the sea a list of Thirty-two Questions for answer. These inquiries covered the whole field of church polity and procedure, treating of such matters as the constitution of a church, the conditions of membership therein, the churchly character of English parishes, the ministry, the brethren and their methods of procedure, ministerial settlement and standing, and lay-preaching; as well as of doctrinal symbols and the legislative powers of synods and councils. And to these questions also the churches of New England sent a full and candid reply by the pen of Rev. Richard Mather, of Dorchester, in 1639.'

The Congregationalism of both these replies is of the type of Barrowe rather than that of Browne. It gives practically all power into the hands of the officers of the church, and leaves to the brethren little more than a bare right to consent.6 But if this

1 A Defence of the Answer made unto the g questions

against the Reply thereto

of John Ball, etc., London, 1645. The more essent1al portions are reprinted in Hanbury, Memorials, III: 33-43.

2 Felt, Eecles. Hist. N. E., 1: 278.

8 These Questions were published, with Mather's Answers, at London in 1643, in the book entitled Church-Government and Church-Covenant Disevssed, etc., cited in note, p. 134. The Questions are also given in Felt, Ibid., I: 278-282; and the Answers are epitomized. Ibid., pp. 380-386.

* Mather speaks in the name of the New England ministers throughout his tract, and h1s son, Increase Mather, expressly affirmed that "what he wrote was approved of by other Elders, especially by Mr. Cotton, unto whom he Communicated it." Order of the Gospel, Boston, 1700, p. 73. See also Dexter, Cong, as seen, p. 426. But a passage in Cotton's Reply to Mr. Williams his examination (printed in 1647, reprinted in Pub. Narragansett Club, Providence, 1867, II: 103), which Dr. Dexter seems to have overlooked, makes it evident that though Mather's sentiments had the approval of the New England ministry, the Answers were not submitted to them. "Though he [R. Williams] say, that Mr. Cotton, and the New-English Elders returned that Answer [the 31]: yet the answer to that Question, and to all the other thirty-two Questions, were drawne up by M*. Mader, and neither drawne up nor sent by me, nor (for ought I know) by the other Elders here, though published by one of our Elders [Hugh Peter] there." Bnt though Cotton had no share in the composition of the Answers, he approved them, for he goes on, in the next paragraph, to say: "I have read it, and did readily approve it (as I doe the substance of all his Answers) to be ludicious, and solide." The same fact is attested by the Preface to the Disputation concerning Church Members, London, 1659 (i. e., result of Half-Way Covenant Convention of 1657): "The 32 Questions, the Answerer whereof was Mr. Richard Mather, and not any other Elder or Elders in New England."

* Sec Davenport's answer to the 5th Position, Chureh-Government and Church-Covenant Discvssed, p. 72; and Richard Mather's reply to the 15th Question, Ibid., pp. 47-60. Compare also Dexter, Cong, as seen, pp. 425-430.