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Untitled Article
dents , nor will I decide with an air of dogmatism upon points that have been disputed by wise and good men ; but as I have paid some attention to the subject , I trust it will be no arrogance if I also shew my opinion , which I will endeavour to do with
meekness and candour . If any of the following observations should be at variance with the judgment of your readers , I hope they will give me credit for impartiality in
my inquiries , and indulge me with the same right of private judgment which they claim ^ o plentifully for themselves . On the impropriety of the tejrm
Presbyterian , as applied to English dissenters , I fully agree with your correspondents . It is a name descriptive of a system of
churchgovernment not practised in South-Britain , and applied to churches that are strictly independent . The origin of the application is . I doubt not , known to most of
your readers . A majority of those divines who were cast out of their livings upon the restoration of Charles II . were proper Presbyterians , and contended for that form of church-government which they themselves practised during the commonwealth . In
consequence of the re-establishment of episcopacy , the societies which they formed became disjointed , and had no other bond of union than what arose from the friendl y correspondence of their ministers ; In their church discipline ,
however , they retained as much of the spirit of Presbytery as could be introduced into q , single * con - gregation . Still , the points upon winch they differed from their Independent brethren were of that ininor importance , that both de-
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nominations agreed to unite ; and articles of union wore drawn up by the great Mr . John Howe . At that time , the Presbyterians were to a man , decided Trinitarians
and Calvinists . The enemy of souls , whose peculiar character is that of a destroyer , envying their peace , soon found means to disturb it . The first source of
contention was the Neonomian controversy , which occasioned the division in the Pinners' Hall lecture , and the establishment of a new one at Salters' Hall , in 1694 . Henceforward , the denominations again became two :
suspicions and jealousies were kept up on both sides ; and each party , afraid of falling into the alleged error of the other , actually
verged further from that system of orthodoxy which both had formerly approved . Hence , many of the Presbyterians became Baxterians or low Calvinists .
Several years afterwards a new grdund of dispute arose , which separated the denominations still widen I allude to the Sajters' Hall c ontroversy in 171 $ . The bulk of the Presbyterians ! it is well
known , joined the non-subscribers ^ the majority of them ., T doubt not , from conscientious motives , and a real desire to uphold the right of private judgment . Bufe this was not the case with all . Mr .
Benjamin Robinson , a learned and respectable Presbyterian minister , and one of the subscribers , declared openly , as a known fact , that some of the non * subscribers
had a secret design to answer , and made a zeal for religious liberty only a covert for error , and a bait to draw in the rest ; the conse * . quence of which , he verily believed * would be the utter ruin of
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&S On the tXeclme of Prestyterian Congregations *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1810, page 58, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2401/page/10/
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