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Untitled Article
The second cause which I shall mention as making the progress of liberal Christianity more rapid and more observable in New England than else * - where , is to be found in the popular cast of our religious institutions / It is remarkable , that the principle of Independency has been adopted in the prevailing form of church government no where else but in New England . Here , however , our ancestors took special care that the privilege should be secured , and watched with a searching jealousy every motion in church or state that threatened its infringement . To the demands of popes , or bishops , or councils , or synods , or consistories , or presbyteries , they had but one answer to make * and that was always ready : «« Jesus I know , and Paul I know ; but who are ye ? " They conceived that every congregation of Christians possessed ' within itself all ecclesiastical powers arid faculties , to be exercised and applied according to the will of the wholes or , in case they were divided , of a majority , of its members . To preserve a community
of interest , protection and fellowship , they did , indeed , make it the duty of every such church to consult the nei g hbouring churches in all important events , such as the ordination of a minister , and in all cases of difficulty ; or internal dissension ; and to follow the advice given them , provided they thought it good advice : but it was expressly forbidden them to submit to it as authority . I find it stated thus in one of their old books : " If a church in a citie and the officers thereof , be of more eminent gifts and
graces , than a church in a village , it is a just occasion for the church in the village to listen the more after the coumel of the church in the citie ; but not to submit the more unto their authority . And so it is true , a classis of the presbyters of many churches may excel ( in more variety of all abilities ) than the presbyterie of any owe church ; yet that onely reacheth to make their counsel the more weighty and acceptable , but not to invest them with more rule or more authority . " Nay , so jealous were they , in the early
settlement of the . country , of any association menacing the boasted independency of their churches , that when it was understood that the ministers of Boston and the vicinity were in the habit of meeting once a fortnight at each other ' s houses , where some question was commonly debated , the practice was much frowned on by the ministers of Salem , on the ground , as they said , that "it would grow into a presbytery , or superintendency , to the prejudice of the church liberties . " . .
It was this ever wakeful suspicion , this unconquerable dread of every thing like ecclesiastical consociations and tribunals , to which our churches are indebted not only for much of the liberty they enjoy , but also for much of the progress they have made in religious inquiry . As it was , we know that the almost unbounded influence of Cotton , and others of the clergy of that day , gave occasion for serious alarm to the leading men of the colony ; and nothing but this determination of the people to preserve their congregational
independency could have presented an effectual barrier to the incroachments of that most subtle , plausible , and imposing of all usurpations , I mean , the usurpation of the priesthood . Could they have succeeded in establishing a sp iritual court— -a court claiming and exercising authority over ministers and churches , over faith and conscience , like ail other courts of the kind , its first act would probably have been to decree a cessation of intellectual and
relifious improvement throughout its jurisdiction ; and it might have made the ifference of a century in the advancement of the mind i > n the prohibited subject ^ . True , it might , and it probably would , have disclaimed the use of the civil arm . It might have had nothing to do with raek $ , and faggots , and dungeons , the common accompaniment of persecution in the old world .
Untitled Article
3 ( M Progress of Literal Christianity in New England .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1828, page 304, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2560/page/16/
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