USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > Thirteen historical discourses, on the completion of two hundred years : from the beginning of the First Church in New Haven, with an appendix > Part 4
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equality among the people, breaking up the rich man's great estate into as many portions as he has children, and thus insuring the constant division and general distribution of prop- erty. How different is the aspect of this country now, from what it would have been, if the feudal law of inheritance had been from the beginning the law of the land! How incal- culable has been the effect on the character of the people !
Notice in the next place, how great a change, in respect to the inflicting of capital punishments, was made by adopting the Hebrew laws, instead of the laws of England. By the laws of England, more than one hundred and fifty crimes were, till quite lately, punishable with death. By the laws which the New England colonists adopted, this bloody cata- logue was reduced to eleven .* On such a difference as this, it would be idle to expatiate. In determining what kind of men our fathers were, we are to compare their laws, not with ours, but with the laws which they renounced. The great- est and boldest improvement which has been made in crimi- nal jurisprudence, by any one act, since the dark ages, was that which was made by our fathers, when they determined, " that the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses, and as they are a fence to the moral law, being neither typical, nor ceremonial, nor having any reference to Canaan, shall be accounted of moral equity, and generally bind all of- fenders, and be a rule to all the courts." Whatever improve- ments in this respect we have made since their day, may be resolved into this :- We have learned to distinguish, better than they, between that in the laws of Moses which was of absolute obligation, being founded on permanent and uni- versal reasons only, and that which was ordained in reference to the peculiar circumstances of the Hebrew nation, and which was therefore temporary or local.
So much for the first principle in the constitution adopted by the fathers of New Haven, namely, the principle that the
* Murder, Treason, Perjury against the life of another, Kidnapping, Besti- ality, Sodomy, Adultery, Blasphemy in the highest degree, Idolatry, Witch- craft, Rebellion against parents.
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Bible should be their rule of justice. As to the other prin- ciple, namely, that political power should be committed only to those men whose moral character, and whose sympathy with the great design of the plantation, should be certified by their being members of the Church,-I know not that I need to explain, any further, its equity or wisdom as a polit- ical measure. If we are to regard it as a measure for the en- couragement or promotion of piety, undoubtedly it must be pronounced a great mistake. Piety is not to be promoted by making it the condition of any civil or political distinctions. This they knew as well as we; and when they introduced the principle in question into their " fundamental agree- ment,". it was not for the sake of bestowing honors or privi- ยท leges upon piety, but for the sake of guarding their liberty, and securing the end for which they had made themselves exiles. If you call their adoption of this principle fanati- cism, it is to be remembered that the same fanaticism runs through the history of England. How long has any man in England been permitted to hold any office under the crown, without being a communicant in the Church of Eng- land ? The same fanaticism had, up to that fourth of June, 1639, characterized all nations, protestant or popish, Moham- medan or heathen ; nay, as Davenport said, " these very In- dians, that worship the Devil," acted on the same principle, so that in his judgment "it seemed to be a principle im- printed in the minds and hearts of all men in the equity of it.""* Call it fanaticism if you will. To that fanaticism which threw off the laws of England, and made these colo- nies Puritan commonwealths, we are indebted for our exist- ence as a distinct and independent nation.
But after all, we may be told, they were Puritans. Well, what and who were the Puritans ? Need any man be ashamed of being descended from such ancestors ?
There are those whose ideas of the Puritans are derived only from such authorities as Butler's Hudibras, Scott's ro-
* Discourse about Civil Government, 24.
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mances, and similar fictions. There are those, still more unfortunate, who form their opinion of the character of the Puritans from what they read in such works as that most un- scrupulous and malicious of lying narratives, Peters' History of Connecticut. With persons whose historical knowledge is of this description, it would be a waste of time to argue. But those who know any thing of the history of England, may easily disabuse themselves of vulgar prejudices against the Puritans.
What were the Puritans? The prejudices which have been infused into so many minds from the light, popular lite- rature of England since the restoration, are ready to answer. The Puritans !- every body knows what they were ;- an en- thusiastic religious sect, distinguished by peculiarities of dress and language, enemies of learning, haters of refinement and all social enjoyments, low-bred fanatics, crop-eared rebels, a rabble of round-heads, whose preachers were cobblers and tinkers, ever turning their optics in upon their own inward light, and waging fierce war upon mince pies and plum pud- dings. It was easy for the courtiers of King Charles II, when the men of what they called "the Grand Rebellion," had gone from the scene of action, thus to make themselves merry with misrepresentations of the Puritans, and to laugh at the wit of Butler and of South ; but their fathers laughed not, when, in many a field of conflict, the chivalry of Eng- land skipped like lambs, and proud banners rich with Nor- man heraldry, and emblazoned with bearings that had been stars of victory at Cressy and at Poictiers, were trailed in dust before the round-head regiments of Cromwell.
What were the Puritans? Let sober history answer. They were a great religious and political party, in a country and in an age in which every man's religion was a matter of political regulation. They were in their day the reforming party in the church and state of England. They were a party in- cluding, like all other great parties, religious or political, a great variety of character, and men of all conditions in soci- ety. There were noblemen among them, and there were
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peasants; but the bulk of the party was in the middling classes, the classes which the progress of commerce and civ- ilization, and free thought, had created between the degraded peasantry and the corrupt aristocracy. The strong holds of the party were in the great commercial towns, and especially among the merchants and tradesmen of the metropolis. There were doubtless some hypocrites among them, and some men of unsettled opinions, and some of loose morals, and some actuated by no higher sentiment than party spirit ; but the party as a whole was characterized by a devoted love of country, by strict and stern morality, by hearty, fervent piety, and by the strongest attachment to sound, evangelical doc- trines. . There were ignorant men among them, and weak men ; but comparing the two parties as masses, theirs was was the intelligent and thinking party. There were among them some men of low ambition, some of a restless, envious, leveling temper, some of narrow views; but the party as a whole, was the patriotic party, it stood for popular rights, for the liberties of England, for law against prerogative, for the doctrine that kings and magistrates were made for the people, and not the people for kings-ministers for the Church, and not the Church for ministers.
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Who were the Puritans? Enemies of learning did you say ? You have heard of Lightfoot, second in scholarship to no other man, whose researches into all sorts of lore are even at this day the great store-house from which the most learned and renowned commentators, not of England and America only, but of Germany, derive no insignificant por- tion of their learning. Lightfoot was a Puritan .* You may have heard of Theophilus Gale, whose works have never yet been surpassed for minute and laborious investigation into the sources of all the wisdom of the Gentiles. Gale was a Puritan. You may have heard of Owen, the fame of whose learning, not less than of his genius and his skill, filled all Europe, and constrained the most determined enemies of
* Lightfoot was a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. Af- ter the restoration, he conformed to the Established Church.
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him, and of his party, to pay him the profoundest deference. Owen was, among divines, the very head and captain of the Puritans. You may have heard of Selden, the jurist, the universal scholar, whose learning was in his day, and is even at this day, the "glory of the English nation." Selden was a Puritan .* Strange that such men should have been iden- tified with the enemies of learning.
The Puritans triumphed for a while. They beat down not only the prelacy, but the peerage, and the throne. And what did they do with the universities ? The universities were indeed revolutionized by commissioners from the Puri- tan Parliament ; and all who were enemies to the Common- wealth of England, as then established, were turned out of the seats of instruction and government. But were the rev- enues of the universities confiscated ?- their halls given up to pillage ?- their libraries scattered and destroyed ? Never were the universities of England better regulated, never did they better answer the legitimate ends of such institutions, than when they were under the control of the Puritans.
Who were the Puritans ? Enemies, did you say, of lite- rature and refinement ? What is the most resplendent name in the literature of England ? Name that most illustrious of poets, who for magnificence of imagination, for grandeur of thought, for purity, beauty, and tenderness of sentiment, for harmony of numbers, for power and felicity of language, stands without a rival. Milton was a Puritan.
Who were the low-bred fanatics, the crop-eared rebels, the rabble of round-heads ? Name that purest patriot whose name stands brightest and most honored in the history of English liberty, and whose example is ever the star of guid- ance and of hope, to all who resist usurped authority. Hamp- den was a Puritan,-associate with Pym in the eloquence that swayed the Parliament and "fulmin'd" over England, comrade in arms with Cromwell, and shedding his blood upon the battle-field.
* Selden was one of the lay members of the Westminster Assembly.
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But their preachers were cobblers and tinkers ! Were they indeed ? Well, and what were Christ's apostles ? One tinker I remember, among the preachers of that age, and of that great party-though not, in the most proper meaning of the word, a Puritan; and what name is more worthy of a place among the names of. the elected fishermen of Galilee, than the name of Bunyan? That tinker, shut up in Bedford jail for the crime of preaching, saw there with the eye of faith and genius, visions only less divine than those which were revealed to his namesake in Patmos. His "Pilgrim's Pro- gress" lives in all the languages of Christendom, among the most immortal of the works of human genius. Would that all preachers were gifted like that tinker Bunyan !
But the Puritan preachers cannot be characterized as illite- rate, or as men who had been trained to mechanical employ- ments. They were men from the universities, skilled in the learning of the age, and well equipped for the work of preach- ing. Never has England seen a more illustrious company of preachers than when Baxter, Owen, Bates, Charnock, Howe, and two thousand others of inferior attainments indeed, but of kindred spirit, labored in the pulpits of the establishment. Never has any ministry in the Church of England done more, in the same time, and under similar disadvantages, for the advancement of the people in the knowledge of Christian truth, and in the practice of Christian piety, than was done by the ministry of the Puritans. Whence came the best and most famous of those books of devotion, and of experimen- tal and practical piety, which have so enriched our language, and by which the authors preach to all generations. The " Saint's Rest," the "Call to the Unconverted," the " Bless- edness of the Righteous," the "Living Temple," these, and other works like these, which have been the means of lead- ing thousands to God the eternal fountain,-are the works of Puritan preachers.
Let me not be considered as maintaining that the Puritans were faultless or infallible. I know they had faults, great faults. I know they fell into serious errors. By their errors
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and faults, the great cause which their virtue so earnestly espoused, and their valor so strongly defended, was wrecked and almost ruined. But dearly did they pay, in disappoint- ment, in persecution, in many sufferings, in the contempt which was heaped upon them by the infatuated people they had vainly struggled to emancipate,-the penalty of their faults and errors. And richly have their posterity, inhabiting both hemispheres, enjoyed, in well ordered liberty, in the diffusion of knowledge, and in the saving influences of pure Christianity,-the purchase of their sufferings, the reward of their virtues and their valor.
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DISCOURSE III.
ECCLESIASTICAL FORMS AND USAGES OF THE FIRST AGE IN NEW ENGLAND.
JOSHUA XXIV, 31 .- And Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua, and who had known all the works of the Lord, that he had done for Israel.
IN the present discourse, as preliminary to some sketches of remarkable individuals among the members of this Church in that generation which came out of England, I shall notice several particulars not yet touched upon, respecting the history of the Church as a community at that period.
With what solemnities the formal constituting of the Church, by the seven men appointed for that purpose, was at- tended, is not upon those records which have come down to us. We know, however, what were the forms generally observed on similar occasions, at the same period; and, presuming that the same forms were 'observed here, we may easily imagine something of the transactions of that day .* At an early hour, probably not far from 8 o'clock in the morning, the congre- gation assembled. Tradition says, that the assembly was under the same broad oak, under which they had kept their first Sabbath. After public exercises of preaching and prayer, "about the space of four or five hours," those who are first to unite in the church covenant, the seven pillars in the house of wisdom, stand forth before the congregation, and the el- ders and delegates from neighboring Churches,-for, prob- ably, such were present from the Churches on the river. In the first place, that all present may be satisfied respecting the personal piety of the men who are to begin the Church, all the seven successively make a declaration of their religious experience,-what has been the history of their minds, and
* Johnson, Wonder-working Prov. II, Mass. Hist. Coll. vii, 40.
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what have been the influences and effects of God's grace upon them. Next, that they may make it clear, that their confidence in Christ rests upon Christ as revealed in the Word, they, either severally or jointly, make profession of their faith, declaring those great and leading doctrines which they re- ceive as the substance of the gospel. If on any point farther explanations are desired, questions are proposed by the rep- resentatives of neighboring Churches, till all are satisfied. Then they unitedly express their assent to a written form of covenant, in nearly the same words in which the covenant of this Church is now expressed ;- after which they receive from the representatives of the neighboring Churches, the right hand of fellowship, recognizing them as a Church of Christ, invested with all the powers and privileges which Christ has given to his Churches.
The election and ordination of officers, followed very soon after the organization of the Church. Mr. Davenport who was, perhaps even more than any other man, the leader of the enter- prise, was chosen pastor. The office of teacher, and that of rul- ing elder, appear to have been left vacant for a season. Mr. Samuel Eaton, who is sometimes spoken of as having been colleague with Mr. Davenport,* appears not to have sustained that relation after the Church was duly gathered. The first deacons were Robert Newman and Matthew Gilbert, who were both in the original foundation of the Church. Mr. Davenport, like nearly all the other ministers who emigrated to this country in that age, had been regularly ordained to the ministry in the Church of England, by the laying on of the hands of a bishop. Yet that ordination was not consid- ered as giving him office or power in this Church, any more than a man's having been a magistrate in England, would give him power to administer justice in this jurisdic- tion. Accordingly he was ordained, or solemnly inducted into office, Mr. Hooker and Mr. Stone, elders of the Church in Hartford, being present, as tradition says, to assist in the
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* Trumbull, I, 286.
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solemnity .* The act of ordination, however, in such cases, was performed by two or more brethren in the name of the Church, laying their hands upon the head of the pastor elect, with some such form of words as this, " We ordain thee to be pastor unto this Church of Christ ;" after which one of the elders present from other Churches, proceeded in prayer to God for his special assistance to his servant in the work, and for his blessing upon the Church, the pastor, and the congre- gation.t The pastor having been thus inducted into office, ordained the deacons.
The question doubtless arises with some-Could such an ordination have any validity, or confer on the pastor thus or- dained any authority ? Can men, by a voluntary compact, form themselves into a Church ? and can the Church thus formed impart to its own officers the power of administering ordinances ? If Davenport had not been previously ordained in England, would not his administration of ordinances have been sacrilege ? Answer me another question : How could the meeting which convened in Mr. Newman's barn, origin- ate a commonwealth ? How could the commonwealth thus originated, impart the divine authority and dignity of magis- trates to officers of its own election ? How could a few men coming together here in the wilderness, without commission from king or parliament, by a mere voluntary compact among themselves, give being to a state ? How can the state thus instituted, have power to make laws which shall bind the minority ? What right had they to erect tribunals of justice ? What right to wield the sword? What right to inflict pun- ishment, even to death, upon offenders ? Is not civil gov- ernment a divine institution, as really as baptism and the Lord's supper ? Is not the " duly constituted" magistrate as truly the minister of God, as he who presides over the Church and labors in word and doctrine? Whence then came the authority with which that self constituted state, meeting in Mr. Newman's barn, invested its elected magistrates ? It came
* Trumbull, I, 285.
t See Appendix No. II.
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directly from God, the only fountain of authority. Just as directly from the same God, came the authority with which the equally self constituted Church, meeting in the same place, invested its elected pastor. Could the one give to its magistrates power to hang a murderer in the name of God,- and could not the other give to its elders power to administer baptism ?*
In the year 1644, the Rev. William Hooke, who had been a minister of the Church of England, and who upon the first settlement of Taunton in the Plymouth colony, became pas- tor of the Church there, was ordained teacher in this Church ; and at the same time, probably, Mr. Robert Newman, one of the first deacons, was ordained ruling elder. The ordina- tion in this case was of course performed by Mr. Davenport, Mr. Hooke preaching, on the occasion, his own inauguration sermon. Thus the Church became completely supplied with the officers which every Church in that day was supposed to need. It had within itself a complete presbytery-a full body of ordained elders, competent to maintain a regular suc- cession, without any dependence on the supposed ordaining power of ministers out of the Church, and without any neces- sity of resorting to the extraordinary measure of ordination by persons specially delegated for that purpose.
The three elders, one of whom was to give attention chiefly to the administration of the order and government of the Church, while the others were to labor in word and doc- trine, were all equally and in the same sense "elders," or "overseers" of the flock of God. The one was a mere
* 'Those who admire " the judicious Hooker," ought not to be startled at this doctrine. Richard Hooker argues thus : " Another extraordinary kind of vocation is where the exigence of necessity doth constrain to leave the usual ways of the Church, which otherwise we would willingly keep. Where the Church must needs have some ordained, and neither hath nor can possi- bly have a bishop to ordain ; in case of such necessity, the ordinary institu- tion of God hath given oftentimes, and may give place. And therefore we are not, simply without exception, to urge a lineal descent of power from the apostles, by continued succession of bishops in every effectual ordination."- Eccl. Pol., B. vii, ch. 14.
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elder ; but the others were elders called to the work of preaching. The distinction between pastor and teacher was theoretical, rather than of any practical importance. Both were, in the highest sense, ministers of the gospel ; as col- leagues, they preached by turns on the Lord's day, and on all other public occasions ; they had an equal share in the administration of discipline ; and if Mr. Davenport was more venerated than Mr. Hooke, and had more influence in the Church and in the community generally, it was more because of the acknowledged personal superiority of the former in respect to age and gifts and learning, than because of any official disparity. The Cambridge Platform, which was framed in 1648, and with which Mr. Davenport, in his wri- tings on church government, fully agrees, says, in defining the difference between pastors and teachers, " The pastor's special work is to attend to exhortation, and therein to ad- minister a word of wisdom; the teacher is to attend to doc- trine, and therein to administer a word of knowledge; and either of them to administer the seals of that covenant unto the dispensation whereof they are alike called; and also to execute the censures, being but a kind of application of the word : the preaching of which, together with the application thereof, they are alike charged withall."* The pastor and teacher gave themselves wholly to their ministry and their studies, and accordingly received a support from the people ; they might properly be called clergymen.t The ruling elder was not necessarily educated for the ministry ; he might, without impropriety, pursue some secular calling ; and though he fed the flock occasionally with "a word of admonition," the ministry was not his profession. Inas- much as he did not live by the ministry, he was a layman.
* Chap. vi, Sect. 5.
t In England, a clergyman is a minister of the Established Church. In this country, if the word has any proper meaning, it means, not every one who preaches, or every one who is licensed or ordained, but a minister who makes the ministry his profession. A merchant or mechanic may preach, and may be ordained ; but if he pursues his secular calling, he is not a cler- gyman.
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The ministers were supported, not from the treasury of the town-for the town as a civil corporation had nothing to do with them-but from the church treasury kept by the dea- cons, and this church treasury was supplied by voluntary con- tributions .* This appears to have been the method till some time after the union of the New Haven colony with Connec- ticut. Instead of the assessment and collection of a tax, as for the expenses of the civil government, each member of the congregation was called upon to manifest his liberality, his sense of justice, his affection for the elders, and his regard for the ordinances, by contributing, of his own will, as God had prospered him. The first approach towards a tax for the support of the ministry, was made, when it was enacted, that if any man refused to contribute, or contributed what was manifestly below his just proportion, he might be com- pelled to do his duty in this matter.t
In regard to the views of Christian doctrine entertained by the founders of this Church, my design, at present, will not permit me to go into particulars. It is sufficient to say, in general, that their doctrines were those of the Reformation, the doctrines of Calvin and of the articles and homilies of the Church of England, the doctrines of such bishops as Latimer and Ridley, and of such archbishops as Cranmer and Abbott, the same doctrines which were held by their cotem- poraries and brethren, the divines of the Westminster Assem- bly. While they regarded with great dislike the scheme of doctrine which, by the influence of Laud, had then lately become characteristic of the adherents of prelacy, and from the unhappy influence of which the Church of England is now at last partly delivered ; they had no sympathy with the mysticism and antinomianism which, in that age of excite- ment, broke out in so many forms in various quarters.
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