USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > History of the First church in Boston, 1630-1880 > Part 2
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The Holy Apostolic Church, said the Romanists, cx- isted and was fully organized, according to the direction of its Founder, and by authority conferred by him, before the Scriptures were written, and independently of what may or may not happen to be found in them for instruc- tion or example. The Scriptures are in fact the free gift of the church to those who belong to its fold, -one of many helps and agencies in which, in the exercise of its
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divine trust, it seeks to fulfil its work. The church settled the canon of the sacred writings, and has taken care that they should be safely transmitted through the ages for the bless- ing of the faithful, for whom also the church claims the right to interpret the Scriptures. But the church is by no means held to restrict itself, in every element of its consti- tution, government, and discipline, to what may be laid down or set forth in Scripture. The Apostles had verbal, unwritten instructions from Christ, which they communi- cated to their successors. These instructions were actually followed in the planting and government of the first Chris- tian communion; they appeared in practical observance, in traditional transmission, and in various usages, rules, ceremonies, and methods of discipline, which all have thus an apostolic authority, are the marks and witnesses of the true church, wholly extraneous to what may appear in the sacred writings.
It is easy to conceive that, starting with this theory of a universal, apostolical church, bearing the sanction of its divine Founder, there might have been planted in this world an august and benedictive institution which would have gone far towards realizing for successive generations the establishment of the "Kingdom of Heaven " among men. But what, in contrast to this, the Roman Church became and was when its fearful thrall of despotism and superstition, its foul corruptions, and its debasing tyranny stirred alike the manhood and the piety of carnest souls to renounce it, need not here be related or portrayed.
In bursting the bonds of the papacy, and in renouncing all connection with the Roman Church, the Reformers in general recognized but one alternative for those who re- mained in discipleship of the Church of Christ: it was to find their rule and guidance in the Scriptures. If the New Testament Scriptures had indeed been the gift of the
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church to Christ's disciples, the gift was bestowed while yet the church lived in its original simplicity and purity. The English Puritans asked of their dear mother church that she would strictly model herself by the simple rule of Scripture. They protested against the retention and the imposition by authority, in the constitution and discipline of their church, of any of the hierarchical, sacerdotal, or ceremonial inventions of the papacy. The ruling party in the English Church insisted that certain observances and usages which the Puritans disliked and repudiated were things " indifferent." The answer was, " Why then do you eject us from our vicarages, fine and imprison us for our scruples about them?" The Papal Church, in its elaborate hierarchy, had developed a system and series of priestly functionaries, with distinctions, ranks, privileges, and offices more numerous and complicated than are covered by all the officials of civil government, as running through all national and municipal departments and all the constitu- ent parts of an army. The ritual, ceremonial, and altar service of the church, with its vestments, its ornaments, its attitudes and observances, was so intricate and compli- cated that only a glossary, or dictionary of terms and defi- nitions, with something answering to " stage directions," could assign and interpret a meaning for them. To the Puritan they were all " mummeries."
The writer of these pages recalls a remembrance which, at the time, gave him a full sense of the old Puritan abhor- rence of the Roman pomp and ceremonial in contrast with the simplicities of the carly Christian worship. It was on Christmas day at the Church of St. Peter in Rome. With the blaze of thousands of candles at midday, the swinging of smoking censers, the array of religious orders in monkish hoods and varied garbs, the harlequin suits of the Swiss Guards, and other military escort, and crowds
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of lay-people all in requisite dress-suits, the Pope, lifted in a canopy-covered golden chair, was borne in upon the arms of ecclesiastics. He was clad in robes so heavily wrought with gold that four bearers were needed to relieve their weight when he took a few steps on the pavements. He hardly needed the large fans and bunches of feathers from the tails of peacocks, borne before him, to remind him - as the explanation of the ceremonial is - that " the eyes of the people are upon him." Probably it was the Puritan lineage of the writer, as he looked on the scene, that prompted the thought, that if the dome of the superb temple could have been riven, and the Apostle whose name it bears could have descended upon the scene, he would not have known what was going on there. It would cer- tainly have been interesting to have listened as his "suc- cessor " explained the situation to him.
The Puritans, as we say, did not discriminate between what was part and parcel of a corrupt, overladen, pon- pous, sacerdotal ceremonialism, - the growth of centuries of a towering, domineering priesthood, enslaving the pco- ple by greed and superstition, - and certain harmless de- vices and adaptations still left in the English Church, which, though they could not claim positive Scripture sanction and apostolic precept, had in them fitness and grace, and might help to devout impression, order, and discipline. As the Puritans devoutly read the New Testa- ment they learned from it that the Founder and Head of the Christian Church commissioned a company of men whom he had chosen, by themselves and their successors, to teach and preach to the world what he had taught them, - just that and no more. These teachers were called apostles, evangelists, ministers, elders, presbyters, over- seers, bishops, - simply synonymous terms, without any gradations of office or dignity in rank, for they were
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" all brethren." A company of men and women in any place, - Jews or Gentiles, - after listening to the teaching of the new religion, might gather together, and with a simple organization, under a competent, regular minister, - or, failing in that, edifying each other in exhortation and prayer, - might form a Christian church and admin- ister its discipline. Some men of years and gravity, called deacons, had special oversight over the poor and the work of charity. The Puritans found nothing relating to " cleri- cal habits or vestments," to a form of prayer and service, to an observance of the Lord's Supper as a commemora- tive rite by kneeling as in adoration at an altar, or to the drawing of a cross on the brow of an infant in baptism. The point must in fairness be granted that if the field and matter of variance between the Puritans and the prelacy and ceremonial of the Church of England were restricted to the New Testament, the Puritans could hold their ground. Able and candid prelates and scholars of the English Church have frankly admitted that it must look outside of the writings of the apostolic age for its full hierarchical and ceremonial system, and they plead for its right to do so.
With such a meaning and purpose attaching in their minds to the " Positive Part of Church Reformation," we trace the course pursued in the institution and discipline of the First Church in Boston. Its founders adopted, as by spontaneous prompting; the Congregational Polity, simply and for no other reason than because it represented to them the precedent laid down for them in the New Testa- ment. They were constant readers and students of the sacred writings, and it was of supreme interest for them that no counsel or example there set forth should rebuke them for any willing neglect of it. The circumstances of their distant exile, their lack of all the paraphernalia and
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furnishings of ecclesiastical ceremonial, and their straits of necessity, might well have excused their disuse of wonted observances, and their recourse to any shifts of their own devising. But they sought no excuse, they offered no apologies for the course which they pursued. They had a fair, free field for the full trial of methods and the exer- cise of conscientious principles which, before their exile, had profoundly engaged their . convictions. Puritanism had exhibited in England its 'animating spirit, and had indicated its own direction and ideals. These had been impeded and withstood in their development, and in the effort to realize them. Here they were free to assert themselves, and they did so. The result was that the First Church of Boston, the exemplar in this matter of all the early New England churches, became a Congregational Church. Its polity, widely at variance with that of the English Church, is substantially that of sects and commun- ions which vastly outnumber the discipleship of the Eng- lish Church on both continents, and still fairly divide it in Great Britain itself.
Just at this point, in the first acts that initiated the New England Congregational Church polity, we have presented to us a question which, whether it be regarded as reflect- ing severely upon the alleged inconsistency and insin- cerity of the Boston Puritans, or as merely involving an interesting historical fact, may engage our attention.
The question is, How does the openly schismatic course pursued by the founders of the First Church, in their im- mediate and complete repudiation of the ecclesiastical methods of the Church of England, consist with the avowed and tender love, gratitude, affection, and yearning regard which they had expressed for it on leaving their native land? Here are some sentences from this parting address to the " Reverend Fathers and Brethren": "We desire
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4
you would be pleased to take notice of the principals and body of our Company, as those who esteem it our honour to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear mother; and cannot part from our native Country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears in our eyes, ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation 'we have received in her bosom, and sucked it from her breasts. We leave it not, therefore, as loath- ing that milk wherewith we were nourished there; but, blessing God for the parentage and education, as mem- bers of the same body, shall always rejoice in her good," etc.
These tender parting words were evidently the prompt- ings of a deep heart-sincerity. No motive other than the purest and the truest could have drawn them forth. There was a degree of magnanimity, too, in the utterance of them. Some of the exiles had' felt the harsh dealing of the prelates and the spiritual courts of the Church of Eng- land. Much as they had owed to it, and much as they loved it, they were parting from it of their own free-will, in search of some Christian joys and privileges which they could not find in its communion. Still, the question is a pertinent one, - How could they at once thus actually rend the tie of fellowship with that church by disusing all its forms in institution and observance, and invent or establish their own widely different polity?
In dealing with this question, the matter of most signifi- cance for us is that we have not a single word of explana- tion, much less of justification, coming from themselves as to the course which they pursued. This is the more remarkable as it was their most characteristic habit, their unvarying usage and principle, to debate, to discuss, to deliberately and patiently weigh, every proposition, scheme,
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and incidental measure involved in their enterprise. They always had recourse' to " papers" to mark the stages of that enterprise, and to note all its details and incidents. The "brethren" had equal and common part with the ministers in the laying of plans, the consultations over everything however trifling. which concerned their relig- ious or secular interests, and nothing but Scripture argu- ments ever had weight with them. From these facts we might infer that such vitally interesting matters as related to the institution of a church body, the methods of organ- ization and discipline, and the conduct of public worship, were deliberately considered and discussed by them, and that any new or unwonted practices which they might adopt, would have been the topics of earnest conference in the religious meetings which were of such interest to them. But if any such papers were written, if any such debates were held, they have fallen into entire oblivion. If they had foreseen that their farewell letter would be quoted as testimony against them, they might have been at the pains to have left some record for their justification. In lack of it, their church polity seems to us to have been adopted spontaneously, with no dissent or objection, as if they regarded it as their natural, and rightful privilege, when free, to follow a previous inclination and tendency.
In a very interesting communication read before the Massachusetts Historical Society, January, 1881, by its President, Hon. Robert C. Winthrop (see published Pro - ceedings of that date), appears the following, dealing di- rectly with this very interesting question.
" It has sometimes been inquired of me personally, how it was to be explained that Governor Winthrop, who had not only signed that farewell letter officially, and, as I think, written it himself, but had long been the patron of the little church at Groton, and pre- sented to its living, should have made no reference to the Church
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of England on coming here, but should have united without delay in the organization of a church of an entirely different form of worship and of a wholly independent character."
In dealing with this very pertinent and significant ques- tion, Mr. Winthrop does not. essay to reduce or qualify, in any degree, the fact that the honored Governor was a party to, and a conspicuous leader in, this immediate recogni- tion and establishment of the Congregational polity. Nor does he feel called upon to explain the course of his an- cestor in so doing, still less to vindicate his consistency. HIe refers to the loss of papers which might possibly throw light upon this exceedingly interesting and critical incident in the first religious arrangements of the exiles. Assum- ing, as he very justly might, that so grave a proceeding, as has been above intimated, could hardly have engaged the common sympathy and action of all concerned in it, with- out some preliminary consideration and joint understand- ing, Mr. Winthrop infers that the transaction may have been explained in those lost papers. He quotes, from some of the extant letters of the Governor, references to certain other letters to his brother-in-law Downing and others, that have not been recovered. These references, however, so far as they intimate the subjects of the lost papers, are to a journal, a " Relation" of the voyage, and certain busi- ness of the Plantation. The papers might well indeed have contained particulars relating to the entrance upon church institution, other than those which we have in Winthrop's printed journal, copied in the history given in the pages of this book in their proper places. But so far as the refer- ences to the contents of these lost papers make mention of their subjects or topics, not the slightest hint is given of any deliberation on their church affairs, or any allusion to the occasion or reason of their spontaneous adoption of a preferred polity. It may be suggested, likewise, that we
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should hardly look to private letters for an explanation of transactions of so public and general concern as would lead us to seek for recognition of them on the pages of records where less important matters are fully entered.
Here then were professed members of the Church of England organized and worshipping after another "pat- tern" than hers. Without any undue pressure of an argument that might be invalidated if we had certain in- formation which is lacking to us, we are left to recognize, in its full and unrelieved force, the fact that these former communicants of the Church of England, who had re- cently so tenderly apostrophized it, seem spontaneously, we may even say abruptly, without protest on the part of any one, and though without any known preconcert of action, yet as if with skill and ready adaptation, proceeded to do what Mr. R. C. Winthrop has so well described, "organize a church of an entirely different form of worship, and of a wholly independent character." Worship by the Book of Common Prayer, responsive services, reading of set Scripture lessons, priestly vestments, the altar-rail for the communion, the repetition of the creeds, the bowing at the name of Jesus, - are'all set aside, and that too with- out explanation -or apology for their disuse. Several of the carly ministers of the Church had indeed received Episcopal ordination ; but this was looked upon indiffer- ently, neither as an advantage nor a disqualification; and when the Church, in a later period, was instituting, in the succession of its pastors, one who had not received such ordination, the fact does not appear to have been regarded as of sufficient consequence to have been recognized on the records. From that day to this, the First Church, with its succession of seventeen ministers, through its two and a half centuries has set them in office with substan- tially the same simplicity of method, elder and brother
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ministers recognizing their accession to office according to Scripture direction : -
" The things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." - 2 Tim. ii. 2.
Two suggestions may here be offered to relieve, if it be worth the while, the abruptness and surprise to us of what seemed so spontaneous and harmonious to themselves in the institution of their church : -
First, they availed themselves of opportunity, place, and means to put in practice, without any hinderance, convic- tions, tendencies, principles, and methods which had pre- viously engaged their wishes and their consciences. The practices which they disused were precisely those which, in their English home and church worship, they had dis- liked, objected to, and, so far as it was convenient or safe to do so, had reluctantly conformed to or even abandoned. Something very like to the mode of worship and religious fellowship in the First Church of Boston had frequently been anticipated in the old English homes and conven- ticles of the Puritans in their meetings for prayer and con- ference ; so we cannot but note how naturally they assumed and fell in with a method which had already become dear to them.
Second, a more important suggestion, as bearing upon their consistency in the' course which they pursued, is this : They evidently did not feel that they thus sundered the tie which held them to the Church of England in the only character and quality for which they would love or honor it, as representing to them the Church of Christ. In other words, they did not regard such institutional and cere- monial and other adventitious usages of their mother church as they had protested against at home and dis-
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used when they came here, as being essentially and vitally wrought into her identity as Christian.
It would be irrelevant to discuss here the history of the struggle which has now run through centuries between the ecclesiastical and the distinctively Christian elements com- bined in the English Church. It has always had a repre- sentation of parties standing respectively for ritual and doctrine. A curious and almost ludicrous illustration of the popular fancy by which a single form or usage identi- fied with the Episcopal Church has come to stand as a symbol for the whole system, has been made familiar to us when, in some other denominational churches, the introduction of chants, of read prayers, or responses in service, has been met by the amazed question, "Are you becoming Episcopal?" If we owe to the Puritans the standing for the grand position that the English Church might still be the Church of Christ while disusing or leaving optional every form and exaction with which in conscience they could not comply, we may well confess their claim upon our respect. What other than this is the ground on which the late beloved and revered Dean Stanley based the comprehensiveness of his ideal Church of England?
There were in the realm of England, at the time of the exile here, avowed and resolute Separatists from the Church who would not on any terms hold communion with it, and whose judgments against it were bitter and denun- ciatory. The founders of the First Church took pains to distinguish themselves, in feeling and spirit at least, from these Separatists. They called themselves Non-conform- ists. Till Archbishop Laud and other "Romanizing" prelates widened the breach and exasperated the alienations between themselves and the Puritans, there was ever an open prospect of conciliation, which was often again re-
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newed in later times. The exiles here wished that those in sympathy with them who remained at home should be a tie of a still existing fellowship between themselves and the mother church. Roger Williams tells us that he refused to accept an invitation to become the teacher of the First Church because its members would not repudiate their former communion with the Church of England. And its members also declined to censure any of their number who, on revisiting England, renewed their communion. The inference seems to be clear. The exiles did not regard those fortuitous elements in the order and discipline of the Church of England against which they had objected, and with which they had more or less failed to conform while they remained in its communion at home, and which they wholly disused here, as at all essential to the validity of its existence and identity as the Church of Christ. They be- lieved that a further cleansing of its ritual and ceremonial, while making it less Roman, would leave it the more Chris- tian. If this is a fair construction of the attitude in which the Boston Puritans placed themselves towards their mother church, it would seem that in their time, however it may be in our own, their course could be censured as incon- sistent and schismatic only by ascribing to the ecclesi- astical authorities at home the assumption that certain sacerdotal and ritual injunctions were of equal importance with the vitalities and sanctities of the Christian religion, as identifying the Church of Christ.
The positive and absolute rejection by those covenanted in the membership of the First Boston Church of the whole theory and practice of prelacy and the old ecclesi- astical system, of course compelled them to adopt a sub- stitute authority and method for such institution as their loyalty to Christ and his Gospel made essential to their fellowship in instruction, worship, and communion. If we
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would fully understand and fairly appreciate the course which they pursued in their Congregational polity, we must recognize the thorough sincerity and conscientious- ness which guided them. It was not by the leadings of their self-will or by the exercise of their own ingenuity that they undertook their reconstructive work. They had the material and the plan for it which to them were of divine furnishing. They were to follow a "pattern " answering in the Christian dispensation to that of Moses in the Jewish. The New Testament Scriptures, supreme in their authority, were sufficient for them. The conscious intrusion, adoption, or exercise of any fancy, device, or adaptation of their own, to help out any supposed lack of scriptural direction in any important matter, would have shocked them as an impiety. There was, indeed, an assumption involved in the course pursued by them, a taking for granted of a fundamental position, which, as has been already noted, was not then cleared of controversy, and which has ever since remained open for variance and discussion. Their assumption was that they would find in the New Testament Scriptures the rule and direction for everything essential and allowable for the organization, . administration, and discipline of local Christian churches. In this assumption they set wholly aside the fundamental theory of the ecclesiastical system of the Roman, and to a qualified degree, of the English Church, of certain apos- tolical authority transmitted through oral directions, tradi- tions, institutions, usages, and sacerdotal sanctions, which was co-ordinate with, if not paramount to, the partial and incomplete instructions given in the Scriptures. The Eng- lish Church recognized something of this traditional and institutional authority external to the New Testament Scriptures, but relied upon a vague and arbitrary limitation of it, as to the period of time, the matters of institution and
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