Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/745

725 INDEPENDENTS 725 Altogether nobler spirit, devout, simple-minded, erudite, one who &quot;had not his better for the Hebrew tongue in the university (of Leyden) nor scarce in Europe,&quot; anxious only to be allowed to search out the meaning of Scripture and teach it to his people. The church under these two men had a somewhat troubled history, and divided at length, part going with Johnson, part with Ainsworth, the cause of the division being as to the office and power of the elder. The former held that the church had power to elect, but not to depose, the elders, who were its real gov ernors, but the latter held that the elders were responsible to the church, which had the power, as to appoint, so also to depose and excommunicate them. Johnson was moving away from Independency, as it is now understood, but Ainsworth towards it. Their church is significant as an attempt to realize the ideal of Barrowe and Greenwood, a provisional or tentative Independency, but no more. A much more successful attempt at realizing the Indepen dent ideal was made at Leyden under the leadership of John Robinson (see ROBINSON, JOHN). He and his people came from Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire. Their head quarters had been at first at Gainsborough-on-Trent. In 160G one section of the church under John Smyth who was to become the most extreme of separatists, discovering that baptism by a corrupt church was none, to rebaptize himself and become founder of the General Baptists emigrated to Amsterdam ; the other organized themselves under Robinson at Scrooby. But peace was impossible ; flight became necessary. So in 1607 and 1G08 they suc ceeded in escaping in detachments to Holland, settling first in Amsterdam, ultimately in Leyden. There the fine qualities of Robinson found a congenial soil, and developed as they could not have done in the less generous air of England. Leyden helped to make English separatism into Independency. What is developed in antagonism is ill de veloped, full of exaggerations, undue emphases, antitheses so sharply stated as to be almost, even when true, danger ously near the false. A proscribed faith may be strong, but can never be sweet ; and the strength that is bitter is not a purely religious strength. So Independency in Eng land in the days of Whitgift and Bancroft was too much hated and hunted to be able to say the best word and do the best thing for itself. But Independency in Leyden, breathing the free air of the Dutch republic, living in open fellowship with all its institutions, braced by its strong en thusiasm for liberty, its robust religious faith, its brilliant and fruitful intellectual activity, then at its best and brightest in the young university of the city, was Inde pendency planted where it could do approximate justice to its own ideal. The influence of the changed conditions soon became manifest in its happier spirit. The church at Leyden lost the narrow and ungenerous spirit of sepa ratism, pleaded for the duty of communion with the godly in the Church of England and the other reformed churches. On this point Robinson wrote with eloquence and acted with courage, his spirit growing the larger the longer he lived. While professing &quot; a separation from the English national, provincial, diocesan, and parochial church, and churches, in the whole former state and order thereof,&quot; he yet confessed and declared that he had still &quot; the same faith, hope, spirit, baptism, and Lord &quot; as in the Church of England, that he enjoyed fellowship with her &quot;many thousands &quot; of godly sons, and that occasional &quot; hearing of the word of God as there preached &quot; was both lawful and necessary to him as a Christian man. 1 This most generous spirit and conduct involved Robinson in a long and bitter controversy with Helwys and other extreme separatists, who held approval of anything or any one J Robinson, Works, iii. 377-8. connected with the Anglican Church to be altogether a sin,- but it iu no way modified the rigour of his Independency. His definition of a church is almost identical with Barrowe s : &quot; A company, consisting though but of two or three, separated from the world, whether unchristian or anti-christian, and gathered into the name of Christ by a covenant made to walk in all the ways of God known unto them, is a church, and so hath the whole power of Christ.&quot; 2 Its independence, its sufficiency as a church alike in what concerned idea and reality, he strenuously maintained. Thus &quot; neither was Peter or Paul more one, whole, entire, and perfect man, consisting of their parts essential and integral, without relation unto other men, than is a parti cular congregation, rightly instituted and ordered, a whole, entire, and perfect church immediately and independently, in respect of other churches, under Christ &quot; 3 Above a church so conceived there could be no authoritative person or court, ecclesiastical or civil; it was armed with all the powers necessary to do the will of its Head, and to interfere with it was an unlawful interference with rights it had received from Him. Office did not exalt a man above the brotherhood : the clergy were but Christians, and good only as Christians. To saintship, and not to office, was promised the forgiveness of sins. &quot; The estate of a saint ia most happy and blessed, though the person never so much as come near an office; but, on the contrary, an officer, if he be not also and first a saint, is a most wretched and accursed creature.&quot; 4 Acts to be acts of the church must be collective, done, not by the clergy or the officers only, but by the brethren as well. 5 The church was, indeed, an ecclesia, an assembly, called out and called together by the public preaching of the word, but forming in its collective and corporate character a body possessed of supreme authority, of all the attributes, rights, and prerogatives that belong to those who rule. It is evident that a conception of this kind was full of promise. It showed a firm trust in the capabilities of individual Christian men to exercise the rights of citizenship within the kingdom of God. It made it in the highest degree wrong for any ruler or body of rulers to enforce their own belief on the people. And it was as opposed to ecclesiastical as to civil tyranny, whether in its Episcopal or Presbyterial form. Robinson, indeed, was far from seeing or courageously deducing all the consequences implied in his Independency. He was even illogical enough to state, though in a hesitating way, principles radically incompatible with it. He concedes &quot; that godly magistrates are by compulsion to repress public and notable idolatry,&quot; by some penalty &quot; to provoke their subjects universally unto hearing for their instruction and conversion &quot; ; but he denies that any king is at liberty to inflict death upon all that refuse to be drawn into covenant with God, or remain wicked and unrepentant. 8 He knows well enough the utmost coercion can do. &quot; By this course of compulsion many become atheists, hypocrites, and familists, and, being at first constrained to practise against conscience, lose all conscience afterwards.&quot; Liberty is too complex a notion to be easily and in all its bearings grasped : and liberty in religion too great a thing to be suddenly and all at once understood and realized. The Leyden church is the parent of Independency alike in England and America. In 1G16 Henry Jacob, a native of Kent, a graduate of Oxford, one of Johnson s converts, pastor awhile of a church at Middleburg, then a resident with Robinson at Leyden, returned to England, and founded an Independent church at Southwark. In 1020 a little company led by Elder Brewster and Deacon Carver sailed froni Delfthaven, landed in the-midst of a severe and stormy 2 Robinson, Works, ii. 132. 4 Ibid., ii. 228. s Ibid., 449. 3 Ibid., iii. 16. 6 Ibid., ii. 314, 315.