Page:The Leveller movement; a study in the history and political theory of the English Great Civil War (IA levellermovement01peas).djvu/73

 any person neither ignorant of essential Christian doctrine, nor of a scandalous mode of life. The two tests were appropriate for a national church—a church which admitted to its communion all adult members of a nation, save such as she held back for discipline or instruction. To such communicants, however, the Presbyterian Church could not commit the powers of excommunication, ecclesiastical censure, and ordination; these it reserved to the synods and representative assemblies of the eldership. On the other hand, since the Independent Church had to allow its members a share in the “keys,” it could admit to membership only persons giving satisfactory proof of their spiritual regeneracy; they must be saints, as the term was, persons distinguished in the community as living the lives of regenerate Christians.

Such a restriction of church membership made necessary a device by which the saints in a community could associate together in church fellowship. The device which the Independents adopted was covenant. An Independent church began with a covenant of the future members, one with another and all with Christ, to walk together as a church. Each new member admitted by elders and congregation renewed this covenant, thereby subjecting himself to the spiritual censures of his fellow members, administered in accord with Christ’s law. The covenant of an Independent church was its basic law.