Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 05.djvu/337

* CONGREGATIONALISM. 285 CONGKEGATIONALISM. bersliip belonged to all baptizeil inhabit-ants of the kingdom ; they held each church coiii])etent to regulate its own afi'airs. These peculiarities are so similar to those of the Continental Ana- baptists, that some inlluence from Anabaptist sources in Congregational beginnings seems ])rob- able: but the dissimilarities existing between Anabaptists and Congregationalism are so con- siderable that tliis influence must have been indirect and unconscious. The founders of Con- gregationalism thouglit they were simply re- producing the system of the Xew Testament. 'I'liDugh a church essentially Congregational in organization existed in London as earl.v as 1507, Congregationalism first came to significance in the work and especially in the writings of an erratic but earnestly refonnatory .voung graduate of Cambridge, Robert Browne. Convinced that reforms such as he desired wore unattainable within the Establishment, Browne organized a Congregational churcli at Xorwich in 1580 or 1581. Compelled to seek refuge in Holland. Browne put forth several tracts in 1582, in which he urged the dut.v of innuediate separation from the Church of England — ^ a characteristic that gave the name 'Separatists' to these early Con- gregational ists. He also set forth Congrega- tional principles with great distinctness. By 1587 Congregational preacliing by Henry Bar- rowe, a London lawyer, and John Greenwood. like Barrowe a Cambridge giaduate, had gath- ered a following in London and brought upon its teachers and disciples the hostilit.y of the Gov- ernment. The organization of a. Congregational churcli in London, in 1592, was followed by the martyrdom, by hanging, of Barrowe, Greenwood, and John Penry, in 1593. and the exile of the greater portion of its membership, who found a home in Amsterdam with Francis Johnson as their 'pastor' and Henry Ainsworth as their 'teacher.' Jleanwhile a movement to secure earnest Puri- tan preaching was begun, about 1590. in the country region of their residence some 150 miles north of London, by Richard Clyfton, rector of Babworth, and William Brewster, a layman of Scrooby. Ecclesiastical opposition deepened the movement into Separation, and it was stimulated by the coming of Rev. John Robinson, in 1004, and Rev. John Smyth, apparently the following year. Churches were formed on the Congrega- tional model at Scrooby and Gainesborough, probably in 1600, though the year is uncertain. Governmental opposition compelled both to seek refuge in Holland, and that of Scrooby, with Robinson as its 'pastor' and Brewster as its 'ruling elder,' found a home at Leyden in 1609. Thence a minority of its membership emigrated to Xew England in 1020, founding Plymiouth, now in ilassachusetts, in December of that year. Here the Separatist colony passed through severe struggles successfully under the leadership of Brewster, and with William Bradford. Edward Winslow, and 5Iyles Standisli as its foremost men in civil affairs. This 'Pilgrim' emigration, as it was called, was Separatist, and Pl.vmouth Colony numbered onlv about three hundred in population by the close of its first decade. It would have amounted to little had it not been unexpectedly and greatly reinforced. The policy of Charles I. impelled English Puritans to seek new homes across the ocean, and the result was the estab- lishment of a Puritan colony at Salem in 1628. Accpiaintance with the Plymouth Se])aratist3 brought recognition of the large siniihirity of their views, and when a churcli was formed at Salem, in 1029, it was organized on the Congre- gational model. The example thus set was fol- lowed in the formation of the succeeding Massa- chusetts churches. The Hood tide of Puritan immigration ran strong till the political situa- tion altered in England in KitO: and it l>r(iught to Xew England such men as .Tolin Wintliro]) in 10:«), Rev. John Eliot in 131, Rev. .John Cot- t^m in 1033, and Rev. Richard Mather in 1035, giving to Massachusetts a strong and numerous Congregational population. Slightly divergent views regarding the extent of the franchise, com- bined with an ardent desire to secure a fertile territoiy, and more personal motives, led emi- grants from Massachusetts under Rev. Thomas Hooker and .John Ha.Ties. to' settle in Connecti- cut in 1034-30; and in 1038 another company, under Rev. .John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, founded Xew Haven. In 1043 the four Congregational colonies united in a confederacy for mutual protection. The settlement of New England was followed by a time of planting and developing institu- tions. The right to vot« was restricted in Jlassa- chusetts to churcli members from lti31 to 1604, and in Xew Haven from 1639 to lOlio. X^o such limitivtion ever obtained in Pl^miouth or Con- necticut colonies. Schools received the early attention of the settlers, and the founding of Han-ard in 1030, followed by the establishment of Yale in 1701. bore witness to the desire for a learned ministry always characteristic of Congregationalism, and were evidences of that interest in education Avhich marks the denomina- tion to the present day. Congregational polity was expounded in ti-eatises by Cotton, Hooker, and Mather, and authoritatively defined by the Cambridge Synod in 1648. Missionary labors among the Indians, begun in 1640 by .John Eliot in Xewton, Mass., and by Thomas JIa.vliew on ilartha's Vineyard, were considerably successful, resulting, by 1674, in six churches, and bring- ing about 4000 savages in some measure at least under the influence of the Gospel, though these results were robbed of pennanence by the d.ving of the Indian race. The chief intellectual monu- ment of this missionary activity is Eliot's Indian version of the Bible of 1003. The most impor- tant internal discussion of seventeenth-century Xew England Congregationalism was that re- garding the 'Half-Way Covenant' — the question being whether persons who had themselves been baptized in infancy because of their parents' church-membership, could in tuni bring their own children to baptism when thc.v themselves were subjects of no conscious regenerative change. "Ihe decision of a meeting of Massachu- setts and Connecticut ministers at Boston in 1057. and of a convention of the Massachusetts churches in 1602, was that such baptized, but not consciously regenerate, parents could bring their children to baptism and transmit the church status they themselves possessed, but could not come to the Lord's Talile or vote in church affairs. Hence the nickname lialf way.' Though never universally adopted, the Half- Way Covenant was practiced by most Xew England churches till about the opening decade of the nineteenth century.