the Congregational community, and conducted throughout in a spirit of candor and faithfulness that all must admire, whether or not they approve of the conclusions at which it arrives. Its highly popular form of discussion, its simple yet elegant style, together with its studied brevity and fulness, recommend it strongly to the widest circulation.

Finally, if Congregationalism finds much to commend it, in its consonance with the genius of Christianity, and with the meek spirit of Christ and his apostles, and with the design of Revelation to place all men on an equality of rights and privileges before God, and lead them to look beyond all forms, and penetrate the mysteries of godliness—it finds not a little additional commendation to us, in the fact that it stood approved to the judgment of the Fathers of New England, men of whom the old world was not worthy, and of whom the new world thinks not highly enough—men of learning, zeal, and self-sacrificing devotion-men who boldly threw off from them the manacles of religious despotism, and every shred of the false faith protected by it, pushing to the utmost their researches into the oracles of God, and receiving his testimony without equivocation or demur, even at the cost of expatriation and the loss of all the pleasures of kindred and home. We honor their memory, we hold fast to the inheritance they bequeathed us, and sell not our birthright for the " mess of pottage."

RICHARD S. STORRS.

Braintree, July 20, 1840.

CONGREGATIONALISM.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

CHURCH POLITY-by which is meant everything relating to the order, discipline and worship of the Church—if not itself the most important of subjects, is intimately connected with the vital interests of true religion. But, like other questions of interest and importance, it has been very differently estimated and treated in different periods of the world. Under the Mosaic Dispensation, church polity was a subject of such absorbing interest that it came at length to be considered, by the mass of the Jewish nation, as the very substance of religion. But, on the introduction of Christianity, men were taught that it was neither upon Mount Gerizim, nor at Jerusalem, neither with the Samaritan, nor the Jewish ritual alone, that acceptable worship could be performed. The private house, the place of public concourse, the open field, the lake shore, were all made places of public worship; and this too, with the most simple ritual.

In the order, discipline and worship of the first Christian churches, there was as little of formality as was consistent with the great end for which they were organized.

The distinctive peculiarity of their church government was-Simplicity; and while the violence of persecution continued, they felt little temptation to vary from this.

Church polity-how estimated by the Reformers.

But, with returning peace and outward prosperity, their simple polity began to give way before the encroachments of worldliness and ambition, until a splendid hierarchal establishment engulfed the churches. Doctrinal errors and licentious practices speedily followed.

At the dawn of the Reformation, these latter enormities attracted special attention; and so engrossed were the Reformers in the work of purifying the Church from doctrinal errors, and immoral practices, that, at first, they gave little heed to the source through which these had come into the Church. If the connection between purity and simplicity of church order, and of religious faith and practice occurred to them, they acted upon the common principle of reforming the greatest abuses first; leaving the lesser ones for after consideration. The wisdom of this course is questionable.

There was, however, in those days a serious impediment to a thorough reform, which, if perceived, could not have been easily surmounted: I refer to the connection of the Church with the State. The Reformers leaned on the princes and nobles of this world; and these were the last men to simplify and spiritualize the polity of the Church. Whether, indeed, they would have countenanced a reform in doctrine and morals even, had this been connected with a thorough reformation in the order, and discipline, and worship of the Church, is problematical. Certain it is, that Wickliffe, the pioneer of the Reformation, lost the support of his prince and of the nobility when he started sentiments which countenanced such a reformation. Whether Luther would have succeeded in his labors without the protection of Frederic, the Elector of Saxony; whether the Reformation in England could have been

By the Fathers of New England.

carried so far, without the concurrence of Henry VIII, and Edward VI; whether what was done could have been accomplished except by the co-operation of these princes, without an entire overturn in the polity of the State, is indeed doubtful. However this may be, one thing is certain, that, while these princes supported the Reformers in their partial labors, they held them back from a more thorough and radical reform of the Church; from reinstating it in its primitive simplicity and restoring it to what it was, before the policy of Constantine made it an appendage to the State.

It was not until men began to feel the extreme difficulty of preserving purity of doctrine and practice under a worldly and unscriptural establishment, that their thoughts were turned towards a reformation in the general polity of the Church. The philosophy of the connection between church order and church purity, seems not to have been studied much, prior to the seventeenth century; or at least, not to have been acted upon. Yet, this is remarkable, since all previous history had shown, that a simple form of ecclesiastical government and purity of religious faith had ever been intimately associated.

The English Puritans, if not the discoverers of this connection, were the men who acted most fully upon the dis

covery.

The religious ancestors of the Congregationalists of New England, of all men who ever lived, had, perhaps, most occasion to study church polity, in all its connections and bearings. Thrown out of the Church which they regarded as the mother of them all, driven to a land of strangers, left to begin the world anew, and to decide what form of ecclesiastical government they would adopt;