I. PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. Importance of this discussion at the present day. Misconceptions concerning the Puritans. Views of Hume. Principles not to be measured by the occasion which calls them into debate. Principles of the Puritans not to be appreciated without some knowledge of their times. Plan of this work. England before the times of Wickliffe. THE PURITANS AND THEIR PRINCIPLES -the permanent importance of those Principles to Freedom, to true Religion, to the present and the eternal interests of Mankind! To those who dwell amid the graves of a Puritan ancestry, these are subjects which can never be devoid of interest. Nor can I feel-believing as I do that to the principles and labors of these ancestors, under God, we owe our dearest privileges-that the memory of such fathers ought ever to go to decay among their children. I would that no one of our sons or daughters might ever be able to visit our ancient burying grounds, without feeling the blood of the Puritans coursing through their veins with honest exultation; and their souls rising to God with heartfelt gratitude for the heritage bestowed upon them, through the faith and toils of such an ancestry. Such a discussion is the more important at the present day, when so many seem scarcely to know what freedom is; and so many more seem not to know what freedom cost; and still more, as if unconscious of the principles from which freedom sprung, are ready to think lightly of the motives and wisdom of that noble race of men, by whom, amid so many perils, the civil and religious rights of mankind were so nobly asserted and maintained. There is further occasion for such a discussion at the present day, when the character of the Puritans is, in certain quarters, so studiously misrepresented, and their principles so perseveringly assailed;-while a system of doctrine, in all essential respects identical with that of Popery, is so fast rising and spreading in certain quarters of the Protestant world; and while the system of Prelacy which, for a thousand years, and on so broad a scale, has proved itself so uncongenial to the pure Gospel and to reli Importance of this discussion at the present day. Misconceptions concerning the Puritans. Views of Hume. Principles not to be measured by the occasion which calls them into debate. Principles of the Puritans not to be appreciated without some knowledge of their times. Plan of this work. England before the times of Wickliffe. THE PURITANS AND THEIR PRINCIPLES :-the permanent importance of those Principles to Freedom, to true Religion, to the present and the eternal interests of Mankind! To those who dwell amid the graves of a Puritan ancestry, these are subjects which can never be devoid of interest. Nor can I feel-believing as I do that to the principles and labors of these ancestors, under God, we owe our dearest privileges-that the memory of such fathers ought ever to go to decay among their children. I would that no one of our sons or daughters might ever be able to visit our ancient burying grounds, without feeling the blood of the Puritans coursing through their veins with honest exultation; and their souls rising to God with heartfelt gratitude for the heritage bestowed upon them, through the faith and toils of such an ancestry. Such a discussion is the more important at the present day, when so many seem scarcely to know what freedom is; and so many more seem not to know what freedom cost; and still more, as if unconscious of the principles from which freedom sprung, are ready to think lightly of the motives and wisdom of that noble race of men, by whom, amid so many perils, the civil and religious rights of mankind were so nobly asserted and maintained. There is further occasion for such a discussion at the present day, when the character of the Puritans is, in certain quarters, so studiously misrepresented, and their principles so perseveringly assailed;-while a system of doctrine, in all essential respects identical with that of Popery, is so fast rising and spreading in certain quarters of the Protestant world; and while the system of Prelacy which, for a thousand years, and on so broad a scale, has proved itself so uncongenial to the pure Gospel and to reli gious freedom, is now putting forth its claims with unwonted boldness, and in the most exclusive and supercilious form;-denouncing us and our Puritan Fathers as rebels and schismatics; our churches as no churches; our ministers as sons of Korah Dathan and Abiram; and all people who do not submit to some Prelatical Hierarchy, as out of the pale of Gospel grace, and given over, like heathen, to the uncovenanted mercies of God. The principles of our fathers are the principles of truth and freedom as important now as they were in the days of primitive Puritanism. They are to be maintained,—if either religious truth or religious freedom is worthy to be maintained among men. The conflicts of principle at the present day are simply the old conflicts revived. He who would find the matters now in debate, most fully set forth, and most amply as well as most ably discussed, has only to review the productions of those ancient times. The system now known as OXFORDISM, or PuSEYISM, which many advocates of Prelacy affect to regard as one of "THE NOVELTIES WHICH DIsturb our peacE,"*—is in reality no new thing: it is nothing more nor less than that compound of Arminianism and Popery into which the English Church was fast declining in the days of " the judicious Hooker;" which had attained its maturity, and begun to develope its fruits under the auspices of the persecuting Laud; and which was again rife and rampant in the days of Queen Anne and George I. It is indeed the genuine Episcopacy of the English Church in its palmiest days, as finally fixed and established under Queen Elizabeth; and thereunto agree the Offices, though not the Articles of the English Establishment. If there is any difference between the system of those days and modern Puseyism, it is not in fundamental principles, but mainly in the more eager reaching forth of Puseyism towards Rome; and in the more loving tones of endearment, in which its advocates hail as a true Sister, and even as a Mother, that "MYSTERY OF BABYLON THE GREAT,” which the early British Reformers, as well as the Puritans and the Bible, abhorred as the "Mother of HarlOTS, AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." Some have conceived of the old Puritans as ignorant, turbulent, bigoted fanatics. Others have conceived of them as men of lofty attachment to principle, but of narrow and intolerant views: men of truth and daring; men who feared God, and who had tasted deeply of the powers of the world to come,but unsocial, all made up of sternness and gloom; men whose austere minds were never unbent in hilarity, and whose countenances were never lighted up by a smile. Those who thus conceive of them have formed their conceptions not from the • The Pamphlets of Bishop Hopkins. |