tablished Church-when they met to establish a Church Polity in consonance with the Word of God, renounced the scheme of Prelacy altogether. That scheme came in again at the Restoration, as the Bourbons returned to France, not by the wishes of the people, but by the hand of power. No sooner was it re-instated than it began its persecutions of the Puritans within the bosom of the Church. The Puritans and Puritan divines again began to pour into America, and as fast as they arrived, from sober conviction they renounced the hierarchy and adopted the simple organization and order of the New England Churches. "These ministers," says Cotton Mather, "which were without any exception, as faithful, painful, and useful as most in the nation, being exiled, there were not known to be left so many NonConformist ministers as there were counties in England." Yet the spirit and principles of Puritanism immediately began to spring up and grow, so that in a few years the same domineering spirit of the hierarchy drove out TWO THOUSAND of the ablest and most devoted ministers of the Church of England, upon a Protestant St. Bartholomew's Day. And in spite of all artifices, rewards and punishments; with every effort of patronage, wealth and power-test-acts and disabilities-in spite of intolerable and crushing burdens and discouragements, Puritanism has since continued to gain upon the Established Church of England, till now one-half of the regular attendants upon public worship in England, are numbered among the Dissenters. A large share of the remaining half, the old Laudean system, with all its enormities of corrupt doctrines, superstitious forms, and intolerance, under the new name of Puseyism, is carrying back with rapid strides to the very gates of Rome. In all these times, multitudes of Christ's true disciples have no doubt lived and died in the bosom of the English Established Church. Doubtless, Christ has true and beloved disciples among all denominations who bear his name. Doubtless, many are found, of whom the world is not worthy, even amid the anti-christian abominations of Popery. It is true, also, that in the Articles of the English Church, the true scheme of the Gospel is traced in clear and living lines. With many glaring defects, there are also many noble excellences in her Liturgy. But the character and tendencies of the PRELATICAL SYSTEM have been legibly written in the results of its past dominion over the Christian world: For that scheme of polity, the Popish and Puseyistic doctrines have ever shown, in the long run and on a grand scale, an invincible affinity. Those tendencies are at the present day broadly developed in the practical working of the system in its fairest fields, England and the United States. We see here a gangrene, and there a foul leprosy; creeping on, and spreading over large portions of the body, the marks of ap

proaching spiritual death. We trace the history backward, and find the same seeds of mischief ever springing up, and bearing still the same fruits of intolerance and spiritual death. We trace these unvaried results of the system, on a large scale, and for a long course of time, up to the causes which produced them. They lie in the assumption of ghostly prerogatives and power; priestly intervention for the forgiveness of sins; baptismal regeneration; the validity of ordinances ministered by virtue of a power to confer grace in sacraments; a virtue flowing down through a chain of an Apostolic succession; the right of the Church, viz. of a Hierarchy, to make canons and prescribe ceremonies and forms for the worship of God: the denial of the right of private judgment; and of the sufficiency of the Bible alone, without human traditions or Church interpretations, to make men wise unto salvation. These are the fond tenets of Puseyism; the rudiments and essentials of Popery itself; without which all other abominations of Popery would fly like straws upon a whirlwind. To these false principles, these tenets of superstition and despotism, we trace the tyranny and spiritual death, from which so many godly ministers and people of the Church of England, found no relief, but in coming out and being separate. After witnessing the results of that scheme in England, we look abroad to Austria, to Spain, to Italy; we cross to Asia, where without a Pope, the same principles have reigned long enough, and with sufficient power, to show their results; and we find everywhere the same dismal reign of darkness and spiritual death. We go up to remoter ages, and a Hierarchy with its forms and fences, its decrees and its canons-wherever it meets us-presents to us still the same hideous features of intolerance and spiritual death. We tread through the hollow aisles and vaults of the Inquisition-the places of the dead; we go where the ashes of martyrs are mouldering; where the fires once raged that have long since been quenched; we go to the towers and dungeons where the Lollards dragged out their lives in darkness and in chains; we go where the dragoonings were inflicted on the Huguenots of France; we penetrate the valleys of Piedmont, where the nights were once lightened by the flames of their dwellings, and the snows around were crimson with their blood; everywhere everywhere, we trace the legitimate fruits of that principle which denies the right of private judgment to the people; gives the interpretation of the Scriptures to the fathers, to councils, or to prelates, under the name of "The Church" and claims for that Church, "holy and apostolic," "the right to make canons for the use of ceremonies in the worship of God, and to enforce the same by law as upon her children." Surely the grand experiment has been tried for centuries

enough; and on a scale sufficiently grand. What is become of the hundreds of happy Churches that once lined the shores of Northern Africa? Gone! Where are the lights that once shone in Asia Minor, in Syria, in Mesopotamia, at Rome? Gone out in a night of a thousand years. And where, in all these times, do we find the true light of the Gospel? Among those poor Churches unblessed with a prelacy of the boasted "succession;" among the Albigenses, who, in the words of Mosheim, "denied that the ministers of religion (bishops, presbyters, and deacons), were of divine appointment [i. e., that they hold their authority according to the dogma of a jure divino succession], and maintained that the Church could exist without an order of teachers." We look among the Waldenses, who had bishops, not such as boast of a lineal apostolical succession, but bishops of the people's making, and who held, not only that the Pope of Rome is not superior to bishops, but that "there is no difference as to rank or dignity among priests;"+ we look to those poor Churches, which the Great Harlot, sitting on the seven hills of Rome, and drunken with the blood of the saints; the great scarlet persecutor with which Protestant Prelacy is now claiming a sisterhood, and a unity of catholicity, to the exclusion of all "Dissenters," we look to the Churches which this Scarlet Harlot was then persecuting to death. History has written the character of prelacy in broad lines of darkness, despotism, and blood; and that over many lands, and for a thousand years! With what arguments, with what honied accents shall the world be persuaded to try the grand experiment again? An apostolical succession! The authoritative interpretations of the Church! We remember who it was that sent his disciples away from the tradition of the elders to "search the Scriptures;" thus for ever establishing the RIGHT and the DUTY OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT. We remember who it was that said "Prove all things," yes, even the interpretations of the first two centuries are to be proved by the Word of God. Surely those interpretations cannot themselves be the rule of that standard by which they are to be tried! It was a true Apostle, not a pretended successor, who said, "Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." "God's clergy, a state whereunto God's people must be subject! We remember who it was that said, "Call no man master." The same it was who said, "Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them; and they that are great exercise authority upon them; but it shall not be so among you." Long, long, has the world seen the consequences of breaking away from this injunction of the Saviour. And so broadly and plainly are the principles of this injunction writ*Vol. ii., p. 204. † Jones' Church History, p. 318.

ten in the Bible, that with great uniformity the people of God come to the same conclusions, the moment when, released from ecclesiastical influence and power, they set themselves with diligence to search out the principles of Church polity laid down in the Word of God. Wickliffe and his followers came to the same results with the Puritan founders of New England. Those who worshipped God in secret under the bloody Mary, came to the same results. Those who from time to time left England for the wilds of America, though strongly prejudiced in favor of the English Church establishment, upon searching the Scriptures, came to the same results with their brethren who had gone before. The distinguished orator at a recent celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims, was not quite correct when he attributed the rise of the republican principles of the English Puritans to the time when they found at Geneva " A Church without a Bishop, a State without a king."* Republicanism in the Church was no new thing among the Puritans of England. It was as old as Wickliffe. Too much has been attributed to the influence of the exiles at Geneva. That was a drop in the bucket. Before these principles were known at Geneva, thousands had embraced them and died for them in England. They owe their origin not to Geneva; not to the Puritans; not to Wickliffe; but to the WORD OF GOD; to the principles of Church polity laid down in the New Testament; and to its delineations of the organization and discipline of the Primitive Apostolical Church. The present age may have too little consideration to prize these principles. Light and uncertain spirits may turn apostates. But if the world should once more sink in darkness and spiritual bondage, these principles will once more rise in majesty to vindicate the rights of man and the truth of God. Their might is inherent and indestructible. In the greater spread of light and freedom and pure religion, these principles will ever continue to rise and prevail. What our fathers proved by Scripture and justified by reason, has now been made a matter of experiment for two hundred years; and the spot where that experiment has been tried, though the trial began in the wilderness, and was continued in the midst of difficulties, hardships, and wars; that spot has long stood forth unrivalled by any other spot for any two hundred years in the history of the whole world. In its results to this nation alone, the grand experiment has richly repaid all the toils and sufferings it cost. Future generations will yet appreciate, better than the fondest admirer of the Puritans has ever yet appreciated, the worth of their principles to the cause of freedom and humanity; to the cause of righteousness and of God.

Hon. Mr. Choate.

XVI

REMOVALS TO AMERICA, AND FOUNDING OF THE PURITAN CHURCHES.

Plymouth a few years after its settlement. Plantation at Cape Ann, Naumkeag. Charlestown. Fleet and Colony of 1629. Tolerant spirit of the Colonists. Salem Church. The Fleet and Colony of 1630. Rapid emigration. Planting of the New England Churches.

THE settlement at Plymouth affording a rendezvous and shelter to adventurers in the fisheries and the trade in furs, such adventurers began immediately to swarm all along the northern coasts of New England. In the year 1624 about fifty ships left England for such adventures upon these coasts. At this period there were at Plymouth about one hundred and eighty souls. The town was impaled about, half a mile in compass. On the hill they had a fort "well built with wood, lime, and stone,"* Health had returned to the colony; not one of the first planters having died within the last three years. This year they had freighted with the products of their trade and industry, a ship of 180 tons.†

The adventurers for trade and commerce had now turned their thoughts to the establishment of some settlements for the furtherance of their projects; when Mr. White, a Puritan minister of Dorchester in England, conceived the idea of making these settlements conducive to the great ends of planting religion in America. A plantation was commenced at Cape Ann; and, soon after, its management was committed to Mr. Roger Conant, a "pious, sober, prudent man," from among the colonists at Plymouth. In 1626 the adventurers threw up their business in discouragement. Mr. White, unwilling that so good a desigu should fail, writes to Mr. Conant, that if he and three others will remain, he will procure them a patent, send them men, provisions, and whatever they need to pursue the trade with the natives.

Mr. Conant had, before this, foreseen that the persecuted Puri† Ibid.

* Prince.