Plymouth, whereof he was; being eminently qualified for such work as the Lord had appointed him unto, of which, should I speak particularly as I might, I should prove tedious. I shall content myself, therefore, only to have made honourable mention in general of so worthy a CONTROVERSY, BY HERLE; R. MATHER AND W. THOMPSON; THE order of time has brought us to "The Independency on Scriptures of the Independency of Churches; Wherein the Question of Independency of Church Government is temperately, first, Stated; secondly, Argued; thirdly, Cleared from the Objections; and fourthly, Appealed in, to the Judgments of such as stand for it.-By Master Herle, a Lancashire Minister; at the Request and for the Satisfaction of some Friends of his, and by them published.-Lond. 1643." 4to. pp. 44. It does not appear who were the parties making this request; but the author, in his prefatory epistle, addresses them thus: "Gentlemen, In answer, if not satisfaction of your desires, I send you the enclosed, wherein, as I have argued against the tenet, so have I appealed to the judgment of those of the Independent opinion, whom you profess, and not unworthily, so much to reverence." And his candour is, afterward, expressed in these words, "For the difference between us and our brethren that are for Independency, it is nothing so great as you seemed to conceive it; we do but, with Abram and Lot, take several ways; we are, as Abram speaks, brethren' still; and, as they were, ready to rescue each other, on all occasions, against the common enemy." b Again, he writes, "Every difference in opinion is not a diversity of religion. Opinion is well called the spy of truth; reason's projector; a Morton's New-England's Memorial, 1669. p. 116.-In p. 77, Morton records, under the date 1629, "Mr. Skelton and Mr. Higginson arrived at Salem in June. Between the latter and Mr. Brewster a correspondence commenced concerning church-membership. They agreed, that 'Baptism was a seal of membership; only when they were adult, they, being not scandalous, were to be examined by the church-officers, and upon their approbation of their fitness, and upon the children's public and personal owning of the [church] covenant, they were to be received unto the Lord's supper. Accordingly, Mr. Higginson's eldest son, being about fifteen years of age, was owned to have been received a member, together with his parents; and being privately examined by the pastor, Mr. Skelton, about his knowledge in the principles of religion, he did present him before the church when the Lord's supper was to be administered, and the child then, publicly and personally, owning the Covenant of the God of his father, he was admitted unto the Lord's supper. It being then professedly owned, according to 1 Cor. vii. 14, that the children' of the church are 'holy' unto the Lord, as well as their parents; accordingly, the parents, owning and retaining the baptism which they themselves received in their infancy in their native land, as they had any children born, baptism was administered unto them, namely, to the children of such as were members of that particular church." b Gen. xiii. 8; xiv. 16. and while but modestly laid down as a problem of discourse,—not cried up for an article of faith; setting, so, the sun by the dial,—it is the 'fan' to 'purge' the religious floor' with a The Turk's religion is never a whit the better that it never passed through this furnace, The strife of tongues it is a sign the devil hath no such quarrel to it, nor God any such care of it, as by this kind of ventilation to make it take the faster root." The treatise opens with "The question stated;" and after showing that papists' make "four several kinds of visible churches:" the virtual, or the pope; the consistorial, the cardinals; the representative, a council; and, the essential, the whole number of professors: it is said the first two of these are, here rejected; all acknowledge the "essential;" but the "representative" is denied by the Independents. Hence, "co-ordinatively mutual dependency of churches in their government, is the thing in question." That is, "Whether it be necessary to the 'well being' of such a single church, or congregation, that where it stands in neighbourhood with other churches, especially under the same civil government, That it be equally and mutually co-ordinated with the rest in a dependence on the ministerial government of a synod or assembly of them all? This, they deny, and we affirm.” c The points which Herle laid down for his discussion, are these four, The pattern of the Jewish church; The institution of our Saviour; The practice of his apostles; and, Other rules of Scripture. His first argument he founds on Deut. xvii. 8-10; 2 Chron. xix. 8, 10, 11; and Psal. cxxii. 4, 5. As there was always something of "type," he says, in the "ceremonial" laws proper to the Jewish church, and of "rule" in the "judicial" laws proper to that "State;" so, in both, there remains "somewhat of general equity, and moral concernment; obliging us and all now and always, as well as them then." And he infers, that "if the benefit of appeals, and consociation of churches,.. should not be as free to us as to the Jews, how much more defective and improvident were the Gospel than the Law!" From this he resorts to meet the objection, That these gradual forms of appeal are borrowed from heathenish customs. “ It is easily answered," he says: "Custom, in whomsoever, as it cannot by differing from it, prescribe against, so much less can it by agreeing with it, forfeit nature, or morality. In spiritual actions, wherein a natural and moral necessity of forms is implied, it is no heathenism to use such forms as have been used by Heathen; as in preaching, for one to speak at once; in prayer, to bend the knee... Hence is it, in all likelihood, that no more is written in Scripture of these kinds of dependencies and appeals in church government, because they are of natural light." What cogency there might appear to be in this mode of reasoning in the author's own mind, we confess our inability to perceive any. "If," he says afterward, "the papists urge the same texts, they do not urge the same arguments from them :" neither can we. With no more force, as appears to us, Herle writes, "For that common objection, Where do we read in Scripture of a national church since this of the Jews? It is d P. 5. a Matt. iii. 12. f 1 Thess. iv. 9.-P. 7. b P. 3. P. 4. P. 7. answered well enough," he says, "with a like question, Where, in Scripture, do we read of a nation converted to the faith, besides that of theirs? Wherever," he adds, "they show us such a nation, we will show them such a national church." a Herle's second argument is founded on Matt. xviii. 17, "Tell the church." Here he begs the question, where he reasons that "The remedy of complaint, or appeal, must be as large as the malady offence; otherwise Christ's salve were not equal to the sore: but offences may arise as well between divers congregations in the same [national] church, as between divers members in the same congregation." And into what difficulty he brought himself is plain, where he ventures on the assertion, "That an offence may be so general as to defile and make guilty a whole land, sufficiently appears in Scripture; and why not, then, the remedy as large as it? Tell the church.' Suppose the magistrate an enemy to religion; and the land, or whole church therein,or, if that word sound not well, the whole number of believers,-have occasion to make a solemn renewal of their covenant with God; shall not this whole church, or number in their collective body, have power to enjoin it? How else is the remedy equal either to the offence or need?" If divines will persist in mixing the church with the world, and so make the world the church, they are only to be pitied for creating their own difficulties: so, however, did not our Saviour direct ; otherwise it were a flat contradiction to his own testimony, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world;"e whence, as God has "ordained" the "powers" which preside over the various States in the world, so the world is, and ever must be, till the consummation of all things, contradistinguished from the church in its elements and its government; benefited, indeed in degree, by the corrective properties of" the salt" wherewith it is salted. & f Herle thought, however, doubtless, that he had reduced those of a contrary judgment, to a perceptible absurdity, in this succeeding paragraph, "That by the word church' here in this place, is principally meant the presbytery and eldership, will be easily evinced out of the text itself: thus, those, questionless, our Saviour means when he bids 'tell the church;' to whom he continues his words in that immediately ensuing promise of ratifying in heaven whatever they shall bind' or 'loose' on earth; assuring them that when two or three' of them shall be so 'gathered together,' he will be in the midst of them.'.. If the whole congregation be the two or three' there mentioned,-as Independents would have it,-suppose of those two,' the one be the offending, the other the offended brother' whom the offender will not hear;' what 'church' shall he tell?' Where shall he find the two or three witnesses' to tell' first,-before he tell it to the church,'-in whose 'mouth' the matter may be first established ?'i Shall the offended P. 9. Num. xxxv. 33; Hos. iv. 1; Jere. xxiii. 10. d P. 11. John xvii. 14; xv. 19. f Rom, xiii. 1. Matt. v. 13.-"The moral doctrine of government, or the reasons why and how far it ought to be obeyed, is perfectly distinguished from the physical theory which explains how it is formed and changed." Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir James Mackintosh, 1836. 2nd Edit. 8vo. vol. i. p. 72. b P. 10. h Matt. xviii. 18, 20. i Ver. 15, 16. party be the witnesses,' and 'church,' and judge, and all? How so? Is the apostle's rule observed, When ye are gathered together.. to deliver such a one to Satan;' a must the one gather himself together to excommunicate the other? Or, because, until excommunicated, he is yet a' brother,' must he join with the other in excommunicating himself?" b We ask, in return, by what authority the word "so" is interposed before the words "gathered together;" and whence is it that the "two or three" are necessarily, referred to "the presbytery and eldership" of this paragraph? Has it been a vain imagination, hitherto, that Christ has graciously promised to be " in the midst" of any and every "two or three" gathered together in his "Name," unless they were presbyters, or elders? And in the case supposed, that the "two" are " believers," it follows that when diversity of opinion arises, they will avail themselves of such helps as the matter shall require; but if no outward means present themselves, they can each seek by prayer that counsel and direction needful for the occasion, and if they still fail to be agreed or pacified, they must divide and walk each by the "light" that is in him.c The following argument, or the third, is taken, Herle says, "from Acts, chap. xv." He now makes a stand upon the consent, or unanimity, of those whose separate systems are only upheld by being placed on the same foundation. "If" says he, " that all ancient and modern writers, of all sorts,-excepting only some few of these last fifty years, engaged by their own tenet of Independency, have with one voice concluded this chapter a formal precedent for synods, would weigh anything herein, the matter would soon be at an end." It is sufficient for us, to show that, in answer to the objection against this "occasional message" brought from Antioch being invested with the like circumstantials imparted to transactions carried on between the high and mighty; "thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers;" he is compelled to reason inconclusively on the subject, for thus he writes, "It neither follows, because the commissioners of the other churches are not named, therefore they were not there; nor because they were not there, therefore they ought not to have been." And, again, he concludes, "It is more than probable" that the apostles "submitted it to this way, of purpose hereby to institute this synodal way of church government." But setting all this aside, others besides "Independents" are, in our days at least, to be placed among the exceptions." "h After more than four pages employed in the fruitless attempt to swell into importance a very simple natural transaction, which only the theory of a national church makes compulsory on its advocates, we find ourselves arrived at the fourth argument, or that relating to "The laying on of hands of the presbytery." 1 Tim. iv. 14. As this subject partakes of similar qualities with that relating to synods, it holds, in our 1 Cor. v. 4, 5. • Col. i. 16. b P. 17. Matt. vi. 22, 23. d P. 19. To call the coming together of the apostles and elders, in this chapter, a "synod" or "council," is, Mosheim says, "a manifest abuse of the word. That meeting was only of one church, and if such a meeting be called a council, it will follow that there were innumerable councils in the primitive times." Eccles. Hist. bk. i. chap. ii. sect. 14. and note, Maclaine's edit. estimation, but the same comparative importance; and would never have been so much contested but for the assumed relation it bears to an external dominancy claimed exclusively by the ambitious, and practised upon the submissive and credulous. Beyond the simple admission of confraternity, we have yet to learn that there is any transmissive and delegated power competent, in these latter ages of the churches, to obtrude itself to confer and preserve the principle of vitality and continuity. Such a doctrine, if sound, would unchurch in reality all those christian communities which have existed in various parts of the world, but which were never instituted and confirmed by other than the promised communication of the Holy Spirit "to them that ask." That this gift is descendible only through the popish succession, is a profanation of it even to imagine. Holiness and sanctity are prostituted terms when applied to innumerable individuals in that pretended succession, so that it were blasphemy to assert that they had themselves ever received the Holy Spirit! It follows, that there is other provision for giving validity to the external matter of a Christian church. So much, then, for a "ministerial" in opposition to an "essential" institution of churches. Herle endeavours to sustain his previous efforts by a further attempt to meet objections which "fall not within the replies upon the foregoing arguments." But as he does this by merely arguing a simili in simile, from the like to the like; from the integrity or entireness of a "single church" composed of members, to the integrity of "a synod," composed of churches; he makes no advance in his general argument. After this, he quits his premises, and turns, in the concluding section, to entreaty, by appealing" to the judgments of the adverse Party." He tells his "Reverend and dear brethren,"—" I acknowledge and admire the excellency of those graces of learning, industry, piety, that shines in many, in most of you: however, give me leave in all humility and friendliness, to offer to your dis-pre-engaged judgments these seven considerations following, from the order, unity, peace, communion, strength, authority, and safety of government. "b These several categories Herle handles in a fanciful manner; as that " order is the sinew, the soul of Nature; unity, is the centre, and peace the circle of Nature; etc." The "end" of all, he says, is "safety;" the climax which he had prepared to enable him to append these words, "Now,-besides how much the civil State may in its safety' be endangered, by a multiplying and, as it were, retailing, entireness of church power into so many hands; which I leave to others whom it more concerns;-how much will this way of church-independency be sure to endanger itself? Every congregation throughout the land, suppose, consisting of 'a hundred and twenty' members apiece; the maximum quod sic of a congregation, as some conceive, from that of Acts i. 15;-will not be able to allow their pastor and other officers such maintenance as will countervail so large an expense of time and cost in study, but that for the most part they must enter young upon the ministry... When every such single congregation so governed shall have entire and independent power of government, and liberty of doctrine, accountable in neither to Assemblies; how apt such young pastors will be, through want of experience, |