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Rise of Independency

MEMORABLE EVENTS AND DATES

Robert Browne, born 1550, died between 1631 and 1633
Church of Richard Fitz met in London

1567

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Puritanism not a Church System-Independency at first not a polity-Harbingers of Independency-Puritans libelled-Beginnings of Separatism-Church of Richard Fitz-Robert BrowneHis relation to Independency-Browne and the Brownists Raleigh's estimate of number of Brownists-Dissenters and Separatists-What Separatism originally implied-Separatists through force of circumstances.

CHAPTER VII

RISE OF INDEPENDENCY

It should always be remembered that Puritanism at the beginning had nothing to do with any question of Church government. Neither Presbyterianism nor Independency were involved in it, and Episcopacy only because it had possession of the field, and appeared, even to the majority of the Puritans of that age, the only possible and practicable polity. What they supremely desired and vehemently contended for was to get Luther's "doctrine of Christian liberty, and of the common universal priesthood," embodied in visible form, so as to become the corner-stone of a temple in which men could worship God without the intervention of priest, altar, and sacrifice. Contemned and rejected by the Church of Rome, it was in their eyes the condemnation of the Reformed Protestant Church, that this was the stone also which the builders rejected.

Independency at first not a polity. The rise of Independency must not be confounded with the rise of Separatism. This confusion is a common one, but no one who reads the history of that period with any degree of care should fall into it. Separatism led, no doubt, to

ence.

the assertion of Independency, and eventually to its setting up as an organised sytem, but in the beginning it had no connection with it whatever, for the simple reason that Independency proper had not then come into existMoreover, it came into existence at first, not as a system at all, but as the vehicle and natural expression of the religious life, and of the fellowship which that life seeks and creates. A shipwrecked crew of religious men and women, united by no tie but that of a deep spiritual faith, and cast upon a desert island, would be at first compelled to form themselves into an independent Church. or fellowship, though they might afterwards graft upon it a system utterly at variance with the principles of Independency. Independency is thus seen to be the form towards which the religious life at first spontaneously gravitates, the mould into which it immediately and naturally runs. Of this we shall find subsequent and striking illustrations.

The first

The harbingers of Independency. heralds of religious freedom in England, those who were Reformers before the Reformation, became, less by choice than of necessity, the harbingers of Independency Among them must be included such names as Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln in 1248; Wyclif, Colet, Erasmus, Hooper, Latimer, Ridley, Tyndale, and More. The most notable of all is Wyclif. It is in his writings that we find the first explicit statement of the principle that lies at the root of Independency. "The Temple of God is the gregation, living religiously, of just men, for whom

hed His blood." "Looking at the present state

of the Church, we find it would be better, and of greater use to the Church, if it were governed purely by the law of Scripture, than by human traditions, mixed up with evangelical." "For Christ, our Lawgiver, has given us a law which is itself sufficient for the whole Church militant." When Wyclif's poor priests went about the country preaching, they gathered assemblies of like-minded religious people, and by them the foregleams of Reformation light were kindled and kept burning. As early as the commencement of the reign of Henry IV. a law was passed, the preamble of which ran-" Some had a new faith about the sacraments of the Church, and the authority of the same; and did preach without authority, gathered conventicles, taught schools, wrote books against the Catholic faith, with many other heinous aggravations." 1 The preamble of an Act for the burning of heretics, passed in 1401, that is, seventeen years after the death of Wyclif, states that "divers false and perverse people of a certain new sect, usurping the office of preaching, do perversely and maliciously, in divers places within the realm, preach and teach divers new doctrines and wicked, erroneous opinions; and of such sect and wicked doctrines they make unlawful conventicles."

Misstatements and prejudice regarding the Puritans. The story of the early Separatists is with difficulty disentangled from the allegations and aspersions which prejudice and rancour have woven round it, or substituted for the final and sober judgment of history itself. "Much as the Puritans have been vilified in history, their treatment 1 Burnet's History of the Reformation (1841), vol. i. p. 20.

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