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his Pisgah vantage ground some vision, dim it may be, but

still real, of the glory that was to follow. It is his title to lasting fame that he incited, promoted, counselled, and directed, from its inception to its execution, the movement that was to be fraught with such signal consequences to the Church and to the kingdom of God and to the commonwealth of nations.1

Historic Independency. We have now arrived at the point in the history of the Puritan Separatists when the name Separatist disappears, and is replaced by

1 On July 24, 1891, a number of American and English Congregationalists, the lineal descendants (in faith and spirit at least, if not in fact) of the Pilgrim Fathers, and the representatives of the Mayflower Church, assembled at Leyden to witness the unveiling of a bronze tablet on the outside of St. Peter's Church, and directly opposite the house where John Robinson lived, taught, and died. The inscription on the tablet is as follows:

THE MAYFLOWER, 1620

IN MEMORY OF

REV. JOHN ROBINSON, M.A.

PASTOR OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH WORSHIPPING OVER AGAINST

THIS SPOT, A.D. 1609-1625, WHENCE, AT HIS PROMPTING

WENT FORTH

The Pilgrim Fathers

TO SETTLE IN NEW ENGLAND IN 1620

BURIED UNDER THIS HOUSE OF WORSHIP, 4TH MARCH 1625,

ÆT. XLIX. YEARS

IN MEMORIA ÆTERNA ERIT JUSTUS

ERECTED BY THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A.D. 1891

the historic title Independents. In Holland historic Independency began, and from that time its record is continuous and unbroken. In 1611 a number of "Brownists," who had been driven from the kingdom, returned, and founded in London the first English Church of General Baptists. Their leader was Thomas Helwys, who was associated with John Smyth in the oversight of the Church which seceded from the Church of Francis Johnson, thus forming the second congregation of Separatists or Independents in Amsterdam. In 1616, five years afterwards, a number of other exiles returned, and founded, also in London, the first permanent Independent or Congregational Church, under the ministry of Henry Jacob.

Henry Jacob was one of the most remarkable of the early Independents, and both in style and manner resembled the modern Independent perhaps more closely than any of his contemporaries. He was originally a clergyman in the county of Kent, and showed his zeal as a Churchman by writing a work, entitled, A Defence of the Churches and Ministry of England, written in two treatises, against the reasons and objections of Mr. Francis Johnson and others of the separation commonly called Brownists. This drew forth an answer from Johnson in a series of propositions which are still worthy of being read as a specimen of clear and admirable reasoning. It is said that Jacob himself was so impressed by Johnson's reply, that soon after he renounced his position as a clergyman, and espoused the cause of the Separatists. Whether due to this cause or not, it is

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certain that Jacob became a convinced and sturdy Independent. "He was a person," says Anthony Wood," most excellently well read in theological authors, but withal a most zealous Puritan, or, as his son Henry used to say, the first Independent in England.' Jacob defines a

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true Church to be a number of faithful people formed by their willing covenant in a spiritual outward society or body politic, ordinarily coming together in one place;1 instituted by Christ in His New Testament, and having power to exercise ecclesiastical government, and all God's other spiritual ordinances-the means of salvation -in and for itself immediately from Jesus Christ." When each ordinary congregation giveth their free consent in their own government, then certainly each congregation is an entire and independent body politic, and indued with power immediately under and from Christ, as every proper Church is and ought to be." This appears to be the first use of the name "Independent"; but no importance, we think, is to be attached to it in this respect, as Jacob evidently uses it more as a description than as an appellation.

John Robinson and Henry Jacob were called semiSeparatists, because they did not share the aversion or reluctance of many of the Separatists to worshipping in the parish churches, maintaining that in them there were true Christians, "tender and gracious souls," to whom

1 Not, however, "ordinarily coming together in one place," as did the Separatists during the reign of Elizabeth, and even that of her sister Mary; for from the way in which he expands the definition, it is clear that Jacob contemplates a less fluid, casual, and altogether more permanent system of Church order and discipline.

Christ's presence was revealed, though their assemblies were not constituted according to Christ and the model and authority of the New Testament.

In both Robinson and Jacob is seen in a very eminent degree the irenical temper and the constructive instinct of the wise, broad-minded Christian statesman. It is probable that the influence of Holland did much to cultivate in them and the Separatists generally much of this instinct and temper. They were out of the reach of persecution, and away from all the baleful influences. which goad and irritate and rankle in the breasts of those who suffer wrongfully the ills and miseries of oppression. Naturally the points of antagonism between them and the dominant hierarchy and Church would become less sharpened and less acutely felt, and as naturally, not the negative, but the positive side of their faith, and of those Church principles which they had come to look upon as the pure deposit of a far-back apostolic age, would begin more and more to strengthen its hold upon them. They had, as it were, leisure from themselves, leisure from strife and contending, and under the more genial conditions in which they now found themselves placed, their minds gradually expanded and ripened; they became enamoured of a new fruitful ideal of strength and beauty, and this ideal they sought patiently and not without success to translate into the life and polity of the Church and Independency of the future.

The Independents the pioneers of religious liberty. -We do not claim for these early Independents that they succeeded in mastering the lesson of religious toleration.

That came later, but the advances they made towards it entitle them to be regarded as the first pioneers, in England at least, of toleration and religious liberty. In 1609, Henry Jacob published his famous tract, entitled, An Humble Supplication for Toleration and Liberty to enjoy and observe the Ordinances of Jesus Christ.

This Dr. Fairbairn speaks of as the earliest plea for toleration in the English language; but while technically this may be allowed, it is due to that much-maligned and "poor shattered renegade," Robert Browne, to say that this is scarcely to do justice to the position he took up a whole generation before Henry Jacob or Leonard Busher ever penned a line in defence of toleration. The consideration of this question we must, however, relegate to a later period, and to a subsequent portion of the history with which we propose to deal.

NOTE ON ROBINSON'S FAREWELL WORDS TO THE PILGRIM FATHERS

It is not to be denied that there is a certain class of thinkers who are more than others enamoured, we might say violently enamoured, of these words. They have been adopted as the special motto of those who claim to be par excellence "liberal theologians." It would seem as if the fair, broad-minded historian of Congregationalism as seen in its Literature had been tried, not to say irritated, by the pretensions of this school, for he enters into an elaborate attempt to prove that in the matter of theological latitude Robinson was guiltless of the "liberalism" which is imputed to him. A careful examination of Dr. Dexter's argument has left upon our mind the impression of his overproving, i.e. of not proving, his case.

We think he proves to the hilt that the primary reference of these remarkable words of Robinson is not to dogma but to polity, or, to

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