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The colonists of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven were grounded in the system which became known as Congregational, and later as Congregationalism. For more than forty years before their migration to New England there had been in old England two clearly developed forms of Congregationalism, Brownism and Barrowism.
The connecting link between Brownism and Barrowism, whose similarities and dissimilarities we shall consider together, or rather the connecting link between Robert Browne and Henry Barrowe, was another Cambridge student, John Greenwood. He was graduated in 1581, the year that Browne removed to Middelburg.
Wise, in his efforts to revive the independence of the single churches, had exploded the Barrowism which New England usage had introduced into original Congregationalism, and the rebound had carried the churches as far beyond the Cambridge Platform towards original Brownism as the Presbyterian movement had carried their polity away from the Cambridge instrument.
Though Barrowism was more welcomed, eventually yet not until long after the colonial period Brownism triumphed, and it predominates in the Congregationalism of to-day. The immediate spread of Barrowism was due to the poor Separatists of London. Doubtless among them were many who in the preceding years had listened to Browne and had begun to look up to him as their Luther.
Thus it happened that in the last decade of the sixteenth century two forms of Congregationalism had developed, Brownism and Barrowism.
Such government had tended to modify the early insistence upon the principle that the power of the church was "above that of its officers." This doctrine was associated in men's minds more with Robert Browne, who had originated it, than with Henry Barrowe, who had modified it, and it was towards Barrowism that the larger body of Puritans were drawn.
The church system, outlined by these two men, became, in time, the organization of the churches of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven. The character of their polity fluctuated, as we shall see, leaning sometimes more to Barrowism and sometimes, or in some respects, emphasizing the greater democracy which Browne taught.
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