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Updated: June 3, 2025
When, during its session, news was received that Cromwell was supreme in England, its members turned from the discussion of baptism and church-membership to a consideration of what should be the constitution of the churches. The supremacy of Cromwell and of the Independents who filled his armies cleared the political background. All danger of enforced Presbyterianism was over.
The government virtually admits that there is no divinely-instituted form of church-membership, or of doctrine, otherwise that one would in preference receive its support.
One stern old Puritan, having been officially expelled from church-membership for some temporal rather than spiritual offence, though ignored by the all-powerful deacon, still refused to consider himself excommunicated, and calmly and doggedly attended the communion service bearing his own wine and bread, and in the solitude of his own pew communed with God, if not with his fellow-men.
He was solemnly suspended from church-membership, and called upon to render up the stolen money: only on confession, as the sign of repentance, could he be received once more within the folds of the church. Marner listened in silence. At last, when everyone rose to depart, he went towards William Dane and said, in a voice shaken by agitation
Finally, in any Christian colony or town, would it not be a turning of everything upside down, and a premium upon hypocrisy, to make church-membership a necessary qualification for magistracy, and so, when a magistrate lapsed into what was thought religious error, and had to be excommunicated by his church, to have to turn him out of his civil office also?
In all three towns there was a pressure for arable lands and more or less jealousy among the ministers. Some dissatisfaction also with the requirement in Massachusetts of church-membership for the suffrage may have been among the motives for seeking a new home. At the head of the movement was the Rev.
Yea, as I also have hinted already, if he appear not a brother before, he appeareth not a brother by that: And those that shall content themselves to make that the note of visible church-membership; I doubt make things not much better, the note of their sonship with God. Yea, though they be saints of opinions contrary to you; though it goeth against the mind of them that are strong.
The question was raised, whether the marked disposition in the mountain communities to place themselves collectively under the instruction of the mission, would justify a lowering of the qualifications for church-membership, especially with reference to the baptism of children.
Again, If baptism respect believers, as particular persons only; if it respects their own conscience only; if it make a man no visible believer to me, then it hath nothing to do with church-membership.
Most of them were, beyond a doubt, pious and sincere; but we are constrained to believe that among them were those who wore the livery of heaven from purely selfish motives, in a community where church-membership was an indispensable requisite, the only open sesame before which the doors of honor and distinction swung wide to needy or ambitious aspirants.
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