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Updated: June 2, 2025
Another move in this direction was taken when the splitting off of churches, and the forming of more than one within the original parish bounds, necessitated a further departure from the principles of Congregationalism, and when the sequestration of lands for the benefit of clergy became a feature of the new order.
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.
The characteristics of Congregationalism during its first quarter of a century upon New England soil were: the clearly defined independence or self-government of the local churches; the fellowship of the churches; the development of large and authoritative powers in the eldership; a more exact definition of the functions of synods, a definite limitation of their authority; and, finally, a recognition of the authority of the civil magistrates in religious affairs generally, and of their control in special cases arising within individual churches.
And I need not here explain that the love of freedom found form in Congregationalism, a religious denomination without a pope and without a bishop, where one congregation was never dictated to nor ruled by any other. Each congregation was complete in itself or was supposed to be. This love of liberty was the direct inheritance of James Armour.
So far as the tract concerns itself with the question between Presbytery and Congregationalism, Goodwin avows himself a Congregationalist. And yet he was not at one in all points with the five Assembly-men. "I know I am looked upon," he afterwards wrote, "by reason partly of my writings, partly of my practice, as a man very deeply engaged for the Independents' cause against Presbytery.
The "General Court" was a House of Lords, where the members, instead of being bishops, were ministers, and the State religion was of course Congregationalism. All that is needed is time, and the rebels evolve exactly the same kind of institution as that from which they rebelled.
The neighborhood extracted considerable eager conversation from it; argument, rebuttal, suspicion, certainty, retrospect, and prophecy. Deacon Milliken gave ten dollars towards the conversion of Syria to Congregationalism, and Mrs. Milliken had a spell of sickness over her husband's rash generosity.
The Five Dissenting Brethren and the other "thraward wits" in the Assembly could still persevere in their struggle with the Presbyterian majority, debating every proposition that implied a surrender of Congregationalism, and conscious that in so impeding a Presbyterian settlement they were pleasing a growing body of their fellow-countrymen.
"You are certainly Independents," the Presbyterians of the Assembly virtually said to Messrs Goodwin, Burroughs, and the rest of the Five; "but you are the best specimens of a class of which the varieties are legion: were all Independency such as yours, and were Independency to end with you, we might see our way to such a toleration as you demand which, on personal grounds, we should like to do: but the principle of Congregationalism has already generated on the earth in England, in Holland, and in America opinions beyond yours, and some heresies at which even you stand aghast; and it is of these, as well as of you, that we are bound to think when we are asked to tolerate Independency."
Yale College was a "school of the prophets" which sent out to the West the young preachers and teachers so much needed if Congregationalism was to hold its own in that region. Princeton was Presbyterian headquarters for both West and South, and few institutions have ever exerted a greater civilizing force in a new nation than that school of sternest theology. Dr.
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