Introductory remarks.—Design of the chapter to exhibit the character of the Church during this period.—Origin of the congregations connected with the presbytery of Philadelphia at the time of its organization.—Origin of the ministers who constituted that presbytery.—Ministers connected with the church at the formation of the synod.—Ministers who joined the synod from 1717 to 1729.—Standard of doctrines assumed by the presbytery.—Form of government established by the presbytery.—Government of the individual congregations.—Powers exercised by the presbytery over the churches.—Its authority over its own members.—Peculiarities in its modes of action.—The powers of the synod.—Its peculiarities.—Examination of Mr. Gillespie’s overture respecting acts of synod; and of president Dickinson’s four articles relating to church government.—Conclusion.
IN the preceding chapter, it was shown that the materials of the Presbyterian Church were, towards the close of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, widely scattered over the middle and southern states; and that these materials increased with great rapidity for a long series of years. It was shown also that a large proportion of all the emigrants who arrived in this country, during that period from Great Britain and the continent of Europe, were Calvinists in doctrine and presbyterians in discipline. It was natural that the Puritans from New England who settled in the middle provinces should unite in ecclesiastical connexions with these European emigrants. These Puritans were all Calvinists; many of them were presbyterians, and those who were congregationalists were accustomed to a far different platform from any now in force. They were familiar with the government of churches, by elders, differing little in their functions from those in the Presbyterian Church. Their synods, especially in Connecticut, were clothed with the power, which at present would be considered as little short of presbyterianism. That the early Puritans were rigid Calvinists, no one has ventured to deny. Cotton Mather informs us, that a gentleman in New England having published a book in which he attempted to prove “that Christ bore not our sins by God’s imputation, and therefore also did not bear the curse of the law for them, the general court of Massachusetts, (the supreme civil authority,) concerned that the glorious truths of the gospel might be rescued from the confusion whereinto the essay of this gentleman had thrown them, and afraid lest the church of God abroad should suspect that New England allowed such exorbitant aberrations, appointed Mr. Norton to draw up an answer to that erroneous treatise. This work he performed with a most elaborate and judicious pen, in a book afterwards published under the title, ‘A discussion of that great point in divinity, the sufferings of Christ; and the questions about his active and passive obedience, and the imputation thereof.’ In that book the true principles of the gospel are stated, with so much demonstration, as is indeed unanswerable. The great assertion therein explained and maintained is, according to the express words of the reverend author, ‘that the Lord Jesus Christ, as God-man, and mediator, according to the will of the Father, and his own voluntary consent, fully obeyed the law, doing the command in the way of works, and suffering the essential punishment of the curse, in the way of satisfaction unto divine justice, thereby exactly fulfilling the first covenant; which active and passive obedience of his, together with his original righteousness, as a surety, God, of his rich grace, actually imputeth unto believers; whom by the receipt thereof, by the grace of faith, he declareth and accepteth as perfectly righteous, and acknowledgeth them to have a right unto eternal life.’ And in every clause of this position, the author expressed, not his own sense alone, but the sense of all the churches in the country; in testimony whereof there was published at the end of the book, an instrument signed by five considerable names, Cotton, Wilson, Mather, Symmes, and Thompson, who, in the name of others declare, ‘As they believe, they also profess, that the obedience of Christ to the whole law, which is the law of righteousness, is the matter of our justification; and the imputation of our sins to Christ, and thereupon his suffering the sense of the wrath of God upon him for our sins, and the imputation of his obedience to us, are the formal cause of our justification, and that they who deny this, do now take away both of these, both the matter and form of our justification, which is the life of our souls and of our religion, and therefore called the justification of life.’ ” With men holding such opinions, presbyterians might well unite. To what extent these doctrines have become obsolete in New England, it is not for us to say. Dr. Beecher, in relation to a cognate doctrine says, “our Puritan fathers adhered to the doctrine of original sin, as consisting in the imputation of Adam’s sin, and in a hereditary depravity; and this continued to be the received doctrine of the churches of New England until after the time of Edwards. He adopted the views of the reformers on the subject of original sin, as consisting in the imputation of Adam’s sin, and a depraved nature transmitted by descent. But after him, this mode of stating the subject was gradually changed, until long since, the prevailing doctrine in New England has been, that men are not guilty of Adam’s sin, and that depravity is not of the substance of the soul, nor an inherent physical quality, but is wholly voluntary, and consists in the transgression of the law, in such circumstances as constitutes accountability and desert of punishment.” It is not to be presumed that all the New England clergy would assent to the correctness of this representation of their rejecting the doctrines of the puritans and of Edwards, any more than the advocates of those doctrines would assent to the correctness of the exposition here given of the doctrine of depravity. Still no one doubts, that there has been an extensive change of views in New England upon all these subjects; and that the doctrines which the early puritans declared to be the life of their souls and of religion, are by very many rejected.