other denomination shares with his own
the advantages and blessings incident
to an adhesion to the simple laws of
Christ. Had he entitled his work a
History of the Independents, there
would have been no ground for re-recognition of their existence.
mark every one would at once have
known to what body he referred. But
in a history of Independency we na-
turally expect to find all who hold
sentiments upon church government of
the kind indicated, having a place.
The reader is thus led into positive
error. Parties who held the fundamental
principles of a true church polity are
overlooked; and we are made to under-
stand, that before the rise of the inde-
pendents of modern times, all were
ignorant of them.

who as clearly as the moderns, and in
some respects more thoroughly, under-
stood the principles of liberty and inde-
pendency. But they were baptists.
Hence we suppose Mr. Fletcher's non-

Certainly it may be said, that till the appearance of Robinson, these principles did not take their present definite but negative form. But on the other hand, it is equally certain, that until the Reformation no one ever dreamed of the church being subject to the laws of sovereigns and of states. It was because that, abroad and at home, the reformers sought to make the church subordinate to the civil power, that those relations came to be called in question and opposed. It had been from the beginning the doctrine of the church of Rome, and is now, that the church of Christ cannot be subject to secular potentates; and therefore, no one of the schismatical communities, so numerous in the middle ages, ever protested against it. It was a non-existent thing. Whenever the secular arm was employed in religious affairs, it was in obedience to the laws, and as a servant of the church; and not by any means as possessing rights over it. The protest was against the hierarchy of Rome, its abominations, its cruelties, its crimes, and its irreligion. It was a universal sentiment that Christ alone, or the church his representative, was the Lawgiver of his people. But no sooner was it taught, that kings and emperors might make laws in the church, might enforce Christian duties from their own motion and right, might establish a religion according to their conscience at the point of the sword, than men were found to protest against it, to proclaim the omnipotence of Jesus, the freedom of conscience, and the pure, simple laws of his church. At a very early period of the Reformation were some to be found

VOL. X.-FOURTH SERIES.

In proof of this, it may not be uninteresting to our readers if we produce a few sentiments on the nature of the church from the writings of the eminent baptist Menno Simons; especially since his writings and opinions are scarcely known in this country. Thus of the parties who constitute the church of the Redeemer he says, "The church of Christ is a gathering of God-fearing people, and a fellowship of the saints who have believed in the promised seed, the Prophet, Saviour, King, Prince, Immanuel, &c., wherein they shall continue till their life's end. His word they have received with pious and sincere hearts, his example they follow, and are led by his Spirit."* On the independency of the church of all human interference and law, he thus writes: "Jesus Christ with his powerful word and Holy Spirit is the Saviour and Defender of his church, and not Cæsar, nor kings, nor any worldly magistrate. The kingdom of the Spirit must be upheld and protected by the sword of the Spirit, and not with carnal weapons: as is placed beyond all contradiction by the teaching and example of Christ and his apostles. Again, I say, did magistrates understand the church and his kingdom, they would to my thinking sooner die than grasp their worldly power and sword in the things of the Spirit, which are reserved not to the power of men, but to the judgment of the great God, the Almighty."+

He carefully distinguishes the magistrate's duty from the rights of conscience: "Also we should be obedient to magistrates in all things to which they are ordained by God's word; as in forming dykes, roads, canals, in paying cess, toll, tribute, &c. But if they domineer above Christ Jesus, or ordain anything in conscience against Christ Jesus, after their own pleasure, with human commands, and not according to God's will, thereto we will not consent; but rather lose life and property than knowingly and willingly, for the sake of any man, be he king or em

* Opera Omnia, p. 296. ↑ Ibid. p. 323.

peror, sin against Christ Jesus and his holy word."*

Yet more distinctly does he propound the duty of the magistrate, restraining it within the bounds set forth by Christ and his word. The magistrate is called to punish the wicked; to protect the good; to decide and judge rightly in all causes; to regard uprightly the orphan and the widow; to protect and guard by his power the poor, the stranger, and the pilgrim; to rule cities and countries with good policy, and to govern the towns which are not against God and his word, for the peace and quiet. the honour and profit of the people; to seek and love with his whole heart God's word, name, and honour, and in scriptural equity, without bloodshed and disturbance, promote, defend, maintain, and protect the same." But he yet further adds, “Faith, says Paul, is not of yourselves, but is the gift of God. If a gift, then may it not he forced by any outward power or sword, but must shine upon all by the Holy Spirit, by the pure teaching of the holy word, and with humble earnest prayer through the mercy of God"t

Two parties were struggling, the one to retain, the other to attain, the supremacy. Episcopacy and presbytery stood in antagonism to each other; and from the irreconcilable claims of either to scriptural sanction, arose the protest of the Brownists, Barrowists, and Separatists, which finally resolved itself into the form of church government erected by Mr. Robinson. Episcopacy had made the sovereign the head of the church, and subordinated the fellowship and the conscience of Christian people to the state. It had, moreover, embraced in its ample bosom the entire nation, without respect to character, age, or piety. Presbytery, on the other hand, would make the state its servant, and rule by the aid of the civil power, enforcing its creed and holy discipline with a vigorous arm on every conscience as divine. Against these tyrannical foes of religious liberty independency lifted up its front; and all its earlier defenders and promoters expended their best and largest efforts to the overthrow of the hierarchy of the one and the synodal authority of the other; for both were alike unscriptural. Either not perceiving this, or not thinking it needful to examine the matter, that portion of our author's volumes which treats of the causes of the revival of independency in this country is most unsatisfactory. sketches, indeed, of Browne, Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry are lengthy; but they are chiefly confined to their personal history. But little is given of their views on the subjects, or the cause which divided them from their contemporaries.

His

Thus were the early movements of the reformers, in their appeals to state aid and interference, opposed. The independence of the church was asserted, and the rights of conscience clearly explained. Of all this Mr. Fictcher appears to be ignorant. His narrative gives the false impression that, till the rise of the so-called independents, none were to be found who consistently resisted the encroachments of the civil power, or refused to how to the yoke imposed upon conscience by the leaders of a like unsatisfactory nature is the of the reformation. Martyrs equal in account given of the differences that number and equal in piety to the suf- appeared in the churches of the sepaferers for conscience sake among other ration, especially concerning the power protestant communities, exhibited by and authority of elders. In this respect their fiery death and holy constancy, they were anything but independents. that the baptists had apprehended their This leads us to the remark, that if the principles of truth long before the name three principles laid down by our author or designation of independents was as the basis of independency be applied known, and were ready to vindicate at as a test to the various parties whom he any cost the royal prerogatives of Jesus as regards as independents, they will be "Head over all things to his church." found to condemn them in all but one point. None of those named in the second volume as the first promoters of these principles in England, not even Robinson himself, understood the first and chief individual independence of human authority, or liberty of conscience. This indeed our author admits in these words,

It has already been intimated, that our author has failed to estimate the relation of the independents on their rise in this country to the system of church polity then agitating the nation.

• Opera Omnis, p. 149. † Ibid. p. 149.

In this sentiment Browne, Johnson, and Robinson alike concurred. Said the latter, Yet, do I not deny all compulsion to the hearing of God's word, as the means to work religion, and common to all of all sorts, good and bad; or condemn convenient restraint of public idolatry." So that the very elementary principle of the whole fabric was far from being comprehended by these pædobaptist independents.

In the same manner we find, that, while they vindicated their external independency of ecclesiastical control, in their internal arrangements they sacrificed it. But one portion only of Mr. Fletcher's second principle can be regarded as true of them. They indeed espoused the principle of self-government, but only so far as it related to the claims of the dominant hierarchy, while internally, in their organization of the church itself, they practised a congregational-presbyterian discipline.

"Both Brownists and Barrowists," says Mr. Fletcher, "regarded the officers of the church in an erroneous light, dividing their functions into a number of classes not warranted by the faithful interpretation of the New Testament." P. 165. They were in fact presbyterians. That such arrangements were not harmless, as Mr. Fletcher asserts, is sufficiently manifest from the disorders that subsequently broke out in their churches in the land of exile, which concerned these very arrangements.

But if these early independents were not sound on the fundamental point, it were no wonder that they erred as to the rest, or that we should find Mr. Fletcher thus speaking with regard to his third principle:

"The greatest error held by these parties pertains to the third principle of independency, or that which relates to the connexion between church and state. In the thirty-ninth article, they allow princes and magistrates to suppress and root out by their authority all false mi

*See Hist. Introduction to the Broadmead Records, where this question is treated at length, pp. 37, 42, 87.

nistries, voluntary religions, and counterfeit | worship of God; and even to enforce all their subjects, whether ecclesiastical or civil, to do their duties to God and men.' It is singular to find this so long maintained by the early independents; more especially as it is so much at variance with their other opinions, and as they had suffered so much in consequence of it in every period of their history, and even at the very moment when the confession was written."-Pp. 220, 221.

We can understand why such tenacity to fatal error is regarded as singular by Mr. Fletcher; for if he has entered upon the study and elucidation of this period with the impression that he will find his "three principles of independency," (principles which his denomination has only attained to in more recent times), in vigorous operation, he has mistaken the whole tenor of the historical records he has been called to peruse. Nothing can be more evident to a dispassionate inquirer than that, if he is correct as to the elementary principles of independency, then those principles were neither practised nor maintained by the parties he would fain claim as their revivers and asserters.

Predobaptist independency goes astray at its very first step. It denies a voluntary agency at the very threshold of the Christian church to the novitiate for reception therein. It imposes a religion upon the child before its faculties and capacities are in exercise. It violates the first principle which Mr. Fletcher says, "is still to be regarded as inviolable," that man is "a spiritual unit, whose eternal destiny is entirely dependent upon the manner in which his personal duty to God is discharged," by professedly bringing the child into a relation to God of the most responsible nature, without the possibility of the exercise of that personal choice, or sense of personal duty, on which responsibility rests. If "the first thing provided for by Christ in reference to the adaptation of his holy religion to man was, that every individual Christian should be free to think, worship, and act in his religious capacity as being subject to Christ and his word alone" (vol. i. p. 71), then does pædobaptist independency root up the basis of personal religion and of church order, by enforcing a religious act when "freedom to think cannot characterize the unconscious neophyte, the helpless candidate for ad

in whose erection modern independents
rejoice. A wider examination of the
history of the reformation might per-
haps lead Mr. Fletcher to a recognition
of their existence, and that among
baptist independents might be found in
every age practical examples of the
principles he would challenge as the
especial heritage of his own denomina-
tion. In our view, a "History of Inde-

mission into the community of the
Lord's people. The child is made to
take part in a religious act when no
moral or religious capacity is awake.
The provision made by Christ is nulli-
fied. The first stage in its religious life
is taken when without thought, freedom,
or accountability. We therefore do not
wonder or deem it singular that these
early pædobaptists should so long deny
so large a part of the principles of independency" ought to have included them;
pendency, or that they should so long
remain without a full apprehension of
them.

But we do wonder that neither impartiality, nor love for historic truth, should have forced from our author an admission that there were in those days some men of greater discernment than these, who laid the axe to the very root of all human authority in the worship of God and coercion of conscience, and by the proclamation of the voluntariness of human belief, the declaration of the guilt and sin of those who forced religion upon the soul, the assertion that Christ was the only lawgiver in his church, laid in their blood the foundation of that noble edifice of liberty

although courtesy and common use
might have permitted their absence from
the pages of a History of the Inde-
pendents.' Mr. Fletcher has chosen for
his work the former designation and not
the latter. We do not however impute this
to that sectarian spirit which can see no
merit in any body but its own; under a
general term claiming for itself a peculiar
property in that truth which it holds in
common with others. We trust that
Mr. Fletcher has not fallen into this mis-
take wittingly; but that it has proceeded
from mere oversight and want of
thought. In other respects there is
much to commend his labour to the
kind reception and welcome of his own
denomination.

BRIEF NOTICES.

A Harmony of the Four Gospels, in the Authorized Version. Following the Harmony of the Gospels in Greek, by EDWARD ROBINSON, D.D., LL.D. Author of Biblical Researches in Palestine. Professor of Biblical Literature in Union Theological Seminary, New York. With Explanatory Notes and References to Parallel and Illustrative Passages. London: R. T. S. 8vo. pp. xii., 203.

To compare together the accounts furnished by the inspired men who recorded our Lord's discourses and actions, deducing from them a consistent and comprehensive narrative, is a work to which many ingenious and industrious men have devoted themselves. The desirableness of such a performance is manifest at first sight; but the difficulty of executing it satisfactorily is greater than would be supposed by any one who had not made the attempt. Patient research has however accomplished much, and both in this and in former centuries many Harmonies and Diatessarons of great value have successively appeared. Dr. Robinson produced one in 1834, which was highly esteemed; but in 1845, having visited Palestine in the interim, and more fully considered several important topics of inquiry, he published one, according to the text of Hahn, newly arranged, which is the basis of the present compilation.

The editor has brought much valuable matter
into a small compass, and furnished a book ex-
ceedingly well adapted for family use. The
history may be read aloud in domestic worship
with great advantage and without much diffi-
culty; those passages which are given by more
than one evangelist being in parallel columns,
one of which may be easily selected, and
those read continuously that are found only in
one. The notes are judicious and appropriate
to the character of the work.

Hora Biblica Quotidiana. Daily Scripture
Readings, by the late THOMAS CHALMERS,
D.D., LL.D. In three Volumes. Vol. I.
Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox. London:
Hamilton, Adams, and Co. 8vo. pp. xlii.

422.

It appears to have been the invariable practice of this eminent man, during the last six years of his life, to devote a portion of every day to meditation on from ten to twenty verses of scripture, and record his thoughts as he proceeded. He began with Genesis, and, at the time of his death, had arrived at the end of Jeremiah. This volume contains one-third part of the whole, terminating with Joshua. It constitutes the first volume of a scries of eight or nine, comprising the "Posthumous Works" of Dr. Chalmers, which are being prepared for the