X. SUMMARY OF CONGREGATIONAL USAGE

A recent and very wide survey of Congregational usage with respect to the employment of creeds and covenants may be briefly summarized. To the following statements there may be some few exceptions, but if so they are infrequent.

In the beginning no Congregational church had a creed. Both in England and in America, as well as while in exile on the continent, the Congregational churches were founded upon covenants entirely free from doctrinal affirmations. While these churches did not underestimate the value of correct thinking in doctrinal matters, they never made such thinking the test of fitness for membership in Christ's Church. They considered themselves in essential agreement, doctrinally, with other Christians, and had no thought or purpose of founding sectarian churches. This may be said to summarize a usage practically universal in Congregationalism for more than two hundred years from the rise of Congregational churches in England to the outbreak of the Unitarian controversy.

The early Baptist covenants appear generally to have been signed by members of the church. The Congregational covenants as a rule were not signed, but verbal assent to them was given. They were changed when new pastors came, and now and then a pastor thought himself able to improve upon the form of covenant he had previously employed and wrote a new one. It would appear that in Robert Browne's church a written covenant was read aloud and each section was explained by the minister, and then assented to by the brethren. Francis Johnson's covenant, of 1591, was written to be signed. Some of the early covenants contain the words, "We whose names are underwritten" but without signatures. The Old

South covenant would appear from its form to have been intended for signature, but was not subscribed. In a few instances the covenant was signed by the original members of the church, but those who joined later signified their assent to it verbally.

We have seen in what manner the members of the London church, established by Henry Jacob, consented to their covenant, standing in a circle with their hands joined.

It appears that the covenant document was generally written on a loose sheet of paper from which it could conveniently be read by the minister. Sometimes, as in the case of the Salem church, the minister wrote out as many copies of the covenant as there were members to be received.

There appeared in London in 1647, "A brief narration of the practices of the churches in New England." John Cotton quotes it in his "Way." In this it is stated that after members have made their individual confession of faith "they enter into a sacred and solemn covenant. . . . agreed on before amongst themselves, then read it before the assembly, and then either subscribe their hands to it, or testify by word of mouth their agreement thereto." This shows that such covenants were occasionally subscribed, but Lechford's "Plain Dealing" gives what was undoubtedly the rule: "And then the elder calleth all them that are to be admitted by name, and rehearseth the covenant on their part to them, which they publicly say they do promise by the help of God to perform. And then the elder, in the name of the church, promiseth the church's part of the covenant, to the new admitted members. So they are received or admitted."

We are reliably informed that when occasion seemed to justify it, a silent or implicit assent was accepted. In short, while the covenant idea was held in the very highest regard, there appears to have been little concern as to the form of the document or the manner of its acceptance. A reasonable degree of flexibility prevailed.

In its original intent, the covenant once assented to remained perpetually in force and needed no renewal, but it often occured that covenants were renewed, with or without change in their phraseology. Sometimes a new pastor would ask the church to join him in a new and perhaps more explicit covenant, as Hugh Peter did at Salem. Sometimes a church, feeling that it had not been faithful to its covenant, would voluntarily renew the covenant. We have two accounts of the renewal of the Norwich covenant in 1669 and 1675, both recorded by Joseph Rix:

And in the Conclusion of the fast day [Dec. 28, 1669] it was moued by some brethren and so propounded by the Pastor to the Church to renue their Couenant which was asented vnto by the whole brethren present (except br. Kinge & br. Will Hardy who did both declare their desentt), notwithstanding the Church did proceed in the worke And the Pastor haueing mentioned the sume of the Couenant in shortt it was asented vnto by the whole by the signs of Lifting vp their hand except the two brethren before mentioned.

And towards the Close of ye day [Oct. 13, 1675] (as it was formerly Concluded) the Church did renue their Couenant after this manner. the Couenant was read out of this booke Contayning seuerall Articells being the same Couenant and Articells of Agreement that was entred into at ye first sitting down of this church in ye year of our Lord 1644, and after the reading thereof the whole church (then present) both brethren and sisters did, as a sign of their mutuall Couenant lift up their right hands, and so the meeting was concluded with prayer and thanksgiving vnto the Lord.-"Some Account of the Nonconformist Churches at Hail Weston & St. Neots," etc., pp. 51, 52, and 54, 55.

It is interesting to find now and then a note which indicates with what good sense exceptions were made to the general custom of oral confession. In 1630, the church at Charlestown was organized and it later became the First Church in Boston. John Cotton, the pastor, made a profession of his own views, but asked for his wife that she be not required to submit to a public examination; whereupon she was asked if she assented to the confession made by her husband; and it is to be inferred that she did. Cotton Mather tells us that some were admitted by expressing their consent to the covenant, that others an

swered questions propounded to them, and others wrote their own views, or delivered them orally, "Which diversity was perhaps more beautiful than would have been a more punctilious uniformity." Magnalia, I., iv., 7). We find an instance of a Mr. Lindall of Boston who wrote his profession of faith because "he had not an audible voice" and the pastor read it for him.

Our oldest Congregational covenants are mutual covenants, framed to be used at the organization of a church; but it is evident that before long, covenants were drawn in which response was made on behalf of the church. The oldest record we have of this is in Lechford's "Plain Dealing," published in London in 1642, in which he declares the custom in New England to have been that after the newly elected member had ascented to the covenant "the elder in the name of the church promiseth the church's part of the covenant to the new admitted members." It is interesting to find that thus early a response was made on behalf of the church. It appears, however, that in a great many churches there was no such response. Gilman in his article in The Congregational Quarterly in 1862, states that the Fitchburg formulas had no response of the church to the members, and that there was no such response in the First Church of Bangor before 1850, nor in Norwich First prior to 1817 or perhaps before 1825, nor in Norwich Second until 1829, nor in Torrington, Connecticut, in its Manual issued in 1852. The Rutland, Vermont, association in 1838 recommended "that the church rise in token of their cordial approbation, while the minister says, 'We do now publically declare our reception of you as a member of the Christian church, in full communion.'"'

The churches West of New England seem quite uniformly to have had responses indicative of the reciprocal relationship established by the covenant. This appears to have been the case in Chicago First, Jackson and Detroit, Mich., and

other of the older churches, whose manuals were in frequent use as models for other churches.

Now and then, we find a church in which the church part of the covenant was not read by the pastor alone, but recited in unison by the whole body of the church membership. This has been the custom in First Church of Oak Park since its organization in 1863.

The Unitarian movement, while spiritually a secession from historic Congregationalism, became, by virtue of the unrighteous Dedham decision, a virtual secession of orthodox Congregationalism from churches that had become Unitarian. The old churches in becoming Unitarian retained their historic covenants in general without change, and the newly organized orthodox churches as a rule adopted creeds and required assent to them on the part of all their members. This was a natural but violent reaction against a condition which had cost the denomination the loss of so many churches and ministers, and it represented a departure from historic Congregationalism.

Center Church, New Haven, has undergone quite an evolution so far as creed and covenant is concerned. It was established by John Davenport upon the basis of a simple nontheological covenant, as was the case with the Boston and Salem churches. Later, a theological creed was introduced and was applied as a test of membership.

During the days of the Unitarian controversy, this creed became more and more Calvinistic. Later it was revised and finally the Apostles' Creed was substituted. This would not have been entirely objectionable, except for the fact that candidates, uniting on confession of faith, were required to express their belief through the medium of the Apostles' Creed. This, many persons, who were excellent Christians, were unable to do, and as a result a great number of men and women -some of the best in the community, thoroughly devoted to religion and loyal to Jesus Christ-were not church members.