unfeignedly repenting of all my sins, I do give up myself wholly unto this God to believe in love, serve & Obey him sincerely and faithfully according to his written word, against all the temptations of the Devil, the World, and my own flesh and this unto the death. I do also consent to be a Member of this particular Church, promising to continue steadfastly in fellowship with it, in the publick Worship of God, to submit to the Order, Discipline and Government of Christ in it, and to the Ministerial teaching, guidance and oversight of the Elders of it, and to the brotherly watch of Fellow Members: and all this according to God's Word, and by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ enabling me thereunto.

The Hartford Half-Way Covenant of 1696.

Amen.

We do solemnly in ye presence of God and this Congregation avouch God in Jesus Christ to be our God one God in three persons ye Father ye Son & ye Holy Ghost & yt we are by nature childrn of wrath & yt our hope of Mercy with God is only thro' ye righteousnesse of Jesus Christ apprehnded by faith & we do freely give up ourselves to ye Lord to walke in communion with him in ye ordinances appointed in his holy word & to yield obedience to all his commands & submit to his governmt & whereas to ye great dishonr of God, Scandall of Religion & hazard of ye damnation of Souls, ye Sins of drunkenness & fornication are Prevailing amongst us we do Solemnly engage before God this day thro his grace faithfully and conscientiously to strive against those Evills and ye temptations that May lead thereto.-For text see "Church records, G. L. Walker, Hist. First Ch. in Hartford, Hartford, 1884, p. 248." Also given in Prof. Williston Walker's "Creeds and platforms," p. 121, note 1.

Concerning these last two Half-Way covenants Professor Walker says: "Like this Salem Direction the Hartford covenant was not formally adopted by the church, though prepared by its pastor and used by its services. For a century, at Hartford, each pastor wrote his own form."

A most interesting description of the manner in which Half-Way covenants were employed is given in a letter of Rev. Samuel Danworth, pastor of a church in Taunton, Massachusetts, of the date 1705. The letter reads in part:

It was a most comfortable Day the first of March, when we renew'd the Reformation Covenant. . . we added an Engagement to reform Idleness, unnecessary frequenting Houses of public Entertainment, irreverent Behaviour in Public Worship, Neglect of Family-Prayer, Promise-breaking, and walking with Slanderers and Reproachers of others; and that we should all in our Families be subject to good Orders and Government. It was read to the Breth

ren and Sisters in the Forenoon; they standing up as an outward Sign of their inward Consent, to the rest of the Inhabitants. In the Afternoon they standing up also when it was read; and then every one that stood up, brought his Name ready writ in a Paper, and put into the Box, that it might be put on Church Record... We gave Liberty to all Men and Women Kind, from sixteen Years old and upwards to act with us; and had three hundred Names given in to list under Christ, against the Sins of the Times. . . We have a hundred more that will yet bind themselves in the Covenant, that were then detained from Meeting. Let GOD have the Glory.

Yesterday fourteen were propounded to the Church; some for full Communion; others for Baptism, being adult Persons.

The full text of the decisions of 1657 and 1662 is given in Prof. Walker's "Creeds and Platforms," pages 228-339. We need not quote them here. But we must record the failure of the Half-Way Covenant as a permanent instrument of organized Congregational church life. In general the Half-Way Covenants embodied virtually everything that ought to have been required for church membership. The vice of the system was in the countenance it gave to a half-way relationship between Christ and the world. Men and women who ought to have come into church membership, and whom the churches ought somehow to have reached, remained in a sort of lefthanded relationship as members, not yet members, and were content. The evil did not tend to its own readjustment. The great awakening, which began with the preaching of Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards, had as one of its chief results the abrogation of the Half-Way Covenant. This is not the place to discuss at length its merits and defects, but only to record in its relation to the general history of the church covenant in our Congregational churches the character and conclusion of this unsuccessful experiment.

It has often been assumed that Jonathan Edwards was opposed to and by his opposition destroyed the Half-Way Covenant. That system was indeed destroyed by the great awakening which grew out of the preaching of Jonathan Edwards; but Dr. Dexter shows plainly that Edwards himself administered the Half-Way Covenant, and probably would

have continued to employ it without any strong feeling of disapproval, had that been the only difficulty encountered by him in the church life of his times. Dr. Dexter refers to Edwards' covenant administered to all members of his congregation above fourteen years of age. It fills four closely printed octavo pages and contains 1568 words (Dexter, Congregationalism, p. 487). The only defect which a modern Congregationalist can possibly discover in this covenant is that it resulted in taking the covenanter only half-way.

IX. THE VALUE OF THE COVENANT

This volume undertakes to assemble all the general confessions of faith of the Congregational Churches that have any present claim to authority, together with such account of past confessions as shall set the present forth in true historic perspective; and also to gather representative covenants adopted by or employed in representative churches of our order from the beginning of modern Congregational history. But this is not its whole purpose. It is the author's hope that he may be able to set forth somewhat more clearly than is sometimes understood the historic and proper relation of creed and covenant within the local church and the denomination. We shall have present occasion to discuss and record creeds, and need not at this point make particular mention of them; but this book undertakes to show that Congregational churches are not founded upon creeds, however useful creeds may be to them, and would be entirely complete without creeds, but that the basis of church organization among us is the covenant. To this end we may well go back to the fathers, and quote from a number of them, to make this thesis clear.

The covenant, was held by all the early Congregational writers to be that which constitutes a church, and a person a member of a Christian church. They held that it ought to be explicit, but might be implied. The advocates both of a national and a catholic visible church accused the Congregationalists of unwarrantable strictness on this point. Thomas Goodwin, in his Letters to John Goodwin, says: "The church covenant is no more with us than this,-an agreement and resolution, professed with promise to walk in all those ways pertaining to this fellowship, so far as they shall be revealed

...

to them in the gospel. Thus briefly and indefinitely and implicitly, and in such like words and no other, do we apply ourselves to men's consciences, not obtruding upon them the mention of any one particular before or in admission, leaving their spirits free to the entertainment of the light that shines or shall shine on them and us out of the word." (p. 44). Daniel Buck, a member of the church organized in London in 1592, declared, on his arraignment before three magistrates, that when he came into the congregation "he made this protestation, that he would walk with the rest of the congregation, so long as they would walk in the way of the Lord, and so far as might be warranted by the word of God." (Punchard's History, 277-8.) Burton, in his Rejoinder to Prynne's Answer concerning the Twelve Considerable Questions, maintains that it is enough that there be a covenant either expressed or implied. John Cotton shows that a covenant may be" by silent consent, Gen. xvii. 2; by express words, Ex. xix. 8; or by writing and sealing, Neh. ix. 38." Cotton Mather says, that, in an Apology of Justin Martyr, we find Christians, who were admitted into church fellowship, agreeing in a resolution to conform in all things to the word of God; which seems to be as truly a church covenant as any in the churches of New England. In the organization of the Salem Church, Mr. Higginson drew up a covenant and confession of faith; and those who were afterward admitted were required "to enter into a like covenant-engagement as to the substance, but the manner was to be so ordered by the elders as to be most conducive to the end, respect being always had by them to the LIBERTY and ability of the person."-(Neal's Puritans, i. 300.) Congregationalism as contained in the Scriptures, &c. quotes from Hooker's Survey, part. i. 46: "This covenant may be either explicit or implicit ; explicit where there is a formal covenant, implicit where they practise without a verbal written formal covenant. This covenant, he maintains, is for life as essentially as is the marriage-covenant. Prince quotes Gov. Brad