The Puritan Church and the Visible Saints I

1. Continuities

2. New England Beginnings

November 1620, 148 passengers and crew of the "Mayflower" landed at Cape Cod Bay. The "Mayflower Compact" was signed on the 11th of November as a formal covenant for combining "our selves together into a civill body politick, for our better ordering and preservation."

William Bradford (1590-1657), governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony from 1620 to 1657; author of the History of Plymouth Plantation.

Massachusetts Bay Colony: the site of the main migration of English Protestants. Original settlers left England in April 1630. Massachusetts received some 20,000 settlers by 1640. Colonists were non-separating Puritans.

Separatists.

John Winthrop (1588-1649), first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Held the governorship for 17 one year terms between 1629 and 1649.

3. What is Puritanism?

Geneva Bible.

4. Puritan Ecclesiology

Biblical in form and practice.

A visible sign of God's grace.

A voluntary society:  A company or congregatone of the faythfull called and gathered out of the worlde by the preachinge of the Gospell, who followinge and embraceinge true religione, do in one unitie of Spirite strengthen and comfort one another, daylie growinge and increasinge in true faythe, framing their lyves, government, orders and ceremonies accordinge to the worde of God. In one unitie of Spirite.

Covenant.

Robert Browne; John Robinson - Separatists.

5. Signs of Election

The Puritan Church and the Visible Saints II

1. The New England Puritan Tradition

a. The Test of Experience

"The practice was for men orally [women in writing] to make confession of faith and a declaration of their experiences of a worke of grace in the presence of the whole congregation, having bin examined and heard before by the elders in private and then stood propounded in publick for two or three weeks ordinarily," John Cotton [the younger], 1679.

b. The Problem of Time

2. The "Half-Way" Covenant

1657, Connecticut and Massachusetts ministers propose compromise measures on membership.

1662, at the instigation of the Massachusetts General Court, ministerial synod establishes measures later known - by their detractors - as the Half-Way covenant.

"Half-Way" covenant: adults who had not convinced the elders of their experiential qualifications would remain members and could have their children baptized. However. They and their children would not be full-members, they would not have the right to vote in church affairs nor would they receive communion.

"The Lord hath not set up Churches only that a few old Christians may keep one another warm while they live, and then carry away the Church into the cold grave with them when they dye: no, but that they might, with all the care, and with all the obligations, and Advantages to that care that may be, nurse up still successively another Generation of Subjects to Christ that may stand up in his Kingdome when they are gone, that so he might have a People and Kingdome successively continued to him from one Generation to another," Jonathan Mitchel defending the "half-way" measures, quoted in Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints, 138.

3. Beyond the "Half-Way" Covenant

1669, Governor and council of Massachusetts require new ministerial initiatives among the unchurched.

1692, Salem witch trials (1712, Massachusetts annulled all convictions and paid reparations).

1699, Boston merchants found Brattle Street Church in which membership was based on verbal profession of faith.

Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729), influential Congregationalist preacher and theologian, minister at Northampton from 1670 until his death. Practiced open communion, opposed church covenants, advocated semi-presbyterial church structures. Preaching excited revivalist beginnings of the "Great Awakening." Succeeded by his grandson, Jonathan Edwards.

Increase Mather (1639-1723) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728), father and son, Congregationalist ministers, leaders, and defenders of Puritan orthodoxy. Increase Mather, president of Harvard from 1685 to 1701, initially opposed the "half-way" covenant but was later convinced of its necessity. Increase also helped end the Salem witch-trials and, unlike his son, rejected the use of "spectral evidence." Favoring religious renewal, orthodoxy, and stronger ministerial government - with an associational structure - the Mathers' lived to see their influence decline along with enthusiasm for classic New England Puritanism.

1699, a synodical decision at Cambridge extended the provision of baptism to allwho profess the Christian faith and are not notorious sinners "whether they be Joyned in Fellowship with a Particular Church, or not."

1708, the Saybrook Platform, Saybrook, Connecticut, established semi-presbyterial structure for Congregationalist churches.

Consociations.

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