informed himself of the low state of education and literature during the centuries which preceded the Protestant reformation, will hardly persuade himself that the authors of those times are fit to be the teachers of the nineteenth century. Their traditions will have no weight whatever. Even that royal sophomore, James I., had sense enough to say ;"In all usages and precedents, let the times be considered wherein they first began; which [times] if they be weak or ignorant, it derogateth from the authority of the usage, and leaveth it for suspect." According to this principle, the fathers will be but dubious guides. A more thorough and systematic view of the doctrines and duties of Christianity can be derived from the volumes of Dr. Dwight, than from all the ponderous tomes* of Chrysostom, and the huge lumbering folios of Augustine beside.

It is true that the works of the later fathers, who lived when the primitive simplicity was lost from sight amid the accumulating inventions of superstitious or aspiring men, are generally favorable to hierarchy and its proud pretensions. But the few genuine documents which have descended to us from the first three centuries, fully substantiate the Congregationalism of the Puritans. And this explains the

treatment which the ancient writers have received from the divines of the Anglican Church. That treatment led Chillingworth to say, that "those divines account the fathers to be fathers when they are for them, and children when they are against them." Martin Luther, who was learned in this sort of lore, was so perplexed by the many discrepancies and puerile fancies which abound in those old ecclesiastical writers, that he cast them aside in despair. He once said;"When God's Word is by the fathers expounded, construed and glossed, then, in my judgment, it is even like to one that straineth milk through a coal-sack, which must needs spoil and make the milk black." In five different places of Lord Bacon's works, he repeats the sentiment ;-"Time seemeth to be of the nature of a river or flood, that bringeth down to us that which is light or blown up, and sinketh and drowneth that which is solid and grave." Were it not for his lordship's charity, he might have felt some suspicions, that antiquity, after all, has sent down to us the best it had.

The Puritans were too stiff-kneed to succumb to the decisions of uninspired men, whether ancient or modern. But they were ready to bring their church polity to the test of antiquity, provided it should be the oldest antiquity of all. In

reply to such as imagined that their churches dropped out of the clouds some time in the sixteenth century, they could adopt the language of King James at the Hampton Court Conference ;-"I know not how to answer the objections of papists, when they charge us with novelties, but by telling them, that we retain the primitive use of things, and only forsake their novel corruptions."

And truly, if antiquity is to decide the point, let us go back of the old writers to the older Bible. The Acts of the Apostles is a far purer and more ancient record than the most antiquated of the church histories; and the apostolical epistles are far safer and more venerable documents than the mustiest relics of what schoolmen and churchmen have penned. Why should we examine the subject of the Church's constitution by the feeble tapers of human wisdom, when we may bring it at once to the sun-light of revelation. If you were suffering from a painful disease, and the physician were to offer you a vast variety of remedies, of which some would help you a little, and others would help you more; and if he were to hold out one which would afford instant and permanent relief, would you not promptly reject the others, and insist upon receiving that which will give immediate

health and soundness? And why should we be dallying with the fathers, when the blessed Bible so far exceeds them in every thing in which they can be supposed to benefit us? Well has it been said by a living divine;"The Bible is older than the fathers,-truer than traditions,-wiser than councils,—more learned than universities,-more orthodox than creeds, more infallible than popes,-more authoritative than priests,-more powerful than ceremonies, more reliable for the world's salvation than any thing or every thing else under the heavens."

When the Papist asks the Congregationalist;"Where was your church before the Puritans set it up?" we might answer as John Wilkes, the celebrated sheriff of Middlesex, did in a similar case. He retorted on the Papist ;"Sir, did you wash your face this morning? The Papist answered, somewhat sullenly, in the affirmative. "Well then," rejoined the witty sheriff, "where was your face before it was washed?" This question was shrewdly put: for let the popish corruptions be thoroughly washed off, and the popish pollutions be purged away, and the fair face of the Church will reappear in its primeval beauty. Or we may answer briefly with Luther to the priest who

scornfully asked ;-" Where was your Church during so many long centuries?" To whom the bold reformer promptly replied;"My Church was where yours never was,—in the Bible!" Holding fast this inviolable charter of the city of God, we may appeal from men who. reject us, to God who owns us. We may appeal in the language of the prophet;"Doubtless thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer; thy name is from everlasting."

Nothing can be more sound than John Cotton's remark ;-"That must be true which was primitive; and that must be primitive which is from the beginning. There is no false way," he adds, "but what is an aberration from the first institution." He followed this principle till it led him to say;-"The way of Independency hath been bred in the womb of the New Testament of the immortal seed of the Word of truth, and received in the times of the purest primitive antiquity." He looked upon no other mode of ecclesiastical discipline to be "so ancient as the way of our Congregational government of each church within itself, by the space of three hun

*Way of Congregational Churches, p. 9, 1648.