CHAPTER VIII.

SMALLER BAPTIST DENOMINATIONS.

THERE are a few Baptist denominations in the United States not usually included with the Regular Baptists noticed in Chapter IV. They are as follows:

1. THE SEVENTH DAY BAPTISTS-who have fifty-nine churches, forty-six ordained ministers, twenty-three licentiates, and 6077 members. The population under their instruction and influence is reckoned at about 35,000. They are quite evangelical in the doctrines that relate to the way of salvation, and are in good repute for piety and zeal. They differ from the Regular Baptists as to the day to be observed as the Christian Sabbath, maintaining, in opposition to these, that the seventh day was not only the Sabbath originally appointed by the Creator, but that that appointment remains unrepealed.

Their churches are widely scattered throughout the States. There are four in New-Jersey, twenty-nine in New-York, six in Ohio, eight in Rhode Island, and four in Virginia, and eight in other parts of the country. They observe Saturday with great strictness as their Sabbath, have Sunday-schools, and one religious newspaper. They have recently formed a Tract Society, a Missionary Society, and a Society for the Conversion of the Jews. They have four Associations, and a General Conference-all meet annually. Altogether they are a very worthy people.

endeavouring to regain a sound orthodox position. Some of them have come to see that creeds are unavoidable, and had better be definitely expressed in writing than merely understood. They have accordingly introduced creeds, and, in some instances, even written articles in the form of a constitution. This augurs well.

Their church government, like that of all the Regular Baptists, is vested primarily in the churches, or assemblages of believers convened for worship. These send delegates to quarterly meetings, the quarterly meetings to the yearly meetings, and these, again, to the general conference. The office-bearers in their churches are elders and deacons. The former are ordained jointly by the church to which they belong, and by the quarterly meeting acting by a council. Each quarterly and yearly meeting has an elders' conference, which, with the general conference, regulates the affairs of the ministry as far as the Presbytery is concerned. Thus they depart from the principle of a pure Independency. Within the last ten years they have entered on the work of sending the Gospel to the heathen, and there can be no better sign than this. They have also a Home Missionary Society, a Tract Society, and an Education Society. Many of their churches have Sunday-schools and various charitable institutions. A religious paper, also, is published under their auspices at Dover, New-Hampshire.

Until a few years ago, these Arminian Baptists took but little interest in the education of young men for the ministry; but they now have six academies.

Starting with the wrong principle that, dispensing with written creeds, covenants, rules of discipline, or articles of organization, they would make the Bible serve for all these, they were soon in great danger from Arians and Socinians creeping in among them. But of late years they have separated from the Christ-ians (a heretical sect we have yet to notice, and likewise opposed to creeds), and are, consequently, * In New-Jersey, and I doubt not in other States also, there are special laws in their favour. This disposition on the part of the civil power in the United States not to coerce the consciences of any religious community, however small, strikingly contrasts with the legislation of France in a like case. In the win: ter of 1840-1, when the factory-children's-labour-bill was before the Chamber of Deputies, it was asked whether there ought not to be a clause for the protection of Jewish children in the observance of their Sabbath. "No," said the committee upon the bill, "they are too few to make that necessary." To this M. Fould, the banker, himself a Jew, assented, say. ing that the Jews were only 300,000 in the kingdom!

tiates and 61,372 communicants.*

3. DISCIPLES OF CHRIST, or REFORMERS, as they call themselves, or CAMPBELLITES, as they are most commonly called by others. It is with much hesitation that, by placing these in this Book, I rank them among evangelical Christians. Ido so because their creed, taken as it stands in written terms, is not heterodox. Not only do they not deny, but in words their creed affirms the doctrine of the Trinity, of salvation by the merits of Christ, and the necessity of the regenerating and sanctifying influences of the Holy Spirit. Yet I understand that there is much about their preaching that seems to indicate that all that they consider necessary to salvation is little if any thing more than a speculative, philosophical faith, in connexion with immersion as the only proper mode of baptism; so that there is little, after all, of that "repentance towards God," and "faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ," which are the indispensable terms of the Gospel.

* The Free-Will Baptist Register for 1844.

to the rules and practice of the Presbyterian Church. The upshot was, that the course pursued by the Cumberland Presbytery was condemned, and this sentence having been confirmed by the General Assembly of the whole Presbyterian Church, before which it had been brought by appeal, the censured Presbytery withdrew from that body, and constituted itself an independent church in 1810, which has ever since been called the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

Its doctrines occupy a sort of middle ground between Calvinism and Arminianism. It holds that the atonement was made for all mankind; it rejects the doctrine of eternal reprobation; holds a modified view of election; and maintains the perseverance of the saints; but on the other points is essentially Calvinistic.

In its ecclesiastical polity it is Presbyterian; the Session, Presbytery, Synod, and General Assembly are all constituted in the manner described at length in our notice of the Presbyterian Church. It differs, however, in one point, from all other Presbyterian churches, by having adopted the itinerating system of the Methodists. By that system of circuits and stations, its ministers have been able to reach almost all parts of the Valley of the Mississippi, that being the great scene of their labours. But their church is not confined to the Western States and Territories of the American Union-it reaches into Texas, where it has a number of churches. The General Assembly has under its superintendence twelve synods, forty-five presbyteries, about 550 churches, and the same number of ministers, and about 70,000 communicants. Several religious newspapers are published under its auspi

ces.

For the education of its youth, it has one flourishing college at Princeton, in Kentucky, and has lately opened another in the State of Ohio. Among its preachers there are several men of highly respectable talents and acquirements.

CHAPTER X.

SMALLER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES: REFORMED DUTCH CHURCH.

We have elsewhere stated that the country embracing what are now the States of New-York, New-Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, was at one time claimed by the Dutch in right of discovery. A trading post was established by them in 1614, at the spot now occupied by the city of NewYork, but it was not until 1624 that any families from Holland settled there. A few years after, the Rev. Everardus Bogardus was sent over to preach to the colonists, and was the first Dutch pastor

that settled in America.* He was succeeded by John and Samuel Megapolensis, the latter of whom was one of the commissioners appointed by General Stuyvesant to settle the terms on which the colony was surrendered to the English in 1664.

The colony having been planted and maintained by the Dutch West India Company, to it the colonists applied from time to time for ministers, as new churches were formed or the older ones became vacant; and the seat of the company being at Amsterdam, the directors naturally applied to the Classis of that city to choose and ordain the persons that were to be sent out. Hence that Classis and the Synod of North Holland, with which it was connected, came, by the tacit consent of the other classes and synods of the Dutch National Church, as well as by the submission of the churches in the colonies, to have an influence over the latter, which, in the course of time, proved a source of no little trouble to the parties concerned.f To such an extent was it carried that the colonial churches were not thought entitled to take a single step towards the regulation of their own affairs.

How far the West India Company aided the congregations that were gradually formed in its American colonies is not now known, but it is supposed to have done something for their support. Some of its governors were decided friends and members of the church, and certain it is that those congregations in New Netherlands were considered as branches of the Established Church of Holland.

The English took possession of the colony in 1664, and guarantied to the inhabitants all their religious rights. Nothing of any consequence to the churches took place for about thirty years, for there being but few English in the colony, they were attended by nearly the whole population. But in 1693, on Colonel Samuel Fletcher becoming governor, he succeeded, as we have elsewhere noticed, by artifice and perseverance, in having the Episcopal Church established in the city of NewYork and four of the principal counties of the province; so that from that time all classes were taxed for the support of

This excellent man left the colony to return to Holland in 1647, and is supposed to have been lost

at sea in the same vessel with Governor Kieft.

The Classis of Amsterdam and the Synod of North Holland retain to this day the charge of the churches in the colonies in the East Indies, and other parts of the world, belonging to the kingdom of the Netherlands.

It would seem that it was a considerable time

before any church edifice of respectable appearance was erected in New Amsterdam, as New-York was then called; for De Vries, in the account of his voyage to New Netherlands, relates that he remarked to Governor Kieft in 1641, "that it was a shame that

the English should pass there, and see only a mean barn in which we performed our worship."

Episcopacy, though its partisans formed but a small minority of the colonists.

But the inconvenience of having no ecclesiastical authority in America higher than a Consistory could not fail to be felt by the Reformed Dutch Church, and accordingly, in 1738, some of its ministers proposed having an association of the clergy, called a catus, but which was to have no power either to ordain pastors or to determine ecclesiastical disputes. Innocent as well as inadequate as was this measure, the concurrence of the Classis of Amsterdam could not be obtained till 1746 or 1747. But it was soon found that nothing short of having a regular classis of their own could meet the wants of the churches. Not only was there the heavy expense and delay attending getting ministers from Holland, or sending young men thither to be educated, but, worse than all, the churches had no power of choosing ministers likely to suit them. Urged by such considerations, the cœtus resolved in 1754 to propose a change of its constitution to that of a regular classis, and a plan to that effect was transmitted to the congregations for their approval. But the project was opposed by a powerful party, mainly formed of those who had been sent over from Holland, and called the Conferentie. Amid the distraction and confusion caused by this opposition of parties, religion made little progress, and many influential families left the Dutch Church, and joined the Episcopal.

All difficulties were at length adjusted through the prudent mediation of the late Rev. John H. Livingston, D.D.,* then a young man. Having gone to Holland for the prosecution of his studies, in 1766, the Synod of Holland and Classis of Amsterdam were led by his representations to devise a plan, which, after Mr. Livingston's return to America in 1770, was submitted to a meeting held in New-York in October, 1771, and attended by nearly all the ministers, and by lay delegates from nearly all the congregations. After a full discussion, having been unanimously adopted, it was carried into effect the following year. The whole Church was divided into five classes, three in the Province of New-Jersey, and two in that of New-York; and a delegation of two ministers and two elders from each classis constituted the General Synod, which was to meet once a year.

* Few men have ever lived in America who have been more useful or respected than Dr. John H. Liv. ingston. For many years he was a pastor in NewYork city; but the latter part of his life was spent in New-Brunswick, in the State of New-Jersey, where he was professor of theology in the seminary of the Reformed Dutch Church. He died in the year 1825, revered by all of every denomination who knew him. He has left an abiding impression of his character upon the church of which he was so distinguished

an ornament.

The prosperity of the Dutch Church, particularly in the city of New-York, was retarded by another cause, namely, the long-continued opposition to preaching in English. The Dutch tongue having been gradually disappearing ever since the conquest of the colony in 1664, many of the youth had grown up almost in utter ignorance of it, and had gone off to the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches, especially the former, for the latter had as yet but a merely tolerated and feeble existence. At length the Rev. Dr. Laidlie, a Scotch minister, was invited from Holland, and commenced preaching in English in 1764, from which time Dutch fell still more rapidly into disuse. The last Dutch sermon was preached in the collegiate churches in the city of New-York in 1804, though in some of the churches in the country it was used some years longer. But it is now quite abandoned in the pulpit throughout the United States.

The Revolutionary war, also, proved disastrous to the Dutch Church, particularly in the city of New-York. One of the church-edifices there was used as a hospital, another as a cavalry riding-school, during the occupation of the place by a British force from 1776 to 1783. But with the return of peace, prosperity returned to this as well as other evangelical communions, and it has been steadily advancing ever since. In all the States it had only eighty-two congregations and thirty ministers in 1784; but the former have now risen to 267, and the latter to 259. The communicants are 29,322.*

A college was founded by the Reformed Dutch at New-Brunswick, in New-Jersey, in 1770, which, after various vicissitudes, has now been open for many years, and is firmly established and flourishing. It is called Rutger's College. Connected with it there is a theological seminary, with three able professors, and between thirty and forty students.

The Dutch Church is doing much for Sunday-schools, home missions, and the education of young men for the ministry. It has a society, also, for foreign missions, auxiliary to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and now maintaining some six or eight missionaries with their wives at two or three stations in Borneo.

The church is at present organized in a general synod, two particular synods, and nineteen classes. Its standards are those of the Reformed Church of Holland, viz., the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Canons of the Synod of Dort, &c. Its doctrines are in all respects purely Calvinistic. From the first it has been

* The number of families reported as belonging to this denomination in 1843 was 21,569; and the number of individuals under its instruction was 96,302.