THE Puritans were a peculiar people,' not only in the sense in which the apostles affirmed as much of Christians generally, because they were among God's own redeemed servants, but according to the sense often imputed to the phrase, as being obviously singular or different from the multitude. It could not have been reasonably expected of men in their situation, that they would be equally judicious in all the particulars about which they were precise and rigid, nor that all their scruples would alike commend themselves to the imitation of their posterity. In some things we can easily see that their very position made them antagonistic, and prone to extremes. It is a fruit of the essential Puritan spirit inherited from the fathers of New England, that their descendants, instead of clinging with blind tenacity to all the traditions received from an ancestry of which they rightly boast, make use of the freedom they obtain from the same source, adapt themselves to their own times, and modify their opin ions and usages in some measure according to their opportunities of advancement.

Thus our fathers are known to have differed from the established church of England not only in certain impor. VOL. VI.

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tant matters of doctrine, polity and discipline, but in regard to ecclesiastical architecture also; on which subject we believe their real views have been misrepresented and misunderstood, while at the same time we can not adopt them as the model or ex ample of our own. They entertained scruples about names as well as things. Their houses of worship they would not call churches, nor was this name popularized among their descendants in New England even within our memory, if indeed it can be said to be so at this day. But as a part of the British people, yet dissenters from the two national establishments, they were obliged to relinquish a name legally appropri ated to the edifices used by those ecclesiastical bodies, just as now in England all houses of worship other than Episcopal, and in Scotland those which are Episcopal, are not called churches, but by way of distinction chapels. Apart from this necessity however, they objected to such an application of the word church, and not without grave reasons. It is not the scriptural name of a place of worship, but rather of a worshiping assembly, a congregation of faithful men,' or of all such congregations collectively considered. And so generally is it used to