any error whose free course was stopped by gates of any kind; and I must say that for the sake of truth itself I desire fair play for the wrong side as well as for the right. I am perfectly certain that the right will triumph in the end, for God is on that side; but if there is to be any moral value in the victory of right over wrong it must be such a victory as will prove the inherent strength of the right to be the greater. You will only hinder this result by offering any adventitious aid to the truth; and the State can only offer adventitious aids— money, place, and power." "Do you think then," said Mr. W—, "that the State can do nothing for religion?" look at India. Would you advise the same policy there?" "Unquestionably I would. The Government is of course bound to enforce English law throughout the British dominions; and must therefore forbid in India what is unlawful in England. It ought no more to tolerate crime under the name of religion there than here. It has no more business to allow widows to be burnt, or devotees to Juggernaut to be crushed to death, because these acts are called religious, than it has to sanction any other form of murder; but provided the Government enforces public order and outward decorum, it has done its work, and must leave the people to choose between Christ and Buddha. I hold that saying of Sir Harry Vane's to be true,-that, 'the province of the magistrate is the world and man's body, not conscience and the things of eternity.' Rulers ought to be a terror to evil doers, and a praise to them that do well;' but they must stop at the seen and the temporal; the unseen and the eternal is above and beyond their power." Here Mr. Wentworth was obliged to leave, and the discussion ended. THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF CONGREGATIONALISM. THE historical fact is plain and undeniable. A hierarchy was not introduced by Christ and his apostles. The system actually established by them was a system of free, independent, self-governed, local churches. This is conceded by eminent Church historians of all denominations. The historical facts alleged by Congregationalists, and conceded by the most eminent historians, are: 1. The establishment of local churches, and not of an extended VOL. III.-NEW SERIES. organized Church, either for the world, or for nations or provinces. 2. These churches were composed of professed believers in Christ, or regenerated persons. 3. Their object was the cultivation of holiness, and its extension among men. 4. These churches were independent of each other, in the sense that each had full power to conduct its own worship, to admit its own members, to exercise its own discipline, to choose and ordain its own officers, to make its G own regulations, and manage its own affairs, without subjection to any organization or head. 5. Each of these churches was accustomed to come together, for worship and for the transaction of business, into one place. Nor is any example given of a church of which this was not true. 6. The permanent officers of the churches were of two kinds, pastors and deacons. The pastors were also called elders, overseers (or Bishops), and teachers. The apostles had no successors. They are still in the Church, and rule it by their inspired writings. 7. The exercise of discipline with final power is, by positive law, enjoined on the local church, and its exercise is illustrated by the action of particular churches. 8. The churches admitted the divine origin and relations of each other, and the fellowship growing out of it; and in cases of doubt they consulted each other. Moreover, this system grew out of the true and divine idea of the kingdom of God which it was designed to introduce and establish. It was a system adapted to develop and cultivate personal holiness, and thus to unite the individual elements of all social systems to God; and it left room for God to be the universal uniting, organizing, and ruling power of 'human society. Moreover, it created an obvious necessity for Him to act as such, by introducing no great outward organization, or system of forms, which could be idolized or worshipped in His place. It thus created a felt necessity of a present God, and of universal personal holiness, with which He can enter into vital and sympathetic communion, and through which He can act in all the We see, as we might suppose, that, as free local churches were ordained by Christ, so they are the wisest and most effectual means of gaining His great end; and that their establishment was not owing to any peculiar and transitory circumstances of the age. In proportion as Christ's ideal of holiness, and of the kingdom of God through it, is understood; in proportion as the culture of true scriptural holiness becomes a matter of intense desire, will the superior adaptation of free local churches to these great ends be the more clearly seen. And it is an undeniable fact in Church history, that, in proportion as hierarchies subverted the system of free local churches, originally ordained by Christ, in the same proportion the study of the Bible receded, and the study of the traditions of men took its place. This process went on until the Old and New Testaments, the two great witnesses of God among men, were clothed in sackcloth, and testified for ages in vain. We use these words, not as the interpretation of a prophecy, but as the best description of a great and undeniable historical fact. In antithesis to this, is the great and equally prominent fact, that the system which has been most efficient in producing popular education and intelligence, freedom, individual energy and enterprize, and a development of the claims of God to pervade and control the whole social fabric, is the system of free churches, organized on the assumption of the supremacy of the Bible as the inspired and only infallible rule of faith and practice.— EDWARD BEECHER, D.D. CONGREGATIONALISM IN BIRMINGHAM. By J. Bickerton Williams, Esq. PART FIRST.-TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. BIRMINGHAM, known anciently as Bromwych-am, and the Hardware Village, --and modernly as the world's toyshop, and the Midland Metropolis-possesses no history of its earliest Nonconformity. The records of its olden population, however, indicate a soil congenial to Nonconformist principles, and demonstrate their prevalence before the celebrated Act of 1662 so strongly stimulated their development and growth. The decided part taken with the Parliament in its great struggle with King Charles, excited Clarendon to denounce the town as declaring more personal malice to His Majesty than any other place, and the neighbourhood as the most eminently corrupted of any in England; while Baxter represents the garrison of Coventry as including the most religious men of the parts round about, especially from Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield, and eulogizes them as men of as great sobriety and soundness of understanding as in any garrison in England. If Mr. Roberts-the minister, whom the Royalist soldiers under Prince Rupert supposed to be their victim, when they "most cruelly mangled and hacked to death" one of the inhabitants, but whom "the Lord delivered out of their bloody hands a little before the town was assaulted," so that "he was neither slain nor hurt,"-was the pastor of a Congregational church, as appears most probable, his name will stand first in the denominational annals, and indicate the earliest known representative of its principles in the town. The Rev. Samuel Wills, who was removed from the rectory of St. Martin's a year or two before the period when the Act of Uniformity would have otherwise compelled him to retire, does not appear to have ministered elsewhere in Birmingham, after leaving its parish church, than in St. John's Chapel, Deritend. During the troublous years that followed the Act of Uniformity, Birmingham, being neither borough nor corporate town, and not coming within the provisions and prohibitions of the FiveMile Act, became the asylum of many of the ministers ejected from neighbouring Churches. Mr. Bladon, of Alrewas; Mr. Wilsby, of Womborn; Mr. Baldwin, of Clent; Mr. Fincher, of Wednesbury; Mr. Brookes, of Hints; Dr. Long, of Newcastle; Mr. Turton, of Rowley Regis; Mr. Bryan, of Allesley; Mr. Bell, of Polesworth; Mr. Bassett; Mr. Fisher, of Thornton-in-the-Moor; and Mr. Hildersham, of West Felton; all made it their temporary home. "What a fellowship of suffering, of patience, and of sentiment," says the Rev. J. A. James, "must these noble but silenced confessors have held in this their Patmos, and how must their presence and conversation, their prayers and their counsels, have contributed to the faith and patience of the saints whom they found of like views here! We can easily imagine what solemn seasons of devout intercourse they would stealthily hold while the storm of persecution was rolling over them, and they knew not but the next flash from the thunder-cloud would strike the house in which they were assembled; and we can scarcely help wishing we knew the spots which they had moistened by their tears and consecrated by their prayers. Honour to their memory. The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance." When religious indulgence again dawned in the "gracious declaration of Charles II.," licence for a public meeting-place" was obtained for a con gregation under the ministry of the above-named Rev. Samuel Fisher, M.A., the ejected from Thornton-in-the-Moor, who is described by Calamy as an old man, of a godly life, and an able preacher. His sermon on the Solemn Fast, January 30th, 1672-3 (the anniversary of the execution of Charles I.), was published by request, and survives to this day. It is entitled, "Honour the King"-dedicated to Lord Delamere-and dated, "From my study in Birmingham, March 10th, 1673." Nothing is known of the good man or his congregation after the cessation of liberty in 1674, except that he lost his wife in 1676, and lived in Birmingham as a widower till his death, at the age of 77, in September, 1681. On the revival of indulgence in a more reliable shape under James in 1687, another of the before-mentioned ejected ministers, the Rev. W. Turton, M.A., of Rowley Regis, became pastor, says Calamy, to one of the Dissenting congregations in Birmingham; and soon after indulgence had matured into liberty under the Toleration Act, he and his people erected for themselves a place of worship, since known as the Old Meeting-house, and for awhile also as the Higher Meeting-house, because of the comparative elevation of its site; while Mr. Sillitoe and his congregation erected the New, or Lower Meeting-house on the bank of the River Rea, at the bottom of the hill in Digbeth, an inconvenient and frequently flooded situation, which was abandoned in 1732 for a better locality and more commodious structure in Moor Street. The latter building was the scene of Dr. Joseph Priestley's ministry from 1780 to 1791, and of Dr. Joshua Toulmin's from 1804 to 1815. It has recently been sold to the Roman Catholics, on the removal of its former congregation to a very elegant and costly edifice, known as the Church of the Messiah in Broad Street. Both these congregations bore the name of Presbyterian, and after a time, passed, like many others of the period, into Unitarianism. The process of change in each case was gradual. When decided Arianism had been avowed at the Old Meeting in the ministry of Mr. Howell, not long after his settlement in 1746, a small minority of the attendants, still steadfast to the earlier faith, withdrew, and having formed themselves into a Congregational Church, erected their place of worship on a piece of land adjacent to Carr's Lane. Before this date, however, Congregationalism had manifested itself in two other associations in the town. A General Baptist Chapel had been erected in Freeman Street prior to 1731, and a Particular Baptist congregation had established itself in Cannon Street in 1738. From these sources, and especially from Cannon Street and Carr's Lane, as from fountain-heads, have flowed the two main streams of Congregationalism in Birmingham. The pursuit of each of these streams in its distinctness will best afford a glance at the whole subject. The Antipædobaptist Churches, as first in order of time in the 18th century, shall have priority of notice through its course, and thenceforth, as the earliest movements of the present century occurred in connection with Carr's Lane, the Pædobaptists shall take precedence. FREEMAN STREET. Very little is known of the Church and congregation in Freeman Street, or of the circumstances or date of the erection of the chapel. The building appears in a plan of the town in 1731, and it would seem from a note upon the plan, not to have been in existence in the year 1700. A Mr. Marston, who attended the opening of Cannon Street Chapel, in 1738, is supposed to have been the minister in Freeman Street. The circumstances of its disuse as a place of worship are as indistinctly traceable as those of its origin, unless Hutton's account be correct in this particular, while incorrect in every other. He speaks of" the flock silently retreating in 1752 to the fold in Cannon Street, and the place being soon after converted into a dwelling-house." It had certainly been long abandoned as a meeting-house, and was taken down in 1856, to make way for an iron foundry which now stands upon the site. Its last use before demolition was as a hay and straw warehouse. CANNON STREET. This Chapel was founded in 1738 by a congregation of Particular Baptists, who had worshipped for some years in a court at the back of No. 38, High Street, and previously in Rann's Yard in the Bull Ring, part of the site now occupied by the Market Hall. The Church was constituted with seventeen members in 1737. Its early career was marked by difficulty, disappointment, and depression. In 1745 it became thoroughly dispirited, and curiously resolved as follows-" That, if the Independents will become part of our auditory, and join to support our ministry for the time being, they shall be allowed to have some weight in the choice of such minister, and also to call in the assistance of a minister of their own at proper seasons to break bread unto them;" and "that if, after a proper season of trial, no other method be found for the settlement and establishment of the Baptist Church here, we think it will be proper to dissolve our Church-state, and join to some neighbouring Church that may be willing to receive us, and watch over us." Happily this determination was not carried into effect, although their hopes of a settled pastor were yet long deferred, and, when eventually realized in 1751, in Mr. Morley, were speedily frustrated by his adoption of Pædobaptist sentiments. When his successor in the pastorate, Mr. Turner, commenced his ministry in 1754, the congregation had dwindled to about thirty persons, and the Church to fourteen members. This appears to have been the lowest depth of depression. Within the first ten years of Mr. Turner's ministry it became necessary to enlarge the Chapel, and it was still further enlarged in 1780. Soon after this period, under the ministry of Mr. Taylor, many very influential persons were added to the Church; and the first extension was made in the dismissal of Mr. Edward Edmonds and four other members, at their own request, for the purpose of forming a new Church. After worshipping in a house in Bath Street till it became too small for them, and then in a room in Needless Alley, these zealous and persevering Church extensionists laid the foundations of Bond Street Chapel, and by the time of its completion in November, 1786, had gathered a Church of sixty-five members to enter upon its possession. Mr. Edmonds had accepted the pastorate about twelve months before the opening of the chapel. The parent Church numbered 242 members at the close of Mr. Taylor's ministry, in 1788, and its growth and prosperity were thenceforth very largely promoted by the devoted labours of the Rev. Samuel Pearce, the whole of whose ministerial life, from the age of twenty-four, in 1790, to thirty-three, in 1799, was spent as its pastor. The additions to the Church during Mr. Pearce's pastorate averaged thirty-four per annum. Early in his ministry he took part with Carey, Fuller, Ryland, and others, in the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society; made the first collection for its funds; acted as its original secretary; founded the earliest auxiliary in his own Church; offered himself for its foreign service, and was only persuaded to abandon his intention by the unanimous and decided judgment of his friends that he could better serve the Christian cause at home. The first Sunday-school, in connection |