Invisible Saints: The ‘Judgment of Charity’ in the Early New England Churches

Abstract

Few early New England practices troubled European observers more than the attempt to restrict church membership to the regenerate. The requirement that each prospective church member give a “relation” of his experience of grace, a public declaration “of God's manner of working upon [his] soul,” won quick notoriety. In his list of sixteen questions designed to embarass the Independent party, for instance, the Dutch minister William Apollonius began by raising the issue of the qualifications of church members. “Is no one to be admitted into the communion of the external visible church,” he demanded, “unless he is endowed with the real internal holiness of regeneration and with justifying faith in Christ? Must such a person undergo a strict examination…?” Robert Baillie suggested that prospective members' obligation “to show to the whole congregation convincing signs of their regeneration” was the “capital and fundamental difference” between his position and that of the New Englanders. He and his fellow Scot Samuel Rutherford were convinced that by requiring such a test, the New England churches had so seriously deviated from traditional Christian practice that they had aligned themselves with the sectarians.

Jonathan Edwards's Virtue: Diverse Sources, Multiple Meanings, and the Lessons of History for Ethics

“…Whether they always accomplish this given the "principle of charity" also required of the church body is another matter, of course. On the latter seeTipson (1975) andHall (1994, 49, 50, 59, 71, 83, 85).…”