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CHAPTER IX.

THE HALFWAY COVENANT.

HE New England churches held that only those

THE

who had consciously experienced the new birth, and their children, were fitted for membership. During the first and second generations this condition occasioned no perplexity. All parents who were church members offered their children in baptism, on the ground that they were included in the covenant. Cotton stated the common belief in these words: "The same covenant which God made with the National Church of Israel and their seed, it is the very same . . . which the Lord maketh with any Congregational church and our seed." These children received baptism not as a condition of admission into the church, but because, being in the church by birth, they were entitled to this rite.

But some of these children, as they grew up, could not claim the experience of the new birth, which was held to be essential to church membership. They were in the church without being fully entitled to its privileges. They made no public confession of their faith, and therefore were not admitted to the Lord's Supper. Some of these persons had children. The question. whether such parents had the right to present their children for baptism disturbed New England churches for more than a century.

As early as 1634 a member of the church in Dor

chester desired baptism for his grandchild, neither of whose parents were church members. The advice of the Boston church was sought, and given in these words: "We do therefore profess it to be the judg ment of our church . . . that the grandfather, a member of the church, may claim the privilege of baptism to his grandchild, though his next seed, the parents of the child, be not received themselves into church covenant." Other occasions for discussing the question arose from time to time. Hooker, Davenport and others held that only the children of "visible saints" should be baptized. Others, like Phillips of Watertown, affirmed that all descendants of visible saints belong within the church. But all agreed that only those baptized children could properly be admitted into full communion, that is, to the Lord's table, who had been personally renewed by the Holy Spirit. Thus there arose in every community a third class, as related to the church. The first class was composed of church members in full communion, the second were the unregenerate, with no connection with the church. This third class were persons who had been born and baptized in the church, believers in the Bible, educated in Christian faith, who lived according to the teachings of the Christian religion and wished to train their children in the same ways, but who could not say with confidence that they had experienced the new birth.

To have admitted this third class to the full privileges of membership would have been against the fundamental principle of the New England churches, that only those consciously united to Christ by the new birth were members of His church. It would have brought the church down to the level of the English

Church, which the Puritans had so earnestly sought to reform, which received to full fellowship all persons of outwardly moral life. To have rejected them altogether would have been to have weakened the influence of the church in the community, and to have shut out from the covenant some who by birth belonged to it. That could be done only by excommunication, for the churches held that the only doors of withdrawal from the covenant were death, dismission to another church or excommunication. Besides, it was not felt to be just to withhold the much valued privileges of Christian training from those sons and daughters of believers, who, as Cotton Mather said, were "sober persons, who professed themselves desirous to renew their baptismal covenant, and submit unto the church discipline," and so have their houses also marked for the Lord's; but who were not able to "come up to that experimental account of their own regeneration which would sufficiently embolden their access to the other sacrament."

This third class was constantly increasing in num-1 ber, many of them were men of character and influence in their communities, yet they had no vote nor voice in calling a pastor nor in managing church affairs. It was natural that this condition should arouse excited feeling and that it should constantly tend to increase. Prominent among the causes which led to the calling of the Cambridge Synod in 1646 was the complaint to the General Court of Massachusetts by Dr. Child and others that their children were “debarred from the seals of the covenant." The court, in calling that synod, had especially commended to its attention this subject of the baptism of children,

declaring that the views and practices of the churches had become so diverse that they would, "if not timely remedied, beget such differences as will be displeasing to the Lord, offensive to others and dangerous to ourselves." This subject was discussed in the synod, and a declaration was inserted in its Platform that the proper subjects of baptism were converted adults who joined in fellowship with a visible church, their children and all their seed after them that cast not off the covenant of God by some scandalous and obstinate going on in sin." This statement, however, was omitted from the final draft of the Platform, though favored by the majority. The violent opposition of some leading men, among whom President Chauncey of Harvard College was specially prominent, caused it to be abandoned.

That action did not quiet discussion. Traces of it abound in the epistolary correspondence of that period. Henry Smith of Wethersfield, Conn., wrote to Richard Mather in 1647 that his people were at a loss as to the admission of members' children to the communion because the synod had not made any deliverance concerning it. He favored the larger view. Messrs. Stone of Hartford and Wareham of Windsor agreed with Mr. Smith. Thomas Shepard of Cambridge approved of the same position. John Cotton thought that these nonregenerate children of church members, though not fit to come to the Lord's Supper, might make profession full enough to admit their children to baptism, "or to the same estate Ishmael stood in after circumcision." In 1650 Mr. Stone of Hartford expressed his conviction that unless a synod should be called

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COLORADO COLLEGE, COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.

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