[Pg 1]
Old South Leaflets.
TWELFTH SERIES, 1894. No. 2.
Governor Bradford’s First Dialogue.
A DIALOGUE, OR THE SUM OF A CONFERENCE BETWEEN SOME YOUNG MENBORN IN NEW ENGLAND AND SUNDRY ANCIENT MEN THAT CAME OUT OFHOLLAND AND OLD ENGLAND, ANNO DOMINI 1648.[1]
Young men.—Gentlemen, you were pleased to appoint us thistime to confer with you, and to propound such questions as might giveus satisfaction in some things wherein we are ignorant, or at leastfurther light to some things that are more obscure unto us. Our firstrequest therefore is, to know your minds concerning the true and simplemeaning of those of The Separation, as they are termed, whenthey say the Church of England is no Church, or no true Church.
Ancient men.—For answer hereunto, first, you must know thatthey speak of it as it then was under the hierarchical prelacy, whichsince have been put down by the State, and not as it is now unsettled.
2. They nowhere say, that we remember, that they are no Church. Atleast, they are not so to be understood; for they often say thecontrary.
3. When they say it is no true Church of Christ, they do not at allmean as they are the elect of God, or a part of the Catholic Church, orof the mystical body of Christ, or visible Christians professing faithand holiness (as most men understand the church); for which purposehear what Mr. Robinson in his Apology, page 53. “If by the Church,”saith he, “be understood the Catholic Church, dispersed upon the faceof the whole earth, we do willingly acknowledge that a singular partthereof, and the same visible and conspicuous, is to be found in theland, and with it do profess and practise, what in us lies,[Pg 2] communionin all things in themselves lawful, and done in right order.”
4. Therefore they mean it is not a true church as it is a NationalChurch, combined together of all in the land promiscuously under thehierarchical government of archbishops, their courts and canons, so fardiffering from the primitive pattern in the Gospel.
Young men.—Wherein do they differ then from the judgment orpractice of our churches here in New England?
Ancient men.—Truly, for matter of practice, nothing at all thatis in any thing material; these being rather more strict and rigidin some proceedings about admission of members, and things of suchnature, than the other; and for matter of judgment, it is more, as weconceive, in words and terms, than matter of any great substance; forthe churches and chief of the ministers here hold that the NationalChurch, so constituted and governed as before is said, is not allowableaccording to the primitive order of the Gospel; but that there aresome parish assemblies that are true churches by virtue of an implicitcovenant amongst themselves, in which regard the Church of England maybe held and called a true church.
Where any such are evident, we suppose the other will not disagreeabout an implicit covenant, if they mean by an implicit covenant thatwhich hath the substance of a covenant in it some way discernible,though it be not so formal or orderly as it should be. But such animplicit [covenant] as is no way explicit is no better than a Popishimplicit faith (as some of us conceive) and a me