Visible Saints and Notorious Sinners: Puritan and Presbyterian Sacramental
Doctrine and Practice and the Vicissitudes of the Baptist Movement in New
England and the Middle Colonies
Peter J. Wallace
On November 4, 1764, Jacob Green preached a sermon to his Presbyterian
congregation at Hanover, New Jersey, declaring that he would no longer baptize the
children of any except communicant members. Explaining his new position that only
those with an outward appearance and credible evidence of grace would be admitted to
the Table, Green explicitly sided with the late Jonathan Edwards in utterly rejecting the
idea of a halfway covenant in which almost anyone could be admitted to baptism.
Richard Webster states that Green had at first followed Jonathan Dickinson and Aaron
Burr in "admitting to the sacraments all who seemed desirous of leading a godly life:
the reading of Watts and Edwards on the Terms of Communion changed his views,
and he, first of all our ministers, took his stand that only those who were hopefully
pious should be received into church-membership." A Harvard graduate of 1744,
Green was originally from Massachusetts, and had been ordained by the New Side
Presbytery of New York--a body with strong New England connections. In 1780 he
led four churches into the independent Morris Presbytery in order to practice his
Edwardsean beliefs.
Seven years after Green's sermon, in 1771, his fellow Presbyterian, John Blair,
published his own recantation. Blair had formerly believed that while virtually anyone
could bring their children for baptism, only the converted should come to the Table.
Now he changed his mind. All but those who had been disciplined by the church
should come to the Table. He had become convinced that all who had been baptized
into the covenant should be "reputed the professors of it untill they disavow it." He
claimed that requiring a public profession by those baptized in infancy denied their
membership given them in baptism: "Are not the Signs which our Lord Jesus Christ
has appointed and the Manner of Covenanting which he has prescribed sufficient,
without the Addition of our own Inventions to supply the Defect?" Blair had been
trained at the Log College, and developed into one of the leading Edwardseans in the
middle colonies, but hailed originally from Northern Ireland.
Both of these men insisted that the terms of admission to one sacrament should
be the same as the other. The difference is that whereas Green sought to tighten
requirements, so that only communicants could have their children baptized, Blair
sought to loosen them, so that all who were baptized could partake of the Lord's
Supper. At first glance, this appears to echo the New England debates between the
followers of Solomon Stoddard and Jonathan Edwards. After all, Green appeals to
Edwards and Blair calls the sacraments, "converting ordinances." Yet this paper claims
that while both Green and Blair were steeped in the New England controversies and
trained in the New Divinity, they were involved in an argument substantially different
from Stoddard and Edwards--a difference rooted in their Middle Colonies Presbyterian
environment.
This paper will explore the relationship between New England sacramental
disputes and the sacramental doctrine and practice of colonial Presbyterians. After
examining the impact of the debates over infant baptism in New England and the
Middle Colonies, we will turn to the conflict over the terms of admission to
communion between the Edwardseans and the Stoddardeans. Many historians have
ignored the crucial differences between New England Congregationalism and Middle
Colonies Presbyterianism. This paper will attempt to demonstrate 1) that divergences
in sacramental doctrine and practice reflect some of the most basic distinctives between
these two bodies; 2) that within colonial Presbyterianism, any influence from the New
England debates was reshaped by the local traditions within Scottish and Scotch-Irish
Presbyterianism; and 3) that these differences begin to explain why Baptists were
successful in New England and not in the Middle Colonies. In short, this paper argues
that differences in sacramental doctrine and practice help show why the heirs of the
New England Puritans became Baptists but Middle Colonies Presbyterians didn't.
I. Demographics: The Rise of the Baptists in New England and the Rise of the
Presbyterians in the Middle Colonies
Whereas the growth of English Baptists occurred largely from 1640-1660 (becoming a
fairly stable dissenting body by 1700), there was no corresponding explosion in the
colonies. The emergence of the Baptists as a substantial movement in the new world
occurred a century later. And while they often relied on English Baptists such as John
Gill for their polemics against "infant sprinkling," the American Baptist movement
maintained its own distinctives.
At first the English Baptists occupied the fringes of Puritan culture, but
gradually fought to position themselves within the realm of "tolerable" dissent.
Underwood's study of Baptist-Quaker polemics during the seventeenth century reveals
a clear movement among Baptists toward respectable nonconformity by 1689. Those
few Baptists who emigrated to the new world after the Glorious Revolution generally
brought with them that more or less settled dissent--not at all in the character of the
later Separate Baptists from New England.
So while some historians have assumed that the Baptists would naturally
gravitate toward the revivals of the Great Awakening, most studies of the Middle
Colonies have noted that they remained aloof from what they considered a
paedobaptist affair. In New England, especially after 1749, the Separate Baptists were
zealous revivalists; but most of their Regular Baptist brethren in the Middle Colonies
tended to shy away from what they considered extreme new measures.
The following chart reflects the growth of Baptist and Presbyterian churches in the
eighteenth century:
Bapts MA CT RI NE NY NJ PA MC VA South Total
1660 0 0 4 4 0 4
1700 2 0 7 12/9 0 4 3 1 1 33
1735 7 1 12 23/20
1740 5 96
1750 16 12 30 58 4 14 29 53 3 21 132
1770 27 12 30 75 19 7
1774 54
1780 45 22 31 /114 457
1795 136 60 40 /325 84 23/30 31 170 227 476 1,152
Pbns MA CT RI NE NY NJ PA MC VA South Pbn Cong
1660 5 5 75
1700 9 28 146
1740 160 423
1750 8 1 19 35 51 56 187 17 27 233 465
1776 140 50+
1780 495 749
Baptists and Presbyterians maintained a similar number of congregations through 1700.
But while Presbyterian immigration from Scotland and Ireland quickly boosted their
numbers, fewer Baptists immigrated to the new world, causing their numbers to
languish throughout the first half of the eighteenth century. By 1750, Presbyterian
congregations outnumbered Baptists nearly two to one.
Rather than depend on immigration, Baptist growth took place largely through
the conversion of paedobaptists (usually English Congregationalists or Episcopalians).
Baptists more than doubled in New England between 1735 and 1750, doubled again by
1780, and then nearly tripled by 1795. In the South, growth was slow until 1770, but
over the next quarter century they doubled (on average) every three years. In New
York the Baptists grew, especially among emigrants from New England, but in the rest
of the middle colonies, growth was painfully slow. Pennsylvania only netted two
additional congregations between 1750 and 1795, while New Jersey netted either 9 or
16, depending on which numbers are accurate.
Meanwhile, Scottish and Scotch-Irish immigration to New Jersey and
Pennsylvania resulted in the dramatic growth of Presbyterianism in the middle
colonies. The best estimates suggest that around 50,000 Scots and well over 150,000
Ulster Scots had immigrated to the colonies by the 1770s (at least 50,000 came in the
years 1768-1774), more than half of which came through Pennsylvania (though many
settled in the backcountry of Virginia and the Carolinas); with the result that Benjamin
Franklin estimated in 1774 that one-third of Pennsylvania's approximately 350,000
inhabitants were Scotch-Irish. Fifteen years before, William Smith had broken down
Pennsylvania's inhabitants as follows:
1759--250,000 inhabitants:
95,000 Germans (1/3 each Anabaptist, Lutheran and Reformed)
55,000 Presbyterians
25,000 Anglicans
50,000 Quakers
5,000 English Baptists
These estimates concur with the scholarship on immigration that suggests that in these
fifteen years when the population of Pennsylvania rose by 40%, the Scots/Scots-Irish
population grew by over 100%. With Pennsylvania as one of the centers of
Presbyterian church planting, and Baptist converts normally coming from English
stock, the middle colonies did not offer a promising field for Baptist growth. As
Baptist historian A. H. Newman once said, "ground once preoccupied by Presbyterians
is relatively irresponsive to Baptist effort." Baptists would be successful among the
descendents of the Scots-Irish after the American Revolution, but tended to be very
sparse wherever the Presbyterians established churches in the colonial era. It appears
that the Scots-Irish preferred Presbyterianism, but their children might become Baptists
if the Presbyterians took too long in establishing churches.
In addition to denominational affiliation, another way to trace the rise of the
Baptists is through the polemical literature of the period. An admittedly incomplete
survey of American publications on infant baptism reveals the following chronology of
the debate:
1639-1699--3
1700-1739--10
1740-1759--10
1760-1779--46
1780-1799--54
This demonstrates that by the 1760s, the Congregationalists and Presbyterians
considered Baptist polemics to be a significant problem. The initial growth of the
Baptists after the Great Awakening sparked a pamphlet war which resulted favorably
for the Baptists--coinciding with their period of greatest growth. Yet another pamphlet
war may have proved at least as significant in the success of the Baptists: the
Edwardsean challenge to the Halfway Covenant and Stoddardeanism. Isaac Backus
and other Baptists certainly believed that the efforts of Jonathan Edwards and his
followers to restore the purity of the visible church aided their efforts to gain converts
for their cause.
II. New England Debates: Sacramental Controversies in Puritan Culture
This focus on the purity of the visible church had been a gradual development in
Puritan thought. While the early Puritans, such as William Perkins, still insisted on
baptizing all children within the parish, the increasing emphasis on inward subjectivity
and the "disciplined and communal character of the Christian life" in English
Puritanism led to a growing emphasis on baptizing only the children of visible saints.
The original New England Puritans attempted to combine the ideal of the pure church
with the holy commonwealth, holding purity and inclusiveness in tension. Michael
Ryan McCoy argues that the "New England divines sought to limit the sacraments to
those who clearly demonstrated evidence that they had received grace, but they feared
to allow their society to become 'unchurched' by tolerating those without grace or
barring from the churches persons who had a right to membership." The doctrine of
the covenant was utilized to bring these two things together. McCoy points out that
for the New Englanders, the sacraments "did not create church membership any more
than they created covenant standing. They were seals of the covenant, not the cause of
it....Church membership existed before baptism and was therefore independent of it."
The difference between infant membership and adult membership was simply that the
benefits for infants in the covenant were all external.
1) The Halfway Covenant and Solomon Stoddard. But as an alarming number
of baptized people grew up without ever giving evidence of conversion, the ministers
of New England feared that their holy commonwealth was crumbling. The halfway
covenant offered the simplest solution: allow anyone who was willing to own the
covenant (i.e., declare their approval of the terms of the covenant), to bring their
children to baptism. The Halfway Covenant of 1662 may have continued to hold in
tension the pure church and the holy commonwealth, but only at a price. Hereafter
the sacraments took on new functions in New England culture: baptism was the
symbol of inclusion in the holy commonwealth, while the Lord's Supper became the
test of purity within the commonwealth.
The Halfway Covenant fitfully acknowledged the importance of baptism even as
it attempted to retain the visible saints criterion for full membership. John Davenport
and other opponents claimed that infant baptism was administered on the basis of a
parental covenant--not the covenant of grace, per se--hence the sacrament did not seal
immediate church membership at all. This ultimately led them to divide baptism
from the covenant of grace, insisting that the covenant of grace technically belonged
only to the elect, whom the church could never actually identify. The supporters of
the Halfway Covenant thought that they espied baptistic tendencies in such remarks,
since it left baptized children outside the covenant of grace altogether.
The first Baptists in New England had divided over the purity of the church--
just as Separatists and Baptists had withdrawn in England during the English
Revolution. But by 1650, the New England Puritans had established their experiment
with fair success, and Baptist growth was negligible. But in the immediate aftermath
of the Halfway Covenant and the failure of the Holy Commonwealth--signaled in the
revocation of the charter--the twin goals of purity and inclusiveness both found
themselves challenged. Yet while a few pamphlets sailed back and forth over the
baptismal waters during the 1680s and '90s, the actual number of Baptist churches rose
slowly.
But in the meantime, the inclusive policies of the Halfway Covenant received an
extra push from the presbyterianizing Solomon Stoddard. Stoddard, besides his well-
known description of the Supper as a converting ordinance, also declared that baptism
was a converting ordinance, "through which God gave saving grace to some children
'in their infancy.'" As Holifield points out, both Stoddard and his opponents were
preoccupied with sacramental and pastoral nurture largely because their churches were
full of Halfway Covenant members--many of whom were still "unconverted." With the
demise of the New England Way, both theologically and politically, many began
moving toward a Presbyterian understanding of the church. Few noticed, however,
that seeds were being sown which would be reaped in a harvest of Baptist conversions
a generation later.
Stoddard himself wished to preserve the New England tension between visible
saints and the holy commonwealth. Far from denying the criterion of "visible saints,"
Stoddard insisted that New Englanders had actually wound up excluding visible saints
from the Table by adding extra terms of communion. Stoddard argued that the church
should indeed consist of visible saints, and that those who did not exhibit such signs
should be excluded altogether and banished from the church. But those who qualified
for baptism also thereby qualified for the Lord's Supper. The Halfway Covenant erred
in retaining too strict a definition of visible saints: "There is not the least foundation
in Scripture, for two sort of adult members, one that might, an other that might not
come to the Lords Supper; unless they were under offense, or wanted sufficient
knowledge for that Ordinance." Instead, he declared that the Table was for all who
made a "solemn Profession of Faith, & Repentance, & are of Godly Conversation,
having Knowledge to Examine themselves, & discern the Lords Body." This
profession was not "an Affirmation that they have Saving Faith and Repentance" but
only "an Assent unto, & Acknowledgement of the Doctrine of Faith & Repentance (as
the onely Doctrine according to which they hope for Salvation) together with a
Promise of Obedience to all the Commandments of God."
Edward Taylor, Stoddard's chief opponent in the Connecticut Valley, replied that
Stoddard's definition of profession lacked any inward appropriation of the outward
assent to doctrine. Insisting upon some evidence of sanctifying grace in the heart,
Taylor claims that while the grounds for admission to baptism includes only "Federall
Holiness," whereas "Sanctifying Grace, or a Saving Implantation into Christ is the
proper ground of the Lords Supper. None without Life can receive Food." Further,
Taylor disclaimed knowledge of any churches who scrutinized "the method of Gods
Working upon the Soule in the Work of Conversion" as a requirement for coming to
the Table. "All that is Expected by the Churches is onely some such Evidence of their
Faith & Repentance as may be an hopefull ground for the Charity of Gods people to
stand upon."
When Stoddard replied in 1690 that the Lord's Supper was a converting
ordinance, he did so on the grounds that the means of grace were intended for all those
in the visible church, not only for those who were regenerate, but for all members of
the covenant--thereby including only those unregenerate who were already within the
covenant.
Increase Mather, one of the leading Boston ministers, rejected this whole
approach, declaring: "A man may be qualified for church-membership, and yett not to
be admitted unto the Lords Supper, without that examination wee plead for. Yea, hee
may be qualified for full communion, and yett not to be admitted unto full communion
untill such time as his qualifications have passed under the churches examination."
But Stoddard pointed out that the standards for admission in the New Testament did
not include entering church covenants or taking doctrinal exams. Hence, whereas in
1640 there was some danger of facing hordes of unbaptized children, by 1720, anyone
who wanted to be baptized could find a minister ready and willing to do so.
2) Edwardseans and the Baptists. The two eighteenth-century results of New
England's sacramental conflicts were the Edwardsean and the Baptist movements
within New England Congregationalism. Just as the English Baptists were the
extremists of seventeenth-century Puritanism, so also the Separate Baptists were the
extremists of eighteenth-century New Lights. But in the same ways that Edwards
differs from his Puritan forebears, so also the Separate Baptists differ from their
English Baptist cousins.
Jonathan Edwards signaled a new emphasis on purity when he rejected his
grandfather's scheme and instituted a requirement for making a more specific
profession of faith in order to come to the Lord's Table. McCoy suggests that there
were three basic reasons why ministers started questioning Stoddard after the Great
Awakening: 1) the revival raised tensions about sacramental practices, particularly
with respect to worthiness to partake of the Lord's Supper; 2) the increasing criticism
from Baptists and Separates that they had fallen from the Fathers led ministers and
interested lay persons to reopen the question of visible sainthood; and 3) the traditional
fears of declension that revived as ministers began to think that open sacramental
policies had not provided the results that they had hoped. Edwards, as one of the first
to question Stoddard, did not advocate returning to the earlier practice of the
conversion narrative; but rather attempted to discern those who had received a divine
and supernatural light, which Edwards claimed would be revealed in a declaration of
the will consisting of an inclination toward God and willingness to enter the
covenant. Edwards did not seek to scrutinize some internal evidence of grace, but
simply requested a declaration of the will that the candidate for the table had their
affections set on their desire to know God. Once again, the doctrine of "visible
saints" was redefined.
But Edwards followers sounded an even more strident call for purity. As
Joseph Bellamy declared, "Your baptism gives you not the least right to any one of the
peculiar blessings of the covenant of grace...but you are now, this moment, in fact, as
liable to be struck dead and sent to hell by the divine justice, as any unbaptised sinner
in the land." Insisting that only those who were admitted to the Lord's Supper could
have their children baptized (and requiring transfers from "impure" churches to make a
full profession of faith), the New Divinity pastors were often indistinguishable from the
Separatists, and frequently cooperated willingly with Isaac Backus and the growing
Baptist movement.
Moses Mather and the Old Calvinist establishment responded with alarm. If
gracious affections are "the Band of Union to the visible Church; it will follow, that no
Person in an unrenewed State can be a Member of it." In Mather's mind, it was only
a small step from such a position to denying infant baptism. Clearly seeing that the
differences between the Old Calvinists and the New Divinity were rooted in their
different conceptions of primitive and fallen human nature and their divergent
understandings of the different dispensations of God to man in these two states, Mather
attempted to unfold the implications of these differences. Claiming that Bellamy
divorced the external administration of the covenant from grace altogether, Mather
concluded that the New Divinity was well on its way to dividing election from the
covenant. In its stead, Mather offered a distinction between the covenant of grace
and the external administration of the covenant: "the intention of the covenant of
grace is to make over to the believer, a sure title to eternal life: but the evident design
of the covenant with Abraham was to set up a visible church." Claiming that
Bellamy belonged logically to the Anabaptists, Mather concluded: "But if we must not
unite with the visible church, till we have faith; it is an undeniable consequence, that
we may not unite with it, till we know we have Faith:....And by this means a very
great part even of true believers must be cut off from the privileges of church-
communion, which God hath appointed for the saving benefit of his people."
Nonetheless, Mather finally gave in to the pressure of the New Divinity and the
Baptists, granting that the covenant of grace contains no visible church. The visible
church, he argued, was grounded on the Abrahamic covenant--not the covenant of
grace itself.
The Baptists saw their opportunity. Isaac Backus now claimed that not only
was the Old Testament invalid for determining who should be admitted to the Lord's
Table (as Mather and Taylor had claimed), but it was also invalid for determining who
should be admitted to baptism! Further, he claimed that New England had fallen from
its purity, and was now permitting the unregenerate to come freely to the Lord's
Supper. Pushing the visible saints criterion to the next step, Backus argued that only
the Baptists could faithfully continue the New England tradition, since even Edwards
and the New Lights compromised their principles by allowing non-professing infants
into church membership. Claiming that only the New Testament was a sufficient guide
to understand who the church should admit to the sacraments, the Baptists relied
heavily on the argumentation of the New Lights to show that the only way to
guarantee a church full of visible saints was to stop baptizing babies.
The Great Awakening alone (to say nothing of later developments) produced
almost 100 separatist churches--many of which became Baptist. C. C. Goen's survey
of these churches suggests that "the logic of the pure church ideal" drove New
Englanders to affirm believers' baptism as the only way to guarantee a pure church.
Denying entirely that the "ordinances" of baptism and the Lord's Supper were
converting ordinances, Backus claimed that in them the "work of sanctification in
believers is carried on," but no salvific power. Hence he denied access to all but
visible saints. He rejected infant baptism for several reasons: 1) it falsely supposed
that there is no distinction between the old covenant, which was based on the family
and the nation, and the new covenant, which was made purely with elect individuals;
2) it permitted the baptism of those who were neither regenerate nor even disciples,
since they had not been taught; 3) historically, it was an innovation from the second or
third century without warrant in the New Testament; 4) it violated the heart of the
Puritan doctrine of visible saints, creating a territorial church that gets mingled with the
world; 5) it is harmful to children by making them think that they are inside the
covenant of grace, when actually even paedobaptists only believe that they are inside
the external covenant; 6) if its advocates were truly consistent, they would give the
Lord's Supper to infants as well. His arguments resonated with his audience. Within
a span of only fifty years, nearly 300 Baptist churches were founded in New England.
III. Middle Colonies Presbyterians and New England's Sacramental Conflicts
James Burton McSwain argues that seventeenth-century English paedobaptists--
whether conforming or dissenting--held firmly to the union of church and state. His
analysis of Robert Baillie suggests that Scottish Presbyterians held a similar view.
McSwain argues that paedobaptists argued from a position of cultural dominance,
rehearsing their arguments that Baptists were dangerous to society because they tossed
infants out of the visible church, thereby removing them from the moral oversight of
the clergy.
McSwain's arguments make sense in New England. The New England Puritans
continued the model of the established church--only now the established church was
congregational and more fully reformed. Their insistence on infant baptism continued
the English emphasis on the unity of church and state--with one major alteration. In
New England, only the children of communicant members--visible saints--could be
baptized. As the years passed it became clear that a large number of people were now
falling outside the pale of the visible church. When children failed to make their
profession of faith, their children could not be brought for baptism, undermining the
religious bonds that held New England society together. The logic of the Puritan
desire for a communion of visible saints ran counter to their insistence on an
ecclesiastical establishment. The resulting Halfway Covenant provided a temporary
stop-gap, but could not forever stem the tide.
Presbyterians in the middle colonies, however, had no such aspirations to the
union of church and state. Like their Ulster Presbyterian forebears, they attempted to
create a self-sustaining dissenting Presbyterian culture which proved remarkably
impervious to Baptist incursions during the seventeenth century. The tendency of
predominantly Scotch-Irish presbyteries to render judgment in divorce cases suggests
that they viewed themselves as competent to determine matters normally reserved for
the civil magistrate.
McCoy blithely assumes that Middle Colonies Presbyterians faced the same
situation as New England Congregationalists, frequently quoting from New Side
Presbyterian sources to substantiate his claims about New Light beliefs and practices.
But New Side Presbyterianism itself consisted of two elements: the Presbytery of New
York, which consisted largely of ex-Congregationalists who had migrated from New
England; and the Presbytery of New Brunswick, led by the Log College revivalists
who were mostly from Northern Ireland. The two elements had largely blended
together by the early 1750s, but their distinctive roots remained important. After all,
the New Englanders had generally joined the Scots precisely because they found in
Presbyterianism a congenial solution to the Halfway Covenant. And while many of the
Scotch-Irish contingent gravitated toward Edwardsean doctrines, it never resulted in a
wholesale embrace of the New Divinity, but remained couched within traditional
Presbyterian sacramentology.
Presbyterian sacramental doctrine and practice was rooted in its Scottish and
Scotch-Irish background. Puritan sacramental practices had developed through their
attempt to purify the Church of England, resulting in an emphasis on the gathered
congregation of visible saints, called out of the world. Presbyterian sacramental
practices had developed through the resistance of local communities against external
pressure from England (not to mention a century of struggle with Scottish episcopacy),
resulting in a strong emphasis on the sacraments as bonds which held together the
whole community. While Presbyterian doctrine emphasized faithful partaking just as
strongly as the Puritans, the Scots and Scots-Irish had an even more vibrantly
communal spirituality of the sacraments. The rise of the Scottish communion season,
with its multi-parish congregation is but one example of such a communal mentality.
Ned Landsman offers another explanation for Presbyterian communal attitudes.
Pointing out that Scottish Lowlanders were perpetually migrating (though generally
within a single county--and often within a single parish), he claims that this peripatetic
lifestyle did not fracture community, but actually built it--though on a larger scale than
the English village. The Lowlanders did not just wander anywhere, they usually
followed friends and relatives to another "toun" (clusters of 2-12 huts) after the lease
expired from their previous residence. These Scottish communities were constantly on
the move, but remained connected especially through the church. After the
Reformation all of the Catholic festivals which had structured time and place for the
community were banned by the reformers. Yet within a generation or two the "holy
fairs" of the Scottish communion seasons had begun to function in many of the same
ways.
Peter Brooke tells a similar story of Ulster Presbyterianism. During the
seventeenth century, Presbyterians stood for "the ideal of the church as a kingdom or
polity separate from the state, with authority in matters of faith and morals. In the
eighteenth century it functioned as the organising centre of a distinct, quasi-national
society." For Ulster Presbyterians, their church courts were the political as well as
religious center from the seventeenth to mid-nineteenth century. Since Presbyterians
emphasized the church "as the means of organising and disciplining the whole society"
they only required "external profession and decent conduct" for church membership.
Whereas English and Scottish Presbyterians often conformed after the
Restoration in 1661, only five out of the seventy Irish Presbyterian clergy did so,
reflecting the relative political independence of the Ulster Presbyterian community.
Once the army left Ulster, they returned to their pulpits and even before the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 they had established the first dissenting synod in the British Isles.
While maintaining cordial relations with their brethren in Scotland, the Ulster
Presbyterians had a unique situation: 1) they did not need the permission or
representative of the king for their Synod to meet; 2) they could establish their own
criterion for ordaining ministers (Scottish GA was forced to accept many conforming
ministers after 1690); 3) they had no patrons. Hence, Ulster Presbyterians developed
an independent subculture which thrived for nearly two centuries.
Yet while the difference between Ulster and Scotland may appear significant in
some respects, the practical differences between Ulster Presbyterians and their
neighbors in southwestern Scotland are negligible. For instance, Landsman points out
that southwestern Scots rarely had to quarrel with patrons, since the lairds were often
such fierce Presbyterians themselves that they would never dream of exercising their
rights.
This Scottish and Ulster Presbyterian community was transplanted to the new
world, where it developed in slightly different directions from the parent communities,
but still within a similar trajectory. While Scottish and Ulster immigrants flourished
throughout the middle colonies, central Jersey was actually a Scottish colony from the
1680s to 1702, and remained predominantly Scottish throughout the eighteenth century.
Indeed, New Jersey was the center of Presbyterian revivals, Scottish commerce (along
the Philadelphia/New York corridor), and with the founding of the College of New
Jersey in 1746, Presbyterian education as well.
Landsman traces the development of the Jersey colony, and notes that the
Scottish propensity for mobility within the framework of a larger community remained
prominent in the shaping of early Scottish-American culture. But the first Scottish
immigrants to New Jersey were largely Quaker and Episcopalians from the northeast,
near Aberdeen. Only gradually did the southwestern Scots--and later the Scots-Irish--
become dominant. Yet by the 1730s and 1740s the Presbyterians had united virtually
all the Scots in one church. Landsman comments that the children of Scottish Quakers
and Episcopalians generally preferred to join with their Scottish friends and neighbors
in the Presbyterian church, rather than fellowship with English co-religionists. Indeed,
Landsman claims that the early revivals of the 1730s in New Jersey were largely
aimed at uniting the Scots into one Presbyterian church.
But, as should be expected among Scottish Presbyterians, these revivals were
focused around the traditional communion seasons. The evangelical preaching that
accompanied such sacramental seasons accomplished the work for which it was
intended, and the majority of the Scottish community united with the Presbyterian
church. Landsman may be correct about central Jersey when he suggests that as the
Scottish contingent grew, the English portion of Presbyterian congregations dwindled;
but certainly that is not the case for West Jersey and New York, where the heirs of
New England continued to mingle with the Scots in joint congregations. Admittedly,
there could be tensions between the two ethnic groups over which version of the
Psalms to sing, or whether to have a Scottish or a New England pastor; but it appears
that Presbyterian doctrine, government, and sacramental practice continued to gain in
popularity with those who migrated to those areas. By 1750, there were 51
Presbyterian churches in New Jersey, and only two Congregationalist churches.
In the same year there were 14 Baptist churches in New Jersey, and 29 in
Pennsylvania. Whereas in New England, Baptist churches tended to reflect the
doctrine, worship, and polity of the Congregationalists, Norman Maring claims that
New Jersey Baptists were very similar to the Presbyterians in doctrine, worship, and
even government. Francis Sacks' study of the government of the Philadelphia Baptist
Association shows that the PBA functioned like a presbytery--exercising almost as
much authority over its constituent churches as the Synod of Philadelphia. This is
largely due to the connectional tendencies of the Welsh Baptists who were prominent
in the founding of the PBA in 1707, but contact between Middle Colonies Baptists
and their more numerous Presbyterians neighbors appears as a likely influence as well.
Certainly when the PBA encouraged New England's Separate Baptists to form
their own associations and get involved in the founding of a college for ministerial
training, the Separates initially reacted with suspicion and wariness. For several
decades, they refused to form associations, but preferred to operate on the basis of ad
hoc councils. And whereas the Philadelphia Baptists accepted the authority of a
council, following their Welsh roots and their Presbyterian neighbors; New England
Baptists, true to their Congregational roots, insisted that a council had only advisory
power. It was not until 1766 that Rhode Island College opened for ministerial training,
largely funded at first by the PBA.
But while such similarities existed between Middle Colonies Baptists and
Presbyterians, the subject of infant baptism could still produce fiery debates. Such a
debate erupted in 1743 between Samuel Finley and Abel Morgan while the pair were
in Cape May, New Jersey. Morgan was one of the few Baptists who gravitated toward
Whitefield and the Great Awakening, while Finley was one of the leading New Side
Presbyterians. Between 1746 and 1750 each side produced two volumes, and then
stopped. Bryan Le Beau suggests that the Presbyterians did not perceive the Baptists
as a significant threat in the Middle Colonies, but offers as his only explanation that
the Anglicans were a more powerful opponent.
Digging down into the roots of Presbyterian sacramental thought and practice
provides a more satisfying answer. The Presbyterian practice was that virtually
everyone should be baptized (even those who were born of scandalous parents could be
sponsored by godly folk, who would thereby promise to give them a Christian
education). But some profession was required for admission to the Lord's Table. Not
indeed the Puritan requirement of a conversion narrative, nor an Edwardsean profession
of the will; they simply required that each communicant have an adequate knowledge
of Christian doctrine and an outwardly godly life. Only the scandalous and profane
were to be excluded from the Table. The practice of giving out communion tokens
guaranteed that only those approved by the session would come to the Table, but it
appears that the elders generally gave tokens to the vast majority of those who desired
them. Marilyn Westerkamp reports that in one congregation,
"these persons were then summoned before the elders and told to appear
before the congregation that very afternoon and acknowledge their sins.
All who did so were publicly absolved; all who 'would not come before
us or, coming, could not be induced to acknowledge their fault before the
congregation, upon the Saturday preceding the communion, their names,
scandals, and impenitency, were read out before the congregation and
they debarred from communion; which proved such a terror that we
found few of that sort.'"
Others might not practice such a public version of discipline, but the common usage of
communion tokens debarred the profane and scandalous from coming to the Table. As
Westerkamp points out, even "those who were given tokens were reminded through
preparatory sermons that while they appeared worthy, in fact they probably were
not." The Scottish emphasis on conversion--but rejection of the visible saints
criterion--resulted in a distinctly communal approach to conversion. Since the
community itself was impure, the whole community needed to be transformed.
Therefore, "in the case of the English, these experiences were intensely personal, while
in the case of the Scots-Irish, they were vibrantly communal."
These emphases continued in the American context as well. The practice of
American Presbyterians in determining the subjects of baptism prior to the Great
Awakening was set forth in the Minutes of Synod in 1735:
"And [we] do also exhort all the ministers within our bounds, to take due
care in the examination of all candidates for baptism, or that offer their
children to God in that sacred ordinance, that they are persons of a
regular life, and have suitable acquaintance with the principles of the
Christian religion; that that seal be not set to a blank, and that such be
not admitted to visible church relation that are manifestly unfit for it."
Here there is neither a requirement for an account of a conversion experience, nor is
there any mention of a "profession of faith," per se. Insisting that ministers could not
judge the heart, they did not require positive proof of godliness, merely an
understanding of the gospel and a life that was consistent with such an understanding.
In the same way, in 1734, when Gilbert Tennent attempted to require an
examination "into the evidence of the grace of God" in candidates for the Lord's
Supper, the Synod merely exhorted "all the ministers within our bounds to use due care
in examining those they admit to the Lord's Supper," declining to add such a
requirement to the church's admission policy. In effect, Tennent was attempting to
implement a "Halfway Covenant" in colonial Presbyterianism--but with this difference:
rather than loosening requirements as had happened in New England in 1662, this
proposal would have tightened requirements.
In 1749, after the Old Side/New Side split, the Old Side leader John Thomson
authored an exposition of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, explicitly designed to
aid in the catechizing of his far-flung congregations in Virginia and the Carolinas. In
his introduction, he laments "how many visible Professors there are in this Part of the
World, who have been baptized in the Name of the Holy Trinity, and so received as
Members of the Visible Church, who are absolute Strangers, both to the Doctrines of
Christianity, and Practice of serious Piety." His treatment of the questions on the
sacraments reveals his traditional Presbyterian approach to the question of admission to
the sacraments.
First, he insists that baptism is not to be administered to any outside the visible
church until "they profess their Faith in Christ, and Obedience to him." The children
of those baptized persons "who are orderly, and not under Censure" should also be
baptized. For the children whose parents are profane and scandalous, however (or for
the children of non-professing slaves), "it's the common Way in the Church, when the
children of scandalous Persons are admitted to Baptism, some of their Friends, who are
orderly, and willing to engage for their Education are taken for Sponsors."
Second, Thomson declares that all Christians who can examine themselves are
commanded to come to the Lord's Table. "The grossly ignorant and the scandalous or
prophane" must be excluded, but no others. One who has been baptized and has not
been excluded by the minister, should examine himself and come. Lest some
scrupulous person fears that his examination has been incomplete, Thomson asserts:
"Let him but truly and sincerely comply with the Gospel Proposals, and immediately
he is prepared in the Main, and may safely come and seal that Covenant which he hath
consented unto."
But Thomson was a leader of the Old Side. How did the New Side view
admission to the sacraments? Numerous scholars have claimed that the New Side was
strongly influenced by New England--did such an influence reach so far as sacramental
practice? In 1745 the New Side Synod of New York declared that it held to the
Westminster Confession, Catechisms, and Directory just as firmly as they had under
the united Synod. By itself this does not prove much. But in 1755 the New Side
Synod of New York made its first direct statement on admission to the sacraments. In
dealing with an ongoing debate over baptismal practices in the Presbyterian Church of
New York City, the Synod declared:
"That previously to the administration of baptism, the minister shall
inquire into the parents' knowledge of the great and fundamental
doctrines of the gospel, and the regularity of their life; and being satisfied
so as to admit them, shall in public point out the special duties of the
parents, and particularly, that they shall teach their children the doctrines
and precepts of Christianity, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments, and comprised in the WCF and Catechisms: which
therefore he shall recommend to them."
The complaints in New York had been directed against the Scotch-Irish minister who
was accused of being too lax in his baptismal practices. While there may have been
some New Englanders in the congregation who found the Synod's answer too weak,
there is no evidence that any minister in the New Side Synod of New York required a
New England-style profession of faith prior to baptizing a person's children until 1764.
But is this also true respect to admission to the Lord's Supper? Did Gilbert
Tennent succeed in requiring New Side communicants to testify to a work of grace in
their hearts? Perhaps certain ministers did so, but there is no clear evidence that the
Synod required such a step. It appears from the objections of John Blair and Jacob
Green that New Side Presbyterians held that there was one requirement for bringing
your children for baptism, and another for coming to the Lord's Supper. But while
the tendency may have been to fence the Table more strictly, Richard Webster tells the
following story of John Wright, a New Side graduate of Nassau Hall (the College of
New Jersey) from one communion season in 1757:
One B. W. had been three years under temptation.
"Such miserables as I," said he, on Friday, "have no place at the Lord's
table."
"Are you then willing to give up all your part and portion in Christ?"
"No; not for a thousand worlds."
On Sabbath, Wright took him aside, and gave him a token, which he
accepted with great reluctance. In fencing the first table, he saw this
poor object, and, going to him with the bread, he said,
"I cannot take; I feel no faith."
"But don't you want Christ?"
"Yes; but I am not worthy of him."
"Are you not ready?"
"I am lost without him."
"Are you not labouring and heavy laden?"
"I am crushed under the load of sin."
"Then Christ calls you by name to come to him"
He took the bread, and stood up. Being a tall man, he was seen by all,
as, stretching out his hands, with the most affecting countenance, he said,
"Lord Jesus, I am lost without thee. I come trembling. I would fain be a
partaker of thy broken body; for I am undone without thee. Lord Jesus,
have mercy on me!"
So while some New Side Presbyterians were drawn towards a practice that echoed
certain features of the halfway covenant, others appear to have retained the traditional
Presbyterian understanding that Christ called all who were "labouring and heavy laden"
to the Table. The key difference from the Congregational practice is that
Presbyterianism had no strong tradition of the "visible saints" doctrine. Rather,
colonial Presbyterians had inherited from Ulster and southwestern Scotland a tendency
to develop regional communities organized around their presbyteries. Hence they
faced neither the "visible saints" insistence on purity, nor the "holy commonwealth"
notion of inclusiveness. The tradition of Scottish covenanting permitted the Scots and
Scotch-Irish to establish regional communities which proved capable of adapting to
change without substantially disrupting the community. Hence while the tension
between purity and inclusiveness drove wedges all through Congregationalism, it only
created a temporary rift in Presbyterianism.
This also helps to explain why Baptists never took root among the Scots and
Scotch-Irish. Baptists affirmed an extreme version of the Puritan visible saints
criterion, insisting that the church should be composed only of the hopefully converted.
Presbyterians had little interest in starting with visible saints; they gathered all but the
profane and scandalous into the church and through preaching, catechizing, and
communing, sought to transform the community into visible saints. Hence even when
New Side Presbyterians augmented Scottish revival practices with the revival doctrines
and techniques of Whitefield and Edwards, they did not offer any significant
challenges to sacramental admission policy until the 1760s
So it was only in 1764 that Jacob Green finally issued a challenge to the
traditional Presbyterian policy of admitting virtually all children to baptism. In 1766
he published this challenge in a sermon on Christian Baptism. At first he had
followed his mentors, Jonathan Dickinson and Aaron Burr in "admitting to the
sacraments all who seemed desirous of leading a godly life," but now after reading
Watts and Edwards he had decided that only those who could manifest a "relish for
religion" would be permitted to have their children baptized (9). Liberally quoting
from Edwards, Green identified covenant renewal with a profession of faith which
would include renouncing "the flesh, the world and the devil" (7) and professing "that
in which true religion consists"--namely a testimony of a heartfelt desire to be God's
people (17). Green now declared that the unregenerate have no right to the covenant
seals, and while he admitted that he could not know the heart, he insisted that he
would require at least the "outward appearance and credible evidence" of grace before
he would baptize their children or admit them to the Table (15-17). He concluded his
sermon with some admonitions to the congregation urging the greater attention to
discipline, calling on those who were baptized to seek God's blessing by owning the
covenant, relishing religion, and coming to the Table (27-36).
Green went on to develop his views in his 1768 treatise An Inquiry into the
Constitution and Discipline of the Jewish Church. He prefaced his remarks by
juxtaposing two camps: 1) "those that admit only gracious persons" to the sacraments
(identified with Edwards); and 2) "those that admit graceless persons" (identified with
Stoddard). This latter group would grant the sacraments to "men of knowledge,
Orthodoxy, Civility, and Thoughtfulness about Religion, yet having Evidence and fully
believing themselves to be unregenerate" (ii).
Green insisted that to be "properly in the Covenant of Grace is the same as to
be a State of Grace, or truly gracious" (1). The unregenerate may not partake of the
Covenant of Grace at all, but only partake of the external administration of the
Covenant of Grace. He attempts to prove this from the Old Testament, by arguing that
God did not focus on the heart as much in previous administrations of the Covenant of
Grace as he does now (7). Appealing to the examples in the Old Testament where
God refused to accept the sacrifices of the people due to their sin, Green claimed that
there is Old Testament support for his contention that only gracious persons should be
permitted to receive the sacraments. After all, he said, pointing to the Book of Joshua,
the Israelites had neither circumcision nor the Passover while they wandered in the
wilderness (37-43). Since only the regenerate can truly be in the covenant, Green
urged Presbyterians to require at least a "Taste or Relish for Divine Things" in those
who would be admitted to the sacraments (58). Green concluded by asserting that
membership in the visible church consisted of three things for an adult: profession,
life and baptism; but four for an infant: being a child of believing parents, baptism,
and then profession and life when he reached years of understanding. Here he clearly
followed the trend in New England to dissociate church membership from baptism.
Insisting that the church should discipline her youth, he argued that if by age eighteen
or so they neither love Christ nor walk in his ways, churches should "drop them out of
their number" (71).
Faced with resolute opposition from even the New England-born ministers in
the New York Presbytery, Green finally led a four minister secession in 1780,
founding the independent Morris Presbytery on Edwardsean principles. Webster
reports that Green wished to reduce the requirements for ministerial training, and notes
his objections to Scottish Presbyterianism. The dissenting ministers did not wish to
return to Congregationalism, however, as they put it in their letter to the New York
Presbytery, "we consider ourselves, in a Scriptural sense, Presbyterians."
Three years after Green's Christian Baptism, in 1771, John Blair responded with
his Essays on I. The Nature, Uses, and Subjects of the Sacraments of the New
Testament. While not referring to Green's treatise or sermon, he step by step
dismantled Green's arguments, claiming that since there is no promise of salvation
outside the church, all those who want to be saved should be included (12). Blair had
previously established himself as one of the leading Edwardseans in the Presbyterian
church, but had spent the previous two years as the professor of theology at the
College of New Jersey under the new presidency of John Witherspoon. While Allen
Guelzo sees him as a slightly more traditional version of Samuel Hopkins, his
reconsideration of the relationship between the sacraments, the covenant, and the
church, demonstrates that something more was at work.
After briefly showing the connections between the biblical sacraments, from the
Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, through circumcision and Passover, to baptism and
the Lord's Supper, Blair bluntly asserts that baptism alone makes one a church
member: "Membership in the Church of Christ admits not of Degrees" (9). There are
no grounds, he claimed, for distinguishing between the church and the congregation--as
though one were gathered out of the other. Rather, all who are baptized are
commanded by Christ to come to the Table as soon as they have sufficient knowledge
to examine themselves and discern the Lord's body (11).
Rejecting Green's insistence on trying to discern a work of grace, Blair argued
that the "visible church consists of all those, who by an external Profession of the
Doctrines of the Gospel, and subjection to the Laws and Ordinances of Christ, appear
as a Society separate from the World, and dedicated to God and his Service" (13-14).
Agreeing that there is only one covenant of grace, and that the unregenerate only
partake of the external privileges thereof, Blair nonetheless declined to seek to
ascertain who had received such a work of grace.
Instead, Blair trumped Green's claim to be more zealous for discipline. Blair
argued that if we view baptism as the seal of the covenant which truly makes us
members of the visible church, then we should treat all baptized children as fully
obligated to the covenant. Those who do not live according to Christ should be cut off
(20-21). Yet the very means by which Christ has chosen to build faith within his
people is through the sacraments. Baptism and the Supper "exhibit Jesus Christ and
him crucified" and by the Holy Spirit "quicken and raise the Affections, and enliven
every grace" (21). But if we truly believe that baptism brings our infants into the
covenant, then we should believe that infants are "reputed the Professors of it untill
they disavow it" (24).
But Blair went a step further and challenged the very notion of a profession of
faith arguing that requiring a public profession of baptized infants denies their
membership: "Are not the signs which our Lord Jesus Christ has appointed and the
Manner of Covenanting which he has prescribed sufficient, without the Addition of our
own Inventions to supply the Defect?" (26). Those who have been baptized should be
welcomed to the Table as soon as they have sufficient knowledge to examine
themselves. No public profession is necessary.
In response to Green's objection that unregenerate people should not come, Blair
granted that if a man knows for certain that he is unregenerate, then he would indeed
perjure himself by coming to the Table; but Blair claimed that very few people truly
know themselves to be unregenerate. Instead he proposed the case of one who is
hopeful of the grace of God: when he comes to the Table, then he simply obeys
Christ (36). Granting that all ordinances are converting ordinances--though only for
those who are within the covenant--Blair appealed to the continuity of the covenant
administrations of Old and New Testament in such matters (37, 49-51).
In conclusion, Blair attached a short treatise on the nature of regeneration.
Reflecting his Edwardsean connections he defined regeneration as "the Communication
of a Principle of Spiritual Life to the Soul of a Sinner, naturally dead in Trespasses
and Sins, by the Agency of the Holy Spirit" (56) Refusing to get caught up in the
debate over whether it was a moral or natural principle, Blair insisted that it is a
Spiritual principle, because granted by the Holy Spirit. Certainly there is a moral
effect--because it affects both the understanding and the will, but regeneration itself is
a "subjective Light created in the Soul"--an "immediate intuitive sense or knowledge of
the Moral Perfections and Character of God" (60-63). Yet, returning to his main
theme, this regeneration is not accomplished apart from the means of grace; hence we
ought to welcome all who desire salvation into the church (74).
In this argument Blair returns to the Scottish and Scots-Irish practice of viewing
the sacraments as the bonds which hold the community together. But the influence of
New England is evident in two ways: 1) his definition of regeneration, which follows
Edwards closely; 2) his description of the sacraments as converting ordinances, which
echoes the Stoddardean approach. As odd as it may sound, Blair utilized an
Edwardsean understanding of regeneration to undergird his Stoddardean (or more
precisely, Presbyterian) view of the sacraments. When combined with his Ulster
Presbyterian upbringing, it resulted in the reintegration of the visible church as truly a
part of the covenant of grace (something the New Englanders had nearly abandoned),
reinforcing the value of traditional Scottish sacramental practices. And in response, the
injection of an Edwardsean understanding of the necessity of informing the mind rather
than appealing directly to the will only bolstered the traditional Presbyterian emphasis
on catechizing and disciplining their youth within the bounds of the church. The
flexibility of colonial Presbyterianism consisted precisely in their ability to redirect the
impulses first of the Awakening, and then of the New Divinity, harnessing them to a
more communal form of doctrine and polity than existed in New England.
IV. Conclusion: Why the Baptists Never Rose
Why did Baptists fare so well among the English, but not among the Scots or Scotch-
Irish? Le Beau follows Maring and Gaustad in suggesting that the reason why the
Baptists saw little fruit from the Great Awakening among Presbyterians in the Middle
Colonies was because of 1) the "formation of the more flexible and liberal New York
Synod...[which] made possible an expression of New Side sympathies and interests
within Presbyterianism"; 2) the lack of "civil pressure on potential schismatics to join
another denomination, as was the case in New England"; and 3) the closed communion
practices of the Baptists, "something the more tolerant New Side Presbyterians
resented." These suggestions, while perhaps pointing in the right direction, betray a
lack of awareness of the divergent cultural contexts in which the Great Awakening
occurred.
This paper proposes an alternative answer based on three interwoven themes: 1)
the Scots and Scotch-Irish had a deeply ingrained pattern of communal identity which
could withstand all sorts of external and internal pressures. This communal identity
had its sacramental foundation in the doctrine of infant baptism and only faded where
the Presbyterian church was absent for an extended period of time. 2) Presbyterian
polity, which was intimately connected to Scottish communal values, provided a
stronger authority and more stable basis for the community than the congregational
model. Presbyterian polity required the whole community to change and adapt
together. When the revivalists tried to push too hard, a temporary split resulted--but
centrifugal forces pulled the community back together. 3) Finally, Scots and Scotch-
Irish Presbyterians had never developed the "visible saints" criterion that had arisen
among the English Puritans, but had welcomed all who desired salvation into the
church. While both camps may have sounded similar when insisting upon faithful
participation in the Lord's Supper, the actual practice of communion differed
drastically, due to the fundamentally different conceptions of the nature of the visible
church. Hence, when New England sacramental debates arrived in the Middle
Colonies, they found a rich tradition of sacramental doctrine and practice already
present, and were therefore significantly reshaped by their encounter with Presbyterian
community, doctrine, and practice. The ultimate losers in the Middle Colonies were
the Baptists.
Home