A review of The Crisis of British Protestantism: Church Power in the Puritan Revolution, 1638–44 by Hunter Powell (Manchester University Press, 2015).
Church polity, including the question of church power, is a complex subject. Hunter Powell notes that such complexity is largely why this subject of church power “has not been treated thoroughly” (2). But thankfully Powell wrote this book, The Crisis of British Protestantism: Church Power in the Puritan Revolution, 1638–44.
The title is off-putting for most. It did not even interest me, and I only picked the book up at the recommendation of others. Powell’s work is also not always an easy read. But it is a beneficial read. I learned much. This is the kind of work that makes me want to read other books on this subject, including some of the primary sources from the seventeenth century (if I can find the time!). This book review is not intended to be my final thoughts on the subject. Rather, it is an opportunity for me to summarize the book, jot some notes, and organize some thoughts—all of which I hope will be helpful for others as well.
If you’re familiar with the Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms, you’ll note that these documents do not address much related to church polity (i.e., church government). That is in part because there was disagreement among the members of the Westminster Assembly on such matters. Such polity matters were addressed in other documents, particularly the Westminster Directory for Church Government (1647).
Powell’s book shows that among the Reformed in the seventeenth century, there were diverse opinions on polity, particularly the question of church power. While the majority of the Westminster Assembly adopted a form of presbyterian government, we should note that this did not end the polity debates. England rejected presbyterianism in favor of episcopal government, leaving few followers of English presbyterianism in later years. The Scottish flavor of presbyterianism became dominant, including in America due to the large influx of Scots-Irish. English Puritans made congregationalism prominent in New England (and Baptists derived their polity from congregationalism). And some Dutch Reformed in America (namely the CRC and URCNA) adopted a continental Reformed polity similar to congregationalism. Considering America’s history and the landscape today, it is fascinating to study the origin of these debates in the post-Reformation period.
Congregationalists at the Westminster Assembly
Hunter Powell’s The Crisis of British Protestantism focuses on a group known as the “Dissenting Brethren,” who officially dissented to the Westminster Assembly’s only propositions passed on Presbyterian church government. This group of five congregational ministers—Thomas Goodwin, Jeremiah Burroughs, Philip Nye, Sidrach Simpson, and William Bridge—went into exile in Holland in the late 1630s. They are also known as the “Apologists” because they wrote a tract during the Assembly called the Apologeticall Narration (3).
Powell seeks to provide a corrective to some of the oversimplifications of the differences between groups of this period, such as “presbyterians vs. independents” (4). He argues the that “the overuse of a highly selective group of sensational pamphlets has distorted our views of debates within Westminster” (6). Powell refers to the Apologists as “congregationalists” instead of “independents” because the latter term was rejected by the Apologists since it appeared to reject community with other churches, which the Apologists did not do (10). Interestingly, the term “independents” was used in the Westminster Assembly minutes “in reference to the Scottish presbyterian system of church government being ‘independent’—or alongside—of the magistrate” (10).
As we will see, congregationalism is not as different from presbyterianism as many today suppose. Powell goes so far as to say, “The assembly repeatedly recognized that the congregationalists favoured a type of presbyterian church government” (10). Thomas Goodwin even listed his congregational view as a form of presbyterianism (189).
The debates during the Assembly led the different groups to engage their opponents and modify their positions as time went on. The Crisis of British Protestantism explains the details of the politicking on the matter, with the Apologists seeking to delay a vote on church power as long as possible. But eventually the Apologists were forced to register three dissents in 1644. These three dissents were followed by presbyterians responses, making up most of The Grand Debate, which was published in 1648 (233). Eventually the different groups of presbyterians coalesced to form a majority, placing them at odds with the Dissenting Brethren who held to a form of congregationalism (236). You can read the Reasons of the Dissenting Brethren (1645) and the Answer of the Assembly to the Reasons of the Dissenting Brethren online (though it is much easier to read them in modern publication of The Grand Debate).
Different Types of Presbyterians at the Westminster Assembly
Powell refers to three different groups of Presbyterians at the Assembly: (1) clerical English presbyterians, (2) (non-clerical) English presbyterians, and (3) Scottish presbyterians.
By “clerical English presbyterians,” Powell means “that the perceived right to partake in a synod resides not in a principle of representative eldership, but in the teaching office of the minister,” and “all church power could reside in a synod of elders over multiple churches and not in the local church” (10). So basically the clerical English put all church power in the synod of ministers (also known as a “presbytery”). Ministers are ordained as ministers in the “general visible church” (191). Thus, ministers in a synod are pastors over multiple churches in their region and serve various churches (189).
The Smectymnuan divines—an acronym for a group of English presbyterians (Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow)—differed from the clerical presbyterians (12). While the clerical presbyterians held that church power resided in clerics exclusively and as the first subject, this other group of English presbyterians held that the people of the congregation were the first subject of church power but the exercise of that power rested in the elders (173). What this meant is that ministers served particular churches and were not ordained to serve the entire visible church or synod. These English presbyterians held that all church discipline—including admonishing and censures—belongs to the synod (190). (Several of the London divines produced the 1647 work, Jus Divinum Regeminis Ecclesiastici: or, the Divine Right of Church-Government.)
The Scottish presbyterians rejected the views of both of these English groups, as well as the view of the Apologists and Voetius, holding instead to a sort of middle way (173). The Scots sided with the Apologists (congregationalists) in holding that the particular church has primary power (and thus ministers join the presbytery by virtue of their ordination at a particular church), while clerical English presbyterians held that church power belongs to the universal church and is passed down derivatively to the particular church (and thus ministers are ordained into the general visible church) (191). Yet the difference between the (non-clerical) English presbyterians and the Scottish presbyterians was this—while the English held that all church discipline is to be exercised by the synod, the Scots held that most church discipline (admonition and suspension) belongs to the particular church, and only excommunication and ordination belong to the synod (190). (American presbyterians are usually closer to the Scottish view, though placing even the power of the excommunication of members in the individual church and allowing for the right of appeal to the presbytery. The discipline of ministers, however, remains entirely in the power of the presbytery.)
There were also Erastians at the Assembly (such as John Selden, Thomas Coleman, and John Lightfoot), who held that excommunication belonged to the state since they “believed the state was a part of the church system based upon Christological fiat” (106). The state therefore has a share in the power of the keys. This differed from the Scots and the congregationalists, who both separated the power of church and state but still held that the state was to protect and promote Christianity (107). The Assembly rejected Erastianism in 1646.
Contrasting Congregationalism and Presbyterianism
Foundational passages to this debate are Matthew 16:19 and Matthew 18:17-18, two passages concerning church power:
I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. (Matthew 16:19)
If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. (Matthew 18:17-18, NASB 1995)
The Westminster Assembly began the debate with Matthew 16:19 and the power of the keys, but they “quickly realized that there was no settled reformed position regarding to whom church power passed after Peter—whether it was visible saints, elders, presbyteries, synods, national assemblies etc.” (242–243).
The fundamental difference between the Apologists and the presbyterian groups is that the Apologists held that “Matthew 18 meant that all church power was in the particular church” (166). All of the groups of presbyterians at the Westminster Assembly held that the power of excommunication belonged to the synod because all power to bind and loose in Matthew 18:17-18 was committed only to elders. John Cotton and the Apologists thought this passage only referred to a particular church, while presbyterians reasoned there could be recourse to a higher court of elders from several churches (164).
Jeremiah Burroughs wrote a work called Irenicum for the Apologists, in which he outlined six points of agreement between presbyterians and congregationalists on the question of synods, with only one point on which they disagreed. The six points of agreement are as follows (with quotations being those of Burroughs):
Congregations have a duty to give account of their ways to other churches.
Synods “are an ordinance of Jesus Christ for the helping of the Church against errors, schismes, and scandals.”
Synods are to admonish churches with Christ’s authority.
Synods “may declare men or Churches to be subverters of the faith…to shame them before all the Churches about them.”
Synods “may by a solemn act in the name of Jesus Christ refuse any further communion with them, till they repent.”
Synods “may proclaim that errant churches or individuals “are not to be received into fellowship…with any…[other] Churches of Christ.” (165)
However, Burroughs listed one point of difference between the congregationalists and the presbyterians—whether a synod has the power to excommunicate a person or church. Yet this was not a minor difference to Samuel Rutherford, who, in Powell’s words, “stated that the Dissenting Brethren gave much power to a synod, but because they did not give excommunication, they gave nothing” (165).
Burroughs pointed to 1 Corinthians 5 as “the only example” of church discipline, particularly excommunication, and thus it “answers Matthew 18.” The power of excommunication therefore belongs to the particular church (192). While the Scottish presbyterians agreed with the Apologists that the particular church has power from Matthew 18, they denied that this prevented the synod from having jurisdiction over several churches (202).
In his congregational view, Thomas Goodwin understood synods to be meetings of elders from several churches convened in cases of schisms and contentions (either cases or doctrinal disputes) where the elders of a particular church seek the assistance from other churches (189).
The (Congregational) Polity of Voetius and Some Dutch Reformed
Where this issue gets even more interesting is that many of the continental Reformed, including the Dutch theologian Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) agreed with the congregational Apologists at the Westminster Assembly. Voetius not only endorsed the Keyes of the Kingdom, by New England congregationalist John Cotton, but Voetius even “uncritically co-opted” much of its “structure” into his Politicae Ecclesiasticae (160). The first volume of this work of Voetius was primarily about a particular church’s power and rights and then about its relationship to other churches. Powell notes that “Voetius rejected the presbyterian arguments that the particular church was a derivative of the Universal church.” Voetius agreed with the Apologists “that the first subject of church power was the whole particular church made up of both elders and the people” (161). In fact, Voetius, along with Scottish presbyterian George Gillespie, considered “the polity espoused by [Lazarus] Seaman and Cornelius Burgess” (i.e., English clerical presbyterianism) to be “outside the reformed tradition because of its failure to see the particular church as having necessary powers of jurisdiction” (247).
Voetius “denied that synods could have the highest power, namely the power to bind and loose” (i.e., excommunication), but he also gave great power to synods, such that “he came to believe that a church could not excommunicate or call a minister without the advisory involvement of a synod” (169). Thus, while the excommunication of a minister does not begin in the synod, it cannot happen apart from the consent of the synod. As shown below, this is the position of the CRC and URCNA today.
When it came to a church members, “Voetius denied that the synod had any right to excommunicate a church or individuals from a church.” Powell adds, “Any synod could only act insofar as the church, as a covenanted body of visible saints, was willing to consociate with other churches and allow for a synod to advise. This was not a jure divino presbyterian polity” (169).
So we see that the Apologists (congregationalists) at the Westminster Assembly held a similar polity to the continental Reformed churches, especially that the influential Voetius. As Powell says, “the Apologists[’] fully developed congregational polity was closer to the continental Reformed churches than the strain of clerical English presbyterianism that was beginning to exert its influence at Westminster” (242).
American Dutch Reformed Polity (the CRC and URCNA)
Interestingly, the Reformed Church in America (RCA) gave the classis (presbytery) “exclusive jurisdiction” regarding the discipline of a minister. (See RCA Book of Church Order, 2.I.3 Sec. 4, p. 78.) (I have not yet found a resource comparing the RCA’s practice to older continental Dutch Reformed views.) However, when the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) seceded from the RCA in 1857, it adopted a more congregational form of polity, particularly in where it places the power of the discipline of a minister. This legacy is seen in the United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA), which broke off from the CRC in 1995 (though the URCNA also shifted explicitly to a “federation” model).
In the CRC and URCNA, the discipline of all church officers must begin in the local church. This stands in contrast to presbyterianism, in which the discipline of ministers (or teaching elders) begins in the presbytery. In the Christian Reformed Church Order (1914), Article 79 on “Disciplining of Office Bearers” stated:
When ministers of the divine Word, elders or deacons, have committed any public, gross sin, which is a disgrace to the Church, or worthy of punishment by the authorities, the elders and deacons shall immediately by preceding sentence to the Consistory [similar to a session] thereof and of the nearest church, be suspended or expelled from their office, but the ministers shall only be suspended. Whether these shall be entirely deposed from office, shall be subject to the judgment of the Classis [similar to a presbytery], with the advice of the delegates of the (Particular) Synod mentioned in Article 11. (J. L. Schaver, The Polity of the Churches [Grand Rapids International Publications, 1956], 2:55)
So we see that in the CRC, the power to excommunicate elders and deacons belonged to the consistory of a particular church. However, the power to suspend ministers belonged to the consistory of a particular church, while the power to depose ministers required the consent of the synod. Church discipline of officers had to start in the individual church, but there was a special protection of ministers—requiring other churches to agree that the church was in the right to depose a minister. It seems this was a protection granted by the churches to the synod for the protection and good of ministers.
Similarly, the URCNA’s Article 61 on “The Suspension and Deposition of an Office-Bearer” states:
When a minister, elder, or deacon has committed a public or gross sin, or refuses to heed the admonitions of the Consistory, he shall be suspended from his office by his own Consistory with the concurring advice of two neighboring Consistories. Should he harden himself in his sin, or when the sin committed is of such a nature that he cannot continue in office, he shall be deposed by his Consistory with the concurring advice of classis.
So the URCNA practice is that all discipline of all church officers, including a minister, begins with the consistory and requires the consent (“concurring advice”) of two other consistories. So the URCNA added two protections. First, while the CRC allowed the particular church to suspend ministers without consent of other consistories, the URCNA requires the consent of other consistories even to suspend a minister. Second, the URCNA also added the requirement for the consent of two other consistories to suspend or depose any officer, even elders and deacons. (In both the CRC and URCNA, it seems that after a minister is deposed by the classis, the power to excommunicate the deposed man, now only a member, is left to the individual church.)
This practice of the Dutch Reformed has the downside that a particular church can protect its minister against legitimate theological or moral concern from other churches and ministers. Yet this practice has the upside that a particular church can protect its minister against illegitimate concern and harassment from other churches and ministers.
Notably, the URCNA calls itself a “federation of churches.” So this Dutch Reformed model is not strictly presbyterian but rather congregational—though it is not “independent” since it still affirms the importance of church associations and federations. The same was true of New England congregationalism, with things such as the Saybrook Platform (1708). Yet we should note that this Dutch Reformed model is still a “Reformed” polity. It was held by continental Reformed theologians such as Voetius and Westminster divines such as Burroughs and Goodwin, and it is practiced today by the URCNA—a member of NAPARC, the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council.
Divine Right Presbyterianism?
This raises the question of “divine right” Presbyterianism (jure divino or jus divinum). Many American Presbyterians, including James Henley Thornwell (1812–1862) and Thomas Ephraim Peck (1822–1893), followed the Westminster presbyterians, especially the Scots, in holding that their system of church government is required by Scripture, hence by “divine right.”
As Peck argued in Notes on Ecclesiology, “Presbyterianism is distinguished by a government in representative assemblies, and may therefore be called a republic or representative commonwealth.” While presbyterians agree with the congregationalists that rule is a “joint” power (contra the prelatists), they put the power in assembled presbyteries of “chosen representatives,” not in the “people en masse” (contra the congregationalists). In support of this conclusion, Peck argued that “there was a plurality of elders or bishops in every church in the times of the apostles” (based on Acts 11:30; 14:23; 15:2, 4, 6, 22; 16:4; 20:17; 1 Tim. 5:17; Phil. 1:1; Titus 1:5; 1 Pet. 5:1). And then he sought to show that “these elders in each church constituted a parliament or court for the government of said church, or in other words, that they ruled jointly and not severally.” Peck appealed to the necessity of agreement or a majority vote of the plurality of elders, as well as the biblical teaching that the presbytery (Greek presbyterion) is “a college of elders, or a senate, implying an organized body, a corporate unit, of which the elements are presbyters” (based on 1 Tim. 4:14; Acts 22:5; Luke 22:66). (See Thomas E. Peck, Notes on Ecclesiology [1892], 178–181.)
The divine right argument, as put forth by Peck, holds that Scripture requires a form of presbyterian polity. Some of the Reformed obviously reject this argument, including Voetius, congregationalists, and the URCNA. The fact that there were five different views of church power at the Westminster Assembly suggests the biblical revelation on this question is not explicit, which is an argument against divine right presbyterianism. (However, readers can examine Peck and the older presbyterian works to consider their exegetical and theological arguments.)
I suppose that many who adhere to presbyterianism today would say that church government is more of a prudential matter. The Westminster Confession states, “there are some circumstances concerning the…government of the church…which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence” (WCF 1.7). Divine right presbyterians would limit such “circumstances” to minor matters, while those rejecting divine right presbyterianism might even include under prudence the larger question of whether the power to discipline a minister belongs to a presbytery (synod) or a session (consistory). The fact is that disagreement among the Reformed on the question of church power has remained since the days of the Westminster divines.