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scarcely less difficult to bear. The Dutch government, acting upon their long established and politic principles of religious toleration, received the exiles with a measure of kindness; and allowed them to erect churches in the principal cities of the states. But the ecclesiastical powers were less friendly. They looked with an evil eye upon these conscientious refugees. Their system of church government was, doubtless, too liberal and democratic in its character for the ecclesiastics of Holland even. By these, the strangers were at first treated with little kindness. The learned and excellent Ainsworth complained, that his brethren and himself "were loaded with reproaches, despised, and afflicted by all; and almost consumed with deep poverty."* And, as an illustration of this, we are told that Ainsworth himself, one of the most profound scholars of his day, was at one time obliged to subsist on "nine pence a week, and some boiled roots." And for this pittance, even, he seems to have been reduced to the necessity of hiring himself as a porter to a bookseller. And yet, this man was capable of writing a commentary on the Pentateuch, which all the improvements of modern scholarship have scarcely superseded.

The explanation of all this, is found in the fact, that the Separatists had been slandered, persecuted, imprisoned, starved, and hanged in England, as enemies to the civil ast well as ecclesiastical government of the kingdom. And, not content with persecuting them out of the country, their enemies had followed them with their slanders into Holland; representing them as a discontented, factious, fanatical people, alike dangerous to state and church.

* Preface to his Treatises, quoted by Toumlin, in Neal's Pur. Vol. II. p. 69.

In addition to this; the dissensions of Browne's church at Middleburgh, some years previous, with whom the exiles were everywhere confounded,-greatly added to the prejudices imported from England.

To counteract these slanderous reports, and to justify their claim to the confidence of the Hollanders, the church at Amsterdam published in 1598,* "the Confession of Faith of certain English people, living in the Low Countries, exiled." In this work they explain the state of things in the church of England, which had forced them into a Separation; avouch their allegiance to the civil authority; and define their doctrine and discipline. In this Confession, drawn up probably by Ainsworth and Johnson, the same general principles of church order and discipline are professed as those contained in Clyfton's Confession, already noticed, and inserted in the Appendix. The same, for substance, which every Congregational church now embraces. Every article is supported by a host of Scripture references.†

To add to their sufferings, dissensions at length arose in the church itself; the first occasion of which seems to have been a trifling one-the marriage of their pastor, with a wealthy and somewhat fashionable widow; but, it verified the observation of the apostle," How great a matter a little fire kindleth." It resulted in slander and abuse, and excommunications; which came nigh tearing the very church in pieces: to the extravagant joy of their adversaries, and the great grief of such as loved the cause of truth. The remark of John Robinson on the occasion,-himself

*This seems to have been republished in 1602.

+ Four of these articles, taken at random, containing about forty lines of matter, are supported by about twenty lines of references, in figures.

not personally concerned in the quarrel-deserves to be repeated: "It is to us," said this good man, “just cause of humiliation all the days of our lives, that we have given and do give, by our differences, such advantages to them which seek occasion against us to blaspheme the Truth; though this may be a just judgment of God upon others which seek offences, that seeking they may find them to the hardening of their hearts in evil. But let men turn their eyes which way soever they will, they shall see the same scandals. Look to the first and best churches planted by the apostles themselves, and behold dissensions, scandal, strife, biting one of another."*

The retort of Ainsworth, upon such as made merchandize of the sins of this people, is characteristic of the man : "How pregnant your persuasions are, to make us believe that because there are sins in Sion, there be none in Babylon !"+

Differences afterwards arose upon the subject of church power, which were of a more serious character. An explanation of this controversy will come more appropriately in a succeeding chapter.

It must be satisfactory to every good man to know, that after a few years, their dissensions were all hushed, and peace and harmony restored; and that this oldest of the churches of the Separation lived and flourished in the land to which it had been transplanted, for more than one hundred years.

Another source of suffering to this poor church, was opened by the slanders and falsehoods of false brethren, brought in unawares; who apostatized, and made their peace with the English prelates by maligning their former

*Robinson's Justification of Separation, p .55, in Hanbury, p. 99. + Counterpoison, p. 51, quoted as above.

friends. To one of this sort, Thomas White, the indefatigable Francis Johnson replied: "Let himself remember his own saying heretofore, if he will regard no others, 'That a man that hath run away from his master, will seldom give him a good report.'

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And, as if all these things were not enough, some of the Dutch divines were not unwilling to lay new burdens upon the poor exiles. Francis Junius, divinity reader at Leyden, entered the lists against them: but certainly had no occasion to be proud of his encounter with the despised Separatists.t

Another enemy with whom this church were obliged to contend, on their first going to Amsterdam, was the celebrated Arminius, then pastor of a church in that city.

The reader need not be told that these various opponents must have furnished abundant employment for the ready writers of the Separation. Indeed, their life in Holland was an almost incessant conflict with opponents. They had the prejudices of the Dutch to soften; which they attempted by publishing their confessions, etc.; which must have cost them a great deal of labor. They had the Libels of such men as the apostate White, and Lawne, and Fairlambe, to answer; which, though not a difficult, was yet a

* It is a valuable, though an undesigned testimony, which one of these apostates, Christopher Lawne, gives to the general steadfastness of the Separatists, when he says: I am not without hope *** that some shall thereby [i, e. by reading his description of the Brownists] be stayed from undertaking that hard and dangerous voyage of Separation,' from which so FEW HAVE EVER RETURNED TO COMMUNION WITH THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST"-i. e. to the same Popish congregations of the English Church.-Hanbury, p. 100.

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† See a particular account of the controversy between Junius and the church at Amsterdam, in Hanbury's 8th Chapter.

vexatious task. The Puritans set on their champions; as Jacob, and the supercilious and self-important Broughton; and their writings required labored replies.

The prelates, through their caustic and "pragmatical" advocate, Hall, attacked them; and furnished work for their ablest writers; and Smyth, one of their former ministers, becoming an Arminian-Baptist, drew them into that controversy. These several opponents, and occasions for controversy-not to name others-made the lives of the Separatists but little less tolerable in Holland than they had been in the prisons of England. Nevertheless, they stood erect; and contended manfully for what they believed to be the truth as it is in Christ. And he who reads with care their various controversial treatises, will not fail to learn, that the leaders of the Separation, the fathers of English Congregationalism, were men of deep learning, great acuteness, and profound acquaintance with the Word of God, in its original, as well as in its English dress. They wrote like men who understood what they said, and whereof they affirmed. They were men who could "render a reason” for their faith and practice, and were to be feared rather than despised by an opponent. And he who has been accustomed to look upon the fathers of our denomination as well meaning, but weak fanatics, will find to his surprise, on examination, that their various writings abound with the marks of strong intellects, and of mature scholarship; and that, on many subjects, they have left but little to be said by their modern followers. Some of these men will be found handling the Greek, the Hebrew, and Syriac with perfect freedom; and nothing will strike the reader more forcibly, than the almost perfect acquaintance which they all manifest with every part of the Bible; and the frequency and aptness of their Scriptural quotations.

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