much, Thorndike, Jeremy Taylor, Ken. Bull, Barrow and others.

When my subject was given me, there was added to it the Rise of the Baptists, and the Spread of Congregationalism. It does not exactly come within this period, but I will finish my lecture by saying a few words on these points.

First to take the Spread of the Independents. The Independents separated from the Church of England in the reign of Elizabeth, and at that time the term included all Puritans; afterward they were divided into Presbyterians, Baptists, and Independents. The peculiar tenets of the Independents are that every particular congregation of Christians is an independent body, which has within itself the right of electing and deposing its pastors, and of exercising discipline over its members, and that there ought to be no such organized unity among its congregations as may interfere with their perfect independence of each other, but every congregation should have the right to settle its faith, and to arrange all matters of discipline, and be entirely separate and independent of the body of the Church. The first person to put forth these principles was a man of the name of Robert Brown, a man of an arrogant spirit who quarrelled with congregation after congregation, and who soon found that Independency would not suit a man of his tempera

ment, so he returned to the Church of England, and through the influence of Burleigh, a relation of his, was made rector of Thorp, a church in Northamptonshire, in 1590; he died in 1630. While he was not long with his people, yet he managed to affix his name to the sect which was known as the Brownists for a considerable time; but as founder, John Robinson, the head of the Community at Leyden, has a better claim; from this place both the English and American Independents originated. Of the history of the sect here, I need say nothing; you all know it; in England it has grown largely and has become one of the four principal sects.

We now come to the Rise of the Baptists; their distinctive principle is that of not recognizing Infant Baptism, of baptizing adults whether they have been baptized as infants or not, not baptizing them in order to make them the children of God, but as a sign that they have already become so; they separated from the Church on account of their belief that the baptism of infants was not valid, and then they taught that the baptism of adults was not necessary as it was not to be administered until after they had become the children of God. The origin of the Baptists is very obscure; one would probably have to go back to the fanatical rising in Germany under Münzer, so severely put down by the sword in the Peasant

War. We can trace them more clearly .o the Dutch Anabaptists in England, who endeavored to ally themselves with the Mennonite Church in Holland; many of them went back to Holland in James I.'s reign and settled there. The English sect, which really only dates from 1616, spread rapidly after separating from the Independents, and in 1646, there were no less than forty-six congregations in London, and about this time the sect developed here under Roger Williams. About that time, a division took place among them with regard to the doctrine of Predestination; they divided themselves into two parties under the names of General and Particular Baptists, the first of whom adopted Arminian views, the second Calvinistic. People often mistake these names of General and Particular and forget that they refer only to their views of Predestination.

I speak more fully of the Baptists as an ilustration of the marvellous powers of growth of the sect by continual schisms. These two parties were subdivided in 1770; the General Baptists separated into two bodies, the New and Old connection, the New reaffirming the Arminian views, the Old becoming Unitarians. The Particular Baptists, who really represented the sect of seceders from the Brownists in 1633, held Calvinistic views, and they split into two bodies,

called the Strict and Free Communion or Open and Close Communion Baptists. The Open Communion Baptists receive those who have been baptized in infancy; the Close Communion do not unless they are re-baptized as adults. The sect of the Baptists is one of the four largest sects in England, and a wonderful example of growth by schism; they have been split up more than any other sect; there are the Free Will Baptists, the Old School Baptists, the Seventh Day Baptists, the Se-Baptists, the Scottish Baptists, the Six Principle Baptists, the Hard Shell Baptists, the Tunkers, Campbellites, and any number of others.

I cannot conclude my lecture without a word to draw your attention to the causes which led to the great growth of Sectarianism in England on the one hand, and to the utter torpor of the English Church in the Hanoverian period on the other. The cause was simply the rise of those two principles, Erastianism and Latitudinarianism; the latter I need not define; we are too much troubled with it in this country in the pres ent day not to know it thoroughly. Thank God, we are delivered from Erastianism by not having a State Church. Lieber or Erastus, a Physician and Professor of Theology at Heidelberg, writhing under the tyranny of Calvinism, put forth a religious system in which he stated that the spirit

ual part of religion was a matter of individual conscience, while the external organization, such as the nomination and commission of Ministers was entirely a matter for the Civil Government, to settle. The most prominent follower of Erastianism in England was Hobbes, who went so far as to say that the Church had absolutely no authority other than that conferred on it by Act of Parliament or equivalent authority. We may trace the growth of Erastianism very clearly to two things at the accession of William III. One was of course the reaction from the Romanism, tyranny, and cruelty of James, and the other, that when William came to the throne, he found that all the most earnest Clergy, the most prominent Bishops, and learned Theologians looked on him as an intruder, and believed that the true King of England was still living. William himself was a Presbyterian, and while he conformed to some extent to the English Church, he was never formally received into it. He found the only way to govern the English Church was to take men who had no principles like Tillotson, and put them in the places of the Non-jurors. It is almost impossible to estimate the harm done by the Secession of the Non-jurors, while respecting their fidelity to conscience one cannot but regret that they left their Holy Mother the Church in the hands of aliens and enemies, and allowed