superior assemblies, according to Acts xv. 4, 6. The lowest of their assemblies, or presbyteries, consists of the ministers and elders of a congregation, who have power to cite before them any member, and to admonish, instruct, rebuke, and suspend him from the Lord's table. They have also a deacon, whose office it is to take care of the poor. Their ordination is by prayer, fasting, and imposition of hands by the presbytery. The Presbyterians differ from the Independents in this respect the government of the former is aristocratical, that of the latter democratical. This is now the discipline of the church of Scotland. See Part the Second. * PRIMINISTS, a party of Donatists; so called from Primianus, who became the head of their denomination. See Donatists. They held that the visible universe was not the production of the supreme Deity, but of some demon, or malignant principle; adopted the doctrine of aions, or emanations from the divine nature; considered human bodies as prisons, formed by the author of evil, to enslave celestial minds; condemned marriage, and disbelieved the resurrection of the body.-This denomination received all the books of scripture.† PROCLIANITES, so called from Proculus, a philosopher of Phrygia, who appeared in 194, and put himself at the head of a band of Montanists, in order to spread the sentiments of that denomination; to which he added, that St. Paul was not the author of the epistle to the Hebrews. The doctrine which his followers maintained with the greatest warmth was, that Jesus Christ assumed nature only in appearance.‡ See Montanists and Valentinians. our PRISCILLIANISTS, a denomination which arose in the fourth century; so called from their leader, Priscillian, a Spaniard by birth, and bishop of Avila. He is said to have practised magic, and to have maintained the principal tenets of the Manicheans. His followers denied the reality of Christ's birth and incarnation. the fifth and the Diet of PROTESTANTS, a name first given in Germany to those who adhered to the doctrine of Luther; because, in 1529, they protested against a decree of the emperor Charles *Collier's Historical Dictionary vol. ii. Barclay's Dictionary. Mosheim, vol, i. p. 349. Priestley's Eccles. Hist. vol, ü. p. 411. Broughton, vol. ii, p. 285, * Spires, declaring that they appealed to a general council. The same name has also been given to the Calvinists, and is now become a common denomination for a variety of sects which differ from the church of Rome. See Lutherans, Calvinists, Arminians, &c. PSATYRIANS, a denomination of the Arians, in the council of Arians, held in the year 360, who maintained that the Son was not like the Father in will; that he was made of nothing; and that in God generation was not to be distinguished from creation. See Arians. PTOLEMATTES, a branch of the Valentinians in the second century; so called from Ptolemy, their leader, who held that the law of Moses came part from God, part from Moses, and part from the traditions of the doctors.§ . PURITANS, [a name given to a religious party who, desirous of a purer form of worship and discipline, were dissatisfied with the reformation established in England under the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It seems to have been a common name given to all who from conscientious motives, though on different grounds, disapproved of the established religion, from the reformation to the restoration of Charles the second, or rather to the passing of the act of uniformity in 1662. From that time to the revolution in 1688, as many as refused to comply with the established worship (among whom were about twothousand clergymen, and perhaps four or five hundred thousand people) were denominated Nonconformists. From the passing of the act of toleration on the accession of William & Mary, the name of Nonconformists was changed to that of Protestant Dissenters; and who were distinguished into three deno.minations; namely Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists. The greater part of the Puritans were favourers of the church-government and worship established at Geneva; that is to say, of Presbyterianism. Their objections to the English establishment lie principally in forms and ceremonies. Some, however, were Independents, and some Baptists. The objections of these were much more fundamental; disapproving of all national churches, and disowning the authority of human legislation This diet was held at Spires, March 15, 1529. They decreed to prohibit any farther innovations in religion, + Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, vol iii. pp. 2578, 2579. Robertson's History of Charles the fifth, vol. ii, p. 249, 250. History of Religion, vol. iv. Bailey's Dictionary, yol. ii. in matters of faith and worship. The severe persecutions car ried on against the puritans during the reigns of Elizabeth and the Stuarts, served to lay the foundation of a new empire in the western world. Thither, as into a wilderness, they fled from the face of their persecutors; and, being protected in the free exercise of their religion, continued to increase, till in about a century and a half, they became an independent nation. The different principles, however, on which they had originally divided from the church establishment at home, operated in a way that might have been expected, when they came to the possession of the civil power abroad. Those who formed the colony of Massachusetts Bay, having never relinquished the principle of a national church, and of the power of the civil magistrate in matters of faith and worship, were less tolerant than those who settled at New Plymouth, and at Rhode Island, and Providence Plantations. The very men (and they were men of God too) who had just escaped the persecutions of the English prelates, now, in their turn, persecuted others who dissented from them, til at length the liberal system of toleration established in the parent country at the revolu tion, extending to the colonies, in a good measure put an end to these unlovely proceedings. Neither the puritans, before the passing of the Bartholomew act in 1662, nor the nonconformists after it, appear to have disapproved of the articles of the established church in matters of doctrine. The number of them who did so, however, was very small. While the great body of the bishops and clergy had, from the days of Archbishop Laud, abandoned their own articles in favour of Arminianism, they were attached to the principles of the first reformers; and by their labours and sufferings the spirit of the reformation was kept alive in the land. But after the revolution one part of the protestant dissenters, chiefly Presbyterians, first veered towards Arminianism, then revived the Arian controversy, and by degrees. many of them settled in Socinianism. At the same time another part of them, chiefly Independents and Baptists, earnestly contending for the doctrines of grace, and conceiving as it would seem, that the danger of erring lay entirely on one side, first veered towards high Calvinism, then forbore to exhort the unregenerate to repent, believe, or do any thing spiritually good; and by degrees many of them settled in gross Antinomianism. Such are the principles which have found place amongst the descendents of the puritans. At the same time, however, there have been some (and a goodly number too) of each of the three denominations, who have adhered both to the doctrine and spirit of their forefathers. While relying for salvation on the free grace of the Father, the atonement of the Son, and the tifying influences of the holy Spirit, they have proved the efficacy of their principles by their concern to be holy in all manner of conversation. sanc The Arian controversy, which in the early part of the last century was agitated amongst the dissenters, is supposed to have been not a little injurious to the prevalence of vital religion in that body. Complaints were soon after heard of the decline of the dissenting interest. About this time they were provoked to jealousy by several eminent men being raised up in the established church; who, preaching the same doctrines which had been taught by the puritans and nonconformists, and which their descendants seem ed disposed to lay aside as obsolete, became not a little popular among the serious part of dissenters themselves. This was the more extraordinary, as the community to which they still adhered had for some time been growing more and more corrupt, and was in a manner given up, as a kind of Nazareth, from which no good thing could come. This description of men, however, have gone on to increase, together with a new denomination of semi-dissenters, which have arisen in a measure from their labours, so as to occasion in reality a new distinction in the dissenting body. Those who continue to treat the doctrine of the puritans and nonconformists with neglect, have still to complain of the decline of the dissenting interest: but those who believe and preach those doctrines, and rejoice in their progress, whether as taught in the establishment or out of it, have in general but very few such complaints to make. It is remarkable, that while a certain description of dissen ters are enquiring the reasons why the dissenting interest declines, a certain description of clergymen are enquiring the reasons why it increases ?* * Neal's History of the Puritans. De Laune's Plea for the Nonconformists. Palmer's Nonconformists' Memorial. Backus's History of the New England Baptists, vol. i.] QUAKERS. See Friends. QUARTODECIMANI, a denomination in the second century; so called because they maintained that the festival of easter was always to be celebrated, conformably to the custom of the jews, on the fourteenth day of the moon of March, whatever day of the month that happened to be.* QUIETISTS, the followers of Michael de Molinus, a Spanish priest who flourished in the seventeenth century. They were so called from a kind of absolute rest and inaction, which the soul is supposed to be in when arrived at that state of perfection which they call the unitive life.t The principles maintained by this denomination are as follow That the whole of religion consists in the present calm and tranquillity of a mind removed from all external and finite things and centered in God, and in such a pure love of the supreme Being as is independent on all prospect of interest or reward. For, say they, the primitive disciples of Christ were all of them inward and spiritual; and when Jesus Christ said to them, It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you, he intended thereby to draw them off from that which was sensible though very holy, and to prepare their hearts to receive the fulness of the holy Spirit, which he looked upon as the one thing necessary. To prove that our love to the Deity must be disinterested, they allege that the Lord hath made all things for himself, as saith the scripture; and it is for his glory that he wills our happiness. Our happiness is only a subordinate end which he has made relative to the last and great end, which is his glory. To conform therefore to the great end of our creation, we must prefer God to ourselves, and *Broughton, vol. ii. p. 307. Lady Guion, a woman of fashion in France, who was born in 1648, was a warm advocate of those principles. She asserted that the means of arriving at this perfect love, are prayer and the self-denial enjoined in the gospel. Prayer she defines to be neither a sweet sensation, nor the charm of an inflamed imagination, nor an abstracted speculative reasoning, but the entire bent of the soul towards its divine origin. Fenelon, the amiable archbishop of Cambray, favoured the sentiments of this lady in a publication, entitled, "The Maxims of the Saints," The distinguishing tenet in his theology was the doctrine of the disinterested love of God for his own excellencies, independent of his relative benevolence: an important feature also in the theological system of Madam Guion, and the Mystics See Life of Lady Guion, in two volumes, octavo: also Life of Fenelon, by the Chevalier Ramsay. |