Beyond the Half-Way Covenant

Solomon Stoddard's Understanding of the Lord's Supper as a Converting Ordinance

McDowell

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781498271172
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Almost everyone has heard of Jonathan Edwards, but very few are familiar with Solomon Stoddard, Edwards's grandfather. Stoddard was an influential force in New England Puritanism, often referred to as the Pope of the Connecticut Valley of western Massachusetts. He was a powerful preacher who saw five (possibly six) revivals during his fifty-eight-year pastorate in Northampton. Yet, he has often been marginalized because of his very unique view of the Lord's Supper as a converting ordinance. This book explores Stoddard's view of Communion as compared to the changing face of Puritanism reflected in the Half-Way Covenant, and in the context of his passionate desire to convert the sinner by any means at his disposal. He believed that God was so gracious and sovereign that no one could judge whether a person was elect or not. Consequently, he crafted an evangelical theology based upon the preaching of the gospel and viewed the Lord's Supper as another form of preaching for the conversion of sinners.

1

What Did It Mean to Be a Puritan?

No one can really appreciate the ethos of Anglicanism without a recognition of how much it derives from nature, nor the character of Puritanism apart from a realization of its dependence upon divine grace and revelation.1

While Anglicans may debate the accuracy of this quote, those whose heritage flows back to English Calvinism would never for a moment doubt its truth. John F. H. New contends that the Anglican system was based upon “the unimpaired power of human reason,”2 which is so evident in the works of Richard Hooker (1554–1600) as well as in Anglican discipline and church order.

On the other hand, the Puritans believed that human reason untouched by grace and unenlightened by revelation was a manifestation of fallen human nature. Thus the mind had to be shaped by the Reformation principle sola scriptura, and from this fountainhead flowed the Puritan understanding of life, as well as church order and discipline. “The Puritans were above all else the people of the Book and what united all Puritans was their belief in the Bible as the sole authority.”3

The Puritans wanted to reform the Anglican Church based upon the New Testament pattern of the primitive church and mediated by what they considered the classic Protestant position, which differed among the various groups of Puritans. The Elizabethan Settlement (1558–1603)4 disappointed those who were committed to the principles of the Reformation. They “could not content themselves with a reformation that reformed so little. Elizabeth to their dismay did not reform the church but only swept the rubbish behind the door.”5

The Thomas Cartwright lectures of 1570 argued that implementing this pattern of reform could only be accomplished by abolishing ecclesiastical hierarchy and replacing it with a system of discipline (akin to Presbyterianism modeled after Calvin in Geneva) designed to bring the visible church more in line with the invisible church as a gathering of “visible saints.” Although Cartwright’s views6 got him expelled from his professorship at Cambridge, and in spite of Edmund Morgan’s critique that the first Reformers “were blind to the sin of their own complacency,”7 this concept that the visible church must accurately reflect the Christian character and profession of its members became the driving force behind Puritan ecclesiology.

Striving for the Puritan ideal took place both within and outside the Church of England. From the 1570s to the middle of the 1590s there was an extensive Puritan movement within the church, and men such as John Field and Thomas Wilcox led a Presbyterian-like system complete with synods and assemblies—all within the established church. These assemblies met for fellowship and preaching that encouraged a more purified form of the Christian faith—a church within the church.8 While this movement declined with Field’s death in 1588, the Puritan movement within the church continued beyond the death of Elizabeth and on into the reigns of James I (1603–1625) and Charles I (1625–1649) and the days of the Long Parliament.

An excerpt from Larzer Ziff illustrates how some Puritan congregations actually existed within an Anglican structure. John Cotton formed a congregation of the “redeemed” within his Anglican parish church in England. In 1617, the Bishop (who had suspended and then reinstated Cotton for his Puritan practices) appointed Edward Wright as the chaplain of the parish in order to preside over the elements of the service containing ceremonies to which the Puritans objected. The following is the description of what must have occurred in the church each Sunday. Ziff writes: “An interesting shuffle took place on a Sunday on the steps of St. Botolph’s as the Puritan members waited until the Apostle’s Creed, at which their orthodox fellow members would stand, was completed under the direction of Chaplain Wright and then filed in to hear Cotton’s sermon while the Anglicans passed on their way out.”9

It was during the decade of the 1630s that the Great Puritan Migration to America took place. These nonconforming but nonseparating Puritans founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Salem, and subsequent migrations established settlements in Dorchester, Watertown, Charlestown, Roxbury, and Saugus as well as a central settlement in Boston.

Alongside this Puritan (and more Presbyterian) movement within the Church of England, there developed a separatist movement of Puritans who were also Calvinistic, but who did not believe that the established church was the true church. The leaders of this movement were such men as Robert Browne (1550?–1633) and Robert Harrison (154?–1585?). Browne became the more radical dissident in his separatist views, even attacking the writings of Thomas Cartwright. Browne’s major tracts were A Book Which Sheweth the Life and Manners of All True Christians (1582); A Treatise upon 23 of Matthewe; and Treatise of Reformation without Tarrying for Anie (1582, published in Holland). Browne has been an easy target for criticism due to his numerous inconsistencies: for being too radical in his separatist views; for flirting with Anabaptism; and for reconciling with the Church of England to regain some of his personal freedoms as well as employment. However, all of this did not hinder his influence or the spread of his views on Congregationalism and theology. His writings were major contributions in the early development of religious dissent and were the beginnings of the English Separatist movement during the later reign of Elizabeth I. “The term Brownists was a common designation for early Separatists before 1620. Brownists, Independents, and Separatists were all used somewhat interchangeably for those nonconformists who broke with the Church of England.”10

These Separatists held to a Congregational polity which rejected any idea of a national church, although associations of churches were acceptable to them. They believed that the church was a people called out of the world by the Gospel, bound together in a voluntary covenant, with membership composed of those who professed faith in Jesus Christ and desired to live a life worthy of Him.

The Separatists kept alive the Puritan idea of the church in those years following the demise of the Presbyterian movement in the 1590s. And their stand quickened the consciences of the non-separating Puritans as they implemented in practice what Puritan doctrine demanded in theory. The movement grew, attracting men of considerable ability such as Henry Ainsworth and John Robinson, whose congregation finally settled at Leyden in Holland in 1609 and later provided the Pilgrim Fathers who in 1620 founded the first permanent settlement in New England at New Plymouth.11

Once in New England, the Puritans, both non-Separatists and the Pilgrim Separatists, became inextricably connected. Larzer Ziff claims that when John Endicot, leader of the settlement at Salem, “brooded about the practical details of just how such a reformed body could be gathered—he consulted the avowed Separatists at Plymouth and copied their procedure on every essential.”12

On the other hand, historical evidence also exists that demonstrates the influence was greater in the other direction.13 In either case, both Puritan movements recognized that separation from the Church of England had occurred and that even the “Great Migration” of the non-Separatists had also become a great separation. Both Pilgrims and Puritans established churches that were ordered according to the Congregational pattern owing to the writings of William Ames,14 Robert Parker, and others.

There was, however, one distinction between Puritans and Pilgrims, which should not be overlooked. This distinction had to do with the requirements for church membership. It was the practice of the Pilgrim Separatists to allow professing Christians of upright moral character to enter their membership without testifying to any experience of regenerating grace. However, the non-separating Puritans required as a condition of membership that a person not only owned the covenant of grace through a profession of faith in Jesus Christ, but could also give testimony to the experience of saving grace. This underscored the distinction made by Augustine and Calvin between covenant grace (visible church) and saving grace (invisible church).

It was John Cotton more than anyone else in Puritan New England who made the examination of one’s regenerative experience a prerequisite ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What Did It Mean to Be a Puritan?
• Chapter 2: The Half-Way Covenant
• Chapter 3: Northampton and the Half-Way Covenant
• Chapter 4: Stoddardism: Beyond the Half-Way Covenant
• Chapter 5: The Influence of Solomon Stoddard
• Afterword
• Appendix
• Bibliography