Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 70:1 (NA 2019)
Article: Congregational Membership, Church Purity, And Presbyterian And Congregationalist Polemics During The Puritan Revolution
Author: Youngkwon Chung

TynBull 70:1 (2019) p. 117

Congregational Membership,
Church Purity, And Presbyterian And Congregationalist Polemics During The Puritan Revolution

Youngkwon Chung

([email protected])

Summary

During the revolutionary decade of the 1640s, intra-Puritan conflict over ecclesiology, or the theological issue of church government, dominated the ecclesiastical landscape of England. Owing to the leading Puritans’ lack of support for complete separatism as an ecclesiological alternative, the conflict pitted mainly the Presbyterians against the Congregationalists. This divergence of opinion over ecclesiastical system of governance has fascinated historians. Yet what this article finds is that, somewhat surprisingly, church purity, which was an issue closely linked to church system of governance and emerged as another highly contested theme vis-à-vis ecclesiology among contemporary polemicists, has not received the attention it deserves. Both Presbyterian and Congregationalist polemicists discoursed at length about the imperative of setting up pure churches, safeguarding the purity of churches from spiritual contamination, and maintaining the religious integrity of both its members and divine ordinances; yet, in many important ways, they differed over the precise means and mechanisms to achieve such a state of purity and integrity for the life of the church. It is hoped that a detailed examination of this theme of church purity as discoursed and debated by the Presbyterians and Congregationalists will add fresh perspectives on earlier works on religious conflict amongst the Puritans as it unfolded over the course of the revolutionary decade of the 1640s as well as the subsequent decade.

TynBull 70:1 (2019) p. 118

1. Introduction

Church government emerged as an explosive issue in England from the early years of the revolutionary decade of the 1640s. In a tract issued in 1641, the Presbyterian minister Thomas Edwards observed that ‘the Great and Present Controversie of these Times is about the Church, and Church Government’. Edwards repeated the observation a little later in the tract – ‘Now in our dayes in this Kingdome, the chiefe question is about the Church and the discipline of the Church’– and commented that the ‘Controversie may fitly be tearmed the Disciplinary Controversie’.1 In 1640 to 1642, the storm surrounding ecclesiastical polity involved primarily the issue of reformation of the established Church of England. Whilst some wanted to turn back the clock to the days of the later sixteenth century and Elizabeth I and merely rid the church of the ‘popish’ accretions built up especially over the course of the reign of Charles I from 1625 to 1640, others wanted a ...