724 INDEPENDENTS inferred that as the apostles had proceeded they ought to proceed, that the methods proper to the apostolic age were also the methods proper to their own. These methods were individual, not national; churches were founded, religion created and reformed, not by civil authorities or agencies, but by preachers who persuaded men to believe, gathered the believers into communities or brotherhoods, each standing in a fraternal relation to all the rest, none occupying a position of political superiority or dependence. The early Independents believed that in this way only was it possible to reform religion in England, and they acted on their belief, separating themselves from the Anglican Church, forming themselves into communities on what they regarded as the Scriptural model, and working in what was conceived to be the apostolic method. But separation from the church was a capital crime, equal to a denial of the royal supremacy; and so every inveterate separatist became liable to death. And early Independency was not without its martyrs. In the summer of 1583 two men, Thacker and Coppin, were executed at Bury St. Edmunds for refusing to conform to the church, and " dispersinge of Brownes bookes and Harrisons bookes." They justified their refusal on the ground that " her Majestie was chieffe ruler civilie, but no further." Two much more remarkable men, who met with a similar fate, were John Greenwood and Henry Barrowe. Both were graduates of Cambridge ; Greenwood had been ordained a priest ; Barrowe was a barrister, a member of Gray s Inn. " He made," as we know on the authority of Lord Bacon, 1 "a leap from a vain and libertine youth to a preciseness in the highest degree, the strangeness of which alteration made him very much spoken of." Both became separatists, and were very active in the numerous conven ticles that were then being held in and about London. Their principles were not so extreme as Browne s, their position being, as it were, intermediate between his and the Puritan. In his notion of the church as a society of the godly or the converted, politically independent alike as regards other churches and the state, they agree with him ; in his notion of its rigidly democratic constitution, they differ, inclining more to leave its government in the hands of certain specially chosen men. Their ideal is a sort of Presbyterial Independency. They think of the church as "A companie of Faithfull people; separated from the vnbelievers and heathen of the land : gathered in the name of Christ, whome they truelie worship, and redily obey as their only King, Priest, and Prophet : ioyned together as members of one bodie : ordered and gouerned by such officers and lawes as Christ in His last will and Testament hath thereunto ordeyned," &c. 2 Of course, this conception placed them in direct anta gonism to both the Genevan and Anglican ideals and methods. They condemn " Mr Calvine " because "he made no scruple to receave all the whole state, even all the profane ignorant people, into the bozome of the church, to administer the sacrarnentes vnto them." 3 They condemn 1 " Observations on a Libel " ; Letters and L-ife, by Snedding, vol. i. p. 165. 3 A Collection of certaine Letters and Conferences, lately passed be twixt cer/aine Preachers and Two Prisoners in the Fleet (1590), p. 67. Those letters were addressed to the Puritan leaders, and state the radical point of divergence of the two systems. This was the church idea ; Greenwood and Barrowe, in all their prison Conferences, which were many, fall back on this idea : " Christ s church always consisteth of a holy free people, separate from the world, rightly called and gathered unto Christ, walking forth in faith and obedience. 1 a Barrowe, A Brief Discouerie of the False Church (1590), p. 33. This is Barrowe s principal work, but he and Greenwood were both prolific and vigorous writers. They had a lengthy controversy with Mr George Gifford, a " Conformable Puritan," who charged them with being the " Donatists of England." They and the Puritans were curiously most deeply at feud. Yet it was only natural. The Puri tans were anxious to show that they had no kinship with the Brownists, the Brownists were anxious to drive the Puritans to the the Church of England because it comprehends " all the profane and wicked of the land," 4 and maintain that " Christ is onely head of His church, and His lawes may no man alter " ; that the prince is no more than a mere member of it ; that, if he sin, not to excommunicate him is to neglect " God s judgmentes, their dutie and the prince s salvation." The Anglican Church was thus conceived as founded on a wrong principle, worked in a wrong method, and hindered rather than helped by its dependence on the state. Whitgift asked Barrowe whether, if the prince delayed or refused to reform abuses, the church should proceed without him ; and his answer was, " it might and ought, though all the princes of the world should prohibit the same upon pain of death." Ideas like these logically involved separation as a duty ; the ideas they contradicted as logically made it a crime. The age was not without the courage of its convictions ; and Barrowe and Greenwood died for theirs, April 6, 1593. Shortly afterwards (May 29) John Penry or Ap Henry, a friend and associate, expiated the same sin in the same way. In spite of the severely repressive measures of the Government, the Independents continued to multiply. In the last decade of the 16th century numerous separatist communities were formed, 5 especially in London and the eastern and north-eastern counties. Their conventicles were often surprised, and in 1596 it was reckoned that as many as twenty-four had died in prison, representing of course but a small proportion of those actually confined. Plainly England had as yet no room for Independency, and the Independents who wished to keep a good conscience were forced to think of seeking a home elsewhere. Cer tain of their leaders had, indeed, in 1592 organized a church in London, with Francis Johnson as its pastor, and Greenwood as its teacher ; but they were so watched and hunted and harassed fifty-six of its members having been seized at one time and imprisoned that they resolved, con vinced by the fate of Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry that a peaceable life in England was impossible, to emigrate in a body. Holland was then the common refuge of the distressed for conscience sake, the place where the outcasts alike of France and Spain and England found a free and even generous home. The Independents, after trying Campen and Naarden, settled finally at Amsterdam. There they completed their church organization, appointing Francis Johnson pastor and Henry Ainsworth teacher. Johnson was a native of Richmond in Yorkshire, had been a fellow of Christ s College, Cambridge, had been expelled the university for publicly teaching the Presbyterian polity, and had become pastor of the English merchants church at Middleburg. There he had been zealous against the Inde pendents, had helped to seize and destroy an edition of one of Barrowe s works, but, preserving a copy, had read it and been persuaded to adopt its views. He returned to Eng land, associated himself with the author, and became, as we have seen, the pastor of the first Independent church in England. He was a pragmatic man, self-willed, empha sizing his separatism, easily drifting into controversies and consequent divisions on minute questions alike of conduct and opinion. Ainsworth (see AINSWORTH, HENRY) was an logical outcome of their position separation. Barrowe s first reply to Gifford was the "Plain Refutation, wherein is discovered the Forgery of the whole Ministry; the Confvsion; False Worship ; and Anti-Christian Disorder, of these Parish Assemblies called the Church of England" (1591). 4 Mid., p. 9. 5 In 1593, in a debate on a Bill to explain the statute 23d of Eliz. 1580, and for the further reducing "disloyal subjects to obedience," Sir Walter Raleigh declared that there were "as many as twenty thousand " Brownists in England. He was anxious that they should be "rooted out of the commonwealth," but was alarmed lest the law that was needed to do so should turn out to be capable of use against liberal-minded Conformists like himself. See D Evves, p. 517, An. 35
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