Excerpt from The Church Polity of the Pilgrims: The Polity of the New Testament

My Dear Sir, - When the articles containing the substance of this little work were first published in "The Congregationalist and Recorder, " I read them with much interest, and expressed to you a hope that they might be re-published in a more permanent form. The practical importance of the subject of church government and polity appears to me to be vastly greater than many people seem to suppose. Congregational government is radically different from hierarchy in any of its forms. The former regards the members of a Christian church as capable of managing the affairs of the church: while the latter regards them as incompetent to manage those affairs, not capable of deciding upon the admission, discipline, or expulsion of their fellow-members, nor of maintaining fellowship with other churches. It, therefore, reduces them to the condition of a governed class, their duty being simply to obey the hierarchy, whose competency to govern them is assumed.

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