CONGREGATIONALISTS

A sect of Protestant Di enters, who arose in this country as early as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Robert Brown maintained that every society of Christians meeting in one place for religious worship under its own laws and ministers formed a legitimate and independent congregation. The Congregationalists have been called from their founder Brownists, and in later times Independents. They form a powerful body in England, and are very numerous in America. Each congregation appoints its own ministers by vote, and can remove them at pleasure, and reduce them to the rank of laymen. They believe in the Trinity, predestination, total depravity, particular redemption, effectual grace and final perseverance; and rna int a in that every congregation of^ visible saints furnished with a pastor is under no other ecclesiastical jurisdiction whatever. (See Neale's Hist. Puritans.) The number of Independent congregations in England and Wales was stated in 1836 to be about 1840. {MCulloch's Statistical Accoimt of the Br. Empire.) [s. 284]