to form an external, visible Church, furnished with a constitution, laws, and proper officers for their administration. The conditions of admission into this visible society, were the profession of spec- ulative, or historical faith in his religion, and external conformity to its laws and the laws of his Church. To this external body all the ordinances of his religion are attached. Those, there- fore, who apply for baptism or the Lord's Supper, do not profess to be the regenerated children of God. They simply profess to be believers as distinguished from infidels or scorners, and to be desirous to avail themselves of Church privileges for their own benefit and for the good of their children. From this body Christ gathers the great majority of his own people, making them mem- bers of his mystical body.
De Moor gives a long account of the controversy. Vitringa, it appears, strenuously opposed this theory of a twofold covenant in its application to the New Testament economy. Marck as stren- uously defended it.1
This seems substantially the ground taken by the Rev. Mr. Stoddard, grandfather of President Edwards. Mr. Stoddard pub- lished, in 1707, a sermon on the Lord's Supper, in which he maintained, " That sanctification is not a necessary qualification to partaking of the Lord's Supper," and " That the Lord's Sup- per is a converting ordinance." This was answered ina" Dis- sertation " by Dr. Increase Mather. To this Mr. Stoddard re- plied in " An Appeal to the Learned ; being a Vindication of the right of visible saints to the Lord's Supper, though they be des- titute of a saving work of God's Spirit on their hearts ; against the exceptions of Mr. Increase Mather." President Edwards suc- ceeded his grandfather as pastor of the Church in Northampton, Mass., in 1727, and for twenty years continued to act on the same principle on this subject as his grandfather. Having be- come convinced that that principle was unscriptural, he published, in 1749, "An humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God, concerning the qualifications requisite to a complete stand- ing and full communion in the visible Christian Church." His design was to prove that no one should be admitted to the Lord's table who is not in the judgment of the Church truly regenerate. This doctrine was very obnoxious to the people of his charge, and opposed to the sentiment and practice of the majority of the neighbouring churches.2 The difficulty arising from this contro-
1 De Moor, ut supra, cap. xxx. § xvi. vol. v. pp. 470-473.
2 It is stated in the Life of President Edwards, by Sereno E. Dwight, prefixed to au
564 PART III. Ch. XX. — THE MEANS OF GRACE.
versy was one of the principal causes which led to the dismission of President Edwards from his pastoral charge at Northampton. The views of Edwards soon gained the ascendancy in the Evan- gelical churches of New England, and to a great extent also among Presbyterians.
The Rev. John Blair, a prominent minister of our Church, took substantially the ground of a twofold covenant. Mr. Blair, as well as his more distinguished brother, Rev. Samuel Blair, took an active part with Whitefield and the Tennents in the great revival which occurred about the middle of the last century, and belonged to what were called the New Lights in the controversy which issued in the schism of 1741. He does not, indeed, admit of a twofold covenant, but he teaches the same doctrine which that expression was intended to assert. The Church of Christ, he says, is very properly distinguished as visible and invisible. By the former is meant " the whole number of true believers wherever they are." " The visible Church consists of all those who by an external profession of the doctrines of the Gospel, and subjection to the laws and ordinances of Christ, appear as a society separated from the world, and dedicated to God and his service. In this view, in the present imperfect state, the Church comprehends branches that are withered, as well as those that bear fruit. Now the covenant of grace subsists between the blessed God and the Church, as such a visible Society,1 and is rendered visible by a visible transaction and external administra- tion in various ordinances ; and comprehends sundry external privileges for the advantage and spiritual edification of the Church. Here are not two covenants, one for the invisible Church and another for the visible." Gomarus, a leader in the Synod of Dort, says two covenants should be distinguished. That with the visible Church he calls hypothetical, that with the in- visible Church absolute. In the main point, however, they agree, for Mr. Blair goes on to say : "It is [to] the covenant of grace
edition of Edwards' Works, in ten vols., New York, 1829, vol. i. p. 307, that "All the churches in the county, except two, and all the clergy, except three, approved of the lax mode of admission." That is, were opposed to Edwards' doctrine on the subject.
1 To this sentence Mr. Blair appends the following note: " In no other way can we con- ceive the covenant to subsist between God and believers as a Church. In the exercise of faith, believers have union to, and communion with Jesus Christ; but by this alone, they could have no fellowship with one another ; for each one could only be conscious of his own exercise of faith, and could have no society with any other therein. Whatever real rela- tion to each other is founded in their common union to Christ, yet they could not at all per- ceive it. They would be members of Christ, but utterly detached from each other, and so not formally a body. It is only as incorporated in the visible Church, that they are fitly placed in the body, and have any knowledge one of another, and so have fellowship."