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A History of the Presbyterian Church in America From Its Origin Until the Year 1760, With Biogr. Sketches of Its Early Ministers
A History of the Presbyterian Church in America From Its Origin Until the Year 1760 With Biogr Sketches of Its Early Ministers Author:Richard Webster General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1858 Original Publisher: Joseph M. Wilson Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you ca... more »n select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: INTRODUCTION. The great King of Zion has endowed the Presbyterian church in the United States with a goodly heritage, and, under his fostering oare, its borders have been widely extended. In the space of a century and a half, a cause which at first was represented by a few itinerant missionaries, labouring among a number of scattered settlers on the shores of the Chesapeake and the adjoining regions, has attained to a magnitude unprecedented in the annals of Pres- byterianism. For many years past, the Presbyterian church numbers among the most valued of her members the descendants of settlers from Holland, France, Germany, and other nations of Continental Europe. Still, the great body of those hardy pioneers who sought a home in the Western world, or who were driven hither by per- secution, and founded our Zion, were from Scotland and the North of Ireland. It is true, that a large proportion of the English Puritans who settled New England held Presbyterian principles, and were favourable to our form of church polity. Popularly, the term Puritanism, when associated with New England, is understood to signify Congregationalism; but the fact, as here stated, that many of the English Dissenters, who fled from their native land to New England, in order to enjoy liberty of conscience, were Presbyterian in sentiment, is established by abundant and most satisfactory evidence. Into the causes which operated in producing a gradual change in tho character of the early New England churches, and which prevented a full development of a distinct Presbyterian organization, it is n...« less