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CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY

OF THE

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

BY

CHARLES HODGE,

PROFESSOR IN THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY.

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Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1840, by WILLIAM S. MARTIEN, in the clerk's office of the district court for the eastern district of Pennsylvania.

PREFACE.

THE design of this history is to exhibit the character and constitution of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. To accomplish this object, it was necessary to bring to view, not only the declarations, but the acts of its highest judicatory. The work has thus become rather a history of the synod, than of the whole church, and does not pretend to enter into those details, which would be necessary in a more comprehensive work. Those controversies, however, which affected the action of the synod, come legitimately within the scope of this history. Hence an account of the great revival which occurred towards the middle of the last century, was necessary, in order to render intelligible the history of the dissentions which agitated and ultimately divided the synod. To that revival therefore, the introductory chapter of the present volume is devoted. The principal sources of information on this subject, to which the writer has had access, are the following: Prince's Christian History, in two volumes, a contempora

neous work, originally published in numbers, containing accounts of the revival in this country and in Scotland, written, in general, by the pastors of the churches in which the revival occurred; Gillies' Collections, which, as far as it relates to this country, is principally a reprint of the former work; Whitefield's Life and Journals; Edwards' Life, Correspondence, and Sermons; Chauncy's Seasonable Thoughts, another contemporaneous work, containing the dark side of the picture; Fisk's nine sermons, preached in Stonnington after the revival, and containing many valuable historical details; Trumbull's History of Connecticut; President Dickinson's Works; Works of the Rev. Samuel Blair. Besides these, there are a great many smaller works, principally pamphlets, for and against the men and measures of those days, quoted and referred to in the following pages, which need not be particularly mentioned here.

The authorities relied upon for the account given of the schism, besides the official records of the synod, which themselves contain much of the history, are the contemporaneous works of the leading men of the two parties. As the controversy ostensibly arose out of the disregard, on the part of the presbytery of New Brunswick, of two acts of the synod,

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