140 CHURCH UNITY 



that it will never (as we humbly conceive) 

 be well with England till there be an union 

 endeavoured and affected between all those 

 that are orthodox in doctrine though differ- 

 ing among themselves in some circumstances 

 about Church government." 1 



Unhappily, the England of the seven- 

 teenth century was too stormy for the 

 fruition of such lofty desires. But on 

 this continent twenty-four years before 

 the Presbyterian Assembly of London is- 

 sued that remarkable paper, there had been 

 realized exactly the union for which these 

 men were praying. At Salem, in 1629, 

 the Plymouth Congregational Church and 

 the Salem Presbyterial-Episcopal Church 

 were united in one blessed fellowship, — a 

 happy omen for this continent. 2 



An important union movement of mod- 

 ern times was that which resulted in the 

 union of the Lutheran and Reformed 

 churches of Prussia, in 1817. So far back 

 as 1720, Christoph Matthaus Pfaff, chan- 



1 Jus Divinum Minister ii Evangelici. London, 1653. 

 Briggs, p. 451. 



2 Bacon, Genesis of the New England Churches, 

 pp. 471-477. Faulkner, On the Early History of 

 the New England Church, in Reformed Quarterly 

 Review. 



