A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



became Unitarian. Both categories are represented in the Congregational 



churches of to-day. , 



Passing over for the moment the story of the early attempts at a general 

 organization, which will be better treated under the Presbyterians, the 

 individual churches of the Old Dissent which remained true and are now 

 Independent, or which became extinct, include Elswick, Forton Darwen, 

 Horwich, St. Helens, Rainford, Hoghton Tower, Tockholes, Hesketh Lane, 

 Altham and Wymondhouses, Ormskirk, and Greenacres. ■ 



Whenever a congregation of the Old Dissent became Unitarian and a 

 secession ensued as a consequence, the seceding members being orthodox, it is 

 a very disputable point as to which of the two represents the original church. 

 Putting the dogmatic consideration on one side the reasonable conclusion can 

 only be that both parties, that remaining in possession and that seceding, have 

 a claim historically to descent from the original congregation. As a rule it 

 is the Unitarians who remain in possession and the orthodox who secede. 

 There are large numbers of such cases. 



The general revival of rehgious hfe which the dreary eighteenth century 

 witnessed in Methodism and other forms seems to have reached the Inde- 

 pendent churches comparatively late in the day. There is one thread of 

 direct connexion with the wider movement in the personality of Benjamin 

 Ingham. For after Ingham left the Moravians and his churches fell to pieces 

 for want of organization many of them passed over to the Independents. The 

 other precursor of the movement, the first wave of Evangelism among 

 the hitherto dry bones of the Independent churches, ' Captain ' Jonathan 

 Scott, possesses an individuality all his own, and one which links him to the 

 Independent churches apart from and regardless of any antecedents. The 

 third stream of influence, namely, the churches which seceded under Bennet 

 from the Methodists, merits less distinction. Most of the churches which 

 originated during this phase of Independent history came into existence after 

 1780. 



The outburst of Independent evangelistic work which created the 

 eighteenth-century Independent churches was but the prelude, in itself 

 comparatively insignificant, to the more zealous and more widespread nine- 

 teenth-century movement inaugurated by the formation of the Lancashire 

 County Congregational Union. The beginnings of this Union are to be traced 

 to the formation at Bolton, 7 June, 1786, of an association of different 

 Congregational churches of Lancashire and the neighbouring counties. The 

 object of this earlier association was the maintenance of the churches in 

 purity of doctrine and discipline. But on i July, 1801, at a meeting at 

 Manchester the association drew up a plan of an Itinerant Society for 

 Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire ; and with this innovation a new spirit 

 breathed upon the churches. William Roby was the secretary of the move- 

 ment, and its first attempts at evangelism were made in the western parts of 

 Lancashire, at Leyland, Ormskirk, &c. The association made yearly reports 

 of the progress of its work until 1806. In that year its place was taken by 

 a new association, the Lancashire Congregational Union, which was formed 

 on 23 September, 1806, at a meeting in the vestry of Mosley Street Church, 

 Manchester. The names of the twenty-four churches which formed the 

 members of this union at its outset are given in Slate's History of the Union. 



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