the Congregational Way: Seven Texts on Government of Christ's Church, 1611-1697

Seven foundational texts on how Christ's church should be governed - gathered, introduced, and freshly typeset in one volume.Long before "Congregationalism" was a denomination, it was an argument: who holds the keys of the church - a bishop, a national assembly, a presbytery, or the gathered congregation of believers itself? The Congregational Way brings together seven seventeenth-century sources that shaped the answer, spanning 1611 to 1697.The volume gathers Henry Jacob's pioneering Declaration and Plainer Opening of Certain Points (1611) and Confession and Protestation (1616); the Independents' celebrated Apologetical Narration (1643); Hanserd Knollys's Moderate Answer unto Dr. Bastwick's Book (1645); John Russell's Brief Narrative (1680); the ecumenical Heads of Agreement (1691); and Benjamin Keach's The Glory of a True Church, and Its Discipline Displayed (1697) - a complete manual of Baptist congregational order.Each text appears in a clean modern setting with an editorial introduction, full scriptural and source notes, and a combined General Index and Scripture Index. Together they trace the "Congregational Way" from persecuted proposal to settled practice.Essential reading for students of Baptist and Independent history, the radical wing of the English Reformation, ecclesiology, and the roots of free-church polity.