History of Northampton, Massachusetts, from its settlement in 1654;

1728.] REV. SOLOMON STODDARD. 57
prescribed the method of admitting persons to full membership,
and the records contain no intimation that it had
ever been changed. Neither is there anything to be found
in them authorizing the statement that Mr. Stoddard
adopted a form of confession in accordance with his own
peculiar views.
The Reforming Synod of 1679, declared that persons
must make profession of faith and repentance in order to
gain full admission into the church, and Mr. Stoddard admits
that" he voted in its favor. Though the doctrine advocated
by him was only partially discussed in that assembly,
the inference is undoubted that notwithstanding the admission
to partake of the holy rite of communion, which
was then practiced in other churches if not in Northampton,
candidates must also make a profession of faith and
repentance. Mr. Stoddard was not so inconsistent as to
preach one doctrine and practice another.
The Scheme Pro- No reliable data are at hand sufficient to demuigated.
temiiue when this method was introduced
here. There is a probability, however, that
it was in practice in Northampton as early as 1077, within
five years of the settlement of the second minister. In
that year. Increase Mather, in an election sermon, denounced
the prevalence of " Stoddardeanism " among the
clergy. ^ Two years later Mr. Stoddard seems to have up-
held this theory at the session of the Reforming Synod, as
far as he was permitted. It was not. however, till the
opening of the eighteenth century that he alluded to the
subject in the pulpit. The public discussion of the question
between Increase and Cotton Mather on one side, and
Mr. Stoddard on the other, commenced in the year 1700,
though the sermon in which the latter fully explained his
views was not delivered till 1704, nor published till three
years later. Books, pamphlets, sermons followed each
other in quick succession for eight or nine years. In 1709,
Mr. Stoddard published the final vindication of his system
in a sermon entitled, " An Appeal to the Learned, Being a
Vindication of the Right of Visible Saints to the Lord's
Supper, Though they be destitute of a Saving Work of
1 Walker's Creeds and Platforms of Congregatioualism, p. 880.