The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut — John Shaqi
The Development of Religious Liberty in ConnecticutGreene, M. Louise (Maria Louise)
History
The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut
Greene, M. Louise (Maria Louise)
Connecticut -- Church history
The connecting link between Brownism and Barrowism, whose similarities
and dissimilarities we shall consider together, or rather the
connecting link between Robert Browne and Henry Barrowe, was another
Cambridge student, John Greenwood. He was graduated in 1581, the year
that Browne removed to Middelburg. Greenwood had become so enamored
with Separatist doctrines, that within five years of his graduation he
was deprived of his benefice, in 1586, and sent to prison. While
there, he was visited by his friend, Henry Barrowe, a young London
lawyer, who, through the chance words of a London preacher, had been
converted from a wild, gay life to one devout and godly. During a
visit to Greenwood, Barrowe was arrested and sent to Lambeth Palace
for examination. Upon refusing to take the oath required by the
bishop, Barrowe was remanded to prison to await further
examination. Later, he damaged himself and his cause by an
unnecessarily bitter denunciation of his enemies and by a too dogmatic
assertion of his own principles. Accordingly, he was sent back to
prison, where, together with Greenwood, he awaited trial until March,
1593. Then, upon the distorted testimony of their writings, both men
were sentenced as seditious fellows, worthy of death. Though twice
reprieved at the seemingly last hour, they were hanged together on
April 6, 1593.
Both Greenwood and Barrowe frequently asserted that they never had
anything to do with Browne. [4] Yet it is probable that it was
Browne's influence which turned Greenwood's puritanical convictions to
Separatist principles. Barrowe had been graduated from Clare Hall,
Cambridge, in 1569-70; Browne, from Corpus Christi in 1572. The two
men, so different in character, probably did not meet in university
days, and certainly not later in London, where one went to a life of
pleasure and the other to teaching and to the study of the
Scriptures. Greenwood, however, had entered Cambridge in 1577-78, and
left it in 1581. Thus he was in college during the two years that
Browne was preaching in and near Cambridge. It is safe to assume that
the young scholar, soon to become a licensed preacher, and overflowing
with the Puritan zeal of his college, might be drawn either through
curiosity or admiration to hear the erratic and almost fanatic
preacher. Later, when Browne's writings were being secretly
distributed in England, both Barrowe and Greenwood had come in contact
with the London congregations to whom Browne had preached. The fact
that many men in England were thinking along the same lines as the
Separatists; that Browne had recanted just as Barrowe and Greenwood
were thrust into prison; and that they both disapproved in some
measure of Browne's teachings, might account for a denial of
discipleship. Browne's influence might even have been unrecognized by
the men themselves. Be that as it may, during their long
imprisonment, both Barrowe and Greenwood, in their teachings, in their
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