ABSTRACT
Basic to the establishment and maintenance of the church in New England was close biblical study to define both faith and forms of church organization and order. The Cambridge Platform followed this principle and the substance of doctrine as defined according to it in the Westminster Asse[m]bly and Co[n]fession (1643-45), a gathering of Puritan divines during the upheavals of Civil War in the British Isles. The section of the Platform reprinted below, however, defends New England's departure in the direction of Congregationalism from the Presbyterian organizational conclusions of Westminster. Of course, it does so in terms of biblical exegesis, but in the favourable context by 1648 of the triumph of the Independents in England who favoured a congregational church polity. The Cambridge Platform remained for a long time definitive of the Congregationalist tradition in America. But with the triumph of a reformed religion still in doubt in Britain and her North American Colonies in 1648 the Cambridge Synod was anxious, while justifying its form of church government, to avoid destructive conflict which would allow the triumph of the Antichristian Hierarchy' of episcopacy.
