Governor Bradford's first dialogue

Old South Leaflets.
TWELFTH SERIES, 1894. No. 2.
Young men. —Gentlemen, you were pleased to appoint us this time to confer with you, and to propound such questions as might give us satisfaction in some things wherein we are ignorant, or at least further light to some things that are more obscure unto us. Our first request therefore is, to know your minds concerning the true and simple meaning of those of The Separation , as they are termed, when they say the Church of England is no Church, or no true Church.
Ancient men. —For answer hereunto, first, you must know that they speak of it as it then was under the hierarchical prelacy, which since have been put down by the State, and not as it is now unsettled.
2. They nowhere say, that we remember, that they are no Church. At least, they are not so to be understood; for they often say the contrary.
3. When they say it is no true Church of Christ, they do not at all mean as they are the elect of God, or a part of the Catholic Church, or of the mystical body of Christ, or visible Christians professing faith and holiness (as most men understand the church); for which purpose hear what Mr. Robinson in his Apology, page 53. “If by the Church,” saith he, “be understood the Catholic Church, dispersed upon the face of the whole earth, we do willingly acknowledge that a singular part thereof, and the same visible and conspicuous, is to be found in the land, and with it do profess and practise, what in us lies, communion in all things in themselves lawful, and done in right order.”
4. Therefore they mean it is not a true church as it is a National Church, combined together of all in the land promiscuously under the hierarchical government of archbishops, their courts and canons, so far differing from the primitive pattern in the Gospel.
Young men. —Wherein do they differ then from the judgment or practice of our churches here in New England?
Ancient men. —Truly, for matter of practice, nothing at all that is in any thing material; these being rather more strict and rigid in some proceedings about admission of members, and things of such nature, than the other; and for matter of judgment, it is more, as we conceive, in words and terms, than matter of any great substance; for the churches and chief of the ministers here hold that the National Church, so constituted and governed as before is said, is not allowable according to the primitive order of the Gospel; but that there are some parish assemblies that are true churches by virtue of an implicit covenant amongst themselves, in which regard the Church of England may be held and called a true church.