Representatives Of Church Research Articles

Arthur Dimmesdale as Tragic Hero

IT IS MY conviction that, even though Arthur Dimmesdale does not move down center until late in the action, The Scarlet Letter is finally his story and, what is more important, that he is a tragic hero. He alone among the major characters never functions symbolically, though he is the familiar figure of Every-Christian. Viewed thus, Hawthorne's allegorical romance centers on a good man's struggle with and eventual victory over the guilt he experiences after committing lechery. Hawthorne is saying that three courses of action are open to such a sinner: he may keep silent and suffer eternal alienation from the Good and True, 1 the course urged by Roger Chillingworth; or-and this implies that he will probably keep silent all the while-he may flee the scene of the crime and with it his responsibility, the course eventually urged by Hester Prynne; or he may make full and public confession, the course urged by the child Pearl. Having kept silent for more than seven years, Dimmesdale finally has his Calvinist faith put to the supreme test and, having agreed to flee Boston with Hester and their child, finds the strength to face his responsibility and confess before he dies. Although Dimmesdale respects and, except in one instance, has never broken civil and ecclesiastical law, theocratic authority at Boston is ultimately powerless to bring him to confession. John Wilson and Governor Bellingham, the chief representatives of church and state, are ill-equipped to understand his condition and can only point to the scaffold of the pillory as the place whereon sinners must stand and reveal their sin. Is it any wonder, then, that Dimmesdale should reject their offers of assistance as he pre-

The Baptist Western Association 1653–1658

The identification of a tract without title-page or caption title in the Library of the Society of Friends in London, together with the location in the Library of the Baptist College, Bristol, of another tract of which no copy was known to exist, makes it possible for the first time to summarise fully the beginnings of the Baptist Western Association. The Association's activity, apart from days spent in waiting upon God in fasting and prayer, was twofold: the resolution of queries submitted by the churches represented; and the issuing of circular letters of exhortation to the churches. Circular letters issued from nine of the Association's first ten meetings are printed in the first of the tracts mentioned, queries submitted and resolved at nine of the meetings in the second. From other sources we know that in 1655 the Association ordained as its superintendent Thomas Collier, the editor of both tracts; and that in 1656 it issued aConfession of the Faith. An assembly of ‘messengers’ or representatives of churches in the South-Western counties of England, meeting normally once in the spring and once in the autumn, the Western Association was a pioneer among those regional associations of churches which have ‘always been a feature of Baptist life’. Correct information concerning its meetings and leaders, and the churches represented, is thus desirable. The fifty-seven queries, moreover, with the answers they received, throw light upon issues then the concern of many beyond Baptist circles.