Lord, as silver purified, Thou hast with affliction tried; Brought into a wealthy land! Ps. lxvi. George Sandys (1636). Let bø now commend the famous men, and our fathers, of whom we are begotten. The Lord hath gotten great glory by them, and that through his great power from the beginning. They haue borne rule in their kingdom?s, and were renowmed for their power, and were wise in counsell, and declared prophecies. They gouerned the people by counsell, and by the knowledge of learning meete for the people, in whose doctrine were wise sentences. Ecclesiasticus [Genevan Version], xliv: 1-4. For the Lordes portion is his people: Jackob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in the land of the wildernes, in a waste, and roaring wildernessz: he led him about, hee taught him, and kept him as the apple of his eie. As an Eagle stereth vp her nest, footereth ouer her birdes, stretcheth out her wings, taketh them, and beareth them on her wings, So the Lorde alone ledde him, and there was no strange god with him. He carried him up to the hie places of the earth, that he might eate the fruites of the fields, and he caused him to sucke hony out of the stone, and oyle out of the hard rocke: Butter of kine, and milke of sheepe with fat of the lambes, and rammes fed in Bashan, and goates with the fatte of the graines of wheate, and the redde licour of the grape hast thou Drunke. Deuteronomie [Genevan Version], xxxii: 9–14. HE ecclesiastical beginnings of New England were mainly of a tentative and provisional chatacter. For eight years and seven months the Leyden-Plymouth Church stood alone. Ten years after the Mayflower came to her moorings inside of the Gurnet Point, there were but five Congregational churches on the continent,' and twenty years after there were but thirty-five." Brewster and his company remained faithful to the extremely mild type of Barrowism in which Robinson had trained them, (1) Plymouth; (2) Salem, constituted 6 August, 1629; (3) Dorchester, June, 1630; (4) First Church, Boston, 30 July, 1630; (5) Watertown, 30 July, 1630. 2 (6) Roxbury, July, 1632; (7) Lynn, 1632; (S) Duxbury, 1632; (9) Marshfield, 1632; (10) Charlestown, 2 November, 1632; (11) Cambridge, 11 October, 1633; (12) Ipswich, 1634; (13) Scituate, 1634; (14) Newbury, 1635; (15) Weymouth, July, 1635; (16) Hingham, September, 1635; (17) Cambridge, 1 February, 1636; (18) Concord, 5 July, 1636; (19) Dorchester, 23 August, 1636; (20) Springfield, 1637; (21) Taunton, 1637; (22) Sandwich, 1638; (23) Salisbury, 1638; (24) Dedham, 8 November, 1638; (25) Hampton (N. H.), 1638; (26) Dover (N. H.), 1638; (27) Exeter (N. H.), 1638; (28) New Haven (Conn.), 22 August, 1639; (29) Milford (Conn.), 22 August, 1639; (30) Quincy, 17 September, 1639; (31) Yarmouth, 1639; (32) Scituate, 1639; (33) Rowley, 3 December, 1639; (34) Sudbury, August, 1640; (35) Stratford (Conn.), 1640. Of these the First Dorchester Church had removed, in 1635, to Windsor, Conn., the First Cambridge, in June, 1636, to Hartford, Conn., and the Scituate Church (which in 1616 had been formed in London), in 1639, to Barnstable. but the fact that, providentially, they had but one Elder, and, for nearly or quite ten years, no present Pastor,' thrust them upon the practical development of a church government of the people, by the people, and for the people, to a degree beyond their philosophy, and beyond their original intent; and having so long the field entirely to themselves, they were undisturbed from without in this their trend. The company which came over to Salem in 1629 was Nonconformist, but not Separatist, in its tastes and intentions. So rigid, in fact, on this point was the policy of the New England Company, that the Rev. Ralph Smith, who afterward became the first Pastor on this side of the sea of the Church at Plymouth, having desired passage in the ships with the Salem people, and his request having been granted, and it afterward coming to the knowledge of the Governor and Council of the Company, that his views inclined toward Separatism, or, as they phrased it, that he had a "difference of judgmt in some things from o ministers," it was at first thought well to forbid his coming, but afterward judged better to let him come, with the order that "vnless hee wilbe conformable to or governm1, yow suffer him not to remaine wthin the limitts of or graunt." Higginson and Skelton fancied on leaving England that they were coming over to be and to do some wiser and better third thing than to be like the Church of England on the one hand, or like the Leyden men on the other; as the former is said to have phrased it: 5 "We will not say as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving of England, Farewel Babylon! Farewel Rome! But we will say, Farewel Dear 3 The theory was that the company remaining, as was supposed and intended temporarily, at Leyden, and the emigrants under Brewster, should constitute but a single church, of all of which Robinson remained Pastor; so that no letters should be required for those who should go or return; yet so as that each portion should be "an absolute church of them selves," competent for all church work. Bradford, Hist. Plim. Plant., 42. 4 Letter of Gov. Cradock, and the Deputy of the New Eng. Co., to Gov. Endecott, Massachusetts Colonial Records, i: 390. 5 These words are given as those of Hig ginson by Cotton Mather, in the Magnalia | [Book iii, 74]. Dr. Palfrey.[Hist. New Eng., i: 297] casts a doubt on the exactness of the narrative, mainly because Mather was writing, in 1697, words said to have been uttered on the other side of the water in 1629. But Judge White [New England Congregationalism, etc. (1861), 4], referring to the fact that John Higginson aided Mather in his book, and prefixed to it his attestation of its truthfulness, concludes that Mather's statement as to the First Church of Salem and its founders "is entitled to the same degree of credit as if it had been recorded by Mr. Higginson himself." Judge White seems to have the reason of the case. England! Farewel the Church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there! We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England; though we cannot but separate from the Corruptions in it: But we go to practise the positive Part of Church Reformation, and propagate the Gospel in America." When the wilderness was reached, however, and the intensely practical question as to what should be done in order to effect and perfect church organization pressed for decision, there seemed to be but one answer that could naturally be given. Every obstruction being taken out of the way, thousands of miles of weary ocean on the one hand separating them from all the constraint of the past, and on the other freeing them from much possibility of persecution; what had they but the Bible for their guide, and why should they not walk in simplicity and godly sincerity along the simple paths which it outlined before their waiting feet? Only one obstacle seems to have presented itself, and that was a bitter prejudice against the "Brownism" of that way which they understood to have been already established at Plymouth-breeding a great unwillingness to do anything which should even look like alliance with that. We have already seen that John Robinson had led his church to a position substantially the same with that which the Salem colonists occupied. It so happened, moreover, that the advance guard of settlers at Salem, under Endecott, were suffering severely with the scurvy and with an infectious fever, and sent to Plymouth for the help of Doctor Samuel Fuller, who went to their relief, and was of great service to them, as it would seem, a few weeks before the arrival of the ships with the ministers, as well as after that date. Fuller was one of the two Leyden Deacons of the church, and fully competent to administer to mental and spiritual, as well as bodily ailments; and he improved his opportunity to satisfy Endecott in regard to whatever was distinctive in their views, and lead him to acknowledge their general position as a church as "being farr from ye commone reporte that hath been spread of you touching 6 Letter from Gov. Endecott to Gov. Bradford, Letter Book, 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., iii: 66. that perticuler." How much was due to this influence we cannot decide. But within about a month after the ships had arrived, we find the Salem company uniting to form a church by covenant, and electing and ordaining their Pastor and Teacher-regardless of the fact that both had received the established ordination in the father-land—and, more than all, "notice was given of their intended proceedings to the church at New Plymouth, that so they might have their approbation and concurrence, if not their direction and assisttance, in a matter of that nature, wherein themselves had been but little before exercised." The Plymouth Church sent Governor Bradford and others as delegates, but they going "by Sea, were hindred by cross winds that they could not be there at the beginning of the day [6-16 August, 1629], but they came into the Assembly afterward, and gave them the right hand of fellowship, wishing all prosperity, and a blessed success unto such good beginnings." When Winthrop's company were leaving England, in the spring of 1630, they took the pains to publish in London "The hvmble Reqvest of his Majesties loyall Subjects, the Governour and the Company late gone for New England; to the rest of their Brethren in and of the Church of England; for the obtaining of their Prayers, and the removal of suspicions, and misconstructions of their Intentions;" in which they beg their fathers and brethren to take notice: r; "of the principals and body of our Company, as those who esteem it our honour to call the Church of England from whence wee rise, our deare mother and cannot part from our native countrie where she specially resideth, without much sadnes of heart and many tears in our eyes; ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation, wee have received in her bosome, and suckt it from her breasts." They go on to say: "Wee leave it not therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith wee were nourished there;" they style themselves "a weake colony from yourselves;" and beg faithful remembrances in their prayers, "for a church springing out of your owne bowels;" reciprocally promising that their 7 Letter in Hist. Plim. Plant., 264. 8 Hubbard's General Hist. New Eng. 2 Mass. Hist. Coll., v: 119. 9 N. Morton, New Englands Memoriall: or, A brief Relation of the most Memorable and Remarkable Passages of the Providence of God manifested to the Planters of New-England, ctc. (ed. 1669, 75. |