w ^ MAR 17 1941 f Logical si\^^:$> BR 530 .F7 Ford, David Barnes, 1820- 1903. I New England's struggles fo] 1 : K^ ,- ^ New England's Struggles for Religious Liberty ' ' Hut viy soul, wherewith I at>t to worship God, that belotigeth to another King, whose kingdom is not of this world, whose people must come willingly, whose weapons arc not carnal but spiritual. ' ' — Thomas Helwys, founder of the First General Baptist Church in England, 1611. • ' So is it the duty of the civil magistrate to suppress all violence to the bodies and goods of meti for their soul' s belief, atid to provide that not one person in the land be restrained from, or constrained to, any worship, ministry, or maintenance, but peaceably maintained in his soul as well as corporal freedom.'^ — Roger Williams "Hire- ling Minist>y," London, /6j2, p. j8. • • J our petitioners have it much on their hearts if they may be permitted to hold forth a lively experiment that a flourishing civil State may stand, yea, and best be maintained, and that among JCnglish spirits, with a full lihf.rtv in religious con'CERN- MENTS." — Dr. John Clarke's Petition for Rhode Island Charter, J 662. ERRATA Page 38 for "(May) 1866" read "(May) 1636." Page 88 for note read " For this petition, see Mass. Col. Records, Vol. IV., p. 450." Page 154 add words of note to line 19, so that it will read "Quakers and our said brethren, the Baptists." Expunge second nu- meral in note. «. Page 206 in fourth line from bottom read "preceding " for "following." Page 249 in seventh line from top read "should " for "shall." Page 251 after Appendix A for (P. 22) read (P. 26). Page 255 in tifth line from top for "specific " read "pacific." Page 259 after Appendix E for (P. 172) read (P. 179). ^ MAR 17 1941 New England's Struggl:#2c/lsj»v*$^ FOR Religious Liberty BY REV. DAVID B. FORD AUTHOR OF " Studies on Baptism, with Review of J. W. Dale," and joint author of a Commentary on the " Epistle to the Romans" in the American Commentary Series "/< is pleasant to remember that — where there is painstaking and an in- tention to tell the truth — an author's most lenient judges are the historical students, who know by experience how difficult it is to avoid errors." — Prof. George Park Fisher, in his Preface to his " Historj' of the Christian Church " PHILADELPHIA AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY I8g6 Copyright 1896 by the American Baptist Publication Society FOREWORD No people in their beginnings have left richer or more abundant materials for veritable history than have the Pilgrim and Puritan fathers of New England. And it is a matter of rejoicing that a fresh popular interest in our Colonial times has been awakened in recent years. An indication of this interest is plainly seen in such writings as those of S. G. and S. A. Drake, of Charles F. and Brooks Adams, of Prof. John Fiske, of Alice Morse Earle, and of several other recent writers. The " Margaret Winthrop," by Mrs. Earle, especially, has much authentic and interesting historic material. The original and chief sources from which our work is drawn are, of course, given in the body of the text and need not be mentioned here. If allowed to particularize, however, I should say that perhaps, in a considerable part of my work, nothing has been more interestingly helpful to me than the treasures of the library of the "Backus Historical Society," in Newton Center, and of the Massachusetts Archives, in the State House in Boston. My obligations also are specially due to our great libraries, to the Boston Public Library most of all, which has allowed me, though a country resident, to take out 6 FOREWORD gratuitously many desired volumes ; also to the Athe- naeum Librar)-, the Congregational Library, the State Library, and the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. In all these libraries there are treasures relat- ing to our theme, which are as yet by no means ex- hausted. D. B. F. HANoviiK, .Mass., i8q6. CONTENTS Preliminary Remarks, ii PART I. The Puritans in their Relation to the Anabaptists and Quakers, 20 PART 11. The Pilgrims in their Relation to the Anabaptists and Quakers, 122 PART III. The Subsequent Struggles for Religious Liberty and its Final Triumph 148 I. A Spirited Remonstrance from the Baptist Churches, 150 II. The Founding of the Warren Association and THE Committee OF Grievances 173 III. The Appointment of an Agent for the Baptist Churches . 178 IV. Refusal to give in Certificates, 18 1 V. The Baptist Agent's Mission to the First Conti- nental Congress, 186 VI. Appeal of the Agent to the Massachusetts Pro- vincial Congress 191 VII. The Agent's Petition to the General Court of Massachusetts, -lo VIII. Matters Touching the Formation of the State Constitution. . • • 223 7 8 CONTENTS IX. rill'. Kffkct ok iiiK Adoition oi' Till-: Constitl'tion. 234 X. An Important Liccjal Uixision . . 237 XI. The Religious Freedom Act of 1811 239 XII. The Delayed Emancipation of Ma.ssachusetts, . 242 XIII. Church and State Finally Separated 246 APPENDIXES APPENDIX A. Some Account OF Henry UuNSTEK, 251 APPENDIX B. Letter of Roger Williams, 253 APPENDIX C. A Petition AGAINST THE Anabaptists 255 APPENDIX D. The Royal Commissioners' Experience of the Refrac- toriness of Massachusetts 256 APPENDIX E. Backus on the Federal Constitution 259 APPENDIX F. Exemptive Acts of Massachusetts Relating to Baptists AND Quakers, 261 APPENDIX G. Colonial Governors and English Sovereigns, . . 267 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY PRELIMINARY REMARKS The reign of violence is dead, Or dying surely from the world ; While love triumphant reigns instead, And in a brighter sky o'erhead His blessed banners are unfurled. And most of all, thank God for this : The war and waste of clashing creeds Now end in words and not in deeds. And no one suffers loss or bleeds For thoughts that men call heresies. — " The Theologian,'" in Longfellow' s Tales of a Wayside Inn. In speaking of the sufferings endured in former times by the Baptists and Quakers of New England, and of the struggles whereby religious liberty was at length secured, our thoughts naturally recur to the somewhat similar sufferings of the Baptists and others in the South, and of the success of their efforts to secure religious freedom. As a rigid Puritanism was the " Great Iron Wheel " of a crushing oppression in the North, so was the Episcopal Establishment a like instrument of dire distress in the South. Persecution, indeed, did not begin so early in the South as in New England, since the early Southern Episcopalians were 12 NEW England's struggles lacking in that religious earnestness which characterized the Puritans. The first penal laws of Virginia date back only so far as 1659, 1662, and the struggle for liberty there was brought to a close much earlier than in New Eng- land. The victory for religious freedom in Virginia, which 15ackus describes as "the greatest revolution about baptism and religious liberty that ever I heard of in any government upon earth," was secured in 1785, and the last relic of Church and State union disappeared in 1802. In Connecticut, however, this union in some form lasted till 1818, and in Massachusetts until 1833. But while persecution raged for a shorter period in the South, we judge it to have been fully as bitter as that endured in the North. Dr. F. L. Hawks, the Epis- copalian historian, says that, " No dis.senters in Virginia experienced for a time harsher treatment than did the Baptists. They were beaten and imprisoned ; and cruelty taxed its ingenuity to devise new modes of punishment and annoyance." But the Baptists of tlie South, in their struggles for religious liberty, had, we think, more outside help than had those of New England. They had, to begin with, the potent influence and aid of those whom we may denominate "the three mighties," Jefferson, Madison, and Henry.* I know not of a single statesman, and 1 Under the head of " Equal Religious Liberty, stated and defended,'' in the March number of the " .NLissachusetts Baptist Missionary ^Liga/ine," l8ll, may be found Madison's masterly " Memorial and Remonstrance against the General Assessment, presented to the General Assembly of Virginia," 1785, which, in the words of the editor, " has been pronounced by good judges to be the best defense of the rights of conscience now extant." PRELIMINARY REMARKS I3 scarcely a prominent man, in the North who spoke a word for religious freedom. Especially encouraging, also, to the brethren of the " United Baptist Churches in Virginia," to whom " mobs, bonds, fines, and prisons " had been, under the royal government, their " frequent repast," were the words of Washington upon receiving from a Committee of the Baptist Churches an Address, signed "August 8, 1789. Samuel Harris, Chairman, Reuben Ford, Clerk,'" but written, as we have seen it stated, by Elder John Leland, a stalwart champion of religious liberty both in the South and in the North.^ The Southern Baptists were for a time also greatly aided by the Presbyterians and, to some extent, by the 1 " In his later years Mr. Leland labored efficiently in Massachusetts in the cause of religious freedom, which he had done so much to secure in Virginia. A characteristic speech on this subject which he delivered to the legislature of Massachusetts, inl 81 1, may be found in 'Benedict's History, ' Vol. XL, pp. 482-486." — Prof. Weston's note to " Backus' History." For some account of his labors in the South, see Dr. Cathcart's " Baptist Ency- clopEedia," p. 1182, and Dr. Armitage's " History of the Baptists," pp. 7^7- 8ll. In Vol. VI. of Sprague's "Annals of the American Pulpit," Dr. B. T. Welch relates the following anecdote of Elder I eland : An orthodox brother proposed to Mr. Leland that he should have the use of the Con- gregational meeting-house if he would preach extempore from a text that should be given him in the pulpit. To this he 'assented, and just as he rose to begin his sermon he opened the paper containing the text, and found these words : " And Balaam saddled his ass.' ' Whereupon he said : " This brings to our view three things — a prophet, an ass, and a saddle. Balaam, the prophet who loved the wages of unrighteousness, and he well represents the class who oppress their fellow-men (otherwise the Congrega- tionalists) ; the ass, a patient bearer of grievous burdens, represents those who are oppressed by them ; and the saddle is the unrighteous exaction that is made of these downtrodden denominations." Of course these were sufficient heads for an ample and pungent sermon. It was Mr. Leland's wish that the following sentence should be inscribed on his gravestone : Here lies the body of John Leland, who laboured— to promote piety and vindicate the civil and religious rights of all men. B 14 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES Quakers. In New England, the Quakers as a body put forth but few concerted, persistent legal efforts for the securing of liberty, and they aided this cause chiefly by their voluntary sufferings and by the giving up of their lives. The early Separatists sympathized, of course, with the cause of the Baptists, as also did the few Episcopalians of that time. In 1645 some isolated individuals, mainly persons, as we suppose, of Episcopal preferences, like William Vassal, of Scituate, in Plym- outh Colony, sent in, as we shall see farther on, a petition to the Plymouth Court, urging a " full and free tolerance of religion to all men that would preserve the civil peace," etc., and "You would have admired," wrote Edward Winslow, " to have seen how sweet this carrion relished to most of the deputies." The next year a petition of the zealous Episcopalian, Sam,- uel Maverick, of Noddle's Island (East Boston), and Dr. Robert Child, of Hingham, with five others, was presented to the Massachusetts legislature, wherein they state that " There are many thousands also in these plantations, free-born, quiet, and peaceable men, who are debarred from all civil employments ; and members of the Church of England, with their pos- terity, are detained from the seals of the covenant of free grace." Notwithstanding these few individual efforts, it must be said that in the great contest for liberty, the Baptists of New England stood alone. No other denomination or organized community, by systematic, persevering legal efforts sought to abolish the oppressive laws of the State and secure the inestimable boon of religious liberty for all. "You Baptists," said a distinguished PRELIMINARY REMARKS I5 Congregational minister, Dr. Leonard Swain, of Provi- dence, R. I., at the Centennial of the Warren Associa- tion, 1867, ".You Baptists fought the battle of religious liberty and we all enjoy the fruits of the victory." We presume that the Baptists of the South also felt that they too were left in great part to fight their battles alone. Certainly, according to Dr. Hawk's concession, they were the principal agents in the securing of reli- gious liberty. "The Establishment," he says, "was finally put down. The Baptists were the principal promoters of this work, and in truth aided more than any other denomination in its accomplishment." ^ As we now proceed to consider the religious persecu- tions which took place in New England, in order the better to show the Puritan and Pilgrim character in its sterner aspects, as also the greatness of the struggle whereby religious liberty was at last achieved, we must speak somewhat at length of the relation which the Puritan and Pilgrim fathers sustained to the Anabap- tists and Quakers. In answer to the question, What was the original and distinctive difference between the Puritans and the Pilgrims ? it may be sufficient in a general way to say that the Puritans, while desirous of remaining in the Church of England, sought to purify and free the church from its " humane inventions," es- pecially from its leanings toward papacy in the matter of vestments and other rites.' The peculiar Puritan 1 For the story of the sufferings, struggles, and triumphs of the Southern Baptists we must refer our readers to the historical works of Semple and Howell, and to the lesser writings of Curry, Taylor, Bitting, Long, John- son, Bailey (pubUshed by the American Baptist Publication Society), and Dabney (in Vol. XXIII. of the " Christian Review "). * Calvin in his letter to John Knox says : " In the liturgy of England I l6 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES tcclinri^ was voiced by I-'rancis Higginson, first minister of Salem, in this wise : 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 England ! Farewel the church of God in England and all the Christian friends there I We do not go to New JCngland 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. Winthrop's company, who came over a little later; speak of themselves — As those who esteem it an honor to call the Church of Eng- land, 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 acknowl- edging 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, etc. Thus while they did not at first separate themselves from their "deare mother," the English Church, they felt it to be an impossibility for them wholly to conform to its ritual. What many of them suffered for their nonconformity may be inferred in part from the threat of King James I. : "I will make them conform or I will see that there were many tolerable foolish things ; by these words I mean that there was not that purity which was to be desired. . . So it behooved the learned, grave, and godly ministers of Christ to enterprise farther, and to set forth something more filed from rust and pun-r. If godly religion had flourished till this day in England there ought to have been a thing better corrected, and many things clean taken away. I cannot tell what they mean which so greatly delight in the leavings of popish dregs." PREI.IMINARY REMARKS 17 harry them out of the land or else do worse." But neither Elizabeth, nor James, nor Charles I. and II., nor the Archbishops Parker, Whitgift, Bancroft, and Laud, could coax or force the Puritans to conform, and so hundreds and thousands of nonconforming Episcopal ministers were silenced, deprived of their benefices, fined, imprisoned, or exiled. The Pilgrims, on the other hand, were not only non- conformists like the Puritans, but Separatists ; that is, they had wholly seceded from the established church and thus incurred the special hostility of both Church and State. Consequently, though in spite of govern- mental opposition, they felt " constrained to leave their native soyle and countrie, their lands and livings, and all their freinds and famillier acquaintance" (Bradford). And so they sought refuge in Holland, " where was freedome of religion for all men," and where in the en- joyment of this religious liberty, and under the liberal- izing teachings of John Robinson, they, while holding to the Calvinistic tenets of the Puritans, became far more tolerant in spirit and practice than they.^ In 1620 the Pilgrims emigrated to Plymouth, in New England, and in 1628-30 the Puritans settled in Salem and Boston. In a surprisingly short space of time, and largely, we think, through the influence of the Plym- outh deacon and doctor, Samuel Fuller — who was "well 1 However we may interpret John Robinson's famous utterance that " he was very confident the Lord had more truth and hght to breake forth out of his holy word " — whether as referring to theology, or, as Dr. H. M. Dexter supposes, to church polity — it is certain that he, a high Calvinist and utterly opposed to Arminianism (which is perhaps fairly represented by our present diluted orthodoxy), would have looked with dread upon any lowering down of the " doctrines of grace." l8 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES versed in the way of church discipline which was practised by Mr. Robinson's church," and who was several times called to the Massachusetts colony to "let blood," by which occasions he was enabled also to "prescribe for spiritual ailments" or church needs — these Puritan emigrants became Independents or Con- gregationalists like the Pilgrims of Plymouth. Note. — In 1629 the church at Salem chose Samuel Skelton for their pastor, and Francis Higginson for their teacher ; and these were ordained or installed in the Congregational way, Gov. Bradford, of Plymouth, giving the hand of fellowship. Thereupon, the two brothers John and Samuel Brown being Episcopalians, "accused the ministers as depaiting from the orders of the Church of England ; that they were Separatists, and would be Anabaptists," etc. The brothers having set up a separate worship of their own, and being men of "high spirits, and their speeches and practices tending to mutiny and faction, the Governor [Endicott] told them that New England was no place for such as they, and therefore he sent them both back to England at the return of the ships [probably in the 'Lion's Whelp'] the same year" (Morton's "Memorial," p. 100). A minister, Mr. Ralph Smith, who came over at the same time with Mr. Higginson, being a Separatist, "was required to give under his hand that he would not exercise his ministry within the limits of the patent without the express leave of the Governor on the spot." He left Salem and became the first minister of the church at Plymouth. Mr. Higginson died at an early age the next year, and Mr. Skelton in August, 1634, which was nearly a year after the coming of Roger Williams from his two years, or more pastorate in Plymouth to become for a second time a preacher in Salem. Gov. Bradford would have retained him longer in Plymouth, but Elder Brewster advised his going, fearing "that he would run the same course of rigid separation and anabaptistry which Mr. John Smith, the Se-baptist at Amsterdam, had done." Immediately on Williams' first arrival in this country he was invited, in the temporary absence of PRELIMINARY REMARKS I9 Mr. Wilson, to become teacher of the Boston church, which call he declined because they were "an unseparated people." At Salem, as we are told, "in one year's time he filled that place with principles of rigid separation, tending to anabaptistry." His separative principles finally became so rigid that he told his church "if they would not separate, not only from the churches of Old England but the churches of New England too, he would separate from them," which he accordingly did. In 1635 he was separated from Massachusetts. This voluntary withdraw- ing of himself from the churches in protest against their errors was in his view or to his hope "the breath of the Lord Jesus sounding forth in him (a poor despised ram's horn) the blast which in His own holy season should cast down the strength and confidence of all those inventions of men in the worshiping of the true and living- God." PART I THE PURITANS THEIR RELATION TO THE ANABAPTISTS AND QUAKERS Touching the superior powers of the earth, it is not unknown to all them that hath read and marked the Scripture that it appertaineth nothing unto their office to make any law to govern the conscience in religion. . . Christ alone is the governor of His church and the only lawgiver. — John Hooper, the first Pur- itan nonconforiiiist and martyr, /jjj. Gospel constitutions, in the case of heresy or error, seem not to favor any course of violence, I mean, of civil penalties. Fore- told it is that heresies must be ; but this for the manifesting of those who are approved, not the destroying of those that are not. . . Perhaps those who call for the sword on earth are as unacquainted with their own spirits as those that called for fire from heaven. — Dr. John Owen, 1616-1683. The reason (for the command, Deut. 13 : 10) is moral, that is, of universal and perpetual equity to put to death any apostate, seducing idolater, or heretic. — John Cotton, "Reply to Roger Witliains," 164/. 1 believe that antichrist hath not at this day a more probable way to advance his kingdom of darkness than by a toleration of all religions and jiersuasions. — Dr. Increase Mather, i6jj. It seem.s at first view somewhat remarkable that the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay gave their special atten- tion to the "obstinate and turbulent Anabaptists" as early as 1644, some twelve years before they seriously noticed the "pernisouse Quakers," against whom sub- 20 THE PURITANS 21 sequently they showed a special malignancy. Of course a sufficient reason for the prior attention shown to the Baptists is found in the fact that they emigrated to this country earlier than the Quakers. Cotton Mather, grandson of the famed John Cotton (born 1663), while disliking Anabaptism, yet speaks of the early Anabap- tists in wholly favorable terms, and in striking contrast with the above characterization. He says : " Infant baptism hath been scrupled by multitudes in our day who have been in other points most worthy Christians, and as holy, watchful, fruitful, and heavenly people as perhaps any in the world. Some few of these people have been among the planters of New England from the beginning."^ It is a singular circumstance that several of the oldest Congregational churches in Eng- land — many of whose members early came to this country — were afflicted with what this same Cotton Mather calls "the hydrophobic of Anabaptism." The Gainsboro Church (founded 1602), of which John Smyth — " a man of able gifts and a good preacher " (Bradford) — was pastor, and the church of John Robinson at Scrooby (founded 1606), were probably at their begin- ning originally one ; and both these pastors with many of their people emigrated, though at different times, to Holland, where there were already many ^^fratres Angli in Belgia exiilantcsy Smyth, who, as is commonly averred, at first joined the Brownist church, of which Francis Johnson was pastor and the learned Henry Ainsworth was teacher — though Dr. H. M. Dexter states that he established a " Second English Church at ' " Magnalia," Lib. II., 459. 22 NEW ENGLAND'S STRrOCxLES Amsterdam " — afterward became an y\nabaptist or Se- bajitist, as he is commonly called.' In the "True Story of John Smyth" will be found an interesting discussion and a flat and vehement denial of the genuineness of the wonderful " Records of the Ancient Baptist Church of Crowle," which inform us that prior to their coming to this country, nearly all the Pilgrim fathers, Carver, Brewster, Bradford, Winslow, Prince (but not John Robinson) were Baptists ! Mr. Smyth, who seems in many respects to resemble Roger Williams, has ever been regarded as a gifted man but as wanting in stability. He says, however, ' Dr. Dexter, in his "Congregationalism as seen in its Literature," p. 319, and in his "True Story of John Smyth," has produced much seeming evidence for Smyth's self-baptism, but we must still beg leave to doubt. Smyth's own statement is that "seeing ther was no church to whome we could joyne with a Good conscience to have baptisme from them, ther for wee might baptize ourselves." At a later date when he had adopted other views, he and his new followers speak of their former error "that they began to baptize themselves" — se iJ>sos baptizare. But if this refers to individual self-baptism it would prove that each one of Smyth's company baptized himself, which would be proving too much ; for no one supposes that each member of his church (which a writer of that time calls " a company of Se-baptists ") baptized himself Smyth furthermore main- tained that it requires two at least to institute a proper church or baptism. Edward Bean Underbill, a distinguished English Baptist, advances the idea that Smyth and others, who differed from the Dutch Baptists in several particulars, were " unwilling to resort to them for baptism, and became of the opinion that it might be originated among themselves," as in the case of Roger Williams and his friends. And from this, as he supposes, origi- nated the charge that Smyth baptized himself. See S. S. Cutting's " His- torical Vindications," pp. 57-60. We may here remark that the term " anabaptism," as used in early times decides nothing as lo the mode of re- baptism. Dr. Dexter maintains that Smyth, like the Mennonites, was bap- tized by affusion, and that even the Anabaptists in I-"ngland did not practise immersion, till about the year 1641, which last assertion will not be gener- ally believed See Dr. Armitage's " History of the Baptists," pp. 425-465. THE PURITANS 23 that to " fal from the profession of Puritanisrne to Brovvnisme, and from Brownisme to true Christian Bap- tisme is not simply evil or reprovable in itself, except it be proved that we have fallen from true religion." Many adhered to him in his change of views, but the greater number opposed him and charged him with being " a murderer of the souls of babes and sucklings by depriving them of the visible seal of salvation." His successor, Thomas Helwys, with his church, about the year 161 1 — the year in which our Common version of the Bible made its appearance — published to the world a Confession of Faith, wherein they boldly affirmed that. The Magistrate is not by virtue of his office to meddle with religion or matters of conscience, to force or compel men to this or that form of reHgion or doctrine, but to leave Christian religion free to every man's conscience, and to handle only civil trans- gressions, injuries, and wrongs of man against man, . . . for Christ only is the king and lawgiver of the church and conscience.' Helwys, we may remark, once belonged to the "ancient church of Separatists," probably to that of Gainsboro, and, according to John Robinson's state- ment, he more than others furthered the cause of emigration to Holland. Probably through the influence of Smyth he was led to a change of views. Robinson and others had a controversy with both Smyth and Helwys. ' In Crosby's second volume, Appendix II., of his ' History of the Eng- lish Baptists " is " A most Humble Supplication " to King James I., pub- lished 1620, " of many of his Majesty's Loyal Subjects, Unjustly called Ana-baptists," wherein they say that " no man ought to be compelled to a worship wherein he hath not faith, seeing there is but one Lord and one Lawgiver over the conscience." 24 NEW exCxI.and's struggles The next oldest Congregational church was that of Southwark, London, founded or re-established in 1616, of which Henry Jacob was pastor, who in 1624 removed to Virginia, where he soon died. Under its second pastor, John Lothrop, more than a score of its members seceded and formed a Particular or Calvinistic Baptist church, in 1633, with John Spilsbury as their pastor.* Prof. A. H. Newman in his recent " History of the Baptist Churches " states as a matter of considerable importance, that Mark Luker (or Lukar) who seceded with Mr. Spilsbury from the Southwark Church, and was immersed in 1641, became a ruling elder and a leading worker in John Clarke's church at Newport, thus forming a connecting link between the first Calvinistic Baptist church in England and one of the two earliest American Baptist churches. He died a few months after Mr. Clarke, 1676, "leaving" as Backus says, "the character of a very worthy walker." It was " At a Disputation in Southwark," held October 17, 1642, between Mr. William Kiffen, with three others, and Dr. Daniel Featly, that " The Dippers [were] Dipt, or the Anabaptists dvck'd and plung'd over Head and Eares " by (the tongue of) said P^eatly, who in the Dedication of his work to the reader, says : " I could hardly dip my pen in anything but gall," which utterance does not seem to be that of a conscious victor in debate. • In Mr. Felt's "Ecclesiastical History" it is stated that a manuscript, dated 1646, supposed to have been written by Richard Mather, of Dor- chester, containing a reply to nine reasons of John Spilsbury for proving that infants should not be baptized, is now in the American Antiquarian Society's Collections, in Worcester. THE PURITANS 25 After the Southwark secession, Mr. Lothrop with about thirty members emigrated in 1634 to "the wil- derness called Scituate," in Plymouth Colony, and here again they were divided on the subject of baptism. A part of the members with their pastor withdrew in 1639 to Barnstable, where also at a later date there were "great divisions" on the Baptist question, and Charles Chauncy, a Pedobaptist immersionist, who had been preaching in Plymouth for nearly three years, was chosen in 1641 to be Mr. Lothrop's successor in Scituate.' After a service here of thirteen years, till 1654, he, on condition of his forbearing to disseminate his peculiar views, was elected president of Harvard College, in place of the genial and gentle Henry Dun- ster, " vir pietate, doctt'ina, prndcntia insig-nis," \who, after serving fourteen years, from 1640, as the first 1 Edward Winslow writes in 1646 (as quoted in Prof. Newman's " History of the Baptist Churches "), that "in the government of Plymouth, to our great grief, not only the pastor of a congregation waiveth the administra- tion of baptism to infants, but divers of his congregation are fallen with him." This is supposed to refer to Chauncy and his congregation at Sci- tuate. And yet there is indubitable evidence that he held to and practised the immersion of infants. The historian of this town says, " There seemed to be three parties in Scituate at this time : one of which held to infant sprinkling, another to adult immersion exclusively, and a third (of which was Mr. Chauncy), to immersion of infants as well as adults." It is not easy to reconcile these differing statements. The one sure thing about the matter is, that he " waived the administration of baptism ' ' in the customary form of sprinkling. His contest with the Plymouth Church had reference solely to immersion. This was the subject of the public disputes which he held with the neighboring ministers, and it was his arguments in favor of immersion which, by request of the Plymouth Church, were sent to the churches and ministers of the Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven Colonies, for the purpose of refutation. Of course, to one like him who was fixed in his views " as the earth was vpon the center,' ' their answers were not satisfactory. C 26 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES president of the college, aiul having to the consterna- tion of the authorities " unaccountably fallen," as Cot- ton Mather expresses it, " into the briars of Antipedo- baptisni,"' was invited by the Court in 1654, as a per- son " unsound in the fayth," to resign his office, and thereafter he became in turn Chauncy's successor in the Scituate parish till his death in 1659. The law of 1653, which may have been enacted in reference to his defection, and by which the Court was enabled to inti- mate the desirableness of his resignation, reads as fol- lows : " Every person that shall publish and maintain any hoethrodoxe and erroneous doctrine shal be liable to be quaestioned and censured by the County Court where he liveth, according to the merrit of his offence."'' Thus it was that the Baptists emigrated from Eng- land to America, and as they were deemed obstinate and turbulent there, so, though even to a greater de- gree, were they regarded here. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Colony gave them very hard and op- probrious names, such as "soul murderers," "troublers of the churches," "incendiaries of the Commonwealth," and more than one writer applied to anabaptism the offensive term, "scab." Dr. Increase Mather charged them with "setting up altar against the Lord's altar," and Urian Oakes, afterward president of Harvard Col- lege, branded their doctrine as " an engine framed to cut the throat of the infantry of the churches." To stay the early tide of the anabaptistic errors, and to establish the contrary opinions, Lothrop in 1644 pub- lished, " To Sion's Virgins : Or a Short Forme of Cate- > "Magnalia," Lib. IL, 78. * For some further account of Henry Dunster, see Appendix A. THE PURITANS 27 chisme of the Doctrine of Baptisme. In use in these Times that are so full of Questions." In the same year appeared Thomas Shepard's " New England's Lam- entations for Old England's present errours and divi- sions, and their feared future desolations, if not timely prevented, occasioned by the increase of Anabaptists, rigid Separatists, Antinomians, and Familists, together with some seasonable remedies," etc. In 1645 George Philips, of Watertown — ancestor of those who founded the famous Andover and Exeter Academies — wrote a " Reply to a Confutation of some Grounds for Infant Baptism," with an Introduction by Thomas Shepard of Cambridge.^ Still later, in 1647, John Cotton, the great light and strong pillar of early Puritanism, wrote on " The Grounds and Endes of the Baptisme of the Children of the Faithful." In the same year, Nathaniel Ward, of Ipswich — who got up the " Body of Liber- ties," adopted by the Puritan Court in 1641 — published in England his " Simple Cobler of Aggawam in Amer- ica, Willing to help 'mend his Native Country lament- ably tattered both in the upper-leather and Sole, with all the honest stitches he can take," etc., in which work he scourges Anabaptists and others with no little severity. The next year Thomas Cobbet, of Lynn, published "A Just Vindication of the Covenant and Church-estate of Children of Church members, as also of their Right unto Baptisme ; Wherein such things as 1 In Vol. X. of the Massachusetts Archives (a collection of some 240 volumes of manuscripts in the Secretary's Department of the State House in Boston), is a letter of Mr. Philips, in which he petitions the Court to remit the fine imposed on John Stowers, one of his church, for reading an Anabaptist book, stating that he is " perswaded Stowers is free from all Anabaptistical opinions." 28 NEW England's struggles have been iM-ought by divers to the contrary, especially by Job. Spilsbury (and others), are revised and An- swered." And in 1649 Thomas Hooker, "a luminary of the first magnitude," issued a work "intituled" the " Covenant of Grace Opened ; wherein These particu- lars are handled, viz.. What the Covenant of Grace is ; What the Scales of the Covenant are ; Who are the Parties and Subjects fit to receive these Seales, From all which Particulars Infants' Baptisme is proved and vindicated." W'e may mention here another quaintly titled work written several years later, 1 681, by Samuel Willard, teacher of the "Old South" Church, Boston, afterward acting president of Harvard College : " Ne S II tor ultra Crcpidain " (Cobbler, stick to your last), the same containing " Brief Animadversions upon the New England Anabaptists late Fallacious Narrative," etc. This "Narrative," which was in part an answer to Dr. Increase Mather's " Divine Right of Infant Baptism," was from the pen of John Russell, styled by the histo- rian Hubbard, "a wedderdop'd shoemaker," of W^oburn, afterward pastor of the Baptist church in Boston.' Our Puritan forefathers professedly came to this ' For such " consecrated cobblers " as Elder Russe'i, and William Wick- enden, of Rhode Island, one of the pioneer Baptist preachers in the Pro- vince of New Netherland (New York), and William Carey, the pioneer baptist missionary to India, the Christian world may well be thankful. In 1656, the " Colibler from Rhode Island" was sentenced to pay a fine ot ^100 Flemish, and to be banished out of the Province, but to remain in prison till the fine and cost of the process be paid. The Council, however, remitted his fine on being informed that he was a poor man, " with a wife and many children, by profession a cobbler, which trade he neglects, so that it will be impossible to collect anything from him " ; though, if ever seen in the Province again, "he shall be arrested and kept in confinement till the fine and costs are paid in full." THE PURITANS 29 " remote corner of the earth to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the hberties of the Gospel in purity with peace." Again, in 1685, in their address to King James II., they say that their fathers came to this "vast howling wilderness" in or- der that " they and wee their children after them might worship God according to the dictates of our consciences, founded upon the Sacred Scriptures, which liberty of our religion wee esteeme more deare to us than our Hues." Again they say : "Our highest am- bition is to live a poore and quiet life in a corner of the world without offence to God or man." In coming, therefore, to "this Pathmos," this "vast and waste wilderness," they designed to make it a quiet Christian home for themselves, "an innofencive retjrement to worship God," and preserve his truth ; and hence, as nursing fathers to the church, the magistrates felt it right to exclude from their partnership or company any persons of pernicious faith and practice who might ven- ture to intrude. They had not learned from Jeremy Taylor that It is also a part of Christian religion that the liberty of men's consciences should be preserved in all things where God hath not made a limit or set a restraint ; that the soul of man should be free and acknowledge no master but Jesus Christ ; that mat- ters spiritual should not be restrained by punishments corporal ; and that the same meekness and charity should be preserved in the promotion of Christianity that gave it foundation and incre- ment and firmness in the first publication. Nor had they attained to Roger Williams' high ideal of the duty of the civil magistrate to suppress all violence to the bodies and goods of men for their soul's belief, and to pro- 30 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES vide that not one person in the land be restrained from, or con- strained to, any worship, ministry, or maintenance, but peace- ably maintained in his soul as well as corporal freedom. Such doctrine as this would be to the Puritan author- ities a " cursed, intolerable toleration," adapted only to an impossible Utopia, where, according to one of its earliest laws, " it should be lawfull for everie man to favoure and folow what religion he would." They knew and deeply felt that a small and feeble commu- nity cannot bear those internal antagonisms which a larger and stronger one would scarcely feel. " It is evident," says Dr. Increase Mather, "that toleration is in one place not only lawful, but a necessary duty, which in another place would be destructive ; and the expectation of it irrational. That which is needful to ballast a great ship will sink a small boat." John Fiske remarks that " the Puritan communities were to some slight extent influenced by such conditions as used to prevail in primitive society, where above all things the prime social and political necessity is social cohesion within the tribal limits," without which "the existence of the tribe is likely to be extinguished." In these conditions he traces the rise of the persecuting spirit which will begin to pass away after men have become organized into great and strong nations. Charles Fran- cis Adams, in his criticism of the Puritans, makes no distinction between the necessities of a little strug- gling community and those of a powerful nation. As we have seen, the Puritan emigrants sought here a peaceful home for themselves ; and as no one has a right to enter a house without the owner's consent, and " if without authority and with violence one presumes THE PURITANS 3 1 to enter, such intruder may justly forfeit even his life;" so they ask "if the publicke keepers and guar- dians of the Commonwealth have not as much power to take away the Hues of such as, contrary to prohibi- tion, shall jnvade and intrude into theire publicke pos- sessions or territories as Private and particular habita- tions." Dr. Palfrey, in his " History of New England," claims that " no householder has a more unqualified title to declare who shall have the shelter of his roof than had the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay to decide who should be sojourners or visitors within their precincts." In 1659 John Norton, the successor of John Cotton in the first Boston church, published a book entitled, " The Heart of New Eng- land Rent " (by the evil tenets and practices of the Quakers), in which he says : The wolf which ventures over the wide sea out of a ravening desire to prey upon the sheep, when landed, discovered, and taken, hath no cause to complain, though for the security of the flock, he be penned up with that door opening upon the fold fast shut, but having another door purposely left open whereby he may depart at his pleasure, either returning from whence he came or otherwise quitting the place. " If," says the Rev. William Hubbard, of Ipswich, in an election sermon, 1676, "If the owner or keeper of a vineyard shall make a thorn hedge about it, if any man by violence breaking in shall wound or destroy himself, where will the blame be found — in them that make the hedge so sharp and strong, or in them that attempted without leave violently to break in.'*" Dr. Thomas Arnold, who advocated a union of Church and State, also advances the theory that " every people in 32 NKW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES that country which is rightfully theirs may establish their own institutions and their own ideas ; and no stranger has any title whatever to become a member of that nation unless he adopts their institutions and ideas." This theory seems plausible, but somehow it does not work well in practice so far as nations and govern- ments are concerned.' Our fathers, moreover, " in forming their Politique Constitution, had an eye principally and primarily unto the Ancient Platforme of God's lawe." In other words, their government was theocratic ; God himself being their Governor, and the Bible, or rather the Old Testament, and more particularly "Moses his Judi- cials," being the statute book. Their ideal form of government was not democratic but monarchical, with God as their monarch. Said John Cotton : Democracy I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for Church or CommonweaUh. If the people be governors, who shall be goxerned ? As for monarchy and aristocracy, they are both ol them clearly approved and directed in Scripture, yet so as referreth the sovereignty to himself and set- teth up theocracy in both as the best form of government in the Commonwealth as well as in the Church. As early as 163 1 the Court pdssed an order that " no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body pol- itick, but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same." Thus from this date ' For a discussion of the right of exclusion and banishment under the Puritan Charter, which grants allowance, under certain circumstances, to "repulse, repell," etc., see Dr. George E. Ellis' "Puritan Age in Massachusetts," Chapter VIL THE PURITANS 33 onward (until 1664) all voters in civil affairs, and ail government officers, had to be church-members. Hence the Puritan government, like that of Israel, was both civil and religious. State and Church, which they compared to Moses and Aaron kissing each other on the mount of God — being regarded as essentially one. We may call it a Church-State system. The Puritan State House, as it has been said, was within the meeting-house. Hence the Commonwealth, as " growing out of the Church," and being " administered for and by God," must be regarded as virtually iden- tical with the church.' In thus adopting the Jewish Commonwealth as the mode for their government, they felt it be God's government rather than theirs, and that any disobedience to it was virtually rebellion against God. As Dr. Geo. E. Ellis remarks : They were acting under the restraint of a divine obligation and covenant, and not as being at perfect liberty to use their own wit or wisdom in plans of their own. . . They could say, as in fact they did say, to many victims of their severe disci- pline : "You are not simply withstanding us, breaking our laws, defying our authority, you are rebelling against God ; and as we have put ourselves under his rule and statutes, we intend to hold you to the same subjection." . . If one who has but a superficial knowledge and apprehension of the principles and spirit of Puritanism is disposed to pronounce upon their rule 1 Perhaps for a small matter nothing better illustrates this Church and State union than the case of Mrs. Sherman and her lost pig, the interest in which became so deep and general that it greatly convulsed both Church and Commonwealth. This contention, beginning in 1636, was not really settled till 1644, when the General Court was divided into two branches, the Senate and House of Representatives. Thus, as Winthrop says, did " a great business grow out of a very small occasion." 34 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES that they must have been inborn inquisitors and fiends of cru- elty, he must be left free to hold that opinion, or advised to en- lighten it. Evidently under this theocratic rule, while private thought might be indulged, yet but little liberty of per- sonal utterance or action could be allowed apart from public authority. The Puritan rule took cognizance of the outward breaches of the first table — which relates to our duties to God — as well as of the second. No meetings could be held or attended, no meeting-houses could be built, no minister chosen and settled, no sal- ary fixed and provided for, apart from the action or authority of the "General Corte." Townships were granted on the condition that the citizens should sus- tain an able and orthodox ministry.' Hence the Court enacted as early as 1638 that, " Every inhabitant in any town is lyable to contribute to all charges both in Church and Commonwealth, whereof he doth or may receive benefit. . . And every inhabitant who shall not vol- untarily contribute proportionably to his ability . . . for upholding the ordinances in the churches as otherwise, shall be compelled thereto by assessment and distress. ' ' Even in the first year of lioston's settlement a tax of sixty pounds was assessed on Bos- ton and neighboring villages for the maintenance of Elders Wilson and Philips. In 1646 a law was passed requiring all persons, not incapacitated, to attend the preaching provided for them on the Lord's Day, and on days of fasting and thanks- giving, under a penalty of five shillings for each case of ab- * The town of Hanover, where the writer now re.sides, was incorpo- rated in 1727, under the condition that its iiihabitant.s "do within the space of two years erect and finish a suitable house for the public worship of God, and, as soon as may be, procure and settle a learned Ortho- dox minister of tjood conversation, and make Provision for his comfort able and honourable support." THE PURITANS 35 sence. The court also " ordered that if any Christian (so called) within this jurisdiction shall contemptuously behave him- selfe towards ye word preached or ye messengers thereof called to dispence ye same, either by interrupting him in his preaching, or by charging him falsely with any error which he hath not taught in ye open face of ye church, or, like a sonn of Korah, cast upon his true doctrine or himselfe any reproach to ye dishon- our of ye Lord Jesus who hath sent him, and to ye disparagement of his holy ordinance, and making God's wayes contemptible and ridiculous ; yt every such person or persons (whatever cen- sure ye church may passe) shall for the first scandall be con- vented and reproved openly by ye magistrates at some lecture, and bound to their good behaviour. [Under this law ex-Presi- dent Dunster was arraigned in the church where he had so often preached and worshiped, for "open contempt of God's word and messengers," by "interrupting," not the "preaching" indeed, but the services.] And if a second time they break forth into like contemptuous carriages, either to pay five pounds into the public treasury, or to stand two houres openly upon a block four foote high, on a lecture day, with a paper fixed on his breast with this : A Wanton Gospeller, written in capitall letters. ' ' ^ ' The Connecticut Colony was settled by encigrants from the vicinity of Boston, and in forming their government they naturally adopted many of the laws of Massachusetts. They at first even named their towns after those they had left ; calling Hartford, Newtown ; Windsor, Dorchester ; and Wethersfield, Watertown. We find the above laws of 1638, 1646 incor- porated almost verbatim in the first code of Conneedcut Colony (1650), only "Wanton Gospeller " gives place to "an open and obstinate con temner of God's Holy Ordinances," which phrase was afterward, in 1672, adopted by the Massachusetts authorities. The New Haven Colony even more than that of Connecticut, borrowed in letter or spirit from the civil polity and laws of Massachusetts. By their legislature it was " ordered that the judicial lawes of God as they were delivered by Moses, ande as they are a fence to the morall lawe, being neither typicall nor ceremoniall, nor had any reference to Canaan, shall be accounted of moral equity, ande generally binde all offenders ande be a rule to all the Courts in their pro- ceedings against offenders." " None shall be admitted freemen or free burgesses within this jurisdiction or any part of it, but such planters as are members of some one or other of the approved churches of New Eng- 36 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES A law of 1652 required all towns to be supplied with a minister, a meeting-house, and a parsonage, and all the inhabitants to be taxed for their support. The Court enacted in 1654, for the comfortable mainte- nance of the ministry : That the County Court in eueiy shire shall (vppon information given them of any defect of any congregation or township within the shire) order and appoynt what mayntenance shalbe allowed to the ministers of that place, and shall issue out warrants to the select men to assesse, and the constable of the said towne to col- lect the same, and distreine the said assessment vppon such as shall refuse to pay. A law of 1658, relating to the selecting of ministers, thus reads : Whereas it is the duty of the Christian magistrate to take care the people be fed with wholesome and sound doctrine, and in this houre of temptation, wherein the enemy designeth to sowe corrupt seede, every company cannot be thought able or fitt to judge of those gospell qualliffications required in the publicke dispensors of the word, . . . considering also the rich blessing of God flowing from the good agreement of the civill and church estate, and the horrible mischeifes and confusions that follow on the contrary : it is therefore ordered that henceforth no person shall publicquely and constantly preach to any company of peo- ple whither in church society or not, or be ordeyned to the office of a teaching elder, where any two organnick churches, Councill of State, or General Court shall declare their dissatisfaction thereat, either in reference to doctrine or practize. land." "The Court shall, with all care and diligence, provide for the maintenance of the purity of religion, and suppress the contrary according to their best light from the word of God." " All who refuse to pay, or subscribe not according to their means (for supporting the ministry), sliall be assessed at a juat rate with others. If any refuse to pay after being so taxed, they shall be made to pay.' ' THE PURITANS 37 When now that "godly minister," Roger Williams, proclaimed in Salem the " newe and dangerous opinion '' that " the civill magistrates' power extends only to the Bodies and Goods and outward State of men," having no right to meddle with one's religion or with matters of conscience, such a doctrine as this, was indeed, as they allege, subversive of their (theocratic) govern- ment, and tended to undermine the foundations of their colony. And so on " 3d Sept.," according to a loose statement of the Colony Records, or more prob- ably, October 9 (19 N. S.), 1635, the Massachusetts Court (with the approval of all the ministers save one), " ordered that the said Mr. Williams . . . shall depte [departe] out of this jurisdiccon within sixe weekes nowe nexte ensueing." John Haynes, who was gov- ernor that .year and pronounced the sentence of ban- ishment against Williams, afterward, with Thomas Hooker, took up his abode in Connecticut. We read in Backus' "History," Vol. H., 515, that: When Williams was at his house in Hartford, Haynes said to him : "I must now confess to you that the most wise God hath provided and cut out this part of his world for a refuge and re- ceptacle for all sorts of consciences. 1 am now under a cloud, and my brother Hooker, with the Bay, as you have been. We have removed from them thus far, and yet they are not satisfied." But all was not peace even in Salem, after Roger Williams left, as we may see by the following mandate sent by the authorities at Boston : TO THE CONSTABLE OF SALEM. Whereas we are credibly informed that divers persons (both men and women) within your town do disorderly assemble them- D 38 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES selves both upon the Lord's day and other times, and contemptu- ously refusing to come to the solemn meetings of the church there (or being some of them justly cast out) do obstinately re- fuse to submit themselves that they might be again received ; but do make contentions and seduce divers persons of weak capacity, and have already withdrawn some of them from the church, and thereby have caused much (not only disturbance in the church, but also) disorder and damage in the civil state, so as if they be suffered to go on, your town is like to be deserted of many of the chief and most useful members, to the great dis- honour of Ciod ; these are therefore to require you forthwith to re- pair unto all such disordered persons (taking assistance of two or three honest neighbors) and signify unto them that their said course is very offensive to the government here, and may no longer be suffered, and therefore command them from us to re- frain all such disordered assemblies and pretended church meet- ings, and either confine themselves to the laws and orders of this government, being established according to the rule of God's word, or else let them be assured that we shall, by God's assist- ance, take some such strict and speedy course for the reformation of these disorders, and preventing the evils which may otherwise ensue, as our duty to God and charge over this people do call for from us. And when you have given them this admonition you shall diligently attend how it is observed, and certify us accord- ingly, as you will answer your neglect herein at your peril. H. Vane, Govr. Jo. WiNTHROP, Dept. Tho. Dudley. From Boston this 30 of the 3 month (May), 18&6. It was almost an axiom with our Puritan fathers that religious toleration is incompatible with the au- thority of magistrates, or indeed, with the existence of the civil State. In opposition to such an idea and to show how soul-freedom and governmental authority may co-exist, Roger Williams uses the following strik- ing and beautiful illustration : THE PURITANS 39 There >^oes many a ship to sea with many hundred souls on one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth or an human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked into one ship ; upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges : that none of the Pa- pists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship's prayers or worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practise any. I further add that I never denied that notwithstanding this liberty, the commander of this ship ought to command the ship's course ; yea, and also command that justice, peace, and sobriety to be kept and prac- tised both among the seamen and all the passengers. If any of the seamen refuse to perform their service, or passengers to pay their freight ; if any refuse to help, in person or purse, toward the common charges or defense ; if any refuse to obey the com- mon laws and order of the ship concerning their common peace or preservation ; if any mutiny and rise up against their commanders and officers ; if any should preach or write that there ought to be no commanders nor officers because all are equal in Christ, therefore no masters or officers, no laws nor orders, no correc- tions nor punishments ; I say I never denied but in such cases, whatever is pretended, the commander or commanders may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors according to their deserts and merits. This if seriously and honestly minded may, if it so please the Father of lights, let in some light to such as willingly shut not their own eyes. The Puritans would, in opposition to the above, force all the company in their "ship of State," to come to their prayers and worship and help support the same, and would forbid all other worship ; and they would do this on the ground that such attendance and conformity was a righteous demand of their divinely ordained and divinely administered government, and to refuse obedi- ence was not only to rebel against God, but to under- 40 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES mine said government ; and in such a case the com- manders or magistrates " may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors." Under the theocratic government of Massachusetts, "heresy and treason were convertible" terms (Straus' "Roger Williams"). Roger Williams, we may remark, was not banished as a Baptist, though he had " anabaptistic tendencies." In after-life he was a Baptist church-member probably only a few months — in Judge Staples' opinion, and according to the Church Records compiled in 1775, about four years — and then he became what is custom- arily called, " a Seeker," or one who waits for the reappearance of true apostles. The principal reason given for his banishment was that he " broached and dyvulgcd dyvers newe and dangerous opinions against the aucthoritie of Magistrates, as also writt Irs [letters] of defamacon both of the magistrates and churches here, and that before any conviccon, and yet mainetaineth the same without retraccon." John W^inthrop voted against him, but afterward regretted it, and in view of his subsequent services to the colony, was disposed to recall him from his banishment and confer upon him some mark of favor for his services.^ I am inclined to ' When Mr. Winthrop on his death-bed was pressed by Mr. Dudley to sign an order of banishment of an heterodox person (Mr. Matthews, a Welsh minister), he refused, saying, " I have done too much of that work already." Williams had Gov. Winthrop for a lifelong friend, and we do not wonder that when writing to John Winthrop, Jr., Governor of Connec- ticut, he should say that he " ever honored and loved and ever shall the root and branches of your deare name." Williams writes that Stephen Winthrop, another of Gov. Winthrop's sons, was "a great man for soul liberty." Indeed, Mr. Williams has words of praise for very many of the Puritan fathers and would seem to think more highly of them than do many of their descendants. He calls Gov. Haynes, who pronounced sen THE PURITANS 4 1 think that Roger Williams' "services," particularly by his preventing a conspiracy among the Indians, saved the Puritan colony from utter destruction. In Vol. X. of the " Plymouth Colony Records," p. 438,^ is an ex- ceedingly interesting letter written in 1654 by Williams to the Massachusetts people, urging them to keep peace, especially with the Narragansetts. In this letter he in- cidentally alludes to some of his services by reminding them — Yt vpon ye expresse advice of Your euer honoured Mr. Win- throp, deceased, I first adventured to begin Plantation among the thickest of these Barbarians ; That in ye Pequt wars it pleased your honoured Goernment to employ me [a few months after his arrival at Providence] in ye hazardous and waighty service of negociating a leauge between Yourselves and ye Narrigansetts when ye Pequt Messengers (who sought ye Narrigansetts leauge against ye English) had almost ended yt my worck and Life to- gether. ["Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequod ambassadors, whose hands and arms, methought, reeked with the blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on the Connec- ticut River, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also." — From a letter to Major Mason.] That at ye subscribing of yt sollemne Leauge (which by ye mercy of ye Lord I had procured with ye Narrigansetts) Your Government was pleased to send unto me ye Copie of it, tence of banishment against him, a "heavenly man," and he speaks of Edward Winslow as " that great and pious soul," "a wise and eminently Christian Governor," who nevertheless advised Williams, though with the loss of his harvest, to " remove " from Seekonk, which was within the Plym- outh Colony limits, " to the other side of the water, where he had the country before him, and might be free as themselves, and they should be loving neighbors together." Yet Williams felt himself " as good as banished from Plymouth as from Massachusetts," and he may justly have said, A bull of excommunication follows me wherever I go. 1 See also Knowles' " Memoir of Roger Williams," pp. 272-278. 42 NEW England's struggles subscribed by all Hands, Yours and Theirs, which yet I keepe as a Monument of Mercy and a Testimonie of Peace and Fayth- fullness betveene You both. That since yt time jt hath pleased ye Lord so to order it yt I haue bene more or less interested and vsed in all ye great Transactions of War or Peace between ye English and ye Natiues, and haue not spared, Purse, nor Paines, nor Hazards (very many times) yt the whole Land, English and Natiues might sleepe in peace securely.' I think it is not generally known that on March 31, 1676, the Council of Massachusetts revoked, partially at least, Roger Williams' sentence of banishment in these words : Whereas, Mr. Roger Williams stands at present under a sen- tence of Restraint from coming into this Colony, yet considering how readyly and freely at all tymes he hath served the English interest in this time of warre with the Indians, and manifested his particular respects to the Authority of this Colony in several services desired of him, and further understanding how by the last assault of the Indians upon Providence his House is burned and himself in his old age reduced to an uncomfortable and dis- abled state, Out of Compassion to him in this condition the Council doe Order and Declare that if the sayd Mr. Williams shall see cause and desire it he shall have liberty to repayre into any of our Towns for his security and comfortable abode during these Public Troubles, He behaving himself peaceably and in- offensively and not disseminating and venting any of his different opinions in matters of religion to the dissatisfaction of any.-* Had our Baptist historians been aware of the above • See further in Appendix B. * Vol. X., p. 233, of the " Mass. Archives." So far as the writer is aware, he had the pleasure of first calling the attention of the Baptist pub- lic to this interesting document, as also to the existence of the original manuscript, by pul)lishing it in certain of our religious newspapers. It had been previously |niblisbed in Vol. X., p. 6, of the " Plymouth Colony Records," and in Dr. Ellis' " Puritan Age in Massachusetts." THE PURITANS 43 reference to "matters of religion" in the revoked sen- tence of banishment, they would have found it much easier answering Dr. H. M. Dexter, who contended that WiUiams' " exclusion from the Colony took place for reasons purely political, and having no relation to his notions upon toleration." ' We doubt whether the "New England firebrand," as George Fox, the Quaker, called Williams, could ever be so far "quenched " as to be welcomed in close embrace for any length of time by the " lord brethren " in the Bay Colony. Certainly for him it was an impossibility to stifle his convictions and muffle his mouth anywhere merely for his own personal comfort and advantage. Williams died about eight years after this, according to the latest investigations, in the spring of 1684. We may add that Williams, in a letter addressed to Gov. Endicott, in 1652, — shortly after the whipping of Holmes, — gives his view of one of the reasons of his banishment. He says : Let it not be offensive in your eyes that I single out a point, a cause of my banishment, wherein I greatly fear one or two sad evils have befallen your soul and conscience. The point is that of the civil magistrates dealing in matters of conscience and religion, as also of persecuting any matter merely spiritual and religious. . . Sir, 1 must be humbly bold to say 'tis impossible for any man or men to maintain their Christ by their sword, and to worship a true Christ ! to fight against all consciences opposite theirs and not to fight against God in some of them, and to hunt after the precious life of the true Lord Jesus Christ. . . I end with an humble cry to the Father of mercies . . . that no sleep may seize upon your eyes nor slumber upon your eyelids until your serious thoughts have calmly and unchangeably, ' " As to Roger Williams," p. 79. 44 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES through help from Christ, fixed on a moderation toward the spirit and consciences of all mankind, merely differing from or opposing yours with only religious and spiritual opposition.' It must be conceded that Williams had his pecu- liarities and his notions, but he was far from being a " mere weathercock, constant only in inconstancy," or a man with " a windmill in his head." "How," asks Backus, " came men of university learning to write great volumes against a windmill and a weathercock.'' " Dr. George E. Ellis, in his "Puritan Age" says: "A windmill must be adjusted by breezes and points of the compass, as Williams never was. He never turned on axis or spindle, though he created a stiff breeze when it was not furnished for his use." No winds. methinkS, ever turned him from the " rockie strength " of his deep convictions. And now that the more important prin- ciples of Roger Williams are everywhere established and cherished in the land,'^ I think it were well, even at this late day, that our people should erect to his memory, as Governor Winthrop suggested, some me- morial as a "mark of favor" for his services, perhaps 1 The whole of Williams' ]5ungent personal appeal to Gov. Endicott, for- merly a member of his church in Salem, may be found in Backus' " History," Vol. I., pp. 209-212. Our readers will recollect that the hanging of the Quakers occurred under Endicott's administration. ^ Professor Gervinus, in his "Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth Century," speakingof universal suffrage, religious freedom, etc , established in Rhode Island, says (as quoted by Straus): " These institutions have not only maintained themselves here, but have sjiread over the whole Union. They have superseded the aristocratic commencements of Carolina and of New York, the high church party in Virginia, the theocracy in Massa- chusetts, and the monarchy throughout America ; they have given laws to one-nvi- lege thenceforward of staying in this country, though he was subsequently imprisoned for not paying his fines, and, for the offense of charging the Court and Country with shedding innocent blood, was sentenced to pay five pounds or be whipped. On page 281 of the volume previously named, Eunice Cole has a peti- tion, written Oct. 8, 1662, wherein she states that " your petitioner was sentenced to a double sentence, the one to corporall punishment (which I have suffered), the other to imprisonment during my life or the pleasure of the Court, which sentence to imprisonment is more intollerable to me than any corporall punishment that may be inflicted on me." She implores the Court to "take into their gratious consideration the condition of herself, an aged and weak woman, and of her aged hus- band, he being eighty-eight years of age and troubled often with swellings and sores in his body which brings him nigh to death oftentimes." She begs them "not to separate my husband and me whom God hath so joined together," and she promises so to behave her- self both in word and deed that there should be no cause for future complaint. The Court allowed her, after paying what is due on arrears to the keeper, to " be released the prison on condition that she depart within one month after her release out of this juris- diction, and not to returne againe on poenalty of hir former sentence being executed against hir." She did not apparently avail herself of this privilege, for in May, 1665. in answer to her petition, it was "ordered that she may banc hir liberty upon hir securitv to de- part from and abide out of this jurisdiction according THE PURITANS 83 to the former faiior of this Court." Thus this woman, " whose condition required that refreshment both of diet and lodging which a prison does not afford," was doomed still longer to her intolerable confinement. It is affecting to look over some half a hundred pages of documents in the volume referred to, all re- lating to the Quakers. The letters, petitions, etc., were often blindly written, and are now hardly legible even to experts, but some of those old faded papers, we are sure, were written in agony and moistened with tears. It may be a difficult question to decide what should have been done to the Quakers, but perhaps no better answer could be given than that found in the reply of the Rhode Island Court, in 1657, to the confederate commissioners who more than once urged the Rhode Island governor to take some effective measures to suppress the Quakers. The reply thus reads : As concerning these Quakers (so called) which are now among us, wee have no law among us whereby to punish any for only declaring by words, etc., their minds and understandings con- cerning the ways and things of God as to salvation and an eter- nal condition. And we moreover finde that in those places where these people aforesaid, in this colony, are most of all suf- fered to declare themselves freely, and are only opposed by arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come, and we are informed that they begin to loath this place for that they are not opposed by the civill authority, but with all pa- tience and meekness are suffered to say over their pretended revelations and admonitions, nor are they like or able to gain many here to their way ; and surely we find that they delight to be persecuted by civill powers, and when they are soe, they are like to gaine more adherents by the conseyte of their patient sufferings than by consent to their pernicious sayings. And yet 84 NEW kngland's strugglks \vc conceive that their doctrines tend to very absolute cutting downe and overturnini:^ relations and civill go\ernment among men if generally received.' With these sentiments the following observations of Backus well agree. He says : The hanging of four Quakers in Boston greatly promoted their sect in this country ; and the light and liberty which has been enjoyed in latter years has been far from increasing their num- ber. The sect which John Rogers began at New London, in 1677 [called Rogerenes] , owed its increase to the severity of the Connecticut government against them ; and since that has ceased their society has nearly dissolved. And although the Sandemanians [named from Sandeman, born in Scotland, died in Conn., 1771] made a great noise in New England from 1764 to 1765, yet, having no oppression to complain of, they have hardly a name now [1795] left among us. The followers of Je- mima Wilkinson [a sort of Shakeress and deluded enthusiast], who made their appearance October, 1776, and continued some years after, are now all gone from us. And in speaking of the Episcopalians at a certain period, he says : " As oppression was greater in Con- necticut than in other governments in New England, they increased the most there." True it is, as Tertul- lian said long ago, semen est sanguis Cliristianorum^ the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. It scarcely need be said that the Quakers of that day were not the peaceable and well-behaved people > The Indians at Martha's Vineyard managed this Quaker business very admirably. Addressing the Quakers, they said: " You tell us of a light within us that will guide us to salvation ; but our experience tells us that we are darkness and corruption, and all manner of evil within our hearts. We cannot receive your counsel contrary to our expe- rience. Therefoie, we pray you trouble us no further with your new doctrines." THE PURITANS 85 that they are now. With some reason they were then regarded as persons "distraught in their wits," a set of half-crazy fanatics and anarchists whose principles and practices, if adopted, would be most " damagef ul " to Church and State. What but the veriest fanaticism could induce modest women, like Deborah Wilson, of Salem, or Mrs. Lydia Wardell, of Newbury (in sup- posed accordance with Isa. 20 : 2 ; Micah i : 8), to walk stark naked through the streets and into the assemblies as a sign of the spiritual nakedness of the ministers and churches ? But all their excesses were no suffi- cient warrant for their being sentenced to the most barbarous forms of corporal punishment, such as branding, slitting of nostrils, cropping of ears, boring the tongue through with a hot iron (which last, I be- lieve, was never executed) and tying persons, even del- icate women, to the "carts tayle," and whipping them "stripped naked from the middle upwards," till they get out of town and out of the jurisdiction — which scourging distance was afterward mercifully limited to the extent of "through three towns," — these and simi- lar tortures which were more or less in vogue until 1 66 1, when the popular feeling would no longer allow the torturing and hanging of Quakers. At the first execution of the Quakers the government ordered "one hundred souldjers, compleately armed with pike, and musketteers, with ponder and bullett, to lead them to the place of execution, and there see them hang till they be dead," and that " thirty-sixe of the souldiers remajne in and about the toune as centinells to pre- serve the peace of the place whiles the rest goe to the execution." H .% NKW EXGLAND'S STRT'OGI.KS In connection with the whipping law referred t'o, one may feel a special interest in reading t-he following order : To the constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, Wennam, Linn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham [in the direction of Providence Plantations !] and until these vagabond Quakers are carried out of this jurisdiction, — You and every of you are recjuired in the king's majesty's name to take these vagabond Quakers, Anne Coleman, Mary Tomkins, and AHce Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's tail, and driv- ing the cart through your several towns, to whip them upon their naked backs, not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them, in each town ; and so to convey them from constable to constable till they are out of this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your peril ; and this shall be your warrant. Richard Walden. Dover, December 22, 1662. The historian Sewel, states that "the whip used for those cruel executions [of the Quakers generally] was not of whipcord, as those of England, but of dried gut, and every string with three knots at the end, which being fastened to a stick, the hangman many times laid on with both his hands." We are glad to be told by this author, that the three women mentioned, after having been whipped in the first three towns, were by some means or other then discharged. Yet their sub- sequent treatment was almost as bad as if they had received all the iminfiicted blows. And not even yet were their whippings all over. About one year af- terward, Anne Coleman was whipped through Salem, Boston, and Dedham. And in 1664 the other women visited Virginia, " where" (under Episcopal rule) "they had not only been pilloried, but whipped also each of THE PURITANS 87 them with thirty-two stripes, with a whip of nine cords, and every cord with three knots ; and they were han- dled so severely that the very first lash drew blood and made it run down from their breasts." ' But just think for a moment of the enormity of the above- threatened punishment — ten blows for each individual in each of eleven different towns, on the naked back, at the cart's tail, in mid-winter ! When the persecution of the Quakers was thus rag- ing in this country, and the indignation of the people was so much aroused against it, then it was that " Our dread Soueraigne," King Charles the Second, by an order "given at our Court at Whitehall," in behalf of the Quakers, mercifully bade the Puritan Court " to forbeare they re corporall punishment or death." A few weeks prior to the king's signing of this order (September 9, 1661), the Puritan authorities, well knowing that there was no Quaker-hanging law in England, and suspecting, doubtless, his majesty's dis- pleasure at their bloody doings, released twenty-eight Quakers from prison, sending most of them directly out of the jurisdiction, but retaining two of them for special punishment, to be stripped from their girdle upward, tied to a cart's tail, and whipped twenty stripes each in Boston, and ten stripes each in Rox- bury and in Dedham.^ Several of these released ones, including Elizabeth Hooton, had been banished 1 Sewel's "History," Vol. I., p. 590. ^ This latter town, lying near the borders of Plymouth Colony south- ward from Boston, and in the direction of "Providence Plantations," seems often to have served as a last stage in their sorrowful journey for the banished Quakers when leaving "ye lymitts " of the Bay. 88 NEW en'CtLand's struggles on pain of death, and on one of them, Wenlock Chris- tison, the sentence of death had been ah-eady pro- nounced. According to the further order of the Court, if any of the Quakers thus freed should be found within the Colony twelve hours after their release, they were to be proceeded with according to law. A fearful prospect indeed for the future. In the year previous to the king's interdict the Court sent him a humble defense and pathetic appeal for themselves ; but it failed to influence the royal mind as they desired.' It was answered in England in an address to the king, by Edward Burrough, who, after hearing of the hanging of still another Quaker, William Leddra, in Boston, went himself personally to the king and secured his majesty's favor for the persecuted Qua- kers of New England. The king's missive which, as we have seen, was intrusted to a banished Quaker, reached Boston the last of November, 1661, and on December 9, the following notice was given : To William Salter, keeper of the prison at Boston. You are required by authority and order of the general court forthwith to release and discharge the Quakers who at present are in your custody. See that you do not neglect this. Edward Rawson, Secretary. The king's order which effected this happy change reads as follows : Charles R. Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. — Having been in- formed that several of our subjects amongst you, called Quakers, have been and are imprisoned by you, whereof some have been * This petition was procured, but was destroyed. THE PURITANS 89 executed, and others (as hath been represented unto us) are in danger to undergo the Hke ; we have thought fit to signify our pleasure in that behalf for the future ; and do hereby require that if there be any of those people called Quakers amongst you now already condemned to suffer death, or other corporal pun- ishment, or that are imprisoned and obnoxious to the like con- demnation, you are to forbear to proceed any further therein ; but that you forthwith send the said persons — whether con- demned or imprisoned — over into this our kingdom of England, together with the respective crimes or otiences laid to their charge ; to the end that such course may be taken with them here as shall be agreeable to our laws and their demerits. And for so doing these our letters shall be your sufficient warrant and discharge. Notwithstanding the king's mandate, the whippings (which by practice had now become in this Colony as mere play), continued long after this in great abun- dance, and the death-banishment was also occasionally resorted to. Even the king, in the instructions given to his commissioners, says: "We cannot be under- stood hereby to direct or wish that any indulgence should be granted to those persons commonly called Quakers whose being (is) inconsistent with any kind of government. Wee have found it necessary by the ad- vice of our Parljament here to make sharpe lawes against them, and are well contented that you doe the like there." In the same instructions the king requires that "such as desire to vse the Booke of Common Prayer and performe their devotions in that manner as is established here, be not debarred the exercise thereof, or vndergoe any prejudice or disadvantage thereby, they vsing their liberty without disturbance to others, and that all persons of good and honest Hues and con- uersations be admitted to the sacrement of the Lord's go NEW England's struggles supper according to the Booke of Common Prajer, and their children to baptisme. . . And that all the free- holders of competent estates, not vitious in conversacon and orthodoxe in religion — though of different persua- sions concerning church gouernment — may haue their votes in the election of all officers both ciuill and mili- tary." To which subsequently the royal commission- ers added this counsel, " that differences in opinion doe not lessen their charity to each other, since charity is a fundamentall in religion " ! Pretty good this, for King Charles II. or his spokesmen. The following reply of the Court shows that the Puritans, who had still some remembrance of the High Commission Court and of Archbishop Laud's rt^gimc, did not take kindly to the Prayer Book recom- mendation : " Our humble addresses to his majesty haue fully declared our majne ends in being voluntary exiles from our deare native country, which wee had not chosen at so deare a rate could we haue scene the word of God warranting us to performe our devotions in that way, and to haue the same set vp here ; we conceive it is apparent that it will disturbe our peace in our present enjoyments." The Court moreover as- serted that " concerning liberty to use the Common Prayer book, none as yet among us appear to desire it." We may infer the Puritanic feeling toward the Prayer Book from an incident related by Gov. W'in- throp. He records, as " a thing worthy of observa- tion," that his son had among his possessions a Greek Testament, the I'salms, and the Common Pra}'er. bound together, which volume was kept in a place "where was corn of divers sorts." The last named THE PURITANS 9I book came to a humiliating end, for the son " found the Common Prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched." It has, how- ever, since been found that the mice stopped their ravages at the " Order for the Visitation of the Sick " ! But Puritan prejudices were at length obliged to give way, and in 1680 the Court so far yields on the Prayer Book matter as to say : That heeiin wee may be the better vnderstood, and stand more cleare in his majesties opinion, wee humbly declare that to be of a different perswasion from ourselves in matters of exter- nall worship, and in particular, to desire to serve God in the way of the Church of England, is no part of that hethrodoxie in re- ligion which our present law concerning admission of freemen doth prouide against. But, as we intimated, these royal mandates and counsels for leniency were not at once heeded, for as late as 1672, when the laws were revised, the death banishment of the Quakers was suffered to continue, while the law relating to heresy reads as follows : If any Christian within this jurisdiction shall go about to de- stroy the Christian religion by broaching and maintaining any damnable heresies : as denying the immortality of the soul, or resurrection of the body, or any sin to be repented of in the regenerate, or any evil done by the outward man to be accounted sin ; or denying that Christ gave himself a ransom for our sins, or shall affirm that we are not justified by his death and right- eousness, but by the perfection of our own works, or shall deny the morality of the Fourth Commandment, or shall openly con- demn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the administration of that ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy or their lawful au- thority to make war, or to punish the outward breaches of the 92 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES first table, or shall endeavor to seduce others to any of the errors or heresies above mentioned ; every such person continuing ob- stinate therein, after due means of conviction, shall be sentenced to banishment. On May 28 (June 7, new style), 1665, seven brethren and two sisters founded (in Charlestown) the First Baptist Church of Boston (now the oldest evangelical church in the city), and though the authorities could not then legally torture them, they could and did fine, imprison, disfranchise, and banish them. In 1655 ^ child was born to Thomas Gould, who was afterward their pastor, and he thereupon was censured by the Charlestown church for withholding the child from baptism. Again, in April 7, 1657, he was presented before the Court, along with President Dunster, for neg- lecting to have his child baptized. Both of them were admonished and put under bonds for future trial. In November, 1663, Thomas Osborn, "being leavened with principles of anabaptisme," is admonished by the church of Charlestown for neglecting worship with the church. And Thomas " Gool " (Gould) is admonished again for neglecting their ordinances. In I^'ebruary, 1664, we find Thomas Osborn re-admonished for the same cause as before, and a similar duty performed on Mr. Gould for having a meeting of Anabaptists at his house on the 8th of the preceding November. And on October 11, 1665, the court sentenced "Thomas Gold (Gould), Thomas Osburne, Edward Drinker, William Turner, and John George, such of them as are freemen to be disfranchised, and all of them, upon conviction before any one magistrate or court of their further pro- ceeding herein [in holding public meetings], to be com- THE PURITANS 93 mitted to prison until the Generall Court shall take further order with them." The next year, April 17, Gould, Osburne, and George were each fined, by the County Court, four pounds for absenting themselves one whole year from the established public worship of God on the Lord's Day, and were required to give bonds of twenty pounds apiece for their appearance at the next Court of Assistants, and refusing to do so, were com- mitted to prison. On the following September they were offered release by paying fines and costs, but in case of their release they were threatened with im- prisonment or banishment if they should continue their schismatical meetings. On the 24th of October war- rants were put into the hands of the Charlestown con- stables " to obtain the names of such [Anabaptists] as you shall find met together," etc.' On March 3, 1668, the case of Thomas Gould comes before the Court of Assistants on an appeal from the County Court, but the judgment of the latter is confirmed, though the jury are disposed to favor him, and he, refusing to pay the fine imposed, is recommitted to prison. At length, in May, 1668, the Court sentenced Thomas Gold (Gould), William Turner, and John Farnum, " obstinate and turbulent Anabaptists," who " some time since combined themselves with others in a pretended church estate, . . to the great greife and offence of the godly orthodox, . . to remooue themselues out of this juris- diction, to some other part of this country or elsewhere, before the 20th of July next," or else to "be forthwith apprehended and committed to prison." And so, as they would not remove themselves, the prison, for 1 See State Archives, X., 224. 94 NKW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES something over a year longer, was their home. It will be remembered that Gould, who had been a member of the Charlestown church, of which Thomas Shepard, son of the Cambridge Shepard, was pastor, and Zachariah Symmes was teacher, was subjected to the censure of the church as early as 1655. In subse- quent years, as we have seen, he was called up before the Church and Court from time to time, till in 1665 he was excommunicated. He must have been a worthy man and member, otherwise the church would hardly have borne with him so long. Cotton Mather says : " There were in this unhappy schism several truly godly men." And the Puritan historian, Hubbard, reports that " Thomas Gold and some of the rest were said to be ' men of a grave and serious spirit, and of sober conversation.' " Possibly in the historian's mind, John Farnum may have been excepted from the exemplary "some," for before the Baptists would receive him, he had to make confession of wrong-doing to the old North or Mather Church, of which he was a constituent member. After becoming a Baptist, and suffering long and much for his new faith, he finally recanted, and upon confession of his Baptist "errors and iniquity," was restored, in 1683, to his former church.' In the Massachusetts Archives, X., p. 224, is a petition of John P^arnum, senior, written as early as October, 1668, praying for release from prison, and engaging " to attend the hearing of the word preached in the publike as- semblys each Lord's day, sickness or the like not hin- dering." We may here state that in April 14, 1668, a short * See Robbins' " History of the Second Church, IJoston," p. 291. THE PURITANS 95 time prior to the sentence of banishment, Gould, Far- num, and Osburne were temporarily released from prison in order to hold a "full and free debate" with six leading ministers of the Bay, Messrs. John Allen, of Dedham ; Samuel Danforth, of Roxbury ; Thomas Cobbett, of Lynn ; John Higginson, of Salem ; Jona- than Mitchell, of Cambridge ; and Thomas Shepard, of Charlestown ; which conference lasted two days, and was attended by three brethren from Elder Clarke's church at Newport, William Hiscox, Joseph Tory, and Samuel Hubbard. But the ministers found and left them still "obstinate," for the "erring brethren," as we are told, " as is usual in such cases, made this their last answer to the arguments which had cast them into much confusion. Say wJiat you zvill, ivc ivill hold oitr mindy ' In the month following they were summoned " to answer for n-ot retracting after having heard the arguments of the elders," and a censure and further orders were pronounced against them.^ It would seem. 1 We hope there is a little more truth in this representation than there was in the malicious, scandalous hoax which was gotten up in England about this time. A pamphlet was published in London, in 1673, en- titled, " Mr. Baxter Baptized in Bloud ; or, a Sad History of the Unpar- alleled Cruelty of the Anabaptists of New England ; faithfully relating the cruel, barbarous, and bloudy murther of Mr. Josiah Baxter, an Orthodox minister, who was killed by the Anabaptists, and his skin most cruelly Head off from his body. Published by his mournful brother, Benjamin Baxter, living in Fenchurch Street, London." The author represents his brother as worsting the Anabaptists in a public disputation at Boston, for which, by way of revenge, they sent four ruffians in visors to his house, who, after* they had bound his wife and three children, first whipped and then flead (flayed) him alive. There was a demand in a few weeks for a second edition of this work, which, however, on its being found a hoax, was suppressed before its issue. ^ See State Archives, X., pp. 215-219. 96 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES however, from the statements of these brethren, that the discussion was mainly on one side. They desired liberty to speak, but were told that " they stood there as delinquents, and ought not to have liberty to speak." In the course of their protracted incarceration, Gould petitioned, in behalf of himself and Turner, to be re- leased from prison (the original of which jDCtition is in the State Archives, X., 220), and the Council in March, 1669, allowed them "liberty for three days, to visit their families, as also to apply themselves to any that are able and orthodox, for their further convincement of their many irregularities," the said Gould and Turner to be returned again to prison at the end of the said three days. Governor Bellingham was not disposed to favor them, but many of the deputies or "lower house" sympathized with them, and even the First Church (from which the church now called the "Old South " or Third Church, had seceded, in 1669, on account of half-way covenant preferences) showed evident signs of relent- ing. "The town and country," writes Edward Drinker, " is very much troubled at our troubles ; and especially the Old Church, in Boston, and their elders, both Mr. Oxenbridge and Mr. Allen have labored abundantly, I think, as if it had been for their best friends in the world." In November, 1668, the Court received a petition in favor of the prisoners from sixty-five per- sons, many of whom did " neither approve of their judgment or practice." A part of their petition reads as follows : Whereas, by the censure of this honorable Court, Thomas Gould, William Turner, and John Farnum now lie in prison de- prived of their liberty, taken off from their callings, separated THE PURITANS 97 from their wives and children, disabled to govern or to provide for their families, to their great damage and hastening ruin, how innocent soever ; beside the hazard of their own lives, being aged and weakly men, and needing that succor a prison will not afford ; the sense of this, their personal and family most deplor- able and afflicted condition, hath sadly affected the hearts of many sober and serious-minded Christians, and such as neither approve of their judgment or practice ; especially considering that the men are reputed godly and of a blameless conversation ; and the things for which they seem to suffer seem not to be moral, unquestioned, scandalous evils, but matters of religion and con- science ; not in things fundamental, plain, clear, but circum- stantial, more dark and doubtful, wherein the saints are wont to differ, and to forbear one another in love, that they be not ex- posed to sin or to suffer for conscience sake. We therefore most humbly beseech this honored Court, in their Christian mercy and bowels of compassion, to pity and relieve these poor prisoners, etc. See further in Backus' " History," Vol. I., p. 304, and for the original, which is written in beautiful style, see State Archives, X., 221, where the petitioners' names are given. Many of the signers of the petition were called to account and fined for this action, while several made acknowledgment of their error in thus signing. For their retraction, see p. 223 of the above- mentioned volume. The imprisoned ones also found sympathizing breth- ren in distant England. Dr. John Owen (whom the Boston Church called more than once to be their min- ister — the Court uniting in the call) with twelve other distinguished Independent ministers addressed the governor, urging him " to put an end unto the suffer- ings and confinements of the persons censured," stat- ing that the procedure "greatly reflects on us," since 98 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES " it hath been xogued that jiersons of our way, prhici- ples. and spirit, cannot bear with dissenters from them." In the same year, 1669, Robert Mascall, an- other EngHsh Congregationalist, writes thus to a friend here : A sad tliiiii; that much affects us is to hear that you, even in New England, persecute your brethren, men sound in the faith, of holy life, and agreeing in worship and discipline with you, only differing in the point of baptism. Dear brethren, we here do love and honor them, hold familiaritv with them, and take sweet counsel together. They lie in the bosom of Christ, and there- fore they ought to be laid in our bosoms. Many years after this, in 1719-20, Dr. Watts, in a letter to Cotton Mather, speaks of the persecuting principles and practices of the first planters in this country as forming a "history which now makes us blush and ashamed." Often were the Puritans of this Colony taunted by the Episcopalians, that the}- were greater persecutors than themselves were ever charged with being. Dr. Stillingfleet, in his "Mischief of Sep- aration," justified their rigorous course against the Con- gregationalists in England by the procedure of rulers here against dissenters from themselves. And the king's fom- commissioners who, much to the dislike and disgust of our magistrates, were ssnt over to this country to overlook the affairs of the Colonies, thus addressed the General Court : " We admire [wonder] that you (whose coming hither was for the enjoyment of the liberty of your consciences) should deny the liberty of conscience to any, especially where the king requires it." ' ' See some account of these comniissioncrs in Appendix D. THE PURITANS 99 From what has been said it will be rightly inferred that the Puritan fathers were far more blamed by their English brethren and by the English authorities for their excessive severity, than for laxness in suppressing heresies and errors ; and yet it was in part for the " clearinge " of themselves in the "observant eyes" of different parties in the mother country, that they took so much notice of erroneous opinions and practices. Indeed, many justify the strictness of the Puritans on the ground that every heresy, misdeed, or failure of theirs would be eagerly watched for and rejoiced in by the home church and government, and might finally result in the loss of their charter or in having a gen- eral governor sent over to them. At what time the different persons above mentioned were freed from imprisonment we cannot tell. We know that Edward Drinker was released on May 19, 1669, from prison, whither he had been put for wor- shiping, on the previous March 7th, with the Baptists at the house of Thomas Gould. He is dismissed with the caution that if he repeat the offense he shall be confined for trial. Elder Gould, who, for not remov- ing himself, was imprisoned in July, 1668, was proba- bly not released till the last part of 1669, or beginning of 1670. Perhaps others were set at liberty about this time on the supposition or hope that they might "remove themselves." Whereupon they betook them- selves no farther away than to Noddle's Island. In- deed, this island seems to have been an early home for the Boston Baptists. W. H. Sumner, in his " History of East Boston," says : " P^or the first ten years this church appears to have held its meetings mostly at lOO NEW ENGLAND S STRUGGLES Noddle's Island." Henry Shrinipton, though a mem- ber of the Boston church, yet has in his will, dated July 17, 1666 (about a year after the Baptist church was formed), this item : "I give to the Society of Chris- tians that doth now Meet at Noddle's Island, of which is Gold and Osborn and the rest, ^10, as a token of my affection." This v/e deem a very complimentary act both for the giver and the receivers. We may add that Mr. Shrimpton's son, Samuel, who in 1670 became owner of the island, was one of the sixty-five persons who joined in a petition for the release of the impris- oned Baptists. On November 30, 1670, Drinker thus writes : " We keep our meeting at Noddle's Island every first day, and the Lord is adding some souls to us still, and is enlightening some others ; the priests are much enraged. The Lord has given us another elder, one John Russell, senior, a gracious, wise, and holy man that lives at Woburn, where we have five brethren near that can meet with him . . . when they cannot come here." In something over a year from this time Russell himself was confined in prison walls, but perhaps was shortly freed on account of ill health. A letter written in the summer of 1672, says : •' I per- ceive you have heard as if our brother Russell had died in prison. Through grace he is yet in the land of the living, and out of prison bonds ; but is in a doubtful way as to recovery of his outward health." His peti- tion for permanent release from prison, which is found in Vol. X, 227, of the Archives, thus reads : To the honoured generall Coart now assembled, vour humble petitionour : Whareas I being comited to prison at cambrig by the honoured Coart of Assistance held at boston the 5, i mth., THE PURITANS lOI 1672, there to remain untill the generall coart should take fur- thur order, in which time of my Imprisonment it pleased God to exercise me with great Siknes and lamnes, upon which I was released under bail, for the recovery of my health ; the which God of his marcy hath in some measure restoared, though not yet freed from the remainders of that jlnes sustained by my Im- prisonment, and questionable whether ever I shall, my hum- ble request js that your honours would be pleased to take my case Into your serious consideration, and to put an jsue too it, but in case it be not your pleasure to fre me from that sentance my request is that your honours would be pleased to free those men that ware bound for me of there bond ; And I shall remain at your pleasure your prisonour, John Russell. Edward Drinker, already mentioned as suffering be- cause of his association with Gould, in his letter of Nov. 30, 1670, also writes that Turner "has been about a month in prison," ^ and that "warrants are in two marshals' hands for brother Gould also, but he is not yet taken because he lives on Noddle's Island, and they only wait to take him at town." Gould's warrant as given in Vol. X., 227, of the Archives reads as follows : To the marshall (nuld or his Deputy or marshall of Suffolk : In his majesty's name you are required to apprehend the body of Thomas Gold and Comitt him to prison in Boston, there to 1 Turner has a manuscript petition (dated October 27, 1670) in the State Archives, in which he prays to be released from prison, and states that he has already "suffered above thirty ?Ff^/Jc'j- imprisonment" [at different times?], and he fears that the weakness of his body and the extremity of living in prison in a cold winter will prove the ruin of his health and of his headless family. In closing he expresses his readiness, if released, to serve his country to the utmost of his ability. This pur- pose he afterward nobly fulfilled, even to the laying down of his life. I02 NEW England's struggles remajne according to the sentence of the Generall Court April 29, 1668, and in so doing this shall be your warrant, dated 25, 8, 1670. Signed by SVMON BrADSTREET, Dam ELL GooKiN, and three other magistrates. Edw. Rawson, Secty. Why the authorities neglected to cross the channel to take Elder Gotild is something of a mystery. The Coin't's authority certainly extended over the island, and it was exercised at times and in a notable manner, as in the case of Samuel Maverick. He was a stren- uous Episcopalian, and was, moreover, very hospitable, "giving entertainments to all comers gratis." The Court, fearing there might be among his guests too many persons of heretical tendency, put a stop to his generosity, forbidding him to entertain strangers longer than one night, without leave from some assistant, on penalty of one hundred pounds. I think the author- ities had been so long and often troubled with Elder Gould, who had been called up before the Church or the Court at least a dozen different times, that they were half willing for a time to lea\-e him alone, pro- vided he would keep away from them even at a little distance. Mr. Drinker further adds in his letter that "■ Brother Turner's family is ver\' weakly and himself too. I fear he will not trouble them long; only this is our comfort, we hear if he dies in prison they say they will bury him.'' Another writer in the last part of 167 1, says: " Hiother Turner has been near to death, but through mercy is revived, and so has our pastor Gould." Messrs. Gould and Turner we find at THE PURITANS IO3 Noddle's Island, Sept. i, 1672, at which time they date a joint letter to Samuel Hubbard, a Seventh Day Bap- tist, at Newport. And on Jan. 9, 1674, another letter states that " Brother Drinker hath been very sick, near unto death, but the Lord hath restored him to health again. The church of the baptized do peaceably en- joy their liberty. Brother Russell, the elder and the younger, have good remembrance of you." This "gra- cious, wise, and holy man," Elder Russell, lived till near the close of 1680, the beloved pastor of the Bos- ton church, — though living with them only about a year at the close of his life, — and a workman of whom none need be ashamed. The Baptists of that day were often accused, as by Increase and Cotton Mather, of the sin of Jeroboam, who " made priests of the lowest of the people," and Samuel Willard, in his "Ne Sutor," etc., plainly said: " Truly, if Goodman Russell was a fit man for a min- ister, we have but fooled ourselves in building colledges, and instructing children in learning." Elder Russell had then gone where he could not hear these words, but in his " Brief Narrative of Some Considerable Passages concerning the First Gathering and Further Progress of a Church of Christ, in Gospel Order in Boston in New England, commonly (though falsely) called by the name of Anabaptists," he replies to the like taunt from Dr. Increase Mather, in these words : It is not because we are against learning, for we esteem it and honor it in its place ; and if we had such among us who were, together with that, otherways duly quahfied for the work of the ministry, we should readily choose them. But we do not think the Spirit of God is locked up so in the narrow limits of college I04 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES learning that none are to be called to office in a church but such, nor that all such are fit for that work, be they never so great scholars ; neitlier clo we think that all those who have not that learning are to l)e accounted " the lowest of the people." We give a few sentences further from the " Falla- cious Narrative" or " Satytical Invective" of this " wedderdop'd shoemaker," in evidence of his large and liberal views. " Far be it from us to judge all that are not baptized not to be visible saints, for we judge that the Lord hath many precious people in the world that are not baptized according to, or in the manner, we baptize. . . And as for not owning their churches, . . we never denied them to be churches of Christ. It is enough for every one to prove his own work ; but we have owned them as such, for where there is true matter joined together in the bond of a holy covenant, they may be looked at as a true church, though not in due order." Yet the historian Hubbard says : "He did stitch up a small pamphlet," in which "he made such botching work," etc. Prof. A. H. Newman mentions in his " History," p. 112, an interesting circumstance, if true, that John Cook (or Cooke), who came over "as a boy among the passengers of the Mayflower, and who had been a Con- gregational minister in the Plymouth Colony . . . was converted to Baptist views before 1680, by reading the ' Narrative of Flder Russell.' " This " Narrative," how- ever, was not published until 1680, and hence the alleged reading must have been subsequent to this date. Ac- cording to Thatcher's " History of Plymouth," John Cook was chosen deacon of the Pilgrim church about 1630, and "was subsequently excommunicated for occa- THE PURITANS IO5 sioning many dissensions." Mr. Felt says that "John Cook, who appears to have been an Anabaptist, caused great divisions in the Barnstable church," about 1654. And Backus states that he " was a Baptist minister at Dartmouth many years." And yet we learn from the Plymouth laws that in 1659, (another.?) John Cooke, of Plymouth, with Isaac Robinson, and two others, was permitted to attend for a time the meetings of the Quakers, " to endeavor to reduce them from the error of theire vvayes." According to Prof. Newman, Mr. Cooke was " among the more noted members of the church [in Newport] during the latter part of the cen- tury, . . and was still living in 1694." It has also been stated that he died at Dartmouth. I am not able to reconcile all these differing statements. Mr. Turner's subsequent history deserves at least brief mention, inasmuch as he became eminently use- ful in the service of his country. Though at first de- nied a commission because he was an Anabaptist, yet he afterward served as commander in King Philip's war — his fellow-sufferer, Edward Drinker, also serving as lieutenant — and was finally slain by the Indians. Under his command, " as an instrument in the hand of the Lord,' was the greatest blow struck to the Indians of any they had received ; for after this they were broken and scattered so that they were overcome and subdued with ease." Under the date of May 19, 1676, Mr. Felt has this record : " In the fall fight on Con- necticut River, wherein the enemy lost three hundred men, women, and children, and which was among the causes of their overthrow, Captain William Turner, with thirty-eight of his men, were slain. He was too 106 NEW ENCxLAND'S STRrOGLES unwell to cngaicdia via between unbounded toleration and what Roger Williams speaks of as " a consuming overzealous fire of the (so-called) godly Christian magistrates." Jeremy Taylor's caution would in those days have been exceed- ingly timely: " Only let not men be hasty in calling every di.sliked opinion by the name of heresy ; and when they have resolved that they will call it so, let them use the erring person like a brother ; not beat him like a dog, or convince him with a gibbet, or vex THE PURITANS IO7 him out of his understanding and persuasion." The Cambridge platform of 1648 provides that, " If any church, one or more, shall grow schismatical, rending itself from the communion of other churches, or shall walk incorrigibly or obstinately in any corrupt way of their own, contrary to the rule of the word ; in such case the magistrate is to put forth his coercive power, as the matter shall require." And this power was again to be put forth against the church of the Baptists. In 1674 (the year of Elder Gould's death, according to Mr. Felt, who makes reference to the Suffolk Probate Records, or the year before his death, according to Backus, who puts it at October 27, 1675) the members of the little church ventured to recross the channel and resume worship in town. The diary of Captain John Hull, father-in-law of Judge Samuel Sewall, has this record: "This summer [1674] the Anabaptists that were wont to meet at Noddle's Island, met at Boston, on the Lord's day. One Mr. Symon Lind [or Lynde], letteth one of them a house." ^ The next year, on June 1 5, the Middlesex Court fined Thomas Foster, John Russell, senior, John Russell, junior, Benanuel Bowers," Thomas Osburne, and John Johnson, from one ^ This Mr. Lynde, and Mr. Samuel Shrimpton, who, as we have seen, also befriended the oppressed Baptists, were afterward appointed coun- sellors of New England by royal authority. - A petition of Elizabeth Bowers, written May 28, 1674, is preserved in Vol. X., p. 232, of the Archives. She complains that her husband has now been "kept prisoner neare upon three months," and that in con- sequence of taking him from his family and his business, "much pains and cares lies uppon me, having small children about me and sucking the brests, and my body weak. I desire you to consider of my condition, and how hard a thing it would be to any of your wives if they were in my condition." Her closing words are ; " I remaine a sufferer." She her- I08 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES to five pounds each and costs for neglect of allowed public worship on Fast, Thanksgiving, and Sabbath days. And agam, on December 19, John Russell, John Wilson, senior, and Caleb Farlow, are fined as Baptists for the same offense, while several persons are ad- monished and ordered to pay costs for a similar charge. On May 30, 1677, the council warned Elder John Myles, of Swansea, not to preach any more to the Baptists in Boston. Swansea, as also Rehoboth, was thoroughly desolated during King Philip's war, and it was about this time that Elder Myles retired to Boston, while most of the inhabitants fled to Rhode Island. In \"ol. X., p. 233, of the State Archives, the action of the Council is thus recorded : Mr. Miles being called before ye Councill to give an acc't of his preaching to the assembly of Annabaptists, whereof Gold and Farnuni, and sundry others excommunicate persons were of the number, the said Miles confessed yt he being driven from his own ])lace and people at Swanzy by the rage of ye Indians, and coming to Boston had accepted the call of sd society to preach among ym, but declared the purpose to return to his owne place as soon as he could be provided of a habitation ; the Council! haveing given him free liberty fully to express himself, read unto him some of the laws of this colony, . . and desired him to tiike notice yt they did now declare their own dissatisfac- tion with him, he being by his own confession convicted of being an offender against the said laws. self was afterward imprisoned and whipped ; while he, for defaming a government official, was beaten twenty stripes. And for the like ofil'ense, both of them at a later date, were sentenced to a fine of five pounds each, or be whipped openly fifteen stripes apiece. Even their daughter, Elizabeth, could not escape without a flagellation. This unfortunate family, though associated with the linptists, seem to liave sympathized at first somewhat with the ( >uakers. THE PURITANS 109 In 1678 "'Mr. John Allen and John Brown [of Swanzey] were chosen to draw up a letter in behalf of the church and town, to be sent to Mr. John Myles, pastor of the church and minister of the town, mani- festing our desires of his return to us " It was voted to pay him sixty pounds yearly, "and whereas Mr. John Myles desires to be accommodated with a servant, horses and cart, and other conveniences for his com- fortable subsistence, the town doth promise to give to the said Myles the sura of four pounds in money," etc.' Mr. Baylies speaks of him as " a man of learning and of elevated views." His son, John Myles, the first town-clerk of Swanzey, went back to England, and another son, Samuel Myles, became, in 1689, the second rector of the Episcopal (afterward, in 1787, Unitarian) "King's Chapel," in Boston. It is some- what singular that the "town" should take action, as above, in regard to Mr. Myles, and also in regard to his successor, Elder Samuel Luther. There was evidently here, eve^i on Baptist ground, some commingling of Church and State. Mr. Myles at this time would ap- pear to have been quite tolerant toward Pedobaptist practices.^ This is " a result of his training in connec- tion with the State-Church system of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate" in I^ngland.' In May, 1679, the Court forbade the erection of meeting-houses without permit, and also prohibited their occupancy, without leave, when built. Fortu- nately just before this prohibitory building law was 1 See Baylies' " History of New Plymouth," II., 94. * See Backus' "History," I., 286. 3 Prof. Newman's "History of the Baptist Churches," p. 170. K no NKw exoland's struggles passed, the Boston Baptists had with <^veat caution built for themselves a house of worship on what is now called Stillman Street, and near the then mill pond, which served as a baptistery. After occupying their house for a time, a warrant was issued " in his Maj- esty's name, forthwith to summon Philip Squire, Thomas Skmner, and Mr. Drinker, to make their ap- pearance [March 5, 1680] before the Court of Assist- ants now sittmg, having liberty to bring with them three or four more of their friends, to give an account of their breach of law in erecting a meeting-house." The third day after this, Messrs. Hull, Russell, Drinker, and Skinner, in their response to the Court whether they would desist from meeting in their house of worship, said that they had no thought of affronting authority in building the house as there was then no law against it, and that after such a law was made they desisted from worshiping therein for a while, until they understood it was his iVIajesty's pleasure that they should enjoy the liberty of their meeting. At the close of their address they make humble request that they may find acceptance with the Court, and so be permitted to "enjoy the liberty of God's worship in such places as God hath afforded us." The Court's response to this was that on March 8, 1680, their meeting-house was ordered to be closed, and the following notice was nailed on the door : All persons are to take notice that by order of the Court the doors of this house are shut up, and that they are inhibited to hold any meetinfj therein, or to open the doors thereof without license from authority till the Court take further order, as tliey will answer the contrary at their peril. THE PURITANS III In Punchard's " History of Congregationalism " the following is given as the original form : All p'sons are to take notice yt by orde of ye Court ye doors of this house are Shutt vp, & yt they are Inhibitted to hold any meeting therein or to open ye doors thereof, without Hshence from Authority till ye gennerall Court take further order, as they will answer ye Company [?] att theire P'ill, dated in boston 8th March 1680. by orde of ye Councell Edward Ranson [Rawson] Secretary. A manuscript account found among the Backus papers (probably taken from the Church Records) gives the following item of the church's experience at this time : After they nailed up our doors we were exposed to meet abroad in ye open air ; ^ but having meet one day without in ye yard, it being an exceeding Cold winday day (but not any one took any harm thereby as we know of) we did the next week procure Some boards and made up a Shelter in ye yard by the House side for to meet the next Lord's Day and so on ; but when the next Lord's day came, in the morning the doors were opened we knew not by whom. Perhaps the Court did not care to venture for too long a time openly to disregard the mandate of the king, requiring : That freedom and liberty of conscience be given to such per- 1 Mr. Willard, in his " Ne Sutor, " &c., or " Brif Animadversions upon the New England Anabaptists late Fallacious Narrative wherein the Notorious Mistakes and Falsehoods by them Published are De- tected," says: "They sullenly meet in the open Air on a cold day, though a large house and their usual place of meeting stood just by." But then these persons, as teacher Willard said uf Gold and Osborn, were "heady and violent men." 112 NEW p:.\GI,AXD S STRUGGLES sons as desire to serve (^lod in the way of the Church of l"n,t,'land, so as not thereby be made obnoxious or discountenanced from their sharing in the government, much less that they or any othei of his Majesty's subjects (not being Papists) who do not agree in the Congregational way, be by law subjected to fines or forfeitures, or other incapacities. As I^Llders Russell, Hull, and others said, the king's wish is that "we (Baptists) should enjoy liberty of our meetings in the manner as other of his protestant sub- jects." This royal order reached here near the end of December, 1679. Yet on May 11, 1680, the Court having been "informed that there is a publicke meet- ing-house erected in Boston where some doe ordinarily meete contrary to the law of May, 1679," summoned again the leaders of the church, who "appeared before the Court at the time, and, after their defence made, withdrew, sent in their humble peticon humbly desiring the Court's favour," &c. Whereupon the Court on May 19 "granted them their petition so farr as to forgive them their offence past, but still prohibited them as a Society of themselves, or joyned with others, to meete in that publicke place they have built, or any other publicke house, except such as are allowed by lawfull authoritje." Little did the authorities of that time dream that in a hundred years less one from that date, a pastor of this same Baptist church (Dr. Stillman) would be chosen to preach the sermon on election day,' and that ' "A Sermon to the Honorable Council, &c., May 26, 1779, by Samuel Stillman, a. m., Render to Ctesar the things that are Cesar's and to God the things that are God's, Mark 12 : 17." Backus informs us that 78 out of 86 voted for Mr. Stillman as preacher, and that the sermon was printed and sent throughout the State by order of authority. THE PURITANS II3 in about three-fourths of a century after this, Jan. 8, 1852, another pastor (Dr. Neale) would likewise dis- course before the magistracy of the commonwealth, taking as his subject : " Religious Liberty, derived directly from the King of heaven ; not regarded as a matter of toleration but a heaven-descended and in- alienable right." But better days were soon in store for this church, for in March, 1682, the Court —with some stretching of the truth, we think — informed the king that "as for the Anabaptists, they are now subject to no other penal statutes than those of the Congregational way." I think for myself that it still fared hard with those who persistently refused to walk in this " Congregational way." In this same year of grace the following oppres- sive act was passed against William Screven, whom a few Baptists in Kittery, Me., desired to be ordained as their pastor by the aid of their brethren in Boston : The Court having considered the offensive speeches of WilHam Screven, viz., his rash and inconsiderate words tending to blas- phemy, do adjudge the dehnquent, for his offence, to pay ten pounds into the treasury of the county or province. And further, the Court doth forbid and discharge the said Screven, under any pretence, to keep any private e.xercise at his own house or else- where, upon the Lord's days, either in Kittery or other place within the limits of this province, and is for the future enjoined to observe the public worship of God in our public assemblies upon the Lord's days, according to the laws here established in this province, upon such penalties as the law requires upon such neglect of the premises.' 1 For Mr. Screven's further experiences in Maine, see Dr. Burrage's '• Baptists in New England," and Prof. Newman's " History of the Baptist Churches in the United States." Mr. Screven afterward became 114 NKW KNGI.AND'S STRUCxGI.ES As another sign of seemingly better times, we notice that a Synod's Confession of Faith, pubHshed in 1680, after speaking of what may be lawfully called to ac- count and proceeded against by the censures of the church and by the power of the civil magistrate, then adds : " Yet in such differences about the doctrines of the gospel or ways of the worship of God, as may befal men exercising a good conscience, manifesting it in their conversation, and holding the foundation, and duly observing the rules of peace and order — there is no warrant for the magistrate to abridge them of their liberty." We are thankful for this encouraging word. And vet, at the first session of this so-called "Reforming Synod," in 1679, among the thirteen specified " evils that have provoked the Lord to bring his judgment on New England," this is mentioned as one, a remissness in testifying against Quakers and Baptists ! I think it must be something over a century the founder and first pastor of the church in Charleston, S. C, which place he was strongly but vainly urged to leave by the Boston church, that he might become its pastor. He was a native of England, but was licensed by the church in Boston. The Baptist cause in the South is somewhat indebted to Boston for two other efficient laborers, Shubal Stearns, who was born in Boston, 1706, and Peter P. Roots, A. M., who joined the Boston church in 1792. For some account of their labors, see Cathcart's " Encyclopcedia " and Backus' "History," H., 420. Mr. Stearns, like Backus, was first a Separatist and then a Baptist, and both gentlemen became such about the same time. Most wonderful stories are told of the enchantments of his eyes and voice. He and his brother-in-law, Daniel Marshall, of Connec- ticut, were remarkal)ly successful in establishing Baptist churches in the South. Samuel Harris who was baptized by Marshall, was another most efficient Ba]itist leader. In Southern 15aptist history, Stearns, Marshall, and Ilairis may be reckoned to have attained unto "the first three." THE PURITANS II5 after the above gracious utterances were made, that the Baptists outside of Boston heard much about this leniency of the Puritan Court and Church. As late as 1784 three men, members of a Baptist church in Cambridge (Arlington), were imprisoned for non-pay- ment of ministerial rates. Their case was carried through the Courts in 1785, and was turned against the Baptists, — by the ambiguity of the word he in the Constitution, — ' which cost them more than a hundred dollars.- The Warrgn Association, the next year Resoh'ed, That as our denomination in this Commonwealth have been long oppressed by the CongregationaHsts who have claimed the power of supporting religious ministers by tax and compulsion ; and as in consequence of this, our brethren in Cambridge, besides their time and trouble, haue lately been at the expense of thirty-three pounds, fifteen shillings, we earnestly recommend that each church in this Association raise a propor- tion of that sum as soon as may be, and forward the same to Mr. Isaac Skillman, of Boston, or to Mr. Thomas Green, of Cambridge, for the relief of the sufferers. The Baptist church in Boston did, from the last years of the seventeenth century, certainly enjoy thenceforth a special degree of liberty, and all that Isaac Backus, the "Agent of Liberty," a hundred years later asked for the churches throughout the State was that they might have the same liberty which their Baptist brethren enjoyed in Boston. 1 " He " was construed to mean the teacher who was to receive the money, and not the man who paid it, and so the Baptist " committee con- cluded that our ministers should demand it again ; all but myself, who could not concur therewith. Our Elders Stillman, Skillman, Smith, and Blood, all thus differed from me " (Backus). * Backus' "History," II., 328-9. Il6 NKW kx(;land\s strugglks When tlicsc heller times had airi\-e(l for the Boston Baptists, most of the founders of the church had passed away, leaving others to enjoy the fruits of their labors and sufferings. " Their trouble and temptations," wrote Elder Russell, in 1680, "followed one upon the neck of another, like the waves of the sea ; but these precious servants of the Lord, having in some good measure counted the cost beforehand, were not moved from [by] any of these things, but were cheerfully carried on by the hand of the Lord upon them through the afflictions and reproaches they met with, and are most of them now at rest with the Lord." Gould, the first pastor, died in 1674 (or 1675); Turner, in 1676; Russell himself, in 1680 ; Dr. Clarke, of Newport, 1676 ; Holmes, his successor, 1682; Myles, of Swanzey, in 1683 ; and Roger Williams, in 1684. These all died in faith, not having received the promise. It was not till 1728 that the first measure was passed whereby. Baptists and Quakers could be partially re- lieved from paying rates or taxes to Pedobaptist min. isters and churches. But this law merely exempted their polls from taxation, and this too under the proviso "that such persons do usually attend the meetings of their respective societies, assembling upon the Lord's Day for the worship of God, and that they live within five miles of the place of such meeting." "Here we may see," said Backus, " that tyranny is always the same. 'Go ye, serve the Lord; only let your flocks and your herds be stayed,' said Pharaoh. Let their bodies be exempted, but their estates and faculties be taxed, said the Massachusetts. ' I will let you go that ye may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilder- THE PURITANS II7 ness ; only you shall not go very far away,' said Pha- raoh. Go but five miles, said the Massachusetts." Other exemption laws — which will be noticed by-and- by — were subsequently enacted, but these, hampered with many restrictions, were very oppressive, and if the unsympathizing authorities neglected their duty, or even violated these laws, no penalty was affixed to this neglect or transgression. One other and truly marvelous occurrence in the early history of the First Baptist Church in Boston may here be noticed. On May 21, 17 18, Mr. Elisha Callender, the first classically educated Baptist minister in this country, was ordained its pastor by the help of three Congregational ministers of Boston — a proceeding which called forth some remonstrance from a few Bap- tist churches. The names of these three were Dr. In- crease Mather, who in his writings had affirmed that " Antipedobaptism is a blasted error"; Dr. Cotton Mather, the greatest scholar and most prolific writer of the age ; and Mr. John Webb, the first pastor of the New North Church. Dr. Increase Mather gave the hand of fellowship. His son, Dr. Cotton Mather, preached from the text, Romans 15:7," Receive ye one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of God," the running title of the sermon being : " Good men united." ' In it he says : " If the brethren in whose 1 The full title-page of the sermon, as printed, reads thus : "Brethren dwelling together in Unity. The true Basis for an Union among the people of God offered and as- serted ; in a Sermon preached at the Ordination of a pastor in the Church of the Baptists at Boston in New England by Cotton Mather, D. D." ii8 NEW England's struggles house we are now convened met with anything too un- brotherly (in former times), they now with satisfaction hear us expressing our dislike of everything that has looked like persecution in the days that have passed over us." This surprising comity shown to Mr. Cal- lender, the young graduate of Harvard College, — of which Dr. Increase Mather had been president, — was the principal means which moved Thomas Hollis, Esq., a merchant prince and Baptist of London, to become, as Cotton Mather expressed it, " the greatest benefactor it ever had in the world." Little did that "godly Calvinist," Thomas Hollis, dream that the theology of Unitarianism' would ever be taught from that chair, the incumbent of which, by express stipulation, was to be a man "of sound and orthodox principles." Dr. Ed- ward Wigglesworth, the first Hollis Professor of Divinity, in his testimonial to Mr. Hollis, speaks of it as " no mean stroke in his character," that in the directions of his bequests "he hath from first to last, taken the ut- most care to put it, as far as was possible, out of our power to misimprove them, or in any measure to defeat his pious intentions." In \'ol. IV., of Crosby's " His- tory of the English Baptists," are found other testi- monials to his character and worth, by Isaac Green- wood, Hollis Professor of Philosophy and Mathe- matics ; by Benjamin Wadsworth, president of the college ; and by Rev. Benjamin Colman, of the Brattle Cotton Mather was colleague witli liis father in the Old North Church (founded 1650), the church of which Henry Ware, Junior, and Ralph Waldo Emerson were afterward pastors. Notwithstanding the "remon- strance " Ijefore referred to, the church invited Congregational ministers to assist in ordaining Mr. Jeremiah Coudy, the successor of Mr. Gal- lender. THE PURITANS II9 Street Church, who was Mr. Hollis' principal corre- spondent in this country, and who pronounced his eulogy at a lecture in Boston, April i, 1731, before the authorities of Massachusetts. His father, Thomas Hollis, and his brother, John Hollis, were alike dis- tinguished for their liberal benefactions. Before leaving the Bay Colony we would make men- tion of an important Synod of the elders and messen- gers of the churches, held in 1662, by order of the Court, to consider two questions, the first of which was: "Who are the subjects of baptisme .-* " — a theo- logical question which, with its related theme of infant church-membership, was agitated and discussed by the Puritan churches oftener, I think, than any other during their entire history. At this Synod the so-called half- way covenant — by a vote of sixty against less than ten — was adopted, by which persons baptized in infancy, and upright in life, became, on "owning the covenant," not communicants, indeed, but quasi church-members, and as such were allowed to have their children baptized. From this position it was but a short and easy step for Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, to take when he maintained that such half-way church-members had " the right of visible saints to the Lord's Supper, though they be destitute of a saving work of God's Spirit on their hearts," and that for such persons "the Lord's Supper is a converting ordinance." Very naturally it came to pass that persons would connect themselves in this half-way manner with the church for the sake of the honors and privileges of church-mem- bership. In defense of this half-way covenant scheme Mr. Mitchell, of Cambridge, says : " We make account I20 NKW ?:nt;LAXD\S STRrOGLKS that if we keep baptism within the non-excommunica- ble, and the Lord's Supper within the compass of those that have (unto charity) somewhat of the power of god- liness or grace in exercise, we shall be near about the right middle i^'ay of church reformation." This same view, which was first suggested and favored by the Con- necticut colonists, was virtually adopted by a smaller Synod held by "order" of the Court in 1657, the result of which was published about two years after- ward, entitled, " A Disputation concerning church- members and their children, in answer to twenty-one questions," which c[uestions, with their answers, may be seen in Hubbard's '' History," pp. 563-569, or Felt's "Ecclesiastical History," H., 154. Nearly all these questions related to two points : What children are to be baptized .'' and. What relation do they, when bap- tized, sustain to the church } I scarcely need say that the Synods did not effectually settle all these contro- verted questions. Note. — This half-way covenant scheme, with its half-way church-membership of adults (which was adopted with much consideration and prayer, as the best preservative of true religion and orthodoxy), and the parish system (without which a Congre- gational church, though boasting of its authority and indepen- dence, was held in aftertimes, by a decision of Chief Justice Isaac Parker, to have no legal existence), are without doubt the two most potent causes of the great defection to Unitarianism in the first c[uarter of this century, by which over eighty of the pres- ent evangelical churches of Massachusetts were constrained to separate from the religious societies with whicli they had been connected, of which number forty-si.\ churches, with a majority of its members, were "dri\en from their houses of worship by town or ]);uisli \otes." I'lie whole membership of eighty- one churches, as stated by Dr. Joseph S. Clark, was five thousand THE PURITANS 121 one hundred and eighty-two, of which number only one thousand two hundred and eighty-two were left to the parishes after the separation. In some instances, only two or three church-mem- bers remained with the parish, yet the exiled churches were obliged to relinquish their meeting-houses, their records, their communion service, and their funds, which were sacredly given to support a learned, able, and orthodox ministry. If not a single church-member remained to a parish, still such exiled church, as to all civil purposes, would be regarded as legally non-existent, while the deserted parish could institute a new church in its stead. Dr. Clark estimates that in consequence of this defection "one hundred and twenty-six places of worship, with their appurtenances of parish and church funds, were lost to the cause of evangelical religion." Such is one of the bitter fruits of the Church-and-State system of our fathers. The above decision, e\en if legally correct and authoritative (of which there are the gravest doubts), is to my mind a monstrous injustice, and I envy not the position of those ministers who are supported in whole or in part by such wrested orthodox church funds. Indeed, I know not why, by moral right or the " law of equity," those funds should not now be restored to the churches which have been thus legally robbed, or, where this is impracti- cable, then to any of the seven great societies which orthodox Congregationalists have formed for the spread of evangelical truth. This famous Dedham case, " Baker 7's. Fales," 1820, is fully reported in Vol. X\T. of the Massachusetts Reports, and is well summarized in Dr. McKenzie's "First Church of Cam- bridge," pp. 272-284. See also the first and second volumes of the "Spirit of the Pilgrims." PART II THE PILGRIMS RELATION TO THE ANABAPTISTS AND QUAKERS We veryly beleeve and trust ye Lord is with us, unto whom and whose service we have given ourselves in many trialls; and that he will graciously prosper our indeavours according to ye simplicitie of our harts therein. — Robinson and Breivster to Ed- win Sandys, of tJie I'irginia Company, i6iy . So they lefte yt goodly and pleasante citie [Leyden], which had been ther resting place near 12 years; but they knew they were Pilgrims, and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to ye heavens, their dearest countrie, and cjuieted their spirits. — Bradford'' s Hist. Plym. Plant., p. jS. Turning now to the "Colony of New Plymouth," let us consider how the Anabaptists and Quakers were treated by the Pilgrims. Before investigating these points, we would learn something of the spirit and purpose of our Pilgrim fathers which, in great part, were quite similar to those of the Puritans. In order to this, let us take an e.xcursion first to Clark's Island, in Plymouth harbor, where they spent their first Sim- day on New ICngland soil, and there read on Pulpit Rock the engraven words : " On the Sabboth day wee rested " ; thence to the Pilgrim Monument, where stands the colossal statue of Faith with her extended right arm pointing upward, and her left hand clasping the Bible at her side ; and finally, uj) the steep " Burial THE PILGRIMS 123 Hill," that there we may read on its most conspicuous monument the words taken from the " Epistle Dedi- catory," or Introduction of Robert Cushman's sermon (preached from i Cor. 10 : 24, on December 9, 1621), on "The Sin and Danger of Self-Love " : And you, my loving friends, the adventurers to this Planta- tion, as your care has been first to settle religion here before either profit or popularity, so I pray you, go on. . . I rejoice . . . that you thus honor God with your riches, and I trust you shall be repayed again double and treble in this world, yea, and the memory of this action shall never die.^ Little did they dream that the Sunday excursion trains — now, indeed, prohibited by the railroad commis- sioners — would ever be run well-nigh over the spot where they should be laid to rest. The purpose by which the Pilgrims were animated is also very plainly expressed by themselves in the opening sentence of the compact signed in the cabin of the Mayflower. Having undertaken, for the glory of God and the advance- ment of the Christian faith and the honour of our King and Countrie, a voyage to plant the first Colonie in the northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine 1 This sermon, which was first printed in 1622, and has since been fre- quently published in pamphlet form, is given in part in Young's " Chron- icles of the Pilgrims." The author, whose son Thomas was an elder in the Plymouth Church many years, was neither a minister nor an elder, yet he gives ministers (perhaps of our day) very good advice. He says in his introduction : " If any shall think it too rude and unlearned for this curious age, let them know that to paint out the gospel in plain and flat English, amongst a company of plain Englishmen (as we are), is the best and most profitable preaching." 124 ^^K^^' knglaxd's strl-ggles ourselves together into a c\ ill body polictick for our better order- ing and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid, etc. Also in the " Genei-al Fundamentals " prefixed to the laws of New Plymouth. 1672, are these words : The great and known end of the first comers was that . . . they might, with the liberty of a good conscience, enjoy the pure Scriptural Worship of (lod without the mixture of human inventions; and that their children after them might walke in the Holy waves of the Lord. The government of Plymouth Colony, like that of Massachusetts, was theocratic, the Court, in the spirit and after the "patterne of God's Ancient Lawe," and as God's representative, taking like care both of church and commonwealth. As a matter of fact, those who held government office were, though by an unwritten law, required to be church-members who had taken the freeman's oath. It is, however, commonly main- tained, and I suppose it must be true, that Captain Miles Standish, who held high offices in the govern- ment, was never a church-member. And yet I find it hard to believe this.' I think, moreover, that all Plym- 1 Standish, according to report, used at times a pretty strong vernacular, and was a man of somewhat rash and fiery disposition, or, as John Robin- son expressed it, " of warm temper." But Morton, the secretary of the Court, and his contemporary for many years, says that he " fell asleep in the I>ord " A threnodist also of that time bewails, The faithful Standish, freed from horrid p.-iin, To be with Christ, in truth, the greatest gain. The chronologist, Prince, also speaks of him in the same strain. It is stated that of his books, some forty in number, nearly twenty were devo- tional or religious. He appears to have been a regular attendant on pub- lic worship. While residing in Duxbury, he and three others of the more noted Pilgrims, in 1632, " promise to remove their families to live in the THE PILGRIMS 1^5 outh County historians, without any exception, hold that in Plymouth, as in the other colonies (that of Con- necticut excepted), '* church-membership was an indis- pensable qualification for freemen." In 1654, the Court at Plymouth, appointing Thomas Prince to ad- minister government at Kennebec River, excused him from requiring them to conform with the peculiarities of the present Colony, such (according to Mr. F'elt's view) as the demand for them to be church-members before they could vote for the legislature or be elected to this body — the Court's " intention being not to expect theire strict observance of euerything peculiaire to our- selves," so that those who " haue taken the oath of fidelitie shall acte as if they were actually freemen." In 1665 King Charles' four commissioners proposed to the Court of Plymouth that " All men of compe- tent estates and ciuell conversations, though of differ- ent judgments, may be admitted to be freemen and have libertie to choose and bee chosen officers both ciuell and milletary." Four years after this the Court enacted " that none shall voate in Town meetings but ffreemen or ffreeholders of twenty pounds rateable town (Plymouth) in the wintertime, that they may the better repair to the worship of God." In his will he bequeathes "three pounds to Marcye Robinson, whom I tenderly love for her grandfather's [John Robinson] sacke." He makes his "loving friends, Mr. Timothy Hatherly and Capt. James Cudworth, supervissors of this Will, and that they will be pleased to doe the office of Christian love to be healpful to my poor wife and chil- dren by their Christian counsell and advisee (whom), though neither they nor I shall be able to recompenc, I doe not doubt but the Lord will." Of course, the case of Standish, for peculiar reasons, may have been exceptional. And, as I should judge, nearly all the writers who have ex- pressed an opinion on this matter, either deny his church-membership or doubt whether he was ever " under covenant." 1 2b NEW ENGLAND S STRUGGLES estate and of good conversation, having taken the oath of fidelitie." It should be stated that the Court in its response to the commissioners averred that it had been its " con- stant practice to admit men [it omits the important word ' all ' ] of competent estates and ciuell conversation, though of different judgments, yett being otherwise or- thodox, to bee freemen," etc. And there is reason for believing that the Pilgrims, while demanding a religious character and orthodox principles in their candidates, were not so strict as the Puritans in requiring the condi- tion of freemen as a qualification for holding town offices, or voting for members of the General Court. In Scit- uate, which was formerly niuch the most populous town in Plymouth Colony, only thirty-eight persons were en- rolled as "freemen" during the first sixteen years, while a much larger number, though they might have been church-members, only took the " oath of fidel- itie," and were thus, as a matter of fact, if not of law, debarred from office in the colonial government. Wil- liam Vassall, of that place, one of the wealthiest and most eminent men of that time, though he was a church-member and had taken the oath of fidelity, — but who was suspected of "leaning to the Bishops," — was never promoted to government office in Plym- outh Colony. Dr. A. E. Dunning, in his " Congrega- tionalists in America," p. 143, states that "In the Plymouth Colony, although the ecclesiastical test was not applied, the restrictions were so great that out of thi-ec thousand persons [in 1643 .'] onlv two hundred and thirty had the right to vote." Thus all church- members were not freemen, but certainly, as a general THE PILGRIMS 127 rule, all freemen were church-members, and only free- men could be members of the General Court.' It has been frequently asserted that the Pilgrims are not chargeable with persecuting, or, at least, that they never persecuted the Baptists. We readily concede that those whom we may specifically term the Pilgrim FATHERS, or the first generation of Pilgrims, were not guilty of persecution. Not until after the long reign of Governor Bradford was ended by his death in 1657, or thirty-seven years after "the landing," do we discover any trace of persecution.- Nor do we after this discover any sign of persecution either of Baptists or Quakers on the part of the Pilgrim descendants until they were incited thereto by the Puritans of Mas- sachusetts Bay, some of whom, in the words of General James Cudworth, to whom reference may be again made, sought to put the " Plymouth saddle on the Bay horse " for a persecuting crusade. The term Anabap- tists nowhere occurs in the Plymouth Court Records from 1633 to 1692, inclusive. Nor is there found any ^ See Baylies' "Memoir of Plymouth Colony," Part I., 29, 298, and Felt's " Ecclesiastical History of New England," II., 237. ^ It would seem that this good man was taken away from the evil or trouble soon to come, and yet at a time when he could hardly be spared. For in this same year, as Secretary Morton writes, " there arrived in the Colony many of that pernicious sect called Quakers, whose opinions are a composition of many errors, and whose practices tend greatly to the dis- turbance both of Church and State." And there were others also, " pre- tending a great zeal for liberty of conscience, but endeavouring to intro- duce such a liberty of will as would have proved prejudicial if not de- structive to civil and church societies." It would appear that the law passed as early as 1637, forbidding any individual to live in the Colony without the consent of the governor or two of the Assistants, failed to keep these and other unwelcome intruders from gaining a temporary resi- dence. 128 NEW rxoland's struggles law in all that time which applies specifically to Ana- baptists. The only law which could bear somewhat heavily against them and other dissenters from the standing order is that which was passed in 1650, as we shall presently notice, and substantially repeated the next year with an added penalty. There is abundant evidence that the Pilgrims were in- cited to a course of intolerance by interested outsiders. As early as 1642 Governor Bellingham wrote to the Plymouth governor, urging the latter to " consider and advise with us how we may avoid " those who are "se- cretly sowing the seed of familism and anabaptism." Four years later, in 1646, the confederate commis- sioners urged each General Corte within these United Colonies that as they haue layd theire foundations and measured the temple of God, the worship and worshippers, by that straight Reed God hath putt into theire hands, so they would walke on and build up with an undaunted heart and unwearied hand according to the same rules and palternes. That a due watch be kept and continued at the doors of God's house . . . that Anabaptisme, familisme, Antinomianisme, and generally that all errors of like nature which oppose, undermine, and slight either the Scriptures, the Sabboth, or other ordinance of God, and bring in and cry up unwarrantable Reuelations, inventions of men, or any carnall liberty under a deceitfull collure of lil^erty of conscience may be seasonably and duly supprest ; though they wish as much for- bearance and respect may be had of tender consciences seeking light as may stand with purity of religion and peace of the churches. (The Commissioners of Plymouth [Timothy Hatherly, of Scituate, and John Brown, of Rehoboth], desire further con- sideration concerning this advise given to the generall Corte. )* 'Of Mr. llatlu'ily we .shall speak presently. Mr. John l?rown was Governor's Assistant as early as 1636, and for many years held high of- THE PILGRIMS 129 The commissioners close their appeal with these beautiful and touching words : If thus wee be for God he will certainly be with us. And though the God of this world (as he is stiled) be worshipped and by usurpation sett upon his throane in the maine and greatest part of America, yet this small parte and portion may be vindi- cated as by the right hand of Jehovah, and justly called Em- manuell's land. But this advice regarding suppression did not seem to "take," and so three years after, in October, 1649, the Massachusetts Court thus addressed the " Corte " of the Pilgrims : Wee have heard heeretofore of diuerse Anabaptists arisen up in your jurisdiction and connived at ; but being but few wee well hoped that it might have pleased God by the endeavors of your- selves and the faithful elders with yow, to have reduced such erring men againe into the right way. But now to our great greife wee are credibly informed that your patient bearing with such men hath produced another effect, namely, the multiplying and encreasing of the same errors, and wee feare may be of other errors also, if timely care be not taken to suppresse the same. Particularly wee understand that within this few weekes there have binn at Sea Cunke thirteene or fowerteene rebaptised (a swift progresse in one toune) ; yett wee heare not of any fice in the government. He was so much "opposed to coercing people to support the ministry, although he was willing to contribute his full proportion " (see Bliss' " Rehoboth " ) that in 1655 he promised the Court that he "would engage himself in behalf of those who were the inhabi- tants of said town . . . that they should voluntarily contribute accord- ing to their estates ; and if any of them fell short in this business, he would supply that want of his own estate ; and this he would make good by engaging his lands for seven years in their behalf while they staid, though he himself should remove from the place" ; and this pro- posal was accepted by the Court. His son, James, was a constituent member of Elder Myies' church in 1663. 130 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLEvS effectual restriction is entended thereabouts. Lett it not, wee pray yow, seeme presumpti(>n in us to minde yow to take care as well of the suppressing of errors as of the majntenance of truth, God equally requiring the performance of both at the hands of Christian magistrates, but rather yow will consider our interest is concerned therein. The infeccon of such diseases, being so neare vs, are likely to spread into our jurisdiccion : Tu7ic iiia res agitur paries cimi prflxiinus ardei} Wee are vnited by con- federacy, by faith, by neighborhood, by fellowship in our suffer- ings as exiles, and by other Christian bonds, and wee hope neither Sathan nor any of his instruments shall, by theis or any other errors, disvnite vs, and that wee shall neuer have cawse to repent vs of our so neare conjunction with yow, but that wee shall both so equally and zealously vphold all the truths of God revealed, that wee may render a comfortable accompt to him that hath sett vs in our places, and betrusted vs with the keeping of both tables, of which well hoping, wee cease your farther trouble, and rest, Your very loving freinds and brethren. What active measures the Pilgrims would have taken to "suppress" the Anabaptists had they not been incited to this business by the Puritans of the Bay, can never be known. But after so much urging from abroad, and ever being " loath," as Winslow once said, "to displease the Bay," they felt bound, as it appears to me, to attempt suppression in a mild way. And so in about ten days after the gratuitous and un- solicited advice respecting the distant " Sea Cunke Anabaptists " was given, " Obadia Hullme " (Holmes) and two others, " were bound one for another in the sum of tenn pound apeece to appear at the next General Court," in June, 1650, on which occasion, as Holmes writes : ' Wien your neighbor's house is afire, your own is in danger. THE PILGRIMS I31 We met with four petitions against our whole company to take some speedy course to suppress us ; one from our own plantation [Seaconck] with thirty hands to it ; one from the church, as they call it, at Taunton ; one from all the ministers in our [Plym- outh] Colony except two, if I mistake not ; and one from the Court at Boston, in the Massachusetts, under their Secretary's hand ; whereupon the Court straitly charged us to desist, and neither to ordain officers, nor to baptize, nor to break bread together, nor yet to meet upon the first day of the week. In less than a week after this the Court enacted as its first law relating to this matter : That whosoeuer shall hereafter set vp any churches or pub- licke meetings diverse from those allreddy set vp and approved, without the concent and approbaccon of the Government, or shall continew any otherwise set vp without concent as aforesaid, shalbe suspended from haueing any voyce in towne meetings, and presented to the next generall Court to Receue such punish- ment as the Court shall think meet to Inflict. Whosoeuer shall villifie by opprobrious tearmes or speeches any church or mines- try or ordinance, being heerof lawfully convicted, shall forfeite and pay to the use of the Colonie ten shillings for every default. On October 2, of the same year, 1650, the year be- fore Holmes received his " thirty strokes " in Boston, he with eight others of the town of Rehoboth (John Hazell, Edward Smith and wife, Joseph Tory and wife, William Deuell and wife, and the wife of James Mann), was again presented " for the continewing of a meeting vppon the Lord's day from house to house, contrary to the order of this Court enacted June the 12th, 1650." No sentence against them is found in the Court Records, and probably they were only threatened with a fine. " How different is this," says Backus, "from the actings of Boston Court next year! " In 165 1 the 132 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES Court re-enacted substantially the foregoing law, with an added penalty : Whatsoeuer person or persons shall neglect the frequenting the pubHcke uoishipp of (iod that is according to God in the places \\ lier they Hue or doe assemble themselues vpon any pre- tence whatsoeuer in any way contrary to (jod and the allowance of the gouerment tending to the subversion of Religion and churches, or palpable prophanacon of God's holy ordinances, being duely convicted shall pay ten shillings for euery such de- fault. If any in any lazey, slothful!, or prophane way, doth neglect to come to the publicke worship of God, he shall forfeit for euery such default ten shillings or be publickly whipte. This is known as the Thomas Hinckley law ; and it is worthy of remark that in the turn of events during the Andros usurpation, this man, afterward governor of the Colony, and in behalf of the Colony, himself preferred a petition to the king " that there be liberty of conscience in matters of religion, . . and that all their meeting-houses may be left free to them accord- ing to the intention of the builders thereof." ' Had * In 1657, the first coercive law for the support of ministers was en- acted, as follows : " Ordered . . . that in whatsoeuer Township there is or shalbee an able, Godly Teaching ministry, which is approued by this (jQuernment, that then four men be Chosen by the inhabitants, or Incase of theire neglect. Chosen by any three or more of the majestrates to make an equall and just proportion vpon the estates of the inhabitants according to theire abillities, to make vp such a convenient maintenance for his com- fortable attendance on his worke as shalbee agreed vpon by the church, . . and that distresse according as in other just cases provided, bee made vpon such as refuse to pay such theire j)roportions, which is in justice due. But Incase there be any other way wherby anv township doe or shall Agree that may effect the end aforesaid, this law not to bee binding to them." Two years previously the Court enacted that, "If there appears to bee a reall defect in the hearers of the ministers soe complaining [of a want of due maintenance] the majestrates shall vse all gentle means to p'swade THE PILGRIMS I33 not Holmes and his friends soon removed to Rhode Island we cannot tell what the Plymouth authorities would have done with them. A dark cloud was at that time gathering over the few Anabaptists in the Colony, which seems to have been dissipated only by the fact of their removal. That the early Pilgrim authorities were not in favor of unlimited toleration, and were not altogether opposed to "suppression," is evident from a letter written to Governor Winthrop, in 1645, by Ed- ward VVinslow, who, speaking of an important order submitted to the legislature (perhaps a petition of William Vassall and others) says that it would " allow and maintaine full and free toleracon of religion to all men that would preserue the civill peace and submit unto government, and there was no limitacon or excep- con against Turke, Jew, Papist, Arrian, Socinian, Nicholayton, familist, or any other, etc. . . But the governor [the tolerant Bradford] would not suffer it to come to vote, as being that indeed would eate out the power of godliness," etc. Winslow says : " I utterly abhorred it as such as would make us odious to all Christian commonweals."^ As late as 1674 one at them to doe theire duty herein, but if any of them shall not heerby bee reclaimed, but shall p'sist through plaine ostinacye against an ordinance of God, then it shalbee in the power of the majestrate to vse such other meanes as may put them vpon theire duty." By a law of 1670 two per- sons were to be appointed in the minister's stead, to " gather in the min- nister's maintenance by Inciting of the people to theire duty in that re- spect, demanding it when due; and if need be by procuring distraint," etc. ' Yet Winslow kindly remembered Williams in his banishment. " It pleased the Father of Spirits," writes Mr. Williams, " to touch many hearts dear to him with some relentings ; amongst which that great and pious soul, Mr. Winslow, melted, and kindly visited me at Providence, and put a piece of gold into the hands of my wife for our supply." M 134 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES least of the Plymouth Colony ministers, Rev. Samuel Arnold, of Marshfield, was capable of giving sound orthodox and Puritan advice touching this business of suppression. In an election sermon he said : " When persons err in fundamentals, deny Christ, the word of God, eternal election, etc., such persons and heretics had need be suppressed." This is really but an echo of the Court in 1671, that if any really or in pretence of conscience shall profess that which eminently tendeth to the inundation of civil state and violating of natural bonds, or the overthrow of the churches of God, or of his worship, that herein prudence is to be improved in a special manner in the enactment and execution of such laws as may be useful for the upholding of the same against such de- structive errors. Some time prior to this last date the penalty attached to the Thomas Hinckley law must apparently have been augmented, for on July 2, 1667, Mr. Miles and Mr. [James] Browne, for theire breach of order in seting vp a publicke meeting without the knowlidge and ap- probation of the Court, to the disturbance of the peace of the place, are fined each of them the summe of fiue pounds, and Mr. Tanner the summe of twenty shillings. And wee judge that theire continuance att Rehoboth, being very prejudiciall to the peace of that church and that towne, may not be alowed, and doe therefore order all persons concerned therein wholly to desist from the said meeting in that place or township within this month ; yett incase they shall remoue theire meeting vnto some other place where they may not prejudice any other church, and shall giue vs any reasonable satisfaction respecting theire prin- ciples, wee know not but they may be permitted by this gouern- ment soe to doe. In the follovvino- October the Court made to them THE PILGRIMS 1 35 and others an ample grant of land, which they called Swanzey (from Swansea in Wales), a blending here surely of mercy with judgment. But Baptists sprang up again in Rehoboth, and in 1 710 Elder Ephraim Wheaton, the friend and corre- spondent of Thomas Hollis, with many others, peti- tioned the General Court to be relieved from the pay- ment of ministerial rates. This relief, however, does not seem to have been granted, for in 1728-29 twenty- eight Baptists, two Quakers, and two Episcopalians, who lived within the bounds of Rehoboth, were im- prisoned at Bristol for refusing to pay these taxes. A manuscript account of their imprisonment, which lies before me, states that they were " carried from their families to a nauseous apartments in Bristol Gaol, and there confined twelve days, during which time they re- ceived the most unkind and unchristian treatment ; altho some of them was weak and sickly." This speci- men of barbarism, however, did not occur under spe- cifically Pilgrim rule.' ■■■ We here give a few extracts from a sweet evangelical letter sent by- Mr. Hollis to Elder Wheaton, in 1723, the whole being found in Backus' " History," Vol. I., 509. Among other things Mr. Hollis says : " I mourn because of the ignorance of your sleeping Sabbatarians. . . Let no man rob us of our comfortable hope that when we cease to be here we shall be present with the Lord, in whose presence the saints believe is fullness of joy in a separate state, and expectation of greater in the resurrection." He (who in this letter declares himself to be "a Baptist") closes his epistle by saying : " Where the image of Christ is formed in any, I call them the excellent of the earth ; with such I delight to associate and worship, whatever particular denomination they may go by among men ; and this I would do till we all come into the unity of the faith," etc. Thomas Hollis, Esq., was a member of an independent church. Mr. Wheaton often received books and other benefactions from his English friend. The like also is true of Mr. Callender, of Boston. 136 NEW RXGLAND'S struggles I^'rom this whole account our conchision is, that while the Pilgrims had no very kindly feelings toward the Anabaptists, they yet cannot be called bitter or greatly active persecutors of them ; but they began to persecute mildly. They were, as concerns the Baptists, incipient, but mild persecutors. But what about the relation of the Pilgrims to those "notorious hereticks," the Quakers.^ As we might have expected, the Puritans of the Bay took the initia- tive in the matter of Quaker persecution in the Pilgrim Colony. In September, 1656, the commissioners of the four united Colonies, meeting at " New Plimouth," received a message from the "Gouernor and majes- trates of the Massachusetts," stating that " hear hath arrived amongst us seueral persons professing them- selves quakers, fitt instruments to propagate the king- dome of Sathan ; for the Securing of ourselues and our Naighbours from such pests wee haue Imprisoned them till they bee despatched away to the place from whence they came." They then request the commis- sioners, doubtless for the special benefit of the Plym- outh jurisdiction, that '•' some generall rules may bee alsoe comended to each Generall Court to prevent the coming in amongst us from foraigne places such No- torious heretiques as quakers. Ranters," etc. A month after this the Massachusetts Court passed their first law against this "cursed sect." And in the years im- mediately following they passed still other laws, several of which for their barbarity can hardly be excelled. And it is not uncharitable to suppose that they would like to have the Plymouth Pilgrims inflict like barbar- ous tortures on the turbulent and contemptuous Qua- THE PILGRIMS 137 kers. And in this instance the Pilgrims proved pretty- apt scholars, and quickly began to imitate, in a meas- ure, the Puritan example — their first law against the Quakers having been passed, June, 1657, less than a year after the Puritans passed theirs. The Pilgrims, unlike the Puritans, did not make Quakerism a capital offense. The banishment they inflicted was not upon pain of death. They did not torture and mutilate, as did the Puritans. They did not apply the lash to the naked backs of obstinate Quakers tied to a " carts tayle." But they did sentence them to be imprisoned, to be put into the stocks, to be "laid neck and heels," to be publicly whipped, to be disfranchised, to be ban- ished, and their goods, books, horses, etc., to be seized. And those who ventured to harbor, aid, or encourage them in any way fared but little better. In the writer's native town, Scituate, to which fre- quent reference has been made, a town noted above all others for its freedom of religious thought and practice in early times, lived two prominent laymen who were champions of religious liberty, Timothy Hatherly and General James Cudworth; the latter being, as it is supposed, brother of the renowned English Platon- ist, Ralph Cudworth, author of the " True Intellectual System of the Universe." Both these gentlemen held high offices in the government till they fell, in 1658, under the displeasure of the stern Governor Thomas Prince, — who was "a terror to the wicked," — and were disfranchised for their opposition to the persecution of the Quakers.^ In a letter written by General Cudworth, ' Isaac, son of Rev. John Robinson, who lived for a time in the above- named town, anti was an assistant in the government, was likewise dis- 138 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES in 1658, to a former magistrate (at that time in Eng- land), in regard to these times, he says : As to the state and condition of things among us, it is sad and so like to continue. The anti-Christian persecuting spirit is very active, and that in the powers of this world. He that will not lash, persecute, and punish men that differ in matters of religion must not sit on the bench, nor sustain any office in the Common- wealth. Last election Mr. Hatherly and myself were left off the bench and myself discharged of my captaincy, because I had entertained some of the Quakers [John Copeland and William Brend] at my house, thereby that I might be the better ac- quainted with their principles. I thought it better to do so than, with the blind world, to censure, condemn, rail at, and revile them when they neither saw their persons nor knew any of their principles. But the Quakers and myself cannot close in divers things ; and so I signified to the Court I was no Quaker, but must give my testimony against sundry things that they held as I had occasion and opportunity. But withal I told them that as I was no Quaker, so I would be no persecutor. And then he goes on to acquaint his friend a little with their sufferings, which is grievous, and saddens the hearts of most of the precious saints of God ; it lies down and rises up with them, and they cannot put it out of their minds, . . Truly it moves bowels of compassion in all sorts except those in place who carry it with a high hand towards them. Through mercy we have yet among us the worthy Mr. Dunster, whom the Lord hath made boldly to bear testimony against the spirit of persecution. This last statement is not contradictory to the as- sertion of Secretary Morton, that Mr. Dtmster " was franchised because of his opposing Quaker persecution, having become almost a Quaker himself in his endeavors to convert others. He was, however, afterward restored to favor. THE PILGRIMS 139 useful in helping to oppose the abominable opinions of the Quakers, and in defending the truth against them." But it does contradict and effectually annul the statement made in Francis Baylies' " History of Plymouth Colony," that Mr. Dunster was "violent and intolerant," and that his "dislike and hatred of the Quakers was unrelenting and vindictive," a statement which I have never seen made elsewhere, and for which there is no ground whatever. The historian, Dr. George E. Ellis, who cannot be supposed to have any special sympathy for Mr. Dunster's religious views, speaks of him far more truly as " one of the most engaging, lov- able, and most eminently serviceable men in our earliest Annals." And President Josiah Quincy, in his " His- tory of Harvard University," bears witness that "Dun- ster possessed a gentle heart and a noble vein of Chris- tian charity." We may here state that the penalty in Plymouth Colony for entertaining Quakers, as Mr. Cudworth had done, was " five pounds for every such default or be whipped." Young Copeland, one of the Quakers whom he entertained for a night or two, received in Boston thirty strokes with a knotted whip of three cords, and had his right ear cut off in the prison. Pre- viously, though in the same year, 1658, he had been whipped in Plymouth and Barnstable. Brend, his com- panion, fared still worse. We here quote mainly from Sewel's large " History," and from the " Historical Me- moirs of the Society of Friends," by William Hodg- son, published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. Detained in Boston prison in order to pay his fees, he yet refused to work, " not feeling at liberty with a clear conscience 140 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES to pay." For not working the jailer first gave him twenty blows with a three-corded whip, and afterward put him into irons, placing a fetter on each leg, and one round his neck, and drawing them wdth force to- gether, "neck and heels," and then left the aged man locked in this suffering position sixteen hours. Still refusing to work, the jailer took a piece of inch rope and beat him with all his strength, till, after striking about twenty blows, the rope began to untwist. After- ward, he produced a much stronger rope and continued to beat him therewith until he had given ninety-one blows, and his own strength was exhausted. This " \V. Brend," said John Norton, " endeavoured to beat our Gospel ordinances black and blue, and it is but just upon him if he is beaten black and blue also." And the poor sufferer's back was beaten till it seemed almost like a jelly, and having moreover been five days with- out food, he at length sunk down and seemed to be dying. Lest the bloody transaction would look too much like murder, the rulers sought by every means to revive him, and even the governor sent him a physician. And strange to say, he was favored with a rapid re- covery. Like his companion, he also received a whip- ping in Plymouth, and was finally banished upon ])ain of death. Among the whippings performed in Plym- outh this same year, 1658, was that of Humphrey Nor- ton, who almost deserved his twenty-three lashes for his insolence to Governor Prince, telling him at sundry times: Tlion licst ! Thomas^ thou art a vialicious vian, etc. He afterward sent the governor a scurrilous let- ter, a part of which is printed in Backus' " History," Vol. I., 256; also a similar letter to John Alden. In THE PILGRIMvS 141 New Haven he had the letter H deeply burned in his hand, " the only instance of branding [of Quakers ?] in New England," (Ellis). Indeed, as compared with the mother country, the Puritan Colony was lenient in respect to capital offenses and penal inflictions.' Under a new governor, Mr. Cudworth, after fifteen years had elapsed, was restored to favor, and was ap- pointed " Ginnirall" in King Philip's war, while Mr. Hatherly, " the principal founder and father of the town of Scituate," who served as the Governor's As- sistant thirteen years, as commissioner of the United Colonies three years, as treasurer of the Colony also, and who was the equal of any that ever occupied the colonial governor's chair, was suffered to remain in re- tirement. The above quoted utterances of Mr. Cud- worth, must not be regarded as the prejudiced testi- mony of a man soured by disappointment. In sub- sequently declining a certain office, he says : " I do not in the least waive the business out of any discontent in my spirit arising from any former difference ; for the thought of all which is and shall be forever buried so as not to come to remembrance." The historian of Scituate , Rev. Samuel Deane, remarks that " his mag- nanimity has rarely been equaled, and when we couple with it the mildness and humanity of his demeanor, his character reaches the sublime." 1 See J. H. Trumbull's "Blue Laws, True and False," of Connecticut and New Haven Colonies, pp. 10-23; also Palfrey's "History of New England," Vol. II., 26-29. Mr. Palfrey states that there were in Eng- land thirty-one capital crimes at the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and that subsequently, at one time, their number was estimated at two hun- dred and twenty-three. Plymouth Colony in early times had but eight capital offenses, and Massachusetts but eleven. 142 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES As a slight apology for the Pilgrims in their perse- cution of the Quakers we may say, in the words of the last-named author, and as the result of what we have already seen, that " The General Court of Massachu- setts communicated to Plymouth Colony the first im- pulse of opposition to this sect." In the Puritan Col- ony the leading Quakers were confessedly turbulent, fanatical, indecent, and we wonder not that under a theocratic government the Puritan magistrates and ministers thought that the actions and principles of this sect " tended to undermine the authority of civill gouernment as also to destroy the authority of the churches." In the Plymouth jurisdiction the Quakers were less turbulent and fanatical,' yet they could not be regarded as desirable neighbors or good citizens, Roger * There are of course exceptions to this statement. From Increase Mather (see also " Magnalia," Lib. IL, 458) we learn that " a man, pass- ing under the name of Jonathan Dunen (Dunham), a singing Quaker, drew away the wife of one in Marshfield, to follow him ; also one Mary Ross, falling into their company, was quickly possessed with the devil, playing such frentick and diabolical tricks as the like hath seldom been known or heard of; for she made herself naked, burning all her clothes, and with infinite blasphemy, said she was Christ, and gave names to her apostles, calling Dunen by the name of Peter, another by the name of Thomas ; declaring that she would be dead for three dayes, and then rise again ; and accordingly seemed to die. And while she was pretendedly dead, her apostle, Dunen, gave out that they should see glorious things after her resurrection ; but that which she then did was she commanded Dunen to sacrifice a dog. The man and the two women danced naked together, having nothing liut their shirts on. The constable brought them before the magistrates in Plymouth, where Ross uttered such prodigious blasphemy as is not fit to be mentioned '' (quoted by Dr. Dexter). The man was " centanced to be publicly whipt att the post," and ordered out of the jurisdiction, and was further condemned to be " soe serued as oft as he shall vnnecessarily rcturne into it to disseminate his corrupt prin- ciples." THE PILGRIMS 143 Williams talked as hard against the Quakers as did any of the Puritans. What the Pilgrims would have done with them, if left to themselves, we can hardly conjec- ture. Both Puritan and Pilgrim necessarily partook of the stern spirit of their age, in the severity and frequency of their punishments.^ It must not, of course, be understood that the corporal punishments we have named were confined merely to Baptists and Quakers, or to matters of religious faith and practice. They were visited upon many offenses of widely different kinds. Whippings, especially, as a legal penalty for adult transgressors seem to have been as common in those times as they were inside the schoolhouses of our — let us rather say — ^our fathers' childhood. One thing must be confessed to the everlasting honor both of Puritan and Pilgrim, that however many and grievous their mistakes, they were yet in their prin- ciples and conduct thoroughly earnest, honest, and con- scientious. And I feel that if we could put ourselves in their place, and could understand all the difficulties they had to encounter, we should sympathize with them far more deeply than we do, and be better en- abled to do them justice. How unfair, for example, and how ridiculous, to reproach the Puritans for the poverty of their literature, especially as contrasted with the immortal writings produced in the mother country during the same period — engaged as they were for so ' If one wishes to see how much the Baptists and Quakers suffered in England, vastly more than in this country, we refer him to a brief state- ment in Dr. Dexter's "As to Roger Williams," pp. 123-4, ^37- See also, as concerns the Baptists and other dissenters, Crosby's " History of the English Baptists," Vol. II., and Ivimey's "History," Vol. I., and as concerns the Quakers, see Sewel's " History," Vol. II. 144 NEW England's vSTruggles long a time in subcUiing a wilderness, rugged in soil, severe in climate, infested witti wild beasts and savage men, often engaged in bloody and expensive wars, and living too, without the conveniences of money and other things as we have them, so that no little part of their time was occupied in keeping the wolf, both the literal and the metaphorical, from their doors. Jkit apart from all consideration of their physical surround- ings, which, of course, were not conducive to the cul- tivation of belles-lettres, it seems to me that their ear- nestness of moral purpose was alone sufficient to de- termine the character and extent of their literary pur- suits, whatever may have been their literary tastes. They felt, I doubt not, that there was something more important for them to do in this world than to devote their intellectual energies to the production of the lighter, or, what we deem, the more pleasing kinds of literature. It is a conceded fact that many ot our Puritan fathers ranked among the most eminent schol- ars of their time ; and it was in the interest of learning and of culture that soon after their arrival, in 1636, they founded a college in this wilderness — an example, I venture to say, whose like has not a parallel in the history of the world. And yet it was in this same seat of learning that a historian in his recent lectures ex- hibited not a little of this unfairness of which I have spoken.' It is also my conviction that justice cannot be done them by those who, like many of our " liberal " his- torians, have no special sympathy with their religious 'See "Massachusetts, its Historians and its History," by Charles Francis Adams. THE PILGRIMS 145 views and aims. And yet I cannot conceive how any person can fail to have very great respect for their sincerity of purpose and righteousness of intent. In contrast with the harsh and often cynical criticisms of the Puritans by some recent historians, we gladly place on record a different estimate of their character by Dr. Alexander Young. In his preface to his " Chron- icles of the First Planters of Massachusetts Bay," he says : No nation or State has a nobler origin or lineage than Massa- chusetts. My reverence for the character of its founders con- stantly rises with the closer study of their lives, and a clearer insight into their principles and motives. Much as has been said in commendation of them, their worth has never been over- rated, and we should never be tired of recounting their virtues.' In pursuing the course of intolerance which they did, they were undoubtedly inconsistent. It seems to 1 Dr. Young was a Unitarian clergyman, but one of the older school. The following utterances of his in a sermon preached at the ordination of Rev. George E. Ellis, in Charlestown, March 11, 1840 (whose lainented decease has occurred during this present writing), have almost an ortho- dox ring. He says : " For one, I must humbly acknowledge that I do not feel the want of a speculative philosophy to put underneath and shore up my religion. I am not ashamed to avow that my faith is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. . . I cling to revelation. I hold to the record. Without the record o£ a supernatural faith which I find in the pages of the New Testament, I confess I should feel like the sailor set adrift on mid-ocean without rudder, compass, or chart — without his quadrant and his ' Practical Navigator.' I turn to the inspired word of Christ as the needle seeks the pole star. . . Above all, let Christ be preached ; not the Christ of theory, of imagination, or of philosophy, but the Christ of the New Testament, the Mediator, the Redeemer, the Saviour, the Son of God, the Advocate with the Father, the Light of the world. Let not the Christian minister fear that he shall insist on the person or the offices of Jesus with a noxious exaggeration," etc. N 146 NKW ENGLAND'vS vSTRUGGLRvS me also that at times they must have had some doubts as to the rightfulness of their severest penal inflictions. But I should not care to say, as a recent historian — Charles Francis Adams, a descendant of Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge — has said, that "they knew better. " It is quite enough to say that they ought to have known better, those at least of them who had suffered from oppression in the Old World, and who in consequence knew the worth of personal religious freedom. It must be remembered of the Puritans that theirs was no easy-going, careless faith or no faith. With them religious error was soul-destroying, and hence infinitely more to be dreaded than the plague. " Doubtless," said one of the Puritan ministers, "doubtless they that are nursing fathers of their peo- ple ought as well to prevent poison as to provide food for them." They had intense convictions of the un- speakable importance of religious truth and of their own religious faith. And their whole aim was to set up in their little corner of New England — " sequestered from the rest of the world," and, as Urian Oakes and John Higginson said, " originally a plantation not for trade but for religion" — God's way and worship in purity. They aimed to exhibit to the world " a speci- men or a little model of the kingdom of Christ on earth." And they knew no better way in which to establish and conserve orthodoxy in church and right- eousness in State, in their little Church and State home, than to keep out, and, as their charter worded it, " repulse, repell," and exclude even by force, here- tics and other persons whose influence they deemed destructive of their Church and State community, and THE PILGRIMS 147 who, as they felt, had no right to intrude themselves into their community. If ever a people on earth were conscientious, they were that people ; but to say that " they knew better," is to say that they deliberately acted against their consciences. But this is to deny them all claims to greatness or goodness. Yet " these men," as Dr. Jeremiah Chaplin, in his " Life of Presi- dent Dunster," well remarks, "were so truly great and good that, better than most men, they can bear the exposure which historic justice necessitates." Nor must we forget the profound truth of Froude's asser- tion concerning Sir Thomas More, that, " The spirit of persecution is no peculiar attribute of the pedant, the bigot, or the fanatic, but may coexist with the fairest graces of the human character," PART in SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES AND FINAL TRIUMPH Divine truth is immortal ; it may perhaps for long be bound, scourged, crowned, crucified, and for a season be entombed in the grave, but on the third day it shall rise again victorious, and rule and triumph forever. — Hiiluiiaier, an A7iahaptist Diartvr, 152S. Planting himself at the period of the Confession of the seven churches of Christ in London (1643), ^^^ Baptist historian, as he looks down the line of coming years, beholds struggles which might appall the stoutest heart, and, at the same time, triumphs which, had they been uttered in prophecy, would have been scarcely less wonderful than those ancient ones in which the seers of the Captivity proclaimed the return to Zion. — 6'. S. Cuttings "Historical Vindications,'' p. 4J . In 1692 the Plymouth Colony was merged into that of Massachusetts, and thenceforward the governors of the consolidated Colony, or " Province," were appointed by the British Crown. By these acts, and by the doing away of any church-membership qualification for voting and office-holding, the Puritan rule of the Colony was greatly weakened for the future, as in the recent past it had been lessened by kingly authority, and espe- cially by the annulling, in 1684, of the Massachusetts charter. For a time, under the Andros usurpation, the scales were completely turned, and Episcopalian rule became the order of the day. He carried the Episco- 148 SUBSEQUENT vSTRUGCxLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 149 palian worship even into the Old South meeting-house, and " threatened to shut up their doors if he was re- fused ; and further threatened that pubHc worship in the Congregational way should not be tolerated." And when Dr. Increase Mather arrived in London, in 1688, he, with others, petitioned the King " that there might be liberty of conscience in matters of religion, . . and that all their meeting-houses may be left free to them according to the intention of the builders thereof." The ingredients of the bitter chalice which they had forced others to take were now commended to their own lips. But, though the times in general had greatly changed, the Puritan character and spirit long remained a domi- nant power both in Church and State. We might have supposed that under the new royal charter of 1 69 1, which allowed equal liberty of conscience to all Christians except Papists, all denominations of Pro- testant Christians might at once have been permitted to enjoy the same liberty. But the very next year the Massachusetts Assembly enacted : That every minister, being a person of good conversation, able, learned, and orthodox, that shall be chosen by the major part of the inhabitants of any town . . . shall be the minister of such town; and the whole town shall be obliged to pay towards his settlement and maintenance, each man his several proportion thereof. But Boston, with its different churches of differing denominations, could not submit to this law, and so the Assembly, in 1693, repealed it, and in its stead en- acted that each respective gathered church in any town or place which is in want of a minister shall. 150 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES with the concurrence of the majority of voters in town affairs who usually met therewith for worship, have power to choose their own minister, and every minister thus obtained should be supported by all the inhab- itants and ratable estates lying within such town or part of a town or place, provided that nothing herein contained shall " abridge the inhabitants of Boston of their accustomed way and practice as to the choice and maintenance of their ministers." " Thus," as Backus says, " in order to tax the country to religious teach- ers, they were abridged of the rights which Boston would not part with." The Assembly still further em- powered the ratable inhabitants of any town where no church was gathered, to call and settle a minister, by the advice and direction of three neighboring ordained ministers, who should be supported by taxation as others were, and that if any town or place neglected to obey these laws, the town authorities, upon legal conviction of such neglect, be fined forty shillings for the first offense, and four pounds for every after con- viction. We thus see .how, by the strong Puritan in- fluence which still survived in the Province of Massa- chusetts, the day of equal religious liberty for all was delayed for many generations. We now purpose to notice some of the more important steps and influences by which, after a long and gigantic struggle, religious liberty was at length secured. I. A SPIRITED REMONSTRANCE FROM THE BAPTIST.^ CHURCHES. After the oppressive and humiliating exemption act was passed in 1753, and "the legislature at Boston SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 151 broke in upon their own exemption law," tiie Baptists, as Backus further states, were so much alarmed as to call several meetings [in Med- field, Bellingham, Boston] and to elect [at the Convention in Bellingham] Mr. John Proctor their agent to carry their case to England; and they subscribed above a hundred pounds there- for, and he drew a remonstrance upon the subject which was presented to the Assembly in Boston, in May, 1754. It stated matters so plainly that a motion was made by some to take the signers of it into custody ; but Governor Shirley, newly returned from Europe, convinced them of the impolicy of such a step, and then they appointed a committee to confer in a friendly way with the Baptists ; and matters were shifted along until the war came on, and their design for England was dropped. This Mr. Proctor, clerk of the Second Baptist Church, in Boston, was a native and public school teacher of that town, in whose schoolhouse the church worshiped for a while. Our readers will see that, in the words of the editor of Backus' "History," Prof. David Weston, this is " a paper of much merit and historic value," which, with other papers of kindred interest, he greatly desired should be published. We give it as printed in Dr. Baron Stow's Centennial Sermon of July 27, 1843. Memorial and Remonstrance. To his Excellency, William Shirley, Esq., Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief in and over His Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England, and to [the] Honorable His Majesty's Council, and the Honorable House of Representa- tives in General Court assembled in Boston the 29th day of May, Anno Domini 1754 — The Memorial and Remonstrance of Thomas Green, Thomas Boucher, Ebenezer Moulton, Ephraim Bosworth, Joseph Collins, 152 NEW exgland's struggles riiili]-) Freeman, josepli Could, Thomas Cheney, and John Proc- tor, a Committee appointed in behalf of several Societies of the people called 15aptists, inhabitants within the said Province, HiDnbly set forth. That in the Royal Charter granted by their majesties, King William and Oueen Mary, to the inhabitants of this Province, wherein your memorialists and all their brethren are included, their said Majesties were graciously pleased to ordain that we and every of us, and our children that should be born here, or on the Seas in coming here, or returning from hence, shall have and enjoy all liberties and immunities of free natural subjects, to all intents, constructions, and purposes whatsoever, as if we and every one of them were born within the realm of England. And for our further ease and encouragement, their said Majesties, of their princely wisdom, royal grace, and mere motion, did fur- ther grant, establish, and ordain to us, under the mildest appella- tion of " loving subjects," — our being denominated Anabaptists, in any wise, notwithstanding, — that there shall be liberty of con- science allowed in the worship of God to all Christians, except Papists, inhabiting or which shall inhabit or be resident within this Province or Territory. From these Summary Abstracts, may it please your Excellency and Honors, we apprehend it plainly appeareth that your Memorialists, in their said capacity, all other his Majesty's good subjects, of the Baptist persuasion, whether they be denominated by the terms of General or Particu- lar Baptists, learned or illiterate, it matters not in point of the Royal Indulgence to them so graciously and freely granted, but that they and every of them, his Majesty's loyal and loving sub- jects, of the said Baptist Persuasion, have as good, ample, and extensive a right to think and act for themselves, in matters of a religious nature, and have indeed as absolute and unlimited an indulgence to perform the worship of Almighty God, conso- nant to their consciences, and that with impunity, as any or«ll and every of the other respective Dissenting Churches and Socie- ties, within this his Majesty's l^rovince or Territory, whomsoever, be they Congregationalists, Independents, Presbyterians, or however otherwise denominated. These Points being thus briefly premised, in which we pray SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 153 that this Honorable Court will not look with a severe eye on your remonstrants, in that they insist upon and claim their privi- leges by birthright ; more especially when it is considered that so long since, as from the year 1692 to the year 1728, our said brethren of the Baptist Persuasion, inhabitants of this Province, have been more or less harassed and oppressed with ministerial rates so called ; and notwithstanding the express Royal Indul- gence to them granted by the Charter as before mentioned, have, with a high hand and by compulsion, contrary thereunto, been enforced to pay ministerial taxes for the maintenance of such ministers as are in fact Dissenters themselves, and upon whose ecclesiastical administrations our said brethren could not, in point of conscience, attend ; and for their refusal to pay such ministers' rates, have oftentimes had their bodies seized upon and thrown into the common gaol as malefactors, and their cat- tle, swine, horses, household furniture, and implements of hus- bandry forcibly distrained from them, and shamefully sold, many times at not one-quarter part of the just value, by reason that people of real virtue and goodness were generally disinclined to buy or even bid at such sort of coerceive Outcries, whereby the estates of our said brethren became a prey to griping officers and their attendants, forasmuch as, generally speaking, the bill of charges brought by the distraining officer, for himself and his as- sistants, would be so swelled, inclusive of the ministerial rate, as nearly to counterbalance the several articles distrained from our brethren aforesaid. It is with regret that we find ourselves compelled to look back so many years past on the repeated usurpations over the bodies and estates of our said brethren ; but however disagreeable the retrospect may be, it is, indeed, we think, at this juncture be- come quite necessary (as perhaps may appear in the sequel), in order the more clearly to convey a just conception of our griev- ances to your Excellency and Honors, to unfold things as they really existed, inasmuch as from the like injurious fountain of ministerial assessment, our present oppressions derive their ori- gin. With all due deference, therefore, your memorialists pro- ceed further to observe that the heavy pressures and afflictions occasioned by the aforesaid distraints, imprisonments, and the 154 ^"Rw England's .sTRT'GrTLE;s losses consequent thereupon, for ministerial taxes, made many of the said Baptists bend, ahiiost ruined some of our people, and disheartened others to such a degree, that they moved, with the remaining effects they had left, out of this Province. We have herein, in the abovementioned state of our case, been briefly (and in one general view pointing from the year 1692) down to the year 1728, at which last mentioned time, af- fairs seemed to be drawing to a crisis. Ministerial taxes were drove with vehemence through the Province (excepting the town of Boston and some other towns), even Episcopalians, as well as Baptists and Quakers, were indiscriminately laid hold on, and some imprisoned for ministers' rates. Four of our friends and brethren about this time were brought down out of the country and thrown into the Boston gaol, which when Lieut. Governor Dummer, who was then at the head of the government, had in- formation of, he expressed a singular displeasure at such harsh proceedings, and forthwith ordered tliem out of prison, with free liberty to return home to their respective families. Our friends and neighbors, the said people called Quakers, being no longer able to endure these continued impositions and severities, by their respective memorials made application once and again to the General 'Court for relief,' which at length, after considerable cost and charge to the memorialists, produced the first act of Exemption, so called, entitled, "An act to exempt persons com- monly called Anabaptists and those called Quakers, within this Province, from being taxed for and towards the support of minis- ters. " This was in the first and second years of his present Majesty's reign ; but as this act only exempted their polls and not their estates, and being remarkably limited to such persons only as lived within five miles of the place of meeting, it was bantered and laughed at, even by some of the principal gentle- men of the then General Assemblv, and called in derision, "the ' Add : pnd our said brethren, the Baptists. ' A petition of certain Quakers to the General Court in 1720, repre- sents " that the said people for years past had suffered the distraint and loss of their goods for the support of the Presbyterian or Independent ministers, and also for the building o{ their meeting-houses, nnd that too often with much extortion."' The (^)uaker^ in 1706 had a meeting-house of their own in Boston. SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 1 55 five mile act," in allusion to the famous act made in England against the Dissenters, in the angry, persecuting time of Charles the Second. Both Baptists and Quakers hereupon renewed their applications to the General Court, determining, if they could not obtain further relief here, to carry home their several complaints to the King, where they were well assured of full redress. This produced a second act, in 1729, wherein the Baptists and Qua- kers were exempted both as to polls and to estates, but clogged, however, with a limitation for less than five years. At the ex- piration of this second act, which brings us to the years 1733 and 1 734, our said brethren were again obliged to apply to the General Assembly, Governor Belcher being then in the Chair, and an excellent friend he really was to the Baptists and Qua- kers through the whole of his administration. Nor can we omit in point of gratitude further to declare in this our memorial, that the late mentioned, and truly honorable Lieut. Governor Dum- mer, was indeed our good friend, and quite averse to every- thing tending to oppress the Quakers and Baptists. In the year 1734, upon application again made as aforesaid, a third act was passed to exempt persons commonly called Ana- baptists from ministerial taxes. This third act was more clear, accurate, and better drawn than either of the former, and therein it is expressly set forth that "to the intent it may be better known what persons are of that persuasion, and who are exempted by this act, that the assessors of each town, where any of the said Anabaptists live or their lands in their own actual improvement lie, shall take a list of all such persons and forthwith transmit the same to the clerk of the town, which list shall be entered on the record of such town by the clerk, that so any of the people called Anabaptists or any members of their Society, thereto ap- pointed, may view such list, have a copy thereof if they desire the same, paying only six pence therefor, and if any person of that denomination shall be omitted in such list by the assessors taken, and the assessors shall be certified thereof in writing under the hands of two principal members of that persuasion, appointed thereto by the respective Societies, that such persons not inserted in their list they believe to be conscientiously of their persuasion, and they do frequently and usually attend their 156 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES meeting for the woisliip of (iod on the Lord's Day, the assess- ors shall also exempt the said persons so omitted, and their es- tates in their actual management and improvement, as well as all others inserted in the said list, from all rates and taxes by the said assessors to be made for the support of minister or min- isters in their towns, or for erecting places of public worship, this act to continue for five years, etc. Our oppressions on account of ministerial taxes, as aforesaid, seemed now to appear upon the decline ; yet, nevertheless, in reality have, in a considerable measure, been continued through- out every of the said acts, by reason that, as in the former, so also in the last recited act, therewas.no sanction, no penalty annexed on the said assessors for their default of not doing their dutv in taking such lists of the people called Anabaptists in their respective towns as the act directed. And when our said brethren have at sometimes reminded the assessors of their omissions herein they were generally snubbed and in a con- temptuous manner answered, that the assessors knew nothing of any such act nor would they concern themselves therein. Other assessors, more knowing and intelligent, insisted upon it that as there was no penalty affixed on the non-performance of taking such lists of the Anabaptists in their respective towns, they would not trouble their heads about it. So that in most if not every town of this province where our said brethren dwell, no such lists as the sai^d act points out were ever taken, or at least that we could ever come to the knowledge of. Which omissions, of consequence, exposed several of our brethren to journeyings, some of forty miles, others to a more or less distance, in order to procure certificates from their respective Societies that they were Baptists. The loss of time, travel, and expense from hence occasioned has sometime amounted to more than the ministe- rial tax.' ' Some assessors neglected their legal duty in another way and for other reasons; as it happened in Dartmouth and Tiverton. These towns were taxed in 1722-1723, one Inuidred and seventy-two pounds and eleven shillings for niiiusterial rates. But the Quakers, with the Anabaptists, constituted a majority in these towns, and several of the assessors were Quakers. Of course, tliey could not deem the Congre- SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 157 Upon the expiration of this third act the Baptists were again for the fourth time exposed to the further trouble, cost, and charge to apply to the (ieneral Court for a renewed exemption, which at length produced a fourth act of the like tenor and im- port with the act last before recited (which brings us to the year 1740), and this fourth act was enacted to be in force for the term of seven years, during all which time last expressed the said assessors persisted, to the great detriment of our said breth- ren, in their omissions as aforesaid, this said last act being as utterly void of any penalty on them for their neglect as the former We are now coming to a more happy Epoch, namely, to the year 1747, under the mild and good government of your Excel- lency. At the expiration of this fourth and last act which was to end in the said year of 1747, our said brethren, many of them being near worn out with so many applications and re- peated strugglings to obtain a just redress of their grievances as aforesaid, were determined to make application to his Majesty; ^ but so it remarkably came to pass that in this very year of 1747, the General Assembly of this Province made an act for reviv- ing and continuing sundry laws expired or near expiring, wherein the act to exempt the persons commonly called Quakers, and also the act further to exempt persons commonly called Anabap- tists, and every clause, article, and thing therein contained were gational ministers to be genuinely orthodox, and they thought it wrong to assess the majority of the inhabitants to support these ministers, and hence refused to do so. Consequently, for their non-compliance with the law, they were cast into prison. A memorial, however, in their behalf was sent to " King George, of Great Britain," etc., and he was pleased to order that the ministerial tax should be remitted, and that the imprisoned assessors, after their thirteen months' confinement, should " be immedi- ately released " ! For this interesting memorial, see Backus' " History," Vol. I., p. 501. 1 Among the Backus manuscripts is a subscription paper, dated Provi- dence, March 7, 1749, signed by Elder Ephraim Bound and others, to pay expenses of an agent to England to make known the needs of the Baptist cause in this country. Mr. Bound was one of the constituent members and also the first pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Boston. O 158 NEW ENGLAND'S STKUOGLES revived, continued, and to remain in full force ten years from the publication of this act ; Your Excellency, His Majesty's Council, and the House of Representatives therein, publicly, like wise and good legislators, declaring in so many words that the aforesaid laws (to exempt the ()uakers and Baptists) have by experience been found beneficial and necessary. This was the most generous, just, and kind treatment that the Baptists and Quakers ever experienced from the General Assembly of the Massachusetts Bay, and inasmuch as it was purely the effect ot their own good will and mere motion, not being solicited there- for, and the exemption extended to a longer term of years :han any of the former acts, it was still the more beneficent, and failed not to penetrate the hearts of our people with proportion- ate sentiments of real thankfulness to the whole (ieneral Court, and in a singular manner to your Excellency, under whose Serene Administration it had its first operation. The Baptists now, and with good reason as might be supposed, justly ex- pected, after all their former tossings, conflicts, and afflictions, to have enjoyed peace and rest in the land for at least the term of ten years, commencing as aforesaid. P>ut these, their expec- tations were, it seems, soon cut down and withered. For so in- deed it was that sometime about the beginning of last year, 1753, your Excellency, unhappily for us, being then in Europe, that the Lieut. (^■o\ ernor. Council, and House of Representatives passed an act which is surprisingly entitled, " An act in addi- tion to an act, passed the 13th year of his present Majesty's reign entitled, an act further to exempt persons, commonly called Anabaptists, within this Province, from being taxed for and toward the support of ministers," \\hich runs thus : "Whereas, notwithstanding the provision already made by an act made and passed in the 13th year of his present Majesty's reign, entitled, an act further to exempt persons, commonly called Anabaptists, within this Province, from being taxed for and toward the support of ministers, in order to ascertain and make known what persons are of that persuasion which denominate themselves Anabaptists, and who shall enjoy the privilege and be esteemed as entitled to the exem])tic)n from taxes, etc., in said act mentioned, many doubts have already arisen thereon, SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 159 and in many cases the said exemption has been extended to many persons to whom the same was never designed to extend — for preventing thereof for the future, and in order to ascertain more effectually what persons shall be esteemed and accounted as Anabaptists, and to whom the said exemption shall thereafter be extended, " Be it oiactt'd, by the Lieut. Governor, Council, and House of Representatives, that no person for the future shall be so esteemed to be an Anabaptist as to have his poll or polls and estate ex- empted from paying a proportionate part of the taxes that shall be raised in the town or place where he or they belong, but such whose names shall be contained in the lists taken by the assess- ors as in said act provided, or such as shall produce a certificate under the hands of the minister, and of two principal members of such Church, setting forth that they conscientiously believe such person or persons to be of their persuasion, and that he or they usually and frequently attend the public worship in such Church on Lord's days : And be it further enacted, that no miJtister nor the Jiieinhers of any Anabaptist Church as aforesaid, shall be esteemed qualified to give such certificate as aforesaid other than such as shall have obtained front three other churches commonly called Anabaptists, in this or the neighboring Provinces, a cer- tificate from each respectively, that they esteem such church to be one of their denomination, and that they conscientiously believe them to be Anabaptists, the several certificates aforesaid to be; lodged with the town clerk where the Anabaptist (desiring such exemption) dwells, sometime betwixt the raising or granting of the tax and the assessment of the same on the inhabitants. This act to continue to be in force for five years from the publication thereof and no longer. This truly strange sort of an act, your remonstrants have herein as above transcribed at large as it stands, and present the same in open view to your Excellency and this Honorable Court with all respectful modesty and deference, craving leave to ob- serve that as there is no legislative power or authority whatsoever existing in this his Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts Bay but what stands subjected and amenable to a much higher tribu- nal at home, and whereas, there seems to be a great probability l6o NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES from the continued ill-treatment which our ancestors and we of the Baptist Persuasion, now surviving, have undergone in this Province, and the same ill spirit being at this day in many towns too predominant, that our just complaints thereupon (unless fully redressed here) must of course be sent home. For these reasons therefore we humbly pray of your Excel- lency and this Honorable Court that your memorialists may not be looked upon in a culpable light when we complain and re- monstrate, with all just freedom and openness of mind becoming Freemen, good Protestants, and loyal subjects of his Majesty, against the said act passed by the said Lieut. (lovernor. Council, and House of Representatives, as being contrary to the liberty of conscience granted us by the royal charter aforesaid, and repug- nant to the laws of England, and which hath, as far as therein lay, disfranchised, unchurched, and usurped an illegal power over, all the religious Societies of the people in the said act called Anabaptists, throughout this his Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts Bay, and moreover, subjected each and every Anabaptist Church in the Province in a very unreasonable and unheard of manner to a new sort of Spiritual Court, consisting at least of three other Anabaptist Churches, as the acts call them, to give each of them a certificate respectively, — and for what ? — why, truly that an Anabaptist Church is truly an Anabaptist, so that, indeed, it is necessary by this act the four Anabaptist churches must be co-operating together in this jumbled decision. But may it please your Excellency and Honors, when is it possi- ble for the poor Anabaptists to find in this or the neighboring Provinces, or indeed /;/ all the world, the first three authenticated Anabaptist Ministers and Churches to certify and authenticate the first three ? Over and above the obvious absurdities in this unreasonable act, the severity thereof is remarkable in exposing of our said brethren to the loss of so much time, and the con- siderable charge and expense which necessarily must arise in journeyings to and fro in this Province and the neighboring Provinces in pursuit of such chimerical certificates utterly impos- sible to be obtained.' 1 A few days after the Baptist church in Haverhill was organized, in May, 1765, its pastor, Hezekiah Smith, set out for Boston, Middlebor SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH l6l Always, heretofore, until such time as this famous act was made, the people commonly called Anabaptists, in all places where they reside, as well in this Province as everywhere else, were looked upon as such by professing themselves to be of that persuasion, and by their usually and frequently attending the worship of God with the people of that denomination when op- portunity so presented, as also by their distinguishing character- istic of immersing or dipping the person baptized in water. And the assessors in every town where such Anabaptists dwell were expressly ordered, as aforesaid, to take a list of all such persons that they might be exempted accordingly (without their being drove about, either in the Province or out of it, to hunt for certificates); and of the repeated omission of the assessors in doing their duty herein as the acts directed, we have, as herein- ough, and Warren, to get for his church the certificates as above required. His diary has the following record of his return : " We went from Warren [where he also obtained an extra certificate from brethren of a Newport Church, who happened to be in the place] to the Rev. Backus, in Middleborough, and I preached a sermon in his meeting house from 'Even so. . . Amen.' Several were much affected. We got a certifi- cate from that Church to the Haverhill Church, and then we went off to Boston," where he obtained two more certificates, thus making five in all. There was need of haste in this certificate business, for the first parish had determined at this time to build a new meeting-house at an expense of three hundred pounds, and Baptists, with others, were taxed to pay this amount. The wealthiest man in town, Mr. John White, a merchant, though not belonging to the church, was an active member of the Baptist society, and a certificate duly signed was handed in stating, in the words of the law, that he and another person men- tioned, were believed to be "conscientiously of our persuasion, and that they do frequently and usually attend public worship with us on the Lord's days." Mr. White, refusing to pay the tax, sued the assessors for seizing his goods. His case was brought to trial, was carried up from one court to another, and was finally decided against him on the ground of an alleged ambiguity in the law — whether it referred to a baptized member of the church or to a stated worshiper, or to both — and the affair cost Mr. White about eighty pounds. For an account of the bitter, shameful persecutions of Elder Smith and certain members of his church, see Backus' " History," and Guild's " Chaplain Smith and the Baptists." r62 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES before observed, often complained, but to no effect. For which reasons (and many others might be offered) the said people, called Anabaptists, ought not to be exposed as abovesaid, to such unreasonable difficulties, costs, loss of time, and damages, which this violent act subjects them to. And what still adds an ag- gravation hereto is the further contemplation that his Honor, the Lieut. Ciovernor, the Council, and the House of Representa- tives that made this act, were almost all, if not every one of them, Dissenters themselves from the Church of England, as well as the poor Anabaptists against whom this act so sorely militates, and which hath effectually, though covertly, revoked, repealed, and made void the ten years' revival of the act made for our relief and exemption as aforesaid, and in lieu thereof set up an Inquisition in this Province among his Majesty's Protest- ant subjects called Anabaptists, which our said constituents and your memorialists are fully determined, at all events, never to sub- mit to. It is well known that his Majesty expecteth, as the charter plainly points out and expressly declareth, that all his loving subjects of every Denomination of Protestants in this Province shall have liberty of conscience and be religiously, peaceably, and civilly governed, protected, and defended, that so the Indian natives may be won to the Christian Faith. But is this indeed liberty of conscience for one great party of Pro- testant Dissenters of this Province, commonly called Congrega- tionalists, violently to lay hold of a much less and more feeble party of their fellow Dissenters in this Province commonly called Anabaptists, standing upon an ecjual level in the Royal Act of Indulgence with the other Protestant Dissenters, and forcibly to compel the said Anabaptists to pay ministerial rates and taxes against their consciences too — Dissenting ministers of quite an- other denomination and on whose ecclesiastical administrations our said brethren do not attend, and such their just and reason- able refusal to pay such ministerial rates, to be harassed, impov- erished, imprisoned, and their estates crumbled and distrained away from them, as very lately and notoriously has been the distressed case of several of our brethren in the County of Wor- cester (more especially in the towns of l^pton and Sturbridge to a surprising degree), and are such proceedings as these the SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 163 blessed effects of being "religiously, peaceably, and civilly gov- erned, protected, and defended," and can a sight of such ava- ricious transgression be the likely means to "win over the In- dian natives to the Christian religion " ? * Your memorialists, may it please your Excellency and this Honorable Court, are ordered by their said brethren and con- stituents in a serious manner to remonstrate against this last mentioned act as a manifest infringement upon the natural and religious rights of the said people therein called Anabaptists, and further to remonstrate and complain against all and every other act and acts whatsoever heretofore made in this his Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts Bay, wherein the said people called Anabaptists were enforced or in any other shape compelled to pay such ministerial rates aforesaid, inasmuch as all such payments are contrary to their consciences, and that all such acts intended to force and compel them thereto are con- trary to the liberty of conscience to them so freely held forth in the Royal Charter, and unto them given and granted as exten- sively and upon as good a footing without reserve as to any other, all or either of his Majesty's Protestant subjects of this Province whomsoever, and that therefore the said people com- monly called Anabaptists in this Province are, and ought to be, by the said Royal Charter, in all points of a religious nature, equally as independent and free from all spiritual subordination and ghostly subjection to any other Denomination or Denomina- 1 " Even Boston gaol, it seems, unhappily begins anew to be the recep- tacle for such of the country Baptists as refuse to pay ministerial rates. An ancient man, named Eleazer Adams, a substantial freeholder of Med- way, a constant attender and for several years past, at the Baptist meet- ing at Bellingham, was brought away from his own house, 27 miles dis- tance, and committed close prisoner in said gaol the loth of April last ; and not long before another man, named lesse Holbrook, of Bellingham, a constant worshipper with said Baptists, was committed to Boston gaol for the ministers' rate of Wrentham, all bail being refused." At a later point we may refer to the oppressions in Sturbridge. At Upton several cows were taken from different individuals for ministers' rates, and in March, 1753, the pastor, Abraham Bloss, afterward of Attle- borough, was confined forty days in jail for a tax to the minister. 164 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES tions of Protestant Dissenters of this I'rovince, as they or either of the said Denominations are and ought to be free and inde- pendent in religious matters from the people called Anabaptists. From hence your remonstrants, with all just deference, appre- hend it of course followelh that however large or numerous one Denomination of Protestant Dissenters in this Province may in- crease in people, and thereby become above another Denomina- tion, even to be so numerous as to gain such an ascendant as to make up the whole legislative power in all its parts, yet, never- theless, such Denomination as last mentioned derives not there- from any authority whereby to make any act or acts whatsoever to oppress, afflict, or unjustly subordinate the less or more feeble Denominations of his Majesty's Protestant subjects of this Prov- ince in matters of religion and conscience. And were it in- deed the case that such an act or acts as last mentioned may have heretofore been made in this province and sent home for the Royal Approbation and not disapproved in three years, it avails not the least in this case, nor is any strength, force, or efficacy whatsoe\er thereby added to such act or acts, they being contrary to the charter as aforesaid, and repugnant to the laws of England. And in point of law (as your memorialists are in- formed) such repugnant act or acts never had nor can have any existence unless the Charter were invalid. We humbly crave your Excellency's indulgence and this Honorable Court's favorable goodness for extending this our memorial and remonstrance to such an unusual length, made so by the long-continued oppressions productive thereof, further humbly praying that the said act passed by the Lieut. Governor, Council, and House of Representatives may be repealed, and that an act may be made and passed totally and forever to ex- empt the said people commonly called .Anabaptists, and every of them within this his Majesty's T'rovince of the IVLassachusetts Bay, from paying any ministerial rates, taxes, or assessments whatsoever, and that such person or persons professing himself or themselves to be of that persuasion commonly called Anabap- tists, may be deemed so accordingly without further harassment or vexation, and that all such persons within this Province, commonly called Anabaptists, that have at any time within the SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 1 65 space of five years last past had their bodies imprisoned for ministerial rates, or their estates, goods and chattels distrained therefor, may be honestly refunded their just damages. Such an act as this will manifestly display the disposition of the Gov- ernment of the Province to be honorable, upright, and impartial ; will silence the cries of the oppressed ; will put a stop to such grievances as in default thereof will necessarily be laid before his Majesty ; will be a further means of increasing the strength of this Province by bringing in inhabitants from abroad, and keeping others already here from moving out, and will, with all becoming thankfulness be received by the said people com- monly called Anabaptists, among which number are included your memorialists and remonstrants as aforesaid, who, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c. Signed by the Committee, Boston, March 27, 1754. The action of the Court on the above is as follows : In Council June 5, 1754, Read; and forasmuch as this Peti- tion contains several indecent reflections on the Laws and Legis- lature of this Province, therefore Ordered that it be dismissed. This disappointing result led Mr. Proctor to make the following explanation and additional appeal : On Oct. 23, 1754, the Memorial and Petition of John Proctor, agent in behalf of several Societies of the people called Bap- tists, inhabitants within the said Province, humbly sheweth, That on the 29th day of May last, a Memorial and Remonstrance, drawn by order of the said people and signed by a Committee appointed for that purpose, was humbly presented in order to be laid before your Excellency, the Council, and House of Repre- sentatives, but so indeed it e\entually occurred that the said Memorial was not sent down to the Honorable House of Rep- resentatives but was read and passed upon in Council as fol- io weth. . . The sentiments of the Honorable Council and their result con- sequent thereupon have given rise to this present exposition of 1 66 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES the true intentions of the said people, called Baptists, as con- tained in their Memorial and Remonstrance abovesaid, and your Petitioner in his said capacity is directed by his constituents with the greatest deference humbly to suggest and assure your I'^xcel- lency and Honours that nothing in the world could be more averse and foreign to the real intention of the said people and their Committee than to offer the least indignity or indecent re- flections on the just laws and Legislature of this Province ; and that in truth there was no perverseness of heart nor malevolence of will operating in anywise whatsoever against the government. Your Memorialist, therefore, humbly supplicates that the former sentiments of the Honorable Council to dismiss the said Petition may subside, and that your Excellency and this Honourable Court would be pleased that the Memorial and Remonstrance aforesaid may be revived and the subject matter therein com- plained of be committed to the mature consideration of the whole Court for the reasons therein mentioned. And your Petitioner as in duty bound, nill ever pray. John Proctor. In Council, Oct. 26, 1754, Read and dismissed — Sent down for concurrence. In the House of Representatives, Nov. 13, 1754, Read and concurred. The whole of the above remonstrance is printed, verbatim et literatim, in Vol. IV. of Hon. L^llis Ames' "Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachtisetts Bay," and the original may be seen in Vol. XIII., p. 496, et seq., of the State Archives. A law similar to that of 1753, and equally burden- some, was passed in 1757, by which no Baptists were to be exempted : But such whose names shall be contained in a list or lists to be taken and e.xhibited ... on or before the 20th of July, annually, to the assessors of such town, district, precinct, or parish, and signed by three principal members of the Anabap- SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 1 67 tist Church to which he or they belong, and the minister thereof, if any there be, who shall therein Certify that the persons whose names are inserted in the said list or lists are really belonging thereto, and that they verily believe them to be conscientiously of their persuasion, and that they do frequently and usually at- tend the public worship in such Church on the Lord's Day. This law, which had reference to the Quakers also, was continued in force thirteen years, till February, 1 77 1, and, " No tongue or pen," says Backus, " can fully describe all the evils that were practised under it."^ In November, 1770, a new law was framed in which the title, Atiti-pedobaptists was substituted for Anabap- tists, and the word congregation for cJiurcJi. Certificates were to be signed by three or more principal members, and the minister, if there be any. ''The parishes," as Backus states it, " were empowered to vote the Bap- tists clear, if they pleased, without certificates. But the word Conscientiously was still retained, and the cer- tificates were required to be given in annually [Septem- ber first] to parish assessors." As late as 1786 a law was made confounding ministerial and civil taxes to- ^ On July 7, 1759, the following notice was posted up in Middle- borough : '• Whereas, By a late law of this Province, it is enacted that a list of names of those who belong to each Baptist Society must be taken each year and given to the Assessors before the 20th of July or else they will stand liable to be rated to the ministers where they live ; therefore this is to notify all who belong to the Baptist Society who usually meet for pub- lic worship in this place, that a meeting is appointed by the Committee to be at our meeting-house on Monday the i6th instant at two of the clock in the afternoon, for each one that is seriously of our persuasion to appear in order that a list may be taken agreeable to said acts, and also to con- sider of other things which may be judged proper for the welfare of the Society." " July 16, 1759, a list of 52 names were given in." — Backus' Ms. l68 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES gether, and so the contest went on. To say nothing of other difficulties, our Baptist fathers could not, of course, conscientiously call themselves or their friends anabaptists, or rebaptizers, since they held their infant baptism or sprinkling to be but a nullity. It will thus be seen that these laws were oppressive and humiliat- ing in a high degree, and Backus, Manning, Smith, Stillman, and others, fought against them as long as they lived. As the different exemption laws of Massachusetts have passed before us in review, we may here briefly notice some of the ecclesiastical laws of Connecticut, and their working — that State having been settled chiefly by Puritan emigrants from Massachusetts. In 1708 the Saybrook Platform was adopted, which made provision for a " Consociation " of neighboring churches that resembled in some respects the modern " Presby- tery," and was thought by many to be a serious in- fringement on the independence and liberty of the churches and of individual members. Joseph Backus, grandfather of Isaac, was strongly opposed to this scheme. He finally withdrew from the Consociated Church, and for this act was e.xpelled from the legisla- ture. In 1727 a law was enacted, favoring the Episco- palians, and in October, 1729, the Assembly "passed an act to allow the Baptists the same privileges as were granted the Quakers the May before ; both of them being perpetual laws, and not such temporary acts as the Massachusetts have perplexed themselves and others with " (Backus). Those who desired exemption from paying ministerial rates were required to produce "certificates," etc., as in Massachusetts, SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 169 The following, which is an " exact coppie of ye peti- tion sent to ye Honourable General Assembly of Con- necticut," may have had something to do with procur- ing for the Baptists the exemption act of 1729. We extract it from the " Diary of John Comer " : To the Honourable General Assembly of ye Colony of Con- necticut to be convened at New Haven on ye second Thursday of October next. The humble Memorial of ye General Associa- tion of ye Baptist Churches convened at North Kingston on ye 6th day of September, A. d. 1729, humbly showeth, That yr Honours' Petitioners having sundry Brethren of their Commun- ion dwelling up and down in your Colony, they therefore do hereby humbly crave yt an Act of Assembly may be passed to free them from paying any taxes to any ministry except their own, and from building any meeting-houses except for their own use, humbly hoping your Honours will consider they are utterly unable to maintain their own way of worship and to pay taxes also to ye Presbyterians, and yt the gracious act of indulgence together with the reasonableness of our request will be motive sufficient to move yr Honours to grant ye request of yr Honours' humble Memorialists. " Signed in ye name and by ye order of the sd Association, by Elders Richard Sweet, Valentine Wight- man, Samuel Fisk, John Comer, Pardon Tillinghast." In connection with this was sent another petition signed at Newport, September 10, 1729, by Governor Joseph Jenks, Elders James Clarke and Daniel Wight- man, and two brethren, which petition reads as follows : To the Honorable General Assembly of ye Colony of Con- necticut to be convened at New Haven on ye 2°*^ Thursday of October next, these lines may signifie yt we ye subscribers do heartily concur with ye Memorial of our Brethren on ye other side and humbly request ye same may be granted, which we think will much tend to Christian unity and be serviceable to P I/O NEW England's struggles true religion, and will very much rejoice your Honours' friends and very humble servants. . . There was drawn from ye Treasury of ye church at Newport 40s. towards defraying ye Charges in preferring ye Petition. During the time of the Great Awakening, in 1742, an act was passed which deprived a settled minister of his salary if he preached in another parish without in- vitation or consent of the parish minister. And every offender, not an inhabitant within the colony, whether an ordained minister or only an exhorter, shall be sent as a vagrant person out of the bounds of the colony as being not only a disorderly person, but guilty of a crime. This law of course had special reference to Whitefield and his fellow-laborers. Benedict states that an itinerant Baptist preacher. Rev. Mr. Marshall, was put in the stocks on a warm summer day, for ag- gression on parish lines, and was imprisoned in Wind- ham jail "for preaching the gospel contrary to the law." In 1747 Rev. Philemon Robbins, who by re- quest preached to a Baptist society, was for this offense excluded from the Consociation, deposed from the ministry and from communion in any of the churches "until he shall have in a public and Christian manner reflected on himself for his crimes and faults to the satisfaction of the Consociation of the county of New Haven." This virtually is the confession they drew up for him, but which he refused to sign : " I, the sub- scriber, acknowledge that I am sorry I preached dis- orderly at WalJingford [to the Baptists], and prayed at the separation at New Haven, and promise not to do so again." In after years the first exempting acts were broad- SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH I71 ened so that all dissenters could be exempted, provided they ordinarily attended meetings in their respective societies and paid their due proportion, etc. Some Baptists in Stafford joined a church in Wellington, but on account of the distance and roughness of the way- could not attend as often as they wished, or the law required. In suing for their goods, which had been distrained from them, the counsel urged in their behalf that they were Baptists sentimentally, practically, and legally. Against them it was urged that they were amenable to the law, since they did not ordinarily attend their own meeting. The sympathies of the judge, who was an Episcopalian, were evidently on the side of the plaintiffs, and so he propounded the inquiry, how long a man who was a Baptist soitinientally, prac- tically, and legally, must stay at home to become a Presbyterian .-* The Baptists won their case. Like the other colonies, Connecticut early passed a law inflicting on those who neglected the public wor- ship of God in some lawful congregation, and formed themselves into separate companies in private houses, a fine of twenty shillings for every such offense. Im- prisonment, of course, in many cases, followed the non- payment of fines. In February, 1744, seventeen per- sons, belonging in Saybrook, were arrested for " holding a meeting contrary to the law on God's holy Sabbath," and they were driven on foot twenty-five miles to New London, and were put in jail, suffering from weari- ness, want of food, and fire. One of these persons, Mr. Job Bulkley, at whose house the meeting was held, was an unconverted man ; but witnessing the faith, forti- tude, and Christian spirit of these disciples he gave 172 NKw ?:ngi.axd's strugglks himself to the Lord Jesus Christ in the jail, and when the church was constituted, his name headed the list of members. Another of those arrested and taken to prison was a woman with an infant in her arms.' In 1752 the widowed mother of Isaac Backus, being a separatist, was imprisoned for thirteen days, taken from her home in_Norvvich when sick, on a dark and rainy night, seventeen miles to New London jail. She was released by some one to her unknown. His brother Samuel lay in prison twenty days. In 1784 all dis- senters had still to "produce certificates" signed by the minister or other of^cer of their order. And " all persons shall be taxed for the support of the min- istry and other charges of the society wherein they dwell, who do not attend and help support other wor- ship." By a law of 1791, the certificate to be legal had to be approbated by one or more justices of the peace. The following is one of the old forms of " Levy," dated Windham, September 1 2, 1 794 : To Samuel Perkins, a Collector of Society Ta.xes in the first Society of Windham : Greeting : By authority of the State of Connecticut, you are hereby commanded forthwith to levy and collect of the persons named in the foregoing list herewith committed to you, each one his several proportion as therein set down, of the sum total of such list, being a rate agreed upon by the inhabitants of said Society, and to deliver and pay over the sums which you shall collect to the Treasurer of said Society within si.xty days next coming ; and if any person shall neglect or refuse to pay the sum at which he is assessed, you are hereby commanded to distrain the goods, ' From Dr. S. D. Phelps' letter in "The Watchman." 1894, "" the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Baptist Church in Saybrook. SUBSEQUKNT STRUGGLES— FINAL TRIUMPH 1 73 chattels, or lands of such person so refusing ; and the same be- ing disposed of as the law directs, return the overplus, if any, to the respective owners ; and for want of such goods, chattels, or lands whereon to make distress, you are to take the body or bodies of the persons so refusing, and them commit to the keeper of the gaol in said County of Windham within the prison, who is hereby commanded to receive and safe keep them until they pay and satisfy the aforesaid sums at which they are respect- ively assessed, together with your fees, unless said assessment, or any part thereof, be legally abated. Jabez Clark, Just. Peace. In 1 8 18 the new constitution put an end to all this oppression, and the Baptist pastor of Suffield, Rev. Asahel Morse, had the honor of penning the article which at last secured religious liberty. IL THE FOUNDING OF THE WARREN ASSOCIATION AND THE COMMITTEE OF GRIEVANCES. An important movement in the struggle for religious liberty was the forming of the "Warren Association " of Baptist churches in i 'j^'j, the Rev. James Manning, the pastor of the Warren Church and president of Rhode Island College, being the leader in this move- ment.^ Eleven Baptist churches were represented at its first meeting ; but four only, the Warren, Haverhill, Bellingham, and Second Middleborough ventured to try the experiment. Others were generally friendly to the movement ; but had some fears that it might inter- fere with church independence. At the Association ' For some of the opposition which the Rhode Island College and Manning, as its president, had to encounter, see Dr. R. A. Guild's " Man- ning and Brown University,"' and more briefly in Dr. H. .S. Burrage's "History of Baptists in New England," Am. Bap. Pub. Soc, 1894. 174 NEW rnot.axd's struggles meeting in 1769, for the third time in Warren, and con- tinuing as appears then to have been the custom, parts of three days, "many letters from the churches mentioned grievous oppressions and persecutions from the Stand- ing Order ; especially the one from Ashfield, where religious tyranny had been carried to great lengths." In view of these oppressions and of the disregard of humble remonstrances and petitions, it was resolved " to inform all the oppressed Baptists in New England that the Association of Warren — in conjunction with the Western or Philadelphia Association — is determined to seek remedy for their brethren where a speedy and effectual one may be had." Accordingly "they made choice of agents and a Committee for the purpose ; and wrote to their Southern brethren for assistance in the design." They caused petitions to be sent to the leg- islatures of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and chose as a committee to seek redress of grievances : Revs. Samuel Stillman, of Boston ; Hezekiah Smith, of Hav- erhill ; Isaac Backus, of Middleborough ; Richard Mon- tague, of Sunderland ; Joseph Meacham, of Enfield, Ct. (who afterward joined the Shakers) ; and Timothy Wightman, of Groton, Ct. The annual appointment of a like committee did not cease until thirty-six years after this date. In a circular letter, as recorded in Dr. Hovey's " Memoir of Backus," President Manning, in addressing the oppressed, says : lirethren, we sympathize with you under your afflictions, while we call to mind the declaration of your ascended Head to his beloved flock whom he left behind : In the world ye shall have tribulation. . . Suffer us, however, to beseech you to use all proper means to obtain relief from the burdens imposed upon SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 175 you, by taking heed to the general plan which we as a body propose to pursue. In August of next year, 1770, this "Committee of Grievances " issued the following notice in the Boston " Evening Post " : To the Baptists in the Province of the Massachusetts Bay who are or have been oppressed in any way on a religious account : It would be needless to tell you that you have long felt the effects of the laws by which the religion of the government in which you live is estabhshed. Your purses have felt the burden of ministerial rates, and when these would not satisfy your ene- mies, your property hath been taken from you and sold for less than half its value. These things you cannot forget. You will therefore readily hear and attend when you are desired to collect your cases of sufferings and have them well attested; such as the taxes you have paid to build meeting-houses, to settle ministers and support them, with all the time, money, and labor you have lost in waiting on Courts, feeing lawyers, etc. ; and bring or send such cases to the Baptist Association to be held at Bellingham, when measures will be resolutely adopted for obtaining redress from another quarter than that to which repeated application hath been made unsuccessfully. Nay, complaints however just and grievous have been treated with indifference and scarcely, if at all, credited. We deem this, our conduct, perfectly justi- fiable, and hope you will pay a particular regard to this desire, and be exact in your accounts of your sufferings, and punctual in your attendance at the time and place mentioned. At the Association held in Bellingham, Sept. 11, 12, 1770, they chose another Committee of Grievances consisting of Rev. Samuel Stillman, Rev. Hezekiah Smith, Rev. John Davis, Rev. Isaac Backus, Rev. Noah Alden, Philip Freeman, Philip Freeman, Jr., Nathan Plimpton, and Richard Gridley, and also " agreed to send to the Swanzey [i*] and Philadelphia 176 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES Associations, to request them to assist us by money and advice." In the Minutes of 1776, we notice an acknowledgment of " monies received from our breth- ren at Philadelphia and elsewhere for sufferers among us, twelve pounds." We presume there may have been other and earlier benefactions from that source which are not recorded or which we have not seen. In this Circular Letter, President Manning says : We have to inform you, dearly beloved, that some of our churches are sorely oppressed on account of religion. Their enemies continue to triumph over them; and as repeated applica- tions have been made to the Court of Justice and to the General Courts for redress of such grievances, but as yet have been neg- lected, it is now become necessary to carry the affair to Eng- land in order to lay it before the King. It is therefore warmly recommended to you to endeavor to collect money to defray the expense which will arise from such a proceeding. Should you not contribute in this matter, some of our brethren must unavoid- ably be ruined as to this world; specially our brethren at Ash- field, some of whose lands have been taken from them and sold for a trifle. Brethren, make the case your own, and then do as you would be done by. Before the close of 1770 the above-named commit- tee sent to the General Court a petition having special reference to the oppression of Baptists in Ashfield. In this petition, which is printed in full in Dr. Hovey's "Memoir of Backus," pp. 177-180, they state that : Three hundred and ninety-eight acres of our land have been sold to build and remove and repair a meeting-house in which we have no part, though our inoney helped to build it, and to settle and support a minister whom we cannot hear. The lands were valued at three hundred and sixty-three pounds, thirteen shillings, lawful money, and were sold for nineteen pounds, SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 1 77 three shillings; so that our loss is three hundred and forty- four pounds, fifteen shillings, lawful money. Part of the lands afore- said belonged to Rev. Ebenezer Smith, a regular ordained Bap- tist minister, who, together with his father and others, their breth- ren, in the last Indian war, built at their own expense a fort and were a Frontier ; and this they did for two years without any help from any quarter, for which we beg leave to say they deserve at least the common privilege of the subjects of the Crown of England. Part of said lands had been laid out for a burying place, and so they have taken from us our dead. They have also sold a dwelling-house and orchard, and pulled up our apple trees, and thrown down our fences, and made our fields waste places. ^ They close their petition by making three requests, as follows : (i) To repeal a law, entitled "An Act for erecting the New Plantation called Huntstown, in the County of Hampshire, into a town by the name of Ashfield," and restore to the Baptists in said town the lands which have been taken from them to sup- port the minister settled by law, and give them damages for the many and great injuries they have been made to suffer. (2) To enable our brethren in different parts of the province to recover damages for the losses they have been made to sus- tain on a religious account. (3) To grant perpetual exemption to all Baptists and their con- gregations from all ministerial rates whatsoever, according to the full intent and meaning of the Charter of the Province, that we all may enjoy full liberty of conscience as others, his Majesty's subjects, in this province. And also to disannul all such rates 1 Some notice of the labors and sufferings of Elder Smith's father, Mr. Chileab Smith, is given in Backus' " History." He was the great grand- father of the renowned teacher, Mary Lyon; and so far forth his wonted prayers for his "posterity to the latest generation " were assuredly an- swered. It is stated that he accompanied Elder Backus to Philadelphia to testify, if need be, of the oppressions at Ashfield. IjS NHW I-;.\(;i.AXI>\s STRUGGLES laid heretofore on anv of our peo|)lc in this (".o\ ernment. And yoin- petitioners as in duty l)ound will ever pray. ,.,,,,., , , ( Samuel Stillman, Signed in beliali oi the whole ■ ,. . < Hezekiah Smith, Lommittee, 1 \ John Davis. At the Association referred to, Hezekiah Smith was chosen Agent to the Court of Great Britain to act in conjunction with Rev. Samuel Stennett, Rev. Benja- min Wallin, and Thomas Llewelyn, ll. d., of London. In the Minutes for 1773, these English brethren say, in response, that they "will cheerfully unite in every measure that may from time to time be thought right and prudent to promote the cause of truth and liberty in general, and that of our denomination in particular." Mr. Smith declined the above agency, but the English brethren, of whom Dr. Stennett acted the most effi- cient part, laid the Ashfield matter before the Court of St. James, whereupon "his Majesty was pleased with the advice of his Privy Council to declare his disallow- ance of the said Act [incorporating the town of Ash- field], and to order that the said Act be and it is hereby disallowed and rejected. Whereof the Governor, Lieu- tenant Governor, or Commander in Chief of his Majes- ty's said Province of the Massachusetts Bay for the time being, and all others whom it may concern, are to take notice and govern themselves accordingly." Thus help for the Ashfield Baptists came at last — and from abroad ! III. THE APPOINTMENT OF AN AGENT FOR THE BAPTIST CHURCHES. Mr. Smith, as we have seen, declined the special agency intrusted to him, and so the Association meet- SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 1 79 ing at Sutton, in 1771, appointed Rev. John Davis, pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Boston, "as their agent, to use his best endeavours, by the advice of their Committee, in concert with their agents in London, to obtain the establishment of equal religious liberty in this land." Mr. Davis' health soon failed, and he died December, 1772, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. The " scurrilous treatment from the press," which he incurred through his efficiency and faithful- ness as clerk of the Committee of Grievances, is re- ferred to in Backus' "History," "V^ol. II., 157, 176. In September of this year, 1772, Elder Isaac Backus was chosen in Mr. Davis' place as agent for the Bap- tist churches " to transact their affairs the year ensu- ing, both in this country and with our agents in London," with the advice of the committee as previ- ously appointed. As agent for the churches some ten years, and as a member of the Committee of Grievances, he wrote numerous articles for the newspapers, also special appeals or addresses, as for example, to the People of New England ; to the Public for Religious Liberty against the Oppressions of the Present Day ; to the Baptist Churches throughout the Land ; to the Gen- eral Court of Massachusetts ; to the Continental Con- gress at Philadelphia ; to the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts ; to the Convention for framing a State Constitution. He was also chosen delegate in 1787 to act in the matter of ratifying the new Constitution of the United States of America. On Backus' action in regard to this last-named matter, see Appendix E. Dr. Burrage thus speaks of the services of Isaac Backus, the " Agent of Liberty " : i8o NEW kngland's struggles For his long-conlinued and unwearied labors in securing re- ligious liberty, Isaac Backus deserves to be held in lasting re- membrance. He did not live to witness the fulfillment of his hopes ; but the value of iiis heroic services is recognized more and more, and recently a worthy memorial, dedicated June 30, 1893, has replaced at his grave in Aliddleboro, Mass., the earlier monument, which bore only his name and the date of his birth and death. We may remark that a second stone, which will probably form a tablet in the walls of the new '♦ Backus Memorial Church," contains an extended epitaph which may be seen in Dr, Hovey's " Life of Backus," p. 311. The present monument is made of the best Westerly granite in the form of an old-fashioned pulpit, having a bronze tablet with inscription in front, and an open bronze Bible on the desk, the whole with platform cost- ing about $800. In form and general characteristics it closely resembles the one erected in Groton, Ct., 1890, to the memory of Valentine Wightman, the pio- neer advocate of religious liberty in Connecticut. The inscription on the Backus monument reads as follows : Elder Isaac Backus, A. M. A pioneer Champion of Religious Liberty, and the earliest 15aptist Historian in America. Born 1724, died 1806, in the 59th Year of his ministry in this Precinct. Erected by a grateful people, A. I). 1893.' ' Rhode Island, as is well known, has a monument to religious liberty as well as Massachusetts and Connecticut, and, indeed, set these two States the example. Miss Betsey Williams. Roger's great great-grand- daughter, bequeathed to the City of Providence a tract of land near the SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH l8l Of his labors as a historian Dr. Hovey says : His volumes are a full storehouse of events indispensable to every one who would understand the true history of New Eng- land. But, to those of his own religious faith, they are spe- cially interesting ; for they furnish almost the only memorials which have come down to us, of the piety, consistency, and sometimes heroism, of brethren who lived in a darker period, and suffered long to obtain the freedom we now enjoy. Bancroft speaks of him as " one of the most exact of our New England historians," and he "greatly compli- ments him and other historians from among the Bap- tists, when, in a letter to Dr. R. A. Guild, he says : "I look always to a Baptist historian for the ingenu- ousness, clear discernment, and determined accuracy, which form the glory of their great historian, Backus." May all our Baptist historians in all coming time be worthy of such eulogy ! IV. REFUSAL TO GIVE IN CERTIFICATES. On May 5, 1773, six members of the Advisory Com- mittee met in Boston and agreed to send this circular to the churches : city to be known as the Roger Williams Park, — -land which the Narra- gansett Chiefs, Canonicus, and his ill-fated nephew, Miantonomo, deeded to Williams in consideration of his "many kindnesses and services," and which " was as much his as any mans coat on his back." On this spot of land, in Oct. l6, 1877, was dedicated a monument to Roger Williams, consisting of a bronze statue, seven and a half feet high, resting on a pedestal twenty-seven feet high. A picture of this statue, in which he is represented as clasping a book on " Soul -liberty " to his heart, forms the frontispiece to Dr. Cathcart's " Baptist Encyclopi^dia." .So let the good work of commemorating our pioneer champions of religious liberty go on ! The next statues or monuments to be erected, should, in my opin- ion, be located on the island " Aquedneck/' in Narragansett Bay. Q l82 NKW KXr,LAXn\S STRUGGLES Beloved Friends : — These lines are lo acquaint you that five of our Committee, appointed to care for and consult the general good of the Baptist churches in this country, especially as to their union and liberties, met with me at Boston, May 5, 1773, when we received accounts that several of our friends at Mendon have lately had their goods forcibly taken from them, for minis- terial rates, and that three more of them at Chelmsford (two of whom were members of the Baptist church there) were seized for the same cause last Winter, and carried prisoners to Concord jail ; so that liberty of conscience, the greatest and most impor- tant article of all liberties, is evidently not allowed in this coun- try, not even by the very men who are now making loud com- plaints of encroachments upon their own liberties. And as it appears to us clear that the root of all these difficulties and that which has done amazing mischief in our land is civil rulers as- suming a power to make any laws to govern ecclesiastical affairs, or to use any force to support ministers ; therefore these are to desire you to consider whether it is not our duty to strike so di- rectly at thrs root as to refuse any conformity to their laws about such affairs, even so much as giving any certificates to their As- sessors. We are fully persuaded that if we were all united in bearing what others of our friends might for a little while suffer on this account, a less sum than has already been expended with lawyers and Courts on such accounts, would carry us through the trial, and if we should be enabled to treat our op- pressors with a Christian temper, would make straining upon others, under pretense of supporting religion, appear so odious that they could not get along with it. \\'e desire you would consider of these matters, and send in your mind at Medfield on the seventh of September next. . . From yours in gospel bonds, Isaac Backus, Agent. At a meeting of the Association it was found that all the messengers were not of one mind in this matter, and so for two days " X.\\q\ stood against our coming to any vote upon it lest our want of union therein should SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 183 give an advantage to our adversaries "' But on the third day, Mr. Stillman, who had been against our coming to a vote, brought in the following paper, which was unanimously adopted: (i) "That the mind of the Association respecting giving or not giving certificates, be taken by written vote, in order to con- fine the difference which subsists among us on this matter, in the Association. (2) " That those Churches that agree to neglect the law for the future shall, in a spirit of meekness, plead as the reason, that they cannot in Conscience countenance any human laws that interfere in the management of the kingdom of Christ, which is not of this world. (3) " That the Churches which think it expedient to give cer- tificates for the present, be advised by letter how many are of a contrary mind, and be desired to consider the matter against the next Association, and to unite with their brethren if pos- sible. (4) "That the Churches allow each other entire liberty, with- out any hard thoughts one of another. (5) "That all the Churches which shall be called to suffer through the year, shall transmit an account of such sufferings to their agent, to be made use of by him as may be thought best to subserve the common cause. (6) " That our true state, with what we have transacted at this Association, be sent to our agents in England, and their opin- ion be requested by the next meeting of the Churches. (7) ' ' That if any are called to suffer, their sister churches be appealed to, to assist them in their trouble." When we came to act upon these articles there appeared thirty-four elders and brethren against giving any more certifi- cates, six for it, and three at a loss how to vote. For myself I wonder that not more than three did not know how to act, and that no more than twice three did not vote in favor of this certificate business ; for 184 NEW ENCxLAND'S struggles well they knew that if they refused certificates and re- fused to pay the ministerial rates, seizure of their goods, or imprisonment, or both, would be sure to follow. The only explanation of their determination thus to resist as it were the authority of the government, is found in the fact, that having for so many years sought in every way, but in vain, to secure equal religious liberty, while at the same time lixing under a charter which guaranteed to the "loving subjects of his Majesty" exemption from "fines, forfeitures, or other incapacities," even to those who "do not agree in the Congregational way," they had reached the point of desperation, and could not but practically assert their religious independence. At the Association Mr. Backus presented an " Appeal to the Public," a part of which he read to them. It was voted that it be examined by the Committee, and then published, which was afterward done in a pamphlet of sixty-two pages. In section third, he gives five reasons for refusing the giving of certificates : (i) Because to give certificates implies an acknowledgment that the civil rulers have a right to set up one religious sect above another ; which they have not. (2) Because civil rulers are not representatives in religious matters, and therefore have no right to impose religious taxes. (3) Because such a practice emboldens the actors therein to assume God's prerogative, and to judge the hearts of those who put not into their mouths. (4) Because the church is presented as a chaste virgin to Christ, and to place her trust and love upon any others for temporal support, is playing the harlot, and so the wav to destroy all re- ligion. Hos. 2 : 5. (5) Because the practice above-said tends to envy, hypocrisy, and confusion, and so to the ruin of civil society. SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 1 85 A Declaration of Religious Independence, truly ! We may well imagine that it required not much less courage, nor was deserving of little less honor, to sign this than it did for some others to sign another " Decla- ration," some three years later. As we have seen, some Baptists thought that Mr. Backus and his friends were going too far in the way of resistance, and were willing for the sake of peace to comply with existing laws. This was discouraging to the Baptist agent, for he felt that if all were united in refusing certificates and would suffer for a time the consequences, they would the sooner achieve their re- ligious liberty. And so at a later date his feelings found utterance in these words : I should have fainted long ago had I not believed that wherein men dealt proudly, Ciod was above them. And he fixed a per- suasion on my soul that if we faithfully improved the advantage he gave us, rulers would be forced to give up their tyrannical power over the Church of God and the consciences of men. A large part of my good friends here rather wished than believed we should obtain so great a blessing, and therefore have often been clogs instead of helps in this great work. And my mis- takes and imperfections in acting therein have been so many and great, that instead of wondering at others' fears at my at- tempts for liberty, 1 may well wonder that 1 was not confounded long ago. . . I speak before Him who will judge all ; if a per- suasion of duty has not been my greatest motive, I know not what has. Oh, that mine was more single therein ! As late as 1791 Mr. Backus was obliged to say : " I know not of one of our churches, especially in Massa- chusetts, which is entirely free of the evil of giv)ng in a list of their Society to their oppressors." l86 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES V. THE BAPTIST AGENT's MLSSIOX TO THE FIRST CON- TINENTAL CONGRESS. Perhaps the most noted act of Isaac Backus, in his endeavors for religious freedom, was his going by spe- cial commission to Philadelphia, in 1774, to plead for religious liberty before the first Continental Congress. We quote the following as given in his Diary : September 7. Went over to Providence to Commencement. Met with Mr. [John] Gano, of New York, and Mr. \Vm. Van Home, of South Hampton, in Pennsylvania. They, with Messrs. Manning and Hezekiah Smith, all were in earnest for me to go to the Association [in Medfield] and also to the Con- gress in Philadelphia, and represented that now was the most likely time to obtain our religious liberty that we had ever known. I had many objections against it, but when I awoke next morning the religious liberties of three Colonies or more appeared so weighty to my mind that, if 1 might do anything for their relief, I was made willing to do it and leave my private concerns to him that orders all things. September 14. The Association were all unanimous that I should go to Philadelphia, and contributed £,6. 10. 1 -'4 towards it. The Association gave to Mr. Backus the following certificate : To the Honorable Delegates of the several Colonies in North America, met in a general Congress in Philadelphia : HoNOKABLE Gkntlemen : As the Anti-pedobaptist churches in New England are most heartily concerned for the preserva- tion and defence of the rights and ])rivileges of this country, and are deeply affected by the encroachments upon the same which have lately been made by the British Parliament, and are will- ing to unite with our dear countrymen vigorously to pursue every prudent measure for relief ; so we would beg leave to say that as a distinct denomination of I'rotestants, we conceive that we SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 1 87 have an equal claim to charter rights with the rest of our fellow- subjects, and yet have long been denied the full and free enjoy- ment of those rights as to the support of religious worship. Therefore we, the Elders and brethren in twenty Baptist churches met in Association at Medfield, twenty miles from Boston, Sept. 14, 1774, have unanimously chosen and sent unto you the rever- end and beloved Mr. Isaac Backus as our agent to lay our case in these respects before you, or otherwise to use all the prudent means he can for our relief. John Gano, Moderator. Hezekiah Smith, Clerk. Mr. Backus, on arriving at Philadelphia, was soon joined by President Manning and others, and, upon consultation, it was deemed best to present his memo- rial or plea first before the Massachusetts Delegation. And so on the evening of October 14, there met at Carpenter's Hall, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, John Adams, and Robert Treat Paine, Esqs., delegates from Massachusetts, also Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward, of Rhode Island, and many other distinguished members of the Congress, together with some promi- nent Quakers. "The Conference," as Elder Backus writes, "was Opened by Mr. Manning, who made a short speech, and then read the memorial which we had drawn up." From this memorial, which is given in full in Dr. Hovey's "Life of Backus," pp. 204-210, we extract the opening and closing sentences : It has been said by a celebrated writer in politics that but two things were worth contending for — Religion and Liberty. For the latter we are at present nobly exerting ourselves through all this extensive continent: and surely no one whose bosom feels the patriotic glow in behalf of civil liberty can remain torpid to 1 88 NEW ENCxLAND'S struggles the more ennoblinij llame of Religious Freedom. The free ex- ercise of private judgment and the unalienable rights of con- science are of too high a rank and dignity to be subjected to the decrees of councils or the im])erfect laws of fallible legislators. The merciful Father of mankind is the alone Lord of conscience. . . As the Kingdom of Christ is not of this world, and religion is a concern between God and the soul with which no human author- ity can intermeddle ; consistently with the principles of Chris- tianity and according to the dictates of Protestantism, we claim and e.xpect the liberty of worshipping God according to our con- sciences, not being obliged to support a ministry we cannot at- tend, whilst we demean ourselves as faithful subjects. These we have an undoubted right to as men, as Christians, and by charter as inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay. The conference, which was highly spirited, lasted about four hours, and "closed with their promising to do what thev could for our relief ; though, to deter us from thinking of their coming upon equal footing with us as to religion, John Adams at one time said we might as well expect a change in the solar system as to expect they would give up their establishment " — which establishment he nevertheless at one time afifirmed was " but a very slender one, hardly to be called an estab- lishment." Backus, in his manuscript "tlistory of the Warren Association," says that " one of them plainly held forth at Philadelphia that they would sooner yield to the power of Britain than give up their power to support religious ministers by law," and again, that "one of them [probably the same John Adams through- out] pleaded conscience for supporting religious teachers by tax." Dr. Ilovcy remarks that "The language and bearing of the delegates from Massachusetts in this conference were such as to diminish greatly the value SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 1 89 of their closing promise." Certain it is that they prom- ised far more than they ever sought to perform. One good result of this agency mission was the ap- pointment by the Philadelphia Baptist Association, then in session, of " a [very large] committee of grievances to correspond with ours in New England and -to prose- cute such measures for our relief as they should judge best " (Backus). This committee held a meeting the day after the conference, at which it was resolved, " That this Committee, not being satisfied with the declaration made last evening by the delegates from Massachusetts Bay, are determined to pursue every prudent measure to obtain a full and complete redress of all grievances for our brethren in New England." This resolution, as also a copy of Backus' "Memorial" and of his " Appeal to the Public," were placed in the hands of each delegate. ^ The year 1774 was fruitful of appeals from the Bap- tist agent, and as it ended with one made to the Mas- sachusetts Provincial Congress, which we shall pres- ently notice, so it began with one addressed to the General Court. This letter was occasioned by the illegal imprisonment in Northampton jail of eighteen men of Warwick who belonged to the Baptist Society of Royalston ; and the agent closes his petition with these words : This is therefore to beseech your Excellency and Honors, as £^uardians of the rights of your people, immediately to order these men to be set at liberty, and that reparation be made of the ' See more fully in Backus' " History," Vol. II,, p. 200 seq., also his MS. "History of the Warren Association," and especially Dr. Hovey's "Life of Backus," pp. 201-13, 349-51. igo NEW England's vSTruggles damages they lia\e sustained; and also to take some effectual methods, as in your wisdom you shall see fit, that for the future all persons within this Province who shall demean themselves as good members of civil society may not be despoiled of the aforesaid rights under a pretence of supporting religious worship; but that all persons who shall presume thus to encroach upon the rights of their neighbors may be punished according to the demerit of their crimes. And your petitioner, as in duty bound, will ever pray. Isaac Backus. MiDDLEBOKo, Feb. 15, 1774. On the first article of the above petition the major- ity of their " Honors " decided adversely, but upon the last "they framed," as Backus says, " an act more favor- able than they had done before, which passed both houses ; but the Court was prorogued so abruptly that it was not laid before the Governor ; so that there is no act in force at all in the Province to exempt us from taxes to their ministers.. But the more they stir about it the more light gains, so that my hope of deliverance in due time increases." About a month prior to writing the above appeal, Mr. Backus sent a letter to the eminent patriot, Samuel Adams (a deacon of the Old South Chiuxh), of which the closing sentence thus reads : I hope, sir, that you will gi\e proof both to the Court and to the world that you regard the religious as well as the civil rights of your countrymen ; that so a large number of as peaceable peo- ple and as hearty friends to their Country as any in the land, may not be forced to carry their complaints before those who would be glad to hear that the Legislature of Massachusetts deny to their fellow-servants that liberty which they so earnestly insist upon for themselves. It were not strange if !\Ir. Backus was disappointed SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES— FINAL TRIUMPH I91 at the stand which this gentleman took a few months later in Philadelphia. Upon the return of the Massachusetts delegation to New England, one of them spread the report that Mr. Backus went to Philadelphia to prevent the Colonies from uniting in defense of their liberties, and that this attempt proceeded from the enemies of America. The proceedings of that conference were also grossly mis- represented. VI. APPEAL TO THE MASSACHUSETTS PROVINCIAL CON- GRESS. In view of the injurious reports indicated in our last chapter, Mr. Backus, with the advice of the committee, drew up the following appeal — designing to show by the instances of oppression adduced, that others than "the enemies of America" had good and sufficient reasons to memorialize the Continental Congress : To the honorable Congress of the Massachusetts province, con- vened at Cambridge, Nov. 22, 1774.^ Honored Gentlemen : — At a time when all America are alarmed at the open and violent attempts that have been made against their liberties, it affords great cause of joy and thankful- ness to see the colonies so happily united to defend their rights ; and particularly that their late Continental Congress have been directed into measures so wise and salutary for obtaining relief and securing our future liberties ; and who have wisely extended their regards to the rights and freedom of the poor Africans. Since then the law of equity has prevailed so far, we hope that it will move this honorable assembly to pay a just regard to their English neighbors and brethren at home. . . Civil rulers ought I We give here but a part of the Petition. The whole is found iu Dr. Hovey's "Life of Backus," pp. 215-221. 192 NKW ENGLAND'S vSTRUGGLES undoubtedly to I)e nursing fathers to the church, by reproof, exhortation, and their own good and Uberal example, as well as to protect and- defend her against injustice and oppres- sion ; but the very notion of taxing all to support any religious denomination, tends to bias its professors against all such as dissent from it ; and so to deprive them of having unbiassed judges ; for every man knows that so much money as he can get from a neighbor to support his minister, so much he saves to himself. As we are fully persuaded that there is not a man in this honorable assembly, but what if he had suffered a quarter so much as many Baptists have from interested judges, would think it high time to be in earnest to have this pernicious evil removed. Two thousand dollars will not make good the damages the Bap- tists in this province have suffered on this account, within these twelve years, as we can make it appear by facts. . . After the Baptists of Ashfield had regularly settled a minis- ter, a Pedobaptist minister was brought in, and the Baptists were taxed to him five years ; and then they petitioned our Leg- islature for relief, who gave them encouragement of it, yet in a few days made a law that cut them off from any liberty on that account at all ; and they in time and money, spent fifty pounds lawful currency in petitioning for the removal of that burden, and could get no help. Then our united churches addressed the Court upon it ; but in a few clays, a piece dated from the place where the Court was sitting, was published in the Boston newspapers, insinuating that the Baptists had complained without any reason. And when the worthy Mr. Davis (now at rest) an- swered it by reciting the fact of Ashfield, he was accused in a succeeding paper, as we ha\e now been, of being an enemy to the colonies.' There being thus no hope of relief here, that Ashfield law was sent home [to England], and was disannulled by his majesty in Council. And from that and other evidence, we have reason to think that an ear was open there to hear our 1 " There is a little upstart gentleman [Mr. Davis] lately settled in town, who calls himself a Baptist ; and the youth discovers a most insufferable arrogance and self-sufficiency. . . I very much suspect tliat he is one of those deluded young men who are employed to defame and blacken the Colonies, and this town and province in particular." SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 193 further complaints ; but we have ne\ er sent any other, as we would not injure the general cause ; and hoped that at last our countrymen would be brought to regard our rights. But alas ! the very laws that have been made about us, have proved to many to be only a snare to get away our money. The Baptists at Montague took advice of a lawyer and en- deavored to comply with your law, according to his direction ; yet they were taxed and strained upon ; they sued for relief in your courts which was so far from helping them that it took away one hundred and fifteen dollars more. The Baptists in Haverhill took the same method, but the case was turned against them which cost them about three hundred dollars. A Baptist church was regularly formed at Gorham, Me., in 1768, and Mr. Joseph Moody of Scarborough, a member of it, yearly had the same certified to the Assessors of his town, yet still he has been taxed and strained upon ; and when he petitioned our Legislature last Winter for help, we are credibly informed that his petition was thrown out, because Mr. March, the representative from Scarbor- ough, said : There was Jio Baptist church in Gorham} The Baptists in Warwick complied with your law, yet were taxed to the parish minister, and for it eighteen of them were imprisoned about forty miles from home [in Northampton] in the extremity of last winter, and when our General Court were addressed upon it, they afforded no help. The Baptists in Chelmsford complied with your law, yet they were taxed ; and three of them were im- prisoned in January, 1773 ; and when they sued for recompense, their case was shifted off from Court to Court, till it has cost above a hundred dollars ; and when the Superior Court at Charlestown, last April, were constrained to give Nathan Crosby 1 Mr. Moody, from whom " a good riding beast " had been seized for a tax of about six dollars, presented to the Assembly, in Boston, in 1774, a petition of which the following is an extract : " As the case of your peti- tioner somewhat resembles the case of the poor man who, traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, fell among evil men, your petitioner from principles of charity and equity, doth believe that you will not pass him by on the other side of the way, but with the good Samaritan, show pity, bind up his wounds, and set him up on his own beast, which has violently been taken away." R 194 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES his case, as having been taxed and imprisoned unlawfully, yet they gave him but three pounds damages and costs of Court ; and at the same time jr.dged that the constable who carried him to prison should receive costs of Crosby for so doing.' If this is unbiassed judgment, we know not what bias means. Must we [be] blamed for not lying still and thus let our countrymen trample upon our rights, and deny us the very liberty that they are ready to take up arms to defend for themselves ? You pro- fess to exempt us from taxes to your worship, and yet tax us every year, (ireat complaints have been made about a tax which the British Parliament laid upon paper ; but you require a paper tax of us annually. . . All America are alarmed at the tea tax, though if they please they can avoid it by not buying the tea ; but we have no such liberty. We must either pay the little tax,- or else your people appear, e\ en in this time of extremity, determined to lay the great one upon us. But these lines are to let you know that we are determined not to pay either of them ; not only upon your principle of not being taxed where we are not represented, but also because we dare not render that hom- age to any earthly power which I and many of my brethren are fully convinced belongs only to God. We cannot give in the certificates you require without implicitly allowing to men that authority which we believe in our consciences belongs only to God. Here, therefore, we claim charter rights, liberty of con- science. And if any still deny it to us, they must answer it to him who has said " With what measure ye mete it shall be meas- ured to you again." If any ask what we would have, we answer: Only allow us 1 Mr. Crosby, being sick when the officers came to take him, entreated them that lie might remain till he should be better ; but one of the com- pany said that if they took him out and he died in their hands nobody would hurt them. As he left his wife and children in tears, some of the company told them he would be put in a room without fire where he would freeze to death. He and several others, one of whom was an old man about eighty-two years of age, were committed to Concord jail. ■-' The required annual certificate cost, as Backus says, " four pence of our money which is three pence sterling ; the very tax upon a pound of tea that brought on the American war." SUBSEQUENT STRUGGLES — FINAL TRIUMPH 1 95 freely to enjoy the religious liberty that they do in Boston, and we ask no more. We remain hearty friends to our country and ready to do all in our power for its general welfare. Isaac Backus. Agent for the Baptist Churches in this Province. By advice of their Committee. Boston, Dec. 2, 1774. After some smiling and considerable opposition the above petition was read in the provincial Congress, and, chiefly through the influence of John Adams, who " was apprehensive if they threw out the petition it might cause a division among the provinces," a committee was appointed which reported that they were no ecclesiastical court and had no business with the petition, yet recom- mended that " if the Baptists were oppressed they might apply to the General Court." Accordingly they passed a handsome resolution recommending to the Baptist churches that, when a General Assembly shall be convened in this colony, they lay the real grievances of said churches before the same, when and where this petition will most certainly meet with all that attention due to a memorial of a de- nomination of Christians so well disposed to the public weal of their country. By order of the Congress, John Hancock, President. In reference to the loyalty of the Baptist denomina- tion. Elder Backus, in his MS. " History of the Warren Association," ^ remarks that " in the fall of the year 1778 the General Assembly of the Massachusetts passed an Act to exclude all men from returning into it who had gone off, whom they judged to be enemies of their ' See also his " History," Vol. II., p. 247. T96 NEW England's struggles counti")', and they named three hundred and eleven men as such, but did not find one Baptist among them." Washington, also, in his letter to the Committee of the Ignited Baptists of Virginia, bears testim.come Christians was that it made them less obedient to their kings. In the succeeding part of AN'illiams' long letter, the whole of which was designed to be of good service to the Bay Col- ony, he offers several reasons for cultivating peace : 1. He thinks it "not only possible (according to Rom. 12 : 1 8) but very easie for ye English to Hue and die in peace with all ye Natiues of this Countery. ' ' 2. "Ye God of Peace and Father of Mercies made these Natiues more friendly in this Wilderness then our Natiue Countrimen in our owne land to vs," so that they have " en- tred Leauges of Loue, and to this day continued peaceable commerce with vs. ' ' 3. A concern for the name of God; "for it Can not be hid how all England and other Nations ring with ye glorious Conversion of ye Indians of New England." 4. "I beseech You forget not yt although wee are apt to pla)- with this plauge of War, more then with ye other 2, Famine and Pestilence, yet I beseech you consider how ye present events of all Wars yt euer haue bene in this World, haue bene wonderfully Fickle, and ye future Calamities and Revolucions wonderful! in ye latter end." 5. But lastly, if any be yet Zealous of kindling this Fire for God, &c. , I beseech yt Gentleman, whoeuer he be, to lay himselfe in ye Oj^posite scale with one of ye fairest Buds yt euer ye Sun of Righteousness cherished, Josiah, yt most Zealous and melting-hearted Reformer; who would to War and against Warnings, and fell in most vntimely Death and Lamentations, and now stands a piUar of Salt to all succeed- ing generations. ' ' He concludes by observing that "all Indians are extremely treacherous" even "to their own Nation," and then makes APPENDIX C 255 solemn request that on account of the offense of a " few in- considerable Pagans and Beasts," nothing be done whereby "all yt the gracious hand of the Lord hath so wonderfully planted in this wilderness should be destroyed. ' ' Had these specific counsels always been followed in the treatment of Indians, doubtless the horrid carnage and bar- barities of King Philip's War, which at one time threatened largely to depopulate and destroy the New England Colonies, would have been avoided. APPENDIX C (P. 54) "The petition of divers of Dorchester, Roxberry, &c. , to ye number of 78," thus reads : "As the prevayhnge of errors and heresies is noted by our Saviour in the gospel, and else- where in the Scriptures, as a forerunner of God's judgments, and inasmuch as the errors of the Anabaptists, where they do prevayle, are not a little dangerous to church and common- wealth, as the lamentable tumults in Germany, when the said errors were grown unto a height, did too manifestlie witnesse, and such good lawes or orders as are enacted amongst vs against such persons havinge alreadie bene, as wee are in- formed, a special meanes of discouraginge multitudes of erro- neous persons from comminge ouer into this countrie, which wee account noe small mercie of God vnto vs, and one sweet and wholesome fruite of the sayd lawes, it is therefore our humble petition to this honoured court, that such lawes or orders as are in force amongst vs against Anabaptists or other erroneous persons, whereby to restraine the spreadinge and divulginge of theire errors amongst people here, may not be abrogated and taken away, nor any waies weakened, but may still continue in their force as now they are, that soe there may not be a dore open for such dangerous errors to infect and spread in this country as some doe desire. And soe yr petitioners shal be ever bound to pray for the spirit of wisdom and zeale to guide you in all your weighty affayres, and the gracious blessing of God through Christ to be vppon you therein. ' ' The original of this petition, which we quote from Felt's "Ecclesiastical History," may be seen in Vol. X., p. 211, 256 NKW KN(>LAND'S STRUGGI^ES of the "Massachusetts Archives." Some thirty names are signed thereto as "humble petitioners." APPENDIX D (P. 98) Instead of gratifying the wishes of the petitioners as ex- pressed in their pathetic appeal of 1660 (referred to on page 88), the king in 1663 made known his intention to send commissioners hither to see how the people observed their Charter, and to '•' reconcile differences at present among them." These commissioners were not at all welcomed, being looked upon as agents to promote royalty and hierarchy rather than the liberties of the Colonies. They arrived in Boston in July, 1664, and in October of the same year the Puritan Court again sent the king an address, signed by "John Endecot, Governor, in the name and by order of ye Generall Court of ye Massachusetts." Endicott has been called the real father of American independence. Certainly, in the spirit and principles of their letter and of their many sharp controversies with the commissioners which followed, we can plainly see the beginnings of the American Revolution. This address, which we must here omit, must have been very disappointing to his Majesty, who had no doubt they would all "have great reason to acknowledge our singular affection in our vissiting them by this our Commission and by the good eifects which, with God's blessing, will arise from it." The king's commissioners after visiting different parts of New England, expressed themselves as satisfied with their re- ception in other colonies, but were greatly displeased with the " refractorinesse of Massachusetts."^ They were especially dissatisfied with the replies which the Court made to their de- ^ The exceedingly interesting narrative, which the royal commissioners sent to his Majesty, of their visits and observations in tlie different colo- nies, may be found in Hutchinson's "Collection of Papers," pp. 412- 425. This work also contains many other interesting old-time docu- ments, such as the Massachusetts Charter of 1629 (occupving over twenty pages) ; Mr. Saltonstall's letter to Messrs. Cotton and Wilson, relating to the Lynn tragedy, and their reply in full, etc., etc. It is a sad reflec- tion that we should have had other volumes of like kind had not young America, in its zeal for national independence, looted Gov. Hutchinson's house on account of his siding with the British party, and destroyed "many ancient and very curious original papers." APPENDIX D 257 mands, and hence assured them that ' ' these answers are so farre from being probable to satisfy the king's expectation, that wee feare they will highly offend him. Abuse not the king' s clemency too much, " " We hold ourselves, ' ' they say, "obliged in duty to his Majesty and out of a singular good affection to the welfare of this his Majesty's Colony, to de- clare to this Court that his Majestje will haue just cause to manifest his displeasure against the contrivers of such dilatory answers from whom his majestje doeth expect a more chear- full obedience in dutifuU performances." After further sharp controversy they decide ' ' to reduce all the discourse hereot into one question whereunto we expect your positive answer which we shall faithfully report to his Majesty, whether you acknowledge his Majesty's Commission wherein we are nomi- nated Commissioners, to be of full force to all the intents and purposes therein contained. Tell us plainly and truly whether you will submit to that Commission without any shuffling. Otherwise, it is time for us to be gone out of the country." After receiving the Court's protest, they say in reply : " Wee shall not lose more of our labors upon you, but refer it to his Majesty's wisdom, who is of power enough to make himself to be obeyed in all his dominions. ' ' Subsequently the General Court sent another address to the king wherein they thus apologize for any offense they may unintentionally have given him in their last petition. " Wee confesse that what wee then presented was our feares of what wee did then rather foresee than feele ; but now to our greife and great sorrow of heart wee find (and wee hope your Majesty in due time will see) that the gentlemen sent hither in the capacitje of commissioners, especially three of them . . . have steered a course so different from, if not contrary to, your majestjes gracious expressions and limitations in your royal letters and instructions, . . . your poore subjects threatened with ruine, reproached with the names of rebells, and your gouernment, established by charter, and our privi- ledges, violated and undermined ; causeless complaints from the Indians receaved and countenanced, in so much that the very carriage and deportment of many of the heathen is changed toward us ; our injurious and licentious neighbors animated against us, a notorious malefactor protected from Justice, some of your faithfull subjects dispossessed of the 258 NEW RNGLAND'S STRUGGI.KS lands and goods without hearing them speake in their cases, the vnity of the English colonyes (which is the wall and bul- worke, vnder God, against the heathen) discountenanced, re- proached, and undermined, our bounds and limits dipt and shortened, seuerall tounes in our north border already (so far as in them Ijesj taken from us," etc. They then remark that *' to be placed vpon the sandy foundations of a blinde obedi- ence vnto that arbitrary, absolute, and unlimited power which these gentlemen would impose vpon us . . . as it is contrary to your majestjes gracious expressions and the libertjes of Englishmen, so wee can (not) see reason to submit thereto." Although our Puritan fathers were assured that if they did not yield obedience they would have cause given them to re- pent of it, " for his Majesty will not sit down by the affronts which he hath received," yet the commissioners, having sought in vain " to find out a way to bring down the pride of Massachusetts," were disappointed that the example of sub- mission to the king's instructions by the other colonies, had not "abated the refractorinesse of this Colony." They finally warned the Court to "remember that the King's pardon of the late rebellion is conditional, and the authors of the opposition among you must expect the punishment awarded to the rebels in England, and you well know their fate. ' ' At length the king recalled the commissioners, and also ordered five of the Massachusetts authorities, including Gov- ernor Bellingham, to present themselves before him that he might hear both sides of the controversy and thus "pass his final judgment and determination thereon." This mandate the Court virtually declined to obey, alleging that they could add nothing to the substance of the explanations of their course of opposition to the commissioners which they had already forwarded, and that the ablest persons they might send would be unable to declare their case more fully.' Though ' In view of the virtual refusal of the Court to oDey his Majesty's com- mands, it is not strange that about this time an Knglish agent wrote home that the king's letters were of no more account in Massachusetts than an old London Gazette ! Probably the needs of an impoverished treasury, the distresses arising from the great plague and fir^, in London (1665, 1666), and possibly the Merry ]\Ionarch's devotion to his mistresses, pre- vented the speedy reduction of this refractory "province" (which loved to call itself a State or Commonwealth) to obedience by force and arms. APPENDIX E 259 the Court at different times expressed a willingness to accede to his Majesty's wishes, there was one thing, they told him, they could not do, namely, consent to any repealing of the laws which "will make us renounce the professed cause of our first coming hither." As a practical proof or indica- tion of loyalty, the legislature, instead of sending the required deputation, presented to the king several masts, "thirty-four yards long," for his navy (which to the English admiralty was ' ' a blessing mighty unexpected ' ' — Pepys), and some years afterward, in 1676, in obedience to the king's behest, they sent two agents on a special errand, making request for their speedy return ; and the next year they presented his Majesty ' ' tenn barrells of cranberries, two hogsheads of special good sampe, and three thousand of codfish." Quite a full account of this contest between the king and this refractory province is given in Hutchinson's " History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay," in the Appendix of Hubbard's "History of New England," and especially in Vol IV., Part n., of the " Massachusetts Colony Records." APPENDIX E (P. 172) BACKUS ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION In Backus' "Diary" is this record : "A new Constitution for the United States of America was finished at Philadelphia, September 17, 1787, and our town [Middleborough] met on December 17, and chose four delegates to meet in Boston, January 9, 1788, with others in Convention, to establish or reject it, of which delegates I was the first, without the least motion of mine that way. When I was first informed of it, on December 20, I thought I should not go, but as religious liberty is concerned in the affair, and many were earnest for my going, I consented. . . Elder Stillman and I, with twelve Congregational ministers, voted for it." President Manning's interest in this matter led him fre- quently to be present on this occasion, whereupon he was re- quested by Governor Hancock to "close the solemn convo- cation with thanksgiving and prayer," which he did "in a strain of exalted patriotism and fervid devotion which awak- 26o NEW England's sTRrGGLP:s ened in the Assembly a mingled sentiment of admiration and awe." As is well known, the majority in this State in favor of the Constitution was not large, one hundred and eighty- seven voting for it, and one hundred and sixty-eight against it. 'Hie Middleborough delegation was etiually divided on this (|uestion. I'^lder Backus, in his address before the Convention (which he read, contrary to his view of preac/ii/ig) gives three prin- cipal reasons for his favoring the Constitution. I. THE ABSENCE OF ANY RELIGIOUS TEST. " Many appear to be much concerned about it, but nothing is more evident both in reason and the Holy Scriptures, that religion is ever a matter between God and individuals ; and therefore no man or men can impose any religious test with- out invading the essential prerogatives of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ministers first assumed this power under the Chris- tian name, and then Constantine approved of the practice when he adopted the profession of Christianity as an engine of State policy. And let the history of all nations be searched from that day to this, and it will appear that the imposing of religious tests hath been the greatest engine of tyranny in the world." II. PROVISION FOR THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE TRADE. " I believe that according to my capacity no man abhors that wicked practice (importation of slaves) more than I do. I would gladly make use of all lawful means toward the abolishing of slavery in all parts of the land. . . In the Articles of Confederation no provision w\is made to hinder the importation of slaves into any of these States, but a door is now open hereafter to do it, and each State is at liberty now to abolish slavery as soon as they please. . . Thus slavery grows more and more odious through the world, and, as an honorable gentleman, Mr. Dawes, said some days ago, ' though we cannot say that slavery is struck with apoplexy, yet we may hope it will die of consumption.' " III. ABSENCE OF HEREDITARY SUCCESSION OF POWER. ''Another great advantage in the Constitution before us is APPENDIX F 261 its excluding all titles of nobility, or hereditary succession of power, which hath been a main engine of tyranny in foreign countries. . . In the Constitution now proposed to us, a power is reserved to the people constitutionally to reduce every officer again to a private station; and what a guard is this against their invasion of others' rights or abusing of their power ! Such a door is now opened for the establishment of righteous government and for securing equal liberty as never was before opened to any people upon earth. ' ' There were about twenty Baptist members in this Conven- tion and about two- thirds of them voted against the Con- stitution, fearing that it did not give sufficient security to re- ligious liberty. Backus doubtless had these fears at first, but on reflection they disappeared. He says: "Each delegate had full liberty, in his turn, to say all he pleased, by means of which I obtained much more light about the extensive affairs of our country, the nature of the proposed Constitu- tion, and the security of the rights of the people therein, than I had when I went from home, and therefore voted for it. And yet Elder Alden, of Bellingham, Elder Rathburn, of Pittsfield, and Elder Tingley, of Waterbury, County of York, all voted against it. ' ' From the above, it would seem that Dr. Armitage in his " History of the Baptists "(p. 808; revised edition, p. 428) is mistaken when he says that "Isaac Backus took about the same ground that Patrick Henry had taken in Virginia [in not voting for the Constitution] because he could not see that it sufficiently guaranteed religious liberty. Manning and Still- man were wiser in their generation." Surely Backus in this matter, belonged to " their generation." APPENDIX F (P. 212) Acts of exemption, so called, were yielded by the author- ities with great reluctance and, possibly, not without some violence done to cherished principle. Both Pilgrim and Puritan felt it extremely hazardous and hence found it very difficult to give up the practice of taxation for the support of the gospel ministry, and the former, perhaps, clung to this as tenaciously as the latter. In Hutchinson's "History" we 262 NEW kngi.and's .struggles read that I'homas Hinckley, the last Governor of Plymouth Colony, "complained of this, as one great grievance that, not being allowed to make rates for the support of the min- istry, the people would sink into barbarism." ' The first exemption act in Massachusetts was pubHshed Dec. 30, 1727, and had reference solely to Episcopalians. It was passed the preceding November, the next month as Backus says, after "the great earthquake." He mentions these two events together, almost seeming thus to imply that it took an earthepiake to rouse the Massachusetts authorities to a sense of their duty.-' Plymouth Colony early defined its attitude toward Episco- palians in its response" in 1665, to the royal commissioners : "We would not deny a liberty to any according to the pro]:)- osition fof the commissioners) that are truly conscientious altho' differing from us ^especially where his Majestye com- mands it), they maintaining an able preaching ministry for carrying on of publicke Sabl)ath worship which we doubt not is his Majesties intent, and withdraw not from paying their due proportions of maintenance to such ministers as are orderly settled in the place where they live, until they have one of their owne, and that in such places as are capable of maintaining the worship of (lod in two distinct congrega- tions." The exemptive Acts of Massachusetts, relating to Baptists and Quakers, a sketch of some of which we now jjroceed to give, may be found in full in the different volumes of "The Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay," as edited by Hon. Ellis Ames. The dates given to these laws refer generally to the time when they were pub- lished. ' We would like to know what response Gov. Hinckley made or could make to the proposal submitted to him in 1686, by Edward Randolph, secretary under Andros, which thus reads: "Perhaps it will be as reasonable to move that your colony should be rated to pay our minister of the Church of England who now preaches in Boston, and you hear him not, as to make the Quakers pay in your colony." Randolph even proposed to rate the three meeting-houses in Boston to "pay twenty shillings a week each out of their contributions, toward defraying of our church charges." See Hutchinson's "History" Vol. I., pp. 350, 357; also his "Collection of Bajiers," p. 550. '•'See Backus' "History," \'ol. I., p. 516; and for the full text of this first exemption law, see "Acts and Resolves," Vol. IT., p. 459. APPENDIX F 263 1. Act of June 24, 1728 ; to continue five years. "Whereas, Some of the inhabitants of this Province called Anabaptists, and others called Quakers, refuse to pay any part or proportion of such taxes as are from time to time assessed for the support of the ministry in the several towns whereto they belong, alleging a scruple of conscience for such their refusal ; and thereupon frequent application has been made to this Court for their relief; Be it therefore enacted . . . That from and after the publication of this Act, none of the persons commonly called Anabaptists, nor any of those commonly called Quakers, that are or shall be en- rolled or entered in their respective Societies as members thereof, and who allege a scruple of conscience as the reason of their refusal to pay any part or proportion of such taxes as are from time to time assessed for the support of the min- ister or ministers of the churches established by the laws of this Province in the town or place where they dwell, shall have their polls taxed toward the support of such minister or ministers ; nor shall their bodies be at any time taken in exe- cution to satisfy any such ministerial rate or tax assessed upon their estates or faculty ; provided that such persons do usually attend the meetings of their respective Societies assembhng upon the Lord's Day for the worship of God, and that they live within five miles of the place of such meeting. ' ' For comments on this Act, see pp. 117, 154. By other provisions of this Act, Quakers were obliged to subscribe a declaration of fidehty and also a formal profession of Chris- tian belief See "Acts and Resolves," Vol. II., p. 494. 2. Amendment of the above Act, Dec. 24, 1729, exempt- ing estates as well as polls. See ' ' Acts and Resolves, ' ' Vol. n., p. 543- "The proper estates, real and personal of the aforemen- tioned Anabaptists and Quakers, being in their own hands and under their actual management and improvement, shall be exempted in the same manner and under the same condi- tions and limitations that their polls are or were ' ' under the previous Act. This Act was "to continue till May, 1733, and no longer. ' ' 3. Act of July 6, 1734. See "Acts and Resolves," Vol. II., p. 714 ; and for comments on the same, see p. 155 of this volume. 264 NEW England's struggles "Be it enacted . . . That from and after tlic ])ul)lication of this Act, none of the persons called Anal)aptists, who allege a scruple of conscience as the reason of their refusal to pay any part or proportion of such taxes as are from time to time assessed for the support of the minister or ministers of the churches established by the laws of this Province, in the town where they dwell, shall have their polls or estate, real or ])ersonal, in their own hands and under their actual improve- ment, taxed toward the support of such minister or minis- ters, or for the building of any meeting-house or place of public worship. "And to the intent that it may be the better known what persons are of that persuasion, and who are exempted by this Act — Be it enacted . . . That the assessors of each town where any of the said Anabaptists live, or their lands in their own actual improvement lie, shall on or before the 20th of July next, and from thence annually some time before the 20th of April, take a list of all such persons, and forthwith transmit the same to the clerk of the town, which list shall be entered on the record of such town by the clerk who is here- by empowered and directed to enter the same accordingly, that so any of the people called Anabaptists, or any members of their Society thereto appointed, may view such list, and have a copy thereof if they desire the same, paying only six- pence therefor ; and if any person of that denomination shall be omitted in such list by the assessors taken, and the assessors shall be certified thereof in writing, under the hands of two principal members of that persuasion, appointed thereto by the respective Societies some time before the loth of September next, and from thence some time before the loth of May then next after, that such persons not inserted in their list they believe to be conscientiously of their per- suasion, and that they do frequently and usually attend their meetings for the worship of God on the Lord's Day, the assessors shall also exempt the said ])ersons so omitted, and their estates in their actual management and improvement, as well as all others inserted in the said lists, from all rates and taxes by the said assessors to be made for the support ot the minister or ministers in their towns, or for erecting places of public worship ; this act to continue Cwc vears, " etc. 4. The above act substantially revived and published Tuly APPENDIX F 265 16, 1740, the same to remain in force seven years. See "Acts and Resolves," Vol. II., p. 1022. 5. Act of July 2, 1747, to continue in force ten years. See "Acts and Resolves," Vol. III., p. 362. This is in general but a repetition of the former Act, but it was espe- cially grateful to the Baptists, as it was to stand for a longer term of years, and was secured, not as the former ones by re- peated petitionings, but by the " good will and mere motion ' ' of the General Assembly (see p. 158). But alas — 6. In a little over five years the authorities, as Backus says, "broke in upon their own law," and enacted in addition to the previous law the oppressive and obnoxious Act of Jan. 6, 1753. See "Acts and Resolves," Vol. III., p. 644. Our readers will find this Act detailed at large and severely com- mented on in Mr. Proctor's " Memorial and Remonstrance," p. 158, ctseq., of this volume. 7. Act of Jan. 26, 1758. See "Acts and Resolves," Vol. IV., p. 67. This law was similar to the previous one and equally burdensome. It was to continue in force for three years, though subsequent legislation, as we shall see, lengthened that term. Concerning this law Backus says : " No tongue or pen can fully describe all the evils that were practiced under it." Its third section reads as follows : "Be it further enacted. That no person in any town, dis- trict, precinct, or parish, as aforesaid, shall be so esteemed or accounted to be an Anabaptist, or to have his or her poll or polls, or any estate to him or her belonging, exempted from paying a proportionable part of the ministerial taxes that shall be raised thereon, but such whose names shall be con- tained in a list or lists to be taken and exhibited on or before the i^' day of February next, and afterward during the con- tinuance of this Act, on or before the 20"' day of July, annu- ally to the assessors of such town, district, precinct, or parish, and signed by three principal members of the Anabaptist church to which he or they belong, and the minister thereof, if any there be, who shall certify that the persons whose names are inserted in said Hst or Hsts are really belonging thereto, and that they verily beheve them to be conscientiously of their persuasion, and that they do frequently and usually at- tend the pubhc worship in such church on the Lord's Day." X 266 NEW en'glaxd's struggles 8. The above exemption Act revived Jan. 31, 1761, to be continued for ten years. See "Acts and Resolves," \'ol. IV., p. 420. 9. Act of Jan. 31, 1771 ; to be continued three years. See "Acts and Resolves," Vol. V., p. iii. This exemptive Act is in some respects more favorable than the preceding ones. Instead of using the offensive term Anabaptists, they now speak of "the people called Antipedobaptists," and for a wider application they substitute the word congregation for church. Thus this last Act exempts those persons whose " Names shall be contained in a list or lists which shall be exhibited to the assessors ... on or before the i" day of September in that year, and signed by three principal mem- bers of the Antipedobaptist congregation to which he or she belongs, and the minister thereof (if any there be), who shall therein certify that the persons whose names are contained in the said list or lists are really belonging thereto ; that they verily believe them to be conscientiously of their persuasion, and that they do frequently and usually, when able, attend the pubhc worship of God in such congregation on the Lord's Day." This Act also graciously empowers the majority of qualified voters (Quakers and Antipedobaptists excepted) in any legally called meeting in a town, district, precinct, or parish. "To exempt and excuse from ministerial taxes, or taxes for building or repairing any meeting-house or place of public wor- ship, the polls and estates respectively of any person or persons dwelling or having any rateable estate in such town, district, precinct, or parish, who profess themselves to be Quakers or Antipedobaptists, altho no such list or lists as is before men- tioned in this Act should be exhibited to the assessors of any town, district, precinct, or parish." This law was, nevertheless, far from being satisfactory to the "Antipedobaptists," for as Backus remarks, "the word conscientiously was still retained, and the certificates were to be given annually to the assessors." Few, we think, must be the instances where a " town, district, precinct, or parish," was pleased to exempt Baptists without any certificates. 10. Act of July I, 1774; to be in force for three years (see "Acts and Resolves," \'ul. \'.. ]). 392), yet was con- tinued in operation after the adoption of the Constitution. APPENDIX G 267 Like the preceding Act, this exempts such Quakers or Anti- pedobaptists "Whose names shall be contained in a list or lists taken and signed by three members of some Quaker or Antipedo- baptist society or congregation who shall be chosen by said society or congregation for that purpose (one whereof to be the minister where there is any), who shall certify for sub stance with respect to the people called Antipedobaptists : " We, the subscribers, being chosen a committee by the so- ciety of the people called Antipedobaptists who meet together for religious worship on the Lord's Day in , to exhibit a list or lists of the names of such persons as belong to said society or congregation, do certify that do belong to said society or congregation, and that they do fre- quently and usually, when able, attend with us in our meet- ings for religious worship on the Lord' s Day, and we do verily believe are, with respect to the ordinance of baptism, of the same religious sentiments with us. A. B. "Signed C. D. Committee. E. F. "Dated ." The next Act of exemption, as we may properly name it, which favored not only Baptists and Quakers, but all other Protestant Christian sects, is that which is found in the Third Article of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution which was adopted by Massachusetts in 1780, and which declares that "Every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the Commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law, and no subordi- nation OF ANY ONE SECT OR DENOMINATION TO ANOTHER SHALL EVER BE ESTABLISHED BY LAW." APPENDIX G colonial governors and english sovereigns Governors of Plymouth Colony. John Carver, 1620 to 21. WiUiam Bradford, 1621 to 33, 35, 37, 39 to 44, 45 to 57. 268 NEW ENGLAND'S STRUGGLES Edward Winslow, 1633, 36, 44. Thomas Prince, 1634, 38, 57 to 73. Josiah Winslow, 1673 to 80. Thomas Hinckley, 1681 to 86, 89 to 92. Massachusetts Governors. John Winthrop, 1629 to 34, 37 to 40, 42 to 44, 46 to 49. Thomas Dudley, 1634, 40, 45, 50. John Haynes, 1635. Henry Vane, 1636. Richard Bellingham, 1641, 54, 65 to 72. John Endicott, 1644, 49, 51 to 53, 55 to 65. John Leverett, 1673 to 78. Simon Bradstreet. 1678 to 86, 89 to 92. (Andros' usurpation, 1687 to 89.) English Sovereigns James I., 1603. Charles I., 1625 to 1650. Cromwellian Protectorate, 1653 to 1660. Charles H., 1660. James H., 1685. William and Mary, 1689. Anne, 1702. (ieorge I., 1714. Ceorge II. , 1 727. George HI., 1760. INDEX. Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.. ..166, 207, 262 Adams', Charles Fiancis, criti- cisms of the Puritans..30, ry2, 144, 146 Adams, John : early attitude to- ward the State Church, 188 ; more liberal views in later life, 243 ; what he endured for our civil liberty 243 Adams, Samuel, letter of Isaac Backus to 190 Alden, Rev. Noah, service for re- ligious freedom 229 Anabaptism: early appearance of, in this country, 21 ; termed a scab, 26 ; early attempted sup- pressions of 45 Anabaptists : how characterized by their opponents, 26, 51 ; laws enacted against, 53, 131, 132; pe- titions against, 54, 255 ; petitions in favor of, 53, 96 ; required to give certificates, 159, 167, 168, 172, 242; their refusal to give them in 181 Andros, Gov. Edmund, his Epis- copal rule 148 Antinomianism, troublesome to the early Puritans 51 Argument, able to remove a mountain, reiiuired 57 Armitage, Thomas, History of the Baptists, 13 ; mistaken on one point 261 Arnold, Samuel G., History of Rhode Island 203 Arnold, Thomas, favored iden- tity of Church and State 31 Ashfield Baptists : sufferings of, 176, 192 ; petitions of, 207 ; peti- tions in aid of, 208 ; responses t(j these petitions 208 Atonement, as defined by the Puritan divines 59 Attleborough, important legal ease connected with 237 Backus, Isaac : agent for the Bap- tist churches, 179; mission to Philadelphia, 186 ; action touch- ing the State constitution, 223, and the Federal constitution, 259 ; as a historian, 181, 222 : as a champion of religious lib- erty, 179, 180; threatened with a halter and the gallows, 197; relatives of, persecuted as sepa- ratists, 168, 172; aversion of to slavery, 191, 260; petitions, me- morials, and letters of, 179, 182, 184, 187, 189, 191, 211, 220, 222, 223, 229, 230 ; monument erected to, 180; memorial pamphlet relat- ing to 249 Baldwin, Dr. Thomas, important actor in the cause of liberty 244 Bancroft, George, on Backus as a historian 181 Baptists : early emigrate to Amer- ica, 21 ; their sufferings in Eng- land, 143 ; patriotism of Ameri- can, 195, 196. See Anabaptists. " Baxter, Josiah," scandalous hoax relating to 95 Baylies, Francis, History of New Plymouth, 127, 139. Belknap, Jeremy, History of New Hampshire 204 Benedict, David, History of the Baptists 13, 45, 267 Bliss, Leonard, History of Reho- both 129 Book of Common Prayer, Puri- tans' feeling toward 90 Boston, First Baptist Church of : origin and early trials of, 92 ; some of its home friends, 96, 100, 107 • its English sympathizers, 97 ; early home at Noddle's Is- land, 99 ; first meeting-house of, 110: doors of, nailed up Ill Bradford, William, long and toler- ant reign of 127 269 270 INDEX Branding of Quakers 73, 71, 141 Brattle family of Boston 210 Briscoe, Nathaniel, Anabaptistic book 48, 215 Brown brothers, of Salem, sent back to England 18 Brown, John : eolonial commis- sioner, 128 ; opi)osed to coercion in religious matters 129 Burning at the stake, in Massa- chusetts and in New York 5'.» Burrage, H. S., History of New England Baptists 113, 173, 17'.» Butler, Ezra, of Vermont, notice of 203 Callender, Elisha, ordained by help of Congregational minis- ters 117 Calvin, John, dislikes the leavings of popish dregs 15 Cambridge platform, favors coer- cion 56, 107 Capital offenses, in England and in the colonies 141 Cathcart, William, Baptist Ency- clopa?dia 13, 114 Certificates for exemption : cost of, 194 ; deemed oppressive and humiliating 117, 168 Chaplin, Jeremiaii, Life of Henry Dunster 147 Charles II. : interdicts Quaker per- secution, 87, 88 ; mandate of, con- cerning liberty of conscience, 90, 111; Court's petitions to, 88, 256, 257 ; controversy of, with the Puritan authorities 256 Charter of William and Mary, in 1692 1.52 Chauncy, Charles: a Pedobap- tist immersionist, 25 ; professed fixedness of views, 25, 253 ; yet willing to ignore them 253 Children of the covenant, born church-members 58 Church and State union : in Massachusetts, 32 ; in Plymouth colony, 124 ; favored by Thomas Arnold, 31; finally dissolved 248 Churches in Old and New Eng- land, divided on the subject of baptism 21, 24 Clark, Joseph S., Congregational- ist churches in Massachusetts... 120 Clarke, .lohn : preaches and is ar- rested in Lynn, 60; letter from prison accepting debate, 60; visits England, M; obtains lib- eral charter for Rhode Island, 205; "111 Newes from New Eng land," 64 ; his motives di.s credited by Drs. Palfrey and Dexter 61 Cleveland brothers, expelled from Yale College as Separatists 201 Coercive power of a godly magis- tracy 56, 106, 107 Colonial governors and English sovereigns 267 Colonies of Massachusetts and Plymouth united in 1692 148 Comer, John, Diary of 169 Commissioners : of the united colonies, 55; on (iod's favors to New England, 51 ; of the king, 98 ; contest of with the Puritan authorities 2-56 Conscientiously : as used in the certificates and in the Constitu- tion, 159, 227 ; why offensive to the Baptists 168, 227, 229, 266 Committee of grievances, when first and last appointed 174, 234 Consecrated cobblers 28 Constitution, Federal ; small ma- jority for it in ^[assachusetts, 260 ; how at first regarded by Baptists, 261 ; amendment of, se- curing religious liberty not ap- proved by Mtissachusetts 246 Constitution of Massachusetts in 1780 ; features of, 226 ; Baptist pro- test against it, 229 ; projwsed change of its Bill of Rights in 1820, 245 ; as changed in 1833 218 Cook, John, a Mayflower passen- ger, differing accounts of 104 Cotton, John : mentioned, 20, 27, 32, 54 ; discusses the Lynn trag- edy, 65; eulogized as "another Moses " 52 Crosby, Thomas, History of the English Baptists 23, 48, 118, 143 Crowle, wonderful records of its Baptist church 22 Cudworlh, James: disfranchised for opposing Quaker persecu- tion, 137; would be no perse- cutor, 138 ; restored to favor, 141 : INDEX 271 testimony of, in regard to Presi- dent Dunster 138 Cushman, Robert, sermon to the early Pilgrims I'io Cutting, S. S., Historical Vindica- tions 22, lis Davis, Rev. John : agent for the Baptist churches, 179 ; reviled for his efforts 179, 192 Deane, Rev. Samuel : historian of Scituate, 141 ; what he says of Chauncy's chin-ch 25 Debate of the Bay ministers : with Boston Baptists, 95 ; with Henry Dunster 2.51 Denison, Frederic : notes relating to Norwich Baptists 217 Dexter, H. M. : on John Robin- son's famous utterance, 17 ; on the se-haptism of John Smyth, 22 ; on the cause of Roger Wil- liams' banishment, 43 ; the pur- pose of Dr. Clarke in the Lynn transaction Gl Discussion of sermon after de- livery 70 Dudley, Thomas: his desired epitaph 59 Dunning, A. E. : Congregational- ists in America 126 Dunster, Henry : stand of, against pedobaptism, 57, 69 ; relation of, to the Quakers, 138 ; character of, 139, 253 ; discovery of his grave 252 Dyer, Mary : letter of, prior to ex- pected execution, 75 ; husband's plea for her life 79 Ellis, George E. : Puritan age in Massachusetts.... 32, 33, 42, 44, 78, 139 " Emancipation of Massachusetts " delayed 242 Endicott, John : Roger Williams' address to, 43 ; Quakers hung under administration of, 44 ; called the father of American independence 256 Episcopal establishment in Vir- ginia: its oppressions 11, 13. 86 Eulogies : on Hooker, Winthrop, Cotton, 57 ; on Norton and Wil- .son .58, 66 Exemption laws of Massachusetts : given, 262-267 ; commented on, 116, 154-158, 167, 211 Featly, Daniel : Dippers Dipt 24 Felt, Joseph B : Ecclesiastical His- tory 24, 105, 120, 125, 127 Fiske, Prof. John : quoted 30 Five-mile exemption act : char- acterized 117, 1.54 Fletcher, Asaph, m. d. : services for religious freedom 202, 219, 220 Freemen : qualifications for, in Massachusetts Colony, 32; in Plymouth Colony 125, 126 Fuller, Samuel : the Plymouth deacon and doctor 17, 70 Gainsboro and Scrooby churches.. 21 Gervinus, Prof. : on the tolerant principles of Rhode Island 44 Gould, Thomas: first pastor of Boston Baptist church, 92 ; with his companions in prison oft 93, 96, 99 Guild, R. A. : Manning and Brown University, 173 ; Chaplain Smith and the Baptists 161 Half-way covenant scheme : men- tioned, 119; its sad fruits 120 Hatherly, Timothy : many gov- ernment offices of, 141 ; de- graded for opposing Quaker persecution 137 Hawks, F. L. : Episcopal his- torian 12, 15 Hawley, Major Joseph : befriends the Baptist cause, 215, 219 ; con- nection of, with Edwards' leav- ing Northampton 219 Helwys, Thomas : noted Confes- sion of his church 23 Heretical book burned in Boston.. ,59 Heretics : to be banished, 91 ; in .John Cotton's view, worthy of death 20 Hollis, Thomas, Esq. : beneficence of, perverted, 118 ; letter of, to ElderWheaton 135 Holmes, Obadiah : arrested in Lynn, 59: publicly whipped in Boston, 62; fate of his sympa- thizers 63 Hooker, Thomas : the light of the Western churches 56, 57 272 INDKX Hudpor, .lohii : lirst Puritan mar- tyr, utterance of 20 Horr, (ieorge K., Jr. : defines toler- ation jiiid !il)erty 212 Hovey, Alvali : Life of Backus by, 180; on the worth of Backus' History, isi ; on the right rela- tion of rhun-li and State 249 IIul.l)ard, William: History of New Enj^'land 28, 31, 101, 120, 259 Hiiljniaier: early Baptist martyr, utterance of 1J8 Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne: Anti- nomian heresiarch, 49, 51 ; her fate 47 llutcliinson. Gov. Thomas: His- tory of the Colony of Massachu- setts Bay, 240, 259 ; collection of papers 204, 256 Important legal decision 237 Infant baptism : early advocates of, 26 ; divided opinions concern- ing 55, 119, 120 Ivimy, Joseph : History of the I'^ng- lish Baptists 143 King, II. M. : early Baptists de- fended 62 Knollys, Ilanserd : his American reputation 49 Knowles, J. D: Memoir of Roger Williams 41 Laws relating to religious w^or- ship : in Massachusetts, 31, 36, 149, 150, 224; in Plymouth Col- ony, 131, 132, 134; in Connecti- cut 35,168,171, 198 Leland, Rev. Aaron: notice of 202 Leland, John: services of, in the cause of freedom, 13 ; anecdote respecting, 13 ; his pica for lib- erty, 240; his desired epitaph 13 Lenthall, Robert: his work at Wt'vmouth and Newport 45 London's great plague and fire 258 Long, Prof. J. C. : quoted 247 Lord, Dr. Benjamin, and Mr. Col- lier: interesting colloquy be- tween 217 Lothrop, John : troubled with anabaptism in England and .Vnicrica 24. ij Lucur (Luker), Mark, member of Spilsbury 's church, became elder at Newport 21 Lynde, Simon : befriended the Boston Baptists io7 Lynn : visit of Clarke, Crandall, and Hr>lmcs to 60 Madison, James: defen.se by, of the rights of con.science, 12 ; op- posed to union of Church and State 246 Manning, James : principal founder of the Warren Associ- ation, 173; his interest in the cause of freedom 174, 176, 187, 259 Ma.ssachusetts Archives 27 Massachusetts Colony: early troubled with "isms," 51; yet originally intended as a model of the kingdom of Christ 146 Mather, Cotton : spoken of, 21, 117 ; his Magnalia quoted or referred to 21, 26, 80, 252 Mather, Increase ; quoted, 20, 26, 30, .52, 67, 117, 149 Maverick, Samuel : his hospitality checked io2 May, possibilities of the word, illustrated 217 McKenzie, I)r. Alexander: history of first church in Cambridge, 121, 252 Middleborough : notice for list- taking of Anabaptists in 167 Mitchell, Jonathan : relation to President Dunster, 57, 252 ; justi- fies the half-way covenant 119 Morse, Rev. Asahel : labor on the Constitution of Connecticut 173 Morton, Nathaniel : New Eng- land's memorial 18, 66, 124, 127 Myles, John : founded first Bap- tist church ,in Massachusetts, 46 ; forbidden to preach in Bos- ton, 108; fined at Rehoboth, 134 : tolerant toward Pedobap- tist practices, 109; son of, be- came Episcopal rector in Boston, 109, 207 Neale, R. H. : election sermon 113 Newman, Prof. A. H. : History of the Baptist churches, 24, 25, 101, 109, 113 Norton, John, 31, .58, 80, 81, 140; view of the atonement 59 INDEX 273 Oakes, Urian: his charge against anabaptism 26 Old South Church : how saved to orthodoxy (J7 Owen, John, advocates toleration, 20, 97 Palfrey, J. G. : liistory of New England 31, 59, 01, 70, HI Parker, Chief Justice Isaac; de- cision on tlie Parish question I'JO Parsons, Judge Theophilus: de- cision of 239 Pedobaptism : early works in de- fense of, 2(;; what it meant in Puritan times ,">« Persecution : strongest argument for, 48 ; of Separatists, 4r), 168, 171, 172, 201, 224, 235 ; of Quakers in Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies, 71-89, 137-141 ; of Bap- tists in Massachusetts, 48, 49, 92- 112, 115, 130, 131, 134, 135, 153, 154, 161-163, 176, 182, 189, 192, 193, 196, 197, 207, 212, 223, 230, 231, 235, 237; in Maine, 11:!, 193 ; in New Hampshire, 49. 80, 197; in Ver- mont, 201, 233 ; in Connecticut, 170-173, 200, 201 ; in the South. ..12, 13 Philips, Rev. George : early Pedo- baptist writer, 27 ; intercedes for Stowers, fined for reading an Anabaptist book, 27; famous schools founded by descendants of 27 Pilgrims : distinguished from Pur- itans, 17 ; purpose in coiuing hither, 123 ; not wholly friendly to toleration, 133, 1:?4 ; incited to Intolerance by the Puritans, 128, 136, 142 ; monument erected to, in Plymouth 122 Plymouth ; a memorable Sunday's service in 70 Plymouth Colony records 41, 42, 127 Proctor, John : spirited remon- strance from the Baptist churches 150, 207 Punchard, George : History of Con- gregationalism Ill Puritan and Baptist fathers : date of their deaths .56. 116, 243 Puritans ; distinguished from the Pilgrims, 15 ; motives for emi- grating hither, 28 ; their theo- cratic government, 32, 146 ; their right to exclude unwelcome in- truders, 31, ;!2 ; opposed to toler- ation, 20, 52 ; their rule and in- fluence gradually weakenea, 148 ; were honest and conscien- tious 143 Quakers: first arrival of, in Bos- ton, 70 ; laws passed against 71-74 ; the hanging of, 74, 77, 88 befriended by "Charles R., 81, 88 ; fanatical actions of, 85 , less indecent in Plymouth Col- ony 142 Quincy, Josiah : History of Har- vard University 139 Quotations ; difficulty of verifying, 207 Randolph, Edward : proposals to favor the English church 262 Ransom, Elisha : letter to Backus, 202 Refractoriness of Massachusetts : how met by British authority 256 Rehoboth ; connection with early Baptist interests 46, 131, 134, 135 Religious freedom ; act of 1811 239 Remonstrances from England against per.secution 65, 97, 98 Revival of 1780, 190 ; in Boston in 1,S0;M80.5.. 67 Rhode Island: tolerant charter and government of, 64, 203-206 ; how Quakers and Jews were treated in, 83, 206 ; not favored by the other colonies, .55, 203 ; its petition for Connecticut Baptists 169 Robbins, Chandler : history of the Second Church, Boston 91 Robbins, Philemon : persecuted for preaching to the Walling- ford Baptists 170, 201 Robinson, John : utterance of, con- cerning more light, 17 ; his son Isaac disfranchised 137 Russell, Elder John, the " wed- derdop'd shoemaker"; men- tioned, 28, 104 ; his Brief Narra- tive, 103, 116 ; petition for relief from prison bonds 100 Salem : first ministers of, how in- stalled, 18 ; not altogether peace- ful after Roger Williams leav- ing 37 274 INDEX Seauiiuon, Kucliul Thurbcr, ii liiip- tist pioneer in New Hampshire. -17 Screven, VVilliuni, bitter experi- ences of, in Maine ll'i Sewel, \Villiani, History of the Quakers 80, 80, 139 Shepanl, Tlioiiuis: of Cambridge, 27, .'lO, r)8; of Cliark'sto\vii...yl, y."", lutj Shrinipton, Henry, and tianiuel, friendly to Boston Baptists luu Smitli, Cliileab, ancestor of Mary Lyon, 177 ; strives and suffers for religious liberty 177 Smith, Hezekiah : how he ob- tained required certiticates, IGO ; appointed agent to England, 178; severely persecuted ItU Sprague's, W. B., Annals of tho American Pulpit, Vol. VI., Bap- ti.'its i:i, 203 Standisli, Miles: probably never " under covenant," 124 ; his will. 12,') Stearns, Shul>ael, his labors in the South 114 Stillman, Samuel: his work for religious freedom, 174-178, ]k;, 2:iG ; i)reaclu's election sermon... 112 Stoddard, Solomon, regarded the Lord's Supper as a converting ordinance for luilf-way church- members 119 Stow, Baron, centennial sermon of 1843 1.31 Stowers, John, fined for reading an Anabaptist book 27, 21.3 Straus, Oscar S., aiithoi' of Life of Roger Williams 40, 44 Sufferings of Baptists and Quakei's in England 143 Sumner, W. H., History of East Boston 99 Swain, Leonard, uttcraiu'e of, at the Warren .\s.soeiation Centen- nial 15 Synod : of lf;37, •'"il : of KVIti, .3.'); of "ir,.37. 120: of UHVj, 119: of it;79 114 Taylor, .Jeremy. i>lca for religious tolerance 29, 10(i Thatcher, James, History of Plym- outh " 104 Trumbull. Benjamin. History of Connecticut 198, 201 Trumbull, J. H. Blue Laws, true anil false, of Connecticut 141 '] inner, William: petition for re- lea.se from prLson, 101; "Tur- ner's Falls " commemorates liis valor loti Unitarian ilefection, causesof 120 Vermont's pioneer (■hami)ions of religious liberty 202 Wanton, Edward, interesting ac- count of 77 Ward, Nathaniel : his Simple Cob- bler of Aggawam, 27; his Body of Liberties 27, .50 Warren Association, founding of.. 173 Washington, George : commenda- tion of Bapti.st loyalty, 190; let- ter to the Newjxjrt Jews 237 Wearing long hair, an ofTense to the Puritans 240 Webster, Daniel, in the State Con- stitutional (;onvention of 1820... 243 Westminster Assembly, three Puri- tan divines invited to 57 Weston, Prof. David, Notes to Backus' History 222 Whipping at " cart's tayle "...74, 85, 80 Wickenden, William : ashoemaker pioneer preacher, 28 ; fined and impri.soned in New Netherland.. 28 Wightman, Valentine, monument to ISO Willard, Samuel : At' Sittor ultra Cvepidam, 28, 111 : his character- ization of New England Ana- baptists .')! Williams, Rev. N. W., in the Con- stilutional Convention of 1820... 241 Williams, Roger: why banished, 37, 40. l:!, 214 : sentence of, re- voked, 42; his phrase, soul free- dom, 29, 40. 09: his two visits to England, 2.');! : letter of, to the Massachusetts aiUhorities, 41, 2.53; .services of, to the Puritan colony, 41 ; writings of, against John Cottoor. despised ram's horn, 19; monu- ment of, in Providence 180 Wilson, Rev. John, opi)o.sed to .\nabaptism and (Juakerism....Oh, 07 INDEX 275 Winslow, Gov. Edward : reference to, 14, 25, 41 : kindness of, to Roger Williams' family 133 Winthrop, John : History of New England, 46, 70; friendly rela- tions of to Roger Williams, 40, 45 ; his sons opposed to persecu- tion 40, 200 Wisner, B. B., History of Old South Church 67 Writers on persecution in the South... 15 Young, Rev. Alexander : his Chronicles of the Pilgrims, 123 ; his Chronicles of the Puritans, 145 ; his estimate of the Puritan character, 145 ; his strong relig- ious faith 145 STUDIES ON BAPTISM, WITH REVIEW OF J. W. DALE New and revised edition, with full index. By the same author TESTIMONIALS. I have examined the advance sheets of your forthcoming book, and am very much pleased. The work might be entitled, " The Encyclopaedia of Baptism," so wide is its range of topics and so thorough are its discussions. . . It is the first serious and ex- tended examination of Dr. Dale ever made by any Baptist scholar. — Prof. Franklin folmson. 1 think very highly of the work There is just enough of easy humor and self- possession In the style to make it pleasant reading, while the sound judgment and safe learning pervading it from first to last will ensure it a high place, indeed the highest, among the discussions of the subject which it treats. I congratulate you on having written so thorough, able and readable a work. — Pres. Ahuih Hovey. I have this day finished reading your work on baptism. It is a thesaurus — a work of immense labor, of extensive research, and of sound learning. It is fair and candid, and presents the subject in its true light . . I congratulate you on your success, and in my pride shall very likely say that 1 number you among my pupils. — Pres. Barnas Sears. The author has read widely on the subject, and has written, apparently, with a library on baptism about him Al. the instances of baptism in the New Testament are reviewed and ali such matters as infant baptism, the baptism of households, the ancient baptisteries and pictures of baptism and the doctrinal connections of the rite, receive careful treatment. — Pre/ M'illiain N- Clarke. Mr. Ford's work is the most thorough and scholarly treatment of the subject of bap- tism in the I'.nglish language so far as the present writer knows. . . The book is packed with facts and reasonings We are ad to see the new edition dedicated to the memory of Professors Ripley Hackett, and Sears, the author's ''beloved and re- vered Newton teachers." — N. Marshinan Williams D D. Mr. Ford's studies on baptism are a credit to his critical acumen, his extensive ' scholarship, his literary ability, and his moral nature. They are controversial without an atom of bitterness, and learned without even the suspicion of pedantry. No Bap- tist library is henceforth complete without them and no future discussion of the Bap- tist position can afford to ignore them. — Prof T. Harivood Pattison. I have " looked " through the work from beginning to end, and it appears to me learned, comprehensive, and thorough. I call to mind no work which will give students a more clear idea of the present state of investigation and thought (as represented by all parties to the controversy) on the subject of baptism. — Pres. Martin B. Anderson. I have read the work with great pleasure. The care with which it has been written, the soundness of its criticisms, the fullness of reading on the subject which it every- where shows, the excellent spirit which pervades the whole — its pleasantries never run- \ 277 Ding into sneers, nor its replies to ill-natured criticisms into a like ill nature — all these will contribute to give tht work :i permanent place in the libraries of careful anii un- prejuUiiLcl readers, whatever may he their view of baptism. — J'res. Ezekiel C. Robin- son. It is by far the best contribution that has been made to the baptismal question in the more recent stage of the controversy. . . It has been a great help to me in a recent discussion with the Presbyterian magnates. . . Vou have done a grand, scholarly work for the denomination. — J. 1.. Hiorinus, /'. y>. This is a book that ought to be in the hands of every Baptist minister and every in- telligent layman. It has won high praise for its learning and spirit from Pedobaptists of various denominations. There is a rich vein of delicate humor running through the volume which makes it as interesting as a novel. . . This is the book on baptism. — /'. /'. Eaton, D. D. Nothing has appeared for years — if, indeed, ever before — that may be compared with this work for a satisfactory discussion of this much-vexed subject. — Journal and Mes- senger. A viiluine packed with information on the baptismal question. The author's studies have been very extensive, anil he writes apparently with an encyclopa;dic knowledge of the subject.— .V■ i ll_^^^^ ^ 1 i 1 1 f) .-i?^