USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > Thirteen historical discourses, on the completion of two hundred years : from the beginning of the First Church in New Haven, with an appendix > Part 2
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The Puritans, it will be remembered, were not a secession from the Church of England ; they were only that party within the Church, which demanded a more thorough refor- mation. Their hopes as a party were kept alive, not only by the consciousness that the force of argument was on their side, with no inferiority in respect to talents and learning ; but partly by the growing popularity of their opinions ; partly by the favor of those politic and far-seeing statesmen, who, so far as the Queen's willfulness would permit, controlled her government by their counsels ; and partly by the prospect that the Queen's successor on the throne might be himself a Puritan.
James Stuart, King of Scotland, became King of England on the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603. As he had reigned over a kingdom thoroughly reformed, and had been educated under influences favorable to the simplest and strictest forms of the Protestant religion, and had often professed in the most solemn manner a hearty attachment to those forms, it was hoped, notwithstanding his known instability of charac- ter and his fondness for the pomp and forms of kingly power, that he might be inclined to bring the ecclesiastical state of England, in its discipline and worship, nearer the pattern of the reformed Churches. Accordingly while he was on his way to the metropolis of his new kingdom, he was met with
* Hallam, Constitutional History of England, I, 270.
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a petition signed by more than eight hundred ministers of the Church of England, praying for the reformation of certain par- ticulars in worship and discipline, but not aimed at all against the principle of prelacy, or the principle of prescribed forms of public prayer. Not one of the least of these requests was granted ; on the contrary, the Puritans soon found that the chances of hereditary succession had placed over them as their king, a low minded, vain-glorious, pedantic fool, to whom the more than oriental adulation with which courtly prelates fawned upon him, was dearer than the honor of God and the welfare of the people. A specimen of what they might ex- pect under his reign was given, in the imprisonment of ten of the ministers who had presented the reasonable and moderate petition for reform-the offense of presenting such a petition having been declared in the Star-chamber to be " fineable at discretion, and very near to treason and felony, as it tended to sedition and rebellion."*
From such persecution, pious and resolute men who loved liberty and purity even more than they loved their native soil, soon began to retreat into other countries. Some had begun to separate themselves professedly from the Church of England, as despairing of its reformation, and to organize themselves independently of the civil state, framing their ecclesiastical institutions according to their own understand- ing of the word of God. A small congregation of such per- sons, " finding by experience that they could not peaceably enjoy their own liberty in their native country," removed with their families from the North of England into Holland, and in the year 1610 settled themselves in the city of Ley- den; "and there," in the language of one of them, "they continued divers years in a comfortable condition, enjoying much sweet society and spiritual comfort in the ways of God ;" "having for their pastor Mr. John Robinson, a man of a learned, polished and modest spirit, pious, and studying of the truth, largely accomplished with spiritual gifts and
* Hallam, I, 406.
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qualifications to be a shepherd over this flock of Christ ; having also a fellow helper with him in the eldership, Mr. William Brewster, a man of approved piety, gravity and sin- cerity, very eminently furnished with gifts suitable to such an office."*
This little Church, after a few years' residence in Holland, finding that in the city of strangers where they were so hos- pitably received, they labored under many disadvantages, especially in regard to the education of their children, and moved also by "a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancement of the king- dom of Christ," " yea, although they should be but as step- ping stones unto others for the performance of so great a work,"-determined on a removal to America ; and on the 22d of December, 1620, one hundred of the Leyden pilgrims, including men, women, and little children, landed from the Mayflower on the rock of Plymouth. Then first the ark of God rested upon the soil of New England, and made it " holy ground." Let the annual return of that wintry day be bright in the hearts of the sons of New England,
" Till the waves of the bay where the Mayflower lay Shall foam and freeze no more."
Meanwhile the Puritans in England were striving and suf- fering in vain. Reluctant, for the most part, to admit the idea of separation from the national Church, they waited and prayed, and struggled to obtain a more perfect reformation. Their cause grew in favor with the people and with the Parliament, for it was felt to be the cause of Protestantism, of sobriety and godliness, and of civil liberty. But the mon- arch, and those dependent creatures of the monarch, the pre- lates, appointed by his pleasure, and accountable to him alone,
Morton's Memorial. The pastor of the Leyden pilgrims never came to New England. His son Isaac Robinson was however one of the early set- tlers of Scituate, in Plymouth colony. From Isaac Robinson was descended the mother of the second Governor Trumbull.
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were steady in the determination to have no reform, and to enforce submission. Five years after the settlement of Ply- mouth, King James was succeeded by his son Charles I, who with more gravity and respectability of personal character than belonged to his father, pursued the same despotic policy, in the Church, and in the civil state, which made his father odious as well as contemptible. His principal adviser was William Laud, a narrow minded aud bitter enemy of all who desired any farther reformation in ecclesiastical discipline, a systematic corrupter of the established doctrines of the Church, a superstitious promoter of pomp and ceremony in religion, more a friend to Rome than to Geneva or to Augs- burg, a hater of popular rights and of the ancient liberties and common law of England, and the constant adviser of all arbitrary methods of government. This man, being made bishop of London, and afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and having the king almost absolutely under his control, brought the despotic powers of the Star-chamber and of the High Commission Court to bear with new terrors, not only uron non-conforming clergymen, but upon men of other professions who dared to express an opinion in favor of re- formation .*
William Prynne, Esq., a barrister at law, for writing a learned but tedi- ous book entitled Histriomastix, against plays, masques, dancing, and other things of the same kind, which was construed into a libel on the Queen, in- asmuch as her majesty was a patron of such diversions,-was condemned in the Star-chamber " to have his book burnt by the hands of the common hanginan, to be put from the bar, and to be forever incapable of his profes- sion, to be turned out of the society in Lincoln's-Inn, to be degraded at Oxford, to stand on the pillory at Westminster and Cheapside, to lose both his ears, one in each place, to pay a fine of five thousand pounds, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment." This was in 1633. Neal, II, 276.
A few months afterwards, Dr. Bastwick, a physician, having published a book which denied the divine right of bishops as an order superior to pres- byters, was condemned by the High Commission to be excluded from the practice of his profession, to be excommunicated, to be fined a thousand pounds, and to be imprisoned till he should recant. Ibid, 278.
Three years before, Dr. Alexander Leighton, a Scotch divine, whose son was afterwards the excellent Archbishop Leighton-for having published a book against prelacy, had suffered a still more cruel punishment. The book
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In these circumstances, the same spirit that had led the Pilgrims of Leyden to Plymouth, led others, in greater num- bers, and with more adequate means, to attempt the estab- lishment of religious colonies in America. Eight years after the settlement of Plymouth, the colony of Massachusetts Bay was commenced by Endicott and his company at Salem ; and in 1630, Boston and the surrounding towns were occu- pied by the illustrious Winthrop and the hundreds of emi- grants who followed him. In 1635, the first beginnings were made on the Connecticut river, at Hartford and at Say- brook ; and in 1638, on the 15th of April, (Old Style,) that being the Lord's day, there was heard upon this spot the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord; and under the open sky, bright with the promise of a new era of light and liberty, a Christian con- gregation, led by a devoted, learned and eloquent minister of Christ, raised their hearts to God in prayer, and mingled their voices in praise.
How easily may the imagination, acquainted with these localities, and with the characters and circumstances of the men who were present on that occasion, run back over the two centuries that have passed, and bring up the picture of that first Sabbath! Look out upon the smooth harbor of Quinnipiack. It lies embosomed in a wilderness. Two or three small vessels, having in their appearance nothing of the characteristic grace, lightness and life of the well known
appears to have had a pretty strong savor of Scotch acrimony ; and the au- thor was censured accordingly. The unanimous judgment of the Star- chamber was, that he should " pay a fine of ten thousand pounds ; that the High Commission should degrade him from his ministry ; and that then he should be brought to the pillory at Westminster, while the Court was sitting, and whipped ; after whipping be set upon the pillory a convenient time, and have one of his ears cut off, one side of his nose slit, and be branded in the face with a double S. S. for a sower of sedition : that then he should be carried back to prison, and after a few days be pilloried a second time in Cheapside, and be then likewise whipped, and have the other side of his nose slit, and his other ear cut off, and then be shut up in close prison for the remainder of his life." Ibid, 235.
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American vessels which are in these days found shooting over every sea, lie anchored in the distance. Here, along the margin of a creek, are a few tents, and some two or three, rude huts, with the boxes and luggage that were landed yesterday, piled up around them ; and here and there a little column of smoke, going up in the still morning air, shows that the inmates are in motion. Yet all is quiet ; though the sun is up, there is no appearance of labor or bu- siness ; for it is the Sabbath. By and by the stillness is bro- ken by the beating of a drum ; and from the tents and from the vessels, a congregation comes gathering around a spread- ing oak. The aged and the honored are seated near the ministers ; the younger, and those of inferior condition, find their places farther back ; for the defense of all, there are men in armor, each with his heavy unwieldy gun, and one and another with a smoking matchlock. What a congregation is this, to be gathered in the wilds of New England. Here are men and women who have been accustomed to the luxuries of wealth in a metropolis, and to the refinements of a court. Here are ministers who have disputed in the universities, and preached under Gothic arches in London. These men and women have come into a wilderness, to face new dangers, to encounter new temptations. They look to God ; and words of solemn prayer go up, responding to the murmurs of the woods and of the waves. They look to God whose mercy and faithfulness have brought them to their land of promise,-and for the first time since the creation, the echoes of these hills and waters are wakened by the voice of praise. The word of God is opened ; and their faith and hope are strengthened for the conflicts before them, by contemplating the conflict and the victory of Him, who, in all things the example of his people, was once, like them, " led forth by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil."*
* Mr. Davenport's sermon on the first Sabbath after the landing, was from Matt. iv, 1, " on the temptation in the wilderness." Kingsley, 80.
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Of the many Puritans who came to New England at its first planting, none, save the Pilgrims of Plymouth, had re- nounced the Church of England, or separated themselves from its communion. None, save those of Plymouth, came with their ecclesiastical institutions already organized. The Church of which Robinson was pastor, and Brewster ruling elder, was formed in England, on the principle of separating from the establishment, and renouncing all connection with it ; and when they came to America, they came as English- men indeed, loving their native country, but not as sustain- ing any relation to the Church of England, from which they had long before come out to be separate. The others, how- ever, those of Salem and Boston, those of Connecticut, and those of New Haven, while they "came over with a pro- fessed intention of practising church reformation," -- came not as separatists ; they disavowed such an imputation as slanderous ; they declared that "they did not separate from the Church of England, nor from the ordinances of God there, but only from the corruptions and disorders there." In England, the difference between the separatists and the non-conformists was a difference of no trivial moment. The practical question upon which they were divided, was a ques- tion involving great principles. To the separatist, the mere non-conformist was one who had communion with idolatry, and with a systematized usurpation of the rights of Jesus Christ as head of the Church. To the non-conformist, the separatist was one who divided the body of Christ, and tore himself away not only from that which was corrupt and dis- orderly in the Church, but from the Church itself, and from the ordinances there. And when men who suffer in the same cause, are divided in respect to the great practical prin- ciples by which that cause is to be promoted, the division , cuts to the quick, and often produces the most painful and lasting alienations. But in the free air of New England, the division between the separatist and the non-conformist was at an end. The Pilgrims of Plymouth and the Puritans of Salem greeted each other with a cordial welcome, and forgot
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that there had ever been a difference between them. They all felt, whether upon the Bay or upon the River, whether at Plymouth or at New Haven, that they had come into the same wilderness, in the face of the same dangers, for the same high end, " freedom to worship God"-freedom to build the house of God according to the pattern of God's word. And here by their united prayers, by their free and strenuous investigations and their harmonious counsels, by their manly toils, and their magnanimous self-denials, under a sense of great responsibility to God for his honor and for the welfare of other generations, they framed a system of ecclesiastical order, and a system of civil government, each perfectly con- genial to the other, and each without a parallel or a model, save the pattern which God showed them in the mount, as they communed with the Spirit of his wisdom recorded in his word.
Thus it was that New England was planted. Thus it was that this Church was placed here in the wilderness. The planting of North America upon merely mercenary and self- ish principles had been attempted once and again, and had failed. Our fathers and predecessors came under the influ- ence of higher motives, and of a holier inspiration. They came, actuated by a great and sublime idea,-an idea from the word and mind of God,-an idea that made them cour- ageous to attempt, wise to plan, strong to suffer, and dauntless to persevere. Their souls were exalted to a perception of the grandeur of their undertaking and of the vast results that were suspended on its success. They were inspired by a living sympathy with the designs of that Almighty provi- dence, which led them into this boundless wilderness, that for them the wilderness and the solitary place might be glad, and the desert rejoice abundantly with joy and singing. Thus they could write upon their banner those words of Puritan faith and devotion, " He who transplanted us, sustains us." Whoever looks upon the armorial bearings of Connecti- cut,-the three vines which God brought out of Egypt and planted, for which he prepared room, before which he cast
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out the heathen, which he caused to take deep root, till they sent out their boughs to the river and their branches to the sea, and till the hills were covered with their shadow, and their boughs were like the cedars of God,-whoever reads that simple yet inspiring motto, brighter from age to age with glorious remembrances,-may see for what ends, in what spirit, and by whose power and guidance, our fathers came into this wilderness .*
Let their spirit be ours. Woe to that man who amid the memorials, and enjoying the fruits of their toils and suffer- ings, breathing the air every murmur of which seems to whisper their reverend names-woe to the man who amid their altars and upon their graves, forsakes their God-rejects their Saviour-and recreant to their principles, lives only to himself instead of living for God, for posterity, and for the world.
* I know not to whom we are indebted for the exquisite device and motto of the arms of Connecticut; but in the absence of evidence it is not unnatural to suppose that the three vines-alluding to those three independent settle- ments, the river towns, the Saybrook fort, and the New Haven jurisdiction- and the motto, Qui transtulit sustinet, are a specimen of the good taste of Governor Winthrop, whose diplomatic skill and personal favor with Charles II, obtained the free charter of 1662; and whose wisdom and popularity, uni- ted so happily, under that charter, a people otherwise greatly divided.
DISCOURSE II.
THE FOUNDATIONS LAID IN CHURCH AND COMMONWEALTH .- CONSTITUTION FORMED IN MR. NEWMAN'S BARN .- THE PU- RITANS.
PROV. ix. 1 .- Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.
THE first settlers of New England generally came hither, not for the improvement of their outward condition and the increase of their estates, not for the sake of putting in prac- tice any abstract theory of human rights or of civil govern- ment, not even for mere liberty of conscience, but for the one great purpose of extending the kingdom of God, and promo- ting their welfare, and the welfare of their posterity, and the welfare of the world, by planting Christian institutions, in the purest and simplest form, upon this virgin soil. It was this purpose, which gave to their enterprise its character of heroic dignity. It was from this high purpose, that they de- rived the resolution which carried the enterprise through all its discouragements, and the faith which ensured its success. It was this one great purpose of theirs, which determined the form, the spirit, and the working of their civil institutions. They had seen, in their native country, the entire subjection of the Church to the supreme power of the civil state ; refor- mation beginning, and ending, according to the caprices of the hereditary sovereign ; the Church neither purified from superstition, ignorance, and scandal, nor permitted to purify itself ; ambitious, time-serving, tyrannical men, the minions of the court, appointed to high places of prelacy; and faith- ful, skillful, and laborious preachers of the Word of God, silenced, imprisoned, and deprived of all means of subsistence, according to the interests and aims of him, or her, who by the law of inheritance, happened to be at the head of the kingdom. All this seemed to them not only preposterous,
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but intolerable ; and, therefore, to escape from such a state of things, and to be where they could freely " practice Church reformation," they emigrated as far from civilization, as if we were now to emigrate to Nootka Sound. Here, they deter- mined that, whatever else might be sacrificed, the purity and liberty of their Churches should be inviolate. The Church was not to be, as in England, subordinate to the civil govern- ment,-the mere dependent creature of the secular power,- the secular commonwealth here was designed, created, fra- med, for no other end than to secure the being and the wel- fare of the Churches. "Mr. Hooker did often quote a saying out of Mr. Cartwright, that noe man fashioneth his house to his hangings, but his hangings to his house." "It is better," adds Mr. Cotton, "that the commonwealth be fashioned to the setting forth of God's house, which is his Church, than to accommodate the Church frame to the civill state."* If, then, their civil polity was essentially popular, if their politi- cal institutions have grown into the most perfect specimen of a free commonwealth which the world has ever seen, that result is to be ascribed to the popular, or as we now use words, the democratic character of their ecclesiastical polity.
With these views, when the planters of the New Haven Colony arrived here, their first care was to lay their founda- tions wisely and safely. In this they proceeded with great deliberation. They began, indeed, very soon after their ar- rival, by forming, at the close of their first day of fasting and prayer, a " plantation covenant," in which they solemnly pledged themselves to each other, and to God, "that as in matters that concern the gathering and ordering of a Church, so likewise in all public offices, which concern civil order, as choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing of laws, dividing allotments of inheritances, and all things of like nature," they would be governed "by those rules which the Scripture holds forth." But under this general compact, they at first made only a temporary arrangement for the man- agement of their religious and civil affairs. Their leaders
* Cotton's letter to Lord Say and Seal, in Hutchinson I, 497.
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had no idea of sitting down to frame, for their colony, a con- stitution and code of laws beforehand, as Locke did, at a later day, for the projected colony of Carolina. They knew that it was not for them, at the first dash, to strike out a complete scheme and system of government. They knew that what is done in a hurry, often needs to be done over again as has- tily ; and that the public welfare depends not merely on the provisions of the written constitution, but also on the worth and fitness of the men who act under the constitution; and therefore they determined, that before proceeding to lay the foundations, not only the principles on which their fabric should be constructed, but the men who were to be employed as living stones in that temple of wisdom, should be well ex- amined. During a period of fourteen months, while they were rearing some temporary shelters, clearing away the dense growth of the wilderness, and raising their first crops from the soil, they were praying, and fasting, and inquiring, and debat- ing, to get wisdom for the great work of laying the foundations of their Church and of their commonwealth. The town was " cast into several private meetings, wherein they that dwelt most together gave their accounts one to another of God's gra- cious work upon them, and prayed together, and conferred to mutual edification," and thus " had knowledge, one of anoth- er," and of the fitness of individuals for their several places, in the foundation-work, or in the superstructure,
While these discussions were in progress, a difference of opinion appears to have arisen between Mr. Davenport, and his colleague in the ministry, Samuel Eaton, respecting the principles on which a government should be constructed, in order best to secure the ends for which the colony was foun- ded. It has been my privilege to have before me, while pur- suing my inquiries respecting the men and the transactions of that period, a treatise from the pen of Davenport, entitled, " A Discourse about Civil Government in a New Plantation whose design is Religion." From strong internal evidence, this pamphlet appears to have been written here in the woods of Quinnipiack, while the form and principles of the civil
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government to be erected here, were yet unsettled, and to have been part of a written discussion which the author was main- taining with his colleague, on that subject, then so interesting to them, and so little illustrated by experience .*
At length, on the fourth, or according to the present style, the fourteenth of June, 1639, every thing having been pre- pared for so grand an occasion, "all the free planters"- which expression includes all who were partners in the un- dertaking of planting the colony -- met in Mr. Newman's barn, for the purpose of laying, with due solemnities, the foundations of their ecclesiastical order, and of their civil government .; The solemnities of the occasion were intro- duced, it is said, by a sermon from Mr. Davenport on the words recited at the commencement of this discourse, " Wis- dom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pil- lars." Then, all present having been seriously warned "not to be rash or slight in giving their votes to things they un- derstood not," but " without respect to men, as they should be satisfied and persuaded in their own minds, to give their anwers in such sort as they would be willing they should stand upon record for posterity," they voted, unanimously, that the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direc- tion and government of men in all duties, as well in families
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