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 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35
* With some this was considered a matter of divine appointment. Cong. Way Justified, 9.
t This was the provision of Gov. Eaton's code.
1
45
Their mode of conducting public worship was not materi- ally unlike our method at this day .* Every sabbath they came together at the beat of drum, about nine o'clock, or before. The pastor began with solemn prayer, continuing about a quarter of an hour. The teacher then read and ex- pounded a chapter. Then a psalm was sung, the lines being given out by the ruling elder. After that, the pastor deliv- ered his sermon, not written out in full, but from notes en- larged upon in speaking. In this Church, at an early period, it was customary for the congregation to rise while the preacher read his text. This was a token of reverence for the word of God.+ After the sermon, the teacher concluded with prayer and a blessing.
Once a month, as now, the Lord's supper was celebrated at the close of the morning service, in precisely the same forms which we observe,-the pastor, teacher and ruling el- der sitting together at the communion table. One of the ministers performed the first part of the service, and the other the last, the order in which they officiated being reversed at each communion.
The assembly convened again for the exercises of the af- ternoon at about two o'clock; and the pastor having com- menced as in the morning with prayer, and a psalm having been sung as before, another prayer was offered by the teacher, who then preached, as the pastor did in the morning, and prayed again.
Then, if there was any occasion, baptism was administered, by either pastor or teacher, the officiating minister commonly accompanying the ordinance with exhortation addressed to the Church and to the parents.
Next in the order of services, was the contribution, made every Lord's day to the treasury of the Church. One of the deacons, rising in his place, said, " Brethren of the congrega- tion, now there is time left for contribution, wherefore as God
* Most of the particulars that follow are derived from Lechford's Plaine Dealing.
t Hutch. I, 430.
46
hath prospered you, so freely offer." The ministers, when- ever there was any extraordinary occasion, were wont to ac- company the call with some earnest exhortation out of the Scriptures urging to liberality. The contribution was re- ceived, not by passing a box from seat to seat, but first the magistrates and principal gentlemen, then the elders, and then the congregation generally, came up to the deacon's seat by one way and returned orderly to their own seats by another way .* Each individual contributed either money, or a written promise to pay some certain amount, or any thing else that was convenient and proper. Money and subscrip- tions were placed in the contribution box,-other offerings were laid down before the deacons. It may be that some of the ancient silver cups now used in our monthly communion, were given in this way.
After the contribution, the assembly being not yet dis- missed, if there were any members to be admitted into the Church, or any to be propounded for admission, or if there were cases of offense and discipline to be acted upon by the Church, such things were attended to; and then another psalm was sung, if the day was not too far spent, and the pastor closed the services with prayer and the blessing.
In the Church, a meeting was held weekly on Tuesday, where the members of the Church by themselves conferred together on religious subjects, and the ministers, as they had occasion, communicated appropriate instruction and exhorta- tion.t There were also stated "private meetings" in the different districts of the town, at which the brethren exercised their gifts for mutual instruction and edification. Besides which, there was a stated public lecture on Wednesday, whether monthly before the communion, or more frequently, I am not able to determine.
The discipline of offenders against the laws of Christ, was strict, and conducted with no respect of persons.§ Every
* Many allusions in the Records of the Church and of the town, confirm Lechford's testimony on this point. t Church Records.
# Town Records, 7th Aug. 1655.
§ See Appendix III.
47
case that was brought before the Church at all, was made ready for the action of the Church by the elders, and chiefly by the ruling elder. At the proper time, the offender was called forth by the ruling elder. A statement was made show- ing the previous proceedings in the case, after which the rul- ing elder read the particulars charged, showing under each particular, what rule of the word of God was broken. Ev- ery specification was proved by the testimony of at least two witnesses. After the reading of the charges with the testi- mony, the ruling elder called on the offender to object, if he would, to the facts that were charged upon him. The of- fender having spoken, or declined speaking, it was put to the brethren, to declare by their vote, whether the facts were sufficiently proved by the witnesses. This point having been decided, it was next put to the brethren, to declare by their vote, whether the several rules the violation of which was charged upon the offender, were rightly applied to the several facts. This having been voted, it was proposed to the brethen to consider whether, in view of the facts proved, and of the rules broken, the offender should presently be cast out, or whether the case would admit of an admonition only at the present time. If on this question there seemed any want of clearness or unanimity, one or both of the ministers spoke to "hold forth light" and to clear away perplexities. If it was decided that admonition was sufficient for the pres- ent, the sentence of admonition was forthwith pronounced by the pastor, if the offense was one that related to morals, or by the teacher if it was an offense in respect to doctrine. After a public admonition, the Church of course waited for a proper time, "expecting the fruit of it" in the repentance and reformation of the offender. Meanwhile the elders la- bored with him as they had opportunity, to further his repent- ance. But if after a proper time there appeared in the offender no satisfactory evidence of inward reformation, the case was taken up again, and in the presence perhaps of delegates from other Churches, the sentence of excommunication was solemnly pronounced. It is reported by one writer of that
48
age, as a strange peculiarity, "that at New Haven, alias Quinapeag, where Master Davenport is Pastor," an excom- municated person was not allowed to enter into the worship- ing assembly at all, till by the consent of the Church, and by a formal absolution, the censure was taken off .* I should have presumed this to be a mistake, had I not found in our carly church records some incidental expressions which seem to confirm it.
The first house for public worship erected in New Haven, was commenced in 1639. The order that such a house should be built forthwith, was passed in the town meeting, on the 25th of November. The cost of the building was to be £500; and to raise that sum, a tax of 12 per cent. was levied, all to be paid before the following May. The house was fifty feet square. It had a tower, surmounted with a turret. It is said to have stood near the spot where the flag- staff now stands ; but it seems more than probable that it stood farther west, perhaps half way between that spot and the spot where this house stands.
The internal arrangements of the house, so far as a know- ledge of them can be gathered from the records, or inferred from what we know of the primitive meeting-houses, are easily described. Immediately before the pulpit, and facing the congregation, was an elevated seat for the ruling elder ; and before that, somewhat lower, was a seat for the deacons, behind the communion table. On the floor of the house there were neither pews nor slips, but plain seats. On each side of what we may call the center aisle, were nine, of suffi- cient length to accommodate five or six persons. On each side of the pulpit at the end, were five cross seats, and ano- ther shorter than the five. Along each wall of the house, between the cross seats and the side door, were four seats,
* Lechford, 13. Lechford was probably lawyer enough to know that the same rule obtained in the Church of England, and that the excommunicate, besides being excluded from the place of worship, was liable to a penalty every Sunday for his constrained absence. Good old Oliver Heywood found that this was no dead letter. Heywood, Works, I, 100.
49
and beyond the side door, six. The men and women were seated separately on opposite sides of the house; and every one, according to his office or his age or his rank in society, had his place assigned by a committee appointed for that pur- pose .* The children and young people, at the first seating, seem to have been left to find their own places, away from their parents, in that part of the house which was not occu- pied with seats prepared at the town's expense. If this was the case, it cannot be wondered at, that within five or six years after the first seating, and so on as long as the practice continued, the regulation of the boys in the meeting house, and the ways and means of suppressing disorders among them, were frequent subjects of discussion and enactment in the town meetings. A congregation ought always to present itself in the house of God by families. The separating of the heads of the family from each other, and the children from both, in the house of God, was a serious and mischiev- ous mistake.
That humble edifice,-humble in comparison with the spacious and beautiful structures that now adorn the same green spot,-was built and maintained in repair with an hon- orable zeal for public worship. It was one of the many calamities of the colonists here, that the meeting house, through the unfaithfulness or incompetency of some of the workmen, very soon began to require expensive repairs. The main posts of the building not being properly secured, it be- came necessary in a few years to keep them in their places by shores and props,-a circumstance which helped Mr. Daven- port to an illustration, when in one of his sermons, showing that as Laban fared the better for Jacob ; Potiphar, Pharaoh, and all Egypt for Joseph ; the inhabitants of Sodom for Lot ; and the mariners and all that were in the ship for Paul ; so the world fares the better for the saints-he added, " The holy seed are (naxn) the props that shore up the places where they live, that the wrath of God does not overwhelm them."+
* See Appendix No. IV.
t Saints' Anchor-hold, 24.
7
.50
In such a temple, the fathers of New Haven maintained the worship and ordinances of God for about thirty years. During all that time they never met for worship, even in the most tranquil times, without a complete military guard. As early as 1640, we find upon the records an order, that " every man that is appointed to watch, whether masters or servants, shall come every Lord's day to the meeting completely armed ; and all others, also, are to bring their swords, no man exempted save Mr. Eaton, our Pastor, Mr. James, Mr. Samuel Eaton, and the two deacons." And from time to time, the number of men that were to bear arms on the Sabbath days, and other days of public assembly, the time at which they should appear at the meeting house, and the places which they should occupy, were made the subjects of particular regulation. Seats were placed, on each side of the front door, for the soldiers. A sentinel was stationed in the turret. Armed watchmen paced the streets, while the people were assembled for wor- ship. And whenever rumors came of conspiracies among the Indians at a distance, or there seemed to be any special occasion of alarm, the Sabbath guards and sentries at once became more vigilant, and the house of God bristled with augmented preparations for defense. For example, in March, 1653, there being apprehensions of an Indian invasion, and a town meeting being held, that nothing needful in such cir- cumstances might be neglected, we find it ordered, among other particulars, that " the door of the meeting house next the soldiers' seat be kept clear from women and children sit- ting there, that if there be occasion for the soldiers to go sud- denly forth, they may have a free passage." Of the six pieces of artillery belonging to the town, three were stationed always by the water side, and three by the meeting house. Twice before each assembly, the drum was beaten in the tur- ret and along the principal streets, and when the congregation came together, it presented the appearance of an assembly in a garrison.
Yet how strictly were their Sabbaths sanctified. "From evening to evening," no unnecessary labor was any where
51
permitted. Let us go back, for a moment, to one of those ancient Sabbaths. You see in the morning no motion, save as the herds go forth to their pasture in the common grounds, each herd accompanied by two or three armed herdsmen. At the appointed hour, the drum having been beaten both the first time and the second, the whole population, from the dwellings of the town, and from the farms on the other side of the river, come together in the place of prayer. The senti- nel is placed in the turret ; those who are to keep ward, go forth, pacing, two by two, the still green lanes. In the mean time, we take our places in the assembly. In this rude un- finished structure, is devotion true and pure,-worship, more solemn for the lack of outward pomp. The learned and fervent Davenport, and the rhetorical and polished Hooke, divide between them the duties of the pulpit. Before them are such hearers as the honored Eaton, Goodyear, and Gregson ; the warriors Turner and Seely ; the Newmans, discreet and beloved; the modest and true hearted Gibbard ; and, that ter- ror to inattentive school boys, Master Ezekiel Cheever .* Sometimes, too, we might see in the audience, that father of his country, venerable alike as a philosopher, a statesman, a patriot and a saint,-the younger Winthrop.t Through a long course of exercises, which would weary out the men of our degenerate days, these hearers sit or stand with most ex- emplary attention. They love the word that comes from the
lips of their pastor. They love the order of this house. For the privilege of uniting in these forms of worship, of hearing the gospel thus preached, of living under this religious con- stitution, and of thus extending in the world the kingdom which is righteousness and peace and joy, they undertook the work of planting this wilderness. To them each sermon, every prayer, every tranquil Sabbath is the more precious for all that it has cost them. It is not strange, then, that their
* Some account of several of the worthies named above, will be found in the Appendix No. V.
t The reader will also find some notices of Governor Winthrop in the Ap- pendix No. VI.
52
attention is awake through these long services, till, as the day declines, they retire to their dwellings, and close the Sabbath with family worship and the catechising of their children. I seem to hear the utterance of their piety in that old stave of Sternhold and Hopkins :
" Go walke about all Syon hill, yea round about her go ; And tell the towres that thereupon are builded on a roe : And marke you well her bulwarkes all, behold her towres there ; That ye may tell thereof to them that after shall be here.
For this God is our God, forevermore is hee ;
Yea and unto the death also, our guider shall he be."
Thus the years went on, each year bringing its changes, its hopes, its disappointments and sorrows ; till those who came hither in the prime of life, had grown gray and feeble, or were seen no more. Meanwhile one spot behind the meet- ing house, marked with a few rude monumental stones, was becoming continually more and more sacred to the affections of the people. One and another, with whom they had often walked to the house of God,-one and another whose faith had dared the sea, and whose constancy had triumphed over the temptations of the wilderness, had there been gathered to the congregation of the dead. There slept the pious Edward Tench and his wife, who dying within a few months after their arrival here, had committed their only child to God and to the Church, "by faith, giving commandment" concerning the child, that it should not "go back to the country from which they had come forth."* There one of the first graves was made for the widow of that Francis Higginson who was the first minister of Salem, and who dying just after his set- tlement there, had left her with eight young children to the protection of a covenant God.+ There, after the lapse of some twenty years from the beginning, when many of the loved and honored among them had rested from their labors, the dust of Allerton, one of the most distinguished of the
* See Appendix No. VII. t Kingsley, Hist. Disc. 55, 102.
# Isaac Allerton was the fifth of the signers of the celebrated civil compact of Nov. 11, 1620. He was a principal man in the Plymouth Colony, and was
53
Pilgrims of the May Flower, was laid among the fathers of New Haven. And every new mound that was erected there, fastened some survivor to the soil, by a new tie of sacred af- fection. Who, when he thinks of dying, would not rather die where he may be buried among the graves of his kindred. When the emigrant turns his face towards some new country, it is painful to leave the familiar walks, the haunts of child- hood, the old homestead, but more painful still to leave the sanctuary and the burial place. Those little graves, which the mother visits so often, weeping,-that green mound, which covers the dust of a parent or a brother,-that blos- soming shrub, which sheds its annual fragrance round a sis- ter's resting place-every thing here is holy to the eye of affection.
Such considerations, doubtless, had an influence in deter- mining the colonists of New Haven, once and again, during the period of their deepest depression, not to abandon the set- tlement. When the plan of removing to Delaware Bay was seriously agitated ; when their friend Cromwell proposed to them a home in Jamaica ; when he offered them a place with many privileges in Ireland ; it was not a mere calculation of interest, certainly,-far less was it a mere deficiency of the spirit of enterprise,-that prevented the removal. It was in part the force of affection, a natural sentiment of attachment to the soil that had been hallowed by labor and peril, by hope and disappointment, by happiness and grief, by having been the birth place of their children, and by embosoming the ashes of their friends. He who has no such attachment to the soil on which he lives and has his home, lacks one of the better elements of human nature. This is one ingredient of the complicated sentiment which we call love of country.
one year deputy governor there. He was a merchant, and deserves a monu- ment as the father of the commerce of New England. Owing to some cause, not now to be explained,-perhaps an attachment to Roger Williams,-he left Plymouth, about the year 1633, and established himself at Marblehead, then a part of Salem. Afterwards he resided at the Manhadoes. In the year 1647, we find him an inhabitant of New Haven ; and here he died in 1659 .- III, Mass. Hist. Coll. vii, 243.
54
What New Englander is he who does not love the soil of New England, and take pleasure in the stones and dust thereof ? To us these mountains are dear, these rushing streams, these rocks and valleys-dear by all the associations of ancient devotion and valor, or of living affection and en- joyment, that cluster around each spot, adorning the rude forms of nature with invisible beauty.
The graves of the fathers are among us : our sanctuaries, our seats of legislation and of justice, our schools, our very dwel- lings are their monument. The land itself that spreads its green sod over their dust,-this land of their hardships and perils, now covered with civilization, filled with wealth, and decorated with multiplying works of art, is their mausoleum. Never may their graves be found among a people disowning their spirit, or dishonoring their memory.
DISCOURSE IV.
SPECIMENS OF PURITAN MINISTERS IN THE NEW HAVEN COLONY. PRUDDEN, SHERMAN, JAMES, EATON, HOOKE.
HEB. xiii, 7, 8 .- Whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation ; Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.
I PROCEED now to give some notices of the lives and char- acters of a few among the founders of this religious society ; so far as distinct memorials of them can be gathered from various records and historical documents.
Five ministers of the gospel, educated at the English Uni- versities, were in the company which came from Boston to Quinnipiack in 1638 ;- two of whom, the Rev. Peter Prud- den and the Rev. John Sherman, went to Milford ; the other three, the Rev. Thomas James, the Rev. Samuel Eaton, and the Rev. John Davenport, remained here.
Though it does not pertain to the design of these discourses to speak particularly of the first two, it will not be improper to bestow a few words upon each of them. Mr. PRUDDEN came from England with Mr. Davenport in 1637, having previously labored with great success in his native country, and being followed by a company of people from Hereford- shire, and the adjoining parts of Wales, who expected still to enjoy his ministry. He was ordained pastor of the Church in Milford in 1640,-the ordination being performed at New Haven,-and continued in that office till his death, in 1656. Cotton Mather testifies concerning him, that " besides his other excellent qualities, he was noted for a singular faculty to sweeten, compose, and qualify exasperated spirits, and stop or heal all contentions :- whence it was that his town of Mil- ford enjoyed peace with truth all his days, notwithstanding some dispositions to variance which afterwards broke out." Hubbard gives us the additional information, that " he had
56
a better faculty than many of his coat to accommodate him- self to the difficult circumstances of the country, so as to provide comfortably for his numerous family, yet without in- decent distractions from his study." All accounts unite in describing him as distinguished by fervor and power in the pulpit .*
Mr. SHERMAN, though regularly educated at the University of Cambridge, and distinguished for his proficiency, had taken no degree, his conscience refusing a compliance with the conditions of graduation. He came to this country in 1634, and was among the first settlers of Watertown in Mas- sachusetts, where he preached his first sermon. Coming with the company who founded this new colony, he united with the Church in Milford, and at the organization of that Church was chosen teacher. This call he declined ; and after a few years residence in the New Haven colony, preaching occasionally-and sometimes serving the public as a member of the General Court for the jurisdiction, he returned to Watertown, and became pastor of the Church there. He was, for his day, a great master of mathematical and astro- nomical science, which he occasionally employed in making the calculations for a Christian Almanack. As a preacher, he was much admired for "a natural and not affected loftiness of style, which with an easy fluency bespangled his discourses with such glittering figures of oratory, as caused his ablest hearers to call him a second Isaiah,-the honey dropping and golden mouthed preacher." As the chief officer of a Church, he was distinguished by his "wisdom and kindness." He died in 1685, in the seventy second year of his age, having been, in two marriages, the father of twenty six children.+ For his second wife he married a young lady of noble extrac- tion,-granddaughter of the earl of Rivers,-who, being a ward of Governor Hopkins, lived here before her marriage in
* Hubbard, 328. Magnalia, III, 93. Trumbull, I, 294. Farmer, Genealo- gical Register.
+ Six of these children were by the first marriage, twenty by the second.
57
the family of Governor Eaton. This distinguished man is the more naturally remembered in this connection, inasmuch as within less than a century after his death, a citizen of New Haven, once like him an almanack maker, and probably of the same lineage with him, though not directly descended from him, affixed the name of Sherman to the memorable instrument which forever absolved the United States of Am- erica, from their allegiance to the British crown .*
The Rev. THOMAS JAMES, before coming to this country, had labored as a minister with approbation and success, in Lincolnshire. He came over in the year 1632, and immedi- ately became pastor of the Church in Charlestown, which Church was at that time first separated from the Church in Boston. Having lived there three years and a half, he re- signed his pastoral charge on account of difficulties between himself and a part of his people, originating, as Gov. Win- throp informs us, in his melancholy temper. In the expecta- tion, probably, of finding employment as pastor or teacher in some of the Churches to be formed in the new colony, he came to this place with the first settlers, and resided here as a planter for several years.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.