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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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THE HISTORY
OF THE
FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH 1 st
OF
BOSTON
mass.
(1665-1899)
BY NATHAN E. WOOD Its Minister
PHILADELPHIA AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 1899
,
1818100
PRESENT MEETING-HOUSE Commonwealth Avenue. 1882.
D
Wood Nathan Eusebius, 1849-
28441 .985
The history of the First Baptist church of Boston (1665-1899) By Nathan E. Wood ... Philadelphia, American Baptist publication society, 1899. x p., 1 1., 378 p. front., illus., plates, ports., 2 facsim. (1 fold.) 21e".
SHELF CARD
17-8243
86462
Library of Congress
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86462
American Baptist Publication Society
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From the Press of the
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Copyright 1899 by NATHAN E. WOOD
D) 2 8441.985
FORESTATEMENT
No extended history of the First Baptist Church of Boston has before been written. A few historical dis- courses have been printed and preserved, but in the nature of the case, their sources of information have been meagre, and their value has not been very great. The two discourses delivered by Rev. J. M. Winchell, in 1816, have the merit of a reasonable degree of ac- curacy, but their limits as history are narrow. It is surprising that a complete narration has not before been undertaken. The church has made a history unsurpassed in interest by any other Baptist church in the new world. Its metropolitan position and its antiquity have made it a conspicuous and an efficient actor in many of the most stirring scenes, not only in colonial, but in our whole American life. For many years it resisted alone the whole despotic power of New England Puritanism, and insisted upon the right to live and to enjoy freedom under a British flag and in a British colony. Its story of sufferings has not before been told so fully as in this volume; nor has the account of its final victory and its long-continued usefulness had careful narration hitherto. Its identi- fication with the struggle for religious liberty is a proud title to a place in the annals of our country. Its history abundantly attests the providential care of God, and gives illustrious proof that the truth of God
V
Then
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will prevail. Long proscribed and ostracised and persecuted, it has at length come to sit down with honor even in the gates of its sometime enemies. Its vicissitudes since 1665, when it was founded, have been many, but its light has never for a inoment gone out.
It is the only Baptist church in America whose records of the seventeenth century have been pre- served. The First Baptist Church in Providence, founded in 1639, has no records preserved previous to 1775. The First Baptist Church in Newport, founded prior to 1644, has no records preserved previous to 1725. The First Baptist Church in Swansea, founded in 1663, has no records preserved previous to 1718. These are the only Baptist churches whose founding antedates the First Church in Boston, which has its records preserved from its founding in 1665 until the present time. It has also much collateral material in its archives. It has the records of its pew proprietors and of its standing committee since 1771. It has the records of its Sunday-school since 1816.
Every known source of information has been used to throw light on our early history. The author was especially fortunate in discovering a mass of original material (although unclassified) in the vaults of the Old Middlesex Court House, which give vivid exhi- bition of the time of persecution, and make live over again before us the sufferings, the endurance, and the faith of many almost forgotten Christian souls. The history of the struggle for religious liberty in the new world cannot be written nor understood without a knowledge of this church. It pioneered and blazed
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the way for that priceless privilege. It has been blessed with men and women who have been notable leaders in every good cause. It is a monument of a divinely guided past, and remains to-day a spiritually living organization with a wide and consecrated in- fluence for good in the kingdom of God.
NATHAN E. WOOD.
. STUDY, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, Boston, May, 1899.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
PREPARATIONS. FORERUNNERS
I
CHAPTER II
HENRY DUNSTER AND THOMAS GOOLD .
23
CHAPTER III
DISCIPLINE OF THOMAS GOOLD .
37
CHAPTER IV
ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH. CONFESSION OF FAITH . . 53 CHAPTER V
DISSENT. DISPUTATION.
WORSHIP. REMOVAL
73
CHAPTER VI
PERSECUTIONS.
THE RUSSELLS .
97
CHAPTER VII
DEATHS OF GOOLD AND RUSSELL. NEW MEETING-HOUSE . . 119
CHAPTER VIII
JOHN RUSSELL'S NARRATIVE
145
CHAPTER IX
CHURCH AT KITTERY. KING'S CHAPEL. ELISHA CALLENDER . 175
CHAPTER X
PROSPERITY.
PLANTING OF NEW INTERESTS. SINGING . . 199
CHAPTER XI
MR. CONDY. WHITFIELD REVIVAL. SECOND BAPTIST
CHURCH. SAMUEL STILLMAN. BROWN UNIVERSITY.
WARREN ASSOCIATION .
231
ix
X
PAGE
CHAPTER XII
NEW MEETING-HOUSE. THE REVOLUTION. EDUCATION SOCIETY 259
CHAPTER XIII
MISSIONARY ORGANIZATIONS. GREAT REVIVAL. CLAY. WIN- CHELL. WAYLAND. MASS. STATE CONVENTION. NEWTON THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTION 287
CHAPTER XIV
NEW MEETING-HOUSE. HAGUE. NEALE. GREAT REVIVAL. SOMERSET STREET. UNION WITH SHAWMUT AVENUE. COM- MONWEALTH AVENUE MEETING-HOUSE. CRANE. MOXOM. WOOD. . 323
CHAPTER XV
The SUNDAY-SCHOOL
. 351
CHAPTER XVI
MISCELLANEOUS. PASTORS. DEACONS. BEQUESTS . . 365
CHAPTER I
PREPARATIONS. FORERUNNERS.
I
THE founders of the colony of Massachusetts Bay purposed to plant on these shores of the new world a theocracy which should be subject to such modifica- tions only as their loyalty to the British sovereign compelled. Evidently they desired the smallest pos- sible amount of constraint put upon them by royal authority. The Hebrew theocracy seems to have been pre-eminently in their minds the model for their own newly organized society. The exactions of the Mosaic statutes seemed to them to furnish a clearer guarantee of security and strength in the State than did the freedom of the Gospels. The Church and the State were to be a happy unity in which each inter- penetrated the other, and the earthly boundaries of which should be conterminous. The first Puritan set- tlers had been gathered on the general principle of similarity of political and theological views, and in the earliest days of the colony it was not difficult, through the willing conformity of its members, to preserve an outward unity. There were few, and pos- sibly no, dissentients from their scheme of a united Church and State.
The mother country through many years had been in such a state of ferment, that in spite of persecution, or perhaps because of persecution, men of every shade of theological opinion abounded within her borders. When, therefore, adventurous colonists from Old Eng-
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land began to multiply in New England, the good ships which brought them brought also theit dissen- tient theologies. Many who had experienced the tyranny of the Established Church in the old home, grew restive under the restrictions of an established church, though of the Puritan order, in the new home. They seemed to have expatriated themselves in vain, for they had only exchanged the tyranny of one estab- tablishment for that of another. The Puritans were themselves dissenters. It would have been strange, indeed, if there had not also been dissenters from the Puritans. Moreover, the novel conditions of the new world, with the freedom of its wide wildernesses and the escape from many of the restraints of an old and ordered society, were sure to furnish the fertile seed plots of independent thought and action. It was a strangely futile dream in which our Puritan fore- fathers walked, when they fancied that they could shut out the spirit of dissent from the colony of Mas- sachusetts Bay, when that spirit had always been one of the most imperious and marked inheritances of men of English blood. Nowhere were the conditions more favorable for its development.
Boston was settled and named sometime in the summer of 1630. In about six months thereafter (Feb., 1631) the good ship Lion, heavily laden with provisions, arrived off Nantasket. It had been a time of want, almost of famine, and the day appointed for humiliation and prayer was turned into rejoicing and thanksgiving by this timely relief. But on board this ship was a passenger who was to prove almost as troublesome to the new colony as famine. Mr. Roger
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Williams, whom Governor Winthrop at that time called "a godly minister," was with his newly mar- ried wife among the passengers. He was a man who could not be bent to the will of the ecclesiastical oligarchy which had already assumed authority in matters both spiritual and political. Dissent had come early to the new world and had come to stay. He was at first welcomed eagerly and was "unan- imously chosen teacher at Boston " of the church.1 He refused the invitation, declaring that "the civil magistrates had no right to punish any breach of the first four tables or commandments of the Decalogue." This was the entering wedge between Church and State.
He was soon called to Salem and accepted the office of teacher in that church, in spite of earnest protests from the Boston magistrates against it, on the ground of his divisive teaching. The little frame church in which he preached may still be seen in Salem. It has been carefully preserved, and is one of the many American shrines to which the pilgrims who love liberty resort. Its simplicity and diminu- tiveness are pathetic illustrations of the "day of small things." His views soon became the source of bound- less trouble to the colonial Court and church, and they did not cease threat, expostulation, and agitation un- til they had driven him from his place. In August, 1631, he went to Plymouth, where he became assist- ant to the pastor for about two years. There he found a generous tolerance. But the Salem Church, which seemed to be sincerely attached to him, en-
1 Palfrey, " History of New England, " Vol. I., p. 406. Note.
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treated him to return to thein, which he did, and they retained him until 1635, when he was again and finally banished from the colony because of his "erro- neous and very dangerous opinions." He fled in the dead of winter to Plymouth and thence to Narragan- sett Bay, where he founded the town which he called Providence.
In this new settlement there was to be complete religious toleration, both in teaching and in worship. He became a Baptist, and with eleven others founded the First Baptist Church in Providence, in March, 1639. His "Anabaptist views" were already well known in Salem, and the news of his actual immer- sion in Providence, together with his establishment of a new church, made no small stir both in Salem and in Boston, where he had many sympathizers and adherents.
The conditions were now ripe for the development of a Baptist schism. To meet this incipient dissent, and to deter any others from following in his steps, the General Court had already on March 3, 1636, ordered,
That all persons are to take notice that this Court doth not, nor will hereafter, approve of any such companies of men as shall henceforth join in any pretended way of church fellowship, with- out they shall first acquaint the magistrates and the elders of the greater part of the churches in this jurisdiction with their inten- tions, and have their approbation therein. And further it is or- dered, that no person being a member of any such church which shall hereafter be gathered without the approbation of the magis- trates and the greater part of said churches, shall be admitted to the freedom of this commonwealth. 1
1 " Mass. Records."
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Enforcement of this law was almost immediately re- quired. It was only three months after its promulga- tion that the "constable of Salem " was ordered to break up unauthorized assemblies of dissenters in the town where Mr. Roger Williams had so lately been the minister, and where the seeds of dissent which he had sown broadcast were already producing harvests.
In 1638 Mr. Hansard Knollys came from London to Boston, but was refused permission to remain in the colony because of his "views of Anabaptisme." He was probably not at that time an avowed Baptist, although he held Baptist views. He fled to Piscat- aqua (since called Dover) in New Hampshire, and there gathered a dissenting congregation, to which he ministered until 1641, when he returned to England. He became an eminent Baptist pastor in London, where he spent the remainder of his useful life. It is not certainly known whether he became an acknowl- edged Baptist in Piscataqua, or whether it was after his return to London. It is known, however, that he preached the doctrines of Baptists in New Hampshire, and created there a new center of dissent and alarm to the authorities.
In 1637 Mr. John Clarke, "a man of education and of property," arrived in Boston. He was a physician and at once began the practice of his profession. He soon became disgusted with the intolerant spirit manifested in the colony, and being an intense lover of liberty, decided to go elsewhere and found a colony on principles of broad toleration. He went first to . New Hampshire with some friends of like spirit with himself, but finding the climate too rigorous for his B
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health finally went to Providence. Under the en- couragement of Mr. Roger Williams he decided to settle in Rhode Island, and in May, 1639, founded Newport. Sometime between 1639 and 1644 he or- ganized a Baptist church in Newport, over which he presided as its distinguished minister until his death in 1676.1 "This year (1639) William Wickenden, a Baptist preacher, moves from Salem to Providence." 2 He had been a disseminator of Baptist doctrine in the region around Salem, and had undoubtedly received his initial impulse toward Baptists from Mr. Roger Williams. In 1642,
The Lady Moody, a wise and amiable religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt withal by many of the elders and others, and admonished by the church at Salem (whereof she was), but persisting still, and to avoid further trouble, she removed to the Dutch, against the ad- vice of her friends. Many others infested with Anabaptisme, etc., removed thither also. She was after excommunicated. 3
All those who removed to New York had doubtless been influenced toward their Baptist views by the teaching and example of Mr. Williams. In 1644 Thomas Painter, of Hingham, became a Baptist, and "having a child born would not suffer his wife to carry it to be baptized. He was complained of for this to the Court, and enjoined by them to suffer his child to be baptized." He refused to obey the order, and told the Court that "it was an antichristian ordinance," where-
1 The first preserved records of the Newport Church do not begin until 1725, but it is known to have been formed before 1644.
2 Felt, " Annals of Salem," Vol. II., p. 577.
3 Winthrop's "Journal," Vol. II., p. 72.
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upon they tied him up and whipped him, "which he bore without flinching and declared he had divine help to support him," etc.1 He was probably the first one of those who, on account of Baptist beliefs, suffered a public whipping in Massachusetts by order of the authorities. He removed afterward to New- port and united with the Baptist church there. His name is fifteenth on their list In February, 1644, William Witter, of Swampscott (then a part of Lynn), a neighbor of the Lady Moody, was arraigned before the Salem Court "for entertaining that the baptism of infants was sinful." He was found guilty and sen- tenced "to make public acknowledgment of his fault." This he would not do, and hence we find him before the Court in Salem again in 1645, "presented by the grand jury for saying that they who staid whilst a child is baptized do worship the devil."2 Later he was cited to appear before the General Court in Boston " to be proceeded with according to the merit of his offense." All these proceedings had no deterrent ef- fect on this obstinate Baptist, nor the fact that at the same court John Wood was arraigned "for professing Anabaptist sentiments and withholding his children from baptism," and John Spur was bound over for similar reasons to pay a fine of twenty pounds. "The heresie of Anabaptismne " had evidently become wide- spread around Salem. In 1648 Edward Starbuck gave much trouble to the authorities in Dover, New Hampshire, because of "his profession of Anabap- tistry." 3 Those who had been punished for heresy
1 " Mass. Records." ? " Mass. Colonial Records," Vol. III., pp. 67, 68. ' Felt, "Ecclesiastical History of New England," Vol. II., p. 28.
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had suffered under no specific statute, but were con- demned without law and without trial. When Gov- ernor Winslow was called to an account for it by the home government, he acknowledged that the whip- ping had been done unlawfully, but justified himself on the ground that the sufferers had been evil-doers against the peace of the commonwealth. The General Court, in order that it might have cover of law for its severely repressive measures, enacted the following statute, November 13, 1644 :
Forasmuch as experience hath plentifully and often proved that . since the first rising of the Anabaptists, about one hundred years since, they have been the incendiaries of the commonwealths, and the infectors of persons in main matters of religion, and the troublers of churches in all places where they have been, and that they who have held the baptizing of infants unlawful, have usually held other errors or heresies together therewith, though they have (as other heretics use to do) concealed the same till they spied out a fit advantage and opportunity to vent them, by way of question or scruple, and whereas divers of this kind have since our coming into New England appeared amongst ourselves, some whereof (as others before them) denied the ordinance of magistracy, and the lawfulness of making war, and others the lawfulness of magistrates, and their inspection into any breach of the first table : which opinions, if they should be connived at by us are like to be in= creased amongst us, and so must necessarily bring guilt upon us, infection and trouble to the churches, and hazard to the whole commonwealth : it is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons, within this jurisdiction, shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely de- part the congregation at the ministration of the ordinances, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy, or their lawful right and authority to make war, or to punish the outward breaches of the first table, and shall appear to the court willfully and obstinately to
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continue therein after due time and means of conviction, every such person or persons shall be sentenced to banishment." 1
This statute was certainly broad enough to allow punishment of any person whatsoever whom . the Court might dislike and desire to drive out of the colony. The assumption that Baptists were "the incendiaries of commonwealths " was wholly gratui- tous. It is a fine illustration of hurling opprobrious epithets where the facts in proof are wholly want- ing. The gist of this statute was its penalty for dis- belief in infant baptism, which was always the real corner-stone on which was builded the union of Church and State. If this were destroyed, the whole structure of a theocratic commonwealth would fall in a hopeless ruin, and the churches of the established · order would be left with but little growth and a di- minishing power. Here was the crucial question, and the battle was destined to rage around it through many long years before complete religious liberty was won and Church and State were severed. There were some who deplored the severity of the laws against dissent, and especially the cruelty of their ap- plication. There was occasionally agitation, although slight, for their repeal. In 1645, "upon a petition of divers persons for consideration of the law against Anabaptists, the Court voted that the law mentioned should not be altered at all, nor explained."2 The General Court received the following petition, which was far more to its liking, signed by seventy-eight citizens of Roxbury and Dorchester :
1 " Mass. Records."
2 "Colonial Records," Vol. II., p. 149.
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It is therefore our humble petition to this honorable Court that such lawes or orders as are in force amongst us against Anabap- tists or other erroneous p-sons whereby to restraine the spreadinge and divulginge of their errors amongst ye 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 infest and spread in this Country as some doe desire. 13. 3. 46. 1
The General Court needed no urging, for its spirit was already relentless toward dissenters. The min- isters also were watchful to see that the bonds of in- tolerance were not in any way loosened, and that their own exclusive monopoly of religious teaching was carefully maintained. This protective duty upon religion made them guard all the boundaries of the colony lest some Baptists or Quakers should be smug- gled into their society, and the ecclesiastical establish- ment be secretly undermined. The General Court felt that Plymouth Colony was far too lenient in deal- ing with Baptists, and sought to stir it up to hostilities against them. As a result of this neighborly citation,
John Hazell, Edward Smith and wife, Obadiah Holmes, Joseph Torry and wife, and the wife of James Mann, William Deuell and wife, Baptists of Rehoboth, are presented for continuing to meet from house to house on the Sabbath. The Court charged them to desist from their separation and neither to ordain officers, nor to baptize, nor to break bread together, nor to meet on the first days of the week. 2
This was in 1649. But they would not promise, and insisted on following the dictates of their own con- science and their understanding of the word of God.
1 "Mass. Archives," Vol. X., p. 211.
2 Felt, "Ecclesiastical History of New England," Vol. II., p. 27.
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The General Court wrote again to Plymouth, Octo- ber 18, 1649:
Wee are credibly informed that your patient bearing with such men hath produced another effect, namely, the multiplying and encreasing of the same errors. Particularly wee understand that within this few weeks there hath binn at Sea Cuncke thirteen or fourteen persons rebaptized (a swift progres in one towne). The infection of such diseases being so neare us, are likely to spread into our jurisdiction. 1
Sea Cuncke (now Swansea and Rehoboth) had be- come, under the gentle tolerance of Plymouth Colony, a place where liberty in doctrinal belief was enjoyed, and was admirably fitted to become the home of the Baptist church which was first permanently estab- lished there in 1663. Rev. John Myles was the founder and first pastor of this church. He and some of his flock, weary of the persecution in Wales which ensued under the "Act of Uniformity " passed when Charles II. came to the throne, sought in the new world freedom of opinion and worship. This church in Swansea was in some sense a reorganization of the original church in Swansea, Wales,2 but added to it- self members who were already residents of the re- 'gion, and who had held Baptist doctrines. The church grew rapidly, so that at the end of the first ten years it had more than two hundred members. These were the best and most influential years of its whole history, and furnished a source of lively dissent from the churches of the Standing Order. It was
1 " Mass. Colonial Records," Vol. III., p. 173.
2 Only two of the constituent members were from Wales, viz, Rev. John Myles and Nicholas Tanner.
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found that the church was located within the juris- diction of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and per- secution soon followed. The members were fined, and were ordered to remove to some other place. They heeded the order and settled within the boun- daries of Rhode Island. Afterward they were granted a tract of land by Plymouth Colony, and settled in their present location, which they named Swansea. The church still exists, and has inade an honorable history. On July 19, 1651, John Clarke, Obadiah Holines, and John Crandall, "being the representa- tives of the Baptist church in Newport, upon the re- quest of William Witter, of Lynn, arrived there, he being a brother in the church, who, by reason of liis advanced age, could not undertake so great a journey as to visit the church." 1 No man in colonial Rhode Island history was inore influential, except Roger Williams, or of nobler and purer fame than Dr. John Clarke. He was a trusted adviser, a wise legislator, a learned man, a devout Christian, and a distinguished minister. Obadiah Holmes was granted land in Salem in 1639, and was admitted to the church there, March 24, 1640. Later in the same year he was pre- sented by the Grand Jury, "for reproachfully speak- ing against the ordinance of God " (baptismn). In 1646 he removed to Rehoboth.2 Hence in going to Salem and Lynn he was returning to a former home, and to meet old neighbors and acquaintances. Of John Crandall little is known. William Witter, of Lynn, had been under discipline, and was finally cut
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