History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 58

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534

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As soon as Winthrop's dissent had put a final stop to the project of choosing Wheelwright associate teacher in Boston, the friends of the former south of the Neponset took action. At the same meeting of the church its records show that " our brother, Mr. John Wheelwright, was granted unto for the prepar- ing for a church gathering at Mount Wollystone, upon a petition of some that were resident there." This vote was passed on the 19th of November, 1636.

If he entered upon his duties immediately,-and there can be little question that he did,-John Wheelwright ministered to those settled at Mount Wollaston about thirteen months. But there is neither local record nor tradition of him or of his work ; nor is it even known where his meeting-house stood, if, indeed, in those early days his scattered flock could boast of a meeting-house. It is not at all impossible that services may have been held during the first winter at the dwellings of different members of the little congregation; while the following sum- mer the pastor preached " abroad under a tree," just as Wilson and Phillips had preached at Charlestown during the first months of the settlement. If a church edifice was then erected, it must have been a very simple and temporary structure, built of logs the crevices between which were sealed with mud, while the roof was covered with thatch. It is not likely that it was more than twenty or twenty-five feet square, and there can be little doubt that it stood at the most convenient point on the old Indian trail, then rapidly widening into a road between Plymouth and Boston.

The single year of Wheelwright's settlement was the year of the Antinomian controversy, the stormiest Into the details

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of that controversy it is unnecessary to enter here, for they are part of the history of the State; but, so far as the later town of Quincy was concerned, it admits of little doubt that the whole course of subsequent events then received an influence which has ever since been felt. As the twig was bent, the tree inclined. Wheel- wright was a leader among the Antinomians, and his parishioners were among the foremost supporters of that cause. The successful opposition to him as associate teacher was the first overt act in the coming contest. It was a victory for Wilson over Mrs. Hutchinson ; and she regarded it as such. She was not so to be put down, and she gave to her tongue loose rein. No longer content with attacking her own pastor, she now boldly assailed the body of the clergy, all of whom had evinced their sympathy with him. To venture on such an attack required no small amount of courage, for the clergy were little less than a sacred caste in the early settlement of Massachusetts. To shake their hold over affairs in church and state was almost impossible. But it is not likely that Mrs. Hutchinson realized this, or ever calmly counted the cost of what she was doing. She went on heedlessly. She had the open sympathy of those immediately around her in Boston. She could count on the support of Governor Vane, and his popularity throughout the colony was so great as to be still a thing not easy to account for. Many others of the magistrates and deputies were with her. Ac- cordingly, she went on step by step, making herself always more offensively aggressive, until at last she boldly declared that not only Wilson, but the whole body of the clergy, excepting only Cotton and Wheel- wright, were under a covenant of works. Those two, and those two alone, walked in a covenant of grace.

Mere theological jargon now, in 1663 these words had a deep significance. In so using them, Mrs. Hutchinson did little less than openly express her belief that the whole body of the clergy, two only of their number excepted, were whited sepulchres. He who walked in a covenant of grace was the chosen of the Lord. In him dwelt the spirit of God. He was inspired ; he preached the true word ; the root of the matter was in him. Not so he who labored under a covenant of works. He might be a very worthy, 1 well-meaning, pious man, doing his best according to his lights ; but his lights were of the earth, earthy. | God's voice was not in him. It was the blind lead- ing the blind. Thus she undertook to declare who were inspired and who were uninspired ; and as she gave utterance to her judgments, incredible as it now seems, nearly the whole of the inhabitants of Boston lent believing ears to her. On one side were her ad-

vocates and friends ; on the other, almost alone, were Wilson and Winthrop.

Outside of Boston it was not so. The mental con- tagion had not spread. The other towns, some twelve in number, gradually, under the influence of their ministers, awoke to a consciousness of what was going on, and they rallied to the support of the clergy. Winthrop was deputy-governor, and recognized as Wilson's main support in the Boston Church ; ac- cordingly, his popularity underwent a revival and he was brought to the front once more as the exponent of the conservative side against Vane, who was the popular idol of the new movement. Thus matters stood all through the winter of 1636-37. The agita- tion was continually on the increase, and it seemed as if men were fairly bereft of their senses, as indeed they were. They argued fiercely about the unknow- able in language the terms of which they did not understand ; and to-day almost the only intelligible thing in the whole dispute is that Mrs. Hutchinson, indulging in wild dreams of ambition on her own ac- count, had persuaded herself and others that she was inspired, and the first movement of her inspiration was to drive Mr. Wilson, whom she did not like, out of his pulpit.

During this time of rising tumult Wheelwright was ministering at the Mount, whither he had re- moved with his wife and family. In December, at the time of the meeting of the General Court, he at- tended an angry conference of the clergy, which re- sulted only in a widening of the breach. For a speech which he then made to the assembled digni- taries, Wilson had been openly called to account by his parishioners in his own church. They were all against him, and after being censured he was publicly admonished by the teacher. It clearly was not in Wheelwright's nature to remain silent in the back- ground during such a controversy ; and even if he made an effort at self-restraint, Mrs. Hutchinson had conferred a dangerous prominence upon him when she classed him, with Cotton, as being alone of all the clergy under a covenant of grace. She had thus made him the centre upon which the anger of his brother-clergymen would naturally concentrate. His position was unlike that of Cotton. Cotton was recognized by his brethren as the first and most eminent of their whole order. He was regarded with reverential respect. Him above all they wished to save. But they greatly needed a scapegoat, and a scapegoat they found ready to their hands in the pastor at the Mount. Nor was he a man to avoid the attack. On the contrary, he invited it.

He did so in this way. On the 29th [N. S.]

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(it was the 19th, old style) of January, 1637, a throp had been made to listen to what the mass of the congregation regarded as some thoroughly sound re- ligious doctrine. But the latter was not sufficiently stirred up by the fact to make any mention of it in his diary, and there is no reason to suppose that either his safety or that of the settlement were put in jeopardy. solemn fast was held in view of the trouble then impending over the Protestant world in general, and the colony of Massachusetts Bay in particu- lar. Not only were the churches at home torn with dissension but Indian troubles were impending, and in Germany the thirty years' war was at its height. It is possible that Wheelwright on the morning of When hostilities are decided upon a pretext for open war is always at hand. A silent decree of the clergy had evidently now gone forth that Wheelwright was to be disciplined. His position invited attack, and his utterances in private, doubtless, as well as in public, afforded sufficient pretext for it. He had been set up against Wilson in Wilson's own church and by Wilson's people. Accordingly, when the March Gen- eral Court met, action was taken on a certain sermon which Wilson had delivered before it in December, and for which it will be remembered he had subse- quently been formally admonished in his own church that day may have preached to his own people at the Mount ; but if he did, he later went to Boston, where, in the afternoon, he attended church services and listened to a discourse from Cotton. When Cotton had finished, Wheelwright was called upon " to exer- cise as a private brother." He had come prepared. Possibly he only repeated the discourse he had that morning delivered to his own flock, though of this there is no evidence. In any event, he now preached that fast-day sermon for which a few months later he was called to such severe account. As he spoke some person in the audience took careful notes of what he by Teacher Cotton. The court now expressed its said. His enemies even then were lying in wait for him.i

emphatic approval of this sermon. It then turned from Wilson to Wheelwright, and the matter of the fast-day discourse was brought up. In answer to a

in itself, and delivered at any other time and place, , summons Wheelwright presently appeared. The notes taken at the time the discourse was delivered were pro- duced, and he was asked if he admitted their correct- ness. In reply he gave the court his own manuscript.

There was nothing in the fast-day sermon which would have excited general notice. Except in parts it is a very dull performance, and, unless delivered with peculiar fire, it would now seem more calculated to put an audience to sleep than to excite those compos- ing it to acts of sedition. Couched in that peculiar scriptural phraseology which it was equally a delight for the Puritan to use and to hear, it belongs to an artificial form of composition which may have its day, but is afterwards sure to be forgotten. In a few years it becomes not less antiquated than last century garments. That the fast-day sermon had a very di- rect bearing on questions then greatly exercising the minds of those who listened to it is indisputable ; but that is expected in all occasional discourses. As a sharp, vehement arraignment of those who walked in a covenant of works, it will not be pretended that Wheelwright ought then to have preached this sermon in Wilson's pulpit. To do so was, to say the least, in very bad taste. But beyond this the sermon is not open to just criticism. It does not seem to have been either intended or calculated to excite sedition, nor is there any reason to suppose that it at the time caused any particular remark. Wilson had been thoroughly exhorted from his own pulpit, and Win- |

A bitter wrangle followed which lasted through the sessions of several days. The conservatives at first thought to dispose of the matter behind closed doors. The proposal so to do excited strong opposition, and Wheelwright, while justifying all that he had said, declined to answer further questions. It was then decided to go on publicly, and Wheelwright was again summoned. The room was thronged, for the court itself, magistrates and deputies, numbered some forty persons, and, besides others, nearly all the twelve or fourteen ministers of the province were present. The feeling was intense. Again the sermon was produced and put in Wheelwright's hands. Again he justified it ; and, in answer to questions put him, he declared that he meant to include in his animadversions, as being under a covenant of works, all who walked in the way he had described. The matter was then re- ferred to the ministers, who were called upon to state whether " they in their ministry did walk in such a way." There was little room for doubt what the an- swer would be, for it was an ingenious way of secur- ing at once both evidence of guilt and a verdict upon it. With one voice the ministers responded they considered that they did walk in such a way.

The verdict was thus rendered. But the struggle was not yet over. The doors of the General Court

1 It has been taken for granted that this sermon was preached at the Mount (Palfrey's " New, England," i. 479, n .; Pattee's " Quincy," 186). The correct facts, as stated in the text, were brought out by Bell, in his monograph on John Wheelwright, in the publications of the Prince Society (pp. 13, 15).

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were again closed, and behind them a debate began which lasted two entire days. Vane and Winthrop led the opposing forces, and for a time it seemed as though the party of the clergy would be thwarted. But at last they won over to their side two of the

put an end to strife. When in the order of business Wheelwright's case came up, he appeared before the court. Among its forty-three members he saw only three faces friendly to him, but he was again allowed to depart until the autumn session. He was merely magistrates, and by a narrow majority the fast-day admonished to bethink himself in the interval of re- sermon was pronounced seditious. Yet no sentence was now passed upon Wheelwright. The contest had been long and severe, and the parties were so equally divided that it was not thought expedient to then proceed further. Wheelwright was accordingly simply ordered to appear before the next General Court, and he was not meanwhile silenced as a minister. His case was commended to the Boston church to be spiritually dealt with. tracting his utterances and reforming his errors if he hoped to receive favor. His answer was character- istic. If he had indeed, he said, been guilty of sedition, he deserved death ; but if the court should proceed against him, he would take his appeal to the king. As for retraction, he had nothing to retract. The dominant party now had recourse to a measure of legislation which there can be little doubt perma- nently affected the settlement of the future town of This was certainly a forbearing disposition to make of it. Not only was the church of Boston notoriously in sympathy with Wheelwright, but it had already so expressed itself. It had done this, too, in a way not to be mistaken, and which was not forgotten ; for hardly had the court by formal vote pronounced the fast-day sermon seditious, than a petition, bearing the names of nearly all the most prominent members of the Boston church, had been presented to that same court. In this paper the case of Wheelwright was warmly argued, and his punishment deprecated. Respectful in tone, the document was singularly well worded and to the point. At the moment it would not seem to have excited particular remark, and, received as a matter of course, it was placed on the files of the court. But priesthoods have long memories. That a long list of influential names was appended to this memorial was now noted down, and a few months later it was made the basis of a pro- scription. Quincy. It passed an alien law. The tide of immi- gration was then setting strongly towards New Eng- land. All the towns were looking for additions to their numbers, and Wheelwright and his friends were confidently expecting the arrival of a portion of the church of a Mr. Brierly in England, who possibly may have been Wheelwright's successor at Bilsby. One party was already on its way, and reached Boston in July. With a view to this coming rein- forcement of the minority, the General Court in May passed a law imposing heavy penalties in case strangers were harbored or allowed to remain in the province three weeks without a magistrate's ·permis- sion. All the magistrates belonged to one party, and were wholly devoted to it. Accordingly, when the body of immigrants from the Brierly church landed in Boston, though they were of one blood with those who met them on the shore, they were confronted with this law. In Boston their friends were in a large majority ; yet their friends could not shelter For the moment the reference of Wheelwright's case to the Boston church seemed to open a door to conciliation ; but now the public feeling was too much excited. A collision was inevitable. One party or the other had to establish its supremacy. The party of the clergy was unmistakably in the majority in all the towns except Boston, and this became apparent at the annual charter election. Held on the 27th [N. S.] of May, under a large oak-tree on the edge of what is now Cambridge common, the election of 1637 was a memorable one. Winthrop, amidst an excitement which seemed at times about to result in violence, was then chosen Governor over Vane. Coddington was left out of the magistracy. So, also, was Hough. The overthrow of the friends of Wheelwright was complete. them above three weeks, nor could Boston sell them a habitation, or a vacant bit of land on which to erect one, without incurring a heavy and accumulative penalty. A delay of four months only in the enforce- ment of the law could be obtained. At the expira- tion of that time the new-comers had to be without the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. They submitted, for they had nothing to do except to submit. None the less the law remains one of the curiosities of partisan legislation. There can be little room for doubt that the people thus driven away would, had they been permitted to remain in the colony, have settled at Mount Wollaston under the ministration of Wheelwright. Indeed, they could not well have settled elsewhere, so high was public feeling running. Under these circumstances, those at the Mount being forced to deny even a resting-place to their own kin,

At first the party now in complete control used its power sparingly, and an earnest attempt was made to | and obliged, as it were, to thrust them out into the

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wilderness, it was small matter for surprise that when midsummer came there were "many hot speeches given forth," and angry threats were freely made.

Early in August Vane returned to England, and Wheelwright lost in him both a friend and a pro- tector. Nearly at the same time the Pequot war was brought to a triumphant close, and the pastor, Wilson, who during the summer had been with the little army as its chaplain, returned to Boston. He came back flushed with a consciousness of victory and bent on revenge. Cotton, who up to this time had preserved an appearance of firmness, bowed before the coming storm and hastened to make his peace. In the first place a synod of the churches was held. This, the carliest gathering of the kind in New England, pro- ceeded at once to detect and spread upon its record, as then existing in primitive Massachusetts, no less than eighty-two "opinions, some blasphemous, others er- roneous, and all unsafe," besides nine "unwholesome expressions. " With two exceptions,-Cotton and Wheelwright,-the ministers in the synod were of one way of thinking. The proceedings consequently were not inharmonious. Certain of the Boston lay- members, indeed, expressing both disgust and indig- nation that such a huge body of heresies should be paraded, got up and left the assembly ; Wheelwright, more sensible, discreetly held his peace, taking the ground that abstract errors not directly imputed to him were none of his concern.

A long discussion of controverted points ensued. No one in the assembly had any distinct idea of the subjects under debate. For the most part they were mere theological abstractions of the most metaphysical character relating to justification, sanctification, and the like, and either immaterial or unknowable. At last Cotton, with a degree of worldly wisdom which did much credit to his head, announced that he saw light. Wheelwright was of a less accommodating spirit ; thoroughly stiff-necked and disputatious, he would not profess to yield. Accordingly, when the synod dispersed his enemies had gained their end. They had won over Cotton, whom they wished to save ; while Wheelwright, whose utter destruction they sought, was left to confront them without a single friend or ally.

Events now moved rapidly to their foregone con- clusion. Immediately after the adjournment of the synod the General Court chosen in May was dissolved. It had been elected for the entire year, and to thus end it was unprecedented; but it had evinced a moderation of spirit which did not meet the views of the extremists. The tide of popular feeling was set- ting strongly towards them, and they meant to avail

themselves of it. Measures of severe repression were to be put in force. So the old court was dissolved, and the election of a new one ordered. The result was all the conservatives could have hoped for. Of the thirty-three members of the court now chosen, no less than twenty-one were new; and all, old and new, save three alone, were strongly opposed to the Hutchinson party. Hough was among those left out ; Coddington was again returned by Boston.

The court met on the 12th [N. S.] of November. It found Wheelwright still preaching the covenant of grace at Mount Wollaston. Though the clouds were gathering black over his path, he held straight on, rejecting all suggestions of compromise, as he sternly declared that the difference between him and his op- ponents was a gulf too wide to bridge. So, as Win- throp expressed it, those in the majority " finding, upon consultation, that two so opposite parties could not continue in the same body without apparent haz- ard of ruin to the whole, agreed to send away some of the principal."

And now the memorial from the Boston church, presented the day after the judgment of the General Court had declared the fast-day sermon seditious, was made to do yeoman's service. It also was pro- nounced seditious. No less than sixty of the leading men of Boston had affixed their signatures to it. In doing so they now found that they had committed a po- litical offense, and might be visited with fine, imprison- ment, and exile. The new court had contained origi- nally three members, deputies from Boston, friendly to the Antinomians. Two of these were incontinently expelled : one because his name was signed to the church memorial, the other because from his place in the court he justified it, though his name was not on it. The tribunal before which he was to be tried be- ing thus purged of all his friends, Coddington alone excepted, Wheelwright's case was called. He ap- peared, and was asked if he was prepared to confess his errors and submit himself to the court. Protest- ing his innocence, he refused. Then followed a long and angry parliamentary struggle extending into a second day. Every ill which had befallen the settle- ment was laid at Wheelwright's door. To such an indictment no defense was possible ; and so the court in due time proceeded to its sentence. It was dis- franchisement and exile. As it was already the latter half of November, and the winter had set in with un- usual severity, it was proposed that the time of the exile's departure should be postponed until March ; but meanwhile he was not to preach. He was again, this time in New England, to be a silenced minister. From this sentence Wheelwright, as he had before

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said he should, took an appeal to the king. A night's reflection probably satisfied him that he had nothing to hope for by pursuing this course, and ac- | cordingly the next day he withdrew his appeal, offer- ing to accept a sentence of simple banishment. It so stands recorded. Fourteen days only were allowed him within which he was to settle his affairs and leave the jurisdiction. His parishioner, Atherton Hough, became bondsman for him.

Unlike the other exiles of the Antinomian contro- versy, Wheelwright did not turn his steps to Rhode Island. On the contrary, after preaching one fare- well sermon to his little congregation, he started northward to New Hampshire. It was the end of November, and the deepening snow was thick on the ground. He went alone, carrying with him a sense of burning wrong and endless persecution ; nor did he ever again set foot in his old parish. Early in the following spring his wife and children followed him, and for a time the family found refuge in the aca- demic town of Exeter. The subsequent fortunes of Wheelwright are no part of the history of Quincy. It is sufficient to say that he survived his exile more than forty years, and when at last he died he was the oldest minister in New England. But though he outlived every one of his contemporaries, and when he passed away the Antinomian controversy had be- come a meaningless thing of the past, his brethren took at the time no notice of the patriarch's death, and no monument now marks his grave.

The first clergyman of the church which was after- wards incorporated as the town of Braintree, John Wheelwright was also its most distinguished clergy- man. A Puritan, and a contentious one, he was essentially a man of force. Stiff-necked, unamiable, and far from lovable, his proper place was not the pulpit. He should have been a man of affairs, a law- . yer and a magistrate. There was about him scarcely a trace of the gentle spirit of Christ. Yet indica- tions have not been wanting that in more than one way the brief connection of John Wheelwright with the young settlement at Mount Wollaston affected its subsequent character as a community through a period of more than two centuries. That it did so negatively has already been pointed out. In conse- quence of the Antinomian controversy the formation of the town was delayed, and the material composing it made different from what it otherwise would have been. More than this, there can be no doubt that Wheelwright's parishioners sympathized fully in his views. The first teacher of his church, when two years later it was formally gathered, was one of his supporters whose name was blotted from the famous

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History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 58

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co. Number of Pages: 1534

Author: Hurd, D. Hamilton (Duane Hamilton) ed
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Philadelphia, J. W. Lewis & Co.
Number of Pages: 1534