USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Scituate > History of Scituate, Massachusetts, from its first settlement to 1831 > Part 7
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" Judith Vassall married Resolved White.
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the larger boundes, because they were the ancient Church. We answer - that neither in respect of inhabitants in the Town, nor yet in respect of Church state in this place, is there much difference, not above two or three men : for when Mr Lothrop the first Pastor left us, most of the inhabitants and church members went with him, in so much that of seven male church members left by the Church that went, we were three.
"2. In regard that they cast us off wrongfully, they ought to be contented that we should be at least equal with them, in the division of lands and commons : although, indeed, the lands are mostly divided already .*
"3d. Whereas some have thought fitting that their towne should come three miles from their Meeting-house toward us, we say, that such a division would take in all our houses into their town (nearly) or if they leave us that little necke of land that some of us dwell upon, that is but one hundred rods broad of planting land, and their towne would goe behind our houses and cut us off from fire wood and commons for cattle, for a mile and an half beyond our houses : and therefore the Governor's motion was most equal 'that we should set our Meeting-house three miles from theirs, and so the members of each Church would draw themselves to dwell as neare to each Meeting-house as they can, and the Town need not be divided.'
"Lastly. If that it were needful to divide the town, it were most fitting for them to set their Meeting-house a mile further from us, towards their farms and hay grounds, and then they may use those lands that now they cannot conveniently doe, and so have convenient room to receive more inhabitants and members, and that is the only way to give maintenance to their officers and enlarge themselves."
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A Letter from Mr Chauncy to the Elders and Church of Roxbury.
" Scituate 22d. 12 mo. 1642.
"Rev. and well beloved in Christ Jesus our Saviour.
"It is an argument of greate weight with us that (feeling as we are persuaded you do) is urged by the Apostle 'that the name of God and his doctrine be not blas- phemed.' Therefore, in regard that it hath been credibly reported unto us, that our Church hath been grievously traduced
* The marshes on the river and lands adjacent to the harbour are here referred to.
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to some of you and of other Churches in the Bay, as also in respect that some of the church members do live amongst us, whose welfare we believe you do tenderly desire to further, we have thought it our duty to wipe away this dishonor of God's name, (at least to endeavor so to do) that might any way be occasioned by us. Now for any imputations that are laid to our charge, because we are uncertain in parte, we have sent two of our brethren to give satisfaction to yourselves and others as farre as may be, withal persuaded that you walk so far by rule, as not to receive, any accusation against us, without suffi- cient witness and hearing of our just defence.
"Now because that other things have fallen out amongst us, that do serve to lay some blemish upon us, we have thought fit to acquaint you and other Churches with them : and they are these. That there are four persons in our plantation (by name Mr William Vassall, Thomas Lapham, Thomas King, and John Twisden) that have challenged of late, the name of a true Church of Christ distinct from us, the beginning and foundation of which pretended Church, we have found to be this. Upon Mr Lothrop and his brethren's resolution to depart from this to Barnstable, there was a day of humiliation kept at Mr Hatherly's house, by the rest of the brethren that purposed to stay at Scituate, and as some of them do constantly affirm they entered into Covenant with God and Christ and with one another, to walke together in the whole revealed will of God and Christ.
" This meeting, the four above named persons account to be the beginning of their Church, and yet two of them (by name Mr William Vassall and John Twisden) were absent from it, and the other two (Thomas Lapham and Thomas King,) tho' they were present, yet since, before many witnesses, have resolutely denied that themselves expressed any covenant by word of mouth : but however, they say that they made an implicit Covenant, which they judge sufficient to constitute a. true Church, whilst we do not, and therefore could not hold communion with them upon any such ground.
" Besides, though they have of late renewed Covenant to- gether, yet we judge that it was done surreptitiously, without any notice given to our Church beforehand, who had just exception against some of their members that renewed it.
" And that it was done suddenly, in that extremity of the greate snow on the 26 of the 11 mo. when few could come at them without apparent danger. and
" Also (we hear) it was done irreligiously without fasting or prayer needful for so greate a business.
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" Besides, we cannot excuse the meeting from being factious, there being already a Church gathered : and we have offered them several tymes, that in case we saw cause, they might joyne with us, which they still refused.
"Lastly. They have since great multitudes added to them, (as we hear) nine or ten in a day, concerning diverse of whom we have just cause to doubt, that they are not lively stones for such a spiritual house.
" And these things we desire you, as you have opportunity, to acquaint at least the elders of other neighbor Churches withal, that neither yourselves nor they may have communion defiled by any of them offering to communicate with you.
"Now our Lord J. C. and God even our Father give you to hold fast your integrity and increase all heavenly graces in you.
" In our Common Saviour " Your loving brother in the name and 3
"CH. CHAUNCY with the consent of the rest."
The following answer was addressed to Mr Chauncy, March 1643, and entered on the Church records.
"Sir. Since we must answer your letter. of complaints against us, we will let pass your preamble, and rank your dis- course of causes and complaints and much untruth under ten heads, for order and brevity's sake, as you will find them signed in the margin.
"1. It is well that you have found a beginning and foundation for our Church (though you intend to rase it, as you have done your own) and we assure ourselves that you can find no better for yourself; for if you found us a Church, you were received a member and ordained a Pastor of that Church.
"2. 3. We count not the meeting at Mr Hatherly's house, the beginning of our Church, and you did not well so peremp- torily to affirm what you knew not: neither do we hold, much less say (as you subtly insinuate) that we have no express Covenant, much less slight it, but have our Church grounded on express Covenant.
"4. We did not renew our Covenant surreptitiously : we secreted nothing by fraud from you: for you had before sent messengers to tell us that we were not of your Church : and if you have any just exceptions against some of our persons you have broken Christ's rule which requires 'If thou hast aught
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against thy brother, to tell him between thee and him, &c.' but thy brother intreats thee to shew him his offence and offers satisfaction, and yet you will cast evil reports abroad of him, who may not know the fault committed. Can you clear this your passage from slander ?
"5. You have untruly reported the suddenness of our meeting, the extremity of the greate snowe, the month, the day of the month in which it was: and also the apparent danger of the meeting, and all to the intent to defame us, as if it had been appointed to avoid others coming to us : wheras, some of your members were invited to be with us, and members of Roxbury and Barnstable, and both men and women were present, without any appearance of danger.
"6. You would have it understood that our meeting was so irreligious as that we did not call upon God by prayer for his blessing upon us and others : you subtly insinuate when you say it was done without fasting and prayer: and having written fasting or prayer, lest that would be too greate to affirm you dashed out or and put in and, so that you might have some color of excuse : but if you had meant plainly, you would have also put out prayer from your exception ; so that we cannot but observe that you would write what you could devise in the subtlest manner that you could, against us : and yet, for that we had not a fast, we had the precedent of our first division when Mr Lothrop was here, before us.
"7. Your charge of faction is (on the ground) that there were a Church here; and yet you were no more a Church without us than we were without you : and indeed you had cast us off and we were not of you. Nor doth the Township make a Church. And as for your offering us to joyne you, 'if you see cause,' you might have mocked a Papist with such a delusion, for they may join with you 'if you see cause.' And what cause did we see more to take you to be our Pastor, than the Church of Plymouth did of which you were a member? And yet you would insinuate that we wilfully and without cause refuse communion with you.
"8. And for the exception which you have against some of those that we have added to us, you ought to tell us the persons and the grounds of your exceptions. And then it may so appear that there may be to us as many exceptions and as much ground of rash censures of some of yours, as you can have against ours, if we should give ourselves to be 'busybodies in other men's matters.'
6 9. For your greate care that you had to write to other
9
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Churches, that they should be kept from defiling themselves by any of ours offering to communicate with any of them; it is a new doctrine to us, that if any of those that communicate together be in sin, and the church be ignorant of it, the Church's communion is defiled, and yet your words import no less.
"In the former parte of your letter, you seem as if you had often offered us holy communion with you, and seem to blame us for refusing therof, and here you deem us so filthy, every one of us, that our holding communion with others would defile the communion of other Churches : a sudden change, too sudden to be well grounded.
"Lastly. For your subscription 'in the name and with the consent of the rest,' you might well leave out the word all, as you have done. For any thing that we can yet learn, but few ever did hear your letter read : and we have no cause to believe that all your Church would ever have been willing that you should have scandalized us in their names ; and therefore blame us not because we do not answer your letter with reference to all the members of your Church, seeing we find such subtilty in the subscription, that three fourths of your Church may be excused, if you please.
" Blame us not for want of styles and compliments, seeing we are only to make our bare answer to an accusation."
To Rev. John Wilson, Boston.
"Scituate June 7, 1643.
" Rev. Sir. We give you hearty thanks for your courteous entertainment at our last being with you, when you were pleased to give us notice of a letter that Mr Chauncy sent to Mr Elliot, with the intent to be showed to the Elders, wherin he intimated some complaints of us : which letter the Church is desirous that I should answer, because Mr Elliot hath told me the effect therof, but not delivered us the letter or a copy. The effect I take to be this. 1. He blames us for calling ourselves the old body or Church. 2. for schisme. 3. for close combining ourselves. 4. for not calling the Church to see our proceedings, which he is pleased to call faction. 5. suspicion of some ungodliness in the meeting. 6. for injury' to their Church. 7. with wrong to God's ordinances, opposing them. 8. that many poor soules may be snared by our example. 9. that his ministry is opposed by our practise. All men may perceive that the accusation is very sharp, and we conceive without cause.
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$1. To the first we answer, that we and they were one Church together, and they disclaimed their Church state wher- in we stood; reason and religion will show that we must needs remain the old Church, themselves being become a new one. I will not find faulte with him for unorderly proceeding, desiring only to clear ourselves. But that we were a Church, the Church at Barnstable can and doth witness, and nothing to the con- trary can (I think) be said from God's word: and to this Church was Mr Chauncy dismissed by the Church at Plymouth, and by this Church, as it then stood, was he called and ordained a Pastor, and with us the Churches here have rightly held communion. And that he hath rejected the church state in which he stood, when he was ordained a Pastor, is clear; for in the publick assembly on the Lord's day he declared it, and then admitted members anew, who were members with us before, and refuseth communion with us because we will not do the like, sending messengers to us for that purpose. So we take it to be no offence to term ourselves the old Church, that was left here at Scituate, when Mr Lothrop our Pastor and the rest departed from us.
"2. Neither can we be charged with schism, seeing that we neither rend from them nor any other Church, but desire com- munion with all the Churches. 3. Nor with close combination, who were combined formerly in publick, in the presence of the whole Church before they departed, and now have renewed our Covenant, before more than twenty witnesses, some of whom were members of other Churches, and some of their members were invited to be with us; so that we cannot be charged with close combination, who did only renew our Cove- nant and that so publickly : neither do we find either precept or practise in the Scriptures against us, nor the practise of any Church in New England or elsewhere, but the contrary in some Churches who have divided and changed their Church state, and did not call other Churches to see their proceedings (as Mr Lothrop and Mr Chauncy and the Churches of which they are Pastors). 4. Nor can we be blamed for not calling their Church to see our proceedings, seeing Mr Chauncy was offend- ed because we refused to call him into office, and it is likely he might have disturbed our peaceable proceedings. Nor can there be any faction in our proceedings, for faction is for some parte of a body to rise against that body, but we were, before this time, declared by them to be no parte of their body. 5. Suspicion of ungodliness upon little, and indeed no grounds, argueth greate want of charity. 6. We cannot perceive how
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we can do their Church any injury, by seeking the ordinances of God for the good of our souls; but it is our duty, and we sin if we neglect it. Now with them we cannot enjoy them, except we will receive Mr Chauncy to be our Pastor, upon his terms, in his difference with us and with other Churches, in the administration of the seals,* and some other things which in conscience we cannot do. Nor can we hurt their outward estates, by leaving them to bear a greater burden than they can bear, to maintain their officers; (for which, if it were so, they should blame themselves and not us, who in all their agitations concerning the bringing in of Mr Chauncy, neglected to call us to advise with them) ; but the truth is, that before we came hither, which is more than seven years since, the old Church were at difference about removing the Meeting-house toward that end of the Town, where our hay grounds and most of our lands lie, it being set, for Mr Hatherly's ease, at the very outside of our plantation : Mr Hatherly and some of London, having by estimation eight if not ten thousand acres of land,+ beginning very near our Meeting-house, on which Mr Hatherly makes farms, one of which is three miles northward from the Meeting- house, and our lands reach ten miles or more to the south- westward, by which runneth a faire River, navigable for boats ten miles, and hay grounds on both sides, and hath an outlet into the sea about four miles from the Meeting-house, with lands sufficient for a Township to settle upon : by that River lieth the most of our land, and there is little hay ground near the Meeting-house, but east and west remote from it, lieth good store ; so that if all other differences were reconciled, yet it were the undoing of us and them both, if we do not become two Congregations, and take in more to them and us. And God, by his providence, hath so ordered things lately, that most of the lands eastward, are come into Mr Hatherly's hands, and by wise ordering of things, a convenient Congregation may be settled with Mr Chauncy, and another with us, and tho' we cannot live to be one Congregation, yet if we be two, we may live comfortably both. I might be longer on this point, did I not see that I shall be tedious.
"7. He seemeth to imply that we, in our way, do oppose the ways or ordinances of God. Supposing some difference between ourselves and other Churches, or at least between
* This refers principally to baptism.
t See Conihassett grant described in this history.
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him and us, either in judgment or practise : (an unfitting ob- jection for him to make, who is himself differing from most of the Churches in this land, and most of the reformed Churches in the world, both in judgment and practise, in so weighty matters as the seals), yet we do not believe that we differ from most of the Churches, or yet from any here, in any fun- damental thing, not in point of grounds of religion, for none of us ever inclined to any of those things that by the Churches here are called errors or schism, which have been or now are in question : and as for particular orders in Churches, we know that their states have in all places and ages something differed and are likely to differ, and yet without refusing holy commu- nion ; that sweet communion of souls, the love of brethren, so highly commended to us by the Holy Ghost is not broken but for great failings, unless where the adversary do get to great advantage, by the infirmities of the part refusing : from which fault we pray the Lord to keep us.
" Mr Chauncy needs not to tell others of our differences (which many Elders both in the Bay and with us, knew before him, and it may be, more fully than himself), and yet hold it to be no such matter to refuse to hold communion with us. Neither can our own grounds breed offence in practise; for (to give you a touch in brief) we hold the practise that particular church fellowship is an Apostolic ordinance, which should be entered into by all that can attain unto it, and that the best entrance thereinto, is to manifest our graces by covenanting one with another ; but in case that God denies any the means of partic- ular Church fellowship, then the Churches, upon the manifes- tation of their grace, should receive them to communion : but if it be objected that such a case cannot be; I answer that it might have been my case, who, in tenderness of conscience, could not have enjoyed it with Mr Chauncy, in respect of his judgment and practise in the governments, (and many other cases I could instance), for had not the Lord provided that we were in fellowship before, and we had wanted matter for a Church, I had been debarred Church fellowship, except I should have undone myself and family by removing, as some have done. And as for that some may think that we incline toward the Scottish discipline, I conceive the difference in that, to be more in words than in substance, and not that we differ much in the main, and this is the great matter that causes reports to grow like snow-balls bigger and bigger by rolling. But those that know us fear not our inclining to the bishops, or to receiving profane persons to the sacraments : our only wish
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is that some more care were taken to instruct all in religion by catechising, that we might win more to God and fit them for the ordinances : and whatever many may think, I cannot see how we are likely to practise contrary to the general practise of the Churches here: and moreover if at any tyme there be any other question that may breed suspicion of us, we are, and hope ever by God's grace shall be, not only willing but very desirous, to crave the help and counsel of the Churches of Christ, not presuming on our own conceivings : we desire to be open and free, and to come to the clearest light. 8. 'Many poor souls may be snared by our examples.' If he mean by our example, our not closing with him wherin he differeth from other Churches, we are not in fault for that: but other en- snaring I cannot perceive. 9. 'For opposing his ministry by our practise.' Be it far from us, if we take his ministry for the pure preaching of the gospel of Christ: but we must give him his due, that God hath blessed him with many excellent gifts in that kind that we oppose not: yet he is a man, and Paul had something to keep him down after his great revela- tions, and for aught we know, the Lord in mercy, may let him discover some weakness, lest too much should be given to man. But we do as little oppose his doctrine, as any Pastor's doctrine in the land is opposed : but if he mean, that to practise con- trary to him in some things, is to oppose his ministry, it is unfitly alledged by him that practiseth contrary to all the Churches, for by that rule he would be found to oppose all the ministry of all the pastors. Nor do we pretend to build up our Church because he is not an able teacher, but for other weighty reasons; wheras we are necessitated so to do in respect to spiritual and temporal wants that urgeth us.
"Thus having a little imparted our condition to you, hoping that you will be pleased to acquaint other elders with our just defence against former accusations or intimations of jealousy that may have come to any of your ears, I humbly crave pardon for my long letter, being very sorry that I am forced to be so large : and yet I could not avoid that particularity, for I have been much briefer than the nature of the thing requires, yet I doubt not but you in your wisdom will conceive the truth by this brief relation. Intreating your favorable construction of our candid intentions-I commend you to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and remain
"Your obliged in all Christian service
" WILLIAM VASSALL."
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To Rev. JOHN COTTON, Boston.
" Scituate, March 9, 1643.
" Rev. and beloved in the Lord Jesus, and his grace be multiplied on you and yours. After our thankfulness to you for your great love and pains manifested to clear up our differ- ences between us and Mr Chauncy, and your Christian charity in holding communion with myself, notwithstanding the rumours spread of us; (tho' nothing proved); and I hear that Mr Chauncy by his letter hath blamed you therefor .* Now further, for your own and the rest of your worthy elders and brethren of your Church, as also for satisfaction of other elders and Churches of Christ living in the Bay, I have herewith by the appointment of our Church, sent you an answer to Mr Chauncy's letter, and also a relation of our church state, beseeching you to acquaint the elders amongst you with our condition, and give us your counsel and acceptance, as you shall in godly wisdom see cause. You know that all men are subject to failings by prejudice, for they are men and not gods ; and we fear that Mr Chauncy hath conceived too much preju- dice against us without grounds. And wheras he would have his letter answered, and seems to be willing to have a hearing before some elders, yet he is not contented to show us before hand who are the persons nor what are the faults he will charge our members withall, which he in general terms doth complain of in his letter, but would have us hear his accusations at the meeting without preparation to answer, which is not reasonable, and according to the rule of Christ which requires private satis- faction ; and we care not to bring forth any member to publick reproof, till he refuse to give private satisfaction, much less come to the hearing of strangers before the Church have heard the same : and although we have cause to believe that he hath little against our members, yet we must walk by rule, and desire first to clear our Church state, and then let him come and see if the Church will not deal with her members according to rule. And having little hope of a fair hearing upon equal terms, we answer his accusations by writing, and have sent you two copies, to the intent that you may, if you think meet, send him one, and keep the other, to make use thereof as you see fitting opportunity, hoping that you will be pleased deliber- ately to weigh our condition, and commend our cause to the Lord, and also to the elders; and we shall rest at present,
* This has reference to a letter which we have not been able to recover.
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