USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > History of the Old South church (Third church) Boston, 1669-1884, Vol. III > Part 30
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256
HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
for him, and according to their prudence order the manner of the building, so as shall bee most fitting.1
The Rev. John Bailey had been preaching for more than a year as assistant to Mr. Willard. This faithful man was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1643, and began his ministry in the neighborhood of Chester, at the age of twenty-two; but he was soon silenced for his non-conformity, and suffered imprison- ment for a time at Lancaster. He afterward went to Limerick, and preached there with great success for fourteen years. Here he was offered church preferment, even a bishopric, upon the first vacancy, if he would conform; but this he could not do, and again he was sent to prison. On his trial he said to the judges : " If I had been drinking, and gaming, and carousing at a tavern with my company, my lords, I presume that would not have procured my being thus treated as an offender. Must praying to God and preaching of Christ, with a company of Christians, that are as peaceable and inoffensive, and serviceable to his Majesty and the Government as any of his subjects, must this be a greater crime ?" The recorder answered, "We will have you to know it is a greater crime." With this strength of prin- ciple, Mr. Bailey had great gentleness, sweetness, and sensitive- ness of nature. John Dunton, the London bookseller, who heard him preach while he was at the South Church, says that his text was, "Looking unto Jesus," and he adds, " I thought he spake like an angel." In the summer of 1686 he accepted a call from the church in Watertown, and he was installed there in the autumn.2 We catch a few glimpses of his ministry in Boston at this period, in Sewall's diary : -
Thorsday, March 12, 1684-5. Mr. John Bayly preached from Amos
1 [Richard Wharton was a large land- holder, a public-spirited citizen, a judge of the Court of Pleas and Sessions, and a councillor under Dudley and An- dros. To oppose the measures of the latter, he went to England in 1687, and died there May 14, 1689. He married, first, Bethiah, daughter of William Tyng ; secondly, Sarah, daughter of the Rev. John Higginson ; and thirdly, Martha, daughter of . John Winthrop, Jr. His name does not appear on the list of members, but his first wife, Bethiah, owned the covenant in 1671, and his third wife, Martha, in 1679; his daughter,
Bethiah, became a communicant in 1691. His affairs were found to be much in- volved, after his death.]
2 For a sketch of Mr. Bailey's life, see Ellis's History of the First Church, pp. 150-155. Mr. Bailey returned to Boston in 1693, and preached as an assistant to Mr. Allen at the First Church, until his death in 1697. His second wife was a daughter of Richard Wilkins, the book- seller. She joined the South Church, in which she had been brought up, in 1698, and in 1699 she became the sec- ond wife of the Rev. Peter Thacher, of Milton.
257
THE REV. JOHN BAILEY.
4. 12, and Mr. Willard from 2 Cor. 4. 16-18; both Sermons and Prayers Excellent.
Friday morn May 8th 1685. Mr. John Bayly preached the Lecture for Mr. Mather, [probably the day before,] from Ps. 37. 4. Delight thyself also in the Lord &c.
Thorsday Septr. 3. Mr. Jno. Bayly preached the Lecture.
Note, Sabbath-day, Septr. 20. Mr. Jno Baily preaches with us all day : Mr. Willard at Watertown. In the Afternoon from those words of Job, Till my Change come. Doct. Death a very great Change.
Thorsday [Jan 13, 1686] exceeding cold : Mr. Jno Bayly preaches the Lecture for Mr. Mather from Eccles. 9. 10. Whatsoever thy hand &c.
Fast-day March 25, 1686. Mr. Willard exerciseth all day, Mr. Bayly being constrained to keep house by reason of the Gout.
Mr. Jno Bayly preaches his farewell Sermon from 2 Cor. 13, II. Goes to Watertown this week. July 25, 1686.
July 28. A considerable Troop from Watertown come and fetch Mr. Bayly, some of ours also accompany them.
We have before us a receipt, signed by Samuel Sewall as a member of the council, for money collected at the South Church on the 8th of August, but for what specific purpose we do not know : -
Augt 13. 1686
Recd the day above written of Capt Jacob Eliot and Capt. The- ophilus Frary Deacons of the South Church in Boston Two and Thirty pounds four shillings and 2d in Money ; and two Bills ; one for fourty shillings in Corn, the other for four shillings in Bisket at 16s pr [ ] being the Contribution made last Sabbath in Answer to the Brief put forth by the Honble President and Council
I say Recd p. SAM SEWALL.
The queen's birthday was celebrated on Saturday, September 25, by the officers of some frigates lying in the harbor, with music, cannon, and bonfires, and the noise and excitement were allowed to invade the stillness and sanctity of the Sabbath eve.
Sabbath, Septr 26. Mr. Willard expresses great grief in's Prayer for the Profanation of the Sabbath last night. Mr. Lee preaches for us in the afternoon from Isa. 52. 7. Said that all America should be converted, Mexico overcome, England sent over to convert the Na- tives, look you do it.1 (Sewall.)
1 [This was the Rev. Samuel Lee, of husband was Mr. John George, a mer- Bristol. His daughter, Lydia, joined chant of good standing; her second, the Rev. Cotton Mather, whom she survived.] the Third Church in 1695. Her first
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HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
The Rev. Charles Morton was installed as pastor of the Charlestown church on Friday, November 5. He had been a clergyman of the Established Church, and lost his living under the Act of Uniformity in 1662. He objected to the laying on of hands at this time, as throwing a shadow upon his previous ordination ; and what had hitherto been the usage in this re- spect was waived in his case, as it had been a month before at the installation of Mr. Bailey at Watertown. Mr. Morton's text was Rom. i. 16: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." " He took occasion to speak of the 5th of November very pithily, and said the just contrary to that Epistle was taught and practised at Rome. Mr. Mather spoke in praise of the Congregational way, and said were [he] as Mr. Morton, he would have Hands laid on him. Mr. Moodey in's prayer said, though that which would have been gratefull to many was omitted, or to that purpose."
At a Church meeting, Octobr. 11. 1687.
Voted that Mr. Moses Pain and Captain James Hill be joyned with Capt. Sewal and Capt. Scotto and Mr. Jno. Joyliffe, in the oversight of the seats.
The position of the New England colonies as an integral part of the British Empire was for a long period a peculiar one. Nominally dependencies of the Crown, their people acted inde- pendently in all matters relating to civil as well as religious affairs. In a half-enlightened age and under an arbitrary ad- ministration of government, they had constructed free Christian commonwealths ; and they had adapted the Congregational idea, as it had been known and put into practice on a limited scale in England and Holland, to the necessities of large and prosperous communities, without taking thought or making provision for the establishment of any other form of church organization. Echoes of princely and prelatical displeasure would reach them from time to time from beyond the sea, but, fortunately for them, steam and electric telegraphy were not yet available for the practical annihilation of distance, and those who would have crushed out their freedom had other and more pressing con- cerns near at hand. They remained secure, therefore, in the enjoyment of their exceptional liberties for many years. At length, in 1664, Charles II. appointed four commissioners, whose duty it was to visit the New England colonies, to hear and de- termine various matters of complaint, to settle conflicting ques-
259
ANGLICAN INTERFERENCE.
tions which had arisen concerning the charters, to adjust all difficulties, and to effect the peace of the country. These broad powers were given largely with reference to ecclesiastical affairs, and one of the chief objects of the commission undoubtedly was to obtain a foothold and an opportunity for episcopacy on this new soil. It must have been galling to the persecuting bishops of the English Church to hear of the men whom they had driven from their pulpits and parsonages, whom they had har- assed with imprisonment and other penalties, and whom they had banished from the land, as successful ministers of prosper- ous parishes on the other side of the sea, and as together con- stituting a clergy not only held in high esteem by the people, but exercising a marked influence in moulding and directing the character and policy of the state. The temptation to inter- fere with these non-conforming clergymen and their associates, and to make them feel the strong arm of ecclesiastical law in their far-off retreat, was too powerful to be resisted.
Two years before the appointment of the commission, June 28, 1662, the king sent a letter to the Massachusetts colony, in which he said : -
Since the principal end and foundation of that charter was and is the freedom and liberty of conscience, we do hereby charge and require that that freedom and liberty be duly admitted and allowed, so that such as desire to use the Book of Common Prayer, and perform their devotions in that manner as is established here, be not debarred the exercise thereof, or undergo any prejudice or disadvantage thereby, they using their liberty without disturbance to others, and that all persons of good and honest lives and conversations be admitted to the Lord's Supper, according to the Book of Common Prayer, and their children to baptism.
The injunction to the ministers and Christian laymen of New England to allow the exercise of liberty of conscience among them did not come with a very good grace from the men who that very summer were putting into operation the Act of Uni- formity, under which two thousand exemplary clergymen were obliged to abandon their livings and their homes, not because they did not accept all the essential doctrines of their church, but because they would not submit to re-ordination, and could not conform conscientiously in certain matters of detail relat- ing to clerical vestments and bodily postures.1
1 " The rectors and the vicars who and the most active of their order. The were driven out were the most learned
bulk of the great livings throughout the
260
HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
The plea that those among the residents of New England who had a decided preference for the Anglican ritual should be permitted to worship according to its forms was not unreason- able, and if they could have done this without prejudice to the paramount interests of the churches already established here, they might have been allowed to do so. Even the king had said, "They using their liberty without disturbance to others." They had come voluntarily and for their own purposes to a country in which they knew beforehand that Congregationalism was the dominant polity, and that they would be at the utmost disadvantage in any endeavor to set up a religious system antagonistic to that polity. Sewall records, November 5, 1686: "One Mr. Clark preaches at the Town-House. Speaks much against the Presbyterians in England and here." Thus, when, at length, they did meet together, they were not satisfied with the enjoyment of the forms of prayer for which they had a preference, but they attacked the great majority about them with whom they were out of harmony. Further, it would seem that until this time, and later, those who desired for themselves the forms of the Book of Common Prayer were not able to pay
country were in their hands. They stood at the head of the London clergy, as the London clergy stood in general repute at the head of their class throughout England. They occupied the higher posts at the two universities. No Eng- lish divine, save Jeremy Taylor, rivalled Howe as a preacher. No parson was so renowned a controversialist, or so indefatigable a parish priest, as Baxter. And behind these men stood a fifth of the whole body of the clergy, men whose zeal and labor had diffused throughout the country a greater appearance of piety and religion than it had ever displayed before. But the expulsion of these men was far more to the Church of England than the loss of their individual services. It was the definite expulsion of a great party which from the time of the Refor- mation had played the most active and popular part in the life of the Church. It was the close of an effort which had been going on ever since Elizabeth's accession to bring the English commu- nion into closer relations with the Re- formed communions of the Continent, and into greater harmony with the re-
ligious instincts of the nation at large. The Church of England stood from that moment isolated and alone among all the churches of the Christian world. The Reformation had severed it irre- trievably from those which still clung to the obedience of the Papacy. By its rejection of all but episcopal orders, the Act of Uniformity severed it as irre- trievably from the general body of the Protestant churches, whether Lutheran or Reformed. And while thus cut off from all healthy religious communion with the world without, it sank into im- mobility within. With the expulsion of the Puritan clergy, all change, all efforts after reform, all national development, suddenly stopped. From that time to this, the Episcopal Church has been unable to meet the varying spiritual needs of its adherents by any modifica- tion of its government or its worship. It stands alone, among all the religious bodies of Western Christendom, in its failure through two hundred years to devise a single new service of prayer or of praise." - Green's Short History of the English People, pp. 609, 610. (1875.)
26I
THE ENGLISH ESTABLISHMENT.
for the maintenance of these forms. One of the propositions of Edward Randolph was, that some of the funds collected in England for the conversion of the Indians in North America, to which the non-conformist party had largely contributed, should be diverted from its proper and legitimate use to this purpose ; and another, " that the three meeting-houses in Boston might pay twenty shillings a week each, out of their contributions, towards defraying of our church-charges, that sum being less per annum than each of their ministers receive." 1
It was not only, perhaps not chiefly, the Episcopal Church of England as a religious body, as one among the Christian denominations, to which the fathers were opposed, and whose progress on these shores they feared. It was the Church of England established by law ; the Church of the Tudors and the Stuarts ; the Church of Parker and Laud ; the Church which had sought to coerce its refractory children with prison and pillory, which had maimed their bodies and tried to crush their spirits,
Archbishop of Canterbury, August 2, I686 :-
1 Edward Randolph wrote to the in Boston, which severally collect 7 or £8 on a Sunday, do pay to our Church Warden 20s. a weeke for each meeting- house, which will be some encouragement to our ministers, and then they can but raile against the Service of the Church. They have great Stocks, and were they directed to contribute to build us a Church, or part from one of their meet- ing-houses, such as wee should approve ; they would purchase that exemption at a great rate, and then they could but call us papists and our Ministers Baals Priests." - Foote's Annals of King's Chapel, vol. i. pp. 51, 52.
" More would daily be of our commu- nion had we but the countenance and company of the President and Council, but instead thereof wee are neglected and can obtain no maintainance from them to support our minister. Butt had we a general governour we should soon have a large congregation and also one of the churches in Boston, as your Grace was pleased to propose when these mat- ters were debated at the Councill Table. I humbly remind your Grace of the money granted formerly for evangelizing The excellent Robert Boyle was presi- the Indians in our neighborhood. It's - dent, and Henry Ashurst was treasurer, of a great pitty that there should be a con- the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, - the oldest of all the Propagation Societies, - and we may be sure that they never would have consented to the perversion of its funds to sectarian uses. Edward Rawson was "steward and agent " of the society in New England, and among the commis- sioners were William Stoughton, Thomas Hinckley, John Richards, and Increase Mather. Randolph would not have been likely to obtain very satisfactory infor- mation from any of these men about the employment of the money entrusted to them. siderable stock in this country (but how imployed I know not) and wee want 7 or 800₺ to build us a church. . . . It is necessary that the governour licence all their ministers, and that none be called to be a pastor of a congregation without his approbation. By this method alone the whole Country will easily be regu- lated, and then they will build us a church and be willing to allow our ministers an honorable maintenance. . . . It would be very gratefull to our church affaires if his Majestie would please to grant us his Royall letters, that the 3 meeting-houses
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HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
which had brought some to death and had driven multitudes into exile ; the Church which with all its wealth at home was proposing now to levy upon their scanty treasury for its support here, -this was the Church which with good reason they feared, and whose encroachments they were determined to withstand.
The sententious remark of James I. after his conversion from Presbyterianism to Episcopacy, No bishop, no king, was a saw that cut both ways. The second generation of New Eng- land men were shrewd enough to see that royal and prelatical prerogatives were closely related and interdependent, and that every degree of toleration yielded to the latter was, in effect, a new concession made to the former. The fathers had come hither to escape from the hierarchy, not from the monarchy, but in their new home they had been free, practically, from both. The sons did not discriminate very closely, certainly while the Stuarts were on the throne, between the two. Quincy says that the policy adopted here at this time was simply one of self-defence, and he adds : "It is unquestionable that it was chiefly instrumental in forming the homogeneous and exclu- sively republican character for which the people of New Eng- land have in all times been distinguished, and, above all, that it fixed irrevocably in the country that noble security for religious liberty, the independent system of church government." And again : " Had our early ancestors adopted the course we, at this day, are apt to deem so easy and obvious, and placed their gov- ernment on the basis of liberty for all sorts of consciences, it would have been, in that age, a certain introduction of anarchy. It cannot be questioned that all the fond hopes they had cher- ished from emigration would have been lost. The agents of Charles and James would have planted here the standard of transatlantic monarchy and hierarchy. Divided and broken, without practical energy, subject to court influences and court favorites, New England at this day would have been a colony of the parent state." 1
The royal commissioners were unable to accomplish any- thing during their stay in New England. The magistrates, the 1 Boston Centennial Address, IS30, pp. 2S. 29. . Bancroft says : "The Puri- tans established a government in Amer- ica such as the laws of national justice warranted, and such as the statutes and common law of England did not war- rant; and that was done by men who still acknowledged the duty of a limited allegiance to the parent state. The Epis- copalians had declared themselves the enemies of the party, and waged against it a war of extermination ; Puritanism ex- cluded them from its asylum." - History of the United States, vol. i. p. 463.
263
THE COLONIAL CHARTER VACATED.
ministers, and the people generally were against them, and in 1667 they returned to England, baffled and disappointed. In July, 1685, the charter of Massachusetts was vacated. On the 14th of May, 1686, Edward Randolph, whose zeal for king and church kept him busy for several years, now on one side of the Atlantic and now on the other, arrived in Boston harbor in the Rose frigate, bringing an exemplification of the judgment against the charter, and a commission for Joseph Dudley, who was to act as president ad interim until the arrival of a royal governor. This time Randolph was accompanied by a chaplain, the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe, with his surplice and service-book, duly empowered to set up the forms and ceremonies of the Anglican communion in the town. On the following Sunday Randolph attended at the South meeting-house, sitting in the pew of Mr. Luscombe.1 " Mr. Willard prayed not for the gov- ernor or government, as formerly, but spake so as implied it to be changed or changing." On Wednesday, the 26th of May, Mr. Ratcliffe waited on the council, and in his behalf Ran- dolph proposed that he should have one of the three meeting- houses to preach in. This was denied; but the council author- ized him to occupy the east room in the town-house, in which the deputies had held their sessions, until a fitter place could be provided, and he preached there on the following Sunday. An Episcopal society was organized a few days later, with the expectation, as we have said, that the Congregational churches would be taxed for its maintenance. Randolph's own words were : " It was never intended that the charge should be sup- ported by myself and some few others of our communion." In England, the dissenters were taxed for the benefit of the Estab- lished Church; in New England, the churches of the estab- lished polity were to be taxed for the benefit of the dissenters. On the 21st of August Randolph called on Samuel Sewall, in company with Mr. Benjamin Bullivant, who had been a member of Mr. Willard's congregation, and was to be warden of the new church, and broached the idea of a contribution by the South
1 Perhaps Major Humphrey Luscomb. For his death, see Sewall's Diary, vol. i. P. 217.
When Randolph arrived in Boston in 1681, we read of his being at the South Church. Sewall says :-
" Dec. 17. Foye arrives, in whom Mr. Randolph and his new wife and family.
"Dec. 25. They sit in Mr. Joyliff's Pue ; and Mrs. Randolph is observed to make a curtesy at Mr. Willard's naming Jesus, even in Prayer time. Since dwells in Hez. Usher's House, where Ministers used to meet."
Christmas-day in the year 1681 fell on a Sunday.
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HISTORY OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
Church towards the building they desired to erect. The former, at least, " seemed to goe away displeased," says Sewall, " because I spake not up to it;" the latter could hardly have expected any other result from the interview. Neither he nor the president, Joseph Dudley, would have been so unwise as to act upon any such suggestion as that "the bank of money in the hands of the corporation for evangelizing the Indians " should be " applied to build a church and free school, that youth might no longer be poisoned with the seditious principles of the country."
Writing of the abrogation of the charter, Palfrey says : " Mas- sachusetts, as a body politic, was now no more. The elaborate fabric, that had been fifty-four years in building, was levelled with the dust." In the midst of the depression that followed, the venerable John Eliot wrote the following short letter to the Hon. Robert Boyle : -
ROXBURY August 29 1686 in the third month of our overthrow
Right honourable unweariable nursing father
I have nothing new to write but lamentations, and I am loth to grieve your loving and noble soul.
Our Indian work yet liveth, praised be God; the bible is come forth, many hundreds bound up, and dispersed to the Indians, whose thankfulness I intimate and testify to your honour. The Practice of Piety is also finished, and beginneth to be bound up. And my hum- ble request to your honour is, that we may again reimpose the primer and catechism ; for though the last impression be not quite spent, yet quickly they will ; and I am old, ready to be gone, and desire to leave as many books as I can. I know not what to add in this distressing day of our overthrow ; so I commit your honour to the Lord, and rest
Your honour's to serve you In Jesus Christ JOHN ELIOT.1
1 [Mr. Eliot brought out the second edition of the Indian Bible in 1685. He had been assisted in its preparation by the Rev. John Cotton, of Plymouth. It was dedicated to Robert Boyle, in an ad- dress signed by William Stoughton, Jo- seph Dudley, Peter Bulkley, and Thomas Hinckley. As in the first edition, the Psalms in Indian metre, translated by Eliot from the Bay Psalm Book, and a short Indian catechism followed the New Testament. Bishop Bayley's Practice of Piety had a remarkable popularity for more than a century and a half, and
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