USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume I > Part 10
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Other churches followed the First, although there was no other until two decades later. It would be well, however, before going further into the matter of church organization, particularly in view of the difficulties in which the early church became enmeshed, to ask: What was the mate- rial and constitution of the Puritan church, the base upon which the very existence of the Theocracy was built and depended? As defined and explained by one historian :
The Constitution of the Puritan Church-"Seven or more professing Christians, associating themselves together in covenant, constitute a
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church for all uses of Christian edification and enjoyment of ordinances ; nothing being between them and Christ. The Bible is their sole sufficient sanction, guide, and statute-book. In the sacred volume are to be found divine directions for the administration and discipline of the Church, a commission and instructions for its teachers and officers, the matter of their teaching, the rule of believing and living for members, and the method of discipline. Men receive their authority and functions as min- isters directly from God; their qualifications of heart, mind and spirit are from Him, in nowise dependent upon any allowance or transmitted privilege from their fellowmen. Such ministers, however, obtain an offi- cial position, opportunity to teach and temporal support, from the free choice of a congregation desiring their services. God commissions the man, but the people set him in his place over or among them. The Puri- tans found a vast and sublime confirmation of their fundamental idea in the grand assertion of St. Paul, that the Gospel made every Christian to represent to himself the two highest offices,-those of a 'King and a Priest unto God.'"
There is nothing in these principles that has not been accepted and followed by Protestants of many communions in later years even to this day. The Puritan idea failed on trial because it clashed so severely with the civil rights of men. Many churches were formed throughout all the colony, each on the theory that it was independent in choosing its pastor, in administering discipline, and in its relations to the civil powers. In theory the right of private judgment, of independency of religious wor- ship, was undeniable; but the possession of a right does not carry with it the wise exercise and use of it. If the State was to be built from the church, and to be governed by it, then independent churches were not likely to prove valuable unless there were some method by which they would recognize the rights of other bodies, be united with them, and establish some central authority (particularly in civil affairs) which they would obey, and to which they would give support. .
The Court the Arbiter of Religion-A Court of Assistants had been `provided for in the charter, and eventually became the civil and religious power of the colony. But the chief business of the Court, if we may judge fairly by such records of its activities during the first few years, was to settle religious disputes, the most of which mere bickerings. Under the first charter, five Synods of the Churches, 1637, 1648, 1662, 1679, and 1680, were held in a vain attempt to harmonize the variances of the churches, and to establish some acceptable common form of disci- pline. Many strange religious beliefs arose; he who stumbled on what he thought was something new in religion went to extremes in the endeavor to impress the notion on others, and the zealot can always
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gather about him a group of believers. So it is that we find creeping into the proceedings of the court severities directed against heresy and seditious theories. At all costs the colony founded in the face of the greatest difficulties by Puritans, must be saved for Puritans. When we read of stringent rulings, cruel laws, persecutions, it is well to recall the positions in which the magistrates were placed, and that punitive repres- sive measures had to be taken against the series of assaults upon the persons who threatened the existence of the settlements; and also that these conditions ruled only for the first thirty years of the colonies. Two other facts should be remembered by one who would sit in judgment over the "persecuting Puritans." The policies followed by the Puritans were those of the times. They had been ex-patriated by their attempt to escape the repressive measures of England, but knew no better way than repression to preserve the freedom which they had secured by migrating to Massachusetts. Again, the classes which the Puritans so severely treated, Antinomians, Baptists and Quakers, are not now represented in the churches that bear these titles. "Autre temps, autres moeurs!"
The Repression of Opponents-If we were to gather together in a group the individuals and the classes of persons who were the victims of Puritan intolerance, we should see that, with the exception of Roger Williams, there were the common elements of fanaticism, aggravating contempt of authority, and usually the claim of special divine guidance in the form of "private revelations." There was Samuel Gorton, a former "clothier from London." He showed up in Boston in 1636, moving shortly after to Plymouth, where he was expelled for some strange heresy. Next he was whipped in Rhode Island for calling the magis- trates "just-asses." He was brought to Boston later, whipped, and ban- ished, again for heresy ; but evidently he was a trouble-maker, both here and in England, which probably had something to do with his repeated punishments. He was accused of being a "Familist," whatever that was. Even a perusal of such of his writings as are still extant, fails to make clear what he was or thought. He seemingly was "against everything and everybody," ignorant, conceited, claiming much but proving little. And yet he founded a sect that bore his name for a century.
The Expulsion of Roger Williams-Gorton was a sample of the class which the Puritans desired to repress; this can hardly be said of Roger Williams. Williams and his wife arrived in Boston in 1631, while Wilson of the First Church was in England, and was invited to become the teacher in the church. This he declined, and by so doing offended. Wil- liams spent the next year or so in visiting other parts of the colony, principally Plymouth and Salem, where he was received gladly. In the
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end he was driven out of Massachusetts under cruel circumstances, tak- ing up his abiding place in Rhode Island, which seems to have provided a home for all sort of eccentric individuals and ideas. Too much has been written concerning the Roger Williams controversy to need any special mention here. There are two ways of putting his case. One represents him as a "premature champion of soul-liberty, denying the right of the magistrate beyond civil affairs, and pleading for the claims of savages above the King's patent to the land." Others telling the story place the emphasis on his ardent holding of opinions which, if followed, would wreck all authority. The court forbade his stay within their juris- diction, charged him with having "broached and divulged divers new and dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates, as also writ letters of defamation, both of the magistrates and churches here."
The Antinomian Controversy-Rather more serious was the discord aroused in Boston known as the "Antinomian Controversy." Antinomian- ism troubled the settlements over nearly the whole of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and spread into other sections. One continually runs upon the word in the early history of the towns bordering the bay, although it is almost unknown in the modern vocabularies. If the dictionary is to be believed, this dreadful heresy was the "holding that faith frees the Christian from the obligations of the moral law." There are other defini- tions, but they are but the expansion of this, and are too often expressed in cant phrases that in themselves require explanation. The trouble was that the Puritans associated the belief with the licentious professions and actions of fanatics in Germany and Holland.
Anne Hutchinson-Except for Captain Underhill, that merry repro- bate, and fine soldier, there evidently was no immorality in the lives of the Antinomians of Boston. Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was the prime exemplar of the faith in the town, and no question has been raised as to her conduct. She became prominent, at first, through her deeds of kindness to her own sex, and was evidently a woman of brains and genuine goodness. Her influence with the women drew about her groups with whom she discussed her ideas, and unfortunately the sermons deliv- ered in the church. Soon her influence spread beyond those of her own sex. She was called upon to retract some of her criticisms and preach- ments. Eventually the court took cognizance of the controversy which had seized the community, and the dealings of the court and church with Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers, roused an anger that was ready to burst into viciousness and lawlessness. Sides were taken by all classes in Boston, some of the principal residents taking the side of Mrs. Hutch-' inson ; the two associate elders, Cotton and Wilson, and the two gov-
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ernors, Winthrop and Vane, being arrayed against each other. The powers of the Puritan Commonwealth prevailed. Anne Hutchinson was banished by order of the court; the church excommunicated her. Two of her followers were both disfranchised and fined, eight disfranchised, two fined, and three banished. Seventy-six inhabitants of Boston, in sym- pathy with her, were disarmed. Many of those suffering under the dis- pleasure of the court were full members of the First Church, so the 'intolerance" of the Puritan turned sometimes upon themselves.
The Anabaptists-The imperiled State had again been saved; the theocratic experiment continued. But there soon was another "heresy" to worry the magistrate and the church, and to whom severity was again shown. This heresy had to do with baptism, or rather to the mode of baptizing. There probably would have been little difficulty growing out of the whole affair had not intolerance ruled both parties. The Ana- baptists, as the "heretics" were called, believed that baptism was a symbolical act, a token of conversion, and therefore should not be prac- ticed except by those of sufficient maturity to have experienced conver- sion. Naturally, not believing in the efficacy of child baptism, they rebaptized those of like faith, which in itself was a reflection on the practices of the Puritan Church. To add fuel to the fire, the Anabaptists railed against the Puritan mode as violently as the Puritans condemned the heresy. Many of the seceding Christians were fined, whipped and banished. In 1644, by law, all could be banished who "shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptising of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart from the congregation at the ministration of the ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of the magistry, &c." Many of the State Church objected to this law, but it stood with the consequence that even the leaving of the meeting-house when infant baptism might be punished by excommunication. If the excommunicated met formally together, then they were guilty of another offense and could be punished.
The First Baptist Church-The Baptists persisted and conquered, thereby putting additional nails into the coffin in which was eventually interred the intolerance of the Puritan theocracy. The first Baptist church was formed in Charlestown in 1665 with five members. Subse- quently it moved to Boston and erected its first meeting-house in 1679. The next year the doors of the little church were nailed up by the order of the Governor and Council of the Colony, but did not remain so for long. The first edifice was erected at the corner of Salem and Stillman streets. After some years a larger building was put up on the same site, and one hundred and fifty years after the erection of the first little edifice,
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the third was built on the corner of Hanover and Union streets, where the congregation remained for a quarter of a century before removing to Somerset Street on Beacon Hill.
The Early Quakers-One other denomination had its rise during the colonial period of Boston. This was the Quaker, and although the Quakers were never a numerous people, they were influential, as were no other class, in breaking down the intolerance of Puritan Boston. The story of the Quakers forms one of the most gloomy in the early history of the town. The first of their number were imprisoned, scourged, sent into slavery, banished, several had an ear cut off by the public execu- tioner, and four met death on the gallows. But the Quakers throve under the persecution and at last won the right to worship God as they pleased without molestation. They built the first brick church in Boston; and they accomplished many other things that only the fanatical persistency of martyrs could have accomplished.
The Quaker of that day is not be confused with the name now borne by a body of men and women noted for their virtues and graces of their lives and religion. They were known as "Ranters" in the mother coun- try and had created quite a stir by the novelty of their professions and the violence of their actions. Boston stood in fear of the coming of the Ran- ters and rejoiced that none entered the colony for the years prior to 1655. The first arrivals were two women, Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, whom came from England by way of Barbadoes. In August of the same year came eight more. The women were escorted out of the colony, and everyone forbidden to speak with them. The eight were thrown into prison, after their books had been taken from them and burned, even- tually to be sent back to England. At the next session of the court, laws were made to quench, once for all, the "cursed Sect of Hereticks . who take upon them to be the immediately sent from God, and infallibly assisted by the Spirit, to speak and write blasphemus opinions. Speaking evil of dignities, reproaching and reviling magistrates and min- isters." Among the laws were ones penalizing the masters of vessels who should bring a Quaker to any port in the colony, and forcing him to take the Quaker away; Quakers coming into the colony were to be imprisoned and whipped with twenty stripes. The next year laws were passed providing that any person entertaining a Quaker for an hour should be fined forty shillings; if the offense was repeated, one of his ears was to be cut off ; if he still persisted he was to lose the other ear, be whipped, and his tongue bored with a hot iron.
The King Intervenes-However interesting it might be to tell the tale of the severe application of these laws and others (for they were enforced most thoroughly), to show to what ends the Puritans went in their blind
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endeavors to preserve their State and religion from all forces that threat- ened their destruction, it need not be done now. "Somewhere beneath the soil of Boston Common lie the ashes of four so-called Quakers-three men and one woman-who were cast into their rude graves after they had been executed on the gallows between 1659 and 1661. This death penalty was the culmination of the successive inflictions to which Puri- tan legislation vainly had recourse to be rid of an intolerable plague." Details of the long list of punishments dealt to the Quakers may be found elsewhere. The Quakers carried their case to the King of England, and Charles the Second after the Restoration, commissioned one of them, Samuel Shattuck, to carry to Boston the royal mandate that no more should the death penalty be inflicted and that those under indictment then in prison should be sent to England for trial. Of the dramatic presentation of letter to Governor Endicott, a well-known account was given by the poet Whittier, in his "The King's Missive." In 1661, the King again ruled that the Quakers should not be interfered with, but allowed to go about their affairs without molestation, and that liberty to peoples of all denominations should be accorded. The Puritan author- ities evaded these mandates in many particulars, but the end of their reign was at hand. One of the rulings of the royal messages removed the restriction of the franchise to church members and its extension to all citizens who were in other respects entitled to it. The strong party of non-covenanted voters which now arose began an effectual undermining of the walls with which the Puritan church and State had surrounded its authority. The collapse came in 1692, when the colony was reduced from its high estate to that of a province. The spell of Puritan was rudely shattered, the Puritan Commonwealth was prostrated, never to rise again. Henceforth, the State and the church were never to be one; the experiment of building a State from a church had proven impractical.
The Puritan Theocracy Loses Control-From 1630, or even earlier, to 1692, marks the years of the Puritan epoch, the period of The Church. Henceforth the history of early religion is the story of churches. We have seen that the period saw the rise of several denominations, but how- ever influential they may have been in the breaking down of the Puritan Theocracy, it is estimated that of the 7,000 inhabitants of the Boston of 1692, there were not more than a few hundred who held to any other faith than that which is now called Congregational. This period of forcible repression of dissent from the Established Church of New England was succeeded by a period in which the Protestant bodies gained a firm and recognized footing in Boston. Before passing to this next and different epoch, there remains the mention of the rise of the Episcopal Church, and details concerning the physical side of the Quaker development.
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Drake says that the Quakers had a meeting-house as early, perhaps, as 1665; in 1677 they most certainly had established a regular place of worship. In 1697 their brick meeting-house was built on Brattle Street, near where the Quincy House stood. It was a little building twenty-four by twenty feet. In 1708 a new house was erected on Congress Street, which for some time after was called Quaker Lane. The burying-ground adjoined the house. This meeting place, which was also of brick, was nearly destroyed in the great fire of 1760, but promptly restored. Here the Quak- ers met with diminishing numbers until 1808, when the property was sold and the remains in the burying-ground removed to Lynn. From this time until 1827, there was no Quaker meeting-house in Boston. It is a strange fact that while the persecutions of the Quakers increased, so did the sect increase in numbers; when allowed to go their way unmo- lested, they began to diminish in strength. For some years after the Revolution their numbers were so small that their meeting-house was no longer used regularly for services.
In 1679 several persons residing in Boston petitioned the King "that a Church might be allowed them for the exercise of religion according to the Church of England." This was but one of a number of protests made against the enforced eliminations by the Puritans of every possible fea- ture of the former manner of conducting religious services by the Church of England. Edward Randolph, who had his finger in ending colonial affairs in Massachusetts at this time, had occasion for rejoicing over the "Bostoneers," as he called them, when in 1686 the frigate "Rose" brought a commission to Joseph Dudley as president of Massachusetts and other lands; and also brought the Reverend Robert Ratcliffe, the first minister of the English church commissioned to officiate on this soil. Dudley assumed office and Randolph soon proposed that one of the Con- gregational churches should be taken and used for the services by the new pastor. This was denied him, a room in the town house being assigned for the purpose, until it was shown that enough wanted worship along the lines of the Church of England. This hardly suited Randolph, who wanted to seize one of the Congregational churches and force the support of the English church upon the Puritans, who hated it. Ran- dolph, it is evident, promoted the church for political ends rather than from any religious purpose. Unable to use Dudley, the partnership between the two was soon broken.
Andros and the Church of England-A congregation of the Church of England was organized, and probably would have chosen quiet methods of securing a place of worship had not the arrival of Governor Andros, the first royal ruler of the province, in December of 1686, forced the issue. For on the very day of his arrival, he called the ministers of Boston
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together and told them they must arrange for the use of one of the Con- gregational churches by the Established Church. It devolved upon five ministers from the three Boston churches to make the last stand for their religion and their State ; they managed to delay the end for three months. But with Lent drawing near, with the Governor surrounded by churches that did not even have the legal right to exist in his home land, the min- isters of which showed no signs of accession to his demands for one meeting-house in which the ritual of the Lenten days might be cele- brated, Andros chose the South Church as the unwilling host of the new Episcopal Society. The first service was held on March 25, 1787.
King's Chapel-There was, of course, a great deal of friction caused by the use of Old South by two opposed congregations; it is cause for regret that the birth of religious freedom was accompanied by so many unpleasant features. But it is seldom that new life can enter the world without suffering, and as far as the South Church is concerned their trouble lasted less than two years. The new society began the erection of a place of worship the next year, the foundations for the little wooden chapel being laid in October, 1688, and worship was first held in the com- pleted edifice, June 8, 1689. This was the first King's Chapel, its site being a corner of the old burial-ground now occupied by the front part of the present chapel. The cost of this modest church is given as £ 284 16s., or $1,425, the most of the amount being raised among ninety-six contributors from the whole colony. The Episcopal Church, both organ- ization and chapel, withstood the storms of the next few years; in 1710 the building was enlarged. It had the fostering care of the monarchs of England from William and Mary to George the Third. "King William and Queen Mary gave them a pulpit-cloth, a cushion, a rich set of plate for the communion table, and a piece of painting reaching from the top to the bottom of the east end of the church, containing the Decalogue, the Lord's Prayer, and the Apostles' Creed. Thomas Brattle gave a pair of organs to it."
The present King's Chapel, the mecca of so many of Boston's visitors, was started in 1741, the corner-stone being laid in 1749. It was built around the old chapel, but not completed until 1754. The edifice is of Quincy granite, erected from designs of Peter Harrison, an Englishman. The portico was not completed until 1789, the year in which Washington attended an oratio in the chapel; the steeple, which was a part of the plan, was never built. During the Siege of Boston, British officers wor- shipped in King's Chapel; but when the town was evacuated, the rector fled to Halifax and the church remained closed until 1777, when by one of the compensative events of history, the Old South congregation, whose meeting-house had been so roughly used by the British, occupied it for
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the next five years. For this period the name was changed, because of the hatred of all things royal, to the Stone Chapel, but in time the love of a familiar name brought back the old title. In 1782, the church was reopened by the remnant of the original society, with James Freeman as "Reader." Under his leading the congregation professed the Unitarian doctrine and the First Episcopal Church of Boston became the First Unitarian.
The Six Earliest Meeting Houses-We have proceeded ahead of our story as far as time is concerned. The epoch which ended in 1692, saw the end of the political despotism of the Puritans. There were now six "meeting-houses" in Boston. Three were Congregational in faith, the dates of their founding being: The First Church of Boston, August 23, 1630; The Second, June 5, 1650; Old South, May 12, 1669. The Baptists had organized, as we have seen, in 1665; the Quakers in 1677; the King's Chapel Society in 1686. The Puritan, or as it should be called from now on, the Congregational faith, was in the ascendant, as it was to be for another century and more. The Second Church was necessitated by the growth of Boston, and was organized in 1649, building a meeting- house possibly the same year, there being no existing record of the date when it was completed or first used. The first sermon was preached June 5, 1650, and services were conducted by one of the members, Michael Powell, until 1655, when John Mayo was ordained as the first pastor. Its roll of ministers is a notable one; three of the first four, extending over the period from 1655 to 1741, were Mathers, Increase, Cotton, and Samuel, to name them in the order of their tenure. The meeting-house was burned in 1676 and rebuilt the next year, and it was this second building that was wantonly destroyed by the British soldiery for fire- wood during the siege of Boston, 1775. The society remained homeless, but held together until 1779, when possession was taken of the "New Brick Church" in Hanover Street, an edifice which had been built in 1726 by seceders from the New North Church, who had failed to thrive as a separate body.
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