USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Cambridge > Services at the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the First church in Cambridge, February 7- 14, 1886 > Part 2
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250TH ANNIVERSARY. 35
their hope. As early, perhaps, as 1567, there was " the Privye Church in London," which described itself as "a poor congregation whom God hath separated from the churches of England, and from the mingled and false worshiping therein used."
In 1568, or about that time, Robert Browne, a young man of good family, became a scholar at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, where he was among the strongest Puritan influences. Declining a Cambridge pulpit, he was drawn to those who were "verie forward" in seeking a reform in the Church, and after months of study and prayer he joined with others of a like mind in the formation of a Church without the Church. That was, proba- bly, in 1580, and is thought to have been the first permanent Congregational Church founded since the Apostles rested from their work of church estab- lishment. The after career of Browne is not to his credit. He suffered, but was not improved. "Com- mitted to thirty-two prisons, in some of which he could not see his hand at noonday," he finally de- serted the cause which he had furthered, accepted a place in the Church he had renounced, fell into bad habits, and finally died, eighty years old, ten years after Separation had enthroned itself on Ply- mouth Rock. Charity trusts that he was insane. A sharper judgment declares that he lacked "the desperate self-respect which prompted Judas to hang himself." His name is disowned. No one consents to be called after him. But his work, in 1
changed forms, proved better than the man. He
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had worked at the beginning, and was not needed for the completion.
In 1593 Sir Walter Raleigh expressed the fear that there were nearly twenty thousand Brownists in England. But this meant resistance, oppres- sion, cruelty. For aiding the movement many were heavily fined and imprisoned. Thacker, Copping, Barrow, Greenwood, Penry, and many others, were put to death. It was of no avail. The English blood was up. The English spirit had been fully awakened. Steadily, secretly, the work of liberty and purity moved forward. Something was hoped from James. The Puritans appealed to him for a truer Sabbath, a shorter liturgy, better music in the churches, and for ministers of uprightness, who should combine ability, fidelity, and integrity. The King granted them an interview at Hampton Court, and replied to them in terms which they could understand. "If this be all your party have to say, I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of this land, or else worse." That was in 1604. He could bluster, if he was a fool. He could be cruel. "I hear our new King hath hanged one man before he was tried. 'Tis strangely done." Reform seemed more distant than ever. There was nothing good to be looked for in England. Was there any hope beyond its shores? Some thought so, and crossed to the Low Countries. Some concealed themselves and waited. The Sep- aratists remained separate. They were not the adherents of Browne, who had long before gone
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back to the place from which, for a little, he had emerged, nor should his ill-omened name be affixed to them. They had their own teachers, and over the open Bible were doing their own thinking, and standing to it. One of their congregations was in Nottinghamshire, in the village of Scrooby. The story of that company of freemen is familiar: the names of Clyfton, Robinson, Brewster, Bradford, the removal to Amsterdam and Leyden, and finally the voyage across the wider sea, where they found a sanctuary and a home. It was a brave history to make, and well do they deserve the world's homage who made it.
Yet in 1620 only a few of the Puritans were Pil- grims. But their principles were growing. The contests with James during his troubled reign in- creased the force of the people as against the de- mands of the King. The spirit of men had grown bolder, and their thoughts had gone deeper into the reason of things. Four years before James disap- peared, the Court of High Commission had renewed its tyranny, and the Puritans were again made to feel its cruelty. The minds of many looked far into the West. Buckingham sought to beguile men whom he could not suppress, and hindered their action by the hopes he created. By degrees they came to see that all this meant nothing. More and more there was talk of making a new England. John White, rector of Trinity Church in Dorchester, on the Chan- nel, proposed to the ship-owners to found a settle- ment on these shores, that the sailors who came here
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might have a home when they were not at sea, and that their spiritual interests might be cared for when they were far from the churches. Not very much came of the project, which perhaps meant more than was avowed. Soon men of means were planning a colony here. They obtained the charter under which Massachusetts lived for fifty-five years, and other ships sailed "into the West as the sun went down." Naumkeag was settled and became Salem. The charter said nothing of religious liberty. It is prob- able that the colonists knew they could secure it by sailing westward three thousand miles, and that the government thought it could be prevented however far away. Four weeks from the arrival at Naumkeag, the colonists gathered themselves into a church, as- senting to a covenant and ordaining their minister. It does not appear that they had intended to leave the Church of England. But they had come " to practise the positive part of church reformation, and propagate the Gospel in America." It was almost inevitable, it was certainly desirable, that they should become a Congregational church. They were qual- ified for it and called unto it. They appear to have contemplated this, at least, and to have provided for it. One who has searched among their goods has written that the Book of Common Prayer "seems to have been as rare here as the holly and the mistle- toe." They were back at the beginning of things, where there was only one book.
The spirit of purity and liberty continued to move in England. In 1629 John Winthrop and eleven
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
others entered into an agreement at Cambridge, "in the word of a Christian and in the presence of God, to inhabit and continue in New England." They brought their charter, and with it the govern- ment of the colony, when they came in the Arbella to Salem in 1630. Before the winter of that year seventeen vessels had crossed from the old world to the new, and a thousand persons had come in them. With the arrival of Winthrop and his company came the establishment of another Congregational church, which was to be the centre of their life. The church was at Charlestown, and was afterwards the First Church in Boston, in whose house the old covenant can now be read, where it glows in the window.
It was necessary that the colony should have the means and ways of livelihood. It must have a sub- stantial basis. There must be money, business, commercial relations, a secure financial support. For this discreet provision was made. But these things were merely incidental. They had not come to make money. John Winthrop, the first Gover- nor here, has left us his record of the reasons which justified this undertaking : " It will be a service to the Church of great consequence to carry the Gos- pell into those parts of the world." " All other churches of Europe are brought to desolation." " The whole earth is the Lord's garden." " The ffountains of Learning & Religion are soe corrupted as most children are perverted." " What can be a better worke, & more honorable & worthy a Chris-
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tian, then to helpe raise & supporte a particular Church while it is in the Infancy, & to joyne his forces wth such a company of faithfull people, as by a timely assistance may growe stronge & prosper." " It appeares to be a worke of God for the good of his Church, in that he hath disposed the hartes of soe many of his wise & faithfull servants, both min- isters & others, not onely to approve of the enter- prise but to interest themselves in it, some in their persons & estates, other by their serious advise & helpe otherwise, & all by their praiers for the wealfare of it."
Who were the people who came to found these settlements? Many were of the substantial middle class of England, possessing the virtues of English- men, strengthened by the free spirit which was the glory of their time, and has proved its renown. Concerning the leaders in the Puritan cause I can use no better words than Dr. Palfrey's : "The Puri- tanism of the first forty years of the seventeenth century was not tainted with degrading or ungrace- ful associations of any sort. The rank, the wealth, the chivalry, the genius, the learning, the accomplish- ments, the social refinements and elegance of the time, were largely represented in its ranks." " The leading emigrants to Massachusetts were of that brotherhood of men who, by force of social consider- ation as well as of intelligence and resolute patriot- ism, moulded the public opinion and action of England in the first half of the seventeenth century." The Puritans read the Bible and obeyed it. Reason
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and conscience bowed to its authority. They sought to fashion their personal and public life by a rigid application of its words. But " in politics the Puri- tan was the Liberal of his day." By as much as he asserted the principle of obedience towards God, did he set bounds to the authority of men, and assert the supremacy of the manhood which he held under his charter as a child of God, belonging to his kingdom. It was freedom in obedience which he cherished. He had the independence of the planet, which claims a large orbit, but never dreams of breaking from the central sun. I am glad to close this account of the Puritans with the words of one who by integrity and liberty belonged with those who helped to lay the foundation of this house for a Puritan church, and who delighted to worship in it: "They will live in history, as they have lived, the very embodiment of a noble devotion to the principles which induced them to establish a colony, to be 'so religiously, peaceably, and civilly governed,' as thereby to incite the very heathen to embrace the principles of Christianity."
I have thought it best to trace again the rise and advance of the Puritan movement, that we might know how it came to pass, and what it meant, that this church was established here, two hundred and fifty years ago. For it was as a part of a great en- terprise that this church was founded. Its history is a page in the history of the times which we have been reviewing. It is not till we mark its place that we know its meaning.
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Into this illustrious assertion and maintenance of purity and liberty Thomas Shepard was born. James I. had been two years the king. "In the yeare of Christ 1605, upon the 5 day of November, called the Powder treason day, & that very houre of the day wherein the Parlament should have bin blown up by Popish priests, I was then borne." The father's consternation at the plot was expressed in the name which he gave his son. William Shepard, like the father of John Harvard, was a tradesman. He was apprenticed to a grocer, one of whose daughters he married. He was prosperous in his business, and "toward his latter end much blessed of God in his estate and in his soule." He " was a wise prudent man, the peacemaker of the place." As there was no good preaching in Towcester, he removed to Banbury that he and his household might be " under a stirring ministry." The boy was very early separated from his home and exposed to much hardship. His mother died when he was four. His stepmother treated him harshly, and a Welshman who kept a free school in Towcester was extremely cruel to him. He used to wish that he was a keeper of beasts rather than a schoolboy. His father died when he was ten, and an elder brother became both father and mother to him. The love of his mother for this her youngest child had been exceedingly great. Long afterwards he wrote of this to his own son, and remembered that she "made many prayers for me." He remembered, too, his own strong and hearty prayers for his father's life, and the covenant
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with which he sealed his entreaties, "as knowing I should be left alone if he was gone." With these early religious impressions upon him, he came under a better teacher, who awakened his desire to be a scholar. At fourteen, though " very raw and young," he was admitted a pensioner at Emmanuel College. Here he found new perils. He became proud of his attainments, neglected his religious duties, and strayed into bad company and evil ways. He felt remorse and shame, as was natural, but it was the searching preaching of the master of the college which persuaded him to seek a better life. The way was not easy, but at length " the Lord gave me a heart to receive Christ."
The Puritans were strong and vigilant in Cam- bridge and he felt their influence. He left college with a high reputation for scholarship and with the honors of the University, and with new purposes and desires. His life was beginning. But what should he do next? He had been under Puritan training from his boyhood onward. He received deacon's orders in the Established Church, but not without scruple, and was appointed a lecturer. This was a Puritan office, designed to furnish preachers where there was no proper ministry. The appointment was for three years. In the town to which he was sent he could find but one man who had any godli- ness. But his labor was rewarded, especially in the chief house, where he won to himself his steadfast friend, Roger Harlakenden, whose mortal part was afterwards laid in the old burying-ground yonder.
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The young minister was not allowed to do his work in peace. He was charged with being "a non-con- formable man, when for the most of that time I was not resolved either way." After his three years, and a little more, had expired, he was summoned before Laud, the Bishop of London, -"our great enemy," Winthrop calls him. The Bishop was more angry than was becoming to his sacred office, and his sen- tence was more explicit than paternal : "I charge you that you neither preach, read, marry, bury, or exercise any ministerial functions in any part of my Diocess ; for if you do, and I hear of it, I'll be upon your back and follow you wherever you go, in any part of this kingdom, and so everlastingly disenable you." This far-reaching denunciation was fitted to have some effect in one direction or the other upon the " prating coxcomb." With the King harrying him and the Bishop upon his back, the young preacher must either move or fall. Trained through his boyhood and his youth, at his father's house and the college, in a Puritan school, they were now driving him into the Pilgrim university, the large and open world. The Puritan made haste slowly: it was a trait of his character. But the Puritan did not go backward or sidewise. In this Thomas Shep- ard was a Puritan. He spent a few months with the Harlakendens, while his spirit burned within him as he saw more clearly "into the evil of the English cer- emonies, crosse, surplice and kneeling." Then the Bishop "fired me out of this place." He accepted an invitation to Yorkshire reluctantly, though glad to
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get away from Laud. He became chaplain to the family of Sir Richard Darley, where he was kindly treated, - very kindly, inasmuch as the knight's kins- woman became his wife, with the consent of the household whom he had made his friends. She was our first Margaret Shepard.
But another ecclesiastic showed a desire to get rid of him, and he came to Northumberland, where he might preach in peace, " being far from any bish- ops." There his study and thought made him more discontented with the character and condition of the Church to which he still belonged. He removed again, and was silenced again. Then he " preached up and down in the country, and at last privately in Mr. Fenwick's house." While he was thus being loosed from church and country, divers friends in New England asked him to come over to them, and many in Old England desired him to go, and prom- ised to accompany him. He resolved to accede to these requests. His reasons are on record in his " little booke." He saw no call to any other place in Old England. The Lord seemed to have de- parted from England when Mr. Hooker and Mr. Cotton were gone, and the hearts of most of the godly were set and bent that way. He was con- vinced of the evils in the English Church. "I saw no reason to spend my time privately when I might possibly exercise my talent publikely in N. E." " My dear wife did much long to see me settled there in peace and so put me on to it." He sailed with his wife and child late in the year 1634. They encoun-
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tered a violent storm, and were nearly lost. But with difficulty they reached the land again. Then his child died, and the stricken father dared not be present at the burial, lest he should be arrested. He wondered if he was resisting the will of God. He feared that he had gone too far in separating from the " Assemblies in England." He spent the winter in Norfolk, with his expenses defrayed by Roger Harlakenden. He could not preach in public, but he was busy with his pen, writing what we can read to-day. In the spring he went up to London, where he evaded the officers for a time. It became clear to him that he should come to New England, and in August he sailed once more, with his wife and a second son, his brother, Harlakenden, and other precious friends. It was in the ship Defence, " very rotten and unfit for such a voyage." There were fears that they might be forced to put back. But through many storms they were carried safely, and on the 3d of October, 1635, they reached Boston harbor, and received a loving welcome from many friends. On the second day after their arrival, Shep- ard and his family came over to Newtown, where he found Hooker and Stone, whom he had known in England. In the following February this church was organized, as we have already seen.
We are much favored in having the Autobiogra- phy of our first minister, wherein there is so full an account of the private and inner life, as well as the public career and experience, of this representative man. We can see into the soul and through the
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2 50TH ANNIVERSARY.
life of a young Puritan minister, and know from the one what the many felt, suffered, dared, and wrought out with courage and endurance. The man is in the pages over which his fingers moved. I know of no other Puritan book in which you can so plainly feel the warm blood, as with all its ache and hope it sent its currents up and down the life.
The new comers enjoyed for some months the society of the good people who had been here since 1632 and 1633, and were about to seek the wilds of Connecticut. Very pleasant must that intercourse have been. I think that we can see why Shepard was so long delayed in England. He needed the discipline and education which he gained in the years of his waiting. But besides that, his arrival here was so timed that he could take up the work which Hooker was laying down, and the new church could enter into the place out of which the old was called.
The Shepard company numbered some sixty per- sons, as nearly as I can determine, and they at once entered into public affairs. When the selectmen were chosen, very soon after their coming, the first name on the list was Mr. Roger Harlakenden. A few of the old families remained when their neigh- bors had gone, but the town passed into new hands, and a new church established itself in the meeting- house. There were strong men in that temple : men of large heart, of vigorous mind, with a robust con- science and an inviolate purpose. They gave them- selves to the beginnings of church and state in a
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new world, knowing how well they builded. They and their neighbors had walked with scholars. The Bible which is now in our churches was first printed in 1611. Shakespeare died in 1616, Bacon in 1626, Herbert in 1632. They made books, though their work was less to create a literature than to found a church which would be the patron of letters, and would train a people to read and think, and in due time to write. Between 1630 and 1647 nearly a hundred university men joined this colony. Of these a good share came to our side of the river. What can we say better than that here the College at once followed the Church? Before this year closes we shall read again that famous page in Cambridge history. But even now we may tell with honest pride why the College was "appointed to be at Cambridge." One writes that this was "a place very pleasant and accommodate." Another: "They chose this place, being then under the Orthodox and soul-flourishing ministry of Mr. Thomas Shep- ard." Another : "It was with a respect unto the enlightening and powerful ministry of Mr. Shepard, that when the foundation of a colledge was to be laid, Cambridge, rather than any other place, was pitched upon to be the seat of that happy seminary." Newtown was called Cambridge, but the river did not exchange its royal for the classic name.
It is instructive to gather up the testimony of his time regarding our first minister. He was thirty years old when the church was formed. We have one picture of his appearance in the words of a
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stranger who listened to him, and described him as " a poore, weake, pale-complectioned man." From the same hand we have an account of the preaching. The man heard the sound of a drum which called people to the meeting, and resolved to hear Shep- ard preach. "Then hasting thither hee croudeth through the thickest, where having stayed while the glasse was turned up twice, the man was metamor- phosed, and was fain to hang down his head often, lest his watry eyes should blab abroad the secret con- junction of his affections." The preacher was able, by the Spirit of the Lord, " to take such impression in his soule . .. as if he had beene his Privy Coun- sellor." There is abundant testimony to the power of his preaching. Language almost beggars itself in the attempt to describe him, -" the holy, heav- enly, sweet-affecting and soul-ravishing minister," " this soul-melting preacher," " that gracious, sweet, heavenly-minded and soul-ravishing minister, in whose soul the Lord shed abroad his love so abun- dantly that thousands of souls have cause to bless God for him." His successor in house and parish, the matchless Mitchel, said of the influence of Shepard upon him while he was in college : " Un- less it had been four years living in heaven, I know not how I could have more cause to bless God with wonder than for those four years." He was the minister here for thirteen years. During all the
time the church was in its first meeting-house. The new house was rising beside his dwelling when the voice ceased in the "silver trumpet,
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from whence the people had often heard the joyful sound."
" His name and office sweetly did agree : Shepard, by name, and in his ministry."
" Oh Christ, why dost thou Shepherd take away, In erring times when sheepe most apt to stray ? "
They who had honored and loved him carried out the form which had been overmuch tossed about on land and sea, and laid it to its rest in their God's- acre. The stone they placed above it has disap- peared, and no man knows where the grave was. He has no monument, save this tablet in the wall, and the stone in the city cemetery which bears his name and the names of those who have followed him through this ministry into the glory beyond. But he has many memorials: his name is on this house and on the society which holds it for the church. It is on school-house and street. It is in the influence of his life, which has remained and re- newed itself in the two centuries since he went up on high. He left his " best silver tankard " to his son Thomas, but with his own hand he wrote the lines, the draft upon the future and God's provi- dence, which brought to his church the tankards and the cups with which we still keep the sacra- ment he loved and renew the covenant in which he lived. He gave his velvet cloak to his beloved friend, Samuel Danforth. But he left his affection and his charity, his faith and his devotion, his truth and his spirit, to the church which he baptized in
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250TH ANNIVERSARY.
its infancy, and trained in its youth for a man- hood which should know the power of an endless life, that through all our generations we might be covered with the strength and beauty of his char- acter and service. He is entitled to the reverence which we render to him now. Increasing years can only increase the honor in which his name is held.
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