USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Gloucester > The book of the three hundredth anniversary observance of the foundation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Cape Ann in 1623 and the fiftieth year of the incorporation of Gloucester as a city > Part 3
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FIRST PARISH CHURCH Historical Sermon Delivered by Rev. Dr. Daniel Munroe Wilson at the 250th Anniversary Celebration
Note by Editor-It has been suggested that the sermon de- livered by Rev. Dr. Daniel Munroe Wilson on the occasion of the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the incorporation of Gloucester would find an appropriate place in the present volume. The First Parish gathered in 1633, is the oldest church organization in point of continuity on Cape Ann. Its history, especially during its first two hundred years, is largely that of the community, when church and state were essentially one. Rev. Mr. Wilson's address, is considered authoritative, and as the memorial volume of that oc- casion is out of print, and in order that a fairly complete ecclesiastical history may be presented in one volume, it is reproduced.
DISCOURSE
"Zebulon shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be for haven of ships." Gen. xlix. 13.
"It was planted in a good soil by great waters, that it might bring forth branches, and that it might bear fruit, that it might be a goodly vine." Ezek. xvii. 8.
In any account of the institutions of Gloucester we must reckon with the influences of the great sea. The salt breath of it, the mys- tery and power of it, and the sadness of it have interfused them- selves with the life of the people and are potently with us in the
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DORCHESTER, ENGLAND Here in 1623 the Colonists Assembled Prior to Their Departure for New England
Photo by W. Pouncy
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celebrations of this day and week. We can no more exclude the sea from our thought than we can from our sight when we walk the ways of this town. Was it not the far extension of this cape into the great sea, reaching out like a hand to welcome and harbor mari- ners, which led to its early discovery and early settlement? It en- ticed, it seems likely, the first Englishmen who set foot on the soil of Massachusetts, from that ship of Gosnold's which in 1602 sailed from headland to headland along our shores. It invited that romantic and tireless adventurer, Capt. John Smith, to bestow upon it the name of the Turkish lady-love who had so nobly befriended him,- a name to be supplanted only by that of his Queen at the command of Prince Charles. Later, the fame of its convenience for fishing made it, next to Plymouth, the place most thought of on our Massachusetts coast, and led to the enterprise of the Dorchester company, which, in the fall of 1623, left the fourteen men at the point now called Stage Fort, to establish a settlement. From the Pilgrims across the bay a party joined them the next spring, and this beginning led on to the planting at Salem and Boston. Thus a true hand of welcome Cape Ann proved to be, beckoning to the multitudes of earnest men and women who sought on these shores liberty to worship God, and reaching out far into the sea to guide them into the bosom of the land.
Then, also, with the wealth of the sea the prosperity of the town has ebbed and flowed. The Lord, in this matter, took a hand, as Minister Chandler firmly believed. "The scaly herds and finny tribes, moved by God's guidance," he wrote "come voluntarily to the hooks and are drawn from their native element." This is a comforting assurance to the tender-hearted residents of this place who may be troubled at the thought their support is at the expense of the suf- fering of the lower creatures.
But in a more deep and subtile way has the influence of the sea entered into the lives of the inhabitants of Gloucester. All the perils of the ocean and that power the sea has to produce sadness and a sense of the solemn mystery of existence, has been exerted upon these people through the generations.
"And though the land is thronged again, O sea! Strange sadness touches all that goes with thee,- The small bird's plaining note, the wild sharp call, Share thy own spirit: it is sadness all."
Profound reverence results from this, and a quick responsive sym- pathy. The whole character is attuned to a deeper and tenderer note. We see the manifestation of it especially in the history of this ancient church. The sad spirit of the sea early subdued the stern Calvinism of the Puritan. He was no cruel bigot here. There is not a single stain of blood upon the records. How could the eyes which were full of tears for husbands, sons, brothers, and friends, who had gone out into the deep never to return, gleam fierce and fatal upon witch and Quaker ? Was there not mourning enough in
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the sea without causing it in a neighbor's dwelling? A quiet, trustful piety was in their hearts, and our Quaker poet, who knows well
"The white-walled hamlet children of this ancient fishing town," can sing, with no dark memory to restrain, of their life,
"Inward, grand with awe and reverence."
The worst in the way of superstitious violence they attempted was to shoot at spectral Frenchmen with silver buttons.
Thus modified by the close relation of its people to the great sea, the history of this First Church in Gloucester is the history of religion in New England. Here, as in any of the other older settle- ments we may trace the development of the spiritual life of a people vigorously and freely manifested under the democratic form of con- gregationalism.
What other form could be so well adapted to a new endeavor to live the Christian life simply and directly? What other form is so consonant with free political aspirations ?
This grand new Republic of ours was in that Puritan church which in all its activities was of and for and by the people. Con- gregationalism, exercised first by the Christian disciples in the sim- plicity of their earliest efforts, is, for efficiency, contesting in the realm of spiritual things with the clerical hierarchy which in its various forms derived rather from Roman imperialism than original Christian precedents. The reformation in England brought these two forms of church administration into direct opposition. State-church and separatism, episcopacy and the congregation of equals, fought it out at first with words and then with arms. When the Pilgrims, most radical of separatists, fled to these shores in hope of es- tablishing their church way unmolested, their opponents sent over ministers to "advance the dignity of the Church of England and the laudable use of the book of common prayer." Undisturbed possession of this new land by either faith was not to be permitted. Stage Fort, in Gloucester Harbor, was the scene of an early incident in this contest.
For two years Pilgrim and prelatist worshipped there in distinct and separate camps. The settlers who were landed by the ship of the English Dorchester Company in 1623 were loyal to the Established church. More joined them the next year, and it seemed as though a church with a bishop was to be established here opposite the church without a bishop at Plymouth. In that same year, however, the fish- ing party from the Pilgrims arrived in Gloucester Harbor. Each faction erected its own "great house," and when the Sabbath came there was exhibited for the first time on New England shores, the spectacle of hostile denominations, settled in the same place, engaged in separate and unfriendly worship. On the Sabbath the Pilgrims piously exhorted one another and aimed their shafts, each tipped with a text, at the popish practices of the English Church. Meanwhile the churchmen joined in the "decent" services of the prayer-book, read fervently the petitions for the king, the bishop, and all in
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authority, and in their hearts desired to be delivered from the sin of fanatical separatism.
For about two years this state of things continued, the prelatists in 1625 receiving for their encouragment the support of the notorious John Lyford. This minister, sent from England to make head against the Pilgrims, had just been ignominiously cast out of Ply- mouth. He not only wrote to England injurious letters about them, while pretending to be friendly, but sins done in the old world had found him out in the new world. However, he was considered good enough by the English authorities to be sent to Cape Ann to lead fishermen in the laudable use of the book of common prayer, and it is easy to imagine he made the most of his opportunity, and with a rough tongue girded at the party from Plymouth. At this time it seemed uncertain whether the origin of First Church should be in a congregation of the Pilgrims or a church of the English episcopacy. The withdrawal of all the settlers of both faiths, soon afterwards, determined that, for the present, it should be in neither. The Pil- grims returned to Plymouth, the others removed to Naumkeag, where, under the lead of the patient Conant, some held on till the arrival of Governor Endicott with that first division of the great Puritan immigration which secured Massachusetts and New England to the churches of the Congregational order.
After great troubles between the different religious factions Cape Ann was now deserted for some years, save for the presence of the agents of Captain Mason who claimed the territory, an occasional fisherman's crew, and the visit of adventurers like Morton of Merry- mount. These nondescripts were, however, numerous enough and re- pugnant enough to the Massachusetts Colony to call forth an order in 1630 for their expulsion. Perhaps this was in preparation for the regular settlement of the place by good men and true. For tradition informs us that soon after 1630, a son of John Robinson, the large- hearted preacher to the Pilgrim congregation in Leyden, led a com- pany to Cape Ann. At all events there were enough persons here by 1633, wrote Minister Forbes, on the authority of an ancient manu- script, "to carry on the worship of God among themselves-read the word of God, pray to him, and sing psalms."* As early as this, he says, on another occasion, "the first settlers of this town consecrated a house for public worship." Here we have the beginnings of First Church.
Properly it is as early as this that we are to seek for our re- ligious and civic origins. From this time onward the occupation and growth of the place is steady and uninterrupted. Thomas Lechford gives us a glimpse of the condition of things in 1639, when he writes that "at Cape Ann, where fishing is set forward and some stages
* Sermon of Sept. 13, 1792, "preached at the desire of the Com- mittee, appointed for Repairing of the Meeting House, in the First Parish of Gloucester, from the Waste of Time and the wanton spoila- tions of Captain Lynzey in the Falcon Sloop of War, immediately after those Repairs were completed."
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builded, there one Master Rashley is chaplain." It is evident that the place is peopled almost entirely by fishermen. There are no families; no homes in the proper sense of the word. But in 1642 a change was wrought. The Rev. Richard Blynman arrives with several families from the Plymouth Colony. And now with a per- manent minister they are to be solidified formally into a "church estate." The exact date of this consummation is not given, nor have we the names of those who signed the covenant, nor the covenant itself. All these facts are lost with the loss of the original records. Early in 1642 it must have been, however, when the church was definitely established.
In those days it was most often the case that the church was or- ganized before the town, and it seems that Gloucester began its career the 3d of May, when the General Court established its bounds. Then again, Blynman would probably regard it his first duty to see that the church was properly ordered, and he was here before May, as it was by him, or the friends he brought with him, that the plantation was named. There were here "about fifty persons," grown persons, mostly men, "when this godly reverend man" was called to office, wrote Johnson in his "Wonder-Working Providence." A goodly number that to transact the business we are met this day to com- memorate. They gathered together in a little thatched meeting-house, already some time built. It was situated, most likely, on the upland which seems to have been that alluded to in a document of 1648, as "Meeting-house Hill." Tradition places it near the spot where in 1644 a half acre was assigned for the "common burial place," that in time outgrew its primitive bounds, has fallen into disuse, and long been known as "the old up-in-town burying ground." That there was a meeting-house at this time we have positive evidence in the report of the commission appointed by the General Court, Oct. 7, 1641, to settle the bounds of Cape Ann. In that report they mention the "Cape Ann meeting-house." It was probably the one which Forbes* says, was "consecrated for public worship," in 1633. The second meeting house was built probably, within two years after Mr. Blyn- man gathered First Church, in 1642. Good authority favors its erection, about half a mile north of "the old meeting-house place." If so, it was the first of four successive houses of worship that stood there through two centuries, and from which the place became historic as "Meeting-house Plain,"- in later days "Meeting-house Green."
Blynman, the first minister, was an aggressively dogmatic Christian, a fair type of the sterner Puritan who, "laboring much against the errors of the times," embroiled himself, first with his flock in Marshfield and was forced to leave, and then so stirred up the people here that they would not peaceably listen to hini. I cannot
* Sermon of March 5, 1795, "preached at the desire of the Select- men, and the Committee for inspecting the Town Schools; occasioned by the Dedication of a new and very commodious Grammar School House, lately erected in the First Parish of the Town of Gloucester."
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PREACHERS OF ANNIVERSARY SERMONS
REV. JOHN BRAINERD WILSON Chapel Street Baptist Church
REV. DR. JOHN CLARENCE LEE Pastor Independent Christian Church (Universalist)
REV. GEORGE H. LEWIS Pastor Annisquam Universalist Church
REV. J. H. C. COOPER Rector St. John's Episcopal Church
REV. A. A. MADSEN, PH. D. Pastor Trinity Congregational Church
REV. DR. FRANK L. WILKINS First Baptist Church
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help wondering if the plain, common-sense fishermen, whose minds had broadened with the breath of the sea, were not too liberal and human to swallow whole, as the whale swallowed Jonah, those doctrines of priestly authority and harsh heavenly decrees which were then preached from most of the pulpits. A more liberal spirit was abroad; that I know from the history of the Boston church and my own church of Qunicy. Let us hope it was welcomed by your predecessors in this place. On such an occasion as this we like to think the best we can of our ancestors.
Blynman left Gloucester in 1649. After him the parish resorted to one of the characteristic principles of the Congregational policy: they chose one or more from among themselves to do the preach- ing. That, I take it, is a proceeding to be commended. Although the people of that day highly esteemed their ministers, calling them "God's prophets," the "annointed of God," and so on in like terms, they did not think he was another sort of creature from themselves, and was to be religious for the whole congregation and do every act of worship for the congregation. Such complete division of labor they did not grasp after. We have succeeded better in thrusting all duties upon the pulpit. Now, if a minister is away from a parish, the peo- ple, in most instances, seem helpless. There is not one among them to lead the worship. In the old days, however, there were many "private brethren" who could preach and pray. The whole church was religious and was competent to serve God at any time, whether a minister was in the pulpit or not. It was customary to elect
"teaching elders," and these were quite prepared to "handle the Word" or "exhort" when called upon. The Gloucester church, weak- ened now by the departure of many to New London with Mr. Blyn- man, felt unable to hire a regular preacher. The Sunday services were dutifully carried on, however, by the "private brethren." A militia captain, one William Perkins, most frequently officiated, and consequently received the title of "teaching elder," and grants of upland and marsh that had been "reserved unto the use of teaching elders unto all posteritie."
He devoted himself to his religious duties during some eight years, but whether he also trained the militia to fight the heathen Indians, and besides, like the apostles John and Peter, went a-fishing, history is silent. Other "teaching elders"- Thomas Millet and Wil- liam Stevens - exercised their gifts for the edification of the church, and then it was determined to invite John Emerson to settle over them. He also was a resident of Gloucester, and it would seem, now that several private brethren had successfully conducted services, the inhabitants were so satisfied with themselves that they thought a "Cape Anner" could do everything and preach too. They were go- ing to have no more imported ministers. "The church and the people," wrote Parson Forbes at a later date, "sought for one of their own sons to take them by the hand and lead them in this wilderness in the paths of peace and truth, but did not obtain one until 1653, when they engaged Mr. John Emerson, who from that time preached
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among them to good acceptance, and was ordained their pastor in 1658 and served them for more than forty years in the gospel of God's dear Son." Mr. Babson, Gloucester's historian, says he was ordained Oct. 6, 1663. However, that is a matter of no consequence. More interesting is it to learn that under him the people were so hungry for preaching that they would not give him increase of corn and fish for salary until he promised to give them a good number of week-day lectures in addition to the two services on Sunday. It was at the beginning of his ministry, that is, about 1664, that the third meeting-house was built for the use of the parish. "It was located on the Meeting-house Plain," says Babson. At the end of this ministry, in December, 1700, the fourth house, that had been some time building, was completed. It "stood on the Meeting-house Green," says the historian, "a short distance, probably, from the old one." These earlier houses of worship were small, the last one mentioned being forty feet square, and were soon outgrown by a parish which under Mr. Emerson increased trebly.
For a year or two after Emerson the parish was dependent upon occasional supplies and the services of teaching elders. Neverthe- less, the members felt quite competent to consider and accept a new covenant. This was done Jan. 6, 1702, and might be regarded as in a way a preparation for a new pastor whom they had called. He will now introduce himself. "After almost two years spent in trouble from the different apprehensions concerning a minister, unworthy me, John White (who am less than the least of all that in a pro- bationary way preached here), was pitched upon and chosen by church and town to be their spiritual pastor and guide, which solemn charge I had given me the 21st of April, 1703." His ministry covers the period in the history of this church in which four new parishes were formed out of it. The mother of churches she may be called. When Mr. White began his ministry there was but one congregation on Cape Ann, and it had connected with it a church of sixty-eight members, twenty-one being males. In 1716, the westerly precinct was set off and called the Second Parish; in 1728, the northerly side of the Cape was set off and called the Third Parish; in 1742, the meeting-house on the Plain, which was deserted by First Church for a new edifice in the Harbor, was given an independent existence under the name of the Fourth Parish; and in 1753, the Fifth Parish was formed at Sandy Bay. Yet, in spite of the withdrawal of so many, Mr. White could say in 1744, when he had parted with the material for three of these other churches, that there remained in the First Parish eighty males and one hundred and eighty females.
All this cutting up of the old parish was done without much friction, except in the case of the establishment of the Fourth Church. At that time the old First Parish needed a new meeting-house, and the burning question was where it should be built. Toward the harbor, said the majority, for thither the population and wealth were drift- ing. As early as 1732 the decision was made, but the people at the north part objected so strenuously that nothing was done till 1738.
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Then seven men took the matter in hand independently, built a church and invited the parish to occupy it. Minister White imme- diately entered its pulpit. The dissentients to the number of about eighty remained by the old church on the "green" where, as the Fourth Parish, they worshipped for many years. But the wisdom of the majority in removing is seen in the fact that a church could not be maintained there, even though a new house was built in 1752. At last, in 1840, the situation was abandoned and the Fourth Parish ceased to exist. Scarcely can one discern where the edifice stood on that hill which is now public domain, but which for so many genera- tions was the scene of the united worship of the people of Cape Ann. All that is left there to remind us of its ancient uses is the house built by Parson White, soon after his settlement in 1702, conveniently near the meeting house.
This violent sundering of worshippers who were really of the same neighborhood and who should have sat side by side in the same house as did their ancestors for a hundred years, took place, curiously enough, at the very height of a religious revival. The wave of the "Great Awakening," which had been set in motion by Jonathan Ed- wards, and which, in 1740, was tumultuously agitated by the eloquence of Whitfield, was now tossing and swaying the souls of the people in New England. Here in Gloucester, worshippers "were impressed with deep terrors," and children of fire "prayed to admiration." In the uttermost stress of this religious commotion, when "the chief recrea- tion was the singing of Dr. Watts's hymns," and many were tearful and many shouted for joy, there was still displayed a good deal of unsanctified human nature. This is very likely why Minister White wrote the following words: "We find that strong, but short terrors, succeeded with ravishing joys, are no certain evidence of saving con- version."
This great revival had a far-reaching and rather unexpected re- sult throughout the churches: it stimulated the growth of liberal sentiments as later manifested in the outbreak of Universalists and Unitarians. When people saw the dogmas of Calvinism, bald and terrible as preached by the logical Edwards, fantastic and lurid as presented by the revivalists, they did not want to think of them, and turned away from them to dwell upon more rational and loving aspects of religion. From this time onward can be noted the soften- ing of doctrines and the gradual ascendency of heart and mind in things theological. The evolution of spiritual Christianity had begun in most of the old churches of the Pilgrim and the Puritan, an evolu- tion which attained self-consciousness in the preaching of Murray and Channing and became aggressive in the withdrawal from the main body of Congregationalists of the churches of Bradford and Winthrop, Endicott and Dudley, of the Apostle Eliot, of the Mathers, of this church here, the First Church in Gloucester.
Minister White did not live to see the change in any marked de- gree of it. He died Jan. 16, 1760, widely beloved. His monument in the old burying-ground was lately repaired by members of the
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Evangelical or Trinity Congregational Society,- an act of graceful Christian courtesy on the part of the youngest offspring of this old church.
It was left to the colleague of Minister White to see and sorrow over the first distinct outbreak against Calvinism. This colleague, Samuel Chandler, settled Nov. 13, 1751, is a marked type of the minis- ter of the old time. He can do something besides preach. Indeed, your Cape Ann parsons have shown themselves to be unusually competent in handling worldly affairs as well as the Word. It was Blynman who first cut the beach through and made a passage from bay to bay behind the Cape; Parson Emerson ran the mill for the town, and now we see Parson Chandler building his own house. He saws and hammers like a born carpenter, makes window frames and shutters, and "sets eighty square of glass in a day." That sounds quite secular to our nice modern people who cannot bear to think of a minister out of a solemn black coat, or touching things material other than books and pens. But Chandler went even beyond this, and did things which are decidedly reprehensible to most Christians of the present. "My house raised," is an entry in his journal; "about sixty or seventy people treated with toddy and flip." Here is another entry: "I bought a Jersey girl for five years; gave £50 for her." Some time later he sold her for forty pounds. He seems also to have dealt cruelly with the king's English, for he not only speaks of a certain convulsion of nature being very truly a "shocking earth- quake," but in another place describes it as "an ingeminated con- cussion." It is not to be wondered at that a revival followed, and that "after meeting came in Peter Severy, aged eight years, under conviction," and that "Alice Messerve was brought into light last night as she was seeking Christ in the cellar."
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