USA > Massachusetts > Worcester County > Westborough > The history of Westborough, Massachusetts. Part I. The early history. By Heman Packard De Forest. Part II. The later history. By Edward Craig Bates > Part 6
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36
$6 arkman
This picture is reproduced from a pen and ink sketch made by a boy from memory. It is probably not a good likeness.
67
HOW THEY SECURED A MINISTER.
Mr. Lenard, of Worcester, at Concord about a Wolf's Head which the said Lenard sued the town for." This intimation that the towns offered bounties for wolves' heads makes it certain that they were still in dangerous numbers. Even thirty years later there was some game - . in these woods not to be despised of the hunter, as wit- ness the following items from the town records: -
To the Town Treasurer for the Time Being : these may cer- tify that Jese Brigham brought to us a wild Catt's head that was under a year old, and it was Executed as the Law directs pr. us, WESTBOROUGH, March ye 5th, 1753.
JAMES EAGER, Selectman. ELIEZER RICE, Constable.
N.B. This head was Brought in ye yeare 1750.
£o 1 4 WESTBOR : march 9, 1753.
then Recd ye whole of this Kitten's head in money. I say Recª by JESSE BRIGHAM.
Nor were wild beasts the only inconvenience of the solitary traveller on horseback. Just at this time Indian hostilities were renewed, and the towns were full of ner- vous alarms. During his first visit Mr. Parkman walked to the meeting-house from John Maynard's, Saturday after- noon, August 31, with pistol in hand. At four o'clock an alarm was raised, and the people rushed to arms; but happily no Indians appeared.
By this time all sentimental feelings toward the red-man had vanished from the thoughts of the settlers, and even the desire to be just was becoming faint before the pres- ence of a terror which never wholly forsook them. Then, too, the mild Indian of Massachusetts had disappeared, and the savage whom they now knew was, as we have
.
68
EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
seen, the emissary of the Frenchman in Canada. The feeling of the time finds a very apt illustration in a passage in the Diary of young Parkman, written just before he assumed charge of a church in the wilderness of Worcester County.
" AUGUST 23d, 1724.
"News that Capt. Harmon had Slain 5 or 6 more Indians at Norridgewock, with Sebastian Rasle, ye Old Jesuit, and brot in his and 26 or 27 scalps besides, and Delivered Three Captives from ye Enemy. Among those yt were slain of ye Indians Bummageem was one. His Wife and Two Sons were taken cap- tive, and Brot to York and Piscataqua. And in all We lost Not a Man but an Indian, a Cape Fellow. DEO OPT. MAX. GLORIA TRIUMPHI. Capt. Harmon found an Iron Chest with ye Jesuit, wh. had many Letters in it, some from Gentle- men at Boston, (O Horrid) Betraying our Country."
The mingling of the Puritanic horror of the Roman Catholic with the most ludicrous carelessness of Indian life makes the unconscious humor of this passage delight- ful. " Ye Old Jesuit" was a devoted and saintly man according to French Catholic ideas of saintliness, and made great sacrifices for the religious welfare of his red converts; but he hated the English, and the Eng- lish returned his hatred with interest, accusing him, probably not without cause, of instigating his Indians to the diabolical deeds they perpetrated. The expedi- tions sent against him for a long time failed of success, and the Indians continued their mad career. But when at last he was caught, great was the exultation; for the heart of New England had suffered long and severely, and its hatred had waxed hot. It found a pre-eminent fitness in some of the imprecatory Psalms for the temper of the hour.
·
69
HOW THEY SECURED A MINISTER.
Such were some of the features of the frontier life into which this college-bred Boston boy came in the year 1723. On the 5th of January, 1724, he preached again, and the next day was held the town meeting above recorded, when he and Mr. Jacob Eliot were nominated as candidates. On Wednesday a committee of the town called upon him to inform him of the pro- ceedings. " And in truth," wrote the young man that day in his Diary, "I was at a stand (though I did not express any extraordinary hesitation), considering my incapacities on every hand."
The next day he rode over to Hopkinton, where he found one of the race, not yet extinct, which loves to tell unpleas- ant news, - one Colonel How, who told him he understood how affairs were in Westborough, and that Mr. Thomas Ward had tried to raise an opposition to him. The news sobered his young ardor somewhat, but not sufficiently to interfere with his enjoyment of a sumptuous dinner the next day at " Mr. Whood's," where they had " roast goose, roast peahen, baked stuffed venison, beef, pork," etc. “After dinner," he records, " we smoked a pipe and read Gov. Shute's memorial to the King."
In March following he became a member of the New North Church in Boston, organized in 1712, of which just a century later the Rev. Francis Parkman became pastor. When Ebenezer joined it, in 1724, the Rev. John Webb was pastor, and the Rev. Peter Thacher, colleague. In July he received his second degree, that of Master of Arts, from Harvard. On the 23d of August he preached again in Westborough. On Tuesday, the Ist of Septem- ber, there was held a meeting of those who proposed to become members of the yet unorganized Church, and on the Friday following they all called on Mr. Parkman,
70
EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
acquainting him with their proceedings and "their most happy union," and inquiring what he thought should be done farther. "They remained in conference," 'he said, " until sundown, and concluded with a prayer." For him- self, the young man was deeply sensitive as to the gravity of the duties he was assuming, and very humble as to his fitness for the work. The day after this conference, re- cording it in his Diary, he adds, "O, my inconstancy and instability in these unsettled times, when steadiness is so much demanded!" It was indeed a time that called for nerve. Harassed with Indian depredations ; oppressed with depreciated currency; forced to toil unremittingly to wrest subsistence from the yet unsubdued land; struggling amid much ignorance and inexperience to lay the founda- tions of Church and State on a new and untried method, - these pioneers had need of courage and wisdom, and those who were to be leaders must be men of strong fibre. The young minister of those days had few advisers. His older brethren being in scattered parishes, and there being no means of easy assembly, he would usually be left to work out his problems alone. And not only that, but he was to be a leader in a sense which would be strange to us. He was first man of the town. No others were as well informed; none carried his influence and authority. He must to a great degree direct the future course of the town. It meant something then to be a New England bishop, and we can pardon the modest shrinking of this youth of twenty-one from the responsibilities that were coming upon him.
But his mind was not wholly absorbed, even at this time, with the gravity of his position : there were sweets mingled with the sternness of his experience; and while he con- sulted with the elders and read up on his duties, his heart
71
HOW THEY SECURED A MINISTER.
was away at Cambridge, where a damsel of twenty-five summers, whom he knew, was busy with preparations for her wedding-day. Sunday over, and the consultations completed, he rode back to Boston, where a week later, on Monday, the 14th of September, he was married to Mary, daughter of Samuel and Hannah Champney. With only a brief time for nuptial festivities, the young couple began preparations for their removal and settlement, and in less than a month were on the ground and in their house.
Meantime the town had observed Thursday, the 24th of September, as a fast-day, "in order to the gathering of a church in sd town, and for ye ordination of ye Revd Mr. Parkman; " and the neighboring ministers had met, as was customary, to conduct the solemn exercises and de- liver devout exhortations. On the 28th a town meeting was held, and it was voted "to ordain ye Revd Mr. Park- man to be a pastor of ye church amongst us ;" and Wed- nesday, the 28th of October, was fixed as the time. It was also voted "to send for ye elders in neighboring towns; " and a committee was appointed "to entertain them as usual at ye town's cost."
CHAPTER VI.
1724.
ORGANIZATION OF A CHURCH, AND ORDINATION OF THE FIRST SETTLED MINISTER.
F ROM this time until the great day arrived that was to see them fully equipped with the institutions of religion, all thoughts were concentrated on one event. The people must needs be busy, one and all, in prepara- tion for the entertainment of the council and the guests. The young minister and his wife were gathering up their housekeeping goods and sending them to their new home. By the 12th of October they were moving into their house, which stood near the church. And besides all the worldly cares that kept feet and hands busy, the minister himself was deeply exercised concerning the weighty responsibility that was so soon to rest on him. He belonged to that class of New England ministers of the early time who felt their calling as an awful responsibility laid on them of God, and who lived and wrought, like Milton, -
" As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye."
And the taskmaster conception of God, though neither the highest nor the truest, furnished a goad to conscience which made stanch and sturdy men for a trying period. Mr. Parkman writes in his Journal, October 9: "My Business about this time was reading Ordination sermons, and wherever ye minister's duty was explained; especially Van Mastricht de Ministerio Ecclesiastico." And on the
73
THE FIRST SETTLED MINISTER.
14th he records: "This Day I Solemnly Dedicated to Humiliation and Prayer to prepare myself (by ye grace of God) for ye awfull Time approaching."
The mention of his chief reliance for instruction in the pastoral office is suggestive of the dearth of books at that day on topics which are now embarrassed with fulness and variety of treatment. It is quite safe to venture the opin- ion that none of the young men who in the last ten years have entered the ministry from Westborough ever heard of " Van Mastricht de Ministerio Ecclesiastico." No pain- ful creeping through the dreary pages of a Dutchman's bad Latin was ever imposed on them. Instead, libraries pour out their treasures at their feet; learned and genial professors on homiletics give them the ripened and selected fruit of the century's thought. By contrast, the demure figure of this young man just come of age, reading, under the shadow of a great dread, his two or three pe- dantic books, and the labored and formal discourses then available, becomes pathetic. The mind of the present day is book-fed to repletion. It is hard to realize the position of those who lived in a famine of literature. Two books lie on my table as I write, inscribed with Ebenezer Park- man's name, one of which was a veritable part of his accoutrement at this time of pondering, having been pur- chased in 1723. It is an octavo of 558 pages, bound in calf and well preserved, printed in London in 1707. I give the titlepage entire, because, though such reprints are common enough now, this has especial interest to us as indicating the material of which the small library of the first minister of Westborough was composed. It is as follows : -
.74
EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
VERITAS REDUX. Evangelical TRUTHS Reftored :
Namely, thofe concerning
God's Eternal Decrees, The Liberty of Man's Will,
Grace and Converfion, The Extent and Efficacy of Chrift's Redemption, and Perfeverance in Grace.
All briefly and plainly Stated and Determin'd according to the Holy Scriptures, the Ancient Fathers, and the Senfe of the Church of England.
WITH
A Full and Satisfactory ANSWER to all the Arguments, Objections and Cabils that have been made ufe of by any Writers againft the faid DOCTRINES.
BEING THE
Firft PART of the Theological TREATISES, which are to compofe a Large BODY OF CHRISTIAN DIVINITY.
By JOHN EDWARDS, D. D.
LONDON: Printed for Jonathan Robinfon, John Lawrence, and John Wyat. MDCCVII.
75
THE FIRST SETTLED MINISTER.
The author of this treatise was a clergyman of the Church of England, a graduate of Cambridge, and a doc- tor of divinity. He was born at Hertford, Feb. 26, 1637, graduated at twenty-four, and had charge, successively, of Churches in Cambridge, Bury St. Edmunds, Colchester, and Cambridge again. He received his doctorate in 1699, when he was sixty-two years old. From that time he be- came a voluminous writer and " a subtle, able, and learned polemic" of the high-Calvinistic type. When he pub- lished the " Veritas Redux" he was seventy years old. It is of no little assistance in comprehending the religious thought of the time, and the influences which moulded this first minister of Westborough, and through him left their impress on the generation, to glance at these pages which at the time we are considering were under his eye. Of the subjects treated in it, the first - The Eternal Decrees, or Predestination - occupies half of the book, being then regarded as the central truth of all theology. There are two prefaces, a " General " and a "Particular," which re- veal the author's personal characteristics. There are few more exquisite bits of unconscious humor anywhere than in these introductory essays. Apologizing for his fre- quent appearance before the public, he justifies it by the necessity of multiplying treatises " in this Degenerate Age, wherein Christianity is ready to breathe her last," and by a comical distortion of Eccl. xii. 12: " By these, my son, be admonished of making many books; " " namely, for the promoting of Religion and Godliness." This " admonish- ing" is to be interpreted as advising " to compose many Books, and as it were without End," even though much study is a weariness of the flesh. As to his own qualifica- tions for following this ingeniously invented advice, he says : -
76
EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
"If the abandoning of Prejudice contributes to the under- standing of the Doctrines of Religion, I may be allowed to say, that I'm in the direct way to understand them aright ; for I have rejected several Notions, Dogmas, and Sentiments, which Com- pany, Education, Books, view of Worldly Advantages, and my own Inclination had invited me to embrace. I hope it will give no offence if I tell thee, Reader, that I reckon there are few Persons in a greater Capacity to enquire impartially into Truth, and consequently to attain to it, than I am, because I have no Biafs or Intereft upon me."
At the close of the "particular preface " he shows unusual consideration for the purchasers of his little octavo : -
" I have endeavored to bring the Whole within this moderate Volume, that I might not be overchargeable to the Purchasers of it. Or if they should think it too costly, they may solace them- selves with this, that they need not all their lives be at any further Expences. For I may be permitted to say, without in- curring the Imputation of Arrogance, That I have comprised in this narrow Compass, everything that can be said with relation to these Heads. So that I can assure the Reader he will never have occasion for the Future to lay out his Money on any Au- thors that have handled these Points. Which I hope will prove a Saving Caution to him, besides the Gain and Advantages which will accrue."
This is delicious, especially as an introduction to themes which lie largely beyond the range of knowledge, and which have been responsible for more verbiage and polemical writing than any others which have exercised the human mind.
In regard to the serious teaching of the work, it may suffice to condense his theory of the divine decrees into a few sentences. God is supreme autocrat, acting, not rationally, but arbitrarily, in regard to Nature and man.
77
THE FIRST SETTLED MINISTER.
He has established absolute decrees concerning all natural and even inanimate things, " Particularly concerning that noted Meteor the Rain." " The number of the Showers of Rain and of the very drops of them is determined : And the particular Places and Cities which shall have the benefit of them are also appointed " (p. 2). In like manner God is an absolute and inflexible fate in relation to man's life. "The Physician's Care and Aid, used about his Rich Patients, are successless, when at the same time the Shiftless and the Poor, who cant go to the cost of Physick, escape the dan- ger of it, and of the Disease, and are soon recovered." Doubtless he had correctly gathered certain facts looking in this direction, but connected the mystery piously with divine decrees, rather than with the superiority of Nature's processes of healing to the bungling and savage methods of the physicians of his day. In the same way God arbi- trarily discriminates between persons, inasmuch as the same causes work very different results in different cases. And his comfort for the afflicted takes, in consequence, such form as this: "Dry up your tears. Surcease your extravagant Sighs and Groans when your Friends take their farewell of this World. . .. Why should you im- moderately lament their Death when they could not possibly live a minute longer?" (p. 49). And yet Chris- tianity had been in the world seventeen hundred years when some of its ministers had only such cold comfort to give !
But the pitiless theorist has a more bitter pill for his readers. It is the eternal and deliberate purpose of God " to leave a certain number of men in their Corrupt State and Guilt." He might save them, but he will not. " He might have hindered the Fall, but he would not." " He wills sin by suffering it to be," and then wills not to
78
EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
redeem from it. "Tho' Sin be not good, yet that there should be sin is good, yea necessary." " Thus we have gain'd by the Fall, and (if I may so say) God hath gained likewise." Moreover, " This [sin] gives God an oppor- tunity of exerting his Vindictive Righteousness in inflicting Punishment on Sinners." Divine Love "must pass some by, to render it the more acceptable to others, and to com- mend the Discriminating Favor of the Most High." "The inflicting of Punishment on incorrigible Sinners, and con- sequently the Decreeing of that Punishment, is one way whereby the Glory of God is exalted : Whence it is that their Punishment is pleasing and delightful to him." This theological speculator, with his infantile reasonings, should have stood for an hour on the slope of Olivet beside the Christ who was weeping over doomed Jerusalem.
Morality he makes one thing in men, and another in God; what we should condemn in any man as selfish or cruel or unjust, may be nothing of the kind in God. This is the sophism to which eighteenth-century Calvinism was forced to resort if it would maintain its position. If God were the pitiless autocrat they pictured him, and if it must nevertheless be maintained that he was the Absolute Justice, then must words be juggled with, and justice in God mean something else than any justice man ever conceived.
He cannot avoid meeting the Scripture statement that, as he renders it, " God willeth all men to be saved." But how does he meet it? Not by the inference that if God desires all men to be saved, their loss must be their own choice rather than his, but by the arbitrary assumption that when God speaks thus graciously "it cannot be an Absolute and Definitive Will that is meant." It only means that God willeth some of all mankind to be saved.
79
THE FIRST SETTLED MINISTER.
That is, it is only when God wills to condemn men that the will is absolute.
It might seem that before a man could thus chop lame logic in cold blood concerning the divine character and the fate of man, he must have had the human heart chilled out of him. But it is only a violent divorcing of head from heart during the process of reasoning about a " scheme." By and by his better feeling begins to assert itself. He is logically forced to believe in an absolute decree in the case of every man, - of salvation for the elect, of reprobation for the vast mass of humanity. But something in him revolts. There is a divine spark of kindliness in him that is better than anything his system will allow him to toler- ate in God, and it is so strong and so divine an instinct that it will come out. Therefore although his theory warns him and disproves his better thought, and shakes a menacing finger in his face every step of the way, he proceeds to make exceptions to it which he confesses he has no authority for. There are doubtless those, he main- tains, for whom the decrees of God are not absolute; and thus he opens " a Door for Hope and Relief." " I con- sider three Ranks of Persons," he says, whom he proceeds to specify as the elect, the reprobate, and " perhaps a third sort, who fall not under either of these Decrees, but are in a state of Probation, and are not definitely predes- tined to Salvation or Damnation." So speaks out the better feeling in this delightful child of seventy years of theologic lore, though the admission makes a fatal breach in his theory. And he carries his illogical hope even into heathen lands, and sturdily contends that though no hea- then can be saved in the ordinary way, "yet in an extra- ordinary way the salvation of such Heathens [viz., those who lived after the coming of Christ] is not to be doubted
80
EARLY HISTORY OF WESTBOROUGH.
of." What these "extraordinary ways" are, he specifies at some length in a manner which demonstrates his hope- less lack of a sense of humor, to say nothing of intellectual breadth. He thinks idiots and infants will be saved, or at least baptized infants; and " tho' there is no reason to hold, with the Turks, that all Fools and Madmen go to Heaven, yet it is generally believed that some of them do." Some heathens may be saved without faith; some without good works ; some because God does deviate from his ways in certain observable cases. " All Pagans are not peremptorily to be sentenced to Destruction, see- ing there may be Ways and Methods not known to us which God may think fit to make use of for their eternal Welfare." He " does not like" the theory of future pro- bation. But they may be saved without their knowledge, -" as I may have my Debts paid by a friend, and so be discharged, and yet have no knowledge of the Person who doth me that kindness." And he thinks "we may reason- ably conceive that God can work inherent Sanctification on Heathens on a sudden." So cries the heart of the man; and yet on the very next page, being confronted again by his theological system, to which he feels he must be loyal, at whatever cost, he wheels around "on a sud- den " to a statement which, by the rules of logic, nullifies all his speculations, that if men can be saved by the light of nature, then Christ's coming was in vain.
And here, in the midst of all his inconsistencies, his childish reasonings, his firm belief in the infallibility of his Calvinism, and the manful struggles of his heart against its inevitable deductions, we leave this good doctor of divinity who helped to form the theological mould of Ebenezer Parkman's thought in his young manhood. I have presented this glimpse because it helps better than
!
i
81
THE FIRST SETTLED MINISTER.
any description to make vivid the habit of thought and the general form of belief which characterized the community of the New England town when Westborough was born. And only by understanding that can we truly estimate the forces that generated the life of these communities, where religion was the highest concern, and the minister the undisputed authority.
The day for which all previous days had been the prepa- ration, at length arrived, - the 28th of October, 1724. The Church was first to be organized, and then the young minister installed over it. The council met at Mr. Park- man's house, which stood near the rude meeting-house. It was composed of the following churches: the church in Framingham, the Rev. John Swift, pastor; the church in Marlborough, the Rev. Robert Breck, pastor; the church in Lancaster, the Rev. John Prentice, pastor; the church in Sudbury, the Rev. Israel Loring, pastor; the church in Mendon, the Rev. Joseph Dorr, pastor; and the church in Weston, the Rev. - Williams, pastor. The Rev. Mr. Breck, of Marlborough, and the Rev. Mr. Swift, of Fram- ingham, were unable to be present, leaving but four clerical members of the council.
There were twelve men, besides the pastor, who were to constitute the new Church. They were Ebenezer Park- man, Thomas Forbush, John Pratt, Edmund Rice, Isaac Tomlin, John Fay, David Maynard, Thomas Newton, James Bradish, David Brigham, Joseph Wheeler, James Ball, and Isaac Tomlin, Jr. It is significant of the times that there were no women's names on the list, and no women in the Church until the next July, when six were received, evidently wives of some of the original mem- bers, including Mary, the wife of Mr. Parkman. The names of these six were as follows: Anna Rice, Abigail 6
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.