USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The history of the First Baptist church of Boston (1665-1899) > Part 2
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1 Newport Church Papers.
2 Felt, "Ecclesiastical History of New England," Vol. II., pp. 25-46.
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off from the Salem Church, June 24, 1651, " for absent- ing himself from public ordinances nine months or more and for being rebaptized."1 He had previously become a member of the Baptist church in Newport. This aged and blind brother had great joy when his pastor, John Clarke, and the other brethren from Newport, arrived at his home. On the following day (the Lord's Day), they proceeded to hold a simple serv- ice of preaching, and of the observance of the Lord's Supper. "Four or five strangers that came in unex- pected," were present also in his house, which for the time had become a sanctuary of worship.
Mr. Witter had probably written to the church at Newport that there were persons in his vicinity who wished to be baptized. The church sent, not their pastor alone, but Holmes, also a preacher, and Crandall, a private member, that their number might give a church authority to all their acts. They baptized the candidates, one of whom may have been under admonition in a State Church for his Baptist opinions. The Supper was then celebrated and the newly baptized converts partook with Witter. This view, which is in perfect harmony with all the facts in the case, makes the administration of the Supper an orderly service, such as the strictest Baptist would approve. The Newport Church kept the ordinance at one of its outposts. 2
While Mr. Clarke was expounding the Scriptures in the house to the little company there gathered, two constables came in with a warrant and arrested him and his Newport associates. They were "watched over that night (in the ordinary) as Theeves and Rob- bers" by the officers, and on the second day after they
1 Felt, "Ecclesiastical History of New England," Vol. II., pp. 25-46. 2 Dr. H. Lincoln, in "Examiner and Chronicle," Dec. 23, 1875.
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were lodged in the common jail in Boston (then in Prison Lane, now Court Street). July 31 they were brought to public trial in Boston. Governor Endicott charged them with being Anabaptists, to which Clarke made reply that he was " neither an Anabaptist, nor a Pedobaptist, nor a Catabaptist." At this reply,
The Governor stepped up and told us we had denied infant bap- tism, and being somewhat transported, told me I had deserved death, and said he would not have such trash brought into his jurisdiction. Moreover he said, "You go up and down and se- cretly insinuate into those that are weak, but you cannot maintain it before our ministers. You may try and dispute with them." 1
To this Clarke was about to make reply that he would be pleased to reason upon these matters out of the Scriptures, when the jailer was ordered to take him forthwith to prison. Holmes says :
What they laid to my charge you may here read in my sentence, upon the pronouncing of which, as I went from the bar, I ex- pressed myself in these words : I bless God I am counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus. Whereupon John Wilson2 (their pastor, as they call him) struck me before the judgment seat, and cursed me saying, "The curse of God or Jesus go with thee." 3
Clarke says : "In the forenoon we were examined ; in the afternoon, without producing either accuser, witness, or jury, law of God or man, we were sen- tenced." He was "fined twenty pounds, or to be well whipped." Crandall was " fined five pounds or to be well whipped." Holmes was "fined thirty pounds or
1 Clarke, "Narrative."
2 John Wilson was the first pastor of the First Parish Church of Boston (1630-1667).
3 " Holmes' Narrative," Backus, Vol. I., p. 189.
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to be well whipped." From his prison cell Clarke wrote this letter, the original of which may be seen in "Massachusetts Archives," Vol. X., p. 212 :
To the Hond Court assembled at Boston. Whereas it pleased this Hond Court yesterday to condemne the faith and order which I hold and practice and after you had past your sentence upon me for it wer pleased to expresse I could not maintaine the same against yor ministers and thereupon publickly proffered me a dis- pute with them : be pleased by these few lines to understand I readily accept it and therefore doe desire you wold appoint the time when pr-son with whom, in that publick place whar I was condemned, I might with fredome and without molestation of the civill powre dispute that point publickly, when I doubt not but by the grace of Christ to make it good out of his last will and testa- ment unto which nothing is to be added nor from which nothing is to be diminished ; Thus desiring the father of light to shine forth by his powre to expell ye darknes,
from the prison this 1. 6. 51.
I remaine yo' well wisher JOHN CLARKE.
The governor, who at first had shown an inclina- tion to allow the points of disagreement to be publicly discussed with the ministers of the colony, and indeed had openly in court offered Clarke that privilege, afterward, at the instigation of the ministers them- · selves, ignored his letter of acceptance of this proposal. From the prison Clarke sent these four propositions, which he ardently hoped to be permitted to discuss :
First, "The absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ in all matters of doctrine" ; secondly, "That baptism, or dipping in water, is one of the commandments of this Lord Jesus Christ, and that a visible believer or disciple of Christ Jesus (that is one that manifesteth repentance towards God, and faith in Jesus Christ) is the only per- son that is to be baptized, or dipped with that visible baptism, or
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dipping of Jesus Christ in water" ; thirdly, "That every believer may, in point of liberty, exhort, or preach, or prophesy" ; fourthly, "That no believer hath right to persecute his brother for a matter of conscience."
These were certainly lucid and explicit statements, and appeared reasonable matter of debate between the inen in power and a man in prison. They were then and are now good Baptist doctrines. But the debate was not allowed. No notice was taken of his appeal nor of his statements. When it became noised abroad that there was to be a public debate, great interest and expectation were aroused. It was rumored that the distinguished John Cotton would be the disputant for the Court. Nothing came of it all. Probably the Court discreetly concluded that such a public discus- sion would advertise the "Baptist heresie " far and wide, and that still further mischief would ensue.
Clarke and Crandall were not long after released "upon the payment of their fines by some tender- hearted friends without their consent and contrary to their judgment." But Holmes could not be persuaded to accept such deliverance. He would neither pay the fine, nor allow it to be paid, and was kept in prison until September, when he was brought forth and publicly whipped
With a three coarded whip, giving me therewith thirty stroakes. As the man began to lay the stroakes upon my back, I said to the people, though my flesh should fail and my spirit should fail, yet my God would not fail.
When he was released from the whipping-post he said to the magistrates,
You have struck me as with roses.1 Although the Lord hath made it easy to me yet I pray God it may not be laid to your charge. 2
The whipping was so severe that Governor Jenckes says :
Mr. Holmes was whipped thirty stripes, and in such an unmer- ciful manner, that in many days, if not some weeks, he could take no rest, but as he lay on his knees and elbows, not being able to suffer any part of his body to touch the bed whereon he lay.
Morgan Edwards says :
This was the first instance of tormenting for conscience' sake in New England, and that a Baptist was the protomartyr here as a Baptist was the first martyr that was burned in Old England.
Two friends, of Baptist proclivities, but not yet avowed Baptists, who stood by the whipping-post, out of sheer sympathy with Holines' sufferings ex- tended to him their hands, and one of them said, " Blessed be the Lord." This exhibition of compas- sion caused the magistrates to order them "to be fined forty shillings or to be well whipped." They were thrust into prison, but were at length released through the intervention of friends who paid their fines. One of these friends was John Spur, who was a member of the First Puritan Church of Boston. He was cut off June 1, 1651, because he believed that their baptism,
1 Dr. H. M. Dexter has sought to make it appear that this expression of Holmes indicates that the whipping was only a "play whipping," and not at all severe. It was done so gently as to make the sentence merely nominal. Such interpretations of history are altogether too partisan to gain any credence among fair-minded readers, even if there were not evidence to the contrary. The Puritans did not indulge in such levity. They were in earnest.
? " Rhode Island Hist. Coll.," Vol. VI., p. 332.
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singing of psalms, and covenant, were "humaine in- ventions." 1
All these things were done without trial by jury, or any trial whatever, but at the pleasure of the mag- istrates in consultation with the ministers. John Cotton in his sermon, before the Court gave its sen- tence against Clarke, Holmes, and Crandall, declared that "denying infant baptismn would overthrow all, and this was a capital offence : and therefore they were soul murderers." 2
This whipping took place at the head of State Street in front of the meeting-house and of the old State House. The site of the former is now occupied by the Brazier Building. Boston lias erected a monu- ment to the memory of those who fell in the "Boston massacre " of 1770, which occurred almost on the same spot. They fell in the assertion of the rights of freemen and in resistance to British tyranny over mu- nicipal and civil liberty. Will Boston ever erect a monument to Obadiah Holmes, whose blood flowed freely on the same ground in assertion of the rights of conscience, and in resistance to American tyranny over religious liberty? The sufferers in the massacre acted on the impulse of the inob and but dimly real- ized their part in the struggle for liberty. The suf- ferer at the whipping-post acted intelligently, delib- erately, and with clear knowledge of the significance of what he suffered. He was the truth-loving fore- runner of the martyrs whose patient sufferings even- tually saved New England from herself and from the
1 Felt, "Ecclesiastical History of New England," Vol. II., p. 46. 2 John Spur's "Testimony."
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dire consqueences of her strange blindness concerning liberty. He was the first in a sadly long list of those who suffered in order that the New England intelli- gence and the New England conscience might assert themselves, and forever establish in the New World a civil and religious liberty which should be Christian and complete.
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CHAPTER II
HENRY DUNSTER AND THOMAS GOOLD.
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ALL the repressive measures devised by the General Court, and the severity of the persecutions, only served to make Baptists more widely known and to create to- ward them an active sympathy. They were the per- suasive and fruitful preparation for the establishment of a Baptist church in Boston. It was one among the oft-repeated illustrations of history, that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." It was im- possible that men should not inquire what these peace- able and law-abiding citizens had done, and what doctrines they held, which should subject them to these indignities and sufferings. The spirit of in- quiry is always a dangerous antagonist of the spirit of tyranny, however sincere or devout the forms of that tyranny may appear. Men who had thought little or nothing about Baptists, now began to inquire about them and their doctrines. Inquiry made new converts and sympathizers. "The Baptist heresie " broke out in wholly unexpected and alarming quar- ters.
Henry Dunster, the first president and practically the founder of Harvard College, was one of the most eminent and useful men in the New World. He. was regarded as "a miracle of scholarship," and his mod- esty, amiability, and devoutness, were not less con- spicuous than his scholarship. He had devoted him- self with rare assiduity to the establishing of the
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infant college. He stood pre-eminent in that notable group of English university-bred men which adorned and guided the affairs of the colony during those early years. The admiration for him was almost boundless, while the grace and sweetness of his character made him almost equally well beloved. He was the rare man, who appears all too seldom, in whom lofty scholarship, noble character, profound unselfishness, and sweet humility are happily blended. He had become president of the college in 1640, and had united with the First Church in Cambridge. It would be difficult to overestimate the confidence and the pride which the whole colony felt in regard to President Dunster.
In 1653 he began to give public expression to his dissent from the scripturalness of infant baptism. The whipping of Holines, two years earlier, had undoubt- edly arrested his attention, and aroused him to search the Scriptures. After some months of careful study, he plainly declared, "All instituted Gospel Worship hath some express word of Scripture, but Pedobap- tism hath none."1 In February, 1654, he held for two days a public disputation with nine leading min- isters of the colony upon this thesis : Soli visibiliter fideles sunt baptizendi-Believers visibly only are to be baptized. All the arguments brought against him were fruitless toward changing his opinions. He in- sistently declared himself opposed to infant baptism, because it had no warrant of Scripture and urged the baptism of believers only. He soon gave a practical expression to his views by withholding his own child
! "Dunster MSS.," p. 289.
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from baptism. So conspicuous a defection from the Puritan doctrine, and so masterly an attack upon the key position of a theocratic State, aroused the leaders in Church and State as nothing previously had been able to do. Every effort was made to win him back, or at least to persuade him to remain silent. The appeal of personal affection was made to him. The danger to the colony and to the college was set before him. The ruin of his personal fortune and of his future usefulness was threatened. But all was in vain. He was immovable. He contended, "that the subjects of Baptismne were visible penitent believ- ers, and they only by Vertue of any rule, example, or any other light in the new testament." He had put nearly all his private property into the establishment of the college. He had given it at one time a hun- dred acres of land, and with almost no outside finan- cial assistance had built the president's house. For nearly fourteen years, he had given himself with rare and single devotion to its maintenance. His property was invested in it. His life was wrapped up in its work. His attitude toward infant baptismn imperiled everything which lie held dear except the truth. The Grand Jury sent a request to the ministers to formulate a suitable charge against him, which they did, and he was presented to the Court under indict- ment, " For disturbing the ordinance of infant baptism in the Cambridge Church." His reply was :
But for the matter, I conceived then, and so do still, that I spoke the truth in the feare of God, and dare not deny the same or go from it untell the Lord otherwise teach me, and this I pray the Honored Court to take for mine Answer.
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In October, 1654, he was forced to resign the presi- dency, for as Cotton Mather says, "he had fallen into the briars of antipedobaptism," and his usefulness was deemed to be at an end. His defection from the standing order was a shock and grief to all the ad- herents of Puritanism, to such an extent as is impos- sible for us at this day to understand. He was or- dered to vacate his house, just as the severities of winter were coming on, but upon his humble peti- tion, and statement of the delicate health of his fam- ily, he was permitted to remain until spring. He then left his home an impoverished man, and scarcely knew which way to turn for employment among those who were now unfriendly to him. He removed at . length out of the jurisdiction of the colony of Massa- chusetts Bay, and located in Scituate, which belonged to Plymouth Colony. There he preached to a little flock which he gathered about himself. But even there his enemies pursued him, for on April 7, 1657, the Grand Jury presented Henry Dunster to the Court at Cambridge, "for not bringing his child to the Holy Ordinance of baptisme." ' When he "affirmed that none of them had given any demonstrative argument touching infant baptism," the Court, instead of giv- ing him a reasonable answer or refutation, "Sollemly, admonished him of his dangerous error," and ordered that he should give bonds for his appearance at the next Court of Assistants in Boston. It is probable that he was never brought to trial. He died in Scit- uate, February 27, 1659. His death allayed ecclesias- tical animosities, and
1 " Middlesex Court Original Papers."
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His body was solemnly interred at Cambridge, where he had spent the choice part of his studies and of his life, and might there have continued if he had been endowed with that wisdom which many others have wanted besides himself, to have kept his singular opinion to himself, when there was little occasion for venting thereof. 1
Fortunately for New England and the world, Henry Dunster was 110 coward, and was endowed with the spiritual sagacity which foresees the triumph of the truth, and is ready to suffer in its behalf. He was, indeed, one of the early New England martyrs.
These sufferings for truth and conscience' sake evi- dently made a profound impression on the mind of Thomas Goold, of Charlestown, who was a close friend of the learned president. He also becaine disturbingly inquisitive on the subject of infant baptismn. In 1655 the elders of the Charlestown Church put Goold under admonition for not bringing his infant child to bap- tism, and when they sent him a note requesting his appearance before thein to answer for his delinquency, Dunster was among the group of friends at his house who advised him what to do. It is evident that they were in close sympathy with each other before this time, and that Dunster's attitude and views were the direct cause of Goold's withholding his child from baptism. It may be said, therefore, with a large measure of truth, that Henry Dunster was the founder of the First Baptist Church of Boston, for he was the immediate forerunner and influential cause of the atti- tude of Thomas Goold, who finally became the actual founder of the church, in 1665. There can be 110
1 Hubbard, " History of New England."
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doubt that if Henry Dunster had lived until 1665 he would have become the first pastor of the church in- stead of Thomas Goold, his friend and disciple, and would have had the joy of seeing his views embodied in a church of baptized believers.
This consumination was, for some unknown reason, delayed until six years after he had passed away. Probably the sternly intolerant spirit of the authori- ties made it seem impolitic that the group of Baptists should organize themselves formally into a church, but it is known that they mnet privately for simple worship some years before the final organization. It is perhaps idle to speculate upon what different results inight have ensued if Dunster had lived to become founder and pastor of this church. He certainly was not without courage to brave persecutions. He might have attracted to himself many men of learning and influence, and have given the church such a stand- ing as to have precluded some of the fiery persecu- tions through which it afterward was called to pass. He found in his disciple, Thomas Goold, a man as inflexible in character as himself, and one whom the terrors of fines, imprisonments, and the loss of all things, had no power to frighten. In the simplicity and greatness of their characters they had much in comninon. Henry Dunster's name and memory will ever hold a cherished and fragrant place in the his- tory of the First Baptist Church.
In 1720 the church wrote a letter to the Baptist churches in London, and gave some account of the rise of the church. The following is an extract from the letter, which has been preserved :
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It pleased the Lord, by his divine and wise-disposing providence to spirit a small number of men who were very gracious and en- lightened in the knowledge of his truth as it is in Jesus, and to appear for the vindication thereof, and to encourage them for their gathering into a church in the way and order of the gospel as above mentioned, which several wise and learned1 men endeavored but could not accomplish it. However God was pleased to succeed the endeavors of our brethren who were not so accomplished with acquired parts and abilities by learning. 2
What Dunster, the wise and learned, was not. per- mitted to do, was accomplished by God's grace through Thomas Goold, who declares,
,We consulting together what to do, sought the Lord to direct us, and taking counsel of other friends who dwelt among us, who were able and godly, they gave us counsel to congregate ourselves to- gether : and so we did, being nine of us, to walk in the order of the gospel according to the rule of Christ, yet knowing that it was a breach of the law of this country : that we had not the approba- tion of magistrates and ministers, for that we suffered the penalty of that law, when we were called before them. 3 .
Thomas Goold' was one of the leading freemen of Charlestown, and was a man of notable character and standing both in town and church. His business was that of a wagon maker. He was one of the leading property owners of the town. In a list of two hun- dred and twelve freemen, among whom in 1658 the public meadow lands on the other side of the Mystic River were divided pro rata by the town, according to
1 This allusion is doubtless to Henry Dunster and others.
2 Rev. S. Hall's "Collection," Backus, Vol. I., p. 490.
3 Backus, " History," Vol. I., p. 296.
4 His name has been spelled in a variety of ways, but his own signa- ture to a prison bail-bond, preserved in the " Massachusetts Archives," spells it Goold. Hence that spelling is followed in this history.
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the assessed property which they owned in the town, his name appears twelfth on the list.1 That he was a man who knew how to think in a clear, consecutive, and orderly way, his narrative of his experience amply - shows. He was undoubtedly the writer of the Con- fession of Faith which the church still accepts as its credal statement. The honorable and influential po- sition which he held in the community accounts for the long and patient dealing with him by the Charles- town Church, and also for the stir which his open espousal of Baptist doctrines caused in the colony. Upon him, for many years, fell the heaviest burden of fines, imprisonments, banishments, and social ostra- cism. Hubbard, in his " History of New England," says that "Goold was a man of a grave and serious spirit and of sober conversation." He and Hannah, his wife, were admitted to the First Congregational Church, of Charlestown on the seventh day of the fourth month in 1640.2 He was admitted a freeman of the colony June 2, 1641. The restrictions about this privilege were so great that to be a freeman was an especial distinction. He was admitted again to the Charlestown Church on the twenty-first day, first month, 1652,3 in which year he was also one of the selectmen of the town. He had evidently changed his residence and returned again, but where he went or how long he remained is unknown. He would seem to have had no scruples about infant baptism in 1641, for in that year he brought his infant daughter to be christened. But between that date and 1655
1 Frothingham, " History of Charlestown," p. 153. 00 Ibid.
2 " Records of First Church, Charlestown."
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had occurred the public whipping of Obadiah Holmes, because he was a Baptist, and the agitating public discussion over President Dunster, between whom and himself was a warm friendship. It is not surprising, therefore, that when in 1655 another child was born to him he refused to have it christened, and in conse- quence was earnestly adınonished by the church. But persisting in his refusal he was suspended from com- munion, December 30, 1656.
This was soon followed by a course of expostulation, admonition, and discipline, lasting through nearly ten years, until July 30, 1665, when he was excluded from the church upon definite information that "he had embodied himself with other Anabaptists in a pre- tended church way." Even if the debates between himself and the church sometimes grew warm, and threats were made against him which were difficult to bear, nevertheless the church in the main showed a commendable patience with him during these ten years. It is abundantly manifest that he was a man of influence and distinction in the community, other- wise he would have been more summarily cut off from church fellowship. In 1656 he was summoned before . the Middlesex Court, "for denying infant baptismi to his child, and thus putting himself and his descend- ants in peril of the Lord's displeasure, as in the case of Moses."
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