USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Charlestown > The history of the First church, Charlestown, in nine lectures, with notes > Part 6
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again to any of them, that would, to object if they had any thing from the word of God to allege against it ; but there was not one contradicent."
But while a good degree of unanimity was prevailing in this church, the people generally were much divided in their opinions. The church of Boston received the doctrine of the synod, and proceeded " to practice according to its recommen- dations ; but a considerable number of the brethren were dis- satisfied." 1 A division was prevented, however, by the influ- ence of the pastor, the Rev. John Wilson, who had been a member of the synod, and subscribed its result. This venera- ble man died in 1667, and the church became vacant for the first time.
Those who were a minority under Mr. Wilson, now became a majority, and succeeded in electing for his successor, the Rev. John Davenport, who was "the greatest of the anti- synodists." To this procedure a large and very influential portion of the church were opposed ; they were friends of the synod, and to the number of twenty-eight, seceded from the First church, and formed a new church, now known by the name of the Old South. This church was organized in Charlestown in the month of May, 1669, after having received the sanction of a council of ministers, who publicly testified their disapprobation of the conduct of the old church, among whom were Mr. Symmes and Mr. Shepard, the pastor and teacher of this church.2
This was the great event of the day. It occasioned much excitement, and divided the whole colony into two parties, the friends of the old and friends of the new church, the latter of whom were in favor of the synod, and the former against it. It was not long, however, before the churches settled down with great unanimity upon the practice recommended by the synod.
Upon our records, besides the catalogue of persons in full communion, we have the " names of such children of the covenant, as have publicly renewed their covenant with God and this church, yet not taken into communion in the Lord's Supper ; " and in a separate list, the " names of such as have
1 Hist. of First church.
2 Note 23.
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been admitted into this church, but not unto full communion." The distinction between these two classes, seems to have been that the first were members of the church by infant baptism ; and the second were baptized at the time of their admission.
On 16th July, 1665, Daniel Edmunds and three other per- sons, renewed their baptismal covenant, and were thus admitted to the privilege of baptism for their children, but not to the Lord's Supper. This practice was continued in the church until 1793; in the beginning of that year, a committee was appointed, consisting of Rev. Dr. Morse, Richard Devens, Esq., Dea. Larkin, Dea. Millar, Dea. James Frothingham, Mr. Joseph Hurd, Mr. Barnabas Barker, Dr. Putnam, and David Wood, Esq., to take into consideration the expediency of departing from this usage. Their report is interesting and valuable, as exhibiting the practical results of the " half-way covenant," as it is called, and the necessity that grew up for a return to the original practice of our churches.
The committee, after ascribing the origin of their practice to the seven propositions of the venerable synod of 1662, and expressing their satisfaction with the plan, if it could be carried out according to the intention of its framers, although they regard the original principle of limiting the privilege of baptism to the children of communicants, as less liable to be abused, proceed to show in what respects their actual practice dif- fered from the one recommended by the synod. The synod regarded the children of believing parents baptized in infancy, not only as visible church members, but also as "personally under the watch, discipline and government of the church, of which their parents were members." And when they grew up, and renewed their covenant, and received the privilege of baptism for their children, they were required to subject them- selves to the discipline and government of the church. And when the plan of the synod was first carried into effect, privi- leges and obligations were united; they who received baptism held themselves accountable to the discipline of the church. Accordingly, after the adoption by this church, of the plan recommended by the synod, we find accounts of the discipline of persons described as " children of the covenant, but not in full communion." The first case of discipline of this sort, deserves to be mentioned, as an evidence that the plan of the
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synod in its true spirit and meaning, was, as stated in the report, essentially different from the half-way covenant of more modern times.
" September 1, 1667. Our pastor," says the teacher, Mr. Shepard, "acquainted the church with the complaint which had been made to us concerning the scandal of Jno. Lowden, (our br. Serjeant Lowden's eldest son, ) and that we had ex- amined it, (referring to his striking the constable and watch- man late in the night, when he was inflamed with drink,) and that we intended according to rule to deal with him in a church way ; and that if any of the brethren had any thing to object against it they had their liberty; but none replying, their silence was taken for a testimony of their consent that he should so be proceeded with."
On the following Lord's day, agreeably to the usage of the fathers, "the assembly, before the pronouncing of the benedic- tion in the afternooon, was made acquainted with the offence in question, and the young man, being called forth, made con- fession of his sin." Inquiries were then made of him, and liberty given to the brethren to object if any of them were not satisfied. " At length," it was voted, " that the repentance held forth by the offender was satisfactory for the removing of the offence that had been given to the church, so that they would forgive him, and still confirm their love towards him." And " so it was declared by the eldership that he was re- stored." 1
This act of discipline seems to have been conducted in the spirit of kindness, and been productive of a salutary reforma- tion. And there is no reason to doubt, that in all similar cases, where the parents of the offender were in full communion, the watch and discipline of the church might have been exercised with equally good effects. But the difficulties in the way of administering discipline to those children of the covenant, whose parents were not communicants, were so great and numerous, that it was soon entirely neglected.
" Baptized persons among us," say the committee, " have not been accustomed to consider themselves as church members,
1 Six months after this, he was admitted a member in full communion. He seems after- wards, however, to have relapsed into intemperance, for which he was publicly admonished, July 26, 1674, and excommunicated, January 10, 1675.
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or subjects of the watch and discipline of the church ; nor have they for many years past, been thus considered and treated by the church. The consequence has been, that baptized persons, unregarded by the church as her children, have been suffered to grow up, and to live in the practice of scandalous sins, un- rebuked, and without any pains taken to reform them; of course all difference between them and the unbaptized, so far as respects the great privilege of being under the watch and care of the church is destroyed, and this part of the church (if we consider them as members) has, in consequence of this neglect, become exceedingly corrupt."
" These things being so," the committee were of opinion, that " an attempt at once to correct these abuses, and to revert completely back to the primitive practice, would in the present state of the minds of the people, produce unwarrantable schism in the congregation."
They therefore conclude by recommending the following plan. " That persons wishing the privilege of baptism for themselves and their children, be propounded to the congregation, and if no objection be offered, they shall be entitled to the privilege by subscribing a 'Declaration of faith in the Christian religion.'" This plan was followed during the ministry of the Rev. Dr. Morse, but gradually fell into disuse, and was never acted upon after his dismission. Since that time, the uniforin practice of our church has been what it was before the synod of 1662, to confine the privilege of household baptism to members of the church in full communion.
The only occasional vote of the church I find recorded during this period, illustrative of primitive usages, is the fol- lowing :
" April 22, 1666. A church act for the provision for the Lord's Table; viz : That at the beginning of every } year, each communicant shall bring in 12d. to the deacon's box for the } year that is to ensue respectively : and the year to begin (in order to this) the next sacrament day, which is May 6th, 1666. Voted in the affirmative by the silence of the whole church."
The venerable Symmes, the aged pastor of the church, was now drawing near the close of his long and faithful life. He was about seventy years old, and the infirmities of age having
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incapacitated him for the active performance of his duties, the church was led to seek another helper in the ministry. In the year 1669, the Rev. John Oxenbridge, one of the most popular preachers and elegant writers of his time, was employed for awhile, and with so much acceptance, that a strong desire was manifested to secure his services in the ministry. On the 8th of October, 1669, " The church met at about 10 of the clock in the forenoon," and passed a vote of thanks to Mr. Oxen- bridge, " for his laboring in the ministry of the word among us hitherto; " and " invited him to continue therein awhile longer among us every Sabbath day, that so the mind of God may be further discovered with reference to our intention (God willing : as the Lord shall make way in his and our hearts), in convenient time (being mutually satisfied in each other), to call him to office-work in this church." " It was also voted at the same time, that our honored magistrate Mr. Russell, Capt. Allen, and our deacons with the elders, would presently acquaint the Rev. Mr. Oxenbridge with the aforesaid invitation." His answer, however, was in the negative; and they made a second attempt, " to take off Mr. Oxenbridge's reasons against abiding with us, and to gain his granting our request," but with no success, for they found he had the day before " left his answer with the elders of the First church in Boston, in the affirmative to their invitation of him to themselves, and that he was resolved to go over to them." Mr. Shepard has appended to this record, the initials D. R. ! (with a point of exclamation, ) probably for Deus Regnat ! God reigns !- an in- dication of the severe disappointment the teacher and the church received from this decision. In the following spring Mr. Oxenbridge became pastor of the Boston church, and died after a ministry of about four years. He was suddenly taken ill while preaching the Thursday Lecture, December 23, and died Dec. 28, 1674, æt. 65.
Not long after this unsuccessful attempt to secure the services of Mr. Oxenbridge, the Rev. Zechariah Symmes died, February 4, 1671,1 within a month of completing his seventy-second year, and in the thirty-seventh of his ministry. Mr. Symmes deserves, if any one, to be called the father of the church. He
1 Note 27.
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was ordained its teacher two years after its organization, and upon the dismission of Mr. James, became its pastor, and for a period of more than thirty years continued to discharge the duties of that office. He ontlived most of those who ex- tended to him the hand of friendship, when he arrived at these infant settlements; they had dropped away one after another; a few white haired old men might still be seen ; but the more active and prominent men had been worn out by their severe privations, their anxieties and labors. The early planters of this town, who had settled him in the min- istry over them, were gone; he had followed them one by one to yonder burying hill, and laid them down with words of prayer and consolation ; and now a new generation-the children he had baptized-were bearing him forth to sleep in the midst of the congregation with whom he had lived. There are few things, in the private journals of the time, more affecting than the allusions they contain to the burial of the last remains of that first generation. The funerals of those days were conducted with great solemnity, and attended with a degree of expense which the straitness of their circumstances could but ill afford. The early settlers regarded it as an im- perative duty to gather about the bier of each of their dimin- ishing number; and it afforded them a melancholy pleasure to behold each other on occasions which seemed to re-unite them with their brethren who had departed. We can imagine we see one of these sable processions, as it moves slowly and silently along our streets ; slowly and almost impercep- tibly it advances, for the feeble and tottering are bearing a venerable form of their own to the tomb. We see them stand upon the burying-hill, their thin white locks floating upon the wind, and their trembling forms almost bending to the blast. The services ended, they seem reluctant to leave the familiar spot ; they revisit the graves of their brethren, notice every change in the yard, and look with solemn thought upon the spot where they soon shall lie; they return to the house of mourning to recount the virtues of the departed-the scenes of trial and hardship through which they have passed- and then with the approaching darkness they separate, each feeling that for his own burial may be the next gathering of the fathers. It will be difficult for us to understand what
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strength of attachment these patriarchs of New England felt for each other; with what increasing interest they watched their rapidly waning ranks ; and how tenderly they grieved for one another, as a soldier for his companion in arms, and a Christian for his brother.
There were bonds of sympathy between the old men of the first generation, which did not and could not exist between them and their children of the second, or such as had arrived at a subsequent period. And there were important differences of character also between the two generations. The warin- hearted and self-denying piety of the fathers, threw into the shade the harsher features of their character ; we reverence the one so much, that we readily cast the mantle of charity over the other. But their sons, as a generation, were not imbued with the same deeply religious spirit ; and yet, as the forms and excrescences of religion are frequently retained after the life is gone, they were characterized by many of the repulsive peculiarities of the fathers, unredeemed by their high moral principle. I do not mean to say, that the spirit of Puritan piety was extinct in the hearts of their sons. Far from it. But, as I shall have occasion hereafter to men- tion, a decline of spiritual religion had commenced, which in the first place rendered the provisions of the synod of 1662 necessary, and afterwards perverted those very provisions to the still more rapid decay of practical godliness, and of the conservative influence of a watchful church discipline.
Permit me to present an extract from a sermon, delivered by the minister of Dorchester, before the assembled clergy and legislators of Massachusetts, shortly before the death of Mr. Symmes. It will give us some idea of the points of difference between the first and second generations. In pressing his exhortation, the preacher directs his remarks distinctly, first, to the remainders of the ancient stock among us ; and, second, to the present generation. .
" First, unto those who are yet abiding with us of the first generation of the Lord's faithful servants, those plants of re- nown wherewith God set his garden here at the first. Let me speak a few words unto you, Fathers, because you have known that which was from the beginning. Yon have had a long and large experience of things ; you have seen all the great
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works which the Lord hath done for this people ; you have been long rooted and satiated in the house of the Lord : as you ought to be, and are, so we esteem of you, and account you to be as a crown and an honor in the midst of us : trials you have seen, and trials you may yet further see, but your triumph is now at hand. You have by this time parted with most and the choicest of your contemporaries, your companions in the foundations of the work of Christ here; and your eyes behold this day that another generation is risen up, and begin to stand thick upon the stage ; and that even of them, there is one, to whose lot it falls to speak to you in the name of the Lord this day. Now what is the sum of your desires, and would be the chief and top of your joys, as to those you must shortly leave behind you? Is it not that your children after you may be found walking in the truth, owning the covenant of God, maintaining and upholding the same interest of holiness and
* reformation wherein you have been engaged before us. * *
As long as you are in this tabernacle, stir them up by putting them in remembrance, that they may be established in all those truths and practices, which to own and abide in hath been New England's glory, and must be its preservation and safety in whatever times are coming upon us. You know what exam- ples unto this purpose you have in Moses and Joshua and David; the Lord plant in you the same love and zeal and care for the name of God and the welfare of your posterity, before you go hence and be seen no more."
And then turning to his brethren and companions of the generation risen and rising, he says :
" Look after the root of the matter in your souls. There are many outside custom-born Christians now-a-days. O let us get good sound principles, for want whereof the profession of so many hath run itself out of breath, and broke its neck. It hath been said that a loose Protestant is fit to become a strict Papist. A formal ungrounded professor, he will be fit for Satan's turn in these days. Plead and improve the Lord's covenant with you, and in special your baptism, the first seal of that covenant, that you may be established and made faithful with the Lord therein. If we forget and neglect the Lord in that, wherein he begins with us, and first visibly takes hold of
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us, no wonder if we make no progress, but sit loose from God all our days.
" Consider and remember always, that the books that shall be opened at the last day will contain genealogies in them. There shall then be brought forth a register of the genealogies of New England's sons and daughters. How shall we, many of us, hold up our faces then, when there shall be a solemn rehearsal of our descent as well as of our degeneracies ? To have it published whose child thou art will be cutting unto thy soul, as well as to have the crimes reckoned up that thou art guilty of." 1
Mr. Symmes appears to have been held in esteem by his co- temporaries, and when we remember who they were, this is no small praise. In respect to ability and literary attainments, he appears to have been respectable ; but if we are authorized to form an opinion from the slender information we possess respecting him, he was more distinguished for his practical talents and general usefulness. "He knew his Bible well," says Cotton Mather, " and he was a preacher of what he knew, and a sufferer for what he preached."
He was honorably interred at the expense of the town. His grave was " covered and set comlie," by a stone work laid in lime, together with a tombstone, procured by the selectmen and deacons, in compliance with a vote of the town. The epitaph, which is now entirely effaced by time, contained the following distich :
" A prophet lies under this stone : His words shall live, though he be gone."?
1 " New England's true Interest not to Lie." By Mr. W. Stoughton, preacher of the gospel in Dorchester. Preached in Boston, April 29th, 1668.
2 Note 23.
LECTURE IV.
HEB. xiii. 7, 8.
REMEMBER THEM WHICH HAVE THE RULE OVER YOU, WHO HAVE SPOKEN UNTO YOU THE WORD OF GOD: WHOSE FAITH FOLLOW, CONSIDERING THE END OF THEIR CONVERSATION : JESUS CHRIST THE SAME YESTERDAY, AND TO-DAY, AND FOREVER.
IN our last Lecture we brought the history of the church down to the death of the Rev. Zechariah Symmes ; this event left Mr. Shepard, the teacher of the church, alone in the ministry; the duties of which he continued to discharge with- out a settled helper till his death, in 1677. During this inter- val very little is to be gathered respecting our internal history. The church records only give evidence that discipline was faithfully maintained. From the town records a few miscel- laneous items may be gleaned, indicative of the spirit and usages of the fathers. Under date of March 31st, 1670, " By order of the selectmen it was left with our deacons to gratifie any minister called in to help Mr. Shepard on occasion of his weakness, and also that Mr. Shepard have £10 allowed him by the deacons in reference to entertaining of those who have been helpful to him for the time past." This vote was passed before the death of Mr. Symmes, and when the teacher, Mr. Shepard, was laid aside from his duties for a while in conse- quence of sickness. But I quote it as one of many evidences that the people procured for their pastor the assistance of a number of ministers, as they had occasion and opportunity. There is to be seen now in our burial ground the monument of the Rev. Thomas Gilbert, who came to this place from Scotland, in July, 1661, and soon after became the first minister of Topsfield. After his dismission from that church, however, he returned to this town, and probably assisted Mr. Shepard during the sickness and some time after the death of Mr.
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Symmes. He died in Mr. Symmes's house on the 26th October, 1673 .*
After this the Rev. Joseph Browne, a minister of considera- ble distinction, was employed as an assistant to Mr. Shepard. He was the son of the Hon. William Browne, a merchant of Salem, and graduated at Harvard College, 1666, where he had a fellowship ; he died May 9th, 1678, shortly after receiving a call to succeed Mr. Shepard in the ministry. The church also enjoyed the occasional services of Rev. Daniel Russell, a native of this town, and " son of the worshipful Richard Russell," who was admitted to the communion of the church, April 16, 1676. He graduated in 1669 at Harvard College, and was invited to succeed Mr. Shepard in the minis- try, but died January 4, 1679. Ten pounds were allowed by the selectmen, out of the sum his father had bequeathed to the church, towards his funeral charges.1
In the spring of 1672, the meeting-house was repaired and enlarged ; and in 1675, galleries were built, doubtless for the first time.2
In the month of May, 1672, Mr. Shepard preached by ap- pointment the election sermon. It was printed the following year at Cambridge, and is entitled " Eye salve, or a watchword from our Lord Jesus Christ unto his churches : especially those within the Colony of Massachusetts, in New England, to take heed of apostacy : or a treatise of remembrance of what God hath been to us, as also what we ought, and what we ought not to be to him, as we desire the prolonging of our prosperous days in the land which the Lord our God hath given us. By
1 Note 29. 2 Note 30.
* The following epitaph, which Mather says, Mag. 1. 544, ' was in his day to be read upon Mr. Gilbert's tomb in Charlestown,' is still legible.
" Here is interred the body of that reverend, sincere, zealous, devout and faithful minister of Jesus Christ,
MR. THOMAS GILBERT, sometime Pastor of the Church of Christ at Chedle, in Cheshire ; also sometime Pastor of the Church of Christ at Eling, in Old England : who was the proto-martyr, the first of the ministers that suffered deprivation, in the cause of non-conformity, in England ; and after, betaking himself to New England, became Pastor of the Church of Christ in Topsfield ; and at sixty-three years of age, departed this life.
Interred October 28, 1673."
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Thomas Shepard, teacher of the church of Christ in Charles- town; who was appointed by the magistrates to preach on the day of Election at Boston, May 15, 1672. Deut. viii. 10, &c. ; v. 32, 33. Cambridge : printed by Samuel Green, 1673."
The sermon is a good specimen of the style of preaching of those days; and especially instructive, as giving some clue to the moral condition of the people. The preacher alludes frequently to the rising sentiment in favor of toleration, but opposes it strongly. It is obvious that at that time, the great majority of the educated and influential classes, were decidedly opposed to the principle of toleration, but that its friends were sufficiently numerous and earnest to press its claims upon the attention of those who guided or executed the public sentiment.1 The text was taken from Jer. ii. 31, " O generation, see ye the word of the Lord : have I been a wilderness unto Israel ? a land of darkness ? Wherefore say my people, we are lords, we will come no more unto thee ?"
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