USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The memorial history of Boston : including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880. Vol. I > Part 29
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Rev. James Allen, an ejected minister and Oxford Fellow, came to New England soon after the accession of Charles II. At the period of our narrative he had been eighteen years a minister of the First Church, having been installed as its teacher Dec. 9, 1668, at the same time that Davenport was inducted as its pastor. He was destined to continue in his sacred office until his death, at the age of seventy-eight, Sept. 22, 1710. John Dunton, in' his Life and Errors, says : " I went to visit the Reverend Mr. Allen. He is very humble and very rich, and can be generous enough when the humor is upon him. His son was an eminent minister here in England, and deceased at Northampton."
The historian of the First Church thus writes concerning him : -
" He was equally moderate and lenient in his concessions to others, on the score of individual freedom, as he was strenuous for the enjoyment of his own rights. He 1685 was willing to render to Cæsar all proper tribute ; but he was unwilling that Cæsar, John Eliot James Allen Samed Phillies Joshua Money Manage Mather in the capacity of civil magistrate, should interfere in holy things. He was equally desirous of shielding the Church against the power of the Clergy, as against that of the civil ruler. [He] enjoyed a long, virtu- ous, and happy life of seventy-eight years, forty-six of which he had been a member, and forty-two a vigilant ruler and instructer of the Church. His wealth gave him the power, which he used as a good Bishop, to be hospitable."
His colleague, Joshua Moodey, was a man of the stuff that martyrs are made of, and had himself shown a willingness to die, if need be, in this very cause. During his imprisonment by Cranfield at Portsmouth, he wrote from prison a letter worthy to be enrolled with the Acts of the Martyrs :
" The good Lord prepare poor New England for the bitter cup which is begun with us, and intended (by man at least) to go round. But God is faithful ; upon whose grace and strength I beg grace to hang and hope." This letter he signed "Christ's prisoner and your humble servant." 1
1 A Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. v. 120.
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THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS.
After three months' incarceration he had come to Boston, and had been invited to remain as Mr. Allen's assistant. It is not less to his honor that in 1692 his opposition to the witchcraft delusion was to cause his removal again from Boston, returning to Portsmouth, where he died July 4, 1697.
The renowned ministers of the Second Church - the Mathers, father and son - are considered in a later chapter of this work. The son, indeed, has given a fantastic tinge to the name, which clouds over his real claim to hon- orable memory. Cotton Mather had grave faults, - his conceit of learning, his credulity, his monstrous part in the witchcraft tragedy. But lovers of books ought to judge leniently of the man who wrote more than three hun- dred ! And the part which he played in his later years in the introduction here of inoculation for small-pox, when the fury, of the mob imperilled his very life, entitles him to grateful remembrance. When he stood before Andros, only twenty- four years old, his faults were not yet so evident, and his promise seemed to have no limit.
Of the father, Increase Mather, President of Harvard College, - and one of the most eminent who have ever filled that office, - a powerful preacher to the age of eighty-five, agent of Massachusetts at the court of King James II. and at that of William and Mary, his distinguished reception there testi- fies to the impression which he made on nobles and princes. He lived to be the last possessor of the almost absolute power of the old Puritan clergy. When he faced Andros he was the very incarnation of the Puritan temper. He addressed a town-meeting in Boston when there was question of giving 'up the charter, in 1683-84, and openly counselled that they should return Naboth's answer when Ahab asked for his vineyard, - that they would not give up the inheritance of their fathers.1
Randolph, who knew men thoroughly, paid Increase Mather the compli- ment of hating him and fearing him as he did no other man herc. "The Bellowes of Sedition and Treason,"2 he called him ; and when after the down- fall of the Andros tyranny he was safely lodged in prison and had leisure to contemplate the bringing to nought of his fifteen years of busy scheming, he wrote from the ".Goal in Boston, May 16, '89," to the Govr of Barbados, ". .. They have not yet sent to England, expecting Mather, their Mahomett." 3
The Mathers also were quite capable of a hatred which they perhaps thought to be only righteous indignation. Increase Mather, with all his dignity, observed this in his famous letter to Governor Dudley, nearly twenty years later than this time, - in which he raked together all Dudley's political and personal sins in a pile of red-hot coals, by no means of the kind which the apostle commands to heap on an enemy's head. . It is not difficult to imagine what was the temper of such men as these, when they saw that
1 In any other country of the civilized world the most dreaded scourge, and where lived his the veriest stranger would read inscriptions re- father, Increase Mather, the leader of Massa- chusetts Puritans in this great contest. cording where the house stood in which Cotton Mather inoculated his own child to prove the 2 Mather Papers, p. 525. safety of the process, and by so doing banished
3 Hutchinson, Coll. of Papers, ii. 315.
*
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
nothing but their firmness and skill could save from destruction all that they held dearest.
Last of the five ministers was he of the South Church, -Rev. Samuel Wil- lard, son of Major Simon Willard, one of the principal citizens of Concord and prominent in civil and military life. He had been a Fellow of Harvard College and subsequently the first minister of Groton, where his ministry was ended by the destruction of the town by the Indians in S. willard, March, 1676, when he had removed to Boston and, being settled as colleague to Rev. Thomas Thacher, was soon left the only minister of the South Church, which place he occupied until Rev. Ebenezer Pemberton was settled as his colleague in 1700. From Sept. 6, 1701, to Aug. 14, 1707, he filled the office of Vice-president of Harvard College, while retaining his pastorship. He died Sept. 12, 1707.
" Well furnished with learning," says Dunton, he " has a natural fluency of speech and can say what he pleases." 1 During the witcheraft delusion he bore himself prudently and firmly. Pastor of three of the special judges of that tribunal, " he has as yet," says a contemporary, " met with little but unkindness, abuse, and reproach from many men." Calef says that once " one of the accusers eried out publicly of Mr. Willard, as afflieting of her." He published many works, of which the chief was his Complete Body of Divinity, the first folio volume of theology published in this country, in 1726.2
These were the men who, with a constituency of laymen behind them, had to foil Andros and Randolph if they could.3
1 Dunton's Letters, edited by Mr. Whitmore, P. 175.
2 [The portrait of Willard, given in this volume, is a reduced heliotype from the engrav- ing which stands as a frontispiece to this folio. There is a portrait in Memorial Hall, Cam- bridge .- En.]
3 The lofty bearing which these Puritan ministers could assume is shown in their an- swer to the Quaker, George Keith, just after this time. Keith's book was called The Presby- terian and Independent Visible Churches in ferw England And else-where, Brought to the Test, &c. Philadelphia, 1689.
It contained the following letter : -
"To James Allen, Joshua Moody, Samuel Wil- lard, Cotton Mather, Preachers in the Town of Boston in New England.
" Friends and Neighbours : -
" I being well assured, both by the Spirit of God in my Heart and the Testimony of the holy Scriptures, that the Doctrine ye preach to the People is false and pernicious to the Souls of People in many things, do earnestly desire and entreat you, and every one of you, the Preachers in the Town of Boston, to give me a fair and publick hearing or meeting with you, either in
one of your publick Meeting-Houses or in any other convenient place, where all who are de- sirous to come may have liberty, and let the time be as soon as may, as either to day in the Afternoon, or to morrow in the Fore-noon ; but rather then fail, if ye will give me any as- surance to have a meeting with you, I will attend your leasure for two or three days to come, pro- viding once this day ye send me your positive answer; and if ye give me a meeting with you, 1 proffer in true love and good-will, by the divine assistance, to show and inform you that ye teach and preach unto the People many false and unsound Principles contrary to the Doc- trine of Christ, sufficiently declared in the holy Scriptures."
It is an interesting illustration of the doctrine then taught in the Boston pulpit, that among his twelve points of complaint, besides asserting his doctrine of the "Inner Light," he mentions that they teach -
" That there are reprobate Infants that dye in Infancy, and perish eternally, only for Adam's Sin imputed unto them, and derived into them.
· " That Justification is only by Christ's Righteousness, without us, imputed unto us,
.
MESAME WIL LARD.
Quanta Pietatis image:
1
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THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS.
Of those who were with these ministers, - the shaft to their spear-head, - we can now call up only few and shadowy glimpses. We know, indeed, the names of a few of the gentlemen who were on the side of the native cause ; but with the exception of Judge Sewall there is hardly one whom we can vividly picture to ourselves. The great men of the former genera-
SIMON BRADSTREET.
tion had passed away. With the death of that grand old Commonwealth soldier, Governor Leverett, nine years before, the last of the heroic group had gone. The most venerable figure whom we now see is old Simon Bradstreet, full of years and of dignity. When Andros is overthrown
and received by Faith alone, and not by any Righteousness of God or Christ infused into us, or wrought in us."
The answer of the Boston ministers was brief and to the point : -
" Ilaving received a Blasphemous and Iferet- ical Paper, subscribed by one George Keith, our answer to it and him is, - If he desires Con- ference to instruct us, let him give us his Argu- ments in writing, as well as his Assertions: If to inform himself, let him write his Doubts : If to cavil and disturb the Peace of our Churches (which we have cause to suspect), we have
neither list nor leasure to attend his Motions : If he would have a Publick Audience, let him Print : If a private Discourse, though he may know where we dwell, yet we forget not what the Apostle John saith, Ep. ii. 10.
" JAMES ALLEN. " JOSHUA MOODY. " SAMUEL WILLARD. " COTTON MATHER.
" July the 12th, 1688."
The final Scriptural reference is this: " If there come any to you and bring not this doc- trine, receive him not into your house, neither give him God-speed."
VOL. I .- 27.
THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
in 1689 he will be placed at the head of the government, though weighed down with the snows of ninety years. We prize the few words in which the Labadist missionaries describe him,1 " an old man, quiet and grave, dressed in black silk, but not sumptuously." Venerable, but not forcible, his memory was long cherished, largely because he had the happy fortune to linger the last survivor of a band of remarkable men. He seemed to concentrate in himself the dignity and wisdom of the first century of Mas- sachusetts life.
But the strength of the opposition which the ministers headed was really the same which made the strength of the Revolution, and again of our own War for the Nation. It was the tough persistence of the common people. The yeomen of New England knew perfectly what they wanted; and they wanted no bishops nor tithes, nor forced loans of their churches. They might bend a little for a moment; but they would only spring back the harder; and they would never break !
The strange law by which the Old South Church was brought, in this carlier time of revolution as well as in the later ninety years afterward, into a sort of representative attitude as the special antagonist of the alien in- fluences, is strikingly exemplified in the person who stands in history as the typical Puritan of his time. It is not because Samuel Sewall was the most prominent man in Boston; for that he was not, at the time where we are, though he was a man of wealth and influence and of the real Puritan character. But it is, above all, because he kept a diary ! His ink had a wholesome human tincture in it which has prevented it from fading through two centuries. Judge Sewall is the Pepys of New England. His diary is as quaint and racy, and as full of delicious bits of self-revealing as was that of his English contemporary. But how unlike to that other Samuel in all the nobler aspects, all of which are mirrored in those brown old pages, - his prayerful temper, his loyalty to God and to the God-fearing Puritanism which he loved so well ! 2
The Governor waited yet three months with a patience hardly in accord with his impetuous character, and showed himself a good churchman in the shorn observances in the town-hall. Sewall records : -
" [1686-7]. Tuesday, January 25. This day is kept for s' Paul and ye Bell was rung in ye Morning to call persons to service ; The Gov" (I am told) was there.
" Monday, January 31. There is a Meeting at ye Town house forenoon and after-
noon. Bell rung for it ; respecting ye beheading Charles ye first. Gov' there."
But when the solemn days of the Church at the close of Lent drew nigh, there seemed a special unfitness in their celebration by the representative of the King and by the authorized ritual of England in a place devoid of all sacred associations, with a few " benches and formes," while around the Governor were commodious houses of worship tenanted by a form of re- ligion which at home had no rights, - not even the legal right to exist.
1 Long Island IIist. Soc. Coll. i. 2 [Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., February, 1873. - ED.]
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THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS.
No reason is given why the South Church was selected to be the very unwilling host of the new Episcopal Society; but it may be conjectured that it was either because it was the nearest to where Sir Edmund lived, - in what was then called " the best part of the town," and near where the Province House afterwards stood, - or because the South Church only had one minister, while each of the others had two, i. e., twice as many persons with troublesome tongues. Then, too, Randolph had doubtless told the Governor how the South Church rose out of a bitter quarrel, and he may have thought that the other two churches would look on its vexations with more composure of spirit. To be sure, in 1682, when ominous clouds were gathering over the prospects of New England Puritanism, the First Church had proposed to the South Church " to forgive and forget all past offences," and to live " in peace for time to come." But it may well have been sup- posed that the old gulf had not wholly closed.
Sewall again notes in his diary : -
"Tuesday, March 22, 1689. This day his excellency views the three Meeting houses. Wednesday, March 23. - The Gov sends Mr. Randolph for ye keys of our Meetingh. yt may say Prayers there. Mr. Eliot, Frary, Oliver, Savage, Davis, and my self wait on his Excellency ; shew that ye Land and House is ours, and that we can't consent to part with it to such use ; exhibit an extract of Mrs. Norton's Deed and how 'twas built by particular persons as Hull, Oliver, 100f a piece, &c.
" Friday, March 25, 1687. The Gov' has service in ye south Meetinghouse ; Goodm. Needham [the Sexton] tho' had resolv'd to ye Contrary, was prevail'd upon to Ring ye Bell and open ye door at ye Governour's Comand, one Smith and Hill, Joiner and Shoemaker, being very busy about it. Mr. Jno. Usher was there, whether at ye very begining, or no, I can't tell."
From this time, during the remainder of Andros's administration, - that is, for a little over two years, - the Episcopalians had joint occupancy of the South Church with its proper owners, though against occasional protests.
It was something, indeed, for which the Puritan congregation had reason to be grateful, that they were allowed to worship at all in their own meeting-house by the representative of a government which at home had set so many marks of scorn on dissenters from the Church of England. Nevertheless, on the special days of the Church they were subjected to grave inconveniences. On Easter Sunday, 1687, the Governor and his suite met there again at eleven, sending word to the proprietors that they might come at half-past one ; " but it was not until after two that the Church service was over;" owing, says Sewall, to "the sacrament and Mr. Clarke's long sermon ; so 'twas a sad sight to see how full the street was with people gazing and moving to and fro, because they had not entrance into the house."
The Puritan diarist, to whose invaluable pages we are indebted for the history of this obstinate contest, follows it further step by step with his pithy narrative till the end of October, 1688, in passages which we have not space to quote. The pressure of imposition on the one side and of resistance on
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
the other grew more urgent. In April, 1688, the Governor gave his definite promise that they would " build a house ;" but the further long delay led to hot remonstrances and an angry dispute between the high-tempered soldier and the Puritan owners of the South Church, who were stubborn for their rights.
To this enforced tenancy of the South Meeting-house we owe some of the most picturesque passages in the religious history of the period. We quote Sewall again : -
" Monday, May 16, 1687. This day Capt. Hamilton buried wth Capt. Nicholson's Redcoats and ye 8 Companies : Was a funeral-sermon preach'd by ye Fisher's Chaplain : Pulpit cover'd with black cloath upon wrh scutcheons : Mr. Dudley, Stoughton & many others at y" Comon Prayer, and Sermon : House very full, and yet ye Souldiers went not in."
But the most impressive scene which it witnessed was the funeral of Lady Andros. The rigid Puritan diarist gives us an unconscious glimpse into his feelings of indignant sorrow for New England, in his private entry on this event : -
" Feb. 10, 1683. Between 4 and 5. I went to ye Funeral of ye Lady Andros having "been invited p ye Clark of ye South-Company. Between 7. and 8. (Lychus illuminating ye cloudy air) The Corps was carried into the Herse drawn by six Horses. The Soul- diers making a Guard from ye Governour's House down ye Prison Lane to ye South-M. House, there taken out and carried in at ye western dore, and set in ye Alley before ye pulpit wth six Mourning women by it. House made light with candles and Torches ; was a great noise and clamor to keep people out of ye House, yt might not rush in too soon. I went home, where about nine a clock I heard ye Bell toll again for ye Funeral. It seems Mr. Ratcliff's Text was, Cry, all flesh is Grass. The Ministers turned in to Mr Willards. The Meeting House full, among whom Mr. Dudley, Stoughton, Gedney, Bradstreet &c. On Satterday, Feb. 11. ye mourning cloth of ye Pulpit is taken off and given to Mr. Willard. My Bro'. Stephen was at ye Funeral, and lodged here."
Another illustration of the bitter conflicts of feeling here is found in the account of the funeral of a person named Lilly, who had left the ordering of this to his executors. Mr. Ratcliffe undertook to read the service at his grave, he having been one of the subscribers to the church, but the execu- tors forbade him ; and when he began, Deacon Frairey of the South Church interrupted him and put a stop to the service, for which the deacon was bound to his good behavior for twelve months. This was deemed of suf- ficient importance to be reported to the Privy Council in England.
The Governor on one occasion requested the South Church minister to begin his service at 8 A.M. for the convenience of the Episcopalians, and promised that it should be the last time. But still the church was occupied in this way till just before the popular uprising which overthrew Andros's government, on the news of William of Orange's landing in England.
It is a chapter of outrageous wrongs which Andros wrote here, and there is cause for lasting regret that the origin of so good a thing as religious
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THE RISE OF DISSENTING FAITHS.
freedom under the stern old Puritan régime should have been sullied by his despotic acts. But it is satisfactory to remember that ninety years later King's Chapel willingly expiated this injustice by opening its doors wide to the Old South Congregation, when dispossessed of their own church by the later revolution. It should be said, too, that the character both of Andros and Randolph doubtless had a better side than they showed to these troub- lesome (as they must have seemed to them) and rebellious colonists. They were pupils in a bad school, - the household of the Stuarts.1 As a matter of policy, it was obviously unwise for Andros to irritate the town by for- cing his form of worship into a meeting-house against the will of its lawful owners. He had to build his own church at last. But we should fall into a great error if we should measure his act by the standard of toleration of our modern day.
The enforced tenancy of the South Meeting-house did not wait to bc brought to a close till the downfall of Governor Andros in April, 1689. The fact that the first wooden church was already nearly finished at that time is sufficient proof that the interference with property which gave such offence was a temporary though high-handed obedience to supposed neces- sity, and not a step towards confiscation. The foundations of the new building had been laid before the middle of October, 1688, and the frame was raised soon after. The last record by Sewall concerning the unwel- come tenants of the South Church reads thus: "Oct !. 28 [1688]. N. It seems ye Govr took Mr. Ratcliffe with him [on a journey to Dunstable],
1 Randolph was probably in the family of the Duke of York before he became James II., while Andros had begun life as a page to Charles I. They were loyal to church and king after the old Iligh Tory fashion. Randolph is de- scribed by Dr. Ellis as "a persistent and pester- ing, if not unscrupulous, man." Of Andros Mr. Whitmore, in his Andros Tracts, says there is "no evidence that he was cruel, rapacious, or dis- honest," or immoral, and that "a hasty temper is the most palpable fault to be attributed to him." But the domineering will of both Andros and Randolph came out in its harshest colors when brought in such collision with the will of the Puritans, which was as unyielding as the granite of New England itself.
These advocates were not such as wise men would have chosen. But the cause which they were advocating, though blindly, was of the best. And doubtless not a few of those who first met in this way had a spirit worthy of the cause. " In the most contentious and stormy periods," says Dr. Greenwood, "I doubt not that a holy calm was shed upon the heart of many a wor- shipper as he offered up his prayers in the way which to him was best and most affecting, and perhaps the way in which, long years ago, he had offered them up in some ivy-clad village church of green England, with many dear friends
about him, now absent or dead." - Greenwood, King's Chapel, p. 36.
Sir Edmund had delayed too long. The building which at an earlier day must have been accepted as a proper recognition of the State and the religion which the Governor represented, was now considered to be his reluctant conces- sion to public opinion. One of the complaints most urged against him before William the Third was, "That the Service of the Church of England has bin forced into their Meeteing Ilouses."
Andros justified his course in his official report to his superiors at home as follows : " The Church of England being unprovided of a place for theyr publique worship, he did, by advise of the Councill, borrow the new meeting- house in Boston, at such times as the same was unused, untill they could provide otherwise ; and accordingly on Sundays went in between eleven and twelve in the morning, and in the afternoon about fower. But understanding it gave offence, hastned the building of a Church, wch was effected at the charge of those of the Church of England, where the Chaplaine of the Souldiers prformed divine service and preach- ing."- Sir E. Andros's Report of his Adminis- tration in Documents Relating to Colonial History of N. Y., vol. iii.
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THE MEMORIAL HISTORY OF BOSTON.
so met not at all distinet in our House y's day: Several of ym wth us in ye afternoon. Col. Lidget, Mr. Sherlock, Farwell in our Puc, went to Contribution." As the custom was for the contributors to go up in the presence of the congregation, and give what they had to offer in the sight of all, this was a conspicuous act. It is pleasant to know that High Churchmen though these men were, and among those whom they loved not, they were Christian enough to join in the worship of the Puritans, and to contribute for its support, -an example of charity which it is to be hoped that some of those with whom they thus held communion would have been willing to imitate in turn. Worship was first held in the new church on Sunday, June 8, 1689. It stood on a corner of the old burial - ground, covering the space now occupied by the tower and front part of the present King's Chapel.
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