USA > Rhode Island > Bristol County > Barrington > A history of Barrington, Rhode Island > Part 10
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our coming into New England, appeared amongst ourselves, some whereof have (as others before them) denied the ordi- nance of magistracy, and the lawfulness of making war, and others the lawfulness of magistrates, and their inspection into any branch of the first table; which opinions, if they should be connived at by us, are like to be increased amongst us, and so must necessarily bring guilt upon us, infection and trouble to the churches and hazard to the com- monwealth :
It is ordered and agreed, that if any person or persons within this jurisdiction shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the administration of the ordinance, or shall deny the ordinances of the magis- tracy, or their lawful right or authority to make war, or to punish the outward breaches of the first table, and shall appear to the Court, wilfully and obstinately to continue therein after due time and means of conviction, every such person or persons shall be sentenced to banishment."
Laws of like tenor and equal severity were made by Plym- outh and Massachusetts Bay Colonies against Rantors or Quakers. Such was the reasoning of the combined legal, ecclesiastical, and lay judgment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, two hundred and fifty years ago.
Our fathers established a state church that they might express as strongly as a new society could its belief in homo- geneity in all matters relating to the social, civil, and relig- ious order. The Puritan would solve the problem of relig- ious freedom by a process of social and theological differen- tiation and segregation. Roger Williams might set up his church and its worship in Providence, and so might Lord Baltimore in Maryland, under protest, but not in Salem, or Plymouth, or Boston. The New Englander's ideal govern- ment was church and state. He knew that France was the Catholic Church, that England was the Establishment, and what he desired for Massachusetts Bay was a Puritan state,
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PURITANS IDEAL STATE.
sincere, pure, without adulteration. The Bible was the best Statute Book for the Puritan ; and Puritan divines, well edu- cated and learned, must be its supreme legal expounders. Hence Harvard College with its motto " Christo et Ecclesiae," where godly men should be taught doctrine and duty so that they in their turn should guide the brethren to intelligent convictions and a vigorous defence of the same.
With such conceptions of the state as a divine institution, after the Mosaic fashion of the Hebrew commonwealth, which they so carefully studied and patterned, it is not strange to see what was the most natural thing for them to do - the very thing we are doing every day, namely, resist the incoming of dangerous elements and the proper educa- tion and discipline, if need be, of the intractible and incorri- gible, already within the fold of the Commonwealth. Accord- ing to Puritan standards, the Baptist, the Quaker, and other dissentients had better stay at home on the English side of the Atlantic, for all concerned, but once here they must hold their tongues or have them held by Puritan nippers.
The act of banishment which severed Roger Williams from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 was the means of advancing rather than hindering, the spread of the so- called heresies which he so bravely advocated. As the per- secutions which drove the disciples of Christ from Jerusalem were the means of extending the cause of Christianity, so the principles of toleration and soul-liberty were strength- ened by opposition, in the mind of this apostle of freedom of conscience in the new world. His Puritan birth and educa- tion made him a bold and earnest advocate of whatever truth his conscience approved, and he went everywhere " preaching the word " of individual freedom. The sentence of exile could not silence his tongue, nor destroy his influ- ence. "The divers new and dangerous opinions " which he had " broached and divulged," though hostile to the notions of the clergy and the authorities of Massachusetts Bay, were at the same time quite acceptable to a few brave souls, who
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like'himself dared the censures and even the persecutions of their brethren, for the sake of liberty of conscience.
The dwellers in old Rehoboth were the nearest white neighbors of Roger Williams and his band at Providence. The Rev. Samuel Newman was the pastor of the church in this ancient town, having removed with the first settlers from Weymouth in 1643. Learned, godly, and hospitable as he was, he had not reached the "height of that great argument," concerning human freedom, and while he cher- ished kindly feelings towards the dwellers at Providence, he evidently feared the introduction of their sentiments among his people. The jealous care of Newman to preserve what he conscientiously regarded as the purity of religious faith and polity, was not a sufficient barrier against the teachings of the founder of Rhode Island.
Although the settlers of Plymouth Colony cherished more liberal sentiments than their neighbors of the Bay Colony, and sanctioned the expulsion of Mr. Williams from Seekonk only for the purpose of preserving peace with those whom Blackstone called "the Lord Brethren," yet they guarded the prerogatives of the ruling church order as worthy not only of the respect, but also the support of all. Rehoboth was the most liberal, as well as the most loyal of the chil- dren of Plymouth, but the free opinions which the planters brought from Weymouth, where an attempt had already been made to establish a Baptist Church, enabled them to sympathize strongly with their neighbors across the See- konk River. "At this time," says Baylies, "so much indif- ference as to the support of the clergy was manifested in Plymouth Colony as to excite the alarm of the other confed- erated colonies. The complaint of Massachusetts against Plymouth on this subject was laid before the Commissioners and drew from them a severe reprehension. Rehoboth had been afflicted with a serious schism, and by its proximity to Providence and its plantations, where there was a universal toleration, the practice of free inquiry was encouraged and principle, fancy, whims, and conscience, all conspired to les-
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SERIOUS SCHISM AT SEEKONK.
sen the veneration for ecclesiastical authority." As the " serious schism " referred to above led to the foundation of the first Baptist Church within the Commonwealth of Mas- sachusetts, on New Meadow Neck in Old Swansea, it is worthy of record here.
The leader in this church revolt was Obadiah Holmes, a native of Preston, in Lancashire, England. He was con- nected with the church in Salem from 1639 till 1646, when he was excommunicated, and, removing with his family to Rehoboth, he joined Mr. Newman's church. The doctrines and the discipline of this church proved too severe for Mr. Holmes, and he, with eight others, withdrew in 1649, and established a new church by themselves. Mr. Newman's irascible temper was kindled into a persecuting zeal against the offending brethren, and, after excommunicating them, he aroused the civil authorities against them. So successful was he that four petitions were presented to the Plymouth Court, one from Rehoboth, signed by thirty-five persons ; one from Taunton, one from all the clergymen in the colony but two, and one from the government of Massachusetts.
Massachusetts Bay Colony had heard of the ongoings and the undoings at Seekonk, and the General Court sitting in Boston under date of October 18, 1649, John Endicott still governor, sent the following letter to the Plymouth General Court :
" Honored and Beloved Brethren, We have heard hereto- fore of divers Anybaptists, arisen up in your jurisdiction, but being but few, we well hoped that it might have pleased God by the endeavors of yourselves, and the faithful elders with you, to have reduced such erring men again into the right way. But now to our great grief, we are credibly informed that your patient bearing with such men hath pro- duced another effect, namely, the multiplying and increas- ing of the same errors, and we fear maybe of other errors also, if timely care be not taken to suppress the same. Par- ticularly, we understand that within these few weeks there have been at Seacuncke (Seekonk) thirteen or fourteen per-
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sons rebaptized, (a swift progress in one town), yet we hear not of any effectual restriction is intended thereabouts. Let it not, we pray you, seem presumptious in us to mind you hereof, and that we earnestly entreat you to take care as well of the suppressing of errors as of the maintenance of truth, God equally requiring the performance of both at the hands of Christian magistrates, but rather that you will con- sider our interest is concerned therein. The infection of such diseases, being so many, are likely to spread into our jurisdiction ; 'tunc tua res agitur paries cum proximus ardet.' We are united by confederacy, by faith, by neighborhood, by fellowship in our sufferings as exiles, and by other Chris- tian bonds, and we hope neither Sathan (Satan) nor any of his instruments, shall by this or any other errors, disunite us, and that we shall never have to repent us of our so near conjunction with you, but that we shall both so equally and zealously uphold all the truths of God revealed, that we may render a comfortable account to Him that hath set us in our places, and betrusted us with the keeping of both tables, of which well hoping, we cease your farther troubles, and rest.
YOUR VERY LOVING FRIENDS AND BRETHREN."
How will the authorities of Plymouth treat this clarion call of the Bay Colony and the first division in the ruling Church of the Colony? Will they punish by severe fines, by imprisonment, by scourging, or by banishment ? By neither, for a milder spirit of toleration prevailed, and the separatists were simply directed to "refrain from practices disagreeable to their brethren, and to appear before the Court."
In 1651, sometime after his trial at Plymouth, Mr. Holmes was arrested, with Mr. John Clarke, of Newport, and Mr. Crandall, for preaching and worshipping God with some of their brethren at Lynn. They were condemned by the Court at Boston to suffer fines or whippings, - Clarke, £20 ; Holmes, £30, and Crandall, £5. Holmes refused to pay the fine, and would not allow his friends to pay it for him,
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saying that, " to pay it would be acknowledging himself to have done wrong," whereas his conscience testified that he had done right, and he durst not accept deliverance in such a way." He was accordingly punished with thirty lashes from a three-corded whip, on Boston Common, with such severity, says Governor Jencks, "that in many days, if not some weeks, he could take no rest but as he lay upon his knees and elbows, not being able to suffer any part of his body to touch the bed whereon he lay." " You have struck me with roses," he said to his tormentors. Soon after this, Holmes and his followers moved to Newport, and, on the death of Rev. Mr. Clarke, in 1676, he succeeded him as pastor of the First Baptist Church in that town. Mr. Holmes died at Newport in 1682, aged seventy-six years.
The persecution offered to the Rehoboth Baptists, scat- tered their church, but did not destroy their principles. Facing the obloquy attached to their cause, and braving the trials imposed by the civil and ecclesiastical powers, they must wait patiently God's time of deliverance. That their lives were free from guile none claim. That their cause was righteous, none will deny, and while the elements of a Baptist Church were thus gathering strength and purifica- tion on this side of the Atlantic, a leader was preparing for them, by God's providence, on the other. In the same year that Obadiah Holmes and his band separated from the Rehoboth church, in opposition to the Puritan order, Charles the First, the great English traitor, expiated his "high crimes and misdemeanors" on the scaffold at the hands of a Puritan Parliament. Then followed the period of the Commonwealth under Cromwell, and then the Restoration, when " there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph." The Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, under the sanction of Charles the Second, though a severe blow at the purity and piety of the English church, was a royal blessing to the cause of religion in America. Two thousand bravely conscientious men, who feared God more than the decrees of the Pope, King or Parliament, were driven from
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their livings and from the kingdom. What was England's great loss was America's great gain, for a grand tidal wave of emigration swept across the Atlantic to our shores. Godly men and women, clergy and laity, made up this exiled band, too true and earnest to yield a base compliance to the edict of conformity. For thirteen years have the dissenters from Mr. Newman's church waited for a spiritual guide, but not in vain; for among the number who sought a refuge from religious oppression, we find John Myles, of Swansea, Wales.
How our Baptist brethren have conducted themselves dur- ing these years, and the difficulties they may have occasioned or encountered, we know but little. Plymouth, liberal al- ready, has grown more lenient towards church offenders in matters of conscience. Mr. John Brown, a citizen of Reho- both, and one of the magistrates, has presented before the court his scruples at the expediency of coercing the people to support the ministry, and has offered to pay from his own property the taxes of all those of his townsmen who may refuse their support of the ministry. This was in 1655. Massachusetts Bay has tried to correct the errors of her sis- ter colony on the subject of toleration, and has in turn been rebuked by her example. Leaving the membership awhile, let us cross over to Wales to find their future teacher and pastor, John Myles.
Wales had been the asylum for the persecuted and op- pressed for centuries. There, freedom of religious thought was tolerated, and from thence sprung Oliver Cromwell and John Myles. About the year 1645, the Baptists in that country, who had previously been scattered and connected with other churches, began to unite in the formation of separate churches, under their own pastors. Prominent among these was the Rev. Mr. Myles, who preached in various places with great success, until the year 1649, when we find him pastor of a church which he organized in Swansea, South Wales. It is a singular coincidence that the termination of Mr. Myles's pastorate at Swansea, and the separation of the members
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MAJOR-GENERAL NELSON A. M.ILES, U.S.A.
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MR. MYLES IN SWANSEA, WALES.
from the Rehoboth Church, a part of whom aided in estab- lishing the church in Swansea, Mass., occurred in the same year, 1649.
During the Protectorate of Cromwell, all dissenters enjoyed the largest liberty of conscience in the mother land, and, as a result, the Church at Swansea, Wales, grew from forty- eight to three hundred souls. Around this centre of influ- ence sprang up several branch churches, and pastors were raised up to care for them. Mr. Myles soon became the leader of his denomination in Wales, and in 1651 he was sent as a representative of all the Baptist Churches in Wales to the Baptist Ministers' meeting, at Glazier's Hall, London, with a letter, giving an account of the peace, union, and in- crease of 'work. As a preacher and worker he had no equal in that country, and his zeal enabled him to establish many new churches in his native land. The act of the English
Saint Bartholomew's Day, in 1662, deprived Mr. Myles of the support which the government under Cromwell had granted him, and he, with many others, chose the freedom of exile to the tyranny of an unprincipled monarch. It would be interesting for us to give an account of his leave taking of his church at Swansea, and of his associates in Christian labor, and to trace out his passage to Massachusetts, and to relate the circumstances which led him to search out and to find the little band of Baptists at Rehoboth. Surely some law of spiritual gravitation or affinity, under the good hand of God, thus raised up and brought this under-shepherd to the flock thus scattered in the wilderness.
Nicholas Tanner, Obadiah Brown, John Thomas, and others, accompanied Mr. Myles in his exile from Swansea, Wales. The first that is known of them in America was the formation of a Baptist Church at the house of John Butter- worth, in Rehoboth. Mr. Myles and his followers had prob- ably learned at Boston, or at Plymouth, of the treatment offered to Holmes and his party ten years before, and his sympathies led him to seek out and unite the elements which persecution had scattered. Seven members made up this
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infant church, viz .: John Myles, pastor, James Brown, Nich- olas Tanner, Joseph Carpenter, John Butterworth, Eldad Kingsley, and Benjamin Alby. The principles to which their assent was given were the same as those held by the Welsh Baptists, as expounded by Mr. Myles. The original record book of the church contains a list of the members of Mr. Myles's Church in Swansea, Wales, from 1640 till 1660, with letters, decrees, ordinances, etc., of the several churches of the denomination in England and Wales. This book, now in the possession of the First Baptist Church, in Swansea, Mass., is probably a copy of the original Welsh records, made by or for Mr. Myles's church in Massachusetts, and the sentiments of which controlled their actions here.
Of the seven constituent members, only one was a mem- ber of Myles's Church in Wales, Nicholas Tanner. The others were probably residents of Rehoboth at the time of their arrival. James Brown was a son of John Brown, both of whom held high offices in the Plymouth Colony. Mr. Newman and his church were again aroused at the revival of this dangerous sect, and they again united with the other orthodox churches of the colony in soliciting the Court to interpose its influence against them, when the following order was adopted :
"At the Court holden at Plymouth, the 2d of July, 1663, before Thomas Prince, Governor, John Alden, Josiah Wins- low, Thomas Southworth, William Bradford, Thomas Hinck- ley, Nathaniel Bacon, and John Freeman, assistants. Mr. Myles and Mr. Brown for their breach of order in setting up a public meeting without the knowledge and approbation of the Court of the disturbance of the peace of the place are fined each of them £5, and Mr. Tanner the sum of £1, and we judge that their continuance at Rehoboth, being very prejudicial to the peace of that Church and town, may not be allowed ; and do therefore order all persons concerned therein to desist from the said meetings in that place or township within this month. Yet in case they shall remove their meeting to some other place where they may not
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prejudice any other Church, and shall give as any reason- able satisfaction respecting their principles, we knew not but they may be permitted by this government so to do."
The worthy magistrates of Plymouth have not told us how these few Baptist brethren "disturbed the peace " of quiet old Rehoboth. Ancient Rehoboth, that roomy place, was not big enough to contain this church of seven members, and we have to-day to thank the spirit of Newman and the order of Plymouth Court for the handful of seed corn, which they cast upon the waters, which took root in Swansea and has brought forth the fruits of a sixty-fold growth. Dr. Mather says of the church, "There being many good men among those,- I do not know that they have been perse- cuted with an harder means than those of kind offices to reclaim them."
With a firm trust in God and in the truth of their princi- ples, the little band of Baptists set out as exiles from Reho- both to find a place of habitation and comfortable rest. South of Rehoboth lay Sowams, the land of the Indians, and into it they came to establish their homes, to build their meeting-house, and make a home for the new church in the wilderness.
To fix the precise location of this first Baptist meeting- house in Massachusetts is of great importance, and I have given much attention to the matter and am fully satisfied as to the correctness of the position. The spot where the house was located is on the road leading to the house for- merly occupied by Joseph Allen on Nockum Hill, and now owned by George H. West, Esq. This road leads from the main road from Warren to Providence across New Meadow Neck and turns to the southwest to Nockum Hill, about half a mile south of the site of Munroe's Tavern. Rev. Mr. Tustin, in his historical discourse, delivered at the dedica- tion of the Baptist Church in Warren, May 8, 1845 (page 83), says, "After the action of the Court in the removal of the church from Rehoboth, these exiled brethren erected their first meeting-house, about three miles Northwest of
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Warren, on a spot within the limits of Wannamoisett (now Barrington) a few rods south of the Rehoboth line, and a little south of the road that now leads from Warren through Seekonk to Providence." This locality is still further estab- lished by the Rev. Abiel Fisher, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Swansea (the Myles Church) in 1845, whose dili- gence and fidelity in searching records and collecting memo- rials of the ancient church are commended by Rev. Mr. Tus- tin. He makes the following statement : "It has been supposed, and often stated by Backus and others that the First Meeting House was erected near Kelley's Bridge, on Tyler's Point (Barrington) opposite Warren, but I have ascertained that it was about three miles northwest from that point, a little southwest of the road leading from War- ren to Seekonk and Providence. The very spot has been pointed out to me, being on a road leading from the main road to the house of Squire Allen, lately deceased. This road leads out of the main road, between the houses of Tim- othy P. Luther and John Grant, only twenty or thirty rods from the latter. The line of Seekonk is only a few rods north of this spot. It seems nearly certain that while most of the Church resided in Rehoboth (as that town then em- braced Seekonk), they chose a site for their meeting house as near their residences as possible, where they could be permitted for a time to worship God according to the dic- ates of ttheir own consciences."
I may state that in the year 1870, while preparing the his- torical address for the Centennial Celebration, I visited the site of Myles's first Meeting-House, in company with Mr. Timothy P. Luther, who resided in the neighborhood, and he pointed out to me the lot on the east side of the road leading to the residence of Joseph G. West, as the place where the first house stood. The location was south of the Seekonk line, within the present limits of the town of Barrington, and also within the original boundary lines of Swansea, at the time of the incorporation of the town in 1667.
The query may arise in some minds why this location was
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LOCATION OF MEETING HOUSE.
chosen for the meeting-house, and three or four reasons suggest themselves. It was outside the Rehoboth limits, and within the Sowams purchase, which was their own prop- erty. It was the centre of the population which was to wor- ship at that church. The Willetts, Browns and Vialls lived across the river to the southwest at Wannamoisett, the Butterworths and others at Seekonk, and John Myles and his friends at Myles's Bridge, with other families at New Meadow Neck and east of the river, towards Kickemuit. The location of the meeting-house after Philip's War, was then the residence of Massassoit, and Popanomscut, west of the Sowams main river, was the home of Peebee. Another reason suggests itself by the fact that there was a sandy beach and plenty of water for baptisms near and south of the meeting-house, in the Sowams River. It is therefore an historic fact of great interest to the citizens of our town that the Baptist meeting-house in Barrington, the first on Massachusetts soil, was erected within our town ; and it is still further a matter of interest that the second meeting- house of the same same great founder, John Myles, stood on Tyler's Point, in Barrington. Rhode Island also, as a state, can now claim as within her borders the first two Baptist Churches of the country, that of Roger Williams at Provi- dence, in 1636, and that of John Myles (in Barrington) at Swansea in 1663.
From a careful reading of the covenant of the Baptist Church, we judge that it was a breach of ecclesiastical, rather than of civil law, that led to the expulsion of the Baptists and that the fines and banishment from the limits of Reho- both were imposed as a preventive against any further inroads upon the membership of Mr. Newman's Church. Within the bounds of old Swansea, in Massachusetts, they selected a site for a church edifice, planted their first spiritual home, and enjoyed a peace which pastor and people had long sought for.
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