By this instrument was the Covenant of Grace explained, received, and recognized, by the first Church in this Colony, and applied unto the evangelical designs of a Church-estate before the Lord: this instrument they afterwards often read over, and renewed the consent of their souls unto every article in it; especially when their days of humiliation invited them to lay hold on particular opportunities for doing so. So you have seen the nativity of the first Church in the Massachuset-colony. § 7. As for the circumstances of admission into this Church, they left it very much unto the discretion and faithfulness of their elders, together with the condition of the persons to be admitted. Some were admitted by expressing their consent unto their confession and covenant; some were admitted after their first answering to questions about Religion, propounded unto them; some were admitted, when they had presented in writing such things as might give satisfaction unto the people of God concerning them; and some that were admitted, orally addressed the people of God in such terms, as they thought proper to ask their communion with; which diver sity was perhaps more beautiful than would have been a more punctilious uniformity; but none were admitted without regard unto a blameless and holy conversation. They did all agree with their brethren of Plymouth in this point, "That the children of the faithful were Church-members, with their parents; and that their baptism was a seal of their being so;" only before their admission to fellowship in a particular Church, it was judged necessary that, being free from scandal, they should be examined by the elders of the Church, upon whose approbation of their fitness, they should publickly and personally own the covenant; so they were to be received unto the table of the Lord: and accordingly the eldest son of Mr. Higginson, being about fifteen years of age, and laudably answering all the characters expected in a communicant, was then so received. § 8. It is to be remembered, that some of the passengers, who came over with those of our first Salemites, observing that the ministers did not use the "Book of Common-Prayer" in their administrations; that they administered the baptism and the supper of the Lord, without any unscriptural ceremonies; that they resolved upon using discipline in the congregation against scandalous offenders, according to the word of God; and that some scandalous persons had been denied admission into the communion of the Church; they began (Frankford fashion) to raise a deal of trouble hereupon. Herodiana Malitia, nascentem persequi Religionem!* Of these there were especially two brothers; the one a lawyer, the other a merchant, both men of parts, estate and figure in the place. These gathered a company together, separate from the publick assembly; and there, the Common Prayer-Worship was after a sort upheld among such as would resort unto them. The governour perceiving a disturbance to arise among the people on this occasion, sent for the brothers; who accused the ministers, as • Herod-like malice, bent on crushing the infant Church. departing from the orders of the Church of England; adding, "That they were Separatists, and would be shortly Anabaptists;" but for themselves, "They would hold unto the orders of the Church of England." The answer of the ministers to these accusations, was, "That they were neither Separatists nor Anabaptists; that they did not separate from the Church of England, nor from the ordinances of God there, but only from the corruptions and disorders of that Church: that they came away from the Common-Prayer and Ceremonies, and had suffered much for their nonconformity in their native land; and therefore being in a place where they might have their liberty, they neither could nor would use them; inasmuch as they judged the imposition of these things to be a sinful violation of the worship of God."-The governour, the council, the people, generally approved of the answer thus given by the ministers; but these persons returned into England with very furious threatnings against the Church thus established; however the threatned folks have lived so long, that the Church has out-lived the grand climacterical year of humane age; it is now flourishing, more than sixty-three years after its first gathering, under the pastoral care of a most reverend and ancient person, even Mr. John Higginson, the son of that excellent man who laid the foundations of that society. CHAPTER V. PEREGRINI DEO CURÆ;* OR, THE PROGRESS OF THE NEW COLONY; WITH SOME ACCOUNT OF THE PERSONS, THE METHODS, AND THE TROUBLES, BY WHICH IT CAME TO SOMETHING. § 1. THE Governour and Company of the Massachuset-Bay, then in London, did in the year 1629, after exact and mature debates, conclude, that it was most convenient for the government, with the charter of the plantation, to be transferred into the plantation it self; and an order of court being drawn up for that end, there was then chosen a new governour, and a new deputy-governour, that were willing to remove themselves with their families thither on the first occasion. The governour was John Winthrop, Esq., a gentleman of that wisdom and virtue, and those manifold accomplishments, that after-generations must reckon him no less a glory, than he was a patriot of the country. The deputy-governour was Thomas Dudley, Esq., a gentleman, whose natural and acquired abilities, joined with his excellent moral qualities, entitled him to all the great • Strangers are peculiar objects of God's care. ished with a sore famine of the Word; nevertheless, there is danger lest the enchantments of this world make them to forget their errand into the wilderness: and some woful villages in the skirts of the Colony, beginning to live without the means of grace among them, are still more ominous intimations of the danger. May the God of New-England preserve them from so great a death! § 8. Going now to take my leave of this little Colony, that I may converse for a while with her younger sisters, which yet have outstript her in growth exceedingly, and so will now draw all the streams of her affairs into their channels, I shall repeat the counsel which their faithful Robinson gave the first planters of the Colony, at their parting from him in Holland. Said he, [to this purpose,] "BRETHREN: We are now quickly to part from one another; and whether I may ever live to see your faces on earth any more, the God of Heaven only knows. But whether the Lord have appointed that or no, I charge you before God, and before his blessed angels, that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ. "If God reveal any thing to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it, as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am verily perswaded, I am very confident the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of his holy Word. For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed Churches, who are come to a period in religion; and will go at present no further than the instruments of their first Reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; whatever part of his will our good God has imparted and revealed unto Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. "This is a misery much to be lamented; for though they were 'burning and shining lights' in their times, yet they penetrated not into the 'whole counsel of God;' but were they now living, they would be as willing to embrace further light, as that which they first received. I beseech you to remember it; it is an article of your Church-covenant, 'That you will be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known unto you from the written Word of God.' Remember that, and every other article of your most sacred covenant. But I must herewithal exhort you to take heed what you receive as truth; examine it, consider it, compare it with the other Scriptures of truth, before you do receive it. For it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick anti-christian darkness, and that perfection of knowledge should break forth at once. I must also advise you to abandon, avoid and shake off the name of Brownist: it is a mere nick-name, and a brand for the making of Religion, and the professors of religion, odious unto the Christian world. Unto this end, I should be extreamly glad, if some godly minister would go with you, or come to you, before you can have any company. For there will be no difference between the unconformable ministers of England and you, when you come to the practice of evangelical ordinances out of the kingdom. And I would wish you by all means to close with the godly people of England; study union with them in all things, wherein you can have it without sin, rather than in the least measure to affect a division or separation from them. Neither would I have you loth to take another pastor besides my self; in as much as a flock that hath two shepherds is not thereby endangered, but secured." So adding some other things of great consequence, he concluded most affectionately, commending his departing flock unto the grace of God, which now I also do the offspring of that holy flock. CHAPTER IV. PAULO MAJORA; OR, THE ESSAYS AND CAUSES WHICH PRODUCED THE SECOND, BUT LARGEST COLONY OF NEW-ENGLAND; AND THE MANNER WHEREIN THE FIRST CHURCH OF THIS NEW COLONY WAS GATHERED. § 1. WORDS full of emphasis, are those which my reader may find written by a learned and pious minister of the Church of England; and I hope I may without offence tender to the reader the words of such an author. "Some among us (writes he) are angry with Calvin for calling humane rites, tolerabiles Ineptias, they will not at the great day be such unto the rigorous imposers, who made them the terms of communion. How will you at that day lift up your faces before your Master and your Judge, when he shall demand of you, 'what is become of those his lambs which you drove into the wilderness by needless impositions?" The story of the folks thus "driven into the wilderness" has begun to be related: and we would relate it without all intemperate expressions of our anger against our drivers, before whom the people must needs go, as they did: it becomes not an historian, and it less becomes a Christian, to be passionate. Nevertheless, poetry may dare to do something at the description of that which drove those drivers; and with a few lines fetched from the most famous epic poem‡ of Dr. Blackmore, we will describe the fury. A Fury crawl'd from out her cell, The bloodiest Minister of Death and hell; No certain shape, no feature regular, No limbs distinct in th' odious fiend appear. Her squalid, bloated belly did arise, Fwoll'n with black gore, to a prodigious size: Distended vastly by a mighty flood Of slaughter'd saints' and constant martyrs' blood. It self a hell, ne'er saw the dark abyss! It was PERSECUTION; a fury which we consider not as possessing the Church of England, but as inspiring a party which have unjustly challenged the name of the Church of England, and which, whenever the Church of England shall any more encourage, her fall will become like that of the house which our Saviour saw built upon the sand. 2. There were more than a few attempts of the English to people and improve the parts of New-England which were to the northward of NewPlymouth; but the designs of those attempts being aimed no higher than VOL. I-5 ⚫ Events somewhat more imposing.-VIRGIL, Bucol. iv. 1. "King Arthur.” the advancement of some worldly interests, a constant series of disasters has confounded them, until there was a plantation erected upon the nobler designs of Christianity; and that plantation, though it has had more adversaries than perhaps any one upon earth; yet, "having obtained help from God, it continues to this day." There have been very fine settlements in the north-east regions; but what is become of them? I have heard that one of our ministers once preaching to a congregation there, urged them to approve themselves a religious people from this considera tion, "that otherwise they would contradict the main end of planting this wilderness;" whereupon a well-known person, then in the assembly, cryed out, "Sir, you are mistaken: you think you are preaching to the people at the Bay; our main end was to catch fish." Truly 'twere to have been wished, that something more excellent had been the main end of the settlements in that brave country, which we have, even long since the arrival of that more pious colony at the Bay, now seen dreadfully unsettled, no less than twice at least, by the sword of the heathen, after they had been replenished with many hundreds of people, who had thriven to many thousands of pounds; and had all the force of the Bay, too, to assist them in the maintaining of their settlements. But the same or the like inauspicious things attended many other endeavours to make plantations upon such a main end in several other parts of our country, before the arrival of those by whom the Massachuset colony was at last formed upon more glorious aims; all proving, like the habitations of the foolish, "cursed before they had taken root." Of all which catastrophe's, I suppose none was more sudden than that of Monsieur Finch, whom in a ship from France, trucking with the Massachuset-Natives; those bloody salvages, coming on board without any other arms, but knives concealed under flaps, immediately butchered with all his men, and set the ship on fire. Yea, so many fatalities attended the adventurers in their essays, that they began to suspect that the Indian sorcerers had laid the place under some fascination; and that the English could not prosper upon such enchanted ground, so that they were almost afraid of adventuring any more. § 3. Several persons in the west of England, having by fishing-voyages to Cape Ann, the northern promontory of the Massachuset-Bay, obtained some acquaintance with those parts; the news of the good progress made in the new plantation of Plymouth, inspired the renowned Mr. White, minister of Dorchester, to prosecute the settlement of such another plantation here for the propagation of religion. This good man engaged several gentlemen about the year 1624, in this noble design; and they employed a most religious, prudent, worthy gentleman, one Mr. Roger Conant, in the government of the place, and of their affairs upon the place; but through many discouragements, the design for a while almost fell unto the ground. That great man, greatly grieved hereat, wrote over to this Mr. Roger Conant, that if he and three honest men more would yet stay upon |