DISCOURSE. It is mentioned by the father of history, at the commencement of his immortal work, that he was prompted to write by a desire to preserve past events from oblivion, and to perpetuate the just renown which belonged to men of departed generations.* Not unmindful of these motives, still higher ones animate us in meeting here to-day to commemorate the scenes and actors of a former century. We too would wish like the Grecian sage to rescue the past from being forgotten, to give honor to whom honor is due, but most of all, to contemplate afresh those great principles which our fathers cherished with a love stronger than death, to bring our tribute of praise to the altar of God who enabled them to establish on these shores the religion and the freedom for which they suffered, and hath given * Herodotus, Clio. §1. us reason to exclaim at this day, "the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places, we have a goodly heritage." Two hundred years have now passed, since was founded in the colony which had become known as the asylum of oppressed consciences, this Church, the first of the Baptist name which was planted on the continent of America. Although that event occurred in a small community, in the midst of a savage wilderness, yet it was not shrouded in complete obscurity.* Its founder was among the lights of his age, the friend of Cromwell and of Milton,† and like his companions, an exile on account of his faith. It was the grief and wonder of the Puritans among whom he first ministered, that a man so learned and so eloquent, so disinterested and so pious, could not submit himself to the laws of their church establishment, but claimed for man as man of every nation and of every creed, the same liberty of conscience which he demanded for himself. Not understanding as he did the nature of the christian dispensation, nor the full meaning of the truth that the weapons of christianity are not carnal but spiritual, not carrying out in all its length the maxim of Chillingworth, * Winthrop's Journal, p. 174. that "the bible alone is the religion of Protestants," nor confiding in the power of merely moral means to promote the triumphs of the church, they expressed at once the height of his offence, their dislike of his sentiments, and their apology for persecution, when they said that "his principles tended to anabaptistry."* In this age and in this commonwealth, it is not easy for one adequately to conceive of the feelings of abhorrence with which the rulers of the Church and the State, both in Old and New England, and throughout all Christendom, looked upon the rise of what they thought to bę so portentous an evil. Sometimes the more clear sighted among them spoke of it in a manner which indicated a dread of its moral power, while others treated it as a weak vagary of unquiet minds, destined soon to expire without leaving scarcely a trace of its existence. Baxter said, that at one time when England had little experience of its tendency and consequents, people used to speak of it as a temporary conceit * The expression of the ruling elder of Plymouth was, that he would run the same course of rigid separation and anabaptistry, which Mr. Smyth, at Amsterdam, had done; and it is said by Morton and Hubbard, that having removed to Salem, "in one year's time he filled that place with principles of rigid separation and tending to anabaptistry."-Backus, I. p. 56. of some heated spirits.* For the most part those who looked attentively at its nature and operation, were inspired with a strange dread of its influence, and a feeling of relentless hostility toward it. Three hundred years are just completed since the edict of Henry VIII, which proclaimed a general pardon for almost all heretics except the Anabaptists.† That very year, thirtyone of them were martyred at Delft in Holland, the men being beheaded and the women drowned. It was certainly a remarkable year, for three men and one woman (called "Donatists, new dipt,") bore faggots at St. Paul's cross, and one man and woman were burnt at Smithfield. This spirit of persecution is not so much to be wondered at as to be deplored. In a country where ecclesiastical and civil power were united, where every native was supposed to be born into the church as well as the state, where baptism had become both the seal of salvation and the sign of citizenship, where the parish register furnished to the ruler the statistics of population and to the individual the proof of his civil birthright, who can tell with what ter * Sylvester's Baxter, part I. 41. + Acts and Monuments, II. 358. + Dutch Martyr, lib. II. p. 123, quoted by Crosby. § Stoes chron. in Fuller, B. 5. p. 229. § 11. rors the very name of anabaptistry was invested! As its chief and essential element, it proclaimed that the christian dispensation recognises no bond of union with the visible church, except a voluntary profession of christian faith. With what a decisive meaning did it strike at the established order of things in Europe: how directly was it seen to aim its blow at every legal bond which united the church and the state! Here and there, in one and another age, as these principles sprung up in some congenial soil or some obscure recess, the foot of civil power was put forth to crush them. At different times and in different countries they had appeared and passed away, had flourished for a while in peaceful obscurity, then being brought out to the light, received their chief attestations from the voice of expiring martyrs. No wonder that to many anabaptistry would seem as the chimera of some erratic mind, destined only for a short period to ruffle the surface of society and then for ever disappear. Yet wherever the spirit of religious inquiry has been much awakened, wherever the word of God unbound hath moved the hearts of the people, there anabaptistry hath appeared; appeared too amongst the sincere, the humble, the devout men of the earth. Over their minds the principle reigned with power, and amidst |