CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES.

Ir every man should know something of the history of his own religious communion, it is especially desirable that such a history as that of the founders of the Churches of New England should, by every means, be kept alive in the minds of their posterity. The character of our Pilgrim Fathers, the causes and objects of their removal hither, the hardships they suffered-more for the sake of us their children, than for their own,have a most sacred claim upon our memory. It is a history which every son of New England should value as his birth-right. "No sober New Englander (says Dr. Dwight) can read the history of his country, without rejoicing that God has caused him to spring from the loins of such ancestors, and given him his birth in a country whose public concerns were entrusted to their management:" and it may be added, that no New Englander who is willingly ignorant of that history is worthy of his origin; or capable of appreciating, or competent to defend, the inestimable inheritance which has descended to him. "I shall count my country lost, (says Cotton Mather) in the loss of the primitive principles, and the primitive practices, upon which it was

at first established:" that loss, however, will ensue, and New England will cease to be New England, when her degenerate children, (if that should ever be,) shall be generally ignorant of her history, or cease to revere the memory of her founders.

It is not, however, the design, nor is it within the compass, of this volume, to give such a history. A few things only can be noticed, as introductory to the matters which are to follow.

The Congregational polity, at least in some of its leading features, began early to be discussed, among the schemes which occupied the Reformers of the sixteenth century, but did not assume a visible and permanent existence till about 1600. The exiled church at Leyden, under the care of the celebrated Robinson, which afterwards removed to Plymouth, in New Engand, is regarded as the mother of the Congregational sister-hood, and its pastor, as the founder of the Congregational plan.

This church was gathered in England in 1602. Being harrassed by an intolerant establishment, they removed, a few years after, to Holland, and thence, in 1620, to Plymouth; where the first detachment of them arrived, in a forlorn condition, in the depth of winter. From the distresses of the sea, which had detained them long upon its bosom, they escaped, at length, to encounter the greater distresses of a houseless forest and an inclement season,-distresses, both of sea and land,

which only a piety like theirs would have been willing to encounter, and a faith like theirs, been able to sustain.

The settlement at Plymouth was the first of the religious colonies which, within a few years after, during the "Laudian persecution," peopled the streams and harbors of New England. And this was the beginning of Congregationalism in this country.

Meantime, a branch of the same vine was beginning to take root in England. The first church which was gathered there, after Mr. Robinson's, was organized, with simple and affecting solemnities, in 1616. Its pastor was a Mr. Jacob, who during a visit to Leyden had embraced Mr. Robinson's views. In that unpropitious soil, it struggled with even greater difficulties, of another kind, than these encountered which were planted in the wilderness. "It subsisted almost by a miracle for above twenty-four years, shifting from place to place, to avoid the notice of the public," till, the times changing, it openly appeared in a house of worship in 1640.* From these oppressed beginnings, Congregationalism in England has gone on increasing and flourishing, "as a grain of mustard seed," till it now numbers, in that country and in Wales, about 1600 or 1700 congregations, and as many ministers. Of its numbers in Scotland I am not informed; but if the eulogy of the celebrated Chalmers, (a Presbyterian) be * Neal.

just, who says of the Scottish Congregationalists, that they are "the purest body of Christians in the united kingdom," it is to be wished that the number were greater than it is, whatever it may be.

The state of society in the New England settlements, as might be expected from the causes which originated them, was altogether peculiar. It was entirely and eminently religious. It might be said of every family, that it was a pious family; of every adult individual, that he was strictly moral, if not religious; and of every child, that he was piously educated. They were of the best people of England. For it is the best people, the most pious and exemplary always, and commonly not the least intelligent and respectable, that - persecution banishes from its communion, while it retains the worst. They were the best people of Jerusalem, "who were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen." They were of the best people of France who fled on the revocation of the edict of Nantes. And England had no better people within her bosom than she exiled from it, by the intolerable vexations of her High Commission and other spiritual courts. The immoral and unprincipled-people of lax lives and pliant consciences-are not the people who either disturb the persecutor, or are disturbed by him. When the Rev. Mr. Cotton, the first minister of Boston, a man of excellent learning and piety, and of much repute in England, as he afterwards was in this country, was informed against in the High