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1
THE
CAMBRIDGE
CHURCH -GATHERING
1 636.
DISCOURSE
CAMBRIDGE CHURCH-GATHERING
IN 1636
DELIVERED IN THE FIRST CHURCH,
ON SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1846.
By WILLIAM NEWELL,
PASTOR OF THE FIRST CHCRCH IN CAMBRIDGE.
BOSTON:
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY.
1846.
CAMBRIDGE:
METCALF AND COMPANY
PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
DISCOURSE
" We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told
US, WHAT WORK THOU DIDST IN THEIR DAYS, IN THE TIMES OF OLD.
HOW THOU DIDST DRIVE OUT THE HEATHEN WITH THY HAND, AND
PLANTEDST THEM FoR THEY GOT NOT THE LAND IN POSSES-
SION BY THEIR OWN SWORD, NEITHER DID THEIR OWN ARM SAVE THEM ;
BUT THY RIGHT HAND, AND THINE ARM, AND THE LIGHT OF THY
COUNTENANCE, BECAUSE THOU HADST A FAVOR UNTO THEM." — Psalm
xliv. 1-3.
On a Monday morning, towards the close of the
early and severe winter of 1635-36, "The New
Towne," or " Newtown," as this village was then
called,* presented an unusual aspect. Instead of the
* Two years after this (in May, 1638) its name was changed by the
General Court to Cambridge, in prophetic compliment to the newly es-
tablished College, and in grateful remembrance of the place in Old Eng-
land where many of the magistrates and ministers of the Massachusetts
Colony had received their education. It was at that place, also, that an
agreement to remove with their families to New England, on condition of
the transfer of the charter and government of the Colony to this country,
was drawn up and subscribed by Saltonstall, Dudley, Johnson, Winthrop,
Nowell, and others, in August, 1629. See it in Hutchinson's Coll.,
p. 25. That agreement determined the destinies of America, and in-
volved consequences which will finally encircle the world.
ordinary stir and business of the day, there was a
Sabbath-like quiet and gravity in the looks and move-
ments of the people. There were signs of prepara-
tion for some special solemnity. The signal for a
public gathering was heard; and, as the inhabitants
issued from their dwellings and passed with sedate
step through the streets, others of less familiar coun-
tenance, who had spent the Sabbath with them that
they might be here in season, or who had just arrived
from the neighbourhood, were seen mingling with
them as they went. Gathering from all quarters
came the fathers of the infant church and common-
wealth of Massachusetts, to sanction by their presence
the solemn act which was about to be performed in
the first rude temple, which had been erected a few
years before a little way from the spot on which we
are now assembled to the worship of the one living
and true God. From Boston, from Charlestovvn, from
Winnisimet, from Roxbury, from Dorchester, from
Watertown, from Medford, from Concord, and the
towns which were within convenient travelling dis-
tance, the " messengers " of the invited churches, and
others drawn hither by curiosity and religious interest,
were seen wending their way, as they then best could,
over new rough roads, or across the open fields and
over the. ice-bridged rivers and streams, to the humble
Puritan sanctuary. In the midst of the newly-risen
dwellings which had sprung up as by magic under
the diligent hands of the Christian adventurers who
first planted the town, on the rising ground just above
the marshes, and in the principal street,* leading
down to the river, — which bore, as it still bears, the
name of their king,f — stood the House of Prayer.
A plain, roughly finished edifice it was, but as precious
in the sight of God as the marble and gilded cathe-
dral ; another expressive testimonial of the spirit
which had led the Pilgrims into the Transatlantic
wilderness, and which, wherever they went, like
Abraham in his journeyings, builded its altars to the
Lord. Whether its church-going bell still woke the
echoes of Cambridge, we have no record to tell us ;
though some time in the course of the year, as we
* Then Water Street; now called Dunster Street, after President
Dunster, whose house, as it is believed to be, is still standing there, —
the only surviving contemporary of the first church. The church stood
on the west side of the street, near the place where it is intersected by
Mount Auburn Street, and on the south side of that street, upon land at
present owned by Dr. T. W. Harris, Librarian of the. University. The
spot js now vacant.
f So named by Captain John Smith, renowned for his bravery, enter-
prise, and romantic adventures, both in the Old World and the New ;
one of the first voyagers to New England (which also owes its name to
him), who, by his writings and personal efforts, did more, perhaps, than
any other single individual to direct the attention of men of character and
property towards it, and to interest them in its early settlement. In his
voyage hither, in 1614, he made a map of the coast, and called it New
England. " But malicious mindes," he says, " amongst Sailers and oth-
ers, drowned that name with the echo of Nusconcus, Canaday, and
Penaquid ; till at my humble sute, our most gracious King Charles, then
Prince of Wales, was- pleased to confirm-e it by that title and did change
the barbarous names of their principall Harbours and habitations for such
English that posterity may say King Charles was their Godfather." In
another place, he says, — "I tooke the fairest reach in this Bay for a
river, whereupon I called it Charles River, after the name of our Boyall
King Charles." Mass. Histor. Coll., 3d Series, Vol. III., pp. 20, 34.
See also Hillard's Life of Smith, in Sparks's Biography, 1st Series,
Vol. II.
learn from an incidental mention of the fact by one
of our quaint New England historians* of that day,
the dull, heavy sound of the beaten drum, converted
for the time from the heathen service of battle and
war into a herald of the assemblies of the Prince of
Peace, announced the hour of gathering to the people.
The little church was soon filled to overflowing. The
day, perhaps, was one of the mild and bright days
which February often mingles with its snows and
storms ; and even if it were not, our hardy sires who
had left their pleasant homes in Old England for the
" stern and rockbound coast " of the New, who had
deliberately exchanged their dear native soil for the
uncertainties and discomforts of a colony in a heathen
and savage land, who had traversed the wide, welter-
ing sea for the privilege of worshipping God in purity
and freedom, — men who made their religion the sun
and centre of their being, — were not to be daunted
by a little cold or a little damp in the performance of
its duties ; and though our modern safeguards against
snow and wet were unknown to their pilgrim feet,
though neither stove nor furnace — those innovations
of modern church-comfort — softened the chilly air,
or dissolved the curling breaths that rose thickly up-
ward in the sanctuary, they never thought of com-
plaining, much less of staying at home. And as for
distance from church, miles to them seemed little
more than as many furlongs now to their descendants.
* Johnson, in his Wonder-working Providence, Chap. XLIIL, speaks
of a drum as being used here in 1636 " to call men to meeting."
" I have heard," says Cotton Mather, in his biogra-
phy of John Norton, the highly esteemed successor
of Cotton in the ministry of the First Church in
Boston, "I have heard of a godly man in Ipswich,
who, after Mr. Norton's going to Boston, would ordi-
narily travel on foot from Ipswich to Boston, which is
about thirty miles, for nothing but the weekly lecture
there ; and he would profess that it was worth a
great journey to be partaker in one of Mr. Norton's
prayers." Thirty miles on foot to hear a Thursday
lecture ! And now I will venture to say that half of
our people, even in the very neighbourhood of the
metropolis, are ignorant that such a lecture still exists ;
— have never heard of it, or, if they have, have for-
gotten it, — and that nineteen twentieths of them
have never attended it in their lives. It has become
what the present successor of Cotton and Norton has
so aptly called it, " the shade of the past." Such are
the changes which take place from generation to gen-
eration. I do not imagine, however, that such in-
stances as that which Mather has reported were at all
common. But it is an indication of the state of feel-
ing and of society among our ancestors, of which this
was but an exaggerated specimen. They loved the
house of God. They prized its privileges. They
were religiously jealous of its honor ; and nothing
would have more shocked the devout public opinion of
that day than absence without good cause from their
Sabbath assemblies. It would have been death to a
man's character and influence among them.
Attendance upon public worship, however, was
with them a matter not only of fashion and decorum,
sometimes enforced by civil authority, but of individu-
al conscience and inclination. They hungered and
thirsted after religious instruction. They sat patiently
through services which to their descendants of this
day would seem of insufferable length. They looked
up to the pulpit, then at the height of its glory and
influence, for their weekly supply of thought and spir-
itual nutriment. Preaching was to them a necessary
of life. The various causes which in after generations
have contributed to lower its authority, and to render
it less exclusively the source of moral and religious
instruction, had not yet begun to operate. The Con-
gregational clergy — " the Elders," as they were
called — were in fact the rulers as well as teachers of
the young Christian commonwealth. In all important
questions of a civil, as well as of a religious nature,
they were formally consulted, and their opinion had
great weight. "In early times they were generally
present in the courts." A discourse at the Thursday
lecture or at a public fast, by Mr. Cotton or Mr.
Hooker, more than once settled a growing difficulty,
or turned the scale in favor of some disputed measure.
The people mingled with reverence for the men much
of the old reverence for their office, and listened to their
words with an attention and deference second only to
that which is accorded by the Catholic to his priest.
What the altered tastes and habits of thought of the
present age would hardly tolerate, they listened to not
only with patience, but with satisfaction and high
relish. Multiplied divisions and subdivisions of text
and subject, accumulations of Scripture proofs, gath-
ered indiscriminately from the Old Testament and the
New, minute dissections of doctrine, expositions of
the technical theology of the day, discussions of its
controverted points, — often in a phraseology which
added mist to the twilight in which they dwell, —
these, which to us, as we read them now on the anti-
quated and discolored page, seem but dry and husky
food, tasteless and innutritive, and sometimes worse
than that, were received by our Calvinistic fathers of
a different training as the sweet marrow of heavenly
wisdom. In their love of religious ordinances, in their
zeal for the doctrines and the institutions of their
choice, in their thirst for divine truth, in their rev-
erence for the ministry and the pulpit, all quickened
by the peculiar circumstances in which they were
placed, the first settlers of New England took a deep
personal, active interest in all that related to the purer
church which they came over to establish in a free
soil, out of the way of the tyrant kings, and the more
dreaded tyrant bishops,* who would fain have stran-
gled and crushed it as it rose in their fatherland.
* The persecutor often does God service, and blesses the world,
though in a way which he never intended ; as the tornado sows more
widely the seed which it rends from the parent stalk. The son of one
of the first ministers, in a preface to a sermon preached soon after the
Revolution in 1688, remarks, " That, if the bishops in the reign of King
Charles the First had been of the same spirit with those in the reign of
King William, there would have been no New England. " r
2
10
They wrapped their religion closer round them in the
storm. They clave more steadfastly and lovingly to
their chosen teachers in their trials and persecutions.
They honored their pulpit the more as the fires of
intolerance blazed more fiercely against it. Their
religious privileges were made dearer to them by the
sacrifices and privations with which they had been
bought ; and the preached word was sought the more
eagerly, and enjoyed with a keener zest, because it
had been arbitrarily and forcibly withheld. These,
added to other obvious reasons in the character, feel-
ings, and present circumstances of the first colonists
in New England, invested every religious occasion
and religious movement among them with a peculiar
interest. The gathering of a new church, therefore,
in this place, in the room of the migratory flock from
Mount Wollaston,* which was only waiting for the
summer days to take up its tents and to pursue its
pilgrimage to the greener pastures of Connecticut,
was a noticeable occurrence in the early days of the
Colony ; and Cambridge, before it was rechristened
by the General Court with its present time-honored
* " In August, 1632," says Winthrop, " the Braintree company
(which had begun to sit down at Mount Wollaston), by order of Court,
removed to Newtown. These were Mr. Hooker's company." They
had attended his ministry in England, and upon their settlement here,
they sent to him in Holland, whither he had fled from persecution, en-
treating him to become their pastor. He came over the next year, and
took up his abode with them. They were now (in February, 1836)
preparing for another removal, the reasons of which will appear in the
following
11
name, was one of the chief towns of the Massachu-
setts settlement. Before our ancestors, with a rare
and wise forethought, and with a liberality and public
spirit which can be matched by few examples in his-
tory, had laid upon this spot the foundations of their
first and favorite College, before the timely and mu-
nificent bequest of John Harvard, in 1638, and the
voluntary contributions of the people at large, had
reared its walls, our ancient village had its own prior
claims to distinction. It was originally selected for
the site of the metropolis ; and was to have been the
residence of the first governor, Winthrop, and his
associates in office, who had made an agreement to
build here,* and in a better and safer style than here-
tofore, none being allowed to have wooden chimneys
or thatched roofs, which had already, in other places,
been the occasion of destructive fires. They actually
commenced the work in the spring of 1631 .f New
considerations led them to abandon the original plan,
* Dudley's Letter to the Countess of Lincoln.
â– j- " Deputy-Governor Dudley, Secretary Bradstreet, and other princi-
pal gentlemen, in the spring went forward with their design, and intend-
ed to carry it on amain. The Governor has the frame of his house set
up where he first pitched his tent ; and Mr. Dudley had not only framed,
but finished his house there, and removed his family thereinto before win-
ter ; but on other considerations, which at first came not into their
minds, the Governor takes down his frame and brings it to Boston, where
he intends to take up his abode for the future ; which is no small disap-
pointment to the rest of the company, who were minded to build at New-
town, and accompanied with some disgust between the two chief gentle-
men (Winthrop and Dudley) ; but they are soon satisfied with the
grounds of each other's proceedings." — Prince.
12
though not without considerable struggle and some
hard feeling among those who had been concerned in
it ; and Boston ere long eclipsed the rising glory of
Cambridge. The New Town, however, was for a
time the object of special notice and patronage. It
was fortified at the public expense for fear of the
Indians, and a " creek," or passage for boats, was
made to it from the river, for the payment of which a
tax was laid upon all the plantations. It was after-
wards the place in which some of the first annual
assemblies of the people were held for the election of
the governor and assistants. Here, under the shade of
a broad-spreading oak, — one of the aborigines of the
soil, in its old age when our Washington Elm was a
sapling, and the decayed stump of which is said to
have been standing, on the northerly side of our village
Common, till within half a century, — the privileged
voters of the new settlements, the freemen, as they
were called, members of the Congregational churches
(for they alone for many years were allowed to have
a voice in civil affairs), chose their rulers for the year ;
at first in person, and afterwards from " the remote
towns " by proxy, when a general attendance was
found inconvenient and expensive, as well as unsafe,
on account of the exposure of their families in their
absence to the attacks of their savage neighbours.
I find, also, that for the two years previous to the
church-gathering in 1636, Newtown paid the highest
tax into the colonial treasury, with the exception of
Boston and Dorchester, whose assessment was the
13
same ; * and that at the time when this event took
place, — before the removal of Hooker's company, —
it stood in point of wealth at the head of the new
settlements.! It was then, also, as it had been for
the last two years, the residence of the governor ; and
the courts were generally holden here. Wood, who
returned from this country to England in 1633, in his
New England's Prospect, published in 1634, speaks
of Newtown as one of the neatest and best built
towns in the colony, and of the inhabitants as being
" most of them very rich, and well stored with Cattle
of all sorts, having many hundred Acres of ground
paled in with one general fence, which is about a
mile and half long, which secures all their weaker
Cattle from the wilde beasts." I have mentioned
these circumstances to show that Cambridge from
the beginning was a place of note ; and that even its
local affairs, especially such as that which I would
now commemorate, would naturally attract general
attention and interest.
But another occurrence in its history, just before
the arrival of Shepard and his people, in 1635, had
made it at that time the occasion of much talk, ex-
citement, and controversy. In the autumn of 1633,
Thomas Hooker, one of the most celebrated and in-
* Except in September, 1635, when that of Boston was a little small-
er. There were frequent fluctuations, however, in the relative popula-
tion and wealth of the several towns in the course of a few years.
t In March, 1636, Newtown was assessed £ 42, Boston and Dorches-
ter £ 37 10s. each, Watertown £ 30, Salem £ 24, &c.
14
fluential of the emigrant Puritan clergy, and Samuel
Stone, also a man of eminence in his day, were or-
dained, the former as pastor, the latter as teacher, of
the church * in this place, where many of Mr. Hook-
er's former hearers and parishioners were already set-
tled ; and " the New Towne " rejoiced for a season
in his light, and reflected his fame. But he and his
people soon became dissatisfied with their situation,
complaining of the narrowness of the township and
the want of land for their cattle, and in a spirit al-
ready foretokening the future genius and fortunes
of their descendants, — a spirit which seems to be
breathed in with our American air, — they proposed
to go " further west," where they should have both a
wider and a more fertile territory. Of the manner in
which this proposition was received and settled, we
have a full account in the Journal of Governor Win-
throp. As the whole passage is, on many accounts,
an interesting one, I shall quote it entire. Under
date of September 4, 1634, he writes as follows : —
" The General Court began at Newtown, and con-
tinued a week, and then was adjourned fourteen days.
Many things were there agitated and concluded, as
fortifying in Castle Island, Dorchester, and Charles-
town ; also against tobacco, and costly apparel, and
* Of the forma] gathering of this church, — the predecessor of Shep-
ard's, but having only a transient abode here, — no account has come
down to us. It probably took place between the day of Hooker's arri-
val, September 4th, 1633, and his ordination, on the 11th of October
following.
15
immodest fashions ; and committees appointed for set-
ting out the bounds of towns ; with divers other mat-
ters, which do appear upon record. But the main
business, which spent the most time, and caused the
adjourning of the Court, was about the removal of
Newtown. They had leave, the last General Court, to
look out some place for enlargement or removal, with
promise of having it confirmed to them, if it were not
prejudicial to any other plantation ; and now they
moved, that they might have leave to remove to Con-
necticut. This matter was debated divers days, and
many reasons alleged pro and con. The principal
reasons for their removal were, 1. Their want of ac-
commodation for their cattle, so as they were not able
to maintain their ministers, nor could receive any
more of their friends to help them ; and here it was
alleged by Mr. Hooker, as a fundamental error, that
towns were set so near each to other. 2. The fruit-
fulness and commodiousness of Connecticut, and the
danger of having it possessed by others, Dutch or
English. 3. The strong bent of their spirits to re-
move thither.
" Against these it was said, 1. That, in point of
conscience, they ought not to depart from us, being
knit to us in one body, and bound by oath to seek
the welfare of this commonwealth. 2. That, in point
of state and civil policy, we ought not to give them
leave to depart. (1.) Being we were now weak and
in danger to be assailed. (2.) The departure of Mr.
Hooker would not only draw many from us, but also
16
divert other friends that would come to us. (3.) We
should expose them to evident peril, both from the
Dutch (who made claim to the same river, and had
already built a fort there) and from the Indians, and
also from our own state at home, who would not en-
dure they should sit down without a patent in any
place which our king lays claim unto. 3. They
might be accommodated at home by some enlarge-
ment which other towns offered. 4. They might re-
move to Merrimack, or any other place within our
patent. 5. The removing of a candlestick is a great
judgment, which is to be avoided.
" Upon these and other arguments, the Court being
divided, it was put to vote ; and, of the deputies,
fifteen were for their departure, and ten against it.
The governor and two assistants were for it, and the
deputy and all the rest of the assistants were against
it (except the secretary, who gave no vote) ; where-
upon no record was entered, because there were not
six assistants in the vote, as the patent requires. Up-
on this grew a great difference between the governor
and assistants, and the deputies. They would not
yield the assistants a negative voice, and the others
(considering how dangerous it might be to the com-
monwealth, if they should not keep that strength to
balance the greater number of the deputies) thought
it safe to stand upon it. So, when they could pro-
ceed no further, the whole Court agreed to keep a day
of humiliation to seek the Lord, which accordingly
was done, in all the congregations, the eighteenth day
17
of this month ; and the twenty-fourth the Court met
again. Before they began, Mr. Cotton preached
(being desired by all the Court, upon Mr. Hooker's
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