670 PORTSMOUTH AND ITS CHURCHES. ment, declaring themselves a 'body-politic,' submitting themselves to Christ and his holy 'truth, to be guided and judged thereby,' much after the form of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. They then chose Coddington as judge or magistrate, appointed civil officers, and voted a whipping-post, a jail and a pair of stocks. At one time, it was supposed that this was a religious compact, because they appointed three elders,' January 2d, 1639. These, however, were civil officers, or associate judges in the Hebrew sense. They were to assist Coddington 'in the execution of justice and judgment, for the regulating and ordering of all offenses and offenders,' and they were to report to the freemen quarterly. They also determined that in laying out the town, two civil commissioners should locate the meeting-house for Portsmouth. These settlers numbered eighteen, most of them being Congregationalists and members of Cotton's Church in Boston, but some of them were under its censure and that of the Court of Massachusetts for imbibing certain peculiar views of Christian doctrine. Whether Anne Hutchinson was with them at the moment does not appear, but her husband was. So far as appears none of them were Baptists, but sympathized with her in theological sentiments, as John Cotton and Sir Henry Vane did at one time, and now determined to enjoy the freedom of their consciences. It is not clear whether Clarke was at this time a Congregationalist, but they formed a Church, to which he was the preacher, whether or not he was the pastor. Winthrop's Journal implies that there were no Baptists amongst them. Indeed, why should the State Church at Boston send a deputation to a Baptist Church at Portsmouth? He says that they gathered a Church in a very disorderly way; for they took some excommunicated persons, and others who were members of the Church in Boston and were not dismissed.'. . . That 'many of Boston and others, who were of Mrs. Hutchinson's judgment and partly removed to the isle of Aquiday; and others who were of the rigid separation, and savored of anabaptism, removed to Providence.' Had he known of a Baptist at Portsmouth, he would have been likely to say so, and would not have contented himself with mentioning that this Church was gathered in a disorderly way. In February, 1640, the Boston Church sent three of its members to understand their judgments in divers points of religion formerly maintained by all or divers of them.' This committee of discipline reported to that Church, March 16th, 1640, that the new Church at Portsmouth was irregular in that they followed the unwarrantable practice of taking the Lord's Supper with excommunicated persons; but the deputation gives no hint that any of them were Baptists. The Portsmouth Church refused to hear these messengers, demanding: 'What power one Church hath over another?' When they reported to Cotton's Church: The elders and most of the Churches would have cast them out, as refusing to hear the Church, but all not being agreed it was deferred.' 19 In 1638 Newport was settled, at the south end of the island, where a Church was formed in 1641, of which Clarke was pastor, probably another Congregational Church, for we have no sign that even then he held Bap 6 FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH AT NEWPORT. 671 tist views of the ordinances. Lechford, who visited the Rhode Island colonies, and speaks freely of them (1637--41) says: At Providence, which is twenty miles from the said island (R. I.), lives Master Williams, and his company, of divers opinions; most are Anabaptists.' But of Newport, which he also visited, he says: At the island called Acquedney are about two hundred families. There was a Church where one Master Clarke was elder. The place where the Church was is called Newport. But that Church, I hear, is now dissolved.' The next most reliable account of Clarke is from John Callender, the sixth successor to Clarke, as pastor of the First Baptist Church at Newport, who preached the Century Sermon at Newport, March 24th, 1738. In his discourse he uses this language: 'It is said that in 1644 Mr. John Clarke and some others formed a Church on the scheme and principles of the Baptists. It is certain that in 1648 there were fifteen members in full communion.' In 1730 Comer, an earlier successor of Clarke, says that this body maintained the doctrine of efficacious grace, and professed the baptizing of only visible believers upon personal profession by a total immersion in water, though the first certain record of this Church is October 12th, 1648.' An interesting item may be mentioned here, namely: That Samuel Hubbard and his wife, of Fairfield, held to the baptism of believers, and she being arraigned twice for this faith, they removed to Newport and united with Clarke's Church November 3d, 1648. These things taken together lead to the highly probable conclusion, that Clarke became a Baptist somewhere between 1640 and 1644, but we have no record of the time of his baptism, or that of his Church. A long train of circumstances indicate that his steps had led in the same path with those of Williams in the main; through Puritanism, love of religious liberty, disgust at the intolerance of Massachusetts, and so into full Baptist positions. Williams was not a Baptist when he first met Clarke, early in 1638, nor was he immersed till March, 1639, a year afterward. With the brotherly affection which subsisted between them, the intervention of Williams in securing the island of Rhode Island to Clarke, and their common views on soul-liberty, is it reasonable to suppose that Williams would have sought baptism at the hands of an immersed layman, if Clarke, his next neighbor, was then a Baptist? True, Williams had ceased to be a Baptist when the Baptist Church of which Clarke became pastor was formed, so that he could not have baptized Clarke. But other elders had taken the Church that Williams had left, and Clarke could have received baptism of one of them at Providence, as easily as William Vaughn, of the First Baptist Church at Newport, could go to Providence and receive imposition of hands from Wickenden in 1652. Be this as it may, however, there is nothing to show that Clarke was a Baptist in England, but much to indicate that his love for liberty of conscience led him to embrace Baptist principles and practices in Rhode Island. Morgan Edwards writes of the Newport Church: 'It is said to have been a daughter of Providence Church, which was constituted about six years before. And it is not at all unlikely that they might be enlight ened, in the affair of believer's baptism, by Roger Williams and his company, for His services in the cause of God and liberty were a marvel. In 1651 the colony sent him and Williams to obtain a new charter, which would set aside Coddington's. Williams returned in 1654, leaving Clarke alone to manage the affair, which he did during the Protectorate, and in 1663 he secured from Charles II. that remarkable document which was held as fundamental law in Rhode Island till 1842. It was an immense triumph of diplomacy to obtain a charter from Charles II., which declared that no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be anywise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences of opinion or matters of religion.' No wonder that he was hailed with delight on his return to Rhode Island in 1664, after an absence of twelve long years on this high mission. 6 He served the public in the General Assembly as Deputy Governor, and in other capacities, requiring strength of judgment and versatility of talents. His ‘Ill News from New England,' 'Narrative of New England Persecutions,' with several other works, bear the marks of a powerful pen. Callender said of him: 'No character in New England is of purer fame than John Clarke.' The Historian of Rhode Island says that 'to him Rhode Island was chiefly indebted for the extension of her territory on each side of the bay, as well as for her royal charter.' And Roger Williams bears this testimony: The grand motive which turned the scale of his life was the truth of God-a just liberty to all men's spirits in spiritual matters, together with the peace and prosperity of the whole colony.' As a consistent Baptist, he displayed a healthy comprehension of all our principles and gave a beautiful And it is equally beautiful to see how he unity to our infant cause in the colonies. accepted from Williams all that related to liberty of conscience, although Williams did not agree with him in regard to Church life. Williams, at Providence, made the distinction between Church and State, radical and complete from the first. Clarke at first took the Bible as the code of the civil State, so that in Providence Church and State were distinct, but in Aquidneck they were confounded, and only after severe experience did that colony come to adopt the Providence doctrine. When this was done, Baptist Churches sprang up in different directions, under the missionary influences of the Newport Church, and people came from many places to unite in its fellowship. These two Baptists shaped the early history of the present State of Rhode Island, and her religious policy has since shaped that of all the States. After the Providence Plantations and the people of Narraganset Bay became united under one charter, an old writer said of them: They are much like their neighbors, only 6 HONORABLE HISTORY OF NEWPORT CHURCH. 673 they have one vice less and one virtue more than they; for they never persecuted any; but have ever maintained a perfect liberty of conscience.' After quoting these words, Edwards remarks: In 1656 the Colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven pressed them hard to give up the point, and join the confederates to crush the Quakers, and prevent any more from coming to New England. This they refused, saying: "We shall strictly adhere to the foundation principle on which this colony was first settled, to wit: That every man who submits peaceably to the civil authority, may peaceably worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience without molestation." This answer made the said colonies hate them the more, and meditate their ruin by slanderous words and violent actions. They had to resist Old England as well as New England. Sir Henry Vane admonished them in a letter. Williams says: "I spent almost five years' time with the State of England to keep off the rage of the English against us." Letter-writers calumniated them as the scum and runaways of other countries which, in time, would bring a heavy burden on the land-as sunk into barbarity, that they could speak neither good English nor good sense, as libertines, antinomians, and every thing except what is good, as despisers of God's worship, and without order or government. In their address to the Lord Protector, 1659, they say: "We bear with the several judgments and consciences of each other in all the towns of our colony, the which our neighbor colonies do not; which is the only cause of their great offense against us. 9921 Mr. Clarke passed through several severe controversies. One, on the innerlight' question, with those who claimed to be led entirely thereby. Many of them were called 'Seekers,' and some became Friends.' Against this doctrine Clarke contended manfully for the Baptist claim of the sufficiency of the Bible as the rule of faith and practice, and carried the public sentiment with him. In 1652, while he was in England, the question of laying on of hands' as a test of membership arose. A number withdrew from his Church in 1656, on this issue, and formed a 'Six Principle' Baptist Church in Newport; then, in 1671, another body went out and formed a Seventh Day' Church, on the persuasion that the seventh day is the divinely appointed Sabbath. The first successor of Clarke as pastor was Obadiah Holmes, 1676-82; the second Richard Dingley, 1689-94; then William Peckkam, 1711-32; John Comer, 1726-29, a colleague to Peckkam. John Callender became pastor in 1731, died in 1748, and from him the pastoral succession has gone on in a line of worthies which would honor the history of any Church, while many of its deacons have been known as the first men in the commonwealth. The Church has always been Calvinistic, and has practiced singing as a part of public worship, excepting for a time, in the early part of the eighteenth century. In 1726 it voted to take a weekly contribution for the support of the ministry.' It has been a living, working band of Christians from its organization, and stands on the old platform where it has stood for nearly two and a half centuries as prominent and healthful as a city on a hill. 44 CHAPTER V. CHAUNCEY.-KNOLLYS.-MILES AND THE SWANSEA CHURCH. EVERAL hints are found in the early colonial writings, that an individual here 1 6 and there amongst the colonists inclined to Baptist views in relation to infant baptism and immersion before the immersion of Williams. Governor Winslow wrote of the Baptists, in 1646: We have some living amongst us, nay, some of our Churches, of that judgment;' and Mather states that many of the first settlers of Massachusetts were Baptists, and they were as holy and watchful and faithful and heavenly a people as any, perhaps, in the world.' We have seen that when Williams was banished he was not a Baptist, nor does it appear that there was then one immersed believer in America. There is no evidence that he expressed any difference with his Pedobaptist brethren as to the proper subjects and method of baptism before he found himself in the wilderness. Yet we have seen that while he was teacher at Plymouth, Elder Brewster read his Baptist tendencies in his preaching, and predicted that he would run into Anabaptistry.' It is, therefore, a singular fact that Rev. Charles Chauncey, who had been an Episcopal clergyman in England, and who arrived in Boston in 1638, should have brought the doctrine of immersion with him, and made directly for that same Plymouth, where somehow there was an 'Anabaptist' taint in the air, to the scant edification of Brewster. Felt writes that Chauncey arrived at Plymouth a few days before the great earthquake on the 1st of June,' 1638. At that time Mr. Reyner was teacher to the Church at Plymouth, and Morton's manuscript reports this: 6 After Mr. Reyner had been in place a considerable time it was desired that Mr. Charles Chauncey should be invited, who, being a very godly and learned man, they intended upon trial to choose him pastor of the Church here for the more comfortable performance of the ministry with Mr. John Reyner, the teacher of the same; but there fell out some difference about baptizing, he holding it ought only to be by dipping and putting the whole body under water, and that sprinkling was unlawful. The Church yielded that immersion or dipping was lawful, but in this cold country not so convenient. But they could not and durst not yield to him in this that sprinkling, which all the Churches of Christ, for the most part, at this day practice, was unlawful and a human invention, as the same was pressed; but they were willing to yield to him as far as they could and to the utmost, and were contented to suffer him to practice as he was persuaded, and when he came to minister that ordinance he might do it to any that did desire it in that way; provided, he could peaceably suffer Mr. Reyner and such as desired it to have theirs otherwise baptized by him, by sprinkling or pouring on of water upon them, so as there might be no disturbance in the Church thereabouts. But he said he could not yield thereunto, upon which the Church procured some other ministers to dispute the point with |