700 GOULD AND OTHERS IMPRISONED. 'schismatical rending from the communion of the Churches here, and setting up a public meeting in opposition to the ordinance of Christ.' Several other persons were tried with him for the same offense, and as they all professed their resolution yet further to proceed in such their irregular practices, thereby as well contemning the authority and laws here established for the maintenance of godliness and honesty, as continuing in the profanation of God's holy ordinances:' Gould, Osborne, Drinker, Turner and George were disfranchised,' and threatened with imprisonment if they continued in this high presumption against the Lord and his holy appointments.' Zechariah Rhodes, a Rhode Island Baptist, being in Court at the time and hearing this decision, said publicly, that they had not to do in matters of religion,' and was committed, but afterward admonished and dismissed. On April 17th, 1666, Gould, Osborne and George were presented to the grand jury at Cambridge, for absence from the Congregational Church for one whole year.' They pleaded that they were members of a Gospel Church, and attended scriptural worship regularly. They were convicted of high presumption against the Lord and his holy appointments,' were fined £4 each, and put under bonds of £20 each; but as they would not pay their fines, they were thrown into prison. On the 18th of August, 1666, according to the General Court papers of Massachusetts, the Assistant's Court decided that Gould and Osborne night be released from prison if they would pay the fine and costs, but if not they should be banished; they also continued the injunction against the assembling of Baptists for worship. March 3d, 1668, Gould was brought before the Court of Assistants in Boston, on an appeal from the County Court of Middlesex, when the previous judgment was confirmed and he was recommitted to prison. Then, on the 7th of the same month, concluding that fines and imprisonments did nothing to win him, and having a wholesome dread of repeating the Holmes's whipping experiment, the governor and council deciding to reduce hin and his brethren from the error of their way, and their return to the Lord, . . . do judge meet to grant unto Thomas Gould, John Farnham, Thomas Osborne and company yet further an opportunity of a full and free debate of the grounds for their practice.' They also appointed Rev. Messrs. Allen, Cobbett, Higginson, Danforth, Mitchel and Shepard to meet with them on the 14th of April 'in the meeting-house at Boston at nine in the morning.' The Baptist and Pedobaptist brethren were then and there to publicly debate the following question: Whether it be justifiable by the word of God for these persons and their company to depart from the communion of these Churches, and to set up an assembly here in the way of Anabaptism, and whether such a practice is to be allowed by the government of this jurisdiction?' Now, who was flouting the 'red flag of the Anabaptistical fanaticism full in the face of the Bay bull?' Gould was required to inform his Baptist brethren to appear, and the Baptist Church at Newport sent a delegation of three to help their brethren in the debate. A great concourse of people assembled and Mitchel took the laboring oar in behalf of the Pedobaptists, 6 THOMAS OSBORNE AND EDWARD DRINKER. 701 aided stoutly by others, but after two days' denunciation of the Baptists, they were not allowed to reply. The authorities, however, claimed the victory and berated them soundly as 'schismatics;' but as this did not convert them, they returned at once to the old argument of fine and imprisonment, notwithstanding many remonstrances were sent from England by such men as Drs. Goodwin and Owen, and Messrs. Mascall, Nye and Caryl. Mitchel gave this sentence against them, and that ended the matter: "The man that will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die, and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel.' That sentence had been pronounced in Rome a hundred times, without half the noise about it which these new-fledged inquisitors made. It may be well to add a few words in regard to Gould's companions in this holy war. Thomas Osborne appears to have been to Gould what Silas was to Paul. As far back as November 18th, 1663, the Charlestown Church records say that he, 'being leavened with principles of Anabaptism, and his wife leavened with the principles of Quakerism,' that Church admonished them. But the admonition. appears to have done no good, for July 9th, 1665, they were up before the Church again, with other Anabaptists,' on the charge that they had 'enbodied themselves in a pretended Church way.' Osborne refused to have his babe baptized, and his wife said that she could not conscientiously attend on ordinances with us,' and they were excommunicated on the 30th 'for their impenitency;' and on May 15th, 1675, he was fined because he worshiped with the Baptist Society, now in Boston. Edward Drinker, another of these worthies, is first heard of at Charlestown, but was not a member of the Congregational Church there yet the Roxbury Church records say that when the Baptist Church was formed, its brethren 'prophesied in turn, some one administered the Lord's Supper, and that they held a lecture at Drinker's house once a fortnight.' This good man was baptized into the fellowship of the new Church, but was disfranchised by the Court when he became a Baptist, and was imprisoned for worshiping with his Church, 1669. He suffered much for his conscience, and we find him writing to Clarke, at Newport, as late as November 30th, 1670, in respect to the trials of the Church, which at that time had left Charlestown, and met at Noddle's Island, now East Boston. In this letter he tells Clarke that Boston and its vicinity were 'troubled,' much as Herod was at the coming of the King to Bethlehem, and especially the old Church in Boston and their elders. Indeed,' he adds, that many gentlemen and solid Christians are for our brother's (Turner) deliverance, but it cannot be had; a very great trouble to the town; and they had gotten six magistrates' hands for his deliverance, but could not get the governor's hand to it. Some say one end is that they may prevent others coming out of England; therefore, they would discourage them by dealing with us.' He then states that they had received several additions to the Church at Noddle's Island, that one of their elders, John Russell, lived at Woburn, where already five brethren met with him, and others in that town were embracing their beloved greatly in Boston. 6 These and other Baptists were forbidden again and again to hold any meetings, to which measure the General Court was moved by an address from the elders in convention, April 30th, 1668. They say: Touching the case of those that set up an assembly here in the way of Anabaptism,' that it belongs to the civil magistrates to restrain and suppress these open enormities in religion,' and for these reasons. The way of Anabaptism is a known and irreconcilable enemy to the orthodox and orderly Churches of Christ.' They make infant baptism a nullity, and so making us all to be unbaptized persons... by rejecting the true covenant of God (Gen. xvii, 7-14) whereby the Church is constituted and continued, and cutting off from the Churches half the members that belong to them. Hence, they solemnly conclude that an assembly in the way of Anabaptism would be among us as an antiTo set up such an temple, an enemy in this habitation of the Lord; an anti-New England in New England, manifestly tending to the disturbance and destruction of those Churches, which their nursing fathers ought not to allow. . sembly is to set up a free school of seduction, wherein false teachers may have open liberty to seduce the people into ways of error, which may not be suffered. At the same door may all sorts of abominations come in among us, should this be allowed, for a few persons may, without the consent of our ecclesiastical and civil order, set up a society in the name of a Church, themselves being their sole judges therein; then the vilest of men and deceivers may do the like, and we have no fence nor bar to keep them out. Moreover, if this assembly be tolerated, where shall we stop? Why may we not, by the same reason, tolerate an assembly of Familists, Socinians, Quakers, Papists yea, 'tis known that all these have elsewhere crept in under the mask of Anabaptism.' as MEETING-HOUSE NAILED UP. 703 They say that if this one assembly be allowed, by the same reason may a second, third, etc.; schools of them will soon be swarming hither. If once that party become numerous and prevailing, this country is undone, the work of reforination being ruined, and the good ends and enjoyinents which this people have adventured and expended so much for, utterly lost. The people of this place have a clear right to the way of religion and order that is here established, and to a freedom from all that may be disturbing and destructive thereunto.' 15 6 After a long contest, the infant Church which had first been organized in Charlestown, and then removed to Noddle's Island, ventured to remove to Boston, and as by stealth, Philip Squire and Ellis Callender built a small meeting-house in 1679 'at the foot of an open lot running down from Salem Street to the mill-pond, and on the north side of what is now Stillman Street,' and Thomas Gould became the first pastor. This building was so small, plain and unpretending, that it did not disturb the Bay bull' until it was completed, and the Church entered it for worship, February 15th. Then that amiable animal awoke and played very violent antics, without the aid of Clarke's 'red flag.' In May, the General Court passed a law forbidding a house for public worship without the consent of the Court or a townmeeting, on forfeiture of the house and land. Under this post facto law the Baptists declined to occupy their own church edifice until the king, Charles II., required the authorities to allow liberty of conscience to all Protestants. Then the Baptists went back again, for which the Court arraigned them, and March 8th, 1680, ordered the marshal to nail up the doors, which he did, posting the following notice on the door: All persons are to take notice that, by order of the Court, the doors of this house are shut up, and that they are inhibited to hold any meetings therein, or to open the doors thereof, without license from authority, till the Court take further order, as they will answer the contrary to their peril. EDWARD RAWSON, Secretary.' 6 The Baptists quietly petitioned in May, asking the right to eat their own bread, and the Court gave them this stone, prohibiting them, as a society by themselves, or joined with others, to meet in that public place they have built, or any public place except such as are allowed by lawful authority. The Baptists did not break open the door, but held their public Sunday services on the first Sabbath in the yard, and then prepared a shed for that on the second Sabbath. But when they came together they found the doors open! Never stopping to ask whether the marshal had opened them or the angel which threw back the iron gate to Peter, they went in boldly and said: 'The Court had not done it legally, and that we were denied a copy of the constable's order and marshal's warrant, we concluded to go into our house, it being our own, having a civil right to it.' Since that day there has always been a 'great door and effectual' opened to Boston Baptists. CHAPTER VII. NEW CENTERS OF BAPTIST INFLUENCE.-SOUTH CAROLINA.— A The first S a wrathful tempest scatters seed over a continent, so persecution has always forced Baptists where their wisdom had not led them. American Baptist that we hear of, out of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, is in a letter which Humphrey Churchwood, a resident of what is now Kittery, Maine, addressed January 3d, 1682, to the Baptist Church in Boston, of which he was a member. He states that there were at Kittery 'a competent number of wellestablished people, whose heart the Lord had opened, who desired to follow Christ and to partake of all his holy ordinances.' They asked, therefore, that a Baptist Church should be established there, with William Screven as pastor, who went to Boston and was ordained. Before he returned to Kittery, Churchwood and others of the little band were summoned before the magistrates and threatened with fines if they continued to hold meetings. A Church was organized, however, September 25th, 1682. So bitterly did the Standing Order oppose this Baptist movement, that Mr. Screven and his associates resolved to seek an asylum elsewhere, and a promise to this effect was given to the magistrates. It is supposed that they left Kittery not long after the organization of the Church, but it is certain from the province records, that this 'Baptist Company' were at Kittery as late as October 9th, 1683; for under that date in the records of a Court occurs an entry from which it appears that Mr. Screven was brought before the Court for not departing this province according to a former confession of Court and his own choice.' next.' At the Court held at Wells, May 27th, 1684, this action was taken: An order to be sent for William Sereven to appear before ye General Assembly in June As no further record in reference to Mr. Screven appears, it is probable that he and his company were on their way to their new home in South Carolina before the General Assembly met. They settled on the Cooper River, not far from the present city of Charleston. Some of the early colonists of South Carolina were Baptists from the west of England, and it is very likely that these two bands from New and Old England formed a new Church, as it is certain that, in 1685, both parties became one Church on the west bank of the Cooper River, which was removed to Charleston by the year 1693, and which was the first Baptist Church in the South. In 1699 this congregation became strong enough to erect a brick meetinghouse and a parsonage on Church Street, upon a lot of ground which had been given |