|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 18
In 1651, some time after his trial at Plymouth, Mr. Holmes was arrested,
with Mr. Clarke, of Newport, and Mr. Crandall, for preaching and
worshiping God with some of their brethren at Lynn. They were condemned
by the Court at Boston to suffer fines or whippings. Holmes refused to
pay the fine, and would not allow his friends to pay it for him, saying
that "to pay it would be acknowledging himself to have done wrong,
whereas his conscience testified that he had done right." He was
accordingly punished with thirty lashes from a three-corded whip, with
such severity, says Governor Jenks, "that in many days, if not some
weeks, he could take no rest but as he lay upon his knees and elbows,
not being able to suffer any part of his body to touch the bed whereon
he lay." Soon after this, Holmes and his followers moved to Newport, and
on the death of the Reverend Mr. Clarke, in 1652, he succeeded him as
pastor of the First Baptist Church in that time. Mr. Holmes died at
Newport in 1682, aged seventy-six years.
The persecution offered to the Rehoboth Baptists scattered their
church, but did not destroy their principles. Facing the obloquy
attached to their cause, and braving the trials imposed by the civil
and ecclesiastical powers, they must wait patiently God's time of
deliverance. That their lives were free from guile, none claim. That
their cause was righteous, none will deny; and while the elements
of a Baptist church were thus gathering strength on this side of the
Atlantic, a leader was prepared for them, by God's providence, on the
other. In the same year that Obadiah Holmes and his band established
their church in Massachusetts, in opposition to the Puritan order,
Charles I, the great English traitor, expiated his "high crimes and
misdemeanors" on the scaffold, at the hands of a Puritan Parliament.
Then followed the period of the Commonwealth under Cromwell, and then
the Restoration, when "there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew
not Joseph." The Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, under the sanction
of Charles II, though a fatal blow at the purity and piety of the
English Church, was a royal blessing to the cause of religion in
America. Two thousand bravely conscientious men, who feared God more
than the decrees of Pope, King, or Parliament, were driven from their
livings and from the kingdom. What was England's great loss was
America's great gain, for a grand tidal wave of emigration swept
westward across the Atlantic to our shores. Godly men and women, clergy
and laity, made up this exiled band, too true and earnest to yield a
base compliance to the edict of conformity. For thirteen years here the
Dissenters from Mr. Newman's church waited for a spiritual guide, but
not in vain.
How our Baptist brethren here conducted themselves during these years,
and the difficulties they may have occasioned or encountered, we know
but little. Plymouth, liberal already, has grown more lenient towards
church offenders in matters of conscience. Mr. John Brown, a citizen of
Rehoboth, and one of the magistrates, has presented before the Court his
scruples at the expediency of coercing the people to support the
ministry, and has offered to pay from his own property the taxes of all
those of his townsmen who may refuse their support of the ministry. This
was in 1665. Massachusetts Bay has tried to correct the errors of her
sister colony on the subject of toleration, and has in turn been rebuked
by her example.
JOHN MYLES.
Leaving the membership awhile, let us cross the sea to Wales to find
their future pastor and teacher--John Myles.
Wales had been the asylum for the persecuted and oppressed for many
centuries. There freedom of religious thought was tolerated, and from
thence sprung three men of unusual vigor and power: Roger Williams,
Oliver Cromwell, and John Myles. About the year 1645, the Baptists in
that country who had previously been scattered and connected with other
churches, began to unite in the formation of separate churches, under
their own pastors. Prominent among these was the Reverend Mr. Myles, who
preached in various places with great success, until the year 1649, when
we find him pastor of a church which he organized in Swansea, in South
Wales. It is a singular coincidence that Mr. Myles's pastorate at
Swansea, and the separation of the members from the Rehoboth church, a
part of whom aided in establishing the church in Swanzey, Massachusetts,
occurred in the same year.
During the Protectorate of Cromwell, all Dissenters enjoyed the largest
liberty of conscience, and, as a result, the church at Swansea grew from
forty-eight to three hundred souls. Around this centre of influence
sprang up several branch churches, and pastors were raised up to care
for them. Mr. Myles soon became the leader of his denomination in Wales,
and in 1651 he was sent as the representative of all the Baptist
churches in Wales to the Baptist ministers' meeting, at Glazier's Hall,
London, with a letter, giving an account of the peace, union, and
increase of the work. As a preacher and worker he had no equal in that
country, and his zeal enabled him to establish many new churches in his
native land. The act of the English Saint Bartholomew's Day, in 1662,
deprived Mr. Myles of the support which the government under Cromwell
had granted him, and he, with many others, chose the freedom of exile to
the tyranny of an unprincipled monarch. It would be interesting for us
to give an account of his leave-taking of his church at Swansea, and of
his associates in Christian labor, and to trace out his passage to
Massachusetts, and to relate the circumstances which led him to search
out and to find the little band of Baptists at Rehoboth. Surely some law
of spiritual gravitation or affinity, under the good hand of God, thus
raised up and brought this under-shepherd to the flock thus scattered in
the wilderness. Nicholas Tanner, Obadiah Brown, John Thomas, and others,
accompanied Mr. Myles in his exile from Swansea, Wales. The first that
is known of them in America was the formation of a Baptist church at the
house of John Butterworth in Rehoboth, whose residence is said to have
been near the Cove in the western part of the present town of East
Providence. Mr. Myles and his followers had probably learned at Boston,
or at Plymouth, of the treatment offered to Holmes and his party, ten
years before, and his sympathies led him to seek out and unite the
elements which persecution had scattered. Seven members made up this
infant church, namely: John Myles, pastor, James Brown, Nicholas Tanner,
Joseph Carpenter, John Butterworth, Eldad Kingsley, and Benjamin Alby.
The principles to which their assent was given were the same as those
held by the Welsh Baptists, as expounded by Mr. Myles. The original
record-book of the church contains a list of the members of Mr. Myles's
church in Swansea, from 1640 till 1660, with letters, decrees,
ordinances, etc., of the several churches of the denomination in England
and Wales. This book, now in the possession of the First Baptist Church
in Swanzey, Massachusetts, is probably a copy of the original Welsh
records, made by or for Mr. Myles's church in Massachusetts, the
sentiments of which controlled their actions here.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|