THE PLACE OF THE OLD CHURCH IN

NEW ENGLAND HISTORY

BY REVEREND WILLIAM HENRY SAVAGE

But Paul said, I am

Tw

a citizen of no mean city.—

ACTS xxi. 39.

WO hundred years ago this month the Weston church began its separate life.

Up to that date, Watertown and Weston were one people. What was done in the old church, was done by your fathers not less than by ours, and the memories of that time are a common heritage.

We are, therefore, for the present hour, sitting together as one people, and neither speaker nor hearer is supposed to know that any separation has ever taken place. When I say Watertown, it is your Watertown I am speaking of. What I claim for the old church, I claim for your old church, wherein your fathers and mothers worshipped God and wrought for human-kind. So much, by way So much, by way of preface.

In the summer of the year 1630, a company of immigrants, newly arrived from England, ascended the Charles River, and selected a place for settlement. The leaders of this company were Sir Richard Saltonstall, a noble gentleman from Yorkshire, and the Reverend George Phillips, a graduate of the University of Cambridge. How many people followed these leaders is not definitely known, but there is reason to believe that the settlers were strong in numbers and excellent in quality. On the 7th

of September, 1630, the Board of Assistants, sitting at Charlestown, ordered that "Trimountain be called Boston; Mattapan, Dorchester; and the town upon Charles River, Watertown."

On the 30th day of July, about five weeks before the settlement had been legally named, the men of the place assembled (probably at the house of Sir Richard Saltonstall) for a day of fasting and prayer. They came together upon the recommendation of the governor, on account of the great sickness then prevailing among the people of Charlestown. But they had another reason for their assembly, for Mather says: They resolved that they would combine into a church fellowship as their first work." After the close of their religious exercises, they proceeded to make history, for Mather goes on to say: "About forty men, whereof the first was that excellent knight, Sir Richard Saltonstall, then subscribed this covenant in order unto. their coalescence into a church estate."" This is the covenant they signed:

66

"July 30, 1630.

"We whose names are hereto subscribed, having through God's mercy escaped out of the pollutions of the world, and been taken into the society of his people, with all thankfulness do hereby both with heart and hand acknowledge that his gracious goodness and fatherly care towards us: and for further and more full declaration thereof to the present and future ages have undertaken (for the promoting of his glory and the church's good, and the honor of our blessed Jesus, in our more full and free subjecting of ourselves and ours, under his gracious government, in the practice of, and obedience unto all

his holy ordinances, and orders, which he hath pleased to prescribe and impose upon us) a long and hazardous voyage from East to West, from old England in Europe to New England in America; that we may walk before him without fear in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives; and being safely arrived here, and thus far onwards peaceably preserved by his special Providence, that we may bring forth our intentions into actions, and perfect our resolutions in the beginnings of some just and meet executions; we have separated the day above written from all other services and dedicated it wholly to the Lord in divine employments, for a day for afflicting our souls and humbling ourselves before the Lord, to seek him, and at his hands. a way to walk in, by fasting and prayer, that we might know what was good in his sight; and the Lord was intreated of us. For in the end of that day, after the finishing of our public duties, we do all, before we depart, solemnly and with all our hearts, personally, man by man, for ourselves and ours (charging them before Christ and his elect angels, even them that are not here with us this day, or are yet unborn, that they keep the promise unblamably and faithfully unto the coming of our Lord Jesus) promise and enter into a sure covenant with the Lord our God, and before him with one another, by oath and serious protestation made, to renounce all idolatry and superstition, will-worship, all human traditions and inventions whatsoever in the worship of God; and forsaking all evil ways, do give ourselves wholly unto the Lord Jesus, to do him faithful service, observing and keeping all his statutes, commands, and ordinances, in all matters

concerning our reformation; his worship, administrations, ministry and government; and in the carriage of ourselves among ourselves and one toward another, as he hath prescribed in his holy word. Further, swearing to cleave unto that alone, and the true sense and meaning thereof to the utmost of our power, as unto the most clear light and infallible rule, and all-sufficient canon in all things that concern us in this our way. In witness of all, we do, ex animo, and in the presence of God, hereto set our names or marks, in the day and year above written."

To our ears this long-drawn statement has a curious sound. At first hearing its cumbrous sentences seem to have little to do with the life that now is and to aim at any other life in a very zigzag and roundabout fashion. Why people who had not yet taken time to get a roof over their heads should give a day to drawing up and signing such a document as that, with ceremonies so formal and solemn is, at the first glance, by no means plain. To the very "practical" man of to-day, who finds history tiresome and theology stupid, the whole business appears a piece of ponderous nonsense.

But such an estimate of the day's work done on the 30th of July, 1630, is far astray from the truth; every word of that old document was then alive with tremendous meaning. On that paper were traced the lines of a struggle that was then shaking all Europe. The Watertown Covenant was at once a Bill of Rights and the troth-plight of its signers to stand by those rights and by one another in life and in death. "I tell you, sir," said Andrew Melville to him who was afterward James I. of England, “I