[The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 by Egerton Ryerson]@TWC D-Link book
The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2

PART II
12/31

In his conferences with Fuller, the Congregational doctor from New Plymouth, he found the Congregational worship to answer to his aspirations as in it he could on the one hand gratify his hatred of King and Church, and on the other hand become the founder of the new Church in a new Plantation.

He paused not to consider whether the manager of a trading Company of adventurers had any authority to abolish the worship professed by the Company under whose authority he was acting; how far fidelity required him to give effect to the worship of his employers in carrying out their instructions in regard to the religious instruction of their servants and the natives; but he forthwith resolved to adopt a new confession of faith and to set up a new form of worship.

On the arrival of the first three chaplains of the Company, in June of 1629, several months after his own arrival, Endicot seems to have imparted his views to them, and two of them, Higginson and Skelton, fell in with his scheme; but Mr.Bright adhered to his Church.
It was not unnatural for Messrs.

Higginson and Skelton to prefer becoming the fathers and founders of a new Church than to remain subordinate ministers of an old Church.

The Company, in its written agreement with them, or rather in its instructions accompanying them to Endicot, allowed them discretion in their new mission field as to their mode of teaching and worship; but certainly no authority to ignore it, much less authority to adopt a new confession of faith and a new form of worship.
Within three months after the arrival of these chaplains of the Company at Salem, they and Endicot matured the plan of setting up a new Church, and seemed to have persuaded thirty-one of the two hundred emigrants to join with them--a minority of less than one-sixth of the little community; but in that minority was the absolute Governor, and against whose will a majority was nothing, even in religious matters, or in liberty of conscience.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books