Michigan Historical Reprint Series

The Genesis of the New England Churches. Michigan Historical Reprint Series

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1874. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XX. THE BEGINNING OF A PURITAN COLONY IN NEW ENGLAND, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. It is no part of the work now in hand to tell the story of the great Puritan Exodus, or to describe minutely its beginning. The present design will be completed when we shall have seen what Puritanism becomes as soon as it finds itself free in the American wilderness; and how, notwithstanding its zeal in England for ecclesiastical Nationalism, and the bitter feeling which it has cherished against the schism of Separatism, it finds, under its new conditions--in a new world, where the Church of Christ is to be formed, instead of being, as in the old world, reformed--no other way than that of calling out from among the ungodly and profane those " who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus," and binding them together " as the Lord's free people" in a voluntary covenant of allegiance to their Saviour and of brotherly helpfulness to each other. In Dorchester, the shire town of Dorsetshire, about one hundred and fifty miles southeast from London, the Rev. John White had long been rector of Trinity Church. He was an earnest Puritan, venerated for his goodness and zealous for church reformation, though he was one of the many . who, either because their scruples did not bring them under the penalties of the Act of Uniformity, or because they were winked at by the ecclesiastical authorities, retained their livings under the imperfectly reformed establishment, and were called "Conforming Puritans." Dorchester, though not a seaport, was a place of some trade; and young men from its families were going, year by year, on fishing voyages to the coast of New England. The good rector of Trinity Church, having served in that place more than twenty years, had learned to care for his parishioners abroad...