by a tithingman with a long rod.

The pastor opened

with prayer for about fifteen minutes, the teacher read and explained the Scriptures and a ruling elder then lined off a Psalm, usually from the Bay Psalm-Book, which was sung. There were not more than ten tunes in use before the year 1700. The pastor then preached for an hour or more, and the teacher concluded the service with prayer and benediction. In the afternoon the service was similar except that the teacher and pastor usually exchanged places. In many churches where there was but one minister, the morning sermon was devoted to the argument, as it was called, and the afternoon sermon to the application.

prayer.

There was ordinarily a mid-week service, either including a sermon, or a conference of the brethren on some topic previously announced. The ministers did not solemnize marriages, nor was there any ceremony at funerals. The congregations stood during public In these and other ways they continued for many years their protest against Roman Catholic customs and modes of worship, witnessing even in their most simple forms as in their most solemn services to their independence of priestly rule, and to their sense of the immediate responsibility of each and every soul to God.

CHAPTER VIII.

TH

GROWTH AND EXPANSION.

HE Puritans left England in order that they might maintain in New England a state and churches in accordance with their views of right and duty. When, then, the persecution of Puritans ceased in England with the assembling of the Long Parliament, in 1640, immigration ceased also. "The change," wrote Governor Winthrop, "made all men to stay in England in expectation of a new world." During the eleven years, 1629–40, about twenty-one thousand persons came to New England. From that time, for a century and a half the immigration was slight, and the increase of the New England population was almost entirely from the descendants of these immigrants. At the end of the eighteenth century, ninety-eight in every one hundred of the inhabitants were of pure English descent.

In 1643 the four colonies, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven, entered into a confederation for more efficient self-defense, under the name of "The United Colonies of New England"; New Hampshire having, in 1641, come under the Massachusetts government. Of the twenty-six thousand white people in New England, twenty-four thousand were in these colonies, fifteen thousand being in Massachusetts and about three thousand in each of the others. The remaining two thousand were mostly scattered along

the coasts of the territory now included in Rhode Island and Maine. In this entire region there were about fifty towns and forty churches.

Plymouth, the oldest colony, had been less flourishing than the others, though, after its earlier difficulties were in a measure overcome, it attained respectable prosperity. For the first nine years the church at Plymouth had no pastor, though regular public worship was maintained; William Brewster, as ruling elder, taking the place of a pastor. Ralph Smith, a good man, but without great gifts as a preacher, occupied that position from 1629 to 1636. He was followed by John Reyner, who served the church as teacher till 1654. The church was then without pastor or teacher for fifteen years, though frequent efforts were made, with many days of fasting and prayer, to fill the vacant place. Its numbers were few, and were lessened by removals from time to time, so that they could not offer sufficient support for the maintenance of a permanent minister. In 1666, when John Cotton, Jr., was called to the pastorate, there were only forty-seven resident members.

Duxbury, on the north side of the bay, was the first offshoot from Plymouth, in 1632, though its first pastor, Ralph Partridge, was not settled till 1637. Marshfield came next, being set off with great reluc tance by the mother church. Edward Winslow was one of its original members. In September, 1634, John Lothrop arrived at Scituate with about thirty people of whom he had been pastor, as successor of Henry Jacob, in the church at Southwark, London. That church was organized in 1616. Mr. Lothrop had endured severe persecutions in England,

including imprisonment. He had been set free after much suffering, on condition that he would leave the country. He was acquainted with some of the people from Kent, England, who had settled in Scituate, and for that reason, probably, decided to unite his fortune. with theirs. Mr. Lothrop's company, with thirteen persons dismissed from Plymouth, organized a church at Scituate by joining in a covenant, January 8, 1635, and he was chosen pastor. But its first years were stormy, chiefly because of differences of opinion on the subject of baptism, some of its members advocating immersion. In consequence the majority of the church, with permission of the General Court, removed in a body with the pastor and formed a settlement at Barnstable, in 1639, while those who remained. at Scituate organized a new church. It was no more united than was the former organization before the majority withdrew. In 1641, it called Charles Chauncey to be its pastor and he accepted, though his coming was opposed by a large minority who, the next year, organized a new church, which they claimed to be the first, on the ground that Mr. Chauncey and his followers. had not kept their covenant. The controversy was long continued. Indeed, divisions between the churches of Plymouth colony have not altogether ceased even to this day.

Miss Elizabeth Poole, with one or more ministers and a considerable company, emigrated from Taunton, England, and settled in the wilderness of Titicut, about twenty-six miles from Plymouth, in 1637. They named their new settlement Taunton. There a church was organized about the end of that year, with William Hooke as its pastor, and Nicholas Street, teacher.

Both were ordained by members of the church appointed for that purpose. Churches were also formed

at Yarmouth in 1639, and at Sandwich in 1640. Some of the churches of the colony were quite prosperous. Cotton Mather says that in the year 1642 they had altogether "above a dozen ministers," some of whom were "stars of the first magnitude." But their early history soon became clouded by doctrinal disagreements, to whose consequences the same author refers as the "hour of temptation, wherein the fondness of the people for the prophesyings of the brethren produced those disagreements unto their ministers, that almost all the ministers left the colony." At the time of its union with Massachusetts under a new charter, in 1692, Plymouth colony contained seventeen towns. In all except three of these towns, Congregational churches had been formed.

The growth of the churches of Massachusetts colony has been described in preceding chapters. These churches, up to 1640, were organized in the following order: Salem, 1629; Dorchester, Boston, Watertown, 1630; Lynn, Roxbury, Charlestown, 1632; Cambridge, 1633; Ipswich, 1634; Newbury, Weymouth, Hingham, Cambridge 2d, 1635; Concord, Dorchester 2d, 1636; Dedham, Salisbury, 1638; Quincy, Rowley, 1639; Sudbury, 1640.

The Connecticut colony began by the immigration of the first churches of Dorchester and Cambridge, which settled at Windsor and Hartford. A company also went about the same time from Watertown, of whom six or seven took letters of dismission to form a new church. This company settled at Wethersfield. In the autumn of 1635 about twenty men from Eng