Page:Bruton parish church restored and its historic environments (1907 V2).djvu/42

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was planted here to be a blessing to the people under the ministry of the old Church of England, and through the forms of worship set forth and sanctioned in the Book of Common Prayer. Beneath that sail awning was the ministry of the English Church represented in Robert Hunt, commissioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bible, the rule of the Church's faith, the Book of Common Prayer, embodying the historic Creeds of Christendom, and the sacred vessels for the administration of the Holy Communion. These, with the baptismal font, were the tokens sent by the Mother Church of England, with her blessing to Virginia, and these tokens have remained as witnesses to the continuity of the Church's life, and as the symbols of her terms of unity. They constitute the fundamental part of our inheritance as churchmen, which we cherish without bigotry, and offer, without narrowness or presumption, as a basis of unity to all who profess and call themselves Christians.


THE SECOND CHURCH.

The second Church was built within the triangular fort, and was "a homely thing like a barne, set upon crotchetts, covered with raftes, sedge and earth; so was also the walls." This building was destroyed in the conflagration which occurred on January 7, 1608.


THE THIRD CHURCH.

The third Church was built by Captain Newport in 1608, and was repaired by Lord Delaware in 1610. It was a frame structure, sixty feet long by twenty-four feet wide. "All the pews and the pulpit were of cedar, with fair broad windows, also of cedar, to shut and open, as the weather shall occasion." The font was "hewen hollow like a canoe," and there were two bells in the steeple at the west end. "The Church was so cast as to be very light within, and the Lord Governor caused it to be kept passing sweet and trimmed up with divers flowers." There was a sexton in charge of the church, and every morning at the ringing of a bell by him, about ten o'clock, each man addressed himself to prayers, and so at four of the clock, before supper. There were a sermon every Thursday and two