374
��Tlie First Baptist Church iti Massachusetts.
��was encouraged, and principle, fancy, whim, and conscience, all conspired to lessen the veneration for ecclesiastical authority." As the " serious schism " referred to above led to the foundation of the first Baptist church within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, on New Meadow Neck in Old Swanzey, it is worthy of record here. The leader in this church revolt was Obadiah Holmes, a native of Preston, in Lan- cashire, England. He was connected with the church in Salem from 1639 till 1646, when he was excommunicated, and removing with his family to Reho- both, he joined Mr. Newman's church. The doctrines and the discipline of this church proved too severe for Mr. Holmes, and he, with eight others, withdrew in 1649, and estabhshed a new church by themselves.
Mr. Newman's irascible temper was kindled into a persecuting zeal against the offending brethren, and, after ex- communicating them, he aroused the civil authorities against them. So suc- cessful was he that four petitions were presented to the Plymouth Court ; one from Rehoboth, signed by thirty-five persons ; one from Taunton ; one from all the clergymen in the colony but two, and one from the government of Mas- sachusetts. How will the authorities at Plymouth treat this first division in the ruling church of the colony ? Will they punish by severe fines, by imprison- ment, by scourgings, or by banishment ? By neither, for a milder spirit of tolera- tion prevailed, and the separatists were simply directed to " refrain from prac- tices disagreeable to their brethren, and to appear before the Court"
In 1 65 1, some time after his trial at Plymouth, Mr. Holmes was arrested, with Mr. Clarke, of Newport, and Mr. Crandall, for preaching and worshiping
��God with some of their brethren at Lynn. They were condemned by the Court at Boston to suffer fines or whip- pings. Holmes refused to pay the fine, and would not allow his friends to pay it for him, saying that " to pay it would be acknowledging himself to have done wrong, whereas his con- science testified that he had done right." He was accordingly punished with thirty lashes from a three-corded whip, with such severity, says Governor Jenks, " that in many days, if not some weeks, he could take no rest but as he lay upon his knees and elbows, not being able to suffer any part of his body to touch the bed whereon he lay." Soon after this. Holmes and his fol- lowers moved to Newport, and on the death of the Reverend Mr. Clarke, in 1652, he succeeded him as pastor of the First Baptist Church in that time. Mr. Holmes died at Newport in 1682, aged seventy-six years.
The persecution offered to the Reho- both Baptists scattered their church, but did not destroy their principles. Facing the obloquy attached to their cause, and braving the trials imposed by the civil and ecclesiastical powers, they must wait patiently God's time of deliv- erance. That their lives were free from guile, none claim. That their cause was righteous, none will deny ; and while the elements of a Baptist church were thus gathering strength on this side of the Atlantic, a leader was prepared for them, by God's provi- dence, on the other. In the same year that Obadiah Holmes and his band established their church in Mas- sachusetts, in opposition to the Puritan order, Charles I, the great English traitor, expiated his " high crimes and misdemeanors " on the scaffold, at the hands of a Puritan Parliament.
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