Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/202

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
186
ANNE BRADSTREET.

reminders of the past, or has a more intensely New England atmosphere than Andover, wherein the same decorous and long-winded discussions of fate, foreknowledge and all things past and to come, still goes on, as steadily as if the Puritan debaters had merely transmigrated, not passed over, to a land which even the most resigned and submissive soul would never have wished to think of as a "Silent Land." All that Cambridge has failed to preserve of the ancient spirit lives here in fullest force, and it stands to-day as one of the few representatives remaining of the original Puritan faith and purpose. Its foundation saw instant and vigorous protest, at a small encroachment, which shows strongly the spirit of the time. A temporary church at Rowley was suggested, while the future one was building, and Hubbard writes: "They had given notice thereof to the magistrates and ministers of the neighboring churches, as the manner is with them in New England. The meeting of the assembly was to be at that time at Rowley; the forementioned plantations being but newly erected, were not capable to entertain them that were likely to be gathered together on that occasion. But when they were assembled, most of those who were to join together in church fellowship, at that time, refused to make confession of their faith and repentance, because, as was said, they declared it openly before in other churches upon their admission into them. Whereupon the messengers of the churches not being satisfied, the assembly broke up, before they had accomplished what they intended."

English reticence and English obstinacy were both at work, the one having no mind to make a pri-