Endicott, writing to Governor Bradford from Salem, May 11, 1629, says, ‘‘I acknowledge myself much bound to you for your kind love and care in sending Mr. Fuller (the physician) amongst, us, and rejoice much that I am by him satisfied touching your judgment of the outward form of God’s worship. It is, as far as I can yet gather, no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth, and the same which I have professed and maintained ever since the Lord in mercy revealed himself unto me, being far differing from the common report that hath been spread of you touching that particular.’’ Fuller himself, in a letter dated Massachusetts, June 28, 1630, writes, ‘‘Here is a gentleman, one Mr. Coddington, a Boston man, who told me that Mr. Cotton’s charge to them at Hampton was, that they should take advice of them at Plymouth, and should do nothing to offend them.’’ Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 66, 75.
’tis true, I confess, that some of the chief of them advised with us (coming over to be freed from the burthensome ceremonies then imposed in England), how they should do to fall upon a right platform of worship, and desired to that end, since God had honoured us to lay the foundation of a Commonwealth, and to settle a Church in it, to show them where-upon our practice was grounded; and if they found, upon due search, it was built upon the Word, they should be willing to take up what was of God. We accordingly showed them the primitive practice for our warrant, taken out of the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles written to the several churches by the said Apostles, together with the commandments of Christ the Lord in the Gospel, and other our warrants for every particular we did from the book of God. Which being by them well weighed and considered, they also entered into covenant with God and one another to walk in all his ways, revealed or as they should be made known unto them, and to worship him according to his will revealed in his written word only, etc. So that here also thou mayest see they set not the church at Plymouth before them for example, but the primitive churches were and are their and our mutual patterns and examples, which are only worthy to be followed, having the blessed Apostles amongst them, who were sent immediately by Christ himself, and enabled and guided by the unerring spirit of God. And truly this is a pattern fit to be followed of all that fear God, and no man or men to be followed further than they follow Christ and them.| Previous chapter/page | Back | Home | Email this | Search | Discuss | Bookmark |