RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Baptists
of hands extended to the Newport church, which had been strictly Calvinistic. William Vaughan, a member of the church, went to Providence in
1652 and submitted to the rite. Wickenden and Dexter accompanied him to Newport and a number were convinced in favor of the " Six Principles." In 1656 a division occurred. From this time onward until the Great Awakening Baptist progress in New England was almost confined to the General (Six Principles) type. Several churches were formed in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and southern Massachusetts, and associational meetings were held among them early in the eighteenth century.
In Massachusetts a rigorous law was enacted (1644) against " Anabaptists," whose presence was supposed to imperil civil and religious order, banishment being the penalty for openly condemning or opposing the baptism of infants or secretly propagating Anabaptist principles. The law was put into execution in a number of cases before the persecutions at Seekonk and Lynn mentioned above. In 1646 Winslow stated that in one of the churches of the Plymouth settlement (presumably that of Chauncy at Scituate) the pastor " waiveth the administration of baptism to infants." Remonstrance on the part of the synod seems to have led to the resumption of infant baptism, though this future president of the college at Cambridge continued to insist upon immersion. About 1652 or
1653 Henry Dunster, the highly efficient first president of the college at Cambridge (1640 onward), became so profoundly impressed against infant baptism that he did not feel at liberty longer to keep his views in abeyance, and after many conferences with the overseers and ample
4. Baptists warning he was obliged at great sacin Massa- rifice of sentiment and material good chusetts. to relinquish his position. The patience of the authorities and their willingness for him to continue in the office provided he would cease to agitate against infant baptism speak well for their tolerant spirit. The influence of Dunster is clearly manifest in the movement for the founding of the First Baptist church of Boston under the leadership of Thomas Gould (1655). In 1663 John Myles, a Welsh Baptist minister who had acted as one of Cromwell's Tryers for Wales, driven from his post by the Act of Uniformity (1662), came with his congregation to Massachusetts and secured a tract of land in Rehoboth, near the Rhode Island border. Partly because of their remoteness from churches of the standing order and partly perhaps because they were less aggressive than most Baptists in their condemnation of the union of Church and State, they suffered little molestation until 1667 and even then they were permitted to continue their worship on condition of holding their meetings at a greater distance from the Rehoboth congregational meeting-house. Myles proved himself a man of power and built up at Swansea in Rehoboth a vigorous church of the Calvinistic type. He also gave valuable assistance to the Boston brethren after they had secured a measure of toleration. Organization was not effected by the Boston antipedobaptists until 1665, when Thomas Gould and three
others were baptized and joined with Richard Goodall and four others who had been baptized in England. In spite of persecution this faithful body grew to considerable size. Even after the Act of Toleration (1689) had come into force in England, intolerance held sway in Boston. In 1680 John Russel, an officer of the church, published in London, with an " Address to the Christian Reader " by Kifnn, Dyke, Collins, Knollys, Harris, and Cox, A Brief Narrative of some considerable passages concerning the first gathering and further progress of a Church of Christ, in Gospel Order, in Boston in New England, commonly (though falsely) called by the name of Anabaptists, for clearing their innocency from the scandalous things laid to their charge (reprinted in Wood's History of the First Baptist Church in Boston). English Congregationalists, and English Baptists, protested in vain against the intolerance of the Massachusetts authorities in dealing with the Boston Baptists, partly because of the justification that it would seem to furnish to the home government for the persecution of non-conformists. A Six Principle church was formed at Swansea in 1693, and in 1732 a Baptist church was formed in Rehoboth by John Comer, the able pastor of the original Newport church, who had left his charge because of his adoption of the doctrine and practise of laying-on of hands, but had remained a Calvinist. Indian Baptist churches were formed by 1694 on Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island through the labors of Peter Foulger, of the First Baptist church of Newport, and others. In 1735 through the influence of Comer a church was organized at Sutton, Mass., from which, by friendly division, the Leicester church was formed in 1738. The Brimfield, Mass., church was gathered and organized through Ebenezer Moulton in 1736.
In 1682 some members of the Boston church who had settled at Kittery, Me., sought and obtained the cooperation of the church in the organization of a new church at that place. The leaders were Humphrey Churchwood and William Screven. The latter was approved as a minister by the parent church and became pastor of the new body. Persecution soon broke up the Kittery church. In 1683 or 1684 Screven made his way to South Carolina, accompanied or followed by several of the members, and settled on the Ashley river, a short distance from the place where Charleston was about to be founded. About 1683 a colony of Britons, among whom were several Baptists, had settled on Port Royal island. At about the same time a large company from Somerset- 5. In South shire, England, including several Bap- Carolina, tists of intelligence and social rank (Lady Blake and Lady Axtell), settled in the Charleston neighborhood and became members of the church at Somerton with Screven as pastor. In 1693 the church was removed to Charleston, which was assuming commercial importance. Screven died in 1713 leaving the church with a membership of nearly a hundred. Through his zeal, preaching stations had been established at a number of points and something practical had been done for the evangelization of the negro slaves. In 1733 a schism occurred that resulted in the
Baptists