finding a place suited to their views, and anticipating danger to their liberty from a general governor of the colonies, who, as it was then apprehended, was about to be sent out, and solicitous to establish a pure church in accordance with their strict principles, they determined after nine months' stay to remove and fix themselves beyond the limits, as they supposed, of the old settlements. Mr. Davenport was of the straitest order of the Puritans. He was a native of Coventry, in England; was educated at Oxford; and became a preacher of note in Colman Street, London. He afterwards removed to Amsterdam, where he preached, but was soon reduced to silence, in consequence of his rigid adherence to certain views he entertained, relating to the proper subjects of baptism and the discipline of a church, not in unison with those of his colleague and others in authority there.

On his arrival in New England during the heats of the Antinomian controversy, he was received with marks of great respect. He was present at the Synod soon after assembled at Cambridge; and, according to the accounts transmitted to us, his influence there was felt, and gratefully acknowledged. With the assistance of Eaton, who was one of the purest men of the day, and who had been his parishioner in London, he gave to the New Haven colony a constitution conformable to his own ideal standard of a Christian commonwealth. Archbishop Laud, who was at the head of the Royal Commissioners for the Colonies, on hearing of his removal to America, had been heard to say, in the way of threat, that his arm should reach him there." But he was suffered, notwithstanding, to pursue his work unmolested, and no obstacles but such as arose from the nature of the undertaking occurred to impede his plans. On the formation of the church, August 22d, 1639, he was made its pastor. His fame as a preacher was great throughout the colonies, and his own people regarded him with sentiments of the most enthusiastic veneration. He was an indefatigable student, and made more diligent preparation for his pulpit, than was common at that period. But though, as it appears, of retiring habits, he did not fail, when great questions of a secular nature came up for discussion, to present himself in the assemblies of the people, where he spoke with energy and

effect.

That he was free from all the errors of the times, of

course, will not be pretended. But that he possessed many of the best virtues which adorn humanity, cannot be questioned. The unfortunate and suffering never found him wanting in courage and warm philanthropy. When the Regicide judges, Whalley and Goffe, in consequence of the royal proclamation of Charles the Second, finding it no longer sa e to remain in Massachusetts, retired to New Haven, Mr. Davenport readily received them into his house, where, at some personal risk, he concealed them as long as practicable. Mr. Bacon dwells at some length on the melancholy story of the fugitives, though we do not perceive that he has added any thing material to the facts stated by Hutchinson, Trumbull, President Stiles, and others.

Whalley and Goffe had been generals in Cromwell's army, and the sister of one of them, Whalley, was the wife of Mr. Hooke, some time colleague with Mr. Davenport at New Haven; a circumstance, probably, which had some influence in procuring them a favorable reception there. Mr. Davenport, too, had been careful, by a strain of preaching sufficiently intelligible, and by some apt quotations from Scripture, as, "Hide the outcasts; betray not him that wandereth; let mine outcasts dwell with thee; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler," to prepare the minds of the people to extend to them protection in their distress. They showed themselves sensible of his kindness; and, when danger threatened him on their account, after they had been compelled to leave the place, they took effectual steps to clear him from the suspicion of still affording them shelter.

The affairs of the plantation were at times in a depressed condition. The settlers had been disappointed in their views of commerce, and their property soon became greatly reduced. Cromwell made them the offer of a retreat in Jamaica, as also in Ireland, if they chose to remove; but Davenport, whose spirit was equal to every exigency, lost not courage and hope; and, in its darkest hour, the colony felt the animating influence of his counsels and example. Occasionally events occurred of a nature to try his fortitude to the utmost, and awaken in his breast the most agonizing sympathies. Of this number was the "lost ship," in which seventy individuals, some of them persons of precious account" in the colony, perished on a winter sea, and the greater

66

part of what remained of the property of the original settlers, was lost.

But the circumstance which most deeply affected the mind of Mr. Davenport, was the subsequent union of the New Haven colony with that of Connecticut. By the charter brought over in 1662, the Connecticut colony claimed jurisdiction over that of New Haven, and, after a determined resistance on the part of the latter, headed by Mr. Davenport, the union took place in 1665. The glory of the New Haven plantation had then, in his view, departed. The right of suffrage was not, in the Connecticut jurisdiction, confined to church members, and thus his strong wall of defence was broken down, and the church was no longer secure in her unspotted purity.

The prevalent views, too, on the subject of baptism, both in Connecticut and Massachusetts, were disapproved by him. His own notions were much more strict, and this, with the above mentioned circumstance, which he regarded as a symptom of degeneracy, filled him with dismay, and he considered all as lost.

We

We shall not be expected to go into a history of the controversy relating to church membership and the proper subjects of baptism, which agitated the colonies at this period, and which prepared the way for the Synod of 1662. will simply observe, that we think that Mr. Bacon a little incautious in some of his statements in regard to the position occupied by Mr. Davenport in relation to this controversy. Thus he asserts, without qualification, that Mr. Davenport was the champion of the old way against the decisions of the Synod. Now he must be aware, that one of the questions discussed at that time was, which was the old way of the churches of New England. The Synod professed conformity with it in its decisions; and Cotton Mather affirms positively, that the propositions embraced in these decisions were among the "first principles of New England," and would have been introduced into the Cambridge Platform, but for the firm opposition of one eminent person." a far better authority still, Allin of Dedham, in his "Defence of the Synod against President Chauncy," asserts, that the doctrine of the Synod was the old doctrine, and not any notion recently broached; that it was holden by the great lights of the church, by Calvin, Cartwright, Perkins, Ames, and

And

"hundreds more," and generally by the framers of the Platform just alluded to, with the history of which he was familiar, for he was a member of the Synod in which it originated, and assisted at its adoption.* Of course, no one would doubt that it had been the doctrine both of the Catholic, and the English Protestant Church, from the first. It was the very doctrine, his opposition to which had made it necessary for Mr. Davenport to desist from the public exercise of the ministry in Holland. There, certainly, Mr. Davenport was viewed as an innovator. We say not which party was right, in regard to the views of the primitive fathers of New England. We would observe, simply, that, had Mr. Bacon looked into the writings to which the controversy gave rise, and especially those put forth in defence of the Synod, he would, we think, have qualified some of his expressions a little; for they are directly at war with the assertions of several of the most distinguished of the early New England divines, and that too, on a question of fact about which they can hardly be supposed to have been ignorant.

Mr. Davenport was now sinking into the vale of years. His dissatisfaction, however, with the state of affairs in his own colony, his desire of a wider field of usefulness, and his hope, it is said, of being able to arrest the downward tendency of things in Massachusetts, prepared him, in an evil hour, to listen to an invitation from members of the First Church in Boston, to succeed Mr. Wilson as their pastor. This was one of the greatest errors of his life. He was now seventy years old. His church remained attached to him, and refused its consent to his removal. His rigorous opinions, and especially his opposition to the decisions of the recent Synod, caused him to meet with a somewhat cold reception from many, especially among his brethren in the ministry, in Boston and the vicinity, who still maintained, that they adhered to the old way. A schism in the First Church followed;

"Ani

The work of Allin above referred to, bears the following title; madversions upon the Anti-Synodalia Americana, a Treatise printed in Old England, in the Name of the Dissenting Brethren in the Synod held at Boston, in N. E., 1662. Tending to Clear the Elders and Churches of New England from those Evils and Declinings charged upon Many of Them in the Two Prefaces before said Book. Together with an Answer unto the Reasons alleged for the Opinions of the Dissenters. And a Reply to such Answers as are given to the Arguments of the Synod. By John Allin, Pastor of the Church of Christ in Dedham, in New England. Cambridge, 1664."

his conduct, as well as that of his adherents, was in several respects subjected to severe animadversion, and neither his comfort nor his usefulness was promoted by his removal. He lost old friends when it was too late to acquire new. died suddenly, in 1670, at the age of seventy-two.

He

Mr. Davenport will always be remembered as among the most distinguished of the first generation of divines in New England. Whatever may have been his defects, they were greatly overbalanced by his merits. He was one of those whom the exigencies of an infant settlement in the wilderness demanded; who seemed made for the times, and they for him.

That he sometimes erred in his judgment, in the opinion of his contemporaries as well as of posterity, will be readily admitted. In his distrust of magistracy, he seemed too much disposed to exalt the power of the churches, and was not himself, as it has been suspected, wholly exempt from priestly ambition. He was very willing to attend the Assembly of Westminster Divines, from which the more judicious among the colonists generally, and even the members of his own church, wisely, no doubt, determined, that it was desirable to keep aloof; and he was forced to yield.

Among his virtues, Mr. Bacon enumerates his friendly care of human learning. His merits in this respect are undoubtedly deserving of honorable mention, though his efforts to found a college were unsuccessful, nor was the institution at New Haven established till more than a quarter of a century after his death. We do not, however, comprehend precisely what Mr. Bacon means, when, in reference to Mr. Davenport's exertions, he claims for the New Haven colony, the distinction of exhibiting greater zeal in the cause of education than was manifested by the other colonies. In 1638, eight years only after Winthrop and his company took possession of the peninsula of Boston, was Harvard College founded. Sixty-two years were suffered to elapse, after the settlement of New Haven, and sixty-five after the settlements on the river commenced, before Yale College was instituted. Of course, we do not state this as matter of reproach. Massachusetts, as by far the most populous and wealthy colony, might be expected to take the lead in the establishment of a literary seminary. But, when a person of reputable standing, in a volume of historical discourses given to the public,