Leaving the membership awhile, let us cross the sea to Wales to find
their future pastor and teacher--John Myles.
Wales had been the asylum for the persecuted and oppressed for many
centuries. There freedom of religious thought was tolerated, and from
thence sprung three men of unusual vigor and power: Roger Williams,
Oliver Cromwell, and John Myles. About the year 1645, the Baptists in
that country who had previously been scattered and connected with other
churches, began to unite in the formation of separate churches, under
their own pastors. Prominent among these was the Reverend Mr. Myles, who
preached in various places with great success, until the year 1649, when
we find him pastor of a church which he organized in Swansea, in South
Wales. It is a singular coincidence that Mr. Myles's pastorate at
Swansea, and the separation of the members from the Rehoboth church, a
part of whom aided in establishing the church in Swanzey, Massachusetts,
occurred in the same year.
During the Protectorate of Cromwell, all Dissenters enjoyed the largest
liberty of conscience, and, as a result, the church at Swansea grew from
forty-eight to three hundred souls. Around this centre of influence
sprang up several branch churches, and pastors were raised up to care
for them. Mr. Myles soon became the leader of his denomination in Wales,
and in 1651 he was sent as the representative of all the Baptist
churches in Wales to the Baptist ministers' meeting, at Glazier's Hall,
London, with a letter, giving an account of the peace, union, and
increase of the work. As a preacher and worker he had no equal in that
country, and his zeal enabled him to establish many new churches in his
native land. The act of the English Saint Bartholomew's Day, in 1662,
deprived Mr. Myles of the support which the government under Cromwell
had granted him, and he, with many others, chose the freedom of exile to
the tyranny of an unprincipled monarch. It would be interesting for us
to give an account of his leave-taking of his church at Swansea, and of
his associates in Christian labor, and to trace out his passage to
Massachusetts, and to relate the circumstances which led him to search
out and to find the little band of Baptists at Rehoboth. Surely some law
of spiritual gravitation or affinity, under the good hand of God, thus
raised up and brought this under-shepherd to the flock thus scattered in
the wilderness. Nicholas Tanner, Obadiah Brown, John Thomas, and others,
accompanied Mr. Myles in his exile from Swansea, Wales. The first that
is known of them in America was the formation of a Baptist church at the
house of John Butterworth in Rehoboth, whose residence is said to have
been near the Cove in the western part of the present town of East
Providence. Mr. Myles and his followers had probably learned at Boston,
or at Plymouth, of the treatment offered to Holmes and his party, ten
years before, and his sympathies led him to seek out and unite the
elements which persecution had scattered. Seven members made up this
infant church, namely: John Myles, pastor, James Brown, Nicholas Tanner,
Joseph Carpenter, John Butterworth, Eldad Kingsley, and Benjamin Alby.
The principles to which their assent was given were the same as those
held by the Welsh Baptists, as expounded by Mr. Myles. The original
record-book of the church contains a list of the members of Mr. Myles's
church in Swansea, from 1640 till 1660, with letters, decrees,
ordinances, etc., of the several churches of the denomination in England
and Wales. This book, now in the possession of the First Baptist Church
in Swanzey, Massachusetts, is probably a copy of the original Welsh
records, made by or for Mr. Myles's church in Massachusetts, the
sentiments of which controlled their actions here.
Of the seven constituent members, only one was a member of Myles's
church in Wales--Nicholas Tanner. James Brown was a son of John Brown,
both of whom held high offices in the Plymouth colony. Mr. Newman and
his church were again aroused at the revival of this dangerous sect, and
they again united with the other orthodox churches of the colony in
soliciting the Court to interpose its influence against them, and the
members of this little church were each fined five pounds, for setting
up a public meeting without the knowledge and approbation of the Court,
to the disturbance of the peace of the place,--ordered to desist from
their meeting for the space of a month, and advised to remove their
meeting to some other place where they might not prejudice any other
church. The worthy magistrates of Plymouth have not told us how these
few Baptist brethren "disturbed the peace" of quiet old Rehoboth. Good
old Rehoboth, that roomy place, was not big enough to contain this
church of seven members, and we have to-day to thank the spirit of
Newman and the order of Plymouth Court for the handful of seed-corn,
which they cast upon the waters, which here took root and has brought
forth the fruits of a sixty-fold growth.
From a careful reading of the first covenant of the church, we judge
that it was a breach of ecclesiastical, rather than of civil, law, and
that the fines and banishment from the limits of Rehoboth were imposed
as a preventive against any further inroads upon the membership of Mr.
Newman's church. In obedience to the orders of the Court, the members of
Mr. Myles's church looked about for a more convenient dwelling-place,
and found it as near to the limits of the old town and their original
homes as the law would allow. Within the bounds of Old Swanzey,
Massachusetts, in the northern part of the present town of Barrington,
Rhode Island, they selected a site for a church edifice. The spot now
pointed out as the location of this building for public worship is near
the main road from Warren by Munro's Tavern to Providence, on the east
side of a by-way leading from said road to the residence of Joseph G.
West, Esq. A plain and simple structure, it was undoubtedly fitted up
quickly by their own labor, to meet the exigency of the times. Here they
planted their first spiritual home, and enjoyed a peace which pastor and
people had long sought for.
The original covenant is a remarkable paper, toned with deep piety and a
broad and comprehensive spirit of Christian fellowship.