History of Swansea, Massachusetts, 1667-1917; - citizen hylbom blog

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Personal Sketches 197
house and vessels for the sea, in one of which I came, and shall soon return.
"He hath much interest in the church at Plymouth, Rehoboth, and
Swanzey, and liketh the minister here, Mr. Myles, who, calling while I was
there, we advantaged by his talk. Mr. James Brown also called: brotherin-law
to Mr. Willett, and son of Mr. John Brown, late deceased, of
Rehoboth, a leading man there.
"Mr. Willett hath shown mc the graves of his wife Mary, and her
parents, at the head of the cove near his house, where also he shall lie, he
saith.
"June 18, Sunday. Went to hear Mr. Myles preach, in the Baptist
way. A good sermon, well set forth. He had a church in Wales, before
settling here.
John Myles
"This learned preacher of the Church of England, while at Swansea,
Wales, during Cromwell's tolerant rule, changed his church into a strong
Baptist body. Ejected under Charles H in 1662, he came to the Massachusetts
Dorchester with several of his flock, and thence went to Rehoboth.
He was somewhat employed there as an assistant preacher, until in 1667
he and his friends of the Wanamoiset district set up a separate worship,
presumably Baptist. The Colony was earnest in securing a learned ministry,
and the subdivison of parishes had ever been discountenanced lest
they become too weak for this purpose. Even the King's Commissioners
had received no encouragement as to the formation of Episcopal parishes,
unless an "able preaching ministry" could be insured in a place able to
maintain two churches. Myles was in the Rehoboth parish, which could
barely support one learned preacher.
On complaint to the Court, Myles and James Brown were each fined
£5, and Nicholas Tanner £1; but their associates, Joseph Carpenter, John
Butterworth, Eldad Kingsley, and Benjamin Alby, seem to have been discharged.
There was in this no persecution because of religious belief, for
the penalty was only that which would have been laid on the most orthodox
of Congregationalists who had in like manner estabhshed a new and poor
church in an existing parish. The absence of sectarian prejudice was clearly
shown by the Court, for after prohibiting the new meeting for only a month,
it advised the defendants, not unkindly, to transfer their church to some
place "not already in parish relations."
Acting on the Court's suggestions, Myles and his friends moved into
the unoccupied region south of Rehoboth. They first settled on the shore
in the present Barrington, but soon fell back to Warren River, where now
is Myles' Bridge (Barneyville). The Court then transferred Wanamoiset
to this territory, and incorporated the whole as a town, named Swansea
(1667), from Myles' former home. Thus did the Congregational Old
Colony create a town as the seat of the first legaUzed Baptist Church in
America outside of Rhode Island.
Captain Willet and James Brown, the magistrate, still Uved in Wanamoiset,
and the latter had become a Baptist; they, with Nathaniel Payne,
John Allen, and John Butterworth, were appointed by the Court to regulate
admission to the town and divide the land. WiUet, as representing
Congregationahsm, proposed the exclusion of all erroneous, evil-living, and
contentious persons; Myles and Butterworth, in behalf of the Baptists,
asked that these terms be so defined that 'erroneous' mean only the holders
of such 'damnable heresies' as Unitarianism, transubstantiation,
merit in good works, denial of Christ's ascension and second coming, or the
divinity of all parts of Scripture, and belief in 'any other antichristian