Excerpt from A Historical Discourse, Delivered on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Formation of the First Baptist Church, Salem, Mass., December 24, 1854

Book of Common Prayer led them to leave the Church of England. The principles of such persons, as Bishop Hall told John Robinson, required them to go on to Anabaptism. This claim never could be disproved. The Pilgrims were these Separatists. They were driven from England to Holland, and thence came to Plymouth. The charge of the Brownes the ministers re pelled, declaring that they were neither Separatists nor Anabaptists and that they did not separate from the Church of England, although they came away from its errors. There was much room to make such a charge as these did, because the religious matters of the new settlers were not fixed until some little time after their arrival, when they resolved to imitate the Pilgrims, but with caution and without perfect agreementfit In doing so, they, however, only fulfilled the prediction of Robin son, that while some of these Puritans did most sharply oppose them, (the Pilgrims) yet if they did come to be from under the bishops, &c., , they would practice the same things which they now did. I It therefore should not be forgotten, that the settlers of this city were not Pilgrims, nor even Independents, before they emigrated to this country, but members of the Church of England, who left that church with avowed regret, not as the Separatists, but because they despaired of seeing it re formed, as they judged desirable.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.