Foreword

1. The title that appears at the top of the first page of Shepard’s manuscript reads The Confessions of Diverse Propounded To Be Received & Were Entertained As Members. Possibly because of the clumsiness of this title, the work is almost always referred to simply as the Confessions of Thomas Shepard.

The Society has also published a number of other “confessions.” One is in “The Commonplace Book of Joseph Green (1675–1715),” edited by Samuel E. Morison (Transactions, 1937–1942, xxxiv, 241–244). Four more are recorded in “The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth,” edited by Edmund S. Morgan (Transactions, 1942–1946, xxxv, 426–444). Finally there are twenty-one in The Notebook of the Reverend John Fiske, 1644–1675, edited by Robert G. Pope (Collections, Volume xlvii).

2. Ms. Caldwell, now Assistant Professor of English at Brown University, is presently completing a monograph to be entitled The Puritan Conversion: The Beginnings of American Expression, which she hopes will be published soon.

3. In the preface to Thomas Shepard’s The Parable of the Ten Virgins Opened and Applied (1660) in John A. Albro, ed., The Works of Thomas Shepard (Boston, 1853), 11, 5; hereafter cited as Works.

4. Increase Mather, A Call from Heaven (1679) as quoted in David D. Hall, The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill, 1972), 249.

5. See James W. Jones, The Shattered Synthesis: New England Puritanism before the Great Awakening (New Haven, 1973), for an analysis of the ministerial differences over conversion.

6. Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago, 1955), 2.

7. James Kendall Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal “History of New England” 1630–1649, 2 vols. (New York, 1908), 1, 275–76; Perry Miller, The New England Mind from Colony to Province (Cambridge, 1953), 56.

8. Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven, 1966), 20, 56. Not every clergyman in first-generation New England preached a theology of preparation. John Cotton of Boston rejected the idea of “any saving preparations in the heart.” So did the Antinomians, who charged that preparationist theology was salvation through works. Shepard kept Antinomianism from gaining a foothold at Cambridge. See, ibid., 19–20, 139.

9. There are a few other extant relations from the early history of New England; one of them is in “The Commonplace Book of Joseph Green (1675–1715)” edited by Samuel E. Morison and published in the Transactions of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxxiv (1943), 241–44; four more are recorded in “The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth,” edited by Edmund S. Morgan and published in ibid., xxxv (1951), 426–44; and there are twenty-one others scattered throughout The Notebook of the Reverend John Fiske, 1644–1675, edited by Robert G. Pope and published in the Collections of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xlvii (1974). John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew, both missionaries to the Indians of New England, recorded several native confessions; for further information see Neal Salisbury, “Red Puritans: The ‘Praying Indians’ of Massachusetts Bay and John Eliot,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., xxxi (1974), 49–50. John Rogers published nearly forty relations, all given by his parishioners in Ireland, in his A Tabernacle for the Sun (London, 1653); for an analysis of their content, see J. H. Taylor, “Some Seventeenth-Century Testimonies,” Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society, xvi (1941–1951), 64–77.

10. William Andrews, Jane Champney, Edward Collins, Gilbert Crackbone’s wife, Henry Dunster, Richard Eccles, Ellen Greene, Jane Holmes, Richard Jackson’s maid, William Manning, John Sill, John Stedman, and John Trumbull testified as to their literacy, and Christopher Cane, Richard Cutter, Robert Daniel, and Edward Hall left books in their wills. Of course, Nathaniel Eaton, William Ames, and John Jones, because of their connection with Harvard, were literate. These people—including two servants, two Harvard graduates, several modest farmers, and five women—span the social and sexual spectrum. On literacy in colonial New England, see Kenneth A. Lockridge, Literacy in Colonial New England: An Enquiry into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York, 1974).

11. Prosperity also eluded Deacon Thomas Cheseholm and Edmund Frost, but Elder Richard Champney owned considerable property, enough to place him among the wealthiest citizens of early New England (Middlesex County Wills nos. 4371, 8567, 15347). In contrast, both Thomas Shepard, who at his death possessed a velvet cape and a box full of gold, and Jonathan Mitchell, a holder of much land, indicate that Cambridge ministers lived on a gentlemanly scale (Middlesex County Wills no. 20288 and Edward J. Brandon, ed., The Records of the Town of Cambridge [formerly Newtowne], Massachusetts, 1630–1703 [Cambridge, Mass., 1901], 96).

12. John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York, 1970), 148. Emory Elliott found that throughout “the second half of the seventeenth century the average age at marriage was between twenty-six and twenty-eight years for men and between twenty-four and twenty-six years for women, with marriage ages for first marriages of both sexes often reaching into the middle thirties”; see his Power and the Pulpit in Puritan New England (Princeton, 1975), 30–31.

13. On women in colonial society, see Eugenie A. Leonard, Sophie H. Drinker, and Mirian Holden, The American Woman in Colonial and Revolutionary Times, 1565—1800: A Syllabus with Bibliography (Philadelphia, 1962); Edward T. James, ed., Notable American Women, 1607—1950: A Biographical Dictionary, 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1971); and Laurel Thatcher Ulrick, “Virtuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668–1735,” American Quarterly, xxviii (1976), 20–40.

14. As quoted in Wallace Notestein, The English People on the Eve of Colonization, 1603–1630 (New York, 1954), 77.

15. Shepard ms, passim.

16. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 5 vols. in 6 (Boston, 1853–1854), 1, 228; Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, 1, 54; Dudley to Lady Bridget, 12 March 1630/31, in Alexander Young, comp., Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, from 1623 to 1636 (Boston, 1846), 320. Gf. J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Johnson’s Wonderworking Providence, 1628–1651 (New York, 1910), 90.

17. Richard Saltonstall intended to build a house at Watertown, and the town assigned him a lot for that purpose; but he went to England in the spring of 1631 and did not return. Increase Nowell remained at Charlestown, William Pynchon at Roxbury, Roger Ludlow at Dorchester, and William Goddington at Boston. John Endicott and Samuel Sharpe, because they had declared their intention to return to England, were originally free from the agreement. See Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630–1877 (Boston, 1877), 7–8.

18. Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, 1, 84–85; Paige, History of Cambridge, 7; Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630–1649 (Chapel Hill, 1965), 31–32.

19. Paige, History of Cambridge, 2–5, 10–11, 8–18; Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, 1, 124. On the availability of land in colonial New England, see Kenneth Lockridge, “Land, Population, and the Evolution of New England Society, 1630–1790; and an Afterthought,” in Stanley N. Katz, ed., Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development (Boston, 1971), 466–91.

20. Their departure to Connecticut involved more than a desire for land; for one interpretation of their other reasons see Perry Miller, “Thomas Hooker and the Democracy of Connecticut,” in his Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), especially 16–18, 23–26. See also Michael McGiffert, ed., God’s Plot, the Paradoxes of Puritan Piety: Being the Autobiography and Journal of Thomas Shepard (Boston, 1972), 89, n. 6.

21. McGiffert, God’s Plot, 64. For a list of those who came with Shepard, see Paige, History of Cambridge, 35–36.

22. Brandon, ed., The Records of the Town of Cambridge, 96–97. Some adjustment upward from the £317 must be made for the common practice of parents transferring land to their offspring before parental demise. Thus these inventories, especially the lowest ones, do not always represent the full accumulation of a lifetime.

23. Selectmen thirty-five and over were William Andrews 35, Thomas Beal 47, John Bridge 45, Thomas Brigham 37, Nicholas Danforth 45, Edward Goff 44, Richard Hildreth 35, Richard Jackson 52, Thomas Marret 50, Edward Oakes 40, Herbert Pelham 44, John Russell 45, and John Stedman 40. Selectmen under thirty-five were George Cooke 28, Joseph Cooke 27, John Cooper 31, Thomas Danforth 28, Thomas Parrish 25, Roger Shaw 33, and Edward Winship 25.

24. Of the ninety identifiable persons included in the 1652 Shawshine grant, only two, both orphans, were under twenty-six years of age. Many of the grantees were under thirty. The average lifetime of these ninety people was seventy years. One hundred first-generation couples, of whom nine were childless, produced 526 offspring. Only fifty-two of these died before age twenty-one, which left the population doubled.

25. Prince, Annals of New England, 2 vols. (Boston, [1755]), ii, 75. Volume one (Boston, 1736) appeared under the title of A Chronological History of New England. Prince cited a manuscript letter, the author of which he did not identify, as the source of his information. See also Brandon, ed., The Records of the Town of Cambridge, 4.

26. Jameson, ed., Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence, 90. Cf. Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, i, 111.

27. Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, i, 173–74.

28. McGiffert, God’s Plot, 37–40.

29. Ibid., 46–55; Albro, “Life of Thomas Shepard,” Works, i, lxxxv–xci.

30. McGiffert, God’s Plot, 70.

31. Nathaniel Morton, The New England’s Memorial (1669) (Plymouth, Mass., ed., 1826), 144; Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), 2 vols. (Hartford ed., 1820), 1, 343, 69, 75; Jameson, ed., Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence, 107, 201; John Erskine, ed., Six Sermons by the late Thomas Prince, A.M. (Edinburgh, 1785), 60; Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, ii, 55; Morgan, ed., “The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth,” 438. John Preston, Shepard’s Cambridge University mentor, greatly influenced Shepard’s development. In his autobiography, Shepard wrote of Preston: “he spake and the secrets of my soul were laid upon [i.e., open] before me.” Moreover, while listening to another of Preston’s sermons, Shepard experienced a sense of assurance about his salvation. McGiffert, God’s Plot, 41–42, 45.

32. Shepard, “Ten Virgins,” Works, ii, 17, 122; Shepard, “The Sound Believer,” Works, i, 170.

33. Shepard, “The Sound Believer,” Works, i, 170. The figures were derived from a study of all of Shepard’s sermons.

34. Shepard, “Ten Virgins,” Works, ii, 521, 563–66, 78–86, 119, 169–71, 375–78, 560; Shepard, “Theses Sabbaticae,” Works, iii, 119–21.

35. Note the dichotomies associated with the logic of Petrus Ramus. See Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, 111–153; Keith L. Spunger, “Technometria: A Prologue to Puritan Theology,” Journal of the History of Ideas, xxix (1968), 115–122, and The Learned Doctor William Ames: Dutch Backgrounds of English and American Puritanism (Urbana, 1972); Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Cambridge, Mass., 1958); and David L. Parker, “Petrus Ramus and the Puritans: The ‘Logic’ of Preparationist Conversion Doctrine,” Early American Literature, viii (1973), 140–162.

36. Thomas Lechford, Plain Dealing or News from New England (1642), J. Hammond Trumbull’s edition (Boston, 1867), 18–20. On New England admission practices, see [Thomas Weld], A Brief Narration of the Practices of the Churches in New-England (1645), reprinted in the Congregational Quarterly, xvii (1875), 261–62; Jameson, ed., Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence, 217–18; John Cotton, The Way of the Churches of Christ in New-England (London, 1645), 52–65; Edmund S. Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea (Ithaca, 1965), 88–89; and Robert A. Rees, “Seeds of Enlightenment: Public Testimony in the New England Congregational Churches, 1630–1750,” Early American Literature, iii (1968), 23.

37. Trumbull, ed., Plain Dealing, 20–22.

38. Ibid., 22–23. In some churches the members testified in behalf of a candidate after he gave his confessions. See [Weld], A Brief Narration, 261. For information on the origins of the relation of faith, see Morgan, Visible Saints, 93–105.

39. Ola E. Winslow, Meetinghouse Hill, 1630–1783 (New York, 1952), 45; Trumbull, ed., Plain Dealing, 22–23, see n. 13. John Cotton insisted that women relate their confessions in private, because an “open confession” was against the “apostle’s rule, and not fit for woman’s modesty.” See Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, 1, 107.

40. Williston Walker, The Creeds and Platforms of Congregationalism (New York, 1893), 223.

41. Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (New York, 1976), 99; Trumbull, ed., Plain Dealing, 151, n. 252; Cotton, The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared (1648) in Larzer Ziff, ed., John Cotton on the Churches of New England (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), 263–64. On the debates over the severity and exclusiveness of admission practices in New England, which allegedly resulted from requiring a confession of faith, see Walker, Creeds, 107, n. 4; Trumbull, ed., Plain Dealing, 21, n. 12, 22, n. 13, 151, n. 252; and Ray P. Stearns and David H. Brawner, “New England Church ‘Relations’ and Continuity in Early Congregational History,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, lxxv (1965), 25, n. 31.

42. Trumbull, ed., Plain Dealing, 23–25, 28–29. The origins of New England’s Congregational polity have been debated since John Cotton’s day; for the most recent developments in the argument see Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630–1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1933); Morgan, Visible Saints; Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston, 283–85; Stearns and Brawner, “New England Church ‘Relations’ and Continuity in Early Congregational History,” 13–45; David D. Hall’s introduction and bibliographical note in the Harper Torchbook edition (New York, 1970) of Miller’s Orthodoxy; and Hall, The Faithful Shepherd, 78–86.

43. See Stephen P. Sharpies, ed., Records of the Church at Cambridge in New England, 1632–1830 (Boston, 1906). Paige published excerpts from the financial records in his History of Cambridge, 253ff.

44. Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, 1, 173.

45. There is no indication that Shepard recorded the confessions in private with the intention of reading them before the congregation, as was the common procedure for women candidates. He copied them into his notebook chronologically, mixing the relations of men and women throughout, and made no notations as to any of them being given in private. Unfortunately, there is little evidence in the Confessions to indicate that the relations of faith were actually given in public; only Henry Dunster said: “Dear brethren and sisters in Christ I account it no small mercy that the Lord hath called me to give an account to [you] of that faith and love I bear to Christ and His church and people.” And Mrs. Greene seems to have given her relation in public, for she seems (like brother Hisdell’s wife, of Dedham), to have panicked and was able to utter only a few sentences. Cf. Walker, Creeds, 107.

46. R. Stansby to John Winthrop, 17 April 1637, in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th Ser., vii (1865), 11. See Morgan, Visible Saints, 106–8, and Miller, “Thomas Hooker and the Democracy of Connecticut,” in Errand, 31–33.

47. Thomas Hooker, Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline (1648), as quoted in Morgan, Visible Saints, 107; Frank C. Shuffelton, Thomas Hooker, 1586–1647 (Princeton, 1977), 227; Shepard, “Ten Virgins,” Works, ii, 631; Pettit, The Heart Prepared, 8.

48. B. Richard Burg, ed., “A Letter of Richard Mather to a Cleric in Old England,” William & Mary Quarterly, xxix (1972), 91–92; Pettit, The Heart Prepared, 101; Albro, “Life of Thomas Shepard,” Works, i, cxxvii–cxxx. For a full description of the Dorchester episode, see B. Richard Burg, Richard Mather of Dorchester (Lexington, Kentucky, 1976), 29–34. See also Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal, i, 177, and Morgan, Visible Saints, 100–101.

49. Jesse Lemisch, “The American Revolution Seen from the Bottom Up,” in Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York, 1967), 3–45. Although for reasons different from those of Lemisch and in some cases before he published the above essay, many historians have focused their attention on the lives of common men. On seventeenth-century New England, the most notable among such studies are: Sumner Chilton Powell, Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town (Middletown, Conn., 1963); Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630–1649 (Chapel Hill, 1965); John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (New York, 1970); Philip Greven, Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (New York, 1970); Kenneth Lockridge, A New England Town, the First Hundred Tears: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1736 (New York, 1970); and Richard P. Gildrie, Salem, Massachusetts, 1626–1683: A Covenant Community (Charlottesville, 1975).

50. Shepard’s parishioners frequently cited biblical passages to support their religious experiences. They took encouragement from the prophets, especially Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as Psalms, Exodus, and Genesis. Nevertheless, they quoted New Testament books more often than Old (318 citations to 226). Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Romans, and Revelation received particular attention. They also quoted the Bible in a wide-ranging fashion, failing to cite only six of twenty-seven New Testament books and eleven of thirty-nine Old Testament books.

51. This pagination is from the original manuscript of the Confessions owned by the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

52. Jose Glover (d. 1638) was the rector at Sutton in Surrey from 1628 until 1636, when he resigned with the intention of moving to New England. By 1638 he completed his preparations for emigration, which included the transportation of the first printing press to Britain’s North American colonies. Glover died at sea, but his wife, Elizabeth (who three years later married Henry Dunster, president of Harvard College), five children, and Stephen Daye—the printer Glover engaged to operate his press—all arrived safely in 1638 and settled at Cambridge.

53. Jer. 7:4.

54. Matt. 16:26; Luke 9:25; Mark 8:36.

55. Thomas Jenner (1607–ca. 1676) studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and preached at Heddon in Northumberland County before emigrating to Roxbury, where he became a freeman on 8 December 1636. He succeeded, in 1638, Joseph Hull as the minister at Weymouth but not without some controversy, according to Winthrop: “Divers of the elders went to Weymouth, to reconcile the differences between the people and Mr. Jenner, whom they had called thither with intent to have him their pastor.” Although the congregation had the “good success of their prayers,” before 1641 Jenner did “not like the place” and moved to Saco, Maine. And in 1650 he returned to England, served as minister at Coltishall, Norfolk, 1652–1658, and wrote Quakerism Anatomized and Confuted (Dublin, 1670).

56. Thomas Shepard—silenced when a lecturer at Earles-Colne, Essex, in 1630 by William Laud and later, in 1632, while at another post in Buttercrambe, Yorkshire, by Richard Neile, Archbishop of York—preached about a year at Heddon, Northumberland, before Thomas Morton, Bishop of Durham, ended Shepard’s official ministry.

57. Matt. 18:11; Luke 19:10.

58. 1 Pet. 2:7.

59. Gen. 4:13–14; Matt. 27:3–5; 1 John 3:12.

60. Matt. 18:11; Luke 19:10.

61. Matt. 5:4, 6; Isa. 61:2, 3; Luke 6:21.

62. Matt. 18:11; Luke 19:10.

63. Mark 9:23.

64. 2 Thess. 1:7–8.

65. Matt. 19:26; Mark 10:27; Luke 18:27.

66. Luke 9:62.

67. Prov. 22:3; 27:12.

68. Isa. 66:2.

69. 1 Chron. 22:16.

70. Matt. 5:4.

71. Isa. 55:1.

72. Matt. 5:6.

73. Isa. 40:29.

74. Matt. 18:11; Luke 19:10

75. Matt. 5:6.

76. Eph. 2:7; Col. 1:27; 2:2–3.

77. James 1:22–23.

78. 2 Pet. 1:19.

79. Isa. 50:10.

80. John 1:16.

81. See note 1, p. 33.

82. Sill either went to Heddon to hear Thomas Shepard preach or, if it was after Shepard’s ejection from there, heard him in the Newcastle area, which was only five miles from Heddon. See note 5, p. 33.

83. Matt. 11:28.

84. Rom. 6:14.

85. Ezek. 36:26.

86. Col. 3:1.

87. Samuel Hieron (1576–1617) attended King’s College, Cambridge, and took orders about 1600. He became an eminent preacher at London—probably where Joanna Sill expected to hear him preach—but soon accepted a post at Modbury in Devonshire, where he remained until his death. He published numerous works, perhaps including an anonymous pamphlet printed in Holland in 1607 entitled A Defence of the Minister’s Reasons for Refusal of Subscription to the Booke of Common Prayer.

88. One usage of “falling” at this time was to pass suddenly, accidentally, or in the course of events into a certain bodily or mental condition or into some external condition or relation, such as falling into an acquaintance with a Leveller. See The Oxford English Dictionary (London, 1933).

89. Robert Jenison (1584?–1652) studied at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1607. He subsequently acquired a D.D. and seems to have acted for a time as domestic chaplain in the family of Henry, sixth earl of Kent—probably the position he held when he came to London to preach in Samuel Hieron’s absence. In 1622 he became a lecturer at All Saints in Newcastle, Northumberland, where he remained until he was suspended for Nonconformity in 1639. During the English Civil War, he regained his former position.

90. Matt. 11:21–24.

91. Ps. 139:1.

92. See note 1, p. 33.

93. Jer. 15:6.

94. Matt. 18:11; Luke 19:10.

95. Matt. 9:12–13; Mark 2:17; 1 Tim. 1:1.5; Luke 5:32.

96. Matt. 25:11.

97. Shepard first wrote “tho shee neglected dutyes” but subsequently inserted “did not,” forgetting to cross out the ed on neglected. For readability the “ed” has been dropped.

98. Matt. 25:8.

99. Hos. 14:3.

100. Isa. 28:16.

101. Lam. 3:39.

102. Luke 1:45.

103. John 6:37.

104. Matt. 5:6.

105. Song of Sol. 1:3.

106. For Thomas Shepard’s reaction to Eaton’s behavior see Michael McGiffert’s God’s Plot: The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety, Being the Autobiography & Journal of Thomas Shepard (Amherst, 1972), 68–69, 92–93, 211.

107. Hos. 2:6.

108. Amos 4:12.

109. Amos 4:9.

110. Gen. 27:34–41.

111. Luke 11:24–26; Matt. 12:44.

112. Acts 8:14–24.

113. William Ames (1576–1633) studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he became a convinced Puritan, refusing to wear the surplice in the college chapel and, theologically, adopting predestination and covenant theology from the Reformed traditions of Calvin, Luther, and others. Forbidden by the Bishop of London to preach at Colchester, he emigrated to Leyden. In Holland, Ames refuted Grevinchovius, an Arminian minister, served as a professor and pastor, and wrote several theological tracts—among them his Medulla Theologiae (Amsterdam, 1623), a work highly acclaimed by some New England ministers.

114. John 6:44.

115. Rev. 3:20.

116. John 14:21.

117. Rev. 2:4.

118. 1 Sam. 12:22.

119. Matt. 13:18–23; Mark 4:3–8; Luke 8:5–8.

120. Possibly John Cotton (1584–1652), a Cambridge graduate and minister at St. Botolph’s Church at Boston in Lincolnshire, who came to the Bay in 1633 and became the teacher of the church at Boston.

121. Ezek. 36:26; 11:19.

122. John Wilson (1588?–1667), a graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, preached at Sudbury in Suffolk County from 1618 until 1630, when he emigrated to Massachusetts and became the pastor of the First Church at Boston.

123. Rom. 8:28–33.

124. Jer. 31:18.

125. Rom. 8:15.

126. Isa. 30:21.

127. Prov. 11:25.

128. Matt. 20:15.

129. Mark 3:1–5; Matt. 12:10–13; Luke 6:6–10.

130. John Rogers (1572?–1636), a Cambridge graduate and the author of The Doctrine of Faith (London, 1627), which reached a seventh edition in 1638, served as the vicar of Dedham in Essex from 1605 until his death, although suspended for Nonconformity between 1629 and 1631. He was reputed to be “one of the most awakening preachers of the age.”

131. See note 3, p. 59.

132. Isa. 64:8.

133. Mark 5:25–34; Luke 8:43–48; Matt. 9:20–22.

134. Hos. 2:14.

135. Hos. 2:23; Exod. 33:19; Rom. 9:15.

136. Isa. 56:8.

137. Matt. 23:37.

138. Isa. 30:7.

139. Isa. 64:8.

140. Isa. 30:15.

141. Isa. 43:22–25; 44:21–23.

142. Isa. 45:22.

143. Isa. 42:16.

144. Isa. 46:12.

145. Isa. 27:4–5.

146. Acts 4:12; 1 Thess. 5:9; Heb. 5:9; 2 Pet. 3:15; 2 Tim. 2:10.

147. Hos. 14:3.

148. John 1:12.

149. John 1:14.

150. John 7:37.

151. 1 John 2:15.

152. Isa. 45:22.

153. Rev. 21:6; 22:17.

154. Matt. 11:28.

155. Matt. 5:3.

156. Col. 1:135 1 John 3:14 in the Geneva Bible.

157. 2 Thess. 1:8.

158. 1 Thess. 5:7–8; Eph. 5:18.

159. 1 Pet. 5:5.

160. Henry Langley (1611–1697), a graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford, and subsequently a Presbyterian leader, became the rector of St. Mary, Newington, Surrey, in 1643. Stedman lived in Surrey County while employed by Jose Glover, minister at Sutton, and may have heard Langley preaching in the area around 1637—before he officially received the St. Mary’s appointment—or in the Oxford vicinity.

161. Job 1:6–12; Rev. 20:7.

162. Ps. 92:12; Isa. 44:4; Lev. 23:40.

163. Note 1, p. 59.

164. Cotton consistently warned his parishioners against relying on a “covenant of works” for an assurance of their salvation. Instead, he exhorted them to be “in the spirit,” for when God calls “any to fellowship with Christ immediately you are in the spirit, Romans 8.” But when Anne Hutchinson and other laymen adopted and, more importantly, propagated Cotton’s mysticism, a controversy erupted which disrupted Massachusetts for two years before Stedman’s arrival in 1638. For further information on Cotton’s antinomianism, see George Selement, “John Cotton’s Hidden Antinomianism: His Sermon on Revelation 4:1–2,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 129:278–94 (1975). See Emery Battis, Saints and Sectaries: Anne Hutchinson and the Antinomian Controversy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Chapel Hill, 1962) for a very readable narrative of the controversy, and The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638: A Documentary History, ed. David D. Hall (Middletown, Conn., 1968), for the documents produced by what was, indeed, a crisis in a relatively new society.

165. “Mother-in-law” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was a synonym for “stepmother.” See The Oxford English Dictionary (London, 1933).

166. Acts 9:6; 22:10.

167. See notes 1 and 8, pp. 59, 74, 75.

168. Hos. 14:8.

169. 2 Tim. 3:6.

170. 2 Tim. 1:12.

171. Thomas Weld (1595–1661), a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, came to New England in 1632 and became the first pastor of the church at Roxbury. During the Antinomian Controversy, he actively opposed the dissenters and participated in their trial. In 1641, he returned to England with Hugh Peter as agent for the colony and remained there, serving from 1649 until his death as the rector of St. Mary’s Church in Newcastle.

172. Jer. 3:14–22; 31:22.

173. 1 John 5:7–8.

174. Gen. 38:18, 25.

175. Mark 1:40, 41.

176. Richard Rogers (1550?–1618), a graduate of Christ’s College, Cambridge, preached at Wethersfield in Essex County from 1577 until his death, although periodically he was suspended for Nonconformity. Rogers was a prominent figure in the Puritan movement; his Seven Treatises, published in 1603, has been called the “first important exposition of the code of behavior which expressed the English Calvinist, or, more broadly speaking, the Puritan, conception of the spiritual and moral life.” See William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), 36.

177. Luke 12:31.

178. William Greenhill (1591–1671), a graduate of Magdalen College, Oxford, and author of several religious tracts, held livings at New Shoreham, Sussex and Norwich, Norfolk, encountering trouble at the latter place for refusing to read The Book of Sports (London, 1618). He subsequently, about 1633, moved to London and became the afternoon preacher to the congregation at Stepney, while Jeremiah Burroughes ministered in the morning; they were called the “Morning Star” and the “Evening Star” of Stepney.

179. Matt. 5:5–6.

180. Ezek. 16:6.

181. 1 Cor. 6:9–10.

182. Matt. 11:28.

183. Isa. 35:2.

184. Heb. 4:16.

185. Ps. 36:9; Jer. 17:13–14; Rev. 21:6.

186. 1 Kings 4:25; Zech. 3:10.

187. Matt. 4:8–9.

188. Ps. 64:5–7.

189. Exod. 14:25.

190. Rev. 3:17.

191. Rev. 7:14.

192. John 1:14.

193. Ps. 45:2.

194. Isa. 63:9.

195. Rev. 17:9.

196. Phil. 4:19.

197. John 13:4–17.

198. Num. 22:24–26.

199. John 21:7.

200. John 13:19.

201. Ps. 140:7.

202. Possibly Isa. 45:8 or 1 Kings 8:35–36.

203. Matt. 25:1–13.

204. “Boote” at this time could mean “advantage” or “profit.” See The Oxford English Dictionary (London, 1933).

205. See the confession of Nathaniel Eaton, pp. 54–57.

206. Ps. 124:7.

207. Mark 16:7.

208. Isa. 35:4.

209. Gal. 5:6; 6:15.

210. Matt. 7:16–20; 12:33; Luke 6:44.

211. 2 Chron. 33:1–20; 2 Kings 21:1–18.

212. Rom. 14:23.

213. Ezekiel Culverwell (d. 1631), educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, served as the rector of Great Stambridge, 1592–1609, and later as the vicar of Felstead in Essex. In 1623 he published A Treatise of Faith (London), which in 1633 reached a seventh edition.

214. Rom. 8:28.

215. Ps. 50:15.

216. Thomas Hooker (1586?–1647) received both his degrees from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and from 1609 to 1618 was Dixie fellow there. About 1620 he became rector of Esher, Surrey, and six years later the lecturer at St. Mary’s, Chelmsford, when William Laud silenced him in 1630. He went to Holland in 1631 and to New England in 1633, preaching at Newtown until his removal to Hartford in 1636.

217. See note 1, p. 59.

218. Acts 3:8–9.

219. 2 Kings 21:1–18; 2 Chron. 33:1–20.

220. Isa. 1:18.

221. Matt. 11:28.

222. See note 1, p. 65.

223. Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38.

224. Zech. 3:2.

225. Ps. 41:11.

226. Prov. 18:10.

227. Isa. 43:2.

228. Exod. 14:13; 2 Chron. 20:17.

229. Ps. 73:26; 119:57; 142:5; Lam. 3:24; Ps. 16:5.

230. Matt. 25:14–30.

231. John 6:37.

232. Luke 12:19.

233. Isa. 50:10.

234. Job 30:26.

235. Rom. 7:15, 17, 19, 20.

236. See note 7, p. 79.

237. Matt. 7:24–27; 16:18; Luke 6:47–49.

238. Rom. 14:23.

239. Isa. 56:3.

240. Gen. 22:1–18.

241. Peter Bulkeley (1583–1659), a graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge, immigrated to New England in 1636. After a short residence at Cambridge, he moved “further into the Woods” and helped settle Concord, accepting a position as teacher in their newly established church. He remained active in Massachusetts affairs, participating in the Synod of 1637, which dealt with some ninety Antinomian “errours,” and published The Gospel Covenant (London) in 1646.

242. Gen. 17:2–3.

243. See note 1, p. 59.

244. Rev. 10:1. John Cotton preached a series of sermons on Revelation in the late 1630’s and early 1640’s. Shepard took notes on his earliest and unpublished sermons—the notes are in the same book as the Confessions. Cotton’s later sermons on the Apocalypse were published; for the details, see Everett H. Emerson’s John Cotton (New York, 1965), 95–105. See also note 8, pp. 74, 75.

245. John 5:2–9.

246. Mai. 3:6.

247. Perhaps Arthur Dent, The Plaine Mans Path-Way to Heaven, which went through some twenty-five editions.

248. For books written on repentance see Robert Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica, 4 vols. (Edinburgh, 1824), iv under “Repentance.”

249. Luke 15:7.

250. Ps. 8:1 or 113:4.

251. 1 Pet. 1:17–19.

252. Song of Sol. 113.

253. Isa. 11:1–9.

254. Exod. 20:9; Deut. 5:13.

255. Probably this is Richard Rolle’s The Arte or Crafte to Lyve well and to Dye well (n.p., 1503), but there are several books with slightly varying titles that may have been the volume Trumbull read. See Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica, iii, under “Dying,” iv, under “Living.”

256. 1 John 2:1.

257. 1 John 2:3–5; 3:24.

258. Obadiah Sedgwick (1600?–1658), a graduate of Queen’s College, Oxford, and author of several religious treatises, received his first preferment in 1630 as the lecturer at St. Mildred’s Church, Bread Street, London. Because of his Puritanism, he had to accept a different pastorate—he became the vicar at Coggeshall, Essex, in 1639—but at the opening of the Long Parliament he regained his lectureship at St. Mildred’s.

Possibly Trumbull heard John Sedgwick (1601?–1643), Obadiah’s younger brother and also a graduate of Queen’s College, who preached for a short while sometime in the 1630’s at St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, London.

259. Matt. 26:69–75; Mark 14:66–72; Luke 22:55–62; John 18:25–27.

260. Matt. 19:30; Mark 10:31; Luke 13:30.

261. Prov. 12:28.

262. John Carter (1554–1635), the author of A Plaine and Compendious Exposition of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (London, 1627), studied at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and became vicar of Bramford, Suffolk, in 1583. Although he performed his pastoral duties with zeal, many in his congregation resented his Puritanism. His bishop, therefore, transferred him to the rectory of Belstead, also in Suffolk, in 1617.

263. See note 1, p. 65.

264. Deut. 5:27.

265. Gen. 17:15–21; 22:1–18.

266. Matt. 5:20.

267. Matt. 5:4, 6.

268. George Phillips (1593–1644), the author of A Reply to a Confutation of Some Grounds for Infant Baptisme (London, 1645), graduated from Caius College, Cambridge, in 1617 and accepted a pastorate at Boxted in Essex. By 1629 Phillips resolved to go to Massachusetts, and in April 1630 he sailed on the Arbella—and was one of the signers, and perhaps author, of The Humble Request, which was dated on the eve of their departure and printed the same year. After a short residence at Charlestown, he became the minister of the newly formed church at Watertown, drafting its covenant, where he remained until his death.

269. Probably Daniel Dyke’s The Mystery of Self-Deceiving; or, A Discourse of the Deceitfulness of Man’s Heart (London, 1615).

270. Ezek. 11:19; 36:26.

271. Ps. 16:6.

272. 2 Thess. 1:7–8.

273. Lewis Bayly’s The Practice of Piety attained extraordinary popularity; although the date and place of its first publication are not known, it reached a third edition in 1613, an eleventh in 1619, a twenty-fifth in 1630, a fifty-ninth in 1735, and a seventy-fifth in 1842. And its influence transcended the English-speaking world: the work was translated into French in 1625, German in 1629, Welsh in 1630, Polish in 1647, Romansch in 1668, and in 1665 an edition for Indians came off New England’s Cambridge press.

274. William Perkins (1558–1602), the author of An Exposition of the Symbole or Creeds of the Apostles (Cambridge, 1595) and numerous other theological tracts, graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he became a fellow upon receiving his M.A. in 1584. Although he maintained his fellowship until 1594, churning out book after book, Perkins still had time to preach and lecture in the area. Thomas Goodwin, a prominent member of the Westminster Assembly, recalled that when he went to Christ’s College in 1613 “the Town was then filled with the discourse of the Power of Mr. Perkins his Ministry, still fresh in Mens Memories,” though Perkins was already ten years in the grave.

275. Perhaps [John Hart], The Burning Bush Not Consumed (London, 1616).

276. Matt. 7:13–14; Phil. 4:22.

277. Matt. 7:13, 14.

278. Matt. 13:45–46.

279. Rom. 7:24.

280. John 12:15.

281. Heb. 6:18–19.

282. 1 John 3:1.

283. 1 John 3:1.

284. Zeph. 1:12.

285. Exod. 20:9–10; Deut. 5:13–14.

286. 2 Pet. 1:10.

287. 2 Kings 20:1–6.

288. 1 Pet. 2:24.

289. Matt. 11:28.

290. Isa. 1:18.

291. Matt. 13:45–46.

292. Eph. 5:16; Cor. 4:5.

293. Ps. 110:3.

294. Hos. 2:19.

295. Jer. 18:22.

296. Isa. 64:11, 12.

297. Isa. 27:9.

298. Matt. 19:27; Luke 5:11; Mark 1:18.

299. John 13:33–38; 16:16–20.

300. Exod. 20:4–6.

301. Ps. 34:8.

302. Rom. 7:13.

303. Jer. 31:13; Isa. 57:18

304. Isa. 42:16.

305. Prov. 13:4.

306. 2 Cor. 5:14–15.

307. James 1:27.

308. James 2:10.

309. Rom. 8:13.

310. Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680), a graduate of Catherine Hall, Cambridge, and the author of several religious treatises, became a lecturer at Trinity Church, Cambridge, in 1628. In 1634 he resigned his position, being dissatisfied with the terms of conformity, but continued to preach in London until he moved to Holland in 1639, accepting the pastorate of the English church at Arnheim. At the beginning of the Long Parliament he returned to London and in 1643 became the foremost Independent at the Westminster Assembly.

Hamlet may have heard John Goodwin (1594?–1665), a graduate of Queen’s College, Cambridge, and pamphleteer, who preached in several Norfolk towns and after 1632 at St. Stephen’s in London, where he remained until he was ejected in 1645 for his rigid Independency.

311. See note 9, pp. 104, 105.

312. Hos. 10:11.

313. Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:19.

314. Lev. 26:21.

315. Luke 23:46.

316. 1 Tim. 1:15.

317. Luke 12:20.

318. John Shaw (1608–1672), a graduate of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and author of several religious tracts, in the 1630’s held lectureships at Bramptom, Derbyshire (1630–1633), Chumleigh, Devonshire (1633–1636)—a post subsidized by London merchants with Puritan sympathies—and All hallows-on-the-Pavement, Yorkshire.

319. John 13:29–31.

320. Ezek. 44:1–2.

321. 1 John 2:12.

322. Jer. 10:23.

323. Rom. 6:23.

324. Matt. 9:12–13; Mark 2:17; 1 Tim. 1:15; Luke 5:32.

325. Matt. 5:3.

326. Samuel Whiting (1597–1679), a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and author of a few religious pamphlets, was the minister at Lynn, Norfolk, and Skirbeck, Lincolnshire, but after two prosecutions for nonconformity he immigrated to New England, where he became the preacher at Lynn from 1636 until his death.

327. Matt. 5:6.

328. Isa. 30:18.

329. Isa. 55:1.

330. Isa. 54:8.

331. Isa. 55:7.

332. Jonathan Burr (ca. 1604–1641), a graduate of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, preached at Rickinghall, Suffolk, before coming to New England in 1639. Although there was some question about his orthodoxy in regard to “familism,” Burr became Richard Mather’s assistant at Dorchester in 1640.

333. Isa. 9:9; 16:6; 23:9; 25:11; 28:1, 3.

334. Ps. 130:1.

335. Exod. 40:34–38; 1 Kings 8:10–11.

336. Mic. 6:8.

337. 2 Cor. 5:19.

338. Isa. 43:24–25.

339. Isa. 40:29.

340. Ps. 18:36.

341. Rom. 3:24.

342. 1 Pet. 5:6.

343. Exod. 39:32, 42–43.

344. Isa. 38:14.

345. Isa. 1:18.

346. There were at least four Smiths who published sermons which might have appealed to Crackbone: Henry Smith (1550?–1591), John Smith (1563–1616), Miles Smith (d. 1624), and Samuel Smith (1584–1662). See The Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1917) for information about their lives and publications.

347. Ps. 86:11. Although the Plymouth church sang from Henry Ainsworth’s The Book of Psalmes (Amsterdam, 1612) until 1692, the Bay churches relied on The Whole Book of Psalmes: collected into English meeter by T. Sternhold, J. Hopkins, and others (London, 1562)—often bound with the Geneva Bible—until Richard Mather and others composed The Bay Psalm Book (Cambridge, Mass., 1640), which nearly every congregation in Massachusetts adopted.

348. Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16.

349. Exod. 34:6.

350. See note 3, p. 50.

351. Isa. 26:3.

352. See note 1, p. 59.

353. Rev. 6:2; 19:11. See note 12, p. 105.

354. Isa. 38:14.

355. Eccles. 12:13.

356. There are no identifiable Rodwells in England or New England at this time; therefore, he was not a college student or author and must have been one of her friends or a layman in an English congregation. If, however, Shepard erred and should have written “Rockwell,” there were several Englishmen—all laymen without a college education—by that name who subsequently came to New England. See James Savage’s A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 4 vols. (Boston, 1861).

357. Matt. 25:1–13.

358. Matt. 25:10–12.

359. Perhaps Gen. 25:5–6.

360. 1 Tim. 1:15.

361. Matt. 9:13; Mark 2:17; Luke 5:32; 1 Tim. 1:15.

362. Luke 4:18.

363. Matt. 11:28.

364. John 6:37.

365. Jer. 2:13.

366. See note 8, p. 98.

367. Hos. 6:1.

368. Ps. 147:2; Isa. 11:12; 56:8.

369. See the confession of Nathaniel Eaton, pp. 54–57.

370. Nathaniel Rogers (1598–1655), a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and son of John Rogers (see note 1, p. 65), preached at Becking, Essex, and Assington, Suffolk, before coming to Massachusetts in 1636. He participated in the Synod of 1637 and the next year joined John Norton at Ipswich, serving as one of their pastors until his death.

371. Ezekiel Rogers (1580–1660), a graduate of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and son of Richard Rogers (see note 1, p. 82), served as chaplain to Sir Francis Barrington, who appointed him to the benefice of Rowley in Yorkshire. After preaching there for about twenty years, he was silenced for nonconformity and, therefore, in 1638 immigrated to New England. Although urged to settle in New Haven, Rogers preferred to be one of the founders of Rowley, where he preached until his death.

372. Matt. 15:28.

373. See note 7, p. 79.

374. Jer. 32:27.

375. Isa. 35:4.

376. Exod. 3:5.

377. Exod. 34:7.

378. John 13:31–32.

379. John 6:44.

380. Matt. 24:44; Luke 12:40.

381. Num. 35; Josh. 20:2; 21:13, 21, 27, 32, 38.

382. Hos. 14:3.

383. Isa. 38:14.

384. 1 Pet. 5:6.

385. John 20:25–29.

386. See note 1, p. 33.

387. Thomas Morton (1564–1659), a graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge, had a long and prestigious career in the Church of England. Although he held many different posts, he probably spoke with Jane either while he was Bishop of Lichfield, 1618–1632, or Bishop of Durham, 1632–1659. Morton was a man of Low-Church inclinations who took no active part in Laud’s campaign for uniformity, and he had no sympathy for Roman Catholicism, publishing several tracts against its doctrinal and ecclesiastical views.

388. See note 3, p. 50.

389. Heb. 13:5.

390. Ezek. 39:29.

391. Rom. 9:21.

392. Ps. 25:11.

393. Matt. 8:8.

394. Exod. 33:19; Rom. 9:15.

395. Isa. 40:29.

396. Edmund Frost (d. 1672) came to New England in 1635 with his wife and child. He became a freeman the following year and a ruling elder in the Cambridge church before 1640—a position he still held in 1658.

397. Ps. 42:5, 11.

398. Matt. 9:13; Mark 2:17; 1 Tim. 1:15; Luke 5:32.

399. Isa. 1:18.

400. Matt. 16:18.

401. Isa. 41:17.

402. Isa. 40:29.

403. John 6:68.

404. Gen. 1:2.

405. Matt. 10:29–31.

406. Gen. 3:14–15.

407. Matt. 7:20–23.

408. Dunster is warning the people against one of the “errours” of Antinomianism, which allegedly taught that there “is a testimony of the Spirit, and voyce unto the Soule, meerely immediate, without any respect unto, or concurrence with the word.” See John Winthrop’s A Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruine of the Antinomians, Familists & Libertines (London, 1644) in The Antinomian Controversy, 230. See also note 8, p. 74, 75.

409. Mark 11:24.

410. 1 Cor. 7:14.

411. Matt. 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16.

412. 1 Cor. 11:20–34.

413. James 2:14–17.

414. Matt. 18:15–17.

415. “Connixt” or “connexed” meant “connected.” See The Oxford English Dictionary (London, 1933).

416. 1 Pet. 1:15–16.

417. Rom. 6:6; Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9.

418. Heb. 8:10.

419. Exod. 20:13–14; Matt. 5:21–22, 27–28.

420. 1 Cor. 15:25.

421. Matt. 25:41.

422. Phil. 3:20–21.

423. Ps. 40:10.

424. There are many Hobarts, Hubbards, or Hubberts—all obscure—whom Dunster may have heard or heard about (the text is not clear as to whether he actually attended a sermon), but it was probably William Hubbock (1560–ca. 1631), who took his B.A. from Oxford in 1581 and M.A. from Cambridge in 1586. Hubbock’s sermons were “powerful” enough to bring him before the Archbishop of Canterbury in about 1590. But he was not silenced and subsequently became a chaplain at the Tower of London, lecturer at St. Botolph’s, London, and after 1598 the rector of Nailstone, Leicestershire, a county not far from Dunster’s Lancashire.

425. Rev. 2:5, 16; 3:3.

426. John Preston (1587–1628), one of the most influential Puritan preachers of his generation and a prolific writer, secured—after using his influence at court—the lectureship at Trinity Church in 1624.

427. See note 4, pp. 126, 127.

428. Gen. 3:5, 22.

429. See Ps. 85:8.

430. Rom. 1:21–32; Gal. 5:19–21.

431. Rom. 9:32–33.

432. Ps. 40:1–2.

433. Ps. 40:6.

434. Ps. 40:7.

435. Heb. 8:10.

436. Ps. 40:12.

437. John Dod (1549?–1645), a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge, and the author of numerous religious tracts, preached at Hanwell, Oxfordshire, until John Bridges, Bishop of Oxford, suspended him for Nonconformity in 1604. Dod moved north, preaching for a time at Fenny Compton, Warwickshire, and then at Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire, until in 1611 Archbishop Abbot silenced him. In 1624 he managed to obtain a position at Fawsley, Northamptonshire, where he remained until his death.

438. Nehemiah Rogers (1593–1660), a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1618 and the author of several expositions on biblical parables, became the preacher at Messing, Essex, in 1620. Rogers was a friend of William Laud and an uncompromising royalist.

439. See note 8, p. 98.

440. Mark 9:42.

441. Mark 9:43–44.

442. Gen. 24:63.

443. Isa. 55:6.

444. James 4:4; Rom. 8:7.

445. Eccles. 12:1.

446. Matt. 10:32; Luke 12:8; Rom. 10:9; 1 John 1:9; Prov. 28:13.

447. “Hoverly” at this time meant “lightly” or “slightly.” See The Oxford English Dictionary (London, 1933).

448. Acts 2:37.

449. Francesco Spira (d. 1548), a civil lawyer and resident of Venice, Italy, accepted the doctrines of the Reformation—particularly justification by faith—and witnessed for the Protestant religion to his family and friends for about six years. But under pressure from the Roman Catholic officials Spira publicly recanted in 1548. After reflecting on his “apostacy,” he was unable to live with himself, becoming convinced that he was damned, and soon died in extreme anguish. Protestants, of course, found the story an undisputable testimony to the truth of their religion and, therefore, published many accounts of it. See the British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books (London, 1964), 227:670–72, and Clifford K. Shipton and James E. Mooney, National Index of American Imprints through 1800 (Worcester, 1969), 1:42–43.

450. Samuel Stone (1602–1663), a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1623, ministered at Stisted, Essex, until he was suspended for Nonconformity in 1630. Through the influence of Thomas Shepard he obtained the lectureship at Towcester in Northamptonshire, where he met Thomas Hooker. Stone and Hooker came to New England in 1633 and preached at Newtown before moving to Hartford in 1636. After Hooker’s death, in 1647, Stone remained the only minister of the Hartford church until his death.

451. Isa. 59:1–2.

452. Rom. 7:23–24.

453. Isa. 38:14.

454. Zech. 13:1.

455. Num. 21:9; 2 Kings 18:4; John 3:14.

456. Isa. 64:8; Jer. 18:6; Rom. 9:21.

457. Isa. 55:2.

458. Isa. 55:1.

459. John 5:1–9.

460. Rom. 7:24.

461. Probably Ezekiel of Yorkshire. See note 7, p. 148.

462. Exod. 31:14–15.

463. Matt. 11:28.

464. Matt. 5:11.

465. Ps. 119:93.

466. John 20:25–28.

467. Neh. 1:11.

468. James 4:6.

469. Jer. 7:26; 16:12.

470. Gen. 17:1.

471. James 4:8.

472. Ps. 81:10.

473. Exod. 14:13.

474. Matt. 11:5; Luke 4:18; 7:22.

475. Isa. 1:18.

476. John 8:44.

477. Exod. 20:15.

478. Exod. 5:1–23.

479. Matt. 16:24.

480. Num. 21:9; 2 Kings 18:4; John 3:14.

481. Isa. 45:22.

482. Isa. 55:6.

483. Heb. 9:27.

484. Luke 6:37.

485. Not identified.

486. Matt. 25:1–13.

487. See note 7, p. 112.

488. Matt. 11:28.

489. Matt. 25:14–30.

490. Isa. 38:1–5.

491. Isa. 38:14.

492. Rev. 14:12.

493. Isa. 62:5.

494. Ps. 147:3.

495. John 13:8.

496. John 13:8.

497. John 13:30

498. Jer. 3:5.

499. Matt. 25:14–30.

500. Mark 14:34.

501. See note 7, p. 112.

502. See note 7, p. 79.

503. Richard Mather (1596–1669), who studied at Brasenose College, Oxford, but did not earn a degree, came to New England in 1635 after being suspended from his ministry at Toxeth, Lancashire, and forbidden to preach. Mather settled at Dorchester, where he preached and wrote until his death. One of his most important works was A Platform of Church Discipline (Cambridge, Mass., 1649).

504. Phil. 3:8.

505. Rev. 3:17–18.

506. Rev. 22:17.

507. 2 Cor. 5:19.

508. Jon. 4:4, 9.

509. Matt. 11:28.

510. Jer. 31:18.

511. Isa. 43:5; Gen. 26:24.

512. See note 8, p. 98.

513. Matt. 25:1–13.

514. John 13:8.

515. See note 7, p. 79.

516. John 19:37.

517. Matt. 25:31–46.

518. Luke 22:42.

519. See note 3, p. 50.

520. Lam. 3:40.

521. Ps. 38:2; 45:5.

522. Not identified.

523. 2 Cor. 5:17.

524. 2 Chron. 32:26.

525. Rom. 8:14–15; Gal. 4:6.

526. Jer. 31:3.

527. Matt. 10:42; 18:6, 10, 14; Mark 9:42; Luke 17:2.

528. Acts 10:42; 2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5.

529. John 3:3; 1 Pet. 1:23.

530. Prov. 28:9.

531. 2 Thess. 2:10.

532. Ezek. 18:25, 29.

533. 1 Chron. 16:29; 2 Chron. 20:21; Ps. 29:2; 96:9.

534. Rom. 2:5.

535. Matt. 5:4, 6.

536. Rom. 11:26; Isa. 27:9; 59:20.

537. Isa. 29:17; 35:1–2, 6–7; 41:19; 43:19–20; 51:3.

538. Ezra 10:2–3.

539. John Davenport (1597–1670), who received a B.D. from Magdalen Hall, Oxford, disclaimed any Puritan leanings when he accepted, in 1624, the Vicarage of St. Stephen’s on Coleman Street in London. But by 1623 he had definitely joined the Puritan wing of the church, and when William Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury, Davenport resigned his post, moving to Holland in 1633. Through the influence of Theophilus Eaton, Davenport’s lifelong friend, he decided to immigrate to New England. Davenport, therefore, returned to England and sailed with Eaton and others on the Hector in 1637. After a short residence at Boston, Davenport helped establish a new colony at New Haven, where he preached for over thirty years.

540. Job 9:4.

541. Matt. 12:25; Mark 3:24–25; Luke 11:17.

542. 1 Sam. 15:23–26.

543. Isa. 43:13.

544. Isa. 65:17; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1.

545. 1 Cor. 2:9.

546. Probably at Ipswich, Suffolk.

547. Ezek. 16:5–6.

548. Robert Selby (dates unknown) received his B.A. from Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1577 and served as the rector of Bedfield, Suffolk—about four miles from Ipswich—from 1584 until around 1610.

549. Song of Sol. 2:16.

550. Jeremiah Burroughes (1599–1646), a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a prolific writer, preached at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk—about sixteen miles from Ipswich—from about 1624 until 1631.

551. Nicholas Danforth (d. 1638) came from Framlingham, Suffolk, in 1634 and settled at Cambridge. He became a freeman on 3 March 1636 and served as both a selectman and deputy before he died.

552. Gal. 6:7.

553. There is no record of a Mr. Rogers being assigned to a post at Colchester, Essex—a town about twenty miles from Ipswich—at this time. There are, however, several of the Rogers name who preached within an eighteen-mile radius of Colchester that may have supplied pulpits there occasionally: Daniel of Wethersfield, Essex; John of Dedham, Essex; Nathaniel of Assington, Suffolk; Nehemiah of Messing, Essex; and Timothy of Pontesbright or Chapel, Essex. All of them were of the Puritan persuasion except Nehemiah, a friend of William Laud. See notes 1 (p. 65), 6 (p. 148), 2 (p. 166), and The Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1917) for further information about their lives and publications.

554. Col. 3:1.

555. Exod. 20:5; Deut. 5:9.

556. Probably Richard Eccles’s question.

557. Eph. 2:13.

558. John 3:3.

559. This could be the question of Nathaniel Sparhawk, Robert Sanders, John Sill, John Stedman, John Stansby, or Edward Shepard.

560. Probably Christopher Cane’s question.

561. Matt. 3:10; 7:13.

562. Perhaps Elizabeth Luxford’s question.

563. James 4:8.

564. Probably Edmund Frost’s comment. See note 11, p. 152.

565. John 15:5.

566. Sir, or Dominus in Latin, was often prefixed to the last name of a person with a Bachelor of Arts degree. For further information, see Samuel Eliot Morison, The Founding of Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass., 1935), 32.

567. Ps. 90:8.

568. See note 9, pp. 104, 105.

569. Isa. 24:5, 17–18, 22; Zech. 9:11.

570. For information on catechisms used in New England, see Wilberforce Eames, “Early New England Catechisms,” American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, 1176—182 (1898), and for background information on English practices, see Leonard T. Grant, “Puritan Catechizing,” Journal of Presbyterian History, 46:107–27 (1968).

571. Zech. 9:11.

572. John Archer (d. 1639) preached at All Saints’, Hertford, Hertfordshire, from 1631 until his death. He may have been the John Archer who graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1626. See John Venn and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1922), 1:37.

573. Eph. 2:1.

574. See note 4, pp. 126, 127.

575. Matt. 22:11–12.

576. This confession is not in the photocopies owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society and Houghton Library of Harvard University. It has been transcribed from the original manuscript of the Confessions owned by the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

577. Ps. 35:6.

578. Matt. 10:15; 11:24; Luke 10:12.

579. See note 4, p. 134.

580. Ezek. 18:31–32; 33:11.

581. Perhaps the question of John Fessenden or John Furnell.

582. Hugh Peter (1598–1660), a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, left England about 1629, when William Laud became Bishop of London. He accepted a pastorate with the elder William Ames at Rotterdam, Holland, before coming to Massachusetts, where in 1636 he succeeded Roger Williams as the pastor of the church at Salem. In 1641 he returned to England as one of three agents for Massachusetts.

583. Rom. 7:9.

584. Rom. 8:1–8.

585. Matt. 19:26; Mark 10:27; Luke 18:27.

586. Gen. 25:25–34; 27:1–41.

587. Edward Norris (d. 1659)—probably the Edward Norris who graduated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and preached at Anmer in Norfolk—came to New England in 1639. He was soon chosen to assist Hugh Peter as teacher to the church at Salem, where he remained until his death.

Ames may have heard John Norton (1606–1663), who graduated M.A. from Peterhouse College, Cambridge, in 1627 and declined both a good benefice and a Cambridge fellowship because of his Puritanism. Immigrating to Massachusetts in 1635, he preached at Ipswich until 1656, when, after a three-year struggle with the Ipswich congregation, he succeeded John Cotton as the teacher of the First Church of Boston.

588. Rev. 22:17.

589. See Matt. 9:12–13; 18:11.

590. John Miller (d. 1663), a graduate of Caius College, Cambridge, in 1628, came to Dorchester, Massachusetts, about 1635. He preached at Rowley, probably assisting Ezekiel Rogers, from 1639 until 1641, when he accepted a pastorate at Yarmouth.