a revolution whose whirlings threw their heads from off their shoulders. As John Cotton expressed it;"God rocked three nations with shaking dispensations, in order to procure some rest for these infant churches."

Mr. Davenport and his companions gave as their principal reason for removing to New Haven after nine months' stay in the older colony, that most of them were Londoners, who were not so well fitted for an agricultural, as for a commercial, settlement; which they thought might be formed with better prospects at Quinipiac than at any unoccupied place on the Bay. They sailed from Boston for the place of their destination on the thirtieth of March, 1638. They left a letter, dated the twelfth of the same month, and addressed to the government at Boston. In this affectionate farewell, they acknowledge gratefully the kindness they had experienced. They anticipate the future services which shall be mutually rendered by the older plantation and that which they are going to make. These plantations, they say, "the Divine Providence hath combined together in as strong bond of brotherly affection, by the sameness of their condition, as Joab and Abishai were, whose several armies did mutually

strengthen them both against several enemies or rather they are joined together as Hippocrates his twins, to stand and fall, to grow and decay, to flourish and wither, to live and die together."

After all, it is not unlikely, that one of the principal motives which induced Mr. Davenport to urge his companions to plant themselves in an unsubdued part of the wilderness, was an inclination to have their own way. They wished to frame their church and commonwealth on a model more thoroughly scriptural than could be found anywhere else. Mr. Davenport, as well as John Robinson, had observed, that reformation is seldom carried further in any place than where the first reformers left the work. Mr. Davenport remarked, that "as easily might the ark have been removed from the mountains o Ararat, where it first grounded, as a people get any ground in reformation after and beyond the first remove of the reformers." With such sentiments, it was natural, that he should wish to have the religious and civil affairs of his colony, from the outset, fashioned in the strictest conformity with the rules of the Bible. This could be best effected where every thing was to be begun anew.

This band of pilgrims reached Quinipiac, the future New Haven, on the fourteenth of April, 1638. Mr. Davenport was then forty-one years of age. The next day is the Sabbath. A drum beats in the rude and hasty encampment. The armed men, with their wives and children, gather at this signal under a branching oak. They meet to consecrate to God a new region reclaimed from heathen darkness. For the first time the aisles of that forest-temple resounded with the praises of the Most High. Here are men who were nurtured in the halls of Oxford and Cambridge; and women used to all the elegant refinements of the British metropolis. They are gathered under the oaken tree. Why are they here? Why this change in their condition? Why are they here, far from the haunts of civilization, confronting privation and suffering in every form? It is for conscience, to keep that sacred thing unspotted:-it is for posterity for eternity for God! Surely angels rejoiced, while Infinite Love smiled upon the scene. Mr. Davenport preached from the text, Matthew 4: 1,-" Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil : "—and his subject was, "the temptations of the wilderness." Every place, however

sequestered, has its trials. In every place, we have need to watch and pray.

The colonists were in no rash haste to frame their institutions. During the fourteen months in which they were laboriously erecting their dwellings, and clearing their lands, they were much occupied in social prayer and conference, with reference to the important undertaking before them. During this period Mr. Davenport prepared his "Discourse about civil government in a New Plantation whose Design is Religion." This treatise was published many years after, in 1673. It is a vindication of the practice, long maintained by our fathers, of restricting the rights of voting, and of holding office, to such as are members of the Church.

When ripe for action, "all the free planters assembled on the fourth of June, 1639, in a barn, for the purpose of organizing a civil government. There was a sermon by Mr. Davenport from Proverbs 9: 1,-"Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars." After much other discourse by different individuals, they formed a literal "social contract," and erected themselves into a body politic by a mutual compact. It was then unanimously agreed to choose twelve men to lay the VOL. II. 24

foundation of the church. These twelve men were empowered to select seven out of their own number to constitute the new church. This number may have been suggested as an allusion to the seven pillars of Wisdom's house: but more probably it was adopted because our fathers considered seven to be the smallest number which could issue a case of discipline according to the directions of our Saviour in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew. Of this particular seven, Mr. Davenport was one. He, with the six, entered into a covenant, and constituted the first church in New Haven on the twenty-second of August, 1639. Being thus gathered, they proceeded to admit others into their fellowship.

Shortly after the church was organized, Mr. Davenport was chosen pastor. He was ordained by the hands of two or three of the lay-brethren, though Mr. Hooker and Mr. Stone, the reverend pastors of the church in Hartford, were present, and one of them made the prayer. This ceremony was used, notwithstanding the validity of Mr. Davenport's ordination in the Church of England was not doubted. But it was held, that his earlier ordination could not constitute him a minister of this new church,