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north side of the River.”
Although these propositions were not accepted, the agitation was continued for many years, until Newton became a separate town.
Mr. Mitchell did not live long enough to witness the final catastrophe; but the church was effectually divided in his lifetime, and Rev. John Eliot, Jr., was ordained pastor of that portion which withdrew from the parent body, July 20, 1664.
A still greater trial was the open opposition of President Dunster to an ordinance which Mr. Mitchell considered important and sacred.
When Mr. Dunster became a member of Mr. Shepard's church, about 1640, he avowed his belief that the children of believers ought to be baptized, and his willingness that baptism should be administered by sprinkling.1 Afterwards, he opposed both; he withheld his own infants from baptism, and publicly denounced such baptism as “not according to the institution of Christ,” when administered to others.
It is related by Mather that, besides his public advocacy of infant baptism, Mitchell labored privately with Dunster, though he felt “embarrassed in a controversy with so considerable a person, and with one who had been his tutor, and a worthy and a godly man.”
2 His efforts to reclaim his former guide and instructor were unavailing.
Dunster became more and more violent in opposition to what he regarded as error, until he both forfeited the office of President of the College and exposed himself to the penalty of a violated law. He was indicted by the grand jury, April 2, 1655, “for disturbance of the ordinances of Christ upon the Lord's day at Cambridge, July the 30th 1654, to the dishonor of the name of Christ, his truth, and minister.”
3 It was testified
1 “As prayer, so the Lord hath given 2 sacraments. 1. Baptism, by which we have our initiation; and concerning it, I believe that only believers and their seed ought to be received into the church by that sacrament; hence profane unbelievers are not to be received into the church. And that the seed are to be received, that of Paul is clear,—else your children were unholy; hence, if holy, let them be offered to God; let children come to me. And as children, so those that come to mature age ought to be received into the church by baptism. And concerning the outward elements, something there is concerning sprinkling in the Scripture; hence not offended when it is used.” —Shepard's Ms. Confessions.
2 Magnalia, Book IV., ch. IV., † 10. To the lasting honor of Mitchell and Dunster, it should be remembered that their personal friendship continued through life. In his will, Dunster styles Mitchell and President Chauncy (his successor in the presidency), his “trusty friends and brethren,” and gave to each of them sundry books from his library. And Mather says, that “Mr. Mitchell continued such an esteem” for Mr. Dunster, “that although his removal from the government of the College, and from his dwelling-place in Cambridge, had been procured by these differences, yet when he died, he honored him with an elegy,” which “very truly points out that generous, gracious, catholic spirit, which adorned that person who wrote it.”
3 Probably Mr. Mitchell was the “minister” then engaged in administering the ordinance of baptism.
Boston. Houghton and Mifflin. 1877.
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