451 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. offence, the court intended to proceed against him with all severity ;" and so dismissed him.. Though Mr. Chauncey was overcome in the hour of temptation ; and enforced, by the terrors and censures of his cruel oppressors, to make the above recantation, he after- wards felt the bitterness of it, and deeply bewailed his sinful compliance. Though he obtained forgiveness of God, lie never forgave himself as long as he lived. He often expressed a holy indignation against himself, as well as the superstitious innovations in the church. He was a most exemplary man, and lived a most holy life ; yet, at the time of his death, nearly forty-years after, he made the follow ing humiliatingdeclaration in his last will and testament :- " I do acknowledge myself to be a child of wrath, and sold undersin, andone who bath been polluted with innumerable transgressionsand mighty sins ; which, as far as I know and can call to remembrance, I keep still fresh before me, and desire, with mourning and self-abhorrence, still to do, as long as life shall last; and especially my so many sinful compliances with, and conformity unto, vile human inven- tions, and will-worship, and hell-bred superstitions, and other evil things patched to the service of God, with which theEnglish-mass-book, I mean the Book of Common Prayer, is so fully fraught. "+ Our author further observes, that there were very few who suffered more for noncon- formity, by fines, by jails, by necessities to abscond, and at last by an exile from his native country. At length he withdrew from these perils and tribulations and went to New England, where he arrived January 1, 1638. There he preached for some time, and with great applause, at Plymouth ; and would have been chosen pastor of the church, hadnot his peculiar,sentiments hindered his settlement. He was of opinion, " that the Lord's supper ought to be administered in the evening, and every Lord's day ; and that baptism ought only to be by dipping or plunging the whole body under water, whether in the case of children or adults."t Afterwards,, he became pastor of the church at Scituate, where he continued twelve years a zealous and faithful labourer in the vineyard of the Lord. At the time of his settlement, in his discourse to the con- gregation, reflecting upon his sinful compliance with the arbitrary and superstitious demandsof the high commission, Prynne's Cant. Dootne, p. 96,494. + Mather's Hist. of New Eng. b. iii. p. 135. Backus's Hist. of New Eng. Bap. vol. i. p, 115,145.
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