" The
only wonder is, when the ministers had the best places at every table, at
every feast, at every merry-making in New England, that stories of their
roistering excesses should not have come down to us as there have of the
intemperate clergy of Virginia.
The ordination services within the meeting-houses were not always decorous
and quiet scenes. In spite of the reverence which our forefathers had for
their church and their ministers, it did not prevent them from bitterly
opposing the settlement of an unwished-for clergyman over them, and many
towns were racked and divided, then as now, over the important question.
As years passed on the church members grew bold enough to dare to offer
personal and bodily opposition. At the ordination of the Rev. Peter
Thatcher in the New North Church in Boston, in 1720, there were two
parties. The members who did not wish him to be settled over the church
went into the meeting-house and made a great disorder and clamor. They
forbade the proceedings, and went into the gallery, and threw from thence
water and missiles on the friends of the clergymen who were gathered around
him at the altar. Perhaps they obtained courage for these sacrilegious acts
from the barrels of rum and the bowls of strong punch. And this was in
Puritanical Boston, in the year of the hundredth anniversary of the landing
of the Mayflower.
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