hesying, such topics the simple villagers
ignored. All that they felt was that there came to them more of a
quickening of the spiritual life, a fuller realization of God and things
divine, in the meeting-house than in the parish church. They were not
what pious Churchmen so much dread nowadays--Political Dissenters; how
could they be such, having no votes, and never seeing a newspaper from
one year's end to the other?

It was to the Brewsters that the village was indebted for the ministry of
the Rev. John Phillip, who married the sister of the pious and learned
Dr. Ames, Professor of the University of Franeker. Calamy tells us that
by means of Dr. Ames, Mr. Phillip had no small furtherance in his
studies, and intimate acquaintance with him increased his inclination to
the Congregational way. Archbishop Abbot, writing to Winwood, 1611,
says: 'I have written to Sir Horace Vere touching the English preacher at
the Hague. We heard what he was that preceded, and we cannot be less
cognisant what Mr. Ames is, for by a Latin printed book he hath laden the
Church and State of England with a great deal of infamous contumely, so
that if he were amongst us he would be so far from receiving preferment,
that some exemplary punishment would be his reward. His Majesty had been
advertised how this man is entertained and embraced at the Hague, and how
he is a fit person to breed up captains and soldiers there in mutiny and
faction.' One of Dr. Ames's works, which got him into trouble, was
entitled 'A Fresh Suit against Ceremonies,' a work which we may be sure
would be as distasteful to the Ritualists of our day as it was to the
Ritualists of his own. One of his works, his 'Medulla Theologiae,' I
believe, adorned the walls of the paternal study. There is, belonging to
the Wrentham Congregational Church Library, a volume of tracts,
sixty-seven in number, of six or eight pages each, printed in 1622,
forming a series of theses on theological topics, maintained by different
persons, under the presidency of Dr. Ames; and I believe a son of the
Doctor is buried in Wrentham Churchyard, as I recollect my father, on one
occasion, had an old gravestone done up and relettered, which bore
testimony to the virtues and piety and learning of an Ames. Thus if Mr.
Phillip was chased out of Old England into New England for his
Nonconformity, some of the good old Noncons remained to uphold the lamp
which was one day to cast a sacred light on all qu