Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/165

LOCATION OF MEETING HOUSE 125 chosen for the meeting-house, and three or four reasons suggest themselves. It was outside the Rehoboth limits, and within the Sowams purchase, which was their own property. It was the centre of the population which was to worship at that church. The Willetts, Browns and Vialls lived across the river to the southwest at Wannamoisett, the Butterworths and others at Seekonk, and John Myles and his friends at Myles's Bridge, with other families at New Meadow Neck and east of the river, towards Kickemuit. The location of the meeting-house after Philip's War, was then the residence of Massassoit, and Popanomscut, west of the Sowams main river, was the home of Peebee. Another reason suggests itself by the fact that there was a sandy beach and plenty of water for baptisms near and south of the meeting-house, in the Sowams River. It is therefore a historic fact of great interest to the citizens of our town that the Baptist meeting-house in Barrington, the first on Massachusetts soil, was erected within our town ; and it is still further a matter of interest that the second meeting-house of the same same great founder, John Myles, stood on Tyler's Point, in Barrington. Rhode Island also, as a state, can now claim as within her borders the first two Baptist Churches of the country, that of Roger Williams at Providence, in 1636, and that of John Myles (in Barrington) at Swansea in 1663. From a careful reading of the covenant of the Baptist Church, we judge that it was a breach of ecclesiastical, rather than of civil law, that led to the expulsion of the Baptists and that the fines and banishment from the limits of Rehoboth were imposed as a preventive against any further inroads upon the membership of Mr. Newman's Church. Within the bounds of old Swansea, in Massachusetts, they selected a site for a church edifice, planted their first spiritual home, and enjoyed a peace which pastor and people had long sought for. The original covenant is a remarkable paper, toned with deep piety, and a broad and comprehensive spirit of Christian fellowship: