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United First Parish Church |
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History of United First Parish Church
The First Covenant of this church
(signed September 16, 1639)
"We poor unworthy creatures, who have sometimes lived without Christ and without God in the world, and so have deserved
rather fellowship with the devil and his angels, than with God and his Saints, being called of God out of this world to the
fellowship of Christ by the Ministry of the Gospel, and our hearts made willing to join together in Church Fellowship, so
by the help and strength of Christ, renounce the devil, the wicked world, a sinful flesh with all the remnants of
Anti-Christian pollution, wherein sometimes we have walked, and all our former evil ways, and do give up ourselves, first
to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and offer up our proffered subjection to our Lord Jesus Christ as the only Priest,
Prophet and King of his Church, beseeching him in his rich grace and free mercy to accept us for his people in the blood of his Covenant,
and we give up ourselves also one to another by the will of God, promising in the name and power of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
worketh in us both to will and to do according to his good pleasure, to worship the Lord in Spirit and Truth and to walk in
brotherly love and the duties thereof according to the will of the Gospel, to the edification of the body and of each member
therein, and to be guided by all things according to God's revealed will, seeking to advance the Glory of Jesus Christ, our
head, both in Church and Motherly Communion, thro' the assistance of his Holy Spirit which he hath promised to his Church,
and we do manifest our joint Consent herein this day in presence of this assembly, by this our present public profession and by
giving to one another the right hand of fe1lowship.
| Wm Tompson, Pastor | John Dassett |
| Henry Flynt, Teacher | William Potter |
| George Rose | Martin Saunders |
| Stephen Kinsley, Elder | Gregory Belcher |
"The original covenant of the first church has something of a history. This covenant of faith was published 1739, in the appendix of the Rev. Mr. Hancock's valuable century sermons of the flrst church. In 1811, Hancock's address had become so rare and scarce, tlint Mr. John Adains desired the Rev. Mr. Whitney, (then its pastor,) to have it republished, who consented. But in having it reprinted, he being a strong advocate of liberal theology, had this covenant left out, for the reason that it was too strongly imbued with the dogmas of Calvin. And it is a little singular, too, that the Rev. Mr. Lunt, a candid and tborough a historian as he was, should have omitted this religious compact in his admirable history of the first church." (Source)