The Guardian of the Gathered: Covenant and Community in the Career of George Philips

By Timothy L. Wood

“Not only the Common Sign-Posts of every Town, but also some famous Orders of Knighthood in the most famous Nations of Europe, have entertained us with Traditions of a certain Champion, by the Name of St. GEORGE, dignified and distinguished,” wrote the Congregationalist minister Cotton Mather in 1702. However, Mather’s tribute was not ultimately directed at the legendary slayer of dragons; instead, the Boston minister believed he had found a greater and more worthy hero within the annals of Massachusetts’s own history. Thus, Mather sought to honor the “one George who was indeed among the first Saints of New-England! And that Excellent Man of our Land was Mr. George Philips.” [1]

George Philips served as pastor of the Puritan church at Watertown, Massachusetts, from 1630 until his death in 1644. But while Mather would have later generations believe that Philips was a stalwart defender of Puritan orthodoxy, in reality Philips’s tenure at Watertown was far more controversial. Indeed, the most puzzling aspect of Philips’s career is how easily he moved between the role of dissenter and respected authority figure. On two separate occasions during the early 1630s, Philips shocked the leaders of Massachusetts by engaging in religious dissent and staunchly criticizing the Bay colony’s government. In 1631, Philips declared Roman Catholicism to be a true form of Christianity. The following year, he attacked the Massachusetts General Court’s taxation policy. In both cases, the colonial leadership rebuked him. However, unlike his contemporaries Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, he never faced formal charges or the threat of banishment. In fact, Philips remained concerned enough about the colony’s social cohesion and the proper exercise of authority within Massachusetts Bay that, despite his own history of dissent, in 1637, he joined the prosecution against fellow dissident Anne Hutchinson. Even in death, Philips lashed out against doctrines he considered heretical. In 1645, a manuscript by Philips was posthumously published wherein the Watertown pastor attacked a number of Baptist doctrines then current in England — a debate which in many ways anticipated the coming antagonism between Puritans and Baptists in New England during the 1650s. And three generations after his death, his reputation remained so strongly intact that Mather could still lionize him as one of the larger-than-life heroes of the Bay colony.

However, the paradoxes that surround Philips’s career can be resolved. For Philips, the reality of community lived out on a day-to-day basis, rather than a body of doctrine, defined the Puritan mission in America. The Puritan theological insight that Philips found most compelling was that of the covenant, since it embodied in theory the actual human community that surrounded Philips. From that perspective, the Watertown pastor’s activities both as a leader and as a dissident can be seen as Philips upholding and defending the Christian ideal of community, as he understood it. When Puritan doctrine or colonial policy weakened the concept of the covenant, threatened the rights of the community, or undermined its cohesion, Philips consistently rose in opposition to it. Those values are evident not only in Philips’s everyday life as a pastor, but also when one examines the dispute over the place of the Catholic church in the Puritan worldview and the Watertown taxation controversy. However, when dissent itself threatened to disrupt the community, the Watertown pastor allied himself with the leadership of the colony in order to eliminate it. Thus, Philips could participate in the proceedings against Anne Hutchinson and critique the seemingly chaotic theology and church polity of the Baptists while remaining faithful to his core values.

Piecing together the life and career of George Philips is an endeavor fraught with difficulties. Unlike his contemporary, John Winthrop, Philips was not a devoted diarist and did not leave historians a detailed journal of his daily activities. Nor was Philips a prolific writer. Unlike his more famous colleagues, Roger Williams and John Cotton, who left volume after volume recording their thoughts on politics and theology, only one book by Philips survives (and even its date of composition is the subject of much controversy), alongside a mere handful of letters and sermon notes. Barring the discovery of new sources in the future, Philips seems destined to remain a shadowy figure in the history of New England, with little in the way of certainty available to scholars.

However, although he continues to be an obscure name in the history of colonial Massachusetts, the fact that Philips found himself involved in several of the major controversies of his day where he alternated between the role of dissident and champion of the established order, and often advocated positions that the majority of the ministers and magistrates in the colony found to be erroneous or unorthodox, suggests that his life and career still offer valuable insights into the larger history of early Massachusetts. [2] Thus, reconstructing the surviving remnants of Philips’s thought remains a worthwhile endeavor.

The roots of Philips’s dedication to the idea of community can be found within the concept of a covenanted church. As David A. Weir remarked, one of the most important aspects of a church covenant in colonial New England was

the “holy watch” or the guarding of souls, an activity the whole congregation engaged in rather than simply the elders and the clergy. This section of the covenant established...a foundation for mutual exhortation and admonition of one another…. [I]n the system of gathered Congregationalism church discipline was the responsibility of the entire gathered church.

Thus, Congregationalist leaders in early Massachusetts adhered to the concept of a

communal commitment to holiness that did not allow for individual privacy or secret sin. Nevertheless, those who did place themselves under “holy watch” did so voluntarily. Once they volunteered, however, it was very hard to get out from under these covenant obligations without some form of ecclesiastical censure or communal pressure. [3]

Certainly, those communal tendencies can be seen in the covenant Philips helped draft at Watertown. After their arrival in Massachusetts, Philips and his congregation signed and entered into a formal church covenant in July of 1630. As the document begins, it recounts the struggles the congregation shared in during the dangerous journey across the Atlantic.

We whose names are hereto subscribed, having through God’s mercy, escaped out of Pollutions of the World, and been taken into the society of his People...acknowledge, That his Gracious Goodness and fatherly Care towards us: and for further and more full Declaration thereof, to the present and future Ages, have undertaken (for the promoting of his Glory and the Churches Good, and the Honour of our Blessed Jesus, in our more full and free subjecting ourselves and ours, under his Gracious Government, in the Practice of, and Obedience unto all his Holy Ordinances and Orders, which he hath pleased to prescribe and impose upon us) a long and hazardous Voyage...from Old England in Europe, to New-England in America; that we may walk before him, and serve him without Fear in Holiness and Righteousness…. And being safely arrived here...we may bring forth our Intentions into Actions, and perfect our Resolutions, in the Beginnings of some Just and Meet Executions….

The future church members then vowed that

...we do all...solemnly and with all our Hearts, personally, Man by Man for our selves and ours (...even them that are not here with us this Day, or are yet unborn, That they keep the Promise unblameably and faithfully unto the coming of our Lord Jesus) promise and enter into a sure Covenant with the Lord our God, and before him with one another, by Oath and serious Protestation made, to...give ourselves wholly unto the Lord Jesus, to do him faithful Service, observing and keeping all his Statutes, Commands, and Ordinances, in all Matters concerning our Reformation; his Worship, Administrations, Ministry, and Government; and in the Carriage of our selves among our selves, and one toward another, as he hath prescribed in his Holy Word. [4]

Thus, the building of a Christian community based upon godly relationships became one of the explicitly stated goals of Philips and the other members of his congregation when they settled in Watertown.

All surviving sources suggest that Philips took that idea of community quite seriously. In April 1630, just before embarking from England to America, Philips was one of seven signers of a document known as The Humble Request. This letter to fellow Christians back in England repelled any hint of separatism that might attach itself to the Puritan migration. The letter states:

We beseech you by the mercies of the Lord Jesus to consider us as your Brethren…. And howsoever your charitie may have met with some occasion of discouragement through the misreport of our intentions, or through the disaffection, or indiscretion, of some of us...; for wee are not of those who dream of perfection in this world; yet we...esteeme it our honor, to call the Church of England, from whince we rise, our deare Mother, and cannot part from our native Country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart..., ever acknowledging that such hope and part as wee have obtained in the common salvation, we have received in her bosome…. [W]ee leave it not therefore, as loathing that milk wherewith we were nourished there, but blessing God for the parentage and education, as members of the same body shall always rejoice in her good, and...syncerely desire and indeavor the continuance and abundance of her welfare, with the inlargement of her bounds in the kingdome of Christ Jesus. [5]

Thus, even before arriving in Massachusetts, Philips concerned himself with strengthening the bonds of community between fellow Christians.

Although Philips remained hostile to outright separatism (and the second-guessing of other churches’ covenants that it implied), he continued to believe the primary arena for God’s work stood within the local congregation. Thus, throughout his career, Philips demonstrated a pronounced suspicion of outside power, whether it be civil or religious. Concerning ministerial authority within the church, Philips believed that “the manner of calling is not the Bishops ordination...that makes it not a calling, but marres the goodnesse of it, addes nothing unto it, but derogates from the purity of it.” However, Philips did believe that a vertical authority structure could coexist — albeit uneasily — with a largely congregational church polity. As Philips contended:

But the people receiving a man, sent unto them in a corrupt way, and not exercising their power in refusing him (though they doe not explicitly exercise their power in chusing)...they doe virtually and really give him all the just calling that he hath, which is a true Ministerial calling, and so all the ordinances, administered by him there, which God hath prescribed...are really Gods ordinances, and of divine authority, and validity. [6]

Just as The Humble Request had stated, fellowship existed between the Congregationalists in New England and their fellow Christians back in the Old World. But no amount of posturing by the hierarchy of the established church could camouflage the fact that divine power and authority could not be channeled through bishops and archbishops. Although power struggles over church government must not be allowed to emerge and escalate into a divisive force within the Christian community, Philips remained convinced that true ecclesiastical power was exercised at the local, congregational level.

The few remaining personal details known about Philips also suggest a man who valued community. A widower by the time he arrived in Watertown, he no doubt depended heavily upon his neighbors for emotional support and social interaction, at least until his subsequent remarriage. As an individual who often suffered from ill health, he may have been acutely aware of his own physical weakness and his dependence upon other people. Certainly, he was remembered after his death as a man who had forged close relationships with those in his congregation. Anecdotal evidence handed down by Cotton Mather indicates that many of the residents of Watertown retired to Philips’s home between church services on Sunday in order to socialize and discuss the morning’s sermon. [7]

Philips’s sense of responsibility for the well-being of his neighbors was reflected in a minor incident that occurred in 1643. That year, the General Court fined a Watertown resident named John Stowes for being in possession of Baptist literature deemed heretical by the religious leaders of the colony. Philips later recalled that “John Stowes was heretofore by the honoured Court fined for some miscarriage of his appearing to ye Court.” As the pastor of the Watertown church, Philips would have been expected to act as a character reference for Stowes, intervening when and if he felt one of his parishioners was being unjustly accused. In this case, Philips assumed the role of advocate, writing the General Court that “upon his [Stowes] earnest request I make bold to entreat thy favor for him at your hands that whatsoever was laid against him...there in the Court may be remitted him.” Philips contended that Stowes should not be punished for having unorthodox books in his possession, since he “fecht the book at my request.” However, Philips did not stop after presenting the facts of the case. Instead, he continued with an evaluation of Stowes’s character, stating that “the man hath been a member with us a long time though he be not free from human frailtie, yet I am persuaded he is free from all Anabaptistical opinions neither have I ever observed in him any carriage towards God’s ordinances but such as well becometh his place.” [8] Apparently Philips’s plea was successful; on October 17, 1643, the General Court relented and proclaimed that “John Stowes fine of 40 s[hillings] upon Mr. Philips his petition is remitted.” [9]

That commitment to the idea of community first revealed in the Watertown church covenant and later on in Philips’s intervention on behalf of Stowes is also evident in the way that he handled the larger controversies that marked his career. The earliest of those disputes occurred in 1631 and involved the consequences of Philips’s going public with his opinion that the Roman Catholic Church represented a “true church” in the theological sense—a position certain to cause an uproar in such a militantly Protestant colony. Most of what can be reconstructed about this event comes from the journal of Governor John Winthrop. Alarmed by the implications of Philips’s charitable opinion of Catholicism, Winthrop, along with Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley and Boston church elder Increase Nowell,

went to Waterton, to conferre with mr Phillips the paster and mr Browne the elder aboute an opinion which they had published: that the churches of Rome were true churches, the matter was debated before many of both Congregations, & by the approbation of all the Assembly except 3:was concluded an error. [10]

The precise contents of this meeting were either never recorded or have not survived, although Philips himself discreetly revisited the subject of Catholicism and its status as a true church later on in his career. However, following the conference at Watertown, the authorities of the Bay colony became much more interested in the case of Richard Browne, a lay elder at the Watertown church and a passionate and defiantly vocal supporter of the pro-Catholic faction. Because Browne continued to press the issue, Winthrop urged the Court of Assistants into action:

The Congregation at Waterton (whereof mr Geo: Phillipes was pastor) had chosen one Rich: Browne for their elder...who persisting in his opinion of the truthe of the Rom[ish] Churche, & maintayninge other errors withal, & being a man of a very violente spirit, the Court wrote a Lettre to the Congregation directed to the Pastor & brethren, to advise them to take into Consideration whither mr Browne were fit to be continued their elder or not. To which after some weekes, they returned answer, to this effect that if we would take the paynes to prove suche things as were objected against him, they would endeavor to redresse them.

This confrontation between the governor and the Watertown church provides the first glimpse into Philips’s determination to defend the independence of his local congregation. Philips recognized Winthrop’s political pressure as a threat to the autonomy of his church. Although the Watertown pastor valued the advice of their neighbors from Boston, he preferred to keep decision-making power localized in Watertown. In Winthrop’s view, the process of dispute resolution could move forward either by having the magistrates from Boston assert their power, or by establishing a footing of equality between both parties. As the governor recalled in his journal:

The said Congregation beinge muche devided aboute their elder, bothe partes repayered to the Governor for assistance...whereupon he went to waterton with the deputy Governor & mr Noell & the congregation being Assembled, the Governor tould them that beinge come to settle peace...they might proceed in 3:distinct respects: 1:as the magistrates (their assistance being desired) 2:as members of a neighbor Congregation: 3:upon the Answer which we received of our Lettre, which did no waye satisfy us, but the pastor mr Ph[ilips] desired us to sitt with them as members of a neighbor Congregation onely whereto the Governor...consented. [11]

Thus, when Winthrop arrived and laid out three possible models for the meeting, Philips seized the opportunity to restrict the visitors to an advisory capacity only. Although Watertown did not exist in isolation from the other communities of Massachusetts Bay, it would not become Boston’s political and intellectual vassal either. By handling that encounter as a dispute among equals, Philips safeguarded Watertown’s independence in religious and theological matters.

Of course, the actual content of Philips’s argument concerning the Catholic Church is also important in gaining a greater insight into his worldview. [12] Although Winthrop wrote much about the political maneuvering that occurred as both sides addressed the Catholicism controversy, nothing remains that would indicate why in 1631 George Philips felt that Catholics belonged to a true church. Instead, the only available glimpse into Philips’s mind comes fourteen years later in a posthumous book by the Watertown pastor entitled A Reply to a Confutation of Some Grounds for Infants Baptisme (1645). Initially written as an anti-Baptist tract, the Reply represents Philips’s most comprehensive statement on the centrality of the covenant throughout the history of the Christian church. [13] Indeed, it would be that high view of the divine covenant that, in time, led Philips into affirming Rome’s status as a true church.

At its heart, Philips’s Reply was an examination of the indispensable role of the covenant in identifying God’s authentic church in the world. By the early seventeenth century, numerous Christian sects in England (such as the Baptists) contended that spiritual regeneration on the personal level was all that was necessary to mark a group of believers as a genuine church. Philips quotes the English Baptist Thomas Lamb as stating that

as it is in natural birth, so it is in spirituall; but in naturall birth we have the beginning of our natural being among the world...; therefore wee have the beginning of our spiritual and visible being among the church, as in the affairs of life eternal by our spiritual birth: and this spiritual birth is baptisme…. therefore by the administration of true baptisme, the church is truly stated and continued in her true being. [14]

However, to Philips such doctrine undercut the idea of the church as a divinely commissioned institution that owed its existence to God rather than to the spiritual fervor of its members. As Philips contended:

First, the relation that each member possesseth from Christ the head, and each the other, is either internall (as Spirit, Faith, Love) or externall, the manifestation of these: as they are internall, they cannot be the form of an externall visible church: as they are manifested outwardly, they cannot make the churches form, because they may manifest these graces, and yet be no church, nor members of a visible and this particular church. And indeed they are neither matter nor form...but the manifestation of these maketh them to be fit matter for a church, which yet cannot be a church without the form added to the matter, and that is a covenant...by which alone every Law and Service is communicable and executed. [15]

It was his belief in the irrevocable nature of the covenant that led Philips to challenge prevailing Protestant beliefs that the Roman Catholic Church had been entirely severed from its divine origins. Although many Reformed theologians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries believed the Catholic Church to be completely apostate, utterly corrupt, and anti-Christian in nature, Philips contended that

Such a church or churches, so remain still true churches, so long as God continues his dispensation towards them, and no longer: but when God forsakes them, and gives them a bill of divorce, then they leave off to be a church, and not before, nor is it in the power of any other church or churches, to unchurch any one such church, but Christ himself must do that. [16]

Philips realized that this doctrine had profound implications for the way that Protestants viewed Catholicism. If the denunciations of Philips’s contemporaries were correct, it could only mean that “the saints in Rome” were never “graffed branches into the true Olive, but only were esteemed so to be; and the cutting, breaking off, dissolving of all those and the like, is but a declaration, and manifest discovery that they were never in covenant.” [17]

However, Philips proposed a different solution. Even if the Catholic Church had been overtaken and dominated by the Antichrist,

then there was a true church estate where he [the Antichrist] sate, and whilst he sate there, and the true measured Temple, whose courts he treads under foot; nor can there be Antichrist, unlesse there be the Temple and courts therefore where he is…. The Temple or church is the subject wherein hee must sit. The Antichristian seat is not the subject nor constitutes it, but is an accident, vitiating the subject, the removing thereof Antichristianity doth not destroy the subject, or make it cease to be, but changeth it into a better state. [18]

According to Philips, no power except God Himself could rescind a divine covenant. Several times in the Reply, Philips indicated that the termination of a covenanted church would require Christ to “come Himself” and decommission them in some “manifest act.” [19]

Philips’s defense of the covenant fell considerably short of endorsing Catholic theology or practice. Like almost all Reformed Protestants in the seventeenth century, Philips believed Catholic doctrine to be deeply flawed and the church itself to be compromised and corrupt. Instead, the Watertown pastor’s concept of a “true church” primarily addressed the potential and metaphysical form of a given ecclesiastical body, rather than its current spiritual health. As Philips remarked:

First, a calling may be lawfull, and of God, and yet corrupted many ways; as first, by unfitness of persons in regard of their qualifications: for the Pharisees sate in Moses chair…. Secondly, by the manner of entrance into the calling: so the high Priesthood administered by them who took upon them the Kingly honors, many of them also purchasing the Priesthood by money given to the heathen Kings…. Thirdly, by their ungodly and wicked acts, as in Elies sonnes, Aaron yeelded to the people to make a Calfe, and kept a festivall day: yet these things did not nullifie the calling of the Priesthood, nor did their administrations prove null thereby, and invalid. [20]

The covenant constituted a charter that brought a true church into existence, but it could offer no guarantee concerning that church’s future. Philips drew a careful distinction between a church’s form and matter. The visible life and ministry of the church represented the latter, while Philips conceptualized “form” as the divine ideal that undergirded an earthly reality. Thus, faith, sound doctrine, and good works were the “matter” that ought to be poured into the abstract “form” of the church. But even if the church’s membership failed to be spiritually fruitful and to provide that necessary matter, the form still existed, since it emanated from the mind of God. Consequently, an authentically covenanted church retained the potential for redemption and rehabilitation. The empty vessel might still be filled. Even fallen churches might rise again to fulfill their divine commission. For instance, while discussing the corruptions that had intruded into the Church of England, Philips argued:

As it pleased God more fully to cleer up the light, and caused his truth to prevail, so as many thousands were redeemed...; nor was the church estate altered essentially all this time, nor are these first fruits unto God, new constituted churches, but members of some churches, clearing themselves from corruption, and by reformation recovering themselves out of a desperate diseased condition, into a more healthful and sound estate. [21]

Although not all true churches bore the same spiritual fruit, through the covenant God had granted to each of them the authentic form of His church. And wherever that form existed, so did the potential for restoration and renewal.

Ultimately, Philips believed that no human being or earthly institution had the power to undermine the foundation of a true church established by God. In fact, he even reserved judgment on the Catholic Church by refusing to rule out the possibility that its original covenant was still intact, rather than validate the schismatic tendencies of those who, in his mind, seemed to downplay the importance of the covenant. By affirming the immutable power of the covenant, Philips once again demonstrated his commitment to the idea of a cohesive Christian community chartered directly by God.

In 1632, the second major controversy of Philips’s career emerged when the Watertown pastor once again confronted an issue that pitted local autonomy against the power of the colonial government. That year, the Court of Assistants declared that “there should be three score pounds levied out of the sevall plantacons within the lymitts of this patent towards the making of a pallysadoe [palisade] about the newe towne [Newtown].” [22] Again, such an intrusion into the affairs of the community offended Philips’s sense of local autonomy. In February, 1632, Winthrop reported that “the pastor & elder [of Watertown]...assembled the people and delivered their opinions that it was not safe to paye monyes after that sorte for feare of bringinge themselves & posteryty into bondage.” Winthrop’s response was swift. The governor recalled that after “being come before the Governor and Councill, after much debate, they [Philips, Browne, and their supporters] acknowledged their fault confessing freely that they were in an error, & made a retraction & submission under their handes & were enjoyned to reade it in the Assembly the next Lordes day.” Winthrop later explained the source of the Watertown faction’s misgivings:

The gronde of their error was, for that they tooke this Government to be no other but as of a maior & Aldermen, who have not power to make lawes or rayse taxations withoute the people: but understanding that this Government was rather in the nature of a Parliament, & that no assistant could be chosen but by the freemen, who had power likewise to remove the Assistants & putt in others, & therefore at every general Court (which was to be helde once every yeare) they had free liberty to confer & proponde any thing concerning the same, & to declare their grievances with out being subject to Question. [23]

Although Philips eventually backed down, he and his supporters had raised an important issue. As Edmund S. Morgan explained:

If Phillips and Brown thought the government of Massachusetts was merely that of an English borough, they did well to protest, for the mayor and aldermen who governed most English boroughs were self-perpetuating corporations, in which the people usually had no share. Aldermen were elected by other aldermen whenever a death occurred in their own ranks. They also chose the mayor, usually for a one-year term, but they themselves held office for life. These petty oligarchies did not usually have the power to tax, but otherwise they enjoyed an almost absolute power within their boroughs. [24]

However, Winthrop argued that the government of Massachusetts had evolved into a form similar to the English Parliament, where taxes were levied through the consent of elected representatives. Those reassurances must have been enough to convince Philips that the rights of the community were still to be protected under the government of Massachusetts. Despite Philips’s eventual retreat on the issue, many scholars believe his complaint was not in vain. Quickly thereafter, the Watertown taxation protest served as an impetus for further political reform in the Bay colony. As Roger Thompson has contended:

Although [Watertown’s] stand against the Newtown levy proved...faulty..., nonetheless, their objections — along with the growth of population and settlements due to the second surge of immigration — did have long term constitutional effects…. By 1634 the freemen, or male church members, of established towns could elect deputies to represent them at general court meetings, and local business was devolved to the individual towns. [25]

Thus, Philips once again championed the rights of the community against intrusive outside powers.

Although Philips’s commitment to the community and his desire to see it free of unreasonable outside control often cast him as the dissenter, he was more than willing to ally himself with the colony’s leadership when he felt a genuine threat existed. Such was the case when the Anne Hutchinson maelstrom broke loose in 1636-1637, allowing Philips to play a minor role in what would be the third known controversy of his career. Hutchinson, an influential Boston midwife and unofficial Bible teacher, had run afoul of the colony’s clergy in a couple of respects. First, she suggested that only the Boston minister John Cotton and her brother-in-law John Wheelwright truly taught a covenant of grace. The other ministers of the colony were branded as apostles of a covenant of works, a stinging insult to Calvinists who believed that God’s grace alone made salvation possible. Secondly, Hutchinson displayed a predilection for “immediate revelations” that most Massachusetts ministers found disturbing. In fact, at her trial, she claimed that God spoke to her by “the voice of his own spirit to my soul,” in pointing out the errors of the Bay colony’s churches and promising to deliver her out of the clutches of colonial authorities. As historian Michael P. Winship explained:

...Hutchinson did not dig a pit for herself simply because she prophesied from scripture verses. The legitimacy of revelations about the future, however, was contested in puritan circles, with their acceptability at best being dependent on who had them, what context they had them in, and whose interests they served. Ministers always cited scripture verses while warning their audiences of God’s impending wrath, but Hutchinson’s judges took for granted that scripture verses could not possibly be correctly interpreted to mean that someone like Hutchinson was under divine protection and that God would destroy them…. 

Moreover, Hutchinson made her case even worse by claiming her revelations were immediate…. It was via scripture that Hutchinson seems to have experienced her revelations. But “immediate” could mean without the medium of scriptures altogether…. It could signal the end of the Bible as the foundational source of religious truth…. It could also signal the end of all moral restraint, as well as for ministers or authorities of any kind, as people did whatever their divine voices told them to do. [26]

Although Philips only played a very small role in Hutchinson’s prosecution, he was called upon to offer a brief testimony against her. Thus, during her civil trial in November, 1637, Philips stated that

[f]or my own part I have had little to do in these things only at the time I was there and yet not being privy to the ground of that which our brother Peters hath mentioned but they procuring me to go along with them telling me that they were to deal with her; at first she was unwilling to answer but at length she said there was a great deal of difference between Mr. Cotton and we. Upon this Mr. Cotton did say that he could have wished that she had not put that in. Being asked of particulars she did instance in Mr. Shephard that he did not preach a covenant of grace clearly, and she instanced our brother Weld. Then I asked her of myself (being she spake rashly of them all) because she never heard me at all. She likewise said that we were not able ministers of the new testament and her reason was because we were not sealed. [27]

Although this exchange offers only vague hints about Philips’s inner thoughts and motivations, its tone is consistent with what is known about the Watertown pastor. First of all, it reaffirms Philips’s willingness to work alongside his ministerial colleagues and cooperate with colonial authorities. Even though the Catholicism dispute and the taxation controversy placed Philips in the role of dissident, it was never a role he relished for its own sake. In fact, throughout both of those episodes, he was careful to keep the lines of communication with his adversaries open, and in both cases he made considerable concessions to his opponents’ position in order to bring the disputes to resolution. For Philips, effective ministry demanded that he balance the rights of his own church and community with a sense of charity and fellowship with Christians outside of his own congregation.

Secondly, Philips’s comments at Hutchinson’s trial highlight his persistent localism. Certainly, on the doctrinal level Philips would have been disturbed by the specter of a religious movement that threatened to replace the hermeneutic authority of the local church with spontaneous and individual revelation. However, Philips also went out of his way to gauge the actual threat to his own community. Although he testified that he heard Hutchinson say that “there was a great deal of difference between Mr. Cotton and we” and observed that she seemed to be drawing a rash conclusion about the quality of the colony’s clergy, the Watertown minister took the next step and “asked her of myself.” [28] With Philips, the heart of the issue always lay within his own church. By inquiring about how Hutchinson perceived him and his ministry, Philips made the controversy real and relevant to his role as pastor at Watertown. If Hutchinson were in fact a disruptive force in the colony, Philips could know with certainty that Watertown would be affected also. If Hutchinson had issued a blanket condemnation of all the ministers in the colony (save Cotton and Wheelwright), then Philips now understood that his work at Watertown stood specifically condemned in her sight as well. Thus, within the context of his own worldview, participation in the prosecution against Hutchinson could be justified. Although he had often engaged in dissent himself, he felt no special kinship with dissenters. Rather, he sought merely to protect the community he ministered to, whether that required challenging authority or cooperating with it.

Finally, in the last controversy of his career, Philips turned his attention to an up-and-coming religious movement whose doctrine posed a direct threat to the covenant theology so treasured by the Watertown pastor and his Puritan colleagues — the Baptists. Certainly, the possibility that other Christian groups and sects might make inroads into Massachusetts was a cause of deep concern for Congregationalist ministers such as Philips. Such splintering of Watertown’s religious unity would have a corrosive effect on the community Philips so treasured. Thus, one of the most significant controversies that Philips became involved with was the Congregationalist effort to discredit Baptists, whose influence in colonial New England was steadily growing and would culminate in the resignation of Henry Dunster as the president of Harvard College in 1654, after his conversion to Baptist principles.

Once again, the only surviving document to offer historians a glimpse of Philips’s positions on these issues is the 1645 book, published a year after Philips’s death, entitled A Reply to a Confutation of Some Grounds for Infants Baptism. Philips was drawn into this war of words by a seemingly innocuous encounter with Nathaniel Biscoe, a local resident with pro-Baptist leanings. Biscoe claimed that he had questions about the Puritan doctrine of infant baptism and their theory on the constitution of the church, and was hoping that Philips might offer him some guidance. Philips, “judging he did intend no more then he pretended (a private conference about those particulars for further light, being not well resolved on either side),” agreed to counsel Biscoe on the subject. During their conference, Biscoe requested that Philips might “pen down those arguments that had passed between us on my part.” Pleased by Biscoe’s interest, Philips jotted down some thoughts on the subject. Somehow, the notes from that meeting were later passed from Biscoe to Thomas Lamb, a prominent English Baptist.

In 1643, Lamb utilized Biscoe’s notes by publishing a book directly attacking Philips’s position on the subject of baptism. [29] In his response to Philips, Lamb reiterated the Baptist critique of infant baptism, reminding the Watertown pastor that, according to Scripture, only those who have received the saving grace of God should go on to receive baptism. As Lamb remarked:

because Baptisme being an action of Religion to be exercised by the ministry of men, it is required that they administer the same upon believers, which if they appeare, so they are to judge, and who can judge otherwise but by appearance, it being Gods Prerogative to search the heart; but when there is no externall manifestation appearing from the subject, then if Baptisme be administered, it is meer humane invention because there is no authority of God for such an Administration: now, it is the Authority or command of God which gives a being to every administration in Religion; and whatsoever hath not a being from God cannot be called his Ordinance; hereupon it followeth that whensoever Baptisme is administered upon such a subject as maketh no externall manifestation of faith, this Baptisme hath no being from God, but is a humane device. [30]

Since young children could not testify to having experienced salvation, it would be improper to confer the rite of baptism upon them.

Needless to say, Philips was stunned to find himself targeted in print by a stranger who lived thousands of miles away. As Philips later remarked:

it put me into kinde of wonderment, to see my name put forth in print, and as Author of a Treatise, who never writ any such Treatise, nor ever desired or intended the publication of any Discourse upon that, or any other subject. [31]

However, Philips felt bound to formally and publicly respond to Lamb. As he prepared the Reply, Philips focused on two points of Baptist doctrine that he found particularly troublesome. First, the Watertown minister sought to refute the Baptist position that infant baptism was an institution of human, rather than divine, origin. For Philips and many other Congregationalist leaders, infant baptism was a sign of the continuity of God’s grace from generation to generation, analogous to the practice of circumcision in ancient Israel. As Philips expressed it in the Reply, the baptism of newborn children represented “the continuance of the dispensation of Gods offer of righteousness with which their fathers first closed.” [32]

However, Philips’s biggest concern with Baptist theology was the way in which he believed it diminished the concept of the covenant. By embracing the doctrine that “by the administration of true baptisme, the church is...truly stated and constituted in her true being,” Lamb and his followers implied that no divine commission was necessary for a church to be legitimate. Rather, the Baptists contended that the “covenant which makes a Church now, is Gods admitting men to be baptized, making profession of faith in Christ.” [33] On the other hand, for the Watertown pastor, the covenant was the central feature of the visible church and indispensable to their identity as the body of Christ. As he put it in the Reply:

though by faith professed a man is visibly united to Christ, and may be so acknowledged; yet this doth not unite him or make him a member of this or that particular church, but there must be something whereby he may be united to this or that church, and make him a member thereof...; baptisme does not so make him...; nor can they be any other things then mutuall agreement, or covenant acted, as we know it to be certain in all consociations, a mutuall covenant is the bond and form of them, as in marriage, common-wealths...and so of other societies and bodies incorporate: so also in this mysticall body of Christ, a church visible being an Ecclesiastical body politike, consisting of many members consociated, it must needs be by covenant acted mutually. [34]

Philips further contended that “baptisme is not, the covenant, but [a] sign...and seal...of the covenant.” [35] By denying infant baptism, Lamb denied that God extended His grace to communities of His chosen people across the generations.

Because Philips believed that the defining trait of a true visible church was its covenant with God, he felt that it was important to emphasize the permanent nature of such covenants. Since the Baptists believed that any church that featured godly preaching and the sacraments was a true church, Philips reminded them that if no preexisting covenant with God existed, then neither preaching nor the administration of communion or baptism could transform that assembly into a church in the eyes of God. As Philips argued, the sacraments

are necessary for her [the church’s] well-being, not her being. And if thee should neglect the administration of the Gospel, and administer the contrary, yet she should be a church still by her first covenant, till God cast her off, which without question in time hee will doe, though she doe but neglect his. [36]

Worship, preaching, baptism, and communion were vital to the health of a church, but they must not be mistaken for a divine commission. In fact, in the absence of a covenant, those same ecclesiastical activities were rendered powerless and ineffectual. The activities of a given church were sanctified by its initial covenant. Consequently, if “any company set up preaching, and administer the sacraments..., that will not make a church, [and] therefore they are not Gods ordinances.” [37] As Philips explained:

a Church becomes a Church, or a company of men and women become a Church, not by usurping the things of God of themselves, nor by imitating others in their Church practices..., but by Gods dispensation, and that performed by these two acts: First, on Gods part, sending the word of his grace, offering it unto a people, thereby opening their eyes, and turning them from darknesse to light, and taketh hold of them by some effect of his power; so that he turns them from Idols to God: Secondly, from that act he produceth another, by that effect of his power, whereby such people takes hold on Gods offer, and taking him and his Christ to be theirs, and submitting themselves up together in joynt and publike visible profession, according to his laws and ordinances. [38]

Only when performed within the context of the covenant did divine ordinances such as baptism and communion have any meaning.

Conclusion

Comprehending Philips’s idealistic view of the covenant is key to understanding his life and ministry. In summarizing the life and career of George Philips, Cotton Mather heralded him as a man “made Wise unto salvation” and “a man of God, throughly furnished unto all good Works.” [39] Indeed, when one reflects on episodes in the Watertown pastor’s career when he assisted in the prosecution of Anne Hutchinson and joined in the polemical battle against the Baptists, it is easy to paint him as a champion of the powers-that-be in early Massachusetts. However, during his own lifetime, Philips was not always a reliable ally of those who wielded religious and political authority in the Bay colony. His remarks defending the Roman Catholic Church as a true church and challenging the right of the colonial government to levy taxes on Watertown marked him as an individual willing to engage in dissent when certain principles were at stake.

In Philips’s eyes, that central principle was an all-encompassing emphasis on the divine covenant. Those holy contracts between God and His people served as the foundation for the many godly communities that Puritans sought to build in the New World. Throughout his life, Philips made little distinction between theory and practice when it came to the concept of the covenant. For the Watertown minister, the everyday experience of life in a New England village was both an embodiment of the covenant and a testimony to its importance. The theology of the covenant was inseparable from its human dimensions. Consequently, Philips’s activities both as a supporter of the colony’s leadership and as a dissident can be understood as upholding and defending his vision of the Christian community. Whenever Puritan doctrine or colonial policy weakened the concept of the covenant, threatened the rights of the community, or undermined its cohesion, Philips stood in opposition to it. In such cases, Philips presented the radical and provocative idea to his fellow settlers that they should not undervalue God’s covenant even with the apostate Church of Rome because that same covenant served as the anchor of their society as well. He also challenged the right of the central government to levy taxes on communities such as Watertown because those individual communities were the arenas in which the covenant played out in everyday life, and therefore their rights and independence must be defended.

On the other hand, the authorities of the Bay colony often took positions that Philips could easily support. The potential for Anne Hutchinson and her followers to fragment these covenanted communities was too great for Philips to ignore, so he assisted in her prosecution without betraying his ideals. In much the same way, Baptists advocated a church polity that diminished the importance of the covenant, so Philips once again closed ranks with his fellow Puritans in waging theological war against Baptist doctrine. For Philips, whether he found himself as an ally or an opponent of the traditional Puritans who were in power was a trivial matter — even beside the point. Ultimately, only the covenant — and the people whom it cemented together before God—truly mattered.

Notes

1. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana: or, the Ecclesiastical History of New-England (London: Thomas Parkhurst, 1702), 3:82.
2. For more on Philips as a Puritan dissenter, see Roger Thompson, Divided We Stand: Watertown, Massachusetts, 1630-1680 (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 72-73; Timothy L. Wood, Agents of Wrath, Sowers of Discord: Authority and Dissent in Puritan Massachusetts, 1630-1655 (New York: Routledge, 2006).
3. David A. Weir, Early New England: A Covenanted Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 160-61.
4. Mather, Magnalia, 3:83.
5. John Winthrop, Winthrop Papers, 1623-1630 (Boston: The Plimpton Press, 1931), 2:231-33.
6. George Philips, A Reply to a Confutation of Some Grounds for Infants Baptisme: as Also Concerning the Form of a Church, Put Forth Against Mee By One Thomas Lamb (London: Matthew Simmons, 1645), 153-54.
7. Mather, Magnalia, 3:82, 84. Mather reports that Philips “laboured under many Bodily Infirmities: But was especially liable unto the Cholick.”
8. John C. Phillips, ed., “Phillips Family Genealogy and Notes” (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, photocopies), 11-12. Roger Thompson suggested that Stowes’s later relocation to Rhode Island indicated that (at least in this case), Philips was a poor judge of character. Thompson, Divided We Stand, 222.
9. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (Boston: The Press of William White, 1853), 2:52.
10. Winthrop, Journal, 54.
11. Ibid., 60-61.
12. For a more in-depth look at Philips’s theology regarding the Roman Catholic Church, see Timothy L. Wood, “‘A Church Still by Her First Covenant’: George Philips and a Puritan View of Roman Catholicism,” The New England Quarterly 72 (March 1999): 28-41.
13. It seems likely that Philips participated intermittently in this particular controversy from about 1631 until shortly before his death in 1644. However, reconstructing the sequence of events in between has proven to be a vexing task and raises several important questions. The first is factual in nature. Since the Reply was published in 1645, and Philips died in 1644, when was the book actually written? The remaining questions then follow closely: Since both documents took up the question of the nature of the Catholic Church, what exactly is the relationship between the “published opinion” of 1631 and the Reply? Was the Reply essentially a final draft of the 1631 manuscript, reworked and expanded in order to address the controversy with Lamb and the Baptists? Was the Reply an entirely separate document that nevertheless presented the same rationale for Catholicism’s legitimacy as its 1631 predecessor? Or were they two completely unrelated documents in which Philips arrived at a similar conclusion for entirely different reasons? Here is what we know with certainty: 1) In 1631, Winthrop made two trips to Watertown to challenge a “published opinion” issued by Philips and elder Richard Browne that Roman Catholic churches were true churches. Browne never recanted, although it is implied that Philips may have backed down. Their reasoning for this position in 1631 remains unknown. 2) In 1645, a year after his death, Philips’s book A Reply to a Confutation of Some Grounds for Infants Baptisme was published. In those pages, Philips offers an in-depth explanation of why God’s covenant with the Roman Catholic Church remains valid. 3) According to the Reply, the chain of events that led Philips to write the book was set in motion when Nathaniel Biscoe arrived in Watertown and questioned Philips on the subject of infant baptism. Biscoe does not begin to appear in the colonial records until the early 1640s (a fire on Biscoe’s property is mentioned in a 1642 entry in Winthrop’s journal, and his 46-acre farm is listed in the Watertown Records in a land inventory conducted between 1643 and 1644). Thus both Philip F. Gura and Roger Thompson argue that the Reply was most likely written in 1643-1644. Thomas Shepard, the influential minister of Newtown (later Cambridge), composed a preface that was published with Philips’s Reply in 1645. In his preface, Shepard praised Philips’s character, lauding him for his “learning, godliness, and peaceablenesse of disposition.” Shepard then remarked that “a sober strong defence of the baptism of Infants, may be very profitable & useful against an unprofitable questioning of it now” before launching into his own brief attack on Baptist doctrine. However, the Newtown minister never commented on Philips’s theory on Roman Catholicism. On the one hand, Shepard’s endorsement of Philips’s Reply may be seen as an indication that the Watertown pastor had moved away from the “heretical” thinking that had landed him in hot water with Winthrop in 1631, and had instead adopted a new line of thinking that earned him Shepard’s seal of approval. On the other hand, if Philips’s views on Catholicism remained largely unchanged between 1631 and his death, this episode reveals an intriguing chasm between the way theological orthodoxy was viewed in Massachusetts between educated laity (such as Winthrop) and the clergy (such as Shepard). To Winthrop, any conclusion which seemed to vindicate the Catholic Church might have seemed to be irretrievably at loggerheads with Protestant doctrine, while Shepard recognized Philips’s thought was in line with that of other thinkers within the Church of England and served a logical purpose. This would not be the first time such a division had revealed itself—during the Antinomian controversy, Winthrop composed a theological treatise which Shepard urged him not to publish due to its theological errors. Ultimately, when working with subjects such as George Philips, historians may have to accept the reality that the available facts are insufficient to retire alternate explanations of his significance. This will require a certain humility on the part of scholars who must then draw their larger conclusions around a range of possible interpretations. See Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 289; Philip F. Gura, “A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory”: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620-1660 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), 110-111; Thompson, Divided We Stand, 69-73; Philips, Reply; Watertown Records (Watertown, Massachusetts: Fred G. Barker, 1894), 1:46, 5:i–ii; Winthrop, Journal, 54, 60-61, 421; Wood, New England Quarterly, 28-41.
14. Philips, Reply, 76.
15. Ibid., 75.
16. Ibid., 143.
17. Ibid., 110.
18. Ibid., 144-45. For more on the complex ways in which Protestants viewed the Roman Catholic church during this period, see Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
19. Philips, Reply, 143-45. One of Philips’s failures is that he does not address in any depth how one might go about identifying a fallen church—or even if any such institutions actually exist. Rather, his main concern is to encourage his readers to hold a higher view of the covenant and to guard against the idea that church covenants could be easily overturned by the actions of human beings.
20. Ibid., 142.
21. Ibid., 147.
22. Massachusetts Bay Records, 1:92-93.
23. Winthrop, 63.
24. Edmund S. Morgan, The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop (Longman: New York, 1999), 95-97.
25. Thompson, Divided We Stand, 41-42.
26. David D. Hall, ed. The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638 (Durham, C.: Duke University Press, 1990), 337; Michael P. Winship, The Times and Trials of Anne Hutchinson: Puritans Divided (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 112.
27. Hall, The Antinomian Controversy, 321-22.
28. Ibid.
29. Philips, Reply, 2; Thomas Lamb, A Confutation of Infants Baptisme, or an Answer to a Treatise Written by Georg Phillips of Wattertowne in New England (1643).
30. Ibid., 7.
31. Philips, Reply, 1.
32. Ibid., 9.
33. Ibid., 20, 76.
34. Ibid., 107.
35. Ibid., 20.
36. Ibid., 87.
37. Ibid., 144.
38. Ibid., 142-43.
39. Mather, Magnalia, 3:84.