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the principal gates of the City of London; to King James the First, who soon after he came to the throne of England published a book called the Book of Sports, which gave toleration for all common practices on the Lord's day after divine service, which the King obliged all ministers to read on the Sabbath in their churches, and those who refused were summoned before the High Commission Court and suspended from their offices; to God's vengeance on the people for the shameful profanation of the holy Sabbath, in the dreadful Fire of London.
The war referred to was the French war of the period.
Twelve pounds were raised this year for the necessary expenses of the Precinct.
1745
On Feb. 25, 1745,
John Backer was found dead in the woods, aged 90 years. He was probably a stranger.
In 1745 the Rev. Mr. Cooke, as one of the Association of Ministers of this and the neighboring towns—viz.
Hancock of Lexington, Williams of Weston, Cotton of Newton, Appleton of Cambridge, Williams of Waltham, Storer of Watertown, Turell of Medford, Bowes of Bedford, and Cooke of Cambridge—voted it not advisable, ‘under the present situation of things, that the Rev. Mr. Appleton should invite the Rev. George Whitefield to preach in Cambridge; and they accordingly declared, each of them for themselves respectively, that they would not invite the said gentleman into their pulpits.’
See Paige, 294, &c.
1746
The town voted that there be paid out of the town treasury thirty pounds, old tenor, to help defray the charge of building a new school-house in the
Northwest Precinct.
1747
In the middle of the year 1747
Mr. Cooke in his list of baptisms records: ‘By reason of sore sickness and distress in my family, not being immediately entered, some omissions, here supposed—suppose 10.’
1748
In this year
Mr. Cooke preached the ordination sermon of
Rev. Cotton Brown, at
Brookline, which was published, and a copy of which is preserved in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
The title-page is as follows:
‘The solemn Charge given to Ministers, to commit the Truths and Doctrines of the Gospel to faithful and able Men.—Considered in a Sermon Preached at the Ordination of the Reverend Mr. Cotton Brown, in the Pastoral Care of the Church of Christ in Brookline, October 26, 1748.—By Samuel Cooke, A. M., Pastor of the Second Church in Cambridge.—2 Tim. i. 13.
Hold fast the Form of sound Words, which thou hast heard of me, in Faith and Love.
1 Tim. VI. 3, 4.
If any Man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome ’
