Daniels of Massachusetts Bay Colony 1636 - 2002 Thomas Shepard's Confessions - Robert Daniell Cambridge
I. Thomas Shepard - Background
II. Robert Daniell - Confession
Mr. Thomas Shepard, a Puritan minister, was educated at Emmanuel College, part of Cambridge University in England. Thomas became a lecturer at Earles Colne, Essex after his graduation. His Puritan theology and practices became known to Bishop Laud the government sponsored church and Thomas was stripped of all authority to perform the functions of a minister. Thomas was taken in by a wealthy landowner where he continued to serve his followers for a time before circumstances forced him to move north to find safe haven from church officials. Eventually, it became evident to Thomas that he must leave England if he was to avoid ongoing harassment and persecution. Thomas left for Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 where he established his church at Cambridge the following year.

Shepard's church developed from a core group made up of elders and a few people from another congregation that stayed behind when they moved on to Connecticut. Shepard required all additional church members to go through an interview process with church elders and if deemed acceptable they would be given the opportunity to give a public confession before the entire congregation. This confession was a final step in the process of becoming a member of the church.

In the earliest days of our nation's development there was little separation from church and state.

Ironically, the same was true back in England; however, in this case it was the Puritan based faiths rather than the church established by King Henry the Eighth.

To become a freemen in the colony you had to first be a member of the church.

Thomas Shepard transcribed 51 confessions as they were being given. The words written below were the ones spoken by my ancestor Robert Daniell before the congregation prior to March 14, 1639.

Robert Daniell�s Confession

"The best and choicest of my time was spent in a civil course of life, friends and others restrained [?], not questioning my estate. But yet the Lord made me see my case to be miserable and so carried many years under a spirit of bondage and fear of God�s wrath. Yet when my soul was at lowest, the Lord held forth some testimony of love, but yet I did depend upon him without assurance. And after this I had some assurance, for whenever I did delight in my pleasures, after I felt I did not. And in former times it was from fear of punishment, but now all my trouble is because I want a heart to honor God. And now the chiefest desire is that I may live to honor him, though I find myself barren and fruitless."

This generally. Particular questions asked; thus he answered.

1. How did the Lord bring you out of that estate of security into a state of fear and spirit of bondage?

Answer. "I sinned against God after light. Others did not, and hence I the greatest of sinners. This was by attending to the word, so fearing the wrath of God. And hence I sought to God for mercy and resolution of heart against sin. I was convinced of sin against Sabbath, yet that sin against resolution overcame it again and I found my will exceeding contrary to the will of God, though I have seen more of my own enmity than before. The wrath of God I apprehended to be the casting of soul from presence of God."

2. How hath the Lord brought you out of this estate unto the Lord Jesus?

Answer. "In this estate I saw how just it was for the Lord to destroy me, yet the lord brought me to rest and rely upon his mercy." 1. Question. Did you find it hard to lie down and yield to mercy? Answer. "By seeing the equity of it for my own vileness." 2. Question. How did the Lord draw you to mercy? Answer. "Seeing his love to me, 2. seeing the freeness of his mercy. He saw some likelihood in Christ mine, yet I would seek though I did perish."

3. Question. How came you to assurance?

Answer. "By feeling a qualification, as mourning not only for wrath but because of my sins, to sin against such a God."

4. How have you walked with God and what effect have you found of mercy in this land?

Answer. "Faith hath been wrought more and Christ more revealed more savingly unto me. I fall short in that obedience that should be, which is my burden when I see how the Lord hath led me."

"Confession Sources"
Thomas Shepard's Confessions - Edited by George Selement & Bruce Woolley, p.60-61.
God's Plot Puritan Spirituality in Thomas Shepard's Cambridge - Edited by Michael Mc Giffert, p.165-166.