Though the partners were thus plunged into heavy engagements and unjust debts, the Lord prospered their trading, and they made large returns yearly, and would soon have freed themselves if they had been fairly dealt with otherwise. The settlers, too, began to grow in prosperity, through the influx of many people to the country, especially to the Bay of Massachusetts. Thereby corn and cattle rose to a high price, and many were enriched, and commodities grew plentiful. But in other regards this benefit turned to their harm, and this accession of strength to weakness. For as their stocks increased and became more saleable, there was no longer any holding them together; they must of necessity obtain bigger holdings, otherwise they could not keep their cattle; and having oxen they must have land for ploughing. So in time no one thought he could live unless he had cattle and a great deal of land to keep them, all striving to increase their stocks. By this means they were quickly scattered all over the Bay, and the town in which they had lived compactly until now was left very thinly peopled, and in a short time almost desolate. If this had been all the ill that resulted, it would have been small in comparison with the rest; but the church also was disunited, and those who had lived so long together in Christian and comfortable fellowship, must now part and suffer many divisions. First, those who lived on their lots on the other side of the Bay, called Duxbury, owing to the trouble of bringing their wives and children to public worship and church-meetings here, growing to a considerable number, sued to be separated and become a distinct body. So they were allowed to separate about this time though very unwillingly. To prevent any further scattering from this place and weakening of it, it was thought best to give out some good farms in the neighbourhood to special persons who would promise to live at New Plymouth, likely to be helpful to the church and commonwealth, and so tie the lands to New Plymouth as farms for its inhabitants, so that their cattle and their ploughed land might be kept there by servants, and they retain their dwellings here. So some special lands were granted at a place called Green’s Harbour, where no allotments had been made in the former division, very well-meadowed and suitable for raising cattle. But alas! this remedy proved worse than the disease; for within a few years those who had thus got footing there, seceded from the church, partly deliberately, and partly by wearing out the rest with importunity and pleas of exigency, so that they either had to let them go or live in continual contention. Others again, thinking themselves impoverished, or for want of accommodation, broke away on one pretence or another, thinking their own imagined necessity or the example of others sufficient warrant. This I fear will be the ruin of New England,—at least of the churches of God there,—and will provoke