"The church had ever in this place required of its members guilty of unlawful cohabitation before marriage, a public confession of that crime, before the whole congregation. The offending female stood in the broad aisle beside the partner of her guilt. If they had been married, the declaration of the man was silently assented to by the woman. This had always been a delicate and difficult subject for church discipline. The public confession, if it operated as a corrective, likewise produced merriment with the profane. I have seen no instance of a public confession of this sort until the ministry of Mr. Dexter (1724-55) and then they were extremely rare. In 1781, the church gave the confessing parties the privilege of making a private confession to the church, in the room of a public confession. In Mr. Haven's ministry, (1756-1803) the number of cases of unlawful cohabitation, increased to an alarming degree. For twenty-five years before 1781 twenty-five cases had been publicly acknowledged before the congregation, and fourteen cases within the last ten years." It will be noticed in the above extract that the writer says he had "seen no instance of a public confession of this sort" prior to 1724, and that until after 1755 "they were extremely rare." In the case of the Braintree records, also, it will be remembered there was but one case of public confession recorded prior to 1723, and that solitary case occurred in 1683. The Record Commissioners of the city of Boston in their sixth report (Document 114--1880) printed the Rev. John Eliot's record of church members of Roxbury, which covers the period from the gathering of the church in 1632 to the year 1689, and includes notes of many cases of discipline. Among these I find the following, the earliest of its kind:-- "1678. Month 4 day 16. Hanna Hopkins was censured in the Church with admonition for fornication with her husband before thei were maryed and for flying away from justice, unto Road Iland." (p. 93.) During the next eighteen years I find in these records only seven entries of other cases generally similar in character to the above, though the Roxbury records contain a number of entries descriptive of interesting cases of church discipline, besides many memoranda of "strange providences of God" and "dreadful examples of Gods judgment." It would seem, however, that the instances of church discipline publicly administered on the ground of sexual immorality were infrequent in Roxbury, as in Dedham and Braintree, prior to the year 1725. As will presently be seen, a change either in morals or in discipline, but probably in the latter more than in the former, apparently took place at about that time. * * * * *