Here are two points admitted, and the Journal mentioned should be good authority upon which to rest them. First, the lack of positive evidence, from which the necessary inference is that we must fall back upon probability or conjecture, as the basis of our judgment in the case. Second, that, as a general rule, churches were formed at the time settlements were begun, or soon after. Without question the latter statement is correct. The well known character and habits of the early emigrants, and the facts that have come to us in connection with them, prove this beyond a doubt. If, then, it can be proved that Weymouth was a prosperous settlement at a much earlier date than that assumed for it, 1635, we shall go far to prove the probability, at least, of an earlier church organization. And this brings us to the subject of the present paper, namely, What are our facts relative to the early settlement of the town, and how do they concern the church and its ministers? The very general assumption that there was no permanent settlement in Weymouth, (using the name by which the town has since been known), previous to the arrival of the Hull company, in 1635, can hardly be sustained in face of the very strong evidence to the contrary. C. F. Adams, Jr., Esq., in his address delivered 4 July, 1874, at the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of the town, and in his paper on the “Old Planters about Boston Harbor,” read before the Massachusetts Historical Society, and published in its collections, “the ablest paper,” says Rev. George E. Ellis, D. D., no mean judge of such matters, “ever read before that Society,” proves conclusively that the Gorges company, which settled upon the deserted plantations of Thomas Weston’s people, in September, 1623, and which, it has been usually thought, was wholly broken up in the following spring, left a number of its emigrants there, who remained and became permanent settlers. These were joined from time to time by single families or small companies, until, upon the arrival of Mr. Hull’s company, the settlement had attained to quite respectable proportions. This ground has been so carefully covered by Mr. Adams in the papers before mentioned, that it will be necessary only to mention very briefly the main facts, and to sustain them by such other evidence as may be had from the court and town records, as well as from private sources.