The Reverend John Wilson (page 57 58 , note 1); Increase Nowell, assistant of the Massachusetts Bay Company and secretary of the Colony from 1636 to 1650 ( D. N. B. ); William Gager, for whom see above; and William Aspinwall, notary public and author of a tract on the Fifth Monarchy. See introduction to his Notarial Records in 32d Report of the Boston Record Commissioners. Winthrop's remarks in this paragraph about the ordination of Wilson have been the subject of much controversy. They are generally taken to mean that Winthrop was not yet entirely converted to Congregational polity. The congregation then gathered was at Charlestown, but later in the year moved to Boston and became the First Church of that town. See the Church Covenant, infra, and notes. The distinction between the offices of pastor and teacher, especially in regard to persons, is not always easy to discover. As a rule, the pastor was the older man, but, according to Savage, “Cotton,” for instance, “was an older and a greater man than Wilson, yet the latter was pastor” — after Cotton's arrival. For evidence of the decline in importance of the office of elder in the Colony, see 4 Collections , IV. Joshua Scottow's “A Narrative of the Planting of the Massachusetts Colony,” 329.