III

COLONIAL BEGINNINGS

It is thus evident that, at the period when American colonization began, the Church and State in Europe were substantially of one mind as to this fundamental principle, that the prosperity of both depended upon a union more or less intimate and vital. To but very few individuals had the thought of true liberty occurred, while in no country had even a grudging toleration of other than the State-Church been made the rule of law.

We need not be surprised, then, to find the most of the colonists in hearty sympathy with that principle. Some of them, indeed, had suffered through its application; but in their view that suffering was a consequence, not of a vicious principle, but of a wicked application of a principle which was very right and necessary. These men had no doubt as to the propriety of a legal insistence upon a prescribed form of worship, supposing that form to be the true form of worship. The impropriety and wrong of persecution were to be decided, not by any inherent vice of persecution itself, but by the character of the doctrine persecuted. If the doctrine were false then persecution of it were justified. If the doctrine were true, persecution became wicked. Thus, to the minds of the fathers of Massachusetts it was clear, both that the English authorities were criminal in persecuting them, and that they were right in their measures against the Brownes and Mrs. Hutchinson; because they, both as persecuted and as persecutors, represented the truth.¹

It is very true that the Pilgrim fathers, landing on the

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“stern and rock-bound coast” of New England, sought and obtained “freedom to worship God.” But the usual understanding of Mrs. Heman's famous lines, that they desired to establish anything like a general religious liberty, is very far from the truth. Their conscious desire was freedom for themselves, never dreaming of extending an equal freedom to such as differed from them in religious opinion; though to the honor of the Pilgrims it should be noted, that they were afterward far more lenient and tolerant toward dissentients than were their neighbors of Massachusetts, and that they never were guilty of great harshness.

To the early leaders of Massachusetts, especially the religious leaders, toleration of dissent from the “established order” of religious worship was as sedition in the state and sin against God. John Cotton declared that “it was Toleration that made the world anti-Christian.” There are many choice specimens of this repressive spirit in Nathaniel Ward's (1645) “Simple Cobler of Aggawam in America.”¹ “I take upon me,” he says, “to proclaim to all Familists, Antinomians (&c.), to keep away from us; and such as will come, to be gone ; the sooner the better.” “Polipiety (a variety of sects) is the greatest impiety in the world.” One other specimen of the Cobler's spirit should not fail of quotation, “He that is willing to tolerate any unsound opinion, that his own may be tolerated, though never so sound, will for a need hang God's Bible at the Devil's girdle.”

This sentiment showed a marvellous tenacity, very slowly yielding to the influences of more liberal thought ; and so late as 1673 President Oakes,² of Harvard College, said in an election sermon, “I look upon unbounded Toleration as the first-born of all abominations.”

There is to the mind of to-day something of amazement at the process by which these men justified their harsh measures. When Sir Richard Saltonstall, by far the broadest-minded

among the early Puritans, remonstrated against the Boston persecutions, on the ground that by such proceedings “many are made hypocrites,” Wilson and Cotton replied: “Better be hypocrites than profane persons ! There is a great difference between God's inventions and men's inventions. We compel none to men's inventions.” Cotton, answering Williams's “Bloody Tenent,” quite outdoes himself: “It is not right to persecute any for conscience' sake rightly informed; for in persecuting such Christ Himself is persecuted in them. . . . For an erroneous and blind conscience (even in fundamental and weighty points) it is not lawful to persecute any, till after admonition once or twice. . . .

The word of God in such things is so clear, that he cannot but be convinced in conscience of the dangerous error of his way, after once or twice admonition wisely and faithfully dispensed. . . . If such a man, after such admonition, shall still persist in the error of his way and be punished, he is not persecuted for cause of conscience, but for sinning against his own conscience.” The arrogance of spiritual inquisition and tyranny could hardly go farther than that in specious defence of its principles.

The powerful presence of such principles has to be constantly noticed in the early history of New England, operative with more or less strictness and severity in all the colonies, except Rhode Island, the corner-stone of which was the explicit denial of this very principle ; indeed, without the memory of this religious attitude of the New England colonies much of their history through the first century will become an unconnected and unmeaning jumble of events. To attempt to read into that history the settled principles of a later day, or to apologize to posterity for ancestral oppressions, is absurd and confusing. These men need no apology. They stood in their lot, in their own age of the world, working out their problem, blindly and blunderingly enough at times, but surely. The issue, to the light and blessing of which their children came, was quite other than their thought, and yet

the Religious Liberty of a later day owed much to the sharp-cut illustrations furnished by the New England Theocracy.

A similar thing may be said of the establishments in the colonies in the South. In these, notably exhibited in the story of Virginia, the attitude of the civil government toward the Church and religion was solely due to a secular or political motive, quite different from the Puritan, whose motive was purely religious. The Puritan insisted on conformity because he wanted to make the state religious and to preserve the true religion in its purity. The Virginian insisted on conformity, because the Church was a department of the state, and all dissent was indicative of civil disorder and insubordination. This contrast is very marked; and it is among the things of special interest to note how from these two diverse grounds the question of Church and State came to simultaneous solutions in America, one religious and the other secular. On the one hand, the Puritan experiment demonstrates that the effect of the union is essentially irreligious; while on the other, the Virginian makes it clear that the law of conformity is the fruitful mother of disorder.

Indeed, there were three separate answers coming to speech and exhibition at the same time. Massachusetts set up its theocratic state with its chief interest centred in the Church; Virginia established its civil state, with the Church as a subject member, a conformity to which was the mark of a good citizen; while Rhode Island boldly denied the purposes and premises of both, placing an impassable gulf between the State and the Church, and relegating to the individual conscience and to voluntary association all concern and action touching the Church and religious matters.

These are the three extreme types about which all the other colonies may be grouped with more or less of similarity to their several patterns. In the one group with Massachusetts are Plymouth, New Haven, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, with their Congregational establishments. Among these it will be observed that theocratic Massachusetts and New

Haven were more closely akin in the strictness of their religious requirements; that Plymouth and Connecticut were more liberal in spirit and enactments; while New Hampshire was organized so long after the period of severity had waned that it furnishes few illustrations of our theme.

In another group are Virginia and the two Carolinas, in which the Church of England was established at their foundation and continued the State-Church until into the era of the Revolution, displaying at times strong and bitter feeling against all forms of dissent.

A third group is composed of New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Georgia, in which occurred changes of attitude toward the Church. Maryland began with religious freedom, under Roman Catholic auspices, and was afterward dragooned into establishing the Church of England. In New York and New Jersey, the violence of English officials endeavored to force the same Church on a Dutch Reformed foundation, but never secured for it a legal establishment. The charter of Georgia declared liberty of worship, but on its abrogation the Church of England was established by royal edict and legislative enactment, a few years before the Revolution.

The fourth group comprises Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The last-named, however, was for so long a time a part of Pennsylvania that its history on the religious question is merged with that of the larger colony. In these colonies no Church was ever established. More than that, the impropriety of a religious establishment was explicitly declared. Of the two, Rhode Island was far broader than Pennsylvania. The Quaker, notwithstanding his voice for liberty of conscience, could yet make no civic room for the infidel, and insisted on certain religious restrictions. Strangely enough, even to-day, Pennsylvania, by terms of its constitution, is unique among the United States, in that it restricts its civic privileges to believers in “an Almighty and Eternal God.” Rhode Island from the beginning imposed no religious restrictions whatever upon its citizenship, and allowed no

question by the civil law as to the belief or unbelief of any one. The civil law knew neither theist nor atheist, neither Jew nor Christian, neither Romanist nor Protestant, neither Episcopalian nor Baptist, neither Congregationalist nor Presbyterian. There has never been a more perfect equality of religious beliefs before the law than was enacted in Rhode Island at its very beginning—a revelation and pattern to all the other colonies; by them for a long period despised and derided, but to the likeness of which they were glad at last to come.

The stress of conflict was in Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, because of exceptional enthusiasm on the part of religionists meeting with exceptional determination of the civil power; or yet again of peculiar historical developments with which religious questions became mingled. Of the one the story of the Quakers in Massachusetts, and of the other the change from Dutch to English rule in New York, may serve as illustrations. For this reason our attention will be mainly directed to the history of these four colonies.

In that study another and striking contrast will appear, arising from the origin of the respective establishments. In Virginia was a Church imposed on the colony by the civil authorities without any suggestion that the people should be consulted in regard to it. It was simply a branch plucked from the Church at home and planted in the soil of Virginia, though afterward ratified by the colony. In Massachusetts was a Church native to the soil, not owing descent from any establishment across the sea, the choice of the people, by them organized and vested with the powers of the civil magistrate. In both the religious establishment was of positive character, while in Massachusetts the union of Church and State was far closer, and its spirit more inquisitorial, than in Virginia.

Yet again, in New York, after a half century of existence under the lax superintendence of the Reformed Church of Holland, was a perverse attempt—never legally successful—

to force a foreign Church upon a people, nine-tenths of whom were opposed to its policy and methods. In Maryland, also, will be seen a unique situation. Begun under the notable tolerance of a Roman Catholic proprietor with freedom not less than that of Pennsylvania, the religious life of the colony was subjected to many troublesome variations—some of them through the rivalry of Puritan and Cavalier, and others through political changes in government.

One other thing to be frequently noted is that, so far as the direct influence of the English government could affect the character of religions institutions in the colonies, the judgment was almost invariable that such institutions should be in vital relation with the Church at home. This judgment appears in charters and in frequent “instructions” to governors, often very peremptory in their terms. It found practical effect in America in all places where a stronger adverse religious sentiment of colonists did not oppose it.

With these preliminary observations we turn to the history of the different colonies. The special peculiarities require that each narrative should cover the entire colonial period without break, inasmuch as each possesses distinctions peculiarly its own. One of the most marked features of the history is in these distinctions, pronouncing often the sharpest contrast between colonies, the borders of which touched each other.

We may, however, on the line of a similarity already suggested, observe the groups into which the colonies fall by reason of the general character of their governmental attitudes toward religion and the Church. As so classed we may consider their respective stories, without rigid regard to the chronological succession in the planting of the colonies.