parallel in the history of the world. What indeed, were irreligious men; some were were the colonies of Egypt, of Phoenicia, even openly wicked, and opposed to all of Greece, and Rome? what the colonies that is good. But these, in most of the of Spain and Portugal, when compared with those we have been considering? Before leaving the subject, let us take a general survey of their character.

colonies, formed a very small minority.

Nor was their religion inoperative. It produced the fruits of righteousness. They have been blamed for their conduct to the Indians, but not with so much justice as has been supposed. No doubt there were instances of individual wrong, but they cannot be charged with any general want of justice or kindness to the Aborigines. In almost every case they bought from those prior occupants the lands on which they settled. But on this, and some other points of a general nature, I shall have more to say in another place.

1. They were not composed of the rich, the voluptuous, the idle, the effeminate, and the profligate, neither were they, generally speaking, composed of poor, spiritless, dependant, and helpless persons. They rather came from that middle class of society, which is placed in the happy medium between sordid poverty and overgrown wealth. They knew that whatever comfort or enjoyment they could look for in the New World, was only to be attained by the blessing of God upon their indus-nists were Protestants; indeed, Lord Baltry, frugality, and temperance.

2. They were not an ignorant rabble, such as many ancient and some modern states have been obliged to expel from their borders. Taken in the mass, they were well informed-many of them remarkably so for the age in which they lived-and which in the case of none of them was an age of darkness. Letters had revived; the art of printing had diffused a great amount of valuable knowledge among the middle ranks of society, and was fast carrying it down to the lowWith few exceptions, they had acquired the elements of a good education. There were few persons in any of the colonies that could not read. They were, moreover, a thinking people, and very unfit to be the slaves of despotic power.

est.

5. With few exceptions, the first colo

timore's was the only Roman Catholic colony, and even in it the Romanists formed only a small minority long before the Revolution of 1775. The great mass had sacrificed much, some their all, for the Protestant faith. They were Protestants in the sense of men who took the Bible for their guide, who believed what it taught, not what human authority put in its place. "What saith the Lord?" this was what they desired first of all, and above all, to know. And it was the study of the Bible that opened their eyes to truths which bore upon every possible relation of life, and upon every duty. There they learned to look upon all men as children of the same heavenly Father, as redeemed by the same Saviour, as going to the same bar of judgment, before which all must stand 3. They were a virtuous people; not a stripped of the factitious distinctions of vicious herd, such as used to be sent out this world. They saw no reason, thereby ancient states, and such as chiefly col-fore, why one man should lord it over anonized South America and Mexico, men other, since all "are of one flesh," and if of unbridled passions and slaves to the ba- Christians, brethren in Christ. And they sest lusts. The morality of the early col- learned from the Bible that obedience is onists of the United States was unrivalled due to rulers, not because they are differin any community of equal extent, and has ent in blood or rank from other men, but been lauded by almost all who have writ- because government is "an ordinance of ten about them, as well as by those who God." Obedience to God secured their governed them. obedience to civil rulers. As God cannot 4. They were religious men. They be- command what is wrong, no ruler can be lieved and felt that Christianity is no vain justified in doing so, nor can expect obefancy-a fact that holds true even as re-dience if he does. And while they learned spects those of them with whom religious motives were not the chief inducement for expatriating themselves. The overwhelming majority stood acquitted of the slightest approach to infidelity. Neither were 6. The great majority of them had sufthey what are called "philosophers," at- fered much oppression and persecution, tempting to propagate certain new theo- and in that severe but effectual school had ries respecting human society, and sug-learned lessons not to be acquired in any gesting new methods for rendering it per- other. It led them to question many fect. By far the greater number of them things to which otherwise their thoughts were simple Christians, who knew of no might never have been directed, and it way by which men can be good or happy gave them irresistible power of argument but that pointed out by God in his Word. in favour of the right of the human mind There was not a single St. Simon or Owen to freedom of thought. Indeed, it is reto be found among them. Some of them,markable how large a proportion of the

from the Bible what were their duties, so they learned there also what were their rights. This led them at once to do the former and to demand the latter.

early colonists of the United States were driven from Europe by oppression. Although Virginia and the Carolinas were not expressly established as asylums for the wronged, yet during the Commonwealth in England they afforded a refuge to the "Cavalier" and the "Churchman," as they did afterward to the Huguenot and German Protestant. Georgia was colonized as an asylum for the imprisoned and "persecuted Protestants;" Maryland, as the home of persecuted Roman Catholics; and the colony of Gustavus Adolphus was to be a general blessing to the "whole Protestant world," by offering a shelter to all who stood in need of one. Even NewYork, though founded by Dutch merchants, with an eye to trade alone, opened its arms to the persecuted Bohemian, and to the inhabitant of the Italian valleys. So that, in fact, all these colonies were originally peopled more or less, and some of them exclusively, by the victims of oppression and persecution; hence the remark of one of our historians is no less just than eloquent, that "tyranny and injustice peopled America with men nurtured in suffering and adversity. The history of our colonization is the history of the crimes of Europe."

7. Though incapable as yet of emancipating themselves from all the prejudices and errors of past ages, with respect to the rights of conscience, they were at least in advance of the rest of the world on these points, and founded an empire in which religious liberty is at this day more fully enjoyed than anywhere else-in short, is in every respect perfect.

the early Anglo-American colonies, I have spoken incidentally only respecting their forms of Church government, and even now proceed to consider these only in so far as is required for a right understanding of the established relations between their Churches and the civil government. I shall elsewhere treat of the various religious communions in the United States, or, rather, of the diverse forms in which the Church presents itself to the world, and the doctrines peculiar to each. We have here to do only with the relations which the State bore in the different colonies to the Church; and where these two bodies were united, we shall see what were the nature and extent of that union.

Many persons whom I have met with in Europe seem to have been altogether unaware of the existence of any such union in any part of the United States, and, still more, have had no correct idea of what the nature of that union was in the different parts of the country where it was to be found. To both these classes I desire to give all the information they may require.

If we consider for a moment what was the state of the Christian world when these colonies were first planted, in the early part of the seventeenth century, we must see that the mass of the colonists would be very little disposed to have the Church completely separated from the State in their infant settlements, and the former deriving no support from the latter. The Church and the State were at that time intimately united in all the countries of Europe; and the opinion was almost universally entertained that the one could not 8. Lastly, of the greater number of the safely exist without the direct counteearly colonists it may be said, that they ex-nance of the other. It is not even certain patriated themselves from the Old World, not merely to find liberty of conscience in the forests of the New, but that they might extend the kingdom of Christ, by founding states where the Truth should not be impeded by the hinderances that opposed its progress elsewhere. This was remarkably the case with the Puritans of NewEngland; but a like spirit animated the pious men who settled in other parts of the country. They looked to futurity, and caught glimpses of the glorious progress which the Gospel was to make among their children and children's children. This comforted them in sorrow, and sustained them under trials. They lived by faith, and their hope was not disappointed.

CHAPTER XVII.

RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CHURCHES AND THE

CIVIL POWER IN the colonies of AMERICA. -1. IN NEW-ENGLAND.

IN treating of the religious character of * Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. ii., p. 251.

that England, or any other country, would have granted charters for the founding of permanent colonies, unless upon the condition expressed, or well understood, that religion was to receive the public sanction and support. Assuredly, James I., at least, was not likely to consent to anything else.

Be that as it may, the first colonists themselves had no idea of abolishing the connexion which they saw everywhere established between the civil powers and the Church of Christ. To begin with NewEngland, nothing can be more certain than that its Puritan colonists, whether we look to their declarations or their acts, never contemplated the founding of communities in which the Church should have no alliance with the State. Their object, and it was one that was dearer to them than life itself, was to found such civil communities as should be most favourable to the cause of pure religion. They had left England in order to escape from a government which, in their view, hindered the progress of divine truth, oppressed the conscience, and was inexpressibly injurious to the im

mortal interests of men's souls. "They to their grand purpose; nor did they doubt had seen in their native country the entire that a government thus originating in volsubjection of the Church to the supreme untary compact would have equal right to civil power; reformation beginning and the exercise of civil authority with that of ending according to the caprices of the any earthly potentate whatever. hereditary sovereign; the Church neither Whatever were the details of their polipurified from superstition, ignorance, and cy, and whatever the results of some parts scandal, nor permitted to purify itself; of it, it is most certain that they intended ambitious, time-serving, tyrannical men, that the Church should in no sense be subthe minions of the court, appointed to the ject to the State. They held the great and high places of prelacy; and faithful, skil- glorious doctrine that CHRIST IS THE ONLY ful, and laborious preachers of the Word HEAD AND RULER OF THE CHURCH, and that of God silenced, imprisoned, and deprived | no human legislation has a right to interof all means of subsistence, according to fere with His. It has been said that they the interests and aims of him or her who, took the Hebrew commonwealth for their by the law of inheritance, happened to be model in civil politics, and this is so far at the head of the kingdom. All this true. But it holds as to their penal code seemed to them not only preposterous, but more than with respect to the forms of intolerable; and, therefore, to escape from their civil governments. With the excepsuch a state of things, and to be where tion of the first few years of the Massachuthey could freely practise Church Ref-setts Bay and New-Haven colonies, there ormation,' they emigrated."*

In the formation, likewise, of their civil institutions in the New World, they determined that, whatever else might be sacrificed, the purity and liberty of their churches should be inviolate. Bearing this in mind, they founded commonwealths in which the churches were not to be subordinate to the state. Not that they were "Fifth monarchy men;" they had no wish that the Church should engross to itself the powers of the State, and so rule in civil as well as

was no such blending of civil and religious authority as existed in the Jewish Republic. There was much, however, in the Hebrew commonwealth and laws that seemed adapted to the circumstances of men who had just exchanged what they considered a worse than Egyptian bondage for a Canaan inhabited by the "heathen," whom they were soon to be compelled "to drive out." The two cases were more alike than at first strikes a superficial observer.* There were

in ecclesiastical matters. But they thought ty emigrating from their native country to a land "The laws of Moses were given to a communiit better that the State should be accom- which they were to acquire and occupy for the great modated to the Church, than the Church purpose of maintaining in simplicity and purity the to the State. "It is better," said Mr. Cot-worship of the one true God. The founders of this ton, "that the commonwealth be fashioned to the setting forth of God's house, which is his Church, than to accommodate the Church frame to the civil state."+

With this in view, they sought to avail themselves of all the lights furnished by the experience of ancient as well as modern states, and looking especially to the Constitution of England as it then stood, they framed civil governments in which, as they hoped, not only the temporal, but, still more, the spiritual interests of mankind might best be promoted. They considered that they had a right to do so, and held opinions on this point directly at variance with those of the age in which they lived. The fashion then was to deduce all authority from the divine right of kings, and the theory of civil power was that of uninterrupted hereditary succession. But the Puritan founders of New-England thought that they were free to cast themselves into that mould and form of commonwealth which appeared best for them," in reference

66

* Bacon's "Historical Discourses on the Completion of 200 Years from the beginning of the first Church in New-Haven," p. 17, 18.

† Cotton's "Letter to Lord Say and Seal, in Hutchinson's History of New-England,” vol. i., p.

497.

colony came hither for the self-same purpose. Their emigration from their native country was a religious emigration. Every other interest of their community was held subordinate to the purity of their religious faith and practice. So far, then, as this point of comparison is concerned, the laws which were given the wants of a religious colony planting itself in to Israel in the wilderness may have been suited to

America.

"The laws of Moses were given to a people who were to live not only surrounded by heathen tribes on every frontier save the seaboard, but also with the mixed among them, not fellow-citizens, but men of anheathen inhabitants, worshippers of the devil, interother and barbarous race; and the laws were therefore framed with a special reference to the corrupting influence of such neighbourhood and intercourse. Similar to this was the condition of our fathers. The Canaanite was in the land, with his barbarian vices, with his heathenish and hideous superstitions; and their servants and children were to be guarded against the contamination of intercourse with beings so degraded.

"The laws of the Hebrews were designed for a free people. Under those laws, so unlike all the institutions of Oriental despotism, there was no absolute power, and, with the exception of the hereditary priesthood, whose privileges, as a class, were well balanced by their labours and disabilities, no privileged classes. The aim of those laws was equal and exact justice;' and equal and exact justice is the only freedom. Equal and exact justice, in the laws and in the administration of the laws, infuses freedom into the being of a people, secures the widest and most useful distribution of the means of enjoyment, and affords scope for the activity and healthful stimulus to the affections of every individual. The people whose habits and sentiments are formed

bers, with the deciding of all controversies, was in the brotherhood; that church-officers, for preaching the Word and taking care of the poor, were to be chosen by the free suffrages of the brethren; that in church censures, there should be an entire separation of the ecclesiastical from the civil sword; that Christ is the Head of the Church; that a liturgy is not necessary; and that all ceremonies not prescribed by the Scriptures are to be rejected.”

parts of the Mosaic law, excluding, of course, all that was typical, ceremonial, and local, which the colonists thought they might do well to adopt, until, in the course of time, they should find reasons for changing to something better. Had it been the laws of Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, or Alfred that they adopted, some who now ridicule would perhaps have applauded them, as if Moses were inferior to any of those lawgivers. There are men who know more of the laws of Solon, and even of Minos, than about Moses, and who, in their ignorance, talk of the Jews of the days of Moses as if almost, if not altogether, savages; not knowing that they were quite as much civ-ent doctrines as to Church government had ilized as any of their contemporaries, and had institutions prescribed to them by the Supreme Ruler and Lawgiver.

But how are we to account for a change in their views so sudden and so great? Even when Winthrop left England in 1630, neither the Presbyterian nor the Independ

to two or three causes. First, it is natural that, on quitting England, where they had suffered so much from Prelacy, they should renounce an ecclesiastical system that conferred upon any men powers so capable of being abused; nor can it be thought surprising that in such circumstances they should

made that progress in public opinion which they had made when the Long Parliament, and Cromwell and his army, began to play It is remarkable that, with the exception their parts. It is quite possible, or, rather, of the Plymouth settlers, all the first New all but certain, that several of the ministers England colonists-all who founded Mas- in the Massachusetts Bay colony were low sachusetts Bay, New-Hampshire, Maine, Episcopalians, and friends of Archbishop Connecticut, New-Haven, Providence, and Usher's scheme; but if all of the leading Rhode Island-up to their leaving England, colonists were as much inclined to Presbywere members of the Established Church. terianism as has been thought by some, it The Plymouth people alone were Inde- is hard to imagine why they did not estabpendents, had had their church organized lish that form of government. It is diffion that principle for years, and were such cult to make out, on the other hand, why even before they went to Holland. If any they diverged so widely, and at once, from of the other original colonists of New-Eng- the Episcopal economy, as to adopt Indeland had been thrust out from the Estab-pendency, which is almost antipodal. lished Church of the mother-country, they This, it appears to me, may be referred had not organized themselves on any other principle; and, however opposed to the spirit of its rulers and to some of its ceremonies and usages, that they were attached to the Church itself, as well as to many of those whom they had left within its pale, is manifest from the letter of Governor Winthrop and his associates, just after embark-run to the opposite extreme, and prefer an ing for America. ecclesiastical government of the most demBut on arriving there they immediately ocratical sort. Another, and much more proceeded to the founding of an ecclesias-powerful reason, for their rejecting Epistical economy upon the Independent plan, having for its essential principles, "That, according to the Scriptures, every church ought to be confined within the limits of a single congregation, and that the government should be democratical; that churches should be constituted by such as desired to be members, making a confession of their faith in the presence of each other, and signing a covenant; that the whole power of admitting and excluding mem-lowed in 1630, and founded Boston. It under such an administration of justice will be a free people."-Bacon's "Historical Discourses," p.

30, 31.

copacy would be, that they might escape the jurisdiction of the bishops, which would otherwise unquestionably have followed them. And, lastly, there can be no doubt that they were much influenced by what they saw and heard of the Plymouth colony. It will be remembered that the first division of the Massachusetts Bay settlers, under Endicott, reached Salem in 1628, and that the main body, under Winthrop, fol

would seem that the Rev. Mr. Higginson, the distinguished minister in Endicott's colony, led the way in effecting the change, he having, upon his arrival at Salem, or soon afterward, introduced the Independent plan among his people, though not without much difficulty, being opposed by the two Brownes, John and Samuel, who, in consequence of this opposition, had to return to England. Mr. Higginson was disposed to receive very favourably the accounts transmitted from the Plymouth col

ony on the other side of the bay. It is true house," for the maintenance of a pastor or that Edward Winslow, in his "Brief Nar-minister, and for all other necessary exrative," as well as Cotton, in his "Way," penses connected with public worship. I &c,, undertake to prove that Plymouth did am not aware of any exemption from this not exert the influence that has been as- law being allowed for a long time after the cribed to it, and which has even by Gorton colonies were founded. Such was the funand his accomplices been charged against damental union of Church and State in the it as a crime. But I think it clear that they colonies that now form the States of Masadmit the substance of the charge.* sachusetts, Connecticut, New-Hampshire, and Maine.

The Church, then, that was established in all the New-England colonies, with the The next law adopted in the Massachuexception of Providence and Rhode Isl-setts Bay colony dates from 1631, the year and,f was what is termed in the United States, Congregational, and in England, Independent; though there is some difference between the Congregational churches in the former of these countries, and the Independent in the latter, as I shall show in another part of this work. I speak here of the form of government. As for doctrines, they were essentially those of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England; in other words, Calvinistic.

Let us now see what were the relations between the Church and the State, or "Commonwealth," in New-England. In every colony there, except the two above mentioned, the object of one of the first acts of civil legislation was to provide for the support of public worship, and other laws followed from time to time to the same effect, as circumstances required. Without going into unnecessary details, suffice it to say, that parishes or "towns" of a convenient size were ordered to be laid out, and the people were directed to levy taxes by the proper authorities of their respective towns, for erecting and keeping in due repair a suitable" meeting

Winslow says, "It is true, I confess, that some of the chief of them," referring to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, "advised with us how they should do to fall upon a right platform of worship, and desired to that end, since God had honoured us to lay the foundation of a commonwealth, and to settle a church in it, to show them whereupon our practice was grounded; and if they found, upon due search, it was built upon the Word of God, they would be willing to take up what was from God." He then goes on to say, that they of Plymouth showed them the warrant for their government in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Gospels; and that their friends, the other colonists, were well pleased therewith, and also agreed to walk in the same way, so far as God should reveal his will to them, from time to time, in his Word. As for Cotton, he says, "The dissuader is much mistaken when he saith, The congregation of Plymouth did incontinently leaven all the vicinity,' seeing for many years there was no vicinity to be leavened. And Salem itself, that was gathered into church order seven or eight years after them, was above forty miles distant from them. And though it be very likely that some of the first-comers (meaning Endicott and Higginson) might help their theory by hearing and discerning their practice at Plymouth, yet therein is the Scripture fulfilled, The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till all was leavened.'"

+ And it too may be called Congregational, for it was founded by Baptists, whose churches are essentially independent in form of government.

after the arrival of Winthrop and his company, and, as we shall hereafter see, it was pregnant at once with evil and with good. It ran thus: "To the end that the body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it is ordered and agreed, that for the time to come, no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same. 99* In other words, no one was to vote at elections, or could be chosen to any office in the commonwealth, without being a member of one of the churches. This law was long in force in Massachusetts and in Maine, which, until 1820, was a part of that state; but it never prevailed, I believe, in New-Hampshire, and was unknown, of course, in Rhode Island. But a like law existed from the first in NewHaven, and when that colony was united, in 1662, with Connecticut, where this had not been the case, it became, I believe, part of the legislation of the united colony.

Thus we find two fundamental laws on this subject prevailing in New-Englandthe one universal, with the exception of Rhode Island; the other confined to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine. In restricting the exercise of political power to men who, as members of the Church, were presumed to be loyal to the grand principle of the colony to which they belonged, namely, the maintenance of purity of doctrine and liberty of worship, as the first consideration, and of free political government as necessary to it, the authors of that law doubtless contemplated rather the protection of their colonists from apprehended dangers than the direct promotion of piety.

This principle, in fact, down to the founding of these colonies, seems to have been adopted substantially by all nations, Popish and Protestant, Mohammedan and Heathen; so much so that Davenport said, "These very Indians, that worship the devil,” acted on the same principle, so that, in his judgment, "it seemed to be a principle imprinted in the minds and hearts of all men in the equity of it." We need

* Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. i., p. 360.

"Discourse about Civil Goverment," p. 24, as quoted in Bacon's "Historical Discourses."