[Footnote 24:  Maine Hist.  Soc., Collections, 2d series, VII., 183-188.]

[Footnote 25:  Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, pp. 200, 204.]

[Footnote 26:  Hazard, State Papers, I., 423-425.]

[Footnote 27:  Winthrop, New England, II., 12.]

[Footnote 28:  Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 256.]

[Footnote 29:  Hazard, State Papers, I., 432.]

CHAPTER XIII

RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT IN MASSACHUSETTS

(1631-1638)

The history of the beginnings of the Massachusetts colony shows that there was no real unity in church matters among the first emigrants.  The majority were strongly tinctured with Puritanism, but nonconformity took on many shades of opinion.  When it came to adopting a form of religion for Massachusetts, the question was decided by the ministers and the handful who then enjoyed the controlling power in the colony, and not by the majority of inhabitants.  It was in this way that the Congregational church, and not the Presbyterian church, or a simplified form of the Anglican church, obtained its first hold upon the colony.

The adoption of the law of 1631 making membership in the Congregational church the condition of citizenship, and the arrival at a later day of so many talented ministers embittered by persecution against the Anglican church, strengthened the connection and made it permanent.  “God’s word” was the law of the state, and the interpretation of it was the natural function of the clergy.  Thus, through church influence, the limitations on thought and religious practice became more stringent than in the mother-country, where the suffrage took in all freeholders, whether they were adherents of the established church or not.

In Massachusetts even Puritans who declined to acknowledge the form of church government prescribed by the self-established ecclesiastical authority were practically aliens, compelled to bear the burdens of church and state, and without a chance of making themselves felt in the government.  And yet, from their own point of view, the position of the Puritan rulers was totally illogical.  While suffering from persecution in England, they had appealed to liberty of conscience; and when dominant in America the denouncers of persecution turned persecutors.

A spirit of resistance on the part of many was the natural consequence of a position so full of contradiction.  Instances of contumacy happened with such frequency and determination as should have given warning to those in control.  In November, 1631, Richard Brown, an elder in the Watertown church, was reported to hold that “the Romish church was a Christian church.”  Forthwith the court of assistants notified the Watertown congregation that such views could not be allowed, and Winthrop, who went in person with the deputy governor, Dudley, used such summary