slightest encroachment on the part of the crown had not the loss of self-government involved the imminent danger that the ark of the Lord might be abandoned to the worshippers of Dagon.  It was in Massachusetts, where the theocracy was strongest, that the resistance to Charles II. was most dogged and did most to prepare the way for the work of achieving political independence a century later.  Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults of the theocracy were most conspicuous.  It was there that priestly authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world.  Much as we owe to the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot be sorry that it was itself crushed in the process.  It was well that it did not survive its day of usefulness, and that the outcome of the struggle was what has been aptly termed “the emancipation of Massachusetts.” [Sidenote:  Merits and faults of the theocracy]

The basis of the theocratic constitution of this commonwealth was the provision by which the exercise of the franchise was made an incident of church-membership.  Unless a man could take part in the Lord’s Supper, as administered in the churches of the colony, he could not vote or hold office.  Church and state, parish and town, were thus virtually identified.  Here, as in some other aspects of early New England, one is reminded of the ancient Greek cities, where the freeman who could vote in the market-place or serve his turn as magistrate was the man qualified to perform sacrifices to the tutelar deities of the tribe; other men might dwell in the city but had no share in making or executing its laws.  The limitation of civil rights by religious tests is indeed one of those common inheritances from the old Aryan world that we find again and again cropping out, even down to the exclusion of Catholics from the House of Commons from 1562 to 1829.  The obvious purpose of this policy in England was self-protection; and in like manner the restriction of the suffrage in Massachusetts was designed to protect the colony against aggressive episcopacy and to maintain unimpaired the uniformity of purpose which had brought the settlers across the ocean.  Under the circumstances there was something to be said in behalf of such a measure of self-protection, and the principle required but slight extension to cover such cases as the banishment of Roger Williams and the Antinomians.  There was another side to the case, however.  From the very outset this exclusive policy was in some ways a source of weakness to Massachusetts, though we have seen that the indirect effect was to diversify and enrich the political life of New England as a whole. [Sidenote:  Restriction of the suffrage to church members]