have been a church, which, so soon as it got power, would have put down every other church as a Conventicle, would have compelled every other church to conform to it. And it would have got power immediately. A single petition to the Church and Government of England for aid would. have brought over a commission from Laud and Charles, charged with power to uproot the dissenting heresy from its foundations. So that, whether it were the wisdom and foresight of Endicott and his coadjutors, or their mere fanaticism, or not, that produced their course of conduct on this occasion, it was the salvation of that colony, it was the preservation of New England liberty from extinction in the bud. It was the providential wisdom and goodness of God, guarding the system which the Puritans were seeking to establish; preserving the newly planted Vine from the boar out of the woods and the wild boar out of the Establishment, that they should not devour it. Our fathers were too vigilant and wise to tolerate in their infant church and state what they saw plainly would utterly destroy its freedom, and make it in the end merely a branch of the Church-and-State system of England. That their conclusions were true, that their foresight was timely, that their course was the only course which a true regard to the freedom of the colony admitted, is fully proved by what, within a very short period, did take place under Laud; by the imprisonment of Winslow, and the High Commission under Laud for overthrowing completely the Puritan Churches of New England, and establishing the English church upon their ruins; a thing which most certainly would have been accomplished, if mean while there had been but the very commencement of an Episcopal church, under government of the Establishment, already planted. Viewed as a mutinous effort against the Government, the movement of these Brownes was most justly restrained and prevented by the Government; viewed as simply and merely an attempt to set up the Church of Eng land, and thus put down Separation and Dissent, the course pursued by the Government must be regarded as an act of pure self-defence, and they must be confessed to have exercised great wisdom in transporting those men back to the enjoyment of the Establishment in their own country. It was fully proved that the Church and Dissent would not be tolerated together by the Government of England. Dissent had fled to New England and gained possession of a place, where, by itself, it could live at liberty. When the Established Church came also, it was really a question which should be expelled. The right of previous possession alone, were that all which could be urged in the premises, would decide the case in favor of the right of the Puritanic Dissenters. 66 Dr. Bacon remarks, that as to the principle of requiring a sympathy with the great design of the plantation in those who were admitted to share its power and privileges, and a membership in the simple Church of Christ, out of which it was constituted, one simple fact which the Fathers knew right well, is the vindication of their policy. They knew that as soon as they should have built their houses, and got their lands under cultivation, as soon as they should have got enough of what was taxable and titheable to excite covetousness, the King would be sending over his needy profligates to govern them, and the Archbishop his surpliced commissaries to gather the tithes into his storehouse. Knowing this, they were resolved to leave no door open for such an invasion. They came hither to establish a free Christian commonwealth; and to secure that end, they determined that in their commonwealth none should have any civil power, who either would not or could not enter at the door of Church Fellowship. They held themselves bound, they said, to establish such civil order as might best conduce to the securing the purity and peace of the ordinances for themselves and their posterity. When they introduced the principle, it was not for the sake of bestowing honors or privileges upon piety, but for the sake of guarding their liberty, and securing the end for which they had made themselves exiles. If you call their adoption of this principle fanaticism, it is to be remembered that the same fanaticism runs through the history of England. How long has any man in England been permitted to hold any office under the crown without being a communicant in the Church of England? Call it fanaticism if you will. To that fanaticism which threw off the laws of England, and made these colonies Puritan Commonwealths, we are indebted for our existence as a distinct and independent nation."* *Bacon's Historical Discourses, p. 27. CHAPTER XIX. SLANDERS AGAINST THE COLONY.-LAUD'S HIGH COMMISSION TO OVERTURN ITS CHURCH AND GOVERNMENT. THE CASE OF MR. WINSLOW'S IMPRISONMENT. THE CASE OF MR. ENDICOTT, AND THE RED ROYAL ENSIGN. To show the correctness of the preceding views, nothing more is requisite than just to glance at the attempts really made, and the steps actually taken from time to time, to set up a church despotism in the colonies under Archbishop Laud; attempts signally defeated by the good Providence of God, but which to all human appearance would have been successful, had there been a single Established Church set up in New England. The exclusion of the Episcopal Hierarchy for the present from the colonies was the only guarantee by which New England was looked to from abroad as being, in the words of Hallam, a secure place of refuge from present tyranny, and a boundless prospect for future hope. Hallam says that in 1638, hopeless of the civil and religious liberties of England, there were men of high rank, and of capacious and commanding minds, such as Jay, Hazlerig, Brooke, Hampden, and Cromwell, preparing to embark for America, when Laud, for his own and his master's cause, procured an order of council to stop their departure. He quotes the royal proclamation, and remarks that any trackless wilderness seemed better than Laud's tyranny, and that the views of the Archbishop were not so much directed to the security of Church and Crown against disaffected men, as to the gratification of his own malignant humor in persecuting them.* Already, as early as the year 1633, an order had been made in council forbidding the departure of a number of ships then ready to sail for New England with passengers and provisions, "because of the resorting thither of divers persons known to be ill affected not only with civil but ecclesiastical government at home; whereby such confusion and distraction is already grown there, in New England, especially in point of religion, as beside the ruin of the said plantation cannot but highly tend to the scandal both of Church and State here." This grew out of the slanders perpetrated against the colony by men who had been punished in it, or banished from it, for their crimes and immoralities, such as the notorious Morton, the servant Ratcliffe, and Sir Christopher Gardiner. Their gross falsehood was proven, and the order, though headed by Archbishop Laud himself, was not executed, but even the king declared that the slanderers should be severely punished.† The slanderers and petitioners against the colony were instigated by Sir F. Gorges and Captain Mason, who wished for a general government over New England; and in their petition they charged both colonies with intended rebellion, that they meant to be wholly separate from the Church and laws of England, and that their ministers and people did continually rail against the State, the Church, and the bishops. Messrs. Cradock, Salstonstall, and Humphrey, who were then in England, answered the accusations on the part of the company so triumphantly that nothing could be done against them. *Hallam's Constitutional History of England, p. 270. |