governments should conform in their legislation and judicial action to
the principles of English common and statute law.[66] If chartered, they
were bound to do this by the terms of their charters. If not chartered,
each individual had the right to claim the protection of English law,
and any denial thereof was a usurpation of authority. This was the head
and front of his alleged anarchism. It was not anarchism, but the
conviction that liberty is a chimera save under the protection of the
sacred majesty of law. This is good English and American doctrine
to-day. It is distinctively Rhode Island doctrine. No one two hundred
and fifty years ago saw it more clearly than Samuell Gorton. His
political vision was more lucid and prescient than that of Roger
Williams, though the latter soon saw the force of Gorton’s position, and
adhered to it the rest of his life. Had Gorton lived until the time of
Andros and James the Second he would have beheld the Colonies fighting
for their charters as the very foundation of their liberties. His
position was already justified.[67]
In defence of “soul liberty” and the limitation of the functions of
government solely to civil affairs, Gorton and Williams stood side by
side from the beginning. Authority, he says, cannot safely be entrusted
to magistrates “if their place and office bee not bounded within the
compass of civill things.” He argues clearly and logically in the
introduction to his “Incorruptible Key, Composed of the CX Psalme,” that
if magistrates are permitted to extend their authority to things
spiritual they are consistently bound to enforce their own convictions
of religious duty, and to persecute all who dissent therefrom. The only
safety is in forbidding them “to intermeddle between God and the
consciences of men. * * In that way only is the preservation and honour
of all States, in their several ways of rule and government.”
This theory, for the first time in the world’s history, was clearly
proclaimed, embodied in constitutional law, and practically tested, in
the Commonwealth founded by Roger Williams and Samuell Gorton. The
Puritan theocracy and the doctrine of “soul liberty” for a time
maintained a competitive existence, side by side in the New England
Colonies. The latter began in relative weakness—almost in anarchy—but it
survived, and ultimately obtained recognition in our Federal
Constitution. The former failed, and was practically discarded in less
than two generations. Connecticut, an offshoot from Massachusetts
Puritanism, under the leadership of Hooker reversed the Massachusetts
theory that citizenship should be conditioned on church membership, and
absorbed the theocratic Colony of New Haven. Rhode Island gained, in
numbers and in internal cohesion, and Massachusetts lost, with every
attack which she made on heresy. The idea that intolerance and
persecution were necessary to insure the survival of the community—to
prevent its disintegration—broached by apologetic writers, is therefore
disproven by the palpable facts of history. Disintegration and secession
were ever the products of intolerance. The story of the Saracens, in
Spain, the Huguenots in France and the Puritans in England, was repeated
in Massachusetts. Internal schisms were promoted rather than prevented
by the policy of persecution.
In the end, local public opinion was a powerful aid to the compulsion of
the Mother Country in compelling the cessation of persecution. The
policy of intolerance failed on its own chosen ground, and Massachusetts
became a powerful and united State only when she followed the example of
her despised Little Sister and became a Commonwealth of Ideas as well as
a Commonwealth of Goods.
VIII
SAMUELL GORTON’S RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS
Samuell Gorton was a man of a profoundly religious nature. His views,
have been little studied, and have been greatly misunderstood, both by
his contemporaries and the historians of later generations. John Fiske
dismisses him with a sentence, in his admirable School History of the
United States, as “a man of queer ideas.” The more extended reference of
this fair-minded historian, in his “Beginnings of New England,” hardly
does justice either to Gorton’s political sagacity, or to the remarkable
character of his religious opinions. Charles Francis Adams, in his
monograph on “Massachusetts, its Historians and its History,” alludes to
Samuell Gorton as a “crude and half-crazy thinker.”
His contemporaries in Massachusetts assailed him with a choice
collection of opprobrious epithets in the place of arguments: he was an
“arch-heretic,” a “beast,” a “miscreant,” a “proud and pestilent
seducer,” a “most prodigious minter of exorbitant novelties.”[68]
Edward Rawson, some time Secretary of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay,
and the ancestor of my own children,—a man capable of making vigorous
use of the sturdy Anglo-Saxon of the period, albeit not always
grammatically, denounces him as “a man whose spirit was stark drunk with
blasphemies and insolences, a corrupter of the truth, a disturber of the
peace wherever he comes;” and his contemporary, Nathaniel Morton, with
whom he conducted an animated correspondence, says he “was deeply
leavened with blasphemous and familistical opinions.”
In so far as his religious views have received attention in recent
years, they have been mainly studied in their incomplete and incidental
expression in some of his published works, “Simplicities Defence Against
Seven-Headed Policie,” and “The Incorruptible Key to the CX Psalme,” the
main object of which was political and polemical rather than expository
of his system of thought. The involved style and quaint and mystical
phraseology have repelled the modern student, and prevented a clear
understanding of his theological doctrines.
By far the best and most complete exposition of Samuell Gorton’s
religious convictions is to be found in a remarkable manuscript in his
own hand-writing which has never been published, but which is preserved
in the library of the Rhode Island Historical Society in Providence. I
am indebted to the Hon. Amos Perry, the courteous Librarian of the
Society, for the opportunity to make a careful study of this paper as
well as of other documents relating to Samuell Gorton’s life and work.
The manuscript to which I refer is a running commentary on the Lord’s
Prayer. Merely as a literary curiosity it merits the attention of the
studious and curious. It is in the clear, careful, accurate hand-writing
of the scholar rather than of one accustomed to manual industry. The
lines are closely written, the characters are minute, and almost as
accurate as copper-plate impressions. The manuscript averages over two
thousand words to a page about the size of our modern legal cap. The
character of the writing makes it exceedingly trying to the eyes. The
orthography, though in some respects archaic, is more regular and
consistent than in most American documents of our Revolutionary era. I
have examined many papers of contemporary and more recent dates, but
with the exception of those left by his eldest son, Capt. Samuell
Gorton, who was evidently instructed by his father, and whose
hand-writing resembles his so closely as to be distinguishable from it
with difficulty, I have never seen any so clear, systematic, and
scholarly in appearance. The literary form, however, is less admirable
than the clerical execution. The style is involved, the sentences are
long, and the punctuation, though systematic, is peculiar. Free use is
made of the comma, semi-colon and parenthesis, but periods are most
economically distributed, being used literally to indicate a “full
stop.” Sentences usually end with a semi-colon, the ensuing clause
beginning with a capital. The interrogation point was apparently
unknown.
When the reader has searched diligently beneath the quaint and involved
phraseology, bristling with scriptural references and illustrations, and
come into sympathetic contact with the living thought of the writer, the
surprising thing which is discovered is the remarkable modernness of
many of Samuell Gorton’s ideas. It goes without saying that he was not
“orthodox” according to the conventional standards of his time, nor yet,
perhaps, of our own; but we everywhere touch the personality of a
vigorous and independent thinker, who in many directions foreshadowed
the views of the advanced thinkers of a later day.
Some of his enemies denounced Samuell Gorton as an atheist. He was as
remote as possible from atheistic leanings. He was not even affiliated
with the deism of his own and the succeeding century. His theology was
profoundly Christian. It was as Christocentric as that of Swedenborg,
with which it has sometimes been compared. Like Swedenborg, he regarded
the Infinite and Absolute as _per se_ unknowable. Here both Gorton and
Swedenborg are in touch with the modern philosophical agnostic. For
both, however, Christianity solved the agnostic problem. In Christ they
found a perfect expression of the divine nature, and the only rational
object of worship.[69]
With regard to the nature of Christ, however, Gorton and Swedenborg were
widely separated. Swedenborg’s theology is boldly anthropomorphic;
Gorton’s was monistic and impersonal. “The word ‘person’,” he says, “is
only borrowed from men and translated to God. * * That doctrine which
ties the death of Christ to one perticuler man in one time and age of
the world, as being the scope and intent of God’s will concerninge the
death of his son in the salvation of the world, that doctrine falsifies
the death of Jesus Christ, and sets men upon the law of workes in the
ground and matter of their salvation, by which law no man is
justified.”[70] Here, too, is another radical distinction between his
doctrine and that of Swedenborg. The latter turns his most powerful
batteries upon Paul’s doctrine of “justification by faith,” while Gorton
stands with Luther in its defence.
The “law of works” by which Gorton says no man is justified, he rightly
interprets as the conception of salvation through ceremonial
observances; not merely the ritual of Pharisaic Judaism denounced by the
Master, but the ritual and ordinances as well of his own day and
generation. Here he stands with the Friends, as he also did in his
opposition to a “hireling ministry.” Worship, he taught, is natural to
man. Every man is called to seek communion with the divine in Christ
directly, and not through priestly mediations. “Prophesie, prayer, and
interpretation of the word of God are one,” he says: “where one is there
is the other; they are co-insident and co-aparant.” All men are
naturally moved to prayer; all men, therefore, may rightfully exhort and
interpret. To the conventional interpretations of churches, universities
and schools, he preferred “the universitie of humane reason, and reading
of the great volume of visible creation.” Mr. Gorton defined prayer as
“nothing else but the true breath and spirit of the eternall word,
according to God’s intent taken and rained into the soule, concocted and
digested in the cauldron of man’s necessities, breathing out it selfe
unto the fountaine and originall of all suply.”
The spirit of prophecy and inspiration, he taught, is as immediately
with man now as in any period of the past. The tenor of his teaching
in this particular is strikingly like that of the modern
transcendentalist. With Emerson, he would have asked, “Why may not we,
too, seek an original relation with the Universe?” In the spirit of
transcendentalism, too, he opposed all sectarianism. He would not be
the founder of a sect. He left no organized body of disciples.[71] The
sectarian contests of the day, even the disputes between Protestants
and Catholics, he deemed of small account because they were so largely
about rites and ceremonies, matters which he deemed non-essential.
“These things men contend aboute and make great stirre in the world,
whilst the life and spirit of the gospel lies buried under humane
ordinances and carnall traditions.” True worship, he declares, is as
well exemplified in the offering of lambs and bullocks “according to
the letter of scripture formerly manifested, * * as in bread, wine,
wafers, &c., or in Bishop, paster, teacher, elder, deacon, &c., for
these things in the outward forme simply considered are carnall and
momentary, but the words of Christ, they are spirit and they are
life.”
While he agreed with the Friends as to outward ordinances, Samuell
Gorton strongly contested some of their other teachings, especially the
doctrine of the “inner light,” which he saw might be interpreted as a
particular revelation of infallible truth to the individual.[72] Such an
assumption, he claimed, is mischievous and erroneous. All revelations
must appeal for examination, recognition and interpretation to the
natural human reason, which is a common possession of all men. Mr.
Gorton combined with a remarkably equable balance, the methods of the
mystic and the rationalist. His mysticism rejected all claims of
infallibility, which logically tend to the persecution of dissidents.
Yet, while he carried this idea so far that he would dispense with all
paid ministries, he recognized more fully than most Protestants of his
day the necessity of sound learning and thorough acquaintance with the
Scriptures in their original tongues, to assure their correct and valid
interpretation.[73]
Though in the highest degree Christocentric, Samuell Gorton’s theology
was not in harmony with the prevailing Trinitarianism of his day. The
doctrine “received from the schoole men of the church of Roome, that
hold and teach a trinitie of persons in one simple and divine essence,
without having respect for the humane nature of Christ,” he
characterizes as “a most dangerous and pernicious doctrine.” It is, he
says, “most derogatory to the glory of the son; for in that time he is
deprived of the glory of a saviour; for without man’s nature hee is not
Jesus; hee is no saviour but in man; hee is not the anointed nor the
redeemer but in man’s nature; and if wee deprive him of that glory for a
time it is to late to give it to him afterwards, because hee ever
remains one and the same.” The scriptural references to the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit he interprets as recognitions of “spirituall
distinctions in the nature of Christ.” They are not separate persons of
a god-head, but distinctions of the divine activity, having a unity “not
found elsewhere, but only in Christ.”[74]
With Channing, Samuell Gorton also taught the essential divinity of
human nature—the equal nearness of the divine spirit to the sinner and
to the saint. He recognizes a divine spark in every human soul, and to
this he made his appeal.[75] He also, however, accepted the eternal
antagonism of good and evil as an unquestionable fact both in scriptural
teaching and in human experience. The tendency of the one is to eternal
life; of the other to eternal death. He therefore taught a conditional
immortality, wholly dependent upon the character of the individual.
“Neither can any salvation hold proportion with the son of God,” he
says, “but freedome from sin.” This saved him from the errors of
Antinomianism.[76] The doctrine of imputed sin and imputed righteousness
he denounces as unworthy of the divine character. “God was in Christ
reconciling men unto him selfe, not imputing their sins.” Nor is this
work of reconciliation limited to any historical period. “God is
eternally a creator, eternally a redeemer, eternally a conservator of
peace.”
The substance of his teaching is that righteousness _is_ life eternal;
sin _is_ eternal death. This is no arbitrary penalty inflicted at the
close of man’s earthly career, or on some future day of judgment; it is
the intrinsic and natural result of evil action. The popular distinction
between a man and his actions is delusive and unreal. He could not hate
the sin and love the sinner. The actions _are_ the man. If the actions
are predominantly evil there is nothing left to save. The divine work of
regeneration is at one and the same time the salvation of the good and
the destruction of the evil. Both results are effected by one and the
same natural operation of the divine power. “The righteousness of God is
of eternal worth and duration; But the one and the other [course of
life] being wrought into a change at one and the same time, thence comes
the capacity of an eternall life, and of an eternall destruction.”
Mr. Gorton distinguishes four distinct stages in the historical
development of religious ideas: the family, the national, the apostolic,
and the spiritual or universal.[77] Considering the period in which he
wrote, and the fact that the Bible seems to have been almost his only
text-book, his conclusions are remarkably consistent with those of
modern students of sociology and comparative religion.
The temptation is great to continue this line of exposition and
quotation, but I must bring it to a close with one or two additional
passages further illustrative of the ethical quality of his thought. All
virtue, he taught, even the goodness of God, consists wholly in the
service of others. “The goodnesse of God’s nature is such,” he says,
“that it cannot subsiste or bee without communicating it selfe with
another, otherwise his goodnesse should bee uselesse, which can not bee
admitted for one moment of time, for there is an impossibility thereof;
The naturall temporary or tipicall goodnesse of any creature is uselesse
unlesse it bee communicated with another; God never made any creature in
heaven or in earth simply for it selfe, but for the use of another; how
infinitely more is this true of God, who hath made him selfe in Christ
to bee the goodnesse of the world.”
Heaven, Samuell Gorton taught, is not to be sought in a future life or
in some distant part of the universe. The soul is even _now_ in
eternity. Heaven is a condition of the soul. It may exist here and now.
“Such doctrine,” he says, “as sets forth a time to come, of more worth
and glory than either is, or hath been, keeps the manna for tomorrow, to
the breeding of worms in it.” With Theodore Parker, he taught that the
divine nature is both masculine and feminine;[78] and in one of the most
striking and eloquent passages in his Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer he
argues for the equal recognition of woman in the Church, and as a
teacher of religion.
In philosophy, Samuell Gorton was an original thinker rather than a
student of past systems. In theology, he was far in advance of the
prevailing thought of his time. Only a few of the minor sects of our own
day have yet approximated to his views as to the equal position of woman
in the pulpit and the church; only an occasional strong and independent
mind has reached his conception of religion as a birthright of the
individual soul, to which belongs the unalienable privilege of
investigation and interpretation, free from priestly mediation and
sectarian bias.
IX
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, what shall we say were the peculiar and distinctive
contributions of Samuell Gorton to the Commonwealth which he helped to
found, and the life of our later day? I answer, first, to him more than
to any other we are indebted for the recognition and establishment of
the principle that English law and the rights of English citizenship are
coextensive with English supremacy; and that to secure these rights in
the Colonies, together with the privileges of local administration, a
charter from the Home Government was necessary. This principle had been
ignored or denied by Roger Williams,[79] and violated by the governments
of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. Samuell Gorton affirmed it in season
and out of season; in its defence suffered imprisonment and stripes, and
did not rest until by the aid of Roger Williams at last convinced by his
insistency and by the stern logic of events, it was accepted by the
Commonwealth, affirmed in its Charter, and embodied in its legislation.
So firmly was this principle subsequently engrafted on our Colonial
system, that it became our strongest defence against the encroachments
of the Mother Country during the Revolutionary struggle and gave us an
effective _pou sto_ for the Declaration of Independence. Nor did the
severing of the relations with the government of England rupture this
thread of law and equity which bound us to our historic past. Ours
became the heritage of English Common Law: ours as well as England’s
those historic rights and privileges of citizenship handed down from
Magna Charta.
I answer, secondly, to Samuell Gorton more than to any other, all
generations of Americans will owe the insistent affirmation and
consistent illustration of the principle of religious individualism
which is the logical outcome of the Protestant idea—the principle which
strips off the conventional reliance on ritual and organization, and
places the individual soul face to face with the problems of life and
duty. In our own generation, Ralph Waldo Emerson has been the clearest
exponent of this principle. Gorton was the premature John the Baptist of
New England Transcendentalism.
No portrait, or adequate description of this forgotten Founder of our
Liberties has been handed down to our time. The writer of his brief
biography tells us that “His bearing was courteous, his feelings lively,
his mind vigorous and well-informed.”[80] From such hints as we may
obtain from various sources we may picture him as a man of tall stature,
marked features and gentlemanly address; blue-eyed—a typical Saxon; of
an earnest and sympathetic nature; persuasive of speech in conversation
and exhortation, and freely emphasizing his thoughts with appropriate
gestures, quick to resent injustice, and bold in his denunciation of
wrong-doers,[81]—more eloquent and effective in his spontaneous
utterances and unstudied efforts than in the formal and labored style of
his written treatises.
Of his domestic life we know but little. From his kindly mention of his
wife and children in the final disposal of his property, we have a right
to infer that his family relations were harmonious. The reverent regard
of his sons for his wishes, long after his decease, shows that the
respect which they bore for him was deep and lasting. Besides the three
sons, his family included twice that number of daughters. These were all
married at the time of his decease, and the fact that they, conjointly
with their husbands, were remembered in the final disposal of his
property indicates his affectionate regard for all the branches of his
household. One of the daughters, with the remarkable Scriptural name of
Mahershallalhashbaz, married Daniel Cole, and removed to Glen Cove, Long
Island, then known as Moscheto Cove, and has numerous descendants still
residing in that vicinity.[82]