We whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the town of
Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active and passive
obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for
public good of the body in an orderly way, by the major consent of
present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together in a
Towne fellowship, and others whom they shall admit unto them only in
civil things. [Richard Scott, and twelve others.] August the 20th,
[1637.]
This limiting of the powers of town meetings to “civil things,” is the
first expression in the new world of a severance of the bonds of Church
and State, and of that principle of freedom of conscience for which the
founder had contended. This first Civil Compact was followed, on the 7th
day of the first month, 1638, by the settlers at Aquidneck, with a