I
The Great Migration, it will be remembered, fell in the time of the
Laudean reaction, when the Presbyterian Utopia seemed remote and the
hopes of the Puritan dreamers were fallen low. The Boston leaders
quitted England ten years before Charles summoned the Long Parliament,
and twelve before the royal standard was unfurled at Nottingham.
The armed struggle for supremacy was far below the horizon, and the
outlandish philosophies that later sectaries were to propagate so
diligently were as yet little known in the land. The generous grain
of liberal thought was still in the milk, its fruitful doctrines
unripened. The immigrant gentlemen who came to Massachusetts Bay were
Puritan Anglicans who professed a hearty love for the mother church and
were no friends to the principle of Separatism. They were potential
Presbyterians who rejected alike the Arminianism of Laud and the
autocracy of the bishops. It is reasonable to suppose that as strict
Calvinists, trained in the ordinances as well as in the doctrine of
the French theologian, they came hither with the conscious purpose of
setting up the complete Genevan discipline in the new world. If such
was their plan--and certainly before their coming over they seem not to
have entertained any thoughts of Separatism--it received a check from
the Plymouth influence and the Puritan experiment was turned aside from
the path of its natural development.
It was a somewhat curious misadventure that was to entail unforeseen
consequences. Except in matters of doctrine Pilgrim and Puritan
consorted ill together. Their social antecedents were as unlike as
their views on political and religious institutions. The intellectual
leaders of Plymouth--whatever may be said of the London adventurers who
joined the Holland group--had been nurtured in Elizabethan radicalism.
They were Brownist-Separatists of plebeian origins, who had arrived
at their conception of the true church from a close study of Biblical
texts, with perhaps some admixture of Anabaptist influence, nearly
a generation before the Stuarts came with their divine-right theory.
During their years on the continent they lived remote from the current
of events in England, and under the guidance of the tolerant Robinson
they had been disciplined in the theory and practice of primitive
Congregationalism. On their removal to America they brought with them
a consciously democratic church order, that met their simple needs and
had taken shape from the experience of daily life. This democratic
model of church government was spontaneously supplemented by the
plantation covenant of civil government drawn up aboard ship, which
was to serve as the organic law of the new commonwealth. Two cardinal
principles--which at bottom were one--thus found their way to New
England in the _Mayflower_: the principle of a democratic church and
the principle of a democratic state. When ten years later the Boston
leaders were faced with the problem of erecting a social order, they
accepted the Plymouth model of Congregationalism, but rejected the
plantation covenant. They saw no need for the latter as they were
already provided with an organic law. The charter which Winthrop was
insistent upon bringing with them out of England was asserted to be the
constitution of the commonwealth and, meticulously interpreted, was to
determine largely the form and scope of the new political state. It was
construed to grant a legal sanction to government; but as the charter
of a Carolinian trading company it quite naturally restricted authority
to the managing heads, and granted powers to its directors that were
useful in managing trade ventures but might easily become intolerable
if interpreted as the organic law of a commonwealth. With such
enlargement of powers the directors of the corporation would constitute
a political oligarchy. There was a striking difference, certainly,
between the covenant of Plymouth and the charter-constitution of
Massachusetts Bay, and a political philosopher could readily enough
have foreseen the course that events would take in the Puritan
commonwealth, given the men and the ideals in control.
II • The Puritan Presbyterian
To make clear what was involved in the attempt to adapt the Plymouth
model of church government to the charter commonwealth, it is necessary
to consider somewhat particularly the body of prejudice and principle
brought to the new world aboard the _Lady Arbella_, as the Puritan
contribution to New England. The capable leaders who created the early
institutions of Massachusetts Bay colony were Jacobean Englishmen of
middle station, halfway between the aristocrat and the burgess, with
certain salient characteristics of both. Fashioned by a caste society,
they transported to the little commonwealth an abundant heritage of
class prejudice. They aspired to be reckoned gentlemen and to live in
the new world as they had lived in the old, in a half feudal state,
surrounded by many servants and with numerous dependents. They honored
rank, were sticklers for precedence, respected class distinctions,
demanded the hereditary rights of the gentry. They had been bred up
in a static order where gentlemen ruled and the people obeyed, and
they could not think in terms of the Plymouth plantation covenant,
subscribed by all heads of families. To the modern reader of his
journal there is something almost childish in Winthrop’s insistence
on public deference to his official position and his grief when the
halberd-bearers refused to provide the usual formality to his little
progresses. But if they aspired to be rated as gentlemen, there
was much also of the burgess nature in them. They were potential
capitalists, eager to accumulate ample landholdings, keen to drive a
bargain, given to trade and with as sharp an eye to the main chance as
any London merchant. The community of goods that marked the early days
of Plymouth they disliked so greatly as to account it almost sinful. In
the infancy of the settlement they entered upon an active mercantile
life, building their ships for the West Indian trade, joining in the
fisheries off the Newfoundland coast, venturing far in pursuit of gain.
Active, capable men, excellent administrators rather than speculative
thinkers, stewards of the public interests as well as their own, they
would take it ill to have their matured plans interfered with by
busybodies and incompetents. Their own counsel sufficed them and they
wanted no help from outsiders.
Endow such men with religious zeal; let them regard themselves as
particular repositories of righteousness; give them a free hand to work
out their program unhampered by rival policies; provide them with a
handbook elaborated in complete detail by a master system-maker; and
the result was certain. Their Utopia must be a close-knit church-state,
with authority reserved to the aristocracy of Christian talent. It
is needless to inquire whether a definite conception of a theocracy
was in their minds before their coming over; some such order was
clearly implicit in their religious fervor, their Hebraic theology,
their Genevan discipline, their aristocratic prejudices. They might
nominally accept the Plymouth model of church-government, but they
would meddle with democracy in church and state no more than necessity
compelled. Circumstances, as well as their own promptings, would
counsel quite an opposite course. They were engaged in a difficult and
perilous undertaking, begirt by wilderness enemies, and fearful of
hostile interference by the home authorities. If the venture were to
survive, a drift towards centralization of power was as natural as it
was inevitable. The common security would not suffer any dispersion of
forces or domestic bickerings over authority. Dissatisfied members must
be held in subjection and dangerous swarmings from the mother-hive must
be prevented. The principle of Separatism was too disruptive to insure
cohesive solidarity; the parts must be welded into a protective whole;
and for such business what ideal was more efficient than a theocracy
with Jehovah substituted for King Charles--not openly and seditiously,
but quietly, in the hearts of the people. The historian need not
wander far in search of the origin of the theocratic principle; it
is to be found in the self-interest of the lay and clerical leaders.
Ambitious men could not have devised a fitter means to weld together
the two groups of magistrates and ministers, and endow their charter
prerogatives with divine sanction. The Stuarts were bunglers at the
business in comparison with Winthrop and Cotton. But if they worked the
metal to such shape as they chose we must not forget that it had been
well heated in the smithy of John Calvin. Overlook that fact and the
theocracy becomes incredible.
There are perhaps sufficient grounds to assume that some plan of
minority control was worked out before the migration took place. The
preliminary discussions in England had been long and the terms of
the charter were carefully seen to. By its provisions the right of
franchise rested with the freemen of the corporation, in number about
a hundred and ten. Of the total body of freemen it was known that
only a small group would undertake the venture; probably fewer than
a score came over with the emigrants, and through removals and death
the number was speedily reduced to about a dozen. This handful of
freemen constituted the court, and chose the governor, deputy governor,
and the assistants or magistrates. These latter were to number
eighteen according to the charter provision; but with more offices
than eligible candidates, the number was necessarily reduced, and six
assistants with the governor came to be reckoned a quorum of the court
with sovereign powers.[2] It was a patriarchal undertaking, and to
Carolinian gentlemen there was nothing unusual or unjust in a handful
of leaders exercising plenary powers over the lives and fortunes of two
thousand members of the commonwealth. If the charter could not have
been construed as granting such powers, it is reasonable to assume
that they would not have entered upon the business. The lay leaders
were practical men. They had ventured their estates in the hope of
bettering their condition, both spiritual and material, and with their
personal fortunes at stake they were in no mind to intrust the fate of
the undertaking to other hands than their own. They loved power quite
as much as did the ungodly, and accounting themselves God’s stewards
they reckoned it sin not to use it in his name. As Puritans they would
not keep a weather eye on the majority will. God did not speak in the
Scriptures through majority votes; his chosen were a minority, the
remnant in Israel.
A further sanction was at hand. If these Hebraized Englishmen created
a close corporation and ruled magisterially, if the order in the new
church-state was inquisitorial and stern, it was in strict conformity
with the teachings and example of Calvin. Men deeply read in the
_Institutes_, familiar with the Genevan Ordinances and the practices
of the Consistory, were not likely to discover in them any lessons
in democratic toleration. Righteousness may be fearfully relentless,
and John Calvin had been a tyrant on principle. Iron-willed and
masterful, he had risen to power in the turbulent city-state of Geneva
in sixteenth-century fashion. A few splotches of blood on the white
garments of the Church did not greatly trouble him. He was never
squeamish about ways and means of furthering the Lord’s work. He
violated the right of refuge to bring to the stake the pantheistic
Unitarian Servetus, and he thanked God when the bungling of the
executioner prolonged the sufferings of certain others of his victims.
The Genevan discipline was rigorous, and the clerical inquisitors were
more relentless than the lay. The tyrannies that have been freely
charged upon the New England oligarchy are easily explained in the
light of the Calvinistic Ordinances. There were no whippings or
banishments or hangings in early Pennsylvania where Quaker and Lutheran
dwelt together in peace if not in fellowship. But they were New
Testament men and not out of the Old, like the Saints in Massachusetts
Bay. They worshiped a God of love rather than a God of wrath.
Granted the conception on which the theocratic experiment went forward,
namely, that Jehovah was the sole lawgiver and the Bible the sufficient
statute-book; granted also that these priests and magistrates were
stewards of God’s will; and the centralization of power in the
commonwealth becomes invested with a higher sanction than the terms
of the charter. It was an oligarchy of Christian grace. The minister
was the trained and consecrated interpreter of the divine law, and
the magistrate was its trained and consecrated administrator; and
both were chosen by free election of the Saints. If unfortunately the
Saints were few and the sinners many, was not that a special reason for
safeguarding the Ark of the Covenant from the touch of profane hands?
Hence all legislative experiments by annually elected deputies, no
matter how exactly those experiments might fall in with the wishes of
the majority, were sternly frowned upon or skillfully nullified. Not
only were such popular enactments, it was held, too often prompted by
the carnal desires of the natural man, but they were no better than an
insult to God, as implying the insufficiency of the Scriptures to every
temporal need. Unregenerate and sinful men must have no share in God’s
work. The Saints must not have their hands tied by majority votes. This
explains, quite as much as mere love of power, the persistent hostility
of the leaders to every democratic tendency. Such institutions as grew
up spontaneously out of the necessities of the situation, were sharply
hedged about by restrictions. The town meeting, which was extra-legal
under the charter, was safeguarded by limiting the right of voting
to freemen, except in a few trivial matters; and the more popular
deputies, who inclined to become self-willed, were forced to accept the
principle of magisterial veto on their actions. When a law was passed,
it was purposely left vague as to penalties, in order to give a free
hand to the judges to punish as they wished; and it was not till 1641,
after much insistence from the representatives of the people, that
Ward’s Body of Liberties was finally adopted.
Later critics of Puritanism discover in the theocratic experiment of
Massachusetts Bay a preposterous attempt to turn back the pages of
history, and refashion Englishmen after an ungainly Hebraic pattern.
But to the leaders of that experiment it seemed rather a Utopian
venture to create in the new world a nobler social order than elsewhere
existed. Whether such a society was either possible or desirable, has
long since become only an academic question; what is more suggestive
is the fact that in spite of some bitterness on the part of a small
minority, the stewardship of an oligarchy remained the accepted
principle of government in Massachusetts Bay until the vacating of the
charter in 1684. That it lingered out so long a life is a testimony to
the skillful opportunism of the leaders. They early adopted a strategic
policy which the British ministry foolishly refused to adopt a hundred
years later; they cautiously undermined any potential disaffection by
admitting the wealthiest and most influential to the rights of freemen,
thus allying the ambitious and capable members of society with the
ruling group, and laying the foundations of a provincial aristocracy,
which in the course of time would secularize the government and
substitute an economic for a theocratic basis of authority. The loss of
the charter only hastened what in the nature of things must have come
about eventually.
III • Certain Mistakes
Skillful as were the theocratic rulers and logical as was their
course, it seems plain in the light of later developments that they
fell into certain grave mistakes at the very beginning of their work
that were to hamper them seriously in after days. Those mistakes
were the adoption of the covenant-principle of church organization
borrowed from Plymouth, that started the new churches on the road
to Congregationalism, and the granting of the land in fee-simple
to non-freemen, that was to create an independent yeomanry. Of the
two the second was far graver, for it threw the economics of the
developing commonwealth on the side of local home rule and provided a
substantial foundation for the erection of a democratic opposition to
the oligarchy. If the plantation system of Virginia, or the Patroon
system of New York, had been adopted, the covenanted church would
naturally have followed the path of Genevan Presbyterianism in harmony
with the desires of the leaders, and the democratic opposition both in
church and state must have been starved into submission. But with the
system of small holdings and the development of a vigorous yeomanry,
the eventual development of Congregationalism into a federated group
of self-governing churches, was predetermined more rigidly than by any
logic of John Calvin. The defeat of the Presbyterian program of the
theocrats was implicit in a decentralized land system.
The decision of the Salem church in 1629 to adopt the Plymouth model,
and the acceptance of that decision by later churches in Massachusetts
Bay, has been abundantly commented upon, but the significance of it
has been somewhat inadequately explored.[3] Very likely it was a deep
hatred of episcopal rule that opened the mind of Endicott and his
fellows to the reasoning of Dr. Fuller of Plymouth, and persuaded them
to take this first step towards Separatism; nevertheless as disciples
of Calvin, desirous of establishing a Bible commonwealth, they must
soon discover that a system centrifugal in tendency and decentralizing
in spirit, unless closely restrained, was certain to lead them far
from the Canaan of their hopes. Separatism was the negation of a
state church, and the rule of the congregation was the negation of an
official creed and ecclesiastical unity. If Congregationalism were
suffered to develop its democratic potentialities, the leaders must
eventually find themselves in like position with Laud, with schismatics
disturbing the orthodox harmony and rending the church from within. The
authorities early began to feel, what the Anglican Lechford pointed out
in 1641, that the system was dangerously democratic, and the principle
of centralizing conformity was set to work. The spirit of Calvin’s
Consistory was invoked. Under the guise of brotherly counsel, or church
fellowship, the principle of consociation was developed, a principle
that opened a convenient door to official coercion. Brotherly counsel
that comes armed with the weapon of excommunication, that points its
argument with the threat of banishment or hanging, is certainly not
the pure spirit of Christian fellowship that Congregational historians
have chosen to see in the principle of consociation. The most ardent
apologist has hard work in discovering the democratic principle of
Congregationalism in the theocratic application of the methods of
the Genevan Consistory. The early churches of the theocracy were
Presbyterian in spirit and rule, in spite of the official promulgation
of the covenant-principle in the Cambridge Platform. Certainly real
Separatists like Roger Williams, who suffered from too much brotherly
counsel and did not want a Christian fellowship imposed by magistrates,
were under no illusions in regard to the coercive spirit that lay
behind the principle of consociation.
More open and above board were the successive statutes that effectively
nullified the principle of Separatism by erecting an official state
church. The law of 1631, restricting the franchise to church members,
and the law of 1635, making attendance at church compulsory on
all, were followed in 1636 by a law requiring the approval of the
magistrates and elders before a new church could be set up, and in
1638 by the institution of a system of state support for the ministry.
The principle of the covenant was being pretty effectively whittled
away. Equally Presbyterian was the movement for the establishment of
a definitive state creed. In consequence of the Antinomian schism
effected by the eloquent tongue of Mistress Anne Hutchinson, the
first general synod was convened at Newtown in 1637, which sat for
four and twenty days and drew up a list of eighty-two heretical
opinions, “some blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe,”
together with “nine unwholesome expressions,” which were alleged to be
disturbing the peace of the community. Whereupon the synod broke up,
the members congratulating themselves “that matters had been carried
on so peaceably and concluded so comfortably in all love.” How much
Christian love was awakened by such brotherly counsels in the heart of
Mistress Hutchinson, who was banished and later slain by the Indians,
is not revealed, but her sin was made of record as a warning to other
schismatics. It was this: “He hath let me distinguish between the voice
of my beloved and the voice of Moses,” which being interpreted, meant
an appeal from the Old Testament to the New, from Mosaic authority to
the inner light.
With the promulgation of the Cambridge Platform by the synod of
1646-47, and the acceptance of the Westminster Confession of Faith,
the work of creating the organism and creed of an authoritative
state-church was completed. According to Williston Walker, the
Cambridge Platform “pictures with great clearness the abiding
principles of Congregationalism”--the covenant origin of the local
church, the autonomy of the congregation, the sole authority of the
Bible, and the fellowship of the churches.[4] But it needs the sharp
eyes of an apologetic historian to discover the spirit of democratic
Congregationalism in a discipline that sanctions the power of the state
to intervene in ecclesiastical matters and requires the magistrate to
enforce uniformity in creed and worship. “Idolatry, Blasphemy, Heresy,
Venting corrupt and pernicious opinions, are to be restrayned and
punished by civil authority,” the Platform states. “If any church one
or more shall grow schismaticall, rending it self from the communion
of other churches, or shall walke incorrigibly or obstinately in
any corrupt way of their own, contrary to the rule of the word; in
such case, the Magistrate is to put forth his coercive power, as the
matter shall require.” If such be Congregationalism, how greatly have
the later churches departed from the primitive faith! To the layman,
wanting in insight, it would seem rather to be stark Calvinism, that
reveals how completely the coercive spirit of the Ordinances and
Consistory of the French theologian had come to dominate the theocratic
mind of New England. The reluctant adoption of the Cambridge Platform
by the suspicious deputies was the grim prelude to Baptist whippings
and Quaker baitings, and the setting-in of the dark days of militant
intolerance. “Yourselves pretend liberty of conscience,” wrote Roger
Williams in 1670, “but alas! it is but self, the great god self, only
to yourselves.”[5]
But while the covenant principle was thus being effectively whittled
away by the theocratic leaders, another principle, likewise of Plymouth
origin, was silently working to the overthrow of the theocratic power.
Following the example of the Pilgrims the several towns apportioned
their lands in fee to their members; and if so acute a political
thinker as Daniel Webster is to be trusted, it was from the creative
influence of freehold tenure that the political institutions of New
England became later democratized. As a disciple of James Harrington,
accepting the doctrine of economic determinism as it had been
elaborated in the _Oceana_, Webster traced the spontaneous rise of
republicanism in New England to the wide diffusion of property; and
in the light of his economic interpretation the harsh intolerance of
the Cambridge Platform is seen to be only the aberration of a passing
bigotry. In his anniversary speech at Plymouth he said:
Their situation demanded a parceling out and division of the
lands, and it may be fairly said, that this necessary act _fixed
the future frame and form of their government_. The character of
their political institutions was determined by the fundamental
laws respecting property.... The property was all freehold ...
alienation of the land was every way facilitated, even to the
subjecting of it to every species of debt. The establishment of
public registries, and the simplicity of our forms of conveyance,
have greatly facilitated the change of real estate from one
proprietor to another. The consequence of all these causes has
been, a great subdivision of the soil, and a great equality of
condition; the true basis, most certainly, of a popular government.
“If the people,” says Harrington, “hold three parts in four of the
territory, it is plain there can neither be any single person nor
nobility able to dispute the government with them; in this case,
therefore, _except force be interposed_, they govern themselves.”[6]
With such a clue it is easier to understand how the liberalisms
implicit in Plymouth Congregationalism--its theory of compact in
church and state--should find support from an independent yeomanry
and eventually rise against the oligarchical rule. The new world
would ultimately throw off the old-world repressions and explore the
reaches of those generous idealisms that were the bequest of English
Separatism. The fathers were engaged in an impossible undertaking.
Sanctuaries were close at hand for all dissenters from the theocracy,
in Connecticut for the Congregationalists, in Rhode Island for the
Separatists, along the Maine frontier for the rebellious individualist.
Seated securely in these regions beyond the reach of the Massachusetts
magistrates, the diverse liberalisms that were being stifled by the
oligarchy prospered and brought forth after their kind. Differentiation
in the provinces was the natural counterpart of coercive conformity
at the capital; and from very early days New England divided into
three diverse groups journeying to their Utopias by different roads.
Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, were variant
answers to the question of what might be expected to result from the
domestication in a free environment of the inchoate idealisms of
English Puritanism. How they differentiated themselves from the norm,
and why, will perhaps become clearer from an examination of the diverse
philosophies of their intellectual leaders.
Footnotes
[2] See James Truslow Adams, _The Founding of New England_, Chapter VI.
[3] See Williston Walker, _A History of the Congregational Churches in
the United States_, Chapter IV.
[4] _Ibid._, p. 162.
[5] _Narragansett Club Publications_, Vol. VI, p. 133.
[6] _Works_, Vol. I, pp. 35-36.