The Beginners of a Nation

CHAPTER THE SECOND.

THE PROPHET OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

I

Centrifugal forces in Massachusetts. The centrifugal force of religious differences acted with disastrous results in Maryland, because the Catholic party, which had always a controlling negative there through the proprietary, was in the minority. The Massachusetts people, on the other hand, were fairly homogeneous in religious opinion, and their government was admirably compacted. In Massachusetts religious sentiment was a powerful centripetal force. Magistrates and ministers were nicely poised, and each order relied upon the other to maintain existing conditions. If the magistrates were perplexed or were seriously opposed, the elders were called in to advise or to lend a powerful ecclesiastical sanction to the rulers. When any disturbance of church order was threatened, the magistrates came to the front and supported the clergy with the sharp smiting of the secular arm. In the magistracy and in the ranks of the clergy were men of unusual prudence and ability. If the little Puritan commonwealth seemed a frail canoe at first, it was navigated – considering its smallness one might rather say it was paddled – most expertly. But in Massachusetts, as well as in Maryland, religious opinion was the main source of disturbance. The all-pervading ferment of the time could not be arrested, and more than once it produced explosion. Now one and now another prophet of novelty or prophet of retrogression arose to be dealt with for religious errors; there were divergences from the strait path of Puritanism in the direction of a return to Church of England usage, divergences in the direction of extreme Separatism, in the direction of the ever-dreaded "Anabaptism," in the direction of Arianism, and of so-called Antinomianism. In the case of the Antinomians, the new movement was able to shelter itself under the authority of the younger Vane, then governor, and for a while under the apparent sanction of the powerful Cotton. But no other religious disturbance was ever allowed to gather head enough to become dangerous to the peace and unity of the little state. Dislike as we may the principles on which uniformity was enforced, we must admire the forehanded statesmanship of the Massachusetts leaders in strangling religious disturbances at birth, as Pharaoh's midwives did infant Hebrews.

II

Early life of Roger Williams. One of the most formidable of all those who ventured to assail the compact phalanx presented by the secular and religious authorities of Massachusetts was Roger Williams. N. Eng. Hist., Gen. Reg., July, 1889. Williams was the son of a merchant tailor of London. He manifested in boyhood that quickness of apprehension which made him successful in acquiring languages later in life. Before he was fifteen the precocious lad was employed in the Star Chamber in taking notes of sermons and addresses in shorthand, and his skill excited the surprise and admiration of Sir Edward Coke. Coke had found time, in the midst of a tempestuous public career and the arduous private studies that brought him permanent renown, to defend the legacy which founded the new Sutton's Hospital, later known as the Charter-House School. Indorsement of Mrs. Sadleir on Williams's letter, transcript, Lenox Library; also in Narragansett Club, Pub. VI. Of this school he was one of the governors, and he appointed young Roger Williams to a scholarship there, Williams being the second pupil that ever gained admission to that nursery of famous men. His natural inclination to industry in his studies was quickened by the example and encouragement of Coke, who was wont to say that he who would harrow what Roger Williams had sown must rise early. From the Charter House Williams went to Pembroke College, Cambridge. He early manifested sincere piety and a tendency to go to extremes in his Puritan scruples. Even in his father's house he had begun to taste the bitterness of persecution. His eager temper transformed his convictions into downright passions; his integrity was an aggressive force, and there was a precipitation in his decisions and actions that was trying to his friends. 93 From an early period he showed a conscience intolerant of prudent compromises. Puritanism had contrived to exist and to grow to formidable strength within the church by means of such compromises. Hooker and Cotton, two of the greatest luminaries of that party and afterward the lights that lightened New England, one day urged on the impetuous Williams the propriety of temporarily conforming in the use of the common prayer. By conceding so much to the judgment of his revered elders, Williams would have removed the only obstacle to his advancement, for preferment was offered to the clever and exemplary protégé of Coke in the universities, in the city, in the country, and at court. 94 But neither interest nor example could sway the impractical young minister. He took refuge, like other extreme Puritans, in a private chaplaincy, and refused all compromise, in order, as he afterward declared, to keep his "soul undefiled in this point and not to act with a doubting conscience." Most men feel bound to obey conscience only where it clearly commands or forbids; good men may act on the balance of probabilities where there is doubt; but this young man would not do anything concerning which his moral judgment felt the slightest halting. Here is the key to his whole career; his strength lay in his aspiration for a soul undefiled; his weakness, in that he was ever a victim to the pampered conscience of an ultraist. Property of some thousands of pounds, that might have been his had he been willing to make oath in the form required in chancery, he renounced to his scruples. It certainly seemed rash in a young man just setting out in life, with a young wife to care for, to indulge in such extravagant luxury of scruple.

III

Flight of Williams from England. Laud succeeded in hunting the non-conforming Puritans from their lectureships and chaplaincies. It became with Williams no longer a question of refusing preferments on both hands with lavish self-denial, but of escaping the harsh penalties reserved for such as he by the Courts of High Commission and the Star Chamber. There was nothing left but to betake himself to New England for safety. Williams's letter to Mrs. Sadleir, as above. He fled hurriedly across country on horseback, feeling it "as bitter as death" that he dared not even say farewell to his great patron Sir Edward Coke, who detested schism.

Arrival in New England. Here, as in after life, the supreme hardship he suffered was not mere exile, but that exile of the spirit which an affectionate man feels when he is excommunicate of those he loves. His escape by sea was probably the more difficult because he was unwilling to "swallow down" the oath exacted of those who emigrated. But he succeeded in sailing with his young wife, and in 1631 this undefiled soul, this dauntless and troublesome extremist, landed in New England. He was invited to become one of the ministers of the Boston church. 95 But Williams was conscientiously a Separatist, and he refused to enter into communion with the Boston congregation because of its position with reference to the church in England.

This protest by withdrawal of communion was a fundamental principle of Separatism. It was not, as it appears on the surface, a manifestation of uncharitableness toward persons, but a solemn protest by act in favor of a principle. 96 Never was any man more forgiving, long-suffering, and charitable toward opponents than Williams, but never was a man less inclined to yield a single jot in the direction of compromise where his convictions were involved, whatever might be the evils sure to result from his refusal.

IV

Williams at Salem. Williams repaired first to Salem, the north pole of Puritanism, where the pioneer church of Massachusetts had a more Separatist tone than any other. In the phrase of the time, no other churches in the world were so "pure" as the New England churches, and Salem was accounted the "purest" church in New England. Its surviving minister, Skelton, and its principal layman, Endecott, both tended to extreme Congregationalism; but the General Court of the colony protested against the selection of Williams to be one of the ministers of the Salem church. Skelton's Separatist tendencies, Endecott's impetuous radicalism, and Salem's jealous rivalry with the younger town of Boston, were already sources of anxiety to the rulers. The addition of Williams to these explosive forces was alarming. Williams's ecclesiastical ideals were not those which the leaders of the colony had devoted their lives and fortunes to establish. Had this young radical been less conscientious, less courageous, less engagingly good and admirable, there would not have been so much reason to fear him. A letter was written to Endecott protesting against Williams's ordination, because he had refused communion with the church at Boston, and because he denied the power of the magistrate to enforce duties of the first table – that is, duties of religion. Winthrop's Journal, i, 63, 12th April, 1631. Here at the very outset of his American life we find that Williams had already embraced the broad principle that involved the separation of church and state and the most complete religious freedom, and had characteristically pushed this principle to its logical result some centuries in advance of the practice of his age. 97 The protest of the court prevented his ordination. He yielded to the opposition and soon after removed to Plymouth, where the people were Separatists, modified by the conservative teachings of John Robinson, somewhat modified also by the responsibility of founding a new state, and perhaps by association with Puritans of the neighboring colony.

Williams at Plymouth. At Plymouth the young idealist "prophesied" in his turn, but did not take office in the church, which already had a pastor in Ralph Smith, the Separatist, who had been suffered to come over in a Massachusetts ship only on his giving a promise not to preach in that jurisdiction without leave. The congregation at Plymouth was poor, and Roger Williams mainly supported himself by hard toil "at the hoe and the oar" – that is, perhaps, in farming and fishing. His body seems to have been vigorous, and no physical fatigue abated anything of his mental activity. The Pilgrims had passed more than twelve years in Holland, and almost every adult in Plymouth must have known Dutch. Those of Roger Williams's own age, who were children when they migrated to Leyden and men when they left, probably spoke it as well as they did their mother tongue. Maverick's Description of New England, 25. The Plymouth people, indeed, were styled "mungrell Dutch" a quarter of a century later. It is probable that Williams, with his usual eagerness to acquire knowledge, now added Dutch to his stock of languages; it is certain that he afterward taught Dutch to John Milton. But he was still more intent on learning the language of the natives, that he might do them good. He resolved not to accept office as pastor or teacher, but to give himself to work among the Indians. Williams to Winthrop, 1632. Perhaps his tendency to individualism made this prospect pleasing to him. He may have begun already to realize in a half-conscious way that there was scant room in any organization for such as he. The learning of the Indian language was an arduous toil in more ways than one. "God was pleased to give me a painful patient spirit," wrote Williams long after, "to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes to gain their tongue." He afterward wrote an excellent treatise on the dialect of the New England Indians.

Writes against the royal patents. At Plymouth Williams spoke, as he had at Salem, without restraint from any motive of expediency or even of propriety. Separatist Plymouth, whose days of advance were over, was a little disturbed by his speech. In his own sweet, reckless way he sometimes sharply rebuked even the revered Bradford when he thought him at fault. And in the interest of the aborigines and of justice Williams laid before Governor Bradford a manuscript treatise which argued that the king had no right to give away, as he had assumed to do in his grants and charters, the lands of the Indians merely because he was a Christian and they heathen. That it was right to wrong a man because he was not orthodox in belief could find no place in the thoughts of one whose conscience was wholly incapable of sophistication. Bradford accepted candidly the rebukes of Williams and loved him for his "many precious parts." Bradford, 310. But as governor of a feeble colony he was disturbed by Williams's course. In spirituality, unselfish fearlessness, and a bold pushing of Separatist principles to their ultimate logical results, Roger Williams reminded the Pilgrims of the amiable pastor of the Separatist church in Amsterdam whose change step by step to "Anabaptism," the great bugbear of theology in that time, had been a tragedy and a scandal to the Separatists of Leyden. Knowles's Life of Williams, 53. Elder Brewster feared that Williams would run the same course. Williams wished to return to Salem, where he might still devote himself to the neighboring Indians, and assist Skelton, now declining in health. Brewster persuaded the Plymouth church to give him a letter of dismissal. Williams returns to Salem. The leading Pilgrims felt bound to send "some caution" to the Salem church regarding the extreme tendencies of Williams. On the other hand, some of the Plymouth people were so captivated by his teachings and his personal character that they removed with him. This following of an approved minister was common among Puritans; an acceptable preacher was of as much value to a town as good meadows, broad pastures, and pure water.

V

The town system. To understand the brief career of Williams at Salem and its catastrophe, we must recall the character of colonial life in Massachusetts at the time. There were already sixteen settlements or "towns" on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, with an indefinite stretch of gloomy wilderness for background, the dwelling place of countless savages and wild beasts. The population of all the settlements may have summed up five thousand people – enough to have made one prosperous village. The inhabitants of the various towns of the bay were from different parts of England; their dress and dialect were diverse, and their Puritanism was of various complexions. The town system, at first a reproduction on new soil of the township field communes that had subsisted in parts of England from ages beyond the fountain heads of tradition, gave some play to local peculiarities and prejudices. There is evidence that the central government relieved itself from strain by means of this rural borough system. The ancient town system in turn appears to have taken on a new youth; it was perhaps modified and developed by the local diversity of the people, and it lent to Massachusetts, at first, something of the elasticity of a federal government. Note 6.

Life in the Massachusetts settlements. This community of scattered communes was cut off from frequent intercourse with the world, for the sea was far wider and more to be feared in that day of small ships and imperfect navigation than it is now. 1630 to 1640. The noise of the English controversies in which the settlers had once borne a part reached them at long intervals, like news from another planet. But most of the time these lonesome settlements had no interest greater than the petty news and gossip of little forest hamlets. The visitor who came afoot along Indian trails, or by water, paddling in a canoe, to Boston on lecture day, might bring some news of sickness, accident, or death. Sometimes the traveling story was exciting, as that wolves had slaughtered the cattle at a certain place, while yet cattle were few and precious. Or still more distressing intelligence came that the ruling elder of the church at Watertown had taken the High-church position that Roman churches were Christian churches, or that democratic views had been advanced by Eliot of Roxbury. A new and far-fetched prophetical explanation of a passage in the Book of Canticles, and a tale of boatmen wrecked in some wintry tempest, might divide the attention of the people. Stories of boats capsized, of boatmen cast on islands where there was neither shelter nor food, of boats driven far to sea and heard of no more, were staples of excitement in these half-aquatic towns; and if the inmates of a doomed boat had been particularly profane, these events were accounted edifying – divine judgments on the ungodly. When the governor wandered once and lost himself in the forest, passing the night in a deserted wigwam, there was a sensation of a half-public character. That a snake and a mouse had engaged in a battle, and that the puny mouse had triumphed at last, was in one budget of traveling news that came to Boston. To this event an ominous significance was given by John Wilson, pastor of the Boston church, maker of anagrams, solemn utterer of rhyming prophecies which were sometimes fulfilled, and general theological putterer. Wilson made the snake represent the devil, according to all sound precedents; the mouse was the feeble church in the wilderness, to which God would give the victory over Satan. Thus enhanced by an instructive interpretation from the prophet and seer of the colony, the story no doubt took up its travels once more, and now with its hopeful exegesis on its back. The Massachusetts mouse was an auspicious creature; it is recorded by the governor, and it was no doubt told along the coast, that one got into a library and committed depredations on a book of common prayer only, nibbling every leaf of the liturgy, while it reverently spared a Greek Testament and a Psalter in the same covers.

In a petty state with a range of intellectual interests so narrow, the conflict between Williams and the General Court took place.

VI

Self-consciousness of the Massachusetts community. It was a community that believed in its own divine mission. It traced the existence of its settlements to the very hand of God – the God who led Israel out of Egypt. The New England colonists never forgot that they were a chosen people. Upon other American settlers – the Dutch in New Netherland, the Virginia churchmen, the newly landed Marylanders, with their admixture of papists – they looked with condescension if not with contempt, accounting them the Egyptians of the New World. 98 The settlers on the Bay of Massachusetts were certain that their providential exodus was one of the capital events in human history; that it had been predesigned from eternity to plant here, in a virgin world, the only true form of church government and to cherish a church that should be a model to the Old World in turn, and a kind of foreshadowing of the new heaven and the new earth. Some dreamed that the second coming of Christ would take place among the rocky woodlands of New England. The theocratical government was thought to be the one most pleasing to God, and a solemn obligation was felt to import into this new theocracy the harsh Oriental intolerance which had marked that fierce struggle in which the Jewish tribes finally shook off image worship.

John Cotton, 1633. The apostle of theocracy who arrived soon after Williams's return to Salem was John Cotton, a Puritan leader in England, in whom devoutness was combined with extreme discretion, a dominant will with a diplomatic prudence and a temper never ruffled. Cotton's ingenious refinements made him a valuable apologist in an age of polemics, but they often served to becloud his vision of truth and right. He was prone to see himself as he posed, in the character of a protagonist of truth. He gave wise advice to the Massachusetts Puritans at their departure from England. When, a few years later, Laud's penetrating vigilance and relentless thoroughness made even Cotton's well-balanced course of mild non-conformity impossible, he fled from his parish of Boston, in Lincolnshire, to London, and escaped in 1633 with difficulty to the new Boston in New England. As John Cotton had been the shining candle of Puritanism in England, his arrival in America was hailed with joy, and from the time of his settlement in the little capital his was the hand that shaped ecclesiastical institutions in New England, and he did much also to mold the yet plastic state. 99 Though he usually avoided the appearance of personal antagonism, every formidable rival he had left Massachusetts early. Williams, Hooker, Davenport, and Hugh Peter all found homes beyond the bounds of the colony. There can not be two queen bees in one hive, nor can there well be more than one master mind in the ecclesiastical order of a petty theocratic state. It was the paradox of colonial religious organization that the Episcopal colonies had parishes almost independent of all supervision, while the New England Congregationalists were, from the arrival of Cotton, subject to the dominance of ministers who virtually attained to the authority of bishops.

VII

Salem refractory. Salem, the oldest town of the commonwealth, was the most ready to pursue an independent course and it was attached to Williams, whose ability attracted new settlers and who maintained a position of independence toward Cotton and the authorities at Boston. To subdue the refractory Salem was no doubt one of the secondary purposes of the proceedings against Williams. There seems to have been no personal animosity toward Williams himself; his amiable character and his never-doubted sincerity were main obstacles to his punishment.

Collision inevitable. The return of Roger Williams to such a place as Salem was naturally a matter of alarm to the ministers and magistrates of Massachusetts. Collision was not a matter of choice on either side. The catastrophe was like one that comes from the irresistible action of physical forces. In a colony planted at great cost to maintain one chosen form of worship and subordinating all the powers of government to this purpose, a preacher who asserted the necessity for a complete separation of religion and government in the interest of soul liberty had no place. His ideal was higher than the prevailing one, but that age could not possibly rise to it.

VIII

The book against the patent. Williams was yet only a private member of the church in Salem, but in the illness of the pastor he "exercised by way of prophecy" – that is, preached without holding office. An alarming report was soon in circulation that he had written a book against the king's patent, the foundation of the colonial authority. This treatise, we have said, was written in Plymouth for the benefit of Governor Bradford. 100 Like many of the manuscript books that have come down to us, it appears to have been a small quarto, and, if it resembled other books of the sort, it was neatly stitched and perhaps even bound by its author in the favorite pigskin of the time. Williams sent his book promptly to be examined. Some of the "most judicious ministers much condemned Mr. Williams's error and presumption," and an order was made that he "should be convented at the next court." In the charges no fault was found with the main thesis of the book, that the king could not claim and give away the lands of the Indians; but it was thought that there were disloyal reflections cast upon both James and Charles – at least those eager to condemn construed the obscure and "implicative phrases" of Williams in that sense – and these supposed reflections were the subject of the charges. Williams wrote a submissive letter, and offered his book, or any part of it, to be burned after the manner of that time. A month later, when the governor and council met, the whole aspect of the affair had changed. Cotton and Wilson, the teacher and the pastor of the Boston church, certified, after examination of Williams's quarto, that "they found the matters not so evil as at first they seemed." It was decided to let Williams off easily. There are some things unexplained about the affair; the eagerness of the "judicious ministers" and court to condemn without due examination, the failure even to specify the objectionable passages at last, and the unwonted docility of Williams – all leave one to infer that there was more in this transaction than appears. Laud and his associates were moving to have the Massachusetts charter vacated, and it may have seemed imprudent for the magistrates to found their authority on a base so liable to disappear. If the charter had been successfully called in, Williams's ground of the sufficiency of the Indian title to lands might have proved useful as a last resort. Williams asserted, long afterward, that before his troubles began he had drafted a letter addressed to the king, "not without the approbation of some of the chiefs of New England," whose consciences were also "tender on this point before God." Reply to Cotton, 276, 277. This letter humbly acknowledged "the evil of that part of the patent which relates" to the gift of lands. Had the letter been sent to its destination it would have cut a curious figure among the worldly-minded state papers of the time.