Plantation_, 393.]

[Footnote 24: Maine Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d series, VII.,
183-188.]

[Footnote 25: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, pp. 200, 204.]

[Footnote 26: Hazard, _State Papers_, I., 423-425.]

[Footnote 27: Winthrop, _New England_, II., 12.]

[Footnote 28: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, p. 256.]

[Footnote 29: Hazard, _State Papers_, I., 432.]

CHAPTER XIII

RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT IN MASSACHUSETTS

(1631-1638)

The history of the beginnings of the Massachusetts colony shows that
there was no real unity in church matters among the first emigrants.
The majority were strongly tinctured with Puritanism, but
nonconformity took on many shades of opinion. When it came to adopting
a form of religion for Massachusetts, the question was decided by the
ministers and the handful who then enjoyed the controlling power in
the colony, and not by the majority of inhabitants. It was in this way
that the Congregational church, and not the Presbyterian church, or a
simplified form of the Anglican church, obtained its first hold upon
the colony.

The adoption of the law of 1631 making membership in the
Congregational church the condition of citizenship, and the arrival at
a later day of so many talented ministers embittered by persecution
against the Anglican church, strengthened the connection and made it
permanent. "God's word" was the law of the state, and the
interpretation of it was the natural function of the clergy. Thus,
through church influence, the limitations on thought and religious
practice became more stringent than in the mother-country, where the
suffrage took in all freeholders, whether they were adherents of the
established church or not.

In Massachusetts even Puritans who declined to acknowledge the form of
church government prescribed by the self-established ecclesiastical
authority were practically aliens, compelled to bear the burdens of
church and state, and without a chance of making themselves felt in
the government. And yet, from their own point of view, the position of
the Puritan rulers was totally illogical. While suffering from
persecution in England, they had appealed to liberty of conscience;
and when dominant in America the denouncers of persecution turned
persecutors.

A spirit of resistance on the part of many was the natural consequence
of a position so full of contradiction. Instances of contumacy
happened with such frequency and determination