nd unity were introduced among members theoretically independent.[4]

By a unanimous vote the synod adopted "a platform" approving the
confession of faith of the Westminster divines, except as to those
parts which favored the Presbyterian discipline. The bond of union was
found in the right of excluding an offending church from fellowship
and of calling in the civil power for the suppression of idolatry,
blasphemy, heresy, etc. The platform recognized the prerogative of
occasional synods to give advice and admonition to churches in their
collective capacity, but general officers and permanent assemblies,
like those of the Presbyterian and Anglican churches, armed with
coercive power to act upon individuals, were disclaimed.[5]

Nevertheless, by the organization thus effected, the benumbing
influence of the Calvinistic faith upon the intellectual life of New
England was fully established, and the deaths of John Winthrop and
John Cotton, which happened not long after, were the forerunners of
what Charles Francis Adams styles the "glacial period of
Massachusetts."[6] Both Winthrop and Cotton were believers in
aristocracy in state and church, but the bigotry of Winthrop was
relieved by his splendid business capacity and that of Cotton by his
comparative gentleness and tenderness of heart.

"Their places were taken by two as arrant fanatics as ever
breathed"[7]--John Endicott, who was governor for thirteen out of
fifteen years following Winthrop's death, and John Norton, an able and
upright but narrow and intolerant clergyman. The persecuting spirit
which had never been absent in Massachusetts reached, under these
leaders, its climax in the wholesale hanging of Quakers and witches.

In the year of Cotton's death (1652), which was the year that Virginia
surrendered to the Parliamentary commissioners and the authority of
the English Parliament was recognized throughout English America, the
population of New England could not have been far short of fifty
thousand. For the settlements along the sea the usual mode of
communication was by water, but there was a road along the whole coast
of Massachusetts. In the interior of the colony, as Johnson boasted,
"the wild and uncouth woods were filled with frequented ways, and the
large rivers were overlaid with bridges, passable both for horse and
foot."[8]

All the conditions of New England tended to compress population into
small areas and to force the energies of the people into