by "the
Canon Law, as allowed and adopted in England," ever since Archbishop
Cranmer annulled the marriage between Henry VIII. and Catherine of
Aragon, no man could lawfully marry his brother's widow. We do not stop
to consider whether the Canon Law in this respect was right or wrong; we
merely cite this case to show that, as to some things, the Canon Law was
adopted here. In one marked instance the people of Massachusetts
deviated from "the Canon Law as allowed and adopted in England," to
follow the Canon Law as allowed and adopted by the Popes of Rome; they
enacted that, upon the marriage of the parents of any illegitimate
child, such child should thereby become legitimate.

The colonists of Massachusetts had no such blind prejudice against the
Canon Law, or the Church of England, or the Church of Rome, as prevented
them from adopting whatever they found therein which their consciences
and their reason approved. So far from cherishing an unreasoning
prejudice against the Ecclesiastical Courts, the people of Massachusetts
have preserved, in their Probate Courts, substantially the same system
of law and substantially the same method of procedure which were
followed in the Consistory Court of London, and in the Consistory Court
of Rome; notwithstanding that system came to them associated with the
name of one of the most unpopular and yet one of the ablest of their
governors--Sir Edmund Andros.

There were, indeed, two complaints which the Puritans of Old England and
of New England often made against the English Ecclesiastical Courts:
first, that they punished with merciless severity violations of certain
ecclesiastical regulations which involved no moral turpitude; second,
that they were too lax in the punishment of social sins, Sabbath
desecrations, etc., etc. But nowhere among the literary remains of the
Puritans do we find any suggestion that the system of morals which was
recognized by the Canon Law and administered by the Ecclesiastical
Courts was "not suited to their opinions or condition." We shall not be
understood as saying that the Canon Law in its entirety was ever adopted
in New England, or even in Old England; it was not. When Henry VIII.
assumed the prerogatives of supreme head of the Church of England, so
much of the Canon Law as relates to the jurisdiction of the Pope was
abrogated in that kingdom. So when the colonists of Massachusetts
established "a Church without a bishop and a State without a king,"