actual encouragement
given to rival sects, than under the New England theocracies. The
Nationalist principle was exclusive; the men who held it in New England
(subject though they were to the temptations of sectarian emulation and
fanatic zeal) were large-minded and generous men.

The general uniformity of church organization among the Puritan
plantations is the more remarkable in view of the notable independence
and originality of the leading men, who represented tendencies of
opinion as widely diverging as the quasi-Presbyterianism of John Eliot
and the doctrinaire democracy of John Wise. These variations of
ecclesiastico-political theory had much to do with the speedy diffusion
of the immigrant population. For larger freedom in building his ideal
New Jerusalem, the statesmanlike pastor, Thomas Hooker, led forth his
flock a second time into the great and terrible wilderness, and with his
associates devised what has been declared to be "the first example in
history of a written constitution--a distinct organic law constituting a
government and defining its powers."[102:1] The like motive determined
the choice company under John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton to refuse
all inducements and importunities to remain in Massachusetts, choosing
rather to build on no other man's foundations at New Haven.[102:2] At
the end of a hundred years from the settlement of Boston the shores and
river valleys of Massachusetts and Connecticut were planted with towns,
each self-governing as a pure democracy, each with its church and
educated minister and its system of common schools. The two colleges at
Cambridge and New Haven were busy with their appointed work of training
young men to the service of God "in church or civil state." And this
great and prosperous and intelligent population was, with inconsiderable
exceptions, the unmingled progeny of the four thousand English families
who, under stress of the tyranny of Charles Stuart and the persecution
of William Laud, had crossed the sea in the twelve years from 1628 to
1640.

The traditions of the fathers of New England had been piously cherished
down to this third and fourth generation. The model of an ideal state
that had been set up had, meanwhile, been more or less deformed,
especially in Massachusetts, by the interference of England; the
dominance of the established churches had been slightly infringed by the
growth here and there of dissenting churches, Baptist, Episcopalian, and