ifetime of some
of the founders. Of not less grave import was the deflection from the
lofty moral standard of the fathers. A great New Englander, Horace
Bushnell, maintaining his thesis that great migrations are followed by a
tendency to barbarism, has cited in proof this part of New England
history.[105:1] As early as the second generation, the evil tendency
seemed so formidable as to lead to the calling, by the General Court of
Massachusetts, of the "Reforming Synod" of 1679. No one can say that the
heroic age of New England was past. History has no nobler record to
show, of courage and fortitude in both men and women, than that of New
England in the Indian wars. But the terrors of those days of
tribulation, the breaking up of communities, the decimation of the
population, the long absences of the young men on the bloody business of
the soldier, were not favorable for maturing the fruits of the Spirit.
Withal, the intrigues of British politicians, the threatened or actual
molestations of the civil governments of the colonies, and the
corrupting influences proceeding from every center of viceregal
authority, abetted the tendency to demoralization. By the end of the
first third of the eighteenth century, New England, politically,
ecclesiastically, theologically, and morally, had come into a state of
unstable equilibrium. An overturn is impending.

* * * * *

The set and sturdy resolution of the founders of the four colonies of
the New England confederacy that the first planting of their territory
should be on rigorously exclusive principles, with a homogeneous and
mutually congenial population, under a firm discipline both civil and
ecclesiastical, finds an experimental justification in the history of
the neighbor colony of Rhode Island. No commonwealth can boast a nobler
and purer name for its founder than the name of Roger Williams. Rhode
Island, founded in generous reaction from the exclusiveness of
Massachusetts, embodied the principle of "soul-liberty" in its earliest
acts. The announcement that under its jurisdiction no man was to be
molested by the civil power for his religious belief was a broad
invitation to all who were uncomfortable under the neighboring
theocracies.[106:1] And the invitation was freely accepted. The
companions of Williams were reinforced by the friends of Mrs.
Hutchinson, some of them men of substance and weight of character. The
increasing number of persons