ts appearance. The principles of
Congregationalism are first complete separation of Church and State and
then the autonomy of each separate parish,--as a petition addressed to
James I. in 1616 expresses it: the right is exercised "of spiritual
administration and government in itself and over itself by the common
and free consent of the people, independently and immediately under
Christ."[67]

This sovereign individualism in the religious sphere led to practical
consequences of extraordinary importance. From its principles there
finally resulted the demand for, and the recognition of, full and
unrestricted liberty of conscience, and then the asserting of this
liberty to be a right not granted by any earthly power and therefore by
no earthly power to be restrained.

But the Independent movement could not confine itself to ecclesiastical
matters, it was forced by logical necessity to carry its fundamental
doctrines into the political sphere. As the Church, so it considered
the state and every political association as the result of a compact
between its original sovereign members.[68] This compact was made indeed
in pursuance of divine commandment, but it remained always the ultimate
legal basis of the community. It was concluded by virtue of the
individual's original right and had not only to insure security and
advance the general welfare, but above all to recognize and protect the
innate and inalienable rights of conscience. And it is the entire people
that specifically man for man concluded this compact, for by it alone
could every one be bound to respect the self-created authority and the
self-created law.

The first indications of these religious-political ideas can be traced
far back, for they were not created by the Reformation. But the
practice which developed on the basis of these ideas was something
unique. For the first time in history social compacts, by which states
are founded, were not merely demanded, they were actually concluded.
What had until then slumbered in the dust-covered manuscripts of the
scholar became a powerful, life-determining movement. The men of that
time believed that the state rested upon a contract, and they put their
belief into practice. More recent theory of public law with only an
imperfect knowledge of these events frequently employed them as examples
of the possibility of founding a state by contract, without suspecting
that these contracts were only the realization of an abstra