The case of Gorton may serve as an example of a rigor that shocked even the Presbyterian Baillie; it must be said in explanation of his story that the magistrates condemned Gorton and his friends to death for the crime of heresy in obedience to the unanimous decision of the elders, [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 146.] but the deputies refusing to concur, the sentence of imprisonment in irons during the pleasure of the General Court was agreed upon as a compromise. “Only they in New England are more strict and rigid than we, or any church, to suppress, by the power of the magistrate, all who are not of their way, to banishment ordinarily and presently even to death lately, or perpetual slavery; for one Jortin, sometime a famous citizen here for piety, having taught a number in New England to cast oft the word and sacrament, and deny angels and devils, and teach a gross kind of union with Christ in this life, by force of arms was brought to New Boston, and there with ten of the chief of his followers, by the civil court was discerned perpetual slaves, but the votes of many were for their execution. They lie in irons, though gentlemen; and out of their prison write to the admiral here, to deal with the parliament for their deliverance.” [Footnote: Baillie’s Letters, ii. 17, 18.]
Like all phenomena of nature, the action of the mind is obedient to law; the cause is followed by the consequence with the precision that the earth moves round the sun, and impelled by this resistless power his destiny is wrought out by man. To the ecclesiastic a deep debt of gratitude is due, for it was by his effort that the first step from barbarism was made. In the world’s childhood, knowledge seems divine, and those who first acquire its rudiments claim, and are believed, to have received it by revelation from the gods. In an archaic age the priest is likewise the law-giver and the physician, for all erudition is concentrated in one supremely favored class—the sacred caste. Their discoveries are kept profoundly secret, and yet to perpetuate their mysteries among their descendants they found schools which are the only repositories of learning; but the time must inevitably come when this order is transformed into the deadliest enemy of the civilization which it has brought into being. The power of the spiritual oligarchy rests upon superstitious terrors which dwindle before advancing enlightenment; hence the clergy have become reactionary, have sought to stifle the spirit of free inquiry, and have used the schools which they have builded as instruments to keep alive unreasoning prejudice, or to serve their selfish ends. This, then, has been the fiercest battle of mankind; the heroic struggle to break down the sacerdotal barrier, to popularize knowledge, and to liberate the mind, began ages before the crucifixion upon Calvary; it still goes on. In this cause the noblest and the bravest have poured forth their blood like water, and the path to freedom has been heaped with the corpses of her martyrs.
In that tremendous drama Massachusetts has played her part; it may be said to have made her intellectual life; and it is the passion of the combat which gives an interest at once so sombre and so romantic to her story.
In the tempest of the Reformation a handful of the sternest rebels were cast upon the bleak New England coast, and the fervor of that devotion which led them into the wilderness inspired them with the dream of reproducing the institutions of God’s chosen people, a picture of which they believed was divinely preserved for their guidance in the Bible. What they did in reality was to surrender their new commonwealth to their priests. Yet they were a race in whose bone and blood the spirit of free thought was bred; the impulse which had goaded them to reject the Roman dogmas was quick within them still, and revolt against the ecclesiastical yoke was certain. The clergy upon their side trod their appointed path with the precision of machines, and, constrained by an inexorable destiny, they took that position of antagonism to liberal thought which has become typical of their order. And the struggles and the agony by which this poor and isolated community freed itself from its gloomy bondage, the means by which it secularized its education and its government, won for itself the blessing of free thought and speech, and matured a system of constitutional liberty which has been the foundation of the American Union, rise in dignity to one of the supreme efforts of mankind.
CHAPTER II. — THE ANTINOMIANS.
Habit may be defined with enough accuracy for ordinary purposes as the result of reflex action, or the immediate response of the nerves to a stimulus, without the intervention of consciousness. Many bodily functions are naturally reflex, and most movements may be made so by constant repetition; they are then executed independently of the will. It is no exaggeration to say that the social fabric rests on the control this tendency exerts over the actions of men; and its strength is strikingly exemplified in armies, which, when well organized, are machines, wherein subjection to command is instinctive, and insubordination, therefore, practically impossible.
An analogous phenomenon is presented by the church, whose priests have intuitively exhausted their ingenuity in weaving webs of ceremonial, as soldiers have directed their energies to perfecting manuals of arms; and the evidence leads to the conclusion that increasing complexity of ritual indicates a densening ignorance and a deepening despotism. The Hindoos, the Spaniards, and the English are types of the progression.
Within the historic ages unnumbered methods of sacerdotal discipline have been evolved, but whether the means used to compass the end has been the bewildering maze of a Levitical code, or the rosary and the confessional of Rome, the object has always been to reduce the devotee to the implicit obedience of the trooper. And the stupendous power of these amazingly perfect systems for destroying the capacity for original thought cannot be fully realized until the mind has been brought to dwell upon the fact that the greatest eras of human progress have begun with the advent of those who have led successful insurrection; nor can the dazzling genius of these brilliant exceptions be appreciated, unless it be remembered how infinitely small has been the number of those among mankind who, having been once drilled to rigid conformity, have not lapsed into automatism, but have been endowed with the mental energy to revolt. On the other hand, though ecclesiastics have differed widely in the details of the training they have enforced upon the faithful, they have agreed upon this cardinal principle: they have uniformly seized upon the education of the young, and taught the child to revere the rites in which he was made to partake before he could reason upon their meaning, for they understood well that the habit of abject submission to authority, when firmly rooted in infancy, would ripen into a second nature in after years, and would almost invariably last till death.