The two who had dared to take Obadiah Holmes by the hand, as, streaming with blood, he left the stake, were the silent witnesses of a great body of liberal opinion. While the ministers and magistrates were, of course, supported everywhere by very considerable numbers among the narrower and more zealous members of the churches, many causes were at work to reduce their proportion in relation to the community at large. Not only had the body of non-church members always constituted the great majority of the population, but even among the members themselves a new generation was growing up, which had known nothing of the spiritual experiences in England, and the struggle there against the established Church. Such a struggle, as the Massachusetts authorities were soon to find in the case of the Quakers, serves to intensify the zeal of the innovators. But in Massachusetts, the former innovators had become transformed into thoroughly orthodox members of a state church, supported by the arm of the civil power, enjoying all the comfortable, safe, and deadening results of an “establishment.” Their faith being no longer tried by opposition, the inevitable consequence was a decline in interest and in zeal. This was recognized by the ministers, and the rather curious situation resulted, in which we find them adopting an apparently more liberal attitude than the lay members themselves toward the question of admission to membership. If, however, in the ministerial convention of 1657 and the synod of 1662, the clergy were rather the more anxious of the two to effect a compromise on that point,[[663]] the cause is not far to seek. Their power and influence—and it must always be remembered that they thought they were using both for the work of the Lord—were dependent upon the maintenance of the numbers of the Church, quite as much as upon that of strict conformity and discipline. The theocracy was, in fact, in very unstable equilibrium, and was equally in danger from an increase in toleration or from a decrease in church-membership. It was the preservation of their influence, from high motives as well as from low, which was leading the clergy on the path to the “Half-Way Covenant”; and the fact that they felt the need of lowering the requirements for admission to the church is the strongest sort of evidence as to the extent to which liberal opinion had developed among the mass of laymen.
If, however, the clergy were to make the attempt, on the one hand, to prevent the numbers of their followers from declining, by no longer requiring them to have passed through the experience of conversion, on the other, they were about to engage in the most determined effort yet made to enforce conformity in matters of doctrine.
Of all the sects that had arisen during the religious ferment following the Reformation, none seems to have been more misunderstood or to have encountered greater opposition than the Quakers. In the middle of the seventeenth century, both the beliefs and the practices of the sect were in an inchoate state, and the vagaries of many of its adherents from the lower walks of life seem not only to have called forth unparalleled[unparalleled] torrents of abuse from all quarters, but to have made men fear that these inoffensive people were to repeat the excesses of some of the frenzied sects of a century earlier. These fears and prejudices were largely increased by the writings of various ministers, many of whom were closely connected with New England.[[664]]
Both the ideas and the carriage of the Quakers were such as to be especially repugnant to the leaders of the theocracy in Massachusetts. Their democratic tendency and peculiarities of social usage were extremely offensive to persons who regarded themselves as an aristocracy of the Saints of God, and who looked upon any lack of respect offered to magistrates or ministers as little short of blasphemy. Moreover, religion as professed by the Quakers was at the opposite pole of thought and experience from that professed by the Puritans. The latter looked upon the Bible as the only complete and final revelation of God to man, of which the minister was the official expounder. To them, the covenant between man and God, the preaching of the word, the scrupulous observance of the Sabbath and of the letter of the Judaic laws, the hard-won privilege of receiving the Sacrament, were all of the essence of religion. On the other hand, the Quakers laid special stress upon the divine illumination in the individual heart, and upon a continuing revelation of Himself by God to man. They denied to the Bible the position assigned to it by the Puritans, and were bitter in their denunciations of “a hireling ministry.” To them the sacraments were shadows, while their lives were saturated with the spirit of the New Testament, not the Old. It was in this antithesis that lay the real answer to George Bishop's question to the Massachusetts magistrates, when he asked: “Why was it that the coming of two women so shook ye, as if a formidable army had invaded your borders?”[[665]]
Mary Fisher and Ann Austin, the two women in question, arrived at Boston, from Barbadoes, in July, 1656, a few weeks after Ann Hibbens had been hung as a witch.[[666]] Governor Endicott was away at the time, but the Deputy Governor, Bellingham, took charge of the proceedings which were immediately begun against them. Their baggage was searched, and a hundred volumes, considered heretical, were confiscated and burned, without compensation. Although there was nothing about their case to suggest witchcraft, the authorities had them stripped stark naked and examined for evidences, with unnecessary indignities.[[667]] They were imprisoned, deprived of light in their cell, and refused communication with anyone. Finally, after five weeks of this illegal punishment, they were shipped back to Barbadoes, fortunate in having escaped before Endicott's return.
Within a few days of their leaving, eight more Quakers arrived on a ship from London, and were promptly accorded similar treatment, except that witchcraft was not charged.[[668]] Endicott's attitude was shown at once. “Take heed you break not our Ecclesiastical Laws,” he said to them, “for then ye are sure to stretch by a Halter.” At the trial, when they asked for a copy of the laws against them, he refused to allow them to see one—"to the grieving of the People then present," wrote our contemporary authority, “who said openly in the Court—How shall they know then when they Transgress?”[[669]] After some weeks' confinement, they were shipped back to England, and the Massachusetts authorities addressed a letter to the United Colonies, asking for the passage of a general regulation against allowing “such pests” as Quakers to be admitted to any of the colonies.[[670]] In October, the Massachusetts General Court passed the first law specifically directed against the sect, which provided that any master of a ship bringing a known Quaker to Massachusetts should be fined £100, and be required to give bonds for taking such out of the colony again, in default of which he was to be imprisoned. The Quaker was to be committed to the “house of correction,” to be severely whipped, “kept constantly to worke,” and not permitted to speak with anyone. If any resident of the colony defended any Quaker opinion, he was to be fined or, on the third offense, banished; while any person “reviling” a magistrate or minister, which meant criticizing them, was to be fined or whipped.[[671]] Few bits of legislation can be more complete than this, which thus provided punishment for an offender, denied anyone the right to speak in his behalf, and made it a crime to criticize the men who had passed the law. One voice, nevertheless, was publicly raised on behalf of liberty. Nicholas Upshall, “a weakly old man,” who, when the two Quakeresses were being starved in prison, had bribed the jailer to give them food, heard the new law being proclaimed in the streets. He protested against it, and for his temerity in daring to criticize the magistrates, he was fined £20, and banished at the beginning of winter.[[672]] On his way to free Rhode Island, he was offered a home by an Indian who took pity upon him, and who, after hearing of his misfortune, exclaimed, “What a God have the English who deal so with one another about the worship of their God!”[[673]] Upshall, however, continued his journey to Gorton's settlement, where he was welcomed and cared for.
The following year, a band of Quaker missionaries from England landed at Newport, and were kindly received by the Rhode Islanders.[[674]] This at once aroused the other colonies, whose Commissioners wrote to the Rhode Island government of the “prudent care” that Massachusetts had taken when Quakers had sought her hospitality, and requested that government to banish such Quakers as were already on the Island, and to prohibit any more from coming, so that the “contagion” might not spread. The letter ended with the threat that, if the little colony did not take such action, “wee apprehend that it will be our duty seriously to consider what further provision God may call us to make to prevent the aforesaid mischiefe.”[[675]]
To this bullying letter, Rhode Island sent an answer as wise as it was dignified. After stating their desire to live in loving correspondence with all the colonies, they wrote:—
“As concerning these quakers (so called), which are now among us, we have no law among us, whereby to punish any for only declaring by words, &c., theire mindes and understandings concerning the things and ways of God, as to salvation and an eternal condition. And we, moreover, finde, that in those places where these people aforesaid, in this colony, are most of all suffered to declare themselves freely, and are only opposed by arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come, and we are informed that they begin to loath this place for that they are not opposed by the civill authority, but with all patience and meekness are suffered to say over their pretended revelations and admonitions, nor are they like or able to gain many here to their way; surely we find that they delight to be persecuted by civill powers, and when they are soe, they are like to gain more adherents by the conseyte of their patient sufferings, than by consent to their pernicious sayings: And yet we conceive, that theire doctrines tend to very absolute cuttinge downe and overturninge relations and civill government among men, if generally received.”[[676]]
The General Assembly sent a similar reply, some months later, in which they stated that freedom of conscience was the principal ground of their charter, “which freedom we still prize as the greatest hapiness that men can possess in this world”; and added that Quakers were “suffered to live in England; yea even in the heart of the nation.”[[677]] Apparently the only answer the United Colonies could make to the worldly wisdom and nobility of their little neighbor, was to threaten to cut off her trade and to deprive her of the necessities of life.[[678]] Nor has the letter, which is one of the landmarks in the struggle for religious liberty in America, fared better at the hands of New England's clerical historians. Palfrey, who devotes thirty-five pages to an extenuating account of the Massachusetts persecution, conceals Rhode Island's stand in a footnote; and Dr. Ellis speaks of that colony's protest as “a quaint letter,” in which, incredibly, he finds only “naïveté and humor.”[[679]]