The general sentiment of the early New England writers was like that of the "Wonder-working Providence," though it did not always find such rhapsodic expression. It has left its impress upon the minds of their children's children down to our own time, and has affected the opinions held about them by other people. It has had something to do with a certain tacit assumption of superiority on the part of New Englanders, upon which the men and women of other communities have been heard to comment in resentful and carping tones. There has probably never existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth's surface, a group of people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon some such assumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical narratives, from the chronicles of a parish to the annals of an empire, alike proceed. But in New England it assumed a form especially apt to provoke challenge. One of its unintentional effects was the setting up of an unreal and impossible standard by which to judge the acts and motives of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. We come upon instances of harshness and cruelty, of narrow-minded bigotry, and superstitious frenzy; and feel, perhaps, a little surprised that these men had so much in common with their contemporaries. Hence the interminable discussion which has been called forth by the history of the Puritans, in which the conclusions of the writer have generally been determined by circumstances of birth or creed, or perhaps of reaction against creed. One critic points to the Boston of 1659 or the Salem of 1692 with such gleeful satisfaction as used to stir the heart of Thomas Paine when he alighted upon an inconsistency in some text of the Bible; while another, in the firm conviction that Puritans could do no wrong, plays fast and loose with arguments that might be made to justify the deeds of a Torquemada. [Sidenote: Acts of the Puritans often judged by a wrong standard]
From such methods of criticism it is the duty of historians as far as possible to free themselves. If we consider the Puritans in the light of their surroundings as Englishmen of the seventeenth century and inaugurators of a political movement that was gradually to change for the better the aspect of things all over the earth, we cannot fail to discern the value of that sacred enthusiasm which led them to regard themselves as chosen soldiers of Christ. It was the spirit of the "Wonder-working Providence" that hurled the tyrant from his throne at Whitehall and prepared the way for the emancipation of modern Europe. No spirit less intense, no spirit nurtured in the contemplation of things terrestrial, could ever have done it. The political philosophy of a Vane or a Sidney could never have done it. The passion for liberty as felt by a Jefferson or an Adams, abstracted and generalized from the love of particular liberties, was something scarcely intelligible to the seventeenth century. The ideas of absolute freedom of thought and speech, which we breathe in from childhood, were to the men of that age strange and questionable. They groped and floundered among them, very much as modern wool growers in Ohio or iron-smelters in Pennsylvania flounder and grope among the elementary truths of political economy. But the spirit in which the Hebrew prophet rebuked and humbled an idolatrous king was a spirit they could comprehend. Such a spirit was sure to manifest itself in narrow cramping measures and in ugly acts of persecution; but it is none the less to the fortunate alliance of that fervid religious enthusiasm with the Englishman's love of self-government that our modern freedom owes its existence. [Sidenote: Spirit of the Wonder-working Providence]
The history of New England under Charles II. yields abundant proof that political liberty is no less indebted in the New World than in the Old to the spirit of the "Wonder-working Providence." The theocratic ideal which the Puritan sought to put into practice in Massachusetts and Connecticut was a sacred institution in faults of the defence of which all his faculties were kept perpetually alert. Much as he loved self-government he would never have been so swift to detect and so stubborn to resist every slightest encroachment on the part of the crown had not the loss of self-government involved the imminent danger that the ark of the Lord might be abandoned to the worshippers of Dagon. It was in Massachusetts, where the theocracy was strongest, that the resistance to Charles II. was most dogged and did most to prepare the way for the work of achieving political independence a century later. Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot be sorry that it was itself crushed in the process. It was well that it did not survive its day of usefulness, and that the outcome of the struggle was what has been aptly termed "the emancipation of Massachusetts." [Sidenote: Merits and faults of the theocracy]
The basis of the theocratic constitution of this commonwealth was the provision by which the exercise of the franchise was made an incident of church-membership. Unless a man could take part in the Lord's Supper, as administered in the churches of the colony, he could not vote or hold office. Church and state, parish and town, were thus virtually identified. Here, as in some other aspects of early New England, one is reminded of the ancient Greek cities, where the freeman who could vote in the market-place or serve his turn as magistrate was the man qualified to perform sacrifices to the tutelar deities of the tribe; other men might dwell in the city but had no share in making or executing its laws. The limitation of civil rights by religious tests is indeed one of those common inheritances from the old Aryan world that we find again and again cropping out, even down to the exclusion of Catholics from the House of Commons from 1562 to 1829. The obvious purpose of this policy in England was self-protection; and in like manner the restriction of the suffrage in Massachusetts was designed to protect the colony against aggressive episcopacy and to maintain unimpaired the uniformity of purpose which had brought the settlers across the ocean. Under the circumstances there was something to be said in behalf of such a measure of self-protection, and the principle required but slight extension to cover such cases as the banishment of Roger Williams and the Antinomians. There was another side to the case, however. From the very outset this exclusive policy was in some ways a source of weakness to Massachusetts, though we have seen that the indirect effect was to diversify and enrich the political life of New England as a whole. [Sidenote: Restriction of the suffrage to church members]
At first it led to the departure of the men who founded Connecticut, and thereafter the way was certainly open for those who preferred the Connecticut policy to go where it prevailed. Some such segregation was no doubt effected, but it could not be complete and thorough. Men who preferred Boston without the franchise to Hartford with it would remain in Massachusetts; and thus the elder colony soon came to possess a discontented class of people, always ready to join hand in glove with dissenters or mischief-makers, or even with emissaries of the crown. It afforded a suggestive commentary upon all attempts to suppress human nature by depriving it of a share in political life; instead of keeping it inside where you can try conclusions with it fairly, you thrust it out to plot mischief in the dark. Within twenty years from the founding of Boston the disfranchisement of such citizens as could not participate in church-communion had begun to be regarded as a serious political grievance. These men were obliged to pay taxes and were liable to be called upon for military service against the Indians; and they naturally felt that they ought to have a voice in the management of public affairs. [Sidenote: It was a source of political discontent]
Besides this fundamental ground of complaint, there were derivative grievances. Under the influence of the clergy justice was administered in somewhat inquisitorial fashion, there was an uncertainty as to just what the law was, a strong disposition to confuse questions of law with questions of ethics, and great laxity in the admission and estimation of evidence. As early as 1639 people had begun to complain that too much power was rested in the discretion of the magistrate, and they clamoured for a code of laws; but as Winthrop says, the magistrates and ministers were "not very forward in this matter," for they preferred to supplement the common law of England by decisions based on the Old Testament rather than by a body of statutes. It was not until 1649, after a persistent struggle, that the deputies won a decisive victory over the assistants and secured for Massachusetts a definite code of laws. In the New Haven colony similar theocratic notions led the settlers to dispense with trial by jury because they could find no precedent for it in the laws of Moses. Here, as in Massachusetts, the inquisitorial administration of justice combined with partial disfranchisement to awaken discontent, and it was partly for this reason that New Haven fell so easily under the sway of Connecticut. [Sidenote: Inquisitorial administration of justice]
In Massachusetts after 1650 the opinion rapidly gained ground that all baptized persons of upright and decorous lives ought to be considered, for practical purposes, as members of the church, and therefore entitled to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for participation in the Lord's Supper. This theory of church-membership, based on what was at that time stigmatized as the "Halfway Covenant," aroused intense opposition. It was the great question of the day. In 1657 a council was held in Boston, which approved the principle of the Halfway Covenant; and as this decision was far from satisfying the churches, a synod of all the clergymen in Massachusetts was held five years later, to reconsider the great question. The decision of the synod substantially confirmed the decision of the council, but there were some dissenting voices. Foremost among the dissenters, who wished to retain the old theocratic regime in all its strictness, was Charles Chauncey, the president of Harvard College, and Increase Mather agreed with him at the time, though he afterward saw reason to change his opinion, and published two tracts in favour of the Halfway Covenant. Most bitter of all toward the new theory of church-membership was, naturally enough, Mr. Davenport of New Haven. [Sidenote: The "Halfway Covenant">[
This burning question was the source of angry contentions in the First Church of Boston. Its teacher, the learned and melancholy Norton, died in 1663, and four years later the aged pastor, John Wilson, followed him. In choosing a successor to Wilson the church decided to declare itself in opposition to the liberal decision of the synod, and in token thereof invited Davenport to come from New Haven to take charge of it. Davenport, who was then seventy years old, was disgusted at the recent annexation of his colony to Connecticut. He accepted the invitation and came to Boston, against the wishes of nearly half of the Boston congregation who did not like the illiberal principle which he represented. In little more than a year his ministry at Boston was ended by death; but the opposition to his call had already proceeded so far that a secession from the old church had become inevitable. In 1669 the advocates of the Halfway Covenant organized themselves into a new society under the title of the "Third Church in Boston." A wooden meeting-house was built on a lot which had once belonged to the late governor Winthrop, in what was then the south part of the town, so that the society and its meeting-house became known as the South Church; and after a new church founded in Summer Street in 1717 took the name of the New South, the church of 1669 came to be further distinguished as the Old South. As this church represented a liberal idea which was growing in favour with the people, it soon became the most flourishing church in America. After sixty years its numbers had increased so that the old meeting-house could not contain them; and in 1729 the famous building which still stands was erected on the same spot,—a building with a grander history than any other on the American continent, unless it be that other plain brick building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Federal Constitution framed. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South Church, 1669]
The wrath of the First Church at this secession from its ranks was deep and bitter, and for thirteen years it refused to entertain ecclesiastical intercourse with the South Church. But by 1682 it had become apparent that the king and his friends were meditating an attack upon the Puritan theocracy in New England. It had even been suggested, in the council for the colonies, that the Church of England should be established in Massachusetts, and that none but duly ordained Episcopal clergymen should be allowed to solemnize marriages. Such alarming suggestions began to impress the various Puritan churches with the importance of uniting their forces against the common enemy; and accordingly in 1682 the quarrel between the two Boston societies came to an end. There was urgent need of all the sympathy and good feeling that the community could muster, whereby to cheer itself in the crisis that was coming. The four years from 1684 to 1688 were the darkest years in the history of New England. Massachusetts, though not lacking in the spirit, had not the power to beard the tyrant as she did eighty years later. Her attitude toward the Stuarts—as we have seen—had been sometimes openly haughty and defiant, sometimes silent and sullen, but always independent. At the accession of Charles II. the colonists had thought it worth while to send commissioners to England to confer with the king and avoid a quarrel. Charles promised to respect their charter, but insisted that in return they must take an oath of allegiance to the crown, must administer justice in the king's name, and must repeal their laws restricting the right of suffrage to church members and prohibiting the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South Church, 1669] [Sidenote: Demands of Charles II.]
When the people of Massachusetts received this message they consented to administer justice in the king's name, but all the other matters were referred for consideration to a committee, and so they dropped out of sight. When the royal commissioners came to Boston in 1664, they were especially instructed to ascertain whether Massachusetts had complied with the king's demands; but upon this point the legislature stubbornly withheld any definite answer, while it frittered away the time in trivial altercations with the royal commissioners. The war with Holland and the turbulent state of English politics operated for several years in favour of this independent attitude of the colonists, though during all this time their enemies at court were busy with intrigues and accusations. Apart from mere slanders the real grounds of complaint were the restriction of the suffrage, whereby members of the Church of England were shut out; the claims of the eastern proprietors, heirs of Mason and Gorges, whose territory Massachusetts had absorbed; the infraction of the navigation laws; and the coinage of pine-tree shillings. The last named measure had been forced upon the colonists by the scarcity of a circulating medium. Until 1661 Indian wampum had been a legal tender, and far into the eighteenth century it remained current in small transactions. "In 1693 the ferriage from New York to Brooklyn was eight stivers in wampum or a silver twopence." [35] As early as 1652 Massachusetts had sought to supply the deficiency by the issue of shillings and sixpences. It was an affair of convenience and probably had no political purpose. The infraction of the navigation laws was a more serious matter. "Ships from France, Spain, and the Canaries traded directly with Boston, and brought in goods which had never paid duty in any English port." [36] The effect of this was to excite the jealousy of the merchants in London and other English cities and to deprive Massachusetts of the sympathy of that already numerous and powerful class of people. [Sidenote: Complaints against Massachusetts]