The needful bits and curbs to headstrong steeds.”
Shakspeare.
The Pilgrim Fathers were not students of Godefridus de Valle’s odd book, “De Arte Nihil Credendi”—The Art of believing Nothing. They did believe, from the bottom of their hearts; and, in obedience to Paul, they strove to “hold fast” that which they esteemed “good.” They had two passions, devotion to the common weal as citizens, and to the interests of the church as Christians. “They regarded themselves, not as individual fugitives from trans-Atlantic persecution, but rather as confederates in a political association for religious purposes.”[966] From this idea their mixed government naturally evolved; and this, in its turn, gave birth to the principle that the magistrate was armed with power to suppress all phases of internal opposition to the theocracy; because that type of authority logically carried in its train the necessary conditions of its perpetuity.
They neither invited nor desired the intrusion of elements at variance with their ideas; and to such they said, pointing to the broad continent, “There is room; leave us in peace.” And to secure themselves from molestation, it was enacted, in 1637, that “none should be received into the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay but such as should be welcomed by the magistrates”[967]—a provision somewhat analogous to the alien law of England and to the European policy of passports.[968]
Singularly enough, Massachusetts Bay, spite of its exclusive policy, possessed from the very outset a strong charm in the eyes of those who dissented from its formulas. Like the Petit Monsieur who found himself left out of the tapestry which exhibited the story of the Spanish invasion, they longed to work themselves in the hangings of colonial history. They soon swarmed in Boston and Salem; and notwithstanding the banishment of Roger Williams, the “heretics” continued to thrive.
Ere long the public mind “was excited to intense activity on questions which the nicest subtlety only could have devised, and which none but those experienced in the shades of theological opinion could long comprehend; for it goes with these opinions as with colors, of which the artist who works in mosaic easily and regularly discriminates many thousand varieties, where the common eye can discern a difference only on the closest comparison.”[969]
From this fermentation there bubbled up a profound and bitter struggle. The strife filled the interstices of the Pequod war, whose prosecution it sadly crippled; and indeed, at one time it threatened to rend the colony by civil war.[970]
Two distinct parties were early developed. One was composed chiefly of the older colonists, headed by Dudley, and Phillips, and Wilson, and Winthrop, an able coalition of clergymen and politicians. These were earnest to preserve the state as it was. They discountenanced innovation, and “dreaded freedom of opinion as the parent of various divisions.” They said, “These cracks and flaws in the new building of the Reformation portend a fall.”[971] They were anxious “to confirm and build up the colony, child of their prayers and sorrows; and for that they desired patriotism, union, and a common heart.” They dreaded change, because they knew that,
“Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”
The other party was iconoclastic. It was “composed of men and women who had arrived in New England after the civil government and religious discipline of the Pilgrims had been established.”[972] They felt cramped under the theocracy; and having come self-banished to the wilderness to enjoy toleration, they resisted every form of despotism over the human mind, and “sustained with intense fanaticism the paramount authority of private judgment.” “They came,” observes Bancroft, “fresh from the study of the tenets of Geneva, and their pride consisted in following the principles of the Reformation with logical precision to all their consequences. Their eyes were not primarily directed to the institutions of Massachusetts, but to the doctrines of its religious system; so to them the colonial clergy seemed ‘the ushers of a new persecution,’ ‘a popish faction,’ who had not imbibed the principles of Christian reform; and they applied to the influence of the Pilgrim ministers the doctrine which Luther and Calvin had employed against the observances and pretensions of the Roman church.”[973]