The New England theocracy was begotten of these proceedings.[645] “The emigrants,” remarks Bancroft, “were not so much a body politic as a church in the wilderness, with no benefactor around them but Nature, no present sovereign but God. An entire separation was made between church and state—at least in theory; religious worship was established on the basis of the independence of each separate religious community; and these rigid Calvinists, of whose rude intolerance the world had been filled with malignant calumnies, subscribed a covenant cherishing, it is true, the severest virtues, but without one tinge of fanaticism. It was an act of piety, not of study; it favored virtue, not superstition; inquiry, and not submission. The communicants were enthusiasts, but not bigots.”[646] They declared that “the Holy Scriptures only were to be followed, and no man’s authority, be he Augustine, Tertullian, or even Cherubim or Seraphim.”[647]
This entire transaction gave dissatisfaction to some at Salem. Finally, John and Samuel Brown, “two brothers, the one a merchant, the other a lawyer, both men of parts, estate, and figure in the settlement, gathered a company separate from the public assembly.”[648]
Mutual bickerings ensued. A breach of the peace was threatened.[649] Then Endicott interposed. He sent the Browns home to England, and thereby restored quiet.[650]
The brothers Brown, on reaching England, carried a lusty impeachment to the archiepiscopal throne, then occupied by Laud.[651] The Massachusetts Company, alarmed by the clamor, wrote letters of caution to Endicott: “Beware! ’tis possible some undigested counsels have been too suddenly put in execution, which may have ill-construction with the state here, and make us obnoxious to any adversary;”[652] which shows, not that the island Puritans did not sympathize with bluff Endicott’s action, but that they dreaded lest it might provoke a hostile government to give their pet colony its coup de grâce.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ARBELLA.
“We will renew the times of truth and justice,
Condensing into a fair free commonwealth,
Not rash equality, but equal rights,
Proportioned like the columns of the temple,