Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
must have power to consult and execute against intersilient dangers
and flagitious crimes prohibited by the light of Nature: yet it
were good if States would let People know so much beforehand, by
some safe woven _manifesto_, that grosse Delinquents may tell no
tales of Anchors and Buoyes, nor palliate their presumptions with
pretense of ignorance. I know no difference in these Essentialls,
between Monarchies, Aristocracies, or Democracies.... And in all,
the best Standard to measure Prerogatives, is the Ploughstaffe; to
measure Liberties, the Scepter: if the tearms were a little altered
into Loyall Prerogatives and Royall Liberties, then we should be
sure to have Royall Kings and Loyall Subjects....
He is a good King that undoes not his Subjects by any one of his
unlimited Prerogatives: and they are a good People, that undoe not
their Prince, by any one of their unbounded Liberties, be they the
very least. I am sure either may, and I am sure neither would be
trusted, how good soever. Stories tell us in effect, though not in
termes, that over-risen Kings, have been the next evills to the
world, unto fallen Angels; and that over-franchised people, are
devills with smooth snaffles in their mouthes. A King that lives
by Law, lives by love: and he that lives above Law, shall live
under hatred doe what he can. Slavery and knavery goe as seldome
asunder, as Tyranny and Cruelty. I have a long while thought it
very possible, in a time of Peace ... for disert Statesmen, to
cut an exquisite thred between Kings Prerogatives, and Subjects
Liberties of all sorts, so as _Caesar_ might have his due, and
People their share, without such sharpe disputes. Good Casuists
would case it, and case it, part it, and part it; now it, and then
it, punctually.[71]
Nathaniel Ward was no democrat like Hooker and therefore no
Congregationalist. “I am neither Presbyterian, nor plebsbyterian, but
an Interpendent,” he said of himself. But his “Interpendency” would
seem to have been only an individualistic form of Presbyterianism. For
the radical Sectaries who were rising out of the turmoil of revolution,
he had the contempt of a thoroughbred Jacobean gentleman; and for their
newfangled notion of religious toleration and their fetish of popular
liberties--founded and nourished he believed in sentimentalism--he
would substitute the solid reality of absolute truth, the faithful
friend and coadjutor of which he professed himself to be. “Justice and
Equity were before time, and will be after it”; and he regarded it as
folly to try to circumvent them. He would have no great altering of
the fundamental arrangements of society, such as Independents like
Roger Williams were seeking. The solidarity of church and state was an
anciently accepted principle, far safer to trust in, he believed, than
the vagaries of unhistorical sects.
Experience will teach Churches and Christians, that it is farre
better to live in a State united, though a little Corrupt, then
in a State, whereof some Part is incorrupt, and all the rest
divided.... The Scripture saith, there is nothing makes free but
Truth, and Truth saith, there is no Truth but One.... He that is
willing to tolerate any Religion, or discrepant way of Religion,
besides his own, unlesse it be in matters meerly indifferent,
either doubts of his own, or is not sincere in it.... He that is
willing to tolerate any unsound opinion, that his own may also be
tolerated, though never so sound, will for a need hang Gods Bible
at the Devils girdle.[72]
As an honest Christian and a loyal subject he would honor both the
divine and temporal authorities; nevertheless, in order that the
law of God and the law of the land might be known of all and march
together, he would have the exact terms of the constitution written
out by “disert statesmen” in time of peace, and published broadly, in
Massachusetts as well as in England. And so when he was commissioned to
draw up a body of liberties for the new commonwealth, he found the task
congenial. As a lawyer he seems to have been concerned at the non-legal
methods of the magistrates in dispensing judgment, so repugnant to the
spirit of the Common Law; and in the election sermon of 1641, that he
was invited to preach, he “advanced several things that savored more of
liberty, than some of the magistrates were prepared to approve.”[73]
But it was the lawyer protesting against court methods that spoke
out, not the liberal concerned with broader liberties. In a letter
to Winthrop, December 22, 1639, dealing with the body of laws, he
questioned, “Whether it will not be of ill consequence to send the
Court business to the common consideration of the Freemen,” adding:
I fear it will too much exauctorate the power of that Court to
prostrate matters in that manner, I suspect both Commonwealth and
Churches have discended to lowe already. I see the spirits of the
people runne high, and what they gett they hould. They may not be
denyed their proper and lawfull liberties, but a question whether
it be of God to interest the inferiour sort in that which should be
reserved _inter optimates penes quos est sancire leges_ [_i.e._ to
the aristocracy with whom rests the power to establish the law].[74]
The celebrated _Body of Liberties_ was presented three years after _The
Simple Cobler_ was written, and in spite of his frankly aristocratic
bias, Nathaniel Ward did a real service to Massachusetts by
incorporating into the law of the commonwealth many of the old English
safeguards of person and property, in some instances advancing beyond
current English practice. Yet true to his Hebraic leanings, and in
harmony with the spirit of the theocracy, he added certain brutalities
drawn from the Mosaic code that were soon to drop away.
There is something refreshing in the extraordinary frankness of this
old Puritan of the days of Elizabeth. He was no demagogue, but a stout
upholder of authority, who accepted the rule of caste and the law of an
eye for an eye. The militant severity of his judgments, and the caustic
wit of his comments, suggest somewhat startlingly how long and bitter
would be the struggle in New England before the spirit of liberalism
should find wide acceptance there. Gentlemen of the immigrant
generation were set in their ways, and none more inflexibly than
Nathaniel Ward. He was too old to adjust himself to new conditions, a
fact which he recognized by returning to England to die, leaving behind
as a warning certain pithy quatrains of which this is one:
The upper world shall Rule,
While Stars will run their race:
The nether world obey
While People keep their place.
II • John Eliot • A Theocratic Utopia
At the session of the General Court holden at Boston, May 22, 1661, it
was ordered:
This Court taking notice of a booke entituled Christian
Commonwealth, written ... by Mr. John Eliot of Roxbury in New
England, which ... is justly offensive and in speciall relating
to kingly Gouvernment in England, the which the said Mr. Eliot
hath also freely and fully acknowledged to this Court. It is
therefore ordered by this Court and the Authority thereof, that the
said Booke be totally suppressed and the Authors acknowledgement
recorded; and that all persons whatsoever in this jurisdiction
that have any of the said Bookes in theire Custody shall on theire
perrills within fowerteene dayes after publication hereof either
cancel or deface or deliver them unto the next Magistrate or to the
Secretary, whereby all farther divulment and improovement of the
said offensive Booke may be prevented.[75]
The little book over which such a pother was made by the New England
magistrates in the days when they were under the censorious eye of the
newly restored Stuart government was the single venture in the field
of political speculation by the excellent John Eliot, apostle to the
Indians. It was a slender volume, written about 1650, although not
printed till 1659; but within the narrow compass of twenty-one pages
this dreamer in Israel has sketched the outlines of an ideal Christian
commonwealth. It was a day and a world of idealists, and so John Eliot
paused in the midst of his missionary labors to fashion a brick for the
building of that temple which the Puritans of the Protectorate were
dreaming of. The idols had been broken by the hammer of Cromwell; the
malevolent powers of this world were brought low; it remained now only
for the people of God to enter into a solemn covenant to establish a
commonwealth after the true divine model. That no mistake should be
made in so important a matter, John Eliot was moved to send out of the
American wilderness the plan of a Christian Utopia, sanctioned by the
Mosaic example and buttressed at every point by chapter and verse,
which he offered to the godly Puritans of England as a suitable guide
to their feet.
Naked theocracy is nowhere else so uncompromisingly delineated as in
the pages of _The Christian Commonwealth_. At the basis of Eliot’s
political speculations were the two germinal conceptions which animated
his theocratic brethren generally: the conception that Christ is King
of Kings before whom all earthly authority must bow, and the conception
that the Scripture alone reveals the law of God. So long as the Stuarts
were ruling at St. James’s speculative theocrats found it expedient
to gloss their principles with nice distinctions between temporal and
spiritual overlords; but with monarchy overthrown, they came out boldly
and urged the English people to put away all profane institutions.
“_Scripturae plentitudinem adoro_,” John Cotton had exclaimed; and to
the same purpose John Eliot laid down the thesis:
There is undoubtedly a forme of civil Government instituted by God
himself in the holy Scriptures; whereby any Nation may enjoy all
the ends and effects of Government in the best manner, were they
but perswaded to make trial of it. We should derogate from the
sufficiency and perfection of the Scriptures, if we should deny it.
The prayers, the expectation, and faith of the Saints in the
Prophecies and Promises of holy Scripture, are daily sounding in
the ears of the Lord, for the downfall of Anti-christ, and with
him all humane Powers, Polities, Dominions, and Governments; and
in the room thereof, we wait for the coming of the Kingdom of the
Lord Jesus, who by his Divine Wisdom, Power, Government and Laws,
given us ... in the holy Scriptures, will reign over all the
Nations of the earth in his due time: I mean the Lord Jesus will
bring down all people, to be ruled by the Institutions, Laws, and
Directions of the Word of God, not only in Church-Government and
Administrations, but also in the Government and Administration of
all affairs in the Common wealth. And then Christ reigneth, when
all things among men, are done by the direction of the word of his
mouth: his Kingdom is then come amongst us, when his will is done
on earth, as it is done in heaven, where no Humane or Angelical
Policy or Wisdom doth guide anything, but all is done by Divine
direction (Ps. 103:20); and so it shall be on earth, when and where
Christ reigneth.
Much is spoken of the rightful Heir of the Crown of England, and
of the unjustice of casting out the right Heir; but Christ is the
onely right Heir of the Crown of England (Ps. 2:8) and of all other
Nations also (Rev. 11:15).
That which the Lord now calleth England to attend is not to search
humane Politics and Platformes of Government, contrived by the
wisdom of man; but as the Lord hath carried on their works for
them, so they ought to go unto the Lord, and enquire at the Word of