Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
The decision of the Salem church in 1629 to adopt the Plymouth model,
and the acceptance of that decision by later churches in Massachusetts
Bay, has been abundantly commented upon, but the significance of it
has been somewhat inadequately explored.[3] Very likely it was a deep
hatred of episcopal rule that opened the mind of Endicott and his
fellows to the reasoning of Dr. Fuller of Plymouth, and persuaded them
to take this first step towards Separatism; nevertheless as disciples
of Calvin, desirous of establishing a Bible commonwealth, they must
soon discover that a system centrifugal in tendency and decentralizing
in spirit, unless closely restrained, was certain to lead them far
from the Canaan of their hopes. Separatism was the negation of a
state church, and the rule of the congregation was the negation of an
official creed and ecclesiastical unity. If Congregationalism were
suffered to develop its democratic potentialities, the leaders must
eventually find themselves in like position with Laud, with schismatics
disturbing the orthodox harmony and rending the church from within. The
authorities early began to feel, what the Anglican Lechford pointed out
in 1641, that the system was dangerously democratic, and the principle
of centralizing conformity was set to work. The spirit of Calvin’s
Consistory was invoked. Under the guise of brotherly counsel, or church
fellowship, the principle of consociation was developed, a principle
that opened a convenient door to official coercion. Brotherly counsel
that comes armed with the weapon of excommunication, that points its
argument with the threat of banishment or hanging, is certainly not
the pure spirit of Christian fellowship that Congregational historians
have chosen to see in the principle of consociation. The most ardent
apologist has hard work in discovering the democratic principle of
Congregationalism in the theocratic application of the methods of
the Genevan Consistory. The early churches of the theocracy were
Presbyterian in spirit and rule, in spite of the official promulgation
of the covenant-principle in the Cambridge Platform. Certainly real
Separatists like Roger Williams, who suffered from too much brotherly
counsel and did not want a Christian fellowship imposed by magistrates,
were under no illusions in regard to the coercive spirit that lay
behind the principle of consociation.
More open and above board were the successive statutes that effectively
nullified the principle of Separatism by erecting an official state
church. The law of 1631, restricting the franchise to church members,
and the law of 1635, making attendance at church compulsory on
all, were followed in 1636 by a law requiring the approval of the
magistrates and elders before a new church could be set up, and in
1638 by the institution of a system of state support for the ministry.
The principle of the covenant was being pretty effectively whittled
away. Equally Presbyterian was the movement for the establishment of
a definitive state creed. In consequence of the Antinomian schism
effected by the eloquent tongue of Mistress Anne Hutchinson, the
first general synod was convened at Newtown in 1637, which sat for
four and twenty days and drew up a list of eighty-two heretical
opinions, “some blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe,”
together with “nine unwholesome expressions,” which were alleged to be
disturbing the peace of the community. Whereupon the synod broke up,
the members congratulating themselves “that matters had been carried
on so peaceably and concluded so comfortably in all love.” How much
Christian love was awakened by such brotherly counsels in the heart of
Mistress Hutchinson, who was banished and later slain by the Indians,
is not revealed, but her sin was made of record as a warning to other
schismatics. It was this: “He hath let me distinguish between the voice
of my beloved and the voice of Moses,” which being interpreted, meant
an appeal from the Old Testament to the New, from Mosaic authority to
the inner light.
With the promulgation of the Cambridge Platform by the synod of
1646-47, and the acceptance of the Westminster Confession of Faith,
the work of creating the organism and creed of an authoritative
state-church was completed. According to Williston Walker, the
Cambridge Platform “pictures with great clearness the abiding
principles of Congregationalism”--the covenant origin of the local
church, the autonomy of the congregation, the sole authority of the
Bible, and the fellowship of the churches.[4] But it needs the sharp
eyes of an apologetic historian to discover the spirit of democratic
Congregationalism in a discipline that sanctions the power of the state
to intervene in ecclesiastical matters and requires the magistrate to
enforce uniformity in creed and worship. “Idolatry, Blasphemy, Heresy,
Venting corrupt and pernicious opinions, are to be restrayned and
punished by civil authority,” the Platform states. “If any church one
or more shall grow schismaticall, rending it self from the communion
of other churches, or shall walke incorrigibly or obstinately in
any corrupt way of their own, contrary to the rule of the word; in
such case, the Magistrate is to put forth his coercive power, as the
matter shall require.” If such be Congregationalism, how greatly have
the later churches departed from the primitive faith! To the layman,
wanting in insight, it would seem rather to be stark Calvinism, that
reveals how completely the coercive spirit of the Ordinances and
Consistory of the French theologian had come to dominate the theocratic
mind of New England. The reluctant adoption of the Cambridge Platform
by the suspicious deputies was the grim prelude to Baptist whippings
and Quaker baitings, and the setting-in of the dark days of militant
intolerance. “Yourselves pretend liberty of conscience,” wrote Roger
Williams in 1670, “but alas! it is but self, the great god self, only
to yourselves.”[5]
But while the covenant principle was thus being effectively whittled
away by the theocratic leaders, another principle, likewise of Plymouth
origin, was silently working to the overthrow of the theocratic power.
Following the example of the Pilgrims the several towns apportioned
their lands in fee to their members; and if so acute a political
thinker as Daniel Webster is to be trusted, it was from the creative
influence of freehold tenure that the political institutions of New
England became later democratized. As a disciple of James Harrington,
accepting the doctrine of economic determinism as it had been
elaborated in the _Oceana_, Webster traced the spontaneous rise of
republicanism in New England to the wide diffusion of property; and
in the light of his economic interpretation the harsh intolerance of
the Cambridge Platform is seen to be only the aberration of a passing
bigotry. In his anniversary speech at Plymouth he said:
Their situation demanded a parceling out and division of the
lands, and it may be fairly said, that this necessary act _fixed
the future frame and form of their government_. The character of
their political institutions was determined by the fundamental
laws respecting property.... The property was all freehold ...
alienation of the land was every way facilitated, even to the
subjecting of it to every species of debt. The establishment of
public registries, and the simplicity of our forms of conveyance,
have greatly facilitated the change of real estate from one
proprietor to another. The consequence of all these causes has
been, a great subdivision of the soil, and a great equality of
condition; the true basis, most certainly, of a popular government.
“If the people,” says Harrington, “hold three parts in four of the
territory, it is plain there can neither be any single person nor
nobility able to dispute the government with them; in this case,
therefore, _except force be interposed_, they govern themselves.”[6]
With such a clue it is easier to understand how the liberalisms
implicit in Plymouth Congregationalism--its theory of compact in
church and state--should find support from an independent yeomanry
and eventually rise against the oligarchical rule. The new world
would ultimately throw off the old-world repressions and explore the
reaches of those generous idealisms that were the bequest of English
Separatism. The fathers were engaged in an impossible undertaking.
Sanctuaries were close at hand for all dissenters from the theocracy,
in Connecticut for the Congregationalists, in Rhode Island for the
Separatists, along the Maine frontier for the rebellious individualist.
Seated securely in these regions beyond the reach of the Massachusetts
magistrates, the diverse liberalisms that were being stifled by the
oligarchy prospered and brought forth after their kind. Differentiation
in the provinces was the natural counterpart of coercive conformity
at the capital; and from very early days New England divided into
three diverse groups journeying to their Utopias by different roads.
Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, were variant
answers to the question of what might be expected to result from the
domestication in a free environment of the inchoate idealisms of
English Puritanism. How they differentiated themselves from the norm,
and why, will perhaps become clearer from an examination of the diverse
philosophies of their intellectual leaders.
Footnotes
[2] See James Truslow Adams, _The Founding of New England_, Chapter VI.
[3] See Williston Walker, _A History of the Congregational Churches in
the United States_, Chapter IV.
[4] _Ibid._, p. 162.
[5] _Narragansett Club Publications_, Vol. VI, p. 133.
[6] _Works_, Vol. I, pp. 35-36.
Chapter III • The Chief Stewards of Theocracy
I • Master John Cotton • Priest
The most authoritative representative in New England of the ideal of
priestly stewardship was the excellent John Cotton, first teacher to
the church at Boston. While pastor of the church of St. Botolph, in
old Boston, he had dreamed of a Utopia of the Saints, unharassed by
tyrannous prelates; and while sweetening his mouth with a morsel of
Calvin, as he was fond of doing, no doubt he turned over in his mind
the plans and specifications of that Utopia. “When God wrappes us in
his ordinances,” he said in his sermon to Winthrop’s company on the eve
of its departure from England, “and warmes us with the life and power
of them as with wings, there is the land of Promise.” Left behind by
the departing brethren, he lingered for a while in an England that was
every day becoming colder for such as dreamed of other Canaans than
Laud’s, until urged by many invitations, at the age of forty-six he
followed overseas to devote his remaining life to the great work being
done there. For more than a score of years he labored faithfully, and
the New England which the emigrant generation bequeathed to its sons
bore upon it the marks of John Cotton’s shaping hand more clearly than
those of any other minister.
It is not easy today to judge fairly the life and work of John Cotton.
No adequate biography has been written, and his dreams and aspirations
lie forgotten in the grave of lost causes and forsaken faiths. But
to the Boston freemen of his own day, Master John Cotton was a very
great man. Of excellent family and sound university training, he was
both a notable theologian and a courteous gentleman. “Twelve hours in
a day he commonly studied, and would call that a _scholar’s_ day,”
his grandson reported of him. From the hour when he entered Trinity
College, Cambridge, at the age of thirteen, to his death in 1652,
he was a bookman, and in sheer bulk of acquisition probably no man
of his time outdid him. In Cotton Mather’s judgment he was “a most