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elected governor, the first time in 1633. In the year 1645, years before the arrival of the Quakers, Mr. Prince being governor, who came over in 1621, he wrote to Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, sharply complaining of a number of the assistants and deputies for endeavoring to introduce a certain measure which "would make us odious to all Christian commonweals." He adds:

To this the deputies were most made beforehand, and the other three assistants, who applauded it as their Diana; and the sum of it was, To allow and maintain full and free tolerance of religion to all men that would preserve the civil peace and submit unto government; and there was no limitation or exception against Turk, Jew, Papist, Arian, Socinian, Nicolaytan, Familist, or any other sect. But our governor and divers of us having expressed the sad consequences that would follow, especially myself and Mr. Prince, yet notwithstanding it was required, according to order, to be voted. But the governor would not suffer it to come to vote, as being that indeed would eat out the power of godliness. . . You would have admired [wondered] to see how sweet this carrion relished to most of the deputies! What will be the issue of these things our all-ordering God only knows. Only we know without him it shall never be; and that is our greatest comfort. But if he have such a judgment for this place, I trust we shall find (I speak for many of us that groan under these things) a resting-place amongst you for the soles of our feet.

Think of it, the Pilgrims of Plymouth looking to Puritan Massachusetts as a possible refuge from "free religion"! One cannot but regret the loss of a grand opportunity on the part of the Plymouth Colony to establish "FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD." It seems probable that Roger Williams, who, when ordered out of Massachusetts in 1631, had for two years been "freely entreated" and "his preaching well approved" in Plymouth, had somewhat leavened the people there with his notions of "free and full tolerance of religion to all men." It was necessary, therefore, that this "spirit of division," which, says Winslow, was "creeping in amongst" them, should be rebuked and suppressed. Cotton Mather says of Bradford, the second governor of Plymouth Colony, that he "was free from that rigid spirit of separation, which broke to pieces the Separatists themselves in the Low Countries, unto the great scandal of the Reforming churches;" which may be explained by what Alden Bradford' says of him, that in 1655, he "declared his unwillingness to accept his office for a full year, for the reasons, that the support of ministers was neglected; ... that error had not been suppressed, and great confusion was likely to follow; and that the deputies declined acting upon them when 1 Notes on Duxbury, Histor. Col., 2 Ser. Vol. X.

suggested to them." Prince, who came over in 1621, was "zealously opposed to those whom he deemed heretical," and was elected to the office of governor by the "good people," because they were in "extreme distress" from a from a "libertine and Brownistick spirit then prevailing amongst the people." John Alden, who was one of the fathers of the colony, was in full sympathy with the intolerant measure instituted against the Quakers; and Cudworth speaks of his conduct in this respect as giving much pain to some of his friends, who had hoped better things of him.

We have referred to the Cambridge Platform of 1648. This was not the work alone of the Puritans of Massachusetts. Plymouth was represented in the Synod, and formally endorsed the doctrine of "the duty of the magistrate to take care of matters of religion" and to restrain and punish "heresy," for attached to the Platform was An address to all that are faithful in Christ Jesus, especially to the godly of the Commonwealth of England-signed Edward Winslow.

It was this Pilgrim Father who was agent for Massachusetts in England, in resisting the efforts of Child, Vassall and others to introduce a larger liberty into the New England government. In his Narrative, published 1646, Winslow also wrote apologetically respecting the intolerant laws of Massachusetts against the Baptists. It appears, then, that even among the original colonists of Plymouth, there was a spirit of intolerance, at least of non-toleration, which could scarcely help running into persecution. And the spirit of the veritable Pilgrims who landed on Plymouth Rock is to be learned, not only from their own avowed sentiments, and their conduct towards persons of another faith, but also from the spirit of their immediate descendants. It is hardly conceivable that a people trained in the true principles of religious liberty could so soon lapse into the practice of intolerance and persecution. Whether, or how far, persecution did prevail in the Plymouth Colony can readily be ascertained.

Having presented the respective principles of the Puritans and Separatists of Old and New England in regard to the rights of conscience and the province of the civil magistrate in matters of religion, we are prepared to institute a comparison between the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies in the application to "heretics" of their respective principles, in the case especially of the Baptists and Quakers. We have already alluded to Ralph Smith, who for no other reason than his being a Separatist, was not suffered to remain in Massachusetts, and who, being reduced to straits, and asking a passage to Plymouth," was here," writes Bradford, "kindly

entreated and honored, and had the rest of his goods sent for, and exercised his gifts amongst us, and afterwards was chosen into the ministry, and so remained many years." This generous welcome of an exile for conscience's sake from Massachusetts contrasts strangely with the hope expressed, a few years later, by one, too, who must have joined in that welcome, Edward Winslow, that in that same Massachusetts he might possibly have to seek a refuge from the spirit of toleration which, alas! was spreading in Plymouth! Such is the confusion of ideas and inconsistency of conduct resulting from the half-way principles of religious liberty held by the Pilgrims.

Passing over the intolerance of the ruling powers, under the churchand-state system of Massachusetts, towards the least deviation from the "orthodox" standard in their own churches, we come to the Puritan treatment of the Baptists, or, as their persecutors preferred to stigmatize them, the Anabaptists. These "heretics" appeared earlier than the Quakers, and were far more numerous in both colonies. Yet they suffered somewhat less than did their fellowheretics, the disciples of George Fox. Baptists were reprimanded, misrepresented, fined, disfranchised, imprisoned, whipt and banished, but never hanged. They experienced the edge of the sword, but in their case, the sword was never thrust in up to the hilt.

In examining the policy of the two colonies with regard to schismatics and heretics, let it be borne in mind that in 1643 these colonies, with those of Connecticut and New Haven, formed a Confederacy, under the name of The United Colonies of New England, which lasted about forty years; and that in 1692 the Plymouth colony was incorporated with that of Massachusetts. As a consequence of the confederacy, the several colonies each acted with somewhat less independence than before. But the distinctive features of the Plymouth character and legislation, though modified, were not wholly changed by its union with its more powerful neighbor, after seventy years of separate independency.

At the time of the settlement of New England, Baptists had become quite numerous in England, and later many of that sect held high positions in the Parliamentary army. Their principles had been published to the world, and might have been understood by our Puritan forefathers. In one respect they were too well understood, as asserting the right of all men to worship God in their own chosen way. This, as already shown, was almost the head and front of their offence. As the Puritans, especially, openly avowed the principle of intolerance, they of course regarded the Baptists, as afterwards the

Quakers, as the great enemies of their exclusive institutions, civil and religious. In persecuting these sects, they were not false to avowed principles of religious liberty, for they never professed such principles, but directly the contrary.

In considering the persecution of the Baptists, it may be remarked by the way that they were not "intruders," if they were "dissentients." Dr. Mather, who bore honorable testimony to their character when he wrote: "Infant baptism hath been scrupled by multitudes in our day, who have been, in other points, most worthy Christians, and as holy, fruitful and heavenly people as perhaps any in the world," states that "some few of these people have been among the planters of New England from the beginning;" and Hubbard, the early Puritan historian of New England, says that "about the year 1644 [only sixteen years from the first landing of the Puritans] the Anabaptists increased much in Massachusetts." Similar is the testimony of Winthrop. In the Act of 1644 for the suppression of Anabaptists, it is said: "Divers of this kind have, since our coming into New England, appeared amongst ourselves," and this increase was mainly from a formal avowal of sentiments previously held in a private way, or by conversions to their views. It was the spreading of Baptist opinions in the already settled population which alarmed the government and the clergy. "The Lady Moody," styled by Winthrop "a wise and anciently religious woman," who, for "being taken," he adds, "with the error of denying baptism to infants," found it advisable,"to avoid further trouble," to take up her abode among the Dutch on Long Island, had been the owner of a plantation in Lynna part of it at least, four hundred acres, a grant from the General Court in 1649-and a member of the Puritan Church at Salem. "Many others" in Salem and Lynn who, like her, were "infested · with Anabaptism," and shared her exile, had been in the Puritan communion. The six men who, with others not named, were arrested by order of the General Court, in 1639, for attempting to form a Baptist church at Weymouth, appear to have been among the inhabitants of the town. Edward Starbuck, who, in 1648, was the subject of a commission by the General Court for "great misdemeanors with profession of Anabaptistry," had in previous years been a Deputy from Dover to that same Court, and entrusted by it with important business. Obadiah Holmes and others who, in 1650, at the instigation of Rev. Mr. Newman, were summoned before the General Court of Plymouth for becoming Baptists, had been members of his church in Rehoboth, and Holmes had resided in the country eleven or twelve years. Henry Dunster, who, in 1653, for

falling "into the briars of anti-pedobaptism," was indicted by the Grand Jury, sentenced by the General Court to suffer a public admonition, and dismissed from his office, was a Puritan divine, a member of the Cambridge Church, "a learned, worthy, and able man," honored in Old and New England as the first President of Harvard College. A portion certainly of the constituent members of the Baptist Church at Charlestown, formed in 1665, were "of our country." Some had been members of the Puritan Church in Charlestown, and in the Act passed against them that year, some of them are mentioned as "freemen." The fact is, the early Baptists of New England were largely composed of the resident population of the country; as was the case also, to a far less extent, with the Quakers, who, in Sandwich, for instance, had gained over to their faith many of the inhabitants. The Baptists were simply honest Protestants and Nonconformists who, having in common with their Puritan and Pilgrim neighbors, accepted the then acknowledged Reformed doctrines-the Bible the only Rule of Faith, and the Right of Private Judgment, as against Pope and Bishop-reduced the doctrine to practice. The Baptists of Plymouth Colony took Robinson, its father, at his word, in his memorable advice to the departing Pilgrims: "If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am verily persuaded the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy Word."

Both "dissentients" and "intruders" had indeed an equal natural right with the self-styled "orthodox," to religious freedom, but this distinction, drawn by a distinguished writer on Puritan history, Dr. Ellis, may suggest an answer to the "unanswerable" argument of Hon. Joel Parker, in his Lowell Lecture, 1869, in vindication of the Massachusetts Puritans from the charge of persecution, and of consequent inconsistency with their own former position among the persecuted in England for nonconformity to the Established Church. As native Englishmen so he reasons-they had an equal right with their conforming countrymen to religious freedom, and therefore were persecuted by the English Church when fined, ejected from livings, imprisoned, and banished for their nonconformity. But Massachusetts was "for themselves and those who sympathized with them, and no others." Therefore the Puritans, having the exclusive right of possession to Massachusetts soil, were not persecutors of Baptists, Quakers, and other "heretics," when they fined, imprisoned, banished or hanged them; these were intruders upon the former's territory and privileges!

But, as we have shown, Baptists certainly were among the "original

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