One of the important factors determining English religious policy in the colonies was the fact that the colonies were commerical ventures designed to contribute to the prosperity of a developing empire. To be profitable the colonies had to have settlers to clear the forests and till the fields. It was not always easy to persuade people to leave their homes and run the risks of life in a new land. The jails could be and were emptied to provide colonists. The poor were sent out on condition that the passage money be repaid by a term of indentured servitude. Such people had little to lose and much to gain in forsaking their homes and beginning life anew in a distant wilderness. But it was obvious that a sturder type of settle could be recruited from among the members of the oppressed religious sects, to whom the prospects of toleration provided a powerful incentive to accept the hazards of life in the American colonies.
William Penn (1644-1718), son of Admiral Sir William Penn, recruited settlers from among the minority groups of the Rhineland, and his desire to furnish refuge for his fellow Quakers added a personal inducement to attempt to establish a policy of toleration in his colony. After inclinations toward Quakerism as early as 1661, Penn fully embraced its beliefs in 1666 and became at once one of most eminent preachers and literary defender of the faith. He determined to find in America the freedom denied Quakers in England. After aiding in sending eight hundred Quakers to New Jersey in 1677-1678, Penn obtained from Charles II the grant of Pennsylvania, in 1681, in release of a debt due from the crown to his father. In 1682, Philadelphia was founded, and a great colonial experiment began. The Toleration Act of 1689 relieved the Quakers, like other Dissenters, of their more pressing disabilities, and granted them freedom of worship.
In much the same way, Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic English nobleman, sought to attract settlers to Maryland with a promise of toleration, hoping that it would permit his fellow Roman Catholics to be tolerated. He had been given a huge tract of land just north of Virginia, and the king had granted him absolute control over the area. Maryland, the first English proprietary colony in what is now United States of America, was chartered by Lord Baltimore in 1632. His son, Cecil, anxious to make make it a paying venture, laid plans to colonize the vast domain. He recognized that he could not find enough Catholics in England to settle the territory and make it a financial success. Furthermore, Cecil understood that it would be impossible to erect a Catholic colony between Anglican Virginia and the rapidly expanding Puritan New England. Thus, in order to entice Protestant laborers to the colony and in order to provide a place of refuge and freedom under the sovereignty of England for his fellow Catholics, he determined to pursue a policy of religious toleration toward all Christians who believed in God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The plan was doomed to failure from two sides. The Jesuits were dissatisfied with their position and that of the Roman Catholics, and on the other side the Protestants were very uncomfortable with a neighboring colony which tolerated Roman Catholics. Protestants outnumbered the Roman Catholics from the start.
In early 1634, a boat docked in what is now Maryland, bringing a Jesuit priest and 16 Catholic families, along with 200 other people. Soon the word spread through neighboring colonies: "Roman Catholics have arrived!" All the Protestants in the colonies feared and hated the Roman Catholics. It was against Rome and its corruptions that Puritans and Anglicans had protested. Terrible wars had raged between Protestants and Roman Catholics during the previous century. Spain and France, the two great Catholic powers, had explored America long before the English, Dutch, or Swedes. At the very time when Virginia was being settled, Spanish Catholicism was reaching its golden era in Florida, and the French were pushing along the St. Lawrence waterway and through the Great Lakes region. There was bound to be fear, hatred, and warfare between the two religious groups. Thus the coming of the Roman Catholics to Maryland placed the problem right in the middle of Protestant colonies.
The Roman Catholicism was having trouble in Maryland. Settlers poured in from Viriginia and from New England. An Act of Tolerance was passed in 1649, the first in America, guaranteeing freedom of worship for all Christians who professed faith in the triune God. This was based not on principle, but on necessity; but even this could not hold off the storm. Repeated attempts by Protestants to take over control of the colony finally succeeded in 1689. The Protestants feared the Roman Catholics in their midst and were especially aroused by the presence of Jesuit priests. In 1691, Maryland was a royal colony, and, largely through the efforts of Commissary Thomas Bray (1656-1730), the Church of England was there established by law. Bray was actually in the colony only a few months, but his service, especially through the organization of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) in 1699, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (S.P.G.), in 1701, were invaluable. But the establishment did not secure the affections of the majority of the population; Quakers, Presbyterians, and Baptists steadily spread. As for the Roman Catholics, they were subject to legal disabilities as in other colonies.
A similar policy was adopted in New Jersey and Delaware, and liberty of conscience for Protestant Christians was specifically guranteed in the charters of the Carolinas and Georgia. After 1689, efforts were made in the mother country to secure establishement of the Church of England where possible. The first fruit of the policy was the Maryland law (see above); then came establishments in South Carolina in 1706 and North Carolina in 1715. The mixed religious character of their populations, including Huguenots, Scotish-Irish Presbyterians, Baptists, and Quakers, rendered these establisments largely ineffective, though they were well served by missionaries of the S.P.G., and Charlestown had a distinguish succession of rectors. Church of England work began in Georgia with founding of the colony in 1733, but establishment of the Church of England was not effected until 1758. The policy of toleration early attracted various other Protestant groups there, and the establishment was largely nominal.
In New York, the Articles of Capitulation of 1664 provided that the Dutch inhabitants be given freedom of worship, and the instructions of James II to the governor in 1682 directed him to "permit all persons of what religion soever quietly to inhabit" and not to give them "any disturbancee or disquiet whatsoever for or by reason of their differing opinions in matters of religion."
The Anglican church also finally became the established church of Maryland in 1702, despite the opposition of the Roman Catholics, who had been permitted to settle there by Lord Baltimore. The religious toleration that first Lord Baltimore had permitted was thus ended. It was made the established church in parts of New York in 1693 in spite of opposition from the Dutch who had originally settled New York. An act of 1715 made the Anglican church the established church in North Carolina, and earlier, in 1706, it was established in South Carolina. Georgia accepted Anglican establishment in 1758. Not until the American Revolution was this pattern changed.
A larger number of non-Separatist Puritans settled in Salem and Boston in 1628. In 1626, John White, a Puritan minister of Dorchester in England, organized a company to settle a few people at Salem. About fifty of this company landed in Salem in the fall of 1628 and chose John Endicott as their governor. These people were either Puritan Congregationalist or, possibly, Anglicans inclined to Congregationalism before they left England. This, more than the kindly medial services of Dr. Samuel Fuller, who came from the Separatist Plymouth colony to give them medial aid during the winter of 1628-29, led the Salem colony to set up the congregational system of church government based on a covenant.
In 1629, White's organization was incorporated into the Massachusetts Bay Company. All the stockholders of the Massachusetts Bay Company who did not want to migrate from England withdrew, and about nine hundred sailed to America with the governors of the company and the charter in order to get away from the despotic personal rule of Charles I. In 1631, the Massachusetts General Court limited the right to vote to church members, and Congregationalism became the state religion. The colonists rejected episcopacy but upheld the principle of uniformity of faith. John Wlinthrop (1588-1649) was made governor of these settlements at Salem and Boston. Over twenty thousand Puritans came to these settlements between 1628 and 1640. The ministers for the increasing number of churches were university graduates, most of whom were educated in Cambridge. They interpreted the authorative Scriptures to the people so they would know how to apply them in their private and civil lives. Although the polity of the churches was congregational, the theology of these Puritans was Calvinistic.
New England was the only area in colonial America in which a serious attempt was made to enforce religous uniformity, and in New England this attempt was made in spite of rather than because of English policy. The pattern set by the Massachusetts Bay, where the the early settlers, having left their homes to establish a new Zion in the American wilderness, were determined to errect a "due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical" that would permit no dissent. The opportunity to do so arose out of the curious omission from the charter of the customary clause requiring the headquarters of the company to be in England and thus subject to the authority of the crown. As a consequent of this omision, the Massachusetts Bay Company was in effect an independent republic, for all the members of the company migrated to New England and took the charter with them. When the authorities at home finally discovered what had occurred, efforts were made to have the charter returned. But the New Englanders adopted the Fabian tactic of delay - making excuses, misunderstanding the communications they received, and finally ignoring the repeated requests for the charter. They knew that as long as they were able to keep the document on their side of the Atlantic their freedom of action wa assured. The tactic of delay was made possible by the lapse of time which the long sea voyage necessitated in the interchange of communications, and it was further abetted by the Scottish invasion of England in 1639 which turned attention of English authorities to more pressing matters at home.
The attempt to suppress dissent in New England was never wholly successful. This was partly due the fact that there was within the heart of New England Puritanism a never completely suppressed acknowledgment that "the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of the Holy Word" and that therefore they should be ever ready "to receive whatever truth shall be made known ... from the written word of God." These words of John Robinson were echoed in the writings of other New England divines. It was for this reason that New England Puritanism was always spawning its own dissidents - dissidents who appealed to the truth that had been made known to them from "the written word of God."
Another equally important reason why the attempt to suppress dissent was never successful in New England was that there was space enough for everyone. The Massachusetts Bay authorities were not always content with mere banishment, but when they did attempt more explicit forms of coercion, the open spaces of an empty land tended to make them ineffective. Dissenters did not need to go underground; they could just move. And move they did - across the river, through the woods, and over the mountains. From the sanctuary provided by open space and untilled acres, the contagion of dissent filtered back into the older settlements, making even more difficult the effort to compel conformity. Equally important was the spirit generated by vast stretches of empty land. A person who could always escape from the company of his fellows, if and when he wished, was not one who was apt to be undully submissive. He thought of himself as a free man, with a mind of his own, independent of outward constraint. Such a person was not easily reduced to conformity.
Rhode Island represented the first great breach in the New England pattern of conformity established by the Massachusetts Bay, but from a very early date Massachusetts Bay found it necessary to "conive in some cases" with dissent. For some fifty years Massachusetts Bay was able to pursue its independent course. The end of the attempt to enforce conformity was foreshadowed by the loss of the charter in 1684, and it was dramatically signalized in 1687 by the governor's seizure of the Old South meetinghouse for Anglican worship. Therefore, although there was to be continuing trouble over taxes, the New Englanders had to conform to English policy; and not only the Anglicans but even Baptists and Quakers could worship freely according to the dictates of their own conscience.
The magistrates were the called "nursing fathers" of the churches. They investigated the fitness of the clergy, gave advice on disputes between churches, determined where new ministers should be located, and upheld the moral laws of the community. The minister, on the other hand, preached election sermons each time new magistrates were to be selected. In the sermon they attempted to bring to bear the Word of God as it applied to current problems. Many times they gave advice to the magistrates. Thus, the minister and magistrate served to check each other, both were responsible to the church members, and ultimately all were under God's will revealed in Scripture. God's will was to be made to prevail in the public life of the nation as well as in the personal lives of the citizens.
Roger Williams had no argument with making God's will supreme in public as well as in private life. He disputed the method used by the Puritans. He said, you cannot force the conscience of any man. You cannot make laws of faith. John Cotton contended that they were not forcing any man's conscience. But when a man sees the truth, his conscience tells him to follow it, and if he refuses, then the State has the right to compel that man to listen to his conscience. The laws of Massachuetts were not intended to suppress the conscience but to aid it by making hardheaded men to obey it.
All this was rejected by Roger Williams. He argued that there are two areas in life, both ruled by God but in different ways. In one, the the area of natural life, of society, and of government, man lives acccording to the laws and customs of that life. In the other, the area of grace, man lives only by the direct call from God. You cannot force the second area by laws in the first. But, also, you cannot leave God out the first. The insights of the gospel are carried into all of life voluntarily, indirectly, never perfectly, but always under the judgment of God. The State cannot interfere with the Church, and Church cannot make laws for the State.
Little wonder that Roger Williams was rejected by the Bay Puritans! He undercut their whole program. If his criticism were true, then the colony didn't even own its own land, and the crown of England was without power in America. What would the English critics say when they heard this? Furthermore, if the magistrates had no power to enforce forms of worship and to prevent insidious beliefs from arising, how then could a holy commonwealth, pleasing to God, be established? Roger Williams' belief were felt to be dangerous to the welfare of the State both from the spiritual and from the temporal point of view. His views of the relation between the powers of state and religious beliefs of the citizens was the forerunner of the American ideal of the separation of Church and State; hence his great importance.
The exile of Roger Williams did not mark the end but the beginning of
troubles in the holy commonwealth. Further unrest and dissatisfaction
were seen in the reaction to Mistress Anne Hutchinson, one of the
outstanding women in Boston. A gifted woman with powers of persuasion,
she was convince that all the ministers of the Bay, except her pastor,
John Cotton, preached more on good works than on grace. This criticism of
the ministers and magistrates could not tolerate, and it became a point
of contention when an entire group adopted that point of view. In
November, 1637, after her friends had been defeated, several exiled,
Mistress Hutchinson was brought to trial for disparaging the ministers
and for holding meetings in her home in order to criticize the clergy.
The court found it exceedingly difficult to trap her, and it was only
in her reply to the questions of her theological certainty that she gave
her opponents an opportunity. She replied that she was certain in the
same way that Abraham was positive he should not sacrifice his own son -
by an immediate revelation. To this the deputy governor replied,
"How! an immediate revelation."
Governor Winthrop summed up the feelings of the court when he said,
"Now the mercy of God by a providence hath answered our desire and
made her to lay open herself and the ground of all these disturbances
to be by revelations, for we receive no such."
Anne Hutchinson was banished and she fled to Rhode Island. The magistrates had to dispose of her because, from their point of view, she denied the whole basis of the Church and the commonwealth. She had attacked the theology of the ministers, and by emphasizing the personal operation of the Holy Spirit in revealing the truth of Scripture, or truth apart from Scripture, she was denying the very foundation of the holy experiment - that of Scripture as interpreted by the ministers in the midst of the congregations. This would destroy all obedience to law, both private and public, and replace it with individual fancy. So they argued.
Meanwhile the colony was having other growing pains. Some of the members were dissatisfied with the strict control of the magistrates, and they wished better land. So a large number of them moved to Connecticut with their minister, Thomas Hooker. Though they were willing for all good citizens to have a hand in electing those who were responsible for government, they also insisted that only cchurch members could be in actual positions of authority. So, in spite of their dissatisfaction with the Masschusetts arrangement, their system of government was not different.
In the 1640's internal difficulties of Massachusetts were further complicated by events in England. Parliament and King Charles I were at war. The Anglican Church was pulled down, and a coalition of Presbyterians and Congregationalist, the latter called Independents ruled supreme. Both groups looked suspiciously at Massachusetts. The English Independents practiced toleration of all Christian groups except the Anglicans and Roman Catholics; thus, they were astonished at the intolerance of Massachusetts. The Presbyterians could not understand why the American Puritans would not admit good Presbyterians to full communion and to the privilege of voting. It is true that the Presbyterians held a different idea concerning the rights of synods or Church assemblies to legislate for local churches and to examine or ordain ministerial candidates. But the theology of the two groups was essentially the same, Calvinism.
In 1646, a remonstrance was presented to the magistrates at Boston by a group of dissatisfied men. Among them was Dr. Robert Child, a Presbyterian. It asked that all Englishmen be given their essential rights and freedom apart from any religious requirement. Furthermore, it asked that all members of the Church of England be allowed to commune in the Massachusetts churches. This was a bombshell exploding among the magistrates. As Dr. Childs prepared to sail to England, the authorities burst into his cabin and declared him under arrest. A careful search of his belongings revealed a petition addressed to the House of Commons. It asked for an investigation of the Massachusetts Government, the appointment of a royal governor to guarantee the freedom of Englishmen, and the legal recognition of Presbyterianism. Dr. Child was rushed from shipboard to jail and later, with his fellow petitioners, was heavily fined. He subsequently returned to England.
As a result of the repeated attacks on the holy experiment, an attempt was made to strengthen the government and to pacify the unrest of the dissatisfied. In 1648, Laws and Libeties, embodying the laws of the colony, was published. Now every man knew exactly his responsibilities and his rights. Some of the discontent was pacified by the extension of certain local privileges to non-Church members, but the central control of the colony remained unchanged.
Criticisms from England had to be met. In face of the Presbyterian opposition, the magistrates invited the Puritans' churches to a meeting where theological issues were to be discussed. The final formulation of the consensus was known as the Cambridge Platform, 1648. This was American Puritanism's first confession of faith concerning the doctrine and Church government. They silenced English Presbyterian and Independent criticism by the adoption of the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was the product of a group of English Puritan divines called together by the House of Commons, 1643-1649. By its adoption, the Amercan Puritans upheld the same beliefs as did their English brethern. Both held that God, not man, decides who will be saved. God picks His elect. In His time before Christ, God gve man a set of Commandments to obey, and He gave certain men the grace to live in His laws. This was the old covenant, or the covenant of works. But God did not forget His people. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, who perfectly fulfilled and revealed God's will and exhibited how He felt toward man. He created His Church, the sacraments, and the preaching. Whoever received grace to repent his sins and to trust unreservedly in God as seen in Christ was saved. Through preaching, baptism, and the Lord's Supper, and through membership in the Church, the believer came under the new dispensation of God - the new covenant or the covenant of grace. The Puritans believed that God was holy, mighty, fearful in wrath, but also loving and forgiving. He had graciously bound Himself in His covenants. Men could depend upon this. Hence the importance of men's coming to church, hearing His Word, and reverently partaking of the sacraments.
There was one point which on the surface appeared appeared as a basic difference between the English Presbyterians and the New England Puritans. The Cambridge Platform insisted that the Church existed in its fulness in each local congregation which selected its own ministers and officers for the local church. In the hands of the congregation were the keys of discipline. In theory, no presbytery composed of elders and ministers from all the churches of a particular locality could exercise power over any local congregation as to the selection of the pastor, the formulation of doctrine, or the exercise of discipline. Supposedly, then no body such a synod or presbytery had any power over congregations. Such meetings as the synod of Cambridge were only gatherings of congregational representatives to combine their wisdom on particular problems and to offer advice. Though no congregation had to accept the advice, they were to receive the synodical declarations with "reverence and submission." The fact was that the synod did not just produce merely advice; it produced a confession of faith which included even a form of Church government. The synod did not have to insist on the congregations' accepting the declarations and confessions of the synod. But steps were sure to be taken by the civil magistrates against any individual, church, or minister that deviated from the synod's declarations or advanced something contrary to the generally accepted beliefs or practices. The magistrates, after all, the "nursing fathers" of the Church, and in the face of heresy or anything disruptive of the peace in Church and State, they punished nd executed discipline. In practice the Government played the role of a presbytery or a synod in administering rebuke and discipline, which the clergy decided was necessary against such people s Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, or Robert Child.
Strongly fortified by the declaration of the Cambridge Platform, the Puritans turned to a strict control of all opposition within the commonwealth. In 1656, a "plague" descended on New England. At least, that was the way the Puritans received the Quakers, when Mary Fisher and Ann Austin arrived to spread the teachings of George Fox. They were opposed to all externals in worship, to all sacraments, to all ministerial offices. The important thing was the divine light present in the breast of every human being. When, through the Spirit, one turned to the light within and followed it, he became a child of the light, living in peace, fellowship, and unity. True worshiip then became silence, broken only by the inner witness of the Spirit who compelled the believer to testify to his presence. Mary Fisher and Ann Austin were promptly put in jail and deported, but soon more Quakers poured in from the safe base in Rhode Island. A series of strict laws were passed by the magistrates. Finally, in 1658, the death penalty was decreed for all Quakers who returned after banishment. Some were beaten unmercifully with whips, others were branded, and three had the right ear cropped. This was typical treatment of the day. Though the magistrates had no final excuse for such actions, they greatly feared the Quakers. One Sabbath service as the congregation in Nebury listened to the sermon of the pastor, the door burst open and in walked a young woman stark naked. She cried, "Woe to those who hide from their sins. All are known unto God. All shall be thus revealed openly in the last days." Other Quakers interrupted meetings and shocked the congregations which could see no symbol of the openness of sin in the lack of clothing. Some Quakers stood up during or after the service, and with their hats still on contradicted the preacher. Little wonder that the authorities feared and detested the Quakers. In 1659, two men were hanged according to the new laws against the Quakers. The following year Mary Dyer, who had twice returned seeking martyrdom, was hanged until dead. In 1661, the last execution of a Quaker took place. Though the Puritans tried to defend themselves by the plea that they were defending public peace, they were roundly condemned in England and by the Rhode Island Baptists. By the mid-1670's, Quakers were protected by the English law and could conduct non-religious business in New England.
Not only did the Quakers attack the Bay colony and its holy experiment, but so did the Baptist. Roger Williams was only the beginning of Puritan troubles. By the year 1651 a sufficent number of Baptist were located in Massachusetts to merit a visit of fellow Rhode Island Baptists. These were seized on such a visit to Lynn. Two were heavily fined, and one, refusing to pay the fine or to let others to pay for him, was given the usual treatment of being whipped. In 1654, the congregation of Cambridge Church was shocked by a statement from Henry Dunste, the highly respected president of Harvard College. While a baptismal service was in progress, he arose to dispute the practice of infant baptism as unBiblical and preceeded to take each point of the pastor's sermon and to answer it with Baptist views. He was silenced, stripped of his Harvard presidency, and publicly rebuked. Thus the Quakers and Baptists joined the ranks of those dissatisfied with the Puritan holy experiment. Both stressed the conscience of the individual believer and the consequent inability of the magistrate to control the soul of man. The Puritan argued that if one wished a godly nation as well as godly individuals, one must be willing to keep men in line with the laws. The Commonwealth was dedicated to God, and the aim was to make certain that remained so committed.
Francis Makemie (1658-1708), an Irishman who arrived in the colonies in 1683, became the father of American Presbyterianism. By 1706, he had organized a presbytery in Philadelphia, and in 1716 the first synod adopted the Westminster Confession as the standard of faith. The Presbyterians ranked with the Anglicans, Congregationalists, and Baptists as the largest churches in the colonies.
In the American colonies, the predominant Old World religious tradition was the Reformed or Calvinist tradition as it found expression in English Puritainism and the related Presbyterianism of Scotland and northern Ireland.