Whether directly through his reading of Dutch theological works CHAP. II. or indirectly through English followers of Dutch writers, Williams probably derived his broadest principles, in germ at least, from the Mennonites or Anabaptists of the gentler sort, as he did also some of his minor scruples. For the connection between the Mennonites of the Continent and the English cognate sects the reader is referred to Barclay's Inner Life, a valuable work of much research. See also the petition of the Brownists, 1641, cited in Barclay, p. 476, from British Museum, E 34-178, tenth pamphlet. Another delightful example of the far-fetchedness of Cotton's logic is his justification of the sentence of banishment against Williams by citing Proverbs xi, 26: "He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him." This text, says Cotton, "I alledged to prove that the people had much more cause to separate such from amongst them (whether by Civill or church-censure) as doe withhold or separate them from the Ordinances or the Ordinances from them, which are the bread of life." Reply to Williams's Examination, 40. The reference in the text is to the same work, 37. "Much lesse to persecute him with the Civill Sword till it may appeare, even by just and full conviction, that he sinneth not out of conscience but against the very light of his own conscience." But in Cotton's practice those who labored with the heretic were judges of how much argument constituted "just and full conviction." This logic would have amply sheltered the Spanish Inquisition. Note 20, page 299. Cotton's Answer to Williams's Examination, 38, 39. Cotton Note 21, confesses to having had further conversation of a nature unfavor- page 300. able to Williams, but he is able to deny that he counseled his banishment. Even Cotton could hardly have prevented it, and he confesses that he approved the sentence. The only interest in the question is the exhibition of Cotton's habitual shrinking from responsibility and his curious sinuosity of conscience. In an unpublished work by Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library, which I have been kindly permitted to read, and which is a treatise on the election sermons mostly existing only in manuscript, the author says: "The early discourses were full of ecclesiasticism, a great deal of theology, some politics; . . . but of humanity, brotherly kindness, and what we understand by Christianity in the human relations, I have been able to discern very little." Note 22, page 301. BOOK III. Note 23, page 302. Note 24, page 303. Many of Roger Williams's scruples were peculiar, but his scrupulosity was not. Cotton takes pains to call pulpits “scaffolds," to show that they had no sacredness. The scruple about the heathen names of days of the week was felt by many other Puritans. It is evident in Winthrop, and it did not wholly disappear from Puritan use until about the end of the seventeenth century. Barclay, Inner Life, etc., 410, 411, cites Sebastian Franck's Chronica of 1536, from which it appears that the Seekers in fact if not in name existed about a century before Williams adopted their views. "Some desire to allow Baptism and other ceremonies to remain in abeyance till God gives another commandsends out true laborers into the harvest. . . . Some others agree with those who think the ceremonies since the death of the Apostles, are equally departed,' laid waste and fallen-that God no longer heeds them, and also does not desire that they should be longer kept, on which account they will never again be set up but now are to proceed entirely in Spirit and in Truth and not in an outward manner." The relation of Seekerism to Quakerism is manifest. To be a Seeker is to be of the best Sect next to a finder," wrote Cromwell in 1646. CHAPTER THE THIRD. NEW ENGLAND DISPERSIONS. I. tance of the Rhode Island colony. THE removal of Roger Williams and his friends CHAP. III was the beginning of dispersions from the mother Imporcolony on Massachusetts Bay. The company that settled Providence was too small in number at first to be of great importance. The emigration of Williams and his followers to the Narragansett country was an example that may have turned the scale with Hooker and his party in favor of a removal to the Connecticut instead of to some place in the Massachusetts wilderness. Williams certainly prepared a harbor for most of the Hutchinsonians, and pointed the way to Gortonists, Baptists, Quakers, and all others of uneasy conscience. Providence Plantation, and at times all Rhode Island, fell into disorders inevitable in a refuge for scruplers and enthusiasts established by one whose energies were centrifugal and disintegrating. But when at length it emerged from its primordial chaos the community on Narragansett Bay became of capital importance as an example of the secularization of the state, and of the congruity of the largest liberty in religion with civil. peace. The system which the more highly organ BOOK III. ized and orderly commonwealths of Massachusetts and Connecticut labored so diligently to establish —a state propping and defending orthodoxy and church uniformity was early cast into the rubbish heap of the ages. The principle on which the heterogeneous colony of religious outcasts on Narragansett Bay founded itself, was a stone rejected that has become the head of the corner. The Connecticut II. The emigration to the Connecticut River was migration. already incubating when Williams sat down with his radical seceders in the Narragansett woods. The Connecticut settlement was impelled by more various and complicated motives than that of Williams, and its origins are not so easy to disentangle. But it, too, has an epic interest; one dominant personality overtops all others in this second of venturesome westward migrations into the wilderness. Early life of Hooker. We can trace nothing of Hooker to his birthplace, a little hamlet in Leicestershire, except that the imagery of his discourses in after life sometimes reflected the processes of husbandry he had known in childhood. But that he passed through Emmanuel College, Cambridge, while Chaderton was master, is more significant, for Emmanuel was the cradle of Puritan divines, the hatching-place of Puritan crotchets, the college whose chapel stood north and south that it might have no sacred east end, a chapel in which "riming psalms" were sung instead of the hymns, and where lessons different from those appointed in the calendar were read. CHAP. III. Hooker was presented to the living of Chelmsford, in Essex. Here his eloquence attracted wide attention, and unhappily attracted at the same time the notice of his diocesan Laud, then Bishop of London, who drove the preacher from his pulpit. Hooker engaged in teaching a school four miles from Chelmsford, where Eliot, afterward the Indian apostle, became his usher and disciple. But Laud had marked him as one to be brought low. He was cited before the Court of High Commis- 1630. sion, whose penalties he escaped by fleeing to Holland. Thus early in his career Laud unwittingly put in train events that resulted in the founding. of a second Puritan colony in New England. III. company. First Church in 40. Dudley's Letter to of Lincoln, Countess The persecution of Hooker made a great com- Hooker's motion in Essex, dividing attention with the political struggle between the king and the people about Walker's tonnage and poundage. While Hooker was an exile in Holland a company of people from Brain- Hartford, tree and other parts of Essex, near his old parish of Chelmsford, emigrated to New England, chiefly, one may suppose, for the sake of good gospel, since they came hoping to tempt Hooker to become their pastor. This company settled at Newtown, now Cambridge, which had been projected for a fortified capital of the colony, that should be defensible against Indians and out of reach if a sea 3 February, force should be sent from England to overthrow Young's Mass., 320. Mass. Rec ords, 14 June, 1631, and 1632. |