Like all phenomena of nature, the action of the mind is obedient to law; the cause is followed by the consequence with the precision that the earth moves round the sun, and impelled by this resistless power his destiny is wrought out by man. To the ecclesiastic a deep debt of gratitude is due, for it was by his effort that the first step from barbarism was made. In the world’s childhood, knowledge seems divine, and those who first acquire its rudiments claim, and are believed, to have received it by revelation from the gods. In an archaic age the priest is likewise the law-giver and the physician, for all erudition is concentrated in one supremely favored class—the sacred caste. Their discoveries are kept profoundly secret, and yet to perpetuate their mysteries among their descendants they found schools which are the only repositories of learning; but the time must inevitably come when this order is transformed into the deadliest enemy of the civilization which it has brought into being. The power of the spiritual oligarchy rests upon superstitious terrors which dwindle before advancing enlightenment; hence the clergy have become reactionary, have sought to stifle the spirit of free inquiry, and have used the schools which they have builded as instruments to keep alive unreasoning prejudice, or to serve their selfish ends. This, then, has been the fiercest battle of mankind; the heroic struggle to break down the sacerdotal barrier, to popularize knowledge, and to liberate the mind, began ages before the crucifixion upon Calvary; it still goes on. In this cause the noblest and the bravest have poured forth their blood like water, and the path to freedom has been heaped with the corpses of her martyrs.
In that tremendous drama Massachusetts has played her part; it may be said to have made her intellectual life; and it is the passion of the combat which gives an interest at once so sombre and so romantic to her story.
In the tempest of the Reformation a handful of the sternest rebels were cast upon the bleak New England coast, and the fervor of that devotion which led them into the wilderness inspired them with the dream of reproducing the institutions of God’s chosen people, a picture of which they believed was divinely preserved for their guidance in the Bible. What they did in reality was to surrender their new commonwealth to their priests. Yet they were a race in whose bone and blood the spirit of free thought was bred; the impulse which had goaded them to reject the Roman dogmas was quick within them still, and revolt against the ecclesiastical yoke was certain. The clergy upon their side trod their appointed path with the precision of machines, and, constrained by an inexorable destiny, they took that position of antagonism to liberal thought which has become typical of their order. And the struggles and the agony by which this poor and isolated community freed itself from its gloomy bondage, the means by which it secularized its education and its government, won for itself the blessing of free thought and speech, and matured a system of constitutional liberty which has been the foundation of the American Union, rise in dignity to one of the supreme efforts of mankind.
CHAPTER II. – THE ANTINOMIANS
Habit may be defined with enough accuracy for ordinary purposes as the result of reflex action, or the immediate response of the nerves to a stimulus, without the intervention of consciousness. Many bodily functions are naturally reflex, and most movements may be made so by constant repetition; they are then executed independently of the will. It is no exaggeration to say that the social fabric rests on the control this tendency exerts over the actions of men; and its strength is strikingly exemplified in armies, which, when well organized, are machines, wherein subjection to command is instinctive, and insubordination, therefore, practically impossible.
An analogous phenomenon is presented by the church, whose priests have intuitively exhausted their ingenuity in weaving webs of ceremonial, as soldiers have directed their energies to perfecting manuals of arms; and the evidence leads to the conclusion that increasing complexity of ritual indicates a densening ignorance and a deepening despotism. The Hindoos, the Spaniards, and the English are types of the progression.
Within the historic ages unnumbered methods of sacerdotal discipline have been evolved, but whether the means used to compass the end has been the bewildering maze of a Levitical code, or the rosary and the confessional of Rome, the object has always been to reduce the devotee to the implicit obedience of the trooper. And the stupendous power of these amazingly perfect systems for destroying the capacity for original thought cannot be fully realized until the mind has been brought to dwell upon the fact that the greatest eras of human progress have begun with the advent of those who have led successful insurrection; nor can the dazzling genius of these brilliant exceptions be appreciated, unless it be remembered how infinitely small has been the number of those among mankind who, having been once drilled to rigid conformity, have not lapsed into automatism, but have been endowed with the mental energy to revolt. On the other hand, though ecclesiastics have differed widely in the details of the training they have enforced upon the faithful, they have agreed upon this cardinal principle: they have uniformly seized upon the education of the young, and taught the child to revere the rites in which he was made to partake before he could reason upon their meaning, for they understood well that the habit of abject submission to authority, when firmly rooted in infancy, would ripen into a second nature in after years, and would almost invariably last till death.
But this manual of religion, this deadening of the soul by making mechanical prayers and genuflexions the gauge of piety, has always roused the deepest indignation in the great reformers; and, un-appalled by the most ghastly perils, they have never ceased to exhort mankind to cast off the slavery of custom and emancipate the mind. Christ rebuked the Pharisees because they rejected the commandment of God to keep their own tradition; Paul proclaimed that men should be justified by faith without the deeds of the law; and Luther preached that the Christian was free, that the soul did not live because the body wore vestments or prayed with the lips, and he denounced the tyranny of the clergy, who arrogated to themselves a higher position than others who were Christian in the spirit. On their side priesthoods know these leaders of rebellion by an unerring instinct and pursue them to the death.
The ministers of New England were formalists to the core, and the society over which they dominated was organized upon the avowed basis of the manifestation of godliness in the outward man. The sad countenance, the Biblical speech, the sombre garb, the austere life, the attendance at worship, and, above all, the unfailing deference paid to themselves, were the marks of sanctification by which the elders knew the saints on earth, for whom they were to open the path to fortune by making them members of the church.
Happily for Massachusetts, there has never been a time when all her children could be docile under such a rule; and, among her champions of freedom, none have been braver than those who have sprung from the ranks of her ministry, as the fate of Roger Williams had already proved. In such a community, before the ecclesiastical power had been solidified by time, only a spark was needed to kindle a conflagration, and that spark was struck by a woman.
So early as 1634 a restless spirit was abroad, for Winthrop was then set aside, and now, in 1636, young Henry Vane was enthusiastically elected governor, though he was only twenty-four, and had been but a few months in the colony. The future seemed bright and serene, yet he had hardly taken office before the storm burst, which not only overthrew him, but was destined to destroy that unhappy lady whom the Rev. Thomas Welde called the American Jezebel. [Footnote: Opinions are divided as to the authorship of the Short Story, but I conclude from internal evidence that the ending at least was written by Mr. Welde.]
John Cotton, the former rector of St. Botolph’s, was the teacher of the Boston church. By common consent the leader of the clergy, he was the most brilliant, and, in some respects, the most powerful man in the colony. Two years before, Anne Hutchinson, with all her family, had followed him from her home in Lincolnshire into the wilderness, for, “when our teacher came to New England, it was a great trouble unto me, my brother, Wheelwright, being put by also.” [Footnote: Hutch. Hist. ii. 440.] A gentlewoman of spotless life, with a kind and charitable heart, a vigorous understanding and dauntless courage, her failings were vanity and a bitter tongue toward those whom she disliked. [Footnote: Cotton, Way of New England Churches, p. 52.] Unfortunately also for herself, she was one of the enthusiasts who believe themselves subject to divine revelations, for this pretension would probably in any event have brought upon her the displeasure of the church. It is worth while to attempt some logical explanation of the dislike felt by the Massachusetts elders to any suggestion of such supernatural interposition. The half-unconscious train of reasoning on which they based their claim to exact implicit obedience from the people seems, when analyzed, to yield this syllogism: All revelation is contained in the Bible; but to interpret the ancient sacred writings with authority, a technical training is essential, which is confined to priests; therefore no one can define God’s will who is not of the ministry. Had the possibility of direct revelation been admitted this reasoning must have fallen; for then, obviously, the word of an inspired peasant would have outweighed the sermon of an uninspired divine; it follows, necessarily, that ecclesiastics so situated would have been jealous of lay preaching, and absolutely intolerant of the inner light.
In May, 1636, the month of Vane’s election, Mrs. Hutchinson had been joined by her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, the deprived vicar of Bilsby. Her social influence was then at its height; her amiable disposition had made her popular, and for some time past she had held religious meetings for women at her house. The ostensible object of these gatherings was to recapitulate the sermons of the week; but the step from discussion to criticism was short, and it soon began to be said that she cast reproach “upon the ministers, … saying that none of them did preach the covenant of free grace, but Master Cotton, and that they have not the seale of the Spirit, and so were not able ministers of the New Testament.” [Footnote: Short Story, p. 36.] Or, to use colloquial language, she accused the clergy of being teachers of forms, and said that, of them all, Cotton alone appealed to the animating spirit like Luther or St. Paul.
“A company of legall professors,” quoth she, “lie poring on the law which Christ hath abolished.” [Footnote: Wonder-Working Providence, Poole’s ed. p. 102.]
Such freedom of speech was, of course, intolerable; and so, as Cotton was implicated by her imprudent talk, the elders went to Boston in a body in October to take him to task. In the hope of adjusting the difficulty, he suggested a friendly meeting at his house, and an interview took place. At first Mrs. Hutchinson, with much prudence, declined to commit herself; but the Rev. Hugh Peters besought her so earnestly to deal frankly and openly with them that she, confiding in the sacred character of a confidential conversation with clergymen in the house of her own religious teacher, committed the fatal error of admitting that she saw a wide difference between Mr. Cotton’s ministry and theirs, and that they could not preach a covenant of grace so clearly as he, because they had not the seal of the Spirit. The progress of the new opinion was rapid, and it is clear Mrs. Hutchinson had only given expression to a feeling of discontent which was both wide-spread and deep. Before winter her adherents, or those who condemned the covenant of works,—in modern language, the liberals,—had become an organized political party, of which Vane was the leader; and here lay their first danger.
Notwithstanding his eminent ability, he was then but a boy, and the task was beyond his strength. The stronghold of his party was Boston, where, except some half-dozen, [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 212.] the whole congregation followed him and Cotton: yet even here he met with the powerful opposition of Winthrop and the pastor, John Wilson. In the country he was confronted by the solid body of the clergy, whose influence proved sufficient to hold together a majority of the voters in substantially all the towns, so that the conservatives never lost control of the legislature.
The position was harassing, and his nerves gave way under the strain. In December he called a court and one day suddenly announced that he had received letters from England requiring his immediate return; but when some of his friends remonstrated he “brake forth into tears and professed that, howsoever the causes propounded for his departure were such as did concern the utter ruin of his outward estate, yet he would rather have hazarded all” … “but for the danger he saw of God’s judgment to come upon us for these differences and dissensions which he saw amongst us, and the scandalous imputations brought upon himself, as if he should be the cause of all.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 207.]
Such a flight was out of the question. The weight of his name and the protection given his supporters by the power of his family in England could not be dispensed with, and therefore the Boston congregation intervened. After a day’s reflection he seems himself to have become convinced that he had gone too far to recede, so he “expressed himself to be an obedient child to the church and therefore … durst not go away.” [Footnote: Idem, i. 208.]
That a young and untried man like Vane should have grown weary of his office and longed to escape will astonish no one who is familiar with the character and the mode of warfare of his adversaries.
In that society a layman could not retort upon a minister who insulted him, nor could Vane employ the arguments with which Cromwell so effectually silenced the Scotch divines. The following is a specimen of the treatment to which he was probably almost daily subjected, and the scene in this instance was the more mortifying because it took place before the assembled legislature.
“The ministers had met a little before and had drawn into heads all the points wherein they suspected Mr. Cotton did differ from them, and had propounded them to him, and pressed him to a direct answer … to every one; which he had promised. … This meeting being spoke of in the court the day before, the governour took great offence at it, as being without his privity, &c., which this day Mr. Peter told him as plainly of (with all due reverence), and how it had sadded the ministers’ spirits, that he should be jealous of their meetings, or seem to restrain their liberty, &c. The governour excused his speech as sudden and upon a mistake. Mr. Peter told him also, that before he came, within less than two years since, the churches were in peace.... Mr. Peter also besought him humbly to consider his youth and short experience in the things of God, and to beware of peremptory conclusions which he perceived him to be very apt unto.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 209.] This coarse bully was the same Hugh Peters of whom Whitelock afterward complained that he often advised him, though he “understood little of the law, but was very opinionative,” [Footnote: Memorials, p. 521.] and who was so terrified at the approach of death that on his way to the scaffold he had to drink liquor to keep from fainting. [Footnote: Burnet, i. 162.]
“Mr. Wilson” also “made a very sad speech to the General Court of the condition of our churches, and the inevitable danger of separation, if these differences … were not speedily remedied, and laid the blame upon these new opinions … which all the magistrates except the governour and two others did confirm and all the ministers but two.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 209.] Those two were John Cotton and John Wheelwright, the preachers of the covenant of grace.
Their brethren might well make sad speeches, for their cup of bitterness was full; but they must be left to describe for themselves the tempest of fear and wrath that raged within them. “Yea, some that had beene begotten to Christ by some of their faithfull labours in this land” (England, where the tract was published,) “for whom they could have laid downe their lives, and not being able to beare their absence followed after them thither to New England to enjoy their labours, yet these falling acquainted with those seducers, were suddenly so altered in their affections toward those their spirituall fathers, that they would neither heare them, nor willingly come in their company, professing they had never received any good from them.” … “Now the faithfull ministers of Christ must have dung cast on their faces … must be pointed at as it were with the finger, and reproached by name, such a church officer is an ignorant man, and knows not Christ; such an one is under a covenant of works: such a pastor is a proud man, and would make a good persecutor … so that through these reproaches occasion was given to men, to abhorre the offerings of the Lord.” [Footnote: Welde’s Short Story, Pref. Sections 7-11.]
“Now, one of them in a solemne convention of ministers dared to say to their faces, that they did not preach the Covenant of Free Grace, and that they themselves had not the seale of the Spirit.... Now, after our sermons were ended at our publike lectures, you might have seene halfe a dozen pistols discharged at the face of the preacher (I meane) so many objections made by the opinionists in the open assembly against our doctrine … to the marvellous weakening of holy truths delivered … in the hearts of all the weaker sort.” [Footnote: Welde’s Short Story, Pref. Sections 7-11.]
John Wheelwright was a man whose character extorts our admiration, if it does not win our love. The personal friend of Cromwell and of Vane, with a mind vigorous and masculine, and a courage stern and determined even above the Puritan standard of resolution and of daring, he spoke the truth which was within him, and could neither be intimidated nor cajoled. In October an attempt had been made to have him settled as a teacher of the Boston church in conjunction with Wilson and Cotton, but it had miscarried through Winthrop’s opposition, and he had afterward taken charge of a congregation that had been gathered at Mount Wollaston, in what is now Quincy.
On the 19th of January a fast was held on account of the public dissensions, and on that day Wheelwright preached a great sermon in Boston which brought on the crisis. He was afterward accused of sedition: the charge was false, for he did not utter one seditious word; but he did that which was harder to forgive, he struck at what he deemed the wrong with his whole might, and those who will patiently pore over his pages until they see the fire glowing through his rugged sentences will feel the power of his blow. And what he told his hearers was in substance this: It maketh no matter how seemingly holy men be according to the law, if … they are such as trust to their own righteousness they shall die, saith the Lord. Do ye not after their works; for they say and do not. They make broad their phylacteries and enlarge the borders of their garments; and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues; and greetings in the market place and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and ye shall be saved, for being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And the way we must take if so be we will not have the Lord Jesus Christ taken from us is this, we must all prepare a spiritual combat, we must put on the whole armor of God, and must have our loins girt up and be ready to fight, … because of fear in the night if we will not fight the Lord Jesus Christ may come to be surprised.
And when his brethren heard it they sought how they might destroy him; for they feared him, because all the people were astonished at his doctrine.
In March the legislature met, and Wheelwright was arraigned before a court composed, according to the account of the Quaker Groom, of Henry Vane, “twelve magistrates, twelve priests, & thirty-three deputies.” [Footnote: Groom’s Glass for New England, p. 6.] His sermon was produced, and an attempt was made to obtain an admission that by those under a covenant of works he meant his brethren. But the accused was one whom it was hard to entrap and impossible to frighten. He defied his judges to controvert his doctrine, offering to prove it by the Scriptures, and as for the application he answered that “if he were shown any that walked in such a way as he had described to be a covenant of works, them did he mean.” [Footnote: Wheelwright, Prince Soc. ed. p. 17, note 27.] Then the rest of the elders were asked if they “did walk in such a way, and they all acknowledged they did,” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 215. Wheelwright, p. 18.] excepting John Cotton, who declared that “brother Wheelwright’s doctrine was according to God in the parts controverted, and wholly and altogether.” [Footnote: Groom’s Glass for New England, p. 7.] He received ecclesiastical justice. There was no jury, and the popular assembly that decided law and fact by a partisan vote was controlled by his adversaries. Yet even so, a verdict of sedition was such a flagrant outrage that the clergy found it impossible to command prompt obedience. For two days the issue was in doubt, but at length “the priests got two of the magistrates on their side, and so got the major part with them.” [Footnote: Felt’s Eccl. Hist. ii. 611.] They appear, however, to have felt too weak to proceed to sentence, for the prisoner was remanded until the next session.
No sooner was the judgment made known than more than sixty of the most respected citizens of Boston signed a petition to the court in Wheelwright’s behalf, In respectful and even submissive language they pointed out the danger of meddling with the right of free speech. “Paul was counted a pestilent fellow, or a moover of sedition, and a ringleader of a sect, … and Christ himselfe, as well as Paul, was charged to bee a teacher of New Doctrine.... Now wee beseech you, consider whether that old serpent work not after his old method, even in our daies.” [Footnote: Wheelwright, Prince Soc. ed. p. 21.]
The charge of sedition made against them they repudiated in emphatic words, which deserve attention, as they were afterwards held to be criminal.
“Thirdly, if you look at the effects of his doctrine upon the hearers, it hath not stirred up sedition in us, not so much as by accident; wee have not drawn the sword, as sometimes Peter did, rashly, neither have wee rescued our innocent brother, as sometimes the Israelites did Jonathan, and yet they did not seditiously. The covenant of free grace held forth by our brother hath taught us rather to become humble suppliants to your worships, and if wee should not prevaile, wee would rather with patience give our cheekes to the smiters.” [Footnote: Idem.]
The liberal feeling ran so strongly in Boston that the conservatives thought it prudent to remove the government temporarily to Cambridge, that they might more easily control the election which was to come in May. Vane, with some petulance, refused to entertain the motion; but Endicott put the question, and it was carried. As the time drew near the excitement increased, the clergy straining every nerve to bring up their voters from the country; and on the morning of the day the feeling was so intense that the Rev. Mr. Wilson, forgetting his dignity and his age, scrambled up a tree and harangued the people from its branches. [Footnote: Hutch. Hist. i. 62, note.]
Yet, though the freemen were so deeply moved, there was no violence, and Winthrop was peaceably elected governor, with a strong conservative majority in the legislature. It so happened that just at this time a number of the friends of Wheelwright and the Hutchinsons were on their way from England to settle in Massachusetts. The first act of the new government was to exclude these new-comers by passing a law forbidding any town to entertain strangers for more than three weeks without the consent of two of the magistrates.
This oppressive statute caused such discontent that Winthrop thought it necessary to publish a defence, to which Vane replied and Winthrop rejoined. The controversy would long since have lost its interest had it not been for the theory then first advanced by Winthrop, that the corporation of Massachusetts, having bought its land, held it as though it were a private estate, and might exclude whom they pleased therefrom; and ever since this plea has been set up in justification of every excess committed by the theocracy.
Winthrop was a lawyer, and it is but justice to his reputation to presume that he spoke as a partisan, knowing his argument to be fallacious. As a legal proposition he must have been aware that it was unsound.
Although during the reign of Charles I. monopolies were a standing grievance with the House of Commons, yet they had been granted and enforced for centuries; and had Massachusetts claimed the right to exclude strangers as interlopers in trade, she would have stood upon good precedent. Such, however, was not her contention. The legislation against the friends of Wheelwright was passed avowedly upon grounds of religious difference of opinion, and a monopoly in religion was unknown.
Her commercial privileges alone were exclusive, and, provided he respected them, a British subject had the same right to dwell in Massachusetts as in any of the other dominions of the crown, or, indeed, in any borough which held its land by grant, like Plymouth. To subject Englishmen to restriction or punishment unknown to English law was as outrageous as the same act would have been had it been perpetrated by the city of London,—both corporations having a like power to preserve the peace by local ordinances, and both being controlled by the law of the land as administered by the courts. Such arguments as those advanced by Winthrop were only solemn quibbling to cloak an indefensible policy. To banish freemen for demanding liberty of conscience was a still more flagrant wrong. A precisely parallel case would have been presented had the directors of the East India Company declared the membership of a proprietor to be forfeited, and ordered his stock to be sold, because he disapproved of enforcing conformity in worship among inhabitants of the factories in Hindostan.
Vane sailed early in August, and his departure cleared the last barrier from the way of vengeance. Proceedings were at once begun by a synod of all the ministers, which was held at Cambridge, for the purpose of restoring peace to the churches. “There were about eighty opinions, some blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe, condemned by the whole assembly.... Some of the church of Boston … were offended at the producing of so many errors, … and called to have the persons named which held those errors.” To which the elders answered that all those opinions could be proved to be held by some, but it was not thought fit to name the parties. “Yet this would not satisfy some but they oft called for witnesses; and because some of the magistrates declared to them … that if they would not forbear it would prove a civil disturbance … they objected.... So as he” (probably meaning Winthrop) “was forced to tell one of them that if he would not forbear … he might see it executed. Upon this some of Boston departed from the assembly and came no more.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 238.] Once freed from their repinings all went well, and their pastor, Mr. Wilson, soon had the satisfaction of sending their reputed heresies “to the devil of hell from whence they came.” [Footnote: Magnalia, bk. 3, ch. ii. Section 13.] Cotton, seeing that all was lost, hastened to make his peace by a submission which the Rev. Mr. Hubbard of Ipswich describes with unconscious cynicism. “If he were not convinced, yet he was persuaded to an amicable compliance with the other ministers; … for, although it was thought he did still retain his own sense and enjoy his own apprehension in all or most of the things then controverted (as is manifest by some expressions of his … since that time published,”…) yet. “By that means did that reverend and worthy minister of the gospel recover his former splendour throughout … New England.” [Footnote: Hubbard, p. 302.]
He was not a sensitive man, and having once determined to do penance, he was far too astute a politician to do it by halves; he not only gave himself up to the task of detecting the heterodoxy of his old friends, [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 253.] but on a day of solemn fasting he publicly professed repentance with many tears, and told how, “God leaving him for a time, he fell into a spirituall slumber; and had it not been for the watchfulnesse of his brethren, the elders, &c., hee might have slept on, … and was very thankfull to his brethren for their watchfulnesse over him.” [Footnote: Hypocrisie Unmasked, p. 76.] Nor to the end of his life did he feel quite at ease; “yea, such was his ingenuity and piety as that his soul was not satisfied without often breaking forth into affectionate bewailing of his infirmity herein, in the publick assembly, sometimes in his prayer, sometimes in his sermon, and that with tears.” [Footnote: Norton’s Funeral Sermon, p. 37.]