early colonists of the United States were the early Anglo-American colonies, I have driven from Europe by oppression. Al- spoken incidentally only respecting their though Virginia and the Carolinas were forms of Church government, and even not expressly established as asylums for now proceed to consider these only in so the wronged, yet during the Common- far as is required for a right understanding wealth in England they afforded a refuge of the established relations between their to the "Cavalier" and the "Churchman," Churches and the civil government. I as they did afterward to the Huguenot and shall elsewhere treat of the various reliGerman Protestant. Georgia was colo- gious communions in the United States, nized as an asylum for the imprisoned and or, rather, of the diverse forms in which "persecuted Protestants;" Maryland, as the Church presents itself to the world, the home of persecuted Roman Catholics; and the doctrines peculiar to each. We and the colony of Gustavus Adolphus was have here to do only with the relations to be a general blessing to the "whole which the State bore in the different coloProtestant world," by offering a shelter to nies to the Church; and where these two all who stood in need of one. Even New- bodies were united, we shall see what York, though founded by Dutch merchants, were the nature and extent of that union. with an eye to trade alone, opened its arms to the persecuted Bohemian, and to the inhabitant of the Italian valleys. So that, in fact, all these colonies were originally peopled more or less, and some of them exclusively, by the victims of oppression and persecution; hence the remark of one of our historians is no less just than eloquent, that "tyranny and injustice peopled America with men nurtured in suffering and adversity. The history of our colonization is the history of the crimes of Europe."* 7. Though incapable as yet of emancipating themselves from all the prejudices and errors of past ages, with respect to the rights of conscience, they were at least in advance of the rest of the world on these points, and founded an empire in which religious liberty is at this day more fully enjoyed than anywhere else-in short, is in every respect perfect. Many persons whom I have met with in Europe seem to have been altogether unaware of the existence of any such union in any part of the United States, and, still more, have had no correct idea of what the nature of that union was in the different parts of the country where it was to be found. To both these classes I desire to give all the information they may require. If we consider for a moment what was the state of the Christian world when these colonies were first planted, in the early part of the seventeenth century, we must see that the mass of the colonists would be very little disposed to have the Church completely separated from the State in their infant settlements, and the former deriving no support from the latter. The Church and the State were at that time intimately united in all the countries of Europe; and the opinion was almost universally entertained that the one could not 8. Lastly, of the greater number of the safely exist without the direct counteearly colonists it may be said, that they ex-nance of the other. It is not even certain patriated themselves from the Old World, not merely to find liberty of conscience in the forests of the New, but that they might extend the kingdom of Christ, by founding states where the Truth should not be impeded by the hinderances that opposed its progress elsewhere. This was remarkably the case with the Puritans of NewEngland; but a like spirit animated the pious men who settled in other parts of the country. They looked to futurity, and caught glimpses of the glorious progress which the Gospel was to make among their children and children's children. This comforted them in sorrow, and sustained them under trials. They lived by faith, and their hope was not disappointed. that England, or any other country, would have granted charters for the founding of permanent colonies, unless upon the condition expressed, or well understood, that religion was to receive the public sanction and support. Assuredly, James 1., at least, was not likely to consent to anything else. Be that as it may, the first colonists themselves had no idea of abolishing the connexion which they saw everywhere established between the civil powers and the Church of Christ. To begin with NewEngland, nothing can be more certain than that its Puritan colonists, whether we look to their declarations or their acts, never contemplated the founding of communities in which the Church should have no alliance with the State. Their object, and it was one that was dearer to them than life itself, was to found such civil communities as should be most favourable to the cause of pure religion. They had left England in order to escape from a government which, in their view, hindered the progress of divine truth, oppressed the conscience, and was inexpressibly injurious to the im mortal interests of men's souls. "They to their grand purpose; nor did they doubt had seen in their native country the entire that a government thus originating in volsubjection of the Church to the supreme untary compact would have equal right to civil power; reformation beginning and the exercise of civil authority with that of ending according to the caprices of the any earthly potentate whatever. hereditary sovereign; the Church neither purified from superstition, ignorance, and scandal, nor permitted to purify itself; ambitious, time-serving, tyrannical men, the minions of the court, appointed to the high places of prelacy; and faithful, skilful, and laborious preachers of the Word of God silenced, imprisoned, and deprived | of all means of subsistence, according to the interests and aims of him or her who, by the law of inheritance, happened to be at the head of the kingdom. All this seemed to them not only preposterous, but intolerable; and, therefore, to escape from such a state of things, and to be where they could freely practise Church Reformation,' they emigrated."* In the formation, likewise, of their civil institutions in the New World, they determined that, whatever else might be sacrificed, the purity and liberty of their churches should be inviolate. Bearing this in mind, they founded commonwealths in which the churches were not to be subordinate to the state. Not that they were "Fifth monarchy men;" they had no wish that the Church should engross to itself the powers of the State, and so rule in civil as well as in ecclesiastical matters. But they thought it better that the State should be accommodated to the Church, than the Church to the State. "It is better," said Mr. Cotton, "that the commonwealth be fashioned to the setting forth of God's house, which is his Church, than to accommodate the Church frame to the civil state." With this in view, they sought to avail themselves of all the lights furnished by the experience of ancient as well as modern states, and looking especially to the Constitution of England as it then stood, they framed civil governments in which, as they hoped, not only the temporal, but, still more, the spiritual interests of mankind might best be promoted. They considered that they had a right to do so, and held opinions on this point directly at variance with those of the age in which they lived. The fashion then was to deduce all authority from the divine right of kings, and the theory of civil power was that of uninterrupted hereditary succession. But the Puritan founders of New-England thought that "they were free to cast themselves into that mould and form of commonwealth which appeared best for them," in reference * Bacon's "Historical Discourses on the Completion of 200 Years from the beginning of the first Church in New-Haven," p. 17, 18. + Cotton's "Letter to Lord Say and Seal, in Hutchinson's History of New-England," vol. i., p. 497. Whatever were the details of their policy, and whatever the results of some parts of it, it is most certain that they intended that the Church should in no sense be subject to the State. They held the great and glorious doctrine that CHRIST IS THE ONLY HEAD AND RULER OF THE CHURCH, and that no human legislation has a right to interfere with His. It has been said that they took the Hebrew commonwealth for their model in civil politics, and this is so far true. But it holds as to their penal code more than with respect to the forms of their civil governments. With the exception of the first few years of the Massachusetts Bay and New-Haven colonies, there was no such blending of civil and religious authority as existed in the Jewish Republic. There was much, however, in the Hebrew commonwealth and laws that seemed adapted to the circumstances of men who had just exchanged what they considered a worse than Egyptian bondage for a Canaan inhabited by the "heathen," whom they were soon to be compelled "to drive out." The two cases were more alike than at first strikes a superficial observer.* There were ty emigrating from their native country to a land "The laws of Moses were given to a communiwhich they were to acquire and occupy for the great purpose of maintaining in simplicity and purity the worship of the one true God. The founders of this colony came hither for the self-same purpose. Their emigration from their native country was a religious emigration. Every other interest of their community was held subordinate to the purity of their religious faith and practice. So far, then, as this point of comparison is concerned, the laws which were given the wants of a religious colony planting itself in to Israel in the wilderness may have been suited to America. "The laws of Moses were given to a people who were to live not only surrounded by heathen tribes on every frontier save the seaboard, but also with the mixed among them, not fellow-citizens, but men of anheathen inhabitants, worshippers of the devil, interother and barbarous race; and the laws were therefore framed with a special reference to the corrupting influence of such neighbourhood and intercourse. Similar to this was the condition of our fathers. The Canaanite was in the land, with his barbarian vices, with his heathenish and hideous superstitions; and their servants and children were to be guarded against the contamination of intercourse with beings so degraded. "The laws of the Hebrews were designed for a free people. Under those laws, so unlike all the institutions of Oriental despotism, there was no absolute power, and, with the exception of the hereditary priesthood, whose privileges, as a class, were well balanced by their labours and disabilities, no privileged classes. The aim of those laws was 'equal and exact justice;' and equal and exact justice is the only freedom. Equal and exact justice, in the laws and in the administration of the laws, infuses freedom into the being of a people, secures the widest and most useful distribution of the means of enjoyment, and affords scope for the activity and healthful stimulus to the affections of every individual. The people whose habits and sentiments are formed bers, with the deciding of all controversies, was in the brotherhood; that church-officers, for preaching the Word and taking care of the poor, were to be chosen by the free suffrages of the brethren; that in church censures, there should be an entire separation of the ecclesiastical from the civil sword; that Christ is the Head of the Church; that a liturgy is not necessary; and that all ceremonies not prescribed by the Scriptures are to be rejected." parts of the Mosaic law, excluding, of course, all that was typical, ceremonial, and local, which the colonists thought they might do well to adopt, until, in the course of time, they should find reasons for changing to something better. Had it been the laws of Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, or Alfred that they adopted, some who now ridicule would perhaps have applauded them, as if Moses were inferior to any of those lawgivers. There are men who know more of the laws of Solon, and even of Minos, than about Moses, and who, in their ignorance, talk of the Jews of the days of Moses as if almost, if not altogether, savages; not knowing that they were quite as much civ-ent doctrines as to Church government had ilized as any of their contemporaries, and had institutions prescribed to them by the Supreme Ruler and Lawgiver. But how are we to account for a change in their views so sudden and so great? Even when Winthrop left England in 1630, neither the Presbyterian nor the Independ made that progress in public opinion which they had made when the Long Parliament, and Cromwell and his army, began to play their parts. It is quite possible, or, rather, all but certain, that several of the ministers in the Massachusetts Bay colony were low Episcopalians, and friends of Archbishop Usher's scheme; but if all of the leading colonists were as much inclined to Presbyterianism as has been thought by some, it is hard to imagine why they did not establish that form of government. It is difficult to make out, on the other hand, why they diverged so widely, and at once, from the Episcopal economy, as to adopt Inde It is remarkable that, with the exception of the Plymouth settlers, all the first New England colonists-all who founded Massachusetts Bay, New-Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, New-Haven, Providence, and Rhode Island-up to their leaving England, were members of the Established Church. The Plymouth people alone were Independents, had had their church organized on that principle for years, and were such even before they went to Holland. If any of the other original colonists of New-England had been thrust out from the Estab-pendency, which is almost antipodal. lished Church of the mother-country, they This, it appears to me, may be referred had not organized themselves on any other to two or three causes. First, it is natural principle; and, however opposed to the that, on quitting England, where they had spirit of its rulers and to some of its cere- suffered so much from Prelacy, they should monies and usages, that they were attached renounce an ecclesiastical system that conto the Church itself, as well as to many of ferred upon any men powers so capable of those whom they had left within its pale, is being abused; nor can it be thought surprimanifest from the letter of Governor Win- sing that in such circumstances they should throp and his associates, just after embark-run to the opposite extreme, and prefer an ing for America. ecclesiastical government of the most demBut on arriving there they immediately ocratical sort. Another, and much more proceeded to the founding of an ecclesias-powerful reason, for their rejecting Epistical economy upon the Independent plan, copacy would be, that they might escape having for its essential principles, "That, the jurisdiction of the bishops, which would according to the Scriptures, every church otherwise unquestionably have followed ought to be confined within the limits of a them. And, lastly, there can be no doubt single congregation, and that the govern- that they were much influenced by what ment should be democratical; that church- they saw and heard of the Plymouth coloes should be constituted by such as desired ny. It will be remembered that the first to be members, making a confession of division of the Massachusetts Bay settlers, their faith in the presence of each other, under Endicott, reached Salem in 1628, and and signing a covenant; that the whole that the main body, under Winthrop, folpower of admitting and excluding mem-lowed in 1630, and founded Boston. It under such an administration of justice will be a free people."- Bacon's "Historical Discourses," p. 30, 31. would seem that the Rev. Mr. Higginson, the distinguished minister in Endicott's colony, led the way in effecting the change, he having, upon his arrival at Salem, or soon afterward, introduced the Independent plan among his people, though not without much difficulty, being opposed by the two Brownes, John and Samuel, who, in consequence of this opposition, had to return to England. Mr. Higginson was disposed to receive very favourably the accounts transmitted from the Plymouth col ony on the other side of the bay. It is true house," for the maintenance of a pastor or that Edward Winslow, in his "Brief Nar-minister, and for all other necessary exrative," as well as Cotton, in his "Way," &c., undertake to prove that Plymouth did not exert the influence that has been ascribed to it, and which has even by Gorton and his accomplices been charged against it as a crime. But I think it clear that they admit the substance of the charge.* penses connected with public worship. I am not aware of any exemption from this law being allowed for a long time after the colonies were founded. Such was the fundamental union of Church and State in the colonies that now form the States of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New-Hampshire, and Maine. The Church, then, that was established in all the New-England colonies, with the The next law adopted in the Massachuexception of Providence and Rhode Isl-setts Bay colony dates from 1631, the year and, was what is termed in the United after the arrival of Winthrop and his comStates, Congregational, and in England, pany, and, as we shall hereafter see, it Independent; though there is some differ- was pregnant at once with evil and with ence between the Congregational churches good. It ran thus: "To the end that the in the former of these countries, and the body of the commons may be preserved of Independent in the latter, as I shall show honest and good men, it is ordered and in another part of this work. I speak here agreed, that for the time to come, no man of the form of government. As for doc- shall be admitted to the freedom of this trines, they were essentially those of the body politic but such as are members of Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of Eng- some of the churches within the limits of land; in other words, Calvinistic. the same."* In other words, no one was to vote at elections, or could be chosen to any office in the commonwealth, without being a member of one of the churches. This law was long in force in Massachusetts and in Maine, which, until 1820, was a part of that state; but it never prevailed, I believe, in New-Hampshire, and was unknown, of course, in Rhode Island. But a like law existed from the first in NewHaven, and when that colony was united, in 1662, with Connecticut, where this had not been the case, it became, I believe, part of the legislation of the united colony. Let us now see what were the relations between the Church and the State, or "Commonwealth," in New-England. In every colony there, except the two above mentioned, the object of one of the first acts of civil legislation was to provide for the support of public worship, and other laws followed from time to time to the same effect, as circumstances required. Without going into unnecessary details, suffice it to say, that parishes or "towns" of a convenient size were ordered to be laid out, and the people were directed to levy taxes by the proper authorities of their respective towns, for erecting and keeping in due repair a suitable "meeting Winslow says, "It is true, I confess, that some of the chief of them," referring to the colony of Massachusetts Bay, "advised with us how they should do to fall upon a right platform of worship, and desired to that end, since God had honoured us to lay the foundation of a commonwealth, and to settle a church in it, to show them whereupon our practice was grounded; and if they found, upon due search, it was built upon the Word of God, they would be willing to take up what was from God." He then goes on to say, that they of Plymouth showed them the warrant for their government in the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles, and the Gospels; and that their friends, the other colonists, were well pleased there. with, and also agreed to walk in the same way, so far as God should reveal his will to them, from time to an took and hid in three measures of meal till all was leavened."" And it too may be called Congregational, for it was founded by Baptists, whose churches are essentially independent in form of government. Thus we find two fundamental laws on this subject prevailing in New-Englandthe one universal, with the exception of Rhode Island; the other confined to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine. In restricting the exercise of political power to men who, as members of the Church, were presumed to be loyal to the grand principle of the colony to which they belonged, namely, the maintenance of purity of doctrine and liberty of worship, as the first consideration, and of free political government as necessary to it, the authors of that law doubtless contemplated rather the protection of their colonists from apprehended dangers than the direct promotion of piety. This principle, in fact, down to the founding of these colonies, seems to have been adopted substantially by all nations, Popish and Protestant, Mohammedan and Heathen; so much so that Davenport said, "These very Indians, that worship the devil," acted on the same principle, so that, in his judgment, "it seemed to be a principle imprinted in the minds and hearts of all men in the equity of it." We need * Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. i., p. 360. "Discourse about Civil Goverment," p. 24, as quoted in Bacon's "Historical Discourses." hardly remind the reader that this allegiance to the Christian Faith was, until very lately, indispensable to the holding of any office under the crown in England, and that receiving the sacrament in the Established Church was the legal test of a man's possessing it. ligion should be established according to the doctrines and rites of the Church of England; every emigrant was bound to allegiance to the king, and to conformity with the royal creed. Still, it does not appear that any provision was made for the clergy until 1619, that is, twelve years after the commencement of the colony. A Legislative Assembly, elected by the colonists, met that year for the first time, and passed laws for the formation of parishes and the regular maintenance of the clergy; accordingly, the establishment of the Episcopal Church dates formally, if not really, from that year. In conclusion, I ought to state, that in the New-England colonies the ministers of the Gospel had no part, as such, in the civil government. They were confined to their proper office and work. Yet no men had more influence, even in affairs of state. As a body of enlightened patriots, whose opinion it was important to obtain, they were consulted by the political authorities Previously to this, however, and during in every hour of difficulty; and although the governorship of Sir Thomas Dale, the cases might be found in which the leading London Company sent over to Virginia a men among them, at least, did not advise set of "laws, divine, moral, and martial," their fellow-citizens wisely, it was much being, apparently, the first fruits of Sir otherwise in the great majority of instan- Thomas Smith's legislation; and from ces. Such was the state of things through- their Draconian character, they give us out the whole colonial age; and to this some idea of the notions entertained in day, in no other country is the legitimate those times of the ways whereby religion influence of the clergy in public affairs- might be promoted by the civil power. an influence derived from their intelli- They were so bad, it is true, as to be little, gence, united with religion, virtue, and if at all enforced. In short, they soon fell public spirit-more manifest, or more sal- into complete desuetude, and were disutary, than in New-England. If these col- claimed, at length, by the company, withonies might be compared, in their earlier out whose sanction they seem to have been periods, to the Hebrew commonwealth, it prepared and sent. Yet there is ample evis certain that, wherever there was a Mo-idence to prove that they breathed very ses, there was also an Aaron; and the influence of Winthrop, and Haynes, and Bradford, and Eaton, was not greater or happier than that of their compeers and coadjutors, the Rev. Messrs. Cotton, and Hooker, and Brewster, and Davenport. VIRGINIA, too, like New-England, was first colonized by members of the Church of England; but there was a vast difference between the views of the admirers of the English Prelacy of that time and those of the Puritans. The Established Church was then composed, in fact, of two great divisions, which in spirit, at least, have more or less existed ever since, and were represented in the colonization of America by the High Churchmen and Cavaliers of the South, on the one hand, and the Puritans of the North on the other. While the latter left England in order to escape from the oppressions inflicted on them by the Prelacy, abetted by the Crown, the former had no complaint against either, but carried with them a cordial attachment to both. much the spirit of the times that produced them, and of the party in the Church of England to which their author belongeda spirit which, thank God! has long since ceased to exist in that or any other portion of the Church of Christ in that country. The first of those laws that bears upon religion enjoins on the officers of the colony, of every description, to have a care that "the Almightie God bee duly and daily served," that the people "heare sermons," that they themselves set a good example therein, and that they punish such as shall be often and wilfully absent, "according to martial law in the case provided." The second law forbids, upon pain of death, speaking against the sacred Trinity, or any Person of the same, or against the known articles of the Christian Faith. The third law forbids blasphemy of God's holy name, upon pain of death; and the use of all unlawful oaths, upon severe punishment for the first offence, the boring of the tongue with a bodkin for the second, and death for the third. The fourth law forbids speaking disrespectfully of the Word of God, upon pain of death, as well as the treating of ministers of the Gospel with disrespect; and enjoins the "holding of them in all reverent regard and dutiful entreatie," under penalty of being whipped three times, and of * Bancroft's "History of the United States," vol. In the original charter of James I. to |