The Rise and Fall of Religious Liberty in America
By C. M. S.
Conscience Outlawed in Massachusetts
WHILE the purpose of the founders of the first American colonies was the securing for themselves freedom to worship God, the records of the times prove it to have been equally the purpose of the majority of them to obliterate in those same colonies all religious exercises and all religious belief not in harmony with their belief and rituals. The Reformation in Europe had taken the people one long step out of the darkness of the Dark Ages, but failure to follow out the principles of Christ in the matter of soul-freedom had in great measure hindered the real work of reform. The conscience had merely changed masters. The Reformation had found men’s souls enthralled, and at the last had perpetuated the thralldom by establishing religion by law, and making non-conformity with the establishment a crime to be punished with the greatest rigor. The hand of God seems to have hidden America from the knowledge of the Old World until the time was ripe for a new order of things,—a new step in the process of reformation; and if this be true, it is also true that Satan was not idle when the time came for America’s career to open. He would perpetuate in America that subtle process which had so materially interfered with the true progress of the Reformation, arrested its development, and robbed it of its crown of glory. We have learned in our previous studies how every American colony save one established in some measure a union of religion and the state; and how, as a natural consequence, all save that one hounded and harried men and women for their faith. Was the New World to perpetuate the terrible tragedies of the Old, and so blight the purpose of God in bringing men to her shores? It was made evident from the beginning of the colonial governments, that a notable struggle was to take place in this land over the question of what power should dominate men’s consciences. Those early settlers had been educated in two very different schools. One class had been taught that “civil government is designed to support the external worship of God, to preserve the pure doctrine of religion, and defend the constitution of the church;” that persons maintaining or publishing erroneous opinions contrary to the creed of the established church “may be lawfully called to account and proceeded against by the censures of the church and the power of the civil magistrate;” that “the magistrate hath authority, and it is his duty to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed.”—“Westminster Confession.” The other class, far less numerous, had been taught that “the magistrate, by virtue of his office, is not to meddle with religion or matters of conscience, nor to compel men to this or that form of religion or doctrine; but to leave the Christian religion free to every man’s conscience, and to handle only civil transgressions, injuries, and wrongs of man against man, in murder, adultery, theft, etc., for Christ only is the king and law-giver.”—“Confession of the General Baptist Church,” Art. 84. With views thus diametrically opposed, it is not to be wondered at that the turmoil of the Old World over matters of conscience was continued for a time in the New. John Robinson, the “canonized pastor of the Pilgrims,” defended the use of magisterial power “to punish religious5actions, he [the magistrate] being the preserver of both tables [of the law of God], and so to punish all breaches of both, . . . and by some penalty to provoke his subjects universally unto hearing for their instruction and conversion, yea, to inflict the same upon them, if after due teaching they offer not themselves unto the church.” Says Henry M. King: “Bishop and king they had left behind, but the ghosts of both were with them still, in the union of church and state, and in the use of violent repressive measures to preserve uniformity of religious belief. The Bible was in their right hand, and the sword in their left hand.” From the use made of these two swords, it would have been truer to fact to state that the Bible was in their left hand, and the sword in their right. Concerning the position taken by the leaders in the colonial establishments, Sanford H. Cobb, in “The Rise of Religious Liberty in America,” says: “It is true that the Pilgrim Fathers, landing on the ‘stern and rock-bound’ coast of New England, sought and obtained ‘freedom to worship God.’ But the usual understanding of Mrs. Hemans’s lines, that they desired to establish anything like a general religious liberty, is very far from the truth. Their conscious desire was freedom for themselves, never dreaming of extending an equal freedom to such as differed from them in religious opinion.” A law of Massachusetts, passed in 1644, corroborates the foregoing statement, and this is only one of many similar laws. After inveighing strongly against the Anabaptists, this law says: “It is ordered and agreed that if any person or persons within this jurisdiction shall either openly condemn or oppose the baptizing of infants, or go about secretly to induce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the administration of the ordinance, or shall deny the ordinance of magistracy or their lawful right or authority to make war or punish the outward breaches of the first table, and shall appear to the court wilfully and obstinately to continue therein after due time and means of conviction, every such person or persons shall be sentenced to banishment.” This law was not permitted to become a dead letter. It was passed in order to enable those who passed it to carry out a set purpose, and they went about it with vigor. “The question of religious toleration,” says Charles Francis Adams (“Massachusetts: Its Historians and Its History”) “was, so far as Massachusetts could decide it, decided in 1637 in the negative.” John Cotton, than whom no one was better able to proclaim the sentiment of the times, declared that “toleration made the world antichristian;” that “it was not lawful to persecute any, till after admonition once or twice.” And then, with that peculiarly sophistical reasoning characteristic of those wedded to the church-and-state idea, he goes on to justify persecution for conscience’ sake in these words: “If such a man, after such admonition, shall still persist in the error of his way, and be punished, he is not persecuted for cause of conscience, but for sinning against his own conscience.” Thus did John Cotton and his contemporaries ride over the rights of men, make themselves lords and judges over the consciences of others, and attempt to establish in America a duplicate of the inquisitions of the state churches of the Old World. Arguments equally unreasonable and misleading are used in our day in the attempt to justify laws for the “special protection” of a day of worship. In his discussion with Roger Williams, John Cotton frankly declared that “persecution is not wrong in itself; it is wicked for falsehood to persecute truth, but it is the sacred duty of truth to persecute falsehood.” It can not be questioned that the colony carried faithfully into practise what it believed to be its duty in this regard. In 1631 Roger Williams landed in Boston. He had left England because of Archbishop Laud’s animosity toward him and the views he held. He was not long in New England before he began to proclaim the doctrine of soul-freedom, and the unrighteousness of the magistrate’s interference in the realm of conscience. He proclaimed it openly, fearlessly, and in spite of the admonitions of friends and the warnings and threats of enemies. Realizing finally his imminent danger, Williams went to Plymouth, where the more tolerant Pilgrims received him, and to them he ministered for two years. His return to a pastorate at Salem was soon followed (October, 1635) by his trial and banishment. One year previous to Williams’ banishment Mrs. Anne Hutchinson landed at Boston, and soon found herself in the toils of the law for holding independent meetings, and for criticizing some of the clergy. Mrs. Hutchinson was banished from the colony, as was also her brother-in-law, whose offense lay in preaching a sermon defending her views. Banishment was the portion of many another who dared to assert his right to believe and to teach. In those days there was no sin so heinous in the eyes of the established church as the sin of being a Quaker. Ship captains were forbidden to bring Quakers into the country, under penalty of a fine of one hundred pounds, with imprisonment until paid. A number of them were beaten on the bare back with cruel whips through three towns; some (and these included women) were taken long distances into the wilderness, and left without food or shelter; others were imprisoned for as long as six days without food, their meetings were forbidden under pain of heavy penalties, and those who informed upon them were given one third the amount of the fine. Four were hanged, and a fifth was sentenced to death; but the latter’s fearless stand for his rights as a British subject averted the execution of the sentence. But the cruel persecution did not cease with that. There has, perhaps, been no more shocking illustration of the cruelty of the church-and-state régime than the sale, as slaves, of two Quaker children who had been deprived of their parents by the execution of the laws against Quakers. Into such terrible iniquity have professed men of God been led when they have abandoned the example and teaching of their Master, and made religion a matter of civil legislation, regulated under corporeal pains and penalties. The Puritan establishment had outlawed conscience, and in so doing it wrote a record from whose rehearsal later generations recoil in shame and pity. The suffering of the persecuted was a bitter cup, but their cruel tormentors and executioners will never cease to be reprobated so long as history is read. And yet their deeds were but the logical outgrowth of that iniquitous wedlock—a union of religion and the state.