The difficulties with which these congregations had to deal did not merely arise from their environment, but were partly due to the difficulty of maintaining a high Christian standard in their internal life. Those who, as members of the Covenant of Grace, had been admitted into Christian fellowship, were inclined to claim that none of their brethren was justified in overruling the conscientious convictions at which they had arrived. Mrs. Hutchinson claimed a right to abstain from the religious ordinances which the community maintained, and to criticise in forcible language the discourses delivered by the ministers. She maintained a double weekly lecture" where after "she had repeated the sermon she would make her comment upon it, vent her mischievous opinions 'as she pleased and wreathe the Scriptures to her 'own purpose." It is not necessary to try to unravel the threads of this famous controversy; but it may suffice to point out that while the conscience is supreme within, the expression of conviction in word or deed may be rightly taken into account by an external authority. Even in the most spiritual community those who claim to be within the Covenant of Grace are not thereby excused for disparaging the Covenant

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1 Short Story of the Rise of the Antinomians, quoted by Willcock, Life of Sir Henry Vane, 46.

of Works. "The Kingdom of God is within "you."

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These practical experiments were perhaps of less importance than the habits of thought on political matters which they expressed and helped to perpetuate; the conception of a Christian polity as one community considered in two aspects, civil and religious, was abandoned in favour of the view that the two spheres, the civil and the spiritual, were distinct. Roger Williams formulated it thus, "We acknowledge the ordinance of mag"istracy to be properly and adequately fitted by "God to preserve the civil State in civil peace and 'order; as He hath also appointed a spiritual gov"ernment and Governors in matters pertaining to "His Worship, and the consciences of men, both "which Government, Governors, Laws, Offences, "Punishments are Essentially distinct, and the "confounding of them brings all the world in Com"bustion." This endeavour to draw a clear line between the two spheres is very tempting, but it is well to notice what it implied. The spiritual sphere was regarded as definitely religious, where all was to be ordered under a conscious sense of duty to God, but it does not seem to have been possible to maintain the same standard in regard to civil life. From an early date the membership

1 Quoted by Willcock, Life of Sir Henry Vane, 149.

of the churches in Massachusetts was not identical with the residents of the community; and when the unenfranchised at last secured a voice in the civil government, it came to be clear that the principles to which appeal was made in the religious sphere were not identical with the principles to which appeal was made in the civil sphere. The civil sphere was no longer consciously religious; and hence the standards of right and wrong were given, not by spiritual authority but by natural reason or utilitarian considerations. The attempt to establish a perfectly pure Christian community had resulted in driving the regulation of civil affairs and secular life into a sphere where religious considerations were at all events not primary, if indeed they were relevant at all. The attempt to separate the spiritual from all contact with a mundane environment and to keep it immune from contaminating influence, resulted in the disparagement of civil and political society as merely mundane, and led to the abandonment of efforts to control them by means of religious influence. When the conscious effort to realise the Will of God was confined to the spiritual sphere, the first step was taken towards recognising the will of the people

good or bad, wise or foolish - as paramount in the civil sphere.

IV. UNASSIMILATED ELEMENTS IN ENGLISH

SOCIETY

At the Restoration, Parliament took up the endeavour to assert the old conception of a Christian polity more vigorously than ever before. Twenty years' experience had forced many men to feel that the reassertion of the old order in Church and State was the only safeguard against the destruction of the parochial system and the dangers of military despotism. The Presbyterians, who held to monarchical government and national Christianity, were unable to get a hearing for the system they would have preferred. It was remembered against them that the rebellion in Scotland against Charles I had led to the outbreak of civil war, and their ideals of loyalty were not easily comprehensible by the English mind. The Long Parliament of the Restoration endeavoured to safeguard the restored system in Church and State, by turning against the Puritans the weapons which they had forged for attacking the Church of England. The Clarendon Code was the result; and, as a consequence, the various Puritan bodies found themselves in a much worse case than before the Civil War; then they were only thwarted and hampered by ecclesiastics whose position was constitutionally doubtful, but henceforth they

were harried by the authority of Parliament and under the Statutes of the Realm. The religious elements that could not be assimilated to the restored order in Church and State were necessarily placed in a position of antagonism to the institutions of the society in which they lived.

While the Puritans were an object of suspicion to the civil authorities, on account of their political principles and their affinities with the Dutch, there was not much in the restored monarchy that could claim their respect. The Court was corrupt; the severity which had been imposed on the nation generally by the anxieties of the war and the administration of the Puritan régime was suddenly relaxed. The restored clergy did not always commend themselves by their preaching, or by their lives, to their parishioners; it must have been exceedingly hard to feel that there was any Christian obligation to obey such a government. On the other hand, the loss of the liberty of forming gathered congregations, which they had enjoyed during the Interregnum, was bitterly resented, and the Puritans felt it a religious duty to stand on their civil rights, to work hard for an extension of these rights and to endeavour to obtain the repeal of all the disabilities under