Difficulties in the way of our forefathers. Relation between Church and State. Abstract of Mosaic laws. Codification of laws. Relation between the ministers and the magistrates. Mr. Norton. Mr. Cotton's sermon. Letter to Lord Say and Seal. First association of ministers. Mode of supporting the ministry. Public spirit of those times. Roger Williams banished. Controversy between him and Mr. Cotton. Revival of religion in First Church. Church discipline. Anne Hutchinson. The Antinomian contro. versy. John Wheelwright. Sir Henry Vane. Mr. Cotton implicated. Discovers the deceptions practiced upon him. Regains his good standing. General Court. Offence at Mr. Wilson's sermon. Offence at Mr. Cotton's speech. Rowland Hill. Mr. Wheelwright condemned. First synod held in New England. Eighty errors condemned. Mr. Wheelwright banished. Mrs. Hutchinson admonished. She recants. She relapses. Is excommunicated. Banished. Her unhappy end. Mr. Cotton writes against Mr. Barnard and Mr. Ball of England. THE enterprise in which our fathers were here engaged, when Mr. Cotton joined them, was one of great difficulty, as well as great importance. They had some general ideas, derived from their sacred oracle, the Bible, of the nature of the free government, in the Church and in the State, which they wished to set up. But they were sorely perplexed in trying to reduce those ideas into practical forms. It was a novel undertak ing. They had no experience of other men to guide them. They were pioneers. They were to strike out a new path, through jungle and through forest, to reach the high and glorious results toward which they were looking. But, at the outset, they were themselves confused in the intricate and untraveled maze. They were at a loss to find the due bearings and proper starting points. At this juncture Mr. Cotton came to their aid. To them he seemed like that other John, who was the Lord's herald :-"the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." 999 He never attained to the great conclusion, to which the present age has come, that there ought to be an entire separation of Church and State. But he led the way to it, by taking a position much nearer to it than that which was then occupied by the Christian world. He taught, that the ecclesiastical power is totally distinct from the civil power; and that, though they be closely connected, they are never to be confounded. This distinction prepared the way for their separation. Mr. Cotton thus expressed himself on the subject. "God's institutions, such as the government of church and commonwealth be, may be close and compact, and coordinate one to another, and yet not confounded. God hath so framed the state of church government and ordinances, that they may be compatible to any commonwealth, though never so much disordered in his frame. But yet when a commonwealth hath liberty to mould his own frame, I conceive the Scripture hath given full direction for the right ordering of the same, and yet in such sort as may best maintain the well-being of the church. Mr. Hooker doth often quote a saying out of Mr. Cartwright, though I have not read it in him, that no man fashioneth his house to his hangings, but his hangings to his house. It is better 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."* In following out these sentiments, the colony, where "the commonwealth had that liberty to mould its own frame," could not fail to conform to the republicanism of the Congregational church polity in which our fathers believed. *Hutchinson's History of Mass., vol. 1, p. 437. As all the freemen of this new-born republic were church members, it was thought that the law of God ought to be their rule in civil affairs. The General Court desired Mr. Cotton to draw up an abstract of the laws of Moses, omitting such as were of temporary obligation, and in their nature peculiar to the Jewish polity. This service he performed, and the fruit of his labor was many years after printed at London by William Aspinwall, in 1655. From this transaction some malicious joker has taken occasion to say, that our fathers voted that they would be governed by the laws of Moses, till they could find time to make better. The jester had personal reasons, no doubt, for disliking the Mosaic legislation, which is very severe upon slanderers and such as bear false witness. Mr. Davenport gives the following correct account of the matter. "Considering that these plantations had liberty to mould their civil order into that form which they should find to be best for themselves, and that here the churches and commonwealth are complanted together in holy covenant and fellowship with God in Christ Jesus, he did, at the request of the General Court in the Bay, draw an abstract of the laws of judgment deliv ered from God by Moses to the commonwealth of Israel, so far forth as they are of moral, that is, of perpetual and universal equity among all nations, especially such as these plantations are: wherein he advised that Theocracy, that is, God's government, might be established, as the best form of government, where the people that choose civil rulers are God's people in covenant with him."* Mr. Cotton's abstract was not adopted. Another drawn upon the same general principles, but with numerous deviations, some of them impor tant, obtained the preference. It was printed in London in 1641, and has been supposed to be the joint labor of Mr. Cotton and Sir Henry Vane.t This was soon superseded by another body of laws of the same general character; but with a much better arrangement. It is remarkable, that the statutory system which was eventually adopted, was a code of laws systematically arranged under one hundred heads. It has been one of the chief commendations of the mighty mind of * From a manuscript life of John Cotton by Mr. Davenport, quoted in Hutchinson's Original Papers, p. 161. ↑ Reprinted Mass. Hist. Soc. Collec., 1st Series, vol. V. p. 171, &c. |