Page:History of Barrington, Rhode Island (Bicknell).djvu/152

114 our coming into New England, appeared amongst ourselves, some whereof have (as others before them) denied the ordinance of magistracy, and the lawfulness of making war, and others the lawfulness of magistrates, and their inspection into any branch of the first table; which opinions, if they should be connived at by us, are like to be increased amongst us, and so must necessarily bring guilt upon us, infection and trouble to the churches and hazard to the commonwealth:

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 seduce others from the approbation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart the congregation at the administration of the ordinance, or shall deny the ordinances of the magistracy, or their lawful right or authority to make war, or to 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."

Laws of like tenor and equal severity were made by Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies against Rantors or Quakers. Such was the reasoning of the combined legal, ecclesiastical, and lay judgment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, two hundred and fifty years ago.

Our fathers established a state church that they might express as strongly as a new society could its belief in homogeneity in all matters relating to the social, civil, and religious order. The Puritan would solve the problem of religious freedom by a process of social and theological differentiation and segregation. Roger Williams might set up his church and its worship in Providence, and so might Lord Baltimore in Maryland, under protest, but not in Salem, or Plymouth, or Boston. The New Englander's ideal government was church and state. He knew that France was the Catholic Church, that England was the Establishment, and what he desired for Massachusetts Bay was a Puritan state,