Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v1.djvu/69

Rh life to the dream of an Indian mission. How little disturbed he was by the perversities and limitations of facts, is revealed anew in the polity which he laid down for his Indian converts:

And this VOW I did solemnly make unto the Lord concerning them; that they being a people without any forme of Government, and now to chuse; I would endeavour with all my might, to bring them to embrace such Government, both civil and Ecclesiastical, as the Lord hath commanded in the holy Scriptures; and to deduce all their Lawes from the holy Scriptures, that so they may be the Lord's people, ruled by him alone in all things.

Which vow, considering the state of the Indian tribes to whom it was to apply, may serve to throw light upon the causes of the scant success of the Saints in dealing with the Indians.

Despite the logic of the theocrats, unanimity of opinion among the Saints was sadly lacking; and the peace of the new Canaan was troubled and the patience of the leaders sorely tried by pious malcontents, who were not content that God should rule through John Cotton, but themselves desired to be the Lord's vicegerents. The democrats were constantly prodding the ruling coterie of gentlemen; and the democratic conception of a commonwealth of free citizens intruded more and more upon the earlier conception of a kingdom of God. Capable leaders of the new radicalism were not lacking; and if we would comprehend the dissension and heart-burnings of those early times, we must set the figures of Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker over against John Cotton and the theocrats.

Roger Williams, advocate of toleration, was the most tempestuous soul thrown upon the American shores by the revolution then griping England, the embodiment and spokesman of the new radical hopes. He was an arch-rebel in a rebellious generation, the intellectual barometer of a world of stormy speculation and great endeavour. A generation younger than the Boston leaders, he came to maturity at the beginning of the wave of radicalism that was to sweep England into civil war. Older ties of class and custom he put aside easily, to make room for the new theories then agitating young Englishmen; and these new theories he advocated with an importunity disconcerting to practical men more given to