“. . . if any person within this jurisdiction shall, without just and necessary cause, withdraw himself from hearing the public ministry of the word . . . he shall forfeit for his absence . . . five shillings.”
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Isn’t there freedom
not
to go to church? Such a luxury you do not have. “If any person shall blaspheme the name of God the Father, Son or Holy Ghost with direct, express presumptuous or highhanded blasphemy, or shall curse God in the like manner, he shall be put to death.”
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Not even curse God once in a while, if I’m mad at him? God is our sovereign authority and is to be revered lest He visit His punishment upon us. You may not participate in town affairs unless your character and good behavior have been attested to by a majority of the people in the town.
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Is this an exclusive society? Yes, we have too many people taking part who do not share our convictions. You must contribute financially to the support of the church in your town.
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But, I don’t agree with its policies: We are setting up a godly society, and if you don’t like our ways, you may move elsewhere. No Quaker may remain in any town more than two weeks; otherwise a fine of 15 a week shall be imposed, and the offender shall be put in prison until he is banished.
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But, I want the freedom to believe what I want! We could never promise you that right: such freedom would destroy our society.
These are some things that would assuredly bother you if you were to go back via time machine to 17th century Connecticut. (Until 1665 New Haven Colony had a separate existence, and we shall not deal with it here.) How could any group be so narrow-minded? What right do they have to force people into their mold? It sounds like an Hitlerian idea. We must find cut how Puritans could be perfectly nice people and at the same time be so despotic in their laws and government.
When we speak of a Puritan “synthesis,” we refer to the fact that almost every aspect of Puritan life seems to be centered around one focal point. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries in England the Puritans believed that God was the most real thing in their lives and that what He demanded of them was the most important law to be obeyed. What He wanted was clear through a reading of the Bible, and His church ought to be like the earliest Christian communities. The Puritan lived in a constant state of tension, trying to live his life in this world while holding on to a divine perspective.
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Because of this a Puritan held no brief for any kind of church hierarchy. The Bible showed that church officers were democratically-chosen colleagues who had specific practical jobs to do, not superimposed figures like bishops who ruled with an iron hand. The Puritan was upset by forms of worship which went beyond anything mentioned in the Bible and preferred the most simple form based on scripture, sermon and prayer.
(Figure available in print form)
(Figure available in print form)
The Puritan was against ostentation in dress (private or clerical) and church architecture or furnishings. He was repelled by the then current idea that all residents of a community were automatically considered church communicants, since the Bible described Christian communities as being small groups who were “called out” of the larger society and came together because they specifically desired to respond to God’s leading.
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At first the Puritans hoped to reform the Church of England by remaining in it. They had great initial success. The exhortations of Puritan preachers to the congregations in their charge drew enthusiastic response from people who had not recently been so challenged or aroused in church. Thomas Hooker was one such preacher, and his attraction was such that people from some distance away would come to Chelmsford to hear him preach. He became so popular that a clergyman who disagreed with the Puritan movement wrote the following letter of complaint about Hooker to William Laud, then Bishop of London.
Since my return from London I have spoken with Mr. Hooker, but I don’t see much hope of changing his mind. All the favor he desires is that you do not bring him before the High Commission Court, but permit him quietly to depart out of the diocese. All men’s ears are now filled with the obstreperous clamors of his followers against you, my Lord, saying you are trying to suppress good preaching and advance the cause of the Pope. All would be very calm and quiet here if he might quickly depart. If you simply forbid him to preach, it is the resolution of his friends and himself to settle his abode in Essex, and maintenance is promised him in plentiful manner for carrying on his private meetings which have already hurt the peace of our church more than his public ministry. His genius will still haunt all the pulpits in the country, wherever any of his pupils might be permitted to preach. There are several young ministers around here who spend their time in conversation with him and return home and preach what he has brewed. Our people’s palates grow so out of taste, that no food contents them but of Mr. Hooker’s dressing. I have lived in Essex to see many changes and have seen the people idolizing many new ministers and lecturers, but this man surpasses them all for learning and some other considerable qualities, and he gains more and far greater followers than all before him. If my Lord tender his own future peace. Let him connive at Mr. Hooker’s departure.
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Since the Puritan movement was seen as a threat to bishop and king, both bishops and kings connived against any increase in its success. More and more clergymen suspected of Puritan leanings were haled before the Court of the High Commission for examination and probable punishment. Hooker fled to Holland in 1630, but in 1632 he accepted the call of the Church of Newton (later Cambridge), Massachusetts Bay, to be their pastor, and by 1633 he was on board the ship which carried him across the Atlantic to be with these members of church congregations from Braintree and Colchester and from his own Chelmsford group.
That year his was only one of ten or twelve ships to go from England to New England to join the several congregations already established there in Massachusetts Bay since 1629. Eighty more ships would follow before 1639. The Puritans went to America because of disillusionment about the possibilities of change in England and because of hope that in the New World they could establish the City of God for the salvation of their souls and as a light for the aid of the reformation of the Church of England.
In 1636 Thomas Hooker, along with most of his Newtown congregation, left Massachusetts Bay for the Connecticut River to establish what was later called Hartford. Since 1633 Englishmen from Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth had gone to that valley, and it seemed attractive to those who felt cramped in the seaboard colonies.
The citizens of Connecticut gathered their churches before they organized their Commonwealth government, and when they turned their attention to a civil government, they tried to make sure it would preserve their churches. Church and state were closely linked together, and this was not surprising . No one in those days could conceive of a dominion in which a multiplicity of religions co-existed. Each state supported, and was supported by, one religious institution. Pluralism in religion was not an idea whose time had come.
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St. Stephen’s parish, Coleman Street, London, provides an example of the typical confused intermingling of state with church. From this congregation came many of the Puritans who settled New Haven under the leadership of their pastor, John Davenport. Other immigrants to Connecticut must have been used to similar situations at home. Each of these city parishes was a geographical area within which a large group (from thirty to eighty) of property owners, called the General Vestry, made the important decisions, meeting from time to time during the year. They chose not only the highest lay church officials, the wardens, but also members of the city council to represent their precinct. They also chose constables and other officials for the precinct itself. Since St. Stephen’s was one of those churches where the bishop did not have complete determination of the choice of minister, the General Vestry passed on the credentials and suitability of any candidate when a new man was needed. They examined the church’s financial records and imposed the church tax (called the “tithe”). Between the meetings of the General Vestry a smaller group of the more important men of that body carried on the day-to-day affairs of the parish. They made agreements concerning the minister’s salary, took care of parish gifts to various charities, decided the amount of the tithe, watched over the church property, made sure that poor orphans were suitably apprenticed, administered the estates of orphans who died, and made decisions concerning coal for the poor and pensions for the aged. Little distinction was made between the church and the community.
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In Connecticut it was natural to assume that officers of the state would be members and supporters of the church and that all residents of a town would be participants in a local parish. Thomas Hooker, however, made another type of connection between his religious beliefs and his convictions about government based on firmly-held Puritan ideas about choosing one’s own leaders. Such connections were brought out in his famous sermon of 1638.
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1. That the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people, by God’s own allowances.
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2. The privilege of election, which belongs to the people, therefore, must not be exercised according to their humors, but according to the blessed will and law of God.
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3. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them.
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In the first point he is claiming for popular elections the same sanction James I claimed for monarchy: God’s will. The Puritan’s desire to choose his own church leaders, and then his own civil leaders, appears to lead in a reasonably straight line to the American republic. Point two reflects the Puritan’s typically serious attitude toward his own life, but it is now applied to the sphere of government: being a good citizen is part of being a good Christian. Point three is a democratic-seeming idea which, as has been justly pointed out, did not seriously hinder the Standing Order from establishing in office for lengthy periods those members of the oligarchy it approved. Free elections meant to the Puritan that those who were worthy should elect their own leaders. Later they began to spell out more clearly just who they thought were worthy. By that time Hooker had died, and we’re not sure what he would have thought.
In 1639, the General Court of Connecticut adopted the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,” the oldest written plan of government in the world. [See Chart A for an outline of its main provisions. The full text is in Unit II, Appendix A]. It is clear that there is no separation of powers, since the governor is not only an executive (but with very little power besides that of presiding over the Court), but he legislates and judges as well. The magistrates (or assistants) make laws but also act as judges and make decisions which today we would say are properly within the sphere of an executive branch. The deputies participate in law-making and also become law-interpreters when the General Court exercises its judicial powers. In addition, there were committees and individuals commissioned by the Court to administer various areas in a sort of executive oversight.
Although at first any householder was welcome as an “admitted inhabitant” and could vote in all town elections, subsequent amendments made it harder and harder to qualify for this status. To be a “freeman” and be able to vote in Commonwealth elections and be eligible to serve as a deputy or in any higher Commonwealth position one did not have to be a church member. He did, however, have to be an admitted inhabitant and have the approval of a majority of his fellow-townsmen. Later, in conformance to British regulations, a property requirement was added which became part of the Royal Charter of 1662. During the ensuing years the proportion of male residents who were freemen decreased. One can guess that at the time the amendments were added (indicated on the chart) there must have been fear concerning the presence in the Commonwealth of many who did not share the Puritan orientation.
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One example of the Puritans’ attempt to be faithful to the Bible is seen in the Capital Code of 1642, which provided scriptural sanctions for each of the death penalties. Three examples follow:
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1. If any man after legal conviction, shall have or worship any other God but the Lord God, he shall be put to death.
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A glance at the supplied Biblical references reveals the following:
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Deuteronomy 13:6,9,10. If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of Sour bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” which neither you nor your fathers have known . . . you shall kill him’ your hand shall first against him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
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Exodus 22:20. Whoever sacrifices to any god, save to the Lord only, shall be utterly destroyed.
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2. The law against blasphemy quoted earlier. The reference is Levitious 24:13-16, which reads:
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And the Lord said to Moses, “Bring out of the camp him who cursed, and let all who heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him. And say to the people of Israel, whoever curses his God shall bear his sin. He who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him; the sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death.”
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3. If any person shall commit any willful murder, which is manslaughter committed upon malice, hatred, or cruelty, not in a man’s necessary and just defense, nor by mere casualty against his will, he shall be put to death.
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Exodus 21:12-14. Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God let him fall in to his hand, then I will appoint for you a place to which he may flee. But if a man willfully attacks another to kill him treacherously, you shall take him from my altar, that he may die.
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Numbers 35:30,31. If any one kills a person, the murderer shall be put to death on the evidence of witnesses; but no person shall be put to death on the testimony of one witness. Moreover, you shall accept no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death; but he shall be put to death.
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Mary Jeanne Jones, in her helpful book
Congregational Commonwealth,
puts flesh on these words by adducing several examples in which leniency was demonstrated in murder trials because of a fear of executing someone not completely “willful” in his intentions. Few people were put to death in early Connecticut, and almost without exception these were found guilty of witchcraft. The death penalty was imposed by statute on any child over sixteen who cursed or struck his parents unless they had not given him an education or had provoked him; likewise for a child over sixteen who refused to obey his parents. But these laws never brought about the death of any child during the Commonwealth period; if they had a deterrent effect, it is not known.
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In 1650, the Ludlow Code was promulgated to answer the need for a written list of laws and punishments. It received this name from the fact that Roger Ludlow, the only lawyer among Connecticut’s first inhabitants, was responsible for compiling it. This Code warned the people and equipped the judges with guidelines. It drew heavily on a Massachusetts code written, also by Ludlow, somewhat earlier. Here are some examples which show the Puritans’ attempt to regulate society.
Ecclesiastical
Forasmuch as the open contempt of God’s word and its messengers is the desolating sin of civil states and churches, and that the preaching of the word . . . is the chief ordinary means ordained by God for the converting, edifying, and saving of the souls of the elect . . . and according to the respect and contempt of . . . those whom God hath set apart for his own work . . . , the weal or woe of all Christian states is much furthered and promoted:
It is therefore ordered and decreed, that if any Christian . . . shall contemptuously bear himself towards the word preached or the messengers that are called to dispense the same . . . either by interrupting him in his preaching or by charging him falsely with an error . . . in the open face of the church, . . . or cast upon his true doctrine or himself any reproach to the dishonor of the Lord Jesus, . . . every such person . . . shall for the first scandal be convented and reproved openly by the magistrates at some lecture and bound to their good behavior. And if a second time they break forth into the like contemptuour carriages, they shall either pay five pounds to the public treasure or stand two hours openly, upon a block or stool four foot high upon a lecture day with a paper fixed on his breast written with capital letters, AN OPEN AND OBSTINATE CONTEMNER OF GOD’S HOLY ORDINANCES, that others may fear and be ashamed of breaking out into the like wickedness.
(There follows the laW requiring attendance at church cited above.)
Gaming
Upon complaint of great disorder by the use of the game called shuffle board in houses of common entertainment whereby much precious time is spent unfruitfully and much waste of wine and beer occasioned:
It is therefore ordered and enacted by the authority of this Court, that no person shall henceforth use the said game of shuffle board in any such house nor in any other house used to forfeit for every offense twenty shillings. And for every person playing at the said game in any such house to forfeit for every such offense five shillings. . .
Idleness
It is ordered by this Court and authority thereof, that no person, householder or other, shall spend his time idly or unprofitably, under pain of such punishment as the court shall think meet to inflict. And for this end it is ordered that the constable of every place shall use special care and diligence to take knowledge of offenders in this kind: especially of common coasters, unprofitable fowlers, and tobacco takers, and present the same unto any magistrate . . .
Innkeepers
(Houses of entertainment are necessary, but there are too many abuses of that freedom.)
It is therefore ordered by this Court and authority thereof, that no person or persons licensed for common entertainment shall suffer any to be drunken, or drink excessively (which means above half a pint of wine for one person at one time), or to continue tippling above the space of half an hour, or at unreasonable times, or after nine of the clock at night, in or about any of their houses, on penalty of five shillings for every such offense. And every person found drunken (which means so that he be bereaved or disabled thereby in the use of his understanding, appearing in speech or gesture) in any of the said houses or elsewhere, shall forfeit ten shillings. And for excessive drinking three shillings four pence. And for continuing above half an hour tippling two shillings six pence. And for tippling at unseasonable times, or after nine o’clock at night, five shillings . . . and for want or payment shall be imprisoned until they pay or be set in the stocks one hour or more in some open place as the weather will permit, not exceeding three hours at one time. Provided, such licensed persons may entertain seafaring men or land travellers in the night season, when they come first on shore or from their journey, for their necessary refreshment, or when they prepare for their voyage or journey the next day early, so be no disorder among them. And also, strangers and other persons, in an orderly way, may continue at such houses of common entertainment during meal times, or upon lawful business, what time their occasions shall require.
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I have not had the time to investigate the various studies of Puritan life in Connecticut which have tried to calculate the extent to which these laws, and others like them, were carried out. Jones believes that they came down the hardest on various kinds of disorderly conduct (drunkenness or disturbing the Sabbath) and on sacrilege (profanity or crime committed on the Sabbath).