382 GREAT EMIGRATION TO MASSACHUSETTS. CHAP. few emigrants who resorted to the new state, was IX. not sensibly felt in the parent colony; for the Bay of Massachusetts was already thronged with squadrons. The emigrants had from the first been watched in the mother country with intense interest; a letter from New England was venerated" as a sacred script, or as the writing of some holy prophets, and was carried many miles, where divers came to hear it."1 When the first difficulties had been surmounted, the stream of emigration flowed with a full current; "Godly people in England began to apprehend a special hand 1634. of Providence in raising this plantation, and their hearts were generally stirred to come over." New settle1635. ments were, therefore, formed. A little band, toiling through thickets of ragged bushes, and clambering over crossed trees, made its way along Indian paths to the green meadows of Concord. The suffering settlers burrowed for their first shelter under a hill-side. Tearing up roots and bushes from the ground, they subdued the stubborn soil with the hoe, glad to gain even a lean crop from the wearisome and imperfect culture. The cattle sickened on the wild fodder; sheep and swine were destroyed by wolves; there was no flesh but game. The long rains poured through the insufficient roofs of their smoky cottages, and troubled even the time for sleep. Yet the men labored willingly, for they had their wives and little ones about them. The forest rung with their psalms; and "the poorest of the people of God in the whole world,” they were resolved" to excel in holiness." Such was the infancy of a New England village. Would that village one day engage the attention of the world? 1 Old Planters' Narrative, 17. 2 Johnson, c. xxxv. R. W. Emerson's Historical Discourse, 7. 11. HENRY VANE IN NEW ENGLAND. 383 IX. Meantime the fame of the liberties of Massachusetts CHAP. extended widely: the good-natured earl of Warwick, a friend to advancement in civil liberty, though not a republican, offered his congratulations on its prosperity; and in a single year three thousand new settlers were added to the Puritan colony. Among these was the fiery Hugh Peters, who had been pastor of a church of English exiles in Rotterdam; a republican of an enlarged spirit, great energy, and popular eloquence, not always tempering active enterprise with solidity of judgment. At the same time came Henry Vane, the younger, a man of the purest mind; a statesman of spotless integrity; whose name the progress of intelligence and liberty will erase from the rubric of fanatics and traitors, and insert high among the aspirants after truth and the martyrs for liberty. He had valued the "obedience of the gospel" more than the successful career of English diplomacy, and cheerfully "forsook the preferments of the court of Charles for the ordinances of religion in their purity in New England." He was happy in the possession of an admirable genius, though naturally more inclined to contemplative excellence than to action: he was happy in the eulogist of his virtues; for Milton, ever so parsimonious of praise, reserving the majesty of his verse to celebrate the glories and vindicate the providence of God, was lavish of his encomiums on the youthful friend of religious liberty. But Vane was still more happy in attaining early in life a firmly-settled theory of morals, and in possessing an energetic will, which made all his conduct to the very last conform to the doctrines he had espoused, turning his dying hour into a seal of the witness, which his life had ever borne with noble consistency to the freedom 384 AN ORDER OF NOBILITY PROPOSED AND REJECTED. IX. CHAP of conscience and the people. "If he were not superior to Hampden," says Clarendon, "he was inferior to no other man ;" "his whole life made good the imagination, that there was in him something extraordinary." The freemen of Massachusetts, pleased that a young man of such elevated rank and distinguished ability should have adopted their creed, and joined them in 1636. their exile, elected him their governor. The choice was unwise; for neither the age nor the experience of Vane entitled him to the distinction. He came but as a sojourner, and not as a permanent resident; neither was he imbued with the colonial prejudices, the genius of the place; and his clear mind, unbiased by previous discussions, and fresh from the public business of England, saw distinctly what the colo nists did not wish to see, the really wide difference between their practice under their charter and the meaning of that instrument on the principles of English jurisprudence.2 These latent causes of discontent could not but be eventually displayed; at first the arrival of Vane was considered an auspicious pledge for the emigration of men of the highest rank in England. Several of the English peers, especially Lord Say and Seal, a Presbyterian, a friend to the Puritans, yet with but dim perceptions of the true nature of civil liberty, and Lord Brooke, a man of charity and meekness, an early friend to tolerance, had begun to inquire into the character of the rising institutions, and to negotiate for such changes as would offer them inducements for removing to America. They demanded a division 1 Clarendon, b. vii. and b. iii. vol. ii. 379, and vol. i. 186, 187, 188. 2 I find proofs of this in Hutchin son's Coll. 72, 73. 76, and 83; so, too, in Winthrop, i. 187. AN ORDER OF NOBILITY PROPOSED AND REJECTED. 385 IX. of the general court into two branches, that of as- CHAP. sistants and of representatives,-a change which was acceptable to the people, and which, from domestic 1636. reasons, was ultimately adopted; but they further required an acknowledgment of their own hereditary right to a seat in the upper house. The fathers of Massachusetts were disposed to conciliate these powerful friends they promised them the honors of magistracy, would have readily conferred it on some of them for life, and actually began to make appointments on that tenure; but as for the establishment of hereditary dignity, they answered by the hand of Cotton, "Where God blesseth any branch of any noble or generous family with a spirit and gifts fit for government, it would be a taking of God's name in vain to put such a talent under a bushel, and a sin against the honor of magistracy to neglect such in our public elections. But if God should not delight to furnish some of their posterity with gifts fit for magistracy, we should expose them rather to reproach and prejudice, and the commonwealth with them, than exalt them to honor, if we should call them forth, when God doth not, to public authority." 1 And thus the proposition for establishing hereditary nobility was defeated. The people, moreover, soon became uneasy at the concession of office during lifetime; nor would they be quieted, till it was made a law, that those who were 1639. appointed magistrates for life, should yet not be magistrates except in those years in which they might be regularly chosen at the annual election." The institutions of Massachusetts, which were thus 1636. endangered by the influence of men of rank in Eng 1 Hutchinson, i. 44, and 433436. Hazard, i. 379. 2 Winthrop, i. 184. 302. Hubbard, 244. VOL. I. 49 386 THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY. CHAP. land, were likewise in jeopardy from the effects of reIX. ligious divisions. The minds of the colonists were 1636. excited to intense activity on questions which the nicest subtlety only could have devised, and which none but those experienced in the shades of theological opinions could long comprehend. For it goes with these opinions as with colors; of which the artist who works in mosaic, easily and regularly discriminates many thousand varieties, where the common eye can discern a difference only on the closest comparison. Boston and its environs were now employed in theological controversy; and the transports of enthusiasm sustained the toil of abstruse speculations. The most profound questions which can relate to the mysteries of human existence and the laws of the moral world, questions which the mind, in the serenity of unclouded reflection, may hardly aspire to solve, were discussed with passionate zeal; eternity was summoned to reveal its secrets; human tribunals pretended to establish for the Infinite Mind the laws on which the destinies of the soul depend; the Holy Spirit was claimed as the inward companion of man; while many persons, in their zeal to distinguish between abstract truth and the outward forms under which truth is conveyed, between unchanging principles and changing institutions, were in perpetual danger of making shipwreck of all religious faith, and hardly paused to sound their way, as they proceeded through the "dim and perilous" paths of speculative science. Amidst the arrogance of spiritual pride, the vagaries of undisciplined imaginations, and the extravagances to which the intellectual power may be led in its pursuit of ultimate principles, the formation of two distinct parties may be perceived. The first consisted |