ence' sake, and were generally "faithful, watchful, painful,
serving their flock daily with prayers and tears," some among them,
also, men of high European repute. They had often, however, the
mortification of seeing their congregations crowding to hear the ravings
of any knave or enthusiast who broached a new doctrine. Most of these
mischievous fanatics were given the advantage of that interest and
sympathy which a cruel and unnecessary persecution invariably excites.
All this time freedom of individual judgment was the watch-word of the
persecutors. There is no doubt that strong measures were necessary to
curb the furious and profane absurdities of many of the seceders, who
were the very outcasts of religion. On considering the criminal laws of
the time, it would also appear that not a few of the outcasts of
society, also, had found their way to New England. The code of
Massachusetts contained the description of the most extraordinary
collection of crimes that ever defaced a statute-book, and the various
punishments allotted to each.

In one grand point the pre-eminent merit of the Puritans must be
acknowledged: they strove earnestly and conscientiously for what they
held to be the truth. For this they endured with unshaken constancy, and
persecuted with unremitting zeal.

The suicidal policy of the Stuarts had, for a time, driven all the
upholders of civil liberty into the ranks of sectarianism. The advocates
of the extremes of religious and political opinion flocked to America,
the furthest point from kings and prelates that they could conveniently
reach. Ingrafted on the stubborn temper of the Englishman, and planted
in the genial soil of the West, the love of this civil and religious
liberty grew up with a vigor that time only served to strengthen; that
the might of armies vainly strove to overcome. Thus, ultimately, the
persecution under the Stuarts was the most powerful cause ever yet
employed toward the liberation of man in his path through earth to
heaven.

For many years England generally refrained from interference with her
American colonies in matters of local government or in religion. They
taxed themselves, made their own laws, and enjoyed religious freedom in
their own way. In one state only, in Virginia, was the Church of England
established, and even there it was accorded very little help by the
temporal authority: in a short time it ceased to receive the support of
a majority of the settlers, and r