regationalism in New England? The supposition is absurd, and it is
equally unreasonable to suppose that those who applied for and obtained
the Charter contemplated anything of the kind, as will appear presently.

It can hardly be conceived that even among the newly-arrived emigrants
on the shores of Massachusetts, such a revolution as the adoption of a
new form of worship could be accomplished without doing violence to the
convictions and endeared associations of some parties. However they
might have objected to the ceremonies and despotic acts of the Laudian
school in England, they could not, without a pang and voice of
remonstrance, renounce the worship which had given to England her
Protestantism and her liberties, or repudiate the book which embodied
that form of worship, and which was associated with all that had exalted
England, from Cramner and Ridley to their own day. Congregationalism
had done nothing for the Protestantism or liberties of England, and it
would have been strange indeed had there not been some among the
emigrants who would not consider their change of latitude and longitude
as destroying their Church membership, and sundering the additional ties
which connected them with their forefathers and the associations of all
their past life. Endicot, therefore, with all his authority as local
Governor, and all his energy and zeal, and canvassing among the two or
three hundred new emigrants for a new Church, had not been able to get
more than thirty of them, with the aid of the two newly-arrived
ministers, to unite in the new Covenant Confession; but he had got the
(if not coerced) majority of the local Councillors to join with him, and
therefore exercised absolute power over the little community, and
denounced and treated as mutinous and factious all who would not
renounce the Church of their fathers and of their own profession down to
that hour, and adopt the worship of his new community.

As only thirty joined with Endicot in the creation of his new Church
organization and Covenant, it is obvious that a majority of the
emigrants either stood aloof from or were opposed to this extraordinary
proceeding. Among the most noted of these adherents to the old Church of
the Reformation were two brothers, John and Samuel Brown, who refused to
be parties to this new and locally-devised Church revolution, and
resolved, for themselves, families, and such as thought with them, to
continue to worship God according to