rigin in
the reign of Elizabeth, and was a sort of revived Lollardism, which last
dated as far back as Wycliffe, long before the Reformation. They thought
they could worship God in conventicles, and in the great open-air
cathedrals of nature, with quite as much purity of motive and heavenly
acceptance as in regularly consecrated churches, and that the right of
praying and preaching was inalienable, and secured to all godly men by
the charter and seal of Calvary.

They had no idea, however, of non-conformity which was not based upon an
orthodox creed, upon _their_ creed, as they subscribed it on Plymouth
Rock. They fled from persecution themselves, and sought freedom for
themselves in the barren regions of our dear and now hospitable New
England; and they, in their simplicity and good faith before God, sought
to organize a system of civil and religious polity which should incrust
all future generations, and harden them into a fossil state of perpetual
orthodoxy.

They were a stern, implacable race, these early fathers, in all that
related to belief, and the discipline of moral conduct; and we owe many
of the granite securities which lie at the bottom of our social life and
government to this harsh and unyielding sternness. It held the framework
of the colonies together until they were consolidated into the United
States, and until the modern culture of the people relaxed it into a
universal liberty of thought and worship.

The Puritans, however, had no notion of such a result to their teachings
and labors; and would have looked with pious horror upon them if they
could have beheld them in some Agrippa's mirror of the future.

The truth--unpalatable as it may be--is simply this about the Puritans:
they were narrow-minded, bigoted, and furious at times with the spirit
of persecution; sincerely so, it is true, and believing they did God
service; but that does not alter the fact. They had no conception
of the meaning of liberty--and especially of religious liberty as a
development of Protestantism. Their idea of it was liberty for
themselves--persecution to all who differed from them; and this, too,
for Christ's sake, in order that the lost sheep might be brought back,
if possible, to their bleak and comfortless folds. They could not help
it; they meant no wrong by it, and the evil which they thus did was good
in the making, and sprang from the bleeding heart of an infinite love.

We like them, nevertheless; and cannot