e Holy Scriptures
should be their guide both in weighty matters of general legislation and
in the shaping of the smallest details of daily life. In such a scheme
there was no room for religious liberty as we understand it. No doubt
the text of the Scriptures may be interpreted in many ways, but among
these men there was a substantial agreement as to the important points,
and nothing could have been further from their thoughts than to found
a colony which should afford a field for new experiments in the art of
right living. The state they were to found was to consist of a united
body of believers; citizenship itself was to be co-extensive with
church-membership; and in such a state there was apparently no more room
for heretics than there was in Rome or Madrid. This was the idea which
drew Winthrop and his followers from England at a time when--as events
were soon to show--they might have stayed there and defied persecution
with less trouble than it cost them to cross the ocean and found a new
state. [Sidenote: Theocratic ideal of the Puritans]

Such an ideal as this, considered by itself and apart from the concrete
acts in which it was historically manifested, may seem like the merest
fanaticism. But we cannot dismiss in this summary way a movement which
has been at the source of so much that is great in American history:
mere fanaticism has never produced such substantial results. Mere
fanaticism is sure to aim at changing the constitution of human society
in some essential point, to undo the work of evolution, and offer in
some indistinctly apprehended fashion to remodel human life. But in
these respects the Puritans were intensely conservative. The impulse by
which they were animated was a profoundly ethical impulse--the desire
to lead godly lives, and to drive out sin from the community--the same
ethical impulse which animates the glowing pages of Hebrew poets and
prophets, and which has given to the history and literature of Israel
their commanding influence in the world. The Greek, says Matthew Arnold,
held that the perfection of happiness was to have one's thoughts hit the
mark; but the Hebrew held that it was to serve the Lord day and night.
It was a touch of this inspiration that the Puritan caught from his
earnest and reverent study of the sacred text, and that served to
justify and intensify his yearning for a better life, and to give it
the character of a grand and holy ideal. Yet with all this religious
ent