ce]

The history of New England under Charles II. yields abundant proof that
political liberty is no less indebted in the New World than in the Old
to the spirit of the "Wonder-working Providence." The theocratic ideal
which the Puritan sought to put into practice in Massachusetts and
Connecticut was a sacred institution in faults of the defence of
which all his faculties were kept perpetually alert. Much as he loved
self-government he would never have been so swift to detect and so
stubborn to resist every slightest encroachment on the part of the crown
had not the loss of self-government involved the imminent danger that
the ark of the Lord might be abandoned to the worshippers of Dagon.
It was in Massachusetts, where the theocracy was strongest, that the
resistance to Charles II. was most dogged and did most to prepare the
way for the work of achieving political independence a century later.
Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults
of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly
authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are
always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose
primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to
the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot
be sorry that it was itself crushed in the process. It was well that
it did not survive its day of usefulness, and that the outcome of
the struggle was what has been aptly termed "the emancipation of
Massachusetts." [Sidenote: Merits and faults of the theocracy]

The basis of the theocratic constitution of this commonwealth was the
provision by which the exercise of the franchise was made an incident of
church-membership. Unless a man could take part in the Lord's Supper, as
administered in the churches of the colony, he could not vote or
hold office. Church and state, parish and town, were thus virtually
identified. Here, as in some other aspects of early New England, one is
reminded of the ancient Greek cities, where the freeman who could
vote in the market-place or serve his turn as magistrate was the man
qualified to perform sacrifices to the tutelar deities of the tribe;
other men might dwell in the city but had no share in making or
executing its laws. The limitation of civil rights by religious tests is
indeed one of those common inheritances from the old Aryan world that
we find again and again cropping out, e