heir religious
differences. First, there were those who still continued to adhere to
the Roman see. Secondly, those who, either from conviction or from
expediency or from indifference, were content with the state church of
England in the shape in which Elizabeth and her parliaments had left it;
this class naturally included the general multitude of Englishmen,
religious, irreligious, and non-religious. Thirdly, there were those
who, not refusing their adhesion to the national church as by law
established, nevertheless earnestly desired to see it more completely
purified from doctrinal errors and practical corruptions, and who
qualified their conformity to it accordingly. Fourthly, there were the
few who distinctly repudiated the national church as a false church,
coming out from her as from Babylon, determined upon "reformation
without tarrying for any." Finally, following upon these, more radical,
not to say more logical, than the rest, came a fifth party, the
followers of George Fox. Not one of these five parties but has valid
claims, both in its principles and in its membership, on the respect of
history; not one but can point to its saints and martyrs; not one but
was destined to play a quite separate and distinct and highly important
part in the planting of the church of Christ in America. They are
designated, for convenience' sake, as the Catholics, the Conformists,
the Puritans or Reformists, the Separatists (of whom were the Pilgrims),
and the Quakers.

Such a Christendom was it, so disorganized, divided, and subdivided into
parties and sects, which was to furnish the materials for the peopling
of the new continent with a Christian population. It would seem that the
same "somewhat not ourselves," which had defeated in succession the
plans of two mighty nations to subject the New World to a single
hierarchy, had also provided that no one form or organization of
Christianity should be exclusive or even dominant in the occupation of
the American soil. From one point of view the American colonies will
present a sorry aspect. Schism, mutual alienation, antagonism,
competition, are uncongenial to the spirit of the gospel, which seeks
"that they all may be one." And yet the history of the church has
demonstrated by many a sad example that this offense "must needs come."
No widely extended organization of church discipline in exclusive
occupation of any country has ever long avoided the intolerable
mischiefs attendant