t in dealing with natives, was setting in in full force.
However, at Massachusetts, the general court appointed an English
magistrate to hold a court of judicature in conjunction with the chiefs
of the Christian Indians, and to be in fact a sort of special member of
government on their behalf. The first so appointed was Daniel Gookin, a
man of great piety, wisdom, and excellence, and a warm friend of Mr.
Eliot, with whom he worked most heartily, not only in dealing with the
Indians of Natick, but with all those who came under English
jurisdiction, providing schools, and procuring the observance of the
Sunday among them. It was also provided that the Christian Indians
should set apart a tenth of all their produce for the support of their
teachers--a practice that Mr. Gookin defended from the charge of Judaism.
It seems as if these good men, who went direct to the Old Testament for
their politics, must have been hard set between their desire of
scriptural authority and their dread of Judaizing.

It was well for Eliot that he had friends, for in the first flush of the
tidings of the successes of the Puritans in England, he had written a set
of papers upon Government, entitled the "Christian Commonwealth," which
had been sent to England, and there lay dormant for nine or ten years,
until in the midst of all the excitement on the Restoration, this
speculative work, the theory of a scholar upon Christian democracy, was
actually printed and launched upon the world at home, whether by an enemy
or by an ill-advised friend does not appear, and without the author's
consent. Complaints of this as a seditious book came out to New England,
and John Eliot was forced to appear before the court, when he owned the
authorship, but disowned the publication, and retracted whatever might
have declared the Government of England, by King, Lords, and Commons, to
be anti-Christian, avowing it to be "not only a lawful but eminent form
of government, and professing himself ready to conform to any polity that
could be deduced from Scripture as being of Divine authority." The court
was satisfied, and suppressed the book, while publishing Mr. Eliot's
retractation. Some have sneered at his conduct on this occasion as an
act of moral cowardice; but it would be very hard if every man were bound
to stand to all the political views expressed in an essay never meant for
the general eye, ten years old, and written in the enthusiasm of the
commencement o