Freedom of Conscience Promised in Pennsylvania, 1682
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Whereas the glory of Almighty God and the good of mankind is the reason and end of government and, therefore, government in itself is a venerable ordinance of God. And forasmuch as it is principally desired and intended by the Proprietary and Governor and the freemen of the province of Pennsylvania and territories thereunto belonging to make and establish such laws as shall best preserve true christian and civil liberty in opposition to all unchristian, licentious, and unjust practices, whereby God may have his due, Caesar his due, and the people their due, from tyranny and oppression on the one side and insolence and licentiousness on the other, so that the best and firmest foundation may be laid for the present and future happiness of both the Governor and people of the province and territories aforesaid and their posterity.
Be it, therefore, enacted by William Penn, Proprietary and Governor, by and with the advice and consent of the deputies of the freemen of this province . . .
That no person now or at any time hereafter living in this province, who shall confess and acknowledge one almighty God to be the creator, upholder, and ruler of the world, and who professes him or herself obliged in conscience to live peaceably and quietly under the civil government, shall in any case be molested or prejudiced for his or her conscientious persuasion or practice. Nor shall he or she at any time be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place, or ministry whatever contrary to his or her christian liberty in that respect, without any interruption or reflection. And if any person shall abuse any other for his or her different persuasion and practice in matters of religion, such persons shall be looked upon as a disturber of the peace, and be punished accordingly.
But to the end that looseness, irreligion, and atheism may not creep in under pretense of conscience in this province, be it further enacted...that, according to the example of the primitive Christians and for the ease of the creation, every first say of the week, called the Lord's Day, people shall abstain from their usual and common toil and labor that, whether masters, parents, children, or servants, they may the better dispose themselves to read the scriptures of truth at home or frequent such meetings of religious worship abroad as may best suit their respective persuasions . . .
That all officers and persons commissioned and employed in the service of the government in this province and all members and deputies elected to serve in the Assembly thereof and all that have a right to elect such deputies shall be such as profess and declare they believe in Jesus Christ to be the son of God, the savior of the world, and that are not convicted of ill-fame or unsober and dishonest conversation and are of twenty-one years of age at least.
[From "Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania, 1:107-109," in W. Keith Kavenagh (ed.),
Foundations of Colonial America (New York: Chelsea House, 1973), pp. 1340-41.]
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England and Its Colonies
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As the Old World pushed some peoples out, the New World pulled them over the Atlantic. Over the course of the seventeenth century, English colonists shipped out for a number of reasons, including those of economics, politics, and religion. Their motives were reflected in where they settled and how they sowed, nurtured, and defended their cuttings from that hardy oak called English civilization. In the course of transplantation, the colonists took with them certain shared attitudes and behaviors; but they also carried with them localized variations depending on where in England they came from and why they decided to emigrate. Further modification or deviation occurred as the offshoots took root in new soils, were nurtured by new fertilizers, and not only survived but thrived due to grafts from aborigine, African, and other European cultures. Thus, although the colonies had much in common as they developed, they also differed, in their religious, political, and social establishments.
The English colonists compared themselves to and defined themselves against native peoples, including the Powhatans, Pequots, and Mohawks, and immigrant groups, such as the Dutch and African. Coming in contact with those cultures made many colonists more aware and more defensive of their own. While adopting what they deemed useful from the other cultures, they simultaneously established their own identityor identitiesthrough their interactions with these groups and with English settlers in other colonies. Thus these colonists proclaimed their English identity, while developing regionalNew England, Virginian, and Carolinian, for instanceand ethnic or racial ones. Cultural interchange would differ in kind and amount, since colonists in some areas would have more contact with diverse groups than the colonists in others. Intent on implementing their own version of civilization, however, the English colonistsas well as other European colonistsattempted to control this cultural interchange wherever, whenever, and however it happened by imposing their own legal and social principles.
Controlling intercultural exchanges was but one of the complex tasks inherent to colonization; commanding the colonists themselves was another. Military, political, social, and religious leaders found it difficult to impose order in the colonies. From the first, the often dreadful demands of survival challenged the colonists' plans and attempts to create properly regulated and cohesive societies; although the need to survive caused some people to work together, it led others to struggle and strive for their own ends at the expense of others. While the vastness of the land and the different peoples that inhabited it frightened some settlers into huddling their houses close together and accepting strict regulation for protection, others embraced the wilderness for the implied freedom it promised from nosy neighbors and government's rules. Then, as settlement proceeded, other factors, such as the growing diversity of religions and immigrants, complicated social transplantation. Whereas many colonists had hoped to reconstruct traditional social structures and mores, they found that circumstances sometimes demanded new constructions or adaptations. Each colony addressed such problems in different ways: some rooted out those who did not conform to their religious and social prescripts, while others attempted limited toleration and even inclusion. Such reactions, and the results they produced, illuminate both the initial challenges inherent to colonization as well as the developing nature of the different colonial societies.
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The Massachusetts Bay Colony Case against Anne Hutchinson (1637)
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The Puritans'
struggle to practice their own religion freely did not extend to toleration for
those who questioned church policies, as Anne Hutchinson, the intelligent,
well-read, forty-six-year-old wife of a prosperous merchant, discovered. In 1637
Hutchinson faced prosecution for practices and beliefs deemed threatening to the
stability of church and commonwealth. The ministers and magistrates did not think
her weekly meetings unseemly when she began them in 1635, but revised their
opinions as her audience, interpretation, and instruction of scripture changed.
Hutchinson attacked some doctrinal premises, such as blaming Eveand,
correspondingly, womenfor Original Sin, while denouncing some ministers for not
properly teaching Puritan dogma. She also revealed that she had an inclination
to mysticism. For her antinomianism (beliefs against the law) the magistrates
exiled Hutchinson. She then moved with her family into what became Rhode Island,
helping found Portsmouth there, and then on to Long Island where she and most of
her children were later slain by Indians.
Mr. Winthrop, governor. Mrs. Hutchinson, you are called here as one of
those that have troubled the peace of the commonwealth and the churches here; you
are known to be a woman that hath had a great share in the promoting and
divulging of those opinions that are causes of this trouble, and to be nearly
joined not only in affinity and affection with some of those the court had taken
notice of and passed censure upon. But you have spoken divers things as we have
been informed very prejudicial to the honour of the churches and ministers
thereof, and you have maintained a meeting and an assembly in your house that
hath been condemned by the general assembly as a thing not tolerable nor comely
in the sight of God nor fitting for your sex; and notwithstanding that was cried
down, you have continued the same. Therefore we have thought good to send for you
to understand how things are. . . .
* * *
Mrs. Hutchinson. What have I said or done?
Gov. Why for your doings, this you did
harbour and countenance those that are parties in this faction that you have
heard of.
Mrs. H. That's matter of conscience, Sir.
Gov. Your conscience you must
keep, or it must be kept for you. . . .
* * *
Gov. Why do you keep such a meeting at your house as you do every week upon a set
day?
Mrs. H. It is lawful for me so to do, as it is all your practices; and can
you find a warrant for yourself and condemn me for the same thing? . . .
Gov. For
this, that you appeal to our practice you need no confutation. If your meeting
had answered to the former it had not been offensive, but I will say that there
was no meeting of women alone. But your meeting is of another sort, for there are
sometimes men among you.
Mrs. H. There was never any man with us.
Gov. Well, admit
there was no man at your meeting and that you was sorry for it, there is no
warrant for your doings; and by what warrant do you continue such a course?
Mrs. H. I conceive there is a clear rule in Titus, that the elder women should instruct
the younger; and then I must have a time wherein I must do it.
Gov. All this I
grant you, I grant you a time for it; but what is this to the purpose that you,
Mrs. Hutchinson, must call a company together from their callings to come to be
taught of you?
Mrs. H. Will it please you to answer me this and to give me a rule,
for then I will willingly submit to any truth? If any come to my house to be
instructed in the ways of God, what rule have I to put them away?
Gov. But suppose
that a hundred men come unto you to be instructed, will you forbear to instruct
them?
Mrs. H. As far as I conceive I cross a rule in it.
Gov. Very well and do you
not so here?
Mrs. H. No Sir, for my ground is they are men.
Gov. Men and women all
is one for that, but suppose that a man should come and say, "Mrs. Hutchinson,
I hear that you are a woman that God hath given his grace unto and you have
knowledge in the word of God. I pray instruct me a little." Ought you not to
instruct this man?
Mrs. H. I think I may.Do you think it not lawful for me to
teach women, and why do you call me to teach the court?
Gov. We do not call you to
teach the court but to lay open yourself.
Mr. Dudley, dep. gov. Here hath been
much spoken concerning Mrs. Hutchinson's meetings and among other answers she
saith that men come not there. I would ask you this one question then, whether
never any man was at your meeting?
Gov.There are two meetings kept at their
house.
Dep. Gov. How; is there two meetings?
Mrs. H. Ey Sir, I shall not
equivocate, there is a meeting of men and women, and there is a meeting only for
women.
Dep. Gov. Are they both constant?
Mrs. H. No, but upon occasions they are
deferred.
Mr. Endicot. Who teaches in the men's meetings, none but men? Do not women
sometimes?
Mrs. H. Never as I heard, not one. . . .
Dep. Gov. Now it appears by
this woman's meeting that Mrs. Hutchinson hath so forestalled the minds of many
by their resort to her meeting that now she hath a potent party in the country.
Now if all these things have endangered us as from that foundation, and if she in
particular hath disparaged all our ministers in the land that they have preached
a covenant of works, . . . why this is not to be suffered. And therefore being
driven to the foundation, and it being found that Mrs. Hutchinson is she that
hath depraved all the ministers and hath been the cause of what is fallen out,
why we must take away the foundation and the building will fall.
Mrs. H. I pray,
Sir, prove it that I said they preached nothing but a covenant of works.
Dep. Gov. Nothing but a covenant of works? Why, a Jesuit may preach truth sometimes.
Mrs. H. Did I ever say they preached a covenant of works, then?
Dep. Gov. If they
do not preach a covenant of grace clearly, then they preach a covenant of works.
Mrs. H. No Sir, one may preach a covenant of grace more clearly than another, so I said.
Dep. Gov. We are not upon that now, but upon position.
Mrs. H. Prove this
then, Sir, that you say I said.
Dep. Gov. When they do preach a covenant of
works, do they preach truth?
Mrs. H. Yes Sir, but when they preach a covenant of
works for salvation, that is not truth.
Dep. Gov. I do but ask you this: when the
ministers do preach a covenant of works, do they preach a way of salvation?
Mrs. H. I did not come hither to answer to questions of that sort.
Dep. Gov. Because
you will deny the thing.
Mrs. H. Ey, but that is to be proved first.
Dep. Gov. I will make it plain that you did say that the ministers did preach a covenant of
works.
Mrs. H. I deny that.
Dep. Gov. And that you said they were not able
ministers of the new testament. . . .
Mrs. H. If ever I spake that, I proved it by
God's word.
Court. Very well, very well. . . .
Mrs. H. If you please to give me
leave, I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true. Being much
troubled to see the falseness of the constitution of the church of England, I had
like to have turned separatist; whereupon I kept a day of solemn humiliation and
pondering of the thing; this scripture was brought unto mehe that denies Jesus
Christ to be come in the flesh is antichristThis I considered of, and in
considering found that the papists did not deny him to be come in the flesh, nor
we did not deny himwho then was antichrist? Was the Turk antichrist only? The
Lord knows that I could not open scripture; he must by his prophetical office
open it unto me. So after that, being unsatisfied in the thing, the Lord was
pleased to bring this scripture out of the Hebrews. He that denies the testament
denies the testator, and in this did open unto me and give me to see that those
which did not teach the new covenant had the spirit of antichrist, and upon this
he did discover the ministry unto me and ever since. I bless the Lord, he hath
let me see which was the clear ministry and which the wrong. Since that time I
confess I have been more choice, and he hath let me to distinguish between the
voice of my beloved and the voice of Moses, the voice of John Baptist and the
voice of antichrist, for all those voices are spoken of in scripture. Now if you
do condemn me for speaking what in my conscience I know to be truth, I must
commit myself unto the Lord.
Mr. Nowell. How do you know that that was the
spirit?
Mrs. H. How did Abraham know that it was God that bid him offer his son,
being a breach of the sixth commandment?
Dep. Gov. By an immediate voice.
Mrs. H. So to me by an immediate revelation.
Dep. Gov. How! an immediate revelation.
Mrs. H. By the voice of his own spirit to my soul.
I will give you another scripture, Jer. 46. 27, 28out of which the Lord shewed
me what he would do for me and the rest of his servants.But after he was
pleased to reveal himself to me, I did presently like Abraham run to Hagar. And
after that, he did let me see the atheism of my own heart, for which I begged of
the Lord that it might not remain in my heart; and being thus, he did shew me
this (a twelvemonth after) which I told you of before. Ever since that time I
have been confident of what he hath revealed unto me. . . . You see this scripture
fulfilled this day, and therefore I desire you that as you tender the Lord and
the church and commonwealth to consider and look what you do. You have power
over my body, but the Lord Jesus hath power over my body and soul; and assure
yourselves thus much, you do as much as in you lies to put the Lord Jesus Christ
from you; and if you go on in this course you begin, you will bring a curse upon
you and your posterity, and the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Dep. Gov. What
is the scripture she brings?
Mr. Stoughton. Behold I turn away from you.
Mrs. H. But now having seen him which is invisible, I fear not what man can do unto
me.
Gov. Daniel was delivered by miracle. Do you think to be deliver'd so too?
Mrs. H. I do here speak it before the court. I look that the Lord should deliver
me by his providence.
Mr. Harlakenden. I may read scripture and the most glorious
hypocrite may read them and yet go down to hell.
Mrs. H. It may be so. . . .
Mr. Endicot. I would have a word or two with leave of that which hath thus far been
revealed to the court. I have heard of many revelations of Mr. Hutchinson's, but
they were reports, but Mrs. Hutchinson I see doth maintain some by this
discourse; and I think it is a special providence of God to hear what she hath
said. Now there is a revelation you see which she doth expect as a miracle. She
saith she now suffers, and let us do what we will she shall be delivered by a
miracle. I hope the court takes notice of the vanity of it and heat of her
spirit.
[From Thomas Hutchinson,
History of
the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, vol. II, 1767 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1936), pp. 36684.]
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Regulations for the Sabbath in South Carolina, 1691
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Forasmuch as there is nothing more acceptable to Almighty God than the true sincere performance of and obedience to the most divine service and worship, which although at all times, yet chiefly upon the Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday, ought so to be done, but instead thereof many idle, loose, and disorderly people do willingly profane the same in tipling, shooting, gaming, and many other vicious exercises, pastimes and meetings, whereby ignorance prevails and the just judgment of Almighty God may reasonably by expected to fall upon this land if the same by some good orders be not prevented . . . all and every person and persons whatsoever shall on every Lord's Day apply themselves to the observation of the same. . . . no tradesman, artificer, workman, business, or work of their ordinary calling on the Lord's Day . . . shall publicly . . . expose to sale or sell any wares.
[From "Statutes at Large of South Carolina, 2:68-70," in W. Keith Kavenagh (ed.),
Foundatons of Colonial America (New York: Chelsea House, 1973), p. 2273.]
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Religious Toleration in the Charter of Rhode Island, 1663
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That our royall will and pleasure is, that noe person within the sayd colonye, at any tyme hereafter, shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinione in matters of religion, and doe not actually disturb the civil peace of our sayd colony; but that all and everye person and persons may, from tyme to tyme, and at all tymes, hereafter, freelye and fullye have and enjoye his and theire owne judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments, throughout the tract of land hereafter mentioned.
[From "Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, 1663," in W. Keith Kavenaugh (ed.),
Foundations of Colonial America (New York: Chelsea House, 1973), p. 121.]
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Native Americans fishing
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Handbill of the Virginia Company, 1609
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Pilgrims depart Delft Haven
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John Eliot, missionary
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Penn's treaty with Indians
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Penn's treaty (pictoral)
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First legislative assembly, 1619
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Pilgrims sign Mayflower Compact
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Whites smash Indian idols, 1626
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New Amsterdam in 1667
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Miles Standish, 1873
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