A familiar epigram preserves the acid truth that the Puritan emigrants who left England in the seventeenth century went to North America in order to worship God in their own way, and to compel everyone else to do the same.  Religious liberty was certainly not understood by them as it is understood to-day.  The sufferings of the Baptists and Quakers, for example, make a sad chapter of New England history.  About the middle of the century, Roger Williams (1599-1683), having ventilated opinions contrary to the general Calvinism, was driven out of Salem, where he had ministered to a grateful church.  His pleas for a real religious freedom were in vain, and he was forced to wander from the colonial settlements and find a precarious home among the Indians.  After much privation, he succeeded in establishing a new colony at Rhode Island, where a more liberal atmosphere prevailed.

It does not appear that Williams had much influence in the general world of religious thought, but two things at least were favourable to the modification of orthodoxy.  On the one hand there was inevitably a looser system of supervision in a new country, and the pressure of penal law could not be exerted so effectually as in England.  On the other hand the organization of worship and teaching, though intended to be strict and complete, an intention fairly successful in practice, was actually founded upon broad principles.  Each township maintained its ’parish church,’ but this, originally of a Low Church or ‘Presbyterian’ type, was usually accommodated as years went on to a Congregational model.  These churches were looked upon as centres of religious culture for the respective communities by whose regular contributions they were supported and endowed.  The ‘covenants’ by which the members bound themselves were often expressed in terms quite simple, and even touching; the colonists were in the main faithful to the parting injunction of the famous Pastor John Robinson, who sped the ’Pilgrim Fathers’ on their way with the assurance that the Lord had ’more light and truth to break forth from His Holy Word.’  Occasionally, it is expressly declared by the covenanting members that theirs is an attitude of devout expectation of religious growth.

As would naturally be expected, the conditions of the earlier generations in the colonies were not in favour of a deeply studious ministry; the leaders were more frequently men of shrewd and practical piety than profound scholars.  As things became more settled, and especially after the Toleration Act had secured a more assured state of feeling at home, the minds of men were set at liberty in a greater degree.  Locke’s works were carried across the sea, and Dr. Clarke’s Arianizing writings soon followed.  Apparently, the first stir of any importance was produced by the scandal of the punishment of Thomas Emlyn, the Irish clergyman who has been previously referred to.  Emlyn’s writings received a great advertisement,