Many factors helped to enhance the power of the English Church in the colonies.  It was supported by the British government and the official class sent out to the provinces.  Its bishops and archbishops in England were appointed by the king, and its faith and service were set forth by acts of Parliament.  Having its seat of power in the English monarchy, it could hold its clergy and missionaries loyal to the crown and so counteract to some extent the independent spirit that was growing up in America.  The Church, always a strong bulwark of the state, therefore had a political role to play here as in England.  Able bishops and far-seeing leaders firmly grasped this fact about the middle of the eighteenth century and redoubled their efforts to augment the influence of the Church in provincial affairs.  Unhappily for their plans they failed to calculate in advance the effect of their methods upon dissenting Protestants, who still cherished memories of bitter religious conflicts in the mother country.

=Puritanism in New England.=—­If the established faith made for imperial unity, the same could not be said of Puritanism.  The Plymouth Pilgrims had cast off all allegiance to the Anglican Church and established a separate and independent congregation before they came to America.  The Puritans, essaying at first the task of reformers within the Church, soon after their arrival in Massachusetts, likewise flung off their yoke of union with the Anglicans.  In each town a separate congregation was organized, the male members choosing the pastor, the teachers, and the other officers.  They also composed the voters in the town meeting, where secular matters were determined.  The union of church and government was thus complete, and uniformity of faith and life prescribed by law and enforced by civil authorities; but this worked for local autonomy instead of imperial unity.

The clergy became a powerful class, dominant through their learning and their fearful denunciations of the faithless.  They wrote the books for the people to read—­the famous Cotton Mather having three hundred and eighty-three books and pamphlets to his credit.  In cooeperation with the civil officers they enforced a strict observance of the Puritan Sabbath—­a day of rest that began at six o’clock on Saturday evening and lasted until sunset on Sunday.  All work, all trading, all amusement, and all worldly conversation were absolutely prohibited during those hours.  A thoughtless maid servant who for some earthly reason smiled in church was in danger of being banished as a vagabond.  Robert Pike, a devout Puritan, thinking the sun had gone to rest, ventured forth on horseback one Sunday evening and was luckless enough to have a ray of light strike him through a rift in the clouds.  The next day he was brought into court and fined for “his ungodly conduct.”  With persons accused of witchcraft the Puritans were still more ruthless.  When a mania of persecution swept over Massachusetts in 1692, eighteen people were hanged, one was pressed to death, many suffered imprisonment, and two died in jail.