occasion that he always had thought George Washington came over in the "Mayflower." It is not so strange, therefore, that such errors get into printer's ink, but the light which floods the tercentenary day ought to clear away some of the mist which still hangs about the "Mayflower" and the history of Plymouth Rock. The Pilgrims came to this country from Holland; the Puritans direct from England. There were only about a hundred of the Pilgrims on the "Mayflower;" it took nine ships to bring the Puritans, who came a thousand strong. The Pilgrims came in 1620; the Puritans ten years later. The Pilgrims settled about Plymouth Bay; the Puritans about Massachusetts Bay. The Pilgrims had separated from the Anglican Church before they left England for Holland; the Puritans had not separated from The Pilgrims The Pilgrims came to Massachusetts from Holland via Hull, England. The Pilgrims came over in 1620. The Pilgrims who came in the "Mayflower numbered one hundred souls. The Pilgrims settled about Plymouth Bay. The Pilgrims were separatists, that is, they withdrew from the Church of England and established their own worship while still in England. For this reason they found it necessary to seek refuge in Holland, which they did in 1608. The Pilgrims, having themselves tasted persecution, and having fled from it to Holland, where they enjoyed a very large degree of religious liberty, did not themselves persecute others, nor did they attempt to establish a theocracy or unite church and state in this country. the English Church when they arrived in this country. The Pilgrims were democratic in their policy; the Puritans aristocratic. The Pilgrims set up a republic; the Puritans a theocracy, or union of church and state. The Pilgrims were mild and tolerant; the Puritans were dogmatic and persecuting. That is the difference. Like Roger Williams, the Pilgrims had to suffer more or less at the hands of the Puritans, because they were separatists and could not participate with them in the ceremonialism of their ritual nor the enforcement of their dogmas. It is therefore most incongruous in those who advocate a return to Puritanic ideals, to pretend at the same time to honor the Pilgrims. The Witness of History Fortunately, the earliest laws and court records of the Plymouth Colony have been preserved and they speak for themselves. I quote from a work published at Plymouth by some of its citizens: "The curious searcher will look in vain for the evidence of their unjustly alleged bigotry or narrow-mindedness. The Pilgrims of Plym outh Colony have had to bear for years the stigma and opprobrium of deeds done by the younger, more aristocratic, and bigoted colony of Massachusetts Puritans of Salem and Bos ton. Within a few years the truth is being learned, proper distinctions made, and the memory of the men of Plymouth justified. It is now generally known that the Pilgrims as distinguished from the Puritans of Massachusetts were broader and more liberal in their ideas than the men of the latter colony, and for which at the time they were bullied and repri manded by the richer and more influential men of the Bay. . . . It was at Plymouth Roger Williams found a temporary asylum when driven out of Boston." -"Guide to Old Plymouth," pp. 30, 31. The Pilgrims were not politicians like the Puritan leaders, but were practical men of toil. They had little leisure for framing superfluous legislation and spying out offenders. They spent their time in useful employment so that in seven The Puritans The Puritans came to Massachusetts direct from England. The Puritans came in 1630. The Puritans coming in different vessels numbered one thousand. The Puritans settled about Massachusetts Bay. The Puritans, though protesting against the forms and abuses of the Established Church, remained in that communion until after they left England in 1630. The Puritans, though having experienced some of the evils of church-and-state union in England, clung nevertheless to the evil principle, and, erecting on these shores a theocratic state, persecuted to the death all dissenters. years they had not only made homes for themselves and a living for their families, but had liquidated all their heavy indebtedness to the London financiers for the cost of their "Mayflower expedition. Suggestions of Intolerance It is not claimed that the Pilgrims, however, had advanced to our plane of thinking on the subject of religious liberty. Their original pastor, John Robinson, liberal, progressive, and generous though he was, never saw clearly, as did Roger Williams, that the magistrate had no authority in matters spiritual. Roger Williams preached and wrote against the Puritan Sunday laws, saying: "The magistrate might not punish the breach. of the Sabbath or any other [religious] offense," because the duties set forth on the first table of the decalogue are spiritual duties which we owe to God exclusively. He evidently obtained his clear ideas of religious liberty from William, Prince of Orange, who said in 1574: "You have no right to interfere with the conscience of any one, so long as he does not work a public scandal, or an injury to his neighbor." Under his flag the Pilgrim refugees first found rest and protection and learned how "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is made beautiful. This explains why the Pilgrims in America were more tolerant than their neighbors; while the somewhat conservative attitude of their Old World pastor explains why their customs and laws still retained a suggestion of the former order of things, and they needed the contact of Roger Williams to further expand their views. Most Important Facts Pilgrim laws appear to have been adopted and administered with reference to safeguarding the security of the colony as "emergency rules" rather than to coerce the citizens in matters of religion. We have never discovered an instance in which the Pilgrims inflicted corporal injury upon any one on account of religion, or attempted to coerce any in matters of conscience. They are not known to have inflicted any physical suffering upon Quakers. In 1649 the first Baptist Church was organized within the territory of the Plymouth Colony, and within a short time four petitions were sent by the Massachusetts Bay authorities to the Plymouth court not to grant them land upon which to build a meeting house. The Plymouth court cited Mr. Holmes, who had organized the church, and after examination allowed him to proceed unmolested. This "lenitie" did not please the Puritan court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, so they sent the Plymouth court a warning, as follows: Elder Brewster, Impersonated by Charles P. Marshall, Leading the "Pilgrims" in Prayer "We have heard heretofore of divers Anabaptists arisen up in your jurisdiction, and connived at, the infection of such diseases, being so near us, are likely to spread into our jurisdiction, but being so few, we well hoped that it might please God, by the endeavors of yourselves and the faithful elders with you, to have reduced such erring men again into the right way. But now to our great grief we are credibly informed that your patient bearing with such men hath produced another effect, namely, the multiplying and increasing of the same errors. ... Particularly we understand that within this few weeks there have been at Sea Cuncke thirteen or fourteen persons rebaptized (a swift progress in one towne); yet we hear not of any effectual restriction." Still even after all this pressure the Plymouth court not only did not restrict these Baptists from multiplying, but did give them land upon which to build their church. So incensed were the Bay authorities at such "lenitie" that when they caught Mr. Holmes within their limits visiting one of his members who was too aged to get to church, he was arrested, tried, taken to the public whipping post in Boston, and whipped by a strong man with thirty strokes upon his bare back so that for weeks he could only get rest upon his knees and elbows. This illustrates the difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans. About this time, notwithstanding Roger Williams had at the risk of his own life saved the Massachusetts Puritans from an Indian massacre, they schemed to wrest some of his territory from him and sent commissioners to Plymouth to get the co-operation of the authorities there, but the Plymouth people refused aid and the meeting, says the historian, "broke up in what is sometimes called a row." For a time it looked as if the Massachusetts Bay people would make war against Plymouth and Rhode Island, but Roger Williams went to England, secured a new charter, published his book, "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution," and so won the favor of the English government that they immediately took measures to insure toleration and justice n Massachusetts for all except " papists," and the Puritan theocracy began to crumble from that time. All this shows that the Pilgrims sought to be tolerant and just, but had continually to resist the Puritan pressure. There were never any witchcraft persecutions in Plymouth. I will close this article with a quotation from William E. Griffis in the North American Review, January, 1921: "The spirit of tolerance which the Pilgrims exhibited throughout their history, nursed and stimulated to greater breadth in the Dutch Republic, is one of the wonders of history. Not only did they pass the point which Luther and Calvin had reached, and at which these Reformers stopped, but they pressed on. Robinson, their leader, the teaching member of their church, who grieved at the reactionary attiEtude of these leaders, urged his own people to look for more light to break out from the divine word. . . . As a matter of fact, the Plymouth men developed rather than limited their pastor's urgent appeal. In Leyden they had welcomed one and all adherents to, or members of, any reformed churches to their munion. . . com "It may be truly said that the people of the United States of America, dropping much of the Puritan and Puritanical dogmas and practiees, have entered more fully into the ideals and ways of the Pilgrims. . . "Why do people of all creeds, cultures, and nationalities in America now admire and claim inheritance from these separatists, the Pilgrim Fathers? Is it not because they see in their story the successful attempt to realize the hopes of the ages, which have found fruition in the American Federal system of States, so grandly united under the Constitution? The Pilgrim spirit has animated a nation, and its example leavened all our national history." 济济济 THE church that seeks to make Jesus Christ a civil ruler is seeking the throne of civil domination for herself. "My kingdom is not of this world," said Christ. .. Persecution of Quakers THE following clipping is taken from the Chicago Tribune: "The Rev. Cotton Mather, it has been disclosed, in an effort to prevent the landing of 'W. Penn,' whom he characterized as a Quaker scamp,' described a plot to waylay Penn's ship 'slyly' and to sell Penn and his crew into slavery in the Barbados. The revelations are made in a historic letter recently unearthed and read last night at a banquet in honor of Herbert Hoover, Food Administrator, who is a Quaker, by Judge E. C. Lindley. "The letter has created considerable amusement in Administration quarters, where it was circulated today. 66 "It is as follows: "SEPTEMBER YE 15, 1682. "To YE AGED AND BELOVED MR. JOHN HIGGINSON: There is now at sea a ship called the 'Welcome," which has on board an hundred or more of the heretics and malignants called Quakers, with W. Penn, who is the chief scamp, at the head of them. "The general court has accordingly given secret orders to Master Malachi Huscott of the brig Porpoise" to waylay the said "Welcome" slyly, as near the Cape of Cod as may be, and make captive the said Penn and his ungodly crew, so that the Lord may be glorified and not mocked on the soil of this new country with the heathen worship of these people. Much spoil can be made by selling the whole lot to Barbados, where slaves fetch good prices in rum and sugar, and we shall not only do the Lord great service by punishing the wicked, but we shall make great good for His minister and people. "Master Huscott feels hopeful, and I will set down the news when the ship comes back. "Yours in ye bowels of Christ, "COTTON MATHER.'" Puritan Blue Laws in the Good Old Times By C. S. Longacre W ERE the so-called "blue laws" ever really in force, or are they only a myth? If such laws really at one time were on the statute books, where were they to be found? what was their effect? and what happened to them finally? It is such questions as these that Gustavus Myers, a wellknown historical writer, has endeavored to answer in a volume called, "Ye Olden Blue Laws" (The Century Company). Mr. Myers has taken his facts from official or other authentic documents laws, court records, and other annals of the American colonies and States. He considers laws of different kindsthose relating to tobacco, to dress, to personal freedom, to the theater and the arts, to amusement generally. The result is a very interesting volume. Mr. Myers makes it very plain that there once were blue laws-hordes of them. Most people, if asked where the blue laws had their chief habitation, would probably reply that Connecticut ought to be given an azure hue on the maps. Mr. Myers shows, however, that Massachusetts was the principal source of such regulations, and that the State on the Sound merely followed meekly in its wake. Some of the worst laws, however, originated in Virginia, and New Jersey produced one law" An Act for Sup Quakers on Trial Before Puritan Judges for Exercising the Rights of Conscience pressing Vice and Immorality," of April 15, 1846 which prohibited nearly ev ery human activity on Sunday except breathing, dressing, eating, and churchgoing. Driving, sledding, singing, "fiddling or other music for the sake of merriment," games and sports of all kinds, and fishing were among the amusements that were prohibited by this Jersey statute. Mr. Myers adds as to this law that "policemen took a lenient view of the situation." Certainly the Puritan colonies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries offered what appeared to be an ideal society for producing a perfect morality. |