illustrates the manner in which civil and ecclesiastical affairs were blended." 1

The incident would be more than odd, it would be impossible, had the Puritan been content to render to Cæsar the things that were Cæsar's and been able to accept the modern philosophy that God made man, but man made the State. It was impossible for the Puritan to do this, and in his mind there was never any conflict between human and divine law. He was as convinced of the fallibility of human action when it opposed the provisions of his great code as is an American judge who unhesitatingly declares a statute void because it violates a fundamental inhibition of the American Constitution. The Puritan treatment of Mrs. Hutchinson shows his intense narrowness and how deficient he was in the saving grace of charity. He could argue for days over the meaning of an obscure text in the Bible, but his heart was as iron when he racked the woman shortly to feel the pains of maternity. It was this persecution that, unknown to himself, was to spread colonization and make Massachusetts the mother and maker of states. Again we see the sempiternal revolution of the wheel. Driven forth by religious persecution, the Puritan builds for himself a new state. Driven to persecution by the narrowness of his religion, he in turn becomes the oppressor and furnishes the impetus for the forward march of civilization.

1 Doyle: English Colonies in America, vol. ii, p. 122.

Some of Mrs. Hutchinson's adherents founded towns that afterwards became the state of New Hampshire. Mrs. Hutchinson herself and a considerable following bought from the Indians the island of Aquidneck, and settlements were established at Portsmouth and Newport, which later were incorporated with Williams's colony at Providence and became in time the modern state of Rhode Island.

Just as North Carolina was to Virginia "Rogues' Harbor," where the outcasts of society were made welcome and no one was so inquisitive as to ask the latest arrival why he came or whether he brought his real name with him, — which two centuries later was the etiquette of the western miningcamp, where personal history was always strictly tabooed, - Rhode Island was to the other New England colonies a pit of abomination. It was called in derision and contempt the Isle of Errors and the Religious Sink of New England, for it was the only place where every odd bit of theology could be found and prophets could safely deliver themselves of their inspirations and new sects could be founded without fear of punishment. Cotton Mather, who was not overmuch given to delicate sarcasm, said that if any man lost his religion, he could be sure to find it in Rhode Island. That colony was the seventeenth-century Hyde Park Sunday meetings where every man could call his own audience about him and speak to his heart's content.

One of Mrs. Hutchinson's supporters in Aquidneck was Samuel Gorton, who bred turbulence wherever he lodged. He was "a proud and pestilent seducer," in the vigorous language of that day, which had no reference to his morals but to his irrepressible energy in spreading his horrific doctrines. The modern biographer would term him a crotchety, cantankerous man, decidedly inclined toward anarchy and inconveniently assertive of pretty nearly everything that society disapproves. Doyle describes him as "a singularly puzzle-headed and illiterate man, full of courage and energy, and honest, so far as honesty is compatible with a morbid passion for notoriety which is gained by the upholders of unpopular views." He wrote much, but he had no power of clear expression and it is not easy to follow his argument.

A London clothier, he set up as a preacher without ordination and cherished that same doctrine of divine inspiration which so outraged the Puritans of Massachusetts when proclaimed by Mrs. Hutchinson. Coming to Plymouth, he soon displayed those qualities that made him for many years a thorn in the side of New England. One account has it that the wife of his pastor preferred his teachings to those of her husband, while from another historian we learn that with more zeal than tact he defended his wife's servant who had been severely punished for a trifling infraction of church discipline. He

1 Doyle: English Colonies in America, vol. ii, p. 187.

found it wise to flee Plymouth and seek refuge at Aquidneck, where he celebrated his coming by creating a schism among Mrs. Hutchinson's followers, which led to the founding of Portsmouth. Wherever he tarried trouble was sure to abide, and soon Portsmouth would have no more of him, and for its own peace flogged him and cast him out. We next hear of him at Pawtuxet, which was within the jurisdiction of Providence, where even the broadminded and tolerant Roger Williams was driven to complaint. Always agitating, his hand ever against the government, "having abused high and low at Aquidneck,” Williams plaintively writes, he was now "bewitching and madding poor Providence." It is difficult to understand what power this illiterate and muddle-headed man possessed, but instead of accepting Fiske's conclusion, "probably such success as Gorton had in winning followers was due to the mystical rubbish which abounds in his pages and finds in a modern mind no doorway through which to enter,”1 it is more probable that in the revolt against theological tyranny and a dim longing for real religious freedom is the explanation to be found. Williams, true to his principles, although disapproving of Gorton, would not silence him, but when he refused to submit to the authority of the magistrates, some of the leading citizens of Providence appealed to Massachusetts for advice and assistance in dealing with this disturber of the

1 Fiske: The Beginnings of New England, p. 167.

peace. It is not necessary to follow in detail future events. Gorton and some of his followers, after a stout resistance, were captured by an armed force and taken to Massachusetts and sentenced to work in irons during the pleasure of the court and strictly forbidden to communicate with any one except the elders and the assistants. But Puritan obstinacy was more than matched by the stubbornness of Gorton who doubtless knew his Epictetus and was strengthened by the philosopher's defiance.

Despite his fetters Gorton continued to propagate his heresies, and he was like to have bewitched Massachusetts as he had poor Providence had not the court amended the sentence to banishment from the colony on pain of death. To Aquidneck, where he had abused high and low, he returned, and because he was a victim of the religious persecution of Massachusetts he was received with sympathy.

I have outlined the adventurous career of this tailor-preacher and mystic because it was the asylum that Rhode Island offered to discordant religious elements that gave it a character unlike those of the other New England colonies and made it possible for the theocracy of New England to be broken down; which was necessary if men were to gain intellectual freedom and escape from the stagnation of the narrow rule of a creed that was a bar to their highest spiritual development. Under the rule of the theocracy the minds of men could