The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

VI. Molded by a Highly Trained Ministry

While the first English settlers came to New England in 1620, accessions at first were slow. But between 1630 and 1640 they thronged every ship that pointed its prow toward the New England shores. They had come to find in the New World what was denied them in the Old. Then immigration stopped, with twelve independent groups of colonists-fifty towns, having a total population of some 21,000. ¹⁹ Yet from these progenitors descended the majority of New Englanders. By 1660 they numbered 60,000, and 200,000 by 1689. ²⁰ PFF3 28.1

The contrast between the Pilgrims and the Puritans was pronounced. The Pilgrims, as Separatists, had collided with the Church of England and fled across the North Sea to Holland, where they worked long hours and learned remunerative trades. They were poor and relatively few when they came to the American shores. ²¹ On the contrary, the Puritans to the north, who had settled first at Massachusetts Bay, wanted moderated reforms in the Church of England, but nothing revolutionary. Among them were men of wealth, and representatives of the various professions, including scholars of light and learning. And they had a formal charter from the king. ²² PFF3 28.2

The proportion of learned men among these early immigrants was extraordinary. There were as many Cambridge and Oxford graduates as could be found in any similar population in the mother country—every two hundred and fiftieth person being a son of Cambridge. ²³ The proportion of scholarly clergymen ²⁴ was marked, including such names as Cotton, Davenport, Mather, Eliot, Norton, Williams, Bulkley, Shepard, and Chauncy. Of these Tyler asserts: “Probably no other community of pioneers ever so honored study, so reverenced the symbols and instruments of learning.” ²⁵ PFF3 28.3

Universal education seemed to them a universal necessity, and was promptly provided, with public instruction compulsory in every colony except Rhode Island. Six years after Winthrop’s arrival in Salem harbor, plans were under way to found a university. Religion was accounted the chief thing. They largely abolished the secular and retained the sacred. The state became part of the church, politics a department of theology, and citizenship the privilege of the church member. They believed intensely in Providence and in prayer and in a kind of asceticism. There were even laws against the sinfulness of tobacco. So, with it all, among the Puritans came intolerance and the militant spirit of the persecutor.. ²⁶ PFF3 29.1