CHAPTER XIII.
RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT IN MASSACHUSETTS (1631-1638) The history of the beginnings of the Massachusetts colony shows that there was no real unity in church matters among the first emigrants.
The majority were strongly tinctured with Puritanism, but nonconformity took on many shades of opinion.

When it came to adopting a form of religion for Massachusetts, the question was decided by the ministers and the handful who then enjoyed the controlling power in the colony, and not by the majority of inhabitants.

It was in this way that the Congregational church, and not the Presbyterian church, or a simplified form of the Anglican church, obtained its first hold upon the colony.
The adoption of the law of 1631 making membership in the Congregational church the condition of citizenship, and the arrival at a later day of so many talented ministers embittered by persecution against the Anglican church, strengthened the connection and made it permanent.

"God's word" was the law of the state, and the interpretation of it was the natural function of the clergy.

Thus, through church influence, the limitations on thought and religious practice became more stringent than in the mother-country, where the suffrage took in all freeholders, whether they were adherents of the established church or not.
In Massachusetts even Puritans who declined to acknowledge the form of church government prescribed by the self-established ecclesiastical authority were practically aliens, compelled to bear the burdens of church and state, and without a chance of making themselves felt in the government.