When, even in the earliest ages of the Church, the Second Commandment was supposed to be a mere enhancing of the first, and therefore curtailed and omitted, there was little perception that this would lead to popular, though not theoretical, idolatry, still less that this law, when again brought forward, would be pushed by scrupulous minds to the most strange and unexpected consequences, to the over-powering of all authority of ancient custom, and to the repudiation of everything symbolical.
This resolution against acknowledging any obligation to use either symbol or ceremony, together with the opposition of the hierarchy, led to the rejection of the traditional usages of the Church and the previously universal interpretation of Scripture in favour of three orders in the ministry.

The elders, or presbytery, were deemed sufficient; and when, after having for many years been carried along, acquiescing, in the stream of the Reformation, the English Episcopacy tried to make a stand, the coercion was regarded as a return to bondage, and the more ardent spirits sought a new soil on which to enjoy the immunities that they regarded as Christian freedom.
The _Mayflower_ led the way in 1620, and the news of the success of the first Pilgrim Fathers impelled many others to follow in their track.
Among these was John Eliot.

He had been born in 1604 at Nasing in Essex, and had been bred up by careful parents, full of that strong craving for theological studies that characterized the middle classes in the reign of James I.
Nothing more is known of his youth except that he received a university education, and, like others who have been foremost in missionary labours, had a gift for the comparison of languages and study of grammar.

He studied the Holy Scriptures in the original tongues with the zeal that was infused into all scholars by the knowledge that the Authorized Version was in hand, and by the stimulus that was afforded by the promise of a copy of the first edition to him who should detect and correct an error in the type.
The usual fate of a scholar was to be either schoolmaster or clergyman, if not both, and young Eliot commenced his career as an assistant to Mr.
John Hooker, at the Grammar School at Little Baddow.

He considered this period to have been that in which the strongest religious impressions were made upon him.