23) tells, and many are made hypocrites thereby, conforming in their outward man for feare of punishment.

We pray for you and wish you prosperity every way; we hoped the Lord would have given you so much light and love there, that you might have been eyes to God's people here, and not to practise those courses in the wilderness, which you went so far to prevent.

These rigid ways have laid you very lowe in the hearts of the saints.

I do assure you I have heard them pray in the public assemblies that the Lord would give you meeke and humble spirits, not to strive so much for uniformity as to keepe the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace." Addressed: "For my reverend and worthyly much esteemed friends, Mr.
Cotton and Mr.Wilson, preachers to the Church which is at Boston, in New England."[106] It is seen that Sir R.Saltonstall's letter was addressed to the two principal Congregational ministers of Boston.

It has been shown that the preachers were the counsellors and prompters of all violent measures against dissenting Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Quakers--a fact further illustrated and confirmed by Mr.Bancroft, who, under the date of 1650 and 1651, says: "Nor can it be denied, nor should it be concealed, that the Elders, especially Wilson and Norton, instigated and sustained the Government in its worst cruelties."[107] During this first thirty years of the Massachusetts Bay Government, it evinced, in contrast with all the other British American colonies, constant hostility to the authorities in England, seizing upon every possible occasion for agitation and dispute; perverting and abusing the provisions of the Royal Charter to suppress the worship of the Church of England, and banishing its adherents; setting up a new Church and persecuting, by whipping, banishment and death, those who refused to conform to it; seeking its own interests at the expense of the neighbouring colonies; sacrificing the first principles of civil and religious liberty in their legislation and government; basing eligibility to office, and even the elective franchise, upon the condition of membership in a Congregational Church--a condition without a precedent or a parallel in any Protestant country.
I cannot better conclude this review of the first three decades of the Massachusetts Bay Puritan Government, than in the words of the celebrated Edmund Burke, who, in his account of the European settlements in America, after describing the form of government established at Massachusetts Bay, remarks that: "From such a form as this, great religious freedom might, one would have imagined, be well expected.