Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

226 SPRINGFIELD. 1636-1886.
sion ill religion they please. In a word, that persf)ns of good and
honest conversations, who have lived long there, ma}' enjoy all the
privileges, ecclesiastical & civil, which are due to them, & which are
enjoyed by others, as to choose & be chosen in places of government,
& the like, & that differences in opinion doe not lesson their charity
to each other, since charity is a fundamentall in religion." It was a
dark day for Massachusetts. The court lost no time in responding
that " The all-knowing God, he knows our greatest ambition is to
live a poor and a quiet life in a corner of the world, without offence
to God or man. We came not to this wilderness to seek great things
to ourself. . . . We
keep ourselves wuthiu our line, and meddle not
with matters abroad." But what odds? The royal commissioners
had brought a Church of England cha[)lain, and in the summer of
1664 the Episcopal service was first read in Bostcju. The battle
against a religious qualification had been won, and we find this oi'der
made October, 1673 : " That henceforth the names of such as desire
to be admitted to the freedome of this comon-wealtli, not being mem-
bers of churches in full communion, shall be entered w"^ the secre-
tory, from time to time, at the Court of Election, and read over
before the whole court some time that session, and shall not be put to
vote in the Court till the Court of Election next followg." This
provision was subsequently repealed, but by the time of the burning
of Springfield the whole structure of a political corporation fojinded
upon Puritan, Non-conformist, Calvinistic interpretations of the Bible
had been shaken. There was still no chance for a Baptist or
Quaker to become freemen ; but the Church of England was on the
roll of qualifications implied in true orthodoxy which admitted in-
habitants to freemen, even though not in full communion with any
New England church. Therefore, between the natural reaction from
the New England discipline among the "living saints" and their
progeny, and the cruder infelicities of mind in the common walks of
life, where elaborate schemes of religion breed scepticism and open
revolt, the churches in the early part of the eighteenth century were