Puritan Traits. — (Greene's Short History of the English People, III., 19-35; Neale's History of the Puritans; Taine's English Literature, II., ch. v.; Tyler, 91-109; Richardson, I. 10—21.)
The settlers of Massachusetts differed from the early Virginians in almost every respect. They did not seek America for worldly gain; they were not adventurers cast up by the tide of chance, nor were they carried. across the sea by a wave of popular enthusiasm. They were earnest and prayerful, prone to act only after mature deliberation, and they had come to America to stay.
As we study the history of the intellectual development of New England, it must be borne constantly in mind that her founders were deeply religious men. Religion was their vocation. They subordinated everything to this one great, ruling thought. Their convictions were intense and they obeyed them at any cost. Rather than use the book of Common Prayer and wear the robes prescribed for the clergy by the Church of England, they chose to leave all that society holds dear and take wife and child into the wilds across "the vast and furious ocean" where they might be free to worship God as they pleased.
After purchasing religious freedom at such a price, it is but natural that they should be intolerant of those who would pervert their belief, and we are not surprised to find them in turn persecutors. They fiercely assailed the Quakers; they drove Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson into the wilderness, and in Salem hanged nineteen persons suspected of being witches.
