And as it was not necessary to wait for the
action of the church to pronounce excommunication, but the "pastor of a
church might by himself and authoritatively suspend from the Lord's table
a brother _suspected_ of scandal" until there was time for full
examination, we can see what an absolute power the church and even the
minister had over church-members in a New England community.
Nor could the poor excommunicate go to neighboring towns and settlements to
start afresh. No one wished him or would tolerate him. Lancaster, in 1653,
voted not to receive into its plantation "any excommunicat or notoriously
erring agt the Docktrin & Discipline of churches of this Commonwealth."
Other towns passed similar votes. Fortunately, Rhode Island--the island of
"Aquidnay" and the Providence Plantations--opened wide its arms as a place
of refuge for outcast Puritans. Universal freedom and religious toleration
were in Rhode Island the foundations of the State. Josiah Quincy said that
liberty of conscience would have produced anarchy if it had been permitted
in the New England Puritan settlements in the seventeenth century, but the
flourishing Narragansett, Providence, and Newport plantations seem to prove
the absurdity of that statement. Liberty of conscience was there allowed,
as Dr. MacSparran, the first clergyman of the Narragansett Church,
complained in his "America Dissected," "to the extent of no religion at
all.
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