Meanwhile the inadequate compensations of a state of schism began to show themselves. In the absence of any organized fellowship of the whole there grew up, more than elsewhere, a mutual tolerance and even love among the petty sects, the lesson of which was learned where it was most needed. The churches of "the standing order" in Massachusetts not only admired but imitated "the peace and love which societies of different modes of worship entertained toward each other in Rhode Island." In 1718, not forty years from the time when Baptist churches ceased to be _religio illicita_ in Massachusetts, three foremost pastors of Boston assisted in the ordination of a minister to the Baptist church, at which Cotton Mather preached the sermon, entitled "Good Men United." It contained a frank confession of repentance for the persecutions of which the Boston churches had been guilty.[107:2] There is a double lesson to be learned from the history of these neighbor colonies: first, that a rigorously exclusive selection of men like-minded is the best seed for the first planting of a commonwealth in the wilderness; secondly, that the exclusiveness that is justified in the infancy of such a community cannot wisely, nor even righteously, nor even possibly, be maintained in its adolescence and maturity. The church-state of Massachusetts and New Haven was overthrown at the end of the first generation by external interference. If it had continued a few years longer it must have fallen of itself; but it lasted long enough to be the mold in which the civilization of the young States should set and harden. FOOTNOTES: [84:1] The mutual opposition of Puritan and Pilgrim is brought out with emphasis in "The Genesis of the New England Churches," by L. Bacon, especially chaps. v., vii., xviii. [85:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis of New England Churches," p. 245. [87:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 245. [89:1] The writer takes leave to refer to two essays of his own, in "Irenics and Polemics" (New York, Christian Literature Co., 1895), for a fuller statement of this point. [91:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 467. [94:1] The phrase is used in a large sense, as comprehending the whole subject of the nature and organization of the visible church (L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 456, note). [96:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 475. [97:1] L. Bacon, "Genesis," p. 477. [98:1] Morton's Memorial, in Palfrey, vol. i., p. 298. [99:1] Palfrey, vol. i., p. 584. [100:1] As, for example, with great amplitude by Palfrey; and in more condensed form by Dr. Williston Walker, "Congregationalists" (in American Church History Series). [102:1] L. Bacon, "Early Constitutional History of Connecticut."