An interesting illustration of this, and for our purpose a crucial one, is in the religious life of the thirteen original states. Before the Revolution, the states might be divided into four groups as regards their religious organization: there were congregational establishments in Massachusetts and Plymouth, New Haven, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; Church of England establishments in Virginia and the two Carolinas; four states formerly under various regimes had had the Church of England forced on them—Maryland, at first under Catholic rule, but with freedom of residence for all Christians; New York and New Jersey, which had been dominated by the Dutch Reformed Church; and Georgia, founded with almost complete religious liberty. Only three states had no established church—Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and its offshoot, Delaware. Of these last, Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams in 1636, under the radical, not to say revolutionary principle of complete separation of church and state, with right of residence and citizenship for all persons, even including Jews and atheists. Pennsylvania, chartered in 1681, was founded by William Penn, the Quaker, with liberty of residence for all “believers in Almighty God”; but the English government insisted on the condition that all voters and office holders “shall be such as profess faith in Jesus Christ” and the Protestant religion. What the new nation had, then, was not religious liberty, but rather a clash of many different points of view. [64]Massachusetts set up its theocratic state with its chief interest in the Church; Virginia established its civil state, with the church as a subject member; while Rhode Island boldly denied the purposes and premises of both, placing an impassable gulf between the State and the Church and relegating to the individual conscience and to voluntary association all concern and action touching the Church and religious matters. What, then, should be the upshot of this confusion of religious groups, with their ancient hatreds and prejudices, ingrown with history and overlaid with former strife and martyrdom? It was obviously impossible to make the United States Calvinist or Episcopal; it was necessary to have some sacrifice of each for the good of all. But it might have been possible to make the nation Protestant Christian, as was actually the case with the state of New Hampshire until 1877. Various minor causes here entered in. Warfare with England meant some opposition, at least, to the Church of England. The distance from the actual seat of old-world struggles, the character of the colonists and their longing for every type of freedom, helped much. The new theories of the French Encyclopedists, as adopted by Jefferson, certainly had great influence. But most important of all was the existence of the many minor sects, with the few important ones, of which all longed to rule but none wished to be dominated by any other.