Some days after this election, Mr. Higginson drew up “A Confession of Faith and Church Covenant.” Thirty persons assented to it, and a self-constituted church was planted in the wilderness.[643] This transaction has determined and colored the whole religious constitution of New England. It was a bold and aggressive act. But the Pilgrims had always objected to the ceremonial law of the home Establishment; and now, being in the Western wilds, they felt free to form their ecclesiasticism on what they conceived to be a more authentic model. “In their position, such words as ‘Non-conformity’ and ‘Separatism’ ceased to be significant. It was only important that they should conform to their view of the Bible; and their determination to do so was not shaken by the thought that in doing so they must separate, not in spirit, but in discipline and usage, from a church three thousand miles away.”[644] The New England theocracy was begotten of these proceedings.[645] “The emigrants,” remarks Bancroft, “were not so much a body politic as a church in the wilderness, with no benefactor around them but Nature, no present sovereign but God. An entire separation was made between church and state—at least in theory; religious worship was established on the basis of the independence of each separate religious community; and these rigid Calvinists, of whose rude intolerance the world had been filled with malignant calumnies, subscribed a covenant cherishing, it is true, the severest virtues, but without one tinge of fanaticism. It was an act of piety, not of study; it favored virtue, not superstition; inquiry, and not submission. The communicants were enthusiasts, but not bigots.”[646] They declared that “the Holy Scriptures only were to be followed, and no man’s authority, be he Augustine, Tertullian, or even Cherubim or Seraphim.”[647] This entire transaction gave dissatisfaction to some at Salem. Finally, John and Samuel Brown, “two brothers, the one a merchant, the other a lawyer, both men of parts, estate, and figure in the settlement, gathered a company separate from the public assembly.”[648] Mutual bickerings ensued. A breach of the peace was threatened.[649] Then Endicott interposed. He sent the Browns home to England, and thereby restored quiet.[650] The brothers Brown, on reaching England, carried a lusty impeachment to the archiepiscopal throne, then occupied by Laud.[651] The Massachusetts Company, alarmed by the clamor, wrote letters of caution to Endicott: “Beware! ’tis possible some undigested counsels have been too suddenly put in execution, which may have ill-construction with the state here, and make us obnoxious to any adversary;”[652] which shows, not that the island Puritans did not sympathize with bluff Endicott’s action, but that they dreaded lest it might provoke a hostile government to give their pet colony its _coup de grâce_. CHAPTER XXII. THE ARBELLA.