Religious Enthusiasm and Separatism in Colonial New England

Thomas Underhill, a citizen of London during the Commonwealth, described that period of English history as “Hell Broke Loose.” Partly as a result of Anabaptist influence, and partly as a continuation of the indigenous Lollard movement, large numbers of persons in every part of England separated themselves from the Established Church and formed themselves into independent religious societies. Some of these groups were very eccentric in their beliefs and practices. Thomas Edwards, their bitter opponent, made a Catalogue of “the Errors, Heresies, Blasphemies and Pernicious Practices … vented and acted in England” between the years 1642 and 1646, which he called, Gangraena. In it he distinguishes no less than two hundred and ten errors which were held by one or other of the sixteen groups into which he divides the sectaries. The sixteen were, “Independents, Brownists, Chiliasts or Millenaries, Antinomians, Anabaptists, Manifestarians or Arminians, Libertines, Familists, Enthusiasts, Seekers and Waiters, Perfectists, Socinians, Arians, Anti-Trinitarians, Anti-Scripturalists, Sceptics and Quietists.” The Parliamentary army especially abounded with men whose “great religion” was “liberty of conscience and liberty of preaching.” G. P. Gooch and others have shown how deeply the roots of modern democracy are embedded in the religious struggles of these seventeenth century sects. Most of them disappeared with the Commonwealth, or were absorbed in the rising Quaker movement, but certain fundamental principles for which they stood continued to exist and to mold public opinion.