132 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE 
of the Virginia Company’s charter and its destruction 
as a political body. This fate served as a warning five 
years later to the Massachusetts Bay Company. In- 
stead of staying in London where hostile courts and 
the means of enforcing their hostile decrees were too 
near at hand, they decided to carry their charter across 
the ocean and carry out their cherished purposes as 
far removed as possible from interference. Their 
commercial aims were but a cloak to cover the pur- 
pose they had most at heart, —a purpose which could 
not be avowed by any party of men seeking for a royal 
charter. Their purpose was to found a theocratic 
commonwealth, like that of the children of Israel in 
the good old days before their froward hearts con- 
ceived the desire for a king. There was no thought 
of throwing off allegiance to the British crown; but 
saving such allegiance, their purpose was to build up 
a theocratic society according to their own notions, 
and not for one moment did they propose to tolerate 
among them any persons whom they deemed unfit or 
unwilling to codperate with them in their scheme. 
As for religious toleration, they scouted the very idea 
of the thing. There was no imputation which they 
resented more warmly than the imputation of treating 
heretics cordially, as they were treated in the Nether- 
lands. The writings of Massachusetts men in the seven- 
teenth century leave no possibility of doubt on this point. 
John Cotton was not a man of persecuting tempera- 
ment, but of religious liberty he had a very one-sided 
conception. According to Cotton, it is wrong for 
error to persecute truth, but it is the sacred duty of 
truth to persecute error. Which reminds one of the 
Hottentot chief’s fine ethical distinction between right 
