CHAP. XII.] NO PENALTIES FOR DISSENT. 163 



doctrine of the gradual development of Christianity. The Roman 

 ists had stopped short at the council of Trent, when the decrees 

 of a general council were canonized by the sanction of an infal 

 lible Pope. In like manner, almost every Protestant church has 

 acted as if religion ceased to be progressive at the precise moment 

 of time when their own articles of belief were drawn up, after 

 much dispute and difference of opinion. 



But the precepts inculcated by Pastor Robinson were delivered 

 to a body of men whose form of ecclesiastical polity was very 

 peculiar ; who held that each congregation, each separate society 

 of fellow- worshipers, constituted within themselves a perfect and 

 independent church, whose duty it was to compose for itself and 

 modify at pleasure its rules of scriptural interpretation. In con 

 formity with these ideas, the common law of New England had 

 ruled, that the majority of the pew-holders in each church should 

 retain their property in a meeting-house, and any endowment 

 belonging to it, whatever new opinions they might, in the course 

 of time, choose to adopt. In other words, if, in the lapse of ages, 

 they should deviate from the original standard of faith, they 

 should not suffer the usual penalties of dissent, by being dispos 

 sessed of the edifice in which they were accustomed to worship, 

 or of any endowments given or bequeathed for a school-house or 

 the support of a pastor, but should continue to hold them ; the 

 minority who still held fast to the original tenets of the sect, 

 having to seek a new place of worship, but being allowed to 

 dispose of their pews, as of every other freehold, if purchasers 

 could be found. 



Every year in some parts of New England, where the popu 

 lation is on the increase, the manner in which some one of these 

 new congregations starts into existence may be seen. A few 

 individuals, twenty perhaps, are in the habit of meeting together 

 on the Sabbath in a private dwelling, or in the school-house 

 already built for the children of all denominations in the new 

 village. One of the number offers a prayer, another reads a 

 chapter in the Bible, another a printed sermon, and perhaps a 

 fourth offers remarks, by way of exhortation, to his neighbors. 

 As the population increases, they begin to think of forming them- 



