WEBVTT NOTE 1. Liberalism in Massachusetts 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Part One, Developments in the Separate Colonies 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:11.000 Volume Two, Chapter One, Liberalism in Massachusetts 3 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:18.000 The first half of the 18th century was a relatively stable period for the colonies in many ways, 4 00:00:18.000 --> 00:00:22.000 especially in internal political institutions. 5 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:28.000 As was true for most of the other colonies, Massachusetts politics became a tug of war 6 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:43.000 The Key to the Power of the Lower House was its control over the purse strings of government, and it steadfastly refused to vote a permanent salary for the governor. 7 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:57.000 Not only was the voted sum generally far smaller than the governor wished, but the salary was granted at the end of the year, after the legislature had had a chance to appraise his actions. 8 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:02.440 In short, the governor's salary was always based on good behavior. 9 00:01:02.440 --> 00:01:09.640 By 1731, the British government had authorized the governor to accept annual grants of salary, 10 00:01:09.640 --> 00:01:13.980 a final victory for the prerogative of the lower house. 11 00:01:13.980 --> 00:01:20.320 The lower house was not as successful in the controversy over selection of its speaker. 12 00:01:20.320 --> 00:01:25.980 The assembly contended, quite properly, that it had a right to choose its officers, but 13 00:01:25.980 --> 00:01:32.460 But it was finally overruled in 1725 in favor of the governor's assertion of the right 14 00:01:32.460 --> 00:01:36.140 of veto over the post of speaker. 15 00:01:36.140 --> 00:01:42.220 Leadership of the House opposition to the executive was directed by Alicia Cook, who, 16 00:01:42.220 --> 00:01:50.000 at his death in 1715, was succeeded by the equally popular Alicia Cook, Jr. 17 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:55.820 One highly significant development in Massachusetts was the disintegration of the attempt to 18 00:01:55.820 --> 00:02:02.540 To Impose Comprehensive Wage and Price Controls Having lapsed by the mid-seventeenth century 19 00:02:02.540 --> 00:02:09.440 after repeated failures, a bill for comprehensive maximum wage controls, attempting to compel 20 00:02:09.440 --> 00:02:18.940 wage rates lower than the market, was introduced in 1670 and in 1672. The more oligarchic 21 00:02:18.940 --> 00:02:25.620 Council of Magistrates twice approved the bill, but the more popular Lower House twice 22 00:02:25.620 --> 00:02:27.780 defeated the plan. 23 00:02:27.780 --> 00:02:33.100 The Committee of Nine of the Massachusetts General Court, representing the views of the 24 00:02:33.100 --> 00:02:41.180 small-scale artists and employers, lamented the oppression of tanners, glovers and shoemakers 25 00:02:41.180 --> 00:02:47.900 by their being obliged by the market to pay journeyman employees wages that they deemed 26 00:02:47.900 --> 00:02:58.900 The Committee also attacked the gall of journeymen in daring to desire and wear expensive clothes and in asking for wages that would pay for them. 27 00:02:58.900 --> 00:03:04.900 There seemed to be no understanding of how wages are set in an unhampered market. 28 00:03:04.900 --> 00:03:14.900 Finally, in 1675, an extensive but less comprehensive piece of maximum wage control and sumptuary legislation was passed. 29 00:03:14.900 --> 00:03:22.860 was passed. The legislation was clearly designed to keep the lower orders in their place. Significant 30 00:03:22.860 --> 00:03:29.060 of the class bias of the regulations was the fact that only laborers were to be punished 31 00:03:29.060 --> 00:03:35.560 and heavily fined for receiving wages above the legal maximum. No penalties were to be 32 00:03:35.560 --> 00:03:43.300 levied on employers paying those wages. By 1690, however, enforcement of the legislation 33 00:03:43.300 --> 00:03:49.780 had begun to break down, and from then on the laws proved to be increasingly ineffective 34 00:03:49.780 --> 00:03:56.780 and obsolete. The collapse of the regulations and of their enforcement accelerated after 35 00:03:56.900 --> 00:04:02.340 1720. It was not only in the South that the proportion 36 00:04:02.340 --> 00:04:09.340 of negro slaves to white bond servants greatly increased after the turn of the 18th century. 37 00:04:09.340 --> 00:04:16.200 Although forced labor played a less dominant role in the Northern economy, a similar shift 38 00:04:16.200 --> 00:04:19.180 occurred in Massachusetts. 39 00:04:19.180 --> 00:04:26.080 From a class of young English servants bonded to family masters, the coerced laborers became 40 00:04:26.080 --> 00:04:34.740 largely an alienated, heterogeneous group of non-English whites and Negro slaves. 41 00:04:34.740 --> 00:04:42.780 In the 1630s, 95 percent of forced labor in Massachusetts was white and 5 percent negro. 42 00:04:42.780 --> 00:04:51.700 By the 1740s, however, 25 percent of forced labor was white and 75 percent negro. 43 00:04:51.700 --> 00:04:57.340 The increasing alienation of the slaves and the servants led the Puritan members of the 44 00:04:57.340 --> 00:05:04.980 The Oligarchy to try to win their allegiance by rationalizing their ordeal as somehow natural, 45 00:05:04.980 --> 00:05:13.140 righteous and divine. So have tyrants always tried to dupe their subjects into approving 46 00:05:13.140 --> 00:05:21.140 or at least remaining resigned to their fate. Hence the Rev. Samuel Willard in his A Complete 47 00:05:21.140 --> 00:05:29.260 The body of divinity, 1726, slyly linked the supposed hierarchical order of heaven to the 48 00:05:29.260 --> 00:05:37.380 existing order on earth, to the ranks and orders among mankind in this world, which 49 00:05:37.380 --> 00:05:45.060 God rather than the oligarchy hath appointed. Especially, the subjection of servants to 50 00:05:45.060 --> 00:05:52.220 Servitude Masters was divinely appointed, made necessary by man's fall. All servitude 51 00:05:52.220 --> 00:06:00.180 began in curse. Servants, according to the emphatically non-servant Willard, were duty-bound 52 00:06:00.180 --> 00:06:06.140 to revere and obey their masters, to serve them diligently and cheerfully, and to be 53 00:06:06.140 --> 00:06:14.380 patient and submissive even to the cruelest master. A convenient ideology indeed for the 54 00:06:14.380 --> 00:06:23.180 Unfortunately, the Reverend Mr. Willard lamented, some masters are indeed insufferably harsh, 55 00:06:23.180 --> 00:06:29.220 and hence provoke their subjects, and some servants are disorderly enough to be uneasy 56 00:06:29.220 --> 00:06:33.900 and not willing to bear the yoke or be under any command. 57 00:06:33.900 --> 00:06:41.220 The Reverend Cotton Mather, always an eloquent and leading spokesman for despotism, warned 58 00:06:41.220 --> 00:06:46.140 Mathur advised the slaves and servants in a sermon that there is a fondness for freedom 59 00:06:46.140 --> 00:06:52.580 in many of you. Mathur advised the slaves that they were living better materially than 60 00:06:52.580 --> 00:06:59.900 they would be under freedom. Furthermore slavery had been appointed for them by God. Singing 61 00:06:59.900 --> 00:07:06.620 for others the siren song of supposedly contented and blissful security, Mathur purred, Your 62 00:07:06.620 --> 00:07:12.980 Your servitude is gentle. You are treated with more than mere humanity, and fed and 63 00:07:12.980 --> 00:07:19.340 clothed and lodged as well as you can wish for, and you have no cares upon you, but only 64 00:07:19.340 --> 00:07:27.340 to come when you are called and do what you are bidden. All the subjects must do, in short, 65 00:07:27.340 --> 00:07:35.260 was to surrender their natural-born gift of freedom and independence, to subject themselves 66 00:07:35.260 --> 00:07:41.420 matters completely to the whims and commands of others, who could then be blindly trusted 67 00:07:41.420 --> 00:07:50.420 to take care of them permanently. How justify such unreasoning trust? 68 00:07:50.420 --> 00:07:54.700 Mather's role, of course, was not to engage in disinterested inquiry into the well-being 69 00:07:54.700 --> 00:08:02.420 of the slaves. Despite the myths of ideology and the threats of the whip, servants and 70 00:08:02.420 --> 00:08:08.380 The slaves found many ways of protest and rebellion. Masters were continually denouncing 71 00:08:08.380 --> 00:08:15.300 servants for being disobedient, sullen, and lazy. Little wonder, since they scarcely had 72 00:08:15.300 --> 00:08:21.900 reason to be cheerful or energetic. They did not live up to the ideal set for them by the 73 00:08:21.900 --> 00:08:28.300 obliging cotton-mather in his A Good Master Well-Served, 1696. 74 00:08:28.300 --> 00:08:36.940 Servants, you are the animate, separate, active instruments of other men. Servants, your fingers, 75 00:08:36.940 --> 00:08:42.860 your hands, your feet, are your masters, and they should move according to the will of 76 00:08:42.860 --> 00:08:49.380 your masters. One servant declared that he would much rather be in hell than serve his 77 00:08:49.380 --> 00:08:57.020 master. Another, upon murdering his master, confessed that he had often told himself such 78 00:08:57.020 --> 00:09:22.820 The Reverend Benjamin Wadsworth, in The Well-Ordered Family, 1712-1719, set forth the problem of 79 00:09:22.820 --> 00:09:29.780 The slaves and servants fondness for liberty and hence their rebelliousness quite clearly. 80 00:09:29.780 --> 00:09:35.820 Some servants are very high, proud. They'll scarce be commanded or restrained. They are 81 00:09:35.820 --> 00:09:41.580 much for liberty. They must have liberty for their tongues to speak almost what and when 82 00:09:41.580 --> 00:09:48.740 they please, liberty to give or receive visits of their own accord and when they will, liberty 83 00:09:48.740 --> 00:09:55.740 to go and come almost when they will, without telling why or wherefore, such liberty they 84 00:09:55.740 --> 00:10:04.500 contend for, they won't be ruled, governed, restrained. Such servants, Wadsworth thundered, 85 00:10:04.500 --> 00:10:11.980 are very wicked in their plain disobedience to God. They trample God's law, His authority 86 00:10:11.980 --> 00:10:18.540 under their feet. Thus, God was adroitly linked to the rule of the masters. 87 00:10:18.540 --> 00:10:25.420 Runaway servants and slaves were a problem from the beginning in Massachusetts Bay. Mathered, 88 00:10:25.420 --> 00:10:31.500 Willard and Wadsworth took care to denounce running away as a grievous sin, and from the 89 00:10:31.500 --> 00:10:37.040 earliest days of the colony, Massachusetts law allowed the conscription of boats and 90 00:10:37.040 --> 00:10:44.040 It is not surprising that protest and rebelliousness took different forms among different classes 91 00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:54.600 of servants. The protest of contracted servants who had friends or relatives in the colony 92 00:10:54.760 --> 00:11:01.760 tended to take the form of unruly behavior or of taking their case to the courts. The 93 00:11:01.760 --> 00:11:08.760 The more alienated and oppressed Negroes and foreign servants tended to run away. 94 00:11:08.760 --> 00:11:18.760 Thus, from 1629 through 1750, the latter class accounted for 25 percent of the cases of legal protest, 95 00:11:18.760 --> 00:11:23.760 but for 69 percent of the runaways. 96 00:11:23.760 --> 00:11:26.760 Only a few servants bothered to go to court, 97 00:11:26.760 --> 00:11:31.760 and running away accounted for almost half of the recorded cases of protest, 98 00:11:31.760 --> 00:11:37.760 the latter growing with the shift in the type of forced labor during the 18th century. 99 00:11:37.760 --> 00:11:46.760 Here was a significant indication that the propaganda of the Puritan apologist was becoming increasingly ineffective. 100 00:11:46.760 --> 00:11:54.760 Increasingly, the unruliness of servants and slaves reduced the profitability of such labor for their masters. 101 00:11:54.760 --> 00:12:01.760 In the midst of this general miasma of opinion, some courageous voices were raised in behalf of liberty, even for Negroes. 102 00:12:01.760 --> 00:12:10.760 In the midst of this general miasma of opinion, some courageous voices were raised in behalf of liberty, even for Negroes. 103 00:12:10.760 --> 00:12:22.760 The eminent merchant, Judge Samuel Sewell, wrote in The Selling of Joseph, 1700, that liberty is a real value next to life. 104 00:12:22.760 --> 00:12:30.760 Despite the fall, all men as the sons of Adam have equal rights into liberty. 105 00:12:30.760 --> 00:12:42.760 To the excuse that the Negroes had already been enslaved through wars in Africa, Sewell trenchantly replied that an unlawful war can't make lawful captives, 106 00:12:42.760 --> 00:12:50.760 and by receiving we are in danger to promote and partake in their barbarous cruelties. 107 00:12:50.760 --> 00:12:58.560 Indeed, the excuse of humanitarianism for purchasing Negro slaves rings thin. If true, 108 00:12:58.560 --> 00:13:04.280 the slave traders should have instantly released their charges instead of herding and dragging 109 00:13:04.280 --> 00:13:09.320 them at great cost in life to the New World. 110 00:13:09.320 --> 00:13:15.920 The Massachusetts Charter of 1691 had ensured religious liberty for all Protestants and 111 00:13:15.920 --> 00:13:21.440 and had eliminated the religious test for voting. An established church, however, was still 112 00:13:21.440 --> 00:13:28.040 permitted and the general court quickly moved to establish a Puritan church in each town 113 00:13:28.040 --> 00:13:34.200 to be supported by the taxpayers. The ministers, however, were to be selected locally by the 114 00:13:34.200 --> 00:13:40.620 voters of each town, including non-members of the church. This system was quickly shifted 115 00:13:40.620 --> 00:13:46.260 to confine the choice of a minister to the church's members, subject to ratification 116 00:13:46.260 --> 00:13:54.300 by the town voters. Already in 1694, opposition to the church by non-Puritans was blocking 117 00:13:54.300 --> 00:14:01.660 the ratification of ministers, and a new Massachusetts law provided for ratification by a council 118 00:14:01.660 --> 00:14:07.620 of elders of several churches, which council could then override a negative vote by the 119 00:14:07.620 --> 00:14:14.500 of Town. Despite these props and privileges, however, the Puritan establishment soon began 120 00:14:14.500 --> 00:14:20.540 to crumble. Once again it was the Quakers who took the lead in religious liberty. Despite 121 00:14:20.540 --> 00:14:29.540 attempts in 1702, 1706, and later to compel Quakers to pay for the Puritan establishment 122 00:14:29.540 --> 00:14:36.420 and to force Quaker towns to support a Puritan minister, Quaker resistance continued. The 123 00:14:36.420 --> 00:14:43.940 The Quakers kept protesting to England over the compulsion to pay the demands of the priest. 124 00:14:43.940 --> 00:14:51.320 Finally in 1728, the Massachusetts establishment was seriously weakened. A law of that year 125 00:14:51.320 --> 00:14:58.500 permitted Quakers and Baptists to refuse to pay taxes for support of Puritan ministers 126 00:14:58.500 --> 00:15:04.540 on the grounds of conscience. The provision was hedged about with numerous conditions 127 00:15:04.540 --> 00:15:10.020 such as the necessity of the objectors to attend some church and their taking an oath 128 00:15:10.020 --> 00:15:17.500 of allegiance to the colony. But in 1731 all Quakers were unconditionally exempted from 129 00:15:17.500 --> 00:15:25.980 religious taxes and, four years later, Baptists were likewise exempted. Only in new towns 130 00:15:25.980 --> 00:15:32.540 without a minister were Baptists and Quakers still obliged to pay for the Puritan Church. 131 00:15:32.540 --> 00:15:40.460 And even in new towns the regulation was often unenforced, as witnessed a law of 1759 allowing 132 00:15:40.460 --> 00:15:48.320 non-Quakers in any town with a Quaker majority to elect as many assessors for church taxes 133 00:15:48.320 --> 00:15:55.500 as the Quakers. Thus, by the middle of the 18th century, the Puritan establishment had, 134 00:15:55.500 --> 00:16:13.500 broken down in Massachusetts. Hand in hand with the Puritan establishment came, in 1692, a law compelling each town to provide for and impose compulsory schooling on its inhabitants. 135 00:16:13.500 --> 00:16:21.500 Many towns, however, did not abide by the provisions or did not impose penalties for violations. 136 00:16:21.500 --> 00:16:38.500 Massachusetts then tightened the screws, imposing more stringent enforcement in 1701. Further linking government schooling with religion was the fact that the schoolmaster had to be approved by a board of Puritan ministers. 137 00:16:38.500 --> 00:16:49.500 Inability to enforce compulsory schooling led to still further interventions and to still more rigorous and brutal attempts at enforcement. 138 00:16:49.500 --> 00:16:56.500 Not only were fines increased on towns not furnishing compulsory schooling, but in 1735, 139 00:16:56.500 --> 00:17:05.500 parents not educating their children in ways thought fit by the state might see their children seized by the government 140 00:17:05.500 --> 00:17:09.500 and shipped to arbitrarily designated foster families. 141 00:17:09.500 --> 00:17:14.500 In general, rule in Massachusetts by the Puritan oligarchy, 142 00:17:14.500 --> 00:17:21.500 once so rigorous and so fanatical, had been greatly weakened by blows from without 143 00:17:21.500 --> 00:17:26.500 and by crumbling from within by the end of the 17th century. 144 00:17:26.500 --> 00:17:33.500 With the advent of the 18th, the decline of Puritan control accelerated still further. 145 00:17:33.500 --> 00:17:42.500 For the first time, moreover, a determined liberal opposition developed within the Church and was able to retain a foothold. 146 00:17:42.500 --> 00:17:50.500 Within the Church there had emerged with the Salem Witch Hunt liberal opposition led by the merchant Thomas Brattle 147 00:17:50.500 --> 00:17:58.500 and by the Reverend John Wise of Ipswich, who had gone to prison for protesting the Andros Tyranny. 148 00:17:58.500 --> 00:18:05.280 In 1699, a group of influential liberals of Boston, headed by Thomas Brattle, his brother 149 00:18:05.280 --> 00:18:12.780 William and John Leverett, founded the Brattle Street Church within the Puritan fold. 150 00:18:12.780 --> 00:18:19.500 The new church issued a manifesto endorsing the halfway covenant, eliminating the requirement 151 00:18:19.500 --> 00:18:26.700 of a public examination for church membership and allowing halfway covenanters a vote in 152 00:18:26.700 --> 00:18:33.660 and the Church Government. Conservative ministers were outraged, and such ministers as Increase 153 00:18:33.660 --> 00:18:39.620 Mather, John Higginson, and Nicholas Noyes fretted and fumed, but such men no longer 154 00:18:39.620 --> 00:18:45.680 had the coercive power of their forebears and the Brattle Street Church survived and 155 00:18:45.680 --> 00:18:49.780 flourished. Perhaps even more vital a blow to the old 156 00:18:49.780 --> 00:18:56.000 diehards was the loss of old guard control of Harvard College, which had been set up 157 00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:26.000 The Theocrats had always been unlucky in their choice of presidents for the college, the first two being heretical, from the Orthodox Puritan viewpoint, in regard to infant baptism. That is to say, they opposed it. Succeeding presidents were unwilling to give the post their full time. As a result, with President Increase Mather away in England, obtaining the new Massachusetts Charter, 158 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:36.000 In 1692, administration of the college fell into the hands of two outstanding liberal tutors, John Leverett and William Brattle. 159 00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:49.000 It was largely Leverett and Brattle who converted Harvard from an old guard Puritan stronghold to a truly liberal arts college, reflecting new ideas of science and rationality. 160 00:19:49.000 --> 00:19:56.320 Mathur, finally seeing what was happening by the late 1690s, tried to lead a counterrevolution 161 00:19:56.320 --> 00:20:01.840 to regain control of Harvard for the conservatives, but he was hampered by his unwillingness to 162 00:20:01.840 --> 00:20:07.240 give up his congregation and make Harvard his full-time activity. 163 00:20:07.240 --> 00:20:14.520 Mathur persuaded the Massachusetts General Court in 1699 to exclude all the orthodox Puritans 164 00:20:14.520 --> 00:20:21.660 from the Presidency or Governing Fellows of the College, but the Royal Governor Lord Bellomont 165 00:20:21.660 --> 00:20:29.120 vetoed the scheme. Finally, in the fall of 1701, with Mather relinquishing the post, 166 00:20:29.120 --> 00:20:35.520 the General Court elevated Vice President Willard to the Presidency of Harvard. The 167 00:20:35.520 --> 00:20:41.460 Mathers were appalled regarding the accession of Reverend Mr. Willard, who was also inclined 168 00:20:41.460 --> 00:20:47.580 to Heresy on Infant Baptism as the first step down the slippery slope to liberal control 169 00:20:47.580 --> 00:20:53.860 of Harvard. When Brattle and Leverett, who Mather had dismissed from the ruling corporation 170 00:20:53.860 --> 00:21:00.860 of the college, were reinstated to their membership by the general court, the Mathers' fears seemed 171 00:21:00.860 --> 00:21:06.620 confirmed. They were further aggravated by the general courts allowing Willard to reside 172 00:21:06.620 --> 00:21:12.180 in Boston most of the week, thus continuing to leave effective control in the hands of 173 00:21:12.180 --> 00:21:14.740 Leverett and Brattle. 174 00:21:14.740 --> 00:21:21.420 The climax of the struggle over Harvard came in 1707 with the death of the Reverend Mr. 175 00:21:21.420 --> 00:21:22.580 Willard. 176 00:21:22.580 --> 00:21:27.920 The conservatives made a desperate effort to elect one of the mathers to the presidency, 177 00:21:27.920 --> 00:21:33.820 but the fellows of Harvard Corporation selected none other than John Leverett. 178 00:21:33.820 --> 00:21:39.260 The conservatives were extremely bitter. Not only was Leverett the leader of the liberals, 179 00:21:39.260 --> 00:21:47.520 but he, being a mere layman, his appointment ended ecclesiastical control of the college. 180 00:21:47.520 --> 00:21:53.620 With the help of Governor Joseph Dudley, who had long left the fold of the Orthodox and 181 00:21:53.620 --> 00:22:00.420 a petition of 39 liberal Puritan ministers, Leverett's selection and salary were confirmed 182 00:22:00.420 --> 00:22:06.620 by the General Court. The victory of liberalism at Harvard was sealed at long last. The victory 183 00:22:06.620 --> 00:22:12.660 was further confirmed when, a few years later, the liberals won unshakable control of the 184 00:22:12.660 --> 00:22:19.660 Board of Fellows of the Corporation. The Mathers, bitter to the last, each wrote a letter 185 00:22:19.660 --> 00:22:26.380 of denunciation to Dudley, giving up Harvard as a lost cause. For his part, Leverett went 186 00:22:26.380 --> 00:22:53.060 In short, the control of Harvard by the liberal group meant that the future was theirs, with 187 00:22:53.060 --> 00:22:58.460 With the triumph of Leverett and the Braddles and the group they represented, one of the 188 00:22:58.460 --> 00:23:07.180 chief props of the old order, the Bible Commonwealth of Winthrop Ben Cotton, was knocked away. 189 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:12.700 One of the first products of the new Leverett-trained generation of Massachusetts intellectuals 190 00:23:12.700 --> 00:23:17.820 was the Reverend Benjamin Coleman, one of Leverett's favorite pupils, who graduated 191 00:23:17.820 --> 00:23:20.500 from Harvard in the 1690s. 192 00:23:20.500 --> 00:23:25.900 Coleman was selected the first minister of the New Brattle Street Church and was largely 193 00:23:25.900 --> 00:23:32.220 responsible for the Church's defiant liberal manifesto. By the second decade of the 18th 194 00:23:32.220 --> 00:23:37.780 century, the Reverend Mr. Coleman had become one of Harvard's fellows and one of its most 195 00:23:37.780 --> 00:23:44.560 influential members. Defeated at every hand, the Mathers and the other Puritan reactionaries 196 00:23:44.560 --> 00:23:53.560 has decided to counter-attack by transforming Puritan Church polity into virtual Presbyterianism. 197 00:23:53.560 --> 00:24:02.560 Puritanism had always been an uneasy halfway house between congregational and Presbyterian rule. 198 00:24:02.560 --> 00:24:07.560 Now, seeing that individual congregations could be captured by the liberal forces, 199 00:24:07.560 --> 00:24:15.560 The Old Guard decided to impose collective synodal control on the individual churches. 200 00:24:15.560 --> 00:24:23.560 A ministerial convention of the Puritan ministers of Massachusetts had already begun to meet by the turn of the century. 201 00:24:23.560 --> 00:24:28.560 In 1705, the convention adopted the Massachusetts proposals, 202 00:24:28.560 --> 00:24:34.560 which had been adopted by the principal Boston divines under the lead of the Mathers. 203 00:24:34.560 --> 00:24:41.280 The convention made the sweeping proposal that ministerial associations, each headed 204 00:24:41.280 --> 00:24:48.640 by a standing council, should have the power to examine and license ministers, and assign 205 00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:51.880 ministers to the various churches. 206 00:24:51.880 --> 00:24:56.960 The proposals were eventually adopted, with the exception of the rule of each association 207 00:24:56.960 --> 00:24:58.860 by a council. 208 00:24:58.860 --> 00:25:05.540 The result of the change was a shift of Massachusetts Puritanism in the direction, though not a 209 00:25:05.540 --> 00:25:12.600 complete adoption, of Presbyterian ecclesiology. Sturdy liberal resistance to this shift was 210 00:25:12.600 --> 00:25:19.660 headed by the redoubtable Reverend John Wise. Defending congregational polity, Wise published 211 00:25:19.660 --> 00:25:29.460 two famous and widely read works, The Church's Quarrel Exposed, 1710, 2nd edition, 1715, 212 00:25:29.460 --> 00:25:35.620 and A Vindication of the Government of New England Churches, 1717. 213 00:25:35.620 --> 00:25:42.660 Impaled by his interest in the forms of church government, Wise widened his focus to society 214 00:25:42.660 --> 00:25:49.460 and government as a whole, steeping himself in the works of the great late 17th century 215 00:25:49.460 --> 00:26:05.460 The German jurist Samuel Pufendorf, Weiss concluded that, by natural right, all men are born free, thus extending the implications of his individualist argument far beyond church affairs. 216 00:26:05.460 --> 00:26:18.460 Weiss also concluded that power is originally in the people, and that government should limit the natural freedom of the individual as little as consistent with social peace. 217 00:26:18.460 --> 00:26:42.460 Wise leveled attention attack on rule by oligarchy. For what is it that cunning and learned men can't make the world swallow, as an article of their creed, if they are once invested with an uncontrollable power, and are to be the standing orators to mankind in matters of faith and obedience? 218 00:26:42.460 --> 00:26:48.980 The natural equality of all men in liberty meant that government was never established 219 00:26:48.980 --> 00:26:55.980 by God or nature to give one man a prerogative to insult over another.