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CHAPTER III. THE ILLUMINATION. JEFORE going farther in our story we pause to give a brief answer to ihe queries that have risen in the minds o some who remember the old times ir New England: How came there to be any Epis copalians or Episcopal church in a small Purita: town like Poganuc? The Episcopal Church in New England in thf early days was emphatically a root out of dry ground, with as little foothold in popular sym pathy as one of those storm-driven junipers, tha' the east wind blows all aslant, has in the rocky ledges of Cape Cod. The soil, the climate, the atmosphere, the genius, and the history of the people were all against it. Its forms and ceremonies were all associated with the persecution which drove the Puritans out of England and left 'them no refuge but the rock-bound shores of America. It is true that in the time of Governor Winthrop the colony of Massachusetts appealed with affectionate professions to their Mother, the Church of England, and sought her sympathy and her prayers; but it is also unfortunately true that the forms of the Church of England were cultivated and maintained in New England by the very party whose intolerance and tyranny brought on the Revolutionary war. All the oppressive governors of the colonies were Episcopalians, and in the Revolutionary struggle the Episcopal Church was very generally on the Tory side ; hence, the New Englanders came to have an aversion to its graceful and beautiful ritual and forms for the same reason that the free party in Spain and Italy now loathe the beauties of the Romish Church, as signs and symbols of tyranny and oppression. Congregationalism—or, as it was then called by the common people,Presbyterianism—was the religion established by law in New England. It was the State Church. Even i...
