They had only desired a
simpler service. But when they landed in America they did in fact
separate from the Church of England. England was so far away; the
great ocean was between them and all the laws of Church and King.
It seemed easy to cast them off, and they did.
So bishops were done away with, great parts of the Common Prayer
Book were rejected, and the service as a whole made much more
simple. And as they wished to keep their colony free of people who
did not think as they did the founders of Massachusetts made a law
that only Church members might have a vote.
With the Plymouth Pilgrims, however, Separatists though they were,
these Puritans were on friendly terms. The Governors of the two
colonies visited each other to discuss matters of religion and
trade, and each treated the other with great respect and ceremony.
We read how when Governor Winthrop went to visit Governor Bradford
the chief people of Plymouth came forth to meet him without the town,
and led him to the Governor's house. There he and his companions
were entertained in goodly fashion, feasting every day and holding
pious disputations. Then when he departed again, the Governor of
Plymouth with the pastor and elders accompanied him half a mile
out of the town in the dark.
But although the Puritans of Massachusetts were friendly enough
with dissenters beyond their borders they soon showed that within
their borders there was to be no other Church than that which they
had set up.
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