At first the colonists felt themselves an outpost of Europe, a
forlorn hope of the Protestant Reformation. "We shall be as a
city upon a hill," said Winthrop. "The eyes of all people are
upon us." Their creed was Calvinism, then in its third generation
of dominion and a European doctrine which was not merely
theological but social and political. The emigrant Englishmen
were soon to discover that it contained a doctrine of human
rights based upon human needs. At the beginning of their novel
experience they were doubtless unaware of any alteration in their
theories. But they were facing a new situation, and that new
situation became an immense factor in their unconscious growth.
Their intellectual and moral problems shifted, as a boat shifts
her ballast when the wind blows from a new quarter. The John
Cotton preaching in a shed in the new Boston had come to "suffer
a sea-change" from the John Cotton who had been rector of St.
Botolph's splendid church in Lincolnshire. The "church without a
bishop" and the "state without a king" became a different church
and state from the old, however loyally the ancient forms and
phrases were retained.
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