There was a state without king or nobles; there was a church without a bishop;1 there was a people governed by grave magistrates which it had selected, and by equal laws which it had framed.
ATTRIBUTION:
Speech before the New England Society, Dec. 22, 1843.
Note 1. The Americans equally detest the pageantry of a king and the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop.—Junius: Letter xxxv. Dec. 19, 1769. Compare the anonymous poem “The Puritans’ Mistake,” published by Oliver Ditson in 1844:— “Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring A Church without a bishop, a State without a King.”
It [Calvinism] established a religion without a prelate, a government without a king.—George Bancroft: History of the United States, vol. iii, chap. vi. [back]
