ABSTRACT
The Old World tradition contemplated a close relation between church and state. The church taught civil obedience, and the state enforced church decisions. Persons convicted of heresy by the spiritual courts were burned at the stake by the civil authorities. Religious belief and worship were community, not individual, concerns. The Anglicans who settled at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607 contemplated no changes in the relations between their church and their government. The Puritans who settled at Massachusetts Bay in 1630 sought to effect a reformation within the Anglican Church, but looked for no essential change in church-state relations. In the proprietary colonies of East and West Jersey the desire to attract buyers and tenants of land was in part responsible for a substantial measure of religious toleration. There was no established church in these colonies. Religious freedom existed only in Rhode Island. Toleration in varying degrees was to be found in New Netherland under Dutch rule, and in the proprietary colonies.
