ABSTRACT
The struggle over toleration of religious difference in New England was bitter, John Cotton (1584-1652), educated in the intensely Puritan atmosphere of the University of Cambridge in the early seventeenth century and later, a friend of John Winthrop, migrated to Boston in 1633. He became an eloquent exponent of the New England way against the separatist position of Roger Williams. His approval of the use of political authority to discipline religious dissent made him the target of Williams's anger after Williams had been banished from Massachusetts Bay in 1635.
