ABSTRACT
Nathaniel Ward's document built on prior efforts by the colony to compile the existing laws of the towns that made up the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as well as to suggest appropriate measures in those areas where the laws were silent. Although owing much too English common law, the Body of Liberties was nevertheless striking in its appeal to Old Testament biblical law. In form, the document was an extensive list of rights, procedures, and powers compiled by Nathaniel Ward, a preacher from nearby Ipswich, Massachusetts. As an artifact of its era, the Body of Liberties reflects the Puritans' struggle to reconcile faith with the realities of worldly disorder. Yet it remains compelling in that it contains the seeds not only of America's greatest achievement in civil liberties-the Bill of Rights-but also, in the embrace of slavery, of its most egregious error.
