Southern New England, 1638-45, image 6 of 19
Site of Newman’s Barn New Haven, Connecticut
“But in June of the next year preliminary measures were taken for a permanent political organization. These were of a remarkable character, whether looked upon as an instance of the intense earnestness of the religious convictions of the Puritans, or of the submissive deference they were accustomed to yield to their spiritual guides. The whole community gathered together in a barn – for want of any other building large enough to hold them – and the first business of the assembly was to listen to a sermon of instruction and exhortation from Mr. Davenport. (The tradition is that the barn belonged to Robert Newman, and it is supposed to have stood at the corner of Grove and Temple Streets, on land afterwards occupied by the house of Noah Webster, the lexicographer.) His text was from Proverbs ix. 1: ‘Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars.’ Herein he found warrant and direction for the gathering of a Church and the formation of a State.”
“The Church was to rest upon seven pillars and the foundation of the State was the Church. The right and the duty to gather the one and create the other were inherent, no derivative. There was no recognition of either hierarch or king. The assembled people were to choose from among themselves twelve men the most esteemed for their virtue and their wisdom, and these twelve were to elect seven others who were to be the seven pillars. On the pillars the Church was to be built; the seven men, that is, were to call about them such persons as they deemed fit to be members of the Church, and these members were to form the state. For in the Scriptures was to be found a perfect rule for the guidance and government of men in all human affairs, in the family, in the commonwealth, in the church. Church-membership was citizenship; he who was not fit for that, was unfit for this, for the state must be ‘according to God.’”