Excerpt from The State and Federal Governments of the United States: A Brief Manual for Schools and Colleges 5. The first New Englanders, moreover, were religious refugees. They had left the Old World to escape the Old World's persecutions and in order to find independence of worship; they were establishing a church as well as a com munity; they acted as organized congregations; their life was both spiritually and temporally organic. Close geographical association, therefore, such as was virtually forced upon them by the conditions of livelihood by which they found themselves constrained, accorded well with their higher social purposes. The church could be made, by such association, and accordingly was made, the vital nerve-centre of their union: the minister was the ruling head of the community, and church membership was in several of the settlements recognized as identical with citizenship. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.