But he had imagined a vain thing. For even as the century drew to its close, the old Bay colony was already drifting from its back-water moorings, out into the main current of the world's thought. None could know to what uncharted seas of political and religious radicalism they were bearing on. None could foresee the time when Calvin's Institutes would give way to the Suffolk Resolutions, when Adams would speak in place of Endicott, or the later day when Emerson would preach a new antinomianism more desolating than any known to Winthrop or Bradford.
This period is fully treated in Channing's _History of the United States_, I, chaps, VIII-XIV; and in Tyler's _England in America_, chaps. V-VII, IX-XIX. See also Fiske's _Old Virginia and Her Neighbours_, I, chaps. VII-XI, XIV; and Eggleston's _Beginners of a Nation_ and _The Transit of Civilization from England to America_. The constitutional aspects of the colonial settlements are exhaustively treated in Osgood's _The American Colonies in the 17th Century_. For the economic and social history of the colonies, see Bruce's _Social Life in Virginia_ and _The Economic History of Virginia in the 17th Century_, and Weeden's _Economic History of New England_. Contemporary pamphlets relating to the colonies are to be found in Force's _Tracts and Other Papers_, 4 vols. Washington, 1838. To understand the motives and ideals of the Separatists and Puritans one must read their own accounts. Of these, the most charming is Bradford's _History of Plymouth Plantation_. This, as well as Governor Winthrop's _Journal_, is printed in Jameson's _Original Narratives of Early American History_. Johnson's _Wonder Working Providence_, in the same collection, is a history from the point of view of a loyal Puritan of average education and intelligence. Morton's _New English Canaan_ (1632) and _The Simple Cobler of Aggawam_ (1647) are printed in Force's _Tracts and Other Papers_, vols. II, III. A hostile account of the Puritan experiment is in Samuel Gorton's _Letter to Nathaniel Morton_, in Force's _Tracts_, etc., vol. IV. About three quarters of a century after the founding of Massachusetts, Cotton Mather wrote his _Magnalia Christi Americana, or the Ecclesiastical History of New England_, 2 vols. Hartford, 1855. In Bk. I he gives an account of the founding from the point of view of one who felt that New England was then departing from the "primitive principles."