The sermons were often doctrinal, metaphysical, and extremely dry, but it
is a mistake to conclude that the clergy did not speak on topics of current
interest. Winthrop in his _Journal_ for 1639 relates how the Rev. John
Cotton discussed whether a certain shopkeeper, who had been arraigned
before the court for extortion, for having taken "in some small things,
above two for one," was guilty of sin and should be excommunicated from the
church, or only publicly admonished. Cotton prescribed admonition and he
laid down a code of ethics for the guidance of sellers.

With the exception of Roger Williams (1604?-1683), who had the modern point
of view in insisting on complete "soul liberty," on the right of every man
to think as he pleased on matters of religion, the Puritan clergy were not
tolerant of other forms of worship. They said that they came to New England
in order to worship God as they pleased. They never made the slightest
pretense of establishing a commonwealth where another could worship as he
pleased, because they feared that such a privilege might lead to a return
of the persecution from which they had fled. If those came who thought
differently about religion, they were told that there was sufficient room
elsewhere, in Rhode Island, for instance, whither Roger Williams went after
he was banished from Salem. The history of the Puritan clergy would have
been more pleasing had they been more tolerant, less narrow, more modern,
like Roger Williams. Yet perhaps it is best not to complain overmuch of the
strange and somewhat repellent architecture of the bridge which bore us
over the stream dividing the desert of royal and ecclesiastical tyranny
from the Promised Land of our Republic. Let us not forget that the clergy
insisted on popular education; that wherever there was a clergyman, there
was almost certain to be a school, even if he had to teach it himself, and
that the clergy generally spoke and acted as if they would rather be "free
among the dead than slaves among the living."