Old Deluder Satan Law (1642)
Massachusetts Bay Colony, along with the Colony of Connecticut in 1647, passed the Old Deluder Satan Law to prevent illiteracy and to prevent the abuse of power over a population ignorant of Scriptures, as had been the case in Europe. The law instituted:
<It being one chiefe project of that old deluder, Sathan, to keepe men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former time, and that learning may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers in church and Commonwealth....
It is therefore ordered by this Court...that every township within this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty howshoulders, shall forthwith appoint one within theire towne, to teach all such children as shall resorte to him, to write and read.... and it is further ordered, That where any towne shall increase to the number of one hundred families or howshoulders, they shall sett up a grammar schoole for the university.> 1642OD001
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1642OD001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Old Deluder Satan Law, 1642, passed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and The Code of 1650-Being a Compilation of the Earliest Laws and Orders of the General Court of Connecticut (Hartford: Silus Andrus, 1822), pp. 20-91, 92-94. The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, 1648 (reprinted Cambridge: 1929), cited in McCollum v. Board of Education, 68 S.Ct. 461, 333 U.S. 203 (1948). Records of the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, II:203. Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 US 457, 458, 465-471, 36 L ed 226, Justice David Josiah Brewer. Henry Steele Commager, ed., Documents of American History, 2 vols. (NY: F.S. Crofts and Company, 1934; Appleton- Century-Crofts, Inc., 1948, 6th edition, 1958; Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 9th edition, 1973), Vol. I, p. 29. John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution-The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, A Mott Media Book, 1987, 6th printing 1993), p. 28. The Annals of America, 20 vols. (Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968), Vol. I, p. 203. John Wilson Taylor, M.A., Ph.D., et al., The Lincoln Library of Essential Information (Buffalo, New York: The Frontier Press Company, 1935), p. 1623. D.P. Diffine, Ph.D., One Nation Under God-How Close a Separation? (Searcy, Arkansas: Harding University, Belden Center for Private Enterprise Education, 6th edition, 1992), p. 2.