The religious people of Massachusetts were the Puritans. The Puritans were a group of English Protestants who believed that the Church of England had become corrupt and that the only way to worship God properly was to purify it. They left England in the 1620s and 1630s to establish a new colony in America where they could practice their religion freely. The Puritans were very strict in their religious beliefs and they practiced a form of Christianity that was very different from the beliefs of the Church of England. They believed that the Bible was the only source of religious truth and that all people should be able to read and understand it. They also believed that everyone was predestined to either heaven or hell and that there was nothing that people could do to change their fate. The Puritans were very intolerant of other religions and they often persecuted people who did not share their beliefs.