Building the first houses Francis Bacon expressed the common opinion about them: As for those whom we called Brownists, being, when they were at the most, a very small number of very silly and base people here and there in corners dispersed, they are now (thanks be to God) by the good remedies that have been used, suppressed and worn out, so there is scarce any news of them. By the time they emerged from their exile the movement of which they were a part had already broadened. They were aware of the ties that bound them to the multitudes of Englishmen who belonged to the new order. To religiously minded people at that time America was not looked upon as a land of exile, but as a land of opportunity. It was that part of the king's dominion toward which those who were eager for spiritual adventure naturally turned. So conservative a churchman as George Herbert wrote: Religion stands on tiptoe in our land The official censor hesitated to allow the book containing these lines, so dangerous to those who suffered from religious unrest, to be published. Professor Palmer has told us that Herbert was thinking of Virginia and not of New England, but his lines are suggestive of the direction of men's thought. The field of spiritual adventure lay on the western shores of the Atlantic. We know what the "Western fever" meant to the Americans of the nineteenth century. It was in the blood of all men who were eager to make a larger place for themselves than was possible in the long-settled parts of the country. Seventeenth-century Englishmen felt the same impulse, and yielded to it in much the same way. And in yielding they were not cutting themselves off from their own country; they were taking part in its expansion. The congregation in Leyden, said Governor Bradford, "had a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world." When the proposition to remove to one of the unpeopled regions of America was made public "it raised many variable opinions amongst men, and caused many fears and doubts among themselves." There were stories of atrocious Indians who Not being contente only to kill, and take away life, but delight to tormente men in the most bloodie maner that may be flesing some alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off the members and joynts of others by peasmeale and broiling on Going to church the coles, eate the collips of their flesh in their sight while they live: with other cruelties horrible to be related. But none of these things moved the more courageous members of the community. It was answered that all great and honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome by answerable courages. It was granted that the dangers were great but not desperate; the difficulties were many but not invincible. For though there were many of them likely they were not certaine; it might be that sundrie of the things feared might never befall, others by providente care and the use of good means might in a great measure be prevented; and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be borne or overcome. They were reminded that they lived in Holland "as men in exile," and that there was but one way of escape. "After many other particular things answered and aledged on both sides it was fully concluded by the major parte to put this design in execution, and to prosecute it by the best means they could." Years before, while still in England, they had, "as the Lords free people, joyned themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate, in the fellowship of the gospell, to walke in all his wayes made known unto them or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it would cost them, the Lord assisting them." But their church had been a voluntary organization without power to determine community life. They wanted to do what Calvin had done in Geneva, and Knox in Scotland, to give full political expression to their religious convictions. It was because he had suspected they were at heart revolutionists of a dangerous type that King James had driven them out of England. While he was still only king in Scotland he had learned that Calvinism was something more than a system of theology; it involved a theory that was hostile to the divine right of kings to rule. In Germany the Reformation had first excited the hopes of the people and then disappointed them. The peasants' revolt, with its threat of a great social revolution, had frightened Luther. Henceforth he put his trust in princes and supported their claims to authority. But in France the Reformation took a different turn. A young Frenchman, John Calvin, issued a book on "The Institutes of the Christian Religion" which had an effect on the revolutionary forces of the seventeenth century like that which the works of Rousseau had on the revolution The first Thanksgiving of the eighteenth century. Both men began with the statement of abstract ideas, but these abstractions were taken up by thousands of their contemporaries and applied to the political problems of the day. It is interesting that both these men found their home in the free city of Geneva. Calvin's entrance into Geneva was dramatic, and his career a stormy one. With all the self-confidence of youth he "took over" the government of the city. The doctrine of the direct sovereignty of God was applied to municipal affairs. Geneva was ruled in the name of the Invisible King. The Scotch Calvinist Andrew Melville confronted the absolutism of King James with a doctrine which was equally uncompromising: "There are two kings in Scotland, King James and Jesus Christ whose subject King James is and in whose kingdom he is not a king nor a lord over head but a member." As a pious theory, James would have assented to the sovereignty of God. What he objected to was the Calvinistic claim that the ordinary man with the Bible in his hand was competent to decide between the conflicting claims of the two sovereigns. When he came to the throne of England he determined to make an open fight for the royal prerogative. It was in 1604, in the famous conference at Hampton Court, that James in pithy sentences declared that he was prepared to fight Puritans, Presbyterians, and Separatists to the death. They might differ among themselves, but they were all one to him. They all agreed in undermining the royal authority. "If you aim at a Scottish presbytery it agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will shall meet and censure me and my council." As for toleration of such sedition, he would have none of it. "Stay I pray you for one seven years before you demand: and then if I grow pursy and fat I may purchance hearken unto you; for that government will keep me in breath and give me work enough." Rising in his wrath the king cried, "I will make them conform, or else I will harry them out of the land or else I will do worse." The story of the attempt to carry out that threat involves the fortunes of the English people on both sides of the Atlantic. The conflict did not end till the head of the son of King James was laid upon the block. When Laud and Strafford began the policy of "thorough," indignant Puritans swarmed across the sea. The passions stirred by persecution found fierce expression in the new land, and there was the very human desire for retaliation. King James had declared, "No Bishop, no King." In Massachusetts men boldly said that the commonwealth could get along without either. In England people were beginning to say the same things. In the great controversy the English people on both sides of the ocean were equally interested. They read the same vitriolic pamphlets and discussed them with the acrimony which is possible only among fellow An attack by the Indians countrymen. Roger Williams recommends a book of Milton to a London lady of conservative principles. She replies that she has too much respect for the memory of her dear father to read anything written by such a wicked revolutionist. "As for Milton's book which you desire that I should read, that is he that wrote a book on the lawfulness of divorce, and if report says true he had at that time two or three wives. This perhaps were good doctrine in New England but it were abominable in Old England." Then she adds: "But you should have seen the answer to it. If you can get it I assure you it is worth reading." To this good lady New England was a dangerous region, just the place for wild radicals of polygamous habits like John Milton. In the meantime sermons preached in Massachusetts before approving magistrates, by ministers who were known to the English police, were reprinted in London. The more controversial they were, the more eagerly they were read. That the doctrines were revolutionary was nothing against them in the eyes of those who believed that radical changes were necessary. The English preachers were becoming equally bold despite all repressive laws. "It was the Puritan pulpit," said Dr. South, "that supplied the field with swordsmen and the Parliament with incendiaries." The pathos of the early story of the Pilgrims must not blind us to the fact that they were on the winning side. The party that they represented grew in power until it at length imposed its will upon England and all her dominions. That the triumph was temporary did not make it less complete in the eyes of those who witnessed it. To those who had taken part in it it seemed the beginning of a new era which should endure. When Strafford and Laud had perished and the power of King Charles had been overthrown, they seemed to hear the angel of the Book of the Revelation: And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven saying, the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever. And the four and twenty angels which sat before God on their seats fell upon their faces and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art and wast and art to come, because thou hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned. Governor Bradford, in 1646, on re-reading his history of the Plymouth Plantation, adds a note on the reverse of a page in which he had told the pathetic story of the early trials of the Pilgrims. Full little did I thinke that the downfall of the Bishops with their courts, cannons and ceremonies had been so neare when I first begane these scribled writings (which was aboute the year 1630, and so peeced up at times of leasure A Puritan home afterward) or that I should have lived to have seene or heard of the same but it is the Lord's doing and ought to be marvellous in our eyes. "Every plante which our heavenly father hath not planted (saith our Saviour) shall be rooted out. I have snared thee and thou art taken, O Babell [Bishops] and thou wast not aware, thou art found, and also caught, because thou hast striven against the Lord." Do you not now see the fruits of your labours O all yee servants of the Lord, that have suffered for his truth, and have been faithful witnesses of the same, and ye little handfull among the rest, the least among the thousands of Israel? For yee not only had a seede time, but many of you have seen the joyfull harvest. Should you not then rejoyse, yea and again rejoyse, and say Hallelujah, salvation and glory and honour and power be to the Lord our God; for true and righteous are his judgments. Bradford's postscript, with its cry of triumph, is worth considering, for it gives dramatic unity to the lives of the Pilgrims. They had a definite program, and it was accomplished. Within a single lifetime it was possible to see the seed-sowing and the harvest. And the harvest was greater than any of the little company had imagined to be possible. There had come to Bradford the news of the Battle of Naseby, the storming of Bristol, and the surrender of Charles to the Scots. And with the political and military success there was the triumph of the religious ideas of the Puritans. Parliament had on the advice of the assembly of divines revolutionized the discipline of the church. No more should the sign of the cross be used in baptism, the communion table should be set in the body of the church, the ring should not be used in marriage, there should be no wearing of vestments, no prescribed forms of prayer, no keeping of saints' days. All the points for which Plymouth and Salem in the days of adversity had contended had been accepted by those who ruled all England. The story has a dramatic completeness like that of the antislavery movement or the unification of Italy. Let us not blur the outlines of the picture by confusing it with ideas that belong to another era. One who watched at the death-bed of Oliver Cromwell, and who heard him praying, said "a public spirit to God's cause did breathe in him to the very last." In these words are expressed the soul of the Puritan Revolution. The men who struggled in behalf of the English Commonwealth believed that they knew what God's cause was. It was not a private virtue; it was large and public, and to be expressed in civil institutions for whose maintenance they were directly responsible. They were ardent patriots and believed that to their own nation, in their own time, was given the honor of setting up a government in accordance with the revealed will of God. Let us think of them in the moments when they were filled with the glowing sense of the immediate realization of their ideal. Milton expressed their mood: |