I am to leave behind me, or any other outward | voluntary exile as their wisest expedient. Even thing, should enforce me, by the denial of God's this course, however, was beset with difficulty. truth, contrary to my conscience, to sell my own They could escape only by secret means; to be soul. The Lord, I trust, will never give me over detected was to fall into the snare they were so to this sin. Great things in this life I never sought much concerned to avoid. But the thought of the for, not so much as in thought. A mean and base religious freedom which might be enjoyed in Holoutward state, according to my mean condition, I land was so welcome, that for that object numbers was content with. Sufficiency I have had, with became willing to bear the pains of separation great outward troubles, but most contented I was from their native land, and to brave the dangers with my lot, and content I am, and shall be, with of attempting to withdraw from it. Many made my undeserved and untimely death, beseeching that attempt with success, but some were less forthe Lord that it be not laid to the charge of any tunate. An instance of the latter kind is recorded creature in this land. For I do, from my heart, in the history of Robinson, a clergyman, who had forgive all those who seek my life, as I desire to embraced the principles of the Brownists, but who be forgiven in the day of strict account, praying so far modified those principles on some points as for them as for my own soul, that although upon to bring them more into the form of modern conearth we cannot accord, we may yet meet in hea-gregationalism, and who, on that account, is genven, unto our eternal comfort and unity. Sub-erally regarded as the father of the English Indescribed with the heart and the hand which never pendents. Robinson, and a large company, condevised or wrote anything to the discredit or defa- tracted with the master of a ship for a passage to mation of my sovereign Queen Elizabeth, I take Holland. They were to embark at Boston, in it on my death as hope to have a life after this. Lincolnshire, on a certain day, and from a point By me, John Penry." agreed upon. The captain was not punctual. At length, however, the vessel arrived and, under cover of the night, the men, and women, and children, all reached the ship in safety. But the captain was a villain. He betrayed them to the officers of the port. The passengers and their goods were immediately removed from the vessel to several boats in waiting to receive them. All their property was turned over and examined, and not a little of it rifled. The persons of the men were searched "even to their shirts," and the women were treated with indelicacy and rudeness. When these unhappy people reached the town, crowds assembled to gaze upon them, and many mocked and derided them. Nor was their condition improved when brought before the magistrates. Several were bound over to the assizes, and all were committed to prison. Some were released after the confinement of a few weeks, others after a longer period.

Penry wrote in terms equally noble-hearted and devout to the brethren of the fugitive church adhering to his principles, and still existing in London. On the eighth day after his trial, a warrant was issued for his execution; and on that same day, preparations were made for giving it effect. He was taken in a cart from the Queen's Bench prison, Southwark, to St. Thomas Waterings, the place where the gallows then stood. All had been done with indecent haste. No crowd had assembled to stimulate him to manhood by their presence, or to greet him with their sympathies. No friend stood near to drop one word of counsel or encouragement. He had his place alone. To God only-the last refuge of those deserted by man-could he look. The life in his veins flowed in its full vigor, for he was still in the thirty-fourth year of his age. But the power to which he was subject had no pity; the rope was placed about his neck; the signal was given, and for a cause which scarcely merited punishment at all, he hung there until dead-the scholar, and the man of piety, consigned to the same doom with the murderer.

But the good people of England, and especially of the metropolis, had their musings and speeches about these proceedings. The men so dealt with were known to be sound protestants-men of piety, loyalty, and learning; and concerning the government, the prelates, and, above all, concerning Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the great patron of these measures, much was said, which conveyed a meaning that could not have been welcome in those quarters. From this time the punishment of such alleged offences by hanging was deemed inexpedient. It was accounted more safe to pursue the same course by means of imprisonment or banishment. The instincts of humanity have often risen up in this form, as a monitory and controlling power, which even the strongest despotism has not reckoned it prudent wholly to disregard. The most successful tyrants have been thus made to learn that there is a point beyond which outraged humanity must not be expected to be silent or submissive.

But imprisonment in those times, from its duration and its miseries, was hardly less terrible, to those who really knew what it meant, than capital punishment; and the long-harassed people to whom we refer began to think very generally of

This happened in 1602. In the following spring, Robinson and his friends resolved on making a second attempt of this nature. They made an arrangement for this purpose with a Dutch captain; and their plan now was, that the men should assemble on a large common, between Grimsby and Hull, a place chosen on account of its remoteness from any town; while the women, the children, and the property of these parties, were to be conveyed to that point of the coast in a barque. The men made their way to the place of rendezvous, in small companies, by land. But the barque reached its destination a day before the ship. The swell of the sea was considerable, and as the females were suffering greatly from that cause, the sailors ran the barque into the shelter of a small creek. The next morning the ship arrived, but through some negligence on the part of the seamen, the vessel containing the women, their little ones, and the property, had run aground. The men stood in groups on the shore, and that no time might be lost, the captain of the ship sent his boat to convey some of them on board. But by this time, so considerable a gathering of people in such a place, and in a manner so unusual, had attracted attention; information had been conveyed to persons of authority in the neighborhood; and as the boat which had taken the greater part of the men to the ship was proceeding again towards the shore, the captain saw a large company, armed with swords and muskets, and con

sisting of horse and foot, advancing towards the those principles finding any friendly shelter in point where the barque was still ashore, and where England. It was this state of things which sugthe few remaining men had grouped together. gested the expediency of attempting a settlement Fearing the consequences of his illicit compact, the in the New World. Persecution in England, and captain returned to the ship, hoisted sail, and was apathy in Holland, seemed to point to that course. speedily at sea. Robinson-honest and able gen-Nor were the feelings of loyalty without their eral as he was in every sense-had resolved to be influence in this matter. Even in the land of the the last to embark. He was a witness, accord- stranger, this much-injured people never failed to ingly, of the scene of distress and agony which evince some pride in speaking of King James as ensued. The outburst of grief was not to be re- their "natural prince;" and they manifestly strained. Some of the women wept aloud, others shrunk from the thought of seeing their children felt too deeply, or were too much bewildered, to cease to be subjects of the British crown. Engindulge in utterance of any kind; while the chil- land was still their mother-land; its institutions dren, partly from seeing what had happened, and were the bequests of their own noble-hearted partly from a vague impression that something fathers; and, after all their ill treatment, to no dreadful had come, mingled their sobs and cries spot on earth did the generous nature of these in the general lamentation. As the sail of that exiles turn with so much force of affection. Their ship faded away upon the distant waters, the fear, they say, was, "that their posterity would in wives felt as if one stroke had reduced them all to a few generations become Dutch, and so lose their widowhood, and every child that had reached the interest in the English nation;" while their own years of consciousness, felt as one who in a mo- desire rather was, "to enlarge his majesty's ment had become fatherless. But thus dark are dominions, and to live under their natural prince." the chapters in human affairs in which the good Moreover, "a great hope and inward zeal they have often to become students, and from which had of laying some good foundation, or, at least, they have commonly had to learn their special to make some way thereunto for the propagating lessons. The ship soon encountered foul weather, and advancement of the gospel of the kingdom of and after being driven far along the coast of Nor-Christ in those remote parts of the world-yea, way, all hope of saving her being at one time abandoned, she at length safely reached Holland. In the mean while, persecution at home was found to have become a more tedious and odious affair than formerly, and it so happened, in consequence, that by the year 1608, Robinson and the remainder of his company succeeded in leaving their native country, and in obtaining a quiet settlement in Leyden.

In that city the church under the care of Robinson increased until it numbered more than three hundred members, consisting almost wholly of English exiles Robinson himself was greatly respected by the clergy of Leyden, and by the professors in the university, and on more than one occasion the pastor of the Congregational church in that city gave public proof that his piety, his amiableness, and his eminently practical understanding, were allied with sound scholarship, and with much intellectual vigor and acuteness. He succeeded, also, in communicating much of his own well-regulated temper to his charge. We have good reason to believe that no church in Europe in that age exhibited more of the wise simplicity of a primitive church, or more of that correctness of habit by which we suppose the primitive churches to have been distinguished.

although they should be but as stepping-stones unto others for the performance of so great a work." These reasons in favor of such an enterprise were first debated in private. The more they were weighed, the more did obedience to them appear to be a duty. At length they were propounded in public. Solemn days of humiliation were then appointed, that the Divine will might be known. Some of those days were given to private meditation and prayer. On others, the heavenly guidance was sought by conjoint supplications in the house of God. In the end it was agreed-" that part of the church should go before their brethren into America, to prepare for the rest. And if in case the major part of the church should choose to go over with the first, then the pastor should go along with them; but if the major part stayed, that he should then stay with them."

Our own age is not likely to appreciate the spirit which prompted to this movement in the age of which we are writing. Our philosophy, in connexions of this sort, vain as we sometimes are of it, is, for the most part, a very superficial affair. Our greatest pretenders to sagacity in this shape, judge too much of other times by their own, and of other men by themselves. The theology of the But there are affinities between certain seeds Congregationalists in Leyden was that of all the and certain soils, and where these are wanting, reformed churches, but their principles in relation the husbandman may labor never so wisely, and to church polity and religious worship were pecustill reap only a small return. It is with the men- liar to themselves. These principles, moreover, tal in this respect as with the physical. This fact were not adopted as so many points of the expeis illustrated in the history of Independency in dient or the seemly, but were regarded as taught in Holland. In the hands of Robinson that system the Scriptures, and as taught there no less cerwas exhibited with every advantage, but the Hol-tainly than the doctrines of their theology. In landers were not to be attracted by it. On the contrary, the intermarriages between the exiles and the Dutch, the necessity laid upon many of the young to quit the homes of their parents, and some other causes, tended to diminish the number of the Independents, so that, after the lapse of ten years, it began to be apprehended that if some new course were not taken, the principles of the settlers, so far, at least, as Holland was concerned, were ikely to become extinct; and, which was more painful still, there was as little prospect as ever of

their judgment, the hand from which they had received the one had given them the other. The polity had come with the theology, because the former was in its nature the best adapted to secure the ends of the latter. Ages of darkness had obscured both, but the time had come in which the influence of the spirit of the Reformation should be extended equally to both. Care about the one was as truly a religious duty as care about the other. Churches constituted as those maxims required, were churches which must cease to be

of the world, and must stand forth as the manifest | late settlements along that extended coast, and to work of God. In them, the power of the worldly, the distance of a hundred miles inland. which had done so much to obscure the religion The Plymouth company had made little use of of the gospel, could have no place. In their their patent, until occasion was afforded them of instance, the religious must be fully emancipated doing so by the project of the congregation at Leyfrom the control of the secular; and the church, den. So many of those persons as had resolved to possessed of her proper freedom, be prepared to become colonists sold their property and threw the enter on the discharge of her proper mission. proceeds into a common stock, and their first exEvery such church is an enfranchised body, vested penditure from that fund was in the purchase of a with the full power of self-government. It is the small vessel of sixty tons, which bore the name of government of the religious in the church, adum- the Speedwell. In that vessel several of the brating the just government of the virtuous and the brethren, who were deputed to make some requistate. It exhibits man religiously as man should site negotiations in England, performed their be socially. It exacts a moral fitness, preparatory voyage and returned. But the Mayflower, a ship to the conferring of this franchise, and it confers of one hundred and eighty tons, was hired in Lonthe franchise wherever that fitness is realized. It don, to sail in company with the Speedwell. The is a polity devised by Infinite Wisdom to conserve former vessel was secured for the voyage only, the religious truth and religious order; and it contains latter, the colonists meant to retain for the service many suggestive lessons, which, if wisely applied, of the settlement. When the Speedwell reached might suffice to regenerate the condition of the Delft Haven, the brethren of the deputation proworld. Among the means of human improve-ceeded inland to Leyden, and reported faithfully to ment, accordingly, these principles are entitled to the congregation the result of their embassy. the highest place. Men have done well in having They had obtained a document which secured done so much to rescue from threatened oblivion to them liberty of worship, and had made the the remains of ancient literature and art. But in best terms they could, in other respects, with the these religious principles, so long buried amidst company of merchant adventurers at Plymouth. the ruins of the middle age, there were treasures And now came the season for separation. He of much greater worth. The precious things of was a bold man who was the first to commit himthe scholar or the virtuoso were so many frag-self to a passage across that world of waters which ments recovered from the past genius of man, but these elements of spiritual government were so much wisdom recovered from the lost revelation of God-the former might contribute to embellish the present, the latter possessed a power to embellish and ennoble the present and the fu

ture.

has been since found to separate between the shores of Europe and Africa, and those of the great western continent. We have sometimes thought, that of all the tests which have been applied to the courage and firmness of the human spirit, that must have been the greatest. Nor was it soon that the dangers and hardships of such a Robinson and his coadjutors may not have been voyage began to be thought inconsiderable. Piaccustomed to express themselves in these precise rates, and the ships of hostile nations, generally terms, but the thoughts which these terms convey infested those seas. The vessels of those times, were all familiar to them; and it was with views also, were few of them of a structure adapted to thus devout and expanded, that they contemplated brave the perils of such a voyage; and the intetheir removal to the distant regions of the west. rior economy of ships, if we may so speak, down Seed so precious was not to be lost, and how best to to a comparatively recent period, left those who conserve it until its wider diffusion should place its made long voyages subject to inconvenience, want, extinction beyond all danger, was their great solici- and disease, in a degree happily little known to tude. It is manifest, from their subsequent his- us. It was from these causes that so long an intory, that in some respects they still needed fur- terval passed after the discovery of North Amerither light concerning the province of the magis- ca, and so little was done towards establishing trate in regard to religion, but to the extent above any important relation between that continent and stated they had fairly proceeded. It may be said, Great Britain. We can excuse the pious men and indeed, that all this was so much delusion; the women of the congregation at Leyden, if when notions so valued are not taught in the New Tes- they looked forward to such a voyage, and to the tament, nor can they be shown to be pregnant possible beyond it, they had their moments in with any such marvellous tendencies as are thus which the prospect awakened in them something ascribed to them. Our answer is, that we are not like dismay. But with them, prayer had always concerned just now with the question of the truth or been the antagonist of fear. To look to their God falsehood of these opinions, nor with their real or in the time of trouble was to become strong. On supposed tendencies. We look to these princi- this memorable occasion, accordingly, they gave ples simply as having been entertained; and as themselves to religious exercises of special solemhaving been thus viewed; and in this matter of nity. A day of humiliation was appointed. On fact alone, we find enough to impart to the con- that day their pastor addressed them from the landuct of the pilgrim fathers the strictest consis-guage of the prophet Ezra-"I proclaimed a fast tency, and, withal, a dignity-a high moral heroism, which has not been surpassed, and which can hardly be said to have been equalled, in the history of ancient or modern nations.

Until 1614, the whole extent of country from Florida to Canada bore the name of North and South Virginia. From that year the northern division began to be known by the name of New England. James had chartered two companies of merchants, the one in London and the other in Plymouth, empowering them to make and regu

there at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict
our souls before God, to seek of him a right way
for us and for our little ones, and for all our sub-
stance." Many suitable counsels were given to
them, of the nature of which some judgment may
be formed from the following passage :-
"Brethren,"

66
said Robinson, we are now
quickly to part from one another, and whether I
may ever live to see your face on earth any more, the
God of heaven only knows; but whether the Lord
has appointed that or no, I charge you, before

God and his blessed angels, that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

"If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am verily persuaded the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy word. For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed churches, who are come to a period in reliligion, and will go at present no further than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw whatever part of his will our good God has revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. And the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things.

"This is a misery much to be lamented, for though they were burning and shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into the whole council of God; but were they now living, would be as willing to embrace further light as that which they first received, for it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick antichristian darkness, and that perfection of knowledge should break forth at once.

"I must also advise you to abandon, avoid, and shake off the name BROWNIST. It is a mere nickname, and a brand for the making religion and the professors of it odious to the Christian world."

ven upon them! Mutual embraces followed, and that leave-taking came, which, to the greater number, was a last leave. The wind was fair. The ship now glided from her place; all her canvass was spread, and soon the eye, straining to retain the sight of the faint and cloud-like sail, saw nothing save the blue line of the distant sea!

The Speedwell soon reached Southampton. where the Mayflower, with some brethren on board who had not returned to Holland, was awaiting her arrival. The colonists being all now assembled, expressed their mutual congratulations, and directed their thoughts more intently towards their new home. Several weeks, however, were still occupied in making the necessary provisions for so responsible an undertaking. At length, on the 5th of August, in the year 1620, the Speedwell and Mayflower sailed from Southampton. But they had not proceeded far, before Reynolds, the master of the Speedwell, complained of that vessel as being in an unsound state, and insisted that it would be perilous to venture across the Atlantic in her, without considerable repairs. Both ships, accordingly, put in at Dartmouth, from which place, after the Speedwell had been caulked, they again set sail. But when they had run about a hundred leagues, Reynolds again complained of the ship, and both vessels returned to Plymouth. The Speedwell was there abandoned, and the whole company committed themselves to their voyage in the Mayflower. It proved afterwards There is enough in the enlightened candor and that Reynolds was treacherous, either fearing that vigorous perception evinced in this passage, to jus- the provisions would not be adequate, or that the tify the highest praise bestowed on this eminently expedition from other causes would be a failure. gifted man. In the religious service adverted to, The Speedwell performed several voyages subseinstruction was followed by prayer, prayer became quently without danger. These delays were the that of deep feeling, and deep feeling found its more to be regretted, as the summer was now vent in abundance of tears. The majority of the past, and the prospect was that of a winter voyage. congregation determined to remain for the present On the 6th of September, the Mayflower sailed in Leyden, and Robinson, as before provided in from Plymouth, and made her way, with a fair that case, was to remain with them. The number wind, to the southwest, until the faint headlands of the colonists was about one hundred and twen- of Old England became to the pilgrims like so ty. Most of their brethren, especially the more much faded cloud, and at length wholly disapaged, accompanied them from Leyden to the neigh-peared. They had most of them sighed farewell boring port of Delft Haven; and thus, says their to the coast of their mother country before, when own historian," they left that good and pleasant city, which had been their resting-place about eleven years." They found the ship in readiness for departure. Some of their friends, who could not accompany them on their leaving Leyden, now contrived to join them; others came from Amsterdam, all being desirous of seeing them once more, and of deferring their farewell to the last moment in which it might be uttered. One night still remained to them. It was a night, we are told, of little sleep; and was employed "in friendly en-voyager, on regaining the sight of the green earth, tertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love. The next day they went on board, when truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting; to hear what sighs, and sobs, and prayers did sound among them; what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each others heart; that sundry of the Dutch strangers that stood spectators could not refrain from tears!"

But the tide now seemed to rebuke these delays. Separation, however painful, could be deferred no longer. Robinson fell upon his knees, the whole company around threw themselves into the same posture, and while every cheek of man, of woman, and of their little ones, was bedewed with tears, the man of God sent up his parting prayer from their midst for the much needed blessing of Hea

they had fled from her shores in search of a resting-place in Holland. But this farewell must have been uttered with a deeper feeling, as being more like their last!

The voyage was long, rough, and painful, and at more than one time perilous. In the ninth week the pilgrims came within sight of land, which, on a nearer approach, proved to be that of Cape Cod. The Hudson River, their place of destination, lay farther southward. But the weary

is eager to plant his foot upon it. The pilgrims yielded to this impulse, and as they reached the shore, "fell upon their knees, and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from many perils and miseries." It is not too much, to say, that in that first prayer from the soil of the New World, ascending from so feeble a brotherhood amidst a wilderness so desolate, there were the seeds of a new civilization for mankind, the elements of all freedom for all nations, and the power which in its turn shall regenerate all the empires of the earth. Half a day was thus spent. The pilgrims then urged the captain to pursue his course southward. But the Dutch had resolved to establish settlements of their own in those parts, and had bribed the commander to frustrate the

The Bay of Cape Cod is formed by a tongue of land, which juts out from the continent for thirty miles directly eastward into the sea; it then curves to the north, and stretches as a still narrower strip in that direction to about the same extent. The bay itself, accordingly, is somewhere about thirty miles across either way, being bounded by the main land on the west, by a curved tongue of land on the south and east, and being open to the sea, in its full width, on the north. The second | their third day of search.