out going into any comparisons which such a judgment might provoke, it is enough to see in it the strong hand of God acting through novel instruments to break fetters which for ages had shackled all free motion of the common mind of England; disenchanting it of that fictitious and exaggerated reverence for a hierarchy which had hindered its presuming to think for itself; demonstrating that an unknown man might not only differ intrepidly if not victoriously with a Doctor in Divinity, even when clad in the lawn sleeves of a magnate of the church, but might cite the Bishops as a class before the highest courtthe great star-chamber of the common sense and common conscience of the world-and triumph, though he died; so heartening every plain believer to study his Bible for himself, and for himself conclude (meekly and in the fear of Him whose Word it is) what that Bible was designed to teach men, whether the great prelates hear or forbear! Even a heathen poet could sing: Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair, Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1721-4. Plures efficimur, quoties metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis Christianorum. Tertulliani Apologeticus adv. Gentes, &c., 50. Et quis non videat quantum adjuverit Ecclesiam sanguis Ecclesia? Quanta ex illa semente seges toto orbe surrexerit. S. Augustini Episcopi. In Psalmum cxviii, Enar. Ser. xxxii, 6. Ligabantur, includebantur, cædebantur, torquebantur, urebantur, laniabantur, trucidabantur, et multiplicabantur. S. Augustini Episcopi. De Civitate Dei, Lib. xxii, 6. Καὶ τὸ αἷμα τῶν μαρτύρων ἄρδον τὰς ἐκκλησίας, πολυπλασίονας τοὺς ἀγωνιστὰς τῆς εὐσεβείας ἐξέτρεφε, τῷ ζήλω τῶν προλαβόντων ἐπαποδυομένων τῶν ἐφεξῆς. S. Basili Caes. Cap. Archiep. Epistola clxiv: 1. At inter Christianos mortem ob suum dogma perpessos fuere homines de plebe plurimi, vix vicinis suis cogniti, mulieres, virgines, adolescentes, quibus nec appetitus inerat nec spes probabilis duraturi nominis. Hugo Grotius, de Veritate Relig. Chris., ii: 22. Our God (wee trust) will one day rapse up an other Tohn For, to gather and compile the Actes and Monuments of his later Martyrs, for the vew of posteritie; tho pet they seem to bee burped in oblivion, and sleep in the dust. Preface to a True Confession, etc. (1596), v. HE author of the Epistle to the Hebrews said to those whom he addressed: "Ye did not yet resist unto blood, striving against sin;" and whatever nice shade of special meaning its true critical explanation may put upon the phrase, allusion seems clear to the fact that only through painfullest passages can humanity climb to its highest heights. Especially has the history of the world continually been furnishing illustrations of the fact that in men's collective life, and in the case of most individuals, as well, there is a genuine sense in which, with reverence, it may be declared of all successful emergence from long and great calamity: "without shedding of blood is no remission." In the Providential development of the English Reformation the time had now come when Robert Browne had substantially outlined before a well nigh faithless generation the simple, original church polity, so that eyes which were not holden could see it; and something of the spell and stupor which, during dark centuries, had bound the people in unquestioning, if not unmurmuring, submission to the hierarchy, had been shattered and dispelled by Martin Mar-prelate's rough handling of the Bishops; and by the pregnant fact that almost equally by what he had said in attack, and what they and their attorneys had replied in defence, it was beginning to dawn upon the common sense of many Englishmen that although they had always been esteeming these prelates, if not as gods, yet as children of the Most High, they were, in reality, like men, and quite able to "fall like one of the princes." In the disorganization of former beliefs, a few turned to the new-old creed. But they were almost wholly among the common people, and had had small advantage of the universities. Who were they that, as exegetes and ecclesiastical experts, they should assume to instruct their betters? Pursued unsparingly with fine and imprisonment, and exposed perpetually to that most effectual, because most cutting, of all forms of hostility, intellectual contempt; only by being molten in the furnace of affliction could they come forth as gold. And so God ordered it that Congregationalism should again have its martyrs — as it had had in the beginning. Governor Bradford, in his Dialogue, or the Sum of a Conference between some Young Men born in New England, and Sundry Ancient men that came out of Holland and Old England (1648), says: ' We know certainly of six that were publicly executed, besides such as died in prisons: Mr. Henry Barrow, Mr. Greenwood (these suffered at Tyburn); Mr. Penry at St. Thomas Waterings, by London; Mr. William Dennis, at Thetford, in Norfolk; two others at St. Edmund's in Suffolk, whose names were Copping and Elias." This list appears to be accurate and full. There was, to be sure, a real and touching sense, in which the much larger number of men and women who were dragged from their humble homes, and shut up to wear their lives out slowly in damp, vermin-haunted and fever-smitten dungeons, were martyrs to their faith. But such death for Christ and his Church, however heroic, must usually have lacked in its subjective aspect that element 1 A few leaves only of the original MS. of this Dialogue, or Conference, remain in the Library of the Mass. Historical Society. Secretary Morton, the Governor's nephew, however, copied the whole into the Plymouth Church Records, whence it was transcribed, and printed by Dr. Young in 1841, in his Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth, etc., pp. 414-458. This citation is from p. 427. |