some historians have not sufficiently explained-the difference between "our Pilgrim Fathers" and "our Puritan Fathers." In the old world on the other side of the ocean, the Puritan was a Nationalist, believing that a Christian nation is a Christian church, and demanding that the Church of England should be thoroughly reformed; while the Pilgrim was a Separatist, not only from the Anglican Prayer-book and Queen Elizabeth's episcopacy, but from all national churches. Between them there was sharp contention-a controversy quite as earnest and almost as bitter as that which they both had with the ecclesiastico-political power that oppressed them both, fining and imprisoning the Puritan, and visiting upon the Separatist the added penalties of exile and the gallows. The Pilgrim wanted liberty for himself and his wife and little ones, and for his brethren, to walk with God in a Christian life as the rules and motives of such a life were revealed to him from God's Word. For that he went into exile; for that he crossed the ocean; for that he made his home in a wilderness. The Puritan's idea was not liberty, but right government in church and state-such government as should not only permit him, but also compel other men to walk in the right way. Of all this the ingenuous reader will find, I think, some illustration in the history before him. The words, written or spoken, of the actors in the story are often introduced for the sake of bringing the reader into closer connection with the men whom I describe and with their times; but, in so doing, I have not always deemed it necessary to transcribe with scrupulous exactness every pleonasm or tautology, and every careless mislocation of words in the structure of a sentence. If in any instance I have misrepresented the meaning of a quotation, let me receive such censure as the unfairness may seem to deserve. Though I am not aware that I have used a larger liberty in this respect than is conceded to writers of history, I may say that, if I have erred, the error was because of my desire to make the meaning of every sentence clear, at the first glance, to an ordinarily intelligent reader. The history of the colonization of New England has been admirably written by Dr. Palfrey; and it would have been folly in me to attempt a repetition of what he has done so well. Mine is a very different undertaking. The story which I tell is the story of an idea slowly making its way against prejudices, interests, and passions-a story of faith and martyrdom, of heroic endeavor and heroic constancy. It includes only so much of secular history as is involved in the history of the idea, and of the men whom it possessed, and who labored and suffered to make it a reality in the world of fact. I have attempted nothing more than a humble contribution to our ecclesiastical history-only a book of Genesis, which, had I written it earlier, might have been followed by a Puritan Exodus. Mr. Punchard's "History of Congregationalism," and Dr. Waddington's most elaborate "Congregational History" (of which a second volume has been lately published), cover a much wider field than I have ventured to traverse. I take the liberty of expressing here my thanks to Professor Fisher of Yale College, who has kindly assisted in revising the proof-sheets of this volume, and whose suggestions have contributed to its accuracy especially in the earlier chapters. In the later and most important chapters, beginning with Chapter X., I have had also the benefit of corrections and suggestions from the Rev. Dr. Henry M. Dexter, who is better acquainted, I suppose, than any other man with every foot-print of the Pilgrim Fathers, at Scrooby, at Amsterdam, at Leyden, or in New England. Yet I must not represent him as responsible for every thing on those pages; for, being less imbued than he with the antiquarian spirit, I have sometimes ventured not to follow where he seemed to lead me. For example, when he tells me that the first governor of Salem, under the Massachusetts corporation, wrote himself John Endecott, I can not doubt the fact, yet I leave the name in the form in which it has passed into history and poetry-John Endicott. In regard to any more important matter of fact, I should not dare to reject the advice of a friend so learned and so ac curate. L. B. NEW HAVEN, July 1, 1874. |