who are the weak colony from your selves." And after such prayers, they concluded, "What goodness you shall extend unto us, in this or any other Christian kindness, we your brethren in Christ shall labour to repay, in what duty we are or shall be able to perform; promising so far as God shall enable us, to give him no rest on your behalfs; wishing our heads and hearts may be fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness, overshadowed with the spirit of supplication, through the manifold necessities and tribulations, which may not altogether unexpectedly, nor we hope unprofitably, befall us."

§ 3. Reader, If ever the charity of a right Christian, and enlarged soul, were examplarily seen in its proper expansions, 'twas in the address which thou hast now been reading; but if it now puzzle the reader to reconcile these passages with the principles declared, the practices followed, and the persecutions undergone, by these American Reformers, let him know, that there was more than one distinction, whereof these excellent persons were not ignorant. First, they were able to distinguish between the Church of England, as it contained the whole body of the faithful, scattered throughout the kingdoms, though of different perswasions about some rites and modes in religion; many thousands of whom our Nor-Angels knew could comply with many things, to which our consciences, otherwise enlightened and perswaded, could not yield such a compliance and the Church of England, as it was confined unto a certain constitution by canons, which pronounced Ipso Facto,* excommunicate all those who should affirm that the worship contained in the "Book of Common-Prayer and administrations of sacraments," is unlawful, or that any of the thirty-nine articles are erroneous, or that any of the ceremonies commanded by the authority of the church might not be approved, used and subscribed; and which will have to be accursed, all those who maintain that there are in the realm any other meetings, assemblies or congregations of the King's born subjects, than such as by the laws of the land are allowed, which may rightly challenge to themselves the name of true and lawful Churches; and by which all those that refuse to kneel at the reception of the sacrament, and to be present at publick prayers, according to the orders of the church, about which there are prescribed many formalities of responses, with bowing at the name of Jesus, are to be denied the communion; and all who dare not submit their children. to be baptized by the undertaking of god-fathers, and receive the cross as a dedicating badge of Christianity, must not have baptism for their children: besides an et-cætera of how many more impositions! Again, they were able to distinguish between the Church of England, as it kept the true doctrine of the Protestant religion, with a disposition to pursue the reformation begun in the former century, among whom we may reckon such men as the famous assembly of divines at Westminster, who all but eight or nine, and the Scots had before then lived in conformity; and the Church of

By their very act.

England, as limiting that name unto a certain faction, who, together with a discipline very much unscriptural, vigorously prosecuted the tripartite plot of Arminianism and conciliation with Rome, in the church, and unbounded prerogative in the state; who set themselves to cripple as fast as they could the more learned, godly, painful ministers of the land, and silence and ruin such as could not read a book for sports on the Lord's days; or did but use a prayer of their own conceiving, before or after sermon; or did but preach in an afternoon, as well as in a morning, or on a lecture, or on a market, or in aniwise discountenance old superstitions, or new extravagancies; and who at last threw the nation into the lamentable confusions of a civil war. By the light of this distinction, we may easily perceive what Church of England it was, that our New-England exiles called, their Mother; though their mother had been so harsh to them, as to turn them out of doors, yet they highly honoured her; believing that it was not so much their mother, but some of their angry brethren, abusing the name of their mother, who so harshly treated them; and all the harm they wished her, was to see her put off those ill trimmings, which at her first coming out of the popish Babylon, she had not fully so laid aside. If any of those envious brethren do now call these dissenters, as not very long since a great prelate in a sermon did, the bastards of the Church of England, I will not make the return which was made upon it by a person of quality then present; but instead thereof humbly demand, who are the truer sons to the Church of England; they that hold all the fundamentals of Christianity embraced by that Church, only questioning and forbearing a few disciplinary points, which are confessed indifferent by the greatest zealots for them; or they that have made Britain more unhabitable that the Torrid Zone? for the poor non-conformists, by their hot pressing of those indifferencies, as if they had been the only necessaries, in the mean time utterly subverting the faith in the important points of predestination, free-will, justification, perseverance, and some other things, which that Church requires all her children to give their assent and consent unto? If the former, then, say I, the planters of New-England were truer sons to the Church of England, than that part of the church which, then by their misemploying their heavy church-keys, banished them into this plantation. And, indeed, the more genuine among the most conformable sons of the church, did then accordingly wish all prosperity to their New-English brethren; in the number of whom I would particularly reckon that faithful man, Mr. Edward Symons, minister of Rayn in Essex; who in a Discourse printed Anno 1637, does thus express himself: "Many now promise to themselves nothing but successive happiness at New-England; which for a time, through God's mercy, they may enjoy; and I pray God, they may a long time, but in this world there is no happiness perpetual." Nor would I on this occasion leave unquoted some notable words of the learned, witty and famous Dr. Fuller, in his comment on Ruth, page 16: "Concerning our brethren which of late left

this kingdom to advance a plantation in New-England, I think the counsel best that King Joash prescribed unto Amaziah, 'Tarry at home?' yet as for those that are already gone, far be it from us to conceive them to be such to whom we may not say, God speed: but let us pity them, and pray for them. I conclude of the two Englands, what our Saviour saith of the two wines: 'No man having tasted of the old, presently desireth the new; for he saith, the old is better.'"

§ 4. Being happily arrived at New-England, our new planters found the difficulties of a rough and hard wilderness presently assaulting them: of which the worst was the sickliness which many of them had contracted by their other difficulties. Of those who soon dyed after their first arrival, not the least considerable was the Lady Arabella, who left an earthly par adise in the family of an Earldom, to encounter the sorrows of a wilderness, for the entertainments of a pure worship in the house of God; and then immediately left that wilderness for the Heavenly paradise, whereto the compassionate Jesus, of whom she was a follower, called her. We have read concerning a noble woman of Bohemia, who forsook her friends, her plate, her house, and all; and because the gates of the city were guarded, crept through the common-sewer, that she might enjoy the institutions of our Lord at another place where they might be had. The spirit which acted that noble woman, we may suppose carried this blessed lady thus to and through the hardships of an American desart. But as for her virtuous husband, Isaac Johnson, Esq.,

He try'd

To live without her, lik'd it not, and dy'd.

His mourning for the death of his honourable consort was too bitter to be extended a year; about a month after her death his ensued, unto the extream loss of the whole plantation. But at the end of this perfect and upright man, there was not only peace but joy; and his joy particularly expressed it self "that God hath kept his eyes open so long as to see one church of the Lord Jesus Christ gathered in these ends of the earth, before his own going away to Heaven." The mortality thus threatning of this new Plantation so enlivened the devotions of this good people, that they set themselves by fasting and prayer to obtain from God the removal of it; and their brethren at Plymouth also attended the like duties on their behalf: the issue whereof was, that in a little time they not only had health restored, but they likewise enjoyed the special directions and assistance of God in the further prosecution of their undertakings.

§ 5. But there were two terrible distresses more, besides that of sickness, whereto this people were exposed in the beginning of their settlement: though a most seasonable and almost unexpected mercy from Heaven still rescued them out of those distresses. One thing that sometimes extreamly exercised them, was a scarcity of provisions; in which 'twas wonderful to

see their dependance upon God, and God's mindfulness of them. When the parching droughts of the summer divers times threatned them with an utter and a total consumption to the fruits of the earth, it was their manner, with heart-melting, and I may say, Heaven-melting devotions, to fast and pray before God; and on the very days when they poured out the water of their tears before him, he would shower down the water of his rain upon their fields; while they were yet speaking, he would hear them; insomuch that the salvages themselves would on that occasion admire the Englishman's God! But the Englishmen themselves would celebrate their days of Thanksgiving to him. When their stock was likewise wasted so far, which divers times it was, that they were come to the last meal in the barrel, just then, unlooked for, arrived several ships from other parts of the world loaden with supplies; among which, one was by the lord-deputy of Ireland sent hither, although he did not know the necessities of the country to which he sent her; and if he had known them, would have been thought as unlikely as any man living to have helpt them: in these extremities, 'twas marvellous to see how helpful these good people were to one another, following the example of their most liberal governour Winthrop, who made an equal distribution of what he had in his own stores among the poor, taking no thought for to-morrow! And how content they were; when an honest man, as I have heard, inviting his friends to a dish of clams, at the table gave thanks to Heaven, who "had given them to suck the abundance of the seas, and of the treasures hid in the sands!"

Another thing that gave them no little exercise, was the fear of the Indians, by whom they were sometimes alarmed. But this fear was wonderfully prevented, not only by intestine wars happening then to fall out among those barbarians, but chiefly by the small-pox, which proved a great plague unto them, and particularly to one of the Princes in the Massachuset-Bay, who yet seemed hopefully to be christianized before he dyed. This distemper getting in, I know not how, among them, swept them away with a most prodigious desolation, insomuch that although the English gave them all the assistances of humanity in their calamities, yet there was, it may be, not one in ten among them left alive; of those few that lived, many also fled from the infection, leaving the country a meer Golgotha of unburied carcases; and as for the rest, the English treated them with all the civility imaginable; among the instances of which civility, let this be reckoned for one, that notwithstanding the patent which they had for the country, they fairly purchased of the natives the several tracts of land which they afterwards possessed.

6. The people in the fleet that arrived at New-England, in the year 1630, left the fleet almost, as the family of Noah did the ark, having a whole world before them to be peopled. Salem was already supplied with a competent number of inhabitants; and therefore the governour, with most of the gentlemen that accompanied him in his voyage, took their

first opportunity to prosecute further settlements about the bottom of the Massachuset-Bay; but where-ever they sat down, they were so mindful of their errand into the wilderness, that still one of their first works was to gather a church into the covenant and order of the gospel. First, there was a church thus gathered at Charles-town, on the north side of Charles's river; where, keeping a solemn fast on August 27, 1630, to implore the conduct and blessing of Heaven on their ecclesiastical proceedings, they chose Mr. Wilson, a most holy and zealous man, formerly a minister of Sudbury, in the county of Suffolk, to be their teacher; and although he now submitted unto an ordination, with an imposition of such hands as were by the church invited so to pronounce the benediction of Heaven upon him; yet it was done with a protestation by all, that it should be only as a sign of his election to the charge of his new flock, without any intention that he should thereby renounce the ministry he had received in England. After the gathering of the church at Charles-town, there quickly followed another at the town of Dorchester.

And after Dorchester there followed another at the town of Boston, which issued out of Charles-town; one Mr. James took the care of the Church at Charles-town, and Mr. Wilson went over to Boston, where they that formerly belonged unto Charles-town, with universal approbation became a distinct Church of themselves. To Boston soon succeeded a church at Roxbury; to Roxbury, one at Lyn; to Lyn, one at Watertown; so that in one or two years' time there were to be seen seven Churches in this neighbourhood, all of them attending to what the spirit in the Scripture said unto them; all of them golden candlesticks, illustrated with a very sensible presence of our Lord Jesus Christ among them.

§ 7. It was for a matter of twelve years together, that persons of all ranks, well affected unto Church-reformation, kept sometimes dropping, and sometimes flocking into New-England, though some that were coming into New-England were not suffered so to do. The persecutors of those Puritans, as they were called, who were now retiring into that cold country from the heat of their persecution, did all that was possible to hinder as many as was possible from enjoying of that retirement. There were many countermands given to the passage of people that were now steering of this western course; and there was a sort of uproar made among no small part of the nation, that this people should not be let go. Among those bound for NewEngland, that were so stopt, there were especially three famous persons, whom I suppose their adversaries would not have so studiously detained at home, if they had foreseen events; those were Oliver Cromwell, and Mr. Hambden, and Sir Arthur Haselrig; nevertheless, this is not the only instance of persecuting church-mens not having the spirit of prophesy. But many others were diverted from an intended voyage hither by the pure providence of God, which had provided other improvements for them; and of this take one instance instead of many. Before the woeful wars which