the intensest earnestness, and above all things stimulating. Their conferences about order and discipline bristled with individualisms and scruples. Many of these assemblies might soon resolve themselves into constituencies of single members. There was scarce one of those assemblies, either in England or in exile on the Continent, that did not part into two or three. There was a stern necessity which compelled variance and dissension among the members. They had in hand the Bible, and each was trying what he could draw out of it, as an oracle and a rule. They had to devise, discuss, and if possible agree upon and enforce ways of church order and discipline, a form of worship, rules of initiation into church membership, of suspension, expulsion, and restoration. It was brain work, heart work, and soul work with them. It would be difficult to reduce to any exact statements the numbers of persons, or even of what may in a loose sense be called assemblies, of Nonconformists or Separatists who remained in England, or who were in refuge on the Continent at the period just preceding the colonization of New England. What was called the Millenary Petition, which was presented to James I., as he came in from Scotland, was claimed to represent at least eight hundred Nonconforming ministers. The way is now open for connecting the principles and fortunes of the earnest and proscribed class of religious men, whose course has been thus traced in England and Holland, with the enterprise of colonization in New England. It is but reasonable to suppose that, dating from the time and the incident referred to in the opening of this chapter, such an enterprise was latent in conception or desire in the thoughts of many as a possible alternative for the near future. A resolve or purpose or effort of such a nature as this involves much brooding over by individuals, much private communing, balancing of circumstances, conditions, gains, and losses, and an estimate of means and resources, with an eye towards allowance by a governmental or noble patronage, or at least to security in the venture. We have but fragmentary and scattered information as to all these preliminaries to the emigration. We must trace them backward from the completion to the initiation of the enterprise. And here is the point at which we should define to ourselves, as intelligently and fairly as we can from our abounding authentic sources of information, precisely what was the influence or agency of religion in the first emigration to New England. We are familiar with the oft-reiterated and positive statement, that the enterprise would neither have been undertaken, nor persisted in, nor led on to success, had not religion furnished its mainspring, its guiding motive, and the end aimed at, to be in degree realized.