The impulse which had been imparted to the subject through the zeal and devotion of Xavier and Loyola, and the energetic spirit of making proselytes and converts, which characterized the particular order of the Romish church, which they founded, impressed the rulers of Spain, France and Portugal, with a deep sense of the importance of carrying the gospel to the aborigines of the countries which they discovered. Hence it was put forth, and really became one of the cardinal points of attention in their early attempts to found new colonies. And while the governors and servants of these countries did not prosecute the objects of trade and politics with less determination and success, nay, with a more unscrupulous disregard of the means, as the history of South America alone testifies, they carried missionaries in every early enterprise, and set forth to the world, the conversion of the native inhabitants as the great object of their aim, as it was indeed often the shield and cover to the reckless avarice and ambition of the Cortezes and the Pizarros who carried their flags. It was not consonant to the genius of Christianity, as interpreted by Luther and his successors, to proceed in the work of spiritual conquest with so noisy and gorgeous a display, or with hand locked arm in arm with the State; and if the States of Holland did not put forth the object, in their first charters and commissions to the new world, it was, perhaps, because the Church was actuated in, and was guided by, the general policy of the Protestant European churches. England and Sweden, who planted colonies here, did the same. It was not, indeed, until the new impulse which arose in the middle of the 17th century, and which brought Oliver Cromwell to the English throne, that different views and a deeper obligation of national duties in this respect began to prevail. And hence, when the English pilgrims, who had been sheltered awhile in the tolerant domains of Holland, set their faces towards the New World, it was with a pre-determination not only to carry out the principles of the gospel, in their own settlements, but to extend its benign influences among the aborigines. This was averred, and the well known prominency of the fact stamps the efforts to convert and civilize the North American Indians, with a moral force and grandeur, which cannot be claimed for England, in her royal capacity as administrator of patents and honors here, or for any other protestant king or potentate, who sent her poor, bold or enterprising children to the American wilds.