The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the PeopleEggleston, Edward
History
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
Winslow's Briefe Narration appended to his Hypocrisie Vnmasked is the
only authority for Robinson's address. Dr. H. M. Dexter has with
characteristic wealth of learning and ingenuity sought to diminish the
force of these generous words of Robinson in his Congregationalism,
403 and ff. But the note struck in this farewell address was familiar
to the later followers of Robinson's form of Independency. Five of the
ministers who went to Holland in 1637 and founded churches, published
in 1643 a tract called An Apologeticall Narrative Humbly Submitted to
the Honourable Houses of Parliament. By Thomas Goodwin, Phillip Nye,
Sidrach Simpson, Jer. Borroughs, William Bridge. London, 1643. From
the copy in the British Museum I quote: "A second principle we carryed
along with us in all our resolutions was, Not to make our present
judgment and practice a binding law unto ourselves for the future
which we in like manner made continuall profession of upon all
occasions." On page 22 Robinson's words are almost repeated in the
phrase "they coming new out of popery ... might not be perfect the
first day." Robinson's early colleague, Smyth, the unpractical,
much-defamed, but saintly "Anabaptist," says in a tract published
after his death, "I continually search after the truth." Robinson
wrote a reply to a portion of this tract. See Barclay's Inner Life,
appendix to Chapter V, where the tract is given. This holding of their
opinions in a state of flux, this liberal expectancy of a further
evolution of opinion, was a trait to be admired in the early
Separatists in an age when modesty in dogmatic statement was
exceedingly rare.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 177.]
Neill, in the Historical Magazine for January, 1869, and the New
England Genealogical Register, 1874, identifies the Mayflower captain
with Jones of the Discovery, who was accounted in Virginia
"dishonest." But honest seamen were few in that half-piratical age.
That he was hired by the Dutch to take the Pilgrims elsewhere than to
Hudson River is charged in Morton's Memorial, and is not in itself
unlikely. But the embarrassments of Cape Cod shoals were very real; a
trading ship sent out by the Pilgrims after their settlement, failed
to find a way round the cape.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 177.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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