Memorials of the Pilgrim Fathers: John Eliot and His Friends, of Nazing and Waltham Abbey (Classic Reprint)Excerpt from Memorials of the Pilgrim Fathers: John Eliot and His Friends, of Nazing and Waltham Abbey It is well known that there is no county in Old England that can claim precedence of Essex for honest and intrepid men, especially those of the Reformation age, who, for the sake of truth and liberty, endured the tortures of the rack and fagot and others of a later period feared not to exercise the right of conscience and private judgment in things agree able to their religious impressions, until, overcome by the heat of persecution, they were necessitated to cross the stormy Atlantic in search of a home in the dreary wilds of the far West. Prelatism then triumphed in its most potent form, and Sabbath sports received encouragement from King James, who, in 1617, expressed his pleasure in allowing the people to exercise themselves after Divine service on Sabbath days Oh, name it not in Gathl) in May-games, Whitson-ales, and Morris-dances, which, naturally enough, struck the more sober and conscientious clergy with horror, and which they severely censured. Such clergymen were deemed as being too religiously scrupulous, and tainted with Puritanism. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. |