Le vrai n'est pas toujours vraisemblable. French Proverb. If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us! S. T. Coleridge, Table Talk, 18 December, 1831. For considering the wonderfull number, and the difficultie that they haue that would be occupied in the rehearsall of stories, because of the diversitie of the matters, Wee have endeuoured, that they that would reade, might haue pleasure, and that they which are studious, might easily keepe them in memory, and that whosoever reade them might haue profite. 2 Maccabees [Genevan Version], ii : 24, 25. It is not the least debt which we owe unto History, that it hath made us acquainted with our dead Ancestors, and out of the depth and darkness of the Earth delivered us their Memory and Fame: In a word, we may gather out of History a Policy no less Wise than Eternal, by the Comparison and Application of other men's fore-passed Miseries, with our own like Errors and Ill deservings. Sir Walter Raleigh, Preface to History of the World, Works (1829), ii: v. Take wings O Booke, and fly abroade with speed, To such thou shalt be iudged wondrous kinde, Because thou canst right well informe their minde: In such a sort as they shall bettred bee, And well advantag'd by the things in thee. Prelude to Henry Barrowe's Platforme, etc. (1611), 4. LTHOUGH by no means inconsiderable in size, this book is yet, strictly, an episode. I cannot remember when I had not a singular interest in the first settlers and fortunes of New England; and, born within ten miles of Plymouth Rock, always esteemed it great good fortune when my occasions took me into the ancient town. On growing up to learn that in my veins were blended the blood of that restless and sometimes testy Puritan who bargained with Poquanum for Nahant, and to whom a jury gave 40s. damages against Gov. Endecott for an assault, and of that amiable Pilgrim who died in the Secretaryship of the Plymouth Colony which he had held for nearly forty years, having given to the world the first Record of its fortunes; I began almost to esteem it a filial duty to study closely our primitive annals. And this the more that the polity of my fathers, which, against strong temptations toward other church folds, I was learning especially to value, so intertwines its post-reformation records with those annals, as to make the two nearly inseparable. I began to collect material of all sorts, and in several visits to the incunabula in the North of England and Holland, added to the common stock of knowledge much that had been overlooked, until the purpose was gradually formed of writing anew the history of the Old Colony. I went abroad again in the closing days of 1870, to undertake directly that labor. But it soon made itself clear that one cannot adequately understand the Plymouth men, or their work, without a deeper insight than any past writer had gained, into the reality of their religious position, purpose and atmosphere. To this it became indispensable to restudy the English Reformation, to trace the gradual development of its distinctive ideas ; comprehend exactly how Separatism stood related to the Establishment on the one hand, and to various collateral forms of dissent on the other; mark the germination of the modern ideas of civil and religious liberty; assign them to their true originators under God; and not only ascertain the precise stand-point of the Pilgrim Fathers, but determine how much they received from those who had preceded them, and how much - if anything—were original with themselves. As a help in the researches thus suggested, a list of treatises on church government and related themes was commenced, which gradually expanded into a folio MS. Bibliography of some five hundred pages, and some eighteen hundred titles, for the sixteenth century alone. While pursuing these general studies after my return, I was notified, in 1875, of my election to the Southworth Lectureship upon Congregationalism in the Theological Seminary at Andover, for the three years' term then next succeeding; with the intimation that were my lectures to be flavored with history more strongly than with philosophy, such procedure might not be unacceptable to the Trustees. I undertook the task largely because it lay directly in my path, and I dared to hope that I might thus do Christian scholars a service for which possibly my privileges of preparation had been exceptional; and because - though involving much labor by the way-my supreme purpose might be advantaged thereby. I spent six further months in special study in England, Holland and France, and the present volume is the result. The first necessity was to get back into direct intercourse with the men themselves who laid the foundations of modern Congregationalism, since it was always their misfortune that the pen of immediate history for Church as well as for State, was held by writers who saw not how any good thing could come out of Nazareth; and who, often beginning in a misunderstanding that was radical, nearly always ended in a misrepresentation that was reckless. In many cases, and those most important, the difficulty of doing this is excessive, because their humble volumes and pamphlets - always printed on the sly, whose possession was felony, and which were often burned by the hangman; between such special hard usage, and the natural abrasion of from two to three hundred years are almost unknown even in quarters so insatiate of such literature - as the rich repositories of the British Museum and the Bodleian. of the eater came forth meate." And but for the fact that the two archbishops seem to have caused to be preserved in their collections at Lambeth and York Minster many of the books whose authors they harried and hanged for writing them, it might now be impossible to find several of those treatises. Robert Browne had been dead for three generations, and Barrowe and Penry for nearly five, when Neal began the series of modern histories seeking to do them better justice. But he, and Brook eighty years later, could do little more in regard to some than recast what Fuller and other church writers nearer their own time, had written. Hanbury, a quarter of a century after, recognized the impossibility of understanding the early Separatists except through better acquaintance with their own literature; and it would not be easy to overstate the value of his unwearied labors in collecting, describing, and in part reproducing their volumes. But forty years ago the various restrictions which barricaded the York and Lambeth libraries were such, that even if this diligent investigator had somehow become aware that upon their dusty shelves were reposing the means of hearing from the father of the Brownists, and from the self-baptizing John Smyth, their own version of their own views, access might have proved to him so difficult as to be impracticable. The temper of the present is different, and I have found nothing but good will and hearty help from all whom I have had occasion to approach in my search for the principia of modern Congregationalism. And in thus discovering and gaining access-at Lambeth, to Browne's books, and especially to what was really his autobiography for the most critical period of his life, and to some of the scarcest Mar-prelate tracts; at York, to Smith's Principles and Inferences, and particularly to his Retractation of his Errours; and, at Cambridge, to George Johnson's Discourse, much of which gives as full, and I have no doubt as faithful, an account of the business church meetings of the Barrowists of Amsterdam, as could now be obtained from the professional reporter of a morning journal-opportunities of knowledge have been enjoyed which, unless they have been deplorably misused, ought to freight these pages with some special value. If I may not venture so large a claim for data heretofore undiscovered on this side of the sea, it is not for want of diligent search, but because too many gleaners have gone before. I have, indeed, the satisfaction, from the original manuscript in the rich |