had been too thoroughly inspired with disgust for the masks and mummeries of Catholic worship, to be content with a bare renunciation of the temporal or spiritual authority of the Pope, were arrested, imprisoned, and treated with all manner of persecution. At least six of them were capitally executed, and two of these, as it happened, were condemned to death by that very Lord Chief Justice, whom we have seen a few years afterwards, at the head of the Plymouth Company, engaged in so earnest but unavailing an effort to colonize the New England Coast. Little did he know that his part in that work had been already performed.

In an imaginary Dialogue between some Young Men born in New England and sundry Ancient Men that came out of Holland and Old England,' written in 1648 by Gov. Bradford-a name which before all others should be this day remembered with veneration-the Young Men are represented as asking of the Old Men, how many Separatists had been executed. 'We know certainly of six,' replied the ancient men, 'that were publicly executed, besides such as died in prisons. *** Two of them were condemned by cruel Judge Popham, whose countenance and carriage was very rough and severe towards them, with many sharp menaBut God gave them courage to bear it, and to make this answer :—

ces.

'My Lord, your face we fear not,

And for your threats we care not,

And to come to your read service we dare not.'

Nor did King James depart from the footsteps of his predecessor in the religious policy of his administration. Though from his Scotch education and connections, and from the opinions which he had openly avowed before coming to the English throne, he had seemed pledged to a career of liberality and toleration, yet no sooner was he fairly seated on that throne than he, too, set about vindicating his claim to his new title of Defender of the Faith,' and enforcing conformity to the rites and ceremonies of the English Church. And he cut short a conference at Hampton Court, between himself and the Puritan leaders, got up at his own instigation in the vainglorious idea that he could vanquish these heretics in an argument, with this summary and most significant declaration- If this be all they have to say, I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land.'

The idea of banishment was full of bitterness to those to whom it was thus sternly held up. They loved their native land with an affection which no rigor of restraint, no cruelty of persecution, could quench. Death itself, to some of them at least, seemed to have fewer fears than exile. We crave,' was the touching language of a Petition of sixty Separatists in 1592, who had been committed unbailable to close prison in London, where they were allowed neither meat nor drink, nor lodging, and where no one was suffered to have access to them, so as no felons or traitors or murderers were thus dealt with,- We crave for all of us but the liberty

either to die openly or to live openly in the land of our nativity. If we deserve death, it beseemeth the majesty of justice not to see us closely murdered, yea, starved to death with hunger and cold, and stifled in loathsome dungeons. If we be guiltless, we crave but the benefit of our innocence, that we may have peace to serve our God and our Prince in the place of the sepulchres of our Fathers.'

But there were those among them, notwithstanding, to whom menaces, whether of banishment or of the block, even uttered thus angrily by one, who, as he once well said of himself, while he held the appointment of Judges and Bishops in his hand, could make what Law, and what Gospel he chose,' were alike powerless, to prevail on them to conform to modes and creeds which they did not of themselves approve. They heard a voice higher and mightier than James's, calling to them in the accents of their own consciences, and saying, in the express language of a volume, which it had been the most precious result of all the discoveries, inventions and improvements of that age of wonders, to unlock to them- Be ye not conformed-but be ye transformed'—and that voice, summon it to exile, or summon it to the grave, they were resolved to obey.

Foiled, therefore, utterly in the first of his alternatives, the king resorted to the last. It was more within the compass of his power, and he did harry them out of the land. Within three years after the utterance of this threat, (viz. in 1607,) it is re

corded by the Chronologist, that Messrs. Clifton's and Robinson's church in the North of England, being extremely harrassed, some cast into prison, some beset in their houses, some forced to leave their farms and families, begin to fly over to Holland for purity of worship and liberty of conscience.

Religions, true and false, have had their Hegiras, and Institutions and Empires have owed their origin to the flight of a child, a man, or a multitude. Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh,-but he returned to overwhelm him with the judgments of Jehovah, and to build up Israel into a mighty People. Mahomet with his followers fled from the Magistrates of Mecca,-but he came back, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, and the Empire of the Saracens was soon second to none on the globe. The Young Child and his Mother' fled from the fury of Herod, but they returned, and the banner of the Cross was still destined to go forth conquering and to conquer. The Pilgrim Fathers, also, fled from the oppression of this arbitrary tyrant, and, although their return was to a widely distant portion of his dominions, yet return they did, and the Freedom and Independence of a great Republic, delivered from the yoke of that tyrant's successors, date back their origin this day, to the principles for which they were proscribed, and to the institutions which they planted!

But let us follow them in their eventful flight. They first settle at Amsterdam, where they remain for about a year, and are soon joined by the rest of

their brethren. But finding that some contentions had arisen in a Church which was there before them, and fearing that they might themselves become embroiled in them, though they knew it would be very much to the prejudice of their outward interest' to remove, yet valuing peace and spiritual comfort above all other riches' they depart to Leyden, and there live in great love and harmony both among themselves and their neighbor citizens for above eleven years.'

But, although during all this time they had been courteously entertained and lovingly respected by the people, and had quietly and sweetly enjoyed their Church liberties under the States, yet finding that, owing to the difference of their language, they could exert but little influence over the Dutch, and had not yet succeeded in bringing them to reform the neglect of observation of the Lord's day as a Sabbath, or any other thing amiss among them,— that, owing, also, to the licentiousness of youth in that Country and the manifold temptations of the place, their children were drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses, they now begin to fear that Holland would be no place for their church and their posterity to continue in comfortably, and on those accounts to think of a remove to America. And having hesitated a while between Guiana and Virginia as a place of resort, and having at last resolved on the latter, they send their agents to treat with the Virginia Company for a right within their chartered limits, and