THE DECISION.
“Can ye lead out to distant colonies
The o’erflowings of a people, or your wronged
Brethren, by impious persecution driven,
And arm their breasts with fortitude to try
New regions—climes, though barren, yet beyond
The baneful power of tyrants? These are deeds
For which their hardy labors well prepare
The sinewy arms of Albion’s sons.”
DYER.
Although the Pilgrims resided at Leyden in honor, and at peace with
God and their own consciences, many circumstances conspired to render
them anxious and uneasy. The horizon of the Netherlands grew gloomy
with portents of war. The famous truce between Holland and the
Spaniard drew near its conclusion.[72] The impatient demon of strife
stood knocking at the door. Homesickness gnawed at their hearts.
Dear, cruel England filled their thoughts. The language of the Dutch
had never become pleasantly familiar.[73] Frequently “they saw
poverty coming on them like an armed man.” Many of their little band
were taken from them by death. “Grave mistress Experience having
taught them many things,” some of their “sagest members began both
deeply to apprehend their present dangers and wisely to foresee the
future, and to think of timely remedy.” They inclined to removal,
“not out of any newfangledness or other such like giddy humor, by
which men are oftentimes transported to their great hurt and danger,
but for sundry weighty and solid reasons.”[74]
These have been often recited, and they completely vindicate the
project to remove.
The Pilgrims “saw, and found by experience, the hardness of the place
and country to be such that few in comparison would come to them, and
fewer would bide it out and continue with them; for many that joined
them, and many more who desired to be with them, could not endure
the great labor and hard fare, with other inconveniences which they
underwent and were content to bear. But though they loved the persons
of the exiles, approved their cause, and honored their sufferings,
yet they left them weeping, as Orpah did her mother-in-law Naomi,
and as those Romans did Cato in Utica, who desired to be excused and
borne with, though they could not all be Catos.[75] For many, though
they desired to enjoy the ordinances of God as the Pilgrims did, yet,
alas, chose bondage, with danger of conscience, rather than to endure
these hardships. Yea, some preferred the prisons of England to this
liberty in Holland, with these afflictions. The Pilgrims thought
that if a better and easier place of residence could be had, it would
draw many to them, and take away these discouragements. Yea, their
pastor would often say that many of those who both wrote and preached
against them there would, if they were in a place where they might
have liberty and live comfortably, practise as they did.”[76]
Then again, “they saw that, though the exiles generally bore all
these difficulties very cheerfully and with resolute courage, being
in the best and strength of their years, yet old age began to steal
upon them—and their great and continued labors, with other crosses
and sorrows, hastened it before the time—so it was not only probably
thought, but apparently seen, that within a few years more they
would be in danger to scatter by necessities pressing them, or sink
under their burdens, or both. Therefore, according to the divine
proverb, that ‘a wise man seeth the plague when it cometh, and
hideth himself,’[77] so they, like skilful and tried soldiers, were
fearful to be entrapped and surrounded by their enemies, so as they
should neither be able to fight or fly; so they thought it better to
dislodge betimes to some place of better advantage and less danger,
if any such could be found.”[78]
It was furthermore perceived that, “as necessity was a task-master
over them, so they were forced to be such, not only to their
servants, but in a sort to their dearest children; the which, as it
did not a little wound the tender hearts of many loving fathers and
mothers, so it produced likewise sundry sad and sorrowful effects;
for many of their children, who were of the best disposition and
most gracious inclinations, having learned to bear the yoke in their
youth, and being willing to bear part of their parents’ burden,
were oftentimes so oppressed by their heavy labors, that though
their minds were free and willing, yet their bodies bowed under the
weight, and became decrepit in early youth, the vigor of nature being
consumed in the bud. But that which was more lamentable, and of all
sorrows most heavy to be borne, was, that many of the children, by
these means and the great licentiousness of youth in those countries
and the manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away by evil
example into extravagant and dangerous courses, getting the reins off
their necks, and departing from their parents. Some became soldiers,
others made far voyages by sea, and some walked in paths tending to
dissoluteness and the danger of their souls, to the great grief of
their parents and the dishonor of God. The Pilgrims saw that their
posterity would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted.”[79]
Still again—“and this was not least”—they were inclined to remove
by the “great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good
foundation, or at least of making some way thereto, for the
propagation and advancement of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ
in remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even
as stepping-stones unto others for the performance of so great a
work.”[80]
These and some other kindred reasons[81] pushed the Pilgrims to
further emigration. The question which each began to ask the other
was, “Whither shall we go?” Soon this query stared all other
considerations out of countenance, and became the all-engrossing
topic of discussion at the hearth-stones and in the chapel of the
exiles.
At this juncture a germ of thought was developed which proved to be
the seed of a mighty empire. All Europe stood a-tip-toe gazing across
the misty and chilling waste of waters towards that new continent
by whose discovery the genius of Columbus had rounded the globe
into perfect symmetry. The glories of the New World flashed in the
brilliant eloquence of Raleigh. Marvellous tales were told of the
fertility of the soil and of the healthful beauty of the skies; while
old sailors, who had gazed with their own eyes upon the legendary
shores, passed from city to city depicting to eager and credulous
crowds the terrors of the wilderness and the wild ferocity of the
Western savages.
Meantime “the career of maritime discovery had been pursued with
daring intrepidity and rewarded with brilliant success. The voyages
of Gosnold, and Smith, and Hudson, the enterprise of Raleigh, and
Delaware, and Gorges, the compilations of Eden, and Willes, and
Hakluyt, had filled the commercial world with wonder. Calvinists
of the French church had already sought, though vainly, to
plant themselves in Brazil, in Carolina, and, with De Monts, in
Acadia;”[82] and now, in 1617, some bold thinker and unshrinking
speaker among the Leyden Pilgrims, perhaps Brewster, perhaps
Bradford, perhaps Robinson himself, proposed to colonize “some of
those vast and unpeopled countries of America which were fruitful and
fit for habitation, but devoid of all civilized inhabitants; where
there were only savage and brutish men, who ranged up and down little
otherwise than as wild beasts.”[83]
At the outset the Pilgrims listened to this proposal, some with
admiration, some with misgiving, some openly aghast. Bradford’s
quaint pages afford us some glimpses of their debates. The doubters
said, “It is a great design, and subject to inconceivable perils; as
besides the casualties of the seas, which none can be freed from, the
length of the voyage is such that the weak bodies of many worn out
with age and travel, as many of us are, can never be able to endure;
and even if they should, the miseries to which we should be exposed
in that land will be too hard for us to bear; ’tis likely that some
or all will effect our ruin. There we shall be liable to famine,
and nakedness, and want of all things. The change of air, diet, and
water, will infect us with sickness; and those who escape these evils
will be in danger of the savages, who are cruel, barbarous, and most
treacherous in their rage, and merciless when they overcome; not
being content only to kill, but delighting to torment men in the most
bloody way, flaying men alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off
the joints by piece-meal, broiling them on coals, and eating collops
of their victims’ flesh while they yet live, and in their very sight.”
As these horrors darkened in their imaginations, the
deeply-interested exiles who thronged the council-chamber shuddered
with affright. Mothers, hearing the shrill war-whoop in advance,
strained their babes yet closer to their breasts. “Surely it could
not be thought but the very hearing of these things must move the
very bowels of men to grate within them, and make the weak to quake
and tremble.”
But the opponents of the project urged still other objections, “and
those neither unreasonable nor improbable.” “It will require,” they
said, “more money than we can furnish to prepare for such a voyage.
Similar schemes have failed;[84] and our experience in removing to
Holland teaches us how hard it is to live in a strange country, even
though it be a rich and civilized commonwealth. What then shall we do
in the frozen wilderness?”
Fear chilled the hearts, doubt paralyzed the nerves of the assembled
exiles. Then the more resolute stood up, and, fixing their eyes on
the sky, exclaimed, “God will protect us; and he points us on. All
great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties,
and must be both undertaken and overcome with answerable courage.
We grant the dangers of this removal to be tremendous, but not
desperate; the difficulties are many, but not invincible; for though
many of them are likely, all are not certain. It may be that sundry
of the things surmised may never happen; others, by provident care
and the use of good means, may be prevented; and all of them, through
the help of God, by fortitude and patience may either be borne or
overcome. True it is that such attempts are not to be undertaken
without good reason; never rashly or lightly, as many have done,
for curiosity or hope of gain. But our condition is not ordinary;
our ends are good and honorable; our calling lawful and urgent;
therefore we may invoke and expect God’s blessing on our proceeding.
Yea, though we should lose our lives in this action, yet may we have
comfort in it, and our endeavor would be honorable. We live here but
as men in exile; and as great miseries may befall us in this place,
for the twelve years of truce are now nigh up, and here is nothing
but beating of drums and preparations for war, the events whereof are
always uncertain. The Spaniard may prove as cruel as the savages of
America, and the famine and pestilence as sore here as there, and our
liberty less to look out for a remedy.”[85]
It was thus that the undaunted apostles of the future pleaded; and
now as always, the policy of active, trustful, and religious courage
overbore the timid pleas of the undecided, the plausible doubts of
the skeptical, and the wailing dissent of the croakers who paused
distrustful of the unknown future and enamoured of the anchored
past. The Pilgrims announced their decision to follow in the wake of
Columbus, and launch boldly across the Atlantic, trusting God.