William Bradford

“ After a few years of severe hardships in Holland, their newly adopted country, the seed they are nurturing is threatened once again. It must be preserved at all costs. They gather it up and bear it across the seas—fearful seas—and plant it once more, forming a little settlement in the savage, distant land of North America. For years they defend their treasure there against every conceivable attack by Nature and by man, encouraged solely by the consciousness that the plant they are tending is God’s Truth—Freedom for each man to honour and worship God as he sees Him. ”

“ On the sloping hillside of Plymouth, that bathes its feet in the waters of the Atlantic, such a voice is breathed by the brooding genius of the place, and the ear must be dull that fails to catch the whispered words. For here not alone did godly men and women suffer greatly for a great cause, but their noble purpose was not doomed to defeat, but was carried to perfect victory. ”

“ And as we ourselves stand ready to embrace all occasions that may tend to the furtherance of so hopeful a work; rather admiring at what is, than grudging for what is not, so it must rest still in you to make all good again. And if in nothing else you can be approved, yet let your honesty and conscience be still approved, and lose not one jot of your innocence amidst your many crosses and afflictions.
And surely if you upon this alteration behave yourselves wisely and go on fairly, as men whose hopes is not in this life; you shall need no other weapon to wound your adversaries ”

“ 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, viz. that we may have peace to serve our God and our Prince in the place of the sepulchres of our fathers. ”

“ This year Mr. Smith resigned his ministry, partly by his own wish, thinking it too heavy a burden, and partly at the persuasion of others. So the church looked out for some one else, having often been disappointed in their hopes before. But it pleased the Lord to send them an able and godly man, Mr. John Rayner, meek and humble in spirit, sound in the truth, and every way unreprovable in his life and conversation. After some time of trial they chose him as their minister, the fruits of whose labours they enjoyed many years with much comfort, in peace and good agreement. ”

“ May not & ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: Our faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes; but they cried unto ye Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie, &c. Let them [Pg 24] therefore praise ye Lord, because he is good, & his mercies endure for ever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of ye Lord, shew how he hath delivered them from ye hand of ye oppressour. ”

“ This do, and in all things be humble, cheerful and thankful; that if you cannot grow rich in this world, yet you may be rich in grace; and if you can send us no other treasure, yet let all that visit you, bring from you the fame of honesty, religion and godliness, which we trust, shall comfort us more than all else you can send us in this world. ”

“ Treaties and wars, alliances and royal marriages, all are but the flotsam and jetsam on the surface of this ever increasing, ever multiplying river,—sublime in the far-flung grandeur of its streamlets and tributaries, its still deeps and its raging cataracts—not one department of the whole landscape of human life, in all its variety, but reveals its vague new workings or its established deep-set currents. ”

“ Hoar has said, any influence or special effort of mine; but it is international good feeling and comity which brought about to you the pleasure and the joy of having this manuscript returned, and so it will ever be. A generous act will beget a generous act; trust and confidence will beget trust and confidence; and so it will be while the world shall last, and well will it be for the man or for the people who shall recognize this truth and act upon it. ”

“ As you have ever been, not only a favourer, but also a most special beginner and furtherer of the good of this country, to your great cost and no less honour, we whose names are underwritten, being some of every plantation, in the land, deputed for the rest, do humbly crave your worship’s help and best assistance, in the speedy (if not too late) redress of our almost desperate state and condition in this place, expecting daily to be overrun and spoiled by the Savages, who are already abundantly furnished with pieces, powder and shot, swords, rapers and Jaflings ”

“ Young men.—We cannot but marvel that in so few years there should be so great a change, that they who were so hotly persecuted by the prelates, and also opposed by the better sort of ministers, not only Mr. Gifford, Mr. Bernard, and other such like, but many of the most eminent both for learning and godliness, and yet now not only these famous men and churches in New England so fully to close with them in practice, but all the godly party in the land to stand for the same way, under the new name of Independents, put upon them. ”

“ May America and Great Britain go forward charged with the privilege of a common stewardship for the liberties of mankind! May the glorious witness of these brave lives, whom we commemorate to-day, enrich us, whose course on earth is not yet run, with the inspiring vision of the sanctity and self-abnegation of true patriotism! ”

“ I pray you therefore, Sir, set your wisdom and patience to work, and exhort others to do the same, that things may not proceed from bad to worse, making our divisions like the bars of a palace; but that a way of peace may be kept open, where the God of peace may have entrance at His own time. If you are wronged, it is to your honour to bear it patiently ”

“ We are many people, consisting of all sorts, as well women children, as men; and are now left, and forsaken of our adventurers, who will neither supply us with necessaries for our subsistence, nor suffer others that would be willing; neither can we be at liberty to deal with others, or provide for ourselves, but they keep us tied to them, and yet they will be loose from us; they have not only cast us off, but entered into particular course of trading, and have by violence, and force, taken at their pleasure, our possession at Cape Ann. ”

“ If the modern student sets up before his mental vision a moving panorama of the history of Europe through the Middle Ages, the most striking general feature is undoubtedly the irresistible course of the growing stream of Freedom, touching and fructifying every section and institution of human life—the inevitable outcome of the evolution of Christianity made manifest in things temporal, and breaking through the ecclesiastical bounds so long set for it, as exclusively pertaining to things spiritual. ”

“ To the worshipful and my right worthy friend William Bradford, Esq. Governour of New Plymouth, these,
Right Worthy Sir,
It is a thing not usual, that servants to one master and of the same household should be strangers; I assure you I desire it not, nay to speak more plainly, I cannot be so to you: God’s people are all marked with one and the same mark, and sealed with one and the same seal, and have, for the main, one and the same heart, guided by one and the same spirit of truth ”

“ I cannot but take occasion here to wonder at the marvellous providence of God, that, notwithstanding the many changes these people went through, and the many enemies they had, and the difficulties they met with, so many of them should live to very old age. It was not only their reverend elder—for one swallow makes no summer, as they say—but many more of them, some dying about and before this time, and some still living, who reached sixty or sixty-five years of age, others seventy and over, and some nearly eighty, as he was. ”

“ God forbid, I should need to exhort you to peace, which is the bond of perfection, and by which all good is tied together, and without which it is scattered. Have peace with God first, by faith in his promises, good conscience kept in all things, and oft renewed by repentance ”

“ We bear you always in our breasts, and our hearty affection is towards you all, as are the hearts of hundreds more who have never seen your faces, but who doubtless pray for your safety as their own, as we do and ever shall—that the same God which has so marvellously preserved you from seas, foes, and famine, will still preserve you from all future dangers, and make you honourable among men, and glorious in bliss at the last day. ”

“ In defiance of established law and order, and of the accepted, orthodox view of it, this little body of people pursues an ideal, vital to the peace of their souls, with a tenacity which implies certain loss of personal freedom and confiscation of property, with risk of death. Rather than be compelled to abandon the pursuit of their ideal, these people voluntarily exile themselves from England, thereby depriving themselves of loved homes and dear friends and worldly possessions. ”

“ Where is the meek and humble spirit of Moses and of Nehemiah, who re-edified the walls of Jerusalem and the state of Israel? Is not the sound of Rehoboam’s bragging daily among us here? Have not the philosophers and all wise men observed, that even in settled commonwealths violent governors bring either themselves or people or both to ruin? How much more in the building of commonwealths, when the mortar is scarcely hardened which is to bind the walls. ”

“ Let none argue that this is due to human failing rather than to this communistic plan of life in itself. I answer, seeing that all men have this failing in them, that God in His wisdom saw that another plan of life was fitter for them.”
Thus in civil as in religious matters, Bradford’s sure instinct led him always to follow the guidance of a wise and benevolent Providence, working for the rational and natural evolution of mankind, which humanity could expedite only by a plain, unsophisticated reliance upon truth and goodness, as incarnate in the divine character and life of Christ. ”

“ He was tender-hearted and compassionate with those in misery, especially when they were of good birth and rank and had fallen into want and poverty, either for religion’s sake or through the oppression of others; he would always say that of all men such deserved to be most pitied. None displeased him more than those who would haughtily and proudly exalt themselves, having risen from nothing, and having little else to commend them than a few fine clothes, or more means than others. ”

“ Indeed it is our calamity that we are, beyond expectation, yoked with some ill-disposed people, who, while they do no good themselves, corrupt and abuse others.
The rest of the letter stated that they had subscribed to the conditions according to his desire, and sent him the previous accounts very exactly; also how the ship was laden, and in what condition their affairs stood; that the arrival of the new people would bring famine upon them unavoidably, if they did not receive supplies, in time,—as Mr. Cushman could more fully inform him and the rest of the adventurers. ”

“ Those reformers who saw the evil of these things, and whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for his truth, shook off this yoke of anti-Christian bondage and as the Lord’s free people joined themselves together by covenant as a church, in the fellowship of the gospel to walk in all His ways, made known, or to be made known to them, according to their best endeavours, whatever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them. ”