Many
earnestly desired to return to the purity and simplicity which characterized
the primitive church. They regarded many of the established customs of the English Church as monuments of idolatry, and
they could not in conscience unite in her worship. But the church, being
supported by the civil authority, would permit no dissent from her forms.
Attendance upon her service was required by law, and unauthorized assemblies
for religious worship were prohibited, under penalty of imprisonment, exile,
and death.
At
the opening of the seventeenth century the monarch who had just ascended the
throne of England declared his determination to
make the Puritans “conform, or . . . harry them out of the land, or else
worse.”--George Bancroft, History of the United States of America, pt. 1, ch. 12, par. 6. Hunted,
persecuted, and imprisoned, they could discern in the future no promise of
better days, and many yielded to the conviction that for such as would serve
God according to the dictates of their conscience, “England was ceasing forever
to be a habitable place.”--J. G. Palfrey, History of New England, ch. 3, par. 43. Some at last
determined to seek refuge in Holland. Difficulties, losses, and
imprisonment were encountered. Their purposes were thwarted, and they were
betrayed into the hands of their enemies. But steadfast perseverance finally
conquered, and they found shelter on the friendly shores of the Dutch Republic.
In their flight they had left their
houses, their goods, and their means of livelihood. They were strangers in a
strange land, among a people of different language and customs. They were forced to
resort to new and untried occupations to earn their bread. Middle-aged men, who
had spent their lives in tilling the soil, had now to learn mechanical trades.
But they cheerfully accepted the situation and lost no time in idleness or
repining. Though often pinched with poverty, they thanked God for the blessings
which were still granted them and found their joy in unmolested spiritual
communion. “They knew they were pilgrims, and looked not much on those things,
but lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, and quieted their
spirits.”--Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 12, par. 15.
In the midst of exile and hardship their love
and faith waxed strong. They trusted the Lord's promises, and He did not fail
them in time of need. His angels were by their side, to encourage and support
them. And when God's hand seemed pointing them across the sea, to a land where
they might found for themselves a state, and leave to their children the
precious heritage of religious liberty, they went forward, without shrinking,
in the path of providence.
God
had permitted trials to come upon His people to prepare them for the accomplish-ment
of His gracious purpose toward them. The church had been brought low, that she
might be exalted. God was about to display His power in her behalf, to give to
the world another evidence that He will not forsake those who trust in Him. He
had overruled events to cause the wrath of Satan and the plots of evil men to
advance His glory and to bring His people to a place of security. Persecution
and exile were opening the way to freedom.
When
first constrained to separate from the English Church, the Puritans had joined
themselves together by a solemn covenant, as the Lord's free people, “to walk
together in all His ways made known or to be made known to them.” --J. Brown,
The Pilgrim Fathers, page 74. Here was the true spirit of reform, the vital
principle of Protestantism. It was with this purpose that the Pilgrims departed
from Holland to find a home in the New World.
Excerpted from The Great Controversy, pp. 290, 291.
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