A young man, as Morton's story goes, was arrested for stealing corn from an Indian, and the following mode of dealing with the case was proposed by one of the general assembly of the community called to adjudge punishment. Says he: "You all agree that one must die, and one shall die. This young man's clothes we will take off, and put upon one that is old and impotent; a sickly person that cannot escape death; such is the disease on him confirmed, that die le must. Put the young man's clothes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other's stead. Amen, says one, and so says many more." A large portion of the volume is devoted to the aborigines and the natural features of the country. He thus expatiates on his first impressions: And whiles our houses were building, I did endeavor to take a survey of the country; the more I looked, the more I liked it. When I had more seriously considered of the beauty of the place, with all her fair endowments, I did not think that, in all the known world, it could be paralleled. For so many goodly groves of trees; dainty, fine, round, rising hillocks; delicate, fair, large plains; sweet crystal fountains, and clear running streams, that twine in fine meanders through the meads, making so sweet a murmuring noise to hear, as would even lull the senses with delight asleep, so pleasantly do they glide upon the pebble stones, jetting most jocundly where they do meet, and hand in hand run down to Neptune's court, to pay the yearly tribute which they owe to him as sovereign lord of all the springs. Contained within the volume of the land, fowls in abundance; fish in multitude; and discovered besides, millions of turtle doves on the green boughs, which sate pecking of the full, ripe, pleasant grapes, that were supported by the lusty trees, whose fruitful load did cause the arms to bend, while here and there despersed, you might see lillies, and of the Daphnean tree, which made the land to me seem paradise, for in mine eye it was Nature's masterpiece, her chiefest magazine of all, where lives her store. If this land be not rich, then is the whole world poor. He is amusingly at fault in his natural history. The beaver, he says, sits "in his house built on the water, with his tayle hanging in the water, which else would over-heate and rot off." Another marvel is, "a curious bird to see to, called å humming-bird, no bigger than a great beetle; that out of question lives upon the bee, which he catcheth and eateth amongst Flowers; for it is his custom to frequent those places. Flowers he cannot feed upon by reason of his sharp bill, which is like the point of a Spannish needle but short." WILLIAM BRADFORD. WILLIAM BRADFORD was born at Ansterfield, in the north of England, in 1588. He was educated as a farmer, and inherited a large patrimony. Embracing at an early age the tenets of the Puritans, he connected himself with the congregation of the celebrated John Robinson, and at the age of nineteen, after two unsuccessful attempts, joined his associates at Amsterdam. He remained in Holland until 1620, when he formed one of the ship's company of the Mayflower. While exploring the bay in a small boat, for the purpose of selecting a place for settlement, his wife was drowned. After the death of Governor Carver, April 5, 1621, he was chosen his successor. He established by gentleness and firmness a good understanding with the Indians, and conducted the internal affairs of the colony with equal sagacity. He was annually re-elected for twelve years, and then, in the words of Governor Winthrop, "by importunity got off" from the cares of office for two years, when he was re-elected, and continued in power, with the exceptions of the years 1636, '38, and '44, until his death, May 9, 1657. He was twice married, and left two sons by his second wife, Alice Southworth. The eldest, William, was deputy-governor of the colony, and had nine sons and three daughters. Numerous anecdotes are related of Governor Bradford, indicative of ready wit and good cominon sense. When in 1622, during a period of great scarcity in the colony, Canonicus, Sachem of Narragansett, sent him a bundle of arrows tied with the skin of a serpent, the messenger was immediately sent back with the skin stuffed with powder and ball, which caused a speedy and satisfactory termination to the correspondence. Suspecting one Lyford of plotting against the ecclesiastical arrangements of the colony, he boarded a ship, which was known to have carried out a large number of letters written by him, after she had left port, examined them, and thus obtained evidence by which Lyford was tried and banished. William Bradford Governor Bradford's reputation as an author is decidedly of a posthumous character. He left a MS. history, in a folio volume of 270 pages, of the Plymouth colony, from the formation of their church in 1602 to 1647. It furnished the material for Morton's Memorial, was used by Prince and Governor Hutchinson in the preparation of their histories, and deposited, with the collection of papers of the former, in the library of the Old South Church, in Boston. During the desecration of this edifice as a riding-school by the British in the Revolutionary war, the MS. disappeared.* A copy of a portion closing with the year 1620, in the handwriting of Nathaniel Morton, was discovered by the Rev. Alexander Young in the library of the First Church, at Plymouth, and printed in his Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth, in 1841. A "letterbook," in which Bradford preserved copies of his correspondence, met with a similar fate, a portion only having been rescued from a grocer's shop in Halifax, and published in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, in 1794, vol. iii. of the first series of Collections, with a fragment of a poem on New England. These, with two other specimens of a few lines each, first published by the same Society in 1838,t form, with the exception of some slight controversial pieces, the whole of his literary productions. "I commend unto your wisdom and discretion," he says in his will, 66 some small bookes written by my own hand, to be improved as you shall see meet. In special, I commend to you a It was given up for lost till 1655, when it was found complete in the Fulhain Library, England. Third Bories, vil. little booke with a black cover, wherein there is a word to Plymouth, a word to Boston, and a word to New England, with sundry useful verses." OF BOSTON IN NEW ENGLAND. O Boston, though thou now art grown Some thou hast had whome I did know, When thou wast weak they did thee nurse, Thou now hast grown in wealth and store, A Winthrop once in thee was known, Yet thou enjoyed this blessed pair. Live ye in peace. I could say more. Do throw you down from your high state. FRAGMENTARY POEM ON NEW ENGLAND. Famine once we had, But other things God gave us in full store, In other places there were few or none; For Salem was the next of any fame, That began to augment New England's name; More than well knew themselves where to bestow; Not only of the Massachusetts Bay, Pears, apples, cherries, plumbs, quinces and peach, If you will take the pains them to seek for. But that which did 'bove all the rest excel, All marvell'd and said: “Lord, this work is thine, Thus to hear men pray, and God's praises sing JOHN DAVENPORT. JOHN DAVENPORT, the first minister of New Haven, and an important theological writer of his time, was born in Coventry, England, in 1897. He was educated at Merton and Magdalen oolleges, Oxford, but left before taking a degree. Soon after removing to London he became minister of St. Stephen's Church, Coleman st., at nineteen, and obtained great oelebrity as a pulpit orator. In the year 1680 he united with others 1 in purchasing church property held by laymen with a view of devoting the revenue therefrom to provide clergymen for destitute congregations. By the exertions of Laud, who feared that the scheme would be turned to the advantage of the non-conformists, the company was broken up, and the money which had been collected, confiscated. In 1633, in consequence of non-conformity, be resigned his church, and removed to Holland. After preaching to the English congregation for two years as the colleague of John Paget, he became engaged in a controversy in consequence of his opposition to the plan there pursued, of the general baptism of infants, and retiring from the pulpit devoted himself to teaching, until he was induced by John Cotton to emigrate to Boston. He had been an early friend of the colony, having been one of the applicants for the original charter. His name does not appear in the list of patentees, having been omitted at his own request lest it should excite the opposition of Laud to the scheme. He arrived at Boston, June, 1637, and in August took part in the Synod called in reference to the opinions of Anne Hutchinson. He sailed, March 30, 1638, with a company for Quinnipiack or New Haven, where he preached under an oak on the eighteenth of April, the first Sunday after his arrival, as their minister, a position he retained for thirty years, during which he was instrumental in the passage of the rigid laws regarding church membership established in the colony. He displayed great courage in concealing the Regicides, Whalley and Gofle, in his own house, in 1661, and by preaching when their pursuers were expected in the city from the text, "Ilide the outcasts; bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler" (Isaiah xvi. 3, 4). On the death of John Wilson, minister of the first church in Boston, in 1667, he accepted a call to become his successor, believing that as affairs in New Haven were in a settled condition he could do more good in Boston, where, as he thought, ecclesiastical discipline had been unduly relaxed. He was instituted pastor, Dec. 9, 1688, and died of apoplexy March 15, 1670. He was the author of several pamphlets on the controversy between himself and the English church at Amsterdam, of A Discourse about Ciril Government in a new Plantation, whose design is religion, and of The Saints Anchor Hold in all Storms and Tempests, a collection of sermons. He also prepared an Exposition on the Canticles, of which Mather tells us, "the death of the gentleman chiefly concerned in the intended impression proved the death of the impression itself." ROGER WILLIAMS. In the political history of the country, the name of Williams, as the apostle of civil and religious liberty, holds the first rank; his literary achievements, exhibiting his graces of character, entitle him to an honorable place in this collection. He was one of the first of the learned university men who came to New England for conscience sake, and the principle which brought him across the Atlantic did not depart on his landing. Religious • Magnalia, Ed. 1858, 1. 880, liberty, the right divine of conscience, was not simply having his own way, while he checked other people's. He did not fly from persecution to persecute. Born in Wales in 1606,* educated at Oxford; if not a student at law with Sir Edward Coke, enjoying an early intimacy with him; then a non-conformist ininister in conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities of the times, he arrived in Massachusetts in 1631. Asserting at once his views of religious toleration, the independence of conscience of the civil magistrate, and the separation of Church and State, he was driven from Salem, where he had become established as a preacher, by an order of the General Council in 1635, into exile, for "his new and dangerous opinions against the authority of magistrates." He then made his memorable journey in the winter season, through what was then a wilderness, to the vicinity of Narragansett Bay, where, received in friendship by the Indians, he established himself at Seekonk; but finding himself within the limits of the Plymouth colony, he sailed with his friends in a canoe down the river to found on the opposite shore the city of Providence, a living name which will always bear witness to his persecution and trust in God. Here he maintained friendly relations with the Indians, warded off disaster, by quieting their threatened aggressions, from the people who had driven him away, received fugitives for conscience sake from Massachusetts Bay, and promoted the settlement of Rhode Island. In 1643 he sailed from New Amsterdam for England, as an agent to procure a charter. On his way thither at sea, he wrote his Key into the Language of America, which he published in London, on his arrival.† "I drew," he says in his address, "to my dear and well beloved friends and countrymen in Old and New England, the materials in a rude lump at sea, as a private help to my own memory, that I might not by my present absence lightly lose what I had so dearly bought in some few years of hardship and charges among the Barbarians," and he committed it to the public for the benefit of his friends. "A little key," he says, "may open a box, where lies a bunch of keys.” Roger Williams We follow here the Oxford University entry presented by Dr. Elton, in preference to the usual statements which make him seven or eight years older. A Key into the Language of America, or an help to the Language of the Natires in that part of AMERICA called NEW ENGLAND; together with briefe Observations of the Customs, Manners and Worships, &c., of the aforesaid Nations, in Peace and Warre, in Life and Death. On all which are added Spirituall Observations, General and Particular, by the Authour, of chiefe and speciall use (upon all occasions) to all the English Inhabiting those parts; yet pleasant and profitable to the view of all men: By Roger Williams, of Providence, in New England. London: Printed by George Dexter, 18mo., pp. 200. 1048. There are very few coples of the original edition of this book in existence. The library of the Massachusetts Historical Boclety has one, from which a reprint has been made in the first volume of the Collections of the Rhode I-land Historical Society, Providence, 1827. Mr. James Lenox, of New York, in his valuable Collection, has another, which we have had the privilege of consulting for this article. The Licenser's Imprimatur on the last page is curious, "I have read over these thirty chapters of the American Language, to me wholly unknotene, and the Observations, these I conceive inoffensive; and that the Works may conduce to the happy end intended by the Author. Jo LANGLEY." Coarse bread and water's most their fare, Thy cup runs o'er with plenteous store Sometimes God gives them fish or flesh, God's providence is rich to his, There is the same simplicity and faith in Providence in the rest of these little poems, wherever the topic gives him an opportunity to express it. The notes are simply jottings down of facts he had noticed-but even these few words are somehow instinct with his kindly spirit. "I once travailed," he says, "to an island of the wildest in our parts, where in the night an Indian (as he said) had a vision or dream of the Sun (whom they worship for a God) darting a beam into his breast, which he conceived to be the messenger of his death. This poor native called his friends and neighbors, and prepared some little refreshing for them, but himself was kept waking and fasting in great humiliations and invocations for ten days and nights. I was alone (having travelled from my bark the wind being contrary) and little could I speak to them, to their understanding, especially because of the change of their dialect or manner of speech from our neighbors: yet so much (through the help of God) I did speak, of the true and living only wise God, of the Creation, of Man and his fall from God, &c., that at parting many burst forth, Oh when will you come again, to bring us some more news of this God?" And to this follow the more particular" reflections: 66 God gives them sleep on ground, on straw, I have known them leave their house and mat, 'Fore day they invocate their gods, "How sweetly," he says, "do all the several sorts of heaven's birds, in all coasts of the world, preach unto men the praise of their maker's wisdome, power, and goodnesse, who feeds them and their young ones summer and winter with their several sorts of food: although they neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns!" TOL. 1.-8 If birds that neither sow nor reape, If man provide eke for his birds, And each bird spends in songs and tunes, What care will man, what care will God For his wife and children take? Millions of birds and worlds will God Sooner than his, forsake. To the general "observations of their travel," God makes a path, provides a guide, And feeds in wilderness! His glorious name while breath remains, O that I may confess. Lost many a time, I have had no guide, In stormy winter night no fire, In him I have found a house, a bed, No cup so bitter, but's made sweet, When God shall sweetning be. His business with Parliament was successful. He obtained a Charter of Incorporation of Providence Plantations in 1644. Before his return he published in London, the same year, a pamphlet, Mr. Cotton's Letter, lately printed, Examined and Answered, a refutation of the reasons of his dismissal, and also his celebrated work, which embodies the principles of toleration, The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, for cause of Conscience, discussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace.* The history of this composition is curious. "A witness of Jesus Christ, close prisoner in Newgate," wrote a tract "against persecution in cause of Conscience," which he penned on paper introduced into his prison as the stoppers to a bottle of milk, the fluid of which served him for ink. Williams thus introduces it in the prefatory part of his book, the "Tenent:"_ Arguments against persecution in milk, the answer for it (as I may say) in blood. The author of these arguments (against persecution) (as I have been informed) being committed by some then in power, close prisoner to Newgate, for the witness of some truths of Jesus, and having not the use of pen and ink, wrote these arguments in milk, in sheets of paper, brought to him by the woman his keeper, from a friend in London, as the stoppers of his milk bottle. In such paper written with milk, nothing will appear, but the way of reading it by fire being known to this friend who received the papers, he transcribed and kept together the papers, although the author himself could not correct, nor view what himself had written. It was in milk, tending to soul nourishment, even for babes and sucklings in Christ. It was in milk, spiritually white, pure, and inno The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, for cause of Conscience, discussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace, who, in all tender affection, present to the High Court of Par llament, as the Result of their Discourse, these, amongst other, Passages of highest consideration. Printed in the year 1644, 4to. pp. 947. cent, like those white horses of the word of truth and meekness, and the white linen or armour of righteousness, in the army of Jesus. Rev. vi. & xix. It was in milk, soft, meek, peaceable, and gentle, tending both to the peace of souls and the peace of states and kingdoms. This was a mild introduction to controversy: yet being sent to New England, was answered by John Cotton, when Williams published both arguments with his reply. The "Bloody Tenent" is a noble work, full of brave heart and tenderness; a book of learning and piety,-the composition of a true, gentle nature. How sweet, delicate, and reverential are the soft approaches of the dialogue as "Peace" and "Truth" address one another. "But hark," says Truth, "what noise is this?" as she listens to the din of the wars for Conscience. These," is the reply, "are the doleful drums and shrill-sounding trumpets, the roaring, murdering cannons, the shouts of conquerors, the groans of wounded, dying, slaughtered righteous, with the wicked. Dear Truth, how long? How long these dreadful sounds and direful sights? How long before my glad return and restitution?" This is the expression of a poet. For his position as an asserter of religious toleration, we may quote the sentence of Bancroft: "He was the first person in modern Christendom to assert in its plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law, and in its defence he was the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the superior of Jeremy Taylor." Williams returned to America in 1644, and at the close of 1651 again visited England to secure the Confirmation of the Charter, in which he succeeded. Cotton had in the meantime replied, in 1647, to the "Bloody Tenent" in his "Bloody Tenent Washed and Made White in the Blood of the Lamb," to which Williams was ready in London with his rejoinder, The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody, by Mr. Cotton's Endeavor to Wash it White in the Blood of the Lambe,† in which he pursued his argument with his old zeal and learning. He published at the same time, in a small 4to., The Hireling Ministry none of Christ's, or a Discourse touching the Propagating the Gospel of Christ Jesus; humbly presented to such Pious and Honorable Hands, whom the preBent Debate thereof concerns. In 1853, there were first published at Providence, in the Life of Roger Williams by Romeo Elton, a brief series of letters which passed between Williams and the daughter of his old bene Bancroft's Hist. U. 8. 1. 876. The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody, by Mr. Cotton's Endeavor to wash it white in the Blood of the Lambe, of whose precious Blood spilt in the Blood of his Servants, and of the Blood of Millions spilt in former and later Wars for Conscience' Sake, that most Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, upon a second Tryal, is now found more apparently, and more notoriously guilty. In this Rejoynder to Mr. Cotton are principally, 1. The Nature of Persecution; 2. The Power of the Civill Sword in Spiritualls examined; 8. The Parliament's Permission of dissenting Consciences Justifed. Also (as a Testimony to Mr. Clark's Narrative) is added a Letter to Mr. Endicott, Governor of the Massachusetts in N. E. By R. Williams, of Providence, in New England. London, printed for Giles Calvert, and are to be sold at the Black Spread Eagle, at the West End of Paul's, 1652. Life of Roger Williams, the Earliest Legislator and true Champion for a full and absolute liberty of Conscience. By Romeo Elton, 96-109. This is a work of original research and much interesting information, | factor, Sir Edward Coke, Mrs. Anne Sadleir, on this second visit to England in 1652-3. They are full of character on both sides; the humor of them consisting in the lady being a royalist, well disposed to the church establishment, a sharpshooter in her language and a bit of a termnagant, while Williams was practising his politest graces and most Christian forbearance, as he steadily maintained his independent theology. He addresses her, "My much-honored friend, Mrs. Sadleir," and tenders her one of his compositions to read, probably the work he had just published in England, entitled, Experiments of Spiritual Life and Health and their Preservatives,* which he describes as "a plain and peaceable discourse, of my own personal experiments, which, in a letter to my dear wife-upon the occasion of her great sickness near death-I sent her, being ab sent myself among the Indians." He courteously invites attention and even censure. "I have been oft glad," he says, "in the wilderness of America to have been reproved for going in a wrong path, and to be directed by a naked Indian boy in my travels." He quietly throws out a few hints of the virtues of his own position in church matters. Mrs. Sadleir quotes Scripture in reply. MR. WILLIAMS,-Since it has pleased God to make the prophet David's complaint ours (Ps. lxxix.): "0 God, the heathen," &c., and that the apostle St. Peter has so long ago foretold, in his second epistle, the second chapter, by whom these things should be occasioned, I have given over reading many books, and, therefore, with thanks, have returned yours. Those that I now read, besides the Bible, arc, first, the late king's book; Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity; Reverend Bishop Andrews's Sermons, with his other divine meditations; Dr. Jer. Taylor's works; and Dr. Tho. Jackson upon the Creed. Some of these my dear father was a great admirer of, and would often call them the glorious lights of the church of England. These lights shall be my guide; I wish they may be yours; for your new lights that are so much cried up, I believe, in the conclusion, they will prove but dark lanterns; therefore I dare not meddle with them. Your friend in the old way, ANNE SADLEIR. Which little repellant, Williams, feeling the sting, answers, offering another book:— MY MUCH-HONORED, KIND FRIEND, MRS. SADLEIR,My humble respects premised to your much-honored self, and Mr. Sadleir, humbly wishing you the sav ing knowledge and assurance of that life which is eternal, when this poor minute's dream is over. In my poor span of time, I have been oft in the jaws of death, sickening at sea, shipwrecked on shore, in danger of arrows, swords and bullets: and yet, methinks, the most high and most holy God hath reserved me for some service to his most glorious and eternal majesty. I think, sometimes, in this common shipwreck of mankind, wherein we all are either floating or sinking, despairing or struggling for life, why should I ever faint in striving, as Paul saith, in hopes to save myself, to save others to call, and cry, and ask, what hope of saving, what hope of life, and of the Prof. Gammell's Life of Roger Williams, 218. We are much indebted to his careful bibliography. Certainly there should not be suffered to remain much longer any difficulty of access to all which Rogor Williams wrote, |