e
by the mere statement of it.

We do not need to be told that to the little Separatist settlement at
Plymouth, still in the first decade of its feeble existence, the
founding, within a day's journey, of this powerful colony, on
ecclesiastical principles distinctly antagonistic to their own, was a
momentous, even a formidable fact. Critical, nay, vital questions
emerged at once, which the subtlest churchcraft might have despaired of
answering. They were answered, solved, harmonized, by the spirit of
Christian love.

That great spiritual teacher, John Robinson, besides his more general
exhortations to brotherly kindness and charity, had spoken, in the
spirit of prophecy, some promises and assurances which came now to a
divine fulfillment. Pondering "sundry weighty and solid reasons" in
favor of removal from Holland, the pilgrims put on record that "their
pastor would often say that many of those who both wrote and preached
against them would practice as they did if they were in a place where
they might have liberty and live conformably." One of the most
affectionate of his disciples, Edward Winslow, wrote down some of the
precious and memorable words which the pastor, who was to see their face
no more, uttered through his tears as they were about to leave him.
"'There will be no difference,' he said, 'between the unconformable
ministers and you, when they come to the practice of the ordinances out
of the kingdom.' And so he advised us to close with the godly party of
the kingdom of England, and rather to study union than division, viz.,
how near we might possibly without sin close with them, rather than in
the least measure to affect division or separation from them."

The solitude of the little starving hamlet by the sea was favorable to
the springing and fructifying of this seed in the good and honest hearts
into which it had been cast. Before the great fleet of colonists, with
its three unconformable Church of England clergymen, had reached the
port of Salem the good seed had been planted anew in other hearts not
less honest and good. It fell on this wise. The pioneer party at Salem
who came with Endicott, "arriving there in an uncultivated desert, many
of them, for want of wholesome diet and convenient lodgings, were seized
with the scurvy and other distempers, which shortened many of their
days, and prevented many of the rest from performing any great matter of
labor that year for advancing the work of the planta