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The Life of John Eliot; with an Account of the Early Missionary Efforts

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The Life of John Eliot; with an Account of the Early Missionary Efforts I > ^ ->•. : , ^^ Q^ ,^^^- .N ''/ -^ # % .o^ If^ =^_^o< O '''' *^_ "f^c^ ^ .^^^;^;,,- . N ' / . s ^ <^ -^ % ^^^a'^ % .A^' 3 ^ c^^- ' * « /• ^<^ 6 .^^ - >: a5 9^. \.^'- #%"- i\ i ^ • » LIVES CHIEF FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND. The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fa- thers; let hioa not leave us, nor forsake us. 1 Kings 8: 57. VOL. III. F: 3 THE LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE EARLY MISSIONARY EFFORTS AMONG THE INDIANS OF NEW ENGLAND, By NEHEMIAH ADAMS, PASTOR OF SSSEX STREET CHURCH, BOSTON. Written for the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, and approved by the Committee of Publication. BOSTON: MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETV, Depository, No. 13 Cornhill. 18 47. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1847, By CHRISTOPHER C.DEAN, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. ADVERTISEMENT BY THE PUBLISHING COMMITTEE. The substance of this book is a Lecture delivered in 1842, before the Young Men's Missionary Association of Boston. On application of the Publishing Com- mittee, the author has consented to enlarge it for publication, as one of the Series of the Lives of the New England Fathers. 1* SEAL OF THE MASSACHUSETTS (OR SALEM) COLONY. TRANSLATION. Seal of the Governor and Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England. LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT. INTKODUCTORYCHAPTEK. Missionary object of the Pilgrims. Seal of Massachusetts Colony. Reasons with the Pilgrims for leaving Holland. Extnict from the Royal Charter of the Plymouth Colony. Charter of the Salem Company. Thoughts on this Continent as a field for Missionary efforts. Account of the landing at Plymouth, and the first meeting with the Indians. First Missionary efforts among them. Man- ners and habits of the New England Indians. Numbers in the various tribes. Reflections on the Missionary character and efforts of the Pilgrims. The May-flower. A PROMINENT object with the Pilgrim fathers in coming hither, was, to preach the Gospel to the Indians of this Continent. Many popular orators and writers represent them, as it were, following and worshiping a goddess of liberty. But it was not for the mere liberty of believing and doing what they pleased that they braved the ocean and the perils of this wilderness. Two great motives influenced them. For the liberty of worshiping God ac- 8 LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT. cording lo their own consciences, they " went out not knowing," as the event proved, " whither they went." But this was not all ; they had a missionary object in coming here. It is an interesting fact that the original seal of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, who arrived and settled at Salem in 162S, had on it a North American Indian, with these words proceeding from his mouth, " Come over and help us." This device on the seal of their colony pub- lished to the world the fact that they regarded themselves as foreign missionaries to North America. This was also the case with their brethren of the Plymouth Colony, who arrived eight years before. The Pilgrims had fled to Holland, from the persecutions of the English Church. In the account of their residence in Holland we find some records which establish beyond a doubt the fact of their missionary intentions in coming to these shores. Governor Bradford, in his His- tory of Plymouth, speaking of the Pilgrims while yet in Holland, says, " This year, (1617,) Mr. Robinson and his Church begin to think of a remove to America, for several weighty rea- sons, as (1.) The difficulties in Holland dis- couraged many from coming to them out of England, and obliged many to return. (2.) LIFE OF JOilN ELIOT. By reason of these difliculties with tlie licen- tiousness of the youth, and temptations of the place, many of their children left their parents, some of them becoming soldiers, others taking to foreign voyages, and some to dissoluteness and the danger of their souls, to the great grief of their parents, and fear lest their posterity through these temptations and examples should degenerate, and religion die among them. (3.) From an inward zeal and great hope of laying some foundation or making way for propagating the kingdom of Christ to the remote ends of the earth, though they should be but as stepping stones to others." They obtained letters patent from the crown authorizing them to settle in North Virginia. The following is an extract from the Royal Charter, and is of the same purport with the third reason assigned by Governor Bradford for their removal to America. The Royal Charter says,—" We have thought it fit, according to our kingly duty—to second and follow God's holy will, by which means we may with bold- ness go on to the settling of so hopeful a work which tendelh to the reducing and conversion of such savages as remain wandering in desolation and distress, to civil society and Christian re- ligion." " 10 LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT. It is well known that the Colonists who received this Charter, and sailed for North Vir- ginia, were driven into the waters of Cape Cod, and thus unintentionally landed and settled at Plymouth. The Charter of " the Colony of Massachu- setts Bay," who settled a few years after at Salem, says, " To win and incite the natives of that country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Saviour of mankind and the Christian faith, is, in our royal intention and the adventurer's free profession, the principal end of the plantation." The Committee of the " Massachusetts Company, in their letter dated at Gravesend, and addressed to Mr. Endicott, the leader, and afterward the Governor, of the Massachusetts or Salem Colony, say, " For that the propagating the Gospel is the thing we profess above all in settling this plantation, we have been careful to make plentiful provision of good ministers.'"^ * See Laws of Mass. I., page 77, Sect. 8, 9. " Whereas one end in planting these parts teas to propagate the true religion unto the Indians, and that divers of them are become subject unto the English, and have engaged themselves to be ready and willing to understand the law of God : It is therefore ordered thai such necessary and wholesome laws which are in force, and may be made from time to time, to reduce them to civility of life, shall be once a year, if the times be safe, made known to them by such fit persons as the general court shall appoint." LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT. 11 It is interesting^ to think of this Continent as having been the object of missionary zeal and efforts witli the pilgrim fathers. The place which this continent occupies on the globe is peculiar and interesting. The numerous nations of the old world are crowded together in one hemisphere, and this continent is the prominent object of the other. It did not seem presump- tion to the pilgrims to believe that God laid its deep foundations by itself, in the midst of the oceans rolling between it and the rest of the globe, for some purpose as singular as its posi- tion. In the writings of ancient poets there are remarkable allusions to this continent, when as yet it was undiscovered. Seneca, a Latin writer, who lived at the beginning of the Christian era, *' " has in his Medea" this declaration : The time will come in remote years when the ocean will unloose the present boundaries of nature, and a great country wall appear. Another Ty- phis will discover new worlds, and Thule will no longer be the limit of the earth. '"^ Homer and Horace had sung of Islands west of Africa, the Atlantides, which were " the Elysian fields." * " Venicnt annis " Secula seris, quibus Oceanus Vincula rerum. laxet, el iiigens Paleat lellus, Typhis que novos Delegel orbes ; nee ail lenis Ultima Thule " M«dea, Act, 3., v. 375. 12 LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT. Hanno, the Carthaginian general and great navigator, had sailed from the pilhirs of Hercu- les, (the straits of Gibraltar,) westward, thirty days. Some suppose that he must have seen America, or some of the neighboring islands.* Columbus verified the dreams and surmises of the world; the Cabots pursued his sublime dis- coveries, and they, with their Bristol crews, long accustomed to Icelandic fisheries, found this continent. New adventurers carried home some of the native Indians ; and, at length, a new Continent, inhabited by wild men, became the subject of intense interest to the civilized world. Our pious forefathers, while yet in the old world, fancied that they heard the Macedo- nian cry from the Indians here, and it quick- ened their flight, as they say, " to follow Christ into a waste howling wilderness." Having been driven into the waters of Cape Cod, instead of North Virginia, and making a safe harbor on Saturday, the Pilgrims fell on their knees and blessed the God of heaven. The Sabbath came ; the Mayflower riding at anchor, and the exploring party in the shallop, kept the first Sabbath of the Lord which, perhaps, had ever been recognized in this region, since God rested from his works. * " America known to the Ancientu." Bostwn, 177i<, LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT. 13 " Monday," says Prince, in his New England Chronology, '• the people go ashore to refresh thennselves; —the whales play round about them, and the greatest store of fowl they ever saw. But the earth here a company of sand hills, and the water so shallow near the shore, they were forced to wade a bow-shot or two to get to land, which being freezing weather, afTecteth them with grievous coughs and colds, which after proves the death of many.
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