Text: "These all ...confessed that they were strangers and PILGRIMS On the earth." –Hebrews 11:13
Different from the Puritans who sought to "purify" the Church of England were the "Pilgrims", otherwise known as "Independents" or "Separatists." Among their number were such men as John Milton, Isaac Watts, and John Bunyan.
Since England was a Church-State, to be an "Independent" or a "Separatist" involved treason against the crown and for their "crime" with their lives. It was for this reason pastor John Robinson fled with his congregation from persecution of James I and found asylum first in Amsterdam, then in received February 12, 1609. One portion of this congregation immigrated to the shores of Massachusetts and began the settlement at Plymouth in December 1620.
When the day of departure arrived, Pastor Robinson gave the benediction by reading Psalm 120:
"In my distress I cried unto the Lord and He heard me. Deliver my soul, 0 Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue. What shall be given unto thee? Or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? Sharp arrows of the Mighty, with coals of juniper. Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I swell in the tents of Kedar! My soul hath long dwelt with him that hated peace. I am for peace: but when I speak, they are for war.
They sailed from Leyden, Holland to the port of Southampton where, as Cotton Mather writes, "Their excellent pastor, on his knees by the sea-side poured out their mutual petitions unto God; and having wept in one another’s arms, as long as the wind and the time would permit them, they bade adieu."
One hundred and two passengers left Plymouth, England and there is good reason to believe ninety-eight of these were from the congregation of Pastor Robinson. OF these one hundred two passengers, one died by the way, but the Lord added a child while they were at sea. For this reason, the child was named "Oceanus" Hopkins. So it was that one hundred and two people arrived in the New World. Of the seventy-three men, only thirty-four were adults, and for this reason only forty-one men signed the Mayflower Compact which they signed before they went ashore. This document clearly states their purpose:
"In the name of God, Amen. We whose name are underwritten...having undertaken for he glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith...solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid...."
These people had spent eleven years in Holland as exiles. They were not interested in affluence: instead, they confessed they were "strangers and PILGRIMS on the earth." –Hebrews 11:13b. They believed life to be a pilgrimage. They lived under the eye of God and so walked in the fear of God. And the Lord was to teach these people to trust in His providential care.
First, they had planned to anchor in the Hudson River. Had they landed, they would likely have been massacred by hostile Indians. They were not allowed to land and so sailed north to Plymouth. Now, Plymouth had been the site of hostile Indians, too, who had been taking revenge on all white men landing along the coastline, but in the providence of Him who "worketh all things after the counsel of His own will," a plague in 1616 had begun to decimate the inhabitants around the Cape Cod region until nineteen out of every twenty Indians were wiped out.
The remaining Indians fled out of terror.
The second lesson in God’s Providence lay in the fact that in three months, fifty-two of tie one hundred and two people had died. The months of January and February took the heaviest toll. But, if these had not died, it is likely that all would have perished by starvation. Enough corn, however, had been left behind by the fleeing Indians to allow the Pilgrims to get through the winter. When the Indians did return, the Pilgrims paid them for the corn.
A third evidence of the providence of God lay in the appearance of two Indians who did welcome the Pilgrims in broken English. In 1615, an Englishman named Hunt enticed some of these Indians aboard his ship, which was then anchored at Cape Cod. Having placed them in slavery, he set sail for Spain where he sold them. One named "Squanto" managed to escape. He worked his way to England where he learned to speak the English language. Through the kindness of a merchant, Squanto was returned to his native home just six months prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims. It was these two Indians who taught the Pilgrims how to survive. God had spared from the plague the one man most needed by allowing his capture and enslavement, and returning him to America a friend to white men just in time to help the Pilgrims.
Is it any wonder the Pilgrims wanted to celebrate a Feast of Tabernacles at the end of the first year in the New World?
And the Pilgrims placed it on record they had "found the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to bless their outgoings and incomings, for which," they said, "let His holy name have the praise for ever to all posterity!"
Timothy Fellows, Pastor
The PILGRIM’S BIBLE CHURCH
In the Bon Air Residential Hotel
Virtual respect is a duty of married life, and though ...especial reverence is due from the husband also. As it is difficult to respect those who are not entitled to it on any other ground than superior rank or common relationship, it is of immense consequence that we should present to each other that conduct which deserves respect and commands it.... If therefore, we would be respected, we should be respectable.... It is a dreadful thing to lose...mutual respect.
There must be no searching after faults, nor examining with microscopic scrutiny such as cannot be concealed; no reproachful epithets; no rude contempt; no incivility; no cold neglect: there should be courtesy without ceremony; politeness without formality; attention without slavery: it should, in short, be the tenderness of love, supported by esteem, and guided by politeness.
And then, we must maintain our mutual respectability before others: strangers, friends, servants, and children must all be taught to respect us from what they see in our own behaviour.
-John Angell James
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November 29, 1683 --Thomas De Laune has written a book, A Plea for the Non-Conformists: Showing the True State of Their Case, and How For the Conformists Separation From the Church of Rome, for Their Popish Superstitions, Introduced Into the Service of God Justifies the Non-Conformists Separation From Them. Late this evening, he will be seized in his home and hauled to prison. Daniel De Foe, the celebrated author of Robinson Crusoe, writes, "The expensive prosecution depriving him of his livelihood had made him not only unable to pay the fine, but unable to subsist himself and his family." His wife and 2 small children join him in the prison where after lingering sorrows and sickness, one by one they will die, "At last," continues Defoe, "this excellent person sunk under the burden and died also."