Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-01-09

And Twill make Of theea great nation, and
in thee shall all the families of the earth
be blest." That promise famed like a
beacon in the dark night of THEN distress
and sacrifice.
1t is time for US to make the distinction
between the Puritans and the Pilgrims, for
we live in New England where to confound
them would brand us as .ignoramuses.
Henry VIII of England was upon the
whole a bad man, but he inaugurated a
movement which God has wonderfully
.overruled for the blessing of mankind.
Henry repudiated the allegiance of his
kingdom to the pope, and set up in the
business of church-making for himself.
He declared himself to be the head of the
church throughout all his dominions.
But when that church came to be estab-
lished, it was found that all were not of
one mind. Liberty-loving souls hated OPP
preston in a prelate as heartily as in a
pope. Where did these men with these
advanced ideas come from? They were
the spiritual descendants of Wycliffe, the
morning star of the Reformation. He had
translated the Bible for the people and set
the pulses of religious liberty in motion.
He had scattered abroad the new ideas as
later his ashes were scattered to the four
winds of heaven. This accumulated power
of Wycliffe's translated Bible was SO ire
sistible that it made England Protestant
in spite OF Henry, and was the father of
the Puritans whom the king found COM
posing a part of his church.. For there
N o,.c Of T M o,orxrlo.o =.
Europe, scattered voices, ''like the early
birds of the morning ~preIuding
the full choir of the noontide day." There
was a call sounding from ear to ear, a cry
rolling across Europe, and that summons
rung first from Wycliff to S~avonaroIa and
to John Huss, and then was re-echoed to
ZWinglI and Erasmus and Calvin-a call
which rang from the white, pure heights
of Switzerland to the frozen rivers of Nor
way, a cry which broke ~fuIl-toned from
the throat of indignant Luther like a thun-
der-peal. The English church became OPP
pressive; it prosecuted the Puritans, and,
as is always the case, that persecution al
ways strengthens what it opposes by call
forth the sympathies of men toward it's
victims, it accomplished nothing except
to swell the number of the Puritans. At
last Henry VIII died and after Edward VI
Bloody Mary, who took the church
back to allegiance to Rome again. Then
Jhe PurItans fed to SWitzerland-home of
liberty, a land where the people are as free
as their s~now-crowned SUBMITS and as
happy as their tumbling waterfalls. Ex-
in a strange land, they drank in the
spirit of liberty with the air they breathed
learned republicanism where every
anton was a free and sovereign commune
After Mary came Elizabeth on the throne
If England, and she established the church
~ law, decreeing uniformity and COM
handing all her subjects to think and
Worship alike. 1t was church unity brought
bout by brute force. The thing was ridic-
Until God unmakes us and then
US all over again, religious uniform
ty, church unity, Will remain an eternal
~mpossibility. "What hat selfish queen
would have made them they could not en-
Iure. but with their counsel and their
ourage they were the surest buttresses of
Ter menaced throne. John Stubs, print
r, was one of them. He had written
gainst the calculating Irritation with that
aintly demon, Philip III, and for his Of
ensive p%lainness was condemned to lose
lis and He wrote a plea as chfvalrOus
S any that Sidney could have penned, that
entence might be revoked; but Elizabeth
'udor never knew pity, and he suffered.
up from that mutilation John
tubbs waved above his head the stump,
pouting its blood, and cried, 'tGod save
be queen! God save the = >" and so
That was Puritanism them"
1t is right here that the Pilgrims come
nto view. They rebeIIed out and out
gainst this spiritual oppression, left the
hurch of England and set up for them
OF course Elizabeth, who never
ould brook any opposition, prosecuted
hem. Then they crossed over to Holland,
com whence, at last, they crossed to
-merica, and landed at Plymouth Rock in
$40. You see the difference: the Pilgrims
Separatists, the Puritans were not.
till hoping for the reformation and puri-
cation of the church, the Puritans remain
d within it. The pilgrims were Puritans,
ut the Puritans were not necessarily
The Puritans were still in
when the Pilgrims were wrest-
ng with famine and savages on the bleak
lore of Massachusetts, Bay, heroes of a
rander and graver Thermopylae than that
f Old. But because of the usurpations of
ing Charles l., the Puritans themselves
etermined to seek the New World, and in
'28 Salem was settled by John Endicott
nd his company. "Now began what is
in American history as the 'Puri-
IN Exodus" This lasted for eleven years,
ON 1923 to 1910, that is during the time
nat Charles I arbitrarily governed En-