These men now felt that their only hope of enjoying perfect religious
liberty, and of establishing a church according to their own dearly-
loved principles, lay in a voluntary exile. Their English prejudices
made them shrink from continuing to dwell among the Dutch, who had
hitherto given them a hospitable asylum; for they feared that, by
frequent intermarriages, they should eventually lose their nationality;
and they resolved to seek a new home, where they might found an English
colony, and, while they followed that mode of worship which was alone
consistent with their views and principles; might still be subjects of
the English crown, and keep up an intercourse with the friends they
dearly loved, and the land where their forefathers had lived and died.

The recent discovery of the vast continent of America, in several parts
of which the British had already begun to form colonies, opened to them
a field of enterprise, as well as a quiet refuge from persecution and
controversy; and thither the Puritans turned their eyes. Nor were they
the first who had taken advantage of the unoccupied wastes of the New
World, and sought in them an asylum from intolerant oppression. Already
a numerous band of French Huguenots had retired thither, under the
conduct of their celebrated Calvinistic leader, De Monts, who was
invested with the government of the district lying between Montreal and
Philadelphia, by a patent from his sovereign, Henry the Fourth. No
traces of this colony now remain, while those planted by the English
Puritans have taken root in the American soil, and flourished so
greatly, that a few years ago their descendants were found to amount to
4,000,000: so remarkably has the blessing of God, at least in temporal
matters, been bestowed on an enterprise which was, doubtless,
undertaken in dependence on His protection; and was carried out with
that fortitude and resolution which are the results of sincere piety
struggling with deep adversity.[*]