History of American Literature by Reuben Post Halleck
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page 9 of 431 (02%)
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seeing we are not born for ourselves but each to help other ... Seeing
honor is our lives' ambition ... and seeing by no means would we be abated of the dignities and glories of our predecessors; let us imitate their virtues to be worthily their successors." WHY THE PURITANS COLONIZED NEW ENGLAND.--During the period from 1620 to 1640, large numbers of Englishmen migrated to that part of America now known as New England. These emigrants were not impelled by hope of wealth, or ease, or pleasure. They were called Puritans because they wished to purify the Church of England from what seemed to them great abuses; and the purpose of these men in emigrating to America was to lay the foundations of a state built upon their religious principles. These people came for an intangible something--liberty of conscience, a fuller life of the spirit--which has never commanded a price on any stock exchange in the world. They looked beyond "Things done that took the eye and had the price; O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice." These Puritans had been more than one century in the making. We hear of them in the time of Wycliffe (1324-1384). Their religion was a constant command to put the unseen above the seen, the eternal above the temporal, to satisfy the aspiration of the spirit. James I. (reign, 1603-1625) told them that he would harry them out of the kingdom unless they conformed to the rites of the Established Church. His son and successor Charles I. (reign, 1625-1649) called to his aid Archbishop Laud (1573-1645), a bigoted official of that church. Laud hunted the dissenting clergy like wild beasts, threw them into prison, whipped them in the pillory, branded them, |
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