confirm or supersede the gospel in the belief of the whole world and of
posterity. Here are collected all those blessed fathers of the land,
who rank in our veneration next to the evangelists of Holy Writ; and
here, also, are many, unpurified from the fiercest errors of the age,
and ready to propagate the religion of peace by violence. In the
highest place sits Winthrop,--a man by whom the innocent and guilty
might alike desire to be judged; the first confiding in his integrity
and wisdom, the latter hoping in his mildness, Next is Endicott, who
would stand with his drawn sword at the gate of heaven, and resist to
the death all pilgrims thither, except they travelled his own path. The
infant eyes of one in this assembly beheld the fagots blazing round the
martyrs in Bloody Mary's time: in later life he dwelt long at Leyden,
with the first who went from England for conscience' sake; and now, in
his weary age, it matters little where he lies down to die. There are
others whose hearts were smitten in the high meridian of ambitious hope,
and whose dreams still tempt them with the pomp of the Old World and the
din of its crowded cities, gleaming and echoing over the deep. In the
midst, and in the centre of all eyes, we see the woman. She stands
loftily before her judges with a determined brow; and, unknown to
herself, there is a flash of carnal pride half hidden in her eye, as she
surveys the many learned and famous men whom her doctrines have put in
fear. They question her; and her answers are ready and acute: she
reasons with them shrewdly, and brings Scripture in support of every
argument. The deepest controversialists of that scholastic day find
here a woman, whom all their trained and sharpened intellects are
inadequate to foil. But, by the excitement of the contest, her heart is
made to rise and swell within her, and she bursts forth into eloquence.
She tells them of the long unquietness which she had endured in England,
perceiving the corruption of the Church, and yearning for a purer and
more perfect light, and how, in a day of solitary prayer, that light was