# 2 __They had survived, they believe, only by the grace of God. "In sundrie of these storms the winds were so fierce & the seas so high," one of them would later recall, "[and] they comited themselves to the will of God. . . ." Faced now with more rough seas, they abandoned attempts to reach their intended destination in Virginia. Although outside the jurisdiction of their charater, they decided to establish their colony where they had made landfall__on the coast of Massachusetts. After anchoring in Cape Cod Bay, off the site of modern Provincetown, they moved across the bay to the place where they would make their home. They would call it Plymouth Colony, and they would eventually become known as the Pilgrims. Plymouth Colony would prove to be the second successful England colony in America__and it too would be faith-based.
# 3 __"Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land," Pilgrim leader William Bradford would report, "they fell upon their kness & blessed the God of heaven, who had brought them over the vast & furious ocean, and delivered them from all the periles & miseries thereof, againe to set their feet on the firme and stable earth. . ." Bradford and about a third of the Mayflower's 102 passengers belonged to a Puritan sect known as Separatists__and they were the driving force behind the expedition and its vision for a colony in America. The tumultuous Atlantic waves were not the only "periles & miseries" the Plymouth Separatists had face: they had come to the New World wilderness to establish a Christian safe haven from forces they feared in Europe.
# 4 __English Separatists were so named because they had separated from the official state denomination__the Church of England__and no longer considered themselves Anglicans. Theologically, the Church of England held to the fundamental doctrines of the Protestant Reformation, but it had retained distinctive elements of Catholic worship. Mainstream Puritans wanted the Anglican Church to purify itself of all remnants of Catholicism, but they kept their church membership. Separatists, however, believed every local church should be independent and self-governing. That position was illegal under English's uniformity Act of 1559, and was punishable by fines and imprisonment__or worse. Early Separatist leaders had been executed in England, and sect members had suffered ridicule, threats, and persecution.
# 5 __Scores of Separatists had fled to the Netherlands, where religious freedom was allowed. After years in a foreign land, however, some had begun to worry that their children were losing their English heritage. They had also begun to fear that political changes between the Netherlands and Spain might land them under control of Catholic Spain, which had executed thousands of Protestants a generation earlier. In 1617, members of a Separatist congregation in the Dutch city of Leiden prayerfully decided to seek a new life in the New World__where they could live their faith without persecution. Encouraged by their pastor, the Reverend John Robinson, the group contacted the London Company's Sir Edwin Sandy's who had helped the Jamestown colonists achieve self-government, and Sandys arranged a charter for them to establish a colony on what was then Virginia's far northern rim.
# 6 __Upon awarding the charter, Sandys wrote the congregation: "I betake you with this design, which I hope verily is the work of God, to the greatest protection and blessings of the Highest." The Leiden congregation decided that one group of colonists would go first, led by church leaders William Brewster and William Bradford, and another group under Pastor Robinson would follow later. Robinson had a reputation for sound judgment, solid integrity, and sincere faith__"a worthy Instrument of the Gospel," a contemporary called him. He had inspired the Pilgrims' New World venture, but he would not live to see it: he would die of illness before he could rejoin the Pilgrims. Even so, they would be accompanied to America by his parting words. In July 1620, after the Leiden congregation observed a day of Solemn prayer and fasting, Robinson preached a farewell sermon.
# 7 __"Brethren," he told them, "we are now quickly to part from one another, whether I may ever live to see your face on earth any more, the God of Heaven only knows, but whether the Lord hath appointed that or not, I charge you before God and his blessed angels that you . . . follow the Lord Jesus Christ." Then he preached on a text from the book of Ezra: "I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance." The application was obvious: the tiny band of Separatists was bound for the New World "to seek of him a right way . . . for our little ones, and for all. . . ."
# 8 __After a false start from Southhampton, about one hundred men, woman, and children left Plymouth, England, in September 1620, bound for wilderness America aboard the Mayflower. Twenty-seven of the adult passenges were Separatists; the rest were on-Separatists recruited to bolster the colony's numbers. The majority__called "Strangers" by the Separatists__mainly sought a new start in a new land. Most, however, shared the Separatists Judeo-Christian worldview, and the two groups were compatible enough that they would collectively become known as the Pilgrims. "Being thus passed the vast ocean," William Bradford would note, "they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys, no houses or much less townes to repaire too . . . and the whole countrie, full of woods & thickets [was] wild & savage.
# 9 __Like the Jamestown settlers, the Pilgrims were unprepared for the challenges of the North American wilderness__it was so radically different from Europe. "They lacked everything but virture," observed Pilgrim scholar Roland G. Usher. "They . . . brought really nothing but good constitutions, loyalty to each other, good sense, patience, forbearance and devotion to a high religious ideal." That "high religious ideal" was Christianity, and it proved to be the crucial foundation for building a lasting colony amid the perils of the New World. They had landed outside the boundary of their charter and the jurisdiction of the London Company__which allowed them to build a faith-based colony with almost unrestricted freedom. Some type of civil government was necessary for law and order, however: a few "Strangers" were already muttering that once ashore "none had power to command them."
# 10 __Before boarding ship in England, the Pilgrims had received a good-bye letter from Pastor Robinson, which had been read aloud to them at dockside. In it, he had encouraged them "daily to renew our repentances with our God" and to treat each other with respect__and "not easily take offence." He had predicted that some kind of civil government would be needed for the colony, and he advised them to establish a form of self-government based on "God's ordinances" with carefully chosen leaders who would govern "in the image of the Lord's power and authoritie." Establish a Bible-based government, administered by "virtuous" leaders, he counseled them. "Lastly, whereas you are become a body politik, using amongst your selves civil government . . . let your wisdome & godliness, appeare, not only in chusing shuch persons as do entirely love and will promote the common good, but also in yielding unto them all due honour & obedience in their lawful administrations. . . ."
# 11 __When they reached America, the Pilgrims promptly followed the pastor's advice about organizing a "body politik." Before leaving the Mayflower, forty-one Pilgrim men__Separatists and Strangers alike__assembled in the ship's main cabin. There, led by William Brewster, William Bradford, and John Carver__the colony's first governor__they signed a constitution or compact for governing the new colony. It would become known as the Mayflower Compact, and, likeVirginia's milestone legislative assembly, it would establish a precedent for constitutional law in America. It stated in full:
In the Name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, & Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virture hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.
In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape-Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, Anno Domini; 1620.
# 12 __The Mayflower Compact reflected the Bible-based self-government the Pilgrims practiced in their Leiden congregation, and its drafters cited their source of authority__"In the name of God, Amen." It also reflected the historic Judeo-Christian tradition that government should be modeled on the "covenants" that God establish with His people in the Bible. In keeping with this belief, the Compact's signers vowed to "covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick" in order to establish "just and equal laws . . . for the general Good of the Colony." It clearly recognized that all law and authority__even that of a king__was by the "Grace of God," and its signers emphasized that they were acting "solemnly and mutually in the presence of God." The main purpose of the Plymouth Colony and its government, the Compact stated, was to promote "the glory of God, and the advancement of the Christian faith." This extraordinary corner-stone precedent for America law and government__the first American constitution__was thus founded not on the whims of man, but on the Higher Law of the Bible.
# 13 __In the wilderness of New England, the Pilgrims also followed Pastor Robinson's advice to treat each other with biblical charity. When winter illnesses spread through their village of crude huts, the healthy sacrificially served those who were ill or dying__even when the "healthy" was reduced to seven adults. The few served the many, recalled one of them, and "spared no pains, night nor day, but with abundance of toyle and hazard of their owne health, fetched them woode, made them fires, drest them meat, made their beds, washed their loathsome cloaths . . . shewing herein their true love unto their friends & bretheren."
# 14 __Plymouth Colony lost half its population that first winter. In the spring, the survivors befriended a Native American man named Squanto, who taught them how to grow corn and catch fish, and who came to be valued by the grateful Pilgrims as a treasured "instrument sent of God for their good." When the Mayflower left for England, no Pilgrims were aboard: all had chosen to remain in America. Historians would attribute their survival and success to their aptitude, fidelity, wisdom, and practicality, but Pilgrim leader William Bradford placed the credit elsewhere: "it was the Lord which upheld them," he said simply.
# 15 _In 1621, the Council for New England, which held the charter to the land where the Pilgrims landed, granted them a patent for the colony. That year they also celebrated a fruitful harvest. "We set the last spring some twenty acres of Indian corn, and sowed some six acres of barley and pease," reported colonist Edward Winslow. "God be praised, we had a good increase of Indian corn, and our barley indifferent good. . . . And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God we are so far from want. . . ."The plentiful harvest of 1621 also led to the enduring American tradition__Thanksgiving. Catholic colonists in New Spain had assembled to give thanks to God for their survival, and so had the Jamestown Anglicans. It was the Pilgrims of Plymouth, however, who would be credited for establishing America's distinctive Thanksgiving holiday with a joyous observance in the autumn of 1621.
# 16 _Days of thanksgiving were a Christian tradition that was modeled on the Jewish feast days recorded in the Old Testament. The Feast of Harvest (or Firstfruits) and the Feast of Tabernacles (or Ingathering) celebrated God's grace and provision at harvest-time. It was a time of rejoicing when all work ceased, Sabbath-style, and the people gathered in worship, offered the firstfruits of their labors to the Lord, extended mercy to the poor, and gave thanks to God. The New Testament called on believers to personally maintain an attitude of thanksgiving, and the early church observed times of thanksgiving. Later, in Medieval England, churchmen brought a lamb or a loaf of bread to mass on Lammas Day in thanksgiving for harvesttime.
# 17 _Following the Reformation, Protestants discarded the annual Catholic festivals, observing instead days of prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving. In his influential work, A Christian Dictionairie, seventeenth-century Puritan theologian Thomas Wilson, an English pastor at Canterbury, described a Christian thanksgiving in his day. His book was published just eight years before the Pilgrims left for the New World, and recorded the meaning of a thanksgiving observance in the early 1600s. A bibically authentic thanksgiving, Wilson wrote, included an "acknowledging and confessing, with gladness, of the benefits and deliverances of God, both toward ourselves and others to the praise of his Name." It included "Remembrance of the good done to us . . . Confessing God to be the Author and giver of it . . . being glad of an occasion to praise him, and doing it gladly, with joy."
# 18 _The famous 1621 celebration at Plymouth was the first of its kind for the Pilgrims in America, but it was not their first thanksgiving observance. During their years in Holland, the Separatist Pilgrime had repeatedly witnessed Leiden's annual day of thanksgiving, when the city's Protestants gave thanks to God for Leiden's deliverance from a brutal 1574 siege by the Spanish army. The future Pilgrims also celebrated their own thanksgiving observances in Holland, beginning soon after their arrival with an event designed to thank God for their escape from English persecution. The Separatist Pilgrims crried the practice to the New World, where they held thanksgiving observances in obedience to scripture such as PSALM 107:
O give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever: Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy; and gather them out of the lands. . . .They wandered in the wilderness in a solitary way; they found no city to dwell in. Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out their distresses. And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation. Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men!
# 19 _The celebrated 1621 thanksgiving event at Plymouth was apparently commissioned by Pilgrim leader William Bradford, who had become Plymouth's second governor. The colony's first governor, John Carver, had died during the colonists' first winter. So had Bradford's wife, Dorothy, who tragically fell overboard and drowned soon after the Mayflower reached Cape Cod. Despite the heartbreaking losses and severe hardships, the colony had survived the winter__a feat that Bradford attributed to the grace of God. After a good harvest the following autumn, the governor made certain that the survivors "might after a speciall manner rejoice together." Pilgrim Edward Winslow, who also became a Plymouth governor, recorded a description of the event in a letter to a friend in England. Additional insight into the celebration was perserved in a memoir that Bradford later recorded. After "we had gather the fruits of our labours," as Winslow put it, Governor Bradford dispatched a four-man hunting party to obtain game for a celebration.
# 20 _The hunters returned with a week's supply of "fowle"__presumably the "waterfoule" and "wild Turkey's" that Bradford reported as plentiful at the time. Added to the event's menu was a supply of venison, which was contributed by Pokanoket Indians. Ninety members of the tribe and their leader, Massasoit, attended the celebration and were "entertained and feasted" as guests. The Pilgrims may have invited them as "strangers" in fulfillment of an admonition in the book of Deuteronomy: "And thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy servant, and thy maid, and the Levite and the stranger. . . ." If the celebration featured other foods mormally consumed by the Plymouth Pilgrims, it would have also included beaver, baked clams, lobster, cod, bass and other fish, Indian corn, peas, beans, cabbage, onions, parsnips, English cheese, porridge, biscuits, and corn-based hasty pudding. Typical beverages would have been ale and spring water.
# 21 _The event lasted three days, and featured sports activities__"Recreations" in Winslow's words__which, if they were the usual Puritan fare, included footraces, jumping competition and wrestling. The festival's enterainment also included the use of fire-arms. Winslow reported that "we exercised our Armes," which may have referred to target shooting or a firing demonstration for Massasoit and his Pokanoket. The event's three-day length was unique: the usual Puritan thanksgiving observance lasted either a day or an entire week. Typically, it was preceded by a worship service, which Winslow did not mention in his letter. Did that mean the devout Pilgrim failed to worship? Or did Winslow simply assume the letter's recipient understood Separatist practices? The faith-based nature of the Pilgrims 1621 event was clearly demonstrated by the pattern they established with numerous other thanksgiving observances at Plymouth Colony.
In 1623, for instance, when a prolonged drought threatened the colony's crops and survival, Plymouth's magistrates called for a day of prayer and fasting. Edward Winslow would record that event, too:
To that end a day was set apart by public authority, and set apart from all other employments, hoping that the same God who had stirred us up hereunto, would be moved hereby in mercy to look down upon us, and grant the request of our dejected souls. . . . For though in the morning when we assembled together, the heavens were as clear and the drought as like to continue as ever it was; yet (our exercise continuing some eight or nine hours) before our departure the weather was over-cast, the clouds gather together on all sides, and on the next morning distilled such soft, sweet, and mild showers of rain, continuing some fourteen days, and mixed with such seasonable weather as it was hard to say whither our weathered corn or drooping affections were most quickened or revived. Such was the bounty and goodness of our God.
# 23 _The lifesaving rain "gave them cause of rejoicing and blessing God," Governor Bradford would report, and Plymouth's leaders declared an official day of thanksgiving to God for his "gracious and speedy answer." With similar sentiment, Edward Winslow concluded his account of the original thanksgiving: "And although it be not always so plentifull as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so farre from want. . . ."
# 24 _In 1623, the Plymouth Pilgrims survived another serious but less obvious threat__the same common-store socialism that had plagued Jamestown. According to William Bradford, some colonists liked the common-store system and believed "that the taking away of property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing." Instead, it bred "confusion & discontent, and retarded much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort," according to Bradford. "God in his wisdom," he concluded, "saw another course fitter for them."
# 25 _The "fitter" course was the same biblical principle that Captain John Smith had adopted at Jamestown__"if and does not work, neither should he eat." Bradford replaced the common-store with the free enterprise system, which allowed the private ownership of land. "This had very good success," he would later report, "for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted then other wise would have bene by any means the Government or any other could use. . . ." This was more than a mere shift in economic policy: it was a faith-based decision to trust God and embrace individual initiative rather then looking to the government as provider.
# 26 _It set a precedent for the future American nation, which would thrive on personal freedom and individual initiative__the free enterprise system. Another precedent was set in 1636, when the Pilgrims established Plymouth's General Court, composed of the colony's governor and seven deputies chosen "to rule and govern the plantation within the limits of this corporation." It was a smaller Plymouth equivalent of Virginia's House of Burgesses.
# 27 __The deputies were chosen by the colonists to represent them, and therefore were authorized to govern by the consent of the governed. Like Virginia's legislature, it was a form of representative government grounded on the Higher Law of the Bible. The Pilgrims of Plymouth, observed nineteenth-century historian James Thatcher, "held the bible in estimation as the basis of all laws; and the precepts of the gospel [to be] the rules of their lives and the fountains of their dearest hopes. It was the interwoven sentiment of their hearts that the sovereign power resides with the people, and this was the fundamental axiom upon which their government was reared." Plymouth Colony grew slowly. Its people were poor, and their hardscrabble struggle discouraged new colonists for years to come. Even so, they remained true to their vision that God had called them to America as New World pioneers with a purpose. They were confident that they had been providentially placed in "New England" to craft a culture that honored and reflected biblical truth. They identified themselves with the Hebrew people of the Old Testament, who were led by God from Egyptian slavery into nationhood within the Promised Land. "Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt," wrote the psalmist. "Thou preparedst room before it and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land."
# 28 _The Pilgrims knew that Bible passage and fervently believed it applied to them. "God brought a vine into this wilderness," one proclaimed; "he made room for it and caused it to take deep root, and it filled the land." Plymouth's Separatists, like Jamestown's Anglicans, would mold the future of America in a mighty way, and at the root of their influence was a common faith. "Virginia as a Church of England colony and Plymouth as a separatist colony were products of the Reformation as it affected England," observed twentieth-century Colonail scholar Clarence Ver Steeg. "These transplanted ideas were eventually to be modified and molded into institutions."
# 29 - William Bradford predicted such an impact. "Thus, out of small beginnings, greater things have been produced by his hand that made all things of nothing," he wrote; "and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many . . . [L]et the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise." At Plymouth and Jamestown, this "one small candle"__the Judeo-Christian worldview__kindled the flames of freedom for the future American republic. And soon, thousands more would fuel the blaze.
