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From Here to Forever
God Overruled Events
When God’s hand seemed pointing them across the sea to a land
where they might found a state and leave their children the heritage
of religious liberty, they went forward in the path of providence.
Persecution and exile were opening the way to freedom.
When first constrained to separate from the English Church, the
Puritans joined themselves by a covenant as the Lord’s free people
“to walk together in all His ways made known or to be made known
to them.
Here was the vital principle of Protestantism. With this
purpose the Pilgrims departed from Holland to find a home in the
New World. John Robinson, their pastor, in his farewell address to
the exiles said:
“I charge you before God and His blessed angels to follow me
no farther than I have followed Christ. If God should reveal anything
to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as
ever you were to receive any truth of my ministry; for I am very
confident the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of
His holy word.
“For my part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the
reformed churches, who ... will go at present no farther than the
instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn
to go beyond what Luther saw; ... and the Calvinists, you see, stick
fast where they were left by that great man of . God, who yet saw
not all things. ... Though they were burning and shining lights in
their time, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God,
but were they now living, would be as willing to embrace further
light as that which they first received.
“Remember your promise and covenant with God and with one
another, to receive whatever light and truth shall be made known to
you from His written word; but withal, take heed, I beseech you,
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what you receive for truth, and compare it and weigh it with other
scriptures of truth before you accept it; for it is not possible the
Christian world should come so lately out of such thick antichristian
1
J. Brown, The Pilgrim Fathers, p. 74.
2
Martyn, vol. 5, p. 70.
3
D. Neal, History of Puritans, vol. 1, p. 269.