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CHAPTER I Suppression of Religious Liberty in England-First Cause of the Foundation of the New Plymouth Settlement. First I will unfold the causes that led to the foundation of the New Plymouth Settlement, and the motives of those concerned in it. In order that I may give an accurate ac- count of the project, I must begin at the very root and rise of it; and this I shall endeavour to do in a plain style and with singular regard to the truth,-at least as near as my slender judgment can attain to it. As is well known, ever since the breaking out of the light of the gospel in England, which was the first country to be thus enlightened after the gross darkness of popery had overspread the Christian world, Satan has maintained various wars against the Saints, from time to time, in dif- ferent ways,-sometimes by bloody death and cruel torment, at other times by imprisonment, banishment, and other wrongs,-as if loth that his kingdom should be overcome, the truth prevail, and the Church of God revert to their ancient purity, and recover their primitive order, liberty, and beauty. But when he could not stifle by these means the main truths of the gospel, which began to take rooting in many places, watered by the blood of martyrs and blessed from heaven with a gracious increase, he reverted to his ancient stratagems, used of old against the first Christians. For when, in those days, the bloody and barbarous perse- cutions of the heathen Emperors could not stop and subvert the course of the gospel, which speedily overspread the then best known parts of the world, he began to sow^ errors, heresies, and discord amongst the clergy themselves, working upon the pride and ambition and other frailties to which all mortals, and even the Saints themselves in some measure, are subject.
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