Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/330

314 have all justified themselves in later years. Through the early privations and the attempts of some to escape the obligations laid upon them, by the mere fact of having come together to the unknown country, he set his face steadily against all division, and there is no more characteristic passage in his Journal than that in which he gives the reasons which should bind them to common and united action. Various disaffected and uneasy souls had wandered off to other points, and Winthrop gives the results, at first quietly and judicially, but rising at the close to a noble indignation.

"Others who went to other places, upon like grounds, succeeded no better. They fled for fear of want, and many of them fell into it, even to extremity, as if they had hastened into the misery which they feared and fled from, besides the depriving themselves of the ordinances and church fellowship, and those civil liberties which they enjoyed here; whereas, such as staid in their places kept their peace and ease, and enjoyed still the blessing of the ordinances, and never tasted of those troubles and miseries, which they heard to have befallen those who departed. Much disputation there was about liberty of removing for outward advantages, and all ways were sought for an open door to get out at; but it is to be feared many crept out at a broken wall. For such as come together into a wilderness, where are nothing but wild beasts and beast-like men, and there confederate together in civil and church estate, whereby they do, implicitly at least, bind themselves to support each other, and all of them that society, whether civil or sacred, whereof they are members, how they can