Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/466

Rh would have it so!” I have been compelled to say many times to myself as I contemplated the histories and the lives of the persons who founded the most remarkable sects of North America; Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson, George Fox, Anne Lee, and others, were all impelled by a spirit mightier than themselves. They began by opposing the inner voice (as Luther did) but in the end they were compelled to follow its commands. These persons, divinely-possessed, were driven by their inward spirit from comfortable and cheerful homes out into the wilderness, into captivity and persecution, and amid manifold suffering for the promulgation of that truth which they had received, to suffer, nay even to die, for the doctrines they proclaimed. They could not do otherwise; they ought not to do otherwise if they were worthy to be the servants of God.

“Do not stand still with Luther and Calvin,” exclaimed Robinson, the spiritual pastor of the pilgrims, addressing them from the shores of the old world, “they were great and shining lights in their time, but they penetrated not to the councils of God. I conjure you bear this in your remembrance; it is an article of your church communion that you hold yourselves in readiness to receive whatever truth shall be revealed to you from the written word of God.”

It was on the ground of this progressive, divine communication from God to man that Luther appealed from the Pope's bull to the Bible; it was on the ground of the same doctrine that the Puritans appealed from the state church of England to the right of the human conscience,