of poore and miserable soules wrapt up unto death in almost invincible ignorance; to endeavor the fulfilling and accomplishment of the number of the elect which shall be gathered out of all corners of the earth and to add our myte to the Treasury of Heaven.”[1] Probably no one would have been more astonished than the authors of this document if their statement as to the first purpose to be advanced by the London Company, that is to say, missionary work among the Indians, had been accepted literally; and it is quite easy to conceive the objections which would have been raised by the sober merchants who were interested in the enterprise if the authorities of the Company had really concentrated their greatest energies upon this task.[2] The True and Sincere Declaration was written with a view to stimulating interest in the declining fortunes of Virginia, and it was therefore drawn so as to appeal with special strength to the religious sentiment of the age. There can be no doubt, however, as to the eminently religious spirit in which the great venture was undertaken. The absence of that spirit would have been uncharacteristic of the English people. In the orders which the Council formulated for the guidance of the voyagers of 1606, they closed their sagacious instructions with the earnest invocation that the colonists should “serve and fear God, the giver of all goodness, for every
- ↑ Brown’s Genesis of the United States, p. 339.
- ↑ This does not necessarily imply a selfish spirit on the part of the merchants interested in the Virginian enterprise. In 1616 it was declared, “for the Nobilitie and Gentrie, there is scarce any of them expects anything but the prosperitie of the action. And there are some merchants and others, I am confidently persuaded doe take more care and paines, nay and at their continuall great charge than they could be hired to for the love of money; so honestly regarding the general good of this great worke, they would hold it worse than sacrilege, to wrong it but a shillinge or extort upon the Common soldier a penny.” Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 527.
