One Of Governor Bradford's Books (Pastor John Robinson's
"Justification Of Separation"), Published In 1610, And Containing The
Governor's Autograph, Bears Almost 'prima Facie' Evidence Of Having Come
With Him In The MAY-FLOWER, But Of Course Might, Like The Above-Named
Relics, Have Come In Some Later Ship.
In this connection it is of interest to note what freight the MAY-FLOWER
carried for the intellectual needs of the Pilgrims.
Of Bibles, as the
"book of books," we may be sure - even without the evidence of the
inventories of the early dead - there was no lack, and there is reason to
believe that they existed in several tongues, viz. in English, Dutch, and
possibly French (the Walloon contribution from the Huguenots), while
there is little doubt that, alike as publishers and as "students of the
Word," Brewster, Bradford, and Winslow, at least, were possessed of, and
more or less familiar with, both the Latin and Greek Testaments. It is
altogether probable, however, that Governor Bradford's well attested
study of "the oracles of God in the original" Hebrew, and his possession
of the essential Hebrew Bible, grammar, and lexicon, were of a later day.
Some few copies of the earliest hymnals ("psalme-bookes") - then very
limited in number - there is evidence that the Holland voyagers had with
them in the singing of their parting hymns at Leyden and Delfshaven, as
mentioned by Winslow and in the earlier inventories: These metrical
versions of the Psalms constituted at the time, practically, the only
hymnology permitted in the worship of the "Separatists," though the grand
hymn of Luther, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott," doubtless familiar to
them, must have commended itself as especially comforting and apposite.
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