“Whereas New England, and Boston of the Massachusetts, have this to make mention of, that they can tell their age, and account it their honor to have their birth and parentage kept in everlasting remembrance. And in very deed, the families and churches which first ventured to follow Christ thorow the Atlantic Ocean into a strange land full of wild men were so religious, their end so holy, their self-denial in pursuing of it so extraordinary, that I can’t but hope that the plantation has thereby gained a very strong crasis, and that it will not be of one or two or three centuries only, but by the grace of God it will be very long lasting.”[310]
“New Jerusalem will not straiten and enfeeble, but wonderfully dilate and invigorate Christianity in the several quarters of the world,--in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, and in America. And one that has been born, or but lived in America more than threescore years, it may be pardonable for him to ask, Why may not that be the place of New Jerusalem?”[311]
“Of all the parts of the world which do from this charter entitle themselves to the government of Christ, America’s plea, in my opinion, is the strongest. For when once Christopher Columbus had added this fourth to the other three parts of the foreknown world, they who sailed farther westward arrived but where they had been before. The globe now failed of offering anything new to the adventurous traveller,--or, however, it could not afford another New World. And probably the consideration of America’s being _the beginning of the East and the end of the West_ was that which moved Columbus to call some part of it by the name of Alpha and Omega. Now if the last Adam did give order for the engraving of his own name upon this last earth, ’twill draw with it great consequences, even such as will in time bring the poor Americans out of their graves and make them live.”[312]
“May it not with more or equal strength be argued: New Jerusalem is not the same with Jerusalem; but as Jerusalem was to the westward of Babylon, so New Jerusalem must be to the westward of Rome, to avoid disturbance in the order of these mysteries?”[313]
Then quoting Latin verses of Cowley[314] and English verses of Herbert,[315] he says: “Not doubting but that these authorities, being brought to the king’s scales, will be over weight.”[316]