I can well understand how a Puritan of 16—­would justify his rigor.  His opinion of himself would be like that of the amiable Governor Winthrop, as found in his first will, (omitted, however, in his second,) as one “adopted to be the child of God, and an heir of everlasting life, and that of the mere and free favor of God, who hath elected me to be a vessel of glory.”  Such was the Puritan in his own eyes.  He was the chosen of heaven.  He had, for the sake of the Gospel, abandoned his country and the comforts of civilization, to erect (in the language of Scripture which he loved to use) his Ebenezer in the wilderness.  He wanted to be let alone.  He invited not Papists or English Churchmen, or any who differed in opinion from him, to throw in their lots with his.  They would only be obstacles in his way, jarring-strings in his heavenly antique-fashioned harp.  Away with the intruders!  What right had they to molest him with their dissenting presence?  The earth was wide:  let them go somewhere else.  They would find more congenial associates in the Virginia colony.  He would have no Achans to breed dissension in his camp.  With bold heart and strong hand would he cast them out.  His was the empire of the saints; an empire, not to be exercised with feebleness and doubt, but with vigor and confidence.

It is obvious that a very wide difference existed between the characters of the two colonies.  The cavalier, sparkling and fiery as the wines he quaffed, the defender of established authority and of the divine right of kings, was the antithesis of the abstemious and thoughtful religionist and reformer, dissatisfied with the present, hopeful of a better future, and not forgetful that it was in anger God gave the Israelites a king.

Meanwhile the Roman Catholics had not been idle.  Their devoted missionaries, solicitous to occupy other regions which should more than supply the deficiency occasioned by the Protestant defection, and confident of the final triumph of a Church, out of whose pale they believed could be no salvation, had scattered themselves over the continent, and with marvellous energy and self-sacrifice, were extending their influence among the natives.  No boundaries can be placed to the visions of the enthusiastic religionist.  His strength is the strength of God.  No wonder, then, that the Roman Catholic priest should cherish hopes of rescuing the entire new world from heresy, which he considered worse than heathenism, and should enlist all his energies in so grand a cause.  It is almost certain that extensive plans were formed for the accomplishment of this object.

Such were the elements which the seething caldron of the old world threw out upon the new.  A part only of the materials furnished by these elements have I used in framing this tale.  It is an attempt to elucidate the manners and credence of quite an early period, and to explain with the license accorded to a romancer, some passages in American history.