LESSON 57

THE PURITAN FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND

新英格兰清教徒先辈的品格

One of the most prominent features which distinguished our forefathers, was their determined resistance to oppression. They seemed born and brought up for the high and special purpose of showing to the world that the civil and religious rights of man—the rights of self-government, of conscience, and independent thought—are not merely things to be talked of and woven into theories, but to be adopted with the whole strength and ardor of the mind, and felt in the profoundest recesses of the heart, and carried out into the general life, and made the foundation of practical usefulness, and visible beauty, and true nobility.

Liberty, with them, was an object of too serious desire and stern resolve to be personified, allegorized, and enshrined. They made no goddess of it, as the ancients did; they had no time nor inclination for such trifling; they felt that liberty was the simple birthright of every human creature; they called it so; they claimed it as such; they reverenced and held it fast as the unalienable gift of the Creator, which was not to be surrendered to power, nor sold for wages.

It was theirs, as men; without it, they did not esteem themselves men; more than any other privilege or possession, it was essential to their happiness, for it was essential to their original nature; and therefore they preferred it above wealth, and ease, and country; and, that they might enjoy and exercise it fully, they forsook houses, and lands, and kindred, their homes, their native soil, and their fathers’ graves.

They left all these; they left England, which, whatever it might have been called, was not to them a land of freedom; they launched forth on the pathless ocean, the wide, fathomless ocean, soiled not by the earth beneath, and bounded, all round and above, only by heaven; and it seemed to them like that better and sublimer freedom, which their country knew not, but of which they had the conception and image in their hearts; and, after a toilsome and painful voyage, they came to a hard and wintry coast, unfruitful and desolate, but unguarded and boundless; its calm silence interrupted not the ascent of their prayers; it had no eyes to watch, no ears to hearken, no tongues to report of them; here, again, there was an answer to their soul’s desire, and they were satisfied, and gave thanks; they saw that they were free, and the desert smiled.

I am telling an old tale; but it is one which must be told when we speak of those men. It is to be added, that they transmitted their principles to their children, and that, peopled by such a race, our country was always free. So long as its inhabitants were unmolested by the mother country in the exercise of their important rights, they submitted to the form of English government; but when those rights were invaded, they spurned even the form away.

This act was the Revolution, which came of course and spontaneously, and had nothing in it of the wonderful or unforeseen. The wonder would have been if it had not occurred. It was, indeed, a happy and glorious event, but by no means unnatural; and I intend no slight to the revered actors in the Revolution when I assert that their fathers before them were as free as they—every whit as free.

The principles of the Revolution were not the suddenly acquired property of a few bosoms: they were abroad in the land in the ages before; they had always been taught, like the truths of the Bible; they had descended from father to son, down from those primitive days, when the Pilgrim, established in his simple dwelling, and seated at his blazing fire, piled high from the forest which shaded his door, repeated to his listening children the story of his wrongs and his resistance, and bade them rejoice, though the wild winds and the wild beasts were howling without, that they had nothing to fear from great men’s oppression.

Here are the beginnings of the Revolution. Every settler’s hearth was a school of independence; the scholars were apt, and the lessons sunk deeply; and thus it came that our country was always free; it could not be other than free.

As deeply seated as was the principle of liberty and resistance to arbitrary power in the breasts of the Puritans, it was not more so than their piety and sense of religious obligation. They were emphatically a people whose God was the Lord. Their form of government was as strictly theocratical, if direct communication be excepted, as was that of the Jews; insomuch that it would be difficult to say where there was any civil authority among them entirely distinct from ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

Whenever a few of them settled a town, they immediately gathered themselves into a church; and their elders were magistrates, and their code of laws was the Pentateuch. These were forms, it is true, but forms which faithfully indicated principles and feelings; for no people could have adopted such forms, who were not thoroughly imbued with the spirit, and bent on the practice, of religion.

God was their King; and they regarded him as truly and literally so, as if he had dwelt in a visible palace in the midst of their state. They were his devoted, resolute, humble subjects; they undertook nothing which they did not beg of him to prosper; they accomplished nothing without rendering to him the praise; they suffered nothing without carrying their sorrows to his throne; they ate nothing which they did not implore him to bless.

Their piety was not merely external; it was sincere; it had the proof of a good tree in bearing good fruit; it produced and sustained a strict morality. Their tenacious purity of manners and speech obtained for them, in the mother country, their name of Puritans, which, though given in derision, was as honorable an appellation as was ever bestowed by man on man.

That there were hypocrites among them, is not to be doubted; but they were rare. The men who voluntarily exiled themselves to an unknown coast, and endured there every toil and hardship for conscience’ sake, and that they might serve God in their own manner, were not likely to set conscience at defiance, and make the service of God a mockery; they were not likely to be, neither were they, hypocrites. I do not know that it would be arrogating too much for them to say, that, on the extended surface of the globe, there was not a single community of men to be compared with them, in the respects of deep religious impressions and an exact performance of moral duty.

(F. W. P. Greenwood)

【中文阅读】

我们的先辈最突出的特征之一，就是他们坚定地反抗压迫。他们似乎天生就是为了向世界表明崇高和特别的目标，即人的公民和宗教权利——自制、良知和独立思想的权利——不只是挂在嘴上和理论上的事情，而是凭着全部力量和内心的激情付诸实施，感知内心最深切的隐秘情感，并在普通生活中加以运用，为进行有益的实践，有形的美和真正的崇高奠定了基础。

自由之于他们，是一个非常真诚地渴望的目标，并坚定地决心使之成为人格化、寓言化和奉为圭臬的东西。他们并没有像古人那样将其神化；他们没有将时间浪费在无聊的事情上；他们觉得自由是每个人类生命朴素的生命之光；他们也是这么呼唤自由的。他们也是这样主张的。他们对自由表示应有的尊敬，并坚信它是造物主不能让与和不可剥夺的礼物，既不会向权力低头，也不会为了既得利益而出卖。

同其他人一样，自由也是他们固有的权利。没有自由，他们不会得到尊重。与任何其他权益或所有权相比，自由才是幸福的根本，因为对于他们的本性而言自由是最基本的要素。因此，他们将自由看得高于财富、安逸和国家。他们或许喜欢和充分实践自由赋予的权利，为此他们可以放弃房子、土地、亲情、他们的家园，放弃他们的故土和祖先的坟墓。

他们抛弃了所有这些，他们离开英格兰，不论如何号召，对他们而言英格兰都不是自由的土地。他们在无路可走、一望无际和深不见底的大洋上起航，没有被地下的泥土弄脏，他们内心的向往只有上帝知道。对他们来说，这种向往似乎就像更好和更高尚的自由，而他们的祖国不晓得他们的追求，这个概念和想象只存在于他们心里。历经千辛万苦的远航后，他们抵达条件艰苦和风雪交加的海岸，他们食不果腹，孤零零地遗世而立，但是这里没有人守卫，一望无垠。那令人感到温暖的宁静没有打断他们登岸时的祈祷。没有人盯着他们，没有人偷听他们的动静，也没有人报告他们的情况；在这里，他们心灵的渴望又一次得到满足，他们对这种环境非常满意，向上天的眷顾表示感谢。他们发现自己是自由的，即使这里是不毛之地也在所不惜。

我讲述的是一个古老的传奇。但是当我们提起这些人时，这是一个必须提及的传奇。还应该补充的是，他们将他们毕生坚持的原则传给他们的孩子，这样一个种族繁衍的结果就是，我们的国家永远是自由的。只要这块土地上的居民在行使他们重要权利的过程中没有被宗主国干扰，他们会屈从英国政府的体制。但是，当这些权利被侵犯时，他们甚至会将这种体制一脚踢开。

这种行动就是革命，自发而起，没有一点奇妙或不可预见性。倘若没发生的话，那倒奇怪了。的确，这场革命是一个愉快和辉煌的事件，再自然不过了。当我断定他们的先辈像他们一样渴望自由——事实上一点也不自由时，我不打算对这场大革命令人崇敬的演员轻描淡写了。

革命的原则并非突然之间变成少数几个人内心的既得财产，以前很多年就在这块土地上广泛存在了。就像圣经中的真理一样，人们从小就对这些原则耳闻目染，从原始时代开始就父子相传。当时朝圣者在自己简陋的住所里，坐在熊熊燃烧的篝火旁边，而树木则是从在自己门上投下树荫的森林里砍伐来的，堆得很高，向专心倾听的孩子们重复着关于自己做错事情和反抗的故事，孩子们听后欣喜若狂，尽管外面没刮大风，也没有野兽的嚎叫，但他们从大人的郁闷听不出任何害怕。

这就是革命的开端。每位定居者的炉边都是一所呼唤独立的学堂。学者们循循善诱，讲的课程令学生深深地陶醉在其中；因此，得出的结论是我们国家永远是自由的，舍此无他。

自由的原则和对专制势力奋起反抗，在清教徒心中深深扎根，这与他们的虔诚和宗教责任感如出一辙。他们都强调以上帝为君主的人。如果接受直接交流的话，他们的政府体制严格符合犹太人的神权政治；就此程度而言，很难说在他们中间存在完全有别于教会裁判权的民权。

一旦他们中有些人在一座城镇定居下来，他们很快就会组建一个教堂；其中年长者是地方法官，所依据的法典则是《摩西五书》。这些虽然是一些组织形式，但实际上忠实于原则和情感，因为没有谁会采纳这样没有完全激发基督教精神，而倾向于宗教常规的形式。

上帝是他们的王；他们将上帝视为真正和真实的存在，仿佛他就住在他们国家一个能看得见的宫殿里似的。他们是他虔敬、坚决且谦恭的臣民；他们只要祈求他保佑他们繁荣兴旺，什么都可以承担；他们不吝对他的赞美，任何事业都可以完成；只要向他倾诉衷肠，任何困苦都不在话下。

他们的虔诚不仅仅是永恒的，这是发自内心的。这恰好证明了善良之因必将结出善良之果。这种虔诚导致并维系着严格的道德准则。他们坚持习俗的纯粹性，他们的语言也从中获取营养。清教徒这个称谓，尽管有些嘲弄的意味，却是赋予他们的具有荣誉感的称号。

在他们中间存在伪君子，这一点毋庸置疑。不过，这种人很少见。那些自愿将自己放逐到未知海岸的人，出于良心的缘故在那儿忍受千难万苦，他们以自己的方式为上帝服务，这样的人不可能将良知弃之不顾，嘲弄对上帝的虔敬。这样的人不可能，也不会是伪君子。我不晓得是否可以这样说，在地球的广阔大地上，没有哪个人类社会在强烈的宗教情感和道德责任的严格履行方面能与他们相比。

（F.W.P. 格林伍德）