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A History of the Presbyterian Church in America
A History of the Presbyterian Church in America Author:Richard Webster Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: pastors and faithful teachers the training in knowledge and goodness which made them benefactors of this whole nation. In 1641, Mr. Castell, the Parson of... more » Cortenhall, published a plan for introducing the gospel into the colonies. It was approved by seventy of the Westminster divines, by Alexander Henderson and the Scottish Commissioners. But forty years passed, and nothing was done by the Establishment or the Dissenters. The Church of Scotland at that period, like the Church of Ireland, had too many foes, to say nothing of her poverty, to attempt the extension of her doctrine and her discipline in parts beyond sea. But the folly and the cruelty of the Government contributed to effect a result which the Church was unable to accomplish. As in the Apostolic age persecution led to the disciples being scattered abroad throughout Judea and Samaria; so the oppression of men in high places in Britain became the occasion of settling the wilds of America with the fathers of our Presbyterian Zion. Immediately after the battle of Dunbar, the victorious general sent the Scots prisoners by shiploads to the Plantations to be sold. A list of those sent in one vessel is preserved in the Massachusetts Historical Society's Collections. After the Restoration the same method was pursued by the king; and many of those concerned in the risings at Pentland and Both- well were consigned to servitude beyond the Atlantic. A stream of emigration flowed from the oppressed congregations, and Scottish merchants and physicians were fouud from New York to Charleston, and throughout the West Indies. Robert Livingston came to New York in 1672f with his nephew. He was a son of the venerable minister of Ancrum, who was banished to Holland, and whose name is linked in honourable remembrance with the signa...« less