Bradford's history of the Plymouth settlement, 1608-1650

During the last four hundred years the peoples of the Western world have been busily engaged in converting their governments—often forcibly—to practical Christianity, in regard to their domestic affairs.

The new era, upon which we now enter after the Great War, opens with a crusade for the application of Christianity to international relationships.

If the modern student sets up before his mental vision a moving panorama of the history of Europe through the Middle Ages, the most striking general feature is undoubtedly the irresistible course of the growing stream of Freedom, touching and fructifying every section and institution of human life—the inevitable outcome of the evolution of Christianity made manifest in things temporal, and breaking through the ecclesiastical bounds so long set for it, as exclusively pertaining to things spiritual.

The gospel of Jesus Christ had hitherto been regarded as a religious stream pure and simple, from which might be drawn, by priestly hands alone, refreshment for the spiritual life of man, offered to him in the sacerdotal cup, in such quantity and with such admixture of doctrine as seemed fitted to his spiritual needs, by those ordained to take charge of that department of his existence—the servants of the Mediæval Church.