Rooting for Ancestors: To love this world the less, and heaven the more

Rev. John Robinson and love for his flock amid great loss

#OnThisDay30June1621

© 2021 Christy K Robinson

When the Mayflower made the perilous voyage from the Netherlands to Plymouth, the passengers were beset by depression (perhaps one suicide), grave illness that some think was scurvy or typhus, and starvation.

The pastor of the Pilgrim congregation that fled England and lived in Amsterdam and Leiden was John Robinson, a Cambridge University graduate who became a professor at the University of Leiden. In an era when many ministers were harsh and stringent, Robinson can be seen in his writings as a man of grace and kindness. He was beloved by his congregation, and his influence continued for years after he died in 1625. In fact, 40 years later, his son Isaac Robinson became first a Quaker sympathizer and then a Quaker--and though he was disfranchised for a time, he wasn't whipped or jailed as some other Quakers were. Respect for John Robinson seems to have given some immunity to Isaac!

Jail cells in Boston, Lincolnshire, where Robinson and fellow leaders
were imprisoned when they first tried to escape England for
the sake of religious liberty.

Of the 50 or so Pilgrims and "strangers" (business investors or Mayflower crew) who died in the first winter of 1620-21, many were members of Robinson's church community who had been with him for 10 to 20 years. They'd risked their lives and fortunes together, escaping England. They were people he'd taught and baptized and had gone to prison for. Some of them were relatives: his wife's siblings, in-laws, and nephews and nieces. The following letter was written at the end of June 1621, and it's unclear if he knew the full extent of the losses by then because ocean voyages bearing letters to him might take three months or more to cross the Atlantic and be delivered on land. He knew the losses were many, though. And it sounds like he intended to pull up stakes and follow them to New England.

Here's Robinson's letter to his flock in Plymouth Colony:

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To the church of God, at Plymouth in New England.

Much beloved brethren, neither the distance of place, nor distinction of body, can at all either dissolve or weaken that bond of true Christian affection in which the Lord by his spirit hath tied us together. My continual prayers are to the Lord for you; my most earnest desire is unto you; from whom I will not longer keep (if God will) than means can be procured to bring with me the wives and children of divers of you and the rest of your brethren, whom I could not leave behind me without great, both injury to you and them, and offence to God and all men.

The death of so many our dear friends and brethren; oh how grievous hath it been to you to bear, and to us to take knowledge of, which, if it could be mended with lamenting, could not sufficiently be bewailed; but we must go unto them and they shall not return unto us: And how many even of us, God hath taken away here, and in England, since your departure, you may elsewhere take knowledge. But the same God has tempered judgment with mercy, as otherwise, so in sparing the rest, especially those by whose godly and wise government, you may be, and (I know) are so much helped.

In a battle it is not looked for but that divers [various people] should die; it is thought well for a side, if it get the victory, though with the loss of divers, if not too many or too great. God, I hope, hath given you the victory, after many difficulties, for yourselves and others; though I doubt not, but many do and will remain for you and us all to strive with.

Brethren, I hope I need not exhort you to obedience unto those whom God hath set over you, in church and commonwealth, and to the Lord in them. It is a Christian's honour, to give honour according to men's places; and his liberty, to serve God in faith, and his brethren in love orderly and with a willing and free heart. God forbid, I should need to exhort you to peace, which is the bond of perfection, and by which all good is tied together, and without which it is scattered. Have peace with God first, by faith in his promises, good conscience kept in all things, and oft renewed by repentance; and so, one with another, for his sake, who is, though three, one; and for Christ's sake who is one, and as you are called by one spirit to one hope.

And the God of peace and grace and all goodness be with you, in all the fruits thereof, plenteously upon your heads, now and forever. All your brethren here, remember you with great love, a general token whereof they have sent you.

Yours ever in the Lord,

John Robinson

Leiden, (Holland) June 30, Anno 1621.

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Robinson wrote essays in the latter part of his life that were not published until after his untimely death at age 49 in 1625. This is the last paragraph of his essay entitled "Of Death."

We are not to mourn for the death of our Christian friends, as they which are without hope, 1 Thess. iv.13: either in regard of them or of ourselves. Not of them, because such as are asleep with Jesus, God will bring with him to a more glorious life, in which we, in our time, and theirs, shall ever remain with the Lord, and them: not of ourselves, as if that, because they had left us, God had left us also. But we should take occasion by their deaths to love this world the less, out of which they are taken; and heaven the more, whither they are gone before us, and where we shall ever enjoy them. Amen.

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Christy K Robinson, 12th-generation descendant of Rev John Robinson, is author of these books (click the colored title):