THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY II 
Elizabeth as a motive for beginning the Empire. It 
is equally certain that the plea produced no effect. In 
the modern Sir Walter Raleigh’s opinion, as given in 
his essay, John Davis was almost the only English 
sailor of his time who had a sincere belief that it was 
England’s mission to carry the Gospel to the Gentiles, 
and a brilliant passage in the essay sums up the religion 
of the Elizabethan adventuters in the following words: 
¢ These men, though there was little of saintliness in 
their character, had a religion and fought and suffered 
forit. It was a religion not wholly unlike that of the 
later Orangeman, a Protestant compound, made up of 
fervid patriotism, a varied assortment of hates, a 
rough code of morals, and an unshaken trust in the 
providence of God. To the heathen they brought not 
peace but a sword.” ? 
Theirs was a very living creed, though it did not 
enure to the benefit of the American Indians. One of 
Martin Frobishet’s orders to his captains on his third 
voyage was that ‘if any man in the fleet come up in 
the night and hail his fellow knowing him not, he shall 
give him this watchword, Before the wotld was God. 
The other shall answer him, if he be one of our fleet, 
after God came Christ his Son.” # Drake on one or 
mote occasions ordered the whole ship’s company 
of The Golden Hind to partake of the Holy Com- 
munion. Gilbert’s last known words before he was 
lost in the sea were © we are as near to heaven by sea as 
by land.’ 4 
It was not onlv in the lives and conversations of 
! Hakluyt, vol. xii, p. 31. 
3 Ibid., vol, vii, p. 323. 
2 Ibid. p. 34. 
4 Ibid. vol. viii, ». 74.