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.