By: Bill Federer From: American Minute
On MARCH 19, 1590, a boy was born in England named William Bradford.
At age 17, the same year Shakespeare produced his play, "Anthony and Cleopatra," William Bradford fled from England to Holland with the persecuted Pilgrims.
At age 30, he sailed with them to America.
In 1621, William Bradford was chosen governor and reelected 30 times till his death.
The main history of the Pilgrims was William Bradford's journal, published as, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1650, in which he wrote:
"Since ye first breaking out of ye lighte of ye gospell in our Honourable Nation of England...what warrs and opposissions...Satan hath raised...against the Saints...by bloody death and cruell torments...imprisonments, banishments...
What could now sustaine them but ye spirite of God and His grace?...
Ought not the children of these fathers rightly say:
Our fathers...came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness; but they cried unto ye Lord, and He heard their voyce."
William Bradford continued:
"All great and honourable actions are accompanied with great difficulties...
Out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing...and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise."
