Quotes from Smith’s Writings

Religion

We are not born for ourselves but each to help other, and our abilities are much alike at the hour of our birth and the minute of our death. Seeing our good deeds or bad, by faith in Christ’s merits, is all we have to carry our souls to heaven or hell. (Advertisements, p. 11/12; New England, p. 61)

Religion above all things should move us, especially the clergy, if we were religious to shew our faith by our works in converting those poor savages in the knowledge of God. (New England, p. 44)

But God beyond man’s expectation or imagination helpeth his servants when they least think of help, as it hap’ned to [me]. (True Travels, p. 32/33) 

He that will but truly consider the greatness of the Turk’s empire and power here in Christendom shall find the natural Turks are generally of one religion and the Christians in so many divisions and opinions that they are among themselves worse enemies than the Turks. (Advertisements, p. 34)

I honor as well the miter as the lance. (Advertisements, p. A2r)

That God that created all these things they [the Indians] knew he adored for his God, whom they would also term in their discourses the God of Captain Smith. (Proceedings, p. 17; The Generall Historie, 3, p. 51)

Let us fight like men and not die like sheep, for by that means you know God hath oft delivered me and so I trust will now. (Proceedings,, p. 68; The Generall Historie, 3, p. 79)

Never had any people more just cause to cast themselves at the very footstool of God and to reverence his mercy than this distressed colony.  

For if God had not sent … Sir Thomas Gates from the Bermudas [survivor of the wreck of the “Sea Venture”], within four days they had almost been famished.  

If God had not directed [him] to save the fort from firing at their [departure] … they had been destitute of present harbor and succor.  

If they had abandoned the fort any longer time, and had not so soon returned, questionless the Indians would have destroyed the fort, which had been the means of our safeties. 

If they had set sail sooner and had launched into the vast ocean, who would have promised they should have encountered the fleet of the Lord la Ware … especially when they … intended a course contrary to our navy approaching?

If the Lord la Ware had not brought with him a year’s provision, what comfort would the  poor souls have received to have been relanded to a second destruction? This was the arm of the Lord of Hosts. GH4,107 

Never had any people more just cause to cast themselves at the very footstool of God and to reverence his mercy than this distressed colony.  

For if God had not sent … Sir Thomas Gates from the Bermudas [survivor of the wreck of the “Sea Venture”], within four days they had almost been famished.  

If God had not directed [him] to save the fort from firing at their [departure] … they had been destitute of present harbor and succor.  

If they had abandoned the fort any longer time, and had not so soon returned, questionless the Indians would have destroyed the fort, which had been the means of our safeties.

If they had set sail sooner and had launched into the vast ocean, who would have promised they should have encountered the fleet of the Lord la Ware … especially when they … intended a course contrary to our navy approaching?  

If the Lord la Ware had not brought with him a year’s provision, what comfort would the  poor souls have received to have been relanded to a second destruction? This was the arm of the Lord of Hosts. The Generall Historie, 4, p. 107)  

All photos: Connie Lapallo