onourable actions; relief of sundry people within this realm
distressed; all these be honourable purposes, imitating the nature of
the munificent God, wherewith He is well pleased, who will assist such
an actor beyond expectation of many. And the same, who feeleth this
inclination in himself, by all likelihood may hope or rather confidently
repose in the preordinance of God, that in this last age of the world
(or likely never) the time is complete of receiving also these gentiles
into His mercy, and that God will raise Him an instrument to effect the
same; it seeming probable by event of precedent attempts made by the
Spaniards and French sundry times, that the countries lying north of
Florida God hath reserved the same to be reduced into Christian civility
by the English nation. For not long after that Christopher Columbus had
discovered the islands and continent of the West Indies for Spain,
John and Sebastian Cabot made discovery also of the rest from Florida
northwards to the behoof of England.

And whensoever afterwards the Spaniards, very prosperous in all their
southern discoveries, did attempt anything into Florida and those
regions inclining towards the north, they proved most unhappy, and were
at length discouraged utterly by the hard and lamentable success of
many both religious and valiant in arms, endeavouring to bring those
northerly regions also under the Spanish jurisdiction, as if God had
prescribed limits unto the Spanish nation which they might not exceed;
as by their own gests recorded may be aptly gathered.

The French, as they can pretend less title unto these northern parts
than the Spaniard, by how much the Spaniard made the first discovery of
the same continent so far northward as unto Florida, and the French did
but review that before discovered by the English nation, usurping upon
our right, and imposing names upon countries, rivers, bays, capes, or
headlands as if they had been the first finders of those coasts; which
injury we offered not unto the Spaniards, but left off to discover
when we approached the Spanish limits; even so God hath not hitherto
permitted them to establish a possession permanent upon another's right,
notwithstanding their manifold attempts, in which the issue hath been
no less tragical than that of the Spaniards, as by their own reports is
extant.

Then, seeing the English nation only hath right unto these countries
of America from the Cape of Florida northward by the