19th Century Poole Translation Project

Robert Young (1822-1888), was a successful bookseller, and self-taught Biblical scholar and master of oriental languages. A member of the Free Church, and most famous perhaps for publishing Young's Literal Translation of the Bible and his Analytical Concordance of the Bible, he was prolific as a publisher, and both visionary and energetic as a translator. He was the first to translate the Westminster Shorter Catechism into Hebrew (he also translated it into Syriac and 10 other languages), and he did so with a view towards supporting ongoing Free Church missionary outreach to the Jews. He himself served as a missionary in India.

Among his many translation efforts, was a project that he conceived to translate Matthew Poole's Latin Synopsis Criticorum into English for the first time. He prepared a prospectus which outlined his plan not only to translate the Synopsis itself but to append his own critical exegetical and grammatical notes (which he estimated would amount to new matter that would "be equal to one-fifth of the whole work"). Additionally, the plan was to translate fresh each chapter of Scripture preceding Poole's notes, along with an original analysis of each chapter. The 1850 prospectus, which I obtained from the New College Library in Edinburgh (Sherman Isbell graciously provided helpful assistance), contains a translation of Poole's preface to the whole work, and a translation of the summary and initial summary analysis and notes on the book of Matthew. Elsewhere, I have located translations that were prepared by his team of scholars of Poole's prefaces to the New Testament (both the Gospels-Acts and Romans-Revelation), which were published in 1869 (available to read online here, starting on p. 294).

To the best of my knowledge, Young's translation project never progressed further than the translation of these prefaces and a small introductory portion from the book of Matthew. If anyone has information to the contrary, please let me know. It is an encouragement to the current Matthew Poole Project to know that this work was deemed worthy of translation into English in the 19th century as well. The vision of Robert Young is shared by those who desire to unlock valuable Biblical scholarship and make it available to readers in their own tongue, and it is hoped that we will, by God's grace, carry on to complete the task for the edification of the church in the present age and in ages to come.

Happy 200th Birthday, Andrew Bonar

Andrew Alexander Bonar, Free Church of Scotland minister, was born 200 years ago today on May 29, 1810. The younger brother of Horatius Bonar, they shared convictions regarding premillennial eschatology, the conversion of the Jews, revivalism, and other such matters. Andrew was a close friend of Robert Murray M'Cheyne, and wrote a biography of M'Cheyne a year after his death. Bonar also published an edition of the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, commentaries on Leviticus and the Psalms (which bears witness to that saying of Augustine, quoted by Bonar, that "the voice of Christ and his Church was well-nigh the only voice to be heard in the Psalms"), and other works, as well as a diary which was posthumously edited and published by his daughter Marjory. He was a great man of prayer, who felt that he had not prayed enough. Among the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us, he is worthy to be remembered on this bicentennial birthday.

All Israel

Herman Witsius writes that one of the "benefits of the New Testament" is "the restoration of Israel." What does he mean by "the restoration of Israel"? We shall see what he has to say about Israel based on the Apostle Paul's words in Romans 11.

Herman Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, Vol. 2, pp. 414-415:

XXII. From what we have said before, it appears, that they depart from the apostle's meaning, who, by all Israel, understand the mystical Israel, or the people of God, consisting both of Jews and Gentiles, without admitting the conversion of the whole Jewish nation to Christ, in the sense we have mentioned. Notwithstanding this may be confirmed by the following arguments, 1st. The apostle speaks of that Israel, to whom he ascribes his own pedigree, ver. 1 whom he calls his flesh, that is, his kindred, ver. 14. and the natural branches, ver. 21. whom he constantly distinguishes from the Gentiles; to whom, he testifies, blindness is happened. All this is applicable to Israel properly so called. 2dly. He lays before us a mystery: but it was no mystery that a very few Jews were converted to Christ together with the Gentiles; for we have daily instances of that. 3dly. He reminds the Gentiles not to exult over, or despise the Jews, from this argument, that, as they themselves were now taken in among the people of God, so, in like manner, the Jews were in due time to be taken in again. But if the apostle meant, that the body of the Jewish nation was to continue in their hardness; and but a few of them to be saved, who, joined to the Gentiles, should form a mystical Israel, the whole of that discourse would be more adapted to the commendation of the Gentiles than of the Israelites; and encourage rather than repress the pride of the Gentiles. 4thly. As the fall and diminishing of Israel, ver. 12. and their casting away, ver. 15. are to be understood; so likewise the receiving and saving of them; for here the rules of a just opposition must be observed. But the fall, diminishing, and casting away of Israel are to be understood of the generality of the Jewish nation; therefore the receiving and saving of Israel in like manner.

He sums up the expectation Christians ought to have based on this exegesis of Romans 11 (p. 418):

As from all this it is evident, we are to expect the general conversion of the Israelites in time to come, not indeed of every individual, but of the whole body of the nation, and of the twelve tribes.

And how is this promise of God a "benefit" for which Christians are to be thankful? Witsius answers (p. 419):

Lastly, To this restoration of Israel shall be joined the riches of the whole church, and as it were, life from the dead, Rom. xi. 12. "Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness?" and ver. 15. "For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world; what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?" The apostle intimates, that much greater and more extensive benefits shall redound to the Christian church from the fulness and restoration of the Jews, than did to the Gentiles, from their fall and diminuation; greater, I say, intensively, or with respect to degrees, and larger with respect to extent.

What a day to look forward to, and to hasten, if the Lord wills, by our humble prayers for the conversion of the Jews. As Samuel Rutherford memorably wrote, Letters, XXXIX, p. 89:

Oh, to see the sight next to Christ's coming in the clouds, the most joyful! our elder brethren, the Jews, and Christ fall upon one another's necks, and kiss each other! They have been long asunder, they will be kind to one another when they meet: O day! O longed for, and lovely day, dawn! O sweet Jesus, let me see that sight that will be as life from the dead, thee and thy ancient people in mutual embraces!

Pray for the Reign of Grace Over All the Earth

William Swan Plumer, The Rock of Our Salvation, pp. 434-439 (HT: Holdfast):

God's people can pray for the reign of grace over all the earth.. Such supplications are agreeable to the will of God. Psa. 122:6. The first three petitions of the Lord's prayer embrace the same subject. There is too little united, hearty calling on God. All the progress hitherto made in bringing men to a saving knowledge of the Redeemer has been in answer to the fervent cries of the children of God. There is nothing more powerful for good than prayer.

Those who know somewhat the doleful case of the heathen, ought to plead their cause before all Christian people. Mankind are slow to believe how terribly the perishing nations have multiplied their sorrows by hastening after other gods than Jehovah.

Every member of the church should be trained and urged to do his full share of the great work. He should know his place, and keep it. He should love to do what he can for so blessed a cause.

All the churches should be trained to liberality in giving their worldly substance for spreading the gospel. Systematic, benevolence is loudly called for. We must learn to carry our liberality to the extent of self-denial. We must remember the power of littles. The ocean consists of the aggregation of drops.

Our young men must freely give themselves to the work of the ministry at home and abroad. Parents must cheerfully give their sons to this service. It must come to be, in popular esteem, an honor to serve the Lord in any way his providence may permit. Why is the ministry so lighty esteemed ? Why do we so seldom find a Hannah, a Eunice, or a Monica in the church of God? One well-qualified, laborious minister of the gospel is commonly far more useful than two men of equal talents in any other calling. It is enough to break the heart to see revival after revival without a host of young men rising up to publish salvation.

There should be a much deeper tone of piety in all the churches. Love is too cold. Faith too often staggers. Repentance sheds too few tears. Joy has but few feasts. Pity for the perishing too seldom stirs the soul to its depths. Adoring views of God have too little power over men's minds. Hope is too feeble to impart much animation. "In doing good," says Burke, "we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish, and of all things, afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand, touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies when we oppress and persecute." Oh that ministers and people, fathers and mothers, young men and maidens loved as they should a dying world, and labored as they ought to turn many to righteousness.

Prayer.

Holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts! The whole earth is full of thy glory. Blessed be the Lord for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath, and for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon, and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth, and the fulness thereof. Still more would we bless thee for the good will of Him that dwelt in the bush, and for thy precious loving-kindness, and for the precious seed of gospel truth, and for the precious promises, and for precious faith to believe thy word, and for the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, and for the precious death of thy saints, and for the precious name of Jesus, which is as ointment poured forth, and for the precious blood of the Son of God, through whom we have redemption.

Look in mercy on this dark world. Remember Zion. Make Joseph a fruitful bough, whose branches run over the wall. Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion. Bring back the captivity of thy people, that Jacob may rejoice and Israel be glad. Thou hast set thy Son on thy holy hill of Zion. Righteousness is the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. Hasten the time when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the young lion and the fat-ling together, and a child shall lead them; and the cow and the bear shall feed, and their young ones lie down together, and the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the nations shall learn war no more, and thy ancient people the Jews and the fulness of the Gentiles shall be brought in; when the kingdoms of the world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ; when the Lord shall call them his people which are not now his people; when the angel shall fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.

Lord God of hosts, cut short the work in righteousness. Let the ploughman overtake the reaper, and let a nation be born in a day.

"Pity the nations, 0 our God;
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious word abroad,
And bring the strangers home."

We are indeed asking great things, but we do it at thy command. We ask no more than thou hast promised to thy Son, and no more than he has purchased by his most precious blood, and no more than he himself intercedes for in heaven. Amen.

An Honest Look at Our Elder Brethren

Petrus Cunaeus, The Hebrew Republic, pp. 71-75:

St. Paul wrote something very noteworthy in the letter he sent to the Romans. There he says as follows: I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery -- a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles shall come in.

Though nowadays the Jews are wandering about, pathetically unaware of where they are, there will no doubt come a time when they will be returned to the right path. The sun has not set for the last time: its light will once again shine even on them, and though they have certainly fallen, they have not been extinguished. Ezekiel also produced some prophecies about this, which are found in chapter 36 of his book. The prophet says that in the future God will give them a new heart, and a better understanding will occupy their breasts. Then the veil that Moses placed on his face will be lifted, for they will turn to God, who allowed them to live in darkness and the profoundest ignorance so that the day would finally come when He could show them exceptional mercy. This is the proper interpretation of the words of St. Paul: And when Israel turns to the Lord, the veil will be lifted up. Many people have found this verse to be extremely murky, and it has taxed the efforts of a number of scholars.

This matter of which I am speaking is very significant, and its obvious consequence is that we cannot in good conscience continue to shun the Jews as the objects of popular hatred when they still possess such great potential. Certainly St. Paul reveres them, and despite their errors he lavishes praise on them. For he says: It is they whom God chose, and theirs is the glory, and the Covenant, and the Law, and the sacred worship, and the promises; theirs are the patriarchs, and from them came Christ in his corporeal form. What greater nobility could there be? They can count so many patriarchs, prophets, and kings among their grandfathers and great-grandfathers; in short, so many excellent men of divine virtues whose names God has sanctified!

It is true, I must admit, that all of today's Jews have a slavish and illiberal character, and if you were to examine their way of life and their pursuits, you would find nothing at all worthy of a great and proud spirit....

But all these things were done by the pagans; since we have much closer ties with the Jews our two groups should show affection for each other, and should consider it a common bond that we obey the commands of the same God. So deeply does St. Paul love this people that he actually wants to give up his life for them; he also says that if the first fruits are holy then so is the lump; and if the root is holy so are the branches. I am not going to indulge myself now by singing their praises, since I despise nothing more than silliness; and yet it is perfectly obvious, as far as the more recent past is concerned, how much our religion owes to this nation. For who if not the Jews has kept the Bible for us, safe and sound? How many scribal errors would have crept into the Holy Book if it had been entrusted only to the care of men like Lactantius, Augustine, Gregory, and Chrysostom, who -- holy as they were -- knew nothing of Hebrew? Among the Greeks and Latins who governed the early Church, only Origen and Jerome knew Hebrew (and this is an overstatement). Others did not even know the alphabet. When, therefore, mistakes were made because of the carelessness of the copyists, it was not the Christian scholars to whom the men of that age looked for help or support.

The Jews, on the other hand, had one interest and one concern that they all shared: to protect the books of Moses, the Prophets, and the Writings from the dangers of the times. They alone are to be congratulated for this; no other nations merits a share in their glory. Rabbi Abraham of Salamanca has a very important passage in his book Yuhasin, from which we learn that all the copies of the biblical text had been corrected according to an extremely ancient manuscript which Rabbi Hillel had once written with his own hand. (He was the greatest leader of the Jews, and came from Babylonia to Syria sixty years before the birth of our Lord God Christ.)...

So at that time the Jews had the good judgment, the intellectual power, and the set of rules needed to correct the text of the Bible. How easy it would have been for them to rewrite those passages that seemed to contradict their delusions, since the Christians hardly knew three words of Hebrew! But their piety stood in the way, and kept them from changing any of the sacred text. And yet there were some who believed that the Jews had deliberately misrepresented many passages, though Origen gave a brilliant response to these people in the eighth book of his explanations of Isaiah. I myself am astonished whenever I think about the tireless efforts of the Masorites, for after carefully examining and comparing every part of the Hebrew text they marked it with certain signs. This happened after the destruction of the Second Temple, around the year 436. They recorded not only how many verses and words were contained in each book, but even how many letters; so even though the world later descended into complete barbarity, thanks to them not a single mark of that wonderful text was lost. With good reason did the Rabbis say that the Mesorah is a sort of walled enclosure for the Law.
...
If the text of the sacred scriptures is not in doubt and is unlikely to undergo further changes, I give the credit to the Jews who lived in more recent times, after the destruction of the Second Temple. For once their great and wealthy state had been destroyed, they began to take measures so that despite extreme misfortune they might salvage from the wreckage at least this one plank, whose value was priceless. Though I love them for this, the rest of their activities deserve only pity. They busy themselves with marks and letters and books, but no more than that. They neither examine nor seek out the sacred and true perceptions, so what they themselves say in their own language fits them to a tee: They made the essential trivial, and the trivial essential. And the worst of it is that they have no idea how childlike and clueless they really are, for even though all their misfortunes have occurred because they know nothing of God's law, they claim that it was because they lost their homeland, and their kingdom was snatched away from them, and other things of the kind which cannot make us happy when have them or truly unhappy when we lose them. Seneca mentions a foolish friend of his wife named Harpastes, who suddenly lost her sight and did not know she was blind, and kept asking her pedagogue to take her somewhere else, saying that her own home was dark. The same thing has happened to the Jews. They carry around within themselves the cause of their own misfortune; and if by some miracle they were to get Canaan back, they would change their skies but not their spirit. They bring their own night with them wherever they go, and it will not lift until they have paid the heavy penalties for their foolishness and their stubbornness.

Boast Not Against the Branches

Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian's Reasonable Service, Vol. 4, p. 534:

Do not despise the Jewish nation. "Boast not against the branches" (Rom. 11:18), the natural branches of that olive tree into which you, as branches of a wild olive tree, have been grafted contrary to nature. "Be not highminded, but fear" (Rom. 11:20). 1) They have received more than enough contempt from the unconverted. 2) They are in one and the same covenant with Abraham, their father. 3) "They are beloved for the fathers' sakes" (Rom. 11:28). Therefore, let there be the love of benevolence toward them. They are the children of the covenant (Acts 3:25). 4) They will once be converted and be a glorious and holy people above all the nations one the face of the earth. Therefore, esteem, honor, and love them.

O Longed For, and Lovely Day, Dawn!

Apostle Paul, Romans 10.1:

Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.

Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption in Works, Vol. 1, p. 487:

Nothing is more certainly foretold than this national conversion of the Jews is in the 11th chapter of Romans.

One theme that is prevalent throughout the sayings and writings of Samuel Rutherford is the ardent desire and certain but prayerful expectation that the Jews will one day be converted en masse.

"The Spouse's Longing for Christ" (Song of Sol. 5.3-6) in Quaint Sermons, p. 86:

O! for to see that great stumbling-block that stands into the way of Christian religion tane [taken] out of the way, and then to see the people of the Jews brought in again to Christ, their old Husband, and married upon Him, and the fulness of the Gentiles! O! to see our Redeemer Christ have one fair day of it in the world; to see Jew and Gentile married on Christ, and to see His dominions going from the East to the West and from sea to sea, and to see the whole earth in one sheepfold, obeying the voice of one Shepherd! That is the blessedest day that ever we saw if it were come, and we should pray to the Lord to hasten it that so that may be fulfilled which the Lord promises.

Letters, XII, p. 49:

I have been, this time by-passed, thinking much of the incoming of the Kirk of the Jews. Pray for them. When they were in their Lord's house, at their Father's elbow, they were longing for the coming of their Little Sister, the Kirk of the Gentiles. They said to their Lord, (Cant. viii. ver. 8,) "We have a little Sister, and she hath no breasts; what shall we do for our Sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?" Let us give them a mettering. What shall we do for our elder Sister, the Jews? Lord Jesus give them breasts! That were a glad day, to see us and them both set down at one table, and Christ at the head of the table. Then would our Lord come shortly with his fair guard, to hold his great court.

Letters, XXVI, p. 72:

I am confident, madam, that our Lord will yet build a new house to himself of our rejected and scattered stones; for our Bridegroom cannot want a wife. Can he live a widower? Nay he will embrace both us, the Little young Sister, and the Elder Sister, the Church of the Jews; and there will yet be a day of it: and, therefore, we have cause to rejoice, yea, to sing and shout for joy.

Letters, XXXIX, p. 89:

Oh, to see the sight next to Christ's coming in the clouds, the most joyful! our elder brethren, the Jews, and Christ fall upon one another's necks, and kiss each other! They have been long asunder, they will be kind to one another when they meet: O day! O longed for, and lovely day, dawn! O sweet Jesus, let me see that sight that will be as life from the dead, thee and thy ancient people in mutual embraces!

Letters, CXCIV, p. 303:

Oh, what could my soul desire more, next to my Lord Jesus, while I am in this flesh, but that Christ and his kingdom might be great among Jews and Gentiles; and that the isles, (and amongst them overclouded and darkened Britain,) might have the glory of a noon-day's sun!

Letters, CCLXXXVIII, p. 460:

We do welcome Ireland and England to our Well-beloved. We invite you, O Daughters of Jerusalem, to come down to our Lord's garden, and seek our Well-beloved with us; for his love will suffice both you and us. We do send you love-letters over the sea, to request you to come and to marry our King, and to take part of our bed; and we trust our Lord is fetching a blow upon the Beast, and the scarlet-colored Whore, to the end that he may bring in his ancient Widow-wife, our dear sister, the Church of the Jews. Oh, what a heavenly heaven were it to see them come in by this mean, and suck the breasts of their little sister, and renew their old love with their first Husband, Christ our Lord! They are booked in God's word, as a bride contracted upon Jesus! Oh, for a sight, in this flesh of mine, of the prophesied marriage between Christ and them! The kings of Tarshish, and of the Isles must bring presents to our Lord Jesus, (Psal. lxxii. 10.) And Britain is one of the chiefest isles; why then but we may believe, that our kings of this Island shall comin, and bring their glory to the New Jerusalem, wherein Christ shall dwell in the latter days? It is our part to pray, "That the kingdoms of the earth may become Christ's."

Letters, CCXCIV, p. 479:

Oh, what joy and what glory would I judge it, if my heaven should be suspended, till I might have leave to run on foot to be a witness of that marriage-glory, and see Christ put on the glory of his last married bride, and his last marriage-love on earth; when he shall enlarge his love-bed, and set it upon the top of the mountains, and take in the Elder Sister, the Jews, and the fulness of the Gentiles!

Letters, CCXCV, p. 482:

I shall be glad to be a witness to behold the kingdoms of the world become Christ's. I could stay out of Heaven many years, to see that victorious, triumphing Lord act that prophesied part of his soul-conquering love, in taking into his kingdom the Greater Sister, that Kirk of the Jews, who sometimes, courted our Well-beloved for her Little Sister, (Cant. viii. 8;) to behold him set up as an ensign and banner of love, to the ends of the world.

Testimony to the Covenanted Work of Reformation from 1638 to 1649 in Britain and Ireland:

The royal prerogative of Christ is pulled from his head, and after all the days of sorrow we have seen, we have just cause to fear we shall be made to read and eat that book, wherein is written Mouring, and Lamentation, and Woe. Yet we are to believe, Christ will not so depart from the land, but a remnant shall be saved; and he shall reign a victorious conquering King, to the ends of the earth. O that there were nations, kindreds, tongues, and all the people of Christ's habitable world, encompassing his throne with cries and tears from the spirit of supplication, to be poured down upon the inhabitants of Judah for that effect.

Pray Around the World

How many prayers begin and end with "I" and "me"? Ideal intercessory prayer is certainly concerned with the needs of the one praying, but must not terminate there; rather move beyond petitions for oneself in concentric circles, as it were. "Is there none, O man, that needs the mercy of God besides thyself?" (William Gurnall) Begin at home, with the needs of family, and move outward in your petitions to God. We have neighbors with needs -- are you cognizant of the needs of your neighbors? What of the town in which you live? What of those in authority over you in your county, state or federal government? What of the poor, the sick, the homeless, the aged, the lonely, the downcast, those in prison, those who are destitute? What of the congregation you attend, the denomination of which you are a member, the international church of Jesus Christ? What of the Jews and the Gentiles who must be gathered in, and the kingdoms which must be brought in to God's kingdom? We are not all missionaries, and many of us will not travel around the world, but we can, in contemporary parlance, "pray globally, and act locally." William Gurnall gives us a guide and a motive for praying around the world (The Christian in Complete Armour, Vol. 2, p. 525):

[L]et not the sea that divides thee and the other parts of the earth make thee think thou art not concerned in their happiness or misery. Let thy prayers walk over the vast ocean, and bring matters for thy devotions, like the merchant's ship her freight from afar. Visit the churches of Christ abroad; yea, the poor Indians and other ruins of mankind that lie where Adam's sin threw them with us, without any attempt made as yet upon them by the gospel for their recovery, and carry their deplored condition before the Lord. Our [Sir Francis] Drake is famous for compassing the earth with his ship in a few years; thou mayst by thy prayers every day, and make a more gainful voyage of it too than he did.

Florida's French Huguenots

French Huguenots, not unlike the Jews of the Diaspora, have left their religious, cultural and historical footprint around the world. In La Florida, two separate French Huguenot colonies were established almost exactly 200 years apart, one before the French Huguenot Diaspora (which commenced in 1685, following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes), and one after.

In April 1562, Jean Ribault, under orders by Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, first landed on Florida's east coast and soon, after friendly interaction with the native Timucua Indians, claimed territory for the French King, by leaving a statue near what would become Jacksonville, Florida. He sailed north through Georgia waters to establish the first Protestant colony in the United States at Port Royal, South Carolina, before returning to France. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London, however, before he reached home. Thus, when Admiral Coligny was ready to send more ships to La Florida, it was Ribault's second-in-command, Lieutenant René Goulaine de Laudonnière, who led the 1564 expedition. Laudonnière established Fort Caroline where Ribault's first statue was built. The first Protestant thanksgiving service in America was held here on June 30, 1564. Laudonnière wrote of the occasion: "We sang a psalm of Thanksgiving unto God, beseeching Him that it would please His Grace to continue His accustomed goodness toward us."

The full story of this colony, although it only lasted for less than two years, is too long to tell in this brief blog post. It ended effectively when the Spanish founded St. Augustine and massacred the French at Fort Caroline and also, soon after, on the shores of Matanzas. The U.S. National Park Service has established national parks to commemorate both sites, the only U.S. National Parks dedicated to the remembrance of French Huguenot colonists and martyrs.

In 1765, French Huguenot refugees in England petitioned authorities for land in west Florida in which to grow grapes and silkworms (each employed in two industries for which French Huguenots were especially known). Their plans were aided by Monfort Browne, who later became governor of West Florida and served as a high-ranking British officer in the American War of Independence a decade later. A group of around 48 colonists, including Rev. Peter Levrier who served them as pastor and schoolmaster, arrived at Pensacola in January 1766 and soon after established Campbell Town. By 1770, the colony had fizzled out because the land they settled was not fertile, and malaria or yellow fever had likely taken its toll.

Fort Caroline and Campbell Town represent two important, though short-lived, efforts by French Huguenots to settle Florida. Both ended in sadness and disappointment. Therefore, it is not surprising to read the words of a carpenter, Nicolas Le Challeux, who accompanied Jean Ribault on a 1565 expedition and survived the Fort Caroline massacre, returning to France after a brutal voyage home, in a poem he wrote which was first translated into English by Charles E. Bennett (who was the primary influence in the creation of the Fort Caroline National Memorial), Laudonnière & Fort Caroline: History and Documents, p. 164:

OCTET

(By the author when he arrived famished in his home in the town of Dieppe)

Who wants to go to Florida?
Let him go where I have been,
Returning gaunt and empty,
Collapsing from weakness,
The only benefit I have brought back,
Is one good white stick in my hand,
But I am safe and sound, not disheartened,
Let's eat: I'm starving.

Wilhelmus à Brakel on the Future of the Jews

Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian's Reasonable Service (1700), Vol. 4, pp. 510, 530-531:

Question: Will the Jewish nation always be a rejected nation, or will the entire nation yet come to repentence, believing and confessing that the Messiah is already come, and that Jesus is the Christ?
...
After the destruction of Jerusalem, the entire Jewish nation was dispersed and no longer has a specific residence. We are speaking here of this nation without distinction, and we believe that it will acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ -- the Messiah who was promised in the Old Testament and anticipated by the father. This is the general sentiment of the theologians of all ages -- even Luther and papist theologians. There are, however, also those who doubt this, and some deny it.
...
One more question remains to be answered: Will the Jewish nation be gathered together again from all the regions of the world and from all the nations of the earth among which they have been dispersed? Will they come to and dwell in Canaan and all the lands promised to Abraham, and will Jerusalem be rebuilt?

We believe that these events will transpire. We deny, however, that the temple will be rebuilt, and that therein the previous mode of worship will be observed, which prior to Christ's coming was of a typifying nature and would then be of a reflective nature. We also deny that Israel will then have dominion over the entire world -- and other such things which the Jews imagine and some Christians dream about.