Virginia Company and its Sermons during the Period of King James I

这项研究涉及弗吉尼亚公司和支持弗吉尼亚殖民的布道。到目前为止，我已经清楚地表明，弗吉尼亚公司及其殖民活动是“商业性质的”，与宗教无关。这项研究的起源是约翰·多恩的布道，在布道中，多恩引用了新约使徒行传中的一段话来为殖民辩护。多恩把去弗吉尼亚的冒险家视为使徒，他们的目的是向不懂基督教的弗吉尼亚州居民传播福音。整个研究清楚地表明，这种应用方法源于对圣经的一种解释，即类型学。类型学的基本含义是，《旧约》中的一切都是《新约》中写成的“原型”的“类型”。这意味着旧约先于新约。这种解释在17世纪被世俗化和政治化。多恩和他之前的传教士将这种类型学应用于弗吉尼亚的殖民，并使用类型学为殖民辩护。所有的传教士都引用了《圣经》中的一段话，并将殖民作为一项宗教使命。通过这种方法，殖民是一种神圣的活动，那些参与这种殖民的人成为神圣的人，与《圣经》中的人平等。弗吉尼亚殖民的最初目的是希望从弗吉尼亚获得“利润”。但传教士和官方声明坚称，殖民不是商业上的，而是具有宗教意义的。通过使用《旧约》，传教士们把弗吉尼亚的殖民化变成了《旧约》或《新约》的“原型”。

The research concerns Virginia Company and the sermons which supported the colonization of Virginia. So far I made clear how Virginia Company and its colonization were "commercial" and had nothing to do with religion. The origin of this research was John Donne's sermon in which Donne defended the colonization by applying one passage from Acts in the New Testament to the colonization. Donne regarded adventurers to Virginia as apostles whose aim was to spread gospel to the inhabitants in Virginia who didn't know Christianity. Throughout the research it has become clear that this method of application originated from one interpretation of Scripture, typology. The basic meaning of typology is that everything in the Old Testament is a "type" of what is written in the New Testament as "antitype". This means that the Old Testament prefigures the New Testament. This interpretation was secularized, and politicized in the seventeenth century. Donne and the preachers before him applied this typology to the colonization of Virginia and used typology for the justification of the colonization. All of the preachers cited one passage of the Testaments and made the colonization a religious mission. By this method the colonization was a sacred activity and those involved in this colonization became sacred people equal to people in the Testaments. The original aim of the colonization of Virginia was "profits" expected from Virginia. But the preachers and official declarations insisted that the colonization was not commercial but had a religious significance. By using the Testaments the preachers made the colonization of Virginia an "antitype" of the Old Testament or the New Testament.