had become Calvinistic, at one time an ally, at another a neutral friend. The direct influence of Lutheranism on America was inconsiderable. New Sweden alone had the faith and the politics of the German reformer.

As the New World sheltered neither bishops nor princes, in respect to political opinion, the Anglican church in Virginia was but an enfranchisement from popery, favoring humanity and freedom. The inhabitants of Virginia were conformists after the pattern of Sandys and of Southampton rather than of Whitgift and Laud. Of themselves they asked no questions about the surplice, and never wore the badge of nonresisting obedience.

The meaner and more ignoble the party, the more general and comprehensive are its principles; for none but principles of universal freedom can reach the meanest condition. The serf defends the widest philanthropy; for that alone can break his bondage. The plebeian sect of Anabaptists, "the scum of the reformation," with greater consistency than Luther, applied the doctrine of the reformation to the social relations of life, and threatened an end to kingcraft, spiritual dominion, tithes, and vassalage. The party was trodden under foot, with foul reproaches and most arrogant scorn; and its history is written in the blood of myriads of the German peasantry; but its principles, safe in their immortality, escaped with Roger Williams to Providence; and his colony is the witness that, naturally, the paths of the Baptists were paths of freedom, pleasantness, and peace.

Luther finished his mission in the heart of Germany under the safeguard of princes. In Geneva, a republic on the confines of France, Italy, and Germany, Calvin, the great refugee from France, appealing to the people for support, carried forward and organized the reform.

The political character of Calvinism, which, with one consent and with instinctive judgment, the monarchs of that day, except that of Prussia, feared as republicanism, and which Charles II. declared a religion unfit for a gentleman, is expressed in a single word-predestination. Did a proud aristocracy trace its lineage through generations of a high-born ancestry, the republican reformer, with a loftier pride, invaded

the invisible world, and from the book of life brought down the record of the noblest rank, decreed from all eternity by the King of kings. His converts defied the opposing world as a world of reprobates, whom God had despised and rejected. To them the senses were a totally depraved foundation, on which neither truth nor goodness could rest. They went forth in confidence that men who were kindling with the same exalted instincts would listen to their voice, and be effectually "called into the brunt of the battle" by their side. And, standing serenely amid the crumbling fabrics of centuries of superstitions, they had faith in one another; and the martyrdoms of Cambray, the fires of Smithfield, the surrender of benefices by two thousand non-conforming Presbyterians, attest their perseverance.

Such was the system which, for a century and a half, assumed the guardianship of liberty for the English world. "A wicked tyrant is better than a wicked war," said Luther, preaching non-resistance; and Cranmer echoed back: "God's people are called to render obedience to governors, although they be wicked or wrong-doers, and in no case to resist." English Calvinism reserved the right of resisting tyranny. To advance intellectual freedom, Calvinism denied, absolutely denied, the sacrament of ordination, thus breaking up the great monopoly of priestcraft, and knowing no master, mediator, or teacher but the eternal reason. "Kindle the fire before my face," said Jerome, meekly, as he resigned himself to his fate; to quench the fires of persecution forever, Calvinism resisted with fire and blood, and, shouldering the musket, proved, as a foot-soldier, that, on the field of battle, the invention of gunpowder had levelled the plebeian and the knight. To restrain absolute monarchy in France, in Scotland, in England, it allied itself with the party of the past, the decaying feudal aristocracy, which it was sure to outlive; for protection against feudal aristocracy, it infused itself into the mercantile class and the inferior gentry; to secure a life in the public mind, in Geneva, in Scotland, wherever it gained dominion, it invoked intelligence for the people, and in every parish planted the common school.

In an age of commerce, to stamp its influence on the New

World, it went on board the fleet of Winthrop, and was wafted to the bay of Massachusetts. Is it denied that events follow principles, that mind rules the world? The institutions of Massachusetts were the exact counterpart of its religious system. Calvinism claimed heaven for the elect; Massachusetts gave franchises to the members of the visible church, and inexorably disfranchised churchmen, royalists, and all world's people. Calvinism overthrew priestcraft; in Massachusetts, none but the magistrate could marry; the brethren could ordain. Calvinism saw in goodness infinite joy, in evil infinite woe, and, recognising no other abiding distinctions, opposed secretly but surely hereditary monarchy, aristocracy, and bondage; Massachusetts owned no king but the king of heaven, no aristocracy but of the redeemed, no bondage but the hopeless, infinite, and eternal bondage of sin. Calvinism invoked intelligence against satan, the great enemy of the human race; and the farmers and seamen of Massachusetts nourished its college with gifts of corn and strings of wampum, and wherever there were families, built the free school. Calvinism, in its zeal against Rome, reverenced the bible even to idolatry; and, in Massachusetts, the songs of Deborah and David were sung without change; hostile Algonkins, like the Canaanites, were exterminated or enslaved; and wretched innocents were hanged, because it was written, "The witch shall die."

"Do not stand still with Luther and Calvin," said Robinson, the father of the pilgrims, confident in human advancement. From Luther to Calvin there was progress; from Geneva to New England there was more. Calvinism, as a political power, in an age when politics were controlled by religious sects; Calvinism, such as it existed, in opposition to prelacy and feudalism, could not continue in a world where there was no prelacy to combat, no aristocracy to overthrow. It therefore received developments which were imprinted on institutions. It migrated to the Connecticut; and there, forgetting its foes, it put off its armor of religious pride. "You go to receive your reward," was said to Hooker on his deathbed. "I go to receive mercy," was his reply. For predestination Connecticut substituted benevolence. It hanged no Quakers, it mutilated no heretics. Its early legislation is the

breath of reason and charity; and Jonathan Edwards did but sum up the political history of his native commonwealth for a century, when, anticipating, and in his consistency excelling, Godwin and Bentham, he gave Calvinism its political euthanasia, by declaring virtue to consist in universal love.

In Boston, with Henry Vane and Anne Hutchinson, "Calvinism ran to seed;" and the seed was "incorruptible." Election implies faith, and faith freedom. Claiming the spirit of God as the companion of man, the Antinomians asserted absolute freedom of mind. For predestination they substituted consciousness. "If the ordinances be all taken away, Christ cannot be;" the forms of truth may perish; truth itself is immortal. "God will be ordinances to us." The exiled doctrine, which established conscience as the highest court of appeal, fled to the island gift of Miantonomoh; and the records of Rhode Island are the commentary on the true import of the creed.

Faith in predestination alone divided the Antinomians from the Quakers. Both reverenced and obeyed the voice of conscience in its freedom. The near resemblance was perceived so soon as the fame of George Fox reached America; and the principal followers of Anne Hutchinson, Coddington, Mary Dyar, Henry Bull, and a majority of the people, avowed themselves to be Quakers.

The principle of freedom of mind, first asserted for the common people, under a religious form, by Wycliffe, had been pursued by a series of plebeian societies, till it at last reached a perfect development, coinciding with the highest attainment of European philosophy.

By giving a welcome to every sect, America was safe against narrow bigotry. At the same time, the moral duty of the forming nation was not impaired. Of the various parties into which the reformation divided the people, each, from the proudest to the humblest, rallied round a truth. But, as truth never contradicts itself, the collision of sects could but eliminate error; and the American mind, in the largest sense eclectic, struggled for universality, while it asserted freedom. How had the world been governed by despotism and bigotry; by superstition and the sword; by the ambition of conquest and

VOL. I.-41

the pride of privilege! And now the happy age gave birth to a people which was to own no authority as the highest but the free conviction of the public mind.

Thus had Europe given to America her sons and her culture. She was the mother of our men, and of the ideas which guided them to greatness. The relations of our country to humanity were already wider. The three races-the Caucasian, the Ethiopian, and the American-were in presence of one another on our soil. Would the red man disappear entirely from the forests, which for thousands of years had sheltered him safely? Would the black man, in the end, be benefited by the crimes of mercantile avarice? At the close of the middle age, the Caucasian race was in nearly exclusive possession of the elements of civilization, while the Ethiopian remained in insulated barbarism. No commerce connected it with Europe; no intercourse existed by travel, by letters, or by war; it was too feeble to attempt an invasion of a Christian prince or an Arab dynasty. The slave-trade united the races by an indissoluble bond; the first ship that brought Africans to America was a sure pledge that, in due time, ships from the New World would carry the equal blessings of Christianity to the burning plains of Nigritia, that descendants of Africans would aspire to the benefits of European civilization.

That America should benefit the African was always the excuse for the slave-trade. Would America benefit Europe? The probable influence of the New World on the Old became a prize question at Paris; but not one of the writers divined the true answer. They looked for it in commerce, in mines, in natural productions; and they should have looked for revolutions, as a consequence of moral power. The Greek colonists planted free and prosperous cities; and, in a following century, each metropolis, envying the happiness of its daughters, imitated its institutions, and rejected kings. Rome, a nation of soldiers, planted colonies by the sword, and retributive justice merged its liberties in absolute despotism. The American colonists founded their institutions on popular freedom, and "set an example to the nations." Already the plebeian outcasts, the Anglo-Saxon emigrants, were the hope of the world. We are like the Parthians, said Norton in Boston;