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, appealing to the people for support, continued the career of enfranchisement by planting the institutions which nursed the minds of Rousseau and Necker.

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 enfranchisement, 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 confi. dence 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 amidst 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, abso

lutely denied, the sacrament of ordination; thus breaking up the great monopoly of priestcraft, scattering the ranks of superstition, 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 for ever, 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; to protect itself 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. Calvinism rejected the herd of reprobates; Massachusetts 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 corn and strings of wampum, and in every village 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 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, I speak of its political character, in an age when politics were controlled by religious sects; I pass no judgment on opinions which relate to an unseen world, - 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 death-bed. "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 sects, 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 unity of the forming nation was not impaired. Of the various parties into which the Reformation divided the people, each, from the proudest to the most puny sect, 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 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.

The

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. 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 toil for 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 AngloSaxon emigrants, were the hope of the world. We are like the Parthians, said Norton in Boston; our arrows wound the more for our flight. "Jotham upon Mount Gerizim is bold to utter his apologue."

We have written the origin of our country; we are now to pursue the history of its wardship. The relations of the rising colonies, the representatives of democratic freedom, are chiefly with France and England; with the monarchy of France, which was the representative of absolute despotism, having subjected the three estates of the realm, the clergy by a treaty with the pope, feudalism by standing armies, the communal institutions by executive patronage and a vigorous police; with the parliament of England, which was the representative of aristocratic liberties, and had ratified royalty, primogeniture, corporate charters, the peerage, tithes, prelates, prescriptive franchises, and every