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these times. They had not indeed the same facilities for extensive reading that now exist; neither had they generally the same inclination to use the advantages which they possessed. The people venerated, and implicitly trusted, their ministers; and therefore commonly depended on the pulpit and the bible, to afford then most of the religious knowledge which they deemed necessary or desirable. The state of religion being low, there resulted a prevalent distaste for books relating to spiritual topics; and that distaste becoming in its turn a powerful cause, produced a deplorable estrangement from the writings of holy men, and deepened the moral darkness already spread over the land.

8. The unwearied efforts of the church of England, then governed entirely by the high church party, to push her way into the colonies, and especially into Connecticut, together with much of the influence which that church exerted, wherever it had gained a foothold, contributed to the depression of religion in the community. We have before us two Reports of the Society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts, for the years 1768, and 1772 respectively; from one of which it appears that during the last mentioned year, the society employed in ten of the American colonies, no less than eighty Episcopal missionaries, besides fifteen catechists and schoolmasters. New England was the favorite field for the display of this wonderful liberality; and of all New England, Connecticut was privileged with the chief share of the blessing; having had assigned to her nineteen missionaries with a salary to each of about thirty-six pounds sterling, whereas only fifteen were granted to Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island collectively.

The manner in which our churches were treated by these missionaries was highly irritating. It was admitted, though often with reluctance, that a dissenter might be a christian; but the high churchmen here and in the parent country, whenever they had any thing to say or do relative to the alledged need of an Episco pal mission in America, proceeded on the principle that the ministrations of the dissenting churches, or rather dissenting "societies" as they were invidiously called, were at the best, entirely nugatory. From accounts which the missionaries sent to the Society respecting the moral state of things here, it could rarely be inferred that there were any churches, ministers or religious ordinances in the land, except the few that were connected with "the holy apostolic" mother church in England. As profound a silence was commonly maintained in regard to the means of grace enjoyed here, as if nothing but the intervention of Episcopal aid could save the benighted people from everlasting perdition. The motive may be easily divined. In this imposition upon the society, some churchmen who were natives of Connecticut, held a guilty fellowVOL. V. 30

ship with the missionaries. Take the following from the Report of 1772. "Upon the representation from Godfrey Malbone, Esq. of Pomfret in Connecticut, and others, of the sad and hard condition of the people in those parts, the society have consented that a missionary shall be appointed, with the salary of thirty pounds a year, to Pomfret, Plainfield and Canterbury." No wonder a missionary was appointed, if the people,—that is, as the phraseology imports, if all "the people in those parts,”—that is, in all that region, were in so "sad and hard condition," as to be necessarily deprived of the preaching of the gospel. But where, all that time, were the settled pastors of the three places mentioned?

The preachers at the anniversary of the Society, took precisely the same view of what they chose to represent as the almost absolute heathenism of the colonies. In a sermon delivered 1768 by "John, Lord Bishop of Lincoln," may be found the following pas sage. "Melancholy indeed was the representation, made by persons of the best credit about the state of religion in our plantations. As few means of instruction were afforded, the good impressions the settlers might bring with them were soon worn out; the sabbath was profaned; the most essential of the christian ordinances neglected; and the face of religious worship hardly kept up through large tracts of country. This Society, as far as their abili ties would permit, offered them some relief in their distressful situation; they dispatched missionaries to revive among them a sense of religion." Surely his Lordship, for some reason, was much in earnest; but that he was devoid of honesty or the requisite infor mation, no candid man could doubt who was then in the American colonies with his eyes open. On another anniversary four years afterwards, "Charles, Lord Bishop of St. David's," declared the object of the society to be, "to preserve the knowledge and enforce the practice of christianity among our fellow subjects in America." This is as if neither his Lordship nor his audience knew of any thing to "preserve the knowledge" of the christian religion from utter extinction, this side of the Atlantic, but the establishment of Episcopal churches by means of missionaries! And the charter of the institution, granted by "William III. of glorious memory," while it describes in the most moving language the need of missionaries in the "Plantations, Colonies, and Factories beyond the seas," utters not a hint that we can discover, respecting the existence of a single minister of a different denomination in all those "plantations, colonies," etc. In truth, the Society, its anniversary preachers, its patrons, its missionaries, its annual reports and all its proceedings, betrayed a contempt for the churches, ministry, and ordinances of the dissenters here, whom the mortified " establisment" could neither forgive, nor suffer to enjoy religious quietude, in the distant asylum to which they had been driven by her intolerance.

It was exceedingly irritaing, not to say insulting, to the descendarts of the Puritans to witness these insidious efforts of a chartered and powerful society in England, to supplant their own churches, and overthrow all they had been toiling to build for nearly a century and a half. It was provoking to be called Schismatics, and loaded with a score of other hard names, by an order of men who -had arrogated to themselves all ministerial authority; and were laboring to bring Americans under the yoke of a lordly hierarchy and a cumbrous ceremonial, which their fathers had renounced at the expense of blood and of much treasure. It was irritating to be told at their fire sides, as well as from the pulpit and the press, that there was no salvation for them and their children except on the ground of "the uncovenanted mercy of God," when they well knew that no such mercy ever did or could exist. But vexation is no friend to piety. If the unfair measures and arrogant claims of the proselyting missionary, sometimes roused the spirit of indignation, it was only what might have been expected; but it was a spirit that disturbed the soul, and tended to preclude the exercise of evangelical feeling.

It is to be further observed, that the Episcopacy of the high church, which was striving first to wedge herself in among the churches of our land, and then to eradicate them, accorded essentially in her views of baptism with those of the papists. Her doctrines generally, were those of the Arminian school. Her notions of practical religion were low; and she countenanced many amusements and other courses of conduct, on which public sentiment had been accustomed to frown. In various respects her influence tended more or less, to depress the standard of religious doctrine and practice. If this remark should be thought invidious, it is but the invidiousness of truth; for let it be remembered that most of the Episcopalians then in New England, whether missionaries or laymen, were of the same stamp as those who, in the mother country, bestowed the contemptuous appellation of Puritans upon our ancestors, no less on account of their preeminent but highly offensive practical godliness, than because of " their attempting a purer form of worship and discipline than had yet been established." Our remarks have no application to another and very different class of Episcopalians, in whose prosperity we truly rejoice.

9. We shall mention but a single additional demoralizing cause; and that was, the various civil commotions that agitated the public mind during the greater part of that long period. Three several times the country was embroiled in war; twice with France, and finally with England, and in each case, with all the blood-thirsty savages that could be induced to join the foe by misrepresentation, the supply of ardent spirits, or the promise of lucre. The first

war, which was of four years duration, began in as many years after the commencement of the great revival in 1740; and had probably as much influence as any concurrent cause in generating the religious declension which has been described. Seven years after peace was restored, began what has been commonly called the French war, which continued not far from six years to convulse the people with the alternations of defeat and victory. Between that and the revolutionary war, there clapsed about fourteen years; and this struggle was prosecuted nearly eight years against a powerful and irritated nation, in weakness and poverty, in despite of treacherous friends and swarming tories, and in a word, under circumstances in which the great and inflexible Washington could at times ill conceal his painful forebodings as to the issue. Thus eighteen years out of thirty-nine were occupied with war, dreadful to any people, but peculiarly so to the colonies, on which, if success did not ensue, it was foreseen, especially in the last instance, that there must descend a tenfold greater weight of oppression, than monarchical cruelty had before dared to impose on them.

He must be equally superficial in observation and philosophy, who expects to witness any considerable advancement of the interests of religion, while the public attention and feeling are subjected to the control of the daily events of war, and thus harrassed, at one time by the flutter of exhilaration, and at another by the trepidation of alarm and despondence.

But the adverse influence of war on the state of religion, involves a still greater evil than merely the absorption of the mind in the bustling scenes which it presents. When has not an army been a school of vice? And when has there been war in any land, without extensively depressing moral principle and moral conduct in the community? It is not wonderful that during the war of the revolution, there was an unexampled diffusion of Universalism, covert Unitarianism, and almost every species of infidelity; for be sides the fearful contact of the people with the scepticism and atheism of their popish allies, there were piracy, peculation, the collis ions of party, the feelings of revenge, and the innumerable other baleful adjuncts of war, to paralyze the moral susceptibilities of the mind, and prepare it to doubt or renounce the humbling truths of revelation. Infidelity, which had previously sought concealment, now ventured to stalk forth into public view. She showed herself in the work-shop, the counting room and the parlor, in colleges and in halls of legislation, and sent out her insidious poison from the press. This poison was effused upon the community in all forms, from the icy witticism of Jefferson, to the elaborate puffing of Ethan Allen;-from the crafty but mannerly innuendo of Franklin, to the coarsest vulgarity of Thomas Paine. Previous to that memorable struggle with Britain, there were sceptics and heretics; but they

were necessitated to import the writings which advocated their respective schemes of error. But now, so greatly had the scale of moral sentiment sunk in the land, that printers in abundance, finding they had little to lose in the estimation of a large proportion of the public, were ready to publish the worst things that had been written by the Universalist, the deist, and the atheist.

But the difficulties which arose both before and after the war, were as disastrous in their bearing on the cause of religion, as any that were cotemporary. From the imposition of the "stamp act, eleven years previous to the Declaration of Independence, there was a continued series of oppressions which made many a "wise man mad;" and the summary disposal of tea in the harbor of Boston, was not the only act of enthusiastic vengeance which, however defensible as a measure of resistance to aggression, proceeded from feelings, and throughout the country awakened feelings, wholly uncongenial to the spirit of evangelical meekness. Quite as unfriendly to the interest of religion was the exasperation produced among large masses of the people, between the cessation of hostilities, and the settlement of the government under the federal constitution. At one time, the army, in the prospect of being disbanded with no compensation but the paper currency which was without value, was on the point of mutiny. At another, three or four of the States were bent on insurrection. At another, the country was convulsed with bitter outcries against the Society of Cincinnati; as founded on principles of aristocracy, and tending to the establishment of a permanent nobility. And such were the embarrassments which resulted from extensive opposition to Congress, from collisions between many of the States, and from the restrictions which foreign nations imposed on the American trade, that there was no national consolidation, prosperity or rest, till the rope of sand called the confederation, was exchanged, amid much contention, and after long delay, for the present constitutional government.

It is not supposed that all the above mentioned causes exerted an equal influence in depressing the state of morals and religion in the land; but that they all contributed to this deplorable result, there is no room to doubt.

And now, having extended this article considerably beyond the limit originally intended, we have only to offer our earnest prayer that the highly favored churches of New England, warmed by a just view of the past, and grateful to God for the peculiar tokens of his mercy which they enjoy, may so prize and improve their exalted privileges, that in all future ages, it shall be the delightful office of the historian to make an abundant mention of peace within their walls, and prosperity within their palaces.