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Would you still enjoy these privileges? Would you still live and flourish under such a government? Remember, that the same causes, in the same circumstances, always produce the same effects. Our fathers taught their children the rudiments of a pious and liberal education;-our fathers founded schools in their villages;-our fathers kept the sabbaths, and reverenced the sanctuary, of their God; our fathers acted upon the high, and holy, and true principle, a principle proved, and written in letters of human blood on every page in the long history of man, that righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.' Our fathers, in a word, took fast hold of instruction; they let her not go; they kept her; and she was their life. Would you follow their example?-Do as your fathers did. Stand ye in the ways and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein.' Would you purify a poisoned reservoir of water? what so easy as to cast your antidote into the fountain which supplies it! In like manner, if you would purify the head of your government, spread far and wide the influence of education among your villages. Let every parent feel, that in rearing his family, he is preparing a part of the machinery which keeps the wheels of government in motion. Let every teacher feel, that in forming the first bent of his pupil's mind, he is preparing the mind of a freeman, to act and to reason for his country's welfare, or for his country's destruction. Let these things be done, and our government shall be as perpetual as the globe which we inhabit; and increase in moral and in natural resources, just in proportion to the advancement of the human intellect, when in the best possible circumstances to act with freedom."-pp. 22, 23.

Having thus, most appropriately, assumed the station, "not merely of an inhabitant and a well wisher," of the village in which he was speaking, and in which he resides, but "of a Christian patriot, looking over the vast expanse of" his "beloved country;-enjoying, as she does, all the fruition of past achievement, and smiling, as she is, in all the brightness of future anticipation," he makes the following just and animated appeal. "I now call upon you, my friends, to contemplate with me, this glorious spectacle. Look at what our common country now is,-look at what she once was,look at what she may be. We have already seen the cause which nourished her childhood, which now invigorates her youth, which must give solidity and strength to her maturity. This cause is to be found in the influence of a moral and religious education ;—an education confined, not merely to the few who govern,-blessing, not solely the wealthy and powerful,-entering, not only her popu lous cities, but spreading its benign and ever operating influence, over the great mass of the community; regulating the minds of the high and low, of the rich and poor; taking up its abode in towns and villages; leaving not one member of the body politic, however insignificant, to be withered by the palsy of moral and intellectual ignorance. Thus, keeping up the warm pulsation of life throughout the mighty system; and presenting to the world, at this moment, the spectacle of a strong and prosperous people, who are unshackled, without being generally licentious; and powerful, without being overbearing.

"Christian patriot! Would you preserve this noble spectacle, to be transmitted, unimpaired and unaltered, from generation to generation-Remember, I repeat it, remember, that the same causes, in the same circumstances, always produce the same effects. Instead of looking away from yourself, vainly wishing to regulate circumstances which you cannot reach;-retire to the beloved retreat of your native village, and your domestic home. There form, by a religious example, the character of your neighbors, as far as your influence shall extend-there, bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord;-there frown upon intemperance, and encourage industry, and reasonable and healthy abstinence ;there keep the Sabbath, and reverence the sanctuary of the God of your pilgrim fathers;-there establish with your substance the institutions of science, morals and religion;-there, permit me to say, as the organ of the body I have this evening the happiness to represent,—there, give, with a liberal hand, and with an expanded soul, something of that little with which Providence may have blessed you, to ensure to your posterity the blessings of education. Having done this, then live and die under the consoling conviction, that though listening senates' never hung upon your tongue,'though the fire of genius never flashed in your eye,--though the garland of literary fame never adorned your brow;-still, you have not lived in vain ;-you have contributed to the stability of your country-you have added brilliancy to her glory, as surely as a drop adds to the magnificence of the ocean, or a beam to the effulgence of the god of day!" pp. 23-25.

We cheerfully add our commendation, and our earnest recommendation, of the Address, to those of the several journals in which it has been already noticed. We will not even dissent from the expression, in one of them, of the opinion that "it should be immediately stereotyped and circulated in every town and village in New England."

2. "The Unitarian Advocate. Edited by Rev. Edmund Q. Sewall."

This periodical was commenced in Boston at the beginning of the present year. Its object and manner are perhaps sufficiently indicated by its title, and by the name of its editor. It is devoted, almost exclusively, to the inculcation and defence of Unitarianwe might say Humanitarian-theology. The number for April has a notice of the first number of the Spirit of the Pilgrims, particularly of our Introductory article, on which we deem it suitable to offer a few remarks.

Mr. S. complains first of all, that the Orthodox represent themselves as the followers of the Pilgrims, "the proper and legitimate representatives of their pilgrim fathers." But what ground is there for complaint on this subject? What is it to be a follower of the Pilgrims? It is doubtless to imitate them. It is to adopt essentially their system of faith, and the ecclesiastical order which they established. And to depart from this system of faith and order, and introduce a religion which they abhorred, is to forfeit the honorable

distinction of being their followers. Who, then, are the followers of the Pilgrims, and who are not? Who are laboring to defend and promote essentially those views of religion, in the faith of which they lived and died; and who have utterly discarded these views, and are laboring to banish them from the earth? Who are clinging to those churches which the Pilgrims established at the peril of their lives, and with the price of their blood; and who are endeavoring to destroy the independent existence of these churches, and break down the distinction between them and the world? In a word, who are the legitimate followers of the Pilgrims? Let the religious world decide.

Mr. S. supposes, "that the Pilgrims came to this fair land, not that they might be Calvinists, but that they might be freemen. They sought an asylum for their consciences, and not for their creeds." But why this frivolous, ridiculous distinction? Could they have found an asylum in the old world for their creeds, would they not also for their consciences? For, what did their consciences require on the score of religion, but that they might enjoy, unmolested, their own faith and forms of worship, or, in other words, their own creeds?

Says Mr. S. again, "The spirit of civil and religious liberty was the spirit which inspired our fathers." Unitarians can talk fluently on this subject, just as present convenience dictates. At one time, "the Pilgrims were the devoted friends and patrons of liberty. The spirit of civil and religious liberty is the very spirit which inspired them." But at another time, when the faith of these devoted Pilgrims is to be discredited, and the churches which they established are to be broken down, the tone is suddenly and totally changed. "Our ancestors were only half converted to free principles. They had no just ideas of civil and religious liberty. As soon as they were quietly settled in this country, they adopted principles as despotic as those of the church of Rome."*

In our Introductory article, we observed respecting the Panoplist, "It rendered incalculable service to the cause of truth, by compelling Unitarians to leave the concealment by which they had so long been gaining influence, and in which lay the far greater proportion of their strength." Mr. S. complains that this charge of concealment is again urged, and persists in denying it. "The charge," says he, "is utterly false. There was no such concealment." But, with marvellous consistency, in less than half a page, he admits the fact! For he says that Unitarian ministers, at the period in question, "did not preach on controverted topics. They preached what Unitarians now preach, save only that they touched not disputed doctrines." What is this but a full admission of the charge of concealment? Unitarian ministers at the period referred to, did not publicly make their people acquainted with their sentiments. They did not believe in the divinity of Christ, they did not believe in entire moral depravity, in regeneration, in the atonement, in justification by faith, in the perseverance of saints, in future eternal punishment; but

* See a Pamphlet entitled "The Recent Attempt to defeat the Constitutional Provisions in favor of Religious Freedom &c. by a Layman," a work recommended by the editor of the Unitarian Advocate as deserving an "extensive circulation."

their sentiments on these most important subjects, as Mr. S. allows, they thought it prudent in their preaching to conceal. "They did not preach on controverted topics."

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Still it is insisted, there was no concealment." We must be permitted to refresh the memory of Mr. S., by quoting some of the evidence on which this charge of concealment almost thirteen years ago, was made; premising that our witnesses are all of them zealous Unitarians. The Rev. Dr. Freeman of Boston, in a letter to Mr. Lindsey, written, as it would seem, in 1796 or 1797, says, "I am acquainted with a number of ministers, who avow and publicly teach the Unitarian doctrine. There are others more cautious, who content themselves with leading their hearers, by a course of rational but prudent sermons, gradually and insensibly to embrace it." William Wells, Esq. of Boston, in a letter to Mr. Belsham, dated March 21, 1812, says, "With regard to the progress of Unitarianism, I have little to say. Its tenets have spread very extensively in New England, but I believe that there is only one church professedly Unitarian." "Most of our Boston clergy and respectable laymen are Unitarian." "At the same time, the controversy is seldom or never introduced into the pulpit." In commenting on another letter from this country, Mr. Belsham attempts an apology for the concealment practised by the Unitarian clergy of Boston, in the following words, "Can it be reasonably expected of a body of clergy, nursed in the lap of ease and affluence, and placed in a station of such high secular consideration and comfort as that of the ministers of Boston, that they sould come forward, and by an open profession of unpopular truth, voluntarily risk the loss of all their temporal dignity and comfort, and incur the contempt and enmity of many, who are now their warmest admirers and friends?" "Who will venture to say of himself, that his virtue would be equal to the trial ?"'*

If the evidence here adduced in support of the charge in question -a charge which Mr. S., though he virtually admits the truth of it, still declares to be "utterly false," shall be thought insufficient, we have much more evidence in reserve. Says the lamented Dr. Worcester, in his first letter to Dr. Channing, "Hundreds and hundreds of times have I heard it [the fact of concealment] uttered from various quarters, and with various expressions of approbation and disapprobation; and never in any debate or conversation, as I recollect, have I heard the truth of it denied, or called in question." He farther mentions a sermon, which he heard at an ordination in Boston, a few months previous to his writing, "in which the preacher, [a Unitarian] very distinctly, and with considerable amplification, held forth that, though in some places it might be well, and 'contribute to the faith and virtue of the people,' for a minister openly and plainly to declare his sentiments, yet in other places it would not be prudent or proper." p. 17. "I can remember the time," said a writer in the Christian Examiner for March and April 1826, whose authority no Unitarian will dispute, "I can remember the time,

*For the preceding authorities, see the History of American Unitarianism, published in 1815.

and I am not old, when, though Boston was full of Unitarian sentiment and feeling, there was no open profession of it. A dead silence was maintained in the pulpit on doctrinal subjects, a silence, which was not disturbed by the press." And yet Mr. S. says, "There was no concealment"!!.

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The editor next complains, that we charge Unitarians with misrepresenting our sentiments. And he replies, "Having, for some years, habitually consulted every Orthodox publication which was thrown in our way, we confess we see no difference between what they say, and what Unitarians have said, is Orthodoxy. The very creed inserted in this Spirit of the Pilgrims,' expresses precisely what we find represented in works on the opposite side."-It may not be known to all our readers, that this same Mr. S. once published a sermon on depravity, in which he represents the believers in that doctrine as holding and teaching, that God "has sent us into life with our souls in such a state, that we are utterly incapable of the very purpose for which alone we have souls;" p. 21;-that he " has made us with a nature which is incapable of goodness, and then inflicts endless torments on us for not being good;" p. 28;-that "having given us a nature entirely corrupt, incapable of good, and prone to all evil, God placed us in this world with a command to do what he knows we cannot do, and then condemns us to eternal wo for doing that which he knows we cannot help doing;" p. 27;-that God has "sent us, helpless and abandoned, into a waste howling wilderness, with no capacity to do good, and condemned us to woes eternal for doing evil;" p. 42;-that "we sinned sixty centuries before we began to live," and " are guilty of that which, but for history, we never should have known;" p. 22;-that "we came into life with a fixed character, and are, at the first, decidedly, entirely, and for aught we can do, incurably wicked;"-that "we deserve hell as soon as we are born, and can never deserve more ;"—that our doom is decided at the outset, and cannot be the consequence of a trial which it precedes ;" p. 29;-that we can lose nothing" in our state of trial, "since all was lost at the begining; and can gain nothing, since all we do prior to regeneration is done in vain;"-that "we are not made worse by neglect of moral means, for it is impossible to be more than totally depraved; and are not improved by the use of them, for that would detract from the sovereignty of divine grace, to which, as the sole unaided cause, all change for the better is attributed ;" p. 30; -that "the judgment is already completed, when we begin the race of life, and cannot be reversed by all we may perform." p. 34.

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In language such as this, Mr. S., in his sermon, represents the doctrine of depravity, as held by the Orthodox. Yet he assures us after having "habitually consulted, for some years, every Orthodox publication which was thrown in his way," that there is "no difference between what the Orthodox say, and what Unitarians have said, is Orthodoxy." Where then, we must be allowed very seriously to ask the gentleman,-where have the Orthodox of New England, with whom you are conversant, and whose publications for some of the last years you have read, represented the doctrine of depravity as you have represented it in your sermon? Where? Point us to the

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