long since: for, by what is left us of antiquity, we see how elegantly it was then handled, and how sublimely it was pursued. But the truth is, all its use, for the purpose in question, besides what hath been already mentioned, seems to be only habituating the mind to think long and closely and it would be well if this advantage made amends for some inconveniences, as inseparable from its study. It may seem too much a paradox to say, that long habit in this science incapacitates the mind for reasoning at large, and especially in the search of moral truth. And yet, I believe, nothing is more certain. The object of geometry is demonstration; its subject admits of it, and is almost the only subject that doth. In this science, whatever is not demonstration, goes for nothing; or is at least below the sublime inquirer's regard. Probability, through its almost infinite degrees, from simple doubt up to absolute certainty, is the terra incognita of the geometer. And yet here it is that the great business, of the human mind, the march and discovery of all the important truths which concern us as reasonable beings, is carried on. And here too it is that all its vigor is exerted: for to proportion the assent to the probability accompanying every varying degree of moral evidence, requires the most enlarged and sovereign exercise of reason. But, as to excel in the use of any thing, the habit must always be in proportion to the difficulty, it seems very unlikely that the geometer (long confined to the routine of demonstration, the easiest exercise of reason, where much less of the vigor than of the attention of mind is required to excel,) should form a right judgment on subjects, whose truth or falsehood is to be rated on the degrees of moral evidence. I venture to call mathematics the easiest exercise of reason, on the authority of Cicero, who observes, that scarce any man ever set himself upon this study, who did not make what progress in it he pleased. But besides acquired inability, prejudice renders the veteran mathematician still less capable of judging of moral evidence. He who hath been so long accustomed to lay together and compare ideas, and hath reaped demonstration, the richest fruit of specu

lative truth for his labor, regards all the lower degrees of evidence as in the train only of his mathematical principality: and he commonly ranks them in so arbitrary a manner, that the ratio ultima mathematicorum is become almost as great a libel upon common sense, as other sovereign decisions. I might appeal, for the truth of this, to those wonderful conclusions which geometers when condescending to write on history, ethics, or theology, have made from their premises. But the thing is notorious and it is now no secret that the oldest mathematician in England, is the worst reasoner in it. But I would not be mistaken as undervaluing the many useful discoveries made from time to time in moral matters by professed mathematicians. Nor will any one so mistake me, who does not first confound the genius and the geometer; and then conclude that what was the achievment of his wit, was the product of his theorems.

To return. Such was the state and condition of the human understanding in the ancient world, rather a mechanical than a moral or intellectual cultivation of reason, when Christianity arose; and on such principles as were best fitted to correct those errors and prejudices, which had so long and so fatally retarded the progress of truth. It would require a just volume to treat this matter as it deserves. The nature of my work will not permit me to do it. I shall only give a single instance, but an instance of importance, namely, the use of those principles in discovering the true end of man; and in directing him to the right mean of attaining it.

The knowledge of the One God as the moral and immediate Governor of the Universe, directly leads us to the Supreme Good; and the doctrine of Faith in Him, directly inspiring the love of truth enobles us to procure it.

In Paganism, the end was totally obscured, by its having always kept the true God, the supreme good, out of sight; which therefore must be needs sought in vain; and the true mean entirely lost, by the introduction of a number of false ones.

These were amongst the great principles revealed by heaven for the advancement of moral knowledge: and

in time they had their effect: though indeed somewhat with the latest. For it is not to be dissembled, that here as in most other cases in the moral world, the perversity of men soon ran counter to God's good Providence; which had so admirably fitted and disposed things for a general reform.

I

I have said the Fathers were, at least equal, if not superior, to those Gentile writers, their contemporaries whom we most affect to admire. shall now explain the unhappy causes (in which religion and reason suffered equally, as they always will suffer together) why the fathers did not in the exactness of their logic and in the purity of their ethics, infinitely surpass them.

The first preachers of the gospel, were the inspired messengers of the Word. They committed its dictates to writing; and with that purity and splendor in which they drew them from the fountain of truth.

Their immediate followers, whom we are wont to call the Apostolic Fathers, received at their hands the doctrine of life, in all the simplicity of understanding as well as heart. It cannot be said that their writings do much honor to the rational sublimity of our holy religion: but then they have not hurt or violated the integrity of sacred truth. For false philosophy had not yet made havoc of the faith. If, in their writings, we see but little of that manly eloquence of reason, which makes the writings of their inspired predecessors so truly admirable; and is so striking a proof of the reality of that inspiration: yet still there is as little of those adulterate and poluted ornaments which their successors brought from the brothels of Pagan philosophy, to stain the sanctity of religion. And let me add, that though the early prospect of things may not be, in all respects, what we could wish it; yet there is one circumstance, which does great credit to our holy faith: It is this, that as the integrity and dignity of its simple and perfect nature refused all fellowship with the adulterate arts of Grecian learning; so the admirable display of divine wisdom in disposing the parts, and conducting the course of the grand system of redemption, was not to be tolerably apprehended but by an im

proved and well disciplined understand ing. Both these qualities suited the nobility of its original. It could bear no communion with error; and was as little fitted to consort with ignorance.

The men of science were not the first who attended to the call of the gospel. It was not to be expected they should be the first. Their station presented many prejudices against it. It was taught by simple unlettered men, whose condition they held in contempt; and it required that they, who had been till now the teachers of mankind, should become learners. The doctrines of the Gospel had indeed this to recommend them. that they were rational; but the philosophers were already no strangers to those principles of natural religion which Christianity adopted, such as the unity of the Godhead. his moral government, and the essential difference between good and evil. The attestations to its truth were wonderful, but these, their principles of false philosophy enabled them to evade : so that their passions and prejudices for some time, supported them in holding out against all the conviction of gospel evidence.

But it was not thus with plainer men. They submitted to its force with less reluctance. Philosophy had secreted from the profane vulgar, the high truths of natural law, which it taught to the initiated concerning the one true God and his worship. When the gospel openly proclaimed these truths, with others of the like repose and comfort to the human mind, these profane vulgar eagerly embraced it. And as Grecian wisdom could not keep them from believing what was thus revealed, so neither did that wis dom, falsely so called, tempt them to vitiate it, after they had embraced it. They were apt, indeed, to run into the opposite extreme, and reflecting of how little use philosophy had ever been to the body of mankind, and how violently it now opposed the new religion, which had the body of mankind for its object, they became much disposed to avoid or neglect all profane literature without distinction. They saw. in the power of miracles, a more effica cious way of propagating the faith, and they thought they saw in St. Paul's answer of the Grecian wisdom, the

condemnation of all human literature, in general. St. Paul had himself abstained from their meretricious eloquence, and had cautioned posterity against their magical philosophy. The first, lest it should occasion a suspicion that the faith had made its way rather by the arts of human speech, than by the power of the Spirit. The latter because he saw it was fatally framed to infect religion; and had some experience, and more divine foreknowledge, that it would speedily do so.

Indeed the time was at hand. For the convictive evidence and rapid progress of the Gospel, had so shaken and disconcerted learned pride, that the next age saw a torrent of believers pour into the church, from the schools of their rhetors, the colleges of their philosophers, and the cloisters of their priests. The sincerity of these illustrious converts in embracing a religion which did not hold out so much as in distant prospect, any advantages of the temporal kind, cannot be fairly brought into question. Their discretion, their prudence, were the things most wanted. For that passion of new converts, zeal, which is then least under the direction of knowledge when zeal most needs it, hindered them from making their advantages of the principles of revelation; so admirably fitted, as we have shown, to improve human nature on that side where its perfection lies, I mean in the high attainments of moral science. For, instead of reasoning from truths clearly revealed, and so from things known, to advance, by due degrees, in the method of the mathematicians, to the discovery of truths unknown. They travested obscure uncertainties, nay, manifest errors, into truth; and sought in philosophy and logic, analogies and quibbles to support them.

Their two great objects, as became them, were to increase the number of believers; and to defend the faith against infidels and heretics.

Amongst the means they employed for the speedy conversion of the world one was to bring Christianity as near to the genius of the Gentile religion and of the Greek philosophy, as could be done without giving offence to them or to their brethren.

This will account for a circumstance that never fails of giving scandal to

the readers of Church-history: which is, that the principles and doctrines of the ancient Heretics were infinitely more shocking and absurd than those of any modern sectaries. The reason (we see) is, that the ancient heretics formed their tenets on the principles of Pagan Philosophy; while the modern sectaries form theirs on the books of sacred Scripture. And the one was on philosophy reformed and purified, and the other is on the Bible perverted and misunderstood, yet the difference in favor of the latter becomes immense.

This mysterious genius of Paganism, together with its popular absurdities, naturally produced a method of teaching, which always pleases the imagination in proportion as it disgusts the judgment, that is to say, the use of allegory. A practice excellently fitted to cover the early follies of vulgar Gentilism, and to ornament the late knaveries of the philosophic; but very abhorrent of the genius of Christianity, where every doctrine was rational and therefore every rite should have been plain and open. Yet as allegory was become the general vehicle of instruction, and that which distinguished the school of Plato; the Fathers, who leaned most towards that sect, thought fit to go into that fashionable mode. They allegorized every thing; and their success was such as might be expected from so absurd an accommodation.

Here again they were misled in their ignorance of the nature of the Jewish law a law full of allegories and figurative representations. And with great propriety so as that religion was dependent on and preparatory to the Gospel; which, being its end and completion, required to have some shadow of itself delineated in the steps which led to it. But this, which shows the use of allegories to be reasonable in the old Testament, shows the folly of expecting them in the New. For when the substance was advanced, and placed in full light, the shadow was of course to be cast behind. Yet by the most unaccountable perversity, the very reason which the apostle gives for the necessity of interpreting the law figuratively, that the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life, was made the authority for using the Gospel in the

same manner.

Tenth Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color in the United States. Washington; 1827. Eleventh Annual Report of the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color in the United States. Washington; 1828.

SOME men are disposed to pour contempt upon an untried benevolent enterprise, because of the warmth of emotion which its friends exhibit. But deep feeling is perfectly consistent with sound judgment. In the higher stages of passion, there is something which gives to the short sighted faculty of judg. ment, a power of remote vision and comprehensive survey. Men of large minds have been susceptible of strong emotion. The philanthropists of Britain took broad and prospective views in regard to the well-being of Africa, because they felt strongly. In their minds an impulse went through all the regions of intellect and waked up whatever slumbered, and purified whatever was dim. It was often a matter of wonder to the unbelieving little men around them, why they did not give up the cause in despair. But discouragement they had anticipated. They had placed their hopes of success on such substantial things as the progress of knowledge, the connexion between wickedness and impolicy, the nature of man, and the sayings of God. Actuated and impressed by similar views and feelings, the supporters of the American Colonization Society have held on their way. Not the least disheartening of the adversities which they have encountered was the spirit of mingled incredulity and contempt, any thing but magnanimous, which was exhibited by some of the more respectable journals in this country. Men of

the noble views of Mills and Caldwell, and of the sagacious and comprehensive intellect of Harper and Clay, were accused of misguided zeal and of a weak and pitiable philanthropy. But through the merciful kindness of God, those days of rebuke and gloom have gone by. The Colonization Society now urges its claims, not simply on the ground of earnest hope and confident prediction, but on the basis of well established facts. When we presented this subject to our readers five years since, though many circumstances combined to cheer and animate us, yet the final success of the experiment was comparatively problematical.

For the purpose of presenting the subject to our readers in one view, we purpose to go back to the establishment of the Colonization Society, and briefly review its history during the successive years of its existence. Before doing this, however, we will briefly advert to the kindred settlement at Sierra Leone. We regard this colony as an instrument of signal benefit to Africa, as the pioneer in the great cause of Colonization, and as a noble monument of British philanthropy.

The celebrated Granville Sharpe, was the founder of the colony at Sierra Leone. By the decision in the High Court of England, in the case of Somerset, that the British constitution does not recognise a state of slavery, four hundred negroes were thrown, without employment, into the streets of London. They immediately resorted to Mr. Sharpe for protection. After much deliberation, he determined to attempt to colonize them somewhere on the African coast. Proper representations being made to the government, they concluded to defray the whole expense of the expedition. The transports, which conveyed them,

sailed in May, 1787. But owing to the unfavorable time of the year in which they arrived upon the coast, and to the intemperance and insubordination of the people, almost one half died during the first year. The land, which was originally purchased of the natives, is about twenty miles square, lying on Cape Sierra Leone, 8° 12′ north latitude, and about 12° west longitude. By various misfortunes the colony was reduced to forty persons, and a total extinction was feared. In 1788, another ship was sent out, having on board thirtynine emigrants and abundant supplies of provisions. Thirteen of these soon fell victims to death. Mr. Sharpe trusting too much to the force of moral principle in the settlers, had neglected to provide them with any thing like a code of laws, or with any materials for repelling foreign aggression. In 1789, a neighboring chief, for the purpose of retaliating certain injuries received from a British slave factor on the coast, burnt the settlement at Sierra Leone, and dispersed the colonists. By the exertions of Mr. Sharpe the Sierra Leone company was now formed, embracing many of the most wealthy citizens of London. This company despatched forthwith an Agent, with various supplies of provisions, arms, and amunition. A large number of slaves, in our Revolutionary war had escaped from the United States and placed themselves under British protion. At the close of the war, they were removed to Nova Scotia. The climate proving too cold, they petitioned the Sierra Leone company to be removed to their colony; the request was granted, and one thousand one hundred and thirty-two individuals were transported to the colony. Through the presure of the rains and the want of fresh provisions, one tenth of the number died during the first season. In 1792, a school was established, two churches erected, lots of land distributed to the set

tlers, and various important improvements effected. In 1793, the York, store-ship, containing property to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds sterling was consumed. In 1794, the colony was visited with a calamity, which nearly annihilated it. A French fleet, with a barbarity worthy of Tartars, attacked this unof fending settlement, burnt nearly all the buildings, pillaged and destroyed the books, printing apparatus, botanical collections, &c., and captured a ship with goods on board, with ten thousand pounds sterling. The whole loss was little short of fifty-five thousand pounds sterling. But this misfortune was met on the part of the settlers, with much fortitude. Convinced that their very existence depended on obedience and subordination, they exhibited some more unanimity and regard for character.

In 1798, Freetown contained one thousand two hundred inhabitants, three hundred houses, a government house, &c. Many of the colonists about this time became unhappily infected with a spirit of insubordination. Matters at length proceeded so far, that the courts of justice were shut, the Europeans were ordered to depart, or to pay for the privilege of remaining. The loyal party took arms, and met and routed the insurgents. The ringleaders were executed. Shortly after the native tribes made an attack upon the colony, and some loss was sustained. These various misfortunes influenced the directors of the company to make a very spirited representation of the state of the colony to Parliament, accompanied with the urgent request that the government would take it under its protection. The whole subject was fully investigated by a committee of the House of Commons, and in January, 1807, all the possessions of the company were surrendered to the British crown. In the progress of this work Mr. Sharpe had expended from his private funds, more than one thou