CHOICE SPECIMENS

OF

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.

RELIGIOUS WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.

ROGER WILLIAMS. 1598-1683. (Manual, pp. 480, 512.)

From his "Memoirs."

1. EXTENT OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

THERE goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out, sometimes, that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked into one ship. Upon which supposal, I affirm that all the liberty of conscience, that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship's prayers, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practise any. . . . If any of the seamen refuse to perform their service, or passengers to pay their freight; if any refuse to help, in person or purse, towards the common charges or defence; if any refuse to obey the common laws or orders of the ship concerning their common peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny and rise up against their commanders and officers; if any should preach or write, that there ought to be no commanders nor officers, because all are equal in Christ, therefore no masters nor officers, no laws nor orders, no corrections nor punishments, I say I never denied but in such cases, whatever is pretended, the commander or commanders may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors, according to their deserts and merits.

COTTON MATHER. 1663-1728. (Manual, pp. 479, 512.)

From the "Antiquities," or Book I. of the "Magnalia.”

2. PRESERVATION OF NEW ENGLAND PRINCIPLES.

'Tis now time for me to tell my reader, that in our age, there has been another essay made, not by French, but by English PROTESTANTS, to fill a certain country in America with Reformed Churches; nothing in doctrine, little in discipline, different from that of Geneva. Mankind will pardon me, a native of that country, if smitten with a just fear of encroaching and ill-bodied degeneracies, I shall use my modest endeavors to prevent the loss of a country so signalized for the profession of the purest Religion, and for the protection of God upon it in that holy profession. I shall count my country lost, in the loss of the primitive principles, and the primitive practices, upon which it was at first established: but certainly one good way to save that loss, would be to do something, that the memory of the great things done for us by our God, may not be lost, and that the story of the circumstances attending the foundation and formation of this country, and of its preservation hitherto, may be impartially handed unto posterity. THIS is the undertaking whereto I now address myself; and now, Grant me thy gracious assistances, O my God! that in this my undertaking I may be kept from every false way.

JONATHAN EDWARDS. 1703-1758. (Manual, p. 479.)

From the "Inquiry, &c., into the Freedom of the Will."

3. MEANING OF THE PHRASE "MORAL INABILITY."

It must be observed concerning Moral Inability, in each kind of it, that the word Inability is used in a sense very diverse from its original import. In the strictest propriety of speech, a man has a thing in his power, if he has it in his choice, or at his election; and a man cannot be truly said to be unable to do a thing, when he can do it if he will. It is improperly said, that a person cannot perform those external actions which are dependent on the act of the will, and which would be easily performed, if the act of the will were present. And if it be improperly said, that he cannot perform those external voluntary actions which depend on the will, it is in some respect more improperly said, that he is unable to exert the acts of the will themselves; because it is more evidently false, with respect to these, that he cannot if he will; for to say so is a downright contradiction: it is to say he cannot will if he does will. And in this case, not only is it true,