detail, deserve our notice. Wherever the doctrine of retribution in a life to come for good and evil deeds in this world, has taken any hold on the minds of men, a general calamity strongly tends to check the passions, to inspire serious thought, to direct attention toward that future existence,and to make both hope and fear converge to the great Author of nature, the allpowerful, all-wise, and all-just God, who can recompense the sufferings of the good with endless blessings, and convert to lasting misery any short-lived joys, that can arise from the perpetration of evil. But in Athens, where the deity was looked to very generally and very anxiously for the dispensation of temporal good and evil only, it was otherwise. The fear of the divine power, says Thucydides, ceased; for it was observed, that to worship or not to worship the gods; to obey or not to obey those laws of morality, which have been always held most sacred among men, availed nothing. All died alike; or if there was a difference, the virtuous, the charitable, the generous, exposing themselves beyond others, were the first and the surest to suffer. An inordinate and before unknown licentiousness of manners followed. Let us enjoy ourselves; let us, if possible, drown thought in pleasure today, for to-morrow we die, was the prevailing maxim. No crime therefore that could give the means of any enjoyment, was scrupled; for such were the ravages of the disease, that for perpetrator, accuser and judges all to survive, so that an offender could be convicted in regular course of law, was supposed against all chance; and the final comsummation already impending over equally the criminal and the innocent, by the decree of fate or of the gods, any punishment, that human Jaws could decree, was little regarded. How most to enjoy life, while life remained, became the only consideration; and this relaxation, almost to a dissolution of all moral principle, is lamented by Thucydides as a lasting effect of the pestilence at Athens."

What we have seen is not, however, the most unfavourable view of the religion of the ancients. Some of its direct tendencies were to inflame the passions and to countenance the vices of those, among whom it prevailed. Its rites were some

Anaxagoras, the preceptor of Pericles, was the first who taught that better religion, if the term may be allowed, which was afterwards propagated by Socrates and his disciples, and he was persecuted for it as an atheist."

of them cruel, and some of them consisted in the excesses of drunkenness and impurity. In the characters of its gods, the lewd and the ferocious equally found for themselves examples and excuses: Nor were these, as is apparent from the dramatick poets and other writers of antiquity, disregarded, or infrequently alleged. What is said by one of the characters of Terence, who asks why he who was but a man might not do what the gods committed, "hoc ego homuncio non facerem," was, we may easily believe, a sentiment often repeated.

Such then (to say nothing of the immense multitude of slaves) was the condition of the great body of the free population among the ancients. They were without moral instruction, not acknowledging some of the most obvious principles of humanity and justice; with no institutions to call to remembrance those principles, whose obligation they might speculatively acknowledge, and to give these that efficacy, which they have only when continually enforced upon the mind; without any thing in their religion to make virtue venerable or vice odious; and what alone might be almost sufficient to give the character of the times, without any regard to the sanctions of a future life, which had a general influence on men's conduct; and the consequent corruption was dreadful.

In the commencement of his history Tacitus casts his view of the whole of that period, whose events he was about to record. After contemplating its civil and foreign wars, sometimes both carried on at the same time; the miserable internal government of the empire; the prevalence and power of informers and publick accusers, seizing for their reward on the best honours and offices of the state; the treachery of friends and dependents; the hopeless insecurity of either publick or private life; the unrestrained profligacy of manners, and all the scenes of horrour and cruelty, which it presented; he turns away his thoughts to rest them if possible upon some objects less painful. The following passage shews what might be discerned of a different character. *"Nor yet," says the

* Non tamen adeo virtutum sterile saeculum ut non et bona exempla prodiderit. Comitatae profugos liberos matres: secutae maritos in exilium conjuges propinqui audentes: constantes generi: contumax, et etiam adversus tormenta, servorum fides: supremae clarorum vivorum necessitates : ipsa necessitas fortiter tolerata: et laudatis antiquorum mortibus pares exitus. [Hist. I. 3.

historian, was the age so barren of virtue as not to produce some examples of excellence. Mothers attended their children when flying from their country; wives followed their husbands into exile; natural relations, and those allied by marriage, were bold and constant ; the fidelity of slaves was proof even against tortures; and eminent men were reduced to the last extremity, who endured it with fortitude, and there were those, who died in a manner equal to what is applauded in ancient times." Perhaps there is no passage in Tacitus, that may give us more knowledge of the age of which he writes, than this melancholy catalogue of its virtues. What must have been the character of that people, among whose rare specimens of excellence, the historian could think it worth while to record, that there were mothers and wives, who accompanied their children and husbands when driven from their country, and that of the nearest relations of the accused, there were some, who gave their assistance with courage and firmness. The fidelity of the slaves is indeed remarkable. It occurs elsewhere in ancient history as a subject of wonder; and is to be accounted for only by considering that fact, of which what is known of the slaves in the American islands may give sufficient proof, that a little humanity and kindness very often effectually secures the strong attachment of those, who belong to a class usually treated with cruelty and contempt.

It was the vices, the moral ignorance and the gross idolatry of this age, that Christianity had to encounter, when, driven from the Jews, it offered itself to the rest of the world. To the men of this age, it revealed the existence and taught the worship and the love of God; it addressed its precepts of purity, and holiness, and active and universal and disinterested charity; and upon these men it inculcated its motives, the sanctions of a future life; and it prevailed. In a large number of men it produced that wonderful and entire change of principles, of feelings, of affections, and of the habits of life, which it required. Allowing this change to have been produced, and there cannot, as it seems to us, be a doubt that the evidence of its divine authority must have been irresistible. Without such proof it is impossible, that the minds of those whom it addressed should not have been wholly impassive to a religion, whose spirit, whose requirements, whose fundamental principles, whose estimate of the value of present objects, whose high and solemn disclosures concerning things

invisible and remote-nay, whose very language were all so new, strange and unintelligible, so disconnected and irreconcilable with almost every thing, to which they had been accustomed.

If now we would observe what is the influence, and what have been the effects of Christianity, let us compare the condition of society in that country of Europe, where it prevails in its greatest purity, England, or in our own country, where perhaps the state of morals among all classes is higher than in any other, with what we have seen was the condition of mankind before its establishment. With the ferociousness, the profligacy, and the misery, which then existed, may be compared the present quiet, security and comforts of life, the regular administration of justice, the fellow-feeling and spirit of benevolence diffused through all classes, the publick and private charities, the purity of manners, very great, comparatively speaking, the respect for the institution of marriage, the abolition of domestick slavery in England, its partial abolition in our own country, and the freedom from all those customs, which now appear so horrible or disgusting, the exposure of children, the shews of gladiators, and the shameless indecency of publick spectacles.

This comparison might be pursued. But we have already wandered far, perhaps much too far, from our immediate subject. Some of our readers, however, may find an excuse for us in the object we have had in view. Some, perhaps, if they shall think that we may have at all succeeded in giving any

In

one, not familiar with the subject we have been treating, a new impression of the importance of Christianity, will not complain of us for having been thus instant out of season. our next we shall return without any further digression to our proper subject.

RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.

ARTICLE 22.

NEW ENGLISH CANAAN,

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NEW CANAAN:

Containing an abstract of New England.
Composed in three bookes.

The first booke setting forth the original of the natives, their manners and customs, together with their tractable nature, and love towards the English.

The second booke setting forth the natural indowments of the country, and what staple commodities it yieldeth.

The third booke setting forth what people are planted there, and what remarkable accidents have happened since the first planting of it, together with their tenents, and the practice of their church.

Written by Thomas Morton, of Clifford's inn, gentleman, upon tenne yeares knowledge and experiment of the country. Printed at Amsterdam, by Frederick Jacob Stam, in the year 1637.

IN

4to.

IN the various accounts of the first settlements of New England, we see how prejudices influence the pen of the writers. From the diaries of Bradford and Winthrop, Morton's Memorial, and the histories of Hubbard, Mather, &c. we should suppose the first planters of Plymouth to be men of whom the world was not worthy; that their conduct was so pure and excellent, as to need not even the mantle of charity to cover their failings.

From others, we learn that they were the dupes of puritanick cant, sour, tasteless asceticks, bigotted in their sentiments, and sordid in their manners, desirous of anarchy at home, and practisers of intolerance abroad. Among the writers who took pains to depreciate their worth, and make them appear to every disadvantage, is the author of this production, which now comes under our notice. It is a very scarce and curious book, and we believe only one copy of it is to be found in the country. This was obtained by a gentleman in his travels, and is now preserved in the Athenaeum,