the greater part of those refinements whereby foreign articles of luxury, the food of vanity and vice, are daily flowing in upon us, insomuch that we, by their means, are perpetually growing more effeminate, more feeble in mind and body, more incapable of bearing the unavoidable afflictions of life, and of resisting those impressions of heat and cold, which people less indulged can easily withstand, can even enjoy as amusements. In nothing was the wisdom of Lycurgus so manifest as in shutting out wealth and luxury from the people of Sparta. While they continued obedient to his laws, they had nothing to incite an invader, and in case of au attack made on their persons, one Spartan was a match for three enemies of other nations; and then, exclusive of these considerations, they lived more happily in plain clothes, and on their black broth, than any other people on earth. These things were easily had, and with these, health of body and tranquillity of mind came as inseparable companions. Happy ignorance of evil! At what an expense do we manufacture in our own country, and import from all the other countries in the world, the incitements to knavery, robbery, murder! The fuel of pride and anxiety! The materials of sickness, death, and wars! In the acquisition of these things, the fine arts are admired, philosophy applauded, and mathematics adored. So debauched are we, that we cannot so much as imagine, simplicity, ignorance, and what we call poverty, could possibly make us happier. It may soon please God, however, to disabuse us of our gross mistake, and, by destroying one half of a wicked people, and impoverishing the rest, teach them again to believe in his power, who were infidels to his indulgence. I am a false prophet if the period of this revolution is not making a hasty approach towards us. Sure I am, nothing but a speedy revolution in our principles and practices can prevent it. But 'the day and hour' of this visitation is hid from us by Him who perfectly knows both, that we may take heed that we may watch and pray,' as men 'who know not when the time is,' and not as those time-serving wretches do, by looking into an almanack find out when they are to be devout for a week, that they may go to the Lord's table on a great festival, having devoted the rest of the year to their pleasures and sins. Superstition and folly may content themselves with so base a kind of service; but Christ, who died for them, will not be so put off. Our watchfulness should be awakened by our ignorance, lest 'our master coming suddenly when we look not for him, should find us sleeping' in our sins, and in a stupid indifference to him and his religion. We know not the day or hour of our death, when our trial and book of account shall be shut up; but we know, we must all die, and perhaps in the space of one hour or moment. This is knowledge enough of futurity for Christian virtue, which to approve itself to an all-knowing Master, should be unforced, uniform, and ever on its guard. 11. The economist alone is, or can be, an honest man. 13. He is rich who saves a penny a year, and he poor who runs behind a penny in a year. 14. All men, more or less, and many, too much, are excited to laudable exertions by praise and esteem. The generous and ingenuous souls are most apt to be stimulated by this noble motive; and, what may seem surprising, instead of pride, derive humility from it. Their enterprises are often too arduous to succeed. Hence they are mortified with a sensibility of their own weakness, but not wholly discouraged. The active man, who climbs a mountain, is not more apt to find himself fatigued, than the lubbard in only going up stairs. The unaspiring fool hardly ever becomes sensible of his own inability, for he hardly ever puts himself to a trial; and besides, no fool ever knew himself to be a fool. He is a wise man indeed, or soon will be, who can sometimes find out that he himself is a fool. 15. The infidels say, if our religion is necessary, why hath the distribution of it been so partial? Why is it not found in all parts of the world, even to this day? We answer, It, was given to all mankind from the beginning, namely, to our two common parents, Adam and Noah, but perverted by their posterity into gross idolatry, and the worship of stocks, stones, and devils. It hath been offered to all men, but not forced on any, and therefore no just cause of complaint lies either against the goodness of Providence, or the necessity of our religion, if so many have refused it. But we ask the infidel, to whom it is amply offered, why he persists to refuse it? Hath he not full proof of its truth and excellence? Hath he fairly examined that proof? Or does he perceive, that understanding, health, prosperity, with other gifts of Providence, which he values more than religion, are equally distributed to all men? In regard to these, he is still less satisfied with his portion, excepting in regard to the first, than he is with the pagan's portion of Christianity. His murmurs in this objection are but a pretence; for he would much rather wish there were no God than no devil. He is but the devil's blasphemous bully, who, when he had consumed his fortune in vanity, gaming, and other vices, cries out to God, Take back the rascally existence given me; and shoots himself. Existence! What then? Is he sure his existence is to end at the muzzle of the pistol, and not be prolonged to a future account? There is not among us a single infidel, but of this sort, though the greater number of them are not so desperate in regard to criminal pleasures, which they wish to protract a little longer. 16. Are all mankind of one species, and descended from a common parent? No, saith a Scotch lord, too proud to suffer a negro, or perhaps a poor Highlander, to claim any manner of kindred with him. Well, and if such are not of the same species with my lord, he might kill and eat them, only that the negro or Highlander is not fat enough to be good eating, as he does a sheep? It would not be going much farther, than oppressing, impoverishing, starving them, practices of a very lordly kind. A great lawyer, turned into a lord, is not the most likely person in the world to give Moses credit for any thing he reports, and least of all for any sort of equality between so elevated a personage and a poor dunghill-born mortal, crusted in scabs, and but half defended from the snow by a few rags. Yet most certain it is, that every animal knowing, or capable of knowing, its Maker; every animal morally free, and accountable for its actions, with a conscience; every animal who hath the use of reason, and speech, in arbitrary words; who walks upright on two legs, but unfledged, and can sometimes laugh; whether of a fair or dark complexion, like dyed wool or silk; whether a lord or a peasant, is a brother to, and of the same blood with, all other animals, distinguished by these peculiar characteristics. Struck with these, a Dane may ask a negro how he came to be so black? And the negro may as sensibly ask the Dane, how he came to be so white? If neither of them can tell, I can, though but of little learning or philosophy. The Dane, and his ancestors, having for many generations lived in a very cold country, came forth bleached and fair. The Germans, a little nearer the sun, are generally of a little darker cast. The French, a little more to the southward, darker than they. The Spaniards, inhabitants of a warmer climate, considerably darker than the French. The Moors, near the tropic, are only not black. The Æthiopians and negroes living between the tropics, under the perpendicular bask of the sun, from generation to generation, and shut in from a mixture with fairer people by Mount Atlas, and an extensive desert, for at least fifty centuries, are after all, not absolutely black, but so near it, that no other epithet can so well express their colour. As to other distinctions of hair, noses, lips, &c. they are certainly shrivelled by the same influence of the sun, though we cannot so easily account for it. The inhabitants of Indostan make a near approach to the colour of the negroes; but having always lain open to a mixture of fairer people from the north, by whom they have been frequently conquered, they and the Moors differ but little in point of complexion. As for the intertropical Americans, of a colour between dark olive and black, they always lay open, to a mixture of people both from the north and the south, and had their air perpetually tempered by cold winds from the snowy tops of the Andes. Climate and food make considerable differences among both blacks and whites of different countries, between black and black in some countries, and white and white in others. But, what should put a final end to this forced and futile controversy, is, that the males and females of all distinctions among rational animals, on cohabitation, produce a fruitful offspring, and no mules, as is ever the case between different species of brutes. Thus, I hope, it clearly appears, that the horrid opinion of the aforesaid lord, and of some others, who echo his barbarous philosophy, carries with it no shew of reason, much less of that benevolence, with which infidelity hath long affected to plume itself. If man to man is no more akin, than tiger to wolf, and if wealth and poverty, lordship and peasantry, set us still at a greater distance, than white and black, which I am sure they do, it will be a difficult matter to prove, that philosophical benevolence can have any right to come in competition with Christian charity, which, founding itself on a natural brotherhood, unites us all into one body of Christ. Is then commercial barbarity, which for a long time hath encouraged one part of mankind to buy and sell another, examining all their limbs, and looking into their mouths, as into those of horses, to make a judgment of their age and soundness, going to establish itself on philosophical principles, and among a people, not unacquainted with the name of Christ? Most horrible indeed! Woe to that country, whose pride and luxury are supported by such a commerce, and that commerce by such philosophy! 17. Another attack on the credit of Moses as an historian, similar to the former, originates from Moses himself, who tells us, that Caiu went into the land of Nod from the face of his father Adam, and there built a city. From hence the infidels conclude, there were Pre-Adamites, or Co-Adamites at least. As to Pre-Adamites, the supposition of such is nonsense in itself. Men before the first man is too gross a solecism to be palmed on any historian, for Moses says, that Adam called his wife Eve, because she was the mother of all flesh, and calls his first man by the name of Adam; whereas, had there been another man prior to him, he might just as well have taken up the generation of mankind from that other, as from the husband of Eve and father of Cain. Besides, the Pre-Adamites of infidels must have been created before there was a world for them to live upon. But as to Co-Adamites, or another species of mankind, formed about the same time with Adam, a thing not impossible, Moses ab-solutely precludes the fact, in setting Eve forward as the mother of all the human race. I have certainly as good a right to quote Moses for Moses, as any man can have to quote him against himself. Take which side we will in this argument, we must ground ourselves on Moses, for we have none to quote, but him. But now, as to Co-Adamites, the vulgar chronology sends Cain into the land of Nod in the year of the world 125, or at most in 139. This the infidel says, was too early for the peopling of that distant country, if there were in the world none but the posterity of Adam and Eve. This chronology, however disputed, as it really is, and that on good grounds, affords time enough for a considerable progeny in the single line of Adam and Eve, who were commanded and enabled, to increase and multiply, so as to people a small extent of country in one hundred and twenty-five years. Now it is not so much as intimated, how far the land of Nod was from the place of Adam's abode. It was probably but five or six miles. Neither are we told, of how many houses the city consisted, which Cain built. In the first ages, when every father was a prince, and governed his family patriarchally, the bounds of his little community were very much circumscribed, and his subjects few. In those days, and for thousands of years afterward, every association, though exceedingly limited as to numbers, was called a city, because governed by a police of its own. The infidel himself does not expect to hear of a Babylon or Rome at that time. From this he flies to America, and insists, that so extensive a country could not have been peopled, as it was found to be when the Europeans began to settle in it, by the posterity of Noah. The Atlantic ocean was too wide for |