senters from England, and by French Huguenots. On looking over the roll of the Presbyterian churches of Charleston, there may be found the Huguenot names of Dupré, Du Bosse, Quillin, Lanneau, Legaré, Rosamond, Dana, Cousac, Lequeux, Boves, Hamet, Rechon, Bège, Benoist, Bubant, Marchant, Mallard, Belville, Molyneux, Chevalier, Bayard, Sayre, Boudinot, Janvier, Gillet, Purviance, Boyer, &c. &c. Lang's Religion and Education in America, p. 24.

"The Huguenot," says Professor Porter, "was not a Puritan, for though gallant in the field, chivalrous in his bearing, courteous in his manners, martyr-like in his resignation, he adhered too fondly to that feudal spirit which Christianity and freedom were united to disintegrate and destroy." Educational Systems of the Puritans and Jesuits compared, p. 15. This is but faint praise compared with their real worth. We would rather say, with Dr. Hawks in his History of the Episcopal Church in Virginia: "Never did any people better repay the hospitable kindness of the land which afforded them a refuge. Many of their descendants are still left in New York, Virginia, the Carolinas and other parts of our country; and among the brightest ornaments of the state, in the halls of legislation and of justice, as well as in the sacred office, may be found the names of some of the French refugees. No man in America need ever blush to own himself one of their descendants, for the observation has more than once been made, and it is believed to be true, that among their descendants the instances have been rare indeed of individuals who have been arraigned for crime before the courts of the country."

13. GEORGIA was established by the good Oglethorpe, but with a mixed people for Colonists. "Poor debtors taken from the prisons of England, formed a strange medley with godly Moravians from Hernnhut in Germany and brave Highlanders from Scotland." The poet Thomson thus celebrates the praises of Oglethorpe, in lines that very appropriately conclude this part of our subject:

"Lo! swarming southward in rejoicing suns, Gay colonies extend; the calm retreat

Of undeserved distress, the better home

Of those whom bigots chase from foreign lands.

Not built on rapine, servitude and wo,
And in their turn some petty tyrants' prey,
But bound by social freedom, firm they rise,
Such as of late an Oglethorpe has formed,

And crowding round, the pleased Savannah sees.

Progress of Liberty, Part V.

In view then of the facts which we have thus presented, as to the character of the inhabitants of the thirteen colonies who achieved our Independence, we can well understand the remark of Cotton Mather, "that God seemed to have sifted the nations of the old world, to bring the best of his wheat to the new. The man knows nothing of the true primordia rerum in our national history who does not ascribe the original settlement of our country to "persecution for righteousness' sake." We are prepared to assert that, with a very few and insignificant exceptions, the vast and overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the old thirteen colonies at the time of the Revolution were PROTESTANTS; Protestants not merely in name, as some of their degenerate descendants are, but in deed and in truth, as those who had escaped the most imminent peril themselves, and whose property, relatives and friends, had been but recently torn from them by the relentless hand of papal tyranny.

Under God, it was the strength of the Protestant arm that fought our battles and won our victories in 1776; and that we are permitted in this day of fearful tyranny and oppression elsewhere, the full enjoyment of civil and religious privileges natural to man; these blessings, with all the other countless blessings they bring in their train, must we ascribe to the valor and piety of our Protestant (not our Catholic) forefathers. Here and there indeed, we owe something to a Carroll, a Barry, a Montgomery and other Catholics, as individuals, but we owe nothing whatever to them as members of the Catholic church. To that church, as a church, American Independence owes nothing whatever.

"But, to the Constitution of the United States," says Archbishop Hughes, "we are indebted for the religious liberty we now enjoy." We think the men who gave it to us have the prior claim. The mere Constitution of the United States is but a bit of parchment, but the soul that lived and moved, and had

its being in every sentence of that Constitution as its embodiment, was PROTESTANTISM. We arrive at this conclusion by yet another line of argument, which constitutes a very important though much neglected item in the American Protestant Creed.

ARTICLE IV. Protestantism was the original and cementing principle of our National Union.

"If England gave our fathers the idea of a popular representation, Holland originated for them the principle of Federal Union." Bancroft, ii. p. 256.

When the Archbishop makes the sneering remark that "almost every colony had its own kind of Protestants," he admits a most important fact. Leaving out of view the principle of Protestantism, the colonies as originally planted had no common bond of union whatever. They were not one in origin, in language, in religious sects or interest. And indeed at so late a period as 1728, when their loyalty began to be suspected, an official communication was made to the mother country stating, that "because they are so distinct from one another in their forms of government, in their religious titles, in their emulation of trade, and consequently in their affections, it was equally ludicrous and absurd to suppose, that they ever could unite in so dangerous an enterprise." We object utterly to the Pantheistic tendency of certain writers and speakers of the day to represent this Union as resulting from "destiny, or that which makes destiny;" or to imagine some charm in the word "Continental," when a better and much more obvious reason can be assigned: "The religious liberty for which our ancestors came to America, was made the cementing principle of our Union." N. Y. Hist. Orat., 1827.

"The New England Confederation," says an orator, in speaking of the confederacy of 1643, which so surely prepared the way for that of the thirteen colonies in 1777, "started into being complete and perfect. Its heart-blood was religious sympathy. The spirit which animated it was of that spirit which was working great results in the parent VOL. I.-26

country." And what was this spirit but PROTESTANTISM? Hear the emphasis with which they dwell on doctrinal unanimity on religious matters as a main inducement to political concord, when referring to the contest then waging across the water for the dearest rights of man: "We, therefore, do consider it our bounden duty, without delay, to enter into a present association among ourselves, for mutual strength and help, in all future concernment, that as in native and relative, so in other respects we be and continue one, according to the tenor and true meaning of the ensuing articles, by the name of the 'United Colonies of New England,' to be bound in a firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity, for offence and defence, mutual advice and succor on all just occasions, both for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the gospel, and for our own mutual safety and welfare." Infancy of the Union, by W. B. Reed, Esq. Philad. 1840.

At a later period what was the confederation of 1777, but, as we have already seen, an undeniable evidence that the union was entered into for the express purpose of guaranteeing to the citizens of these United States the identical rights that were refused to Protestants at the Diet of Spires. When the Congress of 1776 adopted the Declaration of Independence, they not only adopted in fact, but in form also, sentence after sentence, of resolutions that had already been adopted by the Protestants of Mecklenberg, North Carolina. American Curiosities in Literature, as appended to D'Israeli.

When they pledged "their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor," they only used the same language that had been employed by the Reformed Presbyterians at Middle Octarara in Pennsylvania in 1743. Nor is it any wonder that they used Protestant language when they were Protestants themselves.

ARTICLE V. The old Continental Congress was a Protestant Congress.

Out of many proofs we shall cite but one, their address

4

to the people of England, dated Philadelphia, October 21, 1774, which contains the following sentence: "The dominion of Canada is to be extended*** that their numbers, daily swelling with Catholic emigrants from Europe may become formidable to us *** and reduce the ancient free Protestant colony to a state of slavery. Nor can we express our astonishment, that a British parliament should ever consent to establish in that country, a religion that has deluged your island in blood and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion throughout every part of the world." Had there been a single Roman Catholic in the body, such an address would not have been permitted to go forth.

ARTICLE VI. The Congress of 1781, which gave us the Constitution, was also Protestant, and gave the United States the first Bible ever printed on this side of the Atlantic.

The first English Bible ever printed in this country was the work of Mr. Robert Aitken, of Philadelphia, and approved by Congress in the following resolution:

"Resolved, That the United States, in Congress assembled, highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interest of religion, as well as an instance of the progress of arts in this country; and being satisfied from the above report of his care and accuracy in the execution of the work, they recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States, and hereby authorize him to publish this recommendation in the manner he shall think proper. CHARLES THOMPSON, Sec'y."

The report here referred to was made by the two Chaplains of Congress, Rev. Messrs. William White and George. Duffield. For the Protestant character of Bishop White we can appeal to the nation at large; for that of Mr. Duffield to the fact that he was at that time Pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and to the following definition of religious liberty in a sermon delivered on the National Thanksgiving day, Thursday, December 11, 1783. "Religious liberty