ledging themselves instructed and cured of their antipathy. They may be assured that those persons whom they hear daily condemning those writings, have never read them. They are imposed upon in this business, and their credulity is shamefully abused. They are exactly like the man I have heard of within a day or two, who was strongly condemning the Triangle, and a person present asked him if he had read it; he said no, but had his account from Mr. Honeygall: well, but had Mr. Honeygall read it? Why no, he had not read it, because he would not read so huge a thing; it would be wicked to read it. (Aside.) He never reads any thing.

So, reader, it is just as wicked for these sage censors of books to read the New-England books; and my word for it, they have not that sin to answer for. I ask the great and learned Dr. Buckram, (not that there is any such man in reality, I only use that name in a kind of allegorical or metaphysical sense ;) I ask him whether he has ever read " Edwards on the Will?" Hah! he must think of it.

I must here let the good people into a secret of us bookmen which, perhaps, they don't know. It is the practice of some great readers, when they have read the title of a book and its contents, and cut into a paragraph here and there, to say they have read it; nor do they think it lying. Some, I believe, venture so far as to say they have read a book, when they have only read the letters on the back side: but that is going too far: I never do that.

A powerful appeal lies from this subject to the patriotic feelings of every American. Were any of us in France or England, and should hear them commending the writers of our own country, we should feel a secret gratification arising from our national attachment; we should feel it an honour done to ourselves; and so it would be. We feel a pleasure in hearing the greatness of Washington, the talents of Franklin and Rittenhouse, extolled. Every American is gratified at hearing the eloquent Chatham declare, in the British parliament, the American Congress to be one of the noblest bodies of men ever as

sembled.*

We are not backward to assert the equality, if not the ascendency, of our naval and military character. We boast of our inventions in the arts-of our success in manufactures.

And with such varied excellence of talent, would it not be extraordinary if, in the theological department, something important and respectable had not been achieved? The fame of exhibiting to the world the first perfect experiment of religious freedom and toleration cannot be denied us; and Europe herself has enrolled and immortalized the name of our first theological writer. Is the thought incredible that such a man as Edwards should kindle the genius and rouse the talents of his countrymen? He did it; and has been followed by a constellation of divines and writers on theology, to whom, if the immaturity of our seminaries denied the most perfect classical excellence, nature had not denied intellectual powers of the first order, and posterity will not deny the honour of the first grade of usefulness and importance in their profession.

The perusal of their writings, by the people of this city, will be attended with several good effects which I shall particularly distinguish.

1. It will diminish, if not exterminate, their prejudices against New Divinity. For they will be surprised to find their great and leading doctrines, such as a general atonement, &c., to be the same as taught by the ablest and most orthodox divines since the reformation. The notion of moral inability was never a fabrication of the New-England divines; they will find, in the clearest and best writers of England, the same idea.

2. They will find themselves instructed and pleased. Books and Essays written, and Sermons delivered, in places where the work of God is carried on, cannot but derive an unction, a life and spirit, from the occasions that gave them birth. As the face of Moses shone when he descended from Sinai's glorious vision, so men greatly employed and honoured in the work of God, will transfuse through their writings the spirit of that work.

*At the commencement of the revolution.

It is a mournful fact, and will one day be as deeply deplored by those who have done it, as by those against whom it has been done, that the standard of opposition against those men and their writings should be lifted in New-York: that this highly-favoured city should be made the opposing bulwark-the breastwork of opposition. I rejoice to think that such walls as men build are not high, nor their foundations deep. I have no fear for the ultimate success of truth; but I fear for those who are opposing its progress—especially for those who are held in darkness by the craft and ambition of others. The chariot of salvation will not be impeded; it is guided by one who can save and can destroy.

It shall be the object of this Number to state to the good people of this city, and of the country and nation, wherever. these presents shall come, what documents, and books, and writings-in short, what resources may be resorted to, in order to discover what those sentiments are which are falsely called new divinity, and, very unappropriately, Hopkinsianism. To this I now solicit the reader's attention.

Jonathan Edwards, I have elsewhere said, was the great master spirit of his day. Perhaps no man ever evinced more capaciousness of understanding and strength of intellect than he. This is the opinion of very competent judges, and probably will not be denied. His writings are numerous, among which his Inquiry concerning the Will was his greatest production, and may be considered as forming the basis of the distinguishing tenets of New-England divinity, as far as it contains any distinctive features. Of this I have spoken in the former series. After this. his work on Religious Affections may perhaps be next in point of importance. Had this been the only book he published, it would have rendered his name immortal. On this ground, explored by thousands of writers, he was often original, generally interesting, and always unanswerable. His History of Fedemption, a work left immature, was sufficient to show the force and splendour of his talents. Various other important works were also published by him, which brevity forbids me to enumerate; but his numerous sermons, as many of them were delivered in periods of religious revival, and were more blessed

as instrumental to that great work, if we except Whitefield's, than any ever delivered in this country, are without all parallel among American sermons; and for depth of thought, force of argument, and brilliance of imagination; for a majestic display of truth, solemnity of address, and power to arrest the conscience, they have never been surpassed. He had the rare talent of uniting metaphysical discussion with practical and experimental truth; of appealing with equal force and propriety to the understanding and to the passions.

The style of Edwards is plain and simple, and evinces to the judicious reader the progress of a gigantic mind moving through fields of truth careless of the artificial adjustment and fastidious polish of diction. That inelegancies may be discovered in his style, I certainly will not deny. But when those who dare accuse him of" verbiage" can show equal vigour of intellect, let them boast. When those who dare censure his preaching as unprofitable can show equal trophies of success, let them triumph.

Far be it from me to say that Edwards was correct in all his sentiments, a felicity which rarely falls to the lot of a voluminous writer. Even Calvin was not correct in every thing. Neither do I pretend or wish to say that he agreed in every point with those who since his day are denominated Hopkinsians. But I will say to every reader, if he will read Edwards on the Will -on Religious Affections-on Redemption-on God's Last End in the Creation of the World-on Moral Virtue-on Revivals of Religion-and various points discussed in his sermons, he will have before him some books and some documents whereby to judge of Hopkinsian tenets.

Samuel Hopkins, whose dreaded and execrated name is so often pronounced with strange horror by thousands of people who never read a page of his writings, so often held up to censure and obloquy by an equal number of men who boast of having read his works, but are equally ignorant of what they contain-Samuel Hopkins wrote and published a Body of Divinity. I shall here say little of this work; it is sold in several bookstores, and is in many libraries of this city. I may safely say, however, that it is one of the noblest bodies of divinity in

the English language; and I will venture to predict that it will stand as high on the shelves of future libraries, and be regarded as a work of as much utility and merit, as Pictete, Ridgely, and Turretin, when the ignorant and maniacal rage against Hopkinsianism shall have subsided; and especially when it shall have the good fortune to be judged by those who have read it.

With regard to the leading sentiments of Hopkins, they do not differ materially from the most approved and orthodox divines, and the most eminent and standard writers since the reformation. Hopkins surely did not agree with them in every point, nor did any two important writers, that ever wrote, agree in all points. Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Beza, Zuinglius, Bucer, Carolstadt, all differed from each other; nor less did Baxter, Flavel, Owen, Watts, Doddridge, &c. differ. With reverence be it spoken, even Mason, Ely, Romeyn, and Milldoler, do not agree in all points.

Beside a body of divinity, Hopkins wrote various tracts and sermons, in all of which the grand and fundamental truths of religion are judiciously and ably handled. As a faithful minister of Christ, a public teacher, and an elementary writer on theological and moral subjects, the American church has had few more useful or more distinguished men. His style is plain, unornamented, and simple; with less strength and originality of conception than Edwards, his style verged nearer towards neatness and precision. In reading his pages you do not perceive inanity of mind carefully concealed by an elaborate texture of smooth and spider's-web phrases; nor an eternal and dead level of common places solemnly trimmed with insipid pomp, and the soporific monotony of easy periods, rounded as regularly as a thousand rolls of gingerbread. He wrote like a man of sense, who dared to think for himself, like a man of thought, who was master of his subject; like a man of piety, who regarded the truth; and if sometimes he justifies the suspicion of affecting to trace new paths, to launch into new speculations, show me the writer of eminence who is not more or less susceptible of that kind of ambition, or whose powers of mind rendered similar endeavours more successful, and, of course, more warrantable.