entirely to Mr. Wm. Vassall's; on Fort Hill and Cope's Hill, at Boston Point-so that the threatened assault upon the town now gives us very little disturbance. The General has entirely disarmed the inhabitants, and has permitted numbers to move out with their effects. We have been obliged to live entirely upon salt produce and what store we have in the house, and I think we are very fortunate. Foreseeing a political storm, we had been some time collecting provisions of all sorts, and had just furnished sufficient to last our family six months. Mr. Clark has done the same. "It is inconceivable the distress and ruin this unnatural dispute has caused to this town and its inhabitants. Almost every shop and store is shut; no business of any kind going on. You will wish to know how it is with me. I can only say that I am, with the multitude, rendered very unhappy. The little I had collected entirely lost; the clothes upon my back, and a few dollars, are now the only property which I have the least command of. What is due to me I can't get, and have now an hundred guineas' worth of business stock which will never afford me a hundred farthings. I can't but think myself very unfortunate thus to have so much of the best part of my life-to have my business, upon which my happiness greatly depends, so abruptly cut short; all my bright prospects annihilated; the little property I had acquired rendered useless; myself doomed either to stay at home and starve, or leave my country and friends; forced to give up those flattering expectations of domestic felicity which I once fondly hoped to realize-to seek that bread among strangers which I am thus cruelly deprived of at home. This I long foresaw would be the case. The expectation of this distressing scene was the cause of that illness which sent me to Philadelphia last fall. When I think of my present situation, it requires all my philosophy to keep up my spirits under this accumulated load of uneasiness. I can't help relating two circumstances which, amidst all my distress, affords me real pleasure, and have tended greatly to relieve my anxiety. It has fully taught me that present disappointment may be productive of future good, and that we are indispensably obliged, after we have conscientiously done what appears to us our duty, to leave the issue to that Almighty Being whose fiat created and whose providence governs the world; and whether adversity depress or prosperity cheer us, we are equally bound humbly to adore His wisdom and patiently submit to His all-righteous dispensa tion. "We find it disagreeable living entirely upon salt meat. It is especially so to my honoured mother, whose ill state of health renders her less able to bear it. My brother Jack has been near a year past making the tour of France and Italy. My sister Copley is just embarking with her little family for London, where she expects soon to meet him. She is the bearer of this to England."* Different accounts have been given of the battle of Concord and Lexington, to which this report of a non-combatant refers, representing the heroic conduct of the provincials, but our object is not to give a military history so much as to notice the condition of all parties. The pulpit orators of the time refer to the fratricidal struggle in another tone : "The alarm," Langdon said, "was sudden, but in a very short time spread far and wide. The nearest neighbours in haste ran together to assist their brethren and save their country. Not Pulpit more than three or four hundred met in season, and attacked and repulsed the enemies of liberty, who retreated with great precipitation. But by the help of a strong reinforcement, notwithstanding a close pursuit and continual loss on their side, they acted the part of robbers and savages by burning, plundering, and damaging every house in their way to the utmost of their power, murdering the unarmed and helpless, and not regarding the weaknesses of the tender sex, whilst they had secured themselves beyond the reach of our terrifying arms. "That ever-memorable day, the nineteeenth of April, is the date of an unhappy war openly begun by the ministers of the King of Great Britain against his good subjects in this colony, and implicitly against all the other colonies. But for what? Because they have made a noble stand for their natural and constitutional rights, in opposition to the machinations of wicked men who are betraying their royal master, establishing Popery * Intercepted Letters, S.P. in the British dominions, and aiming to enslave and ruin the whole nation, that they may enrich themselves and their vile dependents with the public treasures and the spoils of America. "We must keep our eyes fixed on the supreme government of the Eternal King, as directing all events, setting up or pulling down the kings of the earth at His pleasure, suffering the best forms of human government to degenerate and go to ruin by corruption, or restoring the decayed constitution of kingdoms and states by reviving public virtue and religion, and granting the interposition of His Providence. Let us consider that for the sins of a people God may suffer the best government to be corrupted, or entirely dissolved, and that nothing but a general reformation can give good ground to hope that the public happiness will be restored. "Consider the true cause of the present remarkable troubles which are come upon Great Britain and these colonies, and the only effectual remedy. "We have rebelled against God. We have lost the true spirit of Christianity, though we retain the outward profession and form of it. We have neglected and set light by the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His commands and institutions. The worship of many is but mere compliment to the Deity, while their hearts are far from Him. By many the gospel is corrupted into a superficial system of moral philosophy, little better than ancient Platonism; and after all the pretended refinements of moderns in the theory of Christianity, very little of the pure practice of it is to be found among those who once stood foremost in the profession of the gospel. "The general prevalence of vice has changed the whole face of things in the British government 66 But, alas! have not the sins of America, and of New England in particular, had a hand in bringing down upon us the righteous judgment of heaven? Wherefore is all this evil come upon us? Is it not because we have forsaken the Lord? Can we say we are innocent of crimes against God? No, surely. It becomes us to humble ourselves under His mighty hand, that He may exalt us in due time. However unjustly and cruelly we have been treated by man, we certainly deserve at the hand of God all the calamities in which we are now involved. Have we not lost much of that spirit of genuine Christianity which so re markably appeared in our ancestors, for which God distinguished them with the signal favours of Providence when they fled from tyranny and persecution into this western desert? Have we not departed from their virtue? Though I hope and am confident that as much true religion, agreeable to the purity and simplicity of the gospel, remains among us as among any people in the world, yet in the midst of the present great apostasy of the nations professing Christianity, have not we likewise been guilty of departing from the living God? Have we not made light of the gospel of salvation, and too much affected the cold, formal, fashionable religion of countries grown old in vice and overspread with infidelity? Do not our follies and iniquities testify against us? Have we not, especially in our seaports, gone much too far into the pride and luxuries of life? Is it not a fact, open to common observation, that profaneness and intemperance, unchastity, the love of pleasure, fraud, avarice, and other vices are increasing among us from year to year ?"* * Sermon preached before the Honourable Congress of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, etc., 31st day of May, 1775, by Samuel Langdon, D.D., President of Harvard College in Cambridge. CHAPTER XIV. Death of Bradbury. BRADBURY, the indomitable opponent of the Jacobites in the reign of Anne, and the last survivor of the energetic band who united with him in the defence of the gospel against its Arian opponents, preached his last sermon, August 12, 1759, from Micah v. 5, and died, "rejoicing, in hope," at Warwick Court, Sept. 9, 1759, aged eighty-two. Job Orton. On the death of Doddridge, JOB ORTON became chief adviser to the Church at Castle Hill and to the academy, which was removed from Northampton to Daventry in 1761. To CALEB ASHWORTH, the newly-appointed tutor, Orton suggested various emendations on the plans of Doddridge. Advice to Caleb Ashworth. "I really think," he said, "the students lived too well at Northampton." "I hope," he added, "I need not caution you against that error in the good Doctor in saying true things to and of almost everybody." "When Dr. Doddridge expounded in the morning, it was seldom less than an hour, which is quite too much." "I hope you will never be the slave of any persons, either Independents or Presbyterians, orthodox or otherwise. Set out upon a generous plan, and be steady." "Pecuniary penalties are very proper, but of late years they answered no end, because the students never paid them, but they were put down to their |