Читать книгу Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader - Benj. N. Martin - Страница 29

'Tis now time for me to tell my reader, that in our age, there has been another essay made, not by French, but by English PROTESTANTS, to fill a certain country in America with Reformed Churches; nothing in doctrine, little in discipline, different from that of Geneva. Mankind will pardon me, a native of that country, if smitten with a just fear of encroaching and ill-bodied degeneracies, I shall use my modest endeavors to prevent the loss of a country so signalized for the profession of the purest Religion, and for the protection of God upon it in that holy profession. I shall count my country lost, in the loss of the primitive principles, and the primitive practices, upon which it was at first established: but certainly one good way to save that loss, would be to do something, that the memory of the great things done for us by our God, may not be lost, and that the story of the circumstances attending the foundation and formation of this country, and of its preservation hitherto, may be impartially handed unto posterity. THIS is the undertaking whereto I now address myself; and now, Grant me thy gracious assistances, O my God! that in this my undertaking I may be kept from every false way.

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=Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758=. (Manual, p. 479.)

From the "Inquiry, &c., into the Freedom of the Will."