Notwithstanding so long a digression into Connecticut, the voluminous letter does not close without touching upon the other topics announced at the beginning. "Mr. Moor's mission" was a mission to the Indians-very proper, one might think, to be undertaken by an institution founded and chartered professedly "for the Propagation of the Gospel." But Colonel Heathcote says: "As for my opinion in that matter, I think it is too heavy for the Society to meddle with at present, and would properly lie as a burthen upon the crown to be defrayed out of the revenue here." Their being "brought over to our holy faith" would secure them in their fidelity to the government, and therefore the cost of converting them ought to be defrayed by the government. He adds that the Society will "find employment enough for their money in sending of missionaries amongst those who call themselves Christians on the coast of America." "As for Mr. Dellius," who seems to have been sent, on some occasion, among the Indians, his case is briefly disposed of. "Mr. Neau," who had been appointed catechist to the Indians and negroes in New York, is commended; and with three pages more of miscellaneous matters, the letter comes to an end.

Probably the reader feels himself, by this time, pretty well acquainted with Colonel Heathcote. It would be wrong to suppose that his professed affection for the Church of England was not real, or that he did not feel all that contempt for Christianity separate from Episcopalianism which breathes through this voluminous document. Much more would it be wrong to suppose without evidence that the writer was not a man of integrity, veracity, and a reasonably good character in other points of morality. We assume-and doubtless all candid readers not informed from other sources will assume that he was in his way a devout man; that in the manor-house of Scarsdale Manor, there were religious observances, such as the saying of grace at table, and the reading of prayers; that Sunday was kept there, not indeed with a sabbatical strictness after the Puritan fashion, but with a cheerful abstinence from weekday labor, with the catechising of servants and children, with the reading of perhaps a chapter out of The Whole Duty of Man, and with the best dinner of the week; that among the

tenants and laborers, on the Colonel's domain, gross vices were discouraged by his influence and his example; that profane language, if uttered in his presence, was rebuked; that the poor of the neighborhood were kindly cared for, especially if they were not guilty of joining in worship not in conformity with the Established Church; that young people of the lower order were instructed in their duty to their superiors, inferiors, and equals, but chiefly to their superiors; and that Col. Heathcote, take him all in all, was quite a model specimen of the English country gentleman in the reign of Anne-a Sir Roger de Coverley enlarged and dignified by military experience, and by participation in the government of a province. Assuming all this, the religious character of that distinguished layman and Christian gentleman is an interesting study. It is of a type that was common amid the general laxity of faith and morals throughout England in those times, and that is by no means extinct on either side of the Atlantic in these days. We may panse to look at it.

The religious character manifested, unaffectedly and unconsciously, in the letter from which we have given large extracts, is not simply, nor is it directly, the faith of Caleb Heathcote in the Divine person of Jesus Christ the Saviour of sinners and the manifestation of God to men; but faith, devout and unreserved, in the Church of England personified as of the feminine gender, faith in her authority, her ministry, her sacraments; full faith that if his soul is in her keeping, it cannot be lost. We are not saying that he did not at all believe in God the Father Almighty and in Jesus Christ, but only that his faith rested first and absolutely on that concrete institution, the Church of England, as by law established. He may have believed in Christ, and in all the articles of the Apostles' creed, for the reason that his faith in the Church being an implicit faith in whatever the Church believed in, must needs be an explicit faith in whatever he understood of her doctrines, and we are not denying that such faith, imperfect and bleareyed as it is, may have been sufficient for the saving of his soul. What we are insisting on is the fact that there was then, and is still extant, a type of religious character which is distinguished by believing primarily in a certain visible Church,

and secondarily in Christ, because that Church believes in him. Such a faith may make a devout Churchman; but at the best it makes only a narrow Christian, who has never learned the meaning of that precept, "Beware of the concision." To our thought, Col. Heathcote's letter illustrates, fairly and favorably, that type of religious character.

Religion of that type is intensely sectarian in its geniusthough of course there are many other kinds of sectarianism. Beginning with a devout faith not in God the Father, nor in Christ the Son of God, nor in the Holy Spirit, nor in any cardinal point of spiritual Christianity, but in a certain organization considered to be feminine and maternal, and represented by her functionaries and her ritual-or, if you please, by her judicatories and her standards-it cannot climb high enough to look over the barriers which the organization has built around itself, or to acknowledge ingenuously, and with no disheartening consciousness of inconsistency, the existence of a living Christianity outside of those walls. Evidently this was the type of religion at Scarsdale Manor. In the eyes of Col. Heathcote, those who worshiped God in Christ otherwise than according to the ritual of the Church of England, however well provided with ministers of their own choice, and however established by law in a region which they had planted for that very purpose, were on a level with the wild heathen in respect to spiritual need, and required hardly less than Mohawks and Oneidas the charitable interposition of a Society instituted for the purpose of "propagating the Gospel." The same type of religion in our day, whatever its denomination may be, is associated with the same proselyting spirit. How can it be otherwise? If "our Church" is the way of salvation, then every dissenter, though he be ever so devout in his way, and ever so confident in Christ, must needs be "brought over to the Church" in order to be saved. Is not that just the spirit in which Col. Heathcote proposes to invade Connecticut? Has he any thought of making converts to Christ, or does he think only of making proselytes to the Church?

At the same time, we shall hardly be just to Col. Heathcote if we do not observe the connection between his religion and his politics or statesmanship. The Church of England, in the

conquered provinces of New York, was part of the new political system which came in with the conquest. Just in proportion to the success of "the Honorable Society's" missionaries, not simply in propagating the gospel, but rather in "gaining over the people," the military conquest would be confirmed and completed by a moral conquest; and the dependence of the province on its new mother country would be more willing and less precarious. Such being, partly at least, the stimulus of the Colonel's zeal for the Church of England in his own province, it was natural for him to feel that, in reference to the same ends, the same work was equally important in the neighboring colony. How could that colony be truly English without the English ecclesiastical establishment? As he looked toward the east, and thought of that Puritan commonwealth stretching a hundred and forty miles along the coast, with "about forty towns in each of which there was a Presbyterian or Independent minister settled by law". a region with "abundance of people and places," but disowning the ecclesiastical establishment of England and the jurisdiction of my lord of London--the sight was as offensive to his loyal English sensibilities, as the sight of Mordecai sitting in the king's gate was to the pride of Haman. An English colony without the acknowledged ascendency of the English Church, without the surplice and the ceremonies, without the sign of the cross in baptism, and without the prayer-book, but full of psalm-singing and unwritten prayer, and thoroughly supplied with Calvinistic preachers-why the thing was not to be endured! It was as a political institution and for political ends, that the Church of England was to be carried into Connecticut. We may say this without imputing to Col. Heathcote and his coadjutors anything like hypocrisy. Assuming that he was a religious man in his way-as religious as Laud, or, to take a more modern instance, as religious as Bishop Staley of Honolulu-we must not forget that certain political principles were part of his religion, the religion with which he endeavored to satisfy the craving of his spiritual nature being essentially related to the state and royal government of England. His religion being faith in the Church of England, the first object of his faith was not a personal God and Saviour,

but a certain ecclesiastico-political institution personified. Unable to recognize any thing better than cant and fanaticism in what pretended to be Christianity without conforming to the Church of England, he was equally unable to recognize any true loyalty which did not worship at her altars. It was not merely as a religious man, zealous for the propagation of the gospel in its purity,—it was also as a loyal man, zealous for Queen Anne's headship over the Church, and as an Englishman zealous for the ascendency of the mother country over the colonies, and for a complete conformity in the colonies to all English institutions except English liberty-that he planned the invasion of Connecticut by missionaries of "the Honorable Society."

We find an illustration of this Christian gentleman's political views and aims, and of his way of thinking about the relation between England and her colonies, in a letter of his to the Board of Trade under the date of August 3d, 1708. Referring to certain proposals which he had made to their Lordships in preceding letters, he says:

“What in the first place I aimed at by my proposals was, to have diverted the Americans from going on with their linen and woolen manufactories, [manufac tures], and to have turned their thoughts on such things as might be useful and beneficial to Great Britain. They are already so far advanced in their manufactories, [manufactures], that three-fourths of the linen and woolen they use is made amongst 'em, especially the coarser sort, and if some speedy and effectual ways are not found to put a stop to it, they will carry it on a great deal farther and perhaps, in time, very much to the prejudice of our manufactories [manufactures] at home. I have been discoursed with by some to assist them in setting up a manufactory [manufacture] of fine stuffs, but I have for the present put it by, and will, for my own part, never be concerned in that nor anything of that nature, but use all the little interest and skill I have to prevent it." Doc. History of New York, I., 712.

A letter of a somewhat earlier date, from Lord Cornbury, Governor of New York, to the same Board, touches on the same subject, and helps us to understand what were the principles and aims of the Councillor as well as of the Governor. His Lordship thinks that with proper encouragement the people of his province might supply England largely with naval stores; and his argument is,

"The want of wherewithal to make returns for England sets men's wits at work, and that has put them upon a trade which I am sure will hurt England in