Copy of a Circular Letter from the Duke of Portland to the Lieutenants of Counties on the Sea Coaft, dated Whiteball, November 5, 1796, (159) A Proclamation by the Lord Lieutenant and Council of Ireland, decaring certain Parts of the County of Down in a State of Disturbance, (161) Treaty of Peace, concluded between the French Republic and the King of Bar- Answer of the Prefident of the United States of America, to the Resolution paffed by the House of Representatives, on the 24th of March 1796, which had for its Object to procure a Copy of the Instructions granted to Mr. Jay Extract from the Register of Resolutions of the Executive Directory of the 14th Mesfidor, Ath Year of the French Republic, one and indivisible, (188) Answer of the Executive Government of America to Citizen Adet's Note, in- clafing the Decree of the Directory respecting Neutral Veffels, Address of the Senate, presented by their President, John Adams, to the Prefi- dent of the United States, in Anfaver to the above Speech, December 12, Concluding Essay on the Science of Orcharding, Account of the Drainage of a Marsh near Marazion, Method of preparing Opium from Poppies grown in England, Invocation to Fancy and Forgetfulness to chase arway the Demon Memory, [156] Hoyle Lake, a Poem, written on that Coast, and addressed to its Proprietor, THE H IS T ORY OF KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING, IN GREAT BRITAIN, During the Commonwealth and the Ufurpation of CROMWELL. 4 J T has frequently been remarked, that, in periods of public commotion and of civil anarchy, the noblest energies of the human mind are often called forth to action; and if we have to witness much calamity, vice, and horror, the prospect is somewhat cheered by examples of virtue uncontaminated by interest, and of genius unfettered by timidity. Yet the short space of time which elapfed from the depofition of the first Charles to the acceffion of his fon, presents us with not many names of eminence in literature, which were unnoticed in the preceding period. There was certainly a large mass of learning depofited at this time in various hands; but that learning was obfcured by pedantry; and the science, as well as the morals of the age, was perverted by fanati cism. It was an age of projects, but those projects partook of all the wildness of anarchy; and history and politics were debased, as they too commonly are, by a devo 1 tion to party. " The The rapid tranfition of the human mind from torpid ignorance to restless speculation, from stupidity to error, was, perhaps, never more strongly instanced than in those ages which immediately succeeded the reformation. A blind devotion to the papal decrees, an averfion to inquiry, an indifference to knowledge and to taste, charac terized fucceflive ages and generations, of which scarcely a monument remains, except upon the tables of chronology. An accidental discovery, the invention of printing, seems to have awakened the European world from its mental lethargy; and no fooner was religious liberty restored, and the scriptures rescued from the strong and sterile grasp of the papal hierarchy, than a scene of confufion enfued, -every man heard them in his own tongue; or, more properly, he forced them to speak a language congenial to the caprices of his own imagination. The ardour for theological speculation was somewhat repressed, as we have already seen, by the arbitrary interference of government during the reigns of Elizabeth and her immediate fuccessor. But these impediments were no fooner removed by the downfall of Charles, and the fevere, though not wholly unmerited, punishment of Laud, than the utmost latitude was given to the excursions of the imagination; and there was scarcely a doctrine or text of scripture which could be perverted, that did not serve as the foundation on which some class of enthusiasts erected a new form of religion. The disciples of Calvin were divided into various parties; many of them embraced with avidity the tenets of the anabaptists, and a still larger party of the old puritans discovered that even the prefbyterian church was not fufficiently democratical; that the church of Corinth had a complete independent jurifdiction within itself; and they determined, in consequence, that every particular and distinct congregation of chriftians must have a full power to regulate all its own concerns without the aid of either bishops or synods, and independent of all connexion with other churches. This party, from their particular tenets, ! #enets, were termed Independents; and with this party it was, that the artful and ambitious Cromwell thought proper to connect himself. Where there exifts no regular principle of affociation, where there is no connected government or fubordination in any fociety, that fociety, whether civil or religious, will more readily be reduced under the yoke of flavery. The prefbyterian party under Cromwell, therefore, loft all its weight and importance in the state; fome of its members were subjected to the severity of perfecution; the independents, of all the greater sects, were alone admitted to the favour of the protector, while fome of the weaker and least numerous of the other sects enjoyed perfect toleration, if not protection, from the court. It is difficult to stop the progress of innovation, and it is most difficult in religious speculation. The independents themselves divided, after some time, into a number of fubordinate sects; and fome of them, by interpreting the obfcure parts of scripture in a literal fenfe, embraced and propagated the wildest doctrines, and the most abfurd delutions. The Ranters received their name from the violence of their extemporaneous harangues, and from their ridiculous and unnatural gesticulation. The Antinomians, not content with rejecting entirely the Jewith difpenfation, and cancelling even the moral precepts of the law, extended the doctrine of justification by the death of Chrift to an unwarrantable extreme, and afferted that juftification precedes the birth of the individual, and that it is impoffible that by any part of his conduct he can become obnoxious to future punishment. The Fifthmonarchy-men, exulting in the overthrow of temporal fovereignty, applied the prophecies which relate to the advent of Chrift in their literal fenfe; they afferted that this was the feafon indicated by the prophets, in which Christ was to reign with his elect upon earth; fome of them even affumed the prophetic character, proclaimed themfelves the precurfors of the Lord, and pronounced positively the speedy downfall of all other principalities and powers. Among |