have taken their rise from the same source with many of his virtues. His mind, forcible and vehement in all its operations, roused by great objects, or agitated by violent passions, broke out, on many occasions, with an impetuosity which astonishes men of feebler spirits, or such as are placed in a more tranquil situation.

By carrying some praiseworthy dispositions to excess, he bordered sometimes on what was culpable, and was often betrayed into actions which exposed him to censure. His confidence that his own opinions were well founded, approached to arrogance; his courage in asserting them, to rashness; his firmness in adhering to them, to obstinacy; and his zeal in confuting his adversaries, to rage and scurrility.

Accustomed himself to consider every thing as subordinate to truth, he expected the same deference for it from other men; and without making any allowances for their timidity or prejudices, he poured forth against such as disappointed him in this particular, a torrent of invective mingled with contempt.

In

But these indecencies of which Luther was guilty, must not be imputed wholly to the violence of his temper. passing judgment upon the characters of men, we ought to try them by the principles and maxims of their own age, not by those of another, for, although virtue and vice are at all times the same, manners and customs continually vary.

Some parts of Luther's behavior, which to us appears most culpable, gave no disgust to his contemporaries. It was even by some of those qualities, which we are now apt to blame, that he was fitted for accomplishing the great work which he undertook. To rouse mankind, when sunk in ignorance and superstition, and to encounter the rage of bigotry armed with power, required the utmost vehemence of zeal, as well as a temper daring to excess.

A gentle call would neither have reached, nor have excited those to whom it must have been addressed. A spirit more amiable, but less vigorous than Luther's would have shrunk back from the dangers which he braved and surmounted. Towards the close of Luther's life, though without any perceptible diminution of his zeal or abilities, the infirmities of his temper increased upon him, so that he grew daily more peevish, more irascible, and more impatient of contradiction.

Having lived to be a witness of his own amazing success;

to see a great part of Europe embrace his doctrines; and to shake the foundation of the papal throne, before which the mightiest monarchs had trembled, he discovered, on some occasions, symptoms of vanity and self-applause. He must have been, indeed, more than man, if, upon contemplating all that he actually accomplished, he had never felt any sentiment of this kind rising in his breast.

Some time before his death, (which took place in 1546,) he felt his strength declining, his constitution being worn out by a prodigious multiplicity of business, added to the labor of discharging his ministerial function with unremitting diligence, to the fatigue of constant study, besides the composition of works as voluminous as if he had enjoyed uninterrupted leisure and retirement.

His natural intrepidity did not forsake him at the approach of death; his last conversation with his friends was concerning the happiness reserved for good men in a future life, of which he spoke with the fervor and delight, natural to one who expected and wished to enter soon upon the enjoyment of it. The account of his death filled the Roman Catholic party with excessive as well as indecent joy, and damped the spirits of all his followers; neither party sufficiently considering, that his doctrines were now so firmly rooted, as to be in a condition to flourish independently of the hand which first planted them. His funeral was celebrated by order of the Elector of Saxony with extraordinary pomp.

LESSON CXII.

Character of Samuel Adams.-TUDOR.

HE combined in a remarkable manner, all the animosities, and all the firmness, that could qualify a man to be the assertor of the rights of the people. Had he lived in acountry, or an epoch, when abuses of power were to be resisted, he would have been one of the reformers.

He would have suffered excommunication, rather than have bowed to papal infallibility, or paid the tribute to St. Peter; he would have gone to the stake, rather than submit to the prelatic ordinances of Laud; he would have mounted the scaffold, sooner than pay a shilling of illegal ship money; he would have fled to a desert, rather than endure the prof

ligate tyranny of a Stuart. He was proscribed, and would sooner have been condemned as a traitor, than assent to an illegal tax, if it had been only a six penny stamp, or an insignificant duty on tea; and there appeared to be no species of corruption, by which this inflexibility could have been destroyed.

The motives, by which he was actuated, were not a sudden ebullition of temper, nor a transient impulse of resentment, but they were deliberate, methodical and unyielding. There was no pause, no hesitation, no despondency; every day, and every hour, was employed in some contribution toward the main design, if not in action, in writing; if not with the pen, in conversation; if not in talking, in meditation.

The mears he advised, were persuasion, petition, remonstrance, resolutions; and when all failed, defiance and extermination, sooner than submission. His measures for redress, were all legitimate, and where the extremity of the case, as in the destruction of the tea, absolutely required an irregularity, a vigor beyond the law, he was desirous that it might be redeemed by the discipline, good order, and scrupulous integrity, with which it should be effected.

With this unrelenting and austere spirit, there was no ing ferocious, or gloomy, or arrogant in his demeanor. His aspect was mild, dignified and gentlemanly. In his own state, or in the congress of the union, he was always the advocate of the strongest measures, and in the darkest hour, he never wavered or desponded. He engaged in the cause with all the zeal of a reformer, the confidence of an enthusiast, and the cheerfulness of a voluntary martyr.

It was not by brilliancy of talents, or profoundness of learning, that he rendered such essential service to the cause of the revolution, but by his resolute decision, his unceasing watchfulness, and his heroic perseverance. In addition to these qualities, his efforts were consecrated by his entire superiority to pecuniary considerations; he, like most of his colleagues, proved the nobleness of the cause, by the virtue of his conduct: and Samuel Adams, after being so many years in the public service, and having filled so many eminent stations, must have been buried at the public expense, if the afflicting death of an only son had not remedied this honorable poverty.

LESSON CXIII

Public Faith. - AMES.

To expatiate on the value of public faith may pass with some men for declamation—to such men I have nothing to say. To others I will urge-can any circumstance mark upon a people more turpitude and debasement? Can any thing tend more to make men think themselves mean, or degrade to a lower point their estimation of virtue, and their standard of action?

It would not merely demoralize mankind, it tends to break all the ligaments of society, to dissolve that mysterious charm which attracts individuals to the nation, and to inspire in its stead a repulsive sense of shame and disgust.

What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a man was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this ardent preference because they are greener? No, sir, this is not the character of the virtue, and it soars higher for its object. It is an extended self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself with the minutest filaments of the heart.

It is thus we obey the laws of society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we see, not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our country's honor. Every good citizen makes that honor his own, and cherishes it not only as precious, but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defence, and is conscious that he gains protection while he gives it.

For, what rights of a citizen will be deemed inviolable, when a state renounces the principles that constitute their security? Or, if his life should not be invaded, what would its enjoyments be in a country odious in the eyes of strangers, and dishonored in his own? Could he look with affection and veneration to such a country as his parent? The sense of having one would die within him; he would blush for his patriotism, if he retained any, and justly, for it would be a vice. He would be a banished man in his native land.

I see no exception to the respect, that is paid among nations to the law of good faith. If there are cases in this enlightened period, when it is violated, there are none when

it is decried. It is the philosophy of politics, the religion of government. It is observed by barbarians—a whiff of tobacco smoke, or a string of beads, gives not merely binding force, but sanctity to treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought for money; but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise, or too just, to disown and annul its obligation.

Thus we see, neither the ignorance of savages, nor the principles of an association for piracy and rapine, permit a nation to despise its engagements. If, sir, there could be a resurrection from the foot of the gallows, if the victims of justice could live again, collect together and form a society, they would, however loath, soon find themselves obliged to make justice, that justice under which they fell, the fundamental law of their state. They would perceive, it was their interest to make others respect, and they would therefore soon pay some respect themselves to the obligations of good faith.

It is painful, I hope it is superfluous, to make even the supposition, that America should furnish the occasion of this opprobrium. No, let me not even imagine, that a republican government, sprung, as our own is, from a people enlightened and uncorrupted, a government whose origin is right, and whose daily discipline is duty, can, upon solemn debate, make its option to be faithless-can dare to act what despots dare not avow.

THE benevolence of the gospel lies in actions. The benevolence of our fictitious writers, in a kind of high-wrought delicacy of feeling and sentiment. The one dissipates all its fervor in sighs and tears and idle aspirations—the other reserves its strength for efforts and execution. The one regards it as a luxurious enjoyment for the heart-the other as a work and business for the hand.

The one sits in indolence, and broods, in visionary rapture, over its schemes of ideal philanthropy-the other steps abroad, and enlightens by its presence, the dark and pestilential hovels of disease. The one wastes away in empty ejaculation-the other gives time and trouble to the wor of beneficence-gives education to the orphan-provid