From 1578 to 1704, under Elizabeth, James the First, Charles the First, the Long Parliament, Cromwell, Charles the Second, James the Second, William the Third, and Queen Anne, the charters of Virginia, of Massachusetts, of Maryland, of Carolina, and of New York, were, one after another, recognized, contested, restrained, enlarged, lost, regained; incessantly exposed to those struggles and those vicissitudes, which are the condition, indeed the very essence, of liberty; for it is victory, and not peace, that free communities can lay claim to.
At the same time with their legal rights, the colonists had also religious faith. It was not only as Englishmen, but as Christians, that they wished to be free; and their faith was more dear to them than their charters. Indeed, these charters were, in their eyes, nothing more than a manifestation and an image, however imperfect, of the great law of God, the Gospel. Their rights would not have been lost, even had they been deprived of their charters. In their enthusiastic state of mind, supported by divine favor, they would have traced these rights to a source superior and inaccessible to all human power; for they cherished sentiments more elevated than even the institutions themselves, over which they were so sensitively watchful.
It is well known, that, in the eighteenth century, the human understanding, impelled by the accumulation of wealth, the growth of population, and the increase of every form of social power, as well as by its own impetuous and self-derived activity, attempted the conquest of the world. Political science, in all its forms, woke into new and vigorous life; as did, to a still greater degree, the spirit of philosophy, proud, unsatisfied, eager to penetrate and to regulate all things. { 17} English America shared in this great movement, but serenely and dispassionately; obeying its inherent tendency rather than rushing into new and untried paths. Philosophical opinions were there combined with religious belief, the triumphs of reason with the heritage of faith, and the rights of man with those of the Christian.
A noble spectacle is presented to us, when we see the union of historical and rational right, of traditions and opinions. A nation, in such a case, gains in prudence as well as in energy. When time-honored and esteemed truths control man without enslaving him, restrain at the same time that they support him, he can move onward and upward, without danger of being carried away by the impetuous flight of his own spirit, soon to be either dashed in pieces against unknown obstacles, or to sink gradually into a sluggish and paralyzing inactivity. { 18} And when, by a further union, still more beautiful and more salutary, religious belief is indissolubly linked, in the very mind of man, to the general progress of opinions, and liberty of reason to the firm convictions of faith,--it is then that a people may trust themselves to the boldest institutions. For religious belief promotes, to an incalculable extent, the wise management of human affairs. In order to discharge properly the duty assigned to him in this life, man must contemplate it from a higher point of view; if his mind be merely on the same level with the task he is performing, he will soon fall below it, and become incapable of accomplishing it in a worthy manner.