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the earth; the protectors of the oppreffed; the avengers of juftice, and the fcourge of tyrants? How have the fons of rapine and violence fhrunk before them, confounded and ⚫ overthrown? Witnefs, ye Danube and Sambre, and thou Boyn, crimsoned in blood! bear witness and fay--what was it that fired our Williams and our Marlboroughs to deeds of • immortal renown? What was it that fteeled their hearts with courage, and edged their fwords with victory? Was it not, under God, an animating conviction of the justice of their caufe, and an unconquerable paffion for liberty, and the purity of the Proteftant faith?

And do you think now, Gentlemen, that the caufe wherein you are engaged, is lefs honourable, lefs important, or that lefs depends on the fwords you draw? No, Gentlemen! I will pronounce it before heaven and earth; that from the days of our Alfreds, our Edwards, and our Henrics, downwards, the British sword was never unsheath⚫ed in a more glorious or more divine cause than at present !

Look round you! behold a country vaft in extent, mer• ciful in its climate, exuberant in its foil, the feat of plenty, ⚫ the garden of the Lord! behold it given to us and to our pofterity, to propagate virtue, to cultivate ufeful arts, and to fpread abroad the pure evangelical religion of Jefus ! behold colonies founded in it! Proteftant colonies! free colonies! British colonies! Behold them exulting in their liberty; flourishing in commerce; the arts and sciences planted in them; the gofpel preached; and in short the feeds of happiness and glory firmly rooted, and growing up among • them!

But, turning from this profpect for a moment, look to ⚫ the other hand! direct your eyes to the weftward! there behold Popish perfidy, French tyranny, and Savage barbarity, leagued in triple combination, advancing to deprive us of thofe exalted bleffings, or to circumfcribe us in the posfeffion of them, and make the land too fmall for us and the increafing multitude of our pofterity!

Oh Britons! Oh Chriftians! what a profpect is this! it is odious to the view, and horrible to relate. See, in the van, a fet of fierce favages hounded forth against us, from their dark lurking places; brandishing their murderous knives, fparing neither age nor fex; neither the hoary fire, nor the hopeful fon; neither the tender virgin, nor the helplefs babe. Ten thousand furies follow behind, and close up the icene! grim fuperftition, lording it over confcience bloody perfecution fhaking her iron icourge! and gloomy

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error feducing the unwary foul! while, in the mid and all around, is heard the voice of lamentation and mourning and woe; religion bleeding under her ftripes! virtue banifhed into a corner! commerce bound in chains, and liberty in fetters of iron !

But look again, gentlemen! between us and thofe evils, there is yet a space or gap left! and, in that gap, among others, you ftand; a glorious phalanx! a royal regiment! ⚫ a royal American regiment! a regiment formed by the best ⚫ of kings for the nobleft of purposes! and formed to conti nue, perhaps, for thefe purposes, the avengers of liberty ⚫ and protectors of justice in this new world, throughout all ⚫ generations!

And now is not my affertion proved? Confidered in this light, does it not appear to yourfelves that never, from the 'firft of time, was a body of Britons engaged in a more glorious caufe than you are at prefent; nor a caufe on whose ⚫iffue more depends? You are not led forth by wild ambition, nor by ill-grounded claims of right, nor by falfe no⚫tions of glory. But, confign'd to you is the happiness of the prefent age and of late pofterity. You wear upon your 'fwords every thing that is dear and valuable to us, as men and as chriftians. And upon your fuccefs it depends, perhaps, whether the pure religion of the gofpel, ftreaming ⚫ uncorrupted from its facred fource, rational, moral and divine, together with liberty and all its concomitant bleffings, 'fhall finally be extended over thefe American regions; or 'whether they fhall return into the bondage of idolatry, and ' darkness of error for ever!

• In fuch an exalted and divine caufe, let your hearts betray no doubts nor unmanly fears. Though the profpect may look dark against us, and though the Lord may juftly think fit to punish us for our fins, yet we may firmly truft that he will not wholly give up the proteftant-caufe; but that it is his gracious purpofe, in due time, to add to the ' reformed church of Chrift,' "the Heathen for an inheritance, and the uttermoft parts of the earth for a poffeffion." The subject of the fifth difcourfe is, the planting the sciences, and the propagation of the gofpel in America; it was delivered before the trustees, masters, students, and scholars of the college and academy of Philadelphia, May 17, 1757, being the first anniversary commencement in that place, together with a charge to the candidates who then obtained their degrees.

REV. July 1759.

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In

In the fixth, the author fhews the duty of praifing God for fignal mercies and deliverances; it was preached in TrinityChurch, New-York, September 17, 1758, on occafion of the remarkable fuccefs of his majefty's arms in America, during that campaign.

The appendix contains the three following pieces ;—An earneft Addrefs to the Colonics, particularly thofe of the fouthern diftrict, on the opening of the campaign, 1758;—An Account of the College and Academy of Philadelphia ;—and A philofophical Meditation, with a religious Addrefs to the Supreme Being.

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A Collection of the yearly Bills of Mortality, from 1657 to 1758 inclufive. Together with feveral other bills of an earlier date. To which are fubjoined, I. Natural and Political Obferuations on the Bills of Mortality. By Capt. John Graunt, F. R. S. reprinted from the fixth edition in 1676. II. Another Effay in political Arithmetic, concerning the growth of the city of London; with the measures, periods, caufes, and confequences thereof. By Sir William Petty, Knt. F. R. S. reprinted from the edition printed at London in 1683. III. Obfervations on the paft Growth and prefent State of the City of London; reprinted from the edition printed at London in 1751; with a continuation of the tables to the end of the year 1757. By Corbyn Morris, Efq; F. R. S. IV. A comparative View of the Dif cafes and Ages, and a Table of the Probabilities of Life, for the left Thirty Years. By J. P. Efq; F. R. S. 4to. 9s. Boards,

Millar.

THE

HE four numbered tracts, which compofe the latter part of this book, having appeared in former editions it is foreign to our purpose to take any notice of them upon this re-publication. What comes under our present cogni zance is the collection of bills of mortality; certainly a really, though not a very apparently, ufeful regifter. As we have neither time, inclination, nor any prefent motive for confidering or comparing the tables themselves; we apprehend it will fufice, on a fubject which, to the majority of readers, will appear fo very dry and uninterefting, if we only prefent them with an abftract of the general obfervations which occurred to the compilers of the tables, and are mentioned in the preface.

Thefe tables commence with the year 1593: but as, at that time, bills of mortality were only made occafionally, at

times of the plague; it was not until the year 1603 that re gular weekly bills commenced, which have been continued to the prefent time.

But though bills of mortality commenced at that time, yet they were but partial ones; fince the number of parishes now included within them, was taken in at various times; and it was not till the year 1746, that the addition of St. Matthew, Bethnal-green, compleated the prefent number.

Thefe bills have not arrived to us in an uninterrupted fucceffion, many being loft; which the publisher invites any poffeffor of to communicate, to add to the work. Nor are those now preserved, kept fo exact as might be wished.

The bills, even in their compleatest form, will afford but an imperfect guess at the state of the metropolis at the time, fince they comprehend only baptifms of thofe of the established religion, the numerous bodies of diffenters being entirely excluded. Their regifler of deaths is not more perfect, fince it includes only thofe buried according to the rites of the church of England. The one omiffion will not balance the other; as more are buried according to the church of Eng land, than are baptized into it; and a confiderable number of all forts are now carried from London to be interred in the country. Add to this, that thofe buried in St. Paul's Cathe dral, Weftminfter-abbey, the Temple Church, St. Peter's ad Vincula in the Tower, the Rolls, and Lincoln-Inn Chapel, the Charter-houfe, and other places, are taken into no account. It were to be wished, that they were continued upon a more exact plan.

In their prefent ftate, however, we learn, that though the city of London has been free from the plague, for near a century paft; yet, before the laft plague, there were but few yearly bills without it: which countenances a doubt of its being imported from other countries. Since, were it introduced with our merchandize, our imports being confiderably more fince that time, by the increase of our trade; we must have more infection brought among us now, than we used to have. But one evident caufe of this happy alteration, appears to be the more open and commodious plan upon which the city of London was built, after the dreadful, though fortu nate, fire which immediately fucceeded the lait plague: the inhabitants not being crouded fo clofely together as formerly. Thus, perhaps, it is owing to its being more thinly peopled than the reff of the world, that America has never yet been visited with the plague, while the crouded and filthy cities of Cairo and Conftantinople are feldom free from it. Another, and F 2

probably

probably the most effectual, prefervative is the great plenty of water conducted to every houfe, and washing the streets into the common fewers; thereby conftantly hindering the tendency to putrefaction. There are many more judicious remarks to be found in this preface, which will be useful to those who more peculiarly study the subjects treated of in this volume.

Medical Facts and Experiments. By Francis Home, M. D. Fellow of the Royal College of Phyficians in Edinburgh. 8vo. 4s. bound. Millar, &c.

DR

R. Home having premifed, in a fhort advertisement, that a book of facts and experiments is the most useful in the medical art, fpeaks of this publication in the following terms: The cafes contain fomething fingular in the fymptoms or in the cure. I have felected thofe chiefly which ended unfuccessfully, as they afford the fulleft picture of the disease, as they often teach more than thofe which have a contrary iffue, as they fhew the fallacy of trufting to a few obfervations in the cure of diseases, as they teach us not to be too fanguine in our hopes and promifes, and as they will at leaft procure credit, which has not always happened to cafes that were moft fuccefsful.'

It must be acknowledged, this method of a physician's publifhing his own fallibility and ill fuccefs has a very antique and unfashionable, but a most honeft and candid appearance; and feems to proceed rather from liberal philanthropy than contracted self-love. It naturally introduces the reflections which Dr. Home frequently makes at the conclufion of some of the unsuccessful cases; by querying, among other things, if fuch a medicine or evacuation, which had been used, had been omitted; or if fuch as had been omitted had been used, whether a different event might not have been the refult? In fomething of this kind we apprehend every thoughtful and confcientious phyfician muft exercise himself on many an unsuccessful catastrophe, (efpecially if it was unexpected) in the course of his practice, by confidering, whether he could with any thing added, omitted, or altered in his conduct throughout the cafe, for his future regulation in fimilar ones. Our Author having alfo very generally exhibited his procefs and prefcriptions in every inftance, and ingenuoufly fhewn us what had an apparently evil or good effect, and what did not finally avail against the disease, has left fuch observations on his prac

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