.

For to any man, who considers the divine power of religion, the innate
force of reason and virtue, and the mighty effects often wrought by the
constant regular operation even of a weak and small cause; it will seem
natural and reasonable to suppose, that rivulets perpetually issuing
forth from a fountain, or reservoir, of learning and religion, and
streaming through all parts of America, must in due time have a great
effect, in purging away the ill manners and irreligion of our colonies,
as well as the blindness and barbarity of the nations round them:
Especially, if the reservoir be in a clean and private place, where its
waters, out of the way of any thing that may corrupt them, remain clear
and pure; otherwise they are more likely to pollute than purify the
places through which they flow.

The greatness of a benefaction is rather in proportion to the number
and want of the receivers, than to the liberality of the giver. A wise
and good man would therefore be frugal in the management of his
charity; that is, contrive it so as that it might extend to the
greatest wants of the greatest number of his fellow-creatures. Now the
greatest wants are spiritual wants, and by all accounts these are no
where greater than in our western plantations, in many parts whereof
divine service is never performed for want of clergy-men; in others,
after such a manner and by such hands as scandalize even the worst of
their own parishioners: where many English, instead of gaining
converts, are themselves degenerated into Heathen, being members of no
church, without morals, without faith, without baptism. There can be
therefore, in no part of the Christian world, a greater want of
spiritual things than in our plantations.

And, on the other hand, no part of the Gentile world are so inhumane
and barbarous as the savage Americans, whose chief employment and
delight consisting in cruelty and revenge, their lives must of all
others be most opposite as well to the light of nature, as to the
spirit of the Gospel. Now to reclaim these poor wretches, to prevent
the many torments and cruel deaths which they daily inflict on each
other, to contribute in any sort to put a stop to the numberless horrid
crimes which they commit without remorse, and instead thereof to
introduce the practice of vertue and piety must surely be a work in the
highest degree becoming every sincere and charitable Christian.

Those, who wish well to religion and mankind, w