George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 3, 15th edition.

[399] out seek to relate ‘the sum of all God's works of prov-

Chap. XXIV.}

idence.’ In America, the first conception of its office, in the mind of Jonathan Edwards, though still cramped

1739

and perverted by theological forms not derived from observation, was nobler than the theory of Vico: more grand and general than the method of Bossuet, it embraced in its outline the whole ‘work of redemption,’ —the history of the influence of all moral truth in the gradual regeneration of humanity. The meek New England divine, in his quiet association with the innocence and simplicity of rural life, knew that, in every succession of revolutions, the cause of civilization and moral reform is advanced. ‘The new creation’—

Works of Edwards, II. 377 and 382

such are his words—‘is more excellent than the old. So it ever is, that when one thing is removed by God to make way for another, the new excels the old.’— ‘The wheels of Providence,’ he adds, ‘are not turned about by blind chance, but they are full of eyes round about, and they are guided by the spirit of God. Where the spirit goes, they go.’ Nothing appears more self-determined than the volitions of each individual; and nothing is more certain than that the providence of God will overrule them for good. The finite will of man, free in its individuality, is, in the aggregate, subordinate to general laws. This is the reason why evil is self-destructive; why truth, when it is once generated, is sure to live forever; why freedom and justice, though resisted and restrained, renew the contest from age to age, confident that messengers from heaven fight on their side, and that the stars in their courses war against their foes. There would seem to be no harmony, and no consistent tendency to one great end, in the confused events of the reigns of George [I. of England and Louis XV. of France, where legislation