It was this great struggle that peopled America.--It was not religion alone, as is commonly supposed; but it was a love of _universal_ liberty, and an hatred, a dread, an horror of the infernal confederacy before described, that projected, conducted, and accomplished the settlement of America.---- It was a resolution formed by a sensible people, I mean the _Puritans_ almost in despair. They had become intelligent in general, and many of them learned.--For this fact I have the testimony of Archbishop _King_ himself, who observed of that people, that they were more intelligent, and better read than even the members of the church whom he censures warmly for that reason.--This people had been so vexed, and tortured by the powers of those days, for no other crime than their knowledge, and their freedom of enquiry and examination; and they had so much reason to despair of deliverance from those miseries on that side the ocean, that they at last resolved to fly to the _wilderness_ for refuge, from the temporal and spiritual principalities and powers, and plagues, and scourges of their native country. After their arrival here, they began their settlement, and formed their plan both of ecclesiastical and civil government, in direst opposition to the _canon_ and the _feudal_ systems.----The leading men among them, both of the clergy and the laity were men of sense and learning: To many of them, the historians, orators, poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome were quite familiar: and some of them have left libraries that are still in being, consisting chiefly of volumes, in which the wisdom of the most enlightened ages and nations is deposited, written however in languages, which their great grandsons, _though educated in European Universities_, can scarcely read.