A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in Our Foreign Plantations, and for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, By a College to Be Erected in the Summer Islands, Otherwise Called the Isles of BermudaBerkeley, George
Religion
A Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in Our Foreign Plantations, and for Converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, By a College to Be Erected in the Summer Islands, Otherwise Called the Isles of Bermuda
To what hath been said, it may not be improper to add, that young
Americans, educated in an island at some distance from their own
country, will more easily be kept under discipline till they have
attained a compleat education, than on the continent; where they might
find opportunities of running away to their countrymen, and returning
to their brutal customs, before they were thoroughly imbued with good
principles and habits.
It must nevertheless be acknowledged a difficult attempt, to plant
religion among the Americans, so long as they continue their wild and
roving life. He who is obliged to hunt for his daily food, will have
little curiosity or leisure to receive instruction. It would seem
therefore the right way, to introduce religion and civil life at the
same time into that part of the world: either attempt will assist and
promote the other. Those therefore of the young savages, who upon trial
are found less likely to improve by academical studies, may be taught
agriculture, or the most necessary trades. And when husband-men,
weavers, carpenters, and the like, have planted those useful arts among
their savage country-men, and taught them to live in settled
habitations, to canton out their land and till it, to provide vegetable
food of all kinds, to preserve flocks and herds of cattle, to make
convenient houses, and to cloath themselves decently: This will assist
the spreading of the gospel among them; this will dispose them to
social vertues, and enable them to see and to feel the advantages of a
religious and civil education.
And that this view of propagating the gospel and civil life among the
savage nations of America, was a principal motive which induced the
crown to send the first English colonies thither, doth appear from the
charter granted by King James I. to the adventurers in Virginia. _See
Purchas's pilgrims, part 4. b. 9. c.i._ And it is now but just (what
might then seem charitable) that these poor creatures should receive
some advantage with respect to their spiritual interests, from those
who have so much improved their temporal by settling among them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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