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 — John Shaqi
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
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, will need no other motive
to forward an undertaking calculated for the service of both: I shall,
nevertheless, beg leave to observe, that whoever would be glad to cover
a multitude of sins by an extensive and well judged charity, or
whoever, from an excellent and godlike temper of mind, seeks
opportunities of doing good in his generation, will be pleased to meet
with a scheme that so peculiarly puts it in his power, with small
trouble or expence to procure a great and lasting benefit to the world.
Ten pounds a year, would (if I mistake not) be sufficient to defray the
expence of a young American in the college of Bermuda, as to dyet,
lodging, clothes, books, and education: And if so, the interest of two
hundred pounds may be a perpetual fund for maintaining one missionary
at the college for ever; and in this succession, many, it is to be
hoped, may become powerful instruments for converting to Christianity
and civil life whole nations, who now sit in darkness and the shadow of
death, and whose cruel brutal manners are a disgrace to humane nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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