In July, 1649, an ordinance had been passed by the Long Parliament for the propagation of the Gospel in New England. A collection for the object having been made in every parish, a large sum was realized in consequence. With this money certain lands were purchased of Colonel Beddingfield, a Roman Catholic Royalist, the annual proceeds of which were to be devoted to the mission. But after the Restoration, the Colonel seized back the property for his own use, and it was only after legal proceedings,--in which Clarendon, as Lord Chancellor, behaved most equitably,--that it was recovered by the trustees. Charles II. granted the Society a new Charter of Incorporation, of which Robert Boyle became president; and Mr. Ashurst, an influential and pious citizen, and alderman of London, who had been treasurer before, reaccepted that important post. Richard Baxter took an active part in the proceedings at home, and John Eliot, a missionary to the Indians, carried on its operations abroad. Letters are preserved which passed between the illustrious Divine and the illustrious Evangelist, and from one written by the former we learn that, although, from reasons connected with the peculiar character of the times, numbers were unwilling to leave England just then to embark in this new expedition of religious zeal, many would have been glad to have gone amongst “Persians, Tartarians, and Indians,” to preach the Gospel, had they but understood the language. Hints respecting universal language--a dream which occupied the thoughts of Wilkins, the Bishop of Chester, and inspired George Dalgarno’s _Ars Signorum_--occur in Eliot’s letters, showing that he leaned towards the Hebrew tongue as the all-comprehensive vehicle of instruction--the tongue which, he said, will be spoken in heaven, and which, by its “trigramical foundation,” is “capable of a regular expatiation into millions of words, no language like it.” Baxter was strongly excited by the deplorable destitution of the Gospel, but it inspired more of despair than of hope; it paralyzed rather than stimulated effort. “He that surveyeth the present state of the earth, and considereth, that scarcely a sixth part is Christian, and how small a part of them are reformed, and how small a part of them have much of the power of godliness, will be ready to think that Christ hath called almost all His chosen, and is ready to forsake the earth, rather than that He intendeth us such blessed days below as we desire. We shall have what we would, but not in this world.”[359] There are also several letters from Eliot to Boyle, written with touching simplicity--reports, in fact, of the missionary work in New England--in which the apostle to the Indians addresses the President of the Society as a right honourable, deeply learned, abundantly charitable, and constant, nursing father.[360] [Sidenote: CHARITIES.]