taries or luxurious friars—and it will account for that singular state of belief and of conscience which existed at the time of the discovery of the new countries of the East and West. It would have been impossible that such ignorance, or such shocking perversion of reason and faith, could have grown up and established themselves as the characteristics of the public mind, had every man had the Bible in his hand to refer to, and imbue himself daily with its luminous sense of justice, and its spirit of humanity.
We shall presently see what effects it had produced on even the best men of the 15th and 16th centuries; but what perhaps is not quite so much suspected, we shall have to learn in the course of this volume to what an extent the influence of this system still continues on the Protestant mind. So thoroughly had it debauched the public morality, that it is to this source that we alone can come to explain the laxity of opinion and the apathy of feeling that have ever since characterized Europe in its dealings with the natives of all new countries. To this day, we no more regard the clearest principles of the gospel in our transactions with them, than if such principles did not exist. The Right of Conquest, and such robber-phrases, have been, and even still continue to be, "as smoothly trundled from our tongues," as if we could find them enjoined on our especial approbation in the Bible. But genuine Christianity is at length powerfully awaking in the public mind of England; and I trust that even the perusal of this volume will strengthen our resolution to wash the still clinging stains of popery out of our garments, and to determine to stand by the morality of the Bible, and by that alone.
