When they intended nothing more than to relieve the necessities of the fatherless, they found their minds gradually cleared from that narrowness of thinking; which leads bigots of all descriptions to suppose themselves exclusively right, and all others wrong. Their minds expanded with good will and charity to their fellow citizens, though differing from them in modes and forms.

These are some of the good consequences which have resulted in Charlestown from the establishment of a charitable institution on a broad basis, and still more extensively over the whole state from placing all religious denominations on an equal footing, without discrimination or preference.

Though real religion is always the same, yet there is a fashion in its modes varying with times and circumstances which is worthy of historical notice. For the first thirty-five or forty years after the settlement ✔^ of South-Carolina there was a constant jarring be-. tween the puritans and cavaliers, or the dissenters and high churchmen. The former brought with them from England much of the severity and strictness of their party, the latter an equal proportion of that levity and sprightliness which was fashionable in England after the restoration of Charles the second to the throne of his ancestors. The former dreaded conformity to the fashionable world, even in matters of indifference, as a great abomination; the latter had an equal horror of hypocrisy, and to avoid the appearance of it went to the opposite extreme.

In the next seventy years in which the church of England was established, both parties relaxed. The sufferings of dissenters under the rigorous establish

ments of Europe were unknown in Carolina. The moderation of the established church was great→ the toleration of the dissenters was complete. Except the patronage from government, and support from the public treasury, the civil rights and privileges of both were nearly equal. The former were too apt to look down with contempt on the latter, as an inferior grade of beings, but abstained from all private acts of injury or oppression. The one gradually abated of their haughtiness, the other of their scrupulosity. Fashion induced several prosperous individuals among the dissenters to join the established church. The american revolution levelled all legal distinctions-diminished prejudices-and brought both into a nearer connexion with each other. Marriages between persons of different denominations became more common and excited less wonder. Fashion no longer led exclusively to one church. The name of meeting-house and the ridicule attached to those who frequented them were done away. The difference now is more in name than reality. The peculiarities, formerly characteristic of each, have been so far dropt that there is no longer any other obvious mark of distinction than that which results from their different modes of performing divine service.

Among the carolinians deism was never common. Its inhabitants at all times generally believed that a christian church was the best temple of reason. Persons professing arian or socinian doctrines, or that system of religion which has been denominated universalism, are so very few that they form no separate religious societies. The only church in which these

doctrines were publicly professed has long been completely extinct. The bulk of the people who make an open profession of any religion are either baptists, catholics, episcopalians, independents, methodists, protestants of the german or french reformed churches, presbyterians, or seceders. All these agree in the following doctrines, which have a direct tendency to advance the best interests of society and the peace and happiness of its members.

There is a God, and a future state of rewards and punishments.

God is to be publicly worshipped.

The holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the word of God.

The present state of man is a state of sin and mi

sery.

Jesus Christ is the son of God and the saviour of the world.

There will be a resurrection of the dead, and a geeral judgment in which retribution will be made to every individual of the human race according to his works.

But these sects differ in matters respecting church politics, some preferring the government of one, others that of a few or of the many; by bishops, presbyteries, associations, the whole body of the people, or by vestries, elders, or select portions of them. While all agree that ministers or public teachers of religion are of divine appointment, some contend for a distinction of ranks and others for a parity among them. The former are subdivided; some considering an uninterrupted succession from the apostles to be necessary-others that ordination derived from

John Westley, or his successors, is as valid as that from St. Paul or any of the apostles. In addition to these acknowledged legitimate sources of ordination, the other sects contend, that three or more ordained ministers are fully competent to the work of ordination, and that all ordained ministers are of equal grade in the church.

All agree that public prayers to the deity are of divine institution; but some prefer prayers by form, others in an extempore manner.

All agree that baptism is a divine ordinance, and that it may be rightly administered when adults are its subjects and immersion the mode. Others add that it may also be rightly administered, when the children of believers are its subjects and sprinkling the mode. Among professors who agree in so many fundamental points, embracing the substance of christianity, and differ only in matters relating to its husk and shell or necessary appendages, there is an ample foundation for a friendly understanding and a liberal exchange of all the kind offices of reciprocal church fellowship; while there is no real cause for treating each other with shyness or cold indifference.

MEDICAL HISTORY

OF

SOUTH-CAROLINA

From 1670-1808.

SOUTH-CAROLINA lies between the 32d and 35th degrees of north latitude, and in the same parallel with Cyprus, Candia, Morocco, Barbary, Damascus, Tripoli, Palmyra, Babylon, and other parts of Turkey in Asia, and with parts of Persia, India, and China. In comparing american climates with those of Europe, to bring them on a par with each other, a difference of 12 degrees should be allowed for peculiarities in the american continent. The most remarkable of these is such a predominance of cold as subjects an american, living in north latitude 35 to an equal degree of cold with an european residing in north latitude 47*. If this opinion is correct we

* If the meteorological observations which have been made at Williamsburg, Cambridge, Quebec, and Hudson's bay in America be compared with those which have been made at Algiers, Rome, Poictiers, and Solyskamski, places whose latitudes are nearly equal, it will be found that the european continent is now 12 degrees warmer than that of America.

Williams' Vermont, p. 384.

VOL. II.

H