his providence, and hear human threatenings without emotion. But the dark omens are to be found at home. In our hearts, in our homes, in our practice, and in a licentious spirit disposed to break down civil and religious order. In affecting to depend on reason in the things of religion, more than the word of God; so as to reject all evangelical holiness, faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the ministrations of the spirit in the heart. In substituting anarchy and licentiousness, in the room of rational and just liberty. In supposing that freedom consists in men's doing what is right in their own eyes; even though their eyes look through the mist of wicked ambition and lust. Here is our real danger, and these are the omens that augur ill to us. 1
Far less subjective in its analysis was the sermon which the now celebrated minister of Medford, the Reverend David Osgood, preached not many days later, on the occasion of the national fast. 2 Once more the eyes of his hearers were invited to contemplate the horrible spectacle abroad. It had now become certain that the legislators of France had abolished the Christian religion. Preposterous indeed was the idea of those who supposed that they were engaged in anything so beneficent as " stripping the whore of Babylon, pulling down the man of sin, destroying popery, 3 and
- 1 A Sermon, preached on the State Fast, April 6th, 1798 By Nathan Strong, pastor of the North Presbyterian Church in Hartford. Hartford, 1798, pp. 14 et seq.
- 2 Some Facts evincive of the Atheistical, Anarchical, and in other respects, Immoral Principles of the French Republicans, Stated in a sermon delivered on the <?//? of May, 1798. ... By David Osgood . . . Boston, 1798.
- 3 One of the curious results of the reflection of the American clergy on the significance of the French Revolution was a marked disposition to treat the Roman Catholic Church with unwonted sympathy and respect. Osgood's implied apology not infrequently received an unblushingly frank statement. Cf. for example, Nathan Strong's Connecticut Fast Day Sermon, cited above.
