30 Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch. 
Massachusetts, under the administrations of Governors Strong and 
Brooks, yet he had no taste for public life, no ambition for po- 
litical honors. He could not be drawn from “ the still air of de- 
lightful studies,” to mingle in the turmoil and strife of politics. 
And yet he was a true-hearted and sound patriot, and not a whit 
the less so for not being a noisy one. He loved his country, and 
prized her peculiar institutions. He felt a deep interest. in the 
welfare and honor of his native State, and would do any thing 
tain the supremacy of the ini, and preserve the peace 
ior mind, good sense being one of its most prominent qualities. 
Accordingly, he could have no sympathy with those visionary 
reformers who would jumble society into its original elements, 
and bring. back. ancient chaos again, in order to get a chance to 
-at making the very best. possible commonwealth 
of the fragments. No. “He valued the lessons of experience, 
and prized the gathered wisdom of ages. He had faith in other 
men’s intelligence, as well as his own, and trusted in the light 
that had been reflected from a yonsand brilliant minds who had 
pored and pondered over the great questions of government and 
civil polity, and given us their results in laws and institutions. 
Dr. Bowditch thought, with Governor Winthrop, in his noble 
apesey for himself, that “‘ there is a great mistake in the country 
about liberty. ' is a two-fold liberty ; natural, and civil or 
Mh apo is common to man with beasts and other crea- 
tures. ee chin, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath 
liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to 
good. This liberty is incompetibte and~inconsistent with au-. 
thority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just 
authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes 
men grow more evil, and, in time, to be worse than brute beasts: 
‘omnes sumus licentia deteriores.’ This is that great enemy of 
truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God 
are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. The other kind I 
call civil, or federal; it may.also be termed moral, in reference to 
the covenant lesensn: God and man, in the moral law, and the 
politic covenants and constitutions, amongst. men themselves, 
iberty is the proper end and object of authority, and can- 
t without it; and it is a liberty to that which is good, 
Libeetax you are to stand for, with the haZ- 
