30 Life and Character of Nathaniel Bowditch. 



Massachusetts, under the administrations of Governors Strong and 

 Brooks, yet he had no taste for pubhc Hfe, no ambition for po- 

 htical 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 

 to maintain the supremacy of the laws, and preserve the peace 

 and order of the community. He had a remarkably sound and 

 sober 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 

 try their hand at making the very best possible commonwealth 

 out 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 thousand 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 

 apology for himself, that " there is a great mistake in the country 

 about liberty. There is a two-fold liberty ; natural, and civil or 

 federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other crea- 

 tures. By this, 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 incompatible 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 between God and man, in the moral law, and the 

 politic covenants and constitutions, amongst men themselves. 

 This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and can- 

 not subsist without it ,• and it is a hberty to that which is good, 

 just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the haz- 



