ESTIMATE OF ENGLISH PIETY. 433 
manners of the English, the royal state of king 
George, the numbers in his army, the evolutions 
of his troops, the laws of the kingdom, the punish¬ 
ment of crimes, the principles of commerce, and 
the extent and variety of manufactures, were at 
different times brought forward. 
Numbers of the natives had indeed visited Eng¬ 
land, but their observation had been so limited, or 
their accounts so contradictory and exaggerated, 
that their countrymen knew not what to believe, 
and not unfrequently, when any of these had re¬ 
turned, the substance of their reports was brought 
to the questioning meeting, to receive our confir¬ 
mation or explanation. The religious character 
and observances of the English were usually mat¬ 
ters of great interest. The dimensions and num¬ 
ber of our cathedrals, churches, and chapels, the 
size of the congregations, the proportion of the 
population that attended public worship, and the 
order of the services, were often topics of inquiry. 
The experience of those who were true Christians 
in England, was also introduced; and their re¬ 
marks on this point, especially when they first 
became interested in the subject of religion them¬ 
selves, were often rather amusing. “ How happy the 
Christians in England must be,” they would some¬ 
times say.—“ So many teachers, so many books, 
the whole of the Bible in their language, and no 
idolatry, they must have little else to do but to 
praise God. Their crimes have never been like 
ours; they never offered human sacrifices, mur¬ 
dered their infants, &c. Do they ever repent? 
have they any thing to repent of?” It was, how¬ 
ever, only those who were recently awakened to a 
sense of the enormity of these crimes, and were 
but very partially informed as to the true state 
II. 2 r 
