Here, Sir, you fee a gentleman, who with all the advantages of a liberal and religious education, added to every natural accomplishment. that could render him moft agreeable, entered, before he had attained the ftature of a man, on thofe arduous and generous fervices to which you are devoted, and behaved in them with a gallantry and courage, which will always give a splendour to his name among the British foldiery, and render him an example to all officers of his rank. But, alas! amidst all the intrepedity of the martial hero, you see him vanquished by the blandithments of pleasure, and, in chace of it, plunging himself into follies and vices, for which no want of education or genius could have been a fufficient excufe. You behold him urging the ignoble and fatal purfuit, unmoved by the terrors which death was continually darting around him, and the most fignal deliverances by which Providence again and again rescued him from those terrors, till at length he was reclaimed by an ever memorable interpofition of Divine grace. Then you have the pleasure of fee. ing him become, in good earnest, a convert to Chriflianity, and, by speedy advances, growing up into one of its brightest ornaments; his mind continually filled with the great ideas which the gofpel of our Redeemer fuggefts, and bringing the bleffed influence of its fublime principles in to every relation of military and civil, of public and domestic life. You trace him perfevering in a steady and uniform courfe of goodness, through a long series of honourable and profperous years, the delight of all that were so happy as to know him, and, in his fphere, the most faithful guardian of his country, till at last,worn out with honourable labours, and broken with infirmities, which they had hastened upon him before the time, you fee him forgetting them at once, at the call of duty and Providence; with all the generous ardour of his most vigorous days rushing on the enemies of religion and liberty, fuftaining their fhock with the most deliberate fortitude, when deserted by those that fhould have fupported him, and cheerfully facri. ficing the little remains of a mortal life in the triumphant views of a glorious immortality. This, Sir, is the noble object I prefent to your view; and you will, I hope, fix your eye continually upon it, and will never allow yourfelf for one day to forget, that this illuftrious man is Colonel Gardiner, your ever honoured father; who, having approved his fidelity to the death, and received a crown of life, feems as it were, by what you here read, to be calling to you from amidst the cloud of witnesses with which you are furrounded, and urging you, by every generous, tender, filial fentiment, to mark the footsteps of his Chriftian race, and ftrenuously to maintain that combat, where the victory is through divine grace certain, and the prize an eternal kingdom in the heavens. The laft number of the Appendix introduces a moft worthy triumvirate of your father's friends, following him through the fame heroic path, to an end like his; and with pleasure pouring forth their lives in blood, for the rescue and prefervation of their dearer country. And I trust, the eloquence of their examples will be prevalent with many, to emulate the many virtues for which they were confpicuous. My hopes, Sir, that all thefe powerful motives will especially have their full efficacy on you, are greatly encouraged by the certainty which I have of your being well acquainted with the evidence of Christianity in its full extent; a criminal ignorance of which, in the midst of great advantages for learning them, leaves fo many of our young people a prey to Deifm, and fo to vice and ruin, which generally bring up its rear. My life would be a continual burden to me, if I had not a confciousness in the fight of God, that during the years in which the impor tant trust of your education was committed to my care, I had laid before you the proofs both of natural and revealed religion, in what I affuredly efleem to be, with regard to the judgment, if they are carefully examined, an irrefiftible light; and that I had endeavoured to attend them with thofe addreffes which might be most likely to imprefs your heart. You have not, dear Sir, forgotten, and I am confident you can never entirely forget, the affiduity with which I have laboured to form your mind, not only to what might be ornamental to you in human life, but above all, to a true taste of what is really excellent, and an early contempt of those vanities by which the generality of our youth, efpecially in your ftation, are debased, enervated, and undone. My private, as well as public addreffes for this purpose, will, I know, be remembered by you, and the tears of tendernefs with which they have so often been accompanied And may they be fo remembered, that they who are most tenderly concerned, may be comforted under the lofs of fuch an ineftimable friend as Colonel Gardiner, by seeing that his character, in all its most amiable and resplendent parts, lives in you; and that, how difficult foever it may be to act up to that height of expectation, with which the eyes of the world will be fixed on the fon of fuch a father, you are, in the ftrength of divine grace, attempting it; at least are following him with generous e mulation, and with daily folicitude, that the fteps may be lefs unequal! May the Lord God of your father, and I will add, of both your pious and honourable parents, animate your heart more and more with fuch views and fentiments as thefe! May he guard your life amidst every scene of danger, to be a protection and bleffing to those that are yet unborn; and may he give you, in fome far diftant period of time, to refign it by a gentler diffolution than the hero from whom you sprung; or, if unerring Wisdom appoint otherwife, to end it with equal glory! I am, Dear Sir, Your ever faithful, Affectionate Friend, and + P. DODDRIDGE. |