incidents of political and religious interest. A summary of news
appeared at the end of each number, under the head of "Historical
Chronicle"; but in the body of the Magazine are inserted, side by side
with what would now be termed "local items," contemporary narratives of
events, many of which have, in the lapse of more than a century,
developed into historical proportions, but which here meet us, as it
were, at first hand, clothed in such homely and impromptu dress as
circumstances might require, with all their little roughnesses,
excrescences, and absurdities upon them,--crude lumps of mingled fact
and fiction, not yet moulded and polished into the rounded periods of
the historian.

The Magazine was established at the period of a general commotion among
the dry bones of New England Orthodoxy, caused by what is popularly
known as "the New-Light Movement," to do battle with which heresy arose
"The Christian History," above alluded to. The public mind was widely
and deeply interested, and the first number of our Magazine opens with
"A Dissertation on the State of Religion in North America," which is
followed by a fiery manifesto of the "Anniversary Week" of 1743,
entitled "The Testimony of the Pastors of the Churches in the Province
of the Massachusetts Bay in New-England at their Annual Convention in
Boston, May 25, 1743, Against several Errors in Doctrine and Disorders
in Practice, which have of late obtained in various Parts of the Land;
as drawn up by a Committee chosen by the said Pastors, read and
accepted Paragraph by Paragraph, and voted to be sign'd by the
Moderator in their Name, and Printed." These "Disorders" and "Errors"
are specified under six heads, being generalized at the outset as
"Antinomian and Familistical Errors." The number of strayed sheep must
have been considerable, since we find a Rejoinder put forth on the
seventh of the following July, which bears the signatures of