If this be my notion of a great part of that high science, Divinity, you will be so civil as to imagine I lay no mighty stress upon the rest. the rest. Even of Even of my darling poetry I really make no other use, than horses of the bells that gingle about their ears (though now and then they toss their heads as if they were proud of them), only to jog on a little more merrily.

Your observations on the narrow conceptions of mankind in the point of Friendship, confirm me in what I was so fortunate as at my first knowledge of you to hope, and since so amply to experience. Let me take so much decent pride and dignity upon me, as to tell you, that but for opinions like these which I discovered in your mind, I had never made the trial I have done; which has succeeded so much to mine, and, I believe, not less to your satisfaction; for, if I know you right, your pleasure is greater in obliging me, than I can feel on my part, till it falls in my power to oblige you.

Your remark, that the variety of opinions in politics or religion is often rather a gratification, than an objection, to people who have sense enough to consider the beautiful order of nature in her variations, makes me think you have not construed Joannes Secundus wrong, in the verse which precedes that which you quote: Bene nota Fides, as I take it, does no way signify the Roman Catholic Religion, though Secundus was of it. I think it was a generous thought, and one that flowed from an exalted mind, That it was not improbable but God might be delighted with the various methods of worshipping

him, which divided the whole world. I am pretty sure you and I should no more make good Inquisitors to the modern tyrants in faith, than we could have been qualified for Lictors to Procrustes, when he converted refractory members with the rack. In a word, I can only repeat to you what, I think, I have formerly said, that I as little fear God will damn a man who has Charity, as I hope that any Priest can save him without it.

LETTER VI.

I am, etc.

March 20, 1715-16.

I FIND that a real concern is not only a hindrance to speaking, but to writing too: the more time we give ourselves to think over one's own or a friend's unhappiness, the more unable we grow to express the grief that proceeds from it. It is as natural to delay a letter, at such a season as this, as to retard a melancholy visit to a person one cannot relieve.

• This was an opinion taken up by the old Philosophers, as the last support of Paganism against Christianity: And the Missionaries, to both the Indies, tell us, it is the first answer modern barbarians give to the offer made them of the Gospel. But Christians might see that the notion is not only improbable, but impossible to be true, if the redemption of mankind was purchased by the death of Jesus, which is the gospel-idea of his Religion. Nor is there any need of this opinion to discredit persecution. For the iniquity of that practice does not arise from restraining what God permits or delights in, but from usurping a jurisdiction over conscience, which belongs only to his tribunal. W.

One is ashamed in that circumstance, to pretend to entertain people with trifling, insignificant affectations of sorrow on the one hand, or unseasonable and forced gaities on the other. It is a kind of profanation of things sacred, to treat so solemn a matter as a generous voluntary suffering, with compliments, or heroic gallantries. Such a mind as yours has no need of being spirited up into honour, or like a weak woman, praised into an opinion of its own virtue. It is enough to do and suffer what we ought; and men should know, that the noble power of suffering bravely is as far above that of enterprising greatly, as an unblemished conscience and inflexible resolution are above an accidental flow of spirits, or a sudden tide of blood. If the whole religious business of mankind be included in resignation to our Maker, and charity to our fellow-creatures, there are now some people who give us as good an opportunity of practising the one, as themselves have given an instance of the violation of the other. Whoever is really brave, has always this comfort when he is oppressed, that he knows himself to be superior to those who injure him: for the greatest power on earth can no sooner do him that injury, but the brave man can make himself greater by forgiving it.

If it were generous to seek for alleviating consolations in a calamity of so much glory, one might say, that to be ruined thus in the gross, with a whole people, is but like perishing in the general conflagration, where nothing we can value is left behind us.

Methinks, the most heroic thing we are left ca

pable of doing, is to endeavour to lighten each other's load, and (oppressed as we are) to succour such as are yet more oppressed. If there are too many who cannot be assisted but by what we cannot give, our money; there are yet others who may be relieved by our counsel, by our countenance, and even by our cheerfulness. The misfortunes of private families, the misunderstandings of people whom distresses make suspicious, the coldness of relations whom change of religion may disunite, or the necessities of half-ruined estates render unkind to each other; these at least may be softened in some degree, by a general well-managed humanity among ourselves; if all those who have your principles of belief, had also your sense and conduct. But indeed most of them have given lamentable proofs of the contrary; and it is to be apprehended that they who want 'sense, are only religious through weakness, and good natured through shame. These are narrowminded creatures that never deal in essentials, their faith never looks beyond ceremonials, nor their charity beyond relations. As poor as I am, I would gladly relieve any distressed, conscientious French refugee at this instant: what must my concern then be, when I perceive so many anxieties now tearing those hearts, which I have desired a place in, and clouds of melancholy rising on those faces, which I have long looked upon with affection? I begin already to feel both what some apprehend, and what others are yet too stupid to apprehend. I grieve with the old, for so many additional inconveniences and chagrins, more than their small remain of life seemed destined VOL. VIII.

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to undergo; and with the young, for so many of those gaieties and pleasures (the portion of youth) which they will by this means be deprived of. This brings into my mind one or other of those I love best, and among them the widow and fatherless, late of—. As I am certain no people living had an earlier and truer sense of others' misfortunes, or a more generous resignation as to what might be their own, so I earnestly wish that whatever part they must bear, may be rendered as supportable to them, as it is in the power of any friend to make it.

But I know you have prevented me in this thought, as you always will in any thing that is good or generous: I find by a letter of your Lady's (which I have seen) that their ease and tranquillity is part of your care. I believe there is some fatality in it, that you should always, from time to time, be doing those particular things that make me enamoured

of you.

I write this from Windsor-Forest, of which I am come to take my last look. We here bid our neighbours adieu, much as those who go to be hanged do their fellow-prisoners, who are condemned to follow them a few weeks after. I parted from honest Mr. D* with tenderness; and from old Sir William Trumbal as from a venerable prophet, foretelling with lifted hands the miseries to come, from which he is just going to be removed himself.

Perhaps I have learnt so far as

Nos dulcia linquimus arva,

my next lesson may be

Nos Patriam fugimus.