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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. I am, &c.

LETTER VI.

TO MR. BLOUNT.

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. One is ashamed in that circumstance, to pretend to entertain people with trifling, insignificant affectations of sorrow on the one hand, or unseasonable

barians 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. Warburton.

and forced gaieties 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 wellmanaged 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 narrow-minded 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? begin already to feel both what some apprehend, and what others are yet too stupid to apprehend.

I

I grieve with the old, for so many additional inconveniences and chagrins, more than their small remains of life seemed destined 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 Trumbull as from a venerable prophet, foretelling with lifted hands the miseries to

come, from which he is just going to be removed himself.

Perhaps, now I have learnt so far as

Nos dulcia linquimus arva,

my next lesson may be

Nos Patriam fugimus.

Let that, and all else be as Heaven pleases! I have provided just enough to keep me a man of honour. I believe you and I shall never be ashamed of each other. I know I wish my country well, and, if it undoes me, it shall not make me wish it otherwise.

LETTER VII.

FROM MR. BLOUNT.

March 24, 1715-16.

YOUR letters give me a gleam of satisfaction, in the midst of a very dark and cloudy situation of thoughts, which it would be more than human to be exempt from at this time, when our homes must either be left, or be made too narrow for us to turn in. Poetically speaking, I should lament the loss Windsor-Forest and you sustain of each other, but that methinks, one cannot say you are 'parted, because you will live by and in one another, while verse is verse. This consideration hardens me in my opinion rather to congratulate you, since you have the pleasure of the prospect whenever you take it from your shelf, and at the

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