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view of effecting an accommodation. His disposition was that of a persecutor, and made him utterly hostile to the toleration act, a measure of which he declares one consequence to be certain, obvious, and undeniable; and that is, the vast increase of sects and heresies among us, which, where all restraint is taken off, must of necessity grow to the highest pitch that the devil himself can raise such a Babel to; so that there shall not be one bold ring-leading knave or fool who shall have the confidence to set up a new sect, but shall find proselytes enough to wear his name, and list themselves under his banner; of which the Quakers are a demonstration past dispute. And then, what a vast party of this poor deluded people must of necessity be drawn after these impostors!' He mercilessly satirises the Puritans, a sect of whom he says, They ascribed those villanies which were done by the instigation of the devil to the impulse and suggestion of the Holy Spirit.' He speaks in terms equally bitter and unqualified of their long prayers:—

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miser find any hands wherewith to give. It is wonderful to consider how a command or call to be liberal, either upon a civil or religious account, all of a sud den impoverishes the rich, breaks the merchant, shuts up every private man's exchequer, and makes those men in a minute have nothing who, at the very same instant, want nothing to spend. So that, instead of relieving the poor, such a command strangely increases their number, and transforms rich men into beggars presently. For, let the danger of their prince and country knock at their purses, and call upon them to contribute against a public enemy or calamity, then immediately they have nothing, and their riches upon such occasions (as Solomon expresses it) never fail to make themselves wings, and fly away.

to descend to matters of daily and common occurrence; what is more usual in conversation, than for men to express their unwillingness to do a thing by saying they cannot do it; and for a covetous man, being asked a little money in private charity, to answer that he has none? Which, as it is, if true, a sufficient answer to God and man; so, if false, it is intolerable hypocrisy towards both.

But do men in good earnest think that God will be put off so! or can they imagine that the law of God will be baffled with a lie clothed in a scoff?

I do not in the least question, but the chief design of such as use the extempore way is to amuse the unthinking rabble with an admiration of their gifts; their whole devotion proceeding from no other principle, but only a love to hear themselves talk. And, For such pretences are no better, as appears from I believe, it would put Lucifer himself hard to it, to that notable account given us by the apostle of this outvie the pride of one of those fellows pouring out his windy, insignificant charity of the will, and of the extempore stuff among his ignorant, whining, factious worthlessness of it, not enlivened by deeds: (James ii. followers, listening to and applauding his copious 15, 16), 'If a brother or a sister be naked, and destiflow and cant, with the ridiculous accents of their tute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, impertinent groans. And the truth is, extempore Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithprayer, even when best and most dexterously per- standing ye give them not those things which are formed, is nothing else but a business of invention and needful to the body; what doth it profit.' Profit, wit (such as it is), and requires no more to it, but a does he say! Why, it profits just as much as fair teeming imagination, a bold front, and a ready ex-words command the market, as good wishes buy food pression; and deserves much the same commendation and raiment, and pass for current payment in the (were it not in a matter too serious to be sudden upon) shops. Come to an old rich professing vulpony, and which is due to extempore verses, only with this dif- tell him that there is a church to be built, beautified, ference, that there is necessary to those latter a com- or endowed in such a place, and that he cannot lay petent measure of wit and learning; whereas the out his money more to God's honour, the public good, former may be done with very little wit, and no and the comfort of his own conscience, than to bestow learning at all. it liberally upon such an occasion; and, in answer to this, it is ten to one but you shall be told, how much and that the Almighty neither dwells nor delights in God is for the inward, spiritual worship of the heart; temples made with hands, but hears and accepts the prayers of his people in dens and caves, barns and stables; and in the homeliest and meanest cottages, as well as in the stateliest and most magnificent churches.' Thus, I say, you are like to be answered. In reply to which, I would have all such sly sanctified cheats (who are so often harping on this string) to know, once for all, that God, who accepts the prayers of his people in dens and caves, barns and stables, when, by his afflicting providence, he has driven them from the appointed places of his solemn worship, so that they cannot have the use of them, will not for all this endure to be served or prayed to by them in such places, nor accept of their barn-worship, nor their hogstye worship; no, nor yet their parlour or their chamber-worship, where he has given them both wealth and power to build churches. For he that commands us to worship him in the spirit, commands us also to honour him with our substance. And never pretend that thou hast a heart to pray while thou hast no heart to give, since he that serves Mammon with his estate cannot possibly serve God with his heart. For as in the heathen worship of God, a sacrifice without a heart was accounted ominous, so in the Christian worship of him, a heart without a sacrifice is worthless and impertinent.

In 1693 Dr South began a most acrimonious and indecent controversy with Dr Sherlock, by publishing Animadversions upon that writer's Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity.' The violence and personality displayed by both parties on this occasion gave just offence to the friends of religion and the church; and at length, after the controversy had raged with unabating violence for some time, the king was induced by the bishops to put an end to it, by ordaining that all preachers should carefully avoid all new terms, and confine themselves to such ways of explication as have been commonly used in

the church.'

Notwithstanding his intolerant and fiery temper, Dr South was fully conscious of the nature of that Christian spirit in which a clergyman, above all others, ought to act. The third of the following passages in his sermons is but another proof of the trite observation, that men are too frequently unable to reduce to practice the virtuous principles which they really and honestly hold.

[The Will for the Deed.]

The third instance in which men used to plead the will instead of the deed, shall be in duties of cost and expense.

Let a business of expensive charity be proposed; and then, as I showed before, that, in matters of labour, the lazy person could find no hands wherewith to work; so neither, in this case, can the religious

And thus much for men's pretences of the will when they are called upon to give upon a religious account; according to which, a man may be well enough said

(as the common word is) to be all heart, and yet the arrantest miser in the world.

charge upon a man, without alleging any particular reason for it from his life or actions; and consequently does the more mischief, because, as a word of course, it passes currently, and is seldom looked into or examined. And, therefore, as there is no way to prove a paradox or false proposition but to take it for granted, so, such as would stab any man's good name with the accusation of ill-nature, do very rarely descend to proofs or particulars. It is sufficient for their purpose that the word sounds odiously, and is believed easily; and that is enough to do any one's business with the generality of men, who seldom have so much judgment or charity as to hear the cause before they pronounce sentence.

But come we now to this rich old pretender to godliness in another case, and tell him that there is such a one, a man of good family, good education, and who has lost all his estate for the king, now ready to rot in prison for debt; come, what will you give towards his release! Why, then answers the will instead of the deed, as much the readier speaker of the two, 'The truth is, I always had a respect for such men; I love them with all my heart; and it is a thousand pities that any that had served the king so faithfully should be in such want.' So say I too, and the more shame is it for the whole nation that they should be 8o. But still, what will you give? Why, then, an- But that we may proceed with greater truth, equity, swers the man of mouth-charity again, and tells you and candour in this case, we will endeavour to find that 'you could not come in a worse time; that now-out the right sense and meaning of this terrible cona-days money is very scarce with him, and that there- founding word, ill-nature, by coming to particulars. fore he can give nothing; but he will be sure to pray And here, first, is the person charged with it false for the poor gentleman.' or cruel, ungrateful or revengeful! is he shrewd and Ah, thou hypocrite! when thy brother has lost all unjust in his dealings with others? does he regard no that ever he had, and lies languishing, and even gasp- promises, and pay no debts? does he profess love, ing under the utmost extremities of poverty and dis-kindness, and respect to those whom, underhand, he tress, dost thou think thus to lick him up again only does all the mischief to that possibly he can is he with thy tongue? Just like that old formal hocus, unkind, rude, or niggardly to his friends? Has he shut who denied a beggar a farthing, and put him off with up his heart and his hand towards the poor, and has his blessing. no bowels of compassion for such as are in want and misery is he unsensible of kindnesses done him, and withal careless and backward to acknowledge or requite them? or, lastly, is he bitter and implacable in the prosecution of such as have wronged or abused him?

Why, what are the prayers of a covetous wretch worth! what will thy blessing go for? what will it buy? is this the charity that the apostle here, in the text, presses upon the Corinthians?* This the case in which God accepts the willingness of the mind instead of the liberality of the purse? No, assuredly; but the measures that God marks out to thy charity are these thy superfluities must give place to thy neighbour's great convenience; thy convenience must veil thy neighbour's necessity; and, lastly, thy very necessities must yield to thy neighbour's extremity. This is the gradual process that must be thy rule; and he that pretends a disability to give short of this, prevaricates with his duty, and evacuates the precept. God sometimes calls upon thee to relieve the needs of thy poor brother, sometimes the necessities of thy country, and sometimes the urgent wants of thy prince: now, before thou fliest to the old, stale, usual pretence, that thou canst do none of those things, consider with thyself that there is a God who is not to be flammed off with lies, who knows exactly what thou canst do, and what thou canst not; and consider in the next place, that it is not the best hus-out adoration, and civility without servitude. bandry in the world to be damned to save charges.

No; generally none of these ill things (which one would wonder at) are ever meant, or so much as thought of, in the charge of ill-nature; but, for the most part, the clean contrary qualities are readily acknowledged. Ay, but where and what kind of thing, then, is this strange occult quality, called ill-nature, which makes such a thundering noise against such as have the ill luck to be taxed with it?

[Ill-natured and Good-natured Men.]

A staunch resolved temper of mind, not suffering a man to sneak, fawn, cringe, and accommodate himself to all humours, though never so absurd and unreasonable, is commonly branded with, and exposed under the character of, pride, morosity, and ill-nature: an ugly word, which you may from time to time observe many honest, worthy, inoffensive persons, and that of all sorts, ranks, and professions, strangely and unaccountably worried and run down by. And therefore I think I cannot do truth, justice, and common honesty better service, than by ripping up so malicious a cheat, to vindicate such as have suffered by it. Certain it is that, amongst all the contrivances of malice, there is not a surer engine to pull men down in the good opinion of the world, and that in spite of the greatest worth and innocence, than this imputation of ill-nature; an engine which serves the ends and safely. Forasmuch as it is a loose and general and does the work of pique and envy both effectually *For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.'-2 Cor. viii. 12.—Ed.

Why, the best account that I, or any one else, can give of it, is this: that there are many men in the world who, without the least arrogance or self-conceit, have yet so just a value both for themselves and others, as to scorn to flatter, and gloze, to fall down and worship, to lick the spittle and kiss the feet of any proud, swelling, overgrown, domineering huff whatsoever. And such persons generally think it enough for them to show their superiors respect with

Again, there are some who have a certain ill-natured stiffness (forsooth) in their tongue, so as not to be able to applaud and keep pace with this or that selfadmiring, vain-glorious Thraso, while he is pluming and praising himself, and telling fulsome stories in his own commendation for three or four hours by the clock, and at the same time reviling and throwing dirt upon all mankind besides.

There is also a sort of odd ill-natured men, whom neither hopes nor fears, frowns nor favours, can prevail upon to have any of the cast, beggarly, forlorn nieces or kinswomen of any lord or grandee, spiritual or temporal, trumped upon them.

To which we may add another sort of obstinate illnatured persons, who are not to be brought by any one's guilt or greatness to speak or write, or to swear or lie, as they are bidden, or to give up their own consciences in a compliment to those who have none

themselves.

And lastly, there are some so extremely ill-natured, when they are slandered in their own good names, and as to think it very lawful and allowable for them to be sensible, when they are injured and oppressed, wronged in their just interests; and, withal, to dare to own what they find and feel, without being such beasts of burden as to bear tamely whatsoever is cast

upon them; or such spaniels as to lick the foot which kicks them, or to thank the goodly great one for doing them all these back-favours. Now, these and the like particulars are some of the chief instances of that illnature which men are more properly said to be guilty of towards their superiors.

But there is a sort of ill-nature, also, that uses to be practised towards equals or inferiors, such as perhaps a man's refusing to lend money to such as he knows will never repay him, and so to straiten and incommode himself, only to gratify a shark. Or possibly the man may prefer his duty and his business before company, and the bettering himself before the humouring of others. Or he may not be willing to spend his time, his health, and his estate, upon a crew of idle, spung ing, ungrateful sots, and so to play the prodigal amongst a herd of swine. With several other such unpardonable faults in conversation (as some will have them), for which the fore-mentioned cattle, finding themselves disappointed, will be sure to go grumbling and grunting away, and not fail to proclaim him a morose, ill-conditioned, ill-natured person, in all clubs and companies whatsoever; and so that man's work is done, and his name lies grovelling upon the ground, in all the taverns, brandy-shops, and

coffeehouses about the town.

And thus having given you some tolerable account of what the world calls ill-nature, and that both towards superiors and towards equals and inferiors (as it is easy and natural to know one contrary by the other), we may from hence take a true measure of what the world is observed to mean by the contrary character of good-nature, as it is generally bestowed.

ous, is to be knowing in their profession, unspotted in their lives, active and laborious in their charges, bold and resolute in opposing seducers, and daring to look vice in the face, though never so potent and illustrious. And, lastly, to be gentle, courteous, and com passionate to all. These are our robes and our maces, our escutcheons and highest titles of honour.

[The Pleasures of Amusement and Industry Compared.]

Nor is that man less deceived that thinks to main

tain a constant tenure of pleasure by a continual pursuit of sports and recreations. The most volup tuous and loose person breathing, were he but tied to follow his hawks and his hounds, his dice and his courtships every day, would find it the greatest torment and calamity that could befall him; he would fly to the mines and galleys for his recreation, and to the spade and the mattock for a diversion from the misery of a continual unintermitted pleasure. But, on the contrary, the providence of God has so ordered the course of things, that there is no action, the use fulness of which has made it the matter of duty and of a profession, but a man may bear the continual pursuit of it without loathing and satiety. The same shop and trade that employs a man in his youth, employs him also in his age. Every morning he rises fresh to his hammer and anvil; he passes the day singing; custom has naturalised his labour to him; his shop is his element, and he cannot with any enjoyment of himself live out of it.

[Hypocritical Sanctimony.]

And first, when great ones vouchsafe this endearing Bodily abstinence, joined with a demure, affected eulogy to those below them, a good-natured man gene- countenance, is often called and accounted piety and rally denotes some slavish, glavering, flattering para-mortification. Suppose a man infinitely ambitions, site, or hanger-on; one who is a mere tool or instrument; a fellow fit to be sent upon any malicious errand; a setter, or informer, made to creep into all companies; a wretch employed under a pretence of friendship or acquaintance, to fetch and carry, and to come to men's tables to play the Judas there; and, in a word, to do all those mean, vile, and degenerous offices which men of greatness and malice use to engage men of baseness and treachery in.

But then, on the other hand, when this word passes between equals, commonly by a good-natured man is meant either some easy, soft-headed piece of simplicity, who suffers himself to be led by the nose, and wiped of his conveniences by a company of sharping, worthless sycophants, who will be sure to despise, laugh, and droll at him, as a weak empty fellow, for all his ill-placed cost and kindness. And the truth is, if such vermin do not find him empty, it is odds but in a little time they will make him so. And this is one branch of that which some call good-nature (and good-nature let it be); indeed so good, that according to the wise Italian proverb, it is even good for nothing.

Or, in the next place, by a good-natured man is usually meant neither more nor less than a good fellow, a painful, able, and laborious soaker. But he who owes all his good nature to the pot and the pipe, to the jollity and compliances of merry company, may possibly go to bed with a wonderful stock of good nature over-night, but then he will sleep it all away again before the morning.

[The Glory of the Clergy.]

God is the fountain of honour, and the conduit by which he conveys it to the sons of men are virtues and generous practices. Some, indeed, may please and promise themselves high matters from full revenues, stately palaces, court interests, and great dependences. But that which makes the clergy glori

and equally spiteful and malicious; one who poisons
the ears of great men by venomous whispers, and rises
by the fall of better men than himself; yet if he steps
forth with a Friday look and a lenten face, with s
blessed Jesu! and a mournful ditty for the vices of
the times; oh! then he is a saint upon earth: an
Ambrose or an Augustine (I mean not for that earthly
trash of book-learning; for, alas! such are above that,
or at least that's above them), but for zeal and for
fasting, for a devout elevation of the eyes, and a holy
rage against other men's sins.
And happy those
ladies and religious dames characterised in the 24 of
Timothy, c. iii. 5, 6, who can have such self-denying,
thriving, able men for their confessors! and thrice
happy those families where they vouchsafe to take
their Friday night's refreshments! thereby demen
strate to the world what Christian abstinence, and
what primitive, self-mortifying vigour there is in for
bearing a dinner, that they may have the better sto-
mach to their supper. In fine, the whole world stands
in admiration of them: fools are fond of them, and
wise men are afraid of them; they are talked of, they
are pointed out; and, as they order the matter, they
draw the eyes of all men after them, and generally
something else.

[Ignorance in Power.]

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We know how great an absurdity our Saviour a counted it for the blind to lead the blind, and to put him that cannot so much as see to discharge the office of a watch. Nothing more exposes to contempt than ignorance. When Samson's eyes were out, of a public magistrate he was made a public sport. And when Eli was blind, we know how well he governed his sons, and how well they governed the church under him. But now the blindness of the understanding is greater and more scandalous, especially in such a seeing age as ours, in which the very knowledge of i former times passes but for ignorance in a better

dress; an age that flies at all learning, and inquires into everything, but especially into faults and defects. Ignorance, indeed, so far as it may be resolved into natural inability, is, as to men at least, inculpable, and consequently not the object of scorn, but pity; but in a governor, it cannot be without the conjunction of the highest impudence; for who bid such a one aspire to teach and to govern? A blind man sitting in the chimney-corner is pardonable enough, but sitting at the helm he is intolerable. If men will be ignorant and illiterate, let them be so in private, and to themselves, and not set their defects in a high place, to make them visible and conspicuous. If owls will not be hooted at, let them keep close within the tree, and not perch upon the upper boughs. Solomon built his temple with the tallest cedars; and surely when God refused the defective and the maimed for sacrifice, we cannot think that he requires them for the priesthood. When learning, abilities, and what is excellent in the world forsake the church, we may easily foretell its ruin without the gift of prophecy. And when ignorance succeeds in the place of learning, weakness in the room of judgment, we may be sure heresy and confusion will quickly come in the room of religion.

[Religion not Hostile to Pleasure.]

That pleasure is man's chiefest good (because, indeed, it is the perception of good that is properly pleasure), is an assertion most certainly true, though, under the common acceptance of it, not only false, but odious. For, according to this, pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent; and therefore he that takes it in this sense, alters the subject of the discourse. Sensuality is indeed a part, or rather one kind of pleasure, such an one as it is. For pleasure, in general, is the consequent apprehension of a suitable object suitably applied to a rightly disposed faculty; and so must be conversant both about the faculties of the body and of the soul respectively, as being the result of the fruitions belonging to both.

Now, amongst those many arguments used to press upon men the exercise of religion, I know none that are like to be so successful as those that answer and remove the prejudices that generally possess and bar up the hearts of men against it: amongst which there is none so prevalent in truth, though so little owned in pretence, as that it is an enemy to men's pleasures, that it bereaves them of all the sweets of converse, dooms them to an absurd and perpetual melancholy, designing to make the world nothing else but a great monastery; with which notion of religion nature and reason seem to have great cause to be dissatisfied. For since God never created any faculty, either in soul or body, but withal prepared for it a suitable object, and that in order to its gratification, can we think that religion was designed only for a contradiction to nature, and with the greatest and most irrational tyranny in the world, to tantalise and tie men up from enjoyment, in the midst of all the opportunities of enjoyment to place men with the furious affections of hunger and thirst in the very bosom of plenty, and then to tell them that the envy of Providence has sealed up everything that is suitable under the character of unlawful? For certainly, first to frame appetites fit to receive pleasure, and then to interdict them with a Touch not, taste not, can be nothing else than only to give them occasion to devour and prey upon themselves, and so to keep men under the perpetual torment of an unsatisfied desire; a thing hugely contrary to the natural felicity of the creature, and consequently to the wisdom and goodness of the great Creator.

He, therefore, that would persuade men to religion both with art and efficacy, must found the persuasion of it upon this, that it interferes not with any rational

pleasure, that it bids nobody quit the enjoyment of any one thing that his reason can prove to him ought to be enjoyed. 'Tis confessed, when, through the cross circumstances of a man's temper or condition, the enjoyment of a pleasure would certainly expose him to a greater inconvenience, then religion bids him quit it; that is, it bids him prefer the endurance of a lesser evil before a greater, and nature itself does no less. Religion, therefore, entrenches upon none of our privileges, invades none of our pleasures; it may, indeed, sometimes command us to change, but never totally to abjure them.

[Labour overcomes Apparent Impossibilities.] therefore no wonder if men fly from it; which they do Labour is confessedly a great part of the curse, and with so great an aversion, that few men know their count think themselves really unable to do many own strength for want of trying it, and upon that acthings which experience would convince them they have more ability to effect than they have will to attempt. It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where men care not to do a thing, they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be done. The shortest and the surest way to prove a work possible, is strenuously to set about it; and no wonder if that proves it possible that for the most part makes it so.

[Ingratitude an Incurable Vice.]

As a man tolerably discreet ought by no means to attempt the making of such an one his friend, so neither is he, in the next place, to presume to think that he shall be able so much as to alter or meliorate the humour of an ungrateful person by any acts of kindness, though never so frequent, never so obliging.

Philosophy will teach the learned, and experience may teach all, that it is a thing hardly feasible. For, love such an one, and he shall despise you. Commend him, and, as occasion serves, he shall revile you. Give him, and he shall but laugh at your easiness. Save his life; but, when you have done, look to your own.

The greatest favours to such an one are but the motion of a ship upon the waves; they leave no trace, no sign behind them; they neither soften nor win upon him; they neither melt nor endear him, but leave him as hard, as rugged, and as unconcerned as ever. All kindnesses descend upon such a temper as showers of rain or rivers of fresh water falling into the main sea; the sea swallows them all, but is not at all changed or sweetened by them. I may truly say of the mind of an ungrateful person, that it is kindnessproof. It is impenetrable, unconquerable; unconquerable by that which conquers all things else, even by love itself. Flints may be melted-we see it dailybut an ungrateful heart cannot; no, not by the strongest and the noblest flame. After all your attempts, all your experiments, for anything that man can do, he that is ungrateful will be ungrateful still. And the reason is manifest; for you may remember that I told you that ingratitude sprang from a principle of ill nature: which being a thing founded in such a certain constitution of blood and spirit, as, being born with a man into the world, and upon that account called nature, shall prevent all remedies that can be applied by education, and leaves such a bias upon the mind, as is beforehand with all instruction.

So that you shall seldom or never meet with an ungrateful person, but, if you look backward, and trace him up to his original, you will find that he was born so; and if you could look forward enough, it is a thousand to one but you will find that he also dies so; for you shall never light upon an ill-natured man who was not also an ill-natured child, and gave several testimonies of his being so to discerning persons, long before the use of his reason.

The thread that nature spins is seldom broken off by anything but death. I do not by this limit the operation of God's grace, for that may do wonders: but humanly speaking, and according to the method of the world, and the little correctives supplied by art and discipline, it seldom fails but an ill principle has its course, and nature makes good its blow. And therefore, where ingratitude begins remarkably to show itself, he surely judges most wisely who takes alarm betimes, and, arguing the fountain from the stream, concludes that there is ill-nature at the bottom; and so, reducing his judgment into practice, timely withdraws his frustraneous baffled kindnesses, and sees the folly of endeavouring to stroke a tiger into a lamb, or to court an Ethiopian out of his colour.

DR JOHN WILKINS.

of Trinity college having been presented to him during the brief government of his wife's nephew, Richard. At the Restoration, he was ejected from this office; but his politics being neither violent nor unaccommodating, the path of advancement did not long remain closed. Having gained the favour of the Duke of Buckingham, he was advanced in 1668, after several intermediate steps, to the see of Chester. According to Bishop Burnet, Dr Wilkins was a man of as great mind, as true a judgment, as eminent virtues, and of as good a soul, as any I ever knew. Though he married Cromwell's sister, yet he made no other use of that alliance but to do good offices, and to cover the university of Oxford from the sourness of Owen and Goodwin. At Cambridge, he joined with those who studied to propagate better thoughts, to take men off from being in parties, or from narrow notions, from superstitious conceits and fierceness about opinions. He was also a great observer and promoter of experimental philosophy, which was then a new thing, and much looked after. He was naturally ambitious; but was the wisest clergyman I ever knew. He was a lover of mankind, and had a delight in doing good.' Bishop Wilkins, like his friend and son-in-law Tillotson, and the other moderate churchmen of the day, was an object of violent censure to the high-church party; but fortunately he possessed, as Burnet farther informs us, a courage which could stand against a current, and against all the reproaches with which ill-natured clergymen studied to load him.' He wrote several theological and mathema tical works; but his most noted performance is one which he published in early life, entitled The De covery of a New World; or a Discourse tending u prove that it is probable there may be another Habitable World in the Moon: with a Discourse concerning the Possibility of a Passage thither. In this ingenious but fantastical treatise, he supports the proposition

DR JOHN WILKINS, bishop of Chester (16141672), resembled Dr Barrow in the rare union of scientific with theological study. Having sided with the popular party during the civil war, he received, when it proved victorious, the headship of Wadham college, Oxford. While in that situation, he was one of a small knot of university men who used to meet for the cultivation of experimental philosophy as a diversion from the painful thoughts excited by public calamities, and who, after the Restoration, were incorporated by Charles II. under the title of the Royal Society. Of the object of those meetings, Dr Sprat, in his history of the society, gives us the following account. It was some space after the end of the civil wars, at Oxford, in Dr Wilkins his lodgings, in Wadham college, which was then the place of resort for virtuous and learned men, that the first meetings were made, which laid the foundation of all this that followed. The university had, at that time, many members of its own, who had begun a free way of reasoning; and was also frequented by some gen-That it is possible for some of our posterity to find tlemen of philosophical minds, whom the misfortunes of the kingdom, and the security and ease of a retirement amongst gown-men, had drawn thither. Their first purpose was no more than only the satisfaction of breathing a freer air, and of conversing in quiet with one another, without being engaged in the passions and madness of that dismal age. For such a candid and unpassionate company as that was, and for such a gloomy season, what could have been a fitter subject to pitch upon than natural philosophy? To have been always tossing about some theological question, would have been to have made that their private diversion, the excess of which they themselves disliked in the public: to have been eternally musing on civil business, and the distresses of their country, was too melancholy a reflection: it was nature alone which could pleasantly entertain them in that estate. The contemplation of that draws our minds off from the past or present misfortunes, and makes them conquerors over things in the greatest public unhappiness: while the consideration of men, and human affairs, may affect us with a thousand disquiets, that never separates us into mortal factions; that gives us room to differ without animosity, and permits us to raise contrary imaginations upon it, without any danger of a civil war.'*

Having married a sister of Oliver Cromwell in 1656, Dr Wilkins was enabled, by a dispensation from the Protector, to retain his office in Wadham college, notwithstanding a rule which made celibacy imperative on those who held it; but three years afterwards he removed to Cambridge, the headship

* Sprat's History of the Royal Society, pp. 53, 55.

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out a conveyance to this other world, and, if there be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them.' He admits, that to be sure this feat has in the present state of human knowledge an air of utter inpossibility: yet from this, it is argued, no hostik inference ought to be drawn, seeing that many things formerly supposed impossible have actually been accomplished. If we do but consider,' says he, by what steps and leisure all arts do usually rise to their growth, we shall have no cause to doub why this also may not hereafter be found out amongst other secrets. It hath constantly yet been the method of Providence not presently to show us all, but to lead us on by degrees from the knowledge of one thing to another. It was a great while ere the planets were distinguished from the fixed stars; and some time after that ere the morning and evening stars were found to be the same. And in greater space, I doubt not but this also, and other as er cellent mysteries, will be discovered.' Though it is evident that the possibility of any event whatsoever might be argued on the same grounds, they seem to have been quite satisfactory to Wilkins, who goes on to discuss the difficulties in the way of acco plishing the aërial journey. After disposing, by means of a tissue of absurd hypotheses, of the ob stacles presented by the natural heaviness of man's body,' and 'the extreme coldness and thinness of the ethereal air-and having made it appear that even a swift journey to the moon would probably occupy a period of six months-he naturally stumbles on the question, And how were it possible for any to tarry so long without diet or sleep?'

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1. For diet. I suppose there could be no trusting to

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