do for the first time, that though a saint in the closet, he was a man among men. A devout man, a heavenly-minded man, for the most part; but still a man suffering from importunate desires and fair-seeming temptations as we suffer; feeling disappointment as we feel it; indulging in innocent mirth, sported with by roving affections, overcome by failings like ours, and wounded by unkindness as deeply as ourselves. All these discoveries are astonishing at first, and to those who have been accustomed to see him exactly as he has been presented, without forming a guess as to what might be behind the picture, such a revelation causes no little dismay; but there may have been some more quick-sighted, who having discerned touches of sprightliness and lively wit in his sayings, remembering that he was the author of the best epigram in the English language, and recognizing in his intellectual character those qualities which are usually related to an exuberant fancy, will be more charmed than surprised at the new light in which the pious divine appears in the volume before us: and they will not wonder that a spirit so affectionate should be peculiarly susceptible of the passion of love. No one, perhaps, could so confidently anticipate this last fact as not to be somewhat shocked at the display here afforded; and none, we imagine, will approve the extent to which it has been carried; but as we have been finding fault with partial representations, and with the suppression so common in these cases, we are far from complaining that a very full light has been cast upon the important years of Doddridge's life which are comprehended in the correspondence now published.

It was his custom (and to us it seems a very strange one) to keep a copy of every letter he wrote, of business or friendship, trivial or important. His present editor has not suppressed a line, and we are thus presented with as perfect a picture of his mind, from his twentieth to his twenty-eighth year, as an extensive and remarkably copious correspondence can give.

We cannot honestly or consistently wish that any material fact should have been suppressed, whether creditable or discreditable, or that any thing should have been added or taken away which could vary the lights and shades of a character which we wish to see as it is. But we cannot admit the necessity of publishing every line of every letter, as the editor prides himself on having done; as a multiplicity of these lines contain fatiguing repetitions, perfectly natural and proper in a varied correspondence, but wearisome to a reader at the distance of more than a hundred years. Not a remembrance to an acquaintance, not a trifling commission is omitted; and the bulk of the volumes is thus swelled to an extent which must injure their usefulness as much as their interest. Some of the love-letters might also have been kept back with great advantage, as two or three would answer the purpose of shewing how apt the Doctor was to fall in love, as well as a dozen. We are anxious, at the same time, to acknowledge that it is a great privilege to discover, on the most unquestionable authority and by adequate means, the perfect purity and soundness of a heart and mind thus laid open in the confidence of friendship. It is very delightful to recover from the painful surprise attendant on the exhibition of frailties and follies, by remembering that we know all, and are released from the fear that something worse than frailty and folly was behind. Once having brought ourselves to be reconciled to them as attendants upon youth and humanity, we are at liberty to be charmed with the grace, the sprightliness, the innocent mirth which appear in most of the letters, the affectionate respect for his correspondents in others, and the rational appreciation of the objects of human pursuit, the depth of affectionate sympathy, the dignity of religious principle, which are

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manifest in all. As the events of the early life of Doddridge,―the circumsance of his becoming an orphan at a very early age, his decided inclination for the ministry, his adoption by Dr. Clark, of St. Albans, and his education Mr. Jennings's academy, are probably known to most of our readers, we shall proceed to practise the honesty we have been recommending, by extracting letters of a very different cast, but, perhaps, equally characteristic of their writer. The first, addressed to his brother-in-law, is a specimen of the gay style in which he most commonly addresses his correspondents.

"Harborough, June, 1726, Wednesday morning, 8 o'clock. "DEAR BROTHER,

"I make it a maxim with myself to write to either you or my sister whenever I have an opportunity of writing at all; so that you have two or three letters from me where other more ceremonious correspondents have but one. You will not then be offended that I write no more at large, for you must consider that I have a great deal of business which requires my daily attendance. I was up at five o'clock this morning; and I have been all this while studying the connexion of a short section in the Romans, and writing letters. Nay, at this very moment, Demosthenes is waiting to entertain me with one of his Philippics, and Virgil is bringing back Æneas to his camp, where I have long been waiting in pain for his absence. Dr. Tillotson has also been preparing an admirable sermon, which he will quickly deliver in my chamber with his usual grace and sweetness, And then Gerard Brandt will go on with his History of the Persecution of the Remonstrants, after their condemnation at the Synod of Dort. In the afternoon I expect to hear from Pliny, who generally favours me with two or three epistles in a day, though a stranger and a Heathen-while you, a Christian minister and my brother, will hardly write once in a quarter of a year! Then I am to drink a dish of tea with some agreeable women in the afternoon, and may possibly look over a chapter or two in the history of the Four Kings:* and if I should be immoderately transported with the joys of the victory, or the sorrows of the defeat, with love to my partner, or anger against my antagonist, I shall hope to find my remedy in the conversation of Mr. Bragg, who has lately undertaken to teach me the Government of the Passions, a lesson, indeed, which I ought to have learnt some time ago! Dr. Potter is instructing me in Grecian antiquities; but I fear I shall hardly have time to speak with him to-day. However, I will, if possible, attend upon my tutor Cradock, in the evening, who is lecturing on the Epistles with great accuracy and solidity; besides this, I have a little kind of a sermon to preach in the family according to my daily custom, and then four letters to transcribe into short-hand.

"Now I will leave you, who are one of the greatest clerks I know, to judge whether all this business will leave me time to say any more than how does my dear sister? Give my service to her, and to Mrs. Nettleton, and believe me to be, &c."-Vol. II. p. 138.

We are the more ready to introduce the following letter to a fair one, who was inclined to sport with tender feelings, because it is far too common to regard with levity the most important circumstances of life, and the deepest and most influential of human emotions. Though Dr. Doddridge might be too ready to yield up his freedom, the solemnity of the following remonstrance shews how seriously he regarded affairs of the heart, and how his affections were made subservient to his principles.

"MADAM,

June 4, 1725.

"I have so little opportunity of conversing with you alone, that I am forced to take this method of expressing my concern, and, indeed, my amazement, at what has just passed between us. I know you to be a lady of admirable good sense, and I wish you would find out the consistency of your

* Cards.

behaviour yesterday and to-day. Yesterday you expressly assured me that you loved me as well as I did you, which you know is to a very uncommon degree; and that it grieved you that you had given me so much uneasiness; adding, you would take care to avoid it for the time to come. To-day you have been telling me, that you could not bear the thought of not being so rich as your sister; that you do not know why you may not expect a good man, with a good estate!

"I leave you to judge whether it be possible I should hear this remark without uneasiness. And if it be not, whether it were fit for you to make it. Consider, Madam, I am a rational creature; and though too much transported with love, yet, blessed be God, not absolutely distracted! How, then, do you imagine I can put my confidence in the assurances you give me of your love, when you are so continually contradicting them? For do you not contradict them when you talk of discarding me for the sake of money?

"I always thought, my dear creature, you had been remarkable both for good sense and religion. But I own I do not see how it is reconcileable with either, to throw aside those entertainments of a rational, a friendly, and a religious nature, which you yourself think you may find in me, merely that you may eat and drink more sumptuously, and wear better clothes, with some of those people whom the word of God already brands as fools.

"Madam, I must presume so far as to say, that it is neither the part of a Christian, nor a friend, to keep one in such a continual uneasiness. You unfit me for business, devotion, or company, and, in short, make my very life burthensome by the inconsistency of your behaviour. Let me, therefore, most earnestly entreat you-not entirely to dismiss me, which God forbid, but resolutely to remember your promises, and not to allow yourself those unbounded liberties of saying every thing that the vanity of your own dear excellent heart may sometimes prompt you to utter, without considering how I am able to bear it.

"As for what you said at parting, that I have a relish for the vanities of life,' I own that I regard them too much. But, I bless God, such is not the governing temper of my mind, and that I can say, with a full assurance, that I know how to postpone them, not only to my duty to God, but to my affection for you. And I think you may easily believe it, when I now give it under my hand, as you had it yesterday from my mouth, that I will willingly and thankfully take you, with what your father and mother will give you, if by any means there be a prospect of the necessary comforts of life.

"I remain, &c."-Vol. II p. 47.

The next letter which we shall extract, if sent into the world anonymously, would, we think, be instantly and universally referred to the right author. The name of Doddridge would rise to the lips of every reader.

"To Mr. SAUNDERS.

"December 2, 1727.

"I here inclose the hints you desire, which I drew up yesterday morning; and, on the review, I see so many defects and improprieties, that were I not so well acquainted with your candour, and did I not attend to your instructions rather than my own advantage, I should not send them.

"How was it possible for you to write such a letter as I received last night? You are always kind and good, and always more partial in favour of my character than any other person I know in the world; and, to tell you the plain truth, I would have you continue to be so; for, if it were not for that happy partiality, you would hardly think me worthy your friendship. You can never displease me with expressions of tenderness, for I love you so well, that I would have as much of your heart as one creature ought to have of another's; and I look upon your fond regard as my glory. But, my dear friend, you must forbear these expressions of unreasonable esteem, for really, Mr. Saunders, I think the clause Is it possible you should think as you say? Can so wise a man be so much deceived? Seriously

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speaking, I am confounded, and I have not the confidence so much as to quote the lines I complain of.

"I have this morning been humbling myself before God for the pride of my heart. It follows me whithersoever I go-into my study, into the conversation of my friends, and, what is most dreadful of all, into the immediate presence of my Maker; of that God who is the fountain of all perfection, and from whose hands I have received my all, and from whom I have deserved an aggravated condemnation. Such is the subtilty of this insinuating mischief, that I can recollect instances in which I have been proud of having exposed the deformity of pride with success, while, perhaps, it was only another instance of my degeneracy to imagine that I had so succeeded. Why, then, must your complaisance add fuel to the fire, which I sometimes fear will burn up all my grace and all my religion? How hard is it to keep self in self-subjection! This you have taught me as well as man can teach it, but God alone can make the excellent lesson effectual. I cannot lay a scheme for the honour of my God, and the service of the world, but self intrudes itself, and that sometimes to such a degree as to make me doubt whether the governing principle be not wrong, and whether many of my most valuable actions and designs be not splendida pietata. Alas, such is your pious and excellent' friend! You compliment me on the learning and accuracy of my views. How are you deceived! I have hardly looked into many of the most excellent treatises of the ancient and modern commentators, and have only dipped into some others so far as to see that there was a great deal that I was not capable of comprehending, at least without a long course of preparatory study! There is hardly a chapter in the Bible which does not puzzle me; nor, in short, any considerable subject of human inquiry in which I do not perceive both my ignorance and my weakness.-And this-is your oracle!

"Were there any thing which could seem a just excuse for my vanity, it would indeed be that you and some other such excellent persons profess not only to love, but to respect me; but I am persuaded, nay, I certainly know it is only because a great portion of my ignorance and folly lies hid, otherwise you would all but pity or despise me! And when I consider your humility in admitting me to such an intimate friendship, and in thinking so honourably of me, I see the greater reason to be abashed at the reflection that I have learned no more of that amiable grace, with so bright an example before me, and in one whom I love so well, that it might be expected that I should imitate him, with a peculiar pleasure.

"Let me beg your pity and your prayers; love me as well as you can! but pray that I may deserve your affection better; yet whatever other imperfections attend my character, I am, with most sincere tenderness and grateful affection,

"Your friend and servant."-Vol. II. p. 375. The humility apparent in this and every other letter, was the most eminent grace of a character which was full of graces. In him it was carried almost to an excess; and to its superabundance, combined with a similar excess of benevolent feeling, we are inclined to attribute the great fault which runs through the whole of his correspondence, and, we imagine, the whole of his intercourse with society we refer to his habit of flattery. Assured, as we are, that he had no selfish ends to answer, and that he was above the use of such means,-making, besides, all due allowance for the manners of the time, we cannot reconcile ourselves to his manner of addressing his friends on the subject of their various perfections. It appears strange that while discomposed, as we find him to have been by such incense, when offered to himself, he should have adopted a style of address which must have been painful to his correspondents; or, if not painful, all the more injurious. There is far less of this to persons to whom he was under the greatest obligations, and whom he loved the best, than to compa

rative strangers, and to one or two among others, of whom, as we elsewhere learn, he had not a very high opinion. Here, and perhaps here only, we discover the traces of a weakness which would probably have pervaded his character, if strength and dignity had not been infused into it by the principles of religion. By these principles his gentle virtues were supported, and through their influence his views became enlarged, and his spirit catholicized to an extent of which some of his followers are perhaps not aware, and which they would do well to contemplate. Some admirers of Doddridge, who are ready to class liberal Christians with Deists, may learn a lesson from one whose name was never coupled with infidelity. He thus writes to a friend who entertained some doubts of the divine origin of Christianity:

"It does not terrify' me to hear, that a person whom I sincerely love, and for whose character I have the truest regard, has entertained some doubts which he cannot entirely get over, concerning a book which his earliest instructors recommended to him as the word of God. It is certainly the duty of every rational creature to bring his religion to the strictest test, and to retain or reject the faith in which he has been educated, as he finds it capable or incapable of a rational defence. I perfectly agree with my Lord Shaftesbury in his judgment, that religion has not so much to fear from its weighty adversaries, who give it exercise, as from its fond nurse, who overlays it out of an excess of tenderness. I therefore do not only allow, but entreat you to urge all your strongest objections against Christianity, and to represent them in the most forcible light; and if, then, upon the whole, I am convinced in my judgment that they are more than a balance to those arguments which support it, I will be a Christian no longer, but will frankly confess myself a Deist, and rather throw myself on Providence, and the charity of my new brethren, than purchase the most comfortable maintenance at so dishonourable a price as contradicting the conviction of my conscience, and speaking lies in the name of the Lord. On the other hand, I must entreat you, Sir, to enter on the inquiry with a solemnity and composure of mind answerable to its awful importance; remembering that we are searching into a matter in which our views for immortality are concerned; those pleasing or dreadful views, before which all the hopes and fears that relate only to this transitory life, fade away and disappear, like twinkling stars in the blaze of the meridian sun: considering also, that if it be really true that God has sent his own Son into the world to recover a race of degenerate creatures at the expense of his own blood, and to fix them in a state of everlasting perfection and glory, it must be infinitely fatal to desert his religion, and to treat him like an impostor, without the most serious and impartial examination of the cause. Nay, though, after all, Christianity should prove only an agreeable dream, yet, as it pretends to the authority of the Supreme Being, and is supported with arguments which have, at least, some plausible appearance, it will argue a want of reverence to him, and consequently will expose us to his high displeasure, to reject it lightly, before we clearly see into the falsehood of its pretensions. Persist, therefore, in your resolution of weighing the question in an impartial balance, and avoid a precipitate judgment. Above all, let me indulge my friendship to you so far as to remind you of what a person of your wisdom cannot but know, that our faculties are weak, and that we are exceedingly apt to be imposed upon by false representations. Let that fact engage you to humility, and so to depend upon divine illumination, and earnestly to pray to the God of truth that he will not suffer you to fall into error; but will guide your reason in such a manner as may establish your mind in an unshaken tranquillity.-Every sober and rational Deist must own there is no enthusiasm in such advice; and if it be pursued, and the whole tenour of your life be agreeable to such principles, I am confidently persuaded you will never be undone by speculative mistakes."-Vol. II. p. 423.

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