DRS. POCOCKE AND HENLEY TO DR. STUKEley. 809 pose; and feared also that one who attends me (I wish, you had, were it not for the trouble) would meet you. My disease was from an "I have been ill these eight weeks. atrabilious, hot, saline acrimony in my blood. I am liable to a cachexy, scorbutic, and jaundiced; with eruptions in my face and head, and a Saint Antony's fire. I wish the Saint had kept his fire to himself; the flames of Saints are more mischievous than the wicked.—I have been purifying my blood by some My skin is generally mixture of flores sulphuris, &c. &c. I have a good smooth, and myself, thank God, healthful. an honest stomach, but cannot rest well. I am very sure, Esculapius would cure me soon, and no relapse. I have been reading Dr. Turner, Quincy, Fuller, and Surgey, about it: but I will not use the least mercury. I know the cause was internal, and is in the acrimonious humours, and that proper moderate physic would help; but I am a Rationalist, and love to enquire into ingredients, and no Doctors will talk reason with me. They are like Popish Priests, and demand implicit faith. I beg, dear Doctor, you would consider well this, and take my health under your guardianship. And, I have a servant, who has lived with me sixteen years, who, from an old contusion in her leg, is almost lame. Surgeons make only jobs of these things, as Physicians do. She has cost me a great deal of money; but, I doubt, she must go into the Infirmary, if she cannot come into a more summary cure, internal and external, without relapse. I wish you would be so kind and compassionate to her as to write for her. [Christ was a servant, and a physician; and, I think, he lived upon physic. The word, in the Acts, nor is there salvation in any other, is, in the Greek, ass, healing; and forgiving sins, was curing distempers, which were God's penalties for sins, executed by evil demons; and the word soul means the life, the person; nay, sometimes it signifies a dead man.-This, by the bye.]-I wish I could wait on you, but my eruptions in my face are the only things that hinder my coming abroad, or into my Oratory; which always was, is, and shall be, at your service. "I could send a messenger to receive what you write, if you condescend to do it for me and my servant. I pray God keep your most valuable health and life, and your good family. I wish you would make this (asking pardon for interrupting you so long) the object of some mature practical reflections. I wish I was in the Church to preach for you now and then, being, with the truest veneration, Sir, your most devoted and hearty friend J. HENLEY.” and servant, Teddington, Sept. 25, 1758. "DEAR SIR, "I return you hearty thanks for so zealously interesting yourself in behalf of Mrs. St. Amand, who has for a great part of a long life been in a most distressed condition, through no fault A gentlewoman in my of hers, but from an unkind husband. house has for several years past given her yearly a guinea. She will now think herself very rich. Her widow-sister Warnford, The well-known Orator; see the "Literary Anecdotes," vol. I. p. 384. who who has supported her, has but 30l. per annum, a shameful scanty allowance, from her husband's brother, who came to a good estate by his death, and who had been maintained by his brother when living. The Princess has left off Sunday drawing-rooms, when she resides in town; and the King's drawing-room at St. James's, immediately after Divine Service, is, as I am told, very short. She is obliged to go every Saturday to London, in order to attend the King's drawing-room the next day at Kensington; and has every other Sunday a drawing-room in town, to avoid the coming purposely to town on a week-day. "Alas! too many are the causes of our dissoluteness! But the grand depraver of the morals of the lower people is that greatest of all evils, because both a natural and moral evil, drams. Were I sure that what I have done in relation to Ventilators, &c. &c. would be a means of bettering the health, and prolonging the lives, of an hundred millions of persons, it would not give me near the satisfaction that I have from the pleasing reflection of having, for near thirty years past, borne my public testimony in books and newspapers against drams eleven times; and the last time, in my book on Ventilators, which I lately published, in which I have exerted myself at large, with the strongest expostulations, in hopes to rouse the attention and indignation of mankind against this mighty debaser and destroyer of the human species. And as there are many things in that book which will be of great benefit to mankind, so I am in hopes that the cautions I give against those, worse than infernal, spirits, will be the more attended to, and taken in good part. With this view I have sent the book to the principal Nations in Europe, as far as to Petersburg, the greatest gin-shop in the world; for that Empress has the whole monopoly of them. And I have, for some months past, given orders to send 400 of that book to all our Colonies in America, from Barbadoes to Hudson's Bay, sending with each parcel pressing letters to the several Governors against those decolonizing legions of evil spirits; which I cannot forbear looking on as the third woe in the Revelations, a woe much sorer and greater than the sum total of all the other woes there denounced. "Ventilators are now in such esteem in our Fleet, that they work them incessantly night and day. "If, when the Princess comes to reside in town, you should have a call towards Duke's Court, St. Martin's Lane, on a Saturday, after twelve o'clock, I should be glad to see a Fellow Collegiate old acquaintance. With what a number of years have we been blessed beyond those of many of our contemporaries! The infirmities of age will not permit me to visit you. I am, Sir, your affectionate humble servant, STEPHEN HALES *. "Pray my respects to Mrs. Sisson and her Sister, to whom Mrs. Gillow in my house sends hers." * This excellent Divine and very able Natural Philosopher, whilst at Bene't College, Cambridge, employed his hours of relaxation in the study of Botany and Anatomy, in which Dr. Stukeley was his constant companion. He was many years Minister of Teddington; where he died June 4, 1764, aged 84. He was one of the witnesses to Mr. Pope's Will. LETTERS LETTERS from the Rev. Mr. WARBURTON to the Rev. Dr. PHILIP Doddridge *. "REVEREND AND WORTHY SIR, London, April 19, 1738, "I found the very agreeable favour of your Letter of the 13th instant in London, where I am lately come for a few days. I can now easily forgive the Country Clergyman'†; as owing to him, in some measure, the acquisition of such a friendship as I flatter myself, Sir, to reap in you. And, though you give so polite a turn to that occasion, I must never suffer myself to believe that it was any merit in my book, but a generous indignation against an abandoned libeller, that has procured me the honour of so considerable a patroniser. "I will assure you, Sir, that, next to the service of Truth, my aim in writing was to procure myself the favour and friendship of good and learned men. So that you will not wonder that I accept the friendship you are pleased to offer me in so generous and polite a manner, with all the pleasure that gifts most esteemed amongst men are generally received. Difference of religious persuasion, amongst sincere professors, never was, I thank God, any reason of restraining or abating my esteem for men of your character in life and learning. "I have read your Proposals for The Family Expositor;' and have entertained, from the specimen, so high an opinion of your Notes and Paraphrase, that, had I any thing material on the Gospels, I should be very cautious (without affectation) of laying them before so accurate a Critick, notwithstanding all the temptations I should have of appearing in so honourable a station. But the truth is, I have little of this kind on the Evangelists worth your notice, and your work is already in the press but you shall be sure to command what I have on the other parts of the New Testament on occasion, if of any service to you. In the mean time, I make it my request to be admitted into the list of your Subscribers. I shall pay the subscription-money to * Large as the present volume already is, I cannot resist the pleasure of inserting in it a Series of Letters, so honourable both to Bp. Warburton and Dr. Doddridge, which should properly have been introduced with those to Dr. Forster in pp. 151-169. Most (but not all) of them were printed in 1790, in a very judicious and entertaining Collection of Letters to and from Dr. Doddridge, published by the Rev. T. Stedman, Vicar of St. Chad's, Shrewsbury. That curious volume is now rare; and I not only have obtained the worthy Editor's free consent to reprint them, but have been favoured by the loan of the Originals; by which several additions are now made, which had before been omitted from motives of delicacy now no longer existing. + In January, 1737-8, Mr. Warburton published the first volume of "The Divine Legation of Moses," &c.; and in March, a Vindication of the Author of that Work, from the Aspersions of the Country Clergyman's Letter, in the Weekly Miscellany of Feb. 14, 1737. The professed Editor of the Miscellany was Dr. William Webster. T. S. His name accordingly appears in that list. Mr. Mr. Hett*, but shall take no receipt, because I would have one from yourself, in order to engage you to begin a correspondence from which I expect to receive so much benefit and pleasure. I am greatly indebted to you, Sir, for your good prayers. I beg you would do me the justice to believe you do not want mine; being, with the utmost esteem and sincerity, dear Sir, Your most affectionate humble servant, W. WARBURTON." "DEAR SIR, Newarke-upon-Trent, May 27, 1738. "It has been a great pain to me, that I had not an opportunity before now of returning my hearty thanks for your last very friendly letter of the 22d past. It would have been a particular pleasure to me to have taken Northampton in my way home: but I was under prior engagements to go by Cambridge, where I stayed much longer than I intended, as not being able to withstand the importunities of my Friends. So, I have been got home but a very little time. But I do not despair of finding leisure and opportunity of paying my respects to you at Northampton, if not this summer, yet next spring. "You see that wretched Writer of the Weekly Miscellany (God knows from what motive) goes on with the most frantic rage against me, unawed by the public contempt and detestation. You would naturally imagine that he had some time or other received, or that he thought he had received, some personal injury from me; but you will be surprized to be told that I never, to my knowledge, saw him, or ever made him the subject of my conversation or writing, he being always esteemed by me of too infamous a character to have any kind of concern with; for, take such a man at the best, suppose him sincere, and really agitated with zeal for Religion, it was always my opinion that the very worst rogue in society is a saint run mad. I can assure you, with the utmost sincerity, that my motive in taking any notice of him, and the doing it with the temper I did, was out of pure Christian charity, to bring him to a right mind. What has been the consequence? -it has but made him the more outrageous, and unchristian, and insulting. His coadjutor, Venn, publicly declared that I discovered in my Vindication such a sneaking humble spirit as shewed plainly I was not orthodox. What then is to be done with these men, either for my own sake, or the sake of the publick they beginning to grow a nuisance to all virtue, to all learning, and love of truth. A poor young Fellow of Oxford did but say the other day, in a Sermon, that he thought natural reason discovered that God would pardon a returning sinner, and they fell upon him as the worst of heretics; he recanted, and they led him chained at their chariot-wheels in triumph through their news-papers. I have determined what to do: having thought it proper to publish a Sermon, preached two years ago at the last Episcopal Visitation for Confirmation, on 2 Peter, cap. i. ver. 5 and following, I take an opportunity in a Preface, * Mr. Richard Hett, Bookseller in the Poultry, and afterwards Treasurer to the Company of Stationers. See the " Literary Anecdotes," vol. 11. p. 607. that that gives the reasons of the present publication, to draw my adversary in his native colours: a thing, in my opinion, very necessary for the good of society, and no offence to Christian charity sure to expose a professed persecutor. There is a Postscript which, I dare say, you would think there was little occasion for, did I not tell you that there are London Divines who pretend to think the calumny confuted in it is none. These matters will be but little worth your notice. But the Sermon itself may deserve it more, and, I hope, may give you some entertainment. I shall therefore take the liberty of ordering one to be given to Mr. Hett for you, which I beg your acceptance of. You see how insensibly I have entered into matters, with all the liberty and freedom of a Friend. I will make no apology for that, because, I dare say, it would be displeasing to you. I know not how, dear Sir, to make my acknowledgments for the many very kind things which your partiality to me puts me upon saying, otherwise than by assuring you of my most sincere and cordial esteem and affection. What I said of your specimen was my real sentiments; and I have the highest expectations of the Work, and so, I perceive, has the world; and I make no question of your satisfying them. I shall certainly take the first opportunity of looking into Sir Isaac. "Pray what think you of our new Cabalists? Are they more rational than the Jewish? Is not Hutchinson's method as much a disgrace to human nature as that of the Talmud? What think you too of the Methodists? You are nearer to Oxford. We have strange accounts of their freaks; and Madam Bourignon's books, the French Vissionnaire, are, I hear, much inquired after by them. "I beg my most humble service to good Mrs. Doddridge, whose guest I hope to have the pleasure and honour of being. My Mother, I thank God, is well, and joins with me in our best respects to you both. I heartily pray God long to continue and increase your happiness and health, that you may go on vigourously in his service at a time when it wants such servants. "I am, reverend and dear Sir, your most affectionate brother, and most obedient friend and humble servant, W. WARBURTON." "DEAR SIR, Newarke-upon-Trent, Feb. 12, 1738-9. "I am much indebted for your last kind Letter; and I heartily wish I could make the same excuse for not acknowledging it sooner, that you have done on the same occasion. But I live in a much less comfortable neighbourhood, and at a greater distance from the few friends whose acquaintance is worth cultivating. But the knowledge of my friends' happiness always relieved my own unhappiness. The kind obliging things you say to me would, from a Courtier, very much disgust me; but coming from one whose virtues and parts I have so great an opinion of must needs be highly agreeable to me, though I thought them no more than the effects of a partial friendship, and merely on that ac count. |