ignorance and vice are two ingredients absolutely necessary in the composition of those you generally call freethinkers, who, in propriety of speech, are no thinkers at all. And since I am in the way of it, pray consider one thing further: as young as you are, you cannot but have already observed what a violent run there is among too many weak people against university education: be firmly assured that the whole cry is made up by those who were either never sent to college, or, through their irregularities and stupidity, never made the least improvement while they were there. I have above forty of the latter sort now in my eye; several of them in this town, whose learning, manners, temperance, probity, good-nature, and politics are all of a piece; others of them in the country, oppressing their tenants, tyrannizing over the neighborhood, cheating the vicar, talking nonsense, and getting drunk at the sessions. It is from such seminaries as these that the world is provided with the several tribes and denominations of freethinkers; who, in my judgment, are not to be reformed by arguments offered to prove the truth of the Christian religion, because reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired: for in the course of things men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers: but if you would once convince the town or country profligate by topics drawn from the view of their own quiet, reputation, health, and advantage, their infidelity would soon drop off: this, I confess, is no easy task, because it is almost, in a literal sense, to fight with beasts. Now to make it clear that we are to look for no other original of this infidelity, whereof divines so much complain, it is allowed on all hands that the people of Fngland are more corrupt in their morals than any other nation at this day under the sun and this corruption is manifestly owing to other causes, both numerous and obvious, much more than to the publication of irreligious books, which indeed are but the consequence of the former. For all the writers against Christianity since the Revolution, have been of the lowest rank among men in regard to literature, wit, and good sense, and upon that account wholly unqualified to propagate heresies unless among a people already abandoned.

In an age, where everything disliked by those who think with the majority is called disaffection, it may perhaps be ill interpreted, when I venture to tell you, that this universal depravation of manners is owing to the perpetual bandying of factions among us for thirty years past, when, without weighing the motives of justice, law, conscience, or honor, every man adjusts his principles to those

of the party he has chosen, and among whom he may best find his own account; but by reason of our frequent vicissitudes, men who were impatient of being out of play have been forced to recant, or at least to reconcile their former tenets with every new system of administration. Add to this, that the old fundamental custom of annual parliaments being wholly laid aside, and elections growing chargeable, since gentlemen found that their country-seats brought them in less than a seat in the house, the voters, that is to say, the bulk of the common people, have been universally seduced into bribery, perjury, drunkenness, malice, and slander.

Not to be further tedious, or rather invidious, these are a few, among other cases, which have contributed to the ruin of our morals, and consequently to the contempt of religion: for, imagine to yourself, if you please, a landed youth, whom his mother would never suffer to look into a book for fear of spoiling his eyes, got into parliament, and observing all enemies to the clergy heard with the utmost applause, what notions he must imbibe, how readily he will join in the cry, what an esteem he will conceive of himself, and what a contempt he must entertain, not only for his vicar at home, but for the whole order!

I therefore again conclude, that the trade of infidelity has been taken up only for an expedient to keep in countenance that universal corruption of morals which many other causes first contributed to introduce and to cultivate. And thus Mr. Hobbes's saying upon reason may be much more properly applied to religion that if religion will be against a man, a man will be against religion. Though after all I have heard a profligate offer much stronger arguments against paying his debts than ever he was known to do against Christianity; indeed, the reason was, because in that juncture he happened to be closer pressed by the bailiff than the parson.

Ignorance may perhaps be the mother of superstition, but experience has not proved it to be so of devotion; for Christianity always made the most easy and quickest progress in civilized countries. I mention this, because it is affirmed that the clergy are in most credit where ignorance prevails, (and surely this kingdom would be called the paradise of clergymen if that opinion were true,) for which they instance England in the times of popery. But whoever knows anything of three or four centuries before the Reformation, will find the little learning then stirring was more equally divided between the English clergy and laity than it is at present. There were several famous lawyers in that period, whose writings are still in

the highest repute, and some historians and poets, who were not of the church. Whereas, now-a-days, our education is so corrupted, that you will hardly find a young person of quality with the least tincture of knowledge, at the same time that many of the clergy were never more learned, or so scurvily treated. Here, among us at least, a man of letters out of the three professions is almost a prodigy. And those few who have preserved any rudiments of learning are (except perhaps one or two smatterers) the clergy's friends to a man; and I dare appeal to any clergyman in this kingdom, whether the greatest dunce in the parish be not always the most proud, wicked, fraudulent, and intractable of his flock.

I think the clergy have almost given over perplexing themselves and their hearers with abstruse points of predestination, election, and the like; at least it is time they should; and therefore I shall not trouble you further upon this head.

I have now said all I could think convenient with relation to your conduct in the pulpit: your behavior in the world is another scene, upon which I shall readily offer you my thoughts if you appear to desire them from me by your approbation of what I have here written; if not, I have already troubled you too much.—I am, sir, your affectionate friend and servant.

AN ESSAY ON THE FATES OF CLERGYMEN.

THERE is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence. Courts are seldom unprovided of persons under this character, on whom, if they happen to be of great quality, most employments, even the greatest, naturally fall when competitors will not agree; and in such promotions nobody rejoices or grieves. The truth of this I could prove by several instances within my own memory; for I say nothing of present times. And, indeed, as regularity and forms are of great use in carrying

on the business of the world, so it is very convenient that persons endued with this kind of discretion should have that share which is proper to their talents in the conduct of affairs, but by no means meddle in matters which require genius, learning, strong comprehension, quickness of conception, magnanimity, generosity, sagacity, or any other superior gift of human minds. Because this sort of discretion is usually attended with a strong desire of money, and few scruples about the way of obtaining it; with servile flattery and submission; with a want of all public spirit or principle; with a perpetual wrong judgment, when the owners come into power and high place, how to dispose of favor and preferment; having no measure for merit and virtue in others but those very steps by which themselves ascended; nor the least intention of doing good or hurt to the public further than either one or t'other is likely to be subservient to their own security or interest. Thus, being void of all friendship and enmity, they never complain or find fault with the times, and indeed never have reason to do so.

Men of eminent parts and abilities, as well as virtues, do sometimes rise in the court, sometimes in the law, and sometimes even in the church. Such were the lord Bacon, the earl of Strafford, archbishop Laud, in the reign of king Charles I., and others in our own times, whom I shall not name; but these, and many more, under different princes and in different kingdoms, were disgraced or banished, or suffered death, merely in envy to their virtues and superior genius, which emboldened them in great exigencies and distresses of state (wanting a reasonable infusion of this aldermanly discretion) to attempt the service of their prince and country out of the common forms.

This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world, the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

And if this be his fate when he employs his talents wholly in his closet, without interfering with any man's ambition or avarice, what must he expect when he ventures out to seek for preferment in a court but universal opposition when he is mounting the ladder, and every hand ready to turn him off when he is at the top? and in this point fortune generally acts directly contrary to nature; for in nature we find that bodies full of life and spirits mount easily and are hard to fall, whereas heavy bodies are hard to rise, and come down

with greater velocity in proportion to their weight; but we find fortune every day acting just the reverse of this.

This talent of discretion, as I have described it in its several adjuncts and circumstances, is nowhere so serviceable as to the clergy, to whose preferment nothing is so fatal as the character of wit, politeness in reading or manners, or that kind of behavior which we contract by having too much conversation with persons of high station and eminency; these qualifications being reckoned, by the vulgar of all ranks, to be marks of levity, which is the last crime the world will pardon in a clergyman; to this I may add a free manner of speaking in mixed company, and too frequent an appearance in places of much resort, which are equally noxious to spiritual promotion.

I have known, indeed, a few exceptions to some parts of these observations. I have seen some of the dullest men alive aiming at wit, and others, with as little pretensions, affecting politeness in manners and discourse; but never being able to persuade the world of their guilt, they grew into considerable stations, upon the firm assurance which all people had of their discretion, because they were of a size too low to deceive the world to their own disadvantage. But this, I confess, is a trial too dangerous often to engage in.

There is a known story of a clergyman, who was recommended for a preferment by some great men at court, to an archbishop [Tenison.] His grace said, "he had heard that the clergyman used to play at whist and swobbers; that as to playing now and then a sober game at whist for pastime, it might be pardoned, but he could not digest those wicked swobbers;" and it was with some pains that my lord Somers could undeceive him. I ask, by what talents we may suppose that great prelate ascended so high, or what sort of qualifications he would expect in those whom he took into his patronage, or would probably recommend to court for the government of distant churches?

Two clergymen, in my memory, stood candidates for a small freeschool in Yorkshire, where a gentleman of quality and interest in the county, who happened to have a better understanding than his neighbors, procured the place for him who was the better scholar and more gentlemanly person of the two, very much to the regret of all the parish: the other being disappointed, came up to London, where he became the greatest pattern of this lower discretion that I have known, and possessed it with as heavy intellectuals, which, together with the coldness of his temper and gravity of his deport