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ness of our Oxford life is continually present with me, and especially of the latter part of it. How well I recollect when you and Cornish did duty for your first time at Begbrooke and Yarnton, and when we had one of our last skirmishes together in a walk to Garsington in March, 1819. All that period was working for me constant good, and how delightful is it to have our University recollections so free from the fever of intellectual competition or parties or jealousies of any kind whatever. I love also to think of our happy meeting in later life, when Cornish and I, with our wives and children, were with you at Malling, in 1823.

Meantime, even in a temporal point of view, you are going from what bids fair, I fear, to deserve the name of a City of Destruction. The state of Europe is indeed fearful; and that of England, I verily think, worst of all. What is coming, none can foresee, but every symptom is alarming; above all, the extraordinary dearth of men professing to act in the fear of God, and not being fanatics; as parties, the High Churchmen, the Evangelicals, and the Dissenters, seem to me almost equally bad, and how many good men can be found who do not belong to one of them?

Your godson is now turned of ten years old, and I think of keeping him at home for some time to familiarize him with home feelings. . . . . . I am sure that we shall have your prayers for his bringing forth fruit unto life eternal. . . . . . . And now farewell my dear friend; may God be with you always through Jesus Christ, and may He bless all your works to His glory and your own salvation. You will carry with you, as long as you live, my most affectionate and grateful remembrances, and my earnest wishes for all good to you, temporal and spiritual.

LX. TO AN OLD PUPIL AT OXFORD. (A.)a

February 25, 1833.

It always grieves me to hear that a man does not like Oxford. I was so happy there myself, and above all so happy in my friends, that its associations to my mind are purely delightful. But, of course, in this respect, everything depends upon the society you fall into. If this be uncongenial, the place can have no other attractions than those of a town full of good libraries.

The letters of the alphabet thus affixed are intended to distinguish between the different pupils so addressed.

T

The more we are estimate of or portunities for induling our feelings, as is the case when we live in uncongenial society, the more we are ant to ense ani harien our outward manner to save our real feelings from exposure. Thus I believe that some of the most belente-minded men get to appear actually coarse from their successful efforts to mask their real nature. And I have krown men disagreeally forward from their shyness. But I doubt whether a man does not suffer from a habit of self-constraint, and whether his feelings do not become really, as well as apparently, chilled. It is an immense Lessing to be perfectly callous to ridicule; or, which comes to the same thing. to be conscious thoroughly that what we have in us of tie ani delicate is not ridiculous to any but fools, and that, if fools will laugh, wise men will do well to let them. I shall really be very glad to hear from you at any time, and I will write to the best of my power on any subject on which you want to know my opinion. As for anything more. I believe that the one great lessen for us all is, that we should daily pray for an "increase of faith." There is enough of iniquity abounding to make our love in danger of waxing ecli; it is well said, therefore, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." By which I understand that it is not so much general notions of Providence which are our best support, but a sense of the personal interest, if I may so speak, taken in our welfare by Him who died for us and rose again. May His Spirit strengthen us to do His will, and to bear it, in power, in love, and in wisdom. God bless you.

LXI. TO THE REV. DR. HAWKINS.

Rugby, March 5, 1833.

[After speaking of a parcel sent to him.] I will not conceal, however, that my motive in writing to you immediately is to notice what you say of my pamphlet on Church Reform. I did not send it you for two reasons; first, because I feared that you would not like it; secondly, because a pamphlet in general is not worth the carriage. And I should be ashamed of myself if I were annoyed by your expressing your total disagreement with its principles or with its conclusions. But I do protest most strongly against your charge of writing "with haste and without consideration;" of writing "on subjects which I have not studied and do not understand,” and “which are not within my proper province." You cannot possibly know

that I wrote in haste, or that I have not studied the question; and I think, however much I might differ from any opinion of yours, I should scarcely venture to say that you had written on what you did not understand. I regret exceedingly the use of this kind of language in Oxford, (for- wrote to me exactly in the same strain,) because it seems to me to indicate a temper, not the best suited either to the state of knowledge or of feeling in other parts of the kingdom. It so happens that the subject of conformity, of communion, of the relations of Church and State, of Church Government, &c., is one which I have studied more than any other which I could name. I have read very largely about it, and thought about it habitually for several years, and I must say, that, sixteen or seventeen years ago, I had read enough of what were called orthodox books upon such matters, to be satisfied of their shallowness and confusion. I do not quarrel with you for coming to a different conclusion, but I do utterly deny that you are entitled to tax me with not being just as qualified as yourself to form a conclusion. I do not know that it gives me much pain, when my friends write what I do not like; for so long as I believe them to be honest, I do not think that they will be the worse for it; but assuredly my convictions of the utter falsehood and mischievous tendency of their opinions are quite as strong as theirs can be of mine; though I do not expect to convert them to my own views for many reasons. As to the pamphlet, I am now writing a Postscript for the fourth edition of it, with some quotations in justification of some of my positions. [After mentioning a pamphlet by a person of junior standing to himself.] If any respectable man of my own age chooses to attack my principles, I am perfectly ready to meet him, and he shall see at any rate whether I have studied the question or no. I wish that I knew as much about Thucydides, which you think that I do understand.

I hope that I have expressed myself clearly. I complain merely of the charge of writing hastily on a subject which I have not studied. As a matter of fact, it is most opposite to the truth. But if you say that you think I have studied it to very bad purpose, and am all wrong about it, I have only to say, that I think differently; but I should not in the least complain of your giving me your own opinion in the plainest terms that you chose.

LXII. TO THE SAME.

Rugby, March 10, 1833.

I thank you entirely for your last letter; it is at once kind and manly, and I much value your notice of particular points in the pamphlet which you think wrong. It is very true that it was written hastily, i. e. penned, for the time was short; but it is no less true that the matter of it, as far as its general principles are concerned, had been thought over in my mind again and again. In fact, my difficulty was how to write sufficiently briefly, for I have matter enough to fill a volume; and some of the propositions, which I have heard objected to, as thrown out at random, are to my own mind the results of a very full consideration of the case; although I have contented myself with putting down the conclusion, and omitting the premises. [After answering a question of history.] I fear, indeed, that our differences of opinion on many points of which I have written must be exceedingly wide. I am conscious that I have a great deal to learn; and, if I live ten years more, I hope I shall be wiser than I am now. Still I am not a boy, nor do I believe that any one of my friends has arrived at his opinions with more deliberation and deeper thought than I have at mine. And you should remember, that if many of my notions indicate in your judgment an imperfect acquaintance with the subject, this is exactly the impression which the opposite notions leave on my mind; and, as I know it to be quite possible that a conclusion, which seems to me mere folly and ignorance, may really rest on some proof, of which I am wholly ignorant, and which to the writer's mind may have been so familiar from long habit as to seem quite superfluous to be stated-so it is equally possible, that what appears folly or ignorance to you, may also be justified by a view of the question which has escaped your notice, and which I may happen to have hit upon.

Undoubtedly I should think it wrong to write on any subject, and much more such a subject as the Church, without having considered it. It can hardly be an honest opinion, if it be expressed confidently, without a consciousness of having sufficient reason for it. And though on subjects within the reach of our faculties, sufficient consideration, in the strict sense, must preclude error, (for all error must arise either from some premises being unknown, or from some faulty conclusion being derived from those which we do know,) yet

of course for our moral justification, it is sufficient that we have considered it as well as we could, and so, that we seem to have a competent understanding of it compared with other men—to be able to communicate some truth to others, while we receive truths from them in return.

But my main object in writing was to thank you for your letter, and to assure you that my feeling of anger is quite subsided, if anger it could be called. Yet I think I had a right to complain of the tone of decided condemnation which ran through your first letter, assuming that I had written without reflection and without study, because my notions were different from yours; and I think that, had I applied similar expressions to any work of yours, you would have been annoyed as much as I was, and have thought that I had judged you rather unfairly. But enough of this; and I will only hope that my next work, if ever I live to write another, may please you better.

LXIII. TO WILLIAM SMITH, ESQ., FORMERLY M.P. FOR NORWICH.

(In answer to a letter on the subject of his pamphlet, particularly objecting to his making it essential to those included in his scheme of comprehension, that they should address Christ as an object of worship.)

Rugby, March 9, 1833.

I trust you will not ascribe it to neglect that I have not returned an earlier answer to your letter. My time has been very much occupied, and I did not wish to write, till I could command leisure to write as fully as the purport and tone of your letter required.

I cannot be mistaken, I think, in concluding that I have the honour of addressing Mr. Smith, who was so long the Member for Norwich, and whose name must be perfectly familiar to any one who has been accustomed to follow the proceedings of Parliament.

The passage in my pamphlet to which you allude is expressly limited to the case of "the Unitarians preserving exactly their present character;" that is, as appears by a comparison with what follows, (p. 36,) their including many who "call themselves Unitarians, because the name of unbeliever is not yet thought creditable." And these persons are expressly distinguished from those other Unitarians whom I speak of "as really Christians." In giving or withholding the title of Christian, I was much more influenced by the spirit and temper of the parties alluded to than by their doctrinal

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