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LETTER XLIV.

FROM LORD SHAFTESBURY TO

May 10th, 1707.

SINCE your disposition inclines you so strongly towards university-learning; and your sound exercise of your reason, and the integrity of your heart, give good assurance against the narrow principles and contagious manner of those corrupted places, whence all noble and free principles ought rather to be propagated; I shall not be wanting to you on my part, when I shall see the fruit of your studies, life, and conversation, answerable to those good seeds of principles you seem to carry in you.

I am glad to find your love of reason and freethought. Your piety and virtue, I know, you will always keep; especially since your desires and natural inclinations are towards so serious a station in life, which others undertake too slightly, and without examining their hearts.

Pray God direct you, and confirm your good beginnings, and in the practice of virtue and religion; assuring yourself that the highest principle, which is the love of God, is best attained, not by dark speculations and monkish philosophy, but by moral practice, and love of mankind, and a study of their interests: the chief of which, and that which only raises them above the degree of brutes, is freedom of reason in the learned world, and good government and liberty in the civil world.

Tyranny in one is ever accompanied, or soon followed, by tyranny in the other. And when slavery is brought upon a people, they are soon reduced to that base and brutal state, both in their understandings and morals.

True zeal therefore for God or religion, must be supported by real love for mankind: and love of mankind cannot consist but with a right knowledge of man's great interests, and of the only ways and means (that of liberty and freedom) which God and nature has made necessary and essential to his manly dignity and character. They therefore who betray these principles, and the rights of mankind, betray religion even so as to make it an instrument against itself.

But I must have done, and am your good friend to serve you.

LETTER XLV.

FROM LORD SHAFTESBURY TO

July 10, 1710.

I BELIEVE indeed it was your expecting me every day at ****, that prevented your writing, since you received orders from the good bishop, my lord of Salisbury; who, as he had done more than any man living for the good and honour of the church of England and the reformed religion, so he now suffers more than any man from the tongues and slander of those ungrateful churchmen; who may well call themselves by that single term of distinction, having no claim to that of Christianity or

Protestant, since they have thrown off all the temper of the former, and all concern or interest with the latter.

I hope whatever advice the great and good bishop gave you will sink deeply into your mind: and that your receiving orders from the hands of so worthy a prelate will be one of the circumstances which may help to ́insure your steadiness in honesty, good principles, moderation, and true christianity; which are now set at nought and at defiance by the far greater part and numbers of that body of clergy called the church of England; who no more esteem themselves a Protestant church, or in union with those of Protestant communion; though they pretend to the name of Christian, and would have us judge of the spirit of Christianity from theirs: which God prevent! lest good men should in time forsake Christianity through their means.

As for my part of kindness and friendship to you, I shall be sufficiently recompensed, if you prove (as you have ever promised) a virtuous, pious, sober, and studious man, as becomes the solemn charge belonging to you. But you have been brought into the world, and come into orders, in the worst times for insolence, riot, pride, and presumption of clergymen that I ever knew, or have read of; though I have searched far into the characters of high-churchmen from the first centuries, in which they grew to be dignified with crowns and purple, to the late times of our reformation, and to our present age.

The thorough knowledge you have had of me, and the direction of all my studies and life to the

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promotion of religion, virtue, and the good of mankind, will (I hope) be of some good example to you; at least it will be a hindrance to your being seduced by infamies and calumnies; such as are thrown upon the men called moderate, and in their style indifferent in religion, heterodox, and heretical.

I pray God to bless you in your new function with all the true virtue, humility, moderation, and meekness, which becomes it. I am your hearty friend.

LETTER XLVI.

LORD SHAFTESBURY TO ROB. MOLESWORTH, ESQ.

Chelsea, Sept. 30, 1708.

DEAR SIR, Two reasons have made me delay answering yours; I was in hopes of seeing our great lord, and I depended on Mr. Micklethwayt's presenting you with my services, and informing you of all matters public and private. The queen is but just come to Kensington, and my lord* to town. He promised to send me word, and appoint me a time, when he came. But I should have prevented him, had it been my weather for town-visits. But having owed the recovery of my health to the method I have taken of avoiding the town-smoke, I am kept at a distance, and like to be removed even from hence in a little while: though I have a project of staying longer here than my usual time, by

*The earl of Godolphin, then lord-treasurer.

removing now and then cross the water, to my friend sir John Cropley's in Surrey, where my riding and airing recruits me. I am highly rejoiced, as you may believe, that I can find myself able to do a little more public service, than what of late years I have been confined to, in my country : and I own the circumstances of a court were never so inviting to me, as they have been since a late view I have had of the best part of our ministry. It may perhaps have added more of confidence and forwardness in my way of courtship, to be so incapacitated as I am from taking any thing there for myself. But I hope I may convince some persons, that it is possible to serve disinterestedly; and that obligations already received (though on the account of others) are able to bind as strongly as the ties of self-interest.

I had resolved to stay till I had one conference more with our lord* before I writ to you: but a letter, which I have this moment received from Mr. Micklethwayt, on his having waited on you in the country, has made me resolve to write thus hastily (without missing to-night's post) to acknowledge, in the friendliest and freest manner, the kind and friendly part you have taken in my private interests. If I have ever endured any thing for the public, or sacrificed any of my youth, or pleasures, or interests to it, I find it is made up to me in the good opinion of some few: and perhaps one such friendship as yours may counterbalance all the malice of my worst enemies. It is true, what I once told you I had determined

Earl of Godolphin.

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