204 LIVES OF THE PURITANS. friendly correspondence. The letters of our divine, it is said, shew his true genius and disposition, and will account for that hot and eager opposition which his writings met with, when he ventured to publish his opinions from the press. As he never wrote upon any subject which he had not fully studied, -and thoroughly examined what had been said upon it by men of all ages and all parties ; so his penetrating skill in distin- guishing truth, and his honest zeal in supporting it, laid him continually open to the clamours of those who had nothing in view, but the maintenance of those systems to which they were attached from their education, or -the magnifying ofsuch notions, as were, popular in those times; and, by defending which, they were sure to have numerous admirers, though their want of learning, and the weakness of their arguments, were ever so conspicuous. But in these kind of disputes, such furious opponents were sure to have the worst; and how considerable soever they might be, either in figure or number, they served only to heighten the lustre of his triumph. For, it is added, as the modestyof his nature withheld him from printing any thing till he was forty-five years of age; so by that time his judgment was so confirmed, and his learning, supported by an extraordinary and almost incredible memory, so greatly extended, that he constantly carried his point, and effectually baffled all the attempts to envelope again in dark- ' ness and obscurity any subject that he had once proposed to enlighten. The great regularity of his life, his unblemished character; and the general esteem in which lie was held by the greatest and best men in the nation, fortified him Sufficiently against all those low and little artifices by which a writer, deficient in any of these respects, would certainly have suffered. He had not the least tincture either of spleen or arrogance in his nature ; and though it be true that he gave no quarter to the arguments of his adversaries, nothing could provoke him to strike at their persons. Fle always remembered that the prize contended for was truth, and that, for the -sake of obtaining it, the public undertook to sit asjudges: he was cautious, there- fore, of letting fall any thing that was unbecoming, or that might be indecent- or ungrateful to his readers to peruse. He was not, however, so scrupulous as to forbear disclosing . vulgar errors, through fear of giving the multitude offence. His modesty might, indeed, hinder his preferment, but it never obstructed his duty. He understood perfectly well how easily the people may be wrought either to superstition or profaneness; and no man could be-more sensible than he
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