now to be changed in compliance with the humour of a party; as soon as that was done, another party might demand other concessions, and there might be as good reasons invented for these as for those. Many such concessions might also shake those of our own communion, and tempt them to forsake us, and go over to the Church of Rome, pretending that we changed so often, that they were thereby inclined to be of a church, that was constant and true to herself. These were the reasons brought, and chiefly insisted on against all comprehension; and they wrought upon the greater part of the House of Commons, so that they passed a vote against the receiving of any bill for that effect. There were others that opposed it upon very different ends they designed to shelter the papists from the execution of the law, and saw clearly that nothing could bring in popery so well as a toleration. But to tolerate popery bare-faced, would have startled the nation too much; so it was necessary to hinder all the propositions for union, since the keeping up the differences was the best colour they could find for getting the toleration to pass, only as a slackening the laws against dissenters, whose numbers and wealth made it adviseable to have some regard to them; and under this pretence popery might have crept in more covered, and less regarded. So these councils being more acceptable to some concealed papists then in great power, as has since appeared but too evidently, the whole project for comprehension was let fall, and those who had set it on foot, came to be looked on with an ill eye, as secret favourers of the dissenters, underminers of the Church, and every thing else that jealousy and distaste could cast on them. But But upon this occasion, the lord chief baron, and Dr. Wilkins, came to contract a firm and familiar friendship; and the lord chief baron having much business, and little time to spare, did to enjoy the other the more, what he had scarce ever done before, he went sometimes to dine with him. And though he lived in great friendship with some other eminent clergymen, as Dr. Ward, bishop of Salisbury; Dr. Barlow, bishop of Lincoln; Dr. Barrow, late master of Trinity College; Dr. Tillotson, dean of Canterbury; and Dr. Stillingfleet, dean of St. Paul's, (men so well known, and so much esteemed, that as it was no wonder the lord chief baron valued their conversation highly, so those of them that are yet alive will think it no lessening of the character they are so deservedly in, that they are reckoned among judge Hale's friends) yet there was an intimacy and freedom in his converse with bishop Wilkins, that was singular to him alone. He had during the late wars, lived in a long and entire friendship with the apostolical primate of Ireland, bishop Usher; their curious searches into antiquity, and the sympathy of both their tempers led them to a great agreement almost in every thing. He held also great conversation with Mr. Baxter, who was his neighbour at Acton, on whom he looked as a person of great devotion and piety, and of a very subtile and quick apprehension : their conversation lay most in metaphysical and abstracted ideas and schemes. He looked with great sorrow on the impiety and atheism of the age, and so he set himself to oppose it, not only by the shining example of his own life, but by engaging in a cause, that indeed could hardly fall into better hands: and as he could not find a subject more worthy of himself, so there were few in the age that understood it so well, and could could manage it more skilfully. The occasion that first led him to write about it, was this. He was a strict observer of the Lord's day, in which, besides his constancy in the public worship of God, he used to call all his family together, and repeat to them the heads of the sermons, with some additions of his own, which he fitted for their capacities and circumstances; and that being done, he had a custom of shutting himself up for two or three hours, which he either spent in his secret devotions, or on such profitable meditations as did then occur to his thoughts he writ them with the same simplicity that he formed them in his mind, without any art, or so much as a thought to let them be published: he never corrected them, but laid them by, when he had finished them, having intended only to fix and preserve his own reflections in them; so that he used no sort of care to polish them, or make the first draught perfecter than when they fell from his pen. These fell into the hands of a worthy person, and he judging, as well he might, that the communicating them to the world, might be a publick service, printed two volumes of them in octavo a little before the author's death, containing his CONTEMPLATIONS. I. Of our latter end. II. Of wisdom and the fear of God. III. Of the knowledge of Christ crucified. VI. Jacob's vow. VII. Of contentation. VIII. Of afflictions. IX. A good method to entertain unstable and trou blesome times. X. Changes and troubles: a poem. XI. Of the redemption of time. XII. The great audit. XIII. Directions touching keeping the Lord's day: in a letter to his children. XIV. Poems written upon Christmas day. In the Second Volume. I. An enquiry touching happiness. II. Of the chief end of man. III. Upon Eccles. 12. 1. Remember thy Creator. IV. Upon the 51 Psalm, v. 10. Create a clean heart in me: with a poem. V. The folly and mischief of sin. VI. Of self-denial. VII. Motives to watchfulness, in reference to the good and evil angels. VIII. Of moderation of the affections. IX. Of worldly hope and expectation. X. Upon 13 Heb. 14, We have here no continuing city. XI. Of contentedness and patience. XII. Of moderation of anger. XIII. A preparative against afflictions. XIV. Of submission, prayer, and thanksgiving. In them there appears a generous and true spirit of religion, mixed with most serious and fervent devotion; and perhaps with the more advantage, that the stile wants some correction, which shews they they were the genuine productions of an excellent mind, entertaining itself in secret with such contemplations. The stile is clear and masculine, in a due temper between flatness and affectation, in which he expresses his thoughts both easily and decently. In writing these discourses, having run over most of the subjects that his own circumstances led him chiefly to consider, he began to be in some pain to choose new arguments; and therefore resolved to fix on a theme that should hold him longer. He was soon determined in his choice, by the immoral and irreligious principles and practices, that had so long vexed his righteous soul; and therefore began a great design against atheism, the first part of which is only printed, of the Origination of Mankind, designed to prove the creation of the world, and the truth of the Mosaical history. The second part was of the nature of the soul, and of a future state. The third part was concerning the attributes of God, both from the abstracted ideas of him, and the light of nature; the evidence of Providence; the notions of morality, and the voice of conscience. And the fourth part was concerning the truth and authority of the Scriptures, with answers to the objections against them. On writing these, he spent seven years. He wrote them with so much consideration, that one who perused the original under his own hand, which was the first draught of it, told me, he did not remember of any considerable alteration; perhaps not of twenty words in the whole work. The way of his writing them, only on the evenings of the Lord's-day, when he was in town, and not |