Chapter 139

July 12, 1778. (page 191)

Mr. Lort has delivered your papers to me, dear Sir, and I have already gone through them. I will try if I can make any thing of them, but I fear I have not art enough, as I perceive there is absolutely but one fact--the expulsion. You have certainly very clearly proved that Mr. Baker was neither supported by Mr. Prior nor Bishop Burnet; but these are mere negatives. So is the question, whether he intended to compile an Athenae Cantabrigienses or not; and on that you say but little, as you have not seen his papers in the Museum. I will examine the printed Catalogue, and try if I can discover the truth thence, when I go to town. I will also borrow the new Biographia, as I wish to know more of the expulsion. As it is our only fact, one would not be too dry on it. Upon the whole, I think that it would be preferable to draw up an ample character of Mr. Baker, rather than a life. The one was most beautiful, amiable, conscientious; the other totally barren of more than one event: and though you have taken excellent pains to discover all that was possible, yet there is an obscurity hangs over the circumstances that even did attend him; as his connexion with Bishop Crewe and his living. His own modesty comes out the brighter, but then it composes a character, not a life.

As to Mr. Kippis and his censures, I am perfectly indifferent to them. He betrays a pert malignity in hinting an intention of being severe on my father, for the pleasure of exerting a right I allowed, and do allow, to be a just One, though it is not just to do it for that reason; however, let him say his pleasure. The truth will not hurt my father; falsehood will recoil on the author. His asserting, that my censure of Mr. Addison's character of Lord Somers is not to be justified, is a silly ipse dixit, as he does not, in truth cannot, show why it is not to be justified. The passage I alluded to is the argument of an old woman; and Mr. Addison's being a writer of true humour is not justification of his reasoning like a superstitious gossip. In the other passage you have sent me, Mr. Kippis is perfectly in the right, and corrects me very justly. Had I seen Archbishop Abbot's(313) Preface, with the outrageous flattery on, And lies of James I., I should certainly never have said, "Honest Abbot could not flatter!" I should have said, and do say, I never saw grosser perversion of truth. One can almost excuse the faults of James when his bishops were such base sycophants. What can a king think of human nature, when it produces such wretches? I am too impartial to prefer Puritans to clergymen, or vice versa, when Whitgift and Abbot only ran a race of servility and adulation: the result is, that priests of all religions are the same. James and his Levites were worthy of each other; the golden calf and the idolaters were well coupled, and it is Pity they ever came out of the wilderness. I am very glad Mr. Tyson has escaped death and disappointment: pray wish him joy 'of both from me. Has not this Indian summer dispersed your complaints? We are told we are to be invaded. Our Abbots and Whitgifts now see with what successes and consequences their preaching up a crusade against America has been crowned! Archbishop Markham(314) may have an opportunity of exercising his martial prowess. I doubt he would resemble Bishop Crewe more than good Mr. Baker. Let us respect those only who are Israelites indeed. I surrender Dr. Abbot to you. Church and presbytery are terms for monopolies, Exalted notions of church matters are contradictions in terms to the lowliness and humility of the gospel. There is nothing sublime but the Divinity. Nothing is sacred but as His work. A tree or a brute stone is more respectable as such, than a mortal called an Archbishop, or an edifice called a Church, which are the puny and perishable productions of men. Calvin and Wesley had just the same views as the Pope; power and wealth their objects. I abhor both, and admire Mr. Baker.

P. S. I like Popery as well as you, and have shown I do. I like it as I like chivalry and romance. They all furnish one with ideas and visions, which presbyterianism does not. A Gothic church or a convent fills one with romantic dreams-but for the mysterious, the Church in the abstract, it is a jargon that means nothing, or a great deal too much, and I reject it and its apostles, from Athanasius to Bishop Keene.(315)

(313) Dr. George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, born at Guildford, in Surrey, 1562. In 1604, when the translation of the Scriptures now in use was commenced by direction of King James, Dr. Abbot was the second of eight divines of Oxford to whom was committed the care of translating the New Testament, with the exception of the Epistles, He died at the palace at Croydon, in 1633.-E.

(314) Dr. William Markham, translated to the see of York from Chester in 1776. He died in 1807.-E.

(315) Dr. Edmund Keene, Bishop of Ely.-E.