XXVII. To the accomplished PETER HEINBACH. I RECEIVED your letter from the Hague the 18th December, which, as your convenience feems to require, I answer the fame day on which it was received. In this letter, after returning me thanks for fome favours which I am not confcious of having done, but which my regard for you makes me with to have been real, you ask me to recommend you, through the medium of D. Lawrence, to him who is appointed our agent in Holland. This I grieve that I am not able to do, both on account of my little familiarity with those who have favours to beftow, fince I have more pleafure in keeping myself at home, and because I believe that he is already on his voyage, and has in his company a perfon in the office of fecretary, which you are anxious to obtain. But the bearer of this is on the eve of his departure. Adieu. Westminster, Dec. 18, 1657. XXVIII. To JOHN BADIAUS, Minifter of the Church of Orange. MOST excellent and reverend fir, I believe that our friend Durius will take upon himself the blame of my not writing to you fooner. After he had showed me that paper which you wifhed me to read concerning what I had done and fuffered for the fake of the Gospel, I wrote this letter as foon as poffible, intending to fend it by the first conveyance, fince I was fearful that you might confider a longer filence as neglect. In the mean you time I am under the greatest obligations to your friend Molin, for procuring me the efteem of the virtuous in those parts by the zeal of his friendship and the warmth of his praise; and though I am not ignorant that the conteft in which I was engaged with fo great an adverfary, that the celebrity of the fubject and the ftyle of the compofition had far and wide diffufed my fame, yet I think that I can be famous only in proportion as I enjoy the approbation of the good. I clearly fee that you are of the fame opinion; fo many are the toils you have endured, fo many are the enemies whom have provoked by your difinterested zeal in defence of the Chriftian doctrine; and you act with fo much intrepidity as to show, that inftead of courting the applaufe of bad men, you do not fear to excite their most inveterate hate and their most bitter maledictions. Oh happy are you whom, out of fo many thousands of the wife and learned, providence has refcued from the very brink of deftruction, and felected to bear a diftinguished and intrepid teftimony to the truth of the Gospel. I have now reasons for thinking that it was a fingular mercy that I did not write to you fooner; for when I understood by your letters that, threatened on all fides by the malice of your enemies, you were looking round for a place of refuge to which you might fly in the laft extremity of danger, and that you had fixed on England as the object of your withes, I was confiderably gratified, because it gave me the hope of enjoying your company, and because I was happy to find you think fo favourably of my country; but I lamented that, particularly owing to your ignorance of our language, I did not fee any chance of a decent provifion being made for you among us. The death of an old French minifter has fince very opportunely occurred. The principal perfons of his congregation (from whom I have received this communication) anxiously with, or rather invite you to be chofen in his place; they have determined to pay the expences of your journey, to provide for you as large a falary as any of the French minifters receive, and to let you want nothing which can contribute to the cheerful discharge of your ecclefiaftical function. Fly, I befecch you, as foon as poffible, re verend verend fir, to thofe who are fo defirous of feeing you, and where you will reap a harvest, not rich indeed in temporal delights, but in numerous opportunities to improve the hearts and to fave the fouls of men; and be affured that your arrival is warmly defired by all good Adieu. men. Weftminfter, April 1, 1659. XXIX. To HENRY OLDENBURG. THE indulgence which you beg for yourself, you will rather have to bestow on me, whofe turn, if I remember, it was to write. My regard for you has, believe me, fuffered no diminution; but either my studies or my domeftic cares, or perhaps my indolence in writing, have made me guilty of this omiffion of duty. I am, by God's help, as well as ufual. I am not willing, as you with me, to compile a history of our troubles; for they seem rather to require oblivion than commemoration; nor have we fo much need of a perfon to compofe a hiftory of our troubles as happily to fettle them. I fear with you left our civil diffenfions, or rather maniacal agitation, fhould expofe us to the attack of the lately confederated enemies of religion and of liberty; but thofe enemies could not inflict a deeper wound upon religion than we ourselves have long fince done by our follies and our crimes. But whatever difturbances kings and cardinals may meditate and contrive, I trust that God will not fuffer the machinations and the violence of our enemies to fucceed according to their expectations. I pray that the Proteftant fynod, which you fay is foon to meet at Leyden, may have a happy termination, which has never yet happened to any fynod that has ever met before. But the termination of this might be called happy, if it decreed nothing else but the expulfion of More. More. As foon as my pofthumous adversary shall make his appearance I request you to give me the earliest in formation. Adieu. Westminster, Dec. 20, 1659. XXX. To the noble Youth RICHARD JONES. You fend me a most modeft apology for not writing fooner, when you might more juftly have accused me of the fame offence; fo that I hardly know whether I should choose that you had not committed the offence or not written the apology. Never for a moment believe that I measure your gratitude, if any gratitude be due to me, by the affiduity of your epiftolary communications. Ifhall perceive all the ardour of your gratitude, fince you will extol the merit of my fervices, not fo much in the frequency of your letters as in the excellence of your habits, and the degree of your moral and intellectual proficiency. On the theatre of the world on which you have entered, you have rightly chosen the path of virtue; but know there is a path common to virtue and to vice; and that it behoves you to advance where the way divides. Leaving the common track of pleasure and amufement, you should cheerfully encounter the toils and the dangers of that steep and rugged way which leads to the pinnacle of virtue. This, believe me, you will accomplish with more facility fince you have got a guide of fo much integrity and fkill. Adieu. Westminster, Dec. 20, 1659. VOL. I. T XXXI. To the accomplished PETER HEINBACH, Counsellor to the Elector of Brandenburgh. Ir is not ftrange as you write that report should have induced you to believe, that I had perifhed among the numbers of my countrymen who fell in a year fo fatally vifited by the ravages of the plague. If that rumour sprung as it feems out of a folicitude for my fafety, I confider it as no unpleafing indication of the esteem in which I am held among you. But by the goodness of God, who provided for me a place of refuge in the country, I yet enjoy both life and health; which, as long as they continue, I fhall be happy to employ in any useful undertaking. It gives me pleafure to think, that after fo long an interval I have again occurred to your remembrance; though, owing to the luxuriance of your praife, you seem almoft to lead me to suspect that you had quite forgotten one in whom you say that you admire the union of fo many virtues; from fuch an union I might dread too numerous a progeny if it were not evident that the virtues flourish moft in penury and diftrefs. But one of those virtues has made me but an ill return for her hofpitable reception in my breaft; for what you term policy, and which I wish that you had rather called patriotic piety, has, if I may so say, almoft left me, who was charmed with fo fweet a found, without a country. The other virtues harmonioufly agree. Our country is wherever we are well off. I will conclude after firft begging you if there be any errors in the diction or the punctuation to impute them to the boy who wrote this, who was quite ignorant of Latin, and to whom I was, with no little vexation, obliged to dictate not the words, but, one by one, the |
