TO THE REV. JOHN NEWTON.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Nov. 19, 1781.

I REALLY think your apprehensions for Mr. Madan are but too well founded. I should be more concerned than surprised to find them verified. Sanguine and confident as he has been, his mortification will be extreme when he finds that what he took for terra firma, was a mere vapour hanging in the horizon, in pursuit of which he has run his vessel upon shoals that must prove fatal to her. Discoverers of truth are generally sober, modest, and humble; and if their discoveries are less valued by mankind than they deserve to be, can bear the disappointment with patience and equality of temper. But hasty reasoners and confident asserters are generally wedded to an hypothesis, and transported with joy at their fancied acquisitions, are impatient under contradiction, and grow wild at the thoughts of a refutation. Never was an air-built castle more completely demolished than his is likely to be; I wish with you that he may be able to sustain the shock,

but am at a loss to conceive how he should do it. After awakening the attention of mankind, and calling the world around him to listen to his 'Evpńka, after having distressed the serious, and excited the curiosity, (perhaps the appetite,) of the giddy and unthinking, to find himself baffled with so much ease, and refuted with such convincing perspicuity on the part of his opponent, must give a terrible blow to every passion that engaged him in the task, and that was soothed and gratified to the utmost by his fancied success in it. This may, (and every considerate person will wish

it may,) dispose him to a serious recollection and examination of his past conduct, and work in him a reform more valuable to him than the possession of all Solomon's wives would be, or even the establishment of polygamy by law. Surely the poor lunatic who uses his blanket for a robe, and imagines that a few straws stuck whimsically through his hair are a royal diadem, is not more to be pitied, perhaps less, than the profound reasoner who turns over shelves of folios with infinite industry and toil, and at the end of all his labour finds that he has grasped a shadow, and made himself a jest to the bystander.

I shall be obliged to you if, when you have had an opportunity to learn, you will let me know how he bears the brunt, whether he hardens himself against conviction, which in this case is scarcely possible, whether he repents of what is past, or whether he is quite overwhelmed by regret and fruitless sorrow.

You do me an honour I little deserve when you ask my opinion upon any occasion, and speak of being determined by it. Such as it is, however, it is always at your service, and would be if it were better worth your having. The dictates of compassion and humanity prompt you to interpose your good offices in order to prevent the publication with which this unhappy man is threatened by Mr. Haweis. They are advisers you may safely listen to, and deserve the more attention on the present occasion, as you are perhaps the only man in the world to whom such a design has been suggested, and who would know how to manage the execution of it with sufficient delicacy and discretion. The book and the author are distinct subjects,

and will be for ever accounted such by all reasonable persons. The author, indeed, may suffer by the follies of the book, but the latter ought not to be judged by the character of the writer. If it were otherwise, yet in this case there can be no need of Mr. Haweis, the point in dispute being already tried, and Mr. Madan's arguments condemned at the bar of the public. Mr. Haweis will hurt himself more by one such ungenerous proceeding, than he can possibly hurt Mr. Madan by divulging, if he can do it, a thousand irregularities in his conduct. Sensual and lawless gratifications are odious enough, especially in a minister; but double detestation attends the man who, to gratify a present enmity, avails himself of secrets he could never have had possession of, had he not once professed himself a friend. If it should happen too that Mr. Madan's intellects should be swept away by such a deluge of obloquy and detraction, following close upon his present disappointment, (an event not at all improbable,) Mr. Haweis will have reason to wish that he had taken his life rather than destroyed his character. He thinks perhaps the interest of the cause demands it of him; but when was the cause promoted by a discovery of the vices or follies of its advocates and professors? On the whole, therefore, if I must advise, I would advise to write.

I believe I returned Mrs. Newton thanks for the cocoa nuts as soon as we received them, but have now a fresh occasion to thank her, Mrs. Unwin having received much benefit from them, and found her health improved ever since she began to eat them.

Our controversies here are at a stand for the pre

sent. Mr. Raban has not yet received the citation with which Mr. Page threatened him, and the Warringtonians are contented not to push forward in the business of the pew till they have seen Mr. Wright, who is expected here on Tuesday.-Mr. Page is very thinly attended; Weston and Clifton and the meetings drink up all his congregation. There were but fifteen to wait upon his last Thursday's lecture;—the blessed effect of quarrelling about straws, when he might have had peace with every body if he had not gone out of his way to seek contention. His hearers, however, complain of great inconsistency in his preaching, and some of his warmest partisans, and whose attachment to him has lasted the longest, begin to be disgusted.

Many thanks for two pair of remarkably fine soles, with shrimps; they were here in sixteen hours after they set out from London, and came very opportunely for me, who, having a violent cold, could hardly have eaten any thing else.

Mrs. Unwin intended to have sent a couple of fowls, but being taken out of the coop, one of them appeared to be distempered, and two others, on examination, in the same predicament; one so bad that we were obliged to throw it away, and the other we gave away, not thinking it eatable except by those whose stomachs were less nice than our own. It is, I suppose, an epipoultrical malady.

You told me Mrs. Newton intended to have sent me a long story about the fish. With both my two eyes, assisted by my two glasses, I could make neither

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more nor less of it than a long song, and so I read the passage to Mrs. Unwin once and again. I should have felt more than ordinary concern for the business that prevented her, and have endeavoured by all means to persuade her to resume her intention and to send me this song immediately, if Mrs. Unwin had not some time after discovered, with more sagacity than I happened to have in exercise, that, what I took for a song was only a story, the insignificant letter t being omitted, and the ry having assumed the appearance on this occasion of their near relations ng.

Mrs. Unwin would have attempted to write, but I dissuaded her from it, because even when she is pretty well she finds it hurtful.

You will believe us both, as ever,

Your obliged and affectionate friends and servants, WM. AND M

TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

Nov. 24, 1781.

NEWS is always acceptable, especially from another world. I cannot tell you what has been done in the Chesapeake, but I can tell you what has passed at West Wycombe, in this county. Do you feel yourself disposed to give credit to the story of an apparition ? No, say you. I am of your mind. I do not believe more than one in a hundred of those tales with which old women frighten children, and teach children to frighten each other. you are not such a philosopher, I suppose, as to have persuaded yourself that an

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