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deed to have discouraged it; but we were far enough removed from the atmosphere of fanaticism. Never therefore would it have entered into our system, to have forced the premature consideration of mystical or speculative theology upon a tender mind, against the current of nature; neither should we have run so directly counter to the dictates of common sense, as to have incurred the danger of disqualifying him for the present world, by an unseasonable preparation for the future. His piety, like the melancholy of Jaques, was his own. It was animated by a natural warmth, but had no fuel applied from without, to kindle it into a self-destroying blaze. Nearly the whole of the following letter exhibits so forcibly his sentiments on this head, that I shall insert it at length.
