appear to have ever come in contact with that noblest of his con- CHA P. temporaries. It was a great thing to have a Queen that could XXVII. appreciate them both. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE BISHOP'S FRIENDS IN HIS OLD AGE. 1740-1745. THE success of the work as it went on came seasonably to divert and relieve the Bishop's anxieties about the famine and the impropriations, both at that time hanging heavy upon him. From two distant friends especially, both Doctors and both correspondents of his son, loving words reached him from time to time, which one may fancy doing him more good than any public and official praise. One was Dr. George Dr. Cheyne of Bath, described by the Bishop two years after- Cheyne. wards, when he had to insert his name in his mortuary list, (for he died April 12, 1743,) as "a most excellent religious physician and philosopher: for whose excellent works I and many more stand indebted"." Dr. Cheyne for his part had thus cordially welcomed the first announcement of the "Indian Instructed:" "I am rejoiced the good, the worthy Christian Bishop of Man continues, an honour to human nature, and a faithful dispenser of the words of the holy Jesus, and shall be glad to benefit by his labours and works." This was written March 9, 1740; the Doctor not dating P He was of Scotland, born 1671: thought first to be a Clergyman, but became a medical student at Edinburgh under Dr. Pitcairn. His first work was "Philosophical Principles of Religion. Lond. 1706." The rest (which were many) were medical or mathematical, and some several times reprinted. The brief sketch of him in Rose's Biographical Dictionary gives two sayings of his, such as may well help to explain our Bishop's deep regard for him. In the Preface to an Essay on Health and Long Life," apologizing for severe language in two former works, he says, "I heartily condemn and detest all personal re flections, all malicious and unmannerly CHAP. by the old ecclesiastical year. Some months after he acXXVIII. knowledges the book as a joint gift from the Bishop and his son: "I was extremely obliged to you both for the valuable present of your father's book for the Indians. I esteem it much, for its justness, solidity, and propriety for the end proposed. . . . I gave a copy to good Mr. Jones, who is the source and great promoter of the Welch schools." But Mr. Jones had been a long time about a compendium of his own in Welch; and being bred among them, and knowing their genius and language, his effort was likely to be bettered, but could hardly be superseded, by that of the Bishop. Then Dr. Cheyne tried among the Bristol dealers to the West Indies: "but alas! they are most of them pirates and Madagascar men:" meaning perhaps regular slave traders. In Jamaica, again, he fails because of the Spanish war keeping all in perpetual alarm. Upon the whole, thus he comforts himself: "Bath, Aug. 13, 1740. "We must do our best, and wait God's time, and seize only the moments of eternity. . . I hope, though the nation, especially those of the two extremes, the highest and greatest, and the lowest and most abject, be extremely ignorant, corrupted, and vicious, yet there is the dawning of some good spirit abroad among the middling rank; and that even the Methodists, though novices, indiscreet, and precipitate, may be sent to move the waters, to bring some to hearken to the gentle, still voice, which in time may lead them into solid truth, if the evil spirit do not creep in, as it has ever done in all these specious pretensions and divisions. But the times and seasons are in the hands of the Father. What is that to thee? follow thou Me.' . . . Depend on it, whatever be your or my outward state of existence, you shall, and all your relatives, possess the heart and all the most tender and amicable affections and actions of mine, and of, Reverend and Dear Sir, 6 Your most affectionate and obliged, humble Servant, "GEORGE CHEYNE." The letter may be said to breathe a sort of autumnal fragrance, sweetly taking leave of any bright hope he might have had of golden days in his time in the visible world, yet in no wise giving up things or making the worst of them. Evidently, too, he anticipates his own approaching departure, CHAP. and the possibility of the Bishop's outlasting him. XXVIII. Dr. Hales appears to have been of a more stirring and Dr. Hales. sanguine temperament, and his words of affection for the Bishop (with whom he seems to have had more of personal acquaintance than Cheyne had) are constantly mixed up with medical and other messages. Thus he writes from Faringdon, near Alton, June 12, 1741 : "I received not long since a very kind letter from the Bishop; he says he drinks nothing but water, though he has some little hints of a gouty humour. But sure it would be well for him to allow himself a little wine at his years. He says that by washing his hands with mustard-seed, which were swelled by the frost and a goutish humour, they were perfectly cured, and that it eased the flying pains in his feet and ancles: and asks if it effects it by causing a perspiration or by disposing the matter into the habit of the body. I believe by attenuating it is prepared to go both ways." Then he explains to him the composition of a certain favourite empirical medicine, called "Mrs. Stephens's," about which the Bishop had enquired; and adds, "I think not to write to the Bishop till I have shewn his letter to the benefactresses, which will be very acceptable to them. Pray my best respects to him." Hales, too, looked for great things from the dispersion of the Bishop's new book in America: "Thank you for sending me the accounts from thence; they are all very acceptable to me, and to the pious donors towards the Instruction of the Indians.' It was very happy that such numbers of them were sent at once to all our plantations. They are like to be the means of spreading true Christianity there in an extraordinary manner. I make no doubt but we [Dr. Bray's] associates shall concur, with our little fund, as far as we are able." son's pro But, after all, the Bishop's chief comfort in England hap- Dr. Wilpily came from his son himself, of whom there can be no motion. doubt that he really applied himself to his clerical work. He began to reside regularly in his house at Walbrook, though it was not the most inviting of all homes; and the very first Lent after his appointment he set about catechising in the CHAP. church, and continued many years to take pains in that XXVIII. office, both there and in the way of instructing the King's scholars at Westminster when he came to be a prebendary. His journal not being extant, we cannot say for certain whether he went on with the mode of solicitation which had become so ordinary with him, as it was, in that day, with no attempt to disguise it, among the generality of those whose position put them in the way of preferment. There is, however, great reason to believe that it had ceased to be so with Dr. Wilson. When the preferment did come, it came as a surprise on his good father. George the Second, mindful, no doubt, of the interest which his Queen had taken in the Bishop of Man, and perhaps in fulfilment of some promise made to her, did, on April 11, 1743, appoint Dr. Wilson Prebendary of Westminster: Bishop Sherlock, then of Salisbury, having three days before, without his knowledge, as he himself told Leland, appointed him Sub-Almoner to his Majesty: "A place of great trust, but it will be a great pleasure, as I hope to distribute his Majesty's favours and charities in a more impartial manner than they have formerly been. In the same week," so his letter goes on, "the King was pleased, without any previous solicitation, to bestow upon me a prebend of Westminster; and the generous and gracious manner in which the favour was conferred has very much enhanced the obligation. I pray God that I may make a good return for these unexpected and unmerited favours, for I look upon myself as a steward, who, the more he has, the larger will his account grow." In a very short time came two letters from the Isle of Man. The first, to the new dignitary himself: "I am both surprised and pleased with the unexpected favours conferred upon you, both by the King and the Bishop of Salisbury. I hope in God you will answer the great ends of His Providence, in raising you such friends, and in putting into your hands such unlooked for talents, in order to improve them to His glory and to your own salvation. For my own part, I have ever received such favours with fear, lest I should be tempted to dishonour God by His own gifts; and it shall be my daily prayer for you that you may never do so. This was the case of the wisest and the greatest of men, whose history and fall was part of this day's service of the CHAP. Church "." "Inclosed you have a letter to his Majesty. Perhaps you may not approve of the style, (his instead of your Majesty,) but I know it to be more becoming, and [it] will be better accepted by a foreigner, and therefore it shall so pass. I have also written to the Bishop of Salisbury, to whom my most grateful service and thanks. According to my notion of writing to his Majesty, I ought not to have subscribed my name, but I have done it, lest you should have thought otherwise : "May it please the King's most sacred Majesty, "To receive the most grateful acknowledgments of the ancient Bishop of Man, for his Majesty's great condescension and late royal favour to the son of a Bishop whose obscure diocese and remote situation might justly have forbid him all expectations of so high a nature from a royal hand. May both the father and the son ever act worthy of so distinguished a favour! And may the King of kings bless his Majesty with all the graces and virtues which are necessary for his high station and for his eternal happiness; enable his Majesty to overcome all the difficulties he may meet with abroad, and bring him back to his kingdoms here in peace and safety, and finally to an everlasting kingdom hereafter:-which has been, and shall be, the sincere and constant prayer of his Majesty's most grateful, dutiful, and faithful subject, "Isle of Man, May 3, 1743." "THOMAS SODOR AND MAN. The latter part of the letter was on business, relating to a charity in the island: the biographers add it as completing the sample of his correspondence with his son. There was, and is, a school called Christian's in the town of Peel, endowed with £20 per annum, under the will of Philip Christian, clothworker and citizen of London, 1654, being a rentcharge on some houses of his in Paternoster-row, bequeathed by him to the Master, Wardens, and Commonalty of the Art or Mystery of Clothworkers, in the City of London, for the maintenance of a school in Peel. This gave occasion to his writing, on that same 3rd of May,— "I have a favour to beg of you in relation to Peel School. The Clothworkers' Company are trustees for the salary, which was £20 9 1 Kings x., xi. XXVIII. |