To his Brother Samuel Date: LINCOLN COLLEGE, December 6, 1726. DEAR BROTHER The very thing I desire of you is this, that you would not content yourself with your own opinion, nor fix your own opinion at all, till you have heard my story as well as theirs who accuse me. 'Tis very hard: I have said all that I can say, I have professed my sincerity and integrity, more perhaps than it became me to profess them; I have asked yours as well as my father's pardon for any real or supposed slight I have put upon you; to you in particular I have given all the satisfaction which I could contrive to give in words; and yet am now just as far, if not farther, from a reconciliation than I was when I first set out. Since all probable methods of gaining my cause have failed, I will try one way more: I will relate the controverted facts as plainly as I can, without desiring you either to believe me or not. If you do, I shall be glad both for your sake and my own; if not, I have done my part, and can therefore quietly commit my ways to Him, who in His own good time will make my innocence as clear as the light. First I shall tell you what I suspect, and next what I know. My suspicion is that, on your receiving a letter from me, you immediately set yourself to consider what 'tis probable I shall say to your last: and if you hit upon any of my objections, then they are to go for nothing; you have already found out the emptiness of them. You then proceed to read, taking it for granted that if I will not tell a downright lie, which is a question, I will however color and palliate everything, as far as my wit will serve me to do with any show of truth; that calmness is an infallible mark of disrespect, as warmth is of guilt; and with a few of these either praecognita or praeconcessa, 'tis perfectly easy to demonstrate that I am totally in the wrong.

Without some proceedings of this kind, I cannot imagine or guess how you come to be so displeased at me: why, alter I have over and over desired that my past miscarriages might be forgotten, your language still shows them to be fresh in your memory; to what end, since it does not appear that different expressions would not do as well, you give me in every one of your letters one or more of those taunting sentences, 'It would have been fair enough ad hominem,' ' I hope 'tis not only pro forma that you labor.' I do believe you are yet my affectionate friend; but very much fear you will not be so long, if everything I say has so strange a construction put upon it.

My father's words and your reflection upon them were both perfectly unintelligible to me till I read the Canon he mentions. I should then have been exactly as much at a loss as before, but that my brother Charles accidentally, while we were in the country, repeated to me part of a conversation he had with my father in their return from my brother Ellison's. The substance of it, as near as I remember, was this: 'My father last night was telling me of your disrespect to him; he said you had him at open defiance. I was surprised, and asked him how or when. He said, "Every day, you hear how he contradicts me, and takes your sister's part before my face. Nay, he disputes with me, preach " And then he stopped short as if he wanted to recall his word, and talked of other things.' I said I wondered what he meant; till recollecting with my brother that my father, mother, sister Emly, and I had several times been speaking of the treatment we should show ill men; and that my brother having likewise had many disputes with me about it, I told him 'I had for near a twelvemonth intended writing on Universal Charity, having read over Dr. Clarke and Bishop Atterbury's Sermons for that purpose; that I would set about it immediately, and there he should hear at once, and so would be better able to judge of my arguments.' I wrote it accordingly, and after my mother's perusal and approbation, she making one alteration in the expression, preached it, on Sunday, August 28. I had the same day the pleasure of observing that my father the same day, when one Will. Atkins was mentioned, did not speak so warmly nor largely against him as usual.

The next day (29) I went to Epworth, and returned from thence on Thursday (September 1). In the evening my brother desired me to take a walk, and told me what I have above recited. We supped, and walked about a quarter of an hour in the garden; from whence I ran in to find my father. I met him by himself in the hall, and told him, not without tears, that I learned from my brother I had offended him, both by speaking often in contradiction to him and by not offering myself to write for him, but, I now promised to do whatever he pleased. He kissed me, and I believe cried too; told me he always believed I was good at bottom (those were his words), and would employ me the next day. The next day I began transcribing some papers for him; and find, by my diary, I employed the same way part of every day, from the 2nd to the 12th inclusive; only excepting Sunday the 11th, in which all the spare time I had was employed in writing what I remembered of my father's sermon. On Thursday of the following week I dined at my sister Lambert's, and was her son's godfather, and was detained there by fresh company coming in till evening; on Friday my father, brother, and I walked over to dinner to Mr. Hoole's; on Saturday morning came over Mr. Harper of Epworth and Mr. Pennington, to take leave of my brother and me. In the rest of the week I wrote and transcribed a sermon against Rash Judging, which with my father's leave I preached on Sunday. On Monday the 19th we set out for Oxon. Neither did my father, while I was with him, speak one word to me of that sermon he complains of; nor did it appear, unless by that one word to my brother, that he had then taken offence at all. If he had, he would surely have used some means 'to have satisfaction made where the offence was given,' and not have' suffered me again to occupy that place I had once abused'; especially till I had 'faithfully promised to forbear all such matter of contention in the church,' which I was not likely to do till I was apprised of my fault.

The 53rd Canon runs thus: 'If any preacher in the pulpit particularly or narrowly of purpose impugn or confute any doctrine delivered by any other preacher in the same church or in any church near adjoining, because upon such public dissenting and contradicting there may grow much offence and disquietness to the people the churchwardens or -party grieved shall forthwith signify the same to the Bishop, and not suffer, c.' Against this I have offended, if I have in the pulpit particularly or of purpose impugned any doctrine there delivered before. But this plainly supposes the impugner to know that the doctrine he opposes was preached there before; otherwise he can't possibly be said to impugn it particularly or on purpose. Now, it is not possible he should know it was there delivered, unless he either heard it preached himself or was informed of it by others. The disputed point between my father and me was the particular measure of charity due to wicked men; but neither have I heard him, neither did he himself or any other person inform me, that he ever preached at all in Wroot Church on that subject. So that I am in no wise guilty of breaking the Canon, unless it obliges every preacher to inquire what particular tenets have ever been maintained (for the time is not limited) both in his own and the adjoining churches: if he is to inquire of the former, he must inquire of the latter too; the Canon equally speaking of both. If there be any objection made to the sermon itself, I have it by me, and, for the matter of it, am not ashamed or afraid to show it anybody.

Why you defer your advice till my debts are paid See letter of March 19, 1727. you may probably see a reason; I do not. I reckon my Fellowship near sixty pounds a year. Between forty and fifty it will infallibly cost to live at college, use what management I can. As for pupils, I am not qualified to take them till one of our tutors goes away; when that will be is very uncertain. What you mean by my debt at Wroot I do not apprehend. If the whole I have at any time received of my father, I know not how much it is, and shall not therefore know (as neither will you) when it is satisfied; if what I have received at the University, I may be ruined for want of advice before I can possibly repay that; if what I received when last in the country, that was nothing at all, for I not only bore my own expenses in traveling, but paid ready money for whatever I brought from thence, and left money behind me though for several reasons I did not think good to tell my father so much when he blamed me with being so expensive to him in that journey. My sister Hetty's behavior has, for aught I have heard, been innocent enough since her marriage. Most of my disputes on Charity with my father were on her account, he being inconceivably exasperated against her. 'Tis likely enough he would not see her when at Wroot: he has disowned her long ago, and never spoke of her in my hearing but with the utmost detestation. Both he, my mother, and several of my sisters were persuaded her penitence was but feigned. One great reason for my writing the above-mentioned sermon was to endeavor, as far as in me lay, to convince them that, even on the supposition that she was impenitent, some tenderness was due to her still; which my mother, when I read it to her, was so well aware of that she told me as soon as she had read it, 'You writ this sermon for Hetty; the rest was brought in for the sake of the last paragraph.'

My sister Lambert behaved herself unexceptionally while we were in the country. That she had lately altered her conduct, which indeed is highly improbable, I did not hear till now. I very heartily desire (though I see not how it can be effected, unless you will take my word till my actions disprove it) that you should entertain a just opinion, as of the morals in general, so in particular of the gratitude of Your loving Brother.