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The Faith of Unbelief: Rochester's “Satyre,” Deism, and Religious Freethinking in Seventeenth-Century England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2012
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1 Burnet, Gilbert, Some Passages of the Life and Death of the Right Honourable John Earl of Rochester (London, 1693), p. 68Google Scholar. On Rochester's sexual libertinism, see, e.g., Kramnick, Jonathan Brody, “Rochester and the History of Sexuality,” ELH 69 (2002): 277–301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hammond, Paul, “Rochester's Homoeroticism,” in That Second Bottle: Essays on John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ed. Fisher, Nicholas (New York, 2000), pp. 47–62Google Scholar; Coltharp, Duane, “Rivall Fops, Rambling Rakes, Wild Women: Homosocial Desire and Courtly Crisis in Rochester's Poetry,” Eighteenth Century 38 (1997): 23–42Google Scholar; Chernaik, Warren, Sexual Freedom in Restoration Literature (New York, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, Stephen, “‘Something Genrous in Meer Lust’? Rochester and Misogyny,” in Reading Rochester, ed. Burns, Edward (New York, 1995), pp. 21–41Google Scholar; Weber, Harold, “Drudging in Fair Aurelia's Womb: Constructing Homosexual Economies in Rochester's Poetry,” Eighteenth Century 33 (1992): 99–117Google Scholar; Wintle, Sarah, “Libertinism and Sexual Politics,” in Spirit of Wit: Reconsiderations of Rochester, ed. Treglown, Jeremy (Hamden, Conn., 1982), pp. 133–65Google Scholar; Wilcoxon, Reba, “Rochester's Sexual Politics,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 8 (1979): 137–49Google Scholar. On the religious aspects of Restoration libertinism, see Turner, James Grantham, Libertines and Radicals in Early Modern London: Sexuality, Politics, and Literary Culture, 1630–1685 (Cambridge, 2002), p. xGoogle Scholar, and “The Properties of Libertinism,” Eighteenth-Century Life 9 (1995): 75–87Google Scholar.
2 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2d ed. (1989)Google Scholar, freethinking in the period under consideration here denoted not only the rejection of religious authority but also the rejection of Christianity generally. For the most part, then, the freethinker was seen to be an unbeliever.
3 Tillotson, John, “The Folly of Scoffing at Religion,” in Works (London, 1696), p. 36Google Scholar.
4 According to the MLA Bibliography, fifty-five full-length articles have been published on Rochester in the past ten years. Of these fifty-five, only two have centrally addressed religion, whereas twenty-seven have examined sex.
5 Manning, Gillian, “Rochester's Satyr against Reason and Mankind and Contemporary Religious Debate,” Seventeenth Century 8 (1993): 107Google Scholar. For the poem's immediate context of religious debate, see also Trotter, David, “Wanton Expressions,” in Treglown, , ed., Spirit of Wit, pp. 111–32Google Scholar; Paulson, Kristoffer F., “The Reverend Edward Stillingfleet and the ‘Epilogue’ to Rochester's a Satyr against Reason and Mankind,” Philological Quarterly 50 (1971): 657–63Google Scholar; Thormählen, Marianne, Rochester: The Poems in Context (New York, 1993), pp. 167–74Google Scholar; Griffin, Dustin, Satires against Man (Berkeley, 1973), pp. 183–88Google Scholar.
6 Wilcoxon affirms that the “Satyre” rejects Christian eschatology, a position seen to be inspired by the Epicurean critique of religion, but her discussion of the poem generally neglects theology in favor of philosophy. Though the poem's animus against rationalism is acknowledged to include “the unverifiable concepts of religion” and “the fear engendered by religion,” these latter insights are not elaborated upon, nor are they traced out more substantively in the genealogy of intellectual precursors reviewed. See Wilcoxon, Reba, “Rochester's Philosophical Premises: A Case for Consistency,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 8 (1974–75): 192, 197CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Griffin connects the poem's attack on reason and its theriophilia to a philosophically heterodox tradition, but such heterodoxy is explained merely as “bodies of thought [that] ranged themselves against the official position of the Anglican and Catholic churches” (Satires, pp. 162, 163–68). Finally, in Thormählen's extensive discussion of the poem's influences, while Hobbes is acknowledged to be an atheist in the eyes of Rochester's contemporaries, and the presence of his thinking in the “Satyre” confirmed, no attempt is made to consider the question of Rochester's infidelity or how it may have been informed by Hobbes. The influence of Montaigne and the skeptics is treated similarly (Thormählen, Rochester, pp. 174, 175, 183–84, 201, 360–61).
7 Turner, “Properties,” p. 76. Larry Carver notes that the debate over Rochester's faith “began the day [he] died and … has continued on into criticism.” See Carver, Larry, “Rascal before the Lord: Rochester's Religious Rhetoric,” in John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: Critical Essays, ed. Vieth, David M. (New York, 1988), p. 108 n. 2Google Scholar. For the view that Rochester was more conventionally Christian than has typically been thought, see Carver; Pinto, Vivian deSola, Enthusiast in Wit (Lincoln, Nebr., 1962), pp. 185–226Google Scholar; Murdock, Kenneth, “A Very Profane Wit,” in The Sun at Noon (New York, 1939), pp. 269–306Google Scholar; Williamson, George, The Proper Wit of Poetry (Chicago, 1961), p. 126Google Scholar.
8 In arguing that Rochester's faith is linked to the particular nature of his heterodoxy, my account of the poet's religious stance differs from the above views of Carver and Pinto. For the argument that the freethinking challenge was articulated within the discourses of piety, see Champion, J. A. I., The Pillars of Priest-Craft Shaken (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 14–15, 18–20Google Scholar; Clark, J. C. D., English Society, 1688–1832: Religion, Ideology, and Politics during the Ancien Regime (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 10, 318–20Google Scholar.
9 Love, Harold, The Works of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar. All references to Rochester's poetry follow Love's edition of the poems and are cited by line number in the body of the essay.
10 Trotter, “Wanton Expressions,” pp. 111–12; Griffin, Satires, p. 201; Hobbes, Thomas, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. Molesworth, William, 11 vols. (London, 1839–45), 5:304Google Scholar; Stillingfleet, Edward, Fifty Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, in Works, 6 vols. (London, 1710), 1:227Google Scholar.
11 See Manning, “Rochester's Satyr”; Thormählen, Rochester, pp. 171–73; Griffin, Satires, pp. 182–96.
12 Manning, “Rochester's Satyr,” pp. 103–6.
13 See Spurr, John, “‘Rational Religion’ in Restoration England,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988): 563–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 3d ed., 2 vols. (London, 1902), 1:86–92Google Scholar.
14 Stillingfleet, Fifty Sermons, p. 227.
15 The Christian humanist tradition had long championed what it called “right reason” as a divinely implanted guide. The later seventeenth century, however, witnessed the divorce of the realms of knowledge and virtue. Even Anglicanism was influenced by reason's newly natural and pragmatic function (see Spurr, “Rational Religion,” pp. 570–71).
16 Standish, John, A Sermon Preached before the King at White-Hal, Septem. the 26th 1675 (London, 1676), p. 25Google Scholar; Glanvill, Joseph, Logou threskeia: Or, a Seasonable Recommendation, and Defence of Reason, in the Affairs of Religion (London, 1674), pp. 29, 23Google Scholar; Hallywell, Henry, “Preface,” in Rust, George, A Discourse of the Use of Reason in Matters of Religion (London, 1683), p. 49Google Scholar.
17 Paulson has argued that this final section (lines 174–225), which in early manuscripts was often circulated as a separate poem (see Love, Works, p. 393 n. 173.2), was composed at a later date from the rest and intended as a rebuttal to Edward Stillingfleet's attack on the “Satyre” (“The Reverend Edward Stillingfleet”). His findings are thought to be inconclusive (see Manning, “Rochester's Satyr,” p. 116 n. 6).
18 See Fujimura, Thomas H., “Rochester's ‘Satyr against Mankind’: An Analysis,” in Attribution in Restoration Poetry: A Study of Rochester's Poems of 1680, ed. Vieth, David M. (New Haven, Conn., 1963), pp. 216–17Google Scholar; Griffin, Satires, pp. 206, 241.
19 Bentley, Richard, “Sermon IX: Of Revelation and the Messias,” in Eight Sermons, 6th ed. (Cambridge, 1735), pp. 307–8Google Scholar.
20 See Pinto, Enthusiast, pp. 157–58, for the view that the speaker's conditional recantation signals a desire to embrace faith as traditionally defined. My reading of these lines also differs from Thormählen's argument that the speaker would agree to obey a truly pious churchman not because he shares the latter's faith but, rather, because his senses would inform him of the existence of one who is worthy of receiving his subservience (Rochester, p. 237).
21 Manning, “Rochester's Satyr,” p. 102.
22 Hill, Christopher, “Freethinking and Libertinism: The Legacy of the English Revolution,” in The Margins of Orthodoxy, ed. Lund, Roger D. (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 61, 61–62Google Scholar, The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, 3 vols. (Amherst, Mass., 1985), 1:298–316Google Scholar, and The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (New York, 1975), pp. 197–230Google Scholar.
23 By “enthusiastic” I refer to the radical sects’ subversive claims to a personal divine inspiration, one whose content was often opposed to the revealed religion sanctioned by Scripture and institutionalized religion.
24 Turner, “Properties,” p. 80; Fane, Francis, “Dedication” to Love in the Dark (1675), in Rochester: The Critical Heritage, ed. Farley-Hills, David (London, 1972), p. 37Google Scholar (quoted in Turner, “Properties,” p. 79; and Hill, Collected Essays, 1:303).
25 Pocock, J. G. A., “Enthusiasm: The Antiself of Enlightenment,” in Enthusiasm and Enlightenment in Europe, 1650–1850, ed. Klein, Lawrence E. and La Vopa, Anthony J. (San Marino, Calif., 1998), pp. 14, 16, 18Google Scholar, and “Thomas Hobbes: Atheist or Enthusiast? His Place in a Restoration Debate,” History of Political Thought 11 (1990): 737–49Google Scholar; Cudworth, Ralph, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 134Google Scholar; Glanvill, Logou, pp. 30–31.
26 Turner, “Properties,” p. 78.
27 Hill, Collected Essays, 1:301, 298.
28 Turner, “Properties,” p. 80, and see also Libertines, pp. 45–46, 120, 225.
29 See Locke, John, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, Peter H. (Oxford, 1975), 4.19.9Google Scholar.
30 See Griffin, Satires, pp. 186–88, 211; Thormählen, Rochester, p. 194; Wilcoxon, “Rochester's Philosophical Premises,” p. 193.
31 The latitudinarian movement in Anglicanism eventually abandoned its Platonist element, but Rochester here refers to a moment when the two were unified in the fight against enthusiam on the one side and atheism on the other. See Levine, Joseph M., “Latitudinarians, Neoplatonists, and the Ancient Wisdom,” in Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England, 1640–1700, ed. Kroll, Richard, Ashcraft, Richard, and Zagorin, Perez (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 85–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Beiser, Frederick C., The Sovereignty of Reason (Princeton, N.J., 1996), pp. 139, 169–72Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., “Definitions of Orthodoxy,” in Lund, , ed., Margins, p. 45Google Scholar.
32 Manning, “Rochester's Satyr,” p. 111.
33 See Crocker, S. F., “Rochester's ‘Satire against Mankind’: A Study of Certain Aspects of the Background,” West Virginia University Studies 3 (1937): 57–73Google Scholar; Fujimura, “Rochester's ‘Satyr’”; Wilcoxon, “Rochester's Philosophical Premises”; Thormählen, Rochester, pp. 174–84; Griffin, Satires, pp. 162–73.
34 de Montaigne, Michel, Apology of Raymond Sebond, in Essays, ed. Stewart, J. I. M. and trans. John Florio, 2 vols. (London, 1931), 1:523, 500Google Scholar.
35 Hobbes, , Works, 4:181–82Google Scholar, and Leviathan (New York, 1968), 3.36.469Google Scholar.
36 Hobbes's influence on Rochester's thinking about reason thus has implications that reach well beyond epistemology, the emphasis of most accounts of the relationship between the two figures (see Fujimura, “Rochester's ‘Satyr,’” pp. 206–7; Wilcoxon, “Rochester's Philosophical Premises,” pp. 194–95; Thormählen, Rochester, pp. 174–78; Griffin, Satires, pp. 168–69).
37 Hobbes, Works, 4:174.
38 On deism's tendency to reduce religion to a set of simple, common notions, see Walker, D. P., The Ancient Theology (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972), p. 165Google Scholar; Lovejoy, Arthur O., “The Parallel of Deism and Classicism,” in Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore, 1948), p. 83Google Scholar; Popkin, Richard H., “The Deist Challenge,” in From Prosecution to Toleration, ed. Grell, Ole Peter and Israel, Jonathan I. (Oxford, 1991), pp. 204–5Google Scholar.
39 Though Manning refers to contemporaries’ use of the term “deism” to describe the “religion” of the unbelievers (“Rochester's Satyr,” p. 102), she does not explore the specificities of this particular tradition or its presence in Rochester's poem.
40 Hill, Collected Essays, 1:309.
41 See Robertson, J. M., Dynamics of Religion, 2d ed. (London, 1926), pp. 65–66Google Scholar, and A History of Freethought, 4th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1936), 2:630, 634Google Scholar.
42 Blount, Charles, Anima mundi (London, 1679), p. A4vGoogle Scholar; Henry Hallywell, “Preface,” p. A1.
43 South, Robert, “A Sermon Preached at Westminster-Abbey, 30 April 1676,” in Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions (London, 1692), p. 439Google Scholar; Allestree, Richard, “Sermon X,” in Eighteen Sermons, Whereof Fifteen Preached before the King. The Rest upon Publick Occasions (London, 1669), p. 179Google Scholar; [Glanvill, Joseph], An Apology and Advice for Some of the Clergy, Who Suffer under False, and Scandalous Reports (London, 1674), pp. 4–6Google Scholar; Owtram, William, Twenty Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, 2d ed. (London, 1681), p. A5, italics mineGoogle Scholar.
44 For Rochester's correspondence with Blount, see Treglown, Jeremy, ed., The Letters of John Wilmot Earl of Rochester (Oxford, 1980), pp. 206–16, 234–41Google Scholar; Blount, Charles, The Two First Books of Philostratus, concerning the Life of Apollonius Tyaneus (London, 1680), p. 227Google Scholar. Blount runs together lines 1–34, 76–77, and 80–97 of Rochester's “Satyre.” My reading differs from Joseph Levine’s, which sees Blount's Philostratus and deism generally as resting religion on reason (see Levine, Joseph, “Deists and Anglicans: The Ancient Wisdom and the Idea of Progress,” in Lund, , ed., Margins, pp. 228, 230)Google Scholar.
45 See Harth, Philip, Contexts for Dryden's Thought (Chicago, 1968), p. 75Google Scholar; Pinto, Enthusiast, p. 152.
46 Baxter, Richard, More Reasons for the Christian Religion, and No Reason against It (London, 1672), p. A2vGoogle Scholar; Leland, John, A View of the Principal Deistical Writers That Have Appeared in England in the Last and Present Century (London, 1754), pp. 47–48, 3Google Scholar. On the links between deism and the Radical Enlightenment, see Israel, Jonathan I., Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford, 2001), p. 471CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 Erbery, Matthias, Deism Examin’d and Confuted. In an Answer to a Book Intitled, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (London, 1697), p. A6Google Scholar; Stillingfleet, Edward, A Letter to a Deist (London, 1677), p. A3vGoogle Scholar. On the clandestine circulation of the first Latin editions of Spinoza's Tractatus among the nobility, see Israel, Radical, p. 279. On Spinoza and the aristocracy generally, see Popkin, “The Deist Challenge,” p. 209. Israel suggests that “fear of philosophical deism and atheism gained added intensity in the mid-1670s with the arrival in Britain of batches of Spinoza's Tractatus” (Radical, p. 603).
48 Spinoza, Baruch, Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Shirley, Samuel (Indianapolis, 1998), p. 169Google Scholar. For the argument that Rochester was familiar with the writings of Spinoza, see Pinto, Enthusiast, pp. 199–200; Berman, David, A History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell (New York, 1988), p. 55Google Scholar.
49 [Blount, Charles], Miracles, No Violations of the Laws of Nature (London, 1683), p. [iv]Google Scholar. Blount's text also incorporates Hobbes's discussion of miracles in Leviathan.
50 Bentley, Richard, The Folly of Atheism, and (What Is Now Called) Deism, 2d ed. (London, 1692), pp. 5–6Google Scholar. Stephens, William's Account of the Growth of Deism in England (London, 1696)Google Scholar also contends that “some who pretend themselves Deists” are “meer Sceptics, and practical Atheists, rather than real Deists” (p. 5). Not surprisingly, one of the defining differences between real and counterfeit deists in both Bentley's and Stephens's view is the respective deist's attitude toward reason. Bentley's deists/atheists significantly “are not led astray by their Reasoning” (Folly, p. 14). Reckless and debased scoffers in the eyes of their opponents, they are rather “led captive by their Lusts” (Folly, p. 14). Whereas Stephens's sham deists “ridicule the reality of all Miracle and Revelation,” replacing serious debate with “a witty Jest,” his authentic deists, though also skeptical about revelation, are at least “Men of Sobriety and Probity, who with great freedom have let me into their Thoughts, whereby I can very clearly and fully … discern the rise and progress of this their Opinion” (Account, p. 5).
51 Bentley, Folly, p. 5; Pierre Viret, quoted in Bayle, Pierre, The Dictionary Historical and Critical of Mr. Peter Bayle, 2d ed., 5 vols. (London, 1734–38), 5:482 n. DGoogle Scholar.
52 See Robertson, History, 1:198.
53 Burnet, Some Passages, pp. 52, 72; Lucretius, , De rerum natura: On the Nature of the Universe, trans. Melville, Ronald (Oxford, 1999), pp. 148–49, 158Google Scholar.
54 Montaigne, Essays, 1:101. Wilcoxon misses this important connection between Montaigne and classical Epicureanism by focusing on epistemology rather than religion (“Rochester's Philosophical Premises,” p. 194). Thormählen observes rightly that “Montaigne's Essais possessed the glamour of the scandalous, not unlike the writings of Hobbes,” and that “Montaigne had the additional appeal of priestly disapproval,” but she fails to explore his connections to heterodox principles (Rochester, pp. 183, 184).
55 Montaigne cites the following lines from Lucretius: “All things enfolded are, / In fatall bonds as fits their share” (Lucretius, De rerum natura, 5:674; quoted in Montaigne, Essays, 1:522).
56 Montaigne, Essays, 1:513, 522.
57 Ibid., 1:537.
58 In Rochester's poem, “Tunbridge Wells,” the speaker praises his horse in similar terms: “For he doing only things fitt for his nature / Did seem to me, by much, the wiser Creature” (lines 185–86).
59 Spinoza, Theological, pp. 72, 74, italics mine.
60 See Bentley, Folly, p. 6, for contemporaries’ view that the extreme apartness of the Epicurean deities was a ruse intended to leave nature as the sole force in the universe. As Robert South remarks, the “Old Heathen Philosophers … adore[d] Eternity, and Immensity in a Brute, or a Plant, or some viler thing” (South, Robert, “Natural Religion, without Revelation,” in Twelve Sermons, 2:288, 290)Google Scholar.
61 Hobbes, Leviathan, 1.12.171.
62 See Tenison, Thomas, The Creed of Mr. Hobbes Examined, 2d ed. (London, 1671), p. 12Google Scholar; Conway, Anne, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, ed. Loptson, Peter (Boston, 1982), p. 222Google Scholar; Pocock, “Thomas Hobbes,” pp. 742, 745; Colie, Rosalie L., “Spinoza and the Early English Deists,” Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959): 37–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
63 Bentley, Folly, pp. 8–9; Burnet, Some Passages, pp. 54, 52, 22.
64 Popkin, Richard, History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley, 1979), p. 55Google Scholar.
65 Ibid.; Kors, Alan, Atheism in France, 1650–1729 (Princeton, N.J., 1990), pp. 115–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walker, Ancient Theology, p. 139–41. Commentators on Rochester's “Satyre” have not properly understood the relationship between skeptical fideism and heterodoxy. The former tends to be identified with an overly orthodox notion of Christian belief (see Griffin, Satires, p. 181; Wilcoxon, “Rochester's Philosophical Premises,” p. 191; Thormählen, Rochester, p. 210 n. 40).
66 Charles Saint–Evremond, quoted in Kors, Atheism, p. 71.
67 To Rochester from Charles Blount, 8 February 1679, in Treglown, Letters, p. 216; Blount, Anima mundi, p. 76.
68 Blount, Anima mundi, pp. 106–7, and Philostratus, p. 19; Spinoza, Theological, p. 169.
69 Blount, Anima mundi, pp. 109, 108.
70 Lovejoy, “The Parallel of Deism and Classicism,” p. 88; Wotton, William, Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, 2d ed. (London, 1697), p. 387Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., “Conservative Enlightenment and Democratic Revolutions: The American and French Cases in British Perspective,” Government and Opposition 24 (1989): 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
71 On enthusiasm and class anxiety, see Hawes, Clement, Mania and Literary Style: The Rhetoric of Enthusiasm from the Ranters to Christopher Smart (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 25–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heyd, Michael, “The Reaction to Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Modern History 53 (1981): 278CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On deism as an aristocratic movement, see Popkin, “Deist,” p. 209; Sullivan, Robert, John Toland and the Deist Controversy (Cambridge, 1982), p. 220Google Scholar.
72 The importance of Hobbes's thought to the Restoration libertines is long established. See esp. Mintz, Samuel I., The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 134–46Google Scholar; Pinto, Enthusiast, pp. 22–31. My reading of Hobbes's influence on English deism differs from Israel's recent claim that the deists preferred Spinoza's more radical republican leanings to Hobbes's absolutism (Radical, pp. 601–3; see also Colie, “Spinoza,” pp. 30–31). While Israel is right to emphasize Spinoza's impact on English freethinking, I would argue that he makes English deism too simply radical, neglecting its contradictory conservative tendencies. Hobbes, as I suggest, is suitably radical and conservative and thus especially compelling to a figure like Rochester. Moreover, the aristocratic freethinkers seemed to have little trouble adapting Spinoza to a less than fully radical agenda.
73 Burnet, Some Passages, p. 68. On the suspension of disbelief, see McKeon, Michael, “Historicizing Absalom and Achitophel,” in The New Eighteenth Century, ed. Nussbaum, Felicity and Brown, Laura (New York, 1987), pp. 23–40Google Scholar, and Origins of the English Novel (Baltimore, 1987), pp. 118–28Google Scholar.
74 Blount, Philostratus, pp. A3v, 160, and Anima mundi, p. 76. I owe this translation from Blount's Latin to Scott McGill.
75 Blount, Anima mundi, p. 76.
76 Burnet, Some Passages, p. 120.
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