and undoubted duties thereof is, to the truly regener- ate soul, a far greater pleasure than all the fine specula- tions imaginable." It was life, not notions, which he chiefly valued ; and he preferred " a single-heartedness of temper beyond any theories." He had no ambition to play the part of a leader in society, and steadily de- clined every attempt to draw him into a public position. He was content in the youthful circle which he gath- ered about himself as private tutor, and preferred to ad- dress the masses by his pen. The deanery of Christ Church in Dublin, with the provostship of Trinity Col- lege, and also the deanery of St. Patrick's, were proposed for his acceptance, as a step to either of the two bishop- rics when a vacancy should occur •, but he could not be persiiaded to accept these preferments. It is said that after the failure of these attempts, a very good English bishopric was procured for him, and that his friends had actually brought him, on some pretence or other, as far as Whitehall, designing to introduce him to the king to kiss the hands of his royal master for the ap- pointment; but when More understood on what busi- ness he had been brought thither, nothing could in- duce him to enter the royal grounds. Once, late in life (in 1675), he accepted a prebend in the cathedral of Gloucester ; this, however, as the event proved, only with the view of serving his friend. Dr. Fowler, after- wards bishop of that diocese, into whose hands, with the chancellor's permission, he resigned it, refusing at the same time repayment of the expenses he had in- curred. In the same manner, he for a short time kept possession of the rectory of Ingoldsbury, in Lincolnshire, which his father had purchased for him, and then pre- sented it to several friends in succession. He had the satisfaction of providing in this way for his friend. Dr. Worthington, when that accomplished divine, in com- mon with many other clergymen, lost his church in the fire of London. When the mastership of his college fell vacant, it was proposed to him, in preference to Cud- worth, as a piece of preferment likely, if any could do so, to suit his wishes ; he declined it as he had done ev- erything else, " passing otherwise his time within those private walls, it may be as great a contemplator, phi- losopher, and divine as ever did or will hereafter visit them." In fact, he believed that by a life of contem- plation, and by laying the residts of it before the world in his writings, he followed the course appointed him by Providence as best suited to his disposition and abili- ties, and likely to be serviceable to that and succeeding generations. Yet so humble were his notions of what he had accomplished by the employment of many years in earnest pursuit of those august theories which tilled his mind, that he would say he '• had lived a harmless ' and childish life in the world." His works, he remarked to a person who was speaking in commendation of them, "were such as might please some solitary men that loved their Creator." In his later years Dr. IMore was sorely tried by the separation of his friend and former pupil, lady Conway, from the communion of the Church which was his ideal in the form " as it existed before the times of disturbance — the Church of the Keforma- tion and of Hooker." To popery in every form he was violently opposed, as is evinced W a work of his on 77ie true Idea of A ntichristianism (see below), and also to the sects he was opposed : " Both his reason and his love of quietness and order were opposed to what he consid- ered the excesses of Puritanism — the dismal spectacle of an infinity of sects and schisms." Yet it should not be thought that jMore loved the ecclesiastical organiza- tion of England rather than the cause of Christ. " His main concern," says his biographer, "is that neither one order of the Church government nor another usurp the place which only religion itself should hold. He is for the ' naked truth of Christianity,' and nothing more : willing even to be called a Puritan, ' if this be to be a Puritan.' " Such was his liberality, and yet he sought earnestly to recall lady Conway to the Church com- munion. She had been a favorite of his in her girlish
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days, and much of his time he had passed at Raglej', ill Warwickshire, her countrj'-seat after marriage to lord Conway. She was a person of ciit)iusiastic piety and great accomplishments, and by her More and his opinions were known to be held in high veneration. Indeed, her liusband is said to have been hardly less en- thusiastic, and to have treasured everything of More's "with jis much reverence as if it were .Socrates's." Among such friends it was but natural tliat More should frequently pass his time, and it was among the shades of Kagley that he composed some of his writ- ings, among them his Conjecturu Cabcilinlica, his I'/iilo- sopliiccB Teutonics Censuru, and his JHrine liialogues (see below). He often counselled with lady Conway, and is believed to have been urged into authorsliip by her. She was particularly attracted by his mys- tical studies. Her consultations with him ultimate- ly led her to turn aside and make her life one of most intense mystical devotion. She thus came to admire the patient quietude of the Quakers, as well as the opinions of that sect, at that time flushed with all the fervor attendant on novelty, persecution, and success, and finally she was induced to join them. Perliaps the doctor was conscious tliat his own religious views, characterized as they arc by a degree of subjectiveness which unfits tliem for general reception (when eagerly adopted by a person of her peculiar temperament, not fortified by the counteraction of those healthier and more robust attainments which prevented any very evil consequences in his own case), might have pre- pared tlic way to this unfortunate result. At all events, he received the account of it with unfeigned affliction, and labored many years with all the earnestness of a faithful friend to reclaim the fair proselyte for the Church establishment of which he was a most devout adherent. He was thus led into a controversy with William Penn, both by writing and conversation. An admirable letter on Baptism and the Lord's Suppei; ad- dressed on this occasion to Penn, is printed in the ap- pendix to his life. He encountered also George Fox, and has left a description of the interview on his own feelings little flattering to tliat ill-used religious enthusi- ast. ]More failed to reconvert his pupil, but he retained her friendship. He continued to spend much of his time, as before, at Kagley "and its woods," and there composed several of his books at lady Conway's "own desire and instigation." After her death he drew her portrait under another name, and with so much address that " the most rigid (Quaker would see everything they could wish in it, and yet the soberest Christian be en- tirely satislied with it." At Kagley, More formed sev- eral valuable acquaintances; of these we shall come to speak hereafter. 15ut it is only there that he was sur- rounded by any associates. In his own "paradise," as he called his liome at Christ College, he lived very much alone. Yet if he thus kept himself retired from the world, this life of solitude greatly stimulated his productivity as an author.