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" Memoirs" of Priestley- — Seattle — Toplady . 61
Untitled Article
O , pity , great Father of Light J then I cry'd , Thy creature who fain would not Tvander . from thee : Lo ! humbled in dust , I relinquish my pride ; From doubt and from darkness tbou only can * st free .
And darkness and doubt are now flying away . No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn I So breaks on the traveller , faint and astray , The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn . See Truth , Love , and Mercy , in triumph descending , And Nature all glowing , in Eden ' s first bloom ! On the cold cheek of Death smiles and rosel % re blending , And Beauty immortal awakes from the tomWl "
These lines will be allowed to appear consistent with the author ' s cc professions of Christianity / ' and to express very happily the sentiments of those who , " depending on the truth of the Christian Scriptures , look forward with anxioiis hope to a continued and more perfect state of existence after death /* Mr . Cooper could not possibly know , that before his insinua * tions against Dr . Beattie could be read in Britain , the subject of them would be , " out of hearing , faraway in the land where all things are forgotten . " Should this letter come under the eye of the learned annotator , I doubt not but he will do ample justice to the author of the * Hermit , ' whose poetry unlessthe feelings of youth and manhood have both deceived me / will be read and admired , when his Metaphysics may have beer » long and deservedly forgotten , *
Before I quit the " Memoirs , " give me leave to add * concern - ing Toplady , that " fierce polemic issuing from his den , " who isjustly represented ( in p . 321 ) as having " connected the doctrine of necessity with all the bigotry of Calvinism /* that he Occasionall y corresponded with Dr . Priestley , who wished to mike him a philosophical necessarian , and whom he-appears to havetreated with great respect , though he assailed his Arrain ^ n . antagonists , Selldn , Wesley , &c . with more than Warburtonjan insolence . Soon after Toplady ' s death , in I 778 > his posthumous works were published . They arc a strange medley .
brought together by a needy relation , who emptied his escru-^ oire to fill a volume . There are two letters to Dr . Priestley ^ one of w | iich has the following passage , the only one I remem-r ber , and which exhibits a curious contrast of images . " Let a man ^ pppcjiples be bl ack a ^ hell , it is nothing to me if he has the courage to ayow them . I love a man whpm I can hold up as a piece of crystal , and look through him : for this I have always admired Dr . Priestley , ' * Toplady was a democratic politician , and a determined foe of the American war . He ap-
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1807, page 67, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2377/page/11/
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