I see now that the error was mine, and it has preyed on my mind for
these many weeks. I should have recognised instantly that your letters
to me were the work of a feverish mind and a disordered imagination. I
shall never forgive myself for not understanding it at the time.
As to your returning to the College for further study, please rest
assured that you are most certainly welcome to return. I have spoken
to the proper authorities, and, after an explanation of the nature
of your illness, all barriers to your re-entrance have been dropped.
Let me assure you that they are well aware of what such an unhappy
affliction can do to unsettle a man temporarily, and they understand
and sympathise.
I can well understand your decision not to continue your studies in
mathematics; I feel that overwork in attempting something that was a
bit beyond one of your tender years was as much responsible for your
condition as that blow on the head from that apple. It is probably that
which accounts for the fact that serious symptoms did not appear until
late in March.
I feel that you will do well in whatever new field you may choose, but
please do not work so hard at it.
Again, my apologies,
Isaac Barrow
* * * * *
3 April 1687
York
To His Grace,
The Most Reverend Dr. Isaac Newton,
By Divine Providence the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury
My Lord Archbishop,
May I take this opportunity to give you my earnest and heartfelt thanks
for the copy of your great work which you so graciously sent; I shall
treasure it always.
May I say, your Grace, that, once I had begun the book, I found it
almost impossible to lay it down again. In truth, I could not rest
until I had completed it, and now I feel that I shall have to read it
again and again.
In my humble opinion, your Grace is the greatest theological logician
since the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. And as for beauty and
lucidity of writing, it ranks easily with "_De Civitate Deo_"
of St. Augustine of Hippo, and "_De Imitatione Christi_" of St.
Thomas à Kempis.
I was most especially impressed by your reasoning on the mystical
levitation of the soul, in which you show clearly that the closer a
human soul approaches the perfection of God, the greater the attraction
between that soul and the Spirit of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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