Before I quit the affairs of that country, I must mention a spiritual business that made some noise there. Dr. Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, had already distinguished himself as a man of parts and a freethinker. His Essay on Spirit, which seemed to accord with Clarke’s esoteric doctrine, had more the address of an heresiarch than the plain-dealing simplicity of a Christian pastor. He now published a vindication of the Testament, which seemed calculated for doing anything with the Testament rather than supporting it. Yet the man was believed sincere in his opinions--and so a man ought to be who thinks it worth his while to expose himself by exploding any common prejudices. He even aspired to sufferings for his zeal in propagating counterband metaphysics among illiterate Irish. But the Bishops, his brethren, taking the alarm, and intending a meeting with their _orthodox_ Primate, in order to prepare an application to the Crown for a royal visitation, Clayton died suddenly of a panic, though possessed of a good private estate, and ambitious of martyrdom! This little flame was soon extinguished; in fact, there were no religious combustibles in the temper of the times. Popery and Protestantism seemed at a stand. The modes of Christianity were exhausted, and could not furnish novelty enough to fix attention. Linzendorffe plied his Moravians with nudities, yet made few enthusiasts. Whitfield and the Methodists made more money than disturbances; his largest crop of proselytes lay among servant-maids; and his warmest devotees went to Bedlam without going to war. Bower, whom some thought they had detected as a Jesuit, and who at most was but detected as an impostor, had laid open the practices of the Catholics, and detailed the establishments of the Jesuits in the very heart of London, without occasioning either alarm or murmur against those fathers. His History of the Popes, one of the ablest performances we have, was decried, because, to recommend a work of truth and utility, he had embroidered his own story with some marvellous legends. Yet, uninflammable as the times were, they carried a great mixture of superstition. Masquerades had been abolished, because there had been an earthquake at Lisbon; and when the last jubilee-masquerade was exhibited at Ranelagh, the ale-houses and roads to Chelsea were crowded with drunken people, who assembled to denounce the judgments of God on persons of fashion, whose greatest sin was dressing themselves ridiculously.