From this political plasticity, in his days and in his station, no harm could arise either to himself or others. But the same temperament in religion, though doubtless it may reach the degree of saving faith, can hardly consist with an active and imaginative mind. It was fortunate therefore for the Doctor, that he found a religious friend in Mr. Bacon. While he was at Leyden his position in this respect had not been favorable. Between the Dutch language and the Burgemeester's daughter, St. Peter's Kirk had not been a scene of much devotion for him. Perhaps many Churches in his own Country might have produced no better effect upon him at that time of life; but the loose opinions which Bayle had scattered were then afloat in Holland, and even these were less dangerous to a disposition such as his, than the fierce Calvinistic tenets by which they were opposed. The former might have beguiled him into scepticism, the latter might have driven him into unbelief, if the necessary attention to his professional studies, and an appetite for general knowledge, which found full employment for all leisure hours, had not happily prevented him from entering without a guide upon a field of enquiry, where he would either have been entangled among thorns, or beset with snares and pitfalls. True indeed it is that nothing but the most injurious and inevitable circumstances could have corrupted his natural piety, for it had been fostered in him by his father's example, and by those domestic lessons which make upon us the deepest and most enduring impressions. But he was not armed, as it behoved him to be, against the errors of the age, neither those which like the pestilence walked in noon day, nor those which did their work insidiously and in darkness. Methodism was then in its rampant stage; the founders themselves had not yet sobered down; and their followers, though more decent than the primitive Quakers, and far less offensive in their operations, ran, nevertheless, into extravagancies which made ill-judging magistrates slow in protecting them against the insults and outrages of the rabble. The Dissenters were more engaged in controversy amongst themselves than with the Establishment; their old leaven had at that time no mass whereon to work, but it was carefully preserved. The Nonjurors, of all sects (if they may be called a sect), the most respectable in their origin, were almost extinct. The Roman Catholics were quiet, in fear of the laws,—no toleration being then professed for a Church which proclaimed, and every where acted upon, the principle of absolute intolerance; but there were few populous parts of the kingdom in which there was not some secular priest, or some regular, not indeed Black, white and grey with all their trumpery,