Sault was, in some respects, a remarkable man. His literary attainments were considerable, and his skill in mathematics great; but he proved unfaithful to his wife, sunk into a state of extreme melancholy, and wrote a paper, which, to a great extent, embodied his own experience, and which he entitled, “The Second Spira, being a fearful example of an Atheist, who had apostatised from the Christian religion, and died in despair at Westminster, Dec. 8, 1692.” In this account, he speaks of himself as having spent five years at the university. He then came to London, and began to study law. He formed an acquaintance with atheistical companions, and drank into their spirit. He was then taken ill, and was visited by his friends. After this, follows an account of his pretended bewailings of his past faithlessness. Once he knew the mercies of God and tasted what they were; but now he had denied Christ, and wished that he was in hell. He refused all sustenance; he groaned and tossed, and said he knew himself sealed unto damnation. “Oh that I was to broil,” he cried, “upon that fire for a thousand years, to purchase the favour of God, and be reconciled to Him again! But it is a fruitless wish! Millions of millions of years will bring me no nearer to the end of my tortures than one poor hour. Oh eternity! eternity!” His last words were, “Oh the insufferable pangs of hell and damnation.” Sault sent this fictitious paper to Dunton, in a disguised hand, and requested him to publish it as a truthful narrative. Dunton did so, and in six weeks sold thirty thousand copies, at sixpence each. Afterwards, it became known that the pamphlet was a piece of fiction, except so far as it was a partial description of Sault’s own experience; for Dunton tells us that a little before he received the narrative, “Sault was under the severest terrors of conscience; and his despair and melancholy made him look like some walking ghost.” Dunton several times heard him muttering to himself, “I am damned! I am damned!” The publication of “The Second Spira” created an immense sensation, and Dunton found it necessary to publish the “Secret History of Mr Sault,” so as to clear himself from the imputation of sham or fraud in giving to the public such a narrative; and yet, it is a singular circumstance, that, nearly a hundred years afterwards, John Wesley republished the greater part of “The Second Spira” in his _Arminian Magazine_, without a single line of explanation that the piece, though powerfully written, was almost altogether false. Richard Sault ultimately removed to Cambridge, where his ingenuity and his algebraic skill obtained for him a considerable reputation. He died there in 1704, being supported in his last sickness by the charity of the scholars. He was interred in St Andrew’s Church, Cambridge; and a writer, who knew him, says, “his learning was as universal as his sense of things was fine and curious.”