“These,” says our author, “she confesses, were but scruples.” According to his mannerly way of arguing with the king, I might ask him, “These” what? Does he mean—these scruples were but scruples? for the word _these_ begins a paragraph. But I am ashamed of playing the pedant, as he has done. I suppose he means—these passages of Heylin only raised some scruples in her, which occasioned her to examine the points in difference by the holy scripture. “And now,” says he, “she was in the right way of satisfaction, provided she made use of the best helps and means for understanding it, and took in the assistance of her spiritual guides.” That she did take in those guides, is manifest by her own papers, though both of them (the more the pity) did but help to mislead her into the enemy’s country; but then, for our comfort, neither of them were church of England men, though they were both bishops, and one of them no less than primate of all England. And now, for a relishing bit before we rise, he has kept in store for us the four points, which, about the midst of her paper, the Duchess told us she found so easy in the scripture, that she wondered she had been so long without finding them. He will needs fall into dispute with her about them, though he knows beforehand that she will not dispute with him. This is a kind of petition to her, that she will permit him to make that difficult which she found easy; for every thing becomes hard by chopping logic upon it. I am sure enough, that the wall before me is white, and that I can go to it; but put me once upon unriddling sophisms, I shall not be satisfied of what colour the wall is, nor how it is possible for me to stir from the place in which I am. Alas! if people would be as much in earnest as she was, and read the scriptures with the same disposition, the same unprejudiced sincerity in their hearts, and docility in their understanding, seeking to bend their judgments to what they find, not what they find to their judgments, more, I believe, would find things as easy as she did, and give the answerer more frequent occasion for his derision of a willing mind.