pray wish him joy ’of both from me.  Has not this Indian summer dispersed your complaints?  We are told we are to be invaded.  Our Abbots and Whitgifts now see with what successes and consequences their preaching up a crusade against America has been crowned!  Archbishop Markham(314) may have an opportunity of exercising his martial prowess.  I doubt he would resemble Bishop Crewe more than good Mr. Baker.  Let us respect those only who are Israelites indeed.  I surrender Dr. Abbot to you.  Church and presbytery are terms for monopolies, Exalted notions of church matters are contradictions in terms to the lowliness and humility of the gospel.  There is nothing sublime but the Divinity.  Nothing is sacred but as His work.  A tree or a brute stone is more respectable as such, than a mortal called an Archbishop, or an edifice called a Church, which are the puny and perishable productions of men.  Calvin and Wesley had just the same views as the Pope; power and wealth their objects.  I abhor both, and admire Mr. Baker.

P. S. I like Popery as well as you, and have shown I do.  I like it as I like chivalry and romance.  They all furnish one with ideas and visions, which presbyterianism does not.  A Gothic church or a convent fills one with romantic dreams-but for the mysterious, the Church in the abstract, it is a jargon that means nothing, or a great deal too much, and I reject it and its apostles, from Athanasius to Bishop Keene.(315)

(313) Dr. George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, born at Guildford, in Surrey, 1562.  In 1604, when the translation of the Scriptures now in use was commenced by direction of King James, Dr. Abbot was the second of eight divines of Oxford to whom was committed the care of translating the New Testament, with the exception of the Epistles, He died at the palace at Croydon, in 1633.-E.

(314) Dr. William Markham, translated to the see of York from Chester in 1776.  He died in 1807.-E.

(315) Dr. Edmund Keene, Bishop of Ely.-E.

Letter 141 To The Hon. H. S. Conway.  Saturday, July 18, 1778. (page 192)

Yesterday evening the following notices were fixed up in Lloyd’s coffee-house:-That a merchant in the city had received an express from France, that the Brest fleet, consisting, of twenty-eight ships of the line, were sailed, with orders to burn, sink, and destroy.  That Admiral Keppel was at Plymouth, and had sent to demand three more ships of the line to enable him to meet the French.  On these notices stocks sunk three-and-a-half per cent.  An account I have received this morning from a good hand says, that on Thursday the Admiralty received a letter from Admiral Keppel, who was off the Land’s End, saying that the Worcester was in sight; that the Peggy had joined him, and had seen the Thunderer making sail for the fleet; that he was waiting for the Centaur, Terrible, and Vigilant; and that having received advice