book it is sufficient to say that purchasers could not have been disappointed; the horrors of the English Spira were equal to those of his Italian exemplar.38

The fact is, the sensation became too great. Readers began to be embarrassingly inquisitive concerning the authenticity of the story and the identity of the author. Finally Dunton came out with an explanation, in a key added to the actual or so-called thirtieth edition of the tract. He had to confess that the whole story was a fraud-not, however, of his invention. To clear his own skirts, he put the entire responsibility upon his former colleague in the Athenian Society, Richard Sault, who apparently had obligingly died.39 According to Dunton, Sault had given him the copy, declaring that he had received it from the attending clergyman, J. Sanders. Thus Dunton had been made the dupe of an unscrupulous associate and his veracity unjustly impugned. He was now convinced that Sault himself, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge and an atheist, had written the report as the result of the horrible fears he had suffered. To be sure, the atheist had not at the time of his writing gone through the final agonies of the death-bed, but a man terrified as he was might easily anticipate this experience by a slight exercise of the imagination. In corroboration of his theory Dunton added to his own account a letter from the mathematician's wife, proving at least that Sault was a libertine, reports of a similar tenor "by other Persons of undoubted credit," and various other material, evidently in the hope that the sale of the book might be made to survive the exposure of its falsehood. One addition was entitled "Double Hell, or an Essay on Despair; Occasioned by Mr. Richard Sault (the second Spira) crying out in Mr. Dunton's hearing, I am Damn'd! I am Damn'd!" This and another piece of the same kind, “A

38 The success of this book was probably responsible for "Spira's despair revived; being a Narration of the Horror and Despair of some late Sinners under the apprehension of Death and Judgment. By Thomas James, Minister of the Gospel" (T. C. 11, 521, Nov., 1694).

39 Sault was buried 17 May, 1702 (D. N. B.). Since Dunton refers to him in his Key as "late Mathematick Professor in Cambridge," this edition of The Second Spira was probably not published as early as 1700, the date conjecturally assigned by the British Museum. See, however, Life and Errors, 1, 157, where Dunton says Sault had died “about six months” before and that he had given the culprit a chance to vindicate himself.

Conference between the famous Mr. John Dod and Mr. Throgmorton (then lying upon his Death-bed under Desertion)" he valued so highly that he published them again several years later in Athenianism. But evidently confession had killed the goose that laid the golden egg; with all these additions the story of the second Spira failed to retain the interest of book-buyers. Whether Sault was really the author of the story and was guilty of deceiving Dunton is unknown. Certainly Dunton made a point thereafter of attacking the memory of his former colleague whenever opportunity arose. The charges are repeated at length in The Life and Errors, where he declares he is willing to swear to the truth of them "upon all the Bibles in the Queen's dominions." 40

Little need be said of An Essay, Proving We shall Know our Friends in Heaven. Writ by a Disconsolate Widower, on the Death of his Wife, and Dedicated to her Dear Memory (1698). In treating this "subject never handled before in a distinct Treatise," Dunton shows his readiness to improve every occasion for business ends. It is evident, too, that while bewailing his loss and looking forward to a reunion, Philaret was already making advances towards the "Pindarick Lady" Mrs. Singer, who was an object of tender interest likewise to Matt Prior but afterwards elected to become "die göttliche Rowe." Some of the wildest parts of this essay, on Platonic love, reappear in Athenianism. After his second and very unhappy marriage the author no doubt recalled with some bitterness of spirit the section entitled "What I intend to do if it please God to bring me into a Married State." His memorial tract is of some importance in a study of Dunton because here, instead of quietly copying other writers, he quotes with acknowledgment from several favorite works-William Bates's Four Last Things, Simon Patrick's Parable of the Pilgrim, John Shower's Discourse of Mourning for the Dead, Robert Bolton's Four Last Things, and Joseph Stevens's Sermons on Dives and Lazarus.

The last of Dunton's formal treatises on religion was The New Practice of Piety. Writ in Imitation of Dr. Browne's Religio Medici: Or, The Christian Virtuoso (1704). In his Life and Errors he refers to this as the production of the Society and states 40 I, 156.

that it had been in preparation for ten years.1 The title-page, however, refers the authorship to "a Member of the New Athenian Society," that is, John Dunton. We here have him presented in an entirely new light. No longer an old-fashioned religionist, he undertakes as a "Christian virtuoso " to effect a compromise between scriptural literalism and the new philosophy or, as he explains in the lengthy title, to discover "the Right Way to Heaven, Between all Extreams." Quite appropriately to this liberal view, he inscribes the Dedication "to Mr. John Lock, Author of the Essay upon Humane Understanding," a man of large soul "Brimfull of Knowledge and Piety" who has now been on the right read for sixty years. Again Dunton threw out excellent bait in his title. It brought together the names of two very dissimilar books of wide popularity. Bishop Lewis Bayly's Practice of Piety had been in circulation for nearly a century.42 Everybody was familiar with it. There was a challenge to curiosity in the very proposal of a new Practice of Piety. The Religio Medici was also an excellent drawing-card, but it would appeal to a somewhat different group. And if Dunton could mediate between the bishop and the physician he would accomplish a great feat. Browne's book had been under strong suspicion among the orthodox ever since Alexander Ross had drawn up his formidable indictment Medicus Medicatus: or, the Physician's Religion Cured (1645).

41 This "fifth project" is described in Life and Errors, 1, 200. Evidently when writing his autobiography Dunton expected it to be printed before The New Practice of Piety (1704); but the order was reversed. Another inaccuracy in what he wrote as an announcement of the virtuoso philosophy is the statement that it would be dedicated to Queen Anne.

42 It was licensed in 1611-12; but apparently the date of the first edition is not known. By 1613 there was a third edition, and it continued to be printed frequently until 1842. A full account is given by J. E. Bailey in "Bishop Lewis Bayly and his 'Practice of Piety,'" Manchester Quarterly, July, 1883.

43 The Religion of a Physician (1663), a despicable poem by Edward Gayton, owes nothing to Sir Thomas Browne except the title, although he is referred to in the Introduction. The purpose of the author was to curry favor with the Anglican authorities by celebrating the festivals of the church. The prose treatise Religio Clerici (1681) is also the production of an ardent Anglican: it is directed principally against deists, Socinians, and atheists, and is solidly orthodox. Encouragement was given to all works of the kind by Dryden's Religio Laici (1682).

Suspicion was confirmed by one or two favorable comments upon Religio Medici by the notorious deist Charles Blount, and as the danger of the deistic movement increased Browne's religion passed under still more severe scrutiny. Dunton, then, was undertaking an ambitious rôle. The hazard was likely to attract purchasers of very divergent views.

One passage will illustrate the influence of Browne's style upon the imitator and also points of minor difference of opinion as well as general agreement. The following is based upon a passage of the Religio Medici so well known that it need not be repeated for the sake of comparison:

I do not affect Rhodomontadoes in Religion, nor to boast the strength of my Faith [as Browne had done]: I do not covet Temptations, nor court Dangers: Yet I can exercise my Belief in the difficultest Point [Browne's exact phrase], when call'd to it; and walk stedfast and upright in Faith, without the Crutch of a visible Miracle. I can firmly believe in Christ, without going in Pilgrimage to his Sepulchre, neither need I the Confirmation that was vouchsaf'd to St. Thomas, that Proverb of Unbelief. However I do not [as Browne had done] bless myself, nor esteem my Faith the better, because I lived not in the Days of Miracles, nor ever saw Christ or any of his disciples.“

In their endeavor to reconcile Faith and Reason all the virtuoso philosophers were in constant danger of making out too good a case for Reason, especially in their treatment of nature as a form of the divine revelation. Bacon had advised that Religion and Science be kept severely apart. Although Browne's boast was that he had achieved this duality in perfection, allowing his faith in no way to be contaminated by pure reason, evidently this was not the impression created on his opponents who condemned him as a deist, and indeed there was some ground for their accusation. The author of The New Practice of Piety was very careful in this connection. "I highly value the Sacred Scripture as the Oracle of Divinity, and Rule of Faith," he declares as an orthodox Christian, "Yet I esteem them not a System of Philosophy, or a Pandect of natural Science. They are able to make us Wise unto Salvation, and perfect in the Knowledge of GOD, through Faith in Christ Jesus, but they instruct us not in Humane Curiosities, nor

4 P. 27. Cf. Religio Medici, Part I, Sect. 9, Works, ed. C. Sayle, 1912, I, 16-17.

acquaint us with the theory of all his Works." 45 This categorical distinction would probably have satisfied Bacon himself. But when the author begins to rhapsodize over astronomy he betrays a leaning toward the heretical Religion of Nature. In some other respects he is much more radical than Browne. Taking a leaf from the works of the Cambridge Platonists, as he had done frequently in the Mercury, he here boldly professes his belief in the Platonist doctrine of pre-existence. "I look upon it," he declares with warmth, "as an effect of Gothick Barbarity and Ignorance, which afterwards overspread all Christendom, That neither this, nor hardly any other Point of Platonism, were countenanced in the Christian Schools, but only the Dictates of Aristotle and his Ghost Averroes." "46 In his attitude towards the "monstrosities" of creation he is hardly so catholic as Browne and the Cambridge Platonists. They decried any inclination to condemn a natural object as ugly. He admits that he has no quarrel with the oldfashioned logic of those who call a toad venomous. He adds, however, that he himself could not hate this proverbial object of hatred since it bears the character and impress of the Divine Artificer, and, never having sinned, is better than man! 47

Dunton's defection from the strict orthodoxy of his other works appears most strikingly in his new treatment of death. In his philosophical rôle he is no longer afraid of the King of Terrors. He now holds that it is only fancy, aggravated by the pomp and circumstance of funerals (customs he had done much to encourage), that makes man afraid to die. "I have no Pannick fears of Death upon me," he writes, "neither am I sollicitous, how or when I shall make my Exit from the Stage of this Life; much less do I trouble my self about the manner of my Burial, or to which of the Elements I shall commit my Carcass." Once in this strain, the former advocate of weekly walks among the tombs as a moral prophylactic grows more and more recklessly modern until he actually declares himself in favor of the Indian custom of cremating dead bodies, this being the quickest method of resolving them back into their elements. To be on the safe side, however, he submits that he is willing, in conformity with the tradition of his church, "to undergo the tedious Conversation of Worms and

45 P. 36.

46 P. 43.

47 P. 64.