"Now giving all diligence, add to your faith _fortitude_, and to _fortitude knowledge_, and to knowledge purity, and to purity patience,[140] and to patience godliness,[141] and to godliness brotherly-kindness, and to brotherly-kindness universal love."[142]
I hope, whatever you may think of godliness, you will like the _note_ on it. I need not tell you, that godliness is God-_like_ness, and is paraphrased by Peter "that ye may be partakers of the divine nature," that is, act from a love of order and happiness, not from any self-respecting motive; from the excellency into which you have exalted your _nature_, not from the _keenness_ of mere _prudence_. "Add to your faith fortitude, and to fortitude knowledge, and to knowledge purity, and to purity patience, and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly-kindness, and to brotherly-kindness universal love." Now, Thelwall, putting _faith_ out of the question (which, by the bye, is not mentioned as a virtue, but as the leader to them), can you mention a virtue which is not here enjoined? and supposing the precepts embodied in the practice of any one human being, would not perfection be personified? I write these things not with any expectation of making you a Christian. I should smile at my own folly, if I conceived it even in a friendly day-dream.
"The ardour of undisciplined benevolence seduces us into malignity," and, while you accustom yourself to speak so _contemptuously_ of doctrines you do not accede to, and persons with whom you do not accord, I must doubt whether even your _brotherly-kindness_ might not be made more perfect. That is surely _fit_ for a man which his mind after sincere examination approves, which animates his conduct, soothes his sorrows, and heightens his pleasures. Every good and earnest Christian declares that all this is true of the _visions_ (as you please to style them, God knows why) of Christianity. Every earnest Christian, therefore, is on a level with slobberers. Do not charge me with dwelling on one expression. These expressions are always indicative of the habit of feeling. You possess fortitude and purity, and a large portion of brotherly-kindness and universal love; drink with unquenchable thirst of the two latter virtues, and acquire _patience_; and then, Thelwall, should _your_ system be true, all that can be said is that (if both our systems should be found to increase our own and our fellow-creatures' happiness), "Here lie and did lie the _all_ of John Thelwall and S. T. Coleridge. They were both humane, and happy, but the former was the more knowing;" and if my system should prove true, we, I doubt not, shall both meet in the kingdom of heaven, and I, with transport in my eye, shall say, "I _told_ you so, my _dear_ fellow." But seriously, the faulty habit of feeling, which I have endeavoured to point out in you, I have detected in at least as great degree in my own practice, and am struggling to subdue it. I rejoice that the bankrupt honesty of the public has paid even the small dividend you mentioned. As to your second part, I will write you about it in a day or two, when I give you an account how I have disposed of your first. My dear little baby! and my wife thinks that he already begins to flutter the callow wings of his intellect. Oh, the wise heart and foolish head of a mother! Kiss your little girl for me, and tell her if I knew her I would love her; and then I hope in your next letter you will convey _her love_ to me and my Sara. Your dear boy, I trust, will return with rosy cheeks. Don't you suspect, Thelwall, that the little atheist Madam Stella has an abominable _Christian_ kind of _heart_? My Sara is much interested about her; and I should not wonder if they were to be sworn sister-seraphs in the heavenly Jerusalem. Give my love to her.