Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/745

 Letters of Dr. Thomas Cooper, iS2j-iSj2 735 battle rages furiously between the Ch[urch mili]tant and your humble servant, even to extermination. Bellum [internee] inum. I am not yet conquered, and expect yet to bivouac on the field of Battle. I have no objection to a moral governor of the universe, but how came he in that character to create the Priesthood ? Moral ! You might as well apply squareness to virtue. I wish I knew how to account for moral and phys- ical evil, and then I should be able to account for malaria, dyspepsia, yellow fever, the plague, cholera, rattlesnakes, mosquitoes and faquirs of all classes and orders, asiatic and european, papist and protestant. Can you tell me for what good purpose that man of the milk of human kind- ness, John Calvin, was ordered into the world, the counterpart of Igna- tius Loyola? Hands off: that's my trick if you please, as the devil said of the dead presbyterian ! Thank heaven, when I depart from these gentry in this world, there is no chance of our meeting again in another ; else I sh"! have to exclaim tantagne animis celestibus ir^ ! I did not send you my "Layman's letter to any Member of Con- gress " because like other great characters, I thought proper to travel in- cognito : but I was it seems like the Ostrich, that wise bird that hides its little head in the sand, and being unable to see anything itself, thinks its great backside invisible to all the world. I shall republish my defence,' with the Layman's letter annexed for the benefit of all pious presbyterians like General Blair. - Shall I send you a copy ? I hope you are not bitten by the black ants : I'm sure not. You are not a man to attend Baptist- immersions at Christmas, or protracted revivals in July. But I vow to heaven, that now a days I do not know who is who ; and metaphysician as I am, I do not believe I can tell whats what, Hudibras notwithstand- ing. When I see a vinegar scowle under the flapped hat of a solemn looking man in black, I cannot for the soul of me associate any thing kindly with it. Do you remember the whites of Ashbel Green's ' eyes when he prayed to half a dozen members of Congress in the early days of our democracy, under good old Stephen Thompson Mason,* whose memory I reverence yet. no : I cannot believe that you fraternize either with yankee politicians or with piety pretending saints. Thank God the new Yorkers are going to turn their Chaplains adrift : they have begun with Parson Wilson for telling truth, and they will go on with the rest for telling lies. However, a nos moutons : to our business. My son in law Manners, I hear, is at Washington, under a rolling stone propensity that has impelled him thither. He wants to quit the woods and practice in a city. He is weary of keeping company and holding 1 The Case of Thomas Cooper, M.D., President of the South Carolina College, sub- mitted to the Legislature and People of South Carolina, Columbia, 1S32. ^ The allusion is to a letter of Gen. James Blair of South Carolina, dated December 17, 1S30, Apropos of Cooper's Letter of a Layman, in which he denounced Cooper as an infidel. The letter is printed in Niles's Pegister, XL. 145. 3 Chaplain of the senate, afterward president of Princeton College.
 * Stevens T. Mason, Senator from Virginia, 1795-1S03.