the other Day relating several strange Stories that he had picked up no Body knows where of a certain great Man; and upon my staring at him, as one that was surprised to hear such things in the Country
which
had never been so much as whispered in the Town,
Will
. stopped short in the Thread of his Discourse, and after Dinner asked my Friend Sir
Roger
in his Ear if he was sure that I was not a Fanatick.
It gives me a serious Concern to see such a Spirit of Dissention in the Country; not only as it destroys Virtue and Common Sense, and renders us in a Manner Barbarians towards one another, but as it perpetuates our Animosities, widens our Breaches, and transmits our present Passions and Prejudices to our Posterity. For my own Part, I am sometimes afraid that I discover the Seeds of a Civil War in these our Divisions; and therefore cannot but bewail, as in their first Principles, the Miseries and Calamities of our Children.