I could digest a salad gathered in a
churchyard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a
serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander: at the sight of a toad or viper
I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in
myself those common antipathies that I can discover in others. Those
national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the
French, Italian, Spaniard, and Dutch: but where I find their actions in
balance with my countrymen's, I honour, love, and embrace them in the
same degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but seem to be framed and
constellated unto all. I am no plant that will not prosper out of a
garden: all places, all airs make unto me one country--I am in England
everywhere, and under any meridian. I have been shipwrecked, yet am not
enemy with the sea or winds. I can study, play, or sleep in a tempest.
In brief, I am averse from nothing: my conscience would give me the lie
if I should absolutely detest or hate any essence but the devil; or so at
least abhor anything, but that we might come to composition.
I am, I confess, naturally inclined to that which misguided zeal terms
superstition: my common conversation I do acknowledge austere, my
behaviour full of rigour, sometimes not without morosity; yet at my
devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, with
all those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote my
invisible devotion.
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