135 



THE TWIN CONVERSIONS. 



BY PROF. W. M. KEYNOLDS, OF PA. COLLEGE. 



Coleridge somewhere {in his Friend I believe,) refers to the fol- 

 lowing anecdote, but I know of no book current among us in which the 

 epigram of Alabaster is to be met. I have, therefore, thought the 

 Record might be doing a favor to this age and land of controversy, by- 

 renewing the memory of this singular event. Rightly interpreted, I 

 think that it furnishes us with a lesson of liberality and modesty, which 

 the heat and turmoil of disputes in politics and religion, have almost 

 banished from among us. At least I think, that it will always be well 

 for us to remember that there may be something in an opponent's argu- 

 ments as well as in our own. — But to my story, which I intend to tell 

 not for the sake of this moral which is prefixed, but on account of the 

 epigram which follows. 



Henke (in his Appendix to Villier's Spirit of the Reformation pp. 

 152 — 153,) gives this story upon the authority of Bayle as follows : 

 John and William Reynolds were twin brothers, the one a Protestant 

 and the other a Roman Catholic. They were both Englishmen, and the 

 former resided in his native country, which the latter had been com- 

 pelled to leave on account of his religious views, and to take up his 

 abode in the Spanish Netherlands. They were both learned men, and 

 alike zealous in their faith. On account of their mutual and tender at- 

 tachment they were greatly concerned for each other's eternal salvation. 

 This was the constant burthen of their letters to each other, and after 

 a correspondence of many years, in which the great points in dispute 

 between them were fully discussed, they were so successful that each 

 renounced Ids men lelief and adopted that of his hrother^ when with 

 his faith he had also to change his place of abode. 



William Alabaster, who may well be supposed to have equally sym- 

 pathised with both the brothers, having first been a Protestant, then a 

 Romanist, and again a Protestant, has celebrated this circumstance in 

 the following epigram, which, if it be not as elegant as some of Mar- 

 tial's, is certainly not discreditable to the scholarship of England in the 

 beginning of the 17th century, when it was written.* 



Bella inter geminos plus quam civilia fratres 



Traxerat ambiguus relligionis apex. 

 Ille reformatae fidei pro partibus instat; 



Iste reformandam denegat esse fidem. 

 Propositis causae rationibus, alteruterque 



Concurrere pares, et cecidere pares. 



* Alabaster died in 1G40. 



