MEMOIR OF RAY. 39 



best friend, he was subjected to another, scarcely 

 less afflicting, by the death of Bishop Wilkins, an 

 event of which he says that it occasioned him un- 

 speakable loss and grief. The most intimate friend- 

 ship had long subsisted between Ray and this 

 learned prelate, and the former had been of the most 

 essential service, in drawing up tables of plants 

 and animals for the elaborate work on a Real Cha- 

 racter. Through his influence Ray might readily 

 have obtained preferment in the church, but he 

 persisted in a conscientious resolution not to sign 

 the necessary articles.* 



Ray's natural sensibility and ardent temperament, 

 made him feel these losses in the acutest manner ; 

 but they fell upon a mind deeply imbued with 

 Christian principle, and accustomed to recognise 

 the beneficent appointments of a presiding power, 

 in the most trivial as well as in the most important 

 incidents to which our nature is liable. How much 

 this was the habit of his mind, appears from various 



* In reply to a letter in which Dr Lister had expressed 

 a hope that he would avail himself of the influence allud- 

 ed to, Ray writes, " D. Wilkins, in episcopalem cathedrum 

 evectum, et suiipsius, et mei, et prsecipue ecclesiae causa 

 vehementer gaudeo : me tamen per eum ecclesise resti- 

 turum iri, stante sententia, plane est impossibile, nee 

 enim unquam adduci me posse puto ut declaration! sub- 

 scribam quam lex non ita pridem lata presbjteris aliisque 

 ecclesise ministris injungit, nee tamen tanti est jactura 

 mei qui nulli fere usui ecclesiae futurus essem, utut (quod 

 iici solet) rectus in curia starem." Phil. Let. p. 35. 



