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 Ileal 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 praecipue ecclesiae causa 
vehementer gaudeo : me tamen per eum ecclesiae resti- 
turum iri, stante sententia, plane est impossibile, nec 
enim unquam adduci me posse puto ut declarationi sub- 
scribam quam lex non ita pridem lata presbyteris aliisque 
ecclesiae ministris injungit, nec tamen tanti est jactura 
mei qui nulli fere usui ecclesiae futurus essem, utut (quod 
dici solet) rectus in curia starem.” — Phil. Let. p. 35. 
