brother's side,
that ever the animosity will be got over: that I must therefore be at
perpetual variance with all my own family: that I must go to him, and to
his, as an obliged and half-fortuned person: that his aversion to them
all is as strong as theirs to him: that his whole family are hated
for his sake; they hating ours in return: that he has a very immoral
character as to women: that knowing this, it is a high degree of
impurity to think of joining in wedlock with such a man: that he is
young, unbroken, his passions unsubdued: that he is violent in his
temper, yet artful; I am afraid vindictive too: that such a husband
might unsettle me in all my own principles, and hazard my future hopes:
that his own relations, two excellent aunts, and an uncle, from whom
he has such large expectations, have no influence upon him: that what
tolerable qualities he has, are founded more in pride than in virtue:
that allowing, as he does, the excellency of moral precepts, and
believing the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, he can live as
if he despised the one, and defied the other: the probability that the
taint arising from such free principles, may go down into the manners
of posterity: that I knowing these things, and the importance of them,
should be more inexcusable than one who knows them not; since an error
against judgment is worse, infinitely worse, than an error in judgment.
Reflecting upon these things, I cannot help conjuring you, my dear, to
pray with me, and to pray for me, that I may not be pushed upon such
indiscreet measures, as will render me inexcusable to myself: for that
is the test, after all. The world's opinion ought to be but a secondary
consideration.

I have said in his praise, that he is extremely ready to own his errors:
but I have sometimes made a great drawback upon this article, in his
disfavour; having been ready to apprehend, that this ingenuousness may
possibly be attributable to two causes, neither of them, by any means,
creditable to him. The one, that his vices are so much his masters, that
he attempts not to conquer them; the other, that he may think it policy,
to give up one half of his character to save the other, when the
whole may be blamable: by this means, silencing by acknowledgment
the objections he cannot answer; which may give him the praise of
ingenuousness, when he can obtain no other, and when the challenged
proof might bring out, upon discussion, other evils. These,