velace had been drawn an _Infidel_ or _Scoffer_, his Character,
according to the Taste of the present worse than Sceptical Age, would
have been more natural. It is, however, too well known, that there are
very many persons, of his Cast, whose actions discredit their belief.
And are not the very Devils, in Scripture, said to _believe_ and
_tremble_?

"But the Reader must have observed, that great, and, it is hoped, good
Use, has been made throughout the Work, by drawing Lovelace an Infidel
only in _Practice_; and this as well in the arguments of his friend
Belford, as in his own frequent Remorses, when touched with temporary
Compunction, and in his last Scenes; which could not have been made, had
either of them been painted as _sentimental_ Unbelievers. Not to say,
that Clarissa, whose great Objection to Mr. Wyerly was, that he was a
Scoffer, must have been inexcusable had she known Lovelace to be so, and
had given the least attention to his Addresses. On the contrary, thus
she comforts herself, when she thinks she must be his--'This one
consolation, however, remains: He is not an Infidel, an Unbeliever. Had
he been an Infidel, there would have been no room at all for hope of
him; but (priding himself as he does in his fertile invention) he would
have been utterly abandoned, irreclaimable, and a Savage[49].' And it
must be observed, that Scoffers are too witty in their own opinion; in
other words, value themselves too much upon their profligacy, to aim at
concealing it.

"Besides, had Lovelace added ribbald jests upon Religion, to his other
liberties, the freedoms which would then have passed between him and his
friend, must have been of a nature truly infernal. And this farther hint
was meant to be given, by way of inference, that the man who allowed
himself in those liberties either of speech or action, which Lovelace
thought shameful, was so far a worse man than Lovelace. For this reason
is he every-where made to treat jests on sacred things and subjects,
even down to the Mythology of the Pagans, among Pagans, as undoubted
marks of the ill-breeding of the jesters; obscene images and talk, as
liberties too shameful for even Rakes to allow themselves in; and
injustice to creditors, and in matters of _Meum_ and _Tuum_, as what it
was beneath him to be guilty of.

"Some have objected to the meekness, to the tameness, as they will have
it to be, of the character of Mr. Hickman. And yet Lovelace owns, that
he rose upon h