Though often misled by prejudice and passion, he was emphatically an honest man.

Though he was not secure from the seductions of vanity, his spirit was raised high above the influence either of cupidity or of fear.

His nature was kind, generous, grateful, forgiving.

[218] His religious zeal, though steady and ardent, was in general restrained by humanity, and by a respect for the rights of conscience.

Strongly attached to what he regarded as the spirit of Christianity, he looked with indifference on rites, names, and forms of ecclesiastical polity, and was by no means disposed to be severe even on infidels and heretics whose lives were pure, and whose errors appeared to be the effect rather of some perversion of the understanding than of the depravity of the heart.