prototype of Dr. Johnson, who imitated him only as far as Sir T. B.
resembles the majority of his predecessors; that is, in the pedantic
preference of Latin derivations to Saxon words of the very same force.
In the balance and construction of his periods Dr. Johnson has followed
Hall, as any intelligent reader will discover by an attentive comparison.


P. 158.

Yea, will some man say, "But that which marreth all is the opinion of
merit and satisfaction." Indeed that is the School doctrine, but the
conscience enlightened to know itself, will easily act that part of
the Publican, 'who smote his breast, and said, God be merciful to me a
sinner'.

Alas! so far from this being the case with ninety nine out of one
hundred in Spain, Italy, Sicily, and Roman Catholic Germany, it is the
Gospel tenets that are the true School doctrine, that is confined to
books and closets of the learned among them.


P. 161.

And the like may be conceived here, since, especially, the idolatry
practised under the obedience of mystical Babylon is rather in false
and will-worship of the true God, and rather commended as profitable
than enjoined as absolutely necessary, and the corruptions there
maintained are rather in a superfluous addition than retraction in any
thing necessary to salvation.