Bolingbroke (Henry St. John, Viscount, English author, orator, and politician), 1678-1751. At last, though the precise words are not preserved, he gave directions that no clergyman should visit him, and avowed his adherence to the deistical principles to which he had held through his life.
His last words to Lord Chesterfield were: "God, who placed me here, will do what he pleases with me hereafter, and he knows best what to do. May he bless you."[6]
The dreadful malady under which Bolingbroke lingered, and at length sank—a cancer in the face—he bore with exemplary fortitude, a fortitude drawn from the natural resources of his mind, and unhappily not aided by the consolation of any religion; for, having early cast off the belief in revelation, he had substituted, in its stead, a dark and gloomy naturalism, which even rejected those glimmerings of hope as to futurity not untasted by the wiser of the heathens.—Lord Brougham.
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