On the constitution of the Church and State according to the idea of each. Lay sermons ..

BT

■!•>

li

^ny -J- ?a> ?.

JEf> i3E10»>->^^

5>-,^

1

' t?^

s

•^

^^^ii^

"kr^^C^

•(i.<jC:m3m<M

Mmc:<i^'

c-r-<msm:

^SSSiIBBSSkS

im-8

■

Cornell University Library

Wordsworth Collection

Gift of

M. H. & Ruth Abrams

ON THE

CONSTITUTION OF CHURCH AND STATE

[THIRD EDITION]

LAY SERMONS

[second edition]

BY S. T. COLERIDGE

I

ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE

CHURCH AND STATE

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA
OF EACH

II
LAY SERMONS

I. THE STATESMAN'S MANUAL

II. "BLESSED ARE YE THAT SOW BESIDE

ALL WATERS"

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

EDITED FROM THE AUTHOR's CORRECTED COPIES WITH NOTES

BV HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE ESQ. M.A.

LONDON

WILLIAM PICKERING

1839

" O that our Clergy did but know and see that their tithe:*
and glebes belong to them as officers and functionaries of the
IVIationalty,— as clerks, and not exclusively as theologians, and
not at all as ministers of the Gospel;— hut that they are like-
wise ministers of the Church of Christ, and that their claims
and the powers of that Church are no more alienated or affected
by their being at the same time the Established Clergy, than
by the common coincidence of their being justices of the peace,
or heirs to an estate, or stock-holders ! The Romish divines
placed the Church above the Scriptures: our present divines
give it no place at all.

" But Donne and his great contemporaries had not yet learnt
to be afraid of announcing and enforcing the claims of the
Church, distinct from, and coordinate with, the Scriptures. This
is one evil consequence, though most unnecessarily so, of the
union of the Church of Christ v,'ith the National Church, and
of the claims of the Christian pastor and preacher with the
legal and constitutional rights and revenues of the officers of
the National Clerisy. Our Clergymen, in thinking of their legal
rights, forget those rights of theirs which depend on no human
law at all." — Literary Remains, vol. iii. p. 119.

C. WVmi INGHAM, TOUKS COURT, CMVNCliUY l.AMi,

CONTENTS.

Page

Preface ix

Advertisement 1

Church and State, Part 1 7

Church of Christ 121

Church of Antichrist 141

Church and State, Part II 157

Notes on the History of Entliusiasm 176

Demosius and Mystes 184

Statesman's Manual 201

Appendix (A.) 257

(B.) 258

(C.) 284

(D.) 286

(E.) 292

" Blessed are ye that sow beside all Wateis" 303

I ntroduction 305

PREFACE
TO THE CHURCH AND STATE.

A RECOLLECTION of the value set upon the fol-
lowing' little work by its Author,* combined with
a deep sense of the wisdom and importance of the
positions laid down in it, will, it is hoped, be
thought to justify the publication of a few preli-
minary remarks, designed principally to remove
formal difficulties out of the path of a reader not
previously acquainted with Mr. Coleridge's writ-
ings, nor conversant with the principles of his
philosophy. The truth is that, although the Au-
thor's plan is well defined and the treatm.ent strictly
progressive, thei'e is in some parts a want of de-
tailed illustration and express connexion, which
weakens the impression of the entire work on the
generality of readers. " If," says Mr. Maurice,
" I were addressing a student who was seeking to
make up his mind on the question, without being
previously biassed by the views of any particular
party, I could save myself this trouble by merely
referring him to the work of Mr. Coleridge, on
the Idea of Church and State, published shortly

See Table Talk, 2nd edit. p. 5, note.

PREFACE TO THE

after the passing of the Roman Catholic Bill. The
hints respecting the nature of the Christian Church
which are thrown out in that work are only suffi-
cient to make us wish that the Author had deve-
loped his views more fully ; but the portion of it
which refers to the State seems to me in the
highest degree satisfactory. When I use the word
satisfactory, I do not mean that it will satisfy the
wishes of any person who thinks that the epithets
teres atque rotundus are the highest that can be
applied to a scientific woi'k ; who expects an author
to furnish him with a complete system which he
can carry away in his memory, and, after it has
received a few improvements from himself, can
hawk it about to the public or to a set of admiring^
disciples. Men of this description would regard
Mr. Coleridge's book as disorderly and fragmen-
tary ; but those who have some notion of what
Butler meant when he said, that the best writer
would be he who merely stated his premisses, and
left his readers to work out the conclusions for
themselves ; — those who feel that they want just
the assistance which Socrates offered to his scho-
lars — assistance, not in providing them with
thoughts, but in bringing forth into the light
thoughts which they had within them before; —
these will acknowledge that Mr. Coleridge has
only deserted the common high way of exposition,
that he might follow more closely the turnings and
windings which the mind of an earnest thinker
makes when it is groping after the truth to which

CHURCH AND STATE. XI

he wishes to conduct it. To them, therefore, the
book is satisfactory by reason of those very quali-
ties which make it alike unpleasant to the formal
schoolman and to the man of the world. And,
accordingly, scarcely any book, published so re-
cently and producing so little apparent effect, has
really exercised a more decided influence over the
thoughts and feelings of men who ultimately rule
the mass of their countrymen."*

Under these circumstances, the following argu-
ment or summary of the fundamental and more
complicated portion of the work may be service-
able to the ingenuous but less experienced reader.

I. The constitution of the State and the Church
is treated according to the Idea of each. By the
Idea of the State or Church is here meant that
conception, which is not abstracted from any par-
ticular form or mode in which either may happen
to exist at any given time, nor yet generalized
from any number or succession of such forms or
modes, but which is produced by a knowledge or
sense of the ultimate aim of each. This idea, or
sense of the ultimate aim, may exist, and power-
fully influence a man's thoughts and actions, with-
out his being able to express it in definite words,
and even without his being distinctly conscious of
its indwelling. A few may possess ideas in this

* Kingdom of Christ, vol. iii. p. 2. A work of singular
originality and power.

Xn PREFACE TO THE

meaning ; — the g-enerality of mankind are pos-
sessed by them. In either case an idea, so under-
stood, is in order of thought always and of necessity
contemplated as antecedent, — a mere conception,
strictly defined as an abstraction or generalization
from one or more particular forms or modes, is ne-
cessarily posterior, — in order of thought to the thing
thus conceived. And though the idea is in its nature
a pi'ophecy, yet it must be carefully remembered
that the particular form, construction, or model,
best fitted to render the idea intelligible to a third
person, is not necessarily — perhaps, not most com-
monly — the mode or form in which it actually
arrives at realization. For in consequence of the
imperfection of means and materials in all the
works of man, a law of compensation and a prin-
ciple of compromise are perpetually active ; and it
is the first condition of a sound philosophy of State
to recog-nize the wide extent of the one, the ne-
cessity of the other, and the frequent occurrence
of both.

II. The word State is used in two senses, — a
larger, in which it comprises, and a narrower, in
which it is opposed to, the National Church. A
Constitution is the ideal attribute of a State in the
larger sense, as a body politic having the principle
of its unity within itself; and it is the law or
principle which prescribes the means and condi-
tions by and under which that unity is established
and preserved. The Constitution, therefore, of
this Nation comprises the idea of a Church and a

CHURCH AND STATE. Xlii

State in the narrower sense, placed in simple an-
tithesis one to another. The unity of the State,
in this latter sense, results from the equipoise and
interdependence of the two g-reat opposite interests
of every such State, its Permanence and its Pro-
gression. The permanence of a State is connected
with the land ; its progression with the mercan-
tile, manufacturing, distributive, and professional
classes. ■ The first class is subdivided into what our
law books have called Major and Minor Barons ; —
both of these subdivisions, as such, being opposed
to the representatives of the progressive interest
of the nation, yet the latter of them drawing more
nearly to the antagonist order than the former.
Upon these facts the principle of the Constitution
of the State, in its narrower sense, was established.
The balance of permanence and progression was
secured by a leg-islature of two Houses ; the first,
consisting wholly of the Major Barons or land-
holders ; the second, of the Minor Barons or
knights, as the representatives of the remaining
landed community, together with the Burgesses,
as representing the commercial, manufacturing,
distributive, and professional classes — the latter
constituting the effectual majority in number. The
King, in whom the executive power was vested,
was in regard to the interests of the State, in its
antithetic sense, the beam of the scales.

This is the Idea of that State, not its history ;
it has been the standard or aim, the Lex Legum,
which, in the very first law of State ever promul-

XIV PREFACE TO THE

g-ated in the land, was pre-supposed as the ground
of that first law.

III. But the English Constitution results from
the harmonious opposition of two institutions, the
State, in the narrower sense, and the Church.
For as by the composition of the one provision was
alike made for permanence, and progression in
wealth and personal freedom; to the other was
committed the only remaining interest of the State
in its larger sense, that of maintaining and ad--
vancing the moral cultivation of the people them-
selves, without which neither of the former could
continue to exist.

IV. It was common, at least to the Scandinavian,
Keltic, and Gothic, with the Semitic tribes, if not
universal in all the primitive races, that in taking
possession of a new country, and in the division
of the land into heritable estates among the indi-
vidual warriors or heads of families, a Reserve
should be made for the Nation itself. The sum
total of these heritable portions is called the Pro-
priety, the Reserve the Nationalty. These were
constituent factors of the commonwealth ; the ex-
istence of the one being the condition of the right-
fulness of the other. But the wealth appropriated
was not so entirely a pi-operty as not to remain,
to a certain extent, national ; nor was the wealth
reserved so exclusively national as not to admit
an individual tenure. The settlement of the Na-
tionalty in one tribe only of the Hebrew confede-
racy, subservient as it was to a higher purpose,

CHURCH AND STATE.

was in itself a deviation from the idea, and a main
cause of the comparatively little effect which the
Levitical establishment produced on the moral and
intellectual character of the Jewish people during'
the whole period of their existence as an inde-
pendent state.

V. The Nationalty was reserved for the main-
tenance of a permanent class or order, the Clerisy,
Clerks, Clerg-y, or Church of the Nation. This
class comprised the learned of all denominations,
the professors of all those arts and sciences, the
possession and application of which constitute the
civilization of a country. Theology formed only
a part of the objects of the National Church. The
theologians took the lead, indeed, and deservedly
so ; — not because they were priests, but because
under the name of theology were contained the
study of languages, history, logic, ethics, and a
philosophy of ideas ; because the science of the-
ology itself was the root of the knowledges that
civilize man, and gave unity and the circulating
sap of life to all other sciences; and because,
under the same name were comprised all the main
aids, instruments, and materials of National Educa-
tion. Accordingly, a certain smaller portion of the
functionaries of the Clerisy were to remain at the
fountain heads of the humanities, cultivating and
enlarging the knowledge already possessed, watch-
ing over the interests of physical and moral science,
and the instructors of all the remaining more nu-
merous classes of the order. These last were to

XVl PREFACE TO THE

be distributed throughout the country, so as not to
leave even the smallest integral division without
a resident guide, guardian, and teacher, diffusing
through the whole community the knowledge in-
dispensable for the understanding of its rights,
and for the performance of the correspondent
duties. But neither Christianity, nor a fortiori,
any particular scheme of theology supposed to be
deduced from it, forms any essential part of the
being of a National Church, however conducive it
may be to its well being. A National Church may
exist, and has existed, without, because before, the
institution of the Christian Church, as the Levi-
tical Church in the Hebrew, and the Druidical
in the Keltic, constitutions may prove.

VI. But two distinct functions do not necessa-
rily imply or require two different functionaries :
on the contrary, the perfection of each may require
the union of both in the same person. And in the
instance now in question, as great and grievous
errors have arisen from confounding the functions
of the National Church with those of the Church
of Christ, so fearfully great and grievous will be
the evils from the success of an attempt to separate
them.

VII. In process of time, however, and as a na-
tural consequence of the expansion of the mercan-
tile and commercial order, the students and pro-
fessors of those sciences and sorts of learnino", the
use and necessity of which were perpetual to the '
Nation, but only occasional to the Individuals, gra-

CHUKCH AND STATE. XVll

dually detached themselves from the National Cle-
risy, and passed over, as it were, to that order,
with the growth and thriving condition of which
their particular emoluments were found to increase
in equal proportion. And hence by slow degrees
the learned in the several departments of law, me-
dicine, architecture and the like, contributed to
form under the common name of Professional, an
intermediate link between the national clerisy and
the simple burgesses.

VIII, But this circumstance cannot alter the
tenure, or annul the rights, of those who remained,
and who, as members of the permanent learned
class, were planted throughout the realm as the
immediate agents and instruments in the work of
increasing and perpetuating the civilization of the
nation ; and who, thus fulfilling the purposes for
which the Nationalty was reserved, are entitled to
remain its usufructuary trustees. The proceeds of
the Nationalty might, indeed, in strictness, if it
could ever be expedient, be rightfully transferred
to functionaries other than such as are also minis-
ters of the Church of Christ. But the Nationalty
itself cannot, without foul wrong to the nation, be
alienated from its original purposes ; and those who
being duly appointed thereto, exercise the func-
tions and perform the duties attached to the Na-
tionalty, possess a right to the same by a title to
which the thunders from Mount Sinai might give
greater authority, but not additional evidence.

IX. Previously to the sixteenth century, large

b

XVUl PREFACE TO THE

masses were alienated from the heritable proprieties
of the realm, and confounded with the Nationaltj
under the common name of Church property. At
the period of tlie Reformation a re-transfer of these
took place, and rightfully so : but tog'ether with,
and under pretext of, this restoration to the State
of what properly belonged to it, a wholesale usur-
pation took place of a very large portion of that
which belonged to the Church. This was a sacri-
legious robbery on the Nation, and a deadly wound
on the constitution of the State at large. The
balance of the reserved and appropriated wealth of
the Nation was deranged, and thus the former be-
came unequal to the support of the entire burthen
of popular civilization originally intended to be
borne by it.* Barely enough — indeed, less than
enough — was left for the effectual maintenance of
that primary class of the Clerisy, which had not
fallen off into separate professions, but continued
to be the proper servants of the public in producing

* " Give back to the Church what the Nation originally
consecrated to its use, and it ought then to be charged with
the education of the people; but half of the original revenue
has been already taken by force from her, or lost to her
through desuetude, legal decision, or public opinion : and
are those whose very houses and parks are part and parcel
of what the Nation designed for the general purposes of the
Clergy, to be heard, when they argue for making the Church
support, out of her diminished revenues, institutions, the in-
tended means for maintaining which they themselves hold
under the sanction of legal robbery 1" Table J'alk, Pref. p.
xvi. 2nd edit.

CHURCH AND STATE. xix

and reproducing, in preserving, promoting and per-
fecting all the necessary sources and conditions of
the civilization of the Nation itself.*

X. Though many things may detiact from the
comparative fitness of individuals, or of particular
classes, for the trust and functions of the Nation-
alty, there are only tw^o absolute disqualifications ;
— allegiance to a foreign power, or the acknow-
ledgment of any other visible head of the National
Church but the King ; — and compulsory celibacy,
in connection with, and dependence on, a foreign
and extra-national head.

XI. The legitimate objects of the power of the
King and the two Houses of Parliament, as consti-
tuting the State, in its special and antithetic sense,
comprise, according to the idea, all the interests
and concerns of the Propriety, and rightfully those
alone.

XII. The King, again, is the Head of the Na-
tional Clerisy, and the supreme trustee of the
Nationalty ; the power of which in relation to its
proper objects is rightfully exercised, according to
the idea, by the King and the two Houses of Con-
vocation, and by them alone. The proper objects
of this power are mentioned in No. V.

Xni. The Coronation Oath neither does, nor
can, bind the conscience of the King in matteis of

* See an approach to an expression of the Author's idea
of the National Church thus regarded, in the Bishop of
London's late Charge, Oct. 1838, p. 2, &c.

PREFACE TO THE

faith. But it binds him to refuse his consent
(without which no change in the existing law can
be effected) to any measure subverting or tending
to subvert the safety and independence of the Na-
tional Church, or which may expose the realm to
the danger of a return of that foreign Usurper, mis-
named spiritual, from which it has with so many
sacrifices emancipated itself. And previously to
the ceremonial act which announces the King the
only lawful and sovereign head of both the Church
and the State, this oath is administered to him re-
ligiously as the representative person and crowned
majesty of the Nation; — religiously; — for the mind
of the Nation, existing only as an idea, can act
distinguishably on the ideal powers alone, — that
is, on the reason and conscience.

The several other points comprised in the re-
mainder of this work, though of great interest and
importance, require neither analysis nor comment
for their perfect comprehension. But it will na-
turally occur to the reader to consider how far the
idea of the Church and of its relation to the State
presented in these pages coincides with either of
the two celebrated systems, those of Hooker and
Warburton, which, under one shape or another,
have divided the opinions of thinking persons up to
the present day.

According to Hooker, the Church is one body,
— the essential unity of which consists in, and

CHURCH AND STATE. XXI

is known by, an external profession of Chris-
tianity, without regard in any respect had to the
moral virtues or spiritual graces of any member
of that body. "If by external profession they
be Christians, then are they of the visible Church
of Christ : and Christians by external profession
they are all, whose mark of recognizance hath in
it those things which we have mentioned, yea,
although they be impious idolaters, wicked he-
retics, persons excommunicable, yea, and cast out
for notorious improbity. Such withal we deny not
to be the imps and limbs of Satan, even as long as
they continue such." (E. P. III. c. i. s. 7. Keble's
edit. vol. i. p. 431.)

With this Warburton and Coleridge in general
terms agree. {Alliance, &c. II. c. ii. s. 2. — Church
and State, p. 139.) And the words of the nineteenth
Article, though apparently of a more restricted
import, may be presumed not to mean less.

But, further, Hooker insists that the Church,
existing in any particular country, and the State
are one and the same society, contemplated in two
different relations, " A Commonwealth we name
it simply in regard of some regiment or policy
under which men live ; a Church for the truth of
that religion which they profess. * * * When we
oppose the Church, therefore, and the Common-
wealth in a Christian society, we mean by the
Commonwealth that society with relation unto all
the public affairs thereof, only the matter of true
religion excepted ; by the Church, the same society

XXll PREFACE TO THE

with only reference unto the matter of true reli-
gion, without any other affairs besides : when that
society, which is both a Church and a Common-
wealth, doth flourish in those things which belong
unto it as a Commonwealth, we then say, ' the
Commonwealth doth flourish ;' when in those things
which concern it as a Church, ' the Church doth
flourish;' when in both, then 'the Church and
Commonwealth flourish together.'" (E. P. VIII,
c. i. s. 5. vol. iii. p. 420 — 1.)

To this view Warburton, as is well known, is
directly opposed. He argues that, althoug'h two
societies may be so closely related to each other
as to have one common stcppositum, — that is, the
same natural persons being exclusively members
of each, — the societies themselves, as such, are
factitious bodies, and each of them must therefore
of necessity be distinct in personality and will from
the other. " The artificial man, society, is much
unlike the natural ; who being created for several
ends hath several interests to pursue, and several
relations to consult, and may therefore be consi-
dered under several capacities, as a religious, a
civil, and a rational animal ; and yet they all make
but one and the same man. But one and the same
political society cannot be considered in one view,
as a religious — in another, as a civil — and in
another, as a literary — community. One society
can be precisely but one of these communities."
{Alliance, &c. ii. c, v.) Accordingly Warburton
insists, in opposition to Hooker, that the Puritan

CHUUCH AND STATE. Xxiii

premiss,— that the Church and the State are distinct
and originally independent societies, — was and is
the truth ; but he denies the Puritan inference, that
such independency must therefore be perpetual ; —
affirming the existence of an alliance between these
two societies upon certain terms; and a resulting mu-
tual inter-dependency of one on the other; whereby
the consequence from the position of the Puritans — -
an imperium in imperio, or subjugation of the State
to the Church, — and the consequence from the
position of Hooker — the enslavement of the Church
by the State — are equally precluded. The Church
subordinates itself to the State upon faith of cer-
tain stipulations for suppoi-t by the latter ; and if
the State violates, or withdraws from the fulfill-
ment of, those stipulations, the Church is thereby
remitted to her original independence.*

Now so far as the distinct inter-dependency of
the State and the Church is in question, Coleridge
agrees with Warburton. But the pfculiarity of
his system, as expressly laid down in this work
and incidentally mentioned in many of his other
writings, — a peculiarity fruitful in the most ini-

* It is worthy of remark that, if Warburton had lived in
these days, and had adhered to the principles advocated by
him in this treatise, he must several years ago lia^re declared
the terms of convention between the Church and State in
this country violated by the latter, and the alliance of the
two at an end. See his third book, and especially the se-
cond chapter. It is to be observed, also, that Warburton
confounds the Christian with the Established Church as
much as Hooker. See B. II. c. iii, 3,

PREFACE TO THE

portant consequences — is grounded on a distinction
taken between the visible Church of Christ, as
localized in any Christian country, and the National
or Established Church of that country. Distinc-
tion, be it observed, not separation, — for the two
ideas

— bene conveniunt, et in una sede morantur ;

they not only may co-exist in the same suppositum,
but may require an identity of subject in order to
the complete development of the perfections of
either. According- to Coleridge, then, the Chris-
tian Church is not a kingdom or realm of this
vi^orld, nor a member of any such kingdom or
I'ealm ; it is not opposed to any particular State in
the larg'e or narrow sense of the word ; it is in no
land national, and the national Reserve is not en-
trusted to its charge. It is, on the contrary, the
opposite to the World only ; the counterforce to
the evils and defects of States, as such, in the
abstract, — asking- of any particular State neither
wages nor dignities, but demanding protection,
that is, to be let alone.

With so much therefore of the preceding- and all
other theories as considers any branch of the
Church of Christ, as such, in the character of a
National Establishment, and arrogates to it, as
such, upon any ground, worldly riches, rank or
power — Coleridge is directly at variance. But we
have already seen (v. vi. vii. viii.) that there
is, nevertheless, in this and in almost every other

CHURCH A'ND STATE. XXV

country raised above the level of barbarism a
Church, which is strictly and indefeasibly National;
and in the ideal history herein presented of its ori-
gin and primary elements, its endowment, its uses,
duties, ends, and objects, its relation to the State,
and its present representatives, a solemn warning-
is recorded of the fatal consequences of either con-
founding it with, or separating it from, the visible
Church of Christ.

The Christian Church is a public and visible
community, having ministers of its own, whom the
State can neither constitute nor deg-rade, and whose
maintenance amongst Christians is as secure as
the command of Christ can make it : for so Jtath
the Lord ordained that they which preach the
Gospel should live of the Gospel. (1. Cor. ix.
14.) The National Church is a public and visible
community, having ministers whom the Nation,
through the agency of a Constitution, hath created
trustees of a reserved national fund, upon fixed
terms and with defined duties, and whom, in case
of breach of those terms or dereliction of those
duties, the Nation, through the same ag-ency, may
discharge. " If the former be Ecclesia, the com-
munion of such as are called out of the World,
that is, in reference to the especial ends and pur-
poses of that communion ; the latter might more
expressively have been called Enclesia, or an
order of men chosen in and of the realm, and con-
stituting an estate of the realm."

Now there is no reason why the ministers of the

XXVI PREFACE TO THE

one Church may not also be ministers of the other :
there are many reasons why they should be-

When therefore it is objected that Christ's king-
dom is not of this world, it is admitted to be true ;
but the text is shown to have no application in the
way of impeachment of the titles, emoluments or
authorities, of an institution which rightfully is of
this world, and would not answer the end of its
constitution if it ceased to belong to, and in a cer-
tain sense to sympathize with, the world. When
again it is alleged that " the best service which men
of power can do to Christ is without any more cere-
mony to sweep all and leave the Church as bare
as in the day it was first born" — " that if we give
God our hearts and affections, our goods are better
bestowed otherwise," * the spirit and reason of
that allegation are humbly submitted to God's own
judgment ; but it is at the same time confidently
charged in reply, that the notion of the Church,
as the established instructress of the people, being-
improved in efficiency by the reduction of its mi-
nisters to a state bordering on mendicancy — can
in its flagrant folly be alone attributed to that
meanness of thought, which is at once the fruit
and the punishment of minds enslaved to party and
the world, and rendered indifferent to all truth by
an affected toleration of every form of error. When
further it is said that the Bishops of the Church of
Christ have no vocation to interfei-e in the le^isla-

* Hooker, B. V. Ixxiv. 17.

CHURCH AND STATE. XXVU

tion of the country, it is granted ; but with this
parallel assertion, that the Prelates of a National
Establishment, charged with the vast and awful task
of preserving, increasing and perpetuating the
moral culture of the people, have a call to be pre-
sent, advise, and vote in the National Council,
which can only cease to be a right when the re-
presentatives of the dearest national interest aie
denied a voice in the national assembly; and which
is no more impaired by the fact of those Prelates
sustaining in their individual persons another and
still more sacred character than by their being
members of a literary club or a botanical society-
When, finally, it is insisted to be contrary to jus-
tice to compel those who dissent from a religious
system either as to its doctrines or its forms of
worship, to contribute to the maintenance of its
priests and ministers, it is not denied ; but it is
withal maintained, that a national dedication of
funds for the support of a determinate class of nlen,
with the duty of national civilization to perform,
can no more be vacated or qualified by reason
of the voluntary secession of such dissenters from
that religious system, because the seceders under-
stand the character and obligation of that duty in
a way of their own, than the rights of Parliament
to levy taxes for the protection of our independence
from foreign aggression can be affected by the
dogma of rich philanthropists that war is unlawful,
and to pay a shilling towards its support an offence
as'ainst God,

PREFACE TO THE

But after all, it is urged, the funds set apart by
the Nation for the support of the National Church
are now in fact received by the ministers of the
Church of Christ in this country ! True ; but, ac-
cording- to the idea, — and that idea involves a his-
tory and a prophecy of the truth — it is not because
they are such ministers that they receive those
funds, but because, being- now the only representa-
tives, as formerly the principal constituents, of the
National Clerisy or Church, they alone have a
commission to carry on the work of national culti-
vation on national grounds — ti'ansmuting and in-
tegrating- all that the separate professions have
achieved in science or art — but, with a range tran-
scending the limits of professional views, or local or
temporary interests, applying- the product simple
and defecated, to the strengthening and subliming-
of the moral life of the Nation itself.

Such a Church is a principal instrument of the
divine providence in the institution and govern-
ment of human society. But it is not that Church
against which we know that Hell shall not pre-
vail.

For when the Nation, fatigued with the weight
of dear and glorious recollections, shall resolve to
repudiate its corporate existence and character, and
to i-esolve its mystic unity into the breathing
atoms that crowd the surface of the land, — then
the national and ancestral Church of England will
have an end. But it cannot be destroyed before.
It lies within the folds of that marvellous Consti-

CHURCH AND STATE. Xxix

tution, which patriots have out -watched the stars to I
develope and to protect, and is not separable from it. '
The time may come when it may seem fit to God
that both shall perish, for ever, or for a season ; —
and the sure token of that time will be, when the
divorce of scientific from religious education shall
have had its full work throughout the length and
the breadth of the land. Then although the Church
o/* England may fall, the Church of Christ iri En-
gland will stand ere(;t ; and the distinction, lost now
in a common splendour, will be better seen and
more poignantly felt by that darkening World to
which the Christian Church must become a more
conspicuous opposite.

ov y a p viv uvara

(j)V(n£ avspojv tTiKnv, ovOt
[lyv TTOTs \d9a KaraKoi^iacii'

(.ikyuQ tv T a V rij Bebc,
OvBk ytjpdcTKEi.

Lincoln's Inn,
Nov. 29, 1838.

ON THE

CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH
AND STATE

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH

ADVERTISEMENT.*

•

The occasion of this little work will be sufficiently
explained by an extract from a letter addressed
by me to a friend a few years ago : — " You ex-
press your wonder that I, who have so often avowed
my dislike to the introduction even of the word,
religion, in any special sense, in Parliament, or
from the mouth of lawyer or statesman, speaking
as such ; who have so earnestly contended that
religion cannot take on itself the character of law
without ipso facto ceasing to be religion, and that
law could neither recognize the obligations of re-
ligion for its principles, nor become the pretended
guardian and protector of the Faith, without de-
generating into inquisitorial tyranny ; — that I, who
have avowed my belief, that if Sir Matthew Hale's
doctrine, t that the Bible was a part of the law of

* To the first edition. — Ed.

t Hale's expression was " that Christianity is part of
B

ADVERTISEiMENT,

the land, had been uttered by a Puritan divine
instead of a Puritan judge, it would have been
quoted at this day, as a specimen of Puritanical
nonsense and bigotry ; — you express your wonder
that I, with all these heresies on my head, should
yet withstand the measure of Roman Catliolic
emancipation, as it is called, and join in opposing
Sir Francis Burdett's intended Bill for the repeal
of the disqualifying statutes ! x4nd you conclude
by asking : but is this true ?

" My answer is ; Here are two questions. To
the first, namely, is it true that I am unfriendly to
what you call Catholic emancipation ? — 1 reply;
No, the contrary is the truth. There is no incon-
sistency, however, in approving the thing, and
yet having my doubts respecting the manner ; in
desiring the same end, and yet scrupling the means
proposed for its attainment. When you are called
in to a consultation, you may perfectly agree with
another physician respecting the existence of the
malady and the expedience of its removal, and yet

the laws of England; and therefore to reproach the Christian
religion, is to speak in subversion of the law." Tlie King
V. Taylor. Ventr. 293, Keble, 607. But Sir Edward Coke
had many years before said that " Christianity is part and
parcel of the Common Law.'' — Erf.

ADVERTISEMENT. -3

diiJer respecting- the medicines and the method of
cure. To your second question, namely, am I un-
friendly to the present measure ? — I shall return an
answer no less explicit. Why I cannot return as
brief a one, you will learn from the following pages
transcribed, for the greater part, from a paper drawn
up by me some years ago, at the request of a
gentleman*— (that I have been permitted to call
him my friend,! place among- the highest honours
of my life), — an old and intimate acquaintance of
the late Mr. Canning's ; and which paper, had it
been finished before he left England, it was his
intention to have laid before the late Lord Liver-
pool.

" From the period of the Union with Ireland,
to the present hour, 1 have neglected no oppor-
tunity of obtaining correct information from books
and from men respecting the facts that bear on
the question, whether they regard the existing
state of things, or the causes and occasions of it ;
nor, during this time, has there been a single
speech of any note, on either side, delivered, or re-
ported as delivered, in either House of Parliament,
which I have not heedfully and thoughtfully pe-

The Rio'ht Honorable John Hookham Freie. — Ed.

ADVERTISEMENT.

rused, abstracting and noting down every argu
ment that was not already on my list, which, I
need not say, has for many years past had but few
accessions to number. Lastly, my conclusion I
have subjected, year after year, to a fresh revisal,
conscious but of one influence likely to warp my
judgment : and this is the pain, I might with
truth add the humiliation, of differing from men
whom I loved and revered, and whose superior
competence to judge aright in this momentous
cause I knew and delighted to know ; and this
aggravated by the reflection, that in receding from
the Burkes, Cannings, and Lansdownes, I did not
move a step nearer to the feelings and opinions of
their antagonists. With this exception, it is
scarcely possible, I think, to conceive an individual
less under the influences of the ordinaiy disturbing
forces of the judgment than your poor friend; or
from situation, pursuits, and habits of thinking,
from age, state of health and temperament, less
likely to be drawn out of his course by the under-
currents of hope, or fear, of expectation or wish.
But least of all, by predilection for any particular
sect or party : for wherever I look, in religion or
in politics, I seem to see a world of power and
talent wasted on the support of half truths, too
often the most mischievous, because least sus-

ADVERTISEMENT. 5

pected, of errors. This may result from the spiiit
and habit of partizanship, the supposed inseparable
accompaniment of a free state, which pervades all
ranks, and is carried into all subjects. But what-
ever may be its origin, one consequence seems to
be, that every man is in a bustle, and, except
under the sting of excited or alarmed self-interest,
scarcely any one in earnest."

I had collected materials for a third part under
the title of " What is to be done now?" — con-
sisting of illustrations, from the history of the
English and Scottish Churches, of the consequences
of the ignorance or contravention of the principles,
which I have attempted to establish in the first
part of this work ; and of practical deductions
from these principles, addressed chiefly to the
English clergy. But I felt the embers glowing
under the white ashes ; and, on reflection, I have
considered it more expedient that the contents
>f this volume should be altogether in strict
•onforraity with the title; that they should be,
md profess to be, no more and no other than
ideas of the constitution in Church and State.
And thus I may without inconsistency entreat
the friendly reader to bear in mind the dis-
tinction enforced in these pages, between the
exhibition of an idea, and the way of acting on

6 ADVERTISEMENT.

the same ; and that the scheme or diagram best
suited to make the idea clearly understood may
be very different from the form in which it is or
may be most adequately realized. And if the
reasonings of this work should lead him to think
that a strenuous opponent of the former attempts
in Parliament may have given his support to the
Bill lately passed into law without inconsistency,
and without meriting the name of apostate, it may
be to the improvement of his charity and good
temper, and not detract a tittle from his good sense
or political penetration.

PART I.

ON THE

CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH
AND STATE,

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH.

THERE IS A MYSTERY IN THE SOUL OF STATE,

WHICH HATH AN OPERATION MOBE DIVINE

THAN OUR MERE CHRONICLERS DARE MEDDLE WITH.

(Troil. and Cress, act iv. sc. 3, altered. — Ed.)

ON THE

CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH
AND STATE,

ACCORDING TO THE IDEA OF EACH.

CHAPTER I.

Prefatory remarks on the true import of the
word, Idea; and what the Author means by
the expression, " according to the idea."

The Act lately passed for the admission of Roman
Catholics into the Legislature* comes so near the
nmrk to which my convictions and wishes have
through my whole life, since earliest manhood,
unwaveringly pointed, and has so agreeably dis-
appointed my fears, that my first impulse was to
suppress the pages, which I had written while the
particulars of the Bill were yet unknown, in com-
pliance with the request of an absent friend, who
had expressed an anxiety " to learn from myself
the nature and grounds of my apprehension, that

* 10. G. IV. c. 7. " An Act for the relief of His Ma-
jesty's Roman Catholic subjects." — Ed.

10 CONSTITUTION OF

the measure would fail to effect the object imme-
diately intended by its authors."

In answer to this I reply that the main g-round
of that apprehension is certainly much narrowed ;
but as certainly not altogether removed. I refer
to the securities. And, let it be understood, that
in calling a certain provision hereafter specified, a
security, I use the word comparatively, and mean
no more, than that it has at least an equal claim
to be so called, with any of those that have been
hitherto proposed as such. Whether either one or
the other deserve the name ; whether the thing
itself is possible ; I leave undetei'mined. This
premised, I resume my subject, and repeat that
the main objection, from which my fears as to the
practical results of the proposed Bill were derived,
applies with nearly the same force to the Act it-
self; though the fears themselves have, by the
spirit and general character of the clauses, been
considerably mitigated. The principle, the solemn
recognition of which 1 deem indispensable as a
security, and should be willing to receive as the
only security — superseding the necessity, though
possibly not the expediency, of any other, but
itself by no other superseded — this principle is not
formally recognized. It may perhaps be implied
in one of the clauses (that which forbids the as-
sumption of local titles by the Romish bishops**);

* See ss. 24-5-6, prohibiting under a penalty the as-
sumption of the titles of the bishoprics and other ecclesiastical

CHURCH AND bTATE. 11

but this implication, even if really contained in the
clause, and actually intended by its framers, is not
calculated to answer the ends, and utterly inade-
quate to supply the place, of the solemn and foi'mal
declaration which I had required, and which, with
my motives and reasons for the same, it will be the
object of the following' pages to set forth.

But to enable the reader fully to understand,
and fairly to appreciate, my arg-uments, I must
previously state (what I at least judge to be) the
true idea of a Constitution, and, likewise, of a
national Church. And in giving the essential
character of the latter, I shall briefly specify its
distinction from the Church of Christ, and its
contra-distinction from a third form, which is
neither national nor Christian, but irreconcileable
with, and subversive of, both. By an idea 1
mean (in this instance) that conception of a thing,
which is not abstracted from any particular state,
form, or mode, in which the thing may happen to
exist at this or at that time ; noi' yet generalized
from any number or succession of such forms or
modes ; but which is given by the knowledge of
its ultimate aim.

Only one observation I must be allowed to add ;

dignities and offices ; the exhibition of the insignia of Romish
priesthood, and the performance of anv part of Romish
worship or religious service, elsewhere than in the usual
chapels. 'I'hese enactments have been openly violated with
impunity from^the passing of the Relief Act to this dav.
—Ed.

12 CONSTITUTION OF

that this knowledge, or sense, may very well exist,
aye, and powerfully influence a man's thoughts and
actions, without his being distinctly conscious of
the same, much more without his being competent
to express it in definite words. This, indeed, is
one of the points which distinguish ideas from con-
ceptions, both terms being used in their strict and
proper significations. The latter, that is, a con-
ception, consists in a conscious act of the under-
standing, bringing any given object or impression
into the same class with any number of other ob-
jects or impressions by means of some character
or characters common to them all. Concipimus,
id est, capimus hoc cum illo ; — we take hold of
both at once, we comprehend a thing, when we
have learned to comprise it in a known class. On
the other hand, it is the privilege of the few to
possess an idea : of the generality of men, it might
be more truly affirmed that they are possessed
by it.

What is here said, will, I hope, suffice as a
popular explanation. For some of my readers,
however, the following definition may not, perhaps,
be useless or unacceptable. That which, contem-
plated objectively (that is, as existing externallv
to the mind), we call a law ; the same contemplated
subjectively (that is, as existing in a subject or
mind), is an idea. Hence Plato often names ideas
laws ; and Lord Bacon, the British Plato, describes
the laws of the material universe as the ideas in

CHURCH AND STATE. 13

nature.* Quod in natura naturata lex, in na-
tura naturante idea, dicitur. By way of illus-
tration take the following. Every reader of Rous-
seau, or of Hume's Essays, will understand me
when I refer to the original social contract, as-
sumed by Rousseau, and by other and wiser men
before him, as the basis of all legitimate govern-
ment. Now, if this be taken as the assertion of
an historical fact, or as the application of a con-
ception, generalized from ordinary compacts be-
tween man and man, or nation and nation, to an
alleged actual occurrence in the first ages of the
world ; namely, the formation of a first contract,
in which men should have covenanted with each
other to associate, or in which a multitude should
have entered into a compact with a few, the one
to be governed and the other to govern under
certain declared conditions; I shall run little
hazard at this time of day in declaring the pre-
tended fact^ a pure fiction, and the conception of
such a fact an idle fancy. It is at once false and
foolish. t For what if an original contract had

* ifiE autem (divincB mentis idea) sunt vera signdcula
Creat(yris super creaturas, prout in materie per lineas veras et
exquisitas imprimnntur et terminantur. Nov. Org. P. II. 124.
—Ed.

t I am not indeed certain that some operatical farce,
under the name of a social contract or compact, may not
have been acted by the Illuminati and constitution-manu-
facturers at the close of the eighteenth century ; a period
which how far it deserved the name, so complacently affixed

14 CONSTITUTION OF

actually been entered into and farmally recorded ?
Still I cannot see what addition of moral force
would be gained by the fact. The same sense of
moral obligation which binds us to keep it, must
have pre-existed in the same force and in relation
to the same duties, impelling our ancestors to make
it. For what could it do more than bind the con-
tracting parties to act for the genei'al good, ac-
cording to their best lights and opportunities?
It is evident that no specific scheme or consti-
tution can derive any other claim to our reverence,
than that which the presumption of its necessity
or fitness for the general good shall give it; and
which claim of course ceases, or rather is reversed,
as soon as this general presumption of its utility
has given place to as general a conviction of the
contrary. It is true, indeed, that from duties
anterior to the formation of the contract, because
they arise out of the very constitution of our hu-
manity, which supposes the social state — it is true,
that in order to a rightful removal of the institution
or law thus agreed on, it is required that the con-
viction of its inexpediency shall be as general as
the presumption of its fitness was at the time of
its establishment. This, the first of the two great
paramount interests of the social state, that of
permanence, demands ; but to attribute more than

to it by contemporaries, of'' this enlightened ag-e,"niaybe
doubted. That it was an ag-e of enlighteners no man will
deny.

CHURCH AND STATE. 15

thi.s to any fundamental articles, passed into law
by any assemblage of individuals, is an injustice
to their successors, and a high offence ag-ainst the
other great interest of the social state, namely,
its progressive improvement. The conception,
therefore, of an original contract, is, I repeat,
incapable of historic proof as a fact, and it is
senseless as a theory.

But if instead of the conception or theory of an
original social contract, we say the idea of an
ever-originating social contract, this is so certain
and so indispensable, that it constitutes the v/hole
ground of the difference between subject and serf,
between a commonwealth and a slave-plantation.
And this, again, is evolved out of the yet higher
idea of person in contra-distinction to thing ; all
social law and justice being grounded on the prin-
ciple that a person can never, but by his own
fault, become a thing, or, without grievous wrong,
be treated as such ; and the distinction consisting
in this, that a thing may be used altogether and
merely as the means to an end ; but the person
must always be included in the end : his interest
must form a part of the object, a mean to which
he by consent, that is, by his own act, makes
himself. We plant a tree and we fell it ; we
breed the sheep and we shear or we kill it; in
both cases wholly as means to our ends; for
trees and animals are things. The wood-cutter
and the hind are likewise employed as means, but
on agreement, and that too an agreement of reci-

16 CONSTITUTION OF

procal advantage, which includes them as well as
their employer in the end ; for they are persons.
And the government, under which the contrary
takes place, is not worthy to be called a state, if,
as in the kingdom of Dahomey, it be unprogres-
sive ; or only by anticipation, where, as in Russia,
it is in advance to a better and more man-worthy
order of things. Now, notwithstanding the late
wonderful spread of learning through the commu-
nity, and though the schoolmaster and the lecturer
are abroad, the hind and the woodman may, very
conceivably, pass from cradle to coffin without
having once contemplated this idea, so as to be
conscious of the same. And there would be even
an improbability in the supposition that they pos-
sessed the power of presenting this idea to the
minds of others, or even to their own thoughts,
verbally as a distinct proposition. But no man,
who has ever listened to laborers of this rank, in
any alehouse, over the Saturday night's jug of
beer, discussing the injustice of the present rate
of wages, and the iniquity of their being paid in
part out of the parish poor-rates, will doubt for a
moment that they are fully possessed by the idea.
In close, though not perhaps obvious, connec-
tion with this is the idea of moral freedom, as the
ground of our proper responsibility. Speak to a
young Liberal, fresh from Edinburgh or Hackney
or the hospitals, of free-will as implied in free-
agency, he will perhaps confess with a smile that
he is a necessitarian, — proceed to assure his hearer

CHURCH AND STATE. 17

that the liberty of the will is an impossible concep-
tion, a contradiction in terms,* and finish by re-
commending a perusal of the works of Jonathan
Edwards or Dr. Crombie ; or as it may happen
he may declare the will itself a mere delusion, a
non-entity, and advise the study of Mr. Lawrence's
Lectures. Converse on the same subject with a
plain, sing-le-minded, yet reflecting, neighbour,
and he may probably say, (as St. Augustine had
said long before him, in reply to the question,
What is time ?) " I know it well enough when
you do not ask me." But alike with both the
supposed parties, the self-complacent student, just
as certainly as with our less positive neighbour;
if we attend to their actions, their feelings, and
even to their words, we shall be in ill luck, if ten
minutes pass without having full and satisfactory
proof that the idea of man's moral freedom pos-
sesses and modifies their whole practical being, in
all they say, in all they feel, in all they do and are
done to ; even as the spirit of life, which is con-
tained in no vessel, because it permeates all.
Just so is it with the Constitution. f Ask any

*, In fact, this is one of the distinguishing characters of
ideas, and marks at once the difference between an idea (a
truth-power of the reason) and a conception of the under-
standing ; namely, that the former, as expressed in words,
is always, and necessarily, a contradiction in terms. — See
A ids to 'Reflection. 3rd edit, p. 206.— Ed,

t I do not say, with the idea: for the constitution itself
is an idea. This will sound like a paradox or a sneer to

rinv

18 CONSTITUTION OF

of our politicians what is meant by the Constitution,
and it is ten to one that he will g'ive a false expla-
nation ; as for example, that it is the body of our
laws, or that it is the Bill of Rights ; or perhaps,
if he have read Thomas Payne, he may say that
we do not yet possess one ; and yet not an hour may
have elapsed, since we heard the same individual
denouncing, and possibly with good reason, this or
that code of laws, the excise and revenue laws,
or those for including pheasants, or those for ex-
cluding Roman Catholics, as altogether unconsti-
tutional ; and such and such acts of Parliament as
gross outrages on the Constitution. Mr. Peel,
who is rather remarkable for groundless and un-
lucky concessions, owned that the late Act broke
in on the Constitution of 1688 : whilst in 1689 a very
imposing minority of the then House of Lords,
with a decisive majority in the Lower House of
Convocation, denounced this very Constitution of
1688, as breaking in on the English Constitution.
But a Constitution is an idea arising out of the
idea of a State ; and because our whole history
from Alfred onwards demonstrates the continued
influence of such an idea, or ultimate aim, on
the minds of our fore-fathers, in their characters
and functions as public men, alike in what they

those with whom an idea is but another word for a fancy,
a something unreal ; but not to those who in the ideas con-
template tlie most real of all realities, and of all operative
powers the most actual.

CHURCH AND STATE. 19-

resisted and in what they claimed ; in the institu-
tions and forms of polity which they established,
and with regard to those, against which they more
or less successfully contended ; and because the
result has been a progressive, though not always
a director equable, advance in the gradual realiza-
tion of the idea ; and because it is actually, though
even because it is an idea not adequately, repre-
sented in a correspondent scheme of means really
existing ; we speak, and have a right to speak, of
the idea itself, as actually existing, that is, as a
principle existing in the only way in which a
principle can exist, — in the minds and consciences
of the persons whose duties it prescribes, and
whose rights it determines. In the same sense
that the sciences of arithmetic and of geometry,
that mind, that life itself, have reality ; the Con-
stitution has real existence, and does not the less
exist in reality, because it both is, and exists as,
an idea.

There is yet another ground for the affirmation
of its reality ; that, as the fundamental idea, it is
at the same time the final criterion by which all
particular frames of government must be tried :
for here only can we find the great constructive
principles of our representative system — (I use the
term in its widest sense, in which the crown itself
is included as representing the unity of the people,
the true and primary sense of the word majesty) ;
— those principles, I say, in the light of which it
can alone be ascertained what are excrescences,

20 CONSTITUTION OF

symptoms of distemperature, and marks of degene-
ration ; and what are native g-rowths, or changes
naturally attendant on the progressive develop-
ment of the original germ, symptoms of immatu-
rity perhaps, but not of disease ; or at worst, mo-
difications of the growth by the defective or faulty,
but remediless, or only gradually remediable, qual-
ities of the soil and surrounding elements.

There are two other characters, distinguishing
the class of substantive truths, or truth-powers
here spoken of, that will, I trust, indemnify the
reader for the delay of the two or three short sen-
tences required for their explanation. The first
is, that in distinction from the conception of a
thing, — which being abstracted or generalized
from one or more particular states, or modes, is
necessarily posterior in order of thought to the
thing thus conceived, — an idea, on the contrary,
is in order of thought always and of necessity con-
templated as antecedent. In the idea or principle,
life, for instance, the vital functions are the result
of the organization ; but this organization supposes
and pre-supposes the vital principle. The bearings
of the planets on the sun are determined by the
ponderable matter of wliich they consist ; but the
principle of gravity, the law in the material crea-
tion, the idea of the Ci'eator, is pre-supposed in
order to the existence, yea, to the very conception
of the existence, of matter itself.

This is the first. The other distinctive mark
may be most conveniently given in the form of a

CHURCH AND STATE. 21

caution. We should be made aware, namely, that
the particular form, construction, or model, that
may be best fitted to render the idea intelligible,
and most effectually serve the purpose of an in
structive diagram, is not necessarily the mode or
form in which it actually arrives at realization.
In the works both of man and of nature — in the
one by the imperfection of the means and mate-
rials, in the other by the multitude and complexity
of simultaneous purposes — the fact is most often
otherwise. A naturalist, (in the infancy of physio-
logy, we will suppose, and before the first attempts
at comparative anatomy,) — whose knowledge had
been confined exclusively to the human frame, or
to that of animals similarly organized, and who by
this experience had been led inductively to the idea
of respiration, as the copula and mediator of the
vascular and the nervous systems, — might, very pro-
bably, have regarded the lungs, with their appur-
tenances, as the only form in which this idea, or
ultimate aim, was realizable. Ignorant of the
functions of the spiracula in insects, and of the
gills of fish, he would, perhaps, with great confi-
dence degrade both to the class of non-respirants.
But alike in the works of nature and the institu-
tions of man, there is no more effectual preserva-
tive against pedantry and the positiveness of scio-
lism, than to meditate on the law of compensation
and the principle of compromise ; and to be fully
impressed with the wide extent of the one, the
necessity of the other, and the frequent occur-
rence of both.

22 CONSTITUTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

Having (more than sufficiently, I fear,) exercised
my reader's patience with these preparatory re-
marks, for which the anxiety to be fully understood
is my best excuse, thoug-h in a moment of less ex-
citement they might not have been without some
claim to attention for their own sake, I return to
the idea which forms the present subject, the
English Constitution, which an old writer calls,
" lex sacra, mater legum, than which nothing
can be proposed more certain in its grounds, more
pregnant in its consequences, or that hath more
harmonical reason within itself: and which is so
connatural and essential to the genius and innate
disposition of this nation, it being formed (silk-
worm-like) as that no other law can possibly regu-
late it; a law not to be derived from Alured, or
Alfred, or Canute, or other elder or later promul-
gators of particular laws, but which might say of
itself, — When reason and the laws of God first
came, then came 1 with them."

As according to an old saying, ' an ill foreknown
is half disarmed,' I will here notice an inconveni-
ence in our language, which, without a greater
inconvenience, I could not avoid, in the use of the
term ' State' in a double sense ; a larger, in which
it is equivalent to realm and includes the Church,
and a narrower, in which it is distinguished quasi
per antithesin fi'om the Church, as in the phrase,
Church and State. But the context, T trust, will
in every instance prevent ambiguity.

IDEA OF A STATE. 23

CHAPTER II.

The Idea of a State in the larger sense of the
term, introductory to the constitution of the
State in the narrower sense, as it exists in
this country.

A Constitution is the attribute of a State, that
is, of a body politic having the principle of its
unity within itself, whether by concentration of its
forces, as a constitutional pure monarchy, which,
however, has hitherto continued to be ens ratio-
nale, unknown in history ;* or, with which we are
alone concerned, by equipoise andinterdependency ;
— the lex equilibrii, the principle prescribing the
means and conditions by and under which this ba-
lance is to be established and preserved, being the
constitution of the State. It is the chief of many
blessings derived from the insular character and
, circumstances of our county, that our social insti-
tutions have formed themselves out of our proper
needs and interests ; that long and fierce as the
birth-struggle and the growing pains have been, the
antagonist powers have been of our own system,

* Spinozse Tract. Pol. cap. vi. De Monarchia ex rationis
prtescripto.

24 IDEA OF

and have been allowed to work out their final ba-
lance with less disturbance from external forces,
than was possible in the continental states.

Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile,

O Albion ! O my mother Isle !

i'hy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,

Glitter green with sunny showers ;

Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells

Echo to the bleat of flocks ;

("Those grassy hills, those glittering dells,

Proudly ramparted with rocks ; )

And Ocean mid his uproar wild

Speaks safety to his Island-child !

Hence for many a fearless age

Has social freedom loved the quiet shore,

Nor ever proud invader's rage

Or sack'd thy towers, or stain'd thy fields with gore.*

Now, in every country of civilized men, acknow-
ledg-ing the rights of property, and by means of
determined boundaries and common laws united
into one people or nation, the two antagonist
powers or opposite interests of the State, under
which all other state interests are comprised, are
those of permanence and of progression. f

* Ode to the Departing Year. Poet. Works, vol. i. p.
126.— Ed.

t Let me call attention to the essential difference between
' opposite' and ' contrary.' Opposite powers are always of
the same kind, and tend to union, either by equipoise or by
a common product. Thus the + and — poles of the mag-
net, thus positive and negative electricity, are opposites.
Sweet and sour are opposites ; sweet and bitter are contra-

A STATE. 25

It will not be necessary to enumerate the several
causes that combine to connect the permanence of
a state with the land and the landed property.
To found a family, and to convert his wealth into
land, are twin thoughts, births of the same mo-
ment, in the mind of the opulent merchant, when
he thinks of reposing from his labours. From the
class of the novi homines he redeems himself by
becoming the staple ring of the chain, by which the
present will become connected with the past, and

ries. The feminine character is opposed to the masculine ;
but the effeminate is its contrary. Even so in the present
instance, the interest of permanence is opposed to that of
progressiveness ; but so far from being contrary interests,
they, like the magnetic forces, suppose and require each
other. Even the most mobile of creatures, the serpent^
makes a rest of its own body, and, drawing up its volumi-
nous train from behind, on this y'w/cruTO propels itself on-
ward. On the other hand, it is a proverb in all languages,
that (relatively to man at least) what would stand still must
in fact be retrograde.

Many years ago, in conversing with a friend, I expressed
my belief that in no instance had the false use of a word
become current without some practical ill consequence, of
far greater moment than would primo aspectu have been
thought possible. That friend, very lately referring to this .
remark, assured me thatnot a month had passed since then,
without some instance in proof of its truth having occurred
in his own experience ; and added, with a smile, that he
had more than once amused himself with the thought of a
verbarian Attorney- General, authorized to bring informa-
tions ex officio against the writer or editor of any work in
extensive circulation, who, after due notice issued, should
persevere in misusing a word.

26 IDEA OF

the test and evidence of permanency be afforded.
To the same principle appertain primogeniture
and hereditary titles, and the influence which
these exert in accumulating large masses of pro-
perty, and in counteracting the antagonist and
dispersive forces, which the follies, the vices, and
misfortunes of individuals can scarcely fail to sup-
ply. To this, likewise, tends the proverbial ob-
duracy of prejudices characteristic of the humbler
tillers of the soil, and their aversion even to benefits
that are offered in the form of innovations. But
why need I attempt to explain a fact which no
thinking man will deny, and where the admission
of the fact is all that my argument requires ?

On the other hand, with as little chance of con-
tradiction, 1 may assert that the progression of a
State in the arts and comforts of life, in the diffu-
sion of the information and knowledge, useful or
necessary for all ; in short, all advances in civili-
zation, and the rights and privileges of citizens,
are especially connected with, and derived from,
the four classes, the mercantile, the manufacturing',
the distributive, and the professional. To early
Rome, war and conquest were the substitutes for
trade and commerce. War w^as their trade.* As

* " War in republican Rome was the offspring of its in-
tense aristocracy of spirit, and stood to the state in lieu of
trade. As long as there was any thing ah eitra to conquer,
the state advanced: when nothing remained but what was
Roman, then, as a matter of course, civil war began." — Ta-
ble Talk, 2nd edit. 169.— Ed.

A STATE. 27"

these wars became more frequent, on a larger
scale, and with feAver interruptions, the liberties of
tlie plebeians continued increasing : for even the
sugar plantations of Jamaica would (in their pre-
sent state, at least), present a softened picture of
the hard and servile relation, in which the plebeians
at one time stbod to their patrician superiors.

Italy is supposed at present to maintain a larger
number of inhabitants than in the days of Trajan
or in the best and most prosperous of the Roman
empire. With the single exception of the Eccle-
siastical State, the whole country is cultivated like
a garden. You may find there every gift of God
— only not freedom. It is a country rich in the
proudest records of liberty, illustrious with the
names of heroes, statesmen, legislators, philoso,-
phers. It hath a history all alive with the virtues
and crimes of hostile parties, when the glories and
the struggles of ancient Greece were acted over
again in the proud republics of Venice, Genoa,
and Florence. The life of every eminent citizen
was in constant hazai-d from the furious factions
of his native city, and yet life had no charm out of
its dear and honored walls. All the splendors of
the hospitable palace, and the favor of princes, could
not soothe the pining of Dante or Machiavel,
exiles from their free, their beautiful Florence.
But scarcely a pulse of true liberty survives. It
was the profound policy of the Spanish and
Austrian courts to degrade by every possible means
the profession of trade; and even in Pisa and

28 IDEA OF

Florence themselves to introduce the feudal pride
and prejudice of less happy, less enlightened, coun-
tries. Agriculture, meanwhile, with its attendant
population and plenty, was cultivated with increa-
sing success ; but from the Alps to the Straits of
Messina the Italians became slaves.

I have thus divided the subjects of the State
into two orders, the agricultural or possessors of
land ; and the mercantile, manufacturing, dis-
tributive, and professional bodies, under the com-
mon name of citizens. And I have now to add
that by the nature of things common to every
civilized country, at all events by the course of
events in this country, the first order is subdivided
into two classes, which, in imitation of our old
law books, we may call the Major and Minor
Barons ; both these, either by their interests or by
the very effect of their situation, circumstances,
and the nature of their employment, vitally con-
nected with the permanency of the State, its in-
stitutions, rights, customs, manners, privileges,
and as such, opposed to the second order, the
inhabitants of ports, towns, and cities, who are in
like manner and from like causes more especially
connected with its progression. I scarcely need
say, that in a very advanced stage of civilization,
the two orders of society will more and more
modify and leaven each other, yet never so com-
pletely but that the distinct character will remain
legible, and to use the words of the Roman Em-
peror, even in what is struck out the erasure will

A STATE. " 29

be manifest. At all times the Franklins, or the
lower of the two ranks of which the first order
consists, will, in their political sympathies, draw
more nearly to the antagonist order than the first
rank. On these facts, which must at all times
have existed, though in very different degrees
of prominence or maturity, the principle of our
Constitution was established. The total interests
of the country, the interests of the State, were
entrusted to a great Council or Parliament, com-
posed of two Houses. The first consisted exclu-
sively of the Major Barons, who at once stood as
the guardians and sentinels of their several estates
and privileges, and the representatives of the com-
mon weal. The Minor Barons, or Franklins, too
numerous, and indeed individually too weak, to
sit and maintain their rights in person, were to
choose among the worthiest of their own body
representatives, and these in such number as to
form an important though minor proportion of a
second House, the majority of which was formed
by the representatives of the second order chosen
by the cities, ports, and boroughs ; which repre-
sentatives ought on principle to have been elected
not only by, but from among, the members of the
manufacturing, mercantile, distributive, and pro-
fessional classes.

These four last mentioned classes, by an arbi-
trary but convenient use of the phrase, I will
designate by the name of the Personal Interest,
as the exponent of all moveable and personal

30 IDEA OF

possessions, including skill and acquired know-
ledge, the moral and intellectual stock in trade of
the professional man and the artist, no less than
the raw materials, and the means of elaborating,
transporting, and distributing them.

Thus in the theory of the Constitution it was pro-
vided that even though both divisions of the
Landed Interest should combine in any legislative
attempt to encroach on the rights and privileges
of the Personal Interest, yet the representatives
of the latter forming the clear and effectual ma-
jority of the lower House, the attempt must be
abortive ; the majority of votes in both Houses
being indispensable in order to the presentation of
a bill for the completory act, — that is, to make it
a law of the land. By force of the same me-
chanism must every attack be baffled that should
be made by the representatives of the minor land-
holders, in concert with the burgesses, on the ex-
isting rights and privileges of the peerage, and of
the hereditary aristocracy, of which the peerage
is the summit and the natural protector. Lastly,
should the nobles join to invade the rights and
franchises of the Franklins and the Yeomanry,
the sympathy of interest, by which the inhabitants
of cities, towns, and sea-ports are linked to the
great body of their agricultural fellow-commoners,
who supply their markets and form their principal
customers, could not fail to secure a united and
successful resistance. Nor would this affinity of
interest find a slight support in the sympathy of

A STATE. 31

feeling between the burg-ess senators and the county-
representatives, as members of the same House ;
and in the consciousness which the former have of
the dignity conferred on them by the latter. For
the notion of superior dignity will always be at-
tached in the minds of men to that kind of property
with which they have most associated the idea of
permanence : and the land is the synonyme of
country.

That the burgesses were not bound to elect repre-
sentatives from among their own order, individuals
bona fide belonging to one or other of the four
divisions above enumerated ; that the elective fran-
chise of the cities, towns, and ports, first invested
with borough-rights, was not made conditional,
and to a certain extent at least dependent, on
their retaining the same comparative wealth and
independence, and rendered subject to a periodical
revisal and re-adjustment ; that, in consequence
of these and other causes, the very weights in-
tended for the effectual counterpoise of the great
land-holders, have, in the course of events, been
shifted into the opposite scale ; that they now
constitute a large proportion of the political power
and influence of the very class of men whose
personal cupidity and whose partial views of the
Landed Interest at large they were meant to keep
in check ; — these things are no part of the Con-
stitution, no essential ingredients in the idea, but
apparent defects and imperfections in its reali-
zation ; which, however, we need neither regret

32 IDEA OF

nor set about amending, till we have seen whether
an equivalent force has not arisen to supply the
deficiency ; — a force great enough to have de-
stroyed the equilibrium, had not such a transfer
taken place previously to, or at the same time with,
the operation of the new forces. Roads, canals,
machinery, the press, the periodical and daily
press, the might of public opinion, the consequent
increasing desire of popularity among public men
and functionaries of every description, and the
increasing necessity of public character, as the
means or condition of political influence ; — I need
but mention these to stand acquitted of having
started a vague and naked possibility in extenuation
of an evident and palpable abuse.

But whether this conjecture be well or ill
grounded, the principle of the Constitution remains
the same. That harmonious balance of the two
gj-eat correspondent, at once supporting and
counterpoising, interests of the State, its perma-
nence, and its progression ; that balance of the
Landed and the Personal Interests was to be secured
by a legislature of two Houses ; the first consisting
wholly of barons or landholders, permanent and
hereditary senators ; the second of the knights or
minor barons, elected by, and as the representatives
of, the remaining landed community, together with
the burgesses, the representatives of the commer-
cial, manufacturing, distributive, and professional
classes, — the latter (the elected burgesses) consti-
tuting the major number. The King, meanwhile,

A STATE. 33

in whom the executive power is vested, it will suf-
fice at present to consider as the beam of the con-
stitutional scales. A more comprehensive view of
the kingly office must be defei'red, till the remain-
ing problem (the idea of a national Church) has been
solved,

I here again entreat the reader to bear in mind
what I have before endeavoured to impress on him,
that I am not giving an historical account of the
legislative body ; nor can I be supposed to assert
that such was the earliest mode or form in which
the national council was constructed. My asser-
tion is simply this, that its formation has advanced
in this direction. The line of evolution, however
sinuous, has still tended to this point, sometimes
with, sometimes without, not seldom, perhaps,
against, the intention of the individual actors, but
always as if a power, greater and better than thfe
men themselves, had intended it for them. Nor
let it be forgotten that every new growth, every
power and privilege, bought or extorted, has uni-
formly been claimed by an antecedent right ; not
acknowledged as a boon conferred, but both de-
manded and received as what had always belonged
to them, though withholden by violence and the in-
jury of the times : and this too, in cases, where,
if documents and historical records, or even consis-
tent traditions, had been required in evidence, the
monarch would have had the better of the argument.
But, in truth, it was no more than a practical way
of saying : " this or that is contained in the idea of

D

34 IDEA or

our g'overnment, and it is a consequence of the
lex, mater legum, which, in the very first law of
state ever promulgated in the land, was pre-sup-
posed as the ground of that first law."

Before I conclude this part of my subject, I must
press on the reader's attention, that the preceding
is offered only as the constitutional idea of the State.
In order to correct views respecting' the constitu-
tion, in the more enlarged sense of the term, namely,
the constitution of the nation, we must, in addi-
tion to a grounded knowledge of the State, have the
right idea of the national Church. These are two
poles of the same magnet; the magnet itself,
which is constituted by them, is the constitution
of the nation.

CHAPTER III.

On the National Church.

The reading of histories may dispose a man to
satire ; but the science of history, history studied
in the light of philosophy, as the great drama of
an ever unfolding Providence, has a verj^ dfferent
effect. It infuses hope and reverential thoughts of
man and his destination. It will, therefore, I trust,
be no unwelcome result, if it should be made appear

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 35

that something' deeper and better than priestcraft
and priest-ridden ignorance was at the bottom of
the phrase, Church and State, and entitled it to be
the form in which so many thousands of the men
of England clothed the wish for their country's weal.
But many things have conspired to draw off atten-
tion from its true origin and import, and have lead
us to seek the reasons for thus connecting the two
words in facts and motives that lie nearer the sur-
face. I will mention one only, because, though
less obvious than many other causes that have
favoured the general misconception on this point,
and though its action is indirect and negative, it
is by no means the least operative. The imme-
diate effect, indeed, may be confined to the men of
education. But what influences these will finally
influence all. I am referring to the noticeable fact
arising out of the system of instruction pursued in
all our classical schools and universities, that the
annals of ancient Greece, and of republican and
imperial Rome, though they are, in truth, but bril-
liant exceptions from history generally, do yet, partly
from the depth and intensity of all early impressions,
and in part from the number and splendour of in-
dividual characters and particular events and ex-
ploits, so fill the imagination as almost to be,—
during the period when the groundwork of our
minds is principally formed, and the direction given
to our modes of thinking, — what we mean by
historj'. Hence things, of which no instance or
analogy is recollected in the customs, policy, and

36 IDEA OF

jurisprudence of Greece and Rome, lay little hold
on our attention. Among these, I know not one
more worthy of notice than the principle of the
division of property, which, if not, as I however
think, universal in the earliest ages, was, at all
events, common to the Scandinavian, Keltic, and
Gothic tribes with the Semitic, or the tribes de-
scended from Shem.

It is not the least among the obligations which
the antiquarian and the philosophic statist owe to
a tribe of the last-mentioned race, the Hebrew,
that in the institutes of their great legislator,
who first formed them into a state or nation, they
have preserved for us a practical illustration of the
principle in question, which was by no means pe-
culiar to the Hebrew people, though in their case
it received a peculiar sanction.

To confound the inspiring spirit with the inform-
ing word, and both with the dictation of sentences
and formal propositions ; and to confine the office
and purpose of inspiration to the miraculous immis-
fe^ion or infusion of novelties, res nusquam prius
tisce vel auditce, — these, alas ! are the current errors
of Piotestants without learning, and of bigots in
spite of it ; but which I should have left unnoticed,
but for the injurious influence which certain notions
in close connexion with these errors have had on
the present subject. The notion, I mean, that the
Levitical institution was not only enacted by an
inspired law-giver, not only a work of revealed
wisdom, (which who denies ?) but that it was a part
cf revealed religion, having its origin in this par-

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 37

ticular revelation, as a something' whicli could not
have existed otherwise; yet, on the other hand, a
part of the i-eligion that had been abolished by
Christianity. Had these reasoners contented them-
selves with asserting that it did not belong to the
Christian religion, they would have said nothing
more than the truth ; and for this plain reason ,
that it forms no part of religion at all in the
Gospel sense of the word, — that is, religion as
contra-distinguished from law ; the spiritual as
eontra-distinguished from the temporal or political.
In answer to all these notions, it is enough to
say that not the principle itself, but the superioi'
wisdom with which the principle was carried into
effect, the greater perfection of the machinery,
forms the true distinction, the peculiar worth, of
the Hebrew constitution. The principle itself was
common to Goth and Kelt, or rather, I would say,
to all the tribes that had not fallen off to either of
the two aphelia, or extreme distances from the
generic character of man, the wild or the bar-
barous state ; but who remained either constituent
parts or appendages of the stirps generosa seu
historica, as a philosophic friend has named that
portion of the Semitic and Japetic races which had
not degenerated below the conditions of pro-
gressive civilization: — it was, I say, common to all
the primitive races, that in taking possession of a
new country, and in the division of the land into
heritable estates among the individual warriors or
heads of families, a resei-ve should be made for tlse
nation itself.

33 IDEA OF

The sum total of these heritable portions, ap-
propriated each to an individual lineage, I take
leave to name the Propriety ; and to call the reserve
above-mentioned the Nationalty ; and likewise to
employ the term wealth in that primary and wide
sense which it retains in the term, commonwealth.
In the establishment, then, of the landed pro-
prieties, a nationalty was at the same time consti-
tuted ; as a wealth not consisting' of lands, but yet
derivative from the land, and rightfully inseparable
from the same. These, the Propriety and the Na-
tibnalty, were the two constituent factors, the op-
posite, but correspondent and reciprocally sup-
porting, counterweights of the commonwealth ;
the existence of the one being the condition and
the perfecting of the rightfulness of the other.
Now as all polar forces, — that is, opposite, not con-
trary, powers, — are necessarily unius generis, ho-
mogeneous, so in the present instance each is
that which it is called, relatively, by predominance
of the one character or quality, not by the absolute
exclusion of the other. The wealth appropriated
was not so entirely a property as not to remain, to
a certain extent, national ; nor w-as the wealth re-
served so exclusively national as not to admit of
individual tenure. It was only necessary that the
mode and origin of the tenure should be different,
and, as it were, in antithesi. If the one be he-
reditarv, the other must be elective ; if the one
be lineal, the other must be circulative.

THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 39

CHAPTER IV.

Illustration of the preceding Chapter from his-
tory, and principally from that of the Hebrew
Commonwealth .

In the unfolding' and exposition of any idea we
naturally seek assistance and the means of illus-
tration from the historical instance, in which it has
been most nearly realized, or of which we possess
the most exact and satisfactory records. Both of
these recommendations are found in the formation
of the Hebrew Commonwealth. But in availine:
ourselves of examples from history there is always
danger lest that which was to assist us in at-
taining a clear insight into truth should be the
means of disturbing or falsifying ijt, so that we at-
tribute to the object what was but the effect of
flaws or other accidents in the glass, through
which we looked at it. To secure ourselves from
this danger, we must constantly bear in mind that
in the actual realization of every great idea or
principle there will always exist disturbing forces,
modifying the product, either from the imperfec-
tion of the agents, or from especial circumstances
overruling them ; or from the defect of the ma-
terials ; or lastly, and which most particularly ap-

40 IDEA OF

plies to the instances I have here in view, from
the co-existence of some yet greater idea, some
yet more important purpose, with which the former
must be combined, but likewise subordinated.
Nevertheless, these are no essentials of the idea,
no exemplary parts in the particular construction
adduced for its illustration. On the contrary, they
are deviations from the idea, which we must ab-
stract and put aside before we can make a safe
and fearless use of the example.

Such, for instance, was the settlement of the
nationally in one tribe, which, to the exclusion of
the other eleven divisions of the Hebrew confe-
deracy, was to be invested with its rights, and to
be alone capable of discharging its duties. This
was, indeed, in some measure, corrected by the
institution of the Nabim, or Prophets, who might
be of any tribe, and who formed a numerous body,
uniting the functions and three-fold character of
the Roman Censors, the Tribunes of the people,
and the sacred college of Augurs ; protectors of
the nation and privileged state-moralists, whom
Milton has aheady compared to the orators of the
Greek democracies.* Still the most satisfactory

'■'' The lines -vvhicli our sag-e and learned poet puts in the
Saviour's mouth, both from their truth and from their appo-
siteness to the present subject, well deserve to be quoted : —

" Their orators thou then extoU'st, as those
The top of eloquence : — Statists indeed
^n.A lovers of their country as may seem ;
But herein to our prophets far beneath,

THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 41

justification of this exclusive policy is to be found,
I think, in the fact, that the Jewish theocracy
itself was but a mean to a further and greater end ;
and that the effects of the policy were subordinated
to an interest far more momentous than that of
any single kingdom or commonwealth could be.
The unfitness and insufficiency of the Jewish cha-
racter for the reception and execution of the great
legislator's scheme were not less important parts
of the sublime purpose of Providence, in the sepa-
ration of the chosen people, than their characte-
ristic virtues. Their frequent relapses, and the
never-failing return of a certain number to the na-
tional faith and customs, were alike subservient to
the ultimate object, the final cause, of the Mosaic
dispensation. Without pain or reluctance, there-
fore, I should state this provision, by which a par-
ticular lineage was made a necessary qualification
for the trustees and functionaries of the reserved
nationalty, as the main cause of the comparatively
little effect, which the Levitical establishment pro-
duced on the moral and intellectual character of
the Jewish people during the whole period of their
existence as an independent state.

As men divinely taught and better teaching

The solid rules of civil government,

In their majestic, unaffected style.

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.

In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt

What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so.''

Par. Res. B. iv.

42 IDEA OF

With this exception, however, the scheme of the
Hebrew polity maybe profitably used as the diagram
or illustrative model of a principle which actuated
the primitive races generally under similar circum-
stances. With this and one other exception,
likewise arising out of the peculiar purpose of
Providence, namely, the discouragement of trade
and commerce in the Hebrew policy, — a principle
so inwoven in the whole fabric, that the revolution
in this respect effected by Solomon had, perhaps,
no small share in the quickly succeeding disso-
lution of the confederacy, — it may be profitably
considered even under existing circumstances.

And first let me observe that with the Keltic,
Gothic, and Scandinavian, equally as with the
Hebrew, tribes property by absolute right existed
only in a tolerated alien ; and that there was
everywhere a prejudice against the occupation ex-
pressly directed to its acquirement, namely, the
trafficking with the current representatives of wealth.
Even in that species of possession, in which the
right of the individual was the prominent relative
character, the institution of the Jubilee provided
against its degenerating into the merely personal ;
reclaimed it for the State, that is, for the line, the
heritage, as one of the peraianent units or integral
parts, the aggregate of which constitutes the State,
in that narrower and especial sense in which it has
been distinguished from the nation. And to these
permanent units the calculating and governing

THE HEBREW COMMONWEALTH. 43^

mind of the State directs its attention, even as it is
the depths, breadths, bays, and windings or reaches
of a river that are the subject of the hydrographer,
not the water-drops that at any one moment con-
stitute the stream. And on this point the greatest
stress should be laid ; this should be deeply im-
pressed, and carefully borne in mind, that the
abiding interests, the estates, and ostensible tangible
properties, not the persons as persons, are the
proper subjects of the State in this sense, or of the
power of the parliament or supreme council, as the
representatives and plenipotentiaries of the State,
that is, of the Propriety, and in distinction from the
commonwealth, in which I comprise both the Pro-
priety and the Nationalty.

And here let me further remark that the records
of the Hebrew polity are rendered far less instruc-
tive as lessons of political wisdom by the disposition
to regard the Jehovah in that universal and spiritual
acceptation, in which we use the word as Chris-
tians. For relatively to the Jewish polity the
Jehovah was their covenanted king : and if we
draw any inference from the former or Christian
sense of the term, it should be this; — that God is
the unity of every nation ; that the convictions and
the will, which are one, the same, and simulta-
neously acting in a multitude of individual agents,
are not the birth of any individual ; that when the
people speak loudly and unanimously, it is from
their being strongly impressed by the godhead or

44 IDEA OF

the demon. Only exclude the (by no means ex-
travagant) supposition of a demoniac possession,
and then vox populi vox Dei* So thought Sir
Philip Sidney, who in the great revolution of the
Netherlands considered the universal and simulta-
neous adoption of the same principles as a proof
of the divine presence ; and on that belief, and on
that alone, grounded his assurance of its successful
result. And that I may apply this to the present
subject, it was in the character of the king, as the
majesty or symbolic unity of the whole nation,
both of the State and of the persons ; it was in the
name of the king, in whom both the Propriety and
the Nationalty ideally centered, and from whom,
as from a fountain, they are ideally supposed to
flow ; it was in the name of the king, that the pro-
clamation throughout the land, by sound of trumpet,
was made to all possessors : The land is not yours, .
saith the Lord, the land is mine. To you I lent
it. The voice of the trumpets is not, indeed, heard
in this country. But no less intelligibly . is it
declared by the spirit and history of our laws that
the possession of a property, not connected with

* "I never said that the vox populi was of course the vox
Dei. It may be ; but it may be, and with equal probability
a priori, vox Diaboli. That the voice of ten millions of men
tailing for the same thing is a spirit, I believe ; but whether
that be a spirit of Heaven or Hell, I can only know by trvina,'
the thing called for by the prescript of reason and God's
will." Table Talk, 2nd edit. p. 163.— Ed.

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 45

especial duties, a property not fiduciary or official,
but arbitrary and unconditional, was in the sight
of our forefathers the brand of a Jew and an alien ;
not the distinction, nor the right, nor the honour,
of an English baron or gentleman.

CHAPTER V.

Of the Church of England, or National Clergy,
according to the Constitution; its characteristic
ends, purposes and functions ; and of the per-
sons comprehended under the Clergy, or the
functionaries of the National Church.

After these introductory preparations, I can have
no difficulty in setting forth the right idea of a
national Church as in the language of Queen
Elizabeth the third great venerable estate of the
realm ; the first being the estate of the land-owners
or possessors of fixed property, consisting of the
two classes of the Barons and the Franklins ; and
the second comprising the merchants, the manu-
facturers, free artizans, and the distributive class.
To comprehend, therefore, the true character of
this third estate, in which the reserved Nationally
was vested, we must first ascertain the end or
national purpose, for which such reservation was
made.

46 IDEA OF

Now, as in the first estate the permanency of
the nation was provided for; and in the second
estate its progressiveness and personal freedom;
while in the king the cohesion by interdependence,
and the unity of the country, were established;
there remains for the third estate only that interest
which is the ground, the necessary antecedent
condition, of both the former. These depend on
a continuing and progressive civilization. ■ But
civilization is itself but a mixed good, if not far
more a corrupting influence, the hectic of disease,
not the bloom of health, and a nation so distin-
guished more fitly to be called a varnished than a
polished people, where this civilization is not
grounded in cultivation, in the harmonious deve-
lopement of those qualities and faculties that cha-
racterize our humanity. We must be men in order
to be citizens.

The Nationalty, therefore, was reserved for the
support and maintenance of a permanent class or
order with the following duties. A certain smaller
number were to remain at the fountain heads of
the humanities, in cultivating and enlarging the
knowledge already possessed, and in watching
over the interests of physical and moral science ;
being, likewise, the instructors of such as consti-
tuted, or were to constitute, the remaining more
numerous classes of the order. The members of
this latter and far more numerous body were to be
distributed throughout the countiy, so as not to
leave even the smallest integral part or division

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 47

without a resident guide, guardian, and instructor ;
the objects and final intention of the whole order
being; these — to preserve the stores and to guard the
treasures of past civilization, and thus to bind the
present with the past ; to perfect and add to the
same, and thus to connect the present with the
future ; but especially to diffuse through the whole
community and to every native entitled to its laws
and rights that quantity and quality of knowledge
which was indispensable both for the understanding
of those rights, and for the performance of the duties
correspondent : finally, to secure for the nation, if
not a superiority over the neighbouring states, yet
. an equahty at least, in that character of general
civilization, which equallywith,orrather more than,
fleets, armies, and revenue, forms the ground of its
defensive and offensive power. The object of the
twoformer estates of the realm, which conjointly form
the State, was to reconcile the interests of perma-
nence with that of progression — law with liberty.
The object of the national Church, the third re-
maining estate of the realm, was to secure and
improve that civilization, without which the nation
could be neither permanent nor progressive.

That, in all ages, individuals who have directed
their meditations and their studies to the nobler
characters of our nature, to the cultivation of those
powers and instincts which constitute the man, at
least separate him from the animal, and distinguish
the nobler from the animal part of his own being,
will be led by the supernatural in themselves to the

48 IDEA OF

contemplation of a power which is likewise super-
human ; that science, and especially moral science,
will lead to religion, and remain blended with it,—
this, I say, will in all ages be the course of things.
Thai in the earlier ages, and in the dawn of
civility, there will be a twilight in which science
and religion give light, but a light refracted through
the dense and the dark, a superstition ; — this is
what we learn from history, and what philosophy
would have taught us to expect. But I affirm
that in the spiritual purpose of the word, and as
understood in reference to a future state, and to
the abiding essential interest of the individual as a
person, and not as the citizen, neighbour, orsubject,'
religion may be an indispensable ally, but is not
the essential constitutive end, of that national in-
stitute, which is unfortunately, at least improperly,
styled the Church ; a name which in its best sense
is exclusively appropriate to the Church of Christ.
If this latter be ecclesia, the communion of such
as are called out of the world, that is, in reference
to the especial ends and purposes of that commu-
nion ; this other might more expressively have
been entitled enclesia, or an order of men Chosen
in and of the realm, and constituting an estate of
that realm. And in fact, such was the original
and proper sense of the more appropriately named
clergy. It comprehended the learned of all names,
and the clerk was the synonyme of the man of
learning. Nor can any fact more strikingly illus-
trate the conviction entertained by our ancestors

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 49

respecting the intimate connexion of this clergy
with the peace and weal of the nation, than the
privilege foi'merly recognized by our laws, in the
well-known phrase, " benefit of clergy."

Deeply do I feel, for clearly do I see, the im-
portance of my theme. And had I equal confi-
dence in my ability to awaken the same interest in
the minds of others, I should dismiss as affronting
to my readers all apprehension of being charged
with prolixity, while I am labouring to compress
in two or three brief chapters the principal sides
and aspects of a subject so large and multilateral
as to require a volume for its full exposition ; —
with what success will be seen in what follows,
commencing with the Churchmen, or (a far apter
and less objectionable designation,) the national
Clerisy.

The Clerisy of the nation, or national Church,
iu its primary acceptation and original intention,
comprehended the learned of all denominations,
the sages and professors of the law and jurispru-
dence, of medicine and physiology, of music, of
military and civil architecture, of the physical
sciences, with the mathematical as the common
organ of the preceding ; in short, all the so called
liberal arts and sciences, the possession and appli-
cation of which constitute the civilization of a
country, as well as the theological. The last was,
indeed, placed at the head of all; and of good
right did it claim the precedence. But why ?
Because under the name of theology or divinity

E

50 IDEA OF

were contained the interpretation of languages,
the conservation and tradition of past events, the
momentous epochs and revolutions of the race
and nation, the continuation of the records, logic,
ethics, and the determination of ethical science, in
application to the rights and duties of men in all
their various relations, social and civil ; and lastly,
the ground-knowledge, the prima scientia as it
was named, — philosophy, or the doctrine and dis-
cipline of ideas.*

Theology formed only a part of the objects, the

* That is, of knowledges immediate, yet real, and herein
distinguished in kind from logical and mathematical truths,
which express not realities, but only the necessary forms of
conceiving- and perceiving-, and are therefore named the formal
or abstract sciences. Ideas, on the other hand, or the truths
of philosophy, properly so called, correspond to substantial
hemgs, to objects the actual subsistence of which isimpUed
in their idea, though only by the idearevealable. To adopt
the language of the great philosophic Apostle, they are spiri-
tual realities that can onlif spiritually be discerned, and the in-
herent aptitude and moral precontiguration to which consti-
tutes what we mean by ideas, and by the presence of ideal
truth and of ideal power, in the human being. They, in
fact, constitute his humanity. For try to conceive a man
without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will, absolute
truth, of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An
animal endowed with a memory of appearances and of facts
might remain. But the man will have vanished, and you
have instead a creature, more subtle than any beast of thejieid,
but likewise cui-sed above every beast of the field ; upon the belly
must it go and dust must it eat all the days of its life. But I
recal myself from a train of thoughts little likely to find fa-
vour in this age of sense and selfishness.

THE NATIONAL CHURCH, 51

theologians formed only a portion of the clerks
or clergy, of the national Church. The theo-
logical order had precedency indeed, and de-
servedly ; but not because its members were
priests, whose office, was to conciliate the invisible
powers, and to superintend the interests that sur-
vive the grave ; nor as being exclusively, or even
principally, sacerdotal or templar, which, when it
did occur, is to be considered as an accident of the
age, a mis-growth of ignorance and oppi'ession,
a falsification of the constitutive principle, not a
constituent part of the same. No, the theologians
took the lead, because the science of theology was
the root and the trunk of the knowledges that
civilized man, because it gave unity and the cir-
culating sap of life to all other sciences, by virtue
of which alone they could be contemplated as
forming, collectively, the living tree of knowledge.
It had the precedency because, under the name
theology, were comprised all the main aids, in-
struments, and materials of national education,
the nisus formativus of the body politic, the
shaping and informing spirit, which, educing or
eliciting the latent man in all the natives of the
soil, trains them up to be citizens of the country,
free subjects of the realm. And lastly, because
to divinity belong those fundamental truths, which
are the common ground-work of our civil and our
reHgious duties, not less indispensable to a right
view of our temporal concerns, than to a rational
faith respecting our immortal well-being. Not

52 IDEA OF

without celestial observations can even terrestrial
charts be accurately constructed. And of especial
importance is it to the objects here contemplated,
that only by the vital warmth diffused by these
truths throughout the many, and by the guiding
light from the philosophy, which is the basis of
divinity, possessed by the few, can either the
community or its nilers fully comprehend, or
rightly appreciate, the permanent distinction and
the occasional contrast between cultivation and
civilization ; or be made to understand this most
valuable of the lessons taught by history, and
exemplified alike in her oldest and her most recent
records — thata nation can never be a too cultivated,
but may easily become an over-civilized, race.

CHAPTER VI.

Secessions or offsets from the National Clerisy.
Usurpations and abuses previous to the Refor-
mation. Henry VIII. What he might and
should have done. The main end and final
cause of the Nationalty ; and the duties,
which the State may demand of the National
Clerisy. A question, and the answer to it.

As a natural consequence of the full developement
and expansion of the mercantile and commercial
order, which in the earlier epochs of the constitu-

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 53

tion only existed, as it were, potentially and in the
bud ; the students and possessors of those sciences,
and those sorts of learning, the use and necessity of
which were indeed constant and perpetual to the
nation, but only accidental and occasional to indi-
viduals, gradually detached themselves from the
Nationalty and the national clergy, and passed to
the order, with the growth and thriving condition
of which their emoluments were found to increase
in equal proportion. Rather, perhaps, it should
be said that under the common name of profes-
sional, the learned in the departments of law,
medicine, and the like, formed an intermediate
link between the established clergy and the bur-

This circumstance, however, can in no way
affect the principle, nor alter the tenure, nor annul
the rights, of those who remained, and who, as
members of the permanent learned class, were
planted throughout the realm, each in his ap-
pointed place, as the immediate agents and in-
struments in the great and indispensable work of
perpetuating, promoting, and increasing the civi-
lization of the nation, and who thus fulfilling the
purposes for which the determinate portion of the
total wealth from the land had been reserved, are
entitled to remain its trustees and usufructuary
proprietors. But I do not assert that the proceeds
from the Nationalty cannot be rightfully vested,
except in what we now mean by clergymen and
the established clergy. I have every where im-

54 IDEA OF

,plied the contrary. But I do assert, that the Na-^
tionalty cannot rightfully, and that without foul
wrong to the nation it never has been, alienated
from its original purposes. I assert that those
who, being duly elected and appointed thereto,
exercise the functions, and perform the duties,
attached to the Nationalty possess collectively an
inalienable, indefeasible, title to the same ; and
this by a jus divinum, to which the thunders from
Mount Sinai might give additional authority, but
not additional evidence.

Corollary. — During the dark times, when
the incubus of superstition lay heavy across the
breast of the living and the dying ; and when all
the familiar tricksy spirits in the service of an
alien, self-expatriated and anti-national priesthood
were at work in all forms and in all directions to
aggrandize and enrich a kingdom of this world ;
large masses were alienated from the heritable pro-
prieties of the realm, and confounded with the
Nationalty under the common name of Church
property. Had every rood, eveiy pepper-corn,
every stone, brick, and beam been re-transferred
and made heritable at the Reformation, no right
would have been invaded, no principle of justice
violated. What the State by law — that is, by the
collective will of its functionaries at any one time
assembled — can do or suifer to be done ; that the
State by law can undo or inhibit. And in prin-
ciple, such bequests and donations were vicious ab
initio, implying in the donor an absolute property

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 55

in land, unknown to the constitution of the realm,
and in defeasance of that immutable reason which,
in the name of the nation and the national majesty,
proclaims : — " The land is not yours ; it was vested
in your lineage in trust for the nation." And
though, in change of times and circumstances,
the interest of progression, with the means and
motives for the same — hope, industry, enterprise
—may render it the wisdom of the State to facili-
tate the transfer from line to line, still it must be
within the same scale and with preservation of the
balance. The most honest of our Enghsh his-
torians, and with no superior in industry and re-
search, Mr. Sharon Turner, has labored success-
fully in detaching from the portrait of our first
Protestant king the layers of soot and blood, with
which pseudo-Catholic hate and pseudo-Protestant
candour had coated it. But the name of Henry
VIII. would haveoutshone thatof Alfred, and with a
splendor which not even the omnious shadow of
his declining life would have eclipsed, had he i"e-
tained the will and possessed the power of effecting,
what in part he promised and proposed to do ; that
is, if he had availed himself of the wealth and landed
masses that had been unconstitutionally alienated
from the State, namely, transferred from the scale
of heritable lands and revenues, to purchase and
win back whatever had been alienated from the
opposite scale of the Nationalty; — wrongfully
alienated ; for it was a possession, in which every
free subject in the nation has a living interest, a

56 IDEA OF

permanent, and likewise a possible personal and

reversionary, interest ; — sacrilegiously alienated ;

for it had been consecrated rw Oeip oiKeio), to the

potential divinity in every man, which is the

ground and condition of his civil existence, that

without which a man can be neither free nor

obliged, and by which alone, therefore, he is ca--

pable of being a free subject or a citizen : and if,

I say, having thus righted the balance on both

sides, Henry had then directed the Nationalty to

its true national purposes, (in order to which,

however, a different division and sub-division of

the kingdom must have superseded the present

barbarism, whioh forms an obstacle to the improve-

I ment of the country, of much greater magnitude

I than men are generally aware) ; and the Nationalty

I had been distributed in proportionate channels to

the maintenance ; — 1, of the universities and great

I schools of liberal learning ; — 2, of a pastor, pres-

I byter, or parson* in every parish ; — 3, of a school-

I * Persona Kar' k^oxriv; persona exemplaris ■ the represen-

tative and exemplar of the personal character of the commu-
nity or parish; of their duties and rights, of their hopesi
privileges and requisite qualifications, as moral persons, and
not merely living things. But this the pastoral clergy can-
not be other than imperfectly ; they cannot be that which it
is the paramount end and object of their establishment and
distribution throughout the country that they should be —
each in his sphere the germ and nucleus of the progressive
civilization — unless they are in the rule married men and
j heads of families. This, however, is adduced only as an
1 accessory to the great principle stated in a following page.

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 57

master ia every parish, who in due time, and
under condition of a faithful performance of his
arduous duties, should succeed to the pastorate ;
so that both should be labourers in different com-
partments of the same field, workmen engaged in
different stages of the same process, with such
difference of rank, as might be suggested in the
names pastor and sub-pastor, or as now exists be-
tween rector and curate, elder and deacon. Both
alike, I say, being members and ministers of the na-
tional Clerisy or Church, working to the same end,
and determined in the choice of their means and
the direction of their labours by one and the same
object — namely, the production and reproduction,
the preservation, continuance, and perfection, of
the necessary sources and conditions of national
civilization : this being itself an indispensable
condition of national safety, power and welfare,
the strongest security and the surest provision,
both for the permanence and the progressive ad-
vance of whatever as laws, institutions, tenures,
rights, privileges, freedoms, obligations, and the
like, constitutes the public weal : — these parochial
clerks being the great majority of the national
clergy, the comparatively small remainder being
principally* in ordine ad hos, Cleri doctores ut
Clerus populi.

as an instance of its beneficial consequences, not as the
grounds of its validity.

* Considered, I mean, in their national relations, and in
that which forms their ordinary, their most conspicuous

58 IDEA OF

I may be allowed, therefore, to express the final
cause of the whole by the office and purpose of
thje greater part ; and this is, to form and train up
the people of the country to be obedient, free,
useful, organizable subjects, citizens, and patriots,
living to the benefit of the State, and prepared to
die for its defence. The proper object and end of
the national Church is civilization with freedom ;
and the duty of its ministers, could they be con-
templated merely and exclusively as officiaries of
the national Church, w-ould be fulfilled in the
communication of that degree and kind of know-
ledge to all, the possession of which is necessary
for all in order to their civility. By civility I
mean all the qualities essential to a citizen, and
devoid of which no people or class of the people
can be calculated on by the rulers and leaders of
the State for the conservation or promotion of its
essential interests.

It follows, therefore, that in regard to the grounds
and principles of action and conduct, the State
has a right to demand of the national Church that
its instructions should be fitted to diffuse through-
out the people legality, that is, the obligations of
a well calculated self-interest, under the conditions
of a common interest determined by common laws.

purpose andutiUty; for God forbid, I should deny or forget
that the sciences, and not only the sciences both abstract
and experimental, but the Utene humaniffres, the products of
genial power, of whatever name, have an immediate and
positive value even in their bearings on the national inte-
rests.

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 59

At least, whatever of higher origin and nobler and
wider aim the ministers of the national Church,
in some other capacity, and in the performance of
other duties, might labour to implant and cultivate
in the minds and "hearts of their congregations
and seminaries, should include the practical conse-
quences of the legality above mentioned. The
State requires that the basin should be kept full,
and that the stream which supplies the hamlet and
turns the mill, and waters the meadow-fields, should
be fed and kept flowing. If this be done the
State is content, indifferent for the rest, whether
the basin be filled by the spring in its first ascent,
and rising but a hand's-breadth above the bed ; or
whether drawn from a more elevated source,
shooting aloft in a stately column, that reflects the
light of heaven from its shaft, and bears the Iris,
cceli decus, promissumque Jovis lucidum on its
spray, it fills the basin in its descent.

" In what relation then do you place Christianity
to the national Church?" Though unwilling to
anticipate what belongs to a part of my subject
yet to come, namely, the idea of the Catholic or
Christian Church, I am still more averse to leave
this question, even for a moment, unanswered.
And this is my answer.

In relation to the national Church, Christianity,
or the Church of Christ, is a blessed accident,*
a providential boon, a grace of God, a mighty and

* Let not the religions reader be offended with this phrase.
I mean only that Christianity is an aid and instrument.

60 IPEA OF

faithful friend, the envoy indeed and liege subject
of another State, but which can neither administer
the laws nor promote the ends of this other State,
which is not of the world, without advantage, di,
rect and indirect, to the true interests of the States,
the ag-gregate of which is what we mean by the
world, that is, the civilized world. As the olive
tree is said in its growth to fertilize the surround-
ing soil, to invigorate the roots of the vines in
its immediate neighbourhood, and to improve the
strength and flai'^our of the wines ; such isthe re-
lation of the Christian and the national Church.
But as the olive is not the same plant with the
vine, or with the elm or poplar, (that is, the
State) with which the vine is wedded ; and as
the vine with its prop may exist, though in less
perfection, without the olive, or previously to its im-
plantation ; — even so is Christianity, and a fortiori
any particular scheme of theology derived and sup-
posed by its partizans to be deduced from Christi-
anity, no essential part of the being of the national
Church, however conducive or even indispensable
it may be to its well being. And even so a na-
tional Church might exist, and has existed, with-
out, because before the institution of, the Christian
Church ; — as the Levitical Church in the Hebrew
constitution, and the Druidical in the Keltic, would
suffice to prove.

which no State or realm could have produced out of its own
elements, which no State had a right to expect. It was, most
awefuUy, a God-send !

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 61

But here I earnestly entreat that two things
may be remembered — first, that it is my object to
present the Idea of a national Church, as the only
safe criterion by which the judgment can decide
on the existing state of things ; for when we are in
ftill and clear possession of the ultimate aim of an
institution, it is comparatively easy to ascertain
in what respects this aim has been attained in
other ways arising out of the growth of the nation,
and the gradual and successive expansion of its
germs ; in what respects the aim has been frus-
trated by errors and diseases in the body politic ;
and in what respects the existing institution still
answers the original purpose, and continues to be a
mean to necessary or most important ends, for
which no adequate substitute can be found. First,
I say, let it be borne in mind that my object has
been to present the idea of a national Church,
not the history of the Church established in this
nation. Secondly, that two distinct functions do
not necessarily imply or require two different
functionaries : nay, the perfection of each may
require the union of both in the same person.
And in the instance now in question, great and
grievous errors have arisen from confounding the
functions ; and fearfully great and grievous will
be the evils from the success of an attempt to se-
parate them — an attempt long and passionately
pursued, in many forms, and through many va-
rious channels, by a numerous party which has
already the ascendancy in the State ; and which,
unless far other minds and far other principles

62 IDEA 07

than those which the opponents of this party have
hitherto allied with their cause, are called into
action, will obtain the ascendancy in the nation.

I have already said that the subjects, which lie
right and left of my road, or even jut into it, are
so many and so important that I offer these pages
but as a catalog-ue of texts and theses, which will
have answered their purpose if they excite a cer-
tain class of readers to desire or to supply the com-
mentary. But there will not be wanting among
my readers men who are no strangers to the ways
in which my thoughts travel : and the jointless
sentences that make up the following chapter or
inventory of regrets and apprehensions will suffice
to possess them of the chief points that press on
my mind.

The commanding knowledge, the power of truth,
given or obtained by contemplating the subject in
the fontal mirror of the idea, is in Scripture ordi-
narily expressed hj vision : and no dissimilar gift,
if not rather in its essential characters the same,
does a great living poet speak of, as

The vision and the faculty divine.

Indeed of the many political ground-truths con-
tained in the Old Testament, I cannot recall one
more worthy to be selected as the moral and len-
voy of a Universal History, than the text in Pro-
verbs,* Where no vision is, the people perisheth,

* xxix. 18.

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 63

It is now thirty years since the diversity of
reason and the understanding-, of an idea and a con-
ception, and the practical importance of distin-
guishing the one from the other, were fii'st made
evident to me. And scarcely a month has passed
during' this long interval in which either books, or
conversation, or the experience of life, have not
supplied or suggested some fresh proof and instance
of the mischiefs and mistakes derived from that
ignorance of this truth, which I have elsewhere
called the queen-bee in the hive of error.

Well and truly has the understanding been de-
fined — -facultas mediata et mec/iorwm— the faculty
of means to medial ends, that is, to such purposes
or ends as are themselves but means to some
ulterior end.

My eye at this moment rests on a volume newly
read by me, containing a well-written history of
the inventions, discoveries, public improvements,
docks, rail-ways, canals, and the like, for about
the same period, in England and Scotland. I
closed it under the strongest impressions of awe,
and admiration akin to wonder. We live, I ex-
claimed, under the dynasty of the understanding:
and this is its golden age.

It is the faculty of means to medial ends. With
these the age, this favoured land, teems ; they
spring up, the armed host, — seges clypeata — from
the serpent's teeth sown by Cadmus : —

mortalia semvia, denies.

In every direction they advance, conquering and

64 IDEA OF

to conquer. Sea and land, rock, mountain, lake
and moor, yea nature and all her elements, sink
before them, or yield themselves captive! But
the ultimate ends ? Where shall I seek for infor-
mation concerning these ? By what name shall I
seek for the historiographer of reason ? Where
shall I find the annals of her recent campaigns ? the
records of her conquests ? In the facts disclosed by
the Mendicity Society ? In the reports on the in-
crease of crimes, commitments ? In the proceed-
ings of the Police ? Or in the accumulating volumes
on the horrors and perils of population ?

O voice, once heard
Delightfully, increase and multiply !
Now death to hear ! For what can we increase
Or multiply,* but woe, crime, penury.

Alas ! for a certain class, the following chapter
will, I fear, but too vividly shew the burden of
the valley of vision, — even the burden upon
the crowned isle, whose merchants are princes,
whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth ;
— who stretcheth out her hand over the sea, —
and she is the mart of nations !f

* P. L. X. 729. — Ed. t Isaiah, xxii. xxiii.

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 65

CHAPTER VII.

Regrets and Apprehensions.

The National Church was deemed in the dai'k age
of Queen Elizabeth, in the unenlightened times of
Burleigh, Hooker, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Lord
Bacon, a great venerable estate of the realm ; but
now by all the intellect of the kingdom it has been
determined to be one of the many theological sects
or communities established in the realm ; yet dis-
tinguished from the rest by having its priesthood
endowed, durante beneplacito, by favour of the Le-
gislature, that is, of the majority, for the time being,
of the two Houses of Parliament. The Church
being thus reduced to a religion, religion in genere
is consequently separated from the Church, and
made a subject of Parliamentary determination,
independently of this Church. The poor are with-
drawn from the discipline of the Church. The
education of the people is detached from the min-
istry of the Church. Religion becomes a noun of
multitude, or nomen coUectivum, expressing the
aggregate of all the different groups of notions and
ceremonies connected with the invisible and su-
pernatural. On the plausible (and in this sense
of the word unanswerable) pretext of the multi-
tude and variety of religions, and for the suppres-
r

66 REGRETS AND

sion of bigotry and negative persecution, national
education is to be finally sundered from all religion,
but speedily and decisively emancipated from the
superintendence of the national Clergy. Educa-
tion is to be reformed, and defined as synonymous
with instruction. The axiom of education so de-
fined is— knowledge being power, those attain-
ments, which give a man the power of doing what
he wishes in order to obtain what he desires, are
alone to be considered as knowledge, or to be
admitted into the scheme of national education.
The subjects to be taught in the national schools
are to be, reading, writing, arithmetic, the me-
chanic arts, elements and results ofphysicalscience,
but to be taught, as much as possible, empirically.
For all knowledge being derived from the senses,
the closer men are kept to the fountain head, the
more knowing thej' must become.

Popular ethics consist of a digest of the criminal
laws, and the evidence requisite for conviction
under the same : lectures on diet, on digestion,
on infection, and the nature and effects of a spe-
cific vii'us incidental to and communicable by
living bodies in the intercourse of society. And
note, that in order to balance the interests of indi-
viduals and the interests of the State, the dietetic
and peptic text books are to be under the censor-
ship of the Board of Excise.

Then we have game laws, corn laws, cotton
factories, Spitalfields, the tillers of the land paid
by poor rates, and the remainder of the population

APPREHENSIONS. 67

Tiiechanized into engines for the manufactory of
new rich men ; — yea, the machinery of the wealth
of the nation made up of the wretchedness, disease
and depravity of those who should consdtute the
strength of the nation ! Disease, I say, and vice,
while the wheels are in full motion ; but at the
first stop the magic wealth-machine is converted
into an intolerable weight of pauperism. But
this partakes of history. The head and neck of
the huge serpent are out of the den : the volumi-
nous train is to come. What next ? May I not
whisper as a fear, what senators have promised to
demand as a right ? Yes ! the next in my filial
bodings is spoliation ; — spoliation of the Nationalty,
half thereof to be distributed among the land-
owners, and the other half among the stock-bro-
kers, and stock-owners, who are to receive it in
lieu of the interest formerly due to them.

But enough. I will ask only one question.
Has the national welfare, have the weal and hap-
piness of the people, advanced with the increase
of the circumstantial prosperity ? Is the increasing
number of wealthy individuals that which ought to
be understood by the wealth of the nation ? In
answer to this, permit me to annex the following
chapter of contents of the moral history of the
last 130 years.

A. A declarative act respecting certain parts of
the Constitution, with provisions against further
violation of the same, erroneously intituled, The
Revolution of 1688.

68 REGRETS AND

B. The mechanico- corpuscular theory raised to
the title of the mechanic philosophy, and espoused
as a revolution in philosophy, by the actors and
partisans of the (so called) Revolution in the
State.

C. Result illustrated, in the remarkable con-
trast between the acceptation of the word, idea,
before the Restoration, and the present use of the
same word. Before 1660, the magnificent Son of
Cosmo was wont to discourse with Ficini, Poli-
tian and the princely Mirandula on the ideas of will,
God, freedom. Sir Philip Sidney, the star of se-
renest brilliance in the glorious constellation of
Elizabeth's court, communed with Spenser on the
idea of the beautiful; and the younger Algernon
— soldier, patriot, and statesman — with Harrington,
Milton, and Nevil on the idea of the State : and
in what sense it may be more truly affirmed, that
the People, that is, the component particles of the
body politic, at any moment existing as such, are
in order to the State, than that the State exists
for the sake of the People.

As to the present use of the word.

Dr. Holofernes, in a lecture on metaphysics,
delivered at one of the Mechanics' . Institutions,
explodes all ideas but those of sensation ; and his
friend, Deputy Costard, has no idea of a better
flavored haunch of venison than he dined oflf at the
London Tavern last week. He admits, (for the
Deputy has travelled) that the French have an
excellent idea of cooking in general; but holds

APPREHENSIONS. 69

that their most accomplished maitres de cuisine
have no more idea of dressing a turtle than the
Parisian gourmands themselves have any real idea
of the true taste and colonr of the fat.

D. Consequences exemplified. A state of na-
ture, or the Ouran Outang theology of the origin
of the human race, substituted for the first ten
chapters of the Book of Genesis ; rights of nature
for the duties and privileges of citizens ; idealess
facts, misnamed proofs from history, grounds of
experience, and the like, for principles and the
insight derived from them. Our state-policy a Cy-
clops with one eye, and that in the back of the
head ; our measures become either a series of ana-
chronisms, or a truckling to events instead of the
science, that should command them ; for all true
insight is foresight. (Take as documents, the
measures of the British Cabinet from the Boston
Port-Bill, March, 1774 ; but particularly from 1789,
to the Union with Ireland, and the Peace of
Amiens.) Mean time, behold the true historical
feeling, the immortal life of the nation, generation
linked to generation by faith, freedom, heraldry,
and ancestral fame, languishing, and giving place
to the superstitions of wealth and newspaper re-
putation.

E. Talents without genius : a swarm of clever,
well-informed men : an anarchy of minds, a des-
potism of maxims. Hence despotism of finance
in government and legislation — of vanity and
sciolism in the intercourse of life — of presump-

70 REGRETS AND

tion, temerity, and hardness of heart in political
economy.

F. The guess-work of general consequences
substituted for moral and political philosophy, and
its most familiar exposition adopted as a text book
in one of the Universities, and cited as autho-
rity in the Legislature. Hence plebs pro senatu
populoque ; and the wealth of the nation (that is,
of the wealthy individuals thereof,) and the mag-
nitude of the revenue mistaken for the well-being'
of the people.

G. Gin consumed by paupers to the value of
about eighteen millions yearly : government by
clubs of journeymen ; by saint and sinner societies,
committees, institutions ; by reviews, magazines,
and above all by newspapers : lastly, crimes qua-
drupled for the whole countr}% and in some coun-
ties decupled.

Concluding address to the Parliamentary leaders
of the Liberalists and Utilitarians.

I respect the talents of many, and the motives
and character of some, among you too sincerely to
court the scorn which I anticipate. But neither
shall the fear of it prevent me from declaring'
aloud, and as a truth which I hold it the disgrace
and calamity of a professed statesman not to know
and acknowledge, that a permanent, nationalized,
learned order, a national clerisy or Church is an
essential element of a rightly constituted nation,
without which it wants the best security alike for
its permanence and its progression ; and for which

APPREHENSIONS, 71

neither tract societies nor conventicles, nor Lan-
casterian schools, nor mechanics' institutions, nor
lecture bazaars under the absurd name of univer-
sities, nor all these collectively, can be a substitute.
For they are all marked with the same asterisk of
spuriousness, shew the same distemper-spot on the
front, that they are empirical specifics for morbid
symptoms that help to feed and continue the dis-
ease.

But you wish for general illumination : you
would spur-arm the toes of society : you would
enlighten the higher ranks per ascensum ah imis.
You begin, therefore, with the attempt to popu-
larize science : but you will only effect its piebifi-
cation. It is folly to think of making all, or the
many, philosophers, or even men of science and
systematic knowledge. But it is duty and wisdom
to aim at making as many as possible soberly and
steadily religious ; inasmuch as the morality which
the State requires in its citizens for its own well-
being and ideal immortality, and without reference
to their spiritual interest as individuals, can only
exist for the people in the form of religion. But
the existence of a true philosophy, or the power
and habit of contemplating particulars in the unity
and fontal mirror of the idea, — this in the rulers
and teachers of a nation is indispensable to a sound
state of religion in all classes. In fine, religion,
true or false, is and ever has been the centre of
gravity in a realm, to which all other things must
and will accommodate themselves.

72 PAST BENEFITS OF

CHAPTER VIII.

The subject resumed, namely, the proper aims
and characteristic directions and channels of
the Nationalty . The benefits of the National
Church in time past. The present beneficial
influences and workings of the same.

The deep interest which, during the far larger
portion of my life since early manhood, I have
attached to these convictions has, I perceive,
hurried me onwards as in a rush from the letting
forth of accumulated waters by the sudden opening
of the sluice gates. It is high time that I should
return to my subject. And I have no better way
of taking up the thread of my argument than by
re-stating my opinion, that our eighth Henry
would have acted in correspondence with the great
principles of our constitution, if, having restored
the original balance on both sides, he had deter-
mined the Nationalty to the following objects :
1st. to the maintenance of the Universities and
the great liberal schools : 2ndly. to the main-
tenance of a pastor and schoolmaster in every
parish : 3rdly. to the raising and keeping in repair
of the churches, schools, and other buildings of

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 73

that kind ; and, lastly, to the maintenance of the
proper, that is, the infirm, poor whether from age
or sickness : one of the original purposes of the
national reserve being the alleviation of those evils,
which in the best forms of worldly States must
arise, and must have been foreseen as arising, from
the institution of individual properties and primo-
geniture. If these duties were efficiently performed,
and these purposes adequately fulfilled, the very
increase of the population (which would, however,
by these very means have been prevented from
becoming a vicious population,) would have more
than counterbalanced those savings in the expen-
diture of the Nationalty occasioned by the de-
tachment of the practitioners of Law, Medicine,
and the like from the national clergy. That this
transfer of the national reserve from what had
become national evils to its original and inherent
purpose of national benefits, instead of the sa-
crilegious alienation which actually took place —
that this was impracticable, is historically true :
but no less true is it philosophically, that this im-
practicability, — arising wholly from moral causes,
that is, from loose manners and corrupt principles
— does not rescue this wholesale sacrilege from
deserving the character of the first and deadliest
wound inflicted on the constitution of the king-
dom : which term, constitution, in the body politic,
as in bodies natural, expresses not only what has
been actually evolved from, but likewise whatever is
potentially contained in, the seminal principle of

74 PAST BENEFITS OF

the particular body, and would in its due time have
appeared but for emasculation or disease. Other
wounds, by which indeed the constitution of the
nation has suffered, but which much more imme-
diately concern the constitution of the Church, I
shall perhaps find another place to mention.

The mercantile and commercial class, in which
I here comprise all the four classes that I have put
in antithesis to the landed order, the guardian
and depository of the permanence of the realm, as
more characteristically conspiring to the interests
of its progression, the improvement and general
freedom of the country — this class, as I have
already remarked, in the earlier states of the con-
stitution existed but as in the bud. Yet during all
this period of potential existence, or what we may
call the minority of the burgess order, the National
Church was the substitute for the most important
national benefits resulting from the same. The
National Church presented the only breathing hole
of hope. The Church alone relaxed the iron fate
by which feudal dependency, primogeniture, and
entail would otherwise have predestined every
native of the realm to be lord or vassal. To the
Church alone could the nation look for the benefits
of existing knowledge, and for the means of future
civilization. Lastly, let it never be forgotten,
that under the fostering wing of the Church the
class of free citizens and burghers were reared.
To the feudal system we owe the forms, to the
: Church the substance, of our liberty. I mention

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 75

only two of many facts that would form the proof
and comment of the above ; first, the origin of
towns and cities in the privileges attached to the
vicinity of churches and monasteries, and which,
preparing an asylum for the fugitive vassal and
oppressed franklin, thus laid the first foundation
of a class of freemen detached from the land ; —
secondly, the holy war, which the national clergy,
in this instance faithful to their national duties,
waged against slavery and villenage, and with such
success, that in the reign of Charles II., the law*
which declared every native of the realm free by
birth had merely to sanction an opus jam con-
summatum. Our Maker has distinguished man
from the brute that perishes, by making hope first
an instinct of his nature, and, secondly, an indis-
pensable condition of his moral and intellectual
progression :

For every gift of noble origin

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath.

Wordsworth,

But a natural instinct constitutes a right, as far

* The Author means the Act passed at the Restoration,
12 C. II. c. 24. " And these encroachments grew to be so
universal, that when tenure in villenage was virtually abol-
ished (though copyholds were preserved) by the statute of
Charles II., there was hardly a pure villein left in the nation,"
&c. Blackstone II. c . 6. 96.— Ed.

76 PAST BENEFITS OF

as its gratification is compatible with the equal
rights of others. And this principle may be
expanded and applied to the idea of the National
Church.

Among the primary ends of a State (in that
highest sense of the word, in which it is equivalent
to the nation, considered as one body politic, and
therefore including the National Church), there are
two, of which the National Church (according to its
idea) is the especial and constitutional organ and
means. The one is, to secure to the subjects of the
realm, generally, the hope, the chance of bettering
their own or their children's condition. And
though during the last three or four centuries, the
National Church has found a most powerful surro-
gate and ally for the effectuation of this great
purpose in her former wards and foster-children,
that is, in trade, commerce, free industry, and the
arts ; yet still the Nationalty, under all its defal-
cations, continues to feed the higher ranks by
drawing up whatever is worthiest from below, and
thus maintains the principle of hope in the humblest
families, while it secures the possessions of the rich
and noble. This is one of the two ends. The
other is, to develope in every native of the country
those faculties, and to provide for every native that
knowledge and those attainments, which are neces-
sary to qualify him for a member of the State, the
free subject of a civilized realm. I do not mean
those degrees of moral and intellectual cultivation
which distinguish man from man in the same

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 77

civilized society, much less those that separate the
Christian from the this-worldian ; but those only
that constitute the civilized man in contra-dis-
tinction from the barbarian, the savage, and the
animal.

I have now brought together all that seemed
requisite to put the intelligent reader in full pos-
session of (what I believe to be) the right idea of
the National Clergy, as an estate of the realm.
But I cannot think my task finished without an
attempt to rectify the too frequent false feeling
on this subject, and to remove certain vulgar errors
— errors, alas ! not confined to those whom the
world call the vulgar. Ma nel mondo non d se non
volgo, says Machiavel. I shall make no apology,
therefore, for interposing between the preceding
statements and the practical conclusion from them
the following paragraph extracted from a work long
out of print,* and of such very limited circulation
that I might have stolen from myself with little risk
of detection, had it not been my wish to shew that
the convictions expressed in the preceding pages
are not the offspring of the moment, brought forth
for the present occasion ; but an expansion of
sentiments and principles publicly avowed in the
year 1817.

Among the numerous blessings of the English
Constitution, the introduction of an established
Church makes an especial claim on the gratitude

1& PRESENT BENEFITS OF

of scholars and philosophers ; in England, at least,
where the principles of Protestantism have con-
spired with the freedom of the government to
double all its salutary powers by the removal of its
abuses.

That the maxims of a pure morality, and those
sublime truths of the divine unity and attributes,
which a Plato found hard to learn and more diffi-
cult to reveal ; that these should have become the
almost hereditary property of childhood and poverty,
of the hovel and the workshop ; that even to the
unlettered they sound as common place ; this is a
fact which must withhold all but minds of the
most vulgar cast from undervaluing the services
even of the pulpit and the reading desk. Yet he
who should confine the efficiency of an established
Church to these can hardly be placed in a much
higher rank of intellect. That to every parish
throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a
germ of civilization ; that in the remotest A'illages
there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of
the place may crystallize and brighten ; a model
sufficiently superior to excite, yet sufficiently near
to encourage and facilitate, imitation ; this inob-
trusive, continuous agency of a Protestant Church
Establislmient, this it is which the patriot and the
philanthropist, who would fain unite the love of
peace with a faith in the progressive amelioration
of mankind, cannot estimate at too high a price.
It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir,
with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 79

mention shall be made of coral or of pearls ; for
the price of wisdom is above rubies. The clergy-
man is with his parishioners and among them ; he
is neither in the cloistered cell, nor in the wilder-
ness, but a neighbour and family-man, whose edu-
cation and rank admit him to the mansion of the
rich-landholder while his duties make him the
frequent visiter of the farm-house and the cottage.
He is, or he may become, connected with the
families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage.
And among the instances of the blindness or at best
of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature of
cupidity to inflict, I know few more striking than
the clamours of the farmers against Church property.
Whatever was not paid to the clergymen would
inevitably at the next renewal of the lease be paid
to the landholder, while, as the case at present
stands, the revenues of the Church are in some
sort the reversionary property of every family that
may have a member educated for the Church or a
daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead
of being foreclosed and immoveable, it is, in fact,
the only species of landed property that is essentially
moving and circulative. That their exist no incon-
veniences, who will pretend to assert ? But I
have yet to expect the proof that the inconveniences
are greater in this than in any other species ; or
that either the farmers or the clergy would be
benefited by forcing the latter to become either
Trullibers or salaried placemen. Nay, I do not
hesitate to declare my firm persuasion that what-

80 DISQUALIFICATIONS FOR

ever reason of discontent the farmers may assign,
the true cause is that they may cheat the parson
but cannot cheat the steward : and that they are
disappointed if they should have been able to with-
hold only two pounds less than the legal claim,
having expected to withhold five.

CHAPTER IX.

Practical Conclusion : What unfits for, and what
excludes from, the National Church.

The Clerisy, or National Church, being an estate
of the realm, the Church and State, with the King
as the sovereign head of both, constituting the body
politic, the State in the larger sense of the word, or
the nation dynamically considered {iv ^vvafxEi Kara
TTVEv^a, that is, as an ideal, but not the less actual
and abiding, unity) ; and in like manner, the Na-
tionalty being one of the two constitutional modes
or species, of which the common wealth of the
nation consists ; it follows by immediate conse-
quence, that of the qualifications and preconditions
for the trusteeship, absolutely to be required of
the order collectively, and of every individual
person as the conditions of his admission into this
order, and of his capability of the usufruct or life-

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 81

interest of any part or parcel of the Nationally, the
first and most indispensable, that without which all
others are null and void, is, that the national Clergy
and every member of the same from the highest
to the lowest, shall be fully and exclusively citi-
zens of the State, neither acknowledging the au-
thority, nor within the influence, of any other state
in the world; — full and undistracted subjects of
this kingdom, and in no capacity, and under no
pretences, owning any other earthly sovereign or
visible head but the King, in whom alone the
majesty of the nation is apparent, and by whom
alone the unity of the nation in will and in deed
is symbolically expressed and impersonated.

The full extent of this first and absolutely ne-
cessary qualification will be best seen in stating
the contrary, that is, the absolute disqualifications,
the existence of which in any individual, and in
any class or order of men, constitutionally inca-
pacitates such individual and class or order from
being inducted into the national trust : and this on
a principle so vitally concerning the health and
integrity of the body politic, as to render the vo-
luntary transfer of the National ty, whole or in part,
direct or indirect, to an order notoriously thus
disqualified, a foul treason against the most funda-
mental rights and interests of the realm, and of all
classes of its citizens and free subjects, the indi-
viduals of the very order itself, as citizens and
subjects, not excepted. Now there are two thino-s,
and but two, which evidently and predeterminably

82 DISQUALIFICATIONS FOR

disqualify for this great trust : the first absolutely;
and the second, — which in its collective opei'ation,
and as an attribute of the whole class, would, of
itself, constitute the greatest possible unfitness for
the proper ends and purposes of the National
Church, as explained and specified in the pre-
ceding paragraphs, and the heaviest drawback
from the civilizing influence of the national Clergy
in their pastoral and parochial character — the
second, I say, by implying the former, becomes
likewise an absolute ground of disqualification.
It is scarcely necessary to add, what the reader
will have anticipated, that the first absolute dis-
qualification is allegiance to a foreign power: the
second, the abjuration — under the command and
authority of this power, and as by the rule of
their order its professed lieges (alligati) — of that
bond, which more than all other ties connects
the citizen with his countrj' ; which beyond all
other securities affords the surest pledge to the
State for the fealty of its citizens, and that which
(when the rule is applied to any body or class of
men, under whatever name united, where the
number is sufficiently great to neutralize the acci-
dents of individual temperament and circumstances,)
enables the State to calculate on their constant
adhesion to its interests, and to rely on their faith
and singleness of heart in the due execution of
whatever public or national trust may be as-
signed to them.

But I shall, perhaps, express the nature of this

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 83

security more adequately by the negative. The
marriage tie is a bond the preclusion of which by
an antecedent obligation, that overrules the acci-
dents of individual character and is common to the
whole order, deprives the State of a security with
which it cannot dispense.; I will not say that it is
a security which the State may rightfully demand
of all its adult citizens, competently circumstanced,
by positive enactment : though I might shelter
the position under the authority of the great
publicists and state lawyers of the Augustan age,
who, in the Lex Papia Poppcea* enforced anew
a principle common to the old Roman Constitution
with that of Sparta. But without the least fear
of confutation, though in the full foresight of
vehement contradiction, I do assert that the State
may rightfully demand of any number of its sub-
jects united in one body or order the absence of all
customs, initiative vows, covenants and by-laws in
that order, precluding the members of such body
collectively and individually from affording this
security. In strictness of principle, I might here
conclude the sentence, though as it now stands it
would involve the assertion of a right in the State
to suppress any order confederated under laws so
anti-civic. But I am no friend to any rights that
can be disjoined from the duty of enforcing them.

* A.U.C. 762. — inditi custodes, et lege Papia Popptea pr6E-
miis indupti, ut, si a privllegiis parentum cessaretur, velut parens
omnium populus vacantia teneret, Tac. Ann. HI. 28. — Ed,

84 DISQUALIFICATIONS FOR

I therefore at once confine and complete the sen-
tence thus: — The State not only possesses the
iii:;ht of demanding, but is in duty bound to demand,
the above as a necessary condition of its entrusting^
to any order of men, and to any individual as a
member of a known order, the titles, functions, and
investments of the National Church.

But if any doubt could attach to the proposition,
whether thus stated or in the perfectly equivalent
converse, that is, that the existence and known
enforcement of the injunction or prohibitory by-
law, before described, in any order or incorporation
constitutes an a priori disqualification for the
trusteeship of the Nationalty, and an insuperable
obstacle to the establishment of such an order or
of any members of the same as a national Clergy,
— such doubt would be removed, as soon as this
injunction, or vow exacted and g'iven, or what-
ever else it may be, by which the members of
the order, collectively and as such, incapacitate
themselves from affording this security for their
full, faithful, and unbiassed application of a na-
tional trust to its proper and national purposes, is
found in conjunction with, and aggravated by, tlie
three following circumstances. First, that this
incapacitation originates in, and forms part of, the
allegiance of the order to a foreign sovereignty :
secondly, that it is notorious that the canon or
prescript, on which it is grounded, was first en-
forced on the secular clergy universally, after
long and obstinate reluctation on their side, and on

THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 85

that of their natural sovereigns in the several
realms, to which as subjects they belonged ; and
that it is still retained in force, and its revocation
inflexibly refused, as the direct and only adequate
means of supporting that usurped and foreign
sovereignty, and of securing by virtue of the ex-
patriating and insulating effect of its operation
the devotion and allegiance of the order* to their
visible head and sovereign : and thirdly, that the
operation of the interdict precludes one of the most
constant and influential ways and means of pro-
moting the great paramount end of a National
Church, the progressive civilization of the com-
munity.

Emollit mores, nee sinit esseferos.

And now let me conclude these preparatory
notices by compressing the sum and substance of
my argument into this one sentence. Though
many things may detract from the comparative

* For the fullest and ablest exposition of this point, I
refer to the Rev. Joseph Blanco White's " Practical and
Internal Evidence against Catholicism," and to that ad-
mirable work, " Riforma d'ltalia,'' written by a professed
and apparently sincere Roman Catholic, a work which well
merits translation. I know no work so well fitted to soften
tlie prejudices against the theoretical doctrines of the Latin
Church, and to deepen our reprobation of what it actually,
and practically is in all countries where the expediency of
keeping up appearances, as in Protestant neighbourhoods,
does not operate.

86 IDEA OF THE KING

fitness of individuals or of particular classes for
the trust and functions of the Nationalty, there
are only two absolute disqualifications : and these
are, allegiance to a foreign power, or the ac-
knowledgement of any other visible head of the
Church, but our sovereign lord the King: and
compulsory celibacy in connection with, and in
dependence on, a foreign and extra-national
head.

CHAPTER X.

On the King and the Nation.

A TREATISE ? why, the subjects might, I own, ex-
cite some apprehension of the sort. But it will
be found like sundry Greek treatises among the
tinder-rolls of Herculaneum, with titles of as large
promise, somewhat lai'gely and irregularly abbre-
viated in the process of unrolling. In fact, neither
my purpose nor my limits permit more than a few
hints which may prepare the reader for some of
the positions assumed in the second part of this
volume.

Of the King with the two Houses of Parliament,
as constituting the State (in the especial and an-
tithetic sense of the word) I have already spoken:
and what remains is only to determine the proper and

AND THE NATION. ,87

legitimate objects of its superintendence and con-
trol. On what is the power of the State rio-htfully
exercised ? Now, I am not arguing in a court of
law ; and ray purpose would be grievously misun-
derstood if what I say should be taken as intended
for an assertion of the fact. Neither of facts, nor
of statutory and demandable rights do I speak : but
exclusively of the State according to the idea.
And in accordance with the idea of the State, I do
not hesitate to answer that the legitimate objects
of its power comprise all the interests and concerns
of the proprietage, both landed and personal, and
whether inheritably vested in the lineage or in the
individual citizen ; and these alone. Even in the
lives and limbs of the lieges the King, as the head
and arm of the State, has an interest of property :
and in any trespass against them the King appears
as plaintiff.

The chief object, for which men, who from the
beginning existed as a social bond, first formed
themselves into a state and on the social super-
induced the political relation, was not the protec-
tion of their lives but of their property. The
natural man is too proud an animal to admit that
he needs any other protection for his life than what
his own courage and that of his clan can bestow.
Where the nature of the soil and climate has pre-
cluded all property but personal, and admitted that
only in its simplest forms, as in Greenland for
instance, — there men remain in the domestic state
and form neighbourhoods, not governments. And

88 IDEA or THE KING

in North America the chiefs appear to exercise
government in those tribes only which possess in-
dividual landed property. Among the rest the
chief is the general, a leader in war ; not a magis-
trate. To property and to its necessary inequalities
must be referred all human laws, that would not be
laws without and independent of any conventional
enactment ; that is, all State-legislation.*

Next comes the King, as the head of the National
Church or Clerisy, and the protector and supreme
trustee of the Nationally : the power of the same
in relation to its proper objects being exercised by
the King and the Houses of Convocation, of which,
as before of the State, the King is the head and arm.
And here if it had been my purpose to enter at
once on the developeraent of this position, together
with the conclusions to be drawn from it, I should
need with increased earnestness remind the reader
that I am neither describing what the National
Church now is, nor determining what it ought to
be. My statements respect the idea alone as
deduced from its original purpose and ultimate
aim : and of the idea only must my assertions be
understood. But the full exposition of this point
is not necessary for the appreciation of the late
Bill which is the subject of the following part
of the volume. It belongs indeed to the chapter
with which I had intended to conclude this volume,
and which, should my health permit, and the cir-

* See the Friend, i, p. 274. 3rd edit.— £d.

AND THE NATION. 89

cumstances warrant it, it is still my intention to
let follow the present work — namely, my humble
contribution towards an answer to the question.
What is to be done now ? For the present, there-
fore, it will be sufficient, if I recall to the reader's
recollection that formerly the national Clerisy, in
the two Houses of Convocation duly assembled and
represented, taxed themselves. But as to the pro-
per objects, on which the authority of the Convo-
cation with the King as its head was to be exercised,
— these the reader will himself without difficulty
decypher by referring to what has been already
said respecting the proper and distinguishing ends
and purposes of a National Church.

I pass, therefore, at once to the relations of the
Nation, or the State in the larger sense of the
word, to the State especially so named, and to the
Crown. And on this subject again I shall confine
myself to a few important, yet, I trust, not common
nor obvious, remarks respecting the conditions
requisite or especially favourable to the health and
vigour of the realm. From these again I separate
those, the nature and importance of which cannot
be adequately exhibited but by adverting to the
consequences which have followed their neglect or
inobservance, reserving them for another place :
while for the present occasion I select two only ;
but these, I dare believe, not unworthy the name of
political principles, or maxims, that is, regulce quce
inter maximas numerari merentur. And both of
them forcibly confirm and exemplify a remark.

90 IDEA OF THE KING

often and in various ways suggested to my mind,
that with, perhaps, one* exception, it would be
difficult in the whole compass of language to find
a metaphor so commensurate, so pregnant, or
suggesting so many points of elucidation, as that
of body politic, as the exponent of a State or Realm.
I have little admiration for the many-jointed simi-
litudes of Flavel, and other finders of moral and
spiritual meanings in the works of art and nature,
where the proportion of the likeness to the differ-
ence not seldom reminds me of the celebrated com-
parison of the morning twilight to a boiled lobster.f
But the correspondence between the body politic
and the body natural holds even in the detail of
application. Let it not however be supposed that
I expect to derive any proof of my positions from
this analogy. My object in thus prefacing them
is answered, if I have shown cause for the use of
the physiological terms by which I have sought to
render my meaning intelligible.

The first condition then required, in order to a
sound constitution of the body politic, is a due pro-
portion of the free and permeative life and energy
of the nation to the organized powers brought within
containing channels. What those vital forces that
seem to bear an analogy to the imponderable agents,
magnetic, or galvanic, in bodies inorganic, if indeed,

* That namely of the Word (Jo/i/i, i. 1.) for the Dirine
Alterity ; the Deus Alter et Idem of Philo ; Deitas Objectim,
i Hudibras Pt. II. c. 2 v. 29.— Ed.

AND THE NATION. 91

they are not the same in a higher energy and un-
der a different law of action — what these, I say,
are in the living body in distinction from the fluids
in the glands and vessels — the same, or at least
holding a like relation, are the indeterminable, but
yet actual, influences of intellect, information, pre-
vailing principles and tendencies, (to which we
must add the influence of property, or income,
where it exists without right of suffrage attached
thereto), to the regular, definite, and legally recog-
nized powers in the body politic. But as no simile
runs on all four legs (nihil simile est idem), so
here the difference in respect of the body politic is,
that in sundry instances the former, that is, the
permeative, species of force is capable of being
converted into the latter, of being as it were or-
ganized and rendered a part of the vascular system,
by attaching a measured and determinate political
right or privilege thereto.

What the exact proportion, however, of the two
kinds of force should be, it is impossible to prede-
termine. But the existence of a disproportion is
sure to be detected sooner or later by the effects.
Thus : the ancient Greek democracies, the hot-beds
of art, science, genius, and civilization, fell into
dissolution from the excess of the former, the per-
meative power deranging the functions, and by
explosions shattering the organic structures, which
they should have enlivened. On the contrary, the
Republic of Venice fell by the contrary extremes.
For there all political power was confined to the

92 IDEA OF THE KING

determinate vessels, and these becoming more and
more rigid, even to an ossification of the arteries,
the State, in which the people were nothing, lost
all power of resistance ad extra.

Under this head, in short, there are three possi-
ble sorts of malformation to be noticed. The first
is, the adjunction or concession of direct political
power to personal force and influence, whether
physical or intellectual, existing in classes or ag-
gregates of individuals, without those fixed or tan-
gible possessions, freehold, copyhold, or leasehold,
in land, house, or stock. The power resulting
from the acquisition of knowledge or skill, and
from the superior developement of the understand-
ing is, doubtless, of a far nobler kind than mere
physical strength and fierceness ; the one being
peculiar to the animal man, the other common to
him with the bear, the buffalo, and the masti£f.
And if superior talents, and the mere possession of
knowledges, such as can be learned at Mechanics'
Institutions, were regularly accompanied with a
will in harmony with the reason, and a consequent
subordination of the appetites and passions to the
ultimate ends of our being ; — if intellectual gifts
and attainments were infallible signs of wisdom
and goodness in the same proportion, and the
knowing and clever were always rational ; — if the
mere facts of science conferred or superseded the
softening humanizing influences of the moral world,
that habitual presence of the beautiful or the seemly,
and that exemption fiom all familiarity with the

AND THE NATION. 93

gross, the mean, and the disorderly, whether in
look or language, or in the surrounding objects,
in which the main efficacy of a liberal education
consists ; — and if, lastly, these acquirements and
powers of the understanding could be shared equally
by the whole class, and did not, as by a necessity
of nature they ever must do, fall to the lot of two
or three in each several group, club, or neighbour-
hood ; — then, indeed, by an enlargement of the
Chinese system, political power might not unwisely
be conferred as the honorarium or privilege on
having passed through all the forms in the national
schools, without the security of political ties, with-
out those fastenings and radical fibres of a collec-
tive and registrable property, by which the citizen
inheres in and belongs to the commonwealth, as a
constituent part either of the Proprietage, or of
the Nationalty ; either of the State or of the National
Church. But as the contrary of all these suppo-
sitions may be more safely assumed, the practical
conclusion will be — not that the requisite means of
intellectual developement and growth should be
withholden from any native of the soil, which it was
at all times wicked to wish, and which it would be
now silly to attempt; but that the gifts of the under-
standing whether the boon of a genial nature, or the
reward of more persistent application, should be al-
lowed fair play in the acquiring of that proprietor-
ship, to which a certain portion of political power be-
longs as its proper function. For in this way there is
at least a strong probability that intellectual power

94 IDEA OF THE KING

will be armed with political power, only where it
has previously been combined with and guarded
by the moral qualities of prudence, industry, and
self-control. And this is the first of the three kinds
of mal-organization in a state ; — namely, direct
political power without cognizable possession.

The second is, the exclusion of any class or nu-
merous body of individuals, who have notoriously
risen into possession, and the influence inevitably
connected with known possession, under pretence
of impediments that do not directly or essentially
affect the character of the individuals as citizens,
or absolutely disqualify them for the performance
of civic duties. Imperfect, yet oppressive and ir-
ritating, ligatures these that peril the trunk, the
circulating current of which they would withhold,
even more than the limb which they would faia
excommunicate.

The third and last is, a gross incorrespondency,
in relation to our own country, of the proportion
of the antagonist interests of the body politic in
the representative body, in the two Houses of Par-
liament, to the actual proportion of the same in-
terests and of the public influence exerted by the
same in the nation at large. Whether in conse-
quence of the gradual revolution which has trans-
ferred to the magnates of the landed interest so
large a portion of that borough representation which
was to have been its counterbalance ; whether the
same causes which have deranged the equilibrium

AND THE NATION. 95

of the landed and the * monied interests in the Le-
gislature have not likewise deranged the balance
between the two unequal divisions of the landed
interest itself, namely, the Major Barons, or great
land-owners, with or without title, and the great
body of the agricultural community, and thus given

* Monied, used arbitrarily, as in preceding pages the words,
Personal and Independent, from my inability to find any one
self-interpreting word, that would serve for the generic name
of the four classes, on which I have stated the interest of
progression more especially to depend, and with it the free-
dom which is the indispensable condition and propelling
force of all national progress : even as the counter-pole, the
other great interest of the body politic, its permanency, is
more especially committed to the landed order, as its natural
guardian and depository. I have therefore had recourse to
the convenient figure of speech, by which a conspicuous
part or feature of a subject is used to express the whole ; and
the reader will be so good as to understand, that the monied
order in this place comprehends and stands for the com-
mercial, manufacturing, distributive, and professional classes
of the community.

Only a few days ago, an accident placed in my hand a
work of which, from my very limited opportunities of see-
ing new publications, I had never before heard, — Mr.
Crawfurd's History of the Indian Archipelago — the work of
a wise as well as of an able and well-informed man. Need
I add that it was no ordinary gratification to find that in
respect of certain prominent positions, maintained in this
volume, I had unconsciously been fighting behind the shield
of one whom 1 deem it an honour to follow. But the sheets
containing the passages having been printed off, I avail
myself of this note to insert the sentences from Mr. Craw-
furd's History, rather than lose the confirmation which a

96 IDEA OF THE KING

to the real or imagined interests of the compar
ratively few the imposing name of the interest of
the whole, the landed interest;— these are questions,
to which the obdurate adherence to the jail-
crowding game laws, (which during the reading of
the Litany, I have sometimes been tempted to

coincidence with so high an authority Las produced on my
own mind, and the additional weight which my sentiments
will receive in the judgment of others. The first of the two
extracts the reader will consider as annexed to pp. 25 — 27.
of this volume ; the second to the paragraph (p. 87.) on the
protection of property, as the end chiefly proposed in the
formation of a fixed government, quoted from a work of my
own, pubhshed ten or eleven years before the appearance of
Mr. Crawfurd's Histoiy, which I notice in order to give the
principle in question that probability of its being grounded
in fact, which is derived from the agreement of two inde-
pendent minds. The first extract Mr. Crawfurd introduces
by the remark that the possession of wealth, derived from
a fertile soil, encouraged the progress of absolute power in
Java. He then proceeds —

Extract I.
The devotion of a people to agricultural industry, by ren-
dering themselves more tame and their property more tan-
gible, went still farther towards it : for wherever agriculture
is the principal pursuit, there it may certainly be reckoned,
that the people will be found living under an absolute go-
vernment. — Vol. iii. p. 24.

Extract II.
In cases of murder, no distinction is made (in the ancient
laws of the Indian Islanders) between wilful murder and
chance-medley. It is the loss, which the family or tribe
sustains, that is oonsidered, and tlie pecuniary compensation
was calculated to make up that loss. — lb. p. 123.

AND THE NATION. 97

include, by a sort of sub intellige, in the petitions
— from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncha-
ritableness ; from battle, murder, and sudden
death, Good Lord, deliver us !) to which the old
corn laws, and the exclusion of the produce of our
own colonies from our distilleries, during the war,
against the earnest recommendation of the govern-
ment, the retention of the statutes against usury,
and other points of minor importance or of less safe
handling, may seem at a first view to suggest an
answer in the affirmative ; but which, for reasons
before assigned, I shall leave unresolved, content
if only I have made the principle itself intelligible.
The following anecdote, for I have no means of
ascertaining its truth, and no warrant to offer for
its accuracy, I give not as a fact in proof of an
overbalance of the landed interest, but as an in-
distinctly remembered hearsay, in elucidation of
what is meant by the words. Some eighteen or
twenty years ago — for so long I think it must have
been, since the circumstance was first related to
me — my illustrious (alas ! I must add, I fear^ my
late) friend, Sir Humphrey Davy, at Sir Joseph
Banks's request, analyzed a portion of an East In-
dian import, known by the names of cutch, and
terra Japonica ; but which he ascertained to be a
vegetable extract, consisting almost wholly of
pure tannin : and further trials, with less pure spe-
cimens, still led to the conclusion that the average
product would be seven parts in ten of the tanning

H

98 IDEA OF THE KING

principle. This discovery was* communicated to
the trade ; and on inquiry made at the India House,

* And, (if I recollect right, though it was not from him,
that I received the anecdote) by a friend of Sir Humphrey's,
whom I am proud to think my friend likewise, and by an
elder claim :' — a man whom I have seen now in his harvest
field, or the market, now in a committee-room with the Rick-
mans and Ricardos of the age ; at another time with Davy,
Wollaston, and the Wedgewoods ; now with Wordsworth,
Southey, and other friends not unheard of in the republic of
letters ; now in the drawing-rooms of the rich and the noble,
and now presiding at the annual dinner of a village benefit
society ; and in each seeming to be in the very place he was
intended for, and taking the part to which his tastes, talents,
and attainnients gave him an admitted right. And yet this
is not the most remarkable, not the individualizing, trait of
my friend's character. It is almost overlooked in the ori-
ginality and raciness of his intellect ; in the lii'e, freshness
and practical value of his remarks and notices, truths plucked
as they are growing, and delivered to you with the dew on
them, the fair earnings of an observing eye, armed and kept
on the watch by thought and meditation ; and above all, in
the integrity or entireness of his being, (integrum etsine cera
vas), the steadiness of his attachments, and the activity and
persistency of a benevolence, which so graciously presses a
warm temper into the service of a yet warmer heart, and so
lights up the little flaws and imperfections, incident to hu-
manity in its choicest specimens, that were their removal at
the option of his friends', (and few have, or deserve to have
so many) not a man among them but would vote for leaving
him as he is.

This is a note digressive ; but, as the height of the offence
is, that the garnish is too good for the dish, I shall confine
my apology to a confession of the fault.

' The late excellent Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey, So-
merset. — Ed.

AND THE NATION, 99

It was found that this cutch could be prepared in
large quantities, and imported at a price which,
after an ample profit to the importers, it would very
well answer the purposes of the tanners to give.
The trade itself, too, was likely to be greatly be-
nefitted and enlarged by being rendered less de-
pendent on particular situations ; while the reduc-
tion of the price at which it could be offered to the
foreign consumer, acting in conjunction with the
universally admitted superiority of the English
leather, might be reasonably calculated on as en-
abling us to undersell our foreign rivals in their
own markets. Accordingly, an offer was made on
the part of the principal persons interested in the
leather trade to purchase, at any price below the
sum that had been stated to them as the highest
or extreme price, as large a quantity as it was pro-
bable that the Company w^ould find it feasible or
convenient to import in the first instance. Well !
the ships went out, and the ships returned, again
and again : and no increase in the amount of the
said desideratum appearing among the imports,
enough only being imported to meet the foi-mer
demand of the druggists, and (it is whispered) of
certain ingenious transmuters of Bohea into Hyson,
— my memory does not enable me to determine
whether the inquiry into the occasion of this dis-
appointment was made, or whether it was anti-
cipated by a discovery that it would be useless.
But it was generally understood that the tanners
had not been the only persons, whose attention had

100 THE OMNIPOTENCE

been drawn to the qualities of the article, and the
consequences of its importation ; and that a very
intelligible hint had been given to persons of known
influence in Leadenhall-street, that in case any such
importation were allowed, the East- India Com-
pany must not expect any support from the landed
interest in Parliament at the next renewal, or
motion for the renewal of their Charter. The East
India Company might reduce the price of bark,
one half or more ; and the British navy, and the
grandsons of our present senators, might thank
them for thousands and myriads of noble oaks, left
unstript in consequence — this may be true ; but no
less true is it, that the free merchants would soon
reduce the price of good tea in the same proportion,
and monopolists ought to have a feeling for each
other.

CHAPTER XI.

The relations of the potential to the actual. The
omnipotence of Parliament ; — of what kind.

So much in explanation of the first of the two con-
ditions* of the health and vigour of a body politic :
and far more, I must confess, than I had myself
reckoned on. I will endeavour to indemnify the

* See ante, p. 90. — Ed.

OF PARLIAMENT. 101

reader by despatching the second in a few sen-
tences, which could not so easily have been ac-
complished without the explanations given in the
preceding paragraphs. For as we have found the
first condition in the due proportion of the free
and permeative life of the State to the powers or-
ganized, and severally determined by their appro-
priate containing or conducting nerves, or vessels ;
the second condition is a due proportion of the
potential, that is, latent or dormant power to the
actual power. In the first condition, both powers
alike are awake and in act. The balance is pro-
duced by the polarization of the actual power,
that is, the opposition of the actual power organ-
ized to the actual power free and permeating the
organs. In the second, the actual power, in toto,
is opposed to the potential. Tt has been frequently
and truly observed that in England, where the
ground plan, the skeleton, as it were, of the go-
vernment is a monarchy, at once buttressed and
limited by the aristocracy, (the assertions of its
popular character finding a better support in the
harangues and theories of popular men, than in
state-documents and the records of clear history,)
a far greater degree of liberty is, and long has
been, enjoyed than ever existed in the ostensibly
freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths
of ancient or of modern times ; — greater, indeed,
and with a more decisive predominance of the
spirit of freedom than the wisest and most philan-
thropic statesmen of antiquity, or than the great

102 THE OMNIPOTENCE

Commonwealth's-men, (the stars of that narrow
interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of
the first and second Charles's reig-ns) believed
compatible, the one with the safety of the State,
the other with the interests of morality.

Yes ! for little less than a century and a half
Englishmen have collectively and individually lived
and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency
than the citizens of any known* republic, past or
present. The fact is certain. It has been often
boasted of, but never, I think, clearly explained.
The solution must, it is obvious, be sought for in
the combination of circumstances, to which we
owe the insular privilege of a self-evolving Con-
stitution : and the following will, I think, be found
the main cause of the fact in question. Extremes
meet — an adage of inexhaustible exemplification.
A democratic republic and an absolute monarchy
agree in this ; that, in both alike, the nation or
people delegates its whole power. Nothing is left
obscure, nothing suffered to remain in the idea,

* It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of
North America should have been excepted. But the iden-
tity of stock, language, customs, manners and laws scarcely
allows me to consider this an exception : even though it were
quite certain both that it is and that it will continue such.
It was, at all events, a remark worth remembering, which
1 once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one I must ad-
mit), that where every man may take liberties, there is little
liberty for any man ; — or, that where every man takes liber-
ties, no man can enjoy any.

OF PARLIAMENT. 103

unevolved and only acknowledged as an existing-,
yet indeterminable right. A Constitution such
states can scarcely be said to possess. The whole
will of the body politic is in act at every moment.
But in the constitution of England according to
the idea, (which in this instance has demonstrated
its actuality by its practical influence, and this
too though counter-worked by fashionable errors
and maxims, that left their validity behind in the
law-courts, from which they were borrowed) the
nation has delegated its power, not without mea-
sure and circumscription, whether in respect of
the duration of the trust, or of the particular inte-
rests entrusted.

The omnipotence of Parliament, in the mouth
of a lawyer, and understood exclusively of the re-
straints and remedies within the competence of
our law-courts, is objectionable only as bombast.
It is but a puffing pompous way of stating a plain
matter of fact. Yet in the times preceding the
Restoration even this was not universally admitted.
And it is not without a fair show of reason that
the shrewd and learned author of " The Royalist's
Defence," printed in the year 1648, (a tract of 172
pages, small quarto, from which I now transcribe)
thus sums up his argument and evidences :

" Upon the whole matter clear it is, the Parlia-
ment itself (that is, the King, the Lords, and
Commons) although unanimously consenting, are
not boundless : the Judges of the realm by the
fundamental law of England have power to deter-

104 THE OMNIPOTENCE

mine which Acts of Parliaments are binding- and
which void." p. 48. — That a unanimous declaration
of the judges of the realm that any given Act of
Parliament was against right reason and the fun-
damental law of the land (that is, the constitution
of the realm), would render such Act null and
void, was a principle that did not want defenders
among the lawyers of elder times. And in a state
of society in which the competently informed and
influential members of the community, (the national
Clerisy not included), scarcely perhaps trebled the
number of the members of the two Houses, and
Parliaments were so often tumultuary congresses
of a victorious party rather than representatives
of the State, the right and power here asserted
might have been wisely vested in the judges of the
realm : and with at least equal wisdom, under
change of circumstances, has the right been suf-
fered to fall into abeyance. " Therefore let the
potency of Parliament be that highest and utter-
most, beyond which a court of law looketh not :
and within the sphere of the Courts quicquid Rex
cum Parliamento voluit,fatum sit!"

But if the strutting phrase be taken, as from
sundry recent speeches respecting the fundamental
institutions of the realm it may be reasonably in-
ferred that it has been taken, that is, absolutely,
and in reference, not to our courts of law exclu-
sively, but to the nation, to England with all her
venerable heir-looms, and with all her germs of
reversionary wealth, — thus used and understood,

or PABLIAMENT. 105

the omnipotence of Parliament is an hyperbole
that would contain mischief in it, were it only
that it tends to provoke a detailed analysis of the
materials of the joint-stock company, to which so
terrific an attribute belongs, and the competence
of the shareholders in this earthly omnipotence to
exercise the same. And on this head the obser-
vations and descriptive statements given in the
fifth chapter of the old tract, just cited, retain all
their force ; or if any have fallen off, their place
has been abundantly filled up by new growths.
The degree and sort of knowledge, talent, probity,
and prescience, which it would be only too easy,
were it not too invidious, to prove from acts and
measures presented by the history of the last half
century, are but scant measure even when ex-
erted within the sphere and circumscription of the
constitution, and on the matters properly and pe-
culiarly appertaining to the State according to the
idea ; — this portion of moral and mental endowment
placed by the side of the plusquam-gigantic height
and amplitude of power, implied in the unqualified
use of the phrase, omnipotence of Parliament, and
with its dwarfdom intensified by the contrast,
would threaten to distort the countenance of truth
itself with the sardonic laugh of irony.*

* I have not in my possession the mornjng paper in which
I read it, or I should with great pleasure transcribe an ad-
mirable passage from the present King of Sweden's Address
to the Storthing, or Parliament ofNorway, on the necessary
limits of Parliamentary power, consistently with the exis-

106 THE OMNIPOTENCE

The non-resistance of successive generations
has ever been, and with evident reason, deemed
equivalent to a tacit consent, on the part of the
nation, and as finally legitimating the act thus ac-
quiesced in, however great the dereliction of prin-
ciple, and breach of trust, the original enactment
may have been. I hope, therefore, that without
offence I may venture to designate the Septennial
Act as an act of usurpation, tenfold more dangerous
to the true liberty of the nation than the pretext for
the measure, namely, the apprehended Jacobite
leaven from a new election, was at all likely to
have proved : and I repeat the conviction which I
have expressed in reference to the practical sup-
pression of the Convocation, that no great principle
was ever invaded or trampled on, that did not
sooner or later avenge itself on the country, and
even on the governing classes themselves, by the
consequences of the precedent. The statesman
who has not learned this from histoiy has missed
its most valuable result, and might in my opinion
as profitably, and far more delightfully, have
devoted his hours of study to Sir Walter Scott's
Novels.*

tence of" a constitution. But I can with confidence refer
the reader to the speech, as worthy of an Alfred. Every
thing indeed that I have heard or read of this sovereign,
has contributed to the impression on my mind, that he is a
good and a vcise man, and worthy to be the king of a virtuous
people, the purest specimen of the Gothic race.

* This would not be the first time that these fascinating
volumes had been recommended as a substitute for history

OF PARLIAMENT. 107

But I must draw in my reins. Neither my limits
permit, nor does my present purpose require, that
I should do more than exemplify the limitation
resulting from that latent or potential power, a due
proportion of which to the actual powers I have
stated as the second condition of the health and
vigor of a body politic, by an instance bearing
directly on the measure which in the following
section I am to aid in appreciating, and which was
the occasion of the whole work. The principle
itself, — which, as not contained within the rule
and compass of law, its practical manifestations
being indeterminable and inappreciable a priori,
and then only to be recorded as having manifested
itself, when the predisposing causes and the en-
during effects prove the unific mind and energy of
the nation to have been in travail ; when they have
made audible to the historian that voice of the
people which is the voice of God ; — this principle,
I say, (or the power, that is the subject of it) which
by its very essence existing and working as an
idea only, except in the rare and predestined
epochs of growth and reparation, might seem to
many fitter matter for verse than for sober argu-
ment, — I will, by way of compromise, and for the
amusement of the reader, sum up in the rhyming

— a ground of recommendation, to which I could not con-
scientiously accede ; though some half dozen of these
Novels, with a perfect recollection of the contents of every
page, I read over more often in the course of a year than I
can honestly put down to my own credit.

108 THE OMNIPOTENCE

prose of an old Puritan poet, consigned to contempt
by Mr. Pope, but whose writings, with all their
barren flats and dribbling common-place, contain
nobler principles, profounder truths, and more that
is properly and peculiarly poetic, than are to be
found in his own works.* The passage in question,
however, I found occupying the last page on a
flying-sheet of four leaves, entitled JEngland's
Misery and Remedy, in a judicious Letter from
an Utter- Barrister to his Special Friend, con-
cerning Lieut-Col. Lilburne's Imprisonment in
Newgate ; and I beg leave to borrow the intro-
duction, together with the extract, or that part at
least, which suited my purpose.

" Christian Reader, having a vacant place for
some few lines, I have made bold to use some of
Major George Withers his verses out of Vox
Pacijica, "page 199.

* If it were asked whether I consider the works of the
one of equal value with those of the other, or hold George
\Vithers to be as great a writer as Alexander Pope, — my
answer would be that I am as Uttle likely to do so, as the
querist would be to put no greater value on a highly
wrought vase of pure silver from the hand of a master, than
on an equal weight of copper ore that contained a small
per centag-e of separable gold scattered through it. The
reader will be pleased to observe that in the passage here
cited, the " State" is used in the largest sense, and as sy-
nonymous with the realm, or entire body poUtic, including
Church and State in the narrower and special sense of the
latter term.

OF PARLIAMENT. 109

" Let not your King- and Parliament in one.
Much less apart, mistake them^selves for tiiat
Which is most worthy to be thought upon :
Nor think they are, essentially, the State.
Let them not fancy, that th' authority
And privileges upon them bestown,
Conferr'd are to set up a majesty,
A power, or a glory, of their own !
But let them know, 'twas for a deeper life.

Which they but represent

That there's on earth a yet auguster thing,
Veil'd tho' it be, than Parliament and King,"

CHAPTER XII.

The preceding position exemplified. The origin
and meaning of the Coronation Oath, in respect
of the National Church. In what its moral
obligation consists. Recapitulation.

ANDhere again the " Royalist's Defence" furnishes
me with the introductory paragraph : and I am
always glad to find in the words of an elder writer,
what I must otherwise have said in my own person
— otium simul et auctoritatem.

" All Englishmen grant, that arbitrary power
is destructive of the best purposes for which power
is conferred : and in the preceding chapter it has
been shown, that to give an unlimited authority
over the fundamental laws and rights of the nation.

1]0 OBLIGATION OF THE COKONATION OATH

even to the King and two Houses of Parliament
jointly, though nothing so had as to have this
boundless power in the King alone, or in the
Parliament alone, were nevertheless to deprive
Englishmen of the security from arbitrary power,
which is their birth right.

" Upon perusal of former statutes it appears,
that the members of both Houses have been
frequently drawn to consent, not only to things
prejudicial to the Commonwealth, but, (even in
matters of greatest weight) to alter and contradict
what formerly themselves had agreed to, and that,
as it happened to please the fancy of the present
Prince, or to suit the passions and interests of a
prevailing faction. Witness the statute by which
it was enacted that the proclamation of King
Henry VHI. should be equivalent to an Act of
Parliament ; another declaring both Mary and
Elizabeth bastards ; and a third statute empower-
ing the King to dispose of the Crown of England
by will and testament. Add to these the several
statutes in the times of King Henry VHI. Edward
VI. Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, setting
up and pulling down each other's religion, every
one of them condemning even to death the profes-
sion of the one before established."- — Royalist's
Defence, p. 41.

So far my anonymous author, evidently an old
Tory lawyer of the genuine breed, too enlightened
to obfuscate and incense-blacken the shrine,
through which the kingly idea should be translu-

IN RESPECT OF THE NATIONAL CHURCH. Ill

cent, into an idol to be worshipped in its own right ;
but who, considering both the reigning Sovei'eign
and the Houses, as limited and representative
functionaries, thought he saw reason, in some few
cases, to place more confidence in the former than
in the latter ; while there were points, which he
wished as little as possible to trust to either. With
this experience, however, as above stated, (and it
would not be difficult to increase the catalogue,)
can we wonder that the nation grew sick of Par-
liamentary religions ; — or that the idea should at
last awake and become operative, that what virtually
concerned their humanity and involved yet higher
relations than those of the citizen to the State,
duties more aweful, and more precious privileges,
while yet it stood in closest connection with all
their civil duties and rights, as their indispensable
condition and only secure ground — that this was
not a matter to be voted up or down, off or on, by
fluctuating majorities ; — that it was too precious an
inheritance to be left at the discretion of an om-
nipotency which had so little claim to omnis-
cience ? No interest this of a single generation,
but an entailed boon too sacred, too momentous,
to be shaped and twisted, pared down or plumped
up, by any assemblage of Lords, Knights, and
Burgesses for the time being ; — men perfectly
competent, it may be, to the protection and manage-
ment of those interests in which, as having so
large a stake, they may be reasonably presumed to
feel a sincere and lively concern, but who, the ex-

112 OBLIGATION OF THE CORONATION OATH

perience of ages might teach us, are not the class
of persons most likely to study or feel a deep con-
cern in the interests here spoken of, in either sense
of the term Church ; — that is, whether the interests
be of a kingdom not of the world, or those of an
estate of the realm, and a constituent part, there-
fore, of the same system with the State, though as
the opposite pole. The results at all events have
been such, whenever the representatives of the one
interest have assumed the direct control of the
other, as gave occasion long ago to the rhyming
couplet, quoted as proverbial by Luther :

Cum mare siccatur, cum Demon ad astra levatur.
Tunc clero laicus Jidus amicus erit.

But if the nation Avilled to withdraw the religion
of the realm from the changes and revolutions in-
cident to whatever is subjected to the suffrages of
the representative assemblies, whether of the State
or of the Church, the trustees of the Proprietage
or those of the Nationalty, the first question is,
how this reservation is to be declared and by what
means to be effected. These means, the security
for the permanence of the established religion,
must, it may be foreseen, be imperfect; for what
can be otherwise that depends on human will ?
but yet it may be abundantly sufficient to declare
the aim and intention of the provision. Our
ancestors did the best it was in their power to do.
Knowing by recent experience that multitudes
never blush, that numerous assemblies, however

IN RESPECT TO THE NATIOTSTAL CHURCH. 113

respectably composed, are not exempt from tem-
porary hallucinations and the influences of party
passion ; that there are things, for the conservation
of which —

Men safelier trust to heaven, than to themselves,
When least themselves, in storms of loud debate.
Where folly is contagious, and too oft
Even wise men leave their better sense at home
To chide and wonder at them, when return'd.*

Knowing this, our ancestors chose to place their
reliance on the honour and conscience of an indi-
vidual, whose comparative height, it was believed,
would exempt him from the gusts and shifting
currents that agitate the lower region of the poli-
tical atmosphere. Accordingly, on a change of
dynasty they bound the person, who had accepted
the crown in trust, — bound him for himself and
his successors by an oath to refuse his consent
(without which no change in the existing law can
be effected,) to any measure subverting or tending
to subvert the safety and independence of the Na-
tional Church, or which exposed the realm to the
danger of a return of that foreign usurper, mis-
named spiritual, from which it had with so many
sacrifices emancipated itself. However uncon-
stitutional therefore the royal veto on a Bill pre-
sented by the Lords and Commons may be deemed

* Poet. Works, Vol. ii. p. 258.— Ed.
I

114 OBLIGATION OF THE CORONATIOK OATH

in all ordinary cases, this is clearly an exception.
For it is no additional power conferred on the
King ; but a limit imposed on him by the consti-
tution itself for its own safety. Previously to the
ceremonial act, which announces him the only
lawful and sovereign head of both the Church and
the State, the oath is administered to him religiously
as the ]-epresentative person and crowned majesty
of the nation. Religiously, I say; — for the mind
of the nation, existing only as an idea, can act
distingiiishably on the ideal powers alone — that is,
on the reason and conscience.

It only remains then to determine what it is to
which the Coronation oath obliges the conscience
of the King. And this may be best done by con-
sidering what in reason and in conscience the
nation had a right to impose. Now that the
nation had a right to decide for the King's con-
science and reason, and for the reason and con-
science of all his successors, and of his and their
counsellors and ministers, laic and ecclesiastic,
on questions of theology, and controversies of
faith, — for example, that it is not allowable in
directing our thoughts to a departed Saint, the
Virgin Maiy for instance, to say Orapro nobis,
beata Virgo, though there might, peradventure, be
no harm in saying, Oret pro nobis, precor, beata
Virgo ; whether certain books are to be holden
canonical; whether the text, They shall be saved
as through fire, refers to a purgatorial process in
the body, or during the interval between its dis-

IN RESPECT TO THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 115

solution and the day of judgment; whether the
words, This is my body, are to be understood
literally, and if so, whether it is by consubstan-
tiation with, or transubstantiation of, bread and
wine ; and that the members of both Houses of
Parliament, together with the Privy Councillors
and all the Clerg-y shall abjure and denounce the
theory last mentioned — this I utterly deny. And
if this were the whole and sole object and intention
of the oath, however large the number might be of
the persons who imposed or were notoriously fa-
vourable to the imposition, so far from recognizing
the nation in their collective number, I should
regard them as no other than an aggregate of
intolerant mortals, from bigotry and presumption
forgetful of their fallibility, and not less ignorant
of their own rights than callous to those of suc-
ceeding generations. If the articles of faith
therein disclaimed and denounced were the sub-
stance and proper intention of the oath, and not to
be understood, as in all common sense they ought
to be, as temporary marks, because the known ac-
companiments, of other and legitimate grounds of
disqualification ; and which only in reference to
these, and only as long as they implied their ex-
istence, were fit objects of political interference ;
it would be as impossible for me, as for the late
Mr. Canning, to attach any such sanctity to the
Coronation oath as should prevent it from being
superannuated in times of clearer light and less
heat. But that these theological articles, and the

116 OBLIGATION OF THE CORONATION OATH.

open profession of the same by a portion of the
King's subjects as parts of their creed, are not the
evils which it is the true and legitimate purpose of
the oath to preclude, and which constitute and
define its obligation on the royal conscience ; and
what the real evils are, that do indeed disqualify
for offices of national trust, and give the permanent
obligatory character to the engagement — this,' —
in which I include the exposition of the essential
characters of the Christian or Catholic Church ;
and of a very different Church, which assumes the
name ; and the application of the premisses to an
appreciation on principle of the late Bill, now the
law of the land, — will occupy the remaining portion
of the volume.

And now I may be permitted to look back on
the road we have passed : in the course of which,
I have placed before the reader a small part indeed
of what might, on a suitable occasion, be profitably
said ; but it is all that for my present purpose I
deem it necessary to say respecting three out of
the five themes that were to form the subjects of
the first part of this little work. But let me avail
myself of the pause to repeat my apology to the
reader for any extra trouble I may have imposed
on him, by employing the same term, the State,
in two senses ; though I flatter myself I have in
each instance so guarded it as to leave scarcely the
possibility that a moderately attentive reader should
understand the word in one sense, when I had
meant it in the other, or confound the State as a

RECAPITULATION. 117

whole and comprehending the Church, with the
State as one of the two constituent parts, and in
contradistinction from the Church.

Brief Recapitulation.

First then, I have given brieiiy but, I trust,
with sufficient clearness, the right idea of a State,
or body politic ; the word State being here synony-
mous with a constituted realm, kingdom, common-
wealth, or nation ; that is, where the integral parts,
classes, or orders ai"e so balanced, or interdependent,
as to constitute, more or less, a moral unit, an or-
ganic whole ; and as arising out of the idea of a
State I have added the idea of a Constitution, as the
informing principle of its coherence and unity.
But in applying the above to our own kingdom
(and with this qualification the reader is requested
to understand me as speaking in all the following
remarks), it was necessary to observe, and I
willingly avail myself of this opportunity to repeat
the observation, — that the Constitution, in its widest
sense as the constitution of the realm, arose out of,
and in fact consisted in, the co-existence of the
constitutional State (in the second acceptation of
the term) with the King as its head, and of the
Church, that is, the National Church, with the
King likewise as its head; and lastly of the
King, as the head and majesty of the whole nation.
The reader was cautioned therefore not to confound

118 RECAPITULATION.

it with either of its constituent parts ; that he
must first master the true idea of each of these
severally ; and that in the synopsis or conjunction
of the three the idea of the English constitution,
the constitution of the realm, will rise of itself
before him. And in aid of this purpose and fol-
lowing this order, I have given according to my
best judgment, first, the idea of the State in the
second or special sense of the term ; of the State-
legislature ; and of the two constituent orders,
the Landed, with its two classes, the Major Barons,
and the Franklins ; and the Personal, consisting
of the mercantile, or commercial, the manufac-
turing, the distributive and the professional ; these
two orders corresponding to the two great all-inclu-
ding interests of theState, — the Landed, namely, to
the permanence, — the Personal to the progression.
The possessions of both orders, taken collectively,
form the* Proprietage of the realm. In contradis-
tinction from this and as my second theme, I have
explained (and it being the principal object of this
work, more diffusely) the Nationalty, its nature and

* To convey his meaning precisely is a debt wliich an
Author owes to his readers. He therefore who, to escape
the charge of pedantry, will rather be misunderstood than
startle a fastidious critic with an unusual term, may be com-
pared to the man who should pay his creditor in base or
counterfeit coin, when he had gold or silver ingots in his
possession, to the precise amount of the debt ; and this under
the pretence of their unsjiapehness and want of the mint
impression.

RECAP IT tJLAT ION. 119

purposes, and the duties and qualifications of its
trustees and functionaries. In the same sense in
which I at once oppose and conjoin the Nationalty
to the Proprietage ; in the same antithesis and
conjunction I use and understand the plirase,
Church and State. Lastly, I have essayed to
determine the constitutional idea of the Crown,
and its relations to the nation, to which I have
added a few sentences on the relations of the nation
to the State.

To the completion of this first part of my under-
taking, two subjects still remain to be treated of—
and to each of these I shall devote a small section ;
the title of the first being, " On the idea of
the Christian Church;" that of the other, " On a
third Church :" the name of which I withhold for
the present, in the expectation of deducing- it by
contrast from the contradistinguishing characters
of the former.

IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

" We, (said Luther), tell our Lord God plainly : If he
will have his Church, then he must look how to maintain
and defend it ; for we can neither uphold nor protect it.
And well for us, that it is so ! For in case we could, or
were able to defend it, we should become the proudest
asses under heaven. Who is the Church's protector, that
hath promised to be with her to the end, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against her 1 Kings, Diets, Parlia-
ments, Lawyers'! Marry no such cattle." — Luther's Table
Talk with additions. — Ed.

IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

The practical conclusion from our inquiries respect-
ing the origin and idea of the National Church, the
paramount end and purpose of which is the con-
tinued and progressive civilization of the commu-
nity, (emollit mores nee sinit esse feros), was this :
that though many things may be conceived of a
tendency to diminish the fitness of particular men,
or of a particular class, to be chosen as trustees
and functionaries of the same ; though there may
be many points more or less adverse to the perfec-
tion of the establishment; there are yet but two
absolute disqualifications : namely, allegiance to
a foreign power, or an acknowledgment of any
other visible head of the Church but our sovereign
lord the King ; and compulsory celibacy in con-
nection with, and dependence on. a foreign and
extra-national head. I now call the reader to a
different contemplation, to the idea of the^ Christian
Church.

Of the Christian Church, I say, not of Chris-
tianity. To the ascertainment and enucleation of the
latter, of the great redemptive process which began
in the separation of light from Chaos (Hades, or

124 IDEA OF

the indistinction), and has its end in the union of
life with God, the whole summer and autumn and
now commenced winter of my life have been dedi-
cated. Hie labor, hoc opus est, on which alone
I rest my hope that I shall be found not to have
lived altogether in vain. Of the Christian Church
only, and of this no further than is necessai-y for
the distinct understanding of the National Church,
it is my purpose now to speak : and for this pur-
pose it will be sufficient to enumerate the essential
characters by which the Christian Church is dis-
tinguished,

I. — The Christian Church is not a kingdom,
realm, (royaume), or state, (sensu latiori) of
the world, that is, of the aggregate or total number
of the kingdoms, states, realms, or bodies politic,
(these words being, as far as the present argument
is concerned, perfectly synonymous), into which ci-
vilized man is distributed ; and which, collectively
taken, constitute the civilized world. The Chris-
tian Church, I say, is no state, kingdom, or realm
of this world ; nor is it an estate of any such realm,
kingdom or state ; but it is the appointed opposite to
them all collectively — the sustaining, correcting, be-
friending opposite of the World; the compensating
counterforce to the inherent* and inevitable evils

* It is not without pain that I have advanced this posi-
tion, without the accompanying proofs and documents which
it may be thought to require, and without the elucidations
which I am sure it deserves ; but which are precluded alike
by the purpose and the limits of the present work, I will,

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 125

and defects of the State, as a State, and without
reference to its better or worse construction as a
particular state ; while whatever is beneficent and
humanizing- in the aims, tendencies, and proper ob-
jects of the State, the Christian Church collects in
itself as in a/ocw5, to radiate them back in a higher
quality; or to change the metaphor, it completes and
strengthens the edifice of the State, without interfer-
ence or commixture, in the mere act of laying and
securing its own foundations. And for these services
the Church of Christ asks of the State neither
wages nor dignities. She asks only protection
and to be let alone. These indeed she demands ;
but even these only on the ground that there is no-
thing in her constitution or in her discipline incon-
sistent with the interests of the State, nothing re-
sistant or impedimental to the State in the exercise
of its rightful powers, in the fulfilment of its ap-
propriate duties, or in the effectuation of its legi-
timate objects. It is a fundamental principle of
all legislation, that the State shall leave the largest
portion of personal free agency to each of its citi-
zens, that is compatible with the free agency of all,

however, take this opportunity of earnestly recommending to
such of my readers as understand German, Lessing's Ernst
unci Falk : Gesprdchefur Freym'durer. They will find it in
Vol. vii. of the Leipsic edition of Lessing's Works. I know
no finer example of the point, elegance, and exquisite, yet
effortless, precision and conciseness of Lessing's philosophic
and controversial writings. I remember nothing that is at
once like them, and equal to them. but the Provincial Letters
of Pascal.

126 IDEA OF

and not subversive of the ends of its own existence
as a state. And though a negative, it is a most
important distinctive, character of the Church of
Christ, that she aslis nothing for her members as
Christians, which thej are not already entitled to
demand as citizens and subjects.

II. — The Christian Church is not a secret com-
munity. In the once current (and well worthy to
be re-issued) terminology of our elder divines, it
is objective in its nature and purpose, not mystic
or subjective, that is, not like reason or the court
of conscience, existing only in and for the indivi-
dual. Consequently the Church here spoken of
is not the kingdom of God which is within, and
which Cometh not with observation * but is most
observable, — a city built on a hill, and not to be
hid — an institution consisting of visible and public
communities. In one sentence it is the Church
visible and militant under Christ. And this visi-
bility, this publicity, is its second distinctive cha-
racter.

III. — The third character reconciles the two pre-
ceding and gives the condition, under which their
co-existence in the same subject becomes possible.
Antagonist forces are necessarily of the same kind.
It is an old rule of logic, that only concerning two
subjects of the same kind can it be properly said
that they are opposites. Inter res heterogeneas
non datur oppositio ; that is, contraries cannot be

• Luke xvii. 21—20. See ib. xxi. 28. 31.— Erf.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 127

opposites. Alike in the primary and the metaphorical
use of the word, rivals (rivales) are those only who
inhabit the opposite banks of the same stream.

Now, in conformity to the first character, the
Christian Church is not to be considered as a coun-
terpole to any particular State, the word being here
taken in the largest sense. Still less can it, like
the National Clerisy, be opposed to the State in the
narrower sense. The Christian Church, as such,
has no Nationalty entrusted to its charge. It
forms no counter-balance to the collective Heritage
of the realm. The phrase, Church and State, has
a sense and a propriety in reference to the National
Church alone. The Church of Christ cannot be
placed in this conjunction and antithesis without
forfeiting the very name of Christian. The true
and only contra-position of the Christian Church is
to the World. Her paramount aim and object, in-
deed, is another world, not a world to come exclu-
sively, but likewise another world that now is,* and
to the concerns of which alone the epithet spiritual
can, without a mischievous abuse of the word, be
applied. But as the necessary consequence and
accompaniments of the means by which she seeks
to attain this especial end, and as a collateral ob-
ject, it is her office to counteract the evils that re-
sult by a common necessity from all bodies politic,
the system or aggregate of which is the world.
And observe that the nisus, or counter-agency, of

• See Appendix to this Treatise.— Ed.

128 IDEA OF

the Christian Church is against the evil results
only, and not (directly, at least, or by primary in-
tention) against the defective institutions that may
have caused or aggravated them.

But on the other hand, by virtue of the second
character, the Christian Church is to exist in every
kingdom and state of the world, in the form of
public communities, and is to exist as a real and
ostensible power. The consistency of the first and
second character depends on, and is fully effected
by, the third character of the Church of Christ ;
namely, —

The absence of any visible head or sovereign,
and by the non-existence, nay the utter preclu-
sion, of any local or personal centre of unity, of
any single source of universal power. This fact
may be thus illustrated. Kepler and Newton, sub-
stituting the idea of the infinite for the conception
of a finite and determined world, assumed in the
Ptolemaic astronomy, superseded and drove out
the notion of a one central point or body of the
universe. Finding a centre in every point of matter
and an absolute circumference no where, they ex-
plained at once the unity and the distinction that
co-exist throughout the creation by focal instead
of central bodies : the attractive and restraining
power of the sun or focal orb, in each particular
system, supposing and resulting from an actual
power, present in all and over all, throughout an
indeterminable multitude of systems. And this,
demonstrated as it has been by science, and verified

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 129

by observation, we rightly name the true system
of the heavens. And even such is the scheme and
true idea of the Christian Church. In the primi-
tive times, and as long as the churches retained
the form given them by the Apostles and Apostolic
men, every community, or in the, words of a Father
of the second century, (for the pernicious fashion
of assimilating the Christian to the Jewish, as
afterwards to the Pagan, ritual by false analogres
was almost coeval with the Church itself,) every
altar had its own bishop, every flock its own pastor,
who derived his authority immediately from Christ,
the universal Shepherd, and acknowledged no
other superior than the same Christ, speaking by
his spirit in the unanimous decision of any number
of bishops or elders, according to his promise,
Where two or three are gathered together in my
name, there am I in the midst of them.*

* Questions of dogmatic divinity do not enter into the
purpose of this work ; and I am even anxious not to give it
a theological character. It is, however, within the scope of
my argument to observe that, as may be incontrovertibly
proved by other equivalent declarations of our Lord, this
promise is not confined to houses of worship and prayer-
meetings exclusively. And though 1 cannot offer the same
justification for what follows, yet the interest and importance
of the subject will, I trust, excuse me if I remark that, even
in reference to meetings for divine worsliip, the true import
of these gracious, soul-awing, words is too generally over-
looked. It is not the comments or harangues of unlearned
and fanatical preachers that I have in my mind, but sermons
of great and deserved celebrity, and divines whose learning,
well-regulated zeal, and sound Scriptural views are as ho-
K

130 IDEA OF

Hence the unitive relation of the churches to
each other, and of each to all, being equally actual

nourable to the Church, as their piety, beneficence, and
blameless life, are to the Christian name, when I say that
passages occur which might almost lead one to conjecture
that the authors had found the words, " 1 will come and join
you," instead of, I am in the midst of you, — passages from
which it is at least difficult not to infer that they had inter-
preted the promise, as of a corporal co-presence, instead of
a spiritual immanence (ori^evei ev r/fiiv) as of an individual
coming in or down, and taking a place, as soon as the required
number of petitioners was completed ; as if, in short, this pre-
sence, this actuation of the I AM, (eijui ev juecr^airwv) were
an after-consequence, an accidental and separate result and
reward of the contemporaneous and contiguous worshipping
— and not the total act itself, of which the spiritual Christ,
one and the same in all the faithful, is the originating and per-
fective focal unity. Even as the physical life is in each hmb
and organ of the body, all in every part ; but is manifested as
life, by being one in all and thus making all one : even so with
Christ, our spiritual life. He is in each true behever, in his
solitary prayer and during his silent communion in the
watches of the night, no less than in the congregation of the
faithful ; but he manifests his indwelling presence more cha-
racteristically, with especial evidence, when many, convened
in liis name, whether for prayer or for council, do through
him become one.

I would that these preceding observations were as httle
connected with the main subject of this volume, as to some
they will appear to be. But as the mistaking of symbols
and analogies for metaphors has been a main occasion and
support of the worst errors in Protestantism ; so the under-
standing the same s}Tnbols in a literal or phenomenal sense,
notwithstanding the most earnest warnings against it, the
most express declarations of the folly and danger of inter-
preting sensually what was delivered of objects super-

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 131

indeed, but likewise equally ideal, that is, mystic
and supersensual, as the relation of the whole

sensual — this was the rank -wilding, on which the prince of
this world, the lust of power and worldly aggrandizement,
was enabled to graft, one by one, the whole branchery of
Papal superstition and imposture. A truth not less im-
portant might be conveyed by reversing the image ; — by
representing the Papal monarchy as the stem or trunk cir-
culating a poison-snap through the branches successively
grafted thereon, the previous and natural fruit of which was
at worst only mawkish and innutritions. Yet among the
dogmas or articles of belief that contra-distinguish the Roman
from the Reformed Churches, the most important and, in
their practical effects and consequences, the most pernicious
I cannot but regard as refracted and distortetl truths, pro-
found ideas sensualized into idols, or at the lowest rate lofty
and affecting imaginations, safe while they remained general
and indefinite, but debased and rendered noxious by their
apphcation in detail : for example, the doctrine of the Com-
munion of Saints, or the sympathy between all the membeis
of the universal Church, which death itself doth not interrupt,
exemplified in St, Anthony and the cure of sore eyes, St,
Boniface and success in brewing, and other such follies.
What the same doctrines now are, used as the pretexts and
shaped into the means and implements of priestly power and
revenue : or rather, what the whole schem.e is of Romish rites,
doctrines, institutions, and practices in their combined and
full operation, where it exists in undisputed sovereignty,
neither repressed by the prevalence, nor modified by the
light, of a purer faith, nor holden in check by the consci-
ousness of Protestant neighbours and lookers-on ; — this is
a question which cannot be kept too distinct from the former.
And, as at the risk of passing for a secret favourer of super-
annuated superstitions, I have spoken out my thoughts of
the Roman theology, so, and at a far more serious risk of
being denounced as an intolerant bigot, I will declare what,

132 IDEA OP

Church to its one invisible Head, the Church
with and under Christ, as a one kingdom or state,

after a two years' residence in exclusively Popish countries,
and in situations and under circumstances that afforded more
than ordinary means ofacquainting myself with the workings
and the proceeds of the machinery, was the impression left
on my mind as to the effects and influences of the Romish
(most un-Catholic) religion, — not as even according to its
own canons and authorized decisions it ought to be ; but,
as it actually and practically exists. This impression, and
the convictions grounded thereon, which have assuredly not
been weakened by the perusal of Mr. Blanco White's most
affecting statements, and by the recent history of Spain and
Portugal, I cannot convey more satisfactorily to myself than
by repeating the answer, which I long since returned to the
same question put by a friend, that is to say, —

When I contemplate the whole system, as it affects the
great fundamental principles of morality, the terra firma, as
it were, of our humanity ; then trace its operation on the
sources and conditions of national strength and well-being ;
and lastly, consider its woeful influences on the innocence
and sanctity of the female mind and imagination, on the faith
and happiness, the gentle fragrancy and unnoticed ever-
present verdure of domestic life, — I can with difiiculty avoid
applying to it what the Rabbins fable of the fratricide Cain,
after the curse : that the firm earth trembled wherever he strode,
and the grass turned black beneath his feet.

Indeed, if my memory does not cheat me, some of the
mystic divines, in their fond humour of allegorizing, tell us
that in Gen. iv. 3—8. is correctly narrated the history of the
first apostate Church, that began by sacrificing amiss, impro-
priating the fruit of the ground or temporal possessions under
spiritual pretexts ; and ended in slaying the shepherd bro-
ther who brought the firstlings of his fold, holy and without
blemish, to the Great Shepherd, and presented them as new
creatures, before the Lord and Owner of the flocks.

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 133

IS hidden : while in all its several component
monads, (the particular visible churches I mean,)
Caesar receiving the things that are Caesar's, and
confronted by no rival Caesar, by no authority,
which existing locally, temporally, and in the
person of a fellow mortal, must be essentially of
the same kind with his own, notwithstanding any
attempt to belie its true nature under the perverted
and contradictory name of spiritual, sees only so
many loyal groups, who, claiming no peculiar
rights, make themselves known to him as Chris-
tians, only by the more scrupulous and exemplary
performance of their duties as citizens and subjects.
And here let me add a few sentences on the use,
abuse, and misuse of the phrase, spiritual power.
In the only appropriate sense of the words, spiri-
tual power is a power that acts on the spirits of
men. Now the spirit of a man, or the spiritual
part of our being, is the intelligent will : or (to
speak less abstractly) it is the capability, with
which the Father of Spirits hath endowed man of
being determined to action by the ultimate ends,
which the reason alone can present. The under-
standing, which derives all its materials from the
senses, can dictate purposes only, that is, such
ends as are in their turn means to other ends. The
ultimate ends, by which the will is to be deter-
mined, and by which alone the will, not corrupted,
the spirit made perfect, would be determined, are
called, in relation to the reason, moral ideas. Such
are the ideas of the eternal, the good, the true, the

134 IDEA OF

holy, the idea of God as the absoluteness and re-
ality (or real ground) of all these, or as the Supreme
Spirit in which all these substantially are, and are
one : lastly, the idea of the responsible will itself;
of duty, of guilt, or evil in itself without reference
to its outward and separable consequences.

A power, therefore, that acts on the appetites
and passions, which we possess in common with
the beasts, by motives derived from the senses and
sensations has no pretence to the name ; nor can
it without the grossest abuse of the word be called
a spiritual power. Whether the man expects the
auto de fe, the fire and faggots, with which he is
threatened, to take place at Lisbon or Smithfield,
or in some dungeon in the centre of the earth,
makes no difference in the kind of motive by which
he is influenced ; nor of course in the nature of
the power which acts on his passions by means of
it. It would be strange indeed if ignorance and
superstition, the dense and rank fogs that most
strangle and suffocate the light of the spirit in man,
should constitute a spirituality in the power which
takes advantage of them !

This is a gross abuse of the term, spiritual. The
following, sanctioned as it is by custom and sta-
tute, yet (speaking exclusively as a philologist and
without questioning its legality) I venture to point
out as a misuse of the term. Our great Church
dignitaries sit in the Upper House of the Convo-
cation as Prelates of the National Church : and as
Prelates may exercise ecclesiastical power. In

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 135

the House of Lords they sit as Barons and by
virtue of the baronies which, much against the will
of those haughty prelates, our Kings forced upon
them : and as such, they exercise a Parliamentary
power. As Bishops of the Church of Christ only
can they possess, or exercise (and God forbid ! I
should doubt, that as such, many of them do faith-
fully exercise) a spiritual power, which neither
King can give, nor King and Parliament take
away. As Christian Bishops, 'they are spiritual
pastors, by power of the spirits ruling the flocks
committed to their charge ; but they are temporal
Peers and Prelates.

The Fourth Character of the Christian Church,
and a necessary consequence of the first and third,
is its universality. It is neither Anglican, Gal-
ilean, nor Roman, neither Latin nor Greek. Even
the Catholic and Apostolic Church of England is
a less safe expression than the Church of Christ
in England : though the Catholic Church in
England, or (what would be still better,) the Ca-
tholic Church under Christ throughout Great Bri-
tain and Ireland is justifiable and appropriate : for
through the presence of its only Head and Sove-
I'eign, entire in each and one in all, the Church
Universal is spiritually perfect in every true
Church, and of course in any number of such
Churches, of which from circumstance of place, or
the community of country or of language, we have
occasion to speak collectively. I have already,
here and elsewhere, observed, and scarcely a day

136 IDEA OF

passes without some occasion to repeat the obser-
vation, that an equivocal term, or a word with two
or more different meanings, is never quite harm-
less. Thus, it is at least an inconvenience in our
language that the term church, instead' of being
confined to its proper sense, kirk, cedes Kyriacce,
or the Lord's house, should likewise be the word
by which our forefathers rendered the Ecclesia, or
the 'iKK\r]TOL, or evocati, the called out of the world,
named collectively ; and likewise our term for the
clerical establishment. To the Called at Rome —
to the Church of Christ at Corinth, or in Philippi
— such was the language of the Apostolic age ; and
the change since then has been no improvement.
The true Church of England is the National Church
or Clerisy. There exists, God be thanked ! a Ca-
tholic and Apostolic Church in England : and I
thank God also for the constitutional and ancestral
Church of England.

These are the four distinctions, or peculiar and
essential marks, by which the Church with Christ
as its head is distinguished from the National
Church, and separated from every possible coun-
terfeit, that has, or shall have, usurped its name.
And as an important comment on the same, and in
confirmation of the principle which I have attempted
to establish, I earnestly recommend for the reader's
perusal the following transcript from Henry More's
Modest Inquiry, or True Idea of Antichristianism.

" We will suppose some one prelate, who had
got the start of the rest, to put in for the title and

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. - 137

authority of Universal Bishop : and for the obtain-
ing of this sovereignty, he will first pretend that
it is unfit that the visible Catholic Church, being
one, should not be united under one visible head,
which reasoning, though it makes a pretty shew
at first sight, will yet, being closely looked into,
vanish into smoke. For this is but a quaint con-
cinnity urged in behalf of an impossibility. For
the erecting such an office for one man, which no
one man in the world is able to perform, implies
that to be possible which is indeed impossible.
Whence it is plain that the head will be too little
for the body; which therefore will be a piece of
mischievous asymmetry or inconcinnity also. No
one mortal can be a competent head for that
Church which has a right to be Catholic, and to
overspread the face of the whole earth. There can
be no such head but Christ, who is not mere man,
but God in the Divine humanity, and therefore
present with every part of the Church, and every
member thereof, at what distance soever. But to
set some one mortal Bishop over the whole Church,
were to suppose that great Bishop of our spirit ab-
sent from it, who has promised that he loill be with
her to the end of the world. Nor does the Church
Catholic on earth lose her unity thereby. For ra-
ther hereby only is or can she be one.*

* As rationally might it be pretended that it is not the
life, the rector spiritus prcEsens per totum et in omni parte, but '
the crown of the skull, or sonie one convolute of the brain,
that causes and preserves the unity of the body natural.

138 IPEA OF

" Such and so futile is the first pretence. But if
this will not serve the turn, there is another in
reserve. And notwithstanding the demonstrated
impossibility of the thing, still there must be one
visible head of the Church universal, the successor
and vicar of Christ, for the slaking of controver-
sies, for the determination of disputed points !
We will not stop here to expose the weakness of
the argument (not alas ! peculiar to the sophists
of Rome, nor employed in support of Papal infal-
libility only), that this or that must be, and con-
sequently is, because sundry inconveniences would
result from the want of it ; and this without con-
sidering whether these inconveniences have been
prevented or removed by its alleged presence ;
whether they do not continue in spite of this pre-
tended remedy or antidote ; whether these incon-
veniences were intended by Providence to be pre-
cluded, and not rather for wise purposes permitted
to continue ; and lastly, whether the remedy may
not be worse than the disease, like the sugar of
lead administered by the empiric, who cured a fever
fit by exchanging it for the dead palsy. Passing
by this sophism, therefore, it is suihcient to reply
that all points necessary are so plain and so widely
known, that it is impossible that a Christian, who
seeks those aids which the true Head of the Church
has promised shall never be sought in vain, should
err therein from lack of knowing better. And
those who, from defects of head or heart, are blind
to this widely difi'used light, and who neither seek
nor wish those aids, are still less likely to be in-

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 139

fluenced by a minor and derivative authority. But
for other things, whether ceremonies or conceits,
whether matters of discipline or of opinion, their
diversity does not at all break the unity of the out-
ward and visible Church, as long as they do not
subvert the fundamental laws of Christ's kingdom
nor contradict the terms of admission into his
Church, nor contravene the essential characters
by which it subsists and is distinguished as the
Christian Catholic Church."

To these sentiments, borrowed from one of the
most philosophical of our learned elder divines, I
have only to add an observation as suggested by
them ; — that as many and fearful mischiefs have
ensued from the confusion of the Christian with
the National Church, so have many and grievous
practical errors, and much un-Christian intolerance,
arisen from confounding the outward and visible
Church of Christ with the spiritual and invisible
Church, known only to the Father of all Spirits.
The perfection of the former is to afford every op-
portunity, and to present no obstacle, to a gradual
advancement of the latter. The different degrees
of progress, the imperfections, errors and accidents
of false perspective, which lessen indeed with our
advance — our spiritual advance — but to a greater
or lesser amount are inseparable from all progres-
sion ; these, the interpolated half-truths of the
twilight, through which every soul must pass from
darkness to the spiritual sunrise, belong to the
visible Church as objects of hope, patience, and
charity alone.

ON THE

THIRD POSSIBLE CHURCH,

OR THE

CHURCH OF ANTICHRIST.

Eccle sia Cattoiica non, ma il Papismo denunciamo, perche
suggerito dal interesse, perche fortificato dalla menzogna, perche
radicato dal pin abhominevole despotismo, perche contrario al di-
ritto e ai titoli incommunicabili di Ci'isto, ed alia tranquUlita
d'o^ni Chiesa e d'opni Stato. — Spanzotti.

Thus, on the depluming of the Pope, every bird had his
own feather : in the partage whereof, what he had gotten by
sacrilege, was restored to Christ; what by usurpation, was
given to the King, the (National) Church and the State ;
what by oppression, was remitted to each particular Chris-
tian. — Fuller's Church History of Britain, Book v.

143

ON THE CHURCH,

NEITHER NATIONAL NOR, UNIVERSAL.

If our forefathers were annoyed with the cant of
over-boiling zeal, arising out of the belief, that the
Pope is Antichrist, and likewise (sexu mutato)
the Harlot of Babylon : we are more endangered
by the twaddle of humid charity, which (some
years ago at least) used to drizzle, a something
between mist and small rain, from the higher re-
gion of our Church atmosphere. It was sanctioned,
I mean, both in the pulpit and the senate by sun-
dry dignitaries, whose horror of Jacobinism during
the then panic of property led them to adopt the
principles and language of Laud and his faction.
And once more the Church of Rome, in contrast
with Protestant dissenters, became " a right dear,
though erring sister." And the heaviest charge
against the Romish Pontificate was, that the Italian
politics and nepotism of a series of Popes had
converted so great a good into an intolerable
grievance. We were reminded that Grotius and
Leibnitz had regarded a visible head of the Catho-
lic Church as most desirable ; that they, and with
them more than one Primate of our own Church,
yearned for a conciliating settlement of the differ-

144 ON THE CHURCH,

ences between the Romish and Protestant Churches ;
and mainly in order that there might exist really,
as well as nominally, a visible head of the Church
Universal, a fixt centre of unity. Of course the
tenet that the Pope was in any sense the Anti-
christ predicted by Paul was decried as fanatical
and Puritanical cant.

Now it is a duty of Christian charity to presume
that the men, who in the present day employ this
language, are, or believe themselves to be, Chris-
tians ; and that they do not privately think that
St. Paul, in the two celebrated passages of his First
and Second Epistles to the Church at Thessalo-
nica, (1. iv., 13 — 18 ; 11. ii. 1 — 12), practised a ruse
de guerre, and meant only by throwing the fulfil-
ment beyond the life of the present generation,
and by a terrific detail of the horrors and calami*
ties that were to precede it, to damp the impa-
tience, and silence the objections, excited by the ex-
pectation and the delay of our Lord's personal re -ap-
pearance. Again : as the persons, of whom I have
been speaking, are well educated men and men of
sober minds, it may be safely taken for granted
that they do not understand by Antichrist any
nondescript monster, or suppose it to be the pro-
per name or designation of some one individual
man or devil exclusively. The Christians of the
second century, sharing in a delusion that prevailed
over the whole Roman Empire, believed that
Nero would come to life again, and be Antichrist:
and I have been informed that a learned clergy-

NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 145

man of our own times, endowed with the gift of
prophecy by assiduous study of the Book of Daniel
and the Apocalypse, asserts the same thing- of
Napoleon Buonaparte.

But, as before said, it would be calumnious to
attribute such pitiable fanaticism to the parties
here in question. And to them I venture to affirm
that if by Antichrist be meant — what alone can
rationally be meant — a power in the Christian
Church, which in the name of Christ, and at once
pretending and usurping his authority, is systema-
tically subversive of the essential and distinguish-
ing characters and purposes of the Christian
Church : then, if the Papacy, and the Romish
hierarchy as far as it is Papal, be not Antichrist,
the guilt of schism in its most agg-ravated form
lies on the authors of the Reformation. For no-
thing less than this could have justified so tre-
mendous a rent in the Catholic Church with all its
foreseen most calamitous consequences. And so
Luther himself thought ; and so thought Wicliff be-
fore him. Only in the conviction that Christianity
itself was at stake, — that the cause was that of
Christ in conflict with Antichrist, — could, or did,
even the lion-hearted Luther with unquailed spirit
avow to himself; — I bring not peace, but a sword
into the world.

It is my full conviction, a conviction formed
after a long and patient study of the subject in
detail ; — and if in support of this competence I
only add that I have read, and with care, the

L

146 ON THE CHURCH

Summa Theologice of Aquinas, and compared the
system with the statements of Arnauld and Bossuet,
the number of those who in the present much-
reading, but not very hard-reading, age would
feel themselves entitled to dispute my claim, will
not, perhaps, be very formidable ; — it is, I repeat,
my full conviction that the rights and doctrines,
the agenda et credenda, of the Roman Catholics,
could we separate them from the adulterating in-
gredients combined with, and the use made of,
them by the sacerdotal Mamelukes of the Romish
monarchy, for the support of the Papacy and Pa-
pal hierarchy, would neither have brought about,
nor have sufficed to justify, the convulsive separa-
tion under Leo X. Nay, that if they were fairly,
and in the light of a sound philosophy, compared
with either of the two main divisions of Protestan-
tism, as it now exists in this country, that is, with
the fashionable doctrines and interpretations of the
Arminian and Grotian school on the one hand, and
with the tenets and language of the modern Cal-
vinists on the other, an enlightened disciple of
John and of Paul would be perplexed which of
the three to prefer as the least unlike the profound
and sublime system he had learned from his great
masters. And in this comparison 1 leave out of
view the extreme setts of Protestantism, whether
of the frigid or of the torrid zone, Socinian or
fanatic.

During the summer of last year, I made the
tour of Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine as

NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 147

far as Bergen, and among the few notes then
taken, I find the following: — " Every fresh op-
portunity of examining the Roman CathoUc reU-
gion on the spot, every new fact that presents it-
self to my notice, increases my conviction that its
immediate basis and the true grounds of its con-
tinuance are to be found in the wickedness, igno-
rance, and wretchedness of the many ; and that
the producing and continuing cause of this deplo-
rable state is, that it is the interest of the Romish
priesthood that so it should remain, as the surest,
and, in fact, only support of the Papal sovereignty
and influence against the civil powers, and the re-
forms wished for by the more enlightened govern-
ments, as well as by all the better informed and
wealthier class of Roman Catholics generally.
And as parts of the same policy, and equally in-
dispensable to the interests of the Papal Crov/n,
are the ignorance, grossness, excessive number
and poverty of the lower ecclesiastics themselves,
the religious orders included. When I say the
Pope, I understand the Papal hierarchy, which is,
in truth, the dilated Pope : and in this sense only,
and not of the individual priest or friar at Rome,
can a wise man be supposed to use the word." —
Cologne, July 2, 1828.

I feel it as no small comfort and confirmation to
know that the same view of the subject is taken,
the same conviction entertained, by a large and
increasing number in the Roman Catholic com-
munion itself, in Germany, France, Italy, and

148^ ON THE CHURCH

even in Spain ; and that no inconsiderable portion
of this number consists of men who are not only
pious as Christians, but zealous as Roman Catho-
lics ; and who would contemplate with as much
horror a reform from their Church, as they look
with earnest aspirations and desires towards a re-
form in the Church. Proof of this may be found
in the learned work intituled Disordini morali e
politici della Corte di Roma — evidently the work
of a zealous Romanist and from the ecclesiastical
erudition displayed in the volumes, probably a priest.
Nay, from the angry aversion with which the foul
heresies of those sons of perdition, Luther and Cal-
vin, are mentioned, and his very faint and qualified
censure of the persecution of the Albigenses and
Waldenses, I am obliged to infer that the writer's
attachment to his communion was zealous even to
bigotry.

The disorders denounced by him are : —

1. The pretension of the Papacy to temporal
power and sovereignty, directly or as the pretended
consequence of spiritual dominion ; and as furnish-
ing occasion to this, even the retention of the pri-
macy in honour over all other Bishops, after Rome
had ceased to be the metropolis of Christendom, is
noticed as a subject of regret.

2. The boast of Papal infallibility.

3. The derivation of the Episcopal power from
the Papal, and the dependence of Bishops on the
Pope, rightly named the evil of a false centre.

4. The right of exercising authority in other
dioceses besides that of Rome.

NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 149

5. The privilege of reserving to himself the
greater causes — le cause maggiori.

6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Of conferring any and every
benefice in the territory of other Bishops ; of ex-
acting the Annates, or First Fruits ; of receiving-
appeals ; with the power of subjecting all churches
in all parts, to the ecclesiastical discipline of the
church of Rome ; and lastly , the dispensing power
of the Pope.

11. The Pope's pretended superiority to an Ecu-
menical Council.

12. The exclusive power of canonizing Saints.
Now, of the twelve abuses here enumerated, it

is remarkable that ten, if not eleven, are but ex-
pansions of the one grievance — the Papal power
as the centre, and the Pope as the one visible head
and sovereign of the Christian Church.

The writer next enumerates the personal insti'u-
ments of these abuses : — 1. The Cardinals. 2.
The excessive number of the priests and other
ecclesiastics. 3. The Regulars, Mendicant Or-
ders, Jesuits, and the rest. Lastly, the means em-
ployed by the Papacy to found and preserve its
usurped power, namely : —

1. The institution of a Chair of Canon Law, in
the University of Bologna, the introduction of
Gratian's Canons, and the forged decisions. 2.
The prohibition of books, wherever published. 3.
The Inquisition ; and 4. The tremendous power of
excommunication ; — the last two in their temporal
inflictions and consequences equalling, or rather
greatly exceeding, the utmost extent of the puni-

150 ON THE CIlUllCH

tive power exercised by the temporal sovereign and
the civil magistrate, armed with the sword of the
criminal law.

It is observable that the most efficient of all the
means adopted by the Roman Pontiffs, namely,
the celibacy of the clergy, is omitted by this wri-
ter ; — a sufficient proof that he was neither a Pro-
testant nor a philosopher, which in the Italian
states, and, indeed, in most Romish Catholic coun-
tries, is the name of courtesy for an infidel.

One other remark in justification of the tenet
avowed in this chapter, and I shall have said all I
deem it necessary to say on the third form of a
Church. That erection of a temporal monarch
under the pretence of a spiritual authority, which
was not possible in Christendom but by the extinc-
tion or entrancement of the spirit of Christianity,
and which has therefore been only partially attained
by the Papacy — this was effected in full by Mo-
hammed, to the establishment of the most extensive
and complete despotism, that ever warred against
civilization and the interests of humanity. And had
Mohammed retained the name of Christianity, had
he deduced his authority from Christ as his prin-
cipal, and described his own Khalifate and that of
his successors as vicarious, there can be no doubt
that to the Mussulman theocracy, embodied in the
different Mohammedan dynasties, would belong the
name and attributes of Antichrist. But the Pro-
phet of Arabia started out of Paganism an unbap-
tized Pagan. He was no traitor in the Church,
but an enemy from without, who levied war against

NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 151

its outward and formal existence, and is, therefore,
not chargeable with apostasy from a faith which
he had never acknowledged, or from a Church to
which he had never appertained. Neither in the
Prophet nor in his system, therefore, can we find
the predicted Antichrist, that is, a usurped power
in the Church itself, which, in the name of Christ,
and pretending his authority, systematically sub-
verts or counteracts the peculiar aims and purposes
of Christ's mission ; and which, vesting in a mortal
his incommunicable headship, destroys and ex-
changes for the contrary the essential contra-dis-
tinguishing marks or characters of his kingdom
on earth. But apply it, as Wicliff, Luther,* and
indeed all the first Reformers did to the Papacy,
and Papal hierarchy ; and we understand at once

* And (be it observed) without any reference to tlie
Apocalypse, the canonical character of which Luther at first
rejected, and never cordially received. And without the
least sympathy with Luther's suspicions on this head, but
on the contrary receiving this sublime poem as the undoubted
work of the Apostolic age, and admiring in it the most per-
fect specimen of symbolic poetry, I am as little disposed to
cite it on the present occasion ; — convinced as I am and hope
shortly to convince others, that in the whole series of its
magnificent imagery there is not a single symbol, that can
be even plausibly interpreted of either the Pope, the Turks,
or Napoleon Buonaparte. Of charges not attaching to the
moral character, there are few, if any, that I should be more
anxious to avoid than that of being an affecter of paradoxes.
But the dread of other men's thoughts shall not tempt me to
withhold a truth, which the strange errors grounded on the
contrary assumption render important. And in the thorough
assurance of its truth I make the assertion, that the per-

152 ON THE CHURCH

the grounds of the great Apostle's premonition,
that this Antichrist could not appear till after the

spicuity, and (with singularly few exceptions e^^en for us)
the uniform intelligibility, and close consecutiv^e meaning,
verse by verse, with the simplicity and grandeur of the plan,
and the admirable ordonnance of the parts, are among the
prominent beauties of the Apocalypse. Nor do I doubt that
the substance and main argument of this drama sui generis
(the Prometheus of Eschylus comes the nearest to the kind)
were supplied by John the Evangelist: though I incline
with Eusebius to find the poet himself in John, an Elder of
the Church of Ephesus.

It may remove, or at least mitigate, the objections to the
palliative language in which I have spoken of the doc-
trines of the Roman Catholic Church, if I remind the rea-
der that that Church dates its true origin from the Council
of I'rent. Widely differing from my valued and affection-
ately respected friend, the P^ev. Edward Irving, in his in-
terpretations of the Apocalypse and the Book of Daniel, and
no less in his estimation of the latter, and while I honour
his courage as a Christian minister, almost as much as I
admire his eloquence as a writer, yet protesting against his
somewhat too adventurous speculations on the Persons of
the Trinity and the Body of our Lord, — I have great delight
in extracting from his " Sermons, Lectures, and Discourses,"
vol. iii. p. 870, and declaring my cordial assent to the follow-
ing just observations : namely, — "that after the Reforma-
tion had taken firmer root, and when God had provided a
purer Church, the Council of Trent did corroborate and
decree into unalterable laws and constitutions of the Church
aU those impostures and innovations of the Roman See,
which had been in a state of uncertainty, perhaps of permis-
sion or even of custom ; hut which every man till then had
been free to testify against, and against which, in fact, there
never wanted those in each successive generation who did
testify. The Council of Trent ossified all those ulcers and
blotches which had deformed the Church, and stamped the

"NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 153

dissolution of the Latin empire, and the extinction
of the Imperial power in Rome — and the cause

hitherto much doubted and controverted prerogative of the
Pope with the highest authority recognized in the Church."
Then first was the Cathohc converted and particularized into
the Romish Church, the Church of the Papacy.

Not less cordially do I concur with Mr Irving in his re-
mark in the following page. For I too, " am free to confess
and avow moreover, that I believe the soil of the Catholic
Church, when Luther arose, was of a stronger mould , fitted
to bear forest trees and cedars of God, than the soil of the
Protestant Church in the times of Whitfield and Wesley,
which (t/iou^/i sown with the same word) hath brought forth
only stunted undergrowths, and creeping brushwood." I
too, "beheve, that the faith of the Protestant Church in
Britain had come to a lower ebb, and that it is even now at
a lower ebb, than was the faith of the Papal Church when
the Spirit of the Lord was able to quicken in it and draw
forth out of it such men as Luther, and Melancthon, and Bul-
linger, Calvin, Bucer, and Latimer, and Ridley, and a
score others whom I might name."

And now, as the conclusion of this long note, let me be
permitted to add a word or two of Edward Irving himself.
That he possesses mj'' unqualified esteem as a man, is only
saying that I know him, and am neither blinded by envy nor
bigotry. But my name has been brought into connexion with
his on points that regard his public ministry ; and he him-
self has publicly distinguished me as his friend on public
' grounds ; and in proof of my confidence in his regard, I have
not the least apprehension of forfeiting it by a frank decla-
ration of what I think. Well, then ! I have no faith in his
prophesyings ; small sympathy with his fulminations ; and
in certain peculiarities of his theological system as distinct
from his religious principles I cannot see my way. But I
hold withal, and not the less firmly for these discrepancies
in our moods and judgments, that Edward Irving possesses
more of the spirit and purposes of the first Reformers ; that

154 ON THE CHURCH

why the Bishop of Constantinople, with all imagi-
nable good wishes and disposition to do the same,

he lias more of the Lead and heart, the life, the unction, and
the genial power of Martin Luther than any man now alive ;
yea, than any man of this and the last century. I see in
Edward Irving a minister of Christ after the order of Paul ;
and if the points, in which I think liim either erroneous, or ex-
cessive and out ofbounds, have been at any time a subject of
serious regret with jne, this regret has arisen principally or
altogether from the apprehension of their narrowing the
sphere of his influence, from the too great probability that
they may furnish occasion or pretext for withholding or with-
drawing many from those momentous truths, which the age
especially needs, and for the enforcement of which he hath
been so highly and especially gifted. Finallv, my friend's
intellect is too instinct with life, too potential, to remain
stationary ; and assuming, as everv satisfied believer must
be supposed to do, the truth of mv own views, I look forward
with confident hope to a time when his soul shall have per-
fected her victory over the dead letter of the senses and its
apparitions in the sensuous understanding ; when the hal-
cyon Ideas shall have alit on the surging sea of his concep-
tions,

Which then shall quite forget to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.

But to return from the personal, for which I have little
taste at any time, and the contrary when it stands in any
connection with myself; — in orderto the removal of one main
impediment to the spiritual resuscitation of the Church
it seems to me indispensable that in freedom and unfearing
faith, with that courage which cannot but flow from the in-
ward and life-like assurance, that neither death, nor things
present, nor thingi to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shali he able to separate us from the love of God, which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord, the rulers of our Church and our
^eachers of theology should meditate and draw the obvious,

NEITHER NATIONAL NOR UNIVERSAL. 155

could never raise the Patriarchate of the Greek
empire into a Papacy, The Bishops of the other
Rome became the slaves of the Ottoman, the
moment they ceased to be the subjects of the
Emperor.

I will now proceed to the Second Part, intended
as a humble aid to ajust appreciation of the measure,
which under the auspices of Mr. Peel and the Duke
of Wellington is now the law of the land. This
portion of the volume was written while the mea-

though perhaps unpalatable, inferences from the following'
two or three plain truths r — First, that Christ, the Spirit of
Truth, has promised to be with his Church even to the end ; —
•Becondly, — that Christianity was described as a tree to be
raised from the seed, so described by Him who brought the
seed from Heaven and first sowed it: — lastly, — that in the
process of evolution there are in every plant growths of
transitory use and duration. " The integuments of the seed,
having fulfilled their destined ofiice of protection, burst and
decay. After the leaves have unfolded, the cotyledons, that
had perfoiined their functions, wither and drop off."* The
husk is a genuine growth of the staff of life ; yet we must
separate it from the grain. It is, therefore, the cowardice
of faithless superstition, if we stand in greater awe of the
palpable interpolations of vermin ; if we shrink from the
removal of excrescences that contain nothing of nobler
parentage than maggots of moth or chafer. Let us cease to
confound oak-apples with acorns ; still less, though gilded
by the fashion of the day, let us mistake them for golden
pippins or renates.f

* Smith's Introduction to Botany.

t I'he fruit from a pippin grafted on a pippin, is called a
rennet, that is, renate (re-natus) or twice-born.

156 ON THE CHURCH, ETC.

sure was yet in prospectu ; before even the par-
ticular clauses of the Bill were made public. It
was written to explain and vindicate my refusal
to sign a petition against any change in the scheme
of law and policy established at the Revolution,
But as the arguments are in no respect affected by
this circumstance ; nay, as their constant reference
to, and dependence on, one fixed general principle,
which will at once explain both why I find the
actual Bill so much less objectionable than I had
feared, and yet so much less complete and satis-
factory than I had wished, will be rendered more
striking by the reader's consciousness that the
arguments were suggested by no wish or purpose
either of attacking or supporting any particular
measure ; it has not been thought necessary or
advisable to alter the form. Nay, if I am right in
my judgment that the Act lately passed, if charac-
terized by its own contents and capabilities, really
is — with or without any such intention on the part
of its framers — a stepping-stone, and nothing
more ; whether to the subversion or to the more
perfect establishment of the Constitution in Church
and State, must be determined by other causes ; —
the Act in itself being' equally fit for either, — and
offering the same facilities of transit to both friend
and foe, though with a foreclosure to the first
comer ; — if this be a right, as it is my sincere judg-
ment and belief, there is a propriety in retaining the
language of anticipation. Mons adhuc parturit :
the ridiculus mus was but an omen.

PART II.

OR, AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION
OF THE ACT

ADMITTING ROMA^' CATHOLICS TO SIT IN BOTH
HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.

'AfieXEL, nd Tov Al' ouK kvamriciu(TOfj.ai'
Xe^co 5' vitkp 'tjTipoyvw/j.oi'uiv, a fxoi, SokbT'
Kai TOL SiSoiKa iroWd' tous T£ yap Tpotrovi
ToiJS ^v/j,7roXiTwv olSa yalpovTa'i aipoopa,
edv Tts ai/Toi/s EuXoyjJ Koi Ttjv ttoKlv,
dvrjp dXa^oov, Kal SiKaia KaSiKa'
KavTavQa Xavddvovir' direfXTroXoo/xtvoL.

Aristoph. Acharn. 367. ^c. (leviter mutata.)-

I ESTIMATE the beauty and benefit of what is called
" a harmony in fundamentals, and a conspiration
in the constituent parts of the body politic," as
highly as any one. If I met a man who should
deny that an imperium in imperio was in itself an
evil, I would not attempt to reason with him : be
is too ignorant. Or if, conceding this, he should
deny that the Romish Priesthood in Ireland does
in fact constitute an imperium in imperio, I yet
would not argue the matter with him : for he must
be a bigot. But my objection to the argument is,
that it is nothing to the purpose. And even so
with regard to the arguments grounded on the dan-
gerous errors and superstitions of the Romish
Church. They may be all very true ; but they are
nothing to the purpose. Without any loss they
might pair off with " the heroes of Trafalgar and
Waterloo," and " our Catholic ancestors, to whom
we owe our Magna Charta," on the other side. If
the prevention of an evil were the point in question,
then indeed ! But the day of prevention has long
pEissedby. The evil exists : and neither rope, sword,
nor sermon, neither suppression nor conversion, can
remove it. Not that I think slightingly of the last ;
but even those who hope more sanguinely than I
can pretend to do respecting the effects ultimately
to result fi'om the labours of missionaries, the dis-

160 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION

persion of controversial tracts, and whatever other
lawful means and implements it may be in our
power to employ — even these must admit that if
the remedy could cope with the magnitude and
inveteracy of the disease, it is wholly inadequate
to the urgency of the symptoms. In this instance
it would be no easy matter to take the horse to the
water; and the rest of the proverb you know.
But why do I waste words ? There is and can be
but one question : and there is and can be but one
way of stating it. A great numerical majority of
the inhabitants of one integral part of the realm
profess a religion hostile to that professed by the
majority of the whole realm : and a religion, too,
which the latter regard, and have had good reason
to regard, as equally hostile to liberty and the sa-
cred rights of conscience generally. In fewer
words, three-fourths of his Majesty's Irish subjects
are Roman Catholics, with a Popish priesthood,
while three-fourths of the sum total of his Ma-
jesty's subjects are Protestants. This with its
causes and consequences is the evil. It is not in
our power, by any immediate or direct means, to
effect its removal. The point, therefore, to be de-
termined is : Will the measures now in contempla-
tion be likely to diminish or to aggravate it ? And
to the determination of this point on the proba-
bilities suggested by reason and experience I would
gladly be aidant, as far as my poor mite of judg-
ment will enable me.

Let us, however, first discharge what may well

OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 161

be deemed a debt of justice from every well edu-
cated Englishman to his Roman Catholic fellow-
subjects of the Sister Island. At least, let us our-
selves understand the true cause of the evil as it
now exists. To what and to whom is the present
state of Ireland mainly to be attributed ? This
should be the question : and to this I answer aloud,
that it is mainly attributable to those, who during
a period of little less than a whole century used as
a substitute what Providence had given into their
hand as an opportunity ; who chose to consider as
superseding the most sacred duty a code of law,
which could have been excused only on the plea
that it enabled them to perform it. To the sloth
and improvidence, the weakness and wickedness,
of the gentry, clergy, and governors of Ireland,
who persevered in preferring intrigue, violence,
and selfish expatriation to a system of preventive
and remedial measures, the efficacy of which had
been warranted for them, alike by the whole pro-
vincial history of ancient Rome, cui pacare sub-
actos summa erat sapientia ; and by the happy re-
sults of the few exceptions to the contrary scheme
unhappily pursued by their and our ancestors.

I can imagine no work of genius that would
more appropriately decorate the dome or wall of a
Senate house, than an abstract of Irish history
from the landing of Strongbow to the battle of the
Boyfle, or to a yet later period, embodied in intel-
ligible emblems — an allegorical history-piece de-
signed in the spirit of a Rubens or a Buonarroti,

M

162 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION

and with the wild lights, portentous shades, and
saturated colours of a Rembrandt, Caravagg-io, and
Spagnoletti. To complete the great moral and po-
litical lesson by the historic contrast, nothing more
would be required, than by some equally effective
means to possess the mind of the spectator with
the state and condition of ancient Spain, at less
than half a century from the final conclusion of an
obstinate and almost unremitting conflict of two
hundred years by Agrippa's subjugation of the
Cantabrians, omnibus HispanicE populis devicds
et pacatis. At the breaking up of the Empire the
West Goths conquered the country and made divi-
sion of the lands. Then came eight centuries of
Moorish domination. Yet so deeply had Roman
wisdom impressed the fairest characters of the Ro-
man mind, that at this very hour, if we except a
comparatively insignificant portion of Arabic deri-
vatives, the natives throughout the whole Peninsula
speak a language less differing from the Rotnana
rustica or provincial Latin of the times of Lucan
and Seneca, than any two of its dialects from each
other. The time approaches, 1 trust, when our po-
litical economists may study the science of the pro-
vincial policy of the ancients in detail, under the
auspices of hope, for immediate and practical pur-
poses.

In my own mind I am persuaded that the ne-
cessity of the penal and precautionary statutes,
passed under Elizabeth and the three succeeding
reigns, is to be found as much in the passions and

OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 163

prejudices of the one party as in the dangerous
dispositions of the other. The best excuse for this
cruel code is the imperfect knowledge and mistaken
maxims common to both parties. It is only to a
limited extent that laws can be wiser than the na-
tion for which they are enacted. The annals of
the first five or six centuries of the Hebrew nation
in Palestine present an almost continued history
of disobedience, of laws broken or utterly forgotten,
of maxims violated, and schemes of consummate
wisdom left unfulfilled. Even a yet diviner seed
must be buried and undergo an apparent corruption
before — at a late period — it shot up and could ap-
pear in its own kind. In our judgments respecting
actions we must be guided by the idea, but in ap-
plying the rule to the agents by comparison. To
speak gently of our forefathers is at once piety and
policy. Nor let it be forgotten that only by making
the detection of their errors the occasion of our
own wisdom do we acquire a right to censure them
at all.

Whatever may be thought of the settlement that
followed the battle of the Boyne and the extinction
of the war in Ireland, yet when this had been
made and submitted to, it would have been the far
wiser policy, I doubt not, to have provided for the
safety of the Constitution by improving the quality
of the elective franchise, leaving the eligibility
open, or like the former limited only by consider-
ations of property. Still, however, the scheme of
exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side.

164 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION

The ink was scarcely dry on the parchment- rolls
and proscription-lists of the Popish Parliament.
The crimes of the man were generalized into at-
tributes of his faith ; and the Irish Roman Catho-
lics collectively were considered accomplices in the
perfidy and baseness of King James. Alas ! his
immediate adherents had afforded too great colour
to the charge. The Irish massacre was in the
mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be
remembered, but as a thing of recent expectation,
fear still blending with the sense of deliverance.
At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying sys-
tem have been enforced with so little reclamation
of the conquered party, or with so little outrage
on the general feeling of the country. There
was no time, when it was so capable of being in-
directly useful as a sedative in order to the appli-
cation of the remedies directly indicated, or as a
counter-power reducing to inactivity whatever dis-
turbing forces might have interfered with their
operation. And had this use been made of these
exclusive laws, and had they been enforced as the
precursors and negative conditions, but above all
as bonajide accompaniments of a process of eman-
cipation, properly and worthily so named, the code
would at this day have been remembered in Ireland
only as when recalling a dangerous fever of our
boyhood we think of the nauseous drugs and
drenching-horn, and congratulate ourselves that
our doctors now-a-days know how to manage these
things less coarsely. But this angry code was

OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 165

neglected as an opportunity, and mistaken for a
substitute : et hinc ill(B lacrymce !

And at this point I find myself placed again in
connection with the main, and which I contend to
be the pertinent, question ; namely, the evil being
admitted, and its immediate removal impossible, is
the admission of Roman Catholics into both Houses
of the Legislature likely to mitigate or to aggravate
it ? And here the problem is greatly narrowed by
the fact that no man pretends to regard this admis-
sibility as a direct remedy or specific antidote for
the diseases under which Ireland labours. No ! it
is to act, we are told, as introductory to the direct
remedies. In short, this emancipation is to be, like
the penal code which it repeals, a sedative, though
in the opposite form of an anodyne cordial, that
will itself be entitled to the name of a remedial
measure in proportion as it shall be found to render
the body susceptible of the more direct remedies
that are to follow. Its object is to tranquillize
Ireland. Safety, peace, and good neighbourhood,
influx of capital, diminution of absenteeism, indus-
trious habits and a long train of blessings will fol-
low. But the indispensable condition, the causa
causarum et causatorum, is general tranquillity.
Such is the language held by all the more intel-
ligent advocates and encomiasts of emancipation.
The sense of the question therefore is, will the
measure tend to produce tranquillity ?

Now it is evident that there are two parties to
be satisfied, and that the measure is likely to effect

166 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION

this purpose accordingly as it is calculated to
satisfy reasonable men of both. Reasonable men
are easily satisfied : would they were as numerous
as they are pacable ! We must, however, under-
stand the word comparatively as including all those
on both sides, who by their superior information,
talents, or property, are least likely to be under
the dominion of vulg-ar antipathies, and who may
be rationally expected to influence (and in certain
cases, and in alliance with a vig-orous government,
to over-rule) the feelings and sentiments of the
I'est.

Now the two indispensable conditions under
which alone the measure can permanently satisfy
the reasonable, that is, the satisfiable, of both
parties, upon the supposition that in both parties
such men exist and that they form the influencive
class in both, are these : first, that the Act for
the repeal of the exclusive statutes and the admis-
sion of Roman Catholics to the full privileges of
British subjects shall be grounded on some de-
terminate principle, which involving- interests and
duties common to both parties as British subjects,
both parties may be expected to recognize, and
required to maintain inviolable : second, that this
principle shall contain in itself an evident definite
and unchangeable boundary, a line of demarcation,
a. ne plus ultra, which in all reasonable men and
lovers of their country shall preclude the wish to
pass beyond it, and extinguish the hope of so doing
in such as are neither.

OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 167

But though the measure should be such as to
satisfy all reasonable men, still it is possible that
the number and influence of these may not be suf-
ficient to leaven the mass, or to over-rule the agi-
tators. I admit this ; but instead of weakening
what I have here said, it affords an additional ar-
gument in its favour. For if an argument satis-
factory to the reasonable part should nevertheless
fail in securing tranquillity, still less can the re-
sult be expected from an arbitrary adjustment that
can satisfy no part. If a measure grounded on
principle, and possessing the characterof anw^ma-
turn should still, through the prejudices and pas-
sions of one or of both of the parties, fail of success,
it would be folly to expect it from a measure that
left full scope and sphere to those passions ; which
kept alive the fears of the one party, while it
sharpened the cupidity of the other. With confi-
dence, therefore, I re-assert that only by reference
to a principle, possessing the characters above enu-
merated, can any satisfactory measure be framed,
and that if this should fail in producing- the tran-
quillity aimed at, it will be in vain sought in any
other.

Again, it is evident that no principle can be ap-
propriate to such a measure, which does not bear
directlv on the evil to be removed or mitigated.
Consequently, it should be our first business to
discover in what this evil truly and essentially con-
sists. It is, we know, a compound of many ingre-
dients. But we want to ascertain what the base

168 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION

is that communicates the quality of evil, of poli-
tical evil, of evil which it is the duty of a states-
man to guard against, to various other ingredients,
which without the base would have been innox-
ious ; or though evils in themselves, yet evils of
such a kind as to be counted by all wise statesmen
among the tares, which must be suffered to grow
up with the wheat to the close of the harvest, and
left for the Lord of the harvest to separate.

Further : the principle, the grounding and direct-
ing principle of an effectual enactment, must be one
on which a Roman Catholic might consistently
vindicate and recommend the measure to Roman
Catholics. It must therefore be independent of all
differences purely theological. And the facts and
documents, by which the truth and practical import-
ance of the principle are to be proved or illustrated,
should be taken by preference from periods anterior
to the division of the Latin Church into Romish
and Protestant. It should be such, in short, that
an orator might with strict historical propriety intro-
duce the framers and extorters of Magna Charta
pleading to their Roman Catholic descendants in
behalf of the measure grounded on such a prin-
ciple, and invoking them in the name of the Con-
stitution, over the growth of which they had kept
armed watch, and by the sacred obligation to
maintain it which they had entailed on their
posterity.

This is the condition under which alone I could
conscientiously vote, and which being fulfilled, I

OP THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT, 169

should most zealously vote for the admission of lay-
Roman Catholics, not only to both houses of the
Legislature, but to all other offices below the Crown
without any exception. Moreover, in the fulfil-
ment of this condition, in the solemn recognition
and establishment of a principle having the charac-
ters here specified, I find the only necessary secu-
I'ity — convinced that this, if acceded to by the Ro-
man Catholic community, would in effect be such,
and that any other security will either be hollow,
or frustrate the purpose of the Law,

Now this condition would be fulfilled, the re-
quired principle would be given, provided that the
law for the repeal of the sundry statutes affecting
the Roman Catholics were introduced by, and
grounded on, a declaration, to which every possible
character of solemnity should be given, that at no
time and under no circumstances has it ever been,
nor can it ever be, compatible with the spirit or
consistent with the safety of the British Constitu-
tion to recognize in the Roman Catholic priesthood,
as now constituted, a component Estate of the
realm, or persons capable, individually or collec-
tively, of becoming the trustees and usufructuary
proprietors of that elective and circulative property,
originally reserved for the permanent maintenance
of the National Church. And further, it is expe-
dient that the preamble of the Act should expressly
declare and set forth that this exclusion of the
members of the Romish Priesthood (comprehending
all under oaths of canonical obedience to the Pope

170 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION

as their ecclesiastical sovereign) from the trusts and
offices of the National Church, and from all parti-
iCipation in the proceeds of the Nationalty, is en-
acted and established on grounds wholly irrelative
to any doctrines received and taught by the Romish
Church as articles of faith, and protested against
as such by the Churches of the Reformation ; but
that it is enacted on grounds derived and inherited
from our ancestors before the Reformation, and by
them maintained and enforced to the fullest ex-
tent that the circumstances of the times permitted,
with no other exceptions and interruptions than
those effected by fraud, or usurpation, or foreign
force, or the temporary fanaticism of the meaner
sort.

In what manner the enactment of this principle
should be effected is of comparatively small impor-
tance, provided it be distinctly set forth as that
great constitutional security, the known existence
of which is the ground and condition of the right
of the Legislature to dispense with other less essen-
tial safe-guards of the constitution, not unnecessary,
perhaps, at the time of their enactment, but of
temporary and accidental necessity. The form, I
repeat, the particular mode in which the principle
should be recognized, the security established, is
comparatively indifferent. Let it only be under-
stood first, as the provision, by the retention of
which the Legislature possesses a moral and consti-
tutional right to make the change in question ; as
that, the known existence of which permits the
law to ignore the Roman Catholics under any other

or TI-IE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 171

name than that of British suhjects ; and secondly,
as the express condition, the basis of a virtual
compact between the claimants and the nation,
which condition cannot be broken or evaded with-
out subverting (morally) the articles and clauses
founded thereon.

I do not assert that the provision here stated is
an absolute security. My positions are, — first, that
it may with better reason and more probability be
proposed as such, than any other hitherto devised ;
secondly, that no other securities can supersede
the expediency and necessity of this, but that this
will greatly diminish or altogether remove the ne-
cessity of any other : further, that without this the
present measure cannot be rationally expected to
produce that tranquillity, which it is the aim and
object of the framers to bring about ; and lastly,
that the necessity of the declaration, as above given,
formally and solemnly to be made and recorded, is
not evacuated by this pretext, tViat no one intends
to transfer the Church Establishment to the Ro-
mish priesthood, or to divide it with them.

One thing, however, it is of importance that 1
should mention, namely, that the existing state of
the elective franchise* in Ireland, in reference to

• Although, since the text was written, the forty shilling
freeholders no longer possess the elective franchise, yet as
this particular clause of the Act already has been, and may
hereafter be, made a pretext for agitation, the pai-agraph has
been retained, in the belief that its moral uses have not been
altogether superseded by the retraction of this most unhappy
boon.

172 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION

the fatal present of the Union ministry to the
landed interest, that true Deianira shirt of the
Irish Hercules, is altogether excluded from the
theme and purpose of this disquisition. It ought
to be considered by the Legislature, abstracted
from the creed professed by the great majority of
these nominal freeholders. The recent abuse of
the influence resulting from this profession should
be regarded as an accidental aggravation of the
mischief, which displayed rather than constituted
its malignity. It is even desirable that it should
be preserved separate from the Roman Catholic
Question, and in no necessary dependence on the
fate of the Bill now on the eve of presentation to
Parliament. Whether this be carried or be lost,
it will still remain a momentous question, urgently
calling for the decision of the Legislature — whether
the said extension of the elective franchise has
not introduced an uncombining and wholly incon-
gruous ingredient into the representative system,
irreconcilable with the true principle of election,
and virtually disfranchising the class, to whom, on
every ground of justice and of policy, the right un-
questionably belongs ; — under any circumstances
overwhelming the voices of the rest of the commu-
nity ; in ordinary times concentering in the great
land-owners a virtual monopoly of the elective
power ; and in times of factious excitement depri-
ving them even of their natural and rightful influ-
ence.

These few suggestions on the expediency of re-

OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 173

vising the state of the representation in Ireland are,
I am aware, but a digression from the main subject
of the Chapter. But this in fact is already com-
pleted, as far as my purpose is concerned. The
reasons, on which the necessity of the proposed de-
claration is grounded, have been given at large in
the former part of the volume. Here, therefore, I
should end ; but that I anticipate two objections
of sufficient force to deserve a comment and form
the matter of a concluding paragraph.

First, it may be objected that, after abstracting-
the portion of evil which may be plausibly attributed
to the peculiar state of landed property in Ireland,
there are evils directly resulting from the Romanism
of the most numerous class of the inhabitants, be-
sides that of an extra-national priesthood, and
against the political consequences of which the
above declaration provides no security. To this I
reply, that as no bridge ever did or can possess the
demonstrable perfections of the mathematical arch,
so can no existing State adequately correspond to
the idea of a State. In nations and governments
the most happily constituted there will be deformi-
ties and obsti'uctions, peccant humours and irregu-
lar actions, which affect indeed the perfection of
the State, but not its essential forms ; which retard,
but do not necessarily prevent, its progress ; — ca-
sual disorders which, though they aggravate the
growing pains of a nation, may yet, by the vigo-
rous counteraction which they excite, even promote
its growth. Inflammations in the extremities and

174 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION

unseemly boils on the surface must not be con-
founded with exhaustive misgrowths, or the poison
of a false life in the vital organs. Nay, — and this
remark is of special pertinency to the present pur-
pose — even where the former derive a malignant
character from their co-existence with the latter,
yet the wise physician will direct his whole atten-
tion to the constitutional ailments, knowing that
when the source, the fons et fomes, veneni is
sealed up, the accessories will either dry up of
themselves, or, returning to their natural character
rank among the infirmities which flesh is heir to ;
and either admit of a gradual remedy, or where
this is impracticable, or when the medicine would
be worse than the disease, are to be endured as
tolerabiles inepticB, trials of patience, and occasions
of charity. I have here had the State chiefly in
view ; but a member of the Church in England will
to little purpose have availed himself of his free ac-
cess to the Scriptures, will have read at least the
Epistles of St. Paul with a very unthinking spirit,
who does not apply the same maxims to the Church
of Christ ; who has yet to learn that the Church
militant is a floor whereon tvheat and chaff are
mingled together; that even grievous evils and
errors may exist that do not concern the nature or
being of a Church, and that they may even prevail
in the particular Church, to which we belong, with-
out justifying a separation from the same, and with-
out invalidating its claims on our affection as a true
and living part of the Church Universal. And with

OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ACT. 175

regard to such evils we must adopt the advice that
Augustine (a man not apt to offend by any excess of
charity) gave to the complainers of his 6a,y~ut
misericorditer corripiant quod possunt, quod noti
possunt patienter ferant, et cum delectione lu-
geant, donee aut emendet Deus, aut in messe era-
dicet zizania et paleas ventilet.

Secondly, it may be objected that the declaration,
so peremptorily by me required, is altogether un-
necessary ; that no one thinks of alienating the
Church property, directly or indirectly ; that there
is no intention of recognizing the Romish Priests
in law, by entitling them as such to national
maintenance, or in the language of the day by
taking them into the pay of the State : in short, that
the National Church is no more in danger than the
Christian. And is this the opinion, the settled
judgment, of one who has studied the signs of
the times ? Can the person who makes these asser-
tions, have ever read a certain pamphlet by Mr.
Croker ? — or the surveys of the counties, published
under the authority of the now extinct Board of
Agriculture ? Or 'has he heard, or attentively
perused, the successive debates in both Houses
during the late agitation of the Roman Catholic
question ? If he have — why then, relatively to the
objector, and to as many as entertain the same
opinions, my reply is ; — the objection is unansv/er-
able.

GLOSSARY TO THE APPENDED DIALOGUE.

As all my readers are not bound to understand
Greek, and yet, according to my deepest convic-
tions, the truths set forth in the following com-
bat of wit between the man of reason and the man
of the senses have an interest for all, I have been
induced to prefix the explanations of the few
Greek words, and words minted from the Greek:

Cosmos — world. Toutos* cosmos — this world.
Heteros — the other, in the sense of opposition to,
or discrepancy with, some former; as heterodoxy,
in opposition to orthodoxy. Alios — an other sim-
ply and without precluding or superseding the one
before mentioned. Allocosmite — a denizen of an-
other world.

Mystes, from the Greek juvw — one who muses
with closed lips, as meditating on ideas which may
indeed be suggested and awakened, but cannot,
like the images of sense and the conceptions of
the understanding, be adequately expressed by
words.

Where a person mistakes the anomalous mis-
growths of his own individuality for ideas or
truths of universal reason, be may, without impro-
priety, be called a mystic, in the abusive sense of

* Euphonice gratia. — Ed.

GLOSSARY TO THE APPENDED DIALOGUE. 177

the term ; though pseudo- mystic or phantast would
be the more proper designation. Heraditus, PJato,
Bacon, Leibnitz, were mystics in the primaiy sense
of the term; lamblichus and his successors, phan-
tasts.

"ETTEa l^u)ovTa — living words. — The following-
words from Plato may be Englished ; — " the com-
mune and the dialect of Gods with or toward men ;"
and those attributed to Pythagoras ; — " the verily
subsistent numbers or powers, the most prescient
(or provident) principles of the earth and the hea-
vens."

And here, though not falling under the leading
title, Glossary, yet, as tending to the same object
of fore-arming the reader for the following dia-
logue, I transcribe two or three annotations, which
I had pencilled, (for the book was lent to me by a
friend who had himself borrowed it) on the mar-
gins of a volume, recently published, and intituled,
''The Natural History of Enthusiasm." They
will, at least, remind some of my old school-fellows
of the habit for which I was even then noted : and
for others they may serve, as a specimen of the
Marginalia, which, if brought together from the
various books, my own and those of a score others,
would go near to form as bulky a volume as most
of those old folios, through which the larger por-
tion of them are dispersed.*

* See the Author's Literary Remains. — Ed.

178 NOTES ON ISAAC TAYLOr's

History of Enthusiasm.

I.

" Whatever is practically important on religion
or morals, may at all times be advanced and argued
in the simplest terms of colloquial expression."—
p. 21.*

I do not believe this. Be it so, however. But
why? Simply, because, the terms and phrases of
the theological schools have, by their continual
iteration from the pulpit, become colloquial. The
science of one age becomes the common sense of a
succeeding. The author adds — " from the pulpit,
perhaps, no other style should at any time be
heard." Now I can conceive no more direct means
of depriving Christianity of one of its peculiar at-
tributes, that of enriching and enlarging the mind,
while it purifies and in the very act of purifying
the will and affections, than the maxim here pre-
scribed by the historian of enthusiasm. From the
intensity of commercial life in this country, and
from some other less creditable causes, there is
found even among our better educated men a
vagueness in the use of words, which presents, in-
deed, no obstacle to the intercourse of the market,
but is absolutely incompatible with the attainment
or communication of distinct and precise concep-
tions. Hence in every department of exact know-

* 7th edit.

HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM. 179

ledge a peculiar nomenclature is indispensable.
The anatomist, chemist, botanist, mineralogist,
yea, even the common artizan and the rude sailor
discover that " the terms of colloquial expression,"
are too general and too lax to answer their pur-
poses : and on what grounds can the science of
self-knowledge, and of our relations to God and our
own spirits, be presumed to form an exception ?
Every new term expressing a fact, or a diiference,
not precisely and adequately expressed by any
other word in the same language, is a new organ
of thought for the mind that has learned it.

II.

"The region of abstract conceptions, of lofty
reasonings, of magnificent images, has an atmos-
phere too subtle to support the health of true piety.
* * * In accordance with this, the Supreme * *
in his word reveals barely a glimpse of his essential
glories. By some naked affirmations we are, in-
deed, secured against grovelling notions of the
divine nature ; but these hints are incidental, and
so scanty, that every excursive mind goes far be-
yond them in its conception of the infinite attri-
butes." — p. 26.

By "abstract conceptions" the Author means
what I should call ideas, which as such I contra-
distinguish from conceptions, whether abstracted
or generalized. But it is with his meaning, not
with his terms, that I am at present concerned.

1'80 NOTES ON ISAAC TAYLOR's

Now that the personeity of God, the idea of God
as the I AM, is presented more prominently in
Scripture than the (so called) physical attributes,
is most true ; and forms one of the distinctive
characters of its superior worth and value. It was
by dwelling- too exclusively on the infinites that
the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato excepted,
fell into pantheism, as in later times did Spinoza,
" I forbid you," says Plato, " to call God the in-
finite ! If you dare name him at all, say rather
the measure of infinity." Nevertheless, it would
be easy to place in synopsi before the Author such
a series of Scripture passag;es as would incline him
to retract his assertion. The Eternal, the Omni-
present, the Omniscient, the one absolute Good,
the Holy, the Living-, the Creator as well as Former
of the Universe, the Father of Spirits — can the
Author's mind go far beyond these ? Yet these
are all clearly affirmed of the Supreme One in the
Scriptures.

III.
The following pages from p. 26 to p. 36 contain
a succession of eloquent and splendid paragraphs
on the celestial orders, and the expediency or ne-
cessity of their being concealed from us, lest we
should receive such overwhelming conceptions of
the divine greatness as to render us incapable of
devotion and prayer on the Scripture model.
" Were it," says the eloquent writer, " indeed
permitted to man to gaze upwards from step to

HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM. 181

step, and from range to range, of these celestial
hierarchies, to the lowest steps of the Eternal
Throne, what liberty of heart would afterwards be
left him in drawing near to the Father of Spirits ?"
But the substance of these pages will be found
implied in the following reply to them.

NOTE.

More weight with me than all this Pelion upon
Ossa of imaginary hierarchies has the single remark
of Augustine, that there neither are nor can be but
three essential differences of being, namely, the
absolute, the rational finite, and the finite irrational ;
that is, God, man, and brute. Besides, the whole
scheme is un-Scriptural, if not contra-Scriptural.
Pile up wing'ed hierarchies on hierarchies, and
outblaze the Cabalists, and Dionysius the Areopa-
gite ; yet what a gaudy vapor for a healthful mind
is the whole conception (or rather phantasm)
compared with the awful hope holden forth in the
Gospel, to be one with God in and through the
Mediator Christ, even the living, co-eternal Word
and Son of God !

But through the whole of this eloquent decla-
mation I find two errors predominate, and both, it
appears to me, dangerous errors. First, that the
rational and consequently the only true ideas of
the Supreme Being are incompatible with the spirit
of prayer and petitionary pleading taught and ex-
emplified in the Scriptures. Second, that this
being the case, and " supplication with arguments

182 NOTES ON ISAAC TAYLORS

and importunate requests " being irrational and
known by the supplicant to be such, it is 'never-
theless a duty to pray in this fashion. In other
words, it is asserted that the Supreme Being re-
quires of his rational creatures, as the condition of
their offering acceptable worship to him, that they
should wilfully blind themselves to the light, which
he had himself given them, as the contradistin-
guishing character of their humanity, without
which they could not pray to him at all ; and that
drugging their sense of the truth into a temporary
doze, they should make believe that they know no
better ! As if the God of Truth and Father of all
lights resembled an oriental or African despot, whose
courtiers, even those whom he had himself en-
riched and placed in the highest rank, are com-
manded to approach him only in beggars' rags and
with a beggarly whine !

I on the contrary find " the Scripture model of
devotion," the prayers and thanksgiving of the
Psalmist, and in the main of our own Church Li-
turgy, perfectly conformable to the highest and
clearest convictions of my reason. (I use the word
in its most comprehensive sense, as comprising
both the practical and the intellective, not only as
the light but likewise as the life which is the light
of man. John i. 3.) And I do not hesitate to at-
tribute the contrary persuasion principally to the
three following oversights. First (and this is the
queen bee in the hive of error), the identification
of the universal reason with each man's individual
understanding, subjects not only different but di-

HISTORY OF ENTHUSIASM. 183

verse, not only a/Zogeneous but heterogeneous.
Second, the substitution of the idea of the infinite
for that of the absolute. Third and lastly, the
habit of using the former as a sort of superlative
synonyme of the vast or indefinitely great. Now
the practical difference between my scheme and
that of the Essayist, for whose talents and inten-
tions I feel sincere respect, may perhaps be stated
thus.

The Essayist would bring down his understand-
ing to his religion : I would raise up my under-
standing to my reason, and find my religion in the
focus resulting from their convergence. We both
alike use the same penitential, deprecative and
petitionary prayers ; I in the full assurance of their
congruity with my reason, he in a factitious oblivion
of their being the contrary.

The name of the author * of the Natural History
of Enthusiasm is unknown to me and unconjec-
tured. It is evidently the work of a mind at once
observant and meditative. And should these notes
meet the Author's eye, let him be assured that I
willingly give to his genius that respect which his
intentions without it would secure for him in the
breast of every good man. But in the present
state of things, infidelity having fallen into disre-
pute even on the score of intellect, yet the obliga-
tion to shew a reason for our faith having become
more generally recognized, as reading and the taste
for serious conversation have increased, there is a

* Mr. Isaac Taylor. — Ed.

184 DIALOGUE BETWEEN

large class of my countrymen disposed to receive,
witli especial favour, any opinions that will enable
them to make a compromise between their new
knowledge and their old belief. And with these
men the Author's evident abilities will probably
render the work a high authority. Now it is the
very purpose of my life to impress the contrary
sentiments. Hence these notes.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN DEMOSIUS
AND MYSTES.*

In emptying a drawer of rose-leaf bags, old (but,-
too many of them) unopened letters, and paper
scraps, or brain fritters, I had my attention di-
rected to a sere and ragged half-sheet by a gust of
wind, which had separated it from its companions,
and whisked it out of the window into the garden.
-■ — Not that I went after it. I have too much res-
pect for the numerous tribe, to which it belonged,
to lay any restraint on their movements, or to put
the Vagrant Act in force against them. But it so
chanced that some after-breeze had stuck it on a
standard rose-tree, and there I found it, as I was
pacing my evening walk alongside the lower ivy-
wall, the bristled runners from which threaten to

DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 185

entrap the top branch of the cherry tree in our
neighbour's kitchen garden. I had been medi-
tating a letter to you, and as I ran my eye over
this fl^-away tag-rag and bob-tail, and bethought
me that it was a by-blow of my own, I felt a sort
of fatherly remorse, and yearning towards it, and

exclaimed, " If I had a frank for , this should

help to make up the ounce." It was far too de-
crepit to travel per se — 'besides that the seal would
have looked like a single pin on a beggar's coat
of tatters— and yet one does not like to be stopped
in a kind feeling, which my conscience interpreted
as a sort of promise to the said scrap, and there-
fore, (frank or no frank), I will transcribe it. A
dog's leaf at the top was worn off, which must
have contained I presume, the syllable Ve —

" Rily," quoth Demosius of

Toutoscosmos, Gentleman, to Mystes the AUocos-
mite, " thou seemest to me like an out-of-door
patient of St. Luke's wandering about in the rain
without cap, hat, or bonnet, poring on the elevation
of a palace, not the house that Jack built, but the
house that is to be built for Jack, in the suburbs of
the city, which his cousin-german, the lynx-eyed
Dr. Gruithuisen has lately discovered in the moon.
But through a foolish kindness for that face of
thine, which whilome belonged to an old school-
fellow of the same name with thee, I would get
thee shipped off under the Alien Act, as a non ens,
or pre-existent of the other world to come." —
To whom Mystes retorted ; — " Verily, friend De-

186 DIALOGUE BETWEEN

mosius, thou art too fantastic for a genuine Tou-
toscosmos man ; and it needs only a fit of dyspepsy,
or a cross in love to make a Heterocosmite of thee ;
this same Heteroscosmos being in fact the endless
shadow which the Toutoscosmos casts at sun-set.
But not to alarm or affront thee, as if I insinuated
that thou wert in danger of becoming an Allocos-
mite, I let the whole of thy courteous address to
me pass without comment or objection, save only
the two concluding monosyllables and the preposi-
tion (pre) which anticipates them. The world in
which I exist is another world indeed, but not to
come. It is as present as (if that be at all) the
magnetic planet, of which, according to the as-
tronomer H alley, the visible globe which we in-
verminate is the case or travelling- trunk ; — a neat
little world where light still exists in statu perfuso,
as on the third day of the creation, before it was
polarized into outward and inward, that is, while
light and life were one and the same, neither ex-
isting formally, yet both eminenter : and when
herb, flower, and forest rose as a vision, inproprio
lucido, the ancestor and unseen yesterday of the
sun and moon. Now, whether there really is such
an Elysian mundus mundulus incased in the ma-
crocosm, or great world, below the adamantine
vault that supports the mother waters, which sup-
port the coating crust of that mundus immundus
on which we and others less scantily furnished from
nature's storehouse crawl, delve, and nestle — (or,
shall I say the Lyceum, where walk o'i tovtov Koajiov

DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 187

(pikono^oi) — Dr. Halley may, perhaps, by this time
have ascertained : and to him and the philosophic
ghosts, his compeers, I leave it. But that another
world is inshrined in the microcosm I not only be-
lieve, but at certain depths of my being, during the
more solemn Sabbaths of the spirit, I have holden
commune therewith, in the power of that faith,
which is the substance of the things hoped for, the
living stem that will itself expand into the flower,
which it now foreshews. How should it not be so,
even on grounds of natural reason, and the analogy
of inferior life ? Is not nature prophetic up the
whole vast pyramid of organic being? And in which
of her numberless predictions has nature been con-
victed of a lie ? Is not every organ announced by
a previous instinct or act ? The larva of the stag-
beetle lies in its chrysalis like an infant in the
coffin of an adult, having left an empty space half
the length it occupies ; and this space is the exact
length of the horn which distinguishes the perfect
animal, but which, when it constructed its tem-
porary sarcophagus, was not yet in existence. Do
not the eyes, ears, lungs of the unborn babe give
notice and furnish proof of a transuterine, visible,
audible, atmospheric world ? We have eyes, ears,
touch, taste, smell ; and have we not an answering
world of shapes, colours, sounds, and sapid and
odorous bodies ? But likewise — (alas ! for the man
for whom the one has not the same evidence of
fact as the other) — the Creator has given us spi-
ritual senses, and sense-organs — ideas I mean —

188 DIALOGUE BETWEEN

the idea of the good, the idea of the beautiful,
ideas of eternity, immortality, freedom, and of that
which contemplated relatively to will is holiness,
in relation to life is bliss. And must not these too
infer the existence of a world correspondent to
them ? Tltere is a light, said the Hebrew sage,
compared with which the glory of the sun is but
a cloudy veil : and is it an ignus fatuus given to
mock us and lead us astray ? A nd from a yet
higher authority we know, that it is a light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
And are there no objects to reflect it ? Or must
we seek its analogon in the light of the glow-
worm, that simply serves to distinguish one reptile
from all the rest, and lighting, inch by inch, its
mazy path through weeds and grass, leaves all else
before, and behind, and around it in darkness?
No ! Another and answerable world there is ; and
if any man discern it not, let him not, whether
sincerely or in contemptuous irony, pretend a de-
fect of faculty as the cause. The sense, the light,
and the conformed objects are all there and for all
men. The difference between man and man in
relation thereto results from no difference in their
several gifts and powers of intellect, but in the
will. As certainly as the individual is a man, so
certainly should this other world be present to him :
yea, it is his proper home. But he is an absentee
and chooses to live abroad. His freedom and
whatever else he possesses which the dog and the
ape do not possess, yea, the whole revenue of his

DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 189

humanity, is derived from this ; — but with the
Irish land-owner in the theatres, gaming-houses,
and maitresseries of Paris, so with him. He is a
voluntary absentee. I repeat it again and again, — ■
the cause is altogether in the will : and the defect
of intellectual power, and " the having no turn or
taste for subjects of this sort," are effects and con-
sequences of the alienation of the will, that is, of
the man himself. There may be a defect, but
there was not a deficiency, of the intellect. I
appeal to facts for the proof. Take the science of
political economy. No two professors understand
each other ; — and often have I been present where
the subject has been discussed in a room full of
merchants and manufacturers, sensible and well-
informed men : and the conversation has ended in
a confession that the matter was beyond their com-
prehension. And yet the science professes to give
light on rents, taxes, income, capital, the principles
of trade, commerce, agriculture, on wealth, and
the ways of acquiring and increasing it, in short
on all that most passionately excites and interests
the Toutoscosmos men. But it was avowed that
to arrive at any understanding of these mattei-s
requires a mind gigantic in its comprehension, and
microscopic in its accuracy of detail. Now com-
pare this with the effect produced on promiscuous
crowds by a Whitfield, or a Wesley ; — or rather
compare with it the shaking of every leaf of the
vast forest to the first blast of Luther's trumpet.
Was it only of the world to come that Luther and

190 DIALOGUE BETWEEN

his compeers preached ? Turn to Luther's Table
Talk, and see if the larger part be not of that other
world which now is, and without the being and
working of which the world to come would be
either as unintelligible as Abracadabra, or a mere
reflection and elongation of the world of sense —
Jack Robinson between two looking-glasses, with
a series of Jack Robinsons in scecula sceculorum."

" Well, but what is this new and yet other world ?
The brain of a man that is out of his senses ? A
world fraught with castles in the air, well worthy
the attention of any gentleman inclined to idealize
a large property ?"

" The sneer on that lip, and the arch shine of
that eye, friend Demosius, would almost justify
me, though I should answer that question by re-
torting it in a parody. What, quoth the owlet,
peeping out of his ivy-bush at noon, with his blue
fringed eye-curtains dropped, what is this light
which is said to exist together with this warmth
we feel, and yet is something else ? But I read
likewise in that same face, when thou wast be-
ginning to prepare that question, a sort of mis-
giving from within, as if thou wert more positive
than sure that the reply, with which you would
accommodate me, is as wise as it is witty. There-
fore, though I cannot answer your question, I will
give you a hint how you may answer it for yourself.
Learn the art and acquire the habit of contem-
plating things abstractedly from their relations.

DEMOSIUS ANB MYSTES. 191

I will explain myself by an instance. Suppose a
body floating at a certain height in the air, and
receiving the light so equally on all sides as not
to occasion the eye to conjecture any solid con-
tents. And now let six or seven persons see it at
different distances and from different points of view.
For A it will be a square ; for B a triangle ; for
C two right-angled triangles attached to each
other ; for D two unequal triangles ; for E it will
be a triangle with a trapezium hung on to it ; for
F it will be a square with a cross in it ^ ; for
G it will be an oblong quadrangle with three tri-
angles in it f\x^ ; and for H three unequal tri-
angles.

Now it is evident that not one of all these is the
figure itself, (which in this instance is a four-sided
pyramid), but the contingent relations of the figure.
Now transfer this from geometry to the subjects
of the real (that is, not merely formal or abstract)
sciences, — to substances and bodies, the materia
subjecta of the chemist, physiologist and naturalist,
and you will gradually (that is, if you choose and
sincerely will it) acquire the power and the dis-
position of contemplating your own imaginations,
wants, appetites, passions, and opinions, on the
same principles, and distinguish that which alone
is and abides from the accidental and imperma-
nent relations arising out of its co-existence with
other things or beings.

My second rule or maxim requires its prolego-
mena. In the several classes and orders that mark

192 DIALOGUE BETWEEN

the scale of organic nature, from the plant to the
highest order of animals, each higher implies a
lower as the condition of its actual existence ;—
and the same position holds good equally of the
vital and organic powers. Thus, without the first
power, that of growth, or what Bichat and others
name the vegetive life or productivity, the second
power, that of totality and locomotion (commonly
but most infelicitously called irritability) could not
exist, that is, manifest its being. Productivity
is the necessary antecedent of irritability, and in
like manner irritability of sensibility. But it is
no less true that in the idea of each power the
lower derives its intelligibility from the higher;
and the highest must be presumed to inhere latently
or potentially in the lowest, or this latter will be
wholly unintelligible, inconceivable ; — you can
have no conception of it. Thus in sensibility we
see a power that in every instant goes out of itself,
and in the same instant retracts and falls back on
itself: which the great fountains of pure Mafhesis,
the Pythagorean and Platonic geometricians, il-
lustrated in the production or self-evolution of the
point into the circle. Imagine the going-forth
and the retraction as two successive acts, the re-
sult would be an infinity of angles, a growth of
zig-zag. In order to the imaginability of a cir-
cular line, the extroitive and the retroitive must
co-exist in one and the same act and moment, the
curve line being the product. Now what is ideally
true in the generations or productive acts of the

DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 193

intuitive faculty (of the pure sense, I mean, or
inward vision — the reine Anschauung of the Ger-
man philosophers) must be assumed as truth of
fact in all living growth, or wherein would the
g-rowth of a plant differ from that of a crystal ?
The latter is formed wholly by apposition ab extra :
in the former the movement ab extra is in order
of thought consequent on, and yet coinstantaneous
with, the movement ab intra. Thus, the specific
character of sensibility, the highest of the three
powers, is found to be the general character of
life, and supplies the only way of conceiving, the
only insight into the possibility of, the first and
lowest power. And yet, even thus, growth taken
as separate from, and exclusive of, sensibility
would be unintelligible, nay, contradictory. For
it would be an act of the life, or productive form
of the plant, having the life itself as its source,
(since it is a going forth from the life), and like-
wise having the life itself as its object, for in the
same instant it is retracted : and yet the product
(that is, the plant) exists not for itself, by the hy-
pothesis that has excluded sensibility. For all
sensibility is a self-finding ; whence the German
word for sensation or feeling is E?npjindung , that
is, an inward finding. Therefore sensibility cannot
be excluded : and as it does not exist actuall)'', it
must be involved potentially. Life does not yet
manifest itself in its highest dignity, as a self-
finding ; but in an evident tendency thereto, or a
self-seeking ; — and this has two epochs or intensi-
o

194 DIALOGUE BETWEEN

ties. Potential sensibility in its first epoch, or
lowest intensity, appears as growth : in its second
epoch, it shews itself as irritability or vital in-
stinct. In both, however, the sensibility must
have pre-existed, or rather pre-inhered, though
as latent : or how could the irritability have been
evolved out of the growth, (as in the stamina of
the plant during- the act of impregnating the ger-
men) : — or the sensibility out of the irritability,
— as in the first appearance of nerves and nervous
bulbs in the lower orders of the insect realm ? But,
indeed, evolution as contradistinguished from ap-
position, or superinduction ab aliunde, is implied
in the conception of life : and is that which es-
sentially differences a living fibre from a thread of
asbestos, the floscule or any other of the moving
fairy shapes of animalcular life from the frost-
plumes on a window pane.

Again : what has been said of the lowest power
of life relatively to its highest power — growth to
sensibility, the plant to the animal — applies equally
to life itself relatively to mind. Without the latter
the former would be unintelligible, and the idea
would contradict itself. If there had been no
self-retaining power, a self-finding would be a per-
petual self-losing. ' Divide a second into a thou-
sand, or if you please, a million of parts, yet if
there be an absolute chasm separating one moment
ofself-findingfrom another, the chasm of a millionth
of a second would be equal to all time. A being
that existed for itself only in moments, each in-
finitely small and yet absolutely divided from the

DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 195

preceding and following, would not exist for itself
at all. And if all beings were the same, or yet
lower, it could not be said to exist in any sense,
any more than light would exist as light, if thei-e
were no eyes or visual power : and the whole con-
ception would break up into contradictory posi-
tions — an intestine conflict more destructive than
even that between the two cats, where one tail
alone is said to have survived the battle. The
conflicting factors of our conception would eat each
other up, tails and all. Ergo : the mind, as a
self-retaining power, is not less indispensable to
the intelligibility of life as a self-finding- power,
than a self-finding power, that is, sensibility, to a
self-seeking power, that is, growth. Again : a
self-retaining mind — that is, memory, (which is
the primary sense of mind, and the common people
in several of our provinces still use the word in this
sense) — a self-retaining power supposes a self-
containing power, a self-conscious being. And
this is the definition of mind in its proper and dis-
tinctive sense, a subject that is its own object, —
or where A contemplant is one and the same sub-
ject with A contemplated. Lastly, — (that I may
complete the ascent of powers for my own satis-
faction, and not as expecting, or in the present
habit of your thoughts even wishing you to follow
me to a height, dizzy for the strongest spirit, it
being the apex of all human, perhaps of angelic,
knowledge to know that it must be : since absolute
ultimates can only be seen by a light thrown back-
ward from the penultimate ; John i. 18.) — lastly,

196 DIALOGUE BETWEEN

1 say, the self- containing- power supposes a self-
causing power ; causa sui, ahia vTrepovarioQ. Here
alone we find a problem which in its very state-
ment contains its own solution — the one self-solving-
power, beyond which no question is possible. Yet
short of this we dare not rest ; for even O ^N, the
Supreme Being, if contemplated abstractly from
the Absolute Will, whose essence it is to be causa-
tive of all being, would sink into a Spinozistic
deity. That this is not evident to us arises from
the false notion of reason as a quality, property,
or faculty of the real : whereas reason is the su-
preme reality, the only true being in all things
visible and invisible ; the pleroma, in whom alone
God loveth the world ! Even in man will is deeper
than mind : for mind does not cease to be mind by
having an antecedent ; but will is either the first
(to ciEi irpowpwTov, TV nunquam positum, semper
supponendum), or it is not will at all.

And now for the practical rules which I pro-
mised, or the means by which you may educate in
yourself that state of mind which is most favourable
to a true knowledge of both the worlds that now
are, and to a right faith in the world to come.

I. Remember that whatever is, lives. A thing
absolutely lifeless is inconceivable, except as a
thought, image, or fancy, in some other being,

II. In every living form, the conditions of its
existence are to be sought for in that which is
below it; the grounds of its intelligibility in that
which is above it.

III. Accustom your mind to distinguish the

DEMOSIUS AND MYSTES. 197

relations of things from the things themselves.
Think often of the latter as independent of the
former, in order that you may never think of the
former apart from the latter, that is, mistake mere
relations for true and enduring realities : and with
regard to these seek the solution of each in some
higher reality. The contrary process leads de-
monstrably to atheism, and though you may not
get quite so far, it is not well to be seen travelling
on the road with your face towards it.

I might add a fourth rule : Learn to distinguish
permanent from accidental relations. But I am
willing that you should for a time take permanent
relations as real things — confident that you will
soon feel the necessity of reducing what you now
call things into relations, which immediately arising
out of a somewhat else may properly be contem-
plated as the products of that somewhat else, and
as the means by which its existence is made known
to you. But known as what ? not as a product ;
for it is the somewhat else, to which the product
stands in the same relation as the words which
you are now hearing bear to my living soul. But
if not as products, then as productive powers :
and the result will be that what you have hitherto
called things will be regarded as only more or less
permanent relations of things, having their deriva
tive reality greater or less in proportion as they
are regular or accidental relations ; determined by
the pre-established iitness of the true thing to the
organ and faculty of the percipient, or resulting
from some defect or anomaly in the lattei'.

198 DIALOGUE, ETC.

With these convictions matured into a habit of
mind, the man no longer seeks, or believes himself
to find, true reality except in the powers of nature ;
which living and actuating powers are made known
to him, and their kinds determined, and their forces
measured, by their proper products. In other
words, he thinks of the products in reference to
the productive powers, role ovtmq virap-^^ovmv
apLQjxdlc r) hvva}iE<Ti, wq rale Trpo[j,adE<TTaTaiQ ctp-^al.Q
rov TravTOQ ovpavov ical yfjc, and thus gives to the
former (to the products, I mean) a true reality, a
life, a beauty, and a physiognomic expression. For
him they are the eTrea ^wovtu, ofxiXia kai r] ^LoXeKroc
dewv irpoQ avQpwTvovQ. The Allocosmite, therefore,
(though he does not bark at the image in the glass,
because he knows what it is), possesses the same
world with the Toutocosmites ; and has, besides,
in present possession another and better world, to
which he can transport himself by a swifter vehicle
than Fortunatus's wishing cap.

Finally, what is reason ? You have often asked
me ; and this is my answer ;

Whene'er the mist, that stands 'twixt God and thee
Defecates to a pure transparency, •

That intercepts no light and adds no stain —
There reason is, and there begins her reign I

But, alas !

tu stesso tifai grosso

Colfalso immaginar, si che non vedi
Cib che vedresti se I'avessi scosso.

Dante, Par. Canto I. 88.

THE END.

THE

STATESMAN'S MANUAL;

or, the bible the best guide to political skill and

foresight: a lay sermon, addressed to

the higher classes of society,

WITH AN APPENDIX,

CONTAINING COMMKNTS AND ESSAYS CONNECTED WITH THE
STUDY OF THE INSPIRED WHITINGS.

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
Sccontr ©Uitton :

WITH THE author's LAST CORRECTIONS AND NOTES,

BY

HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A.

Ad isthtEC qucEso vos, qualiacunque prima videantur aspectu,
attendite, iit qui vobis forsan insanire videar, saltern quihus
insaniam rationibus cognoscatis. — Giordano Bruno.

A LAY SETIMON,

For he established a testimony in Jacob and ap-
pointed a law in Israel ; which he commanded
our fathers, that they should make them
known to their children : that the generation
to come might know them, even the children
which should be born ; who should arise and
declare them to their children : that they
might set their hope in Ood, and not forget
the works of God. — Psalm Ixxviii. 5, 6, 7,

If our whole knowledge and information concern-
ing' the Bible had been confined to the one fact of
its immediate derivation from God, we should still
presume that it contained rules and assistances
for all conditions of men under all circumstances ;
and therefore for communities no less than for in-
dividuals. The contents of every work must cor-
respond to the character and designs of the work-
master; and the inference in the present case is
too obvious to be overlooked, too plain to be
resisted. It requires, indeed, all the might of

204 THE BIBLE

superstition to conceal from a man of common
understanding the further truth, that the interment
of such a treasure in a dead language must needs
be contrary to the intentions of the gracious Donor.
Apostasy itself dared not question the premisses :
and that the practical consequence did not follow,
is conceivable only under a complete system of
delusion, which from the cradle to the death-bed
ceases not to over-awe the will by obscure fears,
while it preoccupies the senses by vivid imagery
and ritual pantomime. But to such a scheme all
forms of sophistry are native. The very excel-
lence of the Giver has been made a reason for
withholding the gift ; nay the transcendant value
of the gift itself assigned as the motive of its de-
tention. We may be shocked at the presumption,
but need not be surprised at the fact, that a jealous
priesthood should have ventured to represent the
applicability of the Bible to all the wants and oc-
casions of men as a wax-like pliancy to all their
fancies and prepossessions. Faithful guardians of
Holy Writ, they are constrained to make it useless
in order to guard it from profanation ; and those,
whom they have most defrauded, are the readiest
to justify the fraud. For imposture, organized into
a comprehensive and self-consistent whole, forms
a world of its own, in which inversion becomes the
order of nature.

Let it not be forgotten, however, (and I recom-
mend the fact to the especial attention of those
among ourselves, who are disposed to rest con-

OPEN TO ALL. 205

tented with an implicit faith and passive acqui-
escence) that the Church of Rome never ceased
to avow the profoundest reverence for the Scrip-
tures themselves, and what it forbids its vassals
to ascertain, it not only permits, but commands
them to take for granted.

Whether, and to what extent, this suspension
of the rational functions, this spiritual slumber,
will be imputed as a sin to the souls who are still
vmder chains of Papal darkness, we are neither
enabled or authorized to determine. It is enough
for us to know that the land, in which we abide,
has like another Goshen been severed from the
plague, and that we have light in our dwellings.
The road of salvation for us is a hig-h road, and the
wayfarers, though simple, need not err therein.
The Gospel lies open in the market-place and on
every window seat, so that (virtually at least) the
deaf may hear the words of the hook. It is
preached at every turning, so that the blind may
see them. (^Isai. xxix. 18.) The circumstances
then being so different, if the result should prove
similar, we may be quite certain that we shall not
be holden guiltless. The ignorance which may
be the excuse of others will be our crime. Our
birth and denizenship in an enlightened and Pro-
testant land will, with all our rights and fran-
chises to boot, be brought in judgment against us,
and stand first in the fearful list of blessings
abused. The glories of our country will form the
blazonry of our own impeachment, and the very

206 EXHORTATION

name of Englishmen, of which we are almost all
of us too proud, and for which scarcely any of us
are enough thankful, will be annexed to that of
Christians only to light up our shame and to
aggravate our condemnation.

I repeat, therefore, that the habitual unreflect-
ingness, which in certain countries may be sus-
ceptible of more or less palliation in most instances,
can in this country be deemed blameless in none.
The humblest and least educated of our country-
men must have wilfully neglected the inestimable
privileges secured to all alike, if he has not him-
self found, if he has not from his own personal
experience discovered, the sufficiency of the Scrip-
tures* in all knowledge requisite for a right
performance of his duty as a man and a Christian.
Of the labouring classes, who in all countries foi'm
the great majority of the inhabitants, more than
this is not demanded, more than this is not per-
haps generally desirable. They are not sought, for
in public counsel, nor need they be found where
politic sentences are spoken. It is enough if every
one is wise in the working of his own craft: so
best ivill they maintain the state of the world.

But you, my friends, to whom the following
pages are more particularly addiessed, as to men
moving in the higher class of society, — you will,
I hope, have availed yourselves of the ampler
means entrusted to you by God's providence, for

* See App. (A.) — Erf.

TO THE STUDY OF IT. 207

a more extensive study and a wider use of his
revealed will and word. From you we have a
right to expect a sober and meditative accommo-
dation to your own times and country of those
important truths declared in the inspired writings
for a thousand generations, and of the awful
examples, belonging to all ages, by which those
truths are at once illustrated and confirmed. Would
you feel conscious that you had shewn yourselves
unequal to your station in society, — would you
stand degraded in your own eyes, — if you betrayed
an utter Avant of information respecting the acts
of human sovereigns and legislators ? And should
you not much rather be both ashamed and afraid
to know yourselves inconversant with the acts and
constitutions of God, whose law executeth itself,
and whose Word is the foundation, the power, and
the life of the universe ? Do you hold it a requi-
site of your rank to shew yourselves inquisitive
concerning the expectations and plans of states-
men and state-councillors ? Do you excuse it as
natural curiosity, that you lend a listening ear to
the guesses of state-gazers, to the dark hints and
open revilings of our self-inspired state-fortune-
tellers, the wizards, that peep and mutter and
forecast, alarmists by trade, and malcontents for
their bread ? And should you not feel a deeper
interest in predictions which are permanent pro-
phecies, because they are at the same time eternal
truths ? Predictions which in containing the
grounds of fulfilment involve the principles of fore-

208 THE BIBLE.

sight, and teach the science of the future in its per-
petual elements ?

But I will struggle to believe that of those
whom I now suppose myself addressing there are
few who have not so employed their greater leisure
and superior advantages as to render these remarks,
if not wholly superfluous, yet personally inappli-
cable. In common with your worldly inferiors,
you will indeed have directed your main attention
to the promises and the information conveyed in
the records of the Evangelists and Apostles ; —
promises, that need only a lively trust in them,
on our own part, to be the means as well as the
pledges of our eternal welfare — information that
opens out to our knowledge a kingdom that is not
of this world, thrones that cannot be shaken, and
sceptres that can neither be broken nor transferred.
Yet not the less on this account will you have
looked back with a proportionate interest on the
temporal destinies of men and nations, stored up
for our instruction in the archives of the Old
Testament : not the less will you delight to retrace
the paths by which Providence has led the king-
doms of this world through the valley of mortal
life ; — paths engraved with the footmarks of cap-
tains sent forth from the God of armies ; — nations
in whose guidance or chastisement the arm of
Omnipotence itself was made bare.

Recent occurrences have given additional
strength and fresh force to our sage poet's eulogy
on the Jewish Prophets ; —

A MANUAL FOR STATESMEN. 209

As men divinely taught and better teaching

The solid rules of civil government

In their majestic unaffected style,

Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.

In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt

What makes a nation happy and keeps it so.

What ruins kingdoms and lays cities flat.

Par. Reg. iv. 354.

If there be any antidote to that restless craving
for the wonders of the day, which in conjunction
with the appetite for pubhcity is spreading like an
efflorescence on the surface of our national cha-
racter ; if there exist means for deriving resigna-
tion from general discontent, means of building-
np with the very materials of political gloom that
stedfast frame of hope which affords the only cer-
tain shelter from the throng of self- realizing alarms,
at the same time that it is the natural home and
workshop of all the active virtues ; that antidote
and these means must be sought for in the colla-
tion of the present with the past, in the habit of
thoughtfully assimilating the events of our own
age to those of the time before us. If this be a
moral advantage derivable from history in general,
rendering its study therefore a moral duty for such
as possess the opportunities of books, leisure and
education, it would be inconsistent even with the
name of believers not to recur with pre-eminent
interest to events and revolutions, the records of
which are as much distinguished from all other
history by their especial claims to divine authority,
p

210 THE BIBLE

as the facts themselves were from all other facts
by especial manifestation of divine interference.
Whatsoever tilings, saith Saint Paul, {Rom.XY. 4.)
were written aforetime , were written foi' our
learning ; that we through patience and comfort
of the Scriptures might have hope.

In the infancy of the world signs and wonders
were requisite in order to startle and break down
that superstition, — idolatrous in itself and the
source of all other idolatry, — which tempts the
natural man to seek the true cause and origin of
public calamities in outward circumstances, per-
sons and incidents : in agents therefore that were
themselves but surges of the same tide, passive
conductors of the one invisible influence, under
which the total host of billows, in the whole line
of successive impulse, swell and roll shoreward ;
there finally, each in its turn, to strike, roar and
be dissipated.

But with each miracle worked there was a truth
revealed, which thenceforward was to act as its
substitute. And if we think the Bible less appli-
cable to us on account of the miracles, we degrade
ourselves into mere slaves of sense and fancy,
which are indeed the appointed medium between
earth and heaven, but for that very cause stand in
a desirable relation to spiritual truth then only,
when, as a mere and passive medium, they yield
a free passage to its light. It was only to over-
throw the usurpation exercised in and through the
senses, that the senses were miraculously appealed

A MANUAL FOR STATESMEN. 211

to; for reason and religion are their own evidence.*
The natural sun is in this respect a symbol of the
spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while his
glories are still under veil, he calls up the breeze
to chase away the usurping vapours of the night-
season, and thus converts the air itself into the
minister of its own purification : not surely in
proof or elucidation of the light from heaten, but
to prevent its interception.

Wherever, therefore, similar circumstances co-
exist with the same moral causes, the principles
revealed, and the examples recorded, in the inspired
writings render miracles superfluous : and if we
neglect to apply truths in expectation of wonders,
or under pretext of the cessation of the latter, we
tempt God, and merit the same reply which our
Lord gave to the Pharisees on a like occasion.
A ivicked and an adulterous generation seeketh
after a sign, and there shall no sign be given to
it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas, (Matt. xvi.
4 :) that is, a threatening call to repentance. f
Equally applicable and prophetic will the following-
verses be. The queen of the South shall rise up
in the Judgment with the men of this generation
and condemyi them : for she came from the ut-
most parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of
Solomon ; and, beliold, a greater than Solomon is
here. — The men of Nineveh shall rise in judg-
ment with this generation and shall condemn it ;

* See App. CB).— Ed. t See App. (C.)— Erf.

^12 HISTORY RIGHTLY STUDIED

for they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and^
behold, a greater than Jonas is here. (Luke xi.
31, 32.) For have we not divine assurance that
Christ is with his Church even to the end of the
world ? And what could the queen of the South,
or the men of Nineveh have beholden, that could
enter into competition with the eA'^ents of our own
times, in importance, in splendour, or even in
strangeness and significancy ?

The true origin of human events is so little
susceptible of that kind of evidence which can
compel our belief; so many are the disturbing
forces which in every cycle of changes modify
the motion given by the first projection ; and
every age has, or imagines it has, its own circum-
stances which reader past experience no longer
applicable to the present case ; that there will
never be wanting answers, and explanations, and
specious flatteries of hope to persuade a people
and its government that the history of the past is
inapplicable to their case. And no wonder, if we
read history for the facts instead of reading it for
the sake of the general principles, which are to
the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves :
and no wonder, if history so read should find a
dangerous rival in novels, nay, if the latter should
be preferred to the former on the score even of
probability. I well remember, that when the
examples of former Jacobins, as Julius Csesar,
Cromwell, and the like, were adduced in France
and England at the commencement of the French

PROPHETIC. 213

Consulate, it was ridiculed as pedantry and pedant's
ignorance to fear a repetition of usurpation and
military despotism at the close of the enlightened
eighteenth century ! Even so, in the very dawn
of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions
of Corey ra, the proscriptions of the Reformers,
Marius, Caesar, and the like, and the direful effects
of the levelling tenets in the Peasants' War in
Germany, were urged on the Convention, and its
vindicators ; I well remember that the Magi of the
day, the true citizens of the world, the plusquam-
perfecti of patriotism, gave us set proofs that
similar results were impossible, and that it was
an insult to so philosophical an age, to so enlight-
ened a nation, to dare direct the public eye towards
them as to lights of warning ! Alas ! like lights
in the stern of a vessel they illumined the path
only that had been past over !

The politic Florentine* has observed, that there
are brains of three races. The one understands
of itself; the other understands as much as is
shown it by others ; the third neither understands
of itself, nor what is shewn it by others. In our
times there are more perhaps who belong to the
third class from vanity and acquired frivolity of
mind, than from natural incapacity. It is no un-
common weakness with those who are honoured

* Sono di tre generazioni cervelli : I'uno intende per se ;
Valtro intende quanta da altri gii t mostro ; e il terzo non
intende nt per se stesso ne per dimostrazione di altri,

II Principe, c. xxii.

i

214 SPECULATIVE PRINCIPLES

with the acquaintance of the great, to attribute
national events to particular persons, particular
measures, to the errors of one man, to the intrigues
of another, to any possible spark of a particular
occasion, rather than to the true proximate cause,
(and which alone deserves the name of a cause)
the predominant state of public opinion. And still
less are they inclined to refer the latter to the
ascendancy of speculative principles, and the
scheme or mode of thinking in vogue. I have
known men, who with significant nods and the
pitying contempt of smiles have denied all influ-
ence to the corruptions of moral and political
philosophy, and with much solemnity have pro-
ceeded to solve the riddle of the French Revolution
by Anecdotes ! Yet it would not be difficult, by
an unbroken chain of historic facts, to demonstrate
that the most important changes in the commercial
relations of the world had their origin in the closets
or lonely walks of uninterested theorists ; — that
the mighty epochs of commerce, that have changed
the face of empires ; nay, the most important of
those discoveries and improvements in the me-
chanic arts, which have numerically increased our
population beyond what the wisest statesmen of
Elizabeth's reign deemed possible, and again
doubled this population virtually; the most im-
portant, I say, of those inventions that in their
results

best uphold

War by her two main nerves, iron and gold —

CAUSES OF REVOLUTIONS IN SOCIETY. 215

had their origin not in the cabinets of statesmen,
or in the practical insight of men of business, but
in the visions of recluse genius. To the immense
majority of men, even in civilized countries, spe-
culative philosophy has ever been, and must ever
remain, a terra incognita. Yet it is not the less
true, that all the epoch-forming revolutions of the
Christian world, the revolutions of religion and
with them the civil, social, and domestic habits of
the nations concerned, have coincided with the
rise and fall of metaphysical systems.* So few
are the minds that really govern the machine of
society, and so incomparably more numerous and
more important are the indirect consequences of
things than their foreseen and direct effects.

It is with nations as with individuals. In tran-
quil moods and peaceable times we are quite prac-
tical. Facts only and cool common sense are then
in fashion. But let the winds of passion swell,
and straitway men begin to generalize ; to connect
by remotest analogies ; to express the most uni-
versal positions of reason in the most glowing
figures of fancy ; in short, to feel particular truths
and mere facts, as poor, cold, narrow, and incom-
mensurate wath their feelings.

With his wonted fidelity to nature, our own great
poet has placed the greater number of his pro-

* This thought might also be applied to, and exemplified
by, the successive epochs in the history of the Fine Arts
from the tenth century. 1827.

216 AFFINITY OF ABSTRACT NOTIONS

foundest maxims and general truths, both political
and moral, not in the mouths of men at ease, but
of men under the influence of passion, when the
mighty thoughts overmaster and become the ty-
rants of the mind that has brought them forth.
In his Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, principles
of deepest insight and widest interest fly off like
sparks from the glowing iron under the loud forge-
hammer.*

* It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a
fact that none, but the unread in history, wiU deny, that in
periods of popular tumult and innovation the more abstract
a notion is, the more readily has it been found to combine,
the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings of a
people and with all their immediate impulses to action. At
the commencement of the French Revolution, in the re-
motest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and
enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the phy-
siocratic politicians and economists. The public roads were
crowded with armed enthusiasts disputing on the inaUenable
sovereignty of the people, the imprescriptible laws of the
pure reason, and the universal constitution, which, as rising
out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike
were under the obligation of adopting. Turn over the fu-
gitive writings, that are still extant, of the age of Luther :
peruse tlie pamphlets and loose sheets that came out in
flights during the reign of Charles I. and the Republic ; and
you will find in these one continued comment on the apho-
rism of Lord Bacon (a man assuredly sufficiently acquainted
with the extent of secret and personal influence), that the
knowledge of the speculative principles of men in general
between the age of twenty and thirty is the one great source
of political prophecy. And Sir Philip Sidney regarded the
adoption of one set of principles in the Netherlands, as a
proof of the divine agency and the fountain of all the events
and successes of that Revolution.

WITH PASSION. 217

A calm and detailed examination of the facts
justifies me to my own mind in hazarding- the bold
assertion, that the fearful blunders of the late dread
Revolution, and all the calamitous mistakes of its
opponents from its commencement even to the sera
of loftier principles and wiser measures (an sera,
that began with, and ought to he named from, the
war of the Spanish and Portuguese insurgents)
every failure with all its gloomy results may be
unanswerably deduced from the neglect of some
maxim or other that had been established by clear
reasoning and plain facts in the writings of Thu-
cydides, Tacitus, Machiavel, Bacon, or Harrington.
These are red-letter names even in the almanacks
of worldly wisdom : and yet I dare challenge all
the critical benches of infidelity to point out any
one important truth, any one efficient practical di-
rection or warning, which did not pre-exist, (and
for the most part in a sounder, more intelligible,
and more comprehensive form) in the Bible.

In addition to this, the Hebrew legislator, and
the other inspired poets, prophets, historians and
moralists of the Jewish Church have two peculiar
advantages in their favor. First, their particular
rules and prescripts flow directly and visibly from
universal principles, as from a fountain : they flow
from principles and ideas that are not so properly
said to be confirmed by reason as to be reason
itself. Principles in act and procession, disjoined
from which, and from the emotions that inevitably
accompany the actual intuition of their truth, the

218 FAITH IN THE REASON AND CONSCIENCE

widest maxims of prudence are like arms without
hearts, muscles without nerves. Secondly, from
the very nature of these principles, as taught in
the Bible, they are understood in exact proportion
as they are believed and felt. The regulator is
never separated from the main spring. For the
words of the Apostle are literally and philosophi-
cally true : We (that is, the human race) live by
faith. Whatever we do or know that in kind is
different from the brute creation, has its origin in
a determination of the reason to have faith and
trust in itself. This, its first act of faith, is scarcely
less than identical with its own being. Implicite,
it is the copula — it contains the possibility — of
every position, to which there exists any corres-
pondence in reality.* It is itself, therefore, the
realizing principle, the spiritual substratum of the
whole complex body of truths. This primal act of
faith is enunciated in the word, God : a faith not
derived from, but itself the ground and source of,
experience, and without which the fleeting chaos
of facts would no more form experience, than the
dust of the grave can of itself make a living man.
The imperative and oracular form of the inspired

* I mean that, but for the confidence which we place in
the assertions of our reason and conscience, we could have
lio certainty of the reality and actual outness of the material
world. It might be affirmed that in what we call ' sleep'
every one has a dream of his own ; and that in what we call
' awake,' whole communities dream nearly alike. It is ! —
is a sense of reason : the senses can only say — It seems !
1827.

THE DISTINCTION OF MAN 219

Scripture is the form of reason itself in all things
purely rational and moral.

If Scripture be the word of Divine Wisdom, we
might anticipate that it would in all things be dis-
tinguished from other books, as the Supreme Rea-
son, whose knowledge is creative, and antecedent
to the things known, is distinguished from the un-
derstanding, or creaturely mind of the individual,
the acts of which are posterior to the things which
it records and arranges. Man alone was created
in the image of God : a position groundless and
inexplicable, if the reason in man do not differ from
the understanding. For this the inferior animals
(many at least) possess iii degree : and assuredly
the divine image or idea is not a thing of degrees.

Hence it follows that what is expressed in the
Scriptures is implied in all absolute science. The
latter whispers what the former utter as with the
voice of a trumpet. As sure as God liveth, is the
pledge and assurance of eveiy positive truth, that
is asserted by the reason. The human under-
standing musing on many things snatches at truth,
but is frustrated and disheartened by the fluctuating
nature of its objects;* its conclusions therefore

* HoTafit}) yap owk tcrriv kfJ-firjvai Stg r<^ avT(f) Ka^
'HouicXtirov, ovre ^VTjrrjg ovaiaQ dig aipacr^ai Kara s^iv
aXXa o^vTrjTi kul ra%£i fierafioXriQ aicidvrifft Kal rrdXiv
(Tvvdyii, /jlolXXov £e ovSk irciXiv ovSe vcrrepov dXX' lifxa
nvviararai Kal diroXiiTrti, Kal irpocniui, Kai diviici' o^ii>
oiiS' s'lQ TO elvai liEpaivti to yiyvofitvov avrrjc Tf{i ij.r]Sk-
iroTf Xriyfiv, i-irid' 'iffrdffSrai ti)v ykvt(nv, k. r. X.

Plutarch's De EL apud Delphos c. xviii.

220 THE BIBLE A SOURCE OF ACTION.

are timid and uncertain, and it hath no way of
giving permanence to things but by reducing them
to abstractions. Hardly do lue guess aright at
things that are upon earth, and with labour do we
find the things that are before us ; but all certain
knowledge is in the power of God, and a presence
from above. So only have the ways of men been
reformed, and every doctrine that contains a saving
truth, and all acts pleasing to God (in other words,
all actions consonant with human nature, in its
original intention) are through wisdom; that is,
the rational spirit of man.

This then is the prerogative of the Bible ; this
is the privilege of its believing students. With
them the principle of knowledge is likewise a spring
and principle of action. And as it is the only
certain knowledge, so are the actions that flow
from it the only ones on which a secure reliance
can be placed. The understanding may suggest
motives, may avail itself of motives, and make
judicious conjectures respecting* the probable con-
sequences of actions. But the knowledge taught
in the Scriptures produces the motives, involves
the consequences ; and its highest^ormw^a is still :
As sure as God liveth, so will it be unto thee !
Strange as this position will appear to such as
forget that motives can be causes only in a se-
condary and improper sense, inasmuch as the man
makes the motive, not the motives the man ; yet
all history bears evidence to its truth. The sense
of expediency, the cautious balancing of compa-

GENESIS OF THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION, 221

rative advantages, the constant wakefulness to the
Cui bono? — in connection with the Quidmihi'f —
all these are in their places in the routine of con-
duct, by which the individual provides for himself
the real or supposed wants of to-day and to-morrow :
and in quiet times and prosperous circumstances a
nation presents an aggregate of such individuals,
a busy ant-hill in calm and sunshine. By the
happy organization of a well-governed society the
contradictory interests of ten millions Of such in-
dividuals may neutralize each other, and be recon-
ciled in the unity of the national interest. But
whence did this happy organization first come ?
Was it a tree transplanted from Paradise; with all
its branches in full fruitage ? Or was it sowed in
sunshine ? Was it in vernal breezes and gentle
rains that it fixed its roots, and grew and strength-
ened? Let history answer these questions. With
blood was it planted ; it was rocked in tempests ;
the goat, the ass, and the stag gnawed it ; the wild
boar has whetted his tusks on its bark. The deep
scars are still extant on its trunk, and the path of
the lightning may be traced among its higher
branches. And even after its full growth, in the
season of its strength, when its height reached to
the heaven, and the sight thereof to all the earth,
the whirlwind has more than once forced its stately
top to touch the ground: it has been bent like a
bow, and sprang back like a shaft. Mightier
powers were at work than expediency ever yet
called up ; yea, mightier than the mere under-

'222 Hume's history.

standing can comprehend. One confirmation of
the latter assertion you may find in the history of
our country, written by the same Scotch philoso-
pher who devoted his life to the undermining of
the Christian religion ; and expended his last
breath in a blasphemous regret that he had not
survived it ; — by the same heartless sophist who,
in this island, was the main pioneer of that atheistic
philosophy, which in France transvenomed the
natural thirst of truth into the hydrophobia of a
wild and homeless scepticism; the Elias of that
Spirit of Anti-christ, which

still promising

Freedom, itself too sensual to be free.
Poisons life's amities and cheats the soul
Of faith, and quiet hope and all that lifts
And all that soothes the spirit !*

This inadequacy of the mere understanding to
the apprehension of moral greatness we may trace
in this historian's cool systematic attempt to steal
away every feeling of reverence for every great
name by a scheme of motives, in which as often
as possible the efforts and enterprises of heroic
spirits are attributed to this or that paltry view of
the most despicable selfishness. But in the ma-
jority of instances this would have been too palpably
false and slanderous : and therefore the founders
and martyrs of our Church and Constitution, of
our civil and religious liberty, are represented as
fanatics and bewildered enthusiasts. But histories

ENTHUSIASM : IDEAS ACTUATE PRINCIPLES. 223

incomparably more authentic than Mr. Hume's,
(nay, spite of himself even his own history,) con-
firm by ii'refragable evidence the aphorism of an-
cient wisdom, that nothing great was ever achieved
without enthusiasm. For what is enthusiasm but
the oblivion and swallowing-up of self in an object
dearer than self, or in an idea more vivid ? How
this is produced in the enthusiasm of wickedness,
I have explained in the second Comment annexed
to this Discourse. But in the genuine enthusiasm
of morals, religion, and patriotism, this enlarge-
ment and elevation of the soul above its mere self
attest the presence, and accompany the intuition,
of ultimate principles alone. These alone can in-
terest the undegraded human spirit deeply and
enduringly, because these alone belong to its es-
sence, and will remain with it permanently.

Notions, the depthless abstractions of fleeting
phaenomena, the shadows of sailing vapors, the
colorless repetitions of rainbows, have effected
their utmost when they have added to the distinct-
ness of our knowledge. For this very cause they
are of themselves adverse to lofty emotion, and it
requires the influence of a light and warmth, not
their own, to make them crystallize into a sem-
blance of growth. But every principle is actualized
by an idea ; and every idea is living, productive,
partaketh of infinity, and (as Bacon has sublimely
observed) containcth an endless power of semina-
tion. Hence it is, that science, which consists
wholly in ideas and principles, is power. Scieniia
et potentia (saith the same philosopher) in idem

224 IDEAS UNIVERSAL AND NATIVE TO MAN.

coincidunt. Hence too it is, that notions, linked
arguments, reference to particular facts and cal-
culations of prudence, influence only the compara-
tively fevF, the men of leisurely minds who have
been trained up to them : and even these few they
influence but faintly. But for the reverse, I appeal
to the general character of the doctrines which
have collected the most numerous sects, and acted
upon the moral being of the converts with a force
that might well seem supernatural. The great
principles of our religion, the sublime ideas spoken
out everywhere in the Old and New Testament,
resemble the fixed stars, which appear of the same
size to the naked as to the armed eye ; the mag-
nitude of which the telescope may rather seem to
diminish than to increase. At the annunciation
of principles, of ideas, the soul of man awakes and
starts up, as an exile in a far distant land at the
unexpected sounds of his native language, when
after long years of absence, and almost of oblivion,
he is suddenly addressed in his own mother-tongue.
He weeps for joy, and embraces the speaker as his
brother. How else can we explain the fact so
honorable to Great Britain, that the poorest*
amongst us will contend with as much enthusiasm
as the richest for the rights of property ? These

* The reader will remember the anecdote told with so
much humour in Goldsmith's Essay. But this is not the
first instance where the mind in its hour of meditation finds
matter of admiration and elevating thought in circumstances
that in a different mood had excited its mirth.

TRUTHS OF SCRIPTURE EVER NEW. 225

rights are the spheres and necessary conditions of
free agency. But free agency contains the idea of
the free will ; and in this he intuitively knows the
sublimity, and the infinite hopes, fears, and capa-
bilities of his own nature. On what other ground
but the cognateness of ideas and principles to man
as man does the nameless soldier rush to the
combat in defence of the liberties or the honor of
his country ? — Even men woefully neglectful of
the, p]-ecepts of religion will shed their blood for
its truth.

Alas ! — the main hindrance to the use of the
Scriptures, as your manual, lies in the notion that
you are already acquainted with its contents.
Something new must be presented to you, wholly
new and wholly out of yourselves ; for whatever is
within us must be as old as the first dawn of human
reason. Truths of all others the most awful and
mysterious and at the same time of universal in-
terest are considered so true as to lose all the
powers of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitoiy
of the soul, side by side with the most despised
and exploded errors. But it should not be so with
you ! The pride of education, the sense of con-
sistency should preclude the objection : for would
you not be ashamed to apply it to the works of
Tacitus, or of Shakspeare ? Above all, the rank
which you hold, the influence you possess, the
powers you may be called to wield, give a special
unfitness to this frivolous craving for novelty.
To find no contradiction in the union of old and
Q

226 TRUTHS OF SCRIPTURE

new, to contemplate the Ancient of days, his words
and his works, with a feeUng as fresh as if they
were now first springing forth at his fiat — this
characterizes the minds that feel the riddle of the
world and may help to unravel it. This, most of
all things, will raise you above the mass of man-
kind, and therefore will best entitle and qualify
you to guide and control them. You say, you are
already familiar with the Scriptures. With the
words, perhaps, but in any other sense you might
as wisely boast of your familiar acquaintance with
the rays of the sun, and under that pretence turn
away your eyes from the light of heaven.

Or would you wish for authorities, for great
examples ? You may find them in the writings of
Thuanus, of Clarendon, of More, of Raleigh ; and
in the life and letters of the heroic Gustavus Adol-
phus. But these, though eminent statesmen, were
Christians, and might lie under the thraldom of
habit and prejudice. I will refer you then to au-
thorities of two great men, both pagans; but re-
moved from each other by many centuries, and not
more distant in their ages than in their characters
and situations. The first shall be that of Hera-
clitus, the sad and recluse philosopher. UoXvuadit)
voov oh diddaKEC ^IjJvWa M fiaivo^evto (jTOfian
ayeXatTTa koX aKaXkuTriara icai afivpitrra (pOeyyo-
UEvr] ^fX/wj' tTwv ki,iKvtiraL rrj (pMfrj dia TOV Qeov*

* Multiscience (or ti variety and quantity ot" acquired
knowledge) does not teach intelligence. But the Sibyll

KEY TO KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD. 227

Shall we hesitate to apply to the prophets of God,
what could be affirmed of the Sibyls by a philoso-
pher whom Socrates, the prince of philosophers,
venerated for the profundity of his wisdom ?

For the other, I will refer you to the darling-
of the polished court of Augustus, to the man
whose works have been in all ages deemed the
models of good sense, and are still the pocket
companions of those who pride themselves on
uniting the scholar with the gentleman. This
accomplished man of the world has given an ac-
count of the subjects of conversation between the
illustrious statesmen who governed, and the bright-
est luminaries who then adorned, the empire of
the civilized world :

Sermo oritur rum de villis domibusve alienis
Nee, male nee ne Lepos saltet. Sed quod magis ad nos
Pertinet, et nescire malum est, agitamus : utrumne
Divitiis homines, an sint virtute beati ;
Et quod sit natura boni, summumque quid ejus*

with wild enthusiastic mouth shrilling forth unmirthful,
nornate, and unperfumed truths, reaches to a thousand years,
with her voice through the power of God.

Not her's

To win the senvSe by words of rhetoric,
Lip-blossoms breathing- perishable sweets ;
But by the power of the informing Word
Roll sounding onward through a thousand years
Her deep prophetic bodements.

Lit. Rem. III. p. 419.— Erf.

Hor. Serm.II. t. 6. ri, &c.

228 TRUTHS OF SCRIPTURE

Berkeley indeed asserts, and is supported in his
assertion by the great statesmen, Lord Bacon and
Sir Walter Raleigh, that without an habitual in-
terest in these subjects a man may be a dexterous
intriguer, but never can be a statesman.

But do you require some one or more particular
passage from the Bible, that may at once illustrate
and exemplify its applicability to the changes and
fortunes of empires ? Of the numerous chapters
that relate to the Jewish tribes, their enemies and
allies, before and after their division into two
kingdoms, it would be more difficult to state a
single one from which some guiding light might
not be struck. And in nothing is Scriptural his-
tory more strongly contrasted with the histories of
highest note in the present age, than in its free-
dom from the hollowness of abstractions. While
the latter present a shadow-fight of things and
quantities, the former gives us the history of men,
and balances the important influence of individual
minds with the previous state of the national
morals and manners, in which, as constituting a
specific susceptibility, it presents to us the true
cause both of the influence itself, and of the weal
or woe that were its consequents. How should it
be otherwise ? The histories and political economy
of the present and preceding century partake in
the general contagion of its mechanic philosophy,
and are the product of an unenlivened generalizing
understanding. In the Scriptures they are the
living educts of the imagination; of that recon-

KEY TO KNOAVLEDGE OF THE AVORLD. 229

clling and mediatory power, which incorporating-
the reason in images of tlie sense, and organizing
(as it were) the flux of the senses by the perma-
nence and self-circling energies of the reason,
gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in
themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of
which they are the conductors. These are the
wheels which Ezekiel beheld, when the hand of
the Lord was upon him, and he saw visions of
God as he sate among the captives by the river of
Chebar. Whithersoever the Spirit was to go, the
wheels went, and thither was their spirit to go: —
for the spirit of the living creature was in the
wheels also* The truths and the symbols that
represent them move in conjunction and form the
living chariot that bears up (for us) the throne of
the Divine Humanity. Hence, by a derivative,
indeed, but not a divided, influence, and though
in a secondary yet in more than a metaphorical
sense, the Sacred Book is worthily entitled the
Word of God. Hence too, its contents present
to us the stream of time continuous as life and a
symbol of eternity, inasmuch as the past and the
future are virtually contained in the present.
According therefore to our relative position on the
banks of this stream the Sacred History becomes
prophetic, the Sacred Prophecies historical, while
the power and substance of both inhere in its laws,
its promises, and its comminations. In the Scrip-

* Ezek. i. 20.

230 SYMBOLS CHARACTERIZED.

tures therefore both facts and persons must of
necessity have a two-fold significance, a past and
a future, a temporary and a perpetual, a particular
and a universal application. They must be at once
portraits and ideals.

Eheu ! paupertina philosophia in paupertinam
religionem ducit : — A hunger-bitten and idea-less
philosophy naturally produces a starveling- and
comfortless religion. It is among the miseries of
the present age that it recognizes no medium be-
tween literal and metaphorical. Faith is either to
be buried in the dead letter, or its name and
honors usurped by a counterfeit product of the
mechanical understanding, which in the blindness
of self-complacency confounds symbols with alle-
g'ories. Now an allegory is but a translation of
abstract notions into a picture-language, which is
itself nothing but an abstraction from objects of
the senses ; the principal being more worthless
even than its phantom proxy, both alike unsub-
stantial, and the former shapeless to boot. On the
other hand a symbol (6 ttrnv ad ravrrjyopL^ov) is
characterized by a translucence of the special in
the individual, or of the general in the special, or
of the universal in the general ; above all by the
translucence of the eternal through and in the
temporal. It always partakes of the reality which
it renders intelligible ; and while it enunciates the
whole, abides itself as a living part in that unity
of which it is the representative. The other are
but empty echoes which the fancy arbitrarily asso-

PECULIAR TEACHING OF THE BIBLE. 231

ciates with apparitions of matter, less beautiful but
not less shadowy than the sloping orchard or hill-
side pasture-field seen in the transparent lake
below. Alas, for the flocks that are to be led
forth to such pastures ! It shall even be as when
a hungry man dreameth, and behold, he eateth;
but he awaketh and his soul is empty : or as
when a thirsty man dreameth, and behold he
drinketh ; but he awaketh and behold, he is
faint .'* O ! that we would seek for tlje bread
which was given from heaven, that we should eat
thereof and be strengthened ! that we would
draw at the well at which the flocks of our fore-
fathers had living water drawn for them, even
that water which, instead of mocking the thirst
of him to whom it is given, becomes a well wiithin
himself springing up to life everlasting !

When we reflect how large a part of our present
knowledge and civilization is owing, directly or
indirectly, to the Bible ; when we are compelled
to admit, as a fact of history, that the Bible has
been the main lever by which the moral and intel-
lectual character of Europe has been raised to
its present comparative height ; we should be
struck, methinks, by the marked and prominent
difference of this book from the works which it is
now the fashion to quote as guides and authorities
in morals, politics, and history. I will point out
a few of the excellencies by which the one is dis-

* Is. xxix. 8. — Ed.

232 NECESSITY THREEFOLD.

tinguished, and shall leave it to your own judg-
ment and recollection to perceive and apply the
contrast to the productions of highest name in
these latter days. In the Bible every agent ap-
pears and acts as a self-subsisting individual;
each has a life of its ovi^n, and yet all are one life.
The elements of necessity and free-will are recon-
ciled in the higher power of an omnipresent Pro-
vidence, that predestinates the whole in the moral
freedom.of the integral parts. Of this the Bible
never suffers us to lose sight. The root is never
detached from the ground. It is God everywhere :
and all creatures conform to his decrees, the righ-
teous by performance of the law, the disobedient
by the sufferance of the penalty.

Suffer me to inform or remind you, that there
is a threefold necessity. There is a logical, and
there is a mathematical necessity ; but the latter
is always hypothetical, and both subsist formally
only, not in any real object. Only by the intuition
and immediate spiritual consciousness of the idea
of God, as the One and Absolute, at once the
ground and the cause, who alone containeth in
himself the ground of his own nature, and therein
of all natures, do we arrive at the third, which
alone is a real objective, necessity. Here the im-
mediate consciousness decides : the idea is its own
evidence, and is insusceptible of all other. It is
necessarily groundless and indemonstrable ; be-
cause it is itself the ground of all possible demon-
stration. The reason hath faith in itself in its

HEBREW AND GREEK IDEAS OF GOD. 233

own revelations. O \dyoe k'^r;. Ipse dixit. So
it is : for it is so. All the necessity of causal
relations (which the mere understanding reduces,
and must reduce to co-existence and regular suc-
cession* in the objects of which they are predicated,
and to habit and association in the mind predi-
cating) depends on, or rather inheres in, the
idea of the omnipresent and absolute : for this it
is, in which the possible is one and the same with
the real and the necessary. Herein the Bible
differs from all the books of Greek philosophy,
and in a two-fold manner. It doth not affirm a
divine nature only, but a God : and not a God
only, but the living God. Hence in the Scriptures
alone is the jus divinum, or direct relation of the
state and its magistracy to the Supreme Being,
taught as a vital and indispensable part of all
moral and of all political wisdom, even as the
Jewish alone was a true theocracy.

Were it my object to touch on the present state
of public affairs in this kingdom, or on the pro-
spective measures in agitation respecting our sister
island, I would direct your most serious medita-
tions to the latter period of the reign of Solomon,
and to the revolutions in the reign of Rehoboam,
his successor. But I should tread on glowing
embers. I will turn to a subject on which all

* See Hume's Essays. The sophist evades, as Cicero
long ago remarked, the better half of the predicament,
which is not prceire but efficienter prceire.

234 SOURCES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

men of reflection are at length in agreement —
the causes of the Revolution and fearful chastise-
ment of France. We have learned to trace them
back to the rising importance of the commercial
and manufacturing class, and its incompatibility
with the old feudal privileges and prescriptions;
to the spirit of sensuality and ostentation, which
from the court had spread through all the towns
and cities of the kingdom ; to the predominance
of a presumptuous and irreligious philosophy; to
the extreme over-rating of the knowledge and
power given by the improvements of the arts and
sciences, especially those of astronomy, mechanics,
and a wonder-working chemistry ; to an assump-
tion of prophetic power, and the general conceit
that states and governments might be and ought
to be constructed as machines, every movement
of which might be foreseen and taken into previous
calculation ; to the consequent multitude of plans
and constitutions, of planners and constitution-
makers, and the remorseless arrogance with which
the authors and proselytes of eveiy new proposal
were ready to realize it, be the cost what it might
in the established rights, or even in the lives, of
men; in short, to 'restlessness, presumption, sen-
sual indulgence, and the idolatrous reliance on
false philosophy in the whole domestic, social, and
political life of the stirring and effective part of
the community : these all acting, at once and to-
gether, on a mass of materials supplied by the
unfeeling extravagance and oppressions of the go-

FORESHOWN IN ISAIAH. 235

vernment, which shewed no mercy, and very
heavily laid its yoke.

Turn then to the chapter from which the last
words were cited, and read the following seven
verses ; and I am deceived if you will not be com-
pelled to admit that the Prophet revealed the true
philosophy of the French revolution more than two
thousand years before it became a sad irrevocable
truth of history. And thou saidst, I shall be a
lady for ever : so that thou didst not lay these
things to thy heart, neither didst remember the
latter end of it. Therefore, hear now this, thou
that art given to pleasures, that divellest care-
lessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none
else beside me ! I shall not sit as a widow,
neither shall I know the loss of childreii. But
these two things shall come to thee in a moment,
hi one day ; the loss of children, and widoivhood ;
they shall come upon thee in their perfection,
for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the
great abundance of thine enchantments. For
thou hast trusted in thy tvickedness ; thou hast
said, none seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy know-
ledge, it hath perverted thee ; and thou hast said
in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.
Therefore shall evil come upon thee, thou shalt
not know* from whence it riseth : and mischief

* The reader will scarcely fail to find in this verse a
remembrancer of the sudden setting-in of the frost, a fort-
night before the usual time (in a country too, -where the

236 THIS SERMON, TO WHOM ADDRESSED.

shall fall upon thee, thou shalt not be able to
put it off; and desolation shall come upon thee
suddenly, which thou shalt not know. Stand
now with thine enchantments, and with the mul-
titude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured
from thy youth ; if so be thou shalt be able to
profit, if so be thou mayest prevail. Thou art
wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let
now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly
prognosticators stand up, and save thee from
these things that shall come upon thee. (Is. xlvii.
7, &c.)

There is a grace that would enable us to take
up vipers, and the evil thing shall not hurt us:
a spiritual alchemy which can transmute poisons
into a panacea. We are counselled by our Lord
himself to make unto ourselves friends of the
Mammon of unrighteousness : and in this age of
sharp contrasts and grotesque combinations it
would be a wise method of sympathizing with the

commencement of its two seasons is in general scarcely less
regular than that of the wet and dry seasons between the
tropics) which caused, and the desolation which accom-
panied, the flight from Moscow. The Russians baffled the
physical forces of the imperial Jacobin, because they were
inaccessible to his imaginary forces. The faith in St. Ni-
cholas kept off at safe distance the more pernicious super-
stition of the destinies of Napoleon the Great. The English
in the Peninsula overcame the real, because they set at
defiance, and had heard only to despise, the imaginary
powers of the irresistible Emperor. Thank Heaven ! the
heart of the country was sound at the core.

A READING PUBLIC. 237

tone and spirit of the times, if we elevated even
our daily newspapers and political journals into
comments on the Bible.

When I named this Essay a Sermon, I sought
to prepare the inquirers after it for the absence of
all the usual softenings suggested by worldly pru-
dence, of all compromise between truth and cour-
tesy. But not even as a sermon would I have
addressed the present discourse to a promiscuous
audience ; and for this reason I likewise announced
it in the title-page, as exclusively ad clerum ; that
is, (in the old and wide sense of the word) to men
of clerkly acquirements of whatever profession. I
would that the greater part of our publications
could be thus directed, each to its appropriate class
of readers. But this cannot be. For among other
odd burs and kecksies, the misgrowth of our lux-
uriant activity, we have nov/ a Reading Public* —

* Some participle passive in the diminutive form, Erudi-
tulorum Natio for instance, might seem at first sight a fuller
and more exact designation ; but the superior force and
humor of the former become evident whenever the phrase
occurs as a» step or stair in a climax of irony. By way of
example take the following sentences, transcribed from a
work demonstrating that the New Testament was intended
exclusively for the primitive converts from Judaism, was
accommodated to their prejudices, and is of no authority,
as a rule of faith, for Christians in general. " The Read-
ing Public in this enlightened age and thinking nation, by
its favorable reception of liberal ideas, has long demon-
strated the benign influence of that profound philosophy
which has already emancipated us from so many absurd
prejudices held in superstitious awe by our deluded fore-

238 PHILOSOPHIC POPULACE.

as Strange a phrase, methinks, as ever forced a
splenetic smile on the staid countenance of medi-
tation ; and yet no iiction. For our readers have,
in good truth, multiplied exceedingly, and have
waxed proud. It would require the intrepid accu-
racy of a Colquhoun to venture at the precise
number of that vast company only, whose heads
and hearts are dieted at the two public ordinaries
of literature, the circulating libraries and the peri-
odical press. But what is the result? Does the

fathers. But the dark age yielded at length to the dawning
light of reason and common sense at the glorious, though
imperfect, Revolution. The People can be no longer duped
or scared out of their imprescriptible and inalienable right
to judge and decide for themselves on all important ques-
tions of government and religion. The scholastic jargon of
jarring articles and metaphysical creeds may continue for a
time to deform our Church-establishment ; and like the gro-
tesque figures in the niches of our old Gothic cathedrals,
may serve to remind the nation of its former barbarism ;
but the universal suffrage of a free and enlightened Public,"
&c. &c.

Among the revolutions worthy of notice, the change in
the nature of the introductory sentences and prefatory
matter in serious books is not the least striking. The same
gross flattery which disgusts us in the dedications to indi-
viduals in the elder writers, is now transferred to the nation
at large, or the Reading Public : while the Jeremiads of
our old moralists, and their angry denunciations concerning
the ignorance, immorality, and irreligion of the People, ap-
pear (mutatis mutandis, and with an appeal to the worst
passions, envy, discontent, scorn, vindictiveness,) in the
shape of bitter libels on ministers, parliament, the clergy :
in short, on tlie State and Church, and all persons employed
in them.

TWO ERRORS TO BE FEARED. 239

inward man thrive on this regimen ? Alas ! if the
average health of the consumers may be judged of
by the articles of largest consumption ; if the se-
cretions may be conjectured from the ingredients
of the dishes that are found best suited to their
palates ; fi'om all that I have seen, either of the
banquet or the guests, I shall utter my profaccia
with a desponding sigh. From a popular philo-
sophy and a philosophic populace, Good Sense
deliver us !

At present, however, I am to imagine for myself
a very different audience. I appeal exclusively to
men, from whose station and opportunities I may
dare to anticipate a respectable portion of that sound
book-learnedness, into which our old public schools
still continue to initiate their pupils. I appeal to
men in whom I may hope to find, if not philosophy,
yet occasional impulses at least to philosophic
thought. And here, as far as my own experience
extends, I can announce one favourable symptom.

' The notion of our measureless superiority in good
sense to our ancestors, so general at the com-
mencement of the French Revolution, and for
some years before it, is out of fashion. We hear,
at least, less of thejargon of this enlightened age.
After fatiguing itself, as performer or spectator in
the giddy figure-dance of political changes, Europe
has seen the shallow foundations of its self-com-
placent faith give way ; and among men of influ-
ence and property, we have now more reason to
apprehend the stupor of despondence, than the

240 NATIONAL EDUCATION.

extravagancies of hope, unsustained by experience,
or of self-confidence not bottomed on principle.

In this rank of life the danger lies, not in any
tendency to innovation, but in the choice of the
means for preventing it. And here my apprehen-
sions point to two opposite errors ; each of which
deserves a separate notice. The first consists in
a disposition to think, that as the peace of nations
has been disturbed by the diffusion of a false Hght,
it may be re-established by excluding the people
from all knowledge and all prospect of ameliora-
tion. ! never, never ! Reflection and stirrings
of mind, with all their restlessness, and all the
errors that result from their imperfection, from the
Too much, because Too little, are come into the
world. The powers that awaken and foster the
spirit of curiosity are to be found in every village :
books are in every hovel. The infant's cries are
hushed v»?ith picture-books : and the cottager's
child sheds his first bitter tears over pages, which
render it impossible for the man to be treated or
governed as a child. Here as in so many other
cases, the inconveniences that have arisen from a
thing's having become too general are best removed
by making it universal.

The other and contrary mistake proceeds from
the assumption, that a national education will have
been realized whenever the people at large have
been taught to read and write. Now among the
many means to the desired end, this is doubtless
one, and not the least important. But neither is

BELL AND LANCASTER. 241

it the most so. Much less can it he considered
to constitute education, which consists in educing'
the faculties and forming the habits ; the means
varying according to the sphere in which the indi-
viduals to be educated are likely to act and become
useful. I do not hesitate to declare, that whether
I consider the nature of the discipline adopted,*
or the plan of poisoning the children of the poor
with a sort of potential infidelity under the " libe-
ral idea" of teaching those points only of religious
faith, in which all denominations agree, I cannot
but denounce the so called Lancasterian schools
as pernicious beyond all power of compensation
by the new acquirement of reading and writing.
But take even Dr. Bell's original and unsophisti-
cated plan, which I myself regard as an especial
gift of Providence to the human race ; and suppose
this incomparable machine, this vast moral steam-
engine, to have been adopted and in free motion
throughout the Empire ; it would yet appear to me
a most dangerous delusion to rely on it as if this
of itself foi'med an efficient national education.
We cannot, I repeat, honor the scheme too highly

* See Mr. Southey's Tract on the New or Madras sys-
tem of education : especially toward the conclusion, where
with exquisite humour as well as with his usual poignancy
of wit he has detailed Joseph Lancaster's disciplinarian
inventions. But even in the schools, that used to be called
Lancasterian, these are, I believe, discontinued. The true
perfection of discipline in a school is — the maximum of
watchfulness with the minimum of punishment.
II

242 FEARS AS TO EDUCATION.

as a prominent and necessary part of the great
process ; but it will neither supersede nor can it
be substituted for sundry other measures, that are
at least equally important. And these are such
measures, too, as unfortunately involve the necessity
of sacrifices on the side of the rich and powerful
more costly and far more difficult than the yearly
subscription of a few pounds ; — such measures as
demand more self-denial than the expenditure of
time in a committee or of eloquence in a public
meeting.

Nay, let Dr. Bell's philanthropic end have been
realized, and the proposed modicum of learning
have become universal ; yet convinced of its in-
sufficiency to stem the strong currents set in from
an opposite point, I dare not assure myself that it
may not be driven backward by them and become
confluent with the evils which it was intended to
preclude.*

What other measures I had in contemplation, it
has been my endeavour to explain elsewhere.
But I am greatly deceived, if one preliminary to
an efficient education of the laboring classes be
not the recurrence to a more manly discipline of
the intellect on the part of the learned themselves,
in short a thorough re-casting of the moulds, in

* See the Report of the House of Commons' Committee
on the increase of crime ; — witliin the last twenty years
quintupled over all England, and in several counties de-
cupled. 28th September, 1828.

DISCIPLINE OF THE HIGHER CLASSES. 243

which the minds of our gentry, the characters of
our future land-owners, magistrates and senators,
are to receive their shape and fashion. O what
treasures of practical wisdom would be once more
brought into open day by the solution of this
problem ! Suffice it for the present to hint the
master-thought. The first man, on whom the light
of an idea dawned, did in that same moment re-
ceive the spirit and credentials of a law-giver :
and as long as man shall exist, so long will the
possession of that antecedent knowledge (the maker
and master of all profitable experience) which ex-
ists only in the power of an idea, be the one lawful
qualification of all dominion in the world of the
senses. Without this, experience itself is but a
Cyclops walking backwards under the fascination
of the past : and we are indebted to a lucky coin-
cidence of outward circumstances and contingen-
cies, least of all things to be calculated on in times
like the present, if this one-eyed experience does
not seduce its worshipper into practical anachro-
nisms.

But alas ! the halls of old philosophy have been
so long deserted, that we circle them at shy dis-
tance as the haunt of phantoms and chimseras.*
The sacred grove of Academus is holden in like
regard with the unfoodful trees in the shadowy
Avorld of Maro that had a dream attached to every
leaf. The very terms of ancient wisdom are worn

* See App. (E). Ed.

244 TWO' STATES OF MIND

out, or (far worse !) stamped on baser metal : and
whoever should have the hardihood to reproclaim
its solemn truths must commence with a glossary.

In reviewing the foregoing pages, I am appre-
hensive that they may be thought to resemble the
overflow of an earnest mind rather than an orderly
premeditated composition. Yet this imperfection
of form will not be altogether uncompensated, if it
should be the means of presenting with greater
liveliness the feelings and impressions under which
they were written. Still less shall I regret this
defect if it should induce some future traveller en-
gaged in the like journey to take the same station
and to look through the same medium at the one
main object which amid all my discursions I have
still kept in view. The more, however, doth it
behove me not to conclude this address without
attempting to recapitulate in as few and as plain
words as possible the sum and substance of its
contents.

There is a state of mind indispensable for all
perusal of the Scriptures to edification, which must
be learned by experience, and can be described
only by negatives. It is the direct opposite of
that which, if a moral passage of Scripture were
cited, would prompt a man to reply, " Who does
not know this ?" But if the quotation should have
been made in support of some article of faith, this
same habit of mind will betray itself in difiPerent
individuals, by apparent contraries, which yet are
but the two poles, or plus and minus states, of the

INDISPOSING FOR llECEPTION OF TRUTH. 245

same influence. The latter, or the negative, pole
may be suspected, as often as you hear a comment
on some high and doctrinal text introduced with the
words, " It only means so and so ! " For instance,
I object to a professed free-thinking Christian the
following solemn enunciation of the riches of the
glory of the mystery hid from ages and from
generations by the philosophic Apostle of the
Gentiles: — Who (namely, the Father) hath de-
livered us from the power of darkness and hath
translated us into the kingdom of his deo,r Son :
In whom we have redemption through his blood,
even the forgiveness of sins : Who is the image
of the invisible God, the first born* of every
creature : For by him were all things created,
that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible
and invisible, whether they be thrones, or domi-
nions, or principalities, or poivers : all things
were created by him, and for him : And he is
before all things, and by him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body, the Church :
who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead ;
that in all things he might have the preeminence.
For it pleased the Father that in him should all
fulness dwell : And, having made peace through
the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all
things unto himself ; by him, I say, whether

* A mistaken translation. The words should be : Be-
gotten before any hind of creation ; and even this does not
convey the full sense of the superlative, TrpwrciroKOt,'. (See
Table Talk, p. 260, 2nd edit. Ed.)

246 SCEPTICISM AND SUPERSTITION.

they be things in earth, or things in heaven. Col,
i. 13, &c. What is the reply? — Why, that by
these words (very bold and figurative words it must
be confessed, yet still) St. Paul only meant that
the universal and eternal truths of morality and a
future state had been reproclaimed by an inspired
teacher and confirmed by miracles !* The words
only mean, Sir, that a state of retribution after
this life had been proved by the fact of Christ's
resurrection — that is all !

Of the positive pole, on the other band, language
to the following purport is the usual exponent.
" It is a mystery : and we are bound to believe
the words without presuming to inquire into the
meaning of them." That is, we believe in St.
Paul's veracity; and that is enough. Yet St,
Paul repeatedly presses on his hearers that thought-
ful perusal of the Sacred Writings, and those habits
of earnest though humble inquiry which, if the
heart only have been previously regenerated, would
lead them to a full assurance of understanding
eIq ETTiyvwarLv, (to an entire assent of the mind ;

* But I shall scarcely obtain an answer to certain difficul-
ties involved in this free and liberal interpretation : for ex-
ample, that with the exception of a handful of rich men con-
sidered as little better than infidels, the Jews were as fully
persuaded of these trutlis as Christians in general are at the
present day. Moreover that this inspired teacher had him-
self declared that ifthe JevvS did not believe on the evidence
of Moses and the Prophets, neither would they though a man
should rise from the dead.

ST. PAUL S EXHORTATION TO INQUIRY. 247

to a spiritual intuition, or positive inward know-
ledge by experience) of the mystery of God, and
of the Father, and of Christ, in which (nempe,
jj.v(7Tr]plo}) are hid all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge. Col. ii. 2, 3,

To expose the inconsistency of both these ex-
tremes, and by inference to recommend that state
of mind, which looks forward to the fellowship of
the mystery of the faith as a spirit of wisdom
and revelation in the knowledge of God, the eyes
of the understanding being enlightened (Eph. i.
17 — 18.) — this formed my general purpose. Long-
has it been at my heart ! I consider it as the contra-
distinguishing principle of Christianity that in it
alone Trag TrXovroQ rfjQ TrXrjpofopl ac rrjc GvviuEMQ
(the understanding in its utmost power and opu-
lence) culminates in faith, as in its crown of gloiy,
at once its light and its remuneration. On this most
important point I attempted long ago to preclude,
if possible, all misconception and misinterpretation
of my opinions. Alas ! in this time of distress and
embarrassment the sentiments have a more especial
interest, a more immediate application, than when
they were first written. If (I observed)* it be a
truth attested alike by common feeling and com-
mon sense, that the greater part of human misery
depends directly on human vices, and the remainder
indirectly, by what means can we act on men, so
as to remove or preclude their vices and purify

* The Friend, I. p. 134, 3rd edit. Ed.

248 DIFFUSION OF TRUTH

their principles of moral election ? The question is
not by what means each man is to alter his own
character; — in order to this, all the means pre-
scribed, and all the aidances g'iven by rehgion
may be necessary for him. Vain of themselves
may be —

The sayings of the wise

In ancient and in modem books inroll'd

Unless he feel within
Some source of consolation from above.
Secret refreshings, that repair his strength.
And fainting spirits uphold.

Samson Agonistes.

This is not the question. Virtue would not be
virtue could it be given by one fellow creature to
another. To make use of all the means and ap-
pliances in our power to the actual attainment of
rectitude, is the abstract of the duty which we owe
to ourselves ; to supply those means as far as we
can, comprises our duty to others. The question
then is, what are these means ? Can they be any
other than the communication of knowledge and
the removal of those evils and impediments which
prevent its reception ? It may not be in our power
to combine both, but it is in the power of every
man to contribute to the former, who is sufficiently
informed to feel that it is his duty. If it be said,
that we should endeavour not so much to remove
ignorance, as to make the ignorant religious : re-
ligion herself through her sacred oracles answers

A CHRISTIAN DUTY. 249

for me, that all effective faith pre-supposes know-
ledge and individual conviction. If the mere ac-
quiescence in truth, 'uncomprehended and unfa-
thomed, -were suificieht, few indeed would be the
vicious and the miserable, in this country at least
where speculative infidelity is, Heaven be praised !
confined to a small number. Like bodily defor-
mity, there is one instance here and another there ;.
but three in one place are already an undue pro-
portion. It is highly worthy of observation that
the inspired Writings received by Christians are
distinguishable from all other books pretending to
inspiration, from the scriptures of the Bramins,
and even from the Koran, in their strong and fre-
quent recommendations of truth. I do not here
mean veracity, which cannot but be enforced in
every code which appeals to the religious principle
of man; but knowledge. This is not only ex-
tolled as the crown and honor of a man, but to seek
after it is again and again commanded us as one
of our most sacred duties. Yea, the very perfec-
tion and final bliss of the glorified spirit is repre-
sented by the Apostle as a plain aspect or intui-
tive beholding of truth in its eternal and immu-
table source. Not that knowledge can of itself
do all. The light of religion is not that of the
moon, light without heat ; but neither is its
warmth that of the stove, warmth without light.
Religion is the sun whose warmth indeed swells,
and stirs, and actuates the life of nature, but who
at the same time beholds all the growth of life

250 DIFFUSION OF TRUTH

with a master-eye, makes all objects glorious on
which he looks, and by that glory visible to others.

For this cause I how my knees unto the Fa-
ther of our Lord Jesus Christ, that he would
grant you according to the riches of his glory,
to he strengthened with might by his Spirit
in the inner man ; that Christ may dwell in
your hearts by faith ; that ye being rooted and
grounded in love, may he able to comprehend with
all saints what is the breadth, and length, and
depth, and heighth ; and to knoiv the love of
Christ which passeth all knowledge, that ye
might he filed with the fulness of God. (Eph.
iii. 14 — 19.) For to know God is (by a vital and
spiritual act in which to know and to possess are
one and indivisible) — to know God, I say, is — to
acknowledge him as the infinite clearness in the
incomprehensible fulness, and fulness incompre-
hensible with infinite clearness.

This then comprises my first purpose, which is
in a two fold sense general : for in the substance,
if not in the form, it belongs to all my country-
men and fellow-Christians without distinction of
class, while for its object it embraces the whole
of the inspired Scriptures from the recorded first
day of heaven and earth, ere the hght was yet
gathered into celestial lamps or reflected from their
revolving mirrors, to the predicted Sabbath of the
new creation, when heaven and earth shall have
become one city with neither sun nor moon to
shine in it : for the glory of God shall lighten it

A CHRISTIAN DUTY. 251

and the Lamb be the light thereof. My second
purpose is after the same manner in a two fold
sense specific : for as this Sermon is nominally ad-
dressed to, so was it for the greater part exclu-
sively intended for, the perusal of the learned : and
its object likewise is to urge men so qualified to
apply their powers and attainments to an especial
study of the Old Testament as teaching the ele-
ments of political science.

It is asked, in what sense I use these words ?
I answer : in the same sense as the terms are em-
ployed when we refer to Euclid for the elements
of the science of geometry, only with one diffe-
rence arising from the diversity of the subject.
With one difference only ; but that one how mo-
mentous ! All other sciences are confined to ab-
stractions, unless when the term science is used
in an improper and flattering sense. — Thus we may
speak without boast of natural history ; but we
have not yet attained to a science of nature. The
Bible alone contains a science of realities : and
therefore each of its elements is at the same time
a living germ, in which the present involves the
future, and in the finite the infinite exists poten-
tially. That hidden mystery in every the mi-
nutest form of existence, which contemplated
under the relations of time presents itself to the
understanding retrospectively, as an infinite ascent
of causes, and prospectively as an interminable
progression of effects ; — that which contemplated
in space is beholden intuitively as a law of action

252 IDEAL TRUTH.

and re-action, continuous and extending beyond
all bound ; — this same mystery freed from the
phcenomena of time and space, and seen in the
depth of real being, reveals itself to the pure rea-
son as the actual immanence or in-being* of all in
each. Are we struck with admiration at behold-
ing the cope of heaven imaged in a dew-drop ?
The least of the animalcula to which that drop
would be an ocean contains in itself an infinite
problem of which God omni-present is the only
solution. The slave of custom is roused by the
rare and the accidental alone ; but the axioms of
the unthinking are to the philosopher the deepest
problems as being the nearest to the mysterious
root and partaking at once of its darkness and its
pregnancy.

O what a mine of undiscovered treasures, what
a new world of power and truth would the Bible
promise to our future meditation, if in some gra-
cious moment one solitary text of all its inspired
contents should but dawn upon us in the pure un-
troubled brightness of an idea, that most glorious
birth of the God-like within us, which even as the
light, its material symbol, reflects itself from a
thousand surfaces, and flies homeward to its Pa-
rent Mind enriched with a thousand forms, itself
above form and still remaining in its own sim-

* In-being- is the word chosen by Bishop Sherlock to
express this sense. See his Tract on the Athanasian Creed.
1827.

IDEAL TRUTH. 253

plicity and identity ! for a flash of that same
light, in which the first position of geometric
science that ever loosed itself from the generali-
zations of a groping and insecure experience, for
the first time revealed itself to a human intellect
in all its evidence and all its fruitfulness, trans-
parence without vacuum, and plenitude without
opacity ! O that a single gleam of our own in-
ward experience would make comprehensible to
us the rapturous Eureka, and the grateful heca-
tomb, of the philosopher of Samos ; — or that vision
which from the contemplation of an arithmetical
harmony rose to the eye of Kepler, presenting the
planetary world, and all its orbits in the divine
order of their ranks and distances ; — or which, in
the falling of an apple, revealed to the ethereal
intuition of our own Newton the constructive
principle of the material universe. The promises
which I have ventured to hold forth concerning
the hidden treasures of the Law and the Prophets
will neither be condemned as paradox or as exag-
geration by the mind that has learned to under-
stand the possibility, that the reduction of the
sands of the sea to number should be found a less
stupendous problem by Archimedes than the simple
conception of the Parmenidean One. What how-
ever is achievable by the human understanding
without this light, may be comprised in the epithet,
KEvoffiraloi : and a melancholy comment on that
phrase would the history of human cabinets and
legislators for the last thirty years furnish ! The

254 VATSriTY OF IDEALESS STUDY.

excellent Barrow, the last of the disciples of Plato
and Archimedes among our modern mathemati-
cians, shall give the description and state the
value : and in his vi^ords I shall conclude.

" Aliud agere, to be impertinently busy, doing
that which conduceth to no good purpose, is in
some respect worse than to do nothing. Of such
industry we may understand that of the Preacher,
The labor of the foolish ivearieth every one of
them.''

APPENDIX.

257

APPENDIX,

CONTAINING COMMENTS AND ESSAYS.

(A.)

In this use of the word ' sufficiency,' I pre- suppose on
the part of the reader or hearer an humble and docile state
of mind, and above all the practice of prayer, as the ne-
cessary condition of such a state, and the best if not the
only means of becoming sincere to our own hearts. Chris-
tianity is especially differenced from all other religions by
being grounded on facts which all men alike have the same
means of ascertaining with equal facility, and which no
man can ascertain for another. Each person must be
herein querist and respondent to himself; Am I sick, and
therefore need a physician ? — Am I in spiritual slavery,
and therefore need a ransomer ? — Have I given a pledge,
which must be redeemed, and which I cannot redeem by
my own resources? — Am I at one with God, and is my
will concentric with that holy power, which is at once the
constitutive will and the supreme reason of the universe ?
— If not, must I not be mad if I do not seek, and mise-
rable if I do not discover and embrace, the means of
atonement ?* To collect, to weigh, and to appreciate his-
torical proofs and presumptions is not equally within the

* This is a mistaken etymolog'y, and consequently a dull,
though unintentional, pun. Our atone is, doubtless, of the
same stock with the Teutonic aussohnen, versohnen, the Anglo-
Saxon taking- the t for the s.

s

258 APPENDIX A.

means and opportunities of every man. The testimony
of books of history is one of the strong and stately pillars
of the Church of Christ; but it is not the foundation, nor
can it without loss of essential faith be mistaken or sub-
stituted for the foundation. There is a sect, which in its
scornful pride of antipathy to mysteries (that is, to all
those doctrines of the pure and intuitive reason, which
transcend the understanding, and can never be contem-
plated by it, but through a false and falsifying perspec-
tive) affects to condemn all inward and preliminary expe-
rience as enthusiastic delusion or fanatical contagion.
Historic evidence, on the other hand, these men treat, as
the Jews of old treated the brazen serpent, which was the
relic and evidence of the miracles worked by Moses in
the wilderness. They turned it into an idol : and there-
fore Hezekiah {who clave to the Lord, and did right in
the sight oj' the Lord, so that after him was none like him,
among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before
hitn) not only removed the high places, and brake the ima-
ges, and cut down the groves ; but likewise brake in pieces
the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for the children
of Lsrael did burn incense to it. (2 Kings xviii.)

To preclude an error so pernicious, I request that to
the wilful neglect of those outward ministrations of the
word which all Englishmen have the privilege of attend-
ing, the reader will add the setting at nought likewise of
those inward means of grace, without which the language
of the Scri^Jtures, in the most faithful translation and in the
purest and plainest English, must nevertheless continue
to be a dead language, — a sun-dial by moonlight.

(B.)
Reason and Religion differ only as a two-fold applica-
tion of the same power. But if we are obliged to distin-
guish, we must ideally separate. In this sense I affirm
that reason is the knowledge of the laws of the whole

APPENDIX B. 259

considered as one: and as such it is contradistinguished
from the understanding, which concerns itself exclusively
with the quantities, qualities, and relations of particulars
in time and space. The understanding, therefore, is the
science of phenomena, and of their subsumption under
distinct kinds and sorts, {genera and species.) Its func-
tions supply the rules and constitute the possibility of ex-
perience ; but remain mere logical forms, except as far as
materials are given by the senses or sensations. The rea-
son, on the other hand, is the science of the universal,
having the ideas of oneness and allness as its two elements
or primary factors. In the language of the old Schools,
Unity -|- Omneity =: Totality.

The reason first manifests itself in man by the tendency
to the comprehension of all as one. We can neither rest
in an infinite that is not at the same time a whole, nor in
a whole that is not infinite. Hence the natural man is
always in a state either of resistance or of captivity to the
understanding and the fancy, which cannot represent tota-
tality without limit : and he either loses the one in the
striving after the infinite, that is, atheism with or without
polytheism, or he loses the infinite in the striving after tlie
one, and then sinks into anthropomorphic monotheism.

The rational instinct, therefore, taken abstractedly and
unbalanced, did, in itself, (j/e shall be as gods, Gen. iii. 5.)
and in its consequences, (the lusts of the flesh, the eye, and
the understanding, as in v. 5.) form the original tempta-
tion, through which man fell ; and in all ages has con-
tinued to originate the same, even from Adam, in whom
we all fell, to the atheists who deified the human reason in
the person of a harlot dviring the earlier period of the
French Revolution.

To this tendency, therefore, religion, as the conside-
ration of the particular and individual, (in which respect it
takes up and identifies with itself the excellence of the
understanding) but of the individual, as it exists and has

260 APPENDIX B.

its being in the universal (in which respect it is one with
the pure reason,) — to this tendency, I say, religion assigns
the due limits, and is the echo of the voice of the Lord
God walking in the garden. Hence in all the ages and
countries of civilization religion has been the parent and
fosterer of the fine arts, as of poetry, music, painting, and
the like, the common essence of v^hich consists in a similar
union of the universal and the individual. In this union,
moreover, is contained the true sense of the ideal. Under
the old Law the altar, the curtains, the priestly vestments,
and whatever else was to represent the beauty of holiness,
had an ideal character : and the Temple itself was a
master-piece of ideal beauty.

There exists in the human being, at least in man fully
developed, no mean symbol of tri-unity in reason, reli-
gion, and the will. For each of the three, though a dis-
tinct agency, implies and demands the other two, and
loses its own nature at the moment that from distinction it
passes into division or separation. The perfect frame of
a man is the perfect frame of a state : and in the light of
this idea we must read Plato's Republic*

The comprehension, impartiality, and far-sightedness of
reason, (the legislative of our nature) taken singly and ex-
clusively, becomes mere visionariness in intellect, and in-
dolence or hard-heartedness in morals. It is the science of
cosmopolitism witliout country, of philanthropy without
neighbourliness or consanguinity, in short, of all the im-
postures of that philosophy of the French Revolution,
which would sacrifice each to the shadowy idol of all. For
Jacobinism is monstrum hyhridum, made up in part of
despotism, or the lust of rule grounded in selfness ; and
in part of abstract reason misapplied to objects that be-

* If I judge rightly, this celebrated work is to ' The
History of the Town of Man-soul,' what Plato was to John
Buiiyan.

APPENDIX B. 261

long entirely to experience and the understanding. Its
instincts and mode of action are in strict correspondence
with its origin. In all places, Jacobinism betrays its
mixed parentage and nature by applying to the brute
passions and physical force of the multitude (that is, to
man as a mere animal,) in order to build up government
and the frame of society on natural rights instead of social
privileges, on the universals of abstract reason instead of
positive institutions, the lights of specific experience, and
the modifications of existing circumstances. Hight in its
most proper sense is the creature of law and statute, and
only in the technical language of the courts has it any
substantial and independent sense. In morals, right is a
word without meaning except as the correlative of duty.

From all this it follows, that reason as the science of all
as a whole must be interpenetrated by a power, that repre-
sents the concentration of all in each — a power that acts
by a contraction of universal truths into individual duties,
such contraction being the only form in which those truths
can attain life and reality. Now this is religion, which is
the executive of our nature, and on this account the name
of highest dignity, and the symbol of sovereignty. To the
same purport I have elsewhere defined religion as philo-
sophy evolved firom idea into act and fact by the superin-
duction of the extrinsic conditions of reality.

Yet even religion itself, if ever in its too exclusive de-
votion to the specific and individual it neglects to inter-
pose the contemplation of the universal, changes its being
into superstition, and becoming more and more earthly
and servile, as more and more estranged from the one in
all, goes wandering at length with its pack of amulets,
bead-rolls, periapts, fetisches, and the like pedlary, on
pilgrimages to Loretto, Mecca, or the temple of Jagger-
naut, arm in arm with sensuality on one side and self-tor-
ture on the other, followed by a motley group of friars,
pardoners, faquirs, gamesters, flagellants, mountebanks,
and harlots.

~52 APPENDIX B.

But neither can reason or religion exist or co-exist as
reason and religion, except as far as they are actuated by
the will (the Platonic Bvjxbq,) which is the sustaining,
coercive and ministerial power, the functions of which in
the individual correspond to the officers of war and police
in the ideal Republic of Plato. In its state of immanence
or indwelling in reason and religion, the will appears in-
differently as wisdom or as love : two names of the same
power, the former more intelligential, the latter more spi-
ritual, the former more frequent in the Old, the latter in
the New, Testament. But in its utmost abstraction and
consequent state of reprobation, the will becomes Satanic
pride and rebellious self-idolatry in the relations of the
spirit to itself, and remorseless despotism relatively to
others; the more hopeless as the more obdurate by its
subjugation of sensual impulses, by its superiority to toil
and pain and pleasure ; in short, by the fearful resolve to
find in itself alone the one absolute motive of action,
under which all other motives from within and from with-
out must be either subordinated or crushed.

This is the character which Milton has so philosophi-
cally as well as sublimely embodied in the Satan of his
Paradise Lost. Alas! too often has it been embodied in
real life. Too often has it given a dark and savage gran-
deur to the historic page. And wherever it has appeared,
under whatever circumstances of time and country, the
same ingredients have gone to its composition ; and it has
been identified by the same attributes. Hope in which
there is no cheerfiilness ; stedfastness within and im-
movable resolve, with outward restlessness and whirling
activity; violence with guile; temerity with cunning; and,
as the result of all, interminableness of object with perfect
indifference of means; these are the qualities that have
constituted the commanding genius; these are the marks,
that have characterized the masters of mischief, the liber-
ticides, and mighty hunters of mankind, from Nimrod to

APPENDIX B. 263

Buonaparte. And from inattention to the possibility of
such a character as well as from ignorance of its elements,
even men of honest intentions too frequently become fa-
scinated. Nay, whole nations have been so far duped
by this want of insight and reflection as to regard with
palliative admiration, instead of wonder and abhorrence,
the Molochs of human nature, who are indebted for the
larger portion of their meteoric success to their total want
of principle, and who surpass the generality of their fellow
creatures in one act of courage only, that of daring to say
with their whole heart, ' Evil, be thou my good !' — All
system so far is power ; and a systematic criminal, self-
consistent and entire in wickedness, who entrenches vil-
lany within villany, and barricadoes crime by crime, has
removed a world of obstacles by the mere decision, that
he will have no obstacles, but those of force and brute
matter.

I have only to add a few sentences, in completion of this
comment, on the conscience* and on the understanding.
The conscience is neidier reason, religion, or will, but an
experience sui generis of the coincidence of the human
will with reason and religion. It might, perhaps, be
called a spiritual sensation ; but that there lurks a contra-
diction in the terms, and that it is often deceptive to give
a common or generic name to that, which being unique,
can have no fair analogy. In strictness, therefore, the
conscience is neither a sensation nor a sense ; but a testi-
fying state, best described in the words of Scripture, as
the peace of God that passeth all understanding.

'* I have this morning read with high delight an ad-
mirable representation of what men in general think, and
what ought to be thought, concerning the conscience in the
translation of Swedenborg's Universal Theology of the New
Church. 11. p. 361—370. 6 January, 1821.

264

APPENDIX-B.

Of the latter faculty, namely, of the understanding, con-
sidered in and of itself the Peripatetic aphorism, nihil in
intellectu quod non prius in sensu, is strictly true, as well
as the legal maxim, de rebus non apparentibus et non ex-
istentibus eadem est ratio. The eye is not more inappro-
priate to sound, than the mere understanding to the modes
and laws of spiritual existence. In this sense I have
used the term ; and in this sense I assert that the under-
standing or experiential faculty, unirradiated by the reason
and the spirit, has no appropriate object but the material
world in relation to our worldly interests. The far-sighted
prudence of man, and the more narrow but at the same
time far less fallible cunning of the fox, are both no other
than a nobler substitute for salt, in order that the hog may
not putrefy before its destined hour.

It must not, however, be overlooked that this insula-
tion of the understanding is our own act and deed. The
man of healthful and undivided intellect uses his under-
standing* in this state of abstraction only as a tool or

* Perhaps the safer use of the term, understanding, for
general purposes, is, to take it as the mind, or rather as the
man himself considered as aconcipient as well as percipient
being, and reason as a power supervening. The want of a
clear notion respecting the nature of reason may be traced
to the difficulty of combining the notion of an organ of sense,
or a new sense, with the notion of the appropriate and pe-
culiar objects of that sense, so that the idea evolved from
this synthesis shall be the identity of both. By reason we
know that God is : but God is himself the Supreme Reason.
And this is the proper difference between all spiritual facul-
ties and the bodily senses ; — the organs of spiritual ap-
prehension having objects consubstantial with themselves
(oiAoovvia), or being themselves their own objects, that is,
self-contemplative.

APPENDIX B. 265

organ ; even as the arithmetician uses numbers, that is, as
the means not the end of knowledge. Our Shakspeare
in agreement both with truth and the philosophy of his
age names it " discourse of reason," as an instrumental
faculty belonging to reason : and Milton opposes the dis-
cursive to the intuitive, as the lower to the higher,

DiflFering but in degree, in kind the same.

Reason may or rather must be used in two different yet
correlative senses, which are nevertheless in some measure
reunited by a third. In its highest sense, and which is the
ground and source of the rest, reason is being, the Supreme
Being contemplated objectively, and in abstraction from the
personality. Tbe Word or Logos is Ufe, and communicates
life ; is light and conununicates light. Now this light con-
templated in abstracto is reason. Again as constituents of
reason we necessarily contemplate unity and distinctity.
Now the latter as the polar opposite to the former implies
plurality : therefore I use the plural, distinctities, and say,
that the distinctities considered apart from the unity are the
ideas, and reason is the ground and source of ideas. This
is the first and absolute sense.

The second sense comes when we speak of ourselves as
possessing reason ; and this we can no otherwise define
than as the capability with which God had endowed man of
beholding, or being conscious of, the divine light. But
this very capability is itself that light, not as the divine
light, but as the life or indwelling of the living Word,
which is our light ; that is, a life whereby we are capable
of the Hght, and by which the light is present to us, as a
being which we may call ours, but which I cannot call
mine : for it is the life that we individualize, while the
light, as its correlative opposite, remains universal.

Most pregnant is the doctrine of opposite correlatives as
appUed to Deity, but only as manifested in man, not to the
Godhead absolutely. iSSr.

266 APPENDIX B.

Of the discursive understanding, which forms for itself
general notions and terms of classification for the purpose
of comparing and arranging phtBnomena, the characteristic
is clearness without depth. It contemplates the unity of
things in their limits only, and is consequently a know-
ledge of superficies without substance. So much so in-
deed, that it entangles itself in contradictions in the very
effort of comprehending the idea of substance. The com-
pleting power which unites clearness with depth, the ple-
nitude of the sense with the comprehensibility of the un-
derstanding, is the imagination, impregnated with which
the understanding itself becomes intuitive, and a living
power. The reason, (not the abstract reason, not the
reason as the mere organ of science, or as the faculty of
scientific principles and schemes a priori ; but reason) as
the integral spirit of the regenerated man, reason substan-
tiated and vital, one only, yet manifold, overseeing all,
and going through all understanding; the breath of the
power of God, and a pure influence from the glory of the
Almighty ; which remaining in illsc^/' regenerateth all other
powers, and in all ages entering into holy souls maketh
them friends of God and prophets ; (Wisdom of Solomon,
c. vii.) this reason without being either the sense, the
understanding or the imagination, contains all three with-
in itself, even as the mind contains its thoughts, and is
present in and through them all; or as the expression
pervades the different features of an intelligent coun-
tenance. Each individual must bear witness of it to his
own mind, even as he describes life and light : and with
the silence of light it describes itself, and dwells in us
only as far as we dwell in it. It cannot in strict language
be called a faculty, much less a personal property, of any
human mind. He, with whom it is present, can as little
appropriate it, whether, totally or by partition, as he can
claim ownership in the breathing air or make an inclosure
in the cope of heaven.

APPENDIX B. 267

The object of the preceding discourse was to recom-
mend the Bible, as the end and centre of our reading and
meditation. I can truly affirm of myself, that my studies
have been profitable and availing to me only so far as I
have endeavoured to use all my other knowledge as a
glass enabling me to receive more light in a wider field
of vision from the word of God. If you have accompa-
nied me thus far, thoughtful reader, let it not weary you
if I digress for a few moments to another book, likewise a
revelation of God — the great book of his servant Nature.
That in its obvious sense and literal interpretation it de-
clares the being and attributes of the Almighty Father,
none but the fool in heart has ever dared gainsay. But
it has been the music of gentle and pious minds in all
ages, it is the poetry of all human nature, to read it like-
wise in a figurative sense, and to find therein correspon-
dencies and symbols of the spiritual world,

I have at this moment before me, in the flowery mea-
dow, on which my eye is now reposing, one of its most
soothing chapters, in which there is no lamenting word,
no one character of guilt or anguish. For never can I look
knd meditate on the vegetable creation without a feeling
similar to that with which we gaze at a beautiful infant
that has fed itself asleep at its mother's bosom, and smiles
in its strange dream of obscure yet happy sensations. The
same tender and genial pleasure takes possession of me,
and this pleasure is checked and drawn inward by the
like aching melancholy, by the same whispered remon-
strance, and made restless by a similar impulse of aspira-
tion. It seems as if the soul said to herself: From this
state hast thou fallen ! Such shouldst thou still become,
thy self all permeable to a holier power! thy self at once
hidden and glorified by its own transparency, as the ac-
cidental and dividuous in this quiet and harmonious ob-
ject is subjected to the life and light of nature; to that
life and light of nature, I say, which shines in every plant

'-^68 APPENDIX B.

and flower, even as the transmitted power, love and wis-
dom of God over all fills, and shines through, nature!
But what the plant is by an act not its own and uncon-
sciously — that must thou make thyself to become — must
by prayer and by a watchful and unresisting spirit, join
at Jeast with the preventive and assisting grace to make
thyself, in that light of conscience which inflameth not,
and with that knowledge which pufFeth not up !

But further, and with particular reference to that un-
divided reason, neither merely speculative or merely
practical, but both in one, which I have in this annota-
tion endeavoured to contra-distinguish from the under-
standing, I seem to myself to behold in the quiet objects,
on which I am gazing, more than an arbitrary illustralion,
more than a mere simile, the work of my own fancy. I
feel an awe, as if there were before my eyes the same power
as that of the reason — the same power in a lower dignity,
and therefore a symbol established in the truth of things.
I feel it alike, whether I contemplate a single tree or
flower, or meditate on vegetation throughout the world,
as one of the great organs of the life of nature. Lo !* —
with the rising sun it commences its outward life and
enters into open communion with all the elements, at once
assimilating them to itself and to each other. At the same
moment it strikes its roots and unfolds its leaves, absorbs
and respires, steams forth its cooling vapour and finer

* The remainder of this paragraph mrght properly form
the conclusion of a disquisition on the spirit, as suggested
by meditative observation of natural objects, and of our own
thoughts and impulses without reference to any theological
dogma, or any reHgious obligation to receive it as a revealed
truth, but traced to the law of the dependence of the parti-
cular on the universal, the first being the organ of the se-
cond, as the lungs in relation to the atmosphere, the eye to
light, crystal to fluid, figure to space, and the like. 1822.

APPENDIX B. 269

fragrance, and breathes a repairing spirit, at once the food
and tone of the atmosphere, into the atmosphere that feeds
it. Lo ! — at the touch of light how it returns an air akin
to light, and yet with the same pulse effectuates its own
secret growth, still contracting to fix what expanding it
had refined. Lo! — ^how upholding the ceaseless plastic
motion of the parts in the profoundest rest of the whole
it becomes the visible organismus of the entire silent or
elementary life of nature and, therefore, in incorporating
the one extre'me becomes the symbol of the other; the
natural symbol of that higher life of reason, in which the
whole series (known to us in our present state of being)
is perfected, in which, therefore, all the subordinate gra-
dations recur, and are re-ordained in more abundant
honor. We had seen each in its own cast, and we now
recognize them all as co-existing in the unity of a higher
form, the crown and completion of the earthly, and the
mediator of a new and heavenly series.* Thus finally,

* It may be shown that the plus or universal, which man
as the minus or individual finds his correlative pole, can
only be God. I. This may be proved, exhaustively, that
all lower universals are already attached to lower particu-
lars. II. It may be proved by the necessity of harmonic
correspondence. The principle of personal individuality
being- the transcendent — (that is, the highest species oi genus
X, in which X rises, moritur, at dum moritur resurgit, into
the higher genus Y,) — the personal principle, I say, being
the transcendent of all particulars, requires for its corres-
pondent opposite the transcendent of all universals : and
this is God . The doctrine of the spirit thus generally con-
ceived, and without being matured into any more distinct
conceptions by revealed Scripture, is the ground of theo-
pathy, religious feeling, or devoutness : while the reason,
— as contra-distinguished from the understanding by logical
processes, without reference to revelation or to reason sensu
eminenti, as the self-subsistent Reason or Logos, and merely

270 APPENDIX B.

the vegetable creation, in the simplicity and uniformity of
its internal structure symbolizing the unity of nature,
while it represents the omniformity of her delegated func-
tions in its external variety and manifoldness, becomes the
record and chronicle of her ministerial acts, and inchases
the vast unfolded volume of the earth with the hierogly-
phics of her history.

■ O ! — if as the plant to the orient beam, we would but
open out our minds to that holier light, which ' heivg com-
pared with light is found before it, more heautifol than
the sun, and above all the order of stars,' (Wisdom of
Solomon, vii. 29.) — ungcnial, alien, and adverse to our
very nature would appear the boastful wisdom which, be-
ginning in France, gradually tampered with the taste and
literature of all the most civilized nations of Christendom,
seducing the understanding from its natural allegiance,
and therewith from all its own lawful claims, titles, and
privileges. It was placed as a ward of honour in the

considered as the endowment of the human will and mind,
having- two definitions accordingly as it is exercised prac-
tically or intellectually, — is the ground of theology, or reli-
gious belief. Both are good in themselves as far as they
go, and productive — the former — of a sensibility to the
beautiful in art and nature, of imaginativeness and moral
enthusiasm ; — the latter — of insight, comprehension, and a
philosophic mind. They are good in themselves, and the
preconditions of the better; and therefore these disquisi-
tions would form an appropriate conclusion to The Aids to
Reflection. For as many as are wanting either in leisure
or inclination, or belief of their own competency to go further
— from the miscellaneous to the systematic — that volume is
a whole, and for them the whole work. While for others
these disquisitions form the drawbridge, the connecting
link, between the disciplinary and preparatory rules and
exercises of reflection, and the system of faith and philo-
sophy of S. T. C. 1827.

APPENDIX B. 271

courts of faith and reason ; but it chose to dwell alone,
and became a harlot by the way-side. The commercial
spirit, and the ascendancy of the experimental philosophy
which took place at the close of the seventeenth century,
though both good and beneficial in their own kinds, com-
bined to foster its corruption. Flattered and dazzled by
the real or supposed discoveries which it had made, the
more the understanding was enriched, the more did it
become debased ; till science itself put on a selfish and
sensual character, and immediate utility, in exclusive re-
ference to the gratification of the wants and appetites of
the animal, the vanities and caprices of the social, and
the ambition of the political, man was imposed as the test
of all intellectual powers and pursuits. Worth was de-
graded into a lazy synonyme of value ; and value was
exclusively attached to the interest of the senses. But
though the growing alienation and self-sufficiency of the
understanding was perceptible at an earlier period, yet it
seems to have been about the middle of the last century,
under the influence of Voltaire, D'Alembert, Diderot, say
generally of the so-called Encyclopedists, and alas ! — of
their crowned proselytes and disciples, Frederick, Joseph,
and Catherine, — that the human understanding, and this
too in its narrowest form, was tempted to throw off all
show of reverence to the spiritual and even to the moral
powers and impulses of the soul ; and usurping the name
of reason openly joined the banners of Anti-christ, at once
the pander and the prostitute of sensuality, and whether
in the cabinet, laboratory, the dissecting room, or the
brothel, alike busy in the schemes of vice and irreligion.
Well and truly might it, thus personified in our fancy,
have been addressed in the words of the evangelical Pro-
phet, which I have once before quoted. Thou hast said.
None seeth me. Thy wisdom and thy knowledge, it hath
perverted thee — and thou hast said in thy heart, I am, and
there is none beside me. (Isaiah, xlvii. 10.)

272 APPENDIX B.

Prurient, bustling, and revolutionary, this French wis-
dom has never more than grazed the surfaces of knovi^-
ledge. As political economy, in its zeal for the increase
of food it habitually overlooked the qualities and even the
sensations of those that were to feed on it. As ethical
philosophy, it recognized no duties which it could not
reduce into debtor and creditor accounts on the ledgers of
self-love, where no coin was sterling which could not
be rendered into agreeable sensations. And even in its
height of self-complacency as chemical art, greatly am I
deceived if it has not from the very beginning mistaken
the products of destruction, cadavera rerum, for the ele-
ments of composition : and most assuredly it has dearly
purchased a few brilliant inventions at the loss of all com-
munion with life and the spirit of nature. As the pro-
cess, such the result; — a heartless frivolity alternating
with a sentimentality as heartless ; an ignorant contempt
of antiquity ; a neglect of moral self-discipline; a deaden-
ing of the religious sense, even in the less reflecting forms
of natural piety ; a scornful reprobation of all consola-
tions and secret refreshings from above, — and as the caput
■ mortuum of human nature evaporated, a French nature of
rapacity, levity, ferocity, and presumption.

Man of understanding, canst thou command the stone
to lie, canst thou bid the flower bloom, where thou hast
placed it in thy classification ? — Canst thou persuade the
living or the inanimate to stand separate even as thou
hast separated them ? — -And do not far rather all things
spread out before thee in glad confusion and heedless in-
termixture, even as a lightsome chaos on which the Spirit
of God is moving ? — Do not all press and swell under
one attraction, and live together in promiscuous harmony,
each joyous in its own kind, and in the immediate neigh-
bourhood of myriad others that in the system of thy un-
derstanding are distant as the poles ? — If to mint and
to remember names delight thee, still arrange and classify

APPENDIX B. 273

and pore and pull to pieces, and peep into death to look
for life, as moukies put their hands behind a looking-
glass ! Yet consider in the first sabbath which thou im-
posest on the busy discursion of thought, that all this is
at best little more than a technical memory : that like
can only be known by like : that as truth is the correla-
tive of being, so is the act of being the great organ of
truth: that in natural no less than in moral science^
qiMntum sumus, scimus.

That which we find in ourselves is (gradu mutato) the
substance and the life of all our knowledge. Without this
latent presence of the ' I am,' all modes of existence in
the external world would flit before us as colored shadows,
with no greater depth, root, or fixure, than the image of a
rock hath in a gliding stream or the rainbow on a fast-
sailing rain-storm. The human mind is the compass, in
which the laws and actuations of all outward essences are
revealed as the dips and declinations. (The application
of geometry to the forces and movements of the material
world is both proof and instance.) The fact, therefore,
that the mind of man in its own primary and constituent
forms represents the laws of nature, is a mystery which
of itself should suffice to make us religious : for it is a
problem of which God is the only solution, God, the one
before all, and of all, and through all ! — True natural
philosophy is comprized in the study of the science and
language of symbols. The power delegated to nature is
all in every part : and by a symbol I mean, not a meta-
phor or allegory or any other figure of speech or form of
fancy, but an actual and essential part of that, the whole
of which it represents. Thus our Lord speaks symboli-
cally when he says that the eye is the light of the body.
The genuine naturalist is dramatic poet in his own line :
and such as our myriad-minded Shakspeare is, compared
with the Racines and Metastasios, such and by a similar
process of self-transformation would the man be, com-

T

274 APPENDIX B.

pared with the doctors of the mechanic school, who should
construct his physiology on the heaven-descended, Know
Thyself,

Even the visions of the night speak to us of powers
within us that are not dreamt of in their day-dream of
philosophy. The dreams, which we most often remember,
are produced by the nascent sensations and inward mo-
tiuncula: (the fluxions) of the waking state. Hence, too
they are more capable of being remembered, because
passing more gradually into our waking thoughts they are
more likely to associate with our first perceptions after
sleep. Accordingly, when the nervous system is ap-
proaching to the waking state, a sort of under-conscious-
ness blends with our dreams, that in all we imagine as
seen or heard our own self is the ventriloquist, and
moves the slides in the magic- lantern. We dream about
things.

But there are few persons of tender feelings and re-
flecting habits, who have not, more or less often in the
course of their lives, experienced dreams of a very different
kind, and during the profoundest sleep that is compatible
with after-recollection,^states, of which it would scarcely
be too bold to say that we dream the things themselves ;
so exact, minute, and vivid beyond all power of ordinary
memory is the portraiture, so marvellously perfect is our
brief metempsychosis into the very being, as it were, of the
person who seems to address us. The dullest wight is at
times a Shakspeare in his dreams. Not only may we
expect that men of strong religious feelings, but little re-
ligious knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to regard
such occurrences as supernatural visitations ; but it ought
not to surprise us, if such dreams should sometimes be
confirmed by the event, as though they had actually pos-
sessed a character of divination. For who shall decide,
how far a perfect reminiscence of past experiences, (of
many perhaps that had escaped our reflex consciousness

APPENDIX B. 275

at the time) — who shall determine, to what extent this
reproductive imagination, unsophisticated by the will, and
undistracted by intrusions from the senses, may or may
not be concentered and sublimed into foresight and pre-
sentiment ? — ^There would be nothing herein either J:o
foster superstition on the one hand, or to justify contemp-
tuous disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but credulity
seen fiom behind, bowing and nodding assent to the ha-
bitual and the fashionable.

To the touch (or feeling) belongs the proximate; to
tlie eye the distant. Now little as I might be disposed
to believe, I should be still less inclined to ridicule, the
conjecture that in the recesses of our nature, and unde-
veloped, there might exist an inner sense, (and therefore
appertaining wholly to time,) — a sense hitherto without a
name, which as a higher third combined and potentially
included bodi the former. Thus gravitation combines and
includes the powers of attraction and repulsion, which
are the constituents of matter, as distinguished from body .
And thus, not as a compound, but as a higher third, it
realizes matter (of itself ens Jluxionale et prajluum) and
constitutes it body. Now suppose that this nameless
inner sense stood to the relations of time as the power of
gravitation to those of space ? A priori, a presence to
the future is not more mysterious or transcendant than a
presence to the distant, than a power equally immediate
to the most remote objects, as it is to the central mass of
its own body, toward which it seems, as it were, enchant-
ing them : for instance, the gravity in the sun and moon
to the spring tides of our ocean. The true reply to such
an hypothesis would be, that as there is nothing to be said
against its possibility, there is, likewise, nothing to be
urged for its reality ; and that the facts may be rationally
explained without it.

It has been asked why knowing my self to be the object
of personal slander, (slander as unprovoked as it is ground-

■276 APPENDIX B.

less, unless acts of kindness are provocation) I furnish
this material for it by pleading in palliation of so chime-
rical a fancy. With that half-playful sadness, which at
once sighs and smiles, I answered : why not for that very
■reason ?^ — namely, in order that my calumniator might
have, if not a material, yet some basis for the poison-gas
of his invention to combine with ? — But no, — pure false-
hood is often for the time the most eifectiv*; for how can
a man confute what he can only contradict? — Our opi-
nions and principles cannot prove an alibi. Think only
what your feelings would be if you heard a v^etch deli-
berately perjure himself in support of an infamous accu-
sation, so remote from all fact, so smooth and homogene-
ous in its untruth, such a round Robin of mere lies, that
you knew not which to begin with ? — What could you
do, but look round with horror and astonishment, plead-
ing silently to human nature itself, — and perhaps (as hath
really been the case with me) forget both the slanderer and
his slander in the anguish inflicted by the passiveness of
your many professed friends, whose characters you had
ever been as eager to clear from the least stain of reproach
as if a coal of fire had been on your own skin ? — But
enough of this which would not have occurred to me at
all, at this time, had it not been thvis suggested.

The feeling, which in point of fact chiefly influenced
me in the preceding half apology for the supposition of a
divining power in the human mind, arose out of the con-
viction that an age or nation may become free from certain
prejudices, beliefs, and superstitious practices in two
ways. It may have really risen above them ; or it may
have fallen below them, and become too bad for their
continuance. The rustic would have little reason to
■thank the philosopher who should give him true concep-
tions of ghosts, omens, dreams, and presentiments at the
price of abandoning his faith in Providence and in the
- continued existence of his fellow-creatures after their death.

APPENDIX, B, 277

The teeth of the old serpent sowed by the Cadmuses of
French literature under Lewis XV. produced a plenteous
crop of such philosophers and truth-trumpeters in the
reign of his ill-fated successor. They taught many facts,
historical, political, physiological, and ecclesiastical, dif-
fusing their notions so widely that the very ladies and
hair-dressers of Paris became fluent encyclopedists ; and
the sole price, which their scholars paid for these treasures
of new light, was to believe Christianity an imposture, the
Scriptures a forgery, the worship of God superstition, hell
a fable, heaven a dream, our life without providence, and
our death without hope. What can be conceived more
natural than the result, that self-acknowledged beasts
should first act, and next suffer themselves to be treated,
as beasts ?

Thank heaven !^ — notwithstanding the attempts of Tho-
mas Payne and his compeers, it is not so bad with us.
Open infidelity has ceased to be a means even of gratify-
ing, vanity: for the leaders of the gang themselves turned
apostates to Satan, as soon as the number of their prose-
lytes became so large that atheism ceased to give distinc-
tion. Nay,, it became a mark of original thinking to de-
fend the Creed and the Ten Commandments : so the
strong minds veered round, and religion came again into
fashion. But still I exceedingly doubt, whether the su-
perannuation of sundry superstitious fancies be the result
of any real diffusion of sound thinking in the nation at
large. For instance, there is now no call for a Picus
Mirandula to write seven books against astrology. It
might seem, indeed, that a single fact like that of the loss
of Kempenfeldt and his crew, or the explosion of the ship
L' Orient, would prove to the common sense of the most
ignorant, that even if astrology could be true, the astrolo-
gers must be false : for if such a science were possible it
could be a science only for gods. Yet Erasmus, the
prince of sound .common sense, is known to have disap-

278 APPENDIX B.

proved of his friend's hardihood, and did not himself ven-
ture beyond scepticism : and the immortal Newton, to
■whom more than to any othe human being Europe owes
the purification of its general notions concerning the hea-
venly bodies, studied astrology with much earnestness and
did not reject it till he had demonstrated the falsehood of
all its pretended grounds and principles. The exit of two
or three superstitions is no more a proof of the entry of
good sense, than the strangling of a despot at Algiers or
Constantinople is a symptom of freedom. If therefore
not the mere disbelief, but the grounds of such dibelief
must decide the question of our superior illumination, I
confess that I could not from my own observations on the
books and conversation of the age vote for the affirmative
without much hesitation. As many errors are despised
by men from ignorance as from knowledge. Whether
that be not the case vdth regard to divination, is a query
that rises in my mind (notwithstanding my fullest convic-
tion of the non-existence of such a power) as often as I
read the names of the great statesmen and philosophers,
which Cicero enumerates in the introductory paragraphs of
his work de Divinatione. — Socrates, omnesque Socratici,
* * * plurimisque locis gravis auctor DemocrituSy * * *
Cratippusque,familiaris noster, quern ego parem summis
Peripateticisjudico, * *** prasensionem rerumfuturarum
comprobarunt.* Of all the theistic philosophers, Xeno-
phanes was the only one who wholly rejected it. A Stoicis
degeneravit Panatius, nee tamen aiisus est negni'e vim esse
divinandi, sed duhitare se dixit.f Nor was this a mere out-
ward assent to the opinions of the State. Many of them
subjected the question to the most exquisite arguments,
and supported the affirmative not merely by experience,
but (especially the Stoics, who of all the sects most culti-
vated psychology) by a minute analysis of human nature

APPENDIX B. 179

audits faculties: while on the mind of Cicero himself (as
on that of Plato with regard to a state of retribution after
death) the universality of the faith in all times and countries
appears to have made the deepest impression. Gentem
quidem nullum video, neque tarn humanam atque doctam,
neque tarn immanem tamque harharam, qua non significari
futura, et a quibusdam intelligi pradicique posse censeat*
I fear that the decrease in our feelings of reverence to-
wards mankind at large, and our increasing aversion to
every opinion not grounded in some appeal to the senses,
have a larger share in this our emancipation from the pre-
judices of Socrates and Cicero, than reflection, insight,
or a fair collation of the facts and arguments. For myself,
I would much rather see the English people at large believe
somewhat too much than merely just enough, if the latter is
to be produced, or must be accompanied, by a contempt
or neglect of the faith and intellect of their forefathers.
For not to say, what yet is most certain, that a people can-
not believe just enough, and that there are errors which no
wise man will treat with rudeness, while there is a proba-
bility that they may be the refraction of some great truth
as yet below the horizon ; it remains most worthy of our
serious consideration, whether a fancied superiority to
their ancestors' intellects must not be speedily followed in
the popular mind by disrespect for their ancestors' institu-
tions. Assuredly it is not easy to place any confidence in
a form of Church or State, of the founders of which we have
been taught to believe that their philosophy was jargon,
and their feelings and notions rank superstition. Yet are
we never to grow wiser? — Are we to be credulous by
birth-right, and take ghosts, omens, visions, and witch-
craft, as an heir-loom? — God forbid. A distinction
must be made, and such a one as shall be equally availing
and profitable to men of all ranks. Is this practicable ? —

♦ L. I. s. 1. Ed.

280 APPENDIX B.

Yes !— it exists. It is found in the study of the Old and
New Testament, if only it be combined with a spiritual
partaking of the Redeemer's Blood, of which, mysterious
as the symbol may be, the sacramental Wine is no mere
or arbitrary memento. This is the only certain, and this
is the universal, preventive of all debasing superstitions ;
this is the true Haemony, (al/xa, blood, olvoq, wine)
which our Milton has beautifially allegorized in a passage
strangely overlooked by all his commentators. Bear in
mind, reader ! the character of a militant Christian, and
the results (in this life and in the next) of the Redemption
by the Blood of Christ; and so peruse the passage : —

Amongst the rest a small unsightly root,

But of divine eifect, he culled me out :

The leaf was darkish, and had prickles on it,

But in another country, as he said,

Bore a bright golden flower, but not in this soil !

Unknown and Uke esteem'd, and the dull swain

Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon ;

And yet more med'cinal is it than that Moly

That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave.

He called it Hccmony and gave it me.

And bade me keep it as of sovran use

'Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp,

Or ghastly furies' apparition. Comus.

These lines might be employed as an amulet against
delusions : for the man, who is indeed a Christian, will
as little think of informing himself concerning die future
by dreams or presentiments, as of looking for. a distant
object at broad noon-day with a lighted taper in his hand.

But whatever of good and intellectual our nature worketh
in us, it is our appointed task to render gradually our ovra
work. For all things that surround us, and all things
that happen unto us, have (each doubtless its own provi-
dential purpose, but) all one common final cause : namely,

APPENDIX B. 281

the increase ot consciousness in such wise that whatever
part of the terra incognita of our nature the uicreased
consciousness discovers, our will may conquer and brifig
into subjection to itself under the sovereignty of reason.

The leading differences between mechanic and vital
philosophy may all be drawn from one point : naniely,
that the former demanding for every mode and act of ex-
istence real or possible visibility, knows only of distance
and nearness, composition (or rather juxta-position) arid
decomposition, in short the relations of unproductive par-
ticles to each other; so that in every instance the result is
the exact sum of the component quantities, as in arith-
metical addition. This is the philosophy of death, and
only of a dead nature can it hold good. In life, much
more in spirit, and in a living and spiritual philosophy,
the two component counter-powers actually interpenetrate
each other, and generate a higher third, including both
the former, ita tamen ut sit alia et major.

To apply this to the subject of this present comment.
The elements (the factors, as it were) of religion are reason
and understanding. If the composition stopped in itself,
an understanding thus rationalized would tead to the
admission of the general doctrines of natural religion, the
belief of a God, and of immortality; and probably to arl
acquiescence in the history and ethics of the Gospel. But
still it would be a speculative faith, and in the nature of
a theory ; as if the main object of religion were to solve
difficulties for the satisfaction of the intellect. Now' this
state of mind, which alaS! is the state of too many among
our self-entitled rational religionists, is a mere balance or
compromise of the two powers, not that living and gene-
rative interpenetration of both which would give being to
essential religion, — to the religion at the birth of which
we receive the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba,
Father; the Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit,
that we are the children oj' God. (Rom. viii, X5, 16.)

282 APPENDIX B.

In religion there is no abstraction. To the unity and in-
finity of the Divine Nature, of which it is the partaker, it
adds the fullness, and to the fullness, the grace and the
creative overflowing. That which intuitively it at once
beholds and adores, praying always, and rejoicing always
— that doth it tend to become. In all things and in each
thing — for the Almighty Goodness doth not create gene-
ralities or abide in abstractions — in each, the meanest,
object it bears witness to a mystery of infinite solution.
Thus beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, it is
changed into the same image from glory to glory. (2 Cor.
iii. 18.) For as it is born and not made, so must it grow.
As it is the image or symbol of its great object, by the
organ of this similitude, as by an eye, it seeth that same
image throughout the creation ; and from the same cause
sympathizeth with all creation in its groans to be redeemed.
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and tra-
vaileth in earnest expectation (Rom. viii. 20 — 23) of a
renewal of its forfeited power, the power, namely, of re-
tiring into that image, which is its substantial form and
true life, from the vanity of self, which then only is when
for itself it hath ceased to be. Even so doth religion
finitely express the unity of the infinite Spirit by being a
total act of the soul. And even so doth it represent his
fullness by its depth, by its substantiality, and by an all-
pervading vital warmth which — relaxing the rigid, conso-
lidating the dissolute, and giving cohesion to that which
is about to sink down and fall abroad, as into the dust
and crumble of the grave — is a life within life, evermore
organizing the soul anew.

Nor doth it express the fullness only of the Spirit. It
likewise represents his overflowing by its communicative-
ness, budding and blossoming forth in all earnestness of
persuasion, and in all words of sound doctrine : while,
like the citron in a genial soil and climate, it bears a
golden fruitage of good- works at the same time, the ex-

APPENDIX B. 283

ample waxing in contact with the exhortation, as the ripe
orange beside the opening orange-flower. Yea, even his
creativeness doth it shadow out by its own powers of im-
pregnation and production, (being such a one as Paul the
aged, and also a prisoner for Jesus Christ, who begat to
a lively hope his son Onesimus in his bonds) regenerating
in and through the Spirit the slaves of corruption, and
fugitives from a far greater and harder master than Phile-
mon. The love of God, and therefore God himself who
is love, religion strives to express by love, and measures
its growth by the increase and activity of its love. For
Christian love is the last and divinest birth, the harmony,
unity, and god-like transfiguration of all the vital, intel-
lectual, moral, and spiritual powers. Now it manifests
itself as the sparkling and ebullient spring of well-doing
in gifts and in labors ; and now as a silent fountain of
patience and long-suffering, the fulness of which no hatred
or persecution can exhaust or diminish ; a more than con-
queror in the persuasion, that neither death, nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present,
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other
creature, shall be able to separate it from the love of God
which is in Christ Jesus the Lord. (Rom. viii. 38, 39.)
From God's love through his Son, crucified for us from
the beginning of the world, religion begins : and in love
towards God and the creatures of God it hath its end
and completion. O, how heaven-like it is to sit among
brethren at the feet of a minister who speaks under the
influence of love and is heard under the same influence !
For all abiding and spiritual knowledge, infused into a
gratefiil and affectionate fellow Christian, is as the child
of the mind that infuses it. The delight which he gives
he receives ; and in that bright and liberal hour the glad-
dened preacher can scarce gather the ripe produce of to-
day without discovering and looking forward to the green
fruits and embryons, the heritage and reversionary wealth

284 APPENDIX C.

of the days to come ; till he bursts forth in prayer and
thanksgiving — The harvest truly is plenteous, hut the la-
bourers few. gracious Loi-d of the harvest, send forth
labourers into thy harvest ! There is no difference be-
tween the Jew and the Greek. Thou, Lord over all, art
rich to all that call upon thee. But how shall they call
an him in whom they have not believed? and how shall
th^y believe in him of whom they have not heard J and
how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall
they preach except they be sent ? And ! how beautiful
upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good
tidings, that publisheth peace, that bringeth glad tidings
of good things, that publisheth salvation ; that saith unto
the captive soul, Thy God reigneth ! God manifested in
the flesh hath redeemed thee ! Lord of the harvest,
send forth labourers into thy harvest.

Join with me, reader ! in the fervent prayer that we
may seek within us what we can never find elsewhere,
that we may find within us what no words can put there,
that one only true religion, which elevateth knowing into
being, which is at once the science of being, and the being
and the life of all genuine science.

(C.)

Not without great hesitation should I express a suspi-
cion concerning the genuineness of any the least im-
portant passage in the New Testament, unless I could
adduce the most conclusive evidence from the earliest
manuscripts and commentators, in support of its interpo-
lation : well knowing that such permission has already
opened a door to the most fearful license. It is indeed, in
its consequences, no less than an assumed right of picking
and chusing our religion out of the Scriptures. Most
assuredly I would never hazard a suggestion of this kind
in any instance in which the retention or the omission of
the words could toake the slightest difference with regard

APPENDIX C. 285

to feet, miracle, or precept. Still less would I start tbe
question, where the hypothesis of their interpolation could
be wrested to the discountenancing of any article of
doctrine concerning which dissension existed : no, not
though the doubt or disbelief of the doctrine had been
confined to those, whose faith few but themselves would
honor with the name of Christianity ; however reluctant
we might be, both from the courtesies of social life and
the nobler charities of "humility, to withhold from the
persons themselves the title of Christians.

But as there is nothing in Matthew xii. 40. which
would fall within this general rule, I dare permit myself
to propose the query, whether there does not exist internal
evidence of its being a gloss of some unlearned, though
pious, Christian of the first century, which has slipt into
the text? The following are my reasons. 1. It is at all
events a comment on the words of our Saviour, and no
part of his speech. 2. It interrupts the course and breaks
down the application of our Lord's argument, as addressed
to men who from their unwillingness to sacrifice their vain
traditions, gainful hypocrisy, and pride both of heart and
of demeanor, demanded a miracle for the confirmation of
moral truths that must have borne witness to their own
divinity in the consciences of all who had not rendered
themselves conscience-proof. 3. The text strictly taken
is irreconcilable with the fact as it is afterwards related,
and as it is universally accepted, I at least remember
no calculation of time, according to which the interspace
from Friday evening to the earliest dawn of Sunday morn-
ing, could be represented as three days and three nights.
As three days our Saviour himself speaks of it (John ii.
19) and so it would be described in common language as
well as according to the use of the Jews; but I can find
no other part of Scripture which authorizes the phrase of
three nights. This gloss is not found either in the repe-
tition of the circumstance by Matthew himself (xvi. 4^)

286 APPENDIX D.

nor in Mark, (viii. 12.) nor in Luke, (xii. 54.) Mark's
narration doth indeed most strikingly confirm my second
reason, drawn from the purpose of our Saviour's argu-
ment : for the allusion to the prophet Jonas is omitted
altogether, and the refusal therefore rests on the depravity
of the applicants, as proved by the wantonness of the ap-
plication itself. All signs must have been useless to such
men as long as the great sign of the times, the call to
repentance, remained without effect. 4. The gloss cor-
responds with the known fondness of the earlier Jewish
converts, and indeed of the Christians in general of the
first century, to bring out in detail and into exact square
every accommodation of the Old Testament, which they
either found in the Gospels, or made for themselves. It
is too notoriotis into what strange fancies, (not always at
saTe distance from dangerous errors) the oldest uninspired
writers of Christian Church were seduced by this passion
of transmuting without Scriptural authority incidents,names
and even mere sounds of the Hebrew Scriptures, into Evan-
gelical types and correspondencies.

An additional reason may perhaps occur to those who
alone would be qualified to appreciate its force ; namely,
to Biblical scholars familiar with the opinions and argu-
ments of sundry doctors, Rabbinical as well as Christian,
respecting the first and second chapter of Jonah.

(D.)

In all ages of the Christian Church, and in the later
period of the Jewish (that is, as soon as from their ac-
quaintance first with the Oriental, and afterwards with
the Greek, philosophy the precursory and preparative in-
fluences of the Gospel began to work) there have existed
individuals (Laodiceans in spirit, minims in faith, and
nominalists in philosophy) who mistake outlines for sub-
stance, and distinct images for clear conceptions ; with
whom therefore not to be a thing is the same as not to be

APPENDIX D, 287

at all. The contempt in which such persons hold the
works and doctrines of all theologians before Grotius, and
of all philosophers before Locke and Hartley (at least
before Bacon and Hobbes) is not accidental, nor yet alto-
gether owing to that epidemic of a proud ignorance occa-
sioned by a diflfused sciolism, which gave a sickly and
hectic shewiness to the latter half of the last century. It
is a real instinct of self-defence acting offensively by an-
ticipation. For the authority of all the greatest names of
antiquity is full and decisive against them ; and man, by
the very nature of his birth and growth, is so much the
creature of authority, that there is no way of effectually
resisting it, but by undermining the reverence for the past
in toto. Thus, the Jewish Prophets have, forsooth, a cer-
tain degree of antiquarian value, as being the only spe-
cimens extant of the oracles of a barbarous tribe; the
Evangelists are to be interpreted with a due allowance
for their superstitious prejudices concerning evil spirits,
and St. Paul never suffers them to forget that he had
been brought up at the feet of a Jewish Rabbi ! The
Greeks indeed were a fine people in works of taste ; but
as to their philosophers — the writings of Plato are smoke
and flash from the witch's cauldron of a disturbed imagi-
nation : — Aristotle's works a quickset hedge of fruitless
and thorny distinctions ; and all the philosophers before
Plato and Aristotle fablers and allegorizers !

But these men have had their day : and there are signs
of the times clearly announcing that that day is verging to
its close. Even now there are not a few, on whose con-
victions it will not be uninfluencive to know, that the
power, by which men are led to the truth of things, in-
stead of the appearances, was deemed and entitled the
living and substantial Word of God by the soundest of
the Hebrew Doctors ; that the eldest and most profound
of the Greek philosophers demanded assent to their
doctrine, mainly as ao^ia BtonapaSoToQ^ that is, a tradi-

288 APPENDIX D.

tiotiary wisdom that had its origin in inspiration ; that
these men referred the same power to the wvp deilwov
vTTo SioiKovvTOQ Aoyov ; and that they were scarcely less
express than their scholar Philo Judaeus, in their affir-
mations of the Logos, as no mere attribute or quality, no
mode of abstraction, no personification, but literally and
mysteriously Deus alter et idem.

When education has disciplined the minds of our
gentry for austerer study ; when educated men shall be
ashamed to look abroad for truths that can be only found
within ; within themselves they will discover, intuitively
wiH they discover, the distinctions between the light thai
lighteth every man that cometh into the world ; and the
understanding, which forms the peculium of each man,
as different in extent and value from another man's un-
derstanding, as his estate may be from his neighbour's
estate. The words of St. John, i. 7 — 12. are in their
whole extent interpretable of the understanding, which
derives its rank and mode of being in the human race
(that is, as far as it may be contrasted with the in-
Stiiict of the dog or elephant, in all, which constitutes it
human understanding) from the universal light. This
light therefore comes as to its own. Being rejected, it
leaves the understanding to a world of dreams and dark-
ness: for in it alone is life and the lije is the light of'
men. What then but apparitions can remain to a philo-
sophy, which strikes death through all things visible and
invisible; satisfies itself then only when it can explain
those abstractions of the outward senses, which by an
unconscious irony it names indifferently facts and pha-
nomena, mechanically — that is, by the laws of death ;
arid brands with the name of mysticism every solution
gi'ounded in life, or the powers and intuitions of life ?

On the other hand, if the light be received by faith, to
such understandings it delegates the privilege {ilovaiav) to
become sons of God, expanding while it elevates, even

APPENDIX D. 289

as the beams of the sun incorporate with the mist, and
make its natural darkness and earthly nature the bearer
and interpreter of their own glory. 'Eav ^rj TriGTevffrjrt,
ov firj avvfJTs.

The very same truth is found in a fragment of the
Ephesian Heraclitus, preserved by Stobaeus. Siv v6q)
Xtyovrag laxvpi^eaBai ^(^pri r^ ^vv(^ TrdvTwv rps^ovrai
yap TravTEQ ot avS'pwTTivoi vooi virb ivoq rov Beiov (Aoyov)
KpariX yap roffovrov okouov k^iXei, kul t^apKU Tract /cat
irtpiyiverai.* — To discourse rationally (if we would ren-
der the discursive understanding discourse of reason) it
behoves us to derive strength from that which is common
to all men; (the light that lighteth every man.) For all
human understandings are nourished by the one Divine
Word, whose power is commensurate with his will, and
is sufficient for all and overfioweth, (shineth in darkness,
and is not contained therein, or comprehended hy the
darkness.)

This was Heraclitus, whose book is nearly six hundred
years older than the Gospel of St. John, and who was
proverbially entitled the Dark (6 aKornvoq.) But it was a
darkness which Socrates would not condemn, t and which
would probably appear to enlightened Christians the dark-
ness of prophecy, had the work, which he hid in the
temple, been preserved to us. But obscurity is a word
of many meanings. It may be in the subject ; it maybe
in the author; or it maybe in the reader; — and this again
may originate in the state of the reader's heart; or in
that of his capacity; or in his temper; or in his acci-

* Serm. III. Ed.

t Diogenes Laertius has preserved the characteristic cri-
ticism of Socrates, ^aai S' 'EvpnriSrjv avT<p Sovtu tov
'RpaKXt'iTov avyypafifia, ipsaQai, Tt SokIi ; tov Ss davai,
' Ajiiv avvrjKa, yevvala' oi/xai Sk, kuI a fj.fi avvrJKa' ttXjjv
AyXiov yk Tivog ditrai KoXviA.j3rjrov. II. v. T. Ed.
V

290 APPENDIX D.

dental associations. Two kinds are especially pointed
out by the divine Plato in his Sophistes. The beauty of
the original is beyond my reach. On my anxiety to give
the fulness of the thought, I must ground my excuse for
construing rather than translating. The fidelity of the
version may well atone for its harshness in a passage that
deserves a meditation beyond the ministry of words, even
the words of Plato himself, though in them, or no where,
are to be heard the sweet sounds, that issued from the
head of Memnon at the touch of light. — " One thing is
the hardness to be understood of the sophist, another that
of the philosopher. The former retreating into the ob-
scurity of that which hath not true beings {roii fii) ovtoq)
and by long intercourse accustomed to the same, is hard
to be known on account of the duskiness of the place.
But the philosopher by contemplation of pure reason
evermore approximating to the idea of true being (jov
ovtoq) is by no means easy to be seen on account of the
splendor of that region. For tlie intellectual eyes of the
many flit, and are incapable of looking fixedly toward the
God-like.''*

* The passage is : —

Sfi. ToT' iiiv 5i] (tn\6(Jo^oi> ev ToiovTt^) rivi tott^ Kai
vvv Kai tTTtira avevpi'jtTOfxev, kdv ^TjrwjU.ei', iSeiv jU£V
XaXtTTov h'apyoji; Kai tovtov, erepov fifiv rporrov i] Te
Tov (jo(j>i(TTOv %a\£7i"6r?;c i] re tovtov.

OEAI. n.uc;

SE. 'O iiiv aTroSiSpdaKwv tii; ti)v tov fir) tivTog (TKOret-
voTtjTa, Tpi(3y TvpoaaTTTOfiivoQ avTrJQ, Sm to (TKOTEivbv
Torj roTTOv KaTavotjaai xaXfTrog. 17 yap ;

GEAI. "EoiKtv.

SE. '0 Wy£ (pik6(TO(poQ, Tjj TOV OVTOQ cid Out XoyiCfiHiv
TrporTKEinevog iSia, Sid to Xa/nrpov av ttiq j^^aipag OvSa-
fiwQ evTreTrjQ 6<p9fjvai' to, yap tjjq Ttbv ■KoXkihv ^vj^iJQ
oi.tl.iaTa Kaprepeiv Trpbg to Oeiov a(t)opiovTa aSvvaTa,
s, 84.— -Erf.

APPENDIX D. 291

There are, I am aware, persons who willingly admit,
that not in articles of faith alone, but in the heights of
geometry, and even in the necessary first principles of
natural philosophy, there exist truths of apodictic force in
reason, which the mere understanding strives in vain to
comprehend. Take, as an instance, the descending series
of infinites in every finite, a position which involves a
contradiction for the understanding, yet follows demon-
strably from the very definition, of body, as that which
fills a space. For wherever there is a space filled, there
must be an extension to be divided. When therefore
maxims generalized from appearances ( phie-nomena ) are
applied to substances; when rules, abstracted or de-
duced from forms in time and space, are used as measures
of spiritual being, yea even of the Divine Nature which
cannot be compared or classed; (For my thoughts are
not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the
Lord. Isaiah Iv. 8.) — such professors cannot but protest
against the whole process, as grounded on a gross meta-
basis eig aXXo yevog. Yet still they are disposed to tole-
rate it as a sort of sanative counter-excitement, that holds
in check the more dangerous disease of Methodism. But
I more than doubt of both the positions. I do not think
Methodism, Calvinistic or Wesleyan,the more dangerous
disease ; and even if it were, I should deny that it is at
all likely to be counteracted by the rational Christianity
of our modern Alogi (\6jog TriaTewg dXoyog !) who, mis-
taking unity for sameness, have been pleased by a mis-
nomer not less contradictory to their own tenets than in-
tolerant to those of Christians in general, to entitle them-
selves Unitarians. The two contagions attack each a
wholly different class of minds and tempers, and each
tends to produce and justify the other, accordingly as the
predisposition of the patient may chance to be. If fa-
naticism be as a fire in the flooring of the Church, the
idolism of the unspiritualized understanding is the dry

292

APPENDIX E.

rot in its beams and timbers. "^(3piv xPV <^I3svvveiv
naWov fi irvpKatrjv, says Heraditus.* It is not the sect
of Unitarian Dissenters, but the spirit of Unitarianism in
the members of the Church that alarms me. To what
open revilings, and to what whispered slanders, I subject
my name by this public avowal, I well know : dn-icrrovf
■ydp Tivag tivai e7ricyTV(j>wv 'KpaKXeirog, (prjaiv, aKovffai
ovK eTTiraiievovQ ovS' i'nrtlv' aWa Kui, kvveq wg, fSavZov-
aiv ov av fir) yiVMffKwcn.

(E.)
The accomplished author of the Arcadia, the star of
serenest brilliance in the glorious constellation of Eliza-
beth's court, our England's Sir Philip Sidney, the para-
mount gentleman of Europe, the poet, warrior, and statesj-
man, held high converse with Spenser on the idea of su-
persensual beauty ; on all " earthly fair and amiable," as
the symbol of that idea ; and on music and poesy as its
living educts. With the same genial reverence did the
younger Algernon commune with Harrington and Milton
on the idea of a perfect State; and in what sense it is
true, that the men (that is, the aggregate of the inhabitants
of a country at any one time) are made for the State, not
the State for the men. But these lights shine no longer,
or for a few. Exeunt : and enter in their stead Holo-
fernes and Costard, masked as Metaphysics and Com-
mon-sense. And these too have their ideas. The former
has an idea that Hume, Hartley, and Condillac have ex-
ploded all ideas, but those of sensation ; he has an idea
that he was particularly pleased with the fine idea of the
last-named philosopher, that there is no absurdity in
asking What color virtue is of? masmuch as the proper
philosophic answers would be black, blue, or bottle-green,
according as the coat, waistcoat and small-clothes might

* Dioo\ Laert. ix. 1. FA.

APPENDIX E. 293

chance to be of the person, the series of whose motions
had excited the sensations, which formed ovir idea of vir-
tue. The latter has no idea of a better-flavored haunch
of venison than he dined off at the Albion. He admits
that the French have an excellent idea of cooking in ge-
neral, but holds that their best cooks have no more idea
of dressing a turtle than the gourmands themselves, at
Paris, have any real idea of the true taste and color of
the fat.

It is not impossible that a portion of the high value
attached of late years to the dates and margins of our old
folios and quartos may be transferred to their contents.
Even now there exists a shrewd suspicion in the minds of
reading men, that not only Plato and Aristotle, but even
Scotus Erigena,* and the schoolmen from Peter Lombardf
to Duns ScotusJ are not such mere blockheads, as they
pass for with those who have never perused a line of their
writings. What the results may be, should this ripen into
conviction, I can but guess. But all history seems to
favor the persuasion I entertain, that in every age the
speculative philosophy in general acceptance, the meta-
physical opinions that happen to be predominant, will
influence the theology of that age. Whatever is proposed
for the belief, as true, must have been previously admitted
by reason as possible, as involving no contradiction to
the universal forms or laws of thought, no incompatibility
in the terms of the proposition ; and the determination on
this head belongs exclusively to the science of metaphy-
sics. In each article of faith embraced on conviction,
the mind determines, first intuitively on its logical possi-
bility ; secondly, discursively, on its analogy to doctrines
already believed, as well as on its correspondence to the

* He died at Oxford in 886. Ed.

t He died Bishop of Paris in 1164, Ed.

i He died in 1308. Ed.

294 APPENDIX E.

wants and faculties of our nature ; and thirdly, histori-
cally, on the direct and indirect evidences. But the pro-
bability of an event is a part of its historic evidence, and
constitutes its presumptive proof, or the evidence a pnon".
Now as the degree of evidence a posteriori, requisite in
order to a satisfactory proof of the actual occurrence of
any fact stands, in an inverse ratio to the strength or
weakness of the evidence a priori (that is, a fact pro-
bable in itself may be believed on slight testimony) ; it is
manifest that of the three factors, by which the mind is
determined to the admission or rejection of the point in
question, the last, the historical, must be greatly influenced
by the second, analogy, and that both depend on the first,
logical congruity, not indeed as their cause or preconsti-
tuent, but as their indispensable condition ; so that the
very inquiry concerning them is preposterous (tro0iff/ia
Tov v'Tspov TTpoTfpov) as loug as the first remains unde-
termined. Again: the history of human opinions (eccle-
siastical and philosophical history) confirms by manifold
instances, what attentive considerationof the position itself
might have authorized us to presume, namely, that on all
such subjects as are out of the sphere of the senses, and
therefore incapable of a direct proof from outward expe-
rience, the question whether any given position is logi-
cally impossible (incompatible with reason) or only in-
comprehensible (that is, not reducible to the forms of
sense, namely, time and space, or those of the under-
standing, namely, quantity, quality, and relation) in other
words, the question, whether an assertion be in itself in-
conceivable, or only by us unimaginable, will be decided
by each individual according to the positions assumed as
first principles in the metaphysical system which he has
previously adopted. Thus the existence of a Supreme
Reason, the creator of the material universe, involved a
contradiction for a disciple of Epicurus, who had con-
vinced himself that causative thought was tantamount to

APPENDIX E. 295

something out of nothing or substance out of shadow, and
incompatible with the axiom Nihil ex nihilo : While on
the contrary to a Platonist this position, that thought or
mind essentially, vel sensu eminenti, is causative, is neces-
sarily pre-supposed in every other truth, as that without
which every fact of experience would involve a contra-
diction in reason. Now it is not denied that the framers
of our Church Liturgy, Homilies and Articles, entertained
metaphysical opinions irreconcilable in their first prin-
ciples with the system of speculative philosophy which
has been taught in this country, and only not universally
received, since the asserted and generally believed defeat
of the Eishop of Worcester (the excellent Stillingfleet) in
his famous controversy with Mr. Locke. Assuredly
therefore it is well worth the consideration of our Clergy
whether it is at all probable in itself, or congruous with
experience, that the disputed Articles of our Church de
revelalis et credendis should be adopted with singleness of
heart, and in the light of knowledge, when the grounds
and first philosophy, on which the framers themselves
rested the antecedent credibility (may we not add even
the revelability ?) of the Articles in question, have been
exchanged for principles the most dissimilar, if not con-
trary ? It may be said and truly, that the Scriptures, and
not metaphysical systems, are our best and ultimate au-
thority. And doubtless, on Revelation must we rely
for the truth of the doctrines. Yet what is considered in-
capable of being conceived as possible, will be deemed
incapable of having been revealed as real : and that phi-
losophy has hitherto had a negative voice, as to the inter-
pretation of the Scriptures in high and doctrinal points,
is proved by the course of argument adopted in the con-
troversial volumes of all the orthodox divines from Origen
to Bishop Bull, as well as by the very different sense at-
tached to the same texts by the disciples of the modern
metaphysiqve, wherever they have been at liberty to form
their own creeds according to their own expositions.

296 APPENDIX E.

I repeat the question then : is it likely, that the faith of (
our ancestors will be retained when their philosophy is
rejected, — rejected a priori,as baseless notions not worth
inquiring into, as obsolete errors which it would be slay-
ing the slain to confute ? Should the answer be in the
negative, it would be no strained inference that the Clergy
at least, as the conservators of the national faith, and the
accredited representatives of learning in general amongst
us, might with great advantage to their own peace of
mind qualify themselves to judge for themselves concern-
ing the comparative worth and solidity of the two schemes.
Let them make the experiment, whether a patient re-
hearing of their predecessors' cause, with enough of predi-
lection for the men to counterpoise the prejudices against
their system, might not induce them to move for a new
trial ; — a result of no mean importance in my opinion,
were it on this account alone, that it would recall certain
ex-dignitaries in the book-republic from their long exile
on the shelves of our public libraries to their old familiar
station on the reading desks of our theological students.
However strong the presumption were in favor of prin-
ciples authorized by names that must needs be so dear
and venerable to a minister of the Church in England, as
those of Hooker, Whitaker, Field, Donne, Selden, Stil-
lingfleet, — (masculine intellects, formed under the robust
discipline of an age memorable for keenness of research,
and iron industry) — yet no undue preponderance from
any previous weight in this scale will be apprehended by
minds capable of estimating the counter-weights, which
it must first bring to a balance in the scale opposite. The
obstinacy of opinions that have always been taken for
granted, opinions unassailable even by the remembrance
of a doubt, the silent accrescence of belief from the un-
watched depositions of a general, never-contradicted,
hearsay; the concurring suffrage of modern books, all
pre-supposing or re-asserting the same principles with the

APPENDIX E. 297

same confidence, and with the same contempt for all
prior systems ; — and among these, -works of highest au-
thority, appealed to in our Legislature, and lectured on at
our Universities; the very books, perhaps, that called
forth our own first efforts in thinking ; the solutions and
confiitations in which must therefore have appeared ten-
fold more satisfactory from their having given us our first
information of the difficulties to be solved, of the opinions
to be confuted. — ^Verily, a clergyman's partiality towards
the tenets of his forefathers must be intense beyond all
precedent, if it can more than sustain itself against an-
tagonists so strong in themselves, and with such mighty
adjuncts.

Nor in this enumeration dare I (though fully aware of
the obloquy to which I am exposing myself) omit the
noticeable fact, that we have attached a portion even of
our national glory (not only to the system itself, that sys-
tem of disguised and decorous Epicureanism, which has
been the only orthodox philosophy of the last hundred
years ; but also, and more emphatically) to the name of
the assumed father of the system, who raised it to its pre-
sent pride of place, and almost universal acceptance
throughout Europe. And how was this effected ? Ex-
trinsically, by all the causes, consequences, and accom-
paniments of the Revolution in 1688 : by all the opinions,
interests, and passions, which counteracted by the sturdy
prejudices of the mal-contents with the Revolution ;
qualified by the compromising character of its chief con-
ductors; not more propelled by the spirit of enterprise
and hazard in our commercial towns, than kept in check
by the characteristic vis inerti<£ of the peasantry and land-
holders; both parties cooled and lessoned by the equal
failure of the destruction, and of the restoration, of mo-
narchy ; — it was effected extrinsically, I say, by the same
influences, which — (not in and of themselves, but with all
these and sundry other modifications) — combined under

^yB APPENDIX E.

an especial control of Providence to perfect and secure
the majestic temple of the British Constitution : — but the
very same which in France, without this providential
counterpoise, overthrew the motley fabric of feudal op-
pression to build up in its stead the madhouse of Jaco-
binism. Intrinsically, and as far as the philosophic scheme
itself is aloiae concerned, it was effected by the mixed
policy and bonhommie, with which the author contrived to
retain in his celebrated work whatever the system pos-
sesses of soothing for the indolence, and of flattering for
the vanity, of men's average understandings : while he
kept out of sight all its darker features which outrage the
instinctive faith and moral feelings of mankind, ingeni-
ously threading-on the dried and shrivelled, yet still
wholesome and nutritious, fruits plucked from the rich
grafts of ancient wisdom, to the barren and worse than
barren fig tree of the mechanic philosophy. Thus, the
sensible Christians, the angels of the church of Laodicea,
with the numerous and mighty sect of their admirers, de-
lighted with the discovery that they could purchase the
decencies and the creditableness of religion at so small
an expenditure of faith, extolled the work for its pious
conclusions ; while the infidels, wiser in their generation
than the children (at least than these nominal children) of
light, eulogized it with no less zeal for the sake of its
principles and assumptions, and with the foresight of
those obvious and only legitimate conclusions, that might
and would be deduced fi:om them. Great at all times
and almost incalculable are the influences of party spirit
in exaggerating contemporary reputation ; but never per-
haps from the first syllable of recorded time were they
exerted under such a concurrence and conjunction of
fortunate accidents, of helping and furthering events and
circumstances, as in the instance of Mr. Locke.

I am most fully persuaded, that the principles both
of taste, morals, and religion taught in our most popular

APPENDIX E. 299

compendia of moral and political philosophy, natural the-
ology, evidences of Christianity, and the like, are false,
injurious, and debasing. But I am likewise not less
deeply convinced that all the well-meant attacks on the
writings of modern infidels and heretics, in support either
of the miracles or of the mysteries of the Christian reli-
gion, can be of no permanent utility, while the authors
themselves join in the vulgar appeal to common sense as
the one infallible judge in matters, which become subjects
of philosophy only, because they involve a contradiction
between this common sense and our moral instincts, and
require therefore an arbiter, which containing both emi-
nenter must be higher than either. We but mow down
the rank misgrowth instead of cleansing the soil, as long
as we ourselves protect and manure, as the pride of our
garden, a tree of false knowledge, which looks fair and
shewy and variegated with fruits not its own, that hang
from the branches which have at various times been in-
grafted on its stem ; but from the roots of which under
ground the runners are sent off, that shoot up at a distance
and bring forth the true and natural crop. I will speak
plainly, though in so doing I must bid defiance to all the
flatterers of the folly and foolish self-opinion of the half-
instructed many. The articles of our Church, and the
true principles of government and social order, will never
be effectually and consistently maintained against their
antagonists till the champions have themselves ceased to
worship the same Baal with their enemies, till they have
cast out the common idol from the recesses of their own
convictions, and with it the whole service and ceremonial
of idolism. While all parties agree in their abjuration
of Plato and Aristotle, and in their contemptuous neglect
of the Schoolmen and the scholastic logic, without which
the excellent Selden (that genuine Enghsh mind whose
erudition, broad, deep, and manifold as it was, is yet less
remarkable than his robust healthful common sense) af-

300 APPENDIX E.

firms it impossible for a divine thoroughly to comprehend
or reputably to defend the whole undiminished and un-
adulterated scheme of Catholic faith, while all alike pre-
assume, with Mr. Locke, that the mind contains only the
reliques of the senses, and therefore proceed with him to
explain the substance from the shadow, the voice from the
echo, — they can but detect each the other's inconsistencies.
The champion of orthodoxy will victoriously expose the
bald and staring incongruity of the Socinian scheme with
the language of Scripture, and with the final causes of
all revealed religion : — the Socinian will retort on the or-
thodox the incongruity of a belief in mysteries with his
own admissions concerning the origin, and nature of all
tenable ideas, and as triumphantly expose the pretences
of believing in a form of words, to which the believer
himself admits that he can attach no consistent meaning.
Lastly, the godless materialist, as the only consistent be-
cause the only consequent reasoner, will secretly laugh at
both. If these sentiments should be just, the conse-
quences are so important that every well-educated man,
who has given proofs that he has at least patiently studied
the subject, deserves a patient hearing. Had 1 not the
authority of the greatest and noblest intellects for at least
two thousand years on my side, yet from the vital interest
of the opinions themselves, and their natural, uncon-
strained, and (as it were) spontaneous coalescence with
the faith of the Catholic Church, (they being, moreover,
the opinions of its most eminent Fathers) I might appeal
to all orthodox Christians, whether they adhere to the
faith only or both to the faith and forms of the Church, in
the words of my motto : Jd isthac queso vos, qualiacun-
que prmo videantur aspectu attendite, ut qui vohisforsan
insanire vldear, saltern quihus insaniatn rationihus cognos-
catis.

There are still a few, however, young men of loftiest
minds, and the very stuff out of which the sword and

APPENDIX E. 301,

shield of truth and honour are to be made, who will not
withdraw all confidence from the writer, although

'Tis true, that passionate for ancient truths
And honoring with religious love the great
Of elder times, he hated to excess,
With an unquiet and intolerant scorn,
The hollow puppets of a hollow age
Ever idolatrous, and changing ever
Its worthless idols !*

a few there are, who will still less be indisposed to follow
him in his milder mood, whenever their Friend,

Piercing the long-neglected holy cave.
The haunt obscure of Old Philosophy,
Shall bid with lifted torch its starry walls
Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame
Of odorous lamps tended by saint and sage If

I have hinted, above, at the necessity of a glossary, and
I will conclude these supplementary remarks with a no-
menclature of the principal terms which occur in the ele-
ments of speculative philosophy, in their old and rightful
sense, according to my belief; at all events the sense in
which I have myself employed them. The most general
term (genus summum) belonging to the speculative intel-
lect, as distinguished from acts of the will, is Representa-
tion, or (still better) Presentation.

A conscious Presentation, if it refers exclusively to the
subject, as a modification of his own state of being, is=
Sensation.

The same if it refers to an Object, is = Perception.

A Perception, immediate and individual is = an In-
tuition.

* Poet. Works, I. p. 200. Ed. t Ih. Ed.

302 APPENDIX E.

The same, mediate, and by means of a character or
mark common to several things, is := a Conception.

A Conception, extrinsic and sensuous, is = a Fact, or
a Cognition.

The same, purely mental and abstracted from the forms
of the understanding itself = a Notion.

A notion may be realized, and becomes cognition ; but
that which is neither a sensation or a perception, that
which is neither individual (that is, a sensible intuition)
nor general (that is, a conception) which neither refers to
outward facts, nor yet is abstracted from the forms of
perception contained in the understanding ; but which is
an educt of the imagination actuated by the pure reason,
to which there neither* is nor can be an adequate corres-
pondent in the world of the senses ; — this and this alone
is = an Idea. Whether ideas are regulative only, ac-
cording to Aristotle and Kant ; or likewise constitutive,
and one with the power and life of nature, according to
Plato, and Plotinus (Iv Xoyti) ^w?} yv, icai r} 'C^-q yv to
(jiwc TMv avSrpdtvojv) is the highest problem of philosophy,
and not part of its nomenclature.*

» See Table Talk, p. 95, 2d edit. Ed.

A LAY SERMON,

ADDRESSED TO THE HIGHER AND MIDDLE CLASSES,

ON THE EXISTING DISTRESSES AND

DISCONTENTS, 1817.

BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE,
giecontr ©trition:

WITH THE author's LAST COERECTIONS AND NOTES?
BY

HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE, ESQ. M.A.

'Ear fjitj eXTTi^jjre, dveXTriffTov ovk thprifferE, ave^epEV-
vrjrov ov Kal uiropov. Heraclitus,

If ye do not hope, ye will not find : for in despairing ye
block up the mine at its mouth, ye extin^ish the torch,
even when ye are already in the shaft.

God and the world we worship stiU together.

Draw not our laws to Him, but Ilis to ours ;

Untrue to both, so prosperous in neither,

The imperfect will brings forth but barren flowers !

Unwise as all distracted interests be,

Strangers to God, fools in. humanity :

Too good for great things and too great for good,

While still " J dare not" waits upon " J would."

305

INTRODUCTION.

Fellow-Countrymen ! You I mean, who fill the
higher and middle stations of society ! The com-
forts, perchance the splendors, that surround you,
designate your rank, but cannot constitute your
moral and personal fitness for it. Be it enough
for others to know that you are its legal, — but by
what mark shall you stand accredited to your own
consciences, as its worthy, — possessors ? Not by
common sense or common honesty ; for these are
equally demanded of all classes, and therefore mere
negative qualifications in your rank of life, or cha-
racteristic only by the aggravated ignominy con-
sequent on their absence. Not by genius or splen-
did talent ; for these, as being gifts of nature, are
objects of moral interest for those alone, to whom
they have been allotted. Nor yet by eminence
in learning ; for this supposes such a devotion of
time and thought, as would in many cases be in-
compatible with the claims of active life. Erudition
is, doubtless, an ornament that especially beseems
a high station : but it is professional rank only that
renders its attainment a duty.

The mark in question must be so far common,
that we may be entitled to look for it in you from
the mere circumstance of your situation, and so far

306 INTRODUCTION.

distinctive, that it must be such as cannot be ex-
pected generally from the inferior classes. Now
either there is no such criterion in existence, or
the desideratum is to be found in an habitual con-
sciousness of the ultimate principles, in reference
to which you think and act. The least that can
be demanded of the least favored among you is an
earnest endeavour to walk in the light of your own
knowledge ; and not, as the mass of mankind, by
laying hold on the skirts of custom. Blind fol-
lowers of a blind and capricious guide, forced like-
wise (though oftener, I fear, by their own improvi-
dence,* than by the lowness of their estate) to

* A truth, that should not however be said, save in the
spirit of charity, and with the palliating- reflection, that this
very improvidence has liitherto been, though not the inevi-
table, yet the natural result of poverty and the Poor Laws.
With what gi-atitude I venerate my country and its laws, my
humble publications from the Fears in Solitude, printed ia
1798, (Poet. Works, I. p. 132.) to ths present discourse bear
witness. — Yet the Poor Laws and the Revenue I — if I per-
mitted myself to dwell on these exclusively, I should be
tempted to fancy that the domestic seals were put in commis-
sion and entrusted to Argus, Briareus, and Cacus, as lords
of the cormnonalty. Alas ! it is easy to see the evil ; but to
imagine a remedy is difficult in exact proportion to the expe-
rience and good sense of the seeker. That excellent maia,
Mr. Perceval, whom T vegai'd as the best and wisest states-
man this country has possessed since the Revolution — (I
judge only from his measures and the reports of his speeches
in Parliament, for I never saw him) — went into the Minis-
try, with the design as well as the wish of abolishing lot-
teries. I was present at a table, when this intention was an-
nounced by a venerable relative of the departed statesman.

INTRODUCTION. 307

consume life in the means of living', the multitude
may make the sad confession

Tempora mutantur ; hos et mutamur in illis,

unabashed. But to Englishmen in the enjoyment
of a present competency, much more to such as are
defended against the anxious future, it must needs
be a grievous dishonor (and not the less grievous,
though perhaps less striking, from its frequency)
to change with the times, and thus to debase their

who loved and honored the man, but widely dissented from
him as a politician. Except myself, all present were partizans
of the Opposition ; but all avowed their determination on
this score alone, as a great moral precedent, to support the
new minister. What was the result? Two lotteries in the
first year instead of one ! The door of the cabinet has a quality
the most opposite to the ivory gate of Virgil. It suffers no
dreams to pass through it. Alas ! as far as any wide scheme
of benevolence is concerned, the inscription over it miglst
seem to be the Dantean

Lasciate ogni speranza, voi cli'entrate!
We judge harshly because we expect irrationally. But on
the other hand, this disproportion of the power to the wish
will, sooner or later, end in that tame acquiescence in things
as thev are, which is the sad symptom of a moral necrosis
commencing. And commence it will, if its causes are not
counteracted by the philosophy of history , that is, by history
read in the spirit of prophecy ; — if they are not overcome by
the faith which, still re-kindling hope, still re-enlivens cha-
rity. Without the knowledge of man, the knowledge of
men is a hazardous acquisition. What insight might not our
statesmen acquire from the study of the Bible merely as
history, if only they had been previously accustomed to
study history in the same spirit, as that in which good men
read the Bible !

308 INTUODUCTIOW.

motives and maxims, the sacred household of con-
science, into slaves and creatures of fashion. Thou
therefore art inexcusable, man ! (Rom. ii. 1)
if thou dost not give to thyself a reason for the
faith that is in thee : if thou dost not thereby
learn the safety and the blessedness of that other
Apostolic precept, Whatsoever ye do, do it in
faith. Your habits of reflection should at least be
equal to your opportunities of leisure, and to that
which is itself a species of leisure, — your immu-
nity from bodily labour, from the voice and lash of
the imperious ever-recurring this day. Your at-
tention to the objects that stretch away below you
in the living- landscape of good and evil, and your
researches into their existing or practicable bearings
on each other, should be proportional to the ele-
vation that extends and diversifies your prospect.
If you possess more than is necessary for your
own wants, more than your own wants ought to be
felt by you as your own interests. You are pacing
on a smooth terrace, which you owe to the happy
institutions of your country, — a terrace on the
mountain's breast. To what purpose, by what
moral right, if you continue to gaze only on the
sod beneath your feet ? Or if converting means
into ends and with all your thoughts and efforts
absorbed in selfish schemes of climbing cloudward,
you turn your back on the wide landscape, and
stoop the lower, the higher you ascend.

The remedial and prospective advantages that
may be rationally anticipated from the habit of

INTRODUCTION. 309

contemplating particulars in their universal laws ;
its tendency at once to fix and to liberalize the
morality of private life, at once to produce and
enlighten the spirit of public zeal ; and let me add,
its especial utility in recalling- the origin and pri-
mary purport of the term, generosity,* to the heart
and thoughts of a populace tampered with by so-
phists and incendiaries of the revolutionary school ;
these advantages I have felt it my duty and have
made it my main object to press on your serious
attention during the whole period of my literary
labors from earliest manhood to the present hour.
Whatever may have been the specific theme of my
communications, and whether they related to cri-
ticism, politics, or religion, still principles, their
subordination, their connection, and their applica-
tion, in all the divisions of our tastes, duties, rules
of conduct and schemes of belief, have constituted
my chapter of contents.

It is an unsafe partition which divides opinions
without principle from unprincipled opinions : and
if the latter are not followed by correspondent ac-
tions, we are indebted for the escape, not to the
agent himself, but to his habits of education, to
the sympathies of superior rank, to the necessity
of character, often, perhaps, to the absence of

* A genere: the qualities either supposed natural and
instinctive to men of noble race, or such as their rank is cal-
culated to inspire, as disinterestedness, devotion to the ser-
vice of their friends and clients, frankness, and the like.

310 INTRODUCTIOT?".

temptation from providential circumstances or the
accident of a gracious nature. These, indeed, are
truths of all times and places ; but I seemed to see
especial reason for insisting on them in onr own
times. A long and attentive observation had con-
vinced me that formerly men were worse than their
principles, but that at present the principles are
worse than the men.

Few are sufficiently aware how much reason
most of us have, even as common moral livers, to
thank God for being Englishmen. It would fur-
nish grounds both for humility towards Providence
and for increased attachment to our country, if
each individual could but see and feel how large a
part of his innocence he owes to his birth, breed-
ing, and residence in Great Britain. The admi-
nistration of the laws ; the almost continual preach-
ing- of moral prudence ; the pressure of our ranks
on each other, with the consequent reserve and
watchfulness of demeanor in the superior ranks,
and the emulation in the subordinate ; the A^ast
depth, expansion and systematic movements of our
trade ; and the consequent interdependence, the
arterial or nervelike network of property, which
make every deviation from outward integrity a
calculable loss to the offending individual himself
from its mere effects, as obstKuction and irregula-
rity ; and lastly, the naturalness of doing as others
do : — these and the like influences, peculiar, some
in the kind and all in the degree, to this privileged
island, are the buttresses, on which our foundation-

INTRODUCTION. 311

less well-doing- is upholden even as a house of cards,
the architecture of our infancy, in which each is
supported by all.

Well then may we pray, Gh)e us peace in our
time, Lord! Well for us if no revolution, or
other general visitation, betray the true state of
our national morality ! But above all, well will it
be for us if even now we dare disclose the secret
to our own souls ! Well will it be for as many of
us as have duly reflected on the Prophet's assurance,
that 2ve must take roof downwards, if we would
bear fruit ujjwards ; if we would bear fruit, and
continue to bear fruit, when the foodful plants that
stand straight, only because they grow in company,
or whose slender surface-roots owe their whole
stedfastness to their intertanglement, have been
beaten down by the continued rains, or whirled
aloft by the sudden hurricane. Nor have we far
to seek for what ever it is most important that we
should find. The wisdom from above has not
ceased for us. The jrrinciijles of the oracles of
God (Heb. v. 12.) are still uttered from before the
altar ; — oracles, which we may consult without
cost ; — before an altar where no sacrifice is required,
but of the vices which unman us ; no victims
demanded, but the unclean and animal passions,
which we may^have suffered to house within us, for-
getful of our Baptismal dedication, — no victim, but
the spiritual sloth, or goat, or fox, or hog, which
lay waste the vineyard that the Lord had fenced
and planted for himself.

312

INTRODUCTIOlSr.

I have endeavored in my previous discourse to
persuade the more highly gifted and educated part
of my friends and fellow-Christians, that as the
New Testament sets forth the means and conditions
of spiritual convalescence, with all the laws of con-
science relative to our future state and permanent
being ; so does the Bible present to us the elements
of public prudence, instructing us in the true
causes, the surest preventives, and the only cures,
of public evils. The authorities of Raleigh, Cla-
rendon, and Milton must at least exempt me from
the blame of singularity, if undeterred by the con-
tradictory charges of paradoxy from one party and
of adherence to vulgar and old-fashioned prejudices
from the other, I persist in avowing my conviction,
that the inspired poets, historians and sententiaries
of the Jews, are the clearest teachers of political
economy : in short, that their writings* are the

* To which I should be tempted with Burke to annex
that treasure of prudential wisdom, the Ecclesiasticus, I
not only yield, however, to the authorit}^ of our Church, hut
reverence the judgment of its founders in separating this
work from the list of the canonical books, and in refusing to
apply it to the establishment of anv doctrine, while they
caused it to be "read for example of life and instruction of
manners." Excellent, nay, invaluable as this book is in the
place assigned to it by our Church, that place is justified on
the clearest grounds. For not to say ttiat the compiler him-
self candidly cautions us against the imperfections of his
translation, and its no small difference from the original
Hebrew, as it was written by his grandfather, he so ex-
presses himself in his prologue as to exclude all claims to
inspiration or divine authority in any other or higher sense

INTRODUCTION 313

Statesman's best manual, not only as containing
the first principles and ultimate grounds of State-
policy whether in prosperous times or in those of
danger and distress, but as supplying likewise the

than every writer is entitled to make, who having qualified
himself by the careful study of the books of other men had
been drawn on to write something himself. But of still
greater weight practically, are the objections derived from
certain passages of the book, which, savour too plainly of the
fancies and prejudices of a Jew of Jerusalem ; for example,
c. 1. 25-26, and of greater still the objections drawn from
other passages, as from c. xli. which by implication and ob-
vious inference are nearly tantamount to a denial of a future
state, and bear too great a resemblance to the ethics of the
Greek poets and orators in the substitution of posthumous
fame for a true resurrection and a consequent personal en-
durance ; the substitution in short, of a nominal for a real
immortality. Lastly the prudential spirit of the maxims in
general in which prudence is taught too much on its own
grounds instead of being- recommended as the organ or
vehicle of a spiritual principle in its existing worldly rela-
tions. In short, prudence ceases to be wisdom when it is
not to the filial fear of God, and to the sense of the excel-
lence of the divine laws, what the body is to the soul.
Now in the work of the son of Sirach, prudence is both
body and soul.

It were perhaps to be wished, that this work, and the
Wisdom of Solomon had alone received the honor of being
accompaniments to the inspired writings, and that these
should, with a short precautionary preface and a few notes
have been printed in all our Bibles. The remaining books
might without any loss have been left for the learned or for
as many as were prompted by curiosity to purchase them,
in a separate volume. Even of the Maccabees not above a
third part can be said to possess any historic value, as au-
thentic acounts.

314

INTRODUCTION.

details of their application, and as being a full
and spacious repository of precedents and facts in
proof.

Well therefore (again and again I repeat to
you,) well will it be for us if we have provided
ourselves from this armory while yet the day of
trouble and of treading down and of perplexity
appears at far distance and only i7i the valley of
vision : if we have humbled ourselves and have
confessed our thin and unsound state, even while
from the uttermost parts of the earth we were
hearing songs of praise and glory to the upright
nation. (Is. xxii. 5. xxiv. 16.)

But if indeed the day of treading down is pre-
sent, it is still in our power to convert it into a
time of substantial discipline for ourselves, and of
enduring benefit to the present generation and to
posterity. The splendour of our exploits, during
the late war, is less honourable to us than the
magnanimity of our views, and our generous con-
fidence in the victory of the better cause. Ac-
cordingly , we have obtained a good name, so that
the nations around us have displayed a disposition
to follow our example and imitate our institutions ;
too often I fear even in parts where from the dif-
ference of our relative circumstances the imitation
had little chance of proving- more than mimicry.
But it will be far more glorious, and to our
neighbours incomparably more instructive, if in
distresses to which all countries are liable Ave be-
stir ourselves in remedial and preventive arrano-e-

INTRODUCTION. 315

ments which all nations may more or less adopt ;
inasmuch as they are grounded on principles in-
telligible to all rational, and obligatory on all moral,
beings ; inasmuch as, having been taught by God's
word, exampled by God's providence, commanded
by God's law, and recommended by promises of
God's grace, they alone can form the foundations
of a Christian community. Do we love our
country ? These are the principles by which the
true friend of the people is contradistinguished
from the factious demagogue. They are at once
the rock and the quarry. On these alone and with
these alone is the solid welfare of a people to be
built. Do we love our own souls ? These are the
principles, the neglect of which writes hypocrite
and suicide on the brow of the professing Christian.
For these are the keystone of that arch on which
alone we can cross the torrent of life and death
with safety on the passage ; with peace in the re-
trospect ; and with hope shining upon us from
through the cloud toward which we are travelling.
Not, my Christian friends ! by all the lamps of
worldly wisdom clustered in one blaze can we guide
our paths so securely as by fixing our eyes on this
inevitable cloud, through which all must pass,
which at every step becomes darker and more
threatening to the children of this world, but to
the children of faith and obedience still thins away
as they approach, to melt at length and dissolve
into that glorious light, from which as so many
gleams and reflections of the same falling on us

316 INTRODUCTION.

during our mortal pilgrimage, we derive all prin-
ciples of true and lively knowledge, alike in
science and in morals, alike in communities and in
individuals.

It has been my purpose throughout the follow-
ing discourse to guard myself and my readers from
extremes of all kinds : I will therefore conclude
this Introduction by inforcing the maxim in its
relation to our religious opinions, out of which,
with or without our consciousness, all our other
opinions flow as from their spring-head and per-
petual feeder. And that I might neglect no in-
nocent mode of attracting or relieving the reader's
attention, I have moulded my reflections into thp
following

ALLEGORIC VISION.

A feeling of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is
wont to take possession of me alike in spring and
in autumn. But in spring it is the melancholy of
hope : in autumn it is the melancholy of resigna-
tion. As I was journeying on foot through the
Appennine, I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the
spring and the autumn and the melancholy of both
seemed to have combined. In his discourse there
were the freshness and the colors of April :

Qual ramicel a ramo,
Tal da pensier pensiero'
In lui germogliava.

But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I

INTRODUCTION. 317

bethought me of the not unlovely decays, both of
age and of the late season in the stately elm,
after the clusters have been plucked from its en-
twining vines, and the vines are as bands of dried
withies around its trunk and branches. Even so
there was a memory on his smooth and ample fore-
head, which blended with the dedication of his
steady eyes, that still looked — I know not, whether
upward, or far onward, or rather to the line of
meeting where the sky rests upon the distance.
But how may I express that dimness of abstrac-
tion which lay like the flitting- tarnish from the
breath of a sigh on a silver mirror, and which ac-
corded with the lustre of the pilgrim's eyes, with
their slow and reluctant movement, whenever he
turned them to any object on the right hand or on
he left? It seemed, methought, as if there lay
upon the brightness a shadowy presence of disap-
pointments now unfelt, but never forgotten. It
was at once the melancholy of hope and of resig-
nation.

We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a
sudden tempest of wind and rain forced us to seek
protection in the vaulted door-way of a lone cha-
pehy : and we sate face to face each on the stone
bench along-side the low, weather-stained wall,
and as close as possible to the massy door.

After a pause of silence : " Even thus," said
he, " like two strangers that have fled to the same
shelter from the same storm, not seldom do despair
and hope meet for the first time in the porch

318 INTRODUCTION.

of death!" " All extremes meet," I answered;
" but yours was a strange and visionary thought."
" The better then doth it beseem both the place
and me," he replied. " Fi-om a visionary wilt
thou hear a vision ? Mark that vivid flash through
this torrent of rain. Fire and water. Even here
thy adage holds true, and its truth is the moral of
my vision." I entreated him to proceed. Sloping
his face toward the arch and yet averting his eye
from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his words :
till listening to the wind that echoed within the
hollo vvf edifice, and to the rain without,

Which stole on his thoughts with its two-fold sound,
The clash hard by and the murmur all round,

he gradually sank away, alike from me and from
his own purpose, and amid the gloom of the storm
and in the duskiness of that place he sate an em-
blem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like a mourner
on the sodded grave of an only one, an aged mourner,
who is watching the waned moon and sorroweth
not. Starting at length from his brief trance of
abstraction, with courtesy and an atoning smile he
renewed his discourse, and commenced his parable.
' During one of those short furlows from the ser-
vice of the body, which the soul may sometimes
obtain even in this its militant state, I found my-
self in a vast plain, which I immediately knew to
be the Valley of Life. It possessed an astonishing
diversity of soils : here was a sunny spot, and there
a dark one, forming just such a mixture of sun-

INTRODUCTION. 319

shine and shade, as we may have observed on the
mountains' side on an April day, when the thin
broken clouds are scattered over heaven. Almost
in the very entrance of the valley stood a large
and gloomy pile, into which I seemed constrained
to enter. Every part oFthe building was crowded
with tawdry ornaments and fantastic deformity.
On every window was portrayed, in glaring and
inelegant colors, some horrible tale or preterna-
tural incident, so that not a ray of light could
enter, untinged by the medium through which it
passed. The body of the building was full of
people, some of them dancing in and out in un-
intelligible figures, with strange ceremonies and
antic merriment, while others seemed convulsed
with horror, or pining in mad melancholy. In-
termingled with these, I observed a number of
men, clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared
now to marshal the various groups and to direct
their movements ; and now with menacing coun-
tenances, to drag some reluctant victim to a vast
idol, framed of iron bars intercrossed, which formed
at the same time an immense cage, and the shape
of a human Colossus.

I stood for a while lost in wonder, what these
things might mean ; when lo ! one of the directors
came up to me, and with a stern and reproachful
look bade me uncover my head ; for that the place,
into which I had entered, was the temple of the
only true religion, in the holier recesses of which
the great Goddess personally resided. Himself

320 INTRODUCTION.

too he bade me reverence, as the consecrated mi-
nister of her rites. Awe-struck by the name of
religion, I bowed before the priest, and humbly
and earnestly entreated him to conduct me into
her presence. He assented. Offerings he took
from me, with mystic sprinklings of water and
with salt he purified, and with strange sufflations
he exorcised, me ; and then led me through many
a dark and winding alley, the dew-damps of which
chilled my flesh, and the hollow echoes under my
feet, mingled, methought, with moanings, af-
frighted me. At length we entered a large hall
without window, or spiracle, or lamp. The asylum
and dormitory it seemed of perennial night ; only
that the walls were brought to the eye by a number
of self-luminous inscriptions in letters of a pale
sepulchral light, which held strange neutrality with
the darkness, on the verge of which it kept its
rayless vigil. I could read them, methought; but
though each one of the words taken separately I
seemed to understand, yet when I took them in
sentences, they were riddles and incomprehensible.
As I stood meditating on these hard sayings, my
guide thus addressed me, — Read and believe : these
are mysteries ! — At the extremity of the vast hall
the Goddess was placed. Her features, blended
with darkness, rose out to my view, terrible, yet
vacant. I prostrated myself before her, and then
retired with my guide, soul-withered, and wonder-
ing, and dissatisfied.

As I re-entered the body of the temple, I heard

INTRODUCTION. 321

a deep buz as of discontent. A few whose eyes
were bright, and either piercing or steady, and
whose ample foreheads, with the weighty bar,
ridge-hke, above the eyebrows, bespoke observa-
tion followed by meditative thought ; and a much
larger number who were enraged by the severity
and insolence of the priests in exacting their offer-
ings, had collected in one tumultuous group, and
with a confused outcry of " This is the temple of
Superstition!" after much contumely, and turmoil,
and cruel maltreatment on all sides, rushed out of
the pile: and I, methought, joined them.

We speeded from the temple with hasty steps,
and had now nearly gone round half the valley,
when we were addressed by a woman, tall beyond
the stature of mortals, and with a something more
than human in her countenance and mien, which
yet by mortals could be only felt, not conveyed by
words or intelligibly distinguished. Deep reflec-
tion, animated by ardent feelings, was displayed in
them : and hope, without its uncertainty, and a
something more than all these, which I understood
not ; but which yet seemed to blend all these into
a divine unity of expression. Her garments were
white and matronly, and of the simplest texture.
We inquired her name. My name, she replied, is
Religion.

The more numerous part of our company, af-
frighted by the very sound, and sore from recent
impostures or sorceries, hurried onwards and ex-
amined no farther. A few of us, struck by the

Y

322 CIlllISTIAN PROPHECIES.

manifest opposition of her form and manner to
those of the living idol, whom we had so recently
abjured, agreed to follow her, though with cautious
circumspection. She led us to an eminence in the
midst of the valley, from the top of which we could
command the whole plain, and observe the relation
of the different parts, of each to the other, and of
each to the whole, and of all to each. She then
gave us an optic glass which assisted without
contradicting our natural vision, and enabled us to
see far beyond the limits of the Valley of Life :
though our eye even thus assisted permitted us
only to behold a light and a glory, but what we
could not desciy, save only that it was, and that
it was most glorious.

And now with the rapid transition of a dream,
I had overtaken and rejoined the more numerous
party, who had abruptly left us, indignant at the
very name of religion. They journeyed on, goad-
ing each other with remembrances of past oppres-
sions, and never looking back, till in the eager-
ness to recede from the temple of Superstition they
had rounded the whole circle of the valley. And
lo ! there faced us the mouth of a vast cavern, at
the base of a lofty and almost perpendicular rock,
the interior side of which, unknown to them, and
unsuspected, formed the extreme and backward
wall of the temple. An impatient crowd, we en-
tered the vast and dusky cave, which was the only
perforation of the precipice. At the mouth of the
cave sate two figures ; the first, by her dress and

INTRODUCTION. 323

gestures, I knew to be Sensuality; the second
form, from the fierceness of his demeanour and
the brutal scornfulness of his looks, declared him-
self to be the monster Blasphemy. He uttered bio-
words, and yet ever and anon I observed that he
turned pale at his own courage. We entered.
Some remained in the opening of the cave, with
the one or the other of its guardians. The rest,
and I among them, pressed on till we reached
an ample chamber, which seemed the centre of the
rock. The climate of the place was unnaturally
cold.

In the furthest distance of the chamber sate an
old dim-eyed man, poring with a microscope over
the torso of a statue, v.'hich had neither base, nor
feet, nor head ; but on its breast was carved, Na-
ture. To this he continually applied his glass,
and seemed enraptured with the various inequa-
lities which it rendered visible on the seemingly
polished surface of the marble. Yet evermore was
this delight and triumph followed by expressions
of hatred, and vehement railing against a being,
who yet, he assured us, had no existence. This
mystery suddenly recalled to me what I had read
in the holiest recess of the temple of Superstition.
The old man spoke in divers tongues, and conti-
nued to utter other and most strange mysteries.
Among the rest he talked much and vehemently
concerning an infinite series of causes and effects,
which he explained to be — a string of blind men,
the last of whom caught hold of the skirt of the

324 INTRODUCTIOl^.

one before him, he of the next, and so on till they
were all out of sight ; and that they all walked
infallibly straight, without making one false step,
though all were alike blind. Methought I bor-
rowed courage from surprise, and asked him, —
" Who then is at the head to guide them?" He
looked at me with ineffable contempt, not un-
mixed with an angry suspicion, and then replied,
" No one ; — the strinp: of blind men goes on for
ever without any beginning : for although one
blind man cannot move without stumbling, yet
infinite blindness supplies the want of sight." I
burst into laughter, which instantly turned to
terror ; — for as he started forward in rage, I caught
a glance of him from behind ; and lo ! I beheld a
monster bi-form and Janus-headed, in the hinder
face and shape of which I instantly recognized
the dread countenance of Superstition — and in the
terror I awoke.

A LAY SERMON,

Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.
Isaiah xxxii. 20.

On all occasions the beginning should look toward
the end ; and most of all when we offer counsel
concerning circumstances of great distress, and
of still greater alarm. But such is my business
at present, and the common duty of all whose
competence justifies the attempt. And therefore,
my Christian friends and fellow Englishmen, have
I in a day of trouble and of treading do7vn a,nd
of perplexity, taken my beginning from this as-
surance of an inspired messenger to the devisers
of liberal things, (xxxiii. 8.) who confident in
hope are fearless in charity. For to enforce the
precept involved in this gladsome annunciation of
the Evangelical herald, to awaken the lively feel-
ing which it breathes, and to justify the line of
conduct which it encourages, are the end to
which my present efforts are directed — the ulti-
mate object of the present address, to which all
the other points, therein discussed, are but intro-
ductory and preparative. Blessed are ye that sow
beside all waters. It is the assurance of a Pro-
phet, and therefore surety itself to all who profess

326 CHRISTIAN HOPEFULNESS

to receive him as such. It is a command in the
form of a promise, which at once instructs us in
our duty and forecloses every possible objection to
its performance. It is at once our guide and our
pioneer — a breeze from Heaven, which at one and
the same time determines our path, impels us along
it, and removes beforehand each overhanging
cloud that might have conspired with our own
dimness to hewilder or to dishearten us. What-
ever our own despondence may whisper, or the
reputed masters of political economy may have
seemed to demonstrate, neither by the fears and
scruples of the one, or by the confident affirma-
tions of the other, let us be deterred. They must
both be false if the Prophet is true. We will still
in the power of that faith which can hope even
against hope continue to sow beside all waters ;
for there is a blessing attached to it by God him-
self, to whose eye all consequences are present, on
whose will all consequences depend.

But I had also an additional motive for the selec-
tion of this verse. Easy to be remembered from
its briefness, likely to be remembered from its
beauty, and with not a single word in it which the
malig-nant ingenuity of faction could pervert to the
excitement of any dark or turbulent feeling, I
chose it both as the text and title of this dicourse,
that it might be brought under the eye of many
thousands who will know no more of the discourse
itself than what they read in the advertisements of
it in our public papers.

A DUTY. 327

In point of fact it was another passage of Scrip-
ture, the words of another Prophet, that originally
occasioned this address by one of those accidental
circumstances, which so often determine the current
of our thoughts. From a company among whom
the distresses of the times and the disappointments
of the public expectations had been agitated with
more warmth than wisdom, I had retired to solitude
and silent meditation. A Bible chanced to lie open
on the table, my eyes were cast idly on the page
for a few seconds, till gradually as a mist clears
away, the following words became visible, and at
once fixed my attention. We looked for peace, but
no good came ; for a time of health, and behold,
trouble. — I turned to the beginning of the chapter:
it was the eighth of the Prophet Jeremiah, and
having read it to the end, I repeated aloud the verses
which had become connected in my memory by their
pertinency to the conversation, to which I had been
so lately attending: namely, the lltli, 15th, 20th,
and -22nd.

They have healed the hurt of the daughter of
my people slightly, saying. Peace, Peace, when
there is no peace. We looked for peace, but no
good came : for a time of health, and behold,
trouble ! The harvest is past, the summer is
ended: and we are not saved. Is there no balm in
Gilead? Is there no physician'? Why then is
not the health of the daughter of my people re-
covered ?

These impassioned remonstrances, these heart-

328 CHARACTER

probing- interrogatories, of the lamenting Prophet
do indeed anticipate a full and alas ! a too faithful
statement of the case, to the public consideration of
which we have all of late been so often and so
urgently invited, and the inward thought of which
our very countenances betray as by a communion
of alarm. In the bold painting of Scripture lan-
guage, all faces gather blackness, — the many at
the supposed magnitude of the national embarass-
ment, the wise at the more certain and far more
alarming evil of its moral accompaniments. Peace
has come without the advantages expected from
peace, and on the contrary, with many of the se-
verest inconveniences usually attributed to war.
We looked for peace, but no good came ; for a
time of health, and behold, trouble! The harvest
is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.
The inference therefore contained in the preceding
verse is unavoidable. Where war has produced
no repentance, and the cessation of war has brought
neither concord nor tranquillity, we may safely cry
aloud with the prophet: They have healed the
hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying
Peace, Peace, when there is no peace : and pro-
ceed to answer the three questions in the answers
to which the Prophet instructs us to seek the solu-
tion of the problem. First, who are they who have
hitherto prescribed for the case, and are still tam-
pering" with it? What are their qualifications? What
has been their conduct? Second, what is the true
seat and source of the complaint, — the ultimate

OF THE DEMAGOGUE 329

causes as well as the immediate occasions ? And
lastly, what are the appropriate medicines ? Who
and where are the true physicians ?

First, who are those that have been ever loud and
foremost in their pretensions to a knowledge both
of the disease and the remedy ? The answer to
this question is continued in a preceding part of
the chapter from which I extracted the text, where
the Prophet Isaiah enumerates the conditions of a
nation's recovery from a state of depression and
peril. The vile person, he tells us, must no more be
called liberal, nor the churl he said to be boun-
tiful. For the vile person will speak villainy,
and his heart will work iniquity to practise hy^
pocrisy and to utter error against the Lord ; to
make empty the soul of the needy, and he will
cause the drink of the thirsty to fail. The in-
struments also of the churl are evil : he deviseth
wicked devices to destroy the poor with lying
words, even when the needy speaketh aright. But
the liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal
things shall he stand, fxxxii. 5, 6, 7, Q.)

Such are the political empirics, mischievous in
proportion to their effrontery and ig-norant in pro-
portion to their presumption, the detection and ex-
posure of whose true characters the inspired states-
man and patriot represents as indispensable to the
re-establishment of the general welfare, while his
own portrait of these impostors whom in a former
chapter (ix. 15.) he calls, the tail of the nation,
and in the following verse, demagogues that cause

■^30 ' IN ALL AGES

the people to err, affords to the intelligent believer
of all ages and countries the means of detecting
them, and of undeceiving all whose own malignant
passions have not rendered them blind and deaf and
brutish. For these noisy and calumnious zealots,
whom (with an especial reference indeed to the
factious leaders of the populace who under this
name exercised a tumultuary despotism in Jeru-
salem, at once a sign and a cause of its approaching
downfall ,) St. John beheld in the Apocalyptic vision*
as a compound of locust and scorpion, are not of
one place or of one season. They are the peren-
nials of history : and though they may disappear
for a time, they exist always in the e.^^ and need
only a distempered atmosphere and an accidental
ferment to start up into life and activity.

It is worth our while, therefore, or rather it is

* My own conception of this canonical book is, that it nar-
rates in the broad and inclusive form of the ancient Prophets
(that is, in the prophetic power of faith and moral insig'ht
irradiated by inspiration) the successive struggles and final
triumph of Christianity over the Paganism and Judaism of
the then Roman Empire, typified in the fall of Rome, the
destruction of the Old and the symbolical descent of the
New Jerusalem. Nor do I think its interpretation even in
detail attended with any insuperable difficulties.

It was once my intention to have translated the Apoca-
lypse into verse, as a poem, holding a mid place between
the epic narrative and the choral drama : and to have an-
nexed a commentary in prose : —an intention long and fondly
cherished, but during many years deferred from an un-
feigned sense of my deficiency ; and now there remains only
the hope and tlie wish, or rather a feeling between "both.

A DECEIVER, 331

our duty to examine with a more attentive eye this
representative portrait drawn for us by an infallible
master, and to distinguish its component parts each
by itself so that we may combine without confusing
them in our memory; till they blend at length
into one physiognomic expression, which whenever
the counterpart is obtruded on our notice in Uie
sphere of our own experience, may be at once re-
cognized, and enable us to convince ourselves of
the identity by a comparison of feriture with feature.
The passage commences with a fact which to the
inexperienced might well seem strange and impro-
bable ; but which being a truth nevertheless of our
own knowledge, is the more striking and charac-
teristic. Worthless persons of little or no estima-
tion for rank, learning, or integrity, not seldom
profligates, with whom debauchery has outwrestled
rapacity, easy because unprincipled, and generous
because dishonest, are suddenly cried up as men
of enlarged views and liberal sentiments, our only
genuine patriots and philanthropists : and churls,
that is, men of sullen tempers and surly demeanor ;
men tyrannical in their families, oppressive and
troublesome to their dependents and neighbours,
and hard in their private dealings between man
and man ; men who clench with one hand what
they have grasped with the other ; these are ex-
tolled as public benefactors, the friends, guardians,
and advocates of the poor ! Here and there in-
deed we may notice an individual of birth and
fortune,

332 AN INCENDIARY,

(For great estates enlarge not narrow minds)

who has been duped into the ranks of incendiaries
and mob-sycophants by an insane restlessness, and
the wretched ambition of figuring as the Ti'iton of
the minnows. Or we may find, perhaps, a pro-
fessional man of shewy accomplishments but of a
vulgar taste, and shallow acquirements, who in
part from vanity, and in part as means of in-
troduction to practice, will seek notoriety by an
eloquence well calculated to set the multitude
agape, and excite gratis to over-acts of sedition
or treason which he may afterwards be retained to
defend. These however are but exceptions to the
general rule. Such as the Prophet has described,
such is the sort of men ; and in point of historic
fact it has been from men of this sort, that pro-
faneness is gone forth into all the land. (Jere-
miah, xxiii. 15.)

In harmony with the general character of these
false prophets are the particular qualities assigned
to them. First, a passion for vague and violent in-
vective, an habitual and inveterate predilection for
the lang-uag-e of hate, and rage, and contumely,
an ungoverned appetite for abuse and defamation.
The vile will talk villainy.

But the fetid ilower will ripen into the poisonous
berry, and the fruits of the hand follow the blos-
soms of the slanderous lips. His heart will work
iniquity. That is, he will plan evil, and do his
utmost to carry his plans into execution. The

AN INCENDIARY, 333

guilt exists already ; and there wants nothing but
power and opportunity to condense it into crime
and overt act. He that hafeth his brother is a
murderer, says St. John : and of many and va-
rious sorts are the brother-haters, in whom this
truth may be exempUfied. Most appropriately for
our purpose, Isaiah has selected the fratricide of
sedition, and with the eagle eye and practised
touch of an intuitive demonstrator he unfolds the
composition of the character, part by part, in the
secret history of the agent's wishes, designs and
attempts, of his ways, his means, and his ends.
The agent himself, the incendiary and his kindling
combustibles, had been already sketched by Solo-
mon in the rapid yet faithful outline of a master
in the art ; The beginning of the words of his
mouth is foolishness and the end of his talk
mischievous madness. (Eccles. x. 13.) If in the
spirit of prophecy,* the wise ruler had been pre-
sent to our own times, and their procedures; if

* Solomon has himself informed us that beyond wealth and
conquest, and as of far greater importance to him, in his ar-
duous office of king and magistrate, he had sought through
knowledge of wisdom to lay hold on folly ; — that is, by the study
of man to arrive at a grounded knowledge of men, and
through a previous insight into the nature and conditions
of good to acquire by inference a thorough comprehension
of the evil that arises from its deficiency or perversion.
And truly in all points of prudence, public and p)-ivate, we
may accommodate to the royal Preacher his own words :
(Eccles. ii. 12.) What can the man say that cometh after the
King? Even that which hath been said already.

334 A MALIGNANT,

while he sojourned in the valley of vision he
had actually heard the very harangues of our I'eign-
ing- demagogues to the convened populace ; could
he have more faithfully characterized either the
speakers or the speeches ? Whether in spoken or
in printed addresses, whether in periodical journals
or in yet cheaper implements of irritation, the ends
are the same, the process is the same, and the
same is their general line of conduct. On all occa-
sions, — but most of all and with a more bustling
malignity whenever any public distress inclines
the lower classes to turbulence, and renders them
more apt to be alienated from the government of
their country; — in all places and at every oppor-
tunity pleading to the poor and ignorant, — no
where and at no time are they found actually
pleading for them. Nor is this the worst. They
even plead against them. Yes ! — sycophants to
the crowd, enemies of the individuals, and well-
wishers only to the continuance of their miseries,
they plead against the poor and afflicted, under the
weak and wicked pretence that we are to do no-
thing of what we can, because we cannot do all
that we w^ould wish. Or if this sophistry of sloth
fsophisma pigri) should fail to check the bounty
of the rich, there is still the sophistry of slander
in reserve to chill the gratitude of the poor. If
they cannot dissuade the liberal from devising li-
beral things, they will at least blacken the motives
of his beneficence. If they cannot close the hand
of the giver, they will at least embitter the gift in

A TYRANT, 335

the mouth of the receivers. Is it not as if they
had said within their hearts: — "The sacrifice of
charity has been offered indeed in despite of us ;
but with bitter herbs shall it be eaten ! (Exod.
xii. 8.) Imagined wrongs shall make it distaste-
ful. We will infuse vindictive and discontented
fancies into minds, already irritable and suspicious
from distress : till the fever of the heart shall coat
the tongue with gall and spread wormwood on the
palate ?"

Howev-er angrily our demagogues may disclaim
all intentions of this kind, such has been their pro-
cedure, and it is susceptible of no other interpreta-
tion. We all know that the shares must be scanty,
where the thing to be divided bears no proportion
to the number of the claimants. Yet He, who satis-
fied a multitude in the wilderness with a few loaves
and fishes, is still present to his Church. Small
as the portions are, if they are both given and
taken in the spirit of his commands, a blessing
will go with each ; and the handful of meal shall
not fail, until the day when the Lord bring eth
hack plenty on the land. But no blessing can
enter where envy and hatred are already in pos-
session ; and small good will the poor man have
of the food prepared for him by his more favored
brother, if he have been previously taught to re-
gard it as a mess of pottage given to defraud him
of his birth-right.

If then to promise medicine and to administer
poison ; if to flatter in order to deprave ; if to af-

336 A HYPOCRITE AND A SLANDERER.

feet love to all and shew pity to none ; if to exag-
gerate and misderive the distress of the labouring
classes in order to make them turbulent, and to
discourage every plan for their relief in order to
keep them so ; if to skulk from private infamy in
the mask of public spirit, and make the flaming
patriot privilege the gamester, the swindler, or the
adulterer; if to seek amnesty for a continued vio-
lation of the laws of God by an equal pertinacity
in outraging the laws of the land ; if these charac-
terize the hypocrite, we need not look far back
or far round for faces, wherein to recognize the
third striking feature of this prophetic portrait.
When therefore the verifying facts press upon us
in real life ; when we hear persons, the tyranny of
whose will is the only law in their families, de-
nouncing all law as tyranny in public ; — persons,
whose hatred of power in others is in exact pro-
portion to their love of it for themselves ; when
we behold men of sunk and irretrievable cha-
racters, to whom no man would entrust his wife,
his sister, or his purse, having the effrontery to
propose that we should entrust to them our reli-
gion and our country ; when we meet with pa-
triots, who aim at an enlargement of the rights
and liberties of the people by inflaming the popu-
lace to acts of madness that necessitate fetters; —
pretended heralds of freedom and actual pioneers
of military despotism ; we will call to mind the
words of the prophet Isaiah, and say to ourselves :
This is 710 new thing under the sun ! We have

LIBERTY OF THE PRESS 337

heard it with our own ears, and it was declared to
our fathers, and in the old time before them, that
one of the main characteristics of demagogues in
all ages is, to practise hypocrisy.

Such, I assert, has been the general line of con-
duct pursued by the political empirics of the day :
and your own recent experience will attest the
truth of the assertion. It was aflfirmed likewise
at the same time, that as the conduct, such was
the process : and I will seek no other support of
this charge, I need no better test both of the men
and their works, than the plain question : Is there
one good feeling to which they do — is there a
single bad passion to which they do not — appeal '(
If they are the enemies of liberty in general, inas-
much as they tend to make it appear incompatible
with public quiet and personal safety, still more em-
phatically are tbey the enemies of the liberty of the
press in particular ; and therein of all the truths
human and divine which a free press is the most
efficient and only commensurate means of protect-
ing, extending, and perpetuating. The strongest,
indeed, the only plausible, arguments against the
education of the lower classes are derived from
the writings of these incendiaries ; and if for our
neglect of the light that hath been vouchsafed to
us beyond measure, the land should be visited with
a spiritual dearth, it will have been in no small
degree occasioned by the erroneous and wicked
principles which it is the trade of these men to
propagate. Well therefore has the Prophet made
z

338 ENDANGERED.

it the fourth mark of these misleaders of the mul-
titude, not alone to utter error, but to utter error
against the Lord, to make empty the soul of the
hungry. Alas ! it is a hard and a mournful thing
that the press should be constrained to call out
for the harsh curb of the law against the press.
For how shall the law predistinguish the ominous
scritch owl from the sacred notes of augury, from
the auspicious and friendly birds of warning?
And yet will we avoid this seeming injustice, we
throw down all fence and bulwark of public de-
cency and public opinion. Already has political
calumny joined hands vv'ith private slander, and
every principle, every feeling, that binds the citi-
zen to his country, the spirit to its Creator, is in
danger of being undermined. Not by reasoning,
— for from that there is no danger ; but by the
mere habit of hearing them reviled and scoffed at
with impunity. Were we to contemplate the evils
of a rank and unweeded press only in its effects
on the manners of the people, and on the general
tone of thought and conversation, the greater love
we bore to literature, and to all the means and
instruments of human improvement, the more
anxiously should we wish for some Ithuriel spear
that might remove from the ear of the ignorant
and half-learned, and expose in their own fiendish
shape, those reptiles, which inspiring venom and
forging illusions as they list,

• thence raise,

At least distemper'd discontented thoughts,
A^ain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires.

THE DEMAGOGUE S MEANS. 339

I feel, my friends ! that even the strong and
painful interest which the peculiar state of the
times, and almost the occurrences of the hour
create, can scarcely counterbalance the wearisome
aversion inspired by the deformity and palpable-
ness of the subject itself. As the plan originates
in the malignant restlessness of desperate ambition
or desperate circumstances, so are its means and
engines a drag-net of fraud and delusion. 27*6
instruments also of the churl are evil, he deviseth
wicked devices with lying words. He employs a
compound poison, of which the following are the
main ingredients, the proportions varying as the
case requires, or the wit of the poisoner suggests.
It will be enough rapidly to name and number the
components, as in a catalogue. 1. Bold, warm,
and earnest assertions, it matters not whether sup-
ported by facts or not, nay, though they should
involve absurdities and demonstrable impossibili-
ties ; as for example, that the amount of the sine-
cure places given by the executive power would
suffice to remove all distress from the land. He
is a bungler in the trade, and has been an indocile
scholar of his dark master, the father of lies, who
cannot make an assertion pass for a fact with an
ignorant multitude. The natural generosity of the
human heart which makes it an effort to doubt,
the confidence which apparent courage inspires,
and the contagion of animal enthusiasm, will in-
sure the belief. Even in large assemblies of men
highly educated it is too often sufficient to place
impressive images in juxta-position; and the con-

340 THE demagogue's means.

'l

' stitutive forms of the mind itself aided by the
; power of habit will supply the rest. For we all
j think by causal connections. 2. Startling parti-
I cular facts, which, dissevered from their context,
enable a man to convey falsehood while he says
truth. 3. Arguments built on passing events and
deriving an undue importance fjom the feelings
of the moment. The mere appeal, however, to the
auditors whether the arguments are not such that
j none but an ideot or a hireling could resist, is an
effective substitute for any argument at all. For
mobs have no memories. They are in nearly the
same state as that of an individual when he makes
(what is termed) a bull. The passions, like a
fused metal, fill up the wide interstices of thought,
and supply the defective links : and thus incom-
patible assertions are harmonized by the sensation,
without the sense, of connection. 4. The display
of defects without the accompanying advantages,
or vice versa. 5. Concealment of the general and
ultimate result behind the sceneiy of local and
particular consequences. 6. Statement of posi-
tions that are true only under particular condi-
, tions, to men whose ig-norance or fury, make them
I forg-et that these conditions are not present, or
lead them to take for granted that they are. 7.
Chains of questions, especially of such questions
; as the persons best authorized to propose are ever
\ the slowest in proposing; and objections, intelli-
gible of themselves, the answers to which require

! the comprehension of a system. 8. Vague and

i
/

THE DEMAGOGUE S MEANS. 341

common-place satire, stale as the wine in which
flies were drowned last summer, seasoned by the
sly tale and important anecdote of yesterday, that
came within the speaker's own knowledg-e ! 9.
Transitions from the audacious chai'ge, not seldom
of as sig'nal impudence " as any thing was ever
carted for," to the lie pregnant and interpretative :
the former to prove the orator's courage, and that
he is neither to be bought, nor frightened ; the latter
to flatter the sagacity of the audience.

'Ev TiavovQyia re Kai Bpaad kul KojSaXiKEv fiacriv .

10. Jerks of style, from the lunatic trope, prj/jLad'
i7nTo€ajj.ova, ttoWciq re aXivdfidpag ettwv, to the buf-
foonery and " red-lattice phrases " of the canaglia,

CT/CWp (TVfJKtdwV jjOplJOpOV TE TToKw KCU KaKlttQ Kul

(jvKo6avTiaQ ; the one in ostentation of superior
rank and acquirements (for where envy does not
interfere, man loves to look up ;) the other in
pledge of heartiness and good fellowship. II.
Lastly, and throughout all, to leave a general im-
pression of something striking, something that is |
to come of it, and to rely on the indolence of men's <
understandings and the activity of their passions
for their resting in this state, as the brood- warmth ;
fittest to hatch whatever serpents' e^^ opportunity \
may enable the deceiver to place under it. Let \
but mysterious expressions* be aided by signifi- j

* Vide Nortli's Examen, p. 20 ; and The Knights of
Aristophanes. A version of this comedy, abridged and

342 THE RESULT. •

cant looks and tones, and you may cajole a hot
and ignorant audience to believe any thing by say-
ing nothing, and finally to act on the lie which they
themselves have been drawn in to make. This is
the pharmacopoeia of political empirics, here and
everywhere, now and at all times. These are the
drugs administered, and the tricks played off by
the mountebanks and zanies of patriotism ; drugs
that will continue to poison as long as irreligion
secures a predisposition to their influence ; and
artifices that, like stratagems in war, are never
the less successful for having succeeded a hundred
times before. They bend their tongues as a how :
they shoot out deceits as arrows : they are pro-
phets of the deceit of their own hearts : they
cause the people to err by their dreams and their
lightness: they make the people vain, they fe^d
them with vjormivood, they give them the water
of gall for drink ; and the people love to have it
so. And what is the end thereof? (Jerem.
passim.)

Isaiah answers for me in the concluding- words
of the description; — To destroy the poor even

modernized, would be a most seasonable present to the
public. The words quoted above from this play and The
Frog's, may be rendered freely in the order in which they
occur : thus,

1. Thence he is illustrious, as a man of all waters, a bold
fellow, and one t\']io knows how to tickle the populace,

2. Phrases on horseback, curTetting- and careering' words.

3. Scattering- filth and dirt, malice and sj^cophantic tales.

EFFECT OF TAXATION. 343

when the needy speaketh aright ; — that is, to
impel them to acts that must end in their ruin
by inflammatory falsehoods, and by working on
their passions till they lead them to reject the
prior convictions of their own sober and unsophis-
ticated understandings. As in all the preceding'
features so in this, with which the proplietic por-
trait is completed, our own experience supplies
both proof and example. The ultimate causes of
the present distress and stagnation are in my opi-
nion complex and deeply seated ; but the imme-
diate occasion is too obvious to be over-looked but
by eyes at once red and dim through the intoxica-
tion of factious prejudice, that maddening spirit
which pre-eminently deserves the title of vinum
dcemonum applied by an ancient Father of the
Church to a far more innocent phrenzy. It is
demonstrable that taxes, the product of which is
circulated in the country fi'om which they are
raised, can never injure a country directly by the
mere amount ; but either from the time or cir-
cumstances under which they are raised, or from
the injudicious mode in which they are levied, or
from the improper objects to which they are ap-
phed. The sun may draw up the moisture from
the river, the morass, and the ocean, to be given
back in genial showers to the garden, the pasture
and the cornfield ; but it may likewise force up-
ward the moisture from the fields of industry to
drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated swamp,
or the unprofitable sandwaste. The corruptions of

344 IDEA or

:i system can be duly appreciated by those only
who have contemplated the system in that ideal
state of perfection exhibited by the reason; the
nearest possible approximation to which under ex-
isting circumstances it is the business of the pru-
dential understanding to realize. Those, on the
other hand, who commence the examination of a
system by identifying it with its abuses or im-
perfections, degrade their understanding into the
pander of their passions, and are sure to prescribe
remedies more dangerous than the disease. Alas !
there are so many real evils, so many just causes
of complaint in the constitutions and administra-
tion of all governments, our own not excepted,
that it becomes the imperious duty of the true
patriot to prevent, as much as in him lies, the
feelings and efforts of his fellow-country-men from
losing themselves on a wrong scent.

If then we are to master the ideal of a benefi-
cent and judicious system of finance as the pre-
liminary to all profitable insight into the defects
of any particular system in actual existence, we
could not perhaps find an apter illustration than the
gardens of southern Europe would supply. The
tanks or reservoirs would represent the capital of a
nation ; while the hundred rills hourly varying
their channels and directions under the gardener's
spade would give a pleasing image of the dispersion
of that capital through the whole population by the
joint effect of taxation and trade. For taxation
itself is a part of commerce, and the Government

A BENEnCIAL TAXATION. 345

may be fairly considered as a great manufactur-
ing'-house, carrying on in different places, by
means of its partners and overseers, the trades of
the ship-builder, the clothier, the iron-founder,
and the like. As long as a balance is preserved
between the receipts and the returns of Govern-
ment in their amount, quickness, and degree of
dispersion ; as long as the due proportion obtains
in the suras levied to the mass in productive cir-
culation, so long does the wealth and circumstantial
prosperity of the nation, — (its wealth, I say, not its
real welfare ; its outward prosperity, but not neces-
sarily its happiness) — remain unaffected, or rather
they will appear to increase in consequence of the
additional stimulus given to the circulation itself
by the reproductive action of all large capitals,
and through the check which taxation, in its own
nature, gives to the indolence of the wealthy in its
continual transfer of property to the industrious
and enterprizing. If different periods be taken,
and if the comparative weight of the taxes at each
be calculated, as it ought to be, not by the sum
levied on each individual, but by the sum left in
his possession, the settlement of the account will
be in favor of the national wealth, to the amount
of all the additional productive labor sustained or
excited by the taxes during the intervals between
their efflux and their re-absorption.

But on the other hand, in a direct ratio to this
increase will be the distress produced by the dis-
turbance of this balance, by the loss of this pro-

346 BALANCE DISTURBED.

portion ; and the operation of the distress will be
at least equal to the total amount of the difference
between the taxes still levied, and the quantum of
aid withdrawn frona individuals by the abandonment
of others, and of that which the taxes, that still
remain, have ceased to give by the altered mode
of their re-dispersion. But to this we must add
the number of persons raised and reared in con-
sequence of the demand created by the preceding
state of things, and now discharged from their oc-
cupations ; whether the latter belong exclusively
to the executive power, as that of soldiers and the
like, or from those in which the labourers for the
nation in general are already sufficiently numerous.
Both these classes are thrown back on the public,
and sent to a table where eveiy seat is pre-occu-
pied. The employment lessens as the number of
men to be employed is increased; and not merely
in the same, but from additional causes and from
the indirect consequences of those already stated,
in a far greater ratio. For it may easily happen,
that the very same change, which had produced
this depression at home, may from equivalent
causes have embarrassed the countries in com-
mercial connection with us. At one and the same
time the great customer at home wants less, and
our customers abroad are able to buy less. The
conjoint action of these circumstances will furnish,
for a mind capable of combining them, a suffi-
cient solution of the melancholy fact. They can-
not but occasion much distress, much obstruction,

TRANSITION TROM WAR TO PEACE. 347

and these ag-ain in their re-action are sure to be
more than doubled by the still greater and uni-
versal alarm, and by the consequent check of con-
fidence and enterprise, which they never fail to
produce.

Now it is a notorious fact, that these causes did
all exist to a very extraordinary degree, and that
they all worked with united strength, in the late
sudden transition from Avar to peace. It was one
among the many anomalies of the late war, that it
acted, after a few years, as a universal stimulant.
We almost monopolized the commerce of the world.
The high wages of our artizans and the high prices
of agricultural produce intercirculated. Leases of
no unusual length not seldom enabled the provident
and thrifty farmer to purchase the estate he had
rented. Every where might be seen roads, rail-
ways, docks, canals, made, making, and projected ;
villages swelling into towns, while the metropolis
surrounded itself, and became (as it were) set with
new cities. Finally, in spite of all the waste and
havock of a twenty years' war the population of
the empire was increased bymore than two millions.
The efforts and war-expenditure of the nation,
and the yearly revenue, were augmented in the
same proportion : and to all this we must add a
fact of the utmost importance in the present
question, that the war did not, as was usually the
case in former wars, die away into a long expected
peace by gradual exhaustion and weariness on both

348 CIRCUMSTANCES AND DISTRESS

sides, but plunged to its conclusion by a concen-
tration, we might almost say, by a spasm of energy,
and consequently by an anticipation of our re-
sources. We conquered by compelling rever-
sionary power into alliance with our existing and
natural strength. The first intoxication of triumph
having passed over, this our agony of glory was
succeeded of course by a general stiffness, and
relaxation. The antagonist passions came into
play ; financial solicitude was blended with con-
stitutional and political jealousies, and both, alas !
were exacerbated by personal imprudences, the
chief injury of which consisted in their own ten-
dency to disgust and alienate the public feeling.
And with all this, the financial errors and pre-
judices even of the more educated classes, in short,
the general want or imperfection of clear views
and a scientific insight into the true effects and in-
fluences of taxation, and the mode of its operation,
became now a real misfortune, and opened an addi-
tional source of temporary embarrassment. Re-
trenchment could no longer proceed by cautious
and calculated steps ; but was compelled to hurry
forward, like one who crossing the sands at too
late an hour finds himself threatened by the inrush
of the tide. Nevertheless, it was a truth susceptible
of little less than mathematical demonstration,
that the more, and the more suddenly, the revenue
was diminished by the abandonment of the war-
taxes, the greater would be the disturbance of the

ATTENDING IT. 349

balance :* so that the agriculturalist, the manu-
facturer, or the tradesman, — (all in short but an-
nuitants and fixed stipendiaries) — who during the
war having paid as five had fifteen left behind,
would shortly have less than ten after having paid
but two and a half. What then the pressure on
the country must be, when we add to the above the
operation of the return to cash payments, without
any change made in the intrinsic value of the coin,
and so as in effect to reimpose the amount of taxes,
nominally remitted, may be easily understood.

But there is yet another circumstance, which I
must not pass by unnoticed. In the best of times
— or what the world calls such — the spirit of com-

* The disturbance of this balance may be illustrated
tlms : — Suppose a great capitalist to have founded in alarg-e
market-town a factory that gradually increasing- employed
at length from five to six hundred vrorkmen ; and that he
had likewise a second factory at a distance from the former
(in the Isle of Man for instance) employing half that number,
aU of the latter having been drafted from and still belonging
to the first parish. After some years we may further sup-
pose, that a large proportion of the housekeepers and trades-,
people might have a running account with the capitalist,
many with him, as being their landlord, and still more for
their stock. The workmen would in like manner be for the
greater part on the books of the tradesfolks. As long as
this state of things continued, all would go on well ; — nay,
the town would be more prosperous with every increase of
the factory. The balance is preserved. The circulations
counterpoise each other, or rather they are neutralized by
interfluence. But some sudden event leads or compels the
capitalist to put down both factories at once and with little
or no warning ; and to call in all the monies owing to him.

350 FLUCTUATION IN TRADE.

meice will occasion great fluctuations, some falling
while others rise, and therefore in all times there
will be a large sum of individual distress. Trades
likewise have their seasons, and at all times there
is a very considerable number of artificers who are
not employed on the average more than seven or
eight months in the year : and the distress from
this cause is great or small in proportion to the
greater or less degree of dissipation and im-
providence prevailing among them. But besides
this, that artificial life and vigor of trade and
agriculture, which was produced or occasioned by
the direct or indirect influences of the late war,
proved by no means innoxious in its effects. Habit

and which by law had the preference to all other debts. What
would be the consequence ? The workmen are no longer
employed, and cannot at once pay up their arrears to the
tradesmen ; and though the capitalist should furnish the
latter with goods at half price, and make the same abatement
in their rent, these deductions would afford little present
relief : while, in the meantime the discharged workmen from
the distant factory would fall back on the parish, and increase
the general distress. The balance is disturbed. Put the
country at large for the parishioners, and the government in
all departments of expenditure for the capitalist and his
factories : and nearly such is the situation in which we are
placed by the transition from the late war to the presentpeace.
But the difference is this. The town may never recover its
temporary prosperity, and the capitalist may spend his re-
maining fortune in another county ; but a nation, of which
the Government is an organic part with perfect interde-
pendence of interests, can never remain in a state of de-
pression thus produced, but by its own fault : that is from
moral causes.

IMPROVIDENCE IN FARMERS, ETC, 351

and the familiarity with outward advantages, which
takes off their dazzle ; sense of character ; and
above all, the counterpoise of intellectual pursuits
and resources ; are all necessary preventives and
antidotes to the dangerous properties of wealth and
power with the great majority of mankind. It is
a painful subject : and I leave to your own experi-
ence and recollection the assemblage of folly, pre-
sumption, and extravagance, that followed in the
procession of our late unprecedented prosperity ; the
blind practices and blending passions of specula-
tion in the commercial world, with the shoal of
ostentatious fooleries and sensual vices which the
sudden influx of wealth let in on our farmers and
yeomanry. Now though the whole mass of calamity
consequent on these aberrations from prudence
should in all fairness be attributed to the sufferer's
own conduct ; yet when there supervenes some one
common cause or occasion of distress which press-
ing hard on many furnishes a pretext to all, this
too will pass muster among its actual effects, and
assume the semblance and dignity of national ca-
lamity. Each unfortunate individual shares during
the hard times in the immunities of a privileged
order, as the most tottering and ruinous houses
equally with those in best repair are included in
the same brief after an extensive fire. The change
of the moon will not produce a change of weather,
except in places where the atmosphere has from
local and particular causes been predisposed to its
influence. But the former is one, placed aloft and

352 CAUSES OF DISTRESS

conspicuous to all men ; the latter are many and
intricate, and known to few. Of course it is the
moon that must bear the entire blame of wet sum-
mers and scanty crops. All these, however,
whether they are distresses common to all times
alike, or though occasioned by the general revolu-
tion and stagnation, yet really caused by personal
improvidence or misconduct, combine with its pe-
culiar and inevitable effects in making the cup
overflow. The latter class especially, as being in
such cases always the most clamorous sufferers, in-
crease the evil by swelling the alarm.

The main causes of the pi'esent exigencies are
so obvious, and lie so open to the common sense of
mankind, that the labouring classes saw the con-
nection of the change in the times with the sud-
denness of the peace, as clearly as their superiors,
and being less heated with speculation, were in the
first instance less surprised at the results. To a
public event of universal concern there will often
be more attributed than belong-s to it ; but never
in the natural course of human feelings will there
be less. That the depression began with the peace
would have been of itself a sufficient proof with
the many that it arose from the peace. But this
opinion suited ill with the purposes of sedition.
The truth, that could not be precluded, must be
removed : and when the needy speaketh aright,
the more urgent occasion is there for the ivicked
device and the lying words. Where distress is
felt, tales of wrong and oppression are I'eadily be-

MISREPRESENTED. '353

lieved, to the sufferer's own disquiet. Rage and
revenge make the cheek pale and the hand tremble
worse than even want itself : and the cup of sor-
row overflows by being held unsteadily. On the
other hand nothing calms the mind in the hour of
bitterness so efficaciously as the conviction that it
was not within the means of those above us, or
around us, to have prevented it. An influence,
mightier than fascination, dwells in the stern eye
of necessity, when it is fixed steadily on a man :
for together with the power of resistance it takes
away its agitations likewise. This is one mercy
that always accompanies the visitations of the Al-
mighty when they are received as such. If thei'e-
fore the sufferings of the lower classes are to supply
air and fuel to their passions, and are to be per-
verted into instruments of mischief, they must be
attributed to causes that can be represented as re-
movable; either to individuals who have been pre-
viously rendered unpopular, or to whole classes of
men, accordingly as the immediate object of their
seducers may require. What, though nothing
should be more remote from the true cause ? What,
though the invidious charge should be not only
without proof, but in the face of strong proof to
the contrary ? What, though the pretended re-
medy should have no possible end but that of ex-
asperating the disease ? All will be of little or no
avail if these truths have not been administered
beforehand. When the wrath is gone forth, the
plague is already begun. Wrath is cruel, and
A A

354 PENSIONS

where is there a deafness like that of an outra-
geous multitude ? For as the matter of fire is,
so it burneth. Let the demagogue but succeed in
maddening the crowd, he may bid defiance to de-
monstration, and direct the madness against whom
it pleaseth him. A slanderous tongue has dis-
quieted many, and driven them from nation to
nation ; strong cities hath it pulled down and
overthrown the houses of great men. (Ecclus.
xxviii. 14.)

We see in every promiscuous public meeting
the effect produced by the bold assertion that the
present hardships of all classes are owing to the
number and amount of pensions and sine-cures.
Yet from the unprecedented zeal and activity in
the education* of the poor, of the thousands that

* With all due humility we contended that the war in
question had likewise its golden side. The anomalous occa-
sions and stupendous events of the contest had roused us,
like the blast of a trumpet from the clouds ; and as many as
were capable of thinking- were roused to thought. It had
forced on the higher and middle classes — say, rather on the
people at large, as distinguished from the mere populace —
the home truth, that national honesty and individual safety,
private morals and public security, mutually grounded each
other, that they were twined at the very root, and could not
grow or thrive but in intertwine : and we of Great Britain had
acquired this instruction without the stupifying influences
of terror or actual calamity. Yet that it had operated prac-
tically, and in a scale proportional to the magnitude of the
occasion, the late and present condition of manners and in-
tellect among the young men at Oxford and Cambrido-e, the
manly sobriety of demeanor, the submission to the routine

AND SINECURES. 355

are inflamed by, and therefore give credit to, these
statements, there are few without a child at home,
who could prove their impossibility by the first
and simplest rules of arithmetic ; there is not one,
perhaps, who taken by himself and in a cooler mood,
vv-ould stand out against the simple question, —
whether it was not folly to suppose that the low-
ness of his wages or his want of employment could
be occasioned by the circumstance, that a sum (the
whole of which, as far as it is raised by taxation,
cannot take a yearly penny from him) was dis-
persed and returned into the general circulation by
annuitants of the Treasury instead of annuitants
of the Bank, by John instead of Peter; however
blameable the regulation might be in other re-
spects ? What then ? the hypothesis allows of a

of study in almost all, and the zeal in the pursuit of know-
ledge and academic distinction in a large and increasing
number, aiford a cheering testimony to such as were familiar
with the state of the two Universities forty or even thirty
years ago, with the moral contrast which they presented, at
the close of the last, and during the former half of the pre-
sent reign ; while a proof of still greater power, and open
to the .observation of all men, is supplied by the predomi-
nant anxiety concerning the education and principles of
their children in all the respectable classes of the commu-
nity, and the unexampled scale, in consequence, of the very
numerous large and small volumes composed or compiled
for the use of parents. Nor here did the salutary influence
stop. We had been compelled to know and feel that the
times in which we had to act or suffer were the Saturnalia
of revolution ; and fearful evidence had been given us at
the cost of our unfortunate neighbours, that a vicious and

356 TITHES, MACHINEKY.

continual reference to persons, and to all the un-
easy and malignant passions which personalities
are of all means the best fitted to awaken. The
grief itself, however grinding it may be, is of no
avail to this end ; it must first be converted into a
grievance. Were the audience composed chiefly
of the lower farmers and the peasantry, the same
circumstance would for the same reason have been
attributed wholly to the Clergy and the system of
tithes ; as if the corn would be more plentiful if
the farmers paid their whole rent to one man, in-
stead of paying nine parts to the landlords and the
tenth to the tithe -owners ! But let the meeting
be composed of the manufacturing poor, and then
it is the machineiy of their employers that is
devoted to destruction : though it would not ex-
ceed the truth if I affirmed, that to the use and

ignorant population was a magazine of combustibles left
roofless, while madmen and incendiaries were letting off
their new invented blue lights and fire-rockets in every di-
rection. The wish sprang up and spread throughout Eng-
land that ever}- Englishman should be able to read his Bible,
and have a Bible of his own to read. The general wish or-
ganized itself into act and yjlan : a discovery, the living
educt of cue man's genius and benevolence, rendered the
execution practicable and even easy ; and the god-like idea
began and is proceeding to reaHze itself with a rapidity yet
stedfastness, which nothing could make possible or credible,
but such a conviction eifected by an experience so strange
and awful, and acting on that volunteer spirit, that instinct
of fervid yet orderly co-operation, which most of all our
honourable characteristics distinguishes, secures, enriches,
strengthens and elevates the people of Great Britain, [/"rom
an Essay published in the Courier, July, 1816.]

CAPITALISTS. 357

perfection of this very machinery the majority of
the poor deluded destroyers owe their very exist-
ence, owe to it that they ever beheld the light of
heaven !

Even so it is with the capitalists and store-
keepers, who by spreading- tVie dearness of provi-
sions over a larger space and time prevent scarcity
from becoming real famine, the frightful lot at
certain and not distant intervals of our less com-
mercial forefathers. These men by the mere in-
stinct of self-interest are not alone birds of warn-
ino-, that prevent waste ; but as the raven of Elijah,
they bring supplies from afar. But let the incen-
diary spirit have rendered them birds of ill omen :
and it is well if the deluded malcontents can be
restrained from levelling at them missiles more
alarming than the curse of the unwise that alighteth
not. There he three things (says the wise son of
Sirach) that mine heart fear eth, the slander of a
city, the gathering together of an unruly multi-
tude, and a false accusation : all these are ivorse
than death. But all these are the arena, and
the chosen weapons of demagogues. Wretches !
they would without remorse detract the hope which
is the subliming and expanding warmth of public
credit, destroy the public credit which is the vital
air of national industry, convert obstruction into
stagnation, and make grass grow in the exchange
and the market-place ; if so they might but goad
ignorance into riot, and fanaticism into rebellion !■
They would snatch the last morsel from the poor

358 CAUSE OF THE DISTRESS.

man's lips to make him curse the Government in
his heart — alas ! to fall at length, either ignomi-
niously beneath the strength of the outraged law,
or (if God in his anger, and for the punishment of
general depravity should require a severer and
more extensive retribution) to perish still more la-
mentably among the victims of its weakness.

Thus then, I have answered at large to the first
of the three questions proposed as the heads and
divisions of this address. I am well aware that ,
our demagogues are not the only empirics who
have tampered with the case. But I felt unwil-
ling to put the mistakes of sciolism, or even those
of vanity and self-interest, in the same section with
crime and guilt. What is omitted here will find
its place elsewhere ; the more readily, that having
been tempted by the foulness of the ways to turn
for a short space out of my direct path, I have en-
croached already on the second question ; that,
namely, which respects the ultimate causes and
immediate occasions of the complaint.

The latter part of this problem I appear to my-
self to have solved fully and satisfactorily. To
those who deem any further or deeper research
superfluous, I must content myself with observing",
tliat I have never heard it denied that there is
more than a sufficiency of food in existence. I
have, at least, met with no proof that there is or
has been any scarcity, either in the materials of
all necessary comforts, or any lack of strength,
skill and industry to prepare them. If we saw a

OVERBALANCE OF COMMERCIAL SPIRIT. 359

man in health pining at a full table because there
was not the savory meat there which he loved,
and had expected, the wanton delay or negligence
of the messenger would be a complete answer to
our inquiries after the occasion of this suUenness
or inappetence ; but the cause of it we should be
tempted to seek in the man's own undisciplined
temper, or habits of self-indulgence. So far from
agreeing therefore with those who find the causes
in the occasions, I think the half of the question
already solved of very unequal importance with
that which yet remains for solution.

The immediate occasions of the existing distress
may be correctly given with no greater difficulty
than would attend any other series of known his-
toric facts; but toward the discovery of its true
s«at and sources, I can but offer a humble contri-
bution. They appear to me, however, resolvable
into the overbalance* of the commercial spirit
in consequence of the absence or weakness of the
counter-weights ; this overbalance considered as
displaying itself, 1. in the commercial world it-
self: 2. in the agricultural : 3. in the Government :

* I entreat attention to the word, over-balance. My
opinions would be greatly misinterpreted if I were supposed
to think hostilely of the spirit of commerce to which I attri-
bute the largest proportion of our actual freedom, and at
least as large a share of our virtues as of our vices. Still
more anxiously would I guard against the suspicion of a
design to inculpate any number or class of individuals. It
is not in the power of a minister or of a cabinet to say to the

360 DECAYED FEELING OF RANK.

and, 4. in the combined influence of all three on
the more numerous and laboui-ing classes.

Of the natural counter-forces to the impetus of
trade, the first that presents itself to my mind, is
the ancient feeling of rank and ancestry, com-
pared with our present self-complacent triumph
over these supposed prejudices. Not that titles
and the rights of precedence are pursued by us
with less eagerness than by our forefathers. The
coiitrary is the case; and for this very cause, be-
cause they inspire less reverence. In the old
times they were valued by the possessors and
revered by the people as distinctions of nature,
which the Crown itself could only ornament, but
not give. Like the stars in heaven, their influence
was wider and more general, because for the mass
of mankind there was no hope of reaching, and
therefore no desire to appropriate, them. That
many evils as well as advantages accompanied this
state of things I am well aware : and likewise that
many of the latter have become incompatible with
far more important blessings. It would therefore
be sickly affectation to suspend the thankfulness

current of national tendencj', Stay here ! or. Flow there !
The excess can only be remedied by the slow progress of
intellect, the influences of religion, and irresistible events
guided by Providence. In the points, even, which I have
presumed to blame, by the word Government I intend all
the directors of political power, that is, the great estates of
the realm, temporal and spiritual, and not only the Parlia-
ment, but all the elements of Parliament.

ECLIPSE OF PHILOSOPHY. 361

due for our immunity from the one in an idle re-
gret for the loss of the other. But however true
this may be, and whether the good or the evil pre-
ponderated, still, this reverence for ancientry in
families acted as a counterpoise to the grosser
superstition of wealth. Of the efficiency of this
counter-influence I can offer negative proof only :
and for this we need only look back on the de-
plorable state of Holland in respect of patriotism
and public spirit at and before the commencement
of the French Revolution.

The limits and proportions of this address allow
little more than a bare reference to this point. The
same restraint I must impose on myself in the fol-
lowing. For under this head I include the general
neglect of all the austerer studies ; the long and
ominous eclipse of philosophy ; the usurpation of
that venerable name by physical and psychological
empiricism ; and the non-existence of a learned
and philosophic public, which is perhaps the only
innoxious form of an imperium in imperio, but at
the same time the only form which is not directly
or indirectly encouraged. So great a risk do I
incur of malignant interpretation, and the asser-
tion itself is so likely to appear paradoxical even
to men of candid minds, that I should have passed
over this point, most important as I know it to
be ; but that it will be found stated more at large,
with all its proofs, in a work on the point of pub-
lication. The fact is simply this. We have —
lovers, shall I entitle them ? — or must I not rather

362 . MODERN

hazard the introduction of their own phrases, and
say, amateurs or dilettanti, as musicians, botanists,
florists, mineralogists, and antiquarians ? Nor is it
denied that these are ingenuous pursuits, and such
as become men of rank and fortune. Neither in
these or in other points do I complain of any excess
in the pursuits themselves ; but of that which arises
from the deficiency of the counterpoise. The effect
is the same. Every work, which can be made use
of either to immediate profit or immediate pleasure,
every work which falls in with the desire of ac-
quiring wealth suddenly, or which can gratify
the senses, or pamper the still more degrading
appetite for scandal and personal defamation, is
sure of an appropriate circulation. But neither
philosophy or theology in the strictest sense of the
words, can be said to have even a public existence
among us. I feel assured that if Plato himself
were to return and renew his sublime lucubrations
in the metropolis of Great Britain, a handicrafts-
man from a laboratory, who had just succeeded in
disoxydating an earth,— siZex, or lime, for instance,
— would be thought the more respectable, nay,
the more illustrious person of the two. Nor will
it be the least drawback from his honors, that he
had never even asked himself, what law of uni-
versal being nature uttered in this phcenomenon ;
while the character of a visionary would be the
sole remuneration of the man, who from the in-
sight into that law had previously demonstrated
the necessity of the fact. As to that which passes

A^^D ELDER SYSTEMS. 363

with US under the name of metaphysics, philosophic
elements, and the like, I refer every man of reflec-
tion to the contrast between the present times and
those shortly after the restoration of ancient lite-
rature. In the latter we find the greatest men of
the age, statesmen, warriors, monarchs, architects
in closest intercourse with philosophy. I need
only mention the names of Lorenzo the Magnifi-
cent, Picus Mirandola, Ficinus and Politian ;
the abstruse subjects of their discussion, and the
importance attached to them, as the requisite qua-
lifications of men placed by Providence as guides
and governors of their fellow-creatures. If this
be undeniable, equally notorious is it that at pre-
sent the more effective a man's talents are, and
the more likely he is to be useful and distinguished
in the highest situations of public life, the earlier
does he shew his aversion to the metaphysics and
the books of metaphysical speculation, which are
placed before him : though they come with the
recommendation of being so many triumphs of mo-
dern good sense over the schools of ancient philo-
sophy. Dante, Petrarch, Spenser, Philip and Al-
gernon Sidney, Milton and Barrow were Platonists.
But all the men of genius, with whom it has been
my fortune to converse, either profess to know no-
thing of the present systems, or to despise them.
It would be equally unjust and irrational to seek
the solution of this diiference in the men ; and if
not, it can be found only in the philosophic systems
themselves. And so in truth it is. The living of

364 WANT OF A PHILOSOPHIC CLASS.

former ages communed gladly with a life-breathing
philosophy : the living of the present age wisely
leave the dead to take care of the dead.

But whatever the causes may be, the result is
before our eyes. An excess in our attachment to
temporal and personal objects can be counteracted
only by a pre-occupation of the intellect and the
affections with permanent, universal, and eternal
truths. Let no man enter, said Plato, who has
not previously disciplined his mind by geometry.*
He cojisidered this science as the first purification
of the soul, by abstracting the attention from the
accidents of the senses. We too teach geometry ;
but that there may be no danger of the pupil's
becoming too abstract in his conceptions, it has
been not only proposed, but the proposal has been
adopted, that it should be taught by wooden dia-
grams. It pains me to remember with what ap-
plause a work, that placed the inductions of mo-
dern chemistry in the same rank with the demon-
strations of mathematical science, was received
even in a mathematical University. I must not
permit myself to say more on this subject, de-
sirous as I am of shewing the importance of a phi-
losophic class, and of evincing that it is of vital
utility, and even an essential element in the com-
position of a civilized community. It must suffice,
that it has been explained in what respect the pur-
suit of truth for its own sake, and the reverence

* OiiSiiQ dysoJixsTptjTOQ dulrit). — Ed.

RELIGIOUS FAITH ; 365

yielded to its professors, has a tendency to calm or
countei-act the pursuit of wealth ; and that there-
fore a counterforce is wanting wherever philosophy
is degraded in the estimation of society. " What
are you "(a philosopher was once asked) "inconse-
quence of your admiration of these abstruse spe-
culations?" He answered : " What I am, it does
not become me to say ; but what thousands are,
who despise them, and even pride themselves on
their ignorance, I see — and tremble ! "

There is a third influence, alternately our spur
and our curb, without which all the pursuits and
desires of man must either exceed or fall short of
their just measure. Need I add, that I mean the
influence of religion ? I speak of that sincere, that
entire interest, in the undivided faith of Christ
which demands the first-fruits of the whole man,
his affections no less than his outward acts, his
understanding equally with his feelings. For be
assured, never yet did there exist a full faith in the
divine Word, (by whom not immortality alone,
but light and immortality were brought into the
world) which did not expand the intellect while it
purified the heart ; which did not multiply the aims
and objects of the mind, while it fixed and simpli-
fied those of the desires and passions. If acqui-
escence without insight ; if warmth without light ;
if an immunity from doubt given and guaranteed
by a resolute ignorance; if the habit of taking for
granted the words of a catechism, remembered or
forgotten ; if a sensation of positiveness substituted

366 ITS TRUE CHARACTER.

— I will not say, for certainty, but— for that calm
assurance, the very means and conditions of which
it supersedes ; if a belief that seeks the darkness,
and yet strikes no root, immovable as the limpet
from its rock, and like the limpet fixed there by
mere force of adhesion ; — if these suffice to make us
Christians, in wViat intelligible sense could our
Lord have announced it as the height and consum-
mation of the signs and miracles which attested his
Divinity, that the Gospel was preached to the
poor ? In what sense could the Apostle affirm
that believers have received, not indeed the wisdom
of this world that comes to nought, but the wisdom
of God, that we might know and comprehend the
things that are freely given to us of God ? or that
every Christian, in proportion as he is indeed a
Christian, has received the Spirit that searcheth
all things, yea, the deep things of God himself? —
On what grounds could the Apostle denounce even
the sincerest fervor of spirit as defective, where it
does not bring forth fruits in the understanding?*
Or again : if to believe were enough, why are we
commanded by another Apostle, that, besides this,
giving all diligence we should add to our faith
manly energy and to manly energy knowledge ?
(2 Pet. i. 5.) Is it not especially significant, that
in the divine economy, as revealed to us in the
New Testament, the peculiar office of Redemption
is attributed to the Word, that is, to the intel-

* Brethren ! be not children in understanding : howbeit,
in malice be ye children, but in understanding be men.

UNITARIANS. 367

ligential wisdom which from all eternity is with
God, and is God ; that in Him is life, and the life
is the light of men ?

In the present day we hear much, and from men
of various creeds, of the plainness and simplicity
of the Christian religion : and a strange abuse has
been made of these words, often indeed with no ill
intention, hut still oftener by men who would fain
transform the necessity of believing in Christ into
a recommendation to believe him. The advocates
of the latter scheme grew out of a sect that were
called Socinians, but having succeeded in disbe-
lieving far beyond the last foot-marks of the So-
cini, have chosen to designate themselves by the
name of Unitarians. But this is a name, which in
its proper sense, can belong only to their antago-
nists : for unity or unition, and indistinguishable
unicity or oneness, are incompatible terms : while,
in the exclusive sense in which they mean the
name to be understood, it is a presumptuous boast,
and an uncharitable calumny. Their true designa-
tion, which simply expresses a fact admitted on ali
sides, would be that of Psilanthrophists,* or assert-

* N ew tiling's justify new terms. Novls in rebus licet nova
iwhis verba conjingere. — We never speak of the unity of at-
traction, or of the unity of repulsion ; but of the unity of at-
traction and repulsion in each one corpuscle. The essential
diversity of the ideas, unity and sameness, was aijaong- the
elementary principles of the old logicians ; and the sophisms
groimded on the confusion of these terms have been ably
exposed by Leibnitz, in his critique on Wissowatius, the
acutest, perhaps, of all the learned Socinian divines, when
Socinian divines were undeniably men of learning.

368 UNITARIANISM.

ors of the mere humanity of Christ. It is the in-
terest of these to speak of the Christian religion as
comprised in a few plain doctrines, and containing
nothing not intelligible, at the first hearing, to men
of the narrowest capacities. Well then, (it might
be replied) we are disposed to place a full reliance
on the veracity of the great Founder of the Chris-
tian religion, and likewise — which is more than
you yourselves are on all occasions willing to ad-
mit — on the accuracy and competence of the wri-
ters, ^vho first recorded his acts and sayings. We
have learned from you, whom, — and we now wish
to hear from you — what we are to believe. In
answer to this request we are referred to a parti-
cular fact or incident, recorded of Jesus, by his
biographers, the object and purpose of which was,
we are told, to produce belief of certain doctrines.
And what are these ? Those without the previous
belief of which, no man would, or rather, according
to St. Paul's declaration, could become a convert
to Christianity ; doctrines, which it is certain that
Christ's immediate disciples believed, not less con-
fidently, before they had acknowledged his mission,
than they did afterwards. Religion and politics,
they tell us, require but the application of a com-
mon sense, which every man possesses, to a sub-
ject in which every man is concerned. To be a
musician, an orator, a painter, or even a good me-
chanician, presupposes genius ; to be an excellent
artizan or mechanic requires more than an average
degree of talent ; but to be a legislator or a theo-

UNITARIANISM. 369

logian, or both at once, demands nothing but com-
mon sense ! Now, I willing-ly admit that nothing
can be necessary to the salvation of a Christian
which is not in his power. For such, therefore,
as have neither the oppoitunity nor the capacity
of learning- more, sufficient, doubtless, will be the
belief of those plain truths, and the fulfilment of
those commands, which to be incapable of under-
standing, is to be a man in appearance only. But
even to this scanty creed the disposition of faith
must be added : and let it not be forgotten that
though nothing can be easier than to understand a
code of belief, four-fifths of which consist in
avowals of disbelief, and the remainder in truths,
concerning which (in this country at least) a man
must have taken pains to learn to have any doubt ;
yet it is by no means easy to reconcile this code
of negatives with the declarations of the Chris-
tian Scriptures. On the contrary, it requires all
the resources of verbal criticism, and all the per-
verse subtlety of special pleading, to work out a
plausible semblance of correspondency between
them. It must, however, be conceded that a man
may consistently spare himself the trouble of the
attempt, and leave the New Testament unread,
after he has once thoroughly persuaded himself
that it can teach him nothing of any real importance
that he does not already know. St. Paul indeed
thought otherwise. For though he too teaches us,
that in the religion of Christ there is milk for
babes : yet he informs us at the same time, that

B B

370 MEANING OF THE SIMPLICITY

there is meat for strong men : and to the like
purpose one of the Fathers has observed that in
the New Testament there are shallows where the
lamb may ford, and depths where the elephant
must swim. The Apostle exhorts the followers of
Christ to the continual study of the new religion,
on the ground that in the mystery of Christ, which
in other ag'es was not made known to the sons of
men, and in the riches of Christ which no research,
could exhaust, there were contained all the trea-
sures of knowledge and wisdom. Accordingly in
that earnestness of spirit, which his own personal
experience of the truth inspired, he prays with a
solemn and a ceremonious feiTour, that being
strengthened with might in the inner man, they
may be able to comprehend with all saints what
is the breadth and length and depth and height,
of that living principle at once the giver and the
gift of that anointing faith, which in endless evo-
lution teaches us of all things, and is truth ! For
ail things are but parts and forms of its progres-
sive manifestation, and every new knowledge but
a new organ of sense and insight into this one all-
inclusive verity, which, still filling the vessel of
the understanding, still dilates it to a capacity of
yet other and yet greater truths, and thus makes
the soul feel its poverty by the very amplitude of
its present, and the immensity of its reversionary,
wealth. All truth indeed is simple, and needs no
extrinsic ornament. And the more profound the
truth is, the more simple : for the whole labour

OF THE SCRIPTURES. 371

and building-up of knowledge is but one continued
process of simplification. But I cannot comprehend,
in what ordinary sense of the words the properties
of plainness and simplicity can be applied to the
Prophets, or to the writings of St. John, or to the
Epistles of St. Paul ; or what can have so marvel-
lously improved the capacity of our laity beyond
the same class of persons among the primitive
Christians ; who, as we are told by a fellow Apostle,
found in the writings last-mentioned many passages
hard to be understood, which the unlearned as
well as the unstable, were in danger of wresting
and misinterpreting. I can well understand, how-
ever, what is and has been the practical conse-
quence of this notion. It is this very consequence,
indeed, that occasioned the preceding remarks,
makes them pertinent to my present subject, and
gives them a place in the train of argument requi-
site for its illustration. For what need of any
after- recurrence to the sources of information con-
cerning a religion, the whole contents of which can
be thoroughly acquired at once, and in a few hours ?
An occasional remembrancing may, perhaps, be
expedient ; but what object of study can a man
propose to himself in a matter of which he knows
all that can be known, all at least, that it is of use
to know ? Like the first rules of arithmetic, its
few plain and obvious truths may hourly serve the
man's purposes, yet never once occupy his thoughts.
But it is impossible that the affections should be
kept constant to an object which gives no employ-

372 UNITARIAN

ment to the understanding. The energies of the
intellect, increase of insight, and enlarging views,
are necessary to keep alive the substantial faith in
the heart. They are the appointed fuel to the
sacred fire. In the state of perfection all other
faculties may, perhaps, be swallowed up in love ;
but it is on the wings of the Cherubim, which the
ancient Hebrew doctors interpreted as meaning the
powers and efforts of the intellect, that Ave must
first be borne up to the pure empyrean : and it
must be Seraphs and not the hearts of poor mortals,
that can burn unfuelled and self-fed. Give me
understanding (exclaimed the royal Psalmist) and I
shall observe thy law with my tvhole heart. Teach
me knowledge and good judgment. Thy com-
mandment is exceeding broad : how I love thy
law ! it is my meditation all the day. The en-
trance of thy words giveth light, it giveth tinder-
standing to the simple. I prevented the dawning
of the mornings, mine eyes prevent the night-
watches, that I might meditate upon thy word.
Now where the very contrary of this is the opinion
of many, and the practice of most, what results can
be expected but those which are actually presented
to us in our daily experience ?

There is one class of men* who read the Scrip-

* Whether it be on the increase, as a sect, is doubtful.
But it is admitted bj' all — nay, strang-e as it may seem,
made a matter of boast, — that the number of its secret ad-
herents, outwardly of other denominations, is tenfold oreater
than that of its avowed and incorporated followers. And

CREED. 373

tures, when they do read them, in order to pick
and choose their faith : or (to speak more accu-
rately) for the purpose of plucking away live-
asunder, as it were from the divine oro-anism of

truly in our cities and great manufacturing- and commercial
towns, among lawyers and such of the tradesfolk as are
the ruling members in bookcluhs, I am inclined to fear that
this has not been asserted without good ground. For,
Socinianism in its present form, consisting almost wholly
in attack and imagined detection, has a particular charm for
what are called shrewd knowing men. Besides, the vain
and half-educated, whose Christian and surnames in the
title pages of our magazines, lady's diaries, and the like, are
the successors of the shame-faced Critos, Phileleutheroses,
and Philaletheses in the time of our grandfathers, will be
something : and now that Deism has gone out of fashion,
Socinianism has swept up its refuse. As the main success
of this sect is owing to the small proportion which the affir-
mative articles of their faith (^rari nantes in gurgite vasto) bear
to the negative, (that is their belief to their disbelief) it will
be an act of kindness to the unwary to bring together the
former under one point of view. This is done in the
following catalogue, the greater part if not the whole of
which may be authenticated from the writings of Mr.
Belsham.

1. They believe in one God, professing to differ from
other Christians only in holding the Deity to be unipersonal,
the Father alone being God, the Son a mere, though an in-
spired and highly gifted, man, and the Holy Spirit either a
synonyme of God, or of the divine agency, or of its effects.

2. They believe men's actions necessitated, and consist-
ently with this affirm that the Christian religion (that is,
their view of it) precludes all remorse for our sins, they
being a present calamity, but not guilt.

3. They believe the Gospels though not written by in-
spiration, to be authentic histories on the whole : though

374 U]SrlTARIA^"

the Bible, textuary morsels and fragments for the
support of doctrines which they had learned before-
hand from the higher oracle of their own natural
common-sense. Sayictas Scripturas frustant ut

with some additions and interpolations. And on tbe au-
thority of these writings confirmed by other evidence, they
believe in the resurrection of the man Jesus Christ, from
the dead.

4. On the historic credibility of this event they believe
in the resurrection of the body, which in their opinion is
the whole man, at the last day : and differ from other
Churches in this only, that while other Christians believe,
that all men will arise in the body, they hold that all the
bodies that had been men will arise.

5. A certain indefinite number of mankind thus renewed
to life and consciousness, it is the common belief of them
all, will be placed in a state of happiness and immortality.
But with respect to those who have died in the calamitous
condition of unreformed sinfulness, (to what extent it is for
the supreme Judge to decide) they are divided among them-
selves. The one party teach, that such unhappy persons
will be raised only to be re-annihilated : the other party
contend, that there will be a iinal restoration of all men,
with a purgatory or state of remedial discipline, the severity
and duration of which will be proportioned to the kind,
degree, and obstinacy of the disease, and of which there-
fore every man is left to his own conjectural hopes and
fe«rs : with this comfort however to the very worst, (that is,
most unfortunate and erroneous of mankind) that it will be
all well with them at last. In this article they diifer from the
Papists in having- no hell, and in placing their purgatory
after, instead of before, the day of judgment.

6. Lastly, as they hold only an intellectual and physical,
and not a moral, difference in the actions and characters of
men, they not being free agents, and therefore not more re-
sponsible beings than the true beasts, although their greater

375

Jrustrent. Through the gracious dispensations of
Providence a complexity of circumstances may-
co-operate as antidotes to a noxious principle, and
realize the paradox of a very good man under a

powers of memory and comparison render them more sus-
ceptible of being acted on by prospective motives — (and
in tliis sense they retain the term, responsibility, after
having purified it by the ex-inanition of its old, and the trans-
fusion of a new, meaning-) — and as they with strict conse-
quence, merge all the attributes of Deity in power, intelli-
gence, and benevolence, (mercy and justice being modes, or
rather perspective views, of the two latter ; the hohness of
God meaning the same or nothing at all ; and his anger,
offence, and hatred of moral evil, being mere metaphors and
figures of speech addressed to a rude and barbarous people)
they profess to hold a Redemption — not however by the
Cross of Christ, except as his death was an evidence of his
sincerity, and the necessary preliminary to his Resurrection ;
but — by the effects which this fact of his Resurrection, to-
gether with his example, and his re-pubUcation of the moral
precepts (taught indeed long before, but as they think, not
so clearly, by Moses and the Prophets) were calculated to
produce on the human mind. So that if it had so happened,
that a man had been influenced to an innocent and useful life
by the example, precepts, and martyrdom of Socrates, So-
crates, and not Christ, would have been his Redeemer.

These are all the positives of the modem Socinian Creed,
and even these it was not possible to extricate wholly from
■the points of disbelief. But if it should be asked, why this
resurrection, or re-creation is confined to the human animal,
the answer must be, — that more than this has not been reveal-
ed. And so far all Christians will join assent. But some have
added, and in my opinion much to their credit, that they
hope it may be the case with the brutes likewise, as they
see no sufficient reason to the contrary. And truly, upon
their scheme, I agree with them. For if man be no other or

376 UNITARIAN

very evil faith. It is not denied that a Socinian
may be as honest, useful and benevolent a cha-
racter as any of his neighbours ; and if he thinks
more and derives a larger portion of his pleasures
from intellectual sources, he is likely to be more

nobler creature essentially, than lie is represented in their
system, the meanest reptile, that maps out its path on the
earth by lines of slime, must be of equal worth and respec-
tability, not only in the sight of the Holy One, but by a
strange contradiction even before man's own reason. For
remove all the sources of esteem and the love founded on
esteem, and whatever else pre-supposes a will and therein
a possible transcendence to the material world ; mankind,
as far as my experience has extended, (and I am less than
the least of many whom 1 could cite as having formed the
very same judgment) are on the whole distinguished from
the other beasts incomparably more to their disadvantage,
by lying, treachery, ingratitude, massacre, thirst of blood,
and by sensualities which both in sort and degree it would
he hhelling their brother-beasts to call bestial, than to their
advantage by a greater extent of intellect. And what in-
deed, abstracted from the free-will, could this intellect be
but a more shewy instinct of more various application in-
deed, but far less secure, useful, or adapted to its purposes,
than the instinct of birds, insects, and the like. In short,
as I have elsewhere observed, compared with the wiles and
factories of the spider, or with the cunning of the fox, it
would be but a more efflorescent, and for that very cause a
less efficient, salt to preserve the hog from putrifying before
its destined hour.

Well may the words of Isaiah be applied and addressed
to the teachers and followers of this sect, or rather, I would
say, to their tenets as personified — The luord of the Lord was
unto them, precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little and
there a little, that they mi^ht go and fall backward, and he
broken and spared. Wherefore, hear the word of the Lord, ye
scornful men that rule this people ! Because ye have said, We

CREED. 377

SO. But in such instances, (and that they are not
infrequent, I am, from my own experience, most
willing to bear witness,) the fruit is from the grafts,
not from the tree. The native produce is, or would
be, an intriguing, overbearing, scornful and worldly
disposition ; and in point of fact, it is the only
scheme of religion that inspires in its adherents a
contempt for the understandings of all who differ
from them.* But be this as it may, and whatever
be its effects, it is not probable that Christianity
will have any direct influence on men who pay it
no other compliment than that of calling by its
name the previous dictates and decisions of their
own mother-wit.

Still, however, the more numerous class is of
those who do not trouble themselves at all with reli-
gious matters, which they resign to the clergyman of
the parish. But whilst not a few among these men
consent to pray and hear by proxy ; and whilst
others, more attentive to the prudential advantages
of a decorous character, yield the customary evi-
dence of their Church-membership ; but, this per-
formed, are at peace with themselves, and

have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agree-
ment! Your covenant with death shall be anmdled, and your
agreement with hell shall not stand. For your bed is shorter
than that a man can stretch himself upon it, and the covering
narrower than that he can wrap himself in it, — xxviii.

* A Calvinist, or Moravian, for instance, would lament
over a disbeliever in their peculiar tenets, as over one from
whom the gift of faith had been hitherto withholden; but
would readily join in attestation of his talents, learning, good
morals, and all natural gifts. — 1827.

378 MODEEN

-think their Sunday's task

As much as God or man can fairly ask ; —

there exists amongst the most respectable laity of
our cities and great towns, an active, powerful,
and enlarging minority, whose industry, while it
enriches their families, is at the same time a support
to the revenue, and not seldom enlivens their whole
neighbourhood : men whose lives are free from all
disreputable infirmities, and of whose activity in
the origination, patronage, and management both
of charitable and of religious associations, who must
not have read or heard ? and which who that has,
will dare deny to be most exemplary ? After the
custom of our forefathers, and their pure household
religion, these, in so many respects estimable per-
sons, are for the greater part in the habit of having
family-prayer, and a portion of Scripture read every
morning and evening. In this class, with such
changes or substitutions as the peculiar tenets of the
sect require, we must include the sensible, orderly
and beneficent Society of the Friends. Here then,
if any where, (that is, in any class of men ; for the
present argument is not concerned with individu-
als,) we may expect to find Christianity tempering
commercial avidity and sprinkling its holy damps
on the passion of accumulation. This, I say, we
might expect to find, if an undoubting belief in the
threats and promises of Revelation, and a conse-
quent regularity of personal, domestic, and social
demeanor, sufficed to constitute that Christianity,
the power and privilege of which is so to renew
and irradiate the whole intelligential and moral life

QUAKERS : 379

of man, as to overcome the spirit of the world.
If this, the appointed test, were found wanting,
should we not be forced to apprehend, nay, are we
not compelled to infer, that the spirit of prudential
motive, however ennobled by the magnitude and
awfulness of its objects,* and though as the termi-
nation of a lower,— it may be the commencement
(and not seldom the occasion) of a higher state,
—is not, even in respect of morality itself, that
abiding and continuous principle of action, which
is either one with the faith spoken of by St. Paul,
or its immediate offspring. It cannot be that

* And in this alone, Paley, by a use of terms altogether
arbitrary, places the distinction between prudence and
virtue, the former being self-love in its api)lication to the
sum of pain and pleasure that is likely to result to us, as the
consequence of our actions, in the present life only ; while
the latter is the same self-love, that together with the pre-
sent consequences of our actions, takes in likewise the more
important enjoyments or sufferings which, accordingly as we
obey or disobey His known commands, God has promised
to bestow, or threatened to inflict, on us in the life to come.^
According to this writer, it becomes the duty of a rational
free agent (it would be more pertinent to say, of a sentient

" " And from this account of obligation it follows, that
we are obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain
or lose something by ; for nothing else can be a violent
motive to us. As we should not be obliged to obey the
laws or the magistrate, unless rewards or punishments,
pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our
obedience ; so neither should we, without the same reason,
be obHged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey
the commands of God." — Paley, Moral and Polit. Phil.
B. II. c. 2. et passim.

380 THEIR CHARACTER

spirit of obedience to the commands of Christ, by
which the soul dwelleth in him, and he in it ; and
which our Saviour himself announces as a being
born again. And this indispensable act, or in-
fluence, or impregnation, of which, as of a divine
tradition, the eldest philosophy is not silent ; which
flashed through the darkness of the pagan myste-
ries ; and which it was therefore a reproach to a
master in Israel, that he had not already known ;
this is elsewhere explained, as a seed which, though

animal capable of forecast) to reduce his will to an habitual
coincidence with his reason, on no other ground, but because
he beheves that God is able and determined either to gratify
or to torment him. Thus, the great principle of the Gospel,
that we are bound to love our neighbours as ourselves and
God above all, must, if translated into a consistency with
this theory of enlightened self-love, run thus : On the ground
of our fear of torment and our expectation of pleasure from
an infinitely powerful Being, we are under a prudential ob-
ligation of acting towards our neighbours as if we loved
them equally with ourselves ; but ultimately and in very
truth to love ourselves only. And this is the work, this the
system of moral and political philosophy cited as highest
authority in our Senate and Courts of Judicature ? And
(still worse!) this is the text-book for the moral lectures at
one of our Universities, justly the most celebrated for
scientific ardor and manly thinking. It is not without a
pang of filial sorrow that I make this acknowledgement,
which nothing could have extorted from me but the strongest
conviction of the mischievous and debasing tendencies of
that wide-spread system, in which the Works of Paley (his
Sermons excepted) act not the less pernicious part, because
the most decorous and plausible. The fallacious sophistry
of the grounding- principle in this whole system has been
detected by Des Cartes, and Bishop Butler ; and of late
years, with great ability and originality, by Mr. Hazlitt.

AS CHRISTIANS. 381

of gradual developement, did yet potentially con-
tain the essential form not merely of a better, but
of another life ; — amidst all the frailties and tran-
sient eclipses of mortality making', 1 repeat, the
subjects of this regeneration not so properly better
as other men, whom therefore the world could not
but hate, as aliens. Its own native growth, to
whatever height it had been improved by cultivation
(whether through the agency of blind sympathies,
or of an intelligent self-interest, the two best guides
to the loftiest points to which the worldly life can
ascend) the world has always been ready and
willing to acknowledge and admire. They are of
the world : therefore speak they out of the heart
of the world (U tov kou^ov) and the world hear-
eth them. (l. John, iv.)

To abstain from acts of wrong and violence, to
be moreover industrious, useful, and of seemly
bearing, are qualities presupposed in the Gospel
code, as the preliminary conditions, rather than
the proper and peculiar effects, of Christianity.
But they are likewise qualities so palpably indis-
pensable to the temporal interests of mankind that,
if we except the brief frenzies of revolutionary
riot, there never was a time, in which the world
did not profess to reverence them: nor can we
state any period, in which a more than ordinary
character for assiduity, regularity, and charitable-
ness did not secure the world's praise and favor,
and were not calculated to advance the individual's
own worldly interests: pi'ovided only, that his

382 WORLDLY PRUDENCE

manners and professed tenets were those of some
known and allowed body of men.

I ask then, what is the fact ? We are — and,
till its good purposes, which are many, have been
all achieved, and we can become something better,
long may we continue such! — a busy, enterprising,
and commercial nation. The habits attached to
this character must, if there exist no adequate
counterpoise, inevitably lead us, under the specious
names of utility, practical knowledge, and so forth,
to look at all things through the medium of the
market, and to estimate the worth of all pursuits
and attainments by their marketable value. In
this does the spirit of trade consist. Now would
the general experience bear us out in the assertion,
that amid the absence or declension of all other
antagonist forces, there is found in the very circle
of the trading and opulent themselves, in the in-
crease, namely, of religious professors among them,
a spring of resistance to the excess of the com-
mercial impetus, from the impressive example of
their unworldly feelings evidenced by their mode-
ration in worldly pursuits ? I fear, that we may
anticipate the answer wherever the religious zeal
of such professors does not likewise manifest itself
by the glad devotion of as large a portion of their
time and industry, as the duty of providing a fair
competence for themselves and their families leaves
at their own disposal, to the comprehension of
those inspired writings and the evolution of those
pregnant truths, which are proposed for our ear-
nest, sedulous research, in order that by occtipyin"-

WITH UNCHRISTIAN TEMPER. 383

our understandings they may more and more assi-
milate our affections. I fear, that the inquiring
traveller would more often hear of zealous reli-
gionists who have read (and as a duty too and with
all due acquiescence) the prophetic, Wo to them
that join house to house and laij field to field,
that they may be alone in the land! — and yet
find no object deform the beauty of the prospect
from their window or even from their castle turrets
80 annoyingly, as a meadow not their own, or a
field under ploughing with the beam- end of the
plough in the hands of its humble owner ! I fear
that he must too often make report of men lawful
in their dealings, Scriptural in their language,
alms-givers, and patrons of Sunday schools, who
are yet resistless and overawing bidders at all land
auctions in their neighbourhood, who live in the
centre of farms without leases, and tenants without
attachments ! Or if his way should lie through
our great towns and manufacturing districts, in-
stances would grow cheap with him of wealthy
religious practitioners, who never travel for orders
without cards of edification in prose and verse,
and small tracts of admonition and instruction, all
" plain and easy, and suited to the meanest capa-
cities ;" who pray daily, as the first act of the
morning and as the last of the evening. Lead
us not into temptation ; but deliver us from evil !
and employ all the interval with an edge of appetite
keen as the scythe of death in the pursuit of yet
more and yet more of a temptation so perilous,
that (as they have full often read, and heard read,

384 QUAKER NEGLECT

without the least questioning, or whisper of doubt)
no power short of omnipotence could make their
deliverance from it credible or conceivable. Of
all denominations of Christians, there is not one
in existence or on record whose whole scheme of
faith and worship was so expressly framed for the
one purpose of spiritualizing the mind and of ab-
stracting it from the vanities of the world, as the
Society of Friends, not one, in which the members
are connected, and their professed principles en-
forced, by so effective and wonderful a form of
discipline. But in the zeal of their founders and
first proselytes for perfect spirituality they excluded
from their system all ministers specially trained
and educated for the ministry, with all professional
theologians : and they omitted to provide for the
raising up among themselves any other established
class of learned men, as teachers and schoolmasters
for instance, in their stead. Even at this day,
though the Quakers are in general remarkably
shrewd and intelligent in all worldly concerns, yet
learning, and more particularly theological learning,
is more rare among them in proportion to their
wealth and rank in life, and holden in less value,
than among any other known sect of Christians.
What has been the result ? If the occasion per-
mitted, I could dilate with pleasure on their decent
manners and decorous morals, as individuals, and
their exemplary and truly illustrious philanthropic
efforts as a Society. From all the gay and tinsel
vanities of the world their discipline has preserved

OF LEARNING : 385

them, and the English character owes to their ex-
ample some part of its manly plainness in externals.
But my arg-ument is confined to the question,
whether religion in its present state and under the
present conceptions of its demands and purposes
does, even among the most religious, exert any
efficient force of control over the commercial spirit,
the excess of which we have attributed not to the
extent and magnitude of the commerce itself, but
to the absence or imperfection of its appointed
checks and counteragents. Now as the system of
the Friends in its first intention is of all others
most hostile to worldly-mindedness on the one
hand; and as, on the other, the adherents of this
system both in confession and practice confine
Christianity to feelings and motives ; they may be
selected as representatives of the strict, but un-
studied and uninquiring, religionists of every de-
nomination. Their characteristic propensities will
supply, therefore, no unfair test for the degree of
resistance, which our present Christianity is ca-
pable of opposing to the cupidity of a trading
people. That species of Christianity I mean,
which, as far as knowledge and the faculties of
thought are concerned, — which, as far as the growth
and grandeur of the intellectual man is in question
— is to be learnt ex tempore ! A Christianity
poured in on the catechumen all and all at once,
as from a shower-bath : and which, whatever it
may be in the heart, yet for the understanding
and reason is from boyhood onward a thing past
c c

386 ITS RESULT.

and perfected. If the almost universal opinion be
tolerably correct, the question is answered. But
I by no means appropriate the remark to the
wealthy Quakers, or even apply it to them in any
particular or eminent sense, when I say, that often
as the motley reflexes of my experience move in
long- procession of manifold groups before me, the
distinguished and world-honored company of Chris-
tian Mammonists appears to the eye of my imagi-
nation as a drove of camels heavily laden, yet all
at full speed, and each in the confident expectation
of passing through the eye of the needle, without
stop or halt, both beast and baggage.

Not without an uneasy reluctance have I ven-
tured to tell the truth on this subject, lest I should
be charged with the indulgence of a satirical mood
and an uncharitable spleen. But my conscience
bears me witness, and I know myself too near the
grave to trifle with its name, that I am solely
actuated by a sense of the exceeding importance
of the subject at the present moment. I feel it an
awful duty to exercise the honest liberty of frep
utterance in so dear a concernment as that of pre-
paring my country for a change in its external
relations, which must come sooner or later ; which
I believe to have already commenced ; and that it
will depend on the presence or absence of a corres-
ponding change in the mind of the nation, and
above all in the aims and ruling opinions of our
gentry and monied men, whether it is to cast down
our strength and prosperity, or to fix them on a

PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEMS : 387

firmer and more august basis. " Surely to every
good and peaceable man it must in nature needs
be a hateful thing to be the displeaser and molester
of thousands ;* * * but when God commands to take
the trumpet and blow a dolorous or a jarring blast,
it lies not in man's will what he shall say and what
he shall conceal."*

That my complaints, both in this and in my
former Lay Sermon, concerning the same errors
are not grounded on any peculiar notions of mine,
the following remarks of a great and good man,
not less illustrious for his piety and fervent zeal as
a Christian, than for his acuteness and profundity
as a philosopher, may, perhaps, be accepted as
proof.

" Prevailing studies," he observes, " are of no
small consequence to a state, the religion, manners,
and civil government of a country ever taking some
bias from its philosophy, which aifects not only the
minds of its professors and students, but also the
opinions of all the better sort, and the practice of
the whole people, remotely and consequentially
indeed, though not inconsiderably. Have not the
doctrines of necessity and materialism, with the
consequent denial of man's responsibility, of his
corrupt and fallen nature, and of the whole scheme
of Redemption by the incarnate Word gained
ground during the general passion for the corpus -

Milton. Pieason of Church Government, B. II. Introd.

Ed.

388 THEIR POLITICAL

cularian and experimental philosophy which hath
prevailed about a century ? This indeed might
usefully enough have employed some share of the
leisure and curiosity of inquisitive persons. But
when it entered the seminaries of learning, as a
necessary accomplishment and as the most im-
portant part of knowledge, by engrossing men's
thoughts and fixing their minds so much on cor-
poreal objects, it hath, however undesignedly, not
a little indisposed them for spiritual, moral, and
intellectual matters. Certainly, had the philosophy
of Pythagoras and Socrates prevailed in this age,
we should not have seen interest take so general
and fast hold on the minds of men. But while
the employment of the mind on things purely
intellectual is to most men irksome, whereas the
sensitive powers by our constant use of them,
acquire strength, the objects of sense are too often
counted the chief good. For these things men
fight, cheat, and scramble. Therefore, in order to
tame mankind and introduce a sense of virtue, the
best human means is to exercise their under-
standing, to give them a glimpse of a world supe-
rior to the sensible ; and while they take pains to
cherish and maintain the animal life, to teach them
not to neglect the intellectual.

" It might very well be thought serious trifling
to tell my readers that the greatest men had ever
a high esteem for Plato ; whose writings are the
touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind ; whose

IMPORTANCE. 389

philosophy, the admiration of ages, supplied patriots,
magistrates, and lawgivers to the most flourishing
states, as well as Fathers to the Church, and Doc-
tors to the Schools. In these days the depths of
that old learning are rarely fathomed : and yet it
were happy for these lands, if our young nobility
and gentry instead of modern maxims would im-
bibe the notions of the great men of antiquity.
But in this free-thinking time, many an empty
head is shook at Aristotle and Plato : and the
writings of these celebrated ancients are by most
men treated on a level with the dry and barbarous
lucubrations of the Schoolmen. It may, however,
be modestly presumed that there are not many
among us, even of those that are called the better
sort, who have more sense, virtue, and love of their
country than Cicero, who in a letter to Atticus
could not forbear exclaiming, Socrates et Socra-
tici viri ! nunquam vobis gratiam referam. Would
to God, many of our countrymen had the same obli-
gations to those Socratic writers ! Certainly, where
the people are well educated , the art of piloting a
state is best learnt from the writings of Plato. But
among a people void of discipline and a gentry
devoted to vulgar cares and views, Plato, Pytha-
goras, and Aristotle themselves, were they living,
could do but little good."

Thus, then, of the three most approved antago-
nists to the spiiit of barter, and the accompanying
disposition to overvalue riches with all the means

390 SPIRIT OF TRADE UNCHECKED :

and tokens thereof — of the three fittest and most
likely checks to this tendency, namely, the feeling-
of ancient birth and the respect paid to it by the
community at large ; a genuine intellectual phi-
losophy with an accredited, learned, and philo-
sophic class ; and lastly, religion ; we have found
the first declining, the second not existing, and
the third efficient, indeed, in many respects and
to many excellent puj-poses, only not in this par-
ticular direction : the religion here spoken of,
having long since parted company with that inqui-
sitive and bookish theology which tends to defraud
the student of his worldly wisdom, inasmuch as it
diverts his mind from the accumulation of wealth
by pre-occupying his thoughts in the acquisition of
knowledge. For the religion of best repute among-
us holds all the truths of Scripture and all the doc-
trines of Christianity so very transcendant, or so
very easy, as to make study and research either
vain or needless. It professes, therefore, to hunger
and thirst after righteousness alone, and the rewards
of the righteous ; and thus habitually taking for
granted all truths of spiritual import leaves the un-
dei'standing vacant and at leisure for a thorough
insight into present and temporal interests : which,
doubtless, is the true reason why its followers are
in general such shrewd, knowing, wary, well-in-
formed, thrifty and thriving men of business. But
this is likewise the reason, why it neither does nor
can check or circumscribe the spirit of barter ; and
to the consequent monoply which this commercial

ITS PROGRESS. 391

spint possesses, must its over-balance be attributed,
not the extent or magnitude of the commerce itself.
Before I enter on the result assigned by me as
the chief ultimate cause of the present state of the
country, and as the main ground on which the im-
mediate occasions of the general distress have
worked, I must entreat my readers to reflect that
the spirit of trade has been a thing of insensible
growth; that whether it be enough, or more or
less than enough, is a matter of relative, rather
than of positive, determination ; that it depends on
the degree in which it is aided or resisted by all the
other tendencies that co-exist with it; and that
in the best of times this spirit may be said to live on
a narrow isth?nu$^ between a sterile desert and a
stormysea, still threatened and encroached on either
by the too much or the too little. As the argument
does not depend on any precise accuracy in the
dates, I shall assume it to have commenced as an
influencing part of the national character, with the
institution of the public funds in the reign of Wil-
liam III., and from the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
in 1748, to have been hurrying onward to its maxi-
mum, which it seems to have attained during the
late war. The short interruptions may be well
represented as a few steps backward, that it might
leap forward with an additional momentum. The
words, old and modern, then and now are applied
by me, the former to the interval between the
Reformation and the Revolution ; and the latter
to the whole period since the Revolution ; the one

392 CONTRAST OF RELIGIOUS CHARACTER

from 1460 to 1680, the other from 1680 to the pre-
sent time.

Having premised this explanation, I can now
return an intelligible answer to a question, that
will have risen in the reader's mind during his
perusal of the last three or four pages. How, it
will be objected, does all this apply to the present
times in particular ? When was the industrious
part of mankind not attached to the pursuits most
likely to reward their industry ? Was the wish to
make a fortune, or, if you prefer an invidious phrase,
the lust of lucre, less natural to our forefathers than '
to their descendants ? If you say that though a
not less frequent, nor less powerful passion with
them than with us, it yet met with a more frequent
and more powerful check, a stronger and more ad-
vanced boundary-line in the religion of old times,
and in the faith, fashion, habits, and authority of
the religious : in what did this difference consist ;
and in what way did these points of difference act ?
If indeed the antidote in question once possessed
virtues which it no longer possesses, or not in the
same degree, what is the ingredient, either added,
omitted, or diminished since that time, which can
have rendered it less elEcacious now than then ?

Well ! (I might reply) grant all this : and let
both the profession and the professors of a spiritual
principle, as a counterpoise to the worldly weights
at the other end of the balance, be supposed much
the same in one age as in the other. Assume for a
moment, that I can establish neither the fact of its

BEFORE AND SINCE THE REVOLUTION. 393

present lesser efficiency, nor any points of difference
capable of accounting for it. Yet it might still be
a sufficient answer to this objection, that as the
commerce of the country, and with it the spirit of
commerce, has increased fifty-fold since the com-
mencement of the latter period, it is not enough
that the counterweight should be as great as it was
in the former period : to remain the same in its
effect, it ought to have become very much greater.
But though this be a consideration not less impor-
tant than it is obvious, yet I do not purpose to rest
in it. J affirm that a difference may be shown,
and of no trifling importance as to that one point,
to which my present argument is confined. For
let it be remembered that it is not to any extraor-
dinary influences of the religious principle that I
am referring, not to voluntary poverty, or seques-
tration from social and active life, or schemes of
mortification. I speak of religion merely as I
should of any worldly object, which, as far as it
employs and interests a man, leaves less room in his
mind for other pursuits : except that this must be
more especially the case in the instance of religion,
because beyond all other interests it is calculated
to occupy the whole mind, and employ successively
all the faculties of man ; and because the objects
which it presents to the imagination as well as to
the intellect cannot be actually contemplated, much
less can they be the subject of frequent meditation,
without dimming the lustre and blunting the rays
of all rival attractions. It is well known, and has

394 THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE

been observed of old, that poetry tends to render
its devotees* careless of money and outward ap-
pearances, while philosophy inspires a contempt of
both as objects of desire or admiration. But religion
is the poetry and philosophy of all mankind ; unites
in itself whatever is most excellent in either, and
while it at one and the same time calls into action
and supplies with the noblest materials both the
imaginative and the intellective faculties, superadds
the interests of the most substantial and home-felt
reality to both, to the poetic vision and the philo-
sophic idea. But in order to produce a similar effect
it must act in a similar way ; it must reign in the
thoughtsof amanandin thepowers akin to thought,
as well as exercise an admitted influence over his
hopes and fears, and through these on his delibe-
rate and individual acts.

Now as my first presumptive proof of a differ-
ence (I might almost have said, of a contrast)
between the religious character of the period since
the Revolution, and that of the period from the
accession of Edward VI to the abdication of
James II, I refer to the sermons and to the theolo-

* Hie error tamen et levis hmc insania quantas
Virtutes habeat, sic collige : vatis avarus
Nprt temere est animus ; versus amat, hoc studet unum ;
Detrimenta,fugas servorum, incendia ridet ;
Non fraudem socio, puerove incogitat ullam
Pupillo ; vivit siliquis et pane secundo :
Militia: quanquam piger et malus, utilis urhi.

HoRAT. Epist. II. I. 118.

OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY : 395

gical works generally of the latter period. It is
my full conviction that in any half dozen sermons of
Donne, or Taylor, there are more thoughts, more
facts and images, more excitements to inquiry and
intellectual effort, than are presented to the congre-
gations of the present day in as many churches or
meetings during twice as many months. Yet both
these were the most popular pi-eachers of their
times, were heard with enthusiasm by crowded and
promiscuous audiences, and the effect produced by
their eloquence was holden in reverential and affec-
tionate remembrance by many attendants on their
ministry, who, like the pious Isaac Walton, were
not themselves men of much learning or education.
In addition to this fact, think likewise on the large
and numerous editions of massy, closely printed
folios : the impressions so large and the editions so
numerous, that all the industry of destruction for
the last hundred years has but of late sufficed to
make them rare. From the long list select those
works alone, which we know to have been the most
current and favourite works of their day : and of
these again no more than may well be supposed to
have had a place in the scantiest libraries, or per-
haps with the Bible and Common Prayer Book to
have formed the library of their owner. Yet on
the single shelf so filled we should find almost every
possible question, that could interest or instruct a
reader whose whole heart was in his religion, dis-
cussed with a command of intellect that seems to
exhaust all the learning and logic, all the historical

396 ITS PREACHERS

and moral relations, of each several subject. The
very length of the discourses, with which these
rich souls of wit and knowledge fixed the eyes,
ears, and hearts of their crowded congregations,
are a source of wonder now-a-days, and (we may
add) of self-congratulation, to many a sober Chris-
tian, who forgets with what delight he himself has
listened to a two hours' harangue on a loan or tax,
or at the trial of some remarkable cause or culprit.
The transfer of the interest makes and explains
the whole difference. For tViough much may be
fairly charged on the revolution in the mode of
preaching as well as in the matter, since the fresh
morning and fervent noon of the Reformation,
when there was no need to visit the conventicles
of fanaticism in order to

See God's ambassador in pulpit stand.

Where they could take notes from his loot and hand;

And from his speaking- action bear away

More sermon than our preachers use to say ;

yet this too must be referred to the same change
in the habits of men's minds, a change that in-
volves both the shepherd and the flock : though
like many other effects, it tends to reproduce and
strengthen its own cause.

The last point, to which I shall appeal, is the
warmth and frequency of the religious controver-
sies during the former of the two periods ; the
deep interest excited by them among all but the
lowest and most ignorant classes ; the importance
attached to them by the very highest ; the number,

ASB CONTROVERSIALISTS. 397

and in many instances the transcendant merit, of
the controversial publications — in short, the rank
and value assigned to polemic diAanity. The sub-
jects of the controversies may or may not have
been trifling ; the warmth with which they were
conducted, may have been disproportionate and in-
decorous ; and we may have reason to congratulate
ourselves that the age in which we live, is grown
more indulgent and less captious. The fact is intro-
duced not for its own sake, but as a symptom of the
general state of men's feelings, and as an evidence
of the direction and main channel, in which the
thoughts and interests of men were then flowing.
We all know that lovers are apt to take offence and
wrangle with each other on occasions that perhaps
are but trifles, and which assuredly would appear
such to those who had never been under the in-
fluence of a similar passion. These quarrels may
be no proofs of wisdom ; but still in the imperfect
state of our nature the entire absence of the same,
and this too on far more serious provocations,
would excite a strong suspicion of a comparative
indifference in the feelings of the parties towards
each other, who can love so coolly where they pro-
fess to love so well. I shall believe our present
religious tolerancy to proceed from the abundance
of our charity and good sense, wfien I can see
proofs that we are equally cool and forbearing as
litigators and political partizans. And I must
again intreat my reader to recollect that the pre-
sent argument is exclusively concerned with the

398 MODERN SYNCRETISM t

recjuisite correctives of the commercial spirit, and
with religion therefore no otherwise than as a
counter-charm to the sorcery of wealth : and my
main position is, that neither by reasons drawn
from the nature of the human mind, nor by facts
of actual experience, are we justified in expecting
this from a religion which does not employ and
actuate the understandings of men, and combine
their affections with it as a system of truth grad-
ually and progressively manifesting itself to the
intellect ; no less than as a system of motives and
moral commands learnt as soon as heard, and con-
taining nothing but what is plain and easy to the
lowest capacities. Hence it is that objects, the
ostensible principle of which I have felt it my duty
to oppose,* and objects, which and the measures
for the attainment of which possess my good wishes
and have had the humble tribute of my public ad-
vocacy and applause — I am here alluding to the
British and Foreign Bible Society — may yet con-
verge, as to the point now in question. They may,
both alike, be symptoms of the same predominant
disposition to that coalition-system in Christianity,
for the expression of which theologians have in-
vented or appropriated the term, Syncretism :f

* See supra, p. 241. — Ed.

t Clementia Evangelica (writes a German theologian of
the last century) quasi matrona habenda est, purioris doctrinte
custos, mitis quidem, at sedula tamen, at vigilans, at seduc-
torum impatiens. Isle vero Syncretismus, quern Laodicenl apud
7ios tantopere collaudant, nusquam a vie nisi rneretrix uudiet,

ITS EFFECTS. 399

although the former may be an ominous, the latter
an auspicious symptom ; though the one may be
worse from bad, while the other is an instance of
good educed from evil. Nay, I will dare confess
that I know not how to think otherwise, when I
hear a Bishop of the Church publicly exclaim,—
(and not viewing it as a lesser inconvenience to be
endured for the attainment of a far greater good,
but as a thing desirable and to be preferred for its
own sake) — No notes ! No comment ! Distribute
the Bible and the Bible only among the poor!—
a declaration which from any lower quarter 1
should have been under the temptation of attri-
buting either to a fanatical notion of immediate
illumination superseding the necessity of human
teaching, or to an ignorance of difficulties which
(and what more worthy ?) have successfully em-
ployed all the learning, sagacity, and unwearied
labors of great and wise men, and eminent servants

fidei vel pigrct vel status sui ignarcz proles, postea autem indoUs
secularis genetrix, et quacum nee sincera fides, nee germina
caritas commorari feret .

The true Gospel spirit of toleration we should regard as a
matron, a kind and gentle guardian indeed of the pure doc-
trine, but sedulous, but vigilant, but impatient of seducers.
This Syncretism on the contrary, which the Loadiceans
among us join in extolling so highly, shall no where hear
from me other or better name than that of harlot, the offspring
of a belief either slothful or ignorant of its own condition,
and then the parent of worldly-mindedness, and with whom
therefore neither sincere faith nor genuine charity will en-
dure to associate.

400 OVERBALANCE OF COMMERCIAL SPIRIT

of Christ, during all the ages of Christianity, and
will doubtless continue to yield new fruits of know-
ledge and insight to a long series of followers.*

Though an overbalance of the commercial spirit
is involved in the deficiency of its counterweights ;
yet the facts that exemplify the mode and extent
of its operation will afford a more direct and satis-
factory kind of proof. And first I am to speak of
this overbalance as displayed in the commercial
world itself. But as this is the first, so is it for
my present purpose the least important point of
view. A portion of the facts belonging to this
division of the subject I have already noticed ;
and for the remainder let the following suffice as
the substitute or representative. The moi-al of
the tale I leave to the reader's own reflections.
Within the last sixty years or perhaps a somewhat
larger period, (for I do not pretend to any nicety
of dates, and the documents are of easy access)
there have occurred at intervals of about twelve or
thirteen years each, certain periodical revolutions

* I am well aware that b}^ these open avowals, that with
much to honor and praise in many, there is somethinsf to
correct in all, parties, I shall provoke many enemies and make
never a friend. If I dared abstain, how gladly should I have
so done ! Would that the candid part of my judges would
peruse or re- peruse the affecting and most eloquent intro-
ductory pages of Milton's second book of his " Reason of
Church Government urged, &c," and give me the credit,
which my conscience bears me witness I am entitled to claim,
for all the moral feelings expressed in that exquisite pas-'
sao-e.

IN THE COMMERCIAL WORLD. 401

of credit. Yet revolution is not the precise word.
To state the thing as it is, I ought to have said,
certain gradual expansions of credit ending in
sudden contractions, or, with equal propriety, as-
censions to a certain utmost possible height, which
has been different in each successive instance ; but
in every instance the attainment of this its ne plus
ultra has been instantly announced by a rapid se-
ries of explosions (in mercantile language, a crash)
and a consequent precipitation of the general sys-
tem. For a short time this Icarian credit, or ra-
ther this illegitimate offspring of confidence, to
which it stands in the same relation as Phaeton
to his parent god in the old fable, seems to lie
stunned by the fall ; but soon recovering, again it
strives upward, and having once more regained its
mid region,

thence many a league.

As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides
Audacious j —

till at the destined zenith of its vaporous exalta-
tion,

All unawares, fluttering its pennons vain, —
Plumb down it drops. —

Or that I may descend myself to the cool element
of prose, — alarm and suspicion gradually diminish
into a judicious circumspectness ; but by little and
little, circumspection gives way to the desire and
emulous ambition of doing business: till impa-
tience and incaution on the one side, tempting and

D D

402 MORAL DEPRAVATION

encouraging- headlong- adventure, want of principle,
and confederacies of false credit on the other, the
movements of trade become yeai'ly gayer and gid-
dier, and end at length in a vortex of hopes and
hazards, of blinding passions and blind practices,
Vi'hich should have been left where alone they ought
ever to have been found, among the wicked luna-
cies of the gaming table.

I am not ignorant that the power and circum-
stantial prosperity of the nation has been increas-
ing during the same period, with an accelerated
force unprecedented in any country, the popula-
tion of which bears the same proportion to its pro-
ductive soil ; and partly, perhaps, even in conse-
quence of this system. By facilitating the means
of enterprise, it must have called into activity a
multitude of enterprising individuals and a variety
of talent that would otherwise have lain dormant :
while by the same ready supply of excitements to
labor, together with its materials and instruments,
even an unsound credit has been able within a
short time to* substantiate itself. I shall perhaps
be told too, that the very evils of this system even
the periodical crash itself, are to be regarded but

* If by tlie display of fort;-ed Bank notes a speculator
should establish the beUef of his being a man of large fortune,
and gain a temporary confidence in his own paper-money :
and if by large wages so paid he should stimulate a number
of indolent Highlanders to bring- a tract of waste land into
profitable cultivation, the promissory notes of the owner,
which deri^-ed their lirst value from a delusion, would end in

IN THE LABOURING 403

as so much superfluous steam ejected by the escape
pipes, and safety valves of a self-reg-ulating- ma-
chine : and lastly, that in a free and trading country
all things find their level.

I have as little disposition as motive to recant
the principles, which in many forms and through
various channels I have labored to propagate ; but
there is surely no inconsistency in yielding all due
honor to the spirit of trade, and yet charging sun-
dry evils which weaken or reverse its blessings on
the over-balance of that spirit, taken as the para-
mount principle of action in the nation at large.
Much I still concede to the arguments for the
present scheme of things, as adduced in the pre-
ceding paragraph : but I likewise see, and always
have seen, much that needs winnowing. Thus in-
stead of the position, that all things find, it would
be less equivocal and far more descriptive of the
fact to say, that things are always finding, their
level : which might be taken as the paraphrase or
ironical definition of a storm. But persons are
not things — but man does not find his level.
Neither in body nor in soul does the man find his
level. After a hard and calamitous season, during

representing a real property, and this their own product. A
most improbable case ! In its accidental features, I reply,
rather than in its essentials. How many thousand acres have
been reclaimed from utter unproductiveness, how many
doubled in value, by the agency of notes issued beyond the
bona fide capital of the bank or firm that circulated them, or
at best on capital afloat and insecure.

404 AND TRADING

which the thousand wheels of some vast manufac-
tory had remained silent as a frozen water-fall, be
it that plenty has returned and that trade has once
more become brisk and stirring- : go, ask the over-
seer, and question the parish doctor, whether the
workman's health and temperance with the staid
and respectful manners best taught by the inward
dignity of conscious self-support, have found their
level again ! Alas ! I have more than once seen
a group of children in Dorsetshire, during the heat
of the dog-days, each with its little shoulders up
to its ears, and its chest pinched inward, the very
habit and fixures, as it were, that had been im-
pressed on their frames by the former ill-fed, ill-
clothed, and unfuelled winters. But as with the
body, so or still worse with the mind. Nor is the
effect confined to the labouring classes, whom by
an ominous but too appropriate change in our phra-
seology we are now accustomed to call the labour-
ing poor. I cannot persuade myself that the fre-
quency of failures with all the disgraceful secrets
of fraud and folly, of unprincipled vanity in ex-
pending and desperate speculation in retrieving,
can be familiarized to the thoughts and experience
of men, as matters of daily occurrence, without
serious injury to the moral sense : more especially
in times when bankruptcies spread, like a fever,
at once contagious and epidemic ; swift too as the
travel of an earthquake, that with one and the
same chain of shocks opens the ruinous chasm in
cities that have an ocean between them ! — in times,

CLASSES. 40^

when the fate flies swifter than the fear, and yet
the report, that follows the flash, has a ruin of its
own and arrives but to multiply tlie blow !— when
princely capitals are often but the telegraphs of
distant calamity : and still worse, when no man's
treasure is safe who has adopted the ordinary means
of safety, neither the high nor the humble ; when
the lord's rents and the farmer's store, entrusted
perhaps but as yesterday, are asked after at closed
doors ! — but worst of all, in its moral influences as
well as in the cruelty of suffering, when the old
labourer's savings, the precious robberies of self-
denial from every day's comfort ; when the orphan's
funds ; the widow's livelihood ; the fond confiding
sister's humble fortune ; are found among the vic-
tims to the remorseless mania of dishonest specu-
lation, or to the desperate cowardice of embarrass-
ment, and the drunken stupor of a usurious selfish-
ness which for a few months respite dares incur a
debt of guilt and infamy, for which the grave itself
can plead no statute of limitation. Name to me any
revolution recorded in history, that was not followed
by a depravation of the national morals. The Ro-
man character during the Triumvirate, and under
Tiberius ; the reign of Charles II. and Paris at the
present m6ment, — are obvious instances. What
is the main cause ? The sense of insecurity. On
what ground then dare we hope that with the same
accompaniment, commercial revolutions should not
produce the same effect, in proportion to the extent
of their sphere ?

406 INCIDENTS

But these blessings — with all the specific terms,
into which this most comprehensive phrase is to
be resolved ? Dare we unpack the bales and cases
so marked, and look at the articles, one by one ?
Increase of human life and increase of the means
of life are, it is true, reciprocally cause and effect :
and the genius of commerce and manufacture has
been the cause of both to a degree that may well
excite our wonder. But do the last results justify
our exultation likewise ? Human life, alas ! is
but the malleable metal, out of which the thievish
picklock, the slave's collar, and the assassin's
stiletto are formed as Avell as the clearing- axe,
the feeding plough-share, the defensive sword, and
the mechanic tool. But the subject is a painful
one : and fortunately the labours of others, with
the communications of medical men concerning the
state of the manufacturing poor, have rendered it
unnecessary. I will rather (though in strict me-
thod it should, perhaps, be reserved for the follow-
ing head) relate a speech made to me near Fort
Augustus, as I was travelling on foot through the
Highlands of Scotland. The speaker was an elderlj^
and respectable widow, who expressed herself with
that simple eloquence, which strong feeling seldom
fails to call forth in humble life, but especially in
women. She spoke English, as indeed most High-
landers do who speak it at all, with a propriety
of phrase and a discrimination of tone and empha-
sis that more than compensated for the scantiness
of her vocabulary. After an affecting account of

IN THE HIGHLANDS. 407^

her own wrongs and ejectment, (which however,
she said, bore with comparative lightness on her,
who had saved up a wherewithal to live, and was
blessed with a son well to do in the world,) she
made a movement with her hand in a circle, di-
recting my eye meanwhile to various objects as
marking its outhne : and then observed, with a
deep sigh and a suppressed and slow voice which
she suddenly raised and quickened after the first
drop or cadence :— " Within this space — how short
a time back ! there lived a hundred and seventy-
three persons : and now there is only a shepherd,
and an underling or two. Yes, Sir ! One hun-
dred and seventy-three Christian souls, man, wo-
man, boy, girl, and babe ; and in almost every
home an old man by the fire-side, who would tell
you of the troubles before our roads were made ;
and many a brave youth among them who loved
the birth-place of his forefathers, yet would swing
about his broad sword and want but a word to
march off to the battles over sea : aye, Sir, and
many a good lass, who had a respect for herself!
Weill but they are gone, and with them the bris-
tled bear,* and the pink haver, f and the potatoe
plot that looked as gay as any flower-garden with
its blossoms ! I sometimes fancy that the very
birds are gone, all but the crows and the gleads !
Well, and what then? Instead of us all, there is
one shepherd man, and it may be a pair of small

* A species of barley. t A species of oats.

408 INCIDENTS

lads — and a many, many sheep ! And do you think,
Sir ! that God allows of such proceedings ? "

Some days before this conversation, and while I
was on the shores of Loch Katrine,! I had heard
of a sad counterpart to the widow's tale, and told
with a far fiercer indignation, of a " Laird who,
had raised a company from the country round
about, for the love that was borne to his name, and
who gained high preferment in consequence : and
that it was but a small part of those that he took
away whom he brought back again. And what
were the thanks which the folks had both for those
that came back with him, some blind, and more
in danger of blindness ; and for those that had pe-
rished in the hospitals, and for those that fell in
battle, fighting before or beside him ? Why, that
their fathers were all turned out of their farms
before the year was over, and sent to wander like
so many gipsies, unless they would consent to shed
their grey hairs, at ten-pence a day, over the new
canals. Had there been a price set upon his head,
and his enemies had been coming upon him, he
needed but have whistled, and a hundred brave
lads would have made a wall of flame round about

t The Lake so widely celebrated since then by a poet, to
"whose writings a lai'ger number of persons have owed a
larger portion of innocent, refined, and heart-bettering-
amusement, than perliaps to any favourite of the Muses
recorded in English literature : while the most learned of
his readers must feel grateful for the mass of interesting
and highly instructive information scattered throughout his
works, in which respect Southey is his only rival.

IN THE HIGHLANDS. 409

him with the flash of their broad-swords ! Now if
the French should come among us, as (it is said)
they will, let him whistle to his sheep and see if they
will fight for him ! " The frequency with which I
heard, during my solitary walk from the end of
Loch-Lomond to Inverness, confident expectations
of the kind expressed in his concluding words — nay,
far too often eager hopes mingled with vindictive
resolves — I spoke of with complaint and regret to
an elderly man, whom by his dress and way of
speaking I took to be a schoolmaster. Long shall
I recollect his reply: "0, Sir, it kills a man's love
for his country, the hardships of life coming by
change and with injustice ! " I was sometime af-
terwards told by a very sensible person who had
studied the mysteries of political economy, and was
therefore entitled to be listened to,' that more food
was produced in consequence of this revolution,
that the mutton must be eaten somewhere, and what
difference where? If three were fed at Manchester
instead of two at Glencoe or the Trosachs, the
balance of human enjoyment was in favour of the
former.' I have passed through many a manufac-
turing town since then, and have watched many a-
group of old and young, male and female, going
to, or returning from, many a factory, but I could
never yet persuade myself to be of his opinion.
Men, I still think, ought to be weighed not counted.
Their worth ought to be the final estimate of their
value.

Among the occasions and minor causes of this

410 ENHANCEMENT OF PRICES *.

change in the views and measures of our land-
owners, and as being itself a consequent on that
system of credit, the outline of which was given
in a preceding page, the universal practice of en-
hancing the sale price of every article on the pre-
sumption of bad debts, is not the least noticeable.
Nor, if we reflect that this additional per centage
is repeated at each intermediate stage of its elabo-
ration and distribution from the grower or importer
to the last retailer inclusively, will it appear the
least operative. Necessary, and therefore justi-
fiable, as this plan of reprisal by anticipation may
be in the case of each individual dealer, yet taken
collectively and without reference to persons, the
plan itself would, I suspect, startle an unfaraiJia-
rized conscience, as a sort of non-descript piracy,
not promiscuous in its exactions only because by
a curious anomaly it grants a free pass to the of-
fending party. Or if the law maxim, volentibus
non fit injuria, is applicable in this case, it may
perhaps be described more courteously as a Benefit
Society of all the careful and honest men in the
kingdom to pay the debts of the dishonest or im-
provident. It is mentioned bere, however, as one
of the appendages to the twin paramount causes,' the
paper currency and the national debt, and for the
sake of the conjoint results. Would we learn what
these results are ; — what they have been in the
higher, and what in the most numerous, class of
society ? Alas ! that some of the intermediate
rounds in the social ladder have been broken and

ITS EFFECTS. 41]

not replaced, is itself one of these results. Re-
trace the progress of thing-s from 1792 to 1813, when
the tide was at its height, and then as far as its ra-
pidity will permit, the ebb from its first turn to the
dead low-water mark of the last quarter. Then
see whether the remainder may not be generalized
under the following heads. Fluctuation in the
wages of labor, alternate privation and excess (not
in all at the same time, but successively in each)
consequent improvidence, and over all discontent
and a system of factious confederacy : — these
form the history of the mechanics and lower ranks
of our cities and towns. In the country a peasantry
sinking into pauperism, step for step with the rise
of the farmer's profits and indulgencies. On the
side of the landlord and his compeers, we shall find
the presence of the same causes attested by an-
swerable effects. Great as their almost magical
effects* were on the increase of prices in the neces-
saries of life, they were still greater, dispropor-
tionally greater, in all articles of shew and luxury.
With few exceptions, it soon became difficult, and

* During- the composition of this sheet I have had and
availed myself of the opportunity of perusing- the Report of
the Board of Agriculture for the year 1816. The numerous
reflections, which this most extraordinary volume excited in
my mind, I cannot even touch on in this closing- sheet of a
Work tliat has already extended far beyond my original pur-
pose. But had I perused it at the commencement, I should
still have felt it my duty to direct the main force of my ani-
madversions against the demagogue class of State-empirics.
I was not, indeed, ignorant of the aid, which they derived

412 SPIRIT OF TRADE

at leng-th impracticable, for the gentry of the land,
for the possessors of fixed property to retain the
rank of their ancestors, or their own former esta-
blishments, without joining in the general compe-
tition under the influence of the same trading- spirit-
Their dependents were of course either selected
from or driven into the same eddy ; while the temp-
tation of obtaining more than the legal interest for
their principal became more and more strong with
all persons who, neither trading nor farming, had
lived on the interest of their fortunes. It was in
this latter class that the rash, and too frequently,
the unprincipled projector found his readiest dupes.
Had we but the secret history of the building specu-
lations only in the vicinity of the metropolis, too
many of its pages would supply an afflicting but
instructive comment. That both here, and in all
other departments, this incresised momentum in the
spirit of trade has been followed by results of the
most desirable nature, I have myself,* exerted my
best powers to evince, at a period when to present
the fairest and most animating features of the sys-

from other quarters : — nor am I now ashamed of not having-
anticipated its extent. There is, however, one communica-
tion (p. 208 to 227) from jMt. Mosely, from which, with
the abatement only of the passage on tithes, I cannot with-
hold my entire admiration. It ahnost redeems the remain-
der of the Report.

* In a variet}'' of articles published at different periods in
the Morning- Post and Courier ; but with most success in the
Essay, before cited, on Vulgar Errors on Taxation, which
had the advantage of being transferred almost entire to the

IN AGRICULTURE. 413

tem, and to prove their vast and charm-like in-
fluence on the po^ver and resources of the nation
appeared a duty of patriotism. Nothing, however,
was advanced incompatible with the position, which
even then I did not conceal, and which from the
same sense of duty I am now attempting to display ;
namely, that the extension of the commercial spirit
into our agricultural system, added to the over-
balance of the same spirit, even within its own
sphere ; aggravated by the operation of our revenue
laws ; and finally reflected in the habits, and ten-
dencies of the labouring classes ; is the ground-
work of our calamity, and the main predisposing
cause, without which the late occasions would some
of them not have existed, and the remainder not
have produced the present distresses.

That agriculture requires principles essentially
different from those of trade ; that a gentleman
ought not to regard his estate as a merchant his
cargo, or a shopkeeper his stock, — admits of an
easy proof from the different tenure of landed pro-
perty, J and from the purposes of agriculture itself,

columns of a daily paper, of the largest circulation, and from
thence, in larger or smaller extracts, to several of our pro-
vincial journals. It was likewise reprinted in two of the
American Federalist papers ; and a translation appeared, I
have been told, in the Hamburgh Correspondenten.

t The very idea of individual or private property in our
present acceptation of the term, and according to the current
notion of the right to it, was originally confined to moveable
things : and the more moveable, the more susceptible of the
nature of property. Proceeding from the more to the less

414 THE ENDS OF AGRICULTURE

which ultimately are the same as those of the State
of which it is the offspring'. For I do not include
in the name of agriculture the cultivation of a few
vegetables by the women of the less savage hunter
tribes. If the continuance and independence of
the State be its object, the final causes of the State
must be its final causes. Let us suppose the ne-
gative ends of a State already attained, namely,
its own safety by means of its own strength, and
the protection of person and property for all its
members, there will then remain its positive ends :

perfect right ; we may bring- all the objects of an indepen-
dent ownership under five heads: — namely, 1. precious
stones, and other jewels of as easy transfer: — 2. precious
metals, and foreign coin taken as weight of metal : — 3. mer-
chandize, by virtue of the contract between the importer and
the sovereign in whose person the unity and integrity of the
common wealth were represented ; that is, after the settled
price had been paid by the former for the permission to im-
port, and received by the latter under the further obligation
of protecting the same : — 4. the coin of the country in the
possession of the natural subject ; and last of all, and in
certain cases, the live stock, the peculium a pecude. Hence,
the minds of men were most fam.iliar with the term in the
case of Jews and aliens : till gradually, the privileges at-
tached to the vicinity of the bishops and mitred abbots pre-
pared an asylum for the fugitive vassal and the oppressed
franklin, and thus laid the first foundations of a fourth class
of freemen, that of citizens and burghers. To the feudal
system we owe the forms, to the Church the substance of
our liberty. As comment take, first, the origin of towns and
cities ; next, the holy war waged against slavery and vil-
lenage, and with such success that the law had barelv to
sanction opusjain consunimatum at the Restoration.

AND THE STATE IDENTICAL. 415

1- to make the means of subsistence more easy
to each individual :— 2. to secure to each of its
members the hope* of bettering his own condition
or that of his children :~3. the developement of
those faculties which are essential to his humanity,
that is, to his rational and moral being-. Under the
last head I do not mean those degrees of intellectual
cultivation which distinguish man from man in the
same civilized society, but those only that raise the
civilized man above the barbarian, the savage, and
the brute. I require, however, on the part of the
State, in behalf of all its members, not only the
outward means of knowing their essential duties
and dignities as men and free men, but likewise,
and more especially, the discouragement of all
such tenures and relations as must in the very
nature of things render this knowledge inert, and
cause the good seed to perish as it falls. Such at
least is the appointed aim of a State : and at
whatever distance from the ideal mark the existing
circumstances of a nation may unhappily place the

* The civilized man gives up those stimulants of hope
and fear, the mixture or alternation of which constitutes the
chief charm of the savage life : and yet his Maker has dis-
tinguished him from the brute that perishes, by making hope
an instinct of his nature and an indispensable condition of
his moral and intellectual progression. But a natural in-
stinct constitutes a natural right, as far as its gratification is
compatible with the equal rights of others. Hence our an-
cestors classed those who were incapable of altering their
condition from that of their pai-ents, as bondsmen or villeins,
however advantageously they might otherwise be situated.

416 THE NEGATIVE DUTIES

actual statesman, still every movement ought to be
in this direction. But the negative merit of not
forwarding— the exemption from the crime of ne-
cessitating — the debasement and virtual disfran-
chisement of any class of the community, may be
demanded of every State under all circumstances :
and the Government that pleads difficulties in re-
pulse or demur of this claim impeaches its own
wisdom and fortitude. But as the specific ends of
agriculture are the maintenance, strength, and se-
curity, of the State, so (I repeat) must its ultimate
ends be the same as those of the State : even as
the ultimate end of the spring and wheels of a
watch must be the same as that of the watch. Yet
least of all things must we overlook or conceal,
that morally and with respect to the character and
conscience of the individuals, the blame of un-
faithful stewardship is aggravated, in proportion as
the difficulties are less, and the consequences, lying
within a narrower field of vision, are more evident
and affecting. An injurious system, the conni-
vance at which we scarcely dare more than regret
in the Cabinet or Senate of an Empire, may justify
an earnest reprobation in the management of
private estates : provided always, that the system
only be denounced, and the pleadings confined to
the court of conscience. For from this court only
can the redress be awarded. All reform or inno-
vation, not won from the free agent by the presen-
tation of juster views and nobler interests, and
which does not leave the merit of having effected

OF EVERY STATE. 417

It sacred to the individual proprietor, it were foliy
to propose, and worse than folly to attempt.
Madmen only would dream of digging or blowing
up the foundation of a house in order to employ
the materials in repairing the walls. Nothing
more can be asked of the State, no other duty is
imposed on it, than to withhold or retract all ex-
trinsic and artificial aids to an injurious system ;
or at the utmost to invalidate in extreme cases such
claims as have aiisen indirectly from the letter or
unforeseen operations of particular statutes : claims
that instead of being contained in the rights of its
proprietary trustees are encroachments on its own
rights, and a destructive trespass on a part of its
own inalienable and untransferable property — I
mean the health, strength, honesty, and filial love,
of its children.

It would border on an affront to the under-
standings of the members of our Landed Interest,
were I to explain in detail what the plan and conduct
would be of a gentleman ;* if, as the result of his

* Or, (to put the question more justly as well as more
candidly) of the land-owners collectively : — for who is not
aware of the facilities that accompany a conformity with the
general practice, or of the numerous hinderances that retard,
i»3^d the final imperfection that commonly awaits, a deviation
from it 1 On the distinction between things and persons
all law human and divine is g-rounded. It consists in this : .
that the former may be used as mere means ;_ but the latter
must not be employed as the means to an end witliout
directly or indirectly sharing in that end.
E E

418 TRUE OBJECT OF LAND-OWNERS.

own free conviction the marketable produce of his
estates were made a subordinate consideration to the
living- and moral growth tl*at is to remain on the land
—I mean a healthful, callous-handed but high-and-
warm-hearted tenantry, twice the number of the
present landless, parish-paid laborers, and ready to
march off at the first call of their country with a Son
of the House at their head, because under no appre-
hension of being (forgive the lowness of the ex-
pression) marched off at the whisper of a land-
taster : — if the admitted rule, the paramount self-
commandment, were comprised in the fixed resolve
— I will improve my estate to the utmost ; and my
rent-roll I will raise as much as, but no more than,
is compatible with the three great ends (before
enumerated) which being those of my country must
be mine inclusively : — this, I repeat, it would be
more than superfluous to particularize. It is a
problem, the solution of which may be safely en-
trusted to the common sense of every one who has
the hardihood to ask himself the question. But
hov.' encouraging even the approximations to such
a system, of what fair promise the few fragmentaiy
samples are, may be seen in the Report of the
Board of Agriculture for 1816, p. 11, from the Earl
of Winchelsea's communication, in every paragraph
of which wisdom seems to address us in behalf of
goodness.

But the plan of my argument requires the re-
verse of this picture. I am to ask what the results
would be, on the supposition that agriculture is

DIFFERENT RULE IN TRADE : 419

carried on in the spirit of trade ; and if the neces-
sary answer coincide with the known general
practice, to shew the connection of the conse-
quences with the present state of distress and un-
easiness. In trade, from its most innocent form
to the abomination of the African commerce nomi-
nally abolished after a hard fought- battle of twenty-
years, no distinction is or can be acknowledged
between things and persons. If the latter are
part of the concern, they come under the denomi-
nation of the former. Two objects only can be
proposed in the management of an estate considered
as stock in trade— first, that the returns shall be
the largest, quickest, and securest possible ; and
secondly, with the least out-goings in the providing,
over-looking and collecting the same, — whether it
be expenditure of money paid for other men'-s time
and attention, or of the tradesman's own, which
are to him money's worth, makes no difference in
the argument. Am I disposing of a bale of goods ?
The man whom I most love and esteem must yield
to the stranger that outbids him ; or if it be sold
on credit, the highest price, with equal secui'ity,
must have the preference. I may fill up the de-
ficiency of my friend's offer by a private gift, or
loan ; but as a tradesman, I am bound to regard
honesty and established character themselves, as
things, as securities, for which the known unprin-
cipled dealer may offer an unexceptionable substi-
tute. Add to this, that the security being equal,
I shall prefer, even at a considerable abatement of

420 ITS OPERATION

price, the man who will take a thousand chests or
bales at once, to twenty who can pledge them-
selves only for fifty each. For I do not seek
trouble for its own sake ; but among other advan-
tages I seek wealth for the sake of freeing myself
more and more from the necessity of taking trouble
in order to attain it. The personal worth of those,
whom I benefit in the course of the process, or
whether the persons are really benefited or no, is
no concern of mine. The market and the shop
are open to all. To introduce any other piinciple
in trade, but that of obtaining the highest price
with adequate security for articles fairly described,
would be tantamount to the position that trade
ought not to exist. If this be admitted, then what
as a tradesman I cannot do, it cannot be my duty,
as a tradesman, to attempt : and the only remain-
ing- question in reason or morality is — what are
the proper objects of trade. If my estate be such,
my plan must be to make the most of it, as I would
of any other mode of capital. As my rents will
ultimately depend on the quantity and value of the
produce raised and brought into the best market
from my land, I will entrust the latter to those
who bidding- the most have the largest capital to
employ on it : and this I cannot effect but by di-
viding it into the fewest tenures, as none but ex-
tensive farms will be an object to men of extensive
capital and enterprising minds. I must prefer this
system likewise for my own ease and security.
The farmer is of course actuated by the same mo-

IN AGRICULTURE. 421

tives as the landlord : and, provided they are hoth
faithful to their engagements, the object of both
will be : 1. the utmost produce that can be raised
without injuring the estate ; 2. with the least pos-
sible consumption of the produce on the estate
itself; 3. at the lowest wages; and 4. with the
substitution of machinery for human labor where-
ever the former will cost less and do the same
work. What are the modest remedies proposed
by the majority of correspondents in the last Re-
port of the Board of Agriculture ? ' Let measures
be taken that rents, taxes, and wages be lowered,
and the markets raised ! A great calamity has
befallen us from importation, the lessened purchases
of Government, and, " the evil of a superabundant
harvest" of which we deem ourselves the more en-
titled to complain, because " we had been long
making 112 shillings per quarter of our corn," and
of all other articles in proportion. As the best
remedies for this calamity, we propose that we
should pa}' less to our landlords, less to our laborers,
nothing to our clergyman, and either nothing or
very little to the maintenance of the Government
and of the poor ; but that we should sell at our
former prices to the consumer !' — In almost every
page we find deprecations of the Poor Laws : and
I hold it impossible to exaggerate their pernicious
tendency and consequences as at present generally
worked. But let it not be forgotten, that in agri-
cultural districts three-fourths of the Poors' Rates
are paid to healthy, robust, and (0 sorrow and

422 POOR LAWS :

shame !) industrious, hard-working paupers in lieu
of wages — (for men cannot at once work and
starve) ; and therefore if there are twenty house-
keepers in the parish, who are not holders of land,
their contributions are so much bounty money to
the latter. But the Poor Laws form a subject, which
I should not undertake without trembling, had I the
space of a whole volume to allot to it. Sufl&ce it
to say that this enormous mischief is undeniably
the offspring of the commercial system. In the
only plausible work, that I have seen, in favor of
our Poor Laws on the present plan, the defence
is grounded ; first, on the expediency of having
labor cheap, and estates let out in the fewest
possible portions — in other words, of large farms
and low wages — each as indispensable to the other,
and both conjointly as the only means of drawing
capital to the land, by which alone the largest
surplus is attainable for the State ; that is, for the
market, or in order that the smallest possible pro-
portion of the largest possible produce may be con-
sumed by the raisers and their families : — secondly,
on the impossibility of supplying, as we have sup-
plied, all the countries of the civilized world (India
perhaps and China excepted), and of underselling
them even in their own market if our working-
manufacturers -were not secured by the State
against the worst consequences of those failures,
stagnations, and transfers, to which the different
branches of trade are exposed, in a greater or less
degree, beyond all human prevention ; or if the

MANUFACTURING SYSTEM ; 423

master manufacturers were compelled to give
previous security for the maintenance of those
whom they had, by the known law of human in-
crease, virtually called into existence.

Let me not be misunderstood. I do not myself
admit this impossibility. I have already denied,
and I now repeat the denial, that these are neces-
sary consequences of our extended commerce. On
the contrary, I feel assured that the spirit of com-
merce is itself capable of being- at once counteracted
and enlightened by the spirit of the State, to the
advantage of both. But I do assert, that they are
necessary consequences of the commercial spirit
un-counteracted and un-enlightened, wherever
trade has been carried to so vast an extent as it has
been in Eng'land. I assert too, that, historically and
as matter of fact, they have been the consequence
of our commercial system. The laws of Lycurgus,
like those of the inspired Hebrew Legislator, Avere
anti-commercial : those of Numa and Solon were
at least uncommercial. Now I ask myself, what
the impression would have been on the Senate of
the Roman or the Athenian Republic, if the fol-
lowing proposal had been made to them and intro-
duced by the following preamble. " Conscript Fa-
thers, (or Senators of Athens !) it is well known to
you, that circumstances being the same and the
time allowed proportional, the human animal may
be made to multiply as easily, and at as small an
expence, as your sheep or swine: which is meant,
perhaps, in the fiction of our philosophers, that

424 ITS PRINCIPLES APPLIED

souls are out of all proportion more numerous than
the bodies, in which they can subsist and be mani-
fested. It is likewise known to you. Fathers ! that
though in various States various checks have been
ordained to prevent this increase of births from be-
coming such as should frustrate or greatly endan-
ger the ends for which freemen are born ; yet the most
efficient limit must be sought for in the moral and
intellectual prerogatives of men, in their foresight,
in their habituation to the comforts and decencies
of society, in the pride of independence ; but above
all in the hope that enables men to withstand the
tyranny of the present impulse, and in their ex-
pectation of honour or discredit from the rank,
character, and condition of their children. Now
there are proposed to us the speedy means of at
once increasing the number of the rich, the wealth
of those that are already such, and the revenues of
the State : and the latter, Fathers ! to so vast an
amount, that we shall be able to pay not only our
own soldiers but those of the monarch s whom we
may thus induce to become our allies. But for
this it will be requisite and indispensable that all
men of enterprise and sufficiency among us should
be permitted, without restraint, to encourage, and
virtually to occasion, the birth of many myriads
of free citizens, who from their childhood are to be
amassed in clusters and employed as parts of a
mighty system of machinery. While all things
prove answerable to the schemes and wishes of these
enterprisers, the citizens thus raised and thus em-
ployed by them will find an ample maintenance,

TO ROME OR ATHENS. 425

except in those instances where the individual may-
have rendered himself useless by the effects of his
own vices. It must not, however, be disguised
from you, that the nature of the employments and
the circumstances to which these citizens will be
exposed, will often greatly tend to render them in-
temperate, diseased, and restless. Nor has it been
yet made a part of the proposal, that the employers
should be under any bond to counteract such inju-
rious circumstances by education, discipline, or
other efficient regulations. Still less may it be
withholden from your knowledge, O Fathers of the
State, that should events hereafter prove hostile
to all or to any branch of these speculations, to
many or to any one of the number that shall have
devoted their wealth to the realization of the same —
and the light, in which alone they can thrive, is
confessedly subject to partial and even to total
eclipses, which there are no means of precisely
foretelling — the guardian planets to whose conjunc-
tion their success is fatally linked, Avill at uncertain
periods, for a longer or shorter time, act in malig-
nant oppositions — then, Fathers, the principals are
to shift for themselves, and leave the disposal of
the calamitous, and therefore too probably tur-
bulent, multitude, now unemployed and useless, to
the mercy of the community, and the solicitude of
the State ; or else to famine, violence, and the ven-
geance of the laws !"

Jf, on the maxims of ancient prudence, on the
one hand not enlightened, on the other not dazzled,
by the principles of trade, the immediate answer

426 HOW SPIRIT or TRADE IN AGRICULTURE

would have been : — " We should deem it dang-er
and detriment, were we to permit so indefinite and
improvident increase even of our slaves and Helots:
in the case of free citizens, our countrymen, who
are to swear to the same laws, and worship at the
same altars, it were profanation ! May the Gods
avert the omen !"— if this, I say, would have been
their answer, it may be safely concluded that the
connivance at the same scheme, much more that
the direct encouragement of it, must be attributed
to that spirit which the ancients did not recognize,
namely, the spirit of commerce.

But I have shewn that the same system has gra-
dually taken possession of our agriculture. What
have been the results ? For him who is either
imable or unwilling to deduce the whole truth from
the portion of it revealed in the following extract
from Lord Winchelsea's Report, whatever I could
have added would have been equally in vain. His
Lordship speaking of the causes which oppose all at-
tempts to better the labourers' condition, mentions,
as one great cause, the dislike which the farmers
in general have to seeing the labourers rent any
land. Perhaps, (he continues) " one of the reasons
for their disliking this is, that the land, if not
occupied by the labourers, would fall to their own
share ; and another I am afraid is, that they rather
wish to have the labourers more dependent upon
them ; for which reasons they are always desirous
of hiring the house and land occupied by a labourer,
under pretence, that by those means the landlord
will be secure of his rent, and that they will keep

INJURES THE LABOURER, 427

the house in repair. This the agents of estates are
too apt to give into, as they find it much less trouble
to meet six than sixty tenants at a rent-day, and
by these means avoid the being sometimes obhged
to hear the wants and complaints of the poor. All
parties therefore join in persuading the landlord,
who it is natural to suppose (unless he has time and
incHnation to investigate the matter very closely)
will agree to this their plan, from the manner in
which it comes recommended to him : and it is in
this manner that the labourers have been dispos-
sessed of their cow-pastures in various parts of the
midland counties. The moment the farmer obtains
his wish, he takes eveiy particle of the land to him-
self, and re-lets the house to the labourer, who by
these means is rendered miserable ; the poor rate
increased ; the value of the estate to the land-
owner diminished ; and the house suffered to go to
decay ; which once fallen the tenant will never
rebuild, but the landlord must, at a considerable
expence. Whoever travels through the midland
counties, and will take the trouble of inquiring,
will generally receive for answer, that formerly
there were a great many cottagers who kept cows,
but that the land is now thrown to the farmers ; and
if he inquires, still farther, he will find that in those
parishes the poor rates have increased in an amaz-
ing degree, more than according to the average
rise throughout England." — In confirmation of his
Lordship's statement I find in the Agricultural Re-
ports, that the county, in which I read of nothing
but farms of 1000, 1500, 2000, and 2500 acres, is

428 AND SOCIETY.

likewise that in which the poor rates are most nu-
merous, the distresses of the poor most grievous,
and the prevalence of revolutionary principles the
most alarming. But if we consider the subject on
the largest scale and nationally, the consequences
are, that the most important rounds in the social
ladder are broken, and the hope which above all
other things distinguishes the free man from the
slave, is extinguished. The peasantry therefore
are eager to have their children add as early as
possible to their wretched pittances, by letting
them out to manufactories ; while the youths take
every opportunity of escaping to towns and cities.
And if I were questioned, as to my opinion, re-
specting the ultimate cause of our liability to dis-
tresses like the present, the cause of what has been
called a vicious (that is excessive) population with
all the furies that follow in its train — in short, of
a state of things so remote from the simplicity of
nature, that we have almost deprived Heaven itself
of the power of blessing us ; a state in which with-
out absurdity, a superabundant harvest can be com-
plained of as an evil, and the recurrence of the
same a ruinous calamity, — I should not hesitate to
answei' — " the vast and disproportionate number
of men who are to be fed from the produce of the
fields, on which they do not labour."

What then is the remedy ; — who are the physi-
cians ? The reply may be anticipated. An evil
which has come on gradually, and in the growth of
which all men have more or less conspired, cannot be
removed otherwise than gradually, and by the joint

MODE OF REMEDY. 429

efforts of all. If we are a Christian nation, we must
learn to act nationally as well as individually, as
Christians. We must remove half truths, the most
dangerous of errors, (as those of the poor visionaries
called Spenceans), by the whole truth. The Go-
vernment is employed already in retrenchments ;
but he who expects immediate relief from these,
or who does not even know that if they do any
thing at all, they must for the time tend to ag-g-ravate
the distress, cannot have studied the operation of
public expenditure.

I am persuaded that more good would be done,
not only ultimate and permanent, but immediate,
good, by the abolition of the lotteries accompanied
by a public and Parliamentary declaration of the
moral and religious grounds that had determined the
Legislature to this act ; of their humble confidence
of the blessing of God on the measure ; and of their
hopes that this sacrifice to principle, as being more
exemplary from the present pressure on the revenue
of the State, would be the more effective in restoring
confidence between man and man ; — I am deeply
convinced, that more sterling and visible benefits
would be derived from this one solemn proof and
pledge of moral fortitude and national faith, than
from retrenchments to a tenfold greater amount.
Still more, if our legislators should pledge them-
selves at the same time that they would hereafter
take counsel for the gradual removal or counterac-
tion of all similar encouragements and temptations
to vice and folly, that had, alas ! been tolerated
hitherto, as the easiest way of supplying the ex-

430 MODE OF REMEDY.

chequer. And truly, the financial motives would
be strong indeed, if the revenue laws in question
were but half as productive of money to the state
as they are of guilt and wretchedness to the people.
Our manufacturers must consent to reg'ulations ;
our gentry must concern themselves in the educa-
tion as well as in the instruction of their natural
clients and dependents, must regard their estates as
secured indeed from all human interference by every
principle of law, and policy, but yet as offices of
trust, with duties to be performed, in the sight of
God and their country. Let us become a better
people, and the reform of all the public (real or sup-
posed) grievances, which we use as pegs whereon
to hang our own errors and defects, will follow of
itself. In short, let every man measure his efforts
by his power and his sphere of action, and do aH
he can do. Let him contribute money where he
cannot act personally : but let him act personally
and in detail wherever it is practicable. Let us pal-
liate where we cannot cure, comfortwhere we cannot
relieve : and for the rest rely upon the promise of
the King of Kings by the mouth of his Prophet,
Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters.

C, Whittiii^liaiu, Tooks Court, Clmncery Lane,

4^jc:i^^^ '

^mw^

c tc««a

:^^4M-<f-

«^^

C C4

^ggf-/^: ^ <2

s' •rtT'^-V.^ft

oca^ac. <»^'.^

g*5^^.

uCK<2*:

ite^?^:

^,«g:v^^^

^fc^;

s^SSc:

^^c<^

^1^?^

^^^-^^%:;

^-

^<^:

re