li: ^^W OF PRlNCETd^js ^OLQGXMSVIH^^ BR115.H3 H5 1823 Harness, William, 1790-1869. Connexion of Christianity wit H ;. ^ THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. BEING THE SUBSTANCE OF THE BOYLE LECTURES FOR THE YEAR 1821. BY THE REV. WILLIAM HARNESS," A.M. OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY. ALBEMARLE-STREET. MDCCCXXIII. LONPON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES, Northumberland-court. /¥ CONTENTS THE FIRST VOLUME. Introductory Observations. PART I. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL TO HUxMAN HAPPINESS. CHAPTER I. Christian Opinions Essential to the Happiness OF Society. Page Section I.— From their Influence on the Public Mind . . . . . . .17 Section II.— From their Influence on our Supe- riors . , 67 Section III.— From their Influence on the Rich 173 XU CONTENTS. Page Section IV. — From their Influence on the Lower Orders of the People . . . .196 Section V.—From their Influence in mitig-ating the Horrors of War . . . .261 CONTENTS THE SECOND VOLUME. Page Continuation of Chapter I. Section VI. — Christian Opinions essential to the Happiness of Private Life ... 3 Section VIL — Christian Opinions essential to the Happiness of Domestic Life ... 64 CHAPTER n. Christian Opinions Essential to the Happiness OF Individuals. Section I. — From the Terms of Human Exist- 115 Section II. — From the Consolation they afford to the Calamities of Existence . . . 144 Section III.— From enhancing the Enjoyment of Prosperity 18S XIV CONTENTS. Page PART II. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED BY THE UNAIDED POWERS OF THE REASON 233 PART III. IN THE ABSENCE OF CHRISTIAN OPINIONS THE REASON COULD SUGGEST NO SUBSTITUTES, THAT COULD SUPPLY THEIR LOSS . . 303 THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. Mankind have constantly fluctuated, in their religious sentiments, between the opposite extremes of bigotry or indiffe- rence, of superstition or infidelity. They have either imagined the visitations of the Deity " in the earthquake and the fire in which he was not," or refused to confess his presence " in the still small voice in which he was :" They have either listened, with credulous devotion, to the preten- sions of the fanatic and the impostor, VOL, I. B 2 THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY trembled with the secret apprehension of witchcraft and of spectres, and yielded their implicit faith to the suggestions of dreams and auguries ; or they have pre- sumptuously separated themselves from all connexion with the spiritual world, denied the truth of revelation, disputed even the existence of a God, and refused submission to any other authority, than that of the reason and the will. Such are the extremes, into which the weakness of our nature is betrayed, by ignorance on the one hand, and civiliza- tion on the other. At the present day, we are effectually delivered from the errors of superstition ; but there is a very con- siderable danger of our falling into the opposite evil of religious incredulity. " The human reason," says Luther, in his strong, bold manner, " is like an intoxi- cated peasant ; if you support him on one WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. 3 Side, he falls on the other." From be- lieving too much, we have come to believe too little. From falsely imagining the re- velations of divinity, in objects that are purely natural, we have begun to suppose, that there is nothing but what is natural in revelation itself We have only escaped from the central darkness of our igno- rance, to become confused and blinded with the excess of light. — By the fair ex- ertion of the understanding, that intellec- tual night has been dispersed, which, in our father's days, seemed peopled by a host of visionary existences. Those mists have been scattered from the mind, through which every object had appeared magnified to view beyond its true and na- tural dimensions. In their ignorance of secondary causes, our ancestors referred every accident, which exceeded the bounds of their experience, to the immediate in- 4 THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY terference of the Deity. The creation had not yet been examined in its detail. They saw nothing in the universe, but its larger outlines and more striking features ; and, as " the eye glanced from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," it fell upon no intermediate objects, that interposed between Man and his Creator. With us, on the contrary, a more minute acquaint- ance with the laws of nature seems to have withdrawn our attention from the eternal Being, by whom they were or- dained. We have lost sight of the Al- mighty in the investigation of his works. The soul, wholly bent upon the realities of the material world, seems to have con- tracted its sphere of vision, and to have become incapable of aspiring to the lofty truths of the gospel ; to have hardened its moral touch, and to have rendered itself insensible to the spiritualities of religion. WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. 5 We demand for every opinion a conviction that may be apprehended by the senses, and v^ill not admit the possibility of any thing in heaven, or in earth, unless it can be mathematically proved, and experi- mentally demonstrated to the satisfaction of our frigid philosophy. The age in which Faith superseded Reason has been succeeded by an age, in which Reason has usurped an unjust ascendency over Faith; in which the public mind has learned presumption in the consciousness of improvement; in which thousands among us have become conceited of their intellectual faculties and acquirements ; in which, pretending to derive from the erroneous portion of their fathers' faith, an argument against all that it contains of inspiration and of truth, they have presumptuously turned aside from the gospel of the Redeemer, as if its divine 6 THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY instructions were unworthy to receive the incense of their enlightened veneration. This spirit of intellectual pride has, for some time, been gaining ground upon so- ciety. It is by no means exclusively confined to those who have openly sepa- rated themselves from the ranks of Chris- tianity. The professed disciples of the Gospel, whom, of all men, it ought least to have affected, though removed from the more deadly centre of contagion, have shewn themselves to be infected with the intellectual malady. We find some, out- wardly confessing the divine infallibility of scripture, yet refusing to submit the mind to its communications, and debasing its lofty revelations, to adapt them to the narrow measure of their limited capaci- ties. We find others who appear to be altogether Christians when kneeling at the altar of their Redeemer, yet almost WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS, 7 persuaded to apostatize from the creed of their fathers, when they dwell upon the thrice-refuted pages of the infidel: or when, in, the too light and familiar con- verse of society, they sanction his un- hallowed insinuations by an ignominious silence. We find others vacillating under the direction of circumstances, now cling- ing to their creed as a virtuous prepos- session of their childhood, and now look- ing with respect on unbelief, as a kind of splendid emancipation from the preju- dices of ordinary men ; at one time en- deavouring to console their disappoint- ment, or their sorrow, with feeble hopes of the truth of their religion ; and at an- other, smoothing the way to crime, and cheering the timidity of the conscience, by recalling the arguments that would de- feat them. While a very considerable portion of the nominal disciples of the B THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY Saviour hold their cold belief, without any real appreciation of the benefits for which they are indebted to Christianity, and scarcely doubt but that the human reason — weak, erring, prejudiced, dete- riorated human reason — is sufficient for all the moral and spiritual necessities of man, and effectual of itself, to establish the fairest principles of conduct, and en- force the practice of them by adequate obligations. They can perceive the wis- dom of the moral code communicated by the Messiah's revelation ; they can esti- mate the value of those important articles of religious faith, which are assured to them by the gospel ; and because, when the truth is discovered to their view, and brought level to their apprehensions, they can enlarge upon its beauty, and investi- gate its motives, and illustrate its effects, they overlook the immeasurable distance WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. 9 which exists between the faculties that are necessary to comprehend what is excellent, and the higher order of intel- ligence demanded for its invention ; and arrogantly conceive, that the instruction which appears to them so simple, might have been disclosed with equal ability and clearness, by the unaided faculties of the understanding. While in every moment of their lives, in the familiar in- tercourse of friends, in the negotiations of the active, in the tranquillity of home, in the competitions of society, they find every passion softened, every rivalship moderated, every bond confirmed, every virtuous afi^ection sanctioned and en- hanced, by the persuasions of that reli- gious faith, which, like the sunshine and the showers of the God from whom it emanated, sheds its salutary influence on the evil and on the good ; with an inor- 10 THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY dinate ingratitude they have begun to undervalue its instructions, and to enter- tain an unworthy estimation of its advan- tages : — while all is fair, and radiant, and fertile roUnd them, they have learnt to turn away their eyes from the glories of the sun, and doubt their obligation to its beams. It is against this religious indifference that the following reflections are directed. It is not my object to engage with open infidelity, by again detailing the conclu- sive evidences by which the gospel is supported. This has been already done so often, and so well, that no honest heart, or unprejudiced understanding, can enter on the inquiry, without being con- vinced of the supernatural origin of our belief. My aim is of another nature. It will be my endeavour, by a just and candid statement of the necessity of the WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. 11 Christian revelation to the happiness of man, to awaken the devotion, and arouse the gratitude, of those, who look coldly upon the faith, as upon a thing of in- considerable worth. I wish to inspire my readers with a fair appreciation of those lessons of eternal truth, which have been communicated by the revelation of the Messiah. In this attempt I shall direct their reflections to the following propositions : — 1st. That christian opinions are essen- tial to human happiness. 2d. That those opinions could not have been established by the unaided powers of the reason. 3d. That, in the absence of those opi- nions, the reason could suggest no sub- stitutes which could supply their loss. The first of these heads 1 shall treat of at considerable length, the other two I 12 THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY shall dismiss more briefly. In the pro- secution of my task, it is my intention to support myself, as far as possible, by the authority, the admissions, and the exam- ples of those, who have been most cele- brated among the ranks of unbelief. If I should succeed in establishing the pro- positions that I have advanced, the con- clusion is immediate. Unless all the better feelings of the heart have become extinct, under the overwhelming growth of the worldly passions, it is impossible not to be convinced of the wickedness of that indifferent and ungrateful feeling, with which the revelation of the Messiah is so extensively regarded. And while we learn to love the faith, by contem- plating its holy ministrations of joy and peace, we may also derive from the con- sideration another, and an emphatic, tes- timony to its divine authority and truth. WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. 13 If Christianity has conferred a happiness on man, which he had not the means of creating for himself, it is the strongest internal proof of its super-human origin. " It is the good tree that bringeth forth the good fruit*." This is one of those in- disputable axioms to which infidelity itself has granted its assent. " If in the pro- found night by which my reason is sur- rounded," says Maupertuis, " I find a system, which is the only one that can gratify the natural desire after happiness, can I fail to acknowledge it as true? Must I not confess that that which con- duces to happiness is that which cannot possibly deceive f ?" » St. Matthew, 7th ch. 17th verse. t Dans cette nuit profonde si je rencontre le systdme qui est le seul quipuisse remplirle desir que j'ai d'etre heureux, ne dois je pas croire que celui qui me conduit au bonheur, est celui qui ne saurait me tromper." — Maupertuis Essai de Philosophie Morale. PART I. CHEISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN HAPPINESS. The consideration of this proposition I shall divide into two Chapters, which will again be subdivided into Sections. — The first Chapter will be designed to shew, that Christian opinions are essential to the happiness of society. The se- cond, that Christian opinions are essential to the happiness of individuals. Chapter I. Sect. I. CHEISTIAN OPINIONS AEE ESSENTIAL TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY FROM THEIR INFLU- ENCE ON THE PUBLIC MIND, Man cannot live alone. He is con- nected with his fellow-creatures, by the long imbecility of childhood, by the gra- dually increasing infirmities of age, by the bonds of instinctive affection, and by the necessity of combining with his fellow men, for the purposes of opposing their common enemies, and of supplying their common wants. If separate, the race perishes*. Mundi Principio indulsit communis conditor illis Tantum animas, nobis aniraum quoque, mutuus ut nos AfFectus petere auxilium et praestare juberet, VOL. I. C 18 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL There is also another law resulting from the inevitable conditions of human existence. When associated into bodies, there naturally arises from the superiority of the parent to the child, and from the irregular distribution of bodily strength and intellectual endowment, an inequality among the individuals. Man cannot live alone ; neither, when united in society, can all men be equal. This last ordinance, to which human nature is subjected, has been considered as peculiarly irksome, and a thousand theorists, whose minds have been misled by the meteor light of a false imagina- tion, or exaggerated sentiment, have me- ditated its abolition. But, however fair Disperses trahere in populum, migrare vetusto De nemore, et proavis habitatas linquere sylvas ; iEdificare domos, Laribus conjungere nostris Tectum aliud, tutos vicino limine somnos, Ut collata daret fiducia. Juvenal. 15, S. 147. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 19 their systems may appear in speculation, they have ever been found impossible in practice. A few particular nations have attempted, for a time, to dispense with the customary distinctions of society, by ex- pelling all the titles of honour, and the reverence of hereditary rank; but the various degrees of life have still arisen, in some other form and character, and baffled every endeavour to cast over the wide prospect of the social world so dreary and blank an uniformity. You may destroy the aristocracy of birth. You may blot out the names of venerable families. You may debase the living monuments of ancient virtue and wisdom and integrity ; but nothing will result from the destruction, but the conferring an entire ascendency on the fluctuating aristocracy of wealth ; — you may institute a change, which shall degrade the love of c 2 20 CHRISTIAN OPIKIONS ESSENTIAL honour to exalt the love of money, and postpone fame to avarice, and supersede the direction of the highest to enliance the operation of the meanest human prin- ciple of conduct ; but degrees of influence and power can never be totally oblite- rated. It has been continually repeated, and it is palpable to common observation, that if the most exact division of national property were calculated, and each indi- vidual were, this moment, to receive his due proportion, in an hour after the dis- tribution the equality would be violated ; the prudent would already have gained on the imprudent : the crafty have im- posed on the unsuspicious ; the active have surpassed the indolent. Any human interference to restrain these natural ef- fects, would be nothing less than an at- tempt to counteract the fair emoluments of virtue, and repair the just deficiencies TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 21- of vice. While the right of property re- mains inviolable, and mankind vary in their faculties of body and of mind, there v^ill of necessity be gradations in the con- stitution of society. They subsist by an original ordinance of the Creator. There may not be degrees of nominal rank, but there must be degrees of power; for wealth is as much power, as poverty is weakness ; and there is no means of emancipating the poor from the authority of the rich, the labourer from the em- ployer, the mouth that hungers from the hand that feeds it, but by tearing down the barriers which separate and secure the property of individuals, and returning to the licentiousness of savage life, that all may indiscriminately be involved in a state of utter and abject wretchedness, and become abandoned to the unrebuked oppression of the strongest among men. 22 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL to the rage of the beasts of the forests, to the violence and the inclemencies of seasons, and to the unalleviated suf- ferings of accident and of disease. Since, then, wherever man exists, he is destined by an irreversible decree of the Creator, either to exercise authority over his fellow-creatures, or to submit himself to the authority of others : — since, by every propensity of the human heart, this diversity of estate must be the source of hostile dispositions ; " greatness de- lighting to shew itself by effects of power, and baseness to help itself by shifts of malice * :" — since the consequent irritation of public feeling must keep alive a con- tinual struggle to shake off or to confirm the shackles of dependance : — since every contest must prove more and more de- structive to the stock of national hap- * Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity. Vol. II. p. 418. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. ^3 piness, and be productive of depopulated fields, of wasted harvests, of ruined cities, of childless parents, of widowed mothers, and of orphaned infants, during the terrors of the conflict : — since defeated insurrection must necessarily be followed by a servitude less lenient, imbittered by the recollection of past hostility, and guarded by additional restraints, from the possibility of future resistance: — since revolution only promises a field of blood, the rending of familiar ties, the degrada- tion of the great to miserable and unac- customed privations, the promotion of unworthy persons to their vacated ascen- dency, and an unprofitable change of mas- ters to the large body of the people : — since, by the inevitable conditions of hu- manity, life is thus destined to be passed amid the strife of opposite interests, it is evident that, to secure the peace and con- %4j christian opinions essential sequent happiness of society, some inter- posing influence is demanded, which may moderate between the contending ine- qualities ; which may restrain the arro- ' gance of authority, and calm the restless- ness of subjection ; which may appease the suspicions of the powerful, and silence the importunate jealousy of the inferior ; which may ensure the tranquilHty of the whole, by suggesting motives of mutual benevolence, amid such innumerable provocations to mutual malignity. If mankind had been abandoned by the Almighty to float at random on the stormy sea of passion, without any star in heaven to regulate the direction of their way, there is one universal principle of nature that would effectually have per- petuated the animosities of society: — " Pride, which setteth the whole world out of course" — pride doing and suffer- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 25 ing — pride active in the great, fostered by the (Contemplation of its own superiority, and demonstrated in arrogance and oppres- sion— pride passive in the weak, silently brooding over the sense of humiliation, and the bitter recollection of indignities — pride triumphant, seizing on every oppor- tunity of augmenting its exactions — pride constrained, availing itself of every occa- sion of open vengeance or clandestine retribution, would have rendered the en- mities of life as violent as the worst passions of the human soul, and as per- manent as the pulsations of the human heart. But while the multitudes of the earth are thus collected together, like the children of Israel in the wilderness, to lament their desolate estate, with a barren rock and an unprofitable waste before them, the rock is struck, and the waters of consolation flow around them: — '' that rock," says St. Paul, " is Christ." 26 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL * " Give me the hearts of all men hum- ble," exclaims Hooker, " and what is there that shall destroy the peace of the world?" The Messiah has made humility- one of the graces indispensable to the attainment of the rewards of his religion. But he has not only commanded to his disciples the cultivation of this virtue. He has presented to our minds the know- ledge of those sacred truths, which may control the elations of the breast. He has, through the medium of the Gospel, discovered to us the objects, that operate as the provocatives to arrogance, in other points of view than those in which they are naturally apprehended, and under circumstances and relations, that display their comparative insignificance. The conception of such a Deity, as is made known to us in the Gospel, — of a Deity, infinite in his attributes, surveying * Sermon on Pride. Hooker. Vol- III. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. S7 our most private actions, and conscious of our most secret thoughts, the author of our mortal life, and the arbiter of our immortal destination, can never be enter- tained without communicating to the mind something of the temperance of truth. The simple and unconnected act of look- ing beyond the world, to an object of de- pendance and of terror, has of itself a very considerable efficacy in calming the impulses of pride, and restraining the murmurs of discontent. While every de- sire is anticipated, every sentiment re- echoed with applause, every opposition stifled, the powerful might be too readily betrayed into an oblivion of their actual estate. They might be tempted to re- ceive too credulously the servile whisper- ings of adulation round them. Survey- ing themselves in the representations of flattery, while they estimated others by 28 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the knowledge of their imperfections, they might be tempted to conceive that their superiority was of a higher nature, than that which is conferred by the mere ex- ternal additions of their fortune, and be- come arrogant in authority, and tyrannous in its exercise. — The conception of the majesty of God most effectually disperses these delusions. It separates between the real littleness and the factitious dignity. It puts aside those glittering append- ages of distinction which encompass the mightyof the earth, and most impressively reveals them to themselves. It fulfils the office of that rigid counsellor, who, in the palmy state of Rome, when the triumph was advancing to the Capitol, was stationed in the car of the conqueror, and continually repeated, amid the pomp of victory, as he held the glittering co- ronet before him: " Remember thou art TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 29 man*." And while the belief in the existence of the Christian's God teaches humility to the great, it also delivers to the lowly a lesson of submission. If it represses the injurious effects of power, by disclosing to the adoration of its pos- sessors, a pre-eminence so infinitely ex- alted above all that the world can offer of greatness or distinction, that the little elevations of the earth appear to decline before it, and to shrink into inconsider- able dimensions, it also administers to the weak a very persuasive lesson of content. As the poor looks upward to the Deity, his understanding becomes habituated to the sense of inferiority ; he feels that his humbler destiny is no longer to be re- sented as an unjust exception ; he finds * Quippe tenet sutlans hauc publicus, et sibi cousul Ne piaccat, curni servus portatur eodem. Jlvenal, 10, 41. 30 CHKISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL that he occupies an appropriate place in the graduating system of creation; he perceives that, if he is bound by an ob- ligation to submit, his superior acknow- ledges a higher authority, and that God is ever above the highest ; he confesses, that to rule and to obey is an eternal or- dinance and inviolable condition of exist- ence ; and he derives a consolation to the lowliness of his estate, by reflecting that the most favoured among manlcind, how- ever rich in the benefits of life, however affluent in wealth or fame, in talent or authority, standing as he does upon the earth, — in marked comparison with the infinite supremacy of God, — as on a brief and narrow isthmus, between the eternity of the past and the eternity of the future, must always show as insignificant to the view, as to the eye of some distant mari- ner appears the slow and solitary sea- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 31 bird, careering in the fields of air, with the immeasurable canopy of heaven ex- tended above her flight, and the immeasu- rable plains of ocean chafing and swell- ing underneath. Pride naturally results from the per- ception of our own superiority, and if we would prove that " it is not made for man," our arguments must be derived from the intimations of religion. When we would demonstrate the vanity or the wickedness of the passion, the task can only be accomplished, by shewing that the little acquisitions and endowments, which appear to exalt us above our fellow- creatures, are insignificant in comparison with the more vast and important con- siderations which constitute our equality. But these levelling considerations are es- sentially religious. Did we only con- template mankind in their earthly rela- 32 CHRISTIAN OFIXIONS ESSENTIAL tions, we should by no means find that the arrogance of the opulent and the pow- erful were obnoxious to an unmitigated censure. We might even be tempted to exceed in our indulgence ; to grant, not only impunity, but approbation ; to trans- pose, with Hume*, the honour and the reproach from the dispositions, to which they are attributed by the Gospel, and class pride among the virtues, and hu- mility among the ignominious affections of the heart. As far as the mortal man only is concerned, pre-eminence of for- tune confers not only an external eleva- tion, but bestows the only moral supe- riority of which his nature is susceptible. We are so completely modified by cir- * See the Inaviry into the Principles of Morals, 9th Sec- tion. Humility is there named among the monkish virtues, which Hume " transfers to the opposite column, and places among the cataloL'ue of vices." TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 33 cumstance, that there is scarcely a more marked distinction between the different classes of the animal creation, than be- tween the refined and cultivated being, whose prosperous destiny has allowed him the facilities of improvement, and the unlettered churl, who is the blind instru- ment of his instincts and his appetites, and whose intellect is incapable of reach- ing any thing above the most ordinary inventions of his crafl. There are a few, who, like iEsop or Epictetus, may cast off the slough of their mean condition, and rise superior to circumstances ; but, with the generality of men, the rich are as widely separated from the poor, as knowledge is from ignorance, or refine- ment from barbarism. Their pursuits, their manners, their hopes, their fears, their sentiments, their pleasures, all are vol., I, D 34 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL different. There are no bonds of alliance between them. They scarcely possess a single point of sympathy, which is not common to the whole range of animal existence. There is in the rich the cul- tivated mind; there is in the poor the brute force that it may direct : there ia the master and the slave ; and, as the master looks down upon the slave, he may deUght himself in contemplating the immeasurable space between them, and remark his own perfection, and derive new arguments of self-complacency, and remorselessly dismiss the wretch, as an outcast from all the tender sentiments of a kindred nature, to toil, unheeded, for the gratification of his avarice ; or fall unpitied, in some gladiatorial show, to amuse the weary hours of his indolence. " Pride," says Selden, " may be allowed TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 35 to this or that degree * ;" but, without re- ligion, who shall appoint its limits or its measure ? Beings so dissimilar are only fellow-creatures in their exterior seeming. They are men, but they are not brothers. There is no mutual tie between them, till it has been demanded as a duty from the great, to equalize the painM dispropor- tion, by famiharizing the minds of all men with that knowledge of the Gospel, which renders every individual, in a Christian * Table Talk. " When we approach a man, who is, as we say, at his ease, we are presented with the pleasing ideas of plenty, satisfaction, cleanliness, warmth, a cheerful honse, elegant furniture, ready service, and whatever is desirable in meat, drink, or apparel. On the contrary, when a poor man appears, the disagreeable images of want, pe- nury, hard labour, dirty furniture, coarse or ragged clothes, nauseous meats, and distasteful liquor, immediately strike o«r fancy. What else do we mean by saying, that one is rich, and the other poor? Regard or contempt is the natural conseciuence of their different situations in life." — Hume's Inquiry into the Principles of Morals , Sec. 6. Surely the poor owe some gratitude to the Gospel, which has saved them from this philosophical contempt. D 2 36 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL country, more skilled in the important truths of moraUty and reUgion, than the most enlightened sages of antiquity ; and which teaches its disciples to overlook the differences, that are merely of the earth ; to estimate the spiritual graces of the soul above the trivial accomplishments of the understanding ; to forget that which is temporal, and attach themselves to that which is eternal ; and to find the sacred and indissoluble bonds of brotherhood in the paternity of one God, in the redemp- tion of one Saviour, in the justification of one faith, in the sanctification of one Spirit. There is also another truth commu- nicated by the Gospel, in the knowledge of the superintending and directing pro- vidence of God, which necessarily con- duces to allay the irritations arising from the inequalities of society. Those TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 57 objects, which provoke the arrogance of the powerful, and the jealousy of the in- digent, are divested of their mahgnant properties, when they are regarded as the endowments of the Divinity, who main- tains over the operations of his hand a regulating control, dispensing the occur- rences of life ; accelerating or retarding the completion of our purposes, and dis- tributing the various conditions of human existence, for the advancement of the eternal counsels of his wisdom, and the moral amelioration of his creatures. To the Christian's view% riches and distinc- tion inspire no contemplations that elevate the soul ; poverty and depression afford no arguments that should abase it. Each estate is necessary to exercise mankind in those active occupations, by which the faculties are strengthened and refined. Each is responsible for a peculiar class 38 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL of duties, and produces, amid the different accidents, to which it is liable, the means of educating the heart to a peculiar class of virtues. One indeed appears to be more favourably regarded by the love of the Creator; but the Holy Spirit has pro- nounced, that this inestimable distinc- tion is conferred, in a manner, which may at the same time intimate humi- lity to the great, and encouragement to the humble*. Unless the volume of eternal truth tampers with us in a dou- ble sense, which it were impious for a moment to imagine, it is to the poor that the brightest hopes are beam- * ** One may see," says Pope in one of his letters, <* the small value God has for riches, by the people he gives them too." Here Pope speaks as a satirist, but it has been of great importance to tbe morals of tlie rich, and the happmess of the poor, to make a separation between the possession of worldly prosperity, and the favour of tlie Almighty. This it the work of Christianity. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 39 ing, and that the blessings of salvation are most secure. " There are to them*," says Bishop Taylor, " many promises and provisions, in that very capacity, they having a title to some certain cir- cumstances and additionals of grace and blessing; yet to rich men our blessed Saviour was pleased to make none at all, but to leave them involved in general comprehensions, and to have a title to the special promises only by becoming poor in spirit and in preparation of mind." Poverty is represented in the sacred vo- lume, as arrayed in a religious dignity. It is consecrated to our respect by a variety of pious associations. It was to shepherds keeping their flocks by night, that the angel of the Lord came down with the harmonious declaration of the tidings of * Sermon on Divine Judgmenls. 40 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL great joy. It was in humble habitations that the Christ was born, and that the Spirit of the Most High abided with him, and that he grew in favour with God and man. It was as a homeless wanderer that he walked the earth, as the ambassa- dor of spiritual hope ; and to the poor he spake the sublime announcements of his mission. It was from the ranks of poverty that the apostles of the truth were sepa- rated. " It is the poor of this world,'* says St. James, " that God has chosen as his own*." And to the Christian's ap- prehension,— where vice has not attainted them, and reversed the purposes of the Almighty ; where evil counsellors have not insinuated their lessons, and bereaved them of that faith, which is their peculiar grace, and dignity, and consolation, and ^ St. James, chap. 2. v. 5 TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 41 support, — there appears to shine a sacred radiance about their dwellings ; and the heart acknowledges them, as the repre- sentatives of Christ upon the earth* , and longs to secure to itself, by benevolent and gentle services, a claim upon their love, and an affectionate remembrance, in the moments of their devotion. There is nothing in the pomp and pageantry of life, when they are considered as the gifts of Providence, that should excite any haughty dispositions in the hearts of their possessors, or provoke the jealousy of the less endowed. When it is demanded by the voice of revelation, " Who mak- eth thee to differ from another?" and " what hast thou that thou didst not re- ceive f?" The inquiry recals to our recol- * See the 25th chapter of St. Matthew, from the 34th to the 40th verse. t 1st Corinthians, chap, 4. v. 7. 4S CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL lection, that the Almighty has as absolute a command over the distribution of his material, as of his spiritual, blessings ; that if he has intrusted them to our dis- posal, he has not wholly abdicated his authority; that we hold them but as stewards of his benevolence, and are to employ them, by the direction of his scriptures. When we read, " Lord, what is man that thou hast such respect unto him, or the son of man that thou so re- gardest him* ?" we learn to look inward upon ourselves and our imperfections ; to compare the liberalities of the Creator with the deficiencies of our service; and, if separated from the brighter be- nefits of this life, not to resent on our superiors the liberalities of Providence, as if they were the spoils of any human usurpation ; but to silence the suggestions * Psalm, 143, V. 3. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 43 of envy, nor let our " eye be evil be- cause God is good *." In addition to these reflections, which are afforded by the Gospel, to confirm the peace between the different classes of society, and harmonize the public mind, under the enjoyment, or the deprivation, of temporal prosperity, the Messiah has revealed to us a hope, before which every perishable treasure becomes depreciated in its value. — What are the fairest emo- luments this world can offer ; what is the very life, which they adorn and dissi- pate, when regarded in comparison with eternity? — It were senseless to declaim against " the boast of heraldry, and the pomp of power," and all that may be bestowed upon mankind by the pos- session of knowledge, of beauty, or of wealth ; it were idle to expatiate on * Matthew, chap. 20. v. 15. 44 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the vanity of those external ornaments, which appear to aggrandize our being, and enhance the privilege of existence, if the earth were the only theatre of action, and the soul were not instinct with a principle of immortality. Objects derive their importance in our estimation from the associations with which they are con- nected, and the accompaniments by which they are surrounded. The pyramid that seems to soar majestically, amid the sands of the desert, would sink into insignifi- cance, if situated at the foot of the moun- tain. The aspiring heir of immortality may look down upon the transitory at- tainments of pride, or avarice, or am- bition. They may appear to him as things indifferent and contemptible. He confesses himself a wanderer and a pil- grim on the earth. His soul is wrapt in a more momentous interest. He is ever TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 45 rapidly advancing towards the glorious home of his repose, and he is careless of the accidents, that occur upon his way. But remove this distant prospect; take away this expectation of a higher destiny ; and the good and evil of this present life are immediately enhanced in his opinion. His sentiments are changed towards them. Wealth and power, fame and title, riches and pre-eminence, are only valueless and empty, when surveyed from the heights of revelation, to the downward scan of the immortal spirit ; but when our being is dispossessed of its divinity, and brought level to their height, " these little things are great to little man *." If indeed this life be all; if death be an eternal slum- ber; if there be no morning that shall dawn beyond the grave, they acquire to themselves a real dignity, and an incal- * Goldsmith's Traveller. 46 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL culable importance. They become the only objects, by which the affections can be influenced, or the energies awakened. They are suddenly rendered indispen- sable to our felicity. They may perhaps ghtter with a deceitful brightness, but, if theirs be the only light, that shines, amid the gloom around us, theirs is the light which we must follow. With nothing but the charms of sense to love and hope for, life is changed in its import and its purposes. Instead of an instrument of good and a sa- cred trust from the Almighty, we survey it merely as a means of sensual gratification. We become involuntarily the disciples of Epicurus, and exalt pleasure as our god, and regard the virtues only as they administer to the zest or the duration of our enjoyment*. There is no longer any * CleanMies Epicuri discipulus, jubebat eos qui audiebant, »ecuDi ipsos cogitare pictam in tabula voluptateui pulclier- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 47 other philosophy for us, than that which is the harbinger of the decay and the para- lysis of nations*. In vain shall any equi- vocating teacher address us on the beauty of his ideal morals — pleasure, he informs us, is the purpose of our fragile being ; and, however he may refine upon its na- ture, or attempt to explain away the grossness of his institutes, we receive his lessons according to the interpretation of our passions. We are solicited to excess, rirao in vestitu et ornatii regali sedentetn ; praesto esse virtutes, ut ancilhilas, quae nihil aliud at^ereut, nullum suum officium ducerent, nisi ut voluptati ministraient. Cicero. De Fin. lib. 2. c. 21. * " The philosophy of Epicurus is ever ruinous to society. It had its rise when Greece was declining, and, perhaps, hastened its dissolution, as also that of Rome. It is now propagated in France and England, and seems likely to produce the same effects on both." Gray's Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 113. With regard to France, the fulfilment has fully answered the half oracular anticipations of the poet. God forbid, that a similar corruption of sentiment and opinion should ever, in onr land, be the occasion of a similar judstment! 48 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL by the recollection of the speediness of our departure ; and we adopt the indig- nant sarcasm of the Apostle, " Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die *," as the only rational principle of conduct f. * 1 Corinthians, chap. 15- v. 32. t These are the constant maxims of life with those who do not believe in the existence of a future state of retri- bution : — ** Let us the future hours beguile, " With mantling cup and cordial smile, *' And shed from every bowl of wine, " The richest dro pon Bacchus's shrine. " For death may come with blow unpleasant, " May come, when least we wish him present, "And beckon to the sable shore, " And grimly bid us drink no more." Moore's Anacreon Ode. The morals of Anacreon were universal. " Dark are our fates, to-morrow's sun may peer, " From the flushed east upon our funeral bier ; *' Then seize tl»e joys that wine and music give, " Nor talk of deatli while yet 'tis given to live . ** Soon shall each pulse be still ; closed every eye ; " One little hour remains, or e're we die," Palladas. Bland's Translation^ Horace is full of the same motives to voluptuousness ; and Martial finds, in the contemplation of the tomb of Augustus, TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. ^V The luxuries and the distinctions of life, seem to be cast down by the spirit of discord, as prizes to be surveyed with jealousy, contested with animosity, and lost with bitterest discontent. Wealth be- comes the sovereign good, and a licentious avarice the universal passion. Poverty seems as an exclusion of the light of the sun from the ephemera that lives but in its beams. — Let no elder brother inter- pose ; — let no parent too long encroach upon the anticipated inheritance. " The death of a father," says a young disciple of Voltaire, " though not the most amiable is the most secret and sincere wish of an an inducement to sensuality. Compare these impure and gross institutes with the following Christian Epigram of Doddridge : — " Live while you live, the epicure will say, " And give to pleasure every passing day ; "Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, " And give to God each moment as it flies- ** Lord, in my view let both united be, ** I live to pleasure, while I live to thee. VOL. I. E 50 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL expectant son*." — Without the dread of a possible punishment hereafter, which — however the heart may fortify itself in the armour of ungodliness — will sometimes clog the liberty of sin, and disturb the serenity of vice, with most tremendous apprehensions ; without the dread of a punishment hereafter, what shall prevent the child from accelerating this anxious consummation? Well might Paley ask, " what father would not wish his son to be a Christian f?" In the absence of reli- gious hope, youth appears the only season of enjoyment. — Already its irrevocable hours are bewailed, as too rapid and too few. Every moment, that retards pos- session, is impatiently resented, as so much of happiness abridged from the shortness of existence. The natural af- * Standish's Life of Voltaire, p. 134. f Evidences of Christianity. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 51 fections perish before the importunity of passion and the avidity of enjoyment. Every heart is highly wrought and fever- ishly excited, w^ith the grasping violence of the gamester.— Every individual, who, in the least interferes with our desires, whether it be the rich, who withholds his support to our profusion; or the poor, who denies himself to our pleasures, is contemplated as an hateful adversary, in the competitions of selfishness. Man- kind are wholly occupied in unparti- cipated gratification, or invidious pursuit. The order of creation is interrupted and its proportions levelled. ^ — And while the sea of Hfe is thus agitated and disturbed, there is one immortal Being only, who may walk the ocean, and rebuke the troubled waters, with emphasis and power. It is Christ alone, who can re- strain the tumults of the storm, and allay E 2 52 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the deadly and universal malignity of the contest, by again declaring the glad tidings of immortality, and demonstrating the nothingness of the passing treasures of the earth, when compared with the im- perishable beatitude of Heaven. The man, w^ho lives under a continual sense of the sublime convictions of the Gospel, is influenced by a sentiment that humbles the mind, while it exalts the soul ; that depresses the human passions, while it elevates the spiritual affections. His thoughts are occupied with lofty and portentous arguments. He bears fami- liarly about him, an impression, that is kindred to the solemn feeling, with which the heart is filled, in the presence of the mightiest works of nature. He acknow- ledges, as the permanent disposition of his soul, that contempt of the honours and aggrandizements of the earth, with which TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 53 we all occasionally sympathize, when — as the summer sun declines upon our evening walk— or as the wide pavilion of the night is spread above our lonely me- ditations— or as the ocean is rolling at our feet its everlasting anthem to the praise of the Creator — the spark of our immortality is felt to glow more ardently within us, and mingles in more pure and intimate communion with the Divinity, by whom it was inspired. Under the persuasion of those impor- tant truths, which have been delivered by the Messiah — though their complete effect has been retarded by the corruptions of the human heatt — pre-eminence has laid aside much of its arrogance ; inferiority has lost much of its painful feeling of subjection. The Christian world has found that there are higher motives " of respect than power and riches, and that 54 CHRTSTTAl^ OPINIO^^S ESSENTIAL poverty and wretchedness are no just occasions of contempt * ." Humility has become the characteristic of superior birth, and of an early and ingenuous education. The morals of revelation have been effectual on the manners, even where they have failed to touch the affections of society ; and " the rich man's scorn and the proud man's obloquy" have yielded to the semblance, at least, if not to the feeling, of a tenderness for the sensibilities of those who are beneath them. ** N il habet infelix paupertas durius in se Quam qu6d ridiculos liomines facit," was the opinion of Juvenal. Christianity has mitigated the severity of this afflic- tion. The tone of the sarcastic voice, * Hume justifies a contrary opiniou. See Section 6, of the Principles of Morals. And he is right, speaking of men without rehgion. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 55 the arrogant glance, that scorn might cast upon his dwelling, the sneer of vanity upon the rudeness of his gar- ments ; all those outwatd demonstrations of pride, which prey upon the poor man's heart, which echo on his memory, and which return upon his dreams, have nearly been obliterated by the constant repetition of the instructions of the Gos- pel. Disgrace is no longer the insepa- rable companion of his adversity — shame is no longer confounded with his po- verty— and, for the other ills of a sub- ordinate condition, he can open in his Bible the abundant source of consola- tion;— ^there is his support: — and how succe'lsfully it calms the soul, how be- nignly it inspires him with sentiments of patience and resignation, can only be fully understood by those who have vi- sited the dwellings of the miserable, and 56 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL listened to the arguments of consolation that are familiar in the cottages of Chris- tian poverty, and in the chambers of Christian sorrow. ■ TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 57 Chapter 1. Sect. II. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ARE ESSENTIAL TO THE HAPPINESS OF THE DEPENDANT FROM THEIR INFLUENCE ON HIS SUPERIORS. That devout humility which results from a belief in the doctrines of the Gospel, is rather the source of retired contemplation than a vigorous principle of action. It is incompatible with evil, but in itself can hardly be denominated a positive good. It is rather the fruitful soil, on which the virtues may be raised, than an express and irrelative excel- lence. If the Redeemer had only de- livered to mankind those lessons, by which the earth and its attainments and pursuits are degraded in our estimation, the devout disciples of his religion had 58 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL lost all bitterness of competition, but they had also wanted every inducement to exertion. They had justified the ac- cusations of Rousseau, and indolently refused to encounter in a race, which only promised to recompense their suc- cess with a reward that they despised *. A society of real Christians had been in a state of rest, like the form of Adam, ere his Maker had awakened it into being. — The Almighty has breathed the breath of life into the body. — He has not endured that this " cold obstruction" * Cette religion, n'ayant niille relation particuliere avec le corps politique, laisse aux lois la seule force qu'elles tireut d'elles-meme, sans leur en ajouter aiicune autre, et par-la un des grands liens de la soci^t^ particuliere reste sans efFet. Bien plus ; loin d'attacher les cceurs des citoyens a r^tat, elle les en d^tache conime des toutes les choses de la terre : Je ne connais rien de plus contraire a I'esprit so- cial. Une soci^t6 de vrais Chretiens a force d'etre parfaite, manquerait de liaison ; son vice destructive serai t dans sa perfection m^me, Sfc. S^c. jfc Contrat Social, lib. 4. chap. 8. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 59 should exist • he would not that the noble faculties of his creatures should be thus lost in the lethargy of inaction ; and he has endowed them with an impulse, a di- rection, and a purpose, by demanding of them the duties of a strenuous benevo- lence, and by proposing a requital of eter- nal happiness or eternal misery, as the reward of their obedience, or the penalty of their omission. When Bayle, in one of those extraor- dinary paradoxes, which he had a habit of advancing, for the display of his learning and his ingenuity, maintained that athe- ism was better tlian idolatry ^ ; or, in other words, that no religion was more to- lerable for a state, than one which was imperfect; it was admirably answered by Montesquieu, " that whatever truth might appertain to his assertion as it * Peiis^es siir la Comete, 8fc, 60 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL concerned the people, it was absolutely false as it related to their rulers*." The multitude are liable to the influence of many circumstances that might, for a little while, and in an inferior degree, sustain the practice of virtue and deter from the perpetration of offence. The terrors of the law, the desire of popular respect, the prosecution of their worldly interest, till the human mind had become totally corrupt, and learnt, under the un- rebuked direction of the passions, to call good evil, and evil good, might act as substitutes for the restraints and motives of religion. But these considerations fail in their persuasion, in proportion as our situation is exalted above the level of ordinary men. — As for interest; those who tread the most elevated walks of life, have no other to pursue than the * Esprit des Loix, Book 24. ch. 2. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 61 full fruition of their passions. As for opinion ; they are raised above the vul- gar clamour of reproach, and in their bright and conspicuous seclusion, their own sentiments are reverberated by every echo that surrounds them. And as for the law ; they, who are the distribu- tors of justice, may ever find the means of eluding its severity. " The laws reach but a very little way, and it is upon the great that their use and po- tency depend*." There is an eminence of power in every state, which always must inherit a very liberal impunity. The ca- pacity of mischief will always be com- mensurate with the ability for good. They who have been raised by Providence as the "revengers to execute wrath upon those that do evil f," are of themselves re- , * Bnrke's Works, Vol.11, p. 260, + Romans, 13 ch. 4 v. b3 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL sponsible to no other jurisdiction than that of the Divinity, whose ministers they are. To them there are no other terrors, than those that dwell around the throne of God ; — no other retributions, than those which are gloomily over- shadowing the long perspective of their eternity. The powerful may love reli- gion, and yield themselves gently to the hand that abridges their dominion ; or they may fear religion, and with diffi- culty submit to its inhibitions, and vio- lently beat the breast against the bar- rier ^, — against the only barrier, — that would circumscribe the scope of their licentiousness, or their exactions, or their cruelty. " The rich, the great, the pros- perous, would be delighted to learn there * This is the expression of Montesquieu. Esprit des Loix, Book 24. ch. S2. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 63 was no God*." But that unrighteous flatterer would teach a most miserable lesson for mankind, who should emanci- pate their souls from the salutary appre- hensions of an inspecting and avenging Deity. He would let loose the criminal affections to range abroad in unlimited malignity. He would level the only im- pediment that subsists between Abime- lech and his lust, Pharaoh and his cruelty, and Ahab and his usurpations. " If," says Voltaire, " the world were to be governed by atheists, it were as well to be submitted lo the immediate domina- tion of those fiends, who have been de- scribed as inveterately preying upon their victims f." Whoever should insinuate * Rousseau, Letter to Deleyie. t Homelie sur I'Atheisme — '* Si le monde ^tait goiivern6 par des ath^es il vaudrait autant 6tre sous 1' empire imm^diat de ces etres infernaux qu'oii nonspeint acharues coiitre leurs victimes." 64 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIA!. into the hearts of the mighty of the earth those lulling and portentous blasphemies of the infidel, which would pretend that there is no God to mark them — and no penalties which threaten beyond the grave, would give the reins to passion, and mount her in a flaming chariot, that she might whirl, like Phaeton, with bound- less and irregular impetuosity along her elevated course, and scatter a withering desolation upon the realms beneath. Without insisting on the seductions of that dangerous prosperity, which places the great in the more inmiediate vicinity of crime ; which surrounds them with the facilities of transgression ; which attracts towards them all those fawning subsi- diaries of vice, who would conciliate their approach to favour through the in- terest of the bad affections ; and which gradually betrays them to effeminate and TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 65 ignominious sensualities, till, like Nero or Caligula, they become tyrannous from the bitter and resentful consciousness of infamy : — without insisting on that selfish oblivion of every sense of justice or of duty, which so frequently accompanies the intoxication of power, and would per- suade its ministers to yield to no other law than their desires, as the Athenian people, whenever a supply was needed for their shows or dances, would care- lessly condemn some more affluent inha- bitant to death that they might lightly recreate themselves with the confiscation of his wealth * : — without insisting on * This is mentioned by Lysias, Orat. 29, in Nicom, as a thing of very ordinary occurrence, and as reflecting no im putation on his audience. The money so procured was spent in what was called the public service, i. e., shows and figure dances to amuse the indolence of the people. " The strangers find," says Lysias, Orat. 30. contra Phil, " that if they do not contribute largely enough to the people's fancy, they have reason to repent it." Demosthenes takes VOL. I. F 66 CHRISTiAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the insatiable nature of the passion, which agitates the ambitious, and com- pels him to acknowledge, like Buona- parte, " Qu'il n'y a qu'une seule chose a faire dans ce monde: c'est d'acquerir toujours plus d'argent et de pouvoir * :" — without insisting on the corrupting in- fluence of power on the human mind, or on the obdurate and encroaching dispo- sitions which are observable in those who the greatest care to display bis expenses for the pleasures of the people, when he pleads for himself " de corona," and exaggerates Midias's stinginess in this particular, in his ac- cusation of that criminal; " All which, by the by," con- cludes Hume, from whom these details are taken, " marks a very iniquitous judicature; and yet the A thenums valued themselves on having the most legal and regular administration of any people in Greece." — Note C C. Vol. I. * This is taken from a speech of Buonaparte to M. de Meizi, to dissuade him from an act of generous patriotism, he said — " Ne donncz pas dans cette philanthropie ro- manesque du dix-huitieme sifecle : il u'y a qu'une seule chose a faire dans ce monde ; c'est d'acquerir toujours plus d'argent et de pouvoir, tout le reste est chimere."— Mme. DE Stael on the French Revolution. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 67 love and seek it, and which alone would be sufficient to disturb the happiness of their dependants ; it may with confi- dence be affirmed that, unless some prin- ciples of religion confer the right to rule, and prescribe the duty to obey, the possessors of dominion would, by the very circumstances of their situation, be constrained to tyranny, as their only in- strument of defence against the dangers attendant on pre-eminence. Suppose that the most popular leader, in some moment of strong national ex- citement and distress, were raised to the direction of affairs by the general con- sent of his countrymen ; for a little while he might maintain his uninterrupted sway. As long as the emergencies, to which he owed his elevation were in force, he might be attended by a voluntary obe~ dience, and hold his sceptre by the fair F 2 68 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL and perfect tenure of opinion. The ex- ternal difficulties, by uniting the passions of the people in one common interest, might be to him, what Carthage was to R9me, his security against domestic re- bellion. But an authority, supported on such an airy basis, would be shaken with every breath of fortune. The first pause, which allowed an opportunity for enthu- siasm to cool, would also afford an hour for ambition to devise the destruction of a rival, for envy to depreciate his suc- cesses, for slander to blast the laurels upon his brow, for detraction to assoil the brightness of his trophies, and for dis- content to murmur her reproaches, as she canvassed the deficiency between the real benefits of his command, and the exaggerated hopes that had authorized his elevation. With these passions ope- rating against him, there would grow up TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 69 a natural enmity between the sovereign and his subjects. Their interests would become distinctly opposite ; he would no longer be sacred in the estimation of the public, as the protector of their safety, but abhorred as the usurper of their li- berties. They would continually encroach on his authority ; they would represent his actions, as they appeared tinted by the hues of their own jealousy. They would act towards him as the plebeians* of an- cient Rome acted towards the Patricians, and be dissatisfied, while he was dis- tinguished by a single privilege or im- munity ; they would ever more and more invade his sovereignty, which would be gradually wasted by new submissions that authorized more exorbitant demands, * " Tant qu'il resta qnelques privileges aiix Patriciens ; les Pl^b^iens les leiir ot^rent." — Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix. Lib. 11. c l6. 70 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL " Till kingly power, thus ebbing out^ w oiild be Drawn to the dregs of a democracy*." Admitting the truth of those moral axioms of society, which teach us that rule will naturally beget opposition ; that ascendency excites the evil passions of the inferior ; and that malignity ever follows pre-eminence like its shadow ; this is the very mildest course of events in which his destiny could move. The more ordinary course is of a darker and more sanguinary character. The gene- ral progress of the popular idol is from flattery and triumph, to assassination and insults on the dead. The blameless exe- cution of the regal duties would be no defence against this savage consumma- tion f. The righteous judgment, theun- * Drydeu's Absalom and Achitophel. Part I. t Out of the fifty-eight Emperors who preceded Con- stantine, fifty were either killed in war or assassinated by their relations. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 71 biassed protection of the weak and the unhappy, the reformation of public griev- ances and hereditary abuse, if they conci- liated distant friends, would exasperate domestic enemies. His virtues would ex- cite the hostility of those, whose interests were compromised in the success of ho- nesty and justice. The patriot monarch might have loyal subjects in the fields and in the villages ; but his foes would be those of his own household, who had long battened on the rank corruptions of the court ; and who, disappointed of their infamous emolument, would but lightly hesitate in vindicating the wrongs of their avarice by the poison or the stiletto. All history would inform him, that in his dangerous elevation there was but one event to the evil and the good ; that if the tyrant has to dread the conspiracies of the oppressed, the virtuous may also 7^ CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL tremble at the impending machinations of the wicked ; that on the throne of un- christian kingdoms there is one violent conclusion to the vices of Caligula, or the innocence of Pertinax. In these circumstances v^isdom would advise his abdication, before he suffered this re- verse of favour. But such conduct is not to be expected from that inherent love of superiority, which is so invincible in the unregenerated heart. Neither is it consistent with the principles of human nature that he should endure, in passive indifference, to watch the gradual dimi- nution of his authority, and be exposed^ in unresisting quietness, to the perils that threatened its extinction. He would be compelled to raise some barrier be- tween himself and the people. — Though the sovereign had been elected, by the public voice, to the distribution of em- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 73 pire ; though he had received the crown by the most perfect human right, that the imagination can conceive, by the unanimous acclamations of his willing subjects ; without some assurance for the constancy of their allegiance, some sup- port for the conservation of his authority, his fall would be as rapid as his rise ; and, like Robespierre or Massaniello, he must expect, in the fickleness of the public mind, to be suddenly hurled down from his tottering pre-eminence, unless he can discover for himself some less violable protection than the continuance of his popularity. In these difficulties there are only two means of safety to which he can address himself, law or force *. Without re- * " Horum uter uti riolimus, altro est utendnm. Vim vo- lumus extingiii ? Jus valeat necesse est, id est, judicia, quibns oiune jus conlinetur. Judicia displicent, aut nulla 74 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL ligion the first of these is unavailable. To attempt to negotiate with a godless people, to prescribe the extent of the prince's rule, to appoint the limits of the subject's liberty, and to confirm the covenant by the sanctity of oaths were with them, of course, superfluous. Such engagements owe all their efficacy to a belief in the existence and the retribu- tions of the Deity, who is invoked to witness them. Without the awful sanc- tion of religion, they are but empty forms and insignificant observances. The rati- fication of the terms might afford the subject of a riotous holiday * ; but athe- ism would cancel the bond and erase the signature. The most sacred assevera- sunt? Vis dominetnr necesse est ; Haec vident omnes." — Cicero pro Sext. * As the engagements of tlie 1 4th July, 1790 and 1792, between Louis XVI. and the French people. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 75 tions are but words, breath, air, to the ungodly multitude ; and the monarch, who should place reliance on so fragile a security, would only afford an hour of confidence for conspirators to assemble unsuspected, and for insurrections to be deliberately organized. The crowd would carelessly forget the obligations they had lightly formed. They would defend their violation of them, by the authority and the example of the numbers who transgressed; and they would suddenly make a booty of their sovereign, and riot- ously drag him to the scaffold ; while he, poor man, like Charles the First, or Louis the Sixteenth, was timidly retreat- ing from his right, and studiously ob- servant of his every action, lest he should at all exceed, and involuntarily overpass, the conditions of his compact. No protection then would remain to 76 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL him but FORCE. The struggle, which in every state subsists, between au- thority and hberty, would break out into an open and avowed hostility. The monarch would be compelled to find his strength in the weakness, and his secu- rity in the debasement, of the people. He would be constrained to close up the channels of liberal discussion. " The ser- vant, fee'd,'' would be retained in every house to pry into the actions of the mis- trusted master. Spies would be systema- tically organized, who might instigate the crime and then obtain the rewards of information. The words would tremble on the lips of the speaker. Every man would doubt a secret enemy, where the ties of blood and kind associations most solicited the interchange of confidence. Justice would be bowed to the interests of the individual, and the subject would TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 77 be arraigned upon suspicion, and judged unheard, and condemned without appeal. The possessor of dominion would per- ceive that there was for him no safety, but in those terrible oppressions by which the hearts of men are broken ; and he would be constrained to despotism, not more by the insatiable passions of his own breast, than by the invidious ma- lignity of his dependants. The principle of despotism is fear. " It is necessary," says Montesquieu, " that in such a government terror should anni- hilate all spirit and extinguish every sen- timent of ambition *." And for himself the tyrant has nothing to apprehend, except that his oppressions should not be suffi- ciently severe; or that some impolitic * II faut de la crainte dans iin gouvernement despotique. II faut que Ja crainte y abbatte tous les courages et y ^teigne jusque an moindre sentiment d'ambilion. L. 3. C. 9. 78 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL gentleness should limit the purposes of his cruelty, or abridge the measure of his sanguinary precautions *. Savage as such a principle may sound, in the absence of Christianity, it was recog- nised as the only principle of govern- ment. It mattered little v^ith whom the authority was resident, or under what denomination it was exercised ; its max- ims always were the same. Jealousy on the side of power, supporting itself by the weakness and intimidation of its subjects. If the sceptre was held by an indivi- dual, like those secluded monarchs who * There is a degree of oppression which rouses men to resistance, bnt there is another and a greater, which subdues and unmans them. It is remarkable that Robe- spierre himself was safe, till he attacked his own accom- plices. The spirit of men of virtue was broken, and there was no vigour of character left to destroy him, but in those daring niffians who were the sharers of his tyranny. — Mack- intosh's Defence of Peltier. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 79 extend their depopulating sway over the regions to which the Gospel is still un- known, he lived in the continual peril of conspiracy and assassination. The sword of Damocles was ever hanging over him ; he eyed his subjects with a fearful en- mity. His apprehensions taught him ty- ranny, and his tyranny increased his ap- prehensions. With a quick suspicion of every superiority, that was at all conspi- cuous above the dreary waste, which had been levelled by his oppressions, he dealt the immediate death as the recom- pense of every moral or intellectual ex- cellence, that might attract regard or conciliate affection. With a trembling vigilance he observed every movement of the multitude, that he might learn, whence danger appeared to threaten him, and where his security demanded weightier burthens and more rigorous restraints. 80 ( HRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL In every difficulty the cowardice of his heart confirmed the cruel maxims of his policy, and blood was his first, as it was his last, expedient. Did his subjects dare to murmur a remonstrance ; hun- dreds suffered for their temerity. Were they still unwarned, thousands followed in the dark procession of the slaughtered. The increase of his danger or his sus- picions only multiplied the number of the proscribed, till the world was. taught to shudder at the very title under which the regal authority was exercised, and delivered the name of tyrant to poste- rity, as an everlasting appellation of re- proach*. * I prefer usin^ my authorities from Hume's Essays, as comiug from the enemies' quarter, they have the more weight. Conclusions derived from facts, collected by my- self or any other friend of religion, might be considered as prejudiced judgments founded on ex parte, or garbled, evidence ; no such objections can be alleged against the TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 81 Let it not be imagined, that the govern- ment assumed any milder character where it was not thus confined to the hands of details of Hume, on the decisions tliat he may form upon them. He tells us, in Essay xi. Part 2, — " That the Greek tyrannies were altogether horrible." He supports the as- sertion by a note, part of which I have transcribed, '* The people, before the usurpation of Agathocles had banished six hundred nobles. Afterwards that tyrant, in concurrence with the people, killed four thousand nobles, and banished six thousand. He killed four thousand people at Gela. By Agathocles' brother eight thousand were banished from Syracuse. The inhabitants of iEgista, to the number of forty thousand, were kilkd, man, woman, and child ; and witli tortures, for the sake of their money. All the relations, to wit, father, brother, children, grandfather, of his Libyan army killed. He killed seven thousand exiles after capitula- tion. It is to be remaiked, that Agathocles was a man of great sense and courage, and is not to be suspected of wan- ton cruelty, contrary to the maxims of his age. " — Note B B, to the Essay on the Populousness of the Ancients. The newly-settled colony of Heraclea, falling immediately into faction, applied to Sparta, who sent Herifidas with full authority to quiet their dissensions. This man, not pro- voked by any opposition, not iniiamed by party rage, knew no better expedient than immediately putting to death about five hundred of the citizens. A strong proof how deeply-rooted these violent maxims of government were tluoughout Greece. — Hume, Essay xi. Part 2. VOL. I. G 82 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL a single person, but shared with the nobles and the citizens. Besides the Greek tyrannies, which Hume describes as " altogether hor- rible*, there was no medium in those days between a severe and jealous aristocracy, ruling over discontented subjects ; and a turbulent, factious, ty- rannical democracy." But, in reality, ought not those democracies themselves to be considered in the light of aristo- cracies-f-? The citizens were in the place of nobles, and their licentious free- dom was supported by the slavery of the people J. The populace was an en- * Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations. Page 431. t " The republic of Athens was the most extensive de- mocracy that is read of in history." Hume. — " Yet, if we make the necessary allowances for the slaves and strangers, we shall find that no law was ever voted by a twentieth part of those who were bound to obedience to it." — Potter's Archceologia. X " Qiioi ! la liberty ne se maintient qu'a I'appui de la TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 83 chained populace *, and their constraints were oppressive, in proportion to the largeness of the masters' liberty. The weight that was removed from the en- servitiide ? — peut-elie-"— Rousseau, Contrut Soda/.— Livre iii. c. 13. * It is very little considered how widely the bonds of ser- vitude were spread, and how entirely the large body of the people, before Ihey received the emancipation of Christi- anity, were depressed beneath them. In Athens, the citi zens were thirty thousand, the slaves four hundred thou- sand. In Sparta, the Helotae were so much more numerous than the freemen, that, lest they should obtain an over- whelming superiority, it was customary for bands of the Spartan youth to be sent secretly, from time to time, into the country, that they might murder every Helot whom they met. This was a measure of common political precaution. There is no reason for supposing that the numbers of slaves, in Greece, exceeded that of other nations. In comparison with Italy, the reverse appears to have been the case. Ten thousand slaves of a day have often been sold for the use of the Romans, at Delus in Cilicia. When it was once pro- posed in the senate, to mark the slaves by a peculiarity of dress, the niotion was rejected on the plea of its danger, lest it should become the means of informing them of their great numerical superiority. And we read of individuals, who were in possession of many hundreds, and even thou- sands, of these miserable dependants. G 2 84 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL franchisee! neck, was cast as an addi- tional burthen on the yoke of the en- slaved. As the immunities were more libe- ral the bondage was more severe *. But with this miserable exception, the large body of mankind were submitted to the same afilictive maxims of government. Whether they acknowledged one or many masters ; whether the tyrant extended over the people a sad and uniform hu- miliation ; or whether the few arrogant members of a nominal democracy, made a prey of the national liberty, the subject was every where obnoxious to the same austerities, and the depositaries of power were directed by the same selfish and passionate rules of policy, which di- rected them to found the permanency of * Pliitaich says, that " in Lacedajmon the free were the most free, and the slave was the most opprest." — Life of Lt/curgus. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 85 their own authority, in the depression of their dependants. It is terrible to contemplate the bar- barities to which this system naturally conducted. I would take Athens for the example. It was acknowledged to have been the most lenient government of an- tiquity. The mind that is refined to gen- tleness and pity by the spirit of the Gospel, can scarcely bear to dwell on the ruthless exercise of dominion, which is exhibited in the pages of its history. The tyranny exercised by the Athenian people over those who were subject to their control, surpasses description or belief No accumulations of reproachful epithet, or opprobrious metaphor, could compass their savage abuses of authority. The despotism of one is bad ; but the despotism of many is incalculably worse. Not to mention their wanton acts of Ob CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL cruelty, of caprice, of aggression, and of injustice, which were as familiar with them — perhaps more familiar — than with any of the most sanguinary tyrants, whose names are infamous in the annals of mankind ; but to confine myself strictly to the enormities, which originated in their political morals, we shall find, by looking at the conduct of that brilliant people, that the vaunted democracy of Athens, was animated by all the selfish passions, was directed by all the narrow principles, was supported by all the ig- nominious arts, and iniquitous precau- tions, which characterize the dominion of the despot. No Dionysius or Agathocles ever exhibited a more timid and unge- nerous suspicion of their subjects, or followed up their suspicions with more of the oppressive vigilance of terror. — Riches were the objects of jealousy. They TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 87 might be made the means of obtaining too commanding an influence in the re- public; and the wealthy existed, there- fore, in a state of constant persecution and alarm. " While I had riches," says Charmides, " I was obliged to ca- ress every informer. Some imposition was continually laid upon me ; and I was never allowed to travel or be absent from the city. Now, I am poor, I look big, and threaten others ; the rich are afraid of me ; I am become a kind of tyrant in the city*." Fame was an object of jea- lousy : nothing of excellence or wealth or reputation might, with impunity, over- top the level of the democracy. The un- relenting people proscribed every supe- * Xenophon, Banquet of Socrates. — " Whether a man was a citizen or a stranger among that people, it seems, in- deed, requisite, either that he shouUI impoverish himseil", or that tlie i)eopie should impoverish him, and, perhaps, kill him into the bargain." — HuMii's Esmya, Part ii. i j> 88 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL riority, as a thing of dangerous conse- quence * ; and so susceptible was the pru- dence of their tyranny, that it instigated them even to attack the honourable dis- tinctions which recompense superior vir- tue, and Aristides was banished for the celebrity of his justice. But if the arrogant severities of the despot multitude thus aspired to depress and intimidate the eminent, it was on the slave that the more rigorous inflic- tions of their enfeebling and demoraliz- ing ascendency were lavished. — As their poets sung, or their orators declaimed, upon the glories of liberty, the Athenians • " Every prevailing power, in the Grecian republics, was seen to meet with a confederacy against it, and that often composed of its former friends and allies. The same principle of jealous emulation, or cautious politics, pro- duced the Ostracism of Athens, and the Petalism of Syra- cuse, and expelled every citizen whose fame or power over- topped the rest."— Hume's Essai/ on the Balance of flower. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 89 mingled their tumultuous plaudits. They erected temples to her honour, and they worshipped her as divine ; but their love was a jealous love, and it taught them to monopolize her smiles. Their adoration was not a noble sentiment, but a party feeling. It emanated from pride and selfishness, rather than generosity and devotion. They magnified themselves, and not the divinity they served. They rejoiced to lead along the solemn and the fair procession to her praise, and to hymn her brightness, and to shake their incense, and to wave their myrtle branches before her shrine; but the victims that they immolated at her altar, were the just prerogatives of nature, and the birth- right inheritance of man. . The streets, the fields, the villages, the habitations, of the Athenian, were crowded with his troops of slaves ; and he was so per- 90 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL fectly aware of the wretchedness of their subjection, that the very love of freedom, which he prized as the most valuable be- nefit of his own existence, instructed him to dread the vengeance of the wretched beings, who were crouching beneath the lash and the impositions of his autho- rity. Ignorant of those religious com- mandments, which enjoin the kindness of the powerful and gratitude of the weak ; which confer a stability on the inter- change of benevolence, by rendering them offices of piety and devotion ; he felt that the bonds of affection * were but feeble instruments, and that oppression was his sole security. In exact corre- spondence with this sentiment he re- sented their slightest errors with the * " Mctus et tenor est infiima vinciila Caiitalis," (Ta- citus, AgiLVil.), dn universal maxim, wherever religion has notamiealed and strengthened the " vihcula caritalis.'' TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 91 most merciless inflictions. He tutored * them to their duty, " as wild beasts are tamed -}-," with stripes and cruellest seve- rities. He debased their natures by ha- bitual licentiousness ; he endeavoured to extinguish in their breast every spark of generous and manly feeling, by illiberal education, by accustoming them to blows and indignities and insults ; by sub- * " This was the condition of slaves at Athens, which, though deplorable enough, if compared with that of their fellow-sufferers in other cities, seems easy, tolerable, and not to be repined at." *' They were jvholly at the command of their masters, to be employed as they saw convenient in the worst and most wretched drudgeries ; and to be used at their discretion, punished, starved, beaten, tormented, and that in most places without any appeal to superior power, and punished, even with death itself. And, which yet farther enhanced their misery, they had no hope of recovering freedom for themselves, or procuring it for their posterity, but were to continue in the same condition as long as they lived ; and all the inheritance they could leave their children was their pa- rents' miseries, and a condition scarce any way better than that of beasts." — PoTTiiR's Archceologia. t Potter's Archcelogia- 92 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL duing the energy of the mind, by the unmitigated pressure of labour and of want ; and by degrading them, as far as his ability could reach, to a state of moral and intellectual equality, with those beasts who were the less pitiable part- ners of their afflictions, — These miserable dependants on the will, the passions, and the caprices of their master, were so entirely outcasts from all human sym- pathy, that Plato denied to them the ex- ercise of the first right of nature, the right of self-defence; and declares, that* " the slave who defends himself, and kills a freeman, deserves to be punished as a parricide." If this enormous tyranny aspired to exclude its subjects from the rights of natural justice ; it also conde- scended, with a cautious atrocity, and a * Plato, de Lcgibus. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 93 timid savageness, to regulate the most minute oppressions. It strove to sur- round the giant multitude with chains, which might appear, perhaps, individually weak; but which were compulsatory from their complication, and their intri- cacy, and their accumulated weight. The slave was interdicted from repeating the songs of the freeman. His voice was only permitted to give utterance to ob- scenities and grossness. He might not trust his memory with any strain that breathed of liberty, or of glory, or of inspiring sentiment. " Those are the songs of our masters," said the Helot prisoners to the Thebans, who demanded of them the Odes ofTerpander. " Those are the songs of our masters, and those we dare not sing*." The miserable * Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus. 94 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL being was debased to an artificial igno- miny, and depraved by an unnatural cor- ruption. He was attainted by the vices of civilization, without being admitted to its refinements ; he was abandoned to all the grossness of ignorance, while he was studiously dispossessed of all the rugged nobleness of the savage ; and then the philosopher pointed to the degraded being, with an air of self- approval and of triumph, and declared that, " some men were created to be slaves*." " The maxims of ancient politics ^f-," says Hume, " contained in general so little humanity and moderation, that it seems superfluous to give any particular reason for the acts of violence committed * Aristotle, Pol. lib. i. ch. 2. t Essay on the Popnlonsnes THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. l9^ the most valuable sacrifice that the obe- dient can present before the throne of the Creator, and as the only human atone- ment* for the past transgressions of the penitent, there will continue to exist two abundant sources of benevolence from which affliction may derive the waters of consolation. If the munificence of piety should fail, there is another motive as certain and as permanent as the corrup- * " Alms and fastings are the xvings of prayer, and make it pierce the clouds ; that is, humility and charity are the best advantages and sanctification of our desires to God." This was the counsel of Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, " Elee- mosynis peccata tua redime ;" Redeem thy sins by alms, so the Vulgar Latin reads it ; not that money can be the price of a soul, for *' we are not redeemed with silver and gold ;" but that the charity of alms is that which God delights in, and ac- cepts as done to himself, and procures his pardon according to the words of Solomon ; " In truth and mercy iniquity is pardoned ;" that is, in the confession and alms of ^ penitent there is pardon ; "for water will quench a flaming fire, and alms make an atonement for sin j'' this is that love which, as St. Peter expresses it, " hidcth a multitude of sins." — Bishop Taylor — Doctrine and Practice of Repentance, ex. §, 6. VOL. I. O 194 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL tion of our nature, which will extort the alms from the terrors of the conscience. If the humbler classes of mankind have any consideration for their worldly hap- piness, never will they suffer the name of Jesus to be blasphemed. The lower the place we fill in the gradation of society, by so much the greater is our interest in the preservation of the faith. To the poor Christianity is their sole inheritance of good. It is the bright patrimony which God has given them, and by which he has exalted their temporal inferiority, and bestowed a religious equality on the con- ditions of existence. As the poor are subjects, it is their security for political freedom; as they are dependants, it is their protection against private tyranny ; as they are necessitous, it is their claim on sympathy, and their hope for succour. The hour in which the Gospel fails will TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 195 be the miserable hour, when the pas- sions, which it has weakened or expelled, will re-establish their savage domination ; in which pride and selfishness, and lust and rapine, will re-ascend our thrones, and usurp our judgment-seats, and revel in our palaces, and extend over our fading fields and our depopulated cities the iron rule and the torturing powder of their op- pression ; till, in the utter wretchedness of this mortal being, we shall even lan- guish for that dark repose and mute an- nihilation of the grave, which is the only refuge that infidelity can offer to despair. O 2 196 christian opinions essential Chapter 1. Sect. IV. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL TO THE HAPPINESS OF THE SUPERIOR, BY THEIR OPERATION ON THE DEPENDANT, CLASSES OF SOCIETY. If there were found a family in which the due respect for the parent and the master was forgotten; in which the un- profitable day was spent in contested pretensions to authority, and obstinate resistance of command ; in which every endeavour to establish a directing influ- ence should be frustrated, by impious children and rebellious domestics ; in which the individuals, without reference to their common welfare and security. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 197 should separately pursue the violent bent of their inclinations, and make a wilful spoil of the decent accommodations of their home, and, contrary to every design of order and of peace, only join in una- nimity of opposition : — if there were found a family so forgetful of its natural duties, and so blind to its general advantages, we might trace, in its brief career of tu- mult, and in its end of inevitable ruin, the imperfect emblem of the wretchedness and desolation, which would follow the severing of those ties, by which the dif- ferent classes of society are connected. That rule and submission are indispen- sable to the happiness of mankind few have had the temerity to dispute ; but it is one thing to acknowledge their neces- sity, and another to establish them as principles of right and duty. There is an imperfection in every thing of human 198 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL origin or human arrangement. Much of the corruption of our nature ever mingles even with our best designs and with our wisest eJBTorts ; and it is the peculiar cha- racter of our social institutions that their evil bears, with all the oppression of its weight, where their good is least immedi- ately perceptible. The excellence of those regular degrees of authority and subjec- tion, which pervade civil society, is very distinctly visible to those who are enjoy- ing its immunities, in the security of their property, in the obedience that waits on their desires, and in the rapid execution of their purposes ; to them, exercised as they are in exalted trusts, and appointed to splendid but invidious offices, and abounding in those things which excite the malignant passions of the multitude, the inviolability of the laws and ordi- nances is inseparably connected with the TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 199 welfare and the tranquillity of their ex- istence. They experience the conveni- ence, and they acknowledge the wisdom, of those enactments which intrust the rank of the powerful, and the possessions of the affluent, to the severe protection of the law. But the wisdom of such a sys- tem is by no means so self-evident to the many. The meditative mind may trace its kindly influence from the heart to the extremities of society, and discover, that, as there is no part uncherished by the vigour and the support which it diffuses, neither is there any part, however abject or remote, that would not be injured by its abolition. This is a truth ; but it is an obscure truth. The advantages which result from the fair gradations of rule and of obedience, approach the labouring classes through such circuitous and com- plicated channels, that it requires an edu- 200 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL cated attention to follow them in their windings, and to track them to their source. Doubtless the poor would be sufferers in the miseries of anarchy ; — doubtless the poor participate in the ad- vantages of government ; but the portion of good which circulates to them so coldly cheers the narrowness of their homes, that they deserve the pardon, and not the punishment, of their superiors, if they fail to comprehend in what manner their in- terest is involved in the quiet subsist- ence of institutions, which secure to their masters the liberty and the command and the appropriated wealth of nature ; and which yield nothing to themselves but the oppressive residue of constraints and la- bours and exclusions. — ** Malesuada'' has ever been considered as one of the most appropriate epithets of poverty, and dis- content is the evil lesson that she incul- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 201 cates in the hourly sense of personal pri- vation, and in the tantalizing perception of the superfluities of others. In oppo- sition to such powerful and constant ar- guments it would be difficult — nay, it would be impossible — to produce on the minds of the lower orders of society any permanent conviction of the benefit which they derive from the regulations of civil life ; and, unless such a conviction can be produced, it would be in vain, on any human grounds, to assert a claim to their submission. There was a time in which men yielded their ignorant obedience to their supe- riors, " without any inquiry about its origin or its cause, any more than about the principle of gravity or resistance, or the most universal laws of nature *," — ^but that time of tranquillity has past away. * Hume's Essay on Original Contract, 20^ CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL The human mind has received an impulse which shakes it with a kind of feverish agitation, and induces an impatience of repose. To its diseased and nervous irritabiUty change ever appears to smile with the auguries of golden promise, while all that is established is regarded without any of the ancient reverence for prescrip- tion. We have acquired a taste for ex- periment ; we are desirous of attempting some new thing, and the wisest appoint- ments of our fathers are slighted as the barbarisms of a darker age. Every thing is investigated and discussed without any tenderness for the importance of the ob- ject, or consideration of our ability for the task. The word duty has lost its sa- cred import to the understanding, and no longer strikes upon any chord that vi- brates at the heart. It intimates a con- straint; and, though an amiable con- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 203 straint, corresponding to mutual claims and obligations, it has become repulsive to our undefined and irregular aspirations after freedom. The child begins to doubt the authority of the parent ; the servant of the master ; the subject of the prince. The meanest among us, by his evening fire, or as he plies his handicraft, mingles in ignorant discussions on the rights of government,, and boldly vindicates his privilege of resistance. Each is jealous of the higher power, and restless in a lower station, and clamorous for the rea- sons of his subjection. — Has infidelity any thing to offer which may appease his doubts, and satisfy his inquiries, and con- ciliate his discontent? — Is it imagined that the understanding of the- peasant or the mechanic, suffering by temporary pri- vations, and warped by passion, by pre- judice and by evil counsels, will be in- 204 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL duced to a patient submission to authority, by the persuasion of any of the subtile speculations of philosophy ? You may tell him of an original con- tract, in which each man has surrendered a portion of his liberty for the security of the rest, and require his obedience to its conditions; — he has never heard of such a contract ;— he denies the right of any second person to negotiate the limits of his actions ; — he finds that neither his father nor his most distant ancestors have ever witnessed to such a covenant ; and he boldly challenges the production of it. Thus urged, you acknowledge that the whole is an invention of the learned — a philosophic fiction — a kind of sandy and artificial mound, that you have raised as the support of your scheme of civil rights and duties, which it had been found impossible to erect on any more natural TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 205 and substantial basis. With whatever eloquence the claims of this visionary bond may be enforced, surely the sub- ject may very justly hesitate to comply with its demands, and deny that the in- genious falsehood can be binding to his conscience. But there is another plea, by which you would enjoin the duty of submission to authority — a plea that would address itself to the minds of the inferior and less privileged classes of civilized life, armed with all the point and force of logical de- duction. It would derive its convictions from religion as distinct from, and inde- pendent of, revelation; and it partakes, in a more than ordinary degree, of all that inconclusiveness and doubt, which is inseparable from every attempt to raise the fabric of our earthly or our eternal happiness on any other foundation than 206 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL that which, by the mercy of the Almighty, has been laid, " which is in Christ Jesus*." You would require the voluntary sub- jection of the inferior, because God willeth the happiness of his creatures ; and, as civil government promotes that happiness, obedience to civil government is therefore a compliance with the will of God. Here the whole strength of your argument lies on the very point which your adversary disputes ; — ^he grants that " God willeth the happiness of his crea- tures;" but he will advance no farther with you. He will not hearken to the elaborate discussion, or the subtile proof, of the second proposition, from which your conclusion is deduced; he either contests the fact, or only acknowledges its truth, under other modifications, than those which actually exist ; and he disco- * 1 Corinthians, ch. iii. v. ii. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 207 vers the duty of resistance in the very arguments from which you would derive the duty of submission. " If," says your opponent, " God willeth the happiness of his creatures, he must also will a more equal participation of his earthly bless- ings." He argues, therefore, that such a large monopoly, and so extensive an im- poverishment, must be offensive to the just benevolence of the Almighty ; and, like Spence, among whose disciples he is perhaps enrolled, he clamorously demands the abolition of your power, and the con- fiscation of your inheritance, because he deems the happiness of the majority of mankind to be connected with a less par- tial and restricted distribution. Thus insufficient is every suggestion of human reason to induce the submission of the inferior, as a concession rather than a compulsion, or, in other terms, to CHRIM-IAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL procure a state of peace between the higher and the lower gradations of so- ciety, rather than a state of war. If the arguments were more conclusive and more level to common apprehension, I do not believe that their influence would be at all enhanced, or that they would prevail against the inward solicitations of the passions, or the constant comparison of the poor man's wants with the rich man's affluence. The cold calculations of the political economist would never be brought to bear against such resistless preposses- sions. Controversy would only aggra- vate the enmity. There is nothing but the Gospel which could effectually inter- pose and silence the interminable and irritating discussions, and by its sacred infallibility assert for the superior the right to rule, and impose on the depend- ant the duty to submit. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 209 * " Whoever overthrows religion," says Plato, " overthrows the foundations of all human society."— f " A people of philo- sophers," says Diderot, speaking of that atheistical sect of which he was so distin- guished a member, " a people of philo- sophers, if it were possible to form one, would find that its cradle was its tomb from the very vice of its constitution." It was from the perception of this fact, that, wherever the light of revelation was unknown, men strove to feign its sanc- tions by asserting for their laws and in- stitutions a supernatural descent, and imi- tating, by the dreams of superstition, that religious consecration which has been ef- * De Legihusy 10. t Correspondance of Grimm and Diderot, vol. i. 492, — " On a dit quelquefois qu'uii peuple chretien, tel qu'il doit etre suivant I'esprit de I'Evangile, ne saurait subsister. Cela serait bien plus vrai d'lin peuple philosophe, s'il etait possible d'en former un ; il trouverait sa perte, an soitir du berceau, dans le vice de sa constitution." VOL. I. P 210 (HRISTTAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL fectually afforded by the truth of the Gos- pel. There is nothing but the halo, which the faith has shed around the fabric of society, and by which it is represented to our veneration as a temple that we may piously adorn, but which it were worse than sacrilege injuriously to ap- proach, that preserves its stability amid the accessions of popular calamity, or prevents its swaying with every breath of popular passion, or falling before the first violent attack of popular resentment. Christianity has placed the duty of civil obedience on the same level with the other obligations of morality. If it has said " fear God," it has also said " ho- nour the king ;" — if it has said " thou shalt not kill," or, " thou shall not steal," or *' thou shalt not commit adultery," it has also said, " let every soul be subject unto the higher powers." The Gospel TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 211 has declared itself on this subject with the same force and clearness with which it has delivered its less questioned pre- cepts. The duty rests on the same grounds, the recorded will of the Al- mighty, and is guarded by the same as- surances, the hopes of everlasting mercy, and the terrors of everlasting judgment. I of course do not mean to attribute to Christianity those ordinances, which in less enlightened times were promulgated under its supposed authority, and which asserted that the right by which power is held is at once divine and undefeasible, and that our duty requires of us an obe- dience unresisting and irrespective. This is as much an unwise exaggeration of the Gospel precepts, as if one were to extend the commandment of '' thou shalt do no murder," to an exclusion of the right of self-defence. But even these exploded P 2 212 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL dogmas are better practical principles, can be supported by stronger arguments *, and are infinitely less calculated to dis- turb the tranquillity of the social world, than the institutes of those who " Maintaiu the multitude can never err, And set the people in the papal chair t," who would derive the right of government entirely from popular consent ; and who would invalidate its energies, by conti- nually dwelling on the privilege of resist- ance, till opposition appears the rule, and submission the exception. There may be cases in which two obli- gations clash. The will of man may be at issue with the will of the Almighty, and then there can be no doubt to whom the reverence is due. I know the clergy are generally accused of insisting, with * As a proof of this, see Bishop Berkeley's Tract on Passive Obedience; and Bishop Taylor's Rule of Conscience, Book III. chap. iii. Rule 3. t Dryden — The Medal. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 213 too much earnestness, on the duty of civil obedience, and of not allowing sufficient latitude to the spirit of opposition. If this be the case, we are justified by the approbation even of our greatest adver- sary— of one who had attacked our faith, and undermined our influence, and who has libelled our characters * with a virulence, which public opinion would have resented * See Note I, to the Essay on National Character — in which Hume endeavours to prove, from the very circum- stances of our situation, that we must be worse than ordinary men. He says that our hatreds are peculiarly rancorous, and authorizes his assertion on the proverb of " Odium theo- logicum ;" — which is just as rational an argument as if one were to call all lawyers iniquitous, or all physicians ignorant, or all travellers untrue, on the authority of Foote or of Moliere. We have no defence against the Proteus forms of accusation. If we are bad, we are doubly disgraced, be- cause, it is said, we are by our profession bound to be better than our neighbours; — if we are good, it is only hypocrisy, for the strictness of that profession necessarily constrains us to be worse. Hume, in his Essay on National Character, contrasts clerical vices with military virtues. It was prudent at least to lay the opprobrium of his philosophical specula- tions on the class least likely to visit his calumnies with any personal chastisement. 214 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL as illiberal, if we had not been marked for obloquy, by the sacredness of our pro- fession, and excluded from the boasted liberality of the irreligious, by our more immediate connexion with the service of the Creator. Hume has said, that as " obedience is our duty in the common course of things, it ought chiefly to be inculcated; nor can any thing be more preposterous than an anxious care, or so- licitude, in stating all the cases in which resistance may be allowed. In like man- ner, though a philosopher reasonably ac- knowledges, in the course of an argument, that the rules of justice may be dispensed with in cases of urgent necessity, what should we think of a preacher, or casuist, who should make it his chief study to find out such cases, and enforce them with all the vehemence of argument and elo- quence? Would he not be better cm- TO THE HArPINESS OF SOCIETY. 215 ployed in inculcating the general doc- trine than in displaying the particular ex- ceptions which we are, perhaps, but too much inclined of ourselves to embrace and to extend * ?" If then the ministers of religion dwell upon the duty of submis- sion, without weakening the impression of their lessons, by turning aside for the consideration of those extraordinary cases of exemption, which occur not above once or twice in a millennium ; — in the above passage we find our justification. But it seems that we are interested in the cause, and, therefore, culpable for the perform- ance of an office which is acknowledged to be a property of our ministration. We are not to inculcate a virtue, because we ourselves may be benefited by its prac- tice. This is a non sequitur of the grossest absurdity. We certainly are interested * Essay on Passive Obedience. \ 216 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIA! in the preservation of national order and tranquillity. Every individual of the kingdom, except the ferocious inhabit- ant of the prison, the outlav/ed fugitive from public justice, and the man whose bad ambition would be satisfied to erect his throne upon the ruins of his country ; — except these, and such as these, every individual in the kingdom is naturally in- terested in preserving the immunities of virtue, and the restraints on crime, in warding off the wanton conflagration, and in preventing the indiscriminate slaughter of revolution. So far the minister of reli- gion is interested with the wisest, and the best, in declaring to the dependant classes of society the legitimate claims of their superiors. They are to render " custom to whom custom — honour to whom honour — tribute to whom tribute ;" — these ob- ligations the Christian clergyman is so- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 217 lemnly engaged to illUvStrate and enforce. But here his occupation meets its limits. With the peculiar opinions of the several political parties in a state, he acknow- ledges neither participation or commu- nion. His business is with the general duties of mankind, and not with the petty factions and divisions, which are struck asunder in the collision of the passions of the world. There is no side on which he can with dignity array himself If his voice be mingled with those of the flat- terers of power, he makes " his good to be evil spoken of* ;" he affords a just occasion of suspecting that he fawns to ^ While he makes his own good to be evil spoken of, and thus injures religion in tlie disgrace of its servant, he also, in some degree, impedes the cause he supports. Johnson, in his inimitable description of the arts, by which signatures are gained to popular addresses, says that some sign them *' to vex the parson." A man cannot depart from the line of duty without exciting somewhere a counteracting power to urge him back again to his proper station. 218 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL rise ; he is no longer to be distinguished from the ignominious votaries of avarice and ambition ; and he loses the reverence of mankind as he becomes included under the dominion of their passions : and if, on the other hand, he unite in the clamour of opposition, his politics assume a hue of discontent and envy, and are marked by traits of bitterness and asperity, that very ungracefully connect themselves with the character of his faith, or the humility of his profession. A minister of the Saviour degrades himself from the high prerogative of his station when he surren- ders his sublime neutrality. By the very virtue of his situation he is the moderator, the arbiter, and not the accessory, of fac- tion. His office is to pass among the parties like some consecrated herald, and keep alive in each the benevolence of their common Christianity, while they are most TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETV. ^19 widely separated by the opposition of their sentiments. His holy and important delegation is to stand between them, like Aaron " between the living and the dead," and correct the exaggerations of dispute, and persuade to mutual conces- sion, and to deprecate the violence of en- mity. He has no concern with the little differences of political opinion. The Bible speaks not of these distinctions ; and it is from the Bible that all this authority is derived. But he is concerned in the man- ner by which those opinions are sup- ported ; for here the language of the Bible is explicit, intelligible and direct, in de- claring that the subject shall not rise in rebellion against his rulers. This is an ordinance of his religion, and he abandons a very important part of his divine com- mission, if he permit himself to be de- terred from impressing the conviction of 220 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL this law on the minds of the people ;— however, in the hour of peace, the honest execution of his trust may be reproached by anonymous attack or vulgar insinuation, or however, in the terrors of the civil con- test, it may expose his life to the malig- nity of the mutinous. It certainly does appear to me, reading the volume of Revelation, I hope without prejudice or prepossession, but with an humble desire to receive the word of God in the sense designed by the Holy Spirit, that no commandment is more distinctly stated than that of willing submission to authority ; — that this duty enjoins at least some degree of endurance from the sub- ject ; and that there is a religious virtue in that endurance. The language of reve- lation is so plain and so forcible upon this head, that Milton himself, when he attempted to warp its sense to the service TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 2S1 of the regicides, and to mitigate the scrip- tural condemnation of their actions, be- comes guilty of quibbles and evasions that would have disgraced a criminal under the terrors of conviction*. I can scarcely * 1 here allude to his tract on the tenure of Kings and Magistrates. I conld not find a more striking instance of the subterfuges to which the assertors of the right of violent opposition to government are reduced than the following passage :— " Be he king, or tyrant, or emperor, the sword of justice is above him ; in whose hand soever is found suf- ficient power to avenge the effusion of so great a deluge of innocent blood. For if all human power to execute, not ac- cidentally, but intendedly, the wrath of God upon evil doers without exception, be of God, then that power, whether or- dinary, or, if that fail, extraordinary, so executing that intent of God, is lawful and not to be resisted." In this passage Milton voluntarily misunderstands St. Paul, who, as is seen from the context, evidently uses the word '' power" as synonymous with " civil authority." Having thus perverted the Apostle's meaning, he derives from it a maxim that justifies assassination, or poison, or any kind of murder, of unjust magistrates, under the pretence that " the power" was in the hands of the agent, and that he was there- fore religiously justified in avenging " the deluge of innocent blood." Milton found that Scripture would afford no sup- port to his arguments, and he therefore deserts it, in the conclusion of his work, for the more favourable authority of certain Calvinistic divines. 222 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL conceive any thing more express than the following passage from St. Paul : — " Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God : — Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God : and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power ; do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same : for he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil be afraid, for he beareth not a sword in vain ; for he is the minis- ter of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For this cause pay ye tribute also : For they are TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. J223 God's ministers attending continually on this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues : tribute to whom tribute ; cus- tom to whom custom ; fear to whom fear ; honour to whom honour*." It appears impossible that any injunction should be more unequivocally expressed, or be more studiously comprehensive ; and when it is remembered that this is not a solitary precept ; that there are innumerable other passages of revelation which authorize the lesson it conveys, and none which militate against it ; when it is remem- bered that, at the time this instruction was delivered, the sceptre of the world was swayed by a monarch who disgraced humanity, and that the persons to whom it was immediately addressed were ob- noxious to every rigour of persecution, which his most inveterate and ingenious * Romans, cli. xiii. verses i to 8. 2S4 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL malice could invent; when we remember that the Redeemer, " who died leaving us an example*," mildly surrendered himself to death, and indignantly rejected every attempt at rescue f, in obedience to the iniquitous decision of the consti- tuted authorities ; — when we remember the express letter of the Scriptures, and these its impressive corroborations, we must either impiously conceive that the Holy Spirit tampers with us in a double sense, and that the example of the Sa- viour is defective; or honestly acknow- ledge, that the duty of civil submission to princes and to magistrates is not one of those insignificant observances which may with impunity be allowed or doubted, adopted or renounced, as it coincides with * 1 St. Peter, ch. ii. v. 21. t John, chap, xviii. v. 10, 11. Matt. chap. xxvi. ver. 51 to 54. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. the caprices, or offends the incUnations, of the moment. Patience of wrong, slow- ness of resentment, and forgiveness of injuries, are confessed on all sides to be among the ordinary obligations imposed upon the disciple of the Messiah. Who will venture, with any confidence, to as- sert that these precepts are to be in- scribed upon the code of his domestic and his socia] morals, and considered as superfluous to his political relations? — " Let every soul be subject to the higher powers, for there is no power but from God." — There would have been very little necessity for this commandment, and not the slightest merit in our compliance with its requisition, if obedience were only to be rendered as long as we participated in the benefits of prudent counsels and of wise enactments, and of a perfect execu- tion of the laws. Our reverence for au- VOL. I. Q 226 CHKISTIAX OPINTOXS ESSENTIAL thorities would then have fallen under another class of duty in gratitude for the communication of such blessings ; but we are also to submit, though the arm of power may press somewhat heavily upon us. We are then placed in the situation of exercising the suffering and forbear- ing virtues. The extent of such en- durance I do not take upon myself to limit or appoint. Addison has wisely estimated its proportions. " The obedi- ence of children to parents," says the author of the Spectator*, " is the basis of all government, and set forth as the measure of that obedience which we owe to those whom Providence has placed over us." These terms coincide with every principle of Christian duty ; and with the same affection should we meditate the good and lament the misfortunes of our * Spectator, Number I89. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. superiors; with the same tenderness should we excuse their little imperfections, and veil them from too public and too curious an observation; with the same gentle deference should we remonstrate with their errors ; and only at the same extremity, with a grieving spirit, and after a long and a respectful patience, should we dare to disunite ourselves from those alliances which " God has joined," and which nothing but the most imperious necessity should compel " man to put asunder." It has been said by an eloquent writer, whose works are extremely popular among the dissenting portion of our countrymen, " that the only way to determine the agreement of any thing with the will of God is to consider its influence on the happiness of society ; so that in this view the question of passive obedience is re- 228 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL duced to a simple issue : Is it best for the human race that every tyrant and usurper be submitted to without check or con- trol?— It ought Hkewise to be remem- bered, that if the doctrine of passive obe- dience be true, princes should be taught it, and instructed, that to whatever ex- cesses of cruelty and caprice they pro- ceed, they may expect no resistance on the part of the people. If this maxim appear to be conducive to general good, we may fairly presume it concurs with the will of the Deity ; but if it appear pregnant with the most mischievous con- sequences, it must disclaim such sup- port*." To this passage I have two * This passage is from the Preface of Hall's pamphlet on the liberty of the Press ; it is in answer to a sermon of Bishop HoRSLEV on the duty of submission, but, I think, not on passive submission, as Hall understands it, any more than a sermon against murder would recommend a quiet submis- sion to a cut-throat. The bishop enforces, as he ought to do, the general duty, and does not digress to consider the TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. S29 objections. I protest against the rule of interpretation ; and, even if the rule were warranted, I doubt the justice of its ap- plication. As Christians we have no in- terest in the consideration of the possible consequences of any religious precept or opinion, which we find to be really and undeniably inculcated by the oracles of God. The adoption of Hall's method of judgment were to set up the imbecility of exceptions. We have nothing to do in the common circum- stances of life, with those extremities which render resist- ance venial. Bishop Horsley's sermon was preached be- fore the House of Lords, and for such a place there was perhaps an error in the choice of subject. A sermon on obedience to authorities is adapted for the mixt congrega- tion of the parish church ; its delivery before the aristocracy of the country was an idle waste of an opportunity of good, and a flattery of the very passions which it was his duty as a minister of Christianity to rebuke. In such a situa- tion, and before such an audience, his theme should have been connected with the duties which the great owed to their inferiors, and for which they are eternally responsible to their God. Bishop Latimer or Bishop Andrews would not have been guilty of such an unprofitable misapplication of their talents. ^SO CHKISTIAN OriNIONS ESSENTIAL human reason against the perfect intelli- gence of the Almighty, and to oppose the speculations of our doubtful meta- physics to the eternal ordinances by which the universe is governed. The Almighty has not conferred upon us so imperfect and inadequate a revelation as to require that the reason should prepare the way in which the wisdom of the Gospel is to follow. The Christian is not called upon to agitate his mind, by balancing the re- mote effects and the possible operations of the divine commandments. Such a timid scrutiny appears to indicate a de- ficiency of faith, a suspicion of the wis- dom, and a distrust of the providence, of God. Our duty is strictly limited to the study of the Gospel, and to the perform- ance of its instructions. Beyond this we have neither an obligation or an interest : and we may with humble confidence re- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 231 sign all anxiety respecting the results and tendencies of our conduct to the super- intending benevolence of the Almighty, who will never fail to regulate the happi- ness of mankind by the measure of their obedience to his laws. But while I most solemnly dissent from that rule of judg- ment which would separate between the divine commandments, and acknowledge or reject them, according to some specu- lative estimate of their probable effects, I am most religiously confident that the tree will ever be known by its fruits ; that obedience to the will of the Eternal will invariably conduct to salutary issues; and, on that very principle, when the sacred ordinance is so unequivocally writ- ten, I should doubt the melancholy event which the amiable antagonist of Bishop Horsley anticipates, from an inviolable SS^ CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL compliance with the Christian duty of submission to superiors. ' Let it not for a moment be supposed, while I thus assert the just claims of the powerful, that I would appear as the ad- vocate of tyranny, or breathe a sentence that might reproach the glory, or exte- nuate the praise, of freedom. — I love liberty as well as the eloquent assertor of the freedom of the press can love it. — Every heart that is inspired with the adoration of the Saviour will abhor op- pression in proportion as the soul is pu- rified by the knowledge of his Gospel, by the imitation of his example, and by the communion of his Spirit. But when, on the authority of Revelation, I call for the dutiful submission of the subject, my mind is forcibly persuaded that I advance the cause of liberty, and propose the only TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 2S3 ground on which it can successfully be planted, or permanently thrive. — When it is said by Hall that " if the doctrine of passive obedience be true, princes should be taught it, and instructed, that to what- ever excesses of cruelty and caprice they proceed, they may expect no resistance on the part of the people," he surely has forgotten that we no longer are discussing any human proposition ; that we no longer are investigating the political maxim of Plato* or of Tacitus -f-; but a precept ad- vanced on the irresistible authority of the Omniscient, and defended by super- * " Id enim Plato jubet — vim neque parent!, neque pa- triae aiferri oportere atque hanc quidem ille causam sibi, ait, non attingendae reipiiblicae fuisse, quod cum ofFendisset po- puluni Atheniensem prope jam desipientem senectute, cum- que eum nee persuadendo, nee cogendo regi posse vidisset, cum persuader! posse difFideret, cogi fas esse non arbitrare- tur." — Cicero, j^d Divers., i. s. t " Injperatores bonos voto expetendos, qualescuuque tolerandos." — Tacitus, Hist., iv. s. CHRISTIAN OriNIONS ESSENTIAL human and everlasting sanctions. If we were contesting a mere speculative prin- ciple of political philosophy, there might, perhaps, be some room for controversy. If the duty simply rested on the grounds of natural reason, it might, with much plausi- bility, be alleged, that some checks would be demanded to counteract the encroach- ments of authority ; and that such a ne- cessary restraint could only be supplied by the apprehensions of exasperating the people. Such an argument, fallacious as it is,, might afford occasion for much elo- quence of declamation, from those who love the tumult of licentiousness, rather than the peace of a liberal obedience. But under the Gospel dispensation it has no possible reference to the conditions on which society exists. The same voice which commands the reverence or the patience of the subject, commands with TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 235 an equal emphasis the protection and the clemency of the monarch. The same mo- tives which induce the submission of the weak, restrain the excesses of the power- ful; and, unless it can be proved that the poor alone are actuated by the con- victions of religion ; that, on the throne and on the judgment-seat, there is con- tained an anodyne against the terrors of the grave and the reproaches of the con- science ; that to the mighty of the earth the felicities of heaven present no objects of alluring hope ; that to the breasts of princes hell and its eternity of wo con- vey no horrible forebodings -.—unless the faith is limited in its sphere of influence, it never can be true, that the Christian lessons of enduring subjection on the one hand, and of mild dominion on the other, when inculcated as duties of religion, should operate as inducements to tyranny ^86 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL and encouragements of oppression. In the common order of events, by the ge- neral laws of Providence, the effect must be diametrically opposite. All human things are eventually directed by opinion. This is an axiom of universal application. The example of the monarch may afford a sanction to the vices of his subjects, but the example of his subjects must first prepare the way for the vices of the monarch. His conduct will always be in unison with the tone of popular feeling ; it will never more exceed the prevalent iniquity of the multitude than might be expected from the affluence of his means, the multiplicity of his temptations, and the facilities of offending. If the Roman Emperors were prodigies of crime, they were attainted by the contagious exhala- tions that mounted the Palatine from the corruptions of the people. There is a TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 237 harmony of thought and feeling which pervades every society ; and if the rulers of a nation be found voluptuous or cruel, venal or unjust, the manners of the infe- rior classes will always supply the suc- cessive notes of the diapason. But when the Almighty in his mercy communicated to mankind the Gospel of his Son, he pre- sented to the world the sacred institutes, from which the public mind was to derive its estimate of conduct and its principles of action. He prescribed the channel in which the stream of opinion was to flow. The Gospel naturally directs to equal rule and liberality of government ; it op- poses a permanent resistance to tyranny and injustice ; it operates with a steady, even, and continued agency for the ame- lioration of the condition of mankind ; it is the seed which the Lord has sown, and it will inevitably arise in majesty. 238 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL and spread over us its protecting branches, and fill the air with fragrance ; if, with faith in the wisdom, and devout reliance on the providence, of God, we will allow it to grow up and flourish beneath the ge- nial influences of heaven, and not destroy the promise of its blossoms by endeavours to anticipate the fruit. They who would dispense with the peaceful energies of religious opinion, and attempt to accele- rate its progress, by stimulating the pas- sions of the multitude to revolt, act as Herod did when he inquired of the birth- place of the Messiah ; — they incarnadine their souls in the blood of the innocents, and put to flight the blessing that they would pretend to glorify. According to the Gospel-views of mo- rals and of duty, obedience to superiors, — contented, cheerful, and affectionate obedience, — by no means rests on the TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. unsupported authority of the texts to which we have referred in the preceding pages. It is interwoven with the whole system of our religion ; it succeeds as a natural effect of the holy dispositions which it inculcates. A good Christian must be a good subject. That love which is the distinguishing and peculiar charac- teristic of his faith must be eradicated from his soul, ere the heart will swell with the passions of the disaffected, or his voice be raised in the counsels of sedition, or his hand be armed in their support. The charity of the Christian is not abridged and circumscribed in its action. His mild affections do not only rest with those who are on a level with himself, or communicate in gentle offices with his inferiors, while they timidly retreat from every eminence that is raised above their 240 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL proper elevation. There is no envy min- gled with his perception of pre-eminence. He knows that the superintending provi- dence of God has ordained to each his station, and attributed to each his duties ; and, as the disciple of that Redeemer, " who died for the sins of the whole world," he would scorn to love his fellow- creature less, because the Ahnighty has appointed his brother heir of immortality to tread the sunny acclivities of life, while he is doomed to toil in the shade of the valley. The charity of the Christian does not seek its own but the general advantage. It does not vent the sense of disappointed ambition in the clamours of disaffection ; nor meditate the resentment of a private wrong in the overwhelming vengeance of a public calamity ; nor endeavour to un- dermine where it was not permitted to TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 241 preside ; nor strive to sink the vessel, because another might be stationed at the helm. The charity of the Christian will not fawn before the iniquities of the mighty ; or flatter the vicious favourite ; or fear to utter its reproof with a modest and a manly openness ; or sell its truth and honour for the wages of infamy ; or act as the subsidiary of wicked counsels ; — but neither will it suffer him to commit a present certain evil, for the sake of a remote possible good. He cannot over- look the terrors of revolution in the anti- cipation of the casual benefit that may succeed it. He will not speculate on murders and conflagrations, and the in- fraction of the laws, and the violences of an infuriated people, as the means of po- litical reformation, any more than he would calmly dwell upon the artificial VOL. I. R 242 CHRISTTAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL fertility which waves its harvests, for a few brief summers, above the bones that whiten on the battle plain, and contem- plate the watering his fields with blood as an invention of agricultural economy ^. The charity of the Christian does not instruct him to believe, that his superiors are exalted above the operation of the virtues of his religion; that they are raised to a cold and desolate ascendency, to which the kind affections, that are libe- rally diffused to others, can never soar to cheer them, and whence they may look down upon the richness and the beauty of the lower earth, while they are them- selves surrounded by a mountainous and stony barrenness. He does not conceive that the Gospel laws are abrogated with * Does not the constant defence of the French RevoUi- tion, and the heartless estimate of its few beneficial results, savour of such insensibility ? TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. S43 reference to them, or that its decrees are superfluous to their happiness. He does not imagine that, while their temptations are most perilously multiplied, and their infirmities more conspicuously manifest, they alone are outcasts from the pro- tection of that benevolence by which the failings of others are extenuated, and which commands that man shall " not judge his neighbour, lest himself b e judged, nor condemn, lest he also be condemned." The charity of the Christian does not ignorantly fancy that slander is the less slander, because it strikes at exalted marks, and is conversant with venerable names : it does not suppose that the of- fence, which is criminal against an equal, can acquire impunity from the very cir- cumstances that aggravate its guilt: it does not deem that calumny becomes ve- nial because it mingles with sedition, R 2 244 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL because it is derived from darker sources, because it is less an object of personal knowledge, because it is supported by- less obvious authority, and is succeeded by more lamentable results. Not believ- ing that a crime acquires to itself an ho- nour, and a dignity, from the terror of its effects, the faithful disciple of the Saviour feels that the disseminating of injurious reports and malignant insinuations, which the law of the Almighty has prohibited, when directed against the peace of fami- lies, can never become innocent by being levelled against the order and tranquillity of nations. He knows that all human things subsist by opinion ; that evil hints, and insidious whisperings, and the sup- position of ungenerous motives, and the lighter scoffs of ridicule, insinuate away the reverence of government ; that these inconsiderable things waste the energies TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 245 of power, as the rock is wasted by the water-drop ; and his charity instructs him that he may not weaken the foundations of the social column, by tearing missiles from them, to hurl against the statue that crowns and beautifies its summit. The charity of the Christian " would do as it would be done by." If it would be safe within its cottage from riotous intrusion, it would also vindicate for the inhabitant of the palace the same invio- lable security. His charity is not ex- clusive : — we have read of a charity that was, which invented an unnatural alliance of love and hate ; which imagined a wild confusion of the virtues of heaven with the vices of the earth ; and, as of that strange union of the elder world, when the sons of God and the daughters of men were mingled, most gigantic and appalling was the monstrous progeny — 246 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL I mean the charity of the infidel philo- sophy. In France a cry was raised " of peace to the cottage and of war to palaces*." The words were reiterated by applauding multitudes. The senti- ment was hailed as the watchword of revolution ; and its tender mercies were witnessed at the guillotine ; and its re- cords received their deep inscription upon the earth in the many channels which were fretted by the blood of its victims. But the charity of the Gospel is unac- quainted with any reservations. The whole creation is its object. It would deliver from the slightest corporal suffer- ance the poor insect that we tread upon ; it scales the Empyrean, and soars aloft upon the wings of angels, in emotions of adoration and of praise to the ever- * " Guerre aux chateaux ; paix a la chaumiere :" — This, tlie war-cry of the Revolutionists, originated iu Condorcet. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. ^47 glorious and unimaginable presence of our Redeemer and our God. It is an inti- mate communion with the predominating attribute of the Creator, and is infinite as the Holy Spirit of that Deity from whom it is an emanation and an im- pulse. If it beam with a more cheering brightness ; if it glow with a kindlier ardour for the friends of our childhood, and the companions of our youth, and the inmates of our home, there exists not a single living thing that is alienated from its sympathies ; and, if it willingly descend to mingle tears of pity with the sorrows of the poor, it encounters no impediment in its ascent to the loftier habitations of the mighty. Under the prevalence of such a dispo- sition, the germs of civil animosity are destroyed. Remove from the public mind that discontent which loathes inferiority ; MS CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the intrigues of disappointed ambition; the factious feelings of baffled pride ; the love of aspiring slanders ; the malignant spirit with which our jealousy surveys the actions, and perverts the motives, and criticises the good, and exaggerates the evil of our superiors ; remove from the public mind these vicious provocations to political hostility, and it is impossible that the tranquillity of civil life, with which the privileges and the property of the higher classes of society are so inse- parably connected, should ever be en- dangered by the rebellious encroachments of their inferiors. There would be no resistance to authority, but such as would be honestly derived from the diversities of human character, the nature of our studies, and the peculiarities of our pur- suits. There would be a mild discussion of the designs, and an impartial exami- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 249 nation of the wisdom, of our public coun- cils. But such an opposition would be the stability rather than the weakness of the state ; it would be as the purifying airs of heaven which agitate the stag- nant atmosphere, and preserve the vitality of its mass, rather than as the tempest that appals the people, and lays waste their habitations ; it would originate in honourable principle, and be supported with a manly confidence ; and it would be urged, on the legitimate occasions of ex- pressing it, with the calmness which is inseparable from the deliberate considera- tion of the truth, and without any of the animosity which is begotten in the contest for victoxy. It has been said by Sully*, " that the * " Pour la populace, ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se souleve mais par impatience de soufFrir." — Sully p. 133. 250 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL people are never excited to revolution by the desire to attack, but by the impa- tience of suffering." This great man spoke of a Christian people, of a multi- tude, not doubting the authority of their governors to rule, or the duty of the subject to obey. Their faith, therefore, v^ould hold them to their allegiance by a common sentiment ; and nothing but the sympathy of a common calamity could defeat its influence, and urge them to rebel. But, in the absence of those reli- gious feelings and opinions which, by a mild coercion and affectionate induce- ment, persuade the individual to the du- ties of his station, and confine him, by spiritual barriers, from every aggression on his fellows, it may very fairly be dis- puted whether the many would require the sympathy of want or the impulse of distress to associate in conspiracy, or to TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 251 provoke sedition. There would be suf- ficient points of contact, and sufficient in- citements continually before them. They would be united by the animal propen- sities of our nature ; by pride, that hated the dominion which constrained it ; by the avidity of plunder ; by the love of desperate hazards, which would stake the little good that it possessed against the richer prize that might be won amid the incalculable accidents of revolution. These views are by no means grounded on private or soHtary speculation. They are objects of general consent. They are axioms tacitly admitted, as principles of action, by every modern apostle of sedi- tion. All who have desired to overthrow the established institutions of their country, from the guilty conspirators against God and man, who persecuted our moral hap- piness, in the pages of the Encyclopedie, S52 CHRISTIAN OriNIONS ESSENTIAL to their ignominious disciples, whose writ- ings,— like the cold and the burning par- oxysms of an intermittent ague, — now shake the healthy spirit, and now make feverish the noble temper of our nation with accessions of periodical blasphemy — all have aimed at the faith of Jesus, their first blow of hostility against the state. — They feel that Christianity is the bond by which society is permanently con- nected, and that division cannot exist till the bond is severed ; — ^that it is the prin- ciple of love, and that enmity never can irreconcilably predominate among the degrees of men till the venerable impulse be extinct ; — ^that it is the heart that sup- plies the body with animation and sup- port, and they would stab the heart that they might hack the limbs. It was maintained by Hobbes, that " the natural condition of man is a state TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 253 of war — a war of all men against all men ; that there is no way so reasonable for any man as to anticipate, that is, by force and wiles to master all the persons of others that he can, so long till he sees no other power great enough to endanger him*." These maxims are quoted by Leland as extraordinary. But they fol- low as immediate results from the prin- ciples of the man who uttered them. — Such must necessarily be the views and sentiments of every candid unbeliever. Hobbes surveyed mankind as separated from their connexions with the revealed Divinity ; and he has most admirably por- trayed the savageness of an apostate and God-abandoned world. The enmity be- tween the two classes of society is, accord- ing to every natural principle, so inevit- able a consequence of their respective * Principles extracted by Leland from the Leviathan. S54 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL conditions, that they, who are ignorant of the efficacy of Christianity, or omit to calculate its power, can imagine no other feeling to subsist between the parties than that of a reciprocal hostility. " If," says Hazlitt, who ranks as a mighty teacher in the modern school of infidel philosophy, " if the lower ranks are actuated by envy and uncharitableness towards the upper, the latter have scarcely any feelings but of pride, contempt, and aversion to the former*." This is not the actual situation of mankind ; but it is the situation to which the want of Chris- tianity would reduce us. Without the reception of those sacred precepts of re- ligion, which impose the offices of gentle rule and of mild obedience, the social world would either be the prey of an anarchy that trampled down every salu- * Table Talk. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. ^55 tary restraint, or of a despotism that en- chained it. If this faith in the Gospel were withdrawn, society might, perhaps, for a little while retain something of a regular movement from the mere " vis inertise" of its former impulse ; it might be preserved a short time by the linger- ing purity of its decaying morals ; it might yet a little while be bright with the reflected glow of evening, though the sun had sunk beneath the ocean: — ^but that impulse would gradually weaken, — that purity would perish, — that twilight would pass away ; and as the moral night began to blacken on the horizon, every populous city would teem with insurrec- tion ; every peasant calculate on the spoils of his master ; every hovel would become tenanted with its gaunt conspirators. In- feriority would be synonymous with sedi- tion. The poor would be instinct with '^256 I HRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL malice ; they would brood over their fan- cied wrongs, and meditate imaginary op- pressions ; they would indulge the wild exaggerations that worked as insanity within them, and become familiar with the dreams of secret assassination and clandestine vengeance, till the correspond- ent deed became at length habitual to their practice. From such opponents, — and we cannot yet so entirely have lost the recollection of what horrors the un- believing disciples of revolt may medi- tate, as to doubt whether such opponents would exist; — from the wild successors of such men as Despard or Thistlewood the depositaries of political power would have but one method of relief — to intimi- date, to weaken, and to oppress ; to sur- round themselves by military defences ; to rely on the swords and bucklers of their soldiery for a brief and precarious TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. S57 existence till they were basely sold by them for a more liberal donative, or mur- dered, at the sudden change of favour, by the Janissaries, who were collected for their protection. — * " Powerful, formi- dable monarchs," exclaims Voltaire, in hrs letter to Frederic the Great, " who command millions of men and invincible legions, religion is the strongest bulwark of your thrones, and the most respectable tie of society, the most certain guarantee of your authority and the subordination of the people. It is religion that must be responsible for their fidelity and ser- vice, which compels them to lavish their blood and fortunes for your defence and preservation; — by this, good order, peace, and harmony are supported among your * This extract from Voltaire is from Broughton's y4ge of Christian Reason, in which volume the entire letter is translated. VOL. 1= S 258 CHRISTIAN OriNIONS ESSENTIAL subjects, as well as that spirit of concord and universal benevolence which unite them like one great family. In fine, it is religion that stops the regicide hand of a male-content proscribed and disgraced, and prevents his avenging your violence and injustice. Were there no religion each one would give a loose to his passions ; each one would exert his strength to op- press the weak, his cunning to deceive the simple, his eloquence to seduce the credulous, his credit to destroy commerce, his power to promulgate terror, horror, bloodshed, carnage ;— shocking disorders in themselves, but inseparable from the principles of infidelity."—* " Our modern governments," says Rousseau, " are in- contestably indebted to Christianity for their more secure authority, and their less frequent revolutions." It is the * Rousseau— Ewi/^, torn. iii. p. 199- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 259 foundation of our social peace. " It has taught the powerful to rely on his de- pendants, and the dependant to confide in his superior*."— This last sentence is in the words of Montesquieu — of an au- thor whom I have often quoted ; who had no prepossessions in favour of our religion ; who viewed all things with the calm con- sideration of the philosopher ; who was never tempted, by his imagination or his emotions, to exceed the measure of his authority, or advance a step which he had not first established upon proof- — Once, and only once, he is unwillingly betrayed into an expression of enthu- siasm. As his meditative eye reposed on those fair proportions and that just agree- ment of society, to which the Messiah's revelation has given rise, he exclaims, * Montesquieu — Esprit des Loix, b. xxiv. c. 3. — *' Le prince comptesurlessujets, et les sujets siir le prince." S 2 260 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL in admiration of the work before him, * " Oh admirable faith !— Thus it is that a religion, which only seems to have for its object the happiness of another life, creates for man the happiness of this." * " Oh ! chose admirable ! La Religion Chretienne, qui ne semble avoir d'objet que la felicity de 1' autre vie, fait encore ii6tre bonheur dans celle-ci." — Esprit des Loix, liv. xxiv. ch. 3. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 261 Chapter I. Sect. V. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ARE ESSENTIAL TO HUMAN HAPPINESS AS THEY TEND TO MODERATE THE FEROCITY OF WAR. While I maintain the absolute neces- sity of those convictions, which are de- rived from revelation to secure the peace and happiness of society, it would appear unfair to the opponents of the Gospel, and would certainly be unjust to Chris- tianity itself, if I failed to notice a re- proach which has very frequently been attributed to the charge of our religion. Every objection that can be advanced against the faith should be studiously re- corded, and impartially investigated, for S>62 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the examination will always tend to the developement of some latent praise, and the illustration of some less obvious ex- cellence. It was inquired by De Volney*, what diminution would occur to the happiness of the world if the Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament were consumed by some modern Omar, with the records which are reverenced as divine by the votaries of idolatry and superstition ? — In consideration of the various misery to which religion had afforded the occasion or the pretext, he denominated the por- tion of his library, that contained the vo- * Ces livres sont aux Indiens ce que sont I'ancien et le nonveau Testament aux Chretiens, le Koran aux Musul- mans, le Sadder et le Zend-avesta aux Perses, 8fc., en consi- d^rant ce qu'ils renferment tous, je me suis quelques-fois demand^ quelle v^rit6 perdrait le genre humain, si un nou- vel Omar les brftlait ; et je n'en ai pu d^couvrir une seule : j'appelle la caisse oCi je Ics renfernie la boite de Pandore. — De Volney— iRttiwes, p. 305. 2d edit. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 263 lumes which are reverenced as inspired by the different nations of the world, the real box of Pandora. — Of the conse- quences of other and erroneous creeds we have no present interest in inquiring. I believe no mode of superstition has ever been generally admitted by a people that did not communicate more of benefit than of injury ; that did not preserve more of traditionary truth than it had re- ceived of human imagination ; that did not more than atone for every malignant tendency, by its silent influences of con- solation and of hope, — From the contem- plation of those enormities, which appear to be inseparable from idolatry, we do not derive an argument for the abolition of the false, but a motive for the grateful reverence and the diligent promulgation of the true, religion. Any creed, by which man is connected with immortality, is 264 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL preferable to the despair of unbelief It is more eligible that a few should suffer as the martyrs of superstition, than that the multitude, in the moments of affliction, should be bereaved of their reliance on divine protection ; or, in the infinite com- binations of their social intercourse, be delivered from the invisible restraints which are imposed on violence and fraud, and lust and malice, by the apprehen- sions of a future retribution. — Plutarch, indeed, maintained, and, under the per- suasion of his arguments. Lord Bacon* and the sceptic Baylef have been in- duced to coincide in the opinion, that atheism was more tolerable than idolatry. The question is susceptible of endless controversy. It proposes to us a painful * Bacon's Essay on Superstition, who gives the quotation from Phitarch. t Sin la Comete. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 265 t choice between death or pain, stupor or delirium. It was once submitted to the determination of Johnson — his masculine and comprehensive intellect was fit to grapple with speculations of such gigantic magnitude: and he pronounced his ver- dict with a propriety and force of illus- tration which must ever bear conviction with his decision. — " A man may live," said the author of the Rambler, " in a corrupted atmosphere, but he must die in an exhausted receiver^." But we have no concern with the effects of unhappy or mistaken methods of belief. The particular accusation urged against the Gospel alleges, that it has been the means of disturbing the tran- quillity of the world ; that it has excited the most violent and rancorous animosi- ties ; and that it has given rise to a series * Boswell's Life of Johnson, 9,66 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL of wars and persecutions of the most deadly and enduring character. — Such are the avowed or the insinuated charges to be encountered in the pages of Shaftes- bury and of ColUns ; of Hume and of Voltaire ; of Priestley and of Gibbon*. — " Charity and brotherly love," says the author of the Characteristics, ** are very engaging sounds, but who would dream that out of these should issue steel, fire, gibbets, and rods ?" — Who, indeed, would dream of such effects ? — That Christianity has been made the pretext of many guilty enmities can never be denied ; but if they were guilty, they were in the same degree unchristian. — It is true that the sacred gar- ments of religion have been most deeply and terribly imbued in the blood of the human race ; and what has not afforded to the ferocity of man an argument for * Ryan on Religion, vol. ii. p. 176. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 267 the slaughter of his brother ? — But surely the accusation here has been too hastily advanced, and too inconsiderately ad- mitted.— Have we not condemned the Gospel for the vices of its disciples ? — Have we not imposed on Christianity the reproach which is only merited by the beings to whom it is addressed? — Are we not attempting, like the Jews, to save Barabbas by the sacrifice of Jesus ? — It is indisputably right to judge of prin- ciples by their effects,, but before we re- solve on our conclusion we ought first to be assured that the effects are the natural consequences of the principles. And to the inquirer who is thus cautious in his research, and honest in his judgment, it will appear, that if there be one error more wild and inconsequent than another in the whole system of infidelity, it is manifested in the endeavour to attaint 268 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the Gospel with the imputation of those severe hostilities and persecutions which have formerly disgraced the nominal dis- ciples of the Saviour, or of those un- charitable affections by which they still continue to be disgraced. The Son of God descended incarnate upon the earth on a mission of reconcilia- tion and of instruction and of mercy : — his advent was hailed by the voices of angels in the air ; and " peace on earth and good-will towards men" formed the burthen of the celestial anthem: his life was recorded for our example, and it contains an uninterrupted narrative of acts of benevolent power and unresisting endurance of oppression: he added to the moral code of preceding revelation a new commandment, as the characteristic symbol of his faith, and as the indispen- sable grace of his disciples ; and that TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 269 commandment was, " Love one another as I have loved you." Such are the prin- ciples of the Gospel as they are exhibited in the actions, and proclaimed by the in- structions, of the Messiah. — Those prin- ciples are charity and peace ; and if the occasional effects have been enmity and war, what is the conclusion to be drawn from so extraordinary an inconsistency between the apparent cause and the practical result? — Every honest mind would attribute the distortion to the obli- quity of the medium through which it passed. If the principle was good, and the consequences were evil, the malice must have existed in the instrument by which the principle received its operation. The irregularity, instead of diminishing the reverence, demonstrates the necessity, of the revelation. The contests that have originated in the perversion of Christianity 270 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL simply prove, that there is a deep, in- stinctive, complexional ferocity inherent in the disposition of the being to whom the religion has been communicated ; that the morbid corruption of his nature must be most perilously virulent when the manna of heaven only serves to engen- der a poison at the heart ; that there was a most urgent claim for the interposition of the Deity to mitigate and to repress the destructive violence of the passions, by some suggestions of religious hope and fear, since we find that they can even over-master the restraint of super- natural convictions, and pervert by their injurious alchymy the institutes of social peace into the bitterness of civil and do- mestic opposition, and corrupt the obliga- tions to benevolence into the occasions of malignity. Lord Bolingbroke acknowledged that TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETV. 271 '* the wars, persecutions, and massacres, among the Christians ought in no part to be ascribed to the Gospel, nor could be reconciled to its principles * . " Every thing with which man is conversant has been converted into a subject of contest, and proposed as the price of victory f. Op- position is the element in which he seems to breathe most freely — war is the action that the natural man delights in. — If there be no immediate subject of foreign en- mity, he will invent to himself, in the * Vol. V. of his Works, p. 264— quoted by Leland. t " And still while man is man there will be found " Those who on this, or any creed will ground, " Or none at all, some false pretence to draw " The scimitar } and scorning every law " Divine and human, like the deluge, flood " Their native country with their brothers' blood. '* — Ask you for proof from bigot zeal? review '* Charles's dread deeds on St. Bartholomew. " Ask you for proof from want of faith?— they 're clear " In the dread deeds of Danton and Robespierre." Mason's Religio Cterici. 272 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL slightest argument, an opportunity of strife. Every cause of separation, whe- ther it be real or imaginary — whether it be the rivulet which flows between the boundaries of. neighbouring nations, or the shadowy varieties of a creed, which, in all the master doctrines, is as immu- table as the God from whom it was de- rived : — every, even the most trivial, sub- ject of division will provoke and agitate the turbulent passions of the unregene- rated heart; every, even the slightest, accident is sufficient according to the just and the severe, but the painful apologue in the Idler, " to drive men, by some un- accountable power, one against another, that vultures may be fed*." From the creation of the world to the present hour, there has scarcely been an interval of * Idler; from the paper which, in the original edition, was No. XXII. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 273 general aisd uninterrupted peace among the nations, except that which harbinger ed the nativity of the Messiah ; when the world, exhausted by the labour of de- struction, paused awhile, and rested upon its arms to meditate on the desolation it had wrought. For the hostility and the bloodshed, therefore, which have been so frequently attributed to its charge, Christianity is not responsible. If we argue justly, it is not the religion of Jesus, but the depra- vity of man, that deserves to bear the condemnation. The animosities would have originated on some other plea, though the Saviour had never taught or suffered. — And this may be asserted with the greater confidence, because there has been evinced in every species of religious war or persecution more of po- licy than of faith; more of contest for VOL, I. T 274 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL power than of zeal for any peculiarity of creed*? But if Christianity is innocent of the imputation with which it has been re- proached ; if it has not been the source of those implacable and deadly enmities, for which mankind, by connecting them with venerable names, have sought a con- secration and an atonement ; if it has not been the original occasion of those fields of blood, w^hich ambition and pride and * I consider this as true of every kind of religious perse- cution— of the Inquisition, of the massacre of St. Bartho- lomew, of the Anabaptist war in Germany, ifc. Sfc. — The Reformation was opposed on account of the political influ- ence and power which was connected with Popery ; when the Reformists acquired the ascendency, in addition to this motive, they were actuated by resentment for past suffer- ings, and by a dread of suffering again should their enemies recover their pre-eminence. I think it is Montesquieu who has said, that " every religion which is persecuted becomes persecuting ; for if by any accident it acquires the superiority, it attacks its opponent, not as a religious sect, but as a worldly tyranny."— On this subject see Ryan's History of the Effects of Religion on Mankind ^ vol. ii. sec. 7. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. ^75 bigotry and revenge have been solicitous to justify, by raising above their battle the banner of the Cross ; our most holy religion can assert for itself an opposite merit which none have had the temerity to controvert.— While it refutes the evil accusation, it claims to itself the praise of having given a milder tone to the hostile passions of our nature, and miti- gated the horror of their effects ! Christianity has not annihilated the miseries of war, but it has limited their duration and their extent. It has re- strained the hand of the conqueror. — - " Victory now leaves the vanquished in possession of their life, their liberty, their laws, their property*." These formerly * " Nons devons au Christianisme et dans le gouverne- ment un certain droit politique, et dans la guerre un certain droit des gens, que la nature humaine ne saurait assez recon- naitre. C'est ce droit des gens qui fait que, parmi nous, la T 2 0,76 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL^ were numbered among the legitimate spoils of conquest. In the earlier part of our reflections we have noticed the deso- lating results which, in ancient times, were the inevitable attendants on military success. Previously to the advent of the Messiah, the only law acknowledged by the combatants was the right of the con- queror to exterminate the conquered. To destroy was justice ; to enslave was mercy. It was a blest deliverance for the van- quished when avarice defended them from slaughter, by surrounding them with the protection of its chains. Clemency was the crime, and destruc- tion was the virtue, of the Pagan military character. It is enumerated by Cicero among the crimes of Verres, that he had victoire laisse aux peuples vaincus ces grandes choses, la vie, la liberty, les loix,les biens, et toujoiirs la religion, lorsque on ne s'a veng^e pns soi-m^me." — Esprit desJjoix, liv- xxiv. c. 3. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 277 spared the life of a pirate. His reasons for considering this act of mercy as an offence is a striking illustration of the fe- rocity of ancient morals. " No enemy of Rome should be permitted to exist longer than was absolutely necessary. The ge- neral who obtained a triumph should grant a respite to the hostile leaders ; " ut, his per triumphum ductis, pulcherrimum spec- taculum, fructumque victorise populus Ro- manus percipere possit* :" but the mo- ment the triumphal car departed for the forum they were to be cast into prison, and delivered over to the executioner. The appalling cheapness at which the price of human life was estimated when it animated the heart of a fellow-creature, whose faction was opposite, or whose country was hostile to those of the ascend- ant party, is demonstrated in the cold * Cicero contra Verrem, 278 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL indifference with which Tacitus lightly touches on enormities, that chill the blood of the Christian with horror and aversion as he reads. The careless notice of the historian is in painful unison with the impenetrable savageness of the actors. — A victory had been obtained over the Germans. Some of the barbarous and miserable fugitives endeavoured to con- ceal themselves from the violence of the Romans among the leafy branches of their native forests. They were disco- vered in their dangerous concealment. To destroy them, — all unarmed and defence- less as they were, — was an occasion of sport to the vacant soldiery — a kind of trivial relaxation after the severer exer- tions of the conflict, — " Admotis sagitta- riis per ludibrium figebantur*." A few pages afterwards, we read of a proclama- * Jnnal.f lib. ii. c. i6. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 279 tion, issued by Germanicus to his forces, instructing them, that " they should be insatiable of blood ; that there was no necessity for encumbering themselves with captives ; and that the war could only be concluded by the utter extermination of the people*." — It were idle to continue these citations, which evince the habitual ter- rors of the ancient warfare. These are merely the examples of a constant practice, not rare and extraordinary in- stances of savageness. Even with those conmianders who were most renowned for mercy the desolating operations were the same ; and Marcellus at Syracuse, or Fabius at Tarentum, were the authorities and the precedents that made honourable so indiscriminating a massacre. * Annul, lib. ii. c. 21. — '* Orabatque insislerent caedibus nil opus captivis, solam internecionem gentis finem bello fore." 280 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL The mitigation of these barbarities was not the gradual *, but the immediate effect of Christianity. The ferocity and the mercy of the battle has fluctuated with the reception or contempt of our religion. The hostile emotions were moderated in their effects under the Christian emperors. — The example of Constantino is pecu- liarly striking. I translate from Naudetf , " After his first victories, Constantino * " These Romans, who so coolly and so concisely mention these acts of justice which were exercised by the legions, re- serve their compassion and their eloquence for their own sufferings when the provinces were invaded and desolated by the arms of the successful barbarians." — Gibbon's Decline and Fally ch. 26. He adds in a note, " Observe with how much indifference Caesar relates, in the Commentaries of the Gallic War, that he put to death the whole senate of the Veneti, who had yielded to his mercy (ch. iii. p. 16.) ; that he laboured to extirpate the whole nation of the Ebricones (vi. 3t.) ; that forty thousand perspns were massacred at Bourges by the just revenge of his soldiers, who spared nei- ther a;;e nor sex (vii. 27.)," 8fc. f Naudet sur les changemans op6r^s dans toutes les parties de I'administration de I'empire Romain, sous les reg- nes de Diocletian, Sfc. — Quoted by Menais, vol. i. p. 425» TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 281 delivered over the hostile chiefs whom he had made his prisoners to be destroyed by the wild beasts in the theatre ; and the Pagan panegyrists loudly celebrated this barbarous sacrifice. — They delighted themselves in expatiating on the triumph in which an emperor added the slaughter of his enemies, to heighten the magnifi- cence of the public spectacles. After the light of revelation had dawned upon his soul, an orator again enlarged upon the same victories ; but he no longer dwelt upon the punishments of the con- quered.— These things, which had formed so gratifying a theme to the haughty feel- ings of the Pagan prince, were abhor- rent from the gentler sentiments of the Christian monarch. He had now learnt other lessons; and, actuated by higher principles, he had endeavoured to alle- viate the terrors of the conflict, by offer- CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL ing a pecuniary reward to every soldier who should save the life of an enemy." While these were the mercies of the Christian emperor, the virtues of the Gospel no sooner became desecrated in the minds of men under Julian the apos- tate, than the natural cruelty of the hu- man heart, unmitigated by religious in- fluence, recovered its severe ascendency, and revived all the original malignity of the conflict. Gibbon does not deny — though his language skilfully disguises — the inhumanity of his favourite hero. There cannot be a more impressive con- trast between the opposite effects of Pa- ganism and Christianity, of philosophy and revelation, than that which he has unintentionally displayed in the twenty- fourth and the thirty -first chapters of his History. On the one hand we are pre- sented with the march of Julian, the TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 283 literary, the enlightened, the philosophic prince, proceeding on his Asiatic inva- sion, amid all the horrors of burning cities and depopulated fields and slaughtered nations ; on the other, we are presented with the advance of Alaric the rude, Gothic soldier, unacquainted with letters, humanized only by the simple lessons of the Redeemer, marching upon the capital of the world with the least possible severity ; and, as he moves along the Flaminian way, despatching the bishops of the several towns of Italy as the bearers of conciliatory offers, and con- juring the infatuated Honorius that he would protect the capital from those inevitable calamities which defeat the precautions, and baffle the authority, of the commander. Even on the third time of his arriving before the walls of Rome, after it had 284 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL twice experienced the clemency of the conqueror, and all his moderate propo- sals of peace had been eluded or re- jected, Alaric offered to the astonished inhabitants an example of military mercy, that put to shame the sanguinary triumphs of their heroes. While the barbarians were on the point of entering the eternal — but the conquered — city, and the inha- bitants awaited in trembling expectation to receive from the invader that sentence of extermination which, in the plenitude of their power, they had so often dealt towards the victims of their own arms, two successive proclamations were issued to the soldiery. The first declared, that the life of every individual should be con- sidered sacred who sought refuge within the walls of any Christian sanctuary. The second was designed to moderate the wantonness of slaughter amid the avidity TO TKE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. ^S5 for plunder*. That these unaccustomed acts of clemency were at the time consi- dered as the effects of the religious opi- nions of the conqueror may be known by the contemporary sarcasms of the oppo- nents of the Gospel. With a strange ingratitude they derived an argument against the truth of the Redeemer, from the very mercy that had preserved them f . They declared, that to save an enemy was an act unworthy of the Divinity ; and that the equal safety which was ex- perienced by the Pagan and the Chris- tian, marked a deficiency either of the intelligence or of the power of our God * Orosius. Hist. lib. vii. cli. 39. f Nothing can be so partial and unjust as Gibbon's man- ner of relating the conduct of Alaric. — All his noble mode- ration, his forbearance, his desire of peace, are degraded into cunning, hypocrisy, and a sense of weakness — without any imaginable authority for such insinuations — by the artful substitution of injurious for honourable epithets. 286. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL — either of intelligence to distinguish, or of power to enforce distinction. This lenity has not been a transitory result of our religion. As the nations of modern Europe became gradually sub- jected to the direction of the faith, their political contests lost gradually more and more of their rigour and their duration. They had become united by a sympathy of religious hopes and fears and senti- ments, which preserved the natural rights of humanity inviolate amid the wild ob- livion of the combat, and the reckless intoxication of success. This alleviation of the severity of the hostile passions had existed for ages among us ; and he who was the bravest in the fight had made it his glory and his distinction to be the mildest in the victory ; when yet again, with the wars of infidel and revo- lutionary France, the military character TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 287 recovered all its savageness. Again the battle "palled itself in the dunnest smoke of hell ;" again the sword of the con- queror delighted in the wantonness and riot of destruction ; and again the con- quered acknowledged in the lasting op- pression which subdued them, that no Christian hand was the unwilling instru- ment of their distress. At length, galled beyond endurance by the oppression of the iron yoke, to which they were subjected, the impoverished and insulted nations awakened from the motionless despair that had appeared to usurp their force and paralyze their ener- gies. Firm in their Christian strength, and united by a Christian compact, they armed themselves against the foe to the happiness of man : — ^they fought : — they conquered : they entered the precincts of their common enemy: — they were the ^88 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL masters of the destiny of the oppressor : — they looked down, from the heights about the city, upon that gorgeous Ba- bylon which had been enriched by the extorted wealth of their treasuries, and ornamented by the collected spoil of all that was most exquisite and rare among the decorations of their temples and their palaces: — ^they held the very captain as their prisoner, whose successful and un- paralleled atrocities had appalled and conquered and constrained them: — and, while every human passion solicited an awful and enduring vengeance ; while every human principle would have per- suaded an exact and rigorous reprisal, the morals of Christianity prevailed above the natural dictates of the heart ; — no fields were wasted ; — no city was de- stroyed;— no penalty was exacted from the fallen ; — the merciless received no TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. ^9 Other chastisement than mercy. — The proud, who had so loudly vaunted the ex- tension of the ruin which he had wrought, was afflicted with no other retribution from the injured than the silent and the gloomy consciousness of humiliated pride. The miseries of war have afforded to the whole race of infidel philosophers a favourite and exhaustless subject of de- clamation ; and never have its effects been more general or destructive than in the age when the pretended philanthropists most vehernently expatiated on its in- justice. Christianity does not declaim; — it exhorts to peace ; it declares the pre- cepts by which the causes of discord are removed ; and, when the people are com- pelled to arms, it enjoins humanity to the conqueror, as the paramount and the in- dispensable law of the combat. — '* La religion pen^tre jusqiie dans les camps VOL. I. U S90 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS. pour en bannir la haine et I'inexorable cupidite, pour arr^ter I'abus de la force, pour attendrir la victoire, et pour couvrir le faible de son inviolable protection. Ne pouvant retenir le glaive, elle en emousse la pointe, et verse encore du baume sur les blessures qu'il a faites*." * MeNAIS, vol. i. p. 4i25. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY HUMAN HAPPINESS. BRING THE SUBSTANCE OP THE BOYLE LECTURES FOR THE YEAR 1821. JBY THE REV. WILLIAM HARNESS, A.M. OP CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBIilDGE. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET. MDCCCXXIII. LONDON: Printed by William ClowkSj Northnrnberland-court. ADVERTISEMENT. By the will of the Honourable Robert Boyle, — a person whose memory will never cease to be loved and respected by his countrymen, — it was provided, that *' an annual salary '* should be settled on some divine, or preach- *' ing minister, who should be enjoined to " perform the following offices : — 1 . To preach '* eight sermons in the year, for proving " the Christian Religion against notorious "infidels; viz.^ Atheists, Deists, Pagans, *' Jews, and Mahometans ; not descending " to any controversies that are among Chris- " tians themselves : the lecture to be on the ** first Monday of the respective months of '* January, February, March, April, May, ** September, October, November ; in such vi '* church as the trustees shall from time to " time appoint. — 2. To be assisting to all ** companies, and encouraging them in any ** undertaking for propagating the Christian " religion. — 3. To be ready to satisfy such *' real scruples as any may have concern- " ing those matters ; and to answer such " new objections or difficulties as may be " started, to which good answers have not *' yet been made." A large portion of the subsequent pages was delivered in a series of sermons, at the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, in ful- filling the duties which are attached to the Boyle Lectureship by the will of the founder. — In preparing the MS. for the press, so many alterations, both of addition and omis- sion, were adopted, that the work impercep- tibly acquired another character ; and it be- came necessary to dispense with the original divisions. My design has been of a general Vll nature ; to prove the necessity of the Chris- tian revelation, rather than to disprove any particular mode of unbelief. It is the prac- tice of the modern school of infidelity and licentiousness to portray religion as the enemy of man. In my present attempt to execute the intentions of the learned and pious and amiable Robert Boyle, I have en- deavoured to exhibit the fallacy of so unjust and wricked a representation ; and to demon- strate, on the contrary, that an inseparable connexion subsists betvreen the reverence of the Gospel and the happiness of man. It has been my aim to embody my reflections in a form that might not deter the young or in- timidate the indolent reader from following my course of thought.— It has been my wish to give a popular interest to a subject of universal and everlasting importance. — If my efforts should not prove successful, I trust that the candid will ascribe my failure to a Vlll want of the requisite ability, and a mis- calculation of the means, by which so de- sirable an object is to be accomplished, and not to any deficiency of ardour in the cause, or of diligence in its execution. TO The Most Reverend Father in God EDWARD, LORD ARCHBISHOP OF YORK; The Most Noble WILLIAM SPENSER, DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE; The Right Honourable LORD GEORGE HENRY CAVENDISH; AND The Right Reverend Father in God JAMES, LORD BISHOP OF LICHFIELD AND COVENTRY; THE TRUSTEES FOR THE LECTURE FOUNDED BY THE HONOURABLE ROBERT BOYLE, THESE VOLUMES ARE HUMBLY AND RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. THE CONNEXION OF CHRISTIANITY WITH HUMAN HAPPINESS. VOL. IT. Chapter I. Sect. VI. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL TO THE HAPPINESS OP PRIVATE LIFE, *' Suppose," says Hume*, '* the same number of men, that are at present in Great Britain, with the same soil and climate ; I ask, is it not possible for them to be happier, by the most perfect way of life that can be imagined, and by the greatest reformation that Omnipotence itself could work in their temper and disposition? — To assert that they cannot appears evi- dently ridiculous. As the land is able to maintain more than all its present inha- bitants, they could never, in such a Uto- * Essay on Refinement in the Arts. B 2 4 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL plan state, feel any other ills than those which arise from bodily sickness: and these are not the half of human miseries. All other ills spring from vice, either in ourselves or others; and even many of our diseases proceed from the same ori- gin. Remove the vices and the ills will follow." — Now it is self-evident, that the entire predominance of the principles of the Gospel would produce that very ame- lioration in our human condition, which the great sceptical philosopher considers necessary to the security of our earthly happiness. The vices would be removed and the calamities would follow. " A reformation in temper and disposition" would be effected by the grace of God, if we all piously availed ourselves of those means and instruments of spiritual im- provement which have been mercifully placed within our reach ; and we should TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 5 follow " the most perfect way of life that can be imagined," if under the influence of Christian love, which " worketh no ill to his neighbour, and is the fulfilling of the law*," we universally endeavoured to perform the simple precept of the Re- deemer, which enjoins, that ** as we would that men should do unto us, so we like- wise should do unto themf ." — If it were demanded of us to prescribe the rules by which the conduct of our fellow-creatures should be regulated towards ourselves, what system could we invent that should more effectually smooth our rugged pas- sage from the cradle to the grave than that timidity in offending, that affectionate interest in our success, that lenity of judgment and rebuke, that alacrity to aid, to warn, to counsel, and to relieve, which are appointed as indispensable to the * Romans, ch. xiii. v. lo, t St. Luke, cli. vi. v. 30. 6 CHRISTIAN QPINIONS ESSENTIAL profession of the Gospel? " They," says Hooker*, " who commend so much the felicity of that innocent world, wherein it is said, that men of their own accord did embrace fidelity and honesty, not for fear of the magistrate, or because re- venge was before their eyes, if at any time they should do otherwise ; but that which held the people in awe was the shame of ill-doing, the love of equity and right itself, a bar against all oppressions which greatness of power causeth ; they which describe unto us any such estate of happiness amongst men, though they speak not of religion, do notwithstanding declare that which is in truth only her working. For, if religion did possess sincerely and sufficiently the hearts of all men, there would be no need of any other restraint from evil." * Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, vol. ii. p. 9. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 7 Though Christianity has not effected all that it has the power of effecting for our happiness, if mankind would piously submit to its instructions, and co-operate with the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, who has promised to assist them in their obedience : — ^though the influence of Chris- tianity has been impeded by the cor- ruptions of the human heart, still the moral regeneration of the world has been continually advancing by its means. The passions appear to have become less irre- sistible in their nature ; great and appal- ling crimes are more rare in their occur- rence ; the mild virtues have been ren- dered honourable ; the benevolent affec- tions have been recommended and en- forced ; and, in compliance with popular opinion, their effects are imitated by those whose hearts are insensible to their im- pressions.— ^Any one who feels an interest 8 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAI, in discovering how much the religion of the Messiah has accomplished for the happiness of mankind, should cast his eyes upon the picture, which has been delivered by St. Paul, of the state of so- ciety in his own days, in the most po- lished and enlightened period of the hea- then world, when the public mind had been cultivated by the speculations of the greatest philosophers, and refined by the writings of the most gifted poets ; and then compare the description of the apostle * with that improved condition of morals and of manners, which has been achieved among the nations of Christen- dom, and which is every where propor- tionate to the purity of the national church and the sincerity of the national faith. But it may perhaps savour of partiality * RomanS) ch. i. vcr. 26 to 32. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. y to rely wholly on the authority of our own Scriptures for the vices and the im- purities of the ancient world, or to esti- mate the moral benefits which the Gos- pel has conferred, by the representations of St. Paul, whose enthusiasm in the cause of virtue, by inspiring him with an exaggerated enmity against sin, may be thought to have communicated to his de- scription some of the severe and bitter characters of a satiric indignation. We will address ourselves, therefore, to other sources, to demonstrate the superior purity of Christian to heathen times. — Hume shews in his Dialogue, that "an Athe- nian MAN OF MERIT might bo such a one as with us would pass for incestuous, a parricide, an assassin, an ungrateful, per- jured traitor, and something else too abo- minable to be named ; not to mention his rusticity and ill-manners. And having 10 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL lived in this manner, his death might be entirely suitable : he might conclude the scene by a desperate act of self-murder, and die with the most absurd blasphemies in his mouth. And, notwithstanding all this, he shall have statues erected to his memory ; poems and orations shall be composed in his praise ; great sects shall be proud of calling themselves by his name; and the most distant posterity shall blindly continue their admiration. Though were such a one to arise among themselves, they would justly regard him with horror and execration*." — Such is Hume's account of a virtuous Athenian ; and to shew that the Romans, even in their most high and palmy state, were possessed of no superiority of sentiment or of conduct, I shall briefly recapitulate a few of those ordinary circumstances of * Hume's Essays— Dialogue, vol. ii- p. 30,3 TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 11 their private lives, which would have op- pressed the heart of the disciple of the Saviour, whom I shall imagine as finding himself suddenly transported from the presence of the gentle manners and prin- ciples inculcated by the Gospel, to the heart of the capital of the world, in the times immediately subsequent to the pro- mulgation of our faith. The door of the house in which he is received, to the distress of every Chris- tian sentiment, is opened by a chained slave*. He is conducted to the master of the house, who is at supper, and is invited to take a place at the banquet. In- stead of the liberal equality which has been introduced by the general prevalence of the Christian disposition, and which has smoothed the irregularities of society, and rendered persons of a more distinguished * Ovid. Jmor. lib. i. cap. 6. 12 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL opulence and rank attentive to the sensi- bilities of the poorer and more humble members of their society ; he finds the inferior guests studiously reminded of their subordinate condition, removed to a distance from the luxurious table of the master of the feast, and insulted by the offensive coarseness of their enter- tainment*.— During a scene of the gross- est gluttony and intemperance, he is op- prest, as the spirits of the party become elevated, by the most appalling licentious- ness of conversation. A father speaks of the difficulty he had found in per- suading his v^ife to the murder of their new-born infant f. The young men boast of their successful rapes J, their perilous adulteries, or their unnatural attachments. Disgusted with these appalling circum- * Juvenal, 5th Satire. t Terence, HeauL, Act III. Scene 4. X lb. Eun., Act III. Scene 5. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 13 Stances, the Christian visitor might omit remarking on the unbridled sensuality with which his new companions surren- der themselves to the protracted pleasures of the table*, as if to eat were the first privilege of existence, and they had arti- ficially increased their appetites, that they might lengthen their capacity of indul- gence. Wearied of such society, he re- tires to his chamber, but not to rest ; for his repose is broken by the noise of whips and lashes, and the cries of the chastised slaves, whom the master of some neighbouring mansion is rigorously cor- * To prevent the bad effects of repletion, some used, after supper, to take a vomit : thus Caesar {accuhuit Sfxirimv agebaty i. c, post ccenam vomere volebat, ideoque largius edebat). Cicero, Att. 13. 52. Dejot. 7. Also before supper and at other times. Suet. Vit. 13. Cic. Phil. 41. vomunt, ut edant ; edunt, ut vomant, Senec. ad Helv. 9. Even women, after bathing before supper, used to drink wine and throw it up again to sharpen their appetite. Juvenal, 6. 427. 14 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL reeling ^. — In the morning he prepares to accompany his host to the exhibitions of the Circus. As they are departing from the house, an aged and half-starved slave timidly endeavours to elude their ob- servation ; he is detected ; his master notices his infirmities, and orders that he should no longer be retained as an un- profitable expense and incumbrance to his household, but should be exposed to die of starvation, in recompense for the labours of his youth. On their way to the theatre, they pass a company of Pa- trician youth, one of whom is on the * Seneca mentions, Epistle 122, that, regularly about the third hour of the night, the neighbours of one, who indulges the false refinement of changing night into day, hear the noise of whips and lashes ; and, upon inquiry, find that he is then taking an account of the conduct of his servants, and giving them due correction. — ^This is not remarked as an in- stance of cruelty, but only of disorder, which, even in ac- tions the most usual and methodical, changes the fixed hours that established custom had assigned for them. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 15 point of exhibiting his dexterity in the use of the broad-sword. A poor wretch, suffering from the deep afflictions of do- mestic misery, has been bribed, by the offer of a few minae, to devote himself as the victim of the barbarous experiment, on condition that the necessities of his family should be relieved by the stipu- lated purchase-money of his murder*. — On their arrival at the Coliseum, they find a difficulty in securing situations. — Nearly forty thousand persons are already impatiently assembled. It is a day of extraordinary expectation. Many cele- brated gladiators are to be brought on the arena. It is anticipated that some * Ephorion de Chalcide raconle (Apud Athen., lib. iv.) que chez les Remains, on proposait quelquefois cinq mines de recompense a celiii qui voudrait souffrir qu'on lui tran- ch^t la t^te, en sorte que la somme ofFerte devait etre touch^e par les h^ritiers ; et souvent, ajoute le merae auteur, plusieurs concurrens se disputaient la mort a ce prix. — Me- NAIS, vol. i. p. 380. 16 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL hundreds will be slaughtered in the va- rious conflicts which are appointed to suc- ceed each other in the progress of the entertainment; but a more than usual curiosity and interest is excited for those contests, in which the ill-fated wretches are to be exposed in opposition to the wild beasts of the desert or the forest, as on this occasion the lions and the pan- thers have been fed on human flesh, for the purpose of sharpening their thirst of blood, and stimulating the keenness of their ferocity*. Unable to sustain the sight, — while the first victim is expiring, unpitied and unregarded, amid the thun- ders of acclamation that reward the ex- ertions of his competitor, — the Christian visitor of the heathen capital hastily with- draws himself from the scene of san- guinary festival. He is immediately fol- * This was done by Caligula. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 17 lowed by his host, who ridicules his compassion on the authority of the most approved philosophers, and interrupts his eloquent lamentations over the departure of the ancient virtue and simplicity of the Roman character, by assurances, that the people have not degenerated ; that vice may have varied in its form, but not increased in magnitude ; that its ratio has been permanent and equal ; and that whatever enormities may have been en- gendered of power and luxury and refine- ment, at all events those ruder ages could never be deserving of regret, during which a supposed pestilence, that ap- peared to be depopulating the city, was discovered to be effected by the preva- lency of the art of poisoning * ; — a prac- * LivY, viii. 18. One hundred and seventy women, among whom were some of the highest rank, were condemned for this crime. VOL. II. C 18 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL tice which was so accordant to the morals and sentiments of the people, that the praetor, in a single province, after having capitally punished three thousand per- sons for the offence, still complained of the increasing number of the accusa- tions *. In the above sketch of the private mo- rals of the ancient Romans, I have stu- diously cast a veil over that horrible and undisguised impurity which saturated the whole body of society ; which haunted the precincts of their temples ; which min- gled with their religious rites and festi- vals ; which so frequently made the sub- ject of their conversation and their poetry ; which addressed the grossness of the public mind in the signs exhibited in their streets, and in the monuments that defiled their gardens, and of which the * LivY, lib. xl. cap. 43. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 19 images were constantly before the eyes, to pollute and to debase the soul, engraved on the common utensils of daily existence, on their lamps and their vases and their drinking vessels. — That an improvement has been v^rought on the moral condition of the nations of Europe it is impossible to controvert, neither do I comprehend how that improvement can be attributed to any other cause than the religion pro- mulgated by the Messiah. All that phi- losophy could do had been tried, and the experiment had failed. — We hear of the early apologists of Christianity enlarging on the purifying powers of the faith ; of Tertullian * challenging his opponents to produce from the overflowing prisons of the empire a single disciple of the Saviour, who was guilty of any other * Quoted by Tillotson, Sermon xx. vol. 2., folio edition of his Works. C 2 20 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL accusation than that of his belief; of Bardasanes * asserting the efficacy of the Gospel in exalting its disciples above those corruptions of sentiment and con- duct which had been most intimately in- terwoven with the habits of their lives, and authorized by the institutions of their country. But we encounter no such eulo- * The passage from Bardasanes of Mesopotamia is pre- served by Eusebius ; and as it is interesting, from the clia- racter it offers of the manners of the primitive Christians, I quote it in the words of Mihier's translation. Church History, vol. i. p. 253. — " In Parthia polygamy is allowed and practised, but the Christians of Parthia practise it not. In Persia the same may be said with respect to incest. In Bactria and in Gaul the rites of matrimony are defiled with impunity. The Christians there act not thus. In truth, wherever they reside, they triumph in their practice over the worst of laws, and the worst of customs." — To these ancient testimonies in favour of the superior excellence of the faith, we may add the modern testimony of Voltaire, who tells us in his Correspondence, that " Stoicism produced but one Epictetus ; and Christianity forms thousands of such philo- sophers, who know not that they are so, and who carry their virtue to such a length, as to be ignorant that they possess any." — Cor. Gen. iii. 222. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 21 gies on the merits of philosophy ; its benefits are as visionary as its principles. We have the authority of Cicero*, of Diodorus, of Quintilianf , and of Seneca J, for asserting, that its cold and motiveless and unsanctioned lessons were incapable of producing any extensive or sensible effect on the dispositions of the people : — and that they were very seldom of any efficacy in restraining the vices of their in- structors themselves. However eloquently the philosopher might declaim on the beauty of virtue and the deformity of * Tusc. Dis. ii. 4. " Sed haec eadem nnm censes apud eos ipsos valere nisi admodum paucos ; a quibns inventa, dis- putata, conscripta sunt? Quotus enim quisque philosopho- rum invenitur, qui sit ita moiatns, ita animo ac vita consti- tutus, ut ratio postulat? qui disciplinani suam non ostenta- tionem scientiae, sed legem vilze putet? qui obtemperet ipse sibi, et decretis suis pareat ?" Tuv >ca,^' TifjLcii; (pi><,Qa-o(puv rhq tzrAHirs? l^sTv If* T^Byovrctq fjiXv T^ KixXkircc, 'Cj^a.rrovrcK; ^l roc ^sipircc. In Excerpt, Prirese. p. 234. t Inst. Oral, lib. i. Procern. X Epist. 20. is CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL vice ; however skilfully he might prescribe the limits of human duty, his arguments had no other operation than to delight for a little v^hile by the music of the periods with which they were evolved, or by the grace and propriety of the illustrations with which they were recommended and enforced. — This was the extent of his ability ; and this perhaps was all that he designed. — His instructions never were received as the rules of life and prin- ciples of action, because they were not connected with any religious sanctions which might address them to the affec- tions of mankind, and interest their hopes and fears in the cause of their obedi- ence. This want has been supplied by the wisdom of the Saviour. He has not per- mitted that the sublime morality of his religion should be as superfluous to the TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 23 reformation of the world as the unsup- ported maxims of Socrates or of Cicero. If he has communicated to us a law which would secure the happiness of society in a degree commensurate with our submis- sion to his injunctions, he has advanced, in the belief of an Omnipresent Deity, who will hereafter recompense our actions by a correspondent retribution of good or evil, the most animating inducements to obedience. As man is a reasonable being, and actuated to perform or to for- bear by the anticipation of emolument or loss, the Gospel addresses his under- standing with motives to dissuade from crime, and stimulate to virtue, which ap- peal to the universal instincts of human nature ; which, from their infinite and eternal character, can be counterbalanced by no other suggestions ; and which must 24 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL constrain the conduct in proportion to the distinctness of our faith ^. This is one of the points on which the unbeliever and the Christian appear to be agreed. Nearly all the great leading infidel authorities attach the highest value to a popular belief in a future state of re- tribution. This doctrine constituted one of the five articles of Lord Herbert's Universal Creed f. " Without the hopes of another life," says Bayle:}:, " virtue and innocence may be ranked among those things over which Solomon has pronounced the denunciation of vanity of vanities, and all is vanity." Lord Bo- * It was said by Dr. Johnson, " that the most licentions man living would subdue his passions in the presence of temptation if hell were open before him." — Boswell's hifcy vol.iv. p. i!20. To those who live by faith, heaven and hell are open before them. f Leland's Deistical Writers. X Dictiomuire, Art, Brutus. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 25 lingbroke * declares, " that the rewards and punishments of a future state have so great a tendency to enforce the civil laws, and restrain the vices of man, that reason, which cannot decide for it on principles of natural theology, will not decide against it on principles of good policy." Whatever liberty of faith and conscience the infidel may arrogate to himself, there is not one, beyond the miserable band, who make a traffic of the doctrines of despair, who does not tremble at the idea of admitting the mass of his fellow-creatures to the wide im- munities of his ungodliness. However he may have himself succeeded in erasing from his mind the impressions of Chris- tianity, in withdrawing his heart from its convictions, in adopting his passions as his * Vol. V. p. 322. 26 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL infallible counsellors, and his senses as the sovereign arbiters of their own indulgence. However the scoffer of these latter days may assume for himself an exemption from those religious inducements, which operate with others, he has seldom shewn himself solicitous to extend the perilous enfranchisement of his philosophy to those, who are connected with his happi- ness by any of the nearer charities, or more intimate relations of existence. If his light be the light of truth, his own experience can instruct him, that it is possessed of qualities threatening in their aspect, and destructive in their contact ; that it may burn more than it can com- fort, and he dreads its too general dis- semination. He has learnt to contemn, as prejudices, the instructions of the Gospel, but he can estimate their utility, TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 27 and agrees with Diderot *, " that some such prejudices are indispensable to mankind." He perceives that it is the attachment of a rehgious importance to our actions, which gives to virtue its consecration and to vice its opprobrium. He acknowledges, that without the per- suasion of an eternal consequence, the most noble sacrifices and generous acts of self-devotion would be succeeded by no permanent sense of gratifying re- flection ; that the most dark abominations of the guilty would be visited by no compunctions more enduring than the terrors of detection -f-. He regards the conception of a remunerating and aveng- ing God as an effective accessary to the * 11 faut sans donte des pr^juges aux hommes. — Cor- de Grimm el Diderot, vol. v. p. 8. t II n'y a" d'auties remolds que la craiiite du supplice. This maxim, so necessary a consequent ot* infidelity, is ex- tracted from Helvetius. 28 CHEISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL education of his child ; as a constant guard upon his absent obedience, as an additional excitement to his present ex- ertions. He feels that faith is the most bright accomplishment of the female cha- racter, and the most firm and liberal pro- tection for the purity of his home ^. He knows that in the busy intercourse of life, a sympathy in the same religious hopes and fears is the silent .preliminary to every negotiation, the stability of every bond, the confirmation of every compact, the sanction of every testi- mony, the source of fidelity, of honesty, and confidence ; and, like Voltaire f , he * It would be difficult to name an instance of a virtuous female infidel. Chastity is peculiarly a religious virtue, and all the examples of female unbelief, that I have read, or heard of, have been notorious for sacrificing the purity of the morals of the Gospel, when they abandoned the belief of its retributions. t Voltaire's confidential agent was a Janscnist and a I'riest. The second circumstance to which I allude is very TO THE HAITINESS OF SOCIETY. 29 would seek a Christian as the most se- cure depositary of every trust ; and, like him, he would impose a timid silence on the blaspheming converse of the asso- ciates of his unbelief; lest his domestics become attainted by the contagion of their principles, and murder him as he sleeps. There is an unimaginable inconsist- ency in the conduct of the chief apostles of infidelity. While they agree with the heathen philosopher^, or the Christian divine, in admitting, that no man can be steadily virtuous unless he live under the continual remembrance of an im- mortal destination ; they delight in shew- commonly related. Among other places, in which it may be found, is Abernethy's Lectures in answer to Lawrence. * Plato de Legibus. Rousseau was of the same opinion, '* Je n'entends pas que Ton puisse ^tre vertueux sans reli- gion. J'eus long-tamps cette opinion trompeuse, dont je suis bien desabuse. — X/ef^^e sur Ics Spectacles. 30 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSKNTIAL ing, that every human argument is in- sufficient for the foundation of so ele- vated a trust. While they acknowledge that this necessary belief must ever rest upon religious impressions for its strength and efficacy ; they exhaust every engine of sophistry or ridicule, in endeavouring to eradicate a faith, which establishes this sacred truth as the paramount object of its announcements, and which, by the public and attested resurrection of its author, has left the immortality of the soul no longer a subject of variable and inconclusive speculation, but a demon- strable fact and an historic certainty. While they confess, that whoever im- pairs the stability of such sentiments, would deserve the execration of his fel- low-creatures ; they rush forward to vo- lunteer the ignominy, which they have themselves denounced against the preach- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 31 ers of annihilation. While they assert the importance of the faith to the regu- lation of human conduct ; they labour to demonstrate its insignificance, by os- tentatiously comparing the virtues of a few professed infidels with the vices of some of the nominal disciples of Chris- tianity. I should not have delayed any longer upon this head, had it not been with an intention of offering a few remarks, to shew the futility of those arguments by which the unbeliever strives to invalidate his own admissions. There are several* who would persuade us to yield no credit to their assertions, when they speak of the support which vir- * Pomponatiiis, Cardan, Bayle, are named by Bishop Warburton as the three great assertors of the non-import- ance of religious faith ; and the opinion is now very pre- valent. 32 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL tue derives from the belief in a future state of rewards and punishments, because they tell us a few solitary individuals have passed honourably through life, with- out any such preternatural dependance. — With regard to these vaunted instances of morality, independent of religion, who are represented as moved by a disinte- rested love of virtue, as living in unbe- lief as if they lived in faith, as walking in the solitudes of atheism, as if they walked in the continual presence of their Creator and their Judge ; it is evident, that if any such examples have ever had a local habitation and a name, their good must have originated in some rare pecu- liarity of character, and not in the in- ducements of their infidelity. We know that in ordinary life, the passions are predominant over the reason ; that the reason can only acquire and maintain its TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 33 ascendency by the aid of accumulated motive ; that, however weak may be the faith in the retributions of eternity, and faith admits of every gradation, from the slightest suspicion to the most complete assurance, still even a suspicion of this fact is an additional inducement to resist the evil seductions of the heart ; that if others, possessing all the human dissua- sives from transgression, which are at- tainable to the unbeliever, with a supe- rior religious argument, from which he is excluded, are overpowered by the temp- tations that assault them, while he re- mains invincible, his firmness can only be attributed to some rare endowment, or extraordinary deficiency of nature ; — to the supernatural force of his under- standing, or the adamantine frigidness of his temperament. But is it true that any such instances of VOL. II. D 34 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL infidel virtue have existed ? Where are the scenes which their benevolence has cheered ? Where are the charitable en- dowments and the great works of public utility, which they have left to indemnify posterity for the traditionary evil of their instructions ? In the earlier ages of the world we know that there was no such unintelligible division between the prin- ciple and its consequences. The best were ever those who had the most secure dependance on an eternal destination. Socrates was most celebrated by the heathen world, for wisdom and for vir- tue ; and he expired, while endeavouring to animate the mourners of his fate with the prospects of immortality. Scipio is represented as declaring, that he was the more vigilant in the career of honour from anticipating heaven as his reward * . * Somniu m Sc ipionis — Cicero. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 35 Cato is described as acknowledging, that he should never have undergone his pa- triotic labours in the service of his coun- try, had he not conceived the conclusion of this life to be succeeded by the com- mencement of a brighter being *. If the persuasion of the immortality of the soul, and a future retribution, has thus been followed by superior excel- lence of individual virtue, this leading article of religious faith has never been generally discredited by any sect or na- tion, without producing a proportionate deterioration of character. Previously to the Gospel revelation, we are distinctly acquainted with two sects of consider- able importance and duration, who had rent asunder those invisible alliances by which man is united to his Maker ; who * Cicero de Senectute, D 2 36 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL had placed the tomb as the boundary of their spiritual vision ; and who refused to find in this their transitory dwelling any connexion with an imperishable state. Though their authors flourished in dif- ferent regions of the earth ; though seas divided their disciples ; though they ex- isted amid different forms of life, and various modifications of national habit and opinion; this malignant sympathy of creed moulded them, in defiance of every subordinate contrariety, into a dark similitude of soul, and stampt them with the impress of a kindred degrada- tion. Of the one, the votaries, by their obscene and incredible licentiousness, have debased the name of Epicurus into an everlasting epithet of reproach. Of the other, of those Sadducees, whom the Scriptures mention as denying the resur- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 37 rection of the dead, we distinctly know on the authority of Josephus *, that their actions were correspondent to their in- stitutes, and that they were tyrannous and sensual, perfidious and inhuman. These instances are sufficient for the establishment of one point. — They prove tha,t irreligion is destructive to the morals and the affections, when it has obtained any general prevalence over a sect or nation ; and when each individual may find a countenance for his excesses in the enormities of his associates. While Atheism, or Deism: — for Deism is as bad as Atheism, unless it be connected with those operative doctrines which are assured to us by revelation, and which I shall hereafter shew to be most miserably uncertain, when deprived of its convic- tions : — while Atheism is only the error * Josephus, lib. ii. cliap. 12- de Bella Judaico. 38 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL of a few scattered literary speculatists, the virtue of their lives v^ould not at all impeach the arguments that assert the de- moralizing tendency of their principles. It may be very easily comprehended that a few such men might resist the deterio- rating influence of their faith, and might continue to preserve so much of that mo- ral decency and external propriety of conduct, as would be demanded by their situation in society. They might All their station in the world with credit and repu- tation.-— They might " eschew evil," but I doubt whether they would be active in *' doing good." It is not at all made out that any one of these apostates from the faith has attained to that degree of diligent and forbearing virtue, which in a Christian would appear to warrant, through the atonement of his Saviour, any happier confidence of his salvation. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 39 But if any one or two had been thus blest and innocent in their impiety, how does it demonstrate that evil would not result from the more general diffusion of their doctrines ? — Diagoras or Pliny, Vanini or Spinosa, may have lived as guiltlessly as Bayle would represent them to have lived ; but what relation is there between their circumstances and their temptations, and the circumstances and the temptations of ordinary men ? While they imagined the dethronement of their God, the retire- ment to which they withdrew themselves to contemplate, to combine and to adapt the systems of their blasphemy, removed them from those ardent competitions of the busy, by which the fires of the pas- sions are elicited. Their parental attach- ment to the theories which they had in- vented and promulgated, would withhold them from those grosser immoralities that 40 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL might cast an opprobrium on their insti- tutes. When they had displaced the re- straints and motives of religion, and as- serted that human reason was sufficient to maintain the integrity of the conduct, they would feel themselves obliged to exemplify in their lives the truth and the efficacy of their principles. But these inducements perish with the authors of each particular code of unbelief ; and the moral character of the master has very seldom operated further with his followers than to afford them a miserable excuse for the adoption of the opinions by which they were depraved. But are we not engaged in a discussion without having previously agreed upon the premises which are necessary to our ar- riving at any just conclusion ? — Before we can speak of the virtue or the vice of the teachers and disciples of infidelity, is it TO THE HAPPINiESS OF SOCIETY. 41 not first requisite to be informed by what scale their conduct is to be measured ? — When a man professes himself a Chris- tian, we can compare his performance with his obligations, and discern between his rule and his obedience. The Gospel affords a distinct and invariable standard by which its votaries may be censured or approved. But it is not so with the apos- tates from the faith ; they have no com- mon and consistent code of principles. Each is a law unto himself : and he so adapts its form that it may not too rigor- ously press upon the free movement of his prevalent inclinations. In the schools of infidelity all vices are not infamous.* — Voltaire may live in habits of the most shameless adultery* ; he may profess the greatest cordiality for the aged President * It were impossible for charity itself to doubt the nature of his connexion with Madame du Chatelet. 42 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL Renault, and at the same time libel the old man in anonymous pamphlets * ; he may violate the most sacred duties of * The passage alluded to was introduced in a pamphlet, entitled *' Exainen de la nouvelle Histoire de Henri Quatre, de M. de Burl, par le Marquis de B." — It was proved, almost to demonstration, to have been the production of Voltaire. Renault was upwards of eighty years old, and his friends endeavoured to conceal the malicious paragraphs from his knowledge. This would have defeated the malignity of the author, — and, says Madame du Deffand, " II y a six se- maines, ou deux mois que le President revolt une lettre de Voltaire qui lui parle de cette brochure et lui transcrit Par- ticle qui le regarde, et un autre qu'on peut appliquer a une personne bien considerable. Nous fiuiies bien d^concertes ; le President ne fut point aussi trouble que nous rappr6hen- dions. II fit une r^ponse fort sage ; Voltaire lui a ecrit trois lettres depuis cette premiere; il veut absoluraent qu'il ri- ponde, et comme le President persiste a ne le vonloir pas, il lui offre de r^pondre pour lui ; le President y consent pour- vu que Voltaire y mette son nom. Voltaire lui a d'abord dit qu'il croyait que I'auteur de cette critique ^tait la Beau- melle ; depuis il lui a dit que c'^tait uu Marquis de Belestad, lequel ne salt ni lire ni ecrire ; ce n'est ni I'un, ni I'autre, on en est stir; mais savez-vous qui on soupgonne avec juste raison? Voltaire, oui, Voltaire lui-mlme. C'est de cela qu'on peut dire cela est ineffable. — Oh ! tons les hommes sont fous ou niechans, et le plus grand nombre est I'un et I'autre. — Lettres de Mad. du Deffand, vol. i. p. 275. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 43 hospitality and honour by clandestinely breaking open the private letters of his guests* ; he may revenge the cause of his vanity by the invention of the most injurious calumnies against the reputation of Mademoiselle Raucourt f ; he may pan- der to the grossest passions of mankind by the publication of obscene poetry, after polluting his own soul by the stre- nuous impurity of composing it:}: ; he may cherish the most illimitable vanity, and dare demand of his attendant sycophants * This infamous practice is disclosed in the letters of Madame de Grafigny . This breach of domestic probity seems to be a favourite vice among infidels ; and Voltaire only re- venged on his unhappy and opprest guest the v\rrongs of the same kind which he had himself received under the roof of Frederic the Great. — " Le Roi ouvrait toutes mes lettres." — Memoires de Voltaire ecritspar lui meme. f The success of Mademoiselle Raucourt v»^as the cause of delaying for a short time the representation of one of his tragedies ; I think the *^ Lois de Minos." — This anecdote is related by the Baron de Grimm. t I need not name the works that give an infamous cele- brity t» the name of Voltaire. 44 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIA! whether Jesus Christ* were more intel- lectually gifted than himself; and his adul- tery, his duplicity, his meanness, his dis- honour, his falsehood, his slanders, his obscenities, his profaneness, shall dimi- nish nothing from the brightness of his renown. He may still receive the incense of adulation from his cotemporaries, and be embalmed by the eulogies of succes- sive generations of atheists, as if the single quahty of his unbelief was an all-sufficient atonement for the atrocity of his conduct and the baseness of his heart. As all vices are not infamous among the disciples of the new philosophy, nei- ther are all virtues meritorious. There are scarcely any two of their instructors who appear to be agreed on their moral appreciation of the same human actions and affections. With many humility, loy- ♦ " Croyez-voiis que J6sus Christ eftt plus d'esprit que moi ?" TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 45 alty, constancy and devotion, are no longer viewed with any sentiments of approbation. For every infringement of those rigid precepts of temperance and chastity which are respected as venerable by Christians, they are excused by the very dogmata of their philosophy, which has taught them that " no gratification, however sensual, can of itself be esteemed vicious*," and granted them a dispensa- tion from all restraints of mortification or self-denial f." — They avowedly emanci- pate the will from all those stricter limits of temperance, which one of their greatest instructors has classed upon the pro- scribed catalogue of monkish virtues, and allow themselves a liberty of indulgence, which, in a disciple of the Redeemer, they would be among the first to visit * Hume's Essay on Refinement. t Hume's Inquiri/ into the Principles of Morals^ Sec. 9, 46 CHEISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL with reproach : as far as their inclinations urge them, and the regulations and the forbearance of society will permit a scope for action, we generally find that they avail themselves of the ample privileges of irreligion ; and if they be temperate in vice, their moderation must be ac- counted for upon principles which are not only independent of their infidelity, but which exist with a stubborn rectitude in opposition to its demoralizing influence. There are many transgressions from which the unbeliever would be defended, by the terror of reproach and the hazards of detection ; and as long as the ascend- ency of his bad affections is thus coun- terbalanced and abridged, he may perse- vere in the steady course of duty ; but where there is neither shame or punish- ment to be apprehended, we have been experimentally informed that the mere. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 47 cold, speculative estimate of the malice of an action will never be sufficient to prevent its perpetration. — It is unneces- sary to revert to ancient or remote au- thorities to substantiate this truth. Take Hume as the example. — He is one of the most celebrated instances of modern hea- then virtue ; — famous in his life, and re- corded in his death*. There is a passage in his works which evinces that he was perfectly aware of the criminality of pub- lishing the lessons that he inculcated. He makes no attempt to extenuate this wickedness, but fairly estimates the mea- sure of his guilt ; and declares f , with re- ference to the great fundamental doctrine of religion, that " those can never be con- sidered as good citizens who would en- deavour to disabuse mankind" of their * See Adam Smith's Letter on the Death of Hume. f Essay on Providence and n Future State, \o\, ii. p. 155. 48 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL expectations of a future state of retribu- tion. With this conviction upon his mind, in opposition to his acknowleded percep- tion of what was right, conscious, as he must have been, that his name would be authority for error, where his arguments would be perfectly unintelligible, he vo- luntarily commits a sin against his coun- try, of which the effects will be as per- manent as the memorials of his genius ; and, seduced by the paltry claims of his literary vanity, has inscribed this Httle sentence of condemnation against him- self as the moral of an elaborate essay, which was designed as the annihilation of our eternal hope. Hume was, by his own confession, a bad citizen. The highest possible human motive, the love of his country, could not induce him to overcome the slight temptation of exhi- biting his argumentative ingenuity, though TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 49 he distinctly apprehended the guilt of the exhibition. — But this example, which ex- poses the fallibility of the unsupported and disputable conclusions of mere hu- man ethics, when adopted as the only barrier against crime, may be encoun- tered by another, which demonstrates the potency of those principles that are de- rived from the Gospel, and are sanc- tioned by the motives of religious faith. — " If," said Dr. Johnson*, " I could have * I transcribe the whole conversation from which this sen- tence is taken. — " We can have no dependance upon that instinctive, that constitutional, goodness which is not founded upon principle. I grant you that such a man may be a very amiable member of society. I can conceive him placed in such a situation that he is not much tempted to deviate from what is right ; and as every man prefers virtue, when there is not some incitement to transgress its precepts, I can con- ceive him doing nothing wrong. But if such a man stood in need of money, I should not like to trust him ; and I should certainly not trust him with young ladies, for there there is always temptation. Hume, and other sceptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expense. Truth will not afford sufficient food to their vanity ; so they VOL. II. E 50 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL allowed myself to gratify my vanity at the expense of truth, what fame might I have acquired. Every thing which Hume has advanced against Christianity had passed through my mind long before he wrote." — Here the efficacy of those mo- tives, which are respectively acknow- ledged by the Christian and the infidel, may be scanned, and measured and ap- preciated.— They are brought into a fair comparison.-r-Two persons are presented have betaken themselves to error. Truth, Sir, is a cow, which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. If I could have allowed myself to gratify my vanity at the expense of truth, what fame might I have acquired. Every thing which Hume has advanced against Christianity had passed through my mind long before he wrote. Always remember this, that after a system is well settled upon positive evidence, a few partial objections ought not to shake it. The human mind is so limited, that it can- not take in all the parts of a subject, so that there may be objections raised against any thing. Tliere are objections against a plenum^ and objections against a vacuum ; yet one of them must certainly be true."— Boswell's Life of John- son, vol. i. pp. 302, 303. TO THE HAVl'INESS OF SOCIETY. 51 before us as engaged in the same literary career, ambitious of the same recom- pense, aware of the same easy opportu- nity of distinction, tempted to the com- mission of the same act, and dissuaded by the same consciousness of its offence. With the Christian, indeed, the tempta- tion is enforced by arguments from which the infidel is delivered. — He has the res angusta domi to second the suggestions of his vanity, and is solicited by the urgent claims of poverty, which has so frequently seduced the most endowed among man- kind to corrupt the purposes of genius, and pervert the energies of heaven to prosper the interests of hell : — but in the conflict between the desire of celebrity and the sense of duty — notwithstanding the more rigorous circumstances of his trial — we find that the Christian only is triumphant, and that the unbeliever is defeated. And E 2 52 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL when the moral speculatist himself thus falls, in all the pride of his philosophic strength, and in defiance of its own con- victions, is it to be anticipated' that the large and unreflecting body of society would derive a security from ignorance, which to him was unattainable by know- ledge ?— It is certain that there exists an inseparable connexion between virtue and wisdom ; that the voice of revelation has appointed for us a rule of action, of which experience demonstrates the perfection. But the great excellence of the Gospel is, that it does not condescend to any dis- cussion on the motives and principles of conduct. It " speaks with authority and not as the scribes." It does not depend, for the influence of its morals, on any of those elaborate and subtle and compli- cated disquisitions, which must be unin- telligible to the majority of the people. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 53 and of which, while the arguments that condemn the sins of others are admitted without dispute, those that arraign our own are rejected by the partiality of the heart, and controverted by the deceitful sophistry of the passions. It was said by La Harpe*, who was long the companion and the disciple of the French infidel philosophers, though he was eventually reclaimed from his im- piety, that " their principles never were adopted but from the love of sin." — And if sin be the parent of unbelief, religion may with some confidence be asserted as the unacknowledged origin of the dimi- nished virtues of the unbeliever. The infidel is indebted to revelation for what- ever of lingering merit he may possess ; 5^ Cette philosophic n'avait d'influence que comme ami de tontes les passions, et ennemi de tout ce qui les repiime.— La Harpe sur VEncyclopHie. 54 CHRISTIAN OriNIONS ESSENTIAL to the apprehension of the laws, which in every Christian country have been mo- delled upon the precepts of the Gospel ; to the love and dread of popular opinion, which by the general diffusion of the Gospel has been compressed into a con- sistent approbation of excellence and an uniform abhorrence of iniquity ; and to some remaining sentiments of faith, which, according to the joint confession of Bayle and of Voltaire, can never be absolutely eradicated from the human heart*. With respect to the vices which are found to pollute the external members of the Christian faith, it may very easily be shewn that they do not militate at all against the necessity and importance of * *' Presque tons ceux qui vivent dans Tirreligion ne font que douter," says Bayle, in liis Dictionary Art. Bion. ; and Voltaire, in a letter to Horace Walpole, repeated the same sentiment, when he declared that for the last forty years he had done nothing but doubt. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 55 religious sanctions for the foundation and the support of virtue. It is certainly a very melancholy subject of reflection that the sublime motives and the awful re- straints, which are revealed to us by the Gospel, should maintain so divided and so circumscribed an influence upon our actions ; that the majority of those by whom the lessons of the Redeemer are nominally adopted as the institutes of life, should regard his laws with a frigid estimation of their wisdom, without any ambition of accomplishing their perfec- tion ; and that the multitude should pre- tend to aspire to the glories of an immor- tality which they are continually post- poning to the pleasures, or setting at stake against the perishable interests, of the world. — But that the empire of the faith should be thus partial and confined was not unnoticed by the predictions of 56 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the Messiah. He has unequivocally pro- nounced, that of the " many who are called, there are few who should be chosen" and, on a comparison of the character of the Gospel with the disposi- tions of mankind, a more extensive pre- valency could not have been reasonably anticipated. Man is summoned by the Gospel to do violence to those corrupt and vicious in- clinations, which make a part of his un- alienable birthright ; to emancipate him- self from the direction of those passions which appear the very principles of his existence, and supply the animation of the heart with a tide of hoher impulses and more purified affections ; to sacrifice the urgent claims of selfishness to the gratification of an uncontaminated bene- volence ; to exalt himself to a higher rank in the order of the creation ; to cast aside TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 5T every low and animal propensity, and live spiritually for the service of his God ; to disdain the human properties of his being, and vindicate to himself a more intimate participation of the angelic na- ture.— This is a task that requires of us no ordinary efforts. Its accomplishment demands the constant and undivided ex- ertion of those faculties with which the Almighty has so pre-eminently endowed us, and is opposed by the fascinations of the earth, by the temptations of Satan, by the incitements of passion, and by the persuasions of the senses. No induce- ments inferior to those which are pre- sented as the object of religious hope, in the unimaginable beatitude of the elect, would arouse the indolence of the heart to attempt its execution ; neither could any assistances, inferior to those which are communicated by the graces of the SS CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL Holy Spirit, fortify the infirmity of the heart in perfecting its achievement. — If the majority, therefore, should follow the direction of their nature, and cling to earth, rather than aspire to heaven, we may lament their blindness ; but it can afford no just occasion of astonishment ; for we have seen them, with a similar improvidence, squander away the re- spectability of their manhood, and the reverence of their age, for the turbulent vices of their youth ; and barter health for ignominy, and wisdom for indolence. — If others vacillate between the services of God and Mammon, and are betrayed into all the inconsistencies of a wavering faith, which is allowed to exercise an in- termittent and casual control over the affections of a worldly heart ; this inco- herency of practice with profession is no more than might be expected from the TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 59 opposition of powerful motives, each coun- teracting the influence of the other, or, from time to time, acquiring a transient superiority from the co-operation of ex- traneous circumstances : — and, if a less imperfect and a less fluctuating ascend- ency be yielded to the faith by a few only of the more devout disciples of the Sa- viour, this is as much as, with any rea- sonable confidence, could have been ex- pected from the present conditions of our existence, and the violent elements that are mingled in the constitution of our being. But that it does possess this effi- cacy in peculiar instances no one can have the temerity to dispute. — No one can retrace the lives of such men as Taylor, or Wilson, or Fenelon, or Hooker; — no one can read of the indefatigable benevolence of such men as Vincent de Paul, or Howard, or Bernard Gilpin, or 60 CHRISTIAN OriNlONS ESSENTIAL Henry Martyn ; — no one can have wit- nessed the incredible exertions of her active piety, v^ho, disdaining the repulsive terrors of the prison-house, has uttered the effectual exhortations to repentance, and delivered the glad tidings of redemp- tion amid the darkest haunts of spiritual despair ; — no one can meditate on these instances of exalted faith without acknow- ledging that religion is an instrument of very powerful and important operation over those by whom it is seriously and fervently embraced. — " To assert that it is useless,'' says Montesquieu, " because it is not universally effective, were as ab- surd as to argue against the necessity of human laws on the plea of their frequent violation*:" and it was very justly ar- gued by Rousseau, that the transgres- sions of the nominal disciples of Chris- * Esprit des IjoIx, liv. xxiv. c. 2. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 61 tianity " do not prove that religion is su- perfluous, but that very few persons are religious*." But never let it be forgotten, that when we speak of the limited operation of the Gospel, we speak with reference to the vastness of the instrument, and the ex- tent of its capacities. Its effects are, in fact, incalculably great. It acts very perceptibly upon those who apostatize from the faith, or who subscribe and yet appear to sit most loosely by their pro- fession. They dare not greatly derogate from the example of the more worthy members of society. They will strive to imitate the virtues which conciliate po- pular approbation. That cold belief, which is sufficient to justify the condemnation of its possessors, but is deficient in the vitality that may preserve them, acts as * Emile, torn. iii. p. 199. 62 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL a barrier against many vices to which they are but lightly tempted ; and when the first ardour of a passion has been ex- hausted in fruition, it mingles with less sacred arguments to persuade the aban- donment of its excesses. There is every variety of belief from the faintest suspicion to the most inflexible assurance of the truth ; and each individual will be obe- dient to the precepts of his religion, in proportion to his reliance on its certainty. As the virtues of the sceptic may be at- tributed to some unextirpated impressions of faith, so the vices of the Christian may be attributed to some occasional emotions of scepticism ; and for that dis- trust and its attendant immoralities he is presented, by the teachers of infidelity, with both the instruction and the prece- dent.— " It were a sad fallacy," says Necker, " to represent the general decay TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. G3 of the spirit of religion as an evidence that that spirit has but little influence upon human conduct. Rather ought we to remark how efficacious that power must be, which, even in the abatement of its force, forms so indispensable an accessary to the maintenance of public order ! — Well should we be warranted in exclaiming : What would not the whole be worth, if the part be thus excellent in its advantages*." * " Onauroit tort ^galement de nous presenter I'affoiblisse- ment g^n^ral de I'esprit religieux comme une preuve que cet esprit a, de nos jours, tr^s-peu d'influence sur la morale ; il faudroit plutfit remarquer combien ne doit pas ^tre efficace une puissance qui, dans la degradation m^me de ses forces est encore suffisante pour concourir au maiutien de I'ordre public ; on seroit autorise a dire : que ne vaut pas le tout, si Ton re^oittant d'avaotage d'une simple partie?" — De V Im- portance des Opinions Religieuses, par M. Necker. 64 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL Chapter I. Sect. VII. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL TO THE HAPPINESS OF DOMESTIC LIFE. On a survey of the precepts and the in- stitutions which have been consecrated by the diffusion of the Gospel, and on a comparison of the advantages which they have severally communicated to the rege- nerated nations of the earth, it might be difficult to particularize any single object, for the possession of which the gratitude of man is more pecuHarly due. But if there be any one of the lessons of the divine intelligence which has more fa- vourably operated than another to ame- liorate the condition of the social world, TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 65 and to promote and to confirm its happi- ness, it is that which has restored the legitimate equaHty of the sexes, vindi- cated the weakness of woman from the tyranny of man, and revived one of the first original laws of our Creator, by insisting on the inviolable sanctity of the marriage-bond. By rendering every violation of the nuptial tie obnoxious to the judgment of the Almighty ; by denying to his dis- ciples all possibility of a divided union ; by suppressing every facility of divorce; by casting his injunctions even on the vagrancy of the desires — on the wander- ing eye and the licentious inclination — the Messiah has displayed his consummate knowledge of the properties of that heart, into which himself had breathed the spirit of existence. He has cut away from the human soul the vain emotions, and the VOL. II. F 66 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL exhausting exuberances of passion, that it may bear the profitable fruit of the affections*. He has dispossessed the habitations of his disciples of the inflic- tions of those evil spirits that exercise a violent dominion in the dwellings of the ungodly. He has emancipated woman from the oppression of distrust and the apprehensions of desertion. He has de- livered man from the agitations of jea- lousy, and afforded him, with the secu- rity of his tenderest interests, that calm of mind and complacency of heart, which is most favourable to the prosecution of enterprise, the advancement of intellect, and the cultivation of virtue. He has concentrated the affections, that they might become the sacred and enduring * <* The heart of man naturally submits to necessity, and soon loses an inclination when there appears an absolute im- possibility of gratifying it." — Hume's Essay on Polygamy and Divorce. :rO THK HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 67 motives to exertion. He has converted those very desires into instruments of strength, which, in their original state of turbulence and mutability, act as the im- pediments to perseverance, and prove the unprofitable channels by w^hich the ener- gies of the soul are wasted and dispersed. — And while, by thus insisting on their in- separable union, the Messiah has wrought for the happiness of the parents, he has prepared an asylum for the reception of the infant, and secured to him the permanent support of the authors of his being, which had otherwise been as precarious as the caprice, and as frail as the corruption of their nature. A home is thus created for the child, where his wants are the claims for tenderness, and his weakness is the guarantee fo ' protection ; where every error is leniently rebuked, every little merit partially regarded, every light at- F 3 68 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL tainment uninvidiously approved ; where every early sorrow finds the ready sym- pathy of a sister's tears, and every school- boy wrong is answered from some elder brother's arm with the immediate redress ; where the heart, educated at the foot of the afiections, is refined by the intercourse of female gentleness, and fortified by the example of the manly virtues ; where in the centre of relatives and friends the youth grows up beneath the cheering in- fluence of those domestic charities, which, co-existent with the dawn of being, create his safety and his happiness on earth, and, imperishable as the immortal spirit, appear to promise in the re-union beyond the grave no inferior part of the beatitude of heaven. That the perfect developement of those invaluable afiections, which unite to form the happiness of the Christian's home, is TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 69 unattainable under any combinations of society which do not rigorously insist on the inviolability of the marriage-vow, may be demonstrated by the experience of those nations in which the permission of polygamy, or the facility of divorce, has allowed a scope to the licentiousness of passion. Public morals have never been attainted by either of these vices but the destruction of domestic happiness has been the invariable result. Wherever polygamy maintains, the de- gradation of the female sex must neces- sarily ensue. The husband becomes ele- vated into the master and the tyrant. In the multiplicity of objects all the attri- butes of love are lost, except its watch- fulness and its suspicion. The mingled and the countless progeny of many mo- thers are mutually severed by the opposi- tion of their rival parents. Brethren are more exasperated against each other by 70 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL maternal jealousies,than they are united by the blood of their common father: — while that lordly sire, disdaining his paternal duties, abandons his promiscuous offspring to the care of slaves and mercenaries, and considers all the offices of his divided tenderness sufficiently performed when he has once stored his memory with the cata- logue of their names*. If these are the miserable consequences of permitting a participation of the mar- riage-bed, the other mode of violation by which the nuptial institution is opposed — the allowing the possibility of capricious and voluntary divorce — is, perhaps, even more destructive to the existence of the do- mestic affections. It kills where the other only wounds. It concludes in the extirpa^ tion of the rite. It tends to eradicate all * " Barbarism appears from reason as well as experience to be the inseparable attendant of polygamy." — Hume's Essai/ on Polygamy and Divorce. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 71 family connexion. " On this point," says Hume, " no one will pretend to refuse the testimony of experience. At the time when divorces were most frequent among the Romans, marriages were most rare ; and Augustus was obliged, by penal laws, to force men of fashion into the marriage state : — a circumstance which is scarcely to be found in any other age or nation*." But if there be no other basis on which the fair fabric of our domestic happiness can be raised than that of the unity and the sacredness of the nuptial bond, it may also be asserted, on the authority of the same indisputable experience, that there is no other protection by which the institution can be maintained thus holy and entire, but by its alliance with the sanctions of religion. Human law alone is insufficient to esta- * Hume's Essay on Polygamy and Divorce. 72 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL blish and to sustain the purity and the durability of marriage. The weakness of all that mere legal ordinances could effect has already been demonstrated by the ignominy of a defeat. That con- stancy and integrity of wedded love, which is consecrated by the injunctions of the Gospel, was also meditated by the wise severity of the ancient laws of Rome. The wonderful harmony which this inseparable union of interests pro- duced between married persons, " while each of them considered the inevitable necessity by which they were linked to- gether, and abandoned all prospect of any other choice or estabhshment," is re- corded by the eulogies of Dionysius the historian* ; and, for the first five hundred years of the Republic, while the cove- ♦ Lib. ii., quoted by Hume in the £ssa^ on Polygamy and Divorce, TO THE HAPPINESS 01' SOCIETY. T3 nant was hallowed to the consciences of either party by their faith in the exist- ence of the deities, who were invoked to ratify the engagement, the institution was maintained without injury or reproach. But the rite no sooner was deprived of its religious confirmation, by the failure of so salutary a superstition, than the arm of legislation became affected with a sympathetic debility. Its nerves appeared shrunk and withered, and its forces para- lyzed. The feeble instrument, supported as it was by the recollections of past be- nefits, was unable to contend against the impetuous desires of the heart. Every barrier it interposed was insidiously un- dermined, or violently overthrown. The potency of its ordinances became inva- lidated by the corruption of the manners of the people ; and all its faint and dying efforts to render itself heard were 74 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL drowned amid the clamour of their pas- sions. The same enemies, which in ancient Rome were so unhappily, but so success- fully, exerted to procure the revocation of those valuable ordinances that give birth to the tranquilHty and the happi- ness of families, are constantly operating among ourselves. They still retain all the vigour and the intemperance of youth, and have acquired nothing in the lapse of ages but inveterate pertinacity of error. Experience of evil or of good is equally addressed to them in vain. They are limited in their scope of vision, and are conscious of no objects that lie beyond the narrow range of their circumspection. — The passions, without any recollection of the past, or providence for the future, still persevere in their unremitting enmity against the sacred rigour of the marriage- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 75 tie; they are continually endeavouring to desecrate its vows, to extenuate its respect, and to defeat its influence. The validity and force of that holy institution, in which the existence of all our domestic happiness is involved, is wholly depend- ant on the Gospel. It will prevail or fall with the ascendency or the depression of the faith. It has no stabihty inde- pendent of its religious associations ; and the sentiments, the opinions, and the rea- sonings, of mankind have never inter- fered with the divine appointment, but with an intent of mitigating the strictness of its conditions, and of opening a breach for the admission of licentiousness. The arguments of the world, in this respect, have been so powerfully supported by the silent eloquence of our corruption, that even the professed disciples of the Saviour have begun to doubt the letter, 76 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL and to trifle with the sanctity, of the Gos- pel institution. — The Almighty, studious of the welfare of his creatures, has de- signed, that a powerful, but not an irre- sistible, solicitation of nature should urge every individual to the formation of those sacred ties, which, by connecting us with objects of tender and increasing interest, and placing us in the centre of undoubt- ing and confident affections, seem to pro- mise to us the brightest prospects of hap- piness on earth. The desires, reformed and regulated by the sense of religious duty, were designed to operate on the enthusiasm of youth as the springs of enterprise and the motives to honourable perseverance. Love, looking to marriage as its end, was intended to concentrate the ardours, and give direction to the energies, of the young ; and — while it refined the soul by the exercise of self- TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 77 denial and of constancy—- to stimulate the faculties to continued and diligent occu- pation. The hope of securing that cer- tain place and independence in society, which might allow the engagements of affection to be ratified, was calculated to counteract the thoughtless prodigality of vice, and engender prudence in the heart, which was already consecrated to the generous virtues by the very nature of its motives and attachments. To a people rigorously and conscientiously ex- isting according to the purity of the Gos- pel, those tendencies which now conduce, in the most important period of human life, to the waste and ruin of the health, the faculties, the sentiments and the affections, would constitute the most effectual instruments in inducing an early and virtuous stability of cha- racter.— Marriage would be the impulse 78 CHRTSTIAK OPINIONS ESSENTIAL of exertion to their youth — the happiness of their manhood — the safety and con- solation of their dedine. These pur- poses we have attempted to reverse by the immunities which are permitted to the dawning passions, and by the seduc- tions which are suffered to address them. In the stronger sex chastity has been denounced as an antiquated and exploded virtue. The very children of our public schools would conceal their purity as a crime, and blush at the affectionate praise which named it among their meritorious qualities, as at some egregious and scandalous imputation. The desires are forced into a precose maturity by licen- tious books and conversations, by bad precedents and the contagious vicinity of guilt; they are turned from their good and legitimate purposes by the facilities afforded to their forbidden gratification ; TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 79 they are palliated by high examples and authorities ; and they are extenuated and recommended by the maxims of those who represent the licentious vices as ne- cessities of nature, and the consequences of an inherent passion which is too im- perious to be controlled by the visionary restraints of morals. Under the influ- ence of such principles the young are withdrawn from the solid happiness of life. They are seduced from their per- manent good by the very counsellors who appear most solicitous of their ease. No enduring attachments are formed. The heart dissipates in rapid and inimitable change. The purposes of Providence are thwarted. While loose and unhallowed habits are acquired by the eye and the imagination, which, when some arguments of a selfish and ignominious expediency shall, at length, persuade the voluptuary 80 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL to connect himself in more permanent en- gagements, render him incapable of per- forming the obligations he has assumed, and with which he has invoked his God to witness his compliance. Having thus listened to the seductions of passion in their early years, and allowed, in opposition to the word of the Almighty, a license of inclination which it is afterwards found difficult to abridge, mankind have had recourse to another at- tempt to prevaricate with the restraints of the Gospel, and have imagined a world of sophistry to defeat the benevolent pur- poses of the Redeemer. They would render the covenant unjust by imposing on the weaker party all the strictness of the ordinance, and permitting an un- limited impunity to the will and the trans- gressions of the stronger. According to the prevalent opinions of the world, a TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 81 kind of unchristian dispensation has been granted to the offences of the male adul- terer. It has been devised, — according to some system of comparative iniquity, in meditating on which the heart is pre- sented with the gentlest declivity to sin, and the most flattering unction to allay the painful sensibility of the conscience, — that conjugal infidelity is less criminal in man than woman : and the privileged and licensed party has allowed himself to dwell on this supposed inferiority, till the sin has at length appeared to be de- prived of its enormity, and to shew itself as insignificant and venial, and rather as a manly grace than as a moral deformity. To this error Johnson has uninten- tionally afforded the sanction of his vene- rable name. Speaking of the heinousness of adultery, he affirms, that " as confusion of progeny constitutes the essence of the VOL. II. G 82 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL crime, a woman who breaks the marriage- vow is much more criminal than a man who does it*." — This sentence of our great moralist is very frequently alluded to, in a manner which he never could have anticipated. It seems to be ima- gined that he designed to extenuate the offence. But this is a gross misappre- hension. The observation of the author of the Rambler implies no more than that the vice, which is so deadly in the man, acquires a deeper taint in the trans- gressions of the female. — But even of this opinion let us " sift the verity." Is the proposition true, which the corruption of the heart has shewn itself as anxious to substantiate on the authority of its passions, as if the inferiority of the guilt was an apology for the commission of the offence ? — In the first place, as Christians, * Bo swell's Life. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 83 all disputes on the proportionate degrees and the comparative magnitude of crimes to us are irrelevant and vairi. Our duty lies in the narrov^ compass of obedience to the laws of the Almighty; and, beyond the knowledge of his will, we can have no interest to induce inquiry. Now, if we derive our sense of virtue and of vice from the uncorrupted letter of revelation, we are informed, that with God there is no such distinction of persons. — If we look to " the essence of the crime," we shall not find that it consists in " confu- sion of progeny," but in the breach of conjugal confidence, which, if once im- paired, can never be restored to its ori- ginal integrity ; in the wrong committed against the tenderest and most suscep- tible affections ; in the infliction of a wound, which bleeds inwardly, and mur- ders sleep and peace, and in comparison G 2 84 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL to which death itself were a mercy and a deUverance ; — and more than all, " the essence of the crime" consists in the se- vering of a holy contract, which was made at the altar of the Deity, which was so- lemnly witnessed in his presence, and of which the violation will indiscriminately stamp either of the offenders with the guilt of perjury*. — Again, if we look to * Payley says, in his Moral Philosophy, vol. i^ p. 304, that the vow by which married persons mutually engage their fide- lity approaches the nature of an oath. — An oath " is a promise corroborated by the attestation of the Divine Being." And if the marriage-vow fall not under this definition, I do not understand what does. The terms of the vow are " wit- nessed before God and the congregation." — The Almighty is therefore as much invoked as the invisible and guardian wit- ness to the bond of mutual constancy, in a religious sense, as any of the visible witnesses are in an earthly sense. That nothing may be wanting to give solemnity to the contract, it is finally pronounced as covenanted between the parties " in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." — Do not these things constitute " a promise corroborated by the attestation of the Divine Being?" — As to " approaching the nature of an oath," it is impossible for such a half-con- secration to exist. The Deity either is not, or is, called upon TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 85 the consequences of the sin, in what respect is the crime of the male culprit really less pernicious than that of the female ? — I will not dwell upon the cold- ness, the silence, the abstraction, which mark the adulterer in the bosom of his family ; his eagerness to quit, his tardi- ness in returning to them ; his severe re- proofs and constrained approval ; his fret- ful rejection of those gentle offices of duty and attention, by which his wife and children endeavour to conciliate his un- kindness, and reconcile the stranger to his home ; his indifference to their amuse- ments, their occupations, their studies to attest the promise. — There can be no medium. — If he is not, the promise is a simple promise ; its conditions binding to the conscience, its violation obnoxious to the guilt of falsehood and deceit. — If the Deity is called upon to attest the promise, it then acquires the more sacred character of an oath, and idly to engage in it is blasphemous profanation, and its violation is perjury— which is the guilt of every ofTence against the marriage covenant. 86 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL and their improvement, which betrays the characters of a mind dissatisfied with itself, and agonizes the hearts of those who are dependant on his affections, by the afflicting consciousness that his soul is continually intent on some dearer and clandestine interests, and that they are irrelevant to his happiness. — " Chastity in wedlock," says Bishop Taylor, '' is the security of love, and preserves all the mysteriousness like the secrets of a temple. Under this lock is deposited the security of families, the union of affec- tions, the repairer of accidental breaches. That contract, that is intended to be for ever, is yet dissolved and broken by the violation of this ; nothing but death can do so much evil to the holy rites of mar- riage as unchastity and breach of faith can*." — But, without referring to the * Sermon on the Marriage Ring. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 87 wretchedness that the aduherer inflicts on those of his own house for the proof of the enormity of his offence, it must be remembered, that if the institution is worthy of being preserved at all, it must be preserved entire. — Domestic happi- ness does not depend on the virtue of one, but on the virtue of both the pa- rents ; — and the extension of the evil principle, which is, at the present day, so unblushingly acknowledged, ultimately tends to the dissolution of the rite itself. Unless the female sex be again degraded to that subordinate condition, from which they have happily been raised by the operation of the Gospel, they will never consent to become the parties in so un- equal and disproportionate a contract. They will not believe that a transgression which is venial in the husband, can be deeply guilty in the wife. They will be 88 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL seduced by example more than they will be restrained by the faint persuasions of a duty, which they perceive on one side to be violated without reproach. — It will be in vain to dwell upon the inferiority of the husband's crime. — A crime it is ; and the virtuous will either separate them- selves from all communion with the sinful, or will eventually become depraved by the association. — The heart, agitated by conflicting passions, stung by the wrongs of its affection, hardened by the bitter consciousness of desertion, and insulted by the preference of another, will not pause to investigate the nice degrees, and calculate the minute distinctions of offences that are apparently the same.- — And this pretended inferiority of guilt, in what does it consist ? — Why is the trans- gression of the adulterer to be considered as a light transgression? — With respect TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 89 to the confusion of progeny, on which such an important stress is laid by every unchristian moralist, it is one of those lesser accidents which hardly deserves consideration from any man who contem- plates the offence in its severer charac- ters ; who does not prize the temporalities of the earth before the blessings of eter- nity ; or estimate the misappropriation of an inheritance before loyalty in love, and chastity of mind, and purity of heart, and the reverence of a solemn oath, and the favour of Almighty God. — But, in this venial and light transgression of the adul- terer, it must not be forgotten, that if the associate of his sin be wedded, his crime is also followed by the confusion of progeny ;— if otherwise, — is fornica- tion, with all its attendant consequences of attainture to the heart and the imagina- tion; with the evil precedent that it af- 90 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL fords to the younger and less responsible members of society ; with the few years of wicked and luxurious indolence, suc- ceeded by an age of disease and poverty and shame, which it entails upon its vic- tims, to be ranked upon the catalogue of light transgressions? — Fornication may be aggravated by the darker iniquity of seduction. And is seduction a light trans- gression? Is it a light transgression to corrupt innocence to guilt, and modesty to shame — to blast a life and destroy an immortality ? Is it a light transgression to become the father of a child, who, if he be not abandoned by his unnatural parent to track the deteriorating progress of his mother's wretchedness, and derive subsistence from the wages of her guilt, must, under the most prosperous circum- stances, be born to infamy, and live the subject of reproach, and be destined TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 91 to experience all those torturing ills of bastardy, which will never be estimated among the inferior calamities by those who remember the pathetic and the elo- quent lamentations of Savage. — In op- position to these malignant consequences, it were difficult to discover any argu- ments that might substantiate the adul- terer's pretensions to impunity. — Man may challenge to himself an exclusive privilege of guilt, while he endeavours to enclose the female within the severest confines of virtue. It is natural that these immunities should be claimed; that the strong should be impatient of a compact, which places him on an equality with the weak ; that he should avail himself of every opportunity of establishing the ty- rannous ascendency of force ; that in the plenitude of superior power, he should exclaim, as Judah did, when he received 92 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL intelligence of the incontinency of Tamar : " Bring her forth, and let her be burnt* ;" and behold ! — ^he is himself the occasion and the partner of her iniquity. — But, in fact, if any extenuation could be admitted for the perpetration of a crime, which strikes so deeply at the foundation of our social and domestic happiness, that lenity, as in every other instance, is to be conceded to the sex of those whom the laws of God and nature have addressed to our tenderness, and submitted to our protection f. "In the * Genesis, ch. xxxviii. ver. 24. t Dcins ce siecle meme, an uombre des forfaits Je compte d'un Ipoux la volage inconstance. Pour les femmes enfin j'aurais plus d'indulgence. Par le sentiment seul leure jours sont agites ; Consacrant a lui seul toutes leurs facult^s, L'liistoire de leur cceur est celle de leur vie. Mais les horames, vou6s a servir leur patrie, De niille soins divers s'occupant tour-a-tour, Peuvent plus ais6ment s'arracher a I'amour. Madame de Stael, Sophie^ TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 93 grace of chastity, it is fit that the wisdom and severity of man should hold forth a pure taper, that his wife may, by seeing the beauties and transparencies of that crystal, dress her mind and her body by the light of so pure reflections ; it is cer- tain he will expect it from the modesty and retirement, from the passive nature and colder temper, from the humility and fear, from the honour and love of his wife, that she be pure as the eye of heaven : and, therefore, it is but reason that the wisdom and nobleness, the love and confidence, the strength and severity, of the man should be as holy and certain in this grace, as he is a severe exactor of it at her hands, who can more easily be tempted by another, and less by herself*." The indulgence, which is now chal- lenged for the nuptial infidelities of man, * Bishop Taylor's Marriage Ring. 94 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL even by many of the nominal disciples of the Saviour, is unwarranted both by reason and revelation ; and if the pas- sions, in opposition to revelation and to reason, have instructed the Christian in an indulgent sophistry which would dis- sipate the very spirit and efficacy of the Messiah's institution, we cannot be sur- prised that its severity should appear pe- culiarly obnoxious to the champions of infidelity. They have directed their most vigorous efforts to destroy this great pal- ladium of our happiness. This is in the natural course of human action. — When men have renounced their hopes of immortality, sensuality becomes their sovereign good, and they are impatient of every restraint that limits their indul- gence.— Hume has illustrated the advan- tages which result from a strict exclusion of all polygamy and divorce in an essay. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 95 which is a perfect eulogy on the Chris- tian ordinance ; but he has only dwelt upon it that he might manifest himself the advocate of human passion in oppo- sition to the convictions of his reason. He has first proved the need of inviolable constancy in marriage, and then deserted his conclusions to countenance the disse- mination of principles which would an- nihilate all the sacredness — all the dig- nity— all the confidence of wedlock ; which would destroy all the reality, and leave no residue but the empty semblance of the institution. He would instruct us to believe, that " adultery is but a slight of- fence when known, and no offence at all when secret ; that it must be practised if man would obtain all the advantages of life ; that if generally practised it would in time cease to be scandalous ; and that, if practised secretly and frequently, it 96 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL would, by degrees, come to be thought no crime at all*." — The spirit of unbe- lief, since the days of Hume, has ac- quired an audacity in the avowal of its sentiments. It no longer prevaricates with the virtues of the Gospel, or feels it necessary to continue its equivocating tone of insinuated censure and doubtful approbation. A younger and more intre- pid adventurer in the fields of ethical speculation, has advanced yet farther the standard of demoralizing principle, and stigmatizing the sacredness of marriage as the origin of depravity f, would annul * Bishop Horne's Letter to Adam Smithf p. 33. t As a specimen of the ravings of infidelity take the fol- lowing extract from the Notes to Queen Mah. — " Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to na- tural temperance even than intellectual sensuality : it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half the human race to misery, that some few may monopo- lize according to law." — It is said that the notes of this volume were not written by the author of the poem. They have been attributed to a younger and less experienced hand, whose TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 97 all the reciprocal obligations of husband and of wife ; all that confidence which na- turally subsists between those whose in- terests are inseparably united ; all secu- rity of permanent protection and support for children ; all the peace and holiness and serenity of home, and erase the vices of seduction and adultery from the moral code, to merge the gracefulness of virgin purity, and the matron dignity of wife and mother in the polluted mass of ge- neral prostitution. Not content with these attacks on one of name I will not blast with so disgraceful an accusation on so vague an authority as that of popular report. It is indeed me- lancholy to reflect, that two persons of such talents, as these authors manifest, should be so blind to every prospect of their eternal happiness or misery. But it is not wholly unin- structive to ourselves, to survey how widely from the course of right even the most gifted intellects may wander on the wide sea of speculation, when they have once been tempted to cast aside that helm and compass of the mind, which the Almighty has so mercifully conceded to us in the lessons of revelation. VOL. II. H 98 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the most benevolent of the Ahnighty's or- dinances, infidelity has meditated another infringement upon the sanctity of our do- mestic morals, and the happiness by which they are accompanied. — In our homes, at least, Christianity had prepared for us an asylum where the storms of life were silenced ; where we were surrounded by sanctified affections; where the names of father and of mother were hallowed to our souls as the appellatives of sacred mi- nisters, by whose means the providence of God had distributed to our childhood the blessings of love, of instruction, and of sup- port; where the names of brother and of sister were answered in the heart by affec- tions purified of all the solicitudes of rival- ship, and all the agitations of passion ; where, flowing in their lawful course, and within the bounds prescribed by the Al- mighty, the quick emotions of our nature TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 99 adorned and fertilized the hours which, in other scenes and among less holy associ- ations, they have been allowed to contami- nate and to disturb. — Ungodliness would invade these precincts ; it has grown en- vious of the religious serenity of our homes ; it cannot bear that there should be any intercourse on earth independent of the thraldom, and undisturbed by the turmoil, of the passions ; and it has begun to level its attacks against those sacred principles of domestic purity, which religion has inspired, and which, inculcated with the opening of our reason, appear to us as the involuntary instincts and the original impressions of our nature. — The new school of unbelief has endeavoured, by palliating the enormity of incestuous guilt, to deprive mankind of every pure affection, and lay open the liberal inter- course of families to the suspicions of the H2 100 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL credulous, and the insinuations of the base. — Here guilt was warded off, and our happiness, which ever must be de- pendant on our virtue, was secured by a defence far firmer than any of mere mor- tal temperament could possibly afford. — Too secure against every open hostility, the enemies have attempted to insinuate the vice by stratagem into the sanctuary. They have not directed their attacks in the shape of argument, which might look repulsive to the many, but have cast about the bad instruction the attractive witcheries of song, that it might obtain a more universal access and a less dis- criminating reception. It was deemed, perhaps, that the barriers of our domes- tic virtue might fall before the hymnings of the host of Satan, as the walls of the unrighteous city fell before the trumpet- blasts of the army of the Lord. — There TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 101 is a story of Italian guilt, over which Dante has cast the deepest shadows of his genius. It was a tale of horror, and the Christian poet clothed it in all its ap- propriate circumstances of darkness and of gloom. An infidel author of our days has addressed himself to the same argu- ment^. It appeared susceptible of being * Mr. Leigh Hunt. The allusion here is to the story of Rimini. In the Preface to another volume of poems, this author informs us of the object which he had in view in un- dertaking his longer poem. — In the 17th page of Foliage he says, " My creed, I confess, is not only hopeful but cheer- ful, and I would pick the best parts out of other creeds too, sure that I was right in what I believed or chose to fancy, in proportion as I did honour to the beauty of nature, and spread cheerfulness and a sense of justice among my fellow- creatures. It was in this spirit, though with a more serious aspect, that I wrote the story of Rimini — the moral of which is not as some would wish it to be — unjust, bigoted, and unhappy, sacrificing virtue under pretence of supporting it ; but tolerant and reconciling, recommending men's minds to the consideration of first causes in misfortune, and to see the danger of confounding forms with justice, of setting autho- rized selfishness above the most natural impulses, and making guilt by mistaking innocence" 102 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL made the vehicle of moral corruption. He has decked it in light words, and arrayed the sin in roses, and demanded our sympathy for the transgressors. — He has publicly avowed that the latent object of his work was to extenuate an inces- tuous adultery with a brother's wife. — Our modern infidel literature has exhi- bited another and a more daring inno- vator in the schools of ethical impurity^, * Mr, Byshe Shelley. — " In the personal conduct of my hero and heroine, there is one circumstance, which was intended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. It was my object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions, on which established institutions depend. I have appealed therefore to the most universal of all feel- ings, and have endeavoured to strengthen the moral sense, by forbidding it to waste its energies in seeking to avoid actions which are only crimes of convention. It is because there is so great a multitude of artificial vices that there are so few real virtues." — Preface to Laon and Cynthia, p. 21.— Tlie new virtue which this discoverer ui the regions of moral philosophy is desirous of promulgating is the incestuous union of a brother and sister. The author adds, in a note upon this passage, ** The sentiments connected with, and charac- teristic of, this circumstance, have no personal reference to TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 103 There is one who, inspired with the ter- rible ambition of philosophizing away all the healthy virtues of existence, has begun to send abroad his visions of what he would persuade us to regard the moral regeneration of the world ; and, as the first and paramount discovery of his un- godly speculations, he would annihilate those mysterious sentiments of kindred blood, which unite and sever the children of one family. He would inculcate among the institutes of antichrist an emancipa- tion on which it were terrible to dwell, and which, among its lighter evils, would leave the female without a single unsus- picious protector of the stronger sex, and make a brother's house no longer an ho- the writer." — It is rather extraordinary to fiud the inventor of a new system of ethics, thus apprehensive of sharing the imputation of a conduct which he would recommend to the practice of his countrymen. 104 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL nourable asylum for an orphan sister*. — In the heathen world the highest honours ever were attributed to those who had prescribed a limit to the savage liberty of nature, and confined its impetuosities within the bounds of legal institution. The disciples of unbelief appear to have abandoned this sentiment of admiration, and to imagine that the praise and re- verence of manliind shall be conciliated by tearing down every salutary barrier, and re-delivering the earth to the exter- minating subjection of the passions. — Their research only seems to be directed to the invention of new methods of de- basement ; and, in the lowest deep, they appear to exercise themselves in no other occupation than the search after some * Are some passages in Lord Byron's Cain designed to support the incestuous theory of his friend Mr. Shelley ? — Or, if they have not that puipose, what is it that they do imply? TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 105 lower deep, which they may reveal to our shuddering inspection. It used to be objected to the enemies of religion, that " while every one was acquainted with what they wished to overthrow, no man could tell what they desired to establish as its substitute*." — They have most egregiously vindicated themselves from this reproach. We have received a communication of their pur- poses. Having outraged our religious reverence by their impious doubts of the truth of the Redeemer : — shaving accus- tomed our most sacred feelings to tolerate the defamation of their best dependencies, they have possibly conceived, that, after this gradual and cautious preparation, we might at length endure to meditate the precepts by which they would supersede ^ Deism Revealed, vol. i. p. 41. 106 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the Decalogue, and reverse the purity of the Sermon on the Mount. Lucretius, in the bitter spirit of his ma- terial philosophy, made it a reproach to the idolatrous superstition of his country, that it had instigated one dark act in the immolation of a daughter by a father's hand. Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum *. This was evil: — but religion in its errors: — most appalling as may be the horrible exactions of blood and terror which they demand ; most mournful as may be the blight with which they chill and wither the better impulses of the soul : — yet religion, in all the wildness of belief, with which the imagination has corrupted the principles of eternal truth, and depraved the conception of the Deity, has never claimed so inordinate a sacri- fice, as that which has been premedi- * De Rerum Naiurd, Book I. 1. 81—102. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 107 tated for itself by the genius of atheism. Superstition may have bound the living wife to the husband's funeral pile—it may have bade the parent offer up his child to appease the anger of an offended Deity, and " give the fruit of his body for the sin of his soul." — But if these things were presented to the remorseless idol, it was because these things were dearest. Atheism has contemplated a more egre- gious sacrifice. — It refuses the solitary vic- tim, and lays its claim upon the fond affections by which the victim appeared hallowed for the altar. It does not crave the object of our love, but would exhaust the sources of all love. It requires as its appropriate offering the severing of every sacred tie, by which man is more closely knit with the inmates of his dwelling, that each individual may exist a forlorn, a friendless and an isolated being, and 108 christian' opinions essential feel himself alone amid the peopled soli- tudes of creation, a thing irrelevant to the providence of God, and abandoned by the benevolence of his kind. That such is the miserable state to which mankind would be reduced by the entire predominance of infidel opinions, is not a subject of mere visionary specu- lation.— The Deity has imposed upon us the salutary restrictions of his laws ; but the moment we cease to reverence those restrictions as divine, they will be over- borne by the impetuosity of the passions ; and the apostles of unbelief will furnish the deceitful arguments to palliate their violation. — France at this very hour pre- sents to us the page in which we may contemplate the demonstration of these truths. — The names of God and the Re- deemer are yet heard within her churches. The morals of the Gospel are still fami- TO THE HAPriNESS OF SOCIETY. 109 liar as a topic of discussion. From the influence of early prepossession they in- voluntarily have a certain action upon popular conduct. " The form of Godli- ness" is still retained in the national wor- ship, and " the power" is yet resident with a few. These things cannot exist without conferring something of their pu- rity to the apostate nation that contains them. AVhile the temple still remains there will be found a kind of safety in its precincts. But to the many Christianity is indifferent, neglected, or despised. — '* It intervenes in the occurrences of the world merely as an additional form in the more important transactions of social life : but it no longer bears to the unfor- tunate its consolations or its hopes. Its morality no longer directs the understand- ing through the straight and difficult passage of existence." — Such is the ac- 110 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL count which a modern French writer has presented to us of the spiritual corruption of his countrymen. He proceeds to de- tail the consequences. — " A chilling ego- tism has dried up all the springs of senti- ment. The domestic affections are ex- tinct. There is no longer any respect, or love, or authority, or reciprocal de- pendance. Every man lives for himself, and for himself alone. No one any longer enters into those valuable and wise connexions by which the present generation is united to the generations which are to come*." — To this dark por- * La religion n'intervient que comme im usage dans les actes les plus solennels de la vie ; elle n'apporte plus ses consolations et I'espdrance aux malheureux ; la morale reli- gieuse ne guide plus la raison dans le sentier 6troit et diflBcile de la vie : le froid ^goisme a dess^ch^, toutes les sources du sentiment ; il rCy a plus d^ affections domestiques, ni de respect, ni d'amour, ni d'autorite, ni de d^pendances reciproques, cliacun vit pour soi, personne ni forme de ces sages combi- naisons, qui liaient a la generation future les generations pr^- sentes.— From Dr. Esquirol, quoted in the Quarterly Re- view for December, i820. TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. Ill traiture let the few, gloomy, and tremen- dous traits of national character delivered by Mennais be added, and we have the proof — as far as experience can be proof — of the inseparable connexion that sub- sists between the domestic charities and the reverence of Christianity. " Domestic crimes, poisonings, parricides, the mur- der of husbands by their wives, and wives by their husbands, are almost as common as larcenies were wont to be*." Such is the miserable destiny, by which the chaste and purified affections, that mingle to complete the tranquillity of our homes, would wither and decay before the depopulating breath of infidelity. — They avoid the presence of ungodliness, as * Les crimes domestiques, les parricides, I'assassinat des femraes par leurs maris, des maris par leurs femmes, les em- poisonnemens, le suicide, sont d^venus presque aussi com. rauns que le simple vol I'etait autrefois. — Mennais sur la ReligioUf vol. ii. p. 20. lis CHRTSTTAK OPINIONS ESSENTIAL in the human heart the graces of the Holy Spirit are expelled by the invasion of the passions of the world. They are born with religion, and they perish with religion. They are indebted for their tenderness, their permanency, and their confidence, to those everlasting sanctions by which the marriage-covenant is puri- fied, and consecrated and confirmed. — Their extinction has always been com- mensurate with the prevalence of unbe- lief:— and oh! my God, — if thy Scrip- tures be not the emanations of eternal truth, and if there be no bourn beyond the grave, let the morals of the ungodly be ascendant, and emancipate the will from those hallowed and venerable restrictions by which the happiness of the Christian is originated and secured. If it be, indeed, decreed that the soul shall perish with the body, and the affections cease with TO THE HAPPINESS OF SOCIETY. 113 the pulsations of the heart, there is a kind of barbarous and degrading wisdom in the vagrant sensuality of the godless. The abolition of all mutual obligations to constancy, and all tenderness of kindred blood, is for the repose of perishable man. — It is as an act of self-defence that the infidel rends asunder the ties of parental, of filial, and fraternal, love ; it is for the preservation of his tranquillity on earth, that he is solicitous to sever every alliance the instant it is formed ; it is to secure to himself a portion of mitigated pain, that he endeavours to seal up the ave- nues of his breast against every senti- ment which may not be suddenly con- sumed in the fires of the passions, lest, by the familiarity of many years, by the companionship in pleasures that are past, by fond associations and by long remem- brances, by the acquired similarity of taste VOL. II. I 114 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL and feeling, by tenderness to pain and by watchfulness in sickness, by fidelity in sorrow and by sympathy with success, his soul should entertain too intimate and undivided an attachment ; and the object of his pure and his unalienable affection be regarded as the dearest benefit of an existence, which it ever more and more imbitters, by adding to the terrors of the grave the apprehensions of an eternal separation. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVTBUALS. 115 Chapter II. Sect. I. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS FROM THE TERMS OF HUMAN EXISTENCE. However the destinies of mankind may externally be varied, the difference is more in appearance than reality. On a more close and minute consideration, the various conditions of society are not found to be so partially allotted as the mind might at first be tempted to con- ceive. As long as we are supplied with the decent necessaries of life, it very little interests our personal enjoyment whether we are the inhabitants of the palace or the cottage. Those adorned and exag- I 2 116 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL gerated descriptions of the old pastoral poetry, which pretend that innocence of mind and tranquillity of heart are inse- parably connected with the unambitious occupations of the peasant, do not stray more widely from nature and from truth, than those invidious imaginations which imbitter so many moments of the poor man's life, by representing happiness as a necessary attendant on pre-eminence or wealth. Either fortune inherits its pecu- liar anxieties. The rich become satiated of their superfluities; the poor occa- sionally suffer from privations. The rich are weary of their indolence ; the poor of their labours. The rich are agitated by the restlessness of energies unemployed ; the poor are harassed by exertions that overcharge them. If the laborious lan- guish for the repose and the banquet of the affluent; the affluent pine under the TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 117 want of that strenuous action which is necessary to render the banquet and the repose delightful : — but with respect to the great mass of their days, neither can with much confidence pretend to any pecuHar exemptions from the calamities, or any exclusive admission to the felicities, of existence. There may be an outward distinction of the garments. The rich may cast an ermined robe about the sor- row which in the poor is open to every observation ; but this is, indeed, a value- less distinction.- — The constant tide of human happiness or misery is ebbing or flowing at the heart. There it is that every individual, in his human nature, participates in a common property of hopes and fears, of desires and regrets, of affections and disappointments ; and there it is, — as far as we are dependant on our own resources, — that the unfailing 118 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL principle is resident which will assert for every man his legitimate equality of care. But, while all are thus impartially con- demned, as fellow-sufferers under the tor- turing subjection of the passions, Chris- tianity affectionately advances to claim an emancipation for its disciples, to re- veal the nature of their connexion with the earth, to inform them of the real in- terests and the eternal import of their existence, and to confer upon them " the glorious liberty of the sons of God." Look down awhile upon that wide and beaten path-way of the world, on which such innumerable multitudes have arisen and contended, flourished and disap- peared. From the myriads who are wan- dering there — in the valley of the Shadow of Death— direct your view towards the infidel and the Christian. Survey them as they are mutually liable to the general TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 119 dispensations of Providence ; as they are moving in the same scenes, and con- versant with the same circumstances ; and observe with what a happy alchymy the votary of the Gospel can convert into accessions of joy and hope and consola- tion, those events which inspire the un- believer with sentiments of despondency and sorrow. To the infidel the very tenure by which life is held, affords a subject of conti- nually increasing discontent. Every mo- ment of more serious thought overcasts the spirit with the shadows of melancholy reflection. It is scarcely possible to con- ceive any state of torment more skilfully devised than that which this world must prove to those who are excluded from the prospects of immortality. If the most ingenious malevolence had presided at the creation of our race, and most curi- 120 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL ously contrived the gratification of its spleen, could it have invented any addi- tional aggravations to the wretchedness of its victim ? Could it have conceived any severer penalty than to provide him with the deep affections of the human heart, and multiply around him the ob- jects that might attach them ; — than to in- spire him v/ith the anxious forecast of the human mind, and bid him read upon the tombs of his companions, that a period is rapidly approaching, when all that is most exquisite and beloved shall become as superfluous to him as the trappings of his funeral, or the sun-beams that may repose upon his grave? The woes of Tantalus are but as the fabled emblems of the real sufferings of the unbeliever. — In his childhood and his early youth he becomes enamoured of an existence which is to him as TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 121 cheerful as the song of morning birds, and careless as his heart, and various as his young imagination ; but he has scarcely learnt to appreciate its benefits before he is awakened to the reflections that imbitter them. He is taught to love his being only that he may endure the miserable apprehensions of its decay. While the universe is beaming with de- light, and every sensation is alive to pleasure ; while every young attachment seems as imperishable as ardent ; while, in the spring-time of his being, the earth seems prodigal of its flowers, and every flower is redolent of sweets, considera- tion— like an evil angel coming-^suddenly envelopes the sunny scenes of nature in a noonday darkness, and casts a wither- ing blight upon every blossom that is so luxuriantly springing up beneath his feet. The dreary prospect of his decline is 122 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL perpetually present to his imagination. Every symptom of decay, the blanching of a hair, the waning of the purple light of youth, the traces of the lines of time upon his brow, are intimations that are observed with sorrow, for they empha- tically declare the transitory nature of those gifts in which, according to his limited estimation, all the advantages of life are centred. As his destiny is more favourably endowed, his apprehensions of its failure are increased. His path is beautifully adorned; but he knows no pleasurable emotion from the fair abun- dance of the present, for his heart is con- tinually oppressed by the anticipation of the dreary desert to which it must in- evitably tend. The shadows of approach- ing age are continually before him ; and they lengthen and deepen as the sun de- clines; and they cast their darkness over TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 123 all the space that intervenes. He has re- course to the relief of dissipation; and the very banquet to which he flies for a refuge against himself ; the intemperance by which he would overwhelm every im- portunate recollection of his end; the goblet, which he seeks to drown — the song, which he invokes to dissipate — the roses, which he would shower round him to banish from his mind the reflections on his decay, only operate as suggestions that insult, and as intimations that aggra- vate, his despondency. He cannot ex- clude the thought, that amid these things old age is insidiously advancing*. — He perceives in them the emblems of his perishable state ; and, in the failing zest of pleasure, in the wasting goblet, in the * Festinat enim decurrere velox Floscvilus angustae, miseraeque brevissima vitae Poitio, dam bibiniiis, dum serta, unguenta, puellas, Poscimus, obrepit uou intellecta senectus.— juvenal. 124 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL dying song, in the fading coronal, he looks with sadness on the images of his own deteriorating existence, and the me- morials of his own mortality. I am not guilty of any exaggeration in thus describing the spiritual wretched- ness which ever clings to the mind of the unbeliever; which, by oppressing the imagination, urges him to expel the ap- prehensions of the future in the tumult of sensuality ; and which still pursues him to the clamorous haunts of his de- bauchery with sentiments that alarm his riot. In every feature of the sketch I am warranted by the authority of the present and the past. Its truth is seen by the solicitude with which the idolizers of the world endeavour to conceal from others and themselves the natural encroachments of their years. It is heard in the tone of impatience and regret with which they TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 125 vent their sorrows over the departing endowments of their youth; and it is read, not only in the works of modern infidels, in the gloomy spirit of their poetry, and the sullen monotony of their discontented prose, but in the remains of a more venerable literature. Whatever is transmitted to us of the familiar feelings of the ancient Greeks, may, perhaps, be most correctly found in those brief observations upon human life, which are handed down to us in their serious epigrams. That portion of the Anthology, which is of a graver charac- ter, lays bare to our observation the mo- ral sense and the internal sentiments of enlightened and cultivated man, when he is uninformed of the eternal import of his being, and is aware of no other benefit in life than as it afibrds the means of sen- sual indulgence. These poems express 126 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the passing emotions of his heart and the reflections of his solitary hours ; and they are indebted for all their beauty to their tone of evident truth and unexaggerated simplicity. They are of various kinds, and treat of various subjects. With maxims of philosophy, and pathetic lamentations over the brevity of youth and the insecu- rity of life, and epitaphs for the good, the beautiful and the renowned, we are addressed by exhortations to sensuality, that would gather its provocatives from the vicinity of the tomb, and from among the corruptions of the dead. But all those which are of a moral cast are stampt with the same melancholy impression. They are universally of a desponding character. The cause of this undeviating sadness, is eloquently given by an author who has made a selection of their fairest specimens, and transmitted them to our TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 127 language with a taste and harmony more than commonly in unison with the grace of the originals. — " To those," says Bland*, " whose notions of a future state were perplexed, dark, and uncertain; whose belief in retribution was unsettled and wavering, and rather an object of speculation than a ground of hope or sa- tisfaction, this present life must have appeared the boundary of all human hopes and fears : and the very uncer- tainty of its duration, and the dark and miserable gloom which involved every thing beyond it, will of itself account for the continual complaints of the sad lot of humanity to be found in the ancient poets. These ideas followed them in solitude, and crept in upon their banquets ; and such are the remains of Mimnermus the poet of love and pleasure." — * Trariftlntion of the Greek A)ithology — Preface, p. 7. 128 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL Now as we rise from the reviving wave, Braid we our locks, my Prodice, with flowers ; Drarn we deep ])owls of wine, and wisely save From slow-paced care youth's transitory hours; For withering age upon our path attends, Joys drop by joys * ; — But if, in the absence of the hope of immortality, the earlier period of our residence on earth is saddened by the threatening aspect of the infirmities that accompany its conclusion, it must not therefore be supposed that the infidel, when that state of infelicity arrives, will find his affections weaned from life in proportion to the abstraction of its enjoy- ments. It is no uncommon error of the sensualist to conceive, that he should esteem it as a valuable privilege, after his faculties have become impaired and his favourite indulgencies less accessible, to be discharged of all that cheerless residue of privation and infirmity that ■X- Greek Anthology, p. 17. H, TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 129 must succeed. But, when such views are formed, the soul knows not how dearly it is attached to the mouldering tenement of clay that holds it. Life is loved, simply as life, long after all its perceptible ad- vantages have perished. The term in which man would be willing to depart, like the horizon, ever flies before him. In the most complicated ills that " age, ache, penury, or imprisonment, can lay on nature," the old still shew themselves unwilling to be deprived of that slow, weak and lingering remnant of existence, which in their youth they would have been so ready to resign. We know the saying which Seneca has reported of Mecsenas * , — " that life was always sweet, and that he should still desire its conti- nuance, though he had been broken upon * Seneca, epist. loi. — Debilem facito manii, debilem pede, Sfc. VOL. II. K 130 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the wheel, and should be at last con- demned to hang upon a gibbet." — The same results follow the same prin- ciples, at Rome or in Paris, with the dis- ciples of Epicurus or of Voltaire. — " Why is it," exclaims Madame du Deffand, in her age, her blindness, and her hopeless unbelief, " why is it that I hate to live and yet fear to die=^?" — As the years of the infidel increase he changes the nature of his apprehensions ; but still there is an apprehension to agitate and oppress. It is no longer the morning of his being that meditates with pain on the encroach- ing obscurities of eve ; it is the eve so- licitously husbanding the last faint glim- * Dites-moi pourquoi d^testant la vie je redoute la mort ; rien ne m'indique que tout ne finira pas avec . moi ; au con- traiie je m'aper^ois du d^labrenient de mon esprit ainsi que celui de mou corps. Tout ce qu'on dit pour ou contra ne me fait nulle impression : Je n'^conte que moi, et je ne trouve que doute et qu' obscurity. — Letter to H. Walpole, vol. i. p. 312. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 131 merings of day, and shuddering at the approaching horrors of the night. There is no longer a distinct and certain evil to be contemplated — an evil which the eye may scan and the intellect may measure ; but there is something of portentous, in- scrutable and undefined, which — veiled in awe and mystery — ^is ever present to the mental vision of the unbeliever, and makes him cling with agony to life, rather than encounter the unintelligible fears, by which the inmost instincts of his nature are appalled, at the names of Death and of the Grave. — Though all the poetry of life is over — all its fascinations scattered — all its enchantments dissipated ; though he stands, as in a dreary solitude, with all his early associations severed, and every attachment of his youth buried in the tombs around him ; though all that is attractive upon earth has become irrele- K 2 162 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL vant to him ; though disabused of every vision which his young imagination had conceived, and which hope had promised to achieve, still — with nothing for the mind and heart to rest upon but the cold realities of his loneliness and his decay — still he trembles at the prospect of his departure. His forlorn condition may be regarded as pitiable by others, but to him it still is precious ; for there is nothing else that interposes against the utter ex- tinction of his being. Even pain itself is welcome, while it convinces him that he yet retains a habitation and a name among the things that are ; — " For who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion* ?" Oh! the soul does indeed shudder at * Paradise Lost, book ii. 1. 146. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 133 destruction. — The whole human race, says Plutarch, IJotvrsgxai ITao-a/*, would rather undergo the punishment of hell itself, than be bereaved of their hopes of immortality. Nay : — it has been ima- gined, that to be deprived of conscious- ness— to become as they had never been is the punishment which the Almighty has reserved as the retribution to be heaped upon the heads of the most abandoned criminals f. The unbeliever suffers all the bitterness of this infliction. He has no delight in the present liberalities of his Creator ; for to him, as to Atticus, the day and night are haunted by the images of death J. — He pours on his own head * Page 1104 — Edit. Ruald. f Some of the Jewish Doctors have so interpreted Tophet —Abaddon— the Vale of Slaughter, fyc. 8fc. 1;. Quae enim potest esse in vitS, jucunditas cum dies et noctes cogitandum sitjani, jamque esse moriendum.— Cicero, Tus. Dis.i. 134 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL the vial of severest wrath ; — he volunta- rily exhausts the vengeance of the Deity, and prevents the rigours of his justice. — Life may be misery, but then its end pro- poses nothing but despair ; for that end is annihilation : — and how terrible the dread of that annihilation is, we may learn from a multitude of witnesses ; from those who have turned apostate from the faith of their fathers ; from their lamentations over the want of a religious depend ance ^ ; from the eagerness with which they fly in every hour of peril to seek a late protec- * Mais de boune foi, peut-on nier que la philosophic n'ait fait quelque tort a nos plaisirs et a notre bonheur, en affai- blissant le ressort de I'iraagination, en refroidissant I'^me, en nous 6tant de douces illusions, et en nous for^ant a se- couer le joug de plusieurs prSjugSs utiles d la multitude? — Se d^chainer centre le si^cle parcequ'il est le si^cle de la phi- losophie, c'est se ddchainer contre les arrets de la necessity, c'est se revolter contre la loi qui r^gla, de toute ^ternit^, la niarche et la conduite de I'esprit humain — 'tout cela ne nous persuade point encore que ce soit une chose si douce et si desirable que d'etre d'un siccle philosophe. S'il est vrai TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 135 tion from the God they had blasphemed* ; from their hideous tenacity of life ; from the terrors of the death-bed of Voltaire ; que le monde ne devient sage qii'en vieillissant, comment nous applaudir de notre profonde sagesse, sans regretter un peu les douces erreurs dii bel kge, sans craindre sur-tout d'approcher bientot du terme ou I'on ne fait plus que rado- ter? — Correspondance litt^raire, Sec, de Baron Grimm. * Se voyant sur le lit d'infiimit^, ou I'irreligion ne leur est plus d'aucun usage, ils prennent le parti le plus sur, celui qui promet une f^licite ^ternelle, en cas qu'il soit vrai, et qui ne fait courrir aucun risque, en cas qu'il soit faux.— Bayle, Art. Bion. Dictionnaire Critique. S'ils sont assez fous, ils ne sont pas assez forts ; ils ne lair- ront pas de joindre leurs mains vers le ciel, si vous leur at- tachez un bon conp d'^pee dans la poitrine ; et quand la maladie aura app^santi cette liceneieuse ferveur d'humeur volage, ils ne lairront pas de revenir et de se laisser raanier tout discretement aux cr^ances et exemples publiques. Au- tre chose est un dogme serieusement diger^, autre chose ces impressions superficielles lesquelles, nees de la d^bauche d'un esprit d^manche, vont nageant t^m^rairemeut et incer- tainement dans la fantaisie. Hommes bien miserables et ^cerveles, qui tachent d'etre pires qu'ils ne peuvent.— Mon- taigne. The Abbe Mennais has given a list of those infidels of ce- lebrity, who have on their death-bed endeavoured to alle- viate the horrors of their departure, by seeking a reconcilia- tion with their God through Christ. Tl»e passage is curious, and I transcribe it.—" Boulanger, Toussaint, Boulanvilliers, 136 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL from the faint, shrill earnestness of his dying cry — of thdit faites-moivivre — which uttered through the stillness of his cham- ber so emphatic and intelligible a warn- ing to the attendants of his parting mo- ments. While the constant ordinance of Al- mighty Providence, by which we are con- ducted from youth to age and from age to death, through a passage of graduating shade, till we arrive at the impenetrable darkness of the tomb, afflicts the unbe- liever as the decree of an implacable and Le Marquis d'Argens, Montesquieu, Maupertuis, BufFon, Dumarsais, Foiitenelle, Damilavilie, Thomas, Bouguer, de Langle, Tressan, Mercier, Palissot, Soulavie, Larcher. — Di- derot voulait se confesser, ou lui en ota les moyens. -Saws moif disait Condorcetj parlant de d'Alembert, sans moi il faisait le plongeon. II parait qu'on se pr^cautionna ^galement contre la faiblesse de Voltaire, qui mourut, au rapport de Tronchin, d?^ns les convulsions de la rage ; Jean Jacques, selon toutes les vraisemblances, termina lui-meme sa vie. II avait ^crit en faveur du suicide > il avait 6crit contre, et il fiuit par I'autoriser par sou excmple." TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 137 rigid destiny ; to the Christian, on the contrary, this condition appears to be appointed by the counsels of an intelli- gence infinitely wise and infinitely bene- volent. The Gospel interprets to him the symbolic language of creation, and dis- closes to him the purposes of its author. It instructs him, that this earth is but as a passing trial of his obedience. It re- veals to him a higher state of being, to which the present is designed as a prepa- ration; and this important lesson recon- ciles every opposite testimony in the re- cords of nature, and harmonizes every apparent dissonance in the Almighty's dispensations towards mankind. Through the merits of the Redeemer heaven is open as the recompense of his faith and vir- tue. This animating truth is perpetually before him. The dependence on his im- mortality is the restraining, the mode- 138 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL rating, the predominating principle of his affections. The natural consequence of this sublime persuasion is a holy disen- gagement from the world, and the plea- sures and the vanities of the world. The steady light, which beams from beyond the grave, sheds its radiance over the long perspective of his existence, and consoles him for the gradual extinction of the bewildering meteors of the earth. — " He remembers his Creator in the days of his youth*." He knows that the passions which tempt him from within, and the seductions that allure him from without, are the ministers and the in- struments of his trial ; and his heart is steeled against them, lest he fail in the terms of his covenant, and become en- amoured of the things that may destroy. " He remembers his Creator in the days * Ecclesiastes, ch. xii. v. i. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 139 of his youth:" — and, even in this life, he receives the recompense of his faith ; for to him ** the evil days do never come, the years never do draw nigh, in which he says he has no pleasure in them*." — It is to the sensualist alone that the decay of the faculties of life are painful. The Christian can bear to part with the endow- ments of his corporeal nature ; — ^he can complacently remark the encroachments of his decline ; for his soul is instinct with immortality, and he can smile upon the ruin of those frailer properties, that lie wrecked, on either side, upon the banks and shoals of time. His gaze is fixed upon the upward soaring of the column of eternity ; and what are to him the things that crumble into dust about its base ? — Age is to him a period rather of pleasing * Ecclesiastes, ch. xii. v. i. 140 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL expectation than of dread*. — He contem- plates it as an easier state of his proba^ tion, when his temptations shall be dimi- nished; when every rebellious emotion shall be less importunate ; when the vio- lence of passion shall be enfeebled ; when the spirit shall be elevated by more affluent communications of charity and hope and faith ; when duty shall be ren- dered more delightful by the relaxation of the holds of nature, by the increasing fervours of religious love, by the facility of habitual obedience, and by the in- creasing confidence of salvation. He * Sir William Jones, that sincere and excellent Christian, in his Bioscope, considers, if I remember right, from sixty to seventy as the period of human happiness. Could Sir Thomas Barnard's book on the Pleasures of Old Age, have been written by any but a Christian? It mustbe remem^ bered that the J)e Senectute was written on the supposition of the immortality of the soul — an opinion which Cicero adopted or renounced, as it suited the immediate purpose of his declamation. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 141 looks without dismay upon his end ; for to him death has lost its sting, and the grave has been bereaved of victory. The Christ has gloriously triumphed for his deliverance. The tomb, to which he is advancing, presents to his contempla- tions no afflicting or intimidating pros- pect ; and he surveys the narrow mansion of the dead as the consummation of his hope, as the womb of his immortality, and as the passage to the land of pro- mise. To the disciple of the Messiah there is a source of joy and hope in every ob- ject, from which the infidel derives a pain and a solicitude. — In the close of autumn, and in the dawn of spring, all the appear- ances of external nature are so entirely similar, that the eye can trace no single circumstance of distinction. There are the same naked trees, the same moist 142 CHRISTIAN OriNTONS ESSENTIAL landscape, the same soft stillness in the air, the same gray unbroken canopy of clouds, the same pale and yellow glow on the horizon. There is no outward mark of variation ; yet with what oppo- site emotions does the heart interpret to the song of the ruddock, as, in either season, he carols lustily from among his leafless branches. — Even so it is with life to the perceptions of the disciple and the despiser of the Gospel. — The object is the same, yet how contrary are the senti- ments which it awakens. The scenes that they inhabit, their human station, their personal endowments, are equally and impartially allotted. But these kin- dred circumstances do not inspire in their breasts a single kindred feeling. Each contemplates them as connected with dif- ferent associations. Each surveys before him the same inevitable destiny in the TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 143 decrepitude of age, and in the cold ob- structions of the tomb ; but each derives from them his train of appropriate and distinct reflection. To the unbeliever they are frowning signals of the decay : — to the Christian they are cheering harbin- gers of the revival of his being. 144 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL Chapter II. Sect. II. Christian -opinions essential to the relief of the calamities of life. Without the convictions of the Gospel life must be wretched from the very terms of its tenure. To the infidel, in posses- sion of no certain hopes of immortality, his existence upon the earth is a state of graduating darkness: while to the be- liever it is a state of graduating light. This advantage Christianity possesses over unbelief, even when the stream of life flows smoothest, and its current is disturbed by no gales of adversity or affliction. But it must be remembered that " man is horn to sorrow as the TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 145 sparks fly upwards*." — This important fact must surely be forgotten by those who meditate the abohtion of our faith. It must surely be forgotten by them, that the being, whom they would thus wantonly bereave of every supernatural dependance and abandon to his own resources, is ob- noxious to innumerable calamities, which no foresight can divine, no precaution obviate, no efforts of human wisdom can repair. It surely must be forgotten, by those who would deprive mankind of their religious confidence, that the earth does not always yield its increase to the la- bours of the industrious ; that the blos- soms of the spring may fall before the lingering inclemencies of winter ; that the harvest may be scattered by the violence of autumnal tempests ; that the affluent may be suddenly deprest, and, rejected * Job, ch. V. ver. 7. VOL. II. L 146 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL by the troops of friends who courted his prosperity, may lament the privations of poverty as the least piercing and afflict- ing of his sorrov^s ; that while the young is moving upon the earth with the most assured security, in all the pride of beauty and of strength, a single breath of hea- ven may in a moment taint the springs of nature, and pour infection through the veins, and leave him, in useless and que- rulous imbecility, a burthen on the tender- ness of his relatives, and a living admo- nition to the levity of his late associates. It surely is forgotten^ — by the apostles of infidelity, that the holiest and most de- voted affections of this world may be violated or severed ; that confidence may be betrayed ; that the most fond attach- ments may be wronged by the ingrati- tude of their objects, or abandoned to pine and grieve under the perception of TO THE HAIPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS.* 147 their indifference ; that the course of na- ture is not always equal ; that the sap- ling may be suddenly cut off ere the trunk from which it sprung has wi- thered ; that the trembling steps of the pa- rent may follow in the slow procession of her child's funeral ; and that, where a sympathy of love and youth appeared to form another Paradise on earth, and to flatter hope with the promises of its con- tinuance— even in that favoured home — one may in a moment perish, and leave no other companion to the widowed heart than the sense of loneliness and the tomb of the departed. Oh ! indeed, it must be the happy only, who could dare pro- mulgate the merciless and the hopeless lessons of unbelief, and their spirits must have been nursed to pride by the too rare and constant prodigaUties of for- tune ! — they must have closed their eyes l2 148 CHEISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL against the afflictions of their fellow- creatures, and hardened their hearts to pity ; they must have persuaded them- selves into an obstinate delusion, that the chances of others are irrelevant to them ; and, like the wicked, " boasted them- selves in their heart's desire, and said they should never be cast down* ;" or they would tremble, thus rashly to cut away the only anchor of their hope, while the ocean is lashing itself into wrath around them, and the storms are collecting over-head. " I shudder," says Rousseau, in one of his letters to a disciple of Diderot, " I shudder to witness your continual at- tempts against religion. Dear Deleyre, distrust your tendency to satire. Learn at all events to reverence religion ; hu- manity itself demands it. The great, the rich, the happy, would be delighted to hear * Psalms, ch. x. ver. 3 and 6. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 149 there was no God ; but the expectation of another life is in this the only consola- tion of the commonalty and the afflicted. — What cruelty to exclude them from that hope*!" Bewildered with sophistry, and darkened with prejudice and passion, as Rousseau's understanding was, it did not overlook the existence of those calamities by which we are so frequently reminded that this world is not intended as a state of enjoyment and of repose, but of purifi- cation and of trial ; and he was ready to confess, that a philosophy, which had been so long perplexed by unprofitable speculations on the origin of the evil, was * " Je tremble de vous voir contrister la religion dans vos Merits. Cher Deleyre, d^fiez-vous de votre esprit saliriqne. Snrtout, apprenez a respecter la religion ; riiumanite seule exige ce respect. Les grands, les riches, les henreux dii si&cle, seraient charnies qu'il n'y eut point de Dieu ; mais I'attente d'une autre vie console de celie-ci le peiiple et le miserable. (Quelle cruaut6 de leur &ter encore cet espoir. — CEuvres de Rousseau, 6dit. de Paris, 1788, torn. xxxi. p. 202. 150 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL not likely to exhibit any great proficiency in the means of its alleviation. He had measured the troubles of his breast with the consolations which might be afforded by the arguments of man, and he had witnessed their inability to aid. As he sujSered, perhaps, the faint presentiment of the suicide*, to which their unmiti- gated irritation eventually impelled him, he endeavoured to interpose his arm against the more violent aggressor, and would have saved the temple, in which he did not yet despair of finding an ulti- mate asylum. While he acknowledged that Christianity was the only effectual means of consolation, like that highly- gifted and unhappy woman f whom his * There is every reason to believe that Rousseau was the author of his own death. t Madame du DefFand ; in a letter to Voltaire she says, — " Si vous 6tez a ces sortes de gens ienrs prejug^s, que leur reslera-t-il? — c'est leur ressource dans leur malheurs— et c'est en quoije voudruis leur ressembler." Again, to Horace Walpole. — " Ma sante est mediocre niais je n*en d«;sire ^)a^ TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 151 lessons had assisted to delude, he longed for the tranquillity of mind, which could only be communicated by religion, and which he envied as a protection against the afflictions of the world, while he de- spised it, in the pride of human intellect, as the effect of superstition and of igno- rance. We have already noticed several fea- tures of resemblance between the modern infidel, and the ancient heathen, philoso- phy. Each is also consistent with the other in considering despair as an es- sential attribute of sorrow ; " professing themselves to be wise, they have equal- ly become as fools*." There is between them only one circumstance of distinc- tion. The folly of the unbeliever has its origin in presumption and in crime ; the uue nieilleiire, je serais facliee d'avoir plus de force et d'ac- tivite, mais ce que je vondrais, ce serait d'etre devote, d' avoir de la foi." "^ Romans, ch. i. ver. 22, 152 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL folly of the heathen was the consequence of natural incapacity and error. The teachers of the new philosophy, by re- jecting that religious superiority which has been mercifully conceded to them by the Messiah's revelation, have reduced themselves to the same miserable state of darkness, which the teachers of the old philosophy had in vain endeavoured to disperse by the insufficient Hght of the understanding. Refusing the alliance of the Gospel, after infinite toil of me- ditation, the modern infidel has disco- vered that man is born to sorrow, and that all his sorrows are irremediable. Be- fore the day-spring from on high had shed its animating rays about the world, the most gigantic faculties of antiquity had, in the same manner, been employed in imagining a relief for our afflictions, and had arrived at the same desperate con- elusions. Like the most skilled and sub- TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 153 tile of the modem teachers of ungodli- ness, the most endowed and erudite of the heathen world had acknowledged that there was no happiness attainable to man, independent of the possession of health, good fortune, honour, and riches. These things were esteemed as indispensable, and they could invent no consolations for the indigent. Every state of disease, abasement, or distress, was a misery that allowed of no alleviation ; and in this solitary sentiment the grossness of Dio- genes sympathized with the refinements of Plato, and the acuteness of Aristotle*. * Solon lamenting the death of his son, one told him, " yon lament in v.iin ;" — " T'leiefore," said he, " 1 do la- ment, because it is in vain." This was a plain confession how imperfect all his philosophy was, and that something was still wanting. He owned that all his wisdom and morals were useless, and this upon one of the most frequent acci- dents of life. Plato himself, with all his refinement, placed happiness in wisdom, health, good-fortune, honour, and riches ; and held, that they who enjoyed all these were per- fectly happy ; which opinion was, indeed, unworthy of its 154 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL — It afforded, indeed, a splendid theme of declamation to defend the omnipotence of virtue, to assert its- superiority over the malice and the wrongs of fortune, to declare that in every condition of ex- istence it was its own reward, and suffi- cient to its own enjoyment; but the fallacy of these pretensions was ho- nestly and unequivocally confessed. It was granted by " the wise and the scribe and the disputer of this world," that their virtue became unnerved and powerless in every severer grapple with affliction* ; owner, leaving the wise and good man wholly at the mercy of uncertain chance, and to be miserable without resource. His scholar Aristotle fell more grossly into the same notion. — Nay, Diogenes, from whose pride and singularity one would have looked for other notions, delivered it as his opi- nion, that " a poor old man was the most miserable thing in life." — Swift's Sermon on the Wisdom of this fi'orld. * Virtue alone does not constitute happiness. A man pos- sessed of virtue may be asleep or inactive. He may never through life have an opportunity of exhibiting his good qua- lities— and, notwithstanding these qualities, he may fre- TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 155 and that the vulture would prey upon the heart, however the stoic might endeavour to conceal its lacerations by casting over them the ample garments of his pride. In the hour of unalloyed felicity, the philosophers of the world may argue like the sage in Rasselas, and " exhort their hearers to lay aside their prejudices, and to arm themselves against the shafts of malice and misfortune, by invulnerable patience ; they may pronounce that " this state alone is happiness, and that this happiness is in every one's power* ;" — but, when the moment of their sorrow comes, they will find, like him, " that truth and reason can afford no comfort :" affliction will reveal to them " the empti- ness of rhetorical sound, and the inefficacy quently be involved iu the greatest disasters ; such a man was never, except for argument's sake, pronounced happy.-— Aristotle, Ethics, book i. p. 246. Gedde's Translation. * Rasselas, ch. xviii. 156 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL of polished periods and studied sentences;" — it will instruct them not to look down upon the earth for succours that can only be derived from heaven, or solicit from the aids and arguments of man, those alleviating influences which proceed as emanations of divinity. The Christian inherits a consolation for every calamity. If he be reduced in fortunes — why poverty is but a removal from the vanity and the temptations of the wealthy ; it is a deliverance from many incumbrances and many dangers ; it is to be clad in coarse habiliments*, " to feed on simple fare, to work and take some pains, to sit in a lower place, to have no heaps of cash or hoards of grain, to keep no retinue, to have few friends and not one flatterer. What," de- mands Barrow, '' what is the harm of * Barrow's Sermon on Contentment. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 157 this ?" — What indeed is the harm to him who confidently reposes on the superin- tending providence of the Almighty, and knows that the contingencies of fortune are, in his hands, the instruments of our spiritual instruction — " that he giveth and taketh away" — that he can restore as he has reduced, and that " all things work together for the good of those that love him*." The Christian inherits a consolation for every calamity. ^ — ^In the languor of dis- ease, in the severest paroxysms of pain, in the slow advances of a consuming and inevitable decay, he still possesses, in the promises of everlasting glory, a region whither the aspirations of his heart may wing their way and be at rest ; and he can still fortify his soul with patience by the contemplation of those bright ex- * Romans, cli. viii. v. 28. 158 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL amples of suffering and enduring virtue, which of old were written for his instruc- tion in the oracles of God*. In the con- strained retirement of the sick bed he communes with his heart; and, as his conscience testifies of its lingering cor- ruptions, he confesses the mercy and the justice of his chastisement. He holily avails himself of the rehgious uses of his adversity ; it prospers his advancement towards perfection. His affections attach themselves to heaven, as they are re- moved from every possibility of indul- gence upon earth ; and the assurances of the faith are strengthened, as the faculties of life are wasted. " He is no longer in * What human arguments could have supplied Collins with the support he derived from the use of the Bible, when^ in the lucid intervals of insanity, his delicate and gentle mind — " Sought on one book its troubled tlioughts to rest, " And wisely deemed the book of God the best?" — Collins' Epitaph, by Hayley, TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 159 the flesh but in the spirit*." " Let wild beasts tear him," says Tertullianf, "let their feet trample on him, let the cross sus- pend him, a praying Christian can endure any thing while his hands are stretched towards his God." Exalted by the fervours of his devotion, the disciple of the Saviour lies calmly upon the rack of his disease, and, like the blessed saints and martyrs, bears gently with every bodily oppres- sion, conscious that these " light afflictions, which are but for a moment," may work for him, as for St. Paul, " a far more exceed- ing and eternal weight of glory J.'* The Christian inherits a consolation for every calamity. Are his attachments wronged? is his honest confidence be- trayed? is his undoubting generosity * Romans, ch. viii. v. 9. t Quoted in Milner's Church History, vol. i. p. 284. — Octavo edition. t 2 Corinthians, ch. iv. v, 17. 160 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL deceived? — Still he is not deserted. He can rely upon the love of his Creator and his Redeemer, who are ever affectionately near him, and who assure to him, in hea- venly communion, an indemnity for every injury, and a bright atonement for every ingratitude of man. Does jealousy tra- duce his motives? do ignorance or ma- lice misapprehend his purposes? — He can dispense with the approval of the world. His conduct is not exposed to its inspec- tion. His actions are not dependant on its censure. His life is submitted only to the judgment of his conscience and his God ; and, if these sacred and unerring arbiters acquit him, he is contented to await the dis- persion of the clouds of calumny, till that portentous hour, when, with the revelation of the secrets of all hearts, his innocence shall for ever be declared before the judgment-seat of the glorified Redeemer. TO THE HAPPINESS OP INDIVIDUALS. 161 The Christian inherits a consolation for every calamity. — If the breast of man be wrung with contrition for offences into which he was betrayed by the levity of youth or the violence of passion, by the seduction of evil counsels or the persua- sion of unhappy associations, there is no other relief, that can possibly be ima- gined for the anguish of the repentant heart, than that which is mercifully af- forded in the redemption of Jesus. — I am perfectly aware, that *' never to reproach the crimes of others, or repent one's own*," has been delivered among the institutes of infidel philosophy by one of its most applauded teachers ; but, however great its depravity may be, human nature is tempered by an instinctive benevo- lence; and there are few, who have been * " Ne rien reprocher aux autres, ne se repentir de rien : voila, les premiers pas vers la sagesse." — Diderot Lettre €i M. L. — Grimm's CorrispondancC) torn. ii. p. 62. VOL, II. M 162 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL educated in the vicinity of Christian man- ners, and have lived within the influence of Christian principles, whose hearts are hard enough to receive this last and most enduring polish of ungodliness. Until Infidelity shall be ascendant ; and society totally depraved by the consequent pre- valence of lawless passions and iniqui- tous examples, there are not many who will be capable of attaining so scholar- like a proficiency in the groves and por- ticoes of atheism, as to maintain their bad tranquillity undisturbed, when brought to a conviction of their sin by some of its more impressive and awakening remonstrances. — It is true that the ap- prehension of punishment is the most rigorous avenger of iniquity ; that the stings of conscience are but unproductive and transitory emotions, unless they are confirmed by the expectation of an eter- TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 16S nal retribution; that by the irreligious the apathy of reprobation is respected as the serenity of wisdom ; but, till the sin- ner has attained that state, till his breast is hardened, beyond the obduracy of ordinary vice, by the total abandonment of the grace of God, it is impossible that his soul should not thrill with horror in situations, which bring the miserable consequences of his guilt distinctly and un- equivocally to his view, by the presence of the ruin he has occasioned. — As long as the wicked is susceptible of compas- sion, he must also be susceptible of re- morse ; as long as he has a tear to shed for any sorrows but his own, his con- science will never fail reproaching him for the sorrows that he has himself in- flicted upon others. — Could the sensualist, when he accidentally encountered the al- tered being whose beauty had instigated M 2 164 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL his designs, whose aflfections he had coldly and deliberately won, whose inno- cence he had betrayed to crime, and whose crime he had abandoned to gravi- tate to lower and to lower depths of in- famy and woe: — I would seek no other example among the infinite varieties of sin, and of misery the consequence of sin, — but could the sensualist, when his miserable and forsaken victim stood be- fore him in all the squalidness of disease and poverty, and wasted by the prema- ture decay of sorrow and of sin ;— could the sensualist in such a moment suppress the rising emotions of contrition, and for- tify his heart by the counsels of his self- ishness, and sustain the constancy of vice by the inhuman maxims of his philo- sophy ? — I am not one of those who sup- port the modern heresy of opinion, and entertain any very favourable estimate TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 165 of the dignity and the excellence of hu- manity ; but I believe that such an admo- nition, presented unexpectedly to the sin- ner in the midst of his own careless and triumphant iniquity, would strike an arrow to the soul, which would adhere with a barbed point, and there rankle and mortify for ever. — His memory would become deeply and permanently impressed with an image which would rise before him in the vision of the night, and haunt the brightest scenes of dissipation, and recur as the inevitable pain to aggravate the dejection of every moment of lassi- tude or of disease. He would in vain endeavour, under the weight of this spi- ritual affliction, to discover some oblivious antidote that might restore the depression of vice to the hilarity of virtue. He would in vain repeat, that in his seduction he had only followed the direction of a pas- sion which nature had made impetuous. 166 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL which his instructors had warranted by their precepts, and which mankind had authorized by their example ; that in his desertion he had only again obeyed the suggestions of his heart, and acted in correspondence with the dictates of the new philosophy, which disdained that the liberty of man should be constrained by any vows or obligations to constancy, after the caprice of his inclinations had annulled the covenant ; he would in vain exclaim, that the whole course and tenor of his conduct was defensible by much argument, and was supported by innu- merable precedents, and had never suf- fered any condemnation, but from the com- mandments of God and the holiness of religion, from the prejudices of priests and the scruples of women, and from the sorrows and the disease and the desola- tion of its victims. — While a single spark of natural sympathy remained : while any TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 167 sentiment of compassion still resisted the contagion of evil actions and of evil coun- sels, such an immediate perception of the wretchedness he had v^rought w^ould pe- netrate the soul of the guilty, and alarm his sense of justice, and instruct his un- derstanding to deduce from the conscious- ness of sin the apprehensions of a judg- ment.— But be it so : — he is stricken with contrition ; — his conscience is oppressed, and his heart agitated ; — but his contrition is no more than an unprofitable sense of pain. — If in the touch of pity the last, faint, lingering illuminations of the Spirit still plead with him against his crimes, there is another monitor in his heart which tells him that atonement is impos- sible ; that reform is only effective for the future ; that no human exertions can make a reparation for the past; and that if sin has reduced him to repentance, despair should 168 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL urge him back again to sin. — This is the constant language of the transgressing heart, and it is universally supported by the counsels of his associates. For the despondency that follows upon crime they are ignorant of any other succour than the intoxication of debauchery and riot. — They have no remedy to propose for the remorse of conscience except the conti- nuance of the sin that caused it. But are these the intimations of the Gospel? — Oh! no: — far otherwise. It declares that there is a peace for his despair, which is accessible by the oracles of his God; — that there is a refuge in the mount of crucifixion ; — that there is a safety which emanates from the Cross. — Christianity calls upon the guilty for the tears of his repentance, and tells him that in these is hope ; — it calls upon him for the repara- tion of his offences, and tells him that in TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 169 these is hope ; — it reveals to him the abundant fountain of all hope in the mys- teries of revelation, in the mercy of the Creator, in the atonement of his Re- deemer, and in the mediation of the glo- rified Messiah. The Christian inherits a consolation for every calamity. — Unless we ourselves are summoned prematurely to the grave, it has been determined, by an irresistible decree of Providence, that we must wit- ness the dissolution of many to whom we have been attached by the ties of kin- dred blood, by the similarity of tastes and sentiments, by the recollections of their virtues and their kindness, by the long and uninterrupted habits of fami- liarity, or by their companionship with our most favourite pleasures and most in- teresting pursuits. — There are who can endure these separations, who mingle no 170 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL gentler feelings of benevolence with the intercourse of their companions, who, se- cure behind the impenetrable protection of their selfishness, can calmly speculate on the opportunities which their deaths shall open to the purposes of their ava- rice or their ambition, and can see them swept into the grave with as philosophic an apathy as one might gaze upon the departure of the day, or mark the scat- tering of the leaves of autumn. When, therefore, in the death of friends, these pay the penalty which is universally de- manded for the happiness which their society has afforded, there is no neces- sity of any religious arguments to admi- nister to them a consolation. — There are others — and of such perhaps is the large majority of mankind — whose natural sen- sibilities are suppressed beneath the weight of various occupations, and are TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 171 only awakened to a transient conscious- ness of being in some moment of more violent or extraordinary excitement ; and these, to-day, follow weeping behind the corse of the departed, and then look down into the grave, and then dash away the tear, and then every melancholy re- flection on their loss is dissipated by the more urgent and immediate interests of the morrow : — and neither do these feel the necessity of any support from the suggestions of religion. — But there is yet another class, whose souls are more ex- quisitely wrought, and vibrate to the touch of sorrow with a thrill of longer and of deeper feeling. There are real mourners, who cannot thus readily eradi- cate the traces of affection, who cannot erect the monumental marble to spread abroad the memory of virtues, which they themselves have committed to oblivion. — 172 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL There are to whom all the treasures of existence, which can be squandered on them by the lavish hand of fortune, ope- rate as painful accessories to affliction, when bereaved of the companionship of those they love. There are to whom the customary sables, which the world may bear about in mockery " to midnight dances and the public show," do not darken with deceitful indications, but pre- sent the faint and inexpressive images of a sadness that casts its shadows upon the heart. And to these the shaft of death strikes doubly. It kills in its aim and its recoil. The wound by which one is slain rankles in the breast of another ; and wherever he may flee to dispel the sense of desolation, an icy hand conducts him ; he inhales every where the chilling vapours of the tomb ; the knowledge of his existence is reported to him by a TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 173 Steady and even flow of sorrow; there seems no brightness in the sun, which to him burns and does not comfort; his food does not nourish, his sleep does not refresh him ; his mind reflects its darkness upon every object that ad- dresses him ; and if, in the accidental intercourse of society, he is withdrawn a moment from the more distinct remem- brance of his grief, a vague and uncer- tain feeling of depression, reproaches the involuntary smile, and re-awakens him to the assurance of his wretchedness and his desertion. — But, when the mind thus feeds upon the poison that threatens its destruction, and the broken heart thus loves to entertain its sorrow, as a com- panion dearer to it than any other thing which survives upon the earth, there is, indeed, a demand and a necessity for the consolations of the faith. — To what 174 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL other succour can the miserable address himself? — What alleviation can the light of reason offer? — Man has no counsels to propose to his affliction which do not shock the sacredness of his recollections, by requiring an oblivion of the past, or which are not impossible to the instinctive constancy of every holier and purer spirit, by demanding the adoption of new ob- jects of attachment. But, while these things jar upon the ear of the afflicted, and sound repulsive to the tenderness of his sorrow, the Gospel affectionately pleads with him in a voice that thrills in unison with all his sad and cherished and preva- lent emotions. Christianity has none of that hard and dreary stoicism which St. Paul denounced as the " want of natu- ral affection*." It touches gently on his sorrows ; it speaks with compassion to the * Romans, ch. i. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 175 dejected, and looks down with reverence on his grief ; it tells him, that he may re- tain the remembrance of his loss — ^that to cast it from the mind were to annul the merciful designs for which the Eternal had inflicted the calamity — that he may grieve, " but not as one without hope=^." — And, while the religion of the Saviour thus mildly and emphatically addresses him, it administers a glorious hope, which supplies the void and solitude of his heart, which confirms his spirit with the grace of patience., and which renders his affliction another motive to religious vigi- lance and exertion, by proposing in the re-union beyond the grave a more affect- ing stimulant to virtue, and a more imme- diate interest in contemplating the beati- tude of the elect f." * 1 Corinthians, ch- xv. t Perhaps the best illustration of the state of mind, which T have attempted to describe, is to be found in the example 176 CHEISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL But, while the Christian thus inherits, in the instructions of the Gospel, those mo- tives to fortitude and resignation, which. of Beattie. — The blow that leaves us desolate on earth may slowly destroy us, or, in minds that have perhaps an here- ditary tendency to insanity, may put the diseased principle in action. These are infirmities of nature — which follow as necessarily as " the quivering of the flesh where the pincers tear," But Christianity mitigates the agony, while the wound is working its immediate event. The following ex- tracts from the letters of Beattie speak of themselves all that I would say. — His only surviving child had just breathed his last. He writes to Sir William Forbes, " our plans relating to Montague are all at an end, I am sorry to give you the pain of being informed, that he died this morning at five — " here follows an account of his pious dissolution. Beattie concludes — '* I would have written to Mr. Arbuthnot, but have many things to mind, and but indifferent health. How- ever, I heartily acquiesce in the dispensations of Providence which are all good and wise." — In another letter he says, — " A deep gloom hangs upon nie, and disables all my facul- ties ; and thoughts so strange sometimes occur to me, as to make me ' fear that I am not,' as Lear says, * in my perfect mind.'— But, I thank God, I am entirely resigned to the di- vine will." — Campbell has said, speaking of Lord Lyttle- ton's Monody, "that devotion teaches a man not to be sorry." This is an extraordinary assertion from one who has in another place so well expressed the spirit of Chris- tian sorrow. Campbell's poetry is, in this instance, more TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 177 under all the numerous accidents of his perilous condition, may moderate the pressure of calamity, and convert them into the means of holiness and improve- ment, and of that joy which springs from the perception of improvement, it must always be remembered that his strength is not alone attributable to the mere na- truly Christian than his prose. " The spirit of the white man's heaven forbids not him to weep." The critic states that religion robs the monody of its beauty, " because nature, sorrow, and tenderness, are the true genius of such things." — Nature, sorrow, and tenderness, are also the genius of Christian affliction : neither can I conceive them to be rendered less worthy objects of poetic imitation, because the nature of the mourner has been refined by the lessons of revelation ; and his distress is as a visitation from on high ; and liis tenderness is enhanced by religious cultivation. The hope of a future re-union after death would constrain the wildness and the distraction of his sorrow ; but grief is never so affecting as when its vehement demonstrations are sup- pressed. We then know that the afflicted person apprehends the fulness of his distress. The calm allows an opportunity for sympathy. Clamorous grief is as delirium or insanity ; and we are too much alarmed for the physical consequences of so violent a passion, to feel any interest in the calamity that occasioned it- VOL. II. N 178 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL tural effects of consolation, which such ele- vated and inspiring arguments might pro- duce ; but that there is accessible to him in the graces of the Holy Spirit of God the faculties of a super-human patience and the energies of a divine resistance. When St. Paul speaks of man as being composed " of body, soul, and spirit*", he uses the language of Plato, of Zeno, and of Pythagoras. The threefold nature of our. existence was probably delivered to the Gentiles with other scattered truths and lingering notices of traditionary re- velation. But, thus separated and scat- tered, the fragments of eternal wisdom were valueless to the possessor. The knowledge, like music to the deaf, or the glow of morning to the blind, was excel- ent in itself, but void from the imper- * Thessalonians, ch. v. ver. i. — See Macknight's note on the verse. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 179 fection of the being to whom it was de- livered.— The soul, which is the seat of his passions and his appetites ; the body, which is the abode and subject of the soul, may be considered as his human properties, and for those, by his human means, he has the ability of providing. But the spirit, which is to man his pre- eminence above the creatures, his prin- ciple of immortal life, his connecting link with the host of angels, is inaccessible to his reach, and impervious to his in- struction. It is designed as the light, the vigour and the strength of his inferior qualities, but it is from above that its accessions of strength and of vigour and of light are to be received. Its ethe- real essence is incapable of any alliance with those material creatures, with which we are conversant on earth. It is an in- spiration from heaven, and by influences N 2 180 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL from heaven only can it be visited or che- rished. It is an impulse of divinity, and can entertain communion v^ith no exist- ences which are inferior to its God. As the human soul is blank without the aid of the senses to inform it, so is the im- mortal spirit without the assistance of revelation. As there are all the particles of light confined in the recesses of the darkest cavern, which without the action of the sun are destitute of all their efficacy and motion, so does the spirit lie inert and dull and faint in the absence of those invigorating principles of religious faith and hope, which the Gospel, and the Gos- pel only, can communicate. As long as the philosopher of this world was pros- perous, this deficiency was little felt. Aristotle names piety among the attri- butes of good-fortune*. — Imagining that TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 181 the treasures of the earth were evidences of divine favour, the spirit of the hea- then, in the hours of security or peace, might delight itself in sentiments of gra- titude, and expatiate in its proper ele- ments of devotion and of praise. But, in the visitations of affliction, when the body was stricken with disease, or the soul was wrung with anguish ; when the voice of counsel was wasted on the deaf- ening agony of pain, and only irritated the aching sensibilities of sorrow ; when the holier and the purer portion of his nature should have asserted its pre-emi- nence, and, firm in its impassive divinity, have controlled the tributary sensations of the body and the inferior affections of the soul ; when it should have commanded the resignation of the carnal man, by emphatic remonstrances and pathetic in- timations from on high :— then, in the 182 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL hour of severer trial, he was left alone- defenceless and forlorn ; he was shorn of his strength ; the God within him was sleeping and could not be awakened ; — No : — say rather it was sunk into despair. Philosophy had informed it with no argu- ments.— Instead of aiding the properties of his human nature in the endurance of cala- mity, his spirit was itself bowed down by the oppression of their burthen. The inter- ruption of its happiness was as the aban- donment of its God, and uttering unna- tural blasphemies against that heaven to which it was allied, it aggravated the sense of earthly sorrow by the bitterness of religious despondency*. — To this more * '* Hippocrates said, that although poor men used to mur- mur against God, yet rich men would be offering sacrifices to the Deity, whose beneficiaries they are." — Bishop Taylor's Sermon on the Mercy of God's Judgments. " I hate the very Gods, who have hitherto been so very profuse in their favours to me," says Cicero, speaking of the death of his daughter in a letter to Atticus. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 183 elevated endowment of our being Chris- tianity appeals. , It is by the spirit that all our eternal interests are apprehended and achieved — ^that v^e love the author of our being — that we " eschew evil and do good" — that we overmaster the se- ductions of the heart — that we avail our- selves of the privileges of our immor- tality. Christianity restores the spirit to its rank and efficacy, informs it with lofty and important instances, invigorates and renews and augments its energies, and re-establishes its legitimate dominion over the low and animal qualities of our nature. It is these alone that are pene- trable by the disasters and the solicitudes of this life ; and strong in faith, and aided by the powers of the Gospel, the spirit can cry peace to their inferior agitations, — as Jesus did to the winds and to the sea, — and they are pacified, as the ele- 184 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL ments were calmed. Christ is the only succour of the wretched — he is equally a Saviour in heaven and on earth. His re- ligion is peculiarly the religion of the mi- serable.— " Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden ; and I will give you rest*." — This is the promise of the Gospel, and never has it falsified its covenant. Its disciples, like St. Paul, may be " troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken ; cast down, but not destroyed f." In every calamity they find a consolation and a support ; for still the Spirit of Christ " beareth wit- ness with their spirits that they are the children of God J," and subdues the throes of nature with communications of that heavenly " peace which passeth un- * St. Matthew, ch. xi. v. 28. t 2 Corinthians, ch. iv. ver. 8, 9 X Romans, ch. viii. ver. i6. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 185 derstanding * ," and which is alone deri- vative from Him " which is and which was and which is to come f ." But I would again revert to the point from which we started. I would again recall the attention of the reader to that valuable admission of Rousseau, which declares, that " the expectation of an- other life constitutes in this the only con- solation of the miserable." To minister to grief on any other principle has always defeated the ingenuity and exceeded the capacity of man. Destroy the hopes and the promises of religion, and the minds of the wretched are abandoned to roam abroad over the measureless wastes of their despair; to weep like Solon over his child, and to weep in vain, and to weep the more, because it is in vain they weep. — Infidelity offers them, indeed, that * Philippiaiis, ch. iv. v. 7- t Revelations, ch. i. v. 4. 186 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL solitary resource which in the ancient world was vaunted as the last relief for every disquietude, whether of mind or heart, of poverty or of disgrace. Like wayward children they may refuse the benefits that remain to them, in petulant resent- ment of the benefit that they have lost. They still are masters of their existence, and by suicide they may at any moment dismiss themselves of their afflictions*. — This is the dreary port, in which the god- less are taught to look for their repose, when the storms of life beat hardest. But it is a harbour which none but minds of the firmest temperament can make. Such men as Cato or as Brutus, with that blind and " savage jealousy of disgrace that somewhat savours nobly," may, perhaps, inspire a Portia, by the examples of her * Suicide is recommended by nearly all the modem mfidel writers. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 187 father and her husband, to attempt a vio- lent deliverance from the accumulated calamities of life. But this guilty and miserable method of escape is superfluous to the many. It is repulsive to their instincts. The natural apprehensions of the heart withhold them from the refuge that is offered. — The poet* of atheism may mock their miseries, and insult them for enduring their misfortunes ; and he may point out to them the graves that yawn for their reception ; but they recoil with horror from the view, and, bowed down by the burthen of their sor- rows, they will rather choose to toil be- neath the unmitigated weight, than antici- pate that tremendous annihilation which his philosophy proposes as their asylum. * A violent death is the last refuge of the Epicureans as well as of the Stoics. " This," says Lucretius, " is the distin- guishing character of a genuine son of our sect, that he will not endure to live in exile, in want, and disgrace." — Bent- ley's Confutation of Atheism. 188 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL Chapter II. Sect. HI. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL TO THE ENJOYMENT OF WORLDLY PROSPERITY. All the exertions of the unbeliever must necessarily be directed to the attainment of the treasures of the world. These are his only objects of interest, of affection, of pursuit. He has no motive to diligence but the desire of enriching himself with the rewards of pleasure or ambition. He has no source of gratification independent of sensuality or distinction. Pleasure and ambition are the passions which maintain an entire ascendency over the heart of unregenerated man, and which begin to exercise their tyranny as soon as he has TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 189 delivered himself from that condition of abject poverty and depression, v^hich allows no scope for their operation, and engrosses every faculty of the understand- ing in providing by the daily labour for the daily bread. The caprice or the ingenuity of the hu- man mind may multiply the modes of pursuit and of indulgence ; but every line of worldly conduct is actuated by one or the other of these inclinations, and pro- poses the gratification of its claims as the result. The infidel may seek to soothe his selfishness either by the medium of his senses or his vanity. He may either becomie the votary of pleasure, and, how- ever he may refine away its grossness, rank himself as the companion of the vul- gar sensualist, who drowns his intellects and depraves his sentiments in the loath- some abominations of the tavern and the 190 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL bagnio ; or he may enlist himself under the banners of ambition, and make expe- riment of the envy, the solicitude, and the malignity that are stirring among that busy and incongruous multitude, in which the trophies of the warrior, and the lau- rels of the poet and the sage, are united in unseemly contact with the fopperies of the frivolous and the motley of the buf- foon.— Whatever benefit these things may be capable of affording is fairly open to his endeavours, and perhaps may recom- pense his assiduity ; but to this the man, who separates himself from the hopes and the motives of religion, is absolutely con- fined by the poverty of the human heart, and the limited range of its affections. If he be dissatisfied with the mea- sure of enjoyment, which these sources may supply, he murmurs against the destiny of his creation, and requires, for TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. IQI the completion of his happiness, some wider range of faculties, and some more ample modification of existence. With nothing but the favours of plea- sure and ambition to excite or to reward his perseverance, the unbeliever must be content to suffer the anxieties of priva- tion, the labours of acquisition, and the frequent disappointment occasioned by the lubricity with which they elude the hand that is just closed to grasp them. In the absence of these possessions life must necessarily be restless and disturbed. Whether the objects of his pursuit are possessed of a real and a substantial worth, or whether they are recommended by a fictitious and delusive splendour ; — whether the advantages which they pro- mise to bestow are inherent in the things themselves, or the mere idle flourishes of the imagination, is perfectly imma- 192 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL terial to the happiness of the man who has not yet been admitted to the privi- lege of making a personal experiment of their worth or their defects. If it be once imagined that they constitute the sove- reign blessings of existence, his mind will inevitably be vext and agitated in their absence by a painful consciousness of privation. Whether they may or may not avail to enhance the felicity of the affluent ; the want of them will exist as a subject of permanent affliction to the indigent. The unbeliever, who is de- prived of wealth and of distinction, is separated from that which he esteems as indispensable to the enjoyment of his re- sidence on earth ; and, anxious as this condition of murmuring and discontent — of restlessness and jealousy — of solici- tude and competition, may appear, this condition is the most favourable that he, TO THE HAPPINESS OF TNDTVIBTJALS. 193 who is without God in the world, can pos- sibly expect. The pursuit is more tole- rable than the possession. " Man never is, but always to be blest," says Pope ; and that age of more than youthful cre- dulity, in which he yet believed that the recompenses of pleasure or ambition might overpay the toil by which they are secured; — that luxury might soothe the sense, and pre-eminence exalt the spirit ; — ^that the world might possibly contain some treasures which were worthy of being coveted and sought and won, is the period on which he will look back with envy, when his efforts shall have wrought their consummation, and his hopes encoun- tered their severest disappointment in the apparent fruition of their desires. In either event the exertions of the godless tend to an unprofitable conclusion. If he fail, the attempt without the deed corrodes the YOL. 11. o 194 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL heart with the sense of wasted faculties, and overcasts the character with that pale and invidious moroseness, which so fre- quently assoils the dignity of age, and renders it as obnoxious to others as bur- thensome to itself If he be successful, he only finds a change of ill and a new manner of disquietude ; — he has yet to encounter the inconveniences that accom- pany possession; — ^he has to leran the depreciations of riches, the dissatisfaction of enjoyment, and the anxieties of pre- eminence. These are proved to be infinitely greater than are ever calcu- lated upon during the ardour of pursuit and the excitement of desire. Those who have profited most largely of the delights and of the glories of the world have informed us, by the confes- sions which their disappointments have extorted, that such things are wholly TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 195 irrelevant to the purposes for which they are so diligently sought ; and that— like some distant city, which to the traveller appears a glittering assemblage of temples and of palaces, and only discloses to the inhabitant the obscurity of its tall and narrow streets, and the wretchedness of its airless alleys, — they assume a vi- sionary beauty, which tortures the imagi- nation of the indigent, but fades away at the approach of the more successful ad- venturer who has advanced near enough to achieve them. Without recurring to the instances of those who may be regarded as the vic- tims of immoderate indulgence — without considering those martyrs to sensuality who have purchased, by a youth of dis- solute excess, a premature, diseased and irreverent old age, — I should say, that it were impossible for any individual, O 2 196 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL possessed of the least quickness of per- ception, to be admitted to the glittering resorts of dissipation, without discovering that those persons are guilty of a most miserable miscalculation, who there sow upon the golden and the barren sands of pleasure, and expect to reap i-n happiness the increase of their harvest. The casual visitor will find among the frequenters of such scenes, that the smile is habitual and constrained, and acknowledges no sym- pathy with any native gaiety of heart. — He will perceive that the glittering repar- tee of their conversation, which appears so captivating to the uninitiated ear, is a mere affair of convention and routine, to which their companions afford the subject, and spleen supplies the wit, and fashion gives the phrase and the expression ; in which an idle and prying curiosity sustains the part of quickness of observation ; in TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 197 which ill-nature passes for the nerve, and insinuation for the delicacy, of satire ; and which, however it may relieve the vacuity of indolence by the excitement of ma- lignant emotions, acknowledges no rela- tionship with the liberal and honest flow of genuine hilarity. — He will discover, that the spirits, overtasked by the exor- bitant demand of a forced and continued exercise, repair their exhaustion in the intervals of solitude by a proportionate languor and depression ; and that they require the stimulus of wine or opium to brace their enfeebled energies to the endurance of those amusements which habit has rendered necessary and satiety oppressive. — He will perceive, that all those diseases of the imagination, which circulate from the heart and from the brain, by channels too imperceptible for the reach of human remedies, are engen- dered amid the abundance which sup- 198 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL plies the caprices of desire with too im- mediate a facility of indulgence. He will learn, that even the continuance of ease is irksome to the innate activity of the human faculties ; that it is expressed in indolent lamentations over the burthen and calamities of life ; that it strives to satisfy those mighty energies, which are weary of sloth and incapacitated from any honourable endeavour by the pain- ful suspenses of the gaming-table, or the wicked agitations of adulterous love ; and that, after exhausting every variety of innocent gratification and polite ini- quity, it has not unfrequently compelled its victims to seek protection in a volun- tary grave against the languors of their delicacy and their refinement*. * " Cogita quamdiu eadem feceris ; mori velle non tan- tum fortis, aut miser, sed etiam fastidiosiis potest," — says Seneca ; and the truth of his remark may be read in the Life of Jlfieri-, and in a book almost as true to nature, Miss Edgeworth's Ennui TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 109 That happiness which prosperity re- fuses to the votary of pleasure is not con- ferred on the votary of ambition. After toiling through honour and dishonour, and good report and evil report, with a per- severance that declares the greatness of his nature in the perversion of its fa- culties ; — after the anxious day and the sleepless night have raised him to that desired eminence, " whose top to climb is certain falling, or so slippery, the fears as bad as falling," the ambitious painMly discovers that he has been studious of his bane, and '' made himself thrice a servant, a servant to the state, a servant to form, and a servant to business : so that he has no freedom, either in his person, or in his actions, or in his time=^." Such was the result of Lord Bacon's experience; and thousands have born witness to the * Lord Bacon's Essay en Great Place. 200 (CHRISTIAN OPTXIONS ESSENTIAL correctness of his report. — The ambitious finds in his success that his cares have become complicated, almost beyond the possibility of any human superintendence. — The number of his enemies are in- creased by their jealousy of his superiority. — No gratitude can secure his friends. — Benefits only tend to excite in them im- practicable desires, which refusal converts into malignity. — His exaltation only ex- poses him as the aim of envy, and the fair mark for censure, and the public theme of calumny. It also deprives him of the richer portion of his anticipated reward ; and placing him in more immediate con- tact with the evil passions of mankind, teaches him, by the detection of their self- ishness and venality, to despise the re- compense of popular admiration, for which his labours were undertaken and en- dured. TO THE HAPriNESS OF INDIVIDUALS. ^*0l " Great men had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy, for if they judge by their own feehngs they shall not find it*." — This remark ex- tends to every species of success, whe- ther in arts or in arms, in politics or in literature. Alexander pining for new worlds to conquer, Buonaparte " s'en- nuyant de cette vieille Europe f ,'' intimate with sufficient certainty, that the compla- cency which results from victory is inade- quate to allay in the breast of the warrior the diseased avidity of conquest. — If any species of success were exempt from the inconveniences and dissatisfactions of am- bition, one might expect to find the man of letters in possession of that enviable distinction. He pursues his object in the ^ Lord Bacon's Essay on Great Place. f His reason for attacking Russia. — Maoamf. de Stael on the French Revolution^ vol. ii. p. 353. 202 CHEISTIAN OriNIONS ESSENTIAL seclusion of his chamber, without any of that hostile collision, by which, in other situations, the individual endeavours to exalt himself by the depression of his compeers. His task is undertaken for the amusement or the instruction of man- kind ; and, if worthily completed, it would appear that the successful author had none of the alloys of reputation to en- counter, but might leisurely commit him- self to the enjoyment of an unadulterated fame, and receive the honourable recom- pense of his industry from the gratitude of a people whom his efforts had delighted or informed. — But these speculations are contradicted by the public acknowledg- ments of those who are best calculated to decide on their justice or their false- hood.— Not to mention that Ennui, which has been denounced as " the inexorable TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 205 tyrant of every soul that thinks, and against which wisdom is less efficient than folly* :" — not to mention the weari- ness with which the mind toils heavily along upon the conclusion of a work, which was ardently begun and despond- ingly continued : — not to mention the ac- cidents that accompany publication, the vexation of ignorant praise and of frivo- lous censure, the silence or the misap- prehension of criticism, the witticisms of those whose talents are sufficient to detect the superficial errors of a work, but in- capable of appreciating the difficulties, or the skill, or the graces of its execution ; — -not to mention these inferior troubles, which disturb the tranquillity that is promised by a life of literature, we find that the very distinction and the * L'Ennui ce triste tyran de toutes les ames qui pensent, contre lequel la sagesse peut moins que la folie. — Buffon su) VHomme. f204 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL praise, for which all this anxiety is en- countered, are despised and overlooked as valueless the moment they are ob- tained and weighed and measured and appreciated. The complaints of Johnson and Rousseau we will reject as of no au- thority. They, perhaps, inherited a com- plexional discontent which made them morbidly sensible to the gall and bitterness of every condition. But Shakspeare, — who was blest with every faculty of the understanding most equally proportioned, and most aptly blended ; who employed them to bright issues ; and who, when the seed was sown and the harvest ripe, perceived the vanity of the pro- duce, and scorned the toil of reaping, and left his works to the gathering of strange hands, and derived no other fruit from his celebrity than the me- lancholy reflection of having " made TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 205 himself a motley to the view* :" but Pope, — of whose mind good sense was the most striking characteristic, whose few opponents were silenced by the admira- tion of the wisest and the best, whose fame was constantly returning to him in dedication and flattery and the applause of theatres rising at his entrance, and who, at the conclusion of his career, for- got these coveted distinctions, and de- clared, that " the lifef of a wit is a war- fare upon earth ; and that the spirit of the learned world is such, that to attempt to serve it in any way, one must have the constancy of a martyr, and a resolu- tion to suffer for its sake :" — surely these * Sonnet lio. — *' Alas ! 'tis true, I have gone here and thei e, " And made myself a motley to the view" — All the sonnets express a carelessness of fame whenever the topic falls in his way, and his neglect of liis works proves that he was no hypocrite in these sentiments. t Preface to his collected Works. CHEISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL examples speak with most forcible con- viction, that the applauses of mankind, which so many hours are laboriously wasted to obtain, are less than super- fluous to our happiness ; and that BufFon did not speak the sentiments of a solitary individual, but of the whole body of illustrious and celebrated persons, when he pronounced, — in a sentence to which Lord Byron* has assented, and whidi Sir Walter Scott f has paraphrased: * Knowledge is not happiness, and science, But an exchange of ignorance for that Which is another kind of ignorance. — Manfred. f The parallel passage is in Rokeby — It is one of Sir Wal- ter Scott's most beautiful common-places : — *' Ere the youth strip him for the race. Shew the conditions of the chase. Two sisters by the goal are set, Cold Disappointment and Regret ; One disenchants the winner's eyes, And strips of all its worth the prize. While one augments its gaudy show. More to enhance the loser's woe. The victor sees his fairy gold Transformed, when won, to drossy mould ; But still the vanquished mourns his loss. And rues as gold, that glittering dross." TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 207 " Que la gloire, ce puissant mobile de toutes les grandes ames, et qu'on voyait de loin comme un but ^clatant, qu'on s'ef- for(pait d'atteindre par des actions bril- lantes et des travaux utiles, n'est plus qu'un objet sans attraits pour ceux qui en ont approche, et un fant6me vain et trom- peur pour les autres qui sont restes dans r^loignement." There is no exemption from the uni- versal scheme of disappointment. No accumulation can satiate the desires of the heart; and yet the least excess be- yond the limits that nature has appointed overcharges the weakness of those organs by which the desires of the heart are to be fulfilled. The insatiable passion al- ways exceeds in its demands the re- stricted powers of those corporeal facul- ties which are appointed to minister to its claims. — Even from those whose con- 208 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL ditions have been most lavishly endowed by the partial prodigality of fortune ; v^ho have been permitted to select, to vary and to combine, all that is most exquisite and prized among the blandishments of pleasure and the glories of ambition ; who have stood upon the earth as the favourites of destiny with all the treasures of the earth, wealth, power, fame, beauty, ho- nour, cast down before their feet and sub- servient to their disposal : — still, even from these, it is declared, that all united are imperfect and defective, void and ineffi- cient; and our compassion is entreated for the splendid sufferers in the same language of querulous and monotonous disappointment. — " Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity." — Man hastens to the re- sorts of sensuality to relieve the cravings of his inferior nature ; and his appetites are nourished by his indulgence, and TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 209 enhanced by his concessions. He aspires to pre-eminence ; he attempts the tumuUs of ambition ; and he surrounds himself with a pageantry of cares that multiply the anxieties of his day, and put to flight the timid slumbers of his pillow. — '' Va- nity of vanities, and all is vanity." — He proves that the allurements of the earth are valueless, yet he still submits to their attraction, till his passion, increasing in its importunity, becomes the tyrant of his reason and his will ; — till it assumes a savage despotism, and enforces compli- ance with its exactions, and demands as its enormous tribute the security and the health and the welfare of existence. — ** Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity." — Still the sated and melancholy voluptuary is dragged unwillingly along, by the com- pulsion of his lust, or of his gluttony, to the participation of vices that revolt him ; VOL. II. P 210 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL — Still, though disabused of all the flat- tering expectations of his heart, the am- bitious yearns after the clamour and the gaze of multitudes, while the acclama- tions of the people bewilder and astound the ear to which they are addressed, and while he himself is grieving beneath the burthen of the insignia that provokes their ignorant and tumultuous admiration. — " Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity." — Such was the important moral, which, amid all the splendid exaggerations of their fortunes, was uttered by Severus* and by Solomon f from the thrones of Rome and of Jerusalem. From their painful elevation, from the pomp of courts, from the obedience of nations, from the submission of tributary states, from the incense of flattery, from the tranquillity of unrivalled power, from the contemplation * Omnia fui et nihil expedit. + Ecclesiastes, ch, xii. v. 8. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 211 of accumulating opulence, they derived this simple and invariable conclusion, that " all is vanity," — that the cup of plea- sure only sparkles at the brim, — and that the sun, which seems to shine so brightly on the snows of the mountain-top, warms/ only in the valley beneath. It is irrelevant to my present purpose minutely to investigate the causes of that lassitude and discontent, which, in the worldly mind, appear to be invariably connected with the acquisition of the trea- sures of the world. It is acknowledged on every side, that they frustrate the pur- poses for which they are desired. — Per- haps the disappointment may be occa- sioned by the anxieties that accompany prosperity, and which are inseparable from possession, though they are very rarely calculated upon in the ardour of pursuit: — or, perhaps, it may be attri- P 2 ^IS CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL buted to the original propensity which nature has implanted in the heart, as a perpetual impulse to exertion, which, ac- cording to Montaigne*, " abstracts our attention from the enjoyment of the pre- sent to amuse us with the promises of the future," and which disturbs the imagina- tion with its superfluous activity as soon as we have reaped the harvests of the earth, and are conscious of no ulterior prospects to occupy the restlessness of the anticipating faculty of our minds : — or, perhaps, a more worthy and ele- vated cause may be discovered in the vastness of the human soul which, created for eternity, and instinct with immortal energies, is impatient of those attain- * ** Nous ne sommes jamais chez nous ; nous sommes toujours audela. La crainte, le d^sir, Tesperance nous Glance vers I'avenir, et nous d^robent le sentiment et la considera- tion de ce qui est, pour nous amuser a ce qui sera." — Mon- taigne, liv. i. chap. 3. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 213 merits that are less imperishable than itself, and, designed to contemplate and adore the infinite perfections of its Author, in vain endeavours, in the absence of re- ligious hope, to supply the aching void of sentiment by any combination of those objects which in themselves are limited and defective. But whether the dissatisfaction that the soul experiences, amid the most affluent accumulation of temporalities, be derived particularly from any one of the causes I have recounted, or from an union of the whole, it is evident that the Christian is exempted from their operation, by the motives of his conduct, the object of his desires, and the aim of his exertions. — If others, at the brightest and most lux- uriant crisis of their fortunes, lament over the unexpected solicitudes of a state which they had anticipated as the conclusion of their anxiety and their toil, the disciple 214 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL of the Redeemer has no such miscalcula- tions to detect. All the difficulties of his task are honestly exposed to his inspec- tion. They are connected with his first, rude and inexperienced efforts ; and they disappear as he gradually acquires the dominion of his passions, and obtains the habit and facility of virtue.— If others open to themselves a new source of infe- licity in the very fruition of their earthly prospects, and, after attaining the accom- plishment of their desires, become distrest from vacuity of occupation ; the object of the Christian's emulation, alluring from beyond the grave, interests the prospec- tive activity of the mind, by a pursuit as enduring as his existence, and which constantly encourages his perseverance by livelier presentiments of joy. — If others are opprest and agitated by the restless consciousness of faculties inadequately employed, and of energies unworthily TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 215 consumed, the faithful disciple of Christ is delivered from those occasions of dis- quietude ; for his affections, his hopes and his exertions, are strenuously di- rected to the achievement of an end, as infinite as his capacities, as eternal as his nature, as blest as the destiny of angels, and as glorious as the throne of God. But, with these advantages immedi- ately resulting from the nature of his pur- suit, and v^hich he possesses as an ad- ditional and exclusive interest in his ex- istence, the Christian derives a real in- crease of happiness from those acces- sions of temporal prosperity, which to others only communicate a toil of insipid entertainment, and a burthen of unprofit- able splendour. — Those acquisitions of fame or wealth, of place or honour, which to the children of the world are only golden in expectation, and prove worse than tinsel on possession, to the Christian 216 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL really do contribute something of sub- stantial gratification and valuable enjoy- ment. " All things work together for the good of those ^ " whose lives are religiously devoted to the service of the Ahnighty ; and, among the innumerable privileges which the Deity has appointed as the in- defeasible inheritance of those that love him, he has ordained, that the righteous should achieve by virtue the ends which are ineffectually pursued by vice; that, while they renounce themselves, and only seek to glorify their God, by promoting the benefit of others, they should fall un- designedly upon that happiness which escapes the solicitous exertions of the self- ish ; that they should exhaust the sweets which are attached to the delights and the glories of the world, and abandon all the dregs and the bitterness of the cup * Romans, ch. viii. v. 38. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 217 to be drained by the sensualist, the am- bitious and the voluptuary: — whatever is really valuable in the acquisitions of pleasure or of success, may be enume- rated among the uncovenanted and super- venient recompenses of that godliness, v^hich, says the Apostle of the Gentiles, is " profitable unto all things*." Though the objects w^hich excite and frustrate the affections of the ungodly heart are of themselves insufficient to our happiness, they are very far from merit- ing the reproach of utter worthies sness with which their votaries would condemn them in the bitterness of their disap- pointment or their satiety. According to the corrupt and perverted purposes for which they are generally sought, they are unable to fulfil the expectations that are awakened by them. They are not hap- piness, but may be rendered the means of * 1 Tim. cli. iv. v. 8. 218 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL happiness. — When the Christian, wholly occupied in his immediate duties, with a generous indifference and an honest care- lessness of the event to which they may conduct him, passes onward in the direct and the undeviating path of right, without any other motive to his exertions than a devout solicitude to perform the com- mandments of his God; and to confirm the happiness of his immortality : — when the Christian, thus holily and importantly employed, permits himself in the hour of vacancy to participate in any of those pleasures and amusements which the be- nevolence of the Creator has so liberally strew^n about the path of our pilgrimage, he comes with a suddenness and a fresh- ness to the enjoyment, by which the zest of all its valuable qualities is heightened and enhanced. The innocence of the un- burthened heart leaves his bosom free for the play and swell of the emotions of TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 219 happiness. His mind, unoppressed by any painful recollections, surrenders itself with a boyish confidence to the caprices of the imagination. He has not pre- pared for himself a disappointment by any of those over-coloured and exagge- rated anticipations which torment the impatience of the inactive, and defeat fruition, and render the reality insipid. The restraints of diligence confer a sweet- ness on the liberty of relaxation. The temperance, which, with an amiable se- verity, interposes against every indul- gence, that is not virtuously required to restore the spring and vigour of the facul- ties, recalls him to the important duties of his station, before he has approached the limits at which excess is punished in satiety ; and leaves him, with all the healthy and simple tastes of nature un- impaired, again to recreate himself, with the same innocence, with the same viva- 220 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL city, and with the same susceptibihty of delight, whenever the cessation of la- bour may allow no dishonourable op- portunity of amusement. — With regard, therefore, to the ordinary pleasures and relaxations of society, the Christian, by the felicitous interchange of toil and rest, each relieving and heightening the other, inherits a more ample measure of gratification: from his abridged and temperate permission, than the volup- tuary receives from an indulgence that is delivered of every restraint of religion and of morality and of prudence. — The Christian expatiates in a fair enclosure of which the boundaries are artificially concealed, and, forbearing to approach the interdicted limits, he looks around with gratitude and content upon his sphere of pleasure, and is delighted with its imaginary extent; while the voluptuary, disclaiming every religious restriction, TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 221 is impelled by the impetuosity of his de- sires to the utmost verge of its confines, and, discovering the narrowness of his range, and the paucity of his resources, impatiently beats his breast against the extreme barrier, oppressed by the sa- tiety of the body, and agitated by the insatiability of the passions. But, if the devout disciple of the Re- deemer, who, in the purity of his faith, mingles no austerities of superstition with the beauty of his godliness, and " so uses the world as not abusing it," pos- sesses the superiority over the sensualist in the enjoyment of those gratifications, which may be enumerated among the plea- sures of sense ; there is another and a more elevated class of pleasures which may almost be named as his peculiar and exclusive property — I mean, the plea- sures which are excited by works of art and imagination. — Others may very fairly ^22 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL estimate the dexterity of their execution. They may decide on the proportions of the statuary ; — on the expression of the poet ; — on the forms and tints, the ar- rangement and the shadows of the painter. They may measure the quahties of the artist by an accurate comparison of his productions, with those of the most cele- brated masters of antiquity. They may calculate his excellencies and his defects, and appoint his rank upon the schedule of renown. They may survey with a cul- tivated eye, and approve with an elabo- rate precision. But this frigid and arti- ficial skill of discerning between the va- luable and the void, is wholly independ- ent of any perception of the delight which the artist was desirous of inspiring. It is a mere cold operation of the intellect unbiassed by any emotions of the heart, distinct from any sentiment of beauty, and destitute of any, even the slightest. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. S23 sympathy with the genius or inspiration of the creative mind. The pleasure which is received by this kind of critical ap- proval, from the finest combination of forms, or the most melting harmony, or the most splendid bursts of poetic enthu- siasm, consists in the gratification of per- sonal vanity, in the sense of superior knowledge, in the display of technical discrimination, and in the exercise of a delegated authority to arbitrate for the opinions of the multitude. — This estima- tion of the works of art, which is rather the intercourse of acquaintance than of affection, is consistent with the narrow- ness or the depravity of the mind, and the grossest corruption of the heart. — But there is a higher method of apprecia- tion— ^the appreciation of taste and feel- ing.— There are to whom these things appeal with a resistless emphasis ; over whom they exercise a magic potency ; 224 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL with whom they seem to hold a silent and an eloquent and a deep communion ; whom they touch with all the varying emotions, that obey the call and are sub- servient to the dominion of the poet or the painter, whom they move to tears of involuntary pity, or chill with terror, or excite by the virtuous glow of indigna- tion. The mere cold and vulgar know- ledge of art is as distinct from this ge- nuine sensibility of its powers, as the perception of the minute philosopher, who looks upon the tints of the iris, and re- solves its glories into the refraction of the sun-beams on the drops of the falling shower, diflfers from the holier and loftier sentiment of the man, who, dismissing from his mind the concurrence of secondary causes, as he casts his eyes upon the bow in the heavens, is warned of its religious intimations, and awakened to the con- templation of the mercies of his God.— TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 225 This deeper and more intimate appre- hension of the works of genius is the result of character and disposition. The dehght is correspondent to the sensibility of the heart, the vividness of its emo- tions, and its benevolent willingness to admire. The grateful excitement, which the efforts of the artist, the musician, or the poet are calculated to produce, is in pro- portion to the healthy tenderness of our moral sense, and the spirituality of our affections. — As " faith purifies the heart," as it subdues the predominance of the senses, as it abridges the ascendency of selfishness, as it cherishes the kind and gentle affections of our nature, it pre- pares and elevates the soul for the enjoy- ment of the pleasures of the imagination. " Since I have known God in a saving manner," says Martyn, the saint and the apostle of our times, " painting, poetry, VOL. II. ft 226 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL and music have had charms unknown to me before. I have received vi^hat I suppose to be a taste for them; for religion has re- fined my mind, and made me more suscep- tible of impressions from the sublime and beautiful*."— Let not the voluptuary de- spise this abundant source of gratification. His contempt for the pleasures of the ima- gination is as if the blind should ridicule the blessings and the glories of the light. He has deprived himself of the means of appreciating their value. Their charms are apprehended by an internal sense, of which he has deadened the perceptions ; and, amid the delirium of that riot, in which his health of body and energies of mind, his prosperity on earth and his hopes of heaven are dissipated, he has become incapable of estimating those innocent, unobtrusive and intellectual enjoyments which are so dearly prized by the disciple * Memoir of tfie Rev. Henry Martyn. TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 227 of the Redeemer, and which augment the happiness of his life, while they advance the interests of his immortality. Thus eminently favoured with respect to the pleasures of existence, it must also be remembered that the Christian may possibly become possessed of opulence and distinction. — Though he scorns the petty arts by which patronage is concili- ated to the undeserving, the policy of cunning, of flattery and intrigue ; though he is above availing himself of that sub- serviency to the great which seeks the shortest and the easiest road to riches and advancement, still his disadvantages, in the competitions of the world, are not so insurmountable as the children of the world may be tempted to conceive.-r-Suc- cess may be the honest recompense of his exertions, and, if he does succeed, pros- perity is recommended to him by circum- (12 228 OHEISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAL Stances, which do not promise any increase of happiness to others. As it formed nopart of his anticipated reward, or, at all events, was but loosely calculated upon among the possible contingencies of his human pilgrimage, he enjoys whatever benefit it may afibrd with that predisposition to be pleased, which is excited by the presence of any sudden and unexpected acquisi- tion. As his conscience acquits him of every base compliance or dishonourable stratagem, the possession of wealth or fame, of honour or of power, while it is gratefully acknowledged among the libe- ralities of Providence, may, without pre- sumption, be considered as an encourage- ment to religious hope, as an earnest of his eternal recompense, and as an indi- cation of the Almighty's favourable re- ception of his obedience. — The reputa- tion in which there is no falsehood or hy- TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIA^DUALS. 229 pocrisy to be detected, which is honestly obtained by strenuous and continued ef- forts, which is guiltless of those collu- sions that occasionally raise the unde- serving to the distinction of a transient and anxious notoriety, communicates to the Christian's soul a delightful encou- ragement to exertion, and that innocent complacency of mind, which the Almighty has mercifully attached to the contempla- tion of our prosperous endeavours. Act- ing on the principle of duty, for the in- struction or the improvement of his fellow- creatures, the fame which remunerates his diligence informs him by the voice of public gratitude that his diligence has not been superfluously employed. The honours to which he may arrive can add but little to the dignity of his virtue, — for his actions constitute his best nobility, — but that he has attained them, revives their lustre, restores them to popular re- 230 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS ESSENTIAl. spect, enhances in the imagination of every young aspirant the value of their acquisi- tion, and delivers an example to mankind that invigorates the influence of morals, by conspicuously illustrating the distinc- tion and the reverence to which they lead. All those importunate cares and compli- cated transactions, w^hich are classed by others among the evils of pre-eminence, are considered by the man whose breast is animated by the affections of the Gos- pel among its most valuable privileges and endowments. They constitute the very rewards for which he is contented to endure the anxieties, the decorations, and the publicity of his elevation. With the love of God and man predominating within him, his station, and the import- ant duties of his station, present the master passion of his heart with more advantageous opportunities of gratifica- tion, with a more extensive range of use- TO THE HAPPINESS OF INDIVIDUALS. 231 fulness, and with more ample facilities of benevolence, — And at the close of all : when old age comes over him ; when he is no longer capable of mingling in the active negotiations of the busy, and his infirmities shall counsel his retirement, that slow and lingering residue of life, which to the unbeliever is a useless and unprofitable void, a burthen that hangs heavily about him, and for which he wants an object and an occupation, still retains for the faithful disciple of the Sa- viour all that is essential and important in the interests of human existence„ The care of his salvation still continues. It is no longer "to be worked out with fear and trembling," amid the haunts of the ambitious and the seductions of power, but in a more appropriate field of action, and in duties more correspondent to the weakness and the reverence of age. He has secured to himself an hour of CHRISTIAN OPINIONS, i)C. meditation, ere he fall into the silence of the grave. He has withdrawn from the interests of time, that he may be wholly occupied with the interests of eternity. He has surrendered the toil of life into younger and abler hands ; and in self-examination, in acts of piety and charity and devotion, in eradicating the last lingering affections of the earthly man, he dedicates the serene conclusion of his days to the service of his God ; and de- parts from the concerns of this life, like the sun in its decline, which, — after spread- ing an invigorating warmth about the earth, and prospering the industry of man, and looking down upon the tumult of occupation, — sinks at eve, in silent ma- jesty behind the mountains, and casts upwards to the heavens the golden radi- ance of its departing light. PART II. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS COULD NOT HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED BY THE UNAIDED POWERS OF THE REASON. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. " It were less difficult," says Plutarch, '' to build a city in the air, than to consti- tute a state without a belief in the exist- ence of the Gods '^Z' — And to this maxim of the speculative philosopher, may be added the confirmation of Necker's experi- ence, who declares that "no man can have taken any active part in public affairs, or have observed mankind in their constant state of rivalry and opposition, without perceiving that the wisest governments re- quire the co-operation of some invisible influence, that may maintain a secret as- cendency over the conscience!." This * Plutarch contra Cololen. f Necker Importance des Opinions Religieuses. — "On ne pi?ut avoir pris un part active a la conduite des aiFaires pub- bliues ; on ne pent en avoir fail I'objet snivi de son atten- CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT supernatural support, which is so indis- pensable to the preservation of our hap- piness on earth, can only be derived from the popular belief in the existence of a superintending God and a state of future retribution. These are the great fundamen- tal truths of which we are assured by reve- lation, to which every other doctrine or mystery of religion is subservient, and which, by whatever name the Deity may be invoked, or amid whatever circumstances the imagination may have feigned the distribution of his judgments, still remain, under every form of national faith, as the conservative principles of national tran- quillity.— The fear of God and of a future judgment constitute those first, essential tion ; on ne peat avoir compar6 les divers rapports de ce grand ensemble avec la disposition naturelle des esprits et des caracteres ; on ne pent enfin avoir observe les bonimes dans leui-s constantes rivabt^s, sans avoir apper^ii conibieu les gouverneraens les plus sages ont besoin d'etre secoud^'spai I'influence du ressort invisible qui agit en secret snr les con- sciences,"— Introduction, p- 3. DISCOVEEABLE BY REASON. 237 doctrines of religion, which Plato has de- clared it impossible to overthrow without violating the foundations of society*. For these opinions to operate any ex- tensive consequences on popular conduct, they must be entertained with a perfect as- surance of their truth. It is not sufficient that they should be doubtfully regarded as uncertain, and speculative probabi- lities.— A strict compliance with the mo- ral precepts of the Messiah has some- times been demanded by the ministers of Revelation on motives of prudence and precaution, because the requisitions of the Gospel are easy to be accomphshed, and its retributions may possibly be true. In a religious light these inducements are deceitful. — Such arguments to obedience are in opposition to the very terms of the Christian covenant ; they hold a word of promise to the ear, which, if the revela- * Plato de Les^ihus.. lo. CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT tion be divine, will certainly be broken to the hopes ; they dispense with the ne- cessity and the efficacy of faith, by which alone the blessings of redemption can be apprehended ; they omit the need of spi- ritual assistance to our infirmities ; and they presume that a state of unsinning and meritorious obedience may be at- tained by fallen and unregenerated man, acting on his own ability, without any lofty principle or holy motive, from a cold and heartless calculation of chances, and a mercenary comparison of his present sacrifices with the value of his future con- tingencies.— There is surely no necessity for my repeating that these are neither the dispositions or the means by which the glories of the Christian's heaven are to be secured. But, admitting for a mo- ment that those everlasting recompenses, which the Almighty has appointed as the reward of charity and faith, might be DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 239 accomplished, without the sanctification of any holier impulses, by a mere external compliance with the letter of the law, is it probable that any one, who entertained a suspicion of their truth, would be per- suaded to make experiment of this formal method of obtaining them ? — Can it be supposed that any unbeliever would be induced " to eschew the evil," to which his inclifiations forcibly solicited him, and " to do the good," which his indolence or his interest opposed, by the supposition that his actions might perhaps be visible to the eye of his Creator, to whose judg- ments he perhaps might be accountable, in some state of undefinable retribution, which perhaps might be prepared beyond the grave ? — Is it to be believed that any individual, actuated by the feelings and the sentiments of ordinary men, would be deterred from the commission of a sin, to which his unregenerated nature vio- 240 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT lently impelled him, by the recollection of such vague and inconclusive considera- tions ? — No man would postpone the cer- tain, tangible and immediate advantages of this world to the treasures of the next, if the joys of heaven were as problema- tical as they are remote, and as uncer- tain as they are viewless. — Such conduct would be to the highest degree irrational. — Unless the existence of a future state is an object of implicit and confident per- suasion, it neither will or ought to be ad- mitted as an inducement to the resigna- tion of the interests and gratifications of the present. There are no maxims of human wisdom which would instruct us to abandon fruition for a doubtful hope ; and reality for speculation. On the con- trary, they would all direct us to avail our- selves of the present pleasure or emolu- ment. They would exhort us to enjoy the rapid moments as they past ; to se- DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 241 cure, in a life so fragile, so evanescent and so dear, every indulgence that op- portunity might offer, and to allow no dark conjectures of a possible hereafter to impede the liberal current of our incli- nations.— The wisdom of the world would warn us to avoid every visionary appre- hension, and exclaim to each of us, with the emphatic eloquence of the heathen moralist : Sapias, vina liques et spatio brovi Spem longam reseces ; dum loquimur fugerit invida ^tas, carpe diem, quam niininium credula postero*. But, if it be requisite that the essen- tial doctrines of religion should be re- ceived without suspicion, before they can be reasonably insisted upon as motives for the direction of the conduct, it is also necessary that they should be established by some sufficient arguments, which might powerfully impress the- understanding, and * HoRACF, lib. i. Ode 11. VOL. ir. R 242 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT which might be continually recalled to recollection as encouragements to the faith of the virtuous, and as warnings to the negligence of the bad. — In times of rude and imperfect civilization such arguments would not be needed. Hume has correctly said, that there exists in man " an universal propensity to believe*," and with Gibbon it may be added, that * " The uuiversal propensity to believe in invisible intelli- gent power, if not an original instinct being at least a gene- ral attendant of human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp which the divine workman has set upon his work." — Natural History of Religion, sect. 15.— That such an instinct exists Montesquieu considers as sufficiently proved by the single sentence which forms his chapter on the subject ; — ** L' Homme pieux et I'Ath^e parlent toujours de religion, I'un parle de ce qu'il aime et I'autre de ce qu'il craint." — L' Esprit des Loix. This impulse is frequently so imperious as to resist the withering impulse even of atheism itself. When the infatuated disciple has been instructed in the schools of sophistry, to " say in his heart there is no God," he has by no means delivered himself from every spiritual apprehension. The innate and instinctive principle of reli- gious faith will employ itself on other objects ; and he may be superstitious though he has ceased to be devout. Ammi- anus reports of his contemporaries, " that they discovered the most puerile credulity, while they impiously denied the existence of a celestial power." DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. this movement of instinctive faith is " so urgent in the vulgar that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition*." — Speak to unenlightened man of a creating God, of a superintending and directing Provi- dence, of an after-life of punishment or reward, and such sublime communica- tions are heard with reverence, and ad- mitted without suspicion. They are au- thenticated by his sense of weakness, by their harmony with his purest affections and his loftiest impulses, by his anxiety to penetrate the obscurities of the future. — " Often f," said a Thane in the idola- trous court of Edwin, while they dis- cussed the policy of admitting the Chris- * Gibbon's Decline and Fall, ch. xvi. He mentions the de- cay of Paganism as a cause of the rapid extension of the Gospel. t Lingard's History of England ^ vol. i. p. 92. R 2 244 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT tian missionaries, " Often, O King, in the depth of winter, while you are feast- ing with your Thanes, and the fire is blazing on the hearth in the midst of the hall, you have seen a bird pelted by the storm enter at one door and escape at the other. During its passage it was visible ; but whence it came, or whither it went, you knew not. Such to me ap- pears the life of man. He walks the earth for a few years : but what precedes his birth, or what is to follow after his death, we cannot tell. Undoubtedly, if the new religion can unfold these im- portant secrets, it must be worthy our attention." — The Gospel did elucidate these mysterious questions ; it tranquil- lized this anxiety of doubt ; it declared the origin, the conditions and the destiny of human existence ; and the half-en- lightened people discovered the evidences DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 245 of its truth in the instinctive claims and aspirations of nature, and demanded no stronger reasons for the faith which was in them. But, as we improve in science, these convictions of the heart appear too inde- finite to satisfy the understanding. To a certain extent Rousseau was justified in affirming, that " L'Homme qui pense est un animal d^prav6*." From the tree of knowledge he gathers the fruit of good and evil. — As he cultivates his intellec- tual faculties, he learns to mistrust his instincts. The original impressions of his mind appear to him as prepossessions to be eradicated, rather than as intima- tions to be religiously respected. The existence of a God, or of a future state, obtains no credit with refined and edu- cated man, on account of the universality of its reception and his own tendency to * Discours sur I'Origine et Fondement de V In^galite jtarmi les Hommes, 246 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT subscribe to the belief. He attributes the general consent to the force of popu- lar prejudice rather than to the persua- sions of the still small voice of the Deity within. He will submit to the sugges- tions neither of fear or hope, unless the event which they anticipate be confirmed by arguments that may warrant his ex- pectations. He only consents to that which is demonstrated. He distrusts the inspirations of nature. He endeavours to investigate their secret and mysterious movements by the light of a philosophy, before which they shrink, and perish. — He imitates the crime, and he is visited with the punishment of Psyche. As long as the being of a God and the retributions of eternity are connected with a divine revelation, as in the case of Christianity, the reason finds itself in pos- session of the means of satisfying its doubts. The evidences of their truth are DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 247 investigated and decided upon with the consideration of the arguments that prove the existence, the miracles and the inspira- tion of the teacher who delivered them. They become as it were points of history, and are established by the same testi- monies as are required for the confirma- tion of any other historical relation. But, when this ground of confidence is with- drawn, the understanding is left to wan- der over the illimitable sea of specula- tion, and seek some other foundation on which they may be raised. — The reason must then put its faculties to the proof. It must try whether it " can by searching find out God." It must separate the two predominant, essential articles of religious faith into a variety of consecutive propo- sitions, and endeavour, one by one, to discover for them a satisfactory demon- stration.— Let us examine what success 248 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT the reason might anticipate for itself in this difficult and indispensable investigation. OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE DEITY. Is there a God? — It appears impos- sible to look upward on the glory of the heavens, and around us on the beauty and fertility of the earth, and entertain a doubt of the existence of a contriving and creating pov^er. It appears consist- ent with our ordinary experience to sup- pose that such effects must have pro- ceeded from a cause ; and, as there is an admirable correspondence and design dis- coverable in the component parts, it again appears reasonable to suppose that they received their origin from the hand of an intelligent Creator. These conjectures are authorized by revelation ; and to the mind, which Christianity has predisposed for their reception, they assume the cha- DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 249 racter of self-evident propositions. In- formed of his existence and his attributes by the benevolence of the Divinity him- self, we find the testimonies of his being in the wonders and the beauties of crea- tion, and imagine, that the knowledge might be naturally deduced from the pre- sence of those objects, by which the truth of the revealed fact is corroborated. But we no sooner cease to acknowledge the sacred authority of religion, than those arguments, which we had regarded as conclusive, appear to be suddenly di- vested of their force and their persua- sion. The propositions on which we had relied as indisputable axioms are de- graded into problematical conjectures. — Is there a God? — We can advance no reason for the support of this belief, which has not been continually adduced and controverted, and adduced and contro- verted again. — Is there a God ? — In the 250 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT discussion of this question there are those who estimate the probabilities as favour- able to such an hypothesis ; there are those who consider them as inclining to the contrary supposition ; and again, there are others who, like D'Alembert*, regard the arguments on either side as so equally and indiscriminately poised, that they are sensible of no preponderance, and are left bewildered in a state of philosophical uncertainty. — Is there a God I — If any natural aspirations of the soul, if any gra- titude for the important privileges of life, if any consciousness of weakness, or de- sire of protection, or dread of annihila- tion shall prepossess the heart with a per- suasion of his existence, we must learn to prevaricate with our sentiments, and studiously conceal our faith from the de- * J'ai assez comni d'Alembert pour affirnier qu'il ^tait sceptique en tuut, les mathematiques exceptees. II n'aiirait pas plus prononc6 qu'il u'y avait point de religion qu'il n'au- rait prononce qu'il y a un Dieu. — La Harpe. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. S51 tection of the mighty masters of unbelief. Such an avowal would render us ob- noxious to the persecution of enmity and ridicule and contempt. It would subject us to infinite oppression. We should be derided as beings who had fallen upon an unpropitious age ; and who yet retained, in the society of the wise, the supersti- tions of the ignorant. We should incur the imputation of that second childish- ness, with which Diderot reproached the acknowledged theism of Voltaire*. We should be stunned with such clamorous upbraidings as were vociferated against La Harpef , when La Lande and his dis- ciples were heard glorying in their un- godliness, and asserting that atheism was the only true philosophy. — We should be * *' Le pauvre Voltaire ladote un pen, il avouat I'aiitre jour qu'il croyait a Tetre de Dieu." — Diderot Coirhpond- ance. f See the Note to La Harpe's Introduction of his Vo- lumes,— De la Philosophie du dix-huitieme siecle. 252 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT pursued with such shouts of insulting im- precation as those which reverberated through the hall of the Institute, when the eloquent St. Pierre * announced his principles of faith, and which followed the old man with tumultuous violence * In the year 1798, at a meeting of the Institute, St. Pierre had been charged by the class of morals to make a report upon the Memoirs which had been written on the prize ques- tion, " Wliat institutions are the most proper to form the basis of public morals ?" — When at the conclusion of his report he announced his own religious principles, a cry of fury was heard from all parts of the hall : some jested, and asked when he had seen God, and what was his form ; others derided his credulity ; the most moderate addressed him with expressions of contempt. From ridicule they proceeded to outrage ; they insulted his age ; they charged him with do- tage and superstition, and threatened to expel him from an assembly of wliich he had rendered himself unworthy. There were some who carried their madness so far as to challenge him to a duel, in order to prove, at the point of the sword, that there was no God. He vainly attempted to make him- self heard amid the tumult. They refused to listen to him ; and Cabanis, in a transport of rage, cried out, " I swear there is no God, and I demand that his name be never again pronounced within these walls."— St. Pierre would hear no more ; but saying calmly to this last opponent, " Your master, Mirabeau, would have blushed at the words you have uttered," retired without waiting a reply ; and the assembly continued to debate not if there were a God, but if they would allow his name to be mentioned wilhhi their walls. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 253 after he had escaped the fury of his op- ponents, and left the enraged Cabanis swearing that there was no God, and de- manding that his name might never again be pronounced within the walls of the Assembly. — Where is the Deist, who in the face of such a perilous opposition will not tremble to venture on the profession of his belief? — Will he not learn to blush at his own ignorant credulity I — Will he not be ashamed of his adherence to so antiquated a sentiment, when he finds that his obnoxious faith is exploded as a pre- judice by even the very lowest of the people ; that atheism is the favourite de- spair of our alleys and our prison-houses ; that even Ings and Thistlewood conspired without the apprehension of an avenging Deity ; and that the rude assassin of the Duke de Berri, familiar with the easy ar- guments of ungodliness, scorned to dread the retributions of a Creator, of whose 254 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT existence he was not sufficiently assured =^? — Who on so speculative a question will voluntarily involve himself in all the so- licitudes of controversy, and assert the confidence of his religious dependance, while he is superciliously informed by the youngest of the unbelievers, that " the being of a God is a mere veil woven by philosophical conceit, to hide the igno- rance of philosophers even from them- selves," and " of which every reflecting mind must acknowledge a deficiency of proof t?" * When the murderer of the Duke de Berri was reminded of an avenging God, he replied, '* Dieu n'estqu'un mot ; il n'est jamais venu sur la terre." — ''* Cette parole," — says Men- nais, " est bien propre, sous plus d'un rapport, a faire naitre de profondes reflexions. Dans I'esprit de ce miserable, I'existence de Dieu se liait k sa venue sur la terre. II n'etait pas venu, selon lui, done, il n'existait pas. Tant il est vrai qu'il faut aux peuples un Dieu reellement present, un Dieu qui se soit manifest^ d'une mani^re sensible, qui ait venu parmi les hommes et converse avec eux. II n'y a point de deisme pour les nations." — Mennais sur la Religion, vol. ii. p. 21. t Queen Mub, p. 128 of the Notes. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. ^55 OF THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE DEITY. It appears then that the reason is not capable of affording such indisputable proofs of the being of a God, as would warrant our proceeding to deduce from the certainty of his existence any motive for the regulation of the conduct, — The unassisted mind stumbles at the very threshold of the inquiry. — But let it be imagined, for a moment, that all mankind should coincide in the reception of this truth, and agree in deprecating any far- ther discussion of the question, still the reason has made but a very inconsiderable advance towards the establishment of the most material opinion of our religion. — It may admit, as fact, what it acknow- ledges itself incompetent to prove, and confess, that there is a Divinity above us. But it is necessary to prescribe the attributes of this Divinity ; and in what 256 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT region of the world are the people to be discovered who have been enabled, by the simple light of nature, to ascend to the conception of his perfections? — Of what has the unassisted mind been ca- pable but of inventing some tremendous Ashtoreth or some hideous Juggernaut? — It has made a wild assemblage of the circumstances that are most appalling to the instincts of our nature, and conceived that it had approximated the resemblance of the Deity, and endowed him with fit attributes, and addressed him with appro- priate offerings, when it had raised his image of a colossal and terrific magni- tude ; when it had ascribed to his nature the exaggerated violence of human pas- sion ; when it had worshipped him with libations of human blood and the shrieks of expiring victims ; when it had collected about his temple the objects that weigh heaviest on the imagination and strike a DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 257 chill and horror to the soul. — Perhaps it may be alleged that there are exceptions to this account. — There are exceptions. Men have varied in the qualities and the dispositions that they have attributed to their idols. They have painted them after the pictures of their ov^n minds ; and, occasionally, they have deified effeminacy and lust, instead of ferocity and rapine. — Or it may be said, that just and ele- vated conceptions of the greatness and the power of the Almighty were enter- tained by several of the ancient philoso- phers ; who were indebted to no other aids for their discoveries than the common fa- culties of the understanding. — Most cer- tainly, they were in possession of a very extraordinary knowledge of the divine nature. St. Paul alleges it as one of his severest accusations against them, that, when " they knew God they glorified VOL. II. s 258 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT him not as God, neither were thankful*." — But, though the writings of Plato or of Xenophon, of Cicero or of Seneca, bear witness to the unity and spirituality and perfection of the Creator, — it must be remembered, that such opinions were but the uncertain conjectures of a few, and opposed by the plausible speculations of others ; that they were cautiously advanced in private among the friends and dis- ciples of those who professed them, and externally abjured, by a scrupulous com- pliance with the rites and ceremonies of idolatry ; and it also must be remem- bered, that the simple fact of such opi- nions being entertained, can by no means be admitted as a proof that they were self-acquired. " Deism, or the principles of natural worship," says Dryden, a man not 111- * Romansi ch. i. v. 21. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 259 calculated to appoint the limits by which the unaided powers of the intellect are circumscribed, — " Deism, or the prin- ciples of natural worship, are only the faint remnants or dying flames of revealed religion in the posterity of Noah ; and our modern philosophers, nay, and some of our philosophizing divines, have too much exalted the faculties of our souls, when they have maintained that, by their force, mankind has been able to find out that there is one supreme Agent, or in- tellectual Being, which we call God ; that praise and prayer are his due worship ; and the rest of those deducements, which I am confident are the remote effects of revelation, and unattainable by our dis- course, I mean as simply considered, and without the benefit of divine illumination: so that we have not lifted up ourselves to God by the weak pinions of our reason, S 2 260 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT but he has been pleased to descend to us ; and what Socrates said of him, what Plato writ, and the rest of the heathen philosophers of several nations, is all no more than the twilight of revelation, after the sun of it was set in the race of Noah. That there is something above us, some principle of motion, our reason can ap- prehend, though it cannot discover what it is by its own virtue. And indeed it is very improbable that we, who by the strength of our faculties cannot enter into the knowledge of any being, not so much as of our own, should be able to find out by them that supreme nature which we cannot otherwise define than by saying it is Infinite ; as if infinite were definable, or infinity a subject for our narrow under- standing. They who would prove reli- gion by reason do but weaken the cause which they endeavour to support : it is to DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 261 take away the pillars from our faith, and to prop it only with a twig ; it is to de- sign a tower like that of Babel, which, if it were possible (as it is not) to reach heaven, would come to nothing by the confusion of the workmen : for every man is building a several way, impotently con- ceited of his own model and his own ma- terials. Reason is always striving, and always at a loss ; and of necessity it must so come to pass, while it is exercised about that which is not its proper object*." What Dryden has here asserted is authorized by the admissions of the very persons to whom he has alluded, and whose superior knowledge had ap- peared to cast suspicion on his theory. Those great and highly-gifted teachers of the heathen world, who best perceived the falsehood of their national supersti- tions, and, amid the surrounding pesti- * Preface to the Religio Laki. 262 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT lence of idolatry, were preserved from the general contagion by the apprehen- sion of a purer Deity, never arrogated to themselves any merit of discovery. They confessed that they had derived their knowledge from tradition. " There is a tradition," says Plato, "that one God once governed all the universe*." — " There is a tradition," says Aristotle, " received from of old among all men, that God is the creator and preserver of all things ; and that God, being one, received a va- riety of names according to the variety of effects of which he is the cause f." — And what was this universal tradition from which the idea of the unity of the God- head was derived but the faint relics of revelation ? — what was it but the linger- ing traces of the Almighty's earliest dis- pensations, remaining with the descend- * Plato Polit. Quoted by Mitford in the religion of the Greeks. t Aristotle de. Mundn, 6 <5c 7. Quoted by Mitford. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 263 ants of Noah ? — The tints of that rainbow- light which sealed God's covenant with the Patriarch was still dimly reflected upon the clouds of their national idolatry ; and some exalted minds caught a glimpse of the departing beam, and followed it as the cynosure of their inquiries. OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. But the persuasion of the existence of the Deity, however sublime the qualities which we may attribute to his nature, is perfectly unimportant for every religious purpose, unless we are at the same time persuaded, that he looks down with an eye of constant observation on his crea- tures, and is interested in the actions, and regulates the occurrences of their lives. Deism is as injurious in its influ- ences as atheism itself, unless it be con- nected with an entire dependance on the superintending providence of its God. — The Gospel assures us that this intimate 264 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT connexion really does subsist between the Creator and his works ; that " the very hairs of our head are numbered * ;'' that " not a sparrow falls to the ground" without the knowledge and the permis- sion of the Almighty : — and, enUghtened, as we are, by the instructions of revela- tion, with the knowledge of those proba- tionary conditions attached to our resi- dence on earth, we can perceive in the vicissitudes of our pilgrimage the direct- ing counsels of his wisdom ; and we can trace in the interchange of joy and grief, of happiness and calamity, the im- mediate interposition of our heavenly Father awarding to his children the libe- ralities of parental love, or the chastise- ments of parental authority, with a view to the purification of the soul, and the in- terests of their eternal destination. But, if mankind had been left to discover for * St. Matthew, ch. x. verses 29> 30. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. ^65 themselves the knowledge of this im- portant truth, it is scarcely possible that they should arrive at so cheering and sa- lutary a conclusion. That the Deity — if indeed they should determine that there is a Deity — that the Deity is wise and powerful may, perhaps, be read in the exquisite variety, and the admirable pro- portions of the universe ; but whether he continues to extend over the operations of his hand the protection of his provi- dence, or has dismissed the world, to roll its inhabitants along through the regions of illimitable space, without any farther concern for their prosperity or their afflic- tion, is a problem of the most uncertain and difficult solution. *' Allowing," says Hume, " that God is the Author of the universe, it follows that he possesses that precise degree of power, intelligence and benevolence, which appears in its work- manship : but nothing farther can ever be 266 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT proved, except we call in the assistance of exaggeration and flattery to supply the defects of argument and reasoning. So far as the traces of any attributes ap- pear, so far we may conclude that these attributes exist*." Such is the rule pre- scribed by the great master of modern unbelief to guide the investigations of those who would meditate the nature of the Almighty. The rule is of itself most excellent and judicious. It is consistent with the soundest principles of philosophy. The reason would not be justified in adopting any other method of decision ; and, if it be applied to the examination of the existence or the non-existence of Divine Providence, it will lead us to re- ject the supposition of any particular interference with the occurrences of the earth. — In contemplating the works of the Creator, we discover, that he has * E$my Oh Proiidence and n Future Slide. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 267 established certain general and necessary laws, which, though liable to partial de- viations, are sufficiently fixed and per- manent to ensure the regularity of the universe ; — we find that man is animated with peculiar inclinations, of which the temperate gratification is productive of corporeal strength and mental compla- cency, while the immoderate indulgence is punished by the after-penalties of in- tellectual and bodily disease ; — we find that his understanding is endowed with admirable faculties, and that the conti- nued and strenuous exertion of its powers is most frequently successful in procuring an equivalent proportion of those advan- tages to which its labours are designed ; — we find that prudence is generally suc- cessful, imprudence generally unfortunate ; that virtue is generally rewarded, vice ge- nerally defeated ; that " the race is ge- nerally to the swift, and the battle gene- 268 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT rally to the strong ;" and, if this process be occasionally interrupted, the reason would only receive from the triumphs of the unworthy, or the reverses of the de- serving, the confirmation of that simple truth, which is declared by the ungenial spring or by the blighted harvest, that the laws of nature are admirable in their extensive effects, but are susceptible of partial variations, and may be thwarted by contravening accidents. — To the eye of unenlightened man every one of these exceptions affords an argument and an example against the agency and the di- rection of Divine Providence. The pre- sent and particular interposition of the Deity with the transactions of the earth is not only discredited by the apparent ble- mishes, but by the very arrangement and regularity and beauty of the creation. As the philosopher meditates the scenes and circumstances around him: as he DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 269 compares the general order with the oc- casional defects ; from the order he dis- covers, that the Author of the universe has appointed from the beginning a sys- tem of wise and salutary laws for its di- rection ; and from the defects he learns, that the mighty Sovereign by whom they were imposed does not condescend to disturb the serenity of his power, by in- specting their operations, or counteracting the evil contingencies, that may arise from their collision*. OF THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. But, having annihilated all prospect of * Such is the conclusion of Hume, in the Essay I have lately quoted ; and also of Lord Bolingbroke, who says, tliat " God has given his human creatures the materials of phy- sical and moral liappiness in the physical and moral constitu- tion of things. «^ He has given them faculties and powers, ne- cessary to collect and apply these materials. This the Creator has done for us. What we shall do for ourselves he has left to the freedom of our elections. Tliis is the plan of divine wisdom : and we know nothing more particular, and indeed nothing more at all of the dispensations of Providence than this," — Lord Bolingbroke's JVorki, vol. v. p. 473, 474, (juoted by Leland. 270 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT divine protection during our residence on earth, the reason may, perhaps, have the ability of consoling us for the calamities of life, by disclosing the hopes of an im- mortality. It may, perhaps, be able to reveal to us a hereafter, in v^hich every evil shall be repaired, and a glorious atonement be provided for every inequa- lity in our earthly destiny. — Alas ! — if we have no other grounds of confidence in the existence of a future state than those which may be afforded by the arguments of man, most faint and wavering and un- certain must be our expectation of its event. — ^What are the testimonies to which the mere human teacher would refer us for the proofs of the immortality of the soul ? — Cicero has asserted, that the opi- nion is universally maintained among the different nations of the world ; and that the unanimous consent ought to be re- spected as an inward intimation from the DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 271 voice of nature^. — But to this it may be objected, that though the belief is com- mon, it is by no means universal ; that the slightest exception from the universa- lity of its influence desecrates all its pre- tensions to oracular sanctity, and repre- sents its unsupported adoption, rather as a weakness of superstition than an impulse of inspiration ; — and that, even if the argument v^ere valid, as it failed to impress conviction on the mind of the in- structor, it cannot be expected to address itself with any very persuasive emphasis to the understandings of his disciples. — When, in his change of character, Cicero forgot the conclusions of the philosopher in * *' Omni autem in re consensio omnium gentium lex na- tmae pntanda est. Qiiis est igitnr qui suorum mortem primum non eo lugeat, quod eos orbatos vitae commodis arbiiretur ? Tolle banc opinionem : luctum snstuleris- Nemo enim mce- ret suo iucommodo. Dolent fortasse, et anguntur : sed rlla hignbris lanientatio fletusque moerens ex eo est, quod eum quem dileximus vitap commodis privatum arbitramur, idque sentire. Atque hoc ita sentimus natura dnce, nulla ratione nuUaque doctrina." — Cicero, Tus. Dis., lib. i. c. 13. 272 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT the enthusiasm of the advocate * ; — when he was heard declaiming against the faith in the future existence of the soul, with all the force of his overwhelming ridicule, amid the applauses of the Roman people, who does not perceive, that it would have been a most insufficient answer to have recalled his own arguments to his recol- lection ; a most ineffectual means of si- lencing his opposition to remind the en- lightened orator of an enlightened nation, that the opinion he despised was preva- lent in the woods of Germany, and tra- ditionary in the hymns of the Druids ? We are sometimes told to find, in the longing after immortality, and in the soul's shrinking back upon itself and starting at destruction, the suggestions of a divinity within the breast, and the intimations of eternity f ; but may we * Cicero pro Cluentio^ cap. 6. f I need not say that Ihe allusion here is to the magnificent verses of Addison, at the opening of the 5th act of Cato. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 273 not be permitted to doubt the truth and the correctness of the interpretation, which is here attributed to the emotions of the heart? — May we not conceive that the pride of man has prejudiced his judg- ment ? — May we not suspect that he has imagined the movements of an eternal spirit in that universal attachment to ex- istence which the wisdom of the Almighty has implanted in his creatures to prevent their abandoning the state to which his providence has appointed them? — May we not presume that this boasted indication of a deathless nature is nothing more than the movement of a principle which is com- mon to all animated things, and which in man has become educated and refined, till, dreading a total separation from the scenes which a long familiarity has rendered dear, he is solicitous that some memorial of his being should survive among them, and VOL. TI. T 274 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT longs to commit the recollection of his wisdom or his virtue or his valour to the earth, as he would leave the pledge of his attachment with a friend at parting ? Others would call upon us to receive the testimonies of our immortality in the return of the morning, in the reviving fertility of the spring, in the awakening from sleep, in the changes of the summer insect ; but what conviction can be dis- covered in such faint analogies? — The reasonings which are raised upon such frail foundations inform us of no truth, but that man has trembled to encounter the cold obstructions of the grave, that, in his eagerness to be persuaded of the eter- nity of his nature, he has caught at every circumstance which might yield support to his visionary hopes, and mistaken the metaphors that might illustrate, for evi- dences that might confirm them. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 275 Again we are directed to trace the in- dications of a deathless spirit, in the energy and the perfection of the mental faculties. — But when we are told that nothing superior to the memory and the invention can be imagined, even in the nature of the Divinity himself* ; that, in comprehending by their means the design and the system of the creation, we par- ticipate in the attributes of its author ; and that these faculties must necessarily be eternal as a part and an emanation of the eternal Godf , though a hope may be * " Quid est enim memona rernm et verborum? quid porro inventio ? profecto id, quo nee in Deo quicquam niajus, in- telligi potest." — Tus. Dis., lib. i. c. 26. f " Quorum astrorum conversiones omnesque motus qui auimo vidit, is docuit similem animum sunm ejus esse, qui ea fabricatus essetin ccelo. Nam cum Archimedes lunae, so- lis, quinque errantium motus in sphaeram illigavit, effecit idem quod ille, qui Timaeo mundum aedificavit, Platonis Deus ; ut tarditate et celeritate dissimillimos motus una re- ceret conversio. Qnod si in hoc mundo fieri sine Deo non potest, ne in sphaera quidem eosdem motus Archimedes sine divino ingenio potuisset imitari." — Tus. Dis., lib. i. c. 25. " Quidquid est illud, quod sentit, quod sapit, quod vivit, quod viget, coeleste et divinum, ob eamque rem aeternum sit necesse est." — Tus. Dis., lib. i. c. 27. T 2 276 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT excited by the suggestion, that hope is mingled with emotions of the most anxious and painful incredulity ; — for, if the me- mory and the invention be thus eternal as they are excellent, why do they par- take of the infirmities of the body ?— why fail they with the failure of the corporeal strength ? — why do they decay with the energies of the animal and inferior na- ture ? — why do they not increase in viva- city and quickness and apprehension as they return nearer and nearer to their source ? — why do they not spring forth, as they approximate the grave, with an ardent and exulting eagerness to rejoin the fountain of their inspiration ? Surely these things very powerfully advocate the cause of those who would represent the principle of life as solely originating in and depending on the orga- nization of the body. — If the faculties of DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 277 the soul be thus intimately connected with the health and the vigour of the form it animates ; if the tenderest attach- ments and the most rooted enmities, the attainments of the understanding and the affections of the heart, may for ever be erased by the ravages of the malady that paralyzes the bodily members ; if " the ideas, like the children of our youth, often die before us, and our minds represent to us those tomxbs to which we are ap- proaching, where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moul- ders away=^;" do not these phenomena announce to us, with all the force of cor- roborating facts, and to which we have nothing to oppose but vague and inde- finite aspirations, that the soul and the body are inseparable and the same — that the theory of the materialist, however * Locke on the Understanding , book ii. ch. i^. 278 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT repulsive it may be to our hopes and to our pride, is most consistent with actual experience — that life proceeds from the apt conformation and connexion of the members — as the light from the taper, and the music from the lyre — and that they originate and flourish and decay together ? This is the conclusion that thousands have adopted from the contemplation of the circumstances and conditions of our na- ture ; and, if their sentiments be correct, there is one dreary consequence v^hich must inevitably succeed. If the lessons of the Materialist be true, existence ceases vv^ith the beating of the pulse ; and is for ever stopt with the current of the blood. — Reasoning on human prin- ciples, it is impossible to disunite the theory, by which life is considered as the result of organization, from the corollary, that life is therefore as perishable as the organs of which it is the result. — As far DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 279 as the intelligence of man can discover the connexion that subsists between the cause and the effect, these things appear to be inseparable ; but we are no sooner informed, by revelation, of the immortality of the soul, than the opinions of the ma- terialist become divorced from those ma- lignant consequences, which might, under other circumstances, be anticipated from their adoption. To the christian such speculations are perhaps unprofitable; but they are innocent speculations. He knows, on the authority of his faith, that the Almighty will recompense his obe- dience with the eternal felicity of heaven ; that his body is the temple of the living God; and whether the principle of his mere animal existence be material or im- material, is perfectly indifferent to him ; for the important fact of his immortality is not a question of corporeal organi- ^80 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT zation but of divine benevolence and power*. It has occasionally been my lot to fall in contact with individuals, who have pro- fessed deistical opinions, and, though such persons are generally found to be rather * Materialism is peculiarly current in the modern schools of medicine and anatomy. There is no assignable reason why anatomists by profession should be more capable of forming a decision on this intricate and mysterious ques- tion than others who are less conversant with their science; but, as they appear to have arrogated to themselves a right to arbitrate on this occasion, and to infer, from their superior knowledge of the organs of the body, that they must neces- sarily possess a deeper insight into the properties of the mind, it maybe right to intimate, that they are by no means unanimous in their opinions ; and that the most distinguished have refused the sanction of their names to the system by which the body and the soul are thus confounded. — A few weeks before his death, Boerhaave said to his friend the Rev. Mr. Schultens, that, " he had never doubted of the spiritual and immaterial nature of the soul j but declared that he had lately a kind of experimental certainty of the distinction between corporeal and thinking substances, which mere reason and philosophy cannot afford, and opportunities of contemplating the wonderful and inexplicable union of soul and body, which nothing but long sickness can give. This he illustrated by a description of the effects which the infirmities of his body had upon his faculties, Avhich yet they did not so oppress or vanquish, but his soul was always master of itself, and always resigned to the pleasure of its Maker.." Johnson's Life of Boerhaave. DISCOVERABLE BY REASON. 281 ostentatious in the communication of their sentiments, I never remember — even in a single instance — to have encountered among them any firm or confident reliance on the future existence of the soul. Many regard such a state as possible, and even as highly probable, — for there is a con- tagious influence in opinion, and every man involuntarily imbibes something of the expectations and the persuasions of his companions, — but I never heard of any one of them who professed himself to be satisfied of his future destination. The unbeliever, residing in the hourly habits of familiarity with christians, and in the constant observation of their religious hope, receives an authority in their assu- rance of an hereafter, which seems to ac- credit the probability of its occurrence, and induces him to suspect the arguments that oppose it. He doubts, but he does not deny, the immortality of his nature ; ^82 CHRISTIAN OPINIONS NOT he entertains a tenderness for the belief of his childhood ; he hesitates in the ad- mission of the reasonings, by which it is impugned ; he indirectly derives a hope from the prevalence of the Gospel, that moderates the miserable suggestions of his deism. The modern infidel receives involuntarily a kind of cheering confi- dence from the faith of others, which were unattainable by any inquiry of the unas- sisted intellect : but that the respect, the reverence, the half-persuasion of the truth of this christian doctrine, which is mani- fested by many separatists from Christian- ity, is an unacknowledged operation of the faith, is demonstrated by the unde- viating experience of antiquity, and by the unanimous consent of those who had most diligently speculated on this mo- mentous subject previously to the incar- nation of the Messiah. Socrates is re- presented as confessing, that the mortality DISCOVERABLE EY REASON. of the soul was the generally received opinion of the people * ; " A future state was not believed," says Bolingbroke, " by the philosophers, not even by Plato and Pythagoras, though they talked of itf . The belief was ridiculed by Cicero in the public forum:}:, and scorned by Caesar in the open senate §. Even those in whom the will — that eloquent and per- suasive advocate in the direction of the judgment — was prepossessed in favour of the opinion, acknowledged, that the argu- ments on which it was grounded were insufficient to authorize any reliance on its truth. " The opinions of some," said Cicero to his friend Atticus, " convey a hope, that the soul may exist independent of the body, and ascend to heaven as to its home : — if perchance this sentiment * PhcBdo. f BOLINGBROKE'S IVOI'ks, vol. V. |). 5l3. t Pro Owin^jWcap. Ci. $ Sallusl de Bello Catilin. ^84 CHEISTIAN OPINIONS NOT should delight you*." — There are few things more melancholy than the reply. It indicates the incapacity of the unaided reason. It proclaims the solicitude of the healthy and unperverted heart, under the oppression of that burthen of religious uncertainty by which we are afflicted, when abandoned to our natural sources of information, and bereaved of those divine communications of which it is impiety to suspect the truth. Atticus would have been content with error : — he would have blessed the falsehood that deceived him into hope : — whether the soul were in- stinct with immortality or destined to an- nihilation, he would have been satisfied, could he but have cheered the period of his consciousness on earth by the persua- sion— even by the vain persuasion — of its being animated with an everlasting prin- * 1. Tus. Dis. xi. Reliquoium sententiae speni afferunt, si te hoc forte dolectat, posse animos enin e corporibiis ex- cesserint, in ce Stael, Dir Annies d'ExH, p. loo- PRINCIPLES IS IRREMEDIABLE. 341 deep and firm foundation of all real vir- tue; it is to introduce an universal exhi- bition of showy qualities, and glittering accomplishments ; to withdraw a man from the quiet and retiring duties of his home, and '* set him on a stage ; and to make him an artificial creature, with painted, theatric sentiments, fit only to be seen by the glare of candle-light, and formed to be contemplated at a due dis- tance*." If public opinion is deified; vanity will be the prevailing disposition of its votaries, which, "if it be of little moment in a small degree, and conversant in little things, when full grown, assumes the character of the worst of vices, and is the occasional mimic of them all ; it makes the whole man false ; it leaves no- thing sincere and trust-worthy about him, but his best qualities are poisoned and * Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. 8vo edition of Burke's IVorks, vol. vi. p. 34. THE WANT OF CHRISTIAN perverted by it, and operate exactly as his worst*." From the consideration, then, of the defects which are inseparable from those mere human obligations to duty and re- straints on crime, which are vaunted by the distinguished teachers of ungodliness, as adequate to maintain the order and the tranquillity of the universe, and replace the venerable sanctions of religion, we may perceive that their unsupported adop- tion would rather lead to injurious, than to beneficial, issues ; that, instead of con- tributing their forces to the preservation of society, they would become distorted by the corruption of the passions, and conspire as enemies, where they were solicited as allies ; that they themselves have need of instruction, assistance, and restraint from those sacred intimations * Burke's Letter 1o a Member of the National Assembly^ p. 31, PRINCIPLES IS IRREMEDIABLE. 343 of the Gospel, which they have falsely been considered capable of superseding ; and that the want of Christian opinions would, indeed, be irremediable by any substitutes, which could be devised by the ingenuity, or established by the au- thority, of man. We have seen that the lessons of re- velation, its morals and its sanctions, are essential to the happiness of man. We have shewn that the momentous truths which it communicates could not have been established by the unassisted fa- culties of the reason. We have shewn that the invention of mankind could sug- gest no substitute that could supply the void occasioned by the extirpation of the Gospel. From this conclusion there results this most memorable and important re- flection : 344 THE WANT OF CHRISTIAN The man who would boldly and im- piously extend the principles of infide- lity, or countenance the desecration of the Gospel, advances in avowed hostility to the peace and order of human exist- ence. He is the malignant foe of the mo- narch and the subject, of the rich and the poor, of our social confidence, of our domestic purity, and of the inward tranquillity of the heart. He is a con- spirator against the happiness of his race. He rends the golden chain asun- der, by which earth is linked with heaven. He severs the alliances by which man is united with his God. He endea- vours to dispossess his fellow-creatures of those holier and sublimer qualities, which exalt their nature above the beasts that perish, and seeks to re-deliver them to the subjection of their bewildering ap- petites, and their vagrant and selfish in- clinations. He attempts to urge his PRINCIPLES IS IRREMEDIABLE. 345 kind into the track of a moral and in- tellectual debasement, where all civility and arts, justice and probity, constancy and tenderness, may perish in a common ruin, with those sacred aspirations of hope and sentiment, which have been awakened in the human soul by the com- manding summons of the Redeemer. — Cities and villages have gradually col- lected about the spot in which the altar had been raised ; they will be again de- serted when the altar is destroyed. — That narrative of ancient song is not all a fable, which relates that the safety of the long- beleaguered city was inseparably attached to the preservation of the statue of its presiding god. There was here a precept of deep, of solemn, of invariable truth, con- cealed within a veil of superstitious fic- tion. In every nation, and to every people, religion is the energy of war, and the 346 THE WANT OF CHRISTIAN security of peace*. Faith is the true Palladium ; and it can neither suffer in- crease or diminution in the affections of the people, but the happiness and pros- perity of the people will be influenced with a sympathetic elevation or depres- sion. Long and nobly did the bulwarks of Sion resist the forces of imperial hos- tility ; and all the arts of war without, and disease and famine, the gaunt allies of the enemy, within, were ineffectual against the fortresses of the holy and devoted city, while the iniquities of Israel * '' The safety of all estates dependeth upon religion; — Religion, unfeignedly loved, perfecteth men's abilities unto all kinds of virtuous services in the commonwealth ; n