Idolatry is contemptible. But they worship the Sun, the Moon, the Host of Heaven, the Rivers, the Sea, Fire, Air -and what not? Would you that the Creator, for the sake of these Fools, should ruin his own Works and disturb the Laws appointed to Nature by his own Wisdom? If a Man steals grain and sows it, should the seed not shoot up out of the Earth because it was stolen? O no! the wise Creator lets nature run her own course, for her course is his own appointment. And what if the Children of Folly abuse it to evil? The day of reckoning is not far off, and Men will then learn, that human Actions re-appear in their, consequences by as certain a Law as the green Blade rises up out of the buried corn seed. To the doctrine of retribution after Death, the Philo sopher made the following objection. When the soul is disunited from the body, to which will belong the guilt of the offences committed during Life? Certainly not to the body, for this, when the soul takes its departure, lies like a clod of earth, and without the soul would never have been capable of offending: and as little would the soul have defiled itself with sin but for it's union with the flesh. Which of the two then is the proper object of the divine Justice? God's Wisdom only, answered the Rabbi, fully comprehends the ways of his justice. Yet the Mortal may without offence, if with humility, strive to render the same intelligible to himself and his fellows. A Householder had in his fruit-garden two Servants, the one lame and the other blind. Yonder, said the lame Man to the blind, on those Trees I see most delicious fruit hang, take me on thy shoulders and we will pluck thereof. This they did and thus robbed their Benefactor, who had maintained them, as unprofitable servaßts, out of his mere good. ness and compassion. The Master discovered the theft, and called the two Ingrates to account. Each threw off the blame from himself, the one urging in his defence his incapability of seeing the Fruit, and the other the want of power to get at it. What did the Master of the House do? He placed the lame Man upon the blind, and punished them in the same posture in which they had committed the Offence. So will the Judge of the world do with the soul and body of Man. PENRITH: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY J. BROWNG AND SOED BY CLEMENT, 201, STRAND, LONDON. THE FRIEND. No. 25, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1810. ONLY a few privileged Individuals are authorized to pass into the Theatre without stopping at the Door-keeper's box; but every man of decent appearance may put down the Play-price there, and thenceforward has as good a right as the Managers themselves not only to see and hear, as far as his place in the House, and. his own ears and eyes permit him, but likewise to express audibly his approbation or disapprobation of what may be going forward on the Stage. If his feelings happen to be in unison with those of the Audience in general, he may without breach of decorum persevere in his notices of applause or dislike, till the wish of the House is complied with. If he finds himself unsupported, he rests contented with having once exerted his common right, and on that occasion at least gives no further interruption to the amusement of those, who feel differently from him. So it is, or so it should be, in Literature, A few extraordinary minds may be allowed to pass a mere opinion: though in point of fact, those who alone are entitled to this privilege, are ever the last to avail themselves of it. Add too, that even the mere opinions of such men may in general be regarded either as promissory Notes, or as receipts referring to a former payment. But every man's opinion has a right to pass into the common Auditory, if his reason for the opinion is paid down at the same time: for arguments are the sole current coin of intellect. The degree of influence to which the opinion is entitled, should be proportioned to the weight and value of the Reasons for it: and whether these are shillings or pounds sterling, the man, who has given them, remains blameless, provided he contents himself with the place to which they have entitled him, and does not attempt by strength of lungs to counterbalance its' disadvantages, or expect to exert as imme, diate an influence in the back seats of the upper Gallery,, as if he had paid in gold and been seated in the Stage box. : But unfortunately (and here commence the points of difference between the theatric and the literary Public) in the great Theatre of Literature there are no authorized Door-keepers for our anonymous Critics are self-elected. I shall not fear the charge of calumny if I add, that they have lost all credit with wise men, by unfair dealing: such as their refusal to receive an honest man's money, (that is, his argument) because they anticipate and dislike his opinion, while others of suspicious character and the most unseemly appearance, are suffered to pass without payment, or by virtue of orders which they have themselves distributed to known Partizans. Sometimes the honest man's intellectual coin is refused under pretence, that it is light or counterfeit, without any proof given either by the money scales, or by sounding the coin in dispute together with one of known goodness. We may carry the metaphor still farther. It is by no means a rare case, that the money is returned because it had a different sound from that of a counterfeit, the brassy blotches on which seemed to blush for the impudence of the silver wash in which they were inisled, and rendered the mock coin a lively emblem of a lie self-detected. Still oftener does the rejection take place by a mere act of insolence, and the blank assertion, that the Candidate's money is light or bad, is justified by a second assertion, that he is a Fool or Knave for offering it. The second point of difference explains the preceding, and accounts both for the want of established Doorkeepers in the Auditory of Literature, and for the practices of those, who under the name of Reviewers volunteer this office. There is no royal Mintage for Arguments, no ready means, by which all men alike, who possess common sense, may determine their value and intrinsic worth at the first sight or sound. Certain forms of natural Logic indeed there are, the inobservance of which is decisive against an argument; but the strictest adherence to them is no proof of it's actual (though an indispensible condition of its' possible) validity: In the Arguer's own conscience there is no doubt, a certain value, and an infallible criterion of it, which applies to all Arguments equally: and this is the sincere conviction of the mind itself. But for those, to whom it is offered, these are only conjectural marks; yet such as will seldom mislead any man of plain sense, who is both honest and observant... These characteristics THE FRIEND attempted to comprize in the concluding paragraph of his second Number, and has described them more at large in the Essay, which follows, " On the communication of Truth." If the honest warmth, which results from the strength of the particular conviction, be tempered by the modesty which belongs to the sense of general fallibility; if the emotions, which accompany all vivid perceptions, are preserved distinct from the expression of personal passions, and from appeals to them in the heart of others; if the Reasoner asks no respect for the opinion, as his opinion, but only in proportion as it is acknowledged by that Reason, which is common to all men; and, lastly, if he supports an opinion on no subject which he has not previously examined, and furnishes proof both that he possesses the means of enquiry by his education or the nature of his pursuits, and that he has endeavoured to avail himself of those means; then, and with these conditions, every human Being is authorized to make public the grounds of any opinion which he holds, and of course the opinion itself, as the object of them, consequently, it is the duty of all men, not always indeed to attend to him, but, if they do, to attend to him with respect, and with a sincere as well as apparent toleration. I should offend against my own Laws, if I disclosed at present the nature of my con-victions concerning the degree, in which this virtue of Toleration is possessed and practised by the majority of my Contemporaries and Countrymen, but if the contrary Temper is felt and shewn in instances where all the conditions have been observed, which have been stated at full in the second and three following Numbers of this work, and the chief of which I have just now recapitulated; I have no hesitation in declaring that whatever the opinion may be, and however opposite to the Hearer's or Reader's previous persuasions, one or other or all of the following defects must be taken for granted. Either the intolerant Per son is not master of the grounds on which his own Faith is built, which therefore neither is or can be his own Faith, though it may very easily be his Liking his imagined Interest, and his Habit of thought; and he is angry, not at the opposition to Truth, but at the interruption of his own indo lence and intellectual slumber, or possibly at the apprehen sion, that his temporal advantages are threatened, or at least the ease of mind, in which he had been accustomed to en joy them. Or, secondly, he has no love of Truth for its' own sake; no reverence for the divine command to seek earnestly after it, which command, if it had not been so often and solemnly given by Revelation, is yet involved and expressed in the gift of Reason, and in the dependence of all our virtues on its' developement; and no moral and religious awe for freedom of thought, though accompanied both by sincerity and humility; nor for the right of free communication which is ordained by God, together with that freedom, if it be true that God has ordained us to live in Society, and has made the progressive impromvent of all and each of us depend on the reciprocal aids, which directly or indirectly each supplies to all, and all to each. But if his alarm and his consequent intolerance, are occasioned by his eternal rather than temporal interests, and if as is most commonly the case, he does not deceive himself on this point, gloomy indeed, and erroneous beyond idolatry, must have been his notions of the Supreme Being! For surely the poor Heathen who represents to himself the divine attributes of Wisdom, Justice, and Mercy, under multiplied and forbidden Symbols in the powers of Nature or the Souls of Extraordinary Men, practises a Superstition which (though at once the cause and effect of blindness and sensuality) is less incompatible with inward piety and true religious feeling, than the Creed of that Man, who in the spirit of his practice though not in direct words, loses sight of all these attri butes, and substitutes "servile and thrall-like fear instead of the adoptive and chearful boldness, which our new alliance with God requires of us as Christians."* Such fearridden and thence angry Believers, or rather Acquiescents, would do well to re-peruse the Book of Job, and observe the sentence passed by the All-just on the Friends of the Sufferer, who had hoped, like venal advocates, to purchase the favour of Deity by uttering Truths, of which in their own hearts they had neither conviction nor comprehension. Milton's Reformation in England. "For in every deed, the superstitious Man by his good will is an Atheist; but being scared from thence by the pangs of conscience, shuffles up to himself such a God and such a Worship, as is most accordant to his Fear: which Fear of his as also his Hope, being fixed only upon the Flesh, renders likewise the whole faculty of his Apprehension carnal, and all the inward acts of Worship issuing from the native strength of the Soul, run out lavishly to the upper Skin, and there harden into a crust of Formality. Hence men came to scan the Scriptures by the Lefter, and in the covenant of our Redemption magnified the external signs more than the quickening power of the Spirit." |