Essays in a Series of Letters

One of the causes of the displacency is, that Christianity, being the religion
of a great number of persons of weak and uncultivated minds, presents
its doctrines to the view of men of taste associated with the characteristics
of those minds; and though some parts of the religion instantaneously
redeem themselves from that association by their philosophic dignity, other
parts may require a considerable effort to detach them from it.... This easily

done if the men of taste were powerfully pre-occupied and affected by the
religion.... Reflections of one of them in this case.... But the men of taste
now in question are not in this case....Several specific causes of injurious
impression, from this association of evangelical doctrines and sentiments
with the intellectual littleness of the persons entertaining them....Their
deficiency and dislike of all strictly intellectual exercise on religion.... Their
reducing the whole of religion to one or two favourite notions, and con-
tinually dwelling on them.... The perfect indifference of some of them to
general knowledge, even when not destitute of means of acquiring it; and
the consequent voluntary and contented poverty of their religious ideas and
language.... Their admiration of things in a literary sense utterly bad....
Their complacency in their deficiencies.... Their injudicious habits and
ceremonies.... Their unfortunate metaphors and similes... Suggestion to
religious teachers, that they should not run to its last possible extent the
parallel between the pleasures of piety, and those of eating and drinking.
...Mischief of such practices.... Effect of the ungracious collision between
uncultivated seniors and a young person of literary and philosophic taste.
...Expostulation with this intellectual young person, on the folly and guilt
of suffering his mind to take the impression of evangelical religion from
any thing which he knows to be inferior to that religion itself, as exhibited
by the New Testament, and by the most elevated of its disciples......p. 195

LETTER III.

Another cause, the Peculiarity of Language adopted in religious discourse

and writing....Classical standard of language....The theological deviation

from it barbarous....Surprise and perplexity of a sensible heathen foreigner

who, having learnt our language according to its best standard alone, should

be introduced to hear a public evangelical discourse.... Distinctive characters

of this Theological Dialect.... Reasons against employing it....Competence

of our language to express all religious ideas without the aid of this uncouth

peculiarity....Advantages that would attend the use of the language of mere

general intelligence, with the addition of an extremely small number of words

that may be considered as necessary technical terms in theology ......p. 218

LETTER IV.

Answer to the plea, in behalf of the dialect in question, that it is formed from

the language of the Bible.... Description of the manner in which it is so

formed....This way of employing biblical language very different from

simple quotation.... Grace and utility with which brief forms of words,

whether sentences or single phrases, may be introduced from the Bible, if

they are brought in as pure pieces and particles of the sacred composition,

set in our own composition as something distinct from it and foreign to it.

...But the biblical phraseology in the Theological Dialect, instead of thus

appearing in distinct bright points and gems, is modified and mixed up

throughout the whole consistence of the diction, so as at once to lose its own

venerable character, and to give a pervading uncouthness, without dignity,

to the whole composition....Let the scripture language be quoted often, but

not degraded into a barbarous compound phraseology.... Even if it were

advisable to construct the language of theological instruction in some kind

of resemblance to that of the Bible, it would not follow that it should be

constructed in imitation of the phraseology of an antique version....License

to very old theologians to retain in a great degree this peculiar dialect....

Young ones recommended to learn to employ in religion the language in

which cultivated men talk and write on general subjects....The vast mass

of writing in a comprehensive literary sense bad, on the subjects of evan-

gelical theology, one great cause of the distaste felt by men of intellectual

refinement....Several kinds of this bad writing specified..................p. 239

LETTER V.

A grand cause of displacency encountered by evangelical religion among men
of taste is, that the great school in which that taste is formed, that of
polite literature, taken in the widest sense of the phrase, is hostile to that

religion.... Modern literature intended principally to be animadverted on....
Brief notice of the ancient....Heathen theology, metaphysics, and morality
...Harmlessness of the two former; deceptiveness of the last.... But the
chief influence is from so much of the history as may be called Biography,
and from the Poetry....Homer....Manner in which the interest he excites is
hostile to the spirit of the Christian religion.... Virgil

LETTER VI.

Lucan.... Influence of the moral sublimity of his heroes.... Plutarch....The

Historians....Antichristian effect of admiring the moral greatness of the

eminent heathens....Points of essential difference between excellence ac-

cording to Christian principles, and the most elevated excellence of the

Heathens....An unqualified complacency in the latter produces an alienation

of affection and admiration from the former....................................p. 269

LETTER VII.

When a communication, declaring the true theory of both religion and

morals, was admitted as coming from heaven, it was reasonable to expect

that, from the time of this revelation to the end of the world, all by whom

it was so admitted would be religiously careful to maintain, in whatever

they taught on subjects within its cognizance, a systematic and punctilious

conformity to its principles.... Absurdity, impiety, and pernicious effect, of

disregarding this sovereign claim to conformity.... The greatest number of

our fine writers have incurred this guilt, and done this mischief....They are

antichristian, in the first place, by omission; they exclude from their

moral sentiments the modifying interference of the Christian principles....

Extended illustration of the fact, and of its consequences...............p. 281

LETTER VIII.

More specific forms of their contrariety to the principles of Revelation....
Their good man not a Christian.... Contrasted with St. Paul.... Their theory
of happiness essentially different from the evangelical..... Short statement
of both....In moralizing on life, they do not habitually consider, and they
prevent their readers from considering, the present state as introductory to
another. Their consolations for distress, old age, and death, widely dif-
ferent, on the whole, from those which constitute so much of the value of
the Gospel....The grandeur and heroism in death, which they have repre-
sented with irresistible eloquence, emphatically and perniciously opposite
to the Christian doctrine and examples of sublimity and happiness in
death....Examples from tragedy

LETTER IX.

The estimate of the depraved moral condition of human nature is quite dif
ferent in revelation and polite literature.... Consequently, the Redemption
by Jesus Christ, which appears with such momentous importance in the
one, is, in comparison, a trife in the other....Our fine writers employ and
justify antichristian motives to action, especially the love of fame....The
morality of this passion argued....The earnest repression of it shown to be
a duty....Some of the lighter order of our popular writers have aided the
counteraction of literature to evangelical religion by careless or malignant
ridicule of things associated with it.... Brief notice of the several classes of
fine writers, as lying under the charge of contributing to alienate men of
taste from the doctrines and moral spirit of the New Testament.... Mora'
philosophers.... Historians.... Essayists....Addison....Johnson....The Poets....
Exception in favour of Milton, &c....Pope.... Antichristian quality of hi
Essay on Man....Novels.... Melancholy reflections on the Review....Co

ESSAY L

ON A MAN'S WRITING MEMOIRS OF HIMSELF.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

LETTER I.

EVERY one knows with what interest it is natural to retrace the course of our own lives. The past states and periods of a man's being are retained in a connexion with the present by that principle of self-love, which is unwilling to relinquish its hold on what has once been his. Though he cannot but be sensible of how little consequence his life can have been in the creation, compared with many other trains of events, yet he has felt it more important to himself than all other trains together; and you will very rarely find him tired of narrating again the little history, or at least the favourite parts of the little history, of himself.

To turn this partiality to some account, I recollect having proposed to two or three of my friends, that they should write, each principally however for his own use, memoirs of their own lives, endeavouring not so much to enumerate the mere facts and events of life, as to discriminate the successive states of the mind, and so trace the progress of what may be called the character In this progress consists the chief impor

tance of life; but even on an inferior account also to this of what the character has become, and regarded merely as supplying a constant series of interests to the affections and passions, we have all accounted our life an inestimable possession which it deserved incessant cares and labours to retain, and which continues in most cases to be still held with anxious attachment. What has been the object of so much partiality, and has been delighted and pained by so many emotions, . might claim, even if the highest interest were out of the question, that a short memorial should be retained by him who has possessed it, has seen it all to this moment depart, and can never recall it.

To write memoirs of many years, as twenty, thirty, or forty, seems, at the first glance, a very onerous task. To reap the products of so many acres of earth indeed might, to one person, be an undertaking of mighty toil. But the materials of any value that all past life can supply to a recording pen, would be reduced by a discerning selection to a very small and modest amount. Would as much as one page of moderate size be deemea by any man's self-importance to be due, on an average, to each of the days that he has lived? No man would judge more than one in ten thousand of all his thoughts, sayings, and actions, worthy to be mentioned, if memory were capable of recalling them.* Necessarily a very large portion of what has occupied the successive years of life was of a kind to be utterly useless for a history of it; being merely for the accommodation of the time. Perhaps in the space of forty or fifty years, millions of sentences are proper to be uttered, and many thousands of affairs requisite to be transacted, or of journeys to

• An exception may be admitted for the few individuals whose daily deliberations, discourses and proceedings, affect the interests of mankind on a grand scale.

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