On Poetical Scepticism.—No. I. doctrines they espoused damnable heresies, attacked them on every side; but they soon became equal to the contest with their opposers, by never attempting to dispute about words, nor to meddle with criticism, to which they were utterly inadequate; but always keeping close to the plain facts and positive declarations of scripture, which all Christians admit, and bringing every controverted point to the test of those universally admitted facts and declarations. In the autumn of 1809, a person of respectable character, an avowed unbeliever, came from a neighbouring village to hear me preach at Thorne, and was much affected by what he heard. This led him to an examination of the true Christian doctrine, and issued in his avowing himself an Unitarian Christian. His conversion, and firm and candid'exertions to promote what he believes to be divine truth, with the influence of his worth of character, brought many other persons to attend, and produced an important accession to the Unitarians at Thorne. During the last two years, several respectable persons in that town have received the Unitarian doctrine, and are zealous for its success. Thus after occasional labours and exertions for more than ten years, things are come to that promising state which renders it not only desirable, but highly necessary to have an Unitarian chapel at Thorne, and a minister placed there, who might act as a Missionary in the surrounding district, where much inquiry is ex cited, and many openings for public preaching are found. The prospect is highly promising, and the success of the cause in the country between Gainsborough, Doncaster and Selby, will materially depend on what is done at Thorne. I speak from personal knowledge, and feel very deeply concerned for the success of the plan now projected by the friends in that place. The expense of erecting the proposed chapel, &c. is already before your readers. It must be admitted the plan proposed is economical, and the sum raised by the people among themselves as large as can be expected, considering they are most of them poor. The plan of building has not been resolved on without much deJiberation, and a rational prospect of 157 its answering the end designed. Meetings for the worship of the one God have been held, and well conducted, for several years, in a private house; but many persons who would attend in a chapel will not go regularly to a private house, even if it were large enough to contain them. I trust it will not be thought im proper, for one who has happily succeeded in forming the above society, and assisting in bringing it to its present promising state, to solicit, on behalf of the brethren at Thorne, the pecuniary assistance of the friends of Unitarianism in different parts of the kingdom, that they may be enabled to complete the building they are about to erect for the exclusive worship of the one and only God. Permit me to do this, with much deference and respect, through the medium of your valuable Repository; which will much oblige, dear Sir, Yours, &c. curious species of infidelity, HERE exists, at the present day, a which, although not often obtruded on the public, has recently made considerable progress among amiable and virtuous minds. It seems, therefore, to deserve a more regular exposure than it has yet received, since it deprives those of the holiest consolations of the gospel who are best able to feel and most worthy to enjoy them. Though somewhat difficult to be defined, it may be described as a substitution of poetical feeling for religious principle-an avowed dislike of truth-and a contempt for all belief in which any share is allowed to the reasoning faculties. The defenders of these singular paradoxes, which seem to have their origin in Germany, express great veneration 158 On Poetical Scepticism.—No, I. for Calvinism, which they esteem as a beautiful creation of the fancy, and which they regard with peculiar favour as not built upon any rational foundation. Of Unitarianism they express the utmost dislike and scorn. They deem every interference of reason with system as arrogant and profane. Religion is thrown back by them into the regions of imagination and mystery, as something too sacred to be examined or mingled with the business of life, and too majestic to be submitted to our choice or approval. At the same time, their reverence refines it into a phantom-a gorgeous dream-which would vanish if too nearly inspected. They one moment declare the opinions they eulogize as above all scrutiny, and the next acknowledge they could not endure it. It is their principle, therefore, to oppose all serious inquiry; to inculcate love where there can be no respect; to set up a kind of sentimental admiration in the place of belief; and to inveigh against all attempts to discover theological truth as hardening the heart, clouding the fancy, and throwing a chillness over all the social affections. In exposing the fallacy of this novel scepticism, I shall not enter into many of the important points suggested by the inquiry. It would lead to a discussion too extensive were I to aim at shadowing forth the necessary connexion between truth and virtue, at shewing that imagination has increased in lustre in proportion as knowledge has extended, or at proving that genius is independent of opinion and our feelings distinct from our creeds. My object will be first to maintain that the Deist has no source of enjoyment which rational Christianity would diminish; and secondly, to prove that, even as a matter of poetical association, the doctrines of Unitarianism are far superior to that system of popular theology which the sceptic fancies he admires. While the adversaries of rational investigation deride the scantiness of the Unitarian creed, they boast that they feel all the magnificence of Calvinism, and enjoy what the more credulous believe; and this pleasure they assert to be infinitely superior to that which results from a conviction of less mysterious doctrines. But in what does it consist? On whatever prin ciple it is founded, it is evidently not the joy of believing. Those who feel it do not pretend to regard the objects of their delight as true. They do not apply them to their own condition. They cannot even fancy they regard them in the same light with those who look on them as inseparable from their existence; who repose on them as their solace under the cares of life, and rely on them as the support of their dying hours. But the assertions of orthodoxy must be either true or false; and if our opponents enjoy them not as true they must if they admire them at all, admire them as a fable. And this, in plain language, is the whole basis of the undefined emotion which constitutes their religion. They contemplate the orthodox system as a prodigious crea tion of human genius, and as a vision in which the terrible and sublime are strikingly contrasted. So that their reverence for the objects they desig nate as sacred places them ou a level with the dreams of Mahomet, and the mythologies of Homer. What is it then which is offered us in the room of Christian hope? Nothing surely but what we may possess in full perfection with it. The poetical delight to be received from the contemplation of beautiful fictions need not be placed in the stead of a conviction of divine realities. To the enjoyment of fable as such it is absurd to require a belief in its actual existence. Who ever supposed that to relish the "Midsummer's Night's Dream," or the "Tempest," it was necessary to believe in the sportive fairies that " creep into acorn cups and hide them there," or in the pure and delicate spirits that float in the air with strange music? And, on the same principle, why must we admit the devil into our creeds to enjoy the sublimities of Paradise Lost, any more than satyrs and witchcraft in order to be enchanted with Comus? Though rejected as a religion, all the wonders of Pagan superstition have charms for us still. In the grandest regions of imagination, beyond the limits of this material world, they stand as fresh and as glorious as ever. Time has passed over them without witnessing their decay. There Hercules still rests on his club and Apollo tunes his immortal lyre. There Proteus_rises from the sea; there old Triton "blows Gleanings. Heresy of Pope John XXII. his wreathed horn," and there the Fates in awful silence, regulate the variously-coloured thread of human existence. But will these imaginations diminish our anxiety for our own eternal condition? Will they be less "assoiled from the gross ness of present time," because our reliance is fixed on the rock of ages and our hopes have their resting place in heaven? But it is boldly asserted that a spirit of inquiry into religious truth is incompatible with all poetical feeling that it tends to make those who indulge it hard-hearted—and degrade them from imaginative into mere reasoning beings. In answer to these assertions it is not necessary to contend for the superiority of truth over fancy, it is quite sufficient to shew that both may exist together without the least injury to either. Our opponents themselves would exercise their reason in all the concerns of life; and would esteem those madmen who should refuse to apply it to any thing but religion. It is strange then that it should be debarred from the noblest of its uses, from the objects which are most worthy of its powers, and most nearly allied to the divinity which is stamped upon it. And surely it would be strange if heaven had endowed us with both intelligent and creative faculties, one of which must necessarily be left inactive, in order to the perfection of the other. And what luxury of imagination is there, which a Christian, whose belief is founded on understanding is unfitted to enjoy? He would no more allow reason to interfere with the delights of his fancy, than he will suffer poetry to take the place of conviction. He can muse with as delicious a suspension of thought over the still fountain, and people every lovely scene with images as beautiful and unearthy as if he had never investigated the doctrines of scripture. As far as repects the contemplation of the superstitions and errors of mankind he will have an advantage over the most poetical sceptic. For his religion teaches him to see a" spirit of good" in them all-to look at the dim glimpses of heaven which have shone through pompous ceremonials with gratitude to trace the sweet affections which have flourished beneath the shade of nstitutions in themselves unholy 159 and to hail the dawnings of imperfect light as the welcome harbingers of an unclouded day. An Unitarian is the only sectary who makes charity an article of his creed. And yet he must be scornfully accused of scorn, abused for want of kind-heartedness, and reproached for believing too little, and having, therefore, no power of enjoyment, by those who believe nothing in order to enjoy every thing. Poetical fancies might have a better claim to take the place of religious conviction if, like it, they could last for ever. But alas! life cannot be all a holiday dream. Death must separate our dearest companions from us, and compel us to weep over their tomb. Will it then be enough to strew the grave with flowers, and vent our sorrows in the melody of woe;-or will it not be some addi tional relief to be able to cherish a sure and certain hope of meeting them in happiness hereafter? And even if we could pass along wrapt in one delicious vision through this vale of tears, we must awake to die! Surely in that awful moment when heart and flesh fail us, it will be some consolation to think that we are safe in the arms of the Almighty-that our noblest faculties will revive to an immortal youth-that our loveliest visions will be more than realized—and that imagination will expatiate for ever in those glorious regions, to which, in its happiest moments, it delighted to aspire. S. N. D. P.S. With your permission, I propose in a few essays in your succeeding numbers, to expose the other dogma of modern sceptics-that Calvinism is a more poetical system than Unitarianism-by comparing the leading doctrines of both, not as it respects their truth, but the beautiful associations which may be thrown around them and the kind affections they cherish and mature. AND GLEANINGS; OR, SELECTIONS Mezeray, an exact writer, describes the election of this Pope very pleasantly, and says that the Cardi 160 Gleanings.-Eighty Thousand Jacobins-John Bradshaw. nals being shut up in the conclave by Philip, could not any otherwise agree upon the election of a Pope than by their joint referring it to the single voice of James D'Ossat, Cardinal and Bishop of Port: he without any scruple at all named himself, to the great astonishment of all the Conclave, who nevertheless approved of him; and so he took the name of John XXII. and reigned quietly eleven years or thereabouts, without ever having his election questioned or doubted. This John the Two and Twentieth declared that the souls of the dead were neither happy nor miserable till the day of judgment; which opinion was generally held in the former age. But the university of Paris (says Clarendon, Relig. and Pol. i. 34.) having more exactly examined this point, corrected the Holy Father in it, as Mezeray says, and thereupon the king Philip of Valois, writ to the Pope in these terms: Que s'il ne se retractoit il le feroit ardre. Whether he was converted by this threat, or convinced in his conscience, the Pope did not only change his opinion, but published an act of retractation. So far was the holy chair from being infallible when it rested in Avignon. No. CCXLVI. Eighty Thousand Jacobins. In England and Scotland, I compute that those of adult age, not declining in life, of tolerable leisure for such discussions, and of some means, of information, more or less, and who are above menial dependance, may amount to about four hundred thousand. Of these four hundred thousand political citizens, I look upon one-fifth, or about eighty thousand, to be pure Jacobins; utterly incapable of amendment; objects of eternal vigilance, and when they break out, of legal constraint. Burke's Letters on a Regicide Peace. No. CCXLVII. John Bradshaw. It is to this day problematical and can never be ascertained whether the bodies of Cromwell and Bradshaw were actually taken up and dishonoured at the Restoration. It is in secret tradition that Bradshaw was conveyed to Jamaica. His epitaph is descriptive of him and full of spirit. In a public print of 1775, it was said, The following inscription was made out three years ago on the cannon, near which the ashes of President Bradshaw were lodged, on the top of a high hill, near Martha Bay, in Jamaica, to avoid the rage against the Regioides exhibited at the Restoration. Stranger! Ere thou pass, contemplate this Cannon, That near its base, lies deposited the Dust of Who nobly superior to all selfish regards, Tyrant of England, To a public and exemplary Death, Of Unshaken Virtue, Love of Freedom and Impartial Justice, O! Reader, Pass not on till thou hast blessed his Memory: And never, never forget, THAT REBELLION TO TYRANTS IS OBEDIENCE TO GOD. [From Dr, Ezra Styles's History of the Three Judges, Whalley, Goffe and Dixwell, who fled to America and concealed themselves to avoid the Fury of Kingly Violence. 12mo. Hartford, America. 1794.] ( 161 ) REVIEW. "Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame.” ART. I.—Poems, by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq. Vol. III. containing his Posthumous Poetry, and a Sketch of his Life. By his kinsman, John Johnson, LL.D., Rector of Yaxham with Welborne, in Norfolk. London: Printed for Rivingtons, &c. &c. 1815. 8vo. PP. 434. W Boswell of his guide, philo THAT is Poetry?" inquired sopher and friend. "Why, Sir," answered Johnson," it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is." To hazard a definition of Poetry, after such a judgment, might be presumptuous: let us satisfy ourselves with the account given of it by this great writer. "Poetry," he observes,† "is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.". If, by this statement, he intended to define the exalted art of which he speaks, some eritical objections might be taken to his language; which, nevertheless, is for all useful purposes sufficiently ex act. That poetry may communicate pleasure, two objects must be kept in view by the poet: he must raise his diction above mean and ordinary modes of speech; and, at the same time, he must address himself to the associations of ideas existing in the minds of those readers whose approbation is substantial praise. Many of our poets and critics have been extravagant in their respective efforts and decisions. Some of them have bestowed a disproportionate care on splendid images and a well-poized and agreeable versification. Others have become vulgar and iusipid, through an affectation of simplicity: it is not that they are destitute of genius, but that they fail in taste. We may admit, though not without obvious exceptions and qualifications, that the "materials" of poetry" are to be found in every subject which can in -POPE. terest the human mind.”‡ _Yet, sure- ment. Lyrical Ballads (1798): Advertise || Guardian, No. XL. Poetry should be something more than true eloquence in metre. See Mason's Gray, (1778) Vol iv. 32. Note. |