though the one may be worse from Bad, while the other is an instance of Good educed from Evil. Nay, I will dare confess, that I know not how to think otherwise, when I hear a Bishop of an established Church publicly exclaim (and not viewing it as a lesser inconvenience to be endured for the attainment of a far greater good, but as a thing desirable and to be preferred for its own sake) No Notes! No Comment! Distribute the Bible and the Bible only among the Poor!-a declaration, which from any lower quarter I should have been under the temptation of attributing either to a fanatical notion of immediate illumination superseding the necessity of human teaching, or to an ignorance of difficulties which (and what more worthy?) have successfully employed all the learning, sagacity, and unwearied labors of great and wise men, we should regard as a Matron, a kind and gentle guardian indeed of the pure Doctrine, but sedulous, but vigilant, but impatient of Seducers. This SYNCRETISM on the contrary, which the Loadiceans among us join in extolling so highly, shall no where hear from me other or better name than that of Harlot, the offspring of a Belief either slothful or ignorant of its own condition, and then the parent of Worldly-mindedness, and with whom therefore neither sincere Faith nor genuine Charity will endure to associate, and eminent servants of Christ, during all the ages of Christianity, and will doubtless continue to yield new fruits of Knowledge and Insight to a long series of Followers.* Though an overbalance of the commercial * I am well aware, that by these open avowals, that with much to honor and praise in many, there is something to correct in all, parties, I shall provoke many enemies and make never a friend. If I dared abstain, how gladly should I have so done! Would that the candid part of my Judges would peruse or re-peruse the affecting and most eloquent introductory pages of Milton's Second Book of his "Reason of Church Government urged, &c.:" and give me the credit, which (my conscience bears me witness) I am entitled to claim, for all the moral feelings expressed in that exquisite passage. The following paragraph I extract from a volume of my own, which has been long printed, for the greater part, and which will, I trust, now be soon published. 1 "All my experience from my first entrance into life to the present hour is in favor of the warning maxim, that the man who opposes in toto the political or religious zealots of his age, is safer from their obloquy than he who differs from them in any one or two points or perhaps only in degree. By that transfer of the feelings of private life into the discussions of public questions, which is the queen bee in the hive of party fanaticism, the partizan has more sympathy with an intemperate opposite than with a moderate Friend. We now enjoy an intermission and long may it continue! In addition to far higher and more important merits, our present bible spirit is involved in the deficiency of its counterweights; yet the facts, that exemplify the mode and extent of its operation, will afford a more direct and satisfactory kind of proof. And first I am to speak of this overbalance as displayed in the commercial world itself. But as this is the first, so is it for my present' purpose the least important point of view. A portion of the facts belonging to this division of the subject I have already noticed, p. 34, 35; and for the remainder let the following suffice as the substitute or representative. The moral of the tale I leave to the Reader's societies, and other numerous associations for national or charitable objects, may serve perhaps to carry off the superfluous activity and fervor of stirring minds in inno cent hyperboles and the bustle of management. But the poison-tree is not dead, though the sap may for a season have subsided to its roots. At least, let us not be lulled into such a notion of our entire security, as not to keep watch and ward, even on our best feelings. I have seen gross intolerance shewn in support of toleration; sectarian antipathy most obtrusively displayed in the promotion of an undistinguishing comprehension of sects; and acts of cruelty (I had almost said) of treachery, committed in furtherance of an object vitally important to the cause of humanity; and all this by men too of naturally kind dispositions and exemplary conduct."Biographia Literaria, or Sketches of my Literary Life, and Opinions, p. 190. own reflections. Within the last sixty years or perhaps a somewhat larger period, (for I do not pretend to any nicety of dates, and the documents are of easy access) there have occurred at intervals of about 12 or 13 years each, certain periodical Revolutions of Credit. Yet Revolution is not the precise word, To state the thing as it is, I ought to have said, certain gradual expansions of credit ending in sudden contractions, or, with equal propriety, ascensions to a certain utmost possible height, which has been different in each successive instance; but in every instance the attainment of this, its ne plus ultra, has been instantly announced by a rapid series of explosions (in mercantile language, a Crash) and a consequent precipitation of the general system. For a short time this Icarian* * 66 Icarus, Son of Daedalus, who flying with his father from Crete flew too high, whereby the Sun melting his waxen wings he fell into the Sea, from him named the Icarian Sea."-AINSWORTH. By turning back to the word, Dædalus, the Reader will find such a striking and ingenious allegory of the Manufacturing System, its connections with forced or contraband Trade, and its successful evasions of what has been lately called the continental system, as may induce him to forgive the triteness and school-boy character which all allusions of this sort have at first sight for a sensible mind. Credit, or rather this illegitimate offspring of CONFIDENCE, to which it stands in the same relation as Phaethon to his parent god in the old fable, seems to lie stunned by the fall; but soon recovering, again it strives upward, and having once more regained its mid region, thence many a league, As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides PARADISE LOST. till at the destined zenith of its vaporous exaltation," all unawares, fluttering its pennons vain, plumb down it drops!" Or that I may descend myself to the "cool element of prose, Alarm and suspicion gradually diminish into a judicious circumspectness; but by little and little, circumspection gives way to the desire and emulous ambition of doing business; till Impatience and Incaution on one side, tempting and encouraging headlong Adventure, Want of principle, and Confederacies of false credit on the other, the movements of Trade become yearly gayer and giddier, and end at length in a vortex of hopes and hazards, of blinding passions and blind practices, which should have been left where alone they ought |