I dare confess that Mr. Locke's treatise on Toleration
appeared to me far from being a full and satisfactory answer to
the subtle and oft-times plausible arguments of Bellarmin, and
other Romanists. On the whole, I was more pleased with the
celebrated W. Penn's tracts on the same subject. The following
extract from his excellent letter to the king of Poland appeals
to the heart rather than to the head, to the Christian rather
than to the philosopher; and, besides, overlooks the ostensible
object of religious penalties, which is not so much to convert
the heretic, as to prevent the spread of heresy. The thoughts,
however, are so just in themselves, and expressed with so much
life and simplicity, that it well deserves a place in these
Omniana:
Now, O Prince! give a poor Christian leave to expostulate with thee. Did Christ Jesus or his holy followers endeavour, by precept or example, to set up their religion with a carnal sword? Called he any troops of men or angels to defend him? Did he encourage Peter to dispute his right with the sword? But did he not say, Put it up? Or did he countenance his over-zealous disciples, when they would have had fire from heaven to destroy those that were not of their mind? No! But did not Christ rebuke them, saying, Ye know not what spirit ye are of? And if it was neither Christ's spirit, nor their own spirit that would have fire from heaven Oh! what is that spirit that would kindle fire on earth to destroy such as peaceably dissent upon the account of conscience!
O King! when did the true religion persecute? When did the true church offer violence for religion? Were not her weapons prayers, tears, and patience? did not Jesus conquer by these weapons, and vanquish cruelty by suffering? can clubs, and staves, and swords, and prisons, and banishments reach the soul, convert the heart, or convince the understanding of man? When did violence ever make a true convert, or bodily punishment, a sincere Christian? This maketh void the end of Christ's coming. Yea, it robbeth God's spirit of its office, which is to convince the world. That is the sword by which the ancient Christians overcame.
"The very knowledge of the opinions and customs of so considerable a part of mankind as the Jews now are, and especially have been heretofore, is valuable both for pleasure and use. It is a very good piece of history, and that of the best kind, namely, of human nature, and of that part of it which is most different from us, and commonly the least known to us. And, indeed, the principal advantage which is to be made by the wiser sort of men of most writings, is rather to see what men think and are, than to be informed of the natures and truth of things; to observe what thoughts and passions have occupied men's minds, what opinions and manners they are of. In this view it becomes of no mean importance to notice and record the strangest ignorance, the most putid fables, impertinent, trifling, ridiculous disputes, and more ridiculous pugnacity in the defence and retention of the subjects disputed." (Publisher's preface to the reader in Lightfoot's Works, vol. i.)
Kingston, July 30, 1801.
Ran away, about three weeks ago, from a penn near Halfway Tree, a negro wench, named Nancy, of the Chamba country, strong made, an ulcer on her left leg, marked D. C. diamond between. She is supposed to be harboured by her husband, Dublin, who has the direction of a wherry working between this town and Port Royal, and is the property of Mr. Fishley, of that place; the said negro man having concealed a boy in his wherry before. Half a joe will be paid to any person apprehending the above described wench, and delivering to Mr. Archibald M' Lea, East end; and if found secreted by any person, the law will be put in force.
Kingston, August 13, 1801.
Strayed on Monday evening last, a negro boy of the Moco country, named Joe, the property of Mr. Thomas Williams, planter, in St. John's, who had sent him to town under the charge of a negro man, with a cart for provisions. The said boy is, perhaps, from 15 to 18 years of age, about twelve months in the country, no mark, speaks little English, but can tell his owner's name; had on a long Oznaburg frock. It is supposed he might have gone out to vend some pears and lemon-grass, and have lost himself in the street. One pistole will be paid to any person apprehending and bringing him to this office.
Kingston, July 1, 1801.
Forty Shillings Reward.
Strayed on Friday evening last, (and was seen going up West Street the following morning), a small bay HORSE, the left ear lapped, flat rump, much scored from the saddle on his back, and marked on the near side F. M. with a diamond between. Whoever will take up the said horse, and deliver him to W. Balantine, butcher, back of West Street, will receive the above reward.
Kingston, July 4, 1801.
Strayed on Sunday morning last, from the subscriber's house, in East Street, a bright dun He-Mule, the mane lately cropped, a large chafe slightly skinned over on the near buttock, and otherwise chafed from the action of the harness in his recent breaking. Half a joe will be paid to any person taking up and bringing this mule to the subscriber's house, or to the Store in Harbour Street. JOHN WALSH.
Kingston, July 2, 1801.
Ten pounds Reward,
Ran away
About two years ago from the subscriber, a Negro woman named
DORAH,
purchased from Alexander M'Kean, Esq. She is about 20 years of age, and 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high; has a mark on one of her shoulders, about the size of a quarter dollar, occasioned, she says, by the yaws; of a coal black complexion, very artful, and most probably passes about the country with false papers and under another name; if that is not the case, it must be presumed she is harboured about Green pond, where she has a mother and other connexions.
Strange as it may appear, we are assured as a fact, that a number of slaves in this town have purchased lots of land, and are absolutely in possession of the fee simple of lands and tenements. Neither is it uncommon for the men slaves to purchase or manumize their wives, and vice versa, the wives their husbands. To account for this, we need only look to the depredations daily committed, and the impositions practised to the distress of the community and ruin of the fair trader. Negro yards too, under such direction, will necessarily prove the asylum of runaways from the country.
When I hear (as who now can travel twenty miles in a stage
coach without the probability of hearing) an ignorant religionist
quote an unconnected sentence of half a dozen words from any part
of the Old or New Testament, and resting on the literal sense of
these words the eternal misery of all who reject, nay, even of
all those countless myriads, who have never had the opportunity
of accepting this, and sundry other articles of faith conjured up
by the same textual magic; I ask myself what idea these persons
form of the Bible, that they should use it in a way in which they
themselves use no other book? They deem the whole written by
inspiration. Well! but is the very essence of rational discourse,
that is, connection and dependency done away, because the
discourse is infallibly rational? The mysteries, which these
spiritual lynxes detect in the simplest texts, remind me of the
500 nondescripts, each as large as his own black cat, which Dr.
Katterfelto, by aid of his solar microscope, discovered in a drop
of transparent water.
But to a contemporary who has not thrown his lot in the same
helmet with them, these fanatics think it a crime to listen. Let
them then, or far rather, let those who are in danger of
infection from them, attend to the golden aphorisms of the old
and orthodox divines. "Sentences in scripture (says Dr. Donne)
like hairs in horses' tails, concur in one root of beauty and
strength; but being plucked out, one by one, serve only for
springes and snares."
The second I transcribe from the preface to Lightfoot's works.
"Inspired writings are an inestimable treasure to mankind; for so
many sentences, so many truths. But then the true sense of them
must be known: otherwise, so many sentences, so many authorized
falsehoods."
Our modern latitudinarians will find it difficult to suppose,
that anything could have been said in the defence of Pelagianism
equally absurd with the facts and arguments which have been
adduced in favour of original sin, (sin being taken as guilt;
that is, observes a Socinian wit, the crime of being born). But
in the comment of Rabbi Akibah on Ecclesiastes xii. 1. we have a
story of a mother, who must have been a most determined believer
in the uninheritability of sin. For having a sickly and deformed
child, and resolved that it should not be thought to have been
punished for any fault of its parents or ancestors, and yet
having nothing else for which to blame the child, she seriously
and earnestly accused it before the judge of having kicked her
unmercifully during her pregnancy.
I am firmly persuaded that no doctrine was ever widely diffused
among various nations through successive ages and under different
religions, (such as is the doctrine of original sin, and
redemption, those fundamental articles of every known religion
professing to be revealed,) which is not founded either in the
nature of things or in the necessities of our nature. In the
language of the schools, it carries with it presumptive evidence
that it is either objectively or subjectively true. And the more
strange and contradictory such a doctrine may appear to the
understanding, or discursive faculty, the stronger is the
presumption in its favour. For whatever satirists may say, and
sciolists imagine, the human mind has no predilection for
absurdity. I do not, however, mean that such a doctrine shall be
always the best possible representation of the truth on which it
is founded; for the same body casts strangely different shadows
in different places, and different degrees of light, but that it
always does shadow out some such truth, and derive its influence
over our faith from our obscure perception of that truth. Yea,
even where the person himself attributes his belief of it to the
miracles, with which it was announced by the founder of his
religion.
It is a strong presumptive proof against materialism, that
there does not exist a language on earth, from the rudest to the
most refined, in which a materialist can talk for five minutes
together, without involving some contradiction in terms to his
own system. Objection. Will not this apply equally to the
astronomer? Newton, no doubt, talked of the sun's rising and
setting, just like other men. What should we think of the coxcomb
who should have objected to him, that he contradicted his own
system? Answer No! it does not apply equally; say
rather, it is utterly inapplicable to the astronomer and natural
philosopher. For his philosophic, and his ordinary language speak
of two quite different things, both of which are equally true. In
his ordinary language he refers to a fact of appearance, to a
phenomenon common and necessary to all persons in a given
situation; in his scientific language he determines that one
position or figure, which being supposed, the appearance in
question would be the necessary result, and all appearances in
all situations maybe demonstrably foretold. Let a body be
suspended in the air, and strongly illuminated. What figure is
here? A triangle. But what here? A trapezium; and so on.
The same question put to twenty men, in twenty different
positions and distances, would receive twenty different answers:
each would be a true answer. But what is that
one figure which, being so placed, all these facts of appearance
must result according to the law of perspective? Ay! this
is a different question, this is a new subject. The words which
answer this would be absurd if used in reply to the former. 1
Thus, the language of the scripture on natural objects is as
strictly philosophical as that of the Newtonian system. Perhaps
more so. For it is not only equally true, but it is universal
among mankind, and unchangeable. It describes facts of
appearance. And what other language would have been consistent
with the divine wisdom? The inspired writers must have borrowed
their terminology, either from the crude and mistaken philosophy
of their own times, and so have sanctified and perpetuated
falsehood, unintelligible meantime to all but one in ten
thousand; or they must have anticipated the terminology of the
true system, without any revelation of the system itself, and so
have become unintelligible to all men; or lastly, they must have
revealed the system itself, and thus have left nothing for the
exercise, developement, or reward of the human understanding,
instead of teaching that moral knowledge, and enforcing those
social and civic virtues, out of which the arts and sciences will
spring up in due time and of their own accord. But nothing of
this applies to the materialist; he refers to the very same
facts, of which the common language of mankind speaks: and these
too are facts that have their sole and entire being in our own
consciousness; facts, as to which esse and conscire
are identical. Now, whatever is common to all languages, in all
climates, at all times, and in all stages of civilization, must
be the exponent and consequent of the common consciousness of man
as man. Whatever contradicts this universal language, therefore,
contradicts the universal consciousness, and the facts in
question subsisting exclusively in consciousness, whatever
contradicts the consciousness contradicts the fact.
I have been seduced into a dry discussion where I had intended
only a few amusing facts, in proof, that the mind makes the sense
far more than the senses make the mind. If I have life, and
health, and leisure, I purpose to compile from the works,
memoirs, and transactions of the different philosophical
societies in Europe, from magazines, and the rich store of
medical and psychological publications, furnished by the English,
French, and German press, all the essays and cases that relate to
the human faculties under unusual circumstances, (for pathology
is the crucible of physiology), excluding such only as are not
intelligible without the symbols or terminology of science. These I would arrange under the different senses
and powers: as
Often and often had I read Gay's Beggar's Opera, and
always delighted with its poignant wit and original satire, and
if not without noticing its immorality, yet without any offence
from it. Some years ago, I for the first time saw it represented
in one of the London theatres; and such were the horror and
disgust with which it impressed me, so grossly did it outrage all
the best feelings of my nature, that even the angelic voice, and
perfect science of Mrs. Billington, lost half their charms, or
rather increased my aversion to the piece by an additional sense
of incongruity. Then I learned the immense difference between
reading and seeing a play; and no wonder, indeed; for who
has not passed over with his eye a hundred passages without
offence, which he yet could not have even read aloud, or have
heard so read by another person, without an inward struggle?
In mere passive silent reading the thoughts remain mere
thoughts, and these too not our own, phantoms with no
attribute of place, no sense of appropriation, that flit over the
consciousness as shadows over the grass or young corn in an April
day. But even the sound of our own or another's voice takes them
out of that lifeless, twilight, realm of thought, which is the
confine, the intermundium, as it were, of existence and
non-existence. Merely that the thoughts have become audible by
blending with them a sense of outness gives them a sort of
reality. What then, when by every contrivance of scenery,
appropriate dresses, according and auxiliary looks and gestures,
and the variety of persons on the stage, realities are employed
to carry the imitation of reality as near as possible to perfect
delusion?
If a manly modesty shrinks from uttering an indecent phrase
before a wife or sister in a private room, what must be the
effect when a repetition of such treasons (for all gross and
libidinous allusions are emphatically treasons against the very
foundations of human society, against all its endearing
charities, and all the mother virtues,) is hazarded before a
mixed multitude in a public theatre? When every innocent woman
must blush at once with pain at the thoughts she rejects, and
with indignant shame at those, which the foul hearts of others
may attribute to her!
Thus too with regard to the comedies of Wycherly, Vanburgh, and
Etherege, I used to please myself with the flattering comparison
of the manners universal at present among all classes above the
lowest with those of our ancestors even of the highest ranks. But
if for a moment I think of those comedies as having been acted, I
lose all sense of comparison in the shame, that human nature
could at any time have endured such outrages to its dignity; and
if conjugal affection and the sweet name of sister were too weak,
that yet filial piety, the gratitude for a mother's holy love,
should not have risen and hissed into infancy these traitors to
their own natural gifts, who lampooned the noblest passions of
humanity, in order to pander for its lowest appetites.
As far, however, as one bad thing can be palliated by comparison
with a worse, this may be said, in extenuation of these writers;
that the mischief, which they can do even on the stage, is
trifling compared with that stile of writing which began in the
pest-house of French literature, and has of late been imported by
the Littles of the age, which consists in a perpetual
tampering with the morals without offending the decencies. And
yet the admirers of these publications, nay, the authors
themselves have the assurance to complain of Shakspeare (for I
will not refer to one yet far deeper blasphemy) Shakspeare,
whose most objectionable passages are but grossnesses against
lust, and these written in a gross age; while three fourths of
their whole works are delicacies for its support and sustenance.
Lastly, that I may leave the reader in better humour with the
name at the head of this article, I shall quote one scene from
Etherege's Love in a Tub, which for exquisite, genuine,
original humour, is worth all the rest of his plays, though two
or three of his witty contemporaries were thrown in among them,
as a make weight. The scene might be entitled, the different ways
in which the very same story may be told without any variation in
matter of fact; for the least attentive reader will perceive the
perfect identity of the footboy's account with the Frenchman's
own statement in contradiction to it.
SCENE IV.
Scene Sir Frederick's Lodging.
Enter DUFOY and CLARK.
CLARK.I wonder Sir Frederick stays out so late.
DUFOY.Dis is noting; six, seven o'clock in the morning is ver good hour.
CLARK.I hope he does not use these hours often.
DUFOY.Some six, seven time a veek; no oftiner.
CLARK.My Lord commanded me to wait his coming.
DUFOY.Enter a footboyMatré Clark, to divertise you, I vill tell you, how I did get be acquainted vid dis Bedlam Matré. About two, tree year ago me had for my convenience discharge myself from attendingas Matré D'ostel to a person of condition in Parie; it hapen after de dispatch of my little affairé.
FOOTBOY.That is, after h'ad spent his money, Sir.
DUFOY.Jan foutréde lacque; me vil have vip and de belle vor your breeck, rogue.
FOOTBOY.Sir, in a word, he was a Jack-pudding to a mountebank, and turned off for want of wit: my master picked him up before a puppet-show, mumbling a half-penny custard, to send him with a letter to the post.
DUFOY.Morbleu, see, see de insolence of de foot boy English, bogre, rascale, you lie, begar I vill cutté your troaté.
Exit FOOTBOY.
CLARK.He's a rogue; on with your story, Monsieur.
DUFOY.Matré Clark, I am your ver humble serviteur; but begar me have no patience to be abusé. As I did say, after de dispatché of my affairé, von day being idele, vich does producé the mellanchollique, I did valké over de new bridge in Parie, and to divertise de time, and my more serious toughté, me did look to see de marrioneté, and de jack-pudding, vich did play hundred pretty trické; time de collation vas come; and vor I had no company, I vas unvilling to go to de Cabareté, but did buy a darriolé, littel custardé vich did satisfie my appetite ver vel: in dis time young Monsieur de Grandvil (a jentelman of ver great quality, van dat vas my ver good friendé, and has done me ver great and insignal faveure) come by in his caroche vid dis Sir Frolick, who did pention at the same academy, to learn, de language, de bon mine, de great horse, and many oder trické. Monsieur seeing me did make de bowe and did becken me to come to him: he did telle me dat de Englis jentelman had de lettre vor de poste, and did entreaté me (if I had de opportunity) to see de lettre deliveré: he did telle me too, it void be ver great obligation: de memory of de faveurs I had received from his famelyé, beside de inclination I naturally have to serve de strangeré, made me returné de complemen vid ver great civility, and so I did take de lettre and see it deliveré. Sir Frollick perceiving (by de management of dis affairŽ) dat I vas man d'esprit, and of vitté, did entreaté me to be his serviteur; me did take d'affection to his personé, and was contenté to live vid him, to counsel and advise him. You see now de lie of de bougre de lacque Englishe, morbleu.
When I was at Malta, 1805, there happened a drunken squabble on the road from Valette to St. Antonio, between a party of soldiers and another of sailors. They were brought before me the next morning, and the great effect which their intoxication had produced on their memory, and the little or no effect on their courage in giving evidence, may be seen by the following specimen. The soldiers swore that the sailors were the first aggressors, and had assaulted them with the following words: " your eyes! who stops the line of march there?" The sailors with equal vehemence and unanimity averred, that the soldiers were the first aggressors, and had burst in on them calling out "Heave to, you lubbers! or we'll run you down."
An Emir had bought a left eye of a glass eye-maker, supposing that he would be able to see with it. The man begged him to give it a little time: he could not expect that it would see all at once as well as the right eye, which had been for so many years in the habit of it.
The Phoenix lives a thousand years, a secular bird of ages; and there is never more than one at a time in the world. Yet Plutarch very gravely informs us, that the brain of the Phoenix is a pleasant bit, but apt to occasion the head ache. By the by, there are few styles that are not fit for something. I have often wished to see Claudian's splendid poem on the Phoenix translated into English verse in the elaborate rhyme and gorgeous diction of Darwin. Indeed Claudian throughout would bear translation better than any of the ancients.
Beasts and babies remember, that is, recognize: man alone
recollects. This distinction was made by Aristotle.
In answer to the nihil e nihilo of the atheists, and their near relations, the anima-mundi men, a humourist pointed to a white blank in a rude wood-cut, which very ingeniously served for the head of hair in one of the figures.
As an instance of compression and brevity in narration,
unattainable in any language but the Greek, the following distich
was quoted:
[Greek (transliterated): Chruson anaer euron, helipe brochon autar o chruson, hon lipen, ouk ehuron, haephen, hon ehure, brochon.]
This was denied by one of the company, who instantly rendered
the lines in English, contending with reason that the indefinite
article in English, together with the pronoun "his," &c. should
be considered as one word with the noun following, and more than
counterbalanced by the greater number of syllables in the Greek
words, the terminations of which are in truth only little words
glued on to them. The English distich follows, and the reader
will recollect that it is a mere trial of comparative brevity,
wit and poetry quite out of the question:
Jack finding gold left a rope on the ground; Bill missing his gold used the rope, which he found.