cricket, and we play nice matches sometimes to my great refreshGod bless you and yours.

ment.

LXXI. TO REV. AUGUSTUS HARE.

(In answer to objections to his pamphlet.)

Grasmere, August 3, 1833.

And now I feel that to reply to your letter as I could wish, would require a volume. You will say why was not the volume published before, or with the pamphlet? To which I answer that, first, it would probably not have been read, and secondly, I was not prepared to find men so startled at principles, which have long appeared to me to follow necessarily from a careful study of the New Testament. Be assured, however, that, whether mistakenly or not, I fully believe that such a plan as I have proposed, taken altogether, would lead to a more complete representation of Scripture truth in our forms of worship and preaching than we have ever yet attained to; not, certainly, if we were only to cut away articles, and alter the Liturgy-then the effect might be latitudinarian—but if, whilst relaxing the theoretical bond, we were to tighten the practical one by amending the government and constitution of the Church, then I do believe that the fruit would be Christian union, by which I certainly do not mean an agreement in believing nothing, or as little as we Mean time, I wish to remind you that one of St. Paul's favourite notions of heresy is, "a doting about strifes of words." One side may be right in such a strife, and the other wrong, but both are heretical as to Christianity, because they lead men's minds away from the love of God and of Christ, to questions essentially tempting to the intellect, and which tend to no profit towards godliness. And again, I think you will find that all the "false doctrines" spoken of by the Apostles, are doctrines of sheer wickedness; that

can.

This is illustrated by his language in conversation on another subject. “Excommunication ought to be the expression of the public opinion of Christian society; and the line of offences to be censured seems to me very much marked out by the distinction between sins against the Son of Man, and sins against the Holy Ghost. Obscene publications are of the latter character, and are actually under the ban of Christian public opinion; and in proportion as the Church became more perfect, errors of opinion and unbelief, which are now only sins against the Son of Man, would then become sins against the Holy Ghost, because then the outward profession of Christianit would have become identical with moral goodness."

their counterpart in modern times is to be found in the Anabaptists of Munster, or the Fifth Monarchy Men, or in mere secular High Churchmen, or hypocritical Evangelicals,—in those who make Christianity minister to lust, or to covetousness, or to ambition; not in those who interpret Scripture to the best of their conscience and ability, be their interpretation ever so erroneous.

LXXII. TO REV. G. CORNISH.

Allan Bank, Grasmere, August 18, 1833.

I have had a good deal of worry from

the

party spirit of the neighbourhood, who in the first place have no notion of what my opinions are, and in the next place cannot believe that I do not teach the boys Junius and the Edinburgh Review, at the least, if not Cobbett and the Examiner. But this is an evil which flesh is heir to, if flesh, at least, will write as I have done. I am sorry that you do not like the pamphlet, for I am myself daily more and more convinced of its truth. I will not answer for its practicability; when the patient is at his last gasp, the dose may come too late, but still it is his only chance; he may die of the doctor; he must die of the disease. I fear that nothing can save us from falling into the American system, which will well show us the inherent evil of our Protestantism, each man quarrelling with his neighbour for a word, and all discarding so much of the beauty and solemnity, and visible power of the Gospel, that in common minds, where its spiritual power is not very great, the result is like the savourless salt, the vilest thing in the world. I would join with all those who love Christ and pray to Him; who regard him not as dead, but as living. [This part of the letter has been accidentally torn away: the substance of it seems to have been the same as that of Letters LXIII. and LXXI.] . . . . . Make the [Church a] living and active society, like that of the first Christians, [and then] differences of opinion will either cease or will signify nothing. [Look] through the Epistles, and you will find nothing there condemned as [heresy] but what was mere wickedness; if you consider the real nature and connexion of the tenets condemned. For such differences of opinion as exist amongst Christians now, the 14th chapter of the Romans is the applicable lesson-not such passages as Titus iii. 10, or 2 John 10, 11, or Jude 3, (that much abused verse!) or 19 or 23. There is one anathema, which is indeed holy and just, and most profitable

U

.....

for ourselves as well as for others, (1 Corinth. xvi. 22,) but this is not the anathema of a fond theology. . . . . Lo! I have written you almost another pamphlet, instead of telling you of my wife and the fry, who for more than five weeks have been revelling amongst the mountains. But as far as scenery goes, I would rather have heath and blue hills all the year, than mountains for three months, and Warwickshire for nine, with no hills, either blue or brown, no heath, no woods, no clear streams, no wide plains for lights and shades to play over, nay, no banks for flowers to grow upon, but one monotonous undulation of green fields and hedges, and very fat cattle. But we have each our own work, and our own enjoyments, and I am sure that I have more than I can ever be sufficiently thankful for.

LXXIII. TO REV. JULIUS HARE.

Rugby, October 7, 1833.

In Italy you met Bunsen, and can now sympathize with the all but idolatry with which I regard him. So beautifully good, so wise, and so noble-minded! I do not believe that any man can have a deeper interest in Rome than I have, yet I envy you nothing so much in your last winter's stay there, as your continued intercourse with Bunsen. It is since I saw you that I have been devouring with the most intense admiration the third volume of Niebuhr. The clearness and comprehensiveness of all his military details is a new feature in that wonderful mind, and how inimitably beautiful is that brief account of Terni. You will not, I trust, misinterpret me, when I say that this third volume set me at work again in earnest, on the Roman History, last summer. As to any man's being a fit continuator of Niebuhr, that is absurd; but I have at least the qualification of an unbounded veneration for what he has done, and, as my name is mentioned in his book, I should like to try to embody, in a continuation of the Roman History, the thoughts and notions which I have learnt from him. Perhaps I may trouble you with a letter on this subject, asking, as I have often done before, for informationa.

This alludes to a plan he at first entertained of beginning his own Roman History with the Punic wars.

LXXIV.

TO MR. SERGEANT COLERIDGE.

Rugby, October 23, 1833.

I love your letters dearly, and thank you for them greatly; your last was a great treat, though I may seem not to have shown my sense of it by answering it so leisurely. First of all, you will be glad to hear of the birth of my eighth living child, a little girl, to whom we mean to give an unreasonable number of names, Frances Bunsen Trevenen Whately; the second after my valued friend, the Prussian Minister at Rome, of whom, as I know not whether I shall ever see him again, I wished to have a daily present recollection in the person of one of my children. I wish I could show you his two letters, one to me on the political state of Europe, and one to Dr. Nott on the perfect notion of a Christian Liturgy. I am sure that you would love and admire with me, the extraordinary combination of piety and wisdom and profound knowledge and large experience which breathes through every line of both.

I go all lengths with you in deprecating any increase of political excitement, anything that shall tend to make politics enter into a man's daily thoughts and daily practice. When I first projected the Englishman's Register, I wrote to my nephew my sentiments about it in full; a letter which I keep, and may one day find it convenient to publish as my confession of faith; in this letter I protested strongly against making the Register exclusively political, and entered at large into my reasons for doing so. Undoubtedly I fear that the Government lend an ear too readily to the Utilitarians and others of that coarse and hard stamp, whose influence can be nothing but evil. In church matters they have got Whately, and a signal blessing it is that they have him and listen to him; a man so good and so great that no folly or wickedness of the most vile of factions will move him from his own purposes, or provoke him in disgust to forsake the defence of the Temple..

I cannot say how I am annoyed, both on public and private grounds, by these extravagances, [at Oxford;] on private grounds, from the gross breaches of charity to which they lead good men; and on public, because if these things do produce any effect on the clergy, the evil consequences to the nation are not to be calculated; for what is to become of the Church, if the clergy begin to exhibit an aggravation of the worst superstitions of the Roman Catholics, only stripped of that consistency, which stamps even the errors of

the Romish system with something of a character of greatness. It seems presumption in me to press any point upon your consideration, seeing in how many things I have learnt to think from you. But it has always seemed to me that an extreme fondness for our "dear mother the panther,"a is a snare, to which the noblest minds are most liable. It seems to me that all, absolutely all, of our religious affections and veneration should go to Christ Himself, and that Protestantism, Catholicism, and every other name, which expresses Christianity and some differentia or proprium besides, is so far an evil, and, when made an object of attachment, leads to superstition and error. Then, descending from religious grounds to human, I think that one's natural and patriotic sympathies can hardly be too strong; but, historically, the Church of England is surely of a motley complexion, with much of good about it, and much of evil, no more a fit subject for enthusiastic admiration than for violent obloquy. I honour and sympathize entirely with the feelings entertained; I only think that they might all of them select a worthier object; that, whether they be pious and devout, or patriotic, or romantic, or of whatever class soever, there is for each and all of these a true object on which they may fasten without danger and with infinite benefit; for surely the feeling of entire love and admiration is one, which we cannot safely part with, and there are provided, by God's goodness, worthy and perfect objects of it; but these can never be human institutions, which, being necessarily full of imperfection, require to be viewed with an impartial judgment, not idolized by an uncritical affection. And that common metaphor about our "Mother the Church," is unscriptural and mischievous, because the feelings of entire filial reverence and love which we owe to a parent, we do not owe to our fellow Christians; we owe them brotherly love, meekness, readiness to bear, &c., but not filial reverence, "to them I give place by subjection, no not for an hour." Now, if I were a Utilitarian, I should not care for what I think a misapplication of the noblest feelings; for then I should not care for the danger to which this misapplication exposes the feelings themselves; but as it is, I dread to see the evils of the Reformation of the sixteenth century repeated over again; superstition provoking profaneness, and ignorance and violence on one side leading to equal ignorance and violence on the other, to the equal injury of both truth and love. I should feel greatly obliged to you, if you