16

SUSPENSE PAINFUL.-NOVEL READING.-INFIDEL WRITINGS.

ment in opposite directions, and, while this state of things continues, the mind is on the rack. Hence the precipitance with which men rush to conclusions of the utmost importance. Pride then stands up in arms to defend the position thus hastily taken. This accounts for the sudden changes of creed which we sometimes witness in the world, and the unmeasured abuse which is poured on the system so recently cherished, and so suddenly abandoned. There are some, however, who fear to commit themselves by a step which, if repented of, could not be retraced without infamy, and, therefore, put off the decision as long as possible. They seek to beguile the anxiety of the mind, and the sadness of the heart, by amusements and occupations congenial to their dispositions. And I was led to the reading of novels, just as a heart-broken tradesman has recourse to the bottle as an "oblivious antidote" to drown reflection. In this employment I wasted many a precious hour, "wandering by the wild wood side," or seated on a rock, listening to the roar of a torrent, or reclining on the beach, while the setting sun shed its golden radiance over the distant sand-banks, and the blue wave broke with gentle murmurs at my feet; or, more frequently, consuming the midnight oil, while "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," visited with its invigorating influences the couches of all my companions. Many an hour I wasted (with sorrow I reflect on it), reading volumes almost innumerable of the flimsy trash that issued, like summer flies, from the press; or the more serious nonsense furnished to the English reader from the German school of novelists. But there are few evils from which some good may not be extracted. My time, it is true, was lost; my mind left empty of all useful information; an aversion to serious studies was acquired, as well as a sickly sensibility, which entailed on me much ignorance and misery; yet, by the reading of novels, I was cured of my dread of ghosts, and imbibed a hatred of religious persecution. The latter feeling has taken such deep root in my heart as to operate now almost as an instinct. One of my German romances produced in my mind a scepticism in regard to all supernatural appearances of ghosts and demons, which neither the experience of John Wesley, nor the stories of Sir Walter Scott, have been able to eradicate. And the gifted Maturin's Romance of the Albigenses threw such light on the policy of the Church of Rome, and excited in my mind such powerful sympathy for the persecuted, that I have ever since cordially hated all attempts to coerce the conscience.

This passion for novel reading, which converted my life into a kind of dream, full of joys and sorrows, and vain aspirations, marked the transition state of my mind. Reason, so far as I had called it into exercise on some subjects of my religion-such as Transubstantiation and Penance -had given its verdict against them; or, at all events, hinted doubts that left me open to conviction. In this state of mind, I met with some works of the French philosophers, especially those of that "self-torturing sophist,' Rousseau, for whose crude speculations I was prepared by the milder scepticism of Marmontel. Other writers of the same class followed. Their reasoning gratified the understanding, and their eloquence delighted the imagination. They appealed to my judgment; they treated me as a rational creature—as a man—and I felt the proud response of new-born energies agitating my bosom. I soon began to regard Christianity as

CHURCH HISTORY.-THE ALTERNATIVE.

17

the offspring of ignorance, and the parent of persecution—as the foe of freedom, and the enemy of human improvement.

While the French philosophy was, like a powerful chemical agent, rapidly dissolving my religious principles, it happened that the Rev. Mr. D. lent me Fleury's Ecclesiastical History. And there, to my astonishment, I found all that my infidel teachers had asserted abundantly confirmed by the testimony of a Roman Catholic historian, recommended by my own parish priest. I had read short histories of the Church beforesuch as Gahan's-but I could never have discovered from these cautious and flattering compilations that the Church of Rome was anything but a most immaculate virgin. I now learned, from the reluctant admissions of one of her own reverend sons, that she was ambitious, cruel, persecuting, and licentious.

"The happy days of the Church are passed!"* was an ominous ejaculation to break from the lips of the writer, when he came to contemplate Christianity on the throne of the Cæsars. I was disgusted with the intrigues, the quarrels, and the persecuting wars, in which the clergy were perpetually engaged. I saw their sacerdotal robes " 'spotted with the flesh," and deeply dyed in innocent blood; and I said, "Can this religion, so irrational and so cruel, be from heaven? Is it an emanation from infinite benevolence?" Go, seek an answer in the dungeons of the Inquisition and the valleys of Piedmont!

The priest, having soon discovered that Fleury was a dangerous author or me, deprived me of him, stating that my time would be more usefully occupied reading something else. I was once spending the evening with him and his curate. The conversation turned on 66 'Captain Rock in London," a twopenny publication which came out weekly. The curate denounced it in the strongest terms. "It was," said he, "such publications that sapped the foundations of Christianity in France, and led to the Revolution."

He did not know that this circumstance was to me its highest recommendation. I had always identified Christianity with Romanism. They were never separated in my mind, even in imagination. I had, indeed, read of various religious bodies which the Papacy persecuted; but I never thought they were anything better than what they were called by Dr. Doyle "vile heretics." Therefore, my only alternative was Romanism or Infidelity. I saw no Scriptural or rational ground between them, where I might find rest for the sole of my foot.

Reason, then, called for the renunciation of Christianity under the name of Catholicism. But though the passage over the narrow Rubicon that separated credulity from scepticism was but a step, and a short one, I trembled at the thought of taking it. I shrunk from the cheerless waste and frigid atmosphere of infidelity, and, unwilling to leave even the tottering edifice of superstition, I lingered on the threshold, and cast a look of reviving fondness on the household gods which I had loved and trusted so long. Wishing, if possible, to regain that peace of mind in the bosom of the Church which had been frequently disturbed and ultimately destroyed —like a tender plant which perishes by repeated removals-I was induced

* "Les beaux jours de l'Eglise sont passês!"

D

18

THE FRIARS.-A CONVENT.

to try confession once more, determined freely to avow all my doubts and distress. I resembled a person who, when forced by painful circumstances to bid a last farewell to one that once was dear, summons up the utmost energy of his mind to suppress resentment; and, prepared for a great sacrifice, veils the past in oblivion, and yields to the impulsive influence of returning tenderness, hoping that his overtures of reconciliation may be accepted and reciprocated; and then, failing in his dernier resort, desperately takes the irrecoverable step.

It is a general opinion among the Roman Catholics, as you are aware, that friars are more holy, and have generally more power with God, than the secular clergy. I had heard some of these gentlemen, as they came round on their annual itinerating circuits, preaching charity sermons, and collecting money and corn, and never did I witness discourses more calculated to arouse the feelings and terrify the conscience. They moved heaven, earth, and hell, apparently with a view to operate on the purses and the barns of their hearers; for their object was too thinly veiled to escape observation. And hence it became a general remark, that money

formed the conclusion of all their sermons.

Convents are very often houses of refuge to parish outlaws to persons who have failed in paying their dues, or quarrelled with their priests—and they are also the favourite resort of individuals, females especially, who profess singular devotion, and deal much in charms and mysteries. I, too, was resolved to try whether the friars could afford a cure for a wounded spirit-whether they could "pluck from the memory the rooted sorrow, or raze out the written troubles from the brain." Accordingly, I proceeded to the small convent at G. It was a gloomy winter's day when I approached the sacred asylum--an old building seated on an eminence in the midst of a bleak district of country, and surrounded by a few bare, half-decayed fir trees, which served but to add to the dreariness of the scene. I was conducted to a room where I found the reverend father seated in a large chair beside a turf fire. He would have reminded a spectator, in a mood less serious than mine, of the " knight of the rueful countenance"'—so mournful was the aspect, so faded the apparel, and so spiritually poor the whole appearance of the man. There lay in a recess

a number of volumes of casuistical divinity-some fragments, I suppose, of Thomas Aquinas and Peter Dens; and, on a side table, I saw some bottles and glasses, and a few numbers of the Weekly Register. Everything was in keeping. The doors. were greatly worn, the painting on the walls had faded, and the furniture seemed to be the mouldering remnants Although there was a female housekeeper"A pensive nun, devout and pure, Sober, steadfast, and demure"

of another generation.

there was no talk- -no noise. The dead silence was unbroken, except by the mournful cadence of the wind as it moaned fitfully through the chinks of the doors and windows, or murmured among the trees, or rushed round the unsheltered walls of this secluded habitation. The solemn silence within, contrasted with the no less saddening sounds from without "the dim, religious light," which was cast on the apartment-the mortified appearance of the priest-all conspired to put the mind in a frame which might easily pass for an evidence of genuine repentance. And so, indeed,

CONFORMING INFIDELS.-PARTY SPIRIT.

19

In

it was with me. I confessed again and again, and went through a course of painful mortification, and finally received absolution. But the good father had not answered Rousseau's arguments. He merely said they were the suggestions of the devil, and bid me dismiss them from my mind. I tried to do so, and succeeded for a time, but only for a time. I began again to feel that the foundation on which I was standing was insecure. fact, the spell of the Church was broken. I now fearlessly cast off the yoke, and rejoiced in my newly-acquired liberty. I seemed to breathe more freely, and to step more lightly. The earth looked greener, and the sky shone brighter, than ever I saw them before. How delightful to be a disinterested spectator of the religious warfare which was now agitating the country! They might curse and denounce one another as they pleased; what was that to me? Such is the spirit of infidelity—a selfish spirit, which leads us to ask with Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?"

But though I adopted the heartless creed of the Deist, it does not follow that I openly renounced the Church of Rome, or forsook the chapel. If this were a necessary consequence of infidelity, I fear the ranks of Romanism would be thinned of many of its most eloquent and accomplished defenders. There still remained ties powerful enough to secure conformity. The bonds of social affection, the claims of honour, and the force of party-spirit, keep many a secret malcontent quiet within the pale. The mutinous disposition is repressed by prudence. The infidel who acts the bully with his God is frequently a coward in the sight of man. He takes shelter under the forms of religion, from the tempest of indignation and persecution which an open apostacy might draw down upon his head. With the friends of religion he wears the smile of friendship; but, assassin-like, he seeks all opportunities of stabbing her in the dark. The incredulous sneer-the dark insinuation- the bitter taunt gilded with an expression of regret these are the weapons which he carries about, concealed, like the stiletto of the Spaniard, under his mantle of hypocrisy.

I have said that I did not forsake the chapel. Had I done so, it would have brought a very inconvenient suspicion on my character, and would have turned against me the influence of the clergy-powerful when exerted for their friends, and still more so when directed against their enemies. This is a striking, but unhappily not the only, instance that could be pointed out in this country, of the force of political and other earthly considerations, in binding in close confederacy men of the most opposite religious sentiments. Two pieces of loadstone are found powerfully to attract each other, when the opposite poles are placed in juxtaposition, while the influence is as powerfully repellent when similar poles are brought in contact. It must be on some such principle as this that parties whose distinguishing tenets are "wide as the poles asunder," are closely banded in secular pursuits ecclesiastical organization-while, with all the force of the strongest antipathy, they shun the men whose faith and hope, and religious experience, are precisely the same as their own. Alas! that the love of the world should so far prevail, even among the clergy, as to produce anomalies so perplexing to the inquirer, and so revolting in common sense and Christian feeling! Still, my dear friend, we must make large allowance for the infirmities of human nature, the unconscious

PARTY SPIRIT.-PYRRHONISM.-BAYLE.-INFIDELITY.

influence of interest and prejudice, and the force of long-confirmed habits of thinking and acting. But I must now conclude, promising to give in my next some remarks on infidelity.

LETTER IV.

MY DEAR FRIEND, -When I secretly renounced the authority of religion, I felt some relief for a time from that distress of mind which had afflicted

66

me as a Romanist. I was glad that I was no longer under the necessity of defending a creed which I did not believe, and it gratified my pride to think that I could amuse myself at the expense of Protestant and Roman Catholic in turn, without being myself obnoxious to their retaliation. My feelings in these circumstances are well expressed in the following candid avowal of the celebrated infidel Bayle, whom the Jesuits converted when very young, but who afterwards spurned their authority :— In truth (says he to his correspondent, Minutoli), it ought not to be thought strange that so many persons should have inclined to Pyrrhonism (universal doubt), for of all things in the world it is the most convenient. You may dispute, with impunity, against everybody you meet, without any dread of that vexatious argument which is addressed ad hominem. You are never afraid of a retort; for, as you announce no opinion of your own, you are always ready to abandon those of others to the attacks of sophists of every description. In a word, you may dispute and jest on all subjects, without incurring any danger from the lex talionis”—(the law of reprisals).

"It is amusing," as Dugald Stewart judiciously remarks on this passage, to think that the Pyrrhonism which Bayle himself here so ingeniously accounted for, from motives of conveniency and of literary cowardice, should have been mistaken by so many of his disciples for the sportive triumph of a superior intellect over the weaknesses and the errors of human reason. But how detestable is the conduct of the individual who, to gratify his pride or his spleen, or to shield his licentious conduct from reproof, sports with the most sacred feelings and the dearest interests of man, and aims his poisoned arrows at prejudice or piety, not from a fortified enclosure which he has the manliness to defend, but from some secret lurking place, whence he may slink away the moment he is detected! "The fool says in his heart, there is no God"—that is, he wishes it may be so. For the thought of a righteous Governor of the world, and of a future judgment, gives him indescribable pain. Indeed the state of the heart has more to do in this matter than some are willing to admit. All the tendencies of human depravity are most unfavourable to the truth. . The mind is pre-occupied by worldly prejudices, or led captive by sinful passions. It is blinded by the perverting influences of "the sin that dwelleth in us. Like a mirror sullied by impure vapours, it reflects not the beams of the Sun of Righteousness. Instead of that love of truth so necessary to give diligence and perseverance to the spirit of inquiry, and calmness and impartiality to the judgment, we find that the "carnal