then our friends; for, excepting the injunctions of religion, I do not find in myself such a necessary and indissoluble sympathy to all those of my blood. I hope I do not break the fifth commandment, if I conceive I may love3 my friend before the nearest of my blood, even those to whom I owe the principles of life. I never yet east a true affection on a woman; but I have loved my friend, as I do virtue, my breedeth admiration; a glimpse of it in formal courtesie of behaviour procureth much esteem, being deemed to accomplish and adorn a man. How lovely, therefore, and truly gallant is an entire, sincere, constant, and uniform practice thereof, issuing from pure good-will and affection!" Barrow's Sermons, vol. i. p. 375. One of the happiest illustrations I have ever seen, both of the more enlarged and the more limited benevolence, is in Hutcheson, and it well deserves to be quoted: "This universal benevolence towards all men we may compare to that principle of gravitation, which perhaps extends to all bodies in the universe; but, like the love of benevolence, increases as its distance is diminished, and is strongest when bodies come to touch each other. Now, this increase of attraction, upon nearer approach, is as necessary to the frame of the universe, as that there should be any attraction at all; for a general attraction, equal in all distances, would, by the contrariety of such multitudes of equal forces, put an end to all its regularity of motion, and perhaps stop it altogether."-Enquiry, p. 222. In the foregoing words there is a complete description of philanthropy, so far as man, by his nature, is capable of feeling, or by reason or religion is required to practise it; and there is a complete refutation, too, of the strange notions that have gone abroad under the imposing name of philosophy. In No. 45 of the Adventurer, written by Dr. Johnson, imagery nearly the same as that of Hutcheson is applied to the same subject: "The reigning philosophy informs us that the vast bodies which constitute the universe, are regulated, in their progress through the etherial spaces, by the perpetual agency of contrary forces; by one of which they are restrained from deserting their orbits, and losing themselves in the immensity of heaven, and held off by the other from rushing together and clustering round their centre with everlasting cohesion. The same contrariety of impulse may be perhaps discovered in the motions of men; we are formed for society, not for combination; we are equally unqualified to live in a close connection with our fellow beings, and in total separation from them; we are attracted towards each other by general sympathy, but kept back from contact by private interests."—E. H. B. : 3 conceive I may love.] MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, "confess I love."-Ed. + I never yet cast a true affection on a woman.] Moltkenius, the Latin Annotator, gives a very long note on this passage. He suggests that Sir Thomas probably thought it safest not to indulge the tender passion; an opinion which the learned commentator justifies by numerous autho soul, my God. From hence, methinks, I do conceive how God loves man; what happiness there is in the love of God. Omitting all other, there are three most mystical unions; two natures in one person; three persons in one nature; one soul in two bodies. For though, indeed, they be really divided, yet are they so united, as they seem but one, and make rather a duality than two distinct souls. SECT. VI.-There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles; wherein two so become one as they both become two: I love my friend before myself, and yet, methinks, I do not love him enough. Some few months hence, my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all. When I am from him, I am dead till I be with him.5 United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other; which being impossible, their desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction. Another misery there is in affection; that whom we truly love like our own selves, we forget their looks, nor can our memory retain the idea of their faces: and it is no wonder, for they are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our own. This noble affection falls not on vulgar and common constitutions; but on such as are marked for virtue. He that can love his friend with this noble ardour will in a competent degree affect all. Now, if we can bring our affections to look beyond the body, and cast an eye upon the soul, we have found out the true object, not only of friendship, but charity and the greatest happiness that we can bequeath the soul is that wherein we all do place our last felicity, salvation; which, though it be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity and pious invocations to desire, if not procure and further. I cannot contentedly? frame a prayer : rities, bringing together, from various sources, a host of satirical and abusive passages against the fair sex.-Ed. 5 him.] Here occurs, in MS. W. and Edts. 1642, the following conclusion to the sentence: "when I am with him, I am not satisfied, but would still be nearer him."-Ed. 6 He that can love, &c.] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, "He cannot love his friend with this noble ardour, that will in a competent degree affect all.-Ed." 7 contentedly.] Not in MSS. or Edts. 1642.-Ed. for myself in particular, without a catalogue for my friends; nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I never hear the toll of a passing bell, though in my mirth, without my prayers and best wishes for the departing' spirit, I cannot go to cure the body of my patient, but I forget my profession, and call unto God for his soul. I cannot see one say his prayers, but, instead of imitating him, I fall into supplication2 for him, who perhaps is no more to me than a common nature: and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications, there are surely many happy that never saw me, and enjoy the blessing of mine unknown devotions. To pray for enemies, that is, for their salvation, is no harsh precept, but the practice of our daily and ordinary devotions. I cannot believe the story of the Italian; our bad wishes and uncharitable3 desires proceed no further than this life; it is the devil, and the uncharitable votes of hell,4 that desire our misery in the world to come. SECT. VII." To do no injury nor take none" was a principle which, to my former5 years and impatient affections, seemed to contain enough of morality, but my more settled years, and Christian constitution, have fallen upon severer6 resolutions. I can hold there is no such thing as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and no such revenge as the contempt of an injury: that to hate the toll of a passing bell.] Moltke, in a notice on this passage. says, that it was the custom in England to signify, by the tolling of the bell, when any one was in the agonies of death, in order that those who heard it, might offer up their prayers on behalf of the dying.-Ed. 9 in my mirth.] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read here, "and at a tavern."-Ed. departing.] Edt. 1642 W. reads, departed.-Ed. 2 into supplication.] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, "into a zealous oration."-Ed. 2 uncharitable.] MSS. W. 2 and R. read, malevolous.-Ed. 4 votes of hell.] Meaning "voices or prayers of hell." And here may be taken in those interchangeable votes of priest and people, which are interposed; "O Lord, arise, help us, &c." Bp. Prideaux, Euch. p. 225.-Ed. 5 former.] MS. W. and Edts. 1642 read, firm;-MSS. W. 2 & R. read, infirm.-Ed. 6 severer.] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, securer.-Ed. another is to malign himself; that the truest way to love. another is to despise ourselves. I were unjust unto mine own conscience if I should say I am at variance with anything like myself. I find there are many pieces in this one fabrick of man; this frame is raised upon a mass of antipathies: I am one methinks but as the world, wherein notwithstanding there are a swarm of distinct essences, and in them another world of contrarieties; we carry private and domestick enemies within, public and more hostile adversaries without. The devil, that did but buffet St. Paul, plays methinks at sharp with me.9 Let me be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not find the battle of Lepanto, passion against reason,2 reason against faith, faith against the devil, and my conscience against all. There is another man within me that's angry with me,3 rebukes, commands, and dastards me. I have no conscience of marble, to resist the hammer of more heavy offences : nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven some sins as to commit some others. For my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my baptism; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God but from my last repentance, sacrament, or general absolution; and therefore am not 8 we.] MSS. W. & R. and Edts. 1642 read, which.-Ed. 9 plays methinks at sharp with me.] Sharp; "a rapier or pointed weapon." "If butchers had but the manners to go to sharps, gentlemen would be contented with a rubber at cuffs."-Collier. See Johnson's Dictionary.-Ed. battle of Lepanto.] This must allude to the battle between Don John of Austria and the Turkish fleet, near Lepanto, in the year 1571; for what is generally termed the battle of Lepanto, was the taking of the town from the Turks by the Venetians, in the year 1678. This is translated, 'totam Pharsaliam' by Merryweather, whom the French translator thus paraphrases: "Je sens en moimême les cruelles guerres civiles, qu'il y eut entre César et Pompée dans la Pharsalie.' The French edition was certainly not translated from the original, though it professes to be so.-Ed. 2 passion against reason.] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642, 1643, and 1645, read, "passion against passion;" which reading is followed by the Latin and French translations.-Ed. 3 that's angry with me.] These words are not in MS. W. nor Edts. 1642.-Ed. terrified with the sins or madness of my youth. I thank the goodness of God, I have no sins that want a name. I am not singular in offences; my transgressions are epidemical, and from the common breath of our corruption.4 For there are certain tempers of body which, matched with an humorous depravity of mind, do hatch and produce vitiosities, whose newness and monstrosity of nature admits no name; this was the temper of that lecher that carnaled with a statue, and the constitution of Nero in his spintrian recreations. For the heavens are not only fruitful in new and unheard of stars, the earth in plants and animals, but men's minds also in villany and vices. Now the dulness of my reason, and the vulgarity of my disposition, never prompted my invention nor solicited my affection unto any of these ;yet even those common and quotidian infirmities that so necessarily attend me, and do seem to be my very nature, have so dejected me, so broken the estimation that I should have otherwise of myself, that I repute myself the most abject piece of mortality. Divines prescribe a fit of sorrow to repentance: there goes indignation, anger, sorrow, hatred, into mine, passions of a contrary nature, which neither seem to suit with this action, nor my proper constitution. It is no breach of charity to ourselves to be at variance with our vices, nor to abhor that part of us, which is an enemy to the ground of charity, our God; wherein we do but imitate our great selves, the world, whose divided antipathies and contrary faces do yet carry a charitable regard unto the whole, by their particular discords preserving the common harmony, and keeping in fetters those powers, whose rebellions, once masters, might be the ruin of all. SECT. VIII.-I thank God, amongst those millions of vices, I do inherit and hold from Adam, I have escaped one, and that a mortal enemy to charity,-the first and father sin, not corruption.] The passage which occupies the next ten lines, to "yet, even those common," &c. is not in the MSS. nor Edts. 1642.-Ed. 5 mortality.] Here occurs, in all the MSS. and Edts. 1642, the following additional clause; "that I detest mine own nature, and in my retired imaginations cannot withhold my hands from violence on myself."-Ed. 6 sorrow.] MSS. W. 2 & R. read, contempt.-Ed. |
