faith, meekness, temperance."a The spirit of fanaticism is a spirit of error and delusion, and its fruits are often the most unhallowed and outrageous deeds. A warm and irregular imagination, directed to religious subjects, seems to be its true source. Every form of religion has produced its peculiar fanatics. The Greeks had their extatic and infuriate priests and priestesses, of whom astonishing things are related by various ancient authors.b The well known passage of Virgil thus describes the furious agitations of the Sibyl, the oracular priestess of Apollo. Unable yet to bear the power divine, The priestess rages through the cavern'd shrine; The Romans had their Bacchanals, and Corybantes, and others of the same stamp. Nor the God of wine, Nor Pythian Phoebus from his inmost shrine, a Gal. v. 22, 23. b See Potter's Archæologia Græca, lib. ii. c. xi. c At, Phœbi nondum patiens, immanis in antro Bacchatur vates, magnum si pectore possit Excussisse deum: tanto magis ille fatigat Os rabidum, fera corda domans, fingitque premendo. Virg. Æn. lib. vi. 77-80. Nor Dindymene, nor her priests possest, Can with their sounding cymbals shake the breast, b The Jews had their wizards and witches: the Mahomedans have their dancing and whirling dervishes. In different periods of the Christian church, various forms of fanaticism have appeared. They abounded particularly in the twelfth century. Soon after the Reformation, Luther had to encounter the fanatical followers of Munzec, Storchius, and Stubner, and "others, partly Swiss and partly Germans, who kindled the flame of discord and rebellion in several parts of Europe, and chiefly in Germany, and excited, among the ignorant multitude, tumults and commotions, which, though less violent in some places than in others, were nevertheless formidable wherever they appeared." The extravagant notions, the furious zeal, and the outrageous and indecent conduct of the anabaptists in Germany, in the 16th, and of the quakers in England, in the 17th century, are unhappily matter of historical re a Non Liber æque, non adytis quatit Sic geminant Corybantes æra, Hor. Carm. lib. i. xvi. 5—9. b See Clarke's Travels, chap. ii. p. 38, 39. e Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Maclaine's Translation. d Idem, Cent. XVI. ch. iii. sect. 10. a cord. The fanaticism and horrid austerity of the Jansenists are equally so; not to mention many other fanatical sects and opinions which have arisen in different periods, and still continue to arise. Johanna Southcote was not without followers even of no vulgar station. I shall here offer one observation, which I deem to be of considerable importance. We have always reason to expect some species of abuse, as nearly connected with every thing useful. In periods when men's minds are much occupied with religious concerns, still more in those when they are entirely engrossed by them, they will be apt to be carried to some species or other of religious extravagance. During those gloomy centuries that preceded the Reformation, the Christian world was sunk in the deepest ignorance, and enslaved by the grossest superstition. Hence, pilgrimages, penances, munificent donations to the church, and the erection of those venerable piles for divine worship which were reared in every Christian country. However absurd were the notions of religion then entertained, the sincerity of the generality of its votaries was evinced. For, it cannot be supposed that such expense and labour would have been incurred for an object which was supposed to be merely ideal. That imposture was practised a Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, Cent. XVII. ch. iv. sect. 2. Idem, Cent. XVII. ch. i. sect. 46, particularly in the note. cannot be doubted; but imposture implies dupes who are deceived by it, otherwise its operations would cease. Profligate priests were the deceivers; but till the people were more enlightened, they sincerely believed the religion that was taught them. On the other hand, when the glorious Reformation shed its salutary light on a benighted world, it dazzled weak but ardent minds by its effulgence. The yoke of spiritual tyranny being broken, and freedom in religious matters restored, many supposed that this freedom could not be asserted and maintained but by rushing into all the licentiousness of fanatical extravagance. While religious freedom operated in this manner in one direction, it produced in another consequences still more fatal. For, as the absurdities and deceptions of popish superstition had been fully detected, some, who pretended to extraordinary enlargement of mind, were led to believe, or at least to assume, that every species of religion was founded either on delusion or imposture, to reject Christianity, and even to adopt atheistical principles. Hence it is evident, however paradoxical it may appear to be, that absolute scepticism and fanaticism are derived from the same source; an incapacity to discriminate between truth and falsehood, weakness of judgment, and boldness of presumption, As Plato, or rather Chrysippus, maintained that good and evil were tied together by the head, and that where the former was found, the other would also make its appearance; so, with every thing excellent, some excess will infallibly be joined by the folly or the corruption of mankind, and this excess, Like the shadow, proves the substance true.-POPE. The excesses of religion, therefore, are no more to be imputed to religion itself than licentiousness to rational liberty, or tumult to well-balanced government. As, to avoid the evils last mentioned, it is egregious folly to take refuge under civil despotism; so it is no less absurd and pernicious to seek deliverance from fanatical extravagance, or superstition, by discarding religion altogether. Who thinks of rejecting science or literature, or any of the fine arts, because egregious folly or extravagance has been exhibited in those who devoted themselves to the cultivation of them? Yet even such absurdity of procedure I have heard justified by men of ignorant and illiberal minds. The wise maxim in this, as in every other case, is, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”a III. Bigotry exhibits another form of corrupt and perverted religion, differing in some respects a 1 Thess. v. 21. |