yet he recognises the power even of these principles with alarm. He writes, in 1836, to Professor Norton in America: : "We are, unfortunately, retrograde in this country. The grossest spirit of mysticism and popery has revived at Oxford; not without persecution against those who, though feebly, venture to oppose it."* So he had written to Mr. Armstrong, in 1835 +: Orthodoxy poisons every man more or less (in this country perhaps more than where it is merely a name) from the cradle." "I deeply lament that England, a land I love and admire, my second country, should be the spot in Europe most deeply sunk into that refined intolerance which attributes opinions to moral depravity." And to Mr. Mill: "I am convinced that no country in the world suffers more from false notions of religion than England. Spain and Italy are indeed ruined by an established superstition of the grossest kind; but they have the advantage that the subject is treated as a mere concession to be made to ignorance till some more favourable moment may arrive for dislodging the abettors of the nuisance from their ruinous strongholds. But in England the most mischievous, because the most intolerant, superstition has succeeded in disguising itself into something like knowledge and system. It exists in the garb of philosophy, meddling with everything, not as a mere matter of fact, but as reason and right."§ 16. We could fill whole pages with extracts expressing his most bitter complaints against the universal spirit of "Bibliolatry" in England. He finds the attempt to Ibid. p. 109. *Life, II. p. 192. § Ibid. p. 137. † Ibid. II. p. 101. For instance, II. pp. 18, 136, 191, 344; III. p. 380, maintain an authoritative revelation, which he thinks so mischievous, to be common to Christian persuasions generally.* The ordinary idea of God, he says, is anthropomorphic, it is gross idolatry.† Nay, he repeatedly laments the prevalence and power of superstition even among the Unitarians. All this affords a certain ground for thankfulness. It all tends to support the hope that, although the prevalent notions in this country may on several points of religion be inexact, although a dangerous licence is assumed of distinguishing between different articles of faith according to their supposed importance to the individual mind, although even material schism and heresy be too manifest among us, still those habits of mind are deeply rooted in the people, which are the fundamental conditions of Catholic faith; the sense, namely, of revelation as something fixed and immutable, and the conviction of the ethical character of Christian dogmas, and of their indissoluble connection with the conduct of life. While this is the case, even though walls should be thrown down, and foundations laid bare, still their seat in the heart and mind of man is unassailed. 17. So much for Mr. Blanco White as a witness to facts. When we turn to the consideration of his claims as a teacher in divine philosophy, we are alike baffled by the weakness, the incongruity, and the perpetual defluxion of his doctrines. He was, indeed, during the last ten years of his life, lost in a kind of moral atrophy, incessantly employed upon mental speculation, but quite incapable of deriving nourishment from what he devoured with an appetite so ravenous. So that he pined more and more, from year to year: and we can scarcely measure the * III. p. 66. † III. p. 78. I. pp. 228, 264, 275, 276. miserable intensity of his disease, when we find him sunk so far below the Unitarian scheme as to write to Mr. Norton, the Unitarian professor, that they differ on essentials;* and when the same Mr. Norton, himself a Christian in the Unitarian sense, "in his controversy with Mr. Ripley, had completely excluded him (Mr. Blanco White) from the class of Christians,"† under the influence of the spirit of orthodoxy. It was indeed no great wonder that any one should have done so, with whom human language was other than a mockery and a fraud. For, about the same time, Mr. Blanco White was surely preparing himself for emancipation from nearly the last of his fetters, the very name of our religion, or he could hardly have written thus:— "How superior, in various respects, is Islamism to superstitious Christianity! It may shock many, but I must express my expectation that both the corrupt church Christianity and Islamism itself will disappear in the course of ages, and that the two religions will return to their primitive source-the pure patriarchal and primitive view, the true Christian view, of God and man!"§ And, a little further on, he institutes a contrast between Paganism and Christianity, in direct disparagement of the latter. 18. The contradictions with which his work abounds are indescribable. He indeed wonders at his own intellectual consistency; || probably because he had forgotten many of the opinions he had renounced, and because of the remarkable positiveness with which he in most cases adopted for the moment every successive modification of his views. Even the phenomena of his own mind, which seem to * Life, II. P. 361. § Ibid. p. 280. + Ibid. III. p. 207. Ibid. 277, note. have been latterly his only remaining realities, are stated by him in modes quite irreconcilable with each other. For example, during his later life the constant tenor of his representation is, that his return to what he terms orthodoxy, and what we should call partial belief for some years between 1812 and 1818, and again between 1825 and 1832, was the effect of his religious sympathies, obtaining for the time the mastery over his understanding.* 19. But, at the first of these periods, he had taken a directly opposite view; for he embodied his sentiments in the prayer which follows † : "O Lord, my heavenly Father, who knowest how much of sin still remains in my heart, root out of my mind, I beseech thee, the habits of unbelief which I often feel in myself, stirring against the full persuasion of my understanding on the truth of thy revelation, and the strong desire of my heart after that perfect and tranquil assurance in the promises of thy Gospel; of which, through the impious conduct of my youth, I have made myself absolutely unworthy." He expresses the same sentiments in his 'Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism.' Now, upon the whole, we believe that there not only may, but must be, very considerable truth in these earlier statements. Because the fact stands upon record that he had passed (between Spain and England) at least ten years in total unbelief. Was it possible that in so long a period he could fail to form sceptical habits of mind; and had they not time to become to a considerable degree inveterate? 20. It must be borne in mind that our intellectual as well as our moral nature is ever liable to be powerfully affected by habits previously formed. We know, for instance, *Life, I. pp. 320, 340, 363; III. 128. P. 17. that a statesman, a divine, and a lawyer, each fairly representing his class, will usually take different views of a subject even where they agree in their conclusion: because they approach it with distinct predispositions. These predispositions are the results of their several employments, which propose to them the several ends of policy, law, and divine truth; and modify their common mental acts accordingly. Much more must this be the case where the operative cause cuts so deep, lies so close to the very root of our moral being, as in a case of total unbelief combined with daily practice of the exterior acts of the sacerdotal profession. But Mr. Blanco White, so far from seeing in these facts of his history any disqualification, whether total or partial, for his philosophical investigations on moral subjects, rather pleads the tenor of his whole life as his grand claim to credit. Thus he writes to Miss L, in 1836* :— “Having gone through almost every modification of the spirit of devotion, except those which bear the stamp of gross extravagance, I must possess a practical knowledge of the artful disguises of superstition, which no natural talent, no powers of thought, can give by means of study and meditation. It is the results of that individual experience, and not any new doctrine or theoretical system, which I have thought it a duty of Christian friendship to give you without disguise." It is true he speaks of experience, not of opinions; but, in point of fact, thought is mental experience: and if the distinction can be drawn, it is quite irrelevant here, for the very letter, from which the citation is taken, is one of pure theory. We say, therefore, that when we find Mr. Blanco White systematically ignoring the effect which ten years of unbe * Life, II. p. 262. |