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Theology and Romanticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Extract
The widespread reaction towards the Church of Rome by which the first half of the last century was marked, has been subjected to a multitude of more or less intelligent explanations. It was to be expected from poor human nature that each critic should explain in accordance with that law of human development which he had himself embraced, and in illustration of that moral which he deemed it most salutary to draw. In this field the disciple of Bossuet will be forever at issue with the disciple of Comte. From the one we hear how the eyes of Europe had been providentially opened by long years of anarchy and bloodshed, how the spirit of schism had been at length unmasked, how the exhausted nations were taught once more to value a unified spiritual control, and how amid the wreck of thrones and the desolation of kingdoms the very dullest of mankind must have been awed by the spectacle of the Chair of Peter standing fast, an authentic token of the Mighty Hand and the Outstretched Arm. From the other side we listen to the cold comment that world disasters are apt to drive back the less robust sort of mind to the solace of old superstition, that mental progress like all things human has its ebb and flow, and that we need not be surprised if a season of shivering credulity alternates with a season of fearless rationalism. The philosophic historian may well be left to wear himself out in this profitless debate with the brethren of his own craft. Non nostri est tantas componere lites.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1920
References
1 The Statesman's Manual.
2 The Deformed Transformed. Vol. II.
3 Manfred. Vol. II, p. iv.
4 Cain. Vol. I, p. i.
5 Excursion. Vol. III.
6 Intimations of Immortality.
7 Prelude. Vol. II.
8 State of German Literature (1827).
9 How persuasive this line of thought appeared, even to some thinkers who never joined the Roman Church, may be seen from A. W. Schlegel's letter to M. de Montmorency: “The Protestant system does not satisfy me any longer.… I am convinced that the time is not far off when all Christians will reunite in the old faith. The work of the Reformation is accomplished, the pride of human reason which was evident in the first Reformers, and still more in their successors, has guided us so ill, especially during the last century, that it has come into antagonism with itself and has destroyed itself. It is perhaps ordained that those who have influence on the opinions of their contemporaries shall publicly renounce it, and then assist in preparing a union with the one Church of former days.”
10 Cf. Pattison's Memoirs, pp. 211, 212.
11 Loves of the Angels.
12 Cf. Carlyle's comment in State of German Literature: “The meaning here is very good; but why this phraseology? Is it not inviting the simple-minded (not to speak of scoffers, whom Horn very justly sniffs at) to ask when Homer subscribed the Thirty-Nine Articles; or whether Sadi and Hafig were really of the Bishop of Peterborough's opinion?”
13 Essay on “The Romantic School” in the Review Europe Littéraire (1833).
14 Shirley. Vol. I.
15 Sybil. Vol. I, p. iii.
16 Cf. Stanley's Life of Arnold, p. 59.
17 Past and Present.
18 Sybil. Vol. I, p. iii.
19 Loc. cit.
20 The phrase is from Dickens.
21 Cf. Life and Letters of Charles Kingsley. Vol. I, p. 38.
22 Pol. Econ. Vol. IV, p. vii.
23 Cf. Trevelyan's Life.
24 Cf. Aids to Reflection. Vol. I, p. 26. “All the evil achieved by Hobbes and the whole school of materialists will appear inconsiderable if it be compared with the mischief effected and occasioned by the sentimental philosophy of Sterne and his numerous imitators. The vilest appetites and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their objects acquired the titles of the heart, the irresistible feelings, the too tender sensibility; and if the frosts of prudence, the icy chains of human law, thawed and vanished at the genial warmth of human nature, who could help it? It was an amiable weakness!”
25 Main Currents of Nineteenth Century Literature. Vol. II, p. 17.
26 Cf. Fairbairn, A. M., The Philosophy of the Christian Religion.Google Scholar
27 Cf. Aids to Reflection. Vol. I, p. 182.
28 Essay on Diderot.
29 Church, The Oxford Movement, p. 256.
30 Cf. Thackeray's extraordinary outburst in the Irish Sketch Book against the Pope's appointment of an English bishop to the see of “Aureliolopolis,” and his query about what His Holiness would think if the Archbishop of Canterbury nominated a bishop of the Palatine or the Suburra! It illustrates the mood in which Churches were regarded as pieces of national organization.
31 Quatre-vingt-treize. Vol. II, p. 3.
32 The almost forgotten novels of John Gait have some sly hits at the same sort of State-sustaining religion in England. Cf. the complaint of the Rev. Micah Balwhidder that smuggling continued to flourish, though he had preached sixteen times from the text “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's (Annals of the Parish, p. 10); and Mr. Cayenne's request that his doctor should summon a clergyman to his deathbed, because, “you know, that in these times, doctor, it is the duty of every good subject to die a Christian” (ibid., p. 151).