Clergy From England

"It is at any rate evident, that a large and ample province remains for the exercise of Providence, without its being naturally perceptible by us; because obscurity, when applied to the interruption of laws, bears a necessary proportion to the imperfection of our knowledge when applied to the laws themselves, or rather to the effects which these laws, under their various and incalculable combinations, would of their own accord produce. And if it be said, that the doctrine of Divine Providence, by reason of the ambiguity under which its exertions present themselves, can be attended with no practical influenceupon our conduct; that, although we believe ever so firmly that there is a Providence, we must prepare, and provide, and act, as if there were none; I answer, that this is admitted: and that we further allege, that so to prepare, and so to provide, is consistent with the most perfect assurance of the reality of a Providence; and not only so, but that it is probably one advantage of the present state of our information, that our provisions and preparations are not disturbed by it. Or if it be still asked, Of what use at all then is the doctrine, if it neither alter our measures nor regulate our conduct? I answer again, that it is of the greatest use, but that it is a doctrine of sentiment and piety, not (immediately at least) of action or conduct; that it applies to the consolation of men's minds, to their devotions, to the excitement of gratitude, the support of patience, the keeping alive and the strengthening of every motive for endeavouring to please our Maker; and that these are great uses."

"It is a step to have it proved, that there must be something in the world more than what we see. It is a further step to know, that, amongst the invisible things of nature, there must be an intelligent mind, concerned in its production, order, and support. These points being assured to us by Natural Theology, we may well leave to Revelation the disclosure of many particulars, which our researches cannot reach, respecting either the nature of this Being as the original cause of all things, or his character and designs as a moral governor ; and not only so, but the more full confirmation of other particulars, of which, though they do not lie altogether beyond our reasonings and our probabilities, the certainty is by no means equal to the importance. The true theist will be the first to listen to any credible communication of Divine knowledge. Nothing which he has learned from Natural Theology, will diminish his desire of further instruction, or his disposition to receive it with humility and thankfulness. He wishes for light: he rejoices in light. His inward veneration of this great Being, will incline him to attend with the utmost seriousness, not only to all that can be discovered concerning him by researches into nature, but to all that is taught by a revelation, which gives reasonable proof of having proceeded from him."

"Virtue is infinitely various. There is no situation in which a rational being is placed, from that of the best instructed Christian down to the condition of the rudest barbarian, which affords not room for moral agency; for the acquisition, exercise, and display of voluntary qualities, good and bad. Health and sickness, enjoyment and suffering, riches and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, power and subjection, liberty and bondage, civilisation and barbarity, have all their offices and duties, all serve for the formation of character: for when we speak of a state of trial, it must be remembered, that characters are not only tried, or proved, or detected, but that they are generated also, and formed, by circumstances. The best dispositions may subsist under the most depressed, the most afflicted fortunes."

"In all cases, wherein the mind feels itself in danger of being confounded by variety, it is sure to rest upon a few strong points, or perhaps upon a single instance. Amongst a multitude of proofs, it is one that does the business. If we observe in any argument, that hardly two minds fix upon the same instance, the diversity of choice shows the strength of the argument, because it shows the number and competition of the examples. There is no subject in which the tendency to dwell upon select or single topics is so usual, because there is no subject, of which, in its full extent, the latitude is so great, as that of natural history applied to the proof of an intelligent Creator."

"It is one of the advantages of the revelations which we acknowledge, that whilst they reject idolatry with its many pernicious accompaniments, they introduce the Deity to human apprehension, under an idea more personal, more determinate, more within its compass, than the theology of nature can do. And this they do by representing him exclusively under the relation in which he stands to ourselves; and, for the most part, under some precise character, resulting from that relation, or from the history of his providences. Which method suits the span of our intellects much better than the universality which enters into the idea of God, as deduced from the views of nature."

"In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone and were asked how the stone came to be there, I might possibly answer that for anything I knew to the contrary it had lain there forever; nor would it, perhaps, be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had given, that for anything I knew the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone; why is it not admissible in that second case as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, namely, that when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive — what we could not discover in the stone — that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g., that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or placed in any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. This mechanism being observed … the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker — that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed its use. Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion, that we had never seen a watch made; that we had never known an artist capable of making one; that we were altogether incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding in what manner it was performed; all this being no more than what is true of some exquisite remains of ancient art, of some lost arts, and, to the generality of mankind, of the more curious productions of modern manufacture."

"This is atheism: for every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature, with the difference of the side of nature of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. I mean that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtlety, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office than are the most perfect production of human ingenuity."

"In every nature, and in every portion of nature, which we can descry, we find attention bestowed upon even the minutest parts. The hinges in the wings of an earwig, and the joints of its antennae, are as highly wrought, as if the Creator had nothing else to finish. We see no signs of dimunition of care by multiplicity of objects, or of distraction of thought by variety. We have no reason to fear, therefore, our being forgotten, or overlooked, or neglected."

"One question may possibly have dwelt in the reader's mind during the perusal of these observations, namely, Why should not the Deity have given to the animal the faculty of vision at once? ... Why resort to contrivance, where power is omnipotent? Contrivance, by its very definition and nature, is the refuge of imperfection. To have recourse to expedients, implies difficulty, impediment, restraint, defect of power. ... amongst other answers which may be given to it; beside reasons of which probably we are ignorant, one answer is this: It is only by the display of contrivance, that the existence, the agency, the wisdom of the Deity, could be testified to his rational creatures."

"Government, at first, was either patriarchal or military; that of a parent over his family, or of a commander over his fellow warriors. ... Paternal authority, and the order of domestic life, supplied the foundation of civil government. ... A family contains the rudiments of an empire. The authority of one over many, and the disposition to govern and be governed, are in this way incidental to the very nature, and coeval, no doubt, with the existence of the human species."

"[E]lections to the supreme power having upon some occasions produced the most destructive contentions, many states would take refuge from a return of the same calamities, in a rule of succession; and no rule presents itself so obvious, certain, and intelligible, as consanguinity of birth."

"Wanton, and, what is worse, studied cruelty to brutes, is certainly wrong."

"The infidelity of the Gentile world, and that more especially of men of rank and learning in it, is resolved into a principle which, in my judgment, will account for the inefficacy of any argument, or any evidence whatever, viz. contempt prior to examination."

"God, when he created the human species, wished their happiness; and made for them the provision which he has made, with that view, and for that purpose."

"Wherefore rejecting the intervention of a compact, as unfounded in its principle, and dangerous in the application, we assign for the only ground of the subjects' obligation, THE WILL OF GOD AS COLLECTED FROM EXPEDIENCY."

"Some excuse seems necessary for the pain and loss which we occasion to brutes, by restraining them of their liberty, mutilating their bodies, and, at last, putting an end to their lives (which we suppose to be the whole of their existence), for our pleasure or conveniency. The reasons alleged in vindication of this practice, are the following: that the several species of brutes being created to prey upon one another, affords a kind of analogy to prove that the human species were intended to feed upon them; that, if let alone, they would overrun the earth, and exclude mankind from the occupation of it; that they are requited for what they suffer at our hands, by our care and protection. Upon which reasons I would observe, that the analogy contended for is extremely lame; since brutes have no power to support life by any other means, and since we have; for the whole human species might subsist entirely upon fruit, pulse, herbs, and roots, as many tribes of Hindoos actually do. The two other reasons may be valid reasons, as far as they go; for, no doubt, if man had been supported entirely by vegetable food, a great part of those animals which die to furnish his table, would never have lived: but they by no means justify our right over the lives of brutes to the extent in which we exercise it. What danger is there, for instance, of fish interfering with us, in the occupation of their element? or what do we contribute to their support or preservation?"

"The divine right of Kings, is, like the divine right of Constables, the law of the land, or even actual and quiet possession of their office, a right, ratified we humbly presume by the divine approbation, so long as obedience to their authority appears to be necessary, or conducive to the common welfare. Princes are ordained of God by virtue only of that general decree, by which he assents, and adds the sanction of his will, to every law of society, which promotes his own purpose, the communication of human happiness."

"The great revolution which has taken place in the Western World may probably conduce (and who knows but that it was designed?) to accelerate the fall of this abominable tyranny; and now that this contest, and the passions which attend it are no more, there may succeed perhaps a season for reflecting whether a legislature which had so long lent its assistance to the support of an institution replete with human misery, was fit to be trusted with an empire the most extensive that ever obtained in any age or quarter of the world."

"Cold on Canadian hills or Minden’s plain, Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain; Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew, The big drops mingling with the milk he drew Gave the sad presage of his future years,— The child of misery, baptized in tears."

"Care to our coffin adds a nail, no doubt, And every grin so merry draws one out."

"A fellow in a market town, Most musical, cried razors up and down."

"What rage for fame attends both great and small! Better be damned than mentioned not at all."

"No, let the monarch’s bags and others hold The flattering, mighty, nay, al-mighty gold."

"People may have too much of a good thing: Full as an egg of wisdom thus I sing."

"The Cardinal rose with a dignified look, He call’d for his candle, his bell, and his book: In holy anger, and pious grief, He solemnly curs’d that rascally thief! He curs’d him at board, he curs’d him in bed, From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head! He curs’d him in sleeping, that every night He should dream of the devil, and wake in a fright; He curs’d him in eating, he curs’d him in drinking, He curs’d him in coughing, in sneezing, in winking; He curs’d him in sitting, in standing, in lying; He curs’d him in walking, in riding, in flying; He curs’d him in living, he curs’d him in dying! Never was heard such a terrible curse! But what gave rise To no little surprise, Nobody seem’d one penny the worse!"

"Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see How he sits there and glow'rs with his head on his knee!"

"But wherever they live, or whenever they die, They'll never get quit of young Hamilton Tighe."

"The jackdaw sat on the Cardinal’s chair! Bishop and abbot and prior were there; Many a monk, and many a friar, Many a knight, and many a squire, With a great many more of lesser degree,— In sooth, a goodly company; And they serv’d the Lord Primate on bended knee."

"Here's a corpse in the case with a sad swell'd face, And a 'Crowner's Quest' is a queer sort of thing!"

"Next morning I was up betimes — I sent the Crier round, All with his bell and gold-laced hat, to say I'd give a pound To find that little vulgar Boy, who'd gone and used me so; But when the Crier cried, "O Yes!" the people cried, "O No!""

"Though I 've always consider'd Sir Christopher Wren, As an architect, one of the greatest of men; And, — talking of Epitaphs, — much I admire his "Circumspice, si Monumentum requiris;" Which an erudite Verger translated to me, " If you ask for his Monument, Sir-come-spy-see!""

"And the priests, with awe, As such freaks they saw, Said, “The Devil must be in that little Jackdaw!”"

"What was to be done? — 'twas perfectly plain That they could not well hang the man over again: — What was to be done? — The man was dead! — Nought could be done — nought could be said; So — my Lord Tomnoddy went home to bed!"

"And six little Singing-boys,—dear little souls! In nice clean faces, and nice white stoles, Came in order due, Two by two, Marching that grand refectory through."

"A servant's too often a negligent elf; If it's business of consequence, !"

"His eye so dim, So wasted each limb, That, heedless of grammar, they all cried, “! That’s the scamp that has done this scandalous thing! That’s the thief that has got my Lord Cardinal’s Ring!”"

"Christ whose glory fills the skies, Christ, the true, the only light, Sun of Righteousness, arise, Triumph o'er the shades of night; Day-spring from on high, be near, Day-star in my heart appear."

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee. Let the Water and the Blood, From thy riven Side which flow'd, Be of Sin the double Cure, Cleanse me from its Guilt and Pow'r."

"Not the labors of my hands Can fulfill thy Law's demands: Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow, All for Sin could not atone: Thou must save, and Thou alone!"

"In the present stages of spiritual experience, the believer's interior comfort, and his exterior lustre, greatly depend on the position of his heart toward the uncreated sun of righteousness. How obscure and benighted are our views, and how languid our exercise of grace, when an unbelieving, a worldly, or a careless spirit, interrupts our walk with God! But, if the out-goings of our souls are to him, and if the in-pourings of his blessed influence be felt, we glow, we kindle, we burn, we shine.<!-- This may be called (to borrow an astronomical phrase) our superior conjunction with the sun : and, at those distinguished seasons of peace and joy in the Holy Ghost,"

"Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to thy Cross I cling; Naked, come to Thee for Dress, Helpless, look to Thee for grace; Vile, I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Saviour, or I die!"

"In the last decades of his life Bentley undertook two ambitious projects that had an immense effect on the future of scholarship, namely editions of the New Testament and of Homer ... [H]e would not present once again the received text with a farrago of readings from manuscripts of all ages, but would try to restore the oldest knowable text. This was in his opinion the text of the fourth century A.D. at the time of the Council of Nicaea. He proposed to restrict himself to the oldest Greek manuscripts, supplemented by the oldest manuscripts of the Vulgate, of the ancient Oriental versions, and of the earliest quotations in the writings of the Church Fathers. The edition was to become, as Bentley said, "a Charter, a Magna Carta to the whole Christian church". He collected material from manuscripts for more than twenty years, zealously assisted, among other fellow labourers, by the French Benedictines. Although personal difficulties, as well as the complexity of the problems, prevented Bentley from completing and publishing his edition, his project anticipated by a whole century the work of Lachmann and others."

"The mighty scholiast, whose unwearied pains Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton's strains."

"Bentley, like the anti-Miltonists, had a great gift for getting hold of the right thing—by the wrong end. Again and again he sees exactly what is happening in a passage of Milton. He then deplores it, but we need not do so, and can be grateful for his insight. He may be wrong-headed, but at least he is headed."

"It is a maxim with me that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."

"“Whatever is, is not,” is the maxim of the anarchist, as often as anything comes across him in the shape of a law which he happens not to like."

"The fortuitous or casual concourse of atoms."

"It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope; but you must not call it Homer."

"By the second half of the century the percipient few in the universities had come to realize that not all was well. If...the universities were to be places of high scholarship, then the reforms of the first half of the century were found wanting, or at any rate insufficient and wrongly conceived. A different kind of change was therefore required, and there could be none, unless critical scholarship was reinstated. It was an important feature of that change that Bentley arrived back in this country together, as it were, with the great Germans who had made themselves his disciples."

"The greatest scholar that England or perhaps that Europe ever bred; a man so great that in his own province he serves for a touchstone of merit and has always been admired by all admirable scholars and despised by all despicable scholars: Richard Bentley."