Coelebs In Search of a Wife

by Hannah More

"I have often wondered," said Sir John, "at the success of attacks which seemed to have nothing but the badness of the cause to recommend them. But the assailant, whose object it is to make good men ridiculous, well knows that he has secured to himself a large patronage in the hearts of all the envious, the malignant, and the irreligious, who, like other levelers, find it more easy to establish the equality of mankind by abasing the lofty, than by elevating the low."

"In my short experience of life," said I, when Sir John had done speaking, "I have often observed it as a hardship, that a man must not only submit to be condemned for doctrines he disowns, but also for consequences which others may draw from the doctrines he maintains, though he himself, both practically and speculatively, disavows any such consequences."

"There is another class of enemies," resumed Mr. Stanley. "To do them justice, it is not so much the individual Christian as Christianity itself, which they hope to discredit; that Christianity which would not only restrain the conduct, but would humble the heart; which strips them of the pride of philosophy, and the arrogant plea of merit; which would save, but will not flatter them. In this enlightened period, however, for men who would preserve any character, it would be too gross to attack religion itself, and they find they can wound her more deeply and more creditably through the sides of her professors."

"I have observed," said I, "that the uncandid censurer always picks out the worst man of a class, and then confidently produces him as being a fair specimen of it."

"From our more thoughtless, but less uncharitable acquaintance, the gay and the busy," resumed Mr. Stanley, "we have to sustain a gentler warfare. A little reproach, a good deal of ridicule, a little suspicion of our designs, and not a little compassion for our gloomy habits of life, an implied contempt of our judgment, some friendly hints that we carry things too far, an intimation that being righteous overmuch in the practice has a tendency to produce derangement in the faculties. These are the petty but daily trials of every man who is seriously in earnest; and petty indeed they are to him whose prospects are well-grounded, and whose hope is full of immortality."

"This hostility, which a real Christian is sure to experience," said I, "is not without its uses. It quickens his vigilance over her own heart, and enlarges his charity toward others, whom reproach perhaps may as unjustly stigmatize. It teaches him to be on his guard, lest he should really deserve the censure he incurs; and what I presume is of no small importance, it teaches him to sit loose to human opinion; it weakens his excessive tenderness for reputation, makes him more anxious to deserve, and less solicitous to obtain it."

"It were well," said Dr. Barlow, "if the evil ended here. The established Christian will evince himself to be such by not shrinking from the attack. But the misfortune is, that the dread of this attack keeps back well disposed but vacillating characters. They are intimidated at the idea of partaking the censure, though they know it to be false. When they hear the reputation of men of piety assailed, they assume an indifference which they are far from feeling. They listen to the reproaches cast on characters which they inwardly revere, without daring to vindicate them. They hear the most attached subjects accused of disaffection, and the most sober-minded churchmen of innovation, without venturing to repel the charge, lest they should be suspected of leaning to the party. They are afraid fully to avow that their own principles are the same, lest they should be involved in the same calumny. To efface this suspicion, they affect a coldness which they do not feel, and treat with levity what they inwardly venerate. Very young men, from this criminal timidity, are led to risk their eternal happiness through the dread of a laugh. Though they know that they have not only religion but reason on their side, yet it requires a hardy virtue to repel a sneer, and an intrepid principle to confront a sarcasm. Thus their own mind loses its firmness, religion loses their support, the world loses the benefit which their example would afford, and they themselves become liable to the awful charge which is denounced against him who is ashamed of his Christian profession."

"Men of the world," said Sir John, "are extremely jealous of whatever may be thought particular; they are frightened at every thing that has not the sanction of public opinion, and the stamp of public applause. They are impatient of the slightest suspicion of censure in what may be supposed to affect the credit of their judgment, though often indifferent enough as to any blame that may attach to their conduct. They have been accustomed to consider strict religion as a thing which militates against good taste, and to connect the idea of something unclassical and inelegant, something awkward and unpopular, something uncouth and ill-bred, with the peculiar doctrines of Christianity; doctrines which, though there is no harm in believing, they think there can be no good in avowing."

"It is a little hard," said Mr. Stanley, "that men of piety, who are allowed to possess good sense on all other occasions, and whose judgment is respected in all the ordinary concerns of life, should not have a little credit given them in matters of religion, but that they should be at once transformed into idiots or madmen in that very point which affords the noblest exercise to the human faculties."

"A Christian, then," said I, "if human applause be his idol is of all men most miserable. He forfeits his reputation every way. He is accused by the men of the world of going too far; by the enthusiast of not going far enough. While it is one of the best evidences of his being right, that he is rejected by one party for excess, and by the other for deficiency."