CHAPTER XXI.
The conversation of two men bred at the same school or college, when they happen to meet afterward, is commonly uninteresting, not to say tiresome, to a third person, as involving local circumstances in which he has no concern. But this was not always the case since the meeting of my two friends. Something was generally to be gained by their communications even on these unpromising topics.
At breakfast Mr. Stanley said, "Sir John, you will see here at dinner to-morrow our old college acquaintance, Ned Tyrrel. Though he does not commonly live at the family house in this neighborhood, but at a little place he has in Buckinghamshire, he comes among us periodically to receive his rents. He always invites himself, for his society is not the most engaging."
"I heard," replied Sir John, "that he became a notorious profligate after he left Cambridge, though I have lost sight of him ever since we parted there. But I was glad to learn lately that he is become quite a reformed man."
"He is so far reformed," replied Mr. Stanley, "that he is no longer grossly licentious. But in laying down the vices of youth, he has taken up successively those which he thought better suited to the successive stages of his progress. As he withdrew himself from his loose habits and connections, ambition became his governing passion; he courted public favor, thirsted for place and distinction, and labored by certain obliquities, and some little sacrifices of principle, to obtain promotion. Finding it did not answer, and all his hopes failing, he now rails at ambition, wonders men will wound their consciences and renounce their peace for vain applause and 'the bubble reputation.' His sole delight at present, I hear, is in amassing money and reading controversial divinity. Avarice has supplanted ambition, just as ambition expelled profligacy.
"In the interval in which he was passing from one of these stages to the other, in a very uneasy state of mind he dropped in by accident where a famous irregular preacher was disseminating his Antinomian doctrines. Caught by his vehement but coarse eloquence, and captivated by an alluring doctrine which promised much while it required little, he adopted the soothing but fallacious tenet. It is true, I hear he is become a more respectable man in his conduct, but I doubt, though I have not lately seen him, if his present state may not be rather worse than his former ones.
"In the two previous stages, he was disturbed and dissatisfied. Here he has taken up his rest. Out of this stronghold, it is not probable that any subsequent vice will ever drive him, or true religion draw him. He sometimes attends public worship, but as he thinks no part of it but the sermon of much value, it is only when he likes the preacher. He has little notion of the respect due to established institutions, and does not heartily like any precomposed form of prayer, not even our incomparable Liturgy. He reads such religious books only as tend to establish his own opinions, and talks and disputes loudly on certain doctrinal points. But an accumulating Christian, and a Christian who, for the purpose of accumulation, is said to be uncharitable, and even somewhat oppressive, is a paradox which I can not solve, and an anomaly which I can not comprehend. Covetousness is, as I said, a more creditable vice than Ned's former ones, but for that very reason more dangerous."
"From this sober vice," said I, "proceeded the blackest crime ever perpetrated by human wickedness; for it does not appear that Judas, in his direful treason, was instigated by malice. It is observable, that when our Saviour names this sin, it is with an emphatical warning, as knowing its mischief to be greater because its scandal was less. Not contented with a single caution, he doubles his exhortation. 'Take heed and beware of covetousness.'"
After some remarks of Sir John, which I do not recollect, Mr. Stanley said, "I did not intend making a philippic against covetousness, a sin to which I believe no one here is addicted. Let us not, however, plume ourselves in not being guilty of a vice to which, as we have no natural bias so in not committing it, we resist no temptation. What I meant to insist on was, that exchanging a turbulent for a quiet sin, or a scandalous for an orderly one, is not reformation; or, if you will allow me the strong word, is not conversion."