Coelebs In Search of a Wife

by Hannah More

Here I ventured to observe, that the highest panegyric bestowed on one of the brightest luminaries of our church is, that his name is seldom mentioned without the epithet judicious being prefixed to it. Yet does Hooker want fervor? Does Hooker want zeal? Does Hooker want courage in declaring the whole counsel of God?

"I hope," said Sir John, "we have now no clergymen to whom we may apply the biting sarcasm of Dr. South on some of the popular but illiterate preachers of the opposite party in his day, 'that there was all the confusion of Babel without the gift of tongues.'"

"And yet," returned Mr. Stanley, "that party produced some great scholars, and many eminently pious men. But look back to that day, and especially to the period a little antecedent to it, at those prodigies of erudition, the old bishops and other divines of our church. They were, perhaps, somewhat too profuse of their learning in their discourses, or rather they were so brimful, that they involuntarily overflowed. A juster taste, in our time, avoids that lavish display which then not only crowded the margin, but forced itself into every part of the body of the work. The display of erudition might be wrong, but one thing is clear, it proved they had it; and, as Dryden said, when he accused of having too much wit, 'after all, it is a good crime.'"

"We may justly," said Dr. Barlow, "in the refinement of modern taste, censure their prolixity, and ridicule their redundancies; we may smile at their divisions, which are numberless, and at their subdivisions, which are endless; we may allow that this labor for perspicuity sometimes produced perplexity. But let us confess they always went to the bottom of whatever they embarked in. They ransacked the stores of ancient learning, and the treasures of modern science, not to indulge their vanity by obtruding their acquirements, but to prove, to adorn, and to illustrate the doctrine they delivered. How incredible must their industry have been, when the bare transcript of their voluminous folios seems alone sufficient to have occupied a long life?"

"The method," said I, "which they adopted, of saying every thing that could be said on all topics, and exhausting them to the very dregs, though it may and does tire the patience of the reader, yet it never leaves him ignorant; and of two evils, had not an author better be tedious than superficial? From an overflowing vessel you may gather more indeed than you want, but from an empty one you can gather nothing."

"It appears to me," said Mr. Tyrrel, "that you wish to make a clergyman every thing but a Christian, and to bestow upon him every requisite except faith."

"God forbid that I should make any comparison between human learning and Christian principle," replied Mr. Stanley; "the one is indeed lighter than the dust of the balance, when weighed against the other. All I contend for is, that they are not incompatible, and that human knowledge, used only in subserviency to that of the Scriptures, may advance the interests of religion. For the better elucidation of those Scriptures, a clergyman should know not a little of ancient languages. Without some insight into remote history and antiquities, especially the Jewish, he will be unable to explain many of the manners and customs recorded in the sacred volume. Ignorance on some of these points has drawn many attacks on our religion from skeptical writers. As to a thorough knowledge of ecclesiastical history, it would be superfluous to recommend that, it being the history of his own immediate profession. It is therefore requisite, not only for the general purposes of instruction, but that he may be enabled to guard against modern innovation, by knowing the origin and progress of the various heresies with which the Church in all ages has been infested."

"But," said Mr. Tyrrel, "he may be thoroughly acquainted with all this, and not have one spark of light."

"He may indeed," said the Doctor; "with deep concern I allow it. I will go further. The pride of learning, when not subdued by religion, may help to extinguish that spark. Reason has been too much decried by one party and too much deified by the other. The difference between reason and revelation seems to be the same as between the eye and the light; the one is the organ of vision, the other the source of illumination."

"Take notice, Stanley," observed Mr. Tyrrel, "that if I can help it, I'll never attend your accomplished clergyman."