In compliance with the suggestion of a judicious friend, the celebrated conclusion of the fourth Book of Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy, referred to in p. 230 of this volume, is here transprinted for the convenience of the reader:—
"Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than the following—'The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth: they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation:'—he had pronounced a message of inestimable importance, and well worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which his mission was introduced and attested: a message in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries.—It is idle to say, that a future state had been discovered already:—it had been discovered as the Copernican system was;—it was one guess among many. He alone discovers, who proves; and no man can prove this point, but the teacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God."
Pædianus says of Virgil,—Usque adeo expers invidiæ, ut siquid erudite dictum inspiceret alterius, non minus gauderet ac si suum esset. My own heart assures me, that this is less than the truth: that Virgil would have read a beautiful passage in the work of another with a higher and purer delight than in a work of his own, because free from the apprehension of his judgment being warped by self-love, and without that repressive modesty akin to shame, which in a delicate mind holds in check a man's own secret thoughts and feelings, when they respect himself. The cordial admiration with which I peruse the preceding passage, as a master-piece of composition, would, could I convey it, serve as a measure of the vital importance I attach to the convictions which impelled me to animadvert on the same passage as doctrine.
[156] See Preliminary to Aphorisms on Spiritual Religion, &c.—Ed.
[157] So in first edition, 1825.—Ed.
[158] Of which our he was made flesh, is an inadequate translation.—The Church of England in this as in other doctrinal points, has preserved the golden mean between the superstitious reverence of the Romanists, and the avowed contempt of the Sectarians, for the writings of the Fathers, and the authority and unimpeached traditions of the Church during the first three or four centuries. And how, consistently with this honourable characteristic of our Church, a minister of the same could, on the Sacramentary scheme now in fashion, return even a plausible answer to Arnauld's great work on Transubstantiation (not without reason the boast of the Romish Church), exceeds my powers of conjecture.
[159] These were the afterwards published 'On the Church and State, according to the Idea of Each,' 1830, and 'Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit,' 1840. The latter we republish in the present volume; see p. 285.—Ed.
[160] Will the reader forgive me if I attempt at once to illustrate and relieve the subject by annexing the first stanza of the poem composed in the same year in which I wrote the Ancient Mariner and the first book of Christabel?
"Encinctur'd with a twine of leaves, That leafy twine his only dress! A lovely boy was plucking fruits In a moonlight wilderness.[161] The moon was bright, the air was free, And fruits and flowers together grew On many a shrub and many a tree: And all put on a gentle hue, Hanging in the shadowy air Like a picture rich and rare. It was a climate where, they say, The night is more belov'd than day. But who that beauteous boy beguil'd, That beauteous boy to linger here? Alone, by night, a little child, In place so silent and so wild— Has he no friend, no loving mother near?" Wanderings of Cain.