I have read Chateaubriand with as much delight as I ever read Bunyan's Pilgrims' Progress, Robinson Crusoe's Travels, or Gulliver's, or Whitefield's, or Wesley's Life, or the Life of St. Francis, St. Anthony, or St. Ignatius Loyola. A work of infinite learning, perfectly well written, a magazine of information, but enthusiastic, bigoted, superstitious, Roman Catholic throughout. If I were to indulge in jealous criticism and conjecture, I should suspect that there had been an Œcuemenical counsel of Popes, Cardinals and Bishops, and that this traveller has been employed at their expense to make this tour, to lay a foundation for the resurrection of the Catholic Hierarchy in Europe.
Have you read La Harpe's Course de Literature, in fifteen volumes? Have you read St. Pierre's Studies of Nature?
I am now reading the controversy between Voltaire and Monotte.
Our friend Rush has given us for his last legacy, an analysis of some of the diseases of the mind.
Johnson said, "We are all more or less mad;" and who is or has been more mad than Johnson?
I know of no philosopher, or theologian, or moralist, ancient or modern, more profound, more infallible than Whitefield, if the anecdote I heard be true.
He began: "Father Abraham," with his hands and eyes gracefully directed to the heavens, as I have more than once seen him; "Father Abraham, who have you there with you? Have you Catholics?" "No." "Have you Protestants?" "No." "Have you Churchmen?" "No." "Have you Dissenters?" "No." "Have you Presbyterians?" "No." "Quakers?" "No." "Anabaptists?" "No." "Who have you there? Are you alone?" "No."
"My brethren, you have the answer to all these questions in the words of my text: 'He who feareth God and worketh righteousness, shall be accepted of Him.'"
Allegiance to the Creator and Governor of the Milky-Way, and the Nebulæ, and benevolence to all his creatures, is my Religion.
Si quid novisti rectius istis, candidus imperti.