From _Thursday, Dec. 22_, to _Saturday, Dec. 24, 1709_.
----Procul O! procul este, profani!--VIRG., Æn. vi. 258.
_Sheer Lane, Dec. 23._
The watchman, who does me particular honours, as being the chief man
in the lane, gave so very great a thump at my door last night, that I
awakened at the knock, and heard myself complimented with the usual
salutation of "Good morrow, Mr. Bickerstaff; good morrow, my masters
all." The silence and darkness of the night disposed me to be more
than ordinarily serious; and as my attention was not drawn out among
exterior objects by the avocations of sense, my thoughts naturally fell
upon myself. I was considering, amidst the stillness of the night,
what was the proper employment of a thinking being? what were the
perfections it should propose to itself? and what the end it should aim
at? My mind is of such a particular cast, that the falling of a shower
of rain, or the whistling of wind, at such a time, is apt to fill my
thoughts with something awful and solemn. I was in this disposition,
when our bellman began his midnight homily (which he has been repeating
to us every winter night for these twenty years) with the usual
exordium:
_Oh! mortal man, thou that art born in sin!_
Sentiments of this nature, which are in themselves just and reasonable,
however debased by the circumstances that accompany them, do not fail
to produce their natural effect in a mind that is not perverted and
depraved by wrong notions of gallantry, politeness, and ridicule. The
temper which I now found myself in, as well as the time of the year,
put me in mind of those lines in Shakespeare, wherein, according to his
agreeable wildness of imagination, he has wrought a country tradition
into a beautiful piece of poetry. In the tragedy of "Hamlet," where
the ghost vanishes upon the cock's crowing, he takes occasion to
mention its crowing all hours of the night about Christmas time, and to
insinuate a kind of religious veneration for that season.
_It faded on the crowing of the cock.
Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then, they say, no spirit dares walk abroad;
The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, no witch has power to charm;
So hallowed, and so gracious is the time._[350]
This admirable author, as well as the best and greatest men of all
ages, and of all nations, seems to have had his mind thoroughly
seasoned with religion, as is evident by many passages in his plays,
that would not be suffered by a modern audience; and are therefore
certain instances, that the age he lived in had a much greater sense of
virtue than the present.
It is indeed a melancholy reflection to consider, that the British
nation, which is now at a greater height of glory for its counsels
and conquests than it ever was before, should distinguish itself
by a certain looseness of principles, and a falling off from those
schemes of thinking, which conduce to the happiness and perfection
of human nature. This evil comes upon us from the works of a few
solemn blockheads, that meet together with the zeal and seriousness of
apostles, to extirpate common-sense, and propagate infidelity. These
are the wretches, who, without any show of wit, learning, or reason,
publish their crude conceptions with an ambition of appearing more
wise than the rest of mankind, upon no other pretence than that of
dissenting from them. One gets by heart a catalogue of title-pages
and editions; and immediately to become conspicuous, declares that
he is an unbeliever. Another knows how to write a receipt, or cut up
a dog, and forthwith argues against the immortality of the soul. I
have known many a little wit, in the ostentation of his parts, rally
the truth of the Scripture, who was not able to read a chapter in it.
These poor wretches talk blasphemy for want of discourse, and are
rather the objects of scorn or pity, than of our indignation; but the
grave disputant, that reads and writes, and spends all his time in
convincing himself and the world that he is no better than a brute,
ought to be whipped out of a government, as a blot to a civil society,
and a defamer of mankind. I love to consider an infidel, whether
distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, in three
different lights, in his solitudes, his afflictions, and his last
moments.
A wise man that lives up to the principles of reason and virtue, if one
considers him in his solitude, as taking in the system of the universe,
observing the mutual dependence and harmony by which the whole frame of
it hangs together, beating down his passions, or swelling his thoughts
with magnificent ideas of Providence, makes a nobler figure in the eye
of an intelligent being, than the greatest conqueror amidst all the
pomps and solemnities of a triumph. On the contrary, there is not a
more ridiculous animal than an atheist in his retirement. His mind
is incapable of rapture or elevation: he can only consider himself
as an insignificant figure in a landscape, and wandering up and down
in a field or a meadow, under the same terms as the meanest animals
about him, and as subject to as total a mortality as they, with this
aggravation, that he is the only one amongst them who lies under the
apprehension of it.
In distresses, he must be of all creatures the most helpless and
forlorn; he feels the whole pressure of a present calamity, without
being relieved by the memory of anything that is passed, or the
prospect of anything that is to come. Annihilation is the greatest
blessing that he proposes to himself, and a halter or a pistol the
only refuge he can fly to. But if you would behold one of these gloomy
miscreants in his poorest figure, you must consider him under the
terrors, or at the approach, of death.
About thirty years ago I was a-shipboard with one of these vermin, when
there arose a brisk gale, which could frighten nobody but himself. Upon
the rolling of the ship he fell upon his knees, and confessed to the
chaplain, that he had been a vile atheist, and had denied a Supreme
Being ever since he came to his estate. The good man was astonished,
and a report immediately ran through the ship, that there was an
atheist upon the upper deck. Several of the common seamen, who had
never heard the word before, thought it had been some strange fish;
but they were more surprised when they saw it was a man, and heard out
of his own mouth, that he never believed till that day that there was
a God. As he lay in the agonies of confession, one of the honest tars
whispered to the boatswain, that it would be a good deed to heave him
overboard. But we were now within sight of port, when of a sudden the
wind fell, and the penitent relapsed, begging all of us that were
present, as we were gentlemen, not to say anything of what had passed.
He had not been ashore above two days, when one of the company began
to rally him upon his devotion on shipboard, which the other denied in
so high terms, that it produced the lie on both sides, and ended in
a duel. The atheist was run through the body, and after some loss of
blood, became as good a Christian as he was at sea, till he found that
his wound was not mortal. He is at present one of the free-thinkers of
the age, and now writing a pamphlet against several received opinions
concerning the existence of fairies.
As I have taken upon me to censure the faults of the age and country
which I live in, I should have thought myself inexcusable to have
passed over this crying one, which is the subject of my present
discourse. I shall therefore from time to time give my countrymen
particular cautions against this distemper of the mind, that is almost
become fashionable, and by that means more likely to spread. I have
somewhere either read or heard a very memorable sentence, that a man
would be a most insupportable monster, should he have the faults that
are incident to his years, constitution, profession, family, religion,
age, and country; and yet every man is in danger of them all. For this
reason, as I am an old man, I take particular care to avoid being
covetous, and telling long stories. As I am choleric, I forbear not
only swearing, but all interjections of fretting, as "Pugh!" "Pish!"
and the like. As I am a layman, I resolve not to conceive an aversion
for a wise and a good man, because his coat is of a different colour
from mine. As I am descended of the ancient family of the Bickerstaffs,
I never call a man of merit an upstart. As a Protestant, I do not
suffer my zeal so far to transport me, as to name the Pope and the
devil together. As I am fallen into this degenerate age, I guard myself
particularly against the folly I have been now speaking of. And as I am
an Englishman, I am very cautious not to hate a stranger, or despise a
poor Palatine.[351]