Looking over the manuscript diary of Sir Symonds D'Ewes, I was struck by
a picture of the domestic religious life which at that period was
prevalent among families. Sir Symonds was a sober antiquary, heated with
no fanaticism, yet I discovered in his diary that he was a visionary in
his constitution, macerating his body by private fasts, and
spiritualising in search of _secret signs_. These ascetic penances were
afterwards succeeded in the nation by an era of hypocritical sanctity;
and we may trace this last stage of insanity and of immorality closing
with impiety. This would be a dreadful picture of religion, if for a
moment we supposed that it were _religion_; that consolatory power which
has its source in our feelings, and according to the derivation of its
expressive term, _binds men together_. With us it was sectarism, whose
origin and causes we shall not now touch on, which broke out into so
many monstrous shapes, when every pretended reformer was guided by his
own peculiar fancies: we have lived to prove that folly and wickedness
are rarely obsolete.
The age of Sir Symonds D'Ewes, who lived through the times of Charles
the First, was religious; for the character of this monarch had all the
seriousness and piety not found in the _bonhomie_ and careless
indecorums of his father, whose manners of the Scottish court were
moulded on the gaieties of the French, from the ancient intercourse of
the French and Scottish governments. But this religious age of Charles
the First presents a strange contrast with the licentiousness which
subsequently prevailed among the people: there seems to be a secret
connexion between a religious and an irreligious period: the levity of
popular feeling is driven to and fro by its reaction; when man has been
once taught to contemn his mere humanity, his abstract fancies open a
secret bye-path to his presumed salvation; he wanders till he is
lost--he trembles till he dotes in melancholy--he raves till truth
itself is no longer immutable. The transition to a very opposite state
is equally rapid and vehement. Such is the history of man when his
religion is founded on misdirected feelings; and such, too, is the
reaction so constantly operating in all human affairs.
The writer of this diary did not belong to those nonconformists who
arranged themselves in hostility to the established religion and
political government of our country. A private gentleman and a
phlegmatic antiquary, Sir Symonds withal was a zealous Church of England
protestant. Yet amidst the mystical allusions of an age of religious
controversies, we see these close in the scenes we are about to open,
and find this quiet gentleman tormenting himself and his lady by
watching for "certain _evident marks_ and _signs of an assurance_ for a
better life," with I know not how many distinct sorts of "Graces."