"_High_ and _Low_,
Watchwords of party, on all tongues are rife;
As if a Church, though sprung from heaven, must owe
To opposites and fierce extremes her life;--
Not to the golden mean and quiet flow
Of truths, that soften hatred, temper strife."
Wordsworth, and most Anglican writers down to Dr. Hook, are ever
extolling the Golden Mean and the moderation of the Church of England. A
fine old writer of the same Church (Dr. Joseph Beaumont) seems to think
that this love of the Mean can be carried too far:
"And witty too in self-delusion, we
Against highstreined piety can plead,
Gravely pretending that extremity
Is Vice's clime; that by the Catholick creed
Of all the world it is acknowledged that
The temperate _mean_ is always Virtue's seat.
Hence comes the race of mongrel goodness: hence
Faint tepidness usurpeth fervour's name;
Hence will the earth-born meteor needs commence,
In his gay glaring robes, sydereal flame;
Hence foolish man, if moderately evil,
Dreams he's a saint because he's not a devil."
_Psyche_, cant. xxi. 4, 5.
{98}
Cf. Bishop Taylor's _Life of Christ_, part I. sect. v. 9.