SEMLER AND THE DESTRUCTIVE SCHOOL.
1750-1810.
The foreign influences being fairly introduced, it now remained to be
seen what course the German church would adopt respecting them. The
process of incorporation was rapid. A remarkable activity of mind was
observable in the theological world, and men of great learning and keen
intellect began to apply the deductions of foreign naturalism to the
sacred oracles. No one can claim that the interpretation of the
Scriptures rested at this time on a pure and solid basis; and it is
therefore not remarkable that those men who had no special predilection
for the doctrine of inspiration should silently submit to the views of
the orthodox believers of their time. The divine origin of Hebrew points
and accents was rigidly contended for; and Michaelis only fell in with
the accustomed current when, in his early life, he wrote a work in their
defence. The theory that errors of transcription might possibly have
crept into the text, was totally rejected. No such thing could, by any
contingency, occur. The fable of Aristeas was still considered worthy a
place in the canon. The sanctity of the Hebrew language, and other
Rabbinical notions, were defended. Christ was discovered in every book
of the Old Testament; the perfect purity of the Greek of the New
Testament was held; and fabulous accounts of early martyrs and
miraculous legends were elevated to the same standard of authority with
the gospels. What wonder, then, that when such absurdities were
entertained by the evangelical portion of the church the temptation of
others to skepticism was so great? Men like Ernesti could not resist the
enticement to combat such a state of criticism; and he gave himself to
the task with all the ardor of his nature.
He was the classic scholar of his day. The purity of his diction and the
fertility of his authorship gained him a hearing among the educated and
refined. His word became law. In his case, as with many others of his
countrymen both before and after him, his theological tastes gave him
far more authority than his merely linguistic and literary attainments
could have gained for him. He was distinguished as a preacher not less
than as a scholar. Enamored with the old classic times, the atmosphere
of Greece in her glory of taste and culture, and of Rome in her lustre
of victory and law made him impatient of the dull theology of his day.
He lived not in Germany, but in the temples and bowers of paganism. His
Latinity was scarcely inferior to the flowing utterances of his heathen
masters. He edited many classical works, and succeeded in regenerating
the humanistic studies of Europe. For this all honor be given him; but
he did not rest here. He examined the New Testament with the critic's
scalpel, and applied the principles of ordinary interpretation to the
word of God. He held that Moses should receive no better treatment than
Cicero or Tacitus. Logos was _reason_ and _wisdom_ in the Greek
writings; why should it mean Christ or the Word when we find it in the
gospel of John? Regeneration need not be surrounded with a saintly
halo; it is absurd to suppose that it can mean any more than reception
into a religious society. The Holy Spirit does not communicate divine
influences, but certain praiseworthy qualities. Unity with the Father is
mere unity of disposition or will. The Old Testament is very good in its
way, but it certainly cannot be intended for all mankind; since many
parts can have no salutary influence whatever on the heart and life. It
might be of some use to the Jews, but since we are so far beyond them it
is quite out of place for us.
Both Grotius and Wetstein had been the forerunners of Ernesti in this
method of interpretation. What he wrought against the New Testament had
its counterpart in the mischief effected by John David Michaelis against
the Old. This theologian was profoundly learned in the Oriental
languages, but he was a reckless and irreverent critic. He made light of
many of the occurrences of the Old Testament, and whenever the students
applauded one of his obscene jokes, he was tickled into childishness. He
made no claim to an experimental acquaintance with the operations of the
Holy Spirit, and used his position as theological professor and lecturer
only as the stepping-stone to money and fame. He would make Moses a very
good sort of statesman, but took care to cast censure upon him whenever
the feeblest occasion was offered. Still he did not go so far as to
cause great offense to his Jewish readers, who were very numerous at
that time, for that would have endangered the pecuniary profits from his
books. He lectured on every subject that came in his way, and discussed
from his chair natural science, politics, agriculture, and
horse-breeding, with as much respect and reverence as the song of Moses
or the utterances of Isaiah. He carried Ernesti's principles a step
farther than that scholar had done. He held that it is necessary not
only to understand the situation and circumstances of the writer and
people at the time and place in which the books were written, and the
language and history of the time, but all things connected with their
moral and physical character. The critic must also be conversant with
everything relating to those nations with whom the Jews associated, and
know just how far the latter received their opinions and customs from
abroad.
There have been few men who have shown greater boldness in assaulting
the Christian faith than Semler, the father of the destructive school of
Rationalism. Reared in the lap of the sternest Pietism, he found himself
a student at Halle pursuing his theological curriculum. He was one of
the charmed disciples at Baumgarten's feet, but it was reserved for the
pupil to accomplish far more than the master had ever anticipated.
Gradually the old faith claimed him only by a slight hold; and when,
while yet a student, he drew the subtle distinction between theology and
religion, he, in that act, gave the parting hand to evangelical faith.
Then step by step he descended, until he looked at the oracles of God
with no more credence in their inspiration and divine claims than his
master before him. In his turn he became professor; and that was a dark
day for Germany and Protestantism when he read his first lecture to his
auditory. He studied the Scriptures while laboring under the conviction
that people worship the Bible instead of the universal Father; and he
seemed to say within himself: "I will destroy this vain idolatry, if it
take bread from my wife and children: if life be lost in the effort." So
he set himself to work with a will. He was in a difficulty concerning
the want of understanding as to the number of sacred books. He consulted
the Jews of Palestine, and they replied "twenty-four;" he went to the
Alexandrians, and they answered "a greater number than that;" and to the
Samaritans, who stoutly held "that only the five books of Moses have a
just claim to divine authority." With such difference of opinion among
those who ought to know all about the Holy Scriptures, Semler,
confounded and defiant, esteemed himself a judge on his individual
responsibility. He consequently began to examine the merits of each
part. And first of all, he must determine what is the proof of the
inspiration of a book. This he decided to be the inward conviction of
our mind that what it conveys to us is truth. Certainly, reason cannot
be sunk so low as to discard its functions of judgment. And did not
Christ use his natural faculties? Letting reason, therefore, be umpire,
he concluded that the books of Chronicles, Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther,
and the Song of Solomon must be rejected; that Joshua, Judges, the books
of Samuel, Kings, and Daniel, are doubtful at best; that the Proverbs of
Solomon may be _his_ or the joint production of a number of tolerably
gifted men; and that the Pentateuch, and especially Genesis, is a mere
collection of legendary fragments. The New Testament has some good
qualities, which are wanting in the Old; but there are parts of it
positively injurious to the church. The Apocalypse of John, for example,
can only be held by every calm critic as the work of a wild fanatic. As
to the gospels, their authenticity and integrity are very doubtful, and
that of John is the only one in any wise adapted to the present state of
the world; since he alone is free from the Jewish spirit. The general
epistles were written solely for the unification of the struggling
parties into which the early church had unfortunately split.
We now come to the famous _Accommodation-Theory_. Christ and his
apostles taught doctrines of such nature and by such method as were
compatible with the peculiarities of their condition. They adapted
themselves to the barbarism and coëxistent prejudices of the people; and
hence we can only reconcile much that they taught by their disposition
to cater to the corrupt taste of their time. The Jews already possessed
many notions which it would not be policy in Christ to annihilate;
hence, said Semler, he reclothed them, and gave them a slight admixture
of truth. Thus he reduced Christ's utterances concerning angels, the
second coming of the Messiah, the last Judgment, demons, resurrection of
the dead, and inspiration of the Scripture, to so many _accommodations_
to prevailing errors. Semler had some indistinct faith in these revealed
truths, but the stress which Christ laid upon them was, in his opinion,
a mere stroke of policy. This theory he had been maturing for some time,
and he first made it public in the preface to his _Paraphrase of the
Epistle to the Romans_.
Another distinction which Semler drew in connection with his new method
of criticism, and somewhat allied to the details of his
accommodation-theory, was between the local and temporary, the permanent
and eternal, in the Scriptures. A large portion of the Bible, he held,
is only ephemeral, and was never intended to be anything else. There was
a local interest in the accounts of the writers; but after the change of
government, or the lapse of a generation or two, they had no further
application to mankind. Nor do they now meet the wants of the world;
they are only the obsolete machinery of a superseded civilization.
Semler bitterly complained of Ernesti by charging him with failing to
fix the time and locality of the circumstances of the Scriptures. A few
specimens will show how the latter strove to meet the great want. The
coming of our Lord Jesus, 1 Cor. i. 7, is only the dawn of a temporal
kingdom; "Christ is a stumbling-block to the Jews," because he would not
throw off the Roman yoke as his countrymen had fondly hoped; the
Apostle's determination "to know nothing but Jesus Christ crucified,"
meant that he knew nothing whatever of the second coming of Christ; "the
Spirit searching the deep things of God" leads us to know that we can
understand the dark things of the Prophets; "the creature which is made
subject to vanity" is the Roman world still pursuing its idolatry; the
demoniacs are mad men whom it was only necessary to bind in order to
render perfectly harmless. With such a system of interpretation as this,
no one who adopted it could pretend to assign for himself a limit to his
skepticism. Whatever defied the critic's acumen or the believer's
spiritual grasp was unraveled on the principle that it was local and
temporary. Surely Rationalism was making a bold stroke for supremacy,
and it had the rare fortune of possessing a man of Semler's versatile
taste and boldness of utterance.
In one aspect he came into harmony with the English Deists, though his
praise of them was extremely moderate. He maintained that they had done
more good than harm; but it was only the best of them whom he really
admired. He silently repudiated the volatile French school, the learned
Bayle being the only one of the number whom he mentioned with any degree
of satisfaction. The view by which he came into nearest relation to the
free-thinkers of England was, that the Bible is but the republication of
the religion of nature. He held that the world had been taught religion
long before the Scriptures were written; though he confessed that in
them we find it more clearly stated and more rigidly enjoined than
anywhere else. Among the mass of natural teachings in the Bible we
occasionally come across a modicum of eternal truth; but the seeker is
very seldom rewarded with a real gem of permanent value. The Jews were
grossly ignorant of all important spiritual light. Their chief idea of
Jehovah was that he was their national God; and their religion was
purely one of circumstances and ceremonies. Moses had some idea of the
soul's immortality, but his countrymen were not so highly favored as
himself. The Messiah of the Old Testament was a very vague personage;
and indistinct indeed must have been the Jewish idea of a coming
Redeemer.
But it was not here that Semler won his greatest victories. His chief
triumph was against the history and doctrinal authority of the church.
His mind had been thoroughly imbued with a disgust at what was ancient
and revered. He appeared to despise the antiquities of the church simply
because they were antiquities. What was new and fresh, was, with him,
worthy of unbounded admiration and speedy adoption. His prejudice
against the Fathers may have been imbibed in part from the Reformers;
but, however derived, his distaste and censure knew no bounds. All the
early Christian writers, he believed, were brimful of imperfections.
Tertullian was fanciful, and Augustine captious. So persistent were his
efforts against the traditional authority of the church that they
endangered the very foundations of German Protestantism. One would have
thought him at times exhausted of strength; but no sooner did the
thinking public recover from one surprise than it was startled by
another attack. The church reeled beneath his invasion of her doctrinal
and historical authority. But there was a limit to her patience. To call
those heroic standard-bearers of her early faith fanatics and
visionaries was quite too much for her to endure.
It now remained to be seen whether Semler's boldness would overleap
itself, or prove the ruin of the religious spirit of the Continent for
generations. The result, whatever it might be, was soon to be decided.
For such views as he was propagating throughout the Protestant church of
Germany could not fail to determine speedily the drift of the public
sentiment of his day.
His work, though destructive, was in conflict with the pure beauty of
his private life. And here we look at him as one of the enigmas of human
biography. True to his tenet that a man's public teachings need not
influence his personal living, he was at once a teacher of skepticism
and an example of piety. His Moravian origin and Pietistic training he
could never forget; nor do we believe he attempted it. No doubt the
asperity that he witnessed at Halle did much to repel him from the
harsher side of Pietism. When he heard his room-mate praying aloud three
hours a day upon his knees; and when he was advised to lay aside all
extensive studies, because he would never be converted while pursuing
them, he began to question whether intellectual progress were compatible
with deep piety. The conclusion at which he arrived was against the
intellectuality of the creed of Spener, but in favor of the spiritual
purity of the life of his disciples. Through Semler's entire career we
can find traces of that devoted spirit which had shined so brightly in
his early youth, and which, in late life, he was not ashamed to confess.
"There was no corner in the whole house," said he, "where I did not
kneel, and pray, and weep alone that God might, out of his infinite
mercy, pardon my sins. I felt that I was under the bondage of the law.
Moravian songs seemed to be of very little help to me. I examined myself
carefully to see whether or not I clung to any sin either consciously or
ignorantly. I reproached myself several times for only giving one penny
to the poor-collection when I had several pence in my pocket. My father
would give me more the next time to make up my deficiency, and this was
a great delight to me. It is now one of the pleasantest memories of my
university-life that I used to give pieces of money to the poor."
His domestic life was very beautiful. He did not remain alone in his
study, where most literary men love to be. But wherever his children
were playing, or his wife knitting or spinning, he was most happy to
pursue his studies and write his books. He gives the following picture:
"We had the children continually about us, when they were not under the
care of their teachers. Then we would have them read, or in turn sing a
Psalm or a hymn, or learn some passage from a good book. We sang with
them, and asked them questions in what they had been studying. They knew
Gellert's songs by rote. There was nothing but peace and contentment in
our circle. The servants never saw or heard anything unpleasant. Every
little disturbance was hushed at once; and all the family felt the power
of my wife in our household arrangements; and our reciprocal love was
apparent to every one. I put all the money matters into her hands; she
paid the debts and received the revenue. Thus passed on twenty years of
beautiful uniformity; and parents and children felt that we were dearer
to each other than was all the world besides. We all met faithfully our
duties to each other. But little had then been written on domestic
training, yet we created our ideas from the pure fountain of religion;
and though we were deprived of much of the glitter of human life, we
enjoyed its necessities and its beauty."
When such ties unite a family we are not surprised at the spirit with
which death is met by a carefully nurtured child. The account is from
Semler's own pen. His daughter, then twenty-one years of age, was on her
death-bed, hastening to join her mother, who but shortly before had been
borne from the threshold. "About nine o'clock," wrote the bereaved
father, "I again pronounced the benediction upon her. With a breaking
heart I lay down to sleep a little. She sent for me, and addressed me
thus: 'Pardon me, my dear father, I am so needy; and do help me to die
with that faith and determination which your Christian daughter should
possess.' My heart took courage, and I spoke to her of the glories of
the heavenly world which would soon break upon her. She sang snatches of
sweet songs, following which I said but little. When I addressed her,
'My dear daughter, you will soon rejoin your noble mother,' she
answered, 'Oh, yes, and what rapture will I enjoy!' I fell down at her
bedside, and again committed her soul to the almighty and enduring care
of God. Then just before I went to my lecture I went to see her again: I
asked her if she still remembered the hymn, 'Thou art mine, because I
hold thee;' when she said, 'Oh yes,' and repeated the verse, 'O Lord my
refuge, Fountain of my Joys.' 'Yes, eternal,' I added. I left her,
thinking that she might last considerably longer. But I was suddenly
called from my lecture, when I again committed her grand spirit to God
who gave it, and closed her eyes myself. My bitter grief now subsided
into calm affliction, and a sweet acquiescence with the wise will of
God. Now I know what the real joy is of having seen a child die so
calmly, and of feeling that I had some share in the training that could
end so triumphantly. And I still publicly thank those of her teachers
who have contributed to the formation of her character. Therefore, when
some would in our days advocate an unchristian education, I can speak
with the light of experience, when I earnestly recommend to all pious
and provident parents to give their children a good Christian training.
Thus Christian-like and beautifully have Christian-trained people been
dying these many centuries."
It is astonishing that a man could live as purely and devotedly as
Semler, and yet make the gulf so wide between private faith and public
instruction. We attribute no evil intention to him in his theological
labors; these were the result of his own mental defects. He was a
careless writer, and not a close thinker. He read history loosely, and
the philosophy of the Christian system was unperceived and unappreciated
by him. He looked at single defects, and magnified them to such an
extent that they obscured whole mines of truth and virtue. Having
conceived a vague idea of his theme, he wrote hurriedly upon it. He was
impelled by his previous notions and the excitement of the hour. He had
a very retentive memory, but it was no aid to correct reasoning. When he
saw one evil of the Fathers, a mistake of the church, or a defect in her
doctrine, he generalized it until he believed error to be the rule
instead of the exception. It has been said that, toward the close of his
life, he regretted his theological instructions; but in a conversation
two days before his death he betrayed the same skeptical views that had
distinguished his life. His method of skeptical-historical criticism was
the poison which, having been once introduced into the literature and
pulpits of the church, produced wide-spread and long-seated disease.
Semler was not the founder of a school, for he advanced no elaborate
system and possessed no organizing power. Great as were the results of
his labors, no one was more surprised at them than himself. Two or three
immediate disciples, who had heard him lecture, were enamored of his
theories, but as they were men of moderate capacity their activity
produced no permanent effect upon the public mind. It was in another
respect that he was mighty. Some of his contemporaries who taught in
other universities seized upon his tenets and began to propagate them
vigorously. They made great capital out of them for themselves. Semler
invaded and overthrew what was left of the popular faith in inspiration
after the labors of Wolf, but here he stopped. His adherents and
imitators commenced with his abnegation of inspiration, and made it the
preparatory step for their attempted annihilation of revelation itself.
Soon the theological press teemed with blasphemous publications against
the Scriptures; and men of all the schools of learning gave themselves
to the work of instruction. Göttingen, Jena, Helmstedt, and
Frankfort-on-the-Oder were no longer schools of prophets, but of
Rationalists and Illuminists.
Griesbach pursued his skeptical investigations for the establishment of
natural religion and others aided him in his undertaking. But the men
of this class were not the principal agents of the complete ruin of the
religious vitality of the people. We turn to Edelmann and Bahrdt, two of
the most decided enemies of Christianity who have appeared in these
later centuries.
The former was the better man, but his career brought discredit on
private virtue and public morality. In the early part of his life he was
blameless, but he subsequently betrayed all the personal weakness which
his skepticism tended to engender. We get a fair portrait of him from
the pen of one of his countrymen, Kahnis: "What Edelmann wished was
nothing new," writes this author; "after the manner of all adherents of
Illuminism, he wished to reduce all positive religions to natural
religion. The positive heathenish religions stand, to him, on a level
with Judaism and Christianity. He is more just toward heathenism than
toward Judaism, and more just toward Judaism than toward Christianity.
Everything positive in religion is, as such, superstition. Christ was a
mere man, whose chief merit consists in the struggle against
superstition. What he taught, and what he was anxious for, no one,
however, may attempt to learn from the New Testament writings, inasmuch
as these were forged as late as the time of Constantine. All which the
church teaches of his divinity, of his merits, of the gracious influence
of the Holy Spirit, is absurd. There is no rule of truth but reason, and
it manifests its truths directly by a peculiar sense. Whatever this
sense says is true. It is this sense which perceives the world. The
reality of everything which exists is God. In the proper sense there
can, therefore, not exist any atheist, because every one who admits the
reality of the world admits also the reality of God. God is not a
person--least of all are there three persons in God. If God be the
substance in all the phenomena, then it follows of itself that God
cannot be thought of without the world, and hence that the world has no
more had an origin than it will have an end. One may call the world the
body of God, the shadow of God, the son of God. The spirit of God is in
all that exists. It is ridiculous to ascribe inspiration to special
persons only; every one ought to be a Christ, a prophet, an inspired
man. The human spirit, being a breath of God, does not perish; our
spirit, separated from its body by death, enters into a connection with
some other body. Thus Edelmann taught a kind of metempsychosis. What he
taught had been thoroughly and ingeniously said in France and England;
but from a German theologian, and that with such eloquent coarseness,
with such a mastery in expatiating in blasphemy, such things were
unheard of. But as yet the faith of the church was a power in Germany!"
From Edelmann the transition is easy to the reckless and vicious Bahrdt.
This man stands among the first of those who have brought dishonor upon
the sacred vocation. What Jeffreys is to the judicial history of
England, Bahrdt is to the religious history of German Protestantism.
Whatever he touched was disgraced by the vileness of his heart and the
satanic daring of his mind. He heard theological lectures. Thinking that
in this field he could infuse most venom and reap a greater harvest of
gold than in any other, he stripped for the undertaking. While a mere
youth he gained, by his tricky management, a professor's chair. He
blasphemed to his auditors by day, while at night he surrendered himself
to the corruptions of the gambling-room, the beer-cellar and the house
of prostitution. The slave of passion and of doubt, he was, of all his
contemporaries, the most loud-spoken against the claims of God's truth,
and adherence to the canons of the church. His mind was quick, active,
and penetrating. Seizing the pen, he invaded the sanctity of every
doctrine that stood in the way of his corrupt theories. He took up the
Bible with sacrilegious purpose, and made it the plaything of his
vicious heart. He sneered at what was revered by the church and the good
men of past ages, with the kind of levity that should greet the recital
of the stories of _Sinbad the Sailor_ and the _Wonderful Lamp_.
He published many works, the aim of all being to infuse into the masses
a contempt of the received Scriptures. He issued a travesty of the New
Testament under the title of _The New Testament_, or _The Newest
Instructions from God through Jesus and his Apostles_. He did just what
he pleased with the miracles and words of Christ. He would convert
dialogue into parable, and make any passage, however grave in import,
minister to his unsanctified purpose. He banished such expressions as
'kingdom of God,' 'holiness,' 'sanctification,' 'Saviour,' 'Redeemer,'
'way of salvation,' 'Holy Ghost,' 'name of Jesus,' and all other terms
that could leave the impression of inspiration and divine presence.
But corrupt as the church was, it was not ready for this fearful leap;
therefore Bahrdt received a torrent of abuse. Banished and hunted by
opposition, he gained many adherents from the force of the very arrows
discharged against him. He had fallen from the height of faith which he
occupied when he went to Giessen, a fact which he refers to in his
autobiography: "I came to Giessen," says he, "as yet very orthodox. My
belief in the divinity of the Scriptures, in the direct mission of
Jesus, in his miraculous history, in the Trinity, in the gifts of
grace, in natural corruption, in justification of the sinner by laying
hold of the merits of Christ, and especially in the whole theory of
satisfaction, seemed to be immovable. It was only the manner in which
three persons were to be in one God, which had engaged my reason. I had
only explained to myself a little better the work of the Holy Spirit, so
as not to exclude man's activity. I had limited a little the idea of
original sin; and in the doctrine of the atonement and justification, I
had endeavored to uphold the value of virtue, and had cleared myself
from the error that God, in his grace, should not pay any regard at all
to human virtuous zeal. That in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper I was
more Reformed than Lutheran, will be supposed as a matter of course."
But in due time he dropped these points of belief, one by one, until he
indulged in all the illicit extravagances of the radical skeptics of
France. The opposition he met with was a sore rebuke, but it failed to
cure him. He set out for a journey to England and Holland with but three
florins in his purse, and he suffered much by the way. He came home
again only to find new edicts against him. On arriving at Halle, where
he had once been honored, he was met with the following repulse from the
faculty, at whose head stood Semler, the father of his doubt: "Our
vocation demands not only that we should prevent the dissemination of
directly irreligious opinions, but also that we should watch over the
doctrines which are contained in Holy Scripture, and, in conformity with
it, in the _Augsburg Confession of Faith_."
He labored as an educator, preacher, professor, and author. He made all
his enterprises subservient to the dearest object of his life,--money.
He wrote plain books for the masses, and his writings were perused
alike in palace and cottage. While a resident in Halle he established an
inn in the suburbs of the city where his depraved nature was permitted
to indulge in those nameless liberties unbecoming, not only the
theologian, but the rational man. His _liaison_ with the servant-girl in
his employ made his wife an object of public pity, and we can easily
understand his injustice to the latter when he tells us himself that he
had never loved with passion. His death was of a piece with his life.
Having been a public frequenter of brothels and the associate of the
loosest company, he died like the libertine. He was taken off by
syphilis.
It is not necessary to enlarge upon the lesson of Bahrdt's life. He was
the German crystallization of all the worst elements of French
skepticism. He began his work with an evil purpose, and never sought the
wisdom of God who promises to give liberally to all who ask him. The
infamy of his life was soon forgotten, and only his teachings remained
to corrupt the young and injure the mature of the land. While his love
of money controlled his matrimonial alliances and literary labors, his
hatred of revealed religion distorted his whole moral and intellectual
nature. He is illustrative of the certain doom which awaits the man who
commits himself to the sole guidance of his doubts. Semler's moral life
was _in spite_ of erroneous opinions; Bahrdt's was in _conformity_ with
them. And what the latter was in his career and death is the best
comment that can be written on the natural effect of Rationalism. Would
that he had been the only warning; but he had his followers when his
creed became the fashion of the German church. The depth of his infamy
is only aggravated by the holy sphere in which he wrought fearful havoc
upon the succeeding generation. The Old Play says truly:
"That sin does ten times aggravate itself,
That is committed in an holy place;
An evil deed done by authority
Is sin and subornation; deck an ape
In tissue, and the beauty of the robe
Adds but the greater scorn unto the beast;
The poison shows worst in a golden cup;
Dark night seems darker by the lightning's flash;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds;
And every glory that inclines to sin,
The shame is trebled by the opposite."