On the following evening when my spiritual visitor entered the room, that
volume of Dr. Wordsworth's ecclesiastical biography which contains his
life was lying on the table beside me. "I perceive," said he, glancing
at the book, "you have been gathering all you can concerning me from my
good gossiping chronicler, who tells you that I loved milk and fruit and
eggs, preferred beef to young meats, and brown bread to white; was fond
of seeing strange birds and beasts, and kept an ape, a fox, a weasel, and
a ferret."
"I am not one of those fastidious readers," I replied, "who quarrel with
a writer for telling them too much. But these things were worth telling:
they show that you retained a youthful palate as well as a youthful
heart; and I like you the better both for your diet and your menagerie.
The old biographer, indeed, with the best intentions, has been far from
understanding the character which he desired to honour. He seems,
however, to have been a faithful reporter, and has done as well as his
capacity permitted. I observe that he gives you credit for 'a deep
foresight and judgment of the times,' and for speaking in a prophetic
spirit of the evils, which soon afterwards were 'full heavily felt.'"
"There could be little need for a spirit of prophecy," Sir Thomas made
answer, to "foresee troubles which were the sure effect of the causes
then in operation, and which were actually close at hand. When the rain
is gathering from the south or west, and those flowers and herbs which
serve as natural hygrometers close their leaves, men have no occasion to
consult the stars for what the clouds and the earth are telling them. You
were thinking of Prince Arthur when I introduced myself yesterday, as if
musing upon the great events which seem to have received their bias from
the apparent accident of his premature death."
_Montesinos_.--I had fallen into one of those idle reveries in which we
speculate upon what might have been. Lord Bacon describes him as "very
studious, and learned beyond his years, and beyond the custom of great
princes." As this indicates a calm and thoughtful mind, it seems to show
that he inherited the Tudor character. His brother took after the
Plantagenets; but it was not of their nobler qualities that he partook.
He had the popular manners of his grandfather, Edward IV., and, like him,
was lustful, cruel, and unfeeling.
_Sir Thomas More_.--The blood of the Plantagenets, as your friends the
Spaniards would say, was a strong blood. That temper of mind which (in
some of his predecessors) thought so little of fratricide might perhaps
have involved him in the guilt of a parricidal war, if his father had not
been fortunate enough to escape such an affliction by a timely death. We
might otherwise be allowed to wish that the life of Henry VII. had been
prolonged to a good old age. For if ever there was a prince who could so
have directed the Reformation as to have averted the evils wherewith that
tremendous event was accompanied, and yet to have secured its advantages,
he was the man. Cool, wary, far-sighted, rapacious, politic, and
religious, or superstitious if you will (for his religion had its root
rather in fear than in hope), he was peculiarly adapted for such a crisis
both by his good and evil qualities. For the sake of increasing his
treasures and his power, he would have promoted the Reformation; but his
cautious temper, his sagacity, and his fear of Divine justice would have
taught him where to stop.
_Montesinos_.--A generation of politic sovereigns succeeded to the race
of warlike ones, just in that age of society when policy became of more
importance in their station than military talents. Ferdinand of Spain,
Joam II. whom the Portuguese called the perfect prince, Louis XI. and
Henry VII. were all of this class. Their individual characters were
sufficiently distinct; but the circumstances of their situation stamped
them with a marked resemblance, and they were of a metal to take and
retain the strong, sharp impress of the age.
_Sir Thomas More_.--The age required such characters; and it is worthy of
notice how surely in the order of providence such men as are wanted are
raised up. One generation of these princes sufficed. In Spain, indeed,
there was an exception; for Ferdinand had two successors who pursued the
same course of conduct. In the other kingdoms the character ceased with
the necessity for it. Crimes enough were committed by succeeding
sovereigns, but they were no longer the acts of systematic and reflecting
policy. This, too, is worthy of remark, that the sovereigns whom you
have named, and who scrupled at no means for securing themselves on the
throne, for enlarging their dominions and consolidating their power, were
each severally made to feel the vanity of human ambition, being punished
either in or by the children who were to reap the advantage of their
crimes. "Verily there is a God that judgeth the earth!"
_Montesinos_.--An excellent friend of mine, one of the wisest, best, and
happiest men whom I have ever known, delights in this manner to trace the
moral order of Providence through the revolutions of the world; and in
his historical writings keeps it in view as the pole-star of his course.
I wish he were present, that he might have the satisfaction of hearing
his favourite opinion confirmed by one from the dead.
_Sir Thomas More_.--His opinion requires no other confirmation than what
he finds for it in observation and Scripture, and in his own calm
judgment. I should differ little from that friend of yours concerning
the past; but his hopes for the future appear to me like early buds which
are in danger of March winds. He believes the world to be in a rapid
state of sure improvement; and in the ferment which exists everywhere he
beholds only a purifying process; not considering that there is an
acetous as well as a vinous fermentation; and that in the one case the
liquor may be spilt, in the other it must be spoilt.
_Montesinos_.--Surely you would not rob us of our hopes for the human
race! If I apprehended that your discourse tended to this end I should
suspect you, notwithstanding your appearance, and be ready to exclaim,
"Avaunt, tempter!" For there is no opinion from which I should so hardly
be driven, and so reluctantly part, as the belief that the world will
continue to improve, even as it has hitherto continually been improving;
and that the progress of knowledge and the diffusion of Christianity will
bring about at last, when men become Christians in reality as well as in
name, something like that Utopian state of which philosophers have loved
to dream--like that millennium in which saints as well as enthusiasts
have trusted.
_Sir Thomas More_.--Do you hold that this consummation must of necessity
come to pass; or that it depends in any degree upon the course of
events--that is to say, upon human actions? The former of these
propositions you would be as unwilling to admit as your friend Wesley, or
the old Welshman Pelagius himself. The latter leaves you little other
foundation for your opinion than a desire, which, from its very
benevolence, is the more likely to be delusive. You are in a dilemma.
_Montesinos_.--Not so, Sir Thomas. Impossible as it may be for us to
reconcile the free will of man with the foreknowledge of God, I
nevertheless believe in both with the most full conviction. When the
human mind plunges into time and space in its speculations, it adventures
beyond its sphere; no wonder, therefore, that its powers fail, and it is
lost. But that my will is free, I know feelingly: it is proved to me by
my conscience. And that God provideth all things I know by His own Word,
and by that instinct which He hath implanted in me to assure me of His
being. My answer to your question, then, is this: I believe that the
happy consummation which I desire is appointed, and must come to pass;
but that when it is to come depends upon the obedience of man to the will
of God, that is, upon human actions.
_Sir Thomas More_.--You hold then that the human race will one day attain
the utmost degree of general virtue, and thereby general happiness, of
which humanity is capable. Upon what do you found this belief?
_Montesinos_.--The opinion is stated more broadly than I should choose to
advance it. But this is ever the manner of argumentative discourse: the
opponent endeavours to draw from you conclusions which you are not
prepared to defend, and which perhaps you have never before acknowledged
even to yourself. I will put the proposition in a less disputable form.
A happier condition of society is possible than that in which any nation
is existing at this time, or has at any time existed. The sum both of
moral and physical evil may be greatly diminished both by good laws, good
institutions, and good governments. Moral evil cannot indeed be removed,
unless the nature of man were changed; and that renovation is only to be
effected in individuals, and in them only by the special grace of God.
Physical evil must always, to a certain degree, be inseparable from
mortality. But both are so much within the reach of human institutions
that a state of society is conceivable almost as superior to that of
England in these days, as that itself is superior to the condition of the
tattooed Britons, or of the northern pirates from whom we are descended.
Surely this belief rests upon a reasonable foundation, and is supported
by that general improvement (always going on if it be regarded upon the
great scale) to which all history bears witness.
_Sir Thomas More_.--I dispute not this: but to render it a reasonable
ground of immediate hope, the predominance of good principles must be
supposed. Do you believe that good or evil principles predominate at
this time?
_Montesinos_.--If I were to judge by that expression of popular opinion
which the press pretends to convey, I should reply without hesitation
that never in any other known age of the world have such pernicious
principles been so prevalent
"_Qua terra patet_, _fera regnat Erinnys_;
_In facinus jurasse putes_."
_Sir Thomas More_.--Is there not a danger that these principles may bear
down everything before them? and is not that danger obvious, palpable,
imminent? Is there a considerate man who can look at the signs of the
times without apprehension, or a scoundrel connected with what is called
the public press, who does not speculate upon them, and join with the
anarchists as the strongest party? Deceive not yourself by the
fallacious notion that truth is mightier than falsehood, and that good
must prevail over evil! Good principles enable men to suffer, rather
than to act. Think how the dog, fond and faithful creature as he is,
from being the most docile and obedient of all animals, is made the most
dangerous, if he becomes mad; so men acquire a frightful and not less
monstrous power when they are in a state of moral insanity, and break
loose from their social and religious obligations. Remember too how
rapidly the plague of diseased opinions is communicated, and that if it
once gain head, it is as difficult to be stopped as a conflagration or a
flood. The prevailing opinions of this age go to the destruction of
everything which has hitherto been held sacred. They tend to arm the
poor against the rich; the many against the few: worse than this, for it
will also be a war of hope and enterprise against timidity, of youth
against age.
_Montesinos_.--Sir Ghost, you are almost as dreadful an alarmist as our
Cumberland cow, who is believed to have lately uttered this prophecy,
delivering it with oracular propriety in verse:
"Two winters, a wet spring,
A bloody summer, and no king."
_Sir Thomas More_.--That prophecy speaks the wishes of the man, whoever
he may have been, by whom it was invented: and you who talk of the
progress of knowledge, and the improvement of society, and upon that
improvement build your hope of its progressive melioration, you know that
even so gross and palpable an imposture as this is swallowed by many of
the vulgar, and contributes in its sphere to the mischief which it was
designed to promote. I admit that such an improved condition of society
as you contemplate is possible, and hath ought always to be kept in view:
but the error of supposing it too near, of fancying that there is a short
road to it, is, of all the errors of these times, the most pernicious,
because it seduces the young and generous, and betrays them imperceptibly
into an alliance with whatever is flagitious and detestable. The fact is
undeniable that the worst principles in religion, in morals, and in
politics, are at this time more prevalent than they ever were known to be
in any former age. You need not be told in what manner revolutions in
opinion bring about the fate of empires; and upon this ground you ought
to regard the state of the world, both at home and abroad, with fear,
rather than with hope.
_Montesinos_.--When I have followed such speculations as may allowably be
indulged, respecting what is hidden in the darkness of time and of
eternity, I have sometimes thought that the moral and physical order of
the world may be so appointed as to coincide; and that the revolutions of
this planet may correspond with the condition of its inhabitants; so that
the convulsions and changes whereto it is destined should occur, when the
existing race of men had either become so corrupt as to be unworthy of
the place which they hold in the universe, or were so truly regenerate by
the will and word of God, as to be qualified for a higher station in it.
Our globe may have gone through many such revolutions. We know the
history of the last; the measure of its wickedness was then filled up.
For the future we are taught to expect a happier consummation.
_Sir Thomas More_.--It is important that you should distinctly understand
the nature and extent of your expectations on that head. Is it upon the
Apocalypse that you rest them?
_Montesinos_.--If you had not forbidden me to expect from this
intercourse any communication which might come with the authority of
revealed knowledge, I should ask in reply, whether that dark book is
indeed to be received for authentic Scripture? My hopes are derived from
the prophets and the evangelists. Believing in them with a calm and
settled faith, with that consent of the will and heart and understanding
which constitutes religious belief, and in them the clear annunciation of
that kingdom of God upon earth, for the coming of which Christ himself
has taught and commanded us to pray.
_Sir Thomas More_.--Remember that the Evangelists, in predicting that
kingdom, announce a dreadful advent! And that, according to the received
opinion of the Church, wars, persecutions, and calamities of every kind,
the triumph of evil, and the coming of Antichrist are to be looked for,
before the promises made by the prophets shall be fulfilled. Consider
this also, that the speedy fulfilment of those promises has been the
ruling fancy of the most dangerous of all madmen, from John of Leyden and
his frantic followers, down to the saints of Cromwell's army, Venner and
his Fifth-Monarchy men, the fanatics of the Cevennes, and the blockheads
of your own days, who beheld with complacency the crimes of the French
Revolutionists, and the progress of Bonaparte towards the subjugation of
Europe, as events tending to bring about the prophecies; and, under the
same besotted persuasion, are ready at this time to co-operate with the
miscreants who trade in blasphemy and treason! But you who neither seek
to deceive others nor yourself, you who are neither insane nor insincere,
you surely do not expect that the millennium is to be brought about by
the triumph of what are called liberal opinions; nor by enabling the
whole of the lower classes to read the incentives to vice, impiety, and
rebellion which are prepared for them by an unlicensed press; nor by
Sunday schools, and religious tract societies; nor by the portentous
bibliolatry of the age! And if you adhere to the letter of the
Scriptures, methinks the thought of that consummation for which you look,
might serve rather for consolation under the prospect of impending evils,
than for a hope upon which the mind can rest in security with a calm and
contented delight.
_Montesinos_.--To this I must reply, that the fulfilment of those
calamitous events predicted in the Gospels may safely be referred, as it
usually is, and by the best Biblical scholars, to the destruction of
Jerusalem. Concerning the visions of the Apocalypse, sublime as they
are, I speak with less hesitation, and dismiss them from my thoughts, as
more congenial to the fanatics of whom you have spoken than to me. And
for the coming of Antichrist, it is no longer a received opinion in these
days, whatever it may have been in yours. Your reasoning applies to the
enthusiastic millenarians who discover the number of the beast, and
calculate the year when a vial is to be poured out, with as much
precision as the day and hour of an eclipse. But it leaves my hope
unshaken and untouched. I know that the world has improved; I see that
it is improving; and I believe that it will continue to improve in
natural and certain progress. Good and evil principles are widely at
work: a crisis is evidently approaching; it may be dreadful, but I can
have no doubts concerning the result. Black and ominous as the aspects
may appear, I regard them without dismay. The common exclamation of the
poor and helpless, when they feel themselves oppressed, conveys to my
mind the sum of the surest and safest philosophy. I say with them, "God
is above," and trust Him for the event.
_Sir Thomas More_.--God is above--but the devil is below. Evil
principles are, in their nature, more active than good. The harvest is
precarious, and must be prepared with labour, and cost, and care; weeds
spring up of themselves, and flourish and seed whatever may be the
season. Disease, vice, folly, and madness are contagious; while health
and understanding are incommunicable, and wisdom and virtue hardly to be
communicated! We have come, however, to some conclusion in our
discourse. Your notion of the improvement of the world has appeared to
be a mere speculation, altogether inapplicable in practice; and as
dangerous to weak heads and heated imaginations as it is congenial to
benevolent hearts. Perhaps that improvement is neither so general nor so
certain as you suppose. Perhaps, even in this country there may be more
knowledge than there was in former times and less wisdom, more wealth and
less happiness, more display and less virtue. This must be the subject
of future conversation. I will only remind you now, that the French had
persuaded themselves this was the most enlightened age of the world, and
they the most enlightened people in it--the politest, the most amiable,
and the most humane of nations--and that a new era of philosophy,
philanthropy, and peace, was about to commence under their auspices, when
they were upon the eve of a revolution which, for its complicated
monstrosities, absurdities, and horrors, is more disgraceful to human
nature than any other series of events in history. Chew the cud upon
this, and farewell