第35章 LETTER 5(8)

I had reason,therefore,to produce divinity,as one instance of those professions that require a particular application to the study of some particular parts of history;and since I have said so much on the subject in my zeal for Christianity,I will add this further.The resurrection of letters was a fatal period:the Christian system has been attacked,and wounded too,very severely since that time.The defence has been better made indeed by modern divines,than it had been by ancient fathers and apologists.The moderns have invented new methods of defence,and have abandoned some posts that were not tenable:but still there are others,in defending which they lie under great disadvantages.Such are various facts,piously believed in former times,but on which the truth of Christianity has been rested very imprudently in more enlightened ages;because the falsity of some,and the gross improbability of others are so evident,that,instead of answering the purpose for which they were invented,they have rendered the whole tenor of ecclesiastical history and tradition precarious,ever since a strict but just application of the rules of criticism has been made to them.I touch these things lightly;but if your lordship reflects upon them,you will find reason perhaps to think as I do,that it is high time the clergy in all Christian communions should join their forces,and establish those historical facts,which are the foundations of the whole system,on clear and unquestionable historical authority,such as they require in all cases of moment from others;reject candidly what cannot be thus established;and pursue their inquiries in the same spirit of truth through all the ages of the church;without any regard to historians,fathers,or councils,more than they are strictly entitled to on the face of what they have transmitted to us,on their own consistency,and on the concurrence of other authority.Our pastors would be thus,I presume,much better employed than they generally are.Those of the clergy who make religion merely a trade,who regard nothing more than the subsistence it affords them,or in higher life the wealth and power they enjoy by the means of it,may say to themselves,that it will last their time,or that policy and reason of state will preserve the form of a church when the spirit of religion is extinct.But those whom I mentioned above,those who act for survival not temporal ends,and are desirous that men should believe and practise the doctrines of Christianity,as well as go to church and pay tithes,will feel and own the weight of such considerations as these;and agree,that however the people have been,and may be still amused,yet Christianity has been in decay ever since the resurrection of letters;and that it cannot be supported as it was supported before the era,nor by any other way than that which I propose,and which a due application to the study of history,chronology,and criticism,would enable our divines to pursue,no doubt,with success.

I might instance,in other professions,the obligations men lie under of applying themselves to certain parts of history,and I can hardly forbear doing it in that of the law.in its nature the noblest and most beneficial to mankind,in its abuse and debasement the most sordid and the most pernicious.

A lawyer now is nothing more,I speak of ninety-nine in a hundred at least,to use some of Tully's words,"nisi legulcius quidam cautus,et acutus praeco actionum,cantor formularum,auceps syllabarum."But there have been lawyers that were orators,philosophers,historians:there have been Bacons and Clarendons,my lord.There will be none such any more,till,in some better age,true ambition or the love of fame prevails over avarice;and till men fund leisure and encouragement to prepare themselves for the exercise of this profession,by climbing up to the "vantage ground,"so my Lord Bacon calls it,of science;instead of grovelling all their lives below,in a mean but gainful application to all the little arts of chicane.

Till this happen,the profession of the law will scarce deserve to be ranked among the learned professions:and whenever it happens,one of the vantage grounds,to which men must climb,is metaphysical,and the other historical knowledge.They must pry into the secret recesses of the human heart,and become well acquainted with the whole moral world,that they may discover the abstract reason of all laws:and they must trace the laws of particular states,especially of their own,from the first rough sketches to the more perfect draughts;from the first causes or occasions that produced them,through all the effects,good and bad,that they produced.But I am running insensibly into a subject,which would detain me too long from one that relates more immediately to your lordship,and with which I intend to conclude this long letter.

2.I pass from the consideration of those professions to which particular parts or kinds of history seem to belong:and I come to speak of the study of history,as a necessary means to prepare men for the discharge of that duty which they owe to their country,and which is common to all the members of every society that is constituted according to the rules of right reason,and with a due regard to the common good.I have met,in St.Real's works,or some other French book,with a ridicule cast on private men who make history a political study,or who apply themselves in any manner to affairs of state.