I should blame you for the exaggerated terms in which you have spoken of me in the Proposal, did I not perceive the motive. You wished to make it appear an offering--not a favour--and in excess of delicacy have, I fear, fallen into some grossness of flattery.
God bless you, my dear, very dear Friend. The widow[112] is calm, and amused with her beautiful infant. We are all become more religious than we were. God be ever praised for all things! Mrs. Coleridge begs her kind love to you. To your dear mother my filial respects.
MY DEAR THELWALL,--You have given me the affection of a brother, and I repay you in kind. Your letters demand my friendship and deserve my esteem; the zeal with which you have attacked my supposed _delusions_ proves that you are deeply interested for _me_, and interested even to agitation for what you believe to be _truth_. You deem that I have treated "systems and opinions with the furious prejudices of the conventicle, and the illiberal dogmatism of the cynic;" that I have "layed about me on this side and on that with the sledge hammer of abuse." I have, you think, imitated the "old sect in politics and morals" in their "outrageous violence," and have sunk into the "clownish fierceness of intolerant prejudice." I have "branded" the presumptuous children of scepticism "with vile epithets and hunted them down with abuse." "_These be hard words, Citizen! and I will be bold to say they are not to be justified_" by the unfortunate page which has occasioned them. The only passage in it which appears _offensive_ (I am not now inquiring concerning the truth or falsehood of this or the remaining passages) is the following: "You have studied Mr. G.'s Essay on Politi[cal] Jus[tice]--but to think filial affection folly, gratitude a crime, marriage injustice, and the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes right and wise, may class you among the despisers of vulgar prejudices, but cannot increase the probability that you are a _patriot_. But you act up to your principles--so much the worse. Your principles are villainous ones. I would not entrust my wife or sister to you; think you I would entrust my country?" My dear Thelwall! how are these opinions connected with the conventicle more than with the Stoa, the Lyceum, or the grove of Academus? I do not perceive that to attack _adultery_ is more characteristic of _Christian_ prejudices than of the prejudices of the disciples of Aristotle, Zeno, or Socrates. In truth, the offensive sentence, "Your principles are villainous," was suggested by the Peripatetic Sage who divides bad men into two classes. The first he calls "wet or intemperate sinners"--men who are hurried into vice by their appetites, but _acknowledge_ their actions to be vicious; these are reclaimable. The second class he names _dry_ villains--men who are not only vicious but who (the steams from the polluted heart rising up and gathering round the head) have brought themselves and others to believe that _vice_ is _virtue_. We mean these men when we say men of bad _principles_--_guilt_ is out of the question. I am a necessarian, and of course deny the possibility of it. However, a letter is not the place for reasoning. In some form or other, or by some channel or other, I shall publish my critique on the New Philosophy, and, I trust, shall demean myself not _ungently_, and disappoint your auguries.... "But, you cannot be a patriot unless you are a Christian." Yes, Thelwall, the disciples of Lord Shaftesbury and Rousseau as well as of Jesus--but the man who suffers not his hopes to wander beyond the objects of sense will in general be _sensual_, and I again assert that a sensualist is not likely to be a patriot. Have I tried these opinions by the double test of argument and example? I _think_ so. The first would be too large a field, the second some following sentences of your letter forced me to.... _Gerrald_[113] you insinuate is an _atheist_. Was he so, when he offered those solemn prayers to God Almighty at the Scotch conventicle, and was this sincerity? But Dr. Darwin and (I suppose from his actions) Gerrald think sincerity a folly and therefore vicious. Your atheistic brethren square their moral systems exactly according to their inclinations. Gerrald and Dr. Darwin are polite and good-natured men, and willing to attain at good by attainable roads. They deem insincerity a necessary virtue in the present imperfect state of our nature. Godwin, whose very heart is cankered by the love of singularity, and who feels no disinclination to wound by abrupt harshness, pleads for absolute sincerity, because such a system gives him a frequent opportunity of indulging his misanthropy.