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our commentator can bring him * self to believe that however criminal Solomon became in his old age " this early purchaser , if not inheritor , of queens and concubines ,
€ i still retained the simplicity and innocency of hi 9 youth , at the time this poem was wrote . " He can , however , express himself in a man * uer more creditable to a sober
judgment . Having maintained that 4 C a mind untainted by vice , will find in the Song of Solomon , solid instruction " he adds :: — " If we examine the lives of such as have been noted for enthusiastic flights , we shall find ,
that , if they have not lived in the practice of vice , ( though- too many of them have , ) yet have . they been persons of wild and wanton dispositions , careless of their conduct , and more careless of their conversation find studies , such as
have had strong passions , and been only kept from indulging them by the restraints of conscience , fear ^ regard for reputation , or by having met with cruel disappointments . Such persons , when they take a turn to devotion , love God with the same sensual
affections they were wont to feel foi * an human object , and find their , own warm ideas in places of scripture , where no such are really to be found . And though in all this
they may not be absolutely criminal , yet are they too apt to deceive themselves and others * The
love of God is not a sensible passion , noi to be judged of by the seeming pious affections which possess the imagination , and which
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sometimes in a pleasing transport agitate the whole frame . // ' you love me , keep my commandment s saith our blessed Saviour , And
an excellent rule it is , whereby to judge of the reality of our affections * But then on the other side , letus not fancy we do this where there are no afiVctions at all * "
Mr . "Percy , as we have seen , proposed to follow his New Translation , by a search after " sublime truths / 5 concealed in the Song of Solomon * This he reserved tor a
future undertaking . Mr . Harmer , expressed a wish to Bee " what alligorical sepse he would put on this arttient poem / ' and in the Commentary , published at
Edinburgh , hv » pes were entertained , * of seeing such a work performed by him . ' * Mr . Percy , however , to the credit of his maturer judgment * auoeared not to have nurmentj appeared not to have
pursued the subject further . If he ever addressed himself to the c particular suid distinct inquiry' * he had proposed , he probably soon found it a labour more herculean
than he had expected , to assimilate the sensual Solomon to the pure and holy Jesus . Their characters would no more amalmagate than u the iron and the clay , " in
the image presented to the , imagination of the king of Babylon . Our industrious scholar soon attempted another subject , to his successful prosecution of which he was principally indebted for that reputation he has acquired among the writers of his time . [ To be continued . ]
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8 Literary Memoir ofDr * Percy * late Bishop qfDromore . -
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1812, page 8, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1744/page/8/
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