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eloquence , we should remember that his audiences , both at Wittemberg and at Dresden , consisted for the most part of persons of high intellectual cultivation . To the study of the ancient orators and poets he joined that of the ancieht moralists , Plato , Aristotle , Arrian , Plutarch , and Seneca . From them he passed to modern , moralists , and more especially to the best poets and historians of different ages , reading them with a constant reference to morals .
' It was onl y / he observes * , * when I was called to the functions of a preacher that I felt the whole of the advantage which I derived from this mode of studying morals . It is , indeed , evident that a minister of the gospel ought to possess a systematic knowledge of moral truths ; but that alone is not sufficient . He must understand the human heart , and have traced all its movements , propensities , and artifices ; he must observe the endless varieties of inclination and
character , and know what are the difficulties and obstacles that present themselves to the [ practice of good in general , and of each virtue in particular : in one word , practical wisdom is for him the most essential of all attainments . And whence can that wisdom be so effectually obtained as from those authors who have displayed a profound knowledge of the nature of man ? I must confess that the study of the
ancients , especially their moralists ( Reinhard might have added the great classics of every literature ) , joined to the uninterrupted reading of the Bible , was the source from which I drew the treasures of the preacher . Even in the precepts of the Scripture itself , I should have overlooked a thousand applications without the assistance of these invaluable guides /
In the very same spirit , the late Sir James Mackintosh f eloquently vindicates Grotius from the charge brought against him by Dr . Paley , of needlessly loading the margin of his great work ( I ? e Jure Bell , ac Pac . } with quotations from the classics : — ' They are witnesses , whose conspiring testimony , mightily strengthened and confirmed by their discordance on almost every other subject , is a conclusive proof of the unanimity of the whole human race on the
great rules of duty , and the fundamental principles of morals . In those very writings which Grotius is blamed for having quoted , the general feelings of human nature , and the according judgment of all ages and nations , are recorded and preserved . The usages and laws of nations , the events of history , the opinions of philosophers , the sentiments of orators and poets , as well as the observation of common life , are , in truth , the materials out of which the science of morality is formed . * T .
* p . 57 . f On the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations , p . 24 . London , 1828 .
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of F . V . Reinhard . 741
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 741, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/21/
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