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Untitled Article
We have not the heart to extract the record of one of these days of retirement , { dated June 1 st , 1751 , ) which is one of the most afflicting confessions we have ever met with . We are glad to see it here , nevertheless ; because it affords an unquestionable proof that bodily indisposition was the cause of much of the spiritual grief which this pious man experienced . The adherents of his theology will hasten to cast the burden of his conflicts on the peculiarities of his physical constitution ; and it is very true that he was so
framed as to be naturally indolent , yet excitable , subject to alternate raptures and deadness of feeling . What we complain of is , not that Doddridge was thus predisposed , but that his religion was one which incessantly aggravated , instead of alleviating , these natural evils . When in society , where be was exposed to the salutary checks arising from a diversity of opinions and sentiments , the religion of Doddridge exerted its pure and genuine influences . He was cheerful as innocent , and dignified as meek : but when removed from these restraints , he was wrought upon by the corrupt conceptions which
carried fear and darkness into the deepest recesses of his spirit , or illumined them with a fitful and artificial light . Had Doddridge known God only as a tender Father , Christ only as his holy and approved messenger , sin and sorrow as finite and limited influences , holiness and peace as the natural and ultimate elements of being , how serene , how exalted , might have been his mortal life ! As it was , how was it made up of extremes 1 Now weak , now mighty ; in some things narrow and puerile , in others lofty and enlarged ; now in raptures , now on the brink of despair ; sometimes commanding our
reverence , and sometimes pleading for our compassion . This is not what life is intended to be ; such is not what the gospel is designed to make us . None ever surrendered himself more unconditionally to the workings of the Spirit than Doddridge . Alas for him that its operations were disturbed and perverted by human intervention ! We may say alas ! for others also , to judge from the abstracts of his
devotional services given in his Diary . We have never seen examples of a more imaginative and less solid and profitable style of preaching . Upon occasion , no doubt , very strong impressions must nave been produced ; but there is throughout an assumption of a very excited state of feeling in the hearers to begin with ; and of a kind of excitement merely factitious , in very many instances . Such preaching is equally unlike the apostolic method , to which Doddridge would have done well to refer more frequently ; and inapplicable to the spiritual state of men in this or in any other age .
The Editor of this volume will probably be as vehemently assailed on occasion of its appearance as he was when the first came out to scandalize so many good people . We think him perfectly right , however , in presenting us with the whole truth , unacceptable as it will be to many , and painful as in some respects it must be to all . It is high time that some one should set an example of intrepid fidelity in the article of biography ; and in no
instance could the example be more useful than in the present , fio wise man will think the worse of Doddridge for any thing he may have said of himself . What blame there is lies with his theology : what scandal there is rests with those who have hitherto misrepresented him . Doddridge is now proved to be , not exactly what he was thought to be , but something more . He is proved to have quite as strong a right to our admiration ; quite as close a hold on our affections ; while to these is added a new and irresistible claim to our compassion and respectful sympathy .
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1831, page 325, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2597/page/37/
