On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
knowledge or change of opinion ? The egregious folly I It is often hard enough to know and do the right , that is to say , that which is for the greatest happiness of all concerned , at the present moment ; but to fix our conduct for a futurity when changes within and without may have occurred , baffling all our calculations 4
is trampling all morality beneath our feet . But a vow is made to God , and , therefore , must be fulfilled / We say , no such thing ; if it be made to him , let him judge ; which he does , by the general results of such proceedings , and they plainly declare that he has no pleasure in them ; that in his view the vow is a solemn folly , and the fulfilment ( when not consisting in conduct dictated by other considerations ) is only an immorality on the back of a
superstition . Not so , unhappily , stood the case in the casuistry of the rector of Epworth . He was a great stickler for vows ; he had signalized himself in that line ; we must digress for a moment to tell how . Mrs . Wesley was a Jacobite , and did not say Amen to her husband ' s prayers for King William . This grievously offended his ( not King William ' s , but Samuel Wesley ' s ) majesty . Now the doctrine of passive obedience and
non-resistance was carried to great lengths by this lady . On one occasion , during the rector's absence , she admitted the villagers to her sermon-reading and prayers in the house , and was doing great good . He wrote down desiring her to desist ; but her conscience would not let her yield to simple desire , when souls were at stake ; so she wrote that she could only abstain if he commanded . The King's title seems to have weighed more with her conscience than the villagers' souls . * Sukey , ' said the Rector , ' why did you
not say Amen this morning to the prayer for the King ? ' Susanna rebeiliously replied , Because I do not believe the Prince of Orange to be King . ' Whereupon the Rector waxed wroth , and vowed a solemn vow , ( the tale is told rather coarsely , ) that if they were to have two kings they must part . So he said his prayers , packed up his portmanteau , and left his wife and parish for a twelvemonth , at the end of which time King William died , the Rector returned , and Sukey said Amen to the prayer for Queen Anne ,
And on this solemn and obstinate ass was soon to depend the wretchedness or escape of that noble being , as she was , both body and soul , who had the calamity to call him father , A creature as low in mind as in condition , ignorant and grovelling , a Caliban civilized into vulgarity by the pot-house , had the audacity to offer
the violence of marriage to this Miranda , and her father compelled her to submit to the brutality . His enforcement of his daughter ' s vow , in misery , was far worse than Jephtha ' s consummation of his own vow in blood . Four years afterwards the poor victim sent him the following letter ; it does not appear that he was moved by it to any degree of penitence :
Untitled Article
172 A Victim .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1833, page 172, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2610/page/28/
-