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    for Calvinism , which they esteem as a beautiful creation of the fancy , and which they regard with peculiar

    favour as not built upon any rational foundation . Of Unitarianism they express the Utmost dislike and scorn . They deem every interference of reason with system as arrogant and profane . Religion is thrown back by them into the regions of imagination

    and mystery , as something too sacred to be examined or mingled with the business of life , and too majestic to be submitted to our choice or approval . At the same time , their reverence refines it into a phautom—a gorgeous dream—which would vanish

    if too nearly inspected . They one moment declare the opinions they eulogize as above all scrutiny , and the next acknowledge they could not endure it . It is their principle , therefore , to oppose all serious inquiry ; to inculcate love where there can be no

    respect ; to set up a kind of sentimental admiration in the place of belief ; and to inveigh against all attempts to discover theological truth as hardening the heart , clouding the fancy , and throwing a chillness over all the social affections .

    In exposing the fallacy of this novel scepticism , I shall not enter into many of the important points suggested by the inquiry . It would lead to a discussion too extensive were I to aim at shadowing forth the necessary connexion between truth and virtue , at

    shewing that imagination has increased in lustre in proportion as knowledge has extended , or at proving that genius is independent of opinion and our feelings distinct from our creeds . My object will be first to maintain that the Deist has no source

    of enjoyment which rational Christianity would diminish j and secondly , to prove that , even as a matter of poetical association , the doctrines of Unitarianism are far superior to that system of popular theology which the -sceptic fancies he admires . While the adversaries of rational

    investigation deride the scantiness of the Unitarian creed , they boast that they feel all the magnificence of Calvinism , and ^ njoy what the more cre - dulous Relieve ; and this pleasure they assert to be infinitely superior to that which results from a conviction of less ^ mysterious doctrines . But in what does it consist ? Qn whatever prin-

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    ciple it is founded , it is evidently not the joy of believing . Those who feel it do not pretend to regard the objects

    of their delight as true . They do not apply them to their own condition . They cannot even fancy they regard them in the same light with those who look on them as inseparable

    from their existence ; who repose on them as their solace under the cares of life , and rely on them as the support of their dying hours . But the assertions of orthodoxy must be either true or false ; and if our opponents enjoy them not as true they must if they admire them at all , admire them as a fable . Anil this , in plain language , is the whole basis of the undefined emotion which constitutes their religion . They contemplate the orthodox system as a prodigious creation of human genius , and as a visiou in which the terrible and sublime arc

    strikingly contrasted . So that their reverence for the objects they desig nate as sacred places them on a level with the dreams of Mahomet , and the mythologies of Homer . What is it then which is offered

    us in the room of Christian hope ? Nothing surely but what we may possess in fu ) l perfection with it . The poetical delight to be received from the contemplation of beautiful fictions need not be placed in the stead of a conviction of divine realities . To the

    enjoyment of fable as such it is absurd to require a belief in its actual existence . Who ever supposed that to relish the " Midsummer ' s Night ' s Dream , " or the " Tempest , " it was necessary to believe in the sportive fairies that " creep into acorn cups

    and hide them there , " or in the pure and delicate spirits that float in the air with strange music ? And , on the same principle , why must we admit the devil into our creeds to enjoy the sublimities of Paradise Lost , anymore than satyrs and witchcraft in order to be enchanted with Comus ? Though rejected as a religion , all the wonders

    of Pagan superstition have charms for us still . In the grandest regions of imagination , beyond the limits of this material world , they stand as fresh and as glorious as ever . Time has passed over them without witnessing their decay . There Hercules still revts on his club and Apollo tune * hi * immortal lyre . There Proteus rises from the sea ; there oluVTriton " blow *

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    158 On Poetical Scepticism *—No . I .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1816, page 158, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2450/page/30/