The Quarterly Review and Revolt of Islam (Continued)The Examiner[Leigh Hunt] Markup and editing by David Hill Radcliffe Completed November 2009 LeHunt.1819.Revolt2 Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities Virginia Tech
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The Quarterly Review and Revolt of Islam (Continued)The ExaminerHunt, Leigh, 1784-1859London3 October 1819614635-36
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THE EXAMINER.No. 614. SUNDAY, OCT. 3, 1819.THE QUARTERLY REVIEW AND REVOLT OF ISLAM.[Continued from last week.]
Our reviewing Scribes and Pharisees beg the question against Mr. Shelley’s theories because he does not believe in
their own creed. As if they had any creed but that which is established; and the better spirit
of which they, and men like them, have ever prevented from appearing! They cannot affect
meekness itself, but out of hostility. In the course of an article, full of anger, scandal, and bigotry,
they put on little pale-lipped airs of serenity like a vixenish woman; and during one of these
they say they would recommend Mr. Shelley to read the Bible, only it is
“a sealed book to a proud spirit.” We will undertake to say that, Mr.
Shelley knows more of the Bible, than all the priests who have any thing to do
with the Review or its writers. He does not abjure “the pomps and vanities of this wicked
world” only to put them on with the greater relish. To them, undoubtedly, the Bible is
not a sealed book, in one sense. They open it to good profit enough. But in the sense which the
Reviewer means, they contrive to have it sealed
wherever the doctrines are inconvenient. What do they say to the injunctions
against “judging others that ye be not judged,”—against
revenge,—against tale-bearing,—against lying, hypocrisy, “partiality,”
riches, pomps and vanities, swearing, perjury (videlicit, Nolo-Episcopation) Pharisaical scorn,
and every species of worldliness and malignity! Was Mr.
Canning (the parodist) a worthy follower of him that condoled with the lame and
blind, when he joked upon a man’s diseases? Was Mr.
Croker, (emphatically called “the Admiralty Scribe,”) a worthy
follower of him who denounced Scribes, Pharisees, and “devourers of widows’
houses,” when he swallowed up all those widows’ pensions? Was Mr. Giffard a worthy follower of him who was the forgiver and
friend of Mary Magdalen, when he ridiculed the very lameness and crutches
of a Prince’sdiscarded mistress! If Christianity is compatible with all that they do and
write, it is a precious thing. But if it means something much better,—what we really
believe it does mean, in spite of both such men and of much more reverenced and ancient
authorities, then is the spirit of it to be found in the aspiration of the very philosophies
which they are most likely to ill treat. The Reviewer for instance quotes, with horrified
Italics, such lines as these— Nor hate another’s crime, nor loathe thine own.And love of joy can make the foulest breastA paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest.
What is this first passage but the story of the woman taken in adultery? And what
the second, but the story of Mary Magdalen, “out of whom went seven
devils,” and who was who was forgiven because “such loved much?” Mr. Shelley may think that the sexual intercourse might be
altered much for the better, so as to diminish the dreadful evils to which it is now subject.
His opinions on that matter, however denounced or misrepresented, he shares in common with some
of the best and wisest names in philosophy, from Plato down
to Condorcet. It has been doubted by Doctors of the
Church, whether Christ himself thought on these matters as the Jews did. But be this as it may,
it does not hurt the parallel spirit of the passages. The Jews were told “not to hate
another’s crime.” The woman was not told to loathe her sin, but simply not to
repeat it; and was dismissed gently with these remarkable words,—“Has any man
condemned thee? No, Lord. Neither do I condemn thee.” Meaning, on the most
impartial construction, that if no man had brought her before a judge to be condemned, neither
would he be the judge to condemn her. She sinned, because she violated the conventional ideas
of virtue, and thus hazarded unhappiness to others, who had not been educated in a different
opinion: but the goodness of the opinion is left doubtful. It is to the spirit of
Christ’s actions and theories that we look, and not to the comments or contradictions
even of apostles. It was a very general spirit, if it was any thing, going upon the sympathetic
excess, instead of the anti-pathetic—notoriously opposed to existing establishments, and
reviled with every term of opprobrium by the Scribes and Pharisees then flourishing. If
Mr. Shelley’s theological notions run coun-ter to those
which have been built upon the supposed actions of Christ, we have no hesitation in saying that
the moral spirit of his philosophy approaches infinitely nearer to that Christian benevolence,
so much preached and so little practised, than any the most orthodox dogmas ever published. The
Reviewers and their usual anti-christian falsehood say that he recommends people to “hate
no crime” and “abstain from no gratification.” In the Christian sense he does tell them to “hate no crime;” and in a sense as
benevolent, he does tell them to “abstain from no gratification.” But a world of
gratification is shut out from his code, which the Reviewer would hate to be debarred from; and which he instinctively hates him
for denouncing already. Hear the end of the Preface to the Revolt of Islam. “I have
avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our nature, which are ever
on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There is no
quarter given to Revenge, Envy, or Prejudice. Love is celebrated every where as the sole law which
should govern the moral world.” Now, if Envy is rather tormenting to ye,
Messieurs Reviewers, there is some little gratification, is there not, in Revenge? and some
little gratifying profit or so in Prejudice? “Speak, Grildrig.”