The whole evolution of times and ages, from everlasting to everlasting, is collectedly and presentifickly represented to God at once, as if all things and actions were at this very instant really present and existent before him. SIR T. MORE. Prescience or foreknowledge, considered in order and nature, if we may speak of God after the manner of men, goeth before providence; for God foreknew all things before he had created them, or before they had being to be cared for; and prescience is no other than an infallible foreknowledge. SIR W. RALEIGH. This prescience of God, as it is prescience, is not the cause of anything futurely succeeding; neither doth God's aforeknowledge impose any necessity, or bind. SIR W. RALEIGH. PRESS. The most capital advantage an enlightened people can enjoy is the liberty of discussing every subject which can fall within the compass of the human mind: while this remains, freedom will flourish; but should it be lost or impaired, its principles will neither be well understood nor long retained. To render the magis. trate a judge of truth, and engage his authority in the suppression of opinions, shows an inattention to the design and nature of political society. ROBERT HALL: Apology for the Freedom of the Press. It is surely just that every one should have a right to examine those measures by which the happiness of all may be affected. The control of the public mind over the conduct of ministers, exerted through the medium of the press, has been regarded by the best writers both in our country and on the continent as the main support of our liberties. While this remains we cannot be enslaved; when it is impaired or diminished we shall soon cease to be free. ROBERT HALL: On the Right of Public Discussion. He published about the same time his "Areopagitica, a Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing." The danger of such unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of government, which human understanding seems hitherto unable to solve. If nothing may be published but what civil authority shall have previously approved, power must always be the standard of truth; if every dreamer of innovations may propagate his projects, there can be no settlement; if every murmurer at government may diffuse discontent, there can be no peace; and if every sceptic in theology may teach his follies, there can be no religion. The remedy against these evils is to punish the authors; for it is yet allowed that every society may punish, though not prevent, the publication of opinions which that society shall think pernicious; but this punishment, though it may crush the author, promotes the book; and it seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained because writers may be afterwards censured than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted because by our laws we can hang a thief. DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Milton. I am far from adopting the creed of my honourable and learned friend the Attorney General, "that if we were less learned we should be better men." I hold, on the contrary, that the diffusion of learning, by the liberty of the press, is necessary to public liberty and public morality. existed, we are tending towards effeminacy. Like all the great and powerful nations that ever What then would become of us without the press? Not to speak of the rational and elegant amusements which it affords, we owe to it all the spirit which remains in the nation. Were an imprimatur clapped upon it, and a licenser appointed, we should soon come to the last stage of barbarism. We should be worse than Turks and infidels,—the setting of the sun of science being much more gloomy and dismal than the dark hour which precedes its rise. Let us then guard the liberty of the press as watchfully as the dragon did the Hesperian fruit. Next to the privileges of this house and the rights of juries, without it I fear the other two would prove very it is the main prop of the Constitution. Nay, ineffectual. Though it be sometimes attended with inconveniences, would you abolish it? According to this reasoning, what would become of the greatest blessings of society? None of them come pure and unmixed. LORD LOUGHBOROUGH (EARL OF ROSSLYN): Speech in House of Commons, 16 Parl. Hist. 1294. The emancipation of the press produced a great and salutary change. The best and wisest men in the ranks of the opposition now assumed an office which had hitherto been abandoned to the unprincipled or the hot-headed. Tracts against the government were written in a style not misbecoming statesmen and gentlemen, and even the compositions of the lower and fiercer class of malecontents became somewhat less brutal and less ribald than formerly. Some weak men had imagined that religion and morality stood in need of the protection of the licenser. The event signally proved that they were in error. In truth, the censorship had scarcely put any restraint on licentiousness or profaneness. The Paradise Lost had narrowly escaped mutilation: for the Paradise Lost was the work of a man whose politics were hateful to the government. But Etherege's She Would If She Could, Wycherley's Country Wife, Dryden's Translations from the Fourth Book of Lucretius, obtained the Imprimatur without dif ficulty: for Etherege, Wycherley, and Dryden were courtiers. From the day on which the emancipation of our literature was accomplished, the purification of our literature began. That purification was effected, not by the intervention of senates or magistrates, but by the opinion of the great body of educated Englishmen, before whom good and evil were set, and who were left free to make their choice. During a hundred and sixty years the liberty of our press has been constantly becoming more and more entire; and during those hundred and sixty years the restraint imposed on writers by the general feeling of readers has been constantly becoming more and more strict. At length even that class of works in which it was formerly thought that a voluptuous imagination was privileged to disport itself, love songs, comedies, novels, have become more decorous than the sermons of the seventeenth century. At this day foreigners, who dare not print a word reflecting on the government under which they live, are at a loss to understand how it happens that the freest press in Europe is the most prudish. LORD MACAULAY: History of England, ch. xxi. If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man. Νο music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or deportment be taught our youth, but what by their allowance shall be thought honest; for such Plato was provided of. It will ask more than the work of twenty licensers to examine all the lutes, the violins, and the guitars in every house: they must not be suffered to prattle as they do, but must be licensed what they may say. And who shall silence all the airs and madrigals that whisper softness in chambers? The windows also, and the balconies, must be thought on; there are shrewd books with dangerous frontispieces, set to sale: who shall prohibit these? Shall twenty licensers? The villages also must have their visitors to inquire what lectures the bagpipe and the rebec reads, even to the ballatry and the gamat of every municipal fiddler: for these are the countryman's Arcadias and his Monte Mayors. Next, what more national corruption, for which England hears ill abroad, than household gluttony? Who shall be the rectors of our daily rioting? Who shall regulate all the mixed conversation of our youth, male and female together, as is the fashion of this country?... How can a man teach with authority, which is the life of teaching; how can he be a doctor in his book, as he ought to be, or else had better be silent, whereas all he teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tuition, under the correction, of his patriarchal licenser, to blot or alter what precisely accords not with the hide-bound humour which he calls his judgment? MILTON: Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing: To the Parliament of England. 1 PRETENSION. Some are so close and reserved as they will not shew their wares but by a dark light, and seem always to keep back somewhat; and when they know within themselves they speak of that they do not well know, would nevertheless seem to others to know of that which they may not well speak. LORD BACON : Essay XXVII., Of Seeming Wise. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them, are for the greater part ignorant of both the character they | leave and of the character they assume. BURKE. make the most of everything he does know, but A man who knows the world will not only of many things he does not know; and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward COLTON. attempt to exhibit his erudition. Some pretences daunt and discourage us, while others raise us to a brisk assurance. GLANVILL. The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint. The affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety. LAVATER. It is no disgrace not to be able to do everything; but to undertake, or pretend to do, what you are not made for, is not only shameful, but extremely troublesome and vexatious. PLUTARCH. A snob is that man or woman who is always pretending to be something better-especially richer or more fashionable-than they are. THACKERAY. It is worth noticing, that those who assume an imposing demeanour, and seek to puff themselves off for something beyond what they are (and often succeed), are not unfrequently as much under rated by some as they are overrated by others. For, as a man (according to what Bacon says in the essay "On Discourse") by keeping back some knowledge which he is believed to possess may gain credit for knowing something of which he is really ignorant, so if he is once or twice detected in pretending to know what he does not, he is likely to be set down as a mere pretender, and as ignorant of what he does know. the heels of pride, and let ambition have but an epicycle and narrow circuit in thee. Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave; and reckon thyself above the earth by the line thou must be contented with under it. SIR T. BROWNE: Chris. Morals, Pt. I., xix. The disesteem and contempt of others is inseparable from pride. It is hardly possible to overvalue ourselves but by undervaluing our neighbours. EARL OF CLARENDON. Pride is so unsociable a vice, and does all things with so ill a grace, that there is no closing with it. A proud man will be sure to challenge more than belongs to him. You must expect him stiff in his conversation, fulsome in commending himself, and bitter in his reproofs. JEREMY COLLier. There is art in pride: a man might as soon learn a trade. Those who were not brought up to it seldom prove their craftsmaster. JEREMY COLLIER. One thing pride has which no other vice that I know of has; it is an enemy to itself; and a proud man cannot endure to see pride in another. FELLTHAM. In reality, there is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself: you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for even if I could conceive that I had com pletely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility. BENJ. FRANKLIN: Autobiography. Pride is as loud a beggar as want, and a great deal more saucy. When you have bought one fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follows it. B. FRANKLIN. Pride that dines on vanity sups on contempt. B. FRANKLIN. As pride has been transferred from the list of vices to that of virtues, so humility, as a natural consequence, has been excluded, and is rarely suffered to enter into the praise of a character we wish to commend, although it was the leading feature of that of the Saviour of the world, and is still the leading characteristic of his religion; while there is no vice, on the contrary, against which the denunciations are so frequent as pride. ROBERT HALL: Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis. Suppose there were a great and glorious being always present with us, who had given us existence, with numberless other blessings, and on whom we depended each instant as well for every present enjoyment as for every future good; suppose, again, we had incurred the just displeasure of such a being by ingratitude and disobedience, yet that in great mercy he had not cast us off, but had assured us he was willing to pardon and restore us on our humble entreaty and sincere repentance; say, would not an habitual sense of the presence of this being, self-reproach for having displeased him, and an anxiety to recover his favour, be the most effectual antidote to pride? But such are the leading discoveries made by the Christian revelation, and such the dispositions which a practical belief of it inspires. Humility is the first fruit of religion. ROBERT HALL: Modern Infidelity. Pride goes hated, cursed, and abominated by all. HAMMOND. It is one of the innumerable absurdities of pride that we are never more impatient of direction than in that part of life when we need it most: we are in haste to meet enemies whom we have not strength to overcome, and to undertake tasks which we cannot perform; and as he that once miscarries does not easily persuade mankind to favour another attempt, an ineffectual struggle for fame is often followed by perpetual obscurity. DR. S. JOHNSON: Rambler, No. 111. Personal pride and affectation, a delight in beauty, and fondness of finery, are tempers that must either kill all religion in the soul, or be themselves killed by it: they can no more thrive together than health and sickness. LAW. The lifting of a man's self up in his own opinion has had the credit, in former ages, to be thought the lowest degradation that human nature could well sink itself to. LOCKE.. Christians have a particular knowledge how natural and original an evil curiosity is in man. The thirst of knowledge, and the desire to become more wise, was the first ruin of mankind, and the way by which he precipitated himself into eternal damnation. Pride was his ruin and corruption; 'tis pride that diverts from the common path, and makes him embrace novelties, and rather chuse to be head of a troop, lost and wandering in the path of error, to be regent and a teacher of lyes, than to be a disciple in the school of truth, suffering himself to be led and guided by the hand of another, in the right and beaten road. is not by assuming the mask of a Davus or a Geta that an actor will obtain credit for manly simplicity and a liberal openness of proceeding. It is an erect countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and honour and assure to us the confidence of mankind. BURKE: Letters on a Regicide Peace, Letter III., 1797. The effects of pride and vanity are of conse- Fraud and prevarication are servile vices. quence only to the proud and vain; and tend to They sometimes grow out of the necessities, no further ill than what is personal to them always out of the habits, of slavish and degenselves, in preventing their progress in anything|erate spirits; and on the theatre of the world it that is worthy and laudable, and creating envy instead of emulation of superior virtue. These ill qualities are to be found only in such as have so little minds as to circumscribe their thoughts and designs within what properly relates to the value which they think due to their dear and valuable selves: but ambition, which is the third great impediment to honour and virtue, is a fault of such as think themselves born for moving in a higher orb, and prefer being powerful and mischievous to being virtuous and obscure. The parent of this mischief in life, so far as to regulate it into schemes, and make it possess a man's whole heart without his believing himself a demon, was Machiavel. He first taught that a man must necessarily appear weak, to be honest. Hence it gains upon the imagination, that a great is not so despicable as a little villain; and men are insensibly led to a belief that the aggravation of crimes is a diminution of them. Hence the impiety of thinking one thing and speaking another. In pursuance of this empty and unsatisfying dream, to betray, to undermine, to kill in themselves all natural sentiments of love to friends or country, is the willing practice of such as are thirsty of power for any other reason than that of being useful and acceptable to mankind. SIR R. STEELE: Tatler, No. 186. Pride, in some particular disguise or other (often a secret to the proud himself), is the most ordinary spring of action among men. You need no more than to discover what a man values himself for: then of all things admire that quality, but be sure to be failing in it yourself in comparison of the man whom you court. Burke possessed, and had sedulously sharpened, that eye which sees all things, actions, and events in relation to the laws that determine their existence and circumscribe their possibility. He referred habitually to principles. He was a scientific statesman, and therefore a seer. every principle contains in itself the germs of a COLERIDGE. prophecy. For Dangerous principles impose upon our understandings, emasculate our spirits, and spoil our temper. JEREMY COLLIER. The principles which all mankind allow for true are innate; those that men of right reason admit are the principles allowed by all mankind. LOCKE. A good principle, not rightly understood, may prove as hurtful as a bad. MILTON. He acts upon the surest and most prudential grounds who, whether the principles which he acts upon prove true or false, yet secures a happy issue in his actions. SOUTH. He who fixes upon false principles treads upon infirm ground, and so sinks; and he who fails in his deductions from right principles stumbles upon firm ground, and so falls. SOUTH. SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 394. There is no security in a good disposition, if the support of good principles (that is to say, There is no one passion which all mankind so of religion, of Christian faith) be wanting. It naturally give in to as pride, nor any other passion which appears in such different disguises. may be soured by misfortunes, it may be corIt is to be found in all habits and all complex-rupted by wealth, it may be blighted by neediions. Is it not a question whether it does more harm or good in the world; and if there be not such a thing as what we may call a virtuous and laudable pride? It is this passion alone, when misapplied, that ness, it may lose all its original brightness, if destitute of that support. SOUTHEY. If they be principles evident of themselves, they need nothing to evidence them. TILLOTSON. PROBABILITY-PROBATION-PROCRASTINATION. Considered as a state of probation, our present condition loses all its inherent meanness; it derives a moral grandeur even from the shortness of its duration, when viewed as a contest for an immortal crown, in which the candidates are exhibited on a theatre, a spectacle to beings of the highest order, who, conscious of the tremendous importance of the issue, of the magnitude of the interest at stake, survey the combatants from on high with benevolent and trembling solicitude. ROBERT HALL: Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte. PROCRASTINATION. We find out some excuse or other for deferring good resolutions. ADDISON. Virtue is not a mushroom that springeth up of itself in one night, when we are asleep or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly | and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guide it, much time to mature it. Neither is vice a spirit that will be conjured away with a charm, slain by a single blow, or despatched by one stab. Who, then, will be so foolish as to leave the eradicating of vice, and the planting in of virtue in its place, to a few years or weeks? Yet he who procrastinates his 589 repentance and amendment grossly does so: with his eyes open, he abridges the time allotted for the longest and most important work he has to perform: he is a fool. BISHOP J. BUtler. There is no moment like the present; not only so, but, moreover, there is no moment at all, that is, no instant force and energy, but in the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and skurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence. MARIA EDGEworth. How dangerous to defer those momentous reformations which conscience is solemnly preaching to the heart! If they are neglected, the difficulty and indisposition are increasing every month. The mind is receding, degree after degree, from the warm and hopeful zone; till, at last, it will enter the arctic circle, and become fixed in relentless and eternal ice! JOHN FOSTER : Life and Thoughts, by W. W. Everts, 222. Our good purposes foreslowed are become our tormentors upon our death-bed. BISHOP J. HALL. There will always be something that we shall wish to have finished, and be nevertheless unwilling to begin. DR. S. JOHNSON. A Pagan moralist hath represented the folly of an attachment to this world almost as strongly as a Christian could express it. "Thou art a passenger," says he, "and thy ship hath put into harbour for a few hours. The tide and the and thou art amusing thyself, and gathering wind serve, and the pilot calls thee to depart, shells and pebbles on the shore, till they set sail without thee." So is every Christian who, being on his voyage to a happy eternity, delays and loiters, and thinks and acts as if he were to dwell here forever. JORTIN. Is not he imprudent who, seeing the tide making haste towards him apace, will sleep till the sea overwhelms him? TILLOTSON. Now, is it safe, think you, to pass this day? A hard heart is a provoking heart, and as long as it continues hard, continues provoking God and despising the Holy Ghost. To-day, therefore, hear His voice; that is, this present day. But which is that day? It is this very time wherein you stand before God, and in which you hear me. If you embrace the opportunity, happy are you; if not, you shall give as dear an account as for anything you ever heard in |