While such things are, and things as strange, who can hope to expel
superstition from the stronghold of man's belief? and who would wish to
do it altogether, if the vacant citadel is to be taken possession of
by such philosophy as this--the fanaticism of science? And whilst we
condemn, as it must be confessed we ought, but duly and discreetly, the
greater part of the Romish saintology, their legends and the works of
art relating to them, as all belonging to "ages dark" and obsolete, it
may not be altogether amiss to turn over some of the old and new pages
of the evangelical magazines, where modern saints figure in portraiture
and biography--that is, in our enlightened art and literature; and
it is more than probable we shall be humbled and disgusted, and
be charitably disposed to make some apologies even for the _aurea
legenda_. And should any, in their folly or in their wickedness,
desire to set up a new idol, to rival or obliterate the memory of St
Johanna Southcote the immaculate, or St Huntingdon, for whom the fishes
leaped voluntarily from the ponds into his sanctified hands, and for
whose sake sudden death came upon the man who would not receive him
as a tenant, let such person or persons not despair of collecting
a household of "Latter-day Saints" after the authorised manner of
Joe Smith the Mormonist. It may be read in modern biographies, that
children almost infants have been miraculously converted whilst in
idle play, and have gone back to their homes and converted their
great-grandfathers. Poor good John Wesley believed many of these absurd
things. He assented to the assertion of the profligate who courted
his sister, that it was by "the Lord's directions;" and again, that
suddenly "the Lord" had told him to transfer his affections to John's
other sister. The published _Sancta sanctorum_ of religious sects are
nigh forgotten now-a-days; but they still exist, as did other legends,
to be collected in form, should a seeming necessity or a cunning
purpose require it: for there are multitudes who credit them now, and
many more who might, without much difficulty, be made strenuous to
establish them for "their Church."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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