Selfishness and partiality are very inhuman and base qualities even in
the things of this world, but in the doctrines of religion they are of a
far baser nature. In the present divided state of the Church, truth
itself is torn and divided asunder; and, therefore, he is the only true
Catholic who has more of truth and less of error than is hedged in by any
divided part. To see this will enable us to live in a divided part
unhurt by its division, and keep us in a true liberty and fitness to be
edified and assisted by all the good that we hear or see in any other
part of the Church. And thus, uniting in heart and spirit with all that
is holy and good in all Churches, we enter into the true communion of
saints, and become real members of the Holy Catholic Church, though we
are confined to the outward worship of only one particular part of it.
And thus we will like no truth the less because Ignatius Loyola or John
Bunyan were very jealous for it, nor have the less aversion to any error
because Dr. Trapp or George Fox had brought it forth." If Wildhead would
take a winter of William Law, it would sweeten his temper, and civilise
his manners, and renew his heart.
3. Inconsiderate, again, is the shallow creature he is, and does the
endless mischief that he does, largely for lack of imagination. He never
thinks--neither before he speaks nor after he has spoken. He never put
himself in another man's place all his days. He is incapable of doing
that. He has neither the head nor the heart to do that. He never once
said, How would I like that said about me? or, How would I like that done
to me? or, How would that look and taste and feel to me if I were in So-
and-so's place? It needs genius to change places with other men; it
needs a grace beyond all genius; and this poor headless and heartless
creature does not know what genius is. It needs imagination, the noblest
gift of the mind, and it needs love, the noblest grace of the heart, to
consider the case of other people, and to see, as Butler says, that we
differ as much from other people as they differ from us. And it is by
far the noblest use of the imagination, far nobler than carving a
Laocoon, or painting a Last Judgment, or writing a "Paradiso" or a
"Paradise Lost," to put ourselves into the places of other men so as to
see with their eyes, and feel with their hearts, and sympathise with
their principles, and even with their prejudices. Now, the inconsiderate
man has so little imagination and so little love that he is sitting here
and does not know what I am saying; and what suspicion he has of what I
am saying is just enough to make him dislike both me and what I am saying
too. But his dull suspicion and his blind dislike are more than made up
for by the love and appreciation of those lovers and defenders of the
truth who painfully feel how wild and inconsiderate, how hot-headed, how
thoughtless, and how reckless their past service even of God's truth has
been.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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