Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
History
Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
Such is the union of England with Scotland, an union which resembles the
union of the limbs of one healthful and vigorous body, all moved by
one will, all co-operating for common ends. The system of Mr. Gladstone
would have produced an union which can be compared only to that which
is the subject of a wild Persian fable. King Zohak--we tell the story as
Mr. Southey tells it to us--gave the devil leave to kiss his shoulders.
Instantly two serpents sprang out, who, in the fury of hunger, attacked
his head, and attempted to get at his brain. Zohak pulled them away, and
tore them with his nails. But he found that they were inseparable parts
of himself, and that what he was lacerating was his own flesh. Perhaps
we might be able to find, if we looked round the world, some political
union like this, some hideous monster of a state, cursed with one
principle of sensation and two principles of volition, self-loathing and
self-torturing, made up of parts which are driven by a frantic impulse
to inflict mutual pain, yet are doomed to feel whatever they inflict,
which are divided by an irreconcileable hatred, Yet are blended in an
indissoluble identity. Mr. Gladstone, from his tender concern for Zohak,
is unsatisfied because the devil has as yet kissed only one shoulder,
because there is not a snake mangling and mangled on the left to keep in
countenance his brother on the right.
But we must proceed in our examination of his theory. Having, as he
conceives, proved that is the duty of every Government to profess some
religion or other, right or wrong, and to establish that religion, he
then comes to the question what religion a Government ought to prefer;
and he decides this question in favour of the form of Christianity
established in England. The Church of England is, according to him,
the pure Catholic Church of Christ, which possesses the apostolical
succession of ministers, and within whose pale is to be found that unity
which is essential to truth. For her decisions he claims a degree of
reverence far beyond what she has ever, in any of her formularies,
claimed for herself; far beyond what the moderate school of Bossuet
demands for the Pope; and scarcely short of what that school would
ascribe to Pope and General Council together. To separate from her
communion is schism. To reject her traditions or interpretations of
Scripture is sinful presumption.
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