Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 2: With a Memoir and IndexMacaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
Philosophy
Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays; Vol. 2: With a Memoir and Index
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English literature -- History and criticism; Great Britain -- History
{269}world, you may know him by this mark--that the dunces are all
in confederacy against him.” We remember another anecdote, which may
perhaps be acceptable to so zealous a churchman as Mr. Sadler. A certain
Antinomian preacher, the oracle of a barn, in a county of which we do
not think it proper to mention the name, finding that divinity was not
by itself a sufficiently lucrative profession, resolved to combine with
it that of dog-stealing. He was, by ill-fortune, detected in several
offences of this description, and was in consequence brought before
two justices, who, in virtue of the powers given them by an act of
parliament, sentenced him to a whipping for each theft. The degrading
punishment inflicted on the pastor naturally thinned the flock; and
the poor man was in danger of wanting bread. He accordingly put forth a
handbill, solemnly protesting his innocence, describing his sufferings,
and appealing to the Christian charity of the public; and to his
pathetic address he prefixed this most appropriate text: “Thrice was I
beaten with rods.--_St. Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians_.” He did
not perceive that, though St. Paul had been scourged, no number of
whippings, however severe, will of themselves entitle a man to be
considered as an apostle. Mr. Sadler seems to us to have fallen into a
somewhat similar error. He should remember that, though Locke may have
been laughed at, so has Sir Claudius Hunter; and that it takes something
more than the laughter of all the world to make a Locke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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