John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 1 of 2)Shorthouse, J. H. (Joseph Henry)
History
John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 1 of 2)
Shorthouse, J. H. (Joseph Henry)
Great Britain -- History -- Charles I, 1625-1649 -- Fiction; Religious fiction
attain, rather than as absolutely necessary to salvation. With this
view the Church regarded human error with tolerance, and amusements and
enjoyments with approbation, and as deserving the highest sanctions of
religion. Inglesant’s Christianity, therefore, was ignorant of doctrine
and dogma of almost every kind, and concentrated itself altogether on
what may be called the Idea of Christ, that is, a lively conception of
and attraction to the person of the Saviour. This idea,—which comes to
men in different ways, and which came to Inglesant for the first time in
the sacrament at Gidding, being, I should suppose, a purely intellectual
one,—would no doubt be inefficient and transitory, were it not for the
unique and mysterious power of attraction which it undoubtedly
possesses. In the pursuit of this idea he received little assistance
either from Dr. More. The school to which the doctor belonged,—the
Christian Platonists,—had no tendency to that exclusive worship of the
person of Jesus, which, in some religious schools, has almost superseded
the worship of God. This he had received from the Jesuits and the
mystical books of Catholic devotion which had had so great an influence
over him. The Jesuits, with all their faults, held fast by the motive
of their founder, and the worship of Jesus was by them carried to its
fullest extent. Dr. More’s theology was more that of a philosophical
Deism, into which the person and attributes of Christ entered as a part
of an universal scheme, in which the universe, mankind, the
all-pervading Spirit of God, and the objects of thought and sense,
played distinct and conspicuous parts.
One fine and warm day in the early spring, Inglesant and the doctor were
walking in the garden at the side of the house bordering on the chase
and park. The wide expanse of grassy upland stretched before them;
overhead, the arch of heaven, chequered by the white clouds, was full of
life and light and motion; across the water of the lakes the Church
bells, rung for amusement by the village lads, came to the ear softened
and yet enriched in tone; the spring air, fanned by a fresh breeze,
refreshed the spirits and the sense. The doctor began, as upon a
favourite theme, to speak of his great sense of the power and benefit of
the fresh air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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