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Or The Causes Of The Decay Of Our National Morality, And On Some Modern Schemes For Its Renovation.
were the great wits of the new French school , and when free-thinking had somewhat of novelty and fashion to recommend it . But we have said , we deny altogether the allegation concerning the spread of infidelity . We disbelieve the existence of any set of men zealous for the propagation of infidelity ; unless , indeed , infidelity mean the inclination to change any part of the doctrine or discipline of the
established church . Where are they ? what are the titles of their works ? Since the much abused /' ' Lectures" of Mr . Lawrence , we have heard of no infidel publications , and they are hardly known among the lower orders . The trash of Garble and Taylor has continued : —but what is its circulation ? not one hundredth part of the annual sale of Bibles ; scarcely more perhaps , than the consumption of sermons . The spread
of infidelity is a phantom . The clergy themselves , according to many , stand accused of supineness and want of zeal . For our parts , we cannot attribute any important effects to these causes , even should the censure be correct ; for , although the laxity of some of their body may diminish their congregations , the ardour and ability of the dissenters fully secure a supply of religious exhortation ; while , at the same time , the tenets of the latter differ little from orthodoxy , they inculcate exactly the same system of morals . If then , not increase of population , nor its
condensation , nor poverty , nor the spread of infidelity , nor the supineness of the church , be the true cause of the confessed demoralization of the English people , what is the cause ? Our opinion is , that the effect in question has been produced by , 1 st , A gradual change in the manners , not the morals , of society—a change resulting from the remote , and apparently feeble sources of fashionable and capricious mutation ; 2 nd . That the
public mind , enlig htened so far as to throw off the ancient trammels of authority , demands a moral discipline of a more extensive and liberal kind than is supplied at present by any class of religious or philosophical instructors . A proposition , so novel to many , as is implied in the first of the above propositions ; namely , that the mere manners and customs of
society influence more than any other cause the morals of society , demands some examination . In the first place , let any person candidly reflect on the motives which govern his conduct daily and hourly , in his intercourse with his fellow-creatures : —he ivill find , that in doing right , he is seldom acted upon by his religious belief , seldom thinks of the legal punishment that awaits delinquency on his part , seldom calls
upon the inward monitor , conscience , or the moral sense , for assistance against temptation ; but , that having instinctively imbibed the mode of thought and tone of feeling , which distinguishes those about him , his ideas are never directed out of the current of propriety ; wliich is , however , only another word for a system of conduct , approved of by the
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Or The Causes Of The Decay Of Our National Morality, And On Some Modern Schemes For Its Renovation.
were the great wits of the new French school , and when free-thinking had somewhat of novelty and fashion to recommend it . But we have said , we deny altogether the allegation concerning the spread of infidelity . We disbelieve the existence of any set of men zealous for the propagation of infidelity ; unless , indeed , infidelity mean the inclination to change any part of the doctrine or discipline of the
established church . Where are they ? what are the titles of their works ? Since the much abused /' ' Lectures" of Mr . Lawrence , we have heard of no infidel publications , and they are hardly known among the lower orders . The trash of Garble and Taylor has continued : —but what is its circulation ? not one hundredth part of the annual sale of Bibles ; scarcely more perhaps , than the consumption of sermons . The spread
of infidelity is a phantom . The clergy themselves , according to many , stand accused of supineness and want of zeal . For our parts , we cannot attribute any important effects to these causes , even should the censure be correct ; for , although the laxity of some of their body may diminish their congregations , the ardour and ability of the dissenters fully secure a supply of religious exhortation ; while , at the same time , the tenets of the latter differ little from orthodoxy , they inculcate exactly the same system of morals . If then , not increase of population , nor its
condensation , nor poverty , nor the spread of infidelity , nor the supineness of the church , be the true cause of the confessed demoralization of the English people , what is the cause ? Our opinion is , that the effect in question has been produced by , 1 st , A gradual change in the manners , not the morals , of society—a change resulting from the remote , and apparently feeble sources of fashionable and capricious mutation ; 2 nd . That the
public mind , enlig htened so far as to throw off the ancient trammels of authority , demands a moral discipline of a more extensive and liberal kind than is supplied at present by any class of religious or philosophical instructors . A proposition , so novel to many , as is implied in the first of the above propositions ; namely , that the mere manners and customs of
society influence more than any other cause the morals of society , demands some examination . In the first place , let any person candidly reflect on the motives which govern his conduct daily and hourly , in his intercourse with his fellow-creatures : —he ivill find , that in doing right , he is seldom acted upon by his religious belief , seldom thinks of the legal punishment that awaits delinquency on his part , seldom calls
upon the inward monitor , conscience , or the moral sense , for assistance against temptation ; but , that having instinctively imbibed the mode of thought and tone of feeling , which distinguishes those about him , his ideas are never directed out of the current of propriety ; wliich is , however , only another word for a system of conduct , approved of by the