The worst passages are those which betray a fanatical
antipathy to natural science, especially that in the third book
(150--190). The episode of the judgment of heaven on the young atheist
Misagathus, in the sixth book, is also fanatical and repulsive.
Puritanism had come into violent collision with the temporal power, and
had contracted a character fiercely political and revolutionary.
Methodism fought only against unbelief, vice, and the coldness of the
establishment; it was in no way political, much less revolutionary; by
the recoil from the atheism of the French Revolution its leaders,
including Wesley himself, were drawn rather to the Tory side. Cowper,
we have said, always remained in principle what he had been born, a
Whig, an unrevolutionary Whig, an "Old Whig" to adopt the phrase made
canonical by Burke.
'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume,
And we are weeds without it. All constraint
Except what wisdom lays on evil men
Is evil.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121