All things strive to ascend, and ascend in their striving. And shall man
alone stoop? Shall his pursuits and desires, the reflections of his inward
life, be like the reflected image of a tree on the edge of a pool, that
grows downward, and seeks a mock heaven in the unstable element beneath it,
in neighbourhood with the slim water-weeds and oozy bottom-grass that are
yet better than itself and more noble, in as far as substances that appear
as shadows are preferable to shadows mistaken for substance? No! it must be
a higher good to make you happy. While you labour for any thing below your
proper humanity, you seek a happy life in the region of death. Well saith
the moral poet:--
'Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man!'"
P. 105. 2d ed.--ED.]
July 12. 1827.
POPEDOM.--SCANDERBEG.--THOMAS A BECKET.--PURE AGES OF GREEK, ITALIAN, AND
ENGLISH.--LUTHER.--BAXTER.--ALGERNON SIDNEY'S STYLE.--ARIOSTO AND TASSO.--
PROSE AND POETRY.--THE FATHERS.--RHENFERD.--JACOB BEHMEN.
What a grand subject for a history the Popedom is! The Pope ought never to
have affected temporal sway, but to have lived retired within St. Angelo,
and to have trusted to the superstitious awe inspired by his character and
office.
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