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must not be computed from their separate congregations; and the pillars of revelation are shaken by those men who preserve the name without the substance of religion, who indulge the license without the temper of philosophy."*

I would not omit the concluding part of this extract, though conscious of its great unjustness and illiberality. Those Christians need not be ashamed of a creed, which meets with the disapprobation of such sneering and disingenuous unbelieverst as Mr. Gibbon.

* " I shall recommend to public animadversion two passages in Dr. Priestley, which betray the ultimate tendency of his opinions. At the first of these (Hist. of the Corruptions. of Christianity, vol. i. p. 275, 276.) the priest, at the second (vol. ii. p. 484.) the magistrate may tremble."

Dr. Priestley has ably answered this gross misrepresentation of Mr. Gibbon; a misrepresentation evidently provoked by the just castigation the Doctor gave him in the General Conclusion to the work which is so oddly" recommended to public animadversion." Nor can I forbear to remark, that though, perhaps, less disposed to admit some of the tenets in Dr. Priestley's creed than even Mr. Gibbon himself, it is surely a little out of character in the author of the Decline and Fall, to complain of any thing at which "the priest may tremble:" as to the magistrates, Mr. Gibbon was well known to have been a very staunch powers-that-be-man, though it is equally notorious, that he directed the most invidious attack against the powers of heaven.

SECTION VIII.

Influence of the Reformation on Literature and

the Arts.

THE influence of the Reformation on the arts was decidedly and extensively injurious. During the long and splendid pre-eminence of the Catholic church, a multitude of painters, architects, and sculptors, arose to extend the dominion of taste, and give beauty and magnificence to the sacred structures of the country. The productions of men, inspired by genius, and excited by religious zeal, far surpassed, in the loftiness of their conception, in brilliancy of execution, and in all the minute graces that enthusiasm and perseverance could alone bestow, every monument of human art that men, desirous of temporal fame and the common excitements of gain and popularity, have ever been able to produce. To the operation of religious faith, the Greeks were indebted for much of their excellence in art: the temples of the heathen deities were the noblest monuments of ancient taste, munificence and grandeur. But even in the pagan world, the arts were the business of a few: enthusiasm might animate the professional sculptor, but could not form a Phidias or a Praxiteles. It was reserved for the religion of the Roman world, to exhibit the

extraordinary spectacle of a whole empire devoting itself to the cultivation of those arts that best contribute to the embellishment of religious structures, and to the sanction of its external ceremonies. Having once been taught to worship the Deity through the medium of his visible presence, the Catholic world spared neither labour, nor talent, nor expense, to render the sensible images by which they were reminded of religious truths, or impressed with the presence of omnipotence, worthy of the sincerity of their faith, and the ardour of their worship. The churches of the Roman Catholics were not erected and adorned by the regular masters of the art the great body of men to whom the construction and embellishment of religious edifices were committed, undertook the most extraordinary works, and arrived at the most unexpected excellence; and there are still to be found, within the circumscribed limits of this island, statues and paintings, the production of obscure and, probably, uneducated men, that a Raphael or a Phidias might not have been ashamed to own.

This excellence, while it was excited by religion, was corrected and preserved by the necessary presence of immediate and continual criticism. The productions of art, by which devotion was inspired, and infidelity abashed, were exposed to every eye, and scrutinized by every devotee. Comparison was easy; zeal, accustomed to gra

tification, would become fastidious: the artist, who failed of pleasing his fellow-christians, not only sustained the disgrace of imperfection or negligence, but felt the reproaches of remorse: unable to fulfil his own conceptions, he blamed his want of faith as much as he lamented his deficiency in skill, and was excited to more successful efforts by the emulation of the artist, and the enthusiasm of the Christian.

The innumerable statues that still remain, after all that mistaken zeal, or protestant intolerance (for the Reformers were not without errors) have been able to destroy, are the best proof of the regular and extensive effect of Catholicism, in the improvement and cultivation of the arts. The multiplicity of the works of art, and the baneful influence of the Reformation in its progress, are both exemplified in the history of Henry the VIIIth, as a Reformer. He issued a proclamation, by which all images whatever were commanded to be destroyed. The work of destruction began, and was continued for nearly six weeks, when accident alone prevented its completion: yet such was the multitude of statues and images, and so great was the excellence of their execution, that though it is to be presumed that the best and most conspicuous productions became the first objects of iconoclastic fury, and though the mandate of the king was obeyed with the united alacrity of zeal and servility, the number of the

works even of those that have remained, is so great as to have deserved our astonishment and admiration, even supposing them to have been all that had originally existed.

It was not by the mere destruction of images, that the Reformation was productive of injury to the fine arts; but by the introduction of a penurious and puritanical spirit. From hating the reliques of Catholicism, they proceeded to condemn and to discountenance the instruments of their production; because the beauty and sublimity of human workmanship had been displayed in the productions of idolatry: the skill that produced them, and the qualities they displayed, became themselves the objects of fear or disgust. In progress of time, external ornament began to be regarded as indicative of popish feelings, or characteristic of idolatry: he who wished to display the sincerity of his Protestantism, found it necessary to frequent an humble and unadorned place of worship; and whatever decorum or magnificence the English Church has been able to preserve, it has secured by the secession, rather than the amelioration, of its puritanical members,

It might have been imagined, indeed, that of whatever disadvantages to the progress of sculp ture the Reformation may have been the cause, it would at least release it from the trammels of uniformity: that the monotonous groups, which

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