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Romaine's Calvinism was of a more extreme type than that of most of the Evangelicals. He was no Antinomian himself, but one can well believe that his teaching might easily be perverted to Antinomian purposes. Wilberforce has an entry in his journal for 1795: 'Dined with old Newton, where met Henry Thornton and Macaulay. Newton very calm and pleasing.
Long and short make it all, and wherever long and short can be combined, be it in marks, sounds, sneezes, fainting-fits, canes, or children, ideas can be conveyed by this arrangement of the long and short together. Only last night I was talking scandal with Mrs. Wilberforce at a summer party at the Hammersmiths.
In keeping up my visits to members of parliament, I was particularly attentive to Mr. Wilberforce, whom I found daily becoming more interested in the fate of Africa.
Wilberforce, how could any judge or jury, or any one, have the heart to punish her?" "Neither judge nor jury, my poor girl: but the law which says a man must not marry another woman while his first wife is living. There are many even who will not allow of a divorce in any circumstances; but I am not so sure of that.
His earnest efforts in behalf of the negro were as plainly the result of Evangelicalism as was the munificence of the Thorntons or the preaching of Venn. When Wilberforce was first impressed seriously, and was in doubt what plan of life to adopt, he consulted, like many others, John Newton. He could not have had recourse to a better adviser.
The last was drawn by Perceval, the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perceval was a friend of Wilberforce and sympathised both with his religious views and his hatred of the slave trade. He soon became intimate with Stephen, to whose influence the Orders in Council were generally attributed.
This motion was then necessary, if, according to the resolution of that House, the Slave Trade was to cease in 1796. It was opposed, however, by Sir William Yonge, and unfortunately lost by a majority of seventy-eight to fifty-seven. In the year 1796, Mr. Wilberforce renewed his efforts in the Commons. He asked leave to bring in a bill for the abolition of the Slave Trade, but in a limited time.
It is like the Divine Being Himself, Whose sun shines alike on the evil and on the good." In what theology did Wilberforce, whose adult life had been one long search for truth, finally repose? Assuredly he never lost his hold on the central facts of the Christian revelation as they are stated in the creed of Nicæa and Constantinople.
Wilberforce represented in this the real wave of Wesleyan religion which had made a humane reaction against Calvinism, and was in no mean sense philanthropic. But there is something romantic in the English mind which can always see what is remote. It is the strongest example of what men lose by being long-sighted.
Wedgewood aided the work, when he caused cameos to be struck, representing a kneeling African in chains, and thus made even capricious fashion an avenue to the heart. Clarkson assisted by patient investigation of evidence; and Fox and Wilberforce by eloquent speeches. Mungo Park gave his powerful influence by the kind and liberal manner in which he always represented the Africans.
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