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"I am ready enough to allow," answered Mr Monckton, "that an eccentric genius, such, for example, as yours, may murmur at the tediousness of complying with the customs of the world, and wish, unconfined, and at large, to range through life without any settled plan or prudential restriction; but would you, therefore, grant the same licence to every one? would you wish to see the world peopled with defiers of order, and contemners of established forms? and not merely excuse the irregularities resulting from uncommon parts, but encourage those, also, to lead, who without blundering cannot even follow?"
This blind zeal in Seceders, against a testimony for truth in its purity, did gradually increase, until it hurried them on to a more particular and formal stating of their terms of communion, whereby were totally excluded all the free and faithful of the land from their communion, who could not approve of, nor swear the bond, whereby they pretended to renew the covenants: as in their act at Edinburgh, 1744; wherein they did resolve and determine, "That the renovation of the National Covenant of Scotland, and the Solemn League and Covenant of the three nations, in the manner now agreed upon, and proposed by the Presbytery, shall be the terms of ministerial communion with this Presbytery, and likewise of Christian communion, in admission of people to sealing ordinances; secluding therefrom all opposers, contemners, and slighters of the said renovation of our solemn covenants."
They were the avowed and determined adversaries of monarchy and all aristocratic titles and privileges, and contemners of Christianity; and they had started a journal for the dissemination of their ultra-democratic and irreligious doctrines, having for its watchwords Liberty and Equality.
We have an opportunity of judging how far it would be convenient or agreeable to do so, in the conduct of some soi-disant contemners of forms; we perceive that such contempt is equally the offspring of selfishness with slavish regard: it is only the exchange of the selfishness of vanity for the selfishness of indolence and pride, and the world is the loser by the exchange.
I have read a fiery gospel, writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on." He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat: Oh! be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
People of that stamp, who are not ashamed to worship, who do not philosophize but only think just so much as is necessary for acting rightly, those are the worst contemners of every supersensual manifestation." "And the students of nature in the Museum?" asked Krates. "They believe nothing to be real that they cannot see and observe."
They were to punish the heretic, not as one who errs in an intellectual judgment, but as a moral leper and for whose evil influence the community was responsible to God. The civil magistrates were also to punish all profaners of the Sabbath, all contemners of the ministry, all disturbers of public worship, and to proceed "against schismatic or obstinately corrupt churches."
"There are already too many men in the empire." "But never enough good and useful citizens." "Outrageous contemners of the gods and useless citizens!" "Here in Alexandria, where many have accommodated themselves to Greek habits of life and thought, and where all have adopted the Greek tongue, they are undoubtedly good citizens, and wholly devoted to Caesar." "Do they take part in the rejoicings?"
Often he deeply felt his human weakness, but he was quite capable of believing in the sacredness of his imperial person, and this he always found most easy when he had trodden under foot some one who had been rash enough to insult him, or not to acknowledge his superiority. And was it not on the contemners of the gods that their heaviest punishments fell?
People of that stamp, who are not ashamed to worship, who do not philosophize but only think just so much as is necessary for acting rightly, those are the worst contemners of every supersensual manifestation." "And the students of nature in the Museum?" asked Krates. "They believe nothing to be real that they cannot see and observe."
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