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The death of two of his patrons, however, led him to change his views, and coming under the influence of Nicholas Ferrar, the quietist of Little Gidding, and of Laud, he took orders in 1626 and, after serving for a few years as prebendary of Layton Ecclesia, or Leighton Broomswold, he became in 1630 Rector of Bemerton, Wilts, where he passed the remainder of his life, discharging the duties of a parish priest with conscientious assiduity.
It ought to be a calm; not a screaming bull-fight or a battle of gladiators, but a temple for placid contemplation, rapt worship, stately rhythmic ceremony, and music solemn and tender. I shall take down my Snyders and Rubens when I get home; and turn quietist.
A distinctly High Churchman was the originator of what afterwards became the Low Church party a Nonjuror, of the most decidedly 'Orange' element in the Church; a Quietist who scarcely ever quitted his retirement in an obscure Northamptonshire village, of that party which, above all others, was distinguished for its activity, bodily no less than spiritual, a clergyman who rarely preached a sermon, of the party whose great forte was preaching!
Man lived only for the Holy Law; the world had been created merely that the Law might be studied; new lights upon its words and letters were the only things that could matter to a sensible soul. Time and again he had raged against the artificiality of this quietist cosmos, accusing it of his people's paralysis, but to-night every fibre of him yearned for this respite from the harsh reality.
Perpetual type of the quietist, the moderate man, he censured the errors of the Church with discrimination and gentleness, as if Borgianism had not been too long rampant at Rome, as if men's minds throughout Christendom were not too deeply stirred to be satisfied with mild rebukes against sin, especially when the mild rebuker was in receipt of livings and salaries from the sinner.
The hymn-book which Dick had found, in his midnight invasion of her chamber, opened to favorite hymns, especially some of the Methodist and Quietist character. Many had noticed, that certain tunes, as sung by the choir, seemed to impress her deeply; and some said, that at such times her whole expression would change, and her stormy look would soften so as to remind them of her poor, sweet mother.
In the early period of his messianic career, the period of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was a thorough quietist. But if we realize that the delusion that he was "The Messiah" had entered his mind so vehemently that he firmly believed that the end of the world was imminent, and that it was his duty to save as many as possible, we can understand his acquiescence to the violence which followed.
The two men were poles asunder. The one was a quietist evangelical; the other a staunch High Churchman. According to Molther the correct order was, through Christ to the ordinances of the Church; according to Wesley, through the ordinances to Christ.
It is not particularly profitable, again, to seek for Emerson one of the labels out of the philosophic handbooks. Was he the prince of Transcendentalists, or the prince of Idealists? Are we to look for the sources of his thought in Kant or Jacobi, in Fichte or Schelling? How does he stand towards Parmenides and Zeno, the Egotheism of the Sufis, or the position of the Megareans? Shall we put him on the shelf with the Stoics or the Mystics, with Quietist, Pantheist, Determinist? If life were long, it might be worth while to trace Emerson's affinities with the philosophic schools; to collect and infer his answers to the everlasting problems of psychology and metaphysics; to extract a set of coherent and reasoned opinions about knowledge and faculty, experience and consciousness, truth and necessity, the absolute and the relative. But such inquiries would only take us the further away from the essence and vitality of Emerson's mind and teaching. In philosophy proper Emerson made no contribution of his own, but accepted, apparently without much examination of the other side, from Coleridge after Kant, the intuitive,
into the complete retirement of holy meditation. But there were other elements in his nature which urged him towards a very different course. He was no simple quietist. He was an English gentleman, an officer, a man of energy and action, a lover of danger and the audacities that defeat danger; a passionate creature, flowing over with the self-assertiveness of independent
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