The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74
A Christian Discourse
A Christian Discourse.
* I have put the late Bishop of Peterborough into rather bad company here. His epigram of [unclear: referred] to legislative action only, and was not meant to relieve the individual Christian responsibility "to them that are weak" in the exercise of his own liberty. The Master of [unclear: retort] "A man is not free when he is drunk," would seem to mea sufficient answer to epigram if added "nor are his wife and children." As Abraham Lincoln humanely [unclear: the] world is in want of a good definition Of the word ' liberty.'"
† There has been some highly protitable controversy as to whether Noah was really the first [unclear: as] well as the first drunkard. Several of the ancients were of opinion, says Cruden, s.v. "Wine that" if wine had been known before the flood . . . Noah would have been upon [unclear: guard], so as not to have drank of it to excess." Others maintained "that the first men were [unclear: of] of the use of wine, which is a liquor so generally useful and agreeable that it could [unclear: be] unknown even to Adam himself. And as to Noah, thty say that though he knew the [unclear: ting] quality of wine, yet he might be deceived In the strength of it, and think that the [unclear: he] drink of it was not capable of causing the drunkenness in him that he afterwards [unclear: did] It is obvious that both lines of argument are capable of very striking results if [unclear: usly]worked out
Can it be denied that such an appeal would be illogical, [unclear: j] moral and blasphemous ? Yet I say deliberately that in none of [unclear: J] respects does it seriously misrepresent the moderate drinker whose [unclear: bul] is the Scripture. In logic, it covers most of the ground, and it does include a single argument which I have not heard urged by [unclear: profe] Christians from platform or pulpit, in the press or in private [unclear: conva] In morality, it is certainly shocking enough, but unless the moderate [unclear: dr] can show that there is any moral distinction between perpetuating curse which you could remove and introducing one which you could [unclear: s] away, then here again he is not misrepresented. If the phraseology [unclear: of] arguments be deemed even more offensive than their substance, [unclear: the] again is that of the original, which I decided, not without hesitation imitate in order to expose the odious practice of piecing together from garbled fragments of the scripture a disguise for a gospel [unclear: of] selfishnees. So far from healing the inherent indecency of the design, sanctimonious veneer appears to me to add to it the aggravation blasphemy, and I can well imagine the stern "Get thee behind [unclear: f] Satan !" with which all such pleas would have been swept aside by [unclear: c] Christ whose name they profane.†
* It is satisfactory to kneow that this is the only passage in the Bible when much-uabused word "moderation" occurs, and that in the Revised Version it [unclear: di] altogether, "forbearance" being substituted in the text and "gentleness" in the [unclear: ma] Greek word is the one which Matthew Arnold was fond of translating "sweet resonable Burke (Present Ditcontents, ad fin..), speaks of the old "Whigs as not being "of that [unclear: in] paradoxical morality to linagine that a spirit of moderation was properly shown in [unclear: pe] bearing the suffering of your Itiunda." May this species of "moderation" disappear [unclear: the] the hearts of Christians along with the disappearance of the word from their Bibles!
† Tyndale in his quarto New Testament of 1525 has the following marginal note to [unclear: M] 12 :—"Where the worde of God is understocke there: hit multiplieth and makith the people [unclear: ff] where hit is not understode, theare hit decreasith and makith the people woorse [unclear: s] "pestilent gloss," as Henry VIII and his bishops termed it, exactly strikes the practice [unclear: of] speak. The people are made worse, religion is disgraced t and the devil is rejoiced by [unclear: sd] proslitution of Hol Writ.