Samuel Johnson on Religion

From James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D:

He much commended Law’s Serious Call, which he said was the finest piece of hortatory theology in any language.  (Page 440)

Talking of the Irish clergy…Ussher, he said, was the great luminary of the Irish church; and a greater, he added, no church could boast of; at least in modern times.  (Page 448)

Whatever philosophy may determine of material nature, it is certainly true of intellectual nature, that it abhors a vacuum: our minds cannot be empty; and evil will break in upon them, if they are not pre-occupied with good.  (Page 454)

[John Bunyan's] Pilgrim’s Progress has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind.  Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale.  It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote.  There is reason to think he had read Spencer.  (Page 529)

I think more highly of [John Milton] now than I did at twenty [Johnson made this remark when he was 63].  There is more thinking in him and in Butler, than in any of our poets.  (Page 529)

The only method by which religious truth can be established is by martyrdom.  The magistrate has a right to enforce what he thinks; and he who is conscious of the truth has a right to suffer.  I am afraid there is no other way of ascertaining the truth, but by persecution on the one hand and enduring it on the other.  (Page 539)

I think permitting men to preach any opinion contrary to the doctrine of the established church tends, in a certain degree, to lessen the authority of the church, and consequently, to lessen the influence of religion.  (Page 543)

 

Anglicanism Before and After the Revolutionary War

Before 1776, the Anglican church was supported by taxation and enjoyed a monopoly of performing marriages in all Southern colonies and in parts of New York.  It was disestablished in New York, Maryland, and the Carolinas, and complete religious liberty adopted in those states during the war.  In Virginia, however, it took a ten-year contest, which Jefferson called the severest of his life, to separate church from state.  Finally, the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty, drafted by Jefferson, passed the assembly on January 16, 1786.  The exercise of religion, it declares, is a “natural right” which has been infringed by “the impious presumption of legislators and rulers” to set up their own “modes of thinking as the only true and infallible,” and “to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves,” which is “sinful and tyrannical.”  The statute roundly declares, “No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.”  It even warns later assemblies that any attempt, on their part, to tamper with this law “will be an infringement of natural right.”  None, to this day, have ventured to do so.  The statute is still in force.

At the close of the War of Independence, the Anglican church reached its all-time low in America, partly owing to loss of support from taxes, partly because many Anglican clergymen went Tory.  But, there were enough patriotic laity left to demand an independent episcopate.  The Rev. Samuel Seabury, former rector of Westchester, New York, was elected bishop of Connecticut and sent abroad in 1784 to obtain consecration.  This was no easy matter, since the Archbishop of Canterbury still regarded the Americans as rebels and traitors.  But, the Scots bishops were more liberal and, through them, Bishop Seabury transmitted apostolic succession to the American episcopate.  The Protestant Episcopal Church of America was organized at a series of conventions between 1784 and 1789.  These conventions adopted the Book of Common Prayer (omitting prayers for the royal family) and gave more power to the laity than churchmen enjoyed in England.

From: The Oxford History of the American People by Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp. 293-294.

Samuel Eliot Morison (1887-1976) was Professor of American History at Harvard University (1915-1955).  He was also the official historian of World War II for the United States Navy.  His history of the Navy’s battles in that war was published in 15 volumes as History of U. S. Naval Operations in World War II (1947-1962).  He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson.