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'Earnest and Serious Answer to Dr. Trapp. 293

CHAPTER XVI.

ANSWER TO DR. TRAPP,' AND 'APPEAL TO ALL THAT DOUBT, &C.'

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As in the last two works we were reminded that we were still under the guidance of the writer of the 'Three Letters to the Bishop of Bangor,' so in the work now to be considered we are reminded that we are still under the guidance of the author of the Serious Call.' Law's mysticism no more changed his asceticism than it did his catholicism. It modified both; but that was all. As he was still the High Churchman in point of doctrine, so he was still the Puritan in his estimate of the Christian's relation towards 'the world.' A discourse, therefore, 'on the folly, sin, and danger of being righteous overmuch,' would naturally call forth a refutation from him, even if he had not been personally attacked, as he was, by Dr. Trapp. But if on such a subject Law still held Puritan sentiments, they were entirely free from Puritan sourness. The first paragraphs of the Earnest and Serious Answer to Dr. Trapp' give us the true key to the understanding of the spirit in which Law wrote. 'Might I,' he writes, 'follow the bent of my own mind, my pen, such as it is, should be wholly employ'd in setting forth the infinite love of God to mankind in Christ Jesus, and in endeavouring to draw all men to the belief and acknowledgment of it. . . . It is so difficult to enter into controversy without being, or at least seeming, in some degree unkind to the person that one opposes, that it is

294

Law writes from the Heart.

with great reluctance that I have enter'd upon my present undertaking, having nothing more deeply riveted in my heart than an universal love and kindness for all mankind, and more especially for those whom God has called to be my fellow-labourers in promoting the salvation of mankind.'

There is not one word in this treatise which belies this fair profession. An earnest, tender care for the welfare of all mankind, and especially for that of his brethren in the sacred ministry, breathes through every line of it. One feels, as one reads, that every word comes from the heartand that a very large, noble, and generous heart. Above all, his appeal to the clergy on their duty in the sad state of religion which was confessed on all sides, is singularly touching and affectionate. However unwilling,' he said, 'yet I find myself obliged to consider and lay open many grievous faults in the doctor's discourse, and to show to all Christians that the dearest interests of their souls are much endanger'd by it;' and it is manifest on the face of it that nothing but an intense conviction of the truth of this assertion would have led him to write as he did. He might have said of this, as he did of a previous work, 'My stile is the stile of love and zeal for your salvation; and if you condemn anything but love in it, you condemn something that is not there.' '

1

At the same time, it would be a great injustice to Dr. Trapp to judge him simply by the impression which this treatise of Law's leaves upon the mind. It has been remarked before, that Law, in spite of his temperateness, had an extraordinary knack of putting his adversary in the wrong. Perhaps it would be more correct to say 'in consequence of his temperateness'; for intemperate language

On the Plain Account, &c.,' Works, vol. v. p. 195.

Contrast between Dr. Trapp and Law. 295

always recoils upon its author. The fact is, Mr. Law and Dr. Trapp looked upon life from such entirely different standpoints that it was impossible for either to appreciate the other. Dr. Trapp was a very incarnation of eighteenthcentury feeling; Law in the eighteenth century was an anachronism. A few words on Dr. Trapp's life and writings will bring out clearly the contrast between the two men. He was born in 1679, and was therefore seven years older than Law. In 1704 he was elected Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford; and, in 1708 (the year in which Law took his degree), was appointed the first Professor of Poetry at Oxford.' Trapp, like Law, was a distinct High Churchman, acting as manager for Dr. Sacheverell in his trial in 1709, and subsequently contributing his quota to the Bangorian controversy on the same side as Law. But, unlike Law, he was more attracted by the political than by the theological aspect of High Churchmanship; and, unlike Law, he did not suffer his High Church opinions to carry him to their logical result, and so become a nonjuror. He became what was called a Hanoverian Tory, and took an active part in political disputes on the Tory side. He was then made Rector of Christ Church, Newgate Street, and S. Leonard's, Foster Lane, and held the somewhat thankless office of chaplain to Viscount Bolingbroke, whom he always regarded as his patron. But it is rather unfair to suggest, as has been done,2 that Bolingbroke's contemptuous opinion of the clergy was to any extent based on the estimate which he had formed of his chaplain. In point of fact, there seems to be no reason to doubt that Dr. Trapp was a worthy man, according to his lights; but those lights were certainly not Law's lights. Like many of the eighteenth-century clergy, he had a strong lay element

1 His portrait is still to be seen in the Bodleian.

2 See The Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, vol. i. p. 179.

296

Contrast between Dr. Trapp and Law.

in his composition. He was an active-minded man, and a voluminous writer on a most heterogeneous mass of subjects. Many of his writings Law would have regarded as sheer waste of time, if not something worse. According to Law's rigorous sentiments, it was bad enough for a clergyman to translate Virgil into English blank verse, to describe foreign countries, to write on exclusively political subjects. All these things the doctor did; but even these were not all. As a crowning enormity, Dr. Trapp actually wrote a tragedy; thus, according to Law's views, directly helping on the devil's own work.' It need hardly be said that Dr. Trapp was a violent and uncompromising opponent of the Methodists. But here, again, it is hardly fair to affirm, as has been done, that his opposition arose from a mistaken notion that he was thereby recommending himself to his ecclesiastical superiors.' He only took the part

2

1 The following is a list of Dr. Trapp's works, so far as I have been able to trace them;

1. Prælectiones Poetica, in schola naturalis philosophiæ, Oxon. habita.

2. Preservative against Unsettled Notions and Want of Principle in Religion. Two vols. of sermons.

3. Popery Truly Stated and Briefly Refuted.

4. Explanatory Notes on the Four Gospels.

5. The Doctrine of the Trinity.

6. Thoughts upon the Four Last Things-Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. A poem

7. Mesech and Kedar.

8. The whole of Virgil translated into English blank verse.

9. A Single Combat (on Whitefield), and several other works against the

same man.

10. The Character of the Present Set of Whigs.

11. The Spirit of the Nunnery. A tale from the Spanish.

12. Pean. A poem (dedicated to Lord Bolingbroke).

13. A Picture of Italy. Translation.

14. Abra-Mule. A Tragedy.

15. The Nature, &c., of being Righteous Overmuch, &c.

16. Various Papers in the Examiner.

17. A translation of Anacreon into Latin verse.

8. Milton's Paradise Lost translated into Latin verse.

of Lady Huntingdon, vol. i. p. 179.

Dr. Trapp on being Righteous Overmuch.' 297

which the vast majority of his order took, and, though we may consider them mistaken, we have no right to consider them insincere. But few clergy attracted so much attention by their opposition to the Methodists as Dr. Trapp. Loud and many were the invectives which he thundered forth from the pulpit, and afterwards issued from the press, against these new disturbers of the peace; and one of the most notorious of these effusions now comes before us in connection with William Law.

'The Discourse on the Nature, Folly, Sin, and Danger of being Righteous Overmuch,' is, as it stands in Dr. Trapp's printed works, the substance of four discourses rolled into one. Considering the universal complaint in George II.'s reign that all classes were righteous overlittle, we might certainly agree with the comment of a noble lady, who to a certain extent favoured Methodism, on the sermon. 'It is a doctrine,' she says, 'which does not seem absolutely necessary to be preached to the people of the present age.' 2 Dr. Trapp, however, thought otherwise; but it is only fair to him to state that he deals with this very obvious objection at the outset of his discourse. 'Righteous overmuch? may one say' (thus he commences); 'is there any danger of that? Is it even possible? Can we be too good? Or, if that might be, is there any occasion, however, of warning against it in these times, when the danger

It is entitled, The Nature, Folly, Sin, and Danger of being Righteous Overmuch, with a particular view to the doctrines and practices of certain modern enthusiasts; being the substance of four discourses lately preached in the parish churches of Christ Church and S. Lawrence Jewry, London, and S. Martin'sin-the-Fields, Westminster. By Joseph Trapp, D.D. 1739.

2 The Countess of Hertford, afterwards Duchess of Somerset. She contrasts this discourse of Dr. Trapp's with the great tenderness and moderation with which the Bishop of London [Gibson] treated the Methodists personally, though he had thought it necessary to write a pastoral letter to warn the people of his diocese against being led away by them. See The Life and Times of Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, vol. i. p. 197.

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