1435. EBB to William Merry
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 8, 46–50.
50 Wimpole Street
Novr 17– 1843–
My dear friend, If my infinitessimal sheets go on in an approach ad infinitum, they are an equivalent to the unity of your great sheet,—& in fact my letter was as long I ‘calculate,’ as your own. For yours I thank you much & cordially– I appreciate the kindness you extend to me. And in beginning a new sheet I am not going to plunge into a controversy,—being under a vow not to do it,—& being content to pass with you for ‘a rational person’ and no Calvinist in any true sense of predestinarianism after all. My creed is that controversy does harm; & I might say, my experience is that it does harm—for I have given no superficial attention in former years to this very subject, & read the arguments, such as they are, of logicians on both sides, & gone carefully through the scriptures with a reference to the points in question. My own inference is that the manner of election & predestination (those being scriptural words & therefore undeniable vehicles of some truth) is not revealed—although the total dependence of man ‘upon God[’] is revealed, as is his total debility & corruption without the operation of the Holy Ghost and the work of Christ Jesus. Nearly the whole of the second page of your letter satisfies me perfectly; and so does much of your book, [1] however I may yearn to cut certain passages from out of the heart of it—the truth being, my dear friend, that you are as slack an Arminian as ever I can be a Calvinist, & that you fall into contradictions by being too spiritual yourself for those you walk with. That extract for instance!– And then you do not & cannot prove your position that the Church of England is anti-calvinistic on the ground of the Arminian interpretation being supported by certain members of that church; because it is to be met on another ground, of the calvinistic interpretation being supported by other members of that church. The knife cuts two ways. In regard to the articles .. to the doctrines generally of the church of England, I reverence them, on the whole, as Christ’s own doctrines; & receive them as pure & spiritual. They are the doctrines, in the gross, of all Christians, under whatever denominations they may class themselves—& the Baptists, Congregationalists, Wesleyan Methodists &c hold them with as firm a hand as your bishops. Ah! you smile at me for my schism! And I, when you said you smiled, did not smile but quite laughed out, to find you ‘astonied’ at that recreancy. Why did you never hear that I was … a schismatic? And can you not imagine in your musing mind that a “rational person,” thinking & feeling a little, as all responsible persons should, on the most important of all subjects, might (without being by any means “a controvertialist by profession”) class himself or herself with the particular class of Christians which appears to approach nearest his or her view of Scriptural truth? For instance,—suppose that I received the Church of England definition of a church .. i e “a congregation of godly persons” [2] .. too fully to believe in the propriety of a National Church——and suppose my view of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, embraced a simple obedience to the command of the Lord that we “do this in remembrance of Him, [3] .. with no “mystery” beyond except the depth of God’s love— and suppose I preferred by temperament and reflection, a simpler form of worship & teaching than are to be met with in your assemblies—and suppose—even suppose .. that I believed the word ‘bishop’ in scripture, to mean a working minister … would you blame me for approaching what appeared to me the purest form of truth, .. would you esteem me unjustified in my deed, for leaving what appeared to me the impurer form of truth? I appeal to your reverence for Truth. My dear friend & brother, in the unity of the Church of Christ [4] I believe; and I believe that I do not sin against it schismatically, & that I cannot sin against it schismatically, as long as I love Christ, and recognize in Him the brotherhood of all Believers. As there are many mansions in Heaven, [5] so are there many churches on earth—and the true sin of schism is (according to my perception of it,) a sin against the unity of all the churches in Christdom & no more or less.
And now I come to what has interested me not the least in your letter .. the words about my dear friend Miss Mitford. Can it be really true that she goes to no place of worship? I had not even feared it. Oh yes; in the course of our long correspondence, & in the liberty which she has constantly permitted to me, I have often entered upon the subject of religion with her, taking the opportunities as they were presented. Sometimes she has not answered me,—and sometimes, particularly at the period of her father’s death,—she did so almost satisfactorily. Certainly at that period she expressed definitely that her hope for him & herself was in Christ alone, & that in prayer & the sense of the great Hereafter, lay the whole of her personal consolation. Still I will not tell you that I am contented altogether—I love her too much. She has not, I fear, distinct views—and perhaps, perhaps, her interest in the subject,—now that the moment of emotion which brings us all to the feet of God, is past,—may not be strong enough to admit of much long & steady reflection. How can I be contented? More especially how can I be contented after what you tell me?– Dear Mr Merry, if you are able to do any good, do it!—and you who have the opportunity of personal communication with her, must have occasions of useful intervention, to which any intimacy by correspondence is weak & inadequate. If you & I (for instance) were in this room together at this moment, you might fasten me down to a controversy on predestination & I might’nt be able to run away– It is so easy to escape from a subject in a correspondence—and so difficult, face to face! Oh, if you could open her gifted mind fully, serenely, to the divine truths on which depend not only “a happy futurity” [6] but a happy present, what a benediction would be due to you both from herself & from all who love her! I should tell you that sometimes I have felt happy, and sometimes unhappy in relation to her religious state—& also, that she was more vividly affected by her visit to the Roman Catholic bishop & chapel near Bath than she ever appeared to me to be by any cause of the kind. I had asked her (forgive me) to go to hear Mr Jay the non-conformist at Bath, [7] who has been the means of doing much good,—but she went to the R. Catholic chapel instead, & was too pleased to leave me quite satisfied. If she were a person of different habits of mind, I should quite have trembled when she talked lightly of “going to be a catholic.” [8] I tell you all, dear Mr Merry—and if you prove to be the instrument of doing the good to which you aspire, I shall be the first to thank God for you!—for her!! & for me!
It seems to me (—in reference to your kind question,—) that everybody must be tired of hearing of me,—& that to be so long ill without dying, is a decided case of black letter in the body. [9] According to Plato I should have been put to death long ago, as a chronic patient, [10] —and really I feel a little ashamed of being alive. No wonder, therefore, that I should be silent about myself whenever I can! Yet just for those reasons I must thank you for your enquiry,—& reply to it by an assurance of my being considerably better upon the whole, however confined by necessity to my sofa & one room still. My prospects change while my position remains the same—and I begin to understand that it may be God’s will (who has caused me to survive much trial of the body, & mental agonies without a name,) to keep me in the world to watch, wait, & perhaps work, far far longer than once (& that not very long ago) I could have believed either possible or endurable.
May He bless you in your work—and in your joy! I thank you for all your kindness to me, & entreat you to suffer me ‘to walk’ by your side “as far as we are agreed,” as an affectionate, however unworthy “Christian sister should.”!– [11]
Elizabeth B Barrett.
Publication: Nicoll, II, 132–137.
Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library and Wellesley College.
1. EBB is continuing the discussion, started in letter 1420, of Merry’s new book dealing with predestination and election.
2. Cf. the nineteenth of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Faith of the Church of England; this states that “The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men.”
3. Cf. Luke, 22:19.
4. Cf. Ephesians, 4:13.
5. Cf. John, 14:2.
6. A reference to Merry’s 1839 publication, The Philosophy of a Happy Futurity.
7. See letter 1220.
8. For prior references to fears of Miss Mitford’s conversion, see letters 1247 and 1258, note 12.
9. i.e., ancient history, comparable to the Gothic type used in the earliest days of printing.
10. Plato did not advocate euthanasia, but proposed withholding medical treatment from the incurable (Republic, I, 408–409).
11. Cf. Amos, 3:3.
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