Samuel Johnson's Anglicanism (1)

 Through his essays and composed sermons Samuel Johnson made available a complex portrait of the man and his religion. Here are excerpts taken from a paper by Philip Harvey delivered to The Johnson Society of Australia.

  

It is commonplace to speak of Samuel Johnson’s essays as moral examples based squarely, if usually covertly, in Christian teaching. Stand back from such popular, or secular essays, and the classical epithet at the head may as easily be a saying from the Bible or the Fathers of the early Church. This grand endeavour of preaching and exhorting by other means joins together separate literary forms that reached a special level of popularity in the 18^th century: the urbane essay composed along classical lines; the burgeoning fictional form of parable and allegory; and the inspiring sermon. Some of Johnson’s Rambler essays are overt works of Christian meditation.

Rambler no. 44 is an allegorical essay that contrasts two female figures met by the author in a dream. The first is a “most shocking figure.” “She was drest in black, her skin was contracted into a thousand wrinkles, her eyes deep sunk in her head, and her complexion pale and livid as the countenance of death.” This figure, we live to learn, is Superstition. The other figure, “the loveliest object I had ever beheld,” calls herself Religion. “The most engaging charms of youth and beauty appeared in all her form; effulgent glories sparkled in her eyes, and their awful splendours were softened by the gentlest looks of compassion and peace. At her approach, the frightful spectre, who had before tormented me, vanished away, and with her all the horrors she had caused.”

By 1750, superstition had taken on new meanings. For some, religion itself was no more than superstition. For the English, superstition had come to be a word synonymous with Roman Catholicism and all the works of the ‘old religion’, suppressed at the Reformation. But Johnson quietly avoids branding. His Wisdom figure exclaims: “My name is Religion. I am the offspring of Truth and Love, and the parent of Benevolence, Hope and Joy. That monster from whose power I have freed you is called Superstition, she is the child of Discontent, and her followers are Fear and Sorrow. Thus different as we are, she has often the insolence to assume my name and character, and seduces unhappy mortals to think us the same, till she, at length, drives them to the borders of Despair, that dreadful abyss into which you were just going to sink.”

Johnson is condemnatory of any religion that drives people to Despair, and this is being directed at any form of Christianity, whether Catholic, Dissenter sect, or within his own Church of England. Johnson makes no distinctions and gives no favours. All forms of Christianity, organised or not, have the potential to drive their adherents into wrong religion and despair. What follows is an extensive discourse from the fair figure of Religion, in which she adumbrates the identifying marks of true religion.

“For what end has the lavish hand of providence diffused such innumerable objects of delight (the various beauties of the globe), but that all might rejoice in the privilege of existence, and be filled with gratitude to the beneficent author of it? Thus to enjoy the blessings he has sent, is virtue and obedience … Infinite goodness is the source of created existence.”

Confronted with the objection that such religion invites an unlaborious life and escapes the “painful toils of virtue”, she replies: “The true enjoyments of a reasonable being do not consist in unbounded indulgence, or luxurious ease,” before instructing that “whoever would be really happy must make the diligent and regular exercise of his superior powers his chief attention, adoring the perfections of his Maker, expressing good-will to his fellow creatures, cultivating inward rectitude.”

Elsewhere she says of suffering: “Suffering is no duty but where it is necessary to avoid guilt, or to do good; nor pleasure a crime, but where it strengthens the influence of bad inclinations, or lessens the generous activity of virtue.”

All told, Johnson is saying that where there is happiness you will find true religion and that one of religion’s certain signs of truth is, indeed, happiness. Salvation is the ultimate aim of a Christian life, yet happiness in this life is “a needful support and refreshment for the present moment.” Again, enjoyment of the created world and, despite all travail, an emphatic trust in happiness are not by any means uniquely Anglican preserves, yet Johnson’s measure of happiness (or call it felicity or bliss) as a sure indication of spiritual well-being is one that has become familiar in Anglican life. Only listen to the final call of the figure Religion and you can hear Johnson hearing his own command: “Return then with me from continual misery to moderate enjoyment, and grateful alacrity. Return from the contracted views of solitude to the proper duties of a relative and dependent being. Religion is not confined to cells and closets, nor restrained to sullen retirement. These are the gloomy doctrines of Superstition, by which she endeavours to break those chains of benevolence and social affection, that link the welfare of every particular with that of the whole. Remember that the greatest honour you can pay to the author of your being is by such a cheerful behaviour, as discovers a mind satisfied with his dispensations.”

Laden with big words, Johnson’s essay on forgiveness [Rambler no. 185] is directed at the educated reader, not at a mixed congregation of the literate and illiterate. It opens, forbiddingly: “No vitious dispositions of the mind more obstinately resist both the counsels of philosophy and the injunctions of religion, than those which are complicated with an opinion of dignity; and which we cannot dismiss without leaving in the hands of opposition some advantage iniquitously obtained, or suffering from our own prejudices some imputation of pusillanimity.

“For this reason scarcely any law of our Redeemer is more openly transgressed, or more industriously evaded, than that by which he commands his followers to forgive injuries, and prohibits, under the sanction of eternal misery, the gratification of the desire which every man feels to return pain upon him that inflicts it. Many who could have conquered their anger, are unable to combat pride, and pursue offences to extremity of vengeance, lest they should be insulted by the triumph of an enemy.”

Before dealing with long term consequences of not forgiving, Johnson then details a distinctive psychology of wilful vengeance: “He that, when his reason operates in its full force, can thus, by the mere prevalence of self-love, prefer himself to his fellow beings, is very unlikely to judge equitably when his passions are agitated by a sense of wrong, and his attention wholly engrossed by pain, interest, or danger. Whoever arrogates to himself the right of vengeance, shows how little he is qualified to decide his own claims, since he certainly demands what he would think unfit to be granted to another.”

Johnson follows the deepening convolutions that beset an unforgiving person: “For it can never be hoped, that he who first commits an injury, will contentedly acquiesce in the penalty required: the same haughtiness of contempt, or vehemence of desire, that prompt the act of injustice, will more strongly incite its justification; and resentment can never so exactly balance the punishment with the fault, but there will remain an overplus of vengeance which even he who condemns his first action will think himself entitled to retaliate. What then can ensue but a continual exacerbation of hatred, an unextinguishable feud, an incessant reciprocation of mischief, a mutual vigilance to entrap, and eagerness to destroy?”

Forgiveness is one of the central commands of Christian life. Johnson expresses with energetic mind how real is the possibility for a person to forgive and be forgiven. This possibility has a special place in Anglican thought, with enormous emphasis in Johnson’s main reference, The Book of Common Prayer, which was edited in its 1662 form after years of divisive civil war; the Book of Common Prayer was a serious solution toward national reconciliation. Johnson’s essay takes time to warn just how far an unforgiving individual can go, while all the time convincing himself he (or she) is right. It asserts, “Nothing is more apparent than that, however injured, or however provoked, some must at last be contented to forgive.” It shows that forgiveness is possible for all. One reason the essay works is that any reader can see themselves in any of the roles – persecutor, victim, sinner, redeemed.

Perhaps nothing in Johnson’s religious writings is more “serious and surprising” than the 28 known sermons. Fulsome and authoritative, they are written using the complete support of Anglican doctrine. They are also written to be delivered by clergy friends, not by Johnson himself. Some of these sermons were paid for by the clergyperson, privileged to repeat the measured and handsome language of Johnson. Whether the clergy assisted in the final drafts is impossible to discern. The Revd John Taylor of St Margaret’s Westminster was a special beneficiary of this unusual practice, though commentaries on the composition hint that Johnson wrote sermons for Taylor in order to get a free lunch after the service. All this seems to be perhaps somewhat unAnglican behaviour and there are good reasons why records of such practice are scarce.

Of use in this context are Johnson’s two sermons on the Eucharist. In Sermon 9 Johnson places value on the Lord’s Supper as a means for repentants to improve their lives, and therefore find a better life. “The terms, upon which we are to hope for any benefits from the merits of Christ, are faith, repentance, and subsequent obedience. These are therefore the three chief and general heads of examination.” While Sermon 22 uses the same essential and superlative language to extol the Eucharist in the following way, its emphasis is on the necessity of all Christians to partake of the Communion: “The celebration of the sacrament is generally acknowledged, by the Christian church, to be the highest act of devotion, and the most solemn part of positive religion, and has therefore most engaged the attention of those, who either profess to teach the way to happiness, or endeavour to learn it.”

Johnson’s own failure to attend church as regularly as he thought fit is made abundantly clear in the Diaries, as we have seen.  The old line about those who write CE in the census when they mean Christmas-Easter, does not apply to Johnson. At home he regularly said prayers, made devotions, and went through long self-examination, all part of preparation for the sacrament of Eucharist; even if he did not then attend the service. This pattern of worship, serious and surprising in its method, remained his usual way throughout his life. Johnson maintained the potential for communicating, even if his attendance was sporadic.

The accepted view of eighteenth-century English religion as decadent, uneventful, even moribund, is gradually being overturned by recent historians. Rowan Williams may have explained this perception when he said that far more work has to be done. Samuel Johnson contradicts the perception in an overwhelming manner. By his life and manner, an Anglican layman shows how to adapt his religion to everyday life more effectively and creatively than almost any of the contemporary clergy of his time.