Samuel Johnson's Anglicanism (2)

In a conclusion to a paper given to The Johnson Society of Australia, Philip Harvey sets out ten Johnsonian contrasts, not contradictions or paradoxes, but contrasts that help define what we may call his Anglicanism.

1. Johnson made what we would call religious retreats from the world, and he did this in every year of his life. Retreats that were often no more than staying at home to read the Bible, to pray, meditate, and renew faith.

By contrast, he spent the rest of his time immersed in the world and all its doings, with little indication from Johnson that he saw these as separate worlds. [In his sermon on Religion and Superstition,] Johnson says that “society is the true sphere of human virtue.” He means that social life, with its restraints and sufferings, as well as its freedom and promise, is the real test of our ability to grow, and that religious retreat prepares for and explains these experiences.

2. Johnson used the Easter self-examination as a means to self-reform. Some of these Easter programs were evidently intense religious experiences. He turns again to his need for salvation. Read together, they exhibit a pattern of devotion that remains consistent until his final year, when the pattern is intensified to the degree that prayer is his constant resource.

When we contrast the depths of his despair and terror, and like words he often uses in these self-examinations, the certainties he keeps finding are that he can be heard and that the process itself is always available. Access is never denied.

3. In The Vanity of Human Wishes, questions exist in their own despair:

Where then shall Hope and Fear their objects find?

Must dull Suspence corrupt the stagnant mind?

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate,

Roll darkling down the torrent of his fate?

Must no dislike alarm, no wishes rise,

No cries attempt the mercies of the skies?

In the poem, this grim report about experience remains perpetually in contrast with:

Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind,

Obedient Passions, and a Will resign’d;

For Love, which scarce collective Man can fill;

For Patience sov’reign o’er transmuted Ill;

For Faith, that panting for a happier Seat,

Counts Death kind Nature’s Signal of Retreat,

4. Boswell records Johnson saying that “I would be a Papist if I could.” This is a self-explanatory conundrum. The blatantly negative connotations of the word ‘Papist’ explain why he wouldn’t be a Papist

Contrast that with ‘I would be a Roman Catholic if I could’: the intent becomes more serious, but the edge is lost. Likewise, say ‘I would be a Puritan if I could’ and we have a reductio ad absurdum.

5. A firm believer and defender of church doctrine, Johnson argued for and defended what he believed to be true, in line with the Anglican apologists he knew so well.

Contrast this same person when he spoke strongly against the doubtful or heretical doctrines of other churches. He spoke only when the situation warranted. He was not an habitual polemicist and sought common accord rather than discord.

6. Johnson understands the man of the world and the monastic contemplative alike when he transforms Robert Burton’s saying ‘Be not solitary, be not idle’ into:

If you are idle, be not solitary.

A recommendation for good business activity, in contrast to:

If you are solitary, be not idle.

A good start for any recluse fighting the evil of acedia.

7. In Johnson we meet the genuine desire to know everything there is to know, to have read much.

Contrast this with his constant wariness of pride and vanity, his refusal ever to think that anyone knows everything. Or that what he thinks has to be right, or that anything he says (however definitively) is necessarily the final word.

8. Johnson’s infamous reaction upon seeing a party of happy clergy chatting in a pub – “This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive” – denotes the social expectation that clergy were expected to be moderate, sober and upright models to others. These men were not serious enough.

Contrast this with Johnson’s own public bearing, his self-presentation to the world. For it is noticeable that Johnson also sees himself as just such a model. Johnson, the upholder of proper standards and guide through discussions of moral complexity, in part lives out a pastoral role entirely similar to a parson.

9. A corollary to this, is what seems to be an absence of like-minded spiritual guides in his own life. Did Johnson take on the role of a spiritual guide and adviser to his friends, acquaintances and readers because of a seeming lack of such persons in his own world?

This religious vocation is highly plausible when we contrast the spiritual guides we know he used throughout his life: the products of the past, especially books; the lessons of conversation; and his church going.

10. His essay on forgiveness is structured and formed by biblical knowledge. It draws its primary justifications from the Bible.

While in contrast, it is Johnson’s powerful psychological insights, both in himself and others, that are the basis for the persuasive arguments he puts for acting in reconciliation now, not when we feel like it, if ever. This innovative and remarkable achievement of moral exposition comes from a moment in history where reason, combined with biblical example, delivers practical religion, which was and is an integral part of the Anglican tradition.