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Conscience and the Pattern of Christian Perfection in Clarissa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John A. Dussinger
John A. Dussinger*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois, Urbana
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Extract

Just as Defoe had maintained that the novel could surpass the pulpit in encouraging morality, so Richardson explicitly declared his intention of making Clarissa nothing less than an instrument of reviving the Christian religion:

In this general depravity, when even the pulpit has lost great part of its weight, and the clergy are considered as a body of interested men, the author thought he should be able to answer it to his own heart, be the success what it would, if he threw in his mite towards introducing a reformation so much wanted. And he imagined, that in an age given up to diversion and entertainment, he could steal in, as may be said, and investigate the great doctrines of Christianity under the fashionable guise of an amusement; he should be most likely to serve his purpose.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , June 1966 , pp. 236 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1966

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References

1 Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, Everyman's Library edition, 4 vols. (London, 1962), iv, 553, hereafter referred to by volume and page numbers. Cf. Daniel Defoe, “Preface,” to The Storm: or, A Collection of … the Late Dreadful Tempest, both by Sea and Land (London, 1704). Defoe remarks that whereas preaching sermons is communicating with only a part of mankind, printing books is speaking to the whole world.

2 That Richardson conceived of his heroine as the prototype of feminine chastity in the Puritan tradition has, of course, been long recognized, and possible sources have been proposed. See Levin L. Schücking, Die Familie im Puritanismus (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 39–44 and 137–153. William M. Sale's Samuel Richardson: Master Printer (Ithaca, N. Y., 1950) proves almost beyond doubt that Richardson had an early knowledge of Defoe's A New Family Instructor (1727) and Religious Courtship (1729) by showing that these works were printed at his press. See pp. 162–163. The more immediate influences, however, from the author's own Anglican milieu have been largely neglected. A recent essay by Allan Wendt, “Clarissa's Coffin,” PQ, xxxix (1960), 481–495, has labeled the viewpoint in Clarissa once again as “Puritan.”

3 Works, 12 vols. (London, 1757), i, 178. The sermons of Tillotson, besides those of other prominent Anglican divines such as Robert South and John Sharp, were included in Clarissa's little library at Sinclair's establishment. See Clarissa, ii, 194.

4 Although these preachers differed from each other on many theological issues, they all shared a common moralistic purpose. Barrow and Tillotson, the great Latitudinarians, and South, a High Churchman, agreed on “the reasonableness of religion … [because religion] is pleasant and profitable, the surest way to peace and prosperity.” See John Hunt, Religious Thought in England from the Reformation to the End of the Last Century, 3 vols. (London, 1870–73), ii, 264.

5 For a detailed analysis of these changes, see M. Kinkead-Weekes, “Clarissa Restored?” RES, x (1959), 156–171.

6 iii, 326–327, 335–336, 387, 398, and 519–523.

7 iv, 90–91, 113–117, 135–136, 295–298, 303–305, 322–323, 325–326, 342, 375–378, 438–444, 511, and 528–531.

8 Richardson's religious conception is implicit in a remark made to Miss Grainger concerning Clarissa: “Calamity is the test of virtue, and often the parent of it, in minds that prosperity would ruin. What is meant, think you, Madam, by the whole Christian doctrine of the Cross?” [29 March 1750] Catalogue of the Collection … Formed by Alfred Morrison, v (1891), 252.

9 The Christian Hero, ed. Rae Blanchard (Oxford, 1932), p. 41. Professor Blanchard's introduction points out the historical importance of Steele's benevolistic view and his anti-Stoicism.

10 He applauded Lady Bradshaigh's observation that Homer and Vergil perhaps contributed “infinite mischief for a series of ages” by promulgating a code of honor and virtue based on war and savagery. See The Correspondence of Samuel Richardson, ed. Anna L. Barbauld, 6 vols. (London, 1804), iv, 287. Lovelace, who expresses ironically Richardson's own attitudes occasionally, even compares Clarissa to Dido and then attacks Vergil's epithet, “pious Aeneas,” as quite inappropriate for an unfaithful husband (iv, 30–31).

11 i, 460, [Ecclus. xxxvii.13–14]

12 Clarissa told her sister, “You will find excellent things, Bella, in that little book [Imitation of Christ]” (i, 367).

13 Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, 6th ed. (London, 1727), ii, 412.

14 Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, The Library of Christian Classics, xx (Philadelphia, 1960), 281–282. Cf. James Mauclerc's The Christian Magazine … Revis'd and Corrected by Mr. S. Richardson, Editor of “Pamela” and “Clarissa” (London, 1748), p. 193. [University Microfilms, Inc.] For a full-length exposition on conscience as a rational faculty implanted in man by God, see Jeremy Taylor's “Ductor Dubitantium, or, The Rule of Conscience,” The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, ed. C. P. Eden and A. Taylor, 10 vols. (London, 1851), ix–x.

15 Tillotson, viii, 98–99. Cf. South, ii, 463. Adam Smith traced the development of sentimental ethics from the early Christian period to the mid-eighteenth century and discussed the inadequacy of rationalist arguments in the controversy over Hobbes' doctrine of Law: “But though reason is undoubtedly the source of the general rules of morality, and of all the moral judgments which we form by means of them; it is altogether absurd and unintelligible to suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be derived from reason, even in those particular cases upon the experience of which the general rules are formed. These first perceptions, as well as all other experiments upon which any general rules are founded, cannot be the object of reason but of immediate sense and feeling. It is by finding in a vast variety of instances that one tenor of conduct constantly pleases in a certain manner, and that another as constantly displeases the mind, that we form the general rules of morality.” The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), 9th ed., 2 vols. (London, 1801), ii, 289–290. Cf. R. S. Crane, “Suggestions Toward a Genealogy of the ‘Man of Feeling’,” ELH, i (1934), 205–230.

16 Cf. Sixteen Casuistical Sermons Preached on Several Occasions, 4 vols., 3rd ed. (London, 1738), iii, 363 and 308; and South, iv, 531.

17 “This solid Peace of Conscience is the true Joy of the Holy Ghost, the Fruit of the Spirit dwelling within us, in the Sense of which we shall be able to practise, without Interruption, those excellent Precepts of the Apostle, which seem to be the Top of Christian Morals.” Sharp, iii, 66–67. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, ed. Albert Hyma (New York, 1927), p. 64.

18 Richard Lucas, Religious Perfection, or, A Third Part of the Enquiry after Happiness (London, 1704), pp. 110 and 112.

19 Tillotson, i, 304 and 302.

20 iv, 300 and 435. In addition to Lovelace's futile end, the deaths of Belton and of Sinclair likewise exemplify the horrors of infidelity and hardness of heart. See iv, 165–171, and 379–390.

21 iv, 508–509. Cf. Taylor's directions for daily examinations of one's soul, “The Rules and Exercises of Holy Dying,” iii, 295–302. For an excellent study of the early Protestant discipline of the spiritual diary and its relationship to Defoe's fiction, see G. A. Starr's Defoe and Spiritual Autobiography (Princeton, 1965).

22 The “Advertisement to the Reader” in Meditations Collected from the Sacred Books (London, 1750) reflects his low estimation of his reading public: “For, with regard to the success of the Work [Clarissa], he feared nothing so much, as that, in an Age so deeply immersed in the pleasures of sense, and which gives so much countenance to works of froth and levity, he should, even by the serious Reflections which from the Nature of his Design he could not dispense with, lose one of his principal Ends; which was, to engage the Attention of the Light, the Careless, and the Gay.” [University Microfilms, Inc.]

23 Meditations, p. viii.

24 Ibid., pp. 2–3, 5, 35, 44–45, and 50.

25 Sale further indicates (pp. 126–127) that Richardson printed Law's Way to Divine Knowledge (1752). The Weekly Miscellany, a periodical which Richardson printed and in which he showed considerable interest, advertised not only The Oxford Methodists but also Law's A Practical Treatise on Christian Perfection. Dr. Cheyne, who had significantly remarked that the printer always showed “a Relish for Spiritual and internal Religion,” asked Richardson in 1740: “Have you seen Law's Appeal? It is admirable and unanswerable. I wish all the Methodists might get it by Heart.” It is interesting that Richardson even copied a passage from the Appeal. See Forster MS. 48 E 10 XVI 2. “Miscellaneous, chiefly poetry.” [University Microfilms, Inc.] In another letter, Cheyne praises Law with the ardor of a disciple and asks Richardson to have all of the theologian's writings collected together and handsomely bound for the doctor's own library. See “The Letters of Doctor George Cheyne to Samuel Richardson (1733–1743),” ed. Charles Mullet, Univ. of Missouri Studies, xviii (1943), 102, 88, and 93.

26 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, ed. George Birkbeck Hill and L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934), ii, 122.

27 The Works of William Law, 9 vols. (Hampshire, 1892–93), iv, 12.

28 Ibid., pp. 77–78. Cf. Taylor: “Natural virginity of itself is not a state more acceptable to God: but that which is chosen and voluntary in order to the conveniences of religion and separation from worldly encumbrances, is therefore better than the married life, not that it is more holy, but that it is a freedom from cares, an opportunity to spend more time in spiritual employments … and if it be a chosen condition to these ends, it containeth in it a victory over lusts, and greater desires of religion, and self-denial.” iii, 56.

29 i, 32 and 62. For a thorough discussion of the marriage theme in Clarissa, see Christopher Hill's “Clarissa Harlowe and her Times,” Essays in Criticism, v (1955), 315–340. Although a scheme for Protestant nunneries in England had been a topic of discussion earlier in the novel, Sir Charles delivered a “powerful argument” in favor of marriage. See The History of Sir Charles Grandison, 7 vols., 4th ed. (London, 1762), iv, 140–142, and v, 222–225.

30 iv, 2, and iii, 500–501. Under the heading, “Remedies Against Uncleanness,” Taylor recommended considering God's omniscience, meditating upon death, recalling the passions of Christ crucified, endeavoring to imitate his purity, and contemplating the example of “the virgin Mary His unspotted and holy mother, and of such eminent saints who in their generations were burning and shining lights, unmingled with such uncleannesses which defile the soul, and who now follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes” (in, 67). In a sermon on Matt. xxv, Tillotson interpreted the parable of the ten virgins as signifying the necessity of constant preparation for death and for the coming of the heavenly bridegroom. See ii, 343 and 354.

31 Cf. Leslie Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (New York, 1962), ii, 346; and Eric W. Baker, A Herald of the Evangelical Revival (London, 1948), pp. 128–139.

32 Cf. Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor, trans. A. G. Hebert (New York, 1956), pp. 1–15. Aulén has traced three traditions of the idea of Christian atonement, beginning with primitive Christianity and extending to the nineteenth century: 1) the “classic” idea of St. Paul and the Patristics, which dramatically represents God's reconciling His creation to Himself through Christ's propitiation; 2) the idea of “objective” atonement, stressed particularly by Anselm, which views God as the object of Christ's sacrifice (i.e., God is reconciled by the “ransom” paid to His justice); and 3) the idea of “subjective” atonement, developed by the pietists of the Enlightenment, which emphasizes the divine metamorphosis in man as Christ's dispensation. Law's conception is in this third tradition.

33 Law, iv, 258–259.

34 Ibid., pp. 176–177. Maurice Quinlan has demonstrated the impact of Law's atonement doctrine on Johnson's ethics. See Samuel Johnson: A Layman's Religion (Madison, Wis., 1964).

35 Law, iv, 22 and 23.

36 Law, iii, 85.

37 Tillotson, i, 213. Cf. Hunt, ii, 104.

38 South, iv, 179.

39 Richardson (London, 1928), p. 76.

40 Cf. Sale, pp. 158–159; Mullet, pp. 81–82; and An Essay on Regimen, 2nd ed. (London, 1740), p. 25.

41 Regimen, p. 83. Mullet, pp. 94–95. Although Clarissa has “great honour” for the medical profession, Lovelace seems to betray in an unguarded moment Richardson's opinion of Cheyne's regimen: “these cursed physical folks can find out nothing to do us good, but what would poison the devili In the other world, were they only to take physic, it would be punishment enough of itself for a misspent life” (ii, 438 and 434).

42 See, for example, Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel (London, 1960), esp. pp. 234–238; and Morris Golden, Richardson's Characters (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1963).

43 John W. Draper points out that the elegiac tradition in the early eighteenth century is characterized by the change from the Puritan emphasis on salvation to the merely aesthetic indulgence in melancholy. See The Funeral Elegy (New York, 1929), pp. 312–313. In view of this examination of the novel's religious theme, Richardson's hope expressed to Lady Bradshaigh that she would include Clarissa in her proposed reading list comprising Taylor's Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Holy Dying, the Practice of Piety, and Nelson's Festivals and Fasts further suggests his conscious purpose. See Barbauld, iv, 216 and 237–238.