Page:Hazlitt, Political Essays (1819).djvu/173

 to flee to Jerusalem. So Israel rebelled against the house of David unto this day. And it came to pass when all Israel heard that Jeroboam was come again, that they sent and called him unto the congregation, and made him king over all Israel."

Here is the doctrine and practice of divine right, with a vengeance. We do not wonder Mr. Coleridge was shy of instances from his Statesman's Manual, as the rest are like this. He does not say (neither shall we, for we are not salamanders any more than he, to tread on glowing embers) whether he approves of the conduct of all Israel in this case, or of the grand, magnificent, and gracious answer of the son of Solomon; but this we will say, that his bringing or alluding to a passage like this immediately after his inuendo (addressed to the higher classes) that the doctrine of divine right is contained par excellence in the Scriptures alone, is we should suppose, an instance of a power of voluntary self-delusion, and of a delight in exercising it on the most ticklish topics, greater than ever was or ever will be possessed by any other individual that ever did or ever will live upon the face of the earth. "Imposture, organized into a comprehensive and self-consistent whole, forms a world of its own, in which inversion becomes the order of nature." Compared with such powers of inconceivable mental refinement, hypocrisy is a great baby, a shallow dolt, a gross dunce, a clumsy devil!

Among other passages, unrivalled in style and matter by any other author, take the following:—

"When I named this Essay a Sermon, I sought to prepare the inquirers after it for the absence of all the usual softenings suggested by worldly prudence, of all compromise between truth and courtesy. But not even as a Sermon would I have addressed the present Discourse to a promiscuous audience: and for this reason I likewise announced it in the title-page, as exclusively ad clerum, i.e. (in the old and wide sense of the word ) to men of clerkly acquirements, of whatever profession." [All that we know is,