Unkown - "Deuterocanonical Books of the Bible"

Joseph A. Altsheler - "The Rock of Chickamauga"

Unknown - "The World English Bible (WEB): John"

Franklin P. Adams - "Tobogganing On Parnassus"

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

L >> Laurence Sterne >> The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman




Corporal Trim's eyes and the muscles of his face were in full harmony with
the other parts of him;--he looked frank,--unconstrained,--something
assured,--but not bordering upon assurance.

Let not the critic ask how Corporal Trim could come by all this.--I've told
him it should be explained;--but so he stood before my father, my uncle
Toby, and Dr. Slop,--so swayed his body, so contrasted his limbs, and with
such an oratorical sweep throughout the whole figure,--a statuary might
have modelled from it;--nay, I doubt whether the oldest Fellow of a
College,--or the Hebrew Professor himself, could have much mended it.

Trim made a bow, and read as follows:

The Sermon.

Hebrews xiii. 18.

--For we trust we have a good Conscience.

'Trust!--Trust we have a good conscience!'

(Certainly, Trim, quoth my father, interrupting him, you give that sentence
a very improper accent; for you curl up your nose, man, and read it with
such a sneering tone, as if the Parson was going to abuse the Apostle.

He is, an' please your Honour, replied Trim. Pugh! said my father,
smiling.

Sir, quoth Dr. Slop, Trim is certainly in the right; for the writer (who I
perceive is a Protestant) by the snappish manner in which he takes up the
apostle, is certainly going to abuse him;--if this treatment of him has not
done it already. But from whence, replied my father, have you concluded so
soon, Dr. Slop, that the writer is of our church?--for aught I can see
yet,--he may be of any church.--Because, answered Dr. Slop, if he was of
ours,--he durst no more take such a licence,--than a bear by his beard:--
If, in our communion, Sir, a man was to insult an apostle,--a saint,--or
even the paring of a saint's nail,--he would have his eyes scratched out.--
What, by the saint? quoth my uncle Toby. No, replied Dr. Slop, he would
have an old house over his head. Pray is the Inquisition an ancient
building, answered my uncle Toby, or is it a modern one?--I know nothing of
architecture, replied Dr. Slop.--An' please your Honours, quoth Trim, the
Inquisition is the vilest--Prithee spare thy description, Trim, I hate the
very name of it, said my father.--No matter for that, answered Dr. Slop,--
it has its uses; for tho' I'm no great advocate for it, yet, in such a case
as this, he would soon be taught better manners; and I can tell him, if he
went on at that rate, would be flung into the Inquisition for his pains.
God help him then, quoth my uncle Toby. Amen, added Trim; for Heaven above
knows, I have a poor brother who has been fourteen years a captive in it.--
I never heard one word of it before, said my uncle Toby, hastily:--How came
he there, Trim?--O, Sir, the story will make your heart bleed,--as it has
made mine a thousand times;--but it is too long to be told now;--your
Honour shall hear it from first to last some day when I am working beside
you in our fortifications;--but the short of the story is this;--That my
brother Tom went over a servant to Lisbon,--and then married a Jew's widow,
who kept a small shop, and sold sausages, which somehow or other, was the
cause of his being taken in the middle of the night out of his bed, where
he was lying with his wife and two small children, and carried directly to
the Inquisition, where, God help him, continued Trim, fetching a sigh from
the bottom of his heart,--the poor honest lad lies confined at this hour;
he was as honest a soul, added Trim, (pulling out his handkerchief) as ever
blood warmed.--

--The tears trickled down Trim's cheeks faster than he could well wipe them
away.--A dead silence in the room ensued for some minutes.--Certain proof
of pity!

Come Trim, quoth my father, after he saw the poor fellow's grief had got a
little vent,--read on,--and put this melancholy story out of thy head:--I
grieve that I interrupted thee; but prithee begin the sermon again;--for if
the first sentence in it is matter of abuse, as thou sayest, I have a great
desire to know what kind of provocation the apostle has given.

Corporal Trim wiped his face, and returned his handkerchief into his
pocket, and, making a bow as he did it,--he began again.)

The Sermon.

Hebrews xiii. 18.

--For we trust we have a good Conscience.--

'Trust! trust we have a good conscience! Surely if there is any thing in
this life which a man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is
capable of arriving upon the most indisputable evidence, it must be this
very thing,--whether he has a good conscience or no.'

(I am positive I am right, quoth Dr. Slop.)

'If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to the true state of
this account:--he must be privy to his own thoughts and desires;--he must
remember his past pursuits, and know certainly the true springs and
motives, which, in general, have governed the actions of his life.'

(I defy him, without an assistant, quoth Dr. Slop.)

'In other matters we may be deceived by false appearances; and, as the wise
man complains, hardly do we guess aright at the things that are upon the
earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us. But here
the mind has all the evidence and facts within herself;--is conscious of
the web she has wove;--knows its texture and fineness, and the exact share
which every passion has had in working upon the several designs which
virtue or vice has planned before her.'

(The language is good, and I declare Trim reads very well, quoth my
father.)

'Now,--as conscience is nothing else but the knowledge which the mind has
within herself of this; and the judgment, either of approbation or censure,
which it unavoidably makes upon the successive actions of our lives; 'tis
plain you will say, from the very terms of the proposition,--whenever this
inward testimony goes against a man, and he stands self-accused, that he
must necessarily be a guilty man.--And, on the contrary, when the report is
favourable on his side, and his heart condemns him not:--that it is not a
matter of trust, as the apostle intimates, but a matter of certainty and
fact, that the conscience is good, and that the man must be good also.'

(Then the apostle is altogether in the wrong, I suppose, quoth Dr. Slop,
and the Protestant divine is in the right. Sir, have patience, replied my
father, for I think it will presently appear that St. Paul and the
Protestant divine are both of an opinion.--As nearly so, quoth Dr. Slop, as
east is to west;--but this, continued he, lifting both hands, comes from
the liberty of the press.

It is no more at the worst, replied my uncle Toby, than the liberty of the
pulpit; for it does not appear that the sermon is printed, or ever likely
to be.

Go on, Trim, quoth my father.)

'At first sight this may seem to be a true state of the case: and I make
no doubt but the knowledge of right and wrong is so truly impressed upon
the mind of man,--that did no such thing ever happen, as that the
conscience of a man, by long habits of sin, might (as the scripture assures
it may) insensibly become hard;--and, like some tender parts of his body,
by much stress and continual hard usage, lose by degrees that nice sense
and perception with which God and nature endowed it:--Did this never
happen;--or was it certain that self-love could never hang the least bias
upon the judgment;--or that the little interests below could rise up and
perplex the faculties of our upper regions, and encompass them about with
clouds and thick darkness:--Could no such thing as favour and affection
enter this sacred Court--Did Wit disdain to take a bribe in it;--or was
ashamed to shew its face as an advocate for an unwarrantable enjoyment:
Or, lastly, were we assured that Interest stood always unconcerned whilst
the cause was hearing--and that Passion never got into the judgment-seat,
and pronounced sentence in the stead of Reason, which is supposed always to
preside and determine upon the case:--Was this truly so, as the objection
must suppose;--no doubt then the religious and moral state of a man would
be exactly what he himself esteemed it:--and the guilt or innocence of
every man's life could be known, in general, by no better measure, than the
degrees of his own approbation and censure.

'I own, in one case, whenever a man's conscience does accuse him (as it
seldom errs on that side) that he is guilty;--and unless in melancholy and
hypocondriac cases, we may safely pronounce upon it, that there is always
sufficient grounds for the accusation.

'But the converse of the proposition will not hold true;--namely, that
whenever there is guilt, the conscience must accuse; and if it does not,
that a man is therefore innocent.--This is not fact--So that the common
consolation which some good christian or other is hourly administering to
himself,--that he thanks God his mind does not misgive him; and that,
consequently, he has a good conscience, because he hath a quiet one,--is
fallacious;--and as current as the inference is, and as infallible as the
rule appears at first sight, yet when you look nearer to it, and try the
truth of this rule upon plain facts,--you see it liable to so much error
from a false application;--the principle upon which it goes so often
perverted;--the whole force of it lost, and sometimes so vilely cast away,
that it is painful to produce the common examples from human life, which
confirm the account.

'A man shall be vicious and utterly debauched in his principles;--
exceptionable in his conduct to the world; shall live shameless, in the
open commission of a sin which no reason or pretence can justify,--a sin by
which, contrary to all the workings of humanity, he shall ruin for ever the
deluded partner of his guilt;--rob her of her best dowry; and not only
cover her own head with dishonour;--but involve a whole virtuous family in
shame and sorrow for her sake. Surely, you will think conscience must lead
such a man a troublesome life; he can have no rest night and day from its
reproaches.

'Alas! Conscience had something else to do all this time, than break in
upon him; as Elijah reproached the god Baal,--this domestic god was either
talking, or pursuing, or was in a journey, or peradventure he slept and
could not be awoke.

'Perhaps He was gone out in company with Honour to fight a duel: to pay off
some debt at play;--or dirty annuity, the bargain of his lust; Perhaps
Conscience all this time was engaged at home, talking aloud against petty
larceny, and executing vengeance upon some such puny crimes as his fortune
and rank of life secured him against all temptation of committing; so that
he lives as merrily;'--(If he was of our church, tho', quoth Dr. Slop, he
could not)--'sleeps as soundly in his bed;--and at last meets death
unconcernedly;--perhaps much more so, than a much better man.'

(All this is impossible with us, quoth Dr. Slop, turning to my father,--the
case could not happen in our church.--It happens in ours, however, replied
my father, but too often.--I own, quoth Dr. Slop, (struck a little with my
father's frank acknowledgment)--that a man in the Romish church may live as
badly;--but then he cannot easily die so.--'Tis little matter, replied my
father, with an air of indifference,--how a rascal dies.--I mean, answered
Dr. Slop, he would be denied the benefits of the last sacraments.--Pray how
many have you in all, said my uncle Toby,--for I always forget?--Seven,
answered Dr. Slop.--Humph!--said my uncle Toby; tho' not accented as a note
of acquiescence,--but as an interjection of that particular species of
surprize, when a man in looking into a drawer, finds more of a thing than
he expected.--Humph! replied my uncle Toby. Dr. Slop, who had an ear,
understood my uncle Toby as well as if he had wrote a whole volume against
the seven sacraments.--Humph! replied Dr. Slop, (stating my uncle Toby's
argument over again to him)--Why, Sir, are there not seven cardinal
virtues?--Seven mortal sins?--Seven golden candlesticks?--Seven heavens?--
'Tis more than I know, replied my uncle Toby.--Are there not seven wonders
of the world?--Seven days of the creation?--Seven planets?--Seven plagues?-
-That there are, quoth my father with a most affected gravity. But
prithee, continued he, go on with the rest of thy characters, Trim.)

'Another is sordid, unmerciful,' (here Trim waved his right hand) 'a
strait-hearted, selfish wretch, incapable either of private friendship or
public spirit. Take notice how he passes by the widow and orphan in their
distress, and sees all the miseries incident to human life without a sigh
or a prayer.' (An' please your honours, cried Trim, I think this a viler
man than the other.)

'Shall not conscience rise up and sting him on such occasions?--No; thank
God there is no occasion, I pay every man his own;--I have no fornication
to answer to my conscience;--no faithless vows or promises to make up;--I
have debauched no man's wife or child; thank God, I am not as other men,
adulterers, unjust, or even as this libertine, who stands before me.

'A third is crafty and designing in his nature. View his whole life;--'tis
nothing but a cunning contexture of dark arts and unequitable subterfuges,
basely to defeat the true intent of all laws,--plain dealing and the safe
enjoyment of our several properties.--You will see such a one working out a
frame of little designs upon the ignorance and perplexities of the poor and
needy man;--shall raise a fortune upon the inexperience of a youth, or the
unsuspecting temper of his friend, who would have trusted him with his
life.

'When old age comes on, and repentance calls him to look back upon this
black account, and state it over again with his conscience--Conscience
looks into the Statutes at Large;--finds no express law broken by what he
has done;--perceives no penalty or forfeiture of goods and chattels
incurred;--sees no scourge waving over his head, or prison opening his
gates upon him:--What is there to affright his conscience?--Conscience has
got safely entrenched behind the Letter of the Law; sits there
invulnerable, fortified with Cases and Reports so strongly on all sides;--
that it is not preaching can dispossess it of its hold.'

(Here Corporal Trim and my uncle Toby exchanged looks with each other.--
Aye, Aye, Trim! quoth my uncle Toby, shaking his head,--these are but sorry
fortifications, Trim.--O! very poor work, answered Trim, to what your
Honour and I make of it.--The character of this last man, said Dr. Slop,
interrupting Trim, is more detestable than all the rest; and seems to have
been taken from some pettifogging Lawyer amongst you:--Amongst us, a man's
conscience could not possibly continue so long blinded,--three times in a
year, at least, he must go to confession. Will that restore it to sight?
quoth my uncle Toby,--Go on, Trim, quoth my father, or Obadiah will have
got back before thou has got to the end of thy sermon.--'Tis a very short
one, replied Trim.--I wish it was longer, quoth my uncle Toby, for I like
it hugely.--Trim went on.)

'A fourth man shall want even this refuge;--shall break through all their
ceremony of slow chicane;--scorns the doubtful workings of secret plots and
cautious trains to bring about his purpose:--See the bare-faced villain,
how he cheats, lies, perjures, robs, murders!--Horrid!--But indeed much
better was not to be expected, in the present case--the poor man was in the
dark!--his priest had got the keeping of his conscience;--and all he would
let him know of it, was, That he must believe in the Pope;--go to Mass;--
cross himself;--tell his beads;--be a good Catholic, and that this, in all
conscience, was enough to carry him to heaven. What;--if he perjures?--
Why;--he had a mental reservation in it.--But if he is so wicked and
abandoned a wretch as you represent him;--if he robs,--if he stabs, will
not conscience, on every such act, receive a wound itself?--Aye,--but the
man has carried it to confession;--the wound digests there, and will do
well enough, and in a short time be quite healed up by absolution. O
Popery! what hast thou to answer for!--when not content with the too many
natural and fatal ways, thro' which the heart of man is every day thus
treacherous to itself above all things;--thou hast wilfully set open the
wide gate of deceit before the face of this unwary traveller, too apt, God
knows, to go astray of himself, and confidently speak peace to himself,
when there is no peace.

'Of this the common instances which I have drawn out of life, are too
notorious to require much evidence. If any man doubts the reality of them,
or thinks it impossible for a man to be such a bubble to himself,--I must
refer him a moment to his own reflections, and will then venture to trust
my appeal with his own heart.

'Let him consider in how different a degree of detestation, numbers of
wicked actions stand there, tho' equally bad and vicious in their own
natures;--he will soon find, that such of them as strong inclination and
custom have prompted him to commit, are generally dressed out and painted
with all the false beauties which a soft and a flattering hand can give
them;--and that the others, to which he feels no propensity, appear, at
once, naked and deformed, surrounded with all the true circumstances of
folly and dishonour.

'When David surprized Saul sleeping in the cave, and cut off the skirt of
his robe--we read his heart smote him for what he had done:--But in the
matter of Uriah, where a faithful and gallant servant, whom he ought to
have loved and honoured, fell to make way for his lust,--where conscience
had so much greater reason to take the alarm, his heart smote him not. A
whole year had almost passed from first commission of that crime, to the
time Nathan was sent to reprove him; and we read not once of the least
sorrow or compunction of heart which he testified, during all that time,
for what he had done.

'Thus conscience, this once able monitor,--placed on high as a judge within
us, and intended by our maker as a just and equitable one too,--by an
unhappy train of causes and impediments, takes often such imperfect
cognizance of what passes,--does its office so negligently,--sometimes so
corruptly,--that it is not to be trusted alone; and therefore we find there
is a necessity, an absolute necessity, of joining another principle with
it, to aid, if not govern, its determinations.

'So that if you would form a just judgment of what is of infinite
importance to you not to be misled in,--namely, in what degree of real
merit you stand either as an honest man, an useful citizen, a faithful
subject to your king, or a good servant to your God,--call in religion and
morality.--Look, What is written in the law of God?--How readest thou?--
Consult calm reason and the unchangeable obligations of justice and truth;-
-what say they?

'Let Conscience determine the matter upon these reports;--and then if thy
heart condemns thee not, which is the case the apostle supposes,--the rule
will be infallible;'--(Here Dr. Slop fell asleep)--'thou wilt have
confidence towards God;--that is, have just grounds to believe the judgment
thou hast past upon thyself, is the judgment of God; and nothing else but
an anticipation of that righteous sentence which will be pronounced upon
thee hereafter by that Being, to whom thou art finally to give an account
of thy actions.

'Blessed is the man, indeed, then, as the author of the book of
Ecclesiasticus expresses it, who is not pricked with the multitude of his
sins: Blessed is the man whose heart hath not condemned him; whether he be
rich, or whether he be poor, if he have a good heart (a heart thus guided
and informed) he shall at all times rejoice in a chearful countenance; his
mind shall tell him more than seven watch-men that sit above upon a tower
on high.'--(A tower has no strength, quoth my uncle Toby, unless 'tis
flank'd.)--'in the darkest doubts it shall conduct him safer than a
thousand casuists, and give the state he lives in, a better security for
his behaviour than all the causes and restrictions put together, which law-
makers are forced to multiply:--Forced, I say, as things stand; human laws
not being a matter of original choice, but of pure necessity, brought in to
fence against the mischievous effects of those consciences which are no law
unto themselves; well intending, by the many provisions made,--that in all
such corrupt and misguided cases, where principles and the checks of
conscience will not make us upright,--to supply their force, and, by the
terrors of gaols and halters, oblige us to it.'

(I see plainly, said my father, that this sermon has been composed to be
preached at the Temple,--or at some Assize.--I like the reasoning,--and am
sorry that Dr. Slop has fallen asleep before the time of his conviction:--
for it is now clear, that the Parson, as I thought at first, never insulted
St. Paul in the least;--nor has there been, brother, the least difference
between them.--A great matter, if they had differed, replied my uncle
Toby,--the best friends in the world may differ sometimes.--True,--brother
Toby quoth my father, shaking hands with him,--we'll fill our pipes,
brother, and then Trim shall go on.

Well,--what dost thou think of it? said my father, speaking to Corporal
Trim, as he reached his tobacco-box.

I think, answered the Corporal, that the seven watch-men upon the tower,
who, I suppose, are all centinels there,--are more, an' please your Honour,
than were necessary;--and, to go on at that rate, would harrass a regiment
all to pieces, which a commanding officer, who loves his men, will never
do, if he can help it, because two centinels, added the Corporal, are as
good as twenty.--I have been a commanding officer myself in the Corps de
Garde a hundred times, continued Trim, rising an inch higher in his figure,
as he spoke,--and all the time I had the honour to serve his Majesty King
William, in relieving the most considerable posts, I never left more than
two in my life.--Very right, Trim, quoth my uncle Toby,--but you do not
consider, Trim, that the towers, in Solomon's days, were not such things as
our bastions, flanked and defended by other works;--this, Trim, was an
invention since Solomon's death; nor had they horn-works, or ravelins
before the curtin, in his time;--or such a fosse as we make with a cuvette
in the middle of it, and with covered ways and counterscarps pallisadoed
along it, to guard against a Coup de main:--So that the seven men upon the
tower were a party, I dare say, from the Corps de Garde, set there, not
only to look out, but to defend it.--They could be no more, an' please your
Honour, than a Corporal's Guard.--My father smiled inwardly, but not
outwardly--the subject being rather too serious, considering what had
happened, to make a jest of.--So putting his pipe into his mouth, which he
had just lighted,--he contented himself with ordering Trim to read on. He
read on as follows:

'To have the fear of God before our eyes, and, in our mutual dealings with
each other, to govern our actions by the eternal measures of right and
wrong:--The first of these will comprehend the duties of religion;--the
second, those of morality, which are so inseparably connected together,
that you cannot divide these two tables, even in imagination, (tho' the
attempt is often made in practice) without breaking and mutually destroying
them both.

I said the attempt is often made; and so it is;--there being nothing more
common than to see a man who has no sense at all of religion, and indeed
has so much honesty as to pretend to none, who would take it as the
bitterest affront, should you but hint at a suspicion of his moral
character,--or imagine he was not conscientiously just and scrupulous to
the uttermost mite.

'When there is some appearance that it is so,--tho' one is unwilling even
to suspect the appearance of so amiable a virtue as moral honesty, yet were
we to look into the grounds of it, in the present case, I am persuaded we
should find little reason to envy such a one the honour of his motive.

'Let him declaim as pompously as he chooses upon the subject, it will be
found to rest upon no better foundation than either his interest, his
pride, his ease, or some such little and changeable passion as will give us
but small dependence upon his actions in matters of great distress.

'I will illustrate this by an example.

'I know the banker I deal with, or the physician I usually call in,'--
(There is no need, cried Dr. Slop, (waking) to call in any physician in
this case)--'to be neither of them men of much religion: I hear them make
a jest of it every day, and treat all its sanctions with so much scorn, as
to put the matter past doubt. Well;--notwithstanding this, I put my
fortune into the hands of the one:--and what is dearer still to me, I trust
my life to the honest skill of the other.

'Now let me examine what is my reason for this great confidence. Why, in
the first place, I believe there is no probability that either of them will
employ the power I put into their hands to my disadvantage;--I consider
that honesty serves the purposes of this life:--I know their success in the
world depends upon the fairness of their characters.--In a word, I'm
persuaded that they cannot hurt me without hurting themselves more.

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