and every point of our divine religion has acquired an imperishable character fince the learned have agreed, that no language is fo capable of expreffing every minute diftinction and shade of thought and feeling, or is fo incapable of ever becoming equivocal : the works which have been composed in it, enfuring its being ftudied to the end of the world.

CHAP.

CHAP. XXXIV,

On the Abuse of Terms.-Enthufiafm.Superftition.-Zeal for religious Opinions no Proof of Religion.

To guard the mind from prejudice is no unimportant part of a royal education. Names govern the world. They carry away opinion, decide on character, and determine practice. Names, therefore, are of more importance than we are aware. We are apt to bring the quality down to the ftandard which the name establishes, and our practice rarely rifes higher than the current term which we ufe when we fpeak of it.

The abufe of terms has at all times been an evil. To enumerate only a few inftances. We do not prefume to decide on the measure which gave birth to the clamour, when we affert, that in the progress of that

clamour,

clamour, greater violence has feldom been offered to language than in the forced union of the two terins, Liberty and Property*. A conjunction of words, by men who were, at the fame time, labouring to disjoin the things. If liberty, in their fenfe, had been eftablished, property would have had an end, or rather would have been transferred to those, who, in fecuring what they termed their liberty, would have made over to themselves that property, in the pretended defence of which the outcry was made. At a more recent period, the term equality has been fubstituted for that of property. The word was altered, but the principle retained. And, as the preceding clamour for liberty was only a plaufible cover for making property change hands, fo it has of late been tacked to equality, with a view to make power change hands. Thus, terms the most popular and impofing, have been uniformly ufed as the watch-words of tu-" mult, plunder, and tedition.

VOL. II.

* By Wilkes, and his faction.

R

But

But the abuse of terms, and especially their unneceffary adoption, is not always limited to the vulgar and the mischievous. It were to be wished that those persons of a better caft, who are ftrenuous in counteracting the evils themfelves, would never naturalize any terms which convey revolutionary ideas. In England, at least, let us have no civic honours, no organization of plans.

There are perhaps few words which the reigning practice has more warped from its legitimate meaning and ancient ufage than the term proud. Let us try whether Johnfon's definition fanctions the adopted use."Proud," fays that accurate philologist, "means, elated-haughty- daring-preSumptuous-oftentatious," &c. &c. Yet, do we not continually hear, not merely the journalist and the pamphleteer, but the legiflator, and the orator, fages who give law, not to the land only, but to the language, ufing the term exclufively, in an honourable. fenfe." They are proud to

acknow

66

acknowledge,"-" proud to confefs." Instead of the heart-felt language of gratitude for a deliverance or a victory, we hear of "a proud day,"-" a proud circumftance," a proud event,"-thus raifing to the dignity of virtue, a term to which lexicographers and moralifts have annexed an odious, and divines an unchriftian fenfe. If pride be thus enrolled in the lift of virtues, must not humility, by a natural confequence, be turned over to the catalogue of vices? If pride was made for man, has not the Bible afferted a falfehood?

In the age which fucceeded to the reformation, "holinefs" and "practical piety" were the terms employed by divines. when they would inculcate that conduct which is fuitable to chriftians. The very words conveyed a folemnity to the mind, calculated to affift in raifing it to the prefcribed ftandard. But those very terms being unhappily ufed, during the ufurpation, as marks to cover the worst purposes, became, under Charles, epithets of ridicule