This etext was produced by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.
Pagination: The text following a given page number in brackets marksthe beginning of that page, as in the following example: [22] This ispage twenty-two. [23] This is page twenty-three.
Preface: iii-lx
I: 1-50 (Sweetness and Light)
II: 51-92 (Doing as One Likes)
III: 93-141 (Barbarians, Philistines, Populace)
IV: 142-166 (Hebraism and Hellenism)
V: 166-197 (Porro Unum est Necessarium)
VI: 197-272 (Our Liberal Practitioners)
*Note: in the first edition, chapters are numbered only, not named.
I have added the third edition's titles for reference.
[iii] My foremost design in writing this Preface is to address a wordof exhortation to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Inthe essay which follows, the reader will often find Bishop Wilsonquoted. To me and to the members of the Society for PromotingChristian Knowledge his name and writings are still, no doubt,familiar; but the world is fast going away from old-fashioned peopleof his sort, and I learnt with consternation lately from a brilliantand distinguished votary of the natural sciences, that he had neverso much as heard of Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined me to haveinvented him. At a moment when the Courts of Law have just taken offthe embargo from the recreative religion furnished on Sundays by mygifted acquaintance and others, and when St. Martin's Hall [iv] andthe Alhambra will soon be beginning again to resound with theirpulpit-eloquence, it distresses one to think that the new lightsshould not only have, in general, a very low opinion of the preachersof the old religion, but that they should have it without knowing thebest that these preachers can do. And that they are in this case isowing in part, certainly, to the negligence of the ChristianKnowledge Society. In old times they used to print and spread abroadBishop Wilson's Maxims of Piety and Christianity; the copy of thiswork which I use is one of their publications, bearing their imprint,and bound in the well-known brown calf which they made familiar toour childhood; but the date of my copy is 1812. I know of no copybesides, and I believe the work is no longer one of those printed andcirculated by the Society. Hence the error, flattering, I own, to mepersonally, yet in itself to be regretted, of the distinguishedphysicist already mentioned.
But Bishop Wilson's Maxims deserve to be circulated as a religiousbook, not only by comparison with the cartloads of rubbish circulatedat present under this designation, but for their own sake, and evenby comparison with the other works of the same [v] author. Over thefar better known Sacra Privata they have this advantage, that theywere prepared by him for his own private use, while the Sacra Privatawere prepared by him for the use of the public. The Maxims werenever meant to be printed, and have on that account, like a work of,doubtless, far deeper emotion and power, the Meditations of MarcusAurelius, something peculiarly sincere and first-hand about them.Some of the best things from the Maxims have passed into the SacraPrivata; still, in the Maxims, we have them as they first arose; andwhereas, too, in