The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (pdf e book reader txt) 📕

“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 watchmen 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 lawmakers 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 watchmen 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 fossé 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