MICHAEL F. SUAREZ, SJ
Johnson's Christian thought
It is impossible adequately to understand or appreciate Johnson the author without seriously considering Johnson the Christian believer and theological thinker. From the time Johnson first read William Law's Serious Call at the age of twenty, Boswell tells us, "religion was the predominant object of his thoughts" (Life, i, 69-70). Another early biographer, Sir John Hawkins, examined the pi,in of study Johnson composed at
A further sign of Johnson's early theological inclination is the fact that I he second project he ever proposed to
Johnson's theological concerns are also evident in "The Vision of Theodore, Hermit of Teneriffe," written for Robert Dodsley's Preceptor (1748). The theme of this brief allegorical fiction is that the best exercise of reason leads us to the higher truths of religion, a motif that also runs through the illustrative quol.i tions Johnson selected for his Dictionary. In the final number of the Kamhlci, Johnson tells readers that his intention has been to produce a series of essays "exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity, without any accommodation to the licentiousness and the levity of the present age" (Rambler, v, 32.0). This kind of Christian didacticism persists throughout his writings from "The Life of Or Herman Boerhaave" (1739), which portrays the Dutch physician as a model of piety and learning, to the Lives of the Poets (1779-81), in which the reader is led to consider the brevity of life and the transience of earthly glory.
"Learning," wrote Johnson in sermon 6, "is of use to display the greatness, and vindicate the justice, of the Almighty; to explain the difficulties, and enforce the proofs, of religion" (Sermons, p. 71). Convinced that "One of the great duties of man ... is ... to propagate goodness and enforce truth" (Sermons, p. 147), Johnson devoted his writing life to fostering Christian virtue and championing the eternal verities of revealed religion, which he believed were essential to the happiness of humankind (Sermons, p. 15). In Johnson's "prayer on the rambler" he petitions "the giver of all good things" for the Holy Spirit, "that I may promote thy glory, and the Salvation both of myself and others"; the "prayer on the study of religion" asks God to "invigorate my studies... that I may by due diligence and right discernment establish myself and others in thy holy Faith" (Diaries, pp. 42, 62).
During a period of at least thirty-two years Johnson "composed about forty sermons" (Life, v, 67) for clergymen friends. Many of the twenty-seven sermons that still survive reveal his close familiarity with works by seventeenth-century divines frequently cited in the Dictionary, including Jeremy Taylor, Henry Hammond, Richard Allestree, John Wilkins, Robert South, Edward Stillingfleet, and John Tillotson. Richard Baxter, William Law, and Samuel Clarke were particularly important homiletic models for Johnson, though he excluded Clarke from the Dictionary because of his unorthodox beliefs regarding the Trinity (Life, iv, 416, n. z).2
Hawkins tells us that "Johnson owed his excellence as a writer" to his study of "the divines and others of the last century" and remarks that he was "completely skilled in the writings of the fathers [the theologians of the early church], yet was he more conversant with those of the great English church-men, namely [Richard] Hooker, [James] Us[s]her, [Joseph] Mede, [Henry] Hammond, [Robert] Sanderson, [Joseph] Hall, and others of that class" (Hawkins, pp. 271, 542). In the catalogue of the Harleian Library he compiled with William Oldys from November 1742 to January 1744, Johnson displays a comprehensive knowledge of English church history and formidable theological erudition in the entries for such categories as "Controversies with the Papists," "Theologica Ascetica," "Deists," and the "Trinitarian Controversy."'
Incessant references to God and
When Johnson and Boswell were on their tour of the Hebrides, they fantasised about creating a new college at the
Between 1755 and 1781, Johnson made many resolutions "to study Theology" or Divinity (e.g., Diaries, p. 57) and some twenty determinations to read the Bible. He wrote to Boswell in
Johnson's reputation as a Christian moralist and advocate of religion led one of
In light of the religious and moral background of Johnson's periodical essays, fiction, poetry, lexicography, and biographical writing, it is hardly surprising that Pat Rogers sees "Johnson the religious being" as the "core of his creative self."K But how are we to understand Johnson as a Christian writer? Most attempts by modern critics, focusing either upon Johnson's inner psychology or his religious practices, have fallen far short of the mark because of their own neglect of theological knowledge. If we wish to understand "Johnson the religious being," then we must recognize that he was not only a serious Christian believer, but also an equally serious Christian thinker very well read in patristic and seventeenth-century theology and in classical and contemporary ethics. Although Johnson's Christian convictions and theological thinking are more richly complex than is generally recognized by present-day readers, suffice it to say that the key to this vital aspect of Johnson's life and writings lies in his understanding of three crucial ideas: religious authority, conditional salvation, and Christian morality.
Johnson regarded the Bible, the "sacred and inscrutable word, which will shew . . . the inefficacy of all other knowledge," as the revealed word of God whereby we are "taught to know the will of our Maker ... by messengers inspired by himself" (Sermons, pp. 95, 40). As a Protestant, he believed that the Scriptures contained everything necessary for salvation and that doctrines not established by the sacred page could not be required (Sermons, p. 20). In Johnson's view, the light of revelation made clear those truths every soul needed to know (Sermons, pp. 29, 40); yet, at the same time he argued that the Bible was the "most difficult book in the world" (Life, in, 298), a complicated canon of texts whose meaning beyond the essential truths of salvation, immortality, heaven, and hell was far from apparent. Tradition, especially the legacy of the early church as handed down by the Fathers, was therefore an essential secondary authority for fostering Christian understanding in matters of church polity and doctrine. "With regard to the order and government of the primitive church," says Johnson of the Fathers, we may doubtless follow their authority with perfect security. . . . From their writings we are to vindicate the establishment of our church, and by the same writings arc those who differ from us, in these particulars, to defend their conduct. Nor is this the only, though perhaps the chief use of these writers, for, in matters of faith, and points of doctrine, those, at least, who lived in the ages nearest to the times of the apostles undoubtedly deserve to be consulted. (Sermons, pp. 82—83) Johnson is proposing a theological methodology that uniquely privileges early patristic writings as the most reliable and legitimate non-biblical source for the right conduct of theological inquiry: "Thus, by consulting first the holy Scriptures, and next the writers of the primitive church, we shall make otirsdvi'K acquainted with the will of God; thus shall we discover the good way, and liiul that rest for our souls which will amply recompense our studies and enquiries" (Sermons, p. 83).
But why the church Fathers? Were the Anglican divines of the seventeenth :iiul eighteenth centuries not enough for a layman who seldom went to church? Johnson announces his reasons for turning to patristic theology in his own sermon 7. He begins by stating the problem: "The prevailing spirit of the present age seems to be the spirit of scepticism and captiousness, of suspicion and distrust, a contempt of all authority, and a presumptuous confidence in private judgement; a dislike of all established forms, merely because they are established, and of old paths, because they are old" (Sermons, p. 77). Subsequently, he explains why this is so: the age is beset with "an overfondness for novelty . . . and a neglect of ... asking for the old paths, where is the good way, and walking therein" (Sermons, p. 78). For Johnson, "walking therein" amounts to "searching into antiquity" (Sermons, p. 79) or studying the church Fathers. This view is succinctly reiterated in his spiritual diary when he lists the causes of skepticism; immediately following "Complaint of the obscurity of Scripture" is "Contempt of Fathers and of authority" (Diaries, p. 414).
Johnson thoroughly embraced the Anglican orthodoxy of his time, a i'hi media between what he regarded as the fideism and superstition of Roman Catholicism and the dangerously traditionless and personality-oriented characteristics of Dissent. Although Johnson was less vehemently opposed to Roman Catholicism than most of his fellow Englishmen, and even once told Boswell, "I would be a Papist if I could" (Life, iv, 2.89), he nevertheless clearly rejected much Roman doctrine and practice (Life, in, 407). In the Dictionary, his definitions and examples for "reformation," "transubstantiation," and "pope" and its variants leave no doubt about the strength and sincerity of his animus against the Roman church. His life of Paolo Sarpi (1738) and his translation of Lobo's A Voyage to Abyssinia (1735) further document his hostility to Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, because of his belief in the importance of the apostolic or "primitive church" and the authority of the Fathers, Johnson was far more sympathetic to Catholicism than he was to many forms of Dissent, which he regarded as modern innovations lacking legitimizing contact with the past. His personal belief in Purgatory and, hence, in the efficacy of prayers for the dead (Life, i, 240; it, 104—5, 162—63) - doctrines associated with Catholicism - was based largely upon the teachings of the Fathers (Life, v, 356; Hawkins, p. 449). Yet Johnson was so thoroughly a Church of England man that he prayed for the soul of his deceased wife "conditionally" and for his dead relatives "so far as it might be lawful" (Diaries, pp. 50, 79).
"Johnson's profound reverence for the [Church of England's] Hierarchy" (I-iff, iv, 75, 197-98), the emblem of ecclesiastical authority and order, helps to explain why he held the seventeenth-century Puritans in particular disdain. His "Life of Butler" voices his contempt for "the sour solemnity, the sullen superstition, the gloomy moroseness, and the stubborn scruples of the ancient Puritans"; he laments the instability of the mid-seventeenth century when "the tumult of absurdity and clamour of contradiction .. . perplexed doctrine, disordered practice, and disturbed both publick and private quiet" (Lives, I, 114). Most damaging was the loss of authority, for the Puritan ascendancy inaugurated an age "when subordination was broken and hissed away; when any unsettled innovator who could hatch a half-formed notion produced it to the publick; when every man might become a preacher, and . .. collect a congregation" (Lives, 1,114—15). "The destruction of order, and the abolition of stated regulations," wrote Johnson, "must fill the world with uncertainty, distraction, and sollicitude" (Sermons, p. 2.45).
In similar vein, Johnson's "Life of Milton" brims with contempt for the Puritan assault upon the stabilizing forces of monarchy and episcopacy, which in Milton's case Johnson ascribed to "not so much the love of liberty as repugnance to authority" (Lives, I, 157). That Milton, a believing Christian, "was of no church" Johnson found "dangerous" (Lives, I, 155). He considered the Calvinist doctrines of election and predestination to be especially problematic and unacceptable, maintaining that predestination was included in the Thirty-Nine Articles merely because of "the clamour of the times" (Life, n, 104). Deeply distrustful of private revelation and of the assurance of being saved, Johnson repeatedly stresses the unreliability of human fancy and the enormous capacity we possess for self-deception (Rambler, iv, 33ff.).
He sincerely commended the Methodists, who had not yet seceded from the Church of England, for their plain style of preaching that made the gospel message intelligible to the common folk (Life, 1, 458-59; n, 123; v, 392). Yet he was deeply distrustful of the emotionalism associated with the Methodists, and helped to popularize Joseph Trapp's sermons against religious "enthusiasm," abridging them for the Gentleman's Magazine in 1739. As with the Calvinists, Johnson regarded the Methodist notion of "inward light" as "a principle utterly incompatible with social or civil security" because it was a private principle of action without recourse to any external authority (Life, n, 126). A "presumptuous confidence in private judgement" (Sermons, p. 77) should not supplant publicly established forms of religious and moral authority.
Because of his firm conviction that episcopal government was uniquely consonant with the practice of the primitive church, Johnson rejected the legitimacy of all other forms of ecclesiastical polity. Although he was willing to accept that Presbyterianism should be the state religion of Scotland, he refused even to enter a Presbyterian church when he was travelling with Boswell (LJfe, v, 121): he would not sanction Presbyterians' worship by his presence because they "have in church, no apostolical ordination" and "no form of [public] prayer," such as the Roman Missal and the Book of Common Prayer (Life, n, 103, 104; /oiirin'v, pp, 104—5). His brief biography of the Presbyterian controversialist Francis Clicyni'll (1608-65), perhaps Johnson's most mordantly ironic production, reveals his antipathies: Presbyterian preaching is "noisy and unmeaning," and defenders (if that denomination are confounded by a group of simple soldiers (Early /.;rc,», pp. 396,397-98).
Johnson advocated a moderate form of Erastianism, the right of the stale In establish a church and to regulate the ecclesiastical life of its citizens. The governor's trust, he believed, "includes, not only the care of the property, but ol ilu1 morals of the people," and that "deficiencies in civil life can be supplied only liy religion"; therefore, "The first duty of a governor is to diffuse through the community a spirit of religion" (Sermons, pp. 252, 2.56). The state is obliged to exercise its powers to create a climate promoting public worship and fostering Christian virtue: "That religion may be invigorated and diffused, it is necessary that the external order of religion be diligently maintained, that the solemnities of worship be duly observed, and a proper reverence preserved for the times and places appropriated to piety" (Sermons, p. 257).
At the same time, however, Johnson deeply resented any state abridgment of ecclesiastical power or prerogative, and told David Hume that he "would stand before a battery of cannon, to restore the Convocation [a clerical assembly for the government of the Church of England] to its full powers" (Life, 1,464). When, in 1773, the Dissenters Bill sought to remove mandatory subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles by all holders of political office, Johnson was vehemently opposed (Letters, 11, 13, n. 8). He was unwilling to countenance any measure he thought might diminish the stature of the established church. Clergy, he insisted, should have the "right of censure and rebuke" of their spiritual charges, making his case yet again upon "the practice of the primitive church" (Life, in, 59). In short, Johnson was "a sincere and zealous Christian, of high Church-of-England and monarchical principles, which he would not tamely suffer to be questioned" (Life, iv, 426).
