It does not consist with the common
acceptation of his character to fancy him much moved, except
with anger. And yet the language of passion came to his pen
as readily, whether it was a passion of denunciation against
some of the abuses that vexed his righteous spirit, or of
yearning for the society of an absent friend. He was
vehement in affection, as in doctrine. I will not deny that
there may have been, along with his vehemence, something
shifty, and for the moment only; that, like many men, and
many Scotchmen, he saw the world and his own heart, not so
much under any very steady, equable light, as by extreme
flashes of passion, true for the moment, but not true in the
long run. There does seem to me to be something of this
traceable in the Reformer's utterances: precipitation and
repentance, hardy speech and action somewhat circumspect, a
strong tendency to see himself in a heroic light and to place
a ready belief in the disposition of the moment. Withal he
had considerable confidence in himself, and in the
uprightness of his own disciplined emotions, underlying much
sincere aspiration after spiritual humility. And it is this
confidence that makes his intercourse with women so
interesting to a modern. It would be easy, of course, to
make fun of the whole affair, to picture him strutting
vaingloriously among these inferior creatures, or compare a
religious friendship in the sixteenth century with what was
called, I think, a literary friendship in the eighteenth.
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