He says in his diary for
the 15th April, 1828,--"Dined with Sir Robert Inglis, and met Sir
Thomas Acland, my old and kind friend. I was happy to see him. He may
be considered now as the head of the religious party in the House of
Commons--a powerful body which Wilberforce long commanded. It is a
difficult situation, for the adaptation of religious motives to
earthly policy is apt--among the infinite delusions of the human
heart--to be a snare."[37] His letters to his eldest son, the young
cavalry officer, on his first start in life, are much admired by Mr.
Lockhart, but to me they read a little hard, a little worldly, and
extremely conventional. Conventionality was certainly to his mind
almost a virtue.
Of enthusiasm in religion Scott always spoke very severely; both in his
novels and in his letters and private diary. In writing to Lord Montague,
he speaks of such enthusiasm as was then prevalent at Oxford, and which
makes, he says, "religion a motive and a pretext for particular lines of
thinking in politics and in temporal affairs" [as if it could help doing
that!] as "teaching a new way of going to the devil for God's sake," and
this expressly, because when the young are infected with it, it disunites
families, and sets "children in opposition to their parents.
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