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Joanna Baillie’s Religious Ideology:The Dichotomy of Fundamentalismand Liberalism in The Martyr and AView of the General Tenour of the NewTestament Regarding the Nature andDignity of Jesus ChristJudith Bailey SlaglePublished online: 19 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Judith Bailey Slagle (2006) Joanna Baillie’s Religious Ideology: The Dichotomyof Fundamentalism and Liberalism in The Martyr and A View of the General Tenour of the NewTestament Regarding the Nature and Dignity of Jesus Christ , European Romantic Review, 17:3,301-314, DOI: 10.1080/10509580600816736

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European Romantic Review,Vol. 17, No. 3, July 2006, pp. 301–314

ISSN 1050–9585 (print)/ISSN 1740–4657 (online) © 2006 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/10509580600816736

Joanna Baillie’s Religious Ideology:The Dichotomy of Fundamentalism and Liberalism in The Martyr and A View of the General Tenour of the New Testament Regarding the Nature and Dignity of Jesus ChristJudith Bailey SlagleTaylor and Francis LtdGERR_A_181615.sgm10.1080/10509580600816736European Romantic Review1050-9585 (print)/1740-4657 (online)Original Article2006Taylor & Francis173000000July 2006Professor JudithSlagleslagle@etsu.edu

Scottish playwright Joanna Baillie grew up as the daughter of a Church of Scotland minis-ter, but after moving to London in her twenties, she embraced Unitarianism like manyother writers and thinkers of the early Romantic period. After publishing four volumes ofplays, several metrical legends and dozens of poems, in her later years Baillie turned herattention to religious theory. Her 1826 drama The Martyr, later included in Dramas(1836), reveals her fundamental Christian ideology. But her 1831 pamphlet titled A Viewof the General Tenour of the New Testament Regarding the Nature and Dignity ofJesus Christ broaches one of the most controversial theological arguments of the period—the validity of the Trinity. This essay considers why a financially secure, religious Scot, witha certain intellectual reputation, would turn her attention to Christian fundamentalismand then reveal such a liberal position in a frontal attack on Anglican doctrine.

By the time Scottish playwright Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) was in her sixties, she hadpublished a volume of poems, four volumes of plays in several editions, a volume ofmetrical legends based on celebrated historical figures; and she had edited a collectionof manuscript poems for charity that included verses from Walter Scott, WilliamWordsworth, Thomas Campbell, Anna Barbauld, Felicia Hemans, Robert Southey,

Judith Bailey Slagle is Professor and Chair of English at East Tennessee State University. Correspondence to JudithBailey Slagle, Department of English, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN 37614, USA; email:slagle@etsu.edu

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and others. While most of her own poems focused on Romantic subjects and her playson problematic relationships twisted by human passions, one play published in a singleedition in 1826 revealed her Christian ideology—The Martyr—a play that would alsobe included later in her 1836 three-volume Dramas. Shortly after The Martyr, andseemingly out of nowhere, came clearly her most controversial religious work, alengthy pamphlet titled A View of the General Tenour of the New Testament Regardingthe Nature and Dignity of Jesus Christ. Why would a financially secure, religious Scot,with a widely recognized poetic talent and secure intellectual reputation, turn herattention to Christian fundamentalism and then reveal a liberal position in a frontalattack on the validity of the Trinity? This essay attempts to address Baillie’s seemingreligious dichotomy.1

Joanna Baillie was a product of post-Enlightenment Scotland raised by Church ofScotland parents, her father James a minister and Professor of Divinity at the Univer-sity of Glasgow. Eventually, however, through her early association with the Barbauldsand others, she moved from Presbyterianism to Unitarianism at a time when otherwriters and artists were doing the same. Included in this sect were many of Baillie’sfriends and correspondents: Lucy Aikin, Lady Byron, Fanny Kemble, HenryWadsworth Longfellow, Jane Porter, Samuel Rogers, Catharine Sedgwick, AndrewsNorton, William Ellery Channing and others in England and America.

While Baillie was devoutly religious, she was also an open-minded and liberalthinker. As a Unitarian, however, Baillie still supported the Church of Scotland whenasked by the Rev. Baird of Edinburgh to help revise the church psalmody in 1824(Slagle, Life 232). Nevertheless, she defended Congregational Church leader WilliamEllery Channing’s liberal reading of the scriptures2 years later in a letter to her friendMary Berry on July 8, 1833:

… This indeed is the very first day in which I have had any leisure since we returnedhome, last Thursday—“Desire her to write to me and tell me what she thinks of Dr

Channing’s last volume of Discourses”—this I think is your message or the mainpurport of, and I could not well write to you about any thing that has taken morepossession of my own mind. He sent me the book which I received with a letter fromhimself better than two months ago, and I have read it again & again with great inter-est & admiration … . His views of our Saviour’s character as the strongest proof of thefaithfulness of his revelation and the History of him contained in the Gospels, is beau-tiful, noble, and powerful in moving the heart and convincing the understanding; andfew unprejudiced minds, I should think could withstand it. His discourses too on self-denyal, so powerfully supporting the rights of natural reason as that thing belongingto us, God’s best gift, which is not to be denied; and the excellent purposes stated byhim, for which those that ought to be denied are brought into the world, evil passions,bodily pain &c; are most ably & eloquently shewn. (Slagle, Letters 171–172)

Like this one, many of Baillie’s letters to her friends allude to Channing’s sermonsand to his analysis of the scriptures.3 The relationship between Channing’s and Baillie’sreligious thought is clear in this letter; but, explains Christine Colón, their similaritiesrun even deeper:

Both Baillie and Channing long to reform individuals within society, and they viewthe tenets of Christianity as the best means of achieving their goal. Channing

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recognizes how similar their projects are and commends Baillie in a letter to her,stating, “Your influence on the cause of civil and religious liberty through the worldis so great, that I look towards you with much solicitude.” … Both acknowledge thatindividuals need to be reformed, and both see literature as the means of this moralreformation. (“Convictions” 67)

Channing, as Baillie was now doing, had reflected on the nature of Jesus in hisDiscourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion in a lecture delivered at Cambridge inMarch 1821. “The character of Christ,” Channing argues, “was real… . And how canyou account for it, but by that cause to which he always referred it, a mission from theFather?” Channing continues,

One striking peculiarity in Jesus is the extent, the vastness of his views… . Jesus came,declaring himself to be the deliverer and light of the world, and in his whole teachingand life, you see a consciousness, which never forsakes him, of a relation to the wholehuman race. (Discourse 21)

Moreover, Channing explains, “No conqueror, legislator, philosopher, in the extrava-gance of ambition, had ever dreamed of subjecting all nations to a common faith”(Discourse 22). Then, addressing evidences of Christianity, Channing discusses the“spirituality” of Christianity:

There is another evidence of Christianity, still more internal than any on which I haveyet dwelt, an evidence to be felt rather than described, but not less real, becausefounded on feeling. I refer to that conviction of the divine original of our religion,which springs up and continually gains strength, in those who apply it habitually totheir tempers and lives, and who imbibe its spirit and hopes… . its power to confer thetrue happiness of human nature, to give that peace, which the world cannot give.(Discourse 35)

Here Channing communicates an alliance that Baillie uses in The Martyr—reason andpassion.

While Baillie kept up with religious free thinkers such as Channing during her lateryears of religious and philosophical inquiry, she also blended their ideology with herown Christian rationalism. When The Martyr first appeared in 1826, she attached thefollowing Preface:

The Martyr whom I have endeavoured to portray, is of a class, which I believe to havebeen very rare, except in the first ages of Christianity… . but, from the pure devotedlove of God, as the great Creator and benevolent Parent of men, few have suffered butwhen Christianity was in its simplest and most perfect state, and more immediatelycontrasted with the mean, cheerless conceptions and popular fables of Paganism.(Dramatic 509)

This play had been written years earlier and read only by a few friends and, as she madeclear in her Preface, was never intended for public performance:

I need scarcely observe to the reader, that the subject of this piece is too sacred, andtherefore unfit, for the stage. I have endeavoured, however, to give it so much ofdramatic effect as to rouse his imagination in perusing it to a lively representation ofthe characters, action, and scenes, belonging to the story; and this, if I have succeeded,will remove from it the dryness of a mere dramatic poem. (Dramatic 512)

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Baillie had even considered keeping the play from publication, but when her friendHenry Hart Milman produced a similar play, probably The Martyr of Antioch (1822),she thought it time to reveal her own early drama on a similar theme.4 The Martyr goesto the heart of Christianity, to the fundamentals of its inception. Baillie believed thatreligion must be based on rational thinking as well as on feeling. A reflective woman bynature, she introduced plays driven by human passions in order to demonstrate howand why passions should be controlled. Her approach to religion was rational as well,but The Martyr combines rationality with passion. Christine Colón argues that

Despite Baillie’s clear pronouncements of her Christian purpose, many critics todaytend to view her project of helping her audiences learn to control their passions as asecular one in which she is simply warning them to use reason to restrain theiremotions… . In her plays Baillie presents both the negative passions that hinder aperson’s relationship with God and the positive affections that attract individualstoward each other and toward God. (“Christianity” 164)

Further, argues Colón, Baillie “approaches her work with the fervor of a missionary,”asking her readers to “search for truth themselves” (“Christianity” 165). The Martyrprovides the setting for just such a search; while the play is religious, it is not didacticbut heuristic, serving to guide rather than prescribe.

The Martyr is set in the time of Nero, a liberty that Baillie explained might not behistorically accurate but was most fitting for her subject, for it was a time when pureChristianity was

unencumbered with many perplexing and contradictory doctrines, which followed,when churchmen had leisure to overlay the sacred Scriptures with a multitude ofexplanatory dissertations, and with perverse, presumptuous ingenuity to explain theplain passages by the obscure, instead of the obscure by the plain. (Dramatic 511)

It was this “presumptuous ingenuity” that Baillie would go on to attack in her View ofthe General Tenour of the New Testament Regarding the Nature and Dignity of JesusChrist. This play, then, portrays a pure religion unspoiled by theological doctrine andbased on “the pure devoted love of God, as the great Creator and benevolent Parent ofmen … when Christianity was in its simplest and most perfect state” in contrast withthe “mean, cheerless conceptions and popular fables of Paganism” (Dramatic 509).

The Martyr is a three-act play about the conversion and subsequent execution ofCordenius Maro, an officer of the imperial guard of Rome. Maro has the potential fora principal spot in Nero’s court, will soon be granted the hand of senator Sulpicius’daughter Portia, and has the love and respect of friends such as the Parthian princeOrceres. But hearing the words of a Christian father or bishop (as Baillie defines him),Cordenius Maro is consumed with passion and enthusiasm for God and humanity.Suddenly, in a rush of feeling, he witnesses God in man and in nature:

Cor. These blessed hours, which I have pass’d with you,Have to my intellectual being givenNew feelings and expansion, like to thatWhich once I felt, on viewing by degreesThe wide development of nature’s amplitude. (Dramatic 516)

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These lines objectify the Romantic spirit and Baillie’s ability to unite God and the natu-ral world, while they also construct a parallel between untainted devotion and intellect.Maro is no poor, uneducated citizen; he accepts a religion based not only on passionbut also on reason, as does Baillie, who explains,

But though we may well suppose unlearned soldiers to be the most unprejudiced andardent of the early Christian proselytes, we have good reason to believe that the mostenlightened minds of those days might be strongly moved and attracted by the firstview of Christianity in its pure, uncorrupted state. (Dramatic 511)

“Pure and uncorrupted” are the playwright’s operative words. Like the Christians hehas seen burned to death when he was a soldier, Cordenius Maro, too, becomes amartyr. He gives up his right to Portia to protect her family, enables the escape ofimprisoned Christian teacher Ethocles the Grecian, and refuses to deny Christ inNero’s court. As Maro faces the punishment of Nero’s lions, his friend Orceres, “froma lofty stand amongst the spectators, sends an arrow from his bow, which pierces CORD-ENIUS through the heart,” a death “more worthy of a Roman” (Dramatic 527).

Worthiness is a common denominator in this play, for Baillie is especially concernedwith signifying the worthiness and the dignity of Christianity in its original form. Beingworthy also includes being brave, another prevailing motif. When Portia discoversMaro’s conversion, she declares to Orceres:

Portia. Alas! I know that he is brave and virtuous,Therefore I do despair.

Or. In Nero’s court,Such men are ever on the brink of danger,But wouldst thou have him other than he is?

Portia. O no! I would not; that were base and sordid… . (Dramatic 522)

Of course, Nero regards this Christian bravery as simply subversive and asks CordeniusMaro: “Does thou still brave it, false and subtle spirit?” When Cordenius answers in theaffirmative, Nero continues: “I am amazed beyond the power of utt’rance! / Grows itto such a pitch that Rome’s brave captains / Are by this wizard sorcery so charm’d?”(Dramatic 523). As Nero continues to question Cordenius’ sanity, the soldier answers,

Cor. Is it madnessTo be the humble follower of Him,Who left the bliss of heaven to be for usA man on earth, in spotless virtue living,As man ne’er lived: such words of comfort speaking,To rouse, and elevate, and cheer the heart,As man ne’er spoke; and suff’ring poverty,Contempt, and wrong, and pain, and death itself,As man ne’er suffer’d? (Dramatic 524)

Here Baillie also inserts her anti-Trinitarian philosophy, that Christ was a divine mansent to earth by his Father in Heaven. The Martyr reveals what Baillie recognizes as thepure state of Christianity, an adoration of Christ’s principles. And it presents anemotionally freeing experience that results in “social love” without organized bound-aries—as Cordenius exclaims:

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O what a range of thought given to the mind!And to the soul what loftiness of hope!That future dreamy state of faint existenceWhich poets have described and sages taught,In which the brave and virtuous pined and droop’dIn useless indolence, changed for a stateOf social love, and joy, and active bliss,—A state of brotherhood,—a state of virtue … (Dramatic 517)

Cordenius Maro’s spiritual enlightenment is also intensely “macho.” These Chris-tians are rebellious, resolute and courageous, not afraid to be martyrs for their newlyexperienced spiritual freedom. But, as Sean Carney argues, Baillie “knew the agendasof martyrs,” a sort of “literary martyr” herself, and he explains that

The coming of Christ in fact reversed the polarity between life and death, in Baillie’sestimation, and life itself became the ghostly existence which pales in comparison withthe afterlife, “a future life, so joyful, active, spiritual, and glorious, that the presentfaded in the imagination from before, as a shadow.” (251–252)

Early Christian martyrs, argues Carney, “offered a performance which bears a strikingresemblance to the transcendence of [her character] Henriquez: ‘It was then that a newspectacle was exhibited to mankind; then it was that the sublimity of man’s immortalsoul shone forth in glory which seemed supernatural’” (251–252). Carney’s analysis ofthe main character in Henriquez serves for Cordenius Maro as well: “Baillie’s goal asartist is to make manifest this soul” (252).

Continuing her inquiry into religious philosophy, Baillie now turned her hand to adefense of William Ellery Channing’s reading of the scriptures and to a main principleof Unitarianism, stated as the second principle of his A Brief Statement of Some of TheTenets Professed by Unitarian Christians as follows:

We believe in the doctrine of GOD’S UNITY; or, that there is one God, and oneonly… . We object to the doctrine of the Trinity, that it subverts the unity of God.According to this doctrine, there are three infinite and equal persons, possessingsupreme divinity, called—the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Each of these persons, asdescribed by theologians, has his own particular consciousness, will, and percep-tions… . When we attempt to conceive of three Gods, we can do nothing more, thanrepresent to ourselves three agents, distinguished from each other by similar marksand peculiarities to those, which separate the persons of the Trinity; and whencommon Christians hear these persons spoken of as conversing with each other,loving each other, and performing different acts, how can they help regarding them asdifferent beings—different minds? (Tenets 5–6)

At this time, Unitarianism consisted of three centers of development: the Socinianmovement in Poland; the English anti-Trinitarianism of the seventeenth century andonward, arising through rationalist Calvinism and Enlightenment religion; and thebreakup of New England Calvinist covenant theology. Unitarianism developed inAmerica independently of the European movement, and the more liberal branch thereinsisted that Jesus was a man who taught that all men are divine and are sons of Godand denied that Jesus claimed to be part of the Deity. A break between the liberal andconservative factions in the Congregational Church occurred in Baltimore around

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1819 when William Ellery Channing defended his views by appealing to the scripturesfor support and argued that the doctrine of three persons in the Godhead was not afundamental doctrine of Christianity. Baillie took up this argument in the first editionof her View of the General Tenour of the New Testament Regarding the Nature andDignity of Jesus Christ in 1831 and expanded it in a second edition in 1838, adding hercorrespondence with the Bishop of Salisbury and her closing remarks on the “Pre-Existence of Christ.” The general premise of her text, like Channing’s, is that withoutprevious instruction in the doctrine of the Trinity, a person of common sense andunderstanding might read the entire New Testament without being aware that such adoctrine exists.

Baillie’s second edition of A View of the General Tenour (1838) contained a newpreface, stating that it was not the author’s original intention to revise the text for asecond edition, for she had originally “done for conscience’ sake what it was painful forme to do, and was willing to be at rest” (View v). But after the Bishop’s correspondenceand his subsequent rebuttal of her text in his Remarks on the General Tenour of the NewTestament regarding the Nature and Dignity of Jesus Christ (1831), she felt it necessaryto republish her text for fear that people would think she had “changed [her] opinionsregarding the subject.” She makes clear that at the beginning of this correspondence shehad been

… unwilling to enter into any public controversy with His Lordship, a task for whichI felt myself unqualified; but not to have stated to him my opinion of the chief pointsin his letter, for his own private satisfaction, when requested to do so, would haveshown a want of the respect due to his character as a scholar and a clergymen, and aninsensibility to the courtesy and charitable forbearance with which he had treatedwhat he might naturally have considered as a very presumptuous publication. (Viewv–vi)

Baillie begins the body of her text by acknowledging the main argument for the Trin-ity and the two anti-Trinitarian views that oppose it:

[1] The high church doctrine of the Trinity makes Jesus Christ God, equal in power,and all other attributes, with the supreme God, or God the Father. [2] That which iscommonly called the Arian, supposes him to be a most highly exalted Being, who waswith God before the creation of the world, and by whose agency it probably wascreated, by power derived from Almighty God. [3] That which is denominated theSocinian, regards him as the great Missioned Prophet of God, sent into the world toreveal his will to men; to set them an example of perfect virtue; and to testify the truthof his mission by the sacrifice of his life. (View 1)

These three views established, Baillie sets the stage for her argument: “But no Chris-tian—no Protestant Christian, regulates, or at least ought to regulate, his faith by anything but what appears to him to be really taught in Scripture,” for “To human reason,the noblest gift of our heavenly Father, are submitted the proofs of our Scripture’sauthenticity—its claim to being received as the word of God” (View 2–3). In a perfectlystructured argument, she examines the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epis-tles for support and leaves the reader “to draw from them what conclusions his honestjudgment shall dictate” (View 4). She also gives proper bibliographic information for

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her King James text, “Taking the common version (bearing date the year 1765), printedby authority at Cambridge”; for “the learned divines who made that translation … wereall professed believers of the established doctrine, and would therefore naturally givethat sense to the words of every passage which was most favorable to their own tenets”(View 7).

The main body of her text, nearly 100 pages, takes verses from each chapter she haspromised to analyze to prove that references to Jesus give evidence that he is a separateentity from God. For example, from St. Matthew, among many examples, she cites thefollowing:

Chapt. III. v. 16, 17—“And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out ofthe water; and lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of Goddescending like a dove, and lighting upon him: and lo, a voice from heaven, saying,This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” (View 10)

“Throughout St. Matthew’s Gospel,” writes Baillie, “the power of working miracles,with all the wisdom and knowledge of Christ, is spoken of as derived from God”(View 17). She then moves on to evidence in St. Mark:

Chapt. VIII. v. 38—“Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words in thisadulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed whenhe cometh in the glory of his Father, with the holy angels.” (View 20)

She concludes her examples from St. Mark as follows:

The most striking passage in the foregoing Gospel is to be found in the second chapter,from verse 5 to 12… . Releasing the sick person from the bodily punishment of sin.When our Saviour would have sinners released from the punishments of another world,awarded to deep moral guilt, it is from his heavenly Father he requests it. (View 24)

And from St. Luke, she cites the following:

Chapt. XVIII. v. 18, 19.—“And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, whatshall I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, why callest thou me good?none is good, save one, that is God.” (View 29)

These are only four of literally dozens of examples provided in Baillie’s argument thatJesus is a separate being, the Son of God. Nevertheless, the Bishop of Salisbury ignoredher logic and began his attack in his first letter to her in September 1831.

When Baillie’s A View of the General Tenour of the New Testament appeared in 1831,just a year before Sir Walter Scott’s death, it also worried her old friend, always on theopposite political and religious side from her. He recorded in his journal on 17 May1831 that Baillie had entered into the Socinian controversy and that he believed “thisgifted woman” was “hardly doing herself justice” by doing something “not required ather hands.” Scott admitted, however, that his friend William Laidlaw thought it the“finest thing in the world” (qtd in Anderson 655).5 While Scott was simply concernedthat Baillie was delving unnecessarily into a hot controversy, Thomas Burgess, theBishop of Salisbury, was determined to set her straight about theology.

Thomas Burgess, D.D. (1756–1837), had been a scholar of Corpus Christi College,Oxford, in 1775, where he took his BA in 1778, MA in 1782, and was elected a fellow in

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1783. After his ordination as deacon and priest in 1784, his first church appointmentwas examining chaplain to Bishop Shute Barrington of Salisbury (1785), where heremained as prebendary of Salisbury from 1787 to 1803. In the meantime, Burgesspublished various classical works and gradually turned his attention to sacred studies.In September 1791 he was appointed to one of the valuable prebends of DurhamCathedral and in 1798 held the prebend of Islington at St. Paul’s. He continued to takean interest in religious and educational movements and in 1803 was appointed bishopof St. David’s, where he devoted himself to the reformation of his diocese, therebymaking his mark on the Welsh church. In 1825 he was promoted to the bishopric atSalisbury, where he established a church union society and was energetic in visiting,educating, and ordaining. In 1836 he stood firmly against Lord Melbourne’s Irishchurch policy and denounced both Catholics and Unitarians in a series of tracts.6

Burgess was a prolific writer, but most of what he wrote was a defense of a prizedprinciple or opinion, often without the kind of support necessary for a critical argu-ment. The controversy between Burgess and Baillie was rooted in their respectiveAnglican and Unitarian doctrinal positions and was instigated by the Bishop after herfirst edition in 1831. Initially, Baillie was patient with him and attempted to explain herown stance by using evidence from the scriptures, stressing that she did not intend toimply disrespect for him or for the established church (Slagle, Letters 992).7 However,as the Bishop became more and more aggressive in his attempt to prove her wrong, herpatience clearly dwindled. In October 1831 she eventually began to attack flaws in hisargument, citing her own list of biblical references for support:

My Lord,I am greatly obliged by the pains Your Lordship has taken to correct the errors

into which I have fallen according to the orthodox view of the subject; and I am stillmore obliged by the gentleness and charity with which you have pointed out myerrors; for the able and the learned do not always condescend so gracefully to whatmust naturally appear to them the presumption of ignorance. Let me then entreatYour Lordship to accept in good part my sincere thanks, and still to extend yourforbearance while I mention, as you have encouraged me to do, some parts of yourable tract that appear to me to rest upon ingenious reasoning rather than realgrounds,—such grounds at least as to a common understanding produces conviction.For a person like myself to enter into any public controversy with a scholar and divineof your eminence and character would be altogether unbecoming; but I owe it, myLord, as a mark of respect, to lay before you privately my reasons for dissenting fromthe arguments contained in the letter which you have done me the very great honourof addressing to me; and I am quite assured that however weak or unsatisfactory theymay appear to you, they will be received with all the favour and indulgence I coulddesire.

In page 2 it is said, “This is our stronghold, that the doctrine which we professis the doctrine which was taught by Christ and his Apostles, and by the Fathers ofthe primitive church.” As it appears to me, that without previous instruction in thedoctrine of the Trinity, a person of plain sense might read the whole of the NewTestament without being aware of such a doctrine being contained in it, toconceive how it should immediately have become the received doctrine of the firstChristians is very difficult. Upon what grounds this is asserted I am ignorant.(Slagle, Letters 992)8

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Baillie’s letter continues for several pages, citing additional examples from the NewTestament that refute the Bishop’s argument.

Throughout their disagreement, Baillie’s correspondence with the Bishop is logicaland gracious, while his is sometimes contrived and condescending. For example, on 9December 1831, he sidesteps her main premise that a man of reasonable understandingcould read the New Testament and not be aware of a Trinity. “When Philip,” writesBurgess, “said to the man of Ethiopia, ‘Understandest thou what thou readest?’ hisanswer was, ‘How should I except some man should guide me?’”(View 129).9 When theBishop poses that even a man of understanding needs his church fathers to “instruct”him in reading the scriptures, he misconstrues (perhaps intentionally) Baillie’s point,implying that readers must have scripture interpreted for them. She responded to hiscircular reasoning as follows:

The chief point which you seem most anxious to maintain is, that an unlearnedperson, previously uninstructed in the doctrine of the Trinity, would find it out forhimself by carefully reading the New Testament. But your unlearned man, my Lord,is a person very differently circumstanced from the one whom I have taken intoconsideration.—“By a man of plain understanding, I mean one who is ignorant of anylanguage but his own, but is of competent discernment in the perception of what hereads. Wholly uninstructed in the doctrin [sic] of the Trinity, no one can be supposedto be who has been born, babtized [sic] and catechised in a Christian country; but hemay be unconversant in controversy, ingenious and open to conviction which is all, Ithink, that your proposition requires.”—These are Your Lordship’s words, but theydo not convey my meaning. I mean one who has never been Catechised and has neverheard of a doctrine of the Trinity; a person indeed difficult in a Christian country tobe found, but who can easily be imagined to exist. That such a one would conceive thevarious passages you allude to as containing the implications you maintain, I do notbelieve. (Slagle, Letters 997)

Baillie persists in arguing that there is no biblical evidence to support a belief in theTrinity, and the Bishop’s continued correspondence even veers from the main point toargue that Isaac Newton was really a Trinitarian, a fact disputed by Newton himself.10

On February 14, 1832, however, Baillie puts an end to the dispute. “And now,” shewrites, “with many thanks for the pains you have taken with me, let me entreat that aclose may be put to this correspondence which I hope will end with the same feelingsof courtesy & Christian charity with which it began.” She would write again only tothank him for his Remarks on the General Tenour of the New Testament in May 1834.When her second edition of A View of the General Tenour, along with the Bishop’sletters, was scheduled to be published as a response to his Remarks on the GeneralTenour of the New Testament, however, he sent his last letter (January 6, 1837):

My Dear Madam,

I am glad to hear that you are so soon to publish a second edition of “The New Testa-ment Views,” &c. You are most welcome to make the use you propose of my privateletters to you, subsequent to the publication of your Tract; and though I am of an agewhich forbids … my indulging the hope of pleasure in the pursuit of future inquiries,I cordially wish you health and freedom from pain as long as life is permitted to you.(View 146)

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Thus the Bishop and the playwright ended their correspondence, and Burgess, sufferingfrom ill health, died a short time later.

Baillie concludes her second edition with a section entitled “Remarks on the Pre-Existence of Christ,” containing, she explains, “Some of the principal Objections to thePre-existence of Christ, stated at my request by a Friend who had read and thoughtmuch on the subject” (View 147).11 Here Baillie lists her friend’s four objections to thenotion of a pre-existent Christ—not because she favors the anti-Trinitarian argumenton those grounds, but because an unbiased reading of the Gospels would actuallyauthorize such a view. In true Romantic spirit, her comments on the first in the listallude to Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”:

Whatever objections we might make to the heathen notion of the transmigration ofsouls, we should never say that it nullified or destroyed the properties of a man,whether he remembered his pre-existence or not. (View 149)

The second maintains that the “soul or spirit is the same spiritual being in whateverform it may be encompassed” and may “put off an angelic covering and be clothed inflesh and blood.” “The double nature of the Trinitarians,” continues Baillie,

is very different from this; for making Christ equal with God, he is omnipresent,yet confined to one place while he lived upon earth, and, after the resurrection,inhabiting the body with which he was invested when he dwelt with men. (View149)

Her comments on the third focus on language and literal expressions in the NewTestament: “there are passages,” writes Baillie, “that cannot by any latitude of figurativelanguage be received as conveying any other meaning than the previous existence ofour Saviour in a state of glory” (View 149). And finally, to the argument that if Christwere not like us, then he could not be an example to us in “doing or suffering,” shestates,

A man inspired by the spirit of God, bestowed upon him in such an extraordinarydegree that he could work the greatest miracles, and foresee events, was so differentlycircumstanced from other men, that his example could only affect them as illustratingthe will of God, and the beauty and excellence of virtue. (View 149)

Baillie finalizes her argument with several pages of scriptural examples and completesthe publication with remarks on topics such as “Toleration and Fanaticism” and anappendix. Baillie’s tract, explains Christine Colón, “uses the introduction and conclu-sion to promote her philosophy of individual freedom and responsibility, charging herreaders to ‘draw from [these passages] what conclusions [their] honest judgment shalldictate’” (“Christianity” 165).

Baillie did not revise her pamphlet a third time, nor did she publish further on reli-gious subjects. She was sure to have upset her Anglican friends with this excursion intotheology, but at her age one doubts that she was worried. When she sent the firstedition of her General Tenour to her long-time friend William Sotheby in 1831, evenhis wife was concerned that Baillie would be hurt by hostile criticism, but Baillieresponded to her as follows:

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My dear Mrs SothebyWhen your good & friendly husband told me on monday that the advice he came

to offer me was also the wish & advice of yourself & Miss Sotheby, it went to my heart& doubled the pain I felt in not complying with it. My reasons which I stated to him,he has no doubt mentioned to you, so I shall say nothing further on that subject.—But allow me to thank you most heartily for your kind & friendly concern on myaccount; for I know it is your fears that I may by the intended publication provokeunpleasant attacks and injure my own peace which chiefly causes your anxiety. But donot my kind friends be uneasy on this score! I do not think I shall be severely attacked,and at my age such things are felt, or ought to be so, like the pattering of a hail showeron one[’]s back (not face) when one has got to the last steps of a journey and is aboutto cross the threshold of one[’]s own home. Be of good cheer therefore, and that (andthat) you have been so kindly interested in me will always be a grateful thought to myheart whatever may betide. (Slagle, Letters 221)

The playwright was obviously secure in her faith.As a response, then, to the original question—Why would a financially secure,

religious Scot turn her attention to such controversial theology?—I suggest this. Bailliewas raised by Enlightenment men and women and learned to analyze and think criti-cally about everything from theater theory to religion from an early age. She begantheorizing about poetry in her late twenties, moved to dramatic theory in her thirties,so religious theory was a natural progression. Because Baillie was such a methodicalwriter and thinker, she would have felt it her religious duty to give the same theoreticaldevotion to her faith as she had to her work. In one of her last letters, dated January 11,1850, Baillie affirmed her faith to the Bostonian Dr. Andrews Norton, who had kept upa continual correspondence with her since 1827 and whose Evidences of the Genuinenessof the Gospels had appeared in 1837:

My dear Mr Norton,Your letter dated Cambridge 11 Decr 184[9] came to me yesterday and it soothed

[and] gratified me. Yes, my excellent friend, we are both I trust travellers on the samevaried road & conducted by the same Benevolent & Unerring Guide and conductedto that house in which are many mansions. We both meet again as Kinsfolk; To benear the end of our journey is solemn but not depressing. I hope however I am nearerto the end of it than you are. You have done much to benefit your Bretheren [sic] ofmen and have, I trust, more to do. This is not the case with me, I would thereforeshake hands with you & say “till we meet again.” You are recovering from a very feeblestate of health, and with Mrs Norton’s skilful nursing it will improve. You have stilluseful work to do and I feel an assurance that it will be done. I may not live to see it,yet be made acquainted in some way or other. When, as Mrs Norton, says “the rarelight of heaven shines around us all.” (Slagle, Letters 987)

Joanna Baillie died just over a year later in 1851; The Rev. Andrews Norton followedher in 1853.

Finally, what may seem a dichotomy of fundamentalism in The Martyr and liberalityin A View of the General Tenour is not really a conflict in beliefs at all. For what Bailliedoes in The Martyr is take one back to a religious experience unspoiled by doctrine; sheproposes the same in A View of the General Tenour—that the answers are in the simplic-ity of the scriptures, not in a belief system crafted by man.

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Notes

[1] My thanks to Dr. Ron Giles, Professor of English at East Tennessee State University, and toMs. Staci Webb, editor of the Southern Medical Journal and former graduate assistant, forreading this essay and providing very helpful suggestions.

[2] William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) was ordained to the ministry in 1803, pastored theFederal Street Church in Boston from 1805–42, and became a leader in the Unitarian move-ment by his argument against Calvinism. He organized the Berry Street conference of liberalministers in 1820 and the American Unitarian association in 1825. Interested in Jeffersonianpolitics and in literature, he influenced Emerson and Thoreau, supported abolition, temper-ance and peace. He authored such works as Remarks on the Character and Writings of JohnMilton (1826), Analysis of the Life and Character of Napoleon Bonaparte (1828), The Impor-tance and Means of a National Literature, and his Works went through 20 editions in Englandand America. Channing was an intimate friend of Baillie, who kept him up with literaryhappenings in Britain and reported on the success of his work there (see Brown 161–162).Baillie was particularly impressed with Channing’s Dudleian lecture of 1821 on “TheEvidences of Christianity” (see Edgell 202).

[3] Unfortunately, none of Baillie’s letters to Channing are extant. Her letters to his close theolog-ical friend Dr. Andrews Norton, however, are numerous.

[4] Henry Hart Milman (1796–1868), Dean of St. Paul’s and Oxford Professor of Poetry, was themost distinguished ecclesiastical historian of his day and a close friend of Lockhart who said,however, that his friend “ought never to have been a poet.” Scott praised his The Fall of Jerus-alem (1820), but Byron attacked him in Don Juan. He married Mary Anne Cockell in 1824,with whom he had 4 sons. Milman contributed regularly to the Quarterly Review andproduced many literary and historical works, including, The Martyr of Antioch (1822),Belshazzar (1822), History of the Jews (1829) and translations of Horace (DLB 96: 236–242).

[5] William Laidlaw (1779–1845) was born in Selkirkshire, where his father was a sheep farmer;James Hogg was their shepherd for ten years, and Laidlaw encouraged Hogg’s literarypursuits. In 1801 Laidlaw assisted Scott with his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and from1817 to 1826 worked as a steward at Abbottsford and later as his private secretary. Laidlaw’sbest-known poem is “Lucy’s Flittin,” published in Hogg’s Forest Minstrel in 1810 (DNB 32).

[6] This general information about Burgess’s life comes from the DNB 3: 313–314.[7] This 5 October 1831 letter to Burgess can also be found in the 2nd edition (1838) of A View of

the General Tenour.[8] This is not part of the manuscript collection of the Bishop’s letters at Oxford but is the first in

the published 1838 2nd edition of A View of the General Tenour, etc. The Bishop’s letter towhich Baillie replies is not part of these published letters, so she may be responding to hisRemarks on the general tenour, etc., mentioned in her letter dated 20 September 1831.

[9] The Bishop’s example comes from Acts 8: 30–31.[10] See Richard Westfall’s The Life of Isaac Newton for a detailed account of Newton’s fascination

with theology. In brief, Newton’s correspondence of the 1670s and a notebook intended forhis organized study of the Bible show that he was at this time almost preoccupied with thesubject. His longest entry “De Trinitate” is a study of men who had formulated Trinitarianism(Athanasius, Gregory, Augustine and others); but he had a special interest in Athanasius andhis battle with Arius, who denied the trinity and the status of Christ in the Godhead. Newtonbelieved the church had begun a massive fraud as early as the third or fourth century tocorrupt the Bible in support of Trinitarianism, and he believed that worshipping Christ asGod was idolatry. Well before 1675 Newton had become an Arian, recognizing Christ as adivine mediator between God and humankind but subordinate to the Father Who createdhim (Westfall 119–124). On November 14, 1690, Newton sent a treatise in the form of twoletters to John Locke entitled An historical account of two notable corruptions of Scripture, citingcorruptions in the prime Trinitarian passages (1 John 5.7 and 1 Tim. 3.16), and the two men

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discovered quickly they shared similar rational, but unmentionable, approaches to religion.Before publishing such a treatise, however, Newton reevaluated the consequences, and thetreatise lay hidden for 50 years in the Remonstrants Library in Amsterdam (199–200).

[11] I have not identified this “friend,” but it could have been any one of Baillie’s Unitarian corre-spondents, including Ellery Channing or Andrews Norton.

References

Anderson, W. E. K., ed., The Journal of Sir Walter Scott. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972.Baillie, Joanna. The Dramatic and Poetical Works of Joanna Baillie. London: Longman, Brown,

Green, and Longmans, 1851.—. A View of the General Tenour of the New Testament Regarding the Nature and Dignity of Jesus

Christ. 2nd ed. London: Richard and J. E. Taylor, 1838.Brown, Arthur R. A Biography of William Ellery Channing: Always Young for Liberty. Syracuse, NY:

Syracuse UP, 1956.Carney, Sean. “The Passion of Joanna Baillie: Playwright as Martyr.” Theatre Journal 52 (2000):

227–252.Channing, William Ellery. A Brief Statement of Some of The Tenets Professed by Unitarian Christians.

Extracted from a Sermon by Dr. Channing. 2nd ed. Published by the Committee for Managingthe Affairs of Little Portland Street Chapel. London: R. Hunter and M. Eaton, 1834.

—. A Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion, Delivered Before the University in Cambridge, atthe Dudleian Lecture, March 14, 1821. Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, 1831.

Colón, Christine. “Christianity and Colonial Discourse in Joanna Baillie’s The Bride.” Renascence 543 (2002): 163–214.

—. “Convictions of the Heart: Religion, Morality, and Reform in the Works of Joanna Baillie, AnneBrontë, and Adelaide Procter.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Davis, 2000.

Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB). Detroit: Gale Research, 1980–. Dictionary of National Biography (DNB). Ed. Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee. 22 vols. 1882.

London: Oxford UP, 1939.Edgell, David P. William Ellery Channing, An Intellectual Portrait. Boston: Beacon P, 1955.Slagle, Judith Bailey, ed. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie. 2 vols. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson

UP, 1999.—. Joanna Baillie: A Literary Life. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2002.Westfall, Richard. The Life of Isaac Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993.

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