John Foster, Downend, to John Ryland, Jr., Bristol, April 1801.

Dear Sir,

        I am ashamed to have retained the sermon so long, as I read it immediately after receiving it from you, & with still more attention since. I have not been in Bristol since I saw you, except one wet night to enquire after a parcel, when I am unfit to call or stop any where.

        I am not certain to what extent you would wish me to express an opinion; though very certain that to any extent, your candour would forgive the freedom. – If it were a question as to publishing the Sermon or not, I would venture after acknowledging in very strong terms the ingenuity, the variety, & the forcible description with which it abounds, to suggest a few very few general considerations. –

As first, – Placing myself in the situation, I should be very reluctant to appear conspicuously in the class of what has been denominated “Damnation writers.” With the exception of Baxter & a few more I am afraid that those who have expatiated most on infernal subjects, have felt them the least. A predilection for such subjects, & a calm, deliberate, minute exhibition of them, always strikes me as a kind of christian cruelty, the spirit of an auto de fe. I sincerely doubt the utility of a laborious expanded display of the horrors of hell; as far as I have had the means of observing the actual effect, I have found it far the greatest where one would anxiously wish it might not exist at all, – in the minds of the timid, scrupulous, & melancholic. – The utmost space I would allot in my writing to this part of the revelations of our religion, should not at any rate exceed the proportion which, in the new testament, this part of truth bears to the whole of the sacred book, the grand predominant spirit of which is love & mercy. –

1.  Though for a passing illustration it would be striking, I greatly doubt if such an application of the text, so formally & definitively made, be warrantable. – Is the passage any thing more than a finely poetic account of the simple fact – the death, of the tyrant? No part of this sublime ode appears to me to look beyond the grave, the state of being dead – or to bear any reference to the feelings or accostings of departed spirits. –

2. Does not extreme particularity on such a subject lose the effect, either by harassing the feelings into a revolting aversion to think of the subject at all; or sometimes by supplying a half-amusing detail to curiosity, – like Virgil’s Tartarus, rather than making a concentrated mighty impression on the heart.

3.  I doubt if revelation has any where given ground to suppose or if reason, without revelation, can be cruel enough to suppose such a superlatively malicious & horrid style of greetings even in the infernal world. Something very different from this would be indicated in our Lord’s description of the solicitude of the rich man that his wicked connexion might not come into the same plan of torment, – a feeling surely which could not, if they did come, hail them with such an infernal exorable malignity of pleasure.

4. I feel in the strain of some parts of the salutations of the wretched spirits something too familiar, & even approaching too much to the air of spiteful fun, for the dreadful solemnity of the scene, & the supposed profound & infinite intensity of their feelings.

5. In the instantaneous transition, toward the latter end, from Hell to Heaven, with the use of the same language in heaven as so lately with so much adaptedness in hell, I felt some degree of violence. It looks like an expedient to escape from the presecution of the former society & salutations. It has the appearance of ^needing to^ perform a kind of quarantine after coming from the great kingdom of plagues.

[A few] remarks on particular passages may have occurred; but are scarcely of importance enough to be mentioned.

  The few observations that I have expressed are entirely submitted as being the dictates of a taste which may be wrong: and the unceremonious manner in which they are communicated is owing to that freedom which I always feel the most completely with those for whose judgments & candour I have the most entire respect; of you therefore I shall not need to entreat forgiveness. [Bottom portion of page has been cut off, most likely for the signature of Foster.]

Address: Rev Dr Ryland | Bristol

Postmark: none

Endorsed (by Ryland): Revd Foster | Downend | April 1801.

Text: John Foster Folder, RG 1107, American Baptist Historical Society Archives, Atlanta.