It simply dwells so continually on the Infinity of God as to overlook, or slightly regard His Personality: it is Spiritualism and Theism, but of the Greeks rather than the Hebrews. The fact is that Shelley, like every other brave Recusant, is credited with much more infidelity than he really had. Finding a vast State Church, based upon politico-theology, everywhere in the ascendant, he was naturally more occupied in negativing dominant assumptions than in affirming his own positive convictions. If a man asserts his right to crush me under his feet, it is not probable that my reply will contain an exact recognition of whatever wisdom and goodness he may really have.
So much for formulas: but, of course, we are agreed that Shelley's real religious character consisted in his unquenchable love and reverence for all holiness, truth, and beauty. He believed so much more than the generality of us, he strove with so unusual an ardour to realise his belief in his life, that he is necessarily accounted an infidel and semi-maniac by the great majority.
"I never knew that time in England, when men of truest religion were not counted sectaries. . . . Certainly, if ignorance and perverseness will needs be national and universal, then they who adhere to wisdom and to truth are not therefore to be blamed for being so few as to seem a sect or faction." Which are two sentences of (John Milton's) "Eikonoklastes."—Your sincere Friend,
