Bible Commentaries
Expositor's Dictionary of Texts
Judges 17
Judges 17:9-11
After that first fervour of simple devotion, which his beloved Jesuit priest had inspired in him, speculative theology took but little hold on the young man's mind. When his early credulity was disturbed, and his saints and virgins taken out of his worship, to rank little higher than the divinities of Olympus, his belief became acquiescence rather than the ardour; and he made his mind up to assume the cassock and bands, as another man does to wear a breastplate and jack-boots, or to mount a merchant's desk, for a livelihood, and from obedience and necessity, rather than from choice. There were scores of such men in Mr. Esmond's time at the universities, who were going into the Church with no better calling than his.
—Thackeray, Esmond, chap. IX.
In The Force of Truth, Thomas Scott confesses that his original views in entering the ministry "were these three:—A desire of a less laborious and more comfortable way of procuring a livelihood, than otherwise I had the prospect of; the expectation of more leisure to employ in reading, of which I was inordinately fond; and a proud conceit of my abilities, with a vainglorious imagination that I should sometime distinguish and advance myself in the literary world."
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