DR. ABBOT/ AND BISHOP BUTLER ON RESENTMENT.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE “SPECITATOR.1 SLR,—In Dr. Abbott's (painfully) animated reply to Mr. Spedding, in the Contemporary Review for June (p. 167), there is an error which you may perhaps agree with me in thinking worth early correction. Dr. Abbott quotes Mr. Spedding as " sneering " at him because he gives "resentment a conspicuous place in the list of Christian virtues." Dr. Abbott fully adopts the phrase, and says that he only follows Bishop Butler and Dr. Whewell in thus "giving resentment a conspicuous place in the list of Christ- ian virtues." He then quotes Dr. Whewell as calling resentment " a moral sentiment, given for the repression of injustice ;" and refers to Bishop Butler's Sermons for the rest, even taunting Mr. Spedding as "a man of culture," for being ignorant that the Bishop long ago "set his stamp upon this virtue."
But Butler certainly did not describe resentment as a Christian virtue. He described it as "a secondary passion, placed in us upon supposition, and upon account of, and with regard to, injury." It is quite obvious that the " passion " of resentment is necessary to the formation of a complete character, but it is equally obvious that this is a very different thing from calling this " passion " or " sentiment " a Christian virtue. And Butler certainly does not call it anything of the kind.—I am, &c.,
HENRY HOLBEACII.
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