Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 16:63 (Jul 1859)
Article: Partisanship In History
Author: E. D. Sanborn

BSac 16:63 (July 1859) p. 603

Partisanship In History

Prof. E. D. Sanborn

At the present day no ancient record is taken on trust. Everything old is questioned. -Authority, both in church and state, is less valued than formerly. Creeds are reformed, while faith declines; history is rewritten, while truth is obscured. The old record was doubtful; the new is fictitious. The romance of history is succeeded by the dreams of philosophy. For the poetic narratives of an early age, are substituted the sapless disquisitions of learned critics. Heroes, statesmen, and philosophers are presented in a new dress. Those whose characters were supposed to be unalterably determined, are arraigned anew at the bar of public opinion, and the verdict of former generations is set aside.

BSac 16:63 (July 1859) p. 604

Biography and history have become as fruitful in controversies as polemics or politics. The history of past ages is little more than the biographies of the leading men who enacted it. The record of their achievements constitutes the “warp and woof” of the narrative. To unsettle public opinion respecting these prominent actors in the world’s drama, is fatal to the credibility of history. The great men of antiquity are undoubtedly over-estimated; their virtues have been exaggerated, and their vices concealed. The men of each successive generation consent to be thus deluded and amused, and they expect that posterity will show a like partiality in recording their deeds. When a public benefactor or hero dies, it is customary to load his memory with eulogies. Even his enemies forget their feuds, and allow his frailties to sleep in his tomb, and few are so hardy as to draw them from their “dread abode.” In all ages, death, like charity, has been allowed to cover a multitude of sins. “Death,” says Bacon, “hath this also, that it openeth the gate of good fame and extinguished envy;” and he quotes, in confirmation of his own dictum, the opinion of Horace:

“Extinctus amabitur idem.”

But these venerable authorities are now discarded. The law of historic retribution has been repealed, and the public are beginning to adopt Swift’s satirical version of an old and long-received maxim:

“Nil de mortuis nisi bonum,
When scoundrels die let all bemoan ‘em.”

Nero will not much longer rest under the load of infamy which has accumulated upon him for eighteen centuries, and Benedict Arnold will yet be presented to the public as a martyr to principle. Even Judas Iscariot has found an apologist. DeQuincey regards him as a man of excellent intentions; he was guilty of no treachery, but simply moved by a mistaken zeal for his Master’s temporal promotion. He honestly believed that Jesus was to be the “King of ...