38 THEOPHOBIA AND NEMESIS 



Cowper was at times insane and at other times 

 of anything but a well-balanced mind, and he 

 was just the kind of man who never ought 

 to have been brought under the influences to 

 which he was subjected. His principal adviser 

 was the Rev. John Newton, a well-known Cal- 

 vinistic clergyman of the Church of England. 

 He must have been a man of compelling 

 character, for he it was who brought the Rev. 

 Thomas Scott, Rector of Aston Sandford, out of 

 Socinianism, which, though a minister of the 

 Church of England, he professed, into the 

 Calvinistic view of things, as Scott himself tells 

 us in his book The Force of Truth ; and it must 

 not be forgotten that it was to the writings of 

 this same Scott that Newman tells us (in his 

 Apologia) that he owed his very soul. Newton, 

 like many of his fellows, had no sort of doubt as 

 to his right to act as a director of souls, nor of his 

 profound knowledge of how they should be 

 dealt with. Yet it is to be remembered that, 

 whilst the Catholic priest is obliged to undergo 

 a long and careful training before he is permitted 

 to take up this perilous task, Newton and those 

 of his kind undertook it without any training 

 whatever. Cowper, as everybody knows, was 

 carefully and kindly tended by Mrs. Unwin, a 

 woman a good deal older than himself, against 

 whose character no word of reproach was ever 

 uttered, the widow of an old friend of the poet. 

 Newton wanted to drive Mrs. Unwin out of his 

 house, but here at least Cowper rebelled and 

 showed his very just annoyance. Newton actu- 



