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Critical Realism and the Objective Value of Sustainability 1st Edition Gabriela Lucia Sabau
Critical Realism and the Objective Value of Sustainability
CriticalRealismandtheObjective ValueofSustainability contributes to the growing discussion surrounding the concept of sustainability, using a critical realist approach within a transdisciplinary theoretical framework to examine how sustainability objectively occurs in the natural world and in society.
The book develops an ethical theory of sustainability as an objective value, rooted not in humans’ subjective preferences but in the holistic web of relationships, interdependencies, and obligations existing among living things on Earth, a web believed to have maintained life on Earth over the last 3.7 billion years. It proposes three pillars of sustainability ethics: contentment for the human existence given to us; justice (beyond distributive justice); and meaningful freedom (within ecological and moral limits). Using abductive reasoning, the book infers that there is an out-of-thisworld Sustainer behind the Earth’s sustainability acting as a metaphysical source of all being and value. It argues that sustainability value, accepted as a shared understanding of the common good, must guide individual decisions and socio-economic development efforts as a matter of deliberate choice, as well as be built on the awareness that there are non-negotiable, preestablished conditions for our planet’s sustainability.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars across fields of inquiry, including sustainability, sustainable development, environmental philosophy and ethics, philosophy of science, and ecological economics, and to whoever may wonder why seasons exists and why humans have creative minds.
Gabriela-Lucia Sabau is Honorary Research Professor of economics and environmental studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), Canada. Her research interests are sustainability and sustainable development fuelled by scientific knowledge and value judgements; unjust un-economic growth; demand-side management of water resources; sustainable management of fisheries with a focus on small-scale fisheries; and assessing the potential for agro-ecological transition in Newfoundland and Labrador’s agriculture. Gabriela co-founded MUN Grenfell Campus’s first PhD program in Transdisciplinary Sustainability (2019) and continues to derive inspiration from the students she supervises in the program.
Routledge Environmental Ethics
Series
Editor: Benjamin Hale, University of Colorado, Boulder
The Routledge Environmental Ethics series aims to gather novel work on questions that fall at the intersection of the normative and the practical, with an eye toward conceptual issues that bear on environmental policy and environmental science. Recognizing the growing need for input from academic philosophers and political theorists in the broader environmental discourse, but also acknowledging that moral responsibilities for environmental alteration cannot be understood without rooting themselves in the practical and descriptive details, this series aims to unify contributions from within the environmental literature.
Books in this series can cover topics in a range of environmental contexts, including individual responsibility for climate change, conceptual matters affecting climate policy, the moral underpinnings of endangered species protection, complications facing wildlife management, the nature of extinction, the ethics of reintroduction and assisted migration, reparative responsibilities to restore, among many others.
Philosophy and the Climate Crisis
How the Past can Save the Present
ByronWilliston
Climate
Justice Beyond the State
LachlanUmbersandJeremyMoss
The Concept of Milieu in Environmental Ethics
Individual Responsibility within an Interconnected World
LaÿnaDroz
Critical Realism and the Objective Value of Sustainability
Philosophical and Ethical Approaches
Gabriela-LuciaSabau
For more information on the series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Environmental-Ethics/bookseries/ENVE
Critical Realism and the Objective Value of Sustainability
Philosophical and Ethical Approaches
Gabriela-Lucia Sabau
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Names: Sabau, Gabriela-Lucia, author.
Title: Critical realism and the objective value of sustainability : philosophical and ethical approaches / Gabriela-Lucia Sabau.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. |
Series: Routledge environmental ethics | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023044828 (print) | LCCN 2023044829 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032310015 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032310022 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003307587 (ebook)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023044828
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023044829
ISBN: 978-1-032-31001-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-31002-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-30758-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003307587
This book is lovingly dedicated to my four wonderful grandchildren: Timothy, Michael, Teofil, and Cassian. Thank you for showing me that sustainability is real and worth accepting as a gift.
Figures
1.1 The three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social, and economic
2.1 The stratified ontology of critical realism
2.2 Transformational Model of Social Activity
3.1 The economy embedded in biosphere
3.2 The circular flow of goods and money
4.1 The Transformational Model of Social Activity
5.1 Sustainable person’s relational identity
Acknowledgements
This book was years in the making and would not have been possible without the constant support and encouragement I have generously received from many people. I first became interested in sustainability when working on my PhD degree in the late 1990s. I then discovered with delight the writings of ‘giant’ thinkers such as Karl Popper, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and Michael and Karl Polanyi on whose shoulders I am trying to stand. I was also very grateful to work in a team of enthusiastic colleagues led by the late Professor Beniamin Cotigaru on a project for the sustainable reconstruction of Romania. Among the colleagues I remember with thankfulness from that period are Theodor Purcarea, Emilian Dobrescu, Paul Ghita Tanase, Coralia Angelescu, and Christina Marta Suciu.
When I moved to Canada, I introduced ecological economics in my teaching and benefitted from the wisdom of my ecological economist colleagues such as the late Professor Herman Daly, Robert Costanza, Joshua Farley, Jon Erickson, and Brian Czech, from whom I learned that ‘crude’ GDP growth does not measure sustainability when the environment is being destroyed and social inequality rises. Consciously decided limits to economic activity are needed based on the laws of thermodynamics and on valuation of what is meaningful, namely life and unity of life in biological and social communities, plus human wisdom to achieve it all. I was able to verify the truth of these findings in a beautiful coastal and marine environment during
2008 to 2018 when I was invited to teach a Master’s course at the University Centre of the Westfjords in North-Western Iceland. Thank you, Peter Weiss, Sigridur Olafsdottir, Dagny Arnarsdottir, Gunna Sigga, Pernilla Rein, Catherine Chambers, and all the cohorts of students along the way for the opportunity to teach and learn about how achieving fisheries sustainability in an island context requires continuously balancing policies which start from a deep knowledge of the dynamic socio-ecological system. A big thank you to my friend Ratana Chuenpagdee who initiated the Too Big to Ignore global partnership for small-scale fisheries research and invited me to focus my research between 2012 and 2018 on the sustainability of smallscale fisheries worldwide.
Since 2017, I co-developed Memorial University of Newfoundland, Grenfell Campus’s PhD in Transdisciplinary Sustainability, which started accepting students in April 2019, and what a ride it has been since! Thank you, Wade Bowers, Kelly Vodden, Lakshman Galagedara, Mano Krishnapillai, Mumtaz Cheema, Olga Vasilyeva, Garrett Richards, and Michele Piercey-Normore for your hard work and valuable insights. Since the start of the program, I have been inspired by my graduate students to think about the deep questions of life on earth, questions which belong to sustainability even if science alone cannot answer them. Thank you, Temi, Nathaniel, Selim, Naznin, Tithy, Kamal, Natasha, and Sara. Thanks are also due to colleagues and friends who have read parts of the manuscript and provided valuable comments, such as Dumitru Deac, Sean McGrath, John Dagevos, and Roselyne Okech. The manuscript has also been carefully read by loving family members. Thank you, Dan and Megan, for giving me the time to write, and for taking time to provide insights and questions which kept improving my writing. Thank you, Dan, also for your expert technical support.
At Routledge, I have been kindly and expertly guided by my editors, Grace Harrison and Matt Shobbrook. Thank you both for believing in this project and for making it happen. Also, thank you, Katherine Laidler, for your hard and excellent work of copyediting the manuscript.
Finally, I am grateful to the One who made the universe and me within it, and who keeps it functioning in a sustainable manner. If this work is of any value, it is not my merit, as I have never accomplished anything meaningful apart from Him who lights my path. I, of course, do accept responsibility for any errors of understanding or interpretation.
Introduction
DOI: 10.4324/9781003307587-1
Sustainability, planet Earth’s ability to persist and provide a lasting, intricate life-support system for all living things, is wired in the natural world as a matter of fact. That is made evident in the order and interconnectedness we see in nature, where “all animals and plants are held in a delicate balance, and every entity has its purpose and role in its ecosystem” (Wohlleben, 2017). Sustainability transpires in the yearly succession of seasons and the action of the laws of thermodynamics:
History discloses two main tendencies in the course of events. One tendency is exemplified in the slow decay of physical nature. […] The other tendency is exemplified by the yearly renewal of nature in the spring, and by the upward course of biological evolution.
(Whitehead, 1929)
It is obvious in the perpetuation of life over millennia, or in the continuous cycle of life followed by death, with “life persisting in the midst of its perpetual perishing” (Rolston, 2007). Nature exists, majestic and mysterious, as a “great interlocking event in space and time” (Lewis, 1947/2001). It is, yet, open to be discovered, displaying beauty in sights, sounds, smells, shapes, and colours, and offering bountiful wealth. Natural phenomena, which humans call natural disasters, such as landslides, earthquakes, tornadoes, forest fires, and storms, are also part of a dynamic, functioning planet. The nature-aggregate also displays resiliency, or an ability to bounce
back after disturbances, and potential for growth, as well as invisible processes, such as carbon cycling, photosynthesis, or the immunity of multicellular organisms. While nature functions on its own apparently, it is obvious that it obeys certain objective rules and limitations which have been pre-established by “forces we do not create and cannot fully control, forces that bring us into being and sustain us and life around us, but forces that also limit and destroy us and determine the destiny of the cosmos” (Gustafson, 1994). Science keeps discovering such pre-established rules (GeorgescuRoegen, 1971), as well as boundaries and ecological limits which have now been exceeded by humankind (Meadows et al., 1972; Rockström et al., 2009; Raworth, 2017). However, science cannot provide the full picture of nature’s sustainability. It can give good descriptions of the parts involved, but not of the synergistic whole which is greater than the sum of its parts. Things become even more complicated when we try to understand how nature’s sustainability is impacted by human interventions aiming to either extract things from nature or dispose of waste in the terrestrial or the ocean environment.
There have been successful attempts to model sustainability in complex, “linked social-ecological systems” (Ostrom, 2007), such as forests and fisheries, starting from the idea that humans are a part of nature and they are able to know as well as comply with the objective rules of nature’s sustainability. Assuming that the sustainability we see in nature is a good thing, both for nature and for humans, reflective individuals have worked together to identify rules and variables able to lead to the sustainability of these coupled systems by balancing existing resources with identified needs (Ostrom, 2009). Yet, these models do not inform the way most of the modern socio-economic systems are organized and function. Since the age of Enlightenment, from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, and as the Industrial Revolution was unfolding, humans have developed their own definition of sustainability based on a narrative which has become dominant in the Global North. This narrative elevates humans and their needs above life-sustaining nature as if “man has long forgotten that the
earth was given to him for usufruct alone, not for consumption, still less for profligate waste” (Marsh, 1965). In this narrative, nature is no longer seen as a complex, dynamic, enveloping, and providing whole, run by forces that humans do not control, but it is reduced to one sub-system among other human-created systems, be they economic, social, or cultural. It was hoped that this sub-system, called ecological or environmental, could somehow be managed to continue providing for the needs of successive generations of humans to continue to exist, if only we could figure out a way to harmoniously integrate it with human-made economic and social systems. This created a purely anthropocentric concept of sustainability.
The term “sustainability” was coined by a German forester, Hans Carl von Carlowitz, in his 1713 book Sylvicultura Oeconomica in which he proposed rules for “continuous, permanent and sustainable use” of the forest. These rules recognized humans’ dependence on nature and implied deliberate care to conserve nature’s ecological integrity as structure and functions in order for the standing forest to continue to serve human communities in perpetuity. The concept implied a balance between new-growth trees and dying ones, as von Carlowitz considered that it is “anything but sensible to cut down more wood in the forest than grows back” (Endres, 2011). The anthropocentric “sustainability” concept was rebranded in 1987 as “sustainable development” by the Brundtland report of the World Commission for Environment and Development. The report defined sustainable development as harmonious global economic, social and ecological development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987).
The concept mentions the “essential needs of the world’s poor” and some “limits”, but defines them in a reductionist manner, as “limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs”, and not as objective limits imposed by nature. In this definition, economic and social development fuelled by “growth and accumulation” (Gowdy, 2014) have been prioritized over the more
holistic sustainability of nature, using Robert Solow’s theory that nature’s capital can be easily substituted by human-made capital (Solow, 1974). The assumption was that continued economic growth, measured as the rate of increase in real gross domestic product (GDP), backed by science and technological progress, will enable humans to solve the problems of both ecological and social sustainability. The anthropocentric “sustainable development” concept has thus swallowed whole the ontologically objective “sustainability” concept, rendering the limits and constraints imposed by nature on its users completely invisible, and making “the material demands of the human species [as] the primary test of what should be done with the Earth” (Du Pisani, 2006). As a consequence, economic growth has become the main ecologically expansive tool of sustainable development as “our civilization has been built on a continuously expanding human environmental footprint […] a mode of economic expansion that has generated increased material affluence at the cost of growing environmental harm” (Meadowcroft, 2017). It was believed that universal prosperity is achievable and desirable based on “the dominant modern belief [is] that the soundest foundation of peace would be universal prosperity” (Schumacher, 1973). The practical application of the “sustainable development” concept in the last almost four decades has led humanity on an unsustainable path, manifested in deep and protracted environmental and social crises, while “only limited and halting steps are being taken to secure Homo Sapiens a liveable future” (Gale, 2018). Indeed, assessments of the global environmental outlook show that:
Current methods of generating material prosperity have undermined ecosystem health and caused massive environmental damage, crossing several of these planetary boundaries, to the point where the development of human societies and the “safe operating space” for human life on Earth is at risk.
(UN Environment, 2019)
Another assessment identifies humans as irreversibly threatening the “unusual” stability of the planet’s environment over the past 10,000 years which has made “human civilizations arise, develop and strive” (Rockström et al., 2009). Some scientists even believe that we have entered a new geological epoch, called the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2006), an epoch in which humans are the most important geomorphic agent on the planet (Wilkinson and McElroy, 2007). In 2019, the Sustainable Development report noted that “our goal to end extreme poverty by 2030 is being jeopardized as we struggle to respond to entrenched deprivation, violent conflicts and vulnerabilities to natural disasters” (UN, 2019). The COVID-19 pandemic has produced a global recession threatening to reverse into poverty hundreds of millions of people in the developing world (World Bank, 2020). The pandemic has highlighted a serious acceleration of some radical changes determined by two factors: (i) the Industrial Revolution 4.0 (Schwab, 2016), in particular its core component relating to disruptive technologies; and (ii) climate change and related environmental issues. These radical changes have an all-embracing character ranging from the economy to health, education and, generally, all aspects of society, including what basic values we must adopt. We can see and feel the changes in daily life.
Big-data technology, the internet of things, advanced robotics, and, more recently, the mainstreaming of artificial intelligence (AI) are changing the way humans are to operate. Similarly, climate change is deeply impacting the whole spectrum of human activity, as we begin to already experience a first-wave of environmentally induced relocations, changes in weather patterns, an acceleration of desertification, water shortages, and significant biodiversity loss. The entire configuration of the planet is under pressure, including farreaching implications in terms of both geopolitics and geoeconomics.
Assuming that this brief assessment is correct, the question arises with respect to the management of these two phenomena. On the one hand, we can note that there is a positive interplay between the two: better and more efficient technologies may assist with a better use of renewable energies. For instance, the internet of things may
have positive implications for water management or increased efficiency in the use of energy. Yet, there are serious negative implications, as the ethical underpinnings of these new evolutions are not as readily up for discussion or debate. Scientists have yet to reach a consensus on, for example, the environmental impact of electric car batteries, or on humans’ ability to control AI’s long-term impact on human life. How, then, are we to maximize synergies between these two phenomena and minimize negatives? Is it possible to mitigate their adverse effects on society, including its moral values? How can we amend and enrich a concerted action by policy makers, civil society, and the business sector not only in the governance of each phenomenon but also of the interchange between them? Deeper questions arise: will we be able to control these powerful changes, or will the future witness a runaway project crushing our civilization on the planet which was wired for sustainability?
The purpose of this book is not to inventory the developments in these two areas of change, nor to identify actions taken to date. Instead, I aim to clarify the confusion between the concepts of “sustainability” and “sustainable development”, as well as identify a cross-cutting understanding that may allow humans to respond to the current moment; there are challenges and opportunities that arise from the multifaceted dimensions of both disruptive technologies and climate change that impact sustainability. These must be dealt with within the bounds of our well-ordered and miraculously fine-tuned biosphere that we have inherited. The book is therefore trying to testify and exemplify how the concept of sustainability is worth updating and reshaping in order to enable humans to meet both old and new challenges, including of the intertwined phenomena indicated above.
Sustainability is not a new concept. Elements of it can be found many centuries back. In the 1970s, the Club of Rome and then the Brundtland Commission have structured and detailed the concept, which was included in internationally negotiated documents (the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development) (UN, 1992, 2012, 2019). Unfortunately, since then it has become an empty
concept despite the fact that it continues to be referred to. Even more important, its objective ecological dimension has disappeared from centre stage, cementing humans’ current stance as powerful rulers of nature rather than humble stewards interested in the longterm survival of the biosphere and its inhabitants.
The book argues for a holistic reconsideration of sustainability which exists not only as a theoretical concept but also as an objective feature of the world, a numinous condition that makes life on planet Earth possible for this and future generations, as the “biospheric membrane that covers the Earth, and you and me […], is the miracle we have been given” (Wilson, 2002). This view of sustainability implies that the world functions as a web of dynamic interrelationships in which all living things have specific roles to play, and this is what makes it valuable. However, when humans, as the only creatures endowed with reason and moral impulses, ignore this make-up of the world and their role in it, the life relationship web is broken, and sustainability becomes impossible to achieve. Following Karl Popper (1972/1979, 1982, 1990), this book sees the world as real, objective, comprehensible, and full of possibilities (propensities), and considers that science’s goal is to discover truthful and testable causal explanations of how the world functions, aiming to come “nearer to the truth”, ideally reaching “absolute truth” (Popper, 1982) or “fundamental truth” (Nabel, 2009). Truth here is understood as correspondence of statements to the facts of the real world, or as a “necessary reality” (Axe, 2016).
To say that a statement is true is to say that it can correctly be asserted, that it is such that it can perform its cognitive function, that it will express facts about the referent, that it will disclose, or give knowledge about, the referent, that it will tell us what is, or was, the case […] Hence to assert p involves the belief that it is true, that is, gives factual knowledge. If p, “It is raining,” is true, then it israining.
(Sellars, 1946)
A caveat, though, is in order, in the sense that there are truths that science cannot explain. For instance, we “do not know why mathematics is true and whether it is certain” (Berlinski, 2023). That does not mean that mathematicians should stop their efforts to represent the material universe in mathematical formulas. The same is true for sustainability; we might never know why sustainability is true and whether it is certain. However, searching for sustainability with an open mind and multiple tools, and being ready to be amazed in the process, remains a worthwhile endeavour. The book uses a transdisciplinary theoretical framework (Pohl et al., 2017) to develop a critical realist theory of sustainability as it exists both in nature and in the social realm. The transdisciplinary approach uses Ekardt’s insight that transdisciplinarity is not “a matter of placing something ‘alongside’ the classical disciplines and their discourses; rather, it is a matter of their analysis, criticism and continuation” (Ekardt, 2020). This implies the ability to be critical of “scientism” and to accept that there is “deep meaning, truth, relevance, and insight in non-scientific studies pursued with intelligence and rigor” (Hutchinson, 2007) and to accept that intuition, faith, or imagination can be important sources of knowledge. The critical realist perspective is inspired by Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism thinking (Bhaskar, 1975, 1979, 2020). For Bhaskar, reality and the human self are complex and dynamic entities, stratified in three fields – the empirical, the actual, and the real – with the real encompassing both the actual and the empirical fields, but also including various powers (natural mechanisms) and their potentialities. Understanding this complex and dynamic reality requires broader methodologies than those offered by scientific materialism, ones able to explain not only the objective facts of the natural world but also to probe into metaphysical hypotheses. The book discusses sustainability both as objective facts of the material world as well as an objective value rooted in the holistic web of relationships existing between living things on planet Earth. Restoring sustainability value, defined and accepted as a shared understanding of the common good of life, both in ecological communities and in social communities, may be a possible solution to the current unsustainable practices based on the subjective values
of utilitarianism, pragmatism, and postmodern thinking. Thus understood, sustainability must inform all decisions regarding humans’ relations with nature and with each other and their socioeconomic development plans. At the individual level, the book develops a sustainability ethics rooted in specific virtues that can change human behaviour towards sustainability. This sustainability ethics has always been embraced by a minority among humans –some Indigenous groups as well as some faith-inspired groups of people living predominantly in premodern cultures. However, recent studies show that transcendental values conducive to sustainable choices and environment conservation are also held by people in Western cultures (Raymond and Kenter, 2016). The book assumes that a primary justice notion is embedded in sustainability, as the life-sustaining system is available without discrimination to all living earthly creatures. A chapter is dedicated to discussing sustainability as justice, beyond the distributive justice system instituted in liberal democracies following the model developed by John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice (1971). The book also devotes a chapter to a discussion about sustainability and liberty, understood, apud Isaiah Berlin, as both negative and positive liberty, arguing that both types of freedom are important for setting us free from the “evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us” (Lewis, 1949/2001) for almost 200 years. The book ends with an exploration of the mystery behind the powerful entity that runs the life-support network existing on our life-friendly planet. Here I tread cautiously and with humility, aware that humans might never accurately perceive the whole truth about the Creator and Sustainer of the marvellous life-support system existing on Earth, but I feel it is my duty to investigate the “universal design intuition” (Axe, 2016) of the awesomeness of life with the tools available to me, both scientific and metaphysical.
The book is organized as follows.
The Introduction broaches the topic and explains the rationale of the book, clarifying the confusion around the two concepts “sustainability” and “sustainable development” and identifying a knowledge gap in the sustainability debate, where the ethical
aspects are insufficiently discussed. A sustainability ethics framework is proposed, as a possible solution to humanity’s current unsustainable way of life. The book argues that sustainability implementation requires a change of mind and a change of heart at the individual self level, implying a new attitude towards nature and towards other living beings, including other humans.
Chapter 1 offers a brief history of sustainability as a concept, as well as its evolution from the notion that humans need to live in harmony with nature as they organize their socio-economic lives, to a notion that they need to also live in harmony with each other. Various definitions of sustainability are discussed, including those embedded in the three-legged concept of “sustainable development”. The chapter points to the basic differences between “sustainability” and “sustainable development” and proposes a new definition of sustainability starting from the idea that sustainability is not only a theoretical concept but exists objectively embedded in the make-up of the Universe.
Chapter 2 explains the choice of critical realism and of its richer research methodologies, which include abductive and retroductive inferences, in our search to understand sustainability as an objective feature of the world, which has both visible and invisible aspects. It assumes that the world exists “out there”, it is complex, stratified (Bhaskar, 1975), dynamic and open, a “world of propensities” (Popper, 1990). Being comprehensible, it can be studied and understood not only in its visible aspects but also in its invisible characteristics which can reveal effects and causes hard to perceive empirically, but which, however, can be tested by using the “method of hypothesis” (Peirce, 1960).
Chapter 3 discusses sustainability as objective physical reality on our planet, miraculously well-ordered and fine-tuned for supporting life, but at the same time characterized by uncertainty in our continuously “self-arising” biosphere (Bonnett, 2015). The goal of this chapter is to show, based on scientific evidence from physics, astronomy, chemistry, cosmology, and biology, that sustainability exists objectively in nature and is not the result of blind forces, as it is embodied in structures, functions, and processes that seem
specifically designed to protect and sustain life. These structures, functions, and processes can be investigated by science through a spiralling process of discovery which can take us closer to understanding the essence of sustainability in nature. On this view, “science is not an epiphenomenon of nature, nor is nature a product of man” (Bhaskar, 1975). While the chapter refers mostly to sustainability in the macrocosm, it also contains some references to the mystery of life in the quantum world which are relevant for sustainability. Understanding quantum fields, waves and particles, and entanglement phenomena is essential for understanding how our sustainable world, made of matter, energy, and “forces”, operates, and it can even give us clues about the Sustainer.
Chapter 4 investigates sustainability as it exists objectively in the social world, and asks the question why humans cannot, as the only members of the biotic community endowed with reason and moral impulses, make sustainable choices. The answer proposed considers three causes: humans’ limited understanding of reality, science’s reductionist view of human nature, and the socio-cultural-political impact of the modernity narrative, which has given rise to a dogmatic universal theory of how the world functions and how the autonomous modern self relates to it. These causes and the impact of postmodern thinking have produced a fragmented sustainability narrative leading to confusion, disunity, and anxiety, ripping up the very fabric of civilization in the Global North. Globalization and the continued technology disruption, idealized and perpetuated by the Silicon Valley “move fast and break things” culture, have contributed to the spreading of this fragmented narrative, deepening social inequalities and potentially irreversibly damaging the environment. The critical realist Transformational Model of Social Activity (Bhaskar, 1975, 1979) is proposed as a potential way to bring change toward sustainability at the individual level. The model implies opening our culture to a process of staged transition, based on a new sustainability narrative in which humans are seen acting as responsible agents of change.
Chapter 5 deals with the ethical dimension of sustainability. It argues for ethical objectivism and for virtue ethics in analyzing
sustainability. The intrinsic value of sustainability is discussed under three aspects: as persistence, or temporal and spatial continuity of the life-support system; as goodness of life as a unified whole; and as unity of the biotic community, or the relational character of sustainability. As such, sustainability should be a non-negotiable normative goal overarching all human decisions. However, sustainability is ignored by most individuals in the liberal democracies functioning according to the postmodern narrative built around an artificial, fragmented, individualistic, and self-interested human self, unable to conceive of and live a sustainable life. The chapter develops a virtue-based ethical framework of a sustainable person’s identity, and discusses the transformation process through which a modern egotistic individual can become a sustainable person.
Chapter 6 entitled Sustainability as Justice: Beyond Distributive Justice discusses the justice aspects of sustainability, starting from the idea that a basic principle of justice is embedded in the sustainability order existing on planet Earth, which protects all life equally. Noting that currently the sustainable development concept only refers to intergenerational justice as a normative requirement, and that intragenerational justice normally administered by liberal democracies using John Rawls’ theory of “fair” distributive justice (Rawls, 1971) is inadequate to “right” social inequalities and the overuse of natural resources, a new understanding of sustainability as justice is proposed, as primary and reactive justice rooted in the human right to life.
Chapter 7 discusses the relevance of freedom to understanding and implementing sustainability. Starting from Isaiah Berlin’s conception of negative and positive freedom (Berlin, 1969), I argue that while freedom is the objective birthright of any human being, the choice of a sustainable lifestyle depends on understanding and acting upon both aspects of liberty, negative and positive, which sometimes require deliberate sacrifices of freedom. The chapter presents the history of liberty protection under the classical and the modern liberalist doctrines, and the birth of the utilitarian doctrine of moral individualism which instituted freedom as preference
satisfaction. Three causes of erosion of individual freedom under modern liberalism are discussed, namely seeing humans as “homo economicus”, the creation of a free-market society, and the fast process of producing and spreading the Silicon Valley culture and the tech solutionism approach culminating in the current efforts to achieve AGI (artificial generalized information) systems.
Chapter 8 entitled Who Is the Sustainer? argues for the need to reconsider metaphysics as an important source of knowledge about reality. It uses the stratified reality concept of critical realism (Bhaskar, 2020) and the method of inductive reasoning called inference to the best explanation (Lipton, 1991) to search for the most plausible cause of the life-sustaining web of relationships in which humans live. Comparing the worldview of naturalism or scientific materialism with the worldview of theism and the existing evidence about the origin of the Universe, the fine-tuning of the Universe to support life, and the facts provided by the genome analysis in biology, proving the complex design in life-supporting protein molecules, it posits that theism offers a better explanation about the “out-of-this-world” power behind the complex, dynamic, and diverse life-sustaining network than scientific materialism.
Chapter 9 concludes. This book’s main message is a message of cautious hope. Sustainability is a magnificent life project, intelligibly conceived to secure existence and continuation of life on our planet. Of all the billions of creatures that live on Earth, only humans have been offered the choice to participate as a force for good in the sustainability project, by acknowledging their creature status and willingness to respect all forms of life and to live within the biosphere’s limits. Yet, humans have chosen to behave as autonomous rulers of nature, living according to their own poorly conceived sustainability rules, oblivious of life’s complexity, diversity, and awesomeness, and effectively indifferent to the pain, suffering, and destruction this can produce. Awareness is rising that the unsustainability model practiced by the autonomous, individualistic humans over the past 200 years in liberal democracies of the Global North is not working, and that the sustainability narrative and
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Bohemia, December 27, 1754.
Very dear Sir,
HOW condescending is true Friendship! And how does love, founded upon the love of G , like its blessed Author, delight to stoop to its beloved object! Your kind letter, which I received last week from worthy Governor B――, is a proof of this. An affection, a reciprocal affection something like your own, would have constrained me to answer it sooner, but travelling and preaching (my old excuse) have prevented me. At length I am got into Maryland, and into a family, out of which, I trust, five have been born of G . Gladly would I spend this whole day in deep humiliation and prayer: for I am now forty years of age. Fy upon me, fy upon me. Alas! how little have I done for J ! O that my head was water! O that my eyes were fountains of tears! What mercies, what infinite mercies have I received! What poor returns have I made! Behold, I am vile! Am not I treating you like a friend, even like a Boston friend, my dear Sir? Yes, I am; and since you commanded me, I will. Your letter bespeaks you to be worthy of that sacred name, and to be acquainted with that which few, very few know any thing about; I mean the delicacies of true disinterested friendship. This is a secret that none but beloved disciples are let into. May you always remain in the number of these, and when you are leaning on that bosom, where all that is lovely centers, may you have a heart to remember one who is called to travel, whilst you are acting in another sphere for G ! Blessed be his name, heaven is at the end of the journey. Happy Mrs. L――! she hath had a speedy translation. May my latter end be like hers! How ought such events to teach us to converse when together, that if we should be called before the next intended meeting, we might have no trifling conversation to reflect upon. To-morrow, G willing, I move again. Ere long my last remove will come; a remove into endless bliss, where with you and all the redeemed of the L , I trust you will see, very dear Sir,
Your most obliged, affectionate friend, and ready servant for C ’s sake,
G. W.
LETTER MLXXI.
To Mr. R――.
Virginia, January 17, 1755.
IAM just now on the borders of North-Carolina, and after preaching to-morrow in a neighbouring church, I purpose to take my leave of Virginia. Had I not been detained so long at the northward, what a wide and effectual door might have been opened.—Here, as well as elsewhere, rich and poor flock to hear the everlasting gospel. Many have come forty or fifty miles, and a spirit of conviction and consolation seemed to go through all the assemblies. One Colonel R――, a person of distinction, opened one church for me, invited me to his house, and introduced me himself to the reading desk. As I was riding in his chariot, he informed me of his intention to see Boston next Summer If my friends would be so good as to mention my name, and shew him some respect when he comes amongst you, it would add to my obligations. Blessed be G , I see a vast alteration for the better. O for more time, and if possible for more souls and bodies! L J , twenty times ten thousand are too few for thee, and yet (O amazing love) thou art willing to accept of only two mites! These, I trust, you, my very dear Sir, have put into his sacred treasury. O that the trifling thing called honour, may never, so much as for a single moment, draw you from your G ! I hope Colonel P―― stands to his colours. Then I live, if my dear friends stand fast in the L . My most cordial respects and tender love await them all. I doubt not of your improving Mrs. L――’s sudden dissolution; another call to be always ready. That this may be the
happy lot of you and yours, is and shall be the earnest prayer of, very dear Sir,
Yours most affectionately in our glorious Head, G.
W.
LETTER MLXXII.
To Mr. P――.
Virginia, January 17, 1755.
TReverend and very dear Sir,
HOUGH at this distance of time and place, yet I do not forget our solemn and mournful parting. Blessed be G , there is a time coming, when these cutting trials will be over. I long, I long for it, and yet when fresh doors of usefulness are opening, I am content to stay below. This I trust is the case at present in Virginia. The prospect is promising indeed. People have flocked from all parts to hear the word, and arrows of conviction have fled, and I believe stuck fast. Seed sown several years ago, hath sprung up and brought forth fruit. Doth not the L of the harvest by this say, “Go forward.” Do, my dear Sir, help me by your prayers; I want to have my tardy pace quickened. I am now forty years old. Surely it is high time to awake out of sleep. I doubt not but this will find you and yours all alive for J Being straitened for time, I must beg you to remember me in the most tender manner to all dear, very dear friends as they come in your way, and accept the same for your whole self, from, reverend and very dear Sir,
Your most affectionate, obliged friend, brother, and servant in our common L ,
My dear Mr. F――,
LETTER MLXXIII.
To Mr. F――.
Virginia, January 17, 1755.
IHOPE that this will find you safely arrived at Philadelphia, from your northward expedition, and ready to come further southwards. This leaves me in my last Virginia stage, near the borders of North-Carolina. People as I came along have been very willing to attend on my feeble labours, and I hope that some real good hath been done. If this be effected, it matters little how the labourer himself may be sometimes fatigued.
His presence doth my pains beguile, And makes the wilderness to smile.
Lovely delusion this! Living, dying, and after death I hope to be possessed of it. I have seen your Epitaph. Believe on J , and get a feeling possession of G in your heart, and you cannot possibly be disappointed of your expected second edition, finely corrected, and infinitely amended. Verbum sapienti sat est. I could say more, but time is short. Glad shall I be to wait on you and Mr. H―― at the Orphan-house. I send you both my cordial respects, and praying that you may have what good Colonel G――r once wished me, “A thriving soul in a healthy body,” I subscribe myself, my dear Sir,
Your affectionate, obliged friend and ready servant,
LETTER MLXXIV.
To Mr. ――.
Virginia, in Hanover County, January 23, 1755.
My very dear Jonathan,
THAT ever-loving and ever-lovely Redeemer that owned my feeble labours in the northward, still continues to bless and succeed me in my journey southward. I have not been here a week, and have had the comfort of seeing many impressed under the word every day. Two churches have been opened, and a third (Richmond) I am to preach in to-morrow. Prejudices I find do subside, and some of the rich and great begin to think favourably of the work of G . Several of the lower class have been with me acknowledging what the L of all Lords did for them, when I was here before. O that I may be humbly thankful, and improve every smile to quicken my tardy pace, and make me all alive for J ! About this day month, I hope to reach Georgia; from thence, I intend writing to you again. But be where I will, dear Boston is much upon my heart. This may serve as a proof that you and yours are not forgotten. Indeed and indeed I often think of, and pray for you from my inmost soul. Blessed be G , that we can meet at the throne of grace! J sits thereon, even J our advocate, our G , and our All. You must add to my obligations, by continuing to pray, that I may begin to love and serve him in earnest, and thus you will appear a Jonathan indeed, to,
Yours most affectionately in our common L ,
G. W.
LETTER MLXXV.
To Mrs. C――.
Charles-Town, March 3, 1755.
TDear Mrs. C――,
HROUGH divine goodness we arrived here last Wednesday afternoon, on Thursday Mr. E―― was solemnly ordained, and on Friday Andrew H――n and his wife, and R――, came in a schooner from Port-Royal. I believe they will settle here.—The trials I have met with on various accounts, have brought my old vomitings upon me, and my soul hath been pierced with many sorrows.—But I believe, (L help my unbelief!) that all is intended for my good.— Amidst every thing, I am comforted at the present situation of Bethesda.—I hope you will love and walk in love, and the children also grow in years and grace.—I purpose sending all the things by Mr. R――n, who comes shortly by water. Then I purpose writing to dear Mr. Dixon and others, and hope by that time to be determined what course I shall steer. O that it may be heaven-wards, go where I will! This I know will be your prayer, and the prayer of the rest of my dear family in my behalf.—I pray for you all night and day.—I would have you write to Mr. H――t by the bearer, who is an experimental Baptist preacher from the northward.—O that he may say something, that may do my dear family some good.—Mr Z――y will be with you in about three weeks. The L be with you all. Hoping to write again ere long, and wishing you all much of his presence, that is better than life, I subscribe myself, dear Mrs. C――,
Your most assured friend, brother, and servant in C J ,
G. W.
LETTER MLXXVI.
To the Same.
Charles-Town, March 17, 1755.
Dear Mrs. C――,
HAD I wings like a dove, how often would I have fled to Bethesda since my departure from it. I could almost say, that the few last hours I was there, were superior in satisfaction to any hours I ever enjoyed. But I must go about my heavenly Father’s business.—For this, I am a poor but willing pilgrim, and give up all that is near and dear to me on this side eternity.—This week I expect to embark in the Friendship, Captain Ball; but am glad of the letters from Bethesda before I go.—They made me weep, and caused me to throw myself prostrate before a prayer-hearing and promise-keeping G .—He will give strength, he will give power. Fear not; you are now I believe where the L would have you be, and all will be well.—I repose the utmost confidence in you, under G , and verily believe that I shall not be disappointed of my hope.—I should have been glad if the apples had been sent in the boat; they would have been useful in the voyage.—But J can stay me with better apples.—May you and all my dear family have plenty of these! I imagine it will not be long before I return from England. Now Bethesda would be pleasant. G make it more and more so to you and to all. I can only recommend you in the most endearing manner to the ever-blessed J , and my unworthy vile self to your continual prayers, as being, dear Mrs. C――,
Yours most affectionately in our blessed L ,
G. W.
P. S. I hope that one of the players is snatched as a brand out of the burning. Grace! grace!
LETTER MLXXVII.
To the Reverend Mr G――.
London, May 10, 1755.
TReverend and very dear Sir,
HE love which I owe and bear to you for the L J C ’s sake, constrains me to send you a few lines immediately upon my arrival at my native country.—I arrived at Newhaven in Sussex the 8th instant, after a six weeks passage. Hither the cloud seemed to move, though I must own that I left America with regret.—Never was the door opened wider in those parts for preaching the everlasting gospel, than now.—Perhaps this may shorten my stay at home, but future things belong to J . It is not in man to direct his steps.—Prepare us, O L , for whatever thou hast prepared for us! I hear, you have met with changes since my departure.—What have we to do to expect any thing else? Dear Mr M――n!—Whither is he gone? Where J reigns, and where, through rich and sovereign grace, even ill and hell deserving I, hope ere long to be.—Hasten, glorious Emmanuel, that wished-for time!— If your dear yoke-fellow is also gone, she I trust is happy too.— Sequar, etsi non passibus æquis.—You will write soon, and send me some news about the upper world.—This is scarce worth a thought. —I hope my dear host and hostess, Mr. S――, Mrs. M――, and all friends are well.—I can only send them and you my hearty love, and beg the continuance of your prayers for, very dear Sir,
Yours, &c.
G. W.
LETTER MLXXVIII.
To Lady H――n.
London, May 13, 1755.
Ever-honoured Madam,
SINCE I put my letter into the office on Saturday night, I have heard that your Ladyship was gone to Ashby, and therefore make bold to trouble your Ladyship with a few more lines. They leave me safely arrived at my desired port, and endeavouring to begin to do something for him, who hath loaded me with his benefits, and still continues to smile upon my feeble labours. Glad am I to hear, that so many have lately been stirred up to preach a crucified Saviour. Surely that scripture must be fulfilled, “and many of the priests also were obedient to the word.” The work is of G , and therefore must prosper. Blessed be his great name, for continuing to hold your Ladyship as a star in his right-hand. May you shine more and more till the perfect day! I find your Ladyship still delights to do good. The late benefaction for Bethesda came very opportunely; G will provide! That institution begins to rise. But I cannot descend to particulars now; ere long I hope to wait on your Ladyship at Bristol. My first circuit is to be in the west. Hoping to be favoured soon with a line to acquaint me of your Ladyship’s welfare, and earnestly praying that your Ladyship and honoured relations may be filled with all the fulness of G , I beg leave to subscribe myself, ever-honoured Madam,
Your Ladyship’s, &c.
G. W
LETTER MLXXIX.
To the Marquis of L――.
London, May 14, 1755.
BEING but lately arrived in my native country, I take the first opportunity of returning your Lordship thanks for your great zeal in promoting the welfare of New Jersey college. Surely it is the purest seminary that I have known. Your Lordship’s name is precious in America, and children yet unborn will be bound to bless G for what you have done. I think, if the degree of Doctor of divinity could be procured for Mr. A―― B――, their present worthy president, it would still make an addition to the honours of the college. He is a most excellent man; your Lordship will not be offended at my making the motion. Blessed be G , in various places abroad, the gospel runs and is glorified. In Virginia a wide and effectual door is opened. The Indian mission can never I think come upon a proper establishment, till some lands are purchased, and the Indians brought to live together upon them. The plan that was laid, I mentioned to Mr. D―― some months ago, and ere now, I suppose your Lordship hath seen it. O for that happy time, when the kingdoms of the earth shall become the kingdoms of the L and of his C ! Blessed Emmanuel, may thy temple be built in troublesome times! But I forget myself. Your Lordship will excuse my freedom. I am writing to one who delights to serve the Redeemer’s interest. That your Lordship may have the continued honour of confessing him upon earth, and be confessed by him after death in the kingdom of heaven, is and shall be the prayer of, my Lord,
Your Lordship’s most dutiful, obliged, and ready servant for C ’s sake,
G. W.
LETTER MLXXX.
To Lady H――n.
London, May 27, 1755.
IEver-honoured Madam,
T hath given me great concern, that I have not been able till now, to acknowledge your Ladyship’s most kind letter. I could almost say, excess of business at my first coming over hath prevented me; but to make the most of it, I do but little, and that little in so bad a way, that if it was not for the compleat and all-sufficient righteousness of the everlasting, ever-lovely J , I could not lift up my guilty head. And yet what a blessed week have we had! Surely, sinners have come like a cloud, and fled like doves to the windows. In about a fortnight, I hope to take the field in Gloucestershire, and shall endeavour to make all possible dispatch in the west, in order to wait on your Ladyship in my northern visit. Help me, thou friend of sinners, to be nothing, and to say nothing, that thou mayest say and do every thing, and be my all in all!—What a happiness is it to be absorbed and swallowed up in G ? To have no schemes, no views, but to promote the common salvation. This be my happy lot! Your Ladyship will still add to my innumerable obligations, by praying for me. How shall I express my gratitude?—Tears trickle from my eyes, whilst I am thinking of your Ladyship’s condescending to patronize such a dead dog as I am. But it is because I belong to J . He will, he will reward your Ladyship openly. Ever-honoured Madam excuse me. Tears flow too fast for me to write on. I must go and speak to G for you and yours, as being, ever-honoured Madam,
Your Ladyship’s most dutiful, obliged, and ready servant for C ’s sake,
LETTER MLXXXI.
To Governor B――.
London, June 6, 1755.
Much-honoured Sir,
WHILST I remain myself where you are called to sojourn, in this dying world, I trust your Excellency will never be forgotten by unworthy me. You see, honoured Sir, where a poor but willing pilgrim is tossed now. Just this day month did I arrive in this metropolis, where, glory, glory be to the great head of the church! The word hath still free course. The poor despised Methodists are as lively as ever, and in several churches the gospel is now preached with power. Many in Oxford are awakened to the knowledge of the truth, and I have heard almost every week of some fresh minister or another, that seems determined to know nothing but J C , and him crucified. This, I am persuaded, is the best news I can send to your Excellency This, must necessarily rejoice your heart, which I know pants after nothing more, than the enlargement of the Mediator’s kingdom. Ere long, your utmost thirsting shall be satisfied, you shall see J ; you shall see him as he is: O Gloriam quantam et qualem! G give me patience to wait till my appointed change comes! But would it not be a shame to go to heaven without scarce beginning to do something for the blessed Redeemer? He that searches the heart and trieth the reins, knows full well, how often I cry out, “my leanness, my leanness!” G be praised, next week I hope to go on my country range. I hope that your Excellency will have a heart given you to pray for me, whilst life lasts, and after death I doubt not but the glorious Emmanuel will reward you before men and angels, for all your works of faith, and labours of love,
which you have done for the church in general, and particularly for all favours conferred on, honoured, much-honoured Sir,
Your Excellency’s most dutiful, obliged, and ready servant for C ’s sake,
LETTER MLXXXII.
To Mr. C――.
JReverend and dear Sir,
London, June 7, 1755.
UST now I was informed that the bag is to be taken away this afternoon; hurried therefore as I am, you must have a few lines. —And why? Because I love and honour you for J C ’s sake. Will it not rejoice you to hear that his glorious gospel gets ground apace. Several of the clergy, both in town and country, have been lately stirred up to preach C crucified, in the demonstration of the spirit and with power. This excites the enmity of the old serpent, which discovers itself in various shapes. The greatest venom is spit out against Mr. R――n, who having been reputed a great scholar, is now looked upon and treated as a great fool; because made wise himself, and earnestly desirous that others also should be made wise to eternal salvation. Methinks I hear you say, O happy folly! May this blessed leaven diffuse and spread itself through the whole nation! The prospect is promising. Many students at Oxford are earnestly learning C . Dear Mr. H――y hath learnt and preached him some years; his loving and truly catholic heart chearfully complied with the motion about your future correspondence. As for myself, I can only say “that less than the least of all,” must be my motto still. I labour but feebly, and yet, O
amazing condescension! J owns and succeeds such feeble labours. People still continue to flock to the gospel, like doves to the windows. Next week I begin to take my country range. Be so good, my dear Sir, to add to my obligations, by continuing to remember a poor but willing pilgrim, and to salute all my dear friends as they come in your way. I hope, Mr. A―― (to whom I send cordial respects) goes hand in hand with you, striving together for the faith and the practice of the gospel.—Glorious strife this! I do not forget the books I promised to look out for.—I have spoken to Mr. H――, but he says they are very difficult to be procured. I would write to the Chief Justice, but suppose he is at the northward. Will you be pleased to accept of my Lisbon letters, to be disposed of as you think proper? My little communion-book is not yet come out. G be praised, that there is a time coming when we shall need books and ordinances no more, but shall be admitted into an uninterrupted communion and fellowship with the blessed Trinity for evermore. The L ripen us for that blissful state! I must bid you farewel. Be pleased to excuse the length of this, as being occasioned by the love unfeigned which is due to you from, reverend and dear Sir,
Yours most affectionately in our common L ,
G. W.
LETTER MLXXXIII.
To Mr. P――.
ILondon, June 12, 1755.
Dear Nat.,
THINK every thing is now procured that was in the memorandums. I would have sent the children’s cloaths, &c. but they could not be got ready; you will therefore have them by another opportunity. I am
glad to hear by your last, that the children go on well in their learning. Let this encourage you to go on, and who knows, but by and by they may learn C ? Such power belongs only unto G . I am quite satisfied in your present employ, and doubt not (if you are cloathed with humility, as I trust you will be) but G will bless and delight to honour you. To have our own mother’s children angry with and despise us, if sanctified, is a good preservative against self-love, and self-complacency: it puts us more upon the watch, and drives us nearer to G . This be your happy lot! As for your affair with Mr. C――, I can only say, you have my leave to act as you think best. Shew thy will, O G , and give power to perform it! To A―― W―― and his wife, I have allowed twenty pounds per annum, till they have a place, or get into business. G knows, I can little afford it; but I can as yet trust on him, who feedeth the ravens, and hath promised to supply all my wants. O that the L of all Lords may keep you all at Bethesda of one heart and one mind, and give you to send me such news, as may gladden my frequently burdened (though I hope disinterested) mind; and cause me to go on with more chearfulness and joy! Thanks be to G , my feeble labours on this side the water, are owned and succeeded. People seem to be as lively as ever. I hope the time will come, when Bethesda also shall blossom like a rose. We wait for thy salvation O L ; make no long tarrying our L and our G ! My dear Nat. farewel. Feed C ’s lambs, and he will feast thy soul.—Look upon his work as its own wages, and he will richly repay thee for all thy care. I charge you, and all, to continue wrestling in prayer for me, as being, dear Nat.
Your assured friend and ready servant, for C ’s sake, G. W. LETTER MLXXXIV.
To Mrs. C――.
London, June 13, 1755.
IDear Mrs. C――,
WROTE to you amidst a great throng of business, a few days ago, by a Carolina ship. I am now retired to Mr. C――’s, in order to send you a few lines more. Matters about Mr ―― and his wife, have happened as might be expected; it is my lot to be a pelican. But all will be well at last; I know who will stand on my side. Thanks be to G for J C ! He upholds me, and daily succeeds my feeble, but I trust honest labours, and that to me is all in all. I hope you will write often. What your brother hath written, I know not. I believe you are where G would have you to be, and I pray him night and day to make you more and more a mother in Israel. Ere this comes to hand, I hope you will have received the things from the northward. However it fares with me at home, fain would I care for my dear friends and family abroad. G will provide! This is my comfort. Much depends on your success in the silk, but more on my family’s increasing in the knowledge of J . O that this may be their happy case! O that the L of all Lords may feed you in that wilderness! He is good to us here. We have golden seasons at the tabernacle, and several ministers preach C in the churches. This makes my call abroad still more clear. Though I have not yet entered upon my country range, methinks I could set out for America to-morrow. What is time, relations, and even the enjoyment of G ’s people, compared with the unmixed, uninterrupted joys of an happy eternity! Here I could enlarge, and on this dwell, but must away. Ere long I hope to write to you again, and in the mean while beg leave to subscribe myself, dear Mrs. C――,
Your most assured friend, and willing servant, for C ’s sake,
G. W.
LETTER MLXXXV.
To Mr G――.
Bristol, June 27, 1755.
Reverend and dear Sir,
EVER since I received your last kind letter, I have been so perpetually engaged in preaching, travelling, and a multiplicity of other business, that I have not been able to answer it till now. In London the word runs and is glorified, and every day almost we have heard of fresh ministers of our national church being called out, and spirited up to preach the truth as it is in J This is my first excursion: I came through Gloucestershire, where the fields were white, ready unto harvest. Thrice last Lord’s-day, many many thousands attended on the word preached, and I believe a divine power accompanied it. That is all in all.—People in this place hear as for eternity. Next week I shall travel further westward; but whether I can see Scotland this summer, the Redeemer only knows. But whether absent or present, you, my dear Sir, and my other Scotch friends, have my poor prayers night and day, that your souls and bodies may prosper and be in health. O that G may hear you for unworthy me! I long, I long to do something for J . Glad would I be to serve the church of C any way. If you remember, I hinted to you something about getting a Doctor’s degree for President Burr; since that I wrote to the Marquis of L――n. His Lordship writes thus: “The university of Edinburgh desire of me to obtain some account of Mr. Aaron Burr’s literature, or performances: this I hope you will do, and a diploma will be immediately transmitted.” By this post, I shall write what I know of the President, but I would have you and Mr. E―― write also, immediately to the Marquis. Surely he is the most worthy, ingenious, diligent, and truly christian President of his age, now in the world. He hath published something lately to animate our people against the common enemy. I have it at London, and hope you have it with you. If so, be pleased to transmit it to the Marquis. I shall mention it, and so do you, to his Lordship. Adieu, my very dear
Sir, adieu. I must away May the glorious Emmanuel bless and prosper you and yours, and all the dear followers of the Lamb! I cannot forget you, and hope never shall, whilst I have strength to subscribe, what indeed I am, my very dear friend,
Yours, &c. in our common L .
G. W.
LETTER MLXXXVI.
To the Marquis of L――.
Bristol, June 27, 1755.
My Lord,
HOW shall I express my gratitude to your Lordship, for condescending to answer my poor letter, and so readily concurring with the motion made in it, for a degree being procured for my worthy friend? The great Head of the church will bless and reward your Lordship for it. Never was there a man in the world, that could be more safely recommended as a scholar, and a truly christian minister of the gospel, and a laborious prudent President of a college, than Mr. Aaron Burr.—He was educated at Yale College in Connecticut, New England; and for his pregnant abilities, and many years well approved piety, was unanimously chosen to succeed the Reverend Mr D―― in the care of New-Jersey college. It would have delighted your Lordship, to have seen how gloriously he filled the chair last year, at the New-Jersey commencement. His Latin oration was beautifully elegant, and was delivered with an unaffected, yet striking energy and pathos. As a preacher, disputant, and head of a college, he shines in North America; and the present prosperity of the New Jersey college, is, under G , greatly owing to his learning, piety, and conduct. The students revere and love him. Your Lordship
might have testimonials enough from good Governor B――r, Mr Jonathan Edwards, cum multis aliis. And I believe, they would all concur in saying, “that of his age (now upwards of forty) there is not a more accomplished deserving President in the world.” As for any thing of his in print, that can be referred to, I cannot say, unless it be a little pamphlet lately published, in which he hath animated the people against the common enemy, and discovered a close attachment to the interest of our rightful sovereign King George. May the King of kings long preserve his important and precious life! This piece of Mr Burr’s I have at London, and hope it is in Scotland I just now wrote to Mr. G―― of Glasgow, who, together with Mr. J―― E――, I suppose will write to your Lordship concerning Mr. Burr. I wish the diploma may be transmitted against the next commencement. It will endear your Lordship more and more to the good people of America. May the L of all lords vouchsafe your Lordship a good degree in the kingdom of heaven! O for the lowest place there! It will be abundantly too high for such an unworthy wretch as I am: but his name and nature is Love. He still vouchsafes to employ me, and still continues to countenance my feeble labours. At London we have enjoyed golden seasons, and in the country the fields are white ready unto harvest. O that we may be helped to bear the heat and burden of every day! That your Lordship may live long to do much for C , and be at last gathered like a ripe shock of corn into his heavenly garner, is the earnest prayer of, my Lord,
Your Lordship’s most dutiful, obliged, and ready servant for C ’s sake,
To Mr. Thomas J――.
Bristol, June 27, 1755.
My dear Thomas,
YOUR treatment of me at Honslow, put me in mind of Joseph’s steward, who put his brothers money, unknown to them, into their sacks mouth. Well! J takes notice of all help vouchsafed his servants, and will not forget those who assist them in their pilgrimage for his great name’s sake. You and yours then will not be forgotten:—and G forbid that I should cease praying for you both. The Searcher of hearts knows that I love you both in the bowels of J C ; and my heart’s desire night and day is, that you may be rich, yea very rich towards G . Such are durable riches. Every thing else is less than vanity itself. Thanks be to G for such an unspeakable gift! This supports me in my pilgrimage, and makes me go on my way rejoicing. Thousands and thousands flocked in Gloucestershire; and here the congregations fall little short of those at London. The blessed Redeemer shews us his stately steps. O that we may feel his renovating, sin-subduing, heart-refining power more and more! So shall we approve ourselves to be his disciples, who hath said, that those “whom the Son of man makes free, are free indeed.” Adieu. The L be with you and yours. My love to Mr. W――, Mr. K――, &c. I forget none of you. I pray the L of all lords to keep you unspotted from the world, and entreat you not to forget
