“Indeed the mode of showing your courtesy may vary, as Christian prudence will direct. But the thing itself is due to all: the lowest and worst have a claim to our courtesy.” -John Wesley
In 1788, John Wesley published portions of a famous work on manners by the Italian author Baldassare Castiglione which first appeared in English in 1528. Manners, or civility, was a topic of great interest in eighteenth-century Britain. And Wesley, like so many others, tied manners to religion, i.e. a settled heart will be evident in the way that we treat one another.
Writing in the same century, Jeremy Bentham described manners as “a branch of morality.”
These connections had long been explored by authors throughout Europe. And to be honest, we can assume that they had been taught by parents to their children, even without putting them into writing.
What they show, however, is that these thinkers refused to separate moral formation from outward behavior.
And manners involve much more…