SOURCE: "Sterne and the Anglican Church," in his Laurence Sterne as Satirist: A Reading of "Tristram Shandy," University of Florida Press, 1969, pp. 5-28.

In the following excerpt, New argues that Sterne's Sermons reveal his belief in "right reason," a rational morality which is possible only when supported by religion. New maintains that Sterne's religious beliefs can be seen in Tristram Shandy, a satire on human appetite and excesses.

That sterne was a clergyman of the Anglican church has proved, more often than not, a source of embarrassment to his critics. If the modern critic is not as apt as the Victorian critic to wax indignant over the imposture, he is, nonetheless, unwilling to give the forty-five sermons which survive a meaningful place in the Sterne canon.¹ John Traugott, for example, refuses to treat them as religious documents; they are rhetorical exercises. He concludes a cursory examination of them...