On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
© r acquired , he would be of little use in the church of Christ /* And a highly popular writer among the Orthodox * , under the patronage of the Pitt-loving , war-supporting , evangelical Wi !~
perforce , published some years ago a tract on " Religious Backsliding , " in which it was stated that one sure symptom of backsliding of heart was the taking an eager interest in politics ! !" Can you wonder , Mr . Editor , at my wishing to have your caution * * explained ! at my pains that you should not be confounded
with the Claytons and Martins and Rippons of the day , with the base herd of fawning sycophants , who Esau-like , for a mess of pottage , would barter their birth-right , and sell themselves and their posterity to bondage \ In going over to the Dissenters , I flattered myself that I was
about to mingle with a party who more than all others understood , the nature ^ and estimated the value of civil , as well as re * ligious liberty . I was acquainted with their chief writers ; I had studied their history . I supposed that a Price , a Robinson , and a Priestley was the organ , each in hia day and place , of the party ; and I considered that as they were politically persecuted ,
they were to a man so far politicians , as to seek constitutional redress , and to claim tlteir stolen rights . I even regarded it as upon the whole an advantage to my country , though certainly no honour to it , that a large class of my fellow-citizerts , were by state-injustice forced , in self-defence , upon the study of the constitution , and the assertion of British liberty . If , thought
I » we who are the majority , have laid them , being weaker than ourselves , under political disabilities , and subjected them to political disgrace , can we blame them for having turrved their attention to politics—for having studied the occasion of their injuries ? As well might the knave who has defrauded his neighbour of his estate , reproach him with having disturbed his
bead with the difficult study of the law , because by law he sought to recover it . Such , Sir , were my views of the Dissenters , such my expectations from them . I have not been wholly mistaken . I have found among them upon the whole a greater degree of
information and good sense with regard to constitutional liberty , and a more zealous concern for it than I have observed in any other class of my countrymen . I see in them , in the same pro * portion that the aboriginal inhabitants of modern Turkey , are a&id to resemble the ancient Greeks , a likeness however faint to
that venerable race of men the Puritans , their ancestors , to whoip an historian not prejudiced in their favour owi * s that we * Andrew Fulfer .
Untitled Article
On the Study of Polities . 125
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1806, page 125, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1722/page/13/
-