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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.
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Untitled Article
tion relates not , a& this person would suggest , to his then cir cumstances . It is retrospective ; the language as far as relates to himself , is in the past tense . His dying circumstances were , thanks to his soul-supporting system , not trying ; he had no pain , no fear . His " trying circumstances " were antecedent afflictions , some of which were occasioned
by the persecutions of persqns likeminded to this censofipqs writer , and which he had reconciled his mind to uaf ler the persuasion of the paternal and merciful government of Almighty God . And it was an habitual contemplation of the whole scheme of the Divine Administration , and not of that
narrow part of it which refers to future punishments which had constantly administered consolation" to this good man ' s injnd . * ' Had he no basis more firm than this to rest upon in the prospect of eternity ; if he had , tt is peculiar that he did not ? nention it ; if he had not , it is far from being a rccommenda * - iion of his system /'
With what eyes could this writer have read the account of Dr . Priestley ' s death ? But perhaps he read it under so strong a prepossession that the holder of awful Socinian sentiments piust have lived and died miserably , that he could see nothing in the account but one single statement which a little pervert * ed pronitse 4 some gratification to his malignity . Pity that thu Priestley's well-known benevolence to the amiable
CafoinistSj should not have prompted him to affect , in order to please thqm , certain misgivings of mind and terrors which he never felt . As it is , they have , I acknowledge , reason to be dissatisfied . No blemish , unfortunately , can be found in his life , nothing cowardly in his death ; what then remains to he done , but to say with the Evangelical Magazine , that he died hoping ( it might have been said knowing ) that the torments of
Hell will not be everlasting , or with an eminent Orthodox minister , whose name I spare only out of tenderness to his charac-r | er and condition ^ ( and he has said this publicly again and again ) th ^ t he died like a Heathen ? I will tell this writer , Sir , what was the basis of Dr . Priestley ' s hope both in life and death , and if he will read again the Son ' s account , he will find that I am not wrong—it was the
reading of the Scriptures , the exercise of prayer , and the belief which he derived from the gospel of a happy immortality ! This hope and the basis of it he did Ci mention , " and' triumphantly too , and I shall bless God as long as I live , that the 7
* ' dying circumstances ' of Dr . Priestley , were published in this country , time enough to be read to a dying saint , near and dear to me—a saint and an Unitarian , who was so transported by | he recital of them , as to long to see in a better world that
Untitled Article
Dr . Priestley * s Last Moments . 135
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1806, page 135, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1722/page/23/
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