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Church , of England , / With Extracts from Blackstone , as a Comment on the Ganans here given /' The perusal of this Table of Gontents affected me with
unutterable surprise . I suspected , on recovering from my astonishment , that I had ^ . mistaken the title of the pamphlet , and that instead of the " First Principles of Christian Knowledge /* it was the First Principles of Political Wisdom . A further
examination quickly dissipated this supposition ;• my two mottos from Dr . South immediately occurred to my recollection , and I said ta myself— " Well ! the Bishop of St . David ' s has certainly one mark of an apostle upon him , and may on that account lay claim to apostolic succession : he was , without doubt , born out of due time '
What , , £ ir , are we to think of an English bishop in the nineteenth century who teaches the clergy and good people of his diocese to look for the principles of Christianity , not in the Holy Scriptures , but in the Church Catechism and Office of Confirmation- and the three Church-Creeds ! and who
introduces his work on the elements of our religion , of which such instruction forms the substance , with a didactic essay , in question and answer , on the paramount duty of conformity ^ and who concludes it with a collection of threatening and long ^ abandoned statutes and canons against Dissenters ! What dan we do but pity his ignorance , or execrate his intolerance ? Does he not know that Protestant Dissenters have left his
chupel *—endeared to him , no doubt * by the strongest ties— - because they have examined its creeds , its articl e ^ its catechism ^ and its ritual , and have found them unscriptural ; and that they have left it under circumstances of loss and suffering which bespeak the sincerity and conscientiousness of their dissent ? Is he to be yet instructed in the writings of the greatest lights
of his own churchy who have in fact pleaded for all the principles of the Non-conformists , from Jeremy Taylor down to the liberal-minded Watson ? Does he wish to revive the spirit of tTie times of Laud ? to repeat ** those glorious things -that our English prelates did two or * three hundred years s * nce ? " If fcte does not , his Appendix is sheer folly : if he does , let him know that the day is gone by , and that the prelate who sh ^ ll now
dare to project such a design will suffer , not indeed in the same wa y as the proud priest before-mentioned , but under the silent contempt and odium of an enlightened and tolerant empire * iQ I he church / ' says my second motto , € C is in its wane ;¦ *•* , and the wailings , and menaces , and struggles of such men as DauVeny , Horsley , and Burgess , do no more than direct our *
e to the horizon to see it sink . i ' he Bisuhop professes ^ in his Preface , to wishMto reclaim hia
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Bp . Burgess * s Principles . 437
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1806, page 427, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1727/page/35/
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