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Untitled Article
therej and every thing was nearly ready for my undertaking th « j voyage . But getting better health , my former destinatiori for the ministry was resumed , and I was sent to Daventry to study under Mr . Ash worth , afterwards Dr . Ashworth . <¦ ' Looking back , as I often do , upon this period of my life , I see the greatest reason to be thankful to God for the pious care of my parents and friends in giving me religious instruction . ' My mother was a woman of exemplary piety , and my father ako had a stron g sense of religion , praying with his family morning and evening and carefully teaching his children and servants the Assembly ' s Catechism , which was all the system of which he had any knowledge * In the
Jatter part ot Ins lite he became very fond of Mr . WhiUield ' s writings , and other works of a similar kind , having been brought up in the principles of Calvinism , and adopting them , but without ' ever giving much attention to matters of speculation , and entertaining no blotted aversion to those who differed from him on the suhiect . tf
The same was the case with my excellent aunt : she was truly Calvmistic in principle ,, but was far from confining salvation to those who thought as she did on reli g ious subjects . "——*— " Thus was I brought Up with sentiments of piety , but without bigotry , and having from my earliest years given much attention to the subject of religion ! I was as much confirmed as I well could be in the principles of Calvinism , ail the books that came in my way having that tendency . "
Unitarians in general revere the character of Dr , Priestley , and they have great reason to revere him . He was not merely an ingeuious experimental <« ist , an acute metaphysician ^ and an . enlightened defender of the simplicity that is in Christ /* He was also one of those who keep themselves " unspotted from the world / ' His religion he carried constantly about
with him . t-Je neglected no opportunity , either as a teacher or writer , of inculcating the importance of personal religion . This was , doubtless , from having experienced in himself , as iildeed in the memoir he after mentions , the great advantages of an early religious-education . We wish Unitarians were more
impressed than they seem to be , with the importance of such sentiments . Unitarianism appears to be getting more and more a fashionable religion . In addition to novelty , it-has the advantage of claiming a more intimate alliance with reason than those systems which require a belief in doctrines that are
incomprehensible ; and as literature is now more universally diffused than it was half , a century ago , the controversies concerning the Unitarian doctrine , which have taken place during the ° last twenty y ^ ars ., have necessarily come before general readers , an 4 occasionally excited some attention . To a person who possesses
ajn irnpartial judgment , and who is unwilling to forsake reason as his guide , it is not to be wondered that the evidences of Unitarianism should seem to preponderate . Hence many call them-, selves Unitarians who consider the subject in no other light than as a matter of opinion , and in the same way as they call
Untitled Article
Memoirs of Dr . Prfpstley . 4 . 31
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1806, page 431, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1727/page/39/
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