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Untitled Article
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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
Jesus Christ , You are now about to send him to a place where he is to receive it from man ,- and to subscribe not to what Christ has taught , but to what human authority has enjoined , and on this ground , that the church enacts it .
He must enter into holy orders with prevarication , declaring himself moved by the Holy Spirit , but really and bona fide moved by a parent ' s request and the purchase of a living for him . He must be inducted in the practice of prevarication , de- » daring an unfeigned assent and consent to principles which he has never studied , most probably ; and being thirty-nine general points , besides numerous prayers , collects , and sentences scattered through the Common Prayer , it can scarcely be pre ^
sumed he can possibly believe all and each of them . His ministry must be continued and carried oh by repeated acts of prevarication , in reading , as devotional exercises , forms at which conscience will revolt— -forms founded , in his own opinion , on principles contrary to pure Christianity—on the worship of three Gods , instead of one God the Father .
The matter , it may be concluded , has not appeared to you In this serious solemn point of view , Far from exposing a son to any influence that would corrupt his integrity ^ you would hold sacred , you would guard and protect the simplicity and sincerity of a youthful mind . If your son should be qualified to support , and be inclined to assume , the character of a Dissenting minister ^ he would appear
in the world with more weight and dignity , than he could derive from joining the clerical order in the Establishment : there Jie would be lost in the crowd , as is every rich Dissenter who goes over to the Church 2 he loses much in point of real credit and respectability , for his conduct incurs the suspicion and
pensure of being a desertion of principle . It likewise deserves consideration ^ that the sum laid out in ( he purchase of a living would form a genteel , handsome part of a permanent fortune ; whereas the intended application of it will secure a life estate only .
Requesting your permission to refer these hmt $ to your se-j cpnd and mature thoughts ^ I am , Sir , respectfully , your's , Integritas .
N . B . r 7- / rhis letter was not sent to the gentleman to whom it was me ^ mt to address it . By appearing in this Repository , it may probably fall in the wa } ojE others whose secret purposes it jinay m ^ et .
Untitled Article
626 Letter to a Dissenter .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1806, page 626, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1731/page/10/
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