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Untitled Article
prayers in a church , instead of a meeting-house ? Would Mr . Locke and Sir Isaac Newton have deserved better of their country , if they had vehemently admired the Athanasian Creed ?
Opinions are only dangerous , it may be said , when they shock general prejudice , or militate against a creed enacted by the legislature : in this sense , then , the opinions of Protestant Dissenters in
England , of Episcopalians in Scotland , of Roman Catholics in Ireland , of Protestants in Canada , are cjangerous ; in tne same sense , the opinions of the Reformers of popery and of the first Christians were
dangerous ; but what more is meant by the danger in these eases , than the hazard to which the rising independence of the human mind puts spiiitual usurpation , or to
which even a state may bring itself , by opposing in certain junctures the progress of opinion ? There is danger in running a mound across a stream : the banks
will probably overflow and the neighbouring country be laid under water ; but the evil is to be attributed to the mischievous industry which set itself in opposition to nature .
But , it is said , particular religious opinions may have an affinity to certain political opinions ; and , though innocent in themselves , may become noxious by the combination History , however , bears us out in saying that
a theological creed will ^ in the different circumstances of its pro . * fessors , coalesce with widely different political predilections , A sect under persecution is invariably opposed to the Court ; its resentments overcoming , in ' some cases , its natural partialities . Why are the Roman Catholics of Ire-
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land the most forward champions of freedom , —but because the Government have spurned them from them , and forced them fo assume ^ in self-defence , an attitude of oppo * sition ? Why are the
Presbyterians of Scotland , once so dreaded by the episcopal church of England , the tamest supporters oF every successive administration , not excepting any one devoted equally to Toryism and u No
D / trk ^ iMir ' 9 i-v » ¦« ? Y-l * •» v >« % B « n ^ - > k / *»^ - » J : l- »« r ^ . < "k Popery /'—but because Preibyterianism nestles and is fondled in the bosom of government ? The Edinburgh Reviewers need not to be instructed in the recipe for curing faction .
Let it be granted , nevertheless ^ that certain theological creeds have a natural congeniality to some particular political theories ; for instance , that Popery inclines to desL potism , that Socinianfbm leans
towards a commonwealth : —still , government can have no more right to prohibit and to attach penalties to the religious system , than it has to proscribe the politi - cal doctrine , by association with which alone it is confessed that it
becomes pernicious ; but what is the right in this case ? Just nothing at all ; it being a tyranny beyond any thing ever yet heard of , to convert au opinion in favour of this or that foim of government into a crime .
From one singular expression of the Reviewer ' s , it may be gathered , that his meaning , though indistinctly expressed , is , that particular forms of religion may be justly suppressed by the magistrate when united with seditious
practices : but would itnotbesuf * ficient ^ for every wise and good purpose , to say that seditious prac * tices may and ought in every instance to be curbed and put
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On a Passage in the Edinburgh Review . " 35
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1812, page 35, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1744/page/35/
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