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Untitled Article
down , in whatever company found , whether wiih ( he followers of John Calvjn , ofSocinus , of the Pretender or of Sacheverel ? In connection with Socinianism . the
Reviewer makes mention of Republican habits ; by which he intends , we take for granted , not any par , ticular mode of dress , not any precise cut of the hair , not any peculiar compellation with which
Socinians greet each other , but attempts to reduce Republican theories to practice on British ground : now we see no reason why the disbelief of the Trinity should lead to a hatred of King , Lords and Commons : if the term were not
too quaint , the , Unitarians might be fitly called Monarchists , their constant endeavour being to assert ,, according to a favourite phrase with some of the Fathers , the absolute Monarchy of the Deity .
No fact is known to us that bears the writer out in his suspicion of the likelihood of Socinianism being ; in union with treason : the public may lay aside all fears on this head ; some of the Socinians are fich , and wish for no change at all , not even such an one as the
Edinburgh Reviewers maintain to be the only preventive of a much worse change ; some of them have attained the summit of their
ambition , in rising to seats in corporations , up to which they have scrambled , with broken consciences , over the Lord ' s Table ; and we believe a still larger number agree with the Quakers , in depre ,-
cattng all violence , even as the instrument of reformation . But if , in spite of past history and present appearances , Socinians should become traitors , let them be punished , as the law has provided ,
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though not for their Sociniauisra but for their treason . The suppression of the Romish Catholics is put as a contingent virtue in the government for that sect may be infected with the love
of despotism * It would be a novel spectacle if a government were to busy itself in hunting down this affection . Na , no ; there is no danger to the Roman Catholics from loving despotism , —unless it be despotism only a good way ofT \ But this can be nothing else than
a Jeu desprit of the Reviewer ' s , who had somehow or other got into his mind the comic idea of a company of commissioners , appointed by the Houses of Lords and Commons , under sanction of
the Court , to make inquisition after the love of arbitrary power , with a view to bring the possessors to punishment ; and who could
not persuade himself to drop ity till he h ? id indulged the vision of Roman Catholics being whipped by their Protestant brethren int # a sense of liberty .
We may put a case which will perhaps illustrate our argument on the dangerousness of opinions . We hold , in common with most of our countrymen , the immorality as well as illegality of bigamy , and think it justly punishable by the civil magistrate . But if ano *
ther clergyman , following the example 01 Mr . Madan , should write a book in defence of a plu * rality of wives , not otherwise ob * j jectionable than in regard of this doctrine ; we might lament that such a book should have been
written , we might even fear its consequences , but we could nx > t > consistently with our notions of right and our affection for freedom *;
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36 On a Passage in the " Edinburgh ReviewJ
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1812, page 36, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1744/page/36/
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