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gtructors ; " their self-denying labours and their personal virtues attest , they humbly think , the purity of their motives ; and as for learning , although they wish they had more , they cannot admit that as a body they have been signally deficient , —whilst they run over the revered names of their
Howe and Bates and Baxter , their Chandler and Benson and Lardner , their Watts and Doddridge , their Taylor and Farmer and Kippis and Price and Priestley and Cappe . Most true is it , as the Bishop observes ( p . 19 ) that " the complexion
of the times has , in a few years , undergone a material change , —the course of events has given a powerful impulse to the energies of the human mind , —a mighty mass of intellect is working with incessant and increasing activity , " but vain is it to look to
** the Clergy "— " to give a proper direction to this general movement , and to controul its irregularities and excesses ! " They have long ceased to lead , and have with difficulty followed , the public mind . They still pretend
to Holy Orders , to a divine commission , and to the possession of the Holy Ghost , which men of all other professions and classes have agreed to consider as the claim of superstition ; they adhere to articles of faith which the members of their church have for
the most part renounced ; and they repeat nearly once a month a creed which the laity of their communion reject with abhorrence . A wise counsellor would advise them , not to aspire to the direction of the mighty intellect of the age , but to forbear to
oppose it , lest they should be overthrown in the shock , and as far as possible to follow in its train . He would exhort them , especially , to set up no pretensions which they cannot make good , that a conviction of one imposition may not beget a suspicion
of others . He would conjure them , as they value their reputation , and even their political being , to conciliate and not to provoke , to court and not to defy , to promote inquiry instead
of clinging to ancient errors , to bend before the spirit of reform instead of resisting it , to magnify virtue and to abate in their valuation of ceremony , and above all things to put on charity which is the bond of perfectoness .
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578 Review . ' —Morgan * 8 lAfe af Price .
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Morgan ' s Memoirs of Dr . Price . ( Concluded from p . 508 ) THAT the writer of this volume engaged in his design from " j 10 motive of self-interest or ambition •" that he has been " anxious only to render justice to the memory of a friend j" may without difficulty be admitted . In the pretensions of the work before us , in its stvle and
manner , there are no traces of ostentation . The author seems to be intent on his subject : his language is unadorned , even to carelessness , and exhibits no superfluous epithets , but indicates a strong and active mind rather than the habit of literary composition , the talents of the man of business more
than the accomplishments of the scholar . Making no display , moreover , of his uncle ' private correspondence , he determines n ot to gratify " an idle curiosity by the indiscriminate publication of letters which had been
written in the confidence of friendship . " This , we are aware , is not the practice or the sentiment of many of our contemporaries . We live in an age whose taste for telling and hearing " some new thing" has been pampered and quickened by the wanton , if not , in many instances , the mercenary ,
disclosure of epistles which the receiver had , unsuspectingly , entrusted to the custody of his escrutoire , and which were designed , exclusively , for the eye of fidelity and affection . We
cannot but approve of the biographers forbearance in a matter of such delicacy ; though perhaps he has carried it to an extreme point , and afforded some of his readers cause to exclaim ,
In vitium ducit culpcefuga - Yet while we bestow on Mr . Morgan ' s performance our humble praise , in respect of its freedom from parade and affectation , we shall , with the same explicitness , state objections to it , of another kind : these have no been lightly conceived $ they shall not be invidiously urged—and hence ^ e hope that they will be interprets with candour and weighed with
deliberation . 1 If biography is often too copious ana minute , it may sometimes , ho wevc : , be accused of scantiness . This cnarg it incurs when it fails of g iving a cowpi etc picture of the person whom it ui dertakes to delineate . Here , we are opinion , these memoira of Vt >
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1815, page 578, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1764/page/46/
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