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covers by his conduct , what he has < ex animo subscribed , that he is a true son of the Church . What would any reasonable man think of the correctness of his
judgment , who should assert , that the general circulation of Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights , through the tmion of Tories and Whigs , would overthrow the British Constitution ? And as little can be feared from the
circulation of that book ( on whose foundation the Church of England professes to be built ) by the co-operation of Churchmen and Dissenters . Is it not a subject rather of
congratulation than grief , that Christians can unite in the common faith , and thug bless the world with that revelation which both Churchmen and Disssenters believe to be of divine
inspiration ? Were these Bibles accompanied by commentaries inimical to the Church , then there might be just cause of complaint ^ but surely the holy scriptures , in merely passing through the hands of a Dissenter , collect no pestiferous
materials to poison those who may unhappily thus receive a Bible . If the man who gives the Bible have " creed , or no creed , " this does not affect him to whom is given " words whereby he and his house may be ¦ saved . "' *
Some dissenters are lay-rectors , and others are in the habit of bestowing benefices on clergymen ; yet conscientious men are curates to the one , and men eminently devoted to the national establishment are indebted to
the munificence of the other 5 and his lordship knows one living , at least , in his diocese , the presentation of which was from the hands of a Dissenter . Some of the Dissenting yeomanry in the diocese of Lincoln would be
much gratified , if his lordship could carry this system of exclusion into another department of the Church . They say , " if we are not to assist the Church in the circulation of the Bible , why not refuse our help altogether , dur Rectors and Vicars make no
scruple to take their tythes 3 nor are they under any apprehension , that , by a regular and constant pay mentf we shall ruin the establishment . The gold goes pure and sterling into the coffers of the clergymen , uncontamitiated by the heretics and schismatics who pay it j and if we did not know
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the contrary , we should almost be suspicious , that the temporal prosperity of Rectors and Vicars was deemed more important than the circulation of that book which is called the religion of Protestants . "
Pardon my presumption ; but his lordship ' s scruples remind me of a conscientious old lady who refused to eat some grapes which grew on a vine that was nailed against a Presb yterian meeting-house : yet the grapes were ripe and nutritious ; the sun
deigned to shine upon them , and * brought them to perfection ; and God also will bless his own word , whether circulated by a Dissenter or a Churchman , a dissenter from the Church of Rome , or a dissenter from the Church of England *
I would ask what parallel can possibly be formed between a society built on the 6 th Article of the Church of England , and a conspiracy against the Church : between Dissenters
distributing Bibles , and rebels distributing arms ? This parallel appears to me as apposite as the citation from Rom . xvi . 7 , against those who cause divisions : " Salute Andronicus and
Junia , my kinsmen and my fellowprisoners , who are of note among the apostles , who also were in Christ before me /' However , it is certain that his lordship can be supported by precedents , and from an infallible church too ,
who were decided enemies against the heretics and schismatics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries , the fathers and founders of the present Established Church y The selection of a few passages from those periods of ecclesiastical history , may not be inadmissible . " About four and
twenty years ( 1408 ) after Dr . Wichfs death , it was decreed by Archbishop Arundel , in a constitution published in a convocation of the clergy of his province assembled at Oxford , that no one should thereafter translate any
text of holy scripture into English by Jff ay of a book , a little book , a tract , Und that no book , &c , of this kind should be read that was composed lately , in the time of John Wiclif , or since his death / "
The celebrated Erasmus also informs us , that when he published his Greek Testament , it met with great clamour and opposition . ' " One College in the University of Cambri dge
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4 xj * Defence of the Supporters of the BMe Society .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1815, page 704, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1766/page/40/
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