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Untitled Article
Some exception has bee * i taken to the terin Presbyterian * and an app&efoensicm expressed whether it migfat -hereafter be always interpreted to include Unitarian ministers . If , intJeed , such were excluded from the
benefits of this Society , and not reckoned ^ Presbyterian because they eMertairi Unitarian sentiments , whtft body of Christians is there in J 3 ng 1 af ** l to lay claim to the title ? The t-eiw , indeed , was originally designed to
express a peculiar form of church government , namely , by Presbyteries . In this sense , certainly it is not applicable to the English Dissenters , yet it has been for a long time undfcrstooxi to be descriptive of those of ¥ hem who are more free and unrestrained
in their religious opinions , and fess attached to the standard of reputed orthodoxy than some of their Christian brethren . ** The English
Presbyterians do not materially differ from tne Independents with regard to Church government and discipline and mode of worship ; but they generally &How a greater latitude of religious sentiments and communion in their
Churches . The appellation , in this restricted use of it , implies no attachment to the authority of synods , presbyteries , or ecclesiastical assemblies , any more than * o episcopacy
and the ecclesiastical hierarchy , and therefore , according to its original use , It is improperly applied to many torho are now distinguished by it , and who form a very respectable class of Nonconformists , or Protestant Dis-1
senters , in this kingdom . ' fftees * Cyclop . Art . Presbyterians . ) Many words , it is well known , with the lapse of time , are understood in a different sense from that in which they were originally used ; and as the title Presbyterian has been long applied to a certain class of Protestant
Dissenters , distinguished for that 4 < latitude of religious seutiments and communion in their churches'' above described , it is , I think , desirable that it should be continued . * Were this the case , strictly Unitarian societies , to which belong endowments for the support of the Presbyterian cause ,
? Why may not a person be designated an Unitkriah minister of the {* refcbyt < jiian or Bnptifct denomination ?
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need be under no apprenensfiohn *> f being deprived of them <> tfi aecbutot of their professed Unitarian setrtimetits . On mature consideration , therefore , I isee more propriety in adopting and continuing the title trf Presbyterian in the description of the
objects to be relieved by the Widows * Fund and the newly-formed Society of whiob I am treating , than I at first perceived ; neither is there ground to suspect that any aged and infirm Protestant Dissenting Minister in necessitous circumstances , will be ever
rejected because he is an Unitarian . This , indeed , is guarded against by a fundamental law of the Society , that M the Committee of Management shall consist of eighteen members , viz . two ministers and four laymen tff each denomination . "
Some persons , it is said , do not approve of "the plan of this Institution r as tending to wound the feelings of aged and infirm ministers to become objects of charity . They would have a fund raised by the voluntary annual subscriptions erf ministers
themselves and their societies , to which , when necessity required , they might appfly as a claim of right , and not afc a boon of berreflcence . On this principle , however , it seems evident that those ministers who w # l profeabiy stand in most need of pecuniary aid in the time of affliction , would be
least able previously to become entitled to it by their annual contributions . A few 4 * ionths ago , I received a letter from « . very respectable Unitarian minister , stating that , with a wife and seven children , he depended chiefly for support on an endowment
in his Society of aboirt seventy pounds per annum , with a parsonage-house ; that he had lately laid out forty pounds for the necessary repairs of his chapel , and that he could coHect nmong his people towards defrayitig ^ he ex > penses , not more than ten sfcriUings * Thus situated , what could «« ch a
minister and his congregation contribute annually , with a view to his receiving an annuity , should he live to be aged and infirm ? Little or nothing . Yet surely such fc person ; in
these circumstances , would becbrhe a very proper object of ch ^ titaWe a ^ siiitance , and shoiiM he be vMted SVi * fe bodily affliction , or ttie irt ## mltfte- * f age , discj uglify ing him from ptfrstttn £
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662 Mr . Howe mi the Aged and Infirm Ministers * Society .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1819, page 662, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1778/page/10/
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