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Untitled Article
placed in a situation more interesting , or more likely to try his feelings to the utmost . The minister of Christ , his own duties and responsibilities pressing upon his recollection , giving solemn charge to a brother minister , and that minister his own son , could not but have spoken from and to the heart . Mr . Aspland's " standing in the church , his known devotedness to the cause of truth , and his intimate connexion" with the young man whom
he was addressing , must , as Mr . Swanwick justly observed , have " given to his admonitions an especial authority and a peculiar grace . ' * The words upon which Mr . A . grounds his admonitions , are those of St . Paul , in his First Epistle to Timothy , chap . vi . vers . 13—16 : " I give thee charge in the sight of God , " &c . In the commencement of his Address , Mr . A . dwells
at considerable length on the obligation under which the object of his paternal counsels lay , to acknowledge Christ as his sole Master in religion ; to look to htm continually as the only authority in matters of faith , and the only rule in matters of practice ; to assert not only for himself , but for others , the most unbounded liberty of conscience ; to act , in short , such a part as might justly be expected from
" A Hebrew of Hebrews , a Protestant with regard to Protestants , who had never been brought under spiritual bondage to any man or any church , who from a child had been taught to make the Scriptures the only rule of his faith , and who , while dome of his progenitors on both sides purchased their freedom with a great price , was free-bom /'— " Various are the grounds / ' says the preacher in this part of his Charge , on which Protestant Dissenters justify their secession , with so much inconvenience , and in some cases with so many sacrifices , from the National Church . Some choose to stand in their
nonconformity on this -principle , and some on that . I can enter into the sense and spirit of that Dissent which consists in conscientious objection to the imposition of ceremonies , in themselves indifferent , which are not of Divine ordination ; for the same authority which is competent to decree one rite or ceremony may decree rites and ceremonies without end , and overwhelm religion with pomps and vanities : I admire that withdrawment from a religious
establishment by the secular power which is occasioned and justified by some supposed error of doctrine , or some false worship in that establishment ; because quiet . submission to errors in faith and practice is in some cases the same as assent to them and approbation of them , and yet the errors may be , from their very nature or from their tendency to growth and multiplication , subversive of the simplicity of Christ , and fatal to the design of his religion , pure and undefiled before God , even the Father : but I applaud most of all that religious non-conformity which , without regard to this ceremony however grievous , or that error however obnoxious , meditates simply the escape from intellectual thraldom , and the attainment of that spiritual liberty in which
the mind shall be prepared for every truth that may beam upon it from the source of light , ana the church collectively , consisting of many free minds in a state of union , shall be capable of pursuing any reformation which may appear to be pointed out by the finger of God , whether seen in the Scriptures or in the book of God ' s Providence , which is another volume of Scripture , opened gradually , and , as it is opened , expounded , by time . "; To the sentiments contained in this spirited passage we give our cordial assent . We agree with the writer in thinking that no enlightened and
consistent friend of truth , no one who fully understands and feels all that his fealty to truth requires of him , will consent to become a member of any political church-establishment , however liberal , or to subscribe his name to any confession of faith imposed by man , however simple and scriptural he may deem it . In a subsequent passage , after enjoining it upon bis son " to form with deliberation , to express with diffidence , to defend with temper ,
Untitled Article
106 Review . —Ordination Services .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1827, page 108, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1793/page/28/
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