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Untitled Article
V Michael for courtesy even towards the devil , which he rendered , the author state ? , because f < Jie kj&W tfeat he ( Satan ) was cjkrtbec ) with ^ gUirnatf ^ vl ^^ rity ; ; " # 4 ^ he ju stifies a war of extermination by the , example of ? the punishment by the Jews of the Canaanite nations . " Let us , " he qoncJWes , " take a just vengeance on this abominable race of monsters , or resolve to be rebels to our prince and our God ; for rebellion consists not onl y _ in doing what is forbidden , but in omitting what is commanded ; " for which he quotes the transgression incurred by sparing Agag .
We have already observed that the book oefore us contains a fund of documentary information on the progress made throughout Europe in putting an end to all inconvenient interference , on the part of the Papal court , with the internal administration even of Catholic states , and that these details are well worthy of consideration by those who ( though in reality the most instrumental for the last forty years in repressing the natural progress towards suppressing this interference ) oppose the admission of
Catholics to equal rights even in a Protestant state , under the notion that its worst abuses follow as an inevitable consequence , and have never been acknowledged and remedied even by Catholics themselves . The book , however , is put together in a most inconvenient and rambling manner , mixing up a great deal of curious matter with what is often worse than worthless . We observe that a translation , or more properly a compilation from it , is announced in the English language , and we hope that it will be put into a more useful form , and one better calculated to attract the
attention which its importance deserves . The grand political object of the statesmen who headed the reforms in question we caa easily imagine to have teen , to knit the Church more closely with the State , an operation which is perhaps not much calculated to favour the progress of civil liberty . There have been many advantages derived in critical periods from a separation , rather than an identity of interest between Church and State , if we are condemned to have an
establishment ; and the great drawback upon the blessings of the Reformation , in some countries , has been its turning the Church , more completely even than it was before , into the mere instrument of the State-r-subservient at all times to its political purposes . It is true that Joseph and Leopold provided some sort of antidote to this mischief by diminishing the wealth of the Church , an object of absolute necessity under Protestant principles . A rich hierarchy differs little from a standing army , and the more dependent upon and subservient to the Crown the worse , inasmuch as it is the better sujted
to despotic purposes . The Church of England , knit in with the State , and endowed with all the wealth which k possessed when its Catholicism p laced it in a state of more qualified subserviency and sometime . * even of resistance to the views of the Crown , has been found to have been , ever since its intimate connexion with a domestic head , the constant tool pf corruption and influence , directed against popular interests , to an extent to make it very
questionable with us whether faf- rre must have an establishment ) less political evil is not to be apprehended from a church in connexion with a foreign head , than from one founded on subserviency to the power an < J interests of domestic authorities , and ready to offer its priesthood at all times to gerve the purposes of power and to resist popular rights ; unless , indeed , care be taken to reduce the wealth of such a church to such limits as will be sufficient , and only sufficient , to support its moderate and necessary exigencies , and thereby preserve at once its innocence and usefulness .
Untitled Article
Review . —Life »/ IScipio de Ricci . 511
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1827, page 511, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1798/page/39/
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