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    Untitled Article

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    Untitled Article

    These facts serve to shewhoW natural , it is for our race to admire that which pleases the senses , to receive gratifying impressions from what they behold , and to make use of those means which either nature has taught or art and fashion have invented , to arrest the public eye and fix the attention . It might then be asked , whether that mfan would not act on a principle which human nature abhors , who would scorn all external show , and expect to ekclte U universal or even a general approbation by a shapeless figure of virtue or a mean , uninteresting form and plan of public religious worship ?

    We cannot but acknowledge the mistaken principle which was followed by some of the early Reformers of the Church , the Puritans of their day , who , shocked beyond measure at the gross impositions of the Romish ritual , appeared to think they would do wrong in retaining any single mark of peculiarity that it possessed . Accordingly , they abandoned all outward marks of dignity , every thing that distinguished one man among them from another , every thing that gave their houses of worship a different appearance from other habitations , rejecting in scorn all forms of devotion , in some instances

    refusing to make use of the Lord ' s Prayer because it was in the formularies of the ancient church , excluding all instrumental music from their devotional services , because it savours of sensuality , and abandoning even the delightful worfc of psalmody , because there is in it an affectation of skill and a corresporYdetfee with loose and sensual gratifications . Even , within the period of my own remembrance , there has been one society of Dissenters * in which'the Lord's Prayer was not permitted to be made use of , nor psalms to be sung , and anotherf in which neither psalms nor hymns were ever sung at all .

    It should , indeed , be borne in mind , that for many centuries the societies which dissented from the established religion were subject to much embarrassment ^ severe proscriptions , reproach and obloquy , and often to persecution of either a direct or an indirect nature . Under these circumstances , it was natural for them to carry on their worship in a manner as inoffensive as possible , to seek for stations and follow systems which were the least liable to be observed or to give offence , and to avoid every mark of ostentation and show . Hence we find that in many of our old towns the

    meetinghouses are built on retired spots and assumed a humble appearance , carefully shunning public notice , and seeking nothing more than a quiet enjoyment of their own opinions and worship . Sucb a measure was highly praiseworth y ^ nay , it was necessary under the circumstances in which our forefathers lived . The spot ori which we meet to worship the God of our fathers , discovers in its situation marks of the prudential steps which they found it expedient to take : for this church of Christ sprang up among the very first Dissenting societies , J and has maintained its existence without interruption from the

    * At Hertford . If by any accident a stranger used the Lord ' s Prayer in conWnsjpn < its gave great attcwie , because it is not a Christian prayer . The congregation wi ^ h e 4 ^> r Wajtts ' s Psalnis to be introduced , but the old deacon had . njfcde . a . vow that psalms shpuld , n # jt be , sun g in that place so long as he was in power . It ; happened that the roeeting-house was purchased by the Christ Church School Trustees , who built the Dissenters another in a different spot . Into this Wjitts * s Psalms were introduced with the cmisent of the deacon and without a breach of his pfotis vow .

    f At Luttdn in Cambridgeshire . [ This till within the last sixteen years was the case at Lutton hi Lincolnshire , the place probably here intended . Edit . ] % The first register of baptism Vh the Church of Plymouth bears date iti November of the year in which the Act passed , 1662 .

    Untitled Article

    Past Times and present Times . 72 ?

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1827, page 727, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1801/page/15/