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Untitled Article
therefore , it is in vain to urge that the whole bible can be introduced as a school-book , because Protestants and Roman Catholics are at issue as to what constitutes the whole of scripture . How then , may I ask , are the government to act ? They must either give up the idea of a combined education , or introduce such a system as may meet the views of each , without interfering with the peculiar tenets of either party ; and this can only be
accomplished by introducing merely a moral and literary , and not a religious , education , at those times in which this joint instruction is going forward . Such is the plan which the government have adopted , and in this they have shown their wisdom ; for what would be the consequence were the bible to be admitted daily during the time allotted for common instruction ? Either that the Roman Catholic children would leave the school , as they did under the Kildare Street system , when they had reached the upper class in which alone the bible was read ; or schisms ,
dissensions , and the final failure of the very object the government have in view , the union of all classes and denominations in the common bonds of fellowship and love . Such would be the tesult of the introduction of the bible as a . daily book of instruction ; t and in confirmation of this opinion , I shall quote the words of the Rev . R . J . M'Ghee , the author of a small
pamphlet entitled , The Bible , the whole Bible , and nothing but the Bible . ' In speaking of the kind of religious instruction which should be given to the Roman Catholics of Ireland , he remarks , ' This therefore brings us to the third point , namely , what those truths are which must be thrown open to the Roman Catholics in Ireland ; and the answer is condensed into a single
sentence ; for when it is asked , what they are ? the answer is , These identical truths which it is the object and interest of their priests to conceal from them ; the points which they would keep back , are those that ought to be brought forward ; the principles that they would exclude are those that require especially to be
insisted on . ' Now supposing that this principle were reduced to practice , can it be imagined that the Roman Catholic clergy could conscientiously allow the children of their persuasion to remain at a school in which such a system was pursued ? Decidedly they could not . What would be the conduct of the
Protestant clergy were such a system to be acted upon by members of the Romish church in reference to Protestant children ? Would not an outcry be raised at once against such conduct , from one end of Protestant Ireland to the other ? Why thea should our clergy arrogate to themselves a special right to interpret the scripture to the exclusion of their brethren of other and widely different persuasions ? Why do they presume to arrogate to themselves that infallibility of judgment , the assumption of which they so strongly condemned in the Papal churcK ? They talk , and how do they talk , of liberty of conscience ? As well might the father of lies assert , that he was cast from heaven for the
Untitled Article
Irish Scriptural Education . 31 J
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 311, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/23/
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