On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
purity of his moral nature * as these Protestant clergy talk as they do of the right o £ private judgment . They rail against Roman Catholic superstition , and the fetters with which that religion chains down in eternal bondage the faculties of the free -born soul— -they quote learnedly and largely from Roman Catholic works , which assert the impossibility of salvation ojit of the pale
of the true church , and seem sensibly alive to the injustice af such a system ; and yet they seem to forget the intolerant dogmas of their own exclusive creeds . It truly well becomes such men as these to rail against the exclusiveness of the Roman Catholic church ,. whilst their own Calvinistic creed is equally , if not jnore , exclusive in its terms of salvation . Are they quite
satisfied as to . the salvation of those who hold Arminian views ? And are they not quite satisfied ( I put the question to them as a churph ) of the absolute impossibility of the salvation of those entertaining Arian or Humanitarian opinions ? And yet these are the men who thus so loudly talk of Christian liberty , and who call upon their countrymen to join them in defence of the free and unrestricted use of the unmutilated word of God . In what
lies their advantage over those they attack , utrum horum est insanior ? The second objection is directed against extracts as tending to mutilate the scriptures . It seems rather a curious ( and to me inexplicable ) circumstance , that those who at present so violently oppose everything in the shape of extracts or selections from the l > ible , should now for the first time have been seized with this
monomania—this unutterable horror of mutilating the scriptures •*—by making selections for the use of schools . Surely , if they believed that these extracts were of such a dangerous tendency as they assert them to be , it was their duty to have come forward in 1812 , when the commissioners of education recommended ' ample extracts frorn the sacred scriptures / to be introduced into the schools established for the education of the poorer classes in
Ireland . Why did they not urge their objections against this very system ; when recommended by the commissioners in 1825 ? The words of the report bejng as follow :- — We by no means intend § uch works ( extracts from the bible ) as substitutes for the holy scrjptures , although we propose that the reading of the scriptures themselves should be reserved , for the time of separate religious
instruchorir Why did the opponents of this system not put in their protest ijj J 830 , when , during tjre Wellington administration , a bill fpunded oh these several reports was actually prepared ? Why KfOt attack the then existing government ? They thought it better to wait till ' q . more convenient season . In truth , however , the objec , tipns of this party must go for nothing * as the plain fact is , and they pannot deny it , tjiat extracts were in constant use at the schools under the superintendence of the Kildare-street society ; and vyhat must appear noLa little strange , not ojnly were compila-
Untitled Article
fiPB Irish Scriptural Education .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1832, page 312, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1812/page/24/
-