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Untitled Article
of an apology ? Truly the hard representations wherewith sdme ill men have reviled my conduct , and the countenance which other men have given to these representations , oblige me to give mankind some account of my behaviour . No Christian can ( I say
none but evil-workers can ) criminate my visiting such of my poor flock as have at any time fallen under the terrible and sensible molestations of evil angels : let their afflictions have been what they will , I could not have answered it to my glorious Lord if I had withheld my just comforts and counsels from them ; and if I have also , with some exactness , observed the methods of the
invisible world when they have become observable , I have been but a servant of mankind in doing so . Yea , no less a person than the venerable Baxter has more than once or twice in the most public manner invited mankind to thank me for that service . c Wherefore , instead of all apish shouts and jeers at histories which have such undoubted confirmation , as that no man that has breeding enough to regard the common laws of human society will offer to doubt of them , —it becomes us rather to adore the
goodness of God , who does not permit such things every day to befall us all , as he sometimes did permit to befall some few of our miserable neighbours . And it is a very glorious thing that I have notv to mention . The devils have , with most horrid operations , broke in upon our neighbourhood , and God has at such a rate overruled all the fury and malice of those devils , that all the afflicted have not only been delivered , " but I hope also savingly
brought home unto God , and the reputation of no one good person in the world has been damaged ; but instead thereof , the souls of many , especially of the rising generation ^ have been thereby awakened unto some acquaintance with religion ; our young people , who belonged unto the praying meetings of both sexes , apart , would ordinarily spend whole nights , by whole weeks together , in prayers and psalms upon these occasions , in which
devotions the devils could get nothing , but , like fools , a scourge for their own backs ; and some scores of other young people , who were strangers to real piety , were now struck with the lively de ^ xnonstrations of hell evidently set before their eyes , &c . &c . ' * * * * ' 1 am not so vain as to say that any wisdom or virtue of mine did contribute to this good order of things ; but I am so just as to say , I did not hinder this good . '—p . 110—113 .
The days of witchcraft are past ; but not the day of the devil or of his pretended adversaries . We still hear of nocturnal prayer-meetings , of wrestlings with the evil spirit , of miraculous gifts , of instantaneous conversions , of death-bed conflicts , of social revivals . In all these afterpieces of the Salem tragedy , we find the same performers as there enacted such fearful parts . We still find the devil the bugbear , and the clergy the managers - We still find that the ignorant are cajoled , and that orthodoxy is propped up by the false supports of superstition * We still see
Untitled Article
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1832, page 554, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1818/page/50/
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