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174 UNITARIAN CHRONICLE ,
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merits to obtain their publications as soon as they appear , I may per * haps trespass upon you again with some farther notices of this Society and their publications .
PROFESSION OF FAITH OF THE FRENCH CATHOLIC CHURCH .
In things necessary , unity 5 in things doubtful , liberty ; in all things , charity . Deeply afflicted by the reiterated attacks to which the Roman religion and its ministers have been unceasingly exposed , the Ecclesiastics of the French Catholic Church cannot but acknowledge , that if these attacks have been sometimes impassioned , they have also frequently
been legitimate . In truth , if there are some men impatient of all religious restraints , who are desirous of annihilating religion under pretence of improvement , there are also men of enlightened understandings , true Christians , who are anxious for reform , not to overturn religion , but to reestablish it upon a better foundation . With these the tolerant pr iests of
the French Catholic Church hope to conduct to a happy conclusion the reform which they have begun . It is impossible to conceal the indispensable necessity of a reform in the Roman Catholic Church . In this reform it might have been expected , that the priests would
naturally have taken the lead * and have introduced into ecclesiastical discipline those modifications of which it is susceptible ; but it would be evidently a vain expectation to look for this course of conduct from our Bishops , who impose upon the credulity of the people human traditions , substituted for the doctrines of the Gospel ,
A new Jehoiada , a venerable pre ^ late , animated by an enlightened zeal for the house of God , and zealous to make his religion arid morality beloved , which had been unhappily mutilated , after haying approved our profession of faith , has
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testified his earnest desire to co-ope- - rate with us in the work of reformation . The means which this new reform will employ to bind earth to heaven
by restoring Christianity to its primitive institutions , will be to renew -J ^ LJ ^ LJ ^ broken by fanaticism , and to unite ~~ all Christians by religion , the expression of the social virtues .
OF INFALLIBILITY . The opinions of men being always variable and uncertain , we believe that no society on earth has a right to impose its doctrines as infallible , and that to pretend to infallibility , is only to insult God , to whom alone it justly belongs , Heb . xiii . 8 . We are 6 f opinion , therefore , that the same pride which led the evil angels to assimilate themselves to the Most High , could alone have imposed on the Roman Catholic Church the impious belief of the infallibility of the Pope , or even of Bishops , assembled in a General Council .
Undoubtedly a hierarchy has always existed in the Church of God . It is clearly pointed out to us in the Gospel . The Holy Spirit has given the government of the Church to Bishops ; " Feed my Iambs ; feed my sheep . " Nevertheless , it is impossible to infer from these different passages that infallibility has been g iven to the successors of Peter . ' -.. It is an authority arbitrarily usurped , of which some have made so
deplorable a use . We believe that neither civil nor religious liberty can exist , where there reigns a power which believes itself to be infallible ; and that , if sophists ever come to attach some persons to the chariot of a pretended power of this description , liberty , in their case would be either bondage or butchery , as in the times of the Inquisition .
OF TEMPORAL POWER . The voice of the people being the
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 1, 1832, page 174, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1819/page/30/
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