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these dissenters took the decisive step of calling to the-ministry of the largest of these chapels a French pastor , M . Audebez , who left his church of Nerae in the south of France to evangelize the Parisians . Our saints fitted out on this occasion
a snug chapel in the Bazaar , Boule-¦ vardltalieiT , an d ~ wrote olTThlTlTdlDT " in great letters , Culte evangelique non salarie par Vetat , which Jesuitical inscription led the public passing by to conclude that these ministers were not salaried at all , while they receive
handsome incomes by the joint monies of England and France . We have in Paris now above eight or nine chapels of this kind , whose preachers deliver discourses of the deepest mystical shade , and exhibit before the astonished Parisians all
the resources of the well-known cant of methodism . They are , in general , frequented , with the exception of a few Protestant respectable families , by uneducated people , jpf that order on which orthodox
nonsense , delivered with warmth and earnestness , has so much power . Each mystical minister , whom an impious and hard hearted Socinian consistory has expelled from his station ( such as Mr . A . Monod , ex . of Lyons ) , is received in these assemblies as a victim of the world , and of course mounts the pulpit with the
authority of a martyr . All these exhibitions are supported actively by the Avhole host of our saints , and among the rest by a M . Grand Pierre , reverend director of our missionary society , a man of some learning , but whose pale and inquisitorial
countenance bespeaks a mind imbued with the deepest fanaticism . To these meetings , of which many are held at night ( a practice against which strong objections can be raised , especially in Paris ) , all our saints , missionary , biblical , tract society men , editors , and readers of the Archives and of
the ISemeur , eagerly resort to pour Out endless prayers , and to avow With delight their profound and iw-
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veteraie cwruption . So far , you will not perceive much harm in all this . You will only recognize here the influence of methodism acting as in England . But there is exactly the point where lies the mischief . We are not in England , but in France , and it is the laying aside this evident ^ tl ^ th ^ h ^^ h ^ s ^ bT ^^
much injury to our churches at large . What can be the reason for these methodist . % who are , after all , our fellow-Protestants , to separate from the standing church 1 Is there at the Oratoire any ceremony displeasing to them ? Is there any test enacted repulsive to their particular feelings ?—No , not the slightest
thing of the kind . Can they pretend that the Gospel is not preached in our nati onal-church ? This they dare not say ; for now two ministers out of four , Messrs . Monod , jun ., and Juillerat , belong to that evangelical
class out of the pale of which they maintain , in the real papal spirit , there is no salvation . In fact , if you carefully review the entire case , you will find that our chapels have no fair ground of dissent whatever . Not that in a general point of view I blame sects . It is certain that
religions of the State ^ and ecclesiastical establishments are words without meaning for a real and genuine Protestant Christian . But principles must be modified by time and place ; and it is clearly destructive to the church of France that it should split in useless divisions , and morsels of
communities . We live in quite another situation than England . There is here little faith , and much indifference . The great mass of our countrymen have exchanged the fetters of the Roman yoke for the slender and uncertain thread of philosophical indifference .
It is of the utmost importance that all our protestants should keep together , should show the enemy a large and compact front , and should not increase the general levity and contempt with which religion is
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200 . UNITARIAN CHRONICLE .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 1, 1832, page 200, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1821/page/24/
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