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our civil liberties ; and as your worst enemies cannot deny your Lordship to be qualified in that respect , even to a desrree of eminency , what your particular sentiments are in some of the controversies of religion , is wholly out of the question ; and I should be sorry , for the sake of the electors , should your Lordship find it necessary lo vindicate yourself , against any
assertions of this kind , in order to secure your interest with them ; for that must unavoidably ( though your Lordship mean not so ) derive reproach upon them , and arraign their judgments as a sort of w ^ eak men , and very unskilful in characters ; as if it should be objected against a general of consummate courage and conduct , that he is not a good metaphysician , or doth not understand the Hebrew points .
" I speak not this from an apprehension , that your Lordship has any opinions in religion that render you obnoxious , or that you need be shy of owning upon proper occasions , I have reason to think you have examined religion , and formed your creed with some care and exactness \ in the mean time , what have the voters at B—k to do in this matter ? I cannot
discern the obligation we are under , even in religious societies and churches , to pry into our brethren ' s sentiments ,- especiall y in the abstruser questions of religion ; in which most of them I am confident , must , upon examination , if they answer uprightly , return a non llquet : And , I must confess , when I see any busy this way , making a scrutiny into other Christian breasts , and going about in quest of heretics , I presently have the idea of an old Rabbi starting up before me , or of a
JrhartscBus truncatus , or some such composition of pride , selfsufficiency , and censoriousness ; and when this is done in any of the tvavwnra . of reli g ion , as is often the case , in things which it hath pleased God in his wisdom to place out of our reach , the agQwloc ^ nyuxia of the divine nature and government it is more assuming and dangerous : but when we carry the humour into politics , and are for making our own opinions and dictates , not only the test of other people ' s orthodoxy , but of their qualification for a civil trust , the usurpation is still
worse . Mr . Bennet ' s Memorial did not pass without animad versions , from an anonymous author ; who expressed his great surprise , that , though the < c Memorial" had made its second appearance in the world , no one had vouchsafed it the favour of au answer . Mr . Bennet thought , that as this writer , 44 in his greater condescension and goodness had resolved to do it ,
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Memoirs of the Rev . Benjamin Bennet . 455
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1807, page 455, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2384/page/3/
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