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country % " * 'No , but to be sacrificed to the lawless will of an usurper ^ whose prodigality of human blood is only bounded by his restless and insatiable ambi - tion .
I am as much a friend to civil and religious liberty as R . F . can be , and suffer as great a privation of my civil privileges from the penal laws ; but though the penal laws are , undoubtedly , an abridgment of the civil rights of the subject , I am not conscious of
any ? iew infringment of those rights by the Legislature , nor of any fresh declaration by it , expressive of distrust towards Protestant Dissenters , to justify the alarm sounded by R . F . —an alarm that is not calculated to promote that mutual good-will between the church and Dissenters which
it is desirable that they should entertain . Jt is well far R . F . that he is in England , though without place or pension 5 if he had , in France , condemned , with
equal freedom , the conduct or government of Napoleon , he would have been better qualified to appreciate the respective merits of the Frei > ch and British
governments . Not haying read the works of Overton and Daubeny , I cannot juclge of their merits ; but are all the members of a church to be condemned for one or two blind zealots ? lias R . F . never read
or heard of a Hoadly , a Jortin , a Newcome , a Paley , and a Watson , all dignitaries of the same church * 1 shall quit this part of iny subject with observing that there is a danger , which it is well to guard against , of mistak ing the spirit of faction for the spirit of liberty .
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• ' I trace the departed spirit tf Rome also / ' says R . F , * ' whefg it is the least suspected to ' take up its residence , and find it lurking with an ill grace under the broad bri n * and plain garb of otir Qua , ker friends ; and when I read the
proceedings of the society against Hannah . Barnard ,- when I find those ornaments of human nature , a Rathbone and a Matthews , are of the disowned , I call , with a
louder voice , ' No Popery , Friends . ' " And by the ne * t paragraph it appears that by " the departed spirit" is meant " the persecuting spirit for which the church of Rome has been so
eminently distinguished / ' This is a very serious charge , and if wellfounded would f \ illy justify all R . F . ' s alarms ; let us therefore examine its validity . The distinguishing trait of the persecuting Romish church is its endeavour
violently to force into , and to retain in its pale ? by bodily pains and penalties , persons whose consciences will not suffer them to join in communion with it , because it has as they believe , departed ., in its ecclesiastical polity , and several
of its doctrines from the purity of the apostolic church . If R . F . have discovered , among theFriends , or among any other denomination of Christians , an endeavour violently to force into , or to retain in their communion , persons who differ from them in opinion , so
far , and no farther , has he disco , vefed the Romista spivit of persecution ; but nothing he ha * yet advanced brings this ^ charge hon > e to any Protestant Christian so * ciety in th ^ se kingdoms , including the church of England which , in its ecclesiastical polity , aaaimiltfte *
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144 JFb T&pertj .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1808, page 144, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2390/page/24/
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