On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    make the character of that learned > judicious , and liberal divine generally known . The biographer has brought forward and very happily illustrated Paley ' s virtues .

    Perhaps , there may not be enough shade in the picture . TheJbibk * s of Paley were not few nor small His not affording to keep a conscience y and his celebrated chapter on subscription ought not to be passed over lightly .

    Paley was long neglected , but preferments came upon him thick

    enough at last . It is sui'eiy a Avaste of grief to lament that a man who possessed from SO 0 O 1 . to 30001 . per ann * in the church , was not raised by ministerial patronage to a condition of saying , Nolo epvscopari .

    ' Mr . Meadley conjectures that the promotion of Paley was retarded by the freedom of same of his political remarks 'in liis Moral Philosophy . Two of the pas .

    sages pointed out in this connection by the biographer , are worthy of transcription , for the sake of such as are not acquainted with the admirable wojk in which they are contained .

    The Story of the Pigeons constitutes the whole of the first chapter on Property . " If you should see a flock of pigeons

    in a field of corn ; and if ( instead of each picking where and what it liked , taking just as much as it wanted , and no more ) you should see" ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap ; reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff and refuse ; keeping this heap for one , and

    that the weakest perhaps and worst pigeon of the flock ; sitting round , and looldrg on all the winter , whilst this qne was devouring , throwing about , and wasting it ; and , if a pigeon more hardy and hungry than the rest , touched a grain of the hoard , all the others instantly flying upon it , and tearing it to pieces ; if you should iee this , you would

    Untitled Article

    see nothing more , tTian is every day practised and established among men . Among men you ste the ninety and jiine , toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one ; getting nothing for themselves all the while , but a little of the coarsest of the whictheir

    provision , h own labour produces ;_ and this one too , oftentimes the feeblest and worst of the whole set , a child , a woman , a madman , or a foo 1 ; looking quietly on , while they see thfc fruits of all their labour spent or spoiled ; and if one of them take or touch a particle of it , the others join against him and hang him for the theft . *' The other passage occurs B <

    vi . ch . 4 .. on ' th 6 Duty of Civil Obedience as stated in the Scriptures / ' It deserves to be quoted at length , not merely on ^ account

    of its excellence , but also of its being ( according to Mr . Meadley ) differently worded in tne later edi . tions . It is here copied from the ninth edit . Svo . 1793 . vol . ii . p .

    162 , 3 . < c St . Paul has said , « Whosoever re- » sistcth the power , resisteth the ordinance of God . ' This phrase , ' the ordinance of God , ' is by many so interpreted as to authorise the most exalted and

    superstitious ideas of the regal character . But , surely , such interpreters have sacrificed truth to adulation . For , in the first place , the expression , as used by St . Paul , is just as applicable to one kind of government , and to one kind of succession , as to another—to the elective

    magistrates of a pure republic , as to an absolute hereditary monarch . In the next place , it is not affirmed of the supreme magistrate exclusively , that be is the ordinance of God ; the title , whatever it imports , belongs to every inferior officer of the state as much as to the

    highest . The divine right of Jt Ings'is like the divine right of constables— the lav / of the land , or even actual and quier posne ^ irn of their office ; a right ratified , we humbly presume , by the divine approbation , so long as obedience to their authority appears to be necessary or conducive to the common welfare . Princes afe

    ordained of God by virtue only of that general decree , by , which he assents , and adds the sanction of his will , to every law of society , which promotes his own purpose , tjie communication of human

    Untitled Article

    Gleanings . 27

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1810, page 27, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2400/page/27/