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Untitled Article
doctrines as appeared to them most agreeable to scripture and reason . If they felt themselves obliged to differ on any of what they conceived to be important
points , from the great majority of Christians , they supported their own opinions ( from the pulpit if necessary , but generally from the press ) in a manner which was not the less firm , for being inodest
and temperate . So far from being quite indifferent to right and wrong , truth and error , as your correspondent rather uncharitably supposes , it was on account of the value which they set upon religious
truth , properly so called , that they sometimes felt it their duty to abstain from discussions , in which , if they had chosen it
they might have appeared to no little advantage as disputants . They did not conceive themselves justified in risking the entire subversion of Christian faith in any
for the sake of bringing them over exactly to their own creed in every point . Denyers of the Trinity , as many of them were , they never for a single moment imagined , that the denial of that doctrine
was religion * Whilst your correspondent , on the other hand , pretty plainly intimates , that this negative kind of religion , zeal for the denial and refutation of certain doctrines , is that which entitles himself and his friends to
rank with apostles , confessors , and maftyrs ; when , in tru £ ji , as far only as this denial goes , they have . no merit to claim as men of relk gion , which Voltaire might not share with thenn The rational dissehters of the old school were
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not less tenacious of principles than those of the new , but they took care that the principles which they were very tenacious about lay at the root of religion . The right
of private judgment , the exercise of reason in the interpretation of Scripture , the evidences of divine revelation , and , above all , the practical influence of Christian truth upon the hearts and consciences of their hearers : these
were their great points . Of this school , though differing on some minor topics , were Doddridge , WattSj Grove , Mason , Lowman , Chandler , Orton , Lardner , Benson , Farmer , Price , and a long list of worthies ^ whose names will
I trust live , whose works will find admirers , and whose examples will excite imitation , long after the present heats , both soi-disant evangelical , and soi-di $ ant Uni - tarian , have passed away *
Such , Sir , is my humble , and , with all due deference to your correspondent , my . final defence , of the title subjoined to my last letter , which , let it be remembered , was simply in answer to a suggestion thrown out in a former
number , that the kindling of more of a sectarian spirit was the most likely means of raising up our declining congregations . Allow me then , Sir , ( without meaning to give offence to any , and certainly not to the respectable persons mentioned in the note of your correspondent ' s letter , several of whose merits I highly appreciate , ) again to subscribe myself , A Rational Dissente r of the Old School-
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174 " A Rational Dissenter of the Old School , " in Explanation :
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1810, page 174, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2403/page/14/
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