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Untitled Article
i primitive , they will , in a short time , advance more in Christian knowledge and reformation of life , than by the many years preaching of such an incumbent , I may say ,
^ of such an incubus ofttimes , as will be meanly hired to abide long in those places . They have this left perhaps to object further , that to send thus and to maintain , though but for a year or two , ministers and teachers in several
places , would prove chargeable to the churches , though in towns and cities round about . To whom again I answer * that it * was not thought so by them who first thus propagated the gospel , though but
few in number to us , and much Jess able to sustain the expence . Yet this expence would be much less than to hire incumbents , or rather incumbrances , for life-time ; and a great means ( which is the subject of this discourse ) to diminish hirelings .
But be the expence less or more , if it be found burdensome to the churches , they have in this land an easy remedy in their recourse to the civil magistrate , who hath in his hands the disposal of no small revenues , left , perhaps , anciently to superstitious , but meant
undoubtedly to good and best uses ; and therefore , once made public , appliable by the magistrate to such uses as the church , or solid reason from whomsoever , shall convince him to think best . And
thdse uses may bte , no doubt , much rather than as glebes and augmentations are now bestowed , to grant fcuch requests as these of the churches ; or to erect , in greater number all over the land ,
schools , and competent libraries to those schools , where languages and arts may be taught free ioge *
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ther , witlio u * tb 6 needless , unpxo Stable and inconvenient removing , to another place . So all the land would be soon better ciyilizedy and they who are taught freely at
the public cost , might have their education given them on this con * ditiori , that therewith content , they should not gad for preferment out of their own country , but continue
there thankful for what they received freely , bestowing it as freely on their country , without soaring above the meanitess wherein they were born .
But how they shall live when they are thus bred and dismissed , will be still the sluggish objection . To which is answered , That those public foundations may be so in *
stituted as the youth therein may be at once brought up to a competence of learning and to an honest trade ; and the hours of teaching so ordered , as their study may be no hindrance to their labour or
their calling . This was the breeding of St . Paul , though born of no mean parents * a free citizen of the Roman empire : so little did his trade debase him , that it rather enabled him to use that
magnanimity of preaching the gospel through Asia and Europe at his own charges ; thus those preachers among the poor iValdwses , the an . tientstockof ourrsformation , without these helps which I speak of *
bred up themselves in trades , and especially in physic and surgery , well as in the study of scripture ( which is the only true theology ) , that they might be no burden to
the church ; and by the examples of Christ might cure both soul and body , through industry joining that to their ministry which he joined to his by gift of the Spirit . Thus relates PeUr Gille ^ in his
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326 John Muton .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1813, page 326, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2428/page/42/
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