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ported by the authority of Mosheim . " And in this attempt to pass oft as his own , what he had borrowed
from Mosheirn , the bishop might possibly have bee-n successful , had not Dr . Priestley , { vvho not being in possession of the Ante-Constantine Hisrory , had consulted only JVlosheim ' s general Ecclesiastical
History , and had not found there all the tacts asserted by the bishop ) directly charged him with falsi fying history , and thus compelled the learned prelate in his own defence to reveal the whole truth .
This clear and distinct state of facts , not greatly to the credit of the renowned giant in controversy y naturally rouses the indignation of the pious prebendary of St . Asaph ,
who , in his usual manner , and with his usual success , attempts to vindicate the character of bis rightreverend progenitor from having been a plagiary from Mosheim .
But first of all he begins , p . 570 , with a frank avowal that he really knows nothing of the matter , and , consequently , that his testimony in the case is of no value . Hear
the venerable prebendary's own words : — " I can only say it was not bishop Horsley's practice to put implicit confidence in any uninspired testimony : but , / cannot affirm as an unquestionable truth , that on this occasion he did not
deviate from kis usual practice . This is very modest : and it is the more to be commended , because if the reverend gentleman bad made the affirmation alluded to , it must
be directly in the teeth of the bishop ' s own express confession , extorted , indeed , from hipi most reluctajitly , in order to repel the heavier charge of having forged the history himself . * ' If Dr . Priest-
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ley had consulted Mosheim , " sayt the wounded prelate , ( Tracts in Reply , C . 2- ) * he must know that these were Moshiim ' s assertions before they were mine / ' And , t 4 He must know that I have added
no circumstance to Mosheim ' s account , but what every man must add in his own imagination . " So then it appears as clear as light ,
that the whole of the bishop ' s edifying history of the church at TElia was borrowed from Mosheim , excepting a few necessary additions from his own imagination .
This frank and candid declaration of the bishop , however , by no means satisfies the worthy prebendary , who sets all his wits and all his logic at work , to prove that his right reverend % parent is mistaken , and that he really did not copy from Mosheim , though he assures his readers that he did .
His first argument is , ( p * 57 S . ) that "the bishop doesnot infer from the facts stated by Sulpitius and Epiphanius , every thing which Mosheim inferred from them . " But as the learned prelate was never accused of transcribing all that Mosheim wrote , this observation is irrelevant to the question .
" But what detection had the bishop to dread 1 " cries the reverend prebendary , " he expressly declared that Mosheim first pointed out to him the ground over which he afterwards travelled . *'—True .
The bishop did make this acknowledgment . But , observe , it was only in self-defence : and after he had been accused of falsifying history and defaming the dead : then ,
indeed the bishop admits that he had followed the footsteps of Mosheim . And most grievously did the right reverend prelate rue , that he had ever listened to the advice
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384 Mr . Belsham ' s Reply to the Rev : H . Hordey .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1813, page 384, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2429/page/28/
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