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turous feelings , yet he was desirous to enforce his rule , by the peculiar sanctions of the gospel . Scarcely any writer has entered with more delicacy , into the minute and nice discriminations of
virtue and vice ; he has not only delineated the path of the strictly just , butat the same time of the amiable and becoming ; and has aimed at rendering mankind not only mutually serviceable , but also mutually agreeable . From his excellent discourses , in the third
volume , on our Lord ' s conversations —with the young man , with the woman of Samaria , and with his disciples , before his crucifixion , — we may see that his theological system was purged of every mysterious and unintelligible nronositenous ana uninieuigiDie
proposition , and that he had a thorough acquaintance with the proper Unitarian doctrine respecting the person of Christ , the personality of the Holy Spirit , &c , and knew how to make a judicious application of them .
In the earlier part of his life Dr . Enfield , perhaps , might occasionally wish , that no insuperable bar should exist to an
entrance into the established church ; and entertain more sanguine hopes or the success of the petitioners , for a ' relief from subscription , than the event at least justified . To dissent was no part of his natural disposition ; his mild and amiable
disposition disposed him rather to regard the conformities than the differences between religious parties and sects * . Under these impressions he , fora time , disapproved the
conduct of those who , as he conceived , were widening the breach , by calling men to an attention to the rights of conscience , and to ifce assertion and exercise of a
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perfect freedom of enquiry and profession . He lived , however , to see all his expectations frustrated , to see hierarchical claims asserted more dogmatically than , ever , and the chief stress of
religion placed upon those doctrines in which the articles of the Church of England most differ from the opinions of that class of Dissenters with whom he most agreed . He became , therefore , a more decided separatist than ever : the rights of
individual judgment and public discussion , and all the fundamental points of civil and religious liberty , became more and more dear to him ; with a rare magnanimity , he acknowledged his
former error , recommended those books which he had before disapproved , and took every opportunity of shewing his respect and approbation of that distinguished
person , to whose conduct he had most objected , and who certainly had treated him with no particular respect . He even asserted the principles of liberty with a courage and zeal which seemed
scarcely to belong to his habitual temper . Besides the sermon at Bristol , mentioned above , a very manly discourse , which he published on the hundredth anniversary of the Revolution , sufficiently testifies his sentiments on these
subjects . In 1785 he removed from Warrington to Norwich , and for a short time took a few pupils , but as his family grew up , he devoted all his leisure time to them , and they have amply repaid his cares .
He occasionally gave public lectures on natural philosophy , and was eminently useful in the management of a public library , and as a member of a literary society the fruitt of his labour * for which
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432 Historical Account of the Warrington Academy ]
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1813, page 432, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2430/page/8/
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