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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.
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5 $ 4 * Answer to th $ Dissenting ftjinister ' t Camplfiint .
Untitled Article
his course of life . But I fear he has entered his profession with the same view of making a fortune in it , as the physician or the advocate , ( whose gains he seems to envy ) are wont to do ; although tiniform experience ought to have taught him , " that worldly honours and profits are not the re-Avard of those who preach the kingdom of God . **— In his sacred profession , men do not , nor ought they to enter the list with those
who strive in the race where \ AorJdly riches is the prize . I liost readily grant that a worthy and laborious Dissenting minister is deserving a larger stipend than he generally receives ; yet I canrtqt admit it to be true that € t our tespectable congregations think they do enough for their minister if they raise a little more than 1001 . per aim . ; " and that stipends have lowered , is so far from being the fact ( except in very declining
Congregations ) that in most places , 1 believe , they have been raised . The description which this gentleman gives of his own situation , Certainly calls for commiseration ; but let him look at those from ivhom his salary , whatever it may fee , is Collected ; are not many of them so bowed down with the cxpences of the days in which we live , and with the loss of trade , as scarcely to be able to spare from the wants of their own
families , that portion which they give to their minister ? and has he not witnessed the ruin and bankruptcy of others whom he Once looked upon as his opulent friends ? Your correspondent bids us '** consldet the actual price of the necessaries of life ; " a proper consideration no dWbt ; but It ' t him i \ o i ^ fl etf t that these hecessanes
are not dear to h in \ , and cheap to his flock . Tbe discontented mind of this divine , has" I am sorry to say it , gjven an angry , sarcastic , and fincandid turn to his animadversions $ Why else should he represent congregations
as * ' being desirous of keeping their minister in honourable poverty V or why should he retail the pretended ** illiberal and base insi . nuations" of those who are said to have declared * ' that they pay enough /* - —and that " tHeir ministers are as well off as others of the community ? " or disgust us with anecdotes of individual mean , ness ? - —This gentleman has thought proper , on the other band , to suppress the whole of what might reflect any honour upon the hody of dissenting laify , or tend to of
rescue it fmm the chsar ^ e meanness or illiberality = ^ nothing is said of those calls which axe constantly made upoti' r the wealthy for the support of institutions established by them for the education of youth ; nor of such as contemplate giving assistance to declining age , or to the orphan families of Dissenting ministers ; nor of those casual subscriptions which are frequently occurring , for some object connected witfci the relief or comfort of those who minister in spiritual things . By
way of justifying his complaints and heightening them by the contrast , this gentleman bids us look at the Church . "—We do so ; and what do we see in the church ? More complaints and more real poverty and distress , amidst all its wealth , than this dissatisfied divine seems to have any idea of . In the debate of lust week , on the Curate ' s Bill , Mr . RoSe asserted that there were a thousand Curi-
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1813, page 594, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2432/page/34/
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