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Untitled Article
lawa" has had no such effect as the Scotch Reviewer imagines : it has indeed allowed the admission of a great
body of Dissenters , into our corporations ; but the Dissenting corporations , witness Nottingham , Bridport , Coventry , and we believe we may add Norwich and Portsmouth , are of all others most favourable to the cause of
the people , as distinguished from that of the government . The Corporation of London was never more decided than at present in its anti-ministerial politics , and we believe that the Common Council never before
contained so many Dissenters . But ** the practical lenity" in question , has had one certain evil effect upon the Dissenters ; namely , that of seducing their richer and more aspiring members into the worship of the Established Church . Common
Councilmen need not qualify by the sacramental test , but Mayors , Aldermen , Town-Clerks , and Recorders must : and it is surely an evil to both the Church of England and to the Dissenters and to religion itself , when
men , professedly religions , sacrifice their principles for the sake of power , and join in worship which they do not approve that they may thus rise to official dignity . Honest Churchmen have at least as much reason to
complain of this practice as conscientious Dissenters . Fo all lovers of truth and integrity it must , one would think , give pain to see a Dis jenter , perhaps an Unitarian , stoop hi $ neck to a chain , be it a golden chain , which ties him up from worsl lipping with the church of his deliberate
choice , and binds him , vrcti m-like , to the horns of an altar , on wliich he believes that superstition has ki mi led strange fire . This is a real and a moral evil , the consideration of whicl i should
arouse all religious men to the duty of praying the legislature to repeah the test laws , which are insufficient to keep Dissenters out of municipal government , but equally insufficient to convert them into honest Churchmen .
-The agitation of the Catholic question during the present session o f Parliament with more likelihood c f success than heretofore , enforces thi $ subject upon the attention of the pi lblic and ^ specially of the Dissenter * . I f the Dissenters be not included ir i the next 'grant of religious liberty , t heir state is hopeless : fqj : the Cat * lolics are
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now , as aggrieved dissidents , in fa * vour of Protestant Dissenters ; but should they obtain special relief their influence may be expected hereafter to be thrown into the scale of
intolerance . Persecution has made Catholics the advocates of toleration ; but their principles are not tolerant , and let them gain their private ends and the pressure and constraint of which
they complain be removed , and the bent bow will fly back in a contrary direction and new force b <» thus given to High-Church and To n / sentiments . The deputies and ministers of the Three Denominations rind even the
two classes of Methodists would do well to take this matter into serious and early consideration . They may , indeed , be doubtful as to the effect whicl * wo'ild be produced in their denominations by the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts . More of their wealthy members might be
seduced into the world by an enlarged politic A licence and the offer of new temporal dignities . But those only wou ' . d go out from them that are not pro * jerl y of them , and their secession would purify whilst it thinned -the several Dissenting communions . Their influence as Dissenters tends to secu *
tarize the No neon form ing churches . The loss would be only that of unsound members ; and would in all probability be made up by the accession of dissatisfied Churchmen , who are retained within the pale of the Establishment by mere political ties .. At any rate , the abrogation of the
Test laws would be a clear gain to religion , to good morals , to freedom ^ to the English constitution and even to the Dissenters ; for they are less grievous as a restraint than as a stigma : they imply that Dissenters are disaffected to their country and cannot be trusted , and the erasure of them from , the Statute Book woufd- be an
acknowledgment bv the nation that the insinuation is false , that there is neither reason nor justice in treating : an immense body of Britons , e ^ etpp lary for both religion and good morals , as Helotes in the midst of a
free people , and that the state would acquire reputation , which is strength , by taking off the yoke from the n «* ekr of millions of the population , wfidse incapacity of civil usefulness is created by the law itself and whose distinction amongst their fellow-countryMca
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Political Character of English Dissenters . 1 & 5
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1817, page 165, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2462/page/37/
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