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the "Unitarian Fund ? Why , they have conjectures and suspicions that this success has been overrated . It is a pity that all proper tenderness should not have been shewn
towards the " worthy but mistaken individuals , " who , " holding the institutions of their forefathers in great veneration , are afraid to inquire , lest the ?/ should find cause to give them up as indefensible . " Not to respect their failing shews certainly a gross departure from the morality of the German drama , which is known to be
particularly lenient towards amiable „ weaknesses . Notwithstanding their / disgust at the boisterous honesty of men who profess what they ascertain to be truth , and propagate what they
believe to be important , it is my conviction that such are most likely to win over men of principle from all parties . I know that those amongst J * us who are most esteemed by the | Calvinists , are not the timid men
i who profess nothing but our common * Christianity \ j not the mere moralists whose ethics ( not German ) have no intermixture of that truth , which alone gives virtue a foundation and a motive ;( not the second Lardners , as
/ spruce academics call one another , who speak contemptuously of popular preaching and seem to think the tree of life only planted for critical squirrels to crack nuts in its branches ; not the men of Ultra-candour who dismiss
questions on the object of worship , the work of Christ , and the terms of salvation , as merely speculative points ; but those , who seem in earnest about Divine truth ; who are manly
in its profession , and laborious in its diffusion . To such is frequently rendered unasked a candid judgment , which the liberality of those who are illiberal to their brethren fails of purchasing .
To defend the Monthly Repository h your business , Mr . Editor ; and I shall leave you to rebut as you can , the charge of partiality for two personages , of political notoriety , whom you , of all men , ought to have detested , as each of them is an
irrefragable proof of an orthodox doctrine ; it being ascertained that one is an incarnation of the devi ) , and the other a striking demonstration of the total depravity of man . How grateful must the friends of
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order , property and loyalty ,. be to your Correspondent , for his acute peuetratiou into the latent design of the New Unitarians , to employ the
" dint of numbers and physical force ! * . From what an explosion has he preserved us by this timely discovery of the plot 1 Why , but for him they might ere this have risen in arms to massacre all the friends of war and
bloodshed ; to hang all the advocates for capital punishments ; to liberate Bonaparte ; to crown Cobbett King of England ; and to divide the estates of the Old Unitarians betw een themselves and their brethren the
Luddites . After which they would probably have changed the standard of faith and morality , by solemnly canonizing the German drama in place of the Holy Scriptures I At a time when political offences
are heavily visited ; when the suspicions of government are awake , and its power uncontrolled ; it is no friendly work to give those suspicions a new direction . Especially did this not become a brother , though he were an offended and an elder one .
He might not rejoice at the birth of New Unitarianism , nor like its features ; but they might have been criticised without holding it up to be blasted by the lightnings of authority . What is this accuser about ? If he
possess the feelings of humanity , there can no bitterer curse befal him , than the accomplishment of that which it is the obvious tendency of his charge of disaffection to produce . . 1 , Sir , for one , have always spoken my political opinions the more freely because on many points they were so unlike those-of many of my brethren , that none could connect them with
our religious tenets . Those opinions are at the service of the . Old Unitarian , or any body else , but I shall not make you responsible for their publication . Gladly , however , would
I avow , and take the consequences of political heresies , much more obnoxious than my own , rather than have penned the follow ing paragraph ; * ' If , as has been suspected , certain Unitarian ministers of the modern
school , and of its latest discipline , have been desirous of propagating their religious faith with a view more widely to disseminate their political principles among the inferior classes
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SSB Mr . Fox in Reply to An Old Unitarian .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1817, page 338, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2465/page/18/
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