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men among them . In their church the idea that the great mass of the Christian world can be in an error respecting any doctrine of revealed religion would not be attended to : in
such a case , say they , God would not always have been with his church , a notion they regard as subversive of the whole system of Christianity j they therefore consider their antiquity and their extensive dissemination as marks of their being : in
possession of the only true Christian doctrine . As to the Protestants they bear a small proportion to the population of France , and publish little or nothing in defence of their peculiar tenets . The literary and political
writers of the country either look upon the Christian religion as a system of opinions falling gradually away , or as a political machine to be taken up so far as useful or necessary to the governors . The church is here a sort of caput mortuum : the vital principle has long since taken
its flight , but as it has a sort of prescription of fourteen or fifteen centuries , it goes on because no other system is prepollent enough to destroy it . The cause of Protestantism was lost in France by the desertion of Henry IV . and by the persecutions of Louis XIV . and I see no
probability of its revival . Few persons support energetically any system in this country . It is true in the large towns there is commonly one Protestant church ; at Nismes and at Montauban , there are more than one , but the zeal is lukewarm . The Protestants seem on all
occasions afraid of exposing the paucity of their numbers : their pulpit eloquence is displayed in enforcing the admirable morality of the gospel , and very seldom is it you hear among them a
sermon on any particular dogma . Their ministers are far from avowing any sentiment you would look upon as genuine Christianity : the articles of the church of Geneva still bind
them , though they are practically softened down to something like Arminianism : but no one of their ministers would I suppose publicly call in question the doctrine of the Trinity , or of the atonement : and several would mildly plead in their defence . The Crypto-A rians and Socinians
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would shelter themselves under some equivocal scriptural expressions , wh » ch the greater part of the audience would interpret in nearly an orthodox
sense , while a chosen few might perhaps associate with that phraseology a more latitudinarian meaning . if you are at all acquainted with the French Church in Threadnee die-Street , you may have a tolerable idea of the Protestant theology of this country .
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A Catholic Challenge to Protestant Trinitarians . 355
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——¦¦»¦*—Sir , Norwich , May 1 , 1817-IN the year 1581 , ninny Catholics were imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth , " for refusing to conform themselves to that order of religion , ' which was then " public hi tins- realme of England . " The Queen , after she had made sure of the bodies of these
men , resolved to bestow some care upon their souls . Two clergymen of the Church of England were accordingly dispatched to the Marshalsea and the other prisons in London , " to confer with them . " One of them , ( Robert , Crowley , ) states that " after some conference had with certain that
were close prisoners , we came to one Maister Thomas Powndey gentleman , in the lodging where he then lay : and finding him unwilling to enter into any conference by speeches ,
because ( as he said ) he feared to fall into danger of law thereby . " Crowley then vindicates the goodness and clemency of Her Majesty , and reminds " Maister Pownde" that "if
she would proceed against them m rigour of law , and not in mercy , she might cut their heads from their shoulders , and make no more to do with them ; but being desirous that they might become obedient subjects to her , as she sheweth herself a loving
prince to them , she had provided , that by conference with such as be learned , they might be either drawn from their errors , or else found to be obstinate and wilfully blind . But none of these speeches could move Maister Pownde to like of any
conference by speeches . Yet , he said , he was ready to confer by writing . Whereunto I answered , that we had no commission to deal that way , but yet if he would write , I promised to answer him in writing-. Upon this , he pulled a pamphlet out of his
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1817, page 355, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2465/page/35/
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