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% nay be visited with all sort of obloquy , misrepresentation and abuse . Mr . Wardlaw , and such men as Mr . Ward ) aw , may do every thing in their
power to increase the popular odium against them , and to make the whole religious community of Scotland regard them with horror . They will not be moved . They have duties to
perform to their conscience and their God , which make them look with comparative in ^ j ^ ference on the good and the ill opinion of their fellow-men . With calm and steady attention to the evidence before them , to form their own judgment on the great concerns of religion and obedience ; bold I v to avow the conclusions to which their
investigations may conduct them ; and to worship their Creator according to the dictates of their conscience , are rights of which , thank God , they cannot be deprived ; and which they know how to value and how to
exercise . They may suffer in their reputation ; they may even suffer in their property , and they may suffer from the importunities and resentments of their families arid friends : but their duty to the truth they know is paramount to every earthly consideration , and will not allow them to hesitate a
moment respecting the course they must adopt . The time , they reflect , is short ; an awful responsibility , they feel , attaches to them ; and when their last earthly hour shall arrive ( as soon it must arrive ) and the mind shall involuntarily look back upon the conduct of life , they are well aware , they will be unable to endure the
consciousness that they have countenanced what they conceived to be error on the most momentous subjects , because it was countenanced by the multitude ; that they have suffered the ignorant ^ ind bigoted cry of heresy and blasphemy to frighten them from their
adherence to the simplicity of the gospel - that they have sacrificed their integrity to their ease , and purchased a false peace at the expense of a blameless conscience . ] So , —they tremble
at the thought of standing before the bar of him who is appointed to be their judge , and who died a martyr to the truth , with the inward conviction that they have shrunk from the ' few inconveniences to which an adherence to it may now subject them ; and they
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are resolved not to expose themselves to the peril of his disapprobation , because the multitude clamour against them , and because they are reproached with being few—from fear or from
shame . To meet together for public worship , and to conduct that worship according : to their own views of scri p * tural truth , is a duty from the obliga * tion of which nothing can release them : and where circumstances will not allow
them to form a society , or to join in public worship , their own dwellings ought to become their temples and themselves the ministers , offering to the Great Father of their spirits , the only God , the sincere adoration of
their hearts , according to the simplicity of the uucorrupted gospel , and through their Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ . It is not to gain converts that they hold , their public meetings ; it is to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience : it is not the
zeal of proselytism which animates them ; it is the wish to discharge their duty * And if they do avail themselves of these public occasions to state their opinions ; if , while there is a combination of all classes against them ; while the churchman and theseceder , the
minister and the people , the pulpit and the press all join in one general shout —** Heresy , blasphemy , the contemners of Scripture , the enemies of the cross of Christ are come hither ; " if , while all thus condemn them , and all
condemn them unheard , they do associate together , to endeavour in some degree to check the torrent , to silence the calumniator , to expose the malignant reviling of the bigot , to supply the deficiencies of Uie half-informed , to
remove the misconceptions of the illinformed , to answer the sophist , to reprove the scorner , to reason , to expostulate , to instruct and to defend , who will censure them ?—With intrepidity and perseverance , with meekness and charity , with hearts glowing with benevolence and devotion , and
with a conduct , wholly and uniformly consistent with the genuine spirit of Christianity , let them go on . And then if " the Lord of the harvest " should not give an increase to their planting and to their watering ; if , on the contrary , it should please him to make the heart of this people fat , and to make their ears heavy and to-stint
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Review . —* - Unitarian Controversy in Scotland . 417
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v ol * xir . 3 n
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1817, page 417, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2466/page/41/
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