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object than the Discourse—even his " Exposition of the Articles , " which , according to Burners History , under that year , they censured because •* it allowed a diversity of opinions , which the Articles were framed to avoid , and contained many passages contrary to their true meaning . " Whatever unworthy design or antichristian spirit
actuated the Convocation , an attentive reader of the work can scarcely judge their censure to have been wholly misapplied . The management of a work , designed , not so much to encourage inquiry after divine truth as to justify submission to human authority , must indeed have often been
irksome to its author . In 1685 , as his son relates , he had " represented to the clergy at Geneva , " with apparent success , " the folly and ill consequence of such subscriptions" as their Consensus , " whereby the honestest and worthiest men were
frequently reduced to the necessity of quitting their native country , and seeking a subsistence elsewhere , whilst others of less virtue were induced to submit , and comply against their consciences , and even begin their ministry ¦ with ^ mental equivocation . " O . T .
FoL ii . 692 . The malignity of Atterbury and his high-church partizans , Burnet might despise , but unless right and wrong have different senses in Geneva and England , he could scarcely have avoided to say of subscription , as his friend Tillotson wrote of the
Athanasian Creed , I wish we were well rid of it . Id . p . 719 . But I must return to the subject of the Vindication . Bishop Burnet ' s son has thus described his father ' s sedulous attention to the duties of his office : ' * He every summer took a tour , for six weeks or
two months , through some district of his bishopric , daily preaching- and confirming from church to church , so as , in the compass of three years , ( besides his formal triennial
visitation , ) to go through all the principal livings in his diocese . The clergy near the places he passed through , generally attended on him % therefore , to avoid being burdensome in these circuits , he entertained them all at
Jiis own charge . He likewise for many years entered into conferences with them , upon the chief heads of iiiyinity : one of which he usually mened at their meeting , in a discourse
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that lasted near two hours ; and then encouraged those present to start such questions or difficulties upon it as occurred to them . " Id . ii . 7 O 6 . The author of the Vindication , a priest of
the adjoining diocese , attended one of these conferences to satisfy his doubts of the Bishop ' s orthodoxy . He relates the object and result of this attendance in the following passage of his preface :
" His Lordship had been well assured by some of his most dutiful clergy , that the integrity of his faith was under a common suspicion , for causes which I shall think fit to suppress . And this did so sensibly affect him , that thenceforward all his advices and
discourses seem'd pointed against Deism and Socinianism , to work off the jealousie of his clergy . And truly this seemed to be , not only a designed , but an effectual essay hereunto , which he offered in the oral discourse
on the divinity and death of Christ , of which 1 myself was an auditor at Warminster , in the year 1693 , being led thither by a strong desire to know the senses of so great a prelate , on those points which have employ ed my theories for above twenty-seven years .
"And truly , as it was then delivered , it gave a general joy and satisfaction to the whole corona of the clergy , and to my self also ; for though there were some little failures , I attributed those to the inevitable looseness of a present effusion , since all the substance seemed even heartily Orthodox and
Christian , without any indecencies toward the Fathers , or flouts at the received notions or forms \ and with , most passionate concern against the Socinian impieties . For though , indeed , he commended the foreign Socinians for their morals , yet ours he severely condemned for a rout of profligate and irreligious villains . "
It is difficult not to reply mentins impudentissimd to this bold assertion $ nor can any one acquainted with the Bishop ' s character and associations believe that he could thus calumniate the English Unitarians . This oral
discourse was , however , put to the press in 1693 , being the second of " Four Discourses to the Clergy of his Diocese / * It was animadverted upon by an anonymous Unitarian writer , in a pamphlet , printed in 1694 , in 4 to . eutitled € i Considerations on the Ex *
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468 HilVs Vindication of the Fathers .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1817, page 468, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2467/page/20/
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