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^ Sir , Bromley , July 6 th 9 1817-npHE series of papers entitled JL *• Gleanings , or Selections and Reflections , made in a course of general reading , " commencing in Jan .
1809 , have since formed a very interesting part of your literary journal . They comprise a great variety of extracts from a large number of authors , on curious or important subjects , and frequently with appropriate observations . Among these , at p . 595 , of
your last volume , one is given from No . 23 , of the Athenian Mercury , principally respecting the Quakers . From this passage , in connexion with other " facts , " it is shewn " that the Quakers of a century ago were accounted and described as Unitarians . "
Without attempting to controvert this weli-established fact , * ' a member of that society , " who informs you he has " endeavoured to obtain a correct knowledge of its principles , by a perusal of its publications , is of opinion that its early members were not
Unitarians , " and in p . 346 , of your last number , expresses his ** surprise ' at what he calls " an attempt to proveV that they " were . " He thinks " that such an opinion is not founded in truth : " . and , therefore , in order to
"set the question at re » t , " he gives more than twenty " extracts from the writings of its early , and most approved members" which he supposes " clearly and unequivocally prove that they believed in the Divinity or Deity of Jesus Christ , although" he admits at the same time \ hqX " they rejected the
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idea of three distinct and separate persons" in the Deity , " and also the term Trinity , " by which that " idea * is intended to be conveyed , €€ as not to be found in the Sacred Writings . " By what other appellative he would
designate the belief of the early Quakers in the strict Unity of God he does not say . If they rejected , as he allows they did , both the name and the idea of a distinction of persons in the One Supreme , they cannot surely
in his judgment be properl y considered as Trinitarians . Nor will any of the passages he has adduced prove their title to the reputedly orthodox name , under any of its various modifications .
But he tells us that « Penn ' s Sandy Foundation Shaken , on a review of the circumstances under which it was composed , " appears to him " to have been written on the negative side of the question only , " and that " William Perm himself , about five years after , asserts that this was the case . "
This is a mistake . In reference to that work , its author has said no such thing . At the preceding disputation he and George Whitehead also were ,
no doubt , very decidedly " engaged in the negative , concerning the common doctrine of distinct and separate personality , " because the question at issue , between them and their
Trinitarian opponents was , " whether they owned One Godhead , subsisting in three distinct and separate persons , " which it appears they " denied—as a doctrine no where scriptural . " Works . Vol . I . p . 251 . Your readers should know that the
person spoken of in the 12 th Extract , as becoming so intimate with Penn and Whitehead on this occasion , was Thomas Firmin , a man with whose highly estimable character many of them are acquainted . I shall therefore give Penn ' s account of this
transaction more entire , than it is given in this extract , and I should be much gratified to see Firmin ' s also , which perhaps some of your readers may be able to furnish . After saying thlat * ' He and some others fell into great intimacy" with them , Penn adds , " Who but we in his and their
thoughts ? at what time they were wot quite discovered by us : but pulling off their masks , at last we found them to have been the followers of
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Early Quakers Unitarians . 479
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so unpardonable , that all hands were united against that unhappy man ; and he found at length , that he had much better have violated all God ' s commandments , than have interpreted
some passages of Scripture differently from his brethren . The Nonconformists accused him , the Conformists condemned him , the Secular * power was called in , and the cause ended in an imprisonment and a very great fine ; two methods of con viction about which
the gospel is silent . No Trinitarian could have sincerely indited some of these sentences . " The Dedication is supposed to have been written by Hoadley , " according to the Biog . Diet 1784 . XI . 568 , though I know not on what authority . IGNOTUS .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1817, page 479, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2467/page/31/
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