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again at a considerable advantage , or the interest accruing from which might be a useful supply to a permanent fund . These hints some of your valuable Correspondents are very competent to improve upon , and I ardently hope that some will be found to
improve upon them , in such manner as that a sufficient sum of money may be raised in a few years to remove all embarrassments wherever they exist , and create facilities of doing manifold good in all directions to our brethren . THEO-. BROWNE . a ^^ HMi ^ B ^ Ma
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Liverpool , Sir , May 29 , 1820 . IT has been a matter of regret to many enlightened advocates of religious truth , as well as a subject of self-congratulation to most professed
orthodox believers , that the Unitarian views of the gospel were confined to a comparatively few persons of a philosophical turn of mind , and that a much more considerable advance must be made in general information , before any very numerous portion of the
community can be persuaded to examine sufficiently the evidences for rational Christianity , to enable them to shake off the load of prejudice with which they are overwhelmed . The establishment of the Unitarian Fund , and many other more recent institutions , have done much to confirm the
fact , that what is usually called learning , however desirable it may be , is not necessary to common sense , nor is reason a whit more likely to shine through the embellishments of scholastic refinement , than when it rears
its simple front among the humble assertors of Christianity , educated under circumstances widely different . We can best judge of the advances made by mankind in intellectual concerns , by comparing different periods of time ; and when we go back but a few years ,
and view the progress of liberal sentiment among every class , but in a more remarkable degree , the lower orders of society ; we can hardly be too sanguine in our expectations , that at no very remote era , the bulk of mankind will havfc proceeded to still higher advances in knowledge , and that
naany of the obstacles to the free discussion of theological subjects will give way bfefore the opportunities for "approvement so abundantly famished
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by modern times . I confess , it is not without considerable surprise that I hear many persons speak of the decline of Unitarian congregations , as if the old-fashioned Presbyterians , who filled many of our now almost untenanted chapels , would not in general have been shocked at the idea of such an
association . It may do well enough for Dr . Chalmers to talk of the " almost exploded sect ; " but those who have witnessed the secession of family after family from the worship of their fathers , in order to qualify them for the possession of the honours and
emoluments held out with an unsparing hand , in a luxurious age , ought not , in common charity , to be unwilling to palliate such conduct , by allowing that little or nothing has been sacrificed in point of real theological principle . It would be little less than surprising , in many cases , were it otherwise : for even conscience has
aided some of the most estimable men in withholding all disputable matter from their congregations ; and who ever knew information disseminated by silence , or witnessed the overthrow
of established popular error , without a long series of indefatigable efforts to expose effectually and openly the sources of such delusion ? Happily for the interests of truth , the time
seems arriving when that kind of prudence is no longer thought a virtue , which leads us to conceal any opinion whatever that is conceived to be scriptural , and surely if right notions of thinking do not carry with them sufficient weight , the certainty that those societies nave best flourished , where
religious opinions have been most openly discussed , and the pure doctrines of Christianity most strenuously insisted upon as a bond of union , ought to teach us the absolute necessity ( to say nothing of duty ) to leave our brethren in ignorance of nothing which our less liberal opponents may after *
wards turn to their account . Whatever may be the consequence that some may attach to many of the nearly 'extinct Presbyterian interests before alluded to , I confess I found 1117 principal ideas of their usefulness on the supposition that they may now and then be a point , round / which new societies , built up on the firm basis ot theological knowledge and genuine Christian ze * l > ma / ratty , although it
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] $ a ? per inl € nt of a TTiird Unitarian Congregation , Liverpool . 393
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1820, page 393, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2490/page/13/
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