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renness threatened to J > e eternal ; Hope hasted from its domain , Despair seemed to have estab ished there her ebon throne . Of all the causes that produced these ills , Superstition , want of religious liberty , the Inquisition , were most potent . There the consequences of tests and
persecutions and infringements of the rights of conscience developed all their malignity . The little seedling , the shrub whose flowers are here so pestilent , and whose fruit is deadly , had been there watered by the blood of myriads , protected by the vigilance of priests , expanded by the growth of ages , and became a tree , worse than the upas tree , that overshadowed all the soil .
To the Inquisition he thus referred , as it was the whole length portrait of the little sectarian animosities , of the exclusive desires of predominance , that had too long existed even among pious men , and those who had contended for Protestant Dissent . And what was the
Inquisition ? To understand its terrors , we should apply them to ourselves ; let each of the audience suppose the existence of a power that could at midnight enter his abode , tear the husband from
the embraces of the wife , and the mother from the children who hung round her in despair ; could bear the victim to a dungeon , inflict at caprice the threefold tortures of the pulley , or the rack , or of the flame , and " all for the love of God . " ' * Christi nomine invocato / " Let them
multiply these deeds by thousands , let them learn that in one archbishopric alone , 4000 persons suffered death in 40 years . Let them picture to themselves that social Christian state of worse than Indian barbarism , where , at an auto da fe 9 120 victims were brought out for condemnation , where a vast amphitheatre
was erected for the reception of all the majesty and wealth of Spain , where blasphemously it was stated , that God had bestowed supernatural powers on the workmen , to expedite the erection of the fabric ; where a Sabbath day , a Christian Sabbath-day , t { ie Sabbath dedicated to St . Paul , to St . Paul the minister of salvation ,
of love and of good-will , was appropriated to this work of death ; where knights were assembled in all their gay caparisons ; and peerless beauties , whom the winds of heaven might not visit roughly , hastened , exulting , to the spectacle , and
ail without emotions , but of joy : and then see the wretched victims , guilty of no crime but fidelity to their religion and devotion to their God , led away to execution—to be burnt to death ; burnt to death ! and all " for- the love' of
God ! " Then might they begin t 6 under-SteuA what the Inquisition meant ; thqn ibtigip to learn , to what dreadful deeds , ] ft *> 4 fiHify . to ftte rights of conscience may
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naturally lead . Well , a » they thought with the Poet , might they exclaim , God of love , where sleep thy thunderbolts !" They had not slept . Hope , then , might every where exist ! The hideous dwarfish manikin of persecution , exhibited in Test and Corporation Acts , had there swollen
to a colossal statue . The colossus indeed best rid both hemispheres . The hair were snakes ; gall was the milk , and iron was the heart . But the thunderbolts of an injured people and offended Deky no longer slept . Even this colossus ; this colossus though so vast , had fallen ; it had fallen to rise no more ! There was
joy in heaven ? Let there be gratitude and hope on earth ! ! Long , loud and reiterated applause , continuing for several minutes ! The applauses at length terminated . The following resolutions were theiiproposed and unanimously adopted .
1 . That at the nr 3 t Anniversary of this Society , including Christians of every religious denomination , after the commencement of a new reiga , this Meeting cheerfully express their pleasure at the assurances of his Majesty the King , that he will imitate the example of his beloved father , and will preserve toleration
inviolate ; and also as cheerfully express that loyalty , which the friends of religious freedom have ever delighted to cherish towards that Royal Family , whose ances * . tors were placed upon the throne , as protectors of the civil and religious liberties of the British people , from unconstitutional tyranny and unchristian
opp . 2 . But that at the present period , when the principles that constitute the basis of religious freedom , are publicly impugned by some members of the Established Church , and are disavowed by other persons who profess to be Protestant
Dissenters , this Meeting will also repeat their declarations , that the right of every man to worship God according to his conscience , is an unalienable right , with which no human authority can justly interfere , or should even indirectly restrict : and that Christian truth does not
depend for preservation or success on secular protection or national endowments ; but relies chiefly , if not exclusively , for support on the will of its Divine Author , and on its intrinsic excellence . 3 , That this Meeting , influenced not by motives merely personal , and sectaattachment
rian , arid national ; but by an to thq great principles that induced their forefathers to submit to ignominy , spoliation , imprisonment and death ; cannot but rejoice in the triumph of those pwnciples in foreign countries V and record their gratitude to God , that tli ^ execrable Inquisition has been abolfehed in 9 P » =
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496 Intelligence . —Protestant Society z Mr . JFilk $ * $ Speech .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1820, page 496, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2491/page/52/
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