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Untitled Article
made of supreme importance in it ; but , at the same time , I do not deem it impiety to oppose the Bill because it exalts their dignities , and must fall under the censure which Mr . Brougham passes on objectors as " turning their backs on the Clergy , whom Providence
has raised up to give strength and stability to the plan . " With the leave of this gentleman , who is no better divine than statesman , ( and that he is not perfect in that character needs no further proof , ) the agency of Providence is quite as much apparent in the
exalt her name , and debase her character ; to clothe her with new attributes , and bring into jeopardy her very existence . Now , therefore , we , in our turn , must be permitted to speak of dangers , and to occupy ourselves with alarms : we must presume to warn and admonish ; we must
denounce , as enemies to the peace and liberties of the community most certainly , but as worse enemies , if it be possible , to the welfare of the Church , and the whole religious interests of England , those who first , by half-concealed stratagem , and now by more than half-declared aggressions ,
undermining , where they durst not assault , and attacking what they hoped to find defenceless , would wage war against the dearest rights of the people , for the purpose of involving the clergy in trouble and shame 9 and lay society itself waste , in order that the Church might pass through
the highest perils to the most certain corruption . Against the machinations of such men , we warn , above all , the wise and pious part of the sacred order to which they belong , and the temporal rulers , whose ears they may perhaps seek
to gam , by promises of assistance and support . Distrusting both our authority and our powers of persuasion , we would warn both those classes , in the language of the most powerful supporter of the Establishment who was ever suffered to
die unmitred— ' The single end / says Dr . Paley , [ Mor . and Pol . Philos . II . 305 , ] c which we ought to propose by religious establishments , is the preservation and communication of religious knowledge . Every other idea , and every other end , that have been mixed with this , as the
making of the Church an engine , or even an ally of the State , converting it into the means of strengthening or of dj / Tusing influence , or regarding it as a support of regal , in opposition to popular forms of government , have served only to debase the institution , and to introduce into it numerous corruptions and abuses . — JSd . Rev . Nov . 1810 . XVII . 86 , 87 .
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existence of the Dissenters ; tod their readiness to oppose a plaii wKich confers power on the clergy ; at the Expense of the people ' s independence of conscience , and of the improvement and happiness of their families . It is not denied that in a wise and
liberal scheme of public education , the Clergy might be made use of ; but let it be ministerially , as in the proposed Unitarian Marriage Bill , and not as here magisterially , with an unlimited
discretion , and an arbitrary , irresponsible power . The Edinburgh Reviewer says , that the Dissenters have been silent under
greater encroachments upon their opinions and property : they did not oppose the grant of a large sum of money to the poor clergy , nor the vote of a million for the erection of new
churches : but if they did not here oppose government , a writer of less shrewdness than this might have guessed that the true reason was very different from their satisfaction in these
measures . Let the Dissenters , however , learn a lesson of zeal and courage from such reproaches . Their silence , they perceive , is interpreted into acquiescence . It becomes a precedent ; and if they ever afterwards speak out , they are charged with inconsistency , and even with faction .
To urge upon Dissenters , as the Reviewer does , the necessity of sacrifices for the public good , is in this case preposterous . To what are they to sacrifice , except to the complacency or ambition of the author of the Bill ?
They can give up only what regards their consciences ; he has an easy surrender to make : his Bill is not essential to his own or others' happiness , and he may re-cast it so as to make it worthy of himself and of the great nation to whom it is proposed . The history of the sacrifices of the
Dissenters is , in fact , the exposition of the loss of their liberty . By one concession they fastened the yoke of the Test Act upon their own necks and those of their children , and by another they lost , for a century , at feast , the onl y probable chance of their emancipation . be
Nothing ^ vould m ore dangerous to the Dissenters than that the legislature should presume upon their willingness to make concessions of conscience for the supposed public good .
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32 The Nonconformist . No . XIX .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1821, page 32, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2496/page/32/
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