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of setting up Christianity in opposition to the doctrines which they found established , might have taken them as articles of peace , and , conforming as good subjects to the religion of the state , have employed as much or as
little of it as they pleased for the purpose of moral religion ; that the Reformers had done wrong to quit the Church of Rome , and Protestants should return without delay to the fold from which they ought never to have broken out . The assertion that creeds
and confessions were not meant to be imposed in their strict and literal meaning , and might be fairly signed and recited simply as an outward sign of adherence to the church which adopted them , was refuted , it was said , by the whole conduct of the councils mid synods which imposed them , who
evidently meant to exclude every shade of opinion except their own , and either made the language of their symbols more precise , as soon as they found that they were not sufficiently so to prevent all variety of belief , or took more violent measures to get rid of those who did not embrace them in
their most strict and literal sense . In short , all those arguments which are familiar to our readers on the subject of subscription , were successfully urged against Semler ' s scheme , and his antagonists were not sparing of reflections upon his motives . Naturally vehement , conscious of no selfish motive , and unable to bear the loss of that
respect which he had hitherto enjoyed , he replied with equal bitterness , and defended his own principles the more pertinaciously , in proportion as he was involved by them in inconsistencies and contradictions . His defence of the
Religious Edict of the King of Prussia , in 1 7 ^ 8 , raised the animosity of the party against whom it was directed to the highest pitch , and the few remaining years of his life were emlnttered by the virulent attaeks which they made upon his character : During the reign of Frederic the Great , full liberty reign or rrcaenc inc ureat , mu liberty
had been enjoyed in the Prussian dominions to write freely on all subjects but the King and his administration , and the progress of heresy or scepticism , it may be supposed , gave the philosopher of Sans Souci very little uneasiness . His successor , Frederic William II ., however , thought differently , and issued the Edict abovc-men-
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tioned , occasioned principally by the writings of Bahrdt , whose * ' Confession of Faith" was an attack upon revelation . Sernler , as might have been expected , approved and defended the Edict , which was generally condemned as an infringement of religious liberty .
It is a good rule in morals , as well as in criticism , to interpret doubtful passages by those which are plain . We cannot bring ourselves to join in the charges which have been advanced against Semler , when we remember how long and zealously he had laboured in defence of liberal
principles . The exertions of his former life could scarcely have any other motive than a sincere attachment to these principles : his apparent renunciation of them may be explained by his finding himself entangled in a dilemma which ever has embarrassed
and ever will embarrass , those who endeavour to reconcile religious freedom with an establishment of religion and , what is essential to it , a confession and articles . We will not call Paley ' s chapter on Subscription " a shuffling chapter / ' but it is certainly
a very unsatisfactory one , and we have never yet seen any similar attempt which was not equally so . The question respecting the desirableness of an establishment , is , indeed , not decided by its necessarily imposing some restriction upon the religious freedom of its members . "We can conceive of ,
though we do not expect speedily to see realized , an establishment in which this restriction should be so small as to be compensated by the other advantages which an endowed church possesses ; but , without some sacrifice of the right of private judgment , we sec
not how such a thing can exist . A Dissenter may be entitled to say to Semler , You should have left the Church , whose confessions , in the obvious sense of their language , no longer contained your belief , and not have endeavoured , by subtle distinctions and
evasive statements , to excuse what simple honesty condemns . But his accusers in Germany had no right to use this language , as they departed still more widely than he from the Church of which they professed themselves members , and the only other difference between them was , that he made an indifferent justification of himself and
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70 Biographical Sketch of J . S . Semlei
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1821, page 70, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2497/page/6/
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