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league and myself conjointly , I explained my own views respecting the duration of future punishments , his remark to me at the close of the service was , * Well , the Judge of the whole earth will do that which is right ; ' and in this conviction his piety and judgment rest satisfied . "I £ the Dean of Cork should read this
note , he probably will not comprehend how so much union and co-operation can exist with so much diversity of sentiment . It speaks well for Unitarianism that it is fact ; and the reader , if he think it irrelevant , will , 1 trust , pardon the statement of it . "—Note , pp . 42 , 43 .
Dr . Carpenter enters in Chap . IV . upon the Bishop of Raphoe ' s general Charges against Unitarians , and especially Unitarian authors . This is a wide field , for the Bishop ' s hostility takes an almost limitless range . From the unsound Churchman , even though
crowned with the mitre , down to the declared Unbeliever , his hand is against every man who has written any thing that may incidentally favour Umtarianism , and the sin of every heresy is to be punished in the luckless Unitarians , whether it have been owned or disowned
by them . This is a strange mode of proceeding to be sure , and one which is scarcely to be reconciled to a simple love of truth . Nevertheless , the Bishop says that his design is to promote " a more enlivened spirit of religious inquiry $ " upon which his Examiner says ,
' * I know no work , the design and tendency of which is so obviously and clearly marked , to prevent all ( religious inquiry , ' beyond the limits which modern orthodoxy has fenced with her bitterest stigmas and fiercest denunciations . The disciple of the Dean of Cork is like one shut up , with a master-inagician , in a
spacious , irregular , grotesque fortress , within which , he is told , he has abundant room for exercise and enjoyment . He gets a glimpse , perhaps , of a delightful , extensive country beyond the wails by which he is surrounded ; and he fancics that he might roam there without restraint , and enjoy the beauties around him : but a mist is immediately spread
over the prospect , and he is alarmed by the declaration , that those beauties are merely imaginary , that all is a dreary , dangerous desert , full of crags , and pre-< ' » I > ices , and bogs , and torrents . He steals another look ; but frightful spectres are made to dance before him , and be is ix rsuaded that he is safe only while he c ^ nfmes his curiosity to the wonders of
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the place . And if through some unnoticed aperture , the bright gleams of the all-animating sun , reflected from the grand and lovely scenery without , should present a bright picture of reality on the
walls of his darkened chamber , the skill of the enchanter instantaneously interposes some distorting medium which changes order and beauty into deformity and confusion . "—Pp . 48 , 49 .
A favourite charge against the Unitarians in the works of their mitred and unmitred opponents , is their mutilating and corrupting Trinitarian books to serve their own purpose . Thu ^ , Dr . Graves , Dean of Ardagh , in his " Scriptural Proofs of the Trinity , "
accuses them of publishing Dr . Watts ' s Hymns for Children , and Mrs . Trimmer ' Catechism and Prayers , " taking out of both , the passages intended by their authors to impress the doctrine of the Trinity , and making them appear to inculcate Unitarianism , "
this , he adds , ' * is clone deliberately , and without giving the readers notice of the artifice practised upon them . " The Dean refers for proof of his assertions to Bishop Magee , but the Bishop states only the publication of Mrs . Trimmer ' s Catechism and Prayers and
the alteration of Dr . Watts ' s Hymns . Thus the charge gathers as it rolls . But what is the fact ? Some Unitarians have printed editions of the Hymns for Children , with such corrections as make them cease to speak Trinitarianism , yet always with an avowal of the alterations on the
titlepage . But the republication , and of course the mutilation of Mrs . Trimmer ' s Cateehisin , is altogether a fiction . Certainly , none of the Unitarian Societies have put out any such work , nor is the existence of it known to any of those Unitarians that have the most
extensive information on the proceedings of their brethren throughout the kingdom . Upon such a foundation , however , these learned polemics build the charge of " base and deliberate
fraud , " and of " kidnapping of the most atrocious descr iption , by which is stolen away the immortal soul of the infant" ! Dr . Carpenter has done well to expose ( Note , pp . 50—54 ) this accumulation of error into which
the Irish dignitaries have run in their eagerness to vilify the Unitarians . The Bishop of Raphoe , one of &
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Revittw . —Dr . Carpenter ' s Ewumlnation of Bishop Mug-ee . 171
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1821, page 171, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2498/page/43/
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