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charges . The following is a specimen , which we extract the rather because the Monthly Repository is implicated in the Bishop ' s misrepresentations : < c A Religious Tract Society in Glasgow , with Dr . Magee ' s permission , extracted from his work a portion of his
strictures , which they published under the title of An Exposure of the unwarrantable Liberties taken by the Unitarians with the Sacred Scriptures . In reply to this , another pamphlet was circulated by the Glasgow Unitarian Fand , entitled
An Address to the Inquirers after Truth , &c . : By a Calm Inquirer . This tract was reprinted in the Monthly Repository for August 1813 , with a short account of its origin by the Editor , and expressions indicating his high appreciation of its merits . On this train of circumstances
the Dean founds the following statement , in which accuracy in his premises , closeness in his reasoning , and soundness in his deductions ., are as conspicuous as they are in numberless other parts of his volume .
" ' This I am more disposed to do , ' viz . make some observations upon the Calm Inquirer's vindication of the Improved Version , c because ( as far as I know ) this pamphlet contains the only defence of the Version that has been
offered to the public in a detached form ; and because the body of English Unitarians have attributed to it ( trifling as it is ) so high a value , that not content with printing and circulating it at the expense oftheir public fund , they have superadded the publication of it in their Magazine ;
thus securing to it every degree of currency and credit that it is in the power of the entire body to bestow . Recognized and adopted in this manner by the whole community of Unitariansy ( who appear now to be consolidated and organized in a manner somewhat approaching the system of the Wesleian Methodists , ) it is of course to be viewed as their
own authenticated and deliberate defence of their version ; ' Sec . Postscript , p . 9 [ 473 ] . " If the Dean can produce , from the least esteemed of our writers , a pa-ssage parallel to this , in false reasoning and
misrepresentation , he will throw greater discredit on our intellectual attainments , than any evidence which he has yet produced against us can warrant . I do not adduce it to parry his arguments on the greater subjects before us ; but to shew to those who derive their views of
Unitarians and the state of Unitarianism from the Dean of Cork , that they follow one who either wilfully misrepresents , or who is too much blinded by his party hostility and acrimonious zeal , to discern
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plain facts , or to draw just conclusions from them . * " ( 1 ) The Glasgow Unitarian Fund
print and circulate the Address . From this fact , the evidence of which is in the title-page , the Dean asserts , that the Body q /* English Unitarians have printed and circulated it at the expense of their public fund .
" ( 2 ) The Editor of the Monthly Re ~ positoryy an individual of weight and influence among us proportioned to his ve 4 * y important services , but responsible to no one in the conducting of the Repository , and never acting in the name of the Unitarian body , but only for himself , thinking highly of the Address , and believing that his Readers would wish to
see it , inserted it in his Journal . On this fact , and this alone , the Dean of Cork declares , that the Body of English Unitarians published the Address in their Magazine ; by this means , and that stated in the foregoing paragraph , ( in which they had no concern whatever , ) securing to the tract every degree of currency and credit that it is in the power of the entire bo dy to bestow . f-
" ( 3 ) Upon the groundless assumptions already stated , the Dean proceeds to maintain , that the Address having been thus recognized and adopted by the whole community of Unitarians i it is , of course , to be viewed as their own authenticated
and deliberate defence of their version . The tract was written by an individual ( who may be presumed to be the principal Editor of the Improved Version ) ; and , however deliberately he may have done it , the bo dy did not deliberate on the
subject . After it had been printed and circulated by a very small part of that body , the Glasgow Unitarian Fund , it was reprinted bv another individual , the
* " To shorten my quotation , 1 have passed by the Dean ' s contemptuous expressions respecting the Calm Inquirer ' : * tract , —his censures on Unitarians because they do not give the * slightest notice * that their arguments have been a thousand times refuted , —and his modest inference , that his own total discomfiture involves * the entire subversion of the
doctrines' which his work maintains : but I have adduced all which is necessary for the following observations . " + " The Address was never circulated in England , in a separate form , nor
indeed does any bookseller ' s name appear in the title-page ; and no one of the many Unitarian book-societies in South Britain , as far as I have been able to learn , have inserted it in their Catalogues , for distribution among their members . "
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240 Review . —Dr . Carpenter ' s Examination of Bi&hvp Ma gee .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1821, page 240, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2499/page/48/
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