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reviles , and even ridicules in learned phrase , part of which is too indecorous to be translated , some Christians whom he can only charge with a zeal to teach what they know , without waiting for the sanction of a learned ministry :
" Consider the bold invasion of the ministerial office by barbers , drapers , farmers , tailors , shoe-makers , &c , forgetting the commands of the apostle , ( 1 Cor . vii . 20 , ) ' Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called ;' as a caution that the barber should not
go beyond his razor , nor the draper beyond his ell , nor the tailor beyond Ills shears and thimble ; and I will venture upon one scrap of Latin , Ne sutor ultra crepidam , which I would advise them not to meddle with , lest instead of crepidam they sound crept-/ urn , which I leave them to turn into English . "
After a recommendation of catechising < l every where / ' to check " this presumption" in those who , * in their ignorance , " were found ' * confuting catechisms composed by assemblies of learned divines , " the * ' least among the brethren , " a Protestant " servant of servants , " makes
this farther display of his humility : " The logic they have got by shaving of faces , making of shoes , measuring of cloth , &c , is as profound as their divinity , when they argue on the question , Whether a trader might not be a preacher ? To prove it to the
undistiijguishing people , not a week since , a draper , and yet in a pulpit in London , remembering his terms of trade , before he had got his terms of art , ridiculing ordination by grave divines , as a pack of men got together to ordain
others , forgot that a pack of three , with much seeking got together , set him apart . He said , Elisha was a plowman , Amo 3 was an herdsman , Peter was a fisherman , and yet preachers ; therefore we , though formerly traders , might now be preachers . What professor of philosophy is able to deny
such a necessary and immediate consequence ? The people , being persuaded by such an irrefragable argument , are prepared to flock after them , and to swallow down their teachings upon no better proof than the former . " On reading the complaint that " the people" were " prepared to flock after them , " the secret was out . It was surely high time to oppose this " bold
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invasion of the ministerial office /* by running down the invaders so far as reproach and ridicule could effect the purpose . They were , perhaps ,
Baptists * who have been often distinguished among Nonconformists for the virtuous industry to " abide in their calling /' while they became gratuitous preachers to their less informed , and sometimes more necessitous brethren .
As to Thomas Doolittle , who published his Plain Method on a plan which precluded any pecuniary profit , I am much inclined to conjecture that he might be under the rigid discipline of the stone , from which he was a great sufferer , when he thus became out of humour with his unlearned
brethren . It is remarkable that the intellectual attainments of this censor of the unlearned have not always been highly estimated . That learned lawyer , Mr . Solloni Emlyn , says , in the Memoirs
of his Father ' s Life , ( pp . vi . vn ., ) " In August 1682 he removed to Mr . Doolittle ' s academy , first at Islington , then at Clapham , and afterwards at Battersea . Here he was near the public scene , and had the opportunity of perusing variety of books , and of conversing with learned
men of all sorts , by which , and the strength of his own genius , he made much greater improvements than by the instructions of his tutor , who , though a very worthy and diligent divine , yet was not eminent for compass of knowledge or depth of thought ; for he soon soared above the low
lessons of that academy . " Mr . Emlyn adds , " From hence he set out and made his first essay as a preacher , Dec . 19 , 1682 , at Mr . Doolittie ' s meetinghouse , near Cripplegate . " It is too well known , from an
affecting and justly-lamented event , who was the last preacher in Monkwell Street ; a successor of Thomas Doolittle , as remote in disposition , on the subject in question , as in the order of time . Dr . Lindsay was indeed one
of those levellers upward who had too well improved his own attainments , to despise the unlearned . He ever esteemed it a highly incumbent duty to encourage , among all conditions , the march of the human intellect , and he may be justly said to have died , as he had lived , in the honourable service . N > h . T .
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336 Air . IJooiittle ' s Censures on unlearned Ministers .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1821, page 336, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2501/page/12/
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