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sent placse , must have known of ; the existence of the Statute in the books ; and he must know , too , that an Unitarian could not , before that Act of repeal passed , have appeared at their bar and said , ** I am an ynitarian , and wish to
be exempted from the operation of the Marriage Act . " A public avowal of this kind would have made the party a criminal by law . " Aye , " added the Noble Lord , " and are ye sure he is not so now ?" And the Noble and Learned Lord ex * pressed a wish to know what the criminal
law was . Could any one tell him , if he himself did not know it ? What did the Noble Earl , then , mean by this sort of ambiguous question ? Why did he throw out these hints ? Who was to give us the law , if he would not ? And if he did not choose to do so , why did he . go about
thus—( Spargere voces in vulgum ambiguas" ? Why did he suffer these persons to go away deluded by the idea that they had obtained protection ? Why did he go about talking of these moral , virtuous and valuable members of society
as hanging on a doubt which he could not or would not solve ? — as persons who might be tried and punished , " for aught he knows" ? He ( Lord Holland ) had been trying to conjecture what the Learned Lord could mean when he talked
of this as an offence at common law . There were only two grounds ; the first of which would not apply to these parties ; the second ( if he meant that ) was so contrary to all justice , so intolerant
and persecuting , that it never could for a moment be listened to . He had said , ' Let us first know whether denying the Trinity be not an offence at common law . ** It was convenient to the NobJe and
Learned Lord to talk sometimes of Locke , of Hoadley and Tillotson . Let him act by those authorities * Why should he leave them on these occasions ? Did he not know that Locke thought the Toleration Act defective in this very respect ? for it was plain from his Correspondence with Limborch , that it was to the Unitarians he
referred . Was he quite sure that Locke himself did not hold that opinion ? Was he quite sure that many other great and eminent persons did not also hold it ? But to return to the point : —It was a doubt , the Learned Lord said , whether these persons were not offenders at common law . And on what did this common-law
doctrine of offences against religion rest ? Why , on its having been said ( not very happily uor reverently , as it seemed to him ) that Christianity was part and parcel of the law of the land . It was Lord Hale , he believed , who first said this of
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Christianity ; but the doctrine was after , wards more directly and emphatically laid down by Lord Raymond . This happened in the famous case of the King and Wool , ston ( he believed it was this case , but he had not had an opportunity of referring to
it ) . On that occasion , the learned judge said he would not allow Christianity to be attacked , because it / was , in fact , a part of the law of the land ; but he begged it to be observed , that by this he meant Christianity generally , and not the tenets of any particular sect of Christians
Why then he ( Lord Holland ) must ask here , what was Christianity in the legal seuse ? Was it a belief in the Holy Scriptures—a reception of them as the rule of life , faith and conduct—or was it a belief in certain expositions of those Scriptures by human beings ? He would leave the Noble and Learned Lord on the
woolsack to choose , in the dilemma to which lie must be reduced . If the first point were held , then the Unitarians were in no sense affected by this common-law doctrine ; for they held the Scriptures as sacredly as any of their Lordships . They held them to contain the rule of right ,
and the rule of faith , and by them alone they stood . If it were said , on the other hand , that the Christianity intended by the law was the Holy Scriptures as they were expounded by the Chturch , then , if the Noble and Learned Lord held that , it followed that he must be prepared to
hold also , that , before the reign of Henry VIII ., the Roman Catholics were the only Christians in England , ( for , till that period , the Roman Catholic religion was part of the law of the land , ) and that , when that King changed the sort oi
Christianity , he changed the common law . Another of the objections which had been raised was , that the proposed measure would make the Church of England ancillary to the Unitarian Dissenters . He did not see the force of this objection . Did the Church of Ireland consider
itself in this light of a waiting-maid ? He did not believe It did ; yet it either registered all marriages , or left the parties to celebrate them for themselves . But it was said , that the Church was to be deprived
of privileges she held by long usage . He suspected , however , that , until the passing of Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act , the Church had never exercised that right which it was contended she could not
forego without derogating from her dignity . All foreign marriages , previous to that period , were celebrated according to the Uoc loci ; and all marriages duly celebrated by a priest , whether of the Church of England or of Rome , were binding . As to that pathetic part of the speech of die Noble Prelate , iu which he had de-
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250 Intelligence . —Parliamentary : Unitartans Marriage BUL
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1824, page 250, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2523/page/58/
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