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Reply to the Charges of A Friend to Sunday-Schools * 549
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complaint , should allow this man ' ( Elias Hicks ) "to visit families , " which he afterwards did to very general satisfaction , " and in , this way to spread his poisonous principles ,
divisions among them will assuredly be the consequence . " The quotation from Pennington may possibly prove that he adopted the indwelling scheme , or the Sabellian system , but nothing more , in relation to the doctrine of
the divinity of Christ . Thomas Eddy says , lastly , that " during the time George Wit by , " a minister from this country , was " in New York , many of those who havfe uniformly appeared as zealous
supporters of EJias Hicks , shewed themselves highly displeased with George , and charged him with preaching vvrong [ or uncriptural ] doctrines . " They " were exceedingly disturbed , " says Thomas Eddy , < € that George should have told Elias that his
sentiments went to destroy the fundamental doctrines of the Christian religion . In order to support Elias , they published one thousand copies of William Penn's Sandy Foundation Shaken , as they said , to shew that the Unitarian doctrine held by Elias Hicks , agreed with what was advanced bv Penn . "
That these persons so published this celebrated work of Penn ' s , may be safely credited on the testimony of Thomas Eddy . He disapproved its publication , yet bears witness to the tact , in a circular specially intended for his particular friends , and others holding similar sentiments , and alike intolerant .
Many of your readers are so well acquainted with the strong , clear , definite , and scriptural character of this work , as to enable them readily and decisively to judge what doctrines
alone it is calculated to support . I may hereafter send you another paper relative to this controversy among the American Friends , their reception or rejection of those doctrines , for openly avowing which , Penn suffered
imprisonment at the suit of the Bishop of London , but for promulgating which , he never was , that I can find , exposed even to a breath of censure from the Society of Friends , with whom he was then , and long after , in the nearest religious unity and fellowship . BEREUS .
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Sir , July 12 , 1824 . READ with equal pain and sur-I prise , a letter in your Repository , ( pp . 201 , 202 ^ dated from Bristol , and signed A Friend to Sunday-Schools , in which the writer charges the Unitarian body with a manifest
indifference , if not aversion , to the instruction of the poor — in other words , to Sunday-Schools . This he maintains to be & fact , and a lamentable fact . Many strange observations respecting the inconsistency of Unitarians are offered by him to the public ,
and particularly in connexion with the causes of what he is pleased to call the tardy progress of Unitarianism . This tardy progress he ascribes in a great measure to " negligence in the education and in the purity of
the education of the youthful poor , " amongst us . We are , then , accused of aversion to , and neglect in , the momentous duty of education as it relates to the poor , and an impure method besides , in the management of it .
This , Sir , is a heavy charge , and yet appears to carry inconsistency upon its face * But , the author proceeds to make the following appeal to the Unitarian public : — * How is
it , I would ask , that so few of our magnificent and spacious places of worship can boast of having spacious school-rooms appended to them ? How is it that our public donation lists teem with items in favour of
ministers and chapels , and almost every other praiseworthy object , and not a solitary one applicable to that of Sunday-Schools ? Does not this seem to indicate that the Unitarian grants , tacitly at least , to his Trinitarian
brethren the pre-occupation of the vulgar minds of the lower classes of society to implant and cherish those very stamina which constitute his chief complaint , whose eradication is his greatest difficulty ? Or , that he permits the most vigorous portion of their existence to run out in the
debasing , unregenerative torpor of * blessed ignorance , ' until they are incapacitated for the reception of any thing opposed to that prevalent but *
pseudo-proverb , Vox populi vox Dei ? And is not the large expenditure in the erection of chapels , and the education and support of ' ministers * like the providing of hospitals
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1824, page 549, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2528/page/37/
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