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his country , a $ the sage moralist has said , who causes a blade of grass to grow where none grew before , their claims upon our gratitude and admiration are neither few nor small who , in a barren soil and a stormy day , sowed those seeds of truth and liberty of which , after ages of growth , we are now reaping the abundant harvest .
To estimate the Puritans aright we must examine their books , and if these do not shew deep and varied Christian learning , sound judgment , yigour of intellect , pure conscience ,
disinterested zeal and patnotism above suspicion , we , who profess to have their names in reverence , are content that they should be set down for the superstitious drivellers or fanatics and
firebrands that Southey , in his eagerness to serve the " best-constituted Church in the world , " would fain make them appear . * We propose , therefore , in a series
of papers to give an account of some of the principal Puritan publications in the times of Elizabeth and James , accompanied with historic and biographical notices and verified by ample extracts .- * -
The first work that we shall examine bears the following title : " A Briefe and Plaine Declaration , concerning the Desires of all those Faithful Ministers , that have and do seeke for the Discipline and Reformation of the Church of Englande : which may
* It Is really paying too much respect to the Laureate ' s " Book" to consider it as of importance for or against any cause . Were it less disfigured by the historic vices of colouring and omission , and less disgraced by the rhetorical artifices of Invective and ridicule , it could be of no authority whatever , on account of its
total want of references . These , the Laureate says , would have encumbered the page ' . Might he not have added , that they would have convicted him of narrow and wilfully partial reading , and , moreover , have supplied the reader with an antidote to the poison of the odium theologicum which he has infused so largely into his later chapters ?
• f The Nonconformist , No . VI ., Vol . XIV . pp . 24 , &c , " On the Cause of Nonconformity , as connected with the Interests of General Literature , " signed It ., lias in fact given a sketch of our plan . This interesting paper is recommended to the reader ' s notice .
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serve for a just Apologie against the False Accusations and Slaiinders of their Adversaries . " At the head and in the middle of the title-page is an ornament engraved on wood $ atod on
the sides of the middle engraving- are the words , " God is my Defender . " The printer ' s sign at the bottom of the page is , " at London ; printed by Robert Waldegrave , J 584 . "
Besides the general title-page here given , there is another running title after the Preface , viz . * ' A Learned Discourse of Ecclesiasticall Governement , prooved by the Worde of God . " This double title may partly account for the difficutly we have found in tracing this work in the histories of the times .
In the Catalogue of Dr . Wilhams ^ s Library , ( 1 st ed ., No . 1785 , ) a defence of the work by the author against Dr . Bridges is ascribed to Fenner , meaning , no doubt , Dudley Fenner ; but this is probably a mistake . Fenner did write against Bridges , but the extracts from the work which Neal
ascribes to Fenner , ( Hist . Puritans , 8 vo . Toulmin ' s ed ., 1 . 425 , 426 , ) prove that his book was not the same as the " Defence of Ecclesiastical Discipline against Bridges , " just referred to . This book of Fenner ' s ( if it be his ,
which we shall look into , when we give an account of it , ) is now in our hands , a quarto volume , printed in 1587 , and entitled , " A Defence of the Godlie Ministers against the Slaiinders of Dr . Bridges , contayned in his Answere to the Preface before the
Discourse of Ecclesiasticall Governement , with a Declaration of the Bishops' proceeding against them / ' The author of the ts Briefe and Plaine Declaration / ' the subject of the piesent paper , was plainly his own advocate , in €€ A Defence of the
Ecclesiastical Discipline , " a 4 to . tract , printed in 1588 . We shall quote a short passage shewing this from the Dedication of the tract , c < Unto the Christian Reader : " " His" ( Dr . Bridgets ) " first
section ( because nothing should escape liftta ) ia upon these words set after the preface , and before the first sentence of the booke , and upon the ioppe of everie leafe , A Learned Discourse of Ecclesiasticall Governement * This title here and throughout the Replie is much jested at and played withall .
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130 The Puritans . —No . I .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1825, page 130, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2534/page/2/
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