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these a most valuable predecessor of Mr . Wrangham ' s , in the Archdeaconry of Cleveland , * implored the Legislature to grant them relief in the matter of subscription . It was their prayer that , instead of being required to avow their belief in a long series of articles
of human composition , their recorded faith in the Divine authority , and in the sufficiency , of the Scriptures , might be accepted . Compliance with this petition was refused : and it was refused on principles that we deem totally inconsistent with those of Protestantism . From that period a change
has been visible in the actual spirit of the church , and in the theological character of the body of its officiating members . The age of the Blachhurnes and of the Edmunp Laws has passed away . When the clerical petition was lost , a golden opportunity of rendering the English Church truly Protestant was neglected :
Ex lllo fluere ac retro sublapsa referri Spes Danaum . The unreasonableness , the injustice , the inexpediency , the multiplied and positive evils of the terms of clerical
subscription , had been clearly pointed out ; f the advantages of the proposed alteration , as fully and distinctly represented . Nor has the question been since revived ; but is deferred , as far as we are capable of judging , to the Greek calends .
Had the prayer of the petitioners been granted , what would have been thje consequences ? A large , respectable and influential body of men , would have possessed a motive of which they are now destitute to search the Scriptures : they would not have been awed
or bribed into the implicit adoption of * Francis JBlackburne , M . A ., author of the Confessional , &c . f By a Jiving writer this subject has of late been treated of acutely , forcibly and concisely . " A schoolmaster / ' says he , " would not be looked upon as sane , who , instead of putting Euclid ' s Demonstrations into the hands of his scholar .
should , without the Demonstrations , put the Propositions into his hand , and give him a guinea for signing a paper declarative of his belief in them , or Jock him up / for a couple of days without food , on his refusal to sign it . And so in chemistry , mechanics , husbandry , astronomy , or any
other branch of knowledge / ' See p . 65 , o ( Jeremy Bcutham ' s I \ ook of Fallacies .
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a parliamentary creed . We should have found the studious part of them still more intent on the acquisition of theological learning than of science and elegant literature . Religious controversy must then have been occupied with analytical investigations and statements of the meaning of the sacred
volume ; instead of dealing so lavishly in disgraceful personalities , in borrowed misrepresentations and invectives , and in the repetition of objections long since confuted and exposed . The minister of an avowedly Protestant Church , who yet knows and feels that he must bow without reserve to
human authority , nor deviate , either to to the right hand or the left , from the prescribed track , naturally substitutes the contemptuous airs and style of the haughty ecclesiastic for the Christian moderation of the lover and votary of truth : and he interprets Scripture by
his articles , and not by those sound principles of exposition , which he is perhaps in the habit of applying to compositions of infinitely lower value . This has been the tendency , and this the effect , of that pertinacious adherence to creeds fabricated by men , which the events of the last half
century have , in certain quarters , considerably strengthened . Whatever be the individual characters of numbers — perhaps of the majority—of the episcopal clergy , they appear on the stage of controversy ( no doubt with some most honourable exceptions )
rather as hired champions than as fair and manly combatants : nor are they very scrupulous as to the weapons that they use , or to the mode of their carrying on hostilities . Let the polemical labours of Horsley and of Magee , in particular , attest the correctness of our remark . We doubt whether in the
reign of George the Second services ] ike theirs would have been rewarded with the mitre : we doubt whether controversial volumes like theirs would have existed , had the petitioning clergy succeeded in their application ; had scriptural knowledge and inquiry continued to advance among the ministers of the Church of England .
There is nothing that we would more studiously avoid than indiscriminate censure . Neither in private nor in public would we bring sweeping accusations against the body of the clergy * Our personal respect for
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322 Review * - —WellbeloeedF * Letters to Archdeacon Wtangham .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1825, page 222, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2535/page/30/
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