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Toleration : and the majority of trusts in the Presbyterian Nonconformist boc } y are , it is believed , not older than about the year 1700 , and some of them later . -Now the average of Orthodoxy at that period was not the same with the average in the
generation before . At least the importance of maintaining- orthodox sentiments in opposition to those which were verging towards the Unitarian view of the subject , was not so sensibly felt as it might have been in the time of Vincent Alsop and other eminent and earlier Presbyterians . I do not
mean to say that they were not orthodox in the wide signification of the term : but they did not set their love of Orthodoxy against another principle which they had received , the duty of forbearing to fetter inquiry , and of bringing * every doctrine to the test of its conformity to Holy Scripture , of which the decision was to he
left to the private judgment of the individual . On this part of the subject , I would refer Dr . S . to the Catechism of his late friend Mr . Palmer , of Hackney , who will not be suspected of any very violent leaning towards Unitariamsm ( . Under the head of
The Reasons of the Protestant Dissent from the Established Church /' the first question is , " What are the grand principles on which the Protestant Dissenters ground their separation from the Church by law established ? " To which he gives this
answer : " The right of private judgment and liberty of conscience , in opppsition to all human authority in matters of religion : the supremacy of Christ as the only head of his Church , and the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures as the rule of faith and practice . "
Now it appears to me that before the creation of these trusts , these principies had begun to produce their natural effect , a diversity of religious sentiment ; for no one can suppose
that when these principles are conscientiously maintained and acted on > there will be a continued uniformity of religious faith : but rather that , what has in point of fact taken place , was foreseen , that there would be a
declension , be it greater or less , from what at the beginning was the average of faith among' those who professed the principle . And to this , as it seems
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to me , may be in part attributed , the absence of all restriction in respect of doctrine in which the Presbyterian trustees were left by their founders .
The year 1719 was not long after the date of the original trusts . Many of the original trustees and the founders of Presbyterian societies were then In being : and Dr . S . is not ignorant that the zeal for Orthodox opinions
was at that time much reduced from what it may have been , and that in the estimation of the majority of the Presbyterian ministers in and about London , it sunk before what appeared to them the superior importance of maintaining freedom of inquiry and the right of private judgment .
But it appears to me absurd that a religious body shall admit a principle , and then be declared dissolved in consequence of the natural and necessary operation of that principle . If it was a principle admitted by them
that neither themselves nor their posterity should be fettered in their religious inquiries , their posterity must have a right to adopt and to profess any scriptural truth to which their studies in the word of God may have led them .
The founders and original trustees and ministers of these chapels might not , perhaps , have foreseen the whole extent to which their principle would lead their successors . But we cannot suppose them to have been so ignorant as not to have foreseen that such
changes would take place : and it seems to me that if they had wished , or meant to counteract them , we should have found clauses to that effect introduced into the trust deeds , which might with the utmost ease have been done by them . The declension moreover has been
gradual . One point of Orthodoxy was dropped after another . I would ask Dr . 8 ., What quantum of unbelief disqualifies for the possession of their property , and whether he is not acquainted with instances in the very first race of trustees , congregations
and ministers , in which there were departures from the Orthodoxy of such men as Alsop and the other founders of Presbyterian ism ? So that if a change of sentiment were to disqualify for the possession of these chapels , the very persons by whom
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260 Mr . Hunter , in Reply to Jir . J . P . Smith ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1825, page 260, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2536/page/4/
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