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so printed in the original edition of j the Creed , which consisted of 10 , 000 < copies * and which was nevertheless re- i jected , and ordered to be suppressed , i bv the Yearly Meeting for Pennsylva- 1 nfa . BEREUS . 3
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Bemarks on the Resolutions of the Dissenting Ministers respecting the Canton de Vaud . Sir , ON perusing the Resolutions of the General Body of the Protestant
D issenting Ministers of the Three Denominations ( pp . 377 , 378 ) , I cannot avoid fearing that they have been passed without due deliberation . Religious intolerance is under every form justly to be detested , but the party
preferring a charge of this nature against any people or government , ought not to mix any thing with it that is doubtful or unnecessarily irritating ' , and the accusers should " come into court with clean hands / 5 The
three first resolutions are what every liberal Christian must approve ; but the fourth , which contains the accusation against the government of the Canton de Vaud , is confused and indefinite , and is presented to the public without any accompanying evidence . " This Bodv has received , from
different and credible sources , the information , that in Switzerland , which used to be regarded as an asylum for those who fled from persecution , and particularly in the Canton de Vaud , under a Protestant Government and a
Presbyterian Church , a severe persecution has been for more than a year exercised upon peaceable citizens , " &e . Here the charge is first made against Switzerland generally , and secondly against the Canton de Vaud . Now a general charge of this serious nature ought not to have been ad * vanced , unless the resoiutionists were
prepared to prove that all the cantons had been guilty of persecution . If they were not , each of the guilty cantons should have been named , for the Swiss cantons are as independent of ^ ach other , with respect to religion ,
as Great Britain and France . Several of the cantons have ever been Catholic ?* the most bigoted description , and it were surely beating the air to pass ^ solutions now ag ainst them * Though the Prote&tabt cantons might formerly
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admit refugees into their country , whose faith did not differ much from their own , yet I know no period in which they could be properly styled tolerant , and therefore nothing * is gained by referring to their former history .
, , : < Since 1814 , when the Pays de Vaud was established as a separate canton , with an orthodox state religion , it has not been distinguished by any great degree of political or religious liberality ; but when specific charges of persecution are brought against the
government and people , by so respectable a Body as the Protestant Dissenting Ministers of the Three Denominations , or any individuals actingin their name , all the facts and circumstances ought to have been well considered and both sides of the case examined .
I fear it will be found that much of the irritation existing in the Canton de Vaud , which has led to the acts complained of In the resolutions , has been excited by the indiscreet and iateinperate zeal " of a few English ladies and other strangers , whose
interference , in defiance of the public authority , has goaded and exasperated the government of the canton . Nor can it be forgotten that this irritation has been increased by the conduct of the very gentleman who has been chosen by the Body to sign their resolutions .
The last year he most unwarrantably and presumptuously passed sentence of condemnation on the people and pastors of the canton , as Semipelagians , and published to the world that they " were formalists in religion and
held the truth in unrighteousness " ( Mon . Rep . XIX . pp . 321 , 404 , 464 , 520 , 544 , 668 , 735 ); a sentence which they must think evinces as much of an exclusive , illiberal and persecuting spirit as any act of their own government . 1
If the object of the meetingwere really to recommend to the government of the canton peace and conciliation , and a repeal of their edicts against Dissenters , prudence might have suggested the propriety of selecting some one to sign the resolulutions who had not rendered himself
obnoxious to the canton by sucli an unchristian-like aggression . The resolutions , from the signature affixed , will be read with particular distrust , and regarded as the ebullitions of in-
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On Dissenting Ministers Resolutions respecting the Canton de Vaud . 405
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1825, page 405, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2538/page/21/
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