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connected with aiiy teligions function as a necessary or constant appendage ; but when it is constantly done in such connexion , it is as much a snperstitious mummery , however different it may be in degree , as any observance iu the Romish or any other church . Are we then to believe that there is
no harm in a little bit of superstition , if it harmonises with the taste of the age and the state of men ' s prejudices ? I think , notwithstanding , that the necessity of wearing a gown in the performance of a religious exercise , either
directly required of any one , or implied by certain persons scrupulously never omitting to put it on , is an unchristian imposition upon others , as well as in itself a silly superstition .
-Tims , Sir , I have concluded the remarks which I undertook to make on the subject of ordination services . It has been my wish and object to dis ^ cuss the subject with
dispassionateness , to exclude all irrelevant matter , and to determine the question by its own merits ; and I am not conscious that I have indulged an angry feeling , or endeavoured to excite one . But
this , as well as the merits of the question in general ,. is submitted to the judgment of your readers—by me most cheerfully . WILLIAM JOHNS .
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lected the following information , whifh may be depended on as correct . The Inner Temple has ' not for the last twenty years , nor , as far as I am aware , at any previous period , had any such rule or order .
In the Middle Te : nple the test existed for about thirty or forty years previous to the year 1748 , when it was discontinued , and has not been since revived . I further learned , that although in the bond required by that Society upon a student ' s entry for the
bar , the ancient form is retained , in which mention is made of attendance at Church and the taking of the Sacrament as by law required , yet it is not the present practice to inquire into or notice the compliance or noncompliance with the bond in these particulars .
At Lincoln ' s Inn the test was introduced in 1670 , and a few years afterwards dispensed with , and no such regulation has since existed in that Society . ' Such was the result of my inquiry as to the three last-mentioned Inns of
Court . In Gray ^ s Inn , however , the test has existed and been in force for many years past , but at what precise period it was introduced I am unacquainted . So far as the regulation
may have been intended to exclude Dissenters from the bar , its operation * confined as it was to one single Inn , was of course nugatory . Had it prevailed at all the Inns at one and the
same time , its operation would have been complete in effectually shutting out Dissenters from the bar , which is now considered as open to all , without distinction of sect or party . Existing in Gray ' s Inn alone , it served merely as a beacon to warn Dissenters against
a membership with that particular Society : and though cases , like my own , may have occasionally occurred , in which a Dissenter entering for the bar in ignorance of the test may have inadvertently exposed himself to its direct operation , yet the rareness of
such instances , in conjunction with the fact that Catholics were , as I understand , relieved from its operation by some special provision in their favour , may perhaps explain why the prolonged continuance of the test in this Inn has excited so little attention .
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738 Mr . Evans on the Sacramental Test .
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Gray ' s Inn , _ Sir , December 14 , 1825 . f fl ^ HAT the sacramental test has JL ever been required as a
qualification for the English bar , may not , perhaps , be generally known to your readers . Such , however , has till very recently been the case , and it is with peculiar satisfaction I have now to communicate the abolition of the last
remaining regulation of the kind . Having occasion some years since to become a member of one of the four Inns of Court , as preparatory to being called to the bar , I unwarily entered myself of Gray ' s Inn , of which I had not been long a member before I learned that , by an order or by-law
of the Society , candidates for the degree of barrister were required to produce a certificate of having taken the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England . Upon this discovery I was induced to inquire into the existence of any similar requisition in the other Inne , and I col-
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1825, page 738, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2543/page/34/
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