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Untitled Article
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
tendedH& Jjwotluite witfeotrfc ^ any scriptural authority . The partisans of thk opinion appear to be most anxious to establish it as a religious principle , and also by civil and penal enactments to compel its observance ,, and approximate as nearly as possible to this part of the law of Moses , of which , they
gave proof by their application to Parliament some time since , though happily they were there defeated and met with a keen reproof in having the petition stigmatized as a most canting document . Is it possible that those persons can have read the Christian Scriptures with attention , wherein not
a syllable appears of the institution of a Sabbath , but where our Lord in his public teaching and conduct practically abolished it ? And in various places the apostle of the Gentiles , seems to exult in being empowered and authorized to declare the abrogation of the ceremonial law and the
emancipation of the world from the legal observances of days , and times , and new moons , and Sabbaths , and earnestly exhorts Christians to stand fast in their liberty , and not be again entangled with the yoke of bondage , but , having passed from the state of childhood and pupilage which existed under the law . to think and act as
freemen in Christ ; and it has been with pain that I have observed some instances of even Unitarian ministers who in their public services have appeared to slide into this doctrine , and have spoken of the Sabbath much more like followers of Moses than disciples of Christ . —Perhaps , Mr . Editor , you would not have been troubled with the
foregoing observations , but for one or two circumstances recently occuring among Christians of the Calvinistic , or self-named Evangelical , party . In the Supplement to the Evangelical Magazine for 1825 , published
last month , under the head Religious Intelligence , the directors of that work have brought forward accounts of proceedings of the General Association and Tract Society at Boston , called by the Supplement to the
Evangelical Magazine , Measures adopted for the Sanctijication of the Sabbath , which consist of a report and resolutions , wherein the Sabbath , meaning the first day of the week , is styled a sacred institution- ; and though on so short a notice they are not prepared to
Untitled Article
suggest toy course' of pru "^ ticat Vefr mrritt - ttmt '| r f ^ t-fjtbinrafe-t 6 ''^ c 6 ttfre exigencies 4 > f the case , he . ; theV regard with painful apprehensions the grow , ing indifference in many places to the sanctity of the Sabbath , &c . Tolerably intelligible language this , to talk of
practical measures . If it mean any thing more than the power of reason and the force of truth , it cannot be Christian ; if not , they have already the means , in the freedom of speech and a fair field of action , wherein to use the weapons allowed to a Christian
which are not carnal but spiritual . Under the head Sabbath Breakers , is the following , I may say dreadful statement , made by Dr . JMilner , of New York , to the Tract Society , which seeras to have been given and received very complacently ,
* ' A few years since a gentleman residing in Philadelphia , established a Sabbath school in the suburbs of the city , which he regularly met every Sabbath morning . As he walked , he noticed that he passed a house where he uniformly found a part of the family at work in the garden , raising vegetables for market . In one of his
walks past the garden he threw a Tract , over the fence , on the sinfulness of violating the holy Sabbath . " No one happened to be in the garden at that time , and the Tract lay unperceived for some hours . But in the course of the day , a female of the family , walking through the garden ,
picked up the Tract , wondering how a religious book could come there . On reading its title and seeing the subject on which it treated , she superstitiously supposed it must have been sent there miraculously to convict the family of the awful guilt of breaking the Sabbath . What with the
convictions of conscience awakened on reading the Tract , and what with more of superstition , the woman was fir ^ t thrown into an agony , and next into convulsions ; and that night about 12 o ' clock , in the most awful agony and forebodings of misery for a wicked life , she was stretched out a corpse !
" Here , " said the Rev . Dr . Milner , of New York , as he related this account at the meeting of the Tract Society at Boston , " here I must not stop - I , for should not have dared to have related the circumstance b ^ it for what follows : the woman was buried , but the Tract
Untitled Article
282 On the Influence ofNanbe * :
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1826, page 282, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2548/page/30/
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