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( 150 )
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Sir , Your readers will probably feel some interest in the state of the religious world in Holland and Germany , and I therefore proceed to state a few facts which occur to me after a recent visit .
In Holland there is little of religious controversy , and this may be attributed mainly to the universally tolerant spirit which pervades that interesting and intelligent land . It is now not easy to draw the lines of distinction which separate one sect from another . The Mennonites no longer refuse to take arms or oaths ; the Calvinist is seldom found to insist upon the " peculiar doctrines" of his master ; the Lutheran has marched several steps farther away from the Romish church , and has become almost identified with the
Reformed ; and the Remonstrant is so little an object of dislike , that one of the most renowned of their preachers has lately been specially summoned to preach before the king , and , as he himself told me , was honoured by no small portion of royal laudation . The only strong sectarian feeling among . Dutch Protestants is that whicn hangs about their " Catholic question , " a question not quite so divested of difficulties as our Catholic question , since their Catholicism wields instruments of prodigious influence , and has
unfortunately shewed itself on all occasions the hearty ally of civil despotism . The Unitarian question is not , however , in a state of complete stagnation . A champion has lately appeared at Maaslins , named P . W . Bronwer , who published a book ( in 1826 ) entitled , The Bible Doctrine respecting the Person of Jesus Christ , to which he has since added a supplement entitled , Farther Explanations . These works are the symptoms of an
approaching change , and I think it would be desirable both that they should be possessed by the Committee of the Unitarian Association , and that a correspondence should be established with their author . I wrote to him from Rotterdam , but was not able to visit him . In Flanders the Protestant sects are altogether blended . There is but one church , and that church is called The Protestant Church .
A similar state of things exists in many of the states of Germany . The Lutherans and Calvinists are no longer distinguished from one another * They worship in the same churches , the pulpit is occupied by the ministers of either party indifferently , and in a few years they will not eveij have preserved their names . The situation of theological inquiry in Germany covers England with disgrace and reproach . The indefatigable ardour , the varied learning , the critical sagacity with which biblical researches are pursued , form a strange ( and to an Englishman a sad ) contrast to the slumbering dulness of our theologians . " You boast of your civil liberty , " said one of the most renowned , and at the same time most orthodox , of their theological professors to me , " but must come hither to learn what intellectual liberty is . Your politicians may have freedom o f spirit , but your theologians have no freedom of mind * " How should the worshipers of creeds and of authority have freedom ? How should tlie advocates of an establishment built up by tyranny out of the wrecks of ignorance , dare research ? 1 attended several of the theological classes in tne Universities , and found from
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MF » BOWRING ON RELIGION IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY . To the Editor ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1828, page 150, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2558/page/6/
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