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    But there may be a tyranny , where ther ' e is ho visible tyranny . Men may be enslaved by the use that is made of their fears , prejudices , and superstitions . The conscience may be shackled , while the body is free . Men maywear their fetters in their souk . And that it has not bden so with the people of New England , has been owing not a little to the popular and independent cast of our religious i nstitutions . '

    We do not pretend , that our fathers were free from the errors and the bigotry common to their times ; but there is one thing in which they difr fered from all their contemporaries , and which entitles them to the gratitude and veneration of their posterity . Though they had their errors and their bigotry , they did not seek to entail them on their descendants , by incorporating them into formularies and creeds that were to be of perpetual

    obligation . They left their views of religion , such as they were ; but they left them without any obstacle to their correction and amendment , whenever this should become necessary to accommodate theifc to-the progressive illumirialiori of the' human mind . . It is remarkable of liberal Christianity in New England , that it is almost entirely of domestic growth . It was not brought here ; it has grown up spontaneously . Intelligent and thinking men all over the country , without any concert , and with nothing but the Bible for their guide , have been led to adopt liberal views , in some instances , without being aware at the time

    that there were any other persons in the world holding a similar faith . Nay I believe it to be undeniable , that wherever all artificial obstructions to free inquiry are removed , liberal Christianity will spring up spontaneously . Its friends certainly think so ; and that its enemies think so too , is proved by the fact of their resorting to these artificial obstructions , avowedly as their only security against its further arid universal spread . To account , therefore , for the greater progress which liberal Christianity has made in New England than elsewhere , it is only necessary to consider , ' what all will concede , that there is no other place in the world where so few artificial

    obstructions exist to the . progress of truth . I have room to consio ' er but one other cause which has contributed to make the progress of liberal Christianity more rapid and more observable in New England , than elsewhere . It is to be found in the interest taken by the people generally , and especially by the thinking and intelligent part of the community , in theological discussions . Unhappily , in most other places ' the reading and influential classes bestow

    but little attention on religious inquiries ; either from indifference to the whole subject , or from disgust at the forms tinder which they commonly hear it presented , or . from an impression that these are matters to be left to the clergy for them to manage . But in New England it has always been different . From the beginning , we find the governors ^ judges and counsellors mingling with their ministers , and supporting With great ability their own views on points of doctrine and discipline . This , of course , has had

    the effect to elevate the . standard of thought and conversation on religious subjects ; and this again has stimulated the clergy to greater efforts , that they might bring their preaching up to this standard : so that two good influences have been exerted , and these , also , of a kind to act and react perpetually on one another . As a general rule , the preaching in any place will be what public sentiment demands , and never much above what public

    sentiment demands . There is , also , another effect which the interest taken by the laity in

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    Prigress of Liberal Christianity in New England . 305

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    VOL . II . Z

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1828, page 305, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2560/page/17/