On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
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.
-
-
Transcript
-
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.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
Saxon church , anxious , as he is , to find every where religious and moral excellence s and . to relieve his saints and heroes from the frailties which it would be much more strange to find them avoiding than practising j yet who does not feel that , taken in connexion with the times and the existing degree of popular refinement , the Christianity then introduced , elevated
and improved the condition of the tribes among whom it was diffused ; that , with all its abuses , it still was Christianity , and brought forth many of its noblest fruity ; that it raised the intellectual and social standard of the community , and laid the foundations of future excellence ? Try the question only by asking , what England would have been without such a religion ; what its learning , science , and arts would have been ; where lawless power would have met any check ; where the good man would have had his
retreat ; where the scholar his instruction and protection ; where the victim of oppression his city of refuge ;—and we may learn to pause a while before we consign Christianity and its professors , as Providence permitted it and them to exist for near a thousand years , to reprobation or contempt , for the gratification of the polemical feelings of those who are , after all , perhaps , only seeking to disgust us with one tyranny for the purpose of more quietly rivetting upon us the chains of another , less revoking , indeed , but equally opposed to the free exercise of the intellectual faculties *
In looking through Mr . Conybeare ' s pages , we have been naturally led to reflect upon the great share which the church has had in forming , or giving permanency to , the vernacular languages ;—rather a singular praise to belong peculiarly to a church whose leading reproach it now is , that it restrains the circulation of the Scriptures in those tongues , and maintains the exclusive use of a foreign language in its devotional exercises . Our
Bible Society is , in many instances , performing much the same sort of office as the missionaries of the church formerly did throughout Europe , in fixing and giving literary existence to languages which might otherwise have never had . any other than an oral existence . The recollection of the immense literary advantages which we have thus derived from the church , might , if no other reason existed , assuage a little of our present animosities ; at the
same time that the result may teach us a useful lesson both of the mischievous consequences of connecting religion with temporal interests , and of the redeeming influence which instruction and civilization are sure in the end to exercise in breaking the trammels which priestcraft is disposed to hang around the human mind . In its zeal for the conversion of the heathen tribes which spread over the distant parts of Europe , it became necessary for the church to overcome the difficulties which arose from its own
ignorance of the barbarous languages , and from corresponding ignorance on the part of the nations who were to be converted , of the tongue in which the church was accustomed to conduct its instructions and devotional exercises * The vulgar tongues , therefore , were necessarily cultivated by Christian mis * sionaries ; alphabets were in some cases to be adapted : written languages were formed ; and the mere fact of their so becoming was a great advantage gained , and one not likely to be lost . " Books , * as Dr . Johnson h * & observed , " are faithful repositories , which may be a while neglected or forgotten ; but when they are opened again , will again impart their instruction . Memory , once interrupted , is not to be recalled . Written language is a fixed luminary , which , after the cloud that had hidden it has passed away , is again brought in its proper station . Tradition is but a meteor , which , if once it falls , cannot be rekindled / ' But the obligation extended further than
Untitled Article
Remew .- ~ Cohyb € ar& * Anglo-Saxon Poeiry >< 313
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1828, page 313, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2560/page/25/
-