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    ground . What an amazing stretch of charity , which contents itself with humbly doubting if a dissenting brother can have pure intentions ! The times indeed are changed . Firmness of principle is lost ; laxity pervades all ranks ; even Churchmen are not exempt from its baneful influence . Why , in the good olden time , Calvin or Athanasius would have damned the author right heartily at once , not only to future but to present burnings ! The

    Reviewer , afraid of incurring " the charge of latitudinananism , proceeds to mend his manners—and with what elegance of diction , what purity and propriety of allusion ! Shades of Longinus , Blair , and Campbell , why are ye not at hand to immortalize with merited eulogy the exquisite !} ' chaste and simply beautiful phraseology of our Episcopalian Reviewer ! "He has sadly

    soiled his reputation as a biblical critic by slipping into the mud of Socinian absurdity . " Now , my Dissenting brethren , now may you fully learn the extent of your loss in being excluded from our venerable halls of learning . In vain would you try to reach the height of this great excellence . None but a son of Isis or of Cam is capable of such beauties \ none can so admirably realize the simplex munditiis .

    Most of our readers are probably aware that a separation has taken place , in America , between a very considerable body of Quakers attached to the teachings of the venerable Elias Hicks , and those who term themselves Orthodox . An attempt has been made in this country to create the belief that Elias Hicks and bis followers are unbelievers . To this disgraceful object the Congregational Magazine has more than once lent itself . In the number for November last there are these words : 7 Not one Friend has been found in this country to

    avow his agreement in the sentiments , the infidel sentiments , as I need not hesitate to term them , of Elias Hicks . " Yet the writer convicts himself of falsehood in the very next sentence . " Your correspondent , a seeming exception , is , I suspect , no member of our society , " And why ? Because he has been " disowned for the profession of Socinian principles . " On the writer ' s own shewing , then , supposing his suspicion well founded that the correspondent and the " disowned" are the same , ( which is supposing in a rough and random manner , ) there is found one Friend to avow his

    agreement in the sentiments of Elias Hicks , and who for that avowal has been , we are told , " disowned . " Gentle reader , we reckon ourselves to be possessed of a most -excellent temper . Scarcely any thing can discompose us ; and on this ground , with all due humility , we commend ourselves to thee as good Watchmen . We carry a cudgel , it is true ; but the brawl has not yet happened in which we have been provoked to use it , and now that we are engaged in thy service , we find our meekness doubly strong . And , in sooth , we have manifold need of all the meekness we possess ; for at every corner of the street we are dubbed " Infidel . " On all sides our ears are saluted

    with these insulting sounds . From the mitred dignitary down to the starving curate the watch-word passes , and each , as he meets with an Unitarian , looks and wonders , and raises his eyes to heaven , and cries out , " Infidel . " And now , here is this grey-bearded and grey-coated , and verily , we doubt not , sleek and well-fed Quaker , —one who bears in his very name proofs of

    men ' s injustice , and admonitions to deal fairly by his fellows , —this Quaker echoes , and echoes without hesitation , the hue and cry which bigotry has raised , and which ignorance and bigotry support . Protestations we know it boots little to make , and we reserve them / or more worthy occasions . Nor shall this man of starch and parchment and oily visage excite our ire . He may have done it in ignorance , and those merit our indignation who , know-

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    263 The Watchman .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1829, page 268, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2571/page/44/