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Untitled Article
or on the majority of signatures . The truth is , that they are the non-contents , the alarmists , who are in motion : and the contents scarcely ever think of moving , but in the capacity of counter-alarmists . JMeanwhile , if arithmetical deduction were to he made © f all the petitioners on both sides of the question , it would be found that the great body of the public , the great body
of the population , were in a state of rest— ( Cheers )—and they count with us , not with our opponents . ( Loud cheers . ) We have read of expressive silence ; and this is what their silence expresses . ( Cheers . ) There may have been a local effervescence here and there j but mainly and throughout the land , there is a general attitude of quiescence , perhaps the strongest demonstration that could be given of the reliance which the people of Scotland have on the wisdom and the safety of the measures now in agitation . **** ****** **
c < I am sensible of one advantage which our opponents have against us , and that is a certain command over the religious feelings of the population ; and yet I ain not aware of any public topic on which the popular and prevailing cry ever ran so counter as it does at present to the whole drift and spirit of Christianity . What other instruments do we read of in the New Testament for the defence and propagation of the Faith , but the Word of God , and the
Spirit of God ? How does the Apostle explain the principle of its triumphs in that age when truth was so mighty to the pulling down of strong holds ? It was because the weapons of his warfare were not carnal . He confined himself to the use of spiritual weapons , the only ones by which to assail the strong holds either of Popery or Paganism . ( Cheers . ) The kingdom of God , which is not of this world , refuses to be indebted for its advancement to
any other . Reason , and Scripture , and prayer—these compose , or ought to compose , the whole armoury of Protestantism ; and it is by these alone that the battles of the Faith can be successfully fought . ( Cheers . ) It is since the admission of intolerance , that unseemly associate , within our canap , that the cause of the Reformation has come down from its vantage ground ; and from the moment it wrested this engine from the hands of its adversaries , and began to wield and brandish it itself , from that moment it has been at a dead
stand . ( Applause . ) We want to be disencumbered of this weight , and to be restored thereby to our own free and proper energies . We want truth and force to be dissevered from each other—( Cheers )—the moral and spiritual to be no longer implicated with the grossly physical ; for never shall we prosper , and never shall we prevail in Ireland , till our cause be delivered from the outrage and the contamination of so unholy an alliance . ( Cheers . ) " It is not because I hold Popery to be innocent that I want the removal of these disabilities ; but because I hold , that if these were taken out of the way ,
she would be ten-fold more assailable . ( Cheers . ) It is not because I am indifferent to the good of Protestantism that I want to displace these artificial crutches from under her—( Laughter )—but because I want that , freed from every symptom of decrepitude and decay , she should stand forth in her own native strength , and make manifest to all men how firm a support she has on the goodness of her cause , and on the basis of her orderly and well-laid arguments . ( Loud cheers . ) It is because I count so much—and will any Protestant here present say that I count too much ? — on her Bible , and her Evidences , and the blessing of God upon her churches , and the force of her
resistless appeals to the conscience and the understandings of men ; it is because of her strength and sufficiency in these that I would disclaim the aids of the statute-book , and own no dependence or obligation whatever on a system of intolerance . ( Cheers . * ) These were enough for her in the days of her suffering , and should be more than enough for her in the days of her comparative safety . ( Loud cheers . ) It is not by our fears and our false alarms that we do honour to Protestantism . A far more befitting honour to the great cause is the homage of our confidence ; for what Sheridan said of the liberty of the press , admits of most emphatic application to this religion of truth and liberty . ' Give , ' says that great orator , ' give to Ministers a corrupt House
Untitled Article
The Catholic Relief Bill . 281
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1829, page 281, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2571/page/57/
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