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Untitled Article
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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.
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Untitled Article
seriously do we think that discreet differs essentially from fair reading , and that the doctrines of that church cannot be too well founded , of which the friends deprecate inquiry , and hold a confidence in their validity similar to the courage of that doughty knight who feelingly declared that . ** the better part of valour is discretion . " ^ ¦
Quos Deus vult perdere , prius dementat : that is to say , whom the Deity determines to destroy he first deprives of reason . An illustration of this has lately taken place in Yorkshire . The incumbent of a chapel in a parish , named Meltham , near Huddersfield , having recently died , the parishioners , who state themselves , as having built and endowed the chapel , to be the sole possessors of the patronage , nominated to the cure Mr . Keen , who has been curate to the former minister seven
years , and is very acceptable to the parishioners . A rival claimant , however , presents himself in the person of Mr . Jones , vicar of Almondbury , and , to judge by his proceedings , is determined , at whatever cost , to possess himself of the chapel and its emoluments . Mr . Jones maintains that he has the right of presentation , and has accordingly presented himself with the living . To enforce this disposal of the cure , he , in the presence of 5000 people who had assembled expecting a fracas , and attended by a large
number of special constables , made , on Sunday , May 3 , not without considerable effort , rendered necessary by the precautions of his opponents , a forcible entry into the body of the church . So great was the rush on the doors being broken open , that the building itself was in no small peril . All impediments , however , were not yet overcome . Oa entering the chapel the vicar made for the pulpit—but , alas t that had been preoccupied by his rival , and so well defended was the access to it , that his efforts to gain possession were fruitless . After some time the vicar retired and left the nominee of the
parishioners to perform , we doubt not to much edification of the people , the services of holy mother church . A similar scene of indecent outrage took place on the following Saturday , when Mr . Jones again endeavoured to obtain possession of the chapel , by attempting to perform the burial-service over a woman who had been kept several days in order to give this worthy servant of Christ another opportunity of trying his strength . This effort was , however , equally bootless with the former , and after much commotion and
violence , Mr . Jones and his legal assistant were obliged to retire from the town , greatly hooted by the multitude . One would think that if there was no bishop , no archdeacon—none , in a word , of the long and expensive array of ecclesiastical dignitaries , scarcely could religion be more disgraced than in such scenes as that now recorded . Dissenters are not possessed of so many dignified overseers , and yet we rather think the affairs of their places of worship are managed at least as well as are those of the Church : and if Churchmen wish to make men feel as well as think that the higher
dignitaries of the establishment are , to a great extent , nothing more than sinecurists , and that but too many of its humbler servants are lovers chiefly , if not exclusively , of the loaves and fishes it has to bestow , they cannot do better than enact such scenes as that which has lately scandalized the county of Yorkshire . We ourselves happen to know of a township in a neighbouring county in which , through a similar contest to that above stated , Dissent has obtained a most decided predominance over the Church . The inefficiency of Church management and discipline is seen in a thousand things , and except an adequate remedy be applied , it will soon be said , not the Church is in .
Untitled Article
The Watchman . " 657
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1829, page 657, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2576/page/57/
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