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pastoral letter describing arwl deeply lamenting the degradation of the clergy . In number , they are inadequate to the duties of the church . Candidates for the priesthood are taken chiefly from the lower ranks . Their education is said to be very defective . And from these and other causes the clergy are extremely law in public estimation . \
The complaints af the prevalence of infidelity in France were at one time thought in England to be a mere political manoeuvre ; but it appears by the event that they were scarcely overcharged . A generation has grown up without religion . The churches are thinly attended , and chiefly by women and children . Nothing is more common in society than a joke
upon the rites of the church . It is said , however , that a large proportion of intelligent men , who are masters of families , and approaching to middle age , are wearied with scepticism , and for the sake especially of their . chUr dren are strongly dissatisfied with the state of religious destitution in which they find themselves . They cannot return to the dogmas and practices of the Roman Catholic Church ; they abhor the domination of the priesthood , ; and at the same time they see nothing alluring or satisfactory in Prptes ^ tantism , as \ t is professed in France . Some of these have lately turned their attention to Unitarianism , with which they have become acquainted through the medium of English and American publications , and are dls ^*
posed to try the experiment of translations and abridgements of somej > £ tfeese ih their own language . Others meditate further schemes , and ccSi ? - teinplate the establishment of a sect of Catholic Unitarians * It is a fact ,,. at once curious and encouraging , that many individuals and several Uvipts of persons have indulged these designs and hopes without concert , and eyetK without a suspicion of each other ' s wishes . The schemes referred to m&y { in some cases have been suggested , and in others may have been strengthened , by political feelings and speculations ; but it will appear , as the writer believes , whenever the attempt of religious reformation shall be seriously
hiade in France , that many of the best minds of that country are swayed iri their desire of a rational religion by a pure regard to truth , and to the riioral welfare of their fellow-creatures . It maybe added , that the larger pbrtion of the press is favourable to a new and further religious reformation , aiid that the Charter is interpreted as providing toleration for any form of Christian faith and worship .
In the restlessness of spirit which prevails in the French metropolis , some able men have attempted to find relief and comfort in the doctrine and forms of Tbeophilanthropism . * The effort to revive this sect is still continued , but with little success ; for its history is associated in the public mind with revolutionary times , which the benevolent and the prudent equally
* The sect of Theophilanthropists was founded , or rather attempted to be founded , by La ReVeillere Lepaux , one of the Five Directors . The object was to raise a religion without Revelation . Mignet , in his ft History of the French Revolution , " in the English translation , published at Paris , in 1828 , says ( p . 378 ) of La Re * veill £ re , as one of the Directory , that , " entrusted with the moral part of government , he was desirous of introducing , under the name of Theop ? dlanthropic , a , form of DeisticaL wprship , which the Committee of Public Safety had ineffectually attempted to
establish by the Festival of the Supreme Being : He provided temples for it , hymns , formulas , and a sort of liturgy ; but such a creed could not long continue general , it could only be individual . The Theophilajithropists became the objects of ridicule ; for their worship opposed both the opinions of the Catholics and the ipn belief of the Revolutionists . Thus , in the transition from public institutions to individual creeds , liberty was converted into civilization , and worship into opiniou . The Deists remained , but the Theophilanthropists were no more . "
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Religious State and Prospects of France . 779
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1829, page 779, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2578/page/35/
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