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Untitled Article
may be supposed capable of reaching by such a course , and the damage and mischief that may be likely from thence to accrue ; together with . a just comparison of the degree of likelihood and probability there may be , of the good on the one hand , and the mischief on the other . —For there are two things that are most indubitably certain : viz . that neither is a great mischief to be hazarded for the sake of a small benefit ; nor is a probable , much less a certain public damage to be incurred for the sake of a private , or uncertain
public advantage . —Whosoever thwarts either of these principles , seems directly to run the hazard of dishonouring that God to whose service he ought to be entirely devoted ; and of disturbing the peace of his own mind , upon reflection . ' .... 'In short , then , though I cannot say but it might be a possible thing for a man to take the course here proposed , and not be justly chargeable with doing evil that good might come ; yet , as circumstances at present stand with us , I cannot forbear apprehending that he would do more harm than good . And it is my settled judgment that such a gentleman would
better maintain his own reputation , and more effectually secure bis general usefulness ; and particularly be more capable of serving the cause of charity among us , by a continued open adherence to his professed principle , and public acting according to it , than by a politic compliance with such as lay nothing less to heart than religion . —I humbly coneeive that all men that have any sense of honour , will more value so steady a gentleman , than one
whom they can be able to influence to serve a turn ; and that such a gentleman , if he upon all occasions publicly owns the charitable bottom he goes upon , will be likely to have more peace in his own spirit in his last hours , than if by a seeming to fall in with the schemes of politicians ( though upon vbews quite different from theirs ) he involves himself in difficulties by which it is so easy to be ensnared , and so hard a thing to avoid it / " —Vol . TI . p . 56 .
After many fears of ' * being ensnared , " and divers consultations how " to avoid it , " a great number of persons , who held office , were content to absent themselves from conventicles for seven years , and to practise only that restrained way of worship which the law allowed . In consequence of the death of Queen Anne , on the very day when the Schism Act was to have come into operation , the Dissenters were spared the infliction of its insults and injuries . It became at once almost a dead letter , till its formal repeal , 5 George I . It proved , after all , an evil of less magnitude to the Nonconformists than their own breaches of harmony—than the
terrible out-pouring of each other ' s wrath , on occasion of the meddling spirit of some who endeavoured to impose a sort of test , in relation to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity , as to which the body of the Dissenters were ( " unkindly and without any just ground , " says Dr . Calamy ) represented as wavering aud unsettled . It is not our intention to go into the particulars of a quarrel which took place a hundred and ten years ago ; nor should we have adverted to it at all , but for the clear proof which it affords of the evil and danger of interfering with men ' s convictions so far as to endeavour to bring them all to the same standard .
Here we see a large body of men , eminent for their piety to God and services to man , united in the highest objects of pursuit , and more closely drawn together than any class can be which has not been exposed to common injuries and suffering—a body , whose one bond of union was their resistance to the imposition of human authority , splitting their forces , and endangering their existence as a party , by proposing impositions of the very same kind with those against which they had struggled so long , and in the resistance to which they had made such various and painful sacrifices . Tbis is but another page in tbe record of human inconsistencies ; but it is too instructive to be passed over unnoticed .
Untitled Article
96 Calamus Life .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1830, page 96, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2581/page/24/
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