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No . XII . " Watchman , what of the night ? Watchman , what of the night ? The Watchman said , The morning corneth , and also the night . " Isaiah xxi . 11 , 12 . The exposure which from time to time has been made in the pages of the
Monthly Repository of the bigotry manifested , and the wicked arts practised , by portions of the Orthodox community , has , we have reason to believe , been attended with desirable results . The few , if not the many—the few , that is , in some instances , the guilty party—have seen our animadversions , and in a few cases have been shamed , in others , driven into a less offensive manner of speaking respecting Unitarians and their principles . What , however , is before all things to be desired is , that we could urge our defence before the tribunal at whose bar we have been and are accused . We have a
strong reliance on the good sense and love of justice which , as we think , pervade extensively the mass of the people , and had we but the opportunity of undeceiving their minds by a fair exposition of Unitarian principles , and a simple exposure of the injuries to which the worshipers of the one God are continually subjected , we should , we doubt not , within a comparatively short period , make so favourable an impression on the many , as to compel the few considerably to abate , if not altogether to abandon , the bitterness of their invective , and the recklessness of their misrepresentation . Actuated by these sentiments , the Watchman has , in several instances , recently solicited a
hearing in periodical works in . which Unitarians have been injuriously treated . The statement of the result of his application , in one instance , will form the basis of some strictures on charges of no trifling magnitude preferred against Unitarian Christians by the Congregational Magazine . . This work , it may be proper to premise , is the avowed organ of the Independent or Calvinistic body , and numbers among its contributors many persons of considerable influence and great mental and moral excellence . Possessing also an extensive circulation—a circulation by no means limited to England , it affects materially the apprehensions of thousands on religious subjects , and exercises an influence no less fearful when bad , than gratifying when good .
In the number for December last , there occurred the following words : " And whether some recent acts of persecution have not fixed indelible disgrace upon the enlightened Unitarians of the nineteenth century . " In consequence a letter was sent to the Editor , the insertion of which was solicited , begging an explanation of the language used , a distinct mention of the parties referred to , and urging the impropriety of allowing a charge to attach to a whole body of Christians which , as it was presumed , was true only of a part . The Editor in his notice to correspondents replied , that the writer referred to the Cantons of Switzerland , and declined inserting the letter , because he " did not wish to open his pages for a series of controversial
papers . * ' This fear of controversy comes with a bad grace from a sect of so disputatious a spirit as history tells us Calvinists have been ; from a sect who , at the very moment the Editor wrote this notice , had published , under the sanction of their leading men , a tract recommending " free inquiry" in matters of religion . But where could be the Editor ' s sense of justice when he rejected the letter ? If he allows the writers under his direction to fix upon a whole body an imputation which he knows and acknowledges to appertain only to a lew ; that is , to traduce thousands of individuals ; is he at
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THE WATCHMAN .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1830, page 173, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2582/page/29/
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