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atmosphere of solitnde . Books were mute monitors of wisdom that could patiently wait for the moments of reflectiou , and teach when men were most disposed to learn : they awakened in the closet less of the pride of resistance than the voice of the living advocate might arouse within the church ; while their asperities injured less , their reasonings convinced
more . Truth , to be found , must be sought ; and the sincere seeker would more often apply to the recorded wisdom of books , than to the professional addresses of those whom he imagined to be interested partizans . Besides , a publication would go where the eloquence
of the most gifted reformer could never be heard : aud here , he trusted , would henceforth be a centre , a mighty heart , that would send forth through the great aorta of the press a life-stream of truth which should ramify to the remotest extremity of the religious system around , and revivify its wasting strength .
Rev . James Martineau proposed the following resolution : " That , while professing attachment to the principles of Unitarian Christianity , we prize yet more that privilege of free inquiry from the exercise of which they spring : regarding it as the noblest
prerogative of religious beings , we purpose , in our language and our conduct , fearlessly to use it for ourselves , and habitually to reverence it as the equal right of others ; to resist every open encroach - nient , and protest against all secret influence , which may interfere with this boon from the God of truth . "
In commenting on the resolution he observed , that the right of free inquiry , though a familiar topic of boasting since the aera of the Reformation , was not yet understood . There were passages in the statute-book , doctriues in popular creeds , and a predominant spirit in the religious world , inimical to its exercise . And as long as the profession of any honest opinions was associated with feelings of guilt or shame , as long as any of the
possible issues of investigation were threatened with evil consequences temporal or eternal , as long as the inquirer was made to feel that at every step of his progress the cold eye of suspicion was on him , and that the sincerity of the process would be estimated by the orthodoxy of the result , so long the rights of conscience did not receive a practical recognition . The very leaders of the Reformation , who first preferred the claim of freedom for the human mind , carried the long endeared habits of tyranny into their emancipated colony
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of Christianity ; and the gifted and powerful soul of Calvin was overshadowed by a dark act of ecclesiastical murder . The principle of free inquiry was not understood by the violent partizan of a system who could not distinguish between knowledge and opinion , —who mistook his own dogmatic confidence for the dictates of God's Spirit , and the stupid
inflexibility of his creed for the immutability of truth . Men of this kind were seldom very scrupulous in their use of means to promote their favourite cause . Instead of a friendly proffer of evidence , they often employed hostile acts of annoyance It was a mistake to suppose persecution extinct , when its hateful fires of death were extinguished , and its iron rod dropped from the hands of
public justice ; its form was changed , its implements of torture had been refined , but its presence still made itself felt ; its slumbering embers were yet awake in the bigot ' s heart ; its iron was still driven into the soul . The vocabulary of theological insult , the covert imputation , the charge of singularity , the sneer of derision , the affectation of pious horror , the Pharisaic avoidance whicli insulates
the heretic , and the thousand acts which render it unpleasant to profess the honest convictions of the mind , constitute a species of private persecution , often sufficiently malignant in its authors , and corroding to the peace of its victim ; to grace the records of the Inquisition .
The spirit of system not only interfered with the liberty of others by disposing men to petty persecution , but made slaves of its own friends , by impeding the full and free action of the mind , and constraining it into accordance with the ponderous evolutions of a sect . It effaced the delicate hues of individual
sentiments , and melted them down into the broad and vulgar glare of party-colour . It destroyed that individual energy of conscience on which all excellence of character was based , and sunk men into mere pa . ^ ive portions of the great
machine of social life , without any separate spring of motion when detached from the moving mass . He trusted that the Society now formed would afford a noble example of union without bigotry , and moderation without imbecility ; that , however attached to Unitarian
Christianity , it would so highly appreciate conscientious research as to prefer the errors of the inquiring , to the truths of the blind partizan . The principle of free inquiry was not understood by the lukewarm enemy to all controversy . The objections which had been stated against
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352 Intelligence . — Irish Unitarian Christian Society
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1830, page 352, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2584/page/64/
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