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Untitled Article
that many great men , whose names we have from childhood learned to revere , have given their important sanction to the system which we feel it to be our duty to oppose . "—Pp . 11 , 12 J The first chapter is merely introductory ; and traces the history of the celebrated cry of " the Church is in danger , " from the Reformation down to the present day .
Through every generation that cry has been raised . He argues , and we think justly , that those by whom it has been reiterated * have evinced the want of that confidence in their system which truth invariably inspires . " The alarm in a political point of view has been altogether needless . It is true that the Church was once overturned , but it was overturned in consequence of its close alliance with temporal despotism , of the folly and
severity of the very means which were taken to uphold its authority , and of that violent reaction which the extreme of oppression and tyranny seldom fails to produce . Generally speaking , it has the highest degree of external security and protection which can be possessed by any of the institutions which exist in our country . " The establishment has not only been , guarded by the vigilance of powerful monarchs , but by far the greater
portion of the influence and aristocracy of the country ; a portion of its own clergy has been admitted to a voice in the legislative assembly ; it has been protected by penal statutes which have given its members special privileges and immunities ; it has been supported by a levy upon the people , which time has formed into an immense and superabundant revenue ; and
in addition to all this , it has been incorporated into the political constitution of the empire by its supreme government being placed in the sovereign . " It is evidently not from parties , but from principles , that an institution so fortified can have any thing to apprehend . It holds a bond of fate , unless it puts itself into hostility with the progress of knowledge . Its faith must cease to express the opinions , and its forms to affect the feelings ,
and its ministers to deserve the respect , of the people at large , before any earthly power can make it totter . Here is the only danger to which the Church has been or can be exposed : and this is a danger against which tithes , titles , and acts of parliament are utterly unavailing . If the alarmists had sagacity enough to discern this peril , they ought to have looked in another direction for security . It could only be increased by the kind of aid
which they invoked . But they probably looked only to their immediate interests , or cherished the vain expectation of permanently arresting the advance of knowledge , and the expression of opinion . Their fancied safeguards become weak exactly in proportion to the increase of the real peri ) . The Church is in danger : for it ceases to exhibit the spirit of the religion of the _ British nation . The second chapter argues that the Church Establishment is founded in error from a disclosure , of its origin and progresg . The history of the ajli *
Untitled Article
518 The Church Establishment founded in Error .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1831, page 518, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2600/page/14/
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