On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
will correct abuses so as to secure at once the welfare of the Churdh and the welfare of the People . The subterfuge was heard , misunderstood , allowed . The heads of the Church proceeded slowly in the promised reformation . Their tardiness was kindly overlooked , if not excused , on the ground of its
being the effect of a pious and filial regard to existing institutions . Something was , however , done , and that something has exhausted the patience of the nation ; for when it was found that in some cases the changes made doubled existing corruptions , introduced new abuses equal if not greater than those removed , and in no case went to the rootof the evil , but were mere palliatives of the disorder , and devised , not to rectify , but to purchase ,
by the least possible sacrifice , the postponement of the dreaded day of reformation ; that those who were by profession the ministers of purity , were in practice the sturdy upholders of civil as well as ecclesiastical abuses , cleaving , with genuine priest-like tenacity , to every form of corruption ; the more earnestly ,, the fouler the corruption ; and withstanding , not individually , but collectedly — not dubiously , but avowedly $ withstanding that measure and that government which a united nation regarded as their last
anchor in the storm ; then the whole nation , with its eyes at length unsealed , and its anger justly roused , gave utterance , by the tongue of a respected and truly noble advocate of its rights , to its outraged feelings , and warned our ecclesiastical corruptionists to set their house in order , with the manifest implication of the context , that unless they changed , not in pretext , but in reality , they should die and not live . To justify this warning , the Nation may be supposed to arraign the Church on the ground of its intellectual and moral inefficiency .
I have , it might say , given thee riches in abundance . I have appropriated to the supply of thy wants the tenth part of the annual produce of my lands . I have permitted thy coffers to be filled with th £ donations and bequests of many of my pious and charitable children . I have built thee houses throughout the land , and separated thereunto much of the fatness of the soil . I have multiplied for thee princely palaces and splendid halls .
The means of knowledge I have lavished on thee * Thy sons I have delighted to honour . I have raised them from mediocrity and indigence to rank with princes , and I have allowed them to share in the legislation by which I have been governed , and my destiny and happiness determined . My favours demand a suitable return . I have given that I might receive . I
have put out my substance to usury , that when I came and reckoned with my servant I might receive mine own with an increase of good . But the account thou hast to render of thy stewardship I cannot but condemn . I say nothing of the unequal distribution thou hast made of the wealth with which I entrusted thee— -how thou hast allowed the worthless and the idle
to live in princely opulence , and kept the worthy and the industrious on . the edge of starvation . I pass over the utter inefficiency of thy multiform and vaunted discipline , infringed with impunity by every one
Untitled Article
82 # The Question between the Nation and the Church .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1831, page 826, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2604/page/30/
-