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Untitled Article
miserably perverted ? Neither inspiring holiness , nor infusing peace , its influence on the active powers is purely paralytic , and on the passive , torture . There is no charm in devotional anguish , more than in any other , which should make it a thing to be desired ; and self-persecution without reformation , —tears wrung , not from the conscience , but from the creed , are only new items in the account of human misery . It was not , then , till the
reverential feelings towards the object of faith which those struggles implied , were transplanted into a brighter system , —not till they took their place in a religion of duty instead of dogma , —not till they changed their character from tormentors to motives—from abjectness to love , —that they brought with them any blessing to the mind . Calvinism , like the magicians of Egypt , could poison and taint the salubrious stream ; true religion , like the prophet ' s rod , could alone convert the current of blood into the waters of
fertility . The next important circumstance of his life was his conversion ; an event which , from its permanent influence on his external relations and his internal habits , forms the most momentous change in his personal history ; and , from its vast , and still increasing effect on the state of opinion in this country , marks an
era in the annals of our national Christianity . It was brought about by the same qualities of mind which had sunk him in the agonizing humiliation of orthodoxy—we mean his plain-dealing with Jhimself . It is not to the presumptuous , but to the humble , not to the self-ignorant , but to the clear-minded , student of their own nature , that the shade of Calvinism , like that of the fabled
Upas tree , proves itself , instead of a sheltering influence , a sickening and a deadly blight . Had Dr . Priestley exercised more selfadulation and less perspicacity in his dealings with his own rnind , he might have emerged from his gloomy terrors , into the comfortable persuasion of his own saintship ; but the same sincerity which prevented his confounding the operations of his own thoughts with the agency of the Holy Spirit , prevented him also
from mistaking the prepossessions of education for the fulness of evidence . There never was a movement of opinion more purely characteristic than that of Dr . Priestley . It was performed exclusively by the natural gravitation of his own faculties , with the least possible share of impulse from external causes . It was his * call ; ' and we wish that every call which orthodoxy records , were as simply a transaction between God and the believer ' s own
mind : it "was his ' new creation , ' the brooding of God ' s spirit , i . e . his own intelligence and conscience , over the chaos of a rude creed , and bidding light to struggle through the mass , and the elements to fall into a fairer order . That the change was progressive , extending over sixteen years , not only assimilates it to all that is good in God ' s providence , but indicates its independent character . The opinions which he ultimately embraced
Untitled Article
On the Life , Character ' , and IForks of Dr . Priestley . 25
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1833, page 25, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2606/page/25/
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