On this page

• Text (1)

  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.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• 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

    1 ( dissent ) has no security whatever for the permanency or consistency of its own doctrines or discipline , even from year to year . It is well known , that , in many parts of the kingdom , places of worship , which were endowed , more than a century ago , with a competent provision for ministers , who should preach the doctrines commonly known bv the name of Calvinistic , have now , with hut few exceptions , been converted into schoois of Unitarian or Deiatical opinions . * ( p . 34 . )

    We know of but one place of worship , and that was a recent and unendowed building , having become a school of € Deistical opinions . ' That was made so by the well-known Robert Taylor , who probably is now , and who certainly was then , a clergyman of the Church of England . Of no sect but the Established sect , and of that only because it was established , could that individual have retained his memberships still less his ministerial character , under such circumstances . The existing * schools of Unitarian opinions ' are either of Unitarian erection or of Presbyterian origin . The Presbyterian holders of the chapels have passed over from Trinitarianism to

    Unitarianism , retaining ( as was natural , during a gradual and almost imperceptible progress ) the buildings which their forefathers erected and endowed . It is not true that those chapels were ' endowed with a competent provision for ministers , who should preach the doctrines commonly known by the name of Calxinistic * Many of those endowments were founded by Unitarians , or other heretics , whom the law would not allow to

    endow their own opinions ; and who , therefore , endowed what ffas better , —freedom of opinion . Most of the remainder are equally unrestricted as to faith . If there be a few , in which the trust deeds specify the tenets to be taught , and those tenets Calvinistic , they are very few iudeed ; probably not half a score in the whole kingdom ; and they assured ) " ought not to be retained anv loncrer than until the pro ^ iaimants be legally

    indicated . So that this solitary case , when the facts are rescued from the Bishop ' s mystification , still shows their superiority of dissent in preserving that which it was intended to preserve , whether of faith , which is the general rule , or of freedom , which is Ae exception . After laying down a broad and universal proposition , his proof turns out to be a single case , unfairly chosen and unfairly stated , and evaporating as soon as it is explained .

    But we have uniformly protested against Ecclesiastical Reform Wing made a question between Dissenters and Churchmen . It ^ a great national question in which Churchman and Dissenter are alike interested . It is a question of the comparative utijity of the way in which an immense amount of public property 13 applied , and the way in which it might be applied . The ri ght settlement ot that question would remove all the Dissenting grievances ; but what the Dissenters have , some of them , been educed to call their ' practical grievances' might be removed

    Untitled Article

    Defence of the Church Establishment . 2 & 1

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 261, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/29/