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Untitled Article
itinerant preacher in illegal and unhallowed conventicles , who had formerly been an equally disappointed stage-actor or play-wright . Nor ought your feelingsāintemperate as they manifestly appearto be hurt at this supposition , seeing you had yourself induced the impression b y such a communication . It would have appeared , I repeat , equally characteristic and repulsive . Since I find ,
however , that you really are the person you represent yourself , and have long held the situation of a regular servant of the Established Church , I feel myself bound to reply to your address , as far as it admits of reply , and more especially to give you such instructions and exhortations as you evidently stand in need of , both for your spiritual well-being , and towards the better exercise of your serious calling .
I have said that your communication was unbecoming to your cloth and station in the Church , and reprehensible with reference to the state . One would have conceived , sir , that it was neither requisite or wise in a petitioner for a fresh curacy to cast opprobrious reflections upon the ordinations affecting those ministers of the gospel , who , under Divine Providence , are placed above him ; for
this indeed is verifying the scriptural proverb of * straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel . ' In the peaceful times of religion , when men thought no sacrifices and offerings could exceed their duty to God and his Church , to have ' prated against us with malicious words , ' would have been a sufficient heavy sin ; but in the present period of outrage and dissent , when the very props and
pillars of our most sacred ordinations and future hopes are threatened and endangered to the utmost , such licentious conduct becomes rank heresy to our faith , and a traitorous defalcation from the allegiance due to the holy ministers of the sacred cause of Christ . Do not forget that it is written , * The prating fool shall fall , ' and that ' the deeds that he doeth against us will be remembered /
That what you have written is unbecoming to your cloth , abundant examples may be adduced . Your very style and phraseology betray the unhallowed bent of your mind , and the favourite studies to which y ou have devoted yourself , instead of earnestly and humbly striving to render yourself apt and worthy for your proper functions . You manifest an utter want of all that grace which
leadeth to salvation , throughout your whole letter . How , then , should you be a fit minister to the soul of such as would be saved ? Your opinions on religion are manifestly lax and unorthodox , while your speculations touching the social arrangements > of church education and preferment , are such as might have proceeded from the
mouth of the scoffer and the disaffected . Surely the recollection that one of the royal brothers of a beloved and religious monarch had been duly placed as the head of the army , while the social policy of government had at the same time seen fit to endow him with the bishoprick of Osnaberg , ( thereby showing forth , to such as
Untitled Article
The Bishop ' s A riswef . 47 \
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1834, page 471, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2635/page/11/
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