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The old puritan character must , notwithstanding all its repulsive qualities , ever command respect for its consistency . It was at unity in itself and with its position . Indeed its very sternness and sourness are not to be quarrelled with ; for they belong to the principles on which it was formed and the work which it had
to accomplish . Its mission was one of antagonism . Puritanism with its austerity was the countercheck to despotism with its licentiousness . Great were the errors on both sides , but , generally speaking , the Puritan was of a nobler nature than the Cavalier ; he lived for loftier purposes ; and his exertions led to more useful consequences . He denied himself ; he resisted oppression ; he believed in God and futurity . He might have
been a tyrant , but he was a patriot . He might have been a persecutor , but he was a martyr . We have had little else but 'double-minded' men in England since the days of the Puritans . They were the last great class that lived for a single and public object . To make the English nation the p illar of the true
Protestant faitlv , was the hope in which they lived , moved , and had their being . That they contended for political freedom was an accident . Of religious liberty they had no conception . Toleration they held in abomination . Whether Episcopalian or Presbyterian , they deemed that God ' s curse would be on the
magistrate for using his authority against their own true religion , and that his blessing would be on the sword drawn in its cause , lo the putting down of heresies and heretics they had no objection ; they affirmed it to be the duty of the civil power ; but they were infallibly convinced that theirs was the orthodoxy * hich that power was bound to enforce . That this country was
uot reduced to the condition of a proper monarchy is mainly to w ascribed to the resistance of a class of men whose thoughts , Mings , and actions were all pervaded by the determination to make England substantially what the Scotch called a ' covena nted people . ' They did not accomplish their purpose ; but
"ley foiled that of the Stuarts . The end of their being was answered , and they withered away . The race is extinct . Not Ouly have they no legitimate representatives , but none have arisen like unto them for single-mindedness . All our great Parties , political and religious , nave flaws in their composition . * the devotion of Tories , pocket shares the homage with prero-
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A Fragment on Modern Puritanism . 609
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pretend to be what they are not , and to accomplish what they do not even attempt . And the fall of the Church willjbe the downfal of the English aristocracy , as depositaries of political power . When all the privileged orders insist upon embarking in the same vessel , all must naturally expect to perish in the same wreck .
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A FRAGMENT ON MODERN PURITANISM .
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A .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1834, page 609, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2637/page/5/
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