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40 A Defence of Established Protestant Faith .
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Church qf St . Mary ^ Newington Butts , SilrryOcI . If } , 1806 , btivg the Sunday Jolfoiv ing the Interment of the lute Right Rtv * the Lord Bishop of St . Asapk ; 'with an Appendix , ccntain ing a Sketch of the life of the Bishop . By Robert Dickinson , Curate and JLecturcr . Fourth Edition . Rtvingtons . * 806 . 8 vo . pp . 34 . 2 s .
Dr . Horsley was originally curate , and then lecturer of New ingtoik Butts , and is interred in Newingtoti Church . It was therefore natural enough that Mr . Dickinson should have preached a funeral sermon for this unquestionably learned and distinguished prelate ; but we wonder much that any real friends either
to Mr . Dickinson or to Bishop Horsley , should have countenanced its publication , and much more that it should have come to a fourth edition . The bishop deserved an abler panegyrist ; the church of England is capable of a . better defence . From the Epistle of Jude , v , 3 , the curate endeavours to shew ,
44 First , what the faith is which was delivered unto the saints . Secondly , the necessity of our contending for it . And ^ thirdly , the manner in which wti ou ^ ht to can tend . " Zj The Christian faitli is , according to the preacher , the Protes tant faith , and the Protestant faith is the exact faith of the ^ church of England . " The Presbyterians of Scotland , and the Lutherans of Germany , have , it seems , no claim to the character of Protestants . The faith of the church of
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England is to be zeal an sly de # fended , because Dr ^ Priestley , " the prince of heretics /* by his own dreadful confession , artfully laid some time ago , a train of gun-powder to blow up the church , and to destroy its royal defender and the civil constitu - tion . ' * We really thought this contemptible cant , or rather this inflammatory , mob-adapted style of haranguing , had been thoroughly exploded from oijr pulpits .
Tl ) e mode of church defence is to be copied from the plan of 44 the renowned Bishop of Asaph / 5 in his contest with the fierce Li abetter of Unitarian * ism , " namely , Dr . Priestley , who attempted , like a vulture * , to tear away u the very vitals of Christianity , " but was driven off from the savage attempt by the eagleeyed and eagl ^ -taloned Horsley .
Of the bishop the orator remarks , that u his life may be said to have been a life of labonir and of love ; " and to induce his auditory , " to dry up every tear of affliction , " on account oi his loss , he exhorts them to " contemplate him on a seat in Heaven , where he wsll have a view of that blessed and divine Saviour , the Word or Son of God , in whose cause he enlisted . "
Tins discourse is an amusing instance of the alarm which a certain class of ministers of the church have taken at the late visible iucrea . se of Unitarians . The author displays a ludicrous ignorance , however , of the hi en whom he so sincerely dreads ; describing them as 4 < i forming one class , consisting of Arians , Socinikns , IikJUjpeudcots , aud the like . " lie ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1807, page 40, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2376/page/40/
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