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    mit , as the only means of obtaining a legal marriage . They feel themselves compelled to protest against such ceremony for the following reasons : —

    " 1 st . Because , whilst admitting the civil institutions of the country , they deny the Scripture authority of the Church of England to decree rites and ceremonies ; much less to impose such on those who dissent from her community .

    " 2 dly . Because , whilst admitting the civil , they do not admit the spiritual authority of the minister by whom the marriage ceremony is performed ; believing the Jewish priesthood to have been superseded by Christianity , and none other to have been instituted by Christ .

    " 3 dly . Because they do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity , in the name of which the marriage ceremony is solemnized , this doctrine appearing to them , and being by the Christian church of which they are members , publicly

    represented to the world , both in writing and discourse , as'but one of the many lamentable corruptions of Christianity , alike repugnant to reason and contrary to Scripture . " ( Signed ) " W . WOODS , " S . HODGES . "

    This statement , printed as we have said in the Times and Chronicle , was also copied into the following papers —the Courier , the Morning Post , the Star , the Globe and Traveller , and

    the Ledger ; it appeared in several of the provincial journals , and even found its way into the French papers . None of the government prints in our own . country , ventured to censure the conduct of our friends , or to treat with levity the complaints of conscientious dissent from the Church—this task

    was reserved for a single journal , and that one claiming to advocate the interests of liberty and independence . The French papers , indeed , both ultra and liberal , united in condemning the intolerance evinced in England , in the above instance , to the scruples of con *

    science . Indeed , the report of the marriage and protest of our friends , was viewed by the French editors as matter of peculiar interest , touching the efforts then making-, by the advocates of priestly despotism in France ,

    to place marriage again in that country exclusively in the hands of the clergy , and to assimilate the enlightened law of France , upon this subject , to the oppressive principle of the English law : in a word , what the enlightened here are seeking to remove , the cor-

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    rupt in France are endeavouring to re * store . The Etoile , an ultra French paper , and consequently the advocate of the corrupt claims of the church with regard to marriage , inserted on the IOth December , the account of the marriage and protest of our friends

    at St . Stephen ' s , Coleraan Street * but * at the same time , condemned in the strongest manner the intolerant conduct of the minister in rejecting the protest of our friends , and his threatening to call in the civil force ; upon which concession the Courier Francais , a liberal paper , offered the next day the following spirited and appropriate animadversions : —

    " Thb Etoile exclaims against the English law , and it is a similar law whicli the Jesuits wish re-established in France . Among us it & wished that marriage and baptisms , under the pain of their being declared null , should be consecrated by the priests of the dominant religion ; Dissenters are to be forced , by a tyrannical law , to submit to forms and ceremonies

    not % n unison with their creed . It will not certainly be said , that the Catholic Church is more tolerant than the English Church ; it refuses the rites of sepulchre to an aged man suspected of Jansenism—the doors of the church are closed against an unbelieving sponsor ; and it is still asserted ,

    that if a law established among us uie same relation as in England , there would be no difficulty in the way of Dissenters from the Church , obtaining the nuptial benediction ; and that their protests , if they made any , would be viewed more tolerantly by the gens d'armes 9 than by

    the English constables . A wise laav now separates the civil attestation from tbc religious ceremony . This law , which cannot be altered without violating that part of the charter which proclaims liberty of conscience—allows the citizens to remain satisfied with the civil attestation ,

    or have recourse to the religious ceremony ; all consciences , therefore , may be satisfied ; all rights are guaranteed ; and those important acts of life are not exposed to scruples and caprices which ought not to be acknowledged by the law . As long as the religious ceremouy is not imposed by the lawthe priests will sliew

    , themselves tolerant , and intolerance becomes rare , awd less dangerous when it exists . It is this admirable order of things which the fanatics desire to

    destroy . And what will they substitute . An order of things which they themselves call tyrannicalyOdions , oppressive , unbearable , when established in countries uo Catholic . They condemn it in £ ttg (* nat

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    468 Controversy on a Marriage Protest of *• Fretthinking ChristiansJ 9

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1825, page 468, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2539/page/16/