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

    would perhaps have kept pace with others in denunciation . But every man acts from his own conscience . There is no drilling among them . The individual judges for himself , and the consequence is , that there cannot prevail among them a blindness to the virtues of other Christians , or to the defects of their own

    body . When one of their number speaks or writes censoriously or bitterly of others , there is no secret compact to uphold him , and he meets the severest censure among his own friends . So far is this independence carried , that , when the most distinguished men of this body have thought fit to set forth , with strength

    and plainness , the absurdity and pernicious tendency of opposite doctrines , taking care to express at the same time their respect for the virtues of their opponents , they have still heard a murmur of disapprobation from their brethren" You wound the feelings of your fellowchristians . You wound the cause of

    peace . Let truth make its way silently , not by assault . " Such was the language of not a few . In truth , so strong were the principle of charity and the aversion to sectarianism , that there seemed to be growing up among us a party against party , a sect to suppress sects , an army to fight for peace .

    Having offered these remarks on the charitable and pacific dispositions of Unitarians , he proceeded to observe , that these very virtues , through misapprehension , might work evil as well as good , that they might encroach on Christian decision and frankness , that they might be made a shelter for timidity . Let men , he observed , cherish peace , but at the same time hold fast sincerity , and avow what they deem great truths . He feared that even good men might shrink from the conflict to which the times called

    them , and set down their inertness to the account of charity . He would have no spirit of warfare , but yet an entire fearlessness and frankness in expressing our deliberate convictions . He could state ouly two out of mauy grounds for this duty . In the first place , he thought that great firmness in bearing testimony to Unitarian Christianity was due to the cause of religious and intellectual freedom . With this cause Unitarianism was

    closely connected . It was a system hallowed and pervaded by the spirit of inquiry . Through this it had been restored after a long night to the world , and to this it was devoted . Other denominations had the name of religious freedom ; among Unitarians it was a reality . Most Pjeotestaut secta were aiming to perpetu-

    Untitled Article

    ate creeds framed in the darkness of the sixteenth century , if not in darker ages —to stop the human mind where it is , to arrest its upward and forward movements . Among Unitarians , there was a strong feeling of the imperfection of religious knowledge at the present time , an earnest desire for clearer light , a striving for wider and nobler views .

    Freedom and Progress were their watchwords . The spirit of the denomination is certainly a noble and liberal one . It imposes no shackles . Tt does not mock men with invitations to inquire , and then menace destruction , should inquiry lead them beyond the bounds of an established creed . It pleads for religious liberty , not because it sees this to be the interest

    of a minority , but because it reverences the human mind , and would quicken it to use its best powers on the greatest subjects , and because it reverences scripture , and cannot endure that human formularies should be substituted for the words of Christ . Unitarianism is eminently the asserter of Christian and intellectual liberty , and its friends should see in this noble feature a motive for openly espousing it ;

    There was another important view of the connexion between this doctrine and religious freedom , enforcing the same duty . The attempts to suppress Unitarianism are of a character which the friends of Christian and intellectual liberty must abhor , and ought to withstand . No doctrine , true or false , should be suppressed by tyrannical means—* by

    means which , if suffered to prosper , would war as effectually against the rights of free thought and free speech , as an inquisition . Such means unhappily are combined against Unitariauism . There is a coalition extending far and wide to put it down . A voice has gone

    from this city to distant parts of the country , assuring them that Unitariaaism must and should be put down , that men of property were ready to sacrifice it to this object , and that distant parts must in some way or other lend a helping haud . He believed that no political coalition was ever formed among ua of a more determined character than this

    religious one . He observed , that when he saw a conspiracy of immense extent , to put down an opinion by joint clamour , by joint wealth , by joint appeals to the passions of the ignorant , by exciting an odium which might prejudice the dearest interests of its advocates , by overwhelming them with a torrent of public scorn or indignation , he saw a despotic power growing up among us against the liberty

    Untitled Article

    734 Intelligence *—American Unitarian Association .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1829, page 734, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2577/page/62/