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Untitled Article
innately and securely interwoven with what was denominated Uu £ » the numbers saw , with stupid vacancy , or with unthinking admiration , the ' liberty of the subject' emblazoned on their bearings . Their boasted charter partook more of the nature of a patent of nobility , than of a popular defence . Yet so omnipotent have names ever been found with the multitude , that it was not until four centuries after the establishment of that charter , that the * people discovered that they had been cheated by a shadow in the name of a reality .
The pampered and greedy selfishness of Henry the Eighth , intent only on the gratification of his degraded passions * was the cause of the overthrow of the Catholic faith as a state form , and thereby of the commencement of an important revolution in the habits and education of the English people . In abandoning their ancient worship , they also dared to question the authority for the doctrine of passive submission which matfked the whole band of
the ministers of the court of Rome . Not but that every religion * suffering under the baneful influence of union with the state , will almost necessarily hold the same tone ; it has always been so * whatever the faith protected , but that fact was not yet felt * Luther , and his brother reformers of the church , were amply disposed to reform the state also , could they have found the power ; and , as in the case of all new institutions , the first apostles of
Protestantism sought popularity by a show of moderation True , both Henry and his successors attempted , and often with some success , to unite the old awe of the spiritual , with that of their temporal authority , but it never again bound the minds of men in that entire and willing thraldom which it had done . The sacred * ness of mystery was gone . Men had been reared in belief of the immutability of that spiritual power , and of its superiority to all
kings , princes , and powers ; and when the insolent tyrant dared , unpunished , to question its tenets , supplant its authority , and appropriate its wealth , the charm of habitual reverence , while it left the church , was not transferred to the throne . There sprung up in its place the small beginnings of those habits of inquiry , which , step by step , have led , in our time , to universal doubt . This doubt even , we think to be promising of good—to be a transition to
purified belief . To construct a stable foundation we must first clear the ground . It is not less needful in moral than in mental progression that analysis should precede synthesis . And the wisest and loftiest . of our time see cause for hope in its signs . But the first effect of men's change of faith was to leave them more free for the consideration of their political condition . The quick tact of Elizabeth saw the bent of the popular mind : with consummate skill and energy she discerned the points on which she must inevitably yield ; she made her concessions before the people had become aware of their power : so that they received from her as acts of grace , what ohe only had the foresight to see
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1832, page 445, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1816/page/13/
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