The scripture is not one summary of
doctrine regularly digested, in which a man cannot mistake his way; it
is a most venerable but multivarious collection of the records of divine
economy; a collection of an infinite variety of cosmogony, theology,
history, prophecy, psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legislation,
ethics, carried through different books by different authors at
different ages, for different ends and purposes. It is necessary to sort
out what is intended for example, what only as narrative, what to be
understood literally, what figuratively--where one precept is to be
controlled and modified by another--what is used directly and what only
as an argument _ad hominem_--what is temporary and what of perpetual
obligation--what appropriated to our state, and to one set of men, and
what the general duty of all Christians. If we do not get some security
for this, we not only permit, but we actually pay for, all the dangerous
fanaticism which can be produced to corrupt our people and to derange
the public worship of the country." Lord North said that he hoped to
have seen nothing in the petition to prevent him from recommending that
it should be laid on the table. He, however, saw that it was repugnant
to the act of union, and that if such indulgences were allowed, there
would then be nothing to exclude a man from the church of England
but popery. Any innovations in the forms prescribed, he added, would
occasion such contentions in the nation, that neither poppy nor
mandragora could restore it to its former repose.
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