Advice is administered by the essayist to the Church of which he is a
clergyman, in this language: "A national church may also find itself in
this position; which, perhaps, is our own. Its ministers may become
isolated between two other parties,--between those, on the one hand, who
draw fanatical inferences from formularies and principles which they
themselves are not able or are unwilling to repudiate; and on the other,
those who have been tempted, in impatience of old fetters, to follow
free thought heedlessly wherever it may lead them. If our own churchmen
expect to discourage and repress a fanatical Christianity without a
frank appeal to reason, and a frank criticism of Scripture, they will
find themselves without any effectual arms for that combat; or if they
attempt to check inquiry by the repetition of old forms and
denunciations, they will be equally powerless, and run the especial risk
of turning into bitterness the sincerity of those who should be their
best allies, as friends of truth. They should avail themselves of the
aid of all reasonable persons for enlightening the fanatical
religionist, making no reserve of any seemingly harmless or apparently
serviceable superstitions of their own.
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