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When they are told of States where the spontaneous manifestations of group-life, non-conforming sects, workmen's associations, and ordinary social clubs, are driven underground and classed as dangerous secret societies, they should realize how precious a thing is that freedom of association which is one of the dearest attributes of English liberty.
My busy brain had now fit employment, politics and divinity; but was puzzled with which to begin. The table at which I wrote was richly strewed with invectives, now hurled at state profligacy, now thundered against the non-conforming crew. It was my determination to spare neither friend nor foe.
It is further to be noticed that the non-conforming sects and variants whose priesthood is here under discussion, vary among themselves in the degree of their conformity to the ideal scheme of sacerdotal life.
Parliament made the Church of England, and Parliament will unmake the Church of England. The Church of England is not the Church of the English. Its fate is sealed. It will soon become a sect, and all sects are fantastic. It will adopt new dogmas, or it will abjure old ones; any thing to distinguish it from the non-conforming herd in which, nevertheless, it will be its fate to merge.
White, a non-conforming minister at Dorchester, formed an association of several gentlemen, who had imbibed puritanical opinions, for the purpose of conducting a colony to the bay of Massachusetts, and rendering it an asylum for the persecuted of his own persuasion.
"Suppose we take that figure we know so well, the earnest and non-conforming Liberal of our Middle Classes, as his schools and his civilization have made him. He is for Disestablishment; he is for Temperance; he has an eye to his Wife's Sister; he is a member of his local caucus; he is learning to go up to Birmingham every year to the feast of Mr. Chamberlain. His inadequacy is but too visible."
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