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THE

FREETHINKING

CHRISTIANS'

QUARTERLY REGISTER.

VOL. I.

"For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth."-PAUL.

LONDON:

II. HETHERINGTON, PRINTER, 13, KINGSGATE STREET, HOLBORN;
PUBLISHED BY SHERWOOD, JONES, & CO.

PATERNOSTER ROW.

WE look back, on the completion of this, our first volume, to what we. had proposed to ourselves when we undertook this work-to the extent to which we have, as yet, been enabled to fulfil our intentions, and the degree of success which has, hitherto, attended our labours; and we avail ourselves of this opportunity to lay a brief statement of each of these before our readers. For our object then-it has not been to add to the number of light and entertaining miscellanies, which profess to combine, incidentally, some degree of instruction, with mere amusement, or which, at best, propose to promote Christianity, by a species of pious small talk and religious affectation. Believers in revelation, but entertaining what, in the present times, are peculiar views with regard both to its doctrines and to the discipline of "the church of God”—we have felt it as a matter of religious duty that we should, in addition to our public teaching, communicate to the world, by means of the press, what appeared to us important and valuable truths. To this end, too, we were frequently and pressingly invited by others... We have written therefore, and published under the persuasion, that there were miuds to which serious, and even laborious, inquiries into important doctrines and enlightened principles, would prove interesting and acceptable. With regard to the contents of the present volume; in the course of a Review of the Religious, and of the Political World, and incidentally in an essay on Religious Persecution, and other articles, we have found occasion to notice the present state of the system falsely called Christian, both in foreign states and in our own country. In the former, we have remarked the increasing domination of superstition, priestcraft, and spiritual tyranny. In our own country we have noticed the character, the principles, and the ritual of the establishment on the one hand, and the pretensions, the encroachments, and the general proceedings of the dissenting parties, on the other, The Unitarian body has, in the course of two articles, called for our particular remark, chiefly in connection with a charge brought against their teachers and leaders-that of shrinking from inquiry into certain of their doctrines and practices, which we have publicly contended to be antichristian. An incidental notice of the well known Mrs. Fry and her associates, and of their public interference with the discipline of our prisons, with the more than common degree of public attention which has been directed to the article, have led to an essay on the leading principles of the Quaker body; and the whole subject of modern, as compared with primitive, Quakerism, will probably form a prominent feature in our succeeding volume. In the course of all these inquiries, and in various points of view, the conduct and character of the clergy-catholic, established, and dissenting, have presented themselves before our readers; believing, as

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