English Secularism

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ual monarchy in which the tenets of belief are fixed, assumed to be infallible, and to be prescribed by deity. Thus the priest regards inquiry as proceeding from an impertinent distrust, to which he is not reconciled on being assured that it is u

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ceded inquiry under direction, and only so far as it tended to confirm its own anti-papal tenets. But when inquiry claimed to be independent, unfettered, uncontrolled,-in fa

tirely. There arose independent thinkers who held that unfettered investigation was the discover

spiration or conscience, is disquieting; and where impartial investigation interfered with personal interests it was opposed. No one could enter on the search for

om successive imprisonments of more than nine years duration in all. Charles Southwell was in Bristol gaol. Before his sentence had half expired I was in Gloucester gaol. George Adams was there; Mrs. Harriet Adams was committed for trial from Cheltenham. Matilda Roalfe, Thomas Finlay, Thomas Paterson, and others were incarcerated in Scotland. Robert Buchanan and Lloyd Jones, two social missionaries-colleagues of my own-only escaped imprisonment by swearing they believed what they did not believe,-an act I refused to imitate, and no mean inconvenience has resulted to me from it. I took part in the vindication of the free publicity of opinion until it was practically

cessity, began to reason with them and asked: "Now you have established your claim to be heard. What have you to say?" The reply I proposed