Dissenters

“ Well—there is enough to dissent from among the dissenters—the Formula is rampant among them as among others—you hear things like the buzzing of flies in proof of a corruption—and see every now and then something divine set up like a post for men of irritable minds and passions to rub themselves against, calling it a holy deed—you feel moreover bigotry and ignorance pressing on you on all sides, till you gasp for breath like one strangled. ”

“ If the Dissenters, as an honorable gentleman has described them, have formerly risen from a "whining, canting, snivelling generation," to be a body dreadful and ruinous to all our establishments, let him call to mind the follies, the violences, the outrages, and persecutions, that conjured up, very blamably, but very naturally, that same spirit of retaliation. ”

“ We have a church and a chapel, and I attend both. The Dreamthorp people are Dissenters, for the most part; why, I never could understand; because dissent implies a certain intellectual effort. But Dissenters they are, and Dissenters they are likely to remain. In an ungainly building, filled with hard gaunt pews, without an organ, without a touch of colour in the windows, with nothing to stir the imagination or the devotional sense, the simple people worship. ”

“ By hearing the Dissenters, and particularly the Unitarian Dissenters, continually railed at, as enemies to the present government in Church and State, you have been led to consider any injury done to us as a meritorious thing, and, not having been better informed, the means were not attended to. ”

“ All those who take it as a prelude or introduction to the further suppressing of the Dissenters, and a step to repealing the Toleration, or intend it as such, are mistaken.... All those phlegmatic Dissenters who fancy themselves undone, and that persecution and desolation is at the door again, are mistaken. All those Dissenters who are really at all disturbed at it, either as an advantage gained by their enemies or as a real disaster upon themselves, are mistaken. All those Dissenters who deprecate it as a judgment, or would vote against it as such if it were in their power, are mistaken. ”

“ Just consider what tortuous logic, what wire-drawing ingenuity have been exercised to defend guilt by imputation, and righteousness by imputation—absurdities as great morally, as transubstantiation is intellectually. This is the work of Creeds.
Dissenters are sometimes taunted with want of scholarship. The taunt may have foundation in fact; perhaps it has, but on what are we to place the blame? Dissenters, we presume, have a measure of intellect on the average of other men, and are gifted with as many mental faculties as those who subscribe the articles of our National Church. ”

“ This quiet clergyman's daughter, always hearing evil of Dissenters, has therefore from pure courage and revolted justice become a dissenter herself. A dissenter in more ways than one. Never was a nature more sensitive to the stupidities and narrowness of conventional opinion, a nature more likely to be found in the ranks of the opposition ”

“ But it may be said, ‘Why rake up old sores?’ Simply because the same persecuting spirit remains, and if the dissenters were not so strong in numbers, and consequently in political power and wealth, the same things would be done again.” He added that no farmer should be a dissenter. ”

“ I suppose, because the Dissenters oppose some of your new principles, you term them enemies; but, my dear Brother, though there are many Christless talkers, and hypocritical formalists among the Dissenters, as no doubt there are some such in the purest church under heaven; yet many of them hold and practice the truth as it is in Jesus. ”

“ Infidels (of whom I am none) should be consider'd as Dissenting Brethren, whom they should not be forward to oppress, for fear in time, and by degrees, it should come to their own Turn. Our Dissenters indeed, collectively, are vastly numerous, and a potent Party, but may trust too much to their own Strength and Numbers. ”

“ Persecution of a dissenter is always popular in the group which he has abandoned. Toleration of dissent is no sentiment of the masses.
101. Retreat and isolation to make new mores. Quakers. In the stage of half-civilization and above there have been many cases of sects which have "withdrawn from the world" and lived an isolated life. They were dissenters from the world philosophy or the life policy current in the society to which they belonged. The real issue was that they were at war with its mores. In that war they could not prevail so as to change the mores. ”

“ This hath produced a formed and settled division between those who profess the same doctrine and discipline; while they who call themselves moderate, are forced to widen their bottom, by sacrificing their principles and their brethren, to the incroachments and insolence of dissenters; who are therefore answerable, as a principal cause of all that hatred and animosity flow reigning among us. ”

“ In reality those who defend the necessity and propriety of laying dissenters under negative restraints, without chusing to be advocates for positive ones, are only afraid of the term persecution, which, happily for the friends of liberty, lies under an odium at present ”

“ How many might be driven to crime or suicide by their wretched circumstances! He had heard that the Dissenters helped their poor rather more effectually than the "church" people did; and, luckily, in a manufacturing population there were always plenty of Dissenters! ”

“ What Blindness, said I to my self, has possest the Dissenters in our unhappy Country of England, where by eternal Discords, Feuds, Distrusts and Disgusts among themselves, they always fill their Enemies with Hopes, that by pushing at them, they may one time or other compleat their Ruin ”

“ It pretends to show that the Dissenters are at heart incorrigible rebels, that a gentle policy is useless, and suggests that all preachers at conventicles should be hanged and all persons found attending such meetings should be banished. ”

“ These are the People who Cry out of the Danger from the Dissenters, but are not concerned at our Danger from the French; that are frighted at the Dissenters who as they pretend grow too Formidable for the Church, but are not disturb'd at the Threatning Growth of a Conquering Popish Enemy ”

“ Reformers will hardly see themselves in religious schismatics and sectarians, whom they despise. Perhaps others may be struck with the likeness. Rational dissenters, for example, think, because they alone profess the title, they alone possess the thing. All rational dissenters are with them wise and good. An Unitarian is another name for sense and honesty; and must it not be so, when to those of an opposite faith it is a name of enmity and reproach? But the intolerance on one side, though it accounts for, does not disprove the weakness on the other. ”

“ The dissenters, with reason, think themselves betrayed and sold by their brethren. What they have been told, that the present bill against occasional conformity was to prevent a greater evil, is an excuse too gross to pass ”

“ Some of them were not only "serious good Men," but men well known in the nation. This, indeed, was true. The Dissenters had laid themselves open to attack, and doubtless some of them saw and regretted their mistake. ”

“ A. Tis Impossible to say either what a Dissenter IS, or what he is NOT. For he's a NOTHING; that may yet come to be ANY thing. He may be a Christian; or he may be a Turk; But you'l find the best account of him in his Name. A DISSENTER, is one that thinks OTHERWISE. That is to say, let the Magistrate think what he pleases, the Dissenter will be sure to be of another Opinion. A Dissenter is not of This, or of That, or of Any Religion; but A Member Politique of an Incorporate Faction: or Otherwise; A Protestant-Fault-Finder in a Christian Commonwealth. ”

“ Again, even in those who oppose established opinions, and form the little, firm, formidable phalanx of dissent, have not early instruction, spiritual pride, the love of contradiction, a resistance to usurped authority, as much to do with the keeping up the war of sects and schisms as the abstract love of truth or conviction of the understanding? Does not persecution fan the flame in such fiery tempers, and does it not expire, or grow lukewarm, with indulgence and neglect? ”

“ When I go to the city and perceive what creatures wield the power there, when I watch the trickery, the iniquity, the audacious infamy, of the cliques that control the machinery of that great government, and when I look, as I do sometimes, into the faces of those who are thus leagued for plunder and power, only to see there vulgarity, ignorance, vice and general moral filthiness, my soul is made sick. ”

“ Nothing can ever wean the affections or confidence of a people from a Government (to which habit, prejudice, natural pride, perhaps old benefits and joint struggles for liberty have attached them) but an excessive degree of irritation and disgust, occasioned either by a sudden and violent stretch of power, contrary to the spirit and forms of the established Government, or by a blind and wilful adherence to old abuses and established forms, when the changes in the state of manners and opinion have rendered them as odious as they are ridiculous. ”

“ Bear my contempt of oppressors.
Speak against unconscious oppression,
Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,
Speak against bonds.
Go to the bourgeoise who is dying of her ennuis,
Go to the women in suburbs. ”

“ Our limit hitherto has been a kind of toleration rather grudgingly accorded so long as the dissenter does not disturb us over much. But no society will ever be truly free until it has reached the point not only of frank toleration but of the serious encouragement of dissenting opinion. For dissent is after all only a manifestation of the “elan vitale” of a living society; and it should be greeted with a cheer. A society incapable of dissent or of tolerating it has entered upon its last phase. ”

“ I am no social reformer to speak of ways and means. All I can say with certainty is that I have seen them come in by hundreds, by thousands—these men of our country now fighting in every corner of the globe—resentful, suspicious, intolerant of authority. ”

“ Today he thought of them as separate human beings and his intolerance increased. An indefinite distaste never seriously considered seemed, during the few moments in the bare waiting room, to have grown suddenly into active dislike. ”

“ It gives me a serious concern to see such a spirit of dissension in the country; not only as it destroys virtue and common sense, and renders us in a manner barbarians towards one another, but as it perpetuates our animosities, widens our breaches, and transmits our present passions and prejudices to our posterity. ”

“ Having created or stimulated popular discontent by such rhetorical exaggeration, they point to the discontent as itself sufficient proof of the existence of social oppression. They are immersed in a fallacy. ”

“ And from the fusion of opinions and sympathies thus produced, a general sentiment is elicited, to which oppression of any kind, whether of one class by another, or of individuals by the tyranny of sectarian custom, seldom appeals in vain. ”

“ They have been provoked, insulted, imprisoned, calumniated, and repressed. They are indifferent to it all. They move on and on—with the patience and the meekness of a people with the vision that they are soon to inherit the earth. ”

“ This state of national debasement and dishonor lay spread out, a wide scene of moral desolation, in the sight of statesmen, of dignified and subordinate ecclesiastics, of magistrates, of the philosophic speculators on human nature, and of all those whose rank and opulence brought them hourly proofs what great influence they might have, in any way in which, they should choose to exert it, on the people below them. ”

“ The real evils of the system were those which arose from its un-conscious barbarism—the natural and inevitable results of holding human beings as chattels, without right, the power of self-defence or protestation—dumb driven brutes, deprived of all volition or hope, subservient to another's will, and bereft of every motive for self-improvement as well as every opportunity to rise. ”

“ The open expression of difference and avowed opposition to that which is authoritatively established constitutes Dissent, whether the religion be Pagan or Christian, Monotheistic or Polytheistic. The relative attitudes of the Dissenter, and of those in power, are essentially the same in all cases, and in all cases lead to vituperation and persecution.”—The Study of Sociology, ninth edition, p. ”

“ The chief source of the danger, I think, lies in this, that the two classes of society have become so widely separated by difference of interests and pursuits that they no longer fully understand one another, and misunderstanding is the fruitful source of hatred and dissension. ”

“ The men who uttered such lines were driven from their class, their homes, and their country. They were despised and hated, like all who protest against oppression and remind the smug world of uncomfortable things. ”

“ In that hour there will be no more disesteem, or hatred, or contempt for the laws: for, howsoever a people may dislike and resent laws imposed upon them against their will by a subjugating power, no nation disesteems the laws of its own making. ”

“ And we account it a hateful brand of them that walk after the flesh, to despise government, to be presumptuous, self-willed, and not afraid to speak evil of dignities: and that they are filthy dreamers, who despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities: and of those things which they know not. ”

“ It is useless, and indeed worse than useless, that they should see my impotent indignation and unavailing pity, and hear expressions of compassion for them, and horror at their condition, which might only prove incentives to a hopeless resistance on their part to a system, under the hideous weight of whose oppression any individual or partial revolt must be annihilated and ground into the dust. ”