Dissenter

“ 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. ”

“ Were not dissenters, for instance, a class of people, with strict truth characterized as cunning? And may I not lay some stress on this fact to prove, that when any power but reason curbs the free spirit of man, dissimulation is practised, and the various shifts of art are naturally called forth? Great attention to decorum, which was carried to a degree of scrupulosity, and all that puerile bustle about trifles and consequential solemnity, which Butler's caricature of a dissenter brings before the imagination, shaped their persons as well as their minds in the mould of prim littleness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ DISSENTER (Lat. dis-sentire, to disagree) , one who dissents or disagrees in matters of opinion, belief, &c. The term “dissenter” is, however, practically restricted to the special sense of a member of a religious body in England which has, for one reason or another, separated from the Established Church. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whether his dissent be for the better or for the worse, is a matter of little moment: the ruling body always think it worse, and the consequences to the dissenter are the same.
119 Plato, Gorgias, p. 522 B; Theætêtus, p. 179; Menon, p. 79.
Antithesis between philosophy and rhetoric. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was my misfortune perhaps to be bred up among Dissenters, who look with too jaundiced an eye at others, and set too high a value on their own peculiar pretensions. From being proscribed themselves, they learn to proscribe others; and come in the end to reduce all integrity of principle and soundness of opinion within the pale of their own little communion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the opinion of the world, then, contradicts itself, why may not I contradict it, or choose at what time, and to what extent I will agree with it? I have been accused of abusing dissenters, and saying that sectaries, in general, are dry and suspicious; and I believe that all the world will say the same thing except themselves. ”

“ This guiltiness he applied not to great persons only, but also to professors, to ministers, and particularly to ourselves, who are called dissenters from the present establishment; pressing upon us no less than others, the absolute and indispensable necessity of being convinced of, and mourning over these, not as the sins of others only, but also as our own—we having a chief hand in the trespass ”

“ Dissenters are grumblers, we know;—
Tho' excellent men in their way,
They never like things to be so,
Let things be however they may.
But dissenting's a trick I detest;
And besides 'tis an axiom well known,
The creed that's best paid is the best,
If the _un_paid would let it alone.
To me, I own, very surprising
Your Newmans and Puseys all seem,
Who start first with rationalizing,
Then jump to the other extreme.
Far better, 'twixt nonsense and sense,
A nice half-way concern, like our own,
Where piety's mixt up with pence,
And the latter are ne'er left alone. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ That which is their power gives sufficient evidence how they would act if they had exclusive possession of more. I mean the Universities, which they keep closed against Dissenters with such an obstinate and gothic bigotry. Nor does the injustice end here: there is a silent, social injustice, which Dissenters suffer; every one feels it, though it is not easily defined. The Churchman, on the strength of signing a Creed which he does not always believe, assumes to be of a higher religious caste than the Dissenter. ”

“ The disproportion between the fact and the allegation only points the moral the more strongly against you; for the odiousness of your conduct, in differing with men in office and their sycophants, is such, that no colours can be black enough to paint it; and if you are not really guilty of all the petty vices and absurdities imputed to you, it is plain that you ought to be so, to answer to their theory, and as a fiction in loyalty, for the credit of church and state. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Whether you examine the conduct of the nation at large, or that of its chiefs and leaders, your feelings revolt at the one, and your integrity despises the other. You see the idols erected by Folly, degraded by Caprice;—the authority obtained by Intrigue, bartered by Profligacy;—and the perfidy and corruption of one side so balanced by the barbarity and levity of the other, that the mind, unable to decide on the preference of contending vices, is obliged to find repose, though with regret and disgust, in acknowledging the general depravity. ”

“ Now, let the consequences of such a prejudice be considered when shrewd men, thirsting for power, availed themselves of it—and still do so! “Bring about the right state of mind!”—in this way you can do without all arguments and overcome every objection! ”

“ Your heart, on every occasion, belies your conduct; every where your countenance is in contradiction to your sentiments; you are the hypocrites of the world, of ambition, of favour, and of fortune; and it well becomes you, after that, to accuse the just of the same tricks, and so loudly to ring their dissimulation and pretended hypocrisy: when you shall have nothing in the same way with which to reproach yourselves, then will we listen to the temerity of your censures ”

“ From all this it appears, how empty an excuse they seize to defend their tyranny, and what frail weapons they employ, to uphold the delusion. But it is a purely fictitious excuse, with which to disguise their purpose, and to attire in a strange dress the ugliness which cruelty presents to every eye, and, through deception, to make it pleasing to one another. ”

“ The laws of toleration provide for every real grievance that these gentlemen can rationally complain of Are they hindered from professing their belief of what they think to be truth? If they do not like the Establishment, there are an hundred different modes of Dissent in which they may teach. ”

“ Wilt thou dare to contemplate thy own wretchedness stripped of the lies with which thou hast veiled it? Will that which can and must go on living, have the courage to free itself from the deadly embrace of rotten institutions?... ”

“ Dissension disableth you to govern your families aright. Your children and servants will take example by you; or think they are at liberty to do what they list, when they find you taken up with such work between yourselves; and they will think you unfit to reprove them for their faults, when they see you guilty of such faults and folly of your own; nay, you will become the shame and secret derision of your family, and bring yourselves into contempt. 7. Your dissensions will expose you to the malice of Satan, and give him advantage for manifold temptations. A house divided cannot stand ”

“ THERE are few constitutional misfortunes that lead to more unhappiness and disgrace than a wavering, unsettled disposition. In all its aspects of ambiguous expression, variable opinion, and contradictory behaviour, it is blameable and hideous. It is always open to censure, and is often the parent of deceit, dissimulation, and treachery. ”

“ So that they cry out at the suggestion that it is no more than a selfish vice; and finding truth where they had looked for the materials of another debauch of self-delusion, they moan aloud: they protest, and they demand as their sacred right that the bitter cup be taken from before them. ”

“ Is not all the stupid chatter of most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, and so forth, and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space? Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have to guard your back against the lunatic's stealthy malice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He is amenable to a higher jurisdiction, and while all is well with Heaven, he can pity the errors, and smile at the malice of his enemies! Whatever cuts men off from their dependence on common opinion or obvious appearances, must open a door to evasion and cunning, by setting up a standard of right and wrong in every one’s own breast, of the truth of which nobody can judge but the person himself. ”