_See how they have advanced!_ "Free-thinking Christians," a name lately
adopted by a society which arose in the year 1799, and has ever since
regularly assembled in London, calling itself _a church of God_ founded
on the principles of free inquiry. Their first members separated from a
congregation of Trinitarian dissenters in Parliament Court Chapel,
Bishopgate street; they rejected the doctrine of the trinity, the
atonement, and other points of Calvinism; then the sacraments and the
immateriality of the soul; and lastly, the inspiration of the scriptures
and public worship, for they have neither singing nor praying in their
assemblies, and regard the Bible only as an authentic history.
These free-thinking Christians readily admit that, since their first
assembling as a body, their sentiments have undergone considerable
alteration on points of primary importance, but they contend that this
is the natural consequence of free inquiry; that men who had heretofore
been the slaves of error could not but advance in the attainment of
truth after adopting a system which left thought _unrestrained and
conscience free_, and they are still ready to renounce any opinion
whenever it shall appear to them untenable. In consequence, their public
meetings, which are mostly on Sunday forenoons, resemble rather a
debating society than a Christian Church. The elder opens the meeting by
stating the subject for consideration, and, at his call, several
speakers successively address the meeting. It is not unusual to hear
among them difference of opinion, and they are all prompt to controvert
the current doctrines of the Christian world, to show their dissent from
all sects and parties, and their aversion to the clergy and to Christian
ministers of all denominations.
This society was little known till the year 1808, when they advertised
their intention of publicly inquiring into the existence of a being
called _the devil_. So singular a notice could not fail of drawing a
considerable number of persons to their assembly, especially on a
Sunday morning. The landlord of the house at which they met in the old
'Change, alarmed for his personal security, obliged them to remove, and
they engaged the large room at the Paul's Head, Cateaton street. Here
the magistracy interfered, but as they had taken the precaution to
license themselves under the toleration act, nothing could be done
legally to restrain them. Since then they have set up a periodical
publication under the title of the "Free-thinking Christian's Magazine,"
in which they profess to disseminate Christian, moral, and philosophical
truth, and they have erected a handsome meeting-house in the crescent
behind Jewin street, Cripplegate, where this weekly assembly, consisting
of members and strangers, is said to amount to between four and five
hundred persons.
The following appears to be the latest summary of their opinions: "The
Christian religion," they say, "consists in the worship of one God,
eternal, just, and good, and in an obedience to the commands of Jesus,
his messenger on earth, who taught the wicked to repent of the error of
their ways and that God was ever ready to receive them. Forms and
ordinances, parade and show, are no points of his system, but virtue and
purity of heart can alone prepare man for a blissful existence beyond
the grave, the wisdom and hope of which were furnished by the
resurrection of the teacher of their faith, _a member of earth and an
heir of immortality_."--Free-thinking Christians' Magazine; Hannah
Adams's Dictionary of all Religions, page 82.