The good way is the old way; or the love of novelty in religion censured. A sermon preached in the chapel of the Foundling Hospital, on ... October 10th, 1830 / [Alfred Williams].

  • Williams, Alfred
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The good way is the old way; or the love of novelty in religion censured. A sermon preached in the chapel of the Foundling Hospital, on ... October 10th, 1830 / [Alfred Williams]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    looked. If lie only differ from his brethren, which certainly cannot be an abstract virtue,— if his mien be singular,—his movements start¬ ling,—his diction obscure or uncouth,—his pretensions bold and new,—these appearances of novelty, even when he has nothing new to impart, suffice to the high as well as to the low, to the learned as well as to the ignorant 1 They desert their sober-minded spiritual in¬ structors, whom a deep sense of their solemn obligation coniines to ‘ the good old way and they join the ranks of one whom, if he has any new doctrine to deliver, they ought most stu¬ diously to avoid : whose religious vagaries they would, with much greater wisdom, leave to his own undivided enjoyment; and whose old and veritable truths they would hear, with far more devotion and benefit, from their regular mi¬ nisters. These remarks are not pointed at any indi¬ vidual in particular: they are of a general cha¬ racter, and delivered under the sincere hope that they may be instrumental in checking that Athenian propensity to novelty, which, in these days, has taken ample possession of the reli¬ gious public, and which leads them whitherso¬ ever they have a prospect of its gratification :—a