On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
gospels , and of those writings which Christians hav e universally deemed sacred * That a sincere Christian may 'have his doubts respecting the authenticity of a particular passage ^ here
and there , in the Christian scriptures , I am ready to acknowledge ; but I fcannot help considering the conduct of the writer who makes an open attack on the whole , who publishes to the world a hook with the title , " The Dissonanceof the Four Gospels /* and the main business of whose life is to discredit those gospels , as containing ** false , bare-feced fictions' '—I cannot help considering such conduct as much more becoming the open infidel , than the professed Christian , who is endea-1
vouring ** to display Christianity in its native simplicity / I remark , thirdly , that the rejection of some of the clearest evidences of Christianity must for ever prevent the person sq
rejecting them , from being considered one " of the brightest ornaments , and the best instructors of Christianity */* Mr . Evanson is the only Christian ^ writer I ever heard of > who did not consider the miracles , the doctrines , the precepts ,. and the promises of our Savioqr , as evidences of his divine mission .
Jesus Christ himself frequently appeals to these as conclusive evidence that he came from God . Mr . E * on the contrary , is of opinion , that the authority of the prophets- alone is divine , and he further limits even this limitation to those prophets whose predictions are , in part , already fulfilled . Completed prophecy he . considers as the only criterion given by God himself , whereby we can ascertain the truth and divine authority
of what is taught us as revelation from him . Mr . E / s biographer is , I should imagine , the first person who has informed the world , that a rejection of the peculiar evidences of Christianity is the best mode of u displaying Christianity in its native simplicity , by which it may fee as intelligibl y now to the poor and humble , as it was when taught by Jesus and his apostles to the Jewish and Gentile multitudeJ "
I beg leave ., lastly , to observe , that not only the scepticism , but the enthusiasm , of Mr . E . affords the most sad , but , at the same time , conclusive evidence of the injustice of the encomiums alluded to . Extremes not unfrequently meet in the same person , and never did wider extremes meet than in Mr .
E . Who could have imagined that the writer , who rejected the major part of the sacred writings , and the principal and universally received evidences of Christianity , should , still professing himself a believer , rest the truth of the whole system on his own interpretation of the most mysterious book , written in the most figurative language of any in the sacred canon ?
* Monthly Repos . for Feb . p . 63 .
Untitled Article
248 Remarks on the Lifi& of Mr . Evanson *
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1806, page 248, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1724/page/24/
-