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Tor the Monthly Repository .
Chariclo observes that your correspondent Monolatreutes has taken back his threatened answer : the withdrawment is accompanied with an affectation of contempt , which cannot have been felt at the
time of undertaking the composition , and which now will naturally pass for the mask of conscious insufficiency .
Chariclo is obliged by the observations of J . IL inserted vol . iv . p . 25 . This writer , by his reference to the 104 th psalm , means no doubt to deny the existence of angels as personal and intelligent natures . In this he is more consistent than most English Unitarians , who capriciously reject ilie doctrine of demoniacal agency , without rejecting the connected doctrine of anselie * agency . But if all the appearances and interferences of angels , related in the scriptures , are to be treated a *> mythological ornaments devised by the narrater ; other portents and prodigies ., which are commonly considered
as miraculous fac . s , may also be resolved into epic embellishments ; and then what would become of the very gospels ? Would they be more ' trust-worthy than those catholic lives of the saints , which we call legends , where the
natural events are related with all practicable fidelity , but the incid < nts connected with the purposes of the mission are dilated , aiul frothed up into miraculous interpositions . Chariclo remains of opinion that the personality of angelic natures is a doctrine
countenanced by the opinion of Christ , ( Matthew xiii . 49 . ) aud by the ge-
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( 132 )
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neral tenour both of the Jewish and Christian scriptures . In proportion as our faith leans on those scriptures , we shall have an assured persuasion * ( to use the phrase of J . H . ) that angels have had and can have the power to hear and to grant our petitions : which is all that J . H . requires to justify the worshipping of angels . J . H . next proceeds to quote the second commandment , and other passages declaratory of the unity of God . To this doctrine Chariclo has no where objected : there can be but one Supreme Being : but the devotion due to this Being is compatible with a subordinate worship of heroic and hely persons . The Gentiles , who addressed Jupiter as the supreme God , also erected altars to Osiris and Bacchus , the men who invented beer and wine . The Catholics who addressed the trinity as the Supreme God , also erected altars to St . Chrysostom , an eloquent writer and preacher , to St . Teleirmchos ,
the nbolishtr of gladiatorial sports , and to St . llomualdo , who preached down the white slave trade . And why may not the Unitarian church as rationally , put up in its temples , the busts of Priestley and Lardner , of
Serveto and Soeinus , of Paul of Samosata or of Jesus Christ ? This revering of the illustrious dead winch was perhaps at one time , excessively directed toward martyrs , prevailed in the Christian church from its institution , until the reformation . It was
then attacked , because it had led to idoLatry . The statue was con *
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CHRISTIAN POLYTHEISM FURTHER DEFENDED , INlEPLt TO J . H .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1809, page 132, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1734/page/12/
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