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Donne , sometime Dean of St p » j ' ^ t ° K ^ Th 6 Se Letter 8 > thougj much of their interest is gone with the age in which they first appeared are still valuable for some fine thouehh wincn contain
iijey , arid especially for the ease and perspicuity of the style , when compared with the phraseology of Dr . Donne ' s Poems which had become so obsolete , a century ago , that Pope , as is well known * translated the Satires into intelli gible * English verse .
In a letter to his " honoured friend SirT . Lucey , "( P-11 ) written probably about 1624 , the author has a passage introductory to that for which I refer to him well worth transcribing . He remarks , " that as litigious men , tired with suits , admit any arbitrament , and Princes travailledwith
long and wasteful war , descend to such conditions of peace , as they are soon after ashamed to have embraced ; so philosophers , and so all sects of Christians , after long disputations and controversies , have allowed many things for positive and dogmatical truths , which are not worthy of that
dignity . And so , many doctrines have grown to be the ordinary diet and food of our spirits and have place in the pap of Catechisms , which were admitted but as physic in that present distemper , or accepted in a
lazy weariness , when men , so they might have something to rely upon , and to excuse themselves from more painful inquisition , never examined what that was . * Dr . Donne goes on to remark , "in the matter of the soul—that whole
Christian churches arest themselves upon propagation from parents ; and other whole Christian churches allow only infusion from God . " He controverts the first , because you " can never evict necessarily and Gertainly a na-4
tural immortality in the soul , if « soul result out of matter . " He adds , as to the second notion , " they which follow the opinion of infusion from God , and of a new creation , which is now the common opinion , can very
hardly defend the doctrine of original 3 in . The soul is forced to take : ttoj infection , and comes not into the body of her own disposition . " It is <** > I think , that Dr . Donne could discover no foundation for the doctrine <» Original Sin , but church-autboniy . wJhkb Ju * caata » P « rary > Jab » X * a «*
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6 S 0 Perplexities in the Doctrine vf Original Sin .
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-which the name of Watts appears to sanction an abandonment of his system , or at least of its most important doctrines . I have always thought that a
collector might justly accommodate to his own ideas of Christian worship , whatever he met with , putting , as it were , every Hyrnnist on the bed of Procrustes , provided he accompanied his selection with a full declaration of
the liberty he had assumed . For such a declaration , I searched the Preface to this Collection , in the editions of 1795 and 1812 , but was suprised to find a licence taken out only for some slight alterations . I beg leave to ask the surviving editors of the
collection , who , I dare say , are among your readers , and who , I am persuaded , would rather Christianize than designedly neglect the Pagan precept on your blue cover ; I would ask those respectable gentlemen a question , with which orthodox Christians
have more than once puzzled me ; what . are alterations of moment , if those to which I have referred are <• slight alterations ?" VERBUM SAT .
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8 t . Ardleon , Oct . 4 , 1815 . Sir , AM gratified to observe by an I article in your Review , p . 588 , that the doctrine of Original Sin has come under the public animadversion
of Mr . Wright who , with scriptural arguments , in a popular form , has already successfully opposed several popular and long-established perversions , as I cannot help regarding them , of the faith once delivered ter the
Sai nts . The doctrine of Original or Birth Sin though it runs , as it were , en all fours , through the Articles * Confessions and Catechisms of Established
and Separated Churches , has been * a doctrine of difficult digestion with . some learned and pious individuals among th « m , who appear to have perplexed themselves , like the super-human metaphysicians of the poet
And found no end , in wandering * mazes lost . I will give two examples among many which might be adduced . There was published in 1654 , a 4 to volume of ** Letters to several foraons of Honour ,, written ? by John
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1815, page 630, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1765/page/30/
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