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use of letters . Their age , little -ascertained , is reckoned within that called the fabulous , because the earliest heathen political history , possibly cotemporary abounds in fable . Their doctrine , however , carrying evidence of its origin , m what age they severally lived is comparatively unimportant . " But , among evidences of its origin , some deserve more particular obserh
vation . In consonance with the first commandment , those philosoper ^ poets asserted the unity of God . * No such commination as that of the second against the worship of either a pluraliiy , or of images , appears to have reached them . A plurality had already , in their time , obtained vulgar credit ; but of image-worship in their country , in their age , no indication is found . - An opinion of the duty of respect for the sanctity of oaths inforced by the third commandment , has obtained , in all ages , the world over . "—Pp . 77 —7 9 .
For the alteration of the Sabbath , he allows that there is no specific command . It rests on unvaried custom , derived from the earliest times of Christianity , yet with some appearance of authority from the apostles themselves
P . 83 . We pass over Section IX ., on the " Continued Severity of Trial for the selected Nation , " and come to Section X ., entitled " The Historical Books of the Old Testament unsuited to general Edification , " where we find the following free remarks , which are , we think , upon the whole , judicious * " To persons at this day , educated and habituated to thought and reflection , it cannot be necessary to remark that the indiscriminate slaughter of nations , the particular severity of the prophet Samuel to one of their princes , with
other matters related in the Old Testament as warranted by that Almightiness which can largely reward , in another life , suffering in such or in any other way , in this , have clearly not been proposed as examples for man , of his own judgment , to follow . Far from wanting Christianity to ascertain so much , those examples were not even for the Jews to follow , but only to tremble at , as admonitions of what , under divine authority , might come upon themselves . Through these , however , and other matters recorded in the Old Testament ,
that book is surely hazardous in the hands of the uneducated ; and liable to be perverted , as , in modern instances , it has been , to ill purpose by the designing , whose views to their interest might lead them to impose on the simple . But among the Jews , their sacred book could not come readily and extensively into such hands . The art of printing did not then afford means to distribute numerous copies among those who would presently dispose of them to any for wanted food or pernicious drink . Every synagogue probably would have a copy , more or less complete . But it was only for persons appointed , under
strict rule , to read and to expound to the congregation parts duly selected . Christ himself undertook this office ; thus apparently affording intimation sufficiently authoritative , that , for the bulk of mankind , selection and exposition are needful . The founders of the Church of England accordingly , not inattentive probably to this admonition , with which their own judgment on the subject would correspond , have not proposed the whole , nor nearly the whole , of the Old Testament for public instruction , but have appointed only what they have properly denominated lessons , selected from it , to be read to the people . "—Pp . 95—97 .
We believe we speak the sense of educated pious churchmen when we say that the founders of the Church of England have left much more of the Old Testament in the daily Lessons than agrees with the modern sense of decency . But one of the evils of a National Church is , that no reform in the least important customs can take p lace without as great an alarm as if the foundations of the Church were about to be torn up . This is seen at the present moment in Prussia , where there is a great outcry on the revision , by royal authority , of the Liturgy . In England we are so deepl y entrenched in prescription , that whatever has been must continue to be , and though the ^ ¦ ¦
T | — - T . - ' » - * t ( Aristot . de mundo /
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21 $ R 6 vtew . ~ Mitfwd ' 8 Observations on Christianity .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1827, page 216, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1794/page/56/
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