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    selves , yet nevertheless prate about their disbelief , forsooth , of the authenticity of the preliminary chapters of Matthew and Luke , on no other ground than Mr . Belsham ' s " Calm Inquiry , " published as it now is " in a cheap form to facilitate and extend its circulation" ! The consequences of instilling into the minds of Christians an opinion , or even a distrust , that the preliminary chapters in Matthew and Luke are " absolute falsities , " must

    necessarily be most baneful . Perhaps there is nothing so closely associated with the belief of Christians in general , as the very facts which those identical chapters detail respecting our Lord ' s nativity , forming as they do in every town , in every village , and in every house and cottage , the constant themes of rejoicing at those annual festivals , which are the anniversaries of that momentous epoch which brought " glad tidings of great joy to all people , " and on which occasion the heavenly host lauded the all-bountiful

    and beneficent Giver , saying , " Glory to God in the highest , and on earth peace , good-will towards men . " The narrative of those most interesting events was engraven on their memories in their earliest childhood , in a way , too , and at a season , calculated to render the impression indelible . It has grown with their growth , and strengthened with their strength : and in minds like those of the multitude , faith in the truth of such facts relating to the blessed Founder of Christianity , and belief in the truth of Christianity

    itself , must stand or fall together . It is impossible without the worst consequences to attempt to separate the two : destroy the one , and you shake the other to its very centre . The great majority of Christians are , from various causes , unable to sift such matters for themselves ; but they have been taught ( and truly taught ) to believe that the New Testament contains the revealed word of the Almighty . As such they have appreciated it justly as a jewel above all price . They have drawn from it , with religious reverence ,

    the practical inculcation , " to do justice , to love mercy , and to walk humbly before God . " As a whole , they have venerated it hitherto as above all suspicion , spotless and pure ; when they are told , possibly by an authority highly respectable in point of talent and moral conduct , and moreover greatly influential from his station and office , that one hundred and seventysix verses are " complete falsities , " what is in many instances the

    inevitable , the lamentable consequence ? Why , the whole work sinks m their estimation , just as the reputation of any individual , whom they had been accustomed to revere as a model of uprightness and goodness , would sink on his being convicted of a vile falsehood , or an atrocious act of criminality : and all confidence , as well in the integrity of the one as in the authenticity of the other , would alike receive an irrecoverable shock . But the mischief doth

    not stop there : it prepares a highway for the march of Deism ; for many of those individuals who have been so initiated in partial infidelity , are but too well prepared to tolerate the reasoning— " Why , if these four chapters which for so many centuries have been received as true , are now as clearly proved , as they are positively asserted to be , absolute falsities , it is very possible that there may be other chapters , which deeper investigation may shew to be equally spurious ; nay , it is not impossible that there may be but too good a foundation for the Deistical assertion , that the whole is a ' cunningly devised fable !'"

    If ye , the " philosophizing Gentile believers" of the age , must indulge yourselves in wild conjectures and arrogant hypotheses in matters of theological controversy , yet do not—in mercy do not—bereave the sober-minded , single-hearted and pious Christian , of one atom either of his devotional reverence for , or of his unbounded confidence in , the purity of that book

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    260 ' St .. Luke 8 Gospel .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1827, page 260, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1795/page/28/