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him , as the gospel affords . Of all Heathen writers , it may be not wholly foreign to the purpose of this little work to observe ,, he perhaps , in g iving the result of such speculation and inquiry , has expressed the best sentiments of the Grecian philosophers , the best guides furnished by his opportunities , most nearly with Hebrean conciseness and force . " —Pp . 141 , 142 .
Some further remarks are here made upon the Lord ' s Prayer , The author understands the clause relating to temptation to mean , " Put us not so to trial , but that thou wilt graciously deliver us from evil . " He rejects the gloss which would make the concluding phrase to refer to the devil , " the evil one . " " 'But I say unto you that ye resist not evil . ' % Eyu & * Xiya vpTv , ^ am * § - ?? $ ' t ? wovyptp . Matt . v . 39 . Here b y rb irovypbv not only has not been meant the devil , but certainly not any moral evil . This so completely justifies the English translation , that it may appear almost superfluous to add that , in all
known manuscripts , this last cited passage is found to have the article prefixed , but , the oldest has it not in the prayer . "—Note , p . 148 . Mr , Mitford ventures in the IVth Sect , upon the difficult subject " Of Demoniacs . " With little previous knowledge of the sentiments of learned men upon this much-agitated question , he decides , from a review of the New Testament , against the popular hypothesis . In answer to a remark of the late Mr . Gilpin ' s in his Exposition , that the devil had greater visible
power before the time of Christianity than he has now , which it is necessary to suppose in order to meet many difficulties in profane history , with regard to oracles , the writer says , * ' I wish the worthy author had specified the reported oracles which made any difficulty for him ; being myself unaware of any which may not most reasonably be referred to either conjecture before , or invention after the fact ;
unless some of such ingenious duplicity , or of such obscure , if any meaning , that , whatever were the event , mistake could not be imputed to them : nor has this passed unnoticed by Heathen authors . "—Pp . 155 , 156 . We regret that our narrow limits will not allow us to extract some passages in exposition of several instances of possession related in the gospels , which Mr . Mitford considers to have been cases of disease , disease
accompanied by some kind ah <} degree of madness . He protests against the rendering in the English transition of . jfce Greek words " daemon" and " daemonion , " by the English Wprd appropriated to the Greek " diabolos , " as not only " utterly unwarranted , " but " an offensive stumbling-block . " ( P . 182 . ) He says that the word " daemon" was never used in Greek to
express any thing evil ; Luke , a Greek scholar , has therefore in his first notice of possession ( iv . 33 ) used a distinguishing epithet to guard against an improper conception of his meaning , — " the spirit of an unclean dsemonion . " This phrase , or that of M unclean spirit , " he would have substituted in the English New testament " for the offensive term « d evil . ' "
( Pp . 162 , 172 and 183 . ) Reasonable as is this call for an improved version , it will be disregarded b y our ecclesiastical dig nitaries who influence the measures of government with regard to the Church . All improvements have been hitherto , and will , we fear , long continue to be , made by individuals , not only unauthorized by Church and State in their useful labours , but exposed to obloquy for their officious exposure of defects and errors in the religious apparatus of the country . The Second Volume or Part ( ft > r the book is strangely printed ) of the Observations consists partly of " Letters to a Friend , " we suppose a divine ,
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Review *—Mitford * Observation * on Christianity . 361
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YOU I , 2 B
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1827, page 361, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1796/page/49/
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