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Untitled Article
Of Mr . Gilchrist ' s pamphlet it is not my intention to say any thing on tire present occasion ; for though many of his observations are evidently just , it is nevertheless equally obvious that his manner of writing is more declamatory and eloquent than argumentative and satisfactory . Very different is the general style of Mr . Elton ' s publication ; and whatever feelings
his recent secession may have excited among his former friends , it cannot be denied that his arguments bear immediately on the controversial points which form the subject of his work , and that he but rarely indulges in extraneous matter . I say rarely , because in one part he has introduced topics which are , in my apprehension , irrelevant to his purpose , and to which I am desirous , in this communication , of briefly adverting .
Before I notice the passages here alluded to , I trust that it will not be deemed any violation of candour , if I mention a practice too prevalent among Unitarians which has always appeared to me to be extremely unfair , and which is censured by Mr . Elton in his present publication : that , in their controversies with members of the Established Church , they fix upon the ultra-orthodox statement of the doctrines in dispute , and think that if they can succeed in shewing them to be indefensible in that exaggerated form , the truth of their own tenets will be the inevitable result . No writer is more
liable to this charge than Dr . Priestley ; but in the present day his followers have by no means discontinued the same mode of reasoning , and even Dr . Channing , who certainly cannot be called one of his admirers , has , in this particular , thought proper to imitate his example . This accusation is more particularly applicable to the three leading points on which Mr . Elton has
recently changed his sentiments , and we might really imagine that respecting the Trinity , Original Sin , and the Atonement , there was but one mode of explanation , and that no perceptible distinction existed between the opinions of Waterland and Wallis , or , in more recent times , between those of Dr . Hawker , of Plymouth , and Dr . Hey , our late Norrisian Professor at Cambridge .
With regard to the first question considered by Mr . Elton , that which relates to the person of Christ , I conceive it to be perfectly consonant with the soundest principles of reason to believe in our Saviour ' s divinity , without becoming liable to the charge of tritheism ; and were there no other corroborative proof of the former in our possession , I should agree with the eminent Griesbach in thinking that the proem of St . 'John ' s Gospel would alone be abundantly conclusive . This exordium he describes to be " so
perspicuous , and above all exception , that it can never be overturned by the daring attacks of interpreters and critics . ' * I have not yet been fortunate enough , 1 must avow , to meet with any Unitarian interpretation of this passage , which either does not violate the rules of Greek construction , or which is not glaringly inconsistent with the purport of the context . And it is a remarkable circumstance that the best Greek scholar , perhaps , of that denomination of Christians was so well aware of the difficulty incurred by rejecting the natural explication of St . John ' s language , that he frankly
acknowledges that he was deterred from embracing it solely by the apprehension of the inferences to which it must lead . The following confession occurs in the Monthly Repository ( No . CCXL . of the Old Series ) : " And here justice and candour force me to allow , that this interpretation is what the Evangelist seems at first glance to suggest , it being for the most part conformable to the primary acceptation of the words and to the rules of construction in Greek . The Logos is said to be from the beginning of time , to be God , to be with God , and , as it must appear to common sense ,
Untitled Article
644 On Mr . Elian ' s Second Thought s *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1827, page 644, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1800/page/12/
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