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undoubtedly ' say that he was now an Unitarian . His &im in it is to demonstrate from reason and Scripture that Jesus was simply a man * He does not here deal in negations merely , but in direct proofs . This sermon was , besides , no hasty composition , got up on the spur of the moment . It had been first written , the author informs us , for the Lecture at St . Thomas ' s
Chapel , and recomposed for the Southampton Meeting : it was printed after a further revision , and with the appendage of notes . It might , therefore , on the face of it , be fairly taken as conclusive evidence of the author's Unitarianisnu But-Mr * Gilchrist spurns the benefit his pamphlet . would have derived from this inference , in giving to the title somewliat of the sanction of truth , and at one stroke , and a fearful stroke it is , demolishes the autho
rity of the proof » The most austere and relentless critic that ever dipped his pen in gall would not dare , even in reference to the pamphlet now under our review , open and inviting as it is to the severest judicial censures , to say of the author what he affirms of himself by way of apology for printing and publishing this sermon : —• " I preached said discourse" ( he writes , p . 15 ) " in a state of mind bordering on distraction , with doubt and perplexity , ( which was too frequently the case when called to preach Unitarian Lectures , ) and when I wrote it out for the press , I may truly say , that such was the desperation of my spirit that I neither feared God nor regarded man / " Such language precludes all comment . Mr . Gilchrist does not , however , leave us with this measure of evidence *
that he never was an Unitarian , though sufficiently ample and decisive * A large part of his pamphlet consists of a kind of Delectus Sententiarum , or * ' Elegant Extracts" from sermons preached by him in the last ten years . These are not given merely as specimens of his pulpit eloquence , though they would as such be curiosities of their kind : they are avowedly selected for the purpose of shewing that , during this period , he did not preach Unitarianism , but something very different . Surely , then , nothing farther can be requisite to satisfy any reasonable mind , that whatever Mr . Gilchrist has " abandoned , " he has not , himself being the judge , abandoned " Unitarian ism . "
That some " extraordinary change" ( p . 76 ) has taken place in his opinions , we are bound on his own authority to believe . We will not assign this change to any " base motives , " or " to mental weakness and aberration * " ( P . 76 . ) But we must leave it to Mr . Gilchrist to reconcile , as he may be able , to Christian simplicity and integrity , the course of his public labours as an avowed Unitarian minister and advocate , with his now declared disbelief of nearly all the peculiar tenets of Unitarianism , with his unsatisfied doubts as to the divine origin of Christianity , and with the admitted inclination of his mind to the principles of Atheism .
In the perusal of this tract , it is impossible not to be occasionally amused by the supercilious and disdainful style in which the author , with singular self-complacency , delivers his judgment upon those scholars and critics to whom the learned world had been used to give some credit for erudition and talents . Such pretenders to scholarship and criticism as Geddes and
> Vakefteld , et hoc genus omne , merit only the writer ' s unqualified contempt ! Indeed , biblical critics are his aversion . " The labours of thq most learned critics , " he writes , p . 3 , " were as familiar to us as the pages of popular authors ; and if we have long ceased to give our days and nights
to them , the sole reason was that they did us more harm than good . " He does not , however , content himself with the contemptuous treatment of the dead . The living come in for their full share of his scorn and personal abuse * . The eminent persons against whom these vmpot saXafMt , these
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Remeto *~ SecemQ 7 te froto Umtandnism . t > 73
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1827, page 673, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1800/page/41/
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